Short Story: Benny Black: Under the Stack-…

Short Story: Benny Black: Under the Stack- Part 6

Paul lay on the bed laughing. Lucky trembled in her sleep. He told her to shut up. She did. They were that close. He returned to the moving pictures of his family's yesterdays. So much of it was vague, amorphous, pink and fluffy; so essentially happy that the days blurred seamlessly into each other. Were other boys so happy? Were boys with fathers happier than them? He added girls since Kathleen had arrived bringing with her the gift of a move to a better part of Whorterbank and a house with two rooms.

When had he become aware that they were poor? What did poor mean anyway? They had enough to eat, clothes to wear, wellies in winter, sandals in summer, and the whole of Lochee as their kingdom. They even went to Dundee on the tram and ate delicious busters of thick chips and mushy peas doused in vinegar in the Overgate. Sometimes Joe went with his friends; he swore his brother to secrecy, threatened and bribed him to make doubly sure. Paul didn't much care what he did; he was old enough to have secrets of his own.

Some secrets they shared; some never discussed, but they bound the Bosquet boys tighter than jute yarn round a bobbin and taught them they had a life beyond their mother. The end of childhood begins with secrets. Benny Black was one of their secrets.

A singing crocodile winds its way across the wasteland outside 5A Whorterbank. Joe has the pink wicker armchair balanced on his head. Paul staggers along with a half-filled coal scuttle. Armfuls of bedding bury their mother. Mike Durdella and Pierre Labessa carry the double bed between them. That's for the boys. Neighbours have clubbed together and bought a second-hand pull-down settee for the living room. That's for mother and daughter.

Peggy Lynch has the pots, pans and most importantly the kettle. Gran is carrying the bairn, his new sister Kathleen, the cause of this miracle, a house with two rooms. This is the third run between 5A and No. 38 and nothing more can be accomplished before everyone sits in the shade with a hot cup of tea.

Paul leads the singing. Although he doesn't know it, he has perfect pitch. Two years from the day he will stand on stage before two thousand people in Dundee's Caird Hall. An acutely embarrassed eight year old, he will be wearing a kilt, borrowed, white shirt, grey socks, brown sandals, and a clip-on tartan bow tie. He will sing "O Mary, at thy window be, it is the wish'd, the trysted hour!"

The Burns' song will pour from his throat, achingly pure, achingly sweet. He will focus on a point on the ceiling, high and faraway at the back of the hall and bounce notes off it. It will become an exercise in arithmetic. How long should he listen to the echoing note before he sends another speeding past it to its destination? His embarrassment has gone, his fear has gone, his sense of the audience has gone. He is not singing for them. He feels alone but not lonely. He is not singing for himself. He is singing so that the song will exist.

That afternoon he is presented with a Lang gold medal by the Lady Provost of Dundee. She runs her gloved hand through his brown wavy hair. Why do women want to do that? She smells as if she has just had a bath and sprinkled on too much talcum powder. She smells like his little sister's bottom. He looks at his sandals and shuffles his feet. And what's his name? Jean-Paul Bosquet. And where is he from? 38 Whorterbank, Lochee. School? Ancrum Road Primary School, Ancrum Road, Lochee. He looks up at her. She seems surprised. She runs her hand through his hair again. He would give anything to have straight hair like his brother. Then maybe women would leave him alone. The Lady Provost shakes his hand again. She moves on to a silver medallist. Can he go now?

Today he is singing an entirely different song. He started it and everyone else has picked it up, even Mike and Pierre, whose Ukrainian and French accents make the Dundee Weaver even more fun.

I am a Dundee weaver and I come frae bonnie Dundee

I met a Glesca fella an' he came courtin' me

He took me oot a walkin' doon by the Kelvin Hall

And there the dirty wee rascal

Stole mah thingummy jig awa!

Paul thumps out the words thingummy jig. He knows that will annoy his mother. He has asked her before what a thingummy jig is and received only a stern look, the look that precludes any further conversation on the matter. Joe smirked. He would ask Mike or Pierre but he can never understand much that they say. He would ask his Gran but she is absorbed in the baby. Paul is annoyed. He likes to know things. He will ask his granddad. His granddad is not there with them. He is not surprised. He has never seen his mother and his granddad together. It puzzles him. He asked his mother once. He could not understand the expression on her face, but he knew enough not to ask again. There were mysteries in all families that were better left as mysteries. But he is staying at Gran's tonight and he will ask his granddad what a thingummy jig is and why any Glesca fella would want to steal it from a Dundee weaver like his Mum. Paul sighs and sings on:

Whorterbank once more, Whorterbank once more.

When we reach Lochee we'll be longing to see

Whorterbank once more!

A house with two rooms! He certainly will be longing to see Whorterbank once more now that they have a house with two rooms. It is unimaginable. He can be in one room while the rest of the family are in the other. If the door is closed he won't be able to see them. They won't be able to see him. He will be on his own. He can lie on the bed and read till his eyes fall out.

Joe and he will have their own bed, the whole double bed to themselves. For the first time in his life he will be sleeping in a different bed from his mother. And they have real windows, not the pokey little window in the garret. In the backroom, their room, the boys room, you have a window big enough to hang out of, to climb out of. You can look across the wastelands and the tenements all the way to Camperdown Works and Cox's Stack with its million bricks. You don't really need a clock; the bummer will tell you when the working day begins and when it ends.

There is a fireplace in the front room where you can build a really big fire. And a big sink, too, big enough to wash properly in, so that you don't always have to go to the Steamie and the public baths for a proper wash. You can have a good scrub in the big sink. Paul isn't much for washing. He believes his grandfather, only dirty fowk wash. But Joe is fanatical about cleanliness. And he is also getting touchy about standing in the tin basin while Mum scrubs him down.

Mum seems to appreciate this and leaves Joe to get on with it, but Paul revels in it, standing in the big silvery basin in front of a blazing fire, covered in soap suds, while his mother rubs him with a rough cloth all over. He likes to sing while Mum is scrubbing him though she sticks the soapy rag into his open mouth when he tries some of the songs that he's picked up from his granddad on a Saturday night.

Best of all they will be surrounded by friends. The single room dwellings in the old part of Whorterbank house few families with children, but here they swarm out of every door, take over the streets, clamber over the walls to the Wary and to the Rialto cinema, sneak into the Cally, and gather together in tribes to plan expeditions into the Boag and Tipperary, home to the Irish Catholics, who emigrated to Dundee in their thousands to work in the mills and factories.

Paul does not have much idea what a Catholic is. He knows only that they are the enemy who go to different churches, different schools, who go to something called Mass where they gorge themselves on the body and blood of Jesus. He has been reading about cannibals in the Wizard. He had never imagined that there might be cannibals in Whorterbank. What do they do in St Mary's on a Sunday morning? He has sneaked into the church a couple of times while the family was at the Steamie.

The interior is quiet, echoey, peaceful. He likes the smell. He approaches the altar in a mixture of terror and reverence. Is this where they do it? Is this where they strap the baby down on Sunday morning, call him Jesus, plunge in the knife and drink his blood? He is glad Kathleen is a baby girl. They wouldn't want her. He likes the atmosphere inside St Mary's but to be on the safe side he spits in the Holy Water on the way out. That should keep him well in with his God. Only later does Paul learn that he, as the son of a French submariner, was baptised a Catholic in Dundee's St Mary's Cathedral. Appreciating the irony takes even longer.

The Protestant sons of Whorterbank, the proddies, have a considerable advantage over the papes of Tipperary and the Boag. They have dung, fresh, warm, steaming dung which they scoop in fistfuls from the Caley where the mill horses are stabled. Squashed, pummelled and moulded, they make hand grenades of a pleasing density and weight. Held to the nose, they gave off a pungent heady odour that makes the eyes water.

As twilight glooms, the sons of John Knox slip like liquid shadows down Burnside, bags of hardened dung balls slung over shoulders. They filter across the High Street and down Gibb's Lane towards South Street. They commandeer the high ground that overlooks the crowded dwellings of the Boag. Targets are selected, instructions whispered along the line:

"Get the little girls on the swings."

"Get those boys in the push-cart."

"Aim for the washing lines."

"There's a priest. Get him."

The line rises to its feet from behind the banks of rough grasses, willow herb, thistle, groundsel, coltsfoot and stinging nettle.

"Ready."

"Aim."

"Fire!"

Two dungballs splatter into an infant's pram. A girl is knocked off a swing. The priest takes a direct hit on the back of the head. The push-cart is hauled around to face down hill, the driver panicking as a dungball sends his spectacles flying. The push-cart careers into the kerb sending the sightless driver head-over-heels into a lampost. White sheets are disfigured by huge brown craters of dung. Doors are opening onto the pletties. The sounds of feet clattering down winding staircases. The Irish hive has been kicked over.

Catholic boys of all ages and sizes try to storm the slope, but the nettles sting deep and the dungballs are hard. Two of the bigger ones go head over heels, pounded mercilessly as they try to find their feet. The priest is urging his battered troops on. It is hard to tell whose side God is on.

Irish mothers storm into the street uttering curses and imprecations that would shame the Devil. The confessionals will be on overtime this Friday. There are two unwritten laws thou shalt not put stones in the dungballs and thou shalt not hit anybody's mother. She might be your mother's partner in the mill, and there would be hell to pay. A strategic retreat is in order. It's up the hill and across the railway line, round Ancrum Road school, down Muirton Road, under the bridge, back into Whorterbank, over the fence into the Caley, and then down to Delanzo's for chips. What a night! What a victory!

One last problem. There are quite a few dungballs left. Can't be wasted. Never mind. Take that. Dung explodes behind Paul's left ear. He turns and lets George Mackay have one right between the eyes. Blinded, George lets one fly at the first thing he hears. Splat! It catches John Patterson across the bridge of his nose. The air is filled with dungballs, screams, laughter, yelps, threats and counter-threats.

Paul notices Joe sitting on a low stone wall, eating a fish supper, ignoring the mayhem around him. Joe has not thrown a dungball at anyone and no one dares to be the first to throw a dungball at him. Paul considers. He is nine now. He cannot live in his brother's shadow forever. He takes careful aim and fires. The dungball hits Joe in the mouth just as he pops in his last slice of battered cod.

Joe spits out chunks of cod and dung. He looks around. He spots Paul whose eyes widen as he realises what he has done. Joe is off the wall like a whippet, but Paul is faster tearing along Whorterbank like a bat out of hell. Joe is taller, wirier, stronger but Paul has sheer terror in his tank. He almost makes it. Paul has sometimes wondered what dung tastes like; that night he finds out.

The taste of dung fills my mouth again, his stomach heaves, Lucky trembles in her sleep. The moment passes but a shadow remains. He sees Joe's face looming over him, contorted in anger. The dung means nothing, that look means everything. It scares him, terrifies him. He has seen it before. His fingertips feel for the scar above his left eyebrow, the scar across the bridge of his nose, legacies of an anger out of proportion to the offences he'd committed.

Benny Black knew his brother's anger, and it had almost cost him his legs. Perhaps it was the only way, perhaps it had to be done. It taught Benny Black a lesson, and it taught Paul a lesson, too. His brother's anger could be hot or cold; he had felt the hot anger, he never wanted to feel the cold.

They'd been in 38 Whorterbank for three years when Benny Black was given the single-roomed attic above the communal toilet that served our block. Life was good. Mum's health had taken a turn for the better. Joe had begun secondary school at the Logie in Blackness Road. Kathleen was old enough for us to sneak her into the Rialto Cinema. Paul had an endless supply of books at Ancrum Road Primary and a teacher who respected his intelligence. They had two rooms, a cat, a hamster, and friends all around them. Then Benny arrived.

At first they took no notice of Benny. He was just the 'funny wee man' who lived at the top of the stairs. Squat, swarthy, dark and muscular, flat-capped Benny was a charge-hand at one of the Dundee mills. We didn't see much of him during the week, but he seemed to spend most of the weekend sitting at the top of the outside stairs in front of the toilet door. They could understand that. The attic rooms at the top of the buildings were tiny and, in good weather at least, it was natural enough to want to sit outdoors and have a smoke. It became something of a joke. "If you want to ha'e a keich aroon here, you hav' tae step ower Benny Black." But it was not a comfortable joke.

More than once his mother came back from the toilet with a dark look on her face. Only once did she let her feelings show "That Benny Black looks at you as if he's undressing you. It's not decent." She seemed close to tears, which shook Paul. His mother never cried, not even when pleurisy ripped through her lungs and a hot poultice blistered her back. He caught Joe's look; it was darker than Mum's. Evening fell more quickly than usual.

The boy knew how his mother felt though he couldn't have put it into words then. A few days earlier he was having a piddle when Benny pushed the door open. It had never crossed his mind to bolt the door. He was only having a pee.

The man stepped in, reeking of booze and sweat, and pushed the door closed behind him. He was already fishing himself out of his baggy overalls.

"Dinnae worry, we're a' men here," he laughed.

Paul was mortified. He tried to force the urine out of his bladder, which seemed to have entirely the opposite effect. Benny put his free arm around the boy's shoulder.

"Yoor ain o' Cathy's laddies, aren't ye? Yoor a bonnie laddie, you look like yoor ma." Paul could hear him splashing into the bowl like a waterfall, his own thin trickle felt puny in comparison.

"Ye hiv'nae got a dad, hiv ye? Every laddie needs a dad, tae learn things like. Go on, ha'e a look at it if you want, touch it, it'll no bite ye. Though it might bite yer ma." He laughed again.

Paul twisted under his arm and away, pushing himself into his pants, not caring about the piss on his fingers and down his front. He only wanted out of there, away from the smell of him and the claustrophobia of that dingy cubicle. He took the steps three at a time, jumping the last four. He got inside, closed and snibbed the door, stormed into the backroom, threw himself on the bed. Something was wrong. He wasn't sure what it was, but whatever it was, it was wrong.

He was still on the bed when Joe got in from school. He hadn't cleaned the grate, he hadn't set the fire, and it was his turn. He hadn't even listened to 'Tammy Troot' on Children's Hour.

"You lazy wee... whit's wrang?"

"Nuthin'."

"Come on, tell me."

"It's nothing, just leave me. I'll set the fire in a minute."

"Tell me, or I'll tell Mum when she comes in."

Paul sat up on the bed and faced Joe. He felt a chill inside but with the cold came a certain calm. "It's that Benny Black. I dinnae like him."

Joe's face darkened. He pushed his hair away from his eyes, grey-green like his father's. He became very still. Paul knew the signs. He felt sick in the pit of his stomach.

"Has that man been bothering you?"

The boy wasn't quite sure what bothering meant, but he guessed it meant making him feel uncomfortable when he shouldn't.

"He came into the toilet, I was having a pee. He took a pee beside me. He shouldn't do that. He should wait like everybody else, or just do it in the sink if he's desperate. Shouldn't he?"

"Did he bother you?"

"No, he didnae bother me, but he said things about Mum and that bothered me."

Joe didn't interrogate his brother further.

"He's been bothering Mum," he said. The stillness was unnerving.

"Why doesn't Mum tell Mike or Pierre or even Meg McDougall? They'll stop him bothering Mum."

"They're not family," said Joe. "This is family. We keep this in the family. That's the way Mum would want it."

This was beyond the boy. He already had some conception of their family as an entity, of them distinct from all others. He'd even drawn diagrams to demonstrate this; concentric circles with his mother, brother and sister at the centre, granny and granddad in the next circle, aunties and uncles in the next, cousins in the next, and so on till he reached their relatives in France. Their numbers were said to be legion but as he knew nothing beyond their putative existence, they were of hypothetical interest at best. His mother rarely took anything beyond the inner circle, so how could the family resolve the business of Benny Black? The more theoretical this became, the more fascinated and calm he felt.

"Naebody bothers oor Mum," said Joe sliding off the bed. "Now get up and set the fire. I'll get the coal oot o' the bunker."

Assistance like this from Joe was unheard of. Paul followed him off the bed and headed for the fireplace, much cheered and much relieved, switching on the radio as he passed. He could breathe now. Joe had everything in hand.

That Friday evening Joe surprised them all.

"We're going to the show," he announced. Joe never took Paul to the cinema unless under direct orders from Mum. What was more, Paul had no money, having invested that week's allowance in a bumper edition of the Hotspur.

"I'll pay him in," he shrugged throwing Paul his black leather jacket which he was never allowed to touch, let alone wear.

He pulled on the jacket and twirled in front of the wardrobe mirror. "Aw, for Christ's sake, ye wee jessie," came his brother's hiss.

"Sorry, Joe," he gulped and followed him out of the front door.

"Be back by nine," came their mother's voice. "Don't let him sit through the second show."

Outside he dared question my brother. "Are we really going to the show, Joe?"

"Yes, we are. We're going to meet John Patterson and George Mackay at Delanzo's and then we're going to the show. The Rialto."

"What's on?"

Joe kept walking. Paul hurried along in his wake. Surprised and suspicious, but elated to be treated as one of the gang. Real life must be like this.

"The Crimson Pirate. Burt Lancaster and that wee dumb and deaf dwarf. It's a couple of years old but it's okay."

He was thrilled. Some of the older boys at school had seen The Crimson Pirate when it was first released. Everyone agreed it was brilliant. Now it was his turn. He was suffused with a warm glow that embraced everything, including his brother.

"Joe."

"What?"

"Thanks for taking me. I'll let you read my new Hotspur, it's the bumper edition, I'll let you read it before me."

"I don't read that shite. Now hurry up and keep up with me."

The Bosquet brothers met John Patterson and George Mackay outside Delanzo's. They immediately went into a huddle with Joe that excluded Paul. He stood on the fringe trying to look like one of the gang. After a few whispered moments they strolled off to the Rialto where Joe true to his word paid him in. He was parked on an aisle seat - "Sit there, don't move." - while Joe, John and George took their places centre row. They were secondary, he was primary, they might be seen, it made sense.

The heavy velvet curtains swished open and the Pearl & Dean anthem swept him into the programme. By the time an athletic, bare-chested, devil-may-care Burt Lancaster flashed his loopy grin for the fourth time, he was so absorbed in the movie he hardly cared if anyone else was in the cinema. He thrust every thrust, parried every parry and swung through the riggings as if his life depended on it. Bugger black leather jackets, that was real life up on the screen.

"My sidekick Ojo, the deaf dumb dwarf mute, is imprisoned. My lovely Consuela in the arms of the villainous Baron Gruda. And I, Vallo, the Crimson Pirate, am in chains." This was definitely not Kansas. (The Astoria had revived The Wizard of Oz only two weeks earlier.)

"Come on, we're going."

"What?"

"I said 'Move. We're going.'"

"But it's only..."

It was not a hard kick, but it was hard enough. Paul hobbled into the aisle and was hustled towards the Exit, his attempts to catch a last glimpse of the Crimson Pirate thwarted by the heads and shoulders of John Patterson and George Mackay. The last thing he saw was Burt Lancaster's manic grin disappearing under a pile of enraged Spanish soldiers.

Outside he was hurried along to the low wall that separated St Mary's Catholic Church from the Lochee Public Baths and Wash House, the Steamie, where Paul helped Mum do the washing on a Saturday morning. 'Helped' is something of an exaggeration; he helped by keeping out of her way, except when the heavy, soaking-wet sheets were man-handled from the steam boilers and forced through the six-foot mangles. Two or three women were needed to turn the massive handle for the first squeeze-through. He did his bit, though it was not much help to have a small boy dangling from the handle when it reached the top of the up-stroke.

They sat on the wall and received instructions from Joe. George was to take the public houses in the High Street, John the pubs between the Rialto and the railway bridge at Muirton Road, Joe would patrol the pubs in the side-streets, and Paul would mind the hammers.

Mind the hammers!

What hammers?

The boys opened their jackets. Each carefully took out a coal hammer and hid it behind the section of the wall on which they sat. He was not to move. He was not to touch the hammers. He was not even to look at them. If anybody asked him what he was doing, he was waiting for his big brother, just waiting, that was all.

The boy could formulate the question in his mind but he could not articulate the sounds necessary to ask the question aloud. He could feel tears burn somewhere behind his eyeballs.

Joseph took him by the chin and turned his face towards his own. His grey-green eyes glittered in the lamplight.

"Benny Black. He's not going to bother Mum anymore. Right?"

He waited.

Paul felt his stillness wash over him. The tears were gone. He raised an eyebrow. He almost smiled.

"Right."

"Joe?"

"What?"

"Are we gonna dae him in?"

"Don't be such a silly wee shite."

The boy dangled his legs against the wall and hummed 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow', a Saturday morning favourite on the radio. He imagined several possible endings for the Crimson Pirate though it was difficult to have Burt Lancaster swinging through the riggings 'where the bluebirds fly'.

There was a slight breeze. He wished he could wear long trousers like Joe and the others, but he couldn't till he reached secondary school. At least shorts gave him access to his knees; he could pick off the crusted scabs, greyish brown against skin mottled by lamplight.

"Why then, oh why can't...?"

A flurry of boys and whispers.

"He's coming up Flight's Lane."

"That means he'll tak' the Burnie."

"Come on, get the hammers."

They hurried down the back streets to Burnside, passing between the front doors of St Mary's and the Steamie. There were lights on in both. ‘Cleanliness next to godliness,’ Paul'd heard someone say.

It was dark down the Burnie, only a few gas lamps flickering. On one side the high walls of Camperdown factory. On the other some of the meanest dwellings in Lochee. The boys slid along as close to the walls as their shadows. Scared, thrilled and frustrated, he was bitter that he'd been given no hammer. Maybe he was only nine, maybe he was in shorts, but he deserved a hammer.

"There he is!"

His heart thudded beneath the leather jacket. There he was. Benny Black. Lurching along the Burnie. Bouncing every now and again into the factory wall. He was small and squat but he was strong, had to be strong if he was a charge-hand in the mill. He was small but he had big hands, big, dirty, hairy hands with big flattened thumbs. Tackety boots, greasy dark overalls, a flat bunnet on his dark greasy hair. Benny Black was small, but he was a man and they were only bairns.

"Paul, keep a look out at the bottom of the brae. He'll go up it to get into Whorterbank. Whistle if you see anybody coming."

Benny staggered across Burnside to the brae. Leaning against the high stone wall of the Wary with one hand, he fished for himself inside his overalls. They could hear him splatter against the wall, see the steam rising from the hot piss, hear him chundering away to himself. Paul felt his arm round his shoulders again. Remembered his remarks about their mother. If I had a hammer...

They were on him, like ferrets onto a rooster. George Mackay, the biggest and heaviest of the three, threw himself at Benny's back, Joe took his legs, and John Patterson jumped and hit him on the back of the neck with a hammer. They heard the 'oof' of Benny's breath as his lungs emptied and the crunch as his face hit the wall. Down he went like a sack of bobbins falling from a jute cart.

"Turn 'im ower."

They rolled him over. George dropped arse first onto Benny's stomach. There was a gurgling sound followed by a fountain of vomit from his lips. It arched in the air and came down with a wet slap onto his chest. "Ye dirty bugger," hissed George giving the fallen man a sharp tap on the forehead with his hammer. "Keep yer vomit aff meh claes."

Joe and John kneeled on either side of the man's legs. Joe raised his hammer, John raised his. They smacked Benny's shins simultaneously. A gargled scream. "Harder." The hammers rose and fell. Paul could hear bones break, splinter, fragment under the systematic pounding. George parked his big backside over Benny's mouth. He farted and giggled, "Sorry, Mr Black."

"That's enough," said Joe, rising to his feet. "He won't be bothering anybody for a long time now. Will you, Mr Black?"

"Will I give his cock a smack for luck?" asked John Patterson.

"Wash your mooth. My wee brither's here," said Joe. "Get up, we're going. Wha's fur chips? Eh'm buying."

There was a scramble as the boys assembled around their host. They stuck the hammers down their trousers, hitching them onto the snake belts, then cut along the Burnie heading for Lochee High Street and Delanzo's. Nobody looked back. Nobody mentioned Benny Black. Rain was starting to fall.

That night Paul slept well. He did not piss on his brother.

He lay in bed and wondered if what they'd done was wicked. He knew it was wrong but was it wicked? He listened to the rise and fall of Joe's breathing. Could the wicked sleep so soundly?