The True Story of Spit MacPhee by James Aldridge Page B

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.

6
    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