‘You should have been in your bed long ago,’ the Duchess added. ‘If you were mine! But, thank God you’re no’ mine. Standing there all eyes and ears. Beat it now. Before I take the lights from you!’
The policeman saved Janie from sudden extinction. ‘The show’s over for tonight,’ he said, with just the amount of humour needed for the crowd’s mood. ‘You lot got no homes to go to?’
‘Only just,’ cried Battleaxe, speaking for them all. ‘The rent’s behind.’
The crowd had gone, taking with them the cover which they had flung over the tenement. Mysie Walsh’s window, covered with a blanket, lay exposed to Janie and Gertie. Gertie who lived two doors away flaunted her own safety: ‘I’d just hate to be you, Janie, having to pass Mysie Walsh’s door tonight. Maybe she’ll jump out on you.’
‘She can’t. She’s dead.’ Janie used reason to fight fancy, but didn’t succeed. ‘Come on up with me, Gertie. Just till my Mam comes home.’
‘I can’t, I’ve got to go home or else I’ll get a belting. But she can’t touch you, Janie,’ and as if regretting her reassurances, Gertie shouted over her shoulder as she disappeared: ‘I wouldn’t be you for anything. Janie. She might just jump out on you.’
All black and her tongue purple, Janie thought, as the wooden stairs creaked beneath her feet. Ready to jump out on me when I reach second landing. For death, and this was Janie’s first, near experience of it, could suddenly translate the loved and the living into the ghostly and the frightening. The scream poised itself in Janie’s throat, ready for its flight through the tenement, the moment Mysie Walsh jumped out of death, through the door. And not really ready when the moment came. Only the figure who leapt from beside her door, heard the cry that was a substitute for the scream.
‘Shut your mouth, you little bastard. Do you want the whole house woken up?’
The dead don’t speak so. The livingness of the words calmed Janie into surveying the speaker. It was a man. Her Mother suddenly appeared from behind him, annoyance in her voice. ‘Leave the bairn alone.’
‘Yours?’ the man asked.
‘Aye. My first mistake. And my last one.’
The man jingled coppers in his pocket. ‘Like to go and get yourself some chips, hen?’
‘I can’t. Chip shop’s shut,’ Janie said, contemplating him gratefully, since, whoever he was, he just wasn’t Mysie Walsh back from the dead.
‘Find out the time for us, then.’
‘It’s gone eleven. Gertie and me heard the clock not long since.’
‘Scram then.’ The man was growing angry. ‘Make yourself scarce for God’s sake.’
‘She’s my bairn,’ Liza said resentfully, coming towards Janie. ‘Look, luv, run into Mysie Walsh’s for some coppers for the gas. Here’s sixpence. Move over, you. Till the bairn gets past.’
‘I can’t,’ Janie stood impassively. ‘Mysie Walsh’s dead.’
‘Don’t be daft. Don’t act it,’ Liza said harshly in the darkness. ‘I spoke to Mysie Walsh when I went out.’
‘She’s dead since.’ Janie stood small and impregnable in the safety of truth. ‘She hanged herself. The Bobbies were here and all. Chae Tastard cut her down with his big knife.’
Liza stared at Mysie Walsh’s door, and backed away from it, no longer aware of the man: ‘Come on, Janie. It’s high time you and me were in our bed. Mind your feet on the first step. It won’t be there much longer.’
‘What about me?’ The man’s voice came plaintively behind them.
‘You can keep,’ Liza called down, as if she had forgotten him.
‘What about my dough? I paid you, didn’t I?’
‘And I should have got you between the eyes with your lousy dough.’ There was anger in Liza’s voice. But Janie sensed that this anger wasn’t directed at her. It was as if herself and her Mother were in league, against the man. ‘Mind your feet now, bairn,’ her Mother said. Warmly, intimately. The two of them taking care of each other on the stairs.
‘You damned two-timer. You prick-tormentor.’ The man’s voice came furiously from below. ‘I paid you, didn’t I?’
‘And here’s your money.’ The sudden clatter of coppers in the darkness, the anger in Liza’s voice, frightened the man. He mumbled himself down, and out of hearing.
‘You stay here, Mam,’ Janie cried, when he had gone. ‘Just wait for me here, and I’ll look for the money you threw. It’s on the landing somewhere.’
Liza waited without protest. Throwing the money had been a sincere gesture, but a reckless one. ‘There was two bob. A two-bob bit, and sixpence of coppers,’ she shouted to Janie. ‘Can you see, or will I light the lobby gas?’
‘I’ve found the two-bob bit,’ Janie answered. ‘Maybe the pennies have rolled under Mysie Walsh’s door!’
But Mysie Walsh was dead. At the other side of the door. Her face all black and her tongue all purple. Janie had forgotten. Now she remembered, and ran upstairs without the pennies, to where her Mother waited.
three
THE Lane came reluctantly to life. Its occupants, unwilling to face the first shock of early morning coldness, were even more unwilling to miss a moment of Mysie Walsh’s funeral.
No one was sure of the exact time of this event. ‘Before dinner-time,’ Battleaxe said, tilting her tea-leaves into the dustbin. ‘Before the sun rises full.’
‘Myself now,’ maintained Poll, waiting in the bin queue, ‘had the idea that suicides were buried after the sun goes down. I know that the sun hasn’t got to shine on them. But one can never be sure about that.’
‘I know one thing,’ the Duchess concluded, ‘if Pinner has the undertaking, and he usually has the Poor Law burials, he’ll want it over and done with by the time The Hole In The Wall opens.’
Nothing was sure at this grey time of the morning, except that the burial of Mysie Walsh would be a sly, dark thing. As hurried and as secret as her death had been. The women round the dustbin felt that she had cheated them by dying without first informing them. But, by Christ, they weren’t going to be done out of her funeral too.
‘Not if I stand holding up this wall till midnight,’ vowed Battleaxe, planting her teapot firmly between her feet, settling her back comfortably against the causeway and casting a resentful glance over the other women, arriving to stake for themselves a place with a view.
Wee Lil, flopping down the cobbles in her man’s shoes, felt Battleaxe’s resentment rush towards her and directed it away from herself with panting haste:
‘You lot hear the shindy, last night? That Liza MacVean and one of her pick-ups. You wouldn’t have thought there was a corpse in the tenement. Chewing the fat like hell they were. Sounded like they were both up against Mysie Walsh’s door. No shame in the world. Some folk haven’t. And Mysie Walsh stone dead on the other side of the door.’
Poll felt suddenly ribald. ‘Well. What’s the odds? Mysie Walsh couldn’t take it herself anymore anyhow.’ Poll’s laugh rose solitary and, shamed by its own loneliness, darted thinly into silence.
‘There is,’ admonished the Duchess, ‘a time and a place for allusions to other folks’ weakness. And Mysie Walsh is dead.’
* * *
‘And me thinking Mysie Walsh came alive, last night,’ Janie confided to Gertie, on the way down to join the watchers. ‘As sure as God. I thought it was her when the man jumped out on me.’
‘What man?’ Gertie asked, with the sleep still over her.
‘Just some man,’ Janie answered swiftly. ‘After Mysie Walsh likely.’ For it was known that men went for Mysie Walsh. And Janie hoped it wasn’t known that men went for her Mother, too.
‘And her dead,’ Gertie said, completely sidetracked. ‘No wonder my Mam says men are just beasts.’
Battleaxe was right. Before the sun rose full, two horses, pulling the hearse, drew up in front of the tenement.
‘Only two horses.’ Janie was disappointed. ‘Balaclava had four, with black feathers over their heads when she was buried.’
/> ‘That’s because this is no’ a real funeral,’ young Alan shouted, knowing everything, loudly.
‘No. But the corpse is real enough, Son,’ Chae Tastard answered. And he should know, Janie thought, watching him curiously, for he had cut down the corpse. He had seen somebody dead. She stared at his face to find the imprint so strange a seeing must have left upon it. His face looked the same as it always did in his dark, cobbler’s shop, his eyes pale and peering, with yellow stuff stuck in the corners. And when Chae spoke again, there was no more wonder to him.
‘I could hardly get near her to cut her down. She hadn’t opened her window for weeks, surely. Her room stank to Heaven.’
As the undertaker’s men shouldered the coffin, past condemnation turned to present pity.
‘She wasna’ the worst.’ Battleaxe dabbed tearless eyes. ‘If she’d got a bob she’d break it, and let you have the tanner.’
‘And that time my Ned was knocked off the mill, she never saw him without a Woodbine,’ Poll said, edging Gertie off the kerb, to get a better look at the coffin. ‘What a sin. Not even a flower allowed on it.’
Battleaxe assented sadly. ‘A funeral’s no’ a funeral without a flower.’
‘What you never had you never miss,’ Janie’s Mother broke in, appearing so suddenly behind the coffin, that she scattered the crowd. ‘And, what’s more, Mysie Walsh’s in the best place.’ She didn’t give the surprised women time to sharpen their tongues for the defence of such callousness to a corpse, but strode through them. Not even having the decency to stand still in that moment when Pinner crowned himself with his long, funeral hat and lifted his black cane to motion the hearse forward.
‘Well,’ said the Duchess when she had got her breath back. ‘Of all the hard-hearted bitches, that Liza MacVean takes the cake.’
‘She’ll miss Mysie Walsh for one,’ Poll prophesied, ‘She always knew where to go for the price of a bag of cinders. And that young Janie of hers always knew where to go for a bite.’
‘What’s more,’ Battleaxe said, looking furtively round to see where young Janie was, ‘what’s more, you’d expect Liza to cut up rough. Her and Mysie Walsh being partners in the business, as you might say. When one had too many clients, she handed the other the overflow.’
Janie had at last caught up with her Mother. Furiously. Accusingly. ‘You didn’t cry once, Mam. Everybody was sorry for Mysie Walsh, and cried, except you.’
‘There’s nothing to cry for.’ Liza didn’t look at the child. And didn’t slacken her stride. ‘Nothing at all. Death’s the poor man’s best friend. Burns said that. And do you know something? He was quite right. I’ll be back a bit earlier tonight. Here’s tuppence for you. And I’ve left coppers for the gas.’
‘How much?’ Gertie demanded, closing in.
‘Tuppence.’
‘But she said she left coppers for the gas, Janie.’
‘So she did.’
‘Well, you won’t be needing the gas for ages. We can have the lot between us. Birnie’s have got gingerbread men. Great fat ones. They only cost two a penny.’
* * *
The Lane settled down into an apathy edged with restiveness. Mysie Walsh’s funeral had ended too soon, leaving the rest of the day to stretch interminably before the women, leaning against the causeway, with their arms folded across their bosoms.
Janie and Gertie were not caught up in the surrounding apathy. The Lane was the world. And, being so, ever willing to offer up some new distraction. Like the Duchess’s scillas in the window-box. A blaze of blue.
‘It’s bound to be summer soon,’ Janie said, spying them. ‘The Duchess’s scillas are out, now. And then it’ll be Waifs and Strays’ picnic. I’m going to eat till I burst, this year. I was too excited to eat last year. And I wished for days after that I’d eaten everything.’
‘Me too,’ Gertie agreed. ‘I’m going to get tore into all the stuff this time. Only it’ll be a long time till it comes.’
‘And I’ll have new boots, soon,’ Janie went on, trying to reach the picnic sooner, by marking time off with small landmarks. ‘I’m due for a ticket for new boots soon.’
‘My Mam won’t apply for a ticket any more.’ Gertie was rueful. ‘Because the man that gives you the tickets tried to put his hand up her clothes. My Dad wasn’t half flaming. Said he would knock him into next week. But Mam said not to. He gives the tickets for Free Coal too, you see. And he mightn’t have given us one. Not if my Dad had bashed him one.’
An old envy of Gertie’s Dad crept over Janie. That big coal carter, with a voice that could frighten Cruelty Inspectors and Sanitary Men, making them small and wordless and quick to disappear. Gertie didn’t know what it was to sneck the door and hide under the bed when they came. Her Dad was there to attack the attacker, shouting right down the Lane after him:
‘She’ll go to school when she’s got boots to her feet. And that’ll be when I can afford them.’
Not like us, Janie thought. My Mam is afraid of them all. And I get frightened for her. And there’s nobody to knock the Free Boot Man into next week if he tries to put his hand up our clothes.
Janie had created a Father for herself. It was easier to make a completely new Father, than to build from the scant facts she knew about the original:
‘You’ve got your Father’s eyes,’ her Mother would say when she was in a temper. ‘Real wicked eyes. And he was a bad one. By God he was.’
Or, when her Mother was in a mood, mellowed sometimes by the Lane’s own mood, warm and kind, gathering its occupants round its causeway in an expansive oneness, with Poll’s voice singing over them:
Abie, Abie, Abie my boy
What are you waiting for now?
You promised to marry me
One day in June.
It’s never too late,
But it’s never too soon.
Janie’s Mother would squeeze Janie’s hand, whispering through Poll’s song: ‘Your Father could take music out of a tin whistle. That he could. He had so much music to him.’
It had been difficult to take these solitary, contradictory facts and build one complete Father out of them. So Janie, perforce, had given life to a new Father. And death too. Death eliminated awkward questions to which Janie hadn’t got the answer. Gertie had accepted it all as if it wasn’t a lie at all:
‘So that’s why you and your Mam go up to the Cemetery every Sunday?’
‘Don’t be daft!’ Janie had protested, momentarily forgetting her fabrication. ‘My Mam just goes for the walk, and I go to pinch the flowers out of the green bins. Yon little white angel we have on our mantelpiece, I took that too, once. We do look at my Father’s grave,’ she added hurriedly, remembering. ‘Do you know what it says on his stone, Gertie? It says Asleep In Jesus. You can come with me one Sunday to see for yourself.’
Dusk had drawn the Lane into its folds. The women at the causeway had become part of its pattern, absorbed into the greyness of the walls they leant against. Battleaxe leapt in sudden protest against this loss of her individuality. ‘It’s gone six,’ she said, bending to retrieve her teapot between her feet. ‘My Joe’s due home.’
‘What’s more,’ the Duchess cried, coming to life and darting for second place at the pump, ‘this perisher of a pump’s froze, or choked up or something. We’ll be all night squeezing a drop of water out of it.’
‘Not me!’ Battleaxe defended her nickname. ‘Not if I’ve got to rattle the guts out of the damned thing. My Joe works for his supper, so he does. Not like some I could name.’
Poll rose glinting-eyed to the bait: ‘My Hughie would work too, if he’d got work. But he was never the one to lick the Town Council’s arse. If he’d licked a bit more, he might have still been on the dust-cart.’
‘Meaning what?’ Battleaxe’s ears flew back and flicked. ‘If you’re insinuating that my Joe’s a Yes Man.’
‘I’m insinuating nothing.’ Poll was beyond fear. ‘I’m saying straight out that your Joe wasn’t kn
ocked off with the rest of them, because his wife’s tongue’s handy for the Council’s ears. Who was it that nipped up to the Town Hall and reported wee Lil’s bugs to the Sanitary? Tell us that!’
Wee Lil, proud of being the sudden centre of interest, gasped pink-faced and pleadingly: ‘I don’t know who reported my bugs. I only know that I’ve lived in the Lane all my days, and I’ve never reported nobody. You all know that.’
‘Because you haven’t got the guts. That’s why!’ Battleaxe’s skirt wheeled round wee Lil. ‘None of you have got any guts. Except when the beer’s inside you!’
‘There’s going to be a fight,’ Gertie prodded Janie excitedly. ‘Poll and Battleaxe are getting tore into each other at the pump. Come on and watch. Come on, Janie. Don’t be such a fearty.’
Janie was a fearty. Feared of so many things that left Gertie unafraid. Like the women when they fought. Not looking like women any more. But dark and furious and whirling like witches Janie had seen in story books. Janie’s fear was never for the actual, but for the imagined. It could have been her Mother, lying there mauled and vulgar with her clothes up round her head, and blood trickling from her mouth. But that will never happen, Janie vowed to herself. Because I would fight for my Mam. I’d be so frightened for her, that I wouldn’t have fear left for myself at all. I’d become as strong as anything. I know I would. I’d batter the women’s heads against the cobbles, and squeeze their faces, and trample all over them with my feet. I’d just kill them, if they ever touched my Mam.
‘Here’s Sam’s Ernie coming to throw sawdust on the blood,’ Gertie said with regretful finality, as if this ritual truly ended the fight. ‘Anyhow, Battleaxe won, Poll had to get stitches.’
‘Ten stitches,’ young Alan assured them in the passing. ‘My Mother went with her in the ambulance to Casualty. Said she didn’t half bleed.’
The White Bird Passes Page 3
