A Scots Quair (74 page)

Then you'd shake yourself to sense, get down with pail of water and a scrubbing-brush, scrub and scrub till your finger-nails, so smooth and round-shaped in your years at Segget, come jagged again, hacks in your fingers that caught the blankets as you turned in unease of a night and sent a shrill stream of pain up your hands. Queer to work again in such fashion, use all your body till you ached dead tired, by the time you'd finished the upper floor your hips were filled with a stinging and shooting, like a bees' byke with bees, bad as having a baby, sweat in runnels either side your nose—you felt like a greasy dish-clout, just, ready to be wrung and hung out to dry. And when you got down to the kitchen at last Ma Cleghorn would skeugh at you over her specs,
Fegs, lass, you
take well with a slammock of work. Like a cup of tea?—Here
,
gi'me the basses, I'll take them out while you sit down a minute
. You'd say
I'll shake them myself, I'm fine
, and she'd look at you grim,
It's your funeral, then. But die where it's easy to
spread out the corp
.

A blessed minute that when you'd gotten back, though, sat down to drink the strong tea Ma made, hot, steaming and thick, Ma drinking another cup the other side of the table, Meg pleitering still at the kitchen sink. You felt all revived, throat, belly and—better not further. (Miss Murgatroyd you were sure never went further, Ma Cleghorn on the contrary seldom went higher.) You'd see yourself as you sat and drank, your head and hair and face and breast in the kitchen mirror over the range, flushed face, not pretty, it was never that, sulky eyes and the mouth men had liked well enough in your time—long ago, afore you grew old and took to scrubbing! … And you'd finish your tea and loup to your feet and be gone to finish the rest of the ploy, and be back in the kitchen to lend Ma a hand to plan out the dinner for those that came home—Mr Clearmont from the University, Ewan seldom, Mr Piddle sometimes, Mr Quaritch and Miss Ena Lyon never, John Cushnie when Raggie's rag Sales would allow, Sergeant Sim Leslie sure as the clock.

Ma had a great cookery-book of her own, made up of recipes cut out of the papers, daft ones and good ones and plain damn silly ones, Ma'd say
What stomachs some folk must
have to eat the dirt that the papers say!
But she cooked well enough, passable yourself, Jock the cat would sit and purr under the red-hot glow of the range, half-roasted the brute had been since his birth, and liked it: Ma said he'd enjoy hell. And she'd lift him aside with a meikle great foot, impatient- like, and he'd purr all the time, while the foot was under him, while he sailed through the air, while he landed with a thump out under the sink. And Meg would give a bit scraich of fear, and maybe drop a plate, inviting death.

In the first few days you'd been sorry for the lass, Ma Cleghorn treated her worse than dirt, bullying her, sneering at her, upbraiding Almighty God for making such a trauchle to pest decent folk. Syne you saw that Meg, thin, schlimpèd
and pert, wasn't feared a wee bit, sleekèd and sly with a sideways glint in her eyes at Ma, taking her in and her measure unfeared. And Ma that could skin a body alive with her tongue and hang out the hide in the sun to dry wouldn't send Meg out on a message if it rained, heaped her plate with great helpings at dinner, and when she saw the bit maid over-trauchled with a job would swear at her and go tearing to help…. So you didn't interfere but got on with your own work, plenty of that—how you'd ached at first afore dinner-time, hungry as you'd never been in a manse: genteel appetite going with all else, walking now with a quick and a hasting step not the long lope that had once been yours, face altering as well from the drowsy mask that had come on you under the yew-trees of Segget—waiting, half-asleep, sitting deep in a chair, for Maidie to bring tea out on the lawn, the peesies flying over Segget blue in smoke, smoke in sun smother, long ago, long ago; and Robert coming striding across the lawn, whistling—and you looked, and he hadn't a face—

And once Ma came on you as you stood and wept, tearless, sobbing dry-eyed, and stared and knew, shook you and hugged you tight, it hurt:
Don't greet, nothing's worth it, not a
damn thing, no man that ever yet was, Chris!
You'd stopped from that daft carry-on at once, shamed of yourself, bothering Ma, weeping like a fool over something as common as kale, losh, weren't there thousands of widows in the world worse off than you and not snivelling like bairns? And you'd shaken Ma off, gentle as you could:
I know. I'm just giving
myself a pet. My father would have said it was salts I needed
.

Dinner and the feeding of all the faces, funny to think a face was mainly for that; and then out shopping for the morn's meat. You went down Windmill Steps in the blue Spring air, the grey granite walls rising about you, if the day was clear you'd see below Duncairn spread as a map for show, far off, north-east, the sheen of the Beach beyond the rolling green of the Links, Footforthie a smother of smoke ayont the Docks, the Fish Market and the trawlers' rig, the Forthie gleaming grey under its brigs. Cleaving the jumble of
warrens and wynds went Royal Mile like a south-driven sword, to the left the new biggings of Ecclesgriegs, Town Hall and courts and Thomson Tower, the Tangleha' trees that hid the University, the gentry's quarters, genteel Craigneuks—to the right in jumbles around Grand Central the Cowgate and Gallowgate, Paldy Parish, and far off in the west beyond Footforthie the fishers' wee toun, called Kir- riebem.

You waited a tram by the Windmill Steps, it came showding and banging up from the Station, green like a garden slug, in you got, and sat down and closed your eyes and thought hard, the things you'd to order, where you'd best get them. Fish, beef, eggs, butter, go swear at the grocer, the laundry hadn't sent back those sheets, Ma Cleghorn wanted the chimney-sweep, you needed a new frock and must bear with the need…. Out into Royal Mile you stepped,—there on his stance, unmoving, King Edward, bald as a turkey and with much the same face, ready to gobble from a ton of grey granite. In the seats round the plinth the unemployed, aye plenty of them, yawning and wearied, with their flat-soled boots and their half-shaved faces, they'd cry their bit bars as they stared at the stir, or chirp a bit filth to a passing quean, sometimes though seldom they did it to you. You didn't much mind, were you wearied yourself and half-fed, you thought, with nothing to do, you'd do worse than chirp.

Only once had that worse ever happened to you, you'd run down the steps from the Mile to the lane that led to the Gallowgate's guff one evening, to a dairy there that sold good eggs. Day above, but already half-dark in that place, no body about as you hurried along, or so you thought till you sighted the man. He'd been leaning in the doorway of an empty warehouse, heard you coming and looked up and down: and as you came near he got in your way.
I'm starving, wifie. Gi'me
a tanner
.

His face was thin and dirty and brown, he'd no shirt, his jacket pinned over his breast, smelt awful, great knuckled hands, should you scream? And then you'd known that that
would be daft, you'd said
All right, though I haven't one to
spare
. And you'd opened your bag, heart thumping as you did it, what if he grabbed and made off with the lot? But he didn't, stood waiting, face red with shame. You'd found him the sixpence, handed it over, he'd nodded, no thanks, and looked away. And you'd hurried on down the lane to the dairy, suddenly trembling and your lips grown wet.

You'd get back to tea with the netbag full, have a first cup ere the others came, Archie Clearmont first, banging up the stairs, he'd meet you and smile, '
Lo, Mrs Colquohoun. That's
a nice frock
. You'd tease him and say
There's a nice woman in
it
, and he'd blush, boy-clear,
I know that as well
. If only Ewan were as simple as he! … Mr Piddle tearing in from his office, all in a fash to be off to the Station and catch the 6.30 bound for Dunedin. Not that he'd catch the train himself, he'd send off the latest news of Duncairn and make a bit extra salary,
he-he!
from the linage the
Tory Pictman
would print…. Miss Ena Lyon trailing in half-dead from the work in her office, half the rouge gone, the other half sprinkled about like a rash, she'd drawl on the Awful Rush in the firm, and the Boss no more than a Vulgar Keelie…. Ewan at last, black-streaked, black-haired, as cool and composed from Gowans and Gloag's as he'd been when haunting the hills of the Howe seeking the flints of the ancient men.

More clearing away, more tidying-up, getting ready supper, eating it, clearing it—you might almost have hated the sight of food with the number of times you messed the stuff. But you didn't: instead, you were hungry all day, ate a large supper at nine o'clock, found work nearly done and yawned a bit, and sat listening to Ma's radio in the sitting-room, a deserted place most nights but for you. And you'd listen to talks on ethics and cocktails and how to go hiking on the Côte d'Azur, minding the baby, copulation in catkins, and the views of Jacob P. Hackenschmidt on Scotland and Her Ancient Nationhood; and you'd switch the thing off, losh, that was better, worth paying a licence to keep the thing quiet, drowse instead and think of the countryside, corn coming green in clay parks this night as often you'd
seen it when you were a quean, wedded to Εwan in Kinraddie long syne—you that waited the feet of another Ewan now.

In Paldy Parish as the June came in there came a wave of heat with the month, it lifted the guffs from the half-choked drains and flung them in under the broken doors down through the courts to simmer and stew, a body could hardly bear the touch of his sark as he lay in bed by his wife of a night, the weans would whimper and move and scratch on the shake-down over under the window—stewing in the front of a half-open furnace. And a man would get up in a Paldy tenement and go along the passage to the wc, blasted thing crowded, served a score of folk, not decent, by God what a country to live in. On the Broo since the War and five kids to keep, eating off your head—och, why did you live?—never a minute of quiet to yourself, nothing but the girnings of the wife for more silver, the kids half-barefoot, half-fed, oh hell.

And the wife would turn as she heard him come back, lie wakeful and think on the morn's morning—what to give the weans, what to give the man, fed he must be ere he took the streets to look for that weary job he'd not find—he'd never find one you had come to ken. Hardly believe it was him you had wed, that had been a gey bit spark in his time, hearty and bonny, liked you well: and had hit you last night, the bloody brute coming drunk from the pub—a woman couldn't go and hide in booze, forget all the soss and pleiter, oh no, she'd to go on till she dropped, weans scraiching, getting thin and like tinks, and the awful words they picked up every place, the eldest loon a street-corner keelie, the quean—oh God, it made a body sick.

And the quean would turn by the side of her sisters, see the faint glow of the dawn, smell the reek of the Paldy heat—Christ, would she never get out of it, get a job, get away, have clothes, some fun? If they couldn't afford to bring up their weans decent why did father and mother have them? and syne nag and nag at you day on day, on this and that, the way that you walked, the way you behaved (
take care
that the loons don't touch your legs
), the way that you spoke—nothing pleased the old fools, and what you brought home they thought should be theirs, every meek that you made, nothing for yourself, stew in the reek of the Cowgate's drains till you died and were buried and stank to match. My God, if a lassie couldn't do anything else she could take a bit walk out to Doughty Park, fine there, though the place was littered with Reds, fair daft, the Communionists the worst of the lot, aye holding their meetings and scraiching and bawling that the workers all join up with their unions and fight for their rights and down with the gents.

But no decent lassies would listen to them, for they knew the Communionists were awful tinks who wanted to break up the home.

Every day as the Cowgate stirred Meg was up at the cheep of dawn, seeing to young Jessie and Geordie for school, getting ready breakfast, snapping back at Mother, Father the old devil lying snoozing in bed, he didn't go down to the Docks till ten. He swore he could hardly get a wink of sleep because of the old trawl-skipper next door, awful religious and fond of a nip, who thrashed his old wife near every night, singing out hymn-tunes like hell the while. If other folk could sleep through the old skipper's roar of
Rock of Ages, cleft for
me
as he cleft his old woman under the bed, why couldn't Father sleep as well?

Alick, Meg's brother, would get into his clothes, grumbling as usual when he'd only porridge. He was barely Meg's age, an apprentice-lad down at Gowans and Gloag's in Footforthie. That might have been fine, the beginnings of a job, but when his apprenticeship was up—well, everybody kenned what happened to apprentices. They were sacked right off when they needed men's wages, and Alick like others would be chucked on the Broo.

Alick said this morning when Meg sneered that,
Ay, maybe
to me the same as the others, but not to the dirty college sods
. And he said that Gowans took college pups now, with a special apprenticeship, easy as winking, they served the first six months at the Furnace, same as the others, but what
happened to them then? They squatted their dowps in office jobs, and put on clean collars and gave out their orders, bloody toffs, though no better than you or me. There'd been two of them in the last two years, training as managers,
they
weren't sacked, when the last machinery came into the Works that would do all the doings without working-chaps: you'd still need somebody to oil it about, and they'd keep the mammie's pets to do that. Another had come a two months back—a black-haired, stuck-up gypsy Bulgar, over-fine to speak to a chap like Alick, he'd get a sock in the kisser sometime.