“Once ye start school, Begg’ll want ye,” Solly said, tossing a stone after a cat from their perch on a mound of wasteland near their street.
“Who’s Begg?” Avram asked. He liked this, just the two of them, sitting together easy as dusk approached, sometimes silent, sometimes talking when an idle thought arose needing to be spoken.
“Ye’ll find out soon enough.”
“I want to know now.”
“He’s the gym teacher. A cruel one-eyed bastard. They say he was a prizefighter once, lost his eye in a bare-knuckle contest. Ye can see him sometimes at the back of the assembly hall, walloping the shite out of a punch-bag. He does the same with the tawse.”
“What’s that?”
“A thick leether strap. He’ll wallop the shite out of ye with that too. Any excuse. I’ve seen him break fingers with it. I’ve even seen him burst open one boy’s veins with it. All the blood spurting out.” Solly looked at him deadpan, miming with a sprinkle of his fingers a fountain of blood flowing out of his wrists. “Like steaming piss.”
Avram got the message even though he didn’t understand all of the words. “You lie to me.”
“No, I don’t. Ye’ll see. He puts a towel over yer wrists now to stop it happening. Ye should see the line of sick notes for gym class. Begg takes it as a compliment.”
“Why will this Begg want me?” It was Avram’s turn to pick up a stone. He looked for a suitable target, let fly at a broken wheel. The stone clattered off a spoke into a muddy puddle. “He does not know me.”
“Coz yer a natural.”
Avram smiled. “A Patsy Gallacher.”
“Aye, maybe. And d’ye know why yer so good?”
“At throwing stones?”
“At the football, ye daft bampot.”
But the connection between football and stones wasn’t lost on Avram. For he recalled his initial inspired touch of the ball during that first street game in Biblical terms. He’d felt just how he imagined the young King David must have felt, kneeling down to pick up a pebble for his catapult. Feeling in his palm the smoothness, the roundness, the effectiveness of the selected stone. Knowing instinctively this was the object that would fit perfectly in his sling, that would fly most accurately, that would shape his destiny.
“God gave me a gift.”
“Don’t get so big-heided.”
“What is it then?”
“Naw. It’s not that, Patsy. It’s something else. Something I’ve noticed.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s that ye never take yer eyes off yer feet. Other boys’ll look up to set up a pass, or a cross or a shot. Or they’ll be put off by a defender rushing at them. Ye just keep yer eyes on yer feet.”
Eight
CELIA SKIPPED AHEAD, singing as she went:
“You’ll never meet your mither till she’s gone
Gone wi’ yer claes tae the pawn
If you dinnae meet her there
You’ll meet her on the stair
Blind drunk, wi’ the ticket in her haun.”
Avram was caught between catching up with her or waiting for Nathan who was lagging.
“What’s ‘the pawn’?” he called after her.
“Stupid boy. I’m not telling you.”
“Come on. What is it?”
“I told you. I’m not telling you”.
“You don’t know, that’s why.”
“Course I do.”
She stuck out her tongue at him then waltzed further ahead, singing: “Avram doesn’t know what the pawn is,” her voice niggling him until he longed to chase after her, to prod and tickle her into confessing she did not know. But Nathan was groaning behind him, tangled up with the straps of his satchel.
“Are you happy or sad today?” he asked him as he helped the younger boy’s arms through the straps.
The boy beamed at the question. “Nathan is happy.”
“Why?”
“Because you are.”
He thought about this. Yes, he was happy. He had been looking forward to school for months now. His street friends were there. There would be proper football. Not just with a tanner ball on the streets, but on pitches with a real leather ball and goalposts. He looked forward to the lessons in a language and dialect he was beginning to understand. He looked forward to studying with numbers.
“Is Nathan happy because Nathan is happy? Or only because Avram is happy?”
“Nathan feels nothing about himself.”
He looked at the boy. He seemed so fragile. Nathan never played out in the streets. At the very most, he would sit on the close-step and watch. Never taking part, hardly speaking to anyone. He could become totally absorbed in scratching a stone on the pavement surface or watching the drip, drip, drip from a cleaning cloth left out to dry. And those deep circles around his eyes. So much pain hidden there, yet for the moment Nathan’s lips were fixed in a serene smile.
Celia was back, running round in teasing circles. “Avram doesn’t know what the pawn is.”
“What’s wrong with your brother?”
“You keep asking me that. And I keep telling you. There’s nothing wrong with him. Are you all right, Nathan?”
Nathan nodded.
“See. He’s even smiling.”
“But he’s so quiet.”
She took Nathan’s hand, pulled him along with her, chanting her taunt. Nathan twisted his head back awkwardly to look at him. He was still smiling.
“School’s for bampots,” Solly said authoritatively, his mouth and tongue stained black from sucking on a liquorice stick. “There’s nothing worth learning. ’Cept reading and writing.”
“What about your times tables?” Avram asked.
“I already know ma ’rithmetic.” Solly boasted that ever since he was seven years old he could work out the return on a penny bet at thirteen-to-eight on the favourite at Ayr. “That’s about it,” he declared. “The rest is a waste of time. I’m leaving soon as I reach fifteen. I’m going to earn a wage.”
Avram didn’t agree with his friend. He liked school. He liked to learn. He liked his jotters and his blotting paper. He liked the double desks with their inkpots and ink stains, and to read and feel the deeply scored desecrations made on the hinged lids by previous occupants. He liked the display of maps on the walls from which he could constantly review the journey he had made to this country or wonder at the extent of the British Empire. He liked to monitor his progress in learning by his movement away from the front of the class.
As the new boy, he had been seated right next to the teacher’s desk on the first day. But after each test he had slowly moved backwards until he was now well into the top half of the class. Sometimes there would be a space when someone died. Then the seat would be left vacant for a week with a black ribbon tied to the back before everyone again moved up a space. Nobody wanted to end up at a dead child’s desk and Avram felt uneasy if he did, fearful of inheriting the lingering germs of the deceased’s disease. But very quickly, the spirit of the dead pupil vacated both the desk and the memory of the classmates, and he relaxed. On his academic ascent, he had passed Solly now but was yet to reach Celia who hid in the back row. She was the cleverest girl in the class.
“Escovitz!” screamed Roy Begg. “Over here!”
Avram trotted off the pitch to face the school sports master for the first time. Roy Begg stood tall with thinning greased-back hair, long cheeks that gave his face an equine shape, and a mouth frozen into a constant scowl. Over one eye, Roy Begg wore a black patch on a thong etching a deep ridge across his forehead, while the other good eye seemed to weep in perpetual mourning over the loss of its partner.
“Sir.” Avram was surprised to hear his voice come out steady, for his legs were shaking.
Roy Begg looked up from the list of players he had scribbled together for Sunday’s game. “You’re in the team. Left wing.”
He watched Begg chew out other words, his jaw snapping like a seagull’s empty beak. He noticed the
cropped shadow of the man’s shaving glistening with the sheen from some pungent lotion and he felt the glare of his classmates as they looked on. He wanted to turn round to them and shout ‘I’m in the team’ but he stood still with his fists clenched tight around his joy. For that was what Solly had told him. “Don’t show any emotion or he’ll pick on you, like Wee Jimmie picks his spots.” They both had laughed at the joke but he knew the seriousness of the advice. Yet as he stood there petrified by Begg’s one-eyed stare, his fingers stayed wrapped around his elation not just because of Solly’s warning but because he never wanted to let it go.
Wallop. The slap across the top of his head stung him back to attention.
“Are you listening, boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I might even play you later in the senior team,” Roy Begg continued. “But you’re still a runt. You’ll need to put on a bit of beef before I can do that.”
Avram remained tight-lipped. He would ask Solly later what a ‘runt’ was.
“And don’t get any fancy ideas, Escovitz.” Begg stabbed a pencil in his direction. “You’ve got talent, that’s for sure. But it will need nurturing. And discipline. You’re mine now. Do you understand? From now on, you’re mine.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What are you?”
“I’m mine.”
He flinched to another slap across his head.
“What are you?”
“I’m yours.”
“That’s better. And don’t forget that.”
He turned to run on to the pitch but Roy Begg called him back.
“And one more thing you should know, Escovitz.”
Roy Begg stared at him with one watery blue eye until he was forced to ask:
“What is that, sir?”
“I don’t like Jews, Escovitz. I don’t like Jews.”
Nine
THE SOUND OF THE BRASS KNOCKER on the front door echoed in the cold, unlit hallway, intruding on the quiet of the Sabbath afternoon, rousing Avram’s attention from the football cards spread out on the floor. Madame Kahn looked up from her book, clucked disapprovingly. Her husband had gone to lie down while she sat reading before the light of a fire of her own making, her bare legs blotched red from the licking closeness of the flames. Avram was surprised she allowed herself this transgression of fire-lighting on the Sabbath, but Madame Kahn always had the same answer to any comments about her sin. “If our forefathers lived in the Gallowgate and not the Galilee, believe me they would light fires on Shabbos.”
Celia leapt to her feet, darted out of the room. She returned with a contrite-looking Solly.
“He wants to know if Avram can go out for a walk,” Celia announced.
Madame Kahn glowered at Avram, then at Solly, as if trying to detect some sinful conspiracy. She nodded. “Go. But be back in time to collect my cholent.”
Solly bowed politely to Madame Kahn, then gestured with a flick of his head for Avram to come.
“Where do we go?” Avram whispered in the hallway.
“Ye’ll see.” Solly grabbed a tammy from the hat-stand, threw it at his friend. “Dress up warm. It’s right nippy outside.”
He followed Solly out into the cold where the fresh air felt good on his cheeks, drawn deep into his stifled lungs. He let Solly race off, glad to run after him, to move his limbs, to use up the energy lodged stodgily in his stomach. His legs were stiff at first, almost reluctant to exercise on this Day of Rest, but soon he was racing along the Gorbals streets in pursuit.
“Where do we go?” he called out again, but Solly had turned a corner into another street. He followed but again Solly twisted away from him, raced ahead into an alley between the back of the tenements. Avram ran on steady, confident he could catch up with his heavier friend. But after a few more yards, he drew up sharp at the end of the pavement, as if it were the edge of a precipice he’d reached.
“Come on, Patsy,” Solly shouted. “What’s keepin’ ye?”
Where Solly stood waiting on the other side of the road, shops were open for business, pedestrians crowded the streets, tramcars and buses plied their daily routes, horse-drawn wagons ferried goods through the city.
Solly crossed back for him, grabbed his arm. “Get a move on. We have’nae much time.”
Avram stood his ground. “I’m not coming.”
“What? Don’t be a daft bampot. Come on.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not …” He struggled to find the words. “I don’t know. It’s not kosher.”
Solly laughed. “What are ye feart of?”
“Nothing.”
“Ye think God’s looking down on ye or something?”
Avram wrapped his arms around his chest, said nothing.
“I promise ye He isnae.”
“What do you know?”
“I’ll tell ye what I know. God’s got better things to do with His time than worry about what Avram Escovitz does on a Shabbos afternoon.”
“Like what?”
“Jesus, Patsy. I dinnae know.” Solly shrugged, screwed up his face as he searched for an answer. “Other people. People with big problems. People who are really suffering. Like … I dinnae know … like the Jews in Russia.”
Avram thought about this. “Maybe you’re right,” he said.
“Come on, then. We’re late already.”
Avram took off uneasily at Solly’s shoulder. But as they leapt in and out of the tramlines, the two of them racing across the south side of the city in the darkening afternoon, his burden of guilt was soon forgotten. They passed wagons being loaded in a railway goods yard, the belching towers of an electricity generating station, a giant hospital, picture houses splashed with matinée posters, a ballroom preparing for the night to come. They ran through the beery stench emanating from countless pubs, followed the tree-lined railings of a public park, then across a recreation ground of colourful crowded football pitches with their sidelines of staunch supporters.
“Almost there,” Solly panted.
“Where?”
“Round the next corner.”
Avram heard their destination before he saw it. A low rumble of voices conjoined into some audible life form, swishing and swirling in the air, rising sharply to a united gasp of disappointment, disintegrating into an outbreak of applause. He raced ahead past Solly, then stopped at the corner. There in front of him stood the stadium, pulsating from the presence of some vibrant beast locked within. A blanket of mist, cigarette smoke and steamy breath hovered above the stand and the terraces, the corrugated walls heaved from the bodies inside.
“Where are we?” he screamed, dizzy from the noise.
“Cathkin,” Solly said with a showman’s flourish of his hands. “Home of the Hi-Hi’s.”
The Hi-Hi’s. Avram knew the nickname of Third Lanark Football Club from the street games, along with others like ‘The Bully Wee’, ‘The Jags’, ‘The Spiders’, and especially ‘The Bhoys’ for Celtic and ‘The Gers’ for Rangers. He knew the names of the players too, memorised off cigarette cards Solly collected from customers coming out of the tobacco shops, from punters mulling around in the lanes outside his father’s betting premises. He knew these names better than he knew the names of everyday objects in the Kahn household. But the one card he had never seen was the one of his namesake, Celtic’s Patsy Gallacher. That was a collector’s item which never made it into Solly’s begging hands.
“We’ll soon get in,” Solly said. He’d joined a crowd of other boys huddled outside a paybox by a corrugated gate.
“I have no money,” Avram said.
Solly grinned back at him. “Me neither. They open the gates twenty minutes from the end to let people out. That’s when we nip in. Easy as you like.”
As Solly spoke, the gate was dragged aside, a few men in red scarves exited.
“What’s the score?” Solly asked.
“Three-nil to the Bhoys,” one of them muttered sourly.
“The Bhoys?” Avram said. “Celtic play in there?”
Solly grabbed him by the arm, pushed him through the gates along with the other boys who scattered like beetles into the rear of the crowd.
“Of course Celtic are playing. I’m taking ye to see yer hero. Come on. Down to the front quick. Or we won’t see a thing.”
Crouching down, Avram squeezed a path through a curtain of coat-tails, down terraces littered with the dregs of beef tea, cigarette butts squashed by feet stamping against the cold. The game carried on out of sight, but in his imagination he could see each move across the park from the noise above him and the straining of bodies in the direction of the ball. Just crawling through the forest of legs was a game in itself, finding a gap here and there to burrow through, avoiding the kicks and curses when he trod on a foot or grazed an ankle. Eventually he managed to twist out of the sea of spectators to arrive flat up beside Solly against the enclosure wall. It was as if he had emerged out of a caravan of stragglers into the Promised Land.
He gasped at the emerald expanse. “It’s so …”
Solly smiled. “So … what?”
“So … green.”
“What did ye expect?”
“I don’t know. Not like this.”
He couldn’t believe how close he stood to the pitch. So close he could smell the earthy aroma of the churned up turf. The players loomed as shiny giants above him in clouds of snorting breath, baggy shorts flapping around their thick white hairy thighs as they came in close to take a throw-in or to drag a ball along the touchline throwing up divots with their studs. The thwack of boots on leather echoed in his ears and around this stadium bowl awash in the colours of Third Lanark red and Celtic green. The same colours moved around the pitch in a twist and a weave and a swoop as the players followed the ball. At either end the goalkeepers’ bright yellow jerseys shone like warm beacons in the dying light.
The Credit Draper Page 5
