Thongs

Nineteen-Sixteen

The red disc of sun seemed to be suspended at no great height above the roofs in a thin, whitish-yellow atmosphere. No heat came from it. It was more like the sun on a primitive stage-set, a Chinese lantern, perfectly circular, and with no density. It was sill early and the city would have been silent had it not been for an occasional milk cart, its bottles clinking in their metal-strutted boxes, some early tramcars, and the gradually increasing clamor of the church bells.

It was a Sunday morning in January and the winter-blackened trees on Glasgow Green and in other parks of the city were gaunt and lifeless. There was as yet no sign that in a few weeks, a month at most, the sap would begin to stir in them again. In the early morning frost their trunks had the hard glint of cast iron.

With the disappearance of the January snow, the city had assumed its accustomed grayness, and now under the pale yellow sky and the heatless lens of sun, the streets of tenements on either side of the turgid, scum-laden river were almost deserted. Their heavy emptiness, caused in part by the time of the year, the earliness of the hour, and the fact that it was the morning after the Saturday night before, was accentuated by the preponderance of gray stone, quarried locally, which went to their building. More than all other towns in the country, those on the West coast of Scotland are gray, and Glasgow, the rambling metropolis of shipyards, engineering works, mining and construction companies, and endless factories, whose million inhabitants are often cut off for months on end from direct contact with the sun, is more than any other the gray city.

At the beginning there were more women than men in the group, unkempt, hatless women with bare pink legs in broken shoes, the upper part of their tired, sun-starved bodies wrapped in black or gray shawls. Occasionally, one of the women broke away from the group, shambling off down Rose Street towards her flat. But as time passed, the group became larger and signs of life began to appear at the windows of the rooms which gave on to the street. The shrill coarse voice of a slum woman cried down from a window above their heads. Someone answered her. The woman at the window remained there, her flat red suspicious face craning out from the window above her flaccid breasts like some grotesque figurehead. She clutched a towel at her breasts in a thin red hand. Her mouth was open and even after she had been answered she hung there, waiting.

They were all waiting. Most of them were incredulous. But a mute hunger for violence, common to each of them, held them together, reinforcing, animating the rumor.

The men joined them, singly or in groups, coming slowly out of the closes which lined both sides of the street. The same caps, the same white scarves, the same boots. There were now more than fifty people in the crowd and the excitement was growing. They were all talking at once. The woman with the flat red face yelled something to another woman who leaned out over a windowsill at the other side of the street. The other woman cocked her head, blinked, and answered with a burst of braying laughter. The crowd shifted and turned, looking up and down the street and up at the faces which looked down on them from above.

And now it was clear that the young man in the blue serge suit, a white scarf at his throat like the other men, was the main point of interest for the crowd. He was leaning with his back against the wall below a street-level window. His hands were thrust deep in his trouser pockets and he answered questions quickly and incisively as they were put to him. He looked very young, with sleek black hair and a thick powerful body which caused the too-tight blue suit to have a corrugated appearance. His face was sullen, the lips thick and sensual, and his small gray eyes suspicious. Although the crowd made no move to interfere with him, he had the look of an animal at bay, his shoulders rounded against the wall and his heavy hands clenched in his pockets causing his trousers to bulge at the thighs. A half-smoked cigarette, unlit, hung from the corner of his mouth. He answered questions quickly but impatiently, without moving his cigarette. He seemed to be interested in those at the fringes of the crowd rather than in those close to him, or perhaps in something beyond the fringes, for as the men appeared from time to time, sidling from the closes along the street, his eyes narrowed and he watched them guardedly.

Suddenly, from a window far above his head, a metal object fell. It struck the pavement with a sharp crack and ricocheted close to his feet. A hush came over the crowd and all eyes were focused on the open razor towards which his hand, after a moment's hesitation, moved. He seemed to be fascinated by the broad blue blade. He tested its edge with his thumb, his head tilted to one side like a bird's, almost as though he were listening to music, and then, very slowly, almost cautiously, he closed it within its white bone handle and looked up to see who had thrown it. The crowd followed his gaze. The girl at the window on the third story pointed twice at him.

She was not pretty. Big, with thin wispy blond hair and slack lips painted a violent red, she leaned over them all, her massive soft bosom pendulous in a blouse of white satin, her hands clasped, her snail-white arms bent, elbows on the sill. The faces — except for Johnnie's — that looked up at her were not friendly. The men were perhaps amused but their eyes were hard and calculating. One woman shouted an insult to her and went into a guffaw. The other women joined in and soon the noise was deafening. The men joked with one another and looked up meaningfully. Only Johnnie, the young man who a moment before had been the center of attention, wasn't smiling. He had a serious, almost hypnotized look on his face, and his glance was still directed at the girl.

But she was no longer looking at him. She was cursing inaudibly at the crowd. And then, when she realized she wasn't heard, she leaned forward over the sill and spat carefully at the woman who had insulted her.

A sudden angry silence came over the crowd.

A large, big-boned man, the husband of the woman who had been spat at, let out an oath and barged his way quickly towards the close which led up to the girl's apartment. The crowd fell aside to make way for him. Johnnie watched his approach without expression. It was not until the man was within a few feet of the close that Johnnie moved. He did so with a sudden snarl, the razor flashing open in his right hand. The man stopped abruptly, a yard away, facing him. A slow hissing sound came from the crowd. Johnnie crouched, the blade ready.

"Fuck off, Beck!" he said. "Take yer bloody mug awa frae here!"

The man hesitated, glowered at the naked blade Johnnie held rigidly at the level of his face. He stood his ground, his face white and his fists clenched at his sides. There was a deadly hush. No one moved. The faces of the spectators were twisted in anticipation.

"Ah'll gie ye five seconds tae fuck off!" Johnnie said quietly.

The long white scar that ran down the left side of Beck's face from temple to chin became as white as chalk. The young man who threatened him was speaking with his father's voice, the same wolf's look.

Abruptly then, Beck turned on his heel and walked away. As the crowd fell back before his retreat, he said loudly for them all to hear: "Ah'm no wantin tae interfere wi the mornin's sport!"

That might have justified him had it not been for the protracted shriek of a woman's laughter that rang out like the rattle of bones from overhead. Beck froze in his tracks, turned, looked over his shoulder at the young man who barred his way, and spat viciously on the street. Johnnie watched him balefully, and then, when Beck continued to walk away, he closed the razor with a snap, turned himself, and disappeared into the close.

The crowd, left to its own devices, did not disperse.

The woman was waiting for him, the door of her flat ajar. He entered cautiously.

She was standing away from the window now, near the large bed, her big breasts heavy in the white satin blouse and faintly pink beneath the material. She was wearing nothing else. Her fat slug-like belly ran outwards to its own ripple and fell inwards towards her crotch with its tuft of coarse colorless hair. The color of an old man's moustache.

Her haunches were flaccid and the big round thighs were streaked gray with dirt. The legs were fat, the ankles thick, and the toe-nails on the spatulate toes were wedged with filth. An insinuation. In one of her pudgy white hands, held between two fingers stained brown from nicotine, a cigarette wilted.

She looked at him through her watery, childlike eyes, and smiled at him with slack, very red lips.

He stood watching her with a mixture of lust and loathing. She was like any one of the prostitutes in the numerous brothels in the Gorbals. But she was an amateur. They said she had money of her own.

She shuffled in her bare feet over to a cupboard and brought out a bottle of cheap spirits. She poured out two glasses. He was fascinated by the great sack-like buttocks and the thin spines of the thighs with the network of fine red veins behind the colorless sheen of hairs. Perhaps it was the imminence of death that brought his lust to a hard knot at his vitals. But excitement gained on him. He accepted the proffered glass without protest. And when she stood against him, breathing through the slack red lips at his face, he made no move to escape her.

He felt the sudden exciting chill at his loins as her hand worked loose the buttons of his trousers and a moment later felt his sex rampant in the soft fatness of her palm.

"Come on, Johnnie!" she said huskily.

He felt himself drawn to the bed and with his trousers dangling below his hard buttocks, his belly fitted like a forehead against her. He groaned as he sank into the pale lips of her sticky slit. Her hands closed over his buttocks. With an oath he worked blindly and angrily like a gouge at her heavy crotch.

It could not last long. The woman had offered herself with sure knowledge at a moment of crisis. He was back on the street in less than a quarter of an hour.

When he reached the street, his face was wooden. The woman, returned to the window, looked down from her vantage point. When she saw Johnnie's gaze, she made a slight movement with her hand. He was smiling when he looked down again, but the smile drained away as he surveyed the crowd. It got on his nerves as well as theirs. They were glancing at him uneasily. They were waiting.

"Hey, Allison!"

A young man of his own age stepped forward from the front ranks of the crowd.

"Go an tell the auld bastard ah'm waitin!"

Allison nodded. He turned on his heel and disappeared through the crowd.

The men nearest the front began talking now, passing the news back to the fringes. It moved quickly, like an electric spark, like a catalytic agent which caused the members of the crowd to grow together again in purpose. They were elated. All disbelief was washed out of their expressions. The women especially were watching Johnnie as he took up his position against the wall. He seemed to feel the change and respond to it. His thick features were flushed and his jacket was hanging open, disclosing the vest in whose pockets at either side was a razor, the white-handled one which the girl had thrown him on the right, and a larger black-handled one on the left. They were impressed. The new item of information ran through the crowd as the first had, increasing the tension. Then, as he cupped his hands in front of his mouth to light a cigarette, a sudden shivering of glass on metal caused all heads to turn. A milk cart was turning into the street at the far end. He scowled as he threw away the spent match.

Slowly, a few yards at a time, the skinny white horse approached, drawing the rattling milk cart in its wake. At each close it halted while the boy mounted the stairs to deliver milk to the flats. The red-haired man at the reins sat high on the cart, slumped forward, and smoked a broken clay pipe. He was aware of the crowd which was thinning now but not dispersing. The women clustered on the corner, talking excitedly, and the men, in twos and threes, leaned on the walls lining both sides of the street. They watched the snail-like progress of the cart without interest. Nevertheless, the passage of the cart along the street provided a distraction, an interval of lower tension which lasted right up to the moment when, as fortuitously as it had appeared, it rounded the corner of Rose Street and left the central lane of the roadway once again deserted.

At that moment, as the rear end of the cart turned the corner, Johnnie tossed his glowing cigarette butt into the gutter and closed his jacket. Three police constables had appeared suddenly where the cart had turned and were strolling at a leisurely pace along almost the same route. The faces of the men became impassive and those who carried them opened Sunday newspapers and made the movement of relaxing against the walls. Simultaneously, those who had been hanging out of the windows disappeared from their places and the windows were closed, presenting a uniformly gray exterior. The women meanwhile gathered their shawls about them and moved deeper into the doorways or entered the flats of their neighbors at ground level until there was no sign of a woman on the street. Johnnie, isolated now, with at least ten yards between himself and the nearest group of men, lit another cigarette, thrust his hands deep into his trouser pockets, and stared vacantly at the pavement in front of him. He remained in this posture for some seconds and then, as though the thought had just occurred to him, he extracted a neatly folded gray cap from his right-hand jacket pocket and fitted it with great care close to his scalp. He looked up then, his eyes traveling along the groups of men reading their newspapers to the three helmeted constables who had stopped in the middle of the street, looking casual, as though they were discussing the weather or the architecture of the tenements, their hands clasped peacefully behind their backs in an at-ease position and their white faces under their dark blue, silver-studded helmets glancing upwards at the impenetrable windows and the sky beyond.

There were about forty men on the street, most of them ragged, disheveled, and wearing dirty white scarves at their necks, as though they had just got up and had come out for some reason — not particularly urgent — to discuss the morning's news. The church bells were still tolling and their sound on the cold, windless morning seemed to be devoid of all significance. No one, certainly in Rose Street, paid any attention to them. They were there in the background, a sound monotonous and plangent in the atmosphere, and for all their movement, as flat, static, and lifeless as the red coin of sun above the level of the roofs. But there was something in the air. It was too quiet. The policemen knew it and the men, while they feigned innocence, knew that the policemen knew it, but they didn't care, for sooner or later they would have to go away, and then it would happen. By the time the policemen returned, at no matter what strength, it would be too late. It would be over.

The policemen remained in that way, a close and casual triangle, talking in the middle of the street for about five minutes, and then, as casually as they had come, they went, walking the length of the street without so much as a glance to either side, leaving Johnnie on the right unnoticed, ignored, and flicking yet another stub of cigarette where they had walked with their shining boots.

The last of them was now out of sight round the corner. Johnnie nodded to a youth on the opposite side of the pavement. The youth shambled after them as far as the corner. There he hesitated to light a cigarette, looked up and down the intersection as though to satisfy himself that there was no traffic before he crossed, and then actually did cross to the wider-angle view on the opposite pavement. A moment later he looked back at Johnnie, nodded, and held his right thumb upwards, discreetly, at waist-level. Johnnie returned his nod and opened his jacket. The razors were still there, one white and one black, the sleek silver tongues at the non-cutting end of the blades pointing diagonally towards his armpits where, in the sleeve-holes of his vest, he now hooked his thumbs. At the same time he glanced down towards the other end of the street and the men, following his gaze, folded their newspapers.

Allison was approaching at a quick walk along the pavement.

The trio appeared suddenly, the father slightly in advance, and then the mistress holding the sixteen-year-old daughter by the hand. The father carried a long belt of heavy black leather in his right hand.

Johnnie saw him at once and took up his position in the center of the roadway. The crowd pressed forward and back like an ebbing tide. There was a distance of about twenty yards between the two men, the elder of whom, carrying the belt and followed at a few yards' distance by the two young women, now raised his eyes under the skip of his cap and stared drunkenly along the center lane of the street where his son, a razor in each hand crouching ready for battle, awaited him. There was an utter silence in the street. All eyes were trained now upon Razor King, who had halted, his feet apart, swaying, his powerful shoulders hunched forward like a gorilla's, and with the belt of black leather trailing the ground near his right boot. Somewhere, high above the roofs, the church bells were still tolling.

Then, suddenly, the sixteen-year-old girl had broken away from the other and was running the length of the street towards Johnnie, screaming his name. No other noise. Just the harsh strident scream of the girl and the clatter of her shoes on the stone. It took her about four seconds to reach him. And then, shifting his position slightly to meet her onrush with his left shoulder, Johnnie struck sideways with his forearm, sending her sprawling to the gutter at the feet of the nearest spectators. He was immediately on guard again, crouching, the razors held at chest level eighteen inches in front of his body. The girl was gathered into the crowd and held there by Allison and another man. In the tension of the moment as she tumbled, her skirt fluttering upward, in the gutter, no one noticed the thin red weals which disfigured her thighs.

Razor King had not moved. His small bloodshot eyes stared out derisively beneath his low forehead. Now, with a peculiar shambling walk, he advanced slowly and dangerously toward his son.

He was of exactly the same stature as Johnnie, only thicker, with battle scars all over his body. His nose had been broken by a bottle flat into his face. His clothes hung in tatters from his body, but at the neck a spotless white silk scarf was wound, and his cap, like Johnnie's, was sharp and immaculate.

Now, less than ten yards apart, neither man moved. From the windows on the fourth story above the street, because of the dark clothing of the men and because of what they held in their hands — the one, razors, the other, the long black belt — the slow approach had appeared almost beetle-like. The impression was accentuated by the minute tremor in the posture of the younger man and by the slight swaying motion of the other as he advanced. When the latter came to a halt, the whole street seemed to halt with him, to freeze to immobility, the crowd paralyzed by its own acute lust for violence, strung taut as a man is at the instant before he is involved utterly in love or dying, the protagonists seized in the religious certainty of their commitment, and the young woman in the yellow polo-neck jersey — the mistress — her long red hair falling to her shoulders and emphasizing the smooth rise of her breasts under the fine wool, at a dead stop, the muscles of her haunches rigid under her tight skirt and her feet in high heels riveted to the stone where she stood now, slightly to the side, nearer to the father than to the son, and unable to move.

Closer, at street level, where a light wind brushed a scrap of paper along the gutter, movement was more perceptible. The men were not still. The crouch of the younger man was not static. It deepened the tensions doubling and redoubling themselves at every fiber. And the older man, halted momentarily, had paused only so as not to provoke a sudden movement on the part of the other, but he was going forward now, an inch at a time. His voice when it came was gruff, ominous, and strangely calm at the same time. It created the urgent necessity, as certain chords do, for resolution.

"Pit … doon … they … weapons!"

Johnnie didn't flinch. All things seemed suspended. He made no move to obey his father's order.

"Pit … doon … they … weapons, Johnnie!"

The slight note of wonder, even perhaps of hysteria, in the repeated command seemed to draw the crowd actively into the situation. It participated in the nightmare.

The voice which shrilled out now was irrelevant, absurd. It was Allison's. Her face craned whitely forward from behind the daughter whom she held, close to her chest.

"Ye bloody well asked for it, Gault!"

Razor King's face became contorted with fury. The black belt shook in his fist. He glared hatefully behind his son in the direction of the voice.

"Aye, Allison! Ah've got you marked!" he bellowed. "This is your fuckin work an ye'll pay for it! Ah'll come roon tae you in jist aboot two meenutes!" He looked at Johnnie again, his face set and his bloodshot eyes narrowed to slits.

"Ahm tellin ye for the last time, Johnnie! Pit … doon … they … bliddy … razors!"

At that moment, and for the first time, Johnnie wavered. His muscles seemed to slacken. A low moan escaped the crowd. Razor King breathed outwards through his twisted nostrils. His chin was tilted slightly to one side, giving the head a cocked appearance.

It might have been over.

But the next voice, a harsh slum woman's scream, acted as the detonator.

"Ayee! Awa' back hame an get yer bliddy erse skelpit! It's no that long ago yer mither wiped it fur ye!"

Johnnie moved then, straight for his father.

With a thin animal snarl Razor King hurled the belt down. His hands flashed for his vest pockets and the gleaming blades cut forward at his son's rush. Johnnie ducked, too late to avoid having his left cheek slashed open to the bone, but quick enough to be under his father's guard and to butt him with all his power with a knee to the groin. Razor King screamed with rage and pain and toppled backwards, bent like a hinge. Johnnie hesitated for a split second, and then, with the wild cry of a wounded animal, leapt cutting and kicking forward. More like a ghoul than a man he went in, his cheek streaming red blood, his mouth bellowing inarticulate words, and his terrible razors cutting. Razor King went down under the onslaught, powerless to protect himself. And Johnnie had no mercy. His boots began systematically to break the bones of his father's body. At that moment he was insane.

Somewhere in the near distance a police whistle blew, a thin clear sound in the cold morning air. That was the signal for the rammy to begin.

Somebody at the edge of the crowd leapt in with a broken bottle. It was Beck. He was on to Johnnie before the latter knew he was confronted by another assailant and the beer bottle struck jaggedly into his head above the left ear. He collapsed at once, the razors tumbling from his clenched fists.

The crowd, excited by the continuous blasts of the police whistles, became a riot. Women fled screaming to the doorways. Men, uncertain whether to flee or to attack, were struck down from behind and trampled underfoot. No man wanted to be a victim. Razors, bicycle chains, and broken glass appeared in their hands. A moment later Rose Street was involved in one of the most venomous brawls that ever took place in the Gorbals.

The police made a truncheon charge as soon as they arrived, sixty of them, thirty from either end of the street, forming an impenetrable blue cordon. They struck brutally in two waves and the crowd caved in, those who could, escaping into the closes.

Fifteen men, including Johnnie, were carried by stretcher to the infirmary, thirty-two — amongst whom were four women — by police van to the central police station, and Razor King alone by horse ambulance to the morgue.