by Tony Roper
He placed the kettle on the gas ring and applied the taper to it. He could not understand why it would not light. He could hear the gas escaping – it was loud and he could smell it too. ‘What the hell's the matter wi' this noo?’ he cursed. Again he applied the taper to the ring under the kettle but, unfortunately, it was the wrong ring that Harry was trying to light.
He became more aware of the sound of escaping gas – he could smell it and he could hear it. It reminded him of another time, a time that would never be fully erased from his memory. It was buried deep inside him but there were occasions when it rose to the surface uninvited and unwelcome and he relived it. The sound of the gas became louder in his ears as it mingled with the noise of guns and bombs that were all around him and his comrades. None of them knew if their bodies would be whole or intact or even if they would be alive in the next thirty seconds. Twenty-four hours a day, day after terrifying day, they lived with that horrific reality.
When they were first thrown into the conflict that made a lottery of their lives, this knowledge terrified each and every one of them. They did not admit it to their mates, of course, and hid it beneath a thin veneer of jokes and false confidence, but the fear was there, stark and inescapable. It was there every night when they huddled in the trenches surrounded by cold and wet. The smell of dust that had turned to mud would mingle with the acrid gun smoke and the stench of human excrement, and their young minds would try to drive it from their brains and allow them to sink into some kind of sleep before the next onslaught. It was still there, haunting them, when the scream of shells bursting overhead forced them to wake up. Eventually, if they survived, they adapted somehow to living with the fact that death could erase them from everything they held dear as easily as they might swat a fly.
Harry heard a disembodied voice call across the battlefield, ‘Gas! Gas!’ He tried to fathom out what was happening as he stared intently at the still-alight taper hovering over the ring.
Explosions were erupting all round him. His head began to ache with the pounding from the German guns. He stared once more at the taper that seemed to be flaring up.
‘Gas! Gas!’ came the warning again but Harry didn't know what to do about it. The hiss of the escaping gas was now indistinguishable from the hiss of bullets flying past him. The taper's flame hovered over the ring, its glow reflecting on Harry's face, now fixed in a state of confused anxiety. Unbelievably, a smile started to play over his mouth as he relived those long-gone days of danger. The gas continued to escape, Harry looked at the lit taper hovering over the wrong ring as the noise of war became deafening in his ears. His face broke into a broad smile as he said, ‘Ehh?’ and then he saw the flames erupt in a perfect circle and spurt upwards towards him as if someone had struck a dozen matches all at the same time.
He lifted the kettle and placed it on the correct gas ring, blew out the taper and shook his head in resignation for what must have been the twentieth time that day. ‘Cannae even light the bloody gas noo,’ he said, lost in melancholy. ‘Where did she put that album?’
Irritation was fast replacing his melancholic air. ‘I wish she would leave things alone.’ This was, of course, unfair but it probably helped Harry to feel his age was not to blame for all the tribulations that visited him. Like everyone when they get older, deep inside himself, Harry felt he was still a youngster. It was only this feeling that made his present life bearable.
Something, some inner sense, told him that this deep-seated and illogical sentiment was vital. It allowed him to keep his independence and his dignity. He was not about to give that up easily.
TWENTY-THREE
John Hood turned up his jacket collar to give him some protection against the chill in the night air. He could have worn a coat but he had never liked coats. It probably stemmed from when he was wee and his mother used to bumffle him up tight in a scratchy double-breasted tweed coat that finished just above his knees. This blanket with buttons did not allow him any movement, and when it was raining, the water would drop off the bottom of it on to his legs and result in him developing a red weald scurf mark that burned at his legs. All this had to be endured so he wouldn't catch a chill that had been the death of his mother's father's brother.
Doreen had offered to buy him one for his Christmas but he had declined and had got a tie and two pairs of socks instead. One day, they would have children and Doreen would protect them in a manner that would elicit John's mother's approval.
He turned into Henderson's licensed grocer.
Theresa studied her tiny breasts for any appreciable evidence that her exercises were paying off. She had adopted the technique of placing a tape measure round each microscopic mammary and registering their size. She was delighted to note that they had gone up by one of the marks that denoted a tenth of an inch. This signalled definite proof that her exercises were paying off. With a song in her heart and a spring in her step, she put the tape back in the drawer she had got it from and set to with renewed vigour on her exercise. She knew her only passport to wealth and excitement and a successful career as a stewardess was to increase her present cup size A to an F cup like Rita Hayworth and, of course, grow legs like Betty Grable.
On the other side of the bedroom door, Tim and Frankie were playing pontoons using their father's inert body as a table. They had become bored waiting for Theresa after she had stopped her first bout of exercising and were now passing time with an old pack of cards till something else took their fancy. At the sound of Theresa's muffled ‘I must. I must.’, they abandoned the matchsticks they had been using instead of money and raced to the keyhole for another glimpse of the forbidden fruit that was their sister's bare breasts. What attracted them to this mode of behaviour was not the thrill of seeing Theresa's boobs but the fact that they were not supposed to do it. This taboo, therefore, made it compulsory viewing for them.
The sound of their muted giggling, mixed with a million other jumbled thoughts and dreams, clanged together inside the constant throb that was Peter's head as it lay, seemingly detached from its body, on the hall carpet. An all-pervasive smell of disinfectant, that Magrit had used to counteract the smell of alcoholic vomit after she had cleaned the carpet, made Peter think that he may have been in a hospital. His head ached with a dull pounding that was nigh on unbearable.
He tried raising his head a little from the carpet to alleviate it from the rhythmic pulsing. A wave of nausea instantly engulfed him and caused his head to sink back down to the comfort of the damp smelly threadbare wool and nylon mixture in some kind of oriental motif that was trying futilely to service his head's need of comfort and normality.
A groan escaped from his lips – a groan that made Tim and Frankie cease chortling as their heads spun round to check if they had been rumbled. On seeing that this was not the case, they went back to keeking through the keyhole.
The ache that was now the sole sensation inside Peter's head threatened to burst through and spill on to the floor. Another groan broke free from him as he tried to raise his head. This had the effect of relieving the pain that surged back and forth through his clogged-up cranium. Unfortunately, it also had the consequence of returning the swell of nausea that broke over him like surf pounding on a beach. Torn between unrelenting pain or unmerciful nausea, he lay like this for what seemed an eternity as he promised himself over and over, ‘Never again. Never again.’
Harry had found the album and was smiling wistfully at it as he surveyed it on the kitchen table. ‘Happy days,’ he thought wryly, as his eyes focused through the lenses of his National Health specs on a photograph of him and some of his old army pals. They had been snapped just before they had gone on active duty and were all smiling the smile of confident heroes who were about to embark on a great adventure. None of them had ever been outside the British Isles – most of them had never been outside Scotland. This was their chance to see the world and they were going to enjoy every moment of it. Everyone said it would be over in six months, then they could come
back and have a host of stories and tales to tell of their exploits and deeds of gallantry. It was going to be great fun.
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley.
The well-known lines from Burns caused Harry's sardonic smile to broaden. Memories that he had thought forgotten came back with a clarity he had not enjoyed for a long time.
Peter's head registered another form of pounding. It was not quite so dull and insistent as before but it was there nevertheless. He felt his body start to rock from side to side. This did not help the nausea and he cried out in protest. His lips were incapable of forming actual words but he did his best to protect what was left of his automatic response to self-preservation.
Tim's squeaky wee voice found its way inside him and he heard it say, ‘Da? Mister Hood's here tae see you. He says it's important.’
Peter tried to focus on John and rise up from the supine position that had served him so well for the past couple of hours to greet him. He failed miserably. The best he could manage was a thumbs-up sign as he sank back down on to the imitation Axminster.
‘You OK?’ John asked tentatively.
‘No' bad,’ Peter replied. His voice tailed off at the end of the sentence because of the effort the answer required from him.
TWENTY-FOUR
Dolly was sitting on the stool in front of her stall. She had removed her boots and socks and was intently surveying her left foot, which was perched on top of her right knee. In vain, she tried to get a look at the sole of her foot but this was proving impossible due to her waist being three times the size it used to be. ‘Doreen,’ she called out, ‘gonnae come here a minute?’
As Doreen appeared at the side of Dolly's stall, Dolly held her leg out and up so that the sole of the foot was facing towards Doreen for inspection. ‘Is that a wee corn I'm gettin' there, Doreen, or is it just a bit o' hard skin?’ she asked, her face creased in earnest consideration.
‘I think it's just hard skin, Dolly,’ was Doreen's diagnosis.
‘Thank God for that. My mother had awful bad feet and I'm feart I get them as well 'cause I take after her, you know. Gonnae give us a hand into the step-in sink?’
Doreen nodded and offered her shoulder, which Dolly steadied herself against while she stepped up about a foot and a half into the low sink that contained blankets steeping in warm soapy water.
‘Is that you OK, Dolly?’ Doreen enquired before she retreated back into her own stall and, indeed, into the blankets that were lying in her sink also waiting to be washed.
Dolly thanked Doreen and proceeded with driving the dirt from the blankets. The way the women tackled this arduous and heavy job was to trample on the blankets much in the same as winegrowers did with grapes. It was an extremely effective way to drive any dirt that may have accumulated on them. This was an age when most men worked with their hands on building sites or in shipyards or factories and there was no disgrace in bedclothes or, indeed, any washing being soiled – the only disgrace would have lain in not doing anything about it. Then you would have become what was known as ‘the talk of the steamie’. This was not a term that suggested you were the envy of your peers or anyone else really and was to be avoided at all costs.
As Dolly trampled all the offending microbes from her blankets, she watched the water seep through her toes and noted, ‘This'll save me washing my feet thenight.’ There was no reply from any of the others so Dolly carried on, ‘It fairly gets the dirt oot o' them.’
‘What? Your feet?’ Magrit threw back.
‘Naw, the blankets.’
‘It's amazin' where the dirt comes from,’ Doreen joined in, as she too surveyed the murky water that was gathering slowly round her feet. ‘I can understand sheets gettin' dirty but no' blankets.’
‘It comes off the men,’ Dolly said, informatively.
‘Right enough,’ agreed Magrit. ‘He's mingin' when he gets in the hoose. If he's been workin wi' the boilermakers, he's covered in rust.’
‘Aye. John's the same,’ Doreen affirmed. ‘But he always has a good wash in the kitchen sink, though and he comes up here to the baths and has one twice a week.’
‘Peter's a bit like that – except he has one twice a year,’ Magrit said scathingly as she too climbed into the step-in sink and commenced to tread the pile beneath her feet. ‘See my two boys? They will not wash themselves. It's a fight to the death every night. You want to see their shirt collars – you could plant tatties in them.’
‘Men are all clatty in their persons, though,’ was Dolly's verdict, arrived at after a lifetime's experience.
Doreen was almost daydreaming as she tramped absent-mindedly through this part of the wash cycle. ‘What I would like eventually is a hoose wi' a bath inside it,’ she said, wistfully.
Magrit considered this piece of fantasy for a moment before replying firmly, ‘Naw, I like the sprays better. I never have a bath in here. I always go to the sprays.’
Dolly decided that she should share her ablutionary habits with the others and voted in favour of having a bath.
Magrit stated that, as far as she was concerned, you were simply lying in your own dirt in a bath.
Dolly countered that by protesting that it was your own dirt you were lying in and nobody else's.
This piece of logic stopped the discussion for a moment, before Magrit took up the cudgel and again stated that she preferred the sprays.
Doreen furthered the discussion by announcing, ‘See, in America, they've all got them in their hooses – except they call them showers and no' sprays.’
‘Is that no' just in the Hollywood pictures that they have them?’ Dolly asked in politeness to Doreen's fanciful statement – although she was convinced in her own mind that it was, indeed, only in the pictures.
‘Naw,’ Doreen explained, ‘aw the hooses have got sprays – and washin' machines as well.’ Doreen was now in full flow and continued with the lesson on Mr and Mrs America's average home, ‘And they've all got refrigerators and telephones and … and televisions as well,’ she concluded.
Dolly shook her head in wonderment. She had never suspected that this was the case but Doreen had said it with such conviction that she felt the lassie must be right. Indeed, she remembered something that would be of interest to her two pals. ‘Here,’ she called out, thus attracting their attention for what she was about to announce. ‘My sister Jenny's daughter's husband's bought one o' them.’
Doreen was immediately all ears. ‘What? A television? … Have you ever seen it?’ She was so excited that she stopped tramping.
‘Naw, but Jenny's seen it. She says it's great,’ Dolly said.
‘I know all the big hooses in Dalmeny Crescent have them. You can see the big things stickin' oot the chimney pots,’ Magrit said sagely while the rust-coloured water lapped between her toes.
Dolly added ominously that they cost a fortune and Doreen threw up the argument that you would actually save money because you would never have to go out. Dolly agreed this was, indeed, the case and said that her sister Jenny's daughter and her husband never went anywhere now. Indeed she said that they used to visit her sister quite a lot but, lately, they hadn't gone near her. It got so that Jenny had taken to going round there more and more but she eventually gave up because nobody talked to anybody while it was on.
‘That wouldnae suit you, Dolly, eh?’ Magrit said, looking over into Doreen's stall and winking to Doreen.
Dolly agreed without moment's hesitation. ‘Ye're right there – I like tae hear people talkin'. My Boab says it's a wonder my lips are no' frayed at the edges. I'd be as well talkin' to myself as tryin' to haud a conversation wi' him, though,’ she grumbled, as she started to drain down the dirty water from the step-in sink.
‘What kind o' things do they see on the television, Dolly?’ Doreen persisted.
‘I couldn't tell you, hen,’ Dolly answered, as she turned on the tap that let clean water pour over the blankets to give them a rinse out.
‘That's my dream,’ Doreen stated firmly. ‘A hoose in the country wi' a television, a bath and a phone – and a garden as well,’ she added.
‘You're no' wantin' much,’ was Magrit's response.
‘I'll get it eventually, Magrit. I've put my name doon for a hoose in Drumchapel,’ Doreen said resolutely, referring to the vast sprawl of greenbelt that had been allocated for corporation housing to relieve the overspill from the destruction of old housing stock that was about to devastate the city.
Dolly looked up from her chores and said, offhandedly, ‘Drumchapel? She'll no' be talkin' to us, eh, Magrit?’
‘Between being out in the garden, watching the television and having baths, she'll not have the chance to talk to anybody,’ Magrit replied in a posh voice which, considering her background, she did very well.
Doreen smiled at Magrit's send up and decided she would join in, with an even more posh voice. ‘Of course, you would always be able to PHONE for an appointment.’ A large grin spread over her face at topping Magrit's jibe. Glaswegians, whether men or women, have always found the lure of a verbal joust irresistible. Magrit was in the mood for one and so, it seemed, was Doreen.
‘Aye, right enough,’ Magrit answered, before picking up the scrubbing brush, dialling a mock phone number and then holding it up to her ear. ‘DRRING-DRRING, DRRING-DRRING. She's no' in, Dolly. Of course, she might be oot in the gairden. I'll keep trying.’