The Good Provider (13 page)

The man was concealed in the shadowed mouth of a stable stall and did not show himself.

Craig swallowed. ‘I’m after work.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Nicholson.’

‘Age?’

‘Twenty.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘A farm, near Dalnavert.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘In the Carrick, near Girvan.’

‘What’s brought you to Glasgow?’

‘I told you, I’m after work.’

It struck him as strange that the shouted conversation attracted no attention, that the yard, apart from the man with the gruff voice, was deserted.

‘What d’you know about horses?’

‘I can plough,’ Craig answered.

‘I’m no’ needin’ a bloody ploughboy.’

‘Look, I can tend horses an’ I’ve driven carts, long an’ short, for years. Is there work here for me or is there not?’

‘Keep your hair on, sonny.’

When the man emerged from the shadows he was grinning. He was the swaggering sort, muscular, with a powerful bull-neck showing in the collar of his open-throated shirt. Moleskin breeks clung to bulging thighs and a broad leather belt with a brass buckle was slung low about his waist. He wore no scarf or muffler but had on his head an old round-crown tweed hat that perched on a tangle of bushy brown hair.

‘Are you Mr Maitland?’

‘Not me.’

‘Mr Moss, then?’

‘Same bloke; Maitland Moss.’

‘When can I see him?’ said Craig.

‘Never,’ said the man, still grinning. ‘He never dirties his shoes comin’ down here. Why should he? He’s got me t’ run the show for him.’

‘Are you the – the boss?’

‘Danny Malone. Hirin’ and firin’ is my business.’

‘Well, will ye hire me, Mr Malone?’

‘Pay’s rotten an’ the hours are weary.’

‘I’m used to that on the farm.’

‘You’ve a decent pair o’ shoulders on you, an’ a snappy sort o’ lip which will stand ye in good stead when you’re arguin’ wi’ a copper at a junction. Ever been in trouble wi’ the law?’

Craig frowned at the question.

He shook his head. ‘Nah, never.’

‘Ye won’t like what I’ll do to you if you’re lyin’.’

‘I’m tellin’ the truth, I swear.’

‘All right, then, I’ll take ye on a week’s trial; how’s that?’

Craig’s throat was tight with excitement but he was not without guile. ‘Is that week’s trial with or without pay?’

‘If I tell you it’s without pay what’ll ye do?’

‘Walk,’ said Craig.

‘Walk where?’

‘Home.’

‘Where’s home?’

‘Lodgin’s in Walbrook Street.’

‘Walbrook Street; very posh for a farmer’s laddie. Are ye married?’

Craig did not hesitate. ‘Aye.’

Malone grinned again and stuck his thumbs in the sagging belt.

‘Married to some juicy wee country lass, I’ll wager,’ he said.

‘Do I get the job or not?’ said Craig.

‘One week’s trial, with pay by the day. The rate per rake’s damned low, I warn you. Mr Moss likes his profit.’

‘What is the rate?’

‘On average you’ll take home about sixteen bob.’

‘I thought the minimum rate was—’

‘Minimum rates are for Society members – an’ that ain’t you, sonny,’ Malone told him. ‘Anyhow, this is no Society yard. We want none of that sort here. Come on now, are ye in or out?’

‘In,’ said Craig. ‘Do I have to sign a paper?’

‘Christ, no!’ said Malone.

‘When do I start?’

‘Tomorrow morn. Five o’clock.’

‘I’ll be here,’ Craig promised.

Malone did not offer his hand to seal the contract.

‘Have you bairns?’ he asked.

‘Nah.’

‘Tryin’ hard, though, I’ll wager.’

‘What’s that got to do wi’ you?’

‘How do you feel about puttin’ in a spot o’ night work?’

‘If it pays extra, I’m more than willin’.’

Malone placed a beefy hand on his shoulder.

‘Are ye no’ scared some dirty dog’ll sneak into your bed when you’re gone?’ Malone suggested.

‘Let him try,’ Craig said, with more belligerence than he felt. ‘I’ll kill any bastard that tries it on wi’ my wife.’

Malone laughed. ‘That’s what I like to hear; a man that can look after his own.’

Still laughing he gave Craig a dunt with his elbow to direct him out into Kingdom Road, no longer a footloose stranger but a man on the verge of employment.

From Gallowgate to Saracen Cross, from Hogganfield to the Whifflet you were never more than a short step from the door of a place that sold strong drink, from premises where a man might slake his thirst and find relief from the grinding monotony of toil in manly company. Tucked away between the vaults and inns and public houses, however, so obvious as to be invisible, were other oases of comfort and consolation for the citizens of the west. Never a voice was raised to protest the extent of the vice that they fostered and no church took militant stand against them. No society was ever formed to fight a demon that rotted teeth, pitted the gut, puffed up the pancreas, shrivelled the liver and gradually depleted the body of strength by cheating it of true nourishment. Temperance was never preached to those poor wights who fell victim to sweet tooth, who each day craved a taste of sugary confection and who, if they did not get it, grizzled and girned for want of the treat. Fortunes were made from the national addiction. Vast commercial empires were founded and sustained on satisfying the demand for all things sweet, and great wedding cakes of profit were erected on columns of pure cane sugar.

While the average wife was a dab hand at scones, baps or pancakes she somehow baulked at baking cakes, felt perhaps that she could not compete with the products of commercial bakeries, examples of whose art appeared by the hundred score on stencilled boards every morning, oozing treacle and fruit syrup, glistening with icing and sugar crystals. What ordinary mother could duplicate such magic, could reproduce the mouth-watering artefacts that tempted you just with the sight of them lined up on a tray in Dougie’s Dairy or Mr Kydd’s wee corner shop? Few women were bold enough to try. For that reason rogues like the Oswald brothers flourished and girls like Kirsty Nicholson were employed in long bleak sheds to turn out cakes in volume like so many artillery shells.

The Oswalds had several retail outlets of their own where each of their nineteen varieties of cake was displayed in the window on a separate little silver tray against a bank of more ordinary teabreads and soft pastries. In fact, Kirsty had been on the point of going into the shop to part with a penny for a delicious-looking chocolate cup when the notice had caught her attention. Hands, it stated, were wanted in the Oswald Brothers’ Vancouver Street Cakery; no experience necessary. As work of any kind was at a premium Kirsty was surprised to find no queue of eager lassies clamouring for jobs when she presented herself at the ‘Cakery’ the following morning.

She knocked on a big painted door round the back of the building and was greeted by a narrow-shouldered baker in a filthy canvas apron who shouted at her and rudely directed her to the front gate. From there she found her way into the sheds where girls were ‘assembling’ cakes on long trestle tables and sorting them on the boards to fill the day’s printed orders. Kirsty had put on plain clothes, not her powder-blue, and was glad that she had been sensible, for any hint of ‘posh’ would have lost her the job before she had even started.

It was not, of course, either of the Oswald Brothers who ‘interviewed’ her for the vacant position but a heavy-set and menacingly swarthy woman named Dykes. Mrs Dykes was in charge of all female staff, responsible for keeping the girls hard at it from the start of the shift at a quarter past five in the morning until last orders had gone out and the ‘rooms’, as the sheds were called, had been swept and sprinkled.

Mrs Dykes asked Kirsty several desultory questions about her age, marital status, place of residence and proneness to infectious diseases. Kirsty answered truthfully, except that she replied to the question regarding her status only by holding up her left hand and showing Mrs Dykes the ring which she had taken from its thong and slipped on to her finger after she had left Walbrook Street that morning.

It was apparent that Kirsty’s answers were of no real importance, that she might have given her address as the Govanhill lazaret for all the difference it would have made. She was fit enough to stand for seven hours at a stretch and that was all that mattered to Mrs Dykes and the brothers Oswald.

The catch was the wage; a miserly six shillings for a six-day ‘half shift’. Kirsty was not so green as to suppose that a shilling-a-day rate was not usurious, an exploitation of the female labour market’s need for part-time employment. She accepted, nonetheless, and listened while Mrs Dykes reeled off company rules and regulations.

She would be docked threepence for lateness.

She would be docked two days’ wages for every one day that she failed to report for work without prior notice.

She would not, of course, be paid for a day or any part of a day in which she had to leave the sheds for any reason and for any purpose other than to answer a call of nature.

She was not allowed to take her apron or mob-cap home.

She was – glory be – permitted to buy misshapen cakes at half-price and a bag of a dozen bread rolls at a one-penny discount.

To all of this Kirsty agreed, nodding.

Vancouver Street was a long walk from the boarding-house but Kirsty had received so little recompense for her labour at Hawkhead that she felt flattered to be offered money at all. Six shillings was not so bad. Indeed, when Craig found regular work they would be able to afford to rent a nice room and she would be free to devote every afternoon to shopping and housework.

‘Are ye takin’ it, hen?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Kirsty, an answer which, by its eagerness, drew a funny look from Mrs Dykes.

‘Report for “trainin’ ” at five tomorrow.’

‘Friday?’ said Kirsty.

‘Somethin’ wrong wi’ Friday?’

‘No, oh no. Friday’s fine.’

She thanked Mrs Dykes again and went to the door without really studying the girls at the tables or noticing the rusty girders or sweating plaster or the edging of grime to the floor. She had a job, would earn a wage, and that was all that mattered to her there and then. Elated, she set off with the vague notion that she might find Craig in the street and tell him at once of her good fortune.

During the week’s stay at Walbrook Street Kirsty had acquired an awareness, rather than knowledge, of the geography of the territories that snuggled along the Clyde, the wards and parish boundaries marked by steeples, towers, green parks, that flanked the length of Dumbarton Road. Greenfield was new to her, however, for she had not been this far west before.

For Partick folk burgh status lent pride and collective identity but Greenfield was too small and insignificant to be separated from its lively neighbour. It did not even have a proper view of the Clyde, for warehouses blocked out the wharves and an embankment of the Lanarkshire and Dunbartonshire railway line bottomed the little burgh like a rampart. Beyond the railway lay Hedderwick’s repair and fitting yard where, on a few narrow acres, shallow-draught vessels were keeled and equipped. A new block of flats, in beautiful red sandstone, peering disdainfully down on the junction of Kingdom Road and Canada Road, might have suggested to a casual stranger that this was a high-class area but a few steps into the hinterland and the smoke-blackened, weather-worn façades of old whitestone tenements would rapidly dispel the notion that the burgh was in any way ‘posh’.

Kirsty walked down Kingdom Road’s chasm of tenements and hunchbacked cobbles, turned into Banff Street and, skirting the tenements’ dingy backcourts, popped out into the bottom end of Canada Road where it sloped toward a tunnel in the railway embankment. Curiosity led her through the dripping stone arch into St John Street, a long cobbled street which fronted the wharves and shipyards.

Through the open gate she glimpsed the interior of Hedderwick’s yard, the river regulated by a series of locks, and a long ‘thing’ on a slipway that looked for all the world like the rotted carcass of a cow over which men scrambled as if to strip the last of its flesh from its bones. Two gatemen in tall hats glared at Kirsty and quickly closed the big gate as if they feared that she might learn secrets that it was not given to a mere woman to know.

Precious little to see along St John Street; Kirsty returned through the tunnel to Canada Road.

Quarter of a mile or so from the base of the street a little crowd had gathered outside one of the tenements. The bustle and hubbub seemed threatening and Kirsty’s initial impulse was to slip down one of the lanes and avoid the commotion. But she strolled on, intrigued by the reason for the gathering, saw children and a handcart piled high with furniture and bundles of old clothes, and wondered what tinkers could be doing so far into the city. They were not tinkers at all but tenants caught in the humiliating ritual of an eviction.