Love easily turned to hate. The bitterest enmities were within families. Civil wars were the most savage.
Dressed in green costume and musquash coat, with her bag of crocodile leather at her feet, she sat waiting for the taxi. A cigarette hung from her lips. Now and then hope went out of her face, leaving it dull and clownish. She knew that disappointment and humiliation might await her in Torremolinos, but no one in the world could have persuaded her not to go.
‘Don’t look at me like that, for God’s sake,’ she muttered. ‘You remind me of a priest.’
She must have been born a Catholic. In her jewellery box was a silver crucifix. He had seen her kissing it. Perhaps she had it in her bag now, to bring her luck.
‘Except that a priest would want to save my soul. You don’t give a damn whether I go to hell or not.’
Both of them knew that it was his constant priest-like regard she resented.
‘I’ve got a right to better myself,’ she whimpered.
She did not mean becoming kinder and wiser, she meant improving her position in society, having more money, and living among a better class of people.
Her voice hardened. ‘I don’t want you bringing in any dogs or cats while I’m away. I think you’re fonder of animals than you are of people. As for that awful young bitch Helen Cooley, I don’t want her in my house, do you hear? I heard she’s been attending the VD clinic. Some girlfriend, I must say, for somebody that washes his hands twenty times a day.’
Cooley was not his girlfriend. He just liked her, though according to his principles he should not. It was true that she had had gonorrhoea. She took nothing seriously, herself least of all. She lied, swore, smoked, shoplifted, and took no pride in her appearance.
‘I hope you understand, Duffy, that if I marry Mr Harrison he’ll want me to go and live with him in Bearsden. It would be a new beginning for me. There wouldn’t be a place for you. You wouldn’t fit in. It’s your own fault. You’ve got everybody body thinking you’re simple. He thinks it. He asked me if it was hereditary. Not on my side, I told him. He wants a family of his own. I’m not too old.’
She had once brought Mr Harrison to the house and slept with him. He had asked Duffy sly questions and offered him money. Duffy had seen that he was just making use of her: he would never want to introduce her to his middle-class Bearsden friends, far less marry her.
‘You frighten me, Duffy. I can never tell what you’re thinking.’
A car horn sounded down in the street.
She rose. ‘That’ll be the taxi. Carry my case, will you?’ She stubbed out the cigarette in an ash-tray. Hope made her face bright again. ‘Aren’t you going to wish me luck?’
‘Yes.’ He picked up the suitcase and led the way downstairs.
Wrapped in overcoats three neighbours were waiting at the close-mouth.
His mother despised them all.
Duffy himself admired Mrs Ralston. A few days ago her husband Jack had been brought home from hospital, dying of cancer. Her eighteen-year-old daughter Cissie was married to a man who was cruel to her. Cissie’s child had been born with spina bifida and was expected to die soon. Yet Mrs Ralston remained undaunted, always seeing compensations, in a way typical of Glaswegians. Also for a woman nearly forty she was beautiful, with a tawny complexion like Cleopatra’s (his mother said jealously it was caused by a kidney disease), brown eyes, shining black hair, soft delicate neck, and a slim well-shaped figure. She always gave Duffy encouraging smiles. ‘That wee darkie Ralston fancies you, Duffy,’ Cooley had once joked. ‘Do you know something else? I think you fancy her.’
Mrs Stuart was twenty, newly married, hugely pregnant, and unhealthily pale. She often borrowed romantic paperbacks from his mother.
Mrs Munro was stout and suffered from bunions. She was wearing carpet slippers. She liked telling dirty stories.
His mother had been unable to resist boasting about her trip to Spain with her gentleman friend. Therefore Mrs Munro had a handful of rice ready.
‘That’s for good luck, Bella,’ she cried.
His mother smiled, haughtily. ‘Thank you, Mrs Munro. My name is Isabel.’
‘Under the bedclothes what’s the difference?’
Mrs Stuart fingered the fur coat. ‘I hope you have a nice holiday, Mrs Duffy.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Send us a postcard with a bullfighter on it,’ said Mrs Ralston.
‘Send us a bullfighter,’ cried Mrs Munro, with a shriek of bawdy laughter. Her husband Alec, small and quiet, was a champion domino player, an accomplishment that gave her no pleasure.
‘Common as dirt,’ murmured his mother. ‘The sooner I get away from them the better.’
The taxi-driver put her case in the boot.
She arranged a scarf over her hair. On this cold wet morning in March the street was at its dreichest.
‘I can’t wait to see sunshine and blue skies,’ she said. ‘You’ll be all right. I’ve left you plenty of money. You don’t need me. If I thought you did I wouldn’t go. I swear to God I wouldn’t. We’ve got nothing to say to each other. What will I bring you?’
He shook his head.
It angered her that he seldom asked for anything. Other mothers could buy their sons’ affection, why couldn’t she?
‘Good luck,’ he said.
‘Goodbye,’ she snapped, as she got into the taxi.
As it drove away she was rearranging her scarf.
Duffy was very polite as he slipped past the three women on his way back up to his house. ‘Excuse me, please.’
He paused inside the close, where he could hear without being seen. He had to know what they were saying about him.
‘She’s got a damned cheek leaving a boy like that on his own for a week,’ said Mrs Munro. ‘She should be reported.’
‘Duffy can look after himself,’ said Mrs Ralston.
‘You’d never think, would you,’ said Mrs Stuart, ‘that he was backward? He’s got such beautiful manners.’
‘Better not let Phemie hear you say he’s backward,’ said Mrs Munro. ‘She thinks he’s just sensitive.’
Phemie, short for Euphemia, was Mrs Ralston.
‘But, Mrs Ralston, they all say he was a dunce at school.’
‘Maybe, Agnes, he wasn’t very interested in what they taught him. I never was myself.’
‘She bought him a whole set of the Children’s Encyclopaedia,’ said Mrs Munro. ‘Twelve big books with thousands of pages and pictures. He sits for hours looking at them, taking nothing in.’
‘How do you know he takes nothing in, Maggie?’
‘Because, Phemie, he never has anything to say.’
‘Fools often have a lot to say.’
‘Is that personal, Phemie?’ But Mrs Munro laughed, to show her feelings weren’t hurt.
‘Maybe he’s just shy,’ said Mrs Stuart. ‘He’s so good-looking. If he wanted he could have all the girls running after him.’
‘That’s the last thing he wants, Agnes. His mother’s not pleased that he’s so interested in war – he’s got a whole history of war in twenty-four parts. I told her that was natural for a boy his age. What isn’t natural is that he’s got no interest in girls. My Billie tells me that these days with so many girls on the pill any boy that wants it can get it for the asking, and at Duffy’s age it’s all they think of, with that thing in their breeks stiff half the day and all night. But Duffy’s different, if you see what I mean.’
Mrs Stuart lowered her voice. ‘You’re not saying –?’
‘That’s what I’m saying. He’d rather hoover a carpet than kiss a girl.’
‘But he doesn’t walk funny, in the way they do. What do you think, Mrs Ralston?’
‘Duffy’s waiting for the right girl. He’s got plenty of time. Whoever she is she’ll be lucky.’
‘Well, Phemie, she’ll get plenty of help with the housework.’
‘She’ll be treated with kindness and courtesy.’
‘I’ve seen him
with that terrible Helen Cooley,’ said Mrs Stuart. ‘She’s the kind that could ruin him for life.’
‘It’s just like Duffy to stand by her when everybody else is against her,’ said Mrs Ralston.
‘Everybody else has sense, Phemie.’
‘I wonder who his father was,’ said Mrs Stuart. ‘I asked her once and she nearly snapped my head off.’
‘We’ve all had our heads snapped off for asking that, Agnes,’ said Mrs Munro.
Mrs Stuart giggled. ‘I said to Bruce it must have been some lord’s son. I mean, to account for him being so refined-looking and well-mannered.’
‘Not to mention weak-minded. You’ve been reading too many romantic stories, Agnes. Take my word for it Duffy’s simple. He believes everything you tell him, like a ten-year-old child.’
Duffy went on up the stairs, smiling. He knew why Mrs Munro was convinced he was a simpleton. Shortly after the New Year, returning from one of his nocturnal patrols of the town, he had come upon her in the recess at the back of the close, with Mr Logan, a local house-painter. Her arms were round his neck and her white knickers were at her feet. Mr Logan had been grunting and thrusting. Over his shoulder she had seen Duffy. There had been a silly smile of contentment on her face. Next day she had come to Duffy’s door with a chocolate biscuit for him. She had explained that she and Mr Logan had been discussing the repapering of her living-room: it was to be a surprise for Mr Munro. It was a wee secret therefore between her and Duffy. He had nodded and thanked her for the biscuit. She had gone away satisfied that he had swallowed her story. A few days later he had asked her if Mr Munro liked the new paper in the living-room. At first she hadn’t known what he was talking about. Then, remembering, she had said that she had changed her mind: redecoration was too expensive these days. She had delved into her shopping-bag and brought out a sugared doughnut for him.
CHAPTER TWO
According to his mother Duffy had been pernickety even in his cot. Other babies had slavered their bibs, he had kept his dry. He had learned to use a chamber-pot before he was a year old, earlier than any other baby she had heard of: it should be in the Guinness Book of Records. He had insisted too on being alone when seated on it or at least on having his back turned. She had wondered if his revulsion at dirt was a disease, the kind royalty might suffer from, like blood that wouldn’t thicken.
As he got older she ceased to find his obsession with cleanliness amusing. She saw it as a showing up of her own sluttishness.
That morning as usual he had to clean up after her. Her cup was smeared with lipstick, her saucer soiled with cigarette ash. The ash-tray was full of cigarette stubs. In the bathroom wet towels lay on the floor, the top was off the toothpaste, hairs steaked the wash-hand basin. In her bedroom the bed wasn’t made, used underclothes were scattered over the carpet, and tissues used to wipe off face cream littered the dressing-table.
Behind the bar in the hotel she was always smart and attractive. It was in private that she gave way to her natural slovenliness. Mr Harrison was fastidious. He had congratulated her on her house being so well-kept. She hadn’t told him it was Duffy’s doing. In the hotel room in Spain she would be terrified that she would give herself away.
Like most people she did not have the courage and resolution to scrape away the many layers of self-deception. She was too afraid of what she might find underneath.
On the dressing-table was the latest paperback romance she had been reading. In gaudy colours a woman with long fair hair and an angelic smile and a dark-haired handsome man in riding breeches were standing hand-in-hand in front of a vast house with purple mountains in the background.
As a child Duffy had read many of these stories. They had left him with a distrust of books. In them goodness always had too easy a triumph, and only villains were dishonest and unkind. There were no women like Mrs Ralston and Mrs Munro.
In his apparently ingenuous way Duffy had asked Mr Flockhart if history books told the truth.
The teacher had found it difficult to answer. ‘Truth, Duffy, isn’t simple. It looks different according to the angle you view it from. Some historians think the Covenanters were irresponsible fanatics, others that they were godly men fighting for their rights. Russian historians don’t take the same view of the Second World War that British historians do. We all believe what we want to believe, whether we’re professional historians or school janitors.’
Duffy understood all that but he still believed that truth, at its core, was simple. It was like a jewel hidden under many wrappings. To look upon it meant having to throw away lifelong prejudices. Few people could bear to do that.
Duffy read his encyclopaedia and History of War with an understanding that would have amazed Mrs Munro, but his main field of study was Kenilworth Court, the housing scheme in which he lived. Mrs Munro herself had been the source of many discoveries.
He was compiling a book of his own. In a jotter bought in Woolworth’s he wrote down every outstanding instance of human depravity he came across. His sources were mostly newspapers. ‘If it’s just facts, with dates and places given, they can be trusted, more or less,’ Mr Flockhart had said. ‘Not if it’s opinions.’
The last entry was about a young Harijan in India whose eyeballs had been gouged out and his hands chopped off.
Other entries concerned a two-year-old child thrown into scalding water by its mother, a cat soaked in paraffin and set alight by two seven-year-old boys, and a sick old woman raped and robbed by three youths.
Duffy was well aware that though most human beings were capable of atrocities very few committed them and the great majority condemned them utterly: except of course if they were done to win a war. No one cared how many babies or cats were burnt to death in Hiroshima or Dresden.
His mother had come upon the jotter. She had been horrified. ‘What sort of boy are you that you get pleasure copying out such things? No wonder you get bad dreams. Are you trying to drive yourself mad? Maybe you are mad already. If I don’t wash a pot carefully enough you’re disgusted, yet your mind’s full of terrible things like these.’
A few days later, coming home from work tipsy and self-piteous, she had tried to explain to him.
‘You’re looking for perfection, Duffy, and it doesn’t exist. You’ve got to take into account that people have troubles nobody else knows about or cares about. Money troubles. Family troubles. Health troubles. Love troubles. You’re too young to understand. How can people be at their best if they can’t pay the rent or think they have cancer or the person they fancy fancies someone else? You’ve got to make allowances. We’re only human.’
That was the excuse they fell back on: they were only human. Yet they took for granted that they were so favoured by God that He had made the whole universe for their benefit.
His mother had said that he preferred animals to people. If he did their lack of presumption was one of the reasons.
CHAPTER THREE
In the afternoon he went to the electricity company’s office to pay a bill. His mother did not mind being in debt but it worried him, like a kind of uncleanness.
On the other side of the main street two girls yelled and came running across.
He got his idiot’s smile ready.
They were big Molly McGowan and wee Cathie Barr. His mother called them and their like the lowest of the low. It astonished her that he who was so particular would have anything to do with such scum. Even Mrs Munro regarded them as far beneath her socially.
Molly was big all over, especially in the bosom and bottom, but small in intelligence. The doctor had agreed to put her on the pill over a year ago because her mother already had eight others besides Molly, most of them mentally dim like Molly herself, and Molly was likely to be equally prolific. She was passed on from one young lecher to another. Her blue duffel coat was covered with badges. One proclaimed: don’t kick against the pricks. She had pale skin with many freckles, white eyelashes, and long thin pinkish hair. Her hands were always dam
p. She seldom stopped chewing gum.
In Duffy’s presence she was shy, showing it by slower movements of her jaws and an infantile desire to touch his face.
‘Hello, Duffy,’ she said.
‘Hello, Molly.’
‘I heard your mother’s going to Spain for a holiday. Would you like me to come and keep you company? We could watch telly and listen to records.’
Cathie was small, skinny, and sharp. ‘If Mick lets you,’ she said.
Mick Dykes, a brawny curly-haired youth, was Molly’s present possessor.
Molly did not dispute his ownership. ‘Mick likes Duffy. If you wanted me, Duffy, it would be all right with him. He said so.’ She stopped chewing: she had something serious to say. ‘You and me, Duffy, they all think we’re dumb, and maybe so we are, but together we could show them, couldn’t we? When’s your mother going?’
‘She left this morning.’
Why was he encouraging her? Not because of Cooley’s advice: what you need, Duffy, to make you like everybody else, is ten minutes in bed with big Molly.
‘That’s great, Duffy. How long is she going to be away?’
‘A week.’
‘I could come and stay with you. It would be like a holiday for me. At home I never get any sleep. I’ve to share a bed with two of my sisters, and wee Effie’s got a cough that goes on all night. Do you know what my wardrobe is, Duffy? It’s two coathangers on the back of a door.’
He pitied her. In spite of her promiscuity she was innocent, like an animal.
‘I’m not a bad cook. Ask Cathie.’
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