by George Friel
‘To funny Wee Annie!’
‘And here’s to the night we give her a fright,’ Yoyo clinked.
‘Right up her fanny,’ Yowyow concluded and sipped.
Tommy not only heard. In the only way you ever know what people mean, he knew he was meant to hear. The buzzer in his head bossed him more busily, the flutter in his hands flitted more floatingly, and he completed his half-incline to loom over the toasting table.
The clan was surprised to see the genie appear without being summoned. Bobo was the first to twig she must chop him down quick before there was a clash.
‘Hello Tommy, hello dear,’ she gave him a blonde welcome to brazen it out. ‘We was just talking about your sister. Why don’t you get her to come in here some night and have a drink with the girls and boys? Would do her a world of good, so it would but.’
He was too fond of Bobo to pick with her the fight he had meant to pick with one of them, any one of them. He got a hold on himself.
‘Oh, she’d never do that,’ he answered, mild, mannerly and managerial.
‘No?’ said Jean.
‘Poor kwa noan?’ said Yoyo.
‘What for?’ said Jess.
‘Well, she’s,’ Tommy tried slowly. ‘She’s well, well, she’s against drink. She doesn’t even like me working here. She thinks I’ve let the family down.’
‘Ah well, you canny look after the Lounge and the Bar and serve the Family too,’ Yoyo nipped in with parochial wit, because the Family was the local name for the Off- licence.
‘You know how it is,’ Tommy acknowledged Yoyo’s crack with a protocol smile. ‘She thinks the drink’s a bad thing. She believes it’s all wrong, you know.’
‘There’s a hell of a lot of things she thinks is all wrong,’ Dross muttered.
‘Aye well, maybe so,’ Tommy wouldn’t argue with Bobo’s boyfriend in case he annoyed Bobo. ‘But still. You’ve got to make allowances. She’s, you see, she’s never been used to getting out and about like, if you know what I mean, she’s all alone, poor soul. She’s got nobody or nothing. She lives too much in herself I think. Looks into herself all the time. You know what I mean. Sees nothing but herself like in a mirror.’
‘We were talking about a wee ploy to cheer her up,’ said Jean.
‘A sort of practical joke we had in mind,’ explained Jess.
Tommy was puzzled. More, he was frightened.
‘Nae harrum intendit,’ said Yoyo.
‘They’ve been talking about it for months,’ Bobo disowned it.
‘Leave her alone for goodness sake,’ Tommy pleaded. ‘Don’t start any fun and games with her just now. She’s not keeping well.’
They had him worried, but he shirked picking the fight he had meant to pick. If he turned rough on them they might do something quick to his sister just to show him it wasn’t wise to defend her. Misgivings paralysed him, panic inhibited him. He was a man confident enough in his own job, calm in dealing with its snags, at ease in coping with its people. But the danger to his sister pressed all the spirit out of him. He hunched and huddled and stretched and sighed that night in his darkness, thinking it would be for her own safety if he could get her inside again. Loud in his troubled skull he heard the young voices jabbering, the girls squealing and the boys crowing, and the pain of their mockery was renewed in him. It was bitter in his mouth that a little clan he quite liked should laugh at his sister and want to play tricks on her just because she was a bit eccentric. Then he wasn’t so sure it was only a bit, and that made him worry more about his sister than about the plans of Bobo’s friends. His anxieties rankled his guts and his sleeplessness dragged on round a circle of insolubles.
I think it was during the same week that Bobo and Hugh Main had another cosy chat at the staircase window about Big Tonalt. After their chat in the Phoenix about him, she had faced Donald boldly the next time she saw him. She had no use for simpering, blushing, or making eyes silently. She believed in taking the bull by his horns.
‘I believe you and me’s to get better acquaintit,’ she said for a start, and he was the one that blushed, not her.
She couldn’t do much with him, but she tried to edge him on over a week or two, blethering to him on the stairs or at the closemouth instead of passing him by as she used to do. She looked for him to make some advance, willing to help him at the least sign of one, but he was handless, taking his own time.
‘Yon’s an awful drip,’ she told Main. ‘But mind you, he’s funny as well. He gets that earnest, so he does. Kind of intense like.’
‘He’s not bad when you get to know him,’ Main said to encourage her. ‘The fact you even talk to him is a big help. That’s what he needs, a girl to talk to, to take him out of himself. He’ll learn how daft his ideas are if you just keep talking to him.’
‘But he’s awful hard to talk to,’ she complained. ‘He kinda lectures. You know, wags his finger and explains everything. I don’t think he wants to rape me at all. I think he just wants to learn me.’
‘Teach,’ Main whispered, always gently her teacher.
‘I canny get a word in edgeways once he’s startit,’ said Bobo. ‘Yes, I know. Teach, learn. It’s you does the teaching and me does the learning. But he never gives me a chance to say my piece.’
Main laughed over the windowsill, beaming at the back- court.
‘Let the woman learn in silence, subject to the man. That’s what Saint Paul said. And Saint Paul is one of his favourite authors.’
‘Aye, so I’ve gathered,’ she nodded, elbow to elbow with him at the window. ‘He’s made it as clear as a cow’s bottom. Two of a kind, him and Saint Paul.’
‘I’ve had that from him too. But you’ve got to understand he’s not a bad fellow, not really. He’d like to sin so as he could see himself as a justified sinner. That’s all. But he can’t. And he’ll have to learn women weren’t put on this earth just to give men the means of fornication.’
‘And I’m supposed to learn him? He’s like the way I imagine John Knox only without the beard.’
‘You could be right there,’ Main chuckled acoss at her, his hands clasped as in prayer, his wrists resting on the windowsill. ‘I’ve often thought Knox bashed away at Mary Stuart the way he did because he had a repressed desire to bundle her into bed. She would have been quite a change from his other girlfriends.’
‘I don’t know anything about “Repressed Desires”,’ Bobo quoted back at him with capital levity.
‘Because you haven’t got any. But I’m sure John Knox had. When he called Mary a lot of bad names it was because he was wishing she was what he called her. Then he might have had a chance of lifting her nightie.’
‘Oh you men!’ Bobo cried. ‘That’s all you can think of.’
‘Oh you women,’ said Main. ‘It’s all you want to talk about.’
‘Not me,’ Bobo gave him a rabbit punch and knocked his head down against his clasped wrists. ‘It was you startit it.’
‘Are your pals still out to avenge you on Miss Partridge?’ he surprised her by asking when he came up again.
‘Wee Annie you mean? Well, they talk and they talk, and then they talk some more. But I don’t expect for one minute they’ll ever do anything.’
‘I knew they wouldn’t,’ he stroked her. ‘You wouldn’t let them, would you? You’re too goodhearted. And it’s only you she’s a bit hard on at times. It’s got nothing to do with the rest of them. Why should they bother?’
‘Because they stand by me.’
They had shifted round after she hit him and instead of standing side by side looking over the window they were leaning face to face. She tightened his tie.
‘We’re all pals,’ she went on. ‘One for all and all for one, that’s how civvy-lie-sation begun.’
‘Began,’ he said. ‘Leave her alone. She’s terribly unhappy these days.’
‘It wouldn’t rhyme,’ she objected. ‘You mean she’s a sourfaced old bitch. Why these days? She’s always the same.’
/> ‘She’s never got over her loss since her parrot died last winter.’
‘You’d think it was one of her family she lost the way you say it,’ Bobo rejected his condoling tone. ‘Her and her parrot! Maybe Yoyo made a wax model and stuck pins in it after all. Not that I ever wished it any harm. It’s her.’
‘She’s sick,’ he said.
‘You’re a doctor, you cure her,’ she retorted.
‘I’m not a doctor, not yet. And even if I were, her illness isn’t the kind I’d have to treat. Can’t you understand, and show a little sympathy? She’s lost the only creature she loved. Now she has nobody. And everybody must love somebody.’
‘Oh, she’ll find somebody,’ Bobo threw out impulsively. ‘I think she’s got another wee bird lined up for loving. If you can call it love, what she’s got.’
She saw he didn’t quite take it in, so she hurried on before he could ask her what she meant, a little ashamed of her remark.
‘She could try loving me. Everybody else does. Anyway, what’s so special about her, tell me that, that I’m supposed to feel sorry for her? You’re only saying what Tommy in the Phoenix says. She’s no keeping well, she’s sick. There’s damn all wrong with her if you ask me. Why’s everybody so sorry for her and nobody spares a thought for what she says about me? She doesn’t deserve any sympathy the way she carries on.’
‘That’s a hard thing to say,’ he scolded her. ‘You know better than that. It’s because of the way she carries on you ought to be sorry for her. It might be you in thirty years time. How are we to know what’ll happen to us? I bet you she was a dainty wee thing once, and pretty too.’
‘All right, I’m sorry for her, God forgive me,’ Bobo answered with a swallow and an effort. Perhaps she wasn’t wholly sincere, but at least she said it. To please Main. And he was pleased.
He chucked her under the chin and she caught his fingers and twisted them, and that was all they did to show they were in touch. He knew if he kissed her it would be the end of a beautiful friendship, a move over to something he didn’t truly want, and he knew she knew and agreed. She didn’t want anything more either, not with him. Like Britain and America they found their pleasure in believing they had a special relationship.
It was sheer chance she walked into Tommy Partridge on the Sunday afternoon that week. She was coming through the close as he came in, and she was all dressed up in her Sunday best, soaped and scented and her nails varnished, off to meet Dross.
‘My, you look great!’ Tommy cried, and for a moment while he looked at Bobo his sister went right out of his mind, so easily distracted by a lovely face are even the most sorrowing men. On an impulse he added, though the language was out of character, ‘What the Yanks call a swell dish.’
‘Och aye, I know them all right,’ she muttered thrusting the fingers of one hand between the fingers of the other to tighten the fit of her beautiful white gloves. ‘There was one of them sailors from the Gareloch, did you see them in the Phoenix on Friday night, and he called me a hot plate between the ladies and the gents on the way out and there was me waiting for Dross to come out the gents, believe me I damn soon froze him. They seem to think a girl’s something for eating, they Yanks. They make me want to spew the way they go throwing honey about. Any man ever calls me honey he’s out on his beeneck.’
‘Good for you!’ he slapped his hands and rubbed the palms together. He had a tendency to Yankeephobia, for he found them a bit of a nuisance in the lounge and at the bar, loud and amorous, drinking what they called Scatch as if it was lager. ‘You keep them in their place!’
‘I think She’s out,’ said Bobo. ‘She’s always out at this time on a Sunday. She goes to the Botanics now. I think She goes to admire the goldfish in the hothouse. Anyway I’m sure She’s not in.’
‘Aye, I know,’ he agreed, so eager to talk to Bobo he didn’t think to be secretive. ‘Actually it’s Mrs Christie I’m going to see. I want a wee word with her. That’s why I came round now. I wanted to take the chance while She’s out.’
Bobo stared hard at him and she seemed to be reading his mind as if it was as clear as a newspaper headline.
‘I mean,’ he started, but couldn’t go on. Her blonde self- possession and her white gloves, her young perfumed purity, her well-shaped nyloned legs and her smart court shoes all intimidated him.
‘Oh I know what you mean all right,’ she said as if she was wise to his purpose. ‘It’s high time somebody had a wee word with the same Mrs Christie.’
He was too alarmed at her insinuation to make any reply, and they broke off with a wave and a smile. But his smile was gone by the time he was up the stair and knocking at the Christies’ door. He was sorry he had told Bobo what he had come round for, and he wasn’t happy about what he meant to do next. It seemed a mean thing to do, an act of disloyalty, and yet he was sure it was his duty to all concerned.
Mrs Christie knew him in passing. She had said ‘Hullo’ to him on the stairs, plus ‘Lovely day’ or ‘Dirty weather’ according to conditions, but nothing much more. She had no reason to expect him to call on her. He felt her eyes were a couple of flamethrowers searching him with suspicion when she opened the door, and he was afraid she was going to keep him standing on the stairhead and make him say at the doorstep whatever he had come to say. In which case he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Perhaps she heard the pleading in his heart echoed in his voice, perhaps she gave in to the tenement convention that it’s rude to keep anyone standing talking at the door. Whatever persuaded her, she straightened up after the first recoil at seeing him and invited him in as if he was a normal Sunday visitor.
When he crossed the threshold, head bowed, and stepped into the lobby, she led him to the kitchen. The kitchen and room of the two-apartment tenements are the but and ben of Scottish jargon. When a Scotsman says in song or story, ‘Come awa’ ben,’ he is inviting you into his front room. The but is the workaday apartment, with a sink and a grate and an oven, the kitchen where he cooks and eats his meals, performs his ablutions, sleeps in a recess bed against the wall, and quarrels with his wife and weans on a Saturday night. The ben is the best room, always tidy and seldom used apart from the fact that some of the family must sleep in the recess bed there. But she wasn’t taking him ben. He wasn’t important enough. The kitchen was the place for him.
The lobby was a dim little link between the two rooms, traversed in half-a-dozen paces, with a gasmeter high up in a corner and a rank of coatpegs along the wall. It had a timid odour of forgotten clothes and weekly carbolic. The waxcloth covering the floor was scrubbed every Friday night by Mrs Christie, a job she would duly hand down as a tradition to Agnes, the elder daughter, who would in the fulness of time bequeath it to Grace.
Mr Christie, The Sunday Express, The Sunday Mail, and The Sunday Post across his lap and round his feet as he dozed, sprawled in an armchair hogging the fire. His unslippered feet, in heavy grey socks with his big toe horning through one of them, were crossed on a judi- ciously located low stool. He hadn’t a jacket on, and his flies and waistcoat were unbuttoned, his shirt open at the neck, and yesterday’s growth still on his double chin. He squinted up at Tommy Partridge and grunted, ‘Aye.’
‘Aye,’ answered Tommy.
Two Scotchmen being diplomatic.
‘Is there something on your mind?’ said Mrs Christie, stuck at the table that filled the centre of the room. Her fingers kept moving round the corner of the board as if she was a blind person discovering a right angle.
‘It’s about my sister,’ Tommy started and stopped. ‘You know my sister? Three up the middle.’
‘Och aye,’ said Mr Christie. ‘Of course.’
‘Aye, we know her all right,’ Mrs Christie admitted with a grudge, like an accused person recognising there was no use denying a known fact but waiting to see what could be made of it. ‘Why? What’s up?’
‘I just wondered could you be careful,’ said Tommy, still only a couple of steps in from the kitchen door. And nervous a
nd miserable he was.
‘Take a pew,’ said Mr Christie.
‘Thank you,’ Tommy chimed gratefully.
He shyly lowered his bottom to the edge of a chair beside the table and couldn’t go on for a minute. The Christies’ Sunday dinner was over, and the table was cleared except for a bottle of milk, a bottle of HP sauce, a bowl of sugar, a jar of Heinz pickles, a pot of Robertson’s jam, with the Scott Monument in jamjars on the label, a salt cellar and a bottle of pure malt vinegar.
‘Whadye mean careful?’ Mrs Christie, always alert to take offence.
‘I don’t mean it’s anything you’ve done,’ said Tommy in a hurry, equally alert to fear he was giving offence. ‘I mean it’s Annie my sister. If you could be careful about her I mean. She gets a bit odd sometimes you see. As a matter of fact I hate to tell you she was once put away because she tried to harm a wee girl. She’s awful fond of wee girls.’
Mr Christie took his big feet off the low stool and wrestled up to a sitting position on his ruptured armchair.
‘Don’t get it, Mac,’ he declared, ready for war. ‘How do you mean she tried to harm a wee girl she’s awful fonda wee girls?’
Tommy Partridge was near to tears. All eternity wouldn’t be long enough to put to rights the wrong he was doing, and yet he had to go through with it because it was right as well as wrong. And anyway he had started. He knew he couldn’t stop now without making bad worse. He blurted. Maybe it was because he spoke so quickly, maybe it was because what he was saying was so hard to take in, maybe it was both. Whatever the cause, the Christies man and wife gawked and gaped at him.
‘She loves them so much she wants to save them. It started after she came back from America. Then she went too far. Of course it’s a long time ago now you know. She took a wee girl with her, a neighbour’s wee girl she was daft about, it was a kind of babysnatching like if you see what I mean, and she coaxed her into her house, she had a house away over on the south side when she came back from America, and she turned on the gas and took the wee one on her knee, she said she wanted to send her to heaven and to make sure she got there she was going to cross over with her. Luckily enough the wife next door, she was three up then like what she is now only the faraway not the middle, the wife next door was coming up the stairs with her messages and she smelt the gas and she thought to herself there’s something wrong here, and the way it happened the postman was coming up the stairs at the same time, a big strong fellow, and she got him to burst the door in and it was just in time. They didn’t put her in jail you understand. She wasn’t a criminal. It was just her mind. They put her in a home you see. She had this idea about sending wee girls with a message to the Father and say she sent them. She said she wanted them to get across to the other side before they went bad. You know, like apples that are kept too long. That’s one of the things she said to the doctor. She said she was helping them to escape to freedom across the frontier. In an express. It was her mind. You don’t want to be too hard on her. It was these ideas she had. She never meant anybody any harm. She did it for what she thought was the best.’
