The Cold Blast
Page 17
After a while I spoke up. ‘Uncle Peter? Can we gang ower for a blether wi’ the lads oan the ither side o’ the street. Dae ye mind?’
Five lads sat on the pavement, diagonally opposite from where he and Bessie were perched close together on the wall, enjoying the last of their tea.
‘They were in oor class at the school, Mr Logie,’ explained Jenny. ‘They’re no at the dance but can we gang speak wi’ them? Till the dance sterts up again?’
Peter wasn’t convinced that it was a good idea to let us go, even though the boys were only twenty yards or so up the road. But a dig in the ribs from Bessie helped him make up his mind.
‘Aye, fair enough. Five meenits then back in the hall or I’ll be oot lookin’ for ye mind!’
Dan, Bert, Sandy, and the twins sat with their backs against the wall in front of the village school.
‘Hello,’ said Jenny on our behalf.
‘Hello,’ said Bert.
‘Yous no been at the dance then?’ asked Jenny knowing full well they hadn’t been.
‘Naw,’ replied John. ‘We’ve been havin’ a gemm up at the park.’ He blushed. We were old friends and we’d played together in the street or down at the Meadie by the burn often enough in the past. But in the three years since we had all left school to take up employment, a gulf as wide as an ocean seemed to have opened up between us.
‘Yous no gonnae staun up?’ asked Jenny who certainly wasn’t going to sit down beside them on the ground.
‘Naw,’ they replied in unison.
‘We’re fine here,’ explained Bert.
‘Whau else was at the park?’ I asked, unable to stop myself.
‘Jist some o’ the younger lads,’ said Sandy.
‘An’ Andra Brownlee,’ said John.
‘An’ Geordie,’ added Bert. ‘He’s walkin’ Andra hame. He likes tae cairry the ba’!’
Then right on cue, Geordie appeared from the direction of the Smiddy at the bottom of the hill road.
‘Here’s the man himself,’ announced Sandy.
Geordie was running as fast as he could. He was smaller than might be expected for a lad of fourteen years and this endeared him to everybody in the village. His small stature was emphasised by the substantial football he carried under his arm. His face was flushed and he looked upset.
‘Smile, Geordie,’ shouted Sandy when he was near enough to hear. ‘Ye left the school yesterday. Miss Foulkes an’ her strap are a thing o’ the past! Cheer up!’
Geordie didn’t reply. He wasn’t happy, everyone could see that he was crying once he was close enough.
‘Whit’s wrang, Geordie?’ asked his brother. ‘Whit’s up?’
Geordie arrived and we gathered round him. He made a few loud whoops as he tried to get his breath back. Geordie had a weak chest, everybody said so. He held up the ball for us to see.
‘Calm doon, calm doon, Geordie,’ said Bert. He took the ball from his brother. It was Andrew Brownlee’s ball.
‘Is it the ba’, Geordie?’ asked Sandy.
Geordie shook his head.
‘Is it Andra?’ asked the twins together.
Geordie nodded.
‘Is Andra a’richt?’
Geordie shook his head.
‘Has somethin’ happened tae Andra?’
Geordie nodded again. He bent double and pointed in the direction from where he had come.
‘Bad yins!’ he said at last. ‘Bad boys jumped us. They’re giein’ Andra a hammerin’....’ He pointed again. ‘Up the hill road! Ye need tae help him!’
I put my arm round Geordie’s shoulder as the five pals ran full pelt along Main Street towards the steading. They turned the corner at the Smiddy and disappeared up the hill road.
‘Did ye see who it was, Geordie?’ I asked him, horrified that something so terrible could have happened to well-mannered Andrew Brownlee, son of the manager at the Broadrigg Pits.
Geordie didn’t take time to answer my question. He wrestled from my grasp and ran after his brother and his friends. I wanted to go too but a stern voice rang out from across the street, reminding me that the second half of the dance was about to start and our five minutes was up. We wandered slowly across the road, our gaze fixed on the place by Smiddy Cottage where the lads had disappeared from view. Jenny said she hoped Andrew would be alright. Maybe Geordie had been exaggerating. He was a well-known character, famous for his stories, so maybe it had just been a scuffle with lads who wanted a kick of the ball. Maybe, we all agreed. But Geordie had looked distressed and we didn’t think he would make up such a tale, not now that he was growing up, and had left the school.
John
I remember sitting in the dirt by the roadside with the pals. The sweat ran down my back, out of my hair, into my eyes. I was still catching my breath from the game but gradually the sound of the music inside the hall came to me on the evening air.
Da dee, da dee, da dee, dum. Da dee, da dee, da dee, dumm………
I can hear it yet and it soothes me to sleep.
Laughter and chatter and clapping, people flowing out onto the street, laughing and talking and couples hand-in-hand.
Then suddenly she was there in the street with the others. They came towards us and we sat there like fools, looking up at them as if we had been looking at the clouds and seen angels instead. If we’d stood beside them, the gulf between us would have been stark. Not only would our scruffiness be shown up beside their finery but the difference in maturity would be obvious and too embarrassing – we were still boys but they seemed, somehow, transformed. Better to pretend to have no manners than to be shown up for the immature specimens that we were. All five of us sat in silent admiration, seeing how braw they looked in their special dresses – completely out of our reach – though if somebody had asked us at the time, we would have protested no interest in the opposite sex.
The pals whispered that Minn Graham was barely recognisable but I’d noticed her immediately. Her eyes blue and bright and kind, her lips full and smiling. The lace at the collar of her blouse touched milky white skin just below her neck and her dark hair spilled out of the pins that held it up at the back. She was wearing shoes that showed off her slender feet and legs clad in black stockings. She was only a few yards away, close enough to touch, and everything a sixteen-year-old boy could wish for. I could have stayed there forever drinking her in but the world turned on its head with Geordie’s arrival and I was running like the rest of them, running full pelt up the hill road to Andrew Brownlee’s aid.
Fleet-of-foot, Dan ran ahead with Bert in close pursuit. Me, Jim, and Sandy took up the rear. The hill road was steep but nobody seemed to notice, our minds focused on a friend in need of assistance. Dan and Bert arrived at the end of the lane that led to Mansefield where we’d been playing football only half an hour earlier, then sprinted between the hedgerows, expecting to find trouble at any moment. They scanned the park but Andrew was nowhere to be seen. By the time they returned to the road just below Kaim Farm, we three were making a final push up the hill. Dan and Bert shook their heads and pointed to the other side of the road. Jim leapt the stile first then held up his hand for all to see. There was blood on his hand. Was it Andrew’s blood? We crossed the stile and ran along the path, the short cut to Bankhead Cottage where Andrew lived, but we didn’t go far before we found him.
Andrew lay on his side curled into a ball on the ground. His head was covered in blood and he held one arm across his middle. He didn’t flinch as we crowded round. His eyes were closed and he didn’t make a sound. He was perfectly still.
‘Is he a’right?’ asked Jim.
‘Coorse he’s no a’right,’ replied Sandy. ‘He’s been beaten tae a pulp!’
‘I mean... is he... breathin’?’ replied Jim.
Dan knelt down beside Andrew for a better look. ‘Andra, are ye a’right?’
Bert and Dan looked at each other then cast their eyes up at the rest of us standing over them, deeply concerned.
‘Is he deid?’ asked Jim.
I gave him a dig in the ribs.
A silence followed, a profound heart-thumping, stomach-churning silence when the possibility that the world had changed forever hit home; the possibility that our friend, Andrew Brownlee, was no longer of this world, and nothing would ever be the same again because of it. Football games without him in the park – quiet moments when he would come into your mind for no reason – the possibility of heading down the pit road knowing that Andrew wasn’t going to the big school anymore and would never attend the technical college in Edinburgh as he’d intended, that we would never hear of his future life because there wouldn’t be one, not anymore. He would be a memory, something only of the past, not of the future or even the present.
We were shocked beyond belief.
Andrew’s still, battered body lay in our midst, glistening crimson blood oozing from his broken nose, congealing in his brown hair, and smeared across his white football shirt. I remember how I knelt down in the grass and lifted one of his lily-white hands, now dirty with soil and covered in blood. I groped around the wrist for a pulse but couldn’t find one. Jim gulped when he saw me gently place Andrew’s hand back on the ground. I felt around the base of Andrew’s neck, where the muscle and tendon disappeared into the collar bone then beside his throat and up towards his chin.
I could feel the tiny throb of life beneath my fingers. ‘He’s no deid!’ I gasped. ‘He’s alive!’
‘Thanks be,’ whispered Dan.
‘Jim, go for yer Ma,’ ordered Bert. ‘We’ll get Andra hame tae Bankheid.’
Jim ran off towards the hill road, the quickest route to Stoneyrigg.
Andrew gave a low moan, making us gulp with relief. Between us, Bert and me did our best to work out the extent of our friend’s injuries and the likelihood of him being able to walk the half mile to Bankhead Cottage. He was wearing only one football boot, the other presumably lost in the fray, but that was the least of his problems. The worst of his injuries were to his head and his stomach. He had scrapes and bruises on his knuckles and lower arms gained, no doubt, when defending himself from the onslaught, and his knees were grazed and full of grit from being pushed to the ground. Andrew clutched at his hip and the top of his leg when we tried to move him. He was probably bruised in that area too, we agreed, but nothing seemed to be broken.
‘We’ll need tae cairry him,’ I said. ‘Watch how ye move him.’
Between us, there were three jackets which we laid on the ground. We rolled and cajoled Andrew onto the makeshift stretcher and, clutching the material in strong hands, did our best to raise him from the ground. It was hard going. The path was narrow, uneven, and the woollen fabric kept slipping through our fingers. Besides, Andrew was a ton weight.
‘The feedin’ must be guid at Bankheid,’ declared Sandy.
Andrew gave a groan and clutched at his middle. He was trying to say something but we couldn’t make out what it was.
‘At least ye’ve still got yer teeth, Andra. Ye’ll be back tae yer guid-lookin’ self in a couple o’ weeks when the swellin’s gaun doon,’ said Sandy trying to throw his injured friend a lifeline.
Soon, we discovered a better way. We slipped our arms under Andrew’s body and gripped each other’s wrists. We moved as one after that, an eight-legged creature with Andrew at its centre, stumbling and staggering all the way across the hill.
We were almost at Bankhead when Geordie caught us up, the leather football still firmly wedged under his arm.
‘I’m sorry, Andra,’ he sniffled. ‘I’m sorry I ran awa’ an’ left ye.’ He drew in a loud suck of air and almost turned purple before breathing out. Tide marks of tears patterned Geordie’s dirty face and a white bubble of snot blew out of his nose with every breath.
‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I should’ve helped ye!’
‘Ye did help him,’ said Dan. ‘Ye came an’ got us.’
‘Whit else could ye’ve done?’ said a new voice. We looked back in surprise at the arrival of Rob. ‘There were ower monie for ye tae mak a difference, Geordie,’ he added.
‘An’ hoo would you ken?’ asked Sandy, studying his brother’s face, almost losing his footing in the process.
‘Oniebody can see there was mair than yin,’ replied Rob quickly. ‘Look at the boy!’ He nodded at Andrew who moaned loudly whenever we stumbled over a stone or a clump of grass.
‘Did ye see who it was, Geordie?’ asked Rob. ‘Did ye see who jumped Andra? Afore ye ran for help, hoo monie were there? Hoo monie lads?’
Geordie thought for a moment, sniffing. ‘Three. There was three o’ them. But I dinnae ken whau it was. They had their faces covered.’ He bubbled again. ‘They were big. They were... they were men, no boys. They were men!’
‘Whit aboot Andra? Has he said oniethin?’ Rob asked. ‘Did he see whau it was?’
‘He’s no got ower muckle tae say at this precise meenit, as ye can see for yersel,’ replied Bert puffing, red in the face.
‘Mebbe he kent them an’ mebbe he didnae,’ added Sandy, recovering from another stumble. ‘He’ll tell the polis a’ aboot it, nae doobt.’ I could see how suspiciously he was eyeing his brother. ‘Nice o’ ye tae ask efter the casualty b’ the wey.’
Rob did seem very interested in whether or not the culprits had been recognised by either Geordie or Andrew, and not at all concerned about the victim’s condition. It made me wonder where he had been all evening, how he had found out there had been trouble in the first place, and why he had made the effort to find us on the short cut to Bankhead. He hadn’t been that keen on our company these past two or three weeks yet suddenly he had gone out of his way to seek us out.
We nudged open a gate, carried Andrew into the garden at the back of his house. He wretched a mixture of bile and blood onto his father’s vegetable patch before starting to cry. I’ll never forget that sound of him bleating for his mother like a newborn lamb.
‘Ye’ll be fine,’ we all said to him, more or less together. ‘Yer hame noo.’
‘There’s Highland Mary runnin’ alang the road. She’ll see tae ye. We’ll gang for the polis an’ let them ken whit’s happened, Andra.’ Sandy glared at Rob. ‘They’ll sin get tae the bottom o’ this,’ he said.
In the middle of the following week, my family sat around the small table in the front room of the end cottage in the Back Row finishing our supper: a plate of broth made with a bone and a hunk of bread, followed by homemade pancakes and strawberry jam. Mrs Cherrie – Mags – had appeared at the door with the jam in return for my mother’s help during her latest confinement. Mags was now a proud mother of ten bairns and could ill-afford so much as a pot of jam but she had insisted that Highland Mary take it. She was grateful for her presence during the birth, she explained, as she craned her head into our cottage from the doorway. I hadn’t given such matters much thought before then and the knowledge that my mother had assisted during her confinement would have been sufficient information for a young man of my tender years but Mags was not one to hold back on the details. Whilst the nurse officiated and dealt with the technicalities of childbirth in the back room, it was Highland Mary who had organised the older Cherrie children so that the youngest were fed, watered and comforted in the front room to the sounds of their mother roaring in pain. Eventually, it had all become too overpowering and upsetting for the wee ones, apparently, so she’d hunted them out to play on the washing green, even though it was late in the evening and long past their bedtime. It was Mary who chastised Bobby Cherrie when he came in from the Village Inn reeking of drink whilst his wife gave birth to his tenth child through by. It was Mary who cleared up aft
erwards, washing the floor, and making sure Mags had a cup of tea and something to eat to restore her strength, before promising to look in on subsequent days to check that the elder Cherrie girls were coping with the rest of the brood. By the time Mags had said her piece and departed, even my father was wondering if he could bring himself to consume her strawberry jam.
I admired my mother as she sat watching her family tucking in to what she had made for us. It pleased her to see us enjoying our food after a hard day’s work down the pit and, for once, the place wasn’t crowded out with boarders – people who helped pay the rent but were strangers nevertheless. There was only Alex, Davy, Jim and me. Her twin boys were still growing fast, almost young men working hard in the Broadrigg Pits and paying our way. I could see how that pleased her and, in return, it pleased me.
It was unusual for Davy to join the rest of us. He kept his own hours and pleased himself as a rule. Alex had been overjoyed when Davy had become the union man at Back o’ Moss Pit at such a tender age, still in his early twenties. It had given him a focus for his anger and his energy, too often misdirected in his younger days and aggravated by strong drink until he had taken the pledge at my father’s insistence. Yet there was still something about Davy that worried my mother, I could tell. He was sullen and quick to anger where me and Jim were concerned, something he had probably learned from Alex. She never knew what was going on in Davy’s head and it grieved her. He was so unlike me and Jim, she would say, which wasn’t surprising considering we had been adopted separately, in infancy. It had simply been a matter of walking into the Combination Poorhouse in Leith and showing willing, promising to take good care of the child and signing a paper. She didn’t know much, if anything, about our respective parents and she’d taken a chance that she’d chosen well. It was a matter of luck at the end of the day what you got. Davy, it transpired, had a temper – reinforced and nurtured by a childhood witnessing Alex’s outbursts. Me and Jim, on the other hand, were more placid and restrained, subdued by our father’s hand rather than riled by it.