Rue End Street

by Sue Reid Sexton

  ‘I’m going to see the council man tomorrow about somewhere to live...’

  ‘I’m not going!’ said Mavis.

  ‘I’m not going either,’ said Rosie. ‘There’s nowhere to live and...’ and Rosie was off on one.

  ‘Quiet, Rosie!’ said my mum, but it made no difference. Rosie went on and on and on and she stumbled round the room bumping into Mavis who was still in her circle. ‘We’ll have to give this place up too,’ she went on, as if getting every possible piece of bad news out at once made it easier. ‘We can’t afford two rents.’

  Everyone started talking at once, but the only person making any sense was me. I told my mum about the peas and carrots and the farm but I don’t think she heard me. I told her I was going to find a job and that my job would keep us there, along with her sewing, and I’d try everywhere the next day for more work. I told her about my plan, but suddenly we were all shouting at each other and I had to run away into Mr Tait’s room and hide behind the door until they’d all stopped. It was like Miss Weatherbeaten all over again, shouting and making noise and everyone being unkind, as if her violence had infected us all just by the mention of her. Then suddenly our last candle died and Mavis and Rosie were sent next door to ask Mr Duncan for one of his while my mum banged about at the fire muttering to herself, heating more water to add to the bath that was still sitting there cold and waiting for her. They didn’t want to go for the candle. I could hear them arguing. As they left I heard my mum shouting to all of us.

  ‘I’m doing my very best for us!’ she yelled. ‘I don’t want to go any more than you do!’

  But I didn’t believe her because if she really wanted to stay she’d have listened to my plan and tried to keep us there. I knew I’d have to do it all myself and maybe that way I could convince her we didn’t need to go.

  The girls came back with the candle, Rosie still talking fifteen to the dozen and Mavis as silent as the grave, and were sent straight off to bed. I stayed behind Mr Tait’s door and listened and tried not to fall asleep and, to stay awake, I checked under Mr Tait’s bed again with my hand. I pulled the pallet away from the wall too, as carefully as I could so no-one would hear me, but there was nothing there either. I lay down on the floor in the gap I’d made and listened to the wind and watched the dark shapes of the trees merge with the night.

  Beautiful Carbeth, my beautiful Carbeth. I couldn’t bear it, the very thought of leaving. There had to be something more I could do, more than earning peas and carrots. And then I had one of those crazy thoughts: if only my dad had really been under Mr Tait’s bed then he could have come out and looked after us and we’d all be together again. He’d make sure we stayed in Carbeth, I was sure of it, if only he’d known how desperate we were and how beautiful Carbeth was. I’d just have to find him. Then everything would be alright.

  Chapter 8

  The next day we ate breakfast in silence. Then, without even pretending to go to school, I said goodbye to Mavis and Rosie a little way down the road and turned in at the long sweeping path between the trees to the big house. Thick and tumbling bushes deadened all sound except the little birds hiding amongst them. The front of the big house seemed to be at the back and when I arrived there I climbed the steps to the front door with its fancy pillars on either side and knocked. A tall man with a thick moustache opened it. He had a tweed suit on like Mr Tait’s and the mouth beneath the moustache was wide, made wider by a smile.

  ‘What sort of services?’ he said.

  ‘Anything,’ I said. ‘I’ll do anything. We need money.’

  He eyed me sideways. ‘Shouldn’t you be at school, young lady?’ he said.

  I squinted back up at him. ‘I’m too old for school,’ I said.

  ‘Really?’ he said, and he twisted his mouth and the moustache to one side. ‘We’ll put you in the kitchen then. We have guests for lunch and Willie needs help. We don’t have a cook.’

  Willie was not a man. Willie was Miss Barns- Graham, the same Miss Barney who’d been there when Mr Tait was taken away. She recognised me instantly.

  ‘Hello, young lady, remember me? Sorry, awfully sorry to hear about your dad. You must be frightfully upset.’ Without waiting for a reply she set me at a large wooden table, scrubbed pale with use, and handed me a knife and some potatoes. ‘Peal ’em and cut ’em up good and small. I can’t seem to get this stove going well enough today so it’ll have to be small and mashed.’

  I did as I was told.

  ‘We’re having pheasant. I found this one on the road two weeks ago. Must have been hit by a car but it seems alright. What do you think? Look, isn’t it beautiful, bronze and sleek.’ She pronounced ‘sleek’ with a special flourish like a big tick and grinned at me. I smiled back. ‘There are six of us for lunch so we need six big carrots from the garden and a bit of spinach too. I like a bit of spinach.’ Then she dived out the door and came back a few minutes later with the veg wrapped in newspaper. ‘Voila!’ she said and grinned at me again. ‘The apples are a bit sharp but they’ll just have to do. Stewing’ll help. Now, where was I? The pheasant. Do you think you could pluck it?’

  I gulped. We had done this before, or rather, my mum had done this before and I’d helped. Mr Tulloch gave us a hen once that had been caught by a fox. The fox got every single one of the hens and left them lying dead or nearly dead. It was a terrible waste. I don’t understand why foxes are so wasteful. Why not just kill one and come back the next day when you’re hungry again?

  ‘Fill the sink with hot water from the kettle then put in the pheasant. It opens the follicles so the feathers come out more easily.’ She pointed at the kettle and the sink as if I didn’t know what they were.

  I did as I was told. It was a thoroughly horrible thing to do. The feathers stuck to my fingers and got up my nose. It wasn’t just the feathers that were colourful either. Slimy bits of orange, purple and green pheasant skin came off in my hand and when I’d finished there were blotches and holes all over it. It also stank to high heaven and made me hold my breath. It was almost impossible not to think about people who’d been stuck dead under the rubble in Clydebank and the awful cloying smell there had been when I went back there two weeks later to try and find Mavis.

  I’d been in Willie’s big kitchen an hour before I realised I hadn’t said a word since, ‘I’m too old’ on the doorstep. ‘Finished!’ I said as soon as I was, glad to hear the sound of my own voice again, glad to unsticky my fingers under the tap.

  ‘Smashing!’ she said. ‘What next?’ She looked about the room, tapping one finger on her lip.

  ‘Um, excuse me,’ I said.

  ‘Yes?’ Her gaze fell on me.

  ‘I’m looking for a job.’

  ‘A job?’

  ‘Yes, I need to earn a living for me and my sisters and my mum, so we can stay in Carbeth.’ I didn’t tell her Rosie wasn’t really my sister because she was as good as, and either way I had to find money for her too.

  ‘Well, good for you!’ she said. ‘What kind of job?

  ‘Um, this kind,’ I said. ‘Anything really. I just want, um, to be paid, you know?’

  ‘Paid?’ she said. ‘Shall I ask our guests if they know of any jobs? How old did you say you were? Paid?’ She tapped her finger on her lip again.

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Lenny. Lenny Gillespie.’

  ‘Well, Lenny Gillespie, I don’t believe you really are fourteen but well done for trying. We can’t pay you, I’m afraid, because we don’t have any money either, but I can give you some of our veg, if that would help. You live in that hut, don’t you? And you were bombed out.’ I could see her thinking it all over.

  She promised me a big sack of stuff from her garden if I’d help her peel the apples. So I did. I rescued the spinach that was boiling dry, and I got the stove going properly too. She was trying to save wood for some reason even though we were surrounded by trees. She was very kind but not good at staying on the job in han
d, like me when I’m at school, I suppose.

  I was scrunching up the newspaper so that I could tease the fire back to life and get the pheasant to cook when I noticed a headline.

  TIGER IN EXEMPTION APPEAL

  I had to look. Fenella the tiger was a circus tiger with a Miss Overend for a trainer. Miss Overend must surely have been a trapeze artist when not taming tigers. Miss Overend had been called up for war work. I wondered if I could have her old job.

  Then Willie came back and gave me my pay: eight large potatoes, four huge carrots and a cabbage. I noticed little smears of paint on her apron and suddenly remembered she was A FAMOUS ARTIST.

  ‘Thank you, miss,’ I whispered.

  ‘I’ll come and get you if I need help again, if I may. Look what you’ve done with my fire!’ She clasped her hands under her chin and beamed at me. ‘How wonderful you are!’

  As I wandered back along the sweeping driveway picking the mud off one of the carrots so I could eat it, I reflected on my uselessness as a woman of business and determined to do better next time. Nice to be called wonderful though.

  My next stop was Jimmy Robertson in his shopcome- bus-come-bedroom. I stood on the bottom step and smelled old milk and biscuits and offered my services. He said he had no need of help. He was fine thank you very much.

  ‘What about the papers?’ I said. ‘I could deliver papers.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe. Maybe not.’

  I waited. He sat back in his driver’s seat and smiled at me. I could do it. I knew I could. He didn’t know how much I needed to.

  ‘No,’ he said and scratched his beard. ‘Wouldn’t work. How would you get them up the hill? Good luck though! I’m sure you’ll find something.’

  Disappointed, I hoped he was right.

  Then I tried the tearoom next to the Halfway House pub. But it was empty except for a lady waiting for customers to arrive.

  ‘How old are you?’ she said.

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘Come back on Saturday,’ she said, looking over my head.

  ‘Alright,’ I said.

  ‘We’re busy then. You can work in the kitchen.’

  But I knew I had to get something before then.

  So I went to Mr Tulloch’s farm. Mr Tulloch was a bit on the round side, like horrible Mr Beveridge only nice. His head was like a ball and his unshaven face was matched by the stubble across his head and down his neck. Very useful, he said, for keeping your hat on.

  ‘Come back at four,’ he said.

  ‘In the morning?’ I said aghast, another of my dad’s funny words, for when things are really horrible.

  ‘No, no, you daftie,’ he said. ‘This afternoon. You can help with the milking. You ever milked a cow?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘but I can learn. How much will you pay me?’ I said. It seemed so cheeky to ask, especially when Mr Tulloch had always been very kind to us and it was thanks to him and his brother that we got Mavis back. ‘Halfway to Helensburgh,’ he said she was, then he had to explain that Helensburgh was miles away along the Clyde River, and he promised us we’d only really been a short distance apart.

  He burst out laughing at my request for a wage. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘How much would you like me to pay you?’

  I looked at the sky. I closed my eyes and scratched my head. I kicked my toes one into the other and pulled my lip. ‘Um,’ I said.

  ‘Um. That’s no use. I can’t pay you in “ums”. Come back at four and if you’re any good I’ll give you a penny.’

  ‘Thank you!’ I said.

  ‘You can do the cleaning up and if you manage alright I’ll show you how to milk.’

  ‘Thank you!’ I felt dizzy with excitement and nearly fell over a mounting block on my way out of his yard.

  ‘Watch where you’re going!’ he called after me. ‘Slow down and keep your wits about you! You can learn some common sense too.’

  For good measure I stopped at the Halfway House pub where a huge fire roared in a wide grate, a lady stood behind a bar and three men leant on it chatting.

  ‘I’m fourteen,’ I said to the lady. ‘I need a job. I can cook and clean.’

  They all fell about laughing and I stumbled out the door, the excitement of going to Mr Tulloch’s farm all gone up in smoke.

  Chapter 9

  ‘Sometimes good things come out of bad, my dear, don’t you think?’ said Mr Tait. ‘Even the bombing. If the German’s hadn’t bombed us we wouldn’t be here together under this tree eating your mum’s best dumplings and watching George mess up the roof of his hut because he won’t ask for help.’

  George had no idea we were watching. There was a sudden yowl then a thud as he threw down his hammer. And I had no real idea what Mr Tait was on about. The bombing was straightforwardly bad. How could it be anything else?

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mr Tait. ‘That looked like a thumb this time.’ He leant forward the better to see and reached for his stick. George disappeared behind a tree. His hut was a skeleton made with bits of old wood he’d carried over from Clydebank, piece by piece, from places that had been bombed. There were three green strips along one side that looked like they’d once been a park bench. The whole thing was not much bigger than two single-end alcoves stuck together. George was only thirteen at that time but determined not to live with his parents Mr and Mrs Connor or Mrs Mags his aunt, which is why Mr Tait kept an eye on him instead.

  We finished our dumplings, me and Mr Tait, just as George lifted his hammer again.

  ‘That’ll never do,’ said Mr Tait. ‘If he puts that there it’ll be in the way of the door.’ Mr Tait went on in this way, but I didn’t catch most of it because it was mainly too technical for me and the dumplings were making me drowsy. Mr Tait went down and helped George while I lay back and snoozed in the grass.

  But George’s hut was long finished, Mr Tait was gone and I sat under the same tree all by myself and waited for four o’clock to come. When I thought it must be time I made my way down through the trees and across the fields to Mr Tulloch’s farm.

  Mr Tulloch’s whistle, which normally rang out wherever he went, was almost impossible to hear above the rising wind as it hurtled through the trees around the farm buildings. But add to that the happy mooing of his cows as they were herded into the old byre and he was easy to find.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, standing by the gate to the back field with a stick in his hand and Molly the collie dog at his feet. ‘My new milkmaid.’

  ‘Hello, Mr Tulloch!’

  ‘Hmmm,’ he said, looking me over. ‘Skinny little thing, aren’t you? We’ll need to put some muscle on you if you’re going to be any use with cows.’ His eyes fell on my legs with all the bruises from Mr Beveridge’s little joke.

  ‘I’m tougher than I look,’ I told him and smiled. It was a fake smile. I was overcome with nerves. And then I was overcome with nerves because of being overcome with nerves, which I wasn’t used to being. Normally I’m first in the queue for anything new, and this should have been the best thing in the world since I rode Senga’s dad’s Clydesdale home from the field last year.

  Mr Tulloch pulled the gate shut behind the last of the herd and shifted his cap so far back on his head it should have fallen off but for the stubble.

  ‘The first thing you have to do is wash those hands,’ he said. I followed him past the herd to the front of the queue. The cows were at a standstill at the byre door, which he now opened. ‘There’s a tap over there,’ he said, pointing along the wall. ‘Keep out the way of this lot or you’ll get trampled. They’re a placid bunch really but heavy and stupid and they’ll put a foot right through you without actually meaning any harm.’ He dived inside.

  I pressed myself against the stone of the byre while the cows sauntered in, each one swaying to a halt to look me up and down before deciding I was nothing of interest and moving on past. They had big square noses, round dark eyes that seemed to be all pupil and tufts of curly hair between two horns and t
wo ears. Their hips were triangular with the skin pulled tight over them and underneath hung huge wobbly udders heavy and straining with milk. They had impossibly skinny legs and no feet.

  There was a clank of metal inside the barn and they all stopped. The middle ones bumped into the ones at the front and two at the back started mooing, as if they were arguing over an important family matter.

  There was a rustling of light chains. Mr Tulloch whistled away, stopping every so often to mutter a few words to the cows. I rushed to wash my hands at the standpipe then squeezed past the largest brown cow and followed him in.

  ‘Now, no sudden noise,’ he said. ‘If you upset one of them you upset them all and that makes ’em dangerous. They’re not bad, just clumsy, so talk softly and don’t shout over to me. They’ll get used to the sound of your voice.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Got that?’

  I nodded again.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Tulloch.’

  He looked at me and frowned.

  ‘Another thing. Don’t come at them from behind. They don’t like it. They don’t know what’s going on back there. The best thing to do is just keep talking all the time so they know what you’re up to.’ He eyed me and frowned again. ‘If you don’t know what to say you can sing. How’s that? That okay?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Right,’ he said.

  Ordinarily I would have been wildly excited to be in Mr Tulloch’s byre learning about milking, but it was like all the happiness had been sifted out of me and all I could do was nod miserably. I was tired too. The thought of singing with Mr Tulloch did not cheer me up either.

  ‘Tough losing Mr Tait, was it?’ he said, gazing down at me.

  I looked at him.

  ‘He was a good man, he was,’ said Mr Tulloch. ‘Very solid, if you know what I mean, very kind.’

  I felt my lip tremble so I nodded extra low.

  ‘Right then, no crying in here. You don’t want Tulip over there getting upset.’ Tulip twisted round to look at us with her big soft brown eyes.