Andrew Tannahill sat down, ragged, burnt and tired. It seemed as if the entire town of Greenock was burning behind him. As he looked out across the docks towards where night-time Helensburgh surely was, Rosneath, across the Gareloch, was also ablaze with fire from misdirected bombs. Hell had reached out its long arm from Europe and had personally visited Renfrewshire and Dunbartonshire.
He ate the warm lamb pie, slugging back tepid water from his tin canteen. Nearby the Salvation Army stall was doing its brisk business, offering physical succour to the fire-fighters and the homeless. The noise was everywhere, even long past midnight. Women screamed, men wept, tenements roared with flame, falling with a shock to the earth beneath his feet. Everywhere was splashed with red, orange, yellow, and black.
The entire town of Greenock was lit up by the bright white light of the distillery aflame and fuelled by drink. Like a drunken giant burning with rage, threatening to destroy everything nearby, its spirit illuminating the town, directing the Luftwaffe bombers with its unquenchable beacon all the way from above Glasgow and beyond. Tannahill and his fellow fire-fighters could only watch it burn and pray that the bombing would finally end.
"How many bombers were there?", Tannahill asked no-one in particular. A small boy, shaking with excitement and fear, seeking Andrew's adult company, gripped the man's trouser leg, "Hunners and hunners, mister!" He looked down at the boy, probably homeless and even without a family, and gave him the rest of the pie. Before them the Clyde flowed as red as lava from the burnt remains of Clydebank to watching Dunoon. The hills beyond the docks and river were a strangely-illuminated brown umber, a colour he had never chosen to paint these beautiful hills. He wondered what was left of his home, his studio and his paintings in nearby Gourock.
Just a few weeks back it seemed the entire population of Greenock was either hanging out of tenement windows or standing at the docks as they watched Clydebank burn. No-one spoke as for two nights the town was bombed, chasing the shortening, dark spring nights away. News had reached Greenock quickly. By some bizarre turn of fate the bombs had destroyed almost the entire town, but the docks survived intact. How could that be? Was it an act of God that saved the war effort, or an act of the Devil that murdered the sleeping population in their beds? Or, perhaps, both.
Andrew Tannahill's father, George, would have known. A stalwart of the secessionist church in Paisley, Andrew had often accompanied him as he preached in County Square on Fridays and Saturdays against the dangers of the demon drink. His father could stoke up a religious firestorm, and was beaten up for it on more than one occasion by mobs paid in whisky by the local publicans who stood at a distance, arms-crossed on their aprons and grinning demonically.
He stood up to find his legs again. "I suppose this will go on until I collapse of tiredness", he speculated out loud. At his feet the boy was by now sound asleep. He took off his firefighter's jacket and laid it on the bairn. Anyway, in the heat around him there was no need for him to wear it. As he watched the bright white fire of the distillery blazing away, he nodded an, “Uh-hu!", towards his long-dead father. "Well, in a way you were right, faither", as he acknowledged that the German fliers were probably saying, “Danke”, as they used the burning distillery to pinpoint the town and bomb it to grey rubble.
Andrew wondered about his sister down in Salford. Twenty years had now gone since she married Ron Littledale and passed from her father's bosom to that of her husband. 1921, just after the Great War; the war to end all wars. That one had been an August walk and picnic up the Greenock Cut to Loch Thom compared to the war raging around him tonight.
Paisley’s garment trade had been just getting going again when the tall, young Mancunian had turned his eye to Andrew’s quiet, shy wee sister, Betty. He had wooed her under the watchful eye of her father. Ron was known to the family, a widower whose wife had died in a loom accident in Salford. He was closer to her father's age than her's. A proud man, now a gaffer in charge of a mill floor full of women. Deaf as a door-post from 30 years of working in the powered cotton mills, but with a sharp wit, a sparkle in his eye, and a poke of Uncle Joe's Mint Balls for any children he passed who he felt needed one.
Andrew had last visited them in the phoney war of early 1940. The trains were bustling with soldiers and he had found it hard to get a travel pass. However, being a well-connected painter, patronised by the likes of the Earl of Glasgow and Lord Kelvin - and by now a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Art - he came out 'lucky' in the draw for tickets. His sister was doing well, but still childless, living in Wesley Row near her husband's work. She kept home for her busy husband and managed his investments in several barges plying goods between Salford docks and Liverpool.
He wondered if her house was burning at the end of the railway line in Manchester. Was the whole country burning in a war we were definitely losing. How long till the frightening war machine of Herr Hitler came up the Clyde in battleships? How long. How long.
He stood, still weary from two nights and one day of fire-fighting. In front of him the fires in several houses and tenements burnt on and on. As he looked up, the planes had gone now. He refused to relax or consider the thought, "Is that it, then?" The whole town had known that after Clydebank the bombs would soon fall on nearby Port Glasgow and Greenock. It had been like waiting to be called to his father when he had lipped Mrs MacPherson next door in Sma' Shot Lane. He well remembered the hours of endless waiting, the front door opening, his mother talking to her husband, his name being called, and then his father standing with tears in his eyes, red-faced, as he removed his leather belt and then used it six times, as Mr Spence at Paisley Gramar had done with his Lochgelly tawse, with real force on the backside of his shorts.
His father was a fair man. Rigid in religion and Sabbath observance, formed by his Ayrshire upbringing in the lace town of Darvel. Andrew had loved to draw the Paisley patterns coming off his grandfather's loom, adding colour to their contours. His sketches attracted the attention of none less than Sir Peter Coats of Renfrewshire's cottonopolis. Through Sir Peter he was introduced to local artists, even sitting quietly by as Sir Daniel MacNamee FRSA painted the great man's portrait. Through him he was soon matriculated at the prestigious Glasgow School of Art, and set on his career as a professional artist to the apparently great, perhaps the good, and certainly the wealthy.
As he returned to the Salvation Army stall, offering his canteen for a refill of black tea, he was surrounded by conversation,
"She was standing in the close holding the twa wee bairns, with twa neighbours' bairns staunin under her skirt, hauding ontae her legs when the bomb fell. Next thing she was still there, wearing rags. But the bairns were gone - all fower of them. We looked around the rubble, but there was naythin' alive aboon the groond."
"Ah huvnae seen a building left staunin undamaged. Everything oan the Port side of West Blackhall Street has gone. A’thing."
"Ah saw big man Pratten, the top fire-master, go intae a burnin' building with Willie Neill and Jim Berry with hoses on to stop it going up. It wiz fu' o' bombs aw ready for the RAF. They put the fire oot. Let’s hope the RAF drop them back on one of their cities, so we can see them burn."
Dawn was beginning to break. To the limited hues of men's fires were being added the full spectrum of the sun, from red to violet. The light first appeared from beyond the Port, spreading like an oil across Greenock and Gourock, illuminating the unburnt rich grey mansions of Helensburgh and Kilcreggan, bringing the green heather tones back to Cowal and Bute. The Clyde once again shouted its blue, tinged with white horses brought into being by the roaring firestorm behind Andrew Tannahill's back.
He took a drink from the canteen. The tea was as warm as a mother's tears and as satisfying as a father's embrace. He turned to face the mayhem and destruction of two nights of German workmanship. His artist's eye caught a flash of colour amidst the charcoals, greys and ochres. A tiny red, orange and white flapping. A butterfly. He stood transfixed as it flew before him, zigging and zagging, seeking a perch to stop. Finding one. The butterfly rested on a small pink hand. It cleaned its antennae, turning its wings to the sun. The girls' hand arose from an arm in the rubble before him, beautiful, pink and shouting with life.
He ran and began to pull at and throw the rocks in disarray. Under the rubble was a table. And under the table two huge blue eyes set in a tear-smeared face. The girl’s mouth opened and said one word, “Ma!" Two other men had joined him, pulling away the debris and, more carefully, the table. Andrew leant over and grasped the girl. She was perhaps not much more than four years old. She gripped him tightly with her arms and legs in silent shock and awe, colour returning to her cheeks. He took her to the Salvation Army stand, but the little girl would not let go of him.
All around was destruction. The town had been devastated and, in a faustian pact, only its docks had, like Clydebank's, survived unharmed to fight another day. The Salvation Army officer said, "Can you take her home and look after her?" It wasn't a question, so he carried her the miles to his flat in Barrhill Road, with its high north-facing views onto the vista of unchanging created glory that transcends war.
"Jenny Tannahill, stand still!" Her father reproached her with a smile. The years had aged him, while she had matured into his 'little jewel'. Eyes blue like lapis lazuli, hair as red as agate, skin as pink as rhodonite, her dress as creamy white as the Tay pearls his father had brought his mother one day when returning from visiting Baxter's cotton mills in Dundee.
He had long sketched the painting, but it was Sir John Scott II of Cartsburn Dockyard who had finally persuaded him to paint. He had roughly sketched out the outline of four young girls in pencil, then around them the setting of hills and heather in charcoal. Burnt umber for the earth. Sunlight of dawn for the sky. Jenny had sat for each pose, laughing and, scratching her nose when she shouldn't as her amused father drew lines in quick actions, spying at her occasionally from around the canvas.
Andrew Tannahill knew this was his last chance, for she was being courted by Sir John's son, Robert, who had recently returned from inspecting the family's newlyfounded dockyard in Hong Kong. The pair were smitten, and she wouldn't be a girl much longer. The painting flowed quickly once he got beyond keeping the young woman still. Just one touch and it would be done. A wedding present for her.
The day went well at St John's Kirk, a short walk from the flat in Gourock, and afterwards for the reception at the home of Sir John on the Esplanade in Greenock. Andrew Tannahill unveiled the painting to gasps, some genuine, from the wedding guests. He looked at his daughter who, hand-in-hand, was examining the painting closely with her new husband at her side.
"Daddy. It's beautiful!" She smiled at him.
"Don't touch it, little jewel, its not quite dry."
But, she had let go of her husband, Robert’s hand and had already touched it with her index finger. A perfect image of a butterfly in red, orange and white was imprinted on her finger. She turned to her father, pointed at him with it, and laughed as he kissed it.