Bitter Water

by Ferris, Gordon

  ‘New suits?’

  ‘For a while last year he was one of my only customers. I made three for him. The last I fitted this January. All the finest cloth. One with matching waistcoat. He came by last month and ordered two more in different cloths. He said he wanted the best. I said you’ve come to the right shop.’

  ‘How did he pay, Isaac? Cash or cheque? I assume he has paid?’

  He was shaking his head. ‘I suppose I won’t be completing the new orders now. The first ones were paid for all right, Douglas. But not by Mr Sheridan. Wait, I have it here.’

  Isaac ducked below the counter and pulled out a fat ledger. He opened it and worked down the pages of beautiful German script. I’d seen ledgers like it in the camps, but they had a very different purpose.

  ‘Ach yes, here. I had to send the bill to Mr Andrew Cunningham. A cheque came back by return. It was a good cheque. No problem. Covered my heating bills this winter.’

  I was disappointed. I’d never heard of Cunningham. ‘Do you know him? This man who promptly paid up?’

  ‘No. But I know the address. It’s the offices in the city of Sir Colin Maxwell.’

  I spent another half-hour at Isaac’s trying on my haul. He was right. It was all good cloth, from heavy tweeds that would see me through a damp day in the heather or repel barbed wire, to smart lounge suits that would have the maître d’ at the Ritz bowing and scraping. I stood in the last of Sam’s father’s suits – a lightweight blue wool – and glanced at the discarded Co-op rig I’d come in wearing. Isaac was nodding and smiling.

  ‘I’ll keep this one on, Isaac. And I won’t be needing that rag. Can you give it away?’

  ‘With pleasure, sir.’

  I paid him a ridiculously small amount for his labours and marched off into the warm morning, feeling transformed. Isaac would have the other suits sent round to Sam’s. The dinner jacket would be ready for the gallery opening and I would have purchased a new pair of shoes to live up to this new image.

  Which reminded me; I needed more money. The Gazette was paying me a pittance as Wullie’s understudy, though promises had been made about a salary hike to a fiver per week if I proved worthy of filling his down-at-heel shoes. In the meantime, my demob gratuity had all but run out and I was struggling to keep up with the swimming-club membership and day-to-day living. I was a poor man living in a palace. It rankled. Maybe the fags would have to go. Maybe I could start writing some articles and get them published?

  THIRTY-FOUR

  All the following week, between us, McAllister and I were selling newspapers like free mutton pies at Hampden. People couldn’t wait to get their hands on them. I told Wullie about my impending rendezvous with his prime suspects and promised him, under pain of excommunication from Ross’s, that I’d tell him everything I learned. City Hall corruption was his story and I was merely contributing to it. Wullie was mollified and suggested he might give me a mention in passing.

  As McAllister’s headlines about Jimmie Sheridan fell from the public’s immediate attention I provided new grist to the gossip mills with a column about my encounter with the Marshals, the Glasgow vigilantes.

  The police were helping the sales by making a big production of the murder inquiries and linking them to the vigilante activities. Spokesmen from the Chief Constable’s office were being quoted in all the papers: no stone left unturned . . . escalation of violence . . . eradicate this criminal gang who have taken the law into their own hands . . .

  I almost felt sorry for the Marshals, if they were indeed innocent of the murders. I called Duncan to check our stance again.

  ‘Duncan, I know we want to avoid mentioning the severed pinkies in the paper, but it sounds like you and Sangster are only focusing on the Marshals for the murders.’

  ‘Sangster just disnae believe anyone else is involved. His brain can’t imagine two sets of bampots causing mayhem in his patch. He’s absolutely clear that you should not mention the pinkies or try to suggest there’s another outfit at work.’

  In the meantime, the punishments went on. Either Ishmael had been recruiting again, or, as I’d feared, Glasgow was littering copycats. I had a call that Cowcaddens was erupting. I grabbed one of our photographers and we shot round in a taxi. We found a mob, lead by wifies in headscarves and pinnies, clearing out a vipers’ nest of drug dealers. We cheered them on as they surrounded the dingy pair of shops where the dealers and their customers hung out and dinned them away with clashing dustbin lids and chants. Next day, our front page had a sensational shot of the housewife army in a mad charge, brandishing lids and brooms, re-enacting Bannockburn.

  The day after, another call came in, and I leaped down the subway and rattled round to Govan. I was in time to see a band of flat-capped men marching down the high street, tackety boots pounding out a steady rhythm. Each man carried a pickaxe handle and a resolute mien. I followed them as they darted into closes and smashed down doors. They dragged out squealing ruffians and put the boot in. They swung their heavy sticks and bloodied cowering heads until they’d exacted justice on the local gangsters who’d made life miserable with street battles and protection rackets.

  It wasn’t legal but it was effective; although, as usual, revenge and envy clouded judgements. Old scores got settled under the banner of localised law enforcement. Two young women had their heads shaved and were paraded through the streets of Bellahouston, accused of prostitution. It turned out that the righteous harpy who’d led the moral crusade had lost her man to one of them and was just getting even.

  The crime rates were falling like bugs in a vacuum jar but Glasgow was becoming ungovernable. More than usual. And worse was to come. Isaac called the office. He sounded bleak.

  ‘I told you some of my people were of the old persuasion, Douglas. Two of the men used the bagel shop to report on their wives.’

  ‘Their own wives!’

  ‘Suspicions. Jealousies. An old story.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Men in balaclavas visited the women. Both on the same day.’

  I could hardly bear to ask. ‘And?’

  ‘They made the women kneel. Then they read out a bit of our old book to them. Your Old Testament. Numbers 5, verses 17 to 27. I have it here. I’ll give you the extracts.

  ‘And the priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel; and of the dust that is in the floor of the tabernacle the priest shall take, and put it into the water . . .

  And the priest . . . shall cause the woman to drink the . . . water that causeth the curse . . .

  And . . . if she be defiled, and have done trespass against her husband . . . the water . . . shall . . . become bitter, and her belly shall swell and her thigh shall rot: and the woman shall be a curse among her people.’

  Isaac switched into his native German and his voice took on the rolling high pitch of his ancestors. He painted such a graphic picture of the scene that it was like watching a movie unfold in front of me . . .

  A small hot room, windows wide but no air stirring. Three men standing; one woman on her knees. One of the men is behind the kneeling woman. His ringletted hair tangles with his beard. He wears a long black jacket and black hat. Round his waist is a wide cloth belt. A shawl hangs down across his shoulders and his left hand grips and tugs at the strings that dangle from the corners. From moment to moment he pulls the strings to his mouth and kisses them. He is rocking on his heels, all the time using his right hand to clutch the woman’s shoulder to keep her in place.

  Her head is scarfed and she is weeping. Her hands are clenched in front of her. Two men stand facing her, their heads covered by woollen masks except for the eyes and mouth. One of them holds an open bible in his left hand. He has just finished declaiming from it. He holds out a bottle of murky fluid in his right hand.

  ‘Drink! If you’re innocent it won’t harm you. If you’re guilty, it will become bitter. It will eat your vitals. God will see through you. God will judge you.’

  The woman shrieks and throws her
self forward on to her face.

  The masked man says, ‘Hold her!’

  His colleague and the woman’s husband haul her to her knees again and wrench back her head. She is sobbing and flailing. Her husband pulls open her jaw while the man holds her arms by her side. The man with the bottle tips the dirty contents into her gaping mouth. She chokes and coughs and vomits but enough fluid has gone down her throat to matter. The men stand back and the woman falls to the floor. She writhes and her knees jerk up to her chest.

  ‘It’s hot. It’s burning! I can’t breathe,’ she gasps.

  The man with the bottle waves it in triumph over her head. ‘Ha! It is the sign. Bitter water! She is defiled!

  The husband pulls back, his face red with anger and distress. His wife struggles to her feet.

  ‘ God . . .!’ Her voice fails her. She chokes and holds her throat. ‘Yakob! Not true! Not . . .’ Her words stick in her burning mouth. ‘Aaah,’ she shrieks. She turns her head from side to side until she sees the window. The open window. She takes two long steps, brushes aside the second masked man and dives at the opening. She makes no further sound as her body falls the three storeys to the street below.

  Isaac has fallen silent, waiting for me.

  I cleared my throat and found my voice. ‘Dear God. You said there were two women. What happened to the other?’

  ‘She broke down and admitted adultery. Her husband has thrown her out. And her children. He refuses to believe they are his.’

  ‘Stupid sod!’

  I tried distracting myself from the daily litany of horrors with a swim in the morning and again in the evening. I smelled permanently of chlorine.

  Morag was avoiding me – or trying to. It’s not easy when you work twenty feet away from each other. I wasn’t sure if she’d decided I was cheating on her with Sam or if I should have been trying harder to explain there was nothing in it. Maybe it was the chlorine. Her big blue eyes just looked hurt when I raised my head and caught her looking at me. At the same time, my mother’s absence from Sam’s house seemed to have disturbed the fabric of the place. Or perhaps just the relationship between Sam and me. We looked forward to sitting reading together in the library or talking and listening to the gramophone in the drawing room. As though we’d been married for twenty years but had somehow skipped all that messy business of sex. It confused the hell out of me.

  Saturday evening came and I was standing in my finery in the drawing room waiting for Sam. Dinah Shore was singing softly on the wireless. I still wasn’t sure what we’d get out of this evening, other than to put a face on some famous names. We might draw a reaction from anyone with a guilty conscience. At the very least it would apply some pressure, like lobbing some shells on enemy positions to force them keep their heads down and let them know that we were there. When people get nervous they make mistakes.

  The stiff collar kept my head up and reminded my back and shoulders of their army training. As did the line of medals in a clanking row on my left breast. It was the first time I’d worn them all together. It felt false and flash, as though I was flaunting them. Or going to an old boys’ reunion. But the invite was clear. I’d even given them a polish. I could see from the holes in the cloth that it wasn’t the first time this jacket had carried decorations. I needed to ask Sam about her father. In fact there was a great deal I needed to ask her about her father. Such as whether I was some sort of stand-in for him. It was a cheap thought, inspired by a brief examination of Siggie Freud during one term at university. It had all seemed funny at the time. We sophisticates considered that the old boy had some real mental problems of his own to come up with such tosh. And yet . . .

  I caught myself in the big mirror. In truth I found myself turning and posing. It had been years since I’d looked this smart. A light touch of Brylcreem kept my dark thatch in place. The grey smudges by my ears looked more distinguished than just plain old. My face glowed with the attention of a new razor blade.

  The dinner jacket fitted like a glove. A double-breasted and old-fashioned glove, with slightly shiny trousers, but none the worse for that. It had the look of an outfit worn regularly and nonchalantly at a steady stream of grand occasions throughout the season. My new shoes shone with parade-ground brilliance, and I forgave them their pinching. The black tie – another gift from Sam – sat perfectly in the hard collar; the technique of tying it had come back to me like swimming.

  ‘Show me,’ said Sam, standing in the doorway. ‘Don’t keep it all to yourself.’

  I turned round, caught out like a wee boy admiring himself in a shop window. Then my brief embarrassment evaporated. Her floor-length dress was blue silk and fell over her gentle lines like a shimmering river. She had matching arm-length gloves and blue silk shoes. She clasped a glittering bag in one hand and held a cigarette holder high in the other. But it was her head and shoulders that stood out.

  ‘You look lovely, Samantha.’

  She’d managed to sweep up her shoulder-length blonde bob into a carefully tangled crown. It was held in place by a small cap of silk and sequins. From her ears dangled long sparkling pendants, and round her slim throat, a matching necklace glittered and drew the eye to the gentle swell of her breasts. Mascara brought out her grey-blue eyes, and her slash of red lipstick accentuated them. My words and my inspection brought a flush to her face. She stepped further into the room and twirled to hide her confusion.

  ‘Now your turn, Douglas. By the way, it’s Douglas tonight. None of your common Brodie stuff.’

  I smiled and pirouetted in a clumsy imitation of her controlled birl.

  She walked over and flicked a hair from my shoulder. ‘So you weren’t just malingering at Edinburgh Castle.’ She pointed at the medals. ‘What’s this?’ She fingered the cross.

  ‘A bit of stupidity that came off. Just.’

  We were holding a position east of Caen and had taken a pounding for ten solid days. Lying in filthy foxholes, with shrapnel and bullets whistling overhead. I suppose I cracked. Certainly it was a kind of madness. A mind-shaking bout of anger which tore up the rule book that said a man with a machine gun always loses against a tank. I got lucky.

  She peered closer. ‘It’s the Military Cross, Douglas! You’re a bloody hero!’

  Her eyes were big. On impulse, and to hide my blushes, as the music swept into Perry Como’s big hit, I reached out my hand. For a second I thought she’d decline, but then she moved forward, took my fingers and moved into my arms. We smiled at the blatant lyrics:

  ‘Surrender, why don’t you surrender?

  How long can your lips live without a kiss?

  Surrender, I beg you surrender,

  How long can your heart resist?’

  She was light and warm in my arms, and her scent filled my chest. I wanted to lift her up and carry her to bed. We swayed easily together to the gentle rhythms of the music. It wasn’t dancing. It was reminding ourselves of our one night of love-making. Then I felt her stiffen.

  ‘Enough, my dear. Enough, Douglas.’

  But her eyes betrayed her. I leaned in and kissed her, and felt her mouth tremble and soften on mine. She gave herself up to me and we kissed like lovers reunited after a long break. Then she was pushing me back. She kept me at arm’s length, chest heaving, eyes glistening.

  ‘Your medals are cold.’

  ‘I’ll take them off.’

  ‘We’ll be late.’

  ‘Isn’t it fashionable to be late?’ In fact as far as I was concerned the soirée could happen without us.

  ‘I’ll bring you a love you can cling to,

  A love that won’t be untrue . . .

  So please be tender,

  And, darling, surrender,

  And love me as I love you.’

  She shook her head and her beaded cap glittered in the lamplight. ‘If you think I’ve just spend the last two hours getting dolled up just to have it messed up, you can think again, Major Brodie, MC.’

  I noted she didn’t deny the temptati
on, just the waste of effort.

  ‘Perhaps later, Samantha? I mean, I should at least get the second dance.’

  ‘Hmph. We should go.’ She glanced at the clock. ‘The taxi will be waiting.’

  It was. We’d decided to leave her Riley in the garage rather than get our hands dirty with a starting handle. As we stepped outside, I could have wished we were walking. It was a balmy evening, still broad day in this late Northern summer. The park looked tempting. A gentle stroll downhill to the art gallery would have been just the ticket.

  Sam must have read my mind. ‘It’s a pity, Brod . . . Douglas, but these shoes wouldn’t make it.’

  I handed her into the taxi and we sailed off on the short ride down Clifton Street and along Royal Terrace. As we turned on to Argyle Street and drew near, we could see other cars and taxis disgorging their passengers in front of the Hall. I could see shimmering long dresses and black suits gliding towards the door. I could see . . .

  ‘Stop!’ I called to the driver.

  ‘Here, sir?’

  ‘Right here. Just for a second.’

  Fifty yards ahead of us was a massive car, a Rolls by its size and shape. A royal car. The doors on either side were being held open by capped and uniformed chauffeurs. On the left-hand side a man was emerging, straightening his jacket and tugging at his cummerbund. On the right, the pavement side, a wheelchair was being set up and a man was being helped into it. He was also in evening dress. But it was the chauffeurs that had caught my attention.

  ‘What is it, Douglas? What’s the matter? That’s just . . . wait a minute . . . yes, it’s Colin Maxwell and his son Charlie. Colin’s health’s worse than I thought. What’s wrong?’

  ‘It’s not them. It’s their drivers. Look closely. And, Sam, steel yourself. ’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Sam peered past the taxi driver’s head, through the windscreen. She was long-sighted, so I knew she’d be able to see what I saw. The chauffeur on the left closed the door and limped round the car. His black curling hair pushed out from under his cap. On the other side, the sallow face with the flattened nose turned towards us. As recognition dawned, Sam’s gloved hand went up to her mouth.