‘Good evening, Miss Riddel.’ Helen Riddel’s eyes followed a large expanse of fawn and brown checks, to land on Miss Booth’s face beaming on top of them. ‘This is your weekend off, isn’t it? Miss Riddel is fortunate in having her home in the country,’ Miss Booth turned to explain to the newest recruit. ‘A country house,’ she repeated, laughing to emphasise that she was really joking, and having revealed her human potentialities, briskened up into being the Warden of the Centre again. ‘Let me see, now.’ Miss Booth shot her arm out in front of her face, pulled it sharply back till her hand almost caught her nose, and studied her wrist-watch before turning an accusing eye towards the cafeteria clock. ‘Is your clock at the correct time, Mrs. Lovat?’ she demanded of the cafeteria lady, so importantly that the staff broke off their conversation and turned all their eyes and all their attention upon the cafeteria clock.
‘It wasn’t right according to the Wireless,’ the cafeteria lady grumbled. ‘I went and missed the six o’clock News through that clock.’ Her tone rejected suggested ownership of it. ‘And it wasn’t me that touched it. I’ve got enough to get through here in an evening, without going and messing about with other folks’ clocks.’
‘Of course it wasn’t you, Mrs. Lovat,’ Miss Booth hastened to reassure the cafeteria lady. ‘You wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing.’
‘It could have been one of the lads,’ Mr. Fleming ventured. ‘They get up to all sorts, trying to wangle an extra ten minutes at table tennis.’
‘Robert!’ Miss Booth turned her back on both Mr. Fleming and his opinions, and shouted again for the Patrol Boy. ‘Robert! Where has Robert got to?’ No one moved to search for Robert, but all seemed to be poised at the starting tape. ‘Ah! There you are, Robert,’ Miss Booth acclaimed him gladly, the way an amateur conjurer might acclaim the rabbit he hadn’t really expected inside his hat. ‘now.’ Miss Booth’s enunciation of that simple word adjured all to listen carefully, although Robert, slightly overwhelmed by the prominence in which he found himself, was the one to whom she spoke. ‘Now Robert. As you well know, I like this Centre efficiently run.’
I know it all, Helen Riddel thought wearily, letting the rest of Miss Booth’s words slip away from her. I could say it for her, word for word; or rather for the benefit of the newest recruit. Indeed it was for the newest recruit’s benefit that the Warden was repeating her edicts to a patrol boy who was familiar with them.
‘She’s such a personality, isn’t she?’ The newest recruit sat herself down beside Helen Riddel in a fervour of admiration for the Warden. ‘She mixes so well. It must be very difficult to get close to that type of teenager, and that’s half the battle, Miss Booth assures me. How do you manage it, Miss Riddel? I believe you’ve worked here for quite a time.’
‘For eight years,’ Helen Riddel said, ‘and I’ve never managed it.’ It didn’t matter now; you could admit to murder when it no longer mattered to you. And you’ll never manage it either, Helen Riddel thought, smiling at the shocked blankness of the newest recruit’s expression. ‘You see,’ she added, kindly enough, ‘knowing the way and being capable of walking straight along it are two different things. In theory I know the way, and it sounds simple enough. It just means keeping in mind that, in our Welfare State, the only difference between these teenagers and ourselves is that we have lived that little bit longer, and so should have more experience of life.’
‘Of course you are right, Miss Riddel, you are quite right.’
‘No.’ Helen Riddel shook her head. ‘That’s the theory, but it just doesn’t always work out like that.’
‘But we must keep it in mind just the same,’ the newest recruit insisted.
You’re shaping all right, Helen Riddel thought, rising and collecting her registers; you have already got the most essential thing, the team spirit (for she had observed the instinctive natural use of the collective pronoun ‘we’). Perhaps your face will fit better than mine ever did. My personal distaste for teetering, high-heeled children, rescued from all-night cafés, was cancelled out by the knowledge that even the sluttiest of them had more experience of the basics of life in one wet night than I had in twenty-five years.
She could cope much better now, Helen Riddel realised ironically. But now was too late.
* * *
The bus for Caldwell was already standing in Glebe Street when Helen Riddel took up her place at the end of the queue, though this by no means signified its departure on time.
‘God Almighty, Jean, where are you off to now?’ Beel Grieve, the crofter, grumbled after the disappearing figure of the conductress. ‘When that redheaded one’s on the conducting,’ he informed the rest of the queue, ‘she’s just like a hen on a hot girdle.’
‘She’s a lot more obliging than the wee dark creature that was on the conducting before her,’ the Joiner’s wife defended. ‘There’s nothing Jean won’t bring you back from the Town, if you ask her nice like. And she’s away the now for rings for poor Bert Wheeler’s pigeons.’
‘Is yon mannie taken to rearing pigeons, then?’ Beel Grieve’s irritation was momentarily overcome by his contemplation. ‘He was awful set on ferrets at the back end of the year.’
‘He’s on the pigeons now then,’ the Joiner’s wife snapped, turning her attention on the bus driver, who was struggling to put a crate of day-old chicks up on the rack. ‘Turn that box over on its other side, Davie,’ she advised him. ‘You’ll have the chickens standing on their heads that way. What are they, anyhow, day-olds?’
‘God knows what they are,’ the driver grumbled, pausing to examine the label on the crate. ‘Day-old pullets for Balwhine.’
‘You would think,’ the Joiner’s wife reflected, ‘that Balwhine would just set a clocking hen and let her do the rest of it for him; for she’s a lot better at it than all yon scuttering about with oil stoves.’
‘There’s not a sign of that conductress quean coming back yet.’ Beel Grieve was becoming irritable again. ‘And I’ve got a Union Meeting in Caldwell the night at eight o’clock.’
‘Jean will be holding on for the Late Final Editions,’ the driver explained, ‘and the lassie canna get them till they come out.’
‘But I tell you, Davie, I’ve got a Meeting at eight o’clock,’ Beel Grieve insisted again.
‘Excuse me,’ a voice behind him interrupted, ‘but I understood that this bus was scheduled to leave Glebe Street at seven o’clock.’
‘You understood right, Mistress.’ The driver surveyed the newcomer severely. ‘But this bus takes fits and starts. It’s the last bus to Caldwell the night. And I’m not budging an inch from here till my regulars turn up.’
‘But don’t you realise,’ the woman protested, ‘I am due to judge a Competition in Caldwell at eight o’clock.’
‘Good God!’—the Joiner’s wife nudged Beel Grieve—‘that must be the Marmalade Competition wifie. It serves them all right, too, if she never turns up,’ she added resentfully, ‘for they say she’s a first cousin of the Dominie’s wife; and she’s got a good sweep of her, when you take a right look. We should always have complete outsiders to judge our competitions. It’s a lot fairer that way.’
‘Rob Finney’s pulled a muscle and will be out of the Cup Final the morn,’ the conductress shouted from the other side of the street, a bundle of Late Finals slung in one hand, and her own free copy waving in the other. ‘That’s the Town’s chances of the Northern League up in the air. And your coupon gone for a Burton, Davie. Look see.’ She thrust the paper under the driver’s nose, and they relayed the headlines together. ‘Voodoo Hits The Dons. What Price Pittodrie Tomorrow?’
‘Dundee United will just murder them the morn, then,’ the driver prophesied, handing the paper back to Jean. ‘And that reminds me. Did you call in by Bruntslands to collect yon wrench for Wylie the blacksmith. He says Hugh Riddel will lay hands on him if it doesn’t turn up this week.’
‘God, Davie,’ the conductress gaped, crestfallen. ‘I clean forgot all about that wre
nch. But it won’t take me two minutes to nip back to Bruntslands for it.’
‘You may just as well all get inside the bus, then,’ the driver advised, as the conductress shot off out of view again, ‘and get yourselves settled down in comfort till Jean gets back.’
‘But it isn’t good enough,’ the Marmalade Competition lady protested, struggling through the queue, and making her way first into the bus, as if this was but her natural right.
‘It’s my bus, Mistress,’ the driver reminded her.
‘It isn’t good enough,’ she repeated. ‘I haven’t got all the time in the world.’
But Caldwell has, Helen Riddel thought smilingly, before putting on the white, serious mask of Miss Riddel again, and getting into the bus.
‘It’s you, is’t then, Miss Riddel?’ The Joiner’s wife swung round in her seat. ‘I didna notice you in the queue.’
‘I was at the back of it.’
‘Excuse me,’ the Marmalade Competition lady hovered above Helen Riddel. ‘Do you mind if I share this seat with you? I usually prefer a back seat, but there’s a crate of chickens in the rack above my head.’
‘And a great pity they didna file on her hat,’ the Joiner’s wife whispered, as the Marmalade Competition lady struggled to put her belongings up on the rack before easing herself down beside Helen Riddel.
‘Ridiculous things, these country buses,’ she confided, when she got settled. ‘And, do you know, although my work takes me all over the countryside—Domestic Science, you know—this bus is just about the last word.’
Helen Riddel turned her face aside to the window. She didn’t want to be involved in conversation. She wanted to be left to herself, and to her own thoughts.
‘Miss Riddel? I thought it was you, hiding yourself away in the corner there.’ The Vet’s wife was now leaning over the Marmalade Competition lady’s knees. ‘I was speaking about you just the other day, with Mr. Anson. We both thought it would be an excellent idea if we could persuade you to give a talk to our Churchwomen’s Guild on Present-Day Teenagers and Their Needs.’
‘So you got the wrench then, Jean?’ The driver popped his head through the small window, and to her gratitude prevented Helen Riddel from committing herself. ‘Right then. So we’re all set, are we?’ the driver asked, his foot on the accelerator.
‘No, Davie. Good God, not yet.’ The conductress stopped him. ‘Donald Craig’s just on his road here for the bus. I got a glimpse of him making his way down the Kirkgate.’
‘It’s just not good enough,’ the Marmalade Competition lady protested again.
* * *
‘Pitmedden Lodge. Stott’s Smiddy. Hill of Inish. Tyrebagger Corner.’ The conductress did not indicate a route, but pinpointed a whole countryside. No bus in all the world was so uncomfortably personal in its function. ‘Kingorth Crossroads! That’s your stop, Donald. Donald’s stop,’ she shouted, rapping on the driver’s window.
‘But I’m not wanting off here, Jean,’ Donald Craig observed, equably enough. ‘You might just put me down a bittie further on, at Geordie Scobie’s place.’
‘But this is your stop, Donald.’ The conductress was inexorable. ‘You bide at Kingorth Crossroads.’
‘I bide at Kingorth, lassie.’ Donald’s equanimity was beginning to desert him. ‘I was born at Kingorth, and like as not I’ll die there. But for all that, I just want to be put down at Geordie Scobie’s place the night. Is there any law against that? Tell me.’
‘Further on, Davie. Geordie Scobie’s place.’ The conductress rapped on the driver’s window before casting a beseeching glance towards her passengers, which implied that any man who refused to be set down on the doorstep of his own home must be clean out of his mind.
‘Lendrum Village.’ No London conductor could have announced ‘Trafalgar Square’ with more aplomb, nor could his bus have entered it with such an anticipation of Occasion.
‘Well, we may as well get out and stretch our legs for a bit,’ Beel Grieve suggested, making his way out of the bus as the conductress disappeared to deliver the Late Finals to the shop, while the driver followed her, laden with personal errands he had undertaken to deliver from the Town.
‘This is one place my work has never taken me to.’ The Marmalade Competition lady leaned across Helen Riddel to peer out of the window.
‘You havena missed very much then,’ the Joiner’s wife assured her. ‘For it’s a dead and alive hole of a place, is Lendrum. That’s so, isn’t it, Miss Riddel?’
‘I couldn’t say.’ Helen Riddel kept her face averted and her eyes fixed on the darkness.
Edinburgh. Glasgow. Aberdeen. Dundee. How small Scotland sounded, summed up by its four main cities, but what a width of world its little villages stravaiged.
‘I’ve always just passed through Lendrum in the bus,’ Helen Riddel explained, ‘so I’ve never really seen it.’ But then she recollected to herself:
I’ve never been to Mamble
That lies above the Tame.
So I wonder who’s in Mamble . . .
‘What a stramash there was in the sawmill in Lendrum the night,’ the conductress burst into the bus, brimful of the news garnered from the shop. ‘It appears Robb’s got one of thae misplaced Hungarians working for him at the sawmill; and the night, when the men were getting their wages, two women turned up and claimed the Hungarian and his wages. They both said they were his wife.’
‘Lord. That had put Robb the Sawmill in a right lather,’ Beel Grieve said, ‘for Robb was aye awful feared of womenfolk.’
‘Poor Robb just didna know what to do about it,’ the conductress agreed. ‘According to Bell in the shop, he just did nothing. Nor did the Hungarian. It was the two women that fought it out amongst themselves.’
‘None of the local women, surely, Jean?’ the Vet’s wife demanded, aghast.
‘No. Of course not!’ The conductress felt contemptuous of such stupidity. ‘Just two Town women. Apparently the Hungarian goes off to the Town and gets mixed up with the women every other weekend.’
‘And Robb the Sawmill would not have approved of that,’ the Vet’s wife concluded decisively.
‘Robb wasna muckle concerned over that part of it, one way or the other,’ the conductress contradicted aloofly, as one in first possession of all the facts. ‘It seems the Hungarian’s willing and a worker; and Robb doesna want to lose him. So long as he keeps the women from the Town from popping up and creating at the sawmill!’
* * *
‘Next Stop, Caldwell,’ the conductress announced, in the wearied tone of one who, having more than fulfilled her duties to her fellow-men, has tired of the species at last; and slumping herself down into the seat vacated by Donald Craig, kicked off her shoes, took a Late Final out of one pocket, an apple out of the other, and withdrew herself.
‘And George, of course,’ the Vet’s wife began to inform loudly, ‘is always the same. I was annoyed when the Garage said they couldn’t possibly have the car overhauled by Monday.’
‘We know fine she’s got a car,’ the Joiner’s wife turned round to whisper, ‘so she needn’t go on about it like that. We know fine she doesn’t usually go by bus like other seven-day folk.’
‘But George simply refused to let me have the brake,’ the Vet’s wife went on, ‘although I told him I had to take the chair up in the School Hall tonight.’
‘Michty! We forgot all about George’s brake.’ The Joiner’s wife swung confidentially round in her seat again. ‘Aye, aye. Of course George has got a brake. Two cars. Well, well! We really have got it right this time!’
The bus was skirting round beneath Soutar Hill. Caldwell, spread out before it, was anonymous to all except its own, who could interpret its far-flung flickering lights.
‘What’s the School Hall all lit up for?’ the Joiner’s wife demanded suddenly, in the incredulous tone of one who had neither been consulted nor informed.
‘God, I forgot.’ For she had now remembered. ‘Charlie Anson is holding what he
calls an Open Night, up yonder at his Youth Club. But of course you’ll know all about that, Miss Riddel?’
For an instant Helen Riddel was not quite sure whether she had been stung into replying aloud.
‘Yes. Of course. I know all about that. But do you know something else? I’m going to marry Charlie Anson. I’m going to accept when he proposes tonight.’
She couldn’t have spoken aloud though. The Joiner’s wife was now peering out of the window at the other side of the bus, debating over what was going on up in the Church Hall. It was her inner intention, Helen Riddel realised, that had sounded loud to her own ears, so that she herself could no longer ignore it.
I’m going to say Yes, she reassured herself. I only wish I had said it long ago, when there was no compulsion on me to do so; before my instincts revealed themselves and shocked me. Not so much for what I did, but for the way I did it. No, not even for that. Just that Charlie Anson or any man at all should discover my need in the moment I was discovering it for myself. I didn’t know I was like that till then.
‘Well! That just about takes the cake.’ The Joiner’s wife demanded their attention again. ‘I did hear tell that Jeems Leslie stood with his hands under his hens’ dowps just waiting for their eggs to drop into them, but I never did hear tell that he stood in his parks watching for his corn to appear, the minute it was sown. For I’ll swear that’s Jeems. There, see! Down in his nether park yonder. He aye did claim he could see in the dark.’
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