From the night they met at the Debating Society he began to look out for her and she looked out for him looking out for her. They grew in affection with the growing season. He had to tell her everything. He wasn’t boasting. He just had to tell her. He didn’t want to hide anything. He told her his father was a director in an engineering firm, he told her his mother was the graduate daughter of a defunct Conservative m.p. He described the big house where he lived. It was in an old-world residential outpost, an Edwardian if not Victorian survival from the days when Tordoch was still rural. His parents weren’t happy to have him attending Collinsburn. They regretted not moving him to a fee-paying school in the west end when Collinsburn changed from a local Academy to a regional Comprehensive. But he was so near his exams for university entrance it seemed best to leave him where he was.
He mentioned one of his mother’s complaints. She was brought up in a house with a maid that lived in, and now she couldn’t get anything better in her own house than an unreliable daily-help, a dismal widow who scamped the work.
In class-conscious retaliation Martha gave him an account of her domestic troubles. She had to do it all herself.
‘It’s worst in the winter. I’m up at six in the morning. Oh my, oh my, it’s that cold! And it’s that dark! I’ve to get the fire lit and start making my dad’s porridge and give him a shout but he won’t get up till I’ve got the fire going. Then when I’ve got rid of him I get my three young sisters up and make their breakfast and while they’re taking their cornflakes I get my two wee brothers up and after I’ve got them dressed and fed and got them ready for school I get Jean up and wash her and dress her. Jean’s only three. And by that time I’ve got to get myself ready for school.’
‘But what’s your mother doing?’ he asked.
‘She stays in bed till I take her a cup of tea before I go out,’ said Martha. ‘She’s a poor soul really. She doesn’t keep well. She gets up when we’re all away and looks after Jean.’
He brimmed with pity and fell in love.
But let’s have no misunderstanding. Although she was Martha and not Mary she never felt sorry for herself. She never saw herself as Martha in Beth-ania, the House of Care. She was no spiritless drudge, no pallid, thinlegged, flatchested, dullfaced little skivvy, but a lively, chatty, slim, brighteyed, clearskinned young blonde, promising at seventeen to be what blondes are vulgarly supposed to be anyway, that is, lushus – if she lived long enough.
‘It must be interesting,’ he said, not quite insincerely. ‘Being one of a big family.’
‘It’s a bit of a bind at times,’ she said. ‘You never get any peace. You’re never alone. I’d love to be alone once in a while.’
They were sitting there in Ianello’s, quite content, with a coffee in front of them. Sometimes their hands touched across the table as they spoke, but they never actually held hands. He made no show of affection in public, nor did she. They despised teenagers that did. They considered themselves older, more mature.
Their conversation was disturbed by the loud entrance of Gerald Provan and his company.
‘See me in the morning, says he,’ Gerald was shouting as he came in. ‘I’ll fix him, the auld grey bastard! I’ll get ma maw on to him again. She sorted him last time all right.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Martha.
‘What are you laughing at, Poggy?’ said Gerald. ‘Think I’m feart for him?’
‘Ach, him!’ Poggy shouted, shoulder to shoulder with him at the counter. ‘Who’s feart for him? It’s a kick on the balls he needs.’
He was a big lad, Gerald’s loyal bondman.
Enrico Ianello came flustered from the backshop, fluttered at them, wanting peace and quiet, good business with decorum. His parents had left Naples with similar ambitions for the unattainable. He was a smallish man, plump, darkeyed, darkskinned, a bit of a singer when he was in the mood. He had a good moustache and a double chin. Mr Alfred said he looked like Balzac. Granny Lyons had never seen Balzac, but she liked Enrico and hoped her nephew was being kind.
‘Where’s Smudge?’ Gerald called out, turning round to face his followers.
‘They didn’t used to come here,’ Graeme whispered.
A thin little swarthy miasmal wraith of a boy joined Gerald at the counter.
‘Here, boss,’ he grinned. His teeth were yellow and deficient.
‘Good lad,’ said Gerald.
‘Did you see him pick up the knife?’ Smudge shouted.
‘They’re taking over,’ said Martha.
‘I bet you he tries to say it was me had it,’ Gerald shouted back.
‘You’d think they were across the street from each other, the way they shout,’ said Graeme.
‘I’ll say you never,’ Poggy shouted. ‘Don’t worry, pal.’
‘Let’s get outa here,’ said Martha. ‘As they say on those old fillims on the telly.’
They rose at once together. They were always en rapport. They went out, backed by a medley of jeering fare- wells from their comprehensive juniors.
‘Ta-ta, toffee-nose.’
‘Wur we annoying you, blondie?’
‘Gie us a wee kiss, sugar-lumps!’
Poggy knew her name. He jumped, waving to her.
‘Hey, Martha Weipers! If I get a car will ye come oot wi me?’
She went red in the face.
‘Hoy! Windscreen-wipers! D’ye no hear me?’
Graeme held the door open, head up, and handed her out.
They stood a while fretting at the bus stop where Mr Briggs had waited half-an-hour earlier.
‘I’m not going back there,’ she said. ‘It’s getting worse.’
‘Where else can we go?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. But don’t ask me to go back there.’
She looked so upset he made up his mind to persuade her to meet him at night as she used to do.
It probably doesn’t matter, but in case you think this is all made up here are the names and ages of Martha’s brothers and sisters. [‘The bricks are alive at this day to testify it; therefore deny it not.’]
Mary, 15.
Rose, 12 [who has her own place in this true narrative, and of whom Martha once said to Graeme, ‘She’s a bit dopey. Dreamy I mean. I don’t think she’ll ever be a great scholar. But she’s quite pretty. And awfully good-natured. Do anything for anybody.’].
Christine, 10.
Angus, 8.
Billy, 6.
Jean, 3.
Martha looked after them all. Her mother was married at twenty-two, so she was thirty-six when Jean was born. She wasn’t an unintelligent woman, but bearing seven children had sapped her strength, rearing them had narrowed her mind, and the hard years had discouraged her. Sometimes she felt life wasn’t worth the living.
Martha’s father was a big strong man who liked work and beer. He had a lot of commonsense about everything in general and anything in particular. He was very fond of Martha but he never showed it. He thought it wouldn’t be decent for a man his age to embrace a girl of seventeen, so he treated her with a cold obliquity. He ignored