by George Friel
‘Look who’s coming in,’ said Jess.
‘There’s Dross,’ said Yowyow.
‘Talk of the devil,’ said Yoyo.
Bobo sat tight, soberly refusing to let the entrance of Dross turn her head. Yet with the fourfold warning of his coming she felt flood over her the warmth of the unforgotten past, of all the familiar carefree sessions that used to be the sum and substance and irreplaceable pleasure of a Friday night.
Friday night was clean-the-house night in the Christies’ room and kitchen. Grace got off lightly. All the heavy chores were left to her big sister while her mother wan¬ dered round in charge of the campaign and reassembled all the bits and pieces of furniture Agnes had moved to get cleaning beneath and behind them. To escape the menace of three females on the warpath Mr Christie faded after seven to the nearest pub. The Phoenix wasn’t his howff. It was too far down the road for him, and anyway he despised it as what he called mo-dern, stressing the second syllable. He preferred the oldfashioned Canal Vaults with a sawdust track at his feet, where a man could drink a half and a beer amongst men, served by men, and none of this barmaids everywhere and uptodate lounges ladeeda. The burr of workingmen’s voices the length of the bar was music after the shrill squabbling he had left behind him, and he knew his wife was happier to have him out of the way, even if he did get a little drunk.
‘Lift that rug! Shift that chair!’
‘I’m fair scunnered,’ Agnes whined. ‘Tired of slaving, fed up scrubbing.’
‘Aye, we all get weary,’ said her mother, ‘but it’s got to be done.’
Grace said nothing in case she drew attention to herself.
‘Scrub out the lobby, scrub below the bed, bleach the jawbox, clean out the press.’
Mrs Christie kept them at it till they tottered punch- drunk and it turned nine.
‘And I wanted to wash my hair tonight,’ Agnes grieved.
‘You’ll have time enough for that when you’ve washed the windows,’ her mother snapped.
Sweating on her knees Agnes scrubbed the doorstep. Luckily it wasn’t the Christies’ turn for washing the stairs, or Grace might have got more to do inside while Agnes was doing that job outside.
Recognising the battle was nearly over, ending in a complete victory for Scotch cleanliness in one house at least, Grace piped up warm and willing after mopping out every shelf in the press, lining each with clean paper, polishing the jellypan, doing the brasses, nameplate and doorbell, and washing the two walliedugs on the mantelpiece, ‘Will I go for a fish supper?’
‘Aye, when you’ve emptied that pail there,’ her mother, pipeclaying the hearth, panted.
Grace carried the pail in one hand to the midden and her free hand wandered into the pocket of her pinny. She had put the poke of teuch jeans there, half meaning to tackle them during the tasks of the evening, half just wanting to have them always within touch. Her angry molar was calm, as calm as if it had never raged. But her nerve failed her. She feared those solid sweets. She knew they would only start her toothache off again, and after she had timmed out her pail in the midden she found the hand that had fondled the poke was pulling it out of her pinny. Without her saying a yea or a nay her hand tossed the poke into an ashcan away at the far end of the midden. The deed was done in the darkness of a backcourt in winter, and she was neither glad nor sorry. She liked jellybabies and soft chocolates and macaroons, melting caramels, turkish delight, nougat and liquorice allsorts, but teuch jeans had never been to her liking. She just didn’t want them. And she knew, of course she knew, the whole close knew, Wee Annie was in hospital. By the time she came out she would have forgotten all about teuch jeans. Surely. She always asked you how you liked whatever she gave you, but this time she would hardly ask, and so there would be no need to tell lies.
Grace skipped back upstairs to the shining kitchen, washed her face and hands, squabbling at the sink with Agnes who was wanting to start washing her hair, and then skipped down again for three fish suppers.
‘Save a few chips for your dad,’ said Mrs Christie when they were all tucking in, saltily enjoying with plenty of vinegar what they had earned by the sweat of their brow.
Proud of himself, you’d think, the way he behaved, Dross stood over the whole company. A cold welcome he got from them. Bobo wouldn’t even look up. To the others he was a stranger from the past, so long is an autumn absence in the friendships of the young. He lifted over an empty chair from another table without a do-you-mind to the courting couple there, acting the old lordly Dross, always master of the situation, the bigshot, the boss, and took it round to sit straddled facing Bobo. She looked at him straight, just looked at him.
‘Anybody heard how Wee Annie is?’
The way he said it he might as well have tabled a signed confession. He spoke too soon in the first place, and his offhand bravado was a threadbare coat over his nervous suit. Everybody saw he was anxious and frightened.
‘Oh, have you heard about her?’ Jean asked, and the question sounded as cruel as she intended.
‘We haven’t heard much,’ said Yowyow.
‘The last we heard she was still unconscious,’ said Jess.
‘There’s some talk of her having a fractured skull,’ said Yoyo.
‘She’ll maybe no live,’ said Jean. ‘At least that’s what they were saying.’
They knew, they all knew, and they all knew they all knew, he was chattering with guilt as they sat and looked at him, just looked at him. He offered cigarettes round, but they all refused. He lit one for himself and his hand was shaking. Bobo stared hard at that hand all the way till he put it back in his pocket.
‘Seen Tiger and his pals?’ Yowyow asked. Innocent face, innocent question.
‘No, I didn’t go to the, no, I haven’t seen them, no.’
He stammered, changed direction. They were all silent. Yoyo offered cigarettes round and they all took one, even Bobo. Dross saw the snub and fidgeted, looking round the room as if for a friendly face or escape. He sat with nothing in front of him. By all their conventions one of them should have put a drink up for him at once or else he should have joined them with a glass in his hand. He had blundered sitting down amongst them emptyhanded and they weren’t going to put it right. He rolled his shoulder- blades to caress the nape of his neck with the collar of his new coat.
‘Howya doin, Bobo?’ he tried.
‘All right,’ she said. Cold, clear, concise.
‘There’s Tommy!’ Jean cried joyfully.
‘He’ll know,’ said Dross, half out of his seat, impatient to learn the best or the worst.
Tommy answered the queenly flutter of Bobo’s raised hand and came gently over, a gentleman in his own house, smiling goodwill to his seated guests. Bobo spoke. They all left it to her, respecting her anxiety.
‘How is she?’
‘They tell me she might live till tomorrow,’ he said with strained flippancy. ‘She’s a tough old bird, my big sister. There’s hope yet.’
He smirked, grinned, laughed it off to cover his suffering, blethered so vaguely they couldn’t quite follow him at times.
‘And I might have been sitting waiting to see till the cows come home if I hadn’t met Mr Main. He was coming out when he seen me in the corridor. I’ve left him in the bar having a pie and a beer. He’s doing his ward practice there he was telling me. He’s a real toff. Brought me back here in a taxi. Wouldn’t leave till he found out about my sister once I told what I was doing there and got the doctor to have a word with me. He even got me in to see her. He’s a real gentleman that fellow. Any service wanted?’
‘Well, since you’re here,’ said Yowyow. ‘To celebrate the good news.’
He ordered for the company, and for a moment it seemed touch and go if he would include or omit Dross.
‘Scuse me,’ Bobo murmured.
She rose elegantly, stepped highheeled past Dross, and went straight through to the bar, blonde, smart and distant-eyed. She looked for Main, saw him sitting in a corner with his half-eat
en mutton pie and a bottle of Worcester sauce and a glass of beer in front of him. Flounced down beside him, her knees showing, her mouth trembling.
‘That man! I don’t think he knows what he’s saying. Makes a joke of it. His own sister! Tell me the truth. How is she? You know!’
‘What are you on about now?’ Main asked, bending his lips to a precious fragment.
‘You know bloody well what I mean,’ she said. ‘Don’t play games with me. Wee Annie.’
‘Miss Partridge?’ he chided her with a mild question.
‘I’m not playing games. I don’t know what you’re so het up about. She was attacked this morning coming from the bank. That’s all I was told.’
‘Yes, I know. I know that. Everybody knows that. But how is she? That’s what I’m asking.’
‘She has a fracture of the left wrist and delayed concussion. Bruises on the back and legs. Lacerations across the bridge of the nose and forehead. No internal injuries. Nothing serious. She’ll be all right in a day or two.’
Bobo wept. Her head went down, her hand grubbed in her bag, but she couldn’t find her hanky.
‘What in heaven or earth is troubling you now?’ Main muttered plaintively. She was spoiling the rest of his pie.
‘You’ve got me beat. I don’t understand you. I thought you didn’t like her.’
‘It was you told me to try,’ she said.
‘So you’ve tried. I’m glad. But she’s all right. What are you worrying about?’
‘Dross is through there,’ she nodded back to the lounge.
‘Then what are you doing here?’
He finished his pie, hardly interested in the answer.
‘I’ve gone off him,’ she said, finding her hanky too late and stuffing it back into her bag. ‘You know you can go off people?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Main. ‘It never occurred to me.’
‘Can I sit here and talk to you for a bit?’ she asked him, not Bobo the lively girl of the spring and summer who turned everyman’s head, the gallus piece that Big Donald thought he had seen, but a tired lump of a lassie in a wintry season.
‘Sure, if you want to,’ said Main, easygoing.
‘I’ve gone off him,’ she said again, looking blankly across at the gantries behind the bar. ‘I’ve gone right off him. For good.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
It’s very hard to know where to begin now I’ve come to the end. That must be the end because there’s nothing much more I know.
‘I don’t see how you could know even as much as that,’ my mother objected.
She wasn’t pleased. Far from it. She sat despising my skewered pages, holding them on her lap between her palms, one thumb flipping them from last to first, the other flipping them from first to last, again and again, and went off on her own.
‘Oh, I remember well when she came out the hospital and I was talking to her in this very room, the puir wee soul, and she said you know it’s a strange thing, she said, it was frightening too. I’d always thought I wanted to die but when it came to the pinch I found I didn’t. I couldn’t let go. It was like a bad tooth that hurts you, she said. You wish it wasn’t there but you hate to lose it. I used to think it would be a beautiful thing to die, just to lie back and not care any more and let go and fade away, but I couldn’t let go. I just hung on, she said, and it turned out it was the wages she was hanging on to.’
‘She was a brave woman,’ I granted. ‘Or a stubborn wee besom. I don’t know. But that’s not the point. You mean to say you don’t like it at all?’
‘Not particularly. Who told you all this anyway?’
‘You did.’
‘Me? I never did! There’s things there I never knew, and wouldn’t have told you even if I did. And there’s things you just couldn’t know.’
‘Well of course I made up the odd bit here and there.’
‘So you’re not pretending it’s all true? You admit you made it up?’
‘I didn’t say that. What you told me and what I got from Wee Annie’s diaries—’
‘I’m sorry I ever gave you them,’ my mother cut in quick.
‘It all led me on. It had to be like that. Like that bloke could reconstruct a prehistoric monster if you gave him a bone.’
‘Ach, give the dog a bone!’ my mother sneered at my defence. She was a deeply religious woman, but a complete sceptic about what science could do. ‘And I bet you the same man made a lot of blunders too with his prehistoric lobsters.’
‘Monsters,’ I said patiently.
‘What are you trying to do to me exactly?’ she asked, just as patient. ‘You come here and hand me this true history all dressed up as if it was fiction.’
‘I couldn’t write a historical monograph on Wee Annie, could I? She doesn’t rank. I had to pretend it was a story.’
‘That’s what I’m saying. You ask me to read a history pretending to be fiction. Hold your wheesht! Let me finish. Then you admit you made up the half of it and pretend it’s all true. So it’s fiction pretending to be history?’
‘I never said I made up the half of it,’ I corrected her respectfully. ‘I never said that at all. What I said was I made up a bit here and there to connect things. Forged a few links.’
‘Forged a history!’ my mother took up my mischosen word. ‘You’re in a bit of a muddle, aren’t you?’
‘Not me. It’s you. And you’re one of my sources.’
‘Do I get an acknowledgement in the preface?’ she laughed at me. ‘Or maybe a wee footnote?’
‘You don’t have to be funny about it,’ I muttered, getting sour with her.
I had fully expected her to be a lot more interested than she had turned out to be. I should explain about her. In her well-earned widowhood she had become an addict of books from the public library. Of course it was me had to go and change them for her, even after I was married, while she sat alone, two up the faraway in the close where Wee Annie had lived, acting the duchess (with all the neighbours obliging and respectful because they thought her a real lady), and found fault with whatever I brought back. Yet she always read whatever I picked, because in fact I knew her taste well enough. The two things she couldn’t stand were historical novels and books about archaeology. She was no fool, and I had a great regard for her intelligence, even now she was getting old and I was an educated young man. She had been in her time what we call here a nongraduate teacher. That is, she had been at school till she was in her late teens and then spent three years at a teachers’ training college. That let her teach in primary schools till she married. That was her mistake. Marrying. Well, marrying who she did. Her standing insult to me was that I got more like my father every day. He had been the plague of her life for twenty years with his groundless vanity. He was an insurance salesman when she married him, earning enough to live on by tenement standards, but he had the gift of patter and he fancied himself as a freelance journalist, concocting funny bits for the local papers and comedy sketches for Scotch comics. His undoing came when a paper took a series of his humorous articles for its Saturday afternoon magazine page. It gave him ideas. Wrong ideas. He neglected his insurance canvassing. Then he chucked it altogether. He had to have a typewriter and paper. If it was a choice between our dinner and a new ribbon and a packet of quarto his new ribbon and the packet of quarto came first. The more he tried the less he got. He wrote a comic song for a Scotch comedian, a poor man’s Harry Lauder, and thought it would open the doors to the Kingdom of Heaven. He was still waiting to be paid for it when he died. Scotch comics were like that then. None of the other comics who took a few pages of patter from him ever paid much. He took to drinking to meet the right people. He didn’t. Like Shakespeare he died from a chill he got after drinking too much. He fell coming up the stairs at one o’clock in the morning and lay there drunk for a couple of hours before my mother heard his groans. I had to help to carry him upstairs. It was a blessed relief when I helped to carry him downstairs again.
‘You can’t even
write as well as your old dad,’ my mother would say any time I had a tenement-sketch printed in some ephemeral Scots magazine. And in case I missed the full venom she always added after the due pause, ‘and he couldn’t write for toffee.’
‘It’s all very well for you to sit there and criticise,’ I complained. ‘But there’s more can be recovered from the past than you think. When you consider all the sources available today to modern scholarship.’
‘Spare me,’ she threw back. She couldn’t be intimidated that way. ‘You’re writing down what people said, aye, and even what they thought, fifteen years ago or more. It’s not possible. You can’t know the unknowable. I’ve told you often, I’d rather read a life of Mary Queen of Scots than a lot of tripe made up about her in a novel.’
‘I quite agree,’ said I. ‘But Bobo’s not Mary Queen of Scots. And in any case, using my sources, I’ve still got to mould the material, give it a shape, make it mean something, seize the essential behind the accidental. Create the ideal form, find the objective correlative.’
‘Then you ought to have made Bobo marry Hugh Main.’
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ I cried. ‘Spare us that! That’s you and your happy ending again. I’m surprised at you. A woman of your intelligence.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, not in the least grateful. ‘But I don’t know it would have been a happy ending. They’d probably have been miserable in a year or two once Bobo got fat, and she was always a bit lazy about the house. It’s just the way you put it you’d make people think they were all set to discover they were in love.’
‘Don’t talk soft,’ I got cross with her. ‘I never meant such a thing. Those two could never have married. How could a doctor like Main, an assistant physician in a big hospital, marry a girl who worked in a ladies’ underwear shop in Sauchiehall Street? And she never learned to stop saying I seen.’
‘You’re a right wee snob, aren’t you?’ my mother smirked at me. ‘When you made up so much you might as well have made up they got married.’
