The True Story of Spit MacPhee (7 page)

‘It’s fantastic,’ Sadie said. ‘It’s great, Spit. It’s absolutely great.’

‘Don’t say anything about it,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

‘No, I won’t. I swear.’

It seemed quite simple thereafter for Sadie to sit in the extension, which was where Spit had his own bench and where she could watch him shape the little pine messenger boats, make sinkers for his fishing lines out of lead slugs, and (another of his secrets) fit spokes into a rusty bicycle wheel which he would eventually add to the rest of a half-built old bike which still needed a front wheel, handlebars, two pedals and a seat.

‘But where did you get it from?’ she asked him.

‘I got this and that from the back of Sykes’ bike shop, and some at the blacksmith’s, and here and there and everywhere.’

Spit almost forgot her sometimes as she sat on a small three-legged stool; and when his grandfather shouted at him, ‘Ye maun put the potatoes on, or ye won’t be eating supper,’ she moved with him into the small kitchen at the end of old Fyfe’s workroom where she helped him peel the potatoes. Spit was a quick impatient peeler of potatoes, and he filled a cooking pot from a bucket of river water on the floor. He put it on the wood stove, which he poked fiercely, and then shouted at his grandfather, ‘You didn’t put any wood on the fire.’

‘Well put it on now.’

‘That’s what I am doing.’

Sadie listened to them and whispered to Spit, ‘Why are you always so angry with each other?’

Spit didn’t lower his voice but said indignantly, ‘We’re not angry with each other.’

‘But that’s how it sounds, Spit. Everybody thinks …’

‘They don’t know anything about it,’ Spit said, and he was putting two mutton chops in a wire folder to grill them when he said, ‘Do you want a chop?’

‘No, thanks. I’ll have to go home in a minute for tea.’

She left reluctantly, but thereafter she would come and go to the little house without any difficulty. Old Fyfe had looked quizzically at her once and said with a sort of grim laugh, ‘How are ye dressed, Jean Armour, aye sae clean and neat.’

Sadie, in her own advice to herself, had always been frightened of old Fyfe, but in the little house with Spit she lost all her fear of him, and though she didn’t understand what he said to her most of the time, she always smiled at him and one day said to him, ‘Can I watch you mend the clocks?’

The old man’s face, grey as it was and grizzled as it was, and so often pained, ground itself into a smile. He stared at her for a moment. ‘Stand there,’ he said.

‘Give her the glass,’ Spit said to his grandfather.

‘You be quiet, ye cairn …’

‘I was only trying to help,’ Spit shouted back.

Sadie listened and watched, unafraid, and the old man pointed to the clock he was working on and said, ‘Ye don’t need the glass. It’s the clock of Mrs Andrews, and if ye look at the coggies there ye’ll see all her powder, pink and dirty, and look at her grey hairs that she brushes into the clock. All in a bedroom, the clock stays, and it maun tick with its face down.’ He showed Sadie the scratched glass of the clock. ‘And all that grease on her face. She’s winding it up wi’ her fingers thick with that awfu’ gruel.’ Mrs Andrews’ face-creamed finger marks were stained into the clock where she held it to wind it.

‘I never thought …’ Sadie began in amazement.

But old Fyfe had lost interest in his demonstration, and Sadie stood still to watch his quivering hands working with the diminutive screwdrivers, holding them miraculously still long enough to undo the minute screws. The old man crouched over his bench, a tiny figure. It was neat and clean, and she could smell the fine oil he used on the clocks he was repairing. Sometimes it seemed to be a quiet, rumbling fury, and other times it was more like a Scottish bee buzzing. Noise, in fact, seemed to be his only relief, as if it were a desperate diversion from whatever was going on in his head.

Like that, Sadie learned to sit and watch not only old Fyfe’s clock and watch repairing, but the way he re-set planes and razors on his oilstone and with the tiny grinder, using a strop to finish them with.

While she watched old Fyfe, Spit would sometimes behave like a housewife, sweeping the floor or cleaning the stove; or he would leave her when he watered the garden or chopped the wood for the stove, and she began to love the place. But she was surprised one day when, helping Spit with the spokes of the old bicycle wheel, she heard her mother calling her.

‘Oh, my gosh,’ she said, handing Spit the pliers with which she was holding the spokes in place for him. ‘What time is it?’

‘I dunno,’ Spit said, ‘but – maybe your father’s come home.’

‘Goodbye, Spit,’ Sadie said as she rushed out. ‘Goodbye, Mr MacPhee,’ she shouted. And, calling over her shoulder, she said, ‘Be back tomorrow.’

But in fact she would not be back on the morrow, because that night old Fyfe burned down the house, and Spit’s days of security and safety were finally over.

Spit had awakened to hear his grandfather banging and opening and then banging and opening again and again the front door. At first Spit lay still and did nothing because it was not unusual for his grandfather to wander around in the middle of the night making a noise and shouting nonsense. Sooner or later it would stop and the old man would drop exhausted on his bed to sleep it off, groaning and twisting and covering his head but eventually subsiding. But this time it seemed different because Spit could see a reflection of a light through the boiler’s window. Instead of simply shouting, his grandfather was also singing, which he sometimes did when he was working at his bench, but never in the middle of the night.

Spit got out of bed, and still wearing the old shirt he slept in and pulling on his trousers, he went through the house and found his grandfather holding the front door open and wrenching violently at it as if he wanted to tear it off its hinges.

‘Grandpa,’ Spit shouted at him. ‘You’ve got to stop. You’re making too much noise.’

But he knew his grandfather couldn’t hear him. What puzzled Spit was the hurricane lamp which his grandfather had managed to light. It was on the path leading to the gate. Deciding quickly that it was the best thing to do, Spit picked it up but didn’t blow it out. Old Fyfe was still singing, but sometimes he laughed the grim and curious and agonised laugh which was often a sort of punctuation to his shouting. When Spit tried to pull his arm he held the door tight and shouted, ‘I’m awfu’ cold … awfu’ cold.’

‘You can’t be cold,’ Spit told him.

‘It’s an auld auld killick,’ Fyfe said in his agony. Then he left the door and walked down the path to the gate, which he also tried to pull off its hinges. It was too well made, and Fyfe suddenly crumpled to his knees and held his hands to his ears and began to moan.

‘It maun kill me, cairgie … It’s awfu’ bad …’

‘Come on, Grandpa. Come back inside,’ Spit said anxiously, aware that though it looked like the old man’s usual behaviour in such moments, this time there was something else that was different and disturbing. Spit held up the lamp and caught a glimpse of tears running down his grandfather’s face. Then, in a quiet, almost normal but pained voice, his grandfather looked up at him and said, ‘Go away, cairgie … run away, d’ye hear me. Run away from me. Go on … Go on, I tell ye.’

Spit had never before heard that sort of calm if desperate sense in his grandfather’s voice, and he didn’t know what to make of it. ‘Go on w’ye,’ Fyfe shouted as if he was trying desperately now to contain some terrible danger that could not be held off much longer. ‘Run off, cairgie, and don’t come back. Don’t ye come back, do y’hear …’

Spit understood the words but he couldn’t grasp the meaning or the reason. He shifted from one bare foot to the other, holding up the hurricane lamp so that he could see his grandfather’s upturned face. What he saw was a subterranean terror in the old man’s eyes, and it was the first time in his life that Spit felt frightened by his grandfather’s behaviour.

‘What’s the matter, Grandpa?’ he said. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Will ye go …’ the old man groaned.

Spit knew that he had to stay; above all he had to stay. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to get inside. It’s no use shouting out here. You’ve got to go in.’

The old man’s face made some final tortured gesture towards sanity, clawing at it, trying to convince the boy. Then it broke into madness as if everything he had been holding back had finally defeated him and had now overcome him. He no longer saw. He no longer recognised. He seemed no longer to have any link with anything except the awful torture in his own mind. And, seizing the lighted lamp from Spit, he walked slowly up the path and threw it through the open door of the house.

It was too unexpected for Spit to stop him doing it, and as the lamp glass smashed and the kerosene spilled and caught alight Spit ran straight into the flames. Without thinking about it he tried to damp them out with his bare feet. When he felt the burning pain of it he looked around for one of the buckets of water that were usually kept near the stove. One bucket was empty and the other one only half full, awaiting a fresh refill in the morning. He threw the half bucket of water over the flames which made no impression on them, so he rushed out and down to the river to fill one of the buckets on the banks. By the time he had struggled back to the house with it, the whole floor was alight and also the curtain that divided off his grandfather’s bed. He threw the water over the floor but again it made no impression, and though his grandfather was standing in the doorway looking at the flames and shouting, Spit ignored him and ran back to the river once more for water. But this time he knew as he threw it on the flames that it was hopeless for him to go on alone.

‘Grandpa, get out. Don’t stand there,’ he cried.

The old man didn’t see or hear, and Spit pulled him out of the doorway. Then he set off down the river and up the slope to the house he knew best, Sadie Tree’s. The back door was a wire screen door so there was no use hammering on it. Instead he shouted, ‘Mr Tree. Mr Tree. Our house is on fire. Mr Tree …’

It took a few minutes, but Jack Tree heard him and called out, ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s Spit MacPhee. Our house is on fire. Will you come and help me?’

‘Did you call the fire brigade?’

‘No, I can’t.’

‘All right. I’ll do it.’ Mr Tree shouted from somewhere within. ‘Go up to the Andrews on the other side, and Tim Evans. Get their help. I’ll be down.’

Spit was off up the well-worn path to the railway line, and he repeated his cries at the back doors of the Andrews’ house and the Evans’. Then he raced back to the house and found Jack Tree already there and the fire so fierce now that it was sending sparks high in the air and crackling fiercely. Mr Tree was running back and forth to the river carrying buckets of water which he threw over the flames, but now it was obviously out of control.

‘Where is my grandfather?’ Spit shouted.

‘Down by the steps. Get some more buckets.’

‘It’s no use,’ Spit cried. ‘It’s no use any more.’

‘Do as you’re told,’ Mr Tree ordered. ‘Get the buckets.’

They were joined by Mr Andrews and his son Jolly and then Mr and Mrs Evans and Joan Gillespie their neighbour. There were only enough buckets and kerosene tins with wire handles for six people, and though they all poured water onto the fire it was obvious that it couldn’t be put out. By the time the volunteer fire brigade had reached the railway line, and were on the river bank with a hand pump, there was not enough left of the house to bother about. As the fire began to subside in the ashes, the only thing left standing was the charred boiler. By now, too, there was a little crowd of people from the houses along the railway line. They had all done their best, but it was Mrs Tree and Sadie who went looking for Spit and found him, dripping wet, fifty yards along the river bank holding his grandfather half in and half out of the water.

‘Did he go under?’ Mrs Tree said. ‘Is he drowned?’

‘No. He fell in,’ Spit said. ‘But I got him out.’

With Sadie’s help from above, and Spit pushing from the water, Mrs Tree pulled old Fyfe up on the bank.

‘He’s sick,’ Spit said. ‘He fell in. He didn’t know what he was doing.’

Old Fyfe was now lying so twisted and helpless that Mrs Tree said to Sadie, ‘Go and get your father. Quick.’

As Sadie ran off, Spit said, ‘He didn’t know what he was doing. He just threw it in …’

‘Threw what in?’ Mrs Tree said.

‘The hurricane lamp. He just threw it in.’

‘He needs a doctor now, Spit. He’s unconscious. Are you sure he didn’t go under?’

‘No, he didn’t. He’ll be all right,’ Spit insisted.

‘But he looks bad, Spit. He needs help,’ Grace told him.

‘I tell you he’ll be all right,’ Spit insisted.

When Mr Tree arrived, black and wet, Mrs Tree simply pointed to old Fyfe and Mr Tree looked closely and nodded.

‘We’ll get him up to the house and I’ll get Doctor Stevens,’ he said. ‘You stay here with him, Grace, and I’ll get the others to help.’ He dropped a hand on Spit then and said, ‘Your house is gone, Spit. There’s nothing left of it.’

‘Oh no …’ Mrs Tree said.

‘It’s all right,’ Spit said, fighting back. ‘My grandfather will build another one.’

‘Maybe. Maybe,’ Jack Tree said. ‘But you wait here until I get back.’

Spit had to push away Jim Evans’ dog, Patchy, who had escaped and was pawing and licking him as he stood guard over his grandfather. ‘Get away, Patch,’ he was saying as Jack Tree and Jim Evans and two others returned and lifted old Fyfe off the ground and set off up the slope with him.

But Spit was already ahead of them, trying to stop them. ‘Where are you taking him?’ he said, blocking their path.

‘He needs a doctor,’ Jack Tree told him. ‘We’ll take him up to our back verandah and get Doctor Stevens.’

‘He can stay in the old boiler. It didn’t burn down.’

‘It’s burned out, Spit. It was all that paint on it. And anyway it’s half-full of water,’ Mr Tree said. ‘In fact you’d better come with us too. You can’t stay down here.’

‘Come on, Spit,’ Mrs Tree said. ‘We’ll look after your grandfather.’