A Scots Quair (92 page)

As the bobbies passed by below Trease leaned forward:
Okay, Ewan?

—
I'm all right. They've got nothing out of me. Hello, Chris.
Don't worry
.

Neil Quaritch said he was damnably sorry but he couldn't do anything with the papers about it, he was only sub-ed and book-hound on the
Runner
. Besides, the
Runner
daren't make a comment on a case sub judice. Not that it would make it if it could. Oh, the police were a pretty low set of brutes, but he couldn't believe this tripe about Ewan being tortured—this was Duncairn, not Chicago; just Red blah Mrs Colquohoun could discount. Pity Ewan had been led away by the Reds, if he wanted social change there was Douglasism.
Financial Credit operated as Social Credit would ensure that the products of Real Credit, though privately owned, were not malaccredited—

Mr Piddle said
He-he!
he was dreadfully sorry. Yes, he'd been in the court and seen young Mr Tavendale, and yes, he'd written the story for the
Daily Runner
. No, he hadn't intended to offend anyone, but the public must have its news, Mrs Colquohoun. Could she give him a photo for the
Tory Pictman
? And wasn't it the case that her husband, the late minister of Segget, had also held—
He-he!
—rather extremist opinions?

Jim Trease said plain that of course the Communists would exploit the case to the full—for their own ends first, not for Ewan's. They'd do all they could for him, but Ewan was nothing to them, just as he, Jim Trease, was nothing.

Miss Murgatroyd said Eh me, it was Awful, and young Mr Ewan Such Fine to get on with, right interested in the books on old Scottish magic that she'd loaned him—they were Awful Powerful in magic, the Picts. However had he got in such company?—It was said he'd assaulted the police Just Awful and them so kind and obliging, Too. Ask some of her friends at the Unionist Club to interfere?—oh, she couldn't do that she was feared, it wouldn't be right, now, would it? And they all terrible against the Reds, not that Mr Tavendale was really one, she knew, but there you were, oh, she was terribly sorry—

Archie Clearmont said
Hell, was that Ewan? Didn't know he
was Red. So was Wagner. Anything whatever I can do to help—

John Cushnie said nothing but handed in his notice, he couldn't very well stay on any longer, and him an employé of Raggie Robertson's, you ken—

Ellen Johns said, white,
Anything you want. I'm a Socialist,
too, and I started him on it—he's a Socialist, not a Red, it's all a
ghastly mistake. Oh, Chris, how did he really look? … Oh,
Chris, I'm sorry, I'm a fool to cry, he'd think me a fool—

Ake Ogilvie said to Chris not to fret. He thought he could maybe fix up this business.

He went off to his work and bade off the whole day while Chris went about with a mind gone numb, dead brain in her head, scrubbing and cooking and serving the meals, helped by the new maid, a big widow woman who was kind as she could be and never spoke a word about Εwan or the case. The blink of March daylight closed into dark and still Chris worked in a numbing fear; then at last, as it drew to tea-time, she heard the front door open and Ake on the stairs, his slow, independent clump on the stairs. A wee while later he came down again and opened the door:
Ay, mistress, a word with you
.

He sat in the sitting-room, filling his pipe:
Well, you're
looking on an unemployed man
.

Chris said
What?
and Ake nodded and struck a match, and took a bit puff, and said Right on the Broo, Jimmy'd finished with him and he with Jimmy. But that was neither here nor there at the moment. The main thing was that Ewan would be safe—or else Jimmy's bit secret would be all over Duncairn as fast as Ewan's Red friends and Ake could spread it abroad. Ay, a great thing, scandal.

Chris gasped
Ake, Ake, is't true?
and he said
Oh ay. There,
mistress, don't take on so. He's safe, your loon, they won't push
the case—that's the quality of justice we've got in Duncairn. Sit
you still a wee bit and I'll tell the tale
.

She realized later he told it her so that she might hide in herself again. But her mind at the time frothed over the telling like a wild thing mad to be out of a cage, trying to think, to think that Ewan—

And Ake said he'd not made the sawmill that morning, but sought out Speight and put it to him that he could get this bit case against the young Red quashed—Ake knew the lad, there was no harm in him, a decent student, and he'd been sore mishandled already by the bobbies. And Jimmy had listened with his long dreich face looking dreicher than ever, and shaken his head, he couldn't interfere, he'd no power to influence the courts or the bailies. Ake had told him for Christ's sake not to talk wet, they were both of them out of their hippens by now, the Lord Provost kenned as well as he did that there was as much graft in the average Scots toun as
in any damn place across the Atlantic. Who invited contracts for agreed-on tenders? Who arranged the sale of public land and bought it afore the offer was made public? Who took a squeeze off the water rates, and who made a bit thing from the Libraries? And where did the bobbies, inspectors and sergeants, get their extra wages for houses and motors except by acting as pimps for the whores, living off the lasses and running them in when they wouldn't pay up their weekly whack? And was there a bookie's pitch in Duncairn that didn't pay tribute, week in, week out? Not one.

Speight said that all that was just coarse rumour and scandal, he knew nothing about it, and Ake said
Maybe. And
you'll see that this young Tavendale's let off with a caution, or
whatever the flummery's necessary?

The Lord Provost had nearly burst with rage then, he'd said he'd be damned if he'd be badgered and blackmailed in this way any longer, all because of a small mistake in his youth—was he the first young childe to rape a lass in a hedge, with a bit of darkness to hide his identity? … And Ake had seen he half-meant what he said, a rat that was fair being driven in a corner, he'd pressed him over-hard and his nerve would gang, the next thing might be Ake himself in the jail.

So he'd laid his proposition in front of Jimmy: if he'd bring this off in the Tavendale case Ake would never again breathe a single word about that lassie raped in a hedge, never a whisper in public or private, nor seek for any advantage on't. And the Provost had said
And you'll leave my sawmill?
and Ake had given a bit shrug and said
Ay. All right, Jimmy, it's
ta-ta, then
.

When Alick Watson had settled with Red Steve Selden he looked more like a mess in a butcher's shop than a leader that had once been out in Canada and come back to Scotland all in a fash to see to the emancipation of the working class. They fought it out in a Cowgate wynd, four of the chaps had come to see fair play, in the end they held Alick and said to Selden he'd best give best else he'd get bloody murdered.

Selden coughed and spluttered and stood up again and said
he'd never given any man best, it wasn't his wyte he had bairned the lass and it wasn't his wyte she'd never let on. Alick said
What the hell! You knew all the time!
but Selden swore by Christ he never had, if he'd known he'd have done the decent thing. And all the chaps that were standing around cried out to Alick he might believe that, it was true enough, those daft Bulgars the Reds were as scared and respectable about bairning a quean as though they went to the kirk three times on a Sunday and said a grace afore every meal, there was hardly a one but was doucely married, they never looked near a lass if they were, a damn lot of killjoys a lot of folk said…. So Alick had had all his fighting for nothing: and what the hell was his fury for?

Alick said they could mind their own mucking business; and put on his coat and went up to the Slainges Barracks direct and hung about outside the gates a while, half-feared and yet desperate, the sentry looked at him and said
Hello,
chum!
And Alick said
Hello
.
Is this where you 'list?

The sentry, he was swinging to and fro in his kilt and carrying a wee stick, not a rifle, took a keek at the guardroom and syne round about, and said
For Christ's sake, what's ta'en
you?—have you lain with your sister or robbed a bank?
Alick said he'd done neither; and the sentry said not to be a soft sod, then, why join up in this lousy mob? The grub was stinking potatoes, worse beef, seven shillings a week pay and about half of that docked in sports and fines. It was just plain hell when it wasn't hell decorated.

Alick said Ah well, he'd just take his chance; and went in through the gates to the office place, a wheen of poor muckers were wheeling round the square, shoggle and thud, they looked half-dead, punishment drill of some kind Alick knew. And he half made up his mind to turn back, then swore at himself for a yellow-livered sod, they couldn't do worse to him, could they, than the bobbies had done to Ewan?—Oh Christ! And he burst open the door of the office place and went in and they asked who the hell he thought he was, the Colonel, maybe? and closed the door; and that was Alick Watson's end for the Cowgate.

Folk heard the news and took it through hand, he must fair have gone skite, the silly young mucker, wearied no doubt with the darg of the strike. Most knew he'd a hand in the drowning of old Johnny Edwards—well, what of that? More than a dozen had had a bit hand, and a damn good job, the lousy old scab. And
they
didn't run off in a fear to 'list, they marched with the band that Jim Trease got up to demonstrate outside the Central Court where young Ewan Tavendale was coming up on Friday.

Banners and slogans, Jake Forbes with his drum, a cold, dreich, early April day. One or two as they slumped along thought of Alick ticking to another drum now. And what would young Tavendale get, would you say?

Then they heard a bit cheer break out up in front, and the news came flying down the ranks like fire, it was true enough, no it wasn't, yes it was, there he was coming down the steps himself, his head all bandaged: he waved a hand. He'd been letten off with a bit of a fine, his mother had paid it for him at once, there she was behind—
Christ, that his mother? I could
sleep with her the morn and think her his sister…. Sulky-looking
bitch…. Get out, she's fine…. There's Ewan. Now, lads, give
him a cheer!

Into the procession, Chris never knew how, marching by the side of Ewan up the Mile,
boomr
the drum in the hands of the fat man, big Mr Trease stumping ahead with his grin and his twinkle, Ewan's hand in hers. She wished they'd left her alone with her son, Ake had stood aside as they came from the court,
No, not me
, he had said to Jim Trease.
I'm no body's
servant, the Broo folk's or the bobbies
', Chris had liked him for that for she felt the same, had always felt so and felt more than ever that she belonged to herself alone. Except for Ewan: Ewan's hand in hers. And he looked down and laughed, strained, cool from his bandages:
Cheer up, Chris,
it'll soon be over and we can slip off and be respectable!

The procession halted below Windmill Steps, Trease had seen to that, he did it for her, Chris knew: a little thing that
wouldn't hurt his propaganda. And the Paldy folk grabbed hold of Ewan and raised him up on the Steps:
Come on, gi'es a
word, Ewan!
and a sudden hush fell, Chris stood back and waited and knew herself forgotten.

And he said in his clear and cool boy's voice that they needn't bother to make a fuss, he'd got no more than any might expect who was out to work for the revolution. One thing he had learned: the Communists were right. Only by force could we beat brute force, plans for peaceful reform were about as sane as hunting a Bengal tiger with a Bible. They must organize the masses, make them think, make them see, let them know there was no way they could ever win to power except through the fight of class against class, till they dragged down the masters and ground them to pulp—

Then he fainted away on the Windmill Steps.

April was in with a wild burst of the bonniest weather, fleecings of clouds sailed over Duncairn with the honking geese from Footforthie's marshes. Out in the little back- garden Chris saw the buds unfolding on bush and twig, and got out her hoe from its winter sleep, over the walls other garden folk were chintering and tamping on the drying earth. And Chris thought in that hour of the bright April day as she hoed round the blackberry bushes and roses—suddenly, with a long-forgotten thrill—what a fine smell was the smell of the earth, earth in long sweeping parks that rolled dark-red in ploughing up the hills of the Howe, earth churned in great acres by the splattering feet of the Clydesdale horses, their breath ablow on a morning like this, their smell the unforgotten stable smell, the curling rigs running to meet the sun. Earth … and she sossed about here in a little yard of stuff that the men she'd once known wouldn't have paused to wipe their nebs with!

If Ewan had been as that other Ewan … and she paused, bent over the hoe, at the thought. Was he so unalike? There was something about him since that awful time when he'd fainted on the Steps of Windmill Brae that had minded her of
his father back from the War—not the Ewan of the foul mind and foul speech, but that darker being she'd not kenned in those days, only later when the tale of his death was brought her: that being who had been the real Ewan imprisoned, desperate, a wild beast seeking a shelter she hadn't provided, a torn and tormented thing seeking a refuge—