The Observations (25 page)

From that day forth, it was as though all my thoughts and feelings was trapped in my chest, crammed together, taking up all the room there and making it difficult to breathe. But I knew no other way of life and so I pushed any doubts to the back of my head and did as I was told. Besides, I was very frightened of my mother.

As time went by she schooled me in some of the more sophisticated Arts of the trade (which I am sure I will be forgiven for not describing here) and before too long she had contrived to place entries for us both in a privately circulated catalogue entitled “Sporting Ladies of Glasgow‘, in which I was listed as ”Rosebud, a fair and fresh young Sap’ (I suspect that she may have meant “sapling‘) ”who despite her tender years is fond of playing the silent flute and can perform all the stops very well’. My mother had described herself as “Buxom beauty Helena Troy, whose outstanding Good Points cannot be rivalled on this World or in the next‘.

Before too long we was just as much fixtures on the streets as the local girls, most of them it transpired were originally from across the water anyway and so there was a bond there in common. Saturday and Monday were good nights, because of Sunday being “dry‘ and everybody drinking more on either side to compensate. But all us girls were competing with each other for work and unless you were a knockout beauty or you offered some particular ”service’ or other, it was hard to make a living. Especially the way my mother drank. Before too long We got thrown out Stockwell Street for non-payment of rent and ended up in a basement room off the Gallowgate. Not shared, thank Gob, but the air was chill, both winter and summer, and your clothes got mildewed if you laid them down for even a second. The only way to keep warm, my mother said, was to have another budge.

After the move to the Gallowgate, she seemed to forget all about Joe Dimpsey. She found herself a new set of cronies and inevitably took up with a succession of men. The thing about my mother, she never was happy unless she had some piece of goods in tow but she couldn’t just take up with any old fellow, they had to have some talent that marked them out from the ordinary. Take my so-called father Whacker McPartland. It was his gigantic jack and his talent for dancing that she liked to brag about. And Joe Dimpsey was of course notably handsome, but what she especially liked everyone to know about was his so-called wild genius and the possibility, however slim, that he might one day take it to university to be tamed. She was forever hitching her wagon to a star.

The first man she took up with in Glasgow was a night porter at the Tontine Hotel. Nothing too special about that you may say and you would be right but this cove was an Italian by the name of Marco that she had met at Parrys theatre. Marco the night porter had a face like a sick camel. He was known about the place as Macaroni because people were stupid and that was the only Italian they knew. Marco was slippery as they come, his stories was always changing. One minute he was from Rome, the next from Verona. Sometimes he claimed to be in exile. Exile my fat aunt Fanny. If they threw him out his country it can only have been because they were sick fed up to the back teeth of him, the lying thieving scut. Other times, when he’d had a few, he went around telling people he was of noble birth, which because of his accent often gave rise to great hilarity, especially when he was specific about his rank. “I am a curnt,” he would tell you, and there was not many would argue with him on that score. Thank gob, my mother soon tired of him. In the end, she threw him out for drinking the last drop of her budge while she was asleep. She still kept him in tow as one of her cronies, but when he wasn’t there she would go on at great length about his flaws and tell you how she felt dreadful sorry for him, he was only to be pitied, which was a way she had of putting herself above people.

After that, she went through a few other types each no better than the last. My memory of that time is hazy as I soon, like my mother, resorted to a dram to keep my spirits up. In those early days were I going out without a budge I might as well not go, I wouldn’t make a
1/2
penny for I could not speak to a single man. Of course I grew less timid with the passing months and in the end was as “gallus’ as the next girl, but by that time I was too much in the habit to pass up my morning drop and any that followed thereafter.

And so in this way two or 3 years passed. I cannot say that I was either happy or sad. I felt nothing much of anything. I do believe that somewhere deep inside, I knew that what I was doing was wrong. One gentleman I met gave me two shillings just to talk to him about my life. He was an English man and a member of some kind of Society and he was at pains to point out where I was at fault in the life I had chosen. I had no answer for him. I was only fascinated that when he spoke he called you “thee‘ and ”thou’, which I found most quaint, having never heard the like. For a shilling more he asked to see where I slept and I thought to myself, now we have it, he will be pressing his diddle agin me before we get through the door. But after a glance at our room away he went and the only thing he pressed on me was a tract that he bestowed on parting. I hadn’t a notion what it said because at the time I could not read, besides my mother used it to light the fire when she came home. Tell the truth, she could read and write a bit, having had a few years schooling when she was a girl, but she had passed none of what she learned on to me. All she had taught me was how to please a man.

It was about this time I began to have nightmares. Instead of two or 3 drinks, I was having many. I don’t know how many. Just to forget what I had done. The terrible things I had done, that my mother made me do, to “keep the gentlemen interested‘.

Thank God for my Mr. Levy, for he saved me. Poor Mr. Levy! Gone to Kingdom Come, or wherever a Jewish man might go. It broke my heart when he died. And I dreaded going back to my mother. I remembered that morning, after I had been thrown out of Crown House and tramped back to the Gallowgate, scouring the market for her and looking in at our rooms, but in the end I found her at “Dobbies‘, already on the gin. Marco the night porter was sat next to her, slumped across the table.

“Christ almighty!” my mother shouted when she seen me pushing towards her through the throng. “What’s the aul” scut feeding you? You’re awful fat in the face!“

Then she laughed her head off. Here I was, back home less than a minute and already there were so many things annoying me it was hard to know where to start. Marco peered up at me through bleary eyes.

“I am a flipping exile, if you like to know!” he says. “You are not worthy of lick my boots.” Then he slumped down again.

Meanwhile, my mother was waving at someone behind me, over by the bar. “Yoo-hoo!” she shrieked. “Come away over and see who’s here!”

I turned, and just about fainted. There, propped against the wall in deep discussion with another man (and true to form, ignoring my mother) was none other than the bold Joe Dimpsey himself. Leaner in the face he was, and with a new moustache but there was no mistaking him.

“Flip sakes
JOE!!”
my mother shrieked. This time, he looked round, swaying slightly. My mother pointed at me. Joe grinned and tipped me his hat (also new) then turned back to continue his conversation.

“That’s Joe,” my mother said, delighted.

“So I see,” I says.

“He’s going to be starting up the university soon, going to be a doctor. He can do it over here just as well. They all think he’s brilliant up there. They asked him a whole pannopoly of questions. Said theyo never known a brain like it. He’ll be starting soon, next week it is, once he’s bought his books. There’s no stopping him. He’s like a tiger.”

At that moment Joe was swaying from side to side, close to passing out, a tiger would not be the first description that came to mind. A turned back to my mother.

“So to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?” she says. And then her gaze fell for the first time on my bundle. “What have you got there?”

“Nothing,” I says. “Just clothes.”

I sat down, shrugging off my coat. My mind was leaping from one thought to the next. I could see that everything was the same here, and would ever be so. What had I been thinking? I should never have come back anywhere near her.

“They’re for you,” I says. “Mr. Levy bought them for me but—”

“How is the aul” bastard?“

“He’s very well,” I says. “In the pink.”

“He’s a man of his word,” says my mother, lifting her glass. “I’ll give you that.”

I nodded. “Like I was saying, these frocks don’t fit me now so I thought I’d bring them over for you.”

“Really?” says my mother. “That’s decent of you.”

Her expression did not change a whit but I could tell she was suspicious at this unaccustomed generosity, in the past I had learnt to hoard my few possessions from her.

I laughed. “Away and take a carrot,” I says. As if I’d give them to you. No, I’m going to sell them. Can I just leave them up in the room for now while I get a drink?“

My mother shrugged. “If you want.” She flapped her hand. “You could just put them under the table here.”

I looked at Marco. And get them pinched?“ I shook my head. ”I’d just forget them anyway. I don’t mind telling you, I have the day off and I’m here to get mortal.“

Good for you!“ my mother says. ”Glad to see you in good form for a change.“

I’m going to get swacked,“ I says. Hurrah!” says my mother.

“Tanked! Lit to the gills!”

“Yippee!”

I in paying!“ I says.

Then I’ll join you,“ says my mother.

“Wait now and I’ll just stash these clothes up in the room,” I says. “I’ll be back in a minute. Get me a budge in to start with.”

Bridget gave me a slow wink. She was drunker than I had thought.

I put the bundle on my shoulder and made my way slowly through the crowd. At the doorway I paused to wave at my mother but she was too busy staring across the room at Joe, like a lovesick cow. I stepped outside the inn and the minute my foot hit the ground I started running. Too late I realised I had left my coat. Well, I wasn’t about to turn back. I did not stop running until I had passed Janefield and was well on the road to Edinburgh and a young prince. Or, as it turned out, to Castle Haivers and missus.

It wasn’t only the prospect of going back on the streets that scared the behicky out me. There was another thing, something a flip sight worse, something that I knew my mother would inveigle me into doing. The “special‘ service that she had dreamed up, that she had made me do before I went to live with Mr. Levy.

Jesus Murphy I didn’t want to think about it.

I jumped up from the bed to give myself a shake. The motion must have disturbed missus, for of a sudden she opened her eyes and gazed at me, a little bewildered. Then she give me a weak smile.

“Bessy,” she says. “Have I been asleep?”

“No marm. You are not well. You are to stay in bed and rest.”

“Not well? Oh yes. I remember.” Her voice was hoarse, almost a whisper.

I sat down on the bed and with trembling hands took the cloths from her forehead and throat. The wind had dropped and dawn light was creeping in at the window. Missus face was pale as the bolster-cover. It was as though the light bleached her skin. As I leaned over her, she looked at me, a little surprised.

“But—you are upset!” she says. “Whatever is the matter?”

“Nothing, marm. I am just happy that you seem a little better. Would you say my name again, marm?”

She looked puzzled. “You mean—Bessy?”

“Yes, that’s it,” I says. “That’s right. I am happy now.”

For though she was pale and weak it seemed that the worst of her illness, whatever it was, had passed. At any rate, she recognised me.

“Tell me, marm, what do you remember?” I says. “We were up in the attic”

Missus frowned. “Let me see,” she says. “We saw the writing in the window. Four words.” She looked pained, before continuing. “A cry for help.”

And then what?“

She thought a moment. “I must have fainted,” she says. “That is all I can recollect.”

“You don’t remember falling? Or what happened just before you fell?”

“No. I can see the words in the window and I hear your voice saying them, but then it all goes dark, as though a lantern has been turned out.” She clutched my hand. “Why?” she says. “Did something happen? Did you see someone? Or something? What was it?”

“No marm,” I says. “Nothing like that. Marm, you woke up and spoke to me. Do you remember?”

“No,” she croaked. “What did I say?”

I considered telling her the truth, then thought better of it. “Nothing. You just said my name and then you—fell asleep again.”

All I remember is that message.“ She looked at me eagerly. ”You know I’ve been expecting something like this. I told you as much, didn’t I?“

She wanted some sign of encouragement but I gave her none. Marm,“ I says. ”We need to decide what to tell master James. Do you want him to know we were on a ghost hunt in the attic?“

Her eyes widened in alarm. “No!” she says. “What have you told him?”

Not a thing,“ I says. ”I believe he might have suspected something about ghosts or the like but I think I put him off the scent. We’ll be all night if we tell the same story and stick to it. Now, I’ve thought of what we can say. We’ll pretend you were writing a letter in your room and you stood up too quickly, and that’s the last thing you remember.“

She closed her eyes. She stayed like that for so long I began to wonder if she’d fell asleep again.

Then, of a sudden, her eyes opened. She looked at me intently. “I could feel a presence up there,” she says. “It was so cold. Couldn’t you feel it?”

“Attics are always cold,” I tellt her. “Except in summer.”

“No, there was something there, I’m sure of it. It can only be a matter of time before something happens—something more extreme. An apparition, perhaps. Someone is reaching out to us, Bessy. Someone needs our help.”

Her eyes were that wide and she seemed so earnest and anxious it would have been funny—if only it didn’t make you feel guilty and sad. I nodded, slowly, and appeared to consider her statement. “You might be right about that. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if what happened yesterday was the end of it altogether. I suspect we may have seen the last of that ghost.”