by Millie Gray
Freda screamed. The mangy, smelly creature then started to rub itself on her leg, and as she tried to discourage it, whilst also attempting to gulp in some fresh air, she toppled over and landed down on the floor.
Trying hard not to laugh out loud, Robin asked if she was amazed at the size of the room.
Dumbstruck, she nodded. From where she was sitting she could see that the back of the shop was as spacious as the front. Being astute, she knew that not only was the location of the shop important to Robin but also the size of the two areas.
Rising up off the floor, she smirked. ‘I hope you are not thinking we could hold wee dances in here?’
Grabbing hold of her and waltzing her about the room, he chuckled. ‘Not dances. But Freda, you know how good I am at the make-up. I was thinking that in time we could offer our customers the works. You know . . . hair, make-up, manicures.’
Once he stopped birling her she collapsed down on an old wooden chair and her laughter echoed around the shop. ‘Robin,’ she spluttered through her giggles, ‘next you will be suggesting that we take Molly in as a partner and she can create their gowns.’
He stopped abruptly. ‘With me getting the keys to the shop, I forgot to tell you that Molly is getting married in two weeks’ time, and she and her bloke are emigrating to Canada.’
‘Canada?’ Freda looked perplexed. ‘Right enough, Jack Croft is a first-class telephone engineer, so it will be easy for him to get a well-paid job there. But my pal Molly going to Canada! That’s a blow . . .’
‘It is?’
‘Yes, you see she has promised Hannah, Angela and me that if ever we were to get married she would make us our wedding dresses.’
‘Right enough, Toronto would be a long way to go for the fittings.’
Freda looked about the shop again. She began to think that if you left the door open for a month, got a drainage engineer in to flush out the drains, slapped some paint on the walls and evicted the scabby cat, it just might work. Shaking her head, she grimaced, before saying half-heartedly to Robin, ‘Okay, I suppose this dump quite possibly could be the right place for you and me to start up business.’
Robin grinned from ear to ear. ‘You’re right there and this old city of Edinburgh is big enough to accommodate me . . . and that new boy nipping at my heels, Charlie Miller!’
Robin lifted Freda to her feet and they both started to cackle when the chair toppled over and fell to pieces.
‘Hope that’s not an omen!’ Freda teased.
Four
January 1967
Four weeks later, when bleak January was blowing itself out and a heavy snowfall had covered the already frozen pavements, Robin and Freda were busy doing some decorating to the shop when Robin said, ‘Look, the weather seems to be getting worse. I know it’s only eight o’clock and we usually work on until ten, but how about we pack up for the night?’
Laying down her paintbrush, Freda grimaced. ‘I suppose you’re right. I’ve got Susan to get home and the wee soul must be bored out of her skull.’
Robin had by now stowed away his decorating implements, but before taking off his dungarees – which had more paint on them than the walls – he grabbed one of the wigs that was lying waiting for pick-up. As he donned it he took hold of Freda, who was dressed in Granny Rosie’s old crossover overall, and tucked her arm under his own. Susan, who was sitting on the windowsill, stared on in amazement, a huge smile lighting up her face as Robin began to dance around the floor with Freda, singing ‘A Couple of Swells’.
When he had finished the caper and let her go, Freda sank down on the windowsill beside Susan. ‘We sure do look like a couple of tramps,’ she giggled, ‘but Robin, just look at what we have managed to do.’
‘Well best of all was that drainage bloke, your brother’s mate, getting rid of the fishy smell.’
‘Aye.’ Freda mused as she slipped off her overall to reveal what she was wearing underneath – a tight, skinny-ribbed jumper and a short green miniskirt. ‘Wonder if he is any good at getting rid of the smell of gloss paint?’
‘Not any old paint, Freda!’ Robin protested. ‘The very best that Craig and Rose has to offer.’
Fixing Robin, who was now dressed to go out into the night, with a warning stare, Freda mumbled, ‘Careful, Susan has big ears.’ She was of course alluding to the fact that someone who worked in Craig and Rose had sold them the paint at a giveaway price, because it had obviously been ‘acquired’.
Freda put on her white plastic lace-up knee-high boots. These boots were a must-have for anyone like Freda, a fashionable young lassie who just worshipped the designs of Mary Quant. Waggling her legs out in front of her, she said, ‘Robin, see all these lassies that can now afford to buy Mary Quant clothes, do you think that as you have now given me a replica of her hairdo, they will flock in here to get the rest of the image too?’
Standing back, Robin looked at Freda’s new hairstyle. It was an exact replica of Mary Quant’s – a deep, thick, glossy fringe and short but stylish around the ears. Yeah, he thought, if anyone could go out and advertise the salon, Freda could.
However, before he could answer, Susan piped up with, ‘Dad says that your hair looks awful and your skirt is so short that everybody can see what you had for your breakfast. He also says that you will either get pneumonia or something worse.’
Robin was about to put Susan straight, but Freda silenced him with a wave of her hand. Right away he realised that Freda would not chastise Susan, as Susan was too young to understand not to repeat things that opinionated adults should not have said. It was also true that Freda and her stepfather only tolerated each other and continually bitched about each other’s failings to anyone who would listen.
Placing her left hand up to massage her right shoulder, a sign Robin now knew was her way of thinking of her dad, Freda said, ‘Right Missy, you’ve had a nice tea of fish and chips from Deep Sea – okay, you had to go for them – but now it’s time to get you home and into a seat by the fire. Sorry, I mean the Gas Miser.’ Freda was referring to the fact that her mum, to save herself work, had changed the coal fire for one from the Gas Board. Somehow, Freda thought, gas flames did not seem as cosy or as comforting as the leaping and crackling flames of the old coal fire.
*
After alighting from the bus on Restalrig Road, Freda bent down and picked up some fresh snow, which she formed into a ball. ‘I’m going to get you. I’m going to get you. I’m going to get you, Susan Black!’ she chanted.
Susan immediately knew that Freda was going to pelt her with snowballs, so she scampered over the road and down Sleigh Drive, to the four-in-a-block housing where they lived in a front garden flat.
Susan screamed, ‘Mummy, Daddy, Mummy, Daddy, please save me,’ and this brought Drew Black to the front door.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ he hollered, as Susan toppled over at his feet.
‘Daddy, she’s battering me with snowballs!’
Freda, unaware that Drew had opened the door, flung one last icy missile towards Susan, but it hit Drew full in the face. As the ice melted and dripped down his nose and on to his chin, Freda became consumed with terror. Susan, on the other hand, thought the whole thing was very funny. She began jumping up and down. ‘Freda landed one on Daddy, Freda landed one on Daddy, ha, ha, ha!’ she chorused.
Next thing Freda knew, Drew’s clenched fist was smacking her full in the mouth. Blood spurted and gushed down her face. As her fingers brushed the warm sticky liquid, the hatred that she had harboured for this man seemed to boil over, and instead of taking flight, she decided to stand and fight. Indeed, her desire to wreak vengeance on him completely overtook her.
Her first vicious kick was to Drew’s right leg, which resulted in him lunging forward to grab her by the hair. Cursing and swearing, he dragged her into the house. As his fingers curled further into her short locks she became all too aware of the reality of her situation. For years, Drew had hated her as much as she hated him. She had no
t made life easy for him since he had married her mother, and she knew that he had waited years for the chance to get even with her and would more than take advantage of the opportunity she had afforded him. A vicious beating was the least she could expect. Putting her left hand up to her shoulder, where she thought her dad would be standing, she screamed, ‘Susan, run as fast as you can to Marionville Crescent and get my granny and grandad!’
Susan hesitated, but, young as she was, when she saw her father remove his broad belt from his trousers, she knew that he intended to lash Freda – Freda, her beloved sister and the one person in her young life who she could always rely on. She also knew that any pleading with her father from her would fall on deaf ears, so she bolted on unsteady legs from the house and headed out in the direction of Marionville Crescent.
Marionville Crescent was like its name: a pre-war private housing development made up of rather lovely semi-detached bungalows. Susan always liked going to visit Freda’s granny and grandad because she thought they were not only very kind people, but very posh too. Freda had explained to Susan that her grandfather earned a very good wage as he was one of the main compositors in Nimmo’s, the printers on Constitution Street in Leith.
Susan had just passed St Ninian’s Primary School and was heading towards Kemp’s corner shop when breathlessness overtook her. Leaning against the wall of a tenement building, she silently prayed to God to give her the strength to carry on. As if by magic, she felt a second wind starting to flow into her lungs and as she sped away she called out, ‘Please, please hold on, Freda. Honestly I’m getting there, and I will, I promise you, get you help!’
Escape from the house was impossible for Freda because to get to the door she had to make it past Drew, who was wildly swinging his belt in her direction. Dodging behind the settee and then manoeuvring herself into the kitchen, Freda hoped to slam the door shut on Drew, but he was too quick for her. Backing herself against the table, she felt around for something to grab that she could use in her defence. She sighed with relief when her hands curled around the handle of a cast-iron frying pan. Then, when Drew lunged towards her, she didn’t think twice before she swung the heavy pan towards his head. Momentarily he was stunned and fell back against the door. Freda quickly realised that she had to escape, but Drew was now blocking her exit through the door. She jumped up on the bunker and started to open the window.
Unfortunately, before she could escape, Drew recovered his senses and was now completely set on brutal revenge. The last thing she would remember was him pulling her back by her hair and slapping her viciously on the face. He then flung her down on the floor and began to savagely lash her with his belt. She was still conscious when he stopped the beating and tossed the belt away before throwing himself on top of her. She later remembered screaming, ‘No, no, please, don’t do that! Daddy, Daddy, please help me! Daddy, Daddy, please save me!’ They were the last words she shrieked before merciful oblivion overtook her.
*
Too often, she would try to remember what exactly happened that night. She did know that she had drifted in and out of consciousness. In her delirium she thought it was her dad that was the first person to come to her aid. She even believed that she saw him attack Drew. There was the glinting of the bread knife in his hand . . . or was it being wielded by her, or even someone else?
Then there were the shouts and screams of anger, but above all the commotion she heard the distinctive raised voice of her brother, Stuart.
‘Good God,’ Stuart had thundered as he wrestled the knife from someone’s hand, ‘what in the name of heaven have you done? Get a grip, the swine’s not worth doing time for!’
Often Freda wondered if she had actually stab, stab, stabbed at Drew – or was it only in her subconscious? She would reason that she couldn’t have, because when she awoke in the morning she was in bed. Someone had obviously bathed her and changed her out of her ripped and torn clothes – clothes that she never found again, not even her white plastic lace-up boots. The person or persons who had come to her aid obviously wished to get rid of anything that would ever remind her of her ordeal. She also recalled seeing her mother, grandmother, grandfather and even her father . . . but how could that be?
Her head was full of confused thoughts that morning, as she lay in her room bathed in winter sunlight from the window. The bedroom door slowly opened and there stood Granny Rosie.
‘You’re awake, and how do you feel?’ Granny cooed.
Freda’s response was to wash her cheeks with hot, stinging, salt tears. ‘Granny, he attacked me. I didn’t mean to hit him with the snowball and then . . . Granny, please tell me he didn’t?’
Answering Freda’s question was hard for Rosie. She could lie and say that when they got there they were in time to save her from the worst, but would that be the right thing to do? ‘Look, my dear, what you have to do is put last night behind you. Forget that it ever happened. You have a bright future in front of you . . . you will soon be opening your shop and moving your life forward. Brutes like your stepfather are in the minority – most men are good, like your dad was and your grandad is.’
A long silence fell between grandmother and granddaughter. Freda felt sullied and degraded. Inhaling deeply, she knew that she could no longer stay in this house; this house that held such loving childhood memories of life with her father would never feel like a safe haven to her ever again.
‘Granny, I would like to get up and dressed and then I would like to leave here. I never again wish to see that man who made my life hell. Nor do I wish to live with my mother, who replaced my daddy with such a brute.’
‘No need to worry about seeing him again. Your grandad and brother got hold of him, packed up his belongings and drove him down to Leith docks, where they paid a man on one of the Gibson Line ships that sail to Amsterdam to take Drew with them. Your grandad then warned Drew that if he ever set foot back in Leith he would put the police on to him.’
Freda believed her granny’s story because she wanted to believe it. She was further convinced that nothing serious had happened to Drew when she got herself downstairs. The house was in shipshape order: not even so much as a drop of blood or any other upset was visible. Had it all been a dream? It must have been, because her mother was just so calm as she smiled and winked at Freda, before asking if she wanted jam as well as butter on her toast.
*
The bruising and swelling on Freda’s face was so severe that she got her grandad to drive her in his Morris Minor to and from the Elm Row shop. There was just no way she could allow herself the luxury of sick time. The aim was to have the shop ready for opening on All Fools’ Day, 1 April. Okay, that day was a Saturday, and therefore not the norm for opening days, but they had decided that that was the date they wished to start up, and they hoped to have their customers begging for an appointment. Oh yes, they had decided that their opening day was to be a grand affair, with all their clients being treated not only to sherry or coffee, but also to titbits.
There was no way that the opening day could or should be postponed. Therefore, the day after Drew’s attack on her, Freda, a little better but still shaky and suffering from shock, decided that she just had to go into the shop and try to do as much as she could.
Apprehension overpowered her as she slunk into the shop. Then, when she lifted her bowed head to stutter, ‘Good morning,’ to Robin, she became confused, because he just smiled and made no comment whatsoever on her bruised and battered face. To any stranger, it would seem like he found nothing unusual in his partner turning up looking as though she had lost a fight with Muhammad Ali. Nonetheless, she knew that he had noticed her battered face because he jauntily – to allay her suspicions, she thought – suggested that she concentrate on the back room redecoration. This, of course, meant that she would not be seen by anyone coming into the front shop.
Whilst working away with the paintbrush, she began to guess that somehow Robin already knew what had happened to her. But how could he have fou
nd out? The family had decided that they did not wish to get the police involved, as that would cause further distress and embarrassment for Freda. They had agreed that what had happened in Sleigh Drive when Drew had attacked her was not to go beyond the walls of the house. They had also agreed that if they were ever asked where Drew had vanished to, all that was to be said was that he had decided to go back to sea. They knew this would be an acceptable answer, because Drew was forever telling anyone who would listen to his ravings that the happiest days of his life had been when he was a deckhand on the Gibson Line’s SS Melrose.
To her amazement, Freda managed to finish the day, and when she staggered out of the shop, she could have cried with relief at the sight of her grandfather’s car awaiting her.
Five
February 1967
Six weeks later, Grandad Jack was still chauffeuring Freda to and from work. The visible bruises had healed and for two weeks now Freda had been able to eat normally, yet somehow she still felt nauseated and weak. Granny Rosie made such a fuss about Freda consulting the doctor that Freda gave in and made an appointment.
Sitting and waiting to be called into the doctor’s surgery, Freda allowed herself the luxury of thinking about how well things were going with the shop. Thankfully, the tradesmen had now finished all the renovation work. The necessary extra electric lights and sockets were in place, and the washbasins were reflected on the other side of the room in the gleaming, ostentatious mirrors. It was almost time to open shop, although up until yesterday Robin and Freda had been unable to agree on a suitable name for the business.
Freda and Robin had been debating possible names for hours and hours when the signwriter arrived to get started. Freda was starting to panic, as they still hadn’t agreed on a name. Then Robin jumped to his feet. ‘That’s enough,’ he declared. ‘We are going to be called A Cut Above, because that’s what we will be – a cut above all the other hairdressers in town.’