Читать книгу The Staff at Simson's - Frederick Niven - Страница 7
ОглавлениеIF THESE STONES COULD SPEAK
Of the distant connection between Willie Scott (porter) and Dick Robertson (of the Production Department) we have already heard. Between Peter Pringle (porter) and Henry Braid (head of the Dress-Goods Department) there was a closer one. Its likeness to that other is only by reason of the fact that they were equally unaware of theirs.
We have to go back a little way in Peter's life to tell of it and may do so while John Simson, at ease again, Mr. Sinclair the Canadian buyer, and Mr. Alexander Maxwell are chatting between the pillars of iron and the columns of cloth. Before they begin their peregrination of the departments for Sinclair to shake hands with the heads and say, "Well, here we are again," there is time for that backward glance to the days when Peter Pringle, aged six, lived in Argyle Court with his mother—father unknown to him and uncertain to her.
There was something wrong with her that day. She trod to and fro in the room. She opened the window, looked out, and seemed to be measuring the depth of the drop, or leap, to the court below. Then she screamed, and shut the window, but kept her hand upon it, adread it might spring up, open again of its own accord. If it did—such was her disordered emotion—she would have to leap out. Wringing her hands, she dashed away. Suddenly her gaze rested on a present given her by one of her sailor friends.
It stood on the mantelpiece by way of souvenir and decoration—a bottle, though not the sort of bottle she craved and lacked the price to buy. It contained a long lizard from Central America. She stared at it, and with a look as of reprieve from agony lifted it, feverishly clawed off the oil-silk wrapping over the top, prized the cork out, and drank. The lizard in the preserving spirit seemed, to young Peter looking on, abruptly to come alive. It drifted down in pursuit of the rushing air-bubbles, swam as though to kiss his mother.
The boy was terrified. He wheeled and ran, gibbering, on to the landing and down the stairs into Argyle Court. A small girl there, a year younger than he, came to him, full of her own fancies.
"Come and collect tramcar-tickets," she suggested.
"A'richt," Peter replied—and never a word said he about the horror of the resuscitated lizard sliding its snout into the neck of the tilted bottle.
Bare-footed, they pattered together along Argyle Street to the corner of Glassford Street where was a car terminus. The trams came trundling south, and the passengers alighted, tossing their tickets away. To become possessor of these in fine pristine state was desirable. Those retrieved from the gutter were too often mud-stained. Some people had a way of folding and unfolding their tickets as they travelled, pondering their affairs. These were of no use to collectors.
A car having reached that terminus, the conductor went ahead to help the driver in carrying the whiffle-like bar of iron with its hook in the middle to the rear which, the horses in place there, became the front for the return journey. It was an interesting proceeding to watch but seldom did these children watch it, intent on the alighting passengers—and in adding to Jean's collection.
"Please, will ye gie me yer car-ticket? Aw, wife, aw, mister, please, will ye gie me yer car-ticket?"
Thus went their chant at the corner with each tram that arrived, and between whiles they stood on the grating before a baker's window to dry and warm their feet. After an hour or two, Jean had a sheaf to arrange by colours, hold in her hands fan-wise, dote upon as out in the west-end of the city the young of the merchants might dote upon the changing colours in a kaleidoscope.
It was in one of these interludes of collecting, as they stood on the baker's stank, that Peter observed a commotion at the corner. A disturbed-looking man, accompanied by two disturbed-looking lads, all "weel pitten on" (well-dressed), were walking hurriedly—in flight, in fact—away from a pursuer Peter knew well by sight and reputation, a gaunt, bearded man, dubbed in the Court the Mad Reformer. As he ran after these three with shambling legs and flying beard he screamed, "So ye hae sons of yer ain! And ye come doon among us for to debauch oor daughters."
The tram started. The pursued man, thrusting the lads before him—twins they seemed to be—leapt aboard and hurriedly passed inside. The Mad Reformer ran level with the car.
"Ye come doon for to debauch oor daughters," he shouted, "you that has a wife o' yer ain!"
"See ye later, Jean," said Peter, and pattered in pursuit.
The Reformer, being old, despite the fire of righteous or fanatical fury in his eyes, could not keep abreast of the car. It outdistanced him; but at the corner of Ingram Street it had to slow down to make a large "S" turn before passing on towards George Square. Peter was beside it and the Mad Reformer, because of that slackening of speed, was gaining astern.
".... for to debauch oor daughters ..." the boy heard him screaming to rear.
On the last lap up towards George Square, the Reformer's legs failed him. Little Peter, however, panting and puffing, was sufficiently far in advance to see the man and the lads alight at the post office and hurriedly pass up the steps into the portico. When he, following, dashed up the steps, they were not there. They must have passed through one of the doors—to right or left. Only office-boys were visible in that portico, taking letters from baskets or satchels, reading their addresses and popping them selectively into boxes along the rear wall.
Peter ran to one door to pry in, a-tiptoe, through its upper glass. No, not there. He ran to the other door.
"Dae ye think this post office was built for you to jink through?" a man in a red coat demanded of him.
"Ah'm looking for ma faither," lied Peter.
"Wad ye ken him when ye saw him?" asked the man.
Peter looked up in his face, showing very markedly the whites of his eyes beneath the iris. A pathetic panting child he suddenly seemed to the red-coated one.
"Ye canna jink through the post-office, ma lad," he announced in a gentler voice.
Peter turned and went slapping down the steps. There was the Mad Reformer, shambling towards him.
"Ah think he's gone in the end place," Peter shouted "and maybe awa' oot the door at the faur end," and so saying he rushed along the pavement westwards.
"I'll get the hoormonger!" the Reformer cried out.
A policeman, crossing from the north pavement, deliberately, unhurried, desired a word with him.
"What's the trouble wi' you?" he inquired.
The boy did not delay to observe the turn of events there but sped, instead, on to the next corner. There they were, the "weel pitten on" one and the lads. They had slipped out of the door to west and were round the corner into Ingram Street! By the time Peter reached there they were level with the British Linen Company Bank building.
A string of vans and lorries in Queen Street delayed him, but at last, dodging in front of horses' heads, sworn at by drivers, he made the crossing. There they were again. One of the lads looked over his shoulder and said something to the man. They slowed down. Peter made up on them. He was but a few steps to rear when they turned into Buchanan Street.
There something unexpected happened to the urchin. Florists' shops, restaurants from which came distracting odours, grand shops with furs in their gleaming windows, scented ladies going by with a rustle, toffs (all weel pitten on), treading the pavement as though they owned it, carriages at the kerb, and belled hansoms jingling past: he was beyond his country. He was nothing there, nothing at all. He felt sick. Perhaps he had run too fast.
He let the pursued ones pass away to be lost in the crowds of Buchanan Street, shook the hair out of his eyes and turned back, went slapping along to George Square again and the post office. The policeman was strolling along there. At any rate, the Mad Reformer had not been arrested.
Peter walked towards home and on the way made up on the Reformer, padded beside him and——
"Yon hoormonger and debaucher of oor lassies has gone awa' up Buchanan Street," he said.
The Reformer stared down upon him with dulled eyes. He appeared not to understand. He was hopeless. He had given in.
"To hell wi' everybody!" he ejaculated so vehemently that Peter moved on quickly and then, sudden as a pup that has been playing and with a whimper remembers home, ran on down Glassford Street—the incident closed.
Only when he drew near to the Court again he halted. Close to home he wondered what he was going home for. There was a crowd before the entry. It parted, and he saw two policemen, one pushing a barrow into the fairway of the street, the other quick-stepping beside it. It was a barrow of a type he had often seen, as long as a wilk or banany, or ceevil-orange barrow, but had a tarpaulin hood over it, and it was generally used for taking drunken women to the police-station. Men were yanked there on their feet between two constables if they would not go with one; clawing women were put in the barrow, strapped down, and the hood hid their shame. From under that hood usually came screamed views and opinions of the police, couched in language that filled some with delight and others with horror.
But there seemed to be no one under that hood that day. Yes, there was. Peter could tell by the way the policeman bent as he pushed it. His mother (as soon he was to be informed) was there, or all that was mortal of her. Ever since that morning, whenever he was ill, he would see her again whipping the dreadful bottle from the mantelshelf, see the lizard come alive in the spirits with swimming feet and elongating tail.
And Henry Braid of the Dress Goods Department at Simson's, a man grown, would often, in these streets, be clouded by memories of his clouded youth. For he it was who, fleeing with his brother and his dissolute father from a man like Aaron gone mad, had miserably looked over his shoulder to see if they were still pursued and reported that only the barefoot little keelie was following them.
