A Scots Quair (79 page)

He was in and out of the shops all the time, and Norman's father, in the Grindery, took him down to a meeting of the Union branch, Norman didn't go, he couldn't be bothered, he said to Tavendale
They just claik and claik and grab your
subscription and never give anything, they're a twisting lot of sods
in the Union. But the old man's aye been keen on them
. And looked a bit shamed,
He's Labour, you see
.

Tavendale said
There are lots of chaps that, my step-father
was
, and you all cheered up, sitting on buckets in the furnace room, a slack hour, and having a bit of a jaw, you were none of you Labour and knew nothing about politics, but all of you had thought that the Bulgars of toffs were aye Tory or Liberal
or this National faeces. And somehow when a chap knew another had a father who'd been Labour you could speak to him plainer, like, say what you thought, not that you thought much, you wanted a job when apprenticeship was over and a decent bit time and maybe now and then a spare bob or so to take your quean to the Talkies—och, you spoke a lot of stite like the others did, about the queans that you'd like to lie with, and the booze you'd drink, what a devil you were, but if you got half a chance what you wanted was marriage, and a house and a wife and a lum of your own…. Wee Geordie Bruce said
The Tories have the money, they're the muckers for the
working man
; and Norman said
Blethers, the Bulgars have
money, but they take good care to keep it for themselves or spend it
on their lily-fingered whores, what's the good of Tories to us, you
neep?
Alick said that maybe the next Labour Government wouldn't be so bad as the last had been, they were working folk themselves, some of them, though they'd birns of the rotten toffs as well…. And you all said what you thought, except Ewan—funny, you'd started to call him Ewan—he just sat and listened and nodded now and then, as though he couldn't make up his own mind: well, that's what a chap with sense would do. And when one of the chaps in the Stores said to you:
I hear you're all sucking the young toff's anus
you nearly took him a crack in the jaw, the daft sod, young Ewan was as good as he was and a damn sight cleaner in the neck and the tongue.

Well, Ewan went to the Union meeting that night, next morning chaps asked him what he'd thought o't, and he said there hadn't been much on at all, there'd been less than a dozen members there—
I suppose you can't blame a union if the
chaps who belong to it won't attend its meetings
. Norman asked what the hell was the good of attending, the Union had sold the pass time and again, the heads of the bloody thing down in London were thick as thieves with the viscounts and earls. Ewan said that was rotten if it was true, why didn't the Union give them the chuck? And Norman said he'd be Bulgared if he knew.

Alick Watson said that his Ma's new lodger, a chap called
Selden, and he was a Red, was aye saying the unions should chuck out the leaders. And everybody laughed, you knew well enough what Reds were like, daft about Russia and its Bolshevists—tink brutes, it made you boil to think the way they mis-used the ministers there, the
Daily Runner
had pages about it and the Pope had been in a hell of a rage at atheists behaving near as bad as Christians.

And you all sat by the Docks, you'd go down there now and look at the two or three ships in the harbour sleeping an hour in the still July, smoke a slow pencil plume from the derricks, a dead cat or so floating under your feet, far off through the brigs you could see the North Sea fling up its green hands again and again and grab and scrabble at the breakwater wall—and you blethered about everything you could think of, Ewan wouldn't talk much unless Alick made him, Alick'd slap him on the shoulder,
Come on, man, tell us
. But he'd say
I don't know any more than you chaps—less, it's
only stuff out of books
.

Well, wasn't that a lot? And you'd ask him about it, did
he
hold with this ongoing of the Bolshevists in Russia, closing down kirks and chasing ministers all to hell for just preaching, like? He said he didn't know anything about Russia but he thought the time of kirks was past.
But you
surely believe there's Something, man?
and Ewan said
Maybe,
but I don't think it's God
.

And you couldn't make out what he meant by that, funny chap, fine chap, you liked to go home with him, he called you Bob as you called him Ewan, and was awfully interested in everything, where you'd been born, and gone to school, and the stuff they'd taught you in Ecclesgriegs. And you felt a bit shy to invite him, like, the old man's house was a hell of a soss, but you'd like him to tea some Saturday night. And he said
Right, thanks. I'd like to come
; and you went home and maybe boasted a bit till your sister, the silly bitch, said
Tavendale: isn't that the toff that you couldn't stick?

And out of the fragments of days and nights Chris saw her life shape to a pattern again. Getting up and working and going to
bed—it had never been anything else in a way she thought as she scrubbed the floors, tidied the rooms, and helped Ma Cleghorn cook the meals or young Meg Watson wash up at the sink. Meg had come back and was fair subdued, looking at Chris with a frightened eye, afraid, poor lass, she'd be somehow blamed over that fight at Gowans and Gloag's. But Chris wasn't so daft as pay heed to that, Ewan could heed to himself, she thought, he was growing up with his own life to lead. And she had hers, and sleep, and food, work, and meikle Ma Cleghorn to laugh at—and what else was there a body could want?

Ma said B'God she should marry some childe, fair going to waste, a lassie like her. And Chris asked who she should marry—Mr Piddle? and Ma gave a snort, she'd said marry, not martyr, he'd never get up from the marriage bed.

Chris said she thought that was fair indecent, drinking tea and pulling a long face; and Ma shook her meikle red face at her, Life was damn indecent as both of them knew. The first time she'd lain with a man, her Jim, she couldn't make up her mind to be sick or to sing. But there was more of the singing than sickness for all that, even though it felt awful like going to bed and being cuddled by a herring-creel, not a man. But mighty, a lassie when she was a lass just bubbled for a childe to set her on fire. But now they were all as hard and cold and unhandled as a slab of grey granite in a cemetery. Look at that teacher-creature, Miss Johns, whipping in and out the house like a futret, with books and papers and meetings to attend, never a lad to give her a squeeze. Chris said
You don't
know, she's maybe squeezed on the sly
, Ma said
Not her, she'd
freeze up a childe. Not but she isn't bonny in a kind of a way,
though I never could stick they black-like jades with a bit of a
mouser on the upper lip
.

Chris thought of the faint, dark down on the lip of a downbent face, and the long lashes, curled, soft and tender, blue in the sun. And she said that she thought it rather bonny, and Ma said
Bonny? You've an awful taste. Though the
Cushnie and Clearmont think the same, they near eat her up at
breakfast time. I suppose the most of the queans about are all such
a pack of scrawny scans that a sleek pussy-cat like our
Really-Miss-Johns just sets a childe fair a-tingle to stroke her
.

Chris had noticed how Ellen woke up the breakfast, though she herself didn't seem to know it, canty and trig, with her braided hair and her cool, blue eyes, John Cushnie would pass the marmalade, and blush, and habber a bit of English, making an awful mess of it above his tight-tied tie, Mr Clearmont would give his cheerful guffaw and fix his round baby eyes on this titbit—
Coming to the Saturday
Match, Miss Johns, Students and Profs, it'll be great fun?
And Miss Johns would shake her head,
Too busy
, and Archie's face would fall with a bang. Even Mr Quaritch forgot his books, the pussy-cat had snared him as well, he'd waggle his thin little beard at her and tell her stories of the
Daily Runner
, and start to explain the Douglas Scheme, the Only Plan to Save Civilization by giving out lots and lots of money to every soul whether he worked for't or not.
Who would be such a fool
as work at all then?
Miss Johns would ask, but she'd ta'en it up wrong, Mr Quaritch would marshal bits of bread to prove the Scheme again up to the hilt, and Miss Johns would say it sounded great fun, she knew there was Relativity in physics, this was the first time she'd met it in maths. Mr Piddle would say,
He-he! Fine morning. And how is Miss Johns today,
yes—yes?
And Feet the Policeman would curl his mouser, a Sergeant, and give her a bit of a stare like a cod that wanted its teeth in a cat, instead of the other way round, as was usual. Chris would smile at the coffee-pot and meet Ellen's eyes, demure blue eyes with an undemure twinkle.

She and Ewan were indifferent, polite, Chris thought them too much alike to take heed of each other. But Miss Lyon couldn't abide her at all, and would sniff as she watched her, Just a Vulgar Flirt, she didn't let men take Liberties with
her
. She told this to Chris after breakfast one day, didn't Mrs Colquohoun think the Johns girl Common? And Chris smiled at her sweet,
I don't know, Miss Lyon. You see I'm
awfully common myself
.

The first bit of scandal on the pussy-cat Chris heard was brought by Miss Murgatroyd, she had heard it up at the
Unionist Ladies—it was awful, and Miss Johns looking Such Genteel. And what the Tory women had been saying was that the new teacher in the Ecclesgriegs Middle was being over-quick with the strap, strict as could be, maybe not a bad fault. But worse than that she was telling the bairns the queerest and dirtiest things, Mrs Colquohoun, drawing pictures on the blackboard of people's insides and how their food was digested and oh—And Miss Murgatroyd coloured over with Shame, and dropped her voice and nearly her cup—
the way that the waste comes out, you know
.

Chris said she thought that was maybe good and the bairns would be less constipated. Miss Murgatroyd tweetered like a chicken in the rain, and then bridled a wee,
Well, of course I'm
Single, and don't know much about things like that
. Chris wanted to ask, but didn't, if being Single meant that you never went to the bathroom; but a question like that wouldn't have been Such Fine.

But more was to come, as she heard soon enough, the Unionist Ladies in an awful stew, and hot to write the Education Authority. Miss Johns had been explaining the Bible away, the whole tale told to Miss Murgatroyd by Mrs Gawpus, the wife of Bailie Gawpus, she said her little niece had come home and said there wasn't a God at all, the new teacher had said so or as good as said so, He was just a silly old man the Jews worshipped and the world had really begun in a fire…. Just Rank Materialism, wasn't it, now?—And who would think it of a girl like Miss Johns?

She told the same story to Ma Cleghorn that night, but got feint the much petting for her pains.
Well, damn't, there's
maybe some sense in her say, Miss Murgatroyd, the Bible's no
canny. Mind the bit about Lot and his daughters, the foul
slummocks, him worse, the randy old ram? It's better to speak of
beginnings in fire than let the weans think it began in a midden.
Ay, there's more in the lass than meets the eye, I'll have to see how
she's getting on
.

Chris met Ellen Johns a week after that, coming up the stairs, her dark face pale, she smiled at Chris, a tired-looking lass and Chris said she looked tired. She said so she was,
though not with the teaching, and then told she'd been summoned before the Authority and reprimanded for telling the Duncairn kids a few elementary facts about themselves. —
So I've to leave off physiology and it's Nature Study
now—bees, flowers, and how catkins copulate. Won't that be
fun?
But she didn't wait an answer, just smiled in the sleekèd way she had, dark and cool and wise, a mere slip, a little quean playing about with fire, and went on up the stair to the room next Ewan's.

Jim Trease had planned the march for the Friday, Broo day, with all the unemployed of Paldy and contingents from Ecclesgriegs and Footforthie and a gang of the chaps on the Kirrieben Broo. The main mob marshalled up in the Cowgate, the Communionists crying for the folk to join up—
we'll march to the Council and demand admittance, and see
the Provost about the
pac. And a man'd look shamefaced at another childe, and smoke his pipe and never let on till Big Jim himself came habbering along, crying you out by your Christian name, and you couldn't well do anything else but join—God blast it, you'd grievances enough to complain of. The wife would see you line up with the other Broo chaps, looking sheepish enough, and cry out
Will!
or
Peter!
or
Tam! Come out of that—mighty, it'll do you no good
. And a man just waved at her, off-hand-like, seeing her feared face peeking at him. But a bit of a qualm would come in your wame, thinking
Och well, she'll be all right. We're just
marching down to the Castlegate
.

Syne the drum struck up and off you all marched, some gype had shoved the handle of a flag in your hand, it read
DOWN WITH THE MEANS TEST AND HUNGER AND WAR
, the rest of the billies made a joke about it, they would rather, they said, down a bottle of beer. Right in front was Big Jim Trease, big and sappy in his shiny blue shirt, beside him the chap he'd been helping of late, Stephen Selden that had been an emigrant to Canada and come back from the starvation there to starve here. The two of them were in the lead of the march, wee Jake Forbes waddling behind, banging the drum,
boomroomroom
, he could play a one-man band on his
own, a Red musician, and played at the dances with his meikle white face that had never a smile. And on and up you rumbled through Paldy, clatter of boots on the calsay stones, the sun was shining through drifts of rain, shining you saw it fall on the roofs in long, wavering lines and floodings of rain, queer you'd never seen it look bonny as that.