The Good Provider (39 page)

Tickets for the Greenfield Burgh Police Annual New Year Concert were at a premium. Chief Constable Organ was a great one for fostering good relations with the public and the concert, under his patronage, had become quite an event in the burgh. On Thursday evening the Greenfield Hall would be packed, not only with officers, their friends and relatives but with a wheen of those ragtag citizens who spent most of the year cursing the police blue-blind but who, when it came to the bit, could not resist a cheap night’s entertainment.

Craig had requested three tickets. He had received them at the muster that morning. It did not occur to him that he had never before taken Kirsty out for an evening that had to be paid for, and he was keen to surprise her, and old Frew, that night at supper. He had been careful to make discreet enquiries to ensure that the concert did not clash with some holy singsong at St Anne’s.

On and off all morning Craig thought about it as he did his rounds of the streets. He took his dinner – paid for, of course – in the dingy back shop of Dinaro’s Café which lay a few hundred yards off his patch. There he met up with Archie Flynn and Peter Stewart who were also taking their half-hour rest period.

Archie had ‘found’ a printed copy of the concert programme slapped to a wall near the Baffin Bay and had removed it before some urchin could deface it. The constables discussed the programme with enthusiasm, particularly the ‘star’ attractions: J. C. Wilson was a Negro who did ‘eccentric dancing’, whatever that meant; Mr Harry Lauder was a purveyor of humorous Scotch songs; and the beautiful Miss Phoebe Donaldson was a singer of legendary reputation who, only a couple of weeks ago, had reduced the stalwarts of the Patrick Burgh Force to jelly with her rendering of
Tell Her I’ll Love Her
.

‘Not a dry eye in the house, so I heard,’ said Archie Flynn.

‘Och, they would all have been at the whisky,’ said Peter Stewart. ‘It would be alcohol they would be sheddin’.’

‘I hear she’s a real stunner,’ Archie said. ‘Fergusson’s seen her in Glasgow. He tells me she’s got the biggest pair o’ globes he’s ever clapped eyes on. When she hits her top notes, Fergusson says, she quivers.’

‘Quivers?’ said Peter. ‘What quivers?’

‘For God’s sake, man!’ said Craig. ‘What do you think quivers?’

‘Not her bloody vocal chords,’ said Archie.

‘You mean her—?’ said Peter.

‘Nearly pops out her dress,’ said Archie.

‘My God!’ said Peter, dusky-cheeked.

‘All that an’ music too for sixpence,’ said Craig. ‘Three cheers for Organ, eh?’

‘Aye, if Phoebe does pop out o’ her dress,’ said Archie, ‘they’ll make him the bloody Provost on the spot.’

They laughed uproariously and embellished on the theme of Miss Donaldson’s lily-white bosom while they ate their fried-egg rolls and drank hot tea. But they also kept an eye on the clock in case Sergeant Drummond came to check on them.

Craig carried the laughter with him into the cold gusty streets. He did not feel cold, clad in lamb’s-wool combinations and heavy serge uniform. He had stamina too now and did not tire in the course of the long shift.

One of Hedderwick’s big wagons had broken an axle. The load had shifted and part of St John Street was closed. Craig jawed the workers and told them to get a move on, borrowed four bollards from the yard and set them up to signpost the diversion and kept himself warm and occupied for a full two hours steering cart traffic round into Banff Street until the repair was completed and the wagon hauled upright and driven off.

Night came swiftly, sullenly. Bruised winter gloaming showed up the prickling lights of the city. Spurts of fire from a foundry vent only made it more lonely. Craig stopped in a close that already had its gas-lamp lit, took out the three concert tickets and looked at them again. He thought of Phoebe Donaldson and wondered if her breasts were really bigger than Kirsty’s and if they would feel as soft and heavy in a man’s hands. Hastily he stuffed the tickets back into his pocket and plodded on to check on Joseph McGhee’s pawnbroking shop and to inspect and sign the Pledge Book which was part of his daily duty. He found old Joe half asleep in his cane chair with the
Evening Citizen
on his knee and a little marmalade cat draped like a collar about his neck. He went on into Brunswick Lane to make sure that the apprentice at Hannah’s Gas Appliances had fitted up the new set of shutters and padlocked them properly. There had been three break-ins at Hannah’s in as many months, for copper tubing and lead sheets were like magnets to thieves. All was secure. The caretaker, Mr Pritchard, gave him a signal through the window of his cubby.

The embankment: trains rolled and chattered past one after another. It was not the time for suicides or accidents, not the quiet-line time when the glinting iron tracks brought out the daft and the despairing or children keen to risk their lives in dangerous play. Craig did not need a lamp tonight. He knew his way along the slope, could make himself stand without flinching only feet below the Dumbarton Express as it thundered past, the faces of passengers flickering in the windows like silhouettes in a kinegraphic machine. He came down into the street at the bridge, checked his watch and gravitated up towards the corner where Constable McNair would meet him and take over the watch.

He was twenty minutes early, did not want to loiter in case he was being observed by a sergeant or an inspector. He looked up to the corner and then went on up North Sydney Street, a nondescript three hundred yards which stole into Peter Stewart’s beat at the corner where, beyond the long low sheds of a cotton-waste dealer’s yard, stood a lone tenement, an old smoke-grimed stump inhabited, as far as Craig had heard, by peaceable tenants.

He was still some fifty yards from the building when he heard the scream. It was piercing and prolonged and sucked off into a gasping cry that made him think, just for an instant, that it came from the throat of a murder victim. Craig was already running.

Far off, not in North Sydney but up in the narrows of Friar Street, he saw a small crowd of men assembled outside the Rembrandt, a cosy little public house, saw them turn too. Sensing danger, he fumbled for his whistle. The hairs on the nape of his neck bristled when the scream broke out again, from above his head this time.

He stopped. He looked up. A white face, thin white arms jutted from a third-floor window. Craig asked no questions. He tugged his whistle from his pocket and his truncheon from its holster and went into the close and up the stairs three at a time. By the time he reached the second landing he could hear another sound, a man’s voice, not deep and angry but shrill, pathetic. ‘
Oh, help, help, help me. Help me. Please, help me
.’

Craig recognised the voice; Peter Stewart’s.

He paused before the half-open door, pushed it tentatively with his foot. ‘Peter,’ he called. ‘It’s Craig. I’m comin’ in.’

He had no notion of what crime had been committed but the fact that Peter was in need of assistance tempered Craig’s urgency with caution. He stepped carefully into the tiny hallway, glanced to his left. The girl was indistinct against billowing net curtains. She was no longer screaming, thank God. Her hands swung limply by her sides. Head cocked, she rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet crooning to herself in a sweet grieving whine that made the hair rise again on Craig’s neck.

‘
Craig. Here, Craig. Please, Craig
.’

The inner door was ajar. Craig tapped it with the truncheon and stepped into the kitchen.

There was never any question of criminal charges of negligence or neglect. The Cadells were honest, upright Christians. Father was a cobbler in a closet business on Dumbarton Road, as industrious and temperate as a man could be. He had gone that evening with his wife and five of his seven children to a prayer meeting at the Revivalist Mission in Scotstoun. They had left home only a quarter of an hour before the accident occurred. Irene Cadell was fifteen years old, a sensible girl. Eldest in the family, she was well used to caring for her brothers and sisters. No blame could be attached to Irene for what happened. No blame could be attached to anyone. A hundred thousand identical pots bubbled on fifty thousands hobs across the city. Innumerable children played on the floor below leaded ranges. Why little three-year-old Susan had reached up and pulled on the protruding handle of the pot would never be known. Perhaps she had stumbled.

Though Irene had been in the room with the child her back had been turned and the first thing she had heard was the clash of the big pot as it fell from the hob, her sister’s shriek of agony as a quart of boiling water splashed over her head and shoulders.

Irene had run next door but had found the house empty. In panic she had flung open the bedroom window and screamed for help. By chance, sore chance, Constable Stewart had been approaching the tenement at that moment. He had sprinted upstairs and into the house to find wee Susan Cadell writhing upon the carpet, the pot upturned on the fender. She had been unable to utter a sound. She had swallowed a quantity of boiling water and that, coupled with severe shock, had rendered her mute. She was scarlet, blistering and blind. She plucked with her little fists at the collar of her dress while she rolled on her back on the sodden carpet.

When Peter had lifted her in his arms she had gone into a spasm, rigid and jerking, had stopped breathing. Peter later admitted that he had panicked. All that he had learned by rote in Sergeant Mannering’s Ambulance and First Aid Class had vanished from his mind. Blood, wounds, he could have coped with – but not this drenched and choking child. Smothering her convulsions, he had called for help while the elder girl, her reason quite gone, had remained at the window, screaming.

‘Put her down, damn it, Peter,’ Craig snapped. ‘Here, man, on the dry floor.’

‘Craig she’s—’

‘
Let her go, Peter
.’

‘Take her. You take her. Please take her.’

Kneeling, Peter Stewart thrust the child at Craig and Craig, stooped over, received the little body into his arms. She was still alive, still twitching. He had no clue as to whether she was choking from obstruction or from the scalding. First Aid: the child was not comatose but convulsive. He stretched her out upon the boards and opened her lips with his fingers, brought her tongue forward, a little soft moist thing against his forefinger, and she gave a snorting sigh and spluttered out some water.

‘Peter, pull yoursel’ together, for Christ’s sake,’ Craig shouted. ‘Fetch me a cloth, a clean one.’

Still on his knees Peter peered at Craig as if he did not understand the words. Craig turned, slapped him with loose knuckles across the cheek. ‘A cloth, a towel. An’ a big blanket. Quick.’

‘Wha’ – what?’ Peter Stewart said.

The child was still twitching. Craig noted that a vast area of her head and upper body had been drenched. But water scalds, if he recalled rightly, did not penetrate down through the layers of skin; there might be hope for her yet if he could obtain immediate expert assistance. He left the child where she was, pushed Peter to one side, found the hole-in-the-wall bed. He ripped off a blanket and undersheet, spread them on the floor, picked up the child and placed her face down. He could not understand why she did not seem to react to pain, why she was so silent. He glanced towards the door. The elder girl was nowhere to be seen. Rapidly he wrapped sheet and blanket around the child. He left a flap of the top so that her face would not be covered. He lifted her as gently as possible in his arms, well supported. She was still twitching. Her head lolled against his forearm like that of a new-born baby.

He nudged Peter with his boot.

‘Get up, man, for God’s sake. I’m takin’ her to the Western Infirmary.’

Peter nodded, a glint of sense in his expression at long last. ‘Aye, that’s—’

‘You stay here with the other one. She’s in a bad way too. Root out a neighbour. Find out where the family’s gone. Might be the pub. Might be anywhere. Send somebody to find them and bring them back. Do you hear me, Peter?’

‘Aye.’

‘On your feet then.’

Peter scrambled up as Craig, the bundle in his arms, turned towards the kitchen door.

‘Cr-Craig?’

‘What?’

‘D-don’t t-tell anyone. Promise me you – you won’t.’

‘Christ!’ Craig said.

He ran out of the Cadells’ house, downstairs into the street.

He was three hundred yards from Dumbarton Road. The Western Infirmary was the nearest hospital. He might, he supposed, have tried to find a doctor or have run the half-mile to Ottawa Street but he felt the child clinging to life through him, trustingly. He ran as fast as he could towards the thoroughfare.

Passers-by stepped hastily out of his path as if he were a ruffian; and Craig ran towards the lights of Dumbarton Road and, when he reached it, ran straight into the middle of the road through the growling traffic. He spotted a hack at the stance at the bottom of Peel Street. The cabbie spotted him at the same moment and reached for the brake and the whip to speed away from trouble.

Craig bawled, ‘YOU WAIT,’ charged across the road and, loosening one hand from the bundle, grabbed the horse by the snaffle.

‘What the hell d’you think—’ the cabbie began.

Very distinctly Craig said, ‘I am gettin’ into your hack an’ you are goin’ to drive me to the Western Infirmary as fast as you bloody well can. Right?’