Saturday City

by Webster, Jan

  ‘I hate him.’

  ‘Well, your mother doesn’t. She speaks to him — different.’ She couldn’t quite explain what she meant.

  ‘He gives her things.’ Donald was stabbing the sofa with his heels.

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Flowers and letters. Things.’ He pointed to his toy-box in a corner. ‘In there — the painted pencil-case. Fetch it,’ he ordered imperiously.

  Carlie did as she was told. He opened the box and took a long envelope from it, half-hiding it with his blanket. ‘He sent her this. It’s a letter. She doesn’t know I’ve got it. I took it from under her pillow, when she wasn’t looking.’

  His face looked triumphant and at the same time guilty. It made Carlie uncomfortable to look at it.

  ‘You shouldn’t take things,’ she said, subdued.

  ‘It says, “My beloved darling, the days are long when I don’t see you. Tell me you will come away with me.”’

  Carlie wrestled with him and took it from him. She didn’t believe Donald when he said he’d read it. He wasn’t as quick at reading or writing as she was, and she still had difficulty with grown-ups’ handwriting. This, however, was remarkably clear writing, large and somehow — well, pretty was the word for it. Innocently she read from the top of the second page. ‘Tell him you need a holiday. Tell him anything.’ Then she put the sheets of paper back in their envelope, feeling her face go red as it always did when she wasn’t sure a course of action was the right one.

  ‘I think you should put it back,’ she said quickly, but Donald didn’t answer. He was crying, in a furious, half-ashamed way, and she pretended not to notice, for boys weren’t supposed to cry.

  It was a very miserable sound. In a little he put his head under the blanket again and pretended to be asleep. Carlie was glad when her mother came for her and took her home.

  Going down the drive in the dark, Josie catechized her. ‘Was your Uncle Lachie there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But Mr Macleish was?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Josie made a clicking sound with her tongue. Carlie said nothing to her about the letter. Instead she said, ‘Aunt Tansy gave me a banana. From the Colonial Exhibition.’

  When they got home they examined it with interest. It was the first either of them had ever seen. Carlie peeled it as Aunt Tansy had shown her and gave her mother half.

  When she lay in the recessed bed that night, behind the snug curtains, Carlie thought of Donald. Now that no one could see, it was all right for her to cry, too. Not understanding why just made it worse.

  *

  By the time he got back to Dounhead, after seeing Kirsten, Duncan had developed a raging fever. The doctor was called and diagnosed pneumonia, aggravated by undernourishment.

  Josie nursed him through the crisis. She had fallen into a nagging, upbraiding way of talking to him, which her tender actions belied. He was grateful for her care and unmindful of her attitude. If she but knew where his thoughts so often lay, she would have full justification for her anger.

  ‘Don’t go to New York,’ Kirsten had said. There was no question of him going anywhere, said Dr Pettigrew. It was going to take a long time to rebuild his strength and the basis of that was good, nourishing food.

  Jack sent word that he was to keep the six guineas, lent for the trip to New York. Tansy dispatched her maid with calves’ foot jelly and Kate brought brown eggs and rich barley broth in a little lidded canister.

  But he ate little. When the illness had burned itself out, he lay as though washed up on some grey, sunless shore, detached from his own feelings, remote from the worst the world could do to him. Ivy Thompson, thinking herself out of earshot, had pronounced the verdict to Josie: ‘He’s just a rickle of bones.’ His heavy bones lay under the hodden blankets; the rough wool scratched his papery skin. He was aware of the bright red head of his child, Carlie, playing her games; hearing her voice like pleasant music. Faces came and went in the kitchen, mouths urged him to get on his feet again.

  When Josie built up the fire and got him up to sit by it with a blanket round his shoulders, he stared into the small, shooting flames, seeing Kirsten there. If he had any will, it was to see her again. Old Adam in that rickle of bones. Josie coaxed him to take some broth. Her kindness made him retch.

  ‘Keir Hardie’s standing at Mid-Lanark,’ she said to him one day. ‘If he can go independent, so can you next time you get the chance.’

  He laughed. ‘You’ll not see me standing again.’

  She ignored this expression of self-pity.

  ‘He’s having a go at the Kirk and the Queen. Some of them at Lanark seem to like it.’ She ticked Hardie’s other campaign issues off on her fingers. ‘Home rule, the eight-hour working day, temperance, electoral reform. Even those that don’t agree with him say he’s made his mark.’

  She thought she detected a spark of interest, followed by a feeble but genuine irritation when she reported that Hardie had in the end polled less than ten per cent of the vote.

  ‘I could have told him that,’ said Duncan. But he took the paper from her hand to read about it.

  A few days after Hardie’s predictable defeat, Josie showed Jamie Pullar to Duncan’s bedside. The ruddy-faced widower brought some black bun and what he averred was good news. He had been to Mid-Lanark and, he maintained, he had seen a Sign. Hardie might not have polled many votes, but he had focused attention on the genuine possibility of working-class representation. And all kinds of factions who had warred against each other before Mid-Lanark were now talking of getting together at last and starting up a Scottish Labour Party.

  It was after this visit that Duncan pulled on his trousers for the first time in many weeks and, wrapped in all the scarves Josie could find, walked on tottery legs a few yards down the Rows. The warm spring air filtered into his lungs and brought colour to his cheeks. That night, he ate cheese toasted on soda scone. And when Carlie looked at him warily, still seeing the frail invalid father who wasn’t to be bothered, he pulled her on to his knee and sang to her.

  When April came, he was in Glasgow for the founding meeting of the Scottish Labour Party. As Jamie Pullar had shrewdly predicted, the time was ripe to gather together many shades of unrepresented opinion.

  There were those who wanted the immediate nationalization of the banks, land, railways and mineral rights, and some, like the Harrow-educated Liberal MP for North-West Lanark, Robert Bontine Cunningham-Graham, who urged the abolition of Royalty and the House of Lords.

  Land reform and home rule were the preoccupations of men like John Murdoch, the crofters’ leader, and Dr G. B. Clark, Good Templar and radical freelance, while temperance and improving the immediate lot of the poor were the overriding concern of Keir Hardie and his fellow trade unionists.

  When Duncan and Pullar came out of the meeting, they grinned at each other tentatively.

  ‘What do you think?’ demanded Duncan. ‘Will it last any longer than the Miners’ Federation?’

  ‘Who’s to say?’ replied Jamie. ‘It’s a mixed bag of tricks we’ve got. But it’s better than nothing.’

  *

  By the winter, he was again involved in political matters with the new Labour Party and New York was never again mentioned. The ‘New Unionism’ of the unskilled workers, the dockers’ demands for ‘a tanner an hour’, and the strike of ‘those filthy, haggard harridans’, the Bryant and May match-girls, had combined to bring about a new interest in his writings and meetings.

  And he was seeing Kirsten again. She, too, joined the new party and helped him write, shape and sell his articles, determined he should make enough to live on.

  Helplessly, he slipped back into the old infatuation for her. All the time he was ill, she had been helping an English friend, Mary Banks, in her mission offices in the East End, fitting out destitute families with cast-off clothing and boots, and living in Spartan rooms above the mission.

  He was often there, in those rooms, part of the circ
le of friends the two girls drew about them who discussed the topics of the age. He would allow himself to be coaxed to stay behind to eat the nourishing cheap stews they made and to discuss the book on the new radicalism that Kirsten insisted he should be writing.

  ‘No one but you can write this book,’ she persuaded. ‘You’ve got both the journalistic ability and the experience from life.’ She helped him plan the book under chapter headings, putting new heart and resolution into him when she praised his sharp insights and straightforward, readable style.

  One day, when it was sleety-cold outside, and he had just built up the fire in the shabby East End parlour, she came and sat on the edge of his chair and absently stroked his hair.

  He looked round, sensing her mood was troubled. He caught her cold hand and held it. ‘What is it?’ he demanded.

  She didn’t answer him immediately. Instead she watched the burgeoning flames in the grate, her eyes deep and thoughtful.

  ‘Kirsten,’ he urged.

  Slowly she said, ‘I’m going to have a baby.’

  ‘Kirsten! Is it true?’

  ‘Of course it’s true. Why shouldn’t it be? We’ve behaved like two crazy children. Not taking care. I’m robbed of sense when I’m with you.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I? What are we going to do, Duncan? How could we have been so — so stupid and selfish?’

  ‘We’ll find an answer.’ She gazed down at his face and saw that on top of the concern there was triumph. It shot through her worry like a warm, sweet, atavistic pain and she slid on to his lap and let his comforting arms go round her.

  ‘You’re pleased,’ she accused.

  ‘There are worse things than love bairns.’

  ‘How can you be so — so casual? There’s Josie, and your little girl, and your chance of getting in at Dounhead next time. If it gets out, it could ruin your career.’

  ‘We’ll find an answer.’

  ‘There isn’t one. Except that I should go away.’

  ‘No, there’s another. It’s that I should leave Josie and be with you.’

  ‘We’ve been through all that before. Josie doesn’t believe in divorce. You told me. And even if she did, it’s what she represents that matters. Josie is Dounhead. Leave her and you leave behind your chances of getting to Parliament.’

  ‘There are other seats.’

  ‘Your reputation would follow you around.’

  He put her from him and stood up, his face kindling with a slow anger.

  ‘I’m not ashamed of loving you. Let the world know it and do what it likes.’ But she saw that she had got through to him.

  ‘Wheesht!’ She used the vernacular tenderly. Drawing her black crocheted shawl across her chest and holding it tightly under folded arms, she strode about the room.

  ‘I’ve been thinking and thinking. Before I told you. In a way it’s a kind of test of me as a free woman. I’ve loved you without strings. Part of me wants to disdain marriage. I’ll go to London and have it, Duncan. When the time comes.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘Afterwards we’ll see.’

  ‘Kirsten.’ He put his arms round her, holding her close. ‘I can’t let you go. I love you too much.’

  ‘And I love you,’ she said softly. ‘That’s why I’m going.’

  *

  After Christmas, when her slender figure began subtly to change its contours, Kirsten set off for Bloomsbury in London with her friend Mary Banks to await the birth of her baby.

  She had meant it when she said to Duncan that she didn’t know what would happen afterwards. She wanted the baby, because it was Duncan’s, but she found it hard to envisage what motherhood would be like, especially in her single state.

  After the initial shock of the news, which had registered only too plainly on her homely, dedicated features, Mary had been a true friend. She had arranged for the mission work to be taken over by someone else and committed herself to looking after Kirsten till the baby was born. This was partly on the urging of Kirsten’s mother, who had been deeply shocked and grieved. For several weeks before Kirsten broke the news to her she had kept rejecting the scandalous suspicions that had entered her mind when she saw her daughter. It couldn’t be … Not with Kirsten. But it was. She had pleaded with Mary to go with her daughter before the pregnancy became obvious to all, especially to Professor Mackenzie, who would almost certainly never get over the shame and the humiliation to someone in his elevated position in the city. The Professor must never know. London must swallow up his daughter and the pretext that she was on a study course must be maintained, even if in the private hours of her day Mrs Mackenzie brought out baby gowns to scallop and baby bibs to embroider and water with her anxious tears.

  On a cold spring day when a harsh wind broomed the London streets to bone, Kirsten’s baby was born. It was a protracted birth but in the end straightforward enough. Exhausted but triumphant, Kirsten gazed down at her son. He was a little like Duncan, a little like her father and, at the same time, chasteningly, his own baby entity, a totally new human being, glaring at her with the innocent aggression of the new-born. Mary was enchanted by him. ‘What shall you call him?’ she demanded.

  ‘Wallace.’ Kirsten smiled at her friend over the tufty baby head. ‘It’s got the right independent Scottish ring to it, don’t you think? I want him to be brave and independent and free.’

  Duncan did not possess the money for the fare south to see his son, but he wrote frequently, letters full of love and concern and loneliness.

  ‘I am prepared to leave everything and come down to you,’ he wrote. ‘I am in a vacuum here. My work has begun to mean nothing. The road stretches south from Dounhead and how can I keep my feet from starting out on it? If I walked the whole way, it would take me but a week or two.’

  Kirsten wrote back: ‘Be patient. I won’t let you throw away everything you’ve worked for. What would you do here? Besides, you must give me time to think out what is going to be best for baby. I want you to finish your book and be a good Stoic for a while.’

  Although she scarcely admitted it to herself, Kirsten knew that she could never take the baby back to Scotland. There were her parents to think of — her mother assured her her father’s heart would not withstand scandaL She didn’t think people would necessarily connect any child of hers with Duncan, as they had always been circumspect in their affair, but some explanation would be necessary — that she had adopted the infant, perhaps. At the same time, motherhood was not proving something that came naturally or easily. The baby cried a lot and sometimes Mary came home from shopping to find her friend in tears of frustration and even desperation.

  It was agreed when Wallace was six weeks old that a holiday with Mary’s sister and brother-in-law in the country would be a good thing all round. Jill Banks had married a comfortable seedsman in Suffolk and after five years of childless marriage was prepared to lavish her attention on the new infant. In the fresh country air the colour came back into Kirsten’s pale cheeks and her eyes regained their sparkle. For two weeks she and Mary walked the country lanes, argued about women’s suffrage, which had caught up with them again in London, and arrived home to enormous country teas and a quiet and contented baby.

  Towards the end of the holiday Mary began quietly to press Kirsten for a decision about the future. She had decided that she herself wished to remain in London, with a view to going out later to the mission field, perhaps, with luck, as the wife of a certain hesitant clergyman. Even so, she was prepared to remain in the rented Bloomsbury flat for a time, if that was what Kirsten wanted. ‘But it’s the baby’s future that worries me,’ she said gently.

  ‘He is not your concern.’

  Mary took a deep breath and said with sudden, firm resolution, ‘Kirsten, do you mind if I suggest something?’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘It was Jill’s face that made me think of it. The other day when we came back from Aldeburgh and she had looked aft
er Wallace all day. She looked so-so blissfully happy. She was made to be a mother.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Why don’t you let Jill and Walter foster the baby? Look how he’s thrived since he’s been here —’

  ‘I would never consider it’

  ‘I could broach the matter with Jill.’

  ‘How could I give up my baby?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be giving him up. You could sec him whenever you wished. Please think about it, Kirsten. I think it may be the way out for you.’

  The idea, once Mary had brought it forth, seemed to have been lurking in everybody’s mind, awaiting discussion. At first Kirsten refused to consider it. But when Jill and her husband, whether prompted by Mary or not, made a gentle, tentative offer to care for the baby one evening at supper, Kirsten’s resolution wavered.

  ‘Jill’s taken to the little tyke,’ said Walter. ‘And he to her. We’d look after him like our own. London’s no place for a little lad, no more is Glasgow, from what I hear of it’ He looked with loving concern at his wife. ‘Jill likes hearth and home. She has no battles to fight like you, Kirsten, or our Mary here.’

  It was a long speech for him and afterwards there was silence. Kirsten’s chair scraped back on the polished wood floor. Without a word, she went up to the baby’s room, looking down at his small, sleeping form in the handsome farm cradle.

  They were never going to be a conventional family, Duncan, Wallace and herself. She could not see herself as the sacrificial mother, giving up all outside interests to be with her baby. In some ways, she saw clearly, she would be a poor mother.

  And yet there was a wrenching pain inside her that was the worst thing she had ever had to bear. She wanted to be there to see whether the downy gold hair would darken to auburn like her own, or turn black like Duncan’s. She wanted to watch the growing awareness in the dark-blue eyes, to see the little hands stretch out for rusks and flowers and rattles, to be there when he took his first steps.

  She drew the knitted blanket up over the curled fist. A soft wind swept through the tall trees surrounding the farmhouse. Sentinel trees. She knew then she would leave the baby here. She would go back to Duncan and there was comfort there. Already she could hear his soft Lanarkshire burr and already plans crowded into her mind for the work they had to do.