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Scotland the Brave
SCOTLAND the BRAVE by Iain Hamilton.
(A 1930’s child growing up in the town of Renfrew)
Illustrated and converted to CD by Peter (Glen) Gibb
2001
Chapter 1
THROUGH one of the kitchen doors was the scullery,
and in the scullery there was a brick-walled copper
where the washing was boiled, with a smell that went
with Monday’s salty beef; and on that bright and
blowy Monday the copper joyously overflowed. Through
the doorway I saw it happen, that tremendous event;
but of course I did not run to tell my grandmother,
who was upstairs, or call out to her daily help,
Mrs. Gale, who was pushing the carpet-sweeper about
on the sitting-room next door; for I liked the way
the water welled up over the top and ran thinly down
the sides, smoothly and glassily rippling over the
grey faces of the bricks, cataracting between the
courses, and running off the bottom without a sound.
It spread mild as milk over the stone floor, and the
carpet sweeper still went swish-swash in the sitting
room. I paddled in the rising tide which in no great
time was trickling over the doorstep and down on to
the dusty garden path between the scullery steps and
the coal-shed.
At first it scattered in pellets which were not like
water at all but more like small black heads you
might pick up and toss into the air; arid then the
pellets ran together, and the water broke free and
glistening from its dusty strait-jacket. A trickle
began to run down the gutter towards the roots of a
flowering currant tree that stood at the corner of
the wall and stretched its branches towards the
small round side-window of the Scullery.
The trickle grew into a stream, and, splashing down
the stream to the dry earth that was swallowing it,
I discovered the rank feline leaves of the
flowering-currant and the plump caterpillars that
fed on them. If you pulled a caterpillar off a leaf
to which it stickily clung, it curled itself into a
soft ball: I squashed one too hard and a soft
greenness came out over my fingers. I was curiously
excited by this and squashed several in rapid
succession, wiping my fingers on my shirt from time
to time.
But then there came a cry from the scullery:
‘Oh mercy me! Oh crivens, what a mess!’
And here was Mrs. Gale, with her thick black skirt
and her high black boots and the shiny black hat
that she never took off, standing on the doorstep
and shaking her fist at me.
‘Did ye no’ see the watter? Whit wey did ye no’ tell
me? How’m I gaun tae get it soopit up, ye bad wicked
boy, as if I’ve no’ mair nor enough tae dae in this
house withoot gettin’ doon on ma knees an’ wipin’ up
a fair flood’! Just wait till yer grannie sees a’
this, I’m tellin’ ye, an’ then ye’ll catch it. Did
ye no’ ken it was runnin’ ower?’ I shook my head.
‘An’ whit wey are yer feet a’ wet like that? Ye
havenie been oot in the gairden a’ this time? Was it
you turned on the tap?’
I shook my head again.
‘Just you wait, then; ye’lI get it when yer grannie
comes doon!’
I fell back against the door of the coal-shed,
watching Mrs. Gale as, with many a moan and grunt of
annoyance and fatigue, she fetched a big cloth from
the cupboard beneath the sink at the window and,
bent double, with the cherries in her black straw
hat bobbing and dangling towards her knees, began to
slosh the water towards the doorstep; it came down
in waves and soon there was a. wide pool round the
foot of the flowering-currant.
"An’ ma feet a’ wet tae!" she complained,
straightening herself.
‘I like Jennie better than you,’ I said. Jennie was
Mrs. Gale’s daughter, a pretty girl (as I thought)
with bad teeth, who sometimes came in her mother’s
place.
‘Aye, she’s that soft,’ said Mrs. Gale, ‘but I’m the
wan tae sort yea, yea wee rascal. Has nobody telt ye
whit the Bible says’ll happen tae them that tell
fibs like thon?’
I shook my head.
"Have ye no’ heard tell o’ the Bible?" said Mrs.
Gale.
This time I nodded. I had heard of the Bible, which
for some reason I imagined as an object like a small
spinning wheel that spoke like a gramophone when you
turned the handle hard.
‘Aye, well, ye ought tae ken whit happens tae people
that tell fibs,’ said Mrs. Gale sternly. ‘They’re a’
pit in Hell, so they are.’
‘What’s Hell?’ I asked. It had a pleasant sound.
‘Hell’s the hot place whaur folk that tell fibs are
punished.’
‘But I don’t want to be punished,’ I said.
‘Away wi’ ye, then,’ said Mrs. Gale, bending again
with her feet wide apart and dragging the stretched
cloth over the floor. ‘We’ll never get wir dinner
the day.’
‘Where’s my Grannie?’
"She’ll be doon soon enough," said Mrs. Gale; "jist
you wait an’ ye’ll ken a’ aboot it. "Rin awa’ doon
the gairden an’ oot o’ ma sight."
So I skipped away singing, to give Mrs. Gale no sign
of the apprehension that had stolen over me. away
from the house and down the garden path. Halfway
down on the left-hand side there was a bush of tight
little yellow roses for which my grandfather had a
great affection. He called them Scotch roses and
when he was in the garden never failed to stop by
the bush and pluck one of the little flowers for his
button hole. If I was with him he would pick me up
and push my nose into a flower.
‘Take a sniff boy,’ he would say. ‘That’s a good
Scotch rose.’
The bush, mainly for that reason hut also because it
made such a compact and vivid mass of green and
gold, and become in my imagination the most
important part of the garden and when I was alone
there 1 liked to play about in the path near it.
The borders of the path were of planking, which was
rotting away, a process that I accelerated with
prying, pulling fingers. Small flat armoured
creatures fled from this devastation of their lair,
and it was the thrill of horror induced in me by
their dull Grey backs and scurrying legs which I
most valued in this game. The rose-bush towered
above me, and the sunshine falling through its
tightly packed blossoms and leaves dappled the
garden path and spotted my fingers which were
crumbling the wood to a soft powder, a Grey rain
that I sprinkled over the retreating wood-lice. The
air was heavy with the scent of the yellow rose, and
although the wind was heaving and hushing among the
tall wilderness of leaves beyond the next garden,
there was no breath below to disturb the dust on the
garden path. A yellow petal broke lightly free from
a full-blown flower and came to rest, a rich and
glossy wreck, on one of the small nuggets of brown
earth that were heaped up round the stem of the
rose-bush.
I retired into myself, mindless, intoxicated with
the earth’s warmth and the heavy smell of the rose.
All that had happened already that morning was gone
from my mind. I knew little of the world beyond the
bounds of the garden, and cared nothing for it: this
was my domain, my universe, and I squatted at the
centre of it, regarding my fingers drunkenly through
unfocused eyes.
‘Aye, Mr. MacEachran, it’s terrible right enough,
but never mind, it’s nearly done noo an it’ll no’
tak a minute tae get the dinner laid. Aye, the
laddie's doon there in the gairden somewhere aboot,
the wee rogue; tell him tae come in an’ get his bits
changed, for they’re a’ wet wi’ slooshin’ aboot in
the watter."
I heard Mrs. Gale's rough voice cawing and cackling
out from the scullery door as she talked to my
grandfather, home a little early from the works for
dinner and newly come on the chaos in the scullery,
but it made no impression on my consciousness. So he
found me sitting in the dust motionless, rapt, drunk
with the perfection of my world.
"Hey there MacTavish!"
I started and looked up, a long way, at my tall
grandfather. He wore black boots that were dusty,
and a suit of a dark, rough heavy material that had
the sooty-irony smell of the works about it, and a
blue shirt, and a white collar that by mid-day was
no longer very white and a dark blue tie with dark
red stripes running diagonally across it. His
moustache was very large and untidy and Grey, his
hair almost white, his face unwrinkled (in this
unlike my grandmother's), his mouth always kind, his
eyes indulgent. But his voice was fierce.
"What are you up to, scarting about in the ground?"
he asked "and what have you been doing in the
scullery? Wait till Mrs. Gale catches you."
"The water ran over,’ I said, and burst out
laughing.
He laughed too.
"Would you like a boiled sweet?" he said, putting
his hand in his pocket.
I jumped to my feet, all animation at last.
"No, not now; it's nearly dinner-time and you
wouldn't clean your plate."
"Yes. I would"
"No, you wouldn’t."
"I would so!"
He caught me under the arms and lifted me high into
the air,
"Smell the Scotch rose,’ he commanded, pushing my
face among the shiny buds. I could see a few hard
beads of water still held gently among the
half-unfurled petals before my nose went among them:
the beads melted and ran, leaving not a trace behind
them on the fine yellow satin an inch from my eyes;
they made little cold streaks on my face, and on my
lips they tasted of the smell of the rose.
“What were you doing this morning?” he asked,
putting me down and walking off towards the fence at
the foot of the garden. I followed him and we
stopped under the laburnum tree by the gate.
“Playing.”
“Playing at what?”
“Nothing. Playing, just.”
“Playing at pestering?”
“What’s pestering?”
“What you do.”
I laughed and ran away, but he caught me easily and
lifted me up to his shoulders. Mrs. Henderson came
out of the next house on the right and stood arms
akimbo by the fence.
“I don’t see how you can lift him,” she said, “he’s
getting so big. You can see the difference every
week now.”
“Aye, he’s getting a fine big lad,” said my
grandfather fondly.
“And full of mischief too, I’ll warrant,” said Mrs.
Henderson. As they talked about me I lost interest
and stared up at the back of the terrace in which
our house was one of eight. The back was of dull red
brick, unlike the front, which was splendidly faced
with smooth red sandstone; but while the walls to
the right and left were bare and had a
rough-and-ready appearance, ours was covered on one
half with Virginia creeper and on the other,
extending as far as my bedroom window on the upper
floor, an enormous climbing rose which was aflame
with heavy clusters of crimson flowers.
Above my window and immediately under the gutter
protruded the blunt snout of a pipe which would
occasionally, for some reason that I did not know,
spout a stream of water into the middle of the
square of grass, “the green,” on which my
grand-father was standing. I was lost in the
contemplation of this pipe until an upper window of
the next house on the left, the last in the terrace,
thudded open to reveal Rhoda Maclaren standing there
with a feather duster in her hand.
“Hallo!” she cried, waggling the duster out of the
window.
I waved. “My Mother’s divorcing Jack,” I called out.
Rhoda looked startled, waggled the duster once more,
and shut the window.
“Fancy,” said Mrs. Henderson. She seemed to be taken
aback by this remark of mine and her conversation
with my grand-father dithered to a standstill. “Ah
well,” she wound up, “the beasts must be fed.”
“My mother says it's an awful pity you had your
beautiful hair cut short,” I said, not as a parting
shot but because 1 thought it was time I said
something to Mrs. Henderson.
“Wheesht!” hissed my grandfather, and Mrs. Henderson
smiled despairingly, before shaking her finger at me
and going indoors.
My grandfather put me down and looked at me
severely.
“You mustn’t say things like that.”
“Why?”
“You must not repeat outside what you hear inside.
Do you understand that now, for I don’t want to have
to tell you again!”
I could not understand what the fuss was about, but
I could see well enough that my grandfather was
cross, and getting crosser the more he thought about
it. This made me wary. Not that my grandfather had
ever raised his hand to me - that was inconceivable
- but when he was really angry it was his way to
speak very loudly indeed; I once saw him, in the
course of a domestic argument, raise a cup and
saucer from the table and smash them on the floor to
emphasize the point of his objection. Then all earth
and heaven trembled in the terrible awareness of
guilt and shame; black storm clouds drove up against
the sky. the wind howled, a blinding rain fell, and
in the centre of this elemental confusion God
brandished his flaming javelins and thundered out
against his erring children.
It was true that the storm passed over as quickly as
it had come upon us, and that in a moment the sun
would be shining again from a clear sky and the
drenched earth steaming gently in its warmth, but
the terror was complete while the storm raged and
God spoke his words of fierce reproof. It was an
experience to be avoided at all costs, and already I
had learned one or two small tricks of propitiation.
Reluctant tears squeezed themselves from my eyes and
trickled towards my lips. I pulled at my
grandfather’s hand. I said I was sorry and haltingly
asked him to tell me the story of Finn and Cuchulain,
the terrible giants. He ruffled my hair brusquely:
the danger had passed.
But there was no time for stories. Mrs. Gale was
calling from the scullery door and my grandmother
was tapping at the kitchen window. Dinner was ready
and my grandfather would soon have to go back to
work.
There was a red cloth on the table in the kitchen
and on lop of that there was a white tablecloth. The
red shone dimly through the white, making a rosy
ground for the blue-and-white of the willow-pattern
soup plates full to the brim of’ boiled beef and
carrots and cabbage and potatoes, all saltily
steaming. The delicious smell mingled with that from
the copper in the scullery, which was now bubbling
merrily again, with white sheets sometimes
ballooning up briefly, puffing out a belch of soapy
steam, and then subsiding. Mrs. Gale had swept the
scullery floor clear of water, but it was still dark
with wetness save for a light patch in front of the
boiler fire; this patch was growing, steaming gently
along its edge. I could see it through the open door
from my seat at table where I sat perched high on a
hard cushion between my grandmother and Mrs. Gale.
"What’s this Mrs. Gale’s been telling me?” said my
grand mother in her gentle, slightly uncertain,
voice.
“The water ran over." I muttered into my soup
plate, forgetting my grandmother’s deafness. "What’s
that?” she said, and smiled.
“The water ran all over the floor,” I said as loudly
as I could, “but it wasn’t my fault.”
“Eh?” said Mrs. Gale, “are ye sure ye werenie playin’
wi’ the tap, but?”
"I was not!” I exclaimed crossly and banged my
soup-spoon hard on the table.
“That’ll do, now,” said my grandfather sharply.
“Aye,” said Mrs. Gale, “but ye might ha’ run through
and telt me when ye saw it scalin’ a’ower the
flair.”
“Oh, leave the boy alone,” said my grandmother:
“he’s too young to be wise-like.”
Mrs. Gale sniffed and got on with her boiled beef.
My grandfather was looking casually at the front
page of the Daily Record which he held before him in
his left hand. Staring at him, I fell into the sort
of trance in which one seems to turn to stone, aware
of everything around but wholly detached from it in
one’s preoccupation with the strange minor sadness
which comes without reason and concentrates the
imagination like a thin thread of music heard
faintly from a far distance. This moment of intense
abstraction must have printed itself deeply in my
mind, for I remember it now as vividly as if it were
a picture seen only yesterday.
“Wake up, Iain,” said my grandmother. Suddenly the
clouds began to move across the window again, the
fire to roar, the newspaper to rustle gently in my
grandfather’s hand, and Mrs.. Gale’s false teeth to
clink cheerfully as she chewed her beef. After
dinner my grandfather filled his pipe with black
tobacco and went hack to the works, my grandmother
went upstairs again to rest (she had been ill), and
Mrs. Gale returned to her work in the scullery. I
was allowed to go out and play in the front so long
as I promised not to go through the big gate at the
entrance to the avenue and on to Broadloan. Not that
I should have dreamt of breaking out; the world
beyond the gate was uncharted and full of wonders;
everything was too big for my eyes and there were
strange noises, too fierce for my ears.
Sometimes an aeroplane crossed the sky directly
overhead, its engine roaring and coughing like a
wild beast, its wings waggling uncertainly as if in
a moment it might swoop and snatch up any small boys
who had strayed too far from their front doors. From
the distant unseen works came vast hollow clangings
and thumpings and whistlings and often a huge steam
lorry, belching steam and sparks, would lumber past
the gate of the avenue.
Certainly I would not have gone beyond the gate nor
out into the road.
Our house was second from the end in the terrace. A
private avenue ran along the frontage from the high
wall with a door in it on the far side of the last
house up to the wide gate that shuts us off from the
road. There was much to see and to do in the avenue.
But first, having myself opened the glass door into
the porch; I had to inspect the walls there. They
were of pinkish distemper and offered an
irresistible temptation to errand-boys who wrote on
them in pencil and caused my grand-mother and Mrs.
Gale much annoyance. The inscriptions had to be
washed away, bat this muddied the surface of the
distemper and spoiled the appearance of the porch.
There was a new writing on the left-hand wall when I
went out that afternoon, a greasy squiggle running
along almost the whole length of the wall to the
outside door, but of course I could not read it. I
wished I could. When Mrs. Gale muttered fiercely
about the boys using the porch like the wall of a
tenement I asked her what it was they wrote, but she
shooed me away. “Ye widnie ken what it wis, and I
should jist hope not!”
There was a little drawing also on the wall that
afternoon, but I did not know what it portrayed.
Outside the front door there was a small square
garden with a Christmas tree, darkly green and
stiff, in the middle of it. I did not like that
little garden with its prim borders of Nancy Pretty
and its square of dank grass and the stolid tree in
the middle of it - it stood in my mind for all that
was bleak and comfortless - and was always glad to
get to the foot of the narrow path and out on to the
mossy pavement that ran along on the outer side of
the spear-headed iron railings.
The door opened behind me. “Here the ye want yer
tricycle?” said Mrs. Gale. She wheeled it out for me
and boxed my ear lightly when I came up. “Mind
yersel” she said, and went indoors.
When the door closed I jumped for joy, climbed on to
the high seat of the tricycle, and sped down the
pavement like a racer, the patches of moss flashing
like green streaks past the front wheel, the
railings on my right a blur, the wind booming
emptily in my open mouth. It was all mine, the
avenue, and all empty and all familiar, and as long
as the world. Away at the far end I turned to the
left, bumped off the pavement on to the earthy
surface of the drive itself (hard going this) and
returned by way of the path that ran up between the
two lines of trees that stretched along the full
length of the avenue on its far side. It took two
minutes, or two hours: a long time, anyway. Far
overhead, among the topmost branches of the tall
trees, rooks were cawing and tumbling about
clumsily.
At my own end of the drive again, I paused and laid
my cheek against the sun-warmed wood of the doorway
that led into the forbidden grounds of the Mill
House; the sound of hens, and the smell of hens,
came through the cracks. I stood on the pedals and
looked through a crack at the littered yard, full of
scurrying shaggy fowls and at the tumbled own yellow
house which was such a marvel to me because nothing
but the hens and two old carts and a great many
sacks and a whole treasure-trove of old bits and
pieces of everything lived on the ground-floor,
which was open to the little yard; the people of the
house got to the living-quarters on the upper floor
by a rickety wooden staircase that looked as if it
was casually glued to the flaking wall. Beyond the
house there were trees and dense thickets of bushes,
and somewhere in the middle of that wilderness there
was the pond that I must never go near because it
was green and deep and full of newts and frogs and
other monsters.
Suddenly, as I stood there, dreaming of the pond and
imagining the newts crawling out of the green slime
around its edges and pattering through the dense
bushes and snaking through the cracks in the wooden
door and running up my legs, a wave of panic broke
over me; and whooping, half with fear and half with
the pleasure of being afraid, I pedalled wildly
across to the other wooden door in the wall which
closed the drive.
I tried the handle but it was locked. Behind this
door there was a pathway leading through an orchard
of cherries and pears and apples to the big grey
house where the Wilsons lived. They had a ‘nanny’
who made them eat stewed rhubarb at eleven o’clock
in the morning, a treat which I shared when I went
to play with them; they also had a huge garden
bewilderingly divided by hedges into many parts -
one full of vegetables, one full of roses, and one
dotted with funny green bushes trimmed into strange
shapes; and they had a lawn-tennis court with a
summer-house on the edge of it that smelt of sun and
tar and tobacco; and they had a big play-room with
bare walls on which you could write with red and
green chalk if you wanted to, without getting into
trouble.
Lucy was my age and had long hair with ribbons in
it; Johnny was bigger. I liked Lucy better. I liked
her, I thought, sitting disconsolate on my tricycle
outside the door, very much. But she was on holiday.
The house was shut up, and the gardener would he
grunting away to himself among the roses and clipped
bushes, and I should not play in there for weeks and
weeks to come. There was a lump in my throat now and
my eyes were smarting with sorrow and self-pity for
my loneliness; So I scratched the wood with a finger
nail and whistled (my latest accomplishment) as
loudly as I could.
But someone was calling me. It was Mrs. Peterson of
No. 4, and I pedalled back down the avenue to her
gate. She told me that Billy was out in the garden
playing in his boat, and would I like to come
through and play with him?
“All right,” I said, impolitely. Billy and I did not
always agree, and when we fought, as we often did, I
got into trouble.
“Be good, now, both of you,” she said, but she
looked at me as she said it, and she spoke in a tone
which presaged trouble. She was kind always, but apt
to be too openly on Billy’s side, and there was
something in her voice that troubled my temper.
“This is my boat,” said Billy.
His boat was a large wooden box with a wide ledge
round the inside of it, and a pole for a mast with a
square sail of old carpet that could be pulled up
and down.
“That’s nothing,” I said.
“Well, you haven’t got one!” he retorted, standing
on the ledge and holding on to the mast.
“Billy!” said his mother, “do you want your friend
to play with you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, ask him properly, otherwise he will have to
go away.”
“Would you like to come into the boat?”
Of course I wanted to go into his boat, and I did.
It was a marvellous boat, a big boat, a real boat,
and we sped over the green waves in it, pitching and
tossing and vanquishing Pirates whenever they sailed
alongside with guns booming and swords between their
teeth. That was a golden afternoon at sea. The sail
went up and down. The wind whistled in the rigging.
For an hour there were no more brotherly shipmates
than Billy and myself, taking turn about of being
captain, yielding readily to one another in matters
of seamanship, or of tactics, or of who should have
the chocolate-coated caramel and who the boiled
sweet. The call of nature came to us both at the
same moment, and since it was impossible to walk
over the waves in order to visit the lavatory
indoors we pumped ship illicitly through the
railings into Mrs. Bennett’s rhubarb in the garden
next door. A golden afternoon.
But the gold in time turned, as it was bound to,
into lead.
“Bet you wish you had a boat,” said Billy.
“I’ve got a boat,” said I, “a real one.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“I have so.”
“Where is it, then?”
I ran down the garden, along the path where the
dustbins stood, one at each gate, up my own garden
and into the kitchen, where my grandmother was now
seated by the fire knitting.
“Billy Peterson says I haven’t got a boat but I have
so and where is it?”
Mrs. Gale came through from the scullery, wiping her
arms with a towel.
“Was it yon long tin boat wi’ three rid funnels?”
“Yes.”
“Aye, well, dae ye no’ mind you and wee Billy was
playin’ wi’ it doon on the path there twa - three
days ago. Are ye sure he gied it back tae ye? I mind
ye didnie bring it in wi’ ye that night, but ye wid
pey nae heed when I asked ye, sae I thocht it was
jist left lyin’ oot there on the path.”
It took a little time for it to sink in and then I
remembered suddenly that Billy had asked me whether
he could borrow my boat and that I, being called in
for tea, had let him take it away without any
argument on my part. So I hurried round again to
Billy’s garden and asked him indignantly what he had
done with my boat. He was swinging round the mast,
smiling secretly and thumping the railings with his
boot every time he came round.
“I haven’t got it,” he said.
“Yes, you have; you asked to borrow it and I lent it
to you.”
“No, you didn’t.”
I felt a hot pricking behind my eyes and the edges
of my teeth grated and squeaked together as I
started to climb into the boat.
“Surprise, surprise,” said Billy hurriedly. “Look
down at the bottom of the garden.”
I ran down and looked around among the cabbages, but
I could see no sign of my boat.
“Outside,” Billy called.
So I went through the gate, and still I could not
see my bonny big liner with three red funnels.
“Look in the dustbin,” shouted Billy and started to
giggle.
Off came the blotchy lid and there it was stuffed
down among ashes and cabbage leaves and greasy
paper. I did not wait to pick it out, for my eyes
were swimming with a rosy mist and my fists tight
clenched for revenge. When Billy saw how I was
taking his little joke he started to clamber out of
his boat, but I caught up with him before he reached
the scullery door.
“Stop it,” he screamed before I touched him, “or
I’ll tell my mammie,” and then I punched him in the
face. He began to cry but he kicked me on the shin
and then I too started to cry. Both screeching like
small animals driven into a corner, we leapt at each
other with arms flailing painfully. It was a
desperate battle. I was conscious of one thing only,
the desire to hurt Billy as hard as I could; and
Billy, no longer on the defensive since my first
blow had stung the sense of guilt out of him, must
also have had one wish only, to damage me. So we
threshed about the garden path and over the grass
until he broke from me and made for the scullery
door and the shelter of his mother’s arms. But,
blind with rage and helpless in the grip of a red
fury, I pursued him right into his haven and would
have pulled a handful of his hair out had Mrs.
Peterson not held me off with a brawny arm.
“You naughty wicked boy!” she said. “What on earth
are you doing?”
Her sharp voice, with real adult anger in it, pulled
me up.
“Well, it was his fault - - ” I began.
“No, it wasn’t,” wailed Billy, “it was his. He hit
me first.”
“He put my boat in the dustbin.”
“Well, it was only for fun.”
Mrs. Peterson stamped in exasperation.
“If you two can’t play together in peace you can’t
play together at all. And lain: I’m surprised and
shocked at the way you behave, chasing after Billy
like that, like a mad thing. Run away home now this
instant and I’ll tell your Mummy about this when I
see her.”
The last of my anger departed, taking the stiffening
out of me. I crumpled, and so did the day - into a
bleak ruin. Behind me the scullery door slammed as
Mrs. Peterson took Billy in to see to the scratch
that my nail had left above his forehead. Sadly I
turned and walked up the garden path, biting my lip
because it was too late to say ‘Sorry’ and restore
the lead to gold once more.
A sense of utter desolation came flooding across the
rose-bushes and cabbages and tall herbaceous borders
and drowned me as I reached the garden gate; so it
was like one who found the simplest action a mighty
effort that I took my liner from the dustbin and
trailed it home, its stern-post digging a narrow
furrow in the gravelly path. Beyond the high
hawthorn hedge on my left there was, unseen, a
children’s playground with swings and a maypole, and
I could hear boys and girls of the Victory Gardens
housing estate calling out to one another as they
played a game, and the chains of the maypole
jangling like bells as they clashed together and
struck the iron pillar around which they revolved:
but all these sounds merely exacerbated my
melancholy, and by the time I reached my own gate I
was fathoms deep in the total despair that only
childhood knows.
So I wept sorely, and was questioned; wept further,
and was comforted. And Mrs. Gale made a joke from
the scullery and my grandmother told me not to be a
silly boy and the smell of the toast she was making
by the kitchen fire drew me effortlessly to the
surface, and look - the day was golden again, like
the cheese I ate for tea with my toast, while Mrs.
Gale, her day’s work finished, trumpeted at my
grandmother, who smiled gently, as always, and spoke
so softly because she could not hear very well.
After tea I went out to play in the garden for a
little. Mrs. Maclaren was out in the garden next
door choosing a lettuce. When she saw me she came up
to the fence to talk to me.
“Would you like to come over for a wee?” she asked,
“Donald’ll be home in a minute.”
Donald was her son, a tall young man who was in the
works with his father and who took great pleasure in
teasing me in a way which I did not mind at all,
although he had more fun out of it than I. But it
was Mrs. Maclaren whom I liked best, even more than
Mr Maclaren or Donald or Rhoda, for she was quiet
and affectionate and never scolded, and often on
Saturday mornings she slipped an envelope through
our letter-box with threepence in it for me.
Now she put down her lettuce, leant across the
fence, and lifted me over. I stood beside her in the
scullery as she first washed and prepared the
lettuce and then began to clean a pile of knives
that lay on the draining board. This was an
operation I had never seen before and I watched
intently as she tapped a little pile of grey powder
out of a long tin on to the board, wetted a cloth,
wrapped it round her forefinger, dipped it in the
mound of powder, and then rubbed hard at the blade
of a knife. So single-minded, so microscopic, is a
child’s interest in adult magic that I swear that I
thought my very self on to that dull blade, and felt
on my own skin the squeak and scratch of the powder,
and then shone silver, renewed, under the cleansing
gush from the kitchen tap. At any rate, I certainly
did not hear Donald’s footsteps as he came into the
scullery, and the next thing I knew I was held high
in the air.
“Through the window!” he cried.
“You!” I shouted. “Oh you!”
“Put the laddie down,” said Mr. Maclaren, “and don’t
excite him.”
So I sat quietly between Mr. Maclaren and Donald as
they ate their meal, Mr. Maclaren and Rhoda on the
other side of the kitchen table had cheese and
lettuce, but Mr. Maclaren and Donald had minced beef
and mashed potatoes, and I was fascinated by the way
Donald mixed his mince and potatoes together into a
brown paste which he then patted with the flat of
his knife into all sorts of shapes. I was not
hungry, having eaten only half an hour before, but
greed grew in me as I watched Donald shaping his
cubes and slabs and it must have shown in my
expression.
“Haven’t you just had your tea?” said Mr. Maclaren.
I nodded.
“Ach, but he’ll still have room for a sugar
biscuit,” said Mr. Maclaren.
“Huh, he’ll need more than biscuits if he’s going to
wrestle with me,” said Donald.
“Don’t you be so rough with him,” said Rhoda. “I saw
you holding him upside down just now in the scullery
and it would have served you right if he had been
sick all over you.”
“For Pete’s sake!” said Donald, pushing aside his
plate and picking up a clean fork. “Here,” he said,
turning to me, “shut your eyes and open your mouth
and see what Santa Claus’ll bring you.”
My greed disappeared at the taste of the cube which
he popped into my mouth. It was only mince and
potato after all.
“My,” said Mr. Mac!aren, “you’re an awful quiet wee
man tonight. Have you nothing to tell us?”
“My mother - " I began, remembering the great
effect of my announcement to Rhoda at mid-day, and
then paused, recalling also my grandfather’s
warning. Mr. Maclaren and
Rhoda looked at one another.
"Aye, man," said Mr. Maclaren, “come on and tell
us.”
“Wheesht!” said Mr. Maclaren. “Goodness me, but look
at the time. You’ll have to get away home or your
grannie’ll be shooting the boots off me.”
The Maclarens’ garden was bushier than ours and I
ran down the path helter-skelter for fear of the
things that might be lurking in corners. An
agreeable panic made my legs work like pistons and
in a flash I was back in my own kitchen in front of
my grandmother, puffing and blowing as she chided me
gently for disappearing. In ten minutes’ time she
had washed me and put me to bed, and now I lay in my
own room upstairs at the back of the house, screwing
up my eyes against the evening sun and looking at a
picture-book. The window was open and a heavy branch
of the climbing rose, swaying in and out on the
wind, occasionally shed a few petals on the
linoleum.
Children in the playground beyond the high hawthorn
hedges were laughing and shrieking and the chains
were clanging. An aeroplane rasped and coughed
across the pale blue sky. And then my grandfather,
who had been kept late at the works, came up to say
good night. He had a present for me, a little
coloured ball which opened and spilled out dolly
mixtures, tiny sweets of different colours, shapes,
and degrees of hardness; but he told me that since I
had brushed my teeth I must put them all back and
keep the ball under my pillow until tomorrow. So he
had to assuage my disappointment by telling me a
Story.
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