The Breadmakers Saga

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  ‘It’s lovely.’

  ‘I’ll put your cases down here. You can go back to your mother’s and collect the rest of your things in a day or two.’

  Catriona lowered her eyes.

  ‘I haven’t got any more things.’

  ‘Eh?’ He laughed and hunkered down to chug loose the strap that held the cardboard case together. ‘Is this all your worldly possessions, then?’

  ‘Please!’ Spurred into action by the acuteness of her shame and embarrassment, Catriona rushed forward to tug the case away from him. ‘It’s my things! They’re private.’

  Annoyance sharpened his laughing good humour.

  ‘You’ve a lot to learn about marriage, haven’t you? You’re young, of course, and you’ve never been married before. I have, you see. Betty and I had a perfect marriage. There was never any secrets between us. There’s nothing private between married people, didn’t you know that?’

  He flicked open her case.

  ‘An old coat, an old skirt,’ he cackled, holding them up then flinging them aside. ‘A jersey. A pair of knickers. A pair of flannelette pyjamas. And a hot-water bottle?’

  He fell back on his buttocks slapping his knees with merriment. ‘Is that all?’

  Catriona snatched up the hot-water bottle and hugged it and rocked it against herself.

  ‘Come on. I’ll show you the rest of the house.’ He bounced to his feet like a rubber ball. ‘I bet you can’t do that and you’re a good few years younger than me.’

  ‘Do what?’ She stared, mystified.

  ‘Bounce up like that without any stiff joints or breathlessness.’

  He repeated the process several times, up, down, up, down, hands spread over waist, knees expanding.

  ‘You try it!’

  Clutching Lovey tighter against her chest she shook her head vigorously over the top of it, making the veil flap about.

  ‘I shouldn’t do it in my good trousers,’ he admitted, leading her into the next bedroom. ‘That’s where Fergus sleeps. The sitting-room has big corner windows, two looking on to Dessie Street and two onto the Main Road.’

  Dazedly she followed him.

  ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘you saw that before. Here’s the kitchen. The bathroom’s there beside the front room. A nice big square hall, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s lovely.’

  In the kitchen he made straight for the mirror above the mantelpiece, smoothed back his thin brown hair, tweaked out his thick waxed moustache and dusted down his trousers.

  ‘It droops in the bakehouse, you know. The heat and the ovens.’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘My moustache. The wax melts. Sometimes I think I ought to shave it off but everybody says it’s so manly and it suits me.’

  ‘It’s lovely.’

  ‘What are you hugging that thing for? You look ridiculous!’

  She stared down at Lovey, hugging it all the tighter.

  He laughed, puffing his chest like a prize pigeon.

  ‘You won’t need any hot-water bottles when I’m around. Away through and take that awful looking dress off and get your pyjamas on while I make a cup of tea and something to eat. I’m starving.’

  Gratefully she concentrated on finding her way back to the bedroom, hurrying, glad to be away from him but shuffling and tripping, held back by the too-long dress.

  She banged the bedroom door and leaned against it, eyes popping, heart battering. The thump of a man’s feet shook the house, a clatter of a kettle vied with it, then the hiss of a tap turned on full.

  What if he came through before she had her ‘jamas’ on? What if he saw her wearing nothing but her knickers?

  She flung Lovey onto the bed and tore off the white dress, getting into a tangle with the thing bunched on top of her head and the sleeves too tight for her arms to escape and be rid of it. She was gasping, choking, on the verge of hysteria by the time she did disentangle herself.

  A piercing whistle now, and the chinkle of cups. Shivering with panic she hopped out of her knickers and into her pyjamas.

  ‘Come and get it!’ The sudden roar from the other end of the house nearly snatched the legs from under her.

  She leaned a moist quivering hand on the dressing-table.

  ‘Come on!’ The voice bawled again. ‘Never mind trying to pretty yourself up. You’ll do! The tea’s getting cold!’

  Her mind ceased to function properly. She reached for her coat and buttoned it over her pyjamas wondering how she’d transport herself back home to Fyffe Street. She couldn’t be away by herself. She’d never been anywhere by herself.

  Even when she’d gone to school almost directly across from the house in Fyffe Street, her mother had been by her side, escorted her back, and even waited at the gate each play-time to make her stand under a watchful eye and sip a cup of boiling hot Oxo until the bell rang.

  She had always been a delicate child, her mother insisted, and not fit to play. You never knew what you might pick up from other children, bad germs, bad habits, bad things they might talk about. Anything of the male species had been especially taboo.

  Her mother had kicked up a dreadful fuss at school as soon as she heard the new gym teacher was a man, and thereafter had furnished Catriona with a note that excused her from going anywhere near the gym-hall. Instead she sat in the lavatory and dreamed dreams and waited untiI the gym period was over.

  After school there had been homework or housework, visiting with her mother, attending the meeting hall with her mother, sitting at the front-room window, or acting shops by herself.

  The cupboard in the living-room beside the fire was the shop and two wooden chairs placed side by side in front of it formed the counter.

  There weren’t any cupboards in the kitchenette, just a shelf along the wall for dishes, so all the food was kept in the living-room cupboard.

  ‘Yes, madam?’ she’d say smartly and politely. ‘Can I help you? Jam? Certainly we have jam. Which kind would madam prefer, strawberry, blackcurrant or raspberry?’

  ‘Strawberry?’ Melvin was straddling the bedroom doorway hands on his hips, moustache jerking, throat caw-cawing with laughter. ‘Blackcurrant? Raspberry? She doesn’t just talk to herself. She talks shop to herself. Jumpin’ Jesus, I’ve got a right one here!’

  The bed was big. A long iron bar of a bolster stretched across it with two plumped-up pillows on top. It had grey army blankets hidden between pink flannelette sheets and a slippery rayon bedspread. The pièce de résistance was a thick golden cloud of satin quilt.

  Catriona, blue pyjamas fastened neatly up to the neck, cringed back against the pillows, fingers digging into the pink flannelette, face closed, stiff, ashen.

  ‘I always have my hot-water bottle!’

  Unbuttoning his jacket and tossing it over a chair Melvin see-sawed between hilarity and anger.

  ‘Well, you’re not having it now. This is priceless! What do you want a hot-water bottle for? It’s the middle of summer as well as being your wedding night!’

  ‘I always have my hot-water bottle!’

  Watching him flick down his braces, her voice cracked and her fingers retreated under the sheets. Deftly Melvin opened his fly, stepped out of his trousers and flung them over beside his jacket.

  ‘You’re a right one, you are. Never mind, I’ll soon heat you up.’

  He undid his shirt then stripped it off, taking care to avoid mussing up his moustache.

  ‘How’s that for a good figure?’ He admired himself in the wardrobe mirror when he was down to nothing but his underpants. ‘Not bad for a man of thirty-odds?’ He suddenly gripped his wrists before Catriona’s horrified eyes began contorting different parts of his anatomy, making them push forward, swell grotesquely, wrench up and round while all the time he kept talking and getting a little more breathless, a little more red in the face. ‘I’m not the man I used to be, of course, but I’m a miracle of fitness for a man who works nights in a bakery. Bakers are notoriously unfit. You’ll never get t
hem to admit it but they are. Stands to reason. Heart troubles, lung troubles, stomach ulcers, skin diseases, the lot. Bakers never last long. Either die or leave. We don’t have them leaving so much. The houses, you see. Good houses these. My father’s a crafty old devil. This building’s the only one for miles around that has bathrooms. Did you know that?’ He stopped talking for a minute to concentrate on doing unspeakable things to his stomach. ‘See that abdominal definition?’ A bulgy rolling eye demanded an answer.

  Catriona slithered down in bed until only her head with a golden tangle of hair on top was showing. ‘Yes,’ she quavered feebly. ‘It’s lovely.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Melvin agreed. ‘Not even many champions can show an impressive “washboard” like that.’

  Suddenly he began skipping with an invisible skipping rope. ‘All the rest have lavies on the stairs,’ he panted breathlessly. ‘Most of them are just single-ends or room and kitchens and three or four families or more all share the one wee lavy. They never have lights, these lavies. You’ve always to take a candle or a torch.’

  He stopped skipping, scratched energetically under one armpit and said:

  ‘Ah, well! Bed!’

  Immediately Catriona saw him bend, hairy hands ready to peel off his underpants, she shut her eyes.

  It must be a nightmare. Her dreams had got mixed up. She twisted round on her side and curled up tight.

  ‘“Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven, give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us …”’

  Unexpectedly her whole body jarred and bounced a couple of inches up in the air as Melvin leapt into bed beside her. She kept her eyes stubbornly closed.

  ‘“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil …”’

  ‘Jumpin’ Jesus,’ Melvin groaned. ‘Is that you talking to yourself again?’

  In the tiniest most inaudible sound, more a whimper than a whisper, Catriona finished.

  ‘“For Thine is the Kingdom. the power and the Glory, for ever and ever, Amen!”’

  ‘Turn round then!’ The bed lurched about and the blankets untucked and let draughts flap in as Melvin made himself comfortable. Catriona, a small tense ball, refused to budge a muscle.

  ‘Come on!’ With one gorilla arm he scooped her up, rolled her round and held her, nose squashed against the hairy cushion of his chest. ‘Let’s have a cuddle and a wee talk first. It’s not often I have a night off, so enjoy it while you’ve got the chance.’

  They lay like that for a moment before Melvin broke the silence again.

  ‘For pity’s sake, take these thick things off. They’re making me sweat.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘These flannelette horrors.’

  Before she could wriggle an arm free to protect herself he had unbuttoned her and was tossing her from side to side and up and down until he had agitated her out of both jacket and trousers.

  ‘That’s better!’ he exclaimed, one hand pinning her body to his chest. ‘Now, what’ll we talk about?’

  Shock set in. She lay wondering vaguely if she should make some polite remark about the weather while another area of her mind convulsed and shivered like a mad thing with malaria.

  ‘You haven’t much of a chest,’ Melvin remarked, holding her back a bit. ‘Just like a young lady. Of course, I suppose they’ve time to grow yet. See mine! What a difference! There’s a chest for you! A hairy chest is a sign of virility. Didn’t you know that? You’re lucky, you know. Not many men of my age are as well put together as me.’ He flapped the blankets down again. ‘Betty knew how lucky she was. She was crazy about me. Used to call me her dream man. Once when she was in hospital she wrote me some letters. I’ve got them in a case in that cupboard. Did you see her photo on the room mantelpiece? What did you think of it?’

  ‘It’s lovely.’

  ‘I’ll let you read the letters tomorrow.’ There was a pause. Then he absent-mindedly caressed her.

  ‘How did your wife die?’ His hand jerked clear of her.

  ‘She was ill for a long time on and off.’

  Silence.

  ‘Fancy a cup of cocoa?’ he queried eventually.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  His hand returned.

  ‘Did your wife die having the baby?’

  Again the shrinking.

  ‘No, months after.’

  It seemed he could not bring himself to touch her when he spoke of his Betty.

  To Catriona this was, inexplicably, the worst, the most shameful, the most heart-rending humiliation of all.

  Chapter 12

  Jimmy had been too emotionally upset after reading the book even to think about playing the piano. It was a very vivid word picture of what had happened in the Highland Clearances.

  A year after the defeat at the Battle of Culloden the chiefs began the terrible betrayal of their children. They decided they preferred sheep to people and drove the folk to the hills and glens from their homes with bayonets and truncheons and fire, to make way for the Lowland and English sheep-farmers.

  The ill and the dying, the men, the women, the elderly folk, the young children, all with the same childish faith in the laird and all in their innocence refusing to believe the news of the burnings despite the black smoke rising high in the sky from elsewhere.

  The burners came like an army - factor and fiscal, sheriff-officers, constables, shepherds, foxhunters and soldiers. They dragged out the terrified bewildered people. Families who escaped from the violence wandered aimlessly, not knowing where to find shelter or how to get their next meal.

  One old man, sick with the fever, crawled into the ruins of a mill and his dog kept the rats at bay while he tried unsuccessfully to cling to life by licking flour dust from the floor. A man carried his two feverishly-ill daughters on his back for over twenty-five miles, staggering along with one, then putting her down, and going back for the other, and so on all the way.

  Women watched their children die of exposure and starvation, and the tartan became a shroud.

  After reading all this and more, Jimmy had locked himself in the bathroom and wept.

  The trouble was, he thought, wiping his eyes with toilet paper, that people just didn’t think. They didn’t use their imaginations. They couldn’t see events in vivid moving colour in their minds. Nobody, if they had really thought about it, really thought of what it meant in terms of human suffering, would have allowed such a monstrous thing to happen. The most important thing in the world, it seemed to him, was to try to encourage people to think, to increase their sensitivity, to develop a keen and painful edge to their imaginations.

  At the height of his distress he’d tried to discuss the book with everyone but nobody wanted to listen.

  His mother’s normally kind, gentle voice had been impatient, almost petulant.

  ‘It doesn’t do to think so much on these things. You shouldn’t read stuff like that and upset yourself and other folks. Why don’t you get something nice and cheery out the library?’

  Tam had still been in the bakehouse when he’d started his shift and he had actually laughed.

  ‘Och, laddie, laddie, will you never learn to keep the head! And have a heart, son! Spare me the gory stories until I’ve had time to enjoy my breakfast!’

  Lexy had wriggled and wobbled all over and made faces in front of him and behind his back and chanted in her sing-song Glasgow accent, ‘Oh, in the name of the wee man! You’re an awful big fella, so you are! Fancy getting all worked up like that about tewchters that have been pushing up the daisies for years.’

  Nobody cared now as nobody cared then. All day his anguished eyes saw the suffering of the Highlanders, in the mixing-machine, in the fondant bin, in both Scotch ovens and in the proving press.

  By the time he had finished a hard day’s work he was more emotionally than physically exhausted. This lack of caring, this inab
ility or refusal to tune into other people’s distress - how many more tragedies of human suffering could it lead to in the future? It seemed to him to be a most dangerous state of mind.

  His mother’s practised stare took rapid stock of him when he returned upstairs: the tangled curls, the dark bleak eyes, the skin tight over his cheek-bones, a peculiar putty colour.

  ‘No sitting in here reading or playing that piano all by yourself tonight,’ she told him firmly. ‘You’re going to the pictures or away to one of these billiard halls the other lads go to and you’re going to be like them and enjoy yourself.’

  ‘Cheeky old rascal!’ Laughing, he’d pretended to spar with her. ‘Trying to bully me now, are you? Put up your dukes, up your dukes, come on now, come on now!’

  ‘Och, stop your nonsense at once and do as you’re told. Away with you. Get washed and changed and get out of here.’

  He had gone, to please her. But he’d hung about in the closemouth for ages watching the children playing outside in the street and wondering what he should do and where he ought to go to pass the evening.

  Lanky long-legged girls hopped spring-heeled across chalked peaver beds. Others whipped draughty frames of skipping ropes round and round. Reedy voices chanted:

  ‘Eachy-peachy, pear, plum

  Out goes my chum,

  My chum’s not well,

  Out goes mysel’.’

  Boys bellowed.

  ‘Hey, Jock, Ma Cuddy, Ma Cuddy’s ower the dyke, if ye catch Ma Cuddy, ma cuddy’ll gie ye a bite.’

  Balls thumped monotonously.

  ‘House to let apply within, a lady goes out for drinking gin…’

  Everyone walking by or just clustered around enjoying the evening together grinned cheery greetings and women hanging out of windows, arms folded and leaning with breasts comfy on sills, cried out:

  ‘Hey, Jimmy! Have you sold your piano, son?’

  Or, ‘Hallo there, Jimmy boy, is it the jigging the night? You’re a deep one, eh? Got a wee lassie and never let on, eh?’

  He hunkered down to join in a noisy game of marbles with some laughing urchins in the gutter, and was soon excitedly shouting ‘Sheevies’ and ‘High Pots!’ and ‘Knucklies’ with the rest of them. But his heart wasn’t really in the game and after a few minutes he returned to stand at the closemouth, long thin hands gripped behind back, tall lean figure dressed in shabby but good quality Harris tweed jacket with a scarf knotted at his throat. Other people in the district bought a whole new outfit every Easter and for every Glasgow Fair. Even folks on the dole managed to get some new togs at least for the Fair, helped by the Provident and various other clubs to which they paid their shillings religiously every week (except the Fair fortnight) all through the year.