Docherty. William McIlvanney

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      ‘The same, jist much the same. Aggie went through a wee while past.’

      They sat watching the fire as if it were a lantern show. The wind was plaintive. One of the boys wrestled briefly with a dream. Water boiled in the kettle Aggie had put on the hotplate. Tam reached across and laid it on the hearth.

      ‘It’ll be fine, Tam,’ Buff said quietly. ‘Don’t fash yerself. If it’s like the world, that’s everything.’

      ‘Aye. As long as it’s no’ too like.’

      Their silence was listening.

      In the room across the lobby, the scene that met Dr Allan was like a tableau of all that High Street meant to him. Though the address might have been different, he had come into this room more often than he remembered, to find the same place, the same women, the same secret ceremony happening timelessly in an aura of urgency. It was as if everything else was just an interruption.

      The gas-mantle putted like a sick man’s heart. Dimmed to a bead of light, it made the room mysterious as a chapel. The polished furniture, enriched by darkness, entombed fragments of the firelight that moved like tapers in a tunnel. The brasses glowed like ikons. Even in this half-light the cleanliness of the room proclaimed itself. Jenny Docherty had scrubbed her house against the birth as if the child might die of a speck of dust. Beside the fire, where the moleskins lay ready for the morning, Aggie Thompson was standing, watching the water boiling, saying to herself, ‘Goad bliss ye, dochter. Ye’ll be a’ richt, noo. Goad bliss you this nicht,’ with the monotony of a Gregorian chant. Mrs Ritchie was leaning over the set-in bed, which was as shadowed as a cave, and was translating Aggie’s sentiments into practical advice. Over the bedclothes an old sheet had been laid for Jenny to lie on, and under her thighs newspapers had been spread. Her gown was rumpled above her waist. Legs and belly, wearing a skin of sweat, were an anonymous heave of flesh, a primeval argument of pain against muscles.

      Turn up the light,’ Dr Allan said.

      ‘Oh, dochter. Thank Goad ye’re here.’

      ‘I’ll want to wash my hands,’ he said pointedly, hoping to soothe Aggie Thomspson’s nerves with work. ‘How long since the waters broke?’

      ‘A good ‘oor past, dochter,’ Mrs Ritchie said, ‘An she’s had a show o’ bluid. Ah hope ye don’t mind comin’ oot. But ye couldny put a wink between ‘er pains. An it’s still no’ showin’. An’ knowin’ the times she’s had afore.’

      ‘I wouldn’t miss it.’ His jacket was off. He was rolling up his sleeves. ‘Would I, Jenny? Have these sterilised, Mrs Ritchie.’ She took the forceps. ‘We didn’t do so badly with the other three now, did we?’ Her mouth was forming ‘No, doctor’ when a pain rubbed out the words. He felt her gently, watching. Surprisingly, in the moments of quiescence, she didn’t look much more than her thirty, but when the pains came they were centuries passing across her face. Each would leave its residue. In High Street primes were not enjoyed for long.

      ‘Yes I think so. Not long now.’ Washing his hands in the basin, he kept talking, more for Aggie Thompson’s sake than for Jenny’s, who was beyond the use of words as a palliative.

      ‘You must have a terrible comfortable womb in there, Jenny. Your wee ones are never anxious to come out. They need some coaxing. Towel. Thanks.’

      In the street outside somebody had started singing. Aggie tutted in shock: ‘Is that no’ terrible.’

      ‘I have heard better,’ Dr Allan said, taking out the pad of chloroform. ‘Well, that’s enough pain you’ve been through for triplets, Jenny.’

      His hand was a sudden coolness on her forehead. The bottom half of her face came against something soft that seemed to erase her jawline. She fought against a darkness that swooped and then billowed above her and left her falling. Out of emptiness looped one long sound like a rope at which her mind clutched till it snapped: a phrase of song.

      ‘Josey Mackay,’ Buff pronounced after a few attentive seconds, as if identifying the call of one of the rarer birds. ‘He’s late oan the road the nicht.’

      The song diminished into garbled mutterings that suggested Josey was in loud and incoherent conference with himself. It wasn’t long before he had perfected a public statement, delivered through a megaphone of drunkenness: ‘Yese don’t know whit it wis like. Yese haven’t lived. The lot o’ yese. Ah saved yer bacon. Me an’ the likes o’ me. Mafeking. Ah wis there. For King an’ Country. At Mafeking. Queen an’ Country.’

      ‘Christ, no’ again,’ Buff sighed. ‘It’s weel named the Bore War, eh?’

      The Boer War!’ Josey said defiantly. And then more obscurely, ‘Honour the sojer. Wounded in the service of his country.’

      ‘Josey’s only wound’s a self-inflicted wan. He’s dyin’ o’ drouth. An’ it’s like tae injure a few innocent bystanders. Such as his wife an’ weans. There canny be mony gills o’ his gratuity left.’

      ‘Sleep soundly in yer beds this nicht,’ Josey urged with unintentional irony. Thanks tae the sojer laddies. Asleep in foreign soil.’

      The Last Post came through Josey’s clenched hand. When it was over, they waited for further bulletins. But the silence was restored as abruptly as it had been broken.

      ‘Ah doobt they’ve goat ‘im,’ Buff said at last. ‘We’ll bury ‘im in the mornin’.’

      Outside, Josey had ceremonially unbuttoned himself and was urinating against the wall below Buff’s window. With a soldier’s instinct his eyes scouted the winter street. He was conscious of a face somewhere. Cautiously, he didn’t look back round but reconnoitred the street again in his mind, trying to locate whose face he had seen. Having decided who it was, he made his plan. Wheeling abruptly, he bellowed, ‘Present - arms!’ and presented something else. Then he shambled on up the street, buttoning his trousers.

      Miss Gilfillan’s hand jumped away from the window. The lace curtain fell between her and the street, an armour as ineffectual as her gentility. Her heart protested delicately. She almost wept with shame and anger. She withdrew still further, feeling her privacy under siege, when she saw a dark shape at the Thompson’s window.

      ‘Ah canny see ‘im,’ Buff said. ‘He must be away.’

      He crossed and sat back down at the fire.

      ‘Away tae yer bed, Buff,’ Tam said. ‘Ye’ll be needin’ yer rest.’

      ‘Naw, naw,’ Buff said. ‘Ah’d like tae see the wean.’

      Twenty-past eleven. The minute-hand seemed struggling through treacle. The fire, having forged itself to a block of embers, made the area around it molten with heat, and they sat steeping in warmth. They spoke little. Yet their silence was a traffic, more real than words. They had known each other for a long time and both were miners. Their friendship was fed from numberless tubers, small, invisible, forgotten, favours like help with shifting furniture, talk in the gloaming at the corner, laughters shared. Intensifying these was that sense of communal identity miners had, as if they were a separate species. When Buff coughed, it wasn’t just an accidental sound disturbing the quiet of the room. It was part of a way of life, a harshness bred in the pits and growing like a tumour in his breathing. He was at sixty much СКАЧАТЬ