Lizzie was contrite. ‘It’s not that. It’s just a surprise, that’s all. Do you want to marry him?’
Maggy put the teapot down in the middle of the table.
‘I don’t know, really. It’s Charlie, you see. I don’t want to leave him – or you. I love you. You’re my family, more than my own brother or sisters.’
Lizzie rose from her chair and ran round the table to throw her arms round Maggy’s shoulders. Part of her wanted to be brave enough to say: You go, get married. You deserve it. You’ll have bairns of your own and be a wonderful mother. But the words couldn’t come. She was thinking: Sam’s going to die. I won’t be able to cope. I can’t face it alone.
‘Oh, don’t leave me, Maggy. Don’t leave me now. I need you,’ was what she said before she burst into tears and poured out her terrible story.
Chapter 13
After sharing her secret with Maggy, Lizzie did not feel better. Fear that the maid might by some word or gesture give away her confidence paralysed her. Maggy had always been very solicitous of Sam, fluttering around him at the best of times, but now she was even worse, grabbing parcels out of his hand when he came in with shopping, fluffing up cushions behind his back whenever he sat down. He laughed about her devotion but Lizzie fretted, divided between fear and guilt. When she allowed herself to be optimistic and think that Sam was going to be all right, she was contrite at having asked Maggy not to marry her suitor.
‘I’ve spoken to Willie,’ Maggy whispered to Lizzie in the kitchen one morning.
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I said I was staying here.’
‘Did you tell him why?’
Maggy shook her head. ‘No, I just said I couldn’t marry him. He was awful disappointed.’
Lizzie’s heart gave a painful wrench of shame. Maggy had every right to fall in love. It was selfish to deny her that.
‘Get him back and tell him you’ve changed your mind,’ she said.
‘No, it’s done. He’ll not come back. He’s like our Johnny. He’s going to America.’
* * *
The days before Christmas were busy with a great deal of cooking and rushing about buying presents which had to be wrapped and hidden in high places away from Charlie’s sharp eyes. Sam was no worse. Indeed he seemed better and stronger. Lizzie felt more confident that the doctor was wrong but it did not make her feel happier about what she’d done to Maggy.
* * *
On Christmas morning Charlie was wakened by his excited parents and taken into the parlour where there was a strange pile covered with a knitted blanket on the floor. He squatted beside it, his eyes round.
‘What is it, Daddy? What’s under the blanket?’
Sam stood by the pile like a ring master and said, ‘Close your eyes.’
When his son was squatting with his hands over his eyes, he bent forward and swept up the cloth to reveal the Noah’s Ark from the corner toy shop.
The boy fell on it with delight, crying out, ‘It’s beautiful!’ Moved, Sam bent down quickly and swept the child up in his arms. At least, he tried to sweep him up. Charlie’s feet had hardly left the floor when his father gave a groan and put him down again. When Lizzie rushed towards him, he managed a smile however and said, ‘It’s that pain again but it wasn’t too bad. I just forgot I wasn’t meant to bend.’ Soon he had recovered his energy and spirits so they went off to spend the day with David, Chrissy and the growing lads. Sam was quieter than usual however and did not join in the singing round the piano with his usual gusto. As they walked home, Lizzie hung on to his arm and hungrily studied his profile in the frosty moonlight. What a handsome man he was! His dark moustache and the white silk scarf loosely swinging round his neck made him look like the hero of a romantic story. She loved him with every ounce of her being and she fiercely poured that love out to him like a lifegiving stream.
* * *
Next day a hard frost and a deep blanket of snow covered the streets, making even the poorest slums look clean and magical.
Lizzie stared out of the window at a sparkling world and said, ‘I’ve got to go to the Castle Bar and give Chrissy a pot of marmalade I promised her. She’s got an awful notion for Maggy’s marmalade these days.’
‘I won’t come with you, but it’s a grand day so I’ll take Charlie for a walk in the snow. It’ll do us good,’ said Sam.
Lizzie looked anxious. ‘Don’t go far, Sam. I mean, wee Charlie might catch the cold if you go far.’
Sam looked at her in a strange way as if he knew what she was thinking. ‘I’ll not go far. Don’t worry, my dear,’ he assured her.
* * *
Charlie was holding on to his father’s hand when they left the house. Maggy banked up the fires, locked the kitchen door and tucked the key into her skirt pocket before setting off to visit Rosie.
Only fifteen minutes after the maid left, Sam and his son returned. The father’s face was ashen and he was gasping as he slowly put one foot after the other up the steps to the front door. Slowly and painfully he made his way into the parlour where he flopped down in his armchair and closed his eyes. The little boy was standing beside him, worried and unsure of what to do. His father lay gasping for a little while and then spoke through gritted teeth.
‘Charlie, do you know where the whisky’s kept?’
Charlie nodded. ‘Yes, Dadda.’
‘Go and get it, son and bring it to Daddy.’
Charlie ran into the next room and stood on a stool to reach the decanter at the back of the sideboard. To his disappointment it was empty and he ran back again to say, ‘There’s nothing in it, Daddy.’
His father was making strange panting noises but he managed to rasp out, ‘There’s another bottle in the kitchen cupboard. Go down and get that. Be quick, Charlie.’
The boy tumbled down the narrow kitchen stairs and rummaged in the tall sideboard where Maggy kept the dry stores. Right at the back there was a whisky bottle, full and tightly corked. Jubilant he grabbed it by the neck and ran back upstairs, holding the bottle towards his father with both hands.
‘I’ve found it. I’ve got it,’ he cried.
Sam groaned but said, ‘Good boy.’ He tried to reach for the bottle but seemed unable to move. Then in a series of gasping breaths he said, ‘Charlie – try to – pull out – the cork – pull it out – pull it.’
Charlie’s little hands fought with the cork but it was driven in too tight. His brows knitted in determination and his chubby face went pink with effort as he twisted it, sensing his father’s terrible need, but his strength was not great enough for the task. Though he wrenched away and nearly wept with frustration, he failed to make the cork move. When he looked up, Sam was slumped in the chair and his face had gone grey.
‘I can’t get it out, Daddy, I can’t get it out,’ cried Charlie.
‘Never mind, son,’ said Sam softly and though Charlie put the bottle on his father’s lap, Sam did not attempt to grasp it. He lay gasping. Then he gave a convulsive groan and his head slumped down on to his chest. Maggy came back an hour and a half later and went first into the cellar to fill the coal bucket. Charlie heard the shovel rasping among the coals and ran out of the parlour, calling her name. When she heard his voice she dropped the shovel and ran up the stairs to meet the frightened child coming down. He was carrying a whisky bottle in his hands and held it out to her.
‘I can’t get the cork out for Daddy. You try, Maggy. Poor Daddy’s asleep and I can’t wake him up.’
In the darkened parlour Sam lay in his favourite armchair with his hands dangling down by his sides and his face turned towards the fire. The cheerful firelight made flickering patterns on his face and his white shirt front. His eyes were half closed and when Maggy took his hand, it was very cold.
* * *
It fell to David Mudie to break the news of Sam’s death to his daughter. He and George were in the saloon bar with a few customers when Maggy burst in dragging wee Charlie by the hand. She blurted out her te
rrible story and the faces of the men showed their shock, for they all knew and respected Sam Kinge.
David sank his head in his hands. ‘She’ll go mad,’ he groaned before he began climbing the stairs. When he opened the parlour door Lizzie was sitting with his young wife and words that he had not prepared rushed out of him.
‘Lassie, I’ve bad news for you. Oh, you poor lassie. I wish it wasn’t me that had to do this.’
As he spoke the pain of the day that he lost Martha came rushing back and he longed to spare his child the same agony.
She stared at him, her eyes wide with fear, and put out a hand as if to ward him off but he stepped closer saying, ‘Be brave, Lizzie. It’s Sam.’
For a few moments she sat quite still but then as if charged by fury, she jumped from her seat and rushed at her father with her fists clenched. He ducked, afraid that she was going to hit him, but she threw herself on his chest, crying out, ‘No, no, no! Sam’s not dead! No, no, no!’
Though they tried to console her these terrible cries were heard in the street and people on the pavements looked up at the tall windows of the flat with fear in their eyes.
* * *
‘I’m scared for her sanity,’ David told the gathered family. Lizzie was lying in Chrissy’s bed but, in spite of a doctor administering a draught to her, she was still conscious and storming against the cruel fate that had taken her husband away. She coupled her grief for Sam with memories of mourning her mother. All the terrors she thought she had forgotten came back in ghastly force.
When darkness came and the lamp-lighter strolled down the hill setting his flame-bearing pole to the jets of the gas lamps, she sat up in bed and told her father, ‘I must go home. I must be with him. He can’t be left lying there on his own.’
Her father accompanied her to Lochee. In the sitting room, beside the dying embers of the fire, she knelt by Sam’s body and chafed his hands in hers, weeping, imploring him to come back.
‘Don’t leave me, Sam,’ she cried, ‘I shouldn’t have left you on your own. I shouldn’t have gone out. Don’t leave me.’
But the body lay still and her father had to turn away to hide his bitter tears.
When the undertaker’s men arrived she went wild, erupting in an explosion of violence, sweeping everyone out of her way, storming through the house, smashing and breaking everything within reach, taking vengeance on her home and her love of pretty things, deliberately obliterating what she had built up with Sam. Dishes were dashed to the floor; huge plant pots crashed through the mirrors; curtains were ripped down; tables upturned and stamped into firewood.
In the midst of this fury George arrived with Dr McLaren, who looked at the scene of desolation and said, ‘Don’t try to stop her. Let her work it out.’
Eventually she lay down amid the ruin of her possessions and fell into a sleep of exhaustion.
It was Maggy who woke her in the morning. She turned her swollen face up from the floor and said, ‘Send Charlie to stay with Chrissy. I want to be left alone.’
She stayed in the empty house with Maggy, refusing to see anyone else. Even old Mr Adams, who, though frail, drove up to see her but was refused admittance.
On the fourth day, her father and brother came to escort her to the burial service. She was waiting for them, dressed in deepest black.
Her face was white and completely expressionless as she said, ‘I want to go to the interment with you. I know women don’t usually go but I can’t let them bury him without being there.’
No one argued and after a short church service she climbed into the leading carriage of the cortège behind the hearse. Its progress along the Perth Road was slow and when it passed people on the pavements, men doffed their hats in a gesture of respect. She saw all this with detachment; she saw the leafless trees of the gardens behind high stone walls that fringed the road. She saw the maroon and cream tram cars that stopped to allow the cortège to pass; she saw the little streets leading down to the Magdalen Green. They were so steep that the cobbles were laid in terraces and there was an iron handrail down one side. When she was young she and George had taken a sledge and careered down those streets on snowy afternoons. Today there was no snow but the sky was dull grey and threatening, its colour reflected in the river that shone like steel as it slipped along between its banks. As she caught a glimpse of it an inconsolable feeling swept over her. Sam would still be alive if he had not tried to defeat the sea to rescue the Diana’s crewmen. Once again the element of water had shown its implacable fury towards Lizzie.
She collapsed as the coffin was lowered into the hole in the recently opened Western Cemetery and had to be helped back to the carriage by her father and brother. On the way home she suddenly said in a determined voice, ‘I’m going to become a nun.’
‘What?’ asked George.
‘A nun. I’ve decided. I’m going into a nunnery. There’s nothing left for me now.’
‘You can’t go into a nunnery. What about Charlie?’
‘I’ve thought about that. He’ll go to the Mars.’
George was angry. ‘You’ve gone mad. You know what the Mars is like – it’s a disgrace even to think it.’
‘But Sam was in the Mars. His father sent him and Arthur there and they turned out fine.’
In spite of a warning sign from his father, George was determined to make her see sense. ‘There’s no good trying to punish everyone because Sam’s dead. You’d better not do anything until you’ve had time to think about it. You’ll be sorry later on.’
She was silent when they left her at Lochee Road and they had no way of knowing whether George’s words had hit home or not.
She would see no one for a month, and on the doctor’s advice they left her to grieve in peace. It was an engrossing process, taking all her time and all her energy. Early mornings were the worst for she almost always woke up feeling happy and contented. For a few seconds between sleeping and waking her agony was suspended. Then she would turn under the huge eiderdown and slip one hand along the sheet in search of Sam. When her hand met only cold and empty linen, consciousness and reality came flooding back and with it a pain that burned inside her breast. Every morning she had to face again the fact of his death, the terrible truth that never again would he sleep at her side. Every morning she sank her face into the pillow and screamed inside her head – No, no, no.
* * *
What brought Lizzie back to consciousness of the outside world was the news of the birth of a daughter to Chrissy. George walked up to Lochee Road one morning and told Maggy that the baby had been safely delivered and his father was delighted.
That afternoon, quite unexpectedly, Lizzie walked into the Castle Bar, kissed her father and said, ‘I want to take Charlie home now. Please don’t ever tell him that I was going to send him to the Mars.’
David nodded and put an arm round her. ‘No one’ll ever mention it, lassie. Grief makes people say queer things. Come and see my bairn. They say one always comes to take the place of the one that goes out.’
As she looked at Chrissy lying waxen-faced in bed with a scrap that looked like a red-headed rag doll tucked in at her side, Lizzie’s first emotion was a grab of jealousy.
I’d have liked a daughter. I wanted another baby, she thought.
The midwife was anxious about the child. ‘It’s just a poor wee thing. It hardly weighs more than a bag of sugar and poor Mrs Mudie cannae nurse it. She hasn’t any milk,’ she said, taking the baby out of the bed and holding her up towards Lizzie.
The doctor had sent a wet nurse, a stout, red-faced woman with gentle hands who lifted the baby and suckled her with care.
When she put her down again, she said reassuringly, ‘She’ll be fine. She looks like the runt of a litter but the wee ones are sometimes the bonniest fechters. This one’ll pull through. I can tell by the way she sucks.’
David was delighted with his little girl. He had always loved Lizzie best of all his children and when she saw him clucking and cooing
over this new arrival’s cot in a way that he had never done when the lads were born, she felt supplanted.
‘What will you call her?’ she asked as they stood together looking at the sleeping child.
‘We thought we’d like to call her after a queen. You were called after Queen Elizabeth – the one that beat the Armada. What do you think about calling this wee soul Alexandra?’
The name seemed imposing for such a tiny scrap of humanity. ‘It’s rather long, isn’t it?’
But her father liked it. ‘It’s a fine name. We could call her Lexie for short.’
Chapter 14
Did spring come that year? Did daffodils bloom in the garden and apple blossom flourish on the trees? She had no idea because to her there were no elements, neither did it rain nor shine. Blackness hung over everything.
She had no interest in what was going on in the world, never asking Maggy how George and Rosie were settling down together in the Vaults; never wondering about her unruly half brothers whose truancy was now blatant; never noticing the worried look on her father’s face when he talked about Chrissy.
After Sam’s death she gave most of her time to Charlie, about whom she felt guilty, and, in a child-like way, he exploited his mother’s feelings. She would bear no criticism or correction of him, even by Maggy. Whatever he wanted was procured for him even though Lizzie had no idea how she was going to survive when their bank account was exhausted.
When she began to worry about this, she realized that it was time to start making plans. Instinctively she knew where to go for the best advice – to Mr Adams.
In the hall of Tay Lodge she paused and breathed deeply. It smelt of narcissus from the bowls of flowers on the tables and lavender from the oil that was used to polish the furniture. The maid who took her cape was growing old for she had been there since Lizzie’s first visit as a child and her sympathy showed in her face as she opened the brass-handled door to usher Lizzie in to where Mr Adams was sitting. He looked up with a mild expression that changed to genuine delight when he saw her.
Mistress of Green Tree Mill Page 15