by Maggie Craig
‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ said Liz, the words shooting out of her mouth before she could stop them. The Honourable Miss Maclntyre seemed, however, disposed to find them amusing and took her leave of them all with a friendly wave.
The door had barely closed behind her before Miss Gilchrist gave Liz the look and the command. ‘Elizabeth. In front of my desk, now. If you please.’
And whether she pleased or not. The ticking-off which followed - on rudeness to visitors in the office ‘who also happen to be close relatives of Mr Murray’s, young lady!’ - was administered with a smirking Eric Mitchell listening to every word.
It didn’t help that the lecture was delivered by a seated Miss Gilchrist with Liz standing in front of her, arms behind her back like a naughty schoolgirl. Or that having finished berating her, her supervisor stood up, scooped a pile of folders from the filing tray and dumped them in Liz’s arms.
‘You’ll file these before you leave tonight.’
‘But Miss Gilchrist, I’ll be late home!’ wailed Liz, glancing up at the office clock. Not to mention the row I’ll get from Father - especially when he finds out why I had to stay behind.
Adam Buchanan, coming out of the inner office at that moment, must have heard the comment His uncle, following him out, didn’t notice what was going on, but then why should he have? He hadn’t witnessed the conversation which had provoked the reprimand. Adam Buchanan, however, by the faint raise of his eyebrows, showed that he had a fair idea of what was going on.
Alasdair Murray took his leave of his nephew, clapping him affectionately on the shoulder. Then he called Miss Gilchrist into his office. Liz knew they were planning to work late themselves. He was in the middle of dictating a long report to his personal secretary. They’d spent the morning pulling out information from lots of different files, hence the large amount which now needed to be put back into the cabinets.
His visitor came over and stood in front of Liz. ‘Miss MacMillan, I’m heading for Clydebank this evening. Can I offer you a lift home, by any chance?’
‘I have to work late,’ she said, indicating the files. The huge bundle was threatening to slide all over her desk.
‘I’ll stay if you like, Lizzie,’ said Eric Mitchell. ‘Help you put them away.’
‘No need for that, Mr Mitchell,’ said Adam Buchanan smoothly, not taking his eyes off Liz’s face. Had it betrayed the panic she had felt when Eric Mitchell had made his suggestion? ‘I’ll give Miss MacMillan a hand and afterwards I’ll give her a lift home so she won’t be too late.’
Once Eric Mitchell had left, Adam Buchanan pushed some of the files out of the way and half sat on Liz’s desk, perched on the corner.
‘If you’ll excuse me, Mr Buchanan,’ Liz said firmly, ‘I’d better get on. There’s really no need for you to stay and help me with the files. I can manage.’ Now that her tormentor had gone, she could afford to be brave.
Her rejected helper clapped a hand to his chest. ‘Miss MacMillan, you wound me, you really do!’
Liz curled her lip. ‘I doubt it, Mr Buchanan.’
‘My friends call me Adam,’ he said.
‘How very nice for them.’
‘Och, well,’ he said, ‘bring on the tumbrels and the knitting needles. Do you have a basket to catch my head?’ he enquired politely. ‘We wouldn’t want the blood to spatter all over your clothes.’
‘Ha, ha,’ said Liz. ‘Very funny.’ But she did feel a twinge of amusement, and she couldn’t help letting it show.
One long leg swinging, he grinned at her, then made a sudden request. ‘Come and have tea with me after we’ve done the files.’
‘What?’
‘Tea,’ he repeated. .’A popular reviving drink. The cup that cheers but does not inebriate. Enjoyed by all classes of society - even revolutionaries and Red Clydesiders.’
‘Ha, ha,’ said Liz again. ‘Very droll. Unfortunately I shall have to decline. It would make me even later home.’
He looked around him and spotted the phone on Miss Gilchrist’s desk. ‘Couldn’t you telephone your folks? Tell them you’re going to be a little late?’ He clapped his hand to his chest again, a comical expression on his pleasant face. ‘But that you’re in safe hands?’
‘Only with extreme difficulty. We’re not on the phone.’
She said it with a smile. The relief now that Eric Mitchell was no longer in the room was enormous. And Adam Buchanan was funny and nice. She was beginning to warm to him.
‘Ah,’ he said, pushing himself up off the desk. ‘Well, then, we’d better get going. Working together we’ll get through these files like a hot knife through butter. Co-operate in this time of crisis. Put our noses to the wheel and our shoulders to the grindstone and all that - or should it be the other way about?’
‘Uh-huh,’ said Liz, wondering why listening to her boss’s nephew talking nonsense was making her feel so much better. It was kind of him to help her. Really kind.
Twenty minutes later they had put all the files away and, somewhat to her own surprise, Liz was allowing him to lead her to his car.
‘Morag?’ she asked when they reached the Austin 7 parked on the road outside Murray’s. The rain had come on again. It didn’t seem to want to stop this summer.
‘Morag,’ Adam murmured. ‘She’ll be flattered that you remembered.’ He put a gentlemanly hand under her elbow to help her into the car. It was the lightest of touches, but Liz jumped back as though she’d been stung, his innocent good manners evoking all too vividly her terrifying experience of earlier in the afternoon.
‘Sorry!’ Swiftly, he removed his hand. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’
‘I’m all right,’ said Liz, although it was clear that she wasn’t. Her breath was coming too fast, for one thing. The hazel eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
Once he had started up the car and they were driving along the street, raindrops drumming against the windscreen, he seemed inclined to continue the bantering conversation they’d been conducting earlier.
‘Isn’t it fine to be out of the rain? Passing the hoi polloi all getting drookit?’ He gave a teasing emphasis to the last word. ‘I only hope it doesn’t compromise your revolutionary principles.’
Suddenly it was all too much. Today had been hellish.
‘Hey,’ Adam Buchanan said, glancing across at her. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Everything,’ she blurted out. ‘Everything.’
Without a word, he carefully steered Morag into the side of the road, pulled on the handbrake and turned to face Liz.
‘Cup of tea?’ he suggested, surveying her critically.
Liz blew her nose. ‘I thought you were swimming in the stuff.’
‘Coffee, then. I know exactly the place.’
Thirteen
He took her to a café in Byres Road, not far from the Western Infirmary. Putting his hand on the bold diagonal chrome bars of the glass door, he pushed it open, ushering Liz in front of him.
Behind the counter, framed by tall sweetie jars on shelves behind him and dispensers of pink and white paper straws on the glass counter in front of him, stood a man in late middle age. A little heavy around the cheeks and greying at the temples, he was nonetheless still handsome, an impression confirmed when he smiled broadly at Liz, teeth startlingly white against olive skin.
The café owner obviously knew her escort, greeting him by name.
‘Adam! Come in, come in - and close the door. The young lady will get cold.’
He was Italian, of course. café owners always were. The cadences of his native Tuscany were clearly to be heard in a voice which also bore the unmistakable imprint of a long residence in the west of Scotland.
‘Hello, Mr Rossi. Is Mario about?’
‘Not yet, but he’ll be back soon, I think. Now, what can I get for you and the signorina? Coffee?’
‘Please.’
Liz slid into one of the booths Adam indicated. They were set down one wall of the café opposite the counter. A
small oval marble-topped table was bolted to the floor in each one. The wooden bench seats on either side of the table were painted a glossy black and each alcove was big enough to seat four - maybe six if you were prepared to get really friendly with your fellow coffee drinkers.
Gazing out at the street, Liz saw that the rain was into its stride now: a typical west coast summer rainstorm, the water falling in elongated drops like darning needles which bounced back up off the pavement as soon as they struck it.
Inside all was cosy and warm. Liz unbuttoned her mac. The man brought their coffee.
‘It’s fair stoating, eh?’ he said, pointing to the rain outside. Adam shared a smile with her, and she could see that, like herself, he was amused by Mr Rossi’s use of the vernacular. She applied herself to the coffee, white and frothy in a glass cup and saucer.
Everything was glass in here - or chrome - even the sugar dispenser. You tipped it up over your cup and it measured out exactly a teaspoonful of pure white sugar. Liz didn’t drink coffee very often. At home and at work they always had tea, and the coffee she had tasted before hadn’t been nearly as nice as this. Despite her attack of the miseries, she felt herself begin to relax as she sipped the hot, sweet liquid.
Looking around, she caught a glimpse of herself in one of the mirrors which lined the walls. Her hair had done what it always did in the rain: gone into the usual mass of waves and curls. So what? She wasn’t trying to get a lumber with Adam Buchanan. He wasn’t her type. She most definitely wasn’t his. She didn’t have an Honourable in front of her name, for one thing.
‘That’s better,’ he said, watching her smile. ‘Now, tell your Uncle Adam all about it.’
Liz stalled for time, glancing once more at their surroundings.
‘Nice place.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed, his voice deep and measured. ‘We come here all the time. It’s handy for the Infirmary.’
Liz stared at him uncomprehendingly.
‘I’m a medical student,’ he said. ‘So’s Mario. Mr Rossi’s son. We’re in the same year.’
She ignored the information about the unknown Mario.
‘You’re a medical student?’
She hadn’t succeeded in keeping the surprise out of her voice. An unholy gleam of amusement crept into young Mr Buchanan’s eyes.
‘Ah-hah! I see. You had me down as one of the Idle Rich, I suppose. A well-off wastrel. Thought I spent all my time going to cocktail parties. Or huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’. That sort of thing.’
‘Yes. N-no,’ she stammered. That was exactly what she had thought.
‘You Red Clydesiders,’ he sighed in mock dismay. ‘You’d have us all strung up from the nearest lamp-post, wouldn’t you?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Her voice trembled. She was making a mess of everything today.
He leaned forward across the narrow table, peering anxiously into her face.
‘Hey! I think it’s probably me who should be sorry. Have I upset you in some way?’
‘No,’ said Liz. She turned her head to look out at the street. She wasn’t seeing it. In her mind she was back at the Broomielaw with Eric Mitchell. Suppressing a shudder, she forced herself back to the present, meeting Adam’s eyes across the table. ‘No, you haven’t upset me. It’s something else.’
‘Want to talk about it?’ he asked.
Unconsciously catching her bottom lip with her teeth, Liz looked doubtfully at him. Confide in him? A man, a posh man, a medical student? Who even if he had just shot up in her estimation because of his chosen profession was so far outside her social circle he might as well be in the stratosphere that Dominic Gallagher kept going on about? At this precise moment, she couldn’t think of anyone better.
She didn’t tell him about Eric Mitchell of course, but she told him about wanting to become a VAD and about her father’s opposition to her becoming a nurse.
‘What exactly are your papa’s objections? Could you persuade him to change his mind if you tried to pinpoint them and argued your way logically around them?’
‘I wish I could,’ said Liz wistfully. She rested her elbows on the table and gazed at him. ‘Logic doesn’t really seem to come into it.’
Adam looked thoughtful. ‘Is he a bit authoritarian?’
‘You could say that.’
He squared his shoulders and spoke slowly, thinking it out as he went along. ‘Well ... in that case... if he’s not susceptible to a reasoned argument - what you have to do is manipulate him into being unable to refuse his permission.’
‘Och, I don’t know,’ said Liz, sinking her cheek on to her fist. When it came down to it, her father’s objections being completely illogical and unexplainable made them all the more difficult to fight. ‘My brother doesn’t want me to do it either.’
‘Why ever not?’
Liz told him. She got a very scornful look in return.
‘It’s your life,’ Adam said, ‘not your brother’s. I’d tell him to take a running jump if I were you.’
‘Maybe he’s got a point,’ she said gloomily. ‘Mrs Buchanan gave us this talk about it - what a lovely time she’d had being a nurse in the Great War - “how all the officers would fall in love with us”.’
Unthinkingly, she had mimicked Amelia Buchanan’s polite tones for the last phrase. ‘Honestly, that woman’s so frightfully posh-’
She stopped dead, realizing too late who she was talking to: Mrs Buchanan’s wee boy, as Helen called him.
Flushing scarlet, Liz sat up straight and forced herself to look him in the eye. ‘I’ve just opened my mouth and put my big foot right in it, haven’t I? That’s always been one of my greatest talents.’
Adam laughed out loud. ‘That’s what Cordelia says about herself too.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Liz. ‘I’m really sorry. I do apologize.’
‘I should think so too,’ he murmured. ‘Insulting a chap’s mother like that. Not quite the thing, you know, dear gel.’
He was putting it on. He had to be. Quite that posh he wasn’t. But she had been terribly rude. She apologized again. He waved a languid hand.
‘Think nothing of it. I have to admit that my mother in full flow is quite a prospect. It’s a bit like a natural phenomenon - a river bursting its banks or those pictures of streams of molten lava in Iceland that you see on the newsreels. Personally, I think that if the Germans knew we had her on our side, they’d sue for peace straightaway. The people of Czechoslovakia could sleep safe in their beds at night.’
He was doing it again - talking nonsense until she had recovered. Helen was right. Adam Buchanan was a very nice man - even if he did talk posh.
‘Can I call you Elizabeth?’
‘I only get Elizabeth from my father - usually when I’ve done something wrong,’ she responded, giving him a smile in return for his own. ‘You said that your friends call you Adam. Mine call me Liz.’
He extended his hand across the narrow café table. ‘Hello, Liz.’
‘Hello, Adam.’
His grip was firm, and this time the touch of his warm hand didn’t make her feel at all uncomfortable.
‘So, Elizabeth called Liz, have you always wanted to be a nurse?’
‘Since I was wee,’ she confided. ‘I used to bandage my dolls and pretend to take their temperature - my brother too when he’d let me. I would tuck them up in bed and pretend to nurse them. And I took the pillowcase off my bed and fastened it around my head with pins so that I looked the part.’ She made a face, laughing at herself. ‘Daft, eh?’
‘Not daft at all,’ he assured her.
He was real easy to talk to. Liz found herself telling him things she hadn’t even told Helen, like about the time she had spent at Blawarthill as a child, how lost and alone she had felt until the nurse there had been kind to her.
‘That must have been tough.’
‘No doubt it was very character-building.’
‘I’m sure,’ he said politely. ‘Probably what made you want to be a nu
rse, as you say. Would you like another coffee?’
She shook her head. ‘No thanks. I’d better be getting home. My mother’ll be up on the ceiling if I’m not back soon.’
‘I’ll take you,’ he said immediately. He lifted a hand to forestall the protest Liz had started to make. ‘It’s no trouble. No trouble at all.’ He leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘In fact, my dear girl, it’s essential to my cunning plan.’ He sat back in his seat, tapping the side of his nose in a significant manner and putting on a look which reminded her of Helen’s mysterious voice and face.
‘Which is?’
‘To ask your mama if it would be convenient for my mama to call on her and your father to persuade him that it’s his patriotic duty to let you join the Voluntary Aid Detachment.’
‘What?’ Liz’s face broke into a joyful smile. ‘Would she really do that?’
‘Of course she would. She’s a good sport.’
‘But why should she go to all that bother for me?’
Adam smiled. ‘Because you’d make a great nurse and you’d be an asset to the Red Cross - which needs as many volunteers as it can get at the moment. And that would also be the Red Cross to which my mother is devoted.’
‘Because she was a VAD in the Great War?’
‘That,’ he said, ‘and because it was what kept her going after my father died. There was some bad timing there,’ he said ruefully. ‘I’d just started at the Uni, you see, and I was all caught up in that.’
‘You don’t have any brothers and sisters?’
‘No. After she had me she had a post-partum haemorrhage and as a result she had to have a hysterectomy.’
Liz tried to show nothing more than polite interest. She knew what a hysterectomy was, of course, but she’d never actually heard the word said out loud. Even in all-female company it tended to be spoken in a whisper. The young man sitting opposite her seemed belatedly to realize that.