by George Friel
And that’s how they were when Keechie McGibbon came through the close with his left fist on Grace’s neck and his right fist twisting her bare arm behind her back. Shoe Lurinksy trotted alongside, clutching Grace’s other arm, and Wee Annie mumped down at us all from her lonely eyry. Straddlelegged and eyes closed, Lizzie bent right back, her ponytail kissing the ground, and Angus did his burlesque of the Great Lover. He shoved one knee in between her thighs and with an explosion of his pursed lips that could have been heard across the Canal he kissed the air six inches to the left of target, while Lizzie’s pouting lips hopefully searched the air on the right for the kiss that hadn’t arrived.
It gave Big Keechie the wrong idea. It also gave Wee Annie the wrong idea. Angus was only acting the goat. We knew that. But Keechie didn’t get the spirit of it. He was tone deaf. He pawed there agape, a big bawsy sillybilly, still holding Grace by the neck under her thick brown hair. If Angus was having Lizzie he was going to have Grace. He shoved her past the box to the corner against the midden and locked her against the wall. She struggled and scuffled and wriggled and wrassled, and they fought up and down and round and about. Looking back on it now, I think that like Daphnis with Chloe he didn’t know what he was trying to do but Grace knew. She ducked, kicked, elbowed and butted, and came out of it the winner but not unwounded. She held her right wrist in her left hand and blood was streaming down her palm, young rich red maiden blood. Keechie stumbled on the turn trying to keep her, fell on his knees and hit the wall.
We were already crowding round, all of us, on the point of interference when we saw Keechie was off the rein and Grace was shooting out her neck. She bent forward attackingly from the hips, and her words had a good Glasgow edge to them. This was no time for a voice that was soft, gentle and low.
‘Look what you’ve done!’ she screamed, holding up her bleeding wrist, her thumb across the pulse, to show the world the blood he had shed. She was no longer the lovely simple Grace Wee Annie loved, but a vulgar angry little besom.
‘Who do you think you are?’ she howled.
It was a good question. None of us were quite sure who Keechie was. His big sister was called Cathie Garden, an Amazon who did him yeoman service in his many battles, but his mother was Mrs Brown to every other missus in the street, and the nameplate on the door brassily announced Moss, which was the name of Mrs Brown’s married sister (if she was married) who lived in the same house. But whether Mrs Brown or Mrs Moss was the mother of Cathie and Keechie, or if either or neither was the mother of one or the other, nobody ever bothered to say if they knew. Keechie himself was Garden at school, McGibbon in the backcourt, and he had been known to use Moss as a kind of Sunday name, identifying himself as Charles Garden Moss when he had his good suit on. There was no man in the house, but many men called, especially Saturday night and Sunday morning.
Keechie didn’t tell Grace who he thought he was. He scrabbled up, rubbing his paws on his haunches.
‘Summa you boys is far too rough,’ Grace haughtily informed his silence. ‘You should get your nails cut.’
Wee Annie gloomed down on us unregarded. She had been reading her bible till on her way to the lavatory she heard us loud in the backcourt when the prisoners began to accumulate in the box, and like an unapt student she was easily distracted from her prescribed text. She just had to hang out the staircase window to see what was going on in the big wide world beneath her. She saw too much for her peace of mind. Or she saw too little. The way we swarmed round ready to separate Keechie and Grace if the first came to the worst, she lost sight of them for a bit, and when out of all the shoving and pushing and jostling and scraping Grace broke into the clear advertising her bloody wrist Wee Annie thought we had all had a hand in assaulting her pet. She was overthrown, cast down, put out, jealous and wretched. She even hated her long enough to shout rudely over the window.
‘Away, ye bold wee slut! Was it just your wrist they were at?’
But not all of us heard her.
For the two or three seconds she took to conceive and utter those unhappy words she foresaw Grace already grown into what she believed all pretty little girls must become, another Bobo, or what she thought Bobo was. What she had been reading didn’t help her any in that crisis. It may well have been to blame, though she of course looked on the Book as the one great comfort of her life. She didn’t eat much, she never tore her dinner like a famished wolf with the veins swelling on her forehead and the perspiration running down her cheeks, she had no insatiable appetite for fish-sauce or veal-pie, but she had a great fondness for the Book of Revelation and the Pauline Epistles, and before she was distracted from her studies by hearing our voices echoing on the green she had been starting on Paul where he says to the saints at Philippi, ‘Ye are all partakers of my grace’.
The sentence was still in her mind when she stopped to watch us instead of going back to Saint Paul, and it helped her to see what she thought she saw, for she had the strange belief that the words of the sacred text she came on by chance would have a direct bearing on whatever turned up next in her daily life. It made her shake against the sill in a bitter foul rage. For a handful of moments she was convinced Grace was common, and she had no harsher word for any girl. But her despair couldn’t last. She had to have faith, she had to have something to keep her alive and ticking. She was pierced with sorrow for what she had shouted. She repented. She wasn’t to know Grace hadn’t heard her. She flew downstairs to make a quick act of contrition, scurried over to Grace, and swept her out of the ruck around her.
‘Oh my pet lamb, I’m sorry!’ she moaned in distress for herself and for Grace. ‘My poor child! what have they done to you? Come on up with me and I’ll wash and bandage it.’
She mopped the blood on Grace’s wrist with a mansize hanky from the pocket of her pinny, and Grace, with innocent blue eyes staring up at her protector, curiously remembering to forget her daddy and mammy had warned her never to go there, let herself be taken upstairs to Wee Annie’s single-end.
She wasn’t frightened, not the least little bit. Maybe her nerves were better than mine, or maybe she had no imagination. Anyway, Wee Annie had never given her nightmares. She stood solemnfaced at the sink while Wee Annie held the ravished wrist under the running tap and she felt as safe as Snow White with any or all of the Seven Dwarfs. She even felt sorry for the woman she told me once, years afterwards, but I should say that was a retrospective emotion, a colour cast by memory over things past.
Wee Annie put a rectangle of lint on the torn flesh and strapped a bandage round and round and blethered away. Harmless, harmless, harmless, Grace was sure. And being sure, she was disappointed.
‘Long dirty nails he must have had,’ Wee Annie muttered to the girlish wrist, ‘to do that to you. Goodness knows what infection he might give you. And I told you not to play with boys. Remember? Last summer when that nasty tinker Erskine came here. Well, you can see it for yourself what like they are. They’re cruel, dear. Cruel they are, and selfish.’
She cut deftly into the end of the bandage with a pair of manicure scissors, took the strips in opposite directions and tied a tender loveknot, not too tight, not too slack, and whispered, ‘Boys! Ach, boys! I know what I’d do with them if I had my way.’
Grace didn’t ask, and Wee Annie sat down at the empty fireplace, drew her down on to her lap and sizzled on.
‘And when they’re men all they can do is shed blood just to show they’re men. The blood of women and children. You know, Grace, you’re better dying young. It’s an old saying and a true one, believe me, the good die young. When a wee girl dies she goes to heaven, and that’s when she gets her real education. When she crosses over. You don’t learn anything important at school. It’s all got to do with the things of this world. The devil’s world. And when she’s made perfect in wisdom and oh, ever so much more intelligent than she could possibly be on earth if she lived to be a hundred, she becomes an angel. That’s what angels are, dear. Wee girls that died young e
nough to go to school in heaven. The angels go God’s messages. Would you like to be an angel and go messages for God?’
‘Yes,’ Grace granted, unwilling to say she wouldn’t, for after all she went her mother’s messages, and willing to give the answer that seemed to be expected.
‘When I was in America, a long time ago,’ Wee Annie babbled on, ‘I wanted to die and go to heaven and be an angel and learn everything. Not spelling and sums or all about science. I don’t mean that. They don’t count, that’s not real wisdom. But it was too late. And then you see there was a man. He came out of the jungle and pretended I was married to him but I wasn’t, not really. And he held me back too. He had a big big farm away out in the wilds, that’s what he said, but it turned out it wasn’t his at all, and anyway it was only a wee place, hardly bigger than the backcourt, with some pigs I think it was he had. Not that they ever bothered me. I could have been happy enough with the birds and the rabbits. – Have you ever seen a real rabbit, not just a toy? It’s lovely the way they run. Well, they don’t actually run, they kind of jump and jump and jump. Without stopping. And he tried to shoot them and we used to fight about it. – But not with him, not with men. He used to come after me, this man, but I escaped. I got away and I came back here.’
Abruptly she lost interest in what she was saying. Grace slipped off her lap and wandered to the door.
‘Ah well,’ Wee Annie sighed. ‘It’s a long story and you’re only a wee girl yet. Maybe some time.’
She opened the door for Grace, half closed it again and hugged her, kissing her on the brow, lightly, quickly.
‘What’s all the fuss about?’ Grace wondered as she raced downstairs, wiping off the moist spot, and hurried through the close to catch up on us before we scattered off to prayers and bed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It must have been the autumn of that year Bobo had her quarrel with Dross. Autumn, because the clock had been put back and instead of meeting him when the sun was sweet and low above the Old Kilpatrick Hills, the western limit of her world since she was a baby, ten miles beyond the Barracks with the Gas Works eternally visible in between from her window three up the faraway, it was already dark when she was supposed to be meeting him the night he didn’t turn up. She gave him ten, twenty, thirty minutes, six times longer than she had ever waited for anybody before, and when she walked off on an impulse after swithering at half-a-dozen false departures she was fuming. She didn’t usually smoke in the street, and that made another grievance. A packet that would well have lasted her through the evening and on to the next day was emptied, crushed and chucked away by the time she gave in. She swanned away on a pub-crawl on her own, not to drink, for she wouldn’t drink alone, but just to inch open the door of the bar or lounge and take a quick gander round to see if he was there, alone or in company it didn’t matter so long as there he was. But he never was. She tried all his likely howffs, then the possible ones, though she couldn’t think why he should have gone anywhere in the huff. Not for one minute did she think anything had happened to him, run down, beaten up, lifted by the police, gone off with a married woman. She wasn’t given to that kind of alarm. She was sure he had stood her up. With or without malice aforethought, deliberately or by the course of circumstance, she wasn’t bothered to sort out till she knew more. Whatever they were, the circumstances would take some talking away. It wasn’t the first time, but she swore on her pride as a good girl, a selfrespecting oneman decent woman, it would be the last.
Unless he had a good excuse.
The Phoenix was of course the likeliest place but she made it her last port of call because she didn’t want to be seen peeping in alone where she was well known, pub- licising the fact that Dross had ditched her. He wasn’t at the bar, so she crossed to the lounge. And she knew in advance by the intuition of pessimism he wasn’t there either. But Main was. She relaxed at once. She felt she had come to a break in a tedious journey, not yet the right station but a minor halt where she could get out for a while and stretch her legs.
Always glad to see Main and sure he was always glad to see her, she daundered up on him as bright as a morning in May. He was huddled in a corner with his pipe but he wasn’t alone. It didn’t put a cloud over her, for the man with him had just tabled an empty glass and stood up on the point of leaving. A tall dark man with a bashed hat and a pair of kid gloves carried together by their bunched fingers in his left hand. He slapped the table with the cuff of his gloves, a man sadfaced and sufferingeyed, his miserable face creased from the wings of his eagle nose to the corners of his bleak mouth. He was on the move as she modelled forward and she pinned a smile of gratitude on him for his tact in cutting off and letting her get Main to herself.
‘Who’s that?’
Sitting down as if she had arrived by appointment, pleasantly, calmly, just making conversation, she whispered the question not very interested.
‘Mr Wylie,’ he whispered to her whisper, his pipe quiet in his hand. ‘Big Tam.’
She liked the way he was always quick to take her tone, never bothered, never nosey. Any other man she knew would have been asking what she was doing in the Phoenix by herself. She wiggled three fingers in midair as a queenly greeting to Tommy Partridge hovering across the lounge.
‘Who’s he when he’s what are you buying me when he’s at home??’
Main moved his specs down his nose and up again to signal Tommy to serve and Tommy came along with a glass poured the moment he saw Bobo come in. He knew what she always had. And while Bobo and Tommy spent a couple of words on each other Main struck a match and fed the flame to the bowl of his famished pipe.
‘Well you ought to know.’
‘How?’
Bobo leaned back at peace resting her feet. At least and at last she had a man to talk to, and talk was better than loving in some moods. She delved in her handbag before she remembered she hadn’t kept the empty packet to bring out as a hint to the next friend she met and she breathed a gentle dammit when she saw she hadn’t got it. But nobody ever said Main was slow. He ambled over to the bar in the lounge, bought something, and waddled silently back. Filling his broad chair again with his broad bottom he planked a packet of cigarettes in front of her, the brand she smoked.
‘You know how to treat a lady donchew.’
Bobo swiftly unwrapped the packet, accepting it as due tribute, and lit up for herself before Main had time to strike a match. For an obscure moment as she inhaled she wondered why he always made her feel so good all over from the crown of her head to her big toe and yet she couldn’t imagine herself even kissing him.
‘Do you want a box of chocolates too?’ he asked politely.
‘Not with a drink, kew,’ Bobo answered swallowing. ‘How? Why?’
‘How why what?’
‘Should I know him.’
It gave her pleasure to have him beside her but she was glad he wasn’t trying to get closer.
‘Him? Oh, him! He used to be your boyfriend’s probation officer. Before your time. When you were still an innocent wee girl believing there were fairies in the back- court at midnight.’
He gave her there all the cue she needed. She brought up her grievance and leaned over to confide.
‘Boyfriend? Whadyamean, boyfriend? I’ve no boyfriend. If you mean Dross don’t talk to me about him.’
Main cuddled his glass, peered into it like a crystalgazer, and softly sang to the rim.
‘Turn Edward’s face to the wall, mother, don’t ever mention his name.’
‘My man, God help me! You know what the booger done to me tonight?’
‘Nothing wrong I hope,’ Main changed his tune. He saw she wanted sympathy.
‘He kept me standing at the corner like a stookie. I felt such a fool. And so you know what I’ve been doing in case you don’t think I’m daft? I’ve been all round here right down to the Cross looking for him. So help me holy God I feel like a pro on the prowl tapping the pubs for a man. I’m not cut out for that kind of thing, m
ooning about on my own at night. I’m scunnered with him, so I am. I’m willing to be a faithful wife to the man that’ll marry me. I can do without nights on the town and mucking about with Tom Dicken Harry. I’m not one your loose women that would go with any man for a drink.’
She told her love, how much she’d done for him. Oh, if he had it he would spend it, like water off a duck’s back and nobody one smell the better. But how often did he have it? When did he have a job last? Seldom in and usually out of one. Tell me what do I see in him. You know what I’m afraid of? He’s back in his old bad company, folk I made him drop, they’ve picked him up again. A woman’s intuition every time. Hardnut and Chocolate and that big scrubber Alec Lillie. That’s why they call him Tiger, cause his name’s Lillie. He broke his old man’s heart the way he was never out of trouble, a decent wee Orangeman that never did no harm to anybody except one Walk when he had a half too much and kicked a Corporation bus driver on the backside because he had on a green uniform.
‘There was a Rangers supporter from Milton Street was offered a Corporation house with a bit garden front and back,’ Main remembered, ‘and he turned it down because the grass was green. I saw it in the Express last week.’
‘They’re up to something I bet you,’ Bobo went her own way. ‘I know what happens to him when he gets in with his old pals and I wouldn’t be one whit surprised if he was out on a job with Sammy Arnott and Toby Owen just to please Tiger.’
‘So that’s what’s in a name,’ Main got his puff-pipe puffing. ‘Hardnut and Toblerone. Swiss Chocolate. Quite plain once you’re told.’
It turned out she was right. Dross met her the next day at teatime on her way home from work. Right away she cast up the broken date and at once they were out of step. He was as cheery as a Christmas Party and she was as cross as a hot cross bun because she was short of sleep worrying about him in her lonely bed the night before. She drew it out of him like a dentist drawing a loose tooth tutting, at the uselessness of it, no bother at all. Yes, he was out on a job with the three she suspected when he ought to have been meeting her. But it hadn’t worked out right. Lillie said he had a line on a shop near the Govan Docks that sold newspapers and cigarettes and notepaper and birthday cards and American comics et cetera et cetera and he fixed a break-in for when the weekly cigarette order had just arrived. Somehow it happened they had raided a day too soon and all they got was a few hundred fags of mixed brands and a couple of boxes of ballpoint pens.
