by George Friel
He didn’t want to prolong Miss Partridge’s lonely agony at the staircase window, so after the minimum patience he hauled the bird out by the neck, and feeling life still throbbing there he squeezed it steadily till the pulsations stopped. But not until he had put the dead thing in the box and nailed down the lid did he go to the door and silently signal Miss Partridge she could come back to her empty house.
She wept over the coffin, wringing her hands, rocking and keening.
‘He was all I had to love and now I’ve nothing. What am I to do, oh what am I to do? The way he used to play with me and talk to me, aye, and listen to me! He was someone I could talk to when I came home at night. When I was happy so was he, and when I was in the dumps he used to try to cheer me up. He’d flap his wings and make funny sounds to make me smile and give me a row if I didn’t, and now I’ll never hear him again. Oh, we had such good times together! He had lots of wee tricks for me, and we used to fight together, but just in fun of course, my finger and his beak, and he never, never bit me, not once did he bite me. He was a good soul. He bit Tommy once, but it was Tommy’s own fault, he was tormenting him. He knew I loved him. And I’m sure he loved me too. That’s my share of happiness in this world over for ever. Oh, Shelley, Shelley, my own wee friend, where are you now? What’s to become of me?’
She buried him darkly at dead of night, not turning any sods though for a time she thought of digging his grave in the backcourt where leaning out the staircase window she could see where he lay at peace and he would always be near her. She had the exact spot in her mind. But she knew she couldn’t dig deep enough to keep him safe. The youngest children, who often sat in the backcourt excavating aimlessly with sticks and seaside spades, would turn him up in the spring. Then they would break open the plywood lid and trail the dead body round in triumph, scattering his feathers before the winds of March, and everyone would know it was her Shelley and laugh at her for burying him in so public a place and perhaps complain to the sanitary. The picture of Shelley’s grave being desecrated by straddlelegged infants probing the soil of the backcourt was cruelly alive to her visionary eye, and the fear of the neighbours making a fuss and maybe getting her fined impelled her to give up the idea of burying Shelley where she could see him. She thought of a safer way, though it went against her finer feelings to give in to it. She waited till one o’clock in the morning and with the clumsy coffin under her coat she slipped downstairs, along the street and round the corner to the Forth and Clyde Canal that stagnated a hundred yards behind the block. Swaying on the bank, tempted to follow the coffin, she threw it in.
I suppose it was only to be expected (anyway she wasn’t surprised, nor in the least put out, for she was too wound up about what she had to do) that she should have to pass Bobo and Dross making love at the foot of the stairs. She swept proudly on, head up, mouth tight, not even bothering to insult Bobo as usual, and Dross silently covered Bobo till Wee Annie was gone.
‘What’s that she’s carrying under her coat?’ Bobo whispered, wiggling her hips to let her skirt fall evenly about her knees. ‘What’s she trying to hide? You’d think she was in the pudding the way she’s all stuck out in front.’
‘You’ve got an unclean mind,’ Dross scolded her amiably.
‘There’s something up with her,’ Bobo declared. ‘Come on and we’ll see.’
She pulled Dross with her and they peeped round the close and watched where Wee Annie went.
‘She’s away to the Canal!’ Bobo cried, squeezing Dross’s hand in loving alarm. ‘Oh ma Goad! She’s gonna jump in I bet you.’
‘Your granny,’ Dross argued. ‘She’s no the kind. Come on back in the close. That dame aye interrupts me.’
‘She is so the kind but,’ Bobo contraried. ‘I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if she done herself in, the frustrated old bitch.’
She sidled into the street, drawing Dross with her, and keeping close to the shops followed Wee Annie round the corner. From a dark distance they saw her fumble at her front and then throw something into the dirty neglected water. There was a plop and a plump, and after a moment’s puzzled silence a screech of eternal sorrow.
‘What’s up with her?’ Dross fretted. ‘What’s she doing her nut like that for?’
‘Come on quick before she sees us,’ Bobo answered in distress. ‘She’s coming back!’
They scurried a retreat and Bobo was crafty. She led Dross into the close past her own so that Wee Annie didn’t see them on her way back upstairs.
‘I’m sure she was in a mood for trouble,’ Bobo explained. ‘She was better not to see us again. She was like somebody that had done murder. That scream, that was her conscience.’
‘Ach, you’re away wi’ the fairies,’ Dross complained. ‘She was just dumping some old rubbish, that’s all. An old pair of stays maybe.’
‘Wee Annie doesn’t wear stays,’ Bobo informed him coldly. ‘She’s got nothing to wear stays for.’
Miss Partridge never told anyone Shelley had died and she had thrown him in the Canal, and since nobody was ever in her house except her brother Tommy and Grace Christie it was some time before the neighbours were aware she no longer had a parrot. But Bobo spread her tale around, making a mystery, and the speculations about her secret trip to the Canal at one o’clock in the morning were wild and various. Alone in her silence, without a confidant or ally, Miss Partridge felt guilt go with her for a long time afterwards. It was perhaps odd for her, but she felt like an unmarried mother who had concealed a birth and smothered her infant in a back-close.
CHAPTER FIVE
Tommy Partridge always went to see his sister on Sunday. He would stay for an hour or two and he used to take off his jacket and roll up his sleeves and prepare a meal for them both with a couple of chops or bacon and eggs or sausages and liver he brought with him. He was sure it was the only square meal she had all week, and he told her so every time he served her.
‘Aye, cups of tea are all very well. There’s nobody fonder nor me of a cuppa. It’s a habit I got in the army. But you canny live on cups of tea and a fish supper now and again. You’re fading away to a skeleton, lassie. I’m telling you, if you stepped off the pavement you’d fall down a stank.’
She didn’t like to hear him keep on calling her skinny, and she didn’t like to see him with his sleeves up. His arms were hairy, and the anchors and mermaids tattoed on them were to her eyes an ugly emphasis of his masculine coarseness. She wanted to forget the world of matter, to escape from it, to be a disembodied spirit, hearing and seeing and thinking without being subject to the calls of nature, freed from the limitations of the flesh. To be skinny seemed to be at least part of the way there. But her brother talked as if sheer fat was one of the cardinal virtues of a good woman.
‘Och sure I remember you when you were a wee rolypoly, and look at you now! If you stood sidieways you’d never be noticed. Aw, come on now! Give us a smile! I’m only kidding you. You know I don’t mean to offend you. You eat up this rare bitta liver and we’ll sit back and talk about Papa and Mama, eh? When you and me was better off. And happier. Before we grew up into two old eedjits without a friend in the world.’
He knew she found peace in talking of the past, of her father and mother, of herself as a girl at school and a prize- winner, and him as her boneheaded wee brother who bossed and bullied her and still loved her. He had an anthology of family anecdotes, tedious they would have been to strangers, but the very substance of the ‘O Sweet Mystery of Life’ to him and to her, and although she knew them all she was always happy to hear them told again, and their number permitted infinite variations for each session of their familiar reminiscences. But the week after Shelley died she was in no mood for his routine of sloppy chitchat.
‘Haven’t you noticed anything?’ she asked, hurt he plainly hadn’t. ‘Shows how much attention you pay to me and to the little I had to keep me going, the few times you do condescend to call.’
‘Damn it all, now be fair! I’m here every week without fail,
like a recurring decimal, seven places and I turn up again, as sweet as pie.’
He basted the sputtering eggs, cross with her for belittling his loyalty.
He was so used to Shelley he had long stopped looking at him. He hadn’t much patience with canaries, budgies, parrots or any other domestic pets, cats and dogs included at the top of the list, but he had found it kept him out of trouble if he pretended not to notice her absurd affection for a squawker in a cage. After years of pretending he had come at last not to need to pretend. He quite honestly didn’t see Shelley when he visited his sister. But now a sob in her words and the glance she sneaked at the corner where the cage no longer stood jolted him as if he was on a bus with a bad driver.
‘What’s happened to your bird?’ he cried with cheerful curiosity, the cheerfulness called up in lieu of sincerity. ‘You know, the minute I came in I felt there was something missing.’
In his hasty attempt to put a makeshift sympathy on parade he made two blunders that cut through his sister like a January gale and made her more certain than ever there was no use talking to anybody about what was near and dear to her, because nobody understood. He called Shelley her bird as if her loved and lost companion was merely a nameless fowl she used to own, and he was aware of Shelley’s absence only as something missing. It made her weep again, and he had to fuss with a hankie and blurred phrases, trying to wipe her eyes and comfort her while the eggs got a crinkly brown round the edges, the liver curled and shrivelled, and the sausages went black.
She raved so much he was afraid she was going to go off her head again.
‘Shelley is with me now and for ever in eternity, but here and now mourning and weeping in this vale of tears I still have Grace, glory be to the Father, and I will save Grace from the death poor Shelley had to suffer, because all creatures must die, remember man, and not only man, but every beast of the field, every fowl of the air, and the fish in the rivers, even Shelley in his cage that seemed immortal he had lived so long, he was over ninety, I’m sure, he must have been nearly a hundred, but from the life of sin, that’s what I’ll save her from, from growing old in the world unto death. I’ll make sure she doesn’t grow up to be a Bonnar girl.’
When she said she still had Grace he thought she was using a term in theology, for he knew she had a great interest in all religions, he knew she learned off by heart Catholic prayers and Buddhist prayers impartially, read the bible every day and argued with herself about the grace of God and the eternal damnation of all sinners. But as she rambled on he identified Grace as the little girl who lived on the first storey, and he remembered that for many weeks his sister had kept dragging the name into every conversation, though she had never said anything to make him worry about the child.
‘Now, look, dear,’ he said sternly. ‘You keep wee Grace out of this. Put her right out of your mind. And don’t you bother your head about Robina Bonnar, it’s none of your business what she is, and anyway you’re wrong there, you know. You’re wrong! You’re not ever to do that again, what you did before, not even think about it. It’s bad for you, bad!’
He shook her like a child, and because he was shaking her he started shouting, and because he started shouting he got angry.
She seemed calm enough after that for the rest of the winter and on past the turn of the year, but she got him worried as badly as ever when he called on her one Sunday evening in the early spring. He made it an evening visit because he knew she always went for a walk in the Botanic Gardens on a Sunday afternoon when the fine weather came back. She sat at the table with her nose in her bible, and she looked so sedate he was ready to forget he had ever thought she was getting her daft ideas again. But when she was drinking tea with him after they had eaten the steak and onions he dished up, she suddenly spoke out.
‘I’ve been reading the Gospels again and I’ve been thinking. It says in the Gospel according to Saint John—’
She took up her book, her nose almost on the page. She ought to have been using reading glasses, but she wouldn’t. It was a little point of vanity in her, though nobody ever thought she was particular about her appearance. She read out to him in a good clear voice.
‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’
He stroked the bridge of his nose, unsure of her purpose, and the divine words gave him a picture of a brave soldier fatally holding off the Zulus or Fuzzy-Wuzzies with a jammed gatling while his comrades retreated to fight again, of a big-hearted captain giving up his place in the lifeboat, I’ll stick to the ship, lads, you save your lives, a miner on his knees, hands flat on the ground, his broad back taking to death the strain of a cracking roof to let his mates crawl clear, and the voice of a schoolboy rallied the tanks. But he didn’t feel she had anything like that in mind. His fingers travelled down his nose and tapped the tip of it as he squinted across at his sister.
‘Aye yes,’ he said cautiously, an old fear quickening his heart. ‘That’s a well-known saying from the bible. It’s what they put on the epitaph on the Square, isn’t it?’
She gave him neither a yea nor a nay. She looked up from the text and stared at the corner where Shelley used to talk to her.
‘I’ve been thinking. No, that’s not true. It’s not me that’s been thinking. It’s somebody thinking thoughts through me. An angel came to me on Friday night, one of the seven, and he discussed it with me. He made the point perfectly clear by heavenly logic.’
She stopped as if she had made it perfectly clear to him too and merely awaited his formal agreement.
‘What point?’ he asked timidly.
‘Take an infant,’ she said, like reading the start of a recipe. ‘Baptise her. Then she dies. What happens? Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost he shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But she’s been baptised. And she can’t have any sin on her soul. She’s too young. So what will happen? She’ll go straight to Heaven. Even if she’s not an infant exactly. Up till when? Seven eight nine ten? So would it not be a good thing if the mother baptised her child and then killed her? Oh, I know what you’ll say to that. The mother has committed murder and she’ll go to Hell. But will she? Think. Maybe the law will put her to death. Then she has laid down her life for her child. Even if it wasn’t her own child it would still apply.’
‘That’s not right,’ he stood up to her bravely. ‘It’s not like that. That’s a kind of sharp practice. You can’t cheat God that way. That’s not what’s meant.’
‘Suppose you don’t kill her,’ she went on through his interruption. ‘The child would grow up like the Bonnar girl, destined for damnation for all eternity. Any child that grows up is doomed to damnation today. There’s no faith, no religion, no morals, no piety anywhere. Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. And God would forgive a mother who laid down her life for her child to make sure her child entered into the life eternal because she had shown the love to do it, and greater love than this hath no man.’
He couldn’t argue with her. He just stared, sitting at one end of the table with her at the other, the silent backcourt three storeys below them, silent and empty because no children dared play there on the Sabbath Day, and he knew he must do something, but he wasn’t sure what.
‘I often feel Grace is my child,’ she said softly.
That was when he made up his mind to warn Grace’s parents.
He had a bad week in the Phoenix, with a buzzer always in his head, butterflies in his stomach, and a flutter-by in his hands, so worried he was, and after his night’s work he went to bed late to put off the sleepless hours, and he lay on his back and he lay on his right and he lay on his left, turn and turn about till three and more in the morning, fretting in his lonely bed about his sister. She was all he had left of his own blood, but he felt his blood was getting thin. It made him unhappy to think he would maybe be better off without her. He suffered all the guilt of disloyalty, he was hot and bothered with the shame of being a bad brother, when he lay
awake knowing he wanted to have her put away again. For her own good, he answered his conscience. It would be the best thing for everybody. But he knew she was crafty and could outwit him if it came to a battle. She would never go inside willingly, and until she was quite mad and helpless she would beat any plans he made to have her certified. The least he could do in the meantime was warn the Christies not to let Grace be alone with her. And even there he would have to be careful.
‘Guile,’ he said to the darkness. ‘I must use guile. She’s clever. Well, it simply means I’ve got to be cleverer.’
If she saw him visiting the Christies she would guess what he was trying to do. She would be offended, she might tell him never to come and see her again, she might do something violent at once if she was afraid time was getting short. He would have to wait till the end of the week and go round on Sunday afternoon when she was out at the Botanic Gardens. That would give him an hour or two in safety. He could be up the close and down again and call on her in the evening, and she wouldn’t know he had been there before. He made a dangerous mission of it, seeing himself in the dim hours before the dawn as an agent penetrating enemy territory with a message for the underground opposition.
He wasn’t helped any by the week’s custom in the Phoenix. Bobo and her pals were in oftener than usual because Dross had a three cross double up on a pound stake, and he heard his sister’s name dropped with a frivolous clanging every time he passed. He had a feeling they were deliberately teasing him, trying to provoke him, the way they talked about her so loudly without formally identifying her. But he was sure they knew damn well he knew who Wee Annie was. He was hurt. It wasn’t nice of them. Their merry allusions and flippant innuendoes every time he crossed within earshot seemed to him a childish exercise in the old addition sum about insult and injury.
He changed direction abruptly, like a soldier check- stepping in company drill, when Yowyow raised his glass and declared a toast.
