Free Love & Sorrow by Jenny Telfer Chaplin

anybody as exotic as Carolina.”
    Becky hoped her smile was suitably sympathetic.
    Caz exaggerated her very real shiver. “Ah don’t ken
aboot ye, Becky, but Ah’m fair perished wi cauld.”
    Becky nodded. “This windswept corner hasn’t got a lot
going for it, has it? The problem now is; if we’re both looking for work, just
where do we go from here?”
    Caz frowned. “Weel, ye please yersel, china, but Ah kin
tell ye wan thing – Ah’m no goin within a mile o the rag store. Ah kin get mair
than enough fleas at hame withoot workin aw day wi the wee tormentors.”
    “Can’t say I was too anxious to try for work there
myself, nor even at Paddy’s Market. Also I’d rather give the bakehouse a miss
as well. A neighbour warned me the night shift boss there is to be avoided at
all costs as he is a lecherous old devil, or as she put it: A randy old
bugger.”
    “Ah couldnae hae put it better masel. It seems he’s
that guid at the bakin, for want o another word for it, that he’s wantin tae
put a bun in the oven o every daft new lassie that crosses his path and hisnae
the guts tae tell the filthy auld groper tae take a runnin jump tae hissel.”
    Although scandalised by the language she had just heard
and the mental picture it had presented, Becky, while glad to have made a new
friend, determined to stick to the subject of job hunting.
    “Well then, Caz, apart from the coal yard or maybe even
trundling round with a barrow helping the fishwife blow her bugle, I suppose
that leaves us with only a couple of manufactories on the other side of Argyle
Street – that or the carpet factory.”
    Caz grinned. “Templeton’s is nearer, so we’ll try oor
luck therr furst, eh, no?”
    Assuming Becky was in complete agreement with this plan
of action, Caz took hold of her arm and like a pair of old school chums they
headed in the direction of Glasgow Green. Some fifteen minutes later as they
approached the imposing, ornate building – Glasgow’s look-alike Venetian
palazzo – Becky felt her new-found confidence rapidly evaporate.
    “Oh heavens! Would you look at it. Up close it looks
really unapproachable – just like the king’s palace. Sorry, Caz, I just wouldn’t
have the nerve to wander in unannounced and ask for work. I’d just shrivel up
with embarrassment and be dumb with fright. I’d be a right bag of nerves.”
    “If ye think Ah saved yer bluidy life jist so ye could
die o fright at the mercy o some mill gaffer, ye can think again.”
    With these words like a clarion call to arms, Caz all
but frog-marched a trembling Becky into the overwhelming grandeur of Glasgow’s
palazzo whose outward appearance of ease, luxury, and indulgence belied the
grim workplace within – Templeton’s Carpet Factory.

 
    ***

 
 
 
    Chapter 3

 
    Later that same evening in the tenement flat in
Bridgeton’s Main Street Becky was washing the dishes at the stone sink under
the window while her mother sat crocheting by the fireside. Over in the set-in
wall bed Becky’s invalid father, snoring loudly, occasionally gave such an
earth shaking snort that Becky was in danger of dropping the dish she was
drying.
    At just such a moment Erchie, Becky’s elder brother,
arrived home. As he entered the room in his coal-man’s work garb of moleskin
trousers, hessian apron with its leather overlay, and steel-tipped boots he
staggered as he negotiated the short distance between the door and the other
armchair.
    Erchie collapsed in an untidy heap onto the chair, gave
a gargantuan belch, slapped his stomach, and demanded: “Rich weel. So where’s
ma tea? Ah’m fair starvin, so Ah am. Ah could eat a scabby horse and come back
for the driver.”
    Silence greeted this overworked Glasgow expression and
when neither Becky nor his mother at once rose to do his bidding, he glowered
first at one and then at the other female.
    “Have youse gone deaf? Ah said, where’s ma f***in tea?
Ah’ve did a day’s hard graft humpin bluidy bags o