The Breadmakers Saga

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  ‘I don’t suppose they’d do you any harm. They seem to be away in a world of their own.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not that I’m frightened. It just makes me feel sad to look at them.’

  They went into the house and Catriona hurried through to the kitchen to see if the fire was still lit.

  Any kind of fuel was desperately difficult to come by and coalmen no longer bothered to deliver what little they had.

  You had to go to the coalyards and queue up in the hopes of getting a ration of coke or wood, or now and then some briquettes made from nobody knew what.

  Catriona had built the fire up very carefully with wet newspapers, a few briquettes and plenty of dross.

  ‘Oh, good!’ she said, seeing the faint red glimmer underneath all the smoky black. ‘It’s still in. Now wee Robert’s nose will get a chance to thaw out.’

  Tenderly she kissed the nose before sitting down, balancing the baby on her knees and stripping off the bonnet, mitts and coat.

  Fergus was lying back on the opposite chair reading a book.

  ‘Hello, son,’ she greeted him. ‘Are you hungry for your tea?’

  ‘I’ve been hungry for ages.’

  ‘Well, it won’t be long now. You start setting the table and maybe Uncle Sammy will run up to Mrs Jackson’s for Andrew.’

  ‘Right,’ Sammy agreed. ‘I’ll go and fetch him now.’

  Fergus carefully put a marker in his book before laying it down and it was a minute or two before a question registered in Catriona’s mind.

  ‘What was that you put in your book, Fergus?’

  ‘It’s to mark my place.’

  ‘I know. But what is it? Let me see.’

  It was a letter from Melvin.

  ‘When did this arrive? How did you get it? You’re a very bad boy, Fergus. You must never touch other people’s letters.’

  ‘It was Andrew,’ Fergus said. ‘Andrew gave it to me.’

  Catriona sighed.

  ‘Oh, Fergus, for goodness’ sake go and set the table.’

  She propped the happy, gurgling baby against the cushion behind her and hastily ripped open the letter.

  One minute later she had torn the envelope and its contents into shreds and was about to poke them into the fire when she realised that one jab at the carefully balanced dross might collapse the whole thing in a belch of black smoke and completely extinguish the tiny red promise of heat.

  She put the poker down and stuffed the paper into the pocket of her dress instead.

  Lizzie must have written to Melvin and told him about Sammy staying in the house.

  ‘By the time you get this letter’, he wrote, ‘I’ll be overseas again and what have I got to think of when I’m away? I’ll think up ways of doing that conchie. I’ll practise my physical jerks night and day, especially my hand grips. Even under my blankets at night I’ll do my hand grips. Because the first thing I’m going to do when I meet that conchie is to take him unawares and shake him by the hand. “Hello there,” I’ll say in a big friendly voice while I’m crushing his hand to pulp and splinters.’

  Sometimes she suspected that Melvin was a little mad and now she feared that the madness of war might combine with his own madness and swell it to dangerous proportions.

  She looked ahead to the time when Melvin would return, and a wave of apprehension threatened to swamp her. Then Andrew’s plump little figure appeared at her elbow and she had to hold back the wave. She had to smile lovingly down at him.

  ‘Are you a hungry wee boy too, eh?’

  It was a blessing, she told herself, that she had plenty to do to keep herself occupied. She was almost glad now that she had to help in the shop. To keep busy with a host of little tasks and duties was essential. This was the lifeline to which she must cling. The little things were the most important. The tin of beans she was busily opening at this moment to feed her children with. The pot on the cooker to heat them. The spoons the children were clutching in eager anticipation.

  All the little necessities of normal life. The washing up cloth. The plug for the sink. The baby’s bottle, bouncy brown teats. His bath in front of the fire. The cracked yellow duck that swam lopsided.

  The chipped cup that she kept for herself. The extra cup of tea in the teapot to be drunk after all the children were attended to. Teddy bears and golliwogs and comforters. All the bits and pieces that were needed in life and were part of the pattern.

  ‘You look tired.’

  Sammy flashed her a look from under jutting brows.

  The kitchen was cleared, the children asleep, and the old man was listening to his wireless and enjoying a pipe through in his own room.

  Catriona nodded. She was thinking that it was time for the air-raid warning to go, and her eyes strayed up to the clock as the sirens began to wail.

  She felt so tired, she would have liked to close her eyes and drop off to sleep right there and then on the chair.

  No hope of that, though. There was not much chance of a sleep anywhere now. She might as well get ready for the trek downstairs.

  The nightly racket had become earsplitting, the painful din of giant fireworks exploding and vibrating all the time in the echo chamber of the head.

  ‘Nothing to worry about,’ people assured each other. ‘It’s only our own guns.’

  The big guns on the ships and the guns on the docks. And all the ack-ack guns firing from the street.

  As Sammy carried Fergus and the mattress downstairs to the bakehouse lobby and then Robert in his pram and then Andrew, Catriona struggled to concentrate on gathering together all the bits and pieces and odds and ends, trying not to be engulfed or confused by the appalling din, the hysterical wailing of sirens, the low thrum of planes sounding too heavy for the roof to hold, the sharp crack-crack so near that it violently rattled the windows, the (so-far) distant crump-crump of bombs.

  They greeted each other cheerily in the bakehouse lobby, shouting at the pitch of their voices to make themselves heard above the pandemonium outside.

  ‘Hello, Nellie! Is your stomach still bad, hen? I’ve brought a wee pinch of baking soda just in case.’

  ‘Oh, ta! You could have had a spoonful of my sugar if it hadn’t been for Paw. I was saving it in a jar,’ Nellie wailed. ‘Paw thought it was washing soda and emptied it into a basin of hot water and steeped his feet in it.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’

  There was a howl of sympathy.

  Angus’s son Tam, the wee white-haired baker with the big muscly arms, came barging through with two chairs above his head.

  ‘Here’s your seat, Paw, and yours, Mr MacNair.’

  The old men’s chairs were always placed as near as possible to the lavatory door. Robert’s pram and the mattress with Fergus and Andrew were set in the middle. Then with much squeezing and pushing and grunting everyone settled down, their backs supported by pillows, cushions and lobby walls, arms and legs tangled together.

  ‘Watch my feet, for pity’s sake,’ Sandy the vanman pleaded. ‘See, if anybody tramps on my bunions … !’

  His floppy bloodhound face screwed up at the thought.

  ‘Look at that wee pet.’ Catriona nodded towards the baby. ‘Wide awake and not a whimper.’

  She was sitting on the floor at the side of the pram with her knees hugged up under her chin. Leaning her head to one side she began to sing to the baby, who stared at her wide-eyed with delight.

  ‘Wee Willie Winkie,

  Runs through the town,

  Up stairs and down stairs

  In his night-gown,

  Tirling at the window,

  Crying at the lock—

  Are all the weans in their beds,

  For it’s now ten o’clock?’

  Baldy Fowler appeared, huge and merry and slightly drunk, staggered over everybody and made a place for himself.

  ‘Come on! Come on!’ he hollered. ‘The crowd of you aren’t cheery enough tonight, where’s all the Glasgow spirit gone?’

  ‘D
own your throat!’ somebody replied and sent up a roar of laughter.

  ‘Let’s have a song.’ Baldy waved a fist about as if he had a flag in it. ‘Let’s have a good old Glasgow song!’

  ‘Right!’ Tam smacked his palms together and gave them an energetic rub. ‘Here we go, then. Everybody together:

  ‘I belong to Glasgow!

  Dear old Glasgow Town—

  But—there’s somethin’ the matter with Glasgow for—

  It’s going round and round!

  I’m only a common old working chap, as anyone here can see

  But—when I get a couple of drinks on a Saturday—

  Glasgow belongs to me!’

  After several repeats, delivered with great gusto, it was decided that it was time for Catriona to make tea.

  She smiled to herself as she set the cups out on a tray.

  They were belting out another one now, their road voices energetically bouncing and swaggering with typical Glasgow panache.

  ‘Just a wee doch and doris,

  Just a wee yin that’s a’,

  Just a wee doch and doris,

  Before ye gang awa’,

  There’s a wee wifie waitin’

  In a wee but and ben,

  And if you say “it’s a braw bricht moonlicht nicht”,

  Yer aw richt, ye ken!’

  The song screeched to an end in a howling bedlam of laughter, above and outside of which Catriona distinguished a fast, piercing whistle.

  Then the building collapsed.

  For a few minutes the protesting roar of the tenement took possession of Catriona’s brain. She was deafened, blinded, knocked off balance. She found herself on her hands and knees wandering around in circles like a bewildered animal. The air parched and thickened with plaster dust. Her eyes stung. She began to cough.

  Then other sounds filtered through the blackness. Moans, and muffled bursts of screaming punctuated by brief disbelieving silences. There was sifting, sighing sounds, and creaking, splintering sounds. The old building groaned as it disintegrated, with as much anguish as the people who were part of it.

  A high, reedy voice squealed:

  ‘Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!’

  It stabbed Catriona to life, made her claw like a maniac towards it, ignoring the jagged stones and twisted metal tearing at her body.

  ‘It’s all right, wee lovey. It’s all right, Mummy’s here!’

  She reached Andy’s legs and wrenched up the piece of wood that covered the rest of him.

  ‘You’re all right, Andy. You’re all right, son. You’re all right.’

  Blindly she fought to pull him into her arms.

  ‘Mummy’s going to make everything all right. Mummy won’t let anything hurt you.’

  Mummy won’t let anything hurt you. Who took this right away from me? she thought.

  She waited for endless time, hushing and holding the child in her arms, waited and listened to the moans and the screams and the sounds of people far off. Until at last hands came towards her and lifted her with the child out of the tomb into a dark winter’s morning.

  An army of black ghosts was wandering across the Main Road towards the ferry.

  Dazedly, with Andrew cradled in her arms, Catriona joined them.

  There was nowhere else to go. All round her Clydend was burning.

  Chapter 29

  Across at the other side of the river people were gathering to watch helplessly as Clydend went up in flames, a red ball in a black sky.

  When it was realised that their side of the river might soon be an inferno it was decided to get survivors shuttled as far away as possible from the docks and the built-up working-class area, away to the wealthy country districts of Bearsden and Milngavie.

  Already, as if the thought had flown around the inhabitants by telepathy, motor cars were rolling in to block the streets by the riverside, queuing nose to tail. Hands gripping steering-wheels, eyes straining to peer through windscreens, their drivers waited impatiently as the Clydend ferry slid towards them, emerging slowly and smoothly from the flames over the black mirror of water. The Clyde was a riot with leaping, glowing reflection as if a red-hot sunrise had exploded across it.

  As the ferry drew in and the heavy chains clanked, the drivers contracted stomach muscles, clutched steering-wheels tighter and braced themselves for the hysterical invasion of the hurt and the distraught.

  Instead, the ferry brought only a strange immobility and utter silence. The whole thing was uncanny. The people of Clydend stood packed together yet completely alone, every soul suspended in silence behind a vacant mask.

  For a minute or two, the watchers fell into the same immobility. Then suddenly movement scattered everything in a flurry and rush.

  People squeezed on to the ferry, took the Clydend folk by the arms and led them off in a buzz of activity and strange posh accents.

  Somebody put Catriona into the back seat of a car and she sat automatically nursing Andrew in her arms and staring straight ahead. She had never been in a private motor car in her life. She just could not be in one now. It was a fragment of a dream. A dream that she was a part of, though as in all dreams she was watching it from somewhere outside. All she needed to do was to be patient. Sooner or later dreams, even nightmares, came to an end.

  The car sped on and by the time hands helped her out darkness was beginning to fade into misty grey light.

  Somebody said:

  ‘You’re all right now. Don’t worry, nothing ever happens here. This is Bearsden!’

  The air reeked with burnt porridge.

  Another voice:

  ‘The ladies are making breakfast for all of you in the church hall.’

  ‘I want my baby,’ Catriona said.

  ‘You’ve got your baby in your arms, dear. George, I suppose I ought to take the child from her. Under all that dirt he might be injured. Oh, my God!’

  A woman’s face came nearer. The face was delicately painted and topped by a glossy fur hat. The hat was knocked sideways in the woman’s struggle to wrench Andrew away.

  Andrew was gone.

  People milled about. The porridge smell grew stronger. Faces blurred in a confusion of movement and an excited babble. Expensively dressed women fluttered about near to tears and waving spoons. Voices swooped into a circle of echoes and spun around.

  ‘My baby! My baby!’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ somebody gasped with harassment. ‘Lots of families have become separated. There’s children all over the place. We’re trying our best to get everybody organised.’

  Over at the other end of the hall she saw Fergus, listening intently to a man who was hunkered down in front of him holding his hands.

  She thought she saw Sammy.

  ‘I want my baby!’

  ‘There’s lots of places he could be,’ a kindlier tone assured her. ‘They’ve taken children to Milngavie as well. Try not to worry. You’ll find him.’

  She wandered away from the hall and discovered the road outside busy with movement. A stream of cars was shuttling to and from the river. In comparison the pavement was quiet and cool. It glimmered with early morning dew like a carpet of stars. The stars winked at her, here, there, everywhere, minute yet diamond-clear, flashing up in vivid sparkle, disappearing, darting, dazzling.

  She had been walking for a minute or two before she became aware of a car slowing alongside her. The driver, a young man with an eager to please face, was asking her if she wanted a lift. She got into the car without saying anything and the young man eyed her uncertainly and asked:

  ‘Are you all right? Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’

  She knew what she was doing, all right. She was going back for Robert.

  It was daylight now and the fires of Clydend had been extinguished. Most of the tenement buildings or parts of buildings were left standing. Some people had returned to, or perhaps had never left, those houses that had escaped serious damage.

  Ambulances were trying to manoeuvre throug
h blocked streets. Air-raid wardens and police in steel helmets and men in shirt sleeves and women with dirt-streaked faces were digging in the grey mountains of rubble.

  Catriona went to the heap of stones and debris that once had been Number One Dessie Street. Her feet stumbled over it until she was picking her way cautiously on all fours. She stopped at what she thought might be the right part. Maybe under here was some remnant that would prove to her that she was home.

  She began lifting stones and chunks of rubble and setting them neatly aside.

  She found a red velvet cushion and a pudding spoon, a rubber hot-water bottle and a knitted woollen rabbit.

  Important things.

  She concentrated on her digging with great care and attention.

  But from somewhere a wireless was harassing the air with unnecessary sound.

  ‘… we shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans … We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing-grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills … we shall never surrender … and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated or starving, then our Empire beyond the seas … would carry on the struggle … until in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue of the Old …

  ‘Let us therefore brace ourselves … that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say, “This was their finest hour”!

  ‘You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory - victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival …’

  ‘Oh, shut up! Shut up!’ Catriona said, and went on with her digging. ‘A baby might be crying!’

  A SORT OF PEACE

  The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

  Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

  Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

  Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.