Rue End Street

by Sue Reid Sexton

  ‘Okay, here’s what I’ll do,’ said George. ‘I’ll come as soon as I’m finished but you have to take Ella with you.’ ‘No way. I’m not going anywhere with her. She’s waving at all the soldiers. Look at her.’

  Ella was in fact waving at soldiers but none of them seemed to know she even existed.

  ‘She’s just stupid,’ he went on. ‘You could keep her out of trouble and make sure she gets back to Clydebank.’

  ‘Nope.’ I pulled my lips in tight so he’d know there was nothing else to say.

  ‘Oh my God, Lenny,’ he growled. ‘She’s the only person I know who’s more of a pest than you. But it’s a close contest.’

  I crossed my arms and scowled in Ella’s direction.

  ‘What about your parents?’ I said. ‘I’ll have to tell them you’re going. That’s not going to be easy. You owe it to me to follow. Mr Tait...’

  ‘Stop yattering on about Mr Tait. I told you I’m coming, but you’ve got to look after Ella for me. I can’t take her with me for my gear. Come on, Lenny. You don’t want the old minister to get her, do you?’

  I wouldn’t wish the minister on anyone, not even Ella.

  So it was decided. I counted half the money and gave it to George with Ella as our witness. Then we broke the plan to Ella. She turned red with fury first, then white when we both said we’d leave her and hurried off in opposite directions, then green when George wouldn’t come back for her and finally red again when she came puffing up the hill behind me. I won’t tell you what she said because it would make your ears burn although luckily she was so out of breath she only managed a few choice words.

  Chapter 31

  At the top of the road there was a junction. The road was called Hope Street of all things, which I might have pointed out if Ella had been someone else. It seemed like a good street to be in. We turned onto it and tramped along in silence staring in opposite directions, then went left at the next crossroad. The possibility of turning a corner and suddenly staring my dad in the face was suddenly, well, staring me in the face. If I really was going to find my dad that day, I’d better be ready, and I wasn’t. What would I say? What should I do? What could I hope for? I had no answers to any of these questions.

  Somewhere close a machine hammered out, sharp, persistent, hard, and the drone of a colossal engine thundered and rattled. The sweet smell of sugar made us look around for the source but high walls everywhere kept nosey people out. The sugar was soon replaced by stinky whisky, a pong that hung and stuck in my nose and reminded me of Rita’s pub. I rubbed the photo in my pocket and whispered to Mr Tait: ‘I’ve nearly found him, Mr Tait, nearly.’

  The pavement trembled and I yanked Ella back from the wheels of a lorry. Then a train chugged somewhere, and a metal screech rent the air. As we passed over a railway line we were engulfed in thick black smoke and coughed and wiped our watery eyes. The train let out a cheerful whistle and the wind took the smoke as quickly as it had come.

  Very helpfully the sun pushed through just at that moment and cast long shadows of the factory gates and chimneys. We just had to follow the sun to find the south, didn’t we?

  We came to another junction. It was a big main road with factories left and right, left for the docks and right for up the hill. But straight ahead a smaller road beckoned and passed under another railway bridge. The sun shone through the gap, south. Perhaps there were mills beyond it too. I stopped for Ella who was trailing behind, her face glowing like her polka-dotty skirt.

  ‘Come on!’ I called and crossed the road to wait for her.

  Ella was no longer her cheery annoying self, which was no bad thing. As we reached the railway underpass, three old men were leaning against the dank stone beneath it smoking and sheltering from the sun which was bright but not warm. The men smelled of burnt mince and vinegar so I had to hold my nose. But as we passed, they burst out laughing, snorting and sneezing, so I grabbed Ella and dragged her out the other side.

  ‘Josephine and her skin of many colours,’ said one. ‘Somewhere over the rainbow,’ sang another, and they all started coughing as if their insides were going to come out.

  We kept going and we skirted a pond with the longest building you ever saw on the other side of it. There were piles of rope and the strangest glueyest smell ever. No paper or wool, but otherwise there were just a couple of houses, neither of which looked like a farm.

  ‘This isn’t right,’ I said.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ said Ella.

  ‘A mill,’ I said. ‘Don’t you ever listen?’

  ‘How will we know it?’

  ‘It’s a wool mill,’ I said, ‘but it’s not here.’ I turned and started back the way we’d come. ‘We’ll go back to that big road and turn up the hill. Hurry up. Why are you so slow? You’re like an old granny.’

  ‘Keep your hair on,’ she said. ‘What’s the rush? Wait for me!’

  I’d promised George to keep Ella out of trouble so I slowed down for her and we ran back through the underpass together.

  ‘You lost?’ said a man as we passed.

  ‘No, thank you very much,’ I said.

  ‘Yes we are,’ said Ella. ‘What do you mean no we’re not. We’re lost. Let’s go and ask them.’

  So we stood and argued about whether they’d know the way and we wasted time trying not to waste time by going back and asking, until finally Ella went and asked.

  ‘This way,’ she said rather smugly and pointed up the long slow hill into the distance past all the factories and houses, exactly as I said.

  Higher and higher we went until, instead of works walls and trains and lorries, there were piles of rubble, huge and jagged and blackened from fire, with slices of red brick wall lying on top of one another like giant carrot cake on a plate. A horse and cart sat in a space nearby which had been cleared and two men were throwing bricks and stones onto the back of it. Neither of them was my dad. Metal girders and pipes stuck out like lots of fingers pointing at the sky where the sun, now faint, shimmered behind the mist above the hill.

  ‘What does a paper mill look like when it’s at home then?’ she said, echoing my thoughts exactly.

  ‘Well,’ I said, trying to sound as if I knew, ‘there’ll be a chimney or two, that’s for sure, like those ones over there.’ Two chimneys beyond a high wall were belching out black smoke. ‘Not those though,’ I said, hazarding a guess. ‘Those are in the wrong place.’

  ‘What else?’ she said.

  ‘Um... no windows and a big brick building. A gate, probably, with PAPER MILL or the company name on it.’

  ‘What would that be?’

  I didn’t know. We passed more tenements, some with boards over the windows, like in Clydebank after the bombing.

  ‘And corrugated iron sheds,’ I said with some effort, keeping my thoughts away from our old house, ‘and bales of paper.’

  ‘What’s a bale?’ she said.

  ‘Probably like a hay bale,’ I said, not sure.

  ‘What’s that like then?’ she said.

  ‘Haven’t you ever seen a hay bale?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘a hay bale is a bunch of hay so a paper bale will be the same but paper.’

  She laughed. ‘You don’t have the faintest idea.’

  Hands on hips I glared at her. ‘And what does that have to do with anything?’ I said.

  But she had nailed it because the truth was I couldn’t remember what the lady in the labour exchange had said, not exactly. I thought I’d listened so carefully I’d never forget a single syllable, but actually I wasn’t certain of anything except there was a farm and two mills, one wool, the other paper. But which one my dad was at was lost forever. There were names too. Duntocher Road? Drumtocher? No idea. And a farm. Glenlee? Glenree? I tried to remember, starting at the beginning of the alphabet: Glenbee, Glencee, Glendee, but soon realised it was pointless. South. I remembered that.

  A lady came towards us in men’s overalls.
The pipe she carried on her shoulder bounced at both ends with every step.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘Is this D... Duntocher Road?’ Duntocher is a place a few miles from Clydebank.

  ‘Drumfrochar,’ she said with a smile, and shifted the pipe higher onto her shoulder. ‘Drum. Frochar.’

  ‘Drumfrochar,’ I said.

  ‘That’s the one,’ she said. ‘Got it first time.’

  I thanked her and she carried on. Then I remembered all the other things I’d forgotten and ran after her. This time the pipe shoogled and swayed when she stopped.

  ‘What about the wool mill?’ I said. ‘And the paper mill?’

  ‘Just follow the road round to the left,’ she said.

  ‘And the farm,’ I said. ‘Glen... I’ve forgotten... Glen... tee. It was Glentee, I’ve remembered!’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t you be at school or something? Why do you want to know all this?’ Suddenly she wasn’t smiling any more. ‘This is heavy. I’m going to drop it if I don’t get going. I shouldn’t have told you anything.’

  ‘S... sorry,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’ But she’d already gone.

  ‘You should have said,’ said Ella. ‘Why didn’t you tell her? About your dad, I mean. Why didn’t you say? How are we ever going to find him if you don’t ask?’

  I watched the pipe woman turn in at a wide-open door and disappear. I could have asked her more but suddenly my tongue was doing that jelly thing again. How was I ever going to find my dad with a tongue like that? The thought of it all made me shake in frustration.

  ‘Why, Lenny, why didn’t you tell her about your dad?’ said Ella.

  A tractor came down with a load of hay on a trailer, in bales to be exact. It might have come from Glentee Farm. I waved at the farmer, but he was too busy watching the road ahead with his cap down over his eyes and his mouth thrust forward in concentration.

  ‘Excuse me!’ I shouted, and though I crossed the road and ran after him, he didn’t hear me above the chunter of the factories. He was going too fast for me anyway. When I came back up the hill, Ella was nowhere to be seen.

  I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise and then goose pimples slid down my arms in waves, followed swiftly by a heat in my tummy like a volcano. Oh Mr Tait, I thought. What am I going to do? I ran to the nearest wall, leant on my arm and sobbed like I was being sick.

  I’d only been there a minute or so when a lady came and asked me if I was alright.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, still hiding my face.

  ‘You don’t seem alright to me,’ she said. ‘She doesn’t seem alright, does she? What do you think?’

  ‘Something must have happened,’ said another lady. ‘Poor pet.’

  ‘I’m f... fine,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ they said.

  ‘I’m f... fine,’ I said, and I lifted my head and glanced sideways at them.

  ‘Let’s see you then...’ She stuffed a big spanner in her pocket and rubbed my back with her hand.

  So I had to turn round, even though I didn’t want to. I took a big breath. ‘I can’t find my dad,’ I said. I told them I was looking for my dad who was missing presumed dead and I’d come from Clydebank and Helensburgh and now I’d lost Ella and forgotten everything the labour exchange lady said.

  The lady gave me a rag from her boiler suit pocket to blow my nose and wiped her eyes with another. ‘Oh dear,’ she said.

  ‘That’s quite a journey on your own,’ said the other one. ‘Good for you, though, all that searching. Does your mum know you’re here?’

  ‘Very impressive,’ said the first one. ‘Why’re you up here?’

  So I reeled off Drumfrochar Road, the wool mill and the paper mill, and finally Glentee Farm, and asked if they knew it. Och, they said, it wasn’t far, bit of the back of beyond but a lovely spot in the summer for picnics.

  ‘He’s not a conchie, is he?’

  I had cheered up a lot by this point, feeling I had been brave after all. So I was brave again and told them.

  ‘He’s Italian, or I think his dad was. I just found out. That’s why he was sent to a camp. What? What’s wrong?’

  They had drawn back from me.

  ‘I see,’ said the first one. ‘Italian, eh?’ A glance passed between them.

  Oh dear.

  ‘He’s not really Italian,’ I said. ‘It must have been his dad. He was in the army from the beginning. We went on holiday and he got arrested while we were away. He’s English really.’

  ‘I don’t think we want anything to do with Italians,’ said the first one.

  ‘They’re on our side now,’ I said.

  ‘She’s only a wean,’ said the other. ‘It’s not her fault.’ ‘Come on,’ said the first.

  ‘But Italy’s our friend now. Wait! And everybody loves my dad.’

  But they turned away and left me.

  Chapter 32

  ‘This way,’ said Ella, striding past. ‘Where have you been?’ I shouted.

  But I let her stride. Even though I wanted to scream and yell and knock lumps out of her.

  She glanced back and nodded over the road, but didn’t slow down for me. ‘That man with the smelly cart. He says it’s up here.’

  How did I miss the huge dung cart on the other side of the road, with the smallest horse you ever saw? I don’t know. But Ella forged on ahead so I had to hurry after her. The road veered to the left and went up at such an angle I thought I would fall over backwards. She crossed another railway bridge and I followed and we passed the biggest gate I ever saw, so big it had a building in the middle of it with a clock at the top telling me how late we were and we better hurry. Over the clock soared a factory the size of a kingdom with row upon row of huge windows. Some buildings had bars on their windows just asking to be run along with a stick, but Ella seemed to have a tiger chasing her the way she passed all of this without even stopping for breath.

  Then it was fields and a farm with cows and mud and filth everywhere just like at Mr Tulloch’s and I stood for a moment to breathe in the smells I loved. Perhaps this was Glentee. But some ladies in brown uniforms were carrying buckets and I realised they wouldn’t let my dad stay there because of them, the ladies that is, not the buckets. Reluctantly I kept going.

  Reluctantly because a wave of dread now washed over me, and even though I’d wanted to find my dad for ages and had travelled for two whole days to find him, it now seemed like the daftest thing in the world. Everything I had learnt about him made him a complete stranger and not the dad I remembered. I didn’t want to meet a man who drank in pubs, got into fights, lied so convincingly and was often in trouble with the police. What would Mr Tait have thought? And what about Jeannie and little Bobby?... I stopped and gazed out over the ships to Helensburgh and the green fields behind it which were lit up through a gap in the cloud. My stomach tightened. Who would do such a thing? Why was I even looking for him?

  But he was my dad. I had come so far. Could I really just turn and go home and never know?

  When I first saw my mum after the bombing, I was too scared to even look at her. It sounds silly now, but I was younger then and scared of her missing foot. We had all been through so much. But Mr Tait helped me. He told me this was the hardest part, seeing her for the first time, and that once this part was over, it would get easier. I’d had no choice but to believe him and actually it turned out he was right. There’s nothing scary about my mum, not even her stump once you’ve seen it a few times. Mr Tait taught me how to be strong when I felt least able. He taught me to take my time when I wanted to rush or run away. He taught me to save my upset for when bad things really happened and not when I just thought they might, and he taught me how to gather all my strength when I needed it. Like there on the side of that hill on my way to my dad.

  So I faced out over Greenock and the sea to Helensburgh and to Dunoon and to where the three lochs stretched off between them. I looked back down the Clyde River towards Clydebank and Glasgow an
d the Kilpatrick hills, and the other way out to sea. The mountains were turning brown with autumn, the trees red and yellow beside them. I pictured Mr Tait in his brown suit standing there with me admiring the view and what he’d say. ‘Your dad’s your dad,’ he’d say, ‘whatever kind of man he is.’ I breathed in the strong fresh wind that was buffeting me from the hills and I took off my hat and let the breeze lift my hair. Then I faced into it, put my hat back on and straightened my coat and scarf. I thought that maybe, then, I was ready, or as ready as I’d ever be.

  ‘Ella!’ I shouted. ‘Wait!’

  She was like a demon. I finally caught up with her at the paper mill. It stank to high heaven, which was obviously why it was so far from the town centre. A muckier place it was hard to imagine. The stench was sweet, not in the mouth-watering way like the sugar factory, but cloying and foul.

  Across the road a goods train waited by a warehouse with no windows. A chimney grew out of the back of it and blew dark smoke up the hill. Piles of paper as wide as desks and as high as chair backs sat on the train like something I’d seen in all those offices, but much bigger and all tied together with string. A crane was lifting these bundles up and a man stood on top loading everything into position. His shirt was rolled to his elbows and torn at the back and he wore a dark apron and moved in jerks, as if he was going faster than he was able. He glanced our way and shouted something, but I couldn’t hear him.

  ‘Come on,’ said Ella. ‘It’s past here and up that hill. Hurry up or the man’ll get us.’

  The sun burst through the clouds, like an urgent reminder to head south, and glinted off a big sign that said NO SMOKING. Ella charged on in front. The path narrowed between bales of old paper piled high on one side and tin barrels all higgledy-piggledy on the other, then boxes in stacks like rickety old walls leaning to one side, and further down, two buildings of corrugated iron. It was all oddly as I had imagined it. The road squelched under my feet, softened by the rain, and everywhere there were mounds of old paper, curving and ready to fall. A sudden gust gripped these and the nearby autumn rowans and the air was suddenly filled with white and yellow ‘snowflakes’ dancing in the sun.