Clearance, by Callum Strachan

An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.

The removal men had taken the wardrobe and the good chair, and now there was nothing left in the room but Archie Doig and the shape of things. In the corner the gas meter still held the shilling he had fed it on Tuesday, a whole shilling of warmth that nobody would ever burn, and he found he could not stop looking at it.

‘That’s you, Mr Doig,’ said the youngest of the men, jangling his keys. ‘We’ll see you up at Ardmore Court. Seventeenth floor. You’ll be able to see the whole city.’

Archie said he would follow on the bus. He did not say that he had no wish to see the whole city. He had seen enough of it. What he wanted was to see the back court, the washing lines, the midden, the window opposite where Mrs Cruickshank used to rap on the glass when the boys played football too near her lettuces. Mrs Cruickshank was dead. The boys were grandfathers. The lettuces had been concrete since 1951.

He walked through the rooms once more, slowly, in the order Jean had always done her cleaning: kitchen, bedroom, front room, lobby. In the kitchen the range was cold and the tap over the sink still dripped, patient as a clock. He had promised her every spring for twenty years that he would fit a new washer. Now a man with a bulldozer would fix it for him.

In the bedroom he stood where the bed had been and found he could not stay. The air was too full. He went into the lobby and took his cap from the nail, then put it back, then took it again, like a man who had forgotten what caps were for.

He went down the stair with the key of number nine in his fist. The smell was the same as always: damp stone, coal, somebody’s cabbage. He breathed it in as if he were storing it. At the close mouth a small boy was throwing stones at the empty windows opposite, and Archie, without quite knowing why, held out the key to him. The boy looked at it, then took it and ran. Let them have it. Let somebody have it. Archie turned up his collar and went out into the street, which was wider than he remembered, and full of light where the old buildings used to be.

How does the writer show Archie Doig’s thoughts and feelings about leaving his home?

You should consider:

• what the writer says about Archie
• the writer’s use of language to show his thoughts and feelings

You must refer to the text to support your answer, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.