Here is another of our occasional short stories of his which he wrote in the 1950s.

Hugh Barton was almost through with it. Thirteen weeks now the strike had gone, and no prospect of a settlement. Every day the same: grind, grind, grind; picket duty, meetings, collisions with the police; and then the collisions with the police, meetings and picket duty again. And all the time hunger as a dull, miserable undertone. Whipped-up emotions and fiery speeches – what was the use of it all?

He stepped down from the box, and a great lassitude swept in waves over him. From the ring of faithful, broken men who still clung to him there was a faint attempt at applause; but he could sense the waning enthusiasm of the crowd. The grimy factories and the even more grimy, barrack-like slums around him mocked his fine sentiments. A steady drizzle of rain slithered heavily to the muddy cobbles. No wind, no freshness in the air; only a soot-laden atmosphere that scarcely allowed the clammy rain to fall. The gaping door of a filthy public house let out a stream of sickly, yellow light. Across the way a huge model lodging house festered and reeked in the murkiness of the October evening. A group of dispirited outcasts leant against its doorposts, arguing without heat or interest about the Cesarewitch. From time to time they cast heedless, faintly contemptuous glances at his audience. A few, chewing listlessly, spat out black mouthfuls on the greasy pavement.

What was the use of it all? Why was he doing it?

Telling these hopeless masses that they were bound to win, when every one of them knew that each day made defeat more certain. Telling them that their leaders had let them down: they knew that already. After all, what else were leaders for? With their fine, fat jobs, their good clothes, their regular meals. What did these poor devils around him care for his denunciations? What did they care for anything? The truth of their utter hopelessness came home to him with overwhelming, stabbing clarity. They knew he was speaking the truth, knew it with all the abysmal cynicism of the very poor; and they had ceased to resent it. They did not resent the desertion of their leaders; they merely accepted it as they accepted the rain and the unending misery of their lot. If they had found one whom they could not trust, one who would not climb on their shoulders to make a position of security for himself, they might have shown surprise; but wretchedness, betrayal, defeat, these were normal parts of their lives, the whole life.

Barton knew that he had spoken well. But what was the use of speaking well to such people? When he told them they were oppressed and downtrodden, they grunted assent, too dejected even for the luxury of self-pity. When he spoke of the failure to the unions to back their strike, they evinced no indignation. The Unions had done it before; they would do it again. Unions fought only when they were sure of a spectacular victory and of plenty of limelight for some official with an eye to parliament or the local Council or on the look-out for more votes for the Union Presidency.

They were not indulgent – not now, not after the first few weeks. Even old Smithers in his well-cut clothes and his odious bowler could move among them without being jeered at. After all, he was a friendly old chap, not bad with a bob if a fellow was down and out and usually with a good thing for 3.30. No, they were all alike, these toffs in their Union offices, looking well after their soft jobs.

“And damned right too if they get off with it; he’d do the same himself if he got a chance”: Barton caught the muttered comment of one man in the crowd, a lean, disillusioned docker with a scar across his right cheek and two fingers missing from his right hand.

Would he, though? He quivered at the thought. Would he, could he, do the same himself? He who had lost a steady job in Blackwood’s because he wouldn’t hustle the men; he who had put the workers’ fight before everything; he who had seen his home grow more and more sordid every month because he would not kow-tow to a boss nor let any gaffer bounce him.

To them a strike was a strike, nothing more. It was not a symbol of revolt, not a foretaste of the Day when workers everywhere would throw off their chains, when they would establish a new order of things as the workers had done in Russia.

But in face of this naked cynicism argument was useless. There was no point in telling these people his visions and his dreams. To them a strike was a strike, nothing more. It was not a symbol of revolt, not a foretaste of the Day when workers everywhere would throw off their chains, when they would establish a new order of things as the workers had done in Russia. To them it was only a strike, a fight for a penny an hour, four bobs’ worth more chuck and beer and tobacco in the week, a necessary but painful struggle against the hated and well-clad.

Barton wished it was his turn for picket tonight. Then he would not have needed to go home. Then he would have been a somebody, a leader. At home what was he? Not a rebel, not a fighter for freedom, not an idealist in the vanguard of battle. Just a failure, a ragged, shivering out-of-work, who could not provide for him own family.

He turned up the collar of his jacket, pulled his cap down well over his eyes, and slid quietly out of the crowd, unaccompanied. He shoved his hands deep into the holes of his trousers where the pockets had been. The coldness of his wet hands pricked his legs: despite the rain he had been sweating. It did not take much nowadays to make him sweat. He shuddered all over. The vitality had gone out of him suddenly, drained away as though a tap had been opened from his spine. He was deadly tired. He wanted to rest his back which was aching with weariness.

His throat was raw. He wanted to smoke, to flood his lungs with soothing, deadening warmth; but he was too tired to regret that he had no cigarettes. It was all hateful, damnable. Tears rose to his eyes, and the softly falling, dirty rain washed them down his cheeks.

At the closemouth he stopped a moment, thinking dully of the ordeal of climbing the three flights of stairs that lead to his attic. Then he mounted. The steps were broken at the edges and marked with the passage of many feet. On one whitewashed wall some dirty-minded message boy had scribbled words of unimaginable ugliness; across the other sprawled a crude drawing of vilest obscenity. Damnable, damnable. Unpolished doorknobs of dented and twisted brass; and on each landing the wide-open door of communal latrine. Just outside one of them someone had blown his nose foully. Pervading everywhere was the smell of cats and unaired human dwellings.

He let himself quietly into his own house, hoping against reason that his wife would be abed. All the time he knew exactly what he would find. Always the same, always damnably the same. She sat by the fireplace, nursing the youngest baby. Eight years ago she had been pretty, slim, shapely, a mill girl, high-spirited and easily cheerful. Still there clung about her an incongruous attractiveness; but her body was all misshapen with the ugliness that too rapid childbearing imposes on the very poor.

She did not look up as he entered; and she did not speak. What was there to say?

So they sat, she mechanically tending the infant, he staring blankly before him. After a little he rose and hung his jacket above the sink, so that the water from it dripped steadily into the tin basin. She had enough to do, he thought gloomily, without cleaning up after him. After all, Anne was brave, even if her palpable brainlessness did at times madden him.

As he passed behind her stool, he saw the whiteness of her exposed breasts; and for an instant his mind swung back with passionate illumination to the early days when he could not pass her about the house without kissing her brow, the nape of her neck, her arm, anything that was warm and soft to her. In the same instant the impulse was gone: Anne would not understand. Somehow she had grown beyond that: love does not thrive in single apartments.

“Jenny better? he asked at last. Emotion made his voice gruff. To show feeling would in this circumstance be an insult. Her eyes hardened at his tone; more like a grunt it was than the way a man should speak to his wife that he’d left alone all day.

“No”, she answered briefly. “Mrs MacGregor says the rash has gone in too early.”

He did not ask if she had fetched the doctor; there was no money for doctors.

The silence between them grew oppressive. He felt it mounting like an intangible, impalpable barrier. That was how it always started: no word of quarrel, just an atmosphere of estrangement that developed into hostility.

And then for days – or even weeks – she would move about the house without speaking to him, till a frenzy of importance seized him, a fury of desire to make her speak to him, to open her mouth if it was only to nag at him. Even that would help; he could reply and maybe bring her to see his point of view. But this silence of hers made everything impossible. The straight line of her jaw when she sat thus sulking was as maddening as a smooth, steel fence a man could not climb over.

Wildly he longed to take her in his arms, and kiss her, and – and weep. But he could not do that, that would be sentimental, demonstrative.

Wildly he longed to take her in his arms, and kiss her, and – and weep. But he could not do that, that would be sentimental, demonstrative. Why couldn’t she understand, when he sat speechless or made some excuse to pass as close as possible to her without actually touching her, that he ached to fondle her and tell her he was sorry for her? But she had grown cold, matrimonially matter-of-fact.

Soon he must give way to his love of Anne, or to his hate of her. He must embrace her hungrily or fly onto one of is mad rages when he would curse and threaten her. He felt it surging up from the pit of his stomach. Now it was swelling and rising in his chest. He knew all the symptoms. He knew he must speak before it reached his throat, before he felt his finger curling and uncurling, before his throat was constricted, before his lips began to twitch. Now, now, he must speak now, or it would be too late again.

He spoke. And his voice was low, more than a hoarse murmur. No one would have guessed the storm that raged behind that casual voice – least of all the woman who knew him less well now than when she married him eight years ago. And all the things he wanted to stay remained unspoken – this orator of the street corners.

“No more word”, he said thickly. “The bosses won’t meet us.”

She did not answer, but sat picking at her finger nails. The child was in bed now, lying with his numerous brothers and sisters in the truckle bed that was pushed under the set-in bed in the daytime.

No use. He must try again.

“They lifted Dan Molley today. Loitering with the intent to sleep, the cops said”.

The woman stirred peevishly. “And serve him right too”, she snapped. “Him running about with other woman, and Katie is the way she is.”

“And who wouldn’t?” demanded Barton. “And her nag-nag-nagging at him all the time, her and her orange friends.”

“Ay, that’s right: a fine chum for the likes of you that was brought up decent. A drunken waster that’s ready for every row that’s going”

“Steve Harris”, her husband argued dully, “says that Dan’s got good stuff in him at bottom. And we’re no prudes in the Communist Party anyhow. To Hell with their bourgeois morality!”

Mrs Barton flared up: “Ay, to Hell with Steve Harris, and with your Communism as well.”

Barton gasped. He had never before heard Anne swear. She was the only woman in the close he could say that about. Old-fashioned prejudice of course; but somehow it kept Anne different.

“You fool!” she cried. “Aren’t you sick yet of being made a tool of? Is Steve Harris going hungry, him with his hair frizzed and his trousers pressed like a tailor’s dummy, him with his wife in Paisley and a dozen wee hoors down here smirking at him? Ay, and he pats you and Mick McDade and Terry Coyle and the rest of you mugs on the back and makes you imagine you’re heroes, important fellows. What for? So that he’ll rope you in at Election time and make a splash; then everybody’ll think it’s him that’s the big shot in Clydeside. And the Communist Party will pay him to go on spouting for another while, and the rest of you can starve.”

Barton winced in amazement. “Don’t talk nonsense, Anne.” He interrupted her at last. “You know Steve doesn’t get paid, it’s not for him we’re doing it anyway it’s for the workers”. “Paid be damned!” said Mrs Barton contemptuously. “You’ll know well enough he gets paid; or else you’re a fool. Workers! A fat lot Steve Harris cares for the workers, him that never did a hand turn in all his dirty life.”

This was a frontal attack, this was something solid, and something he could meet and fight. Barton felt a great commitment rising within him. Unspeaking, she could beat him – her with the immovable stolidity of silence, him with only the feeble weapons of words and logic. Arguing, he had her beaten.

“But it’s the workers’ fight, Anne. Surely you see that? Would you like me to be a coward, a scab, would you like me to go back on the workers? It’s a fight for bread and butter, a fight for the woman and children.”

Anne laughed scornfully. “Ay, tell that to your meetings. Tell that to the moochers and loafers that would rather listen to big talk than work for their living”.

Anne laughed scornfully. “Ay, tell that to your meetings. Tell that to the moochers and loafers that would rather listen to big talk than work for their living”.

“Anne, Anne!” he pled, earnestly now with the fire of conviction in his eyes “don’t talk that way. You know my hearts in this. It’s part of me. I’ve been fighting for it ever since I knew anything. It’s not for myself, and it’s not for Steve Harris. It’s not for communism even. It’s for the women and the kiddies, the poor little kiddies that the Boss Class is murdering everyday in Clydeside.

” Anne stirred uneasily. She knew Hugh was in earnest. She knew he was brave. Oh, he was brave all right, this man of hers, braver than Harris or Coyle or Mullen or any of that bunch. He would go through hell barefoot for what he believed was right. And she was proud of him, too proud of this shabby man with the ragged clothes, the dark fierce eyes and the hungry jaws.

But she must fight down her pride in her, she must fight down her love for him. He never thought of her now, only of his Communism. He never kissed her or talked foolishly to her, just through her a word and went on thinking, thinking.

“The woman and the kiddies! Ay, always the other women and the other folks’ kiddies”, she snorted. She had not meant to make her tone so harsh, but the softness leaves your voice when you are rearing a family of five in a single end.

“Never a thought for your wife and your own kiddies. Wee Jim died on us the time you were bagged from Scott’s; now it’s Jenny, Jenny gasping her life away and you are out spouting at street corners when you might all be working. Good God, man, are you blind, are you mad? I’m starving, I tell you, and the weans are starving. And you come in and talk to me about the women and the kiddies! Oh, my God, you men, you babies, you blind idiots!”

Hugh Barton shrank. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. This was new to him. Countless time he had told his audiences that in a strike it was the women who suffered most. Now when it was told him by his wife, he realised that he had only been making rhetorical flourishes. This was real. And it was new to him. He would need to think it over. Starving – yes, that was true; and starving all alone in this garret; that must be hellish.

But Anne’s tongue was loosened now, loosened after years of restraint. “Heroes you all are – oh ay, fine heroes! And you get your names in the Daily Worker, maybe in the Daily record if you’re lucky enough to get mixed up in a row. You’re hungry. Ay, but you can forget hunger when you are in a crowd and people are cheering you. And always folk to meet and something to take up your attention. But me here in this hole, with nobody to speak to but the weans when they come in crying for a piece and I’ve got no piece to give them, what about me? Hunger, hunger! It’s me that knows what hunger is when the milk has left me for the want of decent food and I have to catch at the table for dizziness when I stoop to shake up the rags on the bed!”

Suddenly she stopped, exhausted. Her shoulders wilted. Her head fell on her arms on the table. She sobbed with deep, passionate in drawings of her breath.

Barton was stupefied. Not for years has he seen his wife cry, not even when the Parish buried Jenny in an ugly, unvarnished coffin.

Barton was stupefied. Not for years has he seen his wife cry, not even when the Parish buried Jenny in an ugly, unvarnished coffin. And he never could bear to hear a woman cry. Years ago in the theatre a woman cried on stage in the absurdist of melodrama, he had to grip his lower lip in his teeth and swallow desperately for the fear of making a fool of himself. It was the utter abandonment with which a woman cries that unnerved him.

He must get out, out, out. Oh, he would like to throw his arms about her and talk to her and be tender to her. But that would not stop her. She would cry, and cry, and cry. He knew it. Then all his strength would go. He would grow desperate with helplessness. He too would break down, might even cry loudly, hysterically. Oh God! Not that! Not that!

With his head reeling and his backbone a pulpy mass of weariness. Not that! Not that! He seized his jacket and cap, rammed them on somehow, anyhow, and rushed out.

For a long time Mrs Barton lay over the table. Her whole body was shaken by sobs that alternatively drew it up and let it sag as if something inside her were swelling and collapsing. With the ebbing of each sob her forehead struck the table dully. Then gradually she quietened. The passion of tears relieved the tension of long-restrained and mounting despair. The baby whined as it wakened to hunger.

She did not know where her husband had gone. But he often went out at night now, on picket duty to intercept any straggling blacklegs who might attempt to slip in on night shifts. It did not occur to Anne to mistrust him. No; whatever Hugh was, he was clean and he was straight with women.

Fatigued she partially undressed and crept into bed beside Jenny, lifting the infant beside her. Whatever happened, they must be kept warm. Throughout the long, dark hours she lay open-eyed, staring into the blackness. Tramcars clattered past in the street, and each bang shook the inside of her head. A cistern on the landing underneath periodically filled and flushed. A pair of cats yelled barbarically.

Her mind had no peace: thoughts, thoughts, thoughts. Why had she let Hugh go like that? If only he had put one finger on her, made one gesture of tenderness! If only he had spoken to her when she wept! But he was hard, hard. Did he not see that she needed all her strength to restrain herself from throwing her arms round him and kissing him? Oh, if only he would soften his voice when he spoke to her, make one sign of fondness, only do one little thing to make it easy for her to renew the past!

Or if she could only sink her pride and go all the way to meet him. But Hugh was hard; he would not understand. He would think she was trying to get round him, to win him away `from his Communism. Always that Communism of his! But she did not want to weaken him or change him. No she would not have him any different from what he was – brave and straight, and independent.

It was terrible to starve, more terrible to watch the wee ones starve. But it would be worse still to see Hugh go back on himself, do what he would be ashamed of doing. He was brave; God he was brave. He was brave because he was straight, and because he was so sure of himself. If he lost that sureness, his bravery would go with it. He would be just like the rest of them, mouthing a rigmarole that didn’t mean a thing to them.

She should not have been so harsh with Hugh; but the weans with their lean jaws and the hunger in their eyes haunted her. They drove her to say things she should not have said. She was in all day with them; it got on her nerves so that she was ready to fly at anybody.

After this she must be brave too. In the morning she would smother her pride, she would conquer the sulky devil that was in her, and she would tell Hugh she had been in the wrong. Then he would kiss her, and love her, and everything would be bearable again.

But Oh, if only he would make it easier for her! Still she would do it. Maybe it was better that way: she was too proud, too stubborn; it’s time she was getting cured of that. With almost a happy smile of anticipation Anne fell asleep.

A colourless, murky dawn was struggling in through the attic window when she was wakened by a noise of yelling and shouting in the street below. It was a street that was accustomed to noises, even at half-past six in the morning – noises of feet and tongues, noises of men and beasts, of wheels and of hoofs. But these were different noises. There were angry voices, shouts, curses, a police whistle. Anne jumped in alarm from the bed. The baby, rudely wakened, began to howl stridently. Her man, her man, they were after her man. He had done something while he was on picket. She knew it. She made for the door, all unclad as she was.

Just as she reached it, the door flung open from the outside. Hugh, staggering in, half fell across her. A babel of furious voices echoed up the stairs. He was bareheaded. Blood flowed from a cut on his temple.

“Hugh, Hugh!” she cried. “You’re hurt. Is it the polis?”

Barton tried to pull himself together. His shoulders sagged, his arms hung limp before him. “No, it’s Coyle and Mullen and the picket.”

“The picket!” she gasped.

“Ay, the picket”, he shouted. “They’re after me. I started on the night shift in Murray’s. For you, Anne, for you and the weans. Kiss me, Anne, for God’s sake kiss me.”

Her head swam. She shrank back in horror. She held her hands up in front of her face.

“You coward!” she spat at him. “You scab”.