Authors: Eleanor Thom
Wee Betsy, 1955
I must be a wicked lassie. The worst thing in the world happened. It was the middle of the night when a manny came to the door. I heard them hammering loud on the knocker. I thought it was strange for somebody to turn up so late, but then it could’ve just been Jugs, or one of Uncle Wullie’s friends. Sometimes they’re too drunk to walk home. I’d been having a good dream, tucked up all toasty next to Mammy. So when Jeannie’s feet creaked on the floorboards downstairs I just rolled over, hoping I’d be able to go back into the dream. Jeannie made a strange noise, like a fish bone was caught in her throat, and then she started crying. I felt sick.
I did things to Uncle Jock that weren’t nice. Just the other day he came upstairs to have a cup of tea. He was sitting on the wee sofa smoking a ciggie, and I was watching him while I gobbled up my dinner. A wee flame fluttered onto his shirt. I saw it burning, like an orange star near his collar. It didn’t go out. Uncle Jock was reading a book to Rachel, who’d already finished her tea. He was doing silly voices and making her laugh.
‘Uncle Jock there’s a bit of ash on your shirt and it’s still on fire.’ That’s what I should have said. But I never did, cause I’m a sly fox. That’s what Daddy calls me, sly as a fox that one. I liked the feeling of knowing what was going to happen next. The way the Batchie Woman knows. I narrowed my eyes and stared so hard at the wee flame I forgot to eat, just sat there with a wicked glint in my eye till Mammy told me to stop dithering. A hole scorched through Jock’s shirt.
‘Oooyah! Owie! Nipped me,’ he said, startled out of his silly reading voice. He made a show of it, thumping his chest like a monkey to put the flame out and saying ‘Ooo, ooo, ooo!’, and everyone laughed, even Jock. But it was his best shirt, he said so after, and now he’s gone and I hate that I did such a wicked thing.
I did other bad things too. I took some of his comics without asking, and I looked in his drawer once to try and find out if he had a girlfriend. I burnt his boot by putting it into the fire, and Granny said he was already cursed, even before that happened.
It’s the funeral today. Near the grave there’s a tree with rust-colour branches. Granny thinks it’s lucky, but I can’t see anything special about it. It’s a stupid tree like all the others. Daddy says not to listen to my granny at the minute cause she’s been fretting and not right in the head. She cries and talks about Jock and Francis and Granddad as if they were still alive, and I’m supposed to be giving her some peace, which is what she needs.
Peace is where Mammy says Jock is at now. As if peace was really a place. At Peace. Not too different from being at Lossie, at school, at the baths, or at the sweetie shop just down the road. But it’s more like in
Journey into Space
, when something goes wrong and the crew are lost out in the universe. At least it’s meant to be a nice place. I read the gravestones next to Jock’s. A lady in the one beside him isn’t at Peace, she’s at Rest, another place people say you go when you die. I’m not stupid. I know it’s just pretend.
There are names and dates on Jock’s gravestone. Lots of people brought money to pay for the letters and numbers. I count the dates. Jock was twenty-one. He was nearly twentytwo. I know that because he wanted to go on a train on his birthday, and I had already made him a card with the number twos drawn out, and with different colours and patterns inside.
The grass round the hole is soft and thick, sparkling with
raindrops and cold sunlight. It smells of the picnics we go on in the summer when I run round with bare feet and have to mind the thistles. Coiled up bits of leaves have blown into small piles near the graves and the tree trunks. They would have been nice colours once, but now they’re all the same brown, brittle and dull with holes in, like the wings of dead moths that we find in the rags. Wee bits of the brown leaves break up and fly away in the wind, right up over the tree tops. Other bits sink into the soil and help to grow the grass and the trees they fell from. Above us the branches already have new buds, all there cause of the dead things in the earth. We learnt about it at school.
Everyone is being nice to me and Rachel. Miss Webster came to visit already, and brought two yellow cakes, one each. I wanted mine straight away and Mammy gave it to me on a plate while she was talking to my teacher. I took a first mouthful of the treat, but it tasted too sticky and sweet. I got a choking feeling, like I was eating fur or feathers. The icing stuck to the roof of my mouth and I had to close my eyes tight to not cry. But it would have been bad manners not to finish. I gulped it down, forcing it bit by bit. Miss Webster said we could come back to school when we were ready. Granny’s finally got rid of the beasties in our hair. But we might go to a new school now. Daddy says we’re moving on. I said thank you to Miss Webster, anyway, forcing another bite of cake, which made my heart sore. That was what they said happened to Jock. Something was wrong with his heart. Granny doesn’t believe them, and I don’t either. Jock loved everyone. There was nothing wrong with his heart.
Behind Jock’s gravestone, the minister’s making a speech about understanding and forgiveness, the Lord God Almighty and lambs and sinners. I’m a sinner now so I can’t look him in the eye. Instead I stare down into the muddy hole, wondering if I’ll spot a worm. I keep a watch on Daddy, the Bissaker and Jugs, who are holding one side of the coffin. I want to make sure they
are all all right. On the other side are three cousins I don’t know. Daddy said folk came from miles away after other relatives spread the news on the road. I never knew we had so many relatives. In the crowd I catch sight of Big Rachel, the lady with the long red hair who gave me the special toffee, but most of them are strangers.
The coffin wobbles on its way down. I watch it disappear into the neatly cut gap in the grass. Lots of people are crying now, holding handkerchiefs over their faces so no one will see. I don’t want them to be crying, especially not my daddy. Big Mary howls the loudest, and I wish she would shut up. She hardly knew my Uncle Jock, even if Granny wanted them to get married. Jock didn’t love her. But there was nothing wrong with his heart.
A man in a black suit comes round with a velvet bag and everyone puts their hands in. I wonder are they giving money, like you do for the people at the showies? Will it be for us? But then the man shakes the bag in front of me.
My fingers touch something cold and wettish at the bottom. I pull my hand out again quickly. It’s covered in earth, all grubby in the grooves of my palm and itchy under my fingernails. Mammy scrubbed my hands this morning till they were sore and pink, and now I’ll look like I’ve been tattie hauking in my Sunday best. I see the dirt on my skin and want to greet again. It reminds me of ripping up the grass in the park that night, and the secret I told the policeman. No one knows about that.
I’m waiting to be told off for getting clatty, but Mammy takes a whole fistful of the mud and divides it in two. She gets me to hold my hand out and gives me half, telling me not to drop it on the ground this time. It goes into the grave! I don’t want us to bury Jock ourselves, but one by one people throw handfuls of earth down onto the coffin. Granny goes first and Daddy has to help her away again cause she looks like she might throw herself
into the hole. Then him and the Bissaker and Jugs go up. The earth hitting the wood makes a horrible wet noise, a slapping, chopping sound.
Mammy pushes me and Rachel forward and I peer over the edge. The top of the coffin was clean and covered in flowers before, but now it’s dark with mudpies. I hold my fist tight and look up at Father O’Brien’s stern face. I think he remembers me from Sunday School. Mammy whispers in my ear to throw my earth into the hole now, to stay near to Jock for ever. I hold my hand out over the coffin and uncurl my fingers. To stay near to Jock for ever.
For as long as I can, I look at the little grains of earth scattered over the coffin, searching for the ones that were mine. They’ll be there till the end of time, next to where Jock is sleeping. Before I turn away I have to say sorry for another thing, the wickedest thing of all that I did to Jock. I have to make it better quick, cause I know I’ll be pulled away from the grave any minute, just like I was pulled away from Granny’s door when Jock was in her room.
He was in there for days! I saw him through a crack in Granny’s door. He was lying on the table. Mammy said he was sleeping peacefully and I wasn’t to go in. I wasn’t to disturb him. Only the adults were allowed. He was under a blanket and Granny was rocking next to him in her chair. Jeannie was doing the fire and making them all tea, and Daddy was sitting on Granny’s bed with his head in his hands. Mammy caught me peeking and she pulled me back up the stairs. She shouted at me, shouting in a shooshing voice so they wouldn’t hear in Granny’s room, where there needed to be peace.
Earlier today they opened the door so I could kiss Uncle Jock goodbye. He was still on the table in the coffin, but the blanket was gone, and under it he was wearing his station uniform. The button was back on his waistcoat, the one my Mammy said she would mend for him. No one had their head in their hands any
more. They were all standing up now, gathered round him in their best clothes. Granny’s eyes looked swollen and red. Mammy had her head down, like us in assembly when we say ‘Let us pray.’ Rachel was staring at me and Nancy was being hushed in Big Ellen’s arms. Daddy and Jeannie and the Bissaker and Jugs and Annie were there too, all waiting for me and beckoning me over. But I stayed in the doorway. Uncle Jock looked pale and cold.
Rachel did it. Mammy lifted her up and she kissed him on the hand. They even made Baby Nancy kiss him on the forehead, and they put a lock of her precious golden hair into his pocket. But I was tall enough to reach Uncle Jock all by myself. I was his favourite because we listened to the wireless together. And I said no.
Someone takes my hand and gently pulls me away from the grave. I can’t see my sisters or my mammy any more cause my face is tight and sore as knots that won’t undo. I don’t even know if there are tears on my cheeks, but the cold’s stinging them and my chest feels like it’s been squeezed empty.
The lady holding my hand says she’ll take us with her now. She puts an arm round my shoulders and holds something out for me to take. That’s the first thing I can see that isn’t a blur, the hanky clasped in her fingers like a white lily. I take it and the lady presses me to her side and strokes my hair back. I’m still standing there frozen, just holding the hanky, so she puts it up to my face for me.
When I can catch my breath I look up. It’s Big Rachel, Nancy in her arms, and Wee Rachel walking on her other side. There’s no toffee today and I’m glad. I’m fed up of sweeties. The sun in Big Rachel’s hair glows the same orange as the spark from Jock’s cigarette. I stay right by her side and let her lead me away from the grave. The path through the woods crunches under my shoes; the bushes rustle; we see a fox. A sly fox that one, I think, and have to swallow. Wee Rachel finds a pretty feather stuck to
some bark. Maybe it’s a heron’s. She draws it again and again along her cheek.
The things I never had time to say to Uncle Jock start to sink, like the dead leaves that feed the trees. I feel them hardening in the pit of my stomach with the other things I can’t ever tell.
Big Rachel takes us to the budgie house. It’s down a street near the gasworks where we get our cinders, just past a place called the Order Pot, where Granny says they used to drown witches. I’ve only been to the budgie house three times before, twice when my wee sisters were being born and once when Granddad died. The budgies belong to an old lady who Big Rachel calls Mrs Mellor. They have a room all to themselves at the back of the house, where they swing on pine cones and bells hanging from strings, flap their sherbet wings, and stare out of the window at the rolling thunder clouds and the railway line to Lossie.
Mrs Mellor’s been expecting us. She calls us darlings, and when we go inside there’s a sponge cake on the table and four places have been laid with a proper china tea set. But before tea we have to look at the budgies. Mrs Mellor is very proud of her wee birdies. My favourite ones are purple with speckled black bits on their heads. I’d like one to come and land on my hand, so I hold it out and pretend I have some food, but none of them are fooled. Wee Rachel leaves the feather she found at Spynie for them to play with.
We sit at the table and Mrs Mellor asks do we want to listen to some music? I don’t really, but Rachel nods her head, and Mrs Mellor puts a record onto the gramophone. It’s an old song that goes ‘Mairsy doats and dozy doats and little somethingorothers’. The words make Rachel giggle madly and she has to hold onto the seat of her chair not to fall off. Big Rachel strokes her hand down my back and we smile at each other just a bit, cause my wee sister’s so silly.
I like the plates we eat off at the budgie house. They are so
clean and pretty, with roses painted on them, and the knives are always shiny bright. They make everything taste nicer, and I get quite hungry watching Mrs Mellor cutting the cake and scraping the spare butter icing onto the rosy pattern of one of the plates. I decide I do want a piece, and soon I’m licking the icing off my top lip, listening to tiny teaspoons clinking round the teacups and the jingling and chittering of the birds in the next room.
Mrs Mellor’s house has carpets and soft chairs, and always smells good. It’s the nicest house I’ve ever been in, like houses in the pictures. Big Rachel helps her keep it clean.
The best thing of all about the budgie house is that Mrs Mellor has a television. When we’ve finished our cake Big Rachel says she’ll get to work now, and she takes our plates away and starts washing them up. Mrs Mellor sends us into the front room with apples cut into slices. We sit on the carpet with our backs leaning against the settee, comfy except that the carpet is rough and itchy on my shins. I pull my kilt down and my socks up as high as they will go. We share the apple and watch
Muffin the Mule
,
Andy Pandy
and a programme about a zoo before Big Rachel comes through and says it’s time for us to say thank-you-very-much-for-having-us to Mrs Mellor.