Silver Linings

by Gray, Millie

  ‘Yes,’ chorused the three. ‘But,’ Kitty went on, ‘don’t expect any help from her. Honestly, our Rosebud, who I’m positive is one of Hitler’s secret undercover agents, is enough for her to contend with. So come on now, Connie, best thing we can do is to tap on Dora’s door.’

  ‘No. No. You just go.’

  ‘And do you think I could jitterbug if I didn’t know someone was caring for you?’

  Kitty had just left and Dora was now boiling the kettle to make Connie some tea. Suddenly Connie clamped her hand over her mouth and started to heave. She then attempted to stand up, and as she did so she seemed to sway from side to side. Luckily the quick-witted Dora managed to grab her before she hit the floor. Lowering her down on to the chair again Dora began to wipe the clammy sweat from Connie’s brow.

  ‘I know that with the rationing it’s easy not to have enough to eat. So what I’m wondering is, have you had a good meal today?’

  Connie shook her head. ‘To be truthful I just can’t face food right now. The minute I look at it or even smell it I just want to be sick, sick, sick. Oh, Dora, I am just thinking that if I can’t cope with the plumbing I might have to eat humble pie and go back to the parts depot.’

  ‘But would that be such a bad thing? The work there’s not as heavy as I imagine plumbing is.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Dora. I just have to stick it out because I made such a fuss about being able to do my time as an apprenticed plumber when they took on Peggy Duncan. And what’s galling is that she was the one who was vomiting at the start but now she takes it all in her stride.’

  ‘Aye, but she’s not married so she’s …’

  ‘What’s being married got to do with her not being sick any more?’

  ‘Nothing, but it has everything to do with you being so scunnered.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Connie, you can’t fool me. I’ve been pregnant three times and every time the first three months was a nightmare.’ Dora sighed and grimaced. ‘Honestly these endless bouts of sickness, especially in the morning, and falling down all over the place could put you past having any more bairns.’

  ‘Are you trying to say that I’m … ?’

  ‘Well, I know your husband is in Glasgow but you must have been … well, you know … with him lately.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him for years.’

  ‘Oh well, Connie,’ Dora exclaimed with a series of puffs, ‘you’d better see who you have been seeing … and pronto at that.’

  ‘But I just can’t be,’ Connie insisted.

  ‘That right?’ Dora retorted. ‘Well all I’ve got to say is that I know it’s Christmas Eve and weird and wonderful things happen at this time of year. But please, dear, don’t insult my intelligence by claiming another immaculate conception!’

  A while later, Dora had just seen Connie safely into her house and she was about to turn and navigate herself down the dark steps with the aid of her torch when Jenny opened the Andersons’ door.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Jenny asked, flashing her torch light into Dora’s eyes.

  ‘There will be if you don’t stop blinding me with that light.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Jenny, lowering the torch. ‘But what are you doing up here? Should you not be downstairs with your bairns? There might be a raid.’

  ‘Just chummed Connie up to her house – she’s a wee bit under the weather.’

  ‘Under the weather?’ exclaimed Jenny. ‘I hope that’s not a nice way of saying she’s the worse for drink?’

  ‘Oh, if it was just drink I’d be happy because she’d be sober in the morning.’

  Dora’s answer alerted Jenny, who sensed there could be a good bit of gossip coming her way. ‘And what do you think is amiss? And you do know that anything you tell me won’t go any further. No. No. I’m the soul of discretion.’

  ‘Jenny, would you believe,’ Dora confided in a loud whisper, ‘that she’s trying to tell me that she’s not got a bun in the oven.’

  ‘What?’ Jenny exclaimed.

  ‘And that’s not all – she’s adamant that she’s not been with her own man nor anybody else’s!’

  A loud hiss escaped from Jenny but before she could reply, the bottom door opened and Johnny shouted up, ‘Is everything all right up there? And it beats me how you still have dirt to dig at this time of night. Besides it’s freezing cold and time you were all inside your own homes.’

  Naturally Jenny couldn’t divulge to Johnny exactly what Dora had imparted to her, but she did wish to warn him that Connie was probably a fast piece – a very fast piece. So, as she dished up his supper, she tentatively said, ‘You know, son, I don’t think Connie is all that she pretends to be.’

  Johnny didn’t reply. But he did give the sausage that he had just stabbed with his fork a great deal of attention – so much attention that anyone observing him would have thought that he’d never ever seen a sausage before.

  ‘What I am trying to say is that I don’t think she’s a good influence on our Kitty.’

  ‘That right? Well, Mum, I just don’t know how Kitty would have coped when you were having your breakdown if Connie hadn’t been here to shore her up.’

  The atmosphere between mother and son was now so thick that you could have cut it with a knife. It was therefore no surprise to Johnny that Jenny lifted her coat and bag and left without wishing him a Merry Christmas.

  When she first started out on her steep trek down Restalrig Road Jenny did not feel cold because her wrath was keeping her warm. Her hot indignation did not solely come from her resentment about the way Johnny had spoken to her, though. Her main concern was about the way that standards were changing – and in her view, dropping.

  Turning at the foot of the road and into Summerside that would take her up to Industrial Road and then on to her colony house at Parkvale Place, she gave an involuntary shudder. The cold was beginning to seep into her bones now and all she wanted to do was to get home – to firmly close her door on a world that was becoming alien to her.

  Once she had locked the outside door behind her she was surprised by the silence that greeted her. She expected to be deafened by the blaring noise from the Bakelite radio that Kate was forever listening to. Surely, she argued with herself, Tommy Handley on ITMA (It’s That Man Again) or Mrs Mopp asking, ‘Can I do you now, sir?’ should have been entertaining Kate as she got on with the ironing.

  Switching on the light, Jenny was concerned to see the pile of ironing just lying as she had left it. Then her eyes spied the granddaughter clock. Her mouth gaped. It was restored – better then new! She wanted to cry – to tell someone that Donald’s clock was working again. Instinctively she dashed up the stairs and immediately switched on the light in Kate’s bedroom.

  The sight that greeted her of her sleeping daughter and Hans lying entwined under the blush-pink eiderdown caused her to cry out. ‘Kate, Kate, what is that man doing in your bed?’

  Kate sat bolt upright. She then looked down at slumbering Hans’s contented face and she smiled sweetly before replying, ‘Sleeping, Mum. Just sleeping.’

  ‘I can bloody well see that he is sleeping, Kate. But has he done anything else but shut his eyes since you let him into your … bed?’

  Kate giggled. ‘Mum, next week it will be 1944 and I am forty-three and as we all might not see tomorrow, Hans and I have decided to be together.’

  ‘Be together? He’s … he’s … he’s a Polish refugee and worse still he’s only a lowly porter.’

  Kate was now out of bed and Hans was wide awake. ‘Hans dear, I’m just going downstairs to talk to my mum. Now you get dressed, at your leisure, and I will have some tea and toast ready for you when you come down.’

  ‘Tea and toast!’ Jenny exploded. ‘I would have thought with what he has had in here tonight he wouldn’t be requiring anything else but forgiveness. Fornication, Kate, in case you have forgotten, is a sin!’

  Kate and Jenny were now back down in the living room
and Kate could not resist giving the clock another loving pat. ‘You were saying, Mum, that he is only a porter. Think you might be wrong there. I mean, how many lowly porters do you know that are as skilled as my Hans?’

  Time slowly ticked by. Jenny tried to think of an appropriate answer to Kate. None was forthcoming. ‘This has been some night,’ she eventually sulked. ‘Sodom and Gomorrah is what Leith has become.’

  Kate dissolved into laughter. ‘Sodom and Gomorrah! And how do you come to that conclusion?’

  ‘Unlike you, I don’t think any of what I found out tonight … to be funny.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Connie not being what she seems.’ Jenny was quite animated now. ‘And she could be … Worse still I then came home to find you, my daughter, shacked up with a Pole.’ She paused to take in a breath. ‘And when I think back to last September, which I really don’t wish to do, and all that was going on in Leith Links, I am convinced that …’ Jenny now drew herself up before whimpering, ‘Kate, with all this … this … God-forbidding sex going on I honestly believe that everybody now thinks that the continuation of the human race depends on it!’

  * * *

  Times were hard. Everything from food and clothes to coal and even adequate housing were scarce, yet somehow Santa Claus managed to still get through with presents for the children.

  At five o’clock on Christmas morning the Anderson household was awakened by Rosebud shouting, ‘Dad, Kitty, Jack, Davy, Bobby, he’s been! I’ve got a doll and a pram to push it in. There’s also an apple … a rosy apple and a Mars Bar!’

  Johnny groaned and rolled over in his bed. He was tempted to fall back into enjoying a long-overdue restful lie-in – that was until he remembered he was Rosebud’s daddy and he should be up and spending time with her.

  On the other hand it took Rosebud hauling the bedcovers off Kitty to get her to rouse.

  Sleepy Kitty squinted at her old grey metal alarm clock. ‘Oooh,’ she groaned, ‘it’s not even six o’clock, my usual time for getting up. Rosebud,’ she continued, ‘don’t you remember that I said to you that we were all supposed to have a long lie-in this morning?’

  Kitty’s plea to Rosebud was ignored. For the next half hour Rosebud pushed and shoved the second-hand refurbished pram up and down the hallway – at least twenty times. Whilst she was doing that she also dangled the doll by the arm, leg or upside down … anyway at all except how you would expect to see a precious baby handled. Its clothes also had been on and off so often that they now required washing. Naturally the Mars Bar had been scoffed but when it came to eating her porridge, which Kitty had got out of her bed to make, Rosebud wasn’t hungry. It was then she said, ‘I wonder if Connie is up and if she would like a shot of my pram?’

  Kitty glanced at the clock; it was now just past six. ‘Well, Connie will be up because she’s on an early shift this morning so let’s you and I go over and give her a peek at your new doll.’

  The pram had been banged into Connie’s door at least three times but there was no response from the house. Kitty became wary because Connie had been so sick and upset yesterday. She decided then to go back to her own flat and get Connie’s house key.

  Opening up the door Kitty shouted, ‘Connie, Connie, nothing to worry about, it’s only me, Kitty.’

  There was no response. In fact it appeared to Kitty that there was a creeping feeling of unease in the house. Firstly she told Rosebud to go back and get Johnny, then she went from room to room looking for Connie but there was no one at home. Going back into the living room her apprehension mounted. Connie’s work clothes were hung on a chair by the fireside. This meant that wherever Connie was she was not at home, nor was she going out to work.

  When Johnny joined Kitty he asked, ‘Where is she?’

  Kitty shrugged. ‘She was a bit queasy yesterday but that wouldn’t explain where she has got to now. In an hour or so if she hasn’t come back I’ll ask Dora or Mrs Dickson … That’s it – Mrs Dickson will know where she is.’

  Bounding down the stairs Kitty then rattled Mrs Dickson’s door handle before going into the house. She knew the old lady would be awake but not out of her bed yet. ‘Mrs Dickson,’ she called into the bedroom, ‘it’s me, Kitty. I’m just wondering if you know where Connie is.’

  ‘No,’ replied the old woman as she struggled up to a sitting position in the bed. ‘Something funny happened last night but I can’t remember what it was now. Think I’m getting the old folks’ disease. But ask Dora, she knows everything. Honestly if I sneeze twice she’s in here with a hanky.’

  Kitty decided that it was too early to knock up Dora and she was just about to go back upstairs when she heard whoops of joy coming out of Dora’s house. Chapping the door she called, ‘Dora, Dora, can I ask you something?’

  Eventually the door was slowly opened by Dora who was dressed in a voluminous nightgown that Kitty was sure must have at one time belonged to Queen Victoria. ‘Is there a problem, hen?’

  ‘Not really a problem, Dora. It’s just that I can’t find Connie. Do you have any idea where she might be?’

  Dora scowled. ‘Not really, but a queer thing happened last night. You see I had just got all the Santa stuff sorted out and was getting into bed when I heard the stair door shut then a car or a taxi take off. Now that is unusual for around here.’

  ‘You think so?’ replied Kitty, who was deep in thought.

  ‘Aye, hen, I do. You see there are plenty of bikes and a few number thirteen buses that go up and down the outside road, but cars … well they’re for toffs and that’s no any of us, is it?’ Dora shook her head from side to side as the mystery of what had happened to Connie got to her too.

  After Christmas, the next six days leading up to Hogmanay were spent with everybody wondering what had become of Connie.

  Thankfully, on 31 December Kitty got a letter with a Whitburn, West Lothian, postmark. Ripping open the envelope, she was surprised to find it was from Connie. In the short communication, Connie briefly pointed out that she had had to go urgently to Glasgow to deal with an unexpected matter. Once she had got things sorted out in Glasgow she had then transferred herself to Whitburn where she had been born and raised. She then indicated that it was important, very important, that what had taken place in Glasgow should be laid to rest in Whitburn. When this was done she would then come home. In the meantime, could Kitty get her dad to speak to the managers at Robb’s and explain she had been called away suddenly but that she would be back to take up her duties again on 5 January. She closed by wishing everybody a very happy New Year.

  Kitty, who had felt all week that Dora knew something about Connie that she did not, was even more put out when, after reading Connie’s letter, Dora said, ‘Aye, it all figures. Poor lassie. What a thing to have on your conscience.’

  Hogmanay was a hard day for Kitty. She knew, because her mother and granny had drummed it into her, that if a house was not spick and span, coal burning brightly in the hearth and food and drink available when the bells rang and the tall, dark and handsome man ‘first foot’ arrived, then bad luck would follow the household for the whole year. Terrified of inviting this curse into her home, Kitty had spent the whole day cleaning the house from top to bottom and cooking. By eleven o’clock at night all she still had to do was put the glowing hot ashes from the louping fire into the outside ashcan before the bells.

  She heaved a deep sigh as she remembered the problems she had had with the food. This was because the days of the mandatory red salmon sandwiches for New Year visitors were long gone. Unfortunately, they would not return until after the war when shipments of the tinned fish would start to come in again from Canada. Another problem, one that she had not anticipated, was that with Connie still at large there was no black-market butter to make scrumptious shortbread. Kitty had tried her best with Stork unsalted margarine but, when she sampled it, she knew it lacked the luxury flavour that butter would have given it. On the bright side she had managed to get a large tub o
f Cairn the butcher’s potted meat for the sandwiches. This delicacy, in everybody’s opinion – in Restalrig anyway – was to die for. Kitty herself just couldn’t believe how Mr Cairns got it to taste like roast beef.

  All the shipyards in Leith had closed a couple of hours early on Hogmanay because there now was a growing belief that the war would soon be over and that the allies would emerge victorious.

  Johnny and Jock were sitting nursing their second pint in their favourite watering hole when Johnny wiped the froth from his mouth with the back of his hand before announcing, ‘Aye, next year is going to be some year, Jock.’

  Jock nodded and replied, ‘Aye, I think so too, son.’

  ‘Mind you, the main obstacle will be the invasion of Europe.’

  ‘You’re right there.’

  ‘Don’t suppose you have any idea of when, where and with what they will do it?’

  Jock shook his head. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. Mind you, I don’t think wee Monty, who don’t forget sorted out Rommel’s hash in …’ Jock hesitated as he tried to remember the exact date and place.

  ‘October 1942, Jock, at El Alamein, it was.’

  ‘Aye, that’s right, Johnny lad, and do you know that was when the tide in this war turned. But that will make no difference, you mark my words. Oh aye, that Eisenhower, the big American bloke with the even bigger ego, will get overall command when the big push does come in Europe.’

  ‘Talking of the push, will they big concrete things, that seem to get bigger every day, have anything to do with the invasion?’

  ‘Big concrete things?’ Jock mused.

  ‘Aye, the massive ugly building-like things that are standing in the water at western corner …’

  ‘Do you mean they big prefabricated sections that are sitting in the big launching lagoon?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Dinnae ken what they’re for … just ken they’re top secret. And, before you ask again, I really don’t know. I was only told that they are vital to the war effort and that we had to give priority to building these sections because they will eventually be married up with other bits being built on the Clyde.’