Rue End Street

by Sue Reid Sexton

  ‘Mum?’ I said, quietly, to no-one. ‘Mavis? Rosie?’

  Mr Tait’s room was empty apart from the pallet. I noticed the remains of a bonfire outside where my mum must have burnt his mattress. There was still a bed in our room, the pallet and mattress, but no bedding and no clothes piled in the boxes in the corner.

  Mr Duncan’s geese squawked outside the window. There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Mr Duncan,’ I said. Mr Duncan hardly ever came to visit us. He was very thin, which was why he wasn’t allowed in the army.

  ‘Lenny, hello,’ he said, and he touched his cap, probably because of Mr Tait. He hadn’t been in our hut, which was really Mr Tait’s, since Mr Tait had died. ‘I’ve got a message for you from your mum. She couldn’t wait until you got back.’

  I knew what the message was before he said it. It was the message I had been dreading all this time. I was to put the bundle on my back and go down and get on the bus to Clydebank. Mr Duncan had a tiny piece of paper for me and on it was written the address I had to go to. I glanced at it and stuck it in my pocket beside the money. Mr Duncan thought he was telling me good news. He had no idea that I was all broken up inside, that I had finally lost absolutely everything, all in a little split second, and my life would never be the same again.

  ‘You’ll be back at the weekends no doubt,’ he said with a smile. ‘I hope so. You’ll be missed. Oh and she left this for you, for your fare.’ He handed me a silver sixpence, which was more than enough to get me to Clydebank.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘When’s the last bus?’

  He told me and said I should hurry because it wouldn’t be long. Without thinking, I looked for Mr Tait’s alarm clock on the shelf but all that was left was a box of matches.

  ‘You want a hand down there with that bundle?’ he said.

  ‘No thank you,’ I said. ‘I can manage.’

  He left me there and I sat on the bench made of little birch trunks and leant on the bundle and stared hard and long down the road and through the trees that were turning for autumn and off to the Campsie Fells where Senga and I had gone tramping one day over the summer. My mind wandered through our adventures on that trip and the swimming tournament, and all the other days when I did all those other things that had seemed so wonderful or terrible or ordinary since I’d lived in Carbeth. If I’d ever written a diary, this would have been like reading it. We had been there a whole two and a half years, so it took me some time to revisit all those days. But when I’d finished, I realised I had a plan and I hadn’t even been trying. If only I could have told him about it, Mr Tulloch would have been extremely impressed.

  Obviously I didn’t get on the bus. Instead, I unwrapped the bundle and put the blanket back on the bed, climbed in and went to sleep. There was nothing else I could do because I had stared at the hill until all the daylight was gone, and I had no food, no candle and no-one to talk to who wouldn’t have given me away. Fortunately I was so completely exhausted I fell asleep in no time and because I’d gone to sleep so early I also woke the next day with the birds, even before Mr Duncan’s geese were up, which meant I could go down the road in time to milk the cows with Mr Tulloch.

  I managed the same three cows I had milked the previous afternoon. Mr Tulloch had no idea what was going on. A penny ha’penny he’d give me, and another penny ha’penny or even tuppence I’d make later in the afternoon if I kept it up.

  After I did that morning’s shift I went down to Mrs MacLeod’s farm on the other side of the hill and offered my services there. There were still some tatties to be brought in and put in cloches, so I spent three days doing that. She gave me thruppence that day for the pleasure and a huge plate of soup at lunch-time with meat in it, rabbit I think, thick broth with some of those peas I’d picked and chunky brown bread. It was hard going back to work afterwards.

  For five days, Monday to Friday, I milked the cows twice a day, increasing the number milked to four by the Friday. Amazing! Each day when I’d finished I washed all the equipment, the churns and buckets and so on, and on the last two days I mucked out the byre too and Mr Tulloch made my money up to half a crown for the week. I gazed at this shiny silver thing in amazement that it was mine and that I had worked for it, before stuffing it in my pocket along with the other coins.

  Bad George had gone back to Clydebank, probably on the very bus I should have been on, and I knew he would be gone all week, otherwise he’d have lost his job. So one evening, after the afternoon milking, I went into his hut and pulled the newspapers back out of his walls again and looked for clues about my dad. I kept the pile of scrunched-up papers in a corner ready to be put back in.

  The awful truth is I found almost nothing I hadn’t already found out, but what I did find scared me. Here’s the worst of it: the day Italy decided to join Hitler, people in Britain had gone to all the Italian cafés and chippies and ice cream parlours and they’d smashed them to pieces, everything, not a thing left unbroken, and stolen all their ice cream. There was even a picture of a café in Edinburgh with the window all over the pavement. People had stolen what was inside too and the police had been called to stop the riots. Perhaps those Italians really were friends of the Nazis, I had no idea, but I knew my dad wasn’t a Nazi because he’d gone off to fight them as soon as he was able. It didn’t make sense. But if he really was Italian, which he wasn’t, I began to see why my mum would not want me to know. I wasn’t famous for keeping my mouth shut and they might have arrested her too for marrying him, or me and Mavis for being his children, because if he was Italian, didn’t that make us Italian too?

  And all the time I missed Mavis and Rosie terribly and worried about them and wondered what they were doing. I kept thinking how annoying they were but also how much they’d be missing me as well. We were all missing Mr Tait so much already that it seemed mightily unfair to lose Carbeth and each other too. Plus there was a good chance I’d lose the note with the address and never be able to find them again. My mum’s head must have been mince if she thought going back to Clydebank was a good idea. Maybe she was missing Mr Tait so much she wasn’t thinking straight. I was missing everyone so much I couldn’t think straight myself.

  George had no curtains so Mr Duncan must have seen me in his hut.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he said.

  ‘Mrs Mags gave me a message that I should just come to Clydebank when I was ready. From my mum. And I’m not ready.’ This was as close to the truth as I could get.

  ‘I’d sort of worked that out,’ he said. ‘But what are you doing in George’s hut?’

  ‘I’m stuffing his walls,’ I said. He eyed the pile of scrunched and unscrunched papers. ‘I’m very interested in the news.’ I picked up a page with another map of Italy I’d found. Above it were the words 65,000 BRITISH PRISONERS. ‘My dad’s a soldier,’ I said.

  He looked surprised.

  ‘These are great,’ I said, spreading a Broons cartoon over the map. ‘Much better than the Wee Macs.’

  ‘Och, yes,’ he said. ‘But Oor Wullie’s the best!’ And he squatted down beside me to read.

  Mrs Mags came over to our hut at teatime the next day with little Calum. Teatime didn’t really exist because I had no tea, only a jar of porridge left by my mum, and no pots to cook it in.

  ‘Well, young lady,’ said Mrs Mags. ‘What’s going on here then?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to go to Clydebank.’

  ‘I can see that. I meant, don’t put words in my mouth.’

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Mags,’ I said, cursing Mr Duncan for his tale-telling. But I was sorry. Mrs Mags was one of my favourite people in all the world. ‘I’ll go over this weekend, I promise.’ I meant it too.

  ‘Your mum’ll be working seven days a week, you know,’ she said. ‘She needs you for the girls. What would Mr Tait say?’

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Mags,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, stop being so sorry all the time. I know exactly what Mr Tait would have said. He’d have sai
d, “Stay in Carbeth, Peggy, where it’s safe,” wouldn’t he? Of course he would, but Mr Tait’s gone now and you have to do what your mum says, especially her with her leg. He’d have said that too.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. I did know. I just couldn’t go.

  ‘Someone’s been into George’s hut and trashed it too,’ she said.

  Little Calum looked up at me and beamed and offered me a corner of his soggy blanket.

  ‘I’ll put them all back,’ I said. And I did plan to.

  But on the Friday night I was still frantically searching the papers for news, trying not to get stuck on Oor Wullie, The Broons and Thae Twa (which means Those Two) when the old man from up the hill arrived and then Mrs Alder’s children arrived, and then Mr Duncan again and they all wanted to know what I was doing there, and Mrs Alder brought me some Moulton pie for my dinner and sat until I’d had every last mouthful of it, which didn’t take long, so she could have the plate back. I managed not to let any of them into George’s hut because I had a pile of important stories which they might have seen. But then darkness fell and there was no moon and I had to get back to my hut for some sleep before milking in the morning which wasn’t easy.

  And I forgot, sort-of, to re-stuff the walls, and the next morning I was bundling up my belongings in the blanket and setting off, and to be fair I was only half awake.

  That morning my mouth turned to jelly again and it wasn’t just the cold.

  I only milked two of Mr Tulloch’s cows even though I tried hard. But my mind was full of the day ahead so I couldn’t think of any daft nonsense to say to them. Mr Tulloch sang ‘Ye Banks and Braes’ for them but I forgot all the words and had to hum instead. Mrs Tulloch was there too and she sang ‘Good Kind Wenceslas’ but with silly words because it wasn’t Christmas.

  ‘Got to do something to get the little ’un going,’ she said. ‘You look a bit peaky. You alright?’ I shrugged as if to say, ‘you know how it is’, the way I’d seen grown-ups do, and hoped her baby didn’t come that day.

  At the end of milking she went back indoors and I went to the dairy for the milk dishes. Mr Tulloch followed me in.

  ‘Mr T... Tulloch?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, Lenny,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with you today? Only two? Miss Tulip was sorry not to have your company. I was going to give you ten shillings for the week, but I may have to think again.’ Unfortunately he was only joking.

  ‘Mr T... Tulloch,’ I said. And I sighed for all the effort just to speak. ‘Mr Tulloch, c... can you k... keep a secret?’

  ‘Y... yes,’ he said.

  Was he taking the micky? No, he looked too surprised for that.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  I took a deep breath. ‘I can’t do the milking any more because I have to find my dad,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d lost him,’ he said, sitting down on an old wooden chair against the dairy wall. He took his cap off and wiped his brow with his hand, then put the cap on the back of his head like I’d seen him do so many times before.

  ‘I don’t know where he is,’ I said, ‘and I thought he was d... dead, but it turns out he’s not, or probably not, and I’d like to know.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Where did you last see him?’

  ‘In Clydebank about three years ago,’ I said. ‘I can’t tell you any more because you might not like me if I did.’ But he said he liked me just fine and that he always had and that nothing I could tell him about my dad would make him like me less because it was me he liked and not my dad, who he didn’t know.

  ‘Really?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, really. I’ve never met him.’

  ‘No, I mean...’ Then I saw he was making fun and we laughed at each other. ‘I think he might be in a camp for people who live in Scotland but whose parents came from somewhere else.’ I was hoping this was clear enough for him to understand but vague enough for him to not get the Italian part.

  ‘Well that’s clear as mud!’ he said with a laugh. ‘But I think I can help.’

  I hoped so too. He had, after all, found Mavis after the bombing and he probably knew lots of farmers. Maybe he had more brothers too.

  So while I finished the milk dishes, Mr Tulloch went back into his house for a minute and came back with a book in his hand that turned out to be a map the size of a window once he unfolded it. He sat on his chair against the wall and we looked at it together in the sunshine. It had place names and brown mountains and blue for the sea and patches of green trees, and Carbeth was on it and Carbeth Loch and he had put a little cross where our hut was, mine and Mr Tait’s that we had built and lived in for two and a half years. The pub was there, tiny and close to Mr Tulloch’s farm. Clydebank was by the river and there was Greenock and Helensburgh and Dunoon and lots of other places I had heard of but never been to, and Rothesay where we’d gone with Auntie May and Gran. I noticed the route from Clydebank to Helensburgh had a black train line.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Tulloch,’ I said. How kind he was.

  ‘But he could also be on the Isle of Man,’ he said. ‘Some of them were taken there, in which case you need to talk to someone official.’ I bit my lip. ‘Italy isn’t at war with us anymore. They’re with us now. You won’t be arrested.’

  But I had already decided to take no chances. After all, Italy might change its mind again. ‘You won’t tell anyone, will you?’ I said.

  ‘No, but what I’m going to do for a milkmaid I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m going to give you a florin for luck because you’ve worked hard this week and I know you’ll come back. Bring the map when you do.’

  ‘Oh, thank you!’

  ‘Good luck!’

  I added the florin to my pocket and did some mental arithmetic, five shillings and sixpence. I could last for ages on that! I hadn’t spent a thing all week.

  ‘Thank you! Bye!’

  Molly the collie followed me across the farmyard. I was nearly gone when Mr Tulloch called me back.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t go,’ he said. He seemed to be thinking very hard.

  ‘Why don’t you ask my friend Dougie to help with the milking?’ I said, and I told him which hut Dougie was in.

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘It’s not that. I’m worried about you. Young girls shouldn’t be wandering about on their own, especially not now with a war on. What does your mum think of all this?’

  ‘I’ll be alright,’ I said as cheerfully as I didn’t feel. ‘She’ll be...’ What? Furious? Delighted? Not even notice I’ve gone?

  So he made me promise to tell her where I was going. ‘Where are you going anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know. I know he was in Helensburgh,’ I said.

  ‘Very nice. Very pretty. Just don’t you be going there by yourself.’ He paused a minute, and we watched while Mrs Tulloch waddled out of the house with a bucket of scraps for the chickens then went back in again. ‘You’ve been very lucky coming to Carbeth. I hope you know that.’ Molly stuck her nose in his hand and he patted her and pulled her ears.

  I nodded that I’d understood. I told him that was precisely why I had to find my dad, so we could stay in Carbeth, and I listed all the things I loved about being there, the friends I had, the safety from bombs, all the places there were to explore, the ropeswing on the big beech tree at the top of the hill, and the fresh clean air with no factory smells. I knew how lucky I was.

  ‘Yes,’ he said quietly, ‘it is all that. But it’s not like that everywhere else. There are lots of bad people about, bad men in particular. The troops, you know? Especially in Greenock. They get a bit wild when they’re off duty. You’re not used to dealing with things like that.’

  He took his bunnet off, shook his head, scratched the stubble at the back of it and put his bunnet back on. He said even Helensburgh was busy and there were prisoner of war camps up the glens and all sorts of people wandering about that nobody knew. He said a friend of his had counted all the ships on the Clyde one time and there were more than three hundred, which
made me think Mr Tulloch’s friend must have been telling porky pies, but he said no. There were a lot of very important things going on and it wasn’t safe for me to go there.

  ‘Why can’t you wait, or get your mum to come with you? Or hang on ’til the war’s over and I’m sure he’ll come home.’

  I didn’t know what to say. I needed my dad now, not in a few years.

  ‘But if you have to go just be careful,’ he went on, seeing I wasn’t going to change my mind. ‘No talking to strange men and keep well away from Greenock and servicemen off duty.’

  I chewed my lip again and nibbled on my thumbnail.

  ‘Ach, what am I saying?’ he said. He stood up and ruffled my hair. ‘They’d never let you travel without a pass anyway. Just keep yourself to yourself and don’t go on your own. Always make sure you can get home.’

  I gulped and nodded, but somehow couldn’t find any words.

  ‘You can stay here, you know,’ he said. ‘We’ve got the baby coming but there’s room. You could help with it when it comes.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Tulloch, that’s very kind but I do need to go. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure I don’t get into any trouble.’

  Famous last words.

  Chapter 16

  Being a Saturday, no-one was at school. The road and the woods round our hut were teeming with everyone I’d known for the last two and a half years, but no-one bothered me as I made my way home to pack up the bundle and leave. I’ll be back, I kept telling myself. This is just for a while. There are things that need done.

  I headed back down the long sweeping road, waving goodbye to anyone who noticed, and onto the main road towards Glasgow. Jimmy Robertson gave me the thumbs up, I ignored the café and at Mr Tulloch’s road-end I paused and gazed down the track, but saw no-one, not even the cows, who must have been in a back field. At the turn in the road I looked back one last time at all the huts dotted about the hillside in the gentle sunshine and listened to my friends playing, their voices carried easily on the still air, and I wished I could wind back the clock. For a second I thought of staying, but that wouldn’t work either, so with heavy steps and a heart full of dread I turned towards Clydebank.