by George Friel
It bothered her a little that she wouldn’t know just when Grace came to it. She would be in suspense till she heard Grace was dead. But the death didn’t bother her at all. Dead, death, they were a couple of worn words to her, no longer engraved with grief or regret. They meant no irreparable loss. She was only sending Grace on a journey as the Powers sent a man into space. With the big difference. That Grace wouldn’t come back, as the spaceman came back, to a wicked planet. More fortunate, she would reach the Isles of the Blest.
She had the laundry to herself at lunchtime, for she ate a sandwich in her little office and made tea on a gasring in the corner while the local girls rushed home and the others went to a cheap café along the street. In the summer the girls who didn’t rush home-and-back squatted and sprawled on the pavement outside the pend, like the girls in Tennent’s Brewery in Duke Street, and the lads from the rubberwork would come along and sit beside them for a wrestle and a tickle.
On Monday she prowled at lunchtime. She thought of lysol. Then she thought she could get her hands on some liquid chlorine. She thought of asking Main what he had given Shelley, and for a moment she even remembered that the idea hadn’t come in the first place from her Sunday visitors at all but from the way Main had saved Shelley needless suffering. But she knew she couldn’t speak to Main, or to anybody else. It must be secret and all her own work or the whole operation would be invalid. In the end she settled for bleaching powder. She could use it with hardboiled sweets, the longchewing kind she believed children liked. Teuch jeans we called them in the vernacular at that time, and she bought a quarterpound. They were a tough toffee made up in small sweets shaped like a pillow for a doll’s house. She melted one down a little, mixed in the bleach, reshaped it patiently and left it to harden again. The experiment engrossed her.
She went to a lot of trouble to get the tampered sweet back into the right shape, most conscientious about it, as intent on perfecting her instrument of death as any scientist designing a new bomb, and as unconcerned about what the perfected instrument would do when it was finally used for the purpose it was meant for. The only point immediately relevant was to get the thing right in advance.
It wasn’t till the Thursday night she managed to get Grace alone, and by that time she was fully prepared. Mrs Christie and Mrs Green, two faithful lovers of a bawdy bill show, were off to a music-hall again. She saw them go. There was no mistake. From her high window she watched them. She waited till they were out of sight in the evening shadows before she drew in her head and lowered the window. She tiptoed across her little room, listening behind the silent door. Her heart was a hammer in her breast and her mouth was dry.
‘The time is come,’ she said they said.
She knew it was. She felt the heavenly power proving she was one of the elect pervade her bones, she felt her pounding heart grow steady once she told it to be proud, she felt the smile of bliss upon her lips and cast out fear, because she knew her love was perfect and the sacrifice was fit, an unspotted lamb.
‘But how, oh how, oh tell me please God, how am I to get her!’ she panted to the doorknob in her hand, her eyes down, her ears alert, but she heard nothing but the winter wind whining against the top storey. ‘I can’t just go down the stairs and knock at the door and ask for Grace. I don’t even know if she’s in or out.’
The inspired confidence that was leading her on surged in and out of her. Determination to complete the task laid on her ebbed and flowed with the attacking and retreating wind. She loitered behind her door, praying for Grace to come her way, frustrated that the time was come and she had the place and the power and the loved one was missing.
‘God, help me please!’ she whispered her prayer to the door panel where her head rested, ‘and bring this night to a happy ending.’
Gently, slowly, she opened her door, keeked round, waited a few seconds, and then tiptoed downstairs. She couldn’t expect Grace to come to her, so she would have to go looking for Grace.
‘But where am I to find her?’ she moaned to the pipe- clayed stairs.
She couldn’t hear the wind on her way down, and oh! what a hush came seeping up from the close! It made her nervous. Three doors on each landing, all shut and dead.
Three gaslit landings, and each of them deserted. All life, if any, domestic discord and family affection, all the joys and sufferings, the hopes and fears of the unneighbourly tenants were withdrawn and hidden from her behind those poker-faced doors. It was as bad as a nightmare to her as she crossed each corpselike landing in that timeless silence.
She came to Grace’s door, never to her the Christies’ door, but solely the door that sheltered the loved one, the beautiful child and innocent lamb that no one truly valued except herself. She looked at the varnished wood and the brass nameplate in an agony of not knowing, not knowing if Grace were at rest behind them or out playing.
‘Now if I was mad I’d bang on that door and scream for Grace,’ she murmured wisely as she moved past it down to the close. ‘But I’m not. I’m quite possessed and calm. I know what I’m doing all right. Only sometimes I wonder who I am.’
One pace above the last half-landing she heard the lavatory there being flushed. She stopped her step, paralysed, one little slippered foot on its toe, the other in transit. Who would come out of that vulgar place to confront her and sidle past with a grin and a nod? Friend or foe? But she had no friends she knew, and foes she must flee. It always embarrassed her to meet someone coming out of the lavatory. Would it be old Sandy McKay, the brokendown old Scots comedian with the pot belly and his fly still unbuttoned, or Daddy Blair the drunk barber or one of his heirs, or one of Grace’s family, or even it could be if God was kind, and it was.
The lavatory door was slammed shut by a little girl with tousled hair, short skirts and long legs, a girl almost visibly growing, Grace herself.
‘Oh God! Oh God approves!’ Miss Partridge exulted in a thought as swift as a lightning flash. ‘He has sent Grace to me in my hour of need.’
‘Oh, hullo Grace darling,’ she smiled her smile of bliss, the certainty that she was among the elect flooding through her again. ‘I was just going out to get myself a fish supper but I’ve only my slippers on, see!’
Coyly she showed off one tiny foot in a blue slipper with a white pompom at the instep.
‘I wonder would you mind running along to Carlo’s dear for me? You’ve done it for me before, you know what to get.’
The big solemn blue eyes were cautious. Cold words came hard from warm lips soft.
‘I’ll have to ask my mammy for permission.’
‘But your mother’s – oh, all right,’ said Miss Partridge.
She sagged. She was defeated. The child must know her mother was out. She followed her meekly back up the stairs and waited forlorn outside the Christies’ door.
‘Oh God, why are you deceiving me?’ she wept in her heart. ‘To arrange it all for me and bring it all so near and then cheat me with the falsehood of my little one! Why do you mock me like this? Can I wrestle with Thee, O Lord? We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’
Behind the front door Grace hung the lavatory key on its appointed nail and skipped through to her big sister crouched over the kitchen fire on her daddy’s footstool.
‘Wee Annie caught me coming out the closet. She’s wanting me to go for a fish supper for her. What do you think? You know what mammy said. Should I go?’
‘Och aye,’ Agnes muttered, surfacing briefly from the depths of Romeo. ‘It wouldn’t be Christian to starve the auld bitch. Getter what she wants and hurry back. Teller to wait on the stairhead for it.’
‘My mammy says it’s all right if I hurry back,’ Grace announced without a blush to Miss Partridge waiting on the doorstep.
‘You little liar!’ Miss Partridge cried, but into herself. ‘You know damn fine your mother’s out.’
But smiling her blissful smil
e she handed over enough money for the errand from the few shillings she always carried in the pocket of her pinny in case the insurance man called and scuttled back doublequick to her single- end away up on the top flat in case anyone saw her. On the way up she pardoned Grace, forgave her freely for telling a lie. But the deceit made her more sure than ever it was high time to send Grace across the border to safety. The longer the child lived the more wicked she would become. Telling lies to those that loved you was only the beginning. She was getting too big. Soon it would be too late.
She left her door ajar till Grace came back, and after five or six minutes she wearied waiting. Pushed by her demon she dragged out her ledger-diary from the end drawer of the dresser and wrote quickly in it, standing at the bunker lid. She wanted it down in black and white for future reference. Perhaps these lines would defend her in the day of battle against the wicked spirits that wandered through the world for the ruin of souls. She testified she had forgiven Grace for trying to deceive her but the lie meant the journey must be made at once.
‘For the doubleminded will never purify their hearts, no matter how often they are warned, their transgressions and backslidings will increase, leading them into temptation and the works of the flesh, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, the wickedness and snares of the Devil, and absence from the Lord. It is now or never.’
Grace was singing on the stairs. In hurried guilt she edged the diary back into its hidingplace.
‘Come in, dear,’ she called sweetly welcoming the little victim when its knuckles chapped the open door.
‘I had to wait,’ Grace complained, slapping the fish supper down on the table. ‘They weren’t ready. He was just cutting uppa lotta new chips when I went in and there was a big long queue.’
She lingered, loitering. Loitering she lingered, glad to have the hot parcel off her hands but unwilling to abandon it. She couldn’t resist the temptation of those vinegar- odorous chips cuddling the pipinghot haddock fried in buttercoloured batter. And because she knew her own weaknesses she hadn’t told Wee Annie to wait on the stairhead in spite of what Agnes said. She knew if she went right on up and in she would get a share. She knew her Wee Annie. And so it was.
The woman and the child sat at table together, Miss Partridge at the middle of the board, Grace at one end. The fish supper was tidily decanted on to a dinnerplate so that Miss Partridge could make a knife and fork meal of it, for she had eaten little all day, with bread and butter and a pot of tea, but Grace just used her fingers because she thought the chips tasted better that way. Of course she was polite enough to wait after each raid on the margin of the plate till she was invited to have another, and skilfully, craftily, she always managed to lift three or four chips at once and those always the biggest. Miss Partridge didn’t mind. It was food and drink to her to have Grace at her table again, there at her elbow for the last supper, and if it gave the child pleasure to eat up all the chips then it gave her greater pleasure to let her. She did all the talking, for Grace remembered her manners and wouldn’t speak with her mouth full, and that saved her saying anything except Huh-huh and Mm-mm between bites.
Yet to do the girl justice I should say she stayed to help her hostess with the washing-up. Miss Partridge washed and Grace dried.
‘There now, that’s a big job well done!’ Miss Partridge chuckled at her own remark. ‘One cup one saucer one sideplate one dinnerplate one knife one fork one spoon. That’s the best of living all by yourself.’
‘I’ve to wash fower times that every night doon the stair,’ Grace patronised the lonely life of a spinster.
‘Four times, down the stair,’ said Miss Partridge, then wondered why she bothered to correct the lovable speech of a child who hadn’t long to live.
For now it was time. She had been patient all evening. Deliberately patient, steadfastly refusing to rush the last most solemn gift. But now at last she could come to the point.
‘I’ve got something for you,’ she whispered.
From the tabledrawer she took the poke of sweeties.
‘Good sweets, dear,’ she explained. ‘This is the kind we used to eat when I was a wee girl.’
‘Huh-huh,’ said Grace.
‘I saw them in a sweetie shop near the Cross,’ said Miss Partridge. ‘Good chewy sweets. You’ll like them. I didn’t know you could still get them.’
‘Mm-mm,’ said Grace.
‘But not tonight,’ said Miss Partridge. ‘Not after chips. Might make you sick. Keep them for tomorrow.’
‘Huh-huh,’ said Grace, holding out her hand but she wasn’t given them.
A danger not foreseen suddenly reared in front of Miss Partridge.
‘They’re from me to you,’ she said severely. ‘You’re not to share them with anybody. They’re all yours. They’re meant for you and nobody else.’
‘Mm-mm,’ said Grace, still waiting to get them.
‘Keep them for playtime tomorrow at school,’ said Miss Partridge. ‘Promise!’
She looked so alarming, staringeyed and strained, holding back the poke till the required word was spoken that Grace retreated, afraid.
‘Promise,’ Miss Partridge repeated, advancing.
Fierce about it she was Grace saw.
‘Promise,’ Grace agreed.
She swallowed. Her scare passed over.
‘Here, take them then,’ said Miss Partridge kindly. Grace took them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Up in the winter morning sharp, blithe and debonair, the yellow light full on and the gasring burning to heat the chilly darkness, Wee Annie sang to herself the auld Scots sangs in the braid auld Scottish tongue, the sangs her faither loved to hear, the sangs her mither sung. She made tea and toast as usual, canting away to herself. In the small hours Papa had paid a flying visit from outer space to assure her with the prescience of the immortals that Grace would keep her promise not to share the sweeties and not to touch them till playtime. Behind Papa, one at each shoulder, the co-pilot twins nodded in confirmation.
Nothing would go wrong. At ten forty-five G.M.T. Grace would leave the earth, blasted off into infinite space to come to orbit in eternal salvation. So certain of the happy outcome she was, comforted that Knowall hadn’t troubled to make the trip, she passed on without a tremor when on her way to the laundry through the twilight of the December morning she got a glimpse of Grace in the baker’s across the street queuing for freshbaked rolls with a pint of milk in her hand and the (Scottish) Daily Express under her oxter. Unseen, she glanced at the sleepy-eyed child and proceeded heartwarmed to her work.
‘Ah, the wee darling! She’s late this morning, she’ll never be at the school for nine o’clock, I’m sure. Aye, she goes all her mammy’s messages, morning and night, summer and winter, but this day I’m sending her on a better message than she ever went before. Forever and forever. Today’s the day she’ll go away. But tomorrow and tomorrow, ten thousand tomorrows, a hundred hundred million, and she’ll never come back. No transport.’
She smiled. She was so happy she could afford a wee joke. She was only doing what she was told, it was all proper and legal and totally unselfish. Her conscience was clear. Under a sky that threatened snow she plodded dutifully on, till the vision of a world without Grace halted her for a moment.
‘Then who’ll be next for me to love? Susan Greenwood? Sue for Grace? I must love a wee one though no one loves me, I suppose not even Grace.’
Not even Grace, normally punctual, was in time for school that morning. But then she hadn’t expected to be, the way everything had worked to obstruct and delay her. Out of breath after running, she stopped a step inside the door. Miss Galloway barred her, cross, a strap dangling from her ringed fingers, a gaunt time-honouring woman.
‘What kept you?’
‘Please miss Ah wis gaun messages fur ma mammy.’
Grace panting, red in the face, trembling in the childish lips, so confused she forgot she wasn’t supposed to use her native tongue in the clas
sroom. Across the corridor a junior class bawled through the nine times table.
‘I was going errands for my mother.’ – Miss Galloway prunemouthed, prim and proper.
The teacher always teaching coiled the strap round her fist looking lovelessly down at the frightened pupil.
Nothing said Grace looking pleadingly up.
‘You should get up earlier in the morning and get all your errands done in time for school.’
Always prompt with the obvious, herself scrambled in with an egg left halfeaten and two minutes to spare, the cross teacher crossed from the door to her desk. Let Grace enter. Grace hovered.
‘Ach, go and sit down!’
Up with the lid of her desk, in popped the coiled strap, down slammed the lid. Stood there muttering a bitter woman.
‘Every time I want to start new sums half the class is late. I’ll let you off. You’re just the first of many.’
The first of many things Wee Annie had to do was check the wages envelopes and then write out fair on a slip what she wanted from the bank. The number of fivers, singles, halfnotes, halfcrowns, florins and sixpences. Backchecked, downchecked, upchecked, crosschecked, made out the cheque, went through to the other office for Mr Alan’s signature or the manager’s. Mr Alan was in. That pleased her. She liked him because he trusted her.
‘Never made a mistake in my life,’ she sometimes tossed at Tommy on a Sunday if they compared their working responsibilities.
‘Well, I’m no bad myself,’ he sometimes batted back. ‘Working in a pub you see you’ve got to be quick and you’ve got to be right. Funny thing. You might think they’re drunk. But they always know their change. Never twist a customer’s change no matter how much you think he’s had.’
