Growing Up In The West. John Muir

‘I never thought you twa boys wad be enemies.’ That silenced Mansie, and he could not complain to Tom either, for they were not on speaking terms; and besides, in the midst of his anger sometimes he felt strangely touched by those naïve thefts; they were so childish, they were what a little boy might do to an elder brother who did not love him. Occasionally he was actually alarmed at Tom’s familiar use of his things; it touched one so intimately, it was like a threat, and it was unnatural too, quite unlike Tom; and the thought would come into his mind: Tom must be very unhappy. But then his exasperation, tinged with a little dread, would return again, and seeing that his mother and Jean refused to do anything he spoke bitterly of his wrongs to Helen.

      Tom’s own feelings when he took Mansie’s ties and vests might have been expressed in the words: ‘Why should he have everything?’ and although he was not consciously aware of Helen as an item in that everything, no doubt it was she, and she alone, that was at the back of his mind. So his open use of his brother’s belongings was not merely a silent announcement that Mansie was outside the pale now, with no right to protest, whatever was done to him; it was also the symbolical declaration of a claim to have unconditionally all that Mansie had, and Mansie had been wise in seeing a threat in it. A very indeterminate and quite powerless threat, however, almost a fictitious one, for the Helen that Tom wanted was not the Helen who had passed into Mansie’s possession, but an illusion, once cherished and now dead, which his brother was powerless to restore to him. He did not know what he wanted from Mansie, and so he took whatever he could get.

      EIGHT

      ONE EVENING MANSIE decided to walk home instead of taking the tramcar as usual. He had been in the office all day giving an account of his last quarter’s work and going over the possibilities of opening up new custom during the coming weeks; the manager had been very pleased with his report, but Mansie felt cramped and a little stifled after sitting all day in the poky office – the manager had actually insisted on sending out for dinner – and now he wanted to stretch his legs. And besides he was curious to find out how Eglinton Street would strike him now after such a long time, for passing through it in the tramcar every evening was quite a different thing from walking from end to end of it on foot. Months and months it must have been since he had done that; not more than once or twice since he had been taken from the office and put on the road. What could have possessed him to walk home through that street every evening during those first months in Glasgow? Of course, it was Bob Ryrie; Bob had told him that he must take exercise for the sake of his health. All the same Eglinton Street was a queer place to take exercise in; not much health to be picked up in Eglinton Street. It had made him feel quite low-spirited at times, especially when he was tired. Well, he got enough movement now as it was without having to walk through Eglinton Street.

      He crossed the Jamaica Bridge. Dusk was falling and the lamps were being lit; they ran in two straight rows up the slightly rising street, and those in the distance hung in a soft moony haze that was almost fairy-like. The pavement was damp and sticky, though there had been no rain, and now it seemed to him that it had always been like that. After passing through on the tramcar, too, one felt uncomfortably near the ground down here, as though walking along the bottom of a gully which was always slightly damp, while a little above the level of one’s head ran a smooth and clean high road. When a tramcar sailed by with all its lights on he felt tempted to run after it.

      Astonishing the number of dirty squalling children that were down here, down here the whole time by all appearances, for you never saw them anywhere else, perhaps they never got up at all, poor little beggars. And the way they yelled and screamed was enough to scare you; wasn’t like a human sound at all. Yet you never heard them when you were passing on the tramcar. And into Mansie’s mind came a phrase that the Reverend John had been fond of using, a phrase from the Bible: ‘Crying to the heavens.’ Perhaps that was what the poor little beggars were trying to do, their voices sounded so desperate; but their cries remained down here, all the same, seemed in a way to belong to this level, perhaps never got as far even as the house roofs, seeing that you never heard them in the tramcar. A terrible life for those youngsters. And the girls in shawls; walked straight at you, made you step out of their way pretty quick, and even then brushed against you intentionally as if to say: If you walk here you’ve got to take the consequences. And you never saw them speaking to these poor little kids, not even speaking to them. Wouldn’t like Helen to have to walk through this street, by gum! A difference between this and that shore road outside Gourock.

      Maybe it would be best to take the tramcar at the next stop after all. He hesitated, but to stand down here frightened one; walking was bad enough, but standing was far worse; and so before he had time to weigh the matter he abruptly went on again, and as he did so he felt angry. A fine kind of street to be in a Christian town! Blatchford was quite right, by gum; streets like this had no right to exist, people could say what they liked. A warm cloud of stench floated into his face, he hurried past a fish-and-chip shop, and in a flash Eglinton Street rose before him from end to end as something complete, solid and everlasting; it had been there all the time, he realised, and it would always be there, something you had to walk round every morning and evening, that forced you to go out of your way until at last you got used to your new road and it seemed the natural one. As he passed the shop, whose crumbling door-posts seemed rotted and oozing with rancid grease, something made him glance up. Yes, there in the next close mouth she was standing, the great fat red-haired woman with her arms clasped about her overflowing breasts as if to keep them from escaping. Queer, he had clean forgotten her. But there she was, and it seemed to him that she too had been there all the time, standing at the end of the close and keeping them from escaping; and she too was something that one had to walk round, a fixed obstacle that could never be removed. He hurried on. Terrible to have to live down here; but the street was mounting, the houses were thinning, the crowds were thinning too, only a few had managed to struggle up here where he was; and they were better dressed, they were like himself, they lived in the suburbs. And his confidence began to return, and with it pity for those poor beggars who were shaken together down there to the bottom of the street like rubbish at the bottom of a sack. A church. Queer to see a church here. A group of young men, clean-shaven and with mufflers round their necks, stood bristling on the pavement and stared at him without moving aside. He stepped into the street – still muddier, still nearer the ground down here – and made to walk round them; but then he changed his mind – these fellows had to be taught a lesson! – and so he strode straight across to the tramcar halt at the other side of the street and stopped there as though waiting. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of thinking he had stepped off the pavement for them!

      But he had to wait a long time, for all the tramcars were full. Now and then he glanced across at the bristling group on the other pavement; it was almost dark now, but they were standing under a lamp-post and he could see them quite clearly. The stream of home-going pedestrians flowed more thickly now along the pavement, but where the group was stationed it made a bend, wavered, turned aside, and then flowed on again. Mansie’s anger mounted and mounted. A set of hooligans! And the sight of that long, living, helpless animal stretching away under the rows of lamps until it was lost in a dirty haze, stretching so far that it seemed tired and weighed down by its own dragging length, but yet flowed laboriously round this small hard obstacle when it came to it, made him far angrier than his own discomfiture had done. Tom wouldn’t let himself be shouldered aside like that, by gum he wouldn’t! He would teach those young hooligans a lesson; he would send them flying! And Mansie longed for Tom to appear, and when at last he got on to a tram in which there was only standing room he blamed the roughs for that too, and his anger flamed up again. They flourished in the slums, those hooligans, it suited them down to the ground, they were in clover. It was time to put an end to these plague spots; for that was what they were, just plague spots. But those other poor beggars at the bottom of the street, it was no joke for them; a fellow couldn’t close his eyes to the fact; they were a problem. Blatchford might be an atheist, but he was quite right there, people could say what they liked. The words of Gibson in the office came into his mind: ‘And what about the poor bloody little children?’ but he did not smile this time; Gibson was a bit of a card, and an extremist too, but by gum he was right. It was enough to make a fellow join the Clarion Scouts. And as he got off the tramcar at the corner of his street he half wished that it was Brand he had to meet that evening, instead of Bob Ryrie.

      NINE