MRS BEANEY

Why is it always women who have to do the washing? thought Alice as she struggled out of the lift with the broken-handled hold-all. Always women who have to clear up the mess, wipe the baby's bottom, clean the wounds, lay out the corpse. She made it to the doors of the student hostel in one go, dropped the hold-all and got her bearings. The launderette was the one building in the street with a light on. Its cheeriness made the rest look even more dismal. Glasgow on an August evening: the air, still and stuffy, holding the fumes and noise from the traffic on the high-level motorway at the end of the road. It was getting dark earlier again, she realised. Another disappointment: she had looked forward to the 'simmer dim' as one of the pleasures of her Scottish visit, but the sky was overcast and the long twilight only gloomy. She recalled the endless evenings of last summer in Edinburgh. They'd made her do the washing then, lugging sacks of shirts with pink-stained collars and cuffs down to the launderette, out of the tumble-drier and back to the church-hall where they ate, slept and performed, and she ironed the costumes on a blanket on the floor, to have them fresh and white for each night's show. Not much fun, but better than the family villa in Spain.

And that was how she'd met Hamish, over for the day from Glasgow where he was studying (did anybody really go to the Edinburgh Festival for the day?). He wanted to see the show (what had it been called? some obscure Central European thing that Mark had translated and because she'd been going out with Guy she'd tagged along) - so he came along in the middle of the afternoon to make sure of getting a ticket. He was the only one in the audience that night. And they were the only ones there that afternoon. The rest were getting drunk on cheap red on top of Arthur's Seat. That was how Pip twisted his ankle the following day, so they had to scrub all the rest of the performances.

Had he just seen her as a drudge that afternoon? Hardly. He'd talked and talked and talked, and a lot of it had been about her - or was she mixing up her memories with all those letters he'd sent? No - he'd gone on about her hair - she'd been doing it in the pre-Raphaelite way, plaiting it in a host of small strands, so it frizzed out and framed her face. It took a lot of time, but there'd been nothing else to do that summer. All those rehearsals. And the way the actors just sat around, smoking, drinking, groping - Hamish had never done that. He'd seemed painfully respectable. With a tie. In summer.

He'd changed. Or rather, he hadn't changed. She'd been shocked by the smell when he let her into his room yesterday. He'd seen the disgust she couldn't keep out of her face. Had he thought, prissy Southern bitch? That wouldn't have been like the Hamish she knew from the letters, the one she'd been looking forward to meeting again: nervous, no doubt, not at all certain of himself, but sensitive, poetic, full of imagination. All those strange legends he told her about. Premonitions. Messengers of death. Terribly romantic. He'd even sent her a dictionary of highland folklore to read on the train from London, full of Gaelic names she couldn't pronounce. She'd not got beyond the first few pages, though. She preferred to look out of the window. Reading was something she associated with studying and work. And this was the vacation - her holiday. Was it really better than being a relief secretary in her father's office, giving out policies on one phone and apologies on the other? Was it really better than fighting off Noel in his family's cottage in Mid-Wales because Samantha's father had taken her off to the South of France in the mobile home that was all he had left after the divorce? Glasgow in August - Alice picked up the bag of Hamish's soiled clothing and tried to work out which of the six glass doors in the foyer would actually be open. Halls of residence in the vacation were prisons, but not quite so overcrowded. Just as she was despairing of ever getting out, a South-East Asian student flopping by in sandals with a bowl of steaming rice gestured her with smiles and signs to the back-door, which led into a dead-end alley full of smells and dustbins.

Momentarily, she was lost, but there was only one way to go. The street in front of her looked squat, square and two-dimensional in the flat light of evening, like one of those paintings of Manchester by - what was his name? - Malcolm Lowry. Of course, she'd never been to Manchester, and was glad, if it was like this. She'd applied to the university there just to frighten her mother, but had declined the interview they offered. Southampton was a better place to do English anyway. And much nearer home.

In that street, with its dust and dirt, its gutters fringed with chip-papers and burger boxes, its walls delicately frescoed with human and canine urine, and every third paving-stone decorated with an abstract design in weathered vomit, home seemed very far away. She'd rung her mother the previous evening (Daddy was out playing golf) to tell her she'd arrived safely. The hall of residence phone stank of stale beer and would not accept incoming calls. For once, she'd wished she'd had more change. The embarrassing questions had been worth the sense of contact.

She shifted the bag to her other hand and staggered past the boarded-up shops, so frowsty and run-down it was hard to tell if they were permanently closed or just shuttered against wandering drunks. The pop-concert posters were months out of date. She wondered if she was in the Gorbals, the slum district par excellence which they'd bulldozed ten years before she was born. The buildings themselves were all new enough. Maybe it was the earth they were built on, like that strip at the end of their garden beyond the tennis court: whatever you did, all that grew there was nettles and bindweed.

She stood in the pool of garish brightness that spilled through the door of the launderette. At first she thought it was empty, and was pleased to be spared conversation in a dialect she couldn't understand. Then she noticed a little old lady, rummaging in a huge bag she had put on the bench opposite the machines. Always the women, thought Alice. Even her father, who cheerfully loaded and unloaded the dishwasher and would rinse out the odd cup or two by hand without complaint, drew the line at washing. If he needed a clean shirt, he would just look around helplessly. He'd be amazed his golfing trousers still had mud on them and hadn't leapt into the washing machine of their own accord. Didn't men want to be clean? Who did Hamish's washing for him normally? His mother? It seemed likely, from the sort of things he'd said in the letters. A close family, Hamish the only child. She remembered snuggling up to the radiator in her room at home, the earphones pumping Renaissance of the Celtic Harp into her, reading his account of the long winter evenings in their croft: one big room, the draught under the door, the stove smoking, sometimes the gales lashing, sometimes just the wind howling with all the voices of the dead in it... So why had Hamish not gone home, and taken his washing with him? Was it because of her? Or work? What didn't he dare show his mother? His grades or his girlfriend? If that was what she was, and not his home help.

She pushed open the launderette door, marched straight over to the only machine that was not occupied or out of order, and started flinging the minestrone-like tangle of socks, pants, vests and shirts into it. As she slammed the door and turned away with relief, she found the little old lady was advancing towards her, her arms full of sheets with nasty brown stains on them.

'I'm sorry if I've jumped the queue,' she said, not wishing to offend the natives. 'I'm in rather a hurry, and I didn't know if you'd finished or not.' Was she really in a hurry, or was she glad to get away? Hamish was supposed to be cooking a meal, but couldn't stand anyone around while he was preparing it. He'd sent her to borrow a really sharp knife from one of the South East Asian students who were always laughing and joking in the kitchen in that musical and incomprehensible language. She'd asked him why he couldn't go himself and he'd said he was always afraid they were talking about him. She wondered how he would cope in the kitchen if they were there. In fact, she wondered if he would ever get to the kitchen, he seemed so reluctant to leave his room.

'Och, dinna worry, my work's never finished, so I'm in nae hurry at all,' said the little old lady.

'Fine,' said Alice, flashing her most ingratiating smile, the one she kept for check-out girls when she had to write a cheque for half a pound of butter.

'Ye came between me and the watter, and I didnae see ya - that gives you three questions and me three answers.'

'Do I have to take them all at once?' Alice's smile was paying for a bag of crisps with a twenty-pound note.

'Och, no. Tak your time. I'll even ask mine first.'

Alice had been looking forward to some peace, to think her way through her present predicament. She had had little enough sleep last night on the floor of Hamish's room. He had talked constantly in his sleep - well, she hoped he had been asleep - shouting, cursing, whimpering, wheedling, flinging himself about in his bed. She had been terrified, but felt that it was all too private for her to intervene. There had never been a hint of these things in the letters. About eight o'clock she had fallen asleep in sheer exhaustion. Hamish seemed quieter in the light. He had begun writing. The regular scraping of the pen had lulled her.

'Ye're staying with Hamish, are ye no?'

'Yes - do you know him?'

'I'll let ye count that as half a question, lassie. I know everyone.'

Alice was surprised to find herself so ready to talk to a stranger. But they were all strangers up here - Scots, Malaysians - and she needed to know about Hamish. It wasn't the drink, that was fairly clear. In the pub last night he'd clung grimly to one pint and not even finished it. She'd tried to buy him a whisky - 'You're from the Highlands, after all' - and a lad from the next table had leant over and shouted at them: 'He's no frae the Highlands, he's frae Cumbernauld.' And Hamish had got up and left at once.

'Where's Cumbernauld?' asked Alice.

'Are you sure you want tae ask that kind of question?'

'Is that the second of the three you're asking me?'

'You're canny. OK, that's the other half of your first question. It's between here and Edinburgh. But no one else ever asked me about geography.'

Alice wasn't really much wiser, but she was beginning to enjoy the game. Maybe the old lady could help her to understand Hamish. Perhaps it was trouble at home. He'd been writing a letter to his mother this morning, but he hadn't put an address on it, only her name. Perhaps he didn't want Alice to find out where he lived...She'd only ever written to him at university. She'd offered to post it, but he'd refused. Funny, thought Alice, writing letters to your parents. That's what phones were for. Maybe Hamish's parents didn't have a phone. Because they were so far out in the wilds - heather, mountains, bogs, mosquitoes - Daddy had warned her about them, but they had mosquitoes in Spain, too. Maybe they didn't have a phone because they were too poor. A thought struck her like a knife between the ribs.

'You're not his mother, are you?'

The old lady smiled. Her teeth were yellow and stumpy, but all there and all her own. 'Noo. But in a way I'm everybody's mither, hen. Ye've got one more tae ask,' she added, 'and then we can have a real conversation.'

Alice was rather sad the answer had been no. She had wanted to find out why Hamish was so concerned with these legends. It was all very well in letters, in a misty, romantic way, but this afternoon, from the time she'd woken up till he'd sent her out with the washing, he had had her reading aloud from the book of Highland folklore: fetches, doubles, omens of death - 'Do ye love him?'

One of the machines began a particularly noisy part of its cycle. It gave Alice the respite she needed. She did not want to seem too callous by answering at once. Love him? The letters, yes: gentle, kind, considerate, sensitive. The letters picked up all those dreamy thoughts she had just before she went to sleep. The letters he wrote were full of her thoughts. But he was quite different. She'd made a mistake in reading - how was she supposed to know? - and talked about the 'been sigh' where it said 'bean si'. Hamish had leapt off his bed, torn the book from her hand and been about to hit her with it. 'It's the banshee,' he had screamed. Then he had calmed down a little. 'They wail before people die. But they're Irish. We have the 'ben neeyeh', only you don't write it like that - the little washerwoman by the ford. She washes the clothes of the dead.' Then he'd pushed the book back into her hand and told her to carry on. No lunch, no tea, no - 'No,' answered Alice.

'Ye sound very sure. It's a guid thing tae be sure. Are ye staying long?'

'No.' She didn't need to hesitate. 'That was your third question, wasn't it?'

'Ye're sharp. Mebbe not clever, but sharp. Aye, it was. But you have one more.'

Alice's machine began to suck and labour. Then it started to spin with a rising shriek that reminded her of those fireworks called - what was it? - banshees. As the tone fell again, she stopped looking intently at the whirling washing - a kind of abstract pop video - and turned to the little old lady, who sat there patiently in her black-feathered hat, crinkly red shoes and shabby green coat. Endearingly eccentric, thought Alice. Unless you're related to her. And then she could well be unendurable.

'What's your name?'

'It's no a deep question, but happen ye'll need tae know it. It's no easy tae spell, and folk round here don't say it right, but what they call me is Mrs Beaney.'

Alice had noticed that the coin-slot of the only tumble-drier was jammed. She started ramming the damp clothing back into the hold-all with a gnawing urgency that was related to her hunger, but definitely not the same.

'I'll hold the door for ye,' said Mrs Beaney.

'Thank you,' said Alice, and as she went through she half-turned and asked, 'Will Hamish be all right?'

Mrs Beaney paused and cocked her head with the raven-feathered hat, as if to emphasise that this was an extra question that she wasn't obliged to answer.

'He'll hae no more problems.'

The street was dark now. The hall of residence's upraised finger was speckled with lighted windows. The alleyway was pitch-black and stank worse than she recalled. The back-door would not open. She pulled, she pushed, she hammered. As she struggled round to the front of the building, the second handle on the hold-all broke. As if in a goldfish bowl, distant students passed dreamily to and fro, two sets of glass doors away. She didn't want to shout too loudly, for fear of what or who else the disturbance might attract in the street. At last, one of them, carrying an empty rice-bowl, noticed her and came to her rescue, opening the back-door with a plastic card. She stumbled in, clutching the bundle of washing, but realised that she had forgotten which room was Hamish's. The student called one of his friends to carry the washing and they went searching. Luckily, they knew Hamish, otherwise Alice would have had to try identifying his unnumbered door by the pattern of scuff marks or the shape made by the peeling paint on the frame. When she found the door was locked and he didn't answer, she was glad to have the two lads beside her. Even before the plastic card had done its trick, she knew what she would find.

'I'm special,' Hamish had told her - was it last night, or this morning, or in one of those endless letters? 'When my grandmother died, she knew I was on the way, even though my mother hadn't the slightest idea that she was carrying me.'

He looked special now. Propped up in bed, he had slit his wrists, but then, impatient with that, had cut his throat. Blood was everywhere.

As she looked, Alice could not keep out of her head the thought that some poor woman was going to have a terrible job washing those sheets.

Mike Rogers

11th August 1988.

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