Rue End Street Page 9

  I wiped my nose with my sleeve. He patted me on the shoulder.

  ‘You want to be careful of these things too,’ he said quietly, tapping Tulip’s horns. ‘Lethal.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Keep your eyes on ’em.’

  The barn was warm from the cows and dark and smelly, and the cows were lined up in their stalls waiting patiently for us to begin, three on each side with chains hung loosely round their necks and attached to the wall. Suddenly there was the sound of running water, only it wasn’t running water. It was the making of a country pancake right there on the stone floor at my feet, on my feet actually, to be more exact.

  ‘Oh,’ I cried out.

  ‘Shoosh now,’ he said. ‘What did I tell you about noise? Now, that’s the other reason for not standing behind them. You never know when that’s going to happen. Back out to the tap and wash it off your feet. My apologies, young lady. I should have given you some gumboots. You go now to the house and ask my wife why she’s not down here yet and if she has any spare gumboots, which she does. Off you go now.’

  So off I went. Mr Tulloch and I had songs we liked to sing. I’d had lifts on his milk cart loads of times. The very first time we had sung songs and chatted and he’d given me some very good advice about finding my mum and Mavis who were both still lost at that time. Then afterwards he had gone round all the other farms where other people from Clydebank were staying after the bombing and asked if they had anyone called Mavis aged four, and it was his brother who said yes. That’s how I found Mavis in the end. So Mr Tulloch was kind and a good friend. But for some reason the idea of singing filled me with dread that day and brought me out in a sweat. I had no idea why.

  As I crossed the yard I squinted between the buildings, trying to catch a view of the huts on the hill opposite, but the farm was in a dip in the valley and hemmed in by giant sycamores turning for autumn and I couldn’t see beyond them.

  When I reached the farmhouse door I considered forgetting the whole thing, accepting my fate and returning to Clydebank to my old school with its bullies, to the rubble and the stink left behind by the bombing, to living in someone else’s house and not having the woods to run about in and the rope swing on the big beech tree at the top of the field. Perched on the doorstep I imagined giving up any idea of staying in Carbeth and wondered whether my mum’s plan wasn’t the best after all. But I wasn’t there long before a stout lady in a pinafore and pink slippers opened the door.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m... I’m... I... I...’

  ‘You must be the girl with the sister,’ she said. ‘Come on then. We’re late enough already. Look at the state of you. Here, put a pair of these on.’ She shoved me towards a line of gumboots of all shapes and sizes. ‘Woops! Not much of you is there, hen?’ she said as I clattered against the wall.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said to the wall and grabbed a pair of boots that looked my size.

  Mrs Tulloch lifted a pair of boots too. Hers were shiny with fresh mud and she kicked her pink slippers off into the space they left, slipping first one chubby stockinged foot into a boot and then the other. Plumping down onto the step I pulled at my shoe buckles, yanked off my shoes, straightened my socks, which were wet and brown, and shoved my feet into the boots. They were far too big, but there wasn’t time to choose another pair. Mrs Tulloch was already haring across the yard faster than you’d imagine someone that size could.

  ‘Right, at last,’ said Mr Tulloch. ‘Take this bucket into the store on the other side of the yard where there’s a big sack of grain. Fill it, bring it back and put a little feed in each of these mangers so they’ve got something interesting to do while we sneak back and get their milk. On you go.’

  Mrs Tulloch took a little three-legged stool from a shelf and got down beside one of the cows. ‘Come on, young Dahlia,’ she said in a singsong voice. ‘Give us your milk, then. Go on, for the sake of the children and good strong bones.’

  I took Mr Tulloch’s bucket and went for the grain. A flock of little starlings followed me across the yard. The bucket rattled in my hand and the door squeaked open. I filled the bucket from a sack marked ‘Beveridge’, which made me shiver, and staggered back to the byre with the starlings all chit-chattering around me. Mr and Mrs Tulloch were both milking and the milk skooshed into their buckets rapidly and rhythmically as if they were racing against time, or at least against each other. Neither of them spoke so I did as I’d been told and filled the first manger with grain using a scoop that was hanging on a peg.

  ‘Talk to ’em, Lenny,’ said Mr Tulloch in a quiet voice, ‘so they know you’re there. Tell them what you did at school yesterday, anything.’ There was a low moo. ‘Oi, Tulip, mind your p’s and q’s. Ladies present.’

  I didn’t know what to say. I’d been picking peas the day before instead of doing my twelve times table. There was nothing to tell. A heavy silence followed.

  Mr Tulloch started to whistle. Mrs Tulloch sang along. I resigned myself to not speaking and to being in trouble for not doing as I was told. I could be silent. There was nothing wrong with silence. Why talk if you have nothing to say? I knew the song they were singing. It was ‘Ye Banks and Braes’. I even knew some of the words, but I couldn’t sing. Absolutely not. There would be no singing from me.

  ‘Come on, Lenny,’ said Mr Tulloch, and he sang; ‘Ye banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon, how can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?’

  ‘Maybe she doesn’t know the words,’ said Mrs Tulloch. ‘Maybe she’s shy. Are you shy, girl-with-asister?’ I didn’t answer. ‘There you go, she’s shy. What did I tell you?’

  ‘Lenny’s not shy, are you, Lenny?’ said Mr Tulloch. ‘Lenny? And we’ve sung that song before.’

  Another silence.

  ‘Maybe she’s shy today,’ Mr Tulloch went on. ‘She’s not usually shy, are you Lenny? Lenny?’

  ‘N... n... no,’ I said with great difficulty. Somehow the words just wouldn’t come out.

  ‘See? Told you.’

  I kept still, my hand and the scoop poised over a manger, and wondered what was happening to me. My mouth had become thick and spongy, like when George knocked me flat against a tree stump last year when I stole his last sandwich for Mavis. (It was the same day he and Laura from the other farm had been carrying on down at the pool. It was his own fault really and Mavis was starving from swimming anyway.)

  ‘You alright, love?’ said Mrs Tulloch. There was a pause in the skoosh-skoosh in her bucket.

  ‘Mmm,’ I said.

  It was like there was no breath left in me. My body was heaving, trying to do its work, but my mouth had clamped itself shut and wouldn’t open. There was a loud long moo from one of the cows waiting outside as if to say, ‘Get a move on and never mind her.’ It made me jump.

  Mrs Tulloch responded by skoosh-skooshing into her bucket with even greater speed.

  ‘Sss... ,’ I began. I wanted to say sorry for not speaking, for not singing, for not being able to breathe. For not being the normal cheery person I usually was having fun learning how to milk cows, which was something I’d wanted to do for ages, ever since I’d visited Mr Tulloch one time not long after we arrived in Carbeth. It was after he brought Mavis back. Mr Tait and I went to take him a present of some oranges to thank him.

  Neither Mr Tulloch nor his wife spoke. I edged back round the cow whose manger I had just filled until I was in the middle of the byre near the country pancake with lots of cows’ behinds facing my way. I didn’t know where to put myself and I couldn’t see either Mr or Mrs Tulloch because they were both bending down to their cows, so I tiptoed back towards the door and leant against the cold stone wall and trembled.

  ‘Sss... ,’ I said, but I don’t think they heard me. ‘Sorry!’

  ‘Lenny, where have you got to with that feed?’ said Mr Tulloch. ‘The cows need their grub just like you do.’

  ‘C... c... coming!’ I said.

  But the nearest cow was not standing straight in its stall. I
t had its head against one wooden partition and its back-side against the other. Danger at both ends.

  I began to hum. I hummed ‘Row row row your boat’ which was one of my favourites. It should have been sung noisily and sometimes we did it on the floor at school rowing a pretend boat, but that day I just hummed it and probably no-one caught anything, not even the cow, who stayed exactly where she was. She turned towards me and fixed her big brown eyes on me as if she was daring me to move her.

  ‘Sc... sc... scuse me,’ I said.

  ‘That’s Nasturtium you’ve got there,’ said Mr Tulloch. ‘We call her Nasty for short because she’s always difficult. I’ll do her.’ He put down his own bucket, which was full of creamy milk, then took the feed bucket and scoop from me. Then he shoved Nasturtium out of the way so he could fill her manger.

  ‘There you go.’ He gave me back the bucket. ‘Try Poppy over there. Go on. She won’t bite. She’s a darling.’

  There was a clear space past Poppy so I filled hers no problem. Mr Tulloch went back to milking, whistling. Poppy turned her big head to look at me and I saw she only had one horn. The other had broken off right at the root so there was a dip in her head. The skin was brown and scabby round about. It was like things I saw in the bombing and afterwards when people arrived in Carbeth and stayed in our hut, the one we borrowed when we first came. Poppy’s wound was dark and grimy, like the wounds on someone’s leg, and I thought I could smell that burny smell like meat you’ve forgotten on a stove, which is daft because I couldn’t have smelled things like that because I was in a byre. It gave me such a fright I dropped the bucket. Poppy lurched away and swung her head round to me so her nose bumped me hard in the tummy. Then Nasturtium started mooing, as if she was saying ‘leave Poppy alone’, then Tulip, and they all started up and Mrs Tulloch cried out and stood up and raced back to the middle of the byre with the milk slopping out of her bucket.

  ‘What in God’s name happened there?’ she said above the din of mooing and rattling chains. ‘Lenny, get out of there,’ she shouted. ‘Davie? You out?’

  I came out of the stall and ran to the back wall. Mr Tulloch, whose name was Davie, stood in the middle leaning against a divide.

  ‘I’m alright. I’m with Tulip,’ he said, ‘dozy as a dormouse.’

  The mooing spread to the herd outside like a chorus in a round. Then Mr Tulloch began to sing too, in a quiet voice, not low, not a bass like my dad used to sing, and not soft and gentle like Mr Tait either, but somewhere in between, slow and sweet, so that to begin with I thought he’d gone loopy or was crying. It made the hair prickle on my neck but the cows began to calm down.

  ‘The Lord’s my shepherd,’ he sang, ‘I’ll not want. He makes me down to lie.’

  Then Mrs Tulloch joined in. ‘In pastures green, He leadeth me.’

  And I sang too, but in a teeny tiny whisper. ‘The quiet waters by.’

  Mrs Tulloch picked up my bucket and quickly filled the remaining mangers, and between the singing and the grub, a miraculous amazing thing happened: with a tinkle of their chains the cows swung quietly back to their mangers, even Nasturtium, and were soon crunching happily on their feed, as if the commotion had never happened.

  Mr and Mrs Tulloch continued singing. They knew all the words whereas I, in my panic, had forgotten most of them and could only hum. Mrs Tulloch pointed at a brush that was leaning in a corner along with a shovel and gave me a little push in that direction so I did as I was told and set about brushing up the feed that had fallen all over the floor. But what they probably didn’t know was that I had sung that hymn not long before at Mr Tait’s funeral, which made it difficult to sing again, impossible actually, if you want to know the truth. And what’s more I wanted to be as far away from Poppy and her wounded head as I could possibly be, and it took all my strength to stay cleaning up the mess and not run out of there as quickly as quick. To make matters worse, the tears started falling down my cheeks while I was down there sweeping so I couldn’t see the grain or the floor or anything else for that matter. Mrs Tulloch came and took the bucket from me and then the brush and shovel which was full of grain and straw and was shoogling about in my hand ready to empty itself back on the floor.

  Mrs Tulloch gave me a little squeeze and, still singing, lead me out of the byre and back to the house. Molly the collie dog followed us, leaping and barking as if the most exciting thing in the world had just happened.

  ‘You get your shoes back on and I’ll be back to you in a jiffy once we’ve got these cows milked. We’re late already and they get sore and impatient if they’re left too long. Big deep breath, okay? No more tears?’

  I nodded and sat on a little stool that was in the porch and started to push the first boot off with my toes.

  ‘That’s a good girl. Then we can have a nice cup of tea and you can tell me what’s wrong.’ She patted my head. Then she patted Molly’s head too and Molly looked up first at her and then at me and pushed her wet nose under my hand, licked the snotters off my face then bounced after Mrs Tulloch’s retreating back.

  As I watched them go I thought about how stupid I was, how alone, the indignity of it all and how cold it was without Mr Tait to go home to. I sat there on the doorstep for a few minutes and cried and wished there was a big hole that would open up that I could fall into and go to sleep forever.

  What was wrong with me? Why didn’t I just sing along and fill the feeders?

  Chapter 10

  I didn’t wait for Mrs Tulloch to come back that day and I didn’t go back the next day at milking time either. I didn’t go to the Halfway House tea room at the weekend like the lady had said or to any of the other farms as I’d planned, not even Mrs MacLeod with her carrots. In fact I completely stopped thinking about finding work, went to school as normal and accepted my fate.

  But strange and horrible things kept happening to me, especially at school.

  Miss Read asked me to take a message to the bleach works over the road. Apparently we were clean out of matches. So off I went.

  ‘Mm... mmm... Miss Read,’ I said. ‘Sent me for mm... mm... mmmatches.’ I clamped a hand over my mouth.

  In her pure white pinny, her white headscarf, her white hair and her very pale face, the lady at the bleach-works looked like she’d been bleached herself. She looked at me in surprise. Her pale thin eyebrows shot up her forehead and she laughed.

  ‘Michty me!’ she said. ‘That didn’t want to come out.’

  My face burned. I tried a smile. She went inside to fetch the matches and I turned my hot face to the wind.

  ‘Thanks,’ I mumbled when she came back, and scurried off.

  That afternoon I was asked to read the register. This was a treat awarded to the best behaved person in the class. I had never done it before, but that day I hadn’t wandered off when I was sent for the matches or stayed too long at the bleach-works or bothered people for apples. (The people next door had a tasty apple tree completely covered in fruit.) I hadn’t talked in class either because I hadn’t talked at all because I was scared to try in case this strange horrible thing happened to my mouth again and it went to jelly.

  I stood up and went to the front of the class. The blood seemed to drain from my head down to my feet and then quickly back up again. Senga, my back-tofront friend from the farm, gave me a big thumbs up. For the second time that day my face was scorched and my throat tightened like the day Senga decided strangling me with my scarf was funny.

  ‘Anne Sc... Scott,’ I said.

  ‘Here!’

  ‘Mm... mm... May Goodson,’ I said.

  ‘Yup!’

  ‘Here will do nicely,’ said Miss Read.

  ‘Here!’

  ‘Enough!’

  ‘Jjj... jjj... John Harris,’ I said.

  ‘Hh... hh... here!’

  Sniggers rippled round the room. My throat ached. I paused. Tears were forming, hot in my hot face.

  ‘Sss... sss... sss...’

  ‘Stop being silly, Lenny,�
� said Miss Read.

  ‘Sss...’ I took a deep breath. ‘Senga!’ I had to shout this to make sure it got out.

  ‘Right, Catherine,’ said Miss Read. ‘You can take over. Lenny, go, you, and sit down immediately.’

  ‘Sss... sss... sssorry.’

  They all fell about laughing and I stumbled back to my seat and hid my face in my hands.

  At the end of the day I tried hard to sneak off but Dougie, bad George’s wee brother, came and stood in my way.

  ‘L... L... L... look at L... L... lippy L... L... Lenny,’ he said.

  ‘That was so funny,’ said Senga, pushing him out the way and dragging me by the collar. ‘Where d’you get that idea? Miss Read was furious. My uncle does that all the time. Nobody talks to him any more. He’s a complete freak.’

  ‘Thanks, Senga,’ I said without difficulty. ‘I wasn’t joking. I don’t know what happened.’

  ‘D’you wanna go to the ruined cottage today? John Harris stole his dad’s cigarettes.’

  ‘Cigarettes?’

  ‘Shh. Miss Read’s only through that door.’

  I stared at her miserably.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ she said. ‘You’ve been a dumbo recently anyway.’

  She flounced out through the door.

  ‘Lenny?’ It was Miss Read. ‘Can you come and help me put the slates back in the cupboard please?’

  I knew what that meant. It meant a big bad row.

  But I was wrong.

  ‘Now, Lenny, what happened in there?’

  ‘N... nothing.’

  ‘You’re not pretending, are you? Or are you?’

  ‘N... no, Miss Read, honest I’m not.’ Speaking very fast I got to the end of my sentence.

  ‘Careful with those slates. We have too many broken already.’

  They were heavy because I was trying to carry as many as possible so I could get away.

  ‘Why weren’t you here those couple of days last week?’ she said.

  ‘Mmmy mmmum was sick,’ I said.

  ‘I was worried. Rosie said it was