Kezzie at War

by Theresa Breslin

‘Come and sit with me,’ he offered. He took Lucy by the hand. ‘What have you in that basket, Careen?’ he asked her. ‘Anything for a starving man?’

  ‘Pancakes, which I made myself.’

  Michael clutched his stomach.

  ‘Pancakes!’ he exclaimed. ‘How did you know that is my very favourite thing to eat?’ He made smacking noises with his lips. ‘Let me at them.’

  ‘We have to put them on the table,’ said Lucy primly. ‘You will have to wait like everyone else.’

  They laid their food out with all the rest on a trestle table which had been set up at the far end of the barn. There were plates heaped with potatoes, which had been baked in the open fire, bread and butter, cheese, hard boiled eggs, soda scones and a barrel of beer from the farmer.

  ‘Now, isn’t he the generous one,’ Kezzie heard someone say.

  And it was true. Some farmers did not like the Irish, saw them only as a source of cheap labour, to be used and got rid of as quickly as possible. Like the travellers, thought Kezzie. These two groups of people had similar ways, migrating across many miles seeking work. Most of the year they followed the harvests, from Ayrshire to the Lothians, down to the Borders and up past Perthshire. Even though many farms now used the new digging and haymaking machines, workers were needed for lifting the potato crop, and for turnip singling and mangel pulling. She wondered if she would enjoy it herself, this nomadic life, moving on at intervals, meeting different people. And what of those others, the emigrants of whom Michael had spoken? Those who left their homeland to become immigrants in a foreign country. What would it be like to be one of them? She supposed it would be interesting to learn about new and strange customs and have a chance of more prosperity. She would miss her own native land though, she knew that, the hills heather-purple and the village and its folk.

  ‘Right, now,’ said Michael. ‘I’m going to teach you how to dance the “Walls of Limerick”.’ He grasped Kezzie firmly and swung her on to the floor.

  And so the night passed. The Scots and the Irish with a common Celtic heritage in singing and dancing, sang and danced, mournful and happy by turn.

  Lucy and Kezzie were flushed and exhausted after an eightsome reel.

  ‘Wait now and I will get you a lemonade,’ said Michael, and he went to fill up their enamel cups. Kezzie looked at where her grandad was arguing fiercely about something with a group of men. He hadn’t enjoyed himself so much in weeks.

  ‘Sing us a song, Michael,’ someone called. ‘Come on, now.’

  Lucy leaned forward and tugged his sleeve.

  ‘Make it a jolly one,’ she said.

  Michael winked at her. He stood in the middle of the floor, and bowed low. ‘This is a song of special significance for a special person, not forgetting her sister.’

  He hooked his thumbs into his braces;

  Goodbye to all the boys at home, I’m sailing far across the foam

  To try and make me fortune in far Amerikay.

  There’s gold and money plenty, for the poor and for the gentry

  And when I come back again, I never more will stray …

  Soon everyone was clapping and joining in.

  So goodbye Muirsheen Durkin,

  I’m sick and tired of workin’

  No more I’ll dig the praties,

  No longer I’ll be fooled.

  As sure’s me name is Carney,

  I’ll go off to Californay,

  Where instead of digging praties

  I’ll be diggin’ lumps of gold.

  Lucy hugged him when he sat down.

  ‘I liked that one, that was a nice song,’ she said. ‘Except your name’s not Carney.’

  ‘What did you mean, “it was of special significance”?’ asked Kezzie.

  ‘I’ll tell you later,’ said Michael. ‘Come on.’

  He pulled Kezzie to her feet and waltzed away with her to the ‘Pride of Erin’.

  ‘This babby is nearly sleeping,’ said Michael softly as they reached the bothy.

  It was after midnight and he had carried Lucy home with Kezzie walking beside him. From time to time they had stopped to look at the stars which seemed close enough to touch.

  ‘I’m not a babby,’ said a small voice.

  ‘Deed you’re not,’ said Michael stoutly, and he set Lucy down gently. ‘And if the big sister wasn’t watching me, sure I’d be stealing a kiss from a pretty girl like you after walking her home on a beautiful moonlight night like this.’

  He stole a sidelong glance at Kezzie.

  ‘Be darned,’ he said. ‘I’m going to steal one anyway.’ And he kissed Lucy on the top of her curly head. ‘Now away to bed at once, before you drive a man wild.’

  Lucy skipped inside laughing.

  ‘I’ll be there in a minute to tuck you up,’ Kezzie called after her.

  Michael turned to Kezzie.

  ‘I’m not going home tomorrow with the rest,’ he said.

  Kezzie’s eyes opened wide.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘London.’

  ‘But you hate the cities. You told me that!’ she cried.

  ‘Just for a few months. There’s a cousin of my mother’s there. He can fix me up. See, I’m planning to go to America and it’s the only way I’ll get enough money. Working the way I am now you only make enough to live on through the winter, and then it starts all over again. I’ve got to break the cycle and get out.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Kezzie slowly. ‘I’ve been thinking the same myself. We cannot live like this for ever. Lucy needs something better. I shall have to get some kind of steady work.’

  Michael fiddled with his shirt collar.

  ‘You wouldn’t think of America, yourself, would you?’

  ‘America!’ said Kezzie in amazement. ‘America! What would we do in America? I don’t know anyone in America.’

  ‘Well, you might know me,’ said Michael carefully.

  ‘Oh.’

  Kezzie looked into his dark blue eyes. He was not joking with her. His face was serious.

  She didn’t know what to say.

  He put his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘You might think on it,’ said Michael. ‘I’ll come back and see you before I sail.’ He grinned. ‘Now, I’ll have a kiss from the big sister,’ and he brushed the side of her cheek with his lips.

  Kezzie felt something catch at her heart.

  She lay in bed with Lucy cuddled in beside her and gazed out at the moon through the little window. She heard her grandad coming home and going heavily to his bed. It was a long time before she fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 9

  The rag doll

  THE WEATHER BECAME colder. The track to their home was now rutted mud and Kezzie felt the hard ground under her boots each day she walked out. Boots, which were now so small they cramped her feet badly and with soles so thin as to scarcely keep the damp out.

  Each day she left Lucy at school and looked for work. Just before Christmas she was lucky and got some time at the pit head at the picking tables taking the rocks and the slats from the coal. She hated working there, hated the sound of the whistle, the noise of the bell and wheel turning, but it was all she could get. Grandad was having worse luck, Christmas was approaching and their summer savings and sacks of potatoes were running low. But with this job she could also bring home coal and it kept the hut cheery and warm.

  ‘Do you think Santa Claus will know where we are?’ Lucy asked anxiously one night.

  ‘Santa knows where all good children are,’ said Kezzie, not looking up from the sock she was darning.

  Lucy climbed on her grandad’s knee.

  ‘Tell me a story,’ she said.

  Grandad reached for one of the books in the box beside the fire.

  ‘No,’ said Lucy, ‘tell me the pony story.’

  ‘Oh, that old story. You don’t want to hear that again?’ said Grandad.

  This was just a routine they went through now and then, because Grandad kn
ew that it was their favourite story. He let Lucy plead for a moment or two, and then, knocking the ash from his pipe against the chimney, he began.

  ‘I was a pit lad at twelve. Did you know that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lucy snuggling in against his chest.

  ‘Well, I was up at five in the morning and down the pit by half-past six, and it was a long long walk there and back, and hard hard work when you got there. But I looked forward to it every day of my youth, and do you know why? Because the best friend I had in all the world lived down that pit.’

  Kezzie stopped her darning to listen.

  ‘This friend’s name was Meg and she was a beauty. She had brown hair and soft brown eyes, and as soon as she heard my voice in the morning calling her she would come to meet me. Now you might ask yourself what was a nice young lady doing living down a mine. Or perhaps you’ve guessed the secret already?’ He bent his head and looked at Lucy.

  ‘Meg was a pony!’ Lucy cried.

  ‘Yes, Meg was a pony,’ agreed Grandad. ‘And she wasn’t just pretty, she had brains as well. And I’m going to tell you how I found that out.’ He settled himself more comfortably in his chair.

  ‘The ponies pulled the trains of coal hutches backwards and forwards, the full ones from the face, the empty ones back, on separate lines. One day Meg and I were bringing the empties back along their rails when she stopped dead, and then crossed over on to the full track. Her ears were back and she was trembling. I was very surprised. Meg had never done anything like that before. And then I heard the sound of a runaway train!

  ‘I thought quickly. I couldn’t tell which track they were one, but if it was the full one we would both be killed with the weight of the coal in the hutches. On the empty track we might get off lighter. I grabbed her harness and pulled her back over. The crashing noise of the wagons were almost on top of us when she tossed her head and, with me still hanging on her halter, landed us both on the full side. I screamed. I thought my end had come. Then the runaway wagons, five unloaded hutches, roared past us on the empty line.’

  ‘And that,’ said Lucy, finishing the story for him, ‘is how a pit pony saved the life of a pit lad.’

  After Lucy had fallen asleep Kezzie took out the rag doll she was making her for Christmas. She surveyed it critically. She had cut up a good cotton pillowcase for this doll and she was very proud of it. It was stuffed to a nice plumpness and had brown woollen hair, two blue button eyes and a stitched red smile on her face. Kezzie was now sewing her a dress and cape from an old tartan scarf.

  ‘That’s awful bonny,’ said Grandad, handing her a cup of tea.

  She was knitting him a new muffler and had to snatch moments to work on it when he was out looking for odd jobs. He was even thinner. He hadn’t managed more than a few shillings over the last weeks. It must be so frustrating, Kezzie thought, to have trained skills and only be able to mend bits of farm machinery from time to time. They were all less healthy than they had been. They couldn’t afford to keep the fire burning all night, and Lucy had developed a wheeze and cough.

  Kezzie worried about her extravagances, but when Christmas came she couldn’t resist using most of their savings to make it special. They had a small chicken and cake to eat. She had filled their stockings with little things, tangerines, sweeties, some ribbons. She bought Grandad a bottle of beer and some tobacco, and Lucy gloves and a bonnet. Lucy had made them both hankies in school with their initials embroidered on. Grandad, too, had squandered his money and proudly brought out two books, a flower fairy story for Lucy, and Catriona for Kezzie. Grandad put his muffler on at once and insisted on wearing it while eating his dinner. Kezzie watched anxiously as Lucy pulled the doll out of her stocking.

  ‘Look what Santa gave me!’ she cried. She kissed it again and again. ‘This is the most beautiful doll in all the world,’ she said.

  ‘Have you given her a name yet?’ asked Grandad at night when she was in bed with her doll tucked up snugly beside her.

  ‘Her name’s Kissy,’ said Lucy.

  Later Kezzie was glad she had spent the money. In the grim days ahead she could look back often and remember that Christmas day and the warm glow it gave her helped her struggle on.

  CHAPTER 10

  The pit boots

  COMING BACK FROM the outside privy in the half-dark one morning Kezzie saw a large brown rat sitting on their table cleaning its whiskers. She shrieked and it ran away, scuttling across the floor towards the fireplace. She shivered and got back into bed beside Lucy. She could not fall asleep again. Hunger was gnawing at her. She had rationed out supper in a very miserly way last night and her small piece of bread hadn’t filled her stomach at all. The child beside her whimpered softly in her sleep. She had been doing that a lot recently.

  Kezzie lay and tried to think of the most economical way of using the few shillings they had left. She and Grandad had found no work at all that week. After Christmas no one had anything to spare and the little errands she had run for coppers were now not needed. They cut logs from the nearby wood to save coal, but it took up so much time and the wood burned quickly and gave off little heat. Grandad had taken the clock from the mantelpiece the week before and now she knew there was only one other thing they might get money for.

  In the early afternoon she knocked on the door of the house that had once been hers. It was a sorry sight that she saw when the woman opened the door to her. The floor was littered and the range that she had blackleaded so lovingly was tarnished and dirty. The man pushed his wife out of the way.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘Ye’ve come back. I thought ye might.’

  Kezzie held out her father’s pit boots.

  ‘I’ll give ye a shilling for them,’ he said.

  Kezzie was dumbstruck. A shilling! She had thought that he would offer less when she went back. But a shilling!

  ‘D’ye want me tae make it sixpence?’ he enquired rudely.

  She put the boots down on the ground, took his shilling and turned away, walking blindly down the road.

  ‘Lassie,’ she heard someone call before she had gone very far, ‘lassie.’

  She turned and the woman of the house was coming towards her. She looked around her furtively and, taking a paper bag from under her shawl, she gave it to Kezzie, then hurried away. In the parcel was the heel end of a loaf and a piece of cheese.

  The next day Kezzie went to see Bella. She knew her husband had been laid up for some time and he had no pay, but Bella was a picker at the pit head and at least she had something. It was in Kezzie’s mind to ask her to take Lucy in for a time.

  ‘Amn’t I glad to see you,’ declared Bella, putting the kettle on at once. ‘That one next door is always in here borrowing and her hoose! Well …’ She stopped, sensing that Kezzie was upset. ‘What’s the matter, pet? Are things not so good with you?’

  ‘Not very good,’ said Kezzie. In the past she had never let the older woman guess quite how bad things were with them.

  ‘You can sell stuff at the pawn, ye know. Ye mustn’t be too proud. That good suit of ma man’s has been up an’ down that road so often, it kens the way to go itself.’

  Kezzie laughed.

  ‘Aunt Bella, we’ve pawned everything we can. I sold my father’s pit boots to him next door yesterday.’

  ‘My God, lassie, I didn’t know it was as bad as that with you.’ She twirled her cup in her hands for a minute or two, and then said, ‘Have ye been tae the minister?’

  Kezzie looked at her.

  ‘Go on the Parish Relief? I couldn’t.’

  The older woman studied the floor for a moment. Then she sighed.

  ‘I have,’ she said.

  The minister was setting his dinner on the table when Kezzie knocked at the back door. Two small potatoes, a drop of stew and a bit of bread were on his plate. He’s not doing much better than us, Kezzie thought, as he made her welcome and sat her down.

  ‘I can give you a three-shilling allowance each time,’ he said
. ‘I know it’s not very much, but I have to keep to the rate. I must be fair. There are so many, and I must make sure every person gets something.’ He looked at her kindly. ‘I had no idea things were so bad with you. You should have come sooner.’

  He insisted that she ate the food on the table, saying he had more in the pot. She didn’t really believe him, but she was so tired and hungry that she did as she was told. She hadn’t tasted meat for some time and she chewed it slowly. He brought through a ledger and entered the family details.

  He closed his book and said gently, ‘You know … your grandfather would get a place in a hostel in Glasgow, and some of the children’s homes can be quite nice. I’m sure Lucy would adapt very quickly … and then I could probably find you a place as a stay-in scullery maid in one of the big houses. You would win through, I’m sure. I remember your mother and father. You Munros have all got such a strong spirit.’

  ‘No,’ said Kezzie firmly. ‘No.’

  His mentioning her father gave her strength. ‘Lucy wouldn’t adapt. She would break her heart, and it would crush Grandad completely, and me … why, I would lie down and die. The reason we have such a great spirit is because we’re together. We are a family.’

  The minister nodded his head and smiled.

  ‘I thought that would be your answer. You’re a brave girl. Have you been to the mission in Shawcross?’ he asked her.

  She shook her head.

  ‘They give out necessities, like tea and margarine. I’ll write you a letter.’

  She read it as she walked home.

  ‘This is to certify that the bearer of this letter, one Keziah Munro of this parish, is destitute. She has two others in need of support and requires any such goods as you may give her.’

  Kezzie folded the letter very carefully and put it in her pocket.

  It was true then. It was written down. She was destitute.

  CHAPTER 11

  Starvation

  KEZZIE LEFT LUCY at school the next morning and walked to the mission at Shawcross. There was a queue of people waiting to be served at a counter at the far end of the hall. There were some very dirty people jostling along in the group, folk with threadbare and greasy clothes. She tried to keep her distance as they pressed up against her. She waited in line for nearly an hour. When it came to her turn a very severe-looking woman behind the table put out her hand.