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  Willie himself took pride in fuelling his reputation as fearless, and relished watching the apprehension in the girls’ eyes when he went near them. It wasn’t until he caught Lizzie Cordiner breaking her heart in a corner of the bike shed that he gave any thought to the consequences of his pranks. Lizzie, a tiny five-year-old with big blue eyes and hair as straight as the yardstick they used for measuring the length of things like their classroom or the corridor, wasn’t quite as pretty as some of the other little girls, but she looked so miserable that Willie felt a rush of shame at what he had done to her. ‘I’m sorry, Lizzie,’ he said, quietly, but she wept all the harder.

  ‘You … thought … it was funny,’ she sniffed accusingly, ‘and my Ma says you’re a heartless little brat, and if she gets her hands on you …’

  There was no bravado left in her tormentor now. ‘What did she say she’d do?’ he asked, for Lizzie’s Ma was a giant of a woman, strong enough to break him in two if she felt like it, or tear him limb from limb if she so desired.

  ‘She … said … she’d … um … skin you alive.’

  They looked at each other silently, each picturing how the woman would go about such a task, then Willie muttered, ‘I’ll nae dae it again. It was just a bit o’ fun.’

  ‘It wasna funny for us. The big loons took the ribbons and put them in the lavvy, or cut them up … an oor Mas said they couldna afford to keep buying new ribbons. My Ma even says she’s gan to cut my hair aff so’s I can see.’

  ‘Oh, I’m real sorry to hear that. I didna ken. Look, I’ll get money oot’n my bankie and you can buy a new ribbon.’

  ‘Ma would still be angry wi’ you,’ Lizzie murmured, sadly. ‘She thinks your Da should skelp your …’ She stopped, unwilling to use the exact word her mother had used.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Willie thought about what had been said, and made up his mind to do something to repair the damage he had done, and because his mind was not on what was going on in the classroom, he got several raps over the knuckles from Miss Cowe for not paying attention.

  At three o’clock, when the janitor wielded the school bell, Willie walked behind Lizzie and her little chums, but with no intention of playing any tricks on them. He did, out of sheer habit, put his hand in his jacket pocket at one point and took out the matchbox he kept a dead spider in. This was another of the twisted pleasures he got, by telling a girl he had something in the matchbox she would like to see and then holding his sides with laughter when she screamed in terror. It worked every time … but it wasn’t funny, he realised now, and threw it into the ditch at the side of the road.

  When they reached the first small group of Wester Burnton cottar houses, the girls dispersed to their various homes, and Willie hung back, watching which door Lizzie went through. Allowing a few minutes for Mrs Cordiner to ask Lizzie what had happened at school today, Willie girded his loins bravely and marched forward. His courage, however, had failed somewhat after the first few steps, so that his knock on the door was rather hesitant.

  ‘You!’ burst out the woman who answered. ‘I dinna ken how you’ve the cheek tae …’

  ‘I’ve come to say I’m …’ Willie swallowed and carried on, ‘I’m sorry for makin’ Lizzie lose her ribbons. I didna mean that to happen. It was just meant to be a bit o’ fun.’

  ‘A bit o’ fun, eh? Weel, my lad, it micht’ve been fun to you, but poor Lizzie here comes hame every day greetin’ her een oot.’

  ‘I’m richt sorry, Mrs Cordiner, that’s a’ I can say, but I’ll gi’e you money oot’n my bankie so you can buy some mair, honest I will.’

  Taken quite aback by this, the woman’s ferocious expression changed and Willie’s spirits rose. She wasn’t going to skin him alive, thank the Good Lord, as Gramma Fowlie sometimes said … though it might have been interesting to see how she went about it.

  ‘Lizzie’s Da says you’re just ill-trickit, nae coorse, so maybe he’s richt. You needna brak’ into your bankie, though, but I hope you’ve learnt your lesson. It’s nae funny to torment ither fowks.’

  ‘I hiv, Mrs Cordiner. I hiv learnt my lesson an’ I’ll never dae it again.’

  ‘Weel, weel, then, let that be an end till it.’

  He said not a word to his own mother, and for some days he was afraid that Mrs Cordiner would tell her, but that good lady was not as bad as he had feared, and the episode was soon forgotten.

  Chapter Six

  ‘Mam, I’m fed up. Whit wye can I nae get oot to play?’

  ‘Stop saying “Whit wye”. I keep telling you. It’s “What way” or “Why”.’

  ‘Well then, why can I nae get oot to play?’

  ‘It’s ower cauld.’ Emily found it difficult to maintain her proper mode of speech when no one in her family took any notice of her constant criticism of theirs, but, remembering, she hastily corrected herself. ‘It’s far too cold, that’s why, and I don’t want you catching your death.’

  ‘I’ll never die fae catchin’ a cauld, Mam. I’m … whit is it Gramma Fowlie says? She kens a lot o’ big words.’

  ‘Indestructable. It means nothing can destroy whatever she’s speaking about. If you’d concentrate on learning your reading, you’d be able to use big words, and all.’

  ‘Mam, did Gramma Fowlie learn her reading when she was little?’

  ‘I don’t know that, but she must’ve done.’

  ‘But she’s cleverer nor me.’

  ‘She’s not cleverer nor you, she’s …’

  ‘She is cleverer …’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. It should be, “She’s more clever than me”.’

  ‘That’s whit I said. She’s cleverer nor me, so it was easy for her.’

  His mother heaved an exhausted sigh and gave up. ‘Put on your wellies and your coat and muffler. And don’t stay out till you’re frozen to the marrow.’

  ‘Whit’s a marrow, Mam?’

  ‘It’s what I use to eke out the last of the berries when I’m making jam.’

  But the boy had already run to the back porch to get the clothes he needed. If it meant getting away from his mother for a while, he’d willingly have gone out in his semmit and drawers. He wouldn’t have caught cold. Not him. He was disgustable! His Gramma said so!

  There had been a good fall of snow a few days ago, which had been repeated several times since, but most of it had disappeared now, just deep heaps of dirty slush here and there, the stuff you wouldn’t chance making into snowballs or anything else. Willie wondered what he could do to amuse himself. Poopie Grant was in bed with the flu, and he’d nobody to play with, so he’d have to think up something. He let his eyes scour round the back yard. Not one single thing moved, so he was absolutely on his own. Why were the two dogs not running around? They usually bounded out when they heard him coming. It was all right for them being shut up in the shed – there were two of them, so they both had a companion and they had old blankets laid out for them for they weren’t allowed inside the house. In spite of that, they were luckier than he was, because Mam was always chasing him out from ‘under her feet’, as she kept saying, though he couldn’t understand that, for he kept well clear of her feet. But where else could he come but here?

  Folk would think his sisters would play games with him – ludo or tiddly winks or something like that – but Connie and Becky said they were too old to play childish games. At eighteen and fifteen maybe they were, but it would be more fun for them than sitting reading the magazines they got from Mrs Burns at the Mains, sniggering and whispering to each other and shooing him away if he as much as put his head round their bedroom door. They weren’t here just now, anyway. They’d got a few days off for Christmas and had gone to Gramma McKay’s till Sunday. He’d been asked, as well, but there was nothing for him to do there, either. He was just told to sit still and not touch anything.

  His roving eyes caught a movement on his left, not much of a movement but still a movement that meant something or somebody was out here with him. Three silent
sideways steps took him to the spot, and he stood motionless, waiting to see what came from under the upturned pail. Nothing happened for a minute or so, and then his ears picked up a faint mewing sound. Willie screwed up his nose in puzzlement. It wasn’t loud enough to be one of the four cats that belonged to the farm but divided their attentions between all the cottar houses and crofts related to it. It could be a hedgehog; he’d seen a few of them but never in his own backyard. It could be a mole, but they usually burrowed underneath the ground and came up somewhere that was easier to get through than this hard-packed patch. It could be anything, really, and there was only one way to find out. Bending down, he lifted one side of the pail off the ground to find a tiny kitten, eyes beseeching him to lift it up. One of the cats must have had babies somewhere near here.

  Cradling the sopping wet little animal against his chest, he wondered how it had got into such a state, and the only answer he came up with was that it had jumped up on the edge of the bucket and tipped it over on top of itself. There had likely been a lot of melted snow inside so it had got soaked.

  ‘Poor little kitty, kitty,’ he crooned, stroking the wet fur. ‘Poor kitty, kitty, but Willie’ll soon have you dry.’

  This was easier said than done, however. He couldn’t take the wee creature inside the house or Mam would go off her head at the water dripping all over her clean floor – it always seemed to be newly washed. She didn’t like cats much any road, so it was best to steer clear of her … and trouble. It was cold outside but the sun had come out. A soft wind was blowing and some clothes pegs had been left on the washing line. Just perfect, he decided. Just perfect. Mam always gave the rope a wipe over before hanging clothes out in case they got marked, but no dirt would show on this wee black bundle. It had a white patch on top of each of its tiny paws but they wouldn’t need to touch the washing line.

  Being as gentle as he could so as not to hurt his patient, he put the dainty tail over the rope and eased the peg over it. He couldn’t understand why the animal was making so much noise – he couldn’t be hurting it – and carried on in an attempt to peg up the ears next. He was astonished at the din issuing from the little mouth. For all its size, it could make a proper racket … and he was only trying to help it.

  Suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, his mother’s open hand caught him round his ear. ‘Willie! What on earth d’you think you’re doing to that poor wee kitten?’

  ‘I was only …’ His head was snapped back by another wallop before he could say any more.

  ‘If I hadn’t heard it yowling you’d have killed it. You’re a wicked, wicked laddie, Willie Fowlie! Get inside this minute and right up to your bed. It’s no dinner for you, my lad, and your dad’ll have something to say to you when he comes in for his supper.’

  Knowing from past experience that it did no good to argue with his mother, the boy did as he was told and spent the rest of the forenoon feeling sorry for himself for having such a cruel parent. Why would she never listen to him? She laid into him without waiting for any explanation. Always. Whatever he did, or whatever she thought he was doing, wowf! Her hand connected with his lug, his shoulder or his back, or sometimes his backside, if she took him inside first. Backside was kept for what she said were the worst bad things he did.

  His stomach rumbled loudly in an hour or so, making him realise that it was dinnertime, so Mam hadn’t been joking, and with Connie being away he wouldn’t even get anything smuggled up to him. Maybe he should have gone with them, but he wasn’t like the girls. He didn’t fancy sitting poring over old photos or helping the old woman to dust the hundred and one fancy ornaments she had sitting about, especially in her parlour; little crystal dishes, flower dishes, china shepherd and shepherdess, even fancy cherubs or sturdy Clydesdales. The worst things were the artificial flowers sheltering under their domes of glass. If he tried to take them out and dust them, it was sure he’d let them drop. That kind of thing wasn’t a job for a boy. He didn’t think she even liked boys. She wasn’t like his other Gramma.

  He could hear Mam moving about downstairs. She wasn’t one to sit doing nothing, like some of the other mothers at Burnton. Paulie Johnstone’s Mam aye had a fag hanging out of the corner of her mouth and her fingers were nearly as brown as the bars of chocolate Gramma Fowlie brought with her when she came to visit. That was why he was determined not to start smoking when he was older. He’d even seen some of the bigger lads, twelve or thirteen maybe, standing in the bike shelter at the school puffing their heads off. What would their insides be like by the time they were as old as Paulie’s Mam?

  He rubbed his stomach as it gave another gurgle, but he knew better than to sneak down and try to pinch something from the pantry. Mam had ears that picked up ‘a flech farting’ as Dad sometimes laughed, and she could see what you were doing even if she’d her back to you, which proved she’d eyes in the back of her head like she said she had.

  It was an awful long time from breakfast time to suppertime without one single thing to eat. A person could die without even a drink of water. It wasn’t fair! It just wasn’t fair when he hadn’t done anything wrong. He was being punished for trying to do something good, something to help another living being. That was the unfairest thing of all. A little teardrop edged out now, and he dashed it away with a finger. What was the good of being so sorry for himself? He’d just have to make up his mind to go through life getting blamed for things he hadn’t done, and taking his punishment like a man.

  He sat up suddenly. Yes, if that was how it was going to be, that was how it would have to be. He would get used to it. People would say how brave he was, how well he could stand up to … what was that word the dominie used one day in his morning talk? Advertisement! That was it. He would stand up to advertisement. No, that didn’t sound right, but whatever the word was, he would stand up to it and people would think he was a hero.

  Some hero! His mother slapped him for nothing and starved him of food and drink, and he did nothing about it. People wouldn’t think much of a hero who couldn’t stand up to his own mother.

  He shut his eyes and pictured some of the daring deeds he would do when he was older, deeds like killing dragons and giants, rescuing damsels in distress, saving somebody from drowning. There were hundreds – thousands – millions of brave deeds he could do when he was out of Mam’s clutches. He sometimes thought about running away, but he realised he was still too young for that. He’d just have to put up with ‘the slings and arrows of out-something fortune’ as Mr Bremner, the dominie, sometimes said, and he always added, ‘That is a quote from William Shakespeare, boys and girls, whose writings will be studied by those of you going on to higher education.’ Willie shook his head. He wasn’t going on to higher education. He’d had enough already, though he knew the law would make him stay on at school until he was fourteen.

  Six years yet. That was an awful long time to be still learning stuff. He’d had Miss Bell for about six months now – Old Belly, they called her behind her back – and she kept saying he was useless, but there wasn’t room to stuff everything into his brain. Any road, he wanted to be doing things, not sitting on his backside in a stuffy room all day. He hated writing fusty compositions like she wanted – A Day in the Life of a Penny, or Describe the Common Spider and Its Habits. What kind of habits could a spider have? Sneaking up on poor little flies after they’d got caught in her webs. All spiders must be girls. Boy spiders wouldn’t be so underhand. He wanted to be so famous other people would write about him. And he still had six more years to go before he could leave school and start being a hero.

  He was playing a guessing game with himself, going through the alphabet thinking of animals beginning with each letter, and had just reached M for Monkey when he heard the old ladder creaking. He didn’t hold even the teeniest hope that his mother was bringing him something to eat, so it was an extra-special surprise when she carried in a bowl of soup and a thick chunk of her home-made bread.

  ‘Willie, I couldn’t bear to t
hink of you up here in the cold, so here’s something to keep you warm.’ She handed him the bowl and went out before he could bring himself to thank her. The soup did heat him, although he hadn’t really been cold, snuggled under three woollen blankets, a crocheted bedcover and a flock-filled quilt.

  Five hours later, having carried out some other exercises with the alphabet – flowers, boys’ names, girls’ names and having the odd five-minute naps in between, he heard his father come home, having a short low conversation and then the ladder groaning again, the heavy feet telling him it was his father coming up.

  ‘What’s this your Mam’s been tellin’ me? You surely werena bad-usin’ a wee kittlin’?’ Jake’s expression was stern as the boy began his explanation but, by the time he came to the end, the man was having difficulty in keeping a straight face.

  ‘I was trying to help the poor wee thing,’ Willie gulped. ‘I didna mean to hurt it.’

  ‘No, I understand,’ Jake said, carefully keeping his amusement hidden. ‘But you were hurting it, just the same. You wouldna like if somebody pegged your tail …’

  ‘I havena got a tail, Dad, but I can see what you mean and I’m sorry.’

  ‘Weel, weel, then, we’ll let it be now, so come doonstairs and get your supper.’

  His wife made no reference to the incident until their son was in bed. ‘Did you skelp his bottom, Jake?’

  ‘Oh, Emmy, the poor laddie didna ken he was …’

  ‘So you didn’t?’

  ‘No, I didna, but I made him see he mustna dae things like that, and I’m sure he understands now and we’ll say nae mair aboot it.’

  Emily felt a sense of relief. However badly the bairn behaved, she did not like to see his father chastising him. Jake had a really heavy hand – though it was necessary sometimes. Still, if Willie had learned something from this caper that was enough for her – for now, any road.