Thongs

— 11-

With Johnnie, it had to happen.

I never knew whether Hazel had received instructions. But that doesn't matter.

During Razor King's periodic drunken bouts, Hazel was alone with Johnnie. He still sat watching her. She would be washing at the sink, or putting on her silk stockings, or brushing her hair. We all — Hazel, Johnnie and myself — saw it coming. Johnnie was waiting. For some time now he had bothered less to conceal his desire.

But still he waited.

And then, a few days after the visit of the stranger, he made his first overt move. Did Hazel force it?

Johnnie reached out with his hand and caught Hazel by the wrist. The choice was still Hazel's. If she had freed herself, Johnnie would probably have been content to wait. As she stared into his eyes, the knowledge came to her that he would do as she wished him to do. His eyes appraised her, posed a question. And Hazel smiled.

"You'll be awa' ott, Gertie."

I realized at once what it meant.

That night Hazel became Johnnie's mistress.

From then on it was a question of days.

Razor King, habitually drunk now, took Hazel as a bull takes a cow. And sometimes Ella was here too. That was the dark woman. The one who had giggled. The King took them both to bed, the one giggling, the other cool.

Johnnie watched.

And then, toward the end of the week, on the Saturday night before the fatal Sunday, he told Hazel that she would not sleep with his father again. Hazel, responding passionately, held him tightly in her arms, and I wondered as she did so what she was doing and why she did it, for I knew she loved neither man. I knew it was not her intention to remain for long in the squalor of the Gorbals, even as its queen. It occurred to me then and it must have occurred to Hazel a long time before that as strong as these men were — my father, the wolf of the slums, men like him — there were others in the city who could crush them by lifting a telephone. Neither Johnnie nor my father would ever have admitted that, and as long as they inhabited the narrow world of violence in the Gorbals, as long as they did not encroach on the wider, more profitable territory of the city at large, the truth would never be forced upon them. The situation in the Gorbals was tolerated because it did not threaten city interest. Thus, Hazel's reality was the reality of neither man. She had grown up among them, despising them, accepting for the present the love of the strongest, making plans for an entirely different future to begin at the moment she was free to choose. Perhaps it was because she knew that the moment was about to arrive that she accepted Johnnie as a lover. And the idea of certain conflict fascinated her.

"Keep your bliddy hauns aff her!"

To see Razor King sway in the doorway, his face a mask of anger and incomprehension, his huge hands tense as a strangler's, caused an electric sensation that was almost lust to move in me. I backed away near to Hazel, leaving the center of the floor vacant for the two men.

"Jist keep yer big bliddy hauns aff Hazel!" Johnnie repeated.

Razor King lurched towards him with an oath.

Johnnie was quick but he had underestimated my father's strength and it was brute force that counted in that confined space. Johnnie tried hard to hold Razor King in the full-Nelson, but the older man stiffened, ducked with a grunt, making a butt of his bottom, and hurled himself backwards with his full power. They crashed together on the floor, Gault's body like a sack of sand knocking all the breath out of his son. And then Razor King was up and as Johnnie struggled to his feet, my father's boot took him heavily on the mouth so that Johnnie's head struck backwards with a sickening thud on the floor. He didn't move after that.

Hazel slipped quickly into bed, accepting Johnnie's defeat with equanimity.

Johnnie crawled out some time during the night, leaving Hazel in his father's arms.

But in the morning, I knew even before Allison came. I had been out as usual for milk and the Sunday papers. I saw the crowd collect. I even saw the razor thrown from the third story window. I knew that it would take place that morning in the open street.

Less than two hours later, my father was dead.