The Good Provider (43 page)

The Nicholsons shared the top landing with the Pipers.

‘Pipers by name, pipers by nature,’ Constable Jock would cry cheerfully as he dashed downstairs of an evening in kilt and sporran, bagpipes swinging in a long black-painted wooden box; while Mrs Piper adopted as her war cry the odd phrase, ‘My, my, but it’s a sair fecht for us weemen,’ and would greet all and sundry with that observation in lieu of more orthodox conversation.

Strange wails and strangled shrieks pierced the door of the Pipers’ apartment at all hours of the day and night, for the Pipers were that worst of all creatures – Glasgow-born converts to the culture of the Gaels. While Daddy and the three boys wheezed into their chanters, Mammy and the three girls practised those weird, plaintive dirges known as ‘mouth music’ to the cognoscenti. Such musical enthusiasms might have been very commendable in a Highland glen where the nearest neighbour lived on the other side of a mountain but they played hell with peace and quiet in the confines of a close in the Canada Road.

Snapped out of a snooze in a chair by the fire Craig would start up and shout, ‘What’s that, what’s that?’ and when Kirsty assured him that it was only the Pipers at it again he would growl and shake his fist at the wall and vow that some bloody night he would go in there and murder the whole damned lot of them; and then a snatch of song would rise sweet and lilting out of the bedlam and Craig would sigh and
tut
and, chastened, say, ‘Ah, well. Ah, well,’ and let the magic of the old art soothe the anger in his breast.

Public and private lives were so closely entwined in tenement society that Kirsty was not at all surprised that within a week or two of their arrival everybody in the close seemed to know all about them. It had not occurred to her that Craig had acquired a certain notoriety by the unusual manner of his entry to police ranks, that the capture of Skirving and Malone was an event not easily forgotten. To some Craig was a hero; to others a charlatan who had weaseled his way into the Constabulary by less than ethical means. For all that, Kirsty was accepted and made welcome. She found consolation in the company of women whose husbands’ shifts were also essays in mystery and who were separated from the community at large by the very nature of their employment. On Sundays, rain or shine, Kirsty made a pilgrimage to Walbrook Street, drank tea with Mrs Frew before service and walked arm in arm to St Anne’s with the widow. She could not, however, linger afterwards for she had a man to feed and a house to run and was slowed by the weight she bore before her as February progressed and the month of her delivery drew near.

It was on a dull and drizzling Tuesday about the middle of the month. Supper was over, dishes washed and dried, the kitchen all neat and cosy. Craig lay in his favourite chair, his stockinged feet on the end of the hob, a Gold Flake in his mouth and a novel,
Hunted Down
, open on his lap. Kirsty was sewing up frayed cuffs on one of Craig’s shirts, squinting at the tiny needle and fine white thread in the gaslight when a knock sounded upon the door.

‘Who can that be?’ she asked, glancing up.

‘Bert Swanson, maybe,’ Craig answered, stirring himself. ‘He said he might drop in to see if I wanted a few frames o’ billiards down at the gymnasium. But I don’t feel like it.’

Craig put down his book, yawned, stretched and went out into the hallway to open the door to the caller.

Kirsty returned to her stitching.

She heard voices, paused. She heard a peculiar sound, almost like a sob. She had just struggled to her feet, pushing herself from the chair, when the kitchen door swung open and Craig, a hand over his eyes and shoulders heaving, staggered into the room.

Hard on his heels came his brother Gordon.

‘Craig?’ said Kirsty. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

It was Gordon who answered, for Craig waved her away and slumped at once at the table and hid his face between his arms.

Gordon said, ‘It’s our dad. He’s dead.’

‘Dead? But how – when—?’

‘Last week, last Wednesday.’

‘Was he sick? An’ why wasn’t Craig told?’

Embarrassed, Gordon answered, ‘He – Dad just dropped. Nobody knew what caused it. He just dropped. He just dropped like a stone in the yard at the Mains. He just dropped down dead at the door o’ the byre.’

‘Were you there with him, Gordon?’

‘Aye, I was close enough t’see it happen. Straight down on to the cobbles on his face, he went. Split his brow wi’ the fall. It was funny how he hardly bled at all.’

‘What was the cause?’

‘Heart stopped.’

Kirsty experienced a prickle of disappointment, not so much grief as selfishness. She had had a picture of Bob Nicholson with his grandchild on his knee, his small hard brown hands about the white shawl. She regretted that she had been cheated of the pleasure of that reunion, of repaying the man for his kindness to her, regretted too that her baby would never know its grandfather and that he was closed off for ever from them all and their future achievements.

‘When will he be buried?’

‘It – it was Saturday last,’ said Gordon.

Craig jerked up and whirled around, his expression fierce, eyes red and wet and glaring. ‘Christ, could some o’ you no’ have told me?’

‘How could I tell you, Craig, when I never knew where you were?’

‘I wrote—’ Craig sniffed and wiped his nose on his wrist. ‘I wrote t’ Da half a dozen times. Did he no’ tell you?’

Gordon swallowed. ‘I – I don’t think he got the letters.’

Craig was on his feet. Gordon retreated half a step as if he feared that his brother was going to snag his head and knuckle him again as had happened from time to time when they were growing up.

‘He must’ve got the letters,’ Craig said. ‘They were sent to him. All stamped. I mean – what about the gifts I sent at Christmas?’

Gordon shook his head.

Kirsty said, ‘If the letters didn’t arrive, Gordon, how did you know where to find us?’

‘She told me.’

Gordon had changed. He was not as Kirsty remembered him. He had not grown taller but he had broadened out a little, had developed a crop of pimples about his mouth, had coarsened. He smacked no more of carefree ebullience but had the mark of the farmyards on him, long hours in cold byres. His nails were bitten down and rimmed with dirt; she wondered that Madge Nicholson had allowed him to slide into untidiness.

‘Mam?’ said Craig; changed question into exclamation. ‘Mam!’

Gordon said, ‘He often used t’ say to me, when we were goin’ to work, that he’d told you not to write. He said he knew you’d do the right thing by Kirsty an’ would net a good job.’

‘He never even knew I was a policeman?’

‘Nah.’

‘But the letters—’ said Kirsty.

Craig dragged a chair to the table and pointed at it.

‘Sit down, Gordon. She’ll make ye some supper. Kirsty?’

Gordon glanced up, awaiting her invitation too.

Kirsty said, ‘Aye. You must be hungry.’

‘The letters,’ said Craig, ‘will be hid in one o’ her drawers, slipped away under linen or blankets.’

‘Aye,’ said Gordon.

He wore his one and only jacket, apart from the suit he had preserved in the mothball-reeking wardrobe, flannel trousers, a scarf and a soft cap. He carried a little case, a thing of pasteboard and cord with a cheap tin lock, a lady’s case, that he kept perched on his lap as if he were afraid that, even here in his brother’s kitchen, some ruffian would sneak up and steal it from him. Kirsty felt a sudden terrific wave of pity for Gordon, saw that he was still shocked and suffering. She took the case from him and put it on the dresser, took off his cap and put it on top of the little case and then she put an arm about him.

Craig, fingers trembling, was in process of lighting a cigarette.

‘Do you want one, Gordon?’ Kirsty said.

‘What?’

‘A smoke.’

‘Gordon doesn’t smoke,’ said Craig.

‘Aye, but I do.’

‘Give him one, Craig.’

She stood by Gordon’s side while he extracted a Gold Flake from the paper packet that Craig held out to him, put the cigarette into his lips and craned forward to the match flame. Frowning, Craig scrutinised his brother as Gordon inhaled, as if he were watching a trick done by a trained collie.

‘She’ll not know you’re on the gaspers?’ he said.

‘Nah.’ Gordon managed a grin, just. He looked up at Kirsty. ‘Thanks, Kirsty.’

‘How did you get here?’

‘The train; then I walked.’

Craig said, ‘She gave you the address, didn’t she?’

‘Aye,’ said Gordon. ‘She told me where the Greenfield was an’ all. But she never told me it was so bloody far. God, man, I thought I was walkin’ the length o’ the Clyde.’ He glanced up at Kirsty once more, grinned. ‘It’s some size o’ place this.’

‘You get used to it, Gordon,’ said Kirsty.

Gordon said, ‘You’re big.’

‘I’m due in five weeks.’

‘I never knew.’

‘Did
she
not tell you?’ said Craig.

Gordon ran a hand over his hair, took the Gold Flake from his mouth and angled it between his fingers.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘She wants you back.’

‘Hah!’

‘It’s true, though. She sent me here t’ tell you t’ come back.’

‘If she got the letters, if she read them—’

‘She did, Craig. By Christ, we both know that now.’

‘Well, if she did, then she knows I’m settled in work, wi’ a house—’

Gordon interrupted. ‘She’s taken on the farm.’

‘
What?
’

‘Persuaded Mr Sanderson; told him you’d be comin’ back.’

‘She can bloody well untell him, then.’

‘Right after the funeral, in the parlour on Saturday. She laid on a tea.’

‘Christ!’

‘She had it all worked out, Craig.’

‘Did she no’ cry?’

‘Aye, at first. She cried louder, though, when she learned there was nothin’ to come from the Burial Society.’

‘Twenty quid,’ said Craig, nodding. ‘He gave it t’ us. He cashed it in.’

Kirsty crossed to the stove and greased the small frying-pan with lard. ‘Who paid for the funeral, Gordon?’

‘Mr Sanderson.’

‘God Almighty!’ said Craig. ‘Did she ask him?’

‘He’s on the board o’ the Burial Society. He knew the twenty quid was gone before Mam did. I think he was the one who told her the truth.’

Kirsty said, ‘Will she have to pay it back?’

‘Eventually,’ said Gordon. ‘As it is I’m to come off the day work.’

‘It’s the bloody day work pays the bills,’ said Craig.

Gordon spread his hands, wafting smoke across the table. He appeared to be more comfortable now that he had shared the burden of responsibility with Craig and trusted his brother to extricate him, somehow, from the fate that Madge Nicholson had in store.

‘She says she’s ready to pitch in,’ Gordon said. ‘She says she’s done it before, when we were young.’

‘Lyin’ bitch,’ said Craig but softly, without heat.

‘She thinks that you an’ me, an’ Kirsty—’

‘Kirsty?’

‘She knows you’re married. Did you not say so in one o’ the letters?’

Kirsty said, ‘I wouldn’t be in this state, Gordon, if we weren’t married, would I?’

‘Suppose not,’ said Gordon. He was more interested in other aspects of the situation. ‘Anyway, Mam’s got this notion you’ll come home now, to Dalnavert—’

‘She must be bloody daft.’

‘– an’ we’ll all live in the farmhouse, work the ground, build up the yield—’

‘Dad could never make the place pay.’

‘We’re young, though,’ said Gordon. ‘So Mam says.’

‘How long would we stay young, scratchin’ away at yon bit o’ ground?’

‘Dalnavert’s no’ so bad, Craig.’

‘Cut it bloody out, Gordon,’ said Craig. ‘I know fine well what you’re up to an’ I’ll have none o’ it.’

‘Mr Sanderson’s given her a year.’

‘It’ll take five at least, plus capital.’

‘There is no money. She owes Mr Sanderson twenty quid.’

‘The burial never cost that, nothin’ like it.’

‘There wasn’t so much as a ha’penny in the kitty, Craig.’

‘She was fast off the mark findin’ that out.’

‘It was easy to discover,’ said Gordon, ‘since there was nothin’
to
discover.’

He glanced up at Kirsty as she broke an egg into the pan and the sizzle of frying filled the kitchen.

‘Is that for me?’ Gordon asked.

‘Aye.’

‘I’m starved, right enough.’ He tilted his head and ostentatiously surveyed the kitchen, ceiling, window and floor. ‘No’ bad. Small, though.’

‘This is Glasgow,’ said Craig.

‘Some place,’ said Gordon. ‘Glasgow.’

‘You’ll need to stay,’ said Kirsty. ‘I’ll make up a bed in the front room.’