Its Colours They Are Fine

by Alan Spence

  It had started to rain now, a thin soaking drizzle, but it didn’t matter.

  ‘Didye see that wumman’s face?’ said Aleck.

  ‘Ach she fucked it up,’ said Shuggie, disappointed. ‘She’d loosen aff the rope afore they came tae the door.’ Then suddenly, inspired again, he grinned.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘We’ll go an get a can.’

  Yet another variant of KDRF was to fill a tin can with water and lean it against a door. Then, when the door was opened, the can would fall over, spilling water into the house. This was what they were going to do now and they filed off in search of a can. As they crossed the back court towards a midden, Aleck remembered a story from another of the books he’d read, and he pretended they were some of Arthur’s knights crossing the wasteland towards the castle where they’d find the Holy Grail.

  Again they were in luck. Rummaging, they unearthed a large family-size soup can. Shuggie peeled off the label to reveal its shiny metal sides.

  ‘Hey, look at this!’ shouted Joe. He was holding up a discarded paint tin.

  Prising off the lid, he found that there was still some paint left, covered by a thick rubbery skin. Also in the tin was a piece of stick which had been used for mixing, the end of it clogged with paint, once white, but now grimed and grey. He used this to puncture the surface, revealing a little white paint, still fluid, at the bottom of the tin.

  They crossed over to a puddle and Shuggie kneeled down and began slowly, ritually, to fill the soup can with water, using a smaller can as a cup. This puddle too was green and stagnant, though much smaller than the one in Shuggie’s back. Joe was stirring the paint and Aleck was watching, fascinated, as Shuggie scooped feverwater into the can.

  When the can was about half-full, Shuggie suddenly stopped and looked up at them.

  ‘Heh! Ah’ve goat a better idea. We’ll aw pish in the can!’

  He slopped out some of the water and urinated into the can, then passed it to Joe who did the same.

  ‘Ah don’t really need,’ said Aleck, as Joe passed him the can, but he managed a trickle to swell the volume a little. Shuggie took the can in both hands, his axe tucked under his belt, and led them in procession towards the nearest close, Aleck in the middle and Joe at the rear, still carrying the tin of paint. It was raining more heavily now, but it still didn’t matter. The random wantonness of what they were doing filled Aleck with exhilaration and with guilty fear, and the two were inseparable.

  And all this was real. All this was actual. All this was what mattered. It was two fingers to his parents and his teachers, to the Sanitary man and the town planners, to fat Mrs Gallacher and the woman who had chased them and all adults everywhere.

  Just before they entered the close, Joe stopped them with a whispered ‘Jist a minnit!’ He opened the paint tin and, dipping the stick into the paint, he scraped on to the wall the word TRIBE. Underneath, in smaller letters, Aleck added the word PAGAN, just because it was a good word. They laid the paint tin on the ground, pleased with their work, and took up positions as before, Aleck and Joe keeping watch at either closemouth. And they stood very still in the close, rain trickling from their hair and soaked into their clothes, their breath condensing in the damp air. A car passed on the wet road outside and the sound of its wheels faded into the distance, towards Govan Road, towards the river.

  Now all they could hear were the sounds of their own breathing, and the movements of their bodies.

  And Shuggie kneeled down and carefully placed the can with its rim tilted against the door.

  And they were hushed and almost reverent, in awe of the moment.

  And their tomahawks, like their tincan grail, shone silver in the lamplight.

  TWO

  Its Colours They Are Fine

  Billy pulled on the trousers of his best (blue) suit, hoisting the braces over his shoulders, and declared that without a doubt God must be a Protestant. It was no ponderous theology that made him say it, but simple observation that the sun was shining. And a God who made the sun shine on the day of the Orange Walk must surely be a Protestant, in sympathy at least.

  From the front room Lottie mumbled responses he couldn’t quite make out, but which he recognised as agreement. Over the twenty-three years they’d been married, she had come to accept his picture of God as a kind of Cosmic Grand Master of the Lodge. It seemed probable enough.

  Billy opened the window and leaned out.

  The smell of late breakfasts frying; music from a radio; shouted conversations; traffic noises from the main road. A celebration of unaccustomed freedom. Saturday had a life and a character all of its own.

  Sunlight shafted across the tenement roofs opposite, cleaved the street in two. A difference of greys. The other side in its usual gloom, this side warmed, its shabbiness exposed. Sun on stone.

  Directly below, between a lamp-post and the wall, a huddle of small boys jostled in this improvised goalmouth while another, from across the road, took endless glorious corner kicks, heedless of traffic and passers-by.

  One of the most noticeable things about a Saturday was the number of men to be seen in the street, waiting for the pubs to open, going to queue for a haircut, or simply content to wander about, enjoying the day. For them, as for Billy, a Saturday was something to be savoured. He would willingly work any amount of overtime – late nights, Sundays, holidays – but not Saturdays. A Saturday was his. It was inviolable. And this particular Saturday was more than that, it was sacred. In Glasgow the Walk was always held on the Saturday nearest the 12th of July, the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. It was only in Ulster that they observed the actual date, no matter what day of the week that might be.

  Billy closed the window and went through to the front room, which was both living-room and kitchen.

  Lottie was laying out his regalia in readiness for the Walk – the sash, cuffs, white gloves and baton. She had laid them out flat on a sheet of brown paper and was wrapping them into a parcel.

  ‘Whit’s this?’ he asked.

  ‘Ah’m wrappin up yer things. Ye kin pit them oan when ye get tae Lome School.’

  ‘Not ’n yer life! D’ye think ah’m frightened tae show ma colours?’

  ‘That’s jist whit’s wrang wi ye. Yer never DONE showin yer colours! Look whit happened last year. Nearly in a fight before ye goat tae the coarner!’

  ‘Look, wumman, this is a Protestant country. A Protestant queen shall reign.’ He rapped on the table. ‘That’s whit it says. An if a Marshal in the Ludge canny walk the streets in is ain regalia, ah’ll fuckin chuck it. Ah mean wu’ve goat tae show these people! Ah mean whit wid HE say?’

  He gestured towards the picture of King William III which hung on the wall – sword pointing forward, his white stallion bearing him across Boyne Water. In a million rooms like this he was hung in just that pose, doomed to be forever crossing the Boyne. This particular ikon had been bought one drunken afternoon at the Barrows and borne home reverently and miraculously intact through the teatime crowds. Its frame was a single sheet of glass, bound around with royal blue tape. Fastened on to one corner was a Rangers rosette which bore a card declaring NO SURRENDER.

  ‘An you’re askin me tae kerry this wrapped up lik a fish supper!’

  ‘Ach well,’ she said, shoving the parcel across the table. ‘Please yersel. But don’t blame me if ye get yer daft heid stoved in.’

  Billy grinned at the picture on the wall. Underneath it, on the mantelpiece, was the remains of what had been a remarkable piece of sculpture. One night in the licensed grocer’s, Billy had stolen a white plastic horse about ten inches high, part of an advertising display for whisky. On to its back had been fitted a Plasticine model of King William, modelled by Peter, a young draughtsman who was in Billy’s Lodge.

  But one night Billy had come home drunk and knocked it over, squashing the figure and breaking one of the front legs from the horse. So there it sat. A lumpy Billy on a three-legged horse.

  He picked up the splinte
red leg and was wondering if it could be glued back in place when there was a knock at the door.

  ‘That’ll be wee Robert,’ he said, putting the leg back on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Ah’ll get it,’ said Lottie.

  Robert came in. He was actually about average height but he just looked small beside Billy. He and Billy had been friends since they were young men. They were both welders, and as well as working together, they belonged to the same Lodge. Robert was not wearing his sash. Under his arm he carried a brown paper parcel which looked remarkably like a fish supper.

  ‘Is that yer sash?’ asked Billy.

  ‘Aye. Ach the wife thought it wid be safer like, y’know.’

  ‘Well ah’m glad some’dy’s goat some sense!’ said Lottie.

  ‘Ach!’

  Billy buttoned his jacket and put on his sash, gloves and cuffs.

  ‘Great day orra same!’ said Robert. He was used to being caught between them like this and he knew it would pass.

  ‘It is that,’ said Billy. He picked up his baton.

  ‘Right!’ he said.

  ‘Ye better take this,’ said Lottie, handing him his plastic raincoat.

  ‘O ye of little faith, eh!’ He laughed, a little self-conscious at setting his tongue to a quote, but he took the coat nevertheless.

  ‘Noo mind an watch yersels!’

  Lottie watched from the window as they walked along the street and out of sight. At least this year they’d got that far without any trouble.

  As they rounded the corner, in step, Billy turned to Robert.

  ‘Ah’m tellin ye Robert,’ he said. ‘God’s a Protestant!’

  *

  Emerging into the sunlight from the subway at Cessnock, they could hear some of the bands warming up. Stuttered rolls and paradiddles on the side drums, deep throb of the bass, pipes droning, snatches of tunes on the flutes.

  ‘Dis yer heart good tae hear it, eh!’ Billy slapped Robert on the back.

  Robert carefully unwrapped his sash and put it on, then defiantly screwed up the paper into a ball and threw it into the gutter.

  ‘At’s the stuff!’

  Billy caught the strains of ‘The Bright Orange and Blue’ and started to whistle it as he marched along.

  ‘Ther’s the bright orange an blue for ye right enough,’ said Robert, gesturing towards the assembly of the faithful.

  So much colour, on uniforms, sashes and banners. The bright orange and blue, the purple and the red, the silver and the gold, and even (God forgive them!) the green.

  The marchers were already forming into ranks. It must be later than they’d thought. They hurried up to where their Lodge was assembled and took their positions, Billy at the side, Robert up behind the front rank, carrying one of the cords which trailed from the poles of their banner. Purple and orange silk, King William III, Loyal and True. Derry, Aughrim, Inniskillen, Boyne. These were the four battles fought by William in Ireland, their magic names an incantation, used now as rallying cries in the everlasting battle against popery.

  They were near the front of the procession and their Lodge was one of the first to move off, a flute band from Belfast just in front of them.

  Preparatory drumroll. ‘The Green Grassy Slopes’. Sun glinting on the polished metal parts of instruments and the numerals on sashes and cuffs.

  To Billy’s right marched Peter, long and thin with a wispy half-grown beard. Billy caught his eye once and looked away quickly. He was still feeling guilty about ruining the Plasticine model that Peter had so carefully made. A little further on, Peter called over to him. ‘The band’s gaun ther dinger, eh!’

  ‘Aye they ur that. Thu’ll gie it laldy passin the chapel!’

  It was as if they were trying to jericho down the chapel walls by sheer volume of sound, with the bass drummer trying to burst his skins. (He was supposed to be paid a bonus if he did, though Billy had never seen it happen.) And the drum major, a tight-trousered shaman in a royal blue jumper, would leap and birl and throw his stick in the air, the rest of the band strutting or swaggering or shuffling behind. The flute-band shuffle. Like the name of a dance. It was a definite mode of walking the bandsmen seemed to inherit – shoulders hunched, body swaying from the hips, feet scuffling in short, aggressive steps.

  Billy’s own walk was a combination of John Wayne and numberless lumbering cinema-screen heavies. He’d always been Big Billy, even as a child. Marching in the Walk was like being part of a liberating army. Triumph. Drums throbbing. Stirring inside. He remembered newsreel films of the Allies marching into Paris. At that time he’d been working in the shipyards and his was a reserved occupation, ‘vital to the war effort’, which meant he couldn’t join up. But he’d marched in imagination through scores of Hollywood films. From the sands of Iwo Jima to the beachheads of Normandy. But now it was real, and instead of ‘The Shores of Tripoli’, it was ‘The Sash My Father Wore’.

  They were passing through Govan now, tenements looming on either side, people waving from windows, children following the parade, shoving their way through the crowds along the pavement.

  The only scuffle that Billy saw was when a young man started shouting about civil rights in Ireland, calling the marchers fascists. A small sharp-faced woman started hitting him with a union jack. Two policemen shoved their way through and led the man away for his own safety as the woman’s friends managed to bustle her, still shouting and brandishing her flag, back into the crowd.

  ‘Hate tae see bother lik that,’ said Peter.

  ‘Ach aye,’ said Billy. ‘Jist gets everyb’dy a bad name.’

  Billy had seen some terrible battles in the past. It would usually start with somebody shouting or throwing something at the marchers. Once somebody had lobbed a bottle from a third-storey window as the Juvenile Walk was passing, and a mob had charged up the stairs, smashed down the door and all but murdered every occupant of the house. Another common cause of trouble was people trying to cross the road during the parade. The only time Billy had ever used his baton was when this had happened as they passed the war memorial in Govan Road, with banners lowered and only a single drumtap sounding. A tall man in overalls had tried to shove his way through, breaking the ranks. Billy had tried to stop him, but he’d broken clear and Billy had clubbed him on the back of the neck, knocking him to the ground. Another Marshal had helped him to pick the man up and bundle him back on to the pavement.

  But this year for Billy there was nothing to mar the showing of the colours and he could simply enjoy the whole brash spectacle of it. And out in front the stickman led the dance, to exorcise with flute and drum the demon antichrist bogeyman pope.

  They turned at last into Govan Road and the whole procession pulsed and throbbed and flaunted its way along past the shipyards. Down at the river, near the old Elder cinema, buses were waiting to take them to the rally, this year being held in Gourock. Billy and Robert found seats together on the top deck of their bus and Peter sat opposite, across the passage. As the bus moved off there was a roar from downstairs.

  ‘Lik a fuckin Sunday-school trip!’ said Robert, and he laughed and waved his hanky out the window.

  They were in a field somewhere in Gourock and it was raining. Billy had his raincoat draped over his head. He was eating a pie and listening to the speeches from the platform, specially erected in the middle of the field. The front of the platform was draped with a union jack and like the banners it drooped and sagged in the rain.

  Robert nudged him. ‘Wher’s yer proddy god noo!’

  Proddy god. Proddy dog.

  (A moment from his childhood – on his way home from school – crossing wasteground – there were four of them, all about his own age – the taunt and the challenge – ‘A Billy or a Dan or an auld tin can’ – They were Catholics, so the only safe response would be ‘A Dan’ – To take refuge in being ‘An auld tin can’ would mean being let off with a minor kicking. Billy stood, unmoving, as they closed round him. One of them started chanting –

&nbs
p; ‘Auld King Billy

  had a pimple on is wully

  an it nip nip nipped so sore

  E took it tae the pictures

  an e gave it dolly mixtures

  an it nip nip nipped no more.’

  Jeering, pushing him. ‘A Billy or a Dan . . .’ Billy stopped him with a crushing kick to the shin – heavy parish boots – two of the others jumped on him and they fell, struggling, to the ground. They had him down and they would probably have kicked him senseless but about half a dozen of Billy’s friends appeared round a corner, on their way to play football. They ran over, yelling, and the Dans, outnumbered, ran off – and as they ran, their shouts drifted back to Billy where he lay – ‘Proddy dog! Proddy dog!’ fading on the air.)

  On the platform were a number of high-ranking Lodge officials. One of them, wearing a dog-collar, was denouncing what he called the increasing support for church unity and stronger links with Rome.

  ‘The role of the Order,’ he went on, ‘must increasingly be to take a firm stand against this pandering to the popery, and to render the strongest possible protest against moves towards unity.’

  Billy was starting to feel cold because of the damp and he wished the rally was over.

  ‘Wish e’d hurry up,’ said Robert, rain trickling down his neck.

  Billy shuffled. His legs were getting stiff.

  The speaker pledged allegiance. Loyal address to the crown.

  Applause. At last. The national anthem.

  Billy straightened up. The blacksuited backs of the men in front. Long live our noble. Crumb of piecrust under his false teeth. Rain pattering on his coat. Huddled. Proddy god. Happy and glorious. Wet grass underfoot, its colour made bright by the rain.

  Billy poured the dregs of his fourth half into his fourth pint. The discomforts of the interminable return journey and the soggy dripping march back to Lome School were already forgotten as Billy, Robert and Peter sat drying off in the pub. Soon the day would form part of their collective mythology, to be stored, recounted, glorified.