by Maggie Craig
And then, small and scared and lonely, Liz’s paroxysms of grief had subsided to an exhausted sobbing, and a nurse at Blawarthill had laid a cool hand on her hot brow and told her that everything would be all right. The woman had sat with her and talked to her, offering much-needed comfort and reassurance to a very frightened little girl.
Her mother had been allowed to visit once a week, and even then they had only been permitted to look at each other through a window. They hadn’t been able to talk to each other. Her father hadn’t visited at all.
But Liz had survived, gradually regaining her health and strength, and eventually being allowed to go home. She had never forgotten the kindness of that nurse, and of the others who’d looked after her during her six weeks away from home.
As she grew older, Liz came to realize that nursing was what she wanted to do with her life too.
Now, at long last, she had got there - only for the dream to be cruelly snatched out of her reach by her own father. She’d always believed he would have preferred it if Georgie had been the one to survive, not her. He was proud of Eddie but he didn’t seem to think daughters were much use for anything.
Liz groaned, and pulled her knees up more tightly. She tried not to revisit the bad memories too often. Sometimes they seemed to crawl up to the surface of their own accord. The door of her room creaked. Cocooned in her sheets and heavy blankets, she looked up and saw her mother peering round it.
‘Come on, Lizzie,’ said Sadie MacMillan in an anxious whisper. ‘You know your father likes us all to have breakfast together.’
Always what her father wanted. Liz bit back an angry retort.
‘Aye, Ma. I’ll be two ticks.’ She gestured towards her underwear, lying folded in a neat pile on the upright chair which stood against the wall. ‘Hand me those, would you? I’ll need to warm them up.’ She must be a better actress than she’d thought. Her mother’s face cleared a little. That was good.
Clutching her underclothes, Liz suppressed a shriek as the smooth artificial silk of her petticoat made contact with her own warm skin. It had never been this cold in the old house in Radnor Street, where she had slept in the box bed in the warmth of the kitchen, listening to Eddie snoring on the hurly bed on the other side of the curtains.
There, she’d had to perfect the art of putting her clothes on in bed for modesty’s sake. Here, she did it to prevent her skin breaking out into goosebumps as big as Ben Lomond.
She knew her mother missed the old place, but to her father moving into Queen Victoria Row had been a great mark of achievement. Eddie, with his firebrand communist politics, was less happy about it. Their father was now one of the ‘bastards in bowlers’, the choice of hat as much a mark of status as anything else.
His new position set them apart from a lot of the people they’d been friendly with before. As far as some of them were concerned, William MacMillan had now gone over to the enemy. That made life difficult for his wife. She was a shy woman, but she had known people up the road - had appreciated having her parents-in-law just down the stairs. Brought up in an orphanage after the early death of her own parents, she had been close to her in-laws, who had taken her to their hearts in a big way when their son had first brought her home.
Now it was much more difficult and time-consuming for Sadie to visit Peter MacMillan. Because of the dispute between him and his son he wasn’t able to visit her at all.
Performing the various contortions needed to get into her bra and knickers, Liz sighed. Her mother’s life wasn’t easy. For her sake she’d better go through there and play the dutiful daughter.
Her father did not drink to excess. Nor was he a physically violent man. Liz couldn’t remember that he’d ever given her and Eddie so much as a smack when they’d been little: but he’d never hugged them either.
To the best of Liz’s knowledge he’d never lifted a hand to her mother. He didn’t need to. He dominated his wife quite successfully by sheer force of personality, bullying and undermining her at every turn, belittling her whenever she had the rare temerity to contradict him.
To Liz’s way of thinking that made him little better than the Tam Simpsons of this world - or the men who came home from the pub on a Friday and Saturday night and, in Eddie’s memorable if gruesome phrase, bounced their wives’ heads off the wall.
Liz slipped into her place at the kitchen table and scowled at the handsomely framed print which hung on the wall opposite her. It was one of her father’s most prized possessions: Prince William of Orange crossing the Boyne in 1690 to defeat the Catholic army of King James.
It’s all your fault, she silently told the bewigged monarch, resplendent on his white charger. One of the arguments her father had advanced against her going in for nursing was that she might end up having to care for Roman Catholics. Honestly, he was quite ridiculous!
‘Good morning, Elizabeth.’ He hadn’t lifted his head from his newspaper, and he had used her full name. She was still in the doghouse, then.
‘Good morning, Father,’ she replied. Had she ever really called him Daddy? And her father, despite his allegiance to the monarch his fellow Orangemen familiarly addressed as King Billy, got his own name in full. It was always William. There was a formality about him - a coldness - which prevented anyone from shortening it.
Liz felt a fresh wave of despair sweep over her. Was there no way she could persuade him to let her do what she wanted? Maybe, if she was polite and obedient and kept her nose clean....
Her father lifted his head at last, looked at her coolly and dashed that faint hope to smithereens.
‘You’ll reply to that letter as soon as you come home tonight, Elizabeth, telling the Infirmary you will not be attending for interview - that you no longer wish to be considered for a probationer’s position. Then you will give your reply to me and I shall post it.’
The full bitterness of her disappointment threatened to engulf her completely. She did want to be considered for a probationer’s position. It was all she had ever wanted.
‘Do you hear me, Elizabeth?’
She heard him all right. There was to be no shouting this morning, but the message was as clear as though it had been delivered by foghorn. She was to do as she was told. What he wanted her to do.
‘Do you hear me?’ he said again. ‘I’ll have no dumb insolence from you, miss, I’m warning you.’ He hadn’t raised his voice, but her mother jumped all the same. Only for her sake then, thought Liz, only for her sake. Her voice dull, her eyes downcast, she answered him. She had to force down the lump in her throat to get the words out ‘I hear you, Father,’ she said.
Three
Rising to her feet after extracting a file from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, Liz kicked it deftly shut with her foot, turned - and let out a small shriek of alarm. Eric Mitchell, chief clerk of Murray Marine Agents, was standing right behind her.
‘Oh, Mr Mitchell, what a fright you gave me!’
Eric Mitchell laughed. He didn’t, however, stand aside to let her past.
‘Excuse me, please,’ said Liz, looking pointedly over his shoulder towards her own small desk in the middle of the room the two of them shared with Miss Gilchrist, Mr Murray’s secretary. Realizing that they were practically nose to nose - Eric Mitchell wasn’t much taller than her - she also took a step backwards. At least, she tried to, but there wasn’t really anywhere to go.
The solid green filing cabinets which ran nearly the entire length of the back wall of the office left only a narrow space in the corner formed by the other wall. Somehow Liz managed to sidle into the gap. Only after she’d done it did she realize what a mistake she’d made.
Instead of moving away, he took a step towards her. He had her cornered - and they were alone in the sunny room. Her mouth dry, Liz had to moisten her lips before she could speak. The man standing far too close to her smiled when he saw the nervous gesture. The gleam in his pale eyes made her skin crawl.
‘Excuse me, please, Mr Mitchell,’ she sa
id again. She hoped her voice wasn’t rising nervously. She had learned to be careful in the office, cautious about how and when she moved about the place, but she wasn’t thinking straight today.
She’d been day-dreaming for weeks of how she was going to hand in her notice and leave Murray’s. She’d gone so far as to imagine herself telling Eric Mitchell exactly what she thought of him. Some hopes.
‘I have to get on with my work.’ She clutched the buff folder she’d taken from the filing cabinet closer to her chest. He smiled his creepy smile again and put a hand up on the wall beside Liz’s head.
‘Mr Mitchell? Haven’t I told you before to call me Eric?’ He glanced towards the door which separated their office from the boss’s room. ‘Not when Mr Murray or Miss Gilchrist are about, naturally. But when we’re on our own.’
Her eyes followed his. The door into the inner office was half-glazed, but with frosted glass. In any case, they were standing at the wrong angle for anybody in the boss’s room to be able to see them. Miss Gilchrist was in there, taking dictation from Mr Murray. If only they would hurry up and finish...
Liz felt like a trapped animal, her back pressed against the wall, her left shoulder feeling the cold metal of the filing cabinet through the thin crèpe de Chine of her short-sleeved blouse, Eric Mitchell’s arm blocking any escape on the other side.
‘Isn’t it better to be businesslike at work?’ she asked desperately.
‘Och, little Lizzie,’ he said, shaking his head at her in mock despair. ‘So conscientious.’
She hated it when he called her that. She hated everything about Eric Mitchell: the way he looked her up and down, the way he stood behind her while she was typing, the way his hand - accidentally on purpose - managed to brush against her leg as she passed his desk. She shuddered.
‘Cold, little Lizzie? Perhaps I could do something about that. Mmm?’ He moved closer, looming over her, one sandy eyebrow raised in interrogation. She could smell the cigarette smoke which clung always to his clothes, practically count the hairs in his moustache. Oh, Mammy, Daddy, what was she going to do if he tried to touch her? Or even, horror of horrors, kiss her...
She looked at-him, her heart thumping wildly. She wished she could tell him to get lost, give him a really good mouthful. She’d never actually used the words, but she knew them well enough. Living beneath Nan Simpson for several years had seen to that.
There were several reasons why Liz couldn’t swear at Eric Mitchell. Nor could she remind him that he had a wife and child, that he shouldn’t be pestering her in this way, that he was fifteen years older than her, that she herself wasn’t very far away from being a gawky schoolgirl, that it just wasn’t fair.
He was a member of the same Orange Lodge as William MacMillan and had ‘put in a good word for the lassie’ when Murray’s had been looking for a junior member of staff to assist Mr Murray’s personal secretary, and she couldn’t afford to antagonize him.
As her father had reminded her the other night, Eddie had to be seen through college. He had won a bursary to go to the Uni, but it didn’t pay for everything. Her pay really was needed at home.
The door of the inner office opened and Miss Gilchrist came out. Eric Mitchell moved rapidly away from Liz and she scurried back to her desk, laid the file to one side of the solid Underwood typewriter and sat down. She was all fingers and thumbs as she searched through the papers to find the address she needed for the next letter she had to type.
Liz thought grimly that maybe she could understand why Nan Simpson swore at her husband. Even saying the words to yourself helped relieve your feelings.
Damn you, Eric Mitchell, and damn being only eighteen and damn having no say in anything and damn having to work here—
Her index finger slid on to the wrong typewriter key. Did she have to work here? She’d been at Murray’s for two years, surely long enough to repay the favour done when Eric Mitchell had recommended her for the position. Maybe she could find a better job, one that paid a bit more. Her father wouldn’t be able to object to that. And waiting the three long years until she was twenty-one would be a lot pleasanter if she didn’t have to put up with unwanted attentions day in, day out.
Over the next week Liz made enquiries about three shorthand-typist’s jobs she saw advertised. She went to the relevant offices either during her midday break or at the end of the afternoon so that neither Miss Gilchrist nor Eric Mitchell would know she was planning a move.
At the first office, a lady quite as formidable as Miss Gilchrist looked her up and down and told her that they were looking for an experienced stenographer. Liz was far too young.
They were friendlier at the second place, but the pay was lousy, even less than she was getting at Murray’s. At the third they seemed interested in her, and cheerfully asked when she could attend for interview. They reminded her to be sure to bring a reference from her current employer when she came.
‘Oh,’ said Liz, her face falling. ‘Maybe I’d better think about it a bit more. I’ll let you know if I’m interested. Thanks all the same.’
Only ever having been in one job since leaving school, she had forgotten those two important facts. She would need time off to attend an interview, and she would need to get a reference.
Asking for time off meant explanations. She imagined that looking for a new job wasn’t going to go down too well as an excuse. Miss Gilchrist might even contact her father to ask if he approved of his daughter making a move. Liz wouldn’t put it past her.
Murray’s might also refuse to give her a reference. No other firm was going to take her on without one, or perhaps even with one. Liz had few illusions about her abilities as a shorthand-typist. Any reference she received wasn’t going to be a glowing one. She’d get herself into extremely hot water, with no guarantee of a new job at the end of it.
Trudging up the stairs of the railway station on Friday evening, Liz walked out on to the pavement. There was a man standing in front of her, barring her way. She glanced up.
‘Grandad! What on earth are you doing here?’
The station was only a few hundred yards from her home. By tacit agreement, she and Eddie never met Peter MacMillan except at his house.
So far, their father continued to tolerate the visits. It was one of the few things about which Sadie had dug her heels in. It had been an enormous effort for her to stand up to her husband, but she had won. Eddie and Liz were not to be prevented from seeing their grandfather.
Valuing each other’s friendship and company as they did, none of the three of them wanted to put that in jeopardy. Appearing so close to his son’s house might be sufficient annoyance to make William ban the visits - which meant that her grandfather had to have a very good reason indeed for coming to meet Liz off the train.
‘Read that,’ he said, thrusting a crumpled Glasgow Herald into her hand. ‘Page twelve. Under “Women’s Topics”. You get some real good articles on that page, you know.’ He gave her an outrageous wink. Curious, Liz scanned the article. He had folded the newspaper open for her at the right spot.
The piece was about the Red Cross. With international tension rising, the reporter wrote, recruitment to the Voluntary Aid Detachment of the organization was being stepped up. Public-spirited citizens prepared to volunteer would receive training in the various skills required. The Red Cross was particularly keen to hear from men or women who could drive and from women prepared to train as nursing auxiliaries. It would be remembered, of course, that VAD nurses had given sterling service during the Great War.
Liz looked up. She said the words out loud, her voice high and breathless.
‘Nursing auxiliaries?’
Peter MacMillan gestured excitedly towards the newspaper. ‘Read on,’ he said. ‘You haven’t got to the best bit yet.’
Impatient, he snatched it from her hands and read the article out loud to her.
‘While VAD nursing assistants may be sought on a full-time basis if the crisis continues to worsen, the organ
ization will also be happy to hear from girls and women who would be able to make their contribution on a weekend or evening basis, thus combining this valuable work with their domestic duties or existing employment responsibilities. The Red Cross will shortly be establishing an intensive programme of first-aid classes to which both sexes will be warmly welcomed. Initially, all those interested in becoming nursing auxiliaries should enrol for these classes.
‘There,’ he said triumphantly, folding the newspaper and tucking it under his arm. ‘What do you think of that?’
‘I think it’s the answer to a prayer,’ breathed Liz, hardly daring to believe her eyes and ears. Peter beamed at her and they began to walk together along the pavement, chattering excitedly.
‘It would be great experience,’ she said, ‘until I’m old enough to apply to the Infirmary again.’
Peter nodded enthusiastically. ‘Aye. They’d surely snap you up if you already had three years’ experience with the Red Cross.’ He handed her the roughly folded newspaper. ‘Take it home with you, lass. There’s something about a recruitment session one night next week up in Glasgow—’ He broke off. They were getting close to Queen Victoria Row.
‘I’d better not come any further with you, hen.’ His gaze went over her head. ‘I’d like fine to have popped in to see Sadie...’
His voice trailed off and he sighed. ‘But it wouldn’t do to be caught committing the unforgivable sin of talking to my own granddaughter in the street,’ he said wryly. He sketched her a very passable bow. ‘And now, like the great Houdini, I disappear.’
Liz grinned at his departing back. He was a hoot, he really was. Whatever would she do without him?
Once her father was safely out at an Orange Lodge meeting that evening, Liz spread the newspaper over the kitchen table and read the article out loud to her mother and Eddie. Her voice grew warm with excitement as she read it for a second time and the details began to sink in. This was a real possibility.