The Good Provider by Jessica Stirling Page B

nothing worthwhile had replaced them. Piecemeal conversion of middle-class mansions and the flinging up of the odd tenement had done little to provide dwellings for working-class families. ‘Model’ lodging-houses, of municipal design, furnished shelter for more folk than ever found a home in council tenements. This urban phenomenon, as is the way, tickled the private sector, much to the detriment of the artisans who packed every neuk and cranny and had these ‘made-down’ houses bursting at the seams.
    Houses of less capacity than two thousand cubic feet were officially inspected and registered and a metal ticket was fixed to the lintel stipulating the number of occupants permitted by law. But such a law had no meaning for immigrants and wanderers and the homeless citizens of the Empire’s second city. None of this history of municipal mismanagement mattered to Craig and Kirsty. All that concerned them was finding a place of their own, a room to rent at a price they could afford.
    Local shops plastered their windows with advertisements for accommodations, wanted and on offer. It did not take Craig and Kirsty very long, however, to realise that the wording of the advertisements were masterpieces of literary style, of hyperbole and euphemism. Comfortable Bed for Single Gent on Night Work meant a doss in a corner of a kitchen shared with other shift workers. Sleeping Quarters for Respectable Family : six by eight feet in somebody’s single-end, with hammocks on a pulley and children under five tucked up in baskets by the stove.
    All that Friday Kirsty followed Craig on another of his interminable and indecisive treks about the west side of Glasgow. What Craig sought, of course, was the equivalent of a farm labourer’s cottage within the confines of the city; a mirage. By late afternoon, bone-weary and dazed by the realities of the housing situation, he was desperate to find any sort of room at all. He would have had them in a box-bed in the lobby of a house in Cawdor Street even, if Kirsty had not at last drawn the line.
    She was aware that Craig wanted her in bed with him. But she was also aware that, in spite of their extravagances, they were not yet strapped for cash and could afford to spend another night or two in Mrs Frew’s boarding-house.
    ‘I’m not goin’ in there, Craig,’ Kirsty snapped.
    ‘It’s just for a week or two. It’s only three bob a week.’
    ‘It smells.’
    ‘When did you become so bloody fussy?’
    ‘About ten minutes ago,’ Kirsty retorted. ‘I’m not sharin’ with those folk.’
    ‘They’re all right.’
    ‘Are they?’
    ‘I suppose you’d rather be back in Walbrook Street?’ Craig said.
    ‘Aye, I would. Far rather.’
    ‘Sleepin’ alone?’
    ‘Not there, Craig. Not in any o’ the places we’ve seen.’
    ‘It’s not my bloody fault we can’t find a room for rent.’
    ‘It’s not mine either,’ Kirsty said. ‘I’ve done what you asked. I’m wearing a weddin’ ring, Craig Nicholson, but I’ll not spend my – my weddin’ night stuck in a cupboard with ten strangers listenin’ to our every move.’
    ‘Damn it, Kirsty, we could be weeks in Frew’s.’
    ‘So we could.’
    ‘Money’s—’
    ‘I know how much is left,’ Kirsty told him.
    They were standing on a lofty and exposed corner of a hillside street that looked down upon the docks. She had at last seen the Clyde in all its glory but she was too fatigued and far too angry to pay it much heed.
    The properties here were old and crumbling and had the rat-infested, soil-streaked atmosphere of a slum. The March wind moaned in the closes and battered the broken fence of a Monumental Stonemason’s yard and carried not only din but grit and grime from the yards on the riverside. It was only a quarter of a mile or so from Walbrook Street but it seemed to Kirsty like a nether world, not one raised up. She clung tenaciously to the solemn comforts of the boarding-house and resisted Craig’s impatience and