The Breadmakers Saga

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  The door was barely closed when Melvin whispered excitedly:

  ‘Fate, that’s what it is! I was admiring these terrace houses on the way here. “That’s what I call a spacious house,” I said to myself. “That’s the kind of place anybody would be proud of.” Come on, we’ll have another look.’

  She could hardly believe her ears.

  ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘It’s fate, I tell you.’

  ‘Melvin, they’re huge. Don’t be ridiculous. They’ve got three storeys not counting the attics and cellars. We couldn’t possibly keep a house like that. Julie says Reggie’s grandmother has money of her own. They’ve got a living-in servant and a daily char.’

  Melvin hitched back his shoulders. ‘Maybe one day I’ll be able to employ servants too. I’m not going to be content with a small bakery business this time. I’m going to build up something really big. MacNair is going to be a household word before I’m through. And I’m going to have that house. And it’s going to be like a palace.’

  ‘You’re away in a world of dreams,’ Catriona said.

  Chapter 15

  Julie’s greatest fear was that the letter would disintegrate or in some way vanish. She opened it tenderly and read it. She had already consumed every word a hundred times or more.

  ‘My own dearest wife,

  You’ll probably never receive this. I certainly hope you don’t.

  I just thought I’d dash off a few words in case I “failed to return” - as they say.

  Well, I’ve always returned so far, and I’ve more reason than ever to come back now that you’re waiting for me.

  I keep thinking what a lucky chap I am. Wasn’t it a stroke of luck you liked Felix Mendleson’s Hawaiian Band and went to hear him that night at Green’s Playhouse? I thank my lucky stars over and over again that I decided to go there that night too.

  It was the merest chance, darling. I sweat every time I think of it but I nearly went to the Locarno.

  I might never have seen you standing there in front of one of the pillars with your head in the air and that perky look that seemed a kind of challenge. I might never have felt the smoothness of your skin, sweet talcum-smelling like a baby’s. I might never have shared those precious private moments when you gave yourself to me with such loving generosity.

  I couldn’t bring myself to say this to you in person, darling, and probably I’ll always be too embarrassed to say the words to your face, but - thank you for loving me.

  I love you, Julie.

  But, my own dear, proud little brand-new wife, if anything should happen to me tonight, don’t spend the rest of your life thinking about me and what might have been. You’re too young for that.

  I want you to be cherished and looked after. I want you to be happy. I want you to have a lifetime of love and happiness.

  From your adoring husband,

  Reggie.’

  She folded the letter away in her handbag. She did not know what to do. She lit a cigarette and watched her father briskly splash water on his face then attack it with a towel. He was getting ready to go out again.

  ‘Everybody’s acting like they want me fur their best pal the day, hen.’ He rubbed his hands and did a little joyous shuffle. ‘I’ve had that many laughs and blethers wi’ folk ma head’s spinning.’

  ‘I know what’s making your head spin. You don’t fool me, you auld rascal. When you come in tonight - it’s straight through to the room with you, do you hear? Don’t you dare come staggering into this kitchen wakening me with any of your drunken chatter.’

  ‘You’re no’ staying in, are ye, hen?’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ll probably go over to Catriona’s. Away you go and don’t worry about me.’

  She turned away stretching lazily, as if she had not a care in the world.

  ‘Cheerio then, hen. Try and enjoy yersel’.’

  ‘Aye, aw right. Cheerio, Dad.’

  She took a deep drag at her cigarette then tossed it into the fire.

  She stared at herself in the mantelpiece mirror. There she was. Dark glossy hair. Milky skin. Emerald eyes. Not bad-looking. Good figure. Twenty years of age. Widow. Widow about to celebrate Victory day.

  What victory?

  She lit another cigarette and went out still smoking it. Her mother-in-law would not approve of that. Smoking in the street. Tut tut. Not that she would criticise. She was too much of a lady for that but she might gently advise or exude that aura of ladylike suffering that made it only too obvious you were offending her sensibilities.

  She wished Mrs Vincent would leave her alone, get off her back, forget she had ever existed. It was a strain never knowing when she would pop into the shop and invite her in that casual but determined way to lunch in MacDonald’s or Wylie & Lochead’s. Or phone the shop with an invitation to Kelvinside to see about something or other. Letters often arrived asking the same questions or, worse, just anxiously enquiring about her health.

  Shaking Mrs Vincent off had proved impossible for more reasons than one. Julie had tried. Over and over again she had made promises to call at Kelvinside and then never turned up. It only made the situation worse. Her mother-in-law rushed to contact her again to make sure that everything was all right. She refused to take offence and never stopped pressing invitations and presents on her.

  Julie knew how she felt. It was not that Mrs Vincent cared about her. Her son was all that had ever mattered and in his wife she somehow saw her last link with him.

  Often Julie felt the same way. Occasionally loneliness overcame her and she went to visit the Vincents of her own free will. Always she regretted it. If Mr Vincent was there she felt out on a limb, lonelier than ever, isolated in that special kind of severance peculiar to widows. The pain of this could flare into agonising proportions by just being in the company of a married couple, even though the married couple’s relationship was far from perfect. They still had a relationship. They were a pair. They could fight together, gossip together, eat together, sleep together.

  She was neither one thing nor the other. She was no longer the single, carefree, uninitiated girl she had once been. Oceans of sadness cut her off from single girls. Yet she was not married like married women either. Night after night in bed she fevered to have her husband by her side and this physical agony was only a small part of a world of grief at losing him.

  If Mrs Vincent was alone the visit was no happier. There would be the torment of seeing Reggie’s photos and hearing all about his exploits as a child. They spoke about him nearly all the time. It was terrible.

  There seemed so much of Reggie’s life she had never shared. She wanted to see the photographs, to touch his cricket bat and his old school bag, and his favourite books, to sit on the chairs he had sat on, to hold close to her the clothes he had worn.

  Yet it was terrible. She avoided going to Kelvinside as much as she could.

  Tonight she felt compelled to go somewhere and her conscience nagged at her that it might be a kindness to visit Mrs Vincent. Walking smartly round to Bridge Street to catch the subway, she tried to be sensible, to fight the strange horror rising inside her. Maybe she would drop in for a few minutes after visiting Catriona.

  Visits to Catriona were different now. Her husband had returned and Catriona was obsessed by all the apparent worries this entailed. They were in the throes of buying some ridiculously big house and Catriona did not know how she would ever be able to clean and polish it all.

  She had shrugged and told Catriona:

  ‘Well, don’t.’

  But she envied Catriona her trouble with her house and her husband, her planning, her worrying, all her homely harassments.

  It was obvious when she arrived at Byres Road and Catriona opened the door that she had been weeping. Her hazel eyes were inflamed and her face looked hot and blotchy.

  ‘Oh, come in, Julie. It’s nice to see you.’ Her voice shrivelled to a whisper. ‘He’s got this business and he’s wanting
me to manage the shop as well. Did you ever hear anything so ridiculous? The house has ten rooms counting the attics. I don’t know how I’m going to manage that.’

  Before Julie reached the kitchen and entered the family circle she already felt out of it, an intruder. Before she was inside, she itched to escape. To be a non-participator, an observer, meant spending the rest of the evening smiling hypocritically on an icy fringe. It was unendurable.

  ‘I’ve only dropped in for a minute. I thought I might say hello to the old ma-in-law and then scamper off to join the celebrations in George Square. Aren’t you lot going?’

  Catriona darted an uncertain look at Melvin.

  ‘Actually, I wanted to take some things to Madge.’

  ‘Of course we’re going. This is VJ night.’ Melvin allowed his words to puff out in between sucking at the pipe he kept gripped firmly between his teeth. ‘The police pipe band’s going to be playing in George Square and the City Chambers is going to be floodlit and they’ve got fairy-lights in all the trees. I knew we’d win in the end.’

  ‘I’ve these things to take to Madge first, Melvin. I won’t be long.’

  ‘What do you mean, you won’t be long? She lives in Springburn!’

  ‘No, they’re squatters now. They’re in a house over in Huntley Gardens.’

  ‘Squatters?’ Melvin aimed his pipe at her as if it were a gun. ‘You wash your hands of them. No wife of mine is going to get mixed up with that mob. A crowd of right no-users.’

  The red blotches on Catriona’s face merged into a scarlet flush.

  ‘Nobody’s ever any use as far as you’re concerned. You always seem to see the worst in people. Well, Madge helped me when I needed it and I’m going to help her now.

  ‘OK. OK.’ Julie laughed. ‘Call it a draw, pals. I’ll deliver the goods. Where are they?’

  Catriona hesitated, taken aback by the offer as if she had forgotten Julie existed.

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Julie, but I shouldn’t ask you.’

  ‘You’re not asking me.’ Shrugging, she lit a cigarette. ‘I’m at a loose end. It’ll give me something to do.’

  ‘It’s just some food and odds and ends in this basket. Well, all right but stay and have a cup of tea first.’

  ‘No, thanks all the same but I’d rather be off.’ She lifted the basket. ‘Take it easy, pals. The war’s over, remember.’

  Catriona followed her apologetically out to the hall.

  ‘I’m sorry you’re having to rush away, Julie. Come again soon and stay for a meal.’ Her voice contracted into a hiss. ‘Isn’t he terrible? You know where it is, don’t you? Cross the road and …’

  ‘Stop worrying!’ Julie laughed, but returning back down the stairs she kept swallowing at the lump in her throat. It would have been different if Catriona had been on her own. They could have spent the evening giggling and gossiping together. It would have been company and something to do.

  She flicked her cigarette into the gutter when she reached the street and crossed the road with quick capable steps. At the other side she glanced round to see if Catriona had come to the window as usual to give her a wave. The window was empty. Catriona would have completely forgotten her and returned to the absorbing world of conflict that she and her husband shared.

  At the sedate little backwater called Huntley Gardens, in a terraced house thundering with the noise of children’s feet on bare floorboards and vibrating at fever pitch with the racket of voices, Julie had the same experience of being alone, on the outside of a world shared by absorbed, together people, a world in which she belonged, yet had no longer any place.

  Madge’s husband invited her in and introduced himself as Alec. He was tall and broad-shouldered and had a tanned face with dark, sexy eyes that immediately awakened with appreciation when he saw her. He held out his hands.

  ‘If you’re a policewoman come to arrest me, I’ll come quietly, hen, but you’d be safer if you put the handcuffs on!’

  She chuckled.

  ‘Do I look like a policewoman?’

  ‘You look gorgeous!’

  Madge came striding into the hall then with a baby hanging on her hip, its mouth plugged with a dummy teat and its legs wide like a frog’s.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked, tucking her straggly hair behind her ears and at the same time hoisting up the slithering baby.

  Julie held out the basket.

  ‘Not a thing, pal. Not a thing. These are from Catriona.’

  ‘Och, she’s a good wee soul, isn’t she?’ Madge was slightly abashed. ‘I’m sorry I can’t ask you to stay for a cup of tea, hen. There’s God knows how many other families here and only one cooker.’ She erupted in a bluster of laughter that jerked the baby off his perch on her hip again. She hauled him back up. ‘It’s hellish, sure it is, Alec.’

  ‘You’re not kidding!’ Alec groaned. ‘And it’ll get worse, not better. They say they’re going to turn off the water and electricity.’

  ‘Och, we’ll manage somehow.’

  ‘But, Madge, hen, I keep telling you …’

  ‘I know what you keep telling me …’

  ‘But we’ve got to face facts sooner or later.’

  ‘We’re facing facts now but we’re facing them together and that’s how it should be!’

  ‘Excuse me, pals, I’ll have to go. I’m off to George Square to join in the wild celebrations and all that,’ Julie interrupted. ‘I hope you manage all right, Madge. I’ll be hearing from Catriona how you get on.’

  Back outside again, she walked smartly yet without paying any attention to direction. She was away down Byres Road before she could see through her mist of wretchedness. It had been her intention to pay Mrs Vincent a visit and then take the blue tram into town. Her heels went off beat, slowed a little, made to turn, then stopped. She knew she would not be able to bear the Vincents tonight. Yet she longed to make some contact, some sort of communion with Reggie.

  University Avenue led off Byres Road and on impulse she started walking quickly along it until she reached the grey spired and turreted university building, then she went straight in unchallenged with her shoulders back and her head in the air.

  Some young men wearing long university scarves came down the steps of one of the buildings. She wondered if they realised how lucky they were. The war was over. They would have a chance to live. She turned away from the building and gazed at the magnificent view of Glasgow stretched out underneath as far as the eye could see, from the hill she was standing on to the far hills in the distance.

  Down to the right beyond fat green banks of trees was Kelvin Park and the art galleries. To the left high on the horizon rose the elegant ring of terraced houses called Park Circus. Hidden by more trees but on a map looking like the tiers of a wedding cake, were the other beautiful terraces, some of the many examples of Glasgow’s fine architecture.

  Reggie had loved Glasgow, too. He had been much more knowledgeable about it than her, of course. She remembered one day he had taken her out on a tour of the city. Buildings she had passed every day, places she had known all her life had taken on new meaning and interest. Hand in hand they stopped and stared and gazed up as he told her little anecdotes about the history of different places.

  She had never been in Glasgow Cathedral until that day when Reggie had taken her and she remembered how she had enjoyed him quoting Zachary Boyd who had once been bishop in the cathedral and who had fancied himself as a poet. Apparently Zachary Boyd had left his money to the university on condition that they published his poetry. The university had taken the money but could never bring themselves to fulfil the condition.

  ‘That wasn’t fair!’ she protested, but Reggie laughed and said: ‘You haven’t heard any of his poetry. Listen to this:

  And Jacob made for his wee Josie,

  A tartan coat to keep him cosie,

  And what for no?

  There was nae harm,

  Tae kep the lad baith safe and warm.’

 
She laughed then too.

  ‘Well, he had a good Scots tongue in his head. There’s nothing wrong with that.’

  They were going to have such a wonderful time together. He had been going to teach her so much. They were going to love each other so passionately and for so long.

  She ached for him now. She tried to suck his spirit from the air around her. But it was flesh and blood and reality she needed. She hurried away from the university again and caught a tramcar into town.

  It was beginning to get dark. The city was ringed with bonfires and a ceiling of sparks glistened all the time in the air. Around the bonfires children and adults danced. In every street there were rings of dancers. People had been celebrating all day. Public houses had been so busy that they had run dry and closed two hours earlier than the normal time. Revellers spilled out on to the streets. Thousands converged from the suburbs to the centre of Glasgow. People buzzed from buildings as if the place was a city of hives.

  Every vehicle that passed was a throng of riotously happy figures clinging to running-boards and luggage-racks. Crowds of uniformed men roamed the streets drinking out of bottles. The air cracked and quivered with flags. Bugles blew. Trumpets tooted. Men in shirtsleeves pranced about the streets playing wildly on accordions to dancing crowds. Kilted pipers swaggered along followed by strutting, laughing children.

  Young people marched in battalions through the centre of the city and were joined by thousands of others to besiege George Square.

  By the time Julie crushed and jostled her way towards the square it was a solid mass of completely abardoned, riotously happy people, many of whom were climbing up the statues and trying to bring cheer to stone faces by the offer of whisky.

  Coloured lights were strung over all the trees surrounding the square and the City Chambers were floodlit.