by Maggie Craig
Kate, by this time clanking past the Art Galleries and swinging into Dumbarton Road on the tram, had dismissed Jack Drummond from her mind. The trouble was, he kept sneaking back in. Just when she was hugging to herself the praise from the tutor and thinking how pleased her father and Robbie and Jessie would be for her, she would see those mocking blue eyes again, laughing with Suzanne Douglas at her home-made clothes. Or she would hear his voice. My, but you’re fierce. The name’s Jack.
Fancy suggesting that Marjorie would pay for Kate’s afternoon tea - and his, for that matter! The men she knew would be horrified at letting a woman pay for them - or even for herself. What a fight she’d had with Robbie when she’d insisted on paying for her own ticket to the pictures! Posh folk were different, she supposed.
She could still feel Jack Drummond’s fingers, wiping the smudge of paint from her cheek ...
‘Kate, hen!’
Kate looked up. The tram had stopped at Partick Cross and Mrs MacLean, one of their neighbours from Yoker, was making her way up the gangway - with some difficulty, as she was carrying a huge basket of shopping. She settled her comfortable bulk beside Kate.
‘This is me since Tuesday,’ she announced, not only to Kate but to everyone sitting within earshot. Kate hid a smile. It was a common opening gambit, usually the preamble to a long description of how hectic the speaker’s week had been.
‘Have you been getting the messages, Mrs MacLean?’
It was all that was needed. Her neighbour launched into a discourse on the merits of the shops in Partick versus those in Yoker and Clydebank. As this included all the people sitting around them, Kate, so long as she contributed the occasional ‘Oh, aye?’ or ‘Do you tell me that?’ was free to let her thoughts wander. The fact that they so frequently took a route back to green paint and blue eyes was entirely her own problem.
Chapter 9
Marjorie Donaldson was holding forth about a pottery demonstration she’d seen on a recent visit to London.
‘It was marvellous - held at Waring and Gillow - that’s one of the big department stores, you know.’ She divided a smile between the group sitting around the table. ‘Fantastic colours and patterns, all designed by this potter called Clarice Cliff. She’s got these girls working for her and they were painting the things there and then. That was really interesting - to see the work actually being done. Miss Cliff is beginning to experiment with different shapes.’
‘How can you make a cup or a teapot a different shape?’ asked Suzanne Douglas, slanting a smile across the table at Jack Drummond.
Marjorie turned eagerly towards her. ‘Well, that’s just it, you can. There are restrictions because of the function of the thing, of course, but there are innovations to be made. It’s a matter of looking at things from a different angle, with fresh eyes.’ She stretched out an impulsive hand and touched the arm of the girl sitting silently but attentively next to her in the tearoom. ‘You’d have loved it, Kate, you really would.’
Kate smiled. To her own amazement she had warmed to Marjorie Donaldson. When she was interested in something - as she was now - her enthusiasm bubbled over and infected everyone around her. She could make even the sophisticated Suzanne drop the pose of languid disinterest in everything and everybody.
Kate had discovered that it was only because of Marjorie that Suzanne and Jack were regular attenders at the Saturday-afternoon class. ‘Because you insist we have to do something useful with our lives, Marjorie darling,’ Jack Drummond had drawled in explanation.
From what she’d been able to gather, his life seemed to be an endless round of amusement. He didn’t work and still lived with his mother in Bearsden. That seemed odd to Kate. He was twenty-six years old. She knew that for a fact, because it had come out in conversation. Surely he would prefer to be working and in a place of his own?
He and Suzanne Douglas talked merrily of cocktail parties, golf parties and weekends staying with friends in the country.
‘Only,’ Suzanne Douglas had said a couple of weeks ago, a gleam in her dark eyes, ‘Jack keeps turning down weekend invitations these days. I wonder why that is, darling?’ His only answer had been to lean forward and light her cigarette.
Marjorie was part of the circle too, but she was more serious-minded than the other two. Kate wouldn’t have gone so far as to claim her as a friend, but she was beginning to like her - very much. A few weeks after the start of the term, Marjorie had persuaded her to join the midweek ceramics class which Marjorie herself had been attending for the past couple of years. Since Barbara Baxter’s condition seemed, at least for the moment, to have levelled out, and since the grant made it possible, Kate yielded to temptation.
As soon as she felt her hands on wet clay and began learning how to form it into shapes, she knew she’d found something special, something she really wanted to do. Getting her first pieces out of the kiln, fired and ready for decorating, had been a huge thrill. Next week she was going to be allowed on the potter’s wheel for the first time.
It was a passion which united the two young women, Kate forgetting her shyness and her consciousness of the differences between them in their shared enthusiasm. Marjorie, who’d been attending classes for the past three years, was talking about opening her own studio next year, and Kate got caught up in the excitement of it, flattered when Marjorie consulted her about different aspects of the project.
The other girl had even managed to persuade Kate to join the rest of the group for tea after class, which was why Kate, on a Saturday afternoon in December, was sitting in a tearoom in West Regent Street.
Outside the mullioned windows the city was locked fast in a typical Glasgow fog - thick, yellow and smothering. They had found their way down from the Art School with great hilarity, scarves around their mouths and noses to keep it out, linking arms and holding on to each other’s belts as though they were climbers caught out on a mountainside in the dark. Kate had managed to avoid being next to Jack Drummond at any point, which hadn’t been easy, as the giggling group - five girls and three boys - had been constantly shifting position, deriving as much amusement as possible from the journey. This was their last meeting before Christmas, and they were as light-hearted as schoolchildren about the holidays ahead.
Since that first day, she hadn’t exchanged a word with him alone. She was, nevertheless, all too aware of him - in class, at the occasional evening lectures she had been to with Marjorie, in company afterwards. She got the distinct impression that he was full of contrition for his rudeness to her, and then, being Kate, wondered if she was flattering herself. Probably he hardly knew that she existed. Yet once or twice she had looked up from her easel and found him studying her with a little self-deprecating smile, as if to say, ‘Am I forgiven yet?’
His behaviour towards her now was impeccable - almost too good. In a group which prided itself on its informality, and where first names were the order of the day, Jack Drummond insisted on addressing and referring to Kate as ‘Miss Cameron’. Once or twice she had intercepted a look between him and Suzanne Douglas and had wondered if the two of them were laughing at her, but she didn’t think so. Jack did seem genuinely contrite. Had she been too hard on him? Maybe it was Suzanne Douglas who had led him on to behave badly and he, being chivalrous, had gone along with her.
Inside the restaurant, in contrast to the pea-souper which was blanketing the outside world, all was bright and cosy. The tablecloths gleamed white and waitresses in black dresses and equally spotless white lace-trimmed aprons and caps moved smoothly about the room serving tea, coffee and orangeade for the children, enjoying afternoon tea with their parents as a Saturday treat.
There was a standard charge, which suited Kate perfectly. The first time she had gone with them, Marjorie had tried to pay for her too. She hadn’t tried again. Kate had bristled the way Mr Asquith did when another cat had the temerity to walk into his back court. She couldn’t help noticing, however, that Jack Drummond and Suzanne Douglas were quite happy to let Mar
jorie pick up their bills as well as her own.
Kate loved the conversations the group had. They held passionate discussions on the meaning of art and how important it was for the artist to be honest. They talked about politics and their trips to Europe, and whether there would ever be another war. They talked about love and marriage and women’s rights and of how different they were from their parents’ generation. They talked about everything, and they exchanged books and magazines and newspaper articles on all possible topics of interest.
Kate had learned a lot - about the new style called Art Deco, named for the exhibition of Arts Décoratifs et Industriels held in Paris a couple of years before. According to Jack Drummond, this style was poised to take over from Art Nouveau, which had dominated design since before the turn of the century. Kate was surprised how knowledgeable he was about it. He evidently didn’t spend all his time drinking cocktails and playing golf.
Kate loved what she had seen of Art Deco style. It was clean and pure and modern. The new generation of artists and craftworkers used bold primary colours, contrasting them with sharp black, white and silver. They represented nature in a totally new way, and delighted in using such diverse images as geometric shapes and the fluid lines of the female form. She had seen photographs of beautiful little statuettes of women - usually dancing - their bodies caught in movement and their clothes flowing. It was all so different and fresh - a dramatic contrast to the fussy styles which had preceded it.
Marjorie was still enthusing about Clarice Cliff, while Suzanne was still arguing with her about the impossibility of a teapot’s being able to be any other shape than the conventionally accepted one.
‘Of course it can,’ said Marjorie robustly. ‘Don’t you think so, Kate?’
‘Oh yes,’ began Kate, leaning forward over the table and forgetting her shyness in her interest in the subject.
‘The little mouse speaks,’ Suzanne Douglas murmured through her scarlet lips.
‘Shut up, Suzanne,’ Jack Drummond growled. ‘I want to hear what Miss Cameron has to say, even if you don’t.’
Kate blushed and stuttered and somehow managed to finish her sentence.
Later, at the coat-stand behind a screen in a corner of the room, getting ready to venture out into the fog, Kate glanced up at Marjorie’s new coat. It was beautiful, in a mixture of red and dark green velvet, the swirls of the pattern resembling the Glasgow rose. The coat had square shoulders, tapering to a narrow hem, and a deep shawl collar in plain green velvet. She couldn’t resist stroking the luxurious pile of the material, soft and deep under her hand. With a sigh, she swung her own herringbone tweed coat - one of Agnes Baxter’s acquisitions - around her head, ready to put it on. Other hands took it from her and helped her into it.
‘Oh! Thank you,’ she said, turning around when the operation was complete. Had he seen her touching the collar of Marjorie’s coat? She hoped not, uncomfortably aware that the gesture had been all too revealing. She longed to be able to afford beautiful clothes like Marjorie’s.
Jack Drummond, however, said nothing. Smiling politely at her, he turned to take down her muffler which had been hanging underneath her coat.
‘Wrap up warm now - and make sure you have this round your mouth. It’s pretty bad out there. Where did you put your bag?’
Bemused by his attention to her welfare, Kate covered her confusion by turning away to the big mirror, heavily framed in oak, which was on the opposite wall of the lobby created by the screen. The muffler pulled up over her mouth, she turned again to take her leave of Jack Drummond. He was holding the big bag in which she kept her painting gear and he was smiling. He put a hand out and tugged gently on the diminutive brim of her cloche hat.
‘Between this and the muffler, all I can see of you are your eyes.’
There was a brief pause. She should say something. Something sharp and funny. She managed it easily enough with the lads at the yard, but Jack Drummond was a different kettle of fish entirely. He held out the bag to her.
‘See you after the holidays. Mind how you go, now!’
Emptying her bag at home that evening, she pulled out Mr Donaldson’s old shirt. Marjorie had insisted she kept it. Her father had laughed for days at the thought that his daughter was wearing one of the boss’s cast-offs.
‘Oh!’
The exclamation was surprised from Kate by what she had found underneath the striped shirt. It was a package, beautifully wrapped in paper printed with Regency stripes of silver, green and red. Her bag had felt heavier than usual. Curiously, she lifted out the package. It was fastened with red ribbon, finished off with a beautifully tied bow. A small green envelope, tucked in behind the bow, was addressed to Miss Kathleen Cameron.
Looking guiltily around from the box bed on which she had rested her bag, prior to stowing the contents away in the drawers underneath, she saw only Granny snoring in her chair and Mr Asquith fixing her with his yellow eyes from one of his favourite spots, on top of the small hearth rug which covered the oil-cloth flooring in front of the range. From the other side of the wall behind the bed came the murmur of voices - her mother and Davie. She didn’t know where everybody else had disappeared to. Right at this moment she was grateful that it was only the cat who was looking at her.
‘You’ll not clipe on me, son, will you?’ whispered Kate. Mr Asquith continued to give her an unblinking stare which seemed to tell her not necessarily to count on his discretion.
Why, in any case, should she be feeling guilty because someone had given her a present? Stupid question. She knew exactly why. She also knew that she wasn’t going to have to call in Sherlock Holmes to help her work out who had slipped the gift into her bag. Turning her back on the cat and the room, she untied the ribbon and removed the paper.
‘Oh!’ she breathed again. She was holding a beautiful box of chocolates in her hand, the lid decorated with a picture of a huge vase of flowers. She laid it carefully on the bed and, fumbling, opened the little green envelope and found a white card inside. The handwriting sloped elegantly.
I behaved very badly at our first meeting, and I’m sorry for it. Please tell me that I’m forgiven. Merry Christmas. It was signed simply with his initials. J. D.
‘What have we here, then?’
Kate let out a yelp. Pearl was right behind her, peering over her shoulder. She thrust the box of chocolates under her sketch book and turned hurriedly. Mr Asquith, she saw, had dived for cover under the sink curtain; Had she screamed that loudly?
‘Pearl! What a fright you gave me. You shouldn’t creep up on people like that. I was just putting my painting things away.’
‘Oh, aye? Is that what you were doing?’ Leaning forward, Pearl scooped up the box of chocolates from under the sketch book where Kate had tried to hide them - unsuccessfully, it appeared now.
‘Gosh,’ said Pearl, her eyes growing wide in her pretty face. ‘None o’ your rubbish. This is our most luxurious line. Whoever he is, these must have cost him a packet.’ She looked Kate straight in the eye.
‘He’s just a friend,’ said Kate quickly. Too quickly. And he wasn’t a friend, anyway. Was he?
‘That’s what you say about Robbie,’ observed Pearl shrewdly, giving her older sister a very worldly-wise look. ‘Only it wasnae Robbie that gave you these. What’s his name?’
‘Mr Nobody,’ said Kate smartly, snatching the box of chocolates out of Pearl’s grasp. With her free hand, she cleared a space on the bed and sat down on the edge of it. She looked up at Pearl, trying the worldly-wise look herself.
‘Would you like a chocolate, sister dear?’
Pearl gave her a smile which told Kate quite clearly that she wasn’t fooled one little bit by this apparent lack of concern.
‘Of course I’d like a chocolate. Three or four if you want me not to tell Mammy about them,’ she added complacently. ‘Or about Mr Nobody. Are you sure he’s not Mr Right?’
‘Don’t be daft, Pearl,’ said Kate, her tone sharp. ‘Of course he’s
not.’ She dropped her eyes, concentrating on removing the outer wrapper and opening the box of chocolates. Lifting the lid, she offered her sister first choice. Jessie would have to get some too, of course, and wee Davie. She’d need to swear them both to secrecy. Pearl popped a chocolate into her mouth and began chewing it with relish.
‘We’re not allowed to eat these ones at work. Too posh for the likes of us.’ The knowing look stayed on her face. She arched her eyebrows. She had plucked them to a thin, perfectly-shaped line, which she had then filled out and defined with a black make-up pencil. She finished the chocolate and picked out another.
‘Mr Nobody?’
‘Mr Nobody,’ said Kate firmly. With sudden decision, she leaped to her feet. ‘Here, take your other two. I’m putting this away now.’
Jack Drummond most definitely was not Mr Right. That much she was sure of. Men like him weren’t interested in girls like her. Well, only for one thing, and if he thought she was that .kind of a girl, he had another think coming.
However, it wasn’t that robust thought which lingered in her head over Christmas and New Year, but Pearl’s question to her that kept popping up at the most inconvenient moments. Are you sure he’s not Mr Right? Ridiculous though that thought was.
Chapter 10
She had to thank him for the chocolates. She might be poor, but she’d been brought up to have good manners, She thought about writing him a letter, then realized she didn’t know his address. That meant she would have to wait till the class resumed in January. That raised a big problem. If she thanked him in front of everyone else, they would know that he had given her a present, and they would ask why, and then people would start teasing and it would all get too complicated for words.
Kate could imagine the interested gleam in Suzanne Douglas’s eye. That made her think of Pearl, whose sharp eyes never missed a trick - or a handsome man. Kate allowed herself a moment’s amusement at how horrified Suzanne would be by the comparison to someone she would no doubt consider, if she thought of such people at all, as a little shopgirl.