by Dee Yates
‘So how is Tam?’ said her aunt, sitting down at the other end of the settee.
‘Busy as ever. Alan’s enlisted now, as I told you, so there’s only Tam and his dad, and Douglas is no’ so fit as he was.’ Jeannie’s voice trembled a little as she spoke. Now that she was away from the farm, she felt guilt at the note she had left and how it must have affected her husband.
‘Tam must be very pleased about the baby. Is he wanting a son to follow in his footsteps?’
‘I don’t think he minds whether it’s a boy or a girl. He hasn’t said much about a preference, or about anything else, come to that, but I know he’s pleased.’
If Christine noticed the catch in Jeannie’s voice, she did not show it.
*
Later that evening, when her aunt had helped Cameron to bed, she and Jeannie sat in front of the fire, sharing a meal of toasted cheese, followed by tinned peaches.
‘The doctor said your uncle doesn’t have long – maybe a month, maybe only a few days. We’ve been very happy together – just not for long enough. I suppose it never is. I always wished I could have given him a child, not that he minded. But then I suppose if I had children, you wouldn’t have stayed with us and we’ve both been very thankful that you did.’ Her aunt paused a minute, then went on, ‘He has left you something in his will, Jeannie, just a token of how much you have meant to him.’ Jeannie’s eyes filled with tears. Her aunt took her hand and let her cry. When the tears had slowed, she continued, ‘And you, Jeannie, are you happy with Tam?’
‘I don’t know, I really don’t know. Sometimes I think I am and then other times he doesn’t say much for weeks and weeks or show me any affection, and I don’t know what he thinks or feels. Other friends seem to like me and find me fun and attractive, but Tam… I just don’t know most of the time.’ She gave a slight shrug of her shoulders and turned down the corners of her mouth. ‘He didn’t want me to come, but I told him I was, so that was that.’
Her aunt laughed. ‘That sounds like our Jeannie! Well, we won’t keep you long, just a few days and then we’ll pack you off home again. Nice as it would be to have a newborn baby in the house, I don’t think your uncle would cope too well… and I’m sure Tam wouldn’t want to miss out on all the excitement.’
*
Christine had borrowed a wheelchair from a friend and the next day, with Jeannie’s help, they managed to get Cameron into it. With blankets tucked warmly round his legs, they set off towards the river. A pale sun struggled to break through the thin sheet of cloud and from time to time reflected lemon-yellow in the fast-flowing water.
Jeannie thought of her work at the library and her lunchtime escape, when she would run down to the river, climb onto the wall and watch the busy traffic up and down the water. How far away those days seemed now and how carefree. She hadn’t thought she would at the time, but now, with the responsibilities of a family weighing heavily, she remembered them with pleasure.
Her uncle began to cough in the keen east wind and they turned the chair round and walked away from the water to the more sheltered streets of the town.
‘If it’s all right with you, Auntie, I think I’ll take a tram down to Alice’s tomorrow and see how she and the wee girl are and give her an up-to-date report on Ian and Malcolm. I think she’d like that, and it’s not far to go.’
‘A good idea. It must be dreadful for her and all those like her who are parted from their children.’ Her husband’s cough was growing worse. ‘Come along, Cameron,’ she said, pointing the chair in a homeward direction. ‘I think you’ve been out long enough.’
Sure enough, Cameron was exhausted when they arrived back at their house. While her aunt busied herself with seeing to his needs and making him comfortable, Jeannie went to her room for a rest, but instead of lying down, she decided to investigate the contents of the wardrobe. Sure enough, it contained many memories – her formal library attire which Miss Stewart always insisted she wear, her summer dresses for when she had time off at the weekend and which she wore on the several occasions that she went dancing. She looked at herself in the mirror and gave a rueful smile. There would be no chance of her fitting into these frocks at the moment!
The bedside cabinet revealed more treasures – a couple of leaflets advertising dances long gone, an unused ticket for a dance. She turned it over and over in her hand, trying to remember. And then it came to her. It was the weekend that her parents had summoned her home and insisted that she give up her job. She had had to forego the opportunity of meeting up with that boy. Whatever was his name? She riffled in the drawer again and there was the very letter written in her father’s elegant script.
Lying back on the pillow, she thought about her parents. She ought to write to them again, update them on Uncle’s illness, ask them whether they had heard recently from her brothers. She rarely received a letter and then, always from her mother. They gave no indication that they would come and help when she had her baby. In truth, she would not have welcomed it anyway. Perhaps she would write after her visit to Alice.
There was no time to do so, however, for on her return from Clydebank, where she had found Alice and Granny Jess much the same as usual and wee Effie considerably bigger, it was to discover that her uncle had worsened. Confined to his bed, his wife had called in the doctor. The verdict was that he had fluid accumulating in his lungs. He was to stay in bed but to sleep propped up on pillows, so as not to exacerbate his cough. Exhausted though he was, he found it impossible to sleep more than brief snatches at a time so Christine and her niece took it in turns to sit with him through the night.
The next day he was little better. He slept in snatches and in between Jeannie read for him from the poetry of Rabbie Burns, bringing tears to both their eyes.
*
Jeannie was in bed; she couldn’t sleep, troubled as she was by her uncle’s illness, as well as the growing discomfort of her pregnancy. Auntie Christine was to watch at Cameron’s bedside until midnight, when Jeannie would relieve her.
It was eerily quiet now at night, people mostly in their homes, traffic halted, dances cancelled. There were no street lights, and blackout blinds were in place. Jeannie was used to the dark of the countryside, but it still seemed strange in this city, usually so full of light and noise. Before retiring for the evening, she had peeked round the side of the blind in her bedroom to see a full moon, now the only illumination in the city.
She felt a throbbing, like the beginning of a headache. Gradually it became louder. She lifted her head, realising with a jolt that it was coming from outside. She lay, holding her breath, till a muffled explosion caused her heart to miss a beat. Tossing aside the bedclothes, she staggered to her feet and pulled back the blind an inch or two. In the distance she could see a red glow, expanding as she looked. Was it coming from one of the factories in Clydebank? Had there been some kind of accident? The answer came in the next moment as the throbbing grew louder still, more explosions split the air, fires flared in the distance.
Bombs!
Jeannie raced into her aunt and uncle’s bedroom. Christine was already at the window, peering round the blind as Jeannie had done.
‘Clydebank! They’re bombing Clydebank.’ Christine’s voice shook with horror.
‘We ought to get downstairs, Auntie Christine, into the basement where it’s safer.’ She turned to her uncle. ‘Uncle Cameron, we should…’
‘You and your aunt go, lassie,’ her uncle gasped. ‘I’m quite comfortable here. I don’t feel like moving. You take your aunt, lassie.’ Cameron lay back on the pillows and closed his eyes.
Jeannie gave her aunt a look of dismay, but Christine shook her head. ‘I’m staying here with your uncle.’
‘Then we’ll all stay here and take our chance, because I’m not going without yous.’ Suddenly she raised her hands to her mouth and her eyes stared at them. ‘Oh no! What about Alice and wee Effie and Granny Jess. That’s where the bombs are falling.’
‘The sirens should
have alerted them. Hopefully they’ll have had plenty of time to get to a proper shelter,’ Christine said.
‘They’ll be aiming for the John Brown’s shipyard and the Singer factory, like as not, rather than the ordinary houses,’ Cameron murmured.
‘But the houses and the factories are all mixed up together. Alice’s tenement is right next to a factory. How can they avoid hitting innocent people?’ Jeannie sobbed.
‘They surely can’t drop bombs on the whole area,’ her aunt assured her.
But it seemed they could. On and on went the bombardment. The two women removed the blind and sat in the dark, watching an orange glow expanding on the horizon. In the brief pauses between explosions, they could hear in the distance the ack-ack of the anti-aircraft guns firing into the air. On such a moonlit night it should have been easy to see the outline of the Luftwaffe’s planes, but there were so many of them that ground response seemed to be making no impact at all. Throughout the night fell the rain of bombs. It was six in the morning before the last of the planes dropped their deadly cargo and were turning towards home.
Jeannie left the bedroom and dragged herself downstairs to make them all a cup of tea. Her uncle had thankfully slept through a greater part of the attack. Her aunt looked pale and drawn in the early morning light. Jeannie had already decided what she would do: she would get on the tram and go to Clydebank to check on the family there.
*
Ignoring her aunt’s pleas to stay with them and wait for news, Jeannie set off as soon as she had had some breakfast. She was tired, having had only catnaps during the long night, but she knew that news about the family would be unlikely to come her way unless she went in search of it. Alice’s husband had been killed, his elderly mother was being looked after by Alice and her two boys were with Robert and Agnes Cunningham. They alone would hear if the family had been injured or worse, but maybe not for weeks.
The tram jerked and jolted and made slow progress, coming to a halt a considerable distance from Clydebank. Even before she stepped from the vehicle, smoke was blowing eastward from the site of the carnage. She walked down the road, choking, still half a mile from the river. Fires burned everywhere. Water pipes had been destroyed by the bombs, craters from which were up to twenty feet deep. There was no means of putting out all the fires. They would likely burn for days.
‘You can’t go any nearer, hen,’ a fire warden shouted. ‘All the houses are damaged. You’re likely to have bricks fall on you if you even tried.’
‘Tell me,’ Jeannie said, approaching the man. ‘The McPherson family. Is there any news of them?’
‘Where did they live?’
‘Next to the Singer factory.’
‘Nae chance, hen. All the tenements near there – completely flattened.’
‘But did people get away – find shelter?’
‘It’s unlikely, hen. There are hundreds dead. It all happened so quickly. There wouldn’t have been time for people in the upper storeys of those tenement blocks to find shelter.’
Jeannie was stunned. For a moment she could say nothing, imagining the last moments of Alice and her neighbours, hearing the dreadful approach of the bombers from inside the prison of their homes. Then her mind flew to Alice’s boys, safe with Rob and Agnes.
‘Can I ask you one thing?’ she said. ‘Alice McPherson’s sons are evacuees in our village. I want to know if their mother and sister are safe. They’ve already lost their father fighting in Europe.’
‘Give me your address and write down their name and if I get any news, I’ll let you know. And, if you don’t mind me saying, hen, you should get back to where you’re staying. You shouldnae be here in your condition.’
*
‘You ought to be thinking of going home,’ Christine said that evening. ‘Tam will be very worried about you if news of the bombing has reached your village.’
‘Yes, I suppose you’re right, though I don’t want to leave, with uncle so ill.’
‘You’ve come to see him. That’s all he wanted. He’s said his goodbyes.’ Her voice cracked. ‘You need to think of yourself and your baby now.’
Jeannie looked up to the ceiling, above which her uncle lay sleeping. Her baby, whose movements had been markedly less over the last stressful days, gave a forceful kick. Jeannie put her hand on her abdomen and smiled. ‘It’s reminding me that it’s still here. Come and feel it, Auntie Christine.’
Christine stepped over to the settee where Jeannie was resting and put a hand onto her niece’s rounded abdomen. The baby kicked again and Christine looked up, her eyes round with wonder.
‘How wonderful! New life! I’ve never felt it like that before. You must look after yourself Jeannie – for your sake and the baby’s.’
There was a sudden muffled thump and the building shook. Plaster rained down from the ceiling. Jeannie sat up with a gasp and stared at her aunt. ‘It’s starting again. And that’s much nearer than last night. What shall we do?’
‘Come, Jeannie. Come with me.’ Christine almost pulled her niece from the settee, put her arm round her and shepherded her towards the door. They could hear the drone of approaching aircraft now. Another explosion and the walls of the room shook. More plaster fell around them. ‘Quickly – the stairs.’ Her aunt pulled her across the hall. And then a sudden ear-splitting explosion sucked all the air out of the space and the walls began to collapse inwards like a pack of cards. Jeannie felt herself stumbling. She tried to grab hold of her aunt’s hand, but in the dust from the falling debris she could see nothing. She called out but inhaled the choking powder that swirled around her. Coughing and groping, she suddenly felt her aunt close by, pushing her forward. But then something hit her hard on the side of the head and the world around her went black.
41. No Way Back
March 1941
Tam hitched up Holly to the cart, hoisted himself into the seat and guided the creaking conveyance through the ruts and slush out to the road and down to the village. They had run short of supplies, both for themselves and for the animals. He could put off the visit no longer, although he had no desire to meet his fellow farmers.
Around him was the sound of birdsong and the tinkle of a hundred rivulets as the warmer air melted the remaining snow. He should have felt cheered at these early signs of spring, but there was bleakness in his soul, bleakness interspersed every now and then with a surge of anger as he contemplated time and again his wife’s behaviour. She had made him look a fool. How was he going to hold his head up next time he went to the market? The farmers would soon learn what had happened, if they didn’t already know, and then he would be the talk of the farming community. But, of course, this was how it had always been. He had always felt himself unworthy of her. Now she had shown it to be the case.
Looping Holly’s reins over the rails, he went into the shop, mercifully devoid of customers, and bought flour, oatmeal, butter and a sack of dog biscuits. As he was heaving the sack into the cart, he heard a woman’s voice address him.
‘How’re you doing, Tam? You and your dad, you’ll be just like two old bachelors, up there on your own.’
Tam spun round and came face to face with Fiona.
‘What do you mean? What do you know about it?’ he said fiercely.
Fiona stepped back in alarm. ‘Sorry! I only meant that with Jeannie away…’
‘How do you know Jeannie’s away?’
‘Well, I took her, didn’t I? Surely she must have told you. I collected her in the morning and took her down to the railway station to catch the train to her aunt and uncle’s. She said you were busy.’ Fiona hesitated. ‘You mean you didn’t know she was going?’
‘Och, of course I knew she was away. Er, I just didn’t know it was you who had taken her,’ Tam finished awkwardly.
Fiona looked at him closely. ‘Things are all right between you and Jeannie, aren’t they? You do know she loves you very much. She’s singing your praises every time I see her. You’ve got a good one there, you know.’<
br />
Tam stared at her, then looked away. His shoulders slumped. ‘Yes, I know I have, though I think I shall drive her away if I carry on as I am doing.’
‘Why, what are you doing?’
‘It’s what I’m not doing that’s the problem – not talking – being afraid I’ll say the wrong thing.’ He looked sharply at Fiona. ‘Imagining she’s sweet on somebody else.’
‘Well, that’s easily remedied. Start talking. Tell her how you feel about her. It’s what every girl wants.’
Tam gave a small smile. ‘You’re right of course. I’ll try.’
He untied Holly and jumped up into the seat of the cart with greater alacrity than on his outward journey, looking down to where Fiona still stood.
‘Any news from that brother of mine this week?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing yet. I’ll let you know when I hear.’
Tam nodded a goodbye, turned the horse round in a wide semicircle and set off out of the village. Fiona’s words were, if true, reassuring. Could it be that Jeannie really cared for him as much as Fiona had said she did? Or was this wishful thinking on Fiona’s part? Might she suspect, as he did, that her husband had feelings for Jeannie? His emotions swung between hope and despair. And what was he to do about the situation that now existed? Should he wait for Jeannie’s return and apologise or, at the least, try and talk to her, or should he give in to his doubts and suspicions and risk losing her altogether?
He was still pondering that evening as he left the cottage to check on the ewes that he had brought off the hill into the lambing shed. It was a beautiful full-moon night. Black shadows stretched from cottage and barns; frost sparkled on slates and fence posts. He stood for a while, resting his elbows on the top bar of the gate. How he loved the peace and beauty of the place. How he longed to pass on this love and the skills that he had learned to his child. In a matter of weeks Jeannie was to give birth – but would the child be his?