The Good Provider by Jessica Stirling

awful lot o’ money, Craig.’
    ‘It was worth it,’ he said.
    ‘What do we do now, Craig?’
    He shrugged. He had formulated no plan for the rest of the day, had only a vague notion that he must soon look for work.
    Kirsty said, ‘Then can we get somethin’ to eat, dear? Shoppin’ fair makes you hungry.’
    ‘No sooner said than done,’ Craig told her, and led her off along Spring Street in search of a tea-room.
     
    In the end the day perished. Not to be outdone, after a ‘luncheon’ fit for a king in Miss Godfrey’s Restaurant, Craig had decided that he too must have a rig suitable for a Glasgow man and had paraded Kirsty about, toting the wicker basket and the parcel, while he inspected gentlemen’s fashions in shop windows within a square-mile radius of Charing Cross. Finally he bought a new cotton shirt, a necktie, a pair of brown shoes, a striped blazer and cream-toned flannel trousers. He put each item on as he purchased it, folding his own garments into a new canvas carrier, then the couple gravitated back towards Walbrook Street, drifting along dusty pavements amid the bustle of the town to which they did not yet, somehow, belong.
    With legs aching and back twingeing, Kirsty hobbled on in the unfamiliar constricting skirt. The pavements of the streets became hard and less yielding as the day went on and even Craig, for all his fitness and stamina, was ground down, as much, he claimed, by the racket as by the walking. They found a place to sit at last, not a park but a patch of sour grass against a high dirty brick wall, a bench of wood and iron that seemed so old that it might have been a fossil.
    They were no more than a half-mile from Walbrook Street, Craig said, and Kirsty, with inexplicable relief, recognised the skyline. Goods stations and mineral depots crammed the area, a delta of iron rails thunderous with tank engines and shunters and those interminable caravans of trucks and coal wagons. Beyond lay the sheds and moorings of the Queen’s Dock. The sun had gone in and a grey wind swirled about the back street chasing paper scraps and cindery dust and carrying the raw sounds of foundry hammers and timber saws to them. But to sit, even there, was a relief. Craig slumped elbows on knees, lit his last cigarette and inexpertly blew little puffs of smoke at the ground.
    Kirsty kneaded her calves with her hands, trying to unknot the muscles. Her new shoe, on her right foot, slipped off and hung suspended from her toe. She looked at it disconsolately, saw that the leather was already scuffed about the toe and that the heel had a scar on it. Away to the left an empty tram rolled along the street, the horses lathered and exhausted, heading for the terminus and their stables.
    ‘What time does she put out the supper?’ Craig asked.
    ‘Half past six.’
    ‘It must be near that now.’
    ‘Only ten past five,’ said Kirsty.
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘I saw a clock.’
    Craig blew more balls of tobacco smoke.
    The new boater was tilted back, exposing dark hair curled over his brow. He did not look like a gentleman. In the ill-fitting, carrot-striped blazer he seemed like a boy dressed up.
    ‘We’ll go back there,’ Craig said ‘For tonight.’
    ‘I thought we were going to stay there until you found—’
    ‘Not now,’ he said.
    Kirsty noticed that he did not attempt to meet her eye. She was not tempted to touch him either and leaned into the arm of the bench which, she noticed with indifference, was pocked with rust and had already deposited a dusty smear upon the material of her bolero.
    Craig shivered. He watched the wind swirl trash up the lane and lag it against the barred gate of a coal yard. Perhaps, Kirsty thought, he was remembering the field at Dalnavert; he would have put in a long, useful day on it and now, with the sun lowering westward, he would be preparing to head for the farm, for a hot supper and a warm fire and crack with his sister and brother. Hawkhead, Bankhead, the rolling