Its Colours They Are Fine. Alan Spence
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rain and also covered the pilot’s wheel-house. The whole ferry, including the canopy, was painted the same dull brown.
Aleck and Joe went to the front and leaned over the side. Smoke phutted from the chimney as the ferry chugged its way out. Joe had left his bow at home but Aleck had brought his with him, the one remaining arrow tucked under his belt. He trailed the bow in the water, watching the wake ripple out behind it, the boat rocking gently beneath them, the feel of the deck through their thin-soled shoes.
Towering along both banks were the great jutting cranes of the shipyards, a tanker further downstream, gulls circling overhead.
They’d been told a little about the river in school. How it began as a trickle away in the southern uplands and wound its way down through sheepfarms and mining towns and eventually flowed through Glasgow and beyond to the firth and the open sea.
‘Funny tae think ’n aw this watter comin fae a wee stream up ’n the hills,’ said Aleck.
‘Intit,’ said Joe.
‘Ah mean, the same watter,’ said Aleck.
They were silent, looking down at the oily flow. Grey with colours. Like the pigeon.
The journey was too quickly over. At the Partick side they charged up the steps then stopped and looked around them. The ferry started back across.
Miss Riddie had told them about Partick and Govan growing side by side. The deepening of the river. Shipbuilding. Cheap houses for the shipyard workers. She had said they were like reflections, Partick and Govan, with the river like a mirror in between.
The grey buildings looked the same, but they were not their own. They felt lost and threatened. The strange streets and unfamiliar faces were hostile. At the corner opposite, a group of men loafing. Boys their own age, playing, looking towards them. They would have to go past them to get clear of the ferry.
‘D’you know anywherr tae go?’ asked Aleck.
‘Naw. No really,’ said Joe.
‘D’ye fancy jist gawn back?’
‘Comin?’
‘Right, c’mon!’
They squatted on the steps waiting. If Partick and Govan were on opposite sides of the mirror, only one side was real. It depended on where you had been brought up. And for Aleck and Joe, Govan was the only reality they knew. When they were back once more on the steps at the Govan side, Joe turned to Aleck.
‘Hey! D’ye fancy jist steyin oan the ferry an gawn back an furrat a coupla times? Jist fur a wee hurl?’
‘At’s a great idea!’ said Aleck. They jumped back on to the ferry just in time before it moved off.
The low sun was bright on the water and the shadows it cast were long. ‘Heh Aleck,’ said Joe. ‘Ye could haud up the driver wi yer bow ’n arra an get um tae take us tae America or Africa or wherrever it wis.’
‘Imagine!’ said Aleck. He looked at the bow. ‘Och wid ye lookit the state ae it!’ The string had split the cane at one end and the split had continued half way down its length.
‘Never mind,’ said Joe.
‘Disnae really matter, ah suppose.’
At the Partick side they decided to jump off and join the oncoming passengers for the journey back, just for the sake of the leap from the deck to the steps. But when they tried to get back on the pilot blocked their way.
‘Right!’ he said. ‘Yizzur steyin aff. Yizzuv bin up an doon aff this boat lik a fuckin yoyo. D’ye think it’s jist fur playin oan? Noo goan! Get!’
They stood helpless, watching as the ferry moved off towards their home shore.
‘Whit’ll we dae noo?’ asked Aleck.
‘Ther’s another ferry up at the Art Galleries,’ said Joe. ‘We could walk it up.’
‘Wull that no take us a while?’ said Aleck.
‘Nothin else we kin dae.’ Joe looked out after the ferry, now almost at the Govan side.
‘Bastard!’ he said.
‘Cunt!’ said Aleck.
He threw his split bow and his last arrow into the water and watched them being swirled out by the current. He wondered how far they would be carried. Out past the shipyards, past Greenock and Gourock to the firth, past the islands, out past Ireland, out to the Atlantic, out . . .
Aleck suddenly shivered. The sky was beginning to darken. The river was deep and wide. They were far from home, in an alien land.
‘Fuckin Partick,’ said Joe.
They began the slow climb to the top of the ferry steps.
Gypsy
‘Gypsies ur worse than cathlicks!’ said Shuggie to Aleck. ‘Nae kiddin. They havnae a fuckin clue.’
Les the gypsy said nothing. He just laughed and carried on tearing open packets of jotters and stacking them on an old table. The storeroom was thick with dust and a yellow winter light filtered in through the one window, which was small and grimy with bars on the outside. There was a single light bulb but it had fused and the janitor hadn’t got round to replacing it.
Shuggie and Aleck were savouring the few minutes of freedom from the classroom, clambering over packing-cases and ancient desks, all chipped and battered, scrawled on and carved. They climbed and rummaged, poked and dug, from the highest shelf to the darkest grubbiest corner, expecting always to unearth some fabled, long-lost treasure.
But Les insisted on going on with the work they’d been sent to do. That was what had rankled Shuggie, though he hated the gypsy anyway.
‘Wotcha think yer gonna find?’ asked Les.
‘Wojja finkya gonna foind?’ said Shuggie, mocking his English accent.
‘Very funny,’ said Les.
‘Vewy fanny,’ said Shuggie. ‘Anywey, never you mind whit. Jist you wait an see.’
‘Some’dy funn a stuffed owl wance,’ said Aleck. ‘In a gless case it wis. An some’dy else funn a dead dead dead auld fotie a the Rangers.’
‘Whit ye talkin tae that cunt fur?’ said Shuggie.
‘Ach c’mon,’ said Aleck. ‘E’s no daein any herm. Ah mean wu’ve goat tae soart oot the jotters sometime.’
‘Aw ah’m sayin is thur’s nae hurry,’ said Shuggie. ‘We kin take wur time. Nae need tae belt intae it as if wur daein piecework.’
‘Ach well,’ said Aleck. There was a silence. Then he went on, telling Les, ‘An thur’s supposed tae be gasmasks, an fitba strips, an bladders, an loads a great books, an jist . . . hunners a things!’
‘Must be pretty well hidden!’ said Les, looking round the room and laughing.
‘Smartarse!’ said Shuggie, then, turning to Aleck, ‘D’ye wanty gie tit-features a haun then?’
‘Aw right,’ said Aleck, jumping down from the desk-top where he was squatting.
‘Freezin in ere, innit,’ said Les.
For answer, Aleck nodded and shuddered, blowing on his hands and rubbing them together. ‘Nae radiators in here,’ he said. He lifted down a packet of jotters and tore it open.
‘F2,’ he said.
‘Over ere,’ said Les, indicating two of the piles he’d made. ‘These other ones are FO and C2. Anythin else we’ve just t’leave ere.’
The jotters were all a dingy brown colour with the Highway Code on the front. On the back were the multiplication tables and lists of weights and measures, to be memorised. Aleck was reading over