Strangers in a Garden

by Deanna Maclaren

  Chapter Two

  At nine o’clock the following morning, Laura sat with the publicity manager of McAllisters, trying not to laugh. She could not believe that anyone was genuinely called Mungo Sproat. And the sight of him! A red-faced, burly man looking ready to burst out of his elephant-grey suit.

  ‘Now, Miss James. You’ll have brought some cuttings to show me.’

  Laura pulled herself together. She needed this job. Some money. She’d saved £10 to bring with her to Glasgow but she had to pay Arundell House £4 on Friday.

  ‘I haven’t actually done any copywriting yet Mr Sproat, but I’ve brought a reference from my previous job.’ Laura knew the letter by heart. Her boss, a woman, had liked her.

  ‘Laura is diligent, punctual and cheerful to work with. I feel, given the chance and encouragement, she would make an excellent copywriter. I should be glad to answer any questions…’

  As Mungo Sproat put down the letter, Laura handed him her A Level certificates in English, History and French.

  ‘Ah yes,’ he said dismissively. ‘Your English Highers.’

  Stuck up pig, Laura thought, smiling sweetly.

  ‘Can you type?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Probably won’t be necessary, but have you shorthand?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Oh hell. Her grammar school had considered itself far too snooty to offer shorthand and typing, so Laura had learned at evening class. But the shorthand teacher was a bore, the first lesson in the Pitman’s manual involved incomprehensible Bills of Lading and down the corridor there came the seductive sound of dance music. So that was that.

  ‘Why do you want to be a copywriter, Miss James?’

  ‘Well it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. I find advertising, and the retail world, absolutely fascinating.’

  ‘Does that mean you really want to write a novel?’

  He means no scribbling away under the desk, Laura thought. ‘No, Mr Sproat. I’ll leave that to my boyfriend.’

  ‘Is he why you’re in Glasgow?’

  She nodded. ‘His parents are away. They’re Army. So he asked me to come, to keep him company. Just at weekends, of course.’ No hanky panky in the week to make her late for work.

  Mungo Sproat regarded her steadily. Laura kept her hands still in her lap, willing the desperation not to show in her eyes. She remembered Fiona’s advice. Listen fatso, I need this job! You’ve got to bloody give it to me. Otherwise, I’ll have to go to a secretarial agency and that will mean a shorthand test. I haven’t a hope. I’ll have to tell the girls, Adrian, Miss Speddie, my parents, I’m out of a job. GIVE ME THE JOB.

  At last, Mungo Sproat spoke. ‘Can you start today?’

  ‘Oh! Yes.’ Laura trembled with relief.

  Her new boss yelled, ‘Elspeth!’ and immediately a girl entered. She was wearing a tobacco-brown shirt-dress with a yellow scarf knotted round the neck.

  ‘Laura’s joining us today, Elspeth. Take her along and show her where to sit.’

  Laura stood up. ‘Er…Mr Sproat.’ Laura felt choked with embarrassment. Her father had drilled into her that it was bad form ever to speak about politics, religion or money. It just wasn’t done.

  She could feel her face burning an agonising scarlet. Fortunately, Elspeth could see, and stepped in.

  ‘Mr Sproat, I assume you have informed Laura about her remuneration.’

  Mungo Sproat clapped his hands to his pudgy face. ‘Of course. Your wages. You’ll get £8 and five shillings a week, but they’ll knock off the five for tax and insurance.’

  When the two girls were out in the corridor, Elspeth snapped, ‘Honestly, that man! I was going on holiday and he completely forgot to order my holiday money. The pay office was shut, I had a train ticket to buy – anyway I made him stump up from his own wallet.’

  Laura was taken into a large office with a dirty window, and introduced to Dougal and Jimmy.

  ‘Dougal does the layouts, Jimmy runs the copy to the newspaper and you and Shona write the copy.’

  This last caused a prolonged bout of sniggering from the two males.

  ‘This is your desk,’ Elspeth said. ‘I’m afraid it’s a bit close to the radiator.’

  A radiator. Laura wanted to hug it, as if it were an old friend.

  ‘Shona will be in,’ Elspeth went on tiredly, ‘well, when Shona gets in.’

  The mirth of Dougal and Jimmy was interrupted by a bawl from Mungo Sproat. ‘Elspeth! My shoelace has broken.’

  Laura sat down. She had a job. She had a radiator, a boyfriend with a car. Life was good. Be even better if she had a grip on what she was supposed to be doing.

  She knew from her previous job that the adverts followed the seasons. Spring was Bridal and Fashion Fanfare. Then came Summer Parties, Your Holiday Wardrobe, followed by Back to School and Christmas – Crackers!, interspersed with as many sales and special promotions as they could pack in.

  What Jimmy did for the next half hour was stare at her. Unnerved, but refusing to show it, Laura smoked two cigarettes. Dougal, seated on a high stool at the layout desk, said nothing.

  Eventually, Jimmy came across and stuck his spotty face alarmingly near hers. It wasn’t just his pustuled skin that put Laura off, it was the smell. B.O. How did he stand himself?

  He said, ‘You’re English, are you not? I’ve never met anyone English before.’

  ‘Well now you have,’ Laura said crisply. ‘And aren’t you the lucky one?’

  There was a gurgle of laughter behind her. The straight backed black-haired girl walking into the office was wearing a dress the same sapphire blue as her eyes. Celtic good looks, Laura thought enviously, introducing herself.

  ‘Shona,’ said the girl, batting Jimmy out of the way and sitting down at the desk in front of Laura’s.

  ‘Extraordinary thing happened last night,’ she said conversationally, ‘my sister brought round this new man. Hamish. Well dressed, Sunday best, polite. Thanked my mother for the tea and then, this man, who’d never been in the house before, he stood up and announced, And now, for a bath. And he went upstairs, locked himself in the bathroom and used two of my bathcubes!’

  Dougal swivelled round on his high stool. ‘This bath business. What did your father say?’

  ‘Oh, he wasn’t there. We’re not going to tell him.’

  She was unloading from her large black bag a quantity of make-up, which she lined up on her desk. Her heavy gold bracelet clonked solidly like an expensive car door. Suddenly, Laura’s charm trinket seemed ridiculously childish. For years afterwards she coveted a bracelet like Shona’s and, when she eventually got it, she found it was too heavy to wear.

  With Shona sitting sideways on, Laura had a grandstand view of the transformation of a girl with good natural features into a cover-girl beauty. First, Shona smoothed on foundation, lifting her slightly sallow skin to a healthy olive. Powder was pressed on top. Next, she spat into a tablet of black mascara and stirred it around with a tiny brush. Before the mascara went on, Shona opened a tin with a purple heather design on it and Laura was bewildered to see it contained masses of transparent filaments. Shona tipped some into her hand and then, to Laura’s alarm, threw them at her eyes.

  Oh God, she’ll go blind, Laura panicked. Where was Elspeth? Why weren’t Jimmy and Dougal intervening? But Dougal was muttering over a layout and Jimmy was studying the racing results.

  Shona, meanwhile, had moved on to the next stage, and was poised to apply the black mascara. Laura realised that the filaments were to thicken up her lashes, but the question was –

  ‘Shona, can you actually see?’

  ‘I will in a minute. I’m used to this. Done it for years.’

  By the time she’d applied her gold-cased lipstick and a subtle smudge of rouge, she looked starrily marvellous.

  Dougal said, ‘What are you going to do if you get married? You in a natural state’s gonna come as an awful shock.’

  ‘Her? Married? No one’s ever asked her.’ Jimmy went back
to the Daily Record.

  Shona muttered to Laura. ‘He can talk. Just be careful not to stand down-wind of him.’

  ‘I’m surprised you didn’t hit him with a put-down,’ Laura commented.

  Shona turned her now beautiful blue eyes on Laura. ‘Oh no. I never punch below my weight.’

  Laura was eager to get to work, to start writing, but Elspeth arrived with a tray of tea and after that Shona was on the phone.

  ‘Well thanks a bunch for clearing off and leaving me with him!…yes, a bath. Oh, mum’s already told you. Well I was dying for a, you know, and I couldn’t get in!’

  Laura gave a slight smile at this. Roadnights, her home, had two bathrooms and a downstairs cloakroom.

  ‘Where did you meet this Hamish?…Oh I see –‘

  Shona broke off as Elspeth appeared at the desk.

  ‘Mr Sproat wants to see you immediately.’

  ‘Okay. Tell Mungo I’ll be along.’

  ‘May I remind you, Shona, that Mr Sproat is your boss. He wants to see you. Now.’

  Pausing only to confirm lunch with her sister, Shona stood up. ‘Right. Take me to our leader.’

  Half an hour later she marched back and thrust a sheaf of assorted bits of paper at Dougal. ‘Good news, kiddiwinks. They’re doing a pre-Christmas sale. All the old dross they couldn’t shift through the year.’

  Dougal groaned. ‘But we’ve only just got through Bonfire Fun.’

  ‘Well now it’s Your Last Chance to Buy! Everything Must Go. Hurry, Hurry, Hurry.’

  ‘Oh,’ moaned Dougal, ‘I cannae cope.’

  Laura was about to ask exactly what work she could do, when there came an explosion from down the corridor:

  ‘Elspeth! My Super-Plenamins. Where are my Super-Plenamins?’

  ‘I don’t know why,’ Shona said, lighting a Piccadilly, ‘Mungo finds it impossible to communicate with me without resorting to pep pills.’

  Elspeth could be heard running down the corridor. Laura appreciated why she always looked so tired.

  ‘Well,’ Laura said, ‘what would you like me to do?’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s not worth starting anything now. Nearly lunch time.’

  Sharp at 12.15 Elspeth gently pushed Laura out into the grimy gloom of Sauchiehall Street and locked the door.

  ‘Er, where do you go for lunch, Elspeth?’

  ‘I go home to my mother.’

  Oh. That was that then. Dougal had announced he was off for his usual pint o’ heavy, Jimmy was heading for the betting shop and Shona was meeting her sister, no doubt to plot some terrible revenge on the hapless Hamish.

  ‘Be back prompt at two,’ Elspeth said, and hurried off.

  Laura could feel her stomach indignantly demanding sustenance. She’d been too anxious this morning to face breakfast.

  At the end of Sauchiehall Street she found a café that looked suitably cheap. Trouble was, you never could tell until until you got inside and the waitress slapped a menu in front of you.

  Groaning with hunger, Laura ordered meat pie with mash, and a cup of tea. The pie turned out to be the most disgusting fodder Laura had ever been confronted with. If I were writing copy for this mess, she decided, I’d describe it as Cat Meat with Added Gristle. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’ the Beatles concurred on the juke box.

  Sipping her tea, she did some serious totting up. This disastrous lunch had cost her 1s 8p. With only £4 a week left after paying Arundell House, even a cheapskate lunch was going to be out of the question. She would have to think of something else.

  In Surrey she had earned £9 a week plus £3 posing at the art school. (She had not, of course, told her father that it was a life class.) She lived free at home at Roadnights and her father paid her weekly season ticket to London. She lunched at the subsidised store canteen and received a discount on clothes. Summer things she liked to make herself, including the pretty green tennis dress she had met Adrian in.

  It hit her then, pushing aside this dismal meal in this miserable café in this dirty city – she felt flooded with homesickness, for the sheer warm comfort of Roadnights, the familiar routine, everything always just the same.

  And meeting Adrian that sunlit afternoon. The way they’d talked, shared secrets, and he’d told her it was because they were strangers in a garden.

  But however much she longed to be back at Roadnights, I’m not going, Laura thought fiercely. I’m not running home. I’m not leaving Adrian.

  Leaving the café, she wondered what to do. She passed the glamorously lit McAllisters department store, the windows displaying enticing winter party dresses. The store was shut. All the shops were shut.

  In the end, Laura spent her lunch break gazing into jewellers’ windows, looking at engagement rings. Emerald. She wanted an emerald, to match her coat. Not that Adrian had come anywhere near proposing. If she mentioned the future, and life after university, he’d say vaguely, ‘Well I won’t have much money,’ and she’d say with cheerful determination, ‘Oh, I’m sure we’ll manage.’

  Returning to Arundell House that evening, she threw her coat onto the hall chair and walked for the first time into the Drawing Room. As she entered, Lol stopped playing the piano, Marje put down her sewing, the girls on the window seat ceased chattering. They all gazed at her expectantly.

  Laura threw her arms wide. ‘I got it! I got the job.’

  Dinkie reached her first, with a big hug. ‘I knew you could do it, hen. I knew.’

  Laura handed her a packet of twenty Carreras. ‘For my hair. Thanks.’

  She sat on the bulging green velvet sofa next to Marje, and took stock of the room. An open fire, with a full coal scuttle in the grate. An impressive grand piano, manned as usual by Lol. No television. No record player. Entertainment consisted of three baize covered card tables, but not for the pleasures of whist or pontoon. These tables contained jigsaw puzzles. The sort that were practically impossible to solve. Scotland Through the Ages… Skye, Island of Mist. They should do one for Sauchiehall Street, Laura thought. Grim, grey and featureless.

  ‘When do you start?’ Marje said, busy darning pantomime clothes.

  ‘I started today.’

  ‘Ah,’ came a voice at the door. ‘And what deathless prose are you about to inflict on a gasping Glasgow?’ Fiona, just home from work after a bad Monday.

  Laura said, ‘Oh, nothing special. I’m only learning.’

  She couldn’t tell them that after lunch, Shona had heaped on her desk a pile of foolscap publications called Women’s Wear Daily.

  ‘I get them sent from New York,’ Shona told her. ‘WWD is the American fashion industry bible. What’s in fashion, what’s not, future trends…So what would be helpful is for you to go through one each day and extract anything we can use.’

  ‘Isn’t that cheating?’

  ‘Of course not. And who on earth in Glasgow is going to know?’

  No, Laura couldn’t tell the girls at Arundell House that she was plagiarising Women’s Wear Daily. Instead, she talked about Shona, the eyes, the make-up, Hamish and the bath.

  ‘It sounds such fun,’ Dinkie said. ‘All I’ve had today is two sour old women wanting perms. I am sick, sick, sick of the smell of ammonia.’

  Miss Speddie was at the door, causing a draught. ‘Everything all right in here, girls?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Speddie.’

  She beamed at Marje, sewing on spangles. ‘Ah, pantomime time again, Miss King. Aladdin.’

  ‘That was last year, Miss Speddie. We are now rehearsing Cinderella.’

  ‘Deaf old bat,’ Marje said when the housekeeper had gone.

  ‘She reminds me of Mrs Danvers,’ Laura said. ‘You know, in ‘Rebecca’ terrorising the new young bride.’

  ‘Yes,’ rasped Fiona, ‘but Miss Speddie, let me assure you, would never have the guts to burn the house down.’

  The phone was ringing. Although Miss Speddie must have been in earshot, there was no question of her answering it. Lola tore across the room and almost broke
the door down. Then she came crashing back.

  ‘Laura. It’s Adrian. He sounds lovely.’

  Laura sensed Adrian’s relief as he congratulated her on the job. She wasn’t going to be a nuisance, a burden then.

  ‘Adrian, when can I see you?’

  ‘Saturday.’

  ‘What about Friday?’

  ‘Can’t. That’s my night out with the boys. You wouldn’t like us. We get stocious.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rat-arsed. See you Saturday. I’ll take you to Loch Lomond.’

  Laura, ravenous, fell on her supper. Cold roast beef with mashed swedes and ‘neeps.’ (turnips.) Afterwards, there was Spotted Dick and a jug of custard.

  In the Drawing Room, the girls urged Lol to the piano. She started, as she always did, with ‘La Mer.’ Dinkie threw more coal on the fire.

  Then it began. One of the most enchanting sounds Laura had ever heard. The girls were singing, and because so many of them were from the Western Isles – Arran, Lewis, Skye – their voices were soft and liltingly harmonious.

  And they knew all the words. ‘The Skye Boat Song. ‘ ‘Loch Lomond.’ And, specially for Dinkie, a rousing version of a song featuring her hometown:

  ‘Campelltown Loch, I wish ye were whiskey Campelltown Loch, och aye, Campelltown Loch, I wish ye were whiskey, I would drink ye dry.

  ‘Now Campelltown Loch is a beautiful place but the price of whiskey is grim.

  How nice it would be if the whiskey was free and the Loch was filled up to the brim.

  ‘I’d buy a yacht with the money I got, and I’d anchor it out on the bay.

  If I needed a nip, I’d go in for a dip, I’d be pending by night and by day.

  ‘There’d be a gatherin’ of the clan, I’d be pending by night and by day.

  They’d come from near and far, you’d see them grin as they’re wading in,

  And shouting Slainte Vhath!

  ‘But what if the boat should overturn and drooned in the Loch was I.

  ‘You’d hear me shout, you’d hear me call out, What a wonderful way to die.

  ‘’But what’s this I see och comin’ for me, it’s a vision to make your blood freeze.

  It’s the police afloat in a dirty great boat.