In the meantime Angus was a boy who gave the spasmodic illusion of being a man, so that preconceptions about what someone as young was like would give way, like a garment that was too tight bursting. Every so often an incident occurred that caused people to check on his age. One of these had happened in the pit when he was fifteen.
He had gone into a disused working, looking for rails. They laid their own rails as they progressed, using flat forearm and hand plus three fingers of the other hand as a gauge, and the practice was to pull up rails from exhausted workings and relay them where they were needed. Angus had found the lengths he wanted and was emerging from the working into the main tunnel.
The ground there was at a cant. Opposite Angus was a working from which coal was still being cut by Tadger Daly. Tadger had just filled a five-hundredweight hutch and braked it with a piece of wood jammed in a wheel. He was walking down the slope away from the hutch as Angus came out and saw the wood slip from the wheel. The hutch started to roll.
‘Rin, Tadger, rin!’ Angus shouted, and as Tadger turned, he saw, like a negative he would only have time to develop later, the hutch coming at him with Angus hanging on to it and scooping something off the ground – ‘the wey ye’ve heard aboot in thae cowboy-shows’.
Tadger ran – ‘Ye’re no’ goin’ tae stop an’ argu wi’ a quarter ton o’ coal.’ The workings led off the tunnel at thirty-yard intervals. ‘Ah put oan a year for every fit.’ Behind him, involved with the thudding of his feet and the rasping of his breath, he was aware of the rumble of the hutch. ‘Like daith’s empty stomach.’ By the time he had made the next working and thrown himself into its shelter, he could only lean against a prop for a moment, until the silence came home to him and he saw Angus looking at him. ‘Aw right then, Tadger?’
From that time Tadger appointed himself official keeper of Angus’s legend. The truth was that Angus had caught hold of the hutch before it had moved very far. Staying with it, he never allowed it to gain anything like full momentum and acted as a partial brake until he could get the wood wedged once more into the wheel. It was an impressive demonstration of strength mobilised by courage in somebody so young but Tadger in gratitude enlarged it into a wonder. The story of Angus’s twenty-five-yard wrestling match with a quarter ton of coal circulated swiftly and confirmed the reputation Angus already had of being a physical prodigy. That’s no’ a boay,’ Tadger had said. ‘He’s three men dressed up as a boay. He’s awfu’ clever et disguises.’ By the time the men came off their shift, there weren’t many who didn’t know about it. Angus came out among ungrudging acknowledgements of what he had done. As they all tramped away from the pit-head, roughly together for the first couple of hundred yards like an undisciplined army, Angus walking beside his father and already a couple of inches taller, there was a lot of banter and somebody shouted, ‘Who’s that wee boay ye’ve goat workin’ wi’ ye, Gus?’ Tam laughed and shouted, ‘Well. They say guid gear comes in wee book.’
In the house Tam told the others. He was very proud and it wasn’t until Angus was reconstructing the event for the third time that Tam started to play it down. Then when Mick arrived for the night from Glasgow, the whole thing was gone over again. Seeing the talk shift from himself to Mick’s experiences of military training, Angus said he wouldn’t mind faking his age himself and joining up.
‘That’s richt.’ Tam was laughing. ‘You cairry oan. An’ the Germans’ll no’ need tae kill ye. Ah’ll save them a joab.’
Angus’s dour reaction to Tam’s remark, as if it were a serious one, was a sudden reminder of how young he was still. The man’s strength became something innocuous again, a boy’s plaything, for the time being. To ease his awkwardness, Jenny pressed Mick for details of what he was doing.
‘Och, we don’t even hiv uniforms yet. We spend the time mairchin’ aboot the streets. Playin’ at sojers.’
6
They were so tightly knit that just one of them leaving affected every relationship, meant that he heightened not only the others’ sense of himself but their awareness of one another as well. That was the effect Mick’s departure had on them.
It was a rowdy evening, full of strained laughter, noisy with masculine anecdote, secretive with the snifflings of the women, repetitive with sententious takings of leave.
‘Mick, son. Ah want tae tell ye this.’ That was his father. What he wanted to tell him wasn’t important. What mattered was the hand on his arm, the tremor in his voice he kept under control. Mick indulged his father’s sentimentality. He knew what he meant all right and at least it was better than kissing, which, according to some of the men in the Company he was shipping out with, was how the French would have done it.
‘Mick. Ye’re young yit, son. But jist you remember this.’ It was Tadger’s turn. He seemed to have dropped round specially to tell him. All Mick would remember would be Tadger’s expression smudged with the drink and the renewed awareness of how much Mick liked him.
‘Goad bliss ye, boay,’ was Mairtin. Jean said, ‘the best gran’ wean a wumman ever hud.’ ‘Ah’m tellin’ ye that’s seen it. Noo jist you remember, son.’ That was Andra Crawford. Where had he come from? Jean and Mairtin’s house, where they had gathered, was a chaos of comings and goings, like a railway station.
In the middle of it was Jean, propped up in bed. It was because of her illness that they had all come here. Trouble never comes its lane,’ Jenny had said. Jean had been going to get out of bed and come up to their house, and the only way they could stop her was to bring the goodbyes to her. You only had to look at her to see why she had to be stopped. She was very ill. Some said it was her last illness. Her heart was bad. Mairtin had not had a drink for weeks, though now she was always urging him out for a pint.
But tonight she somehow rose above her illness. She still looked unbelievably frail but she achieved that preternatural brightness sick people sometimes have. She glowed with the company. She had even consented to have some drink in the house. That was in tribute to Mick, whom she watched all the same and carefully counted his beer. He had two glasses. Mairtin himself would have none, in spite of the coaxings. It had become very important to him not to take drink. It was as if he somehow believed her illness was deliberate and, by abstaining, he could coerce her to get better.
His abstinence wasn’t out of place, for the drinking wasn’t much. But given the amount of emotion in the room with which it combined, it was enough. Mick was an awful provocation to sentiment, standing there in his kilt and his khaki tunic, looking fresh and young enough to be a boy dressed up for Hallowe’en but going to a war that was very real.
Jenny found him almost unbearably moving. Along with Kathleen, he had always seemed to her less obtrusive than the other two. Angus just had to be noticed, he demanded worry. Conn, being the youngest, had concerned her most. But Mick had always seemed so even and somehow safe. Yet here he was, fully fledged from the training he had told them so little about, dressed up like a stranger and preparing to face a threat that her thoughts hardly dared to guess at.
She felt a little guilty, as if she had let it all happen behind her back. But she consoled herself with the thought that she had never smothered any one of her family. She genuinely had no favourites. She had always tried to let the needs of her family dictate the expression of her concern. And Mick and Kathleen had demanded her attention less than the other two.
Seeing them all together tonight was a vindication. Kathleen and Jack had been in earlier. Jack had had to leave to see about something. But Kathleen had stayed to talk for a long time to Mick. The way she was fighting off her tears meant more to Jenny than if she had cried outright.
Angus had come in late but he was still here too. Jenny understood the lateness of his arrival his slightly bragging brotherhood with Mick. Angus had to create his own night within the main one. Wherever he was, he was for himself the centre. That was just Angus.
And Conn had been there all night, watching and laughing, his eyes enlarging every
thing into a wonder. She saw how he kept making sure that he was standing beside Mick, as if the magic of Mick’s presence might be catching. She was glad that Conn should do that. At least in Mick’s leaving, Jenny could see that she had made a good family. In the moment of knowing that, she looked for the man who had made it with her.
Tam was talking to Old Conn, and to Jenny it seemed typical that just as she was thinking something gentle and nice about him, Tam should be making her falter in that thought. Unconsciously, he was shrugging off her compliment. For he was annoyed. Sensing trouble, she crossed towards them in time to hear the end of what Tam was saying.
‘Fur Christ’s sake, feyther. The boay is goin’ tae France. Can ye no’ at least hing oan till he gets the train?’
‘Ah’m only goin’ oot fur a pint.’
‘A pint, bejesus. Ye’ll get a’ the drink ye want in the hoose here.’
‘It’s no’ the drink.’
‘Whit the hell is it then?’
‘Ah aye go oot fur a pint at this time o’ nicht.’
‘Feyther. Ma son is goin’ tae the war. That’s your grandson, in case ye’ve forgotten that. Ye’ll get yer fuckin’ pint the morra. An’ the next nicht. But oor Mick’ll no’ be here then. Ah want ma faimly roon ‘im while he’s here. An’ you’re pairt o’ ma faimly, feyther. Christ, if the King wis here the nicht, Ah’d expect ‘im tae wait.’
‘Let yer feyther hiv his pint, Tam,’ Jenny said.
Then Mick was there.
‘Oan ye go, aul’ yin,’ Mick said and he winked. ‘Hiv wan fur me while ye’re there then, eh?’
‘Ye ken whit Ah mean, son,’ Old Conn said. ‘Ah aye go oot at this time. Ye ken whit Ah mean?’
‘Ah ken whit ye mean. Ah’ll be seein’ ye, gran’feyther.’
‘Aye, richt, son. A’ the best, Mick. D’ye hear? The very best.’
Old Conn was going.
‘Christ,’ Tam said. ‘Ye’d think ye were goin’ tae the Croass.’
‘Och, feyther. He’s an auld man. It’s jist his wey o’ workin’.’
Tam started to laugh.
‘When ma feyther dees,’ he said, ‘he’ll be awa’ oot fur a walk before onybody’s noticed.’
As Mick moved off to talk to his grandmother again, Jenny said quietly to Tam, ‘There’s nae sign o’ that lassie Mick teilt us aboot.’
‘Naw.’
‘Ah thocht she wis maybe comin’.’
‘Aye, Mick said she micht be comin’. She wid likely hae boather gettin’ intae the toon. She’s workin’ oan a ferm, is she no’?’
‘Aye, richt enough. It’s a peety she couldny a been here, though. It woulda meant a lot tae Mick.’
‘Still,’ Tam said. There’s wan or twa did manage tae make it. Hoo are ye managin’ yersel’, Jen?’
‘Ah’m a’ richt the noo.’
‘Ye’re daein’ awfu’ weel. Jist try tae keep it goin’ fur Mick’s sake, hen. If you greet too sair, he’ll be leavin’ the maist o’ himsel’ here. An’ he’ll be needin’ everythin’ fur whaur he’s goin’.’
‘Ah’m a’ richt, Tam.’
Surprisingly, she was. She had been outmanoeuvring her tears all night. Mostly it meant keeping on the move, not speaking for too long to any one person and making sure that she wasn’t trapped into talking to her mother or Kathleen. If they had got together, each would have undermined the other. She did remarkably well until she saw Danny Hawkins come in. Then she knew it was only a matter of time before she embarrassed Mick. With Danny were a couple of friends and his mother. It was seeing Mary Hawkins that softened Jenny. Unlike Jenny, Mary would be completely alone with Danny gone. Having been stern with her own feelings, Jenny allowed herself to emote for Mary, found release by proxy. The two of them sought each other out immediately, like friends recognising each other in a roomful of strangers.
But their mutual sadness was submerged for the moment in the increased tempo of the evening. Danny’s arrival meant that he and Mick would soon be going for the train and everybody came together frenetically in last attempts to say what they had been wanting to say and to touch and to extract a final essence from the occasion. In the scrum of affection the form of what was happening was lost, and then suddenly Mick and Danny were among the men and moving towards the door. Jean was lying back on her pillow, lips compressed and wet with her own tears, the sensation of Mick’s embrace still warm on her cheek. Kathleen was standing herself, just crying. Tam was gently easing Jenny out of Mick’s arms and Mary Hawkins was being prised away from Danny. Then the men receded like a tide and left the women stranded in an empty room.
The group collected more men at the corner. By the time they reached the station, they were a small battalion. On the platform they stamped and jostled, waiting for the train that would take Mick and Danny on the first stage of the journey to their camp on the east coast. Their breaths fluttered around them, a cluster of small pennants. Their voices were raucous, trying to match the size of the situation. There was a lot of determined laughter. People laid hands on Mick and Danny till they bruised.
The train just saved the whole thing from hysteria. Seats were found and the men who had been carrying the kitbags left them while everybody piled out again and Mick and Danny stood at the window. With about a minute to go Kathleen, pregnant as she was, came running along the platform. They had forgotten the fags which were to be shared between them as a parting gift. Also, Mick’s grandmother had been meaning to give them a clothes-brush each as an extra item of kit.
‘We’ve goat wan,’ Mick said.
But they had to take them.
‘No’ somethin’ else,’ Danny said, laughing. ‘Christ, ma mither wantit me tae take the chist o’ drawers. But it widny fit intae ma kitbag.’
Those were the famous last words of their departure. The train was moving. In spite of all the careful preparation that had gone into the evening, the heart of it was in that suddenness, the clank of the wheel-rods, the chuff and lurch of the train, the wrench of distance. The rest of it had only been a ceremony for discovering that surprise, for savouring it by contrast. The real farewell was in those slightly shocked expressions, the words deflected by the wind, the gestures that fell into the distance.
7
‘War’s Remedy. Let the soldier be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage -a personage less imposing in the eyes of some – perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array.
Lord Brougham
Speech, 1828’
Conn’s voice had baulked on the name, his hesitation advancing and receding like someone contemplating a jump. Finally he had settled for Bruffam, pronounced almost inaudibly. In compensation he declaimed the date with impressive sonorousness.
His father said, ‘Read that again.’
While Conn did, slanting the book towards the window to snare the last of the light, Tam’s lips moved silently in pursuit of the words.
That’s true, son,’ he said. That is true.’
Conn recognised in his father’s tone the implication that it was especially true for Conn. Before Conn had said anything, his father was already arguing with his silence, because he knew the stubborn attitudes that lay behind it. Conn found himself wishing that his grandfather hadn’t gone to bed so early or that Angus would come in or that his mother hadn’t found it necessary to go down to Kathleen’s house. Why did Kathleen need to be having a baby anyway? Feeling himself in the familiar position of being betrayed by a conspiracy of adult whims, Conn surrendered himself to the inevitability of having to confront his father’s mood alone, to undergo a ‘serious talk’.
Tam was lighting one of the many clay pipes he had started recently to use. As the shred of newspaper flared in his fingers, face and throat inhabited for a second the poetry of the flame, achieved in the half-dark a vivid isolation of line and texture held focused in the concentration of a trivial act, l
ike a luminous painting instantly destroyed. Tam fluttered the charred paper, serrated like a feather, into the fire.
‘Is that no’ whit Ah’ve been tryin’ tae tell ye a’ along?’ Conn waited. ‘It’s education, son. That’s whit ye’ve got tae hiv. You’re clever enough tae go oan et the schil. Ah ken ye are. Yer mither’s got a note there fae a teacher. A lassie. Whit’s her name?’
‘Miss Anderson.’
‘Miss Anderson. That’s who it wis. Miss Anderson. She says ye’re capable. An’ so ye are. But why are ye no’ interested?’
Conn shuffled in the chair.
‘Ah jist want tae work in the pits.’
‘Christ, son. The pits! Ponies work in the pits, son. That’s as mony brains as ye need tae work in the pits. They go blin’. Did ye ken that? They’re doon in the daurk that long that they canny see. An’ they’re no’ the only wans. Ah’ve been blin’ fae Ah wis ony age masel’. That’s whit it does tae ye. When Ah wis your age, Ah had ideas, son. Things Ah could see that Ah wid like tae dae. But the pits took care o’ that. Ah’m jist a miner noo. Ma days don’t belong tae me. Ah’m doon there. An’ Ah canny see beyond the seam that Ah’m tryin’ tae howk.’
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