A Postillion Struck by Lightning (27 page)

One day when the weather was too wet to go out and eat our lunch on the dustbin wall, some of the Herd started to make muffled, smothered, giggling jokes clearly about me across the greasy tables. They were mostly the elder boys, and the younger ones were sniggering and squirming sycophantically at the jokes.

Tom suddenly stiffened with alarm and mumbled something, but before he was able to say anything more, the Herd had started to move towards me in a slow, undulating wave. With one united lunge they grabbed me and dragged me struggling in nameless terror to the lavatory at the end of the room. I heard Tom shouting, but the doors had swung closed and I was hustled into the cabin, up-ended into the lavatory pan, held firmly by my knees and legs, while someone, as if from a hundred miles down a tunnel, said: “Fuckin' posh twit. Talking so la-di-da need your wee mouth washin out.” Someone pulled the chain and I thought that I had drowned. Gasping and choking, vomiting like a dog on the wet slimy floor, I was told that until I learned to speak correctly this would happen again. Then they left me. I lay for an eternity, retching and gasping in a sea of filth and undigested meat pie. I thought that I would never be able to breathe again. Tears and dribble coursed down my face from the coughing and choking and the retching.

Tom helped me to clean up as best I could in the boiler room under the school. I lay on a pile of coke while he tried to apologise and wiped me down with his handkerchief and some newspaper which we had found. I stayed there hiccuping and heaving until the break bell clanged. Damp, creased and smelly I took my place in Class. No one said anything. They watched over the tops of their books or sideways from the edges of their faces. They were all quietly smiling. Through bleary eyes I looked back at them. And decided to learn to speak correctly.

For days I was in terror that I should catch some disease from my Lavatory Drowning. With some of my luncheon money—I got one and sixpence a day from Uncle Duff each morning on the train—I bought a bottle of disinfectant and, as secretly as I could, gargled and cleaned my mouth out until it was raw and blistered with whatever it was I had used. No one knew what had happened, of course, and I had a difficult job sneaking into the house and changing my filthy clothes, but managed to convince them that I had been in a fight in the rain and that was that.

Uncle Duff was quite jovial at tea that evening.

“A fight already! Well I declare! they'll make a wee man of ye yet.”

My aunt was no fool. She didn't say a word, just went on buttering her potato pancake, but I think she knew that it had been more than a fight.

For the first month or two I was bullied constantly. Being skinny, having the wrong accent, although I was doing my damnedest to correct that daily, and never joining in the break time football made me as conspicuous as a cripple. And I was accordingly treated as such, for that is really what they thought I was. Deformed, different, weak, a cissie, to be got rid of. Tom was a help, but I felt that I couldn't shelter behind him all the time, and in any case, he wasn't always with me. He had his learning to do and was frequently taking a different Class to me.

Sitting one day on the wall of the Yard (there were no benches) I got clouted on the shin by a whirling block of wood being used as a football. I yelled out in pain and fell off the wall. I was suddenly engulfed in a swirling, kicking mass of roaring footballers who dragged me across the asphalt in the direction of the lavatory. Terror loaned me desperate strength. I fought and clawed and bit and kicked and suddenly found that the crowd had pulled away and I was struggling with one sole boy, older than me, taller, and stronger. His name, I think, was Bell. I don't know what happened, or how I did it, but as he swung me away from him with one arm to punch me in the face, I swung at him and hit him with all the force I could muster in the eye. He gave a great cry and fell to the ground, his face covered with his hands. I fell on top of him and went on bashing and thumping at him, but his cries grew louder and louder, and his hands flew from his face and flailed the air about his head. I saw that he now only had one eye. The other had apparendy gone.

We were dragged to our feet, I stiff with terror at the pulp-face before me; he barking in a loud hoarse voice, groping about in the air, blood streaming down his face.

Whitefaced, they half carried, half led, him across to the school. I stood alone in the middle of the yard. No one moved or spoke. They stood and watched me. Somebody pointed silently to a water tap over by the wall, and they watched in little groups as I bathed my face and washed off the blood which seemed to be more his than mine. When I straightened up they had gone. I was never bullied again. Avoided for a time, but never bullied.

Naturally there was an Inquiry in the Head's office. He was a big, heavy, jovial man. Wise and aware. He knew damned well what had happened but he in no way blamed me, he merely suggested, mildly, that fighting was not what I was there for, and that he didn't want to hear another complaint about me again. I was unaware that he had had any complaints before but was grateful for his leniency. As for Bell—well, whatever I did to his eye in my terror and rage kept him in a bandage for some time. And away from the school for more than three weeks. But I didn't care; from then on I ate my hot pie in peace and found school life peaceful, if lonely.

Self-Preservation became my main preoccupation now. Not merely against bullying; I had got that one sorted out by some strange fluke. Not only against the isolation which my foreignness caused among my school mates. I swiftly learned a thick, and unpleasing, Glasgow accent, and was grudgingly allowed to pass as more or less one of them. However, the fact that I played no games, read during the “breaks” rather than hacked away at lumps of wood stolen from the Woodwork Class, didn't know the difference between H2SO4 or 5 or 9 or whatever, and spent most of my time dreaming away plots and ideas for stories which never really got written, all these things set me clearly apart from the rest, and they resented it; and in their resentment isolated me.

I was supremely unbothered by this. For I liked none of them and preferred my own company to anyone else's, except, perhaps, for Tom whom I seldom saw apart from the hurried meat-pie at lunch on the dustbin walls.

My main self-defence was against Bishopbriggs. Not, you understand, against the town itself. It couldn't help what it was, a sordid, cold, unloving and unloved scatter of grey concrete council houses surrounding, like a belt of cement death, a grim, solid, dour little town of granite block and slate roofs. The town affected me only in so far as it was ugly, sad and apparently constantly in a drizzling rain. It was more the
life
I lived in the town which needed my defence. I found it almost impossible to realise the gentility and coldness of it without shock.

At home, among an easy-going family, we always showed our full emotions; it was, indeed, encouraged. I embraced my father nightly before going to bed, and we all touched, and liked touching, each other. Nakedness meant not having your clothes on. Going to the lavatory a normal, essential, function performed, as far as Lally was concerned, every morning after breakfast. And she wanted to know full details. Puppies, kittens, rabbits and everything else were “born”: we aided the mothers and sat entranced at the births. Everything in life was totally normal and I was quite unprepared for the opposite side of the coin, the Repressions.

The first time I offered to kiss my uncle on the cheek before I went to bed he recoiled as if I had physically assaulted him and, with a crimson face, gruffly said, “we don't do that sort of thing here.” And offered me his hand. My aunt received her kiss as if I had threatened her. She winced uncomfortably. The Lavatory became the “Bathroom”. You never spoke of Birth, only ever of Death. If a woman was pregnant she was “a wee bittie under the weather”. And one was never seen in the corridor of the house in pyjamas. Always, if we had to go from bed to the “Bathroom” a dressing-gown and slippers were obligatory. I am not blaming. This was how it was, and it was I who did not understand and so had to re-learn the rules. After all it was their house not mine. And their way of life. I would have to conform.

That settled, and accepted, the Routine had to be followed. Every weekend was planned months in advance. A constant cosy roster of relations or friends to be visited. Few ever came to our house because the change of Style had been a grave sadness to both my uncle and aunt and they preferred to keep their grief to themselves. Hence on the first Sunday of the month we went to Isa for a tinned salmon tea, where I read knitting patterns; on the second Sunday it was Aunt Teenie, who was a million years old, wore a black velvet ribbon round her throat, was blinded in one eye, and scarred dreadfully down her whole left cheek from an accident with a penknife many years ago when she had been a girl skating. She shook and trembled constantly, like a cobweb in a draught, and presided at a gigantic tea table covered with cakes and scones and home made bread. A silver teapot smothered by a crinolined celluloid doll, its pink shiny arms held out in supplication, a simpering Madonna. A small hand-knitted pom pom hat on its head. A brass kettle steamed gently over a spirit imp, and we ate constantly, in more or less complete silence. It was, as far as I was concerned, like force feeding a goose. Later we retired to the sitting-room, lace and velvet draped, submerged in dark ferns, and while they knitted and did embroidery, the women, my uncle slept discreetly under his Sunday paper and I played eternal games of Solitaire with glass marbles on a round mahogany board.

The third Sunday in the month was usually at Meg's where we sometimes had a Smokie for High Tea, from Dundee, after which I was given a volume of photographs. The clasp would be unlocked, and I was offered a sepia world of bustles, dog carts,
sailor suits and family groups of improbable strangers bug-eyed round bamboo tables.

The final Sunday was usually spent over at my maternal Grandmother's house in Langside. A long table often or fourteen of us, uncles and aunts, and elder cousins. Grandmamma at the head in black, a table laid as for a wedding; cakes and jams, scones and bread, tarts and sandwiches. We ate and talked of Family Matters and what had happened to us all in the month. My uncles were, without exception, handsome, dark and jolly. My aunts pleasant and kind and knitted. The cousins quiet and gently smiling. Later, in the big sitting-room upstairs, the fire was lit for Sunday and the younger of us played a new game called “Monopoly”, or else “Snap”, “Happy Families”, or “Bezique”. My grandmamma, who ruled her house with a deceptive firmness, sat in a chintz armchair and played games of patience. The uncles read papers and were allowed to smoke there.

This routine I accepted easily. It was not at all unpleasant, and sometimes comforting to know that every Sunday was so well taken care of. Of course, in the morning, wet or fine, it was a long walk to church. We left early for the three mile walk through the gritty Estate, out into the ruined fields, and then, quite soon, the real country started and the journey was always very agreeable, even in snow or sleet. The road to Cadder, where the church was, swung up and down gentle hills, across a tumbling, rocky river, through silent beech woods. The Service was dull, slow and incomprehensible. Church of Scotland. Spartan, un-decorated. None of the sweeping colours, the gilts and blues, the purples and viridians, the soaring music and the heady smell of incense to which I had grown accustomed and incorrectly associated with every church. This was white and charcoal, a place for penance not praise. I watched the sun sparkle through the branches of the trees and make dancing shadows on the whitewashed walls. My aunt, inevitably, and elegantly dressed by Pettigrew and Stephens, used always to try and wear a different hat or a different costume, or coat, in the winter. She was hopeful that it would be noticed and sad when, sometimes, it was not. The Service was mostly a weekly check up on who was who and what they had been doing. It was a Social Affair, conducted with religious fervour and a great deal of kneeling and singing. But I enjoyed the walk in the country.

After lunch, which had been put in the oven while we were
at our Holy Orders and Social Spying, I had to write my weekly letter home. This was thoughtfully corrected by my uncle for faults in grammar, spelling and punctuation. Should I, by mistake, miss out an interesting bit of news, such as a trip to the Orpheus Choir, or a visit to a Football Match, this was delicately inserted, even if it meant re-writing an entire page, for my uncle was at great pains that my family should know that my life in Scotland was not just one long grind of scholastic chores. In this way, of course, I had no possible chance of saying anything the least critical. And my letters were dull, dutiful, a long list of totally boring excursions and activities at school.

My parents were relieved that I had settled down so well into the family life, that I was being so warmly welcomed, and that according to the note, always appended to my letters by my uncle, my school work was improving slowly but steadily. There was, they felt, no cause for concern. Why should there be? And so, although they none of them meant to, I was gently put to one side while they went on with their affairs, and those affairs revolved mostly about the Baby and “
The Times
”. When I went back on longed-for holidays, it never ever occurred to me to say otherwise; I mean that life there was simple, pleasant, and everyone was good and warm, which they were. With my usual flair for obliteration of anything unbearable, I refused to spoil the treasured days of my holiday with remembering what I had left behind me up in the bleak, melancholy North. The moment the train rumbled over the railway bridge across the river at Carlisle my heart grew wings and sang all the way down to Watford. From there joy was so heady in my breast that the sights and smells of Euston swiftly erased all traces of any aching despair or loneliness. I was a very quick recoverer.