Saturday City

by Webster, Jan

  She came into Miss Cranston’s wearing an amber-coloured dress and jacket, with a fur muff and tippet. The colour suited her, although she looked a little tired, and pale from the cold. She smiled at him, taking a frozen hand from her muff and putting it against his cheek briefly. ‘This must be the worst winter ever. I’m trying to organize the distribution of food in Bridgeton. There’s never enough. Can’t you get some of your rich relations to help?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  He poured tea for her as she seemed too chilled for action. He thought her dark-fringed, harebell-blue eyes were dulled, with smudges under them as though she had not been sleeping well.

  ‘You wanted to see me,’ he prompted.

  ‘Yes.’ At last she brought the eyes round to his face. ‘One of us has to make a move, my darling, and I’ve decided it has to be me.’

  ‘I’ve been caught up, ever since we got back,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t mean you’ve been out of my thoughts.’

  ‘Or you of mine,’ she admitted. ‘Duncan, I deliberately arranged that we should meet like this. To keep it formal. I’m going away. I’ve had an awful lot of time to think while you were in America, and I’ve decided that I want to give all my energies to the women’s movement. That means London. They want me to take over an administrative post down there.’

  He said nothing. Her hand clattered the teaspoon nervously on her saucer and she went on, ‘It’s Josie who’s your wife, who stands beside you in this election. Josie is Dounhead. And I don’t see how you can ever, ever put me above Dounhead. It would be like cutting your own throat. It’s part of you.’

  ‘You should have been my wife.’

  ‘In some ways, I’ve been more than that. Let’s part kindly, love.’

  ‘What about the child?’

  It was as though he had touched an unbearably raw nerve. Her composure, which till then had been absolute, began to break up. He saw a tear fall on to her muff.

  ‘Not ours. Jill and Walter’s. Really.’

  ‘Don’t,’ he begged.

  ‘Will you write to him? Promise?’

  ‘Yes. Of course. Don’t go, lass.’

  ‘Duncan,’ she said, almost like a schoolmistress, ‘I have to. It has come to that. I can see what I’m doing to you. I am not blind.’

  ‘Drink your tea before you go,’ he said.

  ‘No. I don’t really want it.’ She could not stop the slight, rhythmical chatter of her teeth.

  She rose, pushing her hands into the muff and he noticed for the first time she had pinned some artificial violets on it, in a rare romantic gesture. She saw his gaze rest on the flowers and said with the lightest irony, ‘Yes. The real things wouldn’t stand up to the cold, would they? Let me go first, won’t you? And I won’t say goodbye.’

  He had always liked the way she walked, straight-backed, with a slight unconscious swaying from the hips. She pushed her way through the swing doors and into the bitter, darkening street.

  *

  All day long, those who had the franchise had tramped in and out of the parish chambers, registering their votes. Carriages bearing the supporters of the Conservative man had rattled through frozen ruts to disgorge their passengers muffled to the eyebrows in capes and furs.

  Josie had taken Carlie with her on her rounds to muster support. Exhorting, chaffing, encouraging, she had been tireless. The exhilaration and challenge had got through to Carlie, who had only one question for which she sought an answer. She handed her father a steaming mug of cocoa as he paced the committee rooms awaiting the count, and put it to him: ‘Why haven’t women got the vote, Daddy? If you get in, it’s the first thing you must do.’

  He looked at his red-haired daughter indulgently. She was still at that gangling, half-awkward stage between childhood and adulthood, but she had a lively, sharp intelligence that pleased him and was delicate balm to that other, secret, unacknowledged pain that was deep inside him.

  ‘I’m hoping to be MP for Dounhead, not the Emperor,’ he reminded her. ‘But I’ll do what I can. Why do you think women should have the vote?’

  Jamie Pullar was watching with a smile.

  ‘Because they have the children. And because they often have better brains than the men. They don’t go getting drunk, or gambling —’

  Duncan hugged her absently and she rose on tiptoe and kissed him.

  ‘Will it be long till we know? Daddy, I’ll die if you don’t get in!’

  ‘Not long now.’ Josie had come into the room. The hems of her coat and dress were spattered from the thaw which had set in late in the day, then hardened again. Her face was pale from fatigue, but her eyes sparkled with expectation. ‘Whatever happens, we’ve given them a run for their money.’

  The returning officer mounted the platform in the parish chambers, his gold watch and chain gleaming importantly, a vagrant drop of clear liquid trembling on the tip of his nose from the long, chill wait. Duncan surreptitiously eyed his opponents — the burly, blond Conservative Menzies, public-school educated, rich from South African gold; the aesthetic Galston for the Liberals, from a family of lawyers and dominies. Had he really a chance against them? He had decided to go in under a totally independent Labour banner, a fact that had not pleased too many of his friends in the Independent Labour Party. He and Jamie between them had fought a hard battle.

  As though to make up for his private troubles, things had gone well on the platform. He often reflected not without bitterness that he merely preached the same things he had always done, but it was only since he had ‘made his name’ that folks were prepared to listen.

  He had been surprised, too, by the loyalty that Josie commanded now throughout Dounhead. If he made it, he knew his debt to her was incalculable. As if she read his thoughts, she gazed at him now and gave a nod of encouragement, a brief smile. He had a swift vision of her, labouring over the printing press at the Clarion in those early days, working at that intractable stove that only she had been able to coax into life.

  ‘… and that the said candidate, Duncan Fleming, is duly elected MP for Dounhead —’

  Ninety-eight votes. Galston’s thin-lipped congratulations acknowledged the narrowness of the victory, Menzies’s robust greeting acknowledged a lost cause. Duncan felt emotion rise in him like a jubilant rocket, as though he were about to take off for the stratosphere and not return. It was Josie’s hand on his arm that brought him back to earth, that and Carlie’s kiss and Jamie Pullar’s slow, spreading smile that refused to go away.

  ‘Speech! Speech!’

  He looked around and saw that miners still black from the shift were grinning up at him with their pink lips, pounding their hands together, shuffling their feet in a rumbling, rattling dance of victory.

  From the back of the hall where she had been brought by Tansy in the carriage from Dounhead House, his mother smiled at him and he noticed fresh beads of snow on her bonnet.

  Young Donald had come, too, a gangling, spotty boy who now insisted on pumping his uncle’s hand with great enthusiasm.

  ‘I think I might be an MP some day,’ said Donald. ‘It must be a good thing to be liked by so many people.’

  For a moment, Duncan was distracted from the hubbub of congratulation around him, the youngster’s words cutting through to him. To be liked by so many people. He hadn’t let them down. That was something. He could feel their goodwill and trust around him, almost bearing him up.

  And then they did bear him up, physically, on coaly shoulders that were somehow no longer tired and carried him down the main street in this town where he belonged.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Another tea-room?’ said Kitty. She disengaged her arm from that of Sandia and flopped down on the slatted seat on the deck of the Isle of Arran, looking flabbergasted.

  ‘Yes, another tea-room,’ Sandia said, smiling. She judged this was as good a time as any to put Kitty in the picture. They had indulged in the popular Glasgow pastime of a day’s sail ‘doon the watter’, mean
ing down the Clyde. A whole day’s sail, with dinner and plain tea, for 4s. 6d. They had had a good lunch, laughed at the antics of Glasgow clerks and their girls on an office outing, dancing strathspeys and reels on deck to a melodeon after a light smirr of rain had been and gone. And now, as the paddle steamer chugged homeward in sunlit evening waters, had walked on deck, arm in arm, in happy, confidential mood, faces stinging pleasantly from sun and wind.

  ‘Do you think it is a good idea?’ demanded Kitty.

  ‘Well, if the rest of us don’t watch out, the Cranstons will take over all of Glasgow,’ said Sandia severely. ‘Since Kate Cranston got married to her Major Cochrane, she has gone from strength to strength.’

  She gazed out over the dear, familiar Clyde scenery, seeing not the distant, green banks with their scattered cottages, but Kate Cranston’s establishment at 114 Argyle Street, which had grown from a mere tea-room into something altogether more impressive and splendid. There city businessmen could gather for lunch and afterwards take their ease in lounge, smoking-room or billiards-room, while in the afternoon the place became a general rendezvous for anyone with money to spare. It wasn’t just set up for the men, though; ladies had their own separate tea-room and reading-room where they could discuss important matters like feathers for a hat or how to stop their maids thieving from the larder. It all made her own efforts look homespun and amateurish.

  ‘Now,’ said Sandia, with some vexation, ‘the latest is that she has caught up with some architect who is going to design further tea-rooms for her.’

  ‘Charles Rennie Macintosh,’ said Kitty promptly.

  ‘You’ve heard of him?’

  ‘You must have too, dear, unless you go around with your ears stopped up! He designed the new School of Art in Renfrew Street.’

  ‘Oh, that’s who he is!’

  ‘Yes, that’s who. He sounds quite interesting, I must say. You know they’ve just opened the first part of the school and nothing would do but he had to design a special key for the door and have it presented on a white satin cushion with a silver fringe. And do you know what he and his wife have in their Main Street flat?. A white carpet. Can you think of anything less practical, Sandia? I think Miss Cranston may find he’s a little too artistic even for her taste.’

  ‘I wish I had her flair,’ protested Sandia. She went off into a brown study, her eyes clouded with thought. Kitty surveyed her from under her lashes, astonished by the almost maternal tenderness she felt today for this older sister. Sandia had been restless recently — it showed in the way she ran the tea-rooms, changing the decor, badgering the waitresses; and now in this wish to open up a second place.

  There was something else. Over lunch, in rare confidential mood, Sandia had confessed to her she was still in love with Dandy Peel. Kitty approved of this. One should always be in love with someone. She had never understood why Sandia had not married him, anyhow, and Sandia’s confused explanations earlier had not really satisfied her.

  Mother had been demanding, of course, but there was something soft, giving, in Sandia’s nature, that almost asked for martyrdom to be laid on it Kitty sighed. It wasn’t easy to read into another’s heart, even your own sister’s. Perhaps especially your own sister’s.

  Sandia had revealed that Dandy had been so much in her mind recently she had taken up the cudgels and written to him — just a friendly letter, so that he should not mistake it for opportuning. Asking how he was, giving news of her venture into the tea-room business, and saying if he was ever in Glasgow she hoped he would be sure to look her up. Kitty had been astonished at this admission. It was very un-Sandia like. She was not sure of the wisdom of it, for their youthful romance had been over a long time. But she had shown Sandia none of this, merely made reassuring, confiding noises and squeezed her arm as they promenaded, to show sisterly concern and affection.

  ‘You see,’ said Sandia consideringly, breaking out of her rapt silence now, ‘that’s what it is to have a man at your back. Kate Cranston has the major. But I have no one. And middle-age is beckoning. I’ve been counting the grey hairs, and I have at least six!’

  ‘There’s always Mr Beltry,’ said Kitty, with a mischievous smile that became a wholehearted laugh. Sandia flicked her a doubtful look. She was not altogether prepared to have Mr Beltry laughed at, although she knew what Kitty was getting at. Mr Beltry was a prosperous draper who dropped in at the tea-rooms most afternoons, making sheep’s eyes at Sandia and calling her his ‘dear young lady’. Well-dressed, with a carnation in his buttonhole, his attempts at heavy-handed backchat had the waitresses raising patient eyes to heaven. And nothing could disguise the fact that, well-preserved widower though he might be, Mr Beltry was fast approaching sixty and getting a little short of wind. None the less, he was an admirer and at times good for one’s morale.

  Sandia eased herself along the seat till she was close to her sister.

  ‘I’m deadly serious about branching out, Kitty,’ she said. ‘It’s the money that’s going to be the problem. I’ve ploughed most of what I’ve made back into the business up till now.’ She looked away momentarily and said with face averted, ‘How would you feel about putting some money into the new venture?’

  Kitty did not answer at first. She got up and moved to the steamer rail, shading her eyes to look into the sunset. Sandia rose and followed her, consumed with curiosity over her reaction.

  ‘What’s the matter, Kit? Shouldn’t I have said what I did? Forget it, then. I merely thought —’

  Kitty’s face was set as she turned.

  ‘We’re going to fall out over this, Sandia, and it’s so hateful when we’ve had such a lovely day together.’

  ‘Fall out? Why ever should we?’

  ‘I want to give the five hundred pounds Mama left me to Finn. If I don’t, I can’t see how he will ever build his own motor-car.’

  Sandia’s mouth folded down grimly, fulfilling Kitty’s worst fears. She marched off up the deck, serge skirt swaying with her annoyance, and after a moment Kitty followed her.

  ‘I haven’t absolutely decided,’ lied Kitty.

  ‘What’s got into you over him?’ Sandia demanded. ‘It seems he just needs to crook his little finger and you’ll do anything. I warn you, Kit, he doesn’t take your feelings seriously. Cars are all he cares about. He’ll take your money and you’ll never see a penny back.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be like that at all,’ Kitty faltered. ‘I’ve been down to his workshop and he’s got a machine half-way made. He’s hamstrung because he has so little money —’

  ‘You’re a fool,’ Sandia said bitterly. ‘You’re not getting any younger, either. You could have the choice between half a dozen well-doing men —’

  ‘You exaggerate!’

  ‘What about Hugh Fowler? His father has a house at Helensburgh, a place in London. If you went out with him just once he’d be over the moon.’

  ‘Have you seen his chin?’ enquired Kitty succinctly.

  ‘At least, don’t give Finn all your money.’

  ‘I want to, Sandia. You can raise the money you need. Mr Beltry for one would help. Everyone knows you’re a success.’

  ‘I certainly won’t ask you for a penny, ever again. To put Finn Fleming against your own sister —’

  ‘It isn’t like that.’ Tears of vexation sprang to Kitty’s eyes. She burst out, ‘I love him, Sandia. You’ve talked about Dandy today, and how you feel about him. Well, that’s how it is with me. I love Finn and I think he cares for me.’

  ‘He certainly likes having you moon around him, catering to his every whim,’ upbraided Sandia. ‘But what makes you think he has marriage in mind? I think you’re sadly mistaken if you take him seriously. What about the nights he’s promised to take you to the theatre and then come in about ten o’clock, covered in oil, having forgotten all about you?’

  ‘It may have happened once or twice —’

  ‘It happens all the time. There’s a selfish, single-minded side to Finn, and I can say that b
ecause I’m as fond of him as the next one.’

  Kitty was weeping into a scrap of lace hankie.

  Sandia went up to her and put her arm around her.

  ‘Oh, come on! It’s not as bad as all that. You’ll get over him one day.’

  ‘Just as you’ve got over Dandy?’ returned Kitty fiercely. She said in a hard, low voice, ‘I’m sorry, I’m going to give Finn my money. It is mine, after all, to do what I like with.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Sandia, with a terrible resignation. ‘On your own head be it.’

  *

  With the money safely in an envelope inside the dainty velvet pouch that swung from her wrists, Kitty half-walked, half-ran to the tumbledown hut behind a friend’s overgrown garden where Finn was working on the car.

  In a way, telling Sandia her intentions had been the worst part. Opposition from Father and from Alisdair had been easier to take. In the end, she had talked them all down. Now all she had to do was get Finn to accept the money. Five hundred pounds. It had been intended as a sort of dowry. Well, that was what it would be, in effect. For she was determined to get Finn to ask her to marry him. She was coming up to twenty-five. With her slender girl’s body and lively face she always passed for younger. But she wanted to be settled. She wanted a home of her own. She wanted Finn.

  His friend, Alec Mackinlay, sometimes worked with him on the car, but recently he had got fed up with the slow development and was devoting more time to wooing a plump, laughing girl whose parents ran a dairy.

  Picking her way over the tussocks of grass towards the workshop, Kitty had a sudden attack of nerves. What if she really was behaving with a total lack of sense or discretion? What if Finn never got the car beyond the blueprint stage, and all her money was lost? She only knew she had felt his frustration over the recent months almost like her own. He needed to pay for parts to be made at a local foundry and practically every penny he earned went towards this. Sometimes an expensive component would develop a fault under stress, and it was back to square one.