The Tin-Kin (16 page)

We huddle in beside Granny like a flock of sheep.

‘Whit am ah meant tae dae wi this?’ Granny goes, flapping the leaflet. ‘Whit is it fer? A brown behouchie? Bare-arsed fighter pilots? Ho! Ha! Ha!’

‘It’s a treatment at the hospital, Ma,’ Mammy says. ‘Sun lamps. The kinchins can hae it fer nowt.’

‘Laamps, did ye say? Whit? Sun lamps? At the hospital? O ho!’

Granny jiggles and holds her sides like they might split. Her wee eyes screw up tight, and every so often she opens them, points at the baby’s bum, points at the wifey and the lamp, and creases up again. If she’s not careful she’ll rock back, her chair‘ll crash through the floor, and she’ll end up hohoho-ing on the bed in Jock’s room. I’m nae catching her.

Mammy looks at Daddy, and Daddy looks at Mammy, and then he looks at Jock, and Jock looks at the two of them, and Mammy looks at Jock and shrugs her shoulders. Granny keeps laughing.

‘Oh, me! Sun lamps! Load ae nonsense! They stick ye in a hoose an tell ye tae come tae the hospital fer sun? O ho! Aye, that’d be right an aw. Ho! Ha! Ha! Haaa! Whit in Heaven’s wrang wi runnin aboot kickin a baa outside, eh? Stead ae stickin the wee souls in a school aw day. Bloody daft! Oh, me! Sun lamps! Ho! Ha! Haaa!’

Granny laughs till tears roll down her cheeks.

‘That’s that, then,’ Daddy says, ‘whit did ah tell ye? Ma’s right. The lassies should be oot, nae sittin there readin bloody books.’

‘Aye, cause it’s a fine day tae be oot! Snow on the wye.’ Mammy starts clattering the dishes into the sink.

‘Curly!’ Daddy goes, waving a hand to me. ‘That lassie’ll go blind an turn all peely wally. End up like a bloody albino. Is that whit yer wantin, woman?’

‘I’m nae peely wally, Daddy.’

But no one listens to me. I do my muntiest face, put on the sulks. Miss Webster thought the lamps were a good idea, otherwise she wouldn’t have come over with that nurse. I love Miss Webster. I wanted to go up the hospital with her and sit with the goggles on and fly under the sunshine machine. Mammy would’ve let me if it wasn’t for stupit Granny.

The next day I sleep late, but as soon as I’m awake I run to the window. There’s no snow, just great splodges of rain. I lean my elbows on the ledge and stare at the terrace opposite, number five and number seven, where the Newlands stay. Their houses are just the same as our one. The slate roofs are wet and shiny and a fountain of water’s spurting up out a broken pipe. You hear it splashing on the cobbles below. The wonky chimney stacks have smoke spiralling out already, and the crooked pots are like Granny’s dirty teeth when she holds her pipe between them. My eyes follow the smoke to the sky. Thick and grey as week-old tattie soup. So much for going out in the sunshine, Granny. Not a bloody peep. The sun’s up at the hospital, keeing out a lamp.

Pesky heid beasties. I wish I was going to see Miss Webster today to have roly poly pudding for lunch and go on a special trip to get the sun. I put my finger on the window pane, follow the trickles of rain from the top to the bottom; they sometimes go left and sometimes right, but most often they just follow the drop below.

Mammy’s sweeping the floor and soon my feet are in the way. The broom skirts round my ankles.

‘Why don’t you go down tae your granny, like Rachel?’ says Mammy. ‘There’s messages fer you tae fetch once the rain’s off.’

‘All right, then,’ I yawn.

I don’t go down right away, though. I stand on the landing at the top of the stairs, looking out to where Maggie McPhee lives. The McPhees stay in a sort of hut on the backside of ours.
They’re even poorer than us, so their house is like a patchwork hutch, and the rain pummels down on the wavy metal roof. Wee burns run along each groove, and you can see a good few holes from up here. Maybe Maggie McPhee’s drowned in her bed!

I ease open the window just a wee bit and stick my hand out, catch raindrops. My sleeve’s drenched in seconds. The window frame’s rotten, and I run my wet fingertip over it. Tiny specs of black wood rub off into the ridges of my skin. They’re as tiny as the beasties in our hair. Occhh. Yeuchh. Scrichh. Thinking of them always makes me itch.

‘Hey. Whit are ye up tae?’ a voice shouts.

I look down. It’s her, Maggie McPhee, poking her head out the door. She stares up at my window with one angry eye and follows the seagulls with the other. Maggie was born like that, eyes rolling all over the shop. She’s clumsy and she’s got a soor face, and she’s useless at ball games so no one’s friends with her. ‘That quine couldnae even catch a cold,’ my daddy says, but that’s not true cause Maggie’s always covered in snotters. She should be in the High School, but I don’t think she ever went. Her mammy’s dead, and her big brothers are daft eejits. ‘There’s somethin nae right wi those McPhee boys,’ that’s what my mammy says about Maggie’s brothers. She tells me I’ll stay away from them, if I’ve any sense.

‘I ken ye’re there, Wee Betsy. Whit are ye daein?’ she goes.

‘Nothing,’ I shout, ‘Go away, bad-luck McTootie.’

‘McTootie’ is what Granny calls the McPhees in the morning because it brings misfortune to say their real name before lunch. I don’t believe Granny, but it makes me laugh to call Maggie a McTootie. ‘Tootie-toot,’ I shout, and slam the window shut.

Afterwards I sit on the stairs in the dark and feel a hole in my belly. It’s not a hunger sort-of hole. I think about Maggie and how her mammy died, how Maggie’s daddy likely killed her mammy cause McTooties are forever fighting and murdering their own. But the thing is, my granny’s mammy was a
McTootie. She was called Georgina McPhee, which means Maggie and her brothers must be related to us.

I think Georgina’s a nice name. I wish I was Wee Georgina instead of Wee Betsy. It would take longer to shout on me, or to say night-night.

I go into Granny’s room to try and forget about the McTooties. There are visitors today. Rachel’s sitting at the table with Granny and Big Ellen, and another old lady in black clothes. She’s cuddling up to a lady I don’t recognise, looking all pleased with herself. Their heads turn when I come in.

‘Here she is, sleepy heid!’ says Granny. ‘This is oor Betsy.’

‘Oh, would ye look at the bairnie!’ whispers the old wifey.

‘Dae ye ken Auld Jessie an yer Auntie Rachel?’ Granny says. ‘Ye’ve heard aboot yer Auntie Rachel, still oan the road?’

So this must be who Rachel’s got her name after. I might’ve known there was a Big Rachel somewhere an all. She’s beautiful, this auntie, with long red hair right down to her waist, burning bright, and thick skirts like blankets wrapped round her. She wears a woven cloak thrown over her shoulders, and Wee Rachel can’t stop stroking it.

‘Here, Wee Betsy,’ she says, taking a paper bag out her pocket and holding it open.

I put my hand in, and out of the swarm of waxy twisted wrappers in the bottom I pull a square of dark toffee, not golden like the normal stuff. I put it on my tongue. It’s wonderful! It begins to melt and run, all warm and creamy round my gums. Like chewy chocolate.

‘Thank you!’ I try and say without dribbling on my chin. I want the sweetie to last for ever.

The women laugh and go back to their conversation, all whispering, and Wee Rachel just stares and stares at Big Rachel’s fiery hair.

‘The poor gadgie!’

‘He took a faa, ye say?’

‘OH!’

‘Oh, me!’

I’m only half listening cause the taste of that sweetie is like nothing I’ve ever eaten before. Brown sugar and salt and chocolate and buttercream, and something else, and all at the same time.

‘An faraboots were they stalling?’

‘At the well.’

‘In the wood? OH!’

‘Thon bosh wis the last place ma faither bided an aw.’

‘Aye.’

‘Oh, me! A terrible thing. Whit a curse.’

The sweetie starts trickling down my throat.

‘Wee Betsy!’ Granny says, ‘standing there in a dwam! This is the Deil’s news, nae fer bairns tae be hearin.’

She shuffles to the cupboard where she keeps her jar of pennies. ‘Go get yer granny and her guests some broken biscuits, eh? And ah need milk. There ye go. Skit!’

We head off to the left at the bottom of the Lane, up the High Street and round the corner. I can still taste the sweetie even though I’ve already swallowed it. By the time we’ve fetched the milk, got a few biscuits, and looked in some shop windows, the sky’s spitting again. It’s going to rain all bloody day.

We’re just going past the butcher shop when we bump into Uncle Jock. Rachel runs up and throws her arms round his waist and he jumps cause he didn’t see us coming.

‘Uncle Jock! What are you doing here?’ I say.

‘There’s a hale flock ae sheep on the line,’ he says. We cross the road together. ‘I was in the signals this afternoon but they sent me away.’

Rachel starts whining. She doesn’t like the rain and she wants to go to the pictures, but Uncle Jock says there’s things he’s got to do back at the house. He’s mending some old bicycles. I tell Rachel to stop being a bubbly bairn. I’m looking after her and Uncle Jock has work to do.

Just then there’s a gust of wind and a sheet of heavy rain that
stings my cheeks. Jock takes our hands and starts running for shelter.

‘Put your hood up, Rachel,’ I tell her, cause that’s what Mammy always says. But it’s hard to shout through the rain, especially when I’m running to keep up with Uncle Jock. We run towards a close where we won’t get soaked.

‘Ow!’ says Rachel from under her hood.

Woohoooo! Hailstones! From here we can watch the hail bouncing and rolling all over the road and down the hill to High Street without getting hit ourselves.

‘We’re being attacked by pandrops!’ Jock laughs, lighting a cigarette, and then with a wink to me he says, ‘If we wait long enough maybe we’ll get cinnaminaminaminamon balls!’

A blue car’s parked across the road and hail pings off the bonnet like inside the popcorn machine at the Playhouse. I’m just pointing this out to Rachel, and that’s when my clever wee sister spots her: over the road, up the hill, and a wee bit round the corner. Miss Webster with a huge black brolly. She’s pressed under the stripey awning of Yeaden’s bookshop, which is also taking a beating. Pi-pi-ping-pi-pi-ping-ping-ping! Elsie and Shona from my class are there too, holding hands, and Bertie Topp’s down on his hunkers in the gutter, picking up hail and chucking it at Frankie McAulay and Billy Murphy, who’re holding their gobs open trying to catch. Miss Webster wags her finger at them.

I give Rachel a dunt with my elbow and whisper, ‘All them are off to the hospital for the sun machine, I’ll bet you. Dare you to go with them.’

‘Granny said we’re nae allowed.’

‘I dared you, Rachel. That means you’ve got to.’

‘No!’

‘Do you dare me, then? I’ll do it.’

She scowls and scrunches her hand round the bag of broken biscuits we’ve got for Granny, even more broken now, but never mind.

Then I get an idea. Miss Webster looks lovely today. If I point her out to my uncle, I’m sure he’ll want me to introduce him. I pull on his hand till he leans down so I can whisper in his ear. I’m right! He takes hardly any persuading and stubs the rest of his cigarette against the wall.

‘Well, I suppose so,’ he says. ‘I cannae see it doin any harm as long as your mother and father are none the wiser. Rachel, are you wantin tae come an all?’

But goodie-goodie pulls a face like a half chewed sweetie, about to greet. I push her further into the close, give her kisses on the cheeks, and tell her I’ll bring her a treat if she promises not to tell. I don’t know where I’m going to find a treat, but I’ll work that out later.

Walking over to Miss Webster with Uncle Jock’s hand in mine is like a slow motion scene from the pictures. Except for the stupid weather. But I don’t care any more about the hail. It’s turning back to rain, sugary clumps sticking in my hair. The only thing that matters is that Miss Webster’s already seen us and she’s watching us from under her big black brolly.

‘That’s your teacher?’ Uncle Jock says halfway across, like he can hardly believe it. I’m sure it’s cause she’s so beautiful. I nod and feel Jock start to walk taller. He strides like a soldier. His uniform has shiny buttons, and his shoes are so polished when we get close I’m sure I can see Miss Webster’s reflection in them, a big smile on her lips.

I’ve never been in Dr Grey’s Hospital before, not even when I was born cause Mammy has us in the bed. It smells funny here. Not exactly like sick people. I know that smell well enough. It was horrible going into Granny’s room when Granddad was ill before he died, and it smelt even worse when Wee May Townsley over the Lane’s leg went black. After she came home from Dr Grey’s she only had one leg left, and soon after Mammy told me I couldn’t call on her any more cause she’d gone to Heaven.

The hospital smell’s not like that. Mainly it’s sharp, so strong it burns inside my nose and makes me thirsty. The only place I’ve smelt anything like it is in the hut at the back of the rag store, where Daddy and the other men tan rabbit skins and keep all sorts of tins and bottles I’m not allowed to touch. Maybe Granny’s right about hospitals being bad places where evil happens, full of death she says.

We go in a crocodile down a long corridor that is painted green and white. The floor makes squeaky noises under our shoes and there are hundreds of doors with windows at the top but I can’t jump up high enough to see. When I stop to try Miss Webster says, ‘Come on, Betsy. You must keep up.’ But she’s in a good mood. I’m sure she liked Uncle Jock even though they didn’t speak for long at all. He made her go all shy.

The boys go one way with a nurse and Miss Webster comes with us into a room where we meet a man in a white coat. I know right away this is Dr Grey cause he looks exactly like the man on the leaflet.

Soon we’re all stripped down to our knickers, and Dr Grey is going along the line listening to our chests. My heart must be beating like the Elgin pipe band, but he doesn’t seem to notice. The wee disc on the end of the thing he sticks in his lugs is freezing on my skin. He keeps it there a few seconds.

‘Fine!’ he says suddenly. ‘Come and stand over here. That’s it. Come on, it’ll not hurt anyone.’