Crystal's Song (2 page)

Once Senga had scrambled aboard the bus, Joe half-turned in his seat and called to his conductress, “That bairn there is yin o’ Dinah Glass’s.”

“So ah’m supposed tae gie her a free hurl, am I?”

Joe winked and the bus took off down Restalrig Road and then across Leith Links. However, just as they were approaching the Leith police station, Senga got up.

“No going the whole way then?” the conductress asked.

Senga shook her head. It was true she could have gone on to the terminus in Bernard Street but what Joe and the conductress didn’t know, and she wasn’t going to tell them, was that she had business to do in the pawnshop in the ancient Kirkgate. Oh yes, the skin her Mammy was making off her work on the buses was making life so much easier for the Glass family. Besides, she preferred to walk there and then wander into the Old Tolbooth Wynd because of all the odd characters and raw life there that she felt to be part of her own early childhood. She smiled to herself, remembering the Maltese lady with the monkey on her shoulder, the three-fingered knife grinder and the old sailor who hobbled about on a peg-leg. Never would you see such figures in Bernard Street: that was now for the wealthy shipping agents and bankers – men in smart suits and bowler hats.

It cost Senga only two shillings and tuppence to redeem her clock but paying even that small sum mostly in pennies seemed enough to anger Mr Cohen and he warned Senga not to come back next week and uplift her mother’s Jigger coat with anything else but siller! Senga was sorely tempted to retort that she wouldn’t be back next week as she and her older sister, Tess, and her brother, Johnny, were all being evacuated – mysteriously being taken off to some faraway place called Lasswade that no one had ever heard of.

Almost before she knew it, Senga had reached West Cromwell Street where families were still huddled together in single-ends or room-and-kitchen houses and had to endure sharing the lavatory with several other families. Literally dozens of folk could be using it – how extremely inconvenient that had been, mused Senga, when you were in a desperate rush, because you always had to ask Granny Kelly for the key. Senga had asked her Granny why they kept it locked and Granny had explained that locking it ensured that only the forty or so people entitled to use the lavatory did so – and that no common Tam, Dick or Harry had access!

West Cromwell Street was set on the corner of Admiralty Street beside an enormous pigs’ bin where, ever since the war had started, everybody was required to deposit their vegetable peelings and unwanted food. The local children all loved sitting on top of the bin because it looked straight into a very hot and noisy garage workshop where flames and shooting sparks from the forge offered a constant firework display. The most charismatic of the welders there was a man they all called Fiery because not only did the fiercest flames come from his acetylene torch but his clothes constantly required dousing with water when they, too, caught fire. For Senga, however, the real attraction of Fiery was the way he would come over at his lunch break and sit beside the children on the pigs’ bin, entertaining them by playing his melodeon – invariably accompanied by his apprentice on the mouth organ. The music provided by this talented duo would instantly have the children singing and dancing ecstatically. Then all the harsh privations of wartime seemed not to matter in the slightest. Adults too, like Senga’s mum, appreciated Fiery just as much and he was such a great musician that every Friday and Saturday night he would be found playing his accordion at the Corner Room dance-hall in North Junction Street. Many sailors went there in the hope of picking up a girl and when the interval arrived several of them would liberally buy pints of beer or nips of whisky for Fiery. By the time the interval was over, quite a few of the sailors would be growing a bit fou and a punch-up was likely to ensue. Then the ever-cautious Fiery would carefully remove his precious glass eye and wrap it in his handkerchief before placing it safely in his pocket.

After being suitably entertained from her vantage point on the corner and thinking that one day she would learn to play the squeeze-box or moothie, since they both looked so easy to play, Senga made her way up to No.6 where her Granny and Granddad Kelly lived.

She was glad it was early afternoon because Granddad, who always bad-mouthed his daughter and was forever declaring that Phyllis having been struck down with polio was a clear sign of God’s vengeance on her and Senga’s father for having entered into a mixed-faith marriage, would still be working or, more likely, propping up the bar of the Black Swan pub. But Granny Patsy Kelly was just so special – and she always made you feel that you were the most important person in the world to her. Her soft Irish lilt brought a deep sense of peace to Senga even though she knew that Granny Kelly was sorely tried by Dinah, her only child and Senga’s mother. It had been a heartache for Patsy that her first four children had died as soon as they were born and so when Dinah came bawling into the world she was absolutely elated. Maybe because of that she’d spoiled her but wasn’t that quite understandable? She didn’t give her husband, Danny, any slack, however. She might just be pint-sized at five-foot-nothing but she was a true matriarch. Senga had listened so often to the tale about how Danny thought he would do just as his work-mates did – go straight to the pub on pay night and let Patsy wait until he took his feet out of the sawdust. Danny had tried it once and was surprised when his blonde, curvaceous, attractive blue-eyed wife kicked open the pub door, skipped over to him and said, “Right, where’s the pay packet?” while she flexed her hand menacingly.

Danny had responded by roughly pushing her hand away. “You’ll get what’s left when I decide to come – and that’s
if
I decide to come hame.”

“That right? And you’ll get …” she responded as she raised her hand to hit him.

“Look, Danny,” the barman intervened. “Tak oot your pocket money and fling the rest at her. Ye ken, if ye gie her the bloody nose she’s asking for, we’ll end up wi’ the polis in here.”

“Look, sonny boy,” Patsy sneered, “if he tries slapping me he’ll end up sleeping on a slab while Alex Stoddard shrouds him.”

“That right?” cackled the barman, as he enticed all the men in the pub to join him in jeering at Patsy.

Unperturbed, Patsy now individually eyed each of the men in the bar by turn and her steely stare silenced every one of them. “That’s better,” she said, flinging back her head when the cat-calling stopped. “And don’t any of you forget that I’m the daughter o’ the prize fighter, Shaun O’Leary!”

From that day on, Danny Kelly always went home with his weekly pay packet which he handed over to Patsy
unopened
. Once she had opened the packet she gave him his pocket money and then he went off to put his feet in the sawdust. Senga knew that, for all Granny Patsy’s waspish tongue and fierce demeanour when dealing with Granddad Danny, she had a soft streak when it came to dealing with her mother Dinah, willingly taking on all her responsibilities. And of course, for her grandchildren she would have readily lain down and died. Oh aye. Wasn’t she always saying, “The very reason for living – so my grand-bairns are.”

On entering the house, Senga was immediately greeted by a big grin from her Granny who leapt across the floor and grabbed her in a tight embrace. “Gosh! Are you not a treat for sore eyes!” But then she quickly released Senga and asked, “Why are you not at school, my lass?”

“Mammy says it’s more important for me to look after Phyllis than trying to keep up with the class. And then there’s Elsie to see to when she gets back from nursery.”

“Aw, aw, aw, aw,” groaned Patsy, shaking her head. “Look here, lassie, you need to get an education. Surely you don’t want to be like your Daddy and no be able to read or write?”

Senga just shrugged. She had missed so much schooling by now that there was word of her being put in the duffers’ class and she knew that was what would certainly happen – provided she wasn’t sent off to the bad girls’ school first.

“By the way, I met your Granny Glass in the pork butcher’s queue the day and she was asking if there’d been any word yet from your Daddy?”

Senga shook her head. Poor Granny Mary, she thought. Just like Granny Patsy, she was small in stature but she was so thin, careworn and round-shouldered that she always looked ten years older than her years. She was regularly bullied by her husband, Jack Glass, a big strapping scunner of a man. And, to add to her problems, he always stayed so long in the pub on pay night that there was very little of his pay left when he staggered out. The lack of a decent share from Jack’s earnings resulted in Granny Mary taking on any jobs she could get. She did anything: scrubbing stairs, washing, ironing and looking after bairns. And as if a bad husband, whose gas she couldn’t put in a peep, was not enough for her to be going on with, she also had one son, Billy, who was a jail-bird, and another who wasn’t quite the full shilling. And as luck would have it, the one she was so proud of, Senga’s dad, Tam, was now missing in France. Senga sighed, thinking how daft it was for Granny Mary to ask if there was any word from her dad, when she well knew he couldn’t write. It was only then she remembered that she hadn’t told Granny Patsy how the war was catching up with them and, come next Monday morning, she, Tess and Johnny were all to be evacuated.

On hearing this, Patsy nodded thoughtfully. “Not a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all. You three being away means your mother will have to stay in at night – and you’ll get some proper schooling in reading and counting.”

Senga just nodded before realising it was high time for her to tell Granny that Mammy had nothing to confess this Friday – or (to be truthful) nothing she would really want Father O’Riley to know about! However, before summoning up all her courage by taking deep breaths, she looked around the room and noticed the brown paper bag on the dresser. “Good,” she thought to herself. “Granny Glass has sent us a bag of Crawford’s Rich Tea broken biscuits. That’ll please Phyllis. She just loves having somebody dunk them in tea for her.”

Tam Glass, his long thin bones aching in the blazing sun, was finding it hard to resign himself to his fate. Here he was, at the age of thirty-two, seated on the hard paving stones of a French village square and faced with the certainty of captivity. “How long did they say this business would last?” he asked himself. “Last year they told us it would all be over by Christmas.” He laughed bitterly. “Aye, that was just what they said in the last war, but Christmas 1914 came and went. It didn’t end till November 1918 and there were millions dead or maimed afore they declared a cease-fire!”

“Tam!” The voice of young Eddie broke abruptly into Tam’s train of thought. “How d’you think it’ll go for us?”

Eddie was a mere stripling of nineteen years, whom Tam had befriended from the very day they’d joined up. So close had they become that Tam now knew a great deal about Eddie, who had grown to have complete trust in the older man. Tam soon learned that the young fellow had been adopted and reared by an elderly couple who felt it was their Christian duty to drum the fear of God into him – but he knew nothing about the lad’s birth mother. No doubt Eddie himself was completely in the dark on that subject. All he’d ever said was that he’d been quite lonely before he met up with a lassie called Betty at the Church Youth Group. Now that his adoptive mother was dead, Betty had come to be Eddie’s sheet-anchor in life and it was his firm resolve to marry her (if only she would have him) because she was so beautiful and vivacious.

Tam chuckled when he heard that. It was obvious that a handsome young fellow like Eddie was a catch that any sensible girl would jump at – even a much sought-after redhead, as Betty must surely be from Eddie’s enthusiastic description. Tam’s mind went back to the lad’s question about the war and he wondered if he should speak the truth and say that he simply didn’t know how they’d be treated as prisoners of war and that he too was every bit as shit-scared as his young pal. But before he could answer, the voice of authority boomed out: “Right now, my lads! Stack all your rifles here by the wall. The last-ditch defence is over for us.”

Tam nudged Eddie and they both stood up to obey the order from Sergeant Fred Armstrong, the most senior soldier left with the rearguard.

Andrew Young, who preferred to be known as Andy, stayed firmly seated on the ground and, instead of obeying the order, gallantly squared up to the sergeant. “Are you telling us Royal Scots, who are the First of Foot – Right of the Line –”

“– and the pride of the British army no less,” butted in Charlie Tracey, who in turn was interrupted.

This time the continuity was broken by George McIntyre who added zealously, “And with us being the oldest regiment in the British army, and well-known to have been Pontius Pilate’s own bodyguard to boot, you’re wanting us to surrender like a bunch o’ yellow-livered cowards, are ye?” George then looked contemptuously towards the English squad.

Fred shook his head wearily. “Look here, lads. It’s no about being seen as cowards – it’s all about survival! About living to fight another day – when we will win!”

“But we could make a stand right here,” protested George.

“Now, let’s just get this straight. There are seventy-five of us men here, and that’s counting the twenty-four English and Welsh lads. Most of you are raw recruits and we’ve only got some pesky rifles whose ammunition is running out. So d’you really think we could take on three crack infantry divisions who’ll be backed up by at
least
a hundred German tanks manned by battle-hardened experts?”

The men all looked from one to the other. Some had felt quite proud to be the expendable flank that would take on and delay the enemy so that the greater part of the British Expeditionary Force could retreat to Dunkirk and await rescue there. Others were seething, feeling they’d been sacrificed and abandoned by all their officers without a backward glance; and, as Charlie had remarked: “Look, if a hundred thousand gutless French, who’re waitin’ at Dunkirk to do a bunk, dinnae think their country’s worth fighting for – then why the hell are
we
still here?” Every man there nodded his head and voiced agreement.