Johnnie hadn't come in. Hazel didn't know that and Razor King hadn't noticed, but I had, because Johnnie had mentioned her name a week before. He said he had big eyes for her. A real hot piece of stuff. He might even marry her. And I was wondering how he would take it when he came in and saw her in bed with our father. She couldn't have been more than a year older than Johnnie, who was nearing twenty. Johnnie would be mad. I knew that.
I got up and walked quietly over to the bed. I was right. Hazel was awake. She looked at me without saying anything. She didn't know me then. I was his daughter, that was all she knew.
My father was snoring heavily. Hazel was trying to cover her breasts. It was as though she was ashamed to let me see them. I noticed that she had been bitten in a number of places by the bugs. Here and there on the smooth alabaster skin of her upper torso was an ugly red spot. It was almost impossible to keep the bedbugs at bay in the old Gorbals' tenements. We used paraffin for everything, for light, and the men used it for hair oil, and we used it to fight the bugs with. We smeared it on the walls.
I smiled at her, trying to tell her not to be afraid. She didn't smile back. She was too scared. Her lovely round breasts rose and fell next to the rough gray blanket. I would have liked to touch them but instead I turned away and began the day's work.
I raked out the fire and lit a new one, took the basin out to the stair head lavatory and emptied it, and then I sat down on the pan to pee. There was a used condom, its neck tied with a knot near my right foot. I slipped my foot out of my shoe and touched the little rubber sack with my bare toes. I was cold but it made me feel sexy being as I was with my naked bottom on the wooden seat. I wondered who'd been in the lavatory the night before. It was used often for that. Greta Smith told me she'd let a boy do it to her there. Against the wall where the dirty drawings were. They made me feel sexy too. Sometimes I masturbated there, looking at them. When I lifted up the condom I found it was quite heavy. It was a bit sticky and the dust had collected on it. I wrapped it up in a bit of newspaper and put it in the pocket of my skirt. The thought of its being there, the real stuff, so close to my cunt, made me feel really good. I was going to begin rubbing myself when I heard footsteps on the stairs. I knew at once it was Johnnie. I called out to him.
"That you, Sis?"
"Aye, just a minute, Johnnie. Ah'm comin' out."
He was waiting for me. He had a smirk on his face and looked pleased with himself.
"Where were you all night?" I said.
"That'd be tellin'!" he said with a wink.
I knew all right where he'd been. He'd stayed the night in a brothel with a whore. Otherwise he wouldn't have been so pleased with himself. He was earning money now with a coal lorry.
"Is faither angry?"
I told him then about Hazel.
"Faither didn't notice ye wisnie there."
Johnnie had gone white.
"So he's taken Hazel Cooper has he? Ah'll get the auld bastard fer that yet!" he said between his teeth.
— 3-
When I had finished tidying the room, I put a kettle on to boil and went out to buy milk and the Sunday morning papers. I left Johnnie huddled over the fire, staring at it.
When we had gone in together, Johnnie had taken one look at Hazel who was still lying beside my father with her naked breasts exposed. Then, without a word, he had turned his back and sat down by the fire.
I went out and downstairs.
There were no men in the street. The men of the district usually had a long lie-in on Sunday mornings. But the women were already moving about, in and out of the dairy and the newsagent's.
Old Mrs. MacBride caught me as I came out with the milk from the dairy. She wanted to know if it was true my father had taken Hazel Cooper. She said she had heard talk. Someone had told her that Henry Cooper, Hazel's father, who worked as a night watchman in a warehouse, had been looking for a gun. He said he was going to blow out John Gault's bloody brains.
"Aye, there's them before that tried!" I replied, and once again for it wasn't the first time, I felt proud at having Gault for a father.
But I was worried abut Johnnie so I evaded the others who tried to talk to me and hurried back to the single end.
Johnnie hadn't moved.
I lifted the boiling kettle off the flame.
At that moment Razor King woke up. He shook his head with a grunt and ran his fingers through his close-cropped hair. Hazel, nervous, and as if to appease him, leaned across him and kissed him softly on the lips.
He blinked at her angrily.
"Lay aff of it, ye sexy little sewer!" he snarled. "Fur Christ's sake has that bliddy erse o'yours no had enough of it!"
She cowered away from him into the dark corner of the alcove. He didn't pay any further attention to her. He sat at the edge of the bed, naked from the waist downwards. His feet were filthy and the skin of his legs under the thick growth of blue-black hairs was gray. At that moment he caught sight of the two bottles of beer Johnnie had brought home with him. He lurched off the bed, screwed off the top of one of the bottles, and drank a deep draught. The liquid spilled around his mouth and ran down over the beating vein of his neck onto his dirty undershirt, which he seldom took off. Before he drank again, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and rubbed away the trickle at his chest. He drank again, this time emptying the bottle. The alcohol had an immediate effect upon him. His humor changed. He screwed the top off the second bottle, took one or two small gulps from it and turned to Hazel, offering it to her. She watched him like a rabbit watches a snake. She shook her head. He shrugged his shoulders and walked on his hard-soled feet to the sink where, drinking again, he began to urinate. He allowed the tap to run for a moment afterwards. Still at the sink and gazing out of the grimy window, he drank the rest of the beer. He put down the bottle, turned on the tap again, blew his nose into the sink, and sluiced his face with cold water. He came away rubbing his face with a towel.
As he stepped into his trousers, he asked me if breakfast was ready.
I said it would be in a minute and dropped two slices of bacon into the frying pan. They began to sizzle immediately.
At that moment Razor King caught sight of Johnnie.
He looked at him suspiciously. Johnnie still stared into the fire.
"Whit's wrang wi you?"
"The King's up. No peace noo," Johnnie said laconically.
"You mind yer bliddy lip or ah'll show ye who's King!"
"Aw fer Christ's sake, can ye no leave a man alane!"
Johnnie stood up.
"There's only one man in thise hoose," Razor King said with a laugh, and then, pleased with himself, he added: "How d'ye like the tert, Johnnie?" He nodded towards Hazel who was now sitting up with the blankets pulled up to her chin.
Johnnie turned and looked at Hazel for the first time. His expression became disdainful.
"Is she no a bit skinny?" he said.
"Skinny?" the King said. "Show him ye're no skinny, hen!"
Hazel didn't move.
Razor King strode across to her, whipped off the bedclothes, and scooped Hazel out of bed. She tumbled on the floor.
"Get up," he said.
Slowly, one stocking still trailing round her ankle, Hazel got up. She was stark naked. Her pubic hairs looked damp. They curled in little black wisps.
"Ah thought her hair wis red?" Johnnie said. But he was looking at her in a different way. He was fighting to control himself.
"Aye, she's a wee smasher!" my father said, pride of possession in his voice.