by Joan Lingard
‘I must have brushed up against something.’
Willa turned aside to shield her burning face. At that moment Malcolm created a diversion, for which she silently blessed him, by tipping the contents of his porridge bowl over the floor.
‘Naughty boy!’ she told him nevertheless, since she felt it incumbent upon her to try to teach him to recognise the difference between right and wrong, not that she was always sure of the distinction herself. It was wrong to throw food on the floor, especially when there were people in the world starving, like those African babies who kept Elma occupied knitting matinee coats and bootees. That, to Willa, was clear cut. She also believed it was wrong to be unfaithful to your husband. Thou shalt not commit adultery. It was one of the imperatives that had been burned into her brain early on, like Thou shalt not steal. Not bear false witness. And so forth. She’d gone to Sunday school every week as a child and had even won prizes for her knowledge of biblical stories and sometimes she and Ina went to church, though less than they used to, with Malcolm being unwilling to sit quietly on a knee and listen to a man in black droning on. But what if your husband was unfaithful to you? Willa was well acquainted with the saying that two wrongs don’t make a right but might they not sometime? Or was she just trying to quell her feelings of guilt? These thoughts running and rerunning through her mind were giving her a headache, on top of too little sleep, and a hangover, the first she’d ever had.
Malcolm, being accustomed to getting his own way on most occasions, began to cry.
‘Och, don’t scold the wee soul,’ said his grandmother. ‘He didn’t know what he was doing. Did you Malkie, pet?’ She lifted him up from the chair and he rewarded her with an enormous smile. ‘Come and sit on Granny’s knee and have some of Granny’s porridge.’
After Willa had cleaned up the mess she went into the bathroom to cool down. There were times when she wanted to hit Tommy’s mother with the poker.
LOCAL WOMAN BATTERS MOTHER-IN-LAW TO PULP.
She could see the headline on the Evening News billboard outside Bunty’s shop.
Thou shalt not kill.
Someone was tapping on the door. ‘It’s me, Pauline. Can I get in? I’m going to be sick.’
Willa vacated the bathroom and went into her bedroom. Pauline returned ashen-faced and sat down on the bed beside her.
‘Too many slings,’ she said.
‘Did you spend the night in the Caley? With Ralph?’
Pauline sighed.
‘Maybe you should use my douche?’
‘No point.’
‘How do you mean no point?’
‘I’m expecting already. At least I’m pretty sure I am.’
‘Oh God!’ said Willa.
‘That’s why last night I thought, “What the hell?”’
‘Whose is it?’
‘Ernest’s.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure! I’m not a hoor.’
Pauline began to cry. Willa looked longingly at Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! lying on her bedside table and wished she could pick it up and lose herself in its world. To be a Swedish immigrant in Nebraska might be hard going but it seemed more straightforward than living with your mother-in-law in a small Edinburgh flat. Right now she would love to go to Nebraska. The other advantage of a novel was that it usually offered some kind of reasonable resolution in the end, whereas here, sitting beside a sobbing Pauline, she could not foresee one, not a satisfactory one, anyway.
She comforted Pauline as best she could. ‘I’ll help you in any way I can.’ But in what way? Tommy’s pay didn’t allow much for extras and Ina couldn’t be expected to give shelter to Pauline and a baby in this already overcrowded flat.
‘What am I to do?’
‘I think Ernest should be made to do something. Why should he get off? Perhaps we should try to find him.’
Pauline cheered up a little at that. She sniffled and blew her nose. ‘I do love him, you know. And he loved me. But it was difficult for him. He was torn.’
He might well have been, thought Willa, for all she knew. She understood what it was to be torn: it was like being ripped apart in the middle.
‘What about you?’ asked Pauline. ‘Where did you run off to last night? Who is Richard when he’s at home? Your man from the library?’
And so Willa told her. She had been needing to tell someone; the secret had become too big to hold.
‘I thought something was going on with you,’ said Pauline. ‘You were going about with a kind of faraway look in your eyes. Have you fallen for him? Really fallen?’
Willa nodded.
‘So now what?’
‘Now nothing. There’s no future for us. There can’t be. I’m married.’
‘People get divorced.’
They didn’t know anyone who had.
‘I’ve got a child. I could never give up Malcolm.’
‘Take him with you.’
‘Tommy might try to get custody if I was the guilty party.’
‘Come on, Willa, he’s guilty too, I’ll bet you anything on that! How many girls will he have had?’
‘I’ve no proof.’
‘But you know. There’s no way he wouldn’t, not Tommy.’
‘Yes, I know. There’s other things besides.’
‘Such as?’
‘Richard’s mother.’
‘Not another mother,’ groaned Pauline. ‘You know how to pick them.’
‘This one wouldn’t take me in, I can tell you that.’
‘Maybe she wouldn’t need to.’
‘There’s no chance of Richard being able to support a wife and child. He’s hoping to go back to university in the autumn. But if it weren’t for all of that, all—’ Willa stopped. If it were not for all those difficult, impossible, insurmountable things she could live happily ever after with Richard. She felt convinced that she could. ‘We get on so well together, we understand each other, we can talk for hours about books, the world, all sorts of things. I know I’ll never have that with Tommy. Richard’s like a pool of calm, clear water, open and honest. He would be lovely to live with, I can tell.’
‘Oh, Willa!’ said Pauline and they cried together.
When they’d dried their eyes, Pauline made them laugh saying, ‘Mind you, you can’t beat your Tommy on the dance floor.’
‘Trouble is you can’t spend your whole life dancing.’
‘Pity,’ said Pauline.
The doorbell rang and Willa said, ‘Who in the name can that be?’ using Ina’s well-worn phrase, which gave them another laugh.
The caller was Bunty and, as she herself might have said, she was on her high horse, and snorting. She was looking for Pauline.
‘I’m sorry, Bunty,’ said Pauline, ‘Honest I am. I had an awful bad stomach this morning. I must have eaten something last night.’
‘You’d better be there for the evening papers!’
‘I will, I promise I will. I won’t let you down.’
Bunty went in to the kitchen and Willa fetched Malcolm from his granny’s knee, saying that she and Pauline were taking him out for a walk, it was far too nice a day for him to be inside a hot kitchen. He fought as usual, but she prevailed.
‘Go and wash your face,’ she told Pauline. ‘We’re going out to look for Ernest.’
~ 17 ~
Honolulu, Hawaii,
The Sandwich Islands
10th June, 1924
Dear Willa,
We are now on United States territory. No need to tell you, that being so, the Yankee element predominates, with dollars, autos, chewing gum, horn-rimmed spectacles and ice cream everywhere. Mother would love the ice cream. Any kind of flavour you want.
‘Tommy always brings me in a double-slider when he’s home,’ said Ina.
‘Is Hawaii not where the girls wear grass skirts?’ said Bunty, shoogling her hips. ‘And flowers round their necks.’
‘What about sharks?’ asked Ina.
‘You and y
our sharks!’ said Bunty.
‘Here’s something about fish,’ said Willa. ‘He says they’re very pretty and their vivid colours are remarkable. He’s enclosed a cut-out of one.’ She dug in the envelope and brought out the shape which was passed from hand to hand to be admired. The fish was green, blue, orange and black and quite unlike anything to be seen on their fishmonger’s slab.
‘That reminds me,’ said Ina, ‘if you’re going out get us a couple of smoked haddies for our tea. I fancy one with a poached egg on top.’
Pearl Harbor, about nine miles away, is an American naval base, where approx. 15,000 US sailors and airmen are stationed. Pretty nice posting for them! Wouldn’t mind a few months out here myself. I love the heat of the tropics.
‘That’s with him being so dark,’ said Bunty. ‘He can take it. It wouldn’t suit me.’
‘He’s not dark,’ said his mother. ‘He’s just got black hair.’
‘And olive skin, like most Ities,’ said Bunty. ‘Malkie is going to be the same.’
The American authorities have been doing everything they can to make our stay enjoyable and interesting. Entertainments of various kinds have been arranged for us at the Moana Hotel. The Hawaiians put on a Hula Hula dance, which is a kind of love dance.
‘Love dance,’ said Bunty, clicking her tongue and annoying Ina again. ‘Hear that, Pauline?’ she added, as Pauline came into the room. ‘Fancy going to Hawaii and getting yourself a grass skirt? A bit itchy when you sit down.’ She laughed but Pauline was not in the mood for laughing.
In Waikiki Park there is a dance pavilion, with a jazz band at one end and, at the other, a Hawaiian band which plays dreamy waltzes, while the Hawaiians in the audience sing along in harmony. The nights are balmy and mild and the moon seems bigger than it is in Edinburgh.
‘Dreamy waltzes, eh,’ said Bunty. ‘In the moonlight. Oh shine on, shine on harvest moon up in the sky, I ain’t had no lovin’ since January, February, June or July.’
Pauline joined in and Ina tetched and plucked at the top of her corsets where the bones were sticking into her bosom.
Willa hoped Tommy was dancing dreamily with any girl he fancied. She wasn’t getting the chance to dance with Richard though at nights she dreamt about it. They’d only managed to meet two or three times since the night in Princes Street gardens; they’d had cups of tea in their café and frustrating, dangerous embraces in Dunbar’s Close and each time they had met she had told him that this would have to be the last time and he had told her that he couldn’t live without her.
As for their search for Ernest, she and Pauline had not had any luck so far but they weren’t ready yet to give up. Willa reasoned that he must be somewhere in Edinburgh and someone must know him. They’d tried the hosiery department in Patrick Thomson’s and then gone down to Princes Street to work their way along, calling at Forsyths, Jenners and Darlings, by which time their legs were tired and Malcolm was grumpy so they’d gone into Crawford’s tea room and had a pot of tea and cream cakes.
They had avoided their own area since they were known to the shopkeepers but Willa had decided they would have to start asking them too. And after that, they’d have to go further a field. There were dozens of shops, if not hundreds, in Edinburgh, selling stockings. Meanwhile, the search was helping to keep Pauline from sliding right down into the dumps.
Honolulu is very modern and well ahead of any other island in the South Seas. I guess they’ve got the Yanks to thank for that. All kind of coloured races are to be found here, Japs predominating.
‘They’re off up to Canada next,’ said Willa, deciding to cut the reading short as Malcolm was getting restless. She folded the letter and put it away, to finish reading it with Richard when she got the chance. ‘Pauline and I are going to take Malcolm out.’
‘You look as if you could do with some air right enough,’ said Bunty to Pauline, who gave her a somewhat sickly grin. She was sick only first thing in the morning now, usually before Ina wakened. ‘You’re a bit wan looking.’
Pauline fetched her handbag and Willa carried Malcolm down the stairs, but before strapping him into his pram she took him into the shop next door, the Scotch Wool and Hosiery Stores, which, until now, they had avoided. Pauline followed. Mrs Andrews was behind the counter having a chat with Mrs Begg. She broke off to address them.
‘Well, girls, what can I do for the two of youse today?’
‘A friend of ours was asking us to make enquiries about a Mr Ernest Smith,’ said Willa. ‘He’s a commercial traveller for a hosiery firm. We were wondering if you’d ever come across him?’
‘A Mr Smith?’ Mrs Andrews frowned. ‘Can’t say I have. No, sorry.’
‘Thanks, anyway.’
‘You might try Miss Piper,’ offered Mrs Begg. ‘She kens everybody. Oh, just a minute there, Willa. Could I have a word with you?’
She came out onto the pavement with them and she and Willa stood a little apart from Pauline.
‘I was wondering if you’d like a wee job? Working in the shop Wednesday afternoons – that’s my half day – and all day Saturday?’
‘Well, I’m not sure…’
‘The pay wouldn’t be much but it would give you a bit of pin money. I thought maybe Mrs Costello could look after your wean. She seems right fond of him?’
‘I’ll need to think about it. Thanks for asking me, Mrs Andrews.’
She told Pauline about the offer as they set off up the hill towards Bruntsfield and Morningside.
‘Are you going to do it?’ asked Pauline.
‘I’d like to but I wouldn’t want to leave Malcolm with Tommy’s mother all that time.’
‘I could look after him.’
‘She’d take him from you. I’ll see. Today we’re looking for Ernest!’
‘Where can we start?
‘We’ll ask at every shop,’ said Willa. ‘It’s the only way.’
It was a nice day for a walk; warm, but not hot, the way it would be in the tropics. Malcolm, once he’d accepted his confinement, was enjoying the outing. His bright eyes were alert, noticing everything that was going on around him, and he rewarded everyone who stopped to smile at him with a large grin. Pauline observed that he could charm the birds out of the trees, like someone else they knew. As well as being handsome, Willa was sure that Malcolm would be good at his lessons when he went to school. Perhaps, one day, he might be able to go university like Richard. She might have gone herself had it not been necessary for her to leave school at fourteen and earn a wage to help her mother. There were scholarships for clever children whose parents were not well off.
As they passed the greengrocer’s they saw one of the MacNab boys snaffling an apple from an outside box. It made a bulge in his trouser pocket. He gave them a quick startled look, aware that he’d been seen, and ran off.
‘Good luck to him,’ said Pauline.
Willa nodded in agreement, deciding that sometimes the sixth commandment should be overlooked. Whenever she saw the MacNab children out on their own she slipped a sweet or a small bar of chocolate into their hands. She knew they wouldn’t tell their father. They’d have it eaten before they got home. She hadn’t seen their mother for a week or two.
The greengrocer came out of the shop, wiping his hands on his apron. ‘Did you see that boy taking anything?’
‘What boy?’ asked Pauline.
‘That one running. Him and his brother are aye hanging about. Quick-fingered, they are. I’ll skin them alive if I get my hands on them.’
Pauline shrugged and the man went back inside, muttering to himself.
They carried on to Miss Piper’s. She sold everything from pins and needles, reels of thread of all the colours of the rainbow and others besides, skeins of wool and needles to knit with, hair nets for every shade of hair, cards of knicker elastic and babies’ rompers to hat pins and father boas. This was a shop that Willa loved. She’d come here with her mother since she was a small child. The counter was cluttered and boxes were stacked
on shelves from floor to ceiling. Miss Piper looked as if she’d been left over from the last century.
Willa put her question again.
‘So is this gentleman someone your friend is particularly anxious to track down?’ enquired Miss Piper, leaning over the counter, on the small space that remained clear. Behind her round glasses her watery blue eyes had an amazingly innocent look. ‘Would it be an affair of the heart?’ Her voice had a catch in it. She was a great reader of romances.
‘She didn’t really tell us much,’ said Willa. ‘But thanks anyway, Miss Piper.’
‘If I do come across him I’ll be sure to let you know. Ernest Smith, did you say?’ She was reluctant to let them go. ‘I’ll write it down so that I’ll remember. Call in again when you’re passing in case I hear anything. And how is Mrs Costello, Willa? Well, I hope?’
‘Very well.’
‘And Tommy? Such a charming young man. I wasn’t surprised when he captured your heart. When will he be coming home?’
‘October or so.’
‘Not till then? Dear me. His mother must miss him. He was always the apple— Is that you off now? Remember me…’
After another two shops they decided they were in need of refreshment. Willa unstrapped a joyful baby and they went into a café and sat at the window licking ice-cream sliders. Willa bought a small cone for Malcolm and tied on the bib which she kept at the bottom of the pram. There was no danger of his throwing the cone on the floor. Porridge, yes; ice cream, no. He knew what he was about, that boy.
Willa blinked as a man went past the window.
‘Richard!’ she cried, dumping Malcolm on Pauline’s knee and rushing out of the café. She called his name again and he turned and, without thinking, they went into each other’s arms, in plain daylight, for all who were passing up and down Morningside Road to see. Realising this, Willa drew back and glanced around but saw no one in the immediate vicinity that she recognised.
Pauline had come to the door of the café with Malcolm in her arms. ‘He was crying for you. He wants his mammy.’