Its Colours They Are Fine

by Alan Spence

  The bundle is carried firmly on his shoulder;

  Before him, the way home has no obstructions

  ‘Awaken the mind without fixing it anywhere’,

  And he knows the house where the firewood burns

  I look up to see those Japanese landscapes on the ceiling, and notice the damp patch is spreading, the rainwater starting to seep through. I place a plastic bucket on the floor to catch the drips.

  Jack, our neighbour, is home. I’ve heard him moving about and now he’s knocking at the door of our room.

  ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Ah’m just gettin ready to go. Thought ah’d say cheerio an wish ye all the best.’

  ‘Same to yerself Jack.’ We shake hands on it.

  He stands, a bit awkward, not knowing what else to say. He is dressed up for the journey in his good suit, stiff in a shirt and tie.

  ‘What time’ll ye be home?’ I ask.

  ‘Should make it in time for the bells,’ he says. ‘The plane gets intae Dublin about ten. Then ah get a bus.’

  ‘That’s great. It’s really fast.’

  ‘So it is.’

  ‘You’ll be glad to see yer wife an kids again.’

  ‘Oh aye, ah will that. It’s hard y’know, bein away for so long.’

  He has a drink in him and he’s talking more than usual, his face pink and gleaming.

  ‘No chance of gettin work nearer home Jack?’

  ‘It’s hard,’ he says. ‘It’s hard. Not much doin.’

  ‘It’s a long way to have to come.’

  Up until a month ago we had another Irish neighbour, a younger man, in his twenties, called Terry. One night we were sitting when we heard a roar from his room, a roar that scared us, like a big animal in pain. Then there was a crash and what sounded like an explosion. Then a moaning and crying and the slam of the front door.

  Jack was already out in the hall. Terry had rushed past him, out of the house, ‘lookin like death,’ he said.

  It was only later we found out what had happened. Terry had been watching television, ready for a quiet evening, a couple of cans of Guinness to hand. Then the news had come on, with an item about shootings in Belfast. And one of the dead was Terry’s young brother. He had roared then, roared at the madness of it all. And the stupid newscaster was already talking about something else, talking about Parliament and smiling as if nothing had happened. And Terry took one of his cans of Guinness and threw it at the smiling face. And the screen and the tube caved in with a bang, the set blew up, showered glass all over the room. And Terry went raging out into the night.

  A day or two later he went for good, back home to Ireland with his anger and his grief.

  ‘Ah think when ah come back,’ says Jack, ‘ah’ll be movin on again. Up tae Aberdeen, get a job on the oilrigs.’

  ‘D’you have to do that?’

  ‘Well. Ah could still get plenty work here. They’re pullin down that many buildins an puttin up new ones. But Aberdeen’s where the money is.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Listen,’ he says. ‘Ah’m away in a minute. But ah was thinkin ye might want the loan a ma telly while ah’m away, seein yis haven’t got one.’

  ‘That’s very good ae ye Jack.’

  ‘Ach!’

  Together we lug the set from his room into ours.

  ‘Lots a good pictures an that on jist now,’ he says. ‘Reception’s nothin great, but it does.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Would that be yer missis comin up the stair?’

  ‘Probably. She’s been out visitin her family. Her sister’s in the hospital, just after havin a baby.’

  ‘Boy or a girl?’

  ‘A wee girl.’

  ‘Nice.’

  The frontdoor bell rings and Jack answers it. ‘It’s her right enough,’ he says.

  ‘Hello Jack,’ she says. ‘Thanks.’ She seems to be tired, glad to be home and to set down the heavy bags she’s been carrying.

  ‘Jack’s just goin home,’ I say, ‘and he’s givin us his telly while he’s away.’

  ‘That’s a nice thought Jack,’ she says.

  ‘Lots a good pictures on,’ says Jack.

  He is awkward again for a moment, then he breaks it by looking at the time and saying, ‘Here, ah’d better be goin.’ He fetches his suitcase and a bundle tied with string, and closes the door of his room behind him. He shakes hands with both of us, formally, wishing us well.

  ‘Right then!’ he says.

  ‘Soon be home now,’ she says.

  ‘Should make it before the bells,’ he says again. The words are coming to have a special sound to him. Like an incantation. Home before the bells.

  ‘OK then.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Cheerio.’

  ‘All the best.’

  We wave to him from the door, watch him go out of sight round the bend in the stairs.

  ‘Wee soul,’ she says, as we come inside again. ‘Standing there all dickied up. Your heart goes right out to him.’

  ‘Ye even forget the rest of the year!’ I say. ‘The times he plays his telly too loud . . . an doesn’t put enough money in the gas meter . . . an doesn’t clean the bath after him . . . an leaves the big pot full of chip fat . . .’

  ‘I know I know!’ she says, laughing. ‘But still . . .’

  Later, after we’ve eaten, I put the finishing touches to the painting of the stone; the delicate interweaving of lines, in orange, finely outlined in green. I give it a coat of varnish and it brings out the colours, makes the stone shine, as if still wet from the sea.

  Then together we make a start on cleaning up the room. And we talk, about nothing in particular, glad of the space and the peace, glad, for once, to have the house to ourselves.

  She tells me about her sister’s baby, a poor wee lovely crinkled thing, looking out as if to ask what kind of nightmare was this she’d been born into.

  ‘Any word of them gettin a house yet?’

  ‘Nothing decent,’ she says. ‘The Corporation keep offering them these dumps away out in the schemes. Really rough. She just doesn’t fancy it, stuck in the house all day with the baby, and him out at work.’

  ‘Some bits of the schemes are OK though.’

  ‘Some bits are terrible,’ she says. ‘Absolute misery.’

  There’s a bleakness not far away, coming in through our talk, but then suddenly, brightening, she shakes it off.

  ‘Anyway,’ she says. ‘The baby’s lovely!’

  Then I start telling her about something I’ve been trying to write, a long poem about Glasgow, linked together by the heraldic images on the city’s coat of arms, the bell, the bird, the fish, the tree.

  ‘Still trying to write it out your system,’ she says.

  ‘Right. Ah keep comin across the images too. Ah’m sure it goes back to ma childhood, learnin the jingle.’

  Where’s the bell that never rang?

  Where’s the fish that never swam?

  Where’s the tree that never grew?

  Where’s the bird that never flew?

  ‘There really is something magical about it,’ she says. ‘Mysterious.’

  ‘Like one of those riddles you’ve got to solve before you can move on towards the Holy Grail, or the Jewel in the Lotus, or whatever.’

  ‘Like Zen koans.’

  ‘Right! The sound of one hand clapping. God! The soundless sound! That’s the bell that never rang!’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Why not! There’s a whole world to be read into it. The symbols are really beautiful. Ah was lookin at them today an seein all sorts of things.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well. The tree. It seems it’s a hazel, so that’s the hazel of wisdom that Neil Gunn’s always talkin about. And the fish is a salmon. That’s the salmon of knowledge with the ring of eternity in its mouth. Then there’s the bell. That’s the good news, ringin out. And the bird is the spirit, flying . . . soaring.’

  ‘It’s a lovely way to
see it.’

  ‘And there’s other ways to look at it. Other patterns to make. And the great thing about the images is they’re concrete. They’re real. A bell. A bird. A fish. A tree. Things. And that’s what you come back to after all the flyin about. Just the plain miraculousness of what is.’

  ‘I’m dying to read this poem!’ she says.

  ‘All ah have to do is write it!’

  ‘Why don’t you write something now?’ she says. ‘I’m going to have my bath in a minute and then do the last wee bit tidying up. You could write for a while before the bells.’

  ‘Ah’ll try.’ I clear a space at the table, sit down with a pencil and blank sheets of paper.

  ‘Ah couldn’t really settle to it this morning.’

  ‘If you can’t write the poem,’ she says, ‘write something else. Just start anywhere. Write about where you are. Write about today, about the New Year.’

  She goes off to have her bath and leaves me to it.

  I look at the paper, and start to write . . .

  Last day of another year and I sit at the window looking down over Hill Street, out across the city. Glasgow . . .

  I write for a while then get up to put more coal on the fire. But before I fetch it from the cupboard, I remember I had planned on making up some ginger wine, something I’ve always had at New Year, ever since I was a child. I boil up a kettle and add the water to the ginger essence I bought today, mixing it up in a flagon that once held cider. Then I leave it in the kitchen sink to cool.

  Passing the bathroom, I shout in. ‘Are you gonnae be all night in there?’

  ‘Won’t be long!’

  There is a beauty in the formality of this bathing for the New Year. Putting on clean clothes. Cleaning up the house. A ritual. A purification.

  I remember my mother, scrubbing out the whole house on the last day of the year; changing the bedclothes, washing the windows, hanging up new curtains. The smell of polish and disinfectant; everything in readiness, fresh. Then there was the waiting, for the great change. The bells, and a warmth that made you want to cry. Then the drunk uncles and aunties arriving, everything bright and harsh and loud. The drink and the singing. ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Uncle Billy always sang ‘The Sash My Father Wore’, Uncle Peter sang ‘The Red Flag’. The others would try to shut them both up, afraid they might cause trouble.

  ‘No party songs please. Give us a wee bit Country an Western, or an auld Scotch song.’

  Old but it is beautiful and its colours they are fine, should old acquaintance be forgot, the workers’ flag is deepest red, nobody’s child I’m nobody’s child, I’m like a flower just growing wild, stained by the blood, for Auld Lang Syne, we’ll take a cup of kindness yet for Auld Lang Syne. Come the morning, there was always an emptiness. Glasses would be broken, food trampled into the floor, ashtrays overflowing, the smell of last night’s drink. Tired and drab, a staleness. The New Year.

  I heap more coal on the fire. It douses the flame, but only for a moment as it licks then leaps and flares again, and other New Years come back to me.

  Crouching, in the room full of loud uncles, trying to read The Broons book I’d been given at Christmas. The last page of the book, as always, ended with the Broons at their Hogmanay party, all misunderstandings cleared, all confusions resolved.

  First New Year after my mother died, no party then, my father morose over his beer. But watching television and laughing. Duncan Macrae singing ‘Three Craws’.

  The second craw

  wis greetin fur its maw

  on a cold and frosty mornin.

  Cold and frosty. Waiting for our first foot.

  Jack’s television set sits, alien, in the corner of our room. It is old-fashioned and bulky, a squat box. It takes up too much space; it intrudes. We should just have told Jack we didn’t want it. But I’m curious to know what’s on right now, so I switch it on to find out.

  It takes a few minutes of droning to warm up, and what comes through is a choir that sounds like the Black and White Minstrels, singing ‘In the Good Old Summertime’. There is no picture, just a flickering zigzag of lines. The song is one that touches me. I remember it from before, one of a thousand stupid songs I have floating in my head. Singing about summertime in the heart of winter.

  (An old film clip, of Laurel and Hardy at a street corner, frozen. Deep in the Depression, snow falling thick. Stan plays harmonium, Ollie sings a song. In the Good Old Summertime. At a street corner. Frozen.)

  My grandfather winding up an old-fashioned gramophone, cranking the handle in his big fist. Putting on record after record, old 78s in brownpaper covers. Let the great big world keep turning. When you and I were young. In the good old summertime. My grandfather the blacksmith, who came to Glasgow from Campbeltown when the shipyards closed down.

  ‘Your bath’s run!’

  ‘Jist coming!’

  She comes in wrapped in a towel and crouches in front of the fire to dry her hair.

  ‘See if you can get a picture on the other channel.’

  I switch over and we can make out the vague outline of a kilted Scotsman singing ‘These Are My Mountains’.

  ‘White Heather Club,’ she says.

  We watch for a few minutes, amazed. But the reception is bad. The voice is a crackle. The picture fades. The singer is reduced to a pattern, a buzzing stream of electrons. We switch off, put the television away in the coal cupboard, out of sight.

  ‘That’s better,’ she says. ‘Peace.’

  The bath is deep and hot and I ease down into it. I stretch and soak in the warmth, muscles untensing, and drift off into thought.

  And the memories come in a stream now, no order to them, a moment here, a glimpse there, random, tumbling, New Years past . . .

  Walking home, in company or alone, from endless desolate parties . . . Making resolutions, making no resolutions . . . Starting diaries that never got beyond January 3rd . . . Shouting myself hoarse on the terracing at Ibrox or Parkhead, watching Rangers and Celtic try to pound each other into the ground . . . One year sleeping for a day and a night, disturbed only by the roars from the match up the road, waking through a fog, the floodlights shining on to the wall above the bed . . .

  There was one year in London, stoned and raving through the crazy city night, laughing, laughing at the whole mad universe, spinning in its endless sorrow-joy . . .

  There was a year we had a ceremony in Kelvingrove Park; made patterns with red thread on the hillside, left it to the weather, to be trampled, blown; let a blue thread drift on to the river . . .

  There was a year I took nothing to do with any of it, made the New Year nothing special . . .

  There was a year the two of us came hitch-hiking home from Europe, just making it back in time for the bells . . .

  There was a year I looked out and the world was white and new, all covered in snow, everything still and perfect, in its place . . .

  There was a year our neighbours’ party broke up in a brawl, and outside the street was being hosed down after a car-crash, and somebody’s chimney was on fire along the road . . .

  There was last year when we saw the New Year in quietly, sitting together in meditation . . .

  And this year that is ending will also pass from my mind, except for these moments that will come back to me, from nowhere, vivid and clear, with their own meaning, or with all meaning gone . . .

  A spring day in Kintyre; crouched at the edge of the ocean, picking coral to string for a necklace; seeing, in a green and dripping cave, a flat stone painted by a saint, centuries ago . . . A horse in a field, russet in the sun . . . A smiling jade Buddha, behind a skull, in a cluttered junkshop window . . .

  First days in this our latest temporary home; summer evening at the open window, listening to the sounds from the street . . . The way the sun slants across the tenement opposite; the chance shapes weathered on a gable end . . . A face. A voice. A journey . . . A tree in the park that looked golden as it shed its leaves . . . A dead pigeon in a
fountain, floating on its back, its wings spread open like a bird in heraldry . . . The smile on the lips of a dead cat by the roadside, a winter day . . . The cry of my sister-in-law’s baby daughter, new-born . . .

  I climb from the bath, let the water run out; dry myself and put on clean clothes; I feel new.

  The god of the old year is dying. His is the sadness of these last days, the dark time, the natural ebb of the year. But the solstice is past, already a week gone. The cycle is turning again towards light.

  This year too we plan to meditate through the bells, and it’s almost time for us to begin.

  We have a little shrine set up in one corner; candles, incense, a few flowers. We sit before it and chant an ancient mantra, Aum. The seed-sound of the universe, of God the creator and God the preserver, God the transformer and destroyer. Aum.

  The Universe, The Milky Way, The Solar System, The Earth, The Northern Hemisphere, Europe, Britain, Scotland, Glasgow, Garnethill, no Hill Street, Top flat right.

  The Earth goes turning in space, towards another day. The tape-recorded bells of Saint Aloysius start to chime. It is the magic hour, the change. The New Year.

  Further, away across the city, I hear more bells, and more, all just out of phase. Boats on the river sound their foghorns, all blending into one great drone. It sounds like an extension of our chanted Aum, and that makes us laugh. The great mantra, resounding over Glasgow!

  A window is flung open and a woman’s voice bellows out.

  ‘Happy New Year everybody! Happy New Year!’

  ‘Wonder where this one’ll take us?’

  ‘God knows!’

  The varnish has dried on my painted stone and I pick it up, feel the weight of it, solid, in my hand. The pattern has a wholeness, is harmonious, complete, and within it the lines seem in motion, interweaving, beginningless and endless, a pure energy flow.

  I put the stone down and together we go to the window to look out. A few people are already out in the street. Two young couples, arm in arm, their voices laughing, go swaying down the middle of the road. An old man sits at the edge of the pavement, his head in his hands. A car passes, saluting everyone with a hoot of its horn. Two men have started to scuffle in a doorway, another two are wobbling up the hill, supporting each other and singing, happy.