The River Flows On

by Maggie Craig

  ‘I remember,’ he said gravely. ‘What about it?’

  The blood was pounding in Kate’s ears. She turned and looked at him as though she were seeing him for the very first time. He was pale, and very serious. It was a warm evening and he was in waistcoat and shirt-sleeves. He had taken his tie and collar off, and undone a couple of shirt buttons, she looked at the skin of his throat, exposed to the fresh air. It made him look curiously vulnerable and boyish. His thick hair was, as usual, tousled. Could she really do this to him? Did she have a choice?

  ‘Would you ask me that question again?’

  He went very still, and it was some time before he spoke. ‘I thought you had an understanding with someone else.’

  She dropped her head, shame flooding through her. Maybe she was going to have to tell him the truth after all, see his eyes fill with condemnation and hurt.

  ‘Has something happened to change that?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she mumbled, ‘something’s changed.’

  ‘Look at me, Kate.’ His voice was quiet, but implacable. With a toss of her chestnut-brown waves, Kate forced herself to meet his eyes.

  ‘Are you sure you’re doing this for the right reasons?’

  Her stomach lurched. Did he have a crystal ball?

  ‘I don’t want you to say yes because things haven’t worked out for you, or because you’re feeling sorry for me about ... about Barbara.’ He managed to get his sister’s name out and then clamped his mouth tightly shut. There were to be no tears today. ‘I don’t want you marrying me out of pity, or on the rebound from ... someone else.’ He was finding that name difficult to say, too. ‘You gave me a pretty definite no three weeks ago.’

  Kate tucked a strand of hair behind one ear. She hadn’t expected this interrogation - although she should have. It was how he was: honest and straight and always needing to get at the truth. How was she to convince him? Nervously, she got something out about feelings having changed.

  ‘Is it your feelings that have changed? Or his?’

  He had hit the nail on the head as usual, asking the only question which really mattered. She had to steel herself not to drop her eyes again before his level gaze.

  ‘Mine,’ she whispered. It was the only possible answer, but she crossed her fingers as she said it. Hope leaped into his eyes. She saw it - a tiny flame; saw also how he made a move towards her, then checked himself, hands held stiffly at his sides.

  ‘If I ask you again, I have to ask you two questions. The second one depends on the answer to the first.’

  Squaring his shoulders, he looked her full in the face, preparing himself for the blow she might be about to inflict on him. ‘Do you love me, Kathleen Cameron?’

  She had to lick her lips before she could speak and, once again, she gave him the only possible answer.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  Robert Baxter wasn’t giving an inch.

  ‘Say it,’ he insisted. ‘Say the words.’

  ‘I love you, Robert Baxter.’ She smiled up at him. It was hard to smile when you had tears in your eyes.

  ‘Say it again.’

  ‘I love you, Robert Baxter.’ Her voice was stronger this time.

  ‘Then prove it,’ he said, reaching for her. She could feel the warmth and strength of his arms through the thin cotton of his shirt-sleeves. His lips were cool and firm on her mouth. Swept away on a tide of emotion, Kate found herself kissing him back. He gave a small grunt, tightened his hold on her and redoubled his efforts. Fighting the urge to struggle, Kate forced herself instead to relax against him - and felt the unmistakeable response in the body pressed so closely against her own. He let go of her in the nick of time.

  So swiftly she didn’t realize what was happening until he’d got there, Robbie slid to one knee in front of her. He was smiling at last, his face bright as he looked up at her.

  ‘I think this is what I did wrong, the last time. No’ going down on bended knee.’ Laughing down at him on a surge of relief, she hardly heard the words. ‘Will you marry me, Kate?’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘yes.’

  His arms came round her waist, pulling her to him, his head warm on her stomach. ‘You’re a daft bisom, Kathleen Cameron.’ His voice was muffled by her body but she could hear the joy in it. Waves of gratitude and relief swept through her. It was going to be all right. Everything was going to be all right. Kate sent up a prayer of mingled thankfulness and apology. If You forgive me, God, I swear I’ll make it up to him. I swear I’ll make him happy.

  Just let me marry Robbie and keep my baby. I won’t mind about giving up the Art School, or my apprenticeship - or Jack Drummond. I’ll shut all those memories away in a box in my head, and never look at them again. Just let me keep my baby and I’ll make Robbie happy. I’ll be a good wife to him, I swear I will.

  The words swirled round her head, like a litany, a plea both for forgiveness and a promise to their future together.

  That night, for the first time in two weeks, she slept through without waking. That was good. She had to think about her health now - for the baby’s sake.

  It was only when she opened her eyes the next morning, clutching at a few more moments in a warm bed before she got up to go to work, that she remembered she hadn’t crossed her fingers when she had told Robbie she loved him.

  She thought about it. She had told him too many lies yesterday. She had no desire to tell him any more. They had always been honest with each other, right from when they were children. She frowned, trying to puzzle it out. Then her face cleared. Of course she loved him, like a brother, of course, but it was still love. She only hoped it would be enough.

  Chapter 17

  They married two weeks later - quietly, in the vestry of the church, with only the two families present, as was fitting when the groom was in mourning for his sister. Robbie had made a token protest about the loss of Kate’s apprenticeship, but it hadn’t taken much to persuade him that their wedding should take place soon. Fearful perhaps that she might change her mind if they delayed at all, he didn’t even suggest waiting a decent interval. His family, relieved to see him so happy, put no obstacles in the way of a quick, if quiet wedding, much to the relief of Lily Cameron.

  ‘We’ll hae to hope this bairn’s a wee one,’ she told Kate. ‘Then we can say that it’s arrived early.’ Kate winced, and hated the deception afresh, but determinedly put the thought into that mental box. Robbie was happy. Any fool could see that.

  Andrew Baxter complained that his elder brother was going around ‘grinning like an eejit’ at everyone.

  ‘Then he remembers about Barbara,’ Andrew went on, ‘and he’s away down in the dumps again.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s dead romantic,’ sighed Pearl Cameron. ‘I wish I was getting married. And they’re going to have a place o’ their own. A right wee love nest - eh, Kate?’

  ‘A love nest!’ snorted Andrew Baxter. ‘Likely it’ll be damp.’

  ‘Och, you, you’ve got no romance in your soul. Has he, Jessie?’ asked Pearl, batting her eyelashes at Andrew and winking at Kate as she put the question to their sister.

  Jessie nodded listlessly. Kate was growing increasingly worried about her. She’d been tired and droopy since Barbara’s death, even seemed to have lost interest in her studies. Maybe, once she and Robbie were married, Kate could think of ways of cheering her younger sister up, perhaps have her to stay sometimes at their own wee place - their love nest, as Pearl called it.

  Robbie, puffed up with pride, had come home three days before the wedding and announced that he’d got them a house in Clydebank - very central, at the foot of Kilbowie Road. It wasn’t much, he told Kate apologetically, only a single end - a room where they would sleep and eat and live, but it was a start. Astonishingly, he had further announced that they were going to have a honeymoon - four days at Millport on the Isle of Cumbrae in the Firth of Clyde.

  When Kate asked him how they could afford either of these, he went rather red an
d mumbled something about having been saving up for a while. When she pressed the point, he admitted that he’d had a savings account at the Post Office for the past three years.

  Darting a quick glance up at her from where he sat in the armchair by the range - her father being at the pub and Lily and the rest of the children downstairs at the Baxters’ discussing the food for the wedding celebration - he had gone on to tell her that he’d called this nest egg his ‘marrying Kate’ account.

  Kate, in the process of putting the kettle onto the range, raised her eyebrows at that one and gave him a look her mother would have been proud of. The heavy kettle safely set to boil, she folded her arms over her chest and said, ‘And what if I’d said no the second time? Would this have been your ‘marrying some other lassie’ account?’

  Half-amused, half-angry, she stood there tapping her foot, waiting for his answer. When it came, it took her breath away.

  ‘There’s only ever been you for me, Kate. If you’d kept on saying no, the money would have been my ‘taking my broken heart off to sea’ account.’ He reached out for her, pulling her down to sit on his knee. ‘Give us a kiss,’ he said, ‘before the hordes come back and we start another of those conversations about how much shortbread your Ma’s making and how many empire biscuits mine is.’

  He was trying to lighten the conversation, but Kate knew full well that he was deadly serious. When Robbie Baxter made up his mind to do something, there was no shifting him. He would have gone to sea - especially after Barbara’s death. She’d only just caught him. The thought gave her the queerest little flutter of panic, not all related to her predicament.

  He bent forward to kiss her, but she laid a hand flat against his chest to stop him.

  ‘I know it’s just a single end we’ve got, but d’you think maybe Jessie could stay with us now and again? Would you mind?’

  He put his hand round the back of her neck, lifting the ends of her bobbed hair. ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ he said. ‘But not all the time, eh? I’m looking forward to getting you to myself. Being able to kiss you as much as I like, whenever I like. Among other things,’ he murmured, giving Kate a long slow smile.

  That smile - and the twinkle in the grey eyes which went with it - gave Kate goosebumps. How odd it seemed to be contemplating doing that with Robbie. Embarrassing, even. She thought of him as a brother. He would expect it, though, of course he would. And she had to let him do it. Otherwise there would be no point at all to this deception.

  Robbie wore his Sunday suit for the occasion and Kate a new print dress. It was a simple little yellow cotton frock, nothing at all like the dress he had bought for her. She’d given that to a delighted Pearl, on condition she didn’t wear it at the wedding. Robbie bought Kate a string of glass beads as a wedding gift.

  ‘One day I’ll buy you pearls,’ he told her, lifting the long strand over her head, smooth in her little cloche hat. ‘I know how you like bonnie things.’

  ‘These are bonnie things,’ she assured him, touching the smooth, cold globes. They were dark green, almost exactly the same colour as the beautiful vase Esme MacGregor and Frances Noble had given her when they called the night before the wedding to offer their best wishes.

  Kate’s heart had sunk when she had opened the door to them. She had taken the coward’s way out by sending them a letter informing them of her forthcoming wedding. She had told them of another letter too, one she had tried, and failed, not to cry over. It had been to the Art School, formally giving up any claim to the second half of the grant and stating that she would not be returning to the part-time classes when they resumed in the autumn. Maybe someone else could get some use out of the bursary.

  Expecting reproaches, feeling that the two women who’d done so much to encourage her were perfectly entitled to make them, Kate had been enormously relieved when Miss Noble had simply handed over the gift and wished her all the best for the future.

  She’d even managed to derive some secret amusement from the way Robert Baxter, a man grown, had leapt to his feet at the sight of his old teacher, standing to attention and only just managing not to salute her, the traditional way generations of boys had greeted their schoolmistresses each morning.

  ‘I trust, Robert,’ said Miss Noble, ‘that you are still reading as much as you used to.’

  ‘Oh yes, Miss Noble, I’m the library’s best customer. I’m reading a lot of poetry at the moment.’

  They had gone off into a discussion on the relative merits of Keats, Shelley, Byron and Burns, interrupted only when Esmé MacGregor caught her friend’s eye.

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Frances Noble, stopping in mid-flow. ‘Miss MacGregor and I have something we wish to say to you, Robert - apart, of course, from congratulating you on your forthcoming nuptials.’

  Impatient with this shilly-shallying, Esmé broke in. She drew herself up to. her full height - which was a good foot less than Robbie’s. The contrast between the tall young man and the short middle-aged woman should have looked absurd. It didn’t. Fixing Robbie with a piercing stare, Esmé prepared to do battle.

  ‘Young man, are you aware that your wife-to-be is a very gifted artist?’

  Kate shifted uncomfortably and Robbie cleared his throat.

  ‘I am indeed, Miss MacGregor.’ His voice was grave. ‘I’m very proud of Kate’s talent and I see absolutely no reason why she shouldn’t continue to develop as an artist - through classes, or through practice. I shall certainly put no obstacles in her way. Quite the reverse. I intend to encourage her as much as possible.’

  Kate looked at him in surprise. That little speech hadn’t sounded at all like the Robbie Baxter she knew. Could it be that there was a man she didn’t know hidden behind the years of childhood friendship? One who had grown up in this last year while the two of them had been slowly drifting apart? It was an intriguing thought.

  Esmé MacGregor was looking intently up at Robbie, studying his face. Whatever she saw there seemed to satisfy her. She gave a funny little nod, then stuck out her hand.

  ‘In that case, young man, I congratulate you most heartily.’

  They shook hands solemnly. Miss Noble came forward, smiling, and kissed first Kate and then Robbie, who went bright pink. Then Agnes Baxter opened one of the two bottles of sherry she’d bought for the wedding and they all drank to the future.

  Theirs was not the only awkward visit Kate endured. Marjorie also called, bearing Kate’s pottery and paintings from the Art School, condolences from her mother and herself to Agnes Baxter on Barbara’s death, and congratulations - and a set of fluffy white towels - to Kate and Robbie. She also had some news of her own in that department, she told Kate with a smile. Her left hand was adorned with a beautiful diamond ring.

  That was the day Kate discovered a hitherto unsuspected talent for acting - born out of sheer desperation, she supposed. She did, it was true, have a few moments to collect herself while the assembled womenfolk oohed and aahed over Marjorie’s ring, although that brief respite turned out to have a sting in the tail. Pearl, eager for details, elicited the information that Marjorie’s fiancé had popped the question when they had both been guests at a house party near Dumfries.

  ‘The weekend after we broke up from Art School,’ she told the girl, laughing at Pearl’s enthusiasm.

  The weekend after he had made love to Kate. I may be broke, but not that broke. Obviously not too broke to find the money for a ring for Marjorie either - an investment in his future, no doubt. Just in time, Kate stopped herself from allowing her reactions to show on her face. Robbie was watching her, his dark brows drawn together in the way he had when he was trying to puzzle something out. She remembered the question he had put to her. Is it your feelings that have changed? Or his? Kate leaped to her feet and shook Marjorie by the hand.

  ‘Congratulations,’ she said brightly, ‘and please give Jack my best wishes too.’ There. Her voice hadn’t even wavered when she had said his name. Marjorie stood up and threw her arms around Kate’s neck.
>
  ‘Oh, Kate! We’re both going to be married ladies. Just imagine! Only I’ve got to wait until next February - a winter wedding.’ She beamed at Kate. I’ll tell you all about the arrangements when we start back at the Art School in September. You are coming back to the class, Kate, aren’t you?’ She shot an anxious glance at Robbie. ‘There’s no reason why a married woman shouldn’t take a class, don’t you think so, Mr Baxter?’

  It’s not him who’s going to stop me, Marjorie, thought Kate, he’s not that kind of a man. I won’t be coming back to college because I’ll be having a baby - just about the time you and Jack Drummond are getting married.

  She saw Marjorie downstairs. Should she say something? Tell her to be careful, that she might be making a terrible mistake? As they walked out of the close onto the pavement, Kate saw that a group of excited children were gathered around Marjorie’s car. Her friend turned and smiled. Happiness had transformed her plain features. She looked almost beautiful.

  ‘Do you want to have children, Kate? I know I do.’ She turned and hugged her once more. ‘I’m so happy,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t begin to tell you how happy I am to be marrying Jack. I hope you’re just the same with your Robert.’

  Neil Cameron cried as he gave his daughter away.

  ‘Chicken-hearted!’ scoffed Lily afterwards, repeating the words to anyone who cared to listen. Kate didn’t think her father was chicken-hearted. She found a moment during the wedding breakfast to have a quiet word with him. He was in the front room, sitting by himself at the window.

  ‘Are you all right, Daddy?’ she asked, looking at the glass of whisky in his hand, and wondering how many he’d had.

  He looked up at his daughter, and lifted his free hand to her. She took it between her own. Such a large hand, but still fine-boned and delicate, despite the calluses and hard skin which his work had put there.