When the Lights Come on Again

by Maggie Craig

  Served them bloody well right. It was 1938, after all, not the dark ages. Then her momentary satisfaction at answering back evaporated. That’s you cooked your goose, MacMillan. They’re never going to let you join now. Not after that performance. When are you ever going to learn to hold your tongue, you stupid bisom?

  She’d forgotten about the girl standing beside her, who now began to speak. She seemed to be battling against shyness, traces of a nervous stammer in her voice. All the same, she managed to sound both persuasive and conciliatory.

  Somehow smoothing over the awkwardness of the last exchange, she brought the discussion back to the point at issue. Wouldn’t it be useful to have people of all ages who knew what to do in an emergency? Especially somewhere like Clydebank - as the young gentleman had said, she added, flashing Liz’s champion a shy smile.

  They could perhaps be enrolled for classes on a probationary basis. How about a trial period of three months? The crisis might even be over by then. Whether it was or not, the powers-that-be could then make a decision about keeping them on.

  Liz could see that the woman was wavering, impressed by both the argument and the gentle maturity with which it had been put, not to mention the skilful pouring of oil on troubled waters.

  ‘Well, if you’re both sure ... if you’re happy to be enrolled on that basis ... there is going to be a class starting up in Clydebank. Let me take your details.’

  Liz turned to her new friend and smiled.

  Five

  ‘Are you a communist? You were that fierce in there.’

  Both girls were standing in the lobby of the church hall, making preparations to brave the downpour. The force of the deluge had diminished, but a steady rain was continuing to fall on Buchanan Street.

  Liz laughed at the question, and the way in which it had been put - a mixture of disapproval and reluctant admiration. Her voice was tinged with scorn as she answered.

  ‘Why is it that everyone thinks you’re a communist because you speak your mind and don’t let people like that walk all over you? No,’ she said irritably, pulling on her gloves and getting ready to put up her umbrella, ‘I’m not a communist.’ Preparations complete, she turned to the girl. ‘My brother Eddie is, though. He says it’s the way of the future.’

  Her companion’s blue eyes grew wide.

  ‘But they do the Devil’s work!’

  Liz snorted.

  ‘That’s just propaganda. Don’t tell me you believe everything you read in the capitalist press?’

  The girl’s face fell. Realizing she was taking it out on the wrong person, Liz held out her hand.

  ‘I might have been fierce, but it was you who managed to get us enrolled. Thank you. I’m Elizabeth MacMillan - Liz.’

  The other girl shook Liz’s hand with a firmness which belied her ethereal appearance.

  ‘Helen,’ she said, with a shy dip of the head. ‘Helen Gallagher.’

  ‘Oh!’

  Cursing herself for the reaction she hadn’t managed to suppress, Liz felt the firm clasp on her hand relax. Helen took a step back, lifted her chin and gave Liz a wry smile.

  It was her surname that had done it, marking her out immediately as coming from an Irish - and therefore Roman Catholic - family. It went along with the universal question: what school did you go to? Clydebank High provoked one response, Our Holy Redeemer’s quite another.

  ‘Well,’ said Helen Gallagher after a tiny pause, ‘perhaps I’ll see you when the class starts.’

  She turned and headed for the doorway and the rainy street beyond. The street lamps had been lit early. One was casting a pale glow over the slick wet pavement, the illumination it gave fighting a losing battle with the spring twilight.

  Liz, following her out, noticed for the second time that the other girl wasn’t wearing a mac, but a heavy winter coat - a rather shabby one at that. That told its own story. She didn’t seem to have an umbrella either, so Liz swung her own up to cover the two of them.

  ‘Do you take the tram or the train to Clydebank?’

  ‘Train to Singer’s,’ said Helen shortly. She was obviously reluctant to accept the shelter of Liz’s umbrella, maintaining a slight distance between the two of them.

  ‘I can go that way too!’ exclaimed Liz. ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘The Holy City,’ said the girl, naming the group of tenement houses in Clydebank which had acquired their nickname because their flat roofs were said to resemble those of the houses in Jerusalem.

  ‘The Holy City!’ repeated Liz. ‘I was brought up in Radnor Street! Just up the road a wee bit! What a coincidence!’

  She wasn’t getting much response. She also seemed to be speaking in exclamation marks.

  ‘Look,’ she said urgently, putting a hand on Helen’s damp sleeve, ‘I’ve really got nothing against Catholics.’

  Helen’s voice was as dry as the evening was wet. ‘That’s big of you.’

  Liz grinned. She had deserved that. She must sound as patronizing as the Red Cross woman had sounded to her.

  ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it? What about you, though? Do you have anything against Protestants?’

  Helen gave her fair head a decisive shake. ‘I don’t have anything against anyone.’ She was holding herself less stiffly, her posture more relaxed.

  ‘Come in a wee bit under the brolly,’ urged Liz. ‘Your hair’s getting wet. Can we start again?’ she asked, when Helen had done as she had asked. ‘Chum each other home?’

  Helen tilted her head to one side. She was really pretty, eyes the colour of the summer sky, a straight little nose and a Cupid’s bow of a mouth. Despite the rain, her short blonde hair continued to sit in perfect waves. I ought to hate her, Liz thought ruefully.

  ‘Why not?’ said Helen.

  Walking closely together, the two girls began to negotiate the puddles on the broad pavement.

  ‘Are you working?’ Liz asked.

  ‘Aye. I’m an assistant at Woolie’s in Sauchiehall Street. How about you?’

  On the point of answering, Liz was interrupted by a deep-voiced shout from behind them.

  ‘Ladies!’

  ‘Can he mean us?’ murmured Helen. Liz laughed and turned, somehow not at all surprised to see the tall young man hurrying towards them. He was smartly dressed in a belted trench coat, but, like Helen, he didn’t have an umbrella.

  ‘Ladies,’ he said again when he reached them, taking off his hat in greeting. ‘Could I offer you a lift home to Clydebank? It’s such a filthy night. Fine weather for ducks, what?’

  Liz looked at him. He looked back at her, his face open, the expression on it friendly.

  ‘And are you heading for Clydebank?’ she demanded.

  ‘More or less,’ he said. Then the look on his face turned sheepish. ‘Well, Milngavie, actually, but it’s only a mile or two out of my way.’

  ‘It’s quite a bit out of your way!’ She was back to speaking in exclamation marks.

  ‘Shouldn’t you put your hat back on?’ suggested Helen. ‘You’ll get drookit.’

  He turned his hazel eyes and his pleasant smile on to her.

  ‘Drookit? That’s a good word.’

  ‘And this is a daft place to be holding a conversation,’ said Liz firmly. ‘We’re all going to be drookit if we don’t get out of this rain soon. Thanks for the offer, but no thanks.’

  ‘Och, go on,’ he said, suddenly sounding a lot more Glaswegian. ‘I’m quite trustworthy, I assure you.’ He gave a quick nod of his increasingly damp head, indicating the door of the church hall behind him. ‘I could get my mother to supply you with a written character reference, if you like.’

  Helen chuckled. Liz wished she hadn’t. It would only encourage him.

  ‘I’d be happy to give you a lift to your homes in my little bus.’ He half turned, gesturing. ‘She’s parked round the corner.’

  He stood waiting for their answer, seemingly not at all perturbed by the rain running down his face and dripping off his eyelashes. They wer
e darker than his hair, thought Liz, or maybe they looked darker because they were wet.

  ‘She?’

  His smile grew broader. ‘I call her Morag,’ he confided.

  In the name of the wee man, she thought, this one’s a real numpty, a complete eejit.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said again. Polite but firm. ‘But I’m afraid my friend and I shall have to decline. After all,’ she said grandly, getting ready to walk away from him, ‘we don’t know you from Adam.’

  He laughed out loud, amusement putting a twinkle in the hazel eyes.

  ‘Oh, that’s very good.’ And then, as the two girls stared uncomprehendingly at him, ‘Adam,’ he said. ‘That’s my name, you see.’ He looked first at Helen, then back at Liz. ‘Adam Buchanan.’

  They were standing in Buchanan Street. Helen asked the obvious question.

  ‘Named after the street?’

  Young Mr Buchanan looked embarrassed. ‘I believe it was named after one of my ancestors.’

  That did it for Liz. She’d had quite enough of consorting with the Idle Rich for one evening. She opened her mouth to once more turn down the offer of the lift. Helen Gallagher got there before her.

  ‘It’s very kind of you,’ she said decisively, ‘but we couldn’t possibly take you so far out of your way. Goodnight, Mr Buchanan. Come on, Elizabeth.’

  Liz felt her arm being taken in a firm grip. Helen set the pace, marching them both firmly in the direction of Queen Street railway station. It occurred to Liz that her new friend was turning out to have some surprising characteristics.

  When they were safely under the shelter of the great glass and steel roof of the railway station and she could lower the umbrella, she said as much. Helen shrugged.

  ‘Folk like that,’ she said, ‘I’m never exactly sure what to say to them. I’m no’ very good at social chit-chat. Isn’t that what they call it?’

  She turned her pretty mouth down in mock dismay. The gesture brought her face alive, revealing a mischievous intelligence behind the chocolate-box prettiness of her features.

  ‘Mind you,’ she went on consideringly, ‘he was quite nice. Gorgeous eyes. Did you no’think so?’

  Liz shrugged. She had noticed the eyes. Not that she was going to admit it.

  ‘I suppose so. Not my type, though. Far too posh.’

  Helen laughed. ‘Are you sure you’re not a communist?’ Then the amusement left her face and her features took on a wistful look.

  ‘I’d like fine to have had a hurl in a car, though. I’ve never been in one. Have you?’

  ‘No,’ Liz admitted, ‘but maybe we’d prefer one that wasn’t called Morag!’

  Laughing as she scanned the departure board, Helen grabbed Liz’s arm.

  ‘Platform five. A Helensburgh train. We’ll have to run for it!’

  The man at the barrier waved them through and they ran up the platform, flinging themselves into a compartment with only seconds to spare. The door was slammed behind them, the whistle blew and with a great puff of steam from the locomotive the train pulled away from the platform.

  ‘Let’s give the train a name!’ gasped Liz as they sank together on to the cushions.

  ‘Adam?’ suggested Helen.

  “Then we could call that one Eve,’ said Liz, pointing to a train snaking its way in to another platform.

  Those two remarks brought on a fit of the giggles which lasted until they were nearly through the tunnel which linked Queen Street to Charing Cross, the next station down the line. Recovering from her mirth, Liz rose to close the window against the blackness of the tunnel and the smoke and steam drifting back from the engine.

  Her task completed, she took a seat opposite Helen and found the girl regarding her with a very odd look on her face.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was just thinking,’ began Helen, ‘that here you are trapped in a railway carriage with a Fenian. Does that no’ worry you?’

  Liz winced. Fenian was one of several insulting names Protestants gave to Catholics. She had heard her father come out with most of them: Fenian, pape, left-footer. She’d probably used some of them herself, she thought guiltily ... when she was a wee lassie and hadn’t known any better.

  As the liberal-minded young lady she was now, she’d never have dreamed of coming out with any of them in front of an actual Catholic. She knew exactly why Helen Gallagher had done so. The girl was issuing a challenge, testing Liz to see whether or not the two of them could be friends.

  This was exactly what she needed, of course - a Catholic friend. Her father would love that. But she liked this girl. She really liked her. She saw her old schoolmates occasionally, but they’d all moved on. Everyone was busy working and doing different things. There was no-one she was particularly close to.

  It had been a long time since she’d had a really good laugh like the one she and Helen Gallagher had just shared. With everything that had happened over the past days and weeks she could do with a friend - and right now she couldn’t have cared less whether she was a Roman Catholic, a Jew or a Mohammedan.

  ‘I told you,’ Liz said, looking Helen straight in the eye, ‘I’ve got nothing against Catholics.’ The train, which had stopped at Charing Cross, lumbered back into the tunnel. Nobody had got into their carriage. Helen was still surveying her with that appraising gaze. For someone so pretty, she could look real stern when she chose to.

  ‘Mind you,’ Liz went on, not entirely happy at being put on the spot like this, ‘my brother Eddie does say that religion is the opium of the masses.’

  ‘Your brother Eddie says a lot more than his prayers, doesn’t he?’ Helen Gallagher’s tone was deceptively mild.

  ‘He doesn’t say his prayers at all. He’s an atheist.’

  About to add more, Liz caught herself on. Her defence of her big brother had been automatic. She loved Eddie dearly - nothing could shake that, not even their current estrangement. Although if she were being strictly honest, she might have to admit that he had taken to preaching lately - an odd thing for an atheist to do.

  He’d always loved arguing the toss about politics. However, since he’d joined the Communist Party last year, he’d shown a wee bit of a tendency to ram his beliefs down everyone else’s throat - as with Liz over the Red Cross business. All the same, he was her brother.

  ‘Och, Eddie’s all right,’ she said. ‘You’d like him. Honestly.’

  Helen looked doubtful, but tactfully changed the subject.

  ‘So where do you work?’

  ‘I’m a junior stenographer. I work for a shipping company down at the Broomielaw.’

  ‘That sounds like a good job.’

  Liz shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Don’t you like it there?’

  Liz looked out of the carriage window. They were clanking up to the surface now, passing Queen’s Dock and Yorkhill Quay on their way to Partick Station. She turned back to Helen, who was looking at her with an expression of keen interest on her face.

  ‘I hate it,’ she said.

  ‘That’s a terrible thing to have to put up with,’ said Helen a quarter of an hour later as the two girls climbed the stairs from the platform at Singer station up to street level. Her voice was full of sympathy and righteous indignation. ‘Is there not anybody you can report him to?’

  Liz sighed. ‘I tried telling Miss Gilchrist - she’s the boss’s secretary - when it first happened, but all she did was read me this lecture about girls having to be careful not to lead men on - as though I’d done anything of the sort!’

  Her voice rose as she recalled the outrage she had felt at the time. The suggestion that she had encouraged Eric Mitchell in some way had been humiliating and hurtful.

  She certainly didn’t flirt with him. She was too shy to flirt with anybody. She knew she was quite shapely, but she couldn’t help that. That was the way she was made, and she went out of her way not to wear clothes which emphasized her figure. Did she somehow sit or stand in the wrong way? Was that what Miss Gilchr
ist had meant?

  ‘Aye,’ said Helen. ‘They always try to blame the lassie, don’t they? Could you not change your job?’

  ‘Not really. Eric Mitchell’s in the same Orange Lodge as my father.’ Helen’s eyebrows went up at that, but she said nothing, and Liz went on. ‘He put in a good word for me to get the position - besides, it’s not that easy to find another job.’

  She told Helen why, listing her unsuccessful attempts and the difficulties about getting a reference. ‘I don’t think I’m a very good shorthand-typist, anyway.’

  ‘Because your heart’s not in it?’ suggested Helen, for Liz had also confided her burning desire to become a nurse. Handing her ticket to the collector, Liz followed the other girl out of the station.

  ‘Well,’ said Helen, as they emerged on to Kilbowie Road, ‘I’ll say goodnight, then. I go up the way.’ She gestured with her hand in the direction of the Holy City. Built where Kilbowie Road gave way to Kilbowie Hill proper, the tenement terraces overlooked the sewing-machine factory and the rest of Clydebank. ‘It’s been nice talking to you,’ she said.

  Liz blurted out a question. ‘D’you fancy going to the dancing together one night?’

  Helen Gallagher looked suddenly awkward, her graceful poise and self-possession evaporating. Her nervous stammer had come back. ‘I d-don’t know. I’m n-not sure if my d-daddy w-would let me...’

  ‘What’s the matter? Is he scared you might get a lumber from a Proddy?’ asked Liz. Getting a lumber was the local slang for completing an evening by being walked home by a boy who hopefully then would ask you out on a proper date on a subsequent evening.

  She smiled broadly at Helen. If a Catholic could happily use an insulting name for herself, then Liz was happy to match her with Proddy - though somehow it didn’t sound nearly so bad as Fenian.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d fancy going to the flicks instead?’

  ‘That would be great,’ Liz said cheerfully. ‘Do you know what’s on at the end of the week?’

  They made a date, wished each other goodnight, and went their separate ways. Walking down the road towards Queen Victoria Row - thank goodness the rain had finally stopped - Liz felt happier than she had in a long while.