More than all other towns in the country, those on the West coast of Scotland are gray, and Glasgow, the rambling metropolis of shipyards, engineering works, mining and construction companies, and endless factories, whose million inhabitants are often cut off for months on end from direct contact with the sun, is more than any other the gray city.

At the beginning there were more women than men in the group, unkempt, hatless women with bare pink legs in broken shoes, the upper part of their tired, sun-starved bodies wrapped in black or gray shawls. Occasionally, one of the women broke away from the group, shambling off down Rose Street towards her flat. But as time passed, the group became larger and signs of life began to appear at the windows of the rooms which gave on to the street. The shrill coarse voice of a slum woman cried down from a window above their heads. Someone answered her. The woman at the window remained there, her flat red suspicious face craning out from the window above her flaccid breasts like some grotesque figurehead. She clutched a towel at her breasts in a thin red hand. Her mouth was open and even after she had been answered she hung there, waiting.

They were all waiting. Most of them were incredulous. But a mute hunger for violence, common to each of them, held them together, reinforcing, animating the rumor.

The men joined them, singly or in groups, coming slowly out of the closes which lined both sides of the street. The same caps, the same white scarves, the same boots. There were now more than fifty people in the crowd and the excitement was growing. They were all talking at once. The woman with the flat red face yelled something to another woman who leaned out over a windowsill at the other side of the street. The other woman cocked her head, blinked, and answered with a burst of braying laughter. The crowd shifted and turned, looking up and down the street and up at the faces which looked down on them from above.