The Liberation of Celia Kahn

by J David Simons

  “They’re coming,” she screamed. “They’re coming. Two of them. In their bowlers.” She couldn’t remember ever feeling so excited by anything before. The sheer exhilaration as well as the responsibility of it all. Could this really be her? Sixteen-year old Celia Kahn, a simple Jewish girl from the Gorbals. Celia Kahn running against the law. Celia Kahn fighting for women rights, protesting against landlord tyranny, playing her part in the stronghold of resistance. She couldn’t believe she had the courage to do this. “There’s two of them,” she shouted. “Two bowlers. Not bunnets but bowlers.”

  She arrived up front at number twenty-six, caught at the shoulders by the grip of Agnes Calder.

  “That’s fine, lass. You’ve done your work.”

  The close was packed solid with women, many with grimy faces, the female workers in their overalls from the munitions factory downing tools in solidarity. There were biddies too at the open windows with their little bags of flour and peasemeal lined up along the sills. Jean Dunlop and her bairns stood alongside Agnes who pulled Celia to the other side of her. She immediately stood to attention, her heart beating a clatter as if it were Prime Minister Asquith himself coming to visit Govan. Agnes nudged something into her hand.

  “Your very own grenade, sister.”

  She squeezed the paper bag in her palm. Full of flour by the feel of it.

  Behind her, the mood was still blethery and restless. Not like the raggedy line of children stood along the front of the tenements, strangely still and quiet, sucking thumbs or gobstoppers in their anticipation that something was about to happen but not understanding what and why. On the other side of the street, a few women hung around too curious to stay away.

  “Get back to work, you lazy besoms,” one of them shouted. “I’ve got a soldier-man in good need of your grenades.”

  “Well, he’ll be in need of a roof over his head too,” came the response from an overhead window.

  “If he ever comes home to you,” said another voice that trailed away in regret at the remark. But everyone had gone quiet anyway.

  For all their bravado, it was the sight of the two men coming over the rise that had stilled the crowd of females. That familiar tension, Celia thought, when she heard her father come home from a long day at work, trying to gauge his mood. For many of the other women, it would be the smell of whisky breath they would be waiting for, or the deep grumblings, the slamming of the doors, the meals to be made, the living to be eked out of a pittance, the duties to be done in the marital bed, the drunken assaults to be endured, the babies to be churned out, some dead, others barely alive.

  Agnes must have felt the mood change too for she turned round to face her companions, her voice steady, her expression defiant.

  “Come on. Come on now. There’s only two of them against our band of sisters.”

  The women roared at this and the men in their descent must have heard the noise too. For they stopped in their tracks, bowed their heads together in conversation, before continuing on their errand. Within a minute, they were stood in front of the wall of women, like some comedy double act Celia had seen at the Lyceum Music Hall. One round and sweaty-faced underneath his bowler, the other wiry and nervous, staring at his feet, looking like he’d rather be anywhere on earth than facing this mob of women. The heavier man stepped forward.

  “Will Mrs Michael Dunlop please identify herself.”

  This request was met by a barrage of insults but again Agnes held up her hand.

  “Let the officer speak his part.”

  The sheriff officer wriggled his neck inside his starched collar, repeated the request.

  “I am that woman,” Jean Dunlop said, her voice wavering.

  “Yes, this is Jean Dunlop,” said Agnes. “Wife of one Michael Dunlop, currently called to the Colours on the battlefields of France. Michael Dunlop, holder of medals for courage shown during the Boer War. And who are you, sir? Evicting poor families from their homes while other men lay down their lives for King and country.”

  The sheriff officer ignored this remark, which Celia thought he had every right to do, considering she knew Agnes to be a pacifist through and through, and any notion that a working man should lay down his life for King and country and the war profiteers was anathema to her. The sheriff officer continued to address Jean. “Do you pay a monthly rent?”

  “I do,” Jean said.

  “Do you owe arrears on this rent?”

  “Only in so far as she has not paid these unfair increases,” said Agnes.

  “I am not addressing you, madam. I am asking you again, Mrs Dunlop. Are you…?”

  It started with just one bag. Not on any given signal but out of pure frustration and a sense of justice that had been simmering in Govan ever since the rent hikes had begun. A bag of flour thrown from an upstairs window, hitting the skinnier of the two men on the shoulder, star-bursting its white powder all over the dark suit. The women were silent at first as the full significance of an actual missile striking a legal representative of the Glasgow Sheriff Court sunk in. A couple of the children started to giggle and that was a signal for a full onslaught. Bag after bag was lobbed at the two officers, knocking off their hats, splattering their suits with a mixture of ash, flour, soot and peasemeal. The thinner of the two ran off quick back in the direction he had come, Celia lobbing her own bag of flour at him as he scarpered, hitting him full in the back. But the senior, heavier, man stood his ground, fending off the attack as best he could. The women worked themselves into a frenzy of abuse and flung objects while a few set about the poor man like wolverines to a kill. Someone yanked his jacket half-off so it pinned down his arms. He was pushed to the ground by the mob then picked up like a sack of Ayrshire potatoes. His shoes were dragged from his feet. And then a pause while some kind of decision had to be made about what to do with their captive. One woman was screaming:

  “Off with his trousers. Off with his trousers.”

  “To the midden,” another shouted.

  “Aye, to the midden.” That became the battle-cry. “To the midden. To the midden.”

  Celia found herself holding the sheriff officer’s damp and wriggling foot, hardly remembering how she had gotten herself into such a prime position within the stramash. She noticed a hole in the sock, a detail that evoked a sudden swell of compassion in her. But the man kicked out, hit her square in the chest, knocking the breath full out of her. So she tightened her grip around his bony ankle and along with a crew of other women carried the twisting torso through the close and into the back green. With about four women holding each of his limbs, the officer was swung back and forth, each swing eliciting a countdown from the crowd, starting for no particular reason at the number five. Four. Three. Two. One. And the body was let go to land in the pile of ashes.

  The man lay there for a few seconds before struggling to his feet. The mood changed quickly. A climax had been reached and there was nothing more to be done. There was almost a sense of embarrassment as the sheriff officer attempted the impossible task of trying to clean the dirt off his clothes. One shoe was thrown back at him. Then the other. The women began to disperse quickly, Agnes moving quietly among them, whispering: “Remember. You couldn’t see who did it. Too many to identify. Remember that. Impossible to see.” And also: “Don’t forget the march on the Sheriff Court on Friday. We need all the women we can get. All the women we can get. Friday. See you then.”

  Celia ran off too. Back up the road to the tram-stop. It was only when she got to the top of the rise by Lizzie’s tenement did she realise she had forgotten the bell. She sat down on the wall where she had eaten her piece, waited for her breathing to return to regular, smiling, sensing something in herself she had never felt before. She was no longer simply a good Jewish girl, her father’s hard-working daughter, her mother’s support, the uncomfortable object of schoolboy leers. None of these women here viewed her as ‘just a girl’. But as a person. A full person in her own right.

  Six

 
; “I AM LEAVING,” AVRAM SAID.

  She looked up from her jigsaw puzzle laid out in various stages of completion on the board across her lap, tried to blink away the dull pain behind her eyes. The completed picture should show a village in the Alps. But there was too much snow, too much cloud, almost impossible to tell which of these assorted white pieces was which. “What did you say?”

  “I am leaving.”

  “I know. The day after tomorrow.”

  Her vision cleared, she could see Avram properly, standing in the kitchen doorway, wearing the new jacket her mother had made for him. They were about the same age, but he looked so grown up now. It must have been four years since he had arrived on their doorstep, sent to them from Russia by his mother to escape conscription into the army, even at his young age. Avram’s mother, Rachel Escovitz, a childhood friend of her father’s, a woman she knew Madame Kahn had come to despise in her imagination. A hatred which spilt over on to Avram. Although this new jacket might be the sign of a truce. Either that or the celebration of his departure.

  “I will sell aprons,” he said.

  “And girdles,” she added. “They are all the fashion now.”

  He blushed at that. It was the kind of adolescent boy’s blush she had become familiar with. Their cheeks might be red but there was some other force that drove them beyond their shyness. “I have samples,” he said. “If you want to try.”

  She laughed at that, a laugh of embarrassment, but she knew it would be hurtful to him. His cheeks only shone redder, like polished apples. She asked more kindly: “You must be looking forward to your new life in the Highlands?”

  He moved further into the room, kicked out at some imaginary ball on the floor. “In the Highlands, there is no football.”

  “There must be football. Everyone plays football in Scotland, don’t they?”

  “Shinty. They play shinty.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I think they play it with sticks. Bloody shinty.” He sat down, took a squint at her puzzle. “Hmmph,” he said, with a kind of arrogance that made her think he had spotted the proper location of at least five pieces. “Not finished yet?”

  “I don’t have much time.”

  He sniffed at this. “What about you? What will you do?”

  She lifted the board off her lap, placed it on the table. “I am going to be a clippie.”

  He rolled his eyes at her. “Of course you are.”

  “Every woman has a right to her economic independence. I will have my Corporation green jacket, my tartan skirt, my ticket machine. Every woman has every right.”

  “Papa won’t allow it.”

  “Makes no difference. I’m still going to do it.”

  “You are too young. You must be eighteen to work on the trams. To take money like that.”

  “I’ll lie about my age. Men lie to be in the war.”

  “Who will look after Nathan then?”

  “Nathan will be well soon. You will see. I am sure of it.”

  “When I am away, you need to speak to him. He is your brother.”

  “I do speak to him. Every day when I feed him.”

  “But not properly. You need to speak to him properly.”

  “What do you mean? I do speak to him properly.”

  “I listened to you once. You just talk about yourself.”

  “But he doesn’t say anything. I don’t even know if he hears what I say.”

  “Still you must talk properly. Ask him questions. He hears. I am sure of it.”

  She looked over at the puzzle. To her surprise, she immediately found the piece of cloud she had been searching for. “I have something for you,” she said. She stood up, went over to the mantelpiece, tilted up the base of the clock. “Here,” she said, handing over the card. “Billy Reid.”

  Avram scrutinised the picture, then squinted at her. “What…?”

  “When it is time,” she said. “I’ll come with you to the station.” She left the room. Smiling.

  She brought the bell along to the park, had gone all the way back to Govan to fetch it, one of the women having found it in the back green, handed it in at Jean Dunlop’s. Agnes tucked it safe under the bench as they watched the young men playing football in a grassy area below. She only really saw old men in the public spaces these days. Or the walking wounded. Or boys too young to enlist. These ones must have been essential factory workers or just waiting to be called up. Stripped to their vests some of them were, even in this weak sunshine. Thin-ribbed, white bodies dripping their sweat. Shouting as they kicked the ball about, shivering when they weren’t.

  “The bell was my father’s,” Agnes told her, scattering some breadcrumbs at a burbling horde of pigeons around her ankles. “He was a fishmonger on the West Coast. He’d cycle twenty miles down to the pier at Oban when the catch was in. Mostly herring it was in those days. Then cycle all the way back to our village, his face red-raw from the bite of the wind. He’d ring his bell then, rouse the wee wifies to his cart, let his family know there was a living still to be made.”

  It was the first time she’d heard Agnes give out any personal information, her talk always concentrated on the great social injustices of the world. Even if it was only a bag of sweets she was buying at Glickman’s, there would always be some political commentary to go with the purchase.

  “I just love this spot, Celia,” she went on with the same waver in her voice. “One of my favourite places in the world.”

  Celia lifted her feet off the ground, curled her legs under her body. She certainly agreed here was a more relaxed rendezvous than the Room de Luxe at Miss Cranston’s Willow Tea Rooms. But she didn’t share Agnes’ fascination with these wretched birds that did nothing more than cover these precious benches of hers with their spray of white excrement.

  “What makes it so special?”

  “From here I can see a straight line to the park gates, then again straight down the tramlines of Victoria Road, across the River Clyde, right into the town. It’s like I’m sitting at the end of one of the spokes that drives into the heart of the Second City of the British Empire. Not that I’m in favour of empire, mind you. More like the hub of manufacture and trade as created by the honest toil of the working classes.”

  What with the clear sky and this vantage point Celia had a different sense of the city. Not the usual feeling of how it enfolded her, hemmed her in, cast its dark shadows, choked her with its soot and fumes. But how it spread itself out, gorged itself on the life-blood of the river, threw up its shipyards, museums, munitions factories and merchant buildings. “I can see the university,” she said. “And all these churches. I can’t believe how many there are. Eight, nine, ten …”

  “I’m in two minds about the churches,” Agnes grunted. “I do have to admit there is something quite marvellous about these grand spires, architecturally speaking. It’s just what they stand for that bothers me.”

  Celia braced herself for another lecture on religion, opium, socialism and the wonderful achievements of the late James Keir Hardie, founder of Agnes’ beloved Independent Labour Party, but instead two bags of flour were placed on the bench beside her.

  “What are those for?”

  “I’ve got a wee job for you.”

  “I’m hopeless at baking.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking. Are you coming to the march on Friday?”

  “I’ve got an errand to do in the town. I’ll try to get away after.”

  “Well, bring these bags with you. I can sneak us into the Sheriff Court. If that bastard Fothergill wins his case on behalf of the landlords, I’m lobbing this flour at the man. I’d like you to do the same.”

  “For goodness sake, Agnes. I can’t do that. We’ll get arrested.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got our exit all planned.”

  “I still won’t do it.”

  “I’m not asking you to kill the man. This is peaceful protest. And direct action. But I cannae trust my aim. I need some back-up.
I saw the way you chucked one of these at the sheriff officers. Don’t tell me it didn’t make you feel good inside. A woman demanding justice be served.”

  Agnes put on that pleading face of hers, the same one she’d used when she’d asked her to do the bell-ringing, her mouth going all sloppy, making her think the woman would just crumple and die if she didn’t do what was asked. Then the pigeons flew up in a wing-flapping eruption scaring the life out of her as a ball skittered by, shearing the dead-heads off a bed of flowers by the bench.

  “Throw it back, darlin’, will ye?” one of the boys yelled.

  She stooped, picked up the ball, found herself getting all self-conscious with her under-arm delivery but managing to hoist it back all the same. An accomplishment that raised hoots from the players. She flushed to the teasing but was enjoying the attention until Agnes rustled a brown paper bag of ginger creams in front of her.

  “Don’t pay them no heed. Nothing better to do than kick a piece of leather about.”

  “You can’t blame them,” she replied, picking out a sweet, one eye still on the youths below. “It’s such a fine day. It could be their last game before they go to war.”

  “That may be the case. But what do you say about what I asked? After all you may not need to do anything. I’d like to think the sheriff will refuse to give legal authority to Fothergill for these evictions. If he’s got a sense of what is ethical and right in the world.”

  Celia rolled the ginger cream around in her mouth, felt the spicy tingle on her tongue and gums. “All right. I’ll do it.”

  “And afterwards, my socialist Sunday school’s having a picnic in the Botanic Gardens. I thought you might like to come to that.”