Lying in bed at night unable to sleep she mulled over everything: the guilt and shame of her pregnancy, the coming agonies of childbirth, what Melvin would do to her when he returned home and found out.
Alec said neither Melvin nor anyone else need ever know.
‘Except, of course,’ Madge said, ‘the poor wee bugger’s sure to be Alec’s double.’
When Catriona pointed out that Melvin had planned to have no more children Alec said:
‘Who doesn’t? He can make mistakes the same as anyone else.’
Alec and Madge, of course, did not know Melvin. Madge had never set eyes on him and Alec had only seen him once.
There was something different about Melvin. Catriona had never feared any man as she feared him; and terror went far beyond anything physical. Although, as Alec said, the mere sight of Melvin’s physique was enough to scare anyone.
‘For God’s sake, hen, lie till you’re blue in the face. That gorilla could murder me,’ he said.
‘Listen to him!’ Madge hooted. ‘And the bugger’s at least six feet tall. It would serve him right if Melvin MacNair did murder him!’
She could not be persuaded that this was not really Alec’s fault.
‘If I had had a stronger character, Madge,’ Catriona tried to explain. ‘Or if I had been quicker-witted, or just had more common sense, this would never have happened. Anything that happens to me is my own fault.’
‘You make me madder than ever at that rotten midden!’ stormed Madge. ‘You’re that simple.’
‘No. No,’ Catriona protested. ‘All I’m doing is accepting the responsibility for my own actions.’
‘You’re daft, hen.’ Madge shook her head. ‘You shouldn’t be walking around loose!’ Then turning to Alec. ‘See you! You rotten sneaky dirty midden! I’ll never forgive you!’
A day or two later Alec took off and joined the Navy.
It was awful how people affected each other’s lives.
Because Wee Eck had been killed, Melvin had rushed off to fight in the war, and now because of the trouble she had caused in Alec’s life, he had suddenly shot off to the Navy.
Catriona hoped that neither Melvin nor Alec would be hurt, and would have prayed for their safety, but she was too afraid to open any communicating link with God, in case by doing so she might somehow be made more easily available to Him and He would bring further sufferings to her or through her to the children.
Often, as her pregnancy dragged wearily on, she longed to pray for herself. She longed to say,
‘God, please give me strength. I’m frightened.’
But her mind dodged the words behind the rapidly pulled blind of other thoughts.
It was strange how Melvin had had no leave. As far as she could gather he had been sent to France. He had never been much of a letter writer and what letters she had received, hinting that something big was on, had had bits of them cut out by the censor.
Rumour had it that his regiment was in the fighting somewhere in France. It did not seem possible, somehow.
The war had not much reality for her. Certainly there was rationing. Some foods were very scarce. Others had disappeared altogether and become only mouth-watering dreams of the past.
Still, Catriona was lucky because of the shop, and sometimes she managed to scrape up a little extra for herself and Madge.
The shop was short-handed, since the young women were being conscripted and the older ones were making better money in munitions, but they found a solution to that problem.
Mrs Jackson and Madge between them had been carrying on Alec’s insurance book and one of the customers was Ruth Hunter. Her husband, a conscientious objector, had been taken to Maryhill Barracks.
The wife was living alone and needing work, but in loyalty to her husband she did not want to take any kind of war job.
Mrs Jackson had told her about the shop assistants leaving MacNair’s to go into munitions and Ruth had come over to see about a job.
The only drawback was the travelling distance in the black-out. Even using the Clydend Ferry did not help much. She would still need to use a bus or tram-car as well.
Tentatively Catriona had suggested to Ruth that they might be good company for each other and said that Ruth was welcome to come and stay with her at Dessie Street for as long as she liked. They were about the same age and both their men were away: it seemed silly for both of them to be lonely.
She had not had much hope that Ruth would consider moving in with a pregnant woman, an old man, and two children, but to her surprise and delight the girl had jumped at the chance.
It turned out that she adored children and she was to move in at the end of the week.
The only worry again was what Melvin would do if she was still living in the house when he came back.
The house was beginning to get - it would seem from Melvin’s point of view - cluttered and disorganised.
What had once been a tidy bedroom for them alone had now an extra bed squeezed in for Fergus and also Andrew’s cot.
The other bedroom had never been the same since old Duncan moved in with his empty beer bottles and sticky glasses under the bed. Then there were his ashtrays full of pipes and crumbs of dark brown tobacco, spilling into every corner. The tobacco was not only from his own pipe but from the pipe of Angus MacGuffy, the old man next door who was a regular visitor and who, although almost stone deaf, carried on loud and determined conversations with Duncan in between glasses of whisky.
Now Ruth Hunter would be sleeping on the sitting-room bed-settee.
These were some of the changes the war had brought and it was strange to see the close all shored up and the brick baffle walls outside the entrance. Some said the baffle walls were supposed to protect the tenement buildings from the blast of bombs, others insisted they were to stop shrapnel and splinters flying up the closes. The only thing they had done so far was to cause innumerable black eyes, bloody noses and broken bones in the black-out.
The black-out, as far as Glasgow was concerned, had caused the only violence, injuries and deaths. Every night more and more people were being killed. Yet at the same time the darkness of the city seemed to heighten the senses. The apprehensive ear caught sounds ringing louder, tuned into more hollow echoes, as if each street were a tunnel. The eye saw nothing, only blackness, yet the ear became acutely aware of a wireless talking in the tunnel, or the clang of a dustbin lid, or a measured footfall.
There had been a few alerts - the jerky panicking whoo-whoo-whoo of the sirens echoing in her stomach and making Catriona run for the children and take them down to the windowless lobby in the bakehouse where everybody in the building gathered believing it was the safest and certainly the warmest place to be.
But nothing ever happened. The long wail of the All Clear had gone and everyone had thankfully climbed the stairs and disappeared into their own houses.
Catriona could not conceive that anything ever would happen. The war was a nightmare unreality.
The only real things in life, the only things that meant anything to her were the times she had Andrew on her knee sucking his thumb against her breast and Fergus kneeling at her feet his elbows on her lap, cupping his chin, his eyes wide, intent on listening to her telling a bedtime story.
Or when she was down on her knees with them on the floor playing ‘mummy bears’ and seeing their eyes sparkling and their heads flung back with the joy-bells of laughter.
War seemed very far away. Like Melvin.
Chapter 19
While Alec’s ship was in dry dock for repairs he managed to get a couple of day’s leave.
The first thing he noticed when he reached Springburn was the number of women wearing dungarees, dirty faces and turbans.
On the tram-cars, tough, loud-voiced cursing knots of them leaned forward, calloused hands gripping knees, screeching with laughter at dirty jokes. Lines of them strolled along Springburn Road, dungarees straining and bursting with bouncing footballs. There were no longer an
y men lounging at the corners, but women again, clusters of them, thumbs hooked in belts, chewing gum or smoking. One woman wolf-whistled him as he passed to turn into Cowlairs Road and another bawled:
‘Hey handsome, you can sail me up the river any day!’
Alec made juicy kissing noises with pursed lips before swaggering jauntily across the road, and the women exploded in great yells of pleasure and hilarity.
The pend stank. It had always been a bit smelly, but he never remembered such a sour stench as this.
Face twisting, he screwed his eyes around. The cobbled pend with its brick arch was always dark even in daytime and it took him a minute to discern the two bins at the yard end. Then he remembered that Madge had told him in one of her letters that all the vegetable peelings and waste scraps of food had now to be put in these pig bins. Nothing must be wasted. The corporation collected the bins and sold the contents to farmers for pig food.
Government films were shown in the cinemas urging everyone to be careful not to put in safety pins or anything that might prove too indigestible or dangerous to the pigs.
‘To hell with the bloody pigs,’ Madge had written. ‘We eat all the scraps here. I even grudge the buggers my peelings. The rations are so tight we’ll be eating peelings and all soon!’
Alec had managed to cadge some butter from the galley. He had some NAAFI chocolate for the kids and a pair of stockings for Madge and that ought to keep everyone happy.
The yard was cluttered. No room for a dribble at a tin can now.
Back to back with the line of middens stood an ugly brick erection which was supposed to protect all the occupants of the surrounding tenements from blast.
Alec sprinted up the stairs, calling a cheery greeting to Mrs White from next door.
‘Hello there, Alec,’ she called back. ‘Hey, Madge and the weans are not in.’
‘Out with her fancy man, eh?’ He grinned. ‘Och, well, that leaves you and me to have a wee bit slap and tickle on our own!’
Folding her arms across her chest she enjoyed a good bouncy laugh.
‘My man’ll slap and tickle you if you’re not careful. I would have watched the weans but I had to go out myself and everyone else is away at their work.’
‘Any idea where she is, hen?’
‘Aye, in the queue round at the coal yard in Atlas Street. It’s not so cold now but we need something for the cooking. It’s all right for the well-off yins that have cookers.’
‘Thanks, gorgeous!’
Alec gave her a salute before clattering back down the stairs, across the yard, out through the pend and round the corner on to Springburn Road again. He crossed over and went whistling, rollicking up towards Atlas Street, his round sailor’s cap perched well back on his head.
Springburn had changed quite a bit. It did not look so busy. Instead of the usual rush and squash at tram-stops pople queued quietly. There were long queues at various shops too, although it was hard to see what they were waiting for. The shop windows were empty. Alec had never seen so many empty windows.
Signs were up at the licensed grocer’s saying in big letters: NO WHISKY. He refused to believe them. There was bound to be a wee nip somewhere.
He cut off to the right at Atlas Street and in a matter of minutes was at the coal yard. A long straggly queue of women and children and a few old men had come with prams and boxes on wheels and suitcases and shopping bags and baskets for any kind of fuel they could get.
He saw Madge and the children before they saw him and he felt a pang of disappointment. Madge had been letting herself go. That was the worst thing about marriage and put many a bachelor off taking the plunge. Once a woman captured her man she just let herself go and got steadily worse and worse looking. When they were married Madge had been a fine, big, healthy specimen of a girl with laughing blue eyes and a ready grin. Maybe she had never been a raving beauty; she had too many freckles for that. But she had a fine skin all the same, pearly and soft, and her hair used to have a glossy bounce to it. Her figure had always been buxom but her legs were long and shapely.
What a difference now! Her legs were streaky and dirty-looking with the orange-brown paint the women used now, instead of stockings, and she was wearing the most unglamorous shoes he had ever seen. They had thick wooden soles and as the queue moved up she clumped along like a cart-horse; but the shoes were nothing to the monstrosity she had on her back. Hanging loose and shapeless it completely hid her figure and looked like an old army blanket.
‘Hello there, gorgeous.’
Reaching her he put an arm round her and gave her a hug before lifting and kissing each of the children in turn.
She had the youngest two in the pram and Maisie was sitting in a wooden box on old pramwheels.
Madge’s face lit up.
‘Alec! Thank God! You can pull the coal home. I didn’t know how I was going to manage.’
He laughed.
‘What a welcome! Here, I like your new coat, hen. A Paris model, is it?’
To his astonishment she took him seriously.
‘You really like it, Alec? Is it all right? I made it myself.’
‘Made it yourself?’
‘Yes, out of an old army blanket. It didn’t need any clothing coupons.’
‘Great, hen!’ he assured her. ‘Just great!’
Unzipping his hold-all he produced bars of chocolate and handed them round to a hysterical chorus of delight.
Their turn came, the box was filled with fuel and he towed it towards home, Maisie, Hector, Agnes and Sadie perched on top with black bottoms and chocolate mouths and the old wheels buckling and squeaking. At his side Madge pushed and heaved at the big pram, jostling and bouncing Willie and Fiona so that they kept missing their eager open mouths and spread chocolate all over their faces.
As they hurried towards home, Alec indicated a long line of people.
‘What are they queuing for?’
‘God knows. You daren’t stand for a couple of minutes anywhere now or a queue’s likely to form at your back. And see half of these shopkeepers? Talk about Adolf Hitler! I’m telling you we’ve sprouted a few wee dictators round here.’
The pram bumped through the pend and the box on wheels jangled the air with sound, and Alec helped Madge up with the pram, then went back for the box of fuel and children, then he pulled Madge into his arms, and kissed her and fumbled to unbutton the grey blanket-coat. In no time she pushed him away.
‘The cheek they give you!’ she said.
‘Who?’
He couldn’t think what she was going on about.
‘The shopkeepers, and they don’t give you a bag or even a scrap of paper to wrap anything in. I was buying a bit of fish the other day and he slapped it straight into my hand. I thought he was joking but when I asked for paper the cheeky midden shouted, “Do you not know there’s a war on?” That’s what they’re always saying, “Don’t you lot know there’s a war on?” As if we didn’t. Another thing they do now is draw you aside as if they’re doing you a big favour and whisper out one corner of their mouths that they’ve had a delivery of something. The last time it happened to me it turned out to be bottles of some horrible smelling cough mixture.’ She laughed, remembering. ‘When he said “bottles” I thought he meant whisky.’
He grinned at her.
‘What did you say? I bet you soon told him what he could do with it.’
‘Oh, no!’ She was surprised into seriousness. ‘I bought a couple of bottles. You can’t afford to turn anything down nowadays, Alec.’
He lit a cigarette, settled down on the sofa and watched her strip off her coat, tuck her hair behind her ears, then kneel down on the rug to set and light the fire.
‘How are you and Ma managing the book?’ he asked.
‘Oh, not bad.’ She laughed. ‘But, my God, up and down so many stairs is murder on my veins. I do most mornings, as often as Mrs White can look after the weans, and Ma does most afternoons.’
‘I thought they
had nurseries now for the young ones, and what about the others? Aren’t they at school?’
‘Och, they say it’s too dangerous all the weans together at that school so we all take turn about to have a few of them. A teacher comes here with half a dozen or more once or twice a week.’
‘The classes are held in houses?’
Madge grinned up at him.
‘You know “Mary down the road”?’
He blew out smoke. ‘Don’t tell me they have a class in her wee single-end and Dougal on constant nightshift?’
‘He snores like a pig as well. They shut curtains across the bed but it was no use. They could still hear him snorting and wheezing away. The teacher complained. She said he was putting everybody off. The teachers get awful harassed, poor buggers. But there’s times you’ve just got to laugh.’
Chuckling, she rested back on her heels.
He could see she was about to splurge into a series of domestic reminiscences and restlessness needled him.
‘Hurry up with the fire, hen,’ he urged. ‘This place is as bleak as a dungeon without it.’
‘Och, I know. I won’t be a minute. Then I’ll make the tea.’
‘What have you got, gorgeous? I’m starving!’
She struck a match and watched with pleasure as it crackled the fire into life that warmed and softened the room.
‘I’ve dried egg,’ she told him, struggling to her feet.
‘Dried egg?’ he echoed, with visions of himself chewing away like a martyr at yellow cotton wool.
Immediately she bristled like an angry porcupine.
‘Oh, maybe your fancy women can do better but we’re lucky if we manage to get dried egg here!’
Hastily he spread out his hands.
‘Great, hen! Great!’
The more he saw of civvy life, the more he was glad to be in the Navy. At least the food was good and there was plenty of it.
The Breadmakers Saga Page 31