When the Lights Come on Again (2 page)

‘The old man’s waiting for youse two!’ he said cheerfully, touching his bunnet - his flat cap - to Liz. ‘I’m just away for a wee refreshment!’

Once he had disappeared into the pub, Eddie cocked his head to one side.

‘Can we stay up the road till the pub pours him out on to the pavement, do you think?’ he murmured. ‘Then we could listen to that charming old Clydebank ritual of Mrs Simpson’s welcome home to her husband.’

Liz grimaced at the irony in Eddie’s voice. You didn’t have to be near a pub to know when it was closing time in Clydebank. Not if you lived within shouting distance of the Simpsons. They had a flat in the same tenement in Radnor Street as Liz and Eddie’s grandfather. Liz and Eddie themselves had been born and brought up in the same building until their father’s promotion had brought about a move to the neat little row of terraced houses close to the River Clyde where they now lived.

A few minutes after the pubs called time, Nan Simpson would throw up the sash window of her top-floor flat. Then, when her errant husband hove into view, she would start berating him. The volume and severity of the insults, as well as the coarseness of the swear words, increased the closer he got to home.

After he had negotiated the difficult task of locating the entrance close - as folk said, that must be like trying to thread a needle in the dark - Tam always took a zigzag course up to his own flat, stoating up the stairs, bouncing first off one wall and then the other. Eddie likened his precarious ascent to a tennis ball flying back and forth over a net.

‘Aye, I know. It’s funny, isn’t it?’ Liz took her brother’s arm as they started walking again. ‘Funny peculiar, I mean. Not funny ha-ha. D’you mind how it used to perplex Granny?’

Eddie nodded.

‘I can see her shaking her head now.’ He raised the pitch of his voice, putting on a Highland accent in affectionate mimicry. ‘ “A decent respectable God-fearing body the rest of the week, but at closing time on a Saturday night she’s got a mouth on her like a sailor.’ ”

‘She’s got provocation, mind,’ said Liz. ‘Six children to bring up and a husband who’d spend all of his wages on drink if she didn’t get to them first. People laugh at folk like Tam Simpson, but it’s not funny at all.’

‘No,’ agreed Eddie. ‘It’s not. On the other hand,’ he went on, ‘at least he doesn’t bounce his wife’s head off the wall when he gets home. There’s plenty as do.’

‘And she’s supposed to be grateful for that?’ asked Liz, her voice rising in indignation.

‘No,’ said Eddie consideringly. ‘That’s not what I meant. I think it’s...’ He paused, searching for the right word. ‘I think it’s
despicable
for a man to behave that way. In either of those ways.’

They walked in silence for a few moments, passing the entrance to Singer railway station. It was named for the sewing-machine factory which occupied a vast area to their left. The complex of buildings was dominated by an imposing clock tower, a landmark in Clydebank and for miles around.

Eddie was obviously still thinking about Tam Simpson.

‘I don’t know though, Liz. Maybe you can understand why people reach for the bottle. I suppose it blots out all their problems - for a wee while, at least. Men like Tam Simpson have to worry all the time about when they’re next going to be laid off, how they’re going to feed their wives and children when that happens.’

‘Don’t you see, Eddie,’ said Liz eagerly, ‘that’s one of the reasons I want to go in for nursing - it’s all tied up together. It has to do with what you want to fight for - jobs and decent houses and good wages and better health and all those sorts of things.’

She turned to him in her enthusiasm. The quick movement blew a strand of brown hair across her face, and she tucked it impatiently behind one ear. ‘But it’s about education too - health education for a start. I mean, people needn’t have such big families. There is such a thing as birth control - but there need to be doctors and nurses who can tell folk about it.’

Edward MacMillan, revolutionary and free thinker, blushed to the roots of his hair. Liz guessed he wasn’t too happy about discussing the controversial subject of birth control with his kid sister, but he did his manful best to control his embarrassment. They were children of the twentieth century, after all.

‘That’s what’s wrong with all your Free Love theories,’ Liz added. ‘It’s the woman who ends up paying the price.’

Eddie’s only response to that statement was a noncommittal grunt. Liz had a shrewd suspicion - given added weight by that betraying blush - that her brother’s theories on Free Love were exactly that - theories. He might dress unconventionally, but in other ways he could be surprisingly shy - especially when it came to the opposite sex. Not unlike his sister, she thought wryly. Although what she’d had to put up with from Eric Mitchell over the past two years might possibly have something to do with that...

They turned the corner into Radnor Street.

‘Ah!’ said Eddie. ‘Here we are at last!’ There was just a little too much relief in his voice.

Peter MacMillan swung open the heavy door to his ground-floor home. His craggy face lit up when he saw Liz and Eddie standing in the close.

‘Come in, come in,’ he said, ‘I’ll lead the way.’

Out of sight of their grandfather, Eddie winked at Liz. Peter always spoke about leading the way, as though he were conducting you into some palatial dwelling, full of rooms and corridors in which you might very well get lost without him to guide you safely through.

His two-room apartment was actually tiny. A minuscule lobby led to a small bedroom-cum-parlour looking out over the back court, and to an even smaller kitchen at the front. This was the room where he spent most of his time and to which he was conveying Liz and Eddie now. It was smaller than the corresponding rooms on the floors above because the space for the entrance close to the tenement had been taken out of it. Yet Granny had given birth to six children here, four boys and two girls.

Both of the girls had died young - of scarlet fever, which had nearly taken Liz herself as a child. With no effective treatment for infectious illnesses, there weren’t many families who escaped that sort of loss. Liz and Eddie’s wee brother George had died of it.

Her father’s eldest brother had fallen in the Great War. Of the three boys who had survived, only William was still in Clydebank. Bruce was in the Merchant Navy and dropped in and out of their lives erratically, turning up on the doorstep every two or three years with an armful of exotic presents. Bob had emigrated to Canada when he was eighteen, married and settled down in Ontario. Unlike Bruce, he was a faithful correspondent, his long letters about his life and family out there eagerly awaited by his parents. It wasn’t the same as having him round the corner, though, as Granny used to sigh.

The relationship between Peter MacMillan and his youngest son was a fraught one. Since Granny’s death it had become nonexistent. There had been a furious argument the morning of the funeral, although Liz and Eddie had heard only the aftermath of that: slammed doors and angry footsteps.

After the church service, William MacMillan had helped his father, Eddie and friends of the family lower his mother into the earth. Then, walking out of the cemetery, he had announced that he would not be attending the purvey, or funeral tea. In a carrying voice, he had said that as far as he was concerned, both of his parents were now dead.

Liz had never forgotten the look which passed between her father and grandfather that day - shuttered bitterness on one face, hurt on the other. Now William MacMillan was quite capable of passing his own father in the street without a word. She’d seen him do it.

She had no idea what the argument had been about. She had summoned up the courage to ask her grandfather once, but he had shaken his head, such a sad look on his face that she hadn’t ever had the heart to pose the question again.

Whatever it was, she knew that it caused both her grandfather and her gentle mother a great deal of distress. But that wasn’t something, she thought bitterly, likely to keep her father awake at night.

Having conducted his young guests safely into his inner sanctum, Peter MacMillan gave them the usual command.

‘Sit yourselves down. I’ll make the tea.’

Liz chose a chair as far as possible from the black range which filled most of one wall. Being so small, the kitchen could get as hot as a blast furnace. Eddie made a face at her at being forced to sit close to the heat.

‘My birthday treat,’ she murmured to him. ‘Take your coat off and stop moaning.’

They both looked up brightly as their grandfather approached. Not for all the tea in China would they have hurt his feelings by complaining about the heat, which he himself didn’t seem to notice. He had a package in his hand.

‘Well, hen,’ he said to Liz, holding it out to her. ‘Happy birthday, and many more of them.’

The parcel was small, but solid. He had wrapped it in the newspaper - the
Glasgow Herald
- which he read avidly from cover to cover each morning. With the interested eyes of the menfolk on her, Liz unwrapped her gift. Then she burst into tears. He had given her a pocket nurses’ dictionary.