Read Online Bruach Blend by Lillian Beckwith - Free Book Online Page A

one.’
    â€˜Thigh Jim?’ echoed Morag.
    â€˜Aye, they call him that because he never takes his thigh boots off if he can help it.’
    â€˜Not even to go to his bunk?’ asked Morag incredulously.
    â€˜Not even in his bunk,’ affirmed Willy. The only time you’ll see Thigh’s boots off his feet is when he’s got a woman somewhere.’
    â€˜He does take them off for that?’ queried Johnny with pretended surprise.
    â€˜Aye, he’s made a habit of that,’ agreed Willy. ‘Too much of a habit. God! He’s a laugh, that one. I mind he was in a bar once an’ this tart sneaked him into the ladies’ lavatory. After a while the barman got to suspectin’ somethin’ an’ went an’ banged on the door, shoutin’ to the tart to get rid of the man she had. The tart shouted back swearin’ there was no man with her. “Then who the hell does this great stinkin’ pair of thigh boots belong to?” asks the barman.’ Willy briefly inspected his fingernails which were as thick and ridged as cockle shells before turning on the company with a saucy grin that was the equivalent of a dig in the ribs. ‘That’s how habit kind of lets you down,’ he said, and glanced ironically at the excessively virtuous Kirsty whose eyes were closed almost as tightly as her lips.
    â€˜Ach, the man!’ said Morag scathingly.
    â€˜He would not be an island man, surely,’ defended Anna Vic.
    â€˜Ach no. He was from the east coast somewhere,’ Willy said. ‘They come pretty rough from those parts.’ It was possible to detect something like a sigh of relief at his assurance that it was no island man.
    â€˜I’m wonderin’ where you were yourself while he was off with his tart, as you call her,’ taunted Johnny. ‘Likely you would be off with one of your own.’
    â€˜Indeed no, I’m not much of a one for tarts,’ Willy denied. ‘Though God knows there’s plenty around waitin’ for us lads when we get ashore, particularly when they’ve heard we’ve had a good week. Some of them are as old and ugly as the Devil himself too. I don’t know how Thigh can go with them. Honest,’ Willy went on, ‘there was an old cow tried her best to get hold of me once when I’d a good drink on me. Right enough I was drunk but I wasn’t drunk enough to look at her. I would as soon have gone to bed with a beast. “Away with you, woman,” I told her. “Your face makes me sick.” “You’re not so good-lookin’ yourself,” says she. “Maybe not,” says I, “but if I had a face like yours I’d go down an’ stand in the Square an’ pay the kids a shillin’ each to throw shit at it.” ’ Willy’s grin broadened at the gasps of remonstrance; the sly grins and the appreciative chuckles with which his story was received. ‘She left me alone after that.’
    â€˜I should think she would indeed,’ gurgled Janet.
    â€˜Mind you, she got her own back on me, the bitch,’ Willy continued. ‘She worked on a couple of Irish blokes that was in the bar to pick a row with me an’ we started fightin’. I ended up spendin’ the weekend in gaol.’
    â€˜Oh, be quiet! You did not, surely?’ reproached Janet.
    â€˜I did so,’ insisted Willy. ‘A crumby little gaol it was too. Nothin’ but a wooden pillow on the bed they gave me. I had to take off my seaboot socks an’ put them under my head before I could get to sleep an’ there was I dreamin’ all night there was a stinkin’ corpse in the cell alongside of me.’
    â€˜Did you see the woman again at all?’ asked Morag.
    â€˜I did not then,’ said Willy. ‘I didn’t go ashore for a week or two an’ then we were away with the boat some place else so thank God there was water an’ not land