Rust and Dust 4

The Tink stamped his feet against the cold. Lit a Woodbine. A packet of five from his jacket pocket. Smoked the edge off the day and blew it between tight lips. Held it for a moment between finger and thumb. The lighted end close to his cupped hand added warmth. Tuppence for five. Fourpence for ten. He took another draw and moved his jaw before flicking at the flame, nipping it. Stowing the shortened fag-end back in the paper carton.

He was undecided about whether he’d go to the farewell tea, but the boy had invited him and made him promise he’d come.

It wasn’t far from the pier and he found himself walking in that direction. Victorian sandstone blackened by smoke. Splintered and broken floorboards. Walls patched and unpatched, with holes from burst pipes and leaks.

It stuck in his throat and reminded him of home. Shared lavatories. Six or eight flats to a toilet. Hold the door shut with your feet. Hold your arse in until those holding the pan let go. Newspaper to clean your arse. To clean the seat and to clean your boots where sewerage overflowed the blocked soil pipe.

For the going-away day, the toilets reeked of disinfectant. The close outside to the street was scrubbed with carbolic. The rats in their rat runs kept their heads down to the march of leather-shod feet. He followed the noise to the flat above.

In the high-ceilinged room a linen tablecloth, stiff as card with ironed hard edges and the kind of clean white that was brought out for weddings or funerals. The kind of cloth a pawnbroker would easily exchange for a ten-shilling note and a pledge. A big flowered teapot was on the go with a wicker handle that spoke of the old country. Best china cups and saucers and little dishes to match with lumps of sugar piled high and sucked between gums and blackened teeth.

Plates of sandwiches with thin fillings. Dishes of pickled herring. Plates heaped with home baking and sponge cakes.    

     Crowded elbows pushing together. Tight against the wall and overflowed out into the lobby. All the men smoking and women passing the tea overheads and plates of food, hand-over-hand. The Tink was glad of the warmth and the food. It had been so long since he’d been in company, but he was glad that nobody made conversation with him. He never had much to say.  

Head of the table, Mr Eisenberg, the chestnut seller, in a heavy grey jacket and stared straight ahead. A smile flickered over his wife’s face as someone joked with her husband in Yiddish.

A cold mist rose from the Clyde as they crowded around the close outside. Mr Eisenberg and his wife stood in their best clothes, but when someone spoke in English, they expected their son to appear and translate. Their steadiness and confidence dissipated when a first or second cousin asked ‘Tell me, where is Charlie?’ he used his English name, but it came out sounding more like Varlie.

All the Tink wanted was to slip away into the night as others had, scared of missing the last sailing of the Waverly and being stranded overnight.

A short and stocky man with grey hair approached. He peered through sixpenny Woolworth specs propped squiggly on the end of his nose. Poor enough to be apologetic about his accent and his English and having to ask a direct question. ‘You were his only friend? You perhaps know where the boy is?’

The Tink rubbed his unshaven chin and sighed. ‘Maybe he’ll be on the pier. He seems to spend a lot of time with Madame Zita.’ It all came out wrong. He didn’t mean to say that much.

‘Maybe I’m wrong.’ The stocky man laid a hand on his arm and glanced around him before he went on. ‘We could ask this Madame Zita to come see him and his family off? Is she—the good lady—perhaps your good wife?’

He turned, and with a sweep of his hand and arm included Mr Eisenberg, his wife dabbing at her eyes with a lace-trimmed hankie, standing with a group of stragglers.  

‘No, sorry, I meant tae say, Madame Zita is a fortune-telling machine. It’s the very latest of its kind. Aw the way fae America.’ He let that sink in. ‘It got aw kind of gadgets. It’s eyes light up. It’s got bellows that make it appear that it’s breathing. It’s even got a speaking voice—when the recordings work. It’s wan of the most popular attractions. Charlie helped me to strip it down—he was fair fascinated by that machine.’

He offered a gentle smile. ‘Yingelekh zaynen yingelekh. Boys are boys. But where is he now?’   

‘I don’t know.’

He stood in silence. He took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with a piece of cloth he kept for that purpose. ‘Perhaps we should find out then? Show me where this Madame Zita machine is?’

‘Aye, sure.’

‘Give me one of your minutes,’ he offered a smile. And his chest swelled with responsibility. ‘I’ll let Leibel know where we are going. And we’ll bring his boy, Charlie, home.’

Charlie never came home, of course. The Tink read about it in the local paper, how the police had arrested Mr Eisenberg and accused him of murder. But without a body, they had to let him go.

But the chestnut seller didn’t go far. He fashioned a hemp noose and hung himself beneath the pier.

Sometimes when the Tink is lying half-asleep in the Howff, he thinks he can hear the creaking noise of his body swaying back and forward, following the drift of the tides. And when he conks out, he senses Madame Zita’s eyes light up. The recorded voice is no longer that of a gypsy woman, but of a young boy, Charlie screaming for help.

When the dud Palestinian Penny turned up, that threw him for a bit. But he just put it down to coincidence. But he wonders if he should accidentally—on purpose—dump Madame Zita in the Firth of Clyde and let her fortune-tell the fish.