The Dear Green Place

by Archie Hind

  After Bill had opened up the safe in the main office he came bustling into the room where Mat was standing looking out into the cobbled yard. ‘Weel, weel!’ he said, ‘this is no earning peenies for the bairns.’

  Mat grinned and stopped musing. It was time to get down to work. On Monday mornings before Mr McDaid arrived they had some definite tasks to perform. Regularly every Monday they would read from the meters the gas and water consumption and calculate the amount of coal used by the boilers. These figures were related to the yardage of cloth which had been treated during the week. There was a fixed proportion, so many yards of cloth to so many British Thermal Units, under which the figures mustn’t go otherwise there would be something wrong with the fuel economy. There was no whiff of gas, churl of coal or gleam of light to be used, beyond what was required in the service of production. This task was marked down on Monday’s list of duties as Item One. After this a list was made out from the weekly calendar lying on the desk of the incidental correspondence, appointments, phone calls which would be made that day. Any task which might have to be deferred was marked into the calendar in its proper date. This was Item Two. Then they checked for information about any new employees in the factory. If none, they would score Item Three off the list, otherwise they would go through the procedure for new employees. File the insurance cards, note particulars into employees book, make out income tax cards, enter names into wages book, mark in wage rate, if young female arrange for medical examination, etc., then when the procedure was complete mark off Item Three from list. It went on like this. Item Four, check up and transfer; Item Five, make out list; Item Six, post up amounts; Item Seven, file and put away; and so forth. It was hardly an exciting job and sometimes Mat would be overcome with such a wave of ennui that his very bones would itch. At other times this was not so. Mat, on the contrary, would find himself immersed in his work, sitting at the high wooden desk in the warm office checking accounts with a vague consciousness of the busy sounds around him – the clicking of typewriters, the subdued hum of machinery from the factory, the muted slapping sounds of parcelling and baling from the despatch department, and the ticking of the big old clock in the waiting room – all these sounds coming through the mahogany door. At these times Mat felt content, almost happy, as if he really had a taste for this kind of work. He would immerse himself even deeper into his task and would come out of this immersion at five o’clock feeling slightly irritable and discontented, with a feeling of being interrupted.

  3

  HELEN WAS THE kind of girl who if she hadn’t had a mind of her own would have married into the middle class. Instead she married Mat. From the fuss created by her parents one would have imagined a colossal social gap between them. Perhaps there was, but this had no effect on their personal relations. Mat met Helen quite by accident one day when he was walking through the town watching the students who were all dressed up and collecting money for charity. Helen had come up to him shaking her collector’s can. She was dressed as a sailor, which showed up her strong slim figure. What had really attracted Mat had been that her big brown eyes seemed to shine with intelligence. Mat had tried to flirt with her.

  ‘I’ll give you a penny if you give me a date.’

  ‘All right.’

  Mat had put a penny into her can.

  ‘See you next year,’ she said, and ran off. Mat laughed at her trick and shouted after her. ‘Good for you.’

  Later he had gone into a record shop. Every two or three weeks Mat and his brother Jake put some money together and either one or the other of them would go into town and buy a record. As usual when Mat was in the shop he was tempted to buy more than he should and he bought a record of Caruso singing ‘O Paradiso’ from the opera about Vasco da Gama, and one of Sidney Bechet playing ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ along with his New Orleans Footwarmers. He came out of the shop with his records and wandered about the town watching the students as they ran about dressed in their weird costumes. For the second time Helen came up to him shaking her can in his face. Mat smiled at her.

  ‘It seems we’re fated to meet, either that or you’re following me about.’

  Helen peered at him then she laughed. ‘It’s you again.’ She took the records from under his arm in a friendly way and looked at them. ‘So you’re a Caruso fan?’ But she grimaced slightly at the jazz record.

  ‘Don’t be so narrow-minded,’ Mat said.

  ‘Huh!’

  ‘It’s good.’

  ‘I like the Caruso, I’ve got one of him singing “Minuit Chretien” but . . .’

  ‘Wouldn’t you trust the ear of a Caruso fan? I’m telling you that Bechet’s the greatest thing since toast.’

  Helen demurred by wrinkling her nose.

  ‘I wish I could convince you.’

  ‘Never mind that, how about some more money for my can?’

  Mat grinned slyly and took a half-crown from his pocket, and a penny. ‘One’s for charity, the other’s for a date.’

  Helen was a wee bit embarrassed. ‘You’ll put the half-crown in,’ she said, with a kind of challenge.

  ‘I’ll not,’ Mat said with confidence. ‘If you’re really a conscientious collector you’ll not turn down half-a-crown. And I might get a chance to convert you to Sidney Bechet. You’d make one of the nicest Bechet fans there ever was.’

  Helen was hesitating and Mat could see that she was tempted.

  ‘I’ve got some other records I’ll bet you’d like, real tempting ones – Galli-curci, Pinza, de Luca, Chaliapin . . .’

  ‘You haven’t got all these?’ Helen asked dubiously.

  ‘I have so. And how about Elisabeth Schumann singing “Du Bist Die Ruh”? Just think of it. All that and me too.’

  Helen laughed, ‘It’s the records that tempt me.’

  ‘What’s it to be. The penny or the half-crown?’

  ‘All right,’ Helen capitulated, ‘make it the half-crown.’

  They had made a date and Mat was so exhilarated that he waved goodbye to her and jumped on to a bus going in a completely different direction from the one in which he had wanted to go. When Helen had walked away from him after they had exchanged names and had arranged to meet, Mat had noticed how, although she was short-sighted, she carried herself erect. That she didn’t peer out into the world with her head held forward as most short-sighted people did, touched Mat. Sitting on the bus, thinking of her graceful step as she had walked off, Mat felt half in love with her already.

  After they had gone out with one another for a while and had fallen in love, Helen’s parents began to put up objections to Mat. They began to think about getting married and her parents were indignant that she would interrupt her studies just to get married to a working-class boy. They put the usual kinds of pressure on Helen and refused even to see Mat. It wasn’t at all a blithe experience for them. They naturally expected their love to be smiled on by the world and found instead that it only involved them in a shockingly ugly experience.

  Mat remembered his own father’s advice. ‘Aye, it’s all right now, lad. But wait till you’ve had a wheen of years of marriage behind you and you’ll wonder – is it a’ worth it?’

  ‘Well, you ought to know,’ Mat thought. ‘Hardly anybody would be born in the world if people knew.’ But somehow he was touched and saddened by his father’s tone. He knew in fact that his father was right.

  They both knew that the advice given to them was right. You can’t live on love. Getting a house was next to impossible. Mat’s wage at the office was all right for a single bloke but it wasn’t enough to keep a family. And look what Helen was used to. Young people in love are careless. They think the world will look after them. But you can’t live on love. Above all this Mat had pretensions that were liable to get them into trouble. What was worse was that Helen approved and encouraged him in these pretensions.

  They knew that all this was right, or at least they knew why their parents would look at things in the way they did. Like all young people, particular
ly when they are in love, they thought of themselves as individuals who would be exempt from the common fate. We won’t make their mistakes. They didn’t believe they would ever experience the anxieties and miseries of ordinary domestic life. The kind of erotic dwalm in which they were living convinced them of the truth of this. And they had faith in their own capacity for ordinary loyalty and understanding towards one another which would enable them to suffer what marriage had in store for them with more grace than did their sour advisers.

  Although he had committed the sin of hypergamy Mat did not have any unusual motive for doing this. He loved Helen for the same qualities as he would have loved a working-class girl – for her physical beauty, for her eyebrows, her way of speaking gently, for nought, because it came up his humph, a notion, or just because of personal compatability and affection. Their accents were not all that different, nor were their table manners, their inhibitions, prejudices, politics, interests or religion.

  Nevertheless, from the beginning Mat felt a sense of strain. Helen had to cut herself off completely from her parents. The fact that her parents lived outside Glasgow made this easy. But Mat felt all the time torn between the desire to ‘show them’ by becoming a tremendous success at something or other, in a few months, and the desire to defy them by being indifferent and not doing anything. He had, of course, to make a virtue out of necessity and take the latter course. From Helen he felt no pressure at all – she didn’t give a damn, and the change from the walnut Steinway grand to the tinkly cottage piano in Mat’s home meant so little to her that she’d sometimes close the lid and say, ‘I wish to hell I’d my own piano.’

  This pleased Mat no end.

  Mat had expectations to do with his job. The firm was doing well and was very prosperous. Mr McDaid in his kind fussy way was pleased with Mat’s marriage. At first Mat couldn’t understand why this should be. Mat at this time could only see marriage as an erotic arrangement and it surprised him that Mr McDaid could sympathise with this kind of affair. It was only later he realised that to Mr McDaid his marriage was essentially a social affair which would make Mat more dependable, reliable, solid, now that he had become the supporter of a wife and the possible begetter of a family. However that might be, as a married man he was ‘weel got’ by the firm and he got a slight increase in wages as befitted his new status. His life was laid out with certainty before him and he knew that he had only to wait a little while and he would acquire all that was coming to him – responsibility, a diploma in accountancy, a house up a tiled close in a brownstone building and a good steady wage coming in every week, in lieu of love.

  The few months that stretched out over Christmas during that first year of his marriage were the longest and most irksome of Mat’s life – while they lasted. Later he looked back on these months with nostalgia, so latent had they been with something which it took him years to recognise and which once he had committed himself to a certain way of life he could never attain. He didn’t know about this at the time because he didn’t know about the nature of his flaw.

  Hogmanay fell on a Friday afternoon that year and Bill and Mat had stayed behind in the office after Mr McDaid and the girls had gone home. This was a customary thing for them to do at New Year. After everybody else had gone they drank a few ‘haufs’ together and brought in the works manager and some of the foremen to toast one another’s good health. Mat felt very relaxed and comfortable with his wages in his pocket, including his Ne’erday bonus, and a half bottle of whisky to nibble at. Some of the whisky was inside him already, making him feel warm and just a little drunk. Outside it was cold with the trees stark and a mist rising up from the river and the fields. He wore his best suit and he had that opulent feeling of good clean linen and stout shoes and warmth in contrast to the still silent bitterness, the harsh jagged look of the countryside outside the window.

  Earlier that morning Mr McDaid had given everyone in the office a present – Mat and Bill had been given several shirt lengths of really expensive sea-island cotton with a soft rich finish like silk. Mat had been touched by the kindly finicky old man’s delight in giving him these. It added to the festive holiday mood. Everyone was kind and happy, shaking hands and looking forward to going home to the dinners and drinks and friends, the warm rooms, the great coal fires, the tables all laid and ready, the glasses shining on the sideboard.

  When they had drunk as much as the occasion required they got ready to go, and while Bill locked the outside door of the office Mat stood in the cobbled yard and waited, his breath blowing clouds in the air. Underneath the heavy overcoat he wore a new woollen scarf, on his hands he wore a new pair of kid gloves, inside his pocket he could feel the stiffness of his leather wallet where the belt of his coat pressed into it. The scarf, the gloves and the leather wallet had all been Christmas presents.

  When Bill had locked the door they walked up the long leafless lane together, their shoes crunching on the thin ice over the puddles. Bill produced a box of a hundred cigarettes from his pocket and they smoked; the smoke hung in the still air after them. They weren’t exactly tipsy, but as they walked they sang and crunched their feet into the frozen ruts in the lane. There were four long days of holiday and rest before they got back to work again. They had worked hard and late that week so that the wages would be ready early. In trying to finish as much work as possible in anticipation of the holidays the week had seemed long. But now it was finished and they were going back to their warm homes with the prospect of a well-earned rest before them. When they got to the little railway station they exchanged the usual parting greetings.

  ‘All the best when it comes.’

  ‘Don’t get too drunk.’

  ‘Behave yourself.’

  ‘Ha! Ha! What a chance.’

  ‘See you next year.’

  Mat stood looking over the parapet of the railway bridge, watching the train stop, discharge its few passengers, then make up steam and puff its way into the distance among the chimneys, embankments, telegraph poles, signals and mist. Bill was getting a little short-sighted and while he was saying goodbye he had looked at Mat over the top of his specs. For some reason Mat was reminded of the time he had visited Bill a couple of years before. It was for this reason that he stood and watched Bill’s train as it went off into the distance. He suddenly felt that Ne’erday feeling of trepidation over the year that had gone and over the year to come. This year the Christmas tree had been full as it had very seldom been and now the day was coming when time would be so radically marked. ‘See you next year,’ Bill had said. Then it would be back to ‘auld claes and parritch’, and the prospect of long featureless months before him. Yet as he stood there thinking he couldn’t decide whether he trembled at the thought of change or of no change at all.

  Jake was passing the corner of the street as Mat crossed from the tram stop. Mat walked quickly after him but his brother’s jaunty swagger was too fast for him so Mat whistled through his teeth.

  ‘Limpy Dan, Limpy Dan.’

  Jake turned smiling. He preferred for reasons of his own to be addressed in this derisive way. As he held up the paper bag in his hand the bottles inside chinked.

  ‘Cairry oot.’

  Mat licked his lips. ‘I’m for some of that.’

  Jake was older than Mat, shorter in height and much stronger in build. He was neatly and snappily dressed in an expensive tailor-made suit, well-cared-for brown shoes. He liked to put on the bantering air of the older man.

  ‘Steady on, sonny boy. It can get a grip.’

  ‘Ah can take it,’ Mat said, and they fell into step together. Neither of them drank over much, but jokes about drinking were the thing on Hogmanay.

  As they walked up the road they could see their father at the window. It was characteristic of him that he was standing erect, unlike most people who stoop forward slightly to look out of a window. He was looking quite calm and serious in spite of the fact that he had had a wee smile on his face because Mat and Jake were pretending to hide
the bottles. Then he disappeared and the light went out in the room. They went into the close and up the stairs, scliffing their feet, opening their coats, full of officious cheery noise. Jake whistled and shouted, ‘Op-ee-en, op-ee-en.’ Their father was at the top of the stairs, leaning on the banister. His big figure, even when it was leaning, looked erect and athletic.

  ‘Wheesht,’ he said, ‘you noisy devils.’

  Inside the house Mat and Jake took their coats off, but they kept the jackets of their suits on because it was Hogmanay. Jake went into the living-room to put the bottles on the sideboard. Mat stood at the door of the kitchenette where Helen and his mother were bustling about. Helen wore a soft woollen dress. Underneath the sink there was a bucket full of discarded wrappings and cardboard boxes. Practically all the available space in the kitchenette was covered by plates, trays, bowls, black bun, shortbread, trifle. A vague smell of roasting pervaded the lobby. In spite of the congestion everything in the kitchenette looked neat and orderly. Ma, a small, dumpy, clear-skinned woman, was wiping her hands on her apron and looking at Mat through her spectacles with the smug, self-satisfied air a woman has when everything is under control.

  ‘I can still see the scars of battle.’ Mat started to laugh at his mother, for her spectacles were marked with flour and she couldn’t see him properly. She looked blank for a minute and said, ‘Oh!’ She took her specs off and wiped the lenses with her apron.

  Mat went into the living-room where Jake was pouring out some beer into three tall glasses. Their father was sitting on a dining chair which was placed against the wall beside the sewing machine. He was leaning forward with his elbow on his knee, his chin cupped in his hand, his legs crossed and one slipper flapping. The table had been pulled out to its full size and spread on the crisp white table cloth was the best cutlery and dinner service, with glasses and paper napkins. On the sideboard were bowls of fruit, nuts and chocolates. Later there would be roast chicken, soup, gravies, sauces, stuffing, whisky, coffee, cigars, boxes of cigarettes. Mat took the glass of beer from Jake and sat in front of the fire. The women were still working in the kitchen, Mat could see through the window across to the back court, the big solid sandstone building. The windows in the tenement were now beginning to light up, showing the warm brightly lit rooms still full of Christmas decorations.