Clydesiders at War

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  Euphemia helped herself to another biscuit. Both she and Bridget enjoyed eating and didn’t care how fat they got. The twins never used the word ‘fat’, they always proudly maintained that they were ‘generously moulded’. Florence, on the other hand, was very careful of her figure.

  Euphemia said, ‘Joe isn’t off until the weekend.’

  ‘Pete’s the same,’ Bridget added, ‘so I can stay the night as well.’

  Teresa made a fresh pot of tea and put some more digestive biscuits onto a plate.

  Granny said, ‘This is gonnae be a right circus, if ye ask me.’

  ‘Now, now, Granny, nobody’s asking you. Have another digestive and drink your tea.’

  Granny’s gums chomped over the biscuit. Her arthritis was so bad that these days she couldn’t even cope with wearing her teeth. ‘Aye well, ah’ll soon tell them whit ah think o’ the Cartwrights.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing, Granny. You’ll be nice and polite to them.’

  ‘Or jist keep yer gob shut, Ma,’ Erchie said. ‘It’s gonnae be hard enough without you stirrin’ things up.’

  ‘Nice an’ polite tae the Cartwrights?’ Granny spluttered biscuit crumbs onto her shawl. ‘Johnny Maclean’ll be birlin’ in his grave at the very idea!’

  Florence lit up a cigarette, her eyes dreamy. ‘Maybe they’ll invite us over to their place. Fancy visiting in the West End! Wait till I tell the other girls about this.’ Florence was now in the glove department of Copeland & Lye’s. Ladies came in and, with hands stuck up, rested an elbow on the velvet cushion Florence placed on the counter. Then Florence would gently, expertly, smooth down over the hand a beautiful and very expensive leather glove. Maybe Mrs Cartwright senior and junior had been among her ladies.

  ‘Aren’t you girls supposed to be at work tomorrow?’ Teresa asked as she went over to dust the crumbs off Granny and tidy her kirby grip further into her hair.

  ‘For pity’s sake, Mammy,’ Florence said, ‘I wouldn’t be able to do a stroke. I’ll get Eddie to phone in and say I’m sick or something.’

  ‘And I’ll phone Pettigrews,’ Euphemia added. Both she and Bridget worked in the millinery department of Pettigrew & Stephen’s in Sauchiehall Street, just along from the equally high class Copeland & Lye’s. Florence always insisted that Copeland’s was the place, far more high class than Pettigrews, or anywhere else.

  ‘Don’t be silly, dear. They won’t believe both you and Bridget are sick at the same time.’

  Euphemia giggled. ‘Yes they will. We’re twins. We’re supposed to do everything together.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Bridget agreed. She looked exactly like her sister, they both had the same chubby faces, brown hair tucked behind their ears in a bunch of curls held firmly in place with kirby grips. A smaller, shorter but equally tight bunch of curls decorated each forehead, and they both had mouths slashed with the same scarlet lipstick.

  ‘A right circus,’ Granny repeated, stretching a shaky hand out for another biscuit.

  ‘Well now,’ Teresa said, ‘if you’re staying, you can make yourselves useful. This place will have to have a good clean. And that rug will have to have a good shake out in the back yard.’

  Granny had made the multi-coloured rag rug many years ago, before her arthritis was so bad.

  ‘For pity’s sake, Mammy!’ Florence cast her eyes upwards. ‘Haven’t you any modern equipment?’

  ‘What do you mean, modern equipment?’

  ‘I have a special mop for my kitchen floor. Nobody goes down on their knees with a scrubbing brush nowadays.’

  ‘What nonsense. You’re getting too stuck up for your own good, Florence. Ever since you’ve been in that Copeland & Lye’s.’

  ‘The kitchen’s fine the way it is,’ Wincey interrupted.

  ‘Anyway,’ Euphemia said, ‘you should show them into the front room, not the kitchen.’

  Bridget eagerly nodded her agreement. ‘Yes, that’s definitely the done thing.’

  ‘A right bloody circus. Ye’re no’ gonnae wheel me through tae that cold room. Ah’m stayin’ here by the fire. Far better tae bring them in here anyway. More natural in the kitchen. They won’t thank ye for puttin’ on airs an’ graces, an’ tryin’ tae impress them. They’ll no’ be comin’ here tae admire oor front room. They’ll no’ be seein’ anythin’ or anybody but Wincey.’

  ‘Yes,’ Teresa nodded. ‘You’re quite right, Granny. It’s best if we all just try to relax and be natural. After all, when anyone else drops in, especially in the morning, it’s the kitchen we welcome them into. The kitchen’s the heart of the house, I always say.’

  Florence heaved a sigh. Her mother had no idea. She had never mixed with ladies. And she was so old fashioned. She had too many grey hairs for a woman not yet fifty. She refused to get it coloured and just had it cut short and held on one side by a large kirby grip, just like Granny’s. Florence’s own hair was long and glossy and smoothly curled in behind her ears and down onto her shoulders. Outside she always wore a smart brimmed hat, tipped well forward over her brow. Fancy entertaining the gentry in the kitchen!

  ‘Yes, I’ll feel much better if there isn’t any fuss,’ Wincey said.

  ‘For pity’s sake, Mammy! You’ve a four room and kitchen house here. Anybody would think you’d never moved up the Balgrayhill and were still in that horrible wee room and kitchen in Springburn Road. What’s the point in having four rooms if you’re always stuck in this wee kitchen?’

  ‘It’s not a wee kitchen, Florence. It’s a lovely big kitchen.’

  ‘She’s worse than Wincey,’ Granny said. ‘Stuck up wee madam. Ah’ll say that fur Wincey—she wis never stuck up. She wis different frae us—ah always knew that. There was aye a bit o’ capitalist aboot her, wi’ aw her money makin’ ploys, but she wis never stuck up.’

  ‘Thank you, Granny.’ Wincey laughed and went over to plant a kiss on the old woman’s loose-skinned cheek.

  ‘Get aff!’ Granny roughly shoved her away. ‘Ah cannae stand folk droolin’ ower me.’

  ‘That’s settled then,’ Wincey said. ‘We’re all just going to be ourselves. I still wish I’d never sent the letter though. It’s all very well for Robert. He’s not going to be here.’

  ‘He has his patients to see to, dear,’ Teresa reminded her. ‘He’s a very hard working doctor. You can’t expect him to be always at your beck and call.’

  ‘I know, I know, it’s just … I’ll be so glad once tomorrow’s over. Of course,’ she suddenly added, ‘they might not come. That’ll be worse in a way—the suspense!’

  ‘Oh, they’ll come all right, hen,’ Erchie assured her. ‘Ah’d bet ma life on it. As soon as their postie’s been, they’ll be over here like a shot.’

  ‘We’d better all be up really early then,’ Florence said. ‘By the time I have a bath and do my hair and make up …’

  ‘Ye selfish wee madam!’ Granny shouted. ‘Ye’re no’ gonnae keep us aw oot that bathroom. Forget yer bloody bath. It’s no’ you the Cartwrights are comin’ tae see.’

  ‘For pity’s sake, Mammy, can you not do something about her language? What if she swears tomorrow. She’s liable to give us all a right showing up.’

  ‘Who’s her?’ Granny bawled. ‘Ah’ll her ye. An’ ye dinnae need me tae gie ye a showin’ up. Ye can dae that yersel’—ye’re aye daein’ it.’

  ‘Have your bath tonight, dear,’ Teresa soothed. ‘That’ll give you more time for your hair and make up tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, all right.’

  ‘Now on you go through—the pair of you as well,’ she added to the twins, ‘and make up a couple of beds for yourselves. There’s plenty clean sheets in the room press.’

  ‘Oh very well.’ The girls bounced up. Florence rose with more dignity and, despite her bored tone of voice, there was an air of eagerness and excitement clinging to the three of them. They were in fact dying to get on their own to discuss all that Wincey had told them, not to mention the potential drama of the next day.
/>
  4

  It was lunchtime before Virginia returned from her shift. Usually she just relaxed with a sandwich and a cup of tea beside the Aga in the kitchen with the fragrant herbs hanging down from one of the oak beams. Gone were the days when her housekeeper, Mrs Rogers, would prepare a big pot of soup and perhaps a steak pie and vegetables and leave them just to be heated up. Mrs Rogers had been evacuated with her children to some safe haven in the country. Thousands of children, some accompanied by mothers, teachers and helpers, had already been evacuated. Walter Elliott, the Minister of Health, had described it as an exodus bigger than that of Moses. ‘It’s the movement of ten armies,’ he’d said, ‘each of which is as big as the whole expeditionary force.’

  At least Mrs Rogers would be with her children to make sure that all was well with them. Virginia had heard that not every child had been welcomed or was having a happy time. She knew of one country host who’d written to a friend saying that there were six evacuated children in their house and he and his wife hated them so much, they’d decided to take away something from them at Christmas.

  There hadn’t been any evacuees during the First World War. Even the songs were different in this war. There were no rousing marching songs as there had been in August 1914. Instead there were now songs of longing for wives and sweethearts. And there was no talk of heroism or glory or adventure. Just a dull sense of foreboding and uncertainty about what the future might hold.

  As often as not, while Virginia was eating her sandwich and drinking her cup of tea, she listened to the wireless. She always seemed to be on her own. Now, as her heels clacked across the marble floor of the hall, she remembered how, when she’d first heard about this house and been told about the marble floor, she’d imagined a huge palatial building. In fact it was quite a modest sized hall.

  She pushed open the kitchen door and was suddenly taken aback to find Nicholas sitting waiting for her in the kitchen. He looked very strange—white faced, agitated, yet eager and shining eyed.

  ‘What on earth’s wrong?’ Virginia asked. It had to be something really cataclysmic to bring him out of his room at such an early hour.

  ‘Virginia, you’ll never guess—never in a million years.’

  ‘Guess what?’

  ‘Sit down.’

  Obediently she sank onto a chair.

  ‘A letter came this morning.’

  ‘Good news about your book?’

  ‘No. Even better.’

  What could be better than that to Nicholas? For a moment she thought he must have gone mad. She’d often wondered if his intense concentration on so many fictitious people and situations might one day tip him over the edge.

  ‘You’d never guess,’ he repeated. ‘Never in a million years.’

  ‘For goodness sake, Nicholas.’

  ‘A letter came this morning from Wincey.’

  Virginia stared at him. Now she knew he had gone mad. He repeated the words, ‘From Wincey. She’s alive and well, Virginia.’

  ‘Wincey?’ Virginia felt faint.

  ‘Yes, Wincey. Read the letter. It’s beside you on the table.’

  She stared at it. Then, at last, with a trembling hand, she picked it up and began to read. As she did so, tears welled up and trickled down her cheeks. ‘Forgive me,’ the letter said.

  ‘Forgive me?’ Virginia said out loud. ‘Oh Nicholas, it’s us who need to be forgiven. If only we’d known.’

  Nicholas dazedly shook his head, making a lock of black hair flop down. ‘When I think of us—time after time—sending her over there and all the time, her being so frightened and not able to tell us. And for all these years, she’s felt—she obviously still feels—guilty and afraid. Oh Virginia! We must go to her right away.’

  ‘Yes, right now. It’s an address in Springburn—the Balgrayhill. That’s up near Springburn Park. We’ve been there. To think we went there once to hear that brass band recital. Remember? In the park. She might have been in the crowd.’

  ‘I know. Are you ready?’

  ‘I’m not sure if I can even stand up, Nicholas. I feel shattered, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but I’ve had a little more time to recover. Come on, I’ll help you out to the car.’

  ‘I’m still in my uniform.’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘I suppose not.’ It still hadn’t sunk in. Virginia felt utterly drained. She wanted to believe that Wincey was alive and well and that they were about to be reunited, but she wasn’t able to get used to the idea. She didn’t believe it. Perhaps it was some sort of cruel joke that somebody was playing on her and Nicholas. It was too cruel. She couldn’t bear it. She allowed Nicholas to support her, half carry her, outside. She sat very still beside him in the car.

  ‘I wonder what she’ll look like,’ Nicholas was saying. ‘She’ll be what, twenty, now. Remember her red hair with the fringe and her freckles and her lovely long lashes? I expect she’ll still look the same. I wonder if she’ll be as quiet and shy.’ His voice tightened. ‘Maybe she was so quiet because she was afraid. That never occurred to us, did it? But then how could it?’

  A silence held between them until Nicholas began speaking again.

  ‘I wonder what this Gourlay family are like. They’ve obviously been good to her. Thank God they took her in and looked after her. God knows what might have happened to the child if she’d been left to wander the streets in the dark.’

  ‘I think I must be in shock, Nicholas. I can’t believe this is happening.’ Virginia stared at his long-fingered hands clutching at the steering wheel and shook her head. ‘I just can’t.’

  He laughed. ‘It’s happening all right, darling. And isn’t it wonderful? A miracle. She’s come back from the dead. That’s what it feels like. We’ve believed for so long that she was dead.’

  The car was slowed down by tram cars trundling along the dusty Springburn Road with its lines of shops at either side and the windows of tenement flats glimmering above them. Virginia noticed a long queue of women outside the Co-op grocers. Food rationing had just started, with butter, sugar, bacon and ham the first to be rationed. Rationing had been introduced partly because, in the first few weeks of the war, people in poorer districts were infuriated by the sight of well-heeled middle class matrons motoring into working class areas, stopping at one grocer’s shop after another, and buying up large amounts of essential foods like sugar. Obviously to hoard. Now when something extra would arrive in a shop, the word would spread like a hallelujah and bring local women running to the shop to form a queue. Virginia had done it herself for a packet of raisins. Bananas were one of the things that had completely disappeared.

  Virginia couldn’t stop her mind from wandering. She realised this was partly due to fatigue. Never in all her life had she worked so hard—or felt so tired. On top of her work for the Ambulance Service, she had just finished a long and harrowing shift at the Royal Infirmary. She hadn’t even had time for a cup of tea before receiving the shock of the letter. Not only her mind, but every nerve and sinew in her body, was absolutely exhausted.

  She could see the Balgrayhill now, along at the far end of Springburn Road. Balgrayhill looked much wider and airier. She could see a church steeple at one side and at the top, a block of respectable looking red sandstone tenements. Her heart pounded and she felt faint again. One of these houses, in that block of red sandstone tenements, was where Wincey lived.

  The tram rails stopped at the foot of the steep hill and the car was able to increase its speed until it reached the top.

  ‘There’s the number,’ Nicholas said, stopping the car outside a close. ‘The bottom flat, the letter said. Look, that must be it. There’s somebody at the window.’

  Virginia couldn’t look.

  ‘Is it …?’

  ‘No, an older woman. She’s gone now, probably to open the door. Come on, Virginia. Don’t just sit there, darling.’

  Somehow her legs carried her across the pavement and into the close. The door of the
house on the left was open and a woman with a slight stoop and speckled grey hair held neatly on one side by a kirby grip stood waiting. Beside her was a small, skinny, beaky-nosed man wearing a peaked cap pulled well down over his forehead. Both the man and the woman put out a welcoming hand.

  ‘I’m Teresa Gourlay, and this is my husband, Erchie.’

  They shook hands and followed the couple into a windowless lobby.

  ‘Wincey’s waiting in the kitchen with Granny and our other girls, Florence, Euphemia and Bridget. Poor Wincey is so nervous, she couldn’t come to the door. She’s in a right state, poor soul. We’ve all been up and waiting since early morning.’

  ‘I’ve only just seen the letter,’ Virginia managed. ‘We came right away.’

  And there she was. Just the same as ever. The same dark red hair fringed over her forehead, the same rich, dark sweep of lashes, the same sprinkle of freckles, the same tense, apprehensive looking Wincey.

  Virginia and Nicholas rushed towards her with arms outstretched. The three of them locked together in a wild embrace.

  ‘Oh, Wincey. Oh, darling, we can’t believe it. It’s so wonderful, wonderful …’

  Eventually Virginia had to sit down.

  ‘Are you all right,’ Teresa asked. ‘You’ve gone awfully pale, dear. Would you like a nice cup of tea? The kettle’s on the boil.’

  ‘Oh yes please. I’ve just come off duty at the Royal and we dashed straight over.’

  Nicholas kept a grip of Wincey’s hand as they too sat down, but he had to release it as introductions were made and he politely shook hands with Granny and the three Gourlay sisters who kept staring at him in obvious admiration. He wasn’t young like them but nevertheless they thought him breathtakingly handsome.

  ‘First of all, my wife and I must express our deep appreciation to you for taking Wincey in and for looking after her so well for all this time. It was truly wonderful of you and we cannot thank you enough.’

  ‘Och,’ Erchie grinned, ‘she’s a grand wee worker. She’s been the makin’ o’ this family. She an’ my eldest daughter Charlotte, God rest her soul, built up a great business. Now Wincey runs it on her own.’