The Tin-Kin (33 page)

You should tell Maeve.

She already knows, Dawn said. I’ve shown her pictures. She doesn’t understand yet.

That’s good.

Linda turned more pages. They were all full with photos of her: birthdays, Christmases, holidays on the West Coast. They went to France one year. She was learning French at school so they whisked her off to Paris. She was pictured standing by herself in front of the Eiffel Tower, one of its monster iron legs criss-crossing the sky behind her.

The seventies, Linda said. Flares were in.

Flares and sunglasses. Linda had always had great clothes.

Nothing happened with Warren and me, Linda said suddenly. You know that, eh?

It’s okay, Dawn said.

Not that it couldn’t have, mind. He didn’t half try! They laughed.

I said he wasn’t my type, Linda said.

Dawn needed a smoke. She’d left her packet in the car. Can I?

Course.

Ta.

Here, Dawn said. I’ve got something for you from Shirley’s place. She went to her handbag and pulled out the silver dog with the bell inside it. She pushed down the tail.
Bzzz.

You remember it?

Linda laughed. Jesus, yes! No one could forget that thing. Thanks. I’ll put him in the shop.

Dawn thought she might tell Linda about Shirley and Jock. Not yet, though. It would be too difficult for Dad and Linda would hate her for that. What was the point? They were getting old, just like he’d said in his letter. She saw it more and more in the way he walked and in Mother’s hands, slower at the knitting than they used to be, dropping stitches. She was even getting muddled. Dawn- Lindy- Dawn- Lindy- Dawn, she’d say.

The story was for herself. Later it would be for Maeve, when she was old enough.

   TELEPHONE   

Wee Betsy, 1955

Big Ellen’s bairn was born on April the fifteenth. He’s John, after Uncle Jock, which made everyone happy and also a bit sad.

I wonder if Uncle Jock’s baby’s been born, but I’m not allowed to ask or talk about it any more. Mammy and Daddy said it was an unkind thing to make up, and I got told off for telling lies. I’m especially not allowed to talk about it today. As soon as Mammy has Nancy and Rachel ready, we’re going to visit the new baby Jock. If I talk about Jock’s girlfriend today, Daddy’ll drag me out the door by the lugs. If I mention all this nonsense in front of Granny again he says he’ll spill my blood. And Mammy’s on his side. She said if folk hear the way I’m going on they’ll call us baby snatchers as well as beggars.

Now that we don’t live with Granny and Big Ellen any more we have to put on our nice summer dresses to visit. Visiting’s not the same as running down the dancers to say ‘Hello’. We have a new house now, a house with no stairs at all. I like it cause it’s at Lossie, up a hill near the beach. Rascal’s come with us and I walk him on the sand every day. He chases up and down, barking into the wind and jumping in the sea. The first time he did it I was scared he would drown cause the waves were so big, but it turned out the clever doggie can swim like a fish. The bad thing about the new house is it used to be a place for soldiers to sleep. It’s made of metal, and when Rascal barks at night it echoes. It probably wakes everyone in the other houses too.

Daddy likes it here cause we’ve got a round roof, the same shape as the tents him and Mammy used to live in, only bigger.
We call the house ‘The Tin Can’. It’s very noisy in the rain, and Mammy says we’d be better off if the roof
was
canvas. She says we’ll be hot stew in the summer and ice blue in the winter.

I’m out playing in the garden with my new pal, Jimmy Starbuck. He also lives in a Nissen hut, and Jimmy Starbuck loves
Journey into Space
even more than I do. He pretends his tin-can house is a spaceship. He has a bonnie red bicycle he said he’d let me have a shot of, but now I’m in the saddle he doesn’t want to give me the handlebars.

‘Let go!’ I shout and push at him.

‘Put your foot there first,’ he goes, kicking at the pedal.

‘I know!’

Daddy’s making the front of our hut nice, a proper garden with a fence and flowers like the big houses in the West End of Elgin. To the side is a lawn, and this is where I am playing with Jimmy Starbuck and the bicycle.

‘Okay,’ he says at last. ‘Mind yourself.’ And he steps back so I can turn the pedal.

And at that exact second Mammy goes and roars on me from round the corner.

‘Wee Betsy. Where are ye? We’ve tae get the bus. NOW!’

That does it. The handlebars wobble off to the left and I go to the right. It’s like trying to stand up in the scrap cart when Hughie the pony’s pulling over the bumpy bits on the road.

‘Oooeeaa!’ Starbuck shouts. I think I catch a peek of him out the corner of my eye just as I fall. He’s wearing his hands on his ears, something folk do quite often in the tin-can houses. The red bicycle slams into the side of our metal house, and there’s a shuddering clash. A thousand dustbin lids clattering down a staircase.

Mammy appears.

‘What in the name of Heaven?’

Inside Daddy has dropped something on the floor that’s circling and circling, faster and faster, and then it stops. It’ll be
one of the tin plates Mammy got. She likes them cause he can’t smash them when he takes a drink.

Rascal howls before it’s finally quiet again. Mammy can’t speak. I’ve a grass stain smeared down the front of my new white frock, and a bloody knee to boot. I like the wounded bit, though. It’s shiny and red like the paint on the bicycle, and soon it’ll make a really big scab.

Daddy’s the first to find his voice again. He shouts, ‘FUCKRAT! WHAT THE HELL?’ from somewhere inside the Tin Can. A pissed off sardine. Jimmy Starbuck’s behind me, trying not to laugh.

I’ve told Jimmy Starbuck about Jock’s baby and
he
believes me. The only things he doesn’t know are that I wanted Jock to marry Miss Webster, my old teacher, and how I told the toby in the park about Jock’s baby and the girl from the cinema. I haven’t told him about that. I’ve meant to lots of times, but I always change my mind at the last minute. Anyway, we’ve decided to be spies. I’m going to search for clues while I’m back in Lady Lane today.

Mammy’s still angry.

‘I didn’t mean it,’ I say.

She drags me back inside to change as quick as I can so we don’t miss the bus to Elgin.

‘Bye, Starbuck,’ I shout.

There’s a surprise in store when we arrive in our old house. Big Ellen and her bairn have moved into our old room upstairs, and we find Maggie Marbles McPhee sitting at Granny’s table drinking a glass of milk. Everyone sits, except Daddy, who stands at the window.

This house reminds me of my uncle Jock, and I don’t want to go in his old room. But I do wonder what it’s like in there now, and if
someone
is sleeping in his bed.

They start talking about the new bairn. It’s resting up in its
cot. No one even mentions why Maggie McTootie’s sitting with us at
our
table. I’d almost forgotten she knows the secret too. She was under the bridge with me. She could open her gob and tell them the same story. I hope she doesn’t, though. I’m not wanting Maggie Marbles on my side. Then I’d really look like a maddie.

Granny’s joshing with Daddy that Big Ellen’s had a boy and all he’s ever had is girls.

‘I dinnae see any louns at your hoose. Nae yet. O ho! Ho! Ha!’ she says.

Mammy’s sat next to Granny, who chuckles a bit, reaches over and rubs Mammy’s tummy. She better not start playing music. She’s done enough harm already. But I’m not allowed to talk about that.

Maggie’s finished her milk. She asks Big Ellen if she can check on the baby upstairs, and Granny tells her aye. She pushes back her chair and runs off like she owns the whole house.

‘That’s whit ye hae tae worry about,’ Granny whispers when she’s gone. ‘A wee quine like that in a hoose full ae mannys.’ She speaks like she doesn’t want me and Rachel hearing, and nods to the back where the McPhees’ place is.

‘You’ve taken Wee Maggie, then?’ Mammy goes.

‘Aye. That lot are aw away fer the summer. She’s better aff here wi me, ken? She’s nae a wee quine any more, even if she acts like it. Those brothers ae hers, ken? They’re affae trouble. She’s good-mannered, that quinie.’

‘Ye talked her father intae it?’ Daddy says. He’s been acting like he’s not been interested in the gossip, staring into the street. I saw him wave to Uncle Jock’s pal, the shoemaker from the top of the Lane. He was passing by, swinging a bag in his hand, probably on the way to the shop.

‘I tellt thon McTootie that wi yous all gone I could use a young pair ae haunds roun the place. Couldnae refuse an auld wifey, could he? Ho! Ho! Ha! The lassie’s better aff here. Four boys in that house, and each as baa-heided as the next.’

Daddy doesn’t ask about it any more. He’s brought a paper. He looked all important on the bus with it rolled up under his arm, and now he slaps it open on the table in front of Granny.

‘You seen this, Ma?’

‘No,’ she breathes. ‘What does it say?’

Everyone’s looking at me.

‘Will you read for your granny, Wee Betsy? There’s my clever one,’ Mammy goes.

The paper’s swivelled round and they slide it in front of me. Page twenty-one. I clear my throat and sit up straight, but for some reason my heart’s thumping like footsteps on the dancers. Last time they made me read it was the article about what happened, and I couldn’t do it.

But this is all right. It’s just a dead toby called Munro, an auld manny. So what? When I’m finished reading, I look up. They’re nodding their heads and chewing their lips, just like folk do at the pictures when the film ends. The paper’s folded up and no one speaks about it afterwards, but later I notice Granny cuts it out and keeps it for her tin.

Maggie Marbles isn’t the only surprise. The other one’s on the bairn. Me and Rachel go upstairs and find Big Ellen and Maggie standing over the cot. They’re reaching in, tickling his tummy. It’s the first time I’ve seen a baby boy with no clothes on. All the ones we’ve had in our family have been wee girls. He’s got a thingie between his legs pointing up at us like an extra thumb. I can’t stop looking at it till Big Ellen covers it with his nappy.

‘Do you like him?’ she says.

‘He’s all right,’ I go, still thinking of the thingie, but I don’t want to ask about it. The bairn’s got thick, black hair like my toy monkey. It’s growing right down his neck. Sloe-black is what Maggie and Big Ellen call it. They say it’s really special to be born like that, and a few people get it in our family, but I didn’t. Rachel strokes the baby’s hair. He’s got a face more like the McPhee twins than anyone else.

I don’t look at Maggie the whole time cause I want her to think I’ve forgotten about Jock and the baby. I don’t want her blurting it out like it was
her
secret all along. The three of us follow Big Ellen down the stairs, and everyone in Granny’s room makes a big fuss of the bairnie. We have tea and broken biscuits, some of which Granny spits into the bairn’s mouth like she used to do with Nancy. I think it’s disgusting. I try and forget she did that to me once too.

When we’ve all finished Mammy says she’ll send us to the pictures for a treat. I think she means just me and Rachel, but Maggie gets a coin pressed into her hand too, and the three of us are packed off up the street. This is my chance to do some spying! Now I’ll have something to tell Starbuck. I’m so looking forward to seeing Jock’s girlfriend in the ticket booth that I don’t even care what the picture is. All I have to do is dawdle a bit behind so that Rachel and Maggie Marbles aren’t in the way.

We’re in the queue, and I’m still wondering what I should say to her, thinking the words out in my head, when the man in front says, ‘Thank you, miss.’ He’s got his ticket and I’m next. I look up to see her, and my heart sinks into my belly. It’s not Jock’s girlfriend at all.

‘Three for
Bambi
, please,’ I go.

‘What? Speak up.’

‘Three, please,’ I say again. I push the coins over the counter. The girl looks at me a bit funny, but she takes the coins and gives me a smaller one back. She rips off three yellow tickets from the roll.

The next day, back at The Tin Can, Jimmy Starbuck calls round. He wants me to tell him what I found out as a spy. His bicycle’s leaning up against the fence, and it looks even more beautiful in the sun. Two cans are hanging off the handlebars, connected by a long bit of string.