The Breadmakers Saga

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  She turned and gazed sadly at him. Maybe it was the end of their world. She wanted to weep on his shoulder. But she knew the feeling of comfort and security in his arms would only be an illusion, a figment of her wishful thinking.

  Just as she knew that although she desperately needed sleep, it would again be denied her.

  This time she had to leap out of bed at the sound of the front door opening and closing. Dashing to the window she was horrified to see, by the light of the street lamps, the old man stomping along the crescent dressed in his striped pyjamas, his old black trilby and his working boots.

  She stumbled about the room trying to dress rapidly and get out in time to catch him before he disappeared. Different catastrophes seesawed her mind. People in the crescent could see him and they would all be disgraced.

  Or he could march straight into the river and be drowned.

  She ran outside, her face twisted with the physical distress of movement.

  Her father-in-law was nowhere to be seen.

  Clutching her coat around her, Catriona hurried on to Queen Margaret Drive where she could see as far as Great Western Road. There was still no sign of him and she doubted that he would have been able to get any further.

  Her overstretched nerves tied themselves in knots of apprehension. He must have gone down into the gardens. Running back, her eyes wide with panic, her mouth open and gasping for breath, she could see in her mind the brown bulging water of the river. In her imagination she plunged in to save the old man and drowned along with him, pulled down by his bony clinging fingers, and she sobbed out loud at the thought of the children being left without her.

  The gate creaked open and she suddenly realised that it was dark and she was alone. She hesitated for a few seconds among the high bushes, wringing her hands and anxiously biting at her lip. Then she hurried down the steep steps to find the old man sprawled at the foot of them.

  ‘Da?’ She kneeled down beside him and he looked dazedly at her. ‘It’s all right, Da. Come on. I don’t care what Melvin says. I’m going to get the doctor,’ she said, although she had long ceased to believe that the doctor could do any good either for Da or herself.

  They took ages struggling together to get up the slippery stone steps and back on to the crescent and into the house. Then she phoned the doctor and he promised, politely, to come as soon as he could.

  It was morning before he arrived and she was still up making cups of tea and filling hot-water bottles for Da. Melvin had been told what had happened and he went to the old man’s room, and stood pulling at his moustache and saying: ‘Anything you want or need, Da, just let me know. Anything at all!’

  The doctor wrote out a prescription and chatted to Melvin, and asked about the business, and said he hoped the medicine would help his father but there was nothing much anybody could do now, and added:

  ‘It’s really just his age.’

  Afterwards Melvin said:

  ‘He’s no chicken himself. Quite a nice old guy, though. I don’t mind you going to him.’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ she said bitterly. ‘Thanks for nothing!’

  She returned upstairs to tell Da she was going out to get the medicine. She felt she was on a treadmill.

  He seemed quite perky again.

  ‘Strong as a horse!’ Melvin laughed. ‘He’s wee but he’s wiry. He’ll last for years yet.’

  ‘My God,’ she thought. ‘My God!’

  Chapter 24

  Rain smeared all over Glasgow enfolding it in a damp grey mist. It blurred Catriona’s eyes as she walked. Edwardian and Victorian buildings loomed up, ghost-like, all around. Crowds of shadowy people stirred about.

  She recalled a verse she had once read from a poem called ‘Glasgow’ by Alexander Smith:

  ‘City! I am true son of thine

  Ne’er dwelt I where great mornings shine

  Around the bleating pens

  Ne’er by the rivulets I strayed

  And ne’er upon my childhood weighed

  The silence of the glens.

  Instead of shores where ocean beats

  I hear the ebb and flow of streets.’

  She liked the poem. She loved Glasgow. She could imagine nothing better in the world than living here, having a flat to go to, somewhere in which she could feel safe, somewhere legally indisputably her own. Home, recognisable, everlasting, part of the great sea of Glasgow streets.

  Dreams wafted about her mind like mist. They had no substance against the realities of pain and sickness and worry with which she was attempting to cope.

  Everyone in the solicitor’s plush carpeted office had treated her with attentive deference but she could not help wondering how much of it was due to her best clothes and her Kelvinside address. She was fast becoming aware of the yardstick of money that so many people used. Now she began to worry about how she was going to pay the solicitor’s bill. She seemed only to be adding more problems to those she already had instead of solving them.

  ‘And what can we do for you, Mrs MacNair?’ The young solicitor’s voice slid out like golden honey and he leaned forward to concentrate concern on her.

  Her gaze flickered worriedly, uncertainly.

  ‘I need help and advice.’

  ‘In a matrimonial problem, I believe.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She prayed for strength not to break down, not to sound selfish and neurotic. She prayed to be able to find the right words. And the right amount of words. Not too many. Not too few.

  ‘I’ve been very unhappy for some time,’ she said slowly and carefully, her eyes clutching at the blotting-paper on the desk as if she were reading from it. ‘I feel my marriage is affecting my health. I feel that I have a duty to the children. I must get away and take them with me before they too are made miserable and ill.’

  ‘Were you thinking in terms of divorce or legal separation, Mrs MacNair?’

  She looked up.

  ‘I don’t know. Divorce, I suppose.’

  His chair swung back and he caught himself by hitching his thumbs in his waistcoat.

  ‘There are three main grounds for divorce - desertion, cruelty and adultery. Very briefly, the position with desertion is this. If you left your husband, he could keep offering you, in writing, a home with him. If you refused to accept his offers, then you would be in desertion and he could file divorce proceedings against you. This involves a period of three years.’

  ‘I would be the guilty party.’

  He spread out his hands. ‘Technically, yes. Then there’s adultery.’

  ‘As far as I know my husband has never committed adultery, so I suppose it would have to be cruelty.’

  ‘To make cruelty stand up in court you’ve got to have charged your husband on at least two occasions with assault. Then you would have police witnesses, etcetera, to back you up.’

  ‘I see.’ A bitter laugh jerked out. ‘That seems to be it, then.’

  The solicitor pursed his lips as if to say, ‘Pity!’

  Hopelessness swamped her. Everywhere she turned it was the same.

  ‘Of course, if you could get a note from your doctor to say that your marriage was affecting your health, Mrs MacNair, then we could at least attempt to prove justification in leaving so that you would not be the guilty party.’

  ‘If I left, what would I be entitled to take with me?’

  ‘Your clothes. Articles given to you personally as gifts.’ He shrugged. ‘But, of course, you know what they say. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. If you managed to take more with you then it would be up to your husband to prove that the articles were his and that he was entitled to their return.’

  ‘I see. Oh, well.’ Smiling, Catriona gathered up her gloves and handbag. ‘I’ll go and see my doctor and then I’ll be in touch with you again. Not a very nice day, is it? So dull and wet.’

  ‘Indeed. Indeed.’ Cheerfully he leapt to his feet and made the door in a few energetic strides. ‘Going to be fog tonight, I think.’
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  Back outside, rain mixed with perspiration and wetly covered her face. She felt as if she were drowning. The journey home to Botanic Crescent stretched before her, all-absorbing, like the lonely ascent of the highest and most perilous mountain in Scotland.

  Straining herself along slowly and painfully she thought, ‘I’m going to die.’ She sensed death very near. It did not frighten her, but she felt a terrible sadness at the thought of never seeing her children again. She did not want to say goodbye to Glasgow, either. If she never felt any home belonged to her, at least she knew she belonged to Glasgow.

  Her mind clung desperately to the city. Despite her physical weakness a tough core of spiritual strength remained.

  ‘I belong to Glasgow,

  Dear old Glasgow town,

  But there’s something the matter with Glasgow

  For it’s going round and round …’

  In a daze she successfully reached Botanic Crescent, then, having reached it, remembered she had meant to go to the doctor’s for the note. But the ordeal of another agonising journey and then the seemingly impossible task of convincing the doctor that she was ill proved too much for her. She suspected too, that the doctor would not act in any way against Melvin without first discussing the matter with him. That would result in another terrible scene and she could not stand any more.

  Fumbling for her key with icy cold fingers while her life’s blood drained away her mind became more and more fuddled. She tried to pierce the grey cotton wool to find someone else she could ask for help, or somewhere else she could go, or something else she could do. But she was unable to think of anyone, or any place, or anything.

  Melvin was sitting in his favourite chair smoking his pipe. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  ‘In town for some messages. It’s an awful night. I got soaked.’

  She went through to the kitchen to peel off her wet clothes and crouch gratefully over the fire.

  The sight of Melvin had nevertheless aroused resentment in her. For years she had worked day and night as nanny, cook, cleaning woman, housekeeper, waitress, nurse, decorator, laundry maid and even shop assistant and book-keeper, because many a time she had helped Melvin fill in forms and do books for the bakery. On top of all this she had borne his children. And now at the end of all the years of slaving what had she to show for it?

  Melvin had the house in his name and he owned the furniture and everything in it. He had the business. He had the earning capacity.

  It struck her that there was a wicked inequality in law, and in marriage, and in every sphere, between the sexes.

  Anger burned feebly inside her. She tried to fan its flames but had not the strength. Every ounce of energy was needed to concentrate on making a meal and then afterwards to face the long night looking after old Duncan.

  There was no use going to bed any more. No use undressing only to dress again; to go to bed and have to rise again, to drag herself to the old man’s room to attend to him or perhaps to search for him outside, in the garden, or the crescent, or perhaps she might not hear him leave and he would wander further away.

  After Melvin left for the bakehouse, Catriona just sat in a chair as if in a trance, waiting for her father-in-law to call. Her head nodded and jerked as sleep played hide and seek with her. Sometimes when she thought she heard him, she went out to the hall and stood hunched up in an agony of listening in the silent darkness.

  All the time her head echoed with the wailing sound of her name.

  Catriona! Catriona! Catriona!

  Yet the hall was devoid of all sound except the nervous fluttering of her breathing.

  At last she could bear the suspense no longer, and she dragged herself up the stairs to make sure that he was all right.

  Immediately she went into his room and saw the old face, hollow-cheeked and sagging-jawed against the pillow, she knew he was dead.

  She leaned back against the wall, weak with relief. She admitted to herself she was glad he was dead. She could feel no guilt. She was beyond guilt or grief or caring.

  But she said out loud:

  ‘I’m sorry, Da.’

  Then she forced herself to put on her coat and go and tell Melvin.

  Before she reached the bakery, however, the rain-shimmered streets lapped slowly away from her. She felt herself without bones, a piece of seaweed undulating with the tide until it gradually engulfed her.

  Melvin did not discover until next morning that his father was dead and it was much later before he found she was in hospital.

  By that time Catriona had been through an emergency operation and had her uterus and her ovaries removed.

  ‘You were lucky!’ the surgeon told her. ‘We got you just in time. Now with plenty of rest and care you should be all right.’

  Melvin was the first person she saw after she was back in bed and coming out of the anaesthetic.

  She thought at first she was still out on the street, still in pain and still seeing Glasgow through a misty grey blue. Then Melvin’s bulbous eyes, staring wildly, came into focus. He was waving a bunch of flowers in front of her face. She tried to move her head to escape from them.

  ‘You’re all right,’ she heard him shout excitedly. ‘I knew it! I knew you couldn’t do this to me!’

  Afterwards she wondered what he meant. Was it some sort of confession of faith in her? Or was it that he had been afraid she might die like his first wife and he could not bear any more guilt?

  But why should he feel guilt?

  In the safe world of the hospital, lying tucked neatly in her white bed, drifting in and out of sleep, being conscientiously cared for by the hospital doctors and nurses, she could take a more objective view of her husband.

  Poor Melvin. Surely he was no more responsible for harming his first wife than she was responsible for the death of her baby.

  When he came back to visit her she managed to thank him for the flowers. He seemed pleased, and strolled around the bed jingling coins in his pockets and assuring her:

  ‘Anything you need or want, just tell me.’

  She did not answer him. She only smiled then closed her eyes and pretended to have fallen asleep.

  She felt an instinct of quiet prudence taking root. Her first need was to survive. Layers of caution enfolded her. She drew them around like secrets she would never divulge or share.

  But she wrote to Madge and to Julie and let them know that she was in hospital.

  Madge said, ‘I told you, didn’t I? Some people have all the luck! Now you’ve had everything taken away and you’ll never be able to have any more weans!’

  Melvin and the boys had been by her bedside when Julie arrived bright and smart and talkative, yet with restless eyes that kept straying to Melvin and the children.

  Madge envied her the family she could not have and Julie envied her the family she had. The next time they came and left together, and before she went away Madge said:

  ‘Oh, by the way, you’ll never guess who’s coming around our place now. Him and Alec are the best of pals.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Sammy Hunter. Ruth’s man. He knows about Alec being with her that night as well.’

  ‘Fancy!’

  ‘It makes you think, doesn’t it?’ Madge said. ‘Maybe the big midden was telling me the truth after all.’

  ‘Have I met this Sammy?’ Julie asked.

  ‘No, hen,’ Madge laughed. ‘But you’re welcome to come to my place any night he’s there. That’ll be a laugh, eh? Me as a matchmaker!’

  Julie rolled her eyes.

  ‘I only made a perfectly casual remark.’

  Catriona smiled.

  ‘He’s nice, Julie. I like Sammy very much.’

  ‘Hey, you! Less of it!’ Madge punched her in the arm. ‘Never you mind liking Sammy very much. You’ve got a man already.’ She winked at Julie. ‘Now that she can’t be caught out there’ll be no holding her back. Randy wee bugger!’

  Catriona shook her head.

&nbs
p; ‘Madge, you’re terrible.’

  But she felt a little more cheerful, a little more reassured and a little stronger after their visit.

  ‘It’s terribly kind of both of you to come and see me like this,’ she told them earnestly. ‘It means a lot to me. You’ve no idea how I appreciate it.’

  Julie laughed and as if on an impulse came back to the bedside and dropped a quick kiss on her cheek.

  ‘No need to look so serious, pal. It’s a hard life, but if we keep working at it we’ll survive!’

  Madge strode back too and kissed her noisily on the brow. ‘You’re a right silly wee midden, always have been!’

  For a long time after they left, Catriona felt warmed by their affection and friendship. She felt strangely cheered by what Madge had been saying about Sammy, too. It occurred to her how fascinating it was that in such odd little unexpected ways one person could influence another. Everybody was like a pebble dropping into a pool, making ripples that went on and on, their effect widening and widening.

  By deciding to behave in a certain way Sammy had influenced Madge, although he probably did not know it, and now he was indirectly influencing her in her hospital bed as she struggled to regain strength and purpose to face the world outside.

  Suddenly she felt keenly and urgently aware of the importance of ordinary day-to-day human relationships. It seemed to her that every word everybody ever said, every attitude, every action, helped to swell the influence of either good or bad in the world. The fact that the pebbles could not see the ripples did not matter. There was no doubt at all that the ripples were there.

  And if every casual word or deed to strangers had vital importance in the scheme of things, how much more valuable and meaningful were those of family and friends. Couldn’t she influence, even in tiny ways, her mother and people beyond her mother? Couldn’t she influence Melvin, and the children and their children, and into the future in wider and wider reaches without end? And if Madge and Julie could help and influence her in the most unconscious and unexpected ways - couldn’t she sometime, in some way, do the same for them?