‘Keep back! Keep back!’ MacNair sounded as if he had a peg clipped over his nose. ‘Out of my road, the crowd of you.’ He staggered along at an awkward angle because he was trying to prevent his whiskers from touching the cake and also because Sandy, holding the other side of the huge pillared masterpiece, was so much taller.
The customers obediently made way, still singing praises.
‘Oh, isn’t it lovely! Sadie’s a lucky girl, so she is!’
‘It’s a rer cake, but! I’n’t it, but?’
With much grunting and sweating and agonizing warnings to take care and not bump into anything, they managed to ease their precious burden into the van.
Dixon Street where the cake was to be delivered was only five or ten minutes away, the other side of Dessie Street from Starky Street, but MacNair had no intentions of taking any chances.
‘There’s tissue paper in the shop. I’ll pack some round it. And where’s wee Eck? Tell him to sit in the back and hold on to it in case the Benlin hooter goes and that stupid nag bolts.’
‘Billy’s no stupid, anything but!’ Sandy puttered indignantly. ‘It’s very clever of him to know what that hooter means.’ With long stiff legs he stalked the old man back into the shop. ‘Anyway the hooter’s not due for hours yet.’
Seven-year-old Erchie, his small fists pushed deep into his ragged trousers, watched them emerge from, then return to, the shop. His pace changed to a brisk skip, ever-hopeful of success in persuading the old man to give him something to eat.
Near the doorway, however, his skip slowed to a gawky stop and his mouth fell open. A fascinating horrifying scene was being enacted before his eyes.
Begg the coalman’s horse was trying to take a bite out of Mister MacNair’s cake.
Erchie suddenly recovered his wits and flew into the shop.
‘Hey, mister, mister!’
‘Get away. You wee nyaff!’ the old man whined. ‘Can you not see I’m busy?’
‘But, mister …’
‘I’ll mister you.’ He made a swipe at the child’s ear but Erchie, well-practised in the art of dodging blows, proved too quick for him.
‘But, mister …’
‘I haven’t got any broken biscuits, or stale cookies, you dirty-faced wee devil.’
Erchie danced up and down with exasperation. ‘The coalman’s horse is eating your weddin’ cake.’
‘What?’ Knees lifting, boots clattering, old Duncan beat everybody to the door.
The coal-horse, its wide, soft mouth placidly chomping, stared round at him in innocent surprise as he burst from the shop shaking fists and screaming.
‘I’ll murder you. You big fat thief!’
‘Who’s a big fat thief?’ Arthur Begg emerged from the next close, took in the scene at a glance and dived in front of his horse, arms outstretched to protect it against all comers. ‘Don’t you dare lay a finger on my Nellie.’
‘Lay a finger on her!’ Duncan howled, wildly fighting to prise Arthur out of the way. ‘I’ll punch the big fool until she’s unconscious.’
‘Over my dead body!’ Arthur rolled white eyeballs in a black face held high, chin shoved aggressively forward. ‘Put up your dukes!’
‘Right! Right!’ Old Duncan’s goatee beard bristled with fury as he rapidly arranged himself into suitable fighting pose. ‘I dare you, you fat mucky-faced messin’!’
He was saved from the powerful force of the coalman’s fist only by the timely intervention of Jimmy who pushed his way through the magically gathered crowd - one minute the street had been empty, the next it was packed - and grabbed both Duncan and Arthur by the scruffs of their necks and jerked them away from each other.
‘What are you fighting for?’ Jimmy’s white coat and long white apron made a startling contrast to the coalman’s black clothes and the khaki-coloured shop-coat old MacNair wore. ‘Look, Nellie’s only taken one wee bite off the top, one wee bite, and that’s only icing. Come on, help me get it back into the bakehouse. I’ll soon sort it!’
Puffing at a cigarette, smoke wafting up over her blonde, bescarfed head, Sarah had gone through to stare out of the front-room window in an effort to escape Lender Lil’s tongue.
It was no use.
‘You’ve nothing better to do, I suppose, but smoke my money away and stand around poking your nose into other folks’ business.’
‘I don’t know anything about your money,’ Sarah repeated automatically, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, hen.’
She leaned her brow against the window, her tired eyes resting down on the street.
The wedding cake was beautiful. It reminded her of the cake Baldy had made for their wedding. Baldy had insisted on making the cake himself. And had he been proud of it!
She tried to smile but even thinking of weddings strained her, dangerously near to tears now. Emotion seemed to be building up inside her and losing its balance. Coupled with pain it was almost too much for her, nearly blotting out reason and swamping what little ability she had left to organize her resources.
More and more she longed for help and more and more she thought of the panel of doctors that sat in the converted shop they used as a surgery along the Main Road - the ‘surgery yins’ she called them to distinguish them from the ‘hospital yins’ because she already had so much to do with both. The cost of her previous visits was a shameful source of guilt that Lender Lil never allowed her to forget.
‘You’ll be the ruination of this family, Sarah Sweeney!’ she kept saying, over and over again.
Mixed up with her need for the surgery yins was a secret sense of awe of all those in authority, people like doctors, schoolteachers, the clergy and the police.
The surgery yins and the hospital yins were important and busy men, and she shrank from bothering them and taking up any more of their valuable time in case they lost patience with her and accused her of being a nuisance.
Just as important was the fact that she had so much to do and organize before she could make a visit to the surgery.
She would have to have a bath and shampoo her hair and wash and iron all her underwear, indeed, attend to all her clothes in case she was suddenly despatched to hospital again. She’d have to go up town to buy a new nightie. She would have to see to all Baldy’s clothes, too, and leave everything right for him. The house would have to be cleaned and extra shopping done; a thousand and one jobs would need to be seen to.
Even a visit to the surgery became immensely complicated, an impossible feat, once her thoughts attempted to grapple with it.
She longed to confess the terror that was emerging from the back of her mind like a monster to swim free with the upsurge of emotion.
She hardly dared turn her inward eye on the thought. Yet it was there, refusing to go away.
‘Sarah, hen, you’ve got cancer!’
She had no clear idea of what cancer meant but it was what made Lender Lil and all the older women drop their voices to hoarse frightened whispers.
‘They say it’s - cancer! She’s suffering agonies. She hasn’t got a chance!’
The name ‘cancer’ was only mentioned by the more sturdy like Lender Lil. Most folk couldn’t bring themselves to speak it out loud; instead it was darkly hinted at, as if they were afraid that the word itself had strange powers and was in some way infectious.
It was associated with vague but nonetheless horrible tales of women having their breasts cut off and their insides cut out so that they were left sexless, no longer real women that their men could love.
She felt ashamed; ashamed of the ever increasing untidy, and dirty condition of her house and of herself, ashamed of her lack of energy, ashamed of her inability to cope. Now her shame was spreading, mingling with terror, and entering into dark unmentionable places.
Clinging tenaciously to normal comforting little routines and habit patterns she eased herself away from the window, her emaciated body like a half-shut knife, and made a slow, shuffling, agonizingly painful progress towar
ds the other end of the house; the kitchen, the warmth of the fire, her favourite chair with the soft velvet cushion, a cup of tea in her favourite cup with the roses round it.
‘The kettle’s on at low.’ Her voice came out little more than a whisper so she cleared her throat and tried again once she and her mother-in-law arrived through in the kitchen. ‘Fancy a cup of tea, hen? I’m making one.’
‘It’s about all you can do, you dirty slut. The whole day long you’re making yourself cups of tea. Never you mind tea just now! When I came into this house I had five pounds in my bag. Five pounds for my messages. Now it’s gone and I’m not leaving here until you hand it over. You’ll not do me for money, Sarah Sweeney. By God, you’ll not take my money from me. That’s going too far!’
Ring-a-ring-a-roses. A game she used to play as a child came unexpectedly back to her. All the wee girls joined hands together and went skipping round in a circle.
Ring-a-ring-a-roses,
A pocketful of posies
Atishoo! Atishoo!
We all fall down!
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, hen.’
The cups were dirty, jammed in among a pile of pots and pans, of breakfast dishes and cutlery.
Sarah felt confused.
It wasn’t nearly time for dinner yet. Lender Lil never came until dinner-time or afterwards, after she had done her shopping.
No, it wasn’t nearly dinner-time yet.
They had barely finished breakfast.
She had given her man a good breakfast this morning.
There was the porridge pot, and the empty cream jug. There was the frying pan, the ham-grease hardened over crumbs of fried bread and shiny remnants of egg-whites.
‘You know all right, you just haven’t got the guts to look me straight in the eye and admit it.’
There was the empty marmalade jar and the small plates sticky with bread-crumbs.
The small plates had roses round them.
Ring-a-ring-a-roses,
A pocketful of posies,
Atishoo! Atishoo!
We all fall down!
Sarah smiled.
‘Smirk at me, would you?’ The voice suddenly gathered momentum like a train hurtling towards a tunnel. ‘You impertinent article! You slut! Give me back my money or I’ll strip the dirty rags off you and search them.’ Her fist beat on Sarah’s shoulder. ‘You’re a thief, Sarah Sweeney. A thief! A thief!’
Sound swelled up from inside and outside, and met, and made a mockery of the walls.
All the noise of a lifetime gathered and jabbled about.
The Benlin riveters, crowding inside high hulls, became frenzied. Trams rumbled and clanged and vied with the shipyards. Women called shrilly to each other. Men bawled and laughed and cursed and kicked balls. Children chanted. Somewhere a baby screamed. Suddenly Sarah screamed too.
Too rapid for thought, her hand darted out, grabbed a knife, whisked round and caught Mrs Fowler in the neck.
‘Shut it! Shut it! Shut it!’
Mrs Fowler fell down.
Sarah stared at her.
Lender Lil was lying quietly on the floor.
Atishoo! Atishoo!
We all fall down!
An old woman lay on the floor in a heap.
‘Poor soul!’ Sarah murmured.
A noise at the door made her turn round. Baldy had come crashing into the kitchen in his shirt-tail.
‘What the hell’s going on?’
He froze at the sight of Sarah holding a blood-stained knife and his mother’s body at her feet. Then he shrank, lost size as well as colour; everything about him squeezed smaller, until he was a pathetic creature trembling violently inside a too-big shirt. His legs began to buckle under him and he staggered, hands outstretched to grip the back of a chair for support.
Sarah rushed, arms ready to assist him, but like a wee boy he cried out in distress:
‘Keep away from me. You’ve killed my mammy!’
Sarah looked down at the old woman again and in doing so noticed the knife. Opening her hands, she dropped it, waves of horror lapped away out, far out beyond her mind. She groped for something, anything she could do for Baldy before the tide came in.
‘Go and get dressed, lad. Aye, that’s what to do. We don’t want folks seeing you like that, eh?’
‘Then I’ll have to go and get somebody. Oh, Jesus!’ Baldy was muttering dazedly to himself. ‘I’ll go downstairs and tell Melvin. He’ll know what to do. Oh, Jesus!’
‘Go and get dressed, lad. Aye, that’s what to do!’
Sarah wanted to remain where she was, thinking nothing, seeing nothing; only love of her man moved her on, and the instinctive knowledge, as yet unlinked with emotion, that maybe there wouldn’t be much time left for loving him.
She followed Baldy out into the hall but when he floundered, still muttering instructions to himself, into the bedroom, she tiptoed to the front door.
She was the one who ought to tell Melvin. Baldy had done a hard night’s work. He ought not to be upset. He mustn’t be faced with the shameful ordeal of going downstairs to tell Melvin what she had done.
The waves were creeping closer as she clung to the iron banister, her feet hastening, stumbling down the spiral stairs. The waves rippled near, then receded with the assurance that nothing had happened. It was only a nightmare. Then they surged nearer to make her stomach heave and flutter, then disappeared again far into distance.
Melvin’s wife opened the door and stared at her with huge eyes registering first a look of shy enquiry, then alarm.
‘Your apron! There’s blood! You’ve hurt yourself!’
Bewildered, Sarah stared down at herself, then up at Catriona.
‘Ah’ve kil’t Baldy’s mammy!’
Different emotions scrambled over Catriona’s face, changing and re-changing, jumbling senselessly together in panic. She jerked back, nursing her hands as if she’d been stung.
‘Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, what’ll I do? Oh, how awful! Oh, but look at you! Oh, you poor thing. Come in just now. Come into the hall before anybody sees you.’
Sarah shuffled obediently in but her face creased and twisted ‘I’m sorry, hen,’ she apologized. ‘Ah didn’t mean to put ye to any trouble.’
‘It’s all right. I mean, don’t worry about me. Wait there a minute. My mother’s in. We were through in the front room having tea. My mother’ll help you. You’ll be all right. Don’t worry. Just stand there a minute.’
She pushed the front door shut, her eyes still clinging with a mixture of horror and anguished pity to Sarah’s bent, old-woman figure barely discernible now in the shadow of the hall except for the grey luminous face under the woolly headscarf and the fingers poking from thick woolly mittens.
Catriona flew into the front room and babbled out a rapid stream of words to her mother.
‘It’s Sarah Fowler from upstairs. You remember, the poor soul that cried so much at my wedding. She’s in a terrible state. She says she’s killed somebody. I think she means her husand’s mother. Oh, Mummy, talk to her, do something! Pour her a cup of tea while I waken Melvin. Yes, a hot sweet drink, that’s good for shock. She’s in a state of shock. She looks as if she doesn’t know what’s happened. She’s waiting in the hall. I’ll bring her through.’
‘You’ll do no such thing!’ Hannah Munro managed to keep her voice down to a desperate hiss. ‘Get that madwoman out of here! Get her out. Get her out before she murders the lot of us!’
For a moment Catriona’s face froze in its expression of distress, then suddenly she burst into reckless speech again.
‘You hypocrite! Hypocrite! Call yourself a Christian? Is this Christianity? What good’s your Christianity if it’s just a lot of talk?’
‘Get rid of her, you fool! Get her out of the house before she murders us all.’ Hannah was on her feet now, ruddy cheeks livid.
Catriona turned in a flurry of despair and darted back to the hall where Sarah was still helplessly waiting.
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‘I’ll waken Melvin. No, my mother can tell Melvin. I’ll help you upstairs. I’ll make you a cup of tea.’ She raised her voice. ‘Mummy, tell Melvin! Tell him at once!’
She put an arm around Sarah, helped her out of the house and half-carried her back upstairs.
Sarah twisted round towards her, a pulse in her face pulling, throbbing, twitching, fluttering uncontrolled and uncontrollable.
‘Ah’m terribly sorry, hen. Honest ah am. Ah’m that sorry for putting everybody to all this trouble!’
Chapter 19
Catriona sat at the kitchen table, hands balled on lap, head lowered. Opposite her, Fergus was kneeling up on his chair, his elbows resting on the table, his face cupped in his hands, watching her.
Melvin and Hannah sat on opposite sides of the kitchen fire.
‘I’ll never get over that as long as I live,’ Hannah told Catriona for the umpteenth time. ‘And the way you talked to me! I thought you’d gone off your head as well.’ Her eyes rolled back to Melvin. ‘And when I discovered she’d gone back upstairs with the murderess - may the good Lord forgive the poor woman - I nearly died!’
Melvin glowered.
‘I told her to keep herself to herself. I told her not to have anything to do with the neighbours. I warned her especially about Sarah Fowler.’
‘You needn’t talk. If it hadn’t been for you, she would never have been here, never got mixed up in any of this and I would never have come near the place either.’
‘Nobody asked you to come.’ Melvin stuck his face aggressively forward. ‘But you’ve been here every day since we got married except for the holidays, and I suppose if you could have managed it you would have been with us then, too.’
‘Yes, I would, I certainly would. I said from the beginning that no good would come of that girl coming here. I’ve good neighbours in Farmbank, kindly decent folk, but I told Robert - Clydend’s one of the toughest districts in Glasgow, I said. I wouldn’t live there and neither will that girl. But would he listen to me? Would he? Oh, no, not him! And now look what’s happened. She’s mixed up with a murder! A murder!’
The Breadmakers Saga Page 14