The Kiln by William McIlvanney Page A

National Service with a driver's licence. He would drive for his father. The Dochertys have suddenly achieved the status, it would seem, of having a family business. It is not a status they are destined to enjoy for long.
    Michael has told Allison and Tam, out of earshot of their father, about the first sale achieved by the family business. Michael drives the van into Shortlees housing scheme. Their father gets out, dressed in a leather apron and with a leather satchel slung overhis shoulders. (‘Like a wee-boy that got a tattie-man's outfit for his Christmas?’ Allison says.)
    ‘Tattees! Vegetables!' their father begins to shout. Michael is instantly helpless with laughter. He is stretched full length along the double seat in the cabin of the van, moaning for mercy. The image of his father, transformed in seconds from sardonic fireside philosopher into town crier, is too much for him. (‘It was so corny,’ Michael says. ‘Like he'd been to RADA and not passed the course.’)
    ‘Behave yerself, ya daft bastard!’ their father is hissing at Michael between public announcements. ‘They'll think we're amateurs at the game. Tattees! Vegetables!’
    The first customer is a small woman ‘with a face like a vinegar sponge’. (Michael describes her through the tears of his renewed laughter.)
    ‘Yes, ma bonny lass,’ their father says. ‘What can Ah do for you this fine day?’
    ‘Ah'll take half a stone of potatoes.’
    ‘Yes, you will. That is what you will have.’
    Michael hears him working with the metal weights which he bought in a second-hand shop and of which he is so proud. He has spent an hour or so practising with them in the living-room.
    ‘There we are, ma dear. And many, many thanks.’
    Michael climbs down from the cabin and comes round to the back of the van. Their father is smiling.
    ‘First sale for the old firm,’ their father says. ‘Off and running at Ascot.’
    Michael looks at the scales, where the small metal block that has been used to measure the weight of the potatoes is still in place.
    ‘What did that woman ask for, Feyther?’ he says.
    ‘Tatties. Half a stone. Not much but a beginnin’.'
    ‘Even less than ye think. The scales say a quarter of a stane.’
    ‘Eh?’
    Their father looks at the scales.
    ‘Ah naw,’ he says. ‘Those fuckin’ daft weights. Ah can never get them right.'
    Michael describes the long moment of indecision on their father's face. Allison and Tam can see it as if it were a close-upin a film. He isn't sure which house the woman has gone into. He looks at the scales. He would like to give the woman the extra potatoes. But he is too embarrassed to start making enquiries.
    ‘Fuck it,' he says. ‘Let's get our arses outa here.’
    And they rattle off like the James gang on wheels.
    The first sale was an omen. In five weeks the business had folded and someone had reported Tam's father to the Inland Revenue, who were claiming tax on mysterious sums of money he had never seen. The business has run at a loss.
    The threat of financial ruin and roup hung over the family until Tam's mother went down to the tax office and spoke to a man there. She explained that, far from being a tax-dodger, her husband had rendered the family a hardship case. She told the man how little she had received for housekeeping during the five weeks of what the family would afterwards call ‘the great potato famine’.
    She cited some of the other ventures her husband had engaged in. She mentioned the ton or more of gasmasks he had bought. John Grant, who had a lock-up near Tam's father's had tipped him off that each gas mask contained a small disc of copper. She told how he and Uncle Charlie, for a fortnight, turned up at 8 am every weekday at the lock-up where the gas masks were stored. They treated it as a full-time job. They brought a piece with them and took only a half-hour lunch-break. They worked until 5.30 p.m. each day, chatting as they worked about the riches they were