The Good Provider (12 page)

Kirsty shoved the ring on to her third finger. She held up her hand, fingers spread, to show Craig that she had done what he expected of her.

‘There,’ she mouthed.

Craig nodded, elbowed his way to her.

‘It looks fine,’ he shouted.

‘Aye, it does.’

Taking her firmly by the arm he pulled her after him. The little velvet box dropped from her grasp and was lost, whisked and kicked into the gutter by passing feet. Kirsty checked, dismayed, then yielded. Empty, the box meant nothing. The ring itself was tight and snug against her knuckle.

They struggled out of knots of pedestrians and paused at the corner.

Kirsty hoisted herself on tiptoe and shouted into Craig’s ear, ‘Are we married now?’

‘Near enough, Mrs Nicholson,’ he said, gave her a kiss upon the brow, and groping for her hand, led her on into Union Street without further ceremony or delay.

Eighteen carats of hammered gold conferred no immediate blessing on Craig and Kirsty Nicholson.

Housing was at a premium in Glasgow. The city was grossly overpopulated and various schemes by the city fathers, the City Improvement Trust for instance, to stimulate the private market had foundered on high interest rates and a chronic shortage of social conscience. Programmes of municipal improvement had swept away many of the stinking vennels and closes, slums that had grown cheek by jowl with the elegant eighteenth-century façades, but nothing worthwhile had replaced them. Piecemeal conversion of middle-class mansions and the flinging up of the odd tenement had done little to provide dwellings for working-class families. ‘Model’ lodging-houses, of municipal design, furnished shelter for more folk than ever found a home in council tenements. This urban phenomenon, as is the way, tickled the private sector, much to the detriment of the artisans who packed every neuk and cranny and had these ‘made-down’ houses bursting at the seams.

Houses of less capacity than two thousand cubic feet were officially inspected and registered and a metal ticket was fixed to the lintel stipulating the number of occupants permitted by law. But such a law had no meaning for immigrants and wanderers and the homeless citizens of the Empire’s second city. None of this history of municipal mismanagement mattered to Craig and Kirsty. All that concerned them was finding a place of their own, a room to rent at a price they could afford.

Local shops plastered their windows with advertisements for accommodations, wanted and on offer. It did not take Craig and Kirsty very long, however, to realise that the wording of the advertisements were masterpieces of literary style, of hyperbole and euphemism.
Comfortable Bed for Single Gent on Night Work
meant a doss in a corner of a kitchen shared with other shift workers.
Sleeping Quarters for Respectable Family
: six by eight feet in somebody’s single-end, with hammocks on a pulley and children under five tucked up in baskets by the stove.

All that Friday Kirsty followed Craig on another of his interminable and indecisive treks about the west side of Glasgow. What Craig sought, of course, was the equivalent of a farm labourer’s cottage within the confines of the city; a mirage. By late afternoon, bone-weary and dazed by the realities of the housing situation, he was desperate to find any sort of room at all. He would have had them in a box-bed in the lobby of a house in Cawdor Street even, if Kirsty had not at last drawn the line.

She was aware that Craig wanted her in bed with him. But she was also aware that, in spite of their extravagances, they were not yet strapped for cash and could afford to spend another night or two in Mrs Frew’s boarding-house.

‘I’m not goin’ in there, Craig,’ Kirsty snapped.

‘It’s just for a week or two. It’s only three bob a week.’

‘It smells.’

‘When did you become so bloody fussy?’

‘About ten minutes ago,’ Kirsty retorted. ‘I’m not sharin’ with those folk.’

‘They’re all right.’

‘Are they?’

‘I suppose you’d rather be back in Walbrook Street?’ Craig said.

‘Aye, I would. Far rather.’

‘Sleepin’ alone?’

‘Not there, Craig. Not in any o’ the places we’ve seen.’

‘It’s not my bloody fault we can’t find a room for rent.’

‘It’s not mine either,’ Kirsty said. ‘I’ve done what you asked. I’m wearing a weddin’ ring, Craig Nicholson, but I’ll not spend my – my weddin’ night stuck in a cupboard with ten strangers listenin’ to our every move.’

‘Damn it, Kirsty, we could be weeks in Frew’s.’

‘So we could.’

‘Money’s—’

‘I know how much is left,’ Kirsty told him.

They were standing on a lofty and exposed corner of a hillside street that looked down upon the docks. She had at last seen the Clyde in all its glory but she was too fatigued and far too angry to pay it much heed.

The properties here were old and crumbling and had the rat-infested, soil-streaked atmosphere of a slum. The March wind moaned in the closes and battered the broken fence of a Monumental Stonemason’s yard and carried not only din but grit and grime from the yards on the riverside. It was only a quarter of a mile or so from Walbrook Street but it seemed to Kirsty like a nether world, not one raised up. She clung tenaciously to the solemn comforts of the boarding-house and resisted Craig’s impatience and impracticality.

The prices they had been asked to pay for dosses, for bunks in communal rooms, for beds shared with strangers had appalled him too. Mrs Agnes Frew’s charges had come to seem much more reasonable during the course of that day.

Craig leaned against the tenement wall. The stench of burnt cabbage, oozing from one of the windows, enveloped him. Against the sky, dwarfed by it, eight or ten children played in the gutter. Ragged and shrill, legs bowed, heads over-large, they had no individual identity and seemed, Kirsty thought, like mere daubs on that canvas sky. She had a horror of settling for a bed in a corner in a tenement here, a fear that Craig would take day labour, that she would give birth to children who would become like the little creatures on the horizon, stunted and ugly through no fault of their own. Even at their worst the communities of Dalnavert, Bankhead and Dunnet had offered nothing as bad as this.

She said, ‘No, Craig.’

‘Christ! For a stray from the Baird Home you’re bloody fussy.’

‘Maybe that’s why.’

‘What?’

‘If I’d been more fussy, Craig, I might not have chosen you.’

He had put a cigarette into his mouth and had a matchbox in his hand. Her statement, however, gave him halt. He paused, the cigarette dangling from his lip, his eyes round.

‘Not have
chosen
me?’ he said.

‘You heard me.’

She defied him. Already the city of Glasgow had woven into her some of its fibre. She would hear talk, later, of how the men and women of that place were losers in the world, pacified by poverty, content in their misery. She had no sense of it all in those early days and would not admit even a drop of such fatalism into her thinking. She was no servant now. She was a wife, albeit nominally, and she had a ring on her finger to prove it. She put her hands on her hips and cocked her chin.

‘How much is left?’ she demanded. ‘Exactly.’

Craig did not have to fumble notes and coins from his pockets, did not have to take a tally.

‘Eight pounds, eightpence,’ he told her.

‘Three weeks,’ she said.

‘Eh?’

‘You know damned well what I mean,’ Kirsty told him.

Her strength astonished him. He had not expected it, had not recognised that quality in her before now.

Craig scratched his head, looked at her and then, embarrassed, gave a half-laugh. ‘We could find another place like Frew’s, if that would suit you. Let on we’re man an’ wife.’

‘Have you nothin’ on your mind but bed?’ Kirsty snapped.

‘You’re frightened o’ your marriage duties, is that it?’

‘I’m frightened o’ startin’ on the wrong foot,’ Kirsty said. ‘Listen to me, Craig Nicholson; what sense is there in takin’ a bed in that filthy place when we don’t know how much we can afford?’

‘Eight pounds’ll not last for ever.’

‘I’m well aware of that. But suppose you find a job somewhere, a job that pays well.’

‘Fat chance.’

‘See,’ Kirsty shouted. ‘See, you’ve started makin’ excuses.’

‘Go on.’

‘There’s work to be found. There must be. Good, honest work that offers a decent wage. I’ll bet there’s work for a strong girl too.’

‘You?’

‘Aye, what’s wrong with that?’

‘Some rich man’s servant, I suppose.’

‘Let’s stay where we are. At least we get properly fed.’

‘For how long?’

‘Until we find out how much we’ll have comin’ in.’

She softened. She stepped to him. He was shaking his head, the unlighted cigarette wagging in his mouth. She put her hands on his shoulders, almost as if she intended to shake sense into his silly head. She did not know why it should be but she felt stronger than she had ever felt in her life before. Her awe of Craig had diminished now that she had learned more about him.

Craig had been protected against harsh reality. He had been coddled, spoiled, was comfortable only when doing what he was told. She realised now that he would never have run off with her if his father had not coaxed him to do it. Kirsty wondered if the wedding ring gave her a strange new kind of power over him, like a fairy tale gone wrong, or if Craig was right in his assessment and she feared the hour when he would take her and possess her as a husband does a wife.

Her emotions might be cloudy but her manner was positive.

‘Don’t you see?’ she said.

‘I suppose so.’

‘It would be so much better to begin with a room of our own.’

‘Of course it bloody would. I’m not denyin’ it.’

‘But not in a dismal place like this, Craig.’

‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’

‘We’re not beggars, Craig. You’ve bought me a ring, told me I’m your wife, so I want some of the things a wife has a right to expect from her man; a house, for a start.’

‘Aye, that’s all very fine an’ dandy but—’

‘In the meantime,’ said Kirsty, ‘we’ll go back to Mrs Frew’s.’

Suddenly Craig capitulated. He let Kirsty take his arm.

She said, ‘Tomorrow we’ll start again.’

‘Start what?’ Craig said.

‘Looking for work in earnest,’ said Kirsty.

THREE

A Boy and Girl Romance

Craig was dead set against seeking employment in a cattle mart or on the docks. He had no aversion to working with horses, though, and embarked optimistically on a tour of carriers’ offices in search of a post.

It did not take him long to discover that the four large firms who handled road haulage for the railway companies had no interest in a green hand without a ‘Society’ ticket and that even smaller establishments were only on the look-out for lorrymen who could freight fragile and dangerous cargoes and navigate the crowded city streets without falling foul of the strict police regulations. Undaunted, Craig lowered his sights. In local yards wages were meagre and hours longer but the turnover in hands was greater and a Society ticket not always an advantage. He learned that Sunday morning was the time of the week when bosses were sure to be on the premises. On Sunday morning carters were expected to clean the stables, tend their horses and repair damage to conveyances; and, of course, collect their wages. But Sunday brought Craig no job either and he came back to the boarding-house that evening in a disconsolate mood.

No less than three ministers shared the dining-room table with Craig and Kirsty. They were not particularly friendly and paid no heed to the young couple, exchanged tedious kirk gossip over the plates and teacups. Kirsty had knotted her wedding ring to a leather bootlace and wore it, hidden, about her neck. Craig approved of the secrecy. He was less concerned now about finding a house than he was about finding a job. But it was Thursday before he tramped out as far as Greenfield, a nondescript little burgh that nestled between Patrick and Whiteinch. Here, in Kingdom Road, he discovered the premises of Maitland Moss, general haulers and deliverymen, and, nothing loath, wandered in through the open gates.

The yard was stuck like a half-closed drawer in a tallboy of red tenements. It was flanked by the Kingdom burn which oozed out of a conduit for a lungful of air before vanishing into a big iron pipe for a final crawl to the river. The ammoniac reek of stables was very strong but Craig, a farm lad, did not find it off-putting. He stepped quickly over broken cobbles on to hard-packed cinders. To his left was a wooden shed, raised up on posts and reached by rickety stairs. None of the tenements’ windows looked down into the yard, only cliff-sized gables that reared to the chimney-pots high overhead.

‘What the hell’re you doin’, pokin’ about here?’ roared a deep, rasping voice.

Craig started guiltily.

‘I’m lookin’ for Maitland Moss.’

‘For what reason?’