Moving On

MOVING ON

"And the toilet's actually inside the house."

"Big deal."

My head knew all was for the best but my heart beat out a dull,
desperate tom-tom of protest. This was my home, this was my happiness,
what did I care about a newly-built, three-roomed council house in a
tree-lined square at the other end of Lochee?

I lingered in the bedroom, our bedroom, that had for so long been the
'boysroom' where my brother and I had fought out the wars of childhood.
Only the double-bed in which we'd snuggled up like contented
rattlesnakes remained. I pressed my skinny eleven-year-old body into
the mattress, my face into the pillow, drinking in the old familiar
smells of safety, security and urine.

I could still smell, or imagined I could smell the rotting corpse of
Hammy our hamster who'd been squashed so ingloriously between the
springs as we fought for possession of the side nearest the radiator.
Hammy, whose tiny body had rotted away beneath us, until swarms of
iridescent bluebottles gave his presence away.

"And you'll have your own bed, each."

"Big deal."

Running my fingertips across the grey-white, smeary, Windowlened panes,
I scanned the backplots where so many sparrows, thrushes, blackbirds
and pigeons had been lured and terminated by Joe's air-rifle despite my
squeaky protests and incipient tears.

"They're just vermin, you wee shite, can't you understand that? They're
vermin, just like you."

But if they were vermin they were warm and pretty (though I could
hardly plead that in their defence or mine) and did not deserve to have
their trust betrayed by a ball-bearing between the eyes.

My gaze swept on to encompass the wasteland lying between our row of
houses and the three-storey buildings three hundred yards away,
towering tenements of mystery that were as fascinating as they were
forbidden to us. At least the wasteland belonged to everyone, though
we, as a ground-floor family, had particular responsibility for
ensuring that the dustbins were pulled into the road on a Monday
morning and that the neighbourhood toms did not send up over-long
passionate midnight arias to the fickle females who infested our block.
Joseph's rifle saw to that.

But the wastelands beyond our back windows were trivial compared to the
hunting grounds that lay only a few hundred yards away. The Cally and
the Wary. Huge, derelict areas of grit and gravel rising and falling
like the sand dunes of Montrose, bordered on one side by the cavernous
warehouses of Camperdown Jute Works and on the others by high walls and
fences of rusty corrugated tin that gave less trouble to us than they
did to the local cats.

Some kids grew up in the streets, we grew up in the forbidden lands of
the Cally and the Wary, hunters not gatherers, perpetually engaged in
tribal and internecine warfare from dawn till dusk when mothers ordered
us home with voices that brooked no delay. I imagine the ghosts of our
childhood still haunt the wastelands, like the lost boys in Peter Pan,
forever engaged in awfully big adventures.

I wrestled with the window sealed as it was by the frosts of January.
It suddenly shot up into its socket snapping off icicles as it went. I
hung backwards out of the window, strictly forbidden, not because of
any damage I might inflict on myself but because Joseph had pulled out
the entire rotten frame and gone backwards with it into the wallflower
patch.

The replacement cost mum eight weeks' catalogue money and Joseph a
backside rendered more or less useless for the next few hours. Peering
up through my breath's rising clouds, I half expected to see familiar
faces grinning wickedly back down at me, but so many families had
already gone, rehoused in the schemes that were springing up around
Dundee. Mum had held out to the last, refusing to be decanted into
Ardler, Fintry or Beechwood. It was Lansdowne or nothing.

"Jean-Paul! Get your bike on the van. We're going now."

Why did she insist on calling me Jean-Paul when everyone else called me
Paul? My mother had a passionate dislike for diminutives, so Joseph was
never Joe, Kathleen never Kath, and Jean-Paul never Paul. My surname
was bad enough; my first name simply confirmed I belonged to that
generation of Dundee kids whose fathers were not of Scottish stock. I
was deviant, aberrant, a mongrel, a half-breed, a boy with an accent as
thick as a Wallace bridie and an unpronounceable surname.

I was not alone. Around us were Ukraines, Poles, Czechs, Dutch,
Belgians, the assorted flotsam and jetsam of men who had escaped from
occupied Europe to carry on the struggle against Hitler and his Nazi
henchmen. I belonged, or so I was told by monthly letters, to the Free
French Navy, in particular to an elite group of submariners who had
fought their way across the Bay of Biscay, through the English Channel,
and up the North Sea to the harbour and haven of Dundee. I had so much
to be proud of. Big deal.

My bike, my trusty old Raleigh, my hand-me-down, that rattled and
squealed and got stuck in the tram tracks every morning as it bore me
to school. My bike that carried me round patiently, come rain or shine,
on a paper round that would challenge a professional cyclist.

My bike redundant now since I was going to a new school, a secondary
school, somewhere far across the city, far beyond the sight and sound
of the jute mills, to a school where pupils actually wore uniforms,
never wore wellies, never sneaked a fly fag behind the bike sheds, had
compulsory showers after P.E. even in the summer term, and where I
would learn the language that my father had never lived to teach
me.

What a brave new world I was entering so half-heartedly.

I bumped my bike along the icy road, between the broken pavements,
between the dark hungry emptiness of the removal van waiting to swallow
it, me, and my childhood in its encircling gloom. I glanced at the iron
fence on my right, clear indication the war was long over, and winced
involuntarily as memory and pain shot up between my legs.

Once again I was balancing precariously along its tight-wire, once
again I had lost my balance and come crashing down, the iron bar
catching me between my legs in a stab of pain the most ruthless of
dentist's drills can only hint at. I carry the scar, pale white on
purple, a reminder that childhood is not all unsullied joy, but
whatever it is, it is still childhood, and the place where childhood
blooms is the garden we carry with us throughout our lives.

Whorterbank might be a derelict dump, a maze of nineteenth century
dwellings for jute workers long over-due for demolition, sheltering
under the ramparts of the mighty Camperdown Works, scarred by the
shadow of Cox's stack, but it was the garden of my childhood and my
heart was breaking to leave it.

"Jean-Paul!"

"Coming!"

When my mother's voice carried through both the front room and the
bedroom, we never stood upon the order of our going, we went. I
scrambled out into the close and gave a vague but cheery wave to no one
in particular.

Joe and the removal man were wrestling the pull-me-down settee into the
back of the van. Kathleen, her hair tied up with a pink ribbon,
spectacles askew, was involved in intense conversation with Bessie, her
hideously scarred dolly. Mum stood a little to her daughter's left,
arms across her chest, a hand rising occasionally to reintroduce a
Players Extra to her lips, the same hand indicating in silent elegance
just how the settee could be fitted into what little space remained in
the van.

I stood there unable to move, transfixed, paralysed by the love I felt
for that strong, stubborn, implacable woman who'd shielded us so long
from the dirt of the day and the terrors of the night. Her thick brown
hair, curly and wavey like my own, was tucked away beneath a headscarf
drawn into the turban most women on the mills wore on weekdays. Her
jawline curved into firm cheekbones which themselves curved up to those
wide grey-blue eyes that she'd also gifted me.

Her work pinafore was drawn tightly round her body delineating far too
clearly the figure that drew admiring glances from many men and
disapproving scowls from Joe. Her hips were strong, her legs sturdy,
her feet planted in solid defiance of the world around her. She was the
colossus that supported our world, captain of our little vessel,
mistress of her soul and mistress of mine. That moment confirmed what I
had always known.

"How long are you going to stand there dreaming?" The Players had gone,
the last traces of smoke drifting away.

"Can I come on the last run, with the big bed? The van's too full for
everybody. I'll wait here. I won't do anything, I promise. I'll just
wait."

"You wait here then. Don't go anywhere and don't do anything. And make
sure you've got Lucky ready. She's your cat."

I nodded mutely, face impassive. Mum was always at her most suspicious
when there was nothing to be suspicious about. Joe added his threepence
worth from the back of the van, then hung over the backboard to see if
he could reach the road, distracting mum enough for me to slip back
inside.

From the window I watched mum swing Kathleen effortlessly up onto a
front seat. Then she disappeared into the cab herself. I watched the
van pull out of the narrow close and felt as if I'd never see it or
them again. I hated myself for being so unmoved.

Back in the bedroom I fluffed a coverless pillow and placed it at the
bottom of the bed. I kicked off my shoes and lay on the bed, the
mattress hollowed below me, my head placed on the pillow so I could see
out of the window. It stood open, a chill breeze blew in, it suited my
mood.

Even then I was often most alive when I was most alone. Much as I loved
the local cinemas, the Rialto and the Astoria, my mind created far
better fantasies in a technicolour Hollywood could only dream of,
fantasies in which I was self-sacrificingly heroic, fantasies more real
than the wishy washy stuff that passed for reality. And there were no
censors in my dreams. So I rescued the princess from the dragon, held
her in my match-stick arms, and watched her metamorphose into one of
the girls in vest and knickers who did the crab in gym. I knew there
was something else I should do, but that was as mysterious as the
grammar school waiting for me on the other side of Dundee. Let it
wait.

Consciousness slipped away like a hard, shiny pebble thrown into a
deep, dark pond, drifting down beyond time and will. My mind slipped
through the open front door, along the narrow close and into the main
road that swung right towards Lochee High Street, turned left into
another patch of wasteland, half ran, half stumbled towards the heart
of Whorterbank and entered the square of low, rundown, two-storeyed
stone hovels where it all began.

Stand in the square of mud, slush and snow. Look right. The corrugated
tin fences of the Wary. Look left. The high stone walls of the air raid
shelters. Look behind you. The wooden fences of the Cally, home not so
long ago to the heavy dray horses that dragged the jute carts across
Lochee. Look directly ahead. The strip of workers' cottages, single
rooms below, attics above. Look to the left of the strip. Look up.
There is a tiny garret window. Our window. Come with me.

Look up and see Cox's lum. Red and white brick. Over a million bricks
in that chimney. Mum told us that. It served sixty furnaces in the jute
mills around it. Best mill of all, Camperdown Works. Mum worked there,
kept six machines running from half past seven to five. Chests swelled
with pride. Gi' oor mum a hug.

"Will you stop pulling me off my feet? We're going to be late." (We
were never late.)

Across the High Street we hurried. Hundred of weavers, spinners and
winders roused from their beds by the wailing of the bummer, were
already sleeping-walking to the jute mills. Mind the tram rails. Into
Flight's Lane, down towards South Mid Street. Past the pawnbroker's,
past the Lochee Central Hut, past Henry Walker's, the sanitary
engineer. Cross the road, and there on the right Flight's Lane Nursery
where Joe and I spent some formative years, two of them together. A
substantial building, stone and slate. High, narrow windows. A short
lane leading to the front door.

"How's Jean-Paul doing?"

"Oh, he's fine."

"Does he play with the other children?"

"When he feels like it. Otherwise he reads."

"But he's only four."

"The doctor says it won't do him any harm. He's read everything in the
place. We bring things in for him. He'll read anything. He's easily
pleased."

I was not easily pleased. I loathed the nursery. I despised the
children, especially the three year olds who ran around like
out-of-control toddlers. There was no point telling the nurses. They
were not very bright, and after all what could they have done? It was
hardly their fault that I found no dignity in the childish games we
were compelled to play. And the five year olds, especially the gang
that Joe led, would not permit me to play with them.

At least they were allowed plasticine. Most of the three year olds
tried to eat it. I bore most humiliations, including my flowery
pinafore, with silent, dignified patience, but I would not allow a
nurse to do up my laces for me. Only Joe was allowed to do that. The
day he left I tied them myself.

I felt my mother's hand brush across my cheek. How could they have got
to Lansdowne, unloaded the furniture and returned so quickly? I opened
my left eye. Curled in my armpit lay Lucky, our permanently pregnant,
black and white, battle-hardened lady of the alleys of
Whorterbank.

She was purring steadily, releasing little bursts of flatulence
directly in my face. With my other hand I pulled her around, pointing
her in a more seemly direction. I could feel her warm Kit-e-Kat breath
on my cheek. I cuddled her to me and put my right hand back under my
head. I closed my eye and drifted again.

Meg McDougall ran the shop at the top of Burnside. She was a formidable
woman but she good to us. She had a soft spot for my mother and used to
pay her a little something to run the shop on a Sunday morning. Meg's
hough was famous. I used to love Meg's hough, the thick gluey glutinous
gelatined meat boiled in a huge oval black iron cauldron. I got to stir
the pot if she was in a good mood. You could stand a stick straight up
in the hough and breath in the hot meaty steam that made your mouth
water and your head giddy.

When it cooled enough and nobody was about, you could stick two fingers
in the hough and fill your mouth with the stringy meat soup. You had to
be careful. If Meg caught you, she would slap you so hard around the
ears that you would be listening to a choir of off-key angels for the
next half hour. Meg's hough was worth the risk.

Things fell in the hough. Slivers of firewood. Brittle bits of fire
lighter. Spent matches. Cigarette buts. Various forms of insect life.
None of these discomfited Meg or my mother. They laughed and stirred
the odds and ends in deeper. Everything in the pot was reduced to hough
which was then poured into small tin bowls. These were left on a
windowsill to cool to a thick meaty jelly, sold as McDougall's hough, a
legend throughout Lochee and even in Dundee itself.

I stopped eating the hough when I discovered the truth, though it was
not the bits and bobs that scunnered me. It was Tana, Meg's enormous
Alsatian bitch that served as her family. Tana was a placid lump of dog
that lay around the shop farting into the sawdust sprinkled on the
floor. She would raise her huge head, jaws slavering, and gaze
mournfully into the eyes of any customer who expected her to shift her
carcass. New customers learned to step over her or if infirm to work
their way around her. I had little time for Tana but I tolerated her
until I discovered the truth.

Tana licked the hough.

Tana not only licked the hough, she slavered into it, long trails of
slimy saliva making silvery patterns across the brown bubbling surface.
I was scunnered. I told my mother. She reprimanded me for using the
word 'scunner' and intimated that I should the word 'sickened' or that
'it turned my stomach'.

Neither of these expressions was remotely adequate. I was fair
scunnered and that was that. Mum pointed out that we only purchased and
ate McDougall's hough when she herself made a batch on a Sunday
morning. During that time Tana was not allowed into the backroom of the
shop, so there was no reason to be quite so fastidious. I always knew
when my mother was prevaricating; she bludgeoned me over the head with
words she knew were beyond me.

I would not be counselled, neither would I eat the hough, regardless of
the day it was made. I would not betray Meg, Tana or the hough, but I
felt betrayed. Though my eyes widened and my stomach rumbled as Joe
gorged himself on my share, I would not eat the hough. I was in
possession of knowledge and what I knew changed how I saw the
world.

Tana died from stomach cancer when she was nine. She licked her share
of Meg McDougall's hough till the day she died.

I lay on the bed laughing. Lucky trembled in her sleep. I told her to
shut up. She did. We were that close. I returned to the moving pictures
of my family's yesterdays. So much of it was vague, amorphous, fluffy.
Days blurred seamlessly into each other. Were other boys so happy? Were
boys with fathers happier than us? I added girls since Kathleen had
arrived a few years ago bringing with her the gift of a move to a
better part of Whorterbank and a house with two rooms. When had I
become aware that we were poor? What did poor mean anyway? We had
enough to eat, clothes to wear, wellies in winter, sandals in summer,
and the whole of Lochee as our kingdom.

I hummed the auld sang to myself:

Whorterbank once more, Whorterbank once more.
When we reach Lochee we'll be longing to see:
Whorterbank once more!

A singing crocodile winds its way across the wasteland outside 5A
Whorterbank. Joe has the pink wicker armchair balanced on his head.
Paul staggers along with a half-filled coal scuttle. Armfuls of bedding
bury their mother. Peggy Lynch has the pots, pans and most importantly
the kettle. Gran is carrying the bairn, his new sister Kathleen, the
cause of this miracle, a house with two rooms.

Mike Durdella and Pierre Labessa carry the double bed between them.
That's for the boys. Neighbours have clubbed together and bought a
second-hand pull-down settee for the living room. That's for mother and
daughter.

This is the third run between 5A and No. 38 and nothing more can be
accomplished before everyone sits in the shade with a hot cup of
tea.

Paul leads the singing. Although he doesn't know it, he has perfect
pitch. Two years from the day he will stand on stage before two
thousand people in Dundee's Caird Hall. An acutely embarrassed eight
year old, he will be wearing a kilt, borrowed, white shirt, grey socks,
brown sandals, and a clip-on tartan bow tie.

He will sing "O Mary, at thy window be, it is the wish'd, the trysted
hour!" The Burns' song will pour from his throat, achingly pure,
achingly sweet. He will focus on a point on the ceiling, high and
faraway at the back of the hall and bounce notes off it. It will become
an exercise in arithmetic. How long should he listen to the echoing
note before he sends another speeding past it to its destination?

His embarrassment has gone, his fear has gone, his sense of the
audience has gone. He is not singing for them. He feels alone but not
lonely. He is not singing for himself. He is singing so the song will
exist. That afternoon he is presented with a Lang gold medal by the
Lady Provost of Dundee. She runs her gloved hand through his brown wavy
hair. Why do women want to do that?

She smells as if she has just had a bath and sprinkled on too much
talcum powder. She smells like his little sister's bum. He looks at his
sandals and shuffles his feet. And what's his name? Jean-Paul Bosquet.
And where is he from? 38 Whorterbank, Lochee. School? Ancrum Road
Primary School, Ancrum Road, Lochee.

He looks up at her. She seems surprised. She runs her hand through his
hair again. He would give anything to have straight hair like his
brother. Then maybe women would leave him alone. The Lady Provost
shakes his hand again. She moves on to a silver medallist.

That day he sang an entirely different song. He started it and everyone
else has picked it up, even Mike and Pierre, whose Ukrainian and French
accents made the Dundee Weaver even more fun:

I am a Dundee weaver and I come frae bonnie Dundee
I met a Glesca fella an' he came courtin' me
He took me oot a walkin' doon by the Kelvin Hall
And there the dirty wee rascal
Stole mah thingummy jig awa!

Paul thumps out the words thingummy jig. He knows that will annoy his
mother. He has asked her before what a thingummy jig is and received
only a stern look, the look precludes any further interrogation. Joe
smirks. He would ask Mike or Pierre but he can never understand
anything they say.

He would ask his Gran but she is absorbed in the baby. Paul is annoyed.
He likes to know things. He will ask his granddad. His granddad is not
there with them. He is not surprised. He has never seen his mother and
his granddad together. It puzzles him. He asked his mother once. He
could not understand the expression on her face, but he knew enough not
to ask again. There were mysteries in all families that were better
left as mysteries. But he is staying at gran's tonight and he will ask
his granddad what a thingummy jig is and why any Glesca fella would
want to steal it from a Dundee weaver like his mum. Paul sighs and
sings.

A house with two rooms! He certainly will be longing to see Whorterbank
once more now they have a house with two rooms. It is unimaginable. He
can be in one room while the rest of the family are in the other. If
the door is closed he won't be able to see them. They won't be able to
see him. He will be on his own. He can lie on the bed and read till his
eyes fall out.

Joe and he will have their own bed, the whole double bed to themselves.
For the first time in his life he will be sleeping in a different bed
from his mother. And they have real windows, not the pokey little
window in the garret. In the backroom, their room, the boysroom, you
have a window big enough to hang out of, climb out of.

You can look across the wastelands and the tenements all the way to
Camperdown Works and Cox's Stack with its million bricks. You don't
really need a clock; the bummer will tell you when the working day
begins and when it ends.

And now they were moving again. To a world without wastelands and
tenements. To a world where the bummer did not regulate their lives. To
a world where Cox's Stack was somewhere over the horizon. And o how
half-heartedly Paul wanted to enter that brave new world where his life
would change forever.