THE RAT-PIT
I
The address on the letter which Norah received from Sheila Carrol was
“47, Ann Street, Cowcaddens,” but shortly after the letter had been
written the Glasgow Corporation decided that 47 was unfit for human
habitation, and those who lived there were turned out to the streets.
It was late in the evening of the day on which she left Jean and Donal
that Norah came to No. 47, to find the place in total darkness. She
groped her way up a narrow alley to the foot of a stair and there
suddenly stepped on a warm human body lying on the ground.
“What the devil!--Ah, ye’re choking me, an old person that never done no
one no harm,” croaked a wheezy voice, apparently a woman’s, under
Norah’s feet. “I only came in oot of the cauld, lookin’ for a night’s
shelter. Hadn’t a bawbee for the Rat-pit. Beg pardon! I’m sorry; I’ll go
away at once; I’ll go now. For the love of heaven don’t gie me up to the
cops. I’m only a old body and I hadn’t a bawbee of my own. I couldn’t
keep walkin’ on all night. Beg pardon, I’m only a old body and I hadn’t
a kirk siller piece[F] for the Rat-Pit!”
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t know that there was anyone here,” said Norah,
peering through the darkness. “I’m a stranger, good woman.”
“Ye’re goin’ to doss here too,” croaked the voice from the ground.
“I’m lookin’ for a friend,” said Norah. “Maybe ye’ll know her--Sheila
Carrol. She lives here.”
“Nobody lives here,” said the woman, shuffling to her feet. “Nobody but
the likes of me and ones like me. No human being is supposed to live
here. I had at one time a room on the top of the landin’, the cheapest
room in Glasgow it was. Can’t get another one like it now and must sleep
out in the snow. Out under the scabby sky and the wind and the rain. It
wasn’t healthy for people to sleep here, so someone said, and we were
put out. Think of that, and me havin’ the cheapest room in the
Cowcaddens. If the cops find me here, it’s quod. Wha be ye lookin’ for?”
“A friend, Sheila Carrol.”
“Never heard of her.” The voice, almost toneless, seemed to be forcing
its way through some thick fluid in the speaker’s throat. The darkness
of the alley was intense and the women were hidden from one another.
“Everybody that stayed here has gone, and I don’t know where they are,”
the old woman continued. “Don’t know at all. Ye dinna belong to Glesga?”
she croaked.
“No, decent woman.”
“By yer tongue ye’ll be a young girl.”
“I am.”
“Mind ye, I’m a cute one and I ken everything. It’s not every one that
could tell what ye are by yer tongue. Are ye a stranger?”
“I am,” answered Norah. “I was never in Glasgow before.”
“I knew that too,” said the old woman. “And ye want lodgin’s for the
night? Then the Rat-pit’s the place; a good decent place it
is--threepence a night for a bunk. Beg pardon, but maybe ye’ll have a
kid’s eye (threepence) extra to spare for an old body. Come along with
me and I’ll show the way. I’m a cute one and I know everything. Ye
couldn’t ha’e got into better hands than mine if ye’re a stranger in
Glasgow.”
They went out into a dimly-lighted lane and Norah took stock of her new
friend. The woman was almost bent double with age; a few rags covered
her body, she wore no shoes, and a dusty, grimy clout was tied round one
of her feet. As if conscious of Norah’s scrutiny she turned to the girl.
“Ah! Ye wouldn’t think, would ye, that I had once the finest room in the
Cowcaddens, the finest--at its price?”
“The Rat-pit’s a lodgin’ place for women,” the old creature croaked
after an interval. “There are good beds there; threepence a night ye pay
for them. Beg pardon, but maybe ye’ll pay for my bunk for the night.
That’s just how I live; it’s only one night after another in my life.
Beg pardon, but that’s how it is.” She seemed to be apologising for the
crime of existing. “But ye’ll maybe have a kid’s eye to spare for my
bunk?” she asked.
“All right, decent woman,” said Norah.
“What do they cry ye?”
“Norah Ryan.”
“A pretty name; and my name’s Maudie Stiddart,” said the old woman.
II
Ten minutes later the two women were seated in the kitchen of the
Rat-pit, frying a chop which Norah had bought on their way to the
lodging-house.
The place was crowded with women of all ages, some young, children
almost, their hair hanging down their backs, and the blouses that their
pinched breasts could not fill sagging loose at the bosom. There were
six or seven of these girls, queer weedy things that smoked cigarettes
and used foul words whenever they spoke. The face of one was pitted with
small-pox; another had both eyes blackened, the result of a fight; a
third, clean of face and limb, was telling how she had just served two
months in prison for importuning men on the streets. Several of the
elder females were drunk; two fought in the kitchen, pulling handfuls of
hair from one another’s heads. Nobody interfered; when the struggle came
to an end the combatants sat down together and warmed their hands at the
stove. At this juncture a bare-footed woman, with clay caked brown
behind her ankles and a hairy wart on her chin, came up to Norah.
“Ye’re a stranger here,” she said.
“I am, decent woman.”
“Ye’re Irish, too, for I ken by yer talk,” said the female. “And ye’ve
got into trouble.”
She pointed at the girl with a long, crooked finger, and Norah blushed.
“Dinna be ashamed of it,” said the woman; then turning to Maudie
Stiddart she enquired: “And ye’re here too, are ye? I thought ye were
dead long ago? Jesus! but some people can stick it out. There’s no
killin’ of ’em!”
“Oh, ye’re a blether, Mary Martin,” said Maudie, turning the chop over
on the stove. “Where are ye workin’ now?”
“On the free coup outside Glesga.”
“The free coup?” asked the young girl who had just left prison, lighting
a cigarette. “What’s that atall?”
“The place to where the dung and dust and dirt of a town is carried away
and throwed down,” Mary Martin explained. “Sometimes lumps of coal and
pieces of metal are flung down there. These I pick up and sell to
people and that’s how I make my livin’.”
“Is that how you do?” asked the girl with a shrug of her shoulders.
“Everyone isn’t young like you,” said Mary, sitting down on a bench near
the stove. The girl laughed vacantly, tried to make a ring of the
cigarette smoke, was unable to do so, and walked away. Mary Martin
turned to Maudie and whispered something to her.
“Ah, puir lass!” exclaimed Maudie.
“And the one to blame was a toff, too!” said Mary. “They’re all alike,
and the good dress often hides a dirty hide.”
“Beg pardon, but have ye got anything to ate?” asked Maudie.
“Nothin’ the night,” answered Mary. “Only made the price of my bed for
my whole day’s work.”
“Will ye ate something with us?” asked Norah.
“Thank ye,” said Mary Martin, and the three women drew closer to the
chop that was roasting on the stove.
III
The beds in the Rat-pit, forty in all, were in a large chamber upstairs,
and each woman had a bed to herself. The lodgers undressed openly,
shoved their clothes under the mattresses and slid into bed. One sat
down to unlace her boots and fell asleep where she sat; another, a young
girl of seventeen or eighteen, fell against the leg of the bed and sank
into slumber, her face turned to the roof and her mouth wide open. The
girl who had been in prison became suddenly unwell and burst into tears;
nobody knew what she was weeping about and nobody enquired.
Maudie, Mary, and Norah slept in three adjoining beds, the Irish girl in
the centre. The two older women dropped off to sleep the moment their
heads touched the pillows; Norah lay awake gazing at the flickering
shadows cast by the solitary gas-jet on the roof of the room. The heat
was oppressive, suffocating almost, and not a window in the place was
open. Women were still coming in, and only half the bunks in the room
were yet occupied. Most of the new-comers were drunk; some sat down or
fell on the floor and slept where they had fallen, others threw
themselves in on top of the bed and lay there with their clothes on. An
old woman whose eye had been blackened in a fight downstairs started to
sing “Annie Laurie,” but forgetting what followed the first verse,
relapsed into silence.
Norah began to pray under her breath to the Virgin, but had only got
half through with her prayer when a shriek from the bed on her left
startled her. Maudie was sitting upright, yelling at the top of her
voice. “Cannot ye let an old body be?” she cried. “I’m only wantin’ a
night’s doss at the foot of the stairs. That’s not much for an old un to
ask, is it? Holy Jesus! I cannot be let alone for a minute. Beg pardon;
I’m goin’ away, but ye might let me stay here, and me only an old
woman!”
Maudie opened her watery eyes and stared round. Beads of sweat stood out
on her forehead, and her face--red as a crab--looked terrifying in the
half-light of the room.
“Beg pardon,” she croaked, and her voice had a sound like the breaking
of bones. “Beg pardon. I’m only an old woman and I never did nobody no
harm!”
She sank down again, pulled the blankets over her shoulders and fell
asleep.
Fresh arrivals came in every minute, staggered wearily to their bunks
and threw themselves down without undressing. About midnight a female
attendant, a young, neat girl with a pleasing face, entered, surveyed
the room, helped those who lay on the floor into bed, turned down the
gas and went away.
Slumber would not come to Norah. All night she lay awake, listening to
the noise of the dust-carts on the pavement outside, the chiming of
church clocks, the deep breathing of the sleepers all around her, and
the sudden yells from Maudie’s bunk as the woman started in her sleep
protesting against some grievance or voicing some ancient wrong.
The daylight was stealing through the grimy window when Norah got up and
proceeded to dress. A deep quietness, broken only by the heavy breathing
of the women, lay over the whole place. The feeble light of daybreak
shone on the ashen faces of the sleepers, on the naked body of a
well-made girl who had flung off all her clothing in a troubled slumber,
on Mary Martin’s clay-caked legs that stuck out from beneath the
blankets, on Maudie Stiddart’s wrinkled, narrow brow beaded with sweat;
on the faces of all the sleepers, the wiry and weakly, the fit and
feeble, the light of new-born day rested. Suddenly old Mary turned in
her sleep, then sat up.
“Where are ye goin’ now?” she called to Norah.
“To look for a friend,” came the answer.
“A man?”
“A woman called Sheila Carrol is the one I’m lookin’ for,” said Norah.
“I went to 47, Ann Street last night, for I had a letter from her there.
But the place was closed up.”
“Sheila Carrol, they cry her, ye say?” said the old woman, getting out
of bed. “Maybe it’s her that I ken. She came from Ireland with a little
boy and she used to work with me at one time. A comely strong-boned
wench she was. Came from Frosses, she once told me.”
“That’s Sheila!”
“And she’s left 47?”
“So I hear.”
“Then take my advice and try No. 46 and No. 48,” said Mary Martin; “and
also every close in the street. The people that lived in 47 will not
gang far awa’ from it. They’ll be in the next close or thereabouts. What
do they cry you, lass?” asked the old woman, slipping into her rags.
“Norah Ryan.”
“A pretty name it is, indeed. And have ye threepence to spare for my
breakfast, Norah Ryan? I haven’t a penny piece in all the wide world.”
Norah gave threepence of her hard-earned money to Mary, sorted her dress
and stole out into the streets to search for Sheila Carrol.