The Good Provider (19 page)

‘Ever been across the river?’ Bob asked, after they had been on the road for ten minutes or so.

‘Where do you mean?’ said Craig.

‘Renfrew?’

‘Nah,’ said Craig. ‘Is that where we’re goin’?’

‘It is, it is.’

‘Is that not a bloody long way to carry a load o’ light wood?’

The cart had been loaded when Craig had arrived at the yard, a stack of planed timber loosely stacked and roped, so light in fact that it could be drawn by a filly that was usually reserved for the ‘Valuable Goods’ van.

Bob said, ‘The contractor got it cheap, so it’s worth the carriage fee, see?’

Craig, in his innocence, thought no more about it for a while but hung on to the rail by the front of the board while the filly clopped round the corner and into New Clyde Street.

The wind was still stiff but rain had gone out of it and it was a fresh invigorating morning that made Craig feel sappy and full of beans; a nice morning to be clipping along on a deep-sided two-wheeler behind a sprightly chestnut filly heading for the ferry.

‘What are we to carry back, Bob?’ Craig asked.

Bob McAndrew extracted the pipe, spat.

‘I dinna ken,’ he said.

Bob did not know what the return cargo would be; unusual for a carrier to be so vague about loads and schedules. Craig, with just the faintest prickle of suspicion in him, did not press the point, put no more questions to his mentor and looked about him at the passing scene in silence.

Moist and brilliant with early sunshine the skyline was dominated by the Plantation’s heavy cranes and steam-powered coal hoists. In the streets that radiated from the quays there were milk floats and cleansing carts and the rainbow jets of ‘hosers’ flushing away cattle muck. The cobbles ran red and brown and the smell brought Craig a sudden unexpected memory of mornings at Bankhead. Nostalgia faded swiftly enough, however, when the cart ground down the stone ramp below the mouth of the Kelvin and straight on to the larger of the steam ferries that plied the Clyde.

Bob and he were early enough not to have to queue for passage on the deck, for the vessel could carry but eight horses and carts at a time. The Clyde was running high and strong and, while Bob attended to the filly, Craig leaned on the taffrail and watched the iron-girdered craft slip out into the current and slide away from the familiar shore, drift and twist and nuzzle in again, under the towering walls of a rigging-shed, to bump its bumpers against the Govan wharf.

Bob took the reins and let Craig lead the filly up the ramp from the ferry wharf but when the young man went forward towards the road Bob called to him, ‘No’ that way,’ and summoned him back on to the board.

‘There’s a better way, Craig. The old towpath. It’s o’er narrow for a big cart but it’ll accommodate this wee thing fine.’

‘Is it quicker?’

‘Aye, out o’ the traffic. Clear o’ the polis.’

Craig thought nothing of the remark for carriers and coppers were natural enemies. One officious constable could cost a carter a fine or late-fee or even his job if the firm was strict and the delay long. Bob guided the filly about the gable of an old lime-washed building on to an unpaved ride.

Craig settled again, enjoying the sun on his back and the unhurried, countrified pace. Bob told him that the towpath weaved a right-of-way from the Highland Lane to Renfrew and that forty or fifty years ago it had been a busy thoroughfare when the Silk Mill and the Plantation House were operating, before railways stole the business and shipbuilding yards spread out along the shore. The path nipped away from the river wall whenever there was a yard, ran adjacent to long lines of tall wooden buildings and under the jibs and rigs and ribs of ships on their berths, came back faithfully to the river whenever it could to give Craig a glimpse of the brown, broad water and the far distant hills.

Once he roused himself, sat up and pointed.

‘Hoy, Bob! Yonder’s the Greenfield.’

Smiling at the young man’s pleasure in the prospect, Bob said, ‘So it is now, so it is. I wonder what it’s doin’ away over there, eh?’

From this perspective Greenfield parish appeared small and undistinguished. Even so, Craig eagerly picked out landmarks and pretended – and Bob did not have the heart to correct him – that he could see Canada Road and the tenement in which he lived.

The cart rolled on for four or five miles. It was just after seven o’clock, still early, when it turned away from the towpath and nosed up a lane into a high street.

‘Is this Renfrew?’ Craig asked.

‘It is.’

The market town, a little port, was neat and quiet and sedate. Not exactly on the river, its commodious steamboat wharf was set apart from the burgh centre. The town hall was imposing and the parish church had a fine slender spire and the whole place seemed genteel and well-heeled, though it was no longer as prosperous as it had once been, Bob said, and had only been saved from ruin by the broadening of the Clyde basin and the arrival of steam engineering.

Bob turned out of the high street and headed west through a scattering of new villas on to a flat back country road guarded by trees.

‘Where’s the yard, Bob?’

‘It’s no’ far, no’ far at all.’

The inn was half hidden by the tree line, a small, squat building in a disreputable state of repair.

There was a coachyard to the rear with a high plastered wall about it. The inn itself sported no hanging sign but a weathered board on the wall spelled out, in blistered blue letters, a story of better days:
The Belltree Inn – Refreshments for Travellers – Carriers – Horses – Livery & Beds
.

There were no hints of any of these advertised services. Hens clucked about the doorstep and a barefoot laddie led a couple of cows along the road towards a pasture gate. Beech trees and elms gave the yard shelter from the wind and from prying eyes. Bob pulled the cart into the yard and reined it to a halt. He looked round cautiously at rusty churns, a midden, a broken barrow, kegs and crates, barred back windows and a closed door. There was something odd about this run, Craig realised. He kept his mouth shut and asked no questions. For two or three minutes there was no sound save that of the wind stirring budding leaves, the lowing of cattle from an unseen field and the arrogant crowing of a cockerel. Bob smoked a fresh fill of tobacco, spat frequently, did not dismount from the board; then he stiffened slightly and cocked his head.

Craig had heard it too, the chuckle of wheels and the
clop
of hoofs; a gig or trap. It did not enter the inn yard but stopped out of sight at the front of the building. A minute or so later the back door of the inn opened and a man stuck his head out. He was tall, not young, had a thick square beard and wore a chequered vest under a Norfolk jacket. A pearl-grey bowler was set at a jaunty angle on his head. The sporting gent made a discreet signal to Bob who handed the reins to Craig and climbed down to the ground.

‘Do just as I tell you, son, an’ keep mum,’ Bob said.

‘All right,’ said Craig.

‘Tie up the filly an’ off-load the planks. Pile them up neat against the wall there.’

‘Right.’

‘Give her a rub an’ a drink. You’ll find a pump an’ bucket round the side there.’

‘Is that all?’ said Craig.

‘I’ll attend to the rest o’ it.’

Craig did as he was told to do. The filly was obedient and he had her tied, dried and fed very quickly.

He took off his jacket, for the sun was spring warm. From the corner of his eye he had seen the toff and Bob shake hands before they had gone into the inn. There was not hide nor hair of the publican or any other residents. He unloaded the long, light, pine boards and stacked them against the wall of the yard, watched by a pair of magpies and three or four white doves that had fluttered, crooning, on to the inn roof.

Beneath the pine boards Craig discovered two square wooden crates and a padlocked box, laid on a rug of thick buckram. The crates were roped tight.

Bob had not mentioned a secret cargo and Craig did not know if he was expected to unload it too. He was apprehensive, uncomfortable and, turning, found that the toff was watching him from the back door, a glass in his hand and a cigar in his mouth.

The toff called out, ‘Leave the boxes, boy. Just water the filly like a good chap.’

Craig headed at once for the alley between the inn gable and a wall. Here, as Bob had said, was a rusty iron pump and a bucket, and stables; stables that were so neglected they were beginning to decay. Craig cranked the pump, filled the bucket with brownish water and then, after glancing this way and that, stole to the front of the building and peeped out into the road.

It wasn’t a gig but a large, shiny dog-cart with a sleek Shetland pony in the shafts. Craig paused long enough to admire the rig then came back into the alley, lifted the bucket and returned to the back yard.

It did not surprise him to discover that the wooden crates and padlocked box were gone.

He watered the filly, put on his jacket and seated himself on the cart’s tailgate to wait for Bob.

Ten minutes later a young girl came from the inn with a tray in her hands. Bob had sent him out some breakfast; a glass of ale, three slices of beef and brown bread and butter. The girl was young and would have been pretty if she had not had a cast in her right eye. Her blouse was unbuttoned at the throat and her breasts were plump.

‘What’s your name?’ Craig asked her.

‘Marie.’

He studied her, saw her differently now that he had become a husband, a man. He fancied that he knew all her secrets. He told her to hold the tray while he lifted the glass and drank the ale. He wiped his lips with his wrist.

‘Marie; that’s a nice name,’ he said, and winked at her.

Perhaps she knew what was in the crates and the locked box and the name of the toff and what the toff and Bob were doing inside the inn; he was tempted to question her. But the turned eye was disconcerting, the fold between her young breasts even more so.

He stared at her; and she let him.

Heat and heaviness between his legs; he would not be able to exploit that energy, not now and not tonight.

He snatched the tray from her hands and slid it on to the bed of the cart, snapped at her, ‘What the hell are ye lookin’ at?’

She stuck out her tongue at him, thin, pink and moist, swung on her heel and left him.

Craig watched the lithe hips under the skirt, the shape of her buttocks and, with a degree of annoyance, thought of Kirsty, who had somehow cheated him. Just thinking of Kirsty at all made the heaviness increase. He pushed himself from the tailgate with a little silent snarl and, standing, ate the breakfast that had been sent out to him while Bob was inside doing business with the toff.

Kirsty put on her apron and pulled the cotton cap over her hair, took her place at the table beside Letty and Mrs McNeil. They were still on Easter cakes, the racks thick with biscuits, the boxes crammed with flowers of dyed sugar. She tried not to look towards the archway, towards the flour store in case the sight of it made her squeamish. She ran out two lines of biscuits, pulled her brush from the water jar and reached towards the puree dish.

Letty caught her wrist and told her in a whisper, ‘Lizzie Weekes is dead.’

‘What?’

She had never clapped eyes on Lizzie Weekes. She had no idea whether the girl had been plain or pretty, young or old, dark or fair, yet she had shared with that girl the experience of the flour bin and had somehow ascribed to Lizzie a nature so sensitive that she had been ruined by the store’s contaminating secrets.

‘When?’

‘Last night,’ said Letty.

At the other tables the girls were picking over the same piece of news like crows at a meaty bone, giggling, some of them, as if it were scandal and not tragedy.

‘She must’ve been very sick after all,’ said Kirsty.

‘Sick, nothin’,’ said Letty. ‘She done herself in.’

‘May God forgive her all her sins,’ added Mrs McNeil.

‘Killed herself?’ Kirsty exclaimed. ‘But how did she—’

‘Drank a bottle o’ caustic.’

Letty’s fingers flew over the cardboard biscuits, dabbing puree here and there. The process of manufacturing Easter cakes went on while she imparted, out of the side of her mouth, the sordid details of Lizzie Weekes’ death.

‘She was in the family way,’ said Letty.

‘Four months gone,’ put in Mrs McNeil.

‘It was startin’ to show,’ said Letty. ‘I heard it was a marrit man done it to her. But he wouldn’t dream o’ leavin’ his dear wife. I heard he was a toff from a big house in Dowanhill.’

‘How did she meet him?’ said Kirsty.

‘Got picked up by him in the Groveries last summer.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs McNeil, ‘Lizzie told me she was sure he was mad in love wi’ her.’

‘Cabbage!’ said Letty derisively.

‘Aye, she’ll burn in the eternal fires o’ Hell for her love, I’m thinkin’,’ said Mrs McNeil with a nod.

‘That sort o’ mortal sin’s only for you Catholics,’ said Letty. ‘Lizzie was no bloody Pape.’