THREE

A Boy and Girl Romance

Craig was dead set against seeking employment in a cattle mart or on the docks. He had no aversion to working with horses, though, and embarked optimistically on a tour of carriers’ offices in search of a post.

It did not take him long to discover that the four large firms who handled road haulage for the railway companies had no interest in a green hand without a ‘Society’ ticket and that even smaller establishments were only on the look-out for lorrymen who could freight fragile and dangerous cargoes and navigate the crowded city streets without falling foul of the strict police regulations. Undaunted, Craig lowered his sights. In local yards wages were meagre and hours longer but the turnover in hands was greater and a Society ticket not always an advantage. He learned that Sunday morning was the time of the week when bosses were sure to be on the premises. On Sunday morning carters were expected to clean the stables, tend their horses and repair damage to conveyances; and, of course, collect their wages. But Sunday brought Craig no job either and he came back to the boarding-house that evening in a disconsolate mood.

No less than three ministers shared the dining-room table with Craig and Kirsty. They were not particularly friendly and paid no heed to the young couple, exchanged tedious kirk gossip over the plates and teacups. Kirsty had knotted her wedding ring to a leather bootlace and wore it, hidden, about her neck. Craig approved of the secrecy. He was less concerned now about finding a house than he was about finding a job. But it was Thursday before he tramped out as far as Greenfield, a nondescript little burgh that nestled between Patrick and Whiteinch. Here, in Kingdom Road, he discovered the premises of Maitland Moss, general haulers and deliverymen, and, nothing loath, wandered in through the open gates.

The yard was stuck like a half-closed drawer in a tallboy of red tenements. It was flanked by the Kingdom burn which oozed out of a conduit for a lungful of air before vanishing into a big iron pipe for a final crawl to the river. The ammoniac reek of stables was very strong but Craig, a farm lad, did not find it off-putting. He stepped quickly over broken cobbles on to hard-packed cinders. To his left was a wooden shed, raised up on posts and reached by rickety stairs. None of the tenements’ windows looked down into the yard, only cliff-sized gables that reared to the chimney-pots high overhead.

‘What the hell’re you doin’, pokin’ about here?’ roared a deep, rasping voice.

Craig started guiltily.

‘I’m lookin’ for Maitland Moss.’

‘For what reason?’

The man was concealed in the shadowed mouth of a stable stall and did not show himself.

Craig swallowed. ‘I’m after work.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Nicholson.’

‘Age?’

‘Twenty.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘A farm, near Dalnavert.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘In the Carrick, near Girvan.’

‘What’s brought you to Glasgow?’

‘I told you, I’m after work.’

It struck him as strange that the shouted conversation attracted no attention, that the yard, apart from the man with the gruff voice, was deserted.

‘What d’you know about horses?’

‘I can plough,’ Craig answered.

‘I’m no’ needin’ a bloody ploughboy.’

‘Look, I can tend horses an’ I’ve driven carts, long an’ short, for years. Is there work here for me or is there not?’

‘Keep your hair on, sonny.’

When the man emerged from the shadows he was grinning. He was the swaggering sort, muscular, with a powerful bull-neck showing in the collar of his open-throated shirt. Moleskin breeks clung to bulging thighs and a broad leather belt with a brass buckle was slung low about his waist. He wore no scarf or muffler but had on his head an old round-crown tweed hat that perched on a tangle of bushy brown hair.

‘Are you Mr Maitland?’

‘Not me.’

‘Mr Moss, then?’

‘Same bloke; Maitland Moss.’

‘When can I see him?’ said Craig.

‘Never,’ said the man, still grinning. ‘He never dirties his shoes comin’ down here. Why should he? He’s got me t’ run the show for him.’

‘Are you the – the boss?’

‘Danny Malone. Hirin’ and firin’ is my business.’

‘Well, will ye hire me, Mr Malone?’

‘Pay’s rotten an’ the hours are weary.’

‘I’m used to that on the farm.’

‘You’ve a decent pair o’ shoulders on you, an’ a snappy sort o’ lip which will stand ye in good stead when you’re arguin’ wi’ a copper at a junction. Ever been in trouble wi’ the law?’

Craig frowned at the question.

He shook his head. ‘Nah, never.’

‘Ye won’t like what I’ll do to you if you’re lyin’.’

‘I’m tellin’ the truth, I swear.’

‘All right, then, I’ll take ye on a week’s trial; how’s that?’

Craig’s throat was tight with excitement but he was not without guile. ‘Is that week’s trial with or without pay?’

‘If I tell you it’s without pay what’ll ye do?’

‘Walk,’ said Craig.

‘Walk where?’

‘Home.’

‘Where’s home?’

‘Lodgin’s in Walbrook Street.’

‘Walbrook Street; very posh for a farmer’s laddie. Are ye married?’

Craig did not hesitate. ‘Aye.’

Malone grinned again and stuck his thumbs in the sagging belt.

‘Married to some juicy wee country lass, I’ll wager,’ he said.

‘Do I get the job or not?’ said Craig.

‘One week’s trial, with pay by the day. The rate per rake’s damned low, I warn you. Mr Moss likes his profit.’

‘What is the rate?’

‘On average you’ll take home about sixteen bob.’

‘I thought the minimum rate was—’

‘Minimum rates are for Society members – an’ that ain’t you, sonny,’ Malone told him. ‘Anyhow, this is no Society yard. We want none of that sort here. Come on now, are ye in or out?’

‘In,’ said Craig. ‘Do I have to sign a paper?’

‘Christ, no!’ said Malone.

‘When do I start?’

‘Tomorrow morn. Five o’clock.’

‘I’ll be here,’ Craig promised.

Malone did not offer his hand to seal the contract.

‘Have you bairns?’ he asked.

‘Nah.’

‘Tryin’ hard, though, I’ll wager.’

‘What’s that got to do wi’ you?’

‘How do you feel about puttin’ in a spot o’ night work?’

‘If it pays extra, I’m more than willin’.’

Malone placed a beefy hand on his shoulder.

‘Are ye no’ scared some dirty dog’ll sneak into your bed when you’re gone?’ Malone suggested.

‘Let him try,’ Craig said, with more belligerence than he felt. ‘I’ll kill any bastard that tries it on wi’ my wife.’

Malone laughed. ‘That’s what I like to hear; a man that can look after his own.’

Still laughing he gave Craig a dunt with his elbow to direct him out into Kingdom Road, no longer a footloose stranger but a man on the verge of employment.

 

From Gallowgate to Saracen Cross, from Hogganfield to the Whifflet you were never more than a short step from the door of a place that sold strong drink, from premises where a man might slake his thirst and find relief from the grinding monotony of toil in manly company. Tucked away between the vaults and inns and public houses, however, so obvious as to be invisible, were other oases of comfort and consolation for the citizens of the west. Never a voice was raised to protest the extent of the vice that they fostered and no church took militant stand against them. No society was ever formed to fight a demon that rotted teeth, pitted the gut, puffed up the pancreas, shrivelled the liver and gradually depleted the body of strength by cheating it of true nourishment. Temperance was never preached to those poor wights who fell victim to sweet tooth, who each day craved a taste of sugary confection and who, if they did not get it, grizzled and girned for want of the treat. Fortunes were made from the national addiction. Vast commercial empires were founded and sustained on satisfying the demand for all things sweet, and great wedding cakes of profit were erected on columns of pure cane sugar.

While the average wife was a dab hand at scones, baps or pancakes she somehow baulked at baking cakes, felt perhaps that she could not compete with the products of commercial bakeries, examples of whose art appeared by the hundred score on stencilled boards every morning, oozing treacle and fruit syrup, glistening with icing and sugar crystals. What ordinary mother could duplicate such magic, could reproduce the mouth-watering artefacts that tempted you just with the sight of them lined up on a tray in Dougie’s Dairy or Mr Kydd’s wee corner shop? Few women were bold enough to try. For that reason rogues like the Oswald brothers flourished and girls like Kirsty Nicholson were employed in long bleak sheds to turn out cakes in volume like so many artillery shells.

The Oswalds had several retail outlets of their own where each of their nineteen varieties of cake was displayed in the window on a separate little silver tray against a bank of more ordinary teabreads and soft pastries. In fact, Kirsty had been on the point of going into the shop to part with a penny for a delicious-looking chocolate cup when the notice had caught her attention. Hands, it stated, were wanted in the Oswald Brothers’ Vancouver Street Cakery; no experience necessary. As work of any kind was at a premium Kirsty was surprised to find no queue of eager lassies clamouring for jobs when she presented herself at the ‘Cakery’ the following morning.

She knocked on a big painted door round the back of the building and was greeted by a narrow-shouldered baker in a filthy canvas apron who shouted at her and rudely directed her to the front gate. From there she found her way into the sheds where girls were ‘assembling’ cakes on long trestle tables and sorting them on the boards to fill the day’s printed orders. Kirsty had put on plain clothes, not her powder-blue, and was glad that she had been sensible, for any hint of ‘posh’ would have lost her the job before she had even started.

It was not, of course, either of the Oswald Brothers who ‘interviewed’ her for the vacant position but a heavy-set and menacingly swarthy woman named Dykes. Mrs Dykes was in charge of all female staff, responsible for keeping the girls hard at it from the start of the shift at a quarter past five in the morning until last orders had gone out and the ‘rooms’, as the sheds were called, had been swept and sprinkled.

Mrs Dykes asked Kirsty several desultory questions about her age, marital status, place of residence and proneness to infectious diseases. Kirsty answered truthfully, except that she replied to the question regarding her status only by holding up her left hand and showing Mrs Dykes the ring which she had taken from its thong and slipped on to her finger after she had left Walbrook Street that morning.

It was apparent that Kirsty’s answers were of no real importance, that she might have given her address as the Govanhill lazaret for all the difference it would have made. She was fit enough to stand for seven hours at a stretch and that was all that mattered to Mrs Dykes and the brothers Oswald.

The catch was the wage; a miserly six shillings for a six-day ‘half shift’. Kirsty was not so green as to suppose that a shilling-a-day rate was not usurious, an exploitation of the female labour market’s need for part-time employment. She accepted, nonetheless, and listened while Mrs Dykes reeled off company rules and regulations.

She would be docked threepence for lateness.

She would be docked two days’ wages for every one day that she failed to report for work without prior notice.

She would not, of course, be paid for a day or any part of a day in which she had to leave the sheds for any reason and for any purpose other than to answer a call of nature.

She was not allowed to take her apron or mob-cap home.

She was – glory be – permitted to buy misshapen cakes at half-price and a bag of a dozen bread rolls at a one-penny discount.

To all of this Kirsty agreed, nodding.

Vancouver Street was a long walk from the boarding-house but Kirsty had received so little recompense for her labour at Hawkhead that she felt flattered to be offered money at all. Six shillings was not so bad. Indeed, when Craig found regular work they would be able to afford to rent a nice room and she would be free to devote every afternoon to shopping and housework.

‘Are ye takin’ it, hen?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Kirsty, an answer which, by its eagerness, drew a funny look from Mrs Dykes.

‘Report for “trainin’ ” at five tomorrow.’

‘Friday?’ said Kirsty.

‘Somethin’ wrong wi’ Friday?’

‘No, oh no. Friday’s fine.’

She thanked Mrs Dykes again and went to the door without really studying the girls at the tables or noticing the rusty girders or sweating plaster or the edging of grime to the floor. She had a job, would earn a wage, and that was all that mattered to her there and then. Elated, she set off with the vague notion that she might find Craig in the street and tell him at once of her good fortune.

During the week’s stay at Walbrook Street Kirsty had acquired an awareness, rather than knowledge, of the geography of the territories that snuggled along the Clyde, the wards and parish boundaries marked by steeples, towers, green parks, that flanked the length of Dumbarton Road. Greenfield was new to her, however, for she had not been this far west before.

For Partick folk burgh status lent pride and collective identity but Greenfield was too small and insignificant to be separated from its lively neighbour. It did not even have a proper view of the Clyde, for warehouses blocked out the wharves and an embankment of the Lanarkshire and Dunbartonshire railway line bottomed the little burgh like a rampart. Beyond the railway lay Hedderwick’s repair and fitting yard where, on a few narrow acres, shallow-draught vessels were keeled and equipped. A new block of flats, in beautiful red sandstone, peering disdainfully down on the junction of Kingdom Road and Canada Road, might have suggested to a casual stranger that this was a high-class area but a few steps into the hinterland and the smoke-blackened, weather-worn façades of old whitestone tenements would rapidly dispel the notion that the burgh was in any way ‘posh’.

Kirsty walked down Kingdom Road’s chasm of tenements and hunchbacked cobbles, turned into Banff Street and, skirting the tenements’ dingy backcourts, popped out into the bottom end of Canada Road where it sloped toward a tunnel in the railway embankment. Curiosity led her through the dripping stone arch into St John Street, a long cobbled street which fronted the wharves and shipyards.

Through the open gate she glimpsed the interior of Hedderwick’s yard, the river regulated by a series of locks, and a long ‘thing’ on a slipway that looked for all the world like the rotted carcass of a cow over which men scrambled as if to strip the last of its flesh from its bones. Two gatemen in tall hats glared at Kirsty and quickly closed the big gate as if they feared that she might learn secrets that it was not given to a mere woman to know.

Precious little to see along St John Street; Kirsty returned through the tunnel to Canada Road.

Quarter of a mile or so from the base of the street a little crowd had gathered outside one of the tenements. The bustle and hubbub seemed threatening and Kirsty’s initial impulse was to slip down one of the lanes and avoid the commotion. But she strolled on, intrigued by the reason for the gathering, saw children and a handcart piled high with furniture and bundles of old clothes, and wondered what tinkers could be doing so far into the city. They were not tinkers at all but tenants caught in the humiliating ritual of an eviction.

At first Kirsty could not make out what was going on for the language was so guttural and alien that she could hardly understand a word of it. A constable, tall and distinctive in his uniform, presided over the proceedings and seemed calm and passive in the midst of the rabble. It took Kirsty several minutes to sort out the cast of the drama; the landlord, his agent, a municipal officer, members of the family, and three, possibly four, male lodgers who had also lost their billets.

More bundles were slung on to the handcart and two small children were hoisted on board and a runny-nosed toddler of indeterminate sex was lifted up and perched, howling, on the very top of the pyramid. Women leaned from tenement windows and gathered in closes and bawled and catcalled as if the performance was taking place on the stage of the Empire and not on a public thoroughfare. The landlord and his agent appeared no more respectable than their tenants and, far from being bullying, seemed to be very upset by the whole squalid affair.

‘Ah’m sorry, Mrs Skinner, but ye canny say ye wisnae warned,’ said one of the men in a whining tone, while his agent, also small and seedy and drooping, patted his shoulder and muttered words of sympathy as if injury was being done to the landlord and not his tenants.

‘See you, McCoig, you’s needin’ hung,’ cried a crow-voiced wife from one of the windows. ‘Ye’re a greedy bastard, puttin’ the law on them, an’ her wi’ an ailin’ hubby tae.’

‘Hangin’s too bloody good for him.’

‘Aye, so it is but.’

McCoig, the landlord, denied the accusations.

‘It wisnae me, I tell ye,’ he bleated. ‘God, but she was well warned. How could she no’ pay the three quarters owin’? I mean, God, she’s got four lodgers in there tae.’

But the crowd was not to be appeased.

‘Who was it notified the Sanny man, eh, McCoig?’

The ‘Sanny man’, municipal officer in charge of Health and Sanitation, entered the fray.

‘It was, I assure you, a random inspection,’ he cried.

‘McCoig brung ye in. Deny it if ye can.’

‘Never you mind, Dougie. Never you heed them,’ the agent, a brother perhaps, muttered soothingly. ‘Right’s on our side.’

‘RIGHT? WHAT BLOODY RIGHT?’

‘I never reported nobody.’ Douglas McCoig appealed to the officer, who, in black suit and bowler hat, exuded an air of superior wisdom. ‘Tell them it wisnae me, Mr Manfred.’

‘BLOODY MIDAS, SO YE ARE.’

Mr Manfred had no more respect for landlords than he had for the tenants who packed their miserable apartments far in excess of the numbers laid down by burgh law.

Mr Manfred snapped, ‘Think yoursel’ lucky you weren’t fined, Mr McCoig. You knew fine what was goin’ on. Thirteen folk in a wee single-end, for God’s sake!’

‘I never counted them.’

‘It was your responsibility, Mr McCoig,’ said Mr Manfred, then, waving an arm imperiously, shouted, ‘Now, you lot, stop shilly-shallyin’. I haven’t got all day to waste.’

A young man in shirt sleeves, cheeks aflame, flung himself out of the crowd and might have assaulted the Sanny man if the police constable had not rolled from the wall with the swiftness of a leopard leaping from a rock. He caught and restrained the young avenger and growled, ‘Enough out o’ you, lad, unless you’re anxious for a spell on bread an’ water.’

Persuaded not to press his grievances with his fists the young lodger, released, took shelter behind Mrs Skinner who had by now wrapped her broad-hipped body in a voluminous tartan shawl and had picked up an infant and a toddler to complete the image of martyred and unrepentant motherhood.

She was in her thirties but looked older. Sallow, haggard, with ash-grey circles around each eye, she displayed no lack of energy and in a high yapping voice snapped out orders that every member of the Skinner clan jumped to obey. ‘Bring him down then. Go on, Jimmy, fetch him down. Gi’e him a hand, Bert. I’m no’ leavin’ this spot till I see him right.’ She hoisted a child into the crook of each elbow and shrugged the shawl expertly around them to cover their skinny bare legs.

‘POOR THINGS. LOOK’T THEM. ARE YE NO’ BLACK ASHAMED, McCOIG?’

Douglas McCoig did indeed appear to be ashamed. He hung his head and could not bear to look as the procession emerged noisily from the close. Mr Manfred was not so squeamish. Hands on hips, coat-tails thrust back, he watched every move with a tiny hard-edged smirk.

Kirsty inched closer. Nobody paid her the slightest attention for every eye was fastened upon the close mouth and a hush, broken only by the wailing of the toddler atop the handcart, fell over the multitude.

Seated stiffly on a ladderback chair, Mr Skinner was carried from his ancestral home. He had a shawl about his shoulders and wore no overcoat or jacket. His collarless shirt was open to show a shrunken chest and the emotional palpitations of his Adam’s apple. He was not ashamed of his tears. He did not hide his face in his hands, kept his fists closed tight on the chair knobs as he was rocked out of darkness into daylight. He wore no shoes or boots and his trousers had ridden up to his shins to expose pale, hairy legs. In his lap was a chamber-pot and a cut-glass vase.

The young lodger, Jimmy, was weeping too, and the other attendants looked grim and funeral as they put the chair down on the pavement directly in front of the Sanny man.

Mr Manfred did not flinch. He was not afraid to confront a victim of officialdom face to face.

‘Got the key then, Mr Skinner?’ he demanded.

It was too much, too cold, for the neighbours. Shouting broke out anew and fists were raised. One wife lost balance, shrieked, and was only just saved from tumbling over her window-sill and beaning some poor soul on the pavement below. Even Kirsty, a stranger, felt a lump in her throat when Mr Manfred stuck out a lilywhite hand and once more demanded the key.

Slowly, hesitantly, Mr Skinner dipped a hand into the chamber-pot and brought out a long iron key. He placed it across the officer’s palm with all the dignity of a general surrendering a battalion’s colours.

Mr Manfred heaved a sigh. ‘Right, on your way. You have my letters to the supervisor so you’ll not be turned away.’

‘The Model!’ wheezed Mr Skinner. ‘Who would have thought it’d ever come t’ this that a Skinner would be sent tae the workhouse.’

Mr Manfred leaned forward. ‘I thought you’d be used to it by now, Skinner. Anyway, it’s a model lodgin’ not the workhouse.’

Mr Skinner stiffened, straightened, sniffed and said grandly, ‘Minnie, take our poor homeless weans awa’.’

Hands gripped the shafts of the cart. The child on top, shocked into silence, grabbed desperately at the bundles as the pyramid of belongings listed to starboard. Lodgers levelled the cart and flexed their muscles. Mrs Skinner’s brood gathered, big-eyed, about her skirts. Mrs Skinner glared venomously at Douglas McCoig and spat on the pavement at his feet. ‘Hell mend ye, McCoig. May ye be damned for this day’s work.’

McCoig winced, hung his head and did not look up until the woman led her children off, followed by the laden cart and finally by Mr Skinner raised up in his chair on willing shoulders. With a nod of satisfaction Mr Manfred gave the key to the agent who pocketed it promptly and discreetly.

The police constable had strolled away in the wake of the procession but whether it was to attend their welfare or just to see them safely off his beat Kirsty could not be sure. She had been distracted from watching the family’s departure, her attention caught by the key. A key meant a lock; a lock meant a door; and a door meant an apartment. It dawned on her at that moment that there was a vacant room in this tenement in the Greenfield and that the owner of the property and his letting-agent were standing not ten yards away. Stayed by a certain guilt, she did not immediately obey her inclination to rush forward and accost the landlord on the spot.

The crowd dispersed. Windows slammed shut. The men loitered by the close to watch the Skinners recede. The children clung to Mammy’s hands or to her skirts, dragging and trailing and girning, and the cart swayed and lumbered ponderously with the little toddlers still hanging grimly to the bundles. But the ladderback chair and its occupant had vanished. It was not until Kirsty stepped back that she saw what had become of them. The chair was propped against a wall, vase and chamber-pot beneath it, and above them was the gilded sign of the Vancouver Vaults, Canada Road’s most salubrious public house. Bearers and borne had apparently been unable to resist a last refreshment there and the police constable had apparently felt duty-bound to accompany them to see that they came to no harm.

Kirsty gave a little gasp, laughter and relief. Her guilt evaporated instantly. She dashed into the close of Number 11, where the McCoigs had gone, and followed their voices upstairs to the top landing.

Mr Colin McCoig, cousin not brother, was on the point of inserting the long key into the lock while Douglas watched him gloomily.

Panting, Kirsty said, ‘Sir, can I have a word wi’ you?’

The men looked round and Mr Douglas said, ‘Aye, lass, what is it ye want?’

‘Is it for rent, this house?’

The cousins exchanged a glance and Mr Colin raised an eyebrow before he answered, ‘As a matter o’ fact, it is. But it’ll not be vacant for long, dear, not in this neck o’ the woods.’

‘What size is it?’ said Kirsty.

‘It’s a single-end,’ said Mr Colin.

‘What’s that?’

‘God, are you from China?’

‘A single-end’s a kitchen wi’ a bed recess,’ Mr Douglas explained.

‘Were all those folk livin’ in one room?’

‘That,’ said Mr Douglas, ‘is what all yon stramash was about. The Burgh Council won’t allow it. Three adults an’ three children under twelve is their maximum.’

‘Did you not know?’ said Kirsty, ingenuously.

Again the cousins exchanged a glance and Mr Colin cleared his throat. ‘Obviously the room’ll need a bloomin’ good scrub but, otherwise, it’s in perfect order. How many of a family have ye got, dear?’

‘Me an’ my husband, that’s all.’

‘Aw, you’re newly-weds.’

‘Aye.’

‘Both workin’?’

‘Yes.’ Kirsty had learned the value of a little white lie in the right place at the right time. ‘Yes, he’s a carter. I’m employed at the bakery.’

‘Which bakery?’

‘Oswalds’.’

‘That’ll no’ pay much.’

‘My husband earns a good wage. He works hard.’

‘No doubt, no doubt he does,’ said Mr Douglas McCoig, as his cousin pulled him to one side and whispered in his ear.

Mr Colin said at length, ‘The rent’s four shillin’s per week.’

Kirsty said, ‘Can I look at the place?’

‘Not at this very minute,’ said Mr Colin. ‘We have to check in case it needs repairs, see.’

‘Is it furnished?’

‘It has all the furnishin’ that newly-weds need,’ said Mr Colin. ‘Come on now, dear, make up your mind. I can get a shillin’ a night for the place if I farm it.’

Kirsty hesitated; the rent did not seem unreasonable when she weighed it against her takings from Oswalds. The fact that Craig did not yet have work did not unduly bother her and she gave no thought at all to the long-term commitment.

Firmly she said, ‘I’ll take it.’

‘One month’s rent’s required in advance.’

‘Well, I haven’t got it on me.’

‘When can you get it?’

‘By tonight.’

‘Come tonight then at half past seven – with the cash.’

Kirsty was suddenly desperate to obtain occupancy of the single-end, gulled into imagining that it would be impossible to do better. She touched her wedding ring. It was on the tip of her tongue to offer it as a pledge of good faith that she and Craig would be there that evening with sixteen shillings in cash. But she could not bring herself to do it. She looked at Mr Douglas who seemed still to have a drop of charity in him.

‘Promise me you’ll keep it for us.’

‘We’ll keep it lass,’ the landlord answered. ‘Until eight o’clock.’

‘We’ll be here,’ said Kirsty.

She dropped a curtsy to the men, turned and skipped away down the stairs, her heart singing.

She had a job. She had a house. She had a husband. The dark and dragging threat of Hawkhead snapped like a worn thread and fell from her, leaving her light-hearted and light-headed.

Behind her, echoing down the stairwell, came Mr Douglas’s shout: ‘No dogs, no cats, no parakeets, remember.’

And Mr Colin’s parting shot: ‘An’ bring the bloomin’ readies.’

Kirsty did not hear them.

She was already out in Canada Road and running like the wind to find Craig and tell him her wonderful news.

 

It was almost midnight. For Craig and Kirsty the day had been filled with uncomfortable novelties. Saturday would bring them no rest and no respite and on Sunday they would have to tackle the kitchen in earnest to put it into habitable state.

‘Kirsty,’ Craig said. ‘Is that not enough?’

Pale with exhaustion, he leaned dejectedly against the jawbox, the small stone sink under the window, a claw-hammer in his hand. Since he had returned from the yard at nine o’clock he had been trying to clear the bed recess into which the Skinners had fixed three tiers of bunks. Back at Dalnavert he had always enjoyed working with his hands but there had been space on and about the farm; here there was none and the physical limitations seemed to accentuate the frustrations that had been building in him almost since the hour he had left home. It was all very well for Kirsty. She had been used to squalor. He had been brought up decently and to his way of thinking this place, even if it was ‘their own’, was no better than a slum. He blamed Kirsty for it and cursed his own weakness for not holding out for something better. What had his dad’s hard-earned money bought – a black iron range, a gas jet in a frayed mantle, a cold-water sink, a table, three chairs and a fragment of worn carpet. Kirsty seemed confident that she could create a comfortable home out of it, especially since they both had jobs, but he did not trust her word, was not convinced by her enthusiasm.

It had all been so different from what he had imagined it would be and he could not cope with the swings in his moods, the strain of responsibility and uncertainty. When he had packed the bags and left Walbrook Street, for instance, he should have felt glad to be shot of the stuffy boarding-house but, in fact, he had gone with a little pang of regret and had been quite touched, though he had not shown it, when old Frew had given them a gift of bed linen and a pair of good wool blankets. He wanted things to be printed down in black and white, to know what was good and what was bad, as he had done at home in Carrick, but everything contrived against such simplicity and he felt as if he had moved not just from the country to the city but from one dimension into another. He had to cope, had to shape up to it, to fulfil his vague, rash promises and become not only a man but a provider, to keep his end of the bargain in the hope that Kirsty would keep hers.

His first day on the job had been harrowing and his agitation came out of fatigue. At Dalnavert he would have come home to a hot meal and a warm fire and a chair in which to rest his bones. He had trudged home from the yard with a similar expectation only to find chaos. Supper was a hasty affair, a meat pie and mushy peas, for Kirsty had work for him to do. She had been busy all afternoon, had purchased pots and pans and crockery from the Partick Bazaar, had found a coalman to lug two bags of best domestic upstairs and fill the bunker in the tiny hall, had made a determined start on cleaning. The kitchen was pungent with the smell of carbolic and lukewarm suds. The fire smoked. The frayed gas mantle stank like a singed hoof.

‘What was the job like?’ Kirsty had asked.

‘All right.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘No place very special.’

‘What did you deliver?’

‘Nails. In kegs.’

‘What else?’

‘Just nails. All day.’

‘What sort of horse was it?’

‘Just a horse, a dray.’

‘Did you have the reins?’

‘Nah, I’m only a porter.’

‘What’s the driver like?’

‘All right.’

‘Is he young?’

‘Nah.’

Sensing his reluctance to talk, Kirsty had asked no more questions. He was glad of it. He did not want to seem weak by complaining about the hardship of the carter’s lot and was not sure that she would understand why he hated it so much, with the din of traffic in his ears and the monotony of loading and unloading the tubby kegs, his driver, Bob McAndrew, treating his discomfort as if it were a great joke.

He had made an effort, though, to be civilised.

‘How about Oswalds’? What was it like?’ he had asked.

‘Fine,’ Kirsty had said.

He had nodded and turned his attention to the problems of the bed recess and the dismantling of all that clumsy woodwork with nothing but the hammer that Kirsty had bought for him out of the kindness of her heart. He could not understand why she was so cheerful. With her auburn hair tucked under a mob-cap and her sleeves rolled up, she fairly fizzed with energy. No doubt she was anticipating a night of love, locked in his arms. The truth was that the events of the day had drained him of all desire and he contemplated Kirsty almost objectively. It was for this girl, to possess this girl, that he had quit Dalnavert, surrendered the security of his family and given up the only sort of life he had ever known.

Fleetingly he yearned for the company of his brother and sister, for his mother’s sharp discipline, forgot the rebellion that had been simmering in him for months before Kirsty had appeared out of the darkness and the strange adventure had begun. He felt as if his father had cast him out, not given him his freedom, and he resented it. Much of his vague, youthful, moody resentment of being made to face the reality of responsibility settled, inevitably, upon Kirsty, who, on her knees on the bare floorboards, plied the scrubbing-brush with a vigour that mocked his fatigue. Hands all rough and red, face flushed, hair straggling, she paddled in greasy suds. He did not want her to do it, to have to do it. He wanted her to be sweet and soft and yielding, as fragrant and unblemished as a girl in an advertisement for Starlight soap. He blamed himself for not making it so and was angered at his impotence in protecting her from the coarse and common realities that sullied everything.

Dolefully, guiltily, he contemplated her round bottom, swelling hips and the shape of her breasts heavy under her blouse. There was no drop of passion in him. He did not see that he could avoid disappointing her again and wondered if he would ever be able to fulfil himself in her eyes, make of her the wife he wanted her to be. If he had been less raw, less gauche, he might have thrust the hurt and anger to one side, might have recognised that tenderness needed no dressings or ceremonies, might have touched her, lifted her up and taken her in his arms and told her that everything would be all right, have shown her that there was love entangled in his pride. But he had seen none of it, had no models, and in his confusion snapped at her, ‘Kirsty, for God’s sake, can it not wait till tomorrow?’

She glanced over her shoulder, gave him an uncertain smile.

‘I’ll not be long, dear.’

Oh, God, she assumed he was eager to get her into bed.

‘Come on, mop up that mess,’ he told her.

‘I’ll just be—’

‘Now, Kirsty,’ he snapped.

She got to her feet, plopped brush into pail, carried the pail to the sink and emptied it, lifted the new, tousled mop and whisked it over the wet boards.

Craig leaned on the wall by the bed recess, watching her blearily.

She wrung out the mop under the cold-water tap, rinsed the pail and turned it up to dry.

‘Soon be finished, Craig,’ she told him cheerfully.

This was his wedding night, his honeymoon. He sighed, took his grip from under the bed and went out into the hallway. He changed from his work clothes into a clean shirt and, standing there, stared down at his body. He placed a hand tentatively on his parts and experienced no response at all. He tiptoed out of the house and scurried down to the water closet on the half-landing, praying that he would not meet any of the neighbours. When he got back, tense and shivering, to the kitchen he found that Kirsty had managed to make up the bed. There was no mattress yet but she had tucked a blanket over the hard boards and folded the new linen sheets, fashioned a pillow out of one of Mrs Frew’s wool blankets.

Craig stared in horror and gave a little inaudible groan when Kirsty discreetly lowered the flame of the gas to relieve the kitchen of its starkness and bring in at least a touch of romantic mystery.

Did she not realise how tired he was, that he would have to be up again in about four hours and would be jolting on the board of a horse-cart in five, heaving bloody nail-kegs about? He ached with weariness and craved only sleep. Never before had he appreciated such trivial luxuries as a pillow, a mattress and a bed that he could call his own.

‘Pop in, dear,’ said Kirsty.

‘What – what about you?’

‘I’ll be with you in a minute, Craig.’

Cautiously Craig fitted himself into the makeshift bed. He sighed, rested his neck on the flat pillow, slid out his legs, turned on his hip, tucked up his knees, stared at the scarred and yellowing paper on the back wall.

He closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, tainted with smoke and carbolic soap. He sighed again and with an effort of will, forced himself to fall asleep.

 

Kirsty was neither surprised nor disappointed to discover that Craig had fallen asleep. She had expected as much. She had not even taken her brand-new nightgown from its tissue wrapping and wore only her usual clean, patched shift. She gave her hair attention with the brush and then went softly to the side of the bed and knelt by him. He was curled up against the back wall, snoring fiercely. She had never seen him so tired and dejected and felt guilty about it, believing that she had somehow disappointed him.

She got up, stretched and glanced about the kitchen.

All her chores had been done. The fire was banked, kettle put on the hob; the tea-caddy, porridge pot and salt shaker were placed where she could find them in the drowsy bumbling half-light of the morning hour. She had even remembered to put the butter dish and milk jug in the cold stone sink. She would be first up, of course, at four o’clock.

She picked up the nickel-plated Peep-o-Day American alarm clock that Craig had bought as an essential item and set it as he had instructed her to do, listening to the tiny fairy-like ting of the bell cup and the whirr of its interior mechanism. She put the alarm on a chair and the chair close to the bed recess. All she could see of Craig was a lock of dark hair above the cowl of the blanket and one bare foot at the other end of the bed. She slipped carefully in beside him.

She wriggled into position, adjusted her bottom, made herself as small and unobtrusive as possible. She longed to be able to put her arms about him, hug him to her, but did not dare in case he wakened and supposed that she was putting him under an obligation.

Tomorrow would be better for him; she would make sure that it was better.

She slid an arm along his flank and was soothed by the passive touching. She snuggled closer to her man who did not stir, not even when she kissed him lightly on the earlobe and sleepily whispered her goodnights.

 

Kirsty arrived at Oswalds’ in the calm primrose dawn of a fine April morning. Mrs Dykes was waiting to give her a change of occupation. Saturday was a busy day in the Cakery. Rich, poor and in-between families were all given to perking up their tea-tables with cakes and fancy confections and orders would be thick on the spikes. Kirsty had quickly mastered the routine tasks of the packing-room, guided by Letty, a skinny tubercular girl of about her own age, and Mrs McNeil, a square-faced, square-bodied woman of forty or so who, now that she had borne a family, had returned to work to help make ends meet.

Letty was chatty but Kirsty could not understand half of what she said for the girl had a real Glasgow accent and gave no quarter in her prattle. The work on the boards was simple but fraught with pitfalls for a novice who had not yet learned the names for all the cakes and who could not always decipher the scribbles on the order slips.

‘Letty, what does that say?’

‘Dozen coconut buns, dozen snowballs, two dozen fairy cakes, three dozen almond slices,’ Letty would interpret in her incredible accent, adding, ‘A wee board’ll dae ye.’

Kirsty would find a small board, would move along the flour-dusted iron racks that backed the packing-tables and pluck out the appropriate number of cakes and place them on the board in neat rows. She would then lick the original order slip, slap it to the side of the board and carry the board to the ‘vanman’s table’ where it would be picked up by a delivery boy or one of Oswalds’ carriers.

Kirsty had assumed that her tasks would remain the same from day to day, varied only by sessions of cake-making when seasonal demand was high. She was surprised when, on that first Saturday, Mrs Dykes led her away from the tables only moments after she arrived.

‘Can you count?’ said Mrs Dykes.

‘Aye, well enough.’

‘What’s four times four?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘Go into the store. Tommy’ll tell you what to do.’

The flour store lay between the sheds and the bakehouse and Mrs Dykes’ son, Tommy, was waiting for Kirsty there.

On seeing her, Tommy grinned, showing large white teeth and pink gums. He was probably about her own age, Kirsty judged, but his gawky arrogance made him seem like a child pretending to be an adult. From the first she could not take him seriously. He wore a flannel vest and a brown apron. His arms were thin and hairless and his ears stuck out like the handles of a chamber-pot.

He said, ‘So you’re the new one, eh?’

‘Aye.’

‘You’ve to do what I tell ye.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Measurin’ the mixes. It’s no’ every lassie gets to do it but my mam has you marked as a smart one, so just you listen to me.’ From behind his back Tommy Dykes produced a metal scoop attached to a short wooden handle. ‘See this? This is a two-pounder.’

He handed her the utensil, stepped to the side and slapped a hand on the lid of a wooden bin, chest-high and some six feet in breadth. A dozen such bins lined the storeroom. Two wooden tables occupied the centre of the room.

‘See this?’ Tommy said. ‘Cornflour.’

The bins were coated in the ubiquitous grey dust that seemed to infiltrate every corner in Oswalds’ Cakery.

Kirsty nodded; she had already noticed the printed sign above the bin which identified its contents. Tommy put a hand on her waist and steered her to the left.

‘See this? Oat-flour.’

He gave her a squeeze and guided her on.

‘See this—’

‘Rice-flour,’ said Kirsty.

‘How’d you know that?’

‘I can read, Mr Dykes,’ Kirsty told him, nodding at the sign.

Tommy grunted and led her to the tables.

Upon them were a series of large metal bowls of different sizes.

Tommy said, ‘I heard a rumour that ye were bonnie. I’m the man for freckles.’

‘I’m married, Mr Dykes.’

‘Call me Tommy, eh!’

‘Show me what I’ve to do.’

‘Ever seen how a doughnut gets made?’ Tommy asked her.

‘I can’t say I have.’

‘Like this.’ Tommy made a gesture with fingers and thumb. ‘I’ll show ye later, if ye like.’

‘I don’t think I do like, Mr Dykes.’

Tommy shrugged off the rebuff. ‘Suit yourself.’

‘I’m here to work, Mr Dykes,’ Kirsty reminded him.

‘Aye, right,’ he said. ‘See this? These are mixin’ bowls. You take flour out o’ the bins an’ put it into the bowls. Simple, eh!’

‘In what proportions?’

Tommy did not understand.

Kirsty said, ‘The measure, the recipe?’

‘Oh, aye.’ Tommy dipped a hand into one of the bowls and brought out a slip of paper identical to the order slips used next door. The pencilled message upon it was, however, more legible. ‘Four rice. Two oatmeal.’

‘Is that all?’

‘It’ll just be a wee batch or a special order,’ said Tommy. ‘The bakers’ll add in the sugar an’ stuff. You only get t’ do the basic. Another thing; don’t forget to remove the recipe from the bowl before ye put the flours in. The bakers get fair wild if bits o’ burnt paper spoil the risin’.’

‘Where do I put the bowls when they’re filled?’

‘On the table; just leave them on the table,’ said Tommy. ‘Don’t take them into the bakehouse whatever you do.’

‘Why not?’

‘Women aren’t allowed in the bakehouse.’

Kirsty did not question that answer. The bakehouse would be man’s domain where masters of the trade held sway.

‘Will I be doin’ this job every day from now on?’ said Kirsty.

‘Naw, just till Lizzie Weekes gets back.’

Kirsty put her hand into the big smooth bowl and fished out the recipe; six rice, ten corn. It could not be easier.

‘You can leave me to it, Mr Dykes.’

‘I’m here t’ see you do it properly.’

‘Oh!’ said Kirsty.

She did not trust Tommy Dykes one bit and kept a wary eye on the young man as she lifted up the metal bowl and made to carry it to the flour bin.

Tommy exploded. ‘What the bloody hell do ye think you’re doin’?’

Startled, Kirsty almost dropped the bowl. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Don’t lift the bowl. You never lift the bowl, y’ stupid cow. Take the flour from the bin to the bowl. Never the bowl to the flour.’

‘But why?’

‘That’s the way it’s done. The right way. If I see you liftin’ a bowl again I’ll belt your bloody lug.’

‘That you’ll not do, Mr Dykes. Lay a hand on me an’ you’ll regret it.’

‘I’m in charge o’ all the girls here. They do what I say.’

Kirsty was not intimidated by his bluster.

She said, ‘How old are you, Mr Dykes?’

Tommy blustered even more.

‘Don’t be so bloody impudent,’ he told her. ‘Get on wi’ your work, chop-chop.’

Kirsty tucked the recipe, folded once, into the breast pocket of her apron, took the two-pound scoop to the flour bin, opened the lid and peered inside.

The rice-flour was like fine snow. It had a pleasing sensual texture but an unappetising colour. She held up the lid with her elbow, awkwardly dipped the scoop into the flour. Carefully she extricated the levelled scoop from the bin, let down the lid and returned, without spilling a drop, to the table and carefully padded the quantity of flour into the bowl.

Tommy watched her, arms folded, a scowl on his face.

She returned to the bin and repeated the procedure.

She felt cut off in the flour store. She could hear the clang and clatter of oven doors and male voices from the bakehouse and the prattle of the girls in the sheds, even the whistling of vanmen from the lane. But she could see nobody at all, and could not be seen.

Tommy said, ‘That’s two.’

Kirsty said, ‘I know it’s two, Mr Dykes. I can count.’

‘Freckles,’ Tommy said. ‘I like freckles.’

Forth and back between the tables and the bins Kirsty went, while Tommy lolled and scowled and grinned and passed remarks that bordered on or infringed the limits of decency. Kirsty had little choice but to put up with it. She would have preferred, of course, to be standing next to Letty and Mrs McNeil, for this work was no less monotonous than filling trays and she did not have Tommy to contend with next door.

Tommy Dykes’ knowingness was a mask for uncertainty. He was, Kirsty estimated, not much above sixteen and had no status at all in the bakehouse. The point was proved when a figure appeared in the archway between store and bakehouse, a small, flour-speckled, sepulchral man with a booming bass voice. ‘TOMMY FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, GET THAT STUFF IN HERE.’

By now Kirsty had filled recipes for fourteen of the mixing bowls and had only four left to complete.

At the man’s command Tommy grabbed the nearest bowl and ran with it into the bakehouse. Kirsty went on with her job, listening intently for the howl of protest that would tell her that Tommy was not so smart as he thought himself to be.

‘Idle bugger. Get your bloody mind aff the dames, Tommy, or I’ll belt the hide aff your back wi’ my strap, so I will.’

Kirsty could not restrain herself. She gave a little smothered chuckle of satisfaction not untinged with malice.

Tommy ran back into the store, shouting, ‘See you, ye cow, did I no’ tell ye to put the—’

Ready for him, Kirsty shouted back. ‘No, you did not.’

‘I did, I told you—’

‘You’ve been hangin’ over my back all mornin’,’ Kirsty cried, ‘so how did you not notice I was doin’ it wrong?’

Hands on hips, the baker watched the argument from the archway. Kirsty could not tell whether he was amused by or angry at her tirade against Tommy Dykes.

‘It’s all bloody wasted. God, it’s all ruined. You never marked the bowls wi’ the recipes,’ Tommy wailed. ‘How are we supposed to know what’s what?’

‘Oh, is that what’s botherin’ you, Mr Dykes?’

‘Botherin’ me? Botherin’ me?’

‘Take it easy, Mr Dykes.’

Kirsty fished the neatly folded recipes from her pocket. She had kept them in strict sequence and had no doubt at all about the accuracy of the procedure as she walked briskly down one side of the tables and planted a paper slip in the hillock of flour in each of the bowls. She walked up the other side of the tables and finished the planting with one slip left.

‘The one you took away, Mr Dykes,’ she said, holding the slip up before him.

He swiped the paper from her grasp, opened it and stared at it.

The baker called out, ‘Fetch them in here then, Tommy. At the bloody double.’

‘I think your ears are blushin’, Mr Dykes.’

Grabbing the bowl Tommy ran off into the bakehouse without another word.

Kirsty completed her work with the scoop and filled the last of the bowls after which she was dismissed to the room again to finish her shift at the tables. Her fingers were soon sticky with icing and she settled to the task, glad to be in the company of other girls and women.

Letty leaned towards her. ‘Did Tommy try for a wee feel then?’

‘Aye, but I managed to put his gas in a peep,’ Kirsty answered.

Letty sniggered. ‘He’s a daft big bugger, so he is.’

For several minutes, while Mrs Dykes prowled close, they worked in silence, laying out snowballs, rock cakes, ginger diamonds, chocolate cups and clusters; then Kirsty leaned towards Letty and asked, ‘By the way, what happened to Lizzie Weekes?’

Letty stiffened slightly and exchanged a glance with Mrs McNeil, but neither deigned to answer and left Kirsty, unfairly, to find out about Lizzie for herself.

 

As he hurried to the stables on Sunday morning Craig was in a black mood. He was aggrieved at being called out to do menial work in the stables and irked at the realisation that he had blown money that would have been better saved. He detested the straw boater now, the striped jacket, regarded the wedding ring too as a wasteful expense; nobody cared a hoot whether Kirsty and he were married or whether they were not.

To his surprise, however, the morning’s labour cheered him up no end. The yard was abustle with carters, vanmen, boys and horsemen. There was a camaraderie here that he had not expected to discover and, since Mr Malone did not employ Society or Association members, everybody pitched in equally. Malone was the boss, though, of that there was no doubt. His word was accepted as law. He allocated the Sunday jobs just as he did the weekly rakes and had in his gift, as it were, the plum piece of Sunday work, a trip on the manure cart to Beattock’s farm near Canniesburn where there were pretty daughters and servant lassies and the ‘dung crew’ were treated to dinner at the farm and might stay as long as they liked, enjoying the country air, provided they fed and watered the dray-horse on their return to the yard and did not disturb old Willy Ronald, the resident horseman, who bedded very early.

Most important of all Mr Daniel Malone wore about his shoulder a big fat kidskin satchel out of which, about noon, he would take the weekly paybook and the money due to each man and check the total and shell out the chink.

For most of the morning Malone occupied a stool in a corner of the yard close to a well-fired brazier. He would sup strong tea from a can and smoke fragrant and expensive Havana Delmonicos and summon his special chums to him now and again for a joke and crack and, for most of the time, seemed affable and amiable. But Craig had one glimpse of the sort of man that Mr Malone could be if he was crossed, and the scene was the only cloud over the pleasure of the shift and left a wariness in Craig that Mr Malone’s overtures never quite managed to erase.

After grooming, the horses were run round the yard for Malone’s personal inspection. Old Willy stood by him to offer his expert advice and between them they were quick to spot an injury or an ailment which had not been reported. One carter, a youngish man, had, it seemed, failed to bring to Willy’s notice a puffy swelling on the hock of a dray that he had been driving for most of the week. Willy’s sharp eyes detected it before the horse had taken hardly a step on to the cinders. He tapped Mr Malone’s shoulder and Mr Malone flicked away the butt of his cigar, put down his tea-can and got to his feet.

Harry Shaw, the carter in question, knew what to expect. He tried to retreat. But Malone, too swift for him, shot out a big fist, caught him by the collar and sank a punch into his belly with such functional force that Harry had all the breath knocked from him and could only gurgle and gasp and slump on to his knees on the cinders.

Some carters looked away, others watched furtively. A few went on working as if nothing remarkable had happened.

Malone put a vice-like hand on Harry’s shoulders.

‘Harry, you should have told me about it.’

‘I – I – forgot, Mr Malone.’

‘Forgot be buggered. You took a stick to the animal.’

‘Naw, I swear, naw.’

‘Don’t bloody lie to me, sonny.’

‘It kicked itsel’, Mr Malone.’

Malone entangled his fingers in Harry’s hair and jerked him back so that he could look down into his face. ‘It’s a capped hock, Harry. When did it happen?’

‘Last – last night, Mr Malone.’

‘Did y’ not ask Willy to treat it?’

‘I – I forgot.’

‘You seem to have a right bad memory these days, Harry. Where were you yesterday? Bath Street, was it?’

‘Aye,’ Harry confessed. ‘Aye, on the long hill.’

‘You took a stick to it?’

‘Aye. But he’s no’ lame. It’s only swole.’

Malone released his grip on the scarlet-faced young carter. Near to tears, Harry scrambled to his feet.

Willy had already led the limping animal quietly away.

In the stable doorway Craig leaned on his shovel, hardly daring to breathe lest some undetected ‘crime’ on his part was brought to light during this period of inquisition.

‘Ten shillin’s, Harry; that’s the price of forgettin’,’ said Malone.

‘But, Mr Malone, I’ve got weans to feed—’

‘Christ, sonny, will you argue wi’ me?’

‘Naw, naw, but—’

‘You’ll be docked ten shillin’s. Think yoursel’ lucky to still have work. Now get out o’ my sight.’

Harry Shaw crept off into the shelter of a stable where old Willy had already begun to prepare the horse for surgery, a minor but dangerous operation done with a heated needle. If Willy was careful and skilful, which he always was, then the beast would be fit to pull a light cart again by the week’s end.

Malone seated himself on the stool once more, grinning. He dug a fresh Delmonico from a leather case kept in his inner pocket. He struck a match and rolled the cigar end in it, lighting the tobacco evenly while he squinted this way and that through the smoke. Craig did not quite have the wit to turn away before Mr Malone’s gaze alighted on him.

‘You, Nicholson, the farmer’s boy, come over here.’

Craig put down the shovel and nervously went over to the brazier.

Malone smiled. ‘Do you know what yon idiot did wrong?’

‘Aye, he took a stick to the beast’s hocks.’

‘Rapped the poor creature to make it step the pavement, I expect,’ said Malone. ‘You’d never do somethin’ that daft, would you?’

‘Not me, Mr Malone.’

‘Farm lads would know better.’

‘Most o’ them would, aye.’

‘I hate to see an animal maltreated. It’s the horses earn the fees here, no’ the bloody men.’ He shook his head. ‘Still, I was young mysel’ once an’ I know how hard it can be to make the day’s rakes in time. Some days the horse seems against you, as well as tram-drivers an’ gate-keepers an’ terminus men. But that’s all part o’ the carter’s trade, sonny, an’ such trials have to be endured.’

‘Aye, Mr Malone.’

‘You’ll get some pay today, wi’ the others.’

‘Will I? I thought—’

‘Ach, I’m told by Bob McAndrew that you’re a willin’ lad, so I’ll pay you for the two days at full rate. How’s that?’

‘That’s grand,’ said Craig.

‘Aye, in this yard we look after our own, Craig, as you’ll find out.’

‘Thanks, Mr Malone.’

‘Buy the wife new knickers.’

Craig nodded and, dismissed, returned to mucking out with renewed vigour. He would receive only four or five shillings, of course, but he was gratified to be at last on the earning chain. Whistling, he put his wariness of Daniel Malone to the back of his mind and told himself that there were worse places to be on a fine Sunday morning than the stables in Kingdom Road.

 

Kirsty had not been idle. Brasso, blacklead, sugar soap and Cardinal polish were the tools of her trade and by the time that Craig returned from the stables she had the kitchen shining like a new pin. Dinner was a hot beef stew, a queen’s pudding to follow. Craig shifted the lot, including seconds, and told her that it was the best tuck-in he’d had since he’d left Dalnavert.

All morning the spring sunshine had tempted Kirsty, made her eager to be out of the stuffy kitchen and in the open air. Benevolently Craig agreed that a long walk would do them both good. He put on his flannels and jacket while Kirsty, in the hall, changed into her powder-blue costume, and young and jaunty, they sallied forth together arm in arm.

Even among Greenfield’s legions of the godless the Calvinist tradition lingered on. There was a degree of respect for the Lord’s Day, a leaning towards good togs and sobriety. Wives who normally hung their bosoms over kitchen windows would on Sunday sit behind net curtains, aspidistras and canary cages to watch the world go by unseen. Children who would shriek and thunder through closes and across backcourts six days in the week would, on peril of a warmed lug from Mammy, mooch quietly about the street and contain their energies as best they could. Bairns were not so much brought as sent to Jesus. Brushed and scrubbed and stiff in best pinnies and flannel breeks, collection pennies clutched tightly in their fists, they would toddle in sedate little gangs to the Band of Hope mission house or to one of the neighbourhood’s Sunday Schools or, smart as paint in Boys’ Brigade uniforms or Guildry caps, would march off to an afternoon church parade. The din of industry and the raucous sounds of the street traffic would be mellowed and the air itself seemed cleaner on a Sunday. As Kirsty and Craig came on to Dumbarton Road the marching-song of a boys’ brass band floated from the distance, cornets, horns and euphoniums fading and fluctuating until only the thump-thump of the big bass drum could be heard, steady as a pulse, from Partickhill.

Craig did not make for the West End park or Botanical Gardens. He turned west along Dumbarton Road, and Kirsty, who was just glad to be out and about, hugged his arm and matched her step to his as they headed along the thoroughfare into unexplored territory.

New tenements fronted shipyards and foundries, and on the right side of the road were neat new terraces with little oblong gardens to separate them from the pavement. Greenfield and Whiteinch soon fell away behind and the road broadened and green fields and blue hills could be glimpsed behind the buildings. Capaldi’s ice-cream barrow occupied a strategic corner near the Evangelist Hall, a wooden building plastered with ‘holy’ notices like a bargain store, jumping with the enthusiasm of the Saved. From a swarthy man with huge moustachios Craig purchased two ice-cream cones. Kirsty had never tasted ice-cream before. She adored the cold, smooth, sticky-sweet taste and texture of it. She licked delicately while Craig munched on his as if it were a carrot. They turned casually into a side street that narrowed to a lane that in turn reached down to the riverside behind the stand of brand-new tenements.

The river appeared to have been cut out of the buildings and pasted unevenly against pasture. A herd of Ayrshires grazed in hazy sunlight and Kirsty, seeing them, experienced a sudden little flit of longing for Carrick’s rolling dales and friendly, empty hills.

‘Craig, where are we?’ she asked.

‘God knows!’ Craig said. ‘I thought we’d take a look at the river.’

Tall black-iron railings marked off a platform of sand and gravel that jutted from the line of the bank. One long green-painted bench, surrounded by litter, occupied the space, but Craig did not sit down. He made at once for the railings and gripped them like a prisoner. Cautiously, Kirsty followed. The water of the Clyde gurgled thickly below her toes. She stared at it, fascinated. She felt as if she were on a ship that might at any moment detach itself from the shore and carry her off. She pushed the last of the cone into her mouth and, like Craig, closed her fists about the railing. She had never seen such an assured piece of water, though it was rough and ugly and mud-coloured and its banks were shored with greasy stonework from which protruded pipes and conduits that oozed ribbons of livid effluent like banners draped across an arm. All along the curve of the wall were cranes and gantries and the ribs of ships under construction, and the hulls of ships ready to be launched. Downriver, modest in the haze, she glimpsed the little towns and villages that clung to the Clyde and sucked on its industries. She stared and stared into the muscular brown water that flexed and stretched and coiled below her and could almost feel herself drowning in it.

She started slightly when Craig looped an arm about her waist and pressed his body against her bottom.

She turned her head. He kissed her ear, her cheek, her lips.

Tenement windows glittered in the afternoon light. She felt as if a hundred pairs of eyes were watching her, as if all the wives that dwelled in the courts that overlooked the Clyde had stepped quick to their kitchen windows to grin and wink down at her and shake their heads ruefully at the memory of some moment of wooing that stung their memories still.

Flushed, Kirsty did not resist. She let Craig squeeze her against the railing, poised above the water; kiss her; kiss her; press his hips against her belly.

‘Come on, Kirsty. Let’s go home.’

‘But—’

‘Please, Kirsty.’

She yielded without reluctance. She had slept against him and not felt this strange and unfamiliar response in her nerves. She had dreamed about him without being thus aroused. But she was ashamed of it happening in broad daylight, in public, and was glad to pull away from the river and into the lane, Craig’s hand locked about her waist.

They returned to the main road and caught the first horse-tram that rumbled along, not even waiting for it to halt. They seated themselves inside, knee to knee. Craig held her hand and everybody, even little girls with plaited hair and buttoned capes, seemed to know what was going on, and Kirsty did not know which way to look and how to stop a blush colouring her cheeks.

The ride cost a halfpenny each. It seemed interminable.

They got off at last at the head of Kingdom Road and ran down it and turned into Canada Road, hand in hand, out of step now and breathless. They reached the close of Number 11 and clattered upstairs. Craig could hardly find the lock with the key but fitted it at last and pushed the door open with his knee at last and pushed Kirsty inside. He closed the door behind him with his heel. He pushed her against the bunker, hands upon her breasts. He thrust against her. She could feel his hardness. His passion was not practised, not skilled. When he put his hand down to her thighs he searched her face in perplexity as if he expected her to castigate him and throw him off.

Laughter echoed from the stairwell outside. Children stampeded past the door, giggling. Mr Mills, the landing neighbour, shouted at them and reminded them that it was Sunday.

Kirsty disentangled herself from Craig’s arms.

‘Wait,’ she whispered.

‘I can’t wait.’

‘Just for a minute, till I close the curtains.’

‘Do you – do you want to do it too?’

‘Yes.’

She slipped from him into the kitchen.

The fire seeped grey smoke that hazed the kitchen. The sun, having soared over the wall of tenements, tinted the air a smoky gold. Even when Kirsty tugged down the paper blind and closed the curtain there was still a glow of light in the room. The voices of children could still be heard and the thump-thump of the marching band in the far distance, blowing itself back to supper. Nervous, breathless, Kirsty removed the powder-blue costume. She draped it on a chair. She slipped out of her blouse and shift and stepped out of her drawers. She was naked now in the haze. She hesitated, not knowing what Craig would expect from her or how he would come to her. She wondered if she should put on the nice new nightgown, fresh-smelling from its scented tissues.

Craig knocked uncertainly on the kitchen door.

‘Kirsty, I’m – I’m ready.’

She scrambled into bed, slid beneath the sheets and clasped the blanket to her chin. It was all happening so suddenly, so urgently. She was moist, though, and her breasts tingled. She realised that she was still wearing her stockings. Hastily she skinned them off and kicked them to the bottom of the bed.

Craig opened the door.

‘Are you ready, Kirsty?’ he hissed.

‘Yes.’

He was still dressed. He had removed only his jacket, not his shirt or trousers. She had been curious to see him. She clutched the blanket to her throat as he advanced to the side of the bed. Stooping he brushed her hair with his fingertips and kissed her.

‘Are you sure you’re ready?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes.’

He showed a concern that Kirsty found both irritating and touching. She had been prepared for masculine roughness, for pain and perhaps humiliation but Craig did not seem to know where to begin. Kirsty drew down the blanket, let him see her breasts. He kissed her again, put a hand to her breast. Would he be put off by her freckles? Would she be big enough to please him? She did not know what would happen next. He edged into bed, still dressed, incredibly modest for a man.

Kirsty wriggled closer to the wall but Craig made a tent of sheet and blankets and fumbled off his shirt and trousers, pushed them to the floor. Cramped in the hole-in-the-wall he touched her accidentally. She flinched at his hardness.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ he apologised, embarrassed by his awkwardness.

He eased himself down beside her, his face by hers on the pillow. She saw that he was unsure and would have taken the lead in love-making if only she had known how. She raised herself. She kissed him. The touch of his secret flesh had rendered her clumsy. She was afraid to cuddle him or rub against him in case he became too roused. She felt his fingers insinuate between her knees. She resisted out of instinct, then yielded, opened her thighs to his explorations. She winced when he found the opening. She held her breath. She tilted her hips, receiving not rejecting him.

‘Is this – this the way?’ he asked.

‘Yes. It’s all right, darling. Yes.’

There was pain, a swift stinging pain. She gasped, gasped again as she felt warmth there and a sudden horror that her body had gone out of rhythm. She caught herself. She knew what it was. She opened her eyes and looked down at the line of her body, glimpsed Craig’s muscular stomach and dark tangle of hair as he lowered himself into her. She bit her lip, gasping once more.

Beads of perspiration dappled Craig’s brow. His arms about her shoulders were slippery. He felt huge within her but not sore. She was no longer afraid, not now that it had begun. His hands stroked her back, cupped her buttocks. She was out of step with him, all at sixes and sevens. Suddenly she wanted it to be over, over and out of the way so that she might hold him quietly in her arms. He slapped down against her. She felt a strange exciting tug deep in her stomach. She heard herself groan, heard Craig panting as he beat faster and faster and faster and faster, chest slapping against her breasts. It was as if she had become someone or something else. She hated his frantic detachment even while caught in sharp expanding sensations. She pinned her arms about his waist to hold him to her. She felt him jerk and jerk and gasped when he gasped. Then he slumped, arms on each side of her head, face buried in her hair.

‘God, oh God!’ he groaned.

Kirsty lay motionless, waiting.

He pushed himself up, looked at her, smiled, kissed her brow.

‘All right?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But be careful.’

‘What?’

‘How you – how you come out.’

‘Oh, aye.’

He checked, withdrew slowly until he was clear of her and then he gave a laugh, rolled to one side and folded his arms above his head. His hair was plastered to his forehead in scalloped curls. His eyes were lazy-lidded. He grinned, proud of himself, smug and satisfied. He did not seem to need her now or share her desire for closeness.

‘Well,’ he said, at length, ‘how does it feel to be Mrs Nicholson?’

‘It feels fine,’ Kirsty said, and, a moment later, clambered from the bed to make them both a cup of tea.

 

Oswalds’ Special Easter Cakes were nothing more than two crown-sized pieces of biscuit gummed together with a dab of fruit puree, given a lick of sugar-and-water with a small shellac brush and stuck with a ‘flower’ of dyed icing. To add distinction, and justify the extra halfpence on the price, the cakes were arranged by the dozen in tiny baskets of thin wicker which looked enticing in the windows of local grocery stores and confectioners’ stalls.

If the weather had held fine Kirsty might have enjoyed making and packing the ‘seasonal fare’ but the warm sunshine of the weekend had given way to a snarling north-easter that drove rain across the Greenfield and made spring seem very remote indeed. She had been sent back to the packing-tables out of the flour store, though the mysterious Lizzie Weekes had not yet returned. Kirsty did not know who was doing the measuring. Letty, when asked, shrugged indifferently as if to say that she did not care so long as it wasn’t her.

The week progressed in monotony and discomfort. The stone floors of the rooms were swept by icy draughts that chilled the feet and legs and made the back ache. Mrs McNeil was much affected and had to scurry away to the closets in the yard every quarter of an hour or so, much to the amusement of the younger girls who whistled and cheered the poor woman’s every trip out of doors. Kirsty plied her bristle brush, charged with sugar-water, and patted floral shapes on to hard biscuit until her whole body felt sticky and the cloying taste of icing made her gag. Sunday seemed like a dream now. Rain lashed the shed roof, wind moaned in its girders and the cake racks never seemed to empty. Even Letty had little to say for herself and the hours of each shift dragged by leadenly.

At home things were not much better. Now that he had ‘found the way’, as he put it, Craig could not get enough of her. He fondled, handled and examined her as if she were a pet and not his wife and, though she did not deny him, Kirsty resented it a little, particularly as he remained modest and would not let her see him or touch him, not even in the full heat of love-making. On Thursday morning she awakened to discover that her bleeding had started eight days before it was due. Embarrassed, she got up, dressed and made breakfast. Craig seemed oblivious to her condition. She did not enlighten him. She fed him and saw him off to Maitland Moss with hardly a word. She felt thick and sluggish and had to exert will-power to don her coat and scarf and leave the warm kitchen for a walk through rain-splashed streets to the Cakery.

Mrs Dykes was waiting to direct her to the flour store again for, with the weekend coming, there was pressure on the bakers to increase supplies and ‘her Tommy’ could not do it all by himself. That much was true. The unsavoury Tommy did not have a spare moment to practise seduction. Harassed, he rapped out an order for fifteen bowls at four scoops of rice-flour to each bowl and left Kirsty to it while he loped away into the bakehouse.

Wool-headed and awkward, Kirsty lifted the lid of the bin – it seemed to weigh a ton today – and peered down at the flour banked against the bin’s back wall, all tamped and clotted and damp. She was obliged to balance on her stomach to reach down to it. She had the obsessive fear that Tommy Dykes might steal up behind her and put his hand where it should not be. Today of all days she would die of humiliation if he did. But she filled seven bowls before Tommy showed himself, running, to whisk the bowls away and yell at her to get a bloody move on, Mrs High-and-Mighty, if you don’t mind. She yelled after him, ‘This bin’s near empty,’ but Tommy had gone and, victim of some crisis that had beset the masters, did not immediately return.

Kirsty pushed up the lid, leaned over, stretched down and poked the scoop into the flour in the corner.

At first she thought it was an imperfection in the flour itself, a stain – until the stain moved. It gave a puckering to the bulky stuff and a queer little surge. Frowning, Kirsty touched it with the tip of the spoon. She released a miniature landslide from the wall into the corner, a thick, dense, furtive covering which, after a second, also moved. She made a quick stiff stab with the tip of the scoop and lifted it up.

The grey mouse clung to the scoop by tiny grey forepaws.

Dusted with flour, wriggling and frantic, it swung in the air, chittering in anger or alarm, then it fell with a soft plop into the flour below.

Instantly a dozen mice were visible. Burrowing and wallowing into the broken nest in the bin’s corner, into gaps in the boards of the floor, they submerged and surfaced hideously.

Kirsty screamed. She flung away the scoop, kicked to fling herself clear of the bin. The lid slapped down, pinning her. She screamed. She heaved upward and projected herself backwards with such terrified force that she tripped and fell to the floor.

With the image of that writhing mass of flour-soaked vermin printed in her mind she felt her gorge rise. She imagined the mice swelling like yeast, swarming over the rim of the bin, over her legs and thighs. She clapped her hands to her mouth to check her retching and stumbled to her knees.

Tommy came running from the bakehouse, Mrs Dykes from the rooms. Neither had need to ask Kirsty to explain her outburst. Lizzie Weekes, and umpteen other girls, had taken sick because of it, because of the mice. With an arm about Kirsty’s waist the woman helped her through the store and out by a side door into the back yard, held her while she choked and was finally sick. With an iron fist Mrs Dykes kept Kirsty’s head extended over a puddle of brown rainwater.

‘That’s right, that’s it,’ she crooned. ‘Good, good.’

A heavy, snatching cramp began in Kirsty’s stomach. Icy cold sweat started on her brow. She pushed the woman from her and stiffly straightened herself. She wiped her face with her hand, shaking.

‘There’s a cold tap by a trough round the back there,’ said Mrs Dykes. ‘Wash yourself off, girl. I’ll wait for you.’

Kirsty, trembling, did as bidden. She found the old iron trough and ran clean water from a brass tap on a spout and wiped away the traces of sickness as best she could. She washed her face and rinsed her mouth. She could not stop shivering, though, and the cramp had not decreased. She returned to the yard by the side door.

‘Better, hen?’ Mrs Dykes asked.

‘Aye, a bit.’

‘I thought, since you were a farm lass, you’d be used to such things.’

‘I – I didn’t expect—’

‘Ach, ye canny keep the damned creatures out.’

‘In – in the bins?’

‘Only at the bottom,’ said Mrs Dykes. ‘What’s wrong wi’ you? Are you still feelin’ sick?’

‘Aye.’

‘I suppose you’ll want to go home?’

‘Aye.’

‘Go, then.’

Kirsty put a hand to her brow and clenched her knees together to force herself to stand up straight. ‘Am – am I bein’ sacked?’

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Mrs Dykes. ‘Come back tomorrow.’

‘Not – not for the flour—’

‘The packing-room,’ said Mrs Dykes. ‘You’re no’ fit for the flour store after all.’

‘What about today? Do I get paid for it?’

‘Naw, hen, you sacrifice the shift.’

‘But I’ve worked for five—’

‘It’s the rules.’

‘In that case,’ said Kirsty, ‘I’ll stay.’

The woman uttered a huh, squinted at Kirsty, then gestured towards the door with her thumb.

‘Suit yourself,’ she said. ‘But if you’re sick in there—’

‘I won’t be,’ said Kirsty.

‘Find a clean apron, then.’

Kirsty nodded, made her way back into the room where, pale and shaken and sore, she took her place between Letty and Mrs McNeil and worked out the shift’s end assembling Easter cakes.

 

Craig came home late. Playfully he tossed his cap into the kitchen before him. Kirsty was at the sink, stirring cold water into the potatoes to stop them from burning in the pot. She flinched when the cap came skittering across the floor.

‘How’s my wee honeysuckle tonight then?’ Craig asked jovially.

Kirsty did not answer. He came up behind her, put a hand about her and cupped her breast.

She drew away from him angrily.

‘What’s wrong wi’ you?’

‘It’s the wrong time, Craig.’

‘It’s only five past eight, for God’s sake. I had one pint o’ beer, that’s all.’

She could smell beer on him, cloudy and sour. She pulled away further, to the oven in the range.

She had to tell him what was wrong but she did not know how to do it, what words to use. She felt tearful, in need of affection. But she would not throw herself into his arms. She went on preparing and serving dinner. Craig would not understand why the discovery of mice in a flour bin had made her sick. She really could not talk of it, try to make him see the difference between vermin in a bakery and vermin in a barn. She felt separated from him because she could not let him make love to her.

After dinner she went out into the closet on the stairs, seated herself in the darkness and had a good cry. When she returned to the kitchen she found Craig engaged in writing a letter.

‘Is that to your mother?’

‘To Dad.’

‘He never replied to the others.’

‘He’s no’ much of a letter-writer.’

‘Are you tellin’ him you’ve found work?’

‘I am.’

‘Are you givin’ him our address?’

‘Why should I not?’ said Craig. ‘Don’t look so bloody po-faced, Kirsty, old man Clegg’ll not make trouble for you now. It’s too late.’

She hadn’t been thinking of Clegg or the Baird Home officers. She collected dishes from the table and put them into the new enamel basin by the sink.

‘Craig, would you not like to go back to Dalnavert?’

Craig glanced round at her. ‘Would you?’

‘No.’

He gave a shrug. ‘Neither would I.’

‘Do you like it here, with me?’

Craig said, ‘Mr Malone tells me I’ll have a cart o’ my own soon. That’ll mean more money. Come the winter I could be drawin’ as much as twenty-three or -fourshillin’s every week.’

She poured water, lukewarm, from the kettle into the basin, washed the dinner dishes and put them away. She set out the things for breakfast, clinking them down inches from Craig’s letter pad. She felt all up and down with him, angry and hurt, as if he were to blame for what had happened at Oswalds’.

Pencil, new and sharp, poised over paper. He had written only a few lines in spite of the time he had been at it.

How long could she live without Craig, without the money he brought in? Not long, not in a house of her own. She could see his reflection in the long glass of the window as he sat back, head tilted, staring up for inspiration at the strings of damp washing that dangled from the pulley overhead.

‘Craig, I’m goin’ to bed.’

She wanted the day to be over, to end.

‘Best place for you, in this mood,’ Craig muttered.

He had divined the reason for her shyness without having to be told.

She went into the hallway and undressed. She put on a pair of old drawers under her nightgown and came back into the kitchen to find that he had completed the letter, had addressed the envelope and was in process of licking the stamp.

She touched him, kissed the side of his neck. ‘I’m – I’m sorry.’

‘Not your fault,’ he said, ‘I suppose.’

It was an hour later before he came to bed. Kirsty was still awake, not even drowsy, too tense and overwrought to find sleep easily.

Craig climbed over her to the inside place by the wall, settled, his back to her. Kirsty studied the kitchen. He had neglected to smoor the fire in the grate, to turn down the gas, to draw the curtain over the window.

She should get up and do these things but she feared that Craig would resent it, would take it as criticism. She closed her eyes. She wanted to hug him, hold him, share an intimacy that had no sexual end. But he inched away as if he sensed what was on her mind. She shrank down into her burrow in the mattress, tears in her eyes.

Outside, rain pattered upon the window pane, a broken gutter splashed water into the backcourt and, much closer, the tap drip, drip, dripped, not maddeningly but with a steady soothing regularity as if the appointments of the house had more sympathy for Kirsty than had her man and, in substitute, sang her their own soft lullaby.

 

Bob McAndrew was old enough to have been Craig’s father. He was thick about the midriff, had a full walrus moustache and smoked a dainty clay pipe that was all bowl and no stem. The pipe hung upside down and dropped occasional gouts of ash into his lap, an occurrence that did not seem to bother Bob at all, though he would usually remove it dedicatedly from his mouth at that point and spit to one side, to the peril of any poor pedestrians who happened to be near the cart.

‘Ever been across the river?’ Bob asked, after they had been on the road for ten minutes or so.

‘Where do you mean?’ said Craig.

‘Renfrew?’

‘Nah,’ said Craig. ‘Is that where we’re goin’?’

‘It is, it is.’

‘Is that not a bloody long way to carry a load o’ light wood?’

The cart had been loaded when Craig had arrived at the yard, a stack of planed timber loosely stacked and roped, so light in fact that it could be drawn by a filly that was usually reserved for the ‘Valuable Goods’ van.

Bob said, ‘The contractor got it cheap, so it’s worth the carriage fee, see?’

Craig, in his innocence, thought no more about it for a while but hung on to the rail by the front of the board while the filly clopped round the corner and into New Clyde Street.

The wind was still stiff but rain had gone out of it and it was a fresh invigorating morning that made Craig feel sappy and full of beans; a nice morning to be clipping along on a deep-sided two-wheeler behind a sprightly chestnut filly heading for the ferry.

‘What are we to carry back, Bob?’ Craig asked.

Bob McAndrew extracted the pipe, spat.

‘I dinna ken,’ he said.

Bob did not know what the return cargo would be; unusual for a carrier to be so vague about loads and schedules. Craig, with just the faintest prickle of suspicion in him, did not press the point, put no more questions to his mentor and looked about him at the passing scene in silence.

Moist and brilliant with early sunshine the skyline was dominated by the Plantation’s heavy cranes and steam-powered coal hoists. In the streets that radiated from the quays there were milk floats and cleansing carts and the rainbow jets of ‘hosers’ flushing away cattle muck. The cobbles ran red and brown and the smell brought Craig a sudden unexpected memory of mornings at Bankhead. Nostalgia faded swiftly enough, however, when the cart ground down the stone ramp below the mouth of the Kelvin and straight on to the larger of the steam ferries that plied the Clyde.

Bob and he were early enough not to have to queue for passage on the deck, for the vessel could carry but eight horses and carts at a time. The Clyde was running high and strong and, while Bob attended to the filly, Craig leaned on the taffrail and watched the iron-girdered craft slip out into the current and slide away from the familiar shore, drift and twist and nuzzle in again, under the towering walls of a rigging-shed, to bump its bumpers against the Govan wharf.

Bob took the reins and let Craig lead the filly up the ramp from the ferry wharf but when the young man went forward towards the road Bob called to him, ‘No’ that way,’ and summoned him back on to the board.

‘There’s a better way, Craig. The old towpath. It’s o’er narrow for a big cart but it’ll accommodate this wee thing fine.’

‘Is it quicker?’

‘Aye, out o’ the traffic. Clear o’ the polis.’

Craig thought nothing of the remark for carriers and coppers were natural enemies. One officious constable could cost a carter a fine or late-fee or even his job if the firm was strict and the delay long. Bob guided the filly about the gable of an old lime-washed building on to an unpaved ride.

Craig settled again, enjoying the sun on his back and the unhurried, countrified pace. Bob told him that the towpath weaved a right-of-way from the Highland Lane to Renfrew and that forty or fifty years ago it had been a busy thoroughfare when the Silk Mill and the Plantation House were operating, before railways stole the business and shipbuilding yards spread out along the shore. The path nipped away from the river wall whenever there was a yard, ran adjacent to long lines of tall wooden buildings and under the jibs and rigs and ribs of ships on their berths, came back faithfully to the river whenever it could to give Craig a glimpse of the brown, broad water and the far distant hills.

Once he roused himself, sat up and pointed.

‘Hoy, Bob! Yonder’s the Greenfield.’

Smiling at the young man’s pleasure in the prospect, Bob said, ‘So it is now, so it is. I wonder what it’s doin’ away over there, eh?’

From this perspective Greenfield parish appeared small and undistinguished. Even so, Craig eagerly picked out landmarks and pretended – and Bob did not have the heart to correct him – that he could see Canada Road and the tenement in which he lived.

The cart rolled on for four or five miles. It was just after seven o’clock, still early, when it turned away from the towpath and nosed up a lane into a high street.

‘Is this Renfrew?’ Craig asked.

‘It is.’

The market town, a little port, was neat and quiet and sedate. Not exactly on the river, its commodious steamboat wharf was set apart from the burgh centre. The town hall was imposing and the parish church had a fine slender spire and the whole place seemed genteel and well-heeled, though it was no longer as prosperous as it had once been, Bob said, and had only been saved from ruin by the broadening of the Clyde basin and the arrival of steam engineering.

Bob turned out of the high street and headed west through a scattering of new villas on to a flat back country road guarded by trees.

‘Where’s the yard, Bob?’

‘It’s no’ far, no’ far at all.’

The inn was half hidden by the tree line, a small, squat building in a disreputable state of repair.

There was a coachyard to the rear with a high plastered wall about it. The inn itself sported no hanging sign but a weathered board on the wall spelled out, in blistered blue letters, a story of better days: The Belltree Inn – Refreshments for Travellers – Carriers – Horses – Livery & Beds.

There were no hints of any of these advertised services. Hens clucked about the doorstep and a barefoot laddie led a couple of cows along the road towards a pasture gate. Beech trees and elms gave the yard shelter from the wind and from prying eyes. Bob pulled the cart into the yard and reined it to a halt. He looked round cautiously at rusty churns, a midden, a broken barrow, kegs and crates, barred back windows and a closed door. There was something odd about this run, Craig realised. He kept his mouth shut and asked no questions. For two or three minutes there was no sound save that of the wind stirring budding leaves, the lowing of cattle from an unseen field and the arrogant crowing of a cockerel. Bob smoked a fresh fill of tobacco, spat frequently, did not dismount from the board; then he stiffened slightly and cocked his head.

Craig had heard it too, the chuckle of wheels and the clop of hoofs; a gig or trap. It did not enter the inn yard but stopped out of sight at the front of the building. A minute or so later the back door of the inn opened and a man stuck his head out. He was tall, not young, had a thick square beard and wore a chequered vest under a Norfolk jacket. A pearl-grey bowler was set at a jaunty angle on his head. The sporting gent made a discreet signal to Bob who handed the reins to Craig and climbed down to the ground.

‘Do just as I tell you, son, an’ keep mum,’ Bob said.

‘All right,’ said Craig.

‘Tie up the filly an’ off-load the planks. Pile them up neat against the wall there.’

‘Right.’

‘Give her a rub an’ a drink. You’ll find a pump an’ bucket round the side there.’

‘Is that all?’ said Craig.

‘I’ll attend to the rest o’ it.’

Craig did as he was told to do. The filly was obedient and he had her tied, dried and fed very quickly.

He took off his jacket, for the sun was spring warm. From the corner of his eye he had seen the toff and Bob shake hands before they had gone into the inn. There was not hide nor hair of the publican or any other residents. He unloaded the long, light, pine boards and stacked them against the wall of the yard, watched by a pair of magpies and three or four white doves that had fluttered, crooning, on to the inn roof.

Beneath the pine boards Craig discovered two square wooden crates and a padlocked box, laid on a rug of thick buckram. The crates were roped tight.

Bob had not mentioned a secret cargo and Craig did not know if he was expected to unload it too. He was apprehensive, uncomfortable and, turning, found that the toff was watching him from the back door, a glass in his hand and a cigar in his mouth.

The toff called out, ‘Leave the boxes, boy. Just water the filly like a good chap.’

Craig headed at once for the alley between the inn gable and a wall. Here, as Bob had said, was a rusty iron pump and a bucket, and stables; stables that were so neglected they were beginning to decay. Craig cranked the pump, filled the bucket with brownish water and then, after glancing this way and that, stole to the front of the building and peeped out into the road.

It wasn’t a gig but a large, shiny dog-cart with a sleek Shetland pony in the shafts. Craig paused long enough to admire the rig then came back into the alley, lifted the bucket and returned to the back yard.

It did not surprise him to discover that the wooden crates and padlocked box were gone.

He watered the filly, put on his jacket and seated himself on the cart’s tailgate to wait for Bob.

Ten minutes later a young girl came from the inn with a tray in her hands. Bob had sent him out some breakfast; a glass of ale, three slices of beef and brown bread and butter. The girl was young and would have been pretty if she had not had a cast in her right eye. Her blouse was unbuttoned at the throat and her breasts were plump.

‘What’s your name?’ Craig asked her.

‘Marie.’

He studied her, saw her differently now that he had become a husband, a man. He fancied that he knew all her secrets. He told her to hold the tray while he lifted the glass and drank the ale. He wiped his lips with his wrist.

‘Marie; that’s a nice name,’ he said, and winked at her.

Perhaps she knew what was in the crates and the locked box and the name of the toff and what the toff and Bob were doing inside the inn; he was tempted to question her. But the turned eye was disconcerting, the fold between her young breasts even more so.

He stared at her; and she let him.

Heat and heaviness between his legs; he would not be able to exploit that energy, not now and not tonight.

He snatched the tray from her hands and slid it on to the bed of the cart, snapped at her, ‘What the hell are ye lookin’ at?’

She stuck out her tongue at him, thin, pink and moist, swung on her heel and left him.

Craig watched the lithe hips under the skirt, the shape of her buttocks and, with a degree of annoyance, thought of Kirsty, who had somehow cheated him. Just thinking of Kirsty at all made the heaviness increase. He pushed himself from the tailgate with a little silent snarl and, standing, ate the breakfast that had been sent out to him while Bob was inside doing business with the toff.

 

Kirsty put on her apron and pulled the cotton cap over her hair, took her place at the table beside Letty and Mrs McNeil. They were still on Easter cakes, the racks thick with biscuits, the boxes crammed with flowers of dyed sugar. She tried not to look towards the archway, towards the flour store in case the sight of it made her squeamish. She ran out two lines of biscuits, pulled her brush from the water jar and reached towards the puree dish.

Letty caught her wrist and told her in a whisper, ‘Lizzie Weekes is dead.’

‘What?’

She had never clapped eyes on Lizzie Weekes. She had no idea whether the girl had been plain or pretty, young or old, dark or fair, yet she had shared with that girl the experience of the flour bin and had somehow ascribed to Lizzie a nature so sensitive that she had been ruined by the store’s contaminating secrets.

‘When?’

‘Last night,’ said Letty.

At the other tables the girls were picking over the same piece of news like crows at a meaty bone, giggling, some of them, as if it were scandal and not tragedy.

‘She must’ve been very sick after all,’ said Kirsty.

‘Sick, nothin’,’ said Letty. ‘She done herself in.’

‘May God forgive her all her sins,’ added Mrs McNeil.

‘Killed herself?’ Kirsty exclaimed. ‘But how did she—’

‘Drank a bottle o’ caustic.’

Letty’s fingers flew over the cardboard biscuits, dabbing puree here and there. The process of manufacturing Easter cakes went on while she imparted, out of the side of her mouth, the sordid details of Lizzie Weekes’ death.

‘She was in the family way,’ said Letty.

‘Four months gone,’ put in Mrs McNeil.

‘It was startin’ to show,’ said Letty. ‘I heard it was a marrit man done it to her. But he wouldn’t dream o’ leavin’ his dear wife. I heard he was a toff from a big house in Dowanhill.’

‘How did she meet him?’ said Kirsty.

‘Got picked up by him in the Groveries last summer.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs McNeil, ‘Lizzie told me she was sure he was mad in love wi’ her.’

‘Cabbage!’ said Letty derisively.

‘Aye, she’ll burn in the eternal fires o’ Hell for her love, I’m thinkin’,’ said Mrs McNeil with a nod.

‘That sort o’ mortal sin’s only for you Catholics,’ said Letty. ‘Lizzie was no bloody Pape.’

‘Catholic or no’,’ said Mrs McNeil, ‘she placed her soul in jeopardy an’ must pay the price.’

Kirsty slapped two biscuits together, dabbed them with the heel of her hand and, changing the brushes, pumped the bristles into the bowl of sugar and water. Gossip and argument had dulled the first edge of shock and sorrow. She had a wedding ring on her finger and a good man at home. She felt righteous and protected. She had avoided the trap of illicit love and felt entitled to listen to stories about the silly girl, as if suicide were no more than mischief.

Kirsty said, ‘I thought it might’ve been Tommy.’

‘Tommy! Tommy Dykes!’ Letty shrieked. ‘God, there’s a chuckle for ye. Tommy hasn’t got the spunk for makin’ babies.’

‘How d’you know?’ said Mrs McNeil.

‘Take my word for it; I know.’

‘Have you been out wi’ Tommy Dykes?’ said Kirsty, and grief drifted obliquely from her mind to be replaced by something alive and intriguing.

‘Aye, I have – kind of,’ Letty confessed. ‘I met him one night at the Temple.’

‘Is that a church?’

‘Naw, naw, naw,’ said Letty. ‘The Temple o’ Fame.’

‘A hall of Varieties,’ Mrs McNeil explained. ‘It’s down in Black Street near the Cross.’

‘Anyway, I was down there wi’ my cousin Jeannie. They were doin’ plays at the Temple that week; Still Waters Run Deep an’ The Hunchback. I fair liked The Hunchback. It was about this mannie who—’

‘Get on wi’ it, Letty,’ said Mrs McNeil.

‘Anyway, we were in the top gallery – so was Tommy.’

‘The Temple’s no’ a place where decent girls should go alone,’ said Mrs McNeil. ‘It’s just beggin’ for trouble.’

‘’Course it is,’ Letty admitted. ‘Why do ye think we go there? Anyway, there was Tommy. He’d had a drop too much an’ he was beezin’. Our Jeannie had got hersel’ a click; a brass-founder, no less, from Beardmore’s. Very well-spoken.’

‘What about you and Tommy?’ said Kirsty.

‘He said he’d walk me home. No sooner are we out o’ Black Street than he was haulin’ me up a close.’

‘How could you?’ said Mrs McNeil. ‘Anythin’ might have happened.’

‘I told you, Tommy was beezin’ wi’ drink. I knew I was safe enough. Anyway, he tried t’ get his hand – you know.’

‘I’ve heard enough o’ this,’ said Mrs McNeil, but did not draw away from the conversation. ‘It’s disgustin’, that’s what it is.’

‘Aye, disgustin’s the word,’ said Letty, ‘since the daft beggar couldn’t.’

‘Couldn’t what?’ said Kirsty.

‘Couldn’t – you know.’

Kirsty laughed. She could imagine Tommy Dykes, red, gawky, fumbling, and how Letty would put him through the hoop for his failure to be a man. She laughed again. The girls at other tables all seemed to be laughing. Kirsty looked up, heard them, saw them, felt laughter choke in her throat.

How callous she had become, how coarse.

She felt her eyes grow misty with sentimental self-pity.

She wiped her nose with her wrist, stickily.

‘What’s wrong wi’ you, for God’s sake?’ said Letty.

‘Got a cold comin’ on,’ said Kirsty.

‘Then kindly keep it to yoursel’,’ said Mrs McNeil. ‘I can’t afford t’ be off sick.’

‘Who can?’ said Letty and then, uninvited, rattled on with her tale of the seduction that never was.

 

Bob chose to return by a different route. He drove through the town and down to the riverside where the Renfrew ferry crossed to Yoker. While they waited for the boat to come over the far shore Bob fished in his pocket and brought out two half-crowns. Without show or formality he handed them to Craig.

‘What’s this?’ Craig said.

‘Gratuity.’

‘Is this the rake?’

‘Naw, we chalk up the rake in the usual manner; that’s a bonus.’

It had been a very fishy deal and Craig was no longer in doubt that the boxes hidden under the timber contained stolen goods which had been sold off to the sporting gentleman. The fact that he had been a party to something illegal did not bother him much. Bob McAndrew would not be behind the deal; it would be Mr Malone, and Craig, though wary of the man, took a certain pride in the fact that he had been ‘trusted’, if that was the word, by the boss.

‘Look,’ Bob said, ‘if anybody asks you where we were this mornin’ just tell them we went to Bellshill.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Lanarkshire.’

Craig said, ‘Who’s liable to ask me?’

‘Och, you never know,’ said Bob. ‘Best no’ to talk of it at all; not even t’ your wife. You know how women chatter.’

‘Aye,’ said Craig.

Bob said, ‘Once we’re over the river I’ll let you drive, if you like.’

‘I’d like that fine.’

He was given the reins as soon as the cart had cleared the ferry ramp on the Yoker side of the river. He had driven carts on Dalnavert and at Bankhead and knew what to do.

Day shift had begun in the yards and graving docks but the long stretch of the Dumbarton Road was for the most part bounded by fields and light on traffic. In less than an hour they were back in Greenfield.

Bob let him navigate into Kingdom Road and right into the gates of the yard so that Mr Malone, leaning on the rail at the top of the stairs to the office, could see how proficient he was. Though pleased with himself Craig did not put the morning’s events out of mind and did not miss the enquiring glance that passed between wily old Bob McAndrew and Mr Daniel Malone or Bob’s discreet signal that all had gone smoothly, exactly according to plan and that the Maitland Moss gang had found a new recruit.

 

Unlike many of her fellow citizens, Kirsty did not regard religion as a springboard for bigotry or as something which disbarred you from all pleasure and condemned you to glum sobriety. Going to church was an act of free will as far as Kirsty was concerned; she had never been allowed to leave Hawkhead on Sunday to make the long walk to Bankhead kirk and had thus been excluded from its socials, picnics and soirées, as well as its services. Now that she was her own woman she felt entitled to take three hours of a Sunday morning to herself and, while she’d never have squandered them by lying idly in bed, she felt justified in attending Christian worship while Craig was at work at the stables.

Kirsty had no firm opinion of the advantages of one denomination over another but had it in mind that it might be nice to bump into an acquaintance. Thus she headed for Walbrook Street and the sedate little church on its corner which seemed, from the outside, more hospitable than the smoke-stained kirks that were crammed into side-streets in Greenfield or the huge and daunting edifices that towered over sinners along Dumbarton Road. She liked the gentle name of the Walbrook Street church – St Anne’s – and the feeling that the lead-paned windows gave her and the fact that the building was not composed of soaring verticals but of warm corners and gaslit vestibules, all tinted, of course, by memories of Number 19, where she had first tasted independence.

She had gone but half the distance to Walbrook Street when the first bells rang out. Soreheads found the bells infuriating as they turned over, groaning, in bed or hunched over a late breakfast. To Kirsty, though, they seemed cheerful and encouraging. Her blue mood lifted for the first time in days and she squared her shoulders and lifted her head as she walked along and thoughts of the flour store and poor Lizzie Weekes fell from her.

It was almost as if Mrs Frew had known that she was coming. As Kirsty approached Number 19, the door opened and the woman emerged, dressed all in black, save for a blood-red bow upon her hat. She fumbled with a purse, an umbrella and an enormous Bible as she turned to lock the house door with her latchkey; Sunday, of course, was Cissie’s day off.

Kirsty hesitated, embarrassed by her temerity. Perhaps Mrs Frew would have no time for her now that she was not a guest in the boarding-house. Perhaps Mrs Frew might not care to be seen in the company of a young woman who was not her social equal. However, she had come this far and must risk a snub.

‘Mrs Frew, Mrs Frew.’

The woman had just stepped on the pavement. She turned, without a smile.

‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’

‘Aye, I was just passing, so I thought I’d—’

‘Passing?’

‘On my way to church,’ said Kirsty.

‘Are there no churches in Greenfield?’

‘Well, I’ve always liked the look o’ St Anne’s.’

‘One church is as good as another,’ said Mrs Frew. ‘Does the Lord not tell us that where one or two are gathered in His name there will He be?’

Nonetheless Mrs Frew did not object when Kirsty fell into step with her and together they made their way towards the corner.

‘Why are you wearin’ that?’ said Mrs Frew.

The powder-blue costume was not the most suitable outfit for the Sabbath but it was the only decent, matching garment that she possessed.

Kirsty said, ‘Is it too gaudy?’

‘You’re young enough to get away with it, I suppose,’ said Mrs Frew. ‘And you’re married now, I see.’

Kirsty had not had the ring off her finger since leaving Walbrook Street.

She nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, Craig an’ I are married.’

She held her breath, sure that she would be interrogated, found out in the lie and that her tenuous friendship with the widow would end before it had properly begun. But Agnes Frew was shrewd enough to hold her tongue; what she did not know would not harm her moral sensibilities. She put no questions about the ceremony and appeared to accept Kirsty’s white lie at its face value.

‘Are you settled in Greenfield, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you a house?’

‘A single-end – until we can afford better.’

‘Does he have work?’

‘We both work. I do a half-shift at Oswalds’ Cakery an’ Craig’s with a firm of carriers.’

Mrs Frew did not seem to be listening. She held her head high, nose pointed at the church.

Suddenly she said, ‘Take my arm.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Take my arm, Kirsty. It’ll not look so bad if you’re with me.’

Obediently Kirsty slipped her arm through Mrs Frew’s and so arrived at the door of St Anne’s where the ushers, Mr Brown and Mr McKay, stood rubbing their hands, smiling, bowing, nodding to all the gentlemen and ladies who climbed the four steps to the stone archway.

From within came the soft persuasive sound of an organ and the old dry fragrance of teak and cedar, leather and plush velvet. Involuntarily Kirsty hugged Mrs Frew’s arm as they climbed the steps.

Mr Brown, or was it Mr McKay, beamed at her ruddily and said, ‘I see you’ve found a helper, Mrs Frew. Aye, there are times when I feel I could be doin’ wi’ a hand up these steps myself.’

‘I am not infirm, Mr Brown,’ said Mrs Frew.

‘ ’Course not,’ said Mr Brown, who knew the widow’s foibles only too well. ‘Welcome to St Anne’s, lass. Hymnary?’

‘Thank you,’ said Kirsty and self-consciously followed the widow through the inner door.

It was not in the least like Bankhead kirk, not narrow and austere.

Mrs Frew took seats in a middle row left of the aisle and Kirsty seated herself on the padded leather bench which, though firm, was more communal than Bankhead’s upright pews. She looked about her at carved and graceful pillars and woodwork and stained-glass windows which depicted Jesus the Good Shepherd and Jesus the Fisher of Men and, as the organ played, she felt calm and serene.

It would have been lovely if she could have been married here, coming down the aisle on Mr Sanderson’s arm in a dress of ivory white while Craig and his brother Gordon, in black frock coats, waited by the steps. But she could not marry in St Anne’s, or anywhere, for, in the eyes of the world, she was already a wife.

Mr Graham entered, his black robes floating behind him. He was followed by a small, barrel-shaped man in a tight three-piece suit of absolute black, the senior elder and clerk. Mr Graham was contrastingly tall and lean, with a hawk nose and two sprigs of hair on his cheeks. He wasted no time and, after a murmured prayer, announced the first hymn.

Kirsty rose with the rest of the congregation and gave a tiny start of surprise when the first massive chords rolled from the organ which had previously been so quiet and was now rousing. She filled her lungs with the sound of it and, glancing down at the words in her hymnary, sang with the rest: Hosanna, loud hosanna. She had a strong clear voice and could hold the tune without effort and, uninhibited, felt herself buoyed up by the chorus, loosed, for a time, from concern about Craig and Oswalds’, racks of Easter cakes and poor Lizzie Weekes. She was glad, very glad, that she had come to St Anne’s and hoped that nothing would prevent her from coming again.

 

Kirsty was home long before Craig who did not arrive until after two o’clock. She had, however, taken pains to prepare a cold roast beef dinner for him and had bought a jar of the big brown pickled onions that he loved. He came cheerfully into the kitchen and gave her a peck on the cheek by way of greeting. Today he smelled of horses as well as beer.

‘You’re all dolled up,’ he said.

Hopeful that he might take her out to the park, Kirsty had not changed out of her Sunday best.

‘I went to church,’ she told him.

‘Church? Why?’

‘I felt like it.’

He seated himself at the table and reached for the pickle jar.

‘Craig, wash your hands please.’

Without argument he got up and went to the sink. ‘Is that what goin’ to church does for you?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Is cleanliness no’ next to godliness?’

‘Your mother wouldn’t let you sit at her table after you’d been muckin’ out stables, would she?’

‘What the hell’s she got to do wi’ anythin’?’

‘I didn’t mean to bite your head off,’ Kirsty apologised.

She filled the brown earthenware teapot from the kettle, fitted on its knitted cosy and put it on the cork mat on the table. Sleeves rolled over his forearms Craig returned to the table and picked up his fork.

‘Are you mad because I’ve been drinkin’?’ he asked.

‘It’s up to you what you do.’

‘Christ, I only had one or two jars in the yard.’

‘So that’s what goes on on Sunday mornings.’

‘Mr Malone offered them. I couldn’t refuse.’

‘How hard did you try?’

‘Mr Malone seems to like me.’

‘That’s good.’

‘He’s offered me extra work.’

‘Paid work?’ said Kirsty.

‘Aye.’

Kirsty put the plate of beef and cold potato in front of Craig, and a dish of tomatoes. The tomatoes had cost her a fortune for they were imports from the south, but the dinner-table would look bare without them.

Craig reached out and took one, cut it dextrously into quarters and began to eat.

‘Night work,’ said Craig, his mouth full.

‘When?’

‘Tonight.’

‘Sunday?’

‘Aye, I’ll be goin’ out about ten.’

‘For how long?’

‘Dunno. As long as it takes.’

‘What sort of stuff do you carry at midnight on Sunday?’

Craig folded a slice of bread and pushed it into his mouth. The beef, potato and tomato had all vanished, though she had not been niggardly in her serving.

‘I think,’ Craig said, ‘it might be a moonlight flit.’

‘It’s not against the law?’

Craig grinned. ‘Not if ye don’t get caught.’

He got up from the table, seated himself in a chair by the fire, lit a cigarette and picked up last night’s Evening Citizen. When Kirsty brought him a cup of tea he accepted it without a word.

‘The weather’s quite nice,’ she said. ‘Are we goin’ out for a walk?’

‘Nah, I’d better catch forty winks.’

She hid her disappointment.

It was the only time that she felt close to Craig, that she belonged to him; not in bed, not seated on his knee while he fondled her but ‘promenading’ on Dumbarton Road or in the park. If he had to go out late tonight, however, he would be in need of rest.

With a sigh she said, ‘It’s just as well. I’ve things to do about the house.’

‘Do them quietly, dear,’ Craig told her.

Tomorrow afternoon, after her stint at the Cakery, she would have her time in the wash-house in the backcourt, use of the big tub and boiling water and a share of the drying-lines that latticed the ‘green’. She had already accumulated a pile of sheets and towels that had to be done. ‘Arrangements’ regarding use of the wash-house and a stair-cleaning rota were made by Mrs Bennie, empress of the close community and a woman even more formidable than Mrs Dykes.

Kirsty had asked, innocently, if she might do her ‘turn’ at cleaning the stairs and scrubbing out the lavatory on a Sunday. Mrs Bennie had been outraged by the very suggestion. Nobody, she declared, nobody, not even that slut McAlister – who had a family of eleven – would dream of sweeping stairs on a Sunday. It had to be, had always been, Tuesday for the occupant of the top floor right; and that was that. Life in Number 11 Canada Road was a far cry from Kirsty’s dream of a cottage with a rose trellis and a vegetable garden, and ‘marriage’ to Craig was not all kisses and cuddles. It would never be like that, she realised, though the girlish dreams persisted from time to time. Canada Road was certainly better than Hawkhead, however; better than slaving for Clegg or living in a room in Dalnavert and squabbling with Craig’s mother day in and day out.

Craig heaved himself out of the chair, took off his boots and rolled on to the bed. He lay on his back, hands above his head and stared at the pock-marked plaster florets high above his face.

Making as little noise as possible, Kirsty washed dishes and set the table for tea.

When that was done she took off her apron and went over to the bed. Craig’s eyes were closed. On impulse she leaned over and kissed him on the brow. His eyes flew open, startled. His hands flew to her shoulders not to pull her down but to push her away, as if he was afraid of affection.

‘When’ll you be – fit again?’ he asked.

‘Fit?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Oh,’ Kirsty said. ‘In two or three days.’

His voice was husky with vexation.

She wanted so badly to please him and knew that it pleased him to make love to her. The truth of it was that she wanted him now more than she had ever done before but she would have to learn to put up with this trick of nature as part and parcel of being a wife. It seemed, though, so wanton and unfair. It was easier for Craig. All he wanted was money, and to make love to her. She envied him his easy desires. She did not really know what she wanted. She had grown out of girlhood all too soon and into complicated womanhood without, it seemed, acquiring volition of her own.

She drew back from him, from the bed.

She seated herself and lifted her mending-basket. She did not feel at all inclined to spend the afternoon with her new darning-egg and slippery needles, repairing Craig’s stockings and cardigan.

She wished that she had accepted Mrs Frew’s kind invitation to return to Walbrook Street at half past four o’clock and take tea there, after Mrs Frew had given lunch to her reverend guests. But Kirsty had reluctantly turned down the invitation out of a sense of wifely duty, out of loyalty to Craig and in the hope that he would want to spend the afternoon with her. She could hardly appear at the boarding-house now, out of the blue.

She sighed, unspooled a length of coarse brown wool from the ball and threaded a wetted end through a darning-needle.

In the recess Craig snored rhythmically.

He wakened at six. He ate supper. At nine he left again for the Kingdom Road and his share of the night work that Daniel Malone doled out to trusted accomplices and young lads too green to know exactly what was going on and what treasures they carried through Greenfield’s dark streets in the back of the covered van.

Around ten, tired, dispirited, and with the bloom long gone off the day, Kirsty went to bed alone.