by Alan Spence
Auld Lang Syne
Last day of another year and I sit at the window looking down over Hill Street, out across the city. Glasgow.
Directly opposite, across the road, a row of grey tenements, crazy-tilted chimney pots, a tangle of television aerials. Further along, the red brick block of the cancer hospital. From here, if the lights were lit, I could see right into the houses and into the hospital wards.
Through a gap I can see as far south as the Renfrewshire hills, fading today into grey rainmist. (Out of that mist perhaps came the first straggling settlers to this valley, this green place.) Jutting cranes of the shipyards. Monolithic tower-blocks.
Down in the street, an Indian woman passes in a red raincoat and a gold-embroidered sari; a little boy solemnly drags a huge cardboard box along the pavement, to some secret purpose of his own; a sleek black car goes swishing along towards the synagogue at the end of the road; an ambulance draws up outside the cancer hospital. Beads of rainwater strung along a telegraph wire.
From down the road comes a soft chiming of bells from the church of Saint Aloysius. The chimes are a tape-recording, played through speakers high up in the church tower. This is the bell that never rang.
*
On the table before me is a book on Celtic art, lying open, pencils and a rubber eraser, a paintbrush and a pot of yellow poster-colour, a sea-smoothed stone, speckled and veined. I have been looking for a design that will fit the shape of the stone, an almost-perfect oval. The one I have chosen is an intricate knot, copied from a page in the Book of Kells. The stone is one I brought back with me from Campbeltown. There I went with my wife in the spring, and we crossed one morning to the far side of Kintyre, the coast facing out to the Atlantic. And there we walked for miles, over fields, along clifftops. We scrambled down slopes of shifting scree, till we stood at the edge of a shallow dip, looking down into the wide sweep of a bay. And the waves came smashing in, thundering along the beach, like nothing we had ever seen or heard before. There was nothing between us and America but this vast being, this great surging ocean.
We picked our way down over the shingle. A single shaggy goat looked down at us, without interest. It was a place where no people should be – dead sheep, dead seagulls, a dead gannet, its feathers clotted with oil. And back a little from the water’s edge was the simple grave of some foreign sailor, whose body had been washed up here, far from home. And over the grave was a marker in the shape of a Celtic cross, and the inscription read simply GOD KNOWS. And the ocean rumbled and crashed, endless.
We sat for a time, awed by it, and with nothing much to say.
I had wanted for years to come to Kintyre. In Campbeltown my father was born. There my grandparents lived before coming to Glasgow when the shipyards closed down. Further back than that I know nothing of my family, except that they came over from Ireland, to farm and to fish.
‘Imagine bein able to trace right back,’ I said. ‘All your ancestors, as far as human memory.’
Right back to primitive man. Back through the animals, back through the apes and the reptiles.
‘Back into the sea,’ she said. ‘Back to a tiny wee one-celled creature.’
‘And back before that?’
‘God knows!’
Before we left, she picked up a stone, to bring back with us to Glasgow from this place. How many years had worn it smooth to this perfect shape for us to find? Wet from the sea it glistened, and its colours were deep and rich.
And here sits that same stone, waiting for me to paint it with an ancient pattern. One line interlacing, looping and turning back on itself, without end.
The patterns my mother made with pipe clay on the stairs and the landing, after she had scrubbed them, down on her knees. Curl and sworl, repeated, a flow like waves.
My first efforts at writing – the same recurring shapes, scrawled with a stub of pencil. Holding it up to my mother. Whit dis it say mammy? Real writing.
I make my first marks on the stone, sketching the design in pencil, tilting the stone to the light from the window to see the lines more clearly, watching the outline slowly take shape.
Rub my eyes, grown tired from the concentration. Lean back and stretch. Look up at the ceiling. Landscapes in the damp patch up there in the corner. Japanese mountains through mist, a waterfall, a tree. When the rain falls heavy it seeps through and drips. The landlady has promised, a man will come from the Corporation, climb on the roof, shift a slate or two. ‘That should do the trick,’ she says. ‘Course it’s all storm damage, few years back. Building’s never been the same since. Should’ve been pulled down years ago.’
Years ago.
As a child, writing my name and address on the inside covers of all my books. Elaborately, a very full address.
Top flat right, 115 Brighton Street, Govan, Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, Europe, The Northern Hemisphere, The Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way, The Universe.
And here I am, years later, back in another Glasgow tenement, another top flat right. Same old universe. Wind rattles the panes. It is cold and I can see my breath. The little electric fire is not enough for such a big room. I should have cleared out the grate and lit a real fire, but I’ve been lost in the painting of the stone. I can come back to that later, but for now the room needs warmth.
We have coal, in a tea-chest, in a cupboard by the front door. We have old newspapers under the bed. But no sticks. Check out the kitchen that we share with our neighbours, but there’s nothing there that could be broken up. Nobody else at home. Our neighbours are two students and an Irish labourer. The students have gone home for Christmas and New Year. Jack, the Irishman, goes home tonight. We will have the place to ourselves; some peace.
Perhaps I can pick up some sticks while I’m out. I should go now. The centre of town will be crowded. It’s already getting late.
*
Outside it is colder than I had realised. Dampness and a wind that stings fingers and face.
The small boy I saw earlier, lugging the cardboard box, has pitched the box on its side, like a tent, on a square of wasteground where a house used to be. Hunkered down inside it, sheltered, he huddles and peers out.
(A New Year’s Day, long ago. Going with my father to see Rangers play Celtic at Ibrox Park.
My father worked part-time at the Albion, the greyhound stadium across the road from Ibrox. On match-days they used the Albion car-park and my father worked as an attendant. I went with him, early, and was left in a little office, to wait.
My father’s friend Bobby switched on an electric fire for me, told me to make myself at home. On the wall was an old framed photograph of Charlie Tully as a young man. Screwed on to the wall, it must have been there for years. As Bobby was leaving, he spat on it, hit Charlie smack in the face. ‘Papes!’ he said, disgusted. ‘Never mind son, we’ll murder them the day.’ I had a long time to wait. In my pocket I had two little books. A New Testament in modern English I’d been given at Sunday school, and the Rangers’ annual handbook. I couldn’t settle to reading them. The wind came under the door. Rain beat against the window. The spit moved slowly down the glass on the picture of Charlie Tully.)
At the end of the street, past the last building, the wind whips harder across the empty space. Once the street extended further, down to Saint George’s Road. But they cleared away the houses, bulldozed the hillside. And now it is a steeper slope. Grassy green and landscaped, it dips down towards the motorway and what is left of Charing Cross. A concrete footpath leads down, in flat slab steps. A dear green place. Green grassy slopes.
Down there was a pub where I used to go as a student. Long gone. I’d even forgotten its name. But just then I remembered it. The Wee Hoose.
I remembered sitting there, another Hogmanay. There would be a crowd of us, not long up from school, drinking ourselves sick for the New Year. And there was a moment, afterwards, when the pub was closing; and I found myself sitting outside at the edge of the pavement. It was as if I suddenly came on myself, di
scovered myself sitting there, and it all seemed comical and sad at the same time. There I was, sitting, at the centre of this crazy dream that was my life.
‘How did I get here?’ I said.
‘Jist rolled out the pub an sat down,’ said somebody.
‘Naw, but here! How did I get here!’
‘Ach yer pissed!’
Then there was another voice, in the doorway of the pub, intoning, ‘It is closing time now in the gardens of the west . . .’
‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Ah was readin that the other day. Where in God’s name was that?’
The same voice came back, sharp and nasal, ‘Hurry up please, it’s time . . . Goodnight ladies, goodnight . . .’
‘Who’s that quotin all these books?’ I said. ‘Somebody there knows what ah’m talking about.’
Then it was taken up, an old-time song.
Goodnight ladies
Goodnight ladies
Goodnight ladies
It’s time to say goodnight . . .
Then I was swept off towards a party, somewhere.
Merrily we roll along
Roll along
Roll along
And somehow, later, we were rolling through the Clyde Tunnel. Shouting out old Beatles songs at the tops of our voices, hearing them echo back. Through the tunnel, through the stupid night. Going nowhere. Rolling along.
To walk along these streets is to stir so many memories.
A streetcorner. A shopfront. The texture of a stone wall. The way a girl’s hair hangs. The pattern on a dress. Everything brings back moments, trivial in themselves, beautiful and funny and sad. Bits and pieces. Fragments in a dream.
Sometimes I feel I know everything that has ever been, and will one day remember it all. All the fragments will make one great timeless whole. Then these moments remembered, this restless déjà vu, seem part of an endless awakening, to something more.
Sometimes it seems the fragments contain the whole; and every moment is eternity, every little thing is infinite. And the moment itself is its own significance, its own meaning.
I turn along Sauchiehall Street, into the crowds, the endless flow. Work is over early today, for most. Now it is all preparation for the Big Night. The whole place is frantically getting ready to relax.
My first stop is a chemist’s shop, to buy some ginger essence. It comes in a tiny bottle, a deep rich red, a phial of magic potion.
Out into the street again and the lights are on – streetlights, shoplights, Christmas lights. It’s still afternoon, but the dark comes down early these midwinter days. I push on through the tide and come to a stop at the next traffic lights, catching bits and snatches of conversation.
‘Honest tae God, it was that size . . .’
‘So ah says tae her ah says Margaret ah says . . .’
‘Course Glasgow’s not really Scottish is it . . .’
‘An ther he wis . . .’
‘More Irish than anything else . . .’
‘Fell doon the subway steps an smashed the lot . . .’
‘Now Edinburgh. Edinburgh’s Scottish . . .’
‘Depends what you mean by Scottish . . .’
‘A wee carry-out bag . . .’
‘But surely . . .’
‘All over the place . . .’
‘Gonnae be some night the night . . .’
‘Watchin it on the telly . . .’
‘So ah says c’mere you . . .’
‘Anywey . . .’
An old man in a long grey coat, down almost to his ankles, goes shambling and muttering past. ‘Nae wonder folk laugh at us,’ he says, squinting across to where a man in a kilt is waiting to cross. A cartoon-Scotsman, big-bellied and beefy-red in the face, he stands and waits for the tides of traffic to part. The old man in the long grey coat coughs and spits and shakes his head.
I have met him before, the same old man. There was one day in Hill Street, a big saloon car was easing along slow. It came to a stop, its engine purring, and the driver leaned out and asked the old man the way to the synagogue. I was coming up behind and heard him direct the driver the wrong way, back down into the town centre. I told him the synagogue was at the end of the street, and ‘Oh, aye,’ he said, ‘yer right enough.’ But when the car had gone he turned on me. ‘Whit d’ye want tae dae that fur?’ he said. ‘Wouldnae tell these bastards anythin. Wouldnae give them the time a day.’
There was one other time I met him, walking past Charing Cross, he caught me by the arm.
‘D’ye know whit it’s all about then?’ he asked. ‘Lint,’ he said, telling me his secret of secrets, repeating it, shouting it into my face.
‘Lint! Ur ye deef? Lint! Lint! Fuckin lint!’
Then, ‘Ach, whit’s the use,’ he said. ‘Ah don’t know.’
Further along comes a young man in orange dhoti, orange anorak, a devotee of Lord Krishna, chiming finger-cymbals and chanting the Hare Krishna mantra, moving through the Hogmanay crowds. A few folk shout at him.
‘Gawn yersel son, give us the auld Harry Karry!’
‘D’ye know any Country an Western?’
‘Harry Harry, Harry Hood . . .’
He catches my eye and I smile but don’t stop.
‘Hare Krishna,’ he says, as I pass.
‘Hare Krishna.’
I cut down towards the supermarket, Grandfare, stopping only to peer in at the window of a music ship, at guitar and saxophone, bongo-drums and flute, banjo and autoharp and clarinet, all arranged neatly in display, just so.
The supermarket is like a region of Hell, packed with people stocking up for the coming days. There is a tiredness, in the brightness of the lights, in the ransacked shelves, in the faces of the assistants. And over it all the Tannoy tinkles out tinny music, jingling festive tunes and pop songs, all at the same bland incessant level, muted organ, guitar and drums. Have yourself a merry little Christmas. Welcome to my world. The fool on the hill. I quickly gather up the few things I have come for and join the nearest queue. Whatever queue I join is sure to take the longest, even if it’s only half the length. It seems to be a law of the universe, so I surrender myself to it. The woman just before me has two trolleys, filled to overflowing. I prepare myself for a wait of several days.
And it suddenly seems funny, this madness. I imagine us all dancing to that music, linking in a conga-line, weaving through the check-outs.
I make it out eventually, carrying a bulging plastic bag. I have just about come full circle now, am back almost to Hill Street and home.
I stop outside the Chinese shop to look in at the lanterns and ginger-jars, baskets and soup-bowls, toy dragons and kites, boxes and bottles and packets and tins. I stand at the door, smelling spices and teas, and I notice, in the rubbish left out on the pavement, a wooden crate like an orange-box. Remembering I needed some firewood, I pick it out and walk on. The rain has been drizzling on and off all day; now it has started again and gets steadily heavier. Outside the chip shop there is more wood, a broken fish-box. I gather it up, tuck it inside the Chinese crate, and hurry on up the last stretch home; past Saint Aloysius church, past a playground where three boys are kicking a ball about, past a dog being a dog and chasing a cat, past a young Indian girl, past a policeman, past a man struggling up the hill with a crate of beer. I look across to the wasteground where I saw the small boy earlier, crouched inside his cardboard box. The boy has gone now and I stop. Look. The empty box, sagging. Listen. The drip and patter of the rain on wet cardboard.
Home again, the first thing to do is light the fire. Down on my knees, I rake out the grate, scrumple up bits of newspaper, break up the wooden crate for sticks. On the end of the crate are stencilled Chinese characters, and stamped, in red, the words People’s Republic of China. It has come a long way to be firewood for us to burn. The fish-box is stamped Aberdeen. I don’t need to use it yet, and put it away for another time in the cupboard where we keep the coal.
There is something elemental in it, the ritual placing of paper
, sticks and coal, the kindling and coaxing into life. But today it is made difficult by the strong wind that comes beating down the chimney in gusts, damping the fire, filling the room with smoke. I try to create an updraught by fanning and blowing; I open the door; I spread a sheet of newspaper across the wire mesh of the fireguard; and at last it begins to catch, a flicker in one corner, a crackle of sticks, a rush and roar of flame as it draws and flares. I peel back the sheet of paper and the flames settle into a slower, steady dance, a glow that brings the room to life.
There is a picture I remember, with a poem about firewood, in a book on Eastern art. Searching through my books, I find the right one and open it at the page.
The picture is a brush-drawing, The enlightenment of Eno, by an artist called Shuai Weng. Eno the Chinese master stands, a bundle over his shoulder; he smiles, attentive, as if listening. A few deft brush-strokes give him life; he emerges from the silence, the white expanse of the page; the lines are fluid and fading, eloquent beyond words.
The verse reads: