Mr Tait had a terrible time getting up the hill that afternoon because of his leg.
‘What’s wrong with your leg, Mr Tait?’ I asked him. He was using me as a crutch, leaning one hand on my shoulder and the other on his fancy stick.
He waited a very long time before he answered, but then all he said was, ‘Nothing much. Sometimes it gets a bit stiff.’
What I really wanted to know was how he’d hurt it in the first place, but then he stopped suddenly and his face twisted up in pain. After a few seconds he patted the bad leg and cleared his throat with a great harrumph and I thought I’d better not ask again.
There was a great hoo-haa going on at our hut, which wasn’t really our hut. It was full of people and they were all talking at once. The stove door was open and a fire blazed fiercely in the grate. Someone else was in Mr Tait’s rocking chair. The hut smelled that horrible way of smoke and whisky and burnt buildings and it wasn’t just ours any more.
So I hid in my hat and sneaked off to the lookout chair as soon as I could, even though it was still drizzling and the light was going. Mr Tait gave me the blood orange before I went, saying I’d braved the ward sister and I deserved it.
So I stuck my thumb in the top of it and peeled off the skin. The segments unstuck themselves with a gasp and I thought about what Mr Tait had said. It was just an orange, like any other orange, so I kept my eyes shut to make that easier to believe. But when I opened them I saw the blood running between the little orange beads in that first segment. I wondered whether that was what I would look like if you cut across the bruises on my arms with a knife. I wondered if my mum’s leg looked like that.
‘I like bananas,’ I sang under my breath as I chewed, ‘because they have no bones. Don’t give me tomatoes, can’t stand ice cream cones. I like bananas . . . .’
But I had to eat it because Mr Tait had given it to me and because it was an orange, roughly equivalent to a pot of gold, and because it tasted absolutely, miraculously delicious. It seemed to bring my whole body to life with its sharp, sweet tartness.
Tart-ness. Was my miraculous mum full of sweet, sharp, tartness?
I was halfway through, trembling with confusion and dripping with juice down my chin, when Sandy and Dougie came round the bushes. They seemed surprisingly grey in their grey jumpers against the winter brown of the hills, and their faces shone in the twilight.
‘It’s a blood orange,’ I told them.
I could see they were impressed and appalled.
‘That’s disgusting!’ said Dougie.
‘How do they get the blood into it?’ said Sandy, examining a piece of peel.
‘It’s not real blood,’ I laughed, understanding this properly for the first time.
‘What does it taste like?’ said Dougie. ‘Give us a bit then.’
So I gave them a piece each and then they were covered in pink sticky juice too.
And while we were standing there guzzling, Sandy happened to mention big bad George for no reason, except to tell me that he wasn’t allowed out because he’d been swearing again and because he called my mum a tart.
‘Bloody hell!’ I said, as much to my surprise as theirs and we set off across the wet grass to where the last bus would come.
And then suddenly some other kids ran past, like a flock of birds at the clap of your hands.
‘It’s the bus!’ said Sandy as he charged on ahead. ‘Come on!’
‘Woo, woo, woo!’ I called after them, imitating their excitement, trying to feel it. ‘Hello, Mr Tait!’ I said as I passed him a little way down the hill leaning on his fancy bedpost stick.
The bus clattered to a halt a few minutes later after a few resounding choruses of ‘Why are we waiting?’ and amid a round of applause. But this applause soon fell away, shooshed by Mrs Mags and Mrs Wilson who cleared a path for the latest escapees from Clydebank to step down and begin the hard trudge up the hill for a hut, for a night or perhaps longer. I waited for Miss Weatherbeaten and Rosie, and then the crowd thinned and everyone disappeared up the hill. I watched the bus roar away from the side of the road and vanish round the bend and a dread crept over me. They were not there, no Rosie, no Miss Weatherbeaten, and no Mavis.
Sandy, the sandy-haired boy came back for me.
‘Did they miss the bus?’ he said.
How should I know? I thought.
‘Must have missed the bus,’ he said, as if this was now an established fact.
How would he know? I thought. Nobody knew, so why say something so stupid? And now I wouldn’t know about Mavis until tomorrow. How was I going to get through the night without even Rosie to look after?
‘That’s a shame. It’s the last bus,’ he said.
‘I know,’ I said through tight lips.
I looked up the road after the bus and listened for it to turn round and come back, open its door and let Mavis out, the driver saying, ‘Look who I forgot to leave! Aren’t I silly?’ Then I’d go over and hug her and take her bag, if she had one, and her hand, and lead her up the hill to ‘our’ hut.
‘Mine missed it too,’ he said. ‘My dad,’ he went on, ‘he’s always missing the bus and then he has to stay at my uncle’s. My mum gets very angry.’
‘Oh,’ I said, not really interested. ‘Mmm,’ I said. There was a cold chill creeping up my back and it had nothing to do with the weather.
‘They’ll be alright,’ he said.
‘How do you know?’ I snapped.
He didn’t reply. I pulled my hat back down and watched the rain run into the puddles. I couldn’t imagine what could have happened to Miss Weatherbeaten and Rosie. It gave me a bad feeling.
‘I hope they’re alright,’ said Sandy quietly interrupting my thoughts.
I fumbled for Mavis’s shoe under my coat.
‘Better go up then,’ said Sandy.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Mr Tait will be wondering what’s kept me.’
How steep that hill was and how quiet the trees that stood there. And everything was sodden, the grass, our shoes and socks, everything. We climbed the first part in silence and then he surprised me.
‘My mum, Mrs Mags, says you’ll be going to school tomorrow.’
‘What?’ I said.
‘Craigton,’ he said. ‘It’s very nice. Much smaller than our school at home and there’s a big field out the back to play in.’
‘I don’t want to go to school,’ I said. ‘I have to find Mavis. I can’t go to school.’ I stopped on the side of the hill. ‘I have to find Mavis,’ I said again. Nobody seemed to understand that.
‘We sang all yesterday morning,’ he said. ‘Run, Hitler, run Hitler, run, run, run. No lessons, just singing.’
‘Oh, good,’ I said flatly, even though I liked the idea of singing all morning, especially if you got to sing the words wrong. Miss Weatherbeaten would never have allowed that. ‘I suppose I’ll have to find Rosie and Miss Weatherbeaten too now.’
‘Won’t Mr Tait find them?’ he said. We started up the hill again.
‘Well, no-one’s managed to find Mavis so far, so I’m going to have to do it myself.’
‘I’ll help you,’ he said.
I squinted at him from beneath my hat, which was soggy and sagging. What kind of help could he be?
‘My mum, Mrs Mags, says you’re going to go into one of the tents too,’ he said.
‘No!’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s what she said, a tent. Don’t know what’ll happen now Miss Weatherbeaten’s not back. I mean you can’t live in a tent with Mr Tait. You’re not even related to him. It’s not like he’s your dad.’
‘Yes, I can,’ I said, changing my mind. ‘I can live in a tent.’ I’d never been in one but it couldn’t be that hard could it? ‘And I’m sticking with Mr Tait until my mum’s better. He promised. He promised to provide for me. My mum threw his daffodils at him, but I don’t think she meant it.’
I put my hand to my head to make sure the daffodil was still there then sniffed a big sniff and drew my sleeve across the bottom of my nose.
And there was Mr Tait, standing in the drizzle still leaning on his fancy stick.
‘Oh, Mr Tait!’ I said. ‘Sorry I was so long. Are you alright?’
‘Yes, Lenny my dear, quite alright really, but I need to go back up and sit down. Where are Miss Wetherspoon and Rosie?’
Sandy and I helped Mr Tait back up to Mrs Mags’s hut where we were welcomed with toast and jam and a space was cleared on the old sofa for Mr Tait to sit on. Bad George growled at me and wiggled his hips in a funny way when he thought the grown-ups weren’t looking but they were and he was sent through to the other room. Sandy and I sat on the bench I’d been on before.
I told Mrs Mags and Mr Tait all about Miss Weatherbeaten and Rosie not coming back when they were meant to. Mr Tait seemed very angry, which I’d never seen before, so I was glad Sandy and Mrs Mags were there. Perhaps my mum had been right after all. The wrinkles all creased together over his brow and he muttered something to himself but I couldn’t make out what, something like, ‘Please God, put love in that beaten heart.’ And after that the sick feeling came back so I stared at the picture of Izzie laughing over their stove.
The light was gone now and the room was yellow and pale with only one candle. I could barely see at all. Mr Tait and Mrs Mags were talking. Mr Tait was calmer again and the shadows had taken his wrinkles, in fact they’d nearly gobbled him up altogether.
‘Do you like my pictures?’ said a voice.
‘Oh!’ I said, jumping in my seat.
‘She can’t see your pictures, Grandpa,’ said Sandy. ‘She can’t even see you.’
‘No, but I saw her looking before,’ said Mr MacInnes, the old man in the shadows, Mrs Mags’s father-in-law. ‘She looks at the pictures more than she looks at the people. Very wise.’
‘Matter of opinion, Grandpa,’ said Sandy.
‘I think they’re very nice,’ I said.
‘See?’ said Grandpa Mags defiantly with a chuckle. All I could see of him was the whites of his eyes and his hands on the top of his stick. He was sitting on a chair in the corner behind the sofa, as if to keep himself out of everyone’s way.
‘Well, she has to say that!’ said Sandy.
‘No, I mean it. I like them,’ I said.
‘Which is your favourite? Let me guess, no, don’t interrupt,’ he waved an arm in the air as if he had a duster to rub me out. His other hand held his forehead between finger and thumb trying to squeeze the answer from it. ‘Pah!’ he said. ‘It has to be the one of my granddaughter up there over the stove. Looks like she’s laughing doesn’t it? Ha, ha! I always get it, everyone’s favourites.’
‘Well, actually . . . .’
‘Ah, you’re just teasing. I’m always right. Everyone loves that one. Ha, ha!’
‘But . . . .’
‘Grandpa, tell Lenny where you got the paper and the pencil,’ said Sandy.
‘It was Barmy’s sister, wasn’t it?’ said Mr MacInnes.
‘Don’t call him Barmy, Mr MacInnes,’ interrupted Mrs Mags, ‘or you’ll say it to his face one day.’ She threw me a grin and went back to her conversation with Mr Tait.
‘Barney, Barmy what’s the difference?’ said the old man tossing his head at her. Landlords are landlords whatever you call them. Anyway this was Miss Barmy doing the rounds with his lordship one day and graced us with her presence and sat exactly where you’re sitting now, and blow me but wasn’t she sitting in just that exact same position as you are now, and wouldn’t you make a lovely picture just like she did that day? Blast the darkness, is all I can say, but you can come back tomorrow, eh? This day, Miss Barmy was lovely sitting there on the bench with her hat and her bunch of bluebells, so while everyone was talking, I took the liberty of a quick sketch. Now Mr Barnes could quite easily have thought that cheeky, which it was, and he could have put us off the site straightaway, and I think he would have liked to, but she was delighted and gave me a sketch pad and some pencils from her bag. Turns out she’s a famous artist. Talk about coals to Newcastle!’
‘Oh!’ I said. ‘A real artist sitting here!’
‘Gave me a shilling for the picture too.’
Sandy snorted noisily.
‘Grandpa . . . .’
‘Stop that snorting, Sandy, it’s not nice,’ said Mrs Mags. ‘You’d like to go to school, wouldn’t you, Lenny, dear?’ she said, changing the subject. ‘Sandy can take you down to Craigton in the morning on the bus. Mr Tait will probably be gone by then, won’t you Mr Tait?’
‘I’ll sort her out,’ said George from the doorway to the next room.
‘I’ll sort you out,’ said Mrs Mags fiercely, then she composed herself and George slunk off.
‘I’ll find Miss Wetherspoon and Rosie,’ said Mr Tait before I could say anything. ‘And Mavis. I’ll go and find out first thing in the morning.’
‘She doesn’t want to go to school,’ said the old man in the corner. ‘Don’t make her go to school. She wants to stay here and learn to draw with me. We’ll look after her, won’t we Mrs Mags?’
‘Don’t be silly, Mr MacInnes, why would she want to do that?’ said Mrs Mags.
‘Why wouldn’t she?’
‘Because the law says she has to go to school,’ said Mrs Mags.
‘We’d all like to stay and learn to draw with you,’ said Mr Tait. I think he was speaking for himself. ‘But we have to work and study too, to keep this country on its feet.’
‘Would you like a lesson or two Mr Tait?’ said Mr MacInnes. ‘I’ve got some fine brushes and paints too.’
‘But I can’t go to school,’ I said, quietly. ‘I have to find . . . .’ But no-one was listening. I just knew I couldn’t go to school and see all those kids I didn’t know and a new teacher who might not be nice, and no-one would even have heard of Mavis or my mum. ‘I can’t,’ I said again.
‘Of course you can, dear,’ said Mrs Mags, kindly. ‘They’ve got a field at the back to play in.’
‘Mr Tait,’ I said quietly, ‘can’t I come with you?’