by Webster, Jan
‘I know,’ said Sandia quietly. Who better than she understood the harsh demands of family loyalties?
Kitty began circling the room excitedly.
‘How would you drive them — these cars?’ she demanded. Finn looked at her in surprise, then said, ‘There are several possibilities. Steam, for example.’
‘Too noisy.’
‘Gasoline.’
‘Too smelly.’
‘All right, then.’ He grinned at her. ‘There are other ways, like electricity. Or compressed air. You could even combine two systems in one car.’
There was a wicked gleam in Kitty’s eye. She said mischievously, ‘Why not combine all four systems? You could have a steam engine at the back —’
‘No, Kitty, don’t tease!’ interposed Sandia.
‘It’s all right.’ Finn was not perturbed. ‘When I meet her trudging home one of these days, I’ll pass her in my elegant machine and call her peasant. You, on the other hand, Sandia, shall ride beside me like a lady.’
He wasn’t looking at Sandia, however. His gaze was for Kitty and her flushed face. He grabbed her wrist with his left hand and began scoring out an imaginary diagram on the table with the forefinger of his right.
‘Look, Kit! Gasoline would be best. Gasoline engines could be cooled, by air or water. You could have a two-stroke engine — like this — or a four-stroke, placed back or front. Or even centre, if you like.’
She gazed down where his finger traced as though the actual engine had assembled before their eyes.
‘You haven’t any money,’ she said, mesmerized.
‘All I need is a shed somewhere. The rest I’ll get as I go along. But time’s wearing on. I want to have my first machine on the road in a year.’
‘You’re not serious?’
‘I’ve never been more so.’ He looked at her exultantly. His grasp tightened on her wrist and he pulled her close to him. A quick check ensured that Sandia wasn’t looking. He kissed Kitty quickly on the lips.
*
Sandia had something she wished to discuss with her father. It was his last day at the office. She knew that when he got in he would be sick at heart, dispirited, but she couldn’t keep her idea to herself any longer. She wanted to open a tea-room.
She had to talk her father into giving his approval. For a start, he would be aghast at her even thinking of a career outside the home, a prejudice reinforced by Mama’s firm notions in such matters. She might even have to go ahead without his support. But she would hate that. They were a family still and should operate like one, helping and encouraging each other.
The five hundred pounds Mama had left her was her trump card. He would argue she should keep it. She would argue that it could be put to work for them. It could save the house in Ashley Terrace, it could bring back some of the luxuries they had grown used to, it could furnish again the near-empty rooms.
In her own head, she extended the arguments. She was still young, she was strong, and she needed a new interest to help her forget the unhappy days that had gone before. It was strange how her idea for the tea-room had sprung, fully realized, almost on the day of Mama’s death. As though it had been waiting there, desperate for consideration.
She had known exactly how she would decorate it, what the furniture would be like, what the waitresses would wear. (She had heard that her idol and predecessor, Miss Cranston, even inspected the waitresses’ underwear to make sure it passed muster. She would not go so far as that.) She knew what Glasgow-made delft would grace the tables and what scones and cakes and tea-bread would seduce the hungry shopper across the threshold.
She would have to pick the site with care, for she wanted it to be smart enough to attract the ladies from Kelvinside, but central enough for more ordinary folk. The first would lend style and elegance; the second the numbers necessary for survival.
Not for the first time, Sandia wished she had Dandy to turn to for advice. Although they had not been in touch since that fateful day in Miss Cranston’s Tea-rooms, she often addressed his shadowy figure in her mind. In a strange way, he was still hers and the possibility of reconciliation something she had never let go. She knew in her heart the foolishness of this.
She had watched so much that was sensational and unbelievable happen in his Ireland. Parnell involved in the scandal with Kitty O’Shea. Named in her divorce suit. And then after his marriage to her, howled down by the crowds who had once loved him and lime thrown in his face.
Poor man, within a year he was dead and now his old opponent, Randolph Churchill, was clouded in his mind, they said, and dying, too.
She had thought of Dandy a lot last year, when after Gladstone’s second Home Rule for Ireland Bill had been thrown out by the Lords, there had been riots in Belfast and Catholic workers driven out of the shipyards. But she doubted if he ever thought of her … did he? Dandy, Dandy.
She was thirty now, quite the traditional old maid, as he had predicted. She had put on weight and had the set, mature look that came from household responsibilities and family cares. Yet, when she looked in the mirror, a fresh, milk-maid’s face gazed back at her. Waiting for life to write something there, something more.
The clock in the hall struck up a sonorous din and she saw it was six o’clock. She pulled aside the parlour curtains, looking down the street for her father. At last he came. He climbed the front steps like an old man, hanging on to the iron railings. Her heart melted in love and concern.
‘Papa.’ She took his hat and cane. ‘So it’s all over?’
He nodded, giving her the ghost of an ironic smile. ‘They tried to make a businessman out of me, lass. I should have stuck to my ships.’
‘Can we still remain here?’
‘If we make the strictest economies.’
She told him then of her idea. She had no notion she could be so persuasive. She even brought in Kitty, as a last-minute inspiration. Until Finn had arrived to distract her, Kitty’s theme had been Canada, morning, noon and night. Might she not still want to emigrate there to be with the Wilsons, as she had often begged? A tea-room would take up the slack of Kitty’s interest, provide a challenge and diversion.
She knew that Kitty was too taken up with Finn for this to be likely, but she had to put her case as strongly as she could.
The captain looked at his eldest daughter as though seeing her as a person in her own right for the first time.
‘There’s something of your Grannie Kate in you,’ he mused. ‘She was a great one for rolling up her sleeves when she got in a tight corner.’
‘You mean you approve?’ Sandia could not believe her ears. But it occurred to her later that her own life was not the only one to be circumscribed by the strength and tension of her late mother’s will.
Once the decision was made, events moved with an almost terrifying turn of speed. Premises were found just off Sauchiehall Street and Sandia invested in dark green curtains with gold braid and loops, solid chairs and tables, napery that was not quite so fine as she would have liked, but was the best she could afford, and three-tiered cakestands to take the scones, crumpets and wide variety of cakes for which the city was justly famous.
Kitty was not very enthusiastic to begin with, having reservations about the propriety of going out to work. But she soon found the stir and bustle of setting up the tea-room irresistible. She helped Finn put up the flocked wallpaper and pestered her relatives to donate pictures for the walls.
She helped with the baking in the morning, set out the tables with a dainty touch, hired the waitresses, and still found time to go out to look round the shops or meet friends.
Once the place was opened, her many friends came in for tea, bringing with them all sorts of light-hearted fun and harmless gossip, and there were plenty of city blades who tipped their hats to her and indulged in the sort of discreet, flirtatious repartee that lent wings to the day.
As for Sandia, she felt a satisfaction she had never known in her life before, a liberation and a joy that
made light of all the hard work. ‘I want to be famous for comfort and cleanliness,’ she told her small staff, and the motto was repeated in gilt lettering on her snowy lace-netted windows: ‘Miss Kilgour’s, For Comfort and Cleanliness.’ City wags took up the claim and gave it a familiar ring. A regular clientele sang the praises of the establishment’s French cakes and the fruit slices christened ‘fly cemeteries’ by whimsical young men. It wasn’t long before Sandia found it prudent to employ two steady bakers and to start a selling counter displaying delicacies and treats to be taken home.
The Tea-room Movement was sweeping through Glasgow with an almost evangelical fervour and spreading to other cities in Scotland and England and abroad. Cheap and frequent trams brought customers into the city to sample and pass judgement on the wares of every new establishment. It was generally agreed that no tea-rooms in the world equalled those of the Second City of the Empire, where it had all begun. Sandia realized that she had a certain business acumen and that soon she would be able to branch out.
It was gratifying to take the worry of keeping up the house from her father’s shoulders. And working in the heart of the city, with its changing kaleidoscope of people, its theatres, music-halls and concerts, its lively shops and clean, brightly-painted trams, was like living in a child’s dream of cosmopolitas.
What she wished for now was that one day, when her tearooms were looking their best, and the tables freshly laid, with flowers in their silver vases and the sun striking her favourite picture, a sunny cornfield by Hamish Macleish, her Dandy would walk through the swing doors and give her that cheeky, confident smile and say ‘How are you doing?’ and she would sit down with him, with her best silver service, and tell him everything that had happened in between.
Chapter Eight
‘Are you going to Glasgow to see Jamie Pullar?’ Josie asked Duncan.
He wasn’t home very often now, in Dounhead. Since he had brought out his two popular books, A Newer Look at Radicalism and Politicians in the Wake of Christ, he had been in great demand as a public speaker, not only on political or union platforms but wherever the livelier issues of the age were being discussed, whether it was free love or socialism, anarchy or humanism.
His books and journalism had brought in money. Josie had two fine Alhambra covers on her beds now and a bought rug before the fire. There were decent delft cups and saucers on the dresser and two china dogs she had bought in Glasgow, where they were made in their thousands to satisfy popular demand. She knew he had come into his own now. He no longer had to stuff newspaper down his boots to keep out the worst of the rain. He even had a suit to call his own.
But she knew the price she had paid. She personally. He had grown away from her, become the public figure, even at home. The door-knocker went continually with people seeking his advice or attention. When he spoke to her, sometimes, it was with the same almost impersonal kindness he gave these callers. And yet her pride in him was too great to admit criticism. After the lean years, did he not deserve all the attention and near-adulation that was paid him?
He nodded now in answer to her question.
‘He says he has a matter of great interest to discuss with me.’
‘Have you any idea what he’s talking about?’
‘Not the faintest. But he’s got me intrigued.’
‘I was going to say —’ She paused, feeling strangely reticent.
‘What is it?’ He looked at her sharply, his mind on letters he was anxious to answer before he set out.
‘Can I come with you?’
‘To Glasgow?’ They seldom went anywhere together now, her life being largely in and around the Rows, and taken up with the women’s co-operative movement in Dounhead.
She backtracked hastily. ‘Oh, never bother. It was just a notion —’
He looked at her skinny figure covered in an unbecoming print overall. Her red hair was fading now, and the curl gone from it. She had the big, swollen knuckles of the Rows housewife and she walked badly because of corns and bunions from years of ill-fitting boots and shoes. A chord of long-dormant tenderness was struck in him. He remembered the angular little girl, all jabs and elbows, he had played with years ago.
‘Put your best bonnet on, lass. You’re coming with me. I’ll buy you your tea in our Sandia’s tea-rooms — “Miss Kilgour’s, For Comfort and Cleanliness”. What do you say to that?’
She divested herself of overall and shabby brown dress and had a cold-water wash by the kitchen window. By keeping her head only above the net half-curtains she could conduct her toilet and keep an eye on who went up and down the Rows.
The brown dress had to go on again — it was the best she had, for she was careless in such matters. But she was glad her green coat with the darker velvet frogging on it was new and she had a small velvet hat to go with it. When she sat in the train with Duncan she felt he had no reason to be ashamed of her looks. The thought made her chatty and confidential.
Duncan’s mind had been on other matters to start with, but for the latter part of the journey he allowed himself to be amused and taken up with Josie’s chatter. Much of it was about the co-operative movement, which she was largely responsible for organizing in the Dounhead area. Since Parliament had exempted ‘the Co-op’ from income tax a year ago, providing goods were sold only to members, the Dounhead ‘Co’ had taken off in a big way and now had regular support from most of the miners’ families, to the chagrin of the ageing Wylie, the master grocer.
‘I think things are getting better,’ Josie ventured. ‘There’s not so much unemployment about.’ She was looking thoughtfully from the train windows at the tenements in Glasgow’s outskirts, a sight that seldom cheered her, and her comment was almost by way of being a mental shove against despondency.
‘Trade’s reviving,’ Duncan agreed. ‘We’ll maybe even see some decent houses built here now. God knows they’re needed.’
Glasgow itself seemed to bear out the suggestion that times were on the upswing. The shops were full of delectable, well-made goods and the streets had their full quota of fashionable, leisurely folk. When they reached Sandia’s tea-rooms they were full to overflowing and Sandia and Kitty were so busy they scarcely had time for more than the exchange of enquiries about family health. Sandia, however, loaded their table with exquisite cakes and would not take payment, no matter how Duncan protested.
‘It’s repayment for my tram fare,’ said Sandia, joking about the time her uncle had saved her and Kirsten from the crowd in St Enoch Square. Her contact now with Kirsten was minimal. She knew she was back in Glasgow, but the conventional side of Sandia’s nature had deepened with the years and she was not sure she could acknowledge a female agitator as a friend.
On the way to Jamie Pullar’s house-cum-office, Josie dragged Duncan into a milliner’s ‘just to look’ at the hats and, still in indulgent mood, he bought her one with veiling and flowers which she asserted was a rare bargain. She should have had such hats years ago, he reflected sombrely. They were for chits of lasses. But he said nothing. Josie deserved all the fal-lals that came her way.
Jamie welcomed them with the offer of whisky or tea.
‘We neither of us drink,’ Josie pointed out, with a certain sharpness. Putting on the kettle for tea, Jamie observed that there were plenty who said that in public, but weren’t averse to a medicinal drop in private. Like himself.
‘Have I got news for you!’ he announced, when he’d provided them with cups of thick brew sweetened with condensed milk, and a spice biscuit each.
‘Don’t keep us waiting any longer,’ Duncan pleaded.
‘Well,’ said Jamie, importantly, ‘you know there’s a series of exchange visits going on this year between American and British trade unions?’
Duncan nodded.
‘Our brothers in New York have specifically asked for the author of A Newer Look at Radicalism.’ He smirked at Duncan’s astonishment, adding, ‘And yours truly has been invited along to accompany him, on account of my
brother being a railwaymen’s leader and close to the great Eugene V. Debs.’
‘Is this true?’ Duncan demanded.
‘It’s only got to be ratified at our next meeting,’ said Jamie, ‘and the tickets are as good as booked. I’ll tell you something else. That young friend of yours, Kirsten Mackenzie, the women’s suffrage body, she’s been invited along, too, to talk to her American sisters about out-of-doors meetings. It seems they haven’t started those out there yet.’
Duncan looked briefly at Josie. Her face was set.
‘Has Kirsten accepted yet?’
‘I saw her only this morning, and she seems keen on the idea. Especially if you go, too.’
There was a clatter as Josie set down her cup and saucer.
‘And what about me?’ she demanded.
Jamie looked at her, nonplussed. ‘The expenses’ll not run to wives, lass,’ he said kindly.
‘If I can pay my own expenses?’
‘Well, then, I would say it would be all right. It would be fine.’
‘I can go as a representative of the women’s co-operative movement.’ They looked at her in joint bewilderment. ‘That’s another thing our sisters in America want to hear about.’ The penny had dropped with Jamie Pullar. Hadn’t he just put his foot in it, mentioning the lassie Mackenzie? There were those who said she and Duncan had tig-togged in the past, though he was never astute in these matters, and had no way of knowing the truth. But a look at Josie’s vinegary face made him realize something was up.
He said cautiously, ‘That would be up to you.’
‘I can organize it,’ snapped Josie. ‘I would only want my fare. I’ve a bit put by for other expenses. What do you say, Duncan? Carlie could stay with her Grannie Kate.’
Duncan’s face was carefully without expression. This had been the last thing he had expected to happen. Non-commitally he replied, ‘We’ll have to see, lass. I don’t think the Co-op will agree.’
‘I’ll make them,’ said Josie fiercely. ‘I’ve worked hard for them and this is little enough to ask for.’ She looked at their faces and burst out laughing at their discomfiture. ‘My, a sea voyage would just set me up fine.’