by Maggie Craig
The first thing she heard when she got in was Pearl’s voice, going on at Jessie. That was nothing new.
‘What do you know about life, you wee nyaff?’
‘That’s enough,’ said Kate, coming into the kitchen and taking off her hat. ‘Is there any tea on the go?’
Jessie leaped up from the schoolbooks open in front of her.
‘I’ll get you a cup, Kate.’
‘Where’s Ma and Davie?’ She didn’t ask where her father was. The rent strike had all but collapsed, suffering a terrible blow when Andrew Leiper, one of the leaders of the protest, had died in August after being knocked down by a car. Now that the Vigilantes had been disbanded her father had lost a role - and he’d consoled himself in the only way he seemed to know how.
‘Up at the Baxters’,’ said Pearl.
Kate sat down at the table and looked with interest at the book Jessie had been studying. Botany. She turned over the pages. There were some beautiful illustrations of plants and flowers, and she said as much to Jessie. The girl turned eagerly towards her, her face lighting up as it always did when someone took an interest in her studies.
‘Aye, they’re dead artistic, aren’t they?’ She set a cup of tea down in front of Kate, well away from the book. ‘D’you want a wee biscuit, Kate?’
Kate shook her head. ‘You know, when I finally get to the Art School I think I’d like to do something like china painting - maybe try painting flowers and trees and that sort of thing, but onto crockery.’
Jessie smiled. ‘You’d be real good at that, Kate, I bet.’
Pearl, sprawled in their father’s chair at one side of the range, yawned ostentatiously.
‘Listen to the pair o’ you. One wants to bury herself in books, and the other wants to paint cups and saucers. Me, I think life’s about having fun.’
Kate shot her an old-fashioned look. Pearl was an attractive girl, clad now in the smart black dress with white collar and cuffs which she wore for her work serving behind the counter at a confectioners in the West End of Glasgow. Her smart blonde bob and the make-up Kate knew she applied once she’d left the house and their father’s disapproving gaze made her look much older than fifteen. Kate had a shrewd idea that her sister equated what she called fun with young men - or maybe not even young ones. Her conversation was peppered with tales of well-spoken gentlemen who came into the shop and were so light-hearted with her as she sold them elegant boxes of chocolates for their wives.
‘What’s that look for?’ demanded Pearl, sitting up in the chair and squaring her shoulders. She made a move towards her handbag, lying on the floor beside her, and then checked it.
‘Just be careful, that’s all,’ said Kate. Her eyes flickered from the bag up to her sister’s face, suffused now with a pale rosy glow. ‘Fun’s fine, but watch that it doesn’t get you into trouble.’
They all knew what she meant by ‘getting into trouble’.
‘And if you’re going to smoke,’ Kate went on, ‘at least get rid of the smell out of your hair before you come home.’ Pearl, about to take offence at her sister’s previous comment, allowed her hand to fall protectively towards her handbag. I am right then, thought Kate. She’s got a packet in there. Just lately, in bed at night, lying next to Pearl, she’d caught the faint whiff of something.
‘Daddy’ll hit the roof if he finds out you’ve started smoking.’
Pearl shrugged. ‘He can’t talk. With his drinking, I mean.’
‘Don’t speak about him like that!’
Pearl shrugged again.’Why not? It’s the truth. Where d’you think he is now?’
Kate was saved from saying something she might regret by the sound of her mother’s key in the lock. Also, perhaps, by her own honesty.
Frances Noble smiled at the pretty girl standing on the doorstep of the neat little house she shared with Esmé MacGregor in Scotstoun.
‘Come in, my dear, come in!’
She ushered Kate into the parlour, talking all the while. Esmé was out, but she’d be back very soon. She particularly wanted to see Kate, so would Kate wait for her, take some tea perhaps?
‘I don’t think I will, Miss Noble. Perhaps I could just leave the money for my savings account with you.’
Frances Noble looked at Kate more closely. The girl was bunching up the cloth of her skirt with her hand. It was an unusual gesture for a young woman who, although shy, was extraordinarily self-possessed for her age. And she had expressed no desire to know why Esmé MacGregor wanted to see her. That, too, was unlike her. She was staring fixedly at the silver framed photo on the mantelpiece, the one of Miss Noble’s brother Alan, who had died on the Somme back in 1916.
‘Is something the matter, my dear?’ Frances indicated the two armchairs at either side of the fire. ‘Won’t you sit down and I’ll make us some Russian tea?’
Kate turned sombre green eyes on her.
‘Miss Noble ...’ Then, as though making up her mind, ‘Miss Noble, do you know anything about brain tumours?’
Frances Noble came forward and took Kate’s hand between two of her own.
‘Who is ill, Kate? You?’
Kate shook her head vehemently. ‘Oh, no. It’s Barbara -Robbie’s wee sister - the daughter of our neighbours,’ she added, but her initial method of describing Barbara Baxter told Frances Noble more than Kate knew.
‘Sit,’ she commanded, ‘and to hell with tea. I’ll fetch the sherry.’
Esmé MacGregor came home during Kate’s retelling of the story, letting herself into the house and bouncing into the room. She was halted immediately by her friend putting a finger up to her lips with a brief, ‘Go on, Kate.’
It was a relief to pour it all out: the Baxters’ anxiety over the past two years; Barbara’s dizzy spells; the additional symptoms which had appeared recently - double vision, bumping into things - until, finally, the hospital doctors to whom Dr MacMillan had referred the girl had said the dreadful words. Barbara had a growth on her brain - a tumour. It was the first time Kate had heard the word. She was to come to know what it meant only too well.
‘They say they may have to operate, but not yet. They’re going to wait and see if it grows any more. Sometimes they shrink, apparently. Disappear completely.’ She looked at her listeners. ‘Have you ever heard of that happening?’ She asked the question with a pathetic eagerness which caused Esmé MacGregor and Frances Noble to exchange swift glances of sympathy.
‘Of course we have,’ Esmé MacGregor said stoutly. I’m sure it happens all the time.’
Kate looked doubtful. Frances Noble added the weight of her opinion. ‘What you have to do, Kate, is to remain positive - for the sake of Barbara and her family. I know that’s hard to do, but you’ve got to be strong for their sake. So any time you need to talk about it, don’t forget that Miss MacGregor and I are here. And we’re always pleased to see you. Aren’t we, Esmé?’
Kate’s bottom lip was trembling. Esmé MacGregor poured her a second glass of sherry and patted her on the shoulder.
‘There, there, my dear. There’s no need to say anything. We understand.’
Kate tried to smile. They were both so kind.
‘Was there something you wanted to see me about, Miss MacGregor?’
‘And who,’ asked Esmé MacGregor, watching her friend closing the door behind an astonished Kate half an hour later, ‘might this Robbie be?’ His name had come up several times in the conversation. Frances Noble pulled back the lace curtain which covered the small window to the side of the door and waved to Kate before turning to answer. Her voice was thoughtful.
‘That girl’s soulmate, I think.’
The eyes of the two women met.
‘You’re a good person, Frances Noble,’ Esmé murmured.
Frances smiled and, coming forward, slipped her arm through Esmé’s.
‘Another wee sherry before dinner?’
A grant! Kate had never imagined that such a thing existed. She’d even suspected Miss Noble of trying to f
ool her into letting her pay for classes at the Art School by pretending that Miss MacGregor had discovered the existence of a bursary for part-time students. But no, it was all there in black and white. Miss MacGregor had shown her the paperwork. Incredibly, she had applied for the bursary on behalf of Kate and it had been decided to award the sum to her - a whole ten pounds!
Kate, walking slowly back home from Miss Noble’s house, couldn’t believe her luck. Ten pounds was a fortune. Miss MacGregor had explained how it worked. Any class Kate took would be paid for and a certain sum would be set aside in her name at the supplies shop, so that she could go in and choose what she needed, when she needed it. Each month she would be able to go to the bursar’s office and collect a small sum of money for fares.
The two women, as excited as Kate, had fetched their copy of the Art School’s prospectus. Between them, they decided that she would start with a still-life class held on Saturday afternoons. As if that wasn’t enough, a shining-eyed Kate had then realized that with a grant of ten pounds and her own carefully saved money, she could afford to pay for two years at the Saturday classes, and maybe even take another class on a weekday evening. She knew exactly what she wanted to do - ceramics.
Oh, it was that exciting! To have waited so long and then to have suddenly got what she wanted! Then, crossing Dumbarton Road and nearly home, she remembered about Barbara Baxter. Was it wrong to be this happy for herself when Barbara was ill and everyone was so worried about her? The thought troubled her so much that she stopped dead when she reached the pavement, wrinkling her brow in perplexity.
No, she decided at last, it couldn’t be wrong. Maybe she wouldn’t do the ceramics class, though. Perhaps it wasn’t fair to be out too much. Jessie might need her around - or Robbie. She could always do it next year.
Turning out of the evening sunshine into the darkness of the close Kate made her way up the stairs. Her news might even cheer Jessie up a wee bit - might help Robbie too. Cast down as he was by Barbara’s illness, she knew that he would find it in himself to be pleased for her. He always did.
Chapter 8
Kate wished that a great big hole would open in the floor and swallow her up. She had wanted this for so long. Now she was here, she was conscious only of how nervous she was. There were butterflies in her stomach and her skin felt clammy. This was a new world she was about to enter, one in which she didn’t know the rules. At work she was Miss Cameron, almost halfway through her apprenticeship and good at her job. Here she was just a wee girl from Yoker, with ideas above her station.
It had taken all the nerve she possessed to steel herself for the walk up the hill from Sauchiehall Street to the Art School. Looking up at the building as she toiled up the steep brae of Scott Street on the first Saturday afternoon of term, it seemed monstrous, looming over her like some great fortress.
Built in solid blocks of red sandstone to Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s design, it had been completed the year Kate was born, only eighteen years before. Although red sandstone resisted dirt more than lighter-coloured stone did, the walls were already grubby, bearing the grime all Glasgow’s buildings acquired from being in a big industrial city, with shipyards, locomotive works and forges belching their pollution into the air, day in, day out.
The college was no less imposing for that, thought Kate, looking up at its enormously long windows. Divided into small panes of glass by black horizontals and verticals, the effect struck her as being a wee bit like the bars of a prison. Prisons kept people out as well as in, didn’t they? Who did she think she was, that the doors were going to open for her?
Turning the corner onto Renfrew Street, she felt her heart pounding and knew that it had nothing to do with the exertion of the climb. She paused for a moment, pretending to admire the front of the building.
Pretending was the wrong word. She did admire it, loved the wrought-ironwork with which Toshie - wasn’t that what Miss Noble had called him? - had decorated the frontage. Looking up, she spotted the Glasgow rose - a stylized version of the flower to which he, his wife and their fellow artists of what Kate now knew was called the Glasgow School had returned again and again in all his designs, exterior and interior. She lowered her gaze. The name above the door was also in Mackintosh’s distinctive style. The Glasgow School of Art. She really liked the lettering he had designed. She wondered what Miss Nugent would say if she used it on the blueprints at work. None of your artistic tendencies here, my girl.
Kate Cameron, she told herself sternly, stop dithering and get into that building! Taking a deep breath, she climbed the flight of stone steps leading up from the pavement and pushed open the door.
Once inside, she found a blackboard in the hall directing her to the appropriate room for the still-life class. She asked a girl who was passing where it was and was directed up a light, airy staircase and along a corridor. Taking another deep breath, she walked into the room. It was large and bright with huge windows, probably those she’d seen from outside. Easels and sloping desks were arranged in a circle around a plinth which was draped with a piece of cloth on which stood various objects. The room was also full of her fellow students. She must be one of the last to arrive. Maybe she should come straight from work next week, instead of going home for her dinner first as she’d done today. She glanced nervously about her, and for the second time in ten minutes wished that a great big hole would open at her feet.
She was far too smartly dressed. She’d gone to some effort to be exactly that, but she saw at once that she’d made a mistake. Everyone else was wearing loose, paint-spattered clothes. Old shirts and casual flannels seemed to be the order of the day for the men. Even some of the girls were wearing trousers, with men’s shirts acting as their painting overalls. Why hadn’t she thought to bring one of her father’s old ones? She clutched her bag tightly to her, blushing as she thought of the neat flowery pinny inside it. Mrs Baxter had made it specially for her, they both having decided that her grey work overalls were too shabby, covered as they were with the black ink she used for tracing. That flowery pinny was going to give this lot a real laugh.
She heard a suppressed giggle. In one corner of the room, a girl with very short black hair and bright red lips was saying something to the man beside her. He seemed vaguely familiar and he glanced across at her, the way you do when someone says, ‘Don’t look now, but...’
He was tall and fair and as impossibly sophisticated as his companion, who was one of the girls wearing trousers and an old shirt. Even from across the room she could see that his eyes were a piercing blue. With miserable certainty, Kate knew that they were commenting on her appearance.
She had thought she looked quite nice in the cream-coloured jumper in artificial silk yarn which she’d knitted herself. It was tunic-length, with a deep lacy border at the hem and a collar and tie at the neckline. Combined with her neat brown wool skirt and topped with her new beige cloche hat she had thought she looked just the ticket when she’d got on the tram. Smart, but not too dressy. Now she realized that her outfit was completely inappropriate. Totally out of place. Other heads swivelled to look at the newcomer.
Sharp tears pricked her eyes. Furious with herself, Kate ducked her head, turned on her heel and headed for the open doorway, colliding with someone coming in.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. The girl she’d bumped into grabbed her by the arm.
‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’
Kate lifted her head. She recognized the voice, and the face, immediately.
‘I doubt it, Miss Donaldson, but I know you. Would you excuse me, please?’
Marjorie Donaldson still had her by the arm. ‘Why, it’s Miss Cameron! What are you doing here?’
Having ideas above my station, thought Kate briefly, but Marjorie Donaldson, beaming at her, her pale face animated with what looked like real pleasure, had now let go of her arm and was shaking her enthusiastically by the hand. ‘Hello, how are you? It’s so nice to see you here. I’m glad you decided to take this
class.’
Kate, stopped in her headlong flight, hesitated. Marjorie Donaldson did sound genuinely pleased to see her.
‘Weren’t you coming to this class?’ Marjorie gestured back towards the room, and its chattering young men and women, their momentary interest in the newcomer forgotten. She looked into Kate’s face. ‘Are you upset about something? Did one of this lot say something they shouldn’t have? Most of us know each other from last year, you know. I’ll soon sort them out.’
She’s got even more freckles than the last time I saw her, thought Kate, studying them where they overlaid the creamy complexion on the bridge of her nose and high up on her cheeks. Yes, they would all know each other, wouldn’t they? That made it even worse. The tears threatened again, but she wasn’t going to cry in front of Marjorie Donaldson, of all people.
‘I’ve just changed my mind, that’s all. Now, if you’ll excuse me,’ she said again.
‘But you can’t leave. Come and sit by me at the back. There’s a spare easel there. Are you using oils?’
Kate opened her mouth to protest. Nothing came out. Marjorie, one hand on Kate’s elbow, propelled her towards the spare easel. To her horror she found that it was positioned between Marjorie and the couple she’d been sure had been laughing at her. The black-haired girl looked her over with a glance which took in everything - the cheap shoes and skirt, the home-made jumper, Kate’s obvious discomfort. She turned and murmured something to the fair young man at her side. He shot another glance at Kate and chuckled.
Marjorie, sorting herself out ready to begin, picked up a paint-stained rag from the ledge which ran along the bottom of her easel and flung it at him. He laughed, caught it easily and flung it back. Kate suddenly remembered where she had seen him before. It had been that time during the General Strike when she had spotted Marjorie working on the tram. This ill-mannered young man with the remarkable blue eyes had been the driver.