Rue End Street

by Sue Reid Sexton

  Contents

  Cover

  Title page

  Map

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Before ‘Rue End Street’

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Historical accuracy and the Barns-Graham family

  A note on Italians in Britain during the Second World War

  The importance of Greenock during the Second World War

  Some reviews for Mavis’s Shoe

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Many wonderful people have helped me in the writing of this book. First I have to mention Arthur Blue for his tireless efforts to supply me with information about the Greenock area during the Second World War and also to Jenni Calder. We three went round the town together in the freezing cold imagining where everything once was. I must also thank John Burnett for his endless support in the form of helpful suggestions, accurate information and encouragement, not to mention tea. Vincent Gillen of the MacLean Museum may be entirely unaware of how our initial hurried conversation drove me on and the part the photos and subsequent information he supplied me with helped shape the narrative, but I am most grateful to him. Thanks also to Allan Barns-Graham for his time, and to him and the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Charitable Trust for their permission to include Willie in this story. To Isa McKenzie I am indebted once again for sharing her experiences of post-Clydebank Blitz austerity, and to Clydebank Library and archives for historical information. Liz Small of Waverley has encouraged me, backed me up and been an editor with great insight and a true friend. Ron Grosset and the rest of the team at Waverley have also been outstanding. For emotional support, my daughters, Kirsty and Jessica, have been my rock of safety in the storm of doubt and I am grateful to all my friends and family who have cheered from the sidelines. And lastly I have to thank Rando Bertoia, who sadly died in October 2013, who was the last survivor of the Arandora Star and who alerted me to the plight of Italians during the Second World War.

  Rue End Street is written by Glasgow writer Sue Reid Sexton, and is the sequel to Mavis’s Shoe, a harrowing account of what happened in Clydebank, Glasgow and the Carbeth hut community during the Clydebank Blitz and after. Sue has a background in social care and trauma counselling, and spent a decade working with the homeless. She often writes in a very small campervan in the middle of nowhere.

  Before ‘Rue End Street’

  – by Lenny Gillespie

  This story is about how my world got turned upside down for the second time. The first time was when we got bombed in March 1941. Four thousand bombs rained down on my town, Clydebank, and hundreds of people were killed. I didn’t know where my mum and wee sister were or even if they were alive. While the bombs were still falling I met Mr Tait and some other people, and together we got away from the bombs as fast as we could.

  That night we walked into the hills to the huts at Carbeth. This is my most favourite place in the whole world. The ‘huts’ there are really chalets for people to live in, and there are trees to climb, ropeswings a-go-go, and always someone to play with. It was safe. Mr Tait looked after me there until I found out about my family.

  That was in March 1941. Time has passed, it’s September 1943, I’ve grown up a lot, and disaster is about to strike again.

  Chapter 1

  Heavy rain. Bucketing. Cats and dogs. September floods and puddles fit for ducks, the burn bursting over the path into the bushes and the air so heavy we practically had to swim home. Our new blue tammies that my mum had knitted were black and sagging down round our ears and, speaking for myself, the rain was seeping freely round my shoulders and down my spine. Mavis and Rosie and I were soaked to the bone and we still had a mile to get home.

  The hedges stood in mud by the roadside, there were no trees to hide under, and the deserted cottage we could have sheltered in had a path smothered in country pancakes. There was nothing for it but to keep going or the wind would slice us in half. Mavis got the jitters first. She was only six and a half, Rosie probably a few months older, though we weren’t sure, and I was nearly twice that. They had both turned a shade of grey to match the rainclouds that were pelting us.

  ‘We’ll have to run,’ I said. I was worried about Mr Tait who wasn’t well.

  Mavis gazed up at me with her big brown eyes and trembled.

  ‘I’m too cold to run,’ she said. ‘So am I,’ said Rosie. ‘You’re too cold not to,’ I said. ‘But we have to dance first, like we did at school. One and two and three and turn. Remember.’

  I told them a lie, that our friend Mrs Mags was coming over with the baby and some rabbit stew. That got them going, and we danced in every puddle and played chickens along the way. By the time we were in the home strait we were dog-tired and covered in mud.

  Mr Tait’s perfect white handkerchiefs were limp on a line inside the front window of our hut. They were fuzzy through the mist on the pane where the rough line of a funny face was left from the morning. A good head of smoke reached up from the chimney through the rain and hung there in the trees. As I started up the steps, Rosie clattered past.

  ‘Mrs Gillespie!’ she called out. (That’s my mum. She’s Mavis’s mum too, but not Rosie’s.) ‘Mrs Mags!’

  ‘Mum!’ shouted Mavis.

  I didn’t see anyone at first.

  ‘Mr Tait?’

  The perfect white handkerchiefs were blocking all the light. The room was full of shadow. A small fire played on a pile of ashes in the little iron stove, barely more than embers. Its glow lit one of Mr Tait’s boots but the room was no warmer than outside. The boot was strangely still. I had seen boots that still before when the bombing happened, but the owners of those other boots were dead. This was Mr Tait, who wasn’t ever going to die, obviously, being Mr Tait.

  ‘Lenny,’ he said. His voice was even hoarser than it had been when all the houses were on fire in Clydebank when the bombing happened.

  ‘I can’t see you,’ I said.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ said Rosie.

  ‘Mum?’ said Mavis. ‘Where’s Mum? Mrs Mags?’ She banged through to the bedroom to look.

  ‘Lenny, my darling,’ said Mr Tait, and then he coughed and coughed and he leant forwards and suddenly I could see him in the yellow firelight. He had one of his perfect white handkerchiefs in his hand which he coughed into, only it wasn’t perfect any more and had dark splotches all over it. His face was a mass of wrinkles and I couldn’t see his eyes at all because they had shrunk down into two dark hollows. He leant back again into the darkness and rattled.

  ‘Mavis, pull the hankies down. I can’t see him,’ I said. ‘Rosie, bring some of that wood in the box ’til we get this fire up.’

  ‘You lied,’ said Mavis, under a frown. ‘Mrs Mags’s baby isn’t here.’

  ‘Just do it,’ I said, pulling the stove door
open so a cloud of smoke puffed out. ‘I didn’t lie,’ I lied. ‘It’s too wet to bring a baby out.’

  Mr Tait started coughing again.

  ‘And get a cup of water from the bucket, quick, for Mr Tait,’ I said. ‘Little pieces of wood, Rosie, or we’ll kill the fire altogether.’

  Mavis ran and brought the cup, but Mr Tait’s coughs faded before he could drink it. In fact they petered out like an old car that’s run out of petrol, which is what happened last year to the doctor’s car, outside our school, and we all went and looked. And then Mr Tait lay there in his chair and croaked and rattled and snuffled. I offered him the water but he waved a finger at me to say no.

  ‘Give me a peace flag,’ he whispered, which is what he called his handkerchiefs. I ran to the window and undid one. It wasn’t perfectly white but still had shadows of stain in one corner. But he took it anyway, put it quickly to his mouth and coughed.

  ‘Get your wet stuff off and dry yourselves,’ I said to the little ones, who were staring at Mr Tait as if he’d newly arrived from the moon, which is what he sounded like. ‘Go, before you catch pneumonia.’ I took the wood from Rosie. ‘Here’s the towel. I’ll do the fire. You two go through to the room.’

  Mercifully the wood had been near the stove a while and was dry. I piled it carefully into the grate and blew to make the embers flame. Soon curls of fire sneaked out.

  ‘Lenny,’ whispered Mr Tait.

  ‘Yes, Mr Tait?’

  He raised a hand from his lap to indicate I should come closer.

  Ordinarily I love the batter of rain on the roof and the wind whipping round the corners of our home, because it’s home and it’s cosy inside and we’re all in there together, but that day it was so stormy, and with the wind roaring through the trees around us, I couldn’t hear a word Mr Tait was saying. His voice was always soft and gentle but somehow you could always hear it no matter what. That afternoon he was so weak I couldn’t make anything out at all, so I put my finger in one ear and the other ear right up close to his mouth and waited. I felt his breath on my neck and the dryness of his lips brushed against my ear like autumn leaves. These were things I hadn’t felt before because Mr Tait was never one to show affection by touching. He’d only to call me ‘my dear’ and then I’d know he was the best friend I could ever have.

  ‘My dear,’ he whispered, and then he coughed again and I had to get out of the way. He sounded like little farthings rattling in a collection box, and when he’d finished he was like the wheeze of the fire. He waited a moment, then gave a little nod to indicate I should put my ear back up close. I was scared, I don’t mind saying so, but I always did what Mr Tait told me, usually. I heard him say ‘don’t touch’ and ‘cup’ and ‘keep girls away’ and ‘mum back’ and ‘Barney’. Then he sighed and I could hear his breathing like the fire again. After a minute he went on. ‘Your dad,’ he said, and ‘not far’ and ‘find’ and ‘under bed’. This surprised me because no-one hardly ever talked about my dad. My dad was a complete no-no as far as conversation was concerned. Although we didn’t know where he was and everyone thought he was ‘missing presumed dead’, I was absolutely certain he wasn’t under the bed. Then Mr Tait stopped again and when I drew back to look at him he had sagged even further down into his chair and his eyes were closed.

  ‘Mr Tait?’ I said, and I bent down, but this time I put my mouth next to his ear. ‘Mr Tait,’ I whispered, ‘I don’t understand.’ I listened for him again but he didn’t speak, so I stood up and peered through the darkness at him and wondered if he was sleeping the sleep of the dead. I thought of all the people I had seen when the bombing happened and I remembered seeing an ARP man put his head on someone’s chest. The ARP man had listened there for a few seconds and then given the thumbs up to another man who brought a stretcher and carried the person off. I tiptoed forwards and put my head on Mr Tait’s chest. For the first time he smelled like other men, of sweat and grime, a rancid stinging smell that was not like him. He was always clean and particular, and for a brief moment I was relieved because he was as dirty as me and therefore couldn’t give me a row. And then he did a little cough and whispered, ‘Alive, my dear, but be brave,’ and that made the tears smart in my eyes because I knew, sort of, that he must be very ill.

  The fire began to crackle then so I had to check it and make sure it didn’t collapse out onto the floor, and while I was down there I glanced back at Mr Tait. His face was lit up in the glow and his eyes were open and sparkling at me. He seemed to be smiling but I wasn’t sure. I filled the big kettle with water from the bucket and put it to boil on the stove. Then Mavis and Rosie came through, as quiet as the grave, and went and put their dirty things into the hip bath for washing later. We should have been in trouble for being so muddy and in a way it seemed like we were. I was just wondering if God really did exist and was punishing us for getting filthy, when I heard a car outside.

  Cars didn’t stop outside our house. We didn’t know people with cars, not even old Barney, our landlord, who always arrived on foot seeing as he only lived a few hundred yards away and didn’t own a car. But this car stopped and hummed. I heard the crunch of a brake, then a shudder, then silence.

  In case you don’t know, you can tell my mum a mile off because she walks with a limp, and the reason she does that is she lost her foot in the bombing, a bit like Mr Tait only she wasn’t a soldier and she only lost her foot, not her entire leg. Mr Tait lost almost the whole of his leg in the last war, but my mum was stuck under a house for several hours and when they brought her out her foot was mangled like jam so they took her to the hospital. The next time I saw her, the foot was gone. She had a bandage round her head too with a safety pin the size of Mrs Mags’s nappy pins. Ages later they made her a new foot. It took so long because they had to fix the soldiers first and there were a good few of them needing attention.

  Anyway, I heard my mum’s wooden foot banging up the steps, then a man’s voice, then in she came with her woolly tammy like ours all dark and heavy and wet and her brown hair like rats’ tails underneath it. Her face was wet too and shone in the firelight and behind her there was a man in tweeds. He was hanging onto his hat to stop it blowing off. It was like Mr Tait’s hat, a tweedy brown flat cap or ‘bunnet’, like lots of men wore, only without the darning at the edges, and I recognised him as the doctor whose car had stopped outside our school. He had a bag with him and a blanket. There was a lady there too in a smart coat. She had her hat tied on with a scarf that was done in a knot beneath her chin.

  ‘Lenny, you’re back,’ said my mum. ‘Thank goodness, and you’ve got the fire going. Well done. Good girl.’ This worried me all the more. I was a muddy disgrace. I deserved a row. Something important was happening.

  ‘Wash your hands,’ she went on, ‘and make some tea for Miss Barns-Graham and the doctor.’

  ‘Oh, no, no,’ said the doctor in a deep voice, and he shook his head and frowned at me. ‘That won’t be necessary, and we don’t want the infection to spread, do we?’

  ‘Come in, please come in by the fire,’ said my mum. ‘Mr Tait, how are you? Lenny, go and get changed, sweetheart. You can take the wash-bowl with you and some water. Close the front door, Rosie, and you three go into the bedroom. ’

  ‘Actually, would you mind leaving the door open, would you, please?’ said the doctor. ‘The patient needs air, lots and lots of fresh air.’ He smiled at the room as if smiling would make everything alright. ‘There isn’t enough oxygen in here.’

  The draught nipped at my wet legs but I didn’t want to leave Mr Tait and the doctor and Miss Barns-Graham.

  ‘On you go, Lenny, please,’ said Mum. ‘The doctor’s here now, for Mr Tait. There’s no need to worry.’

  No need to worry? She wasn’t fooling me. There was plenty of need to worry. But I knew when to do as I was told.

  You see, we lived in this hut in the middle of some woods in the countryside in a place called Carbeth along with lots of other huts. That’s what we call it,
a hut, but actually it’s a proper house with rooms, only made of wood. Carbeth is the greenest place in the world in some rolling hills. Before we lived in the hut, we lived in a single-end room two floors up in a tenement on the hill in Clydebank. Tenements are tall buildings with houses piled on top of each other and a stairwell to get to the high-up ones. Our house only had one room so that there was no going next door to get changed or you’d have ended up in someone else’s house, although to be fair, I’d been sent next door to the neighbour’s many times if my mum and dad had visitors or important things to discuss.

  But this was different. Mr Tait was not well. He was very not well and I wanted to be there. Mr Tait had stood by me many times, even when I didn’t want him to, even when I thought he was just a scary old man, which is what I thought at the beginning when I first met him. But by the time he took ill he had been there beside me for two-and-a-half whole years.

  In the draught of the bedroom window I threw off my dirty clothes and scrubbed my face, then got the worst of the mud off the rest of me. Mavis and Rosie huddled together on the bed and watched.

  ‘Hey, monkey faces, cat got your tongue?’ I said.

  ‘Who are those people?’ said Rosie.

  ‘Why were you crying?’ said Mavis. ‘What’s wrong with Mr Tait?’

  Next door the grown-ups were talking quietly so we wouldn’t hear.

  ‘Ssh. They’ll hear us,’ I said. ‘I’m not crying.’ I went to the door and listened. There was silence, then they spoke again, but I still couldn’t make them out. They might have said ‘mop him down’.

  ‘You were crying. I saw you,’ said Rosie.

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with Mr Tait,’ I whispered. ‘I’ve never seen him like that, but it must be serious.’

  ‘Why?’ They said this together.

  ‘When did we last get a visit from Miss Barney?’ Miss Barney, who was the landlord’s daughter, was a famous artist who we’d heard was back on holiday from England.