After Mrs Mags came back with George, and after another terrible row, and after the boys apologised to everyone they had upset and bad George had been sent back up to the clearing in the pine trees to bring back my pretty hat; after Mr Tait and my mum rubbed dock leaves into George’s hands and turned his face green too, and the other boys fetched water from the pump down the hill, and Mrs Mags had given us all a big bowl of soup with bread toasted at the fire and dumplings floating in the top; after Mr Mags, old Mr MacInnes and Izzie and George and Dougie’s mum and dad had all come back from working on other people’s huts, and everyone was friends again all squashed up in the tiny hut; after all of that, Mrs Mags started shimmying. She was standing in the only space available, in front of the stove, in her dungarees with her big tummy wobbling about and a red scarf wound about her head and tucked in at the top.
Old Mr MacInnes was tut-tutting on his chair behind the sofa until Mr Tait began an earnest conversation with him, probably about sketching. Bad George was applauding loudly but not meaning it, until his dad, Mr Connor, roared at him to stop. Sandy was trying to stomp a beat for his mum to dance to, and then Mr Connor reached into his pocket and brought out a mouth organ and played a jig I hadn’t heard before and everyone clapped along.
‘Come on, Mags!’ said Mr Mags. ‘We’ve got to get that baby going somehow!’
‘Mr Mags!’ was the shocked reply, but she was red and happy even though we could hardly see now that the light was going and no-one had lit a candle. ‘What a thing to say in company!’ she said.
My mum stopped clapping and looked at all the faces, then she laughed and carried on.
The girl in the drawing chattered away above the warm stove, just as her real self was doing in the room, when a noise arrived at the door. The clapping stopped, Mr Connor’s moothie stopped, and in came Bella and the two little kids. She smiled at me so I smiled back, even though she’d thought I was a boy that first night.
Outside the door stood a woman I didn’t recognise and behind her I could hear more people. They were on their way to a dance that was happening that night down in the hall and they wanted us to come too. Mr Mags went outside to talk to them and I heard them all laugh and then they all left, like the tide at the beach that I’d seen at Ayr.
So we were left with Mr and Mrs Mags, Mr and Mrs Connor, Mr MacInnes, Mr Tait, my mum and me, while the boys and Izzie ran down the hill to the dance at the hall behind Jimmy Robertson’s bus.
‘Mrs Gillespie,’ said Mr Tait quietly. ‘Would you like to try your chair?’
Mrs Mags had stopped shimmying and was in the other room taking off her red scarf.
‘It’s nearly dark, Mr Tait,’ said my mum. ‘I don’t think it’s such a good idea in the dark. Perhaps tomorrow.’
‘It has been well tested by young George and some of the other lads over by my hut,’ he said.
‘I’d slide right out of it, the seat is so smooth,’ she said.
‘Perhaps we could tie you in somehow,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’
His fingers drummed the top of his fancy bedpost stick.
My mum hung her head and looked miserable.
‘There’s enough of us here to carry her down,’ said Mr Mags. ‘Only kidding!’ he added when he saw my mum’s face.
‘It’s the getting back up that’s going to be hard,’ said Mr Connor.
‘Yes,’ said my mum. ‘That’s what I’m worried about too. I’ll just stay here with Lenny.’
‘But . . . ,’ I said.
‘What we need is a belt,’ said Mr Tait, ‘one that’s big enough to go round Mrs Gillespie’s waist, if you’ll pardon me, and round the back of the chair.’ He drummed his fingers on his lip.
‘I’ve got one!’ I said, delighted but also guilty to be so treacherous. ‘I’ve got one!’ The belt was under my dress so I flew into the other room to where Mrs Mags was. ‘Sorry, Mrs Mags,’ I said as I rummaged around under my dress for the belt which was so big it was wrapped around me twice. The shoe was still in my coat pocket.
‘Here it is!’ I handed it to Mr Tait.
‘Thank you, Lenny,’ said my mum, and I could see she didn’t really mean it. ‘But it’s dark. We’ll end up in the bushes.’
‘I’ll be scout!’ I said. There was no stopping me now.
We were all standing about in readiness, in almost pitch darkness, all but my mum who was still sitting at the far end of the bench. Someone lit the hurricane lamp which hung on a nail by the door.
‘Just you go on,’ she said.
‘How sure are you of this contraption?’ asked Mr Connor. ‘The hill is a steep one.’
‘But a short one,’ said Mr Mags.
Which was quite patently not true. It was a very big hill.
‘It’s a lot of fuss,’ said my mum.
‘Are there handles on the back, Mr Tait?’ said Mr Mags.
‘I’ll just stay,’ said my mum.
‘Of a sort,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I strengthened the back with a board; you could probably hang onto that, and there’s a very rudimentary braking system, which runs against the wheel, very rudimentary and I’m not sure how effective, so be vigilant.’
‘Lenny can stay with me,’ she said. ‘Lenny?’
Loyalty required me to sit down beside her on the bench, but I watched the men eagerly and wondered whether ‘rudimentary’ had anything to do with being rude, and I hoped that Mr Tait would somehow manage to make everything alright. My toes and fingers curled into little knots but, just in case, it seemed sensible to do a bit of extra wishing: ‘Dear God, please make my mum go to the dance. And bring Mavis back to us. Love Lenny Gillespie.’
‘Well, let’s have a look at it,’ said Mr Mags, lifting the hurricane lamp from its nail. Shadows lurched across the wall and all the drawings jumped and raced in the breeze from the open door.
‘And a practice shot too, to be on the safe side,’ said Mr Connor. Mrs Mags and her sister, Mrs Connor, and Mr Tait followed them out.
‘He seems to know what he’s doing,’ said Old Mr MacInnes, from his chair in the corner. We couldn’t actually see him because our eyes had become accustomed to the light of the hurricane.
‘He’s a sewing-machine-testing supervisor, not an engineer,’ said my mum gruffly.
I watched them through the window. Mrs Connor was in the chair tying the belt around herself. Mr Mags and Mr Connor were behind it. It was Mrs Connor who had told George my mum was a tart. Maybe I should have asked her what she meant.
‘We’ll have to get you down there somehow,’ said old Mr MacInnes from the shadows. ‘It’s that or the wheelbarrow.’
‘And why?’ said my mum.
I peered into the darkness to see the man who dared tell my mum what to do.
‘Well, you can’t stay here,’ he said, as if this was obvious.
‘Why not?’ she said.
‘Because you want to go to the dance,’ he said.
‘No, I don’t,’ she said.
‘Yes, you do, and so does young Lenny here,’ he said.
I couldn’t deny it.
‘You’ll both be miserable if you don’t and you’ll go on being miserable when we all come back with stories of what went on,’ he said.
‘They don’t want to be bothered with me,’ she said.
Then Mrs Connor in the wheelchair shrieked outside; it was a laugh like my mum’s.
‘Okay, let’s try her up the hill now,’ I heard Mr Tait say.
As they turned the chair round I saw the board he had put across the back of it to make it strong. It was a board from Singer’s factory where he was my mum’s boss and it said ‘SINGER’ in big bold letters right across the middle of it, and I thought ‘That’s my mum’s chair,’ because she so liked to sing. She sang when she was happy and sometimes she sang when she was sad so that she could be happy again. I knew that because it’s what I do too and, as you know, I even sing inside my head sometimes when I’d be in trouble if I sang out loud. I wondered whether my mum did that too, so I pointed out the board to her but she couldn’t turn far enough to see it.
‘I think they do want to be bothered with you,’ said Mr MacInnes. ‘Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m wrong,’ he said vaguely, and he waved his hand to indicate the conversation was over.
‘I can’t go,’ she said, addressing me. ‘Of course I can’t go. This is silly.’
I didn’t reply.
But finally she had no choice because Mrs Mags came in and declared it not exactly comfortable but safe as long as Mr Connor and Mr Mags paid attention to what they were doing and didn’t get tempted into the kind of silliness their sons were prone to. Mrs Connor stayed outside.
She was scared, my mum, and embarrassed, and she tried to protest just one more time, but no-one was leaving without her, so in the end she wobbled to the door on her crutches and lowered herself into the chair with Mrs Mags’s help. I tied the belt around her middle, even though she wouldn’t look at me she was so scared, and she grabbed my elbow.
‘Stay beside me,’ she said.
‘I’m right beside you, Mum,’ I said. ‘Not going anywhere.’ I took her hand. ‘It says Singer on the back, you know,’ I told her again, ‘so you’ll have to sing.’
She didn’t answer me.
I didn’t press it.
Down across the wet grass we went, past some other huts and bushes of yellow broom like flames in the dark, with our hurricane lamp to light the way (which we shouldn’t have had because of the blackout). She gripped my hand so tightly there was very little feeling in it by the time we arrived at the road, just like wee Rosie had done in Mrs Wilson’s hut. I thought she might be pig-headed and want to walk the length of four buses to Jimmy Robertson’s hall but she didn’t. She sat in silence, as she had done the full journey down the hill.
The rain had started again, the kind that doesn’t fall but seems to hang in the air and seep through your clothes. Some people were standing under the eaves of the pub waiting for the bus which was late and would be creeping along the narrow road with no lights to see by. They were a sober crowd, huddled and worrying in the dark mist, and by the time we reached them we were pretty sober and cold too.
‘I can’t,’ said my mum. ‘I’m sorry, but I really can’t.’
I tried to take my hand back but she wouldn’t let go.
‘Mum!’ I whispered loudly. ‘You can’t say you can’t. They’ve brought you all the way down here.’
‘I’m sorry but I can’t. The chair is lovely. Thank you, Mr Tait,’ (he was up ahead with Mrs Mags and her sister and didn’t hear) ‘but I . . . .’ Her voice cracked and I knew what she meant. She couldn’t go socialising and celebrating and relaxing without knowing where Mavis was. I knew this to be true, and I knew this to be true for me too, but it didn’t stop a flash of anger that Mavis was lost, that she’d run off, that she was four and didn’t have any sense, that my mum’s foot really was gone and that we weren’t going to the dance.
Dougie and bad George were yodelling further down the road outside the hall, and I was furious with them too for being nasty by the canal. The sound of a squeezy box came and went with the opening of the hall door. Mr Tait, Mrs Connor and Mrs Mags slipped inside.
‘Come on, Mrs Gillespie!’ said Mr Mags. ‘It’ll do you good. Off we go then!’
‘No!’ she said, rather loudly. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I really can’t. Take me up now and you won’t need to worry about me later. Please.’
As some people were going in, Sandy stuck his head out and gave me a cheerful wave. The door banged shut behind him. I could feel my ears burning and was glad of the dark. How could she? How could she? But of course she could, and of course she wouldn’t want to go. She’d already said that many times in the hut. I just didn’t want to face the truth, same as I didn’t want to see her leg that I knew, really, some day I’d have to see.
‘Well . . . well . . . ,’ said old Mr MacInnes as he passed us, as if he had something to say, but instead his words hung in the air unspoken, unformed like the mist that was clinging to us.
So they pushed her back up the hill.
Nobody spoke, not a word. They left us. I lit the candle, fed the fire, made tea, helped her to the cludgie, made a bed on the floor for us, tucked us in, blew out the candle and waited in the silent darkness for the chattering in my head to stop, waited for the explosions to die down.
By the time I heard happy voices growing louder as revellers flocked back up the hill, I had a plan.