by Maggie Craig
She and Helen Gallagher had clicked. It was wonderful to have found someone she could talk to about Eric Mitchell. Confiding in her mother had always been out of the question. Like her brother, Liz tried not to burden Sadie with her problems. Their mother worried too much as it was.
As Liz crossed Dumbarton Road and walked past John Brown’s, an uncomfortable thought surfaced. If her father found out that her new friend was a Roman Catholic, she’d be for the high jump. Well, she’d have to make sure that he remained in blissful ignorance.
Six
‘Well, that was all very interesting.’
The girl sitting next to Liz didn’t look so sure. She was Janet Brown, who’d been in Eddie’s class at school. They’d just had their first lecture on the effects of poison gas and how to deal with an attack of it.
‘I don’t know,’ said Janet slowly. She gave a little shudder of distaste before walking over with Liz to the long trestle tables at the back of the hall where they got their tea and biscuits midway through the evening.
‘All that stuff about how the gas gets into your body. It’s a bit frightening.’ She handed Liz a cup of tea, her face troubled. ‘D’you no’ think so, Liz?’
The lecturer had gone into some detail about the effects of poison gas: how it attacked the eyes, the ears, the throat, the skin. Everybody knew of the horrors of its use in the Great War. Nobody who’d seen films or photographs of soldiers blinded by mustard gas could ever forget them.
Liz squared her shoulders. She and Helen were only a few weeks into their probationary period with the Red Cross. They couldn’t afford to give the impression that they were too young to cope with all the grisly details. Besides, Janet was looking really worried. Agreeing with her wasn’t going to make her feel any better.
‘Och, yes,’ she said, ‘it does give you a bit of a thought, but look at it this way, Janet. At least we’re being trained how to deal with it. We’ll be able to help ourselves - and other folk. And didn’t the speaker say that the government’s planning to issue protective masks to everybody?’
‘Oh, aye,’ said Janet. The lines on her forehead smoothed out. “That’s true. I suppose you’re right, Liz.’
The lecturer had shown them drawings of the masks, emphasizing how important it was that the straps which held them in place should be fastened very tightly to keep the gas out. How effective they were really going to be was another matter, one on which Eddie had already offered his opinion.
He and Liz had agreed to make up their quarrel. He had approached her first, pointing out how upset their mother-was about their disagreement. For exactly the same reason, Liz had been on the point of saying something to him. So they had shaken hands on it and agreed to disagree as amicably as possible.
The government was using psychology, he declared, promising the distribution of gas masks to keep folk busy and make them think there was some way they could protect themselves if the threatened war did come. When it came to offering protection from mustard gas, Eddie maintained, the psychology became kidology. No gas masks issued to civilians were going to be any good at keeping that out.
In any case, he’d gone on cheerfully, it wasn’t going to be much use sitting there wearing your wee gas mask if a dirty great German bomb fell on your head ... but Liz wasn’t going to repeat that particular comment to Janet.
She laid a comforting hand on the other girl’s arm.
‘Maybe it won’t come to that. We’re not at war yet, are we? Perhaps the statesmen can sort it all out.’
She only wished she could believe that herself.
‘But are you really not going to get married, Liz? Not ever?’
Liz flicked back a wayward strand of brown hair before she answered Helen’s question. They were sitting opposite each other in the small tearoom near Singer’s station to which they had got into the habit of repairing after their class.
She had dealt with the problem of her father’s disapproval by simply not telling him what she was doing on a Tuesday evening. She was getting away with it because William MacMillan was so regular in his habits.
Coming home from his own night out, he pushed open his front gate at exactly twenty-five past ten. You could set your watch by him. Sadie MacMillan did, timing her husband’s supper of tea and cheese on toast for exactly half past, giving him five minutes to get in, hang up his coat and wash his hands.
Their father’s precision had always given Liz and Eddie a private chuckle, but now she was grateful for it. The Red Cross class finished at half past nine, which gave her time to have a cup of tea and a chat with Helen and still be safely home a quarter of an hour before her father.
‘Och, maybe when I’m really ancient,’ Liz conceded, with all the insouciance of a young woman not long past her eighteenth birthday. ‘When I’m about thirty-five or something.’
She lifted her cup and took a sip of tea. ‘But only if Robert Donat or Cary Grant are available. Or maybe James Stewart,’ she added, placing the cup back in its saucer and giving every appearance of considering the matter seriously. ‘I quite like him.’
‘Well, Robert Donat will be ancient himself by then,’ Helen pointed out. ‘And I think Cary and James are probably spoken for.’ She gestured towards the door of the tearoom. ‘Added to which, the chances of you bumping into any of them out there on Kilbowie Road are no’ all that high.’
‘No bother,’ said Liz confidently. ‘I’ll be a sister at the Western Infirmary by then - maybe even the matron. Cary Grant’ll be visiting Glasgow to open some big new picture house and he’ll fall ill with an exotic ailment—’
‘Which only you can cure?’ suggested Helen.
‘Aye,’ said Liz, nodding her head enthusiastically. ‘Or maybe he’ll be injured heroically saving some child in the crowd from going under the wheels of a tram—’
‘And you’ll patch him up and nurse him back to health, and he’ll be so smitten that he’ll whisk you back off to a life of luxury in Hollywood. By which time, of course, you’ll have done your best work and found a cure for various dreadful diseases which have afflicted mankind for centuries and people will be calling you the Florence Nightingale of Clydebank.’
Picking up the last tiny morsel of her Tunnock’s caramel wafer, Helen popped it into her mouth. Then she wet her index finger and dabbed it over the wrapper to get any last crumbs. She had a tendency to eat treats slowly and with great delicacy because, Liz assumed, she didn’t get very many of them.
As she’d suspected when she first met Helen, the Gallagher family were as poor as church mice. Her father Brendan and her three grown-up brothers were casual labourers, taking work as and when they could get it. Along with her younger brother Dominic and her mother Marie, the whole family lived crammed into a two-apartment house in the Holy City tenements.
Having finished her biscuit at last, Helen spoke again. ‘They’ll probably put up a statue to you on the pavement in front of the town hall.’
‘That’s it,’ said Liz. ‘Do you doubt it?’
‘Not a bit,’ Helen said stoutly. Then, lifting her hand from the biscuit wrapper and holding it palm downwards, above the table, she rocked it from side to side in a balancing gesture. ‘Well ... there’s maybe a few details that don’t quite add up...’
They grinned at each other. A few short weeks after their first meeting they had become firm friends, close enough to trade the occasional amiable insult - and a great many confidences.
They had learned the hard way to be careful about two subjects: religion and politics. Helen’s church was very important to her. She had little interest in politics, and disapproved of extremes in either direction. However, she did have a strong sense of justice and, like Liz, she hated unfairness with a passion.
They talked about silly things too. That was what Liz liked most about her friendship with Helen. They could be having a great serious discussion one minute and the next they’d be on to the latest fashions. Liz had always enjoyed talking with her grandfather and
Eddie, but neither of them was much good on what length skirts were going to be next season.
Taking a final sip of tea, Helen pushed her cup and saucer away and fixed Liz with her cornflower-blue eyes. The picture of innocence. Liz pursed her lips and returned the look with a wary one of her own. Miss Gallagher was up to something.
‘Seen Mrs Buchanan’s wee boy recently?’
‘Who?’
‘Come off it, MacMillan,’ said Helen robustly. ‘And while you’re at it, pull the other one. It’s got bells on. You liked him. You know you did.’
‘He was all right,’ conceded Liz, ‘but we don’t exactly move in the same circles. Do we?’
‘I don’t know about that. We see quite a lot of his mother.’
For although their Red Cross class was led by a local lady, Mrs Galbraith, she was helped out from time to time by local doctors, visiting lecturers and other members of the organization, including Amelia Buchanan.
‘He liked you,’ Helen pointed out. Otherwise he wouldn’t have come running out into the rain that night to offer you a lift. Would he now?’
‘How do you know he wasn’t coming after you?’
‘A woman knows these things,’ said Helen, putting on what both girls referred to as her mysterious voice. It was copied from a fortune-teller they had visited a couple of weekends previously. The woman, sporting a Russian name and corresponding accent - neither of them could decide whether or not either characteristic was genuine - had predicted that they were both shortly going to meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger with whom they would fall deeply in love.
‘A tall, dark, handsome stranger,’ Liz had scoffed once they were safely back out on the street ‘You’d think she could have been a bit more original.’
‘At least we’re getting one each, Liz,’ Helen had pointed out ‘We won’t have to fight over just one of them!’
‘Besides,’ she went on now in her normal tones, still talking about Adam Buchanan, ‘he was perfectly nice and polite to me, but he looked at you in a different way.’ She raised her fair eyebrows. ‘Quite a different way.’
‘Might I point out, Miss Gallagher, that the fortune-teller spoke of a tall, dark, handsome man?’
Helen batted her eyelashes at her. ‘And you said that was a load of baloney.’
Liz snorted and determinedly changed the subject.
It hadn’t taken Liz long to find out the real reason why Helen wouldn’t come to the dancing. Having worn out her last evening dress some time ago, she had nothing suitable to wear. Working behind the make-up and perfume counter in Woolworth’s, it was a hard enough job ensuring she had some decent outfits for work. She rang the changes with two skirts and four pretty, but businesslike blouses.
When her supervisor suggested that one of the skirts was becoming a bit threadbare, it hadn’t been easy to find the money for the material to make another, so a new dance dress had gone way down the list. And of course, as the only girl in a family of boys, Helen had no sister to borrow from.
Liz had a solution to that particular problem. It was hanging at the back of her wardrobe. Bought at Copland & Lye’s January sale six months previously, the dress had been a real bargain and she’d thought it exquisite. It had an orange satin underslip and draped brown georgette overdress. A boat neckline was set off by a graceful floaty collar in the same material. Little cap sleeves completed it and the hem danced attractively on the knee. As she and Helen had agreed, skirts were getting shorter again.
Once Liz got the dress home, trying it on in the privacy of her bedroom, she saw that it did absolutely nothing for her. Her own colouring was too dark. The beautiful rich brown of the dress needed a blonde.
Soon after she met Helen, she realized that the dress would look great on her. Her golden hair would set it off to perfection. The two girls, both fairly tall, were also much of a muchness in size. Helen was perhaps a little less full in the bust, but the dress could be easily adjusted for that.
So far, however, Helen had refused even to try the dress on. Looking unusually haughty, she had informed Liz that she most certainly was not prepared to accept it as a gift. Until she had the money to buy it from her, the dress would have to stay where it was.
Passing the town hall on her way home, Liz glanced up at the clock. Twenty past ten. Helen was so stubborn, but she’d look fantastic in the georgette dress. There must be some way she could make her take it-
Twenty past ten? Hell’s bells, she must have been dawdling down the road. Her father would be home in five minutes’ time!
Seven
Breaking into a run, Liz rounded the corner- and stopped dead. Her father was a hundred yards in front of her. Oh, Mammy, Daddy! What was she going to do?
Then it came to her - the muddy lane which ran behind the houses on Queen Victoria Row. She could dash along there and get in the back door before her father reached the front one. She’d need the luck of the Irish to do it, especially as she would have to give him another half-minute. If she ran down behind him now, he might hear her.
She counted out the thirty seconds, her eyes on the back of his head. Don’t turn round, don’t turn round. Then she ran like the wind, sticking close to the hedges of the gardens which bordered the road. Her heart was thumping. She hadn’t moved this fast since she’d been at school.
With a sob of exertion and relief she wheeled into the lane - and caught her skirt on a nail sticking out of a fence. Damn, damn, damn. Pulling herself free, Liz pushed open the garden gate, sped up the path, flung open the back door and threw herself into the kitchen.
The occupants of it greeted her sudden arrival with upturned faces and looks of astonishment: her mother, Eddie and Mrs Crawford from next door. They were even more amazed when Liz flung her jacket off and ran out to the lobby to put it on the coat stand. Were those her father’s steps she could hear coming up the front path?
Rushing back into the kitchen, Liz switched on the big wireless set which sat on its own solid wooden shelf to the left of the kitchen door. There was a dance music programme on. The band was playing the Lambeth Walk.
Eddie was sitting at the table. Liz seized his hand and pulled him to his feet.
‘Dance with me,’ she said breathlessly. She threw a glance at her mother. ‘Don’t tell him I’ve been at my Red Cross class, Ma. Please!’
Mrs Crawford looked puzzled. ‘Why should her father object to her doing that? I don’t understand.’
Liz and a bemused Eddie started dancing. The music was very loud. In her haste, she’d turned the dial too far. Then it suddenly stopped.
‘What’s the matter with the wireless?’ asked Eddie, whirling round to check. ‘Oh!’
His father was standing in the doorway, his hand on the knob of the substantial machine.
‘What do you lot think you’re playing at? I could hear that cheap music from halfway down the street!’
He wasn’t to know that everyone present knew that wasn’t true. From the front door maybe... but not from halfway down the street. The wireless hadn’t been on then.
‘Mrs Crawford. I didn’t see you there.’ His voice had changed, become much less cold. Liz hated him for being able to do it. He would give his family the rough side of his tongue, not because he had lost his temper and couldn’t help himself. That, though unpleasant, she could have understood. No, they were all in for it because he had found them acting in a way he didn’t consider proper. In some obscure way it threatened the control he seemed to need to exercise over his house and his family.
Mrs Crawford was on her feet, aware as everyone was of the sudden chill in the air.
‘Good evening, Mr MacMillan. You’ll be wanting your supper. I’d better be getting home. I’ll be seeing you, Sadie.’
Liz saw her father’s eyebrows rise at the use of her mother’s first name. The gesture infuriated her. She wasn’t going to allow him to spoil her mother’s new friendship. Taking a mental deep breath, she rushed in. Where angels fear to tread were the words
that sprang to her mind.
‘Why don’t you see Mrs Crawford to the door, Ma? I’ll get on with the supper.’
With grim pleasure she saw that her father was torn between the desire to assert his authority and the desire to defer to Mrs Crawford as the wife of one of the senior managers. Deference won. That didn’t mean the storm wasn’t about to break - only that it had been delayed.
Sadie crept back into the room and lifted her apron off its hook. Her hands were clumsy as she tied the strings around her waist.
‘Here, Ma,’ said Eddie gently, ‘I’ll get that for you.’
He completed the task and sat down. Liz began slicing the bread. The icy silence was too much for Sadie to bear.
‘They were only having a wee dance, William. You and I used to enjoy that, don’t you remember?’
Liz and Eddie exchanged a look. Couldn’t their father hear the plea in their mother’s voice?
‘That’s where we met,’ Sadie told her children as she unwrapped the cheese. ‘Your father was a lovely dancer. Real good-looking, too. All the other girls were jealous when he asked me up.’
For the merest second, Liz saw something flicker in her father’s eyes. It was gone so quickly she wondered if she had imagined it.
His lack of response was making Sadie more and more nervous. She dropped the teaspoons on the floor and had to run them under the tap. When she put the cups and saucers out, they rattled noisily. Her husband sat waiting to be served, breathing heavily and tutting whenever she did something wrong. It made Liz so angry ... but if she or Eddie stood up for their mother it only made matters worse.
Her own escapade tonight hadn’t helped. Liz laid the milk jug and sugar bowl on the table. Her father glanced up at her.
‘You look like a hoyden, Elizabeth. When did you last brush your hair? And you’ve torn your skirt.’ He pointed to the threads which had been pulled by the nail as she had hurtled round into the lane. ‘That’s sheer carelessness.’