Its Colours They Are Fine - Alan Spence Canons

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folk-song, ‘The Sash’, that has played its own part in violence and religious bigotry in central Scotland echoes in the book’s title subtly enough to be open to more than one meaning or sectarian affiliation. The stories collected in this volume do indeed reflect the effect of sectarianism and alcohol (and the caged-in lives of generations of women). But this fragment of the title’s most notorious inference is only a tiny part of what there is to see. Of course not. With the lightest of touches, these stories present the far wider picture.

      Between these pages are the overlooked, the wide-eyed and hopeful, and clear flashes of wonder. Beauty and significance, no matter how indefinable, show their colours too. A wider world and ways of being in it open themselves to view. Some characters turn to poetry instead of alcohol, some to mind-expansion of other types, including as much Glasgow-inspired as Zen-inspired transcendence.

      Which is where the Third Eye, equally the ‘eye of insight’ in the forehead of the god Shiva and the subtle power of poetry, prose and thought (as exemplified by the Sauchiehall Street haven that opened the eyes of so many) take us in this book.

      In ‘Tinsel’, a six-year-old sees an other-worldly beauty on the Christmas tree he and his mother decorate on Christmas Eve, and the child alone glimpses another self, unreachable, in the window’s reflection. In ‘Sheaves’, an older boy can tell the time (time to go to Sunday School means half past one) by his mother’s ‘shouting him up’ from play. ‘The Rain Dance’, some years on, shows a young groom-to-be getting drunk the night before his wedding as his mother waits up, worrying, only to be disappointed when he does appear (‘Ah mean it wis the boay’s last night a freedom before e pits is heid in the auld noose,’ his father, with breathtaking insensitivity, explains). Further along the timeline still, a young married man admires a beautiful Chinese brushwork illustration in a book and finds the appearance of Japanese landscapes, only half-mockingly, in the patterns of damp on his ceiling.

      What culture might be moves on. It touches our lives whether we invite it or not, offering fresh connections between the obvious and the half-glimpsed, the commonplace and the ethereal. Its Colours They Are Fine describes a time of enormous social and cultural change in a resolutely working-class city. Human happiness, folly, fleetingness and hope are its core.

       Janice Galloway, May 2018

      ONE

      Tinsel

      The swing-doors of the steamie had windows in them but even when he stood on tiptoe he couldn’t reach up to see out. If he held the doors open, the people queuing complained about the cold and anyway the strain would make his arms ache. So he had to be content to peer out through the narrow slit between the doors, pressing his forehead against the brass handplate. He could see part of the street and the grey buildings opposite, everything covered in snow. He tried to see more by moving a little sideways, but the gap wasn’t wide enough. He could smell the woodandpaint of the door and the clean bleachy smell from the washhouse. His eye began to sting from the draught so he closed it tight and put his other eye to the slit, but he had to jump back quickly as a woman with a pramful of washing crashed open the doors. When the doors had stopped swinging and settled back into place he noticed that the brass plate was covered with fingermarks. He wanted to see it smooth and shiny so he breathed up on it, clouding it with his breath, and rubbed it with his sleeve. But he only managed to smear the greasy marks across the plate, leaving it streaky and there was still a cluster of prints near the top that he couldn’t reach at all.

      He went over and sat down on the long wooden bench against the wall. His feet didn’t quite reach the ground and he sat swinging his legs. It felt as if his mother had been in the washhouse for hours.

      Waiting.

      People passed in and out. The queue was just opposite the bench. They queued to come in and wash their clothes or to have a hot bath or a swim. The way to the swimming baths was through an iron turnstile, like the ones at Ibrox Park. When his father took him to the match he lifted him over the turnstile so he didn’t have to pay.

      Unfastening his trenchcoat, he rummaged about in his trouser pocket and brought out a toy Red Indian without a head, a pencil rubber, a badge with a racing car, a yellow wax crayon and a foreign coin. He pinned the badge on to his lapel and spread the other things out on the bench. The crayon was broken in the middle but because the paper cover wasn’t torn the two ends hadn’t come apart. It felt wobbly. He bent it in half, tearing the paper. Now he had two short crayons instead of one long one. There was nothing to draw on except the green-tiled wall so he put the pieces back in his pocket.

      The coin was an old one, from Palestine, and it had a hole in the middle. He’d been given it by his uncle Andy who had been a soldier there. Now he was a policeman in Malaya. He would be home next week for Christmas. Jesus’s birthday. Everybody gave presents then so that Jesus would come one day and take them to Heaven. That was where he lived now, but he came from Palestine. Uncle Andy had been to see his house in Bethlehem. At school they sang hymns about it. ‘Come all ye faithful’. ‘Little star of Bethlehem’.

      He scraped at the surface of the bench with his coin, watching the brown paint flake and powder, blowing the flakings away to see the mark he’d made.

      The woman at the pay-desk shouted at him.

      ‘Heh! Is that how ye treat the furniture at hame? Jist chuck it!’

      He sat down again.

      Two boys and two girls aged about fifteen came laughing and jostling out of the baths, red faced, their hair still damp. One of the boys was flicking his wet towel at the girls who skipped clear, just out of reach. They clattered out into the street, leaving the doors swinging behind them. He heard their laughter fade, out of his hearing. For the moment again he was alone.

      He stood his headless Indian on the bench. If he could find the head he’d be able to fix it back on again with a matchstick. He pushed the Indian’s upraised arm through the hole in the coin, thinking it would make a good shield, but it was too heavy and made the Indian fall over.

      He shoved his things back into his pocket and went over to the doorway of the washhouse. The place was painted a grubby cream and lightgreen and the stone floor was wet.

      Clouds of steam swishing up from faraway metaltub machines. Lids banging shut. Women shouting above the throbbing noise.

      He couldn’t see his mother.

      He went back and climbed on to the bench, teetering, almost falling as he stood carefully up.

      A woman came in with a little girl about his own age. He was glad he was standing on the bench and he knew she was watching him.

      He ignored her and pretended to fight his way along the bench, hacking aside an army of unseen cut-throats, hurling them over the immense drop from the perilous bench-top ridge. He kept looking round to make sure she was still watching him, not looking directly at her but just glancing in her direction then looking past her to the pay-box and staring at that with fixed interest and without seeing it at all.

      The woman had taken her bundle into the washhouse and the little girl sat down on the far end of the bench, away from him.

      His mother came out of the washhouse pushing her pram. He jumped down noisily and ran to her. As they left he turned and over his shoulder stuck out his tongue at the girl.

      Once outside, his mother started fussing over him, buttoning his coat, straightening his belt, tucking in his scarf.

      ‘There yar then, ah wasn’t long, was ah?’ Gentle voice. Her breath was wheezy.

      She was wearing the turban she wore to work in the bakery. Today was Saturday and she only worked in the morning, coming home at dinnertime with cakes and pies. He’d gone with her to the steamie because his father was out at the doctor’s and he couldn’t find any of his friends. They’d probably gone to the pictures.

      He had to walk very quickly, sometimes trotting, to keep up with the pram. The snow under his feet made noises like a catspurr at every step. The

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