The River Flows On

by Maggie Craig

  Half an hour later Kate was standing in a small group, discussing how they were all going to manage to get out for a bite to eat.

  ‘We’ll operate a shift system. Six of us can go out at a time. What d’you say, Kate?’ asked the shy young man who’d been talking to her father. He’d come out of his shell quite a bit this morning. He’d never called her by her first name before. Then she heard her name again.

  ‘Kathleen,’ came a quiet voice from behind her. Laughing, she turned around, and experienced embarrassment of a different sort. Robert Baxter, flat cap held between his hands, stood there.

  ‘Robbie,’ she said in surprise. Then, recovering herself, ‘I’m so glad you could come.’ She gestured round the room. ‘Have you had a look at all the exhibits?’

  ‘I’m only interested in yours.’

  The comment fell into a silence which seemed all at once to descend on the whole room. Kate saw eyebrows being raised. Robbie pulled himself up to his full height.

  ‘I’ve come to invite you to dinner. L-lunch, I mean,’ he said, clearly all too aware of the number of ears which had pricked up. ‘If you’re free,’ he added. His voice was clipped, his face unsmiling.

  ‘Sounds more like an order than an invitation,’ murmured Jack, who had strolled over to join the group. There were a few stifled giggles. Robbie glanced without interest at him and bent his grey gaze again to Kate.

  ‘Will you come?’

  Jack took out his gold cigarette case and extended it to Robbie.

  ‘I don’t smoke, thanks,’ he said stiffly.

  ‘Nor drink, either, I hear,’ drawled Jack. ‘How terribly good of you.’ Suzanne Douglas came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder, then draped herself over him - as fluid as a piece of silk, thought Kate. The two of them looked Robbie up and down, taking in his smartly pressed but old suit, his stiff collar and neat tie and his obvious discomfort. Compared to them, he was over-dressed: like her on that first day, when she hadn’t known any better.

  ‘Don’t you have any vices, Mr Baxter?’ purred Suzanne. ‘A good-looking chap like you?’

  Robbie’s spared her and Jack Drummond the swiftest of glances before turning once again to Kate.

  ‘Will you come?’ he asked again. ‘I thought we could go to Sloan’s in the Argyle Arcade. I - I’ve booked a table,’ he added self-consciously. Out of the corner of her eye, Kate saw Suzanne’s mocking reaction. That, if nothing else, made her mind up.

  ‘Of course I’ll come,’ she said, impulsively reaching out to touch his arm. ‘Just let me get my coat.’

  Robert Baxter was ill at ease, and it had nothing to do with his surroundings. In fact, thought Kate, glancing surreptitiously at him from behind her menu, he fitted in well here. Put him in better clothes and he would be more than a match for any of the men enjoying lunch at the tables round about them.

  Her childhood friend had matured into a broad-shouldered and quietly handsome young man, who normally had an air of quiet calm about him. Not today, though. He was jumpy about something.

  Could he be worried about Barbara? No, she dismissed that straight away; If Barbara’s illness had got worse, her mother would have heard about it from Agnes. And if anything had happened, Barbara’s brother certainly wouldn’t be sitting across a restaurant table from her today.

  She had hoped he might relax once they got away from the Art School, but he stayed tense on the short subway ride down to St Enoch’s. Sitting silently beside each other, experiencing the shoogly motion of the train, Kate considered the fact that the world in which she had come to feel so much at home was unfamiliar territory to him. She had changed and he hadn’t. She was leaving him behind and she was sorry about it. Perhaps, she thought, with a sudden burst of affection for him, there was some way for them to stay friends, even if she and Jack did ... but that was counting her chickens before they were hatched. His mother might have invited her to lunch, but Jack hadn’t yet asked the crucial question - not in so many words anyway.

  Robbie relaxed slightly during the meal but passed only the briefest of comments on her exhibits at the show, and then only when pressed - and that wasn’t like him at all.

  ‘Ice cream?’ he asked at the end of the meal, returning the menu to the waitress who stood hovering, waiting to take their dessert order.

  ‘Cheese and biscuits,’ said Kate, smiling up at the woman.

  ‘Then I’ll have cheese and biscuits too. Coffee or tea, Kate?’

  When the waitress had gone, Kate looked at him. ‘You called me Kathleen earlier on. It’s only you and my father who do that. It sounds so formal.’ She laid one hand flat on the white damask tablecloth. Robbie extended his own hand and put it over hers. There was an abruptness about the movement.

  ‘Maybe I called you Kathleen because I wanted to be formal today.’

  Kate’s heart started to thump, so loud in her ears that she was sure the other people in the restaurant must be able to hear it. She glanced around, but no, they all seemed to be involved in their own conversations. She was not at all reassured when Robbie took a visible deep breath and squeezed her hand.

  ‘Kate... Kathleen... you know that I’m time-served now. I’ve got a good trade. Things might not look too rosy at the moment, but there’s always work for a good cabinet-maker. If the orders dried up, I could go to sea, although I’d hate to do that and leave you all alone.’

  ‘Leave me all alone?’ Kate’s voice sounded as though it belonged to someone else.

  Robbie nodded his head. The unruly lock of hair escaped as usual, felling over his pale brow. He had been staring fixedly at the table. Now he looked up, tossed his head, took another deep breath and plunged in.

  ‘Och, Kate, I’m making a bit of a hash of this. What I mean is, well, Kate... Kathleen, I mean ... I suppose what I’m asking is - will you marry me?’

  The waitress brought their biscuits and cheese.

  Robbie jumped back, lifting his hand off Kate’s so quickly it caught one of the plates the waitress was setting down on the table.

  ‘Tut-tut. Now, never you mind, sir, we’ll clear this up in a jiffy.’

  Kate looked away, but not before she had seen that Robbie’s colour was up. She knew he was in an agony of impatience for the woman to leave them alone. She also knew that when the waitress did go, she herself was going to have to utter words she’d rather have left unsaid. Something gentle and kind, but a refusal, all the same. When the woman finally left, she steeled herself to meet Robbie’s grey eyes, but he had one hand up in a gesture of rebuttal.

  ‘Before you give me an answer, let me just say this.’ He stretched his free hand across the table. His voice was very soft. ‘Give me your hand again?’ Reluctantly, she did as he asked.

  ‘You know I’d never stand in the way of your art and your pottery. I’m a modern man. I would hope we’d have children, of course, but apart from that, I’d want you to keep doing all that.’ He nodded, a gesture which took in the Art School and the exhibition and her friends there and everything which was, she knew, so alien to Robert Baxter. He was rubbing her hand now, gently drawing his thumb backwards and forwards over her knuckles. ‘We could go out, to places like this - or to tearooms ... Well, we couldn’t afford it every week, but maybe once a month, or something.’

  ‘Och, Robbie!’ He was offering her all that he had, putting in everything he could think of to tip the balance of the scales in his favour - and it wasn’t enough. He knew that as well as she did, which was why he wasn’t looking at her now, scared to read the answer in her face.

  She knew him so well. He’d been her best friend for as long as she could remember - always there, ready to comfort, ready to talk, ready to help her forget the raised voices and angry silences between her parents. She couldn’t imagine life without Robbie in the background somewhere. She had a shrewd suspicion that when she gave him her answer she was going to have to.

  He looked up. ‘Kate, for God’s sake. Do you want me to go down on one knee,
hen? Because I will. Here and now.’ He was trying so hard to look relaxed and amused, but the hand which wasn’t on top of hers was gripping his linen napkin so tightly his knuckles had gone white.

  She moved her own hand, threading her fingers through his.

  ‘Robbie,’ she said, and then stopped. How could she put this in a way that wouldn’t hurt him? In the end, he saved her even from that, reading the answer in her eyes, soft with pity for him.

  ‘The answer’s no, then?’

  Kate tried to think of something to say, some way to soften it. She should have expected this; It had been brewing for a long time. She had been so taken up with the Art School and her new friends she had thought Robbie had given up on her. He knew as well as she did that she was about to leave him behind, so he had spoken now, trying to catch her before she soared off into the new life which seemed to be beckoning her ever closer.

  ‘The answer’s no. I’m sorry, Robbie. I really am so sorry.’

  ‘Not as sorry as I am.’ He pulled his hand out of her grasp and turned his head away, his lips set in a rigid line.

  They both made a half-hearted attempt at finishing the meal and Robbie asked for the bill.

  ‘Should I leave a tip?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘It’s customary,’ said Kate. Jack always left a tip, usually a generous one.

  Once they were back out on Argyle Street, Kate stole a glance at him. He looked completely dejected. Suddenly she couldn’t bear being in his company for a moment longer. She stopped dead in the middle of the pavement. That made him stop too.

  ‘Well,’ she said brightly, ‘thank you very much for lunch. I’ll get the underground back up to Cowcaddens.’ Absurdly, she held out her hand. Robbie ignored it.

  ‘Come down to the river with me.’ His voice was raw, the words rattled out, as though he’d had to summon up all his courage before he could put the request.

  ‘Robbie...’

  ‘Please. Just for a wee minute.’

  So she went. They walked through St Enoch Square, past the imposing railway station, down onto the river bank and then a few steps out onto the suspension bridge which linked the city centre with the Gorbals. Not until they got there did Robbie speak again, fixing her with one of those looks which meant that he was determined on getting an answer to his question.

  ‘Is it because of him - Jack Drummond? Are you in love with him?’

  She was beginning to get angry. She had said no, and she was sorry, but what was the point of prolonging the agony? She drew in a breath. ‘I’m not sure that’s any of your business, Robbie.’

  He flinched, but went doggedly on. ‘Has he asked you to marry him?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe?’ His voice rose in disbelief. ‘How can someone maybe ask you to marry him?’

  ‘Things are ... understood.’ Were they? She swallowed and turned away to look at the spires and steeples of the city, reaching their smoke-blackened fingers up towards the sky.

  ‘But he hasn’t actually asked you?’ The voice was quiet, the questioning relentless. Robert Baxter would have his answer, whether she wanted to give it to him or not.

  She tossed her head, smooth and neat in the little cloche hat. ‘No,’ she admitted, ‘but we have an understanding.’

  ‘An understanding? Och, Kate!’

  She turned to look at him and saw that now it was his turn to gaze at her with sympathy. That was too much to bear. Kate’s eyes glittered.

  ‘What gives you the right to ask me these questions, Robbie? Is it anybody’s business but my own? And Jack’s?’

  Something flashed in those grey pools when he heard her say that name. All sympathy gone from his face, he said sharply, ‘Don’t be so stupid, Kate. People like them don’t marry people like us.’

  A dart of pure anger shot through Kate’s chest. How dare Robbie Baxter stand here and say that to her? She drew herself up to her full height. It didn’t come close to matching his, so she took a couple of steps back so he wouldn’t have such an advantage.

  ‘Perhaps, Robert...’ Her tone was icy. She never used his full name - except when she was joking - which she most certainly wasn’t now. ‘Perhaps you might like to consider that you’re the stupid one. Maybe I’ve moved on. My friends and I at the Art School don’t pay any attention to all those outdated ideas about class!’

  ‘That’s a brave wee speech, Kate,’ he said dismissively. He closed the distance between them. Now she had lost the advantage. She had to tilt her head back to look at him. He had folded his arms across his chest and was looking down his nose at her. It was a stance designed to infuriate her - and it did. She glared up at him. Where were the clever words when you needed them - the ones that would wound and hurt and show Robert Baxter what was what?

  ‘Cheer up, hen, it might never happen!’ The man who had spoken, crossing the bridge from the Gorbals into town, clutched his mate in pretended alarm when Kate turned and gave him a look. He sketched Robbie a mocking salute. ‘I’d give her the elbow, pal - that look could turn you into stone!’ The two men passed, their raucous laughter floating back to the young couple who stood so still on the bridge.

  Did his lips twitch? Did he stretch a conciliatory hand towards her? Kate was too angry to notice - too angry to find those clever words. She resorted to those of the playground.

  ‘Mind your own business, Robbie, and I’ll mind mine. Thank you for lunch.’

  Turning on her heel, she stomped off. She didn’t look back.

  People like them don’t marry people like us. How dare he? HOW DARE HE? Shoogling her way back up to Cowcaddens on the subway, she kept hearing those words, matching themselves to the rhythm of the train-wheels like the chorus of a song. People like them. People like us.

  Kate stared out of the train window, scowling into the blackness of the tunnel. She wasn’t people like us any more. She was an artist and she wasn’t going to live like her mother did - or that girl Lizzie. She and her family had been evicted in the end - her children split between relatives and her husband off on the tramp somewhere, looking for work.

  Kate’s life was going to be different: different from the only one Robert Baxter was able to offer her. So why did she keep seeing his face, the hurt in his eyes unsuccessfully hidden behind the sharp words he had flung at her? She squeezed her eyes tight shut. That was a mistake - it just brought him into sharper focus.

  The train hurtled to a stop at Cowcaddens. She got off and ran up the stairs to ground level. The underground had its own peculiar smell - stale, like cabbage which had been boiled too long - but oddly refreshing, because there was always a breeze running through the tunnels, along the platforms and up the stairs.

  She had to slow down climbing the hill to the Art School, a stitch in her side. Can’t wait to get back there, she thought ruefully. That’s where I belong now. The picture of those hurt grey eyes was still proving difficult to shake off. Damn you, Robert Baxter, leave me alone.

  It stayed with her all afternoon: even as she laughed and joked with her fellow students; even as she politely conducted visitors around the exhibits; even when Jack, finding her alone in the corridor after she had shown an important visitor out, grabbed her hand, pulled her round a corner and into his arms.

  ‘We’ll get caught!’ she squeaked. Laughing, he overrode her protests, but even as he kissed her, Robbie’s face was still swimming before her eyes.

  It all made for a very uncomfortable afternoon. Kate felt like a wrung-out washing clout by the end of it, her emotions swinging wildly from elation about the reception her work had received to a miserable realization of how unhappy Robbie must be by now. But he shouldn’t have said those things to her, should he? Thinking of that made her angry again. More than that: it made her defiant. She was aware too of an emotion normally foreign to her - recklessness.

  Chapter 14

  At the show the following morning Jack was subdued, but it wasn’t until he was driving them out to Bearsden that he told her w
hy. His mother had remembered a prior engagement and wasn’t going to be able to host the lunch-party after all.

  ‘Oh!’ Kate had been enjoying the view of Cairnhill Woods through the window as they bowled along the Switchback. She hadn’t slept well and the fresh air was clearing her head. She turned anxious eyes on Jack. ‘Is it still all right then? Maybe we should have made other arrangements.’ She wasn’t quite sure what those would have been. Her own mother would definitely die of shock if they all turned up at Yoker. Mother dear, could you fix us a spot of lunch? That’d be right.

  ‘Don’t frown,’ said Jack, taking one hand off the steering-wheel and patting her knee reassuringly. ‘It’s all right. Cook will have everything ready. I’m just a bit disappointed that my Mama’s not going to get to meet you.’

  Touched at the way he had put it, and seeing that there were lines on his own brow, she returned the gesture, patting his hand as it curved round the steering-wheel. “That’s all right. I’m sure it was something really important she had to miss the party for.’

  ‘Are you?’

  How odd he sounded. Had he had an argument with his mother? She hoped it hadn’t been about her.

  They drove through Canniesburn Toll and up Drymen Road which was lined with large houses set in well-cared for gardens. Grounds would be a better word for some of them, thought Kate, looking curiously around her. She was only a few miles from her home in Yoker, but it was a different world up here There were trees everywhere, cool, green and leafy.

  Jack drove through Bearsden Cross and then turned left, shortly afterwards pulling into the driveway of a beautiful honey-coloured sandstone villa. He helped Kate out of the car with due ceremony, extending his hand to her with a flourish.