‘The street’s very quiet for once.’
‘You mean nobody saw you? I think your trouble is you get frightened coming here.’
‘I suppose I do. But you know what they’d do if they saw me. Hide in a close and yell after me. Something obscene probably.’
‘I had a feeling you’d be round tonight.’
‘Well, I thought, seeing it’s Christmas. I’ve brought you something.’
He gave her a bottle of whisky as well as the usual money.
‘I know you like your dram,’ he said.
‘Not any more than yourself.’
She poured him a drink. The quantity showed she wasn’t a mean woman.
‘You have one too,’ he said.
‘Well, seeing it’s Christmas.’
‘To my favourite aunt,’ he said.
‘The only auntie you’ve got now,’ she replied to his toast, unflattered.
‘The only one I ever really knew. My mother’s favourite sister you were. And it was you helped me when I was a student. Don’t think I forget.’
‘I had money then I haven’t got now.’
‘If you need any more you’ve only to tell me.’
‘No, you give me plenty. You shouldn’t bother.’
‘I promised my mother. Anyway, I owe you it. For the time you paid my fees if nothing else.’
‘Well, as I say, I had it then. It was a good shop I had before all that trouble. And there was nobody else to give it to.’
‘Is your clock slow?’
‘No, it’s right. Are you in a hurry?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Not particularly? You mean you want to get away round the pubs?’
‘I’m not desperate. I was just thinking. It was you gave me my first glass of whisky.’
‘I always did my best for you.’
They laughed together.
‘I suppose it will be a lot of low dives tonight, in that coat,’ she said.
‘I suppose so. I like to mix with the common people sometimes. You know, go around incognito.’
He laughed alone.
‘You still never think of getting married?’ she asked suddenly.
‘If a man thinks about it he won’t,’ he said. ‘I mean, you either do or you don’t. You don’t think about it.’
‘You think too much. You should let yourself go. Get a good woman and marry her and get out of those digs you’re in.’
‘I’m too old for that now.’
‘A man’s never too old for that.’
‘I’m happier away from women,’ he said.
He elevated his glass sacramentally and plainchanted.
‘The happiest hours that e’er I spent were spent among the glasses-O!’
They communicated in silence after she poured another drink. The little clock went on ticking patiently because there was nothing else it could do. Mr Alfred said into himself the first line of a poem he had lately read, ‘The house was quiet and the world was calm’. It called up the small hours when he used to read poetry alone in his room and write little poems for himself. He was taken back, at peace with a glass in his hand and a verse in his head.
From a distance a merry cry rocked in the street. It rode above an advancing babble and rolled under the window.
‘Haw, Granny Lyons!’
Repeated.
Chanted loudly, chanted slowly.
‘Et ô ces voix d’enfants,’ said Mr Alfred, ‘chantant dans…’
But he was frightened.
‘I’ve been expecting them,’ said Granny Lyons.
She was calm. Mr Alfred was shaking. He forgot his whisky. There was an edge on the antiphonal voices now.
‘Granny Lyons, ye auld hoor!’
‘Sounds like Wilma,’ said Granny Lyons.
‘Why do they call you granny?’ said Mr Alfred, fretting. ‘I’ve never understood that.’
‘No idea,’ said his aunt, shrugging. ‘They always have. Since the day I came here. I’ve been old witch and old bitch and old granny. Doesn’t bother me.’
‘Here!’ yelled a girl outside. ‘Here’s your Christmas coming up!’
‘Jennifer!’ said Granny Lyons. ‘Quick!’
She stepped smartly to one side of the window and signalled Mr Alfred to get to the other.
First, a hail of stones against the glass. Next, a long rude ring at the doorbell. Mr Alfred turned to answer it.
‘Don’t move,’ Granny Lyons whispered.
The window imploded. A half-brick landed in the centre of the room bringing glass with it. Then the gallop away of the colts and fillies. The whinnying faded.
Mr Alfred stared dumfouttered at the inexplicable half- brick lying mutely on his aunt’s old carpet.
‘They’re getting worse,’ said Granny Lyons.
‘Anarchy,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. Things fall apart.’
He was pale with fright.
‘I chased a crowd of them out the back-close last night,’ said Granny Lyons. ‘Boys and girls. And still at school most of them.’
‘You know who they are?’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Tell me their names and I’ll go to the police.’
‘Don’t talk soft,’ said Granny Lyons. ‘Do you think the police would welcome you? What could you prove?’
‘But you said you were expecting them. Have they been threatening you?’
‘They told me they’d be back. If you can call that a threat. I’m as broadminded as the next person but I’m not putting up with houghmagandy in my back-close.’
‘I wish you’d get out of this district,’ said Mr Alfred.
‘Where could I go? Anyway, it’s the same everywhere now.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Mr Alfred.
‘It’s my own fault,’ she said. ‘I ask for it. I should mind my own business. Let them take over. It’s their world now. But I never learn. That fight I stopped this afternoon. I should have walked on.’
‘What fight?’ he asked.
She told him about it while they tacked double sheets of newspaper across the frame of the broken window.
‘Some of them were your boys,’ she said. ‘That big lump Provan was there. One of Wilma’s boyfriends.’
‘He’s kind of young to be anybody’s boyfriend,’ said Mr Alfred.
‘He’s her age,’ said Granny Lyons. ‘She’s at your school. Don’t you know her? Wilma Beattie.’
‘Can’t say I do,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘But then I don’t take girls’ classes.’
‘I’ve chased