The New Breadmakers (14 page)

They hadn’t seen each other for what seemed like ages. At least, not to get together and talk. It wasn’t easy to avoid being seen together. Especially in Balornock and Springburn. They’d had a few narrow escapes. Today, however, they had managed to meet in town while doing some Christmas shopping. Surely, they felt, in such crowded city streets, no one would notice them.

‘Oh here,’ Chrissie creased forward in a fit of giggles, ‘I made an awful mistake the other day.’

‘Oh, go on, tell me.’

‘Difficult to explain when you don’t know the place. I mean, the kind of work. It was difficult enough for me. There are three catalogues, you see. When you catalogue books, you’ve to do catalogues and several different slips for each catalogue. Different colours as well. One is white, one yellow, one red and each of these slips is in three parts with perforations. When they are typed and finished with, they’re torn up into the strips, and then they are put in their place in the catalogue.’

Ailish looked a bit puzzled but she murmured a cautious ‘Yes.’

Chrissie went on, ‘So here, one day, I had nothing much to do, so I asked Miss Andrews – she’s in charge of catalogues – if I could do anything to help her. And she said, “Yes, you could tear up these slips” and she gave me a box.’

Ailish began to laugh as light dawned.

‘You didn’t!’

‘I did. Tore up every one of them.’

‘What happened? Did you get an awful row?’

‘No, and that was worse. It turned out that Miss Andrews is one of these quiet, long-suffering martyr types. She stuck them all together again and wouldn’t let me help. It took her ages as well. I felt terrible.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘But something else happened – another crisis but more of an excitement than mine. Pauline Winters poured a bottle of perfume over Mr McKay’s head. A big bottle, as well. She’d just bought it in Boots as a Christmas present for her sister.’

‘Why on earth did she do that? Had he made a pass at her or something?’

‘We don’t know. It’s the talk of the place. He stank to high heavens for ages afterwards as well.’

‘He must have done something.’

‘That’s what we all say. And he’s a funny wee man. I mean funny strange. Not funny ha ha. He doesn’t walk around between the stacks. He kind of creeps.’

‘For goodness’ sake!’

‘But he always seemed pretty harmless. Just a quiet wee man, you know.’

‘But he must have done something,’ Ailish repeated, ‘to what was her name?’

‘Pauline Winters. She’s a nervous kind of girl, right enough. A bit jumpy at the best of times. Usually chatters away no bother, but she’s clammed up about this. It’s driving us all mad, not being able to find out.’

‘Do you still like the place then?’

‘Oh yes. We still have to rule the books but there’s more of us and lots of other interesting things going on.’

‘Not half, by the sound of it.’

They both enjoyed another bout of giggles before parting at the arranged place.

All the library staff worked split shifts – nine till twelve, then one-thirty till six. Or nine to one-thirty and six till nine. Chrissie was on the later shift and so had to be back by six.

Being with Ailish had made her think of Sean again. They had spoken a little more than their previous ‘Good morning’ or ‘Good evening’ or ‘Nice day’. One day Sean had unexpectedly said, ‘I hear you’ve changed your job.’

‘Well, not exactly changed.’ Silly ass that she was, she’d begun to blush and stutter. ‘I mean, I’m still a library assistant. But I’ve moved to the Mitchell.’

‘Great place,’ Sean said. ‘The biggest reference library in Europe, I believe. I’d love to have a really good browse through their Burns collection. I’m a great admirer of Burns.’

Instead of giving an opinion of the poet – and she could have because she knew his work so well – she just stood blushing and unable to articulate another word. Oh, how she hated her stupid self afterwards. She could have impressed Sean by quoting some of Burns’s poetry. That had been her big chance and she’d let it pass without doing or saying a thing. She had determined never to make that mistake again. She rehearsed what she’d say to him next time. Then what he’d say to her. And what she’d reply. Something very witty and knowledgeable, of course, because it was obvious that Sean was impressively knowledgeable about many things. Ailish said he’d even read Proust. Fancy! Proust! Her admiration for him knew no bounds.

Yet the next time he’d spoken to her, instead of telling him that she’d also read Proust – she’d hastily whizzed through it after Ailish had told her that Sean had read him – she’d been just as tongue-tied as before. Sean had said, ‘Still liking the Mitchell?’

She’d had to clear her throat before even being able to croak out, ‘Yes, thanks.’ And that was it.

After escaping into the house, she’d stood in front of the bedroom mirror and peered furiously at the flushed face reflected there. She hated its baby roundness under the dark, straight fringe and the rest of the hair dragged back into its pony tail. She’d actually said out loud, ‘Stupid idiot!’ She was wearing her fashionable mohair sweater and stylish shoes.

She returned to the Mitchell with a heavy heart, even though she’d enjoyed the afternoon with Ailish. She wondered, for the umpteenth time, if she should pluck up courage and confess to her friend what she felt for Sean. After all, it wasn’t as if Ailish was bigoted in any way. Ailish was nothing like Mr and Mrs O’Donnel or Dermot. But, to say the least, it would give Ailish an awful shock and would be embarrassing for both of them. It would probably cause Ailish a lot of anxiety as well. The danger of starting a serious relationship with Sean could, if it was found out, trigger a terrible feud up the close. Her mother and father, not to mention her sister Maimie, would be every bit as bad as the O’Donnels.

Once back on duty and after ruling the time book, Chrissie noticed an old man snoozing behind one of the stacks in the newspaper room. Originally, the working classes who used the libraries had little or no access to newspapers, so one of the first things every library had installed was a reading room which was usually as big as, if not bigger than, the lending department and every reading room took everything from the
Morning Star
to the London
Times
. Janitors were normally on duty in the reading room, not librarians. These janitors were equipped with a long stick with a roller on the end, which they rubbed on an ink pad and then ran up the columns of racing results in the newspapers until the results were illegible. This extraordinary procedure was undertaken because Glasgow Corporation couldn’t be seen to approve of gambling. It certainly kept the janitors busy because it had to be done each day with every single edition of every newspaper. If a janitor wasn’t there, one of the library staff had to do it. The result was that not only the janitors but also the librarians were regularly covered in ink.

The main problem, however, was not hordes of inveterate gamblers, desperate to see the racing results, it was sad old men looking for somewhere to sleep. For the homeless and destitute, the reading room was a warm and peaceful shelter.

It was usually the janitor’s job to eject them. In the Mitchell, on this occasion, the job fell to Bob Lightfoot. A tall, hefty man who carried his big stomach proudly before him, he was anything but light-footed. Striding up to the old man, he grabbed him by the frayed lapels of his shabby jacket.

The old man spluttered awake, making spittle spray over Bob’s hands.

‘You dirty old devil!’ Bob’s cry reverberated all round the room. ‘Get out of here before I fling you out.’

Chrissie got a whiff of the stench of the old man as he shuffled past her. She screwed up her face.

‘Makes you sick, doesn’t it?’ Bob whispered to her as he ushered the old man away, ‘I’m off to wash my hands.’

Chrissie nodded. But, as usual, she couldn’t help feeling sorry for the old men whose lives consisted of wandering from one library reading room to another, only to keep being banished to the streets to face every extreme of weather.

That was the trouble with her. She was too emotional. And she had too vivid an imagination. Knowing this didn’t stop her from fantasising about Sean again. She would have to
do
something. She’d been suffering like this for what felt like years. She would have to do something or she’d explode!

At first, Sean and Dermot had tried to get tickets for the big match without success. They had devoured the papers to see where tickets were being sold and discovered that some were to be had at Albion Rovers’ ground in Coatbridge. They immediately got a bus to the station and then another one to Coatbridge and joined the queue. They had been only fifth from the front when a voice said, ‘All sold.’

They travelled in silence all the way home, struck dumb with the acuteness of their disappointment. Dermot was especially cast down, as he’d managed to get enough time off work to be at the match. Then the big announcement came that the Scottish Football Association were selling tickets at Hampden Park. Both Sean and Dermot were beside themselves with excitement. They
had
to get tickets and get into that match at Hampden. They got up at four in the morning and walked all the way from Springburn to Hampden Park. They didn’t know about short cuts so they followed the bus and tram routes. This meant that it took them hours to get there.

Once there, the police, for some unknown reason, wouldn’t allow them or the thousands of others there to queue up. Instead, everyone was forced to keep marching all round the district. It soon became more of a stagger, they were so tired. Eventually the police stopped the march and linked arms to cordon everyone off. Then suddenly they dropped their arms and it was a free-for-all. Thousands raced down the road to get their tickets. Sean noticed, running in front of him, what looked like a wee insurance man, complete with trench coat, soft hat and briefcase. He fell and no one stopped to help. Everyone, including Dermot and himself, just ran across him.

An enormous queue formed once Hampden was reached and, hallelujah, they got tickets. Sean’s heart thumped with relief and excitement. It didn’t matter what game it was, every time he came to Hampden, every time he turned the corner at Prospecthill Road, his heart skipped a beat. He always felt the same magic. His heart thumped and he kept thinking, ‘I’m nearly there.’ Excitement reached fever pitch once the game began. A shot on goal, a near miss or the ball hitting the back of the net could trigger off an unbelievable response – exaggerated groans, curses and cries of despair if it wasn’t a goal, an incredible wall of sound and frenzied rejoicing if it was. If he was standing at the back of the crowd – sometimes of thirty-five thousand or more – and his team scored a goal, the crowd would surge forward like a tidal wave. By the time everything had calmed down again, he often found himself coming up for air more than halfway down the terracing. Submerged in that heaving mass of screaming fans as they had surged forward, he never knew how he ended up where he did.

It was the same at Ibrox. The best day of his life was when Celtic had beaten Rangers seven-one. Dermot had been absolutely over the moon, in a sheer ecstasy of delight. He had even danced a jig of joy. The huge dark-coated, black-booted tide of men thundering along the streets after the game swept them along and into their favourite pub. There they celebrated until their money ran out. They had only coppers left for the bus fare to Springburn. Finally, they raced each other up the Wellfield hill and round into Broomknowes Road. Then up the stairs two at a time to the top flat where they collapsed, utterly exhausted but still happy, on to the living-room settee.

‘Seven-one,’ Dermot gasped, ‘Can you believe it?’

Their mother was setting the table for their tea. ‘You’re both as red as a couple of beetroots. What have you been doin’ wi’ yersels?’

‘Ma, Celtic won seven-one,’ Dermot repeated.

‘Great, son. That’s great, so it is.’ Teresa’s thin, sallow face creased into a smile. The asthma and anaemia she suffered from drained her energy. She often sounded breathless and tired. ‘Big Aggie’ll no’ like that.’

‘Aye, we’ll not see much of the Stoddarts today or the Paters.’

‘Will I pour your tea?’ She addressed both of her sons.

‘Thanks, Ma.’ Sean struggled up from the settee. ‘Sorry we’re so late.’

‘At least you can keep your feet. Dear knows what your da’ll be like.’

‘I thought he was working today.’

‘He should have been, son, but he took the day off. Just before he was leaving this morning, old Kate Gogarty came to the door and said her Joe had a ticket but had taken one of his bad turns and wasn’t able to go to the match and could Michael use the ticket.’ Teresa shook her head. ‘He got me to phone his work and say he’d fallen down the stairs and couldn’t move. I felt terrible, so I did.’

Both Sean and Dermot laughed as they got stuck into their plates of spam and beans.

‘He’ll still be celebrating, Ma,’ Dermot said. ‘There was such a mob in all the pubs, it was taking ages to get served. We gave up eventually.’

‘Oh, he’ll no’ give up,’ Teresa said, sinking on to a chair beside them at the table. ‘He’ll come rolling in here after ten at night, what do you bet?’ She sipped a cup of strong, sweet tea. She drank endless cups of tea. It helped strengthen her.

‘Och, well, Ma,’ Sean said, ‘it’ll be one of the happiest days of his life. You can’t blame him for wanting to celebrate.’

‘Son, if they’d lost seven-one, it would have been just the same. Only then he’d say he’d been drowning his sorrows.’

Dermot laughed. ‘Och, well, he works hard, Ma. He deserves a bit of pleasure.’

She had to concede that Michael did work hard. But all the same, it was really no excuse for his regular weekend drinking bouts. During the week, he had always been fine. A good father and a good husband. Come Saturday, he became a drunken pest, to say the least. He wasn’t violent to any of them but he was a pest, staggering around, roaring out sectarian songs aimed at infuriating the Stoddarts and any other Protestant family or Rangers supporter for miles around.