Fergus had woken up and was getting a ‘coal-carry’ on Baldy’s shoulders. The mattress and blankets were under Baldy’s arm.
‘Come on, hen.’ He bull-bellowed laughter towards Ruth. ‘I’ll carry you down under the other arm.’
They were all out on the landing and Catriona was locking the door. Ruth wriggled and giggled back against her as if for protection.
‘You wouldn’t dare?’ she said in her husky burr that always lilted up to pose provocatively.
Baldy’s shovel of a hand shot out, whirled her round and smacked her soundly on the buttocks before grabbing her round the waist and clattering noisily down the stairs with her.
Fergus bounced up and down and laughed and screamed with excitement. Ruth was laughing and squealing and kicking her legs wildly out behind.
‘Let me down! Let me down! You’re tickling me! Baldy, please! Please?’
‘Aye, you’ve a rare soft belly. Oh -’ He suddenly burst into riotous song. ‘Stop yer ticklin’, Jock, stop yer ticklin’, Jock, stop yer ticklin’, tickalickalickalin’, stop yer ticklin’, Jock!’
They did not seem to care who heard them.
Feeling strangely depressed, Catriona held on to the banisters and slowly and carefully negotiated her clumsy body down the stairs.
The narrow windowless lobby that separated the bakehouse at the back from the shop at the front was packed, but a space was somehow made for her and with much difficulty she managed to ease herself on to the floor. People sat on cushions, backs propped against the walls. The pram and the mattress were in the middle of the floor. Only the two old men, Duncan and Angus, had chairs. They were talking very loudly on topical subjects like black-outs, rationing and bombs.
None of these things were acceptable to old Angus and he was always saying so in no uncertain terms. Again and again he tottered into shops and bawled for his sweeties and baccy and whatever else he fancied. He was completely deaf to any explanations about rationing.
As for the black-out, his utter disdain of the whole procedure was only matched by that of Duncan who also believed it to be a lot of nonsense.
‘I was reading about them insenary bums!’ Angus roared at the pitch of his voice.
‘Aye.’ Duncan’s high pitched nasal voice fought to rival his friend in loudness. ‘You put them kind of booms out with sand!’
‘With your hands?’ Angus shouted incredulously.
‘No, no!’ old MacNair yelled, nearly spluttering his false teeth into Angus’s ear. ‘Sand, SAND!’ Then a lot quieter. ‘You’re a deaf wee nyaff.’
Eventually they both dozed off, gnarled hands clasped on bony laps, mouths loose and drooping, puttering to life only with snorts and snores of long high-pitched whistles.
‘Where’s Ruth?’ Catriona asked Nellie, but before Nellie could answer, Lizzie said:
‘Where do you think? Through in some dark filthy corner of the bakehouse with Baldy. It’s disgusting!’
‘What’s disgusting?’ Catriona’s cheeks burned. ‘Ruth will be making us a cup of tea, that’s all.’
‘Her man’s a conchie, isn’t he?’ Nellie said.
Catriona nodded.
‘He had to go to Maryhill Barracks.’
‘Och, well, the best of luck to him. How about a song to cheer us all up?’
Immediately someone burst into ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag’ and everyone joined in. Then they had ‘Roll out the barrel, - we’ll have a barrel of fun - ’
Fergus lay watching and listening, propping himself up on his elbows, saucer-eyed at first, then gradually as the night wore on he slithered down with fatigue, while Andrew slept peacefully through all the noise.
‘Sit down, Ruth,’ Catriona pleaded, when Ruth had brought in the tea. ‘Don’t go through there again. There’s too many windows. It’s too dangerous, and Mrs MacGuffie was telling me about a woman who just ran upstairs for a hanky and was killed.’
Ruth curled gracefully down on to a tiny space on the lobby floor like a beautiful sleepy-eyed cat, while Catriona tried to lift her belly over to give her a bit more room.
Someone handed round banana sandwiches made with mashed parsnips and banana essence and everyone began to munch.
Sandy the vanman’s mouth undulated like a big rubber band. Then he swallowed and said:
‘The raids are more often now. Have you noticed?’
‘Aye!’ Nellie agreed. ‘All over the place. Did you read about that woman buried alive for nearly three days?’
They all nodded, settling down to eat their sandwiches and drink their tea and enjoy a good chatter about all the strange things that were happening outside their own safe, cosy little world.
Until the all-clear wailed loud and long and folk suddenly realised how stiff and tired they were. Terrible tangles of legs and arms, buttocks bumping in the air, and yelps of pain as everyone struggled to their feet, and jostled about, and gathered up blankets, cushions and cups.
‘Mummy,’ Fergus began to wail. ‘Do I need to go to school today? I’m tired.’
Duncan MacNair woke up with a splutter, fumbled for his big red hanky and loudly blew his nose.
‘Christ!’ His high-pitched whine sounded as if he were about to burst into tears. ‘I might as well just go through and open the bloody shop now. It’s not worthwhile going up the stairs to my bed.’
Tam came through from the bakehouse, grabbed his father by the lapels and jiggled him about in his jacket.
‘Paw!’ he bawled in Angus’s ear. ‘Paw!’
‘Eh?’ Bloodshot old eyes screwed open indignantly. ‘What do you think you’re doing? Take your hands off my good jacket!’
‘Come on, Paw. I’ll help you up the stair and you can go right to bed and rest yourself till dinner time.’
Tam hauled his father up by his bony elbow.
‘Ah could have been in my warm bed all night if you hadn’t dragged me down here.’ He turned, tottering, to old MacNair. ‘Ah can’t see the sense in it, can you, Duncan?’
‘No, I can’t, Angus,’ MacNair whined. ‘They must think we’re awful frisky.’
‘Eh?’ roared Angus. ‘Who had a hauf o’ whisky?’
‘Awful frisky!’ Duncan yelled furiously. Then, clumping away in his too big boots, ‘Christ, you’d need a bloody horn for that wee nyuck!’
Catriona stood at the door waiting for everyone to leave so that the pram and mattress could be lifted out. It had become quite a habit to stand there, hands clasped over swollen waist, smiling shyly at everyone as they left. As if she had just had a party, and was saying goodbye and hoping that everyone had enjoyed themselves.
And because the bakehouse lobby was a MacNair lobby, and she the hostess, everyone smiled in return, and thanked her, almost as if they had.
Up the stairs with the pram and mattress and the children now. And Baldy laughing and Ruth giggling.
Up the stairs slowly, pulling on the banisters, one foot, one stair at a time. Not sure if the baby is starting or if it is only fatigue that is causing the pain.
She is so tired she does not care if the baby is starting.
Only she wonders - what kind of place is it coming into? And for a terrible minute she stops on the stairs feeling frightened of the world outside over which she has no control. Then she hears Andrew wake up and sob and cry out.
‘Mummy, Mummy!’
And she goes on up the stairs, hurrying now, getting breathless but managing to shout.
‘It’s all right, love. Everything’s all right. Mummy’s here!’
Chapter 22
Before he joined the Navy, Alec used to pretend to Madge that he had a hard job fighting women off. In Dover it was literally true. The place was swarming with prostitutes. Some rumour had brought them from all over the country and the faster the police cleared them out, the faster they appeared.
He had seen two real hairies clawing, kicking, twisting and screaming at each other in the middle of the road, completely oblivious of a lor
ry that had nearly knocked both of them down.
The place was seething with rumours. It was said that labourers were already digging vast communal graves enough for several hundred people. A sailor was supposed to have brought a revolver and two rounds of ammunition home for his wife. Some women, it was said, were carrying knives and poison capsules. Somebody was already rumoured to have committed suicide.
The British troops in France were getting beaten and this meant that hordes of Germans would be coming over.
Yet nobody, including Alec, really believed a word of it.
They had lived for eight months in the belief that Lord Gort’s BEF was invincible. It was not easy to re-adjust.
Even after Alec was half-way across to France in HMS Donaldson he still had no clear idea of the true position.
‘Dunkirk?’ He deftly rolled tobacco in a cigarette paper. ‘Never heard of it.’
He was lounging over the side talking to one of his mates as the ship churned busily across the Channel.
Suddenly Alec jabbed his cigarette skywards.
‘Hey, Jack! Are they …? They are!’
German dive-bombers snarled unexpectedly from a peaceful sky.
Alec beat the other sailor for cover by a full five seconds. Crouched below one of the guns, he felt the ship swerve violently from port to starboard as it tried to dodge the hail of bombs.
The old destroyer creaked and shuddered and jarred but bustled towards its destination, visible now on the horizon in its pall of doom.
Oil refineries, warehouses, quays were a holocaust of fire, and smoke belched upwards and sideways, giant beanstalks spreading into black clouds that extinguished the sun.
Dive-bombers whirled and wheeled and swooped and screamed and fire exploded and water shot high white mountain peaks into the air.
An officer came half crawling along the deck.
‘You … you and you …’
Alec groaned to himself, following as best he could.
He had a sinking feeling he was going to be forced into the thick of things and soon found from a hasty briefing that he and a dozen or so other ‘volunteers’ were to go ashore and reconnoitre the place.
Already they were caught in the middle of the inferno, only one of many ships, large and small, a motley armada jostling for space in a fiery sea.
Above them the sky darkened and became heavy with Stukas. The planes screamed with eerie piercing whistles that Von Richthofen had specially invented to splinter nerves and scatter panic. The Stukas fell from the air, swooping, diving so low to drop their bombs that pilots’ faces could be clearly seen before the planes rapidly swerved, dipped and shot upwards again.
Ships cracked in two like nuts and sank within seconds.
Noise engulfed the world. The pounding howl of the destroyers’ guns, the metallic banging of the Bofors guns, the shriek of bombs, the hysterical stutter of the Vickers guns firing two thousand bullets a minute.
Alec could no longer hear what the officer was nattering on about but he set off in the motor launch with the others, towing one of the empty whalers, and prayed as he had never prayed before in his life that he would get back all in one piece.
Dead men and live men were bobbing about cheek to jowl in the water. Hands were outstretched and mouths open in screams for help that Alec could not hear; but he could see that soldiers were being weighed down and drowned by heavy clothing and equipment. The launch nosed nearer the shore and suddenly troops rushed out at them from all directions.
Now he could hear the screams. The boat rocked with frantic clawing hands while the officer bawled himself hoarse and nobody paid a blind bit of notice.
Like shoals of piranhas, troops swamped the whale. A major’s gun cracked out from the beach and shot a floundering young officer through the head.
Christ! Alec thought. Whose side’s he on?
He struggled ashore and stood soaked to the skin beside his mates. They surveyed the scene on the beaches, under aeroplanes endlessly diving like vultures. A vast multitude of battle-fatigued men, shell-shocked men, demoralised men were milling and wandering about. Others had dug themselves into the sand for safety, only to be buried alive by bomb-made avalanches. Some were just stumbling around like bewildered children.
Alec could not help remembering the times he had stood at the corner in Springburn watching men stampeding from the works lusty with good spirits and pride in themselves, confident in their skills and what they could produce and create.
Here, he thought, could be the same men. What a waste!
Different parties of ratings each with an officer in charge were to take over agreed sectors of the beaches and organise the troops in groups of fifty. Later they were to be led to the water’s edge and checked for arms. The last order from the Admiralty, according to Alec’s officer, had been ‘Mind you bring the guns back.’ But first they had to reconnoitre Dunkirk.
The town of Dunkirk had once been much the same as many another seaside town with its promenade and its three and four-storey terrace boarding-houses, its hotels, its souvenir shops. Now, as they walked along with broken glass grinding under their feet, Alec saw a toy shop with its front blown away and crowds of wax dolls with pink cheeks and glassy eyes staring out. He saw dead civilians, men, women and children, littered around like pathetic heaps of rags. Soldiers too weighed down and bulky with equipment and long coats and rifles and tin helmets, as if they had sunk exhausted into death.
The place stank of death and smoke and stale beer and putrid horse flesh and rank tobacco, cordite, garlic and rancid oil.
Noise battered continuously at the ear drums. An abandoned ambulance’s jammed klaxon vied with the terrified screaming of French cavalry horses wheeling and panicking as the guns thundered; and all the time there was a steady chopping and crunching as millions of pounds worth of equipment was destroyed.
Soldiers, some alone, some in menacing-looking bunches, staggered about the street blind drunk.
From underground cellars of hotels came rabid sounds of intoxication.
Yet, despite the madness of those sounds and the racket of the guns, Alec heard sobbing from one of the buildings.
He went in and looted about like a blood-hound until he found the child, a girl of about three, cowering behind a chair on which slumped a dead woman.
‘Hello there, hen,’ he greeted her cheerily. But as he picked her up he inwardly cursed his rotten bad luck. Weans! Even in foreign parts he had to get lumbered with them!
He emerged from the house with the baby hanging from him like a too-tight tie.
The officer, already harassed beyond endurance, glared venomously at him.
‘You effing big fool! We’ve enough on our plates trying to organise the army. We can’t cope with civilians as well. Put that kid back where you found her!’
Alec hesitated. He could feel the child’s puny arms clinging with desperate defiance round his neck. At the same time he saw in his mind’s eye the vast chaotic army surging about the beaches between fountains of sand sucked high in the air by bombs; men who were scrambling into the whalers so fast that the crew could not handle the oars.
The officer repeated himself, adding:
‘That’s an order, Jackson!’
Alec turned back into the building. ‘You’ll be safer in here, hen,’ he said.
It was dark and smelled of gas. A rat skittered over some old newspapers. Alec bent down and untangled himself from the child’s grasp. Small fingers scraped futilely at his neck in a frantic effort to hang on. Baby round eyes bulged with ageless terror in a face, dirt-streaked and snotty-nosed.
He was suddenly reminded of his own children.
Often they had clung to him snotty-nosed, their dirty faces streaked with tears. Their familiar wail had a startling immediacy.
‘Daddae! Daddae!’
His stomach screwed up. He pushed the French child away from him. Incredulity and panic mixed with the horror in her face.
‘You’ll be
all right, hen,’ he said straightening up ‘Your daddy’ll come back and get you.’
As he walked away she ran after him but fell and cut her knees on some broken glass.
That last glimpse of a baby crying helplessly on the floor of a derelict house in Dunkirk would, he knew, remain with him for the rest of his life.
Christ, he thought, what’s happening to the world?
Chapter 23
Melvin arrived unexpectedly just as she had always feared. Catriona went to answer the door, thinking it was Mrs Jackson from upstairs and there he was.
‘Where’s your key?’ she asked in surprise.
He had always been so particular about the keys to his door.
‘Key?’ A strange high-flying laugh careered into song. ‘Beside the seaside! Beside the sea!’
He pushed past her and she hurried after him with short agitated steps like a little Chinese girl. She was thinking of the newborn baby sleeping in one of the bedrooms. Robert, she had called him, after her father.
‘The place looks as if it’s never had a lick of polish since I went away,’ Melvin accused, striding into the kitchen. ‘My God!’
He came to an abrupt stop and stared around.
‘You could stir this place with a stick. And this floor’s filthy. Look at my good linoleum. You’ve been neglecting my house while I’ve been away. Look at it!’
‘Please, Melvin, there’s no need to get angry. You always get everything out of all proportion.’
‘All my life I’ve worked hard to build a good life and a good home, and be decent and respectable. You’re not going to drag me down and make my place like some of the miserable slums around here or in Farmbank.’
‘You’re exaggerating. You always do.’
Despite her words, her voice had gone a bit vague. Now that she got a good look at him in the light she felt frightened for him as well as of him.
His brown hair had darkened to grey. His wiry bush of a moustache now drooped like uneven strands of wool. His eyes were ringed with black and his cheek bones looked higher and more pronounced than before. His shoulders were still enormous yet weight had slipped away from him, shrunk him inside big bones and a hairy skin.
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