“A conversation you cannot have with him,” Uncle Mendel said as he stuffed his pipe with tobacco from a leather pouch. “Yet I am sure what you say he understands.”
Avram waited for more but Uncle Mendel had retreated into his own world as he savoured the first draws on his pipe.
“How is Celia?” Avram asked. It was strange to utter the name. He flushed to the sound of it.
“Ah, Celia.” Uncle Mendel sighed. “One of these suffragettes she is becoming. A rally here, a rally there. Handing out leaflets. Martha is frightened she will be arrested. But these days, everywhere Martha sees enemies. I don’t tell this to my sister. But of Celia I am secretly proud.”
Avram imagined Celia standing on street corners, distributing her propaganda, her earnest face shining with the same excitement he had seen as she turned towards the demonstrations in George Square.
“Wouldn’t you like to take part in all these demonstrations, Uncle?”
“I’m helping. In my way.”
“Helping to promote your socialism?”
“The ordinary working people, they are angry. Not just because of the rent increases and the evictions. But the poverty and the lack of housing. For Jew and non-Jew alike.” Uncle Mendel shrugged then went back to noisily sucking his pipe. “I am not in Glasgow often. What can I do?”
Avram glanced out of the inn’s open door to the harbour where the usual swarm of seagulls hovered and cawed above the fishyards. A few craft bobbed around quietly in the bay as the weak afternoon sun cast a gentle glow over the whole town. He looked to his feet, his boots scuffed and dirty from the football. He could feel his toes scrunched up into the too tight fit. He would buy himself new shoes. That would be his first purchase in the town now he had a wage coming in. Then another pair of boots just for the football.
“You could go straight back to Glasgow,” he said hesitantly.
Uncle Mendel looked at him with eyes red and bleary from the drink and the smoke. “What’s that you say, boychik?”
“I’ll stay on here. You go back.”
“What nonsense are you talking? I have just arrived.”
“Let me remain here to do the rounds of the customers. Come back like you did today and check on me. Collect the money. Take the orders. Bring me samples.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
“Why not? You said you could do more if you were in Glasgow.”
“What will Herschel and Martha say?”
“They can’t say anything. I am not their son. I am a nothing to them.”
“That is not true.”
“Well, then?”
“You are too young to run a business.”
“What have I just done for the last fortnight?”
“Even so.” Uncle Mendel scrutinised the shot glass cradled in his large hands as if the answer lay somewhere floating in the amber liquid. He stayed like this for sometime and Avram was not sure whether he was pondering the offer or he had just disappeared into some daydream.
“Let’s have another drink,” Uncle Mendel said eventually. “And I will think about it.”
Still woozy from the beer, Avram supported his uncle back to the station for the three o’clock train to Glasgow. The man rested heavy and awkwardly on his shoulder, singing some Hassidic melodies close to his ear. Halfway there, Uncle Mendel’s legs slipped, nearly toppling both of them and it was only with the help of a passerby did he manage to get his uncle back on his feet again. At the station platform, Uncle Mendel attempted a clumsy embrace before stepping on to the carriage steps of the train. Avram was ready to wave him off, but Uncle Mendel stepped back down on to the platform. His black hat was swept back far off his sweaty forehead, his tsitsis hung out in a tangle from beneath a loose shirt flap. The money-belt stretched tight around his waist like an unwieldy girdle. It should have been a comical sight but instead Avram found it tragic. It was as if he suddenly could see right through to the drunken heart of the man. “Tuck yourself in. Or someone will rob you.”
Uncle Mendel made an exaggerated effort at stuffing his shirt back into his waistband. Then, a moment of clarity seemed to sweep over his eyes and he poked a finger at Avram’s chest. “Don’t forget.”
“Don’t forget what?”
“Don’t forget you’re a Jew.”
“Yes, yes, yes. Of course, Uncle.”
“It’s easy to forget who you are out here.”
“Yes, yes. Now please get back on the train.”
“Promise me,” he said, grabbing Avram’s jacket by the lapels. “Promise me.”
“No. I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“Because that is exactly what I want to do. Forget that I am a Jew.”
Uncle Mendel’s face was close to his own, his eyes bulging with disbelief, his lips trembling as they tried to form words that wouldn’t come.
“You’re drunk,” Avram said, easing him away gently. “And you need to get on this train.” The stationmaster’s whistle blew and Avram pushed Uncle Mendel back on board.
He sat down on a station bench, closed his eyes, listened to the last churn of the engine pull out of earshot. He dozed like this for a while, letting the alcohol sweep through his bloodstream until he found himself with a clearer head. Then he rose and squeezed his way along a fenced-in corridor between the station and the edge of the pier until he found a gap in the wooden slats. From there, he could see into a yard where a group of young leather-aproned women were gathered round an enormous trough overflowing with the silvery-grey bodies of captured herring. The women chatted and laughed as they greedily dipped their rag-bound hands into the salty mass of bodies. As quickly as the fish were gutted and tossed into baskets, fishermen off the boats re-filled the trough with more creels of herring. Behind the trough, men in suits, their trousers tucked into wellington boots, laid out some of the day’s catch for sale on the washed-down concrete while others packed the remaining fish into barrels. Archie Campbell was among another group hooping up and sealing the barrels.
“Didnae expect to see ye so soon, Glesca boy,” Archie said.
“Me neither. When’s the next game?”
“Next Saturday. Here at home. Three o’ clock kick-off.”
“I’ll be there,” he promised with a handshake. He then left Archie to his task, picked up his parcels from the Oban Arms, hitched a ride on a horse-drawn cart back to the Connel Bridge.
As he lay stretched out on the back of the wagon, he saw the clouds scurry overhead, sensed the approach of rain. He sorted out his parcels so as to defend them best against the wetness to come with a cover of empty potato sacks. The temperature dropped quickly, the greyness closed in like a heavenly wraith. He wrapped his jacket tight, pondered the events of the last two days. Windows of real hope had opened up for him and he knew he had to take his chances quick for fear they might close up again. He thought of Megan and wondered how soon it would be until they could be together again. He thought of the prospect of playing proper football on a Saturday with Argyll Thistle. He thought of the coins he’d have in his pocket from treading the countryside as a credit draper. He pulled his arms around himself as if to keep this sudden good fortune from escaping. Or from keeping the evil spirits at bay. The rain started to spit and he warmed to the vision of the shelter lying ahead of him at the Kennedys’ cosy hearth. He closed his eyes, felt his tastebuds moisten to the imagined smell of Mrs Kennedy’s rashers sizzling in the pan.
Thirty-five
IT TOOK ONE WEEK FOR NEWS OF THE END of the Great War to reach Avram. And when it did, he wondered how peacetime would affect his life. The conflict had rumbled on at the edge of his consciousness like a thundercloud on the horizon without it ever really touching him directly. In the last few months, he had merely borne witness to a countryside mourning the loss of its menfolk who had not returned, pitying the plight of those who had. But the women had rolled up their sleeves, tethered the ploughs and got on with the farm work. They had raised the bai
rns, grown the crops, milked the cows, sheared the sheep, tied up the stooks and rocked in their chairs waiting for the return of their husbands and sons both with a sense of longing and with an air of defiance. Now these same women lined the streets of Oban, standing stoically under their umbrellas and the sodden bunting, waiting for the peace parade to turn into the main street. He stood with them, football boots slung over his shoulders, his knees and shins muddied from the game just played. In his pocket he carried Celia’s letter collected earlier from the post office. The noontime twenty-one gun salute from HMS Cumberland anchored out in the bay boomed over the town, sending the seagulls into a whirling frenzy above the fishyards. He could hear the sound of the pipe bands, the appreciation of the crowd for the parade’s approach along the esplanade. Yet part of his attention was not on the direction of the music, but on the vacant doorway to Donald Munro’s pharmacy.
The front phalanx of the procession swept into view to the moan of the bagpipes, with the Laird at the forefront in his tartans leading the other gentry of the county. It was the first time Avram had set eyes on the man. Even without knowing beforehand that the region’s wealthiest landowner would be leading the procession, he would have recognised him from his bearing. He stood straight-backed – a good inch or two taller than his land-owning counterparts – and his stride was brisk and purposeful as he tapped his walking stick to the drumbeat. Under thick tufts of eyebrows standing out from his face like hanks of cotton wool, the Laird’s gaze was fixed forward in a blinker against the crowd. And the expression on the thin, mean lips of his long face was so grim that a naive observer might have thought the man to be leading this procession into war rather than in a celebration of peace.
Behind the Laird came another line of civilians, including Donald Munro, then the marching band, then the soldiers. Alongside ran the children, waving flags or dancing around fathers they’d almost forgotten. The men walked proudly, yet there was a fear in their eyes as they took in the support of the crowd. It was not just the fear of war – for that was forever bombarded into their hearts and minds. It was the fear of knowing that the life they had once left behind had been altered irredeemably. And that the source of that change rested in the bosoms of their womenfolk.
Avram finally spotted Megan. She had pulled away from the crowd following the procession, taken refuge from the rain in the pharmacy doorway. Jean Munro was with her, and he watched them both huddled together like sisters under their single umbrella, waving to the columns of soldiers as they marched by. Megan was on tiptoe, on a look-out for him, stretching her neck in a twist here and there, not caring for the drops of rain matting strands of her hair to her cheeks. Even under her long coat, he could see she was a full woman now. As did many of the soldiers in the march who momentarily lost their rhythm to let out a whistle or to glance admiringly at the two young women in the doorway. And he felt proud, too. Proud that she was his. Proud in the knowing of that figure under the coat. The whiteness of her body as it wriggled and writhed beside his own. The dampness of her passion under her armpits and between her thighs. Knowing each birthmark, each freckle, each follicle, each fold of flesh. Yet their coupling remained unconsummated. She had relented to the insertion of his fingers into her moistness. But she wouldn’t allow him to do the same with his erect penis, even though she was happy to pump away at it until he spilled his seed in a moan all over her stomach, across the tops of her thighs.
“Just like milking Fladda,” she would say as she wiped the stickiness over his chest. If she had the experience to know the difference between his circumcised penis and any others she might have handled, she did not say. And he chose not to ask for fear of the answer. Instead, he persisted with his usual question.
“When will you let me inside you?”
To which he received the usual reply. “I’ll be a virgin lass till I’m married.”
He had Jean Munro to thank for continuing to host these sessions with Megan, watching over them like some patron saint, a proud hen with her brood, until she had to drive off into the night to fetch her drunk husband. Sometimes she would return alone with an empty wagon and an easier whip to the horse. Then the lights would go on throughout the mansion and they would sit by the French window where he taught the two young women to play cards while the stars lit up across the black water.
“And the important thing is,” he would tell them, “never be low in hearts.”
Megan looked up from her delicately fanned-out hand. “Aye, I like that,” she said. “I like that.”
In return, Megan would coach him in the ballads of the Highlands while Jean Munro, for all she couldn’t speak, expressed herself fiercely on the Jew’s harp. They would drink whisky from Donald Munro’s crystal decanter until the fire was in their cheeks then dance flings, reels, jigs and ridiculous hornpipes to Jean’s frenzied plucking of the harp’s tongue. If the weather was dry and the night warm, they would open the doors and race whooping across the lawn to the peninsula’s edge. He would watch the two friends cavorting in their shifts on the grass like two banshees and knew, as much as the girls knew, that these moments were precious. And as he followed his round of customers in the days after, he would be forever poised in a tension between anticipation and disappointment, never knowing when or where Megan’s message would be waiting for him again. He continued to watch her in the doorway as she strained to catch sight of him, her brow scrunched in a frown at his lateness. He remembered Celia’s letter in his pocket.
You have been away too long. The war is over and life is changing for all of us. For the better, thank God. Papa’s health has improved and he goes into work a couple of times in the week. Mama even sings again to Uncle Mendel’s banging on the piano. Solly visits often and asks for you. But the biggest change is with Nathan. He is so much better now. He wants to see you. We all want to see you. Please come back to visit us, Avram. We don’t understand why you won’t come. We miss you.
When he thought of Glasgow now, he didn’t think of the people he knew in the way that Celia listed. Instead, he felt Glasgow as a mixture of winter darkness and warmth. Not the warmth of the Kahn’s flat, for that was always draughty. But the warmth of the Sabbath candles, the bowls of borsht, the chestnuts from the brazier, the fingers frantically fiddling with playing cards, the huddled bodies of the football crowds at Cathkin, Nathan’s brow, Celia’s fiery cheeks, Fiona Cameron’s hand in his inside the picture house. Never summer and light. But winter darkness and warmth. That was Glasgow. That was the Gorbals.
He felt for the letter in his pocket, crumpled it up in his hand. He still had a hankering to see Celia again, face up to her as the young man he had become – stronger and taller, his cheeks and chin smooth from the razor, his body more confident in a woman’s touch and presence. But he had his own plans now. And he couldn’t wait to tell Megan.
Twenty-one shillings a week. That was his weekly pay. The rest of the contents of the money-belt went back to Glasgow for stock, and no doubt some of it drifted into the hands of Solly under the nom de plume Baked Fish. But twenty-one shillings. One pound one shilling. One guinea. With not a lot to spend it on. Except the box of linen handkerchiefs that he now held in his hand. Each embroidered with a tiny delicate thistle in one corner and the letter ‘M’ in another.
He waited for a gap between regiments, then ran across to Megan. But someone else reached her first. A young soldier swept off his cap, lifted her high in his arms. She let out a yelp, beat the hoist down with her fists on the man’s back until her pounding softened into an embrace.
“Oh, Jamie,” she said, collapsing her head on to his shoulder. “Ye’ve come hame.” Then she pushed him away, urgently patted his body under the loose cape of his coat. “Are ye all in one piece?”
Jamie fully opened his greatcoat. “Aye, every bit of me. I only lost one thing in my travels. And that’s not for me to be telling my wee sister.”
Jamie’s hair may have been cropped so it showed no resemblance to Megan’s lavi
sh locks, but Avram could see his smile was identical to his sister’s. And it was with that smile Jamie turned to tease Jean Munro.
“And who is this bonnie lass ye have alongside?”
For all her frozen emotion from an icy marriage, Jean Munro’s cheeks warmed to the attention. And even a kind of squeal escaped her mute lips when Jamie Kennedy lifted her in the same way he had his sister.
“Jamie,” Megan said, pulling him towards Avram. “Here’s someone to meet.”
Jamie towered over him. Broad-shouldered, well over six feet, with a face that could have been hewn out of a Glen Etive quarry. What could there have been in years between them? Three at most. Yet Jamie seemed a generation older. There was a war between them. A war, that had shown Jamie what death was. And courage. And horror. And fear. When Jamie shook his hand, Avram realised he knew nothing of these things. He felt small and naive before the returned soldier. He felt like a nothing and knew nothing. Except that three years and a war made a big difference.
“Who d’ye play?” Jamie asked, eyes narrowing in his scrutiny of the muddied boots hanging over Avram’s shoulder.
“The Army. A friendly to mark the celebrations.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
Jamie glanced at his sister and laughed. “Well, did ye win?”
“It was a draw.”
“That’ll please everyone and no-one.”
“It’ll please us. We didn’t think we had a chance.”
“Who’s that?”
“Argyll Thistle.”
Jamie let out a whistle. “The Thistle were really useful before all this began.”
The Credit Draper Page 23
