‘Pic-i-nic!’ whoops Debs. Her skin is sheened pale blue. ‘Hot coffee! Quick!’
I lift my laughing daughter in my arms. I am buoyant with the swell of water-tipped air and a rising hunger. Today is a good day. One that I will keep.
7. April
The Tenement House
Adequate housing is at a premium in any city, but a distinctive benefit of the Industrial Revolution sweeping 19th-century Scotland was the growth of the unique tenement apartment block, as city fathers sought to house the rapidly swelling population. Built in red or honey sandstone, tenements – still hugely popular today – are three or four floors high, with two or three flats per ‘landing’, providing homes for a variety of families while minimising land use.
Run by the National Trust for Scotland, the Tenement House is a wonderful example of city living at the turn of the 20th century. With a bedroom, parlour, kitchen and bathroom all opening off a central hallway, it’s the home of an ordinary Glaswegian – and that’s what makes it so special. Miss Toward, who moved there in 1911, made few changes to the décor and contents over the years. Lit by gas lamps, furnished with late-Victorian furniture, and decorated with original fabrics and paint, the Tenement House is a treasure trove of social history. Step inside and enter another world – you may find it’s not so different from your own!
Please note, an entry fee applies. Concessions are available.
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There’s a high, black-lead grate with white washing strung across. On the scrubbed-wood table lie baking bowls, worn spoons and a set of creamy scales. For all the high ceilings and long windows, it’s very dark. Faint, fuzzy gaslight hisses, wavers nauseous yellow over antimacassars and Abdi’s hand touching them and a loudly ticking clock. We glide on brown linoleum, library-quiet, and I recognise the dark-green woodwork from my own grandma’s house, the metal doorplates where sticky fingers must be placed, on pain of . . . well, pain. Administered via a reedy switch which Grandma kept on a nail in the hall. I don’t think I ever saw her use it; I don’t imagine her paper-thin fingers would have had the strength, but it hung there, laden with omniscient potential, and my cousins and sister and I would shuffle by, awestruck. Each secretly hoping that one of the others would incur Grandma’s wrath and we could see the switch in action. But we never did.
There’s the hall press, into which coats and boxes, a carpet beater and – latterly – a lightweight Hoover were crammed. At my grandma’s, I mean. The one in the Tenement House has artfully arranged shelves of vintage linen. My cousin Jessie and I would nestle into the press with an old torch and the Jackie magazine, hiding from Gill and the boys. Jessie was my best, best friend, and I haven’t seen her for . . . I loosen the belt of my coat . . . ten years, it must be. Apart from the funeral, of course. Everyone came to the funeral, but I saw none of them in my faint fuzzy gaslit gaze. You know when you hold in needing the toilet for so long that your kidneys ache? You’re jittery-sick and think your eyes are swimming in toxic pee? That’s the only way I can describe the product of my deeply compressed rage.
Why come now, when I needed you then?
There was no line-up afterwards, no purvey, because I knew that was precisely what I’d spit at them all. Fine, pay Callum all the ‘respects’ you like, but don’t come anywhere near me with that word, because I’ll shove it up your arse. Maybe I did used to swear more than I think. Maybe I do. I experience a sudden, horrible thrill of self-realisation. What if I’m one of those women who shouts at bins, waves my fist and screeches profanities at passing dog-walkers and cars – and I don’t even know I’m doing it? Who would tell me if I did, if I walked around outside without my skirt on, just in my jumper and my slippers and my vast crazy hair?
I remove my coat altogether: it’s very warm inside the Tenement House. Abdi appears transfixed by the piano in the parlour. He’s reading the sheet-music that he cannot possibly read. Or maybe he can, maybe he was a concert pianist in Somalia as well as a teacher and a fisherman. What would I know? I stop traffic in my pants. Ach no. I consider the reality of where I live. My street has a very (very) active Neighbourhood Watch. I’m sure some discreet phone call would have been made to the authorities by now. My secret’s safe.
Abdi strokes the rosewood lid, lights up this mustardy room with his smile. ‘You can play?’
‘No.’ I shake my head, not clear on whether he’s asking me or asking permission.
No doubt the curtains were twitching this lunchtime, when Naomi from across the road arrived at my door. Since Callum’s death, I never receive guests.
‘Deborah. Hi. Have you got a minute?’
‘Em . . .’
I already had my coat on to come here. ‘Sure, come in.’
‘No. No, I won’t stop. Duncan’s just away to fetch the car.’
Our street’s hopeless for getting parked, as I’m rediscovering for myself. You can trawl for that elusive space for ever, crawling up our road, down the next, until you find yourself several squeezed-in streets away and you abandon both car and hope on the double yellows. Still, I think it’s been a good decision. Buying a car, I mean. Just a wee hatchback for getting to the shops. And I thought we . . . well, the Hill House in Helensburgh’s lovely. Then there’s Edinburgh Castle. Or Stirling. Plus, car hire’s extortionate when you add in the insurance, the damage waiver. Absurd excesses. Their gearbox was clearly faulty.
Naomi seemed edgy, her delicate kitten-heels kittenish on my step. ‘Look, I really need to talk to you. How about this evening? Could you call in after eight? I’d come over, but I can’t leave the kids and Duncan’s out . . . We’ve only the nine-to-five nanny at the moment . . .’
‘Yes . . . I guess so.’
Was she going to tell me why? Naomi’s not a committee type of woman – or churchy, I don’t think. I once accepted Mrs Gilfillan’s invite for drinks and found I was spending the evening – along with a squad of Women’s Guilders – making wedding fudge for the local minister’s daughter. Yes, fudge, not favours. All wrapped in greasepaper and coloured tulle. As far as I know, favours represent fertility, so I’m not quite sure what fudge meant. But it was a salutary lesson to always check.
‘Is everything OK?’
‘Not really.’ Naomi was continually surveying the street as she spoke. I imagined she would do that at parties too; scan the room as you tried to engage her attention with witty banter. But I hadn’t asked her to come and chat.
‘Bugger. That’s him back already.’ We both watched Duncan creeping his Jag through the narrow strait left by the 4×4s and jazzy little sports cars parked either side of our road. ‘Don’t say anything to him, OK?’
I doubt Duncan and I had exchanged more than Merry Christmas or Nice day, isn’t it? in fifteen years.
‘OK, I won’t. About what?’
‘Rula,’ she whispered. ‘See you later, yes? Got to go – lunch at Rogano.’ And she was gone, in a puff of citrusy perfume and camel coat.
Poor, lost Rula. I don’t know how Naomi thinks I can help. Either someone reported her to the authorities – and you’d be surprised how many anonymous do-gooders do – or she was already in the system and her claim had been refused. Your application for asylum has been declined . . .:
Heads or tails
Stay or go
Life or death
One thing I know since volunteering is, the moment you get that letter, your ship begins to sink, tilting you slowly, inexorably down. And, as the sea waits blankly to receive you, the powers-that-be nudge you further on your way. They withdraw your meagre benefits, take away your accommodation. Only when you’ve been made destitute and are literally sleeping on the streets will they consider letting you apply for emergency support. And all the time, the threat of detention hangs above your head. Then, subtly cruel to the very end, they posit the tempting notion of your ‘voluntary return’. If you are interested in finding out more about help returning to your home country . . .
The faux-chatty brightness makes me t
hink of the gleaming posters Callum and I would be faced with at hospital: How to Manage Your Pain! set alongside cartoon graphics and amusing speech bubbles; the physio exhorting us to try relaxation tapes and, if all else fails, Mr and Mrs Maxwell, you know, it really helps the endorphins if you can have a good laugh.
Laugh? I nearly cried.
Yes, that’s the spirit. Dear failed asylum seeker . . . Laugh! Or at least be civilised about all this. You can either be dragged screaming back to the country you fled from, or . . . we can do this the dignified way. Good God, man – you wanted to be British, didn’t you? Well, here’s your chance. Let’s see that stiff upper lip. March proudly on to that plane of your own volition, and thank Britannia you learned a little of what makes us great.
That was the thing with Callum, the worst of it wasn’t the illness; well, of course it was, Deborah, you stupid heifer. OK, take that as a given, because there are insufficient words in all this universe to describe observing – uselessly observing while you rail and pray and search for uncreated cures – your husband set within the carapace that was his quick, lively body, the body that held you and made love to you and must now be fed and wiped. So. Deborah of the slipshod thoughts. Given it’s riven through your marrow that the illness was the worst thing, what you’re trying to say – as you sweat inside this sombre, ticking room – is the ancillary stuff compounded it utterly. All those changed appointments, the mobility aids that didn’t fit, new doctors with old questions, interminable waits in waiting rooms when time is one of the many presumptions you no longer have. Trying to get benefits for his increasing disabilities: we’d to go to a medical for that one. Oh, that was a fun day out. All appointments took place on the second floor, and there was the lift not working and there was a disabled man in a wheelchair. Ah, but was this the first of the tests? How crippled are you, really? How desperate are you to ascend to the place of power and distribution? Pick up thy bed and walk. Jesus was a DWP assessor. When we finally got there, we were given a ticket, like the ones for the deli queue at Sainsbury’s. Had to wait until our number was called. All us junkies and shamblers, fat women leaking weans, old boys with sticks, young men with limps and a girl who laughed hysterically and swigged from a paper-wrapped bottle. Strange noises distressed my husband, he couldn’t turn his neck very far. I knew how vulnerable he felt when we ventured from the house, although Godknows I tried to make him do it. Fresh air, some other faces, a remnant of life still living through our walls. Now I wonder, was I just being cruel? But at that point, he could still walk a wee bit, and where there’s life there’s hope and every day brings a new dawn and all that shite. His walk was a swaying hobble with the aid of me and sticks. After a few near-tumbles, though, we decided he was safer in the chair. But I’m choosnit. It’shnot choosin me. He smiled his lopsided smile and I kissed his lopsided head.
Too long sitting, though, and Callum’s shredded nerves begin to scream. He-we needed to move again, raising and shifting buttocks. He hated this; it drew attention to him. Callum, my erudite witty professor, exposed as a sack of limp bones and fluids. One hour late, we were summoned to our medical. The entire interview was conducted by a male nurse who refused to look at the notes I’d brought from Callum’s consultant. We all quickly formed a rapport: in answer to the long list of questions, Callum would slur schomtimes, I would say he can at the moment, but in a month or so he won’t be able to and the nurse would say but he can now, and tick his little boxes.
When the letter arrived some five weeks later, I was proud to learn that Callum scored consistently highly throughout. Apparently my husband – who, at the moment I was reading this letter, was lying on his side in bed unable to halt the passage of liquid shit that was trickling down his thighs but I was too busy reading this fucking letter to notice – had been found capable of work. We could appeal, of course, it said. As long as it was within one month, and, by that time, Callum had been hospitalised with a bout of pneumonia and I no longer had the capacity to care about anything except his lungs not drowning him.
That is how they do it. Pick, pick, picking at your bones. Grinding you down and goading you on until all the fight in you dies. They’ll do it with Rula too, wherever she’s hiding. I shake out my coat before putting it back on. ‘Ready?’ I ask Abdi. We’ve been in all the rooms of the Tenement House – twice – and visited the exhibition space downstairs.
‘This is fascinating.’
‘I know. How we used to live, eh?’
I’m thinking how spartan it is, how cramped.
‘Yes! To have so many possessions, such comfort. Only two women lived in all these rooms?’ Abdi smooths his hand one final time along the rosewood piano.
‘Yes, but some places could have families of ten or more, no inside toilets. This is more . . . middle class. And I don’t think you’re meant to touch.’
Mentoring is far closer to teaching than I realised. Mentally exhausting. Depending on the route you take, the words you choose, a random question can lead to a chain of further questions, a lesson, an entire journey into an area for which you haven’t prepared. And we haven’t even got to where we’re meant to be this afternoon.
‘Middle class?’ he says. ‘Like in a school?’
‘No. More like a . . . caste? A group with more money, more status?’
‘Hmm.’ He nods, thoughtful. ‘Still, I think your Industrial Revolution must have been a wonderful thing. Did people realise what it brought them? In my country, a home like this would be far beyond most people’s reach. Even in the cities.’
‘Well . . . there was a lot of upheaval.’ I button up my coat, aware of the April wind that blustered us up the hill when we came here, and will still be prowling outside. ‘Folk being made to leave their homes in the country, coming to a town they didn’t know . . .’
‘Yes, but –’
‘Speaking of which, we’d better shift our butts. We’ve to be at Housing by three.’
The Homeless Unit have agreed to a meeting. I decided to go straight to the top – the local office Abdi’s been dealing with is where the problem emanated, and I’m too jaded to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. We move outside the tenement, begin the long descent towards the city’s centre. The wind is behind us this time, which is cold but helpful, until it catches my hair, blowing it up and out. I must look like I’m being electrocuted. Abdi, ever-sanguine, pulls on a red woolly hat.
‘Ooh, very smart. Matches your bag. Knit that yourself, did you?’
‘No. My friend Mrs Coutts made it for me. For my birthday.’
‘It was your birthday? When?’
‘Last week. On Wednesday. I did not know my real birthday, so Mrs Coutts decided that would be the day.’
‘You should have said.’
‘But why?’
‘Well . . .’ I make it into a joke. ‘I could have knitted you a scarf to go with it.’
‘Ha! No, I fear Mrs Coutts may already be doing that. She is a demon with the needles.’
‘An old lady, is she?’
‘Yes. Very old.’
‘So how do you know her?’
We’re passing the doorway of BHS. I could buy him a scarf in here I’m thinking as I skirt both the man selling the Evening Times and a Big Issue guy who jinks with the wind, thrusting his single magazine at customers while offering to open the door for them.
‘She is a lady in my church,’ Abdi says. ‘But I met her before – that is how I know about the church. In fact, I found her in my flat.’
‘Inside your flat?’
‘Last one, hen. Err a last Big–’
The Big Issue seller waves his magazine at me. ‘No thanks,’ I say, upping my pace until we’re out of his plaintive reach. I always say no thanks, I don’t ignore them. I’m still trying to process the fact that Abdi’s said ‘church’. We’ve never talked about it, but . . . well, his name is Abdi, he’s from Somalia. How could he not be Muslim?
‘Yes.’ Abdi’s half-laughing. ‘It was very
first night we have come to Glasgow. There was . . . we had no food or milk, so I had gone to shop with Rebecca. We were away long time . . . When we are back and I open door of our flat, there she was! Ancient grey lady, sitting on mattress we had been left. That you back, son? she is saying. I didn’t know what to do; I thought maybe we were to share flat with her? But she stands and is offering us paper bag. Does the wean want a wee sweetie, son? Of course, I know now what she is saying, but then, I was so confused. I am circling one way, she is coming after! Before I know what goes on, she is shoving red shiny sweet in Rebecca’s mouth. I made her spit out – well, I didn’t know what it was, it could be poison! Then Rebecca starts to cry, and Mrs Coutts is patting her, trying to quieten her and I am backing away!’
We’re both laughing now. I think he’s deliberately crafting this into a funny story. His exaggerated movements as he describes the scene, his clever parody of this old Glaswegian granny’s accent – it’s brilliant. That animation in him again, suffusing his mild smooth face; it’s like he’s thrown off a hood and I’m seeing him clearly as bundles of shoppers stream by us and the spring wind worries and whoops.
‘She keep wagging finger at me, and then I think she is cursing us! But now I am facing front door and she is retreating, and all I want is get her outside and away from us, so I follow, make sure she leaves. At door she stops, is pointing always at the handle. Clicking the little . . .’ Abdi mimes a tiny pincer movement.
‘The snib?’
‘She called it “sneck”, I think?’
‘Yeah, snib, sneck, it’s the same thing. The lock, really.’
‘Exactly! That is what it was she kept repeating. It wisny locked, son! I waited here till yous came back. You hear me? Aye mind and lock your door, son! She was rescuing me, God bless her – not cursing me! So now, we are great friends, her and I –’
A gang of youths are bearing down on us. Boys, really, they skip and jostle like gazelles, but their language has no grace. One screeches Haw, ya fucking nig-nog! as another strikes Abdi on the face, an insolent slap with the back of his hand, I’m shoved to the side as they whip the red hat from Abdi’s head, run squealing with their trophy and we stand, dazed. Reeling from the assault, the world all slow and distant. Abdi is dusty-grey but his first concern is for me.
This Is Where I Am Page 10