by Webster, Jan
In his anxiety to see Carlie, he was too early. He entered a turnstile at the university entrance and wandered up and down the avenues, keeping an eye on the Van Houten Pavilion which was where they had arranged to meet. It was all very pleasant and amusing, even the eldritch screeching of young ladies hanging on the rails of the switchback railway and the occasional frustrated infant wailing because he couldn’t go on the water-chute.
He listened to the spirited Sousa band and the Edison talking-machine. He wondered idly if the day would ever come when they would marry moving pictures to sound. Now that would interest him. More than the motor-car or all this talk about getting a machine to fly through the air. He’d been singularly unmoved when, as a schoolboy, someone had told him an unmanned machine had flown half a mile along the Potomac in the USA.
‘Hallo! Sorry if I’m late.’ A breathless voice sounded behind him and he turned to see her standing there, in a brown pelisse and her hair done up like Vesta Victoria’s, in little curls with a fringe, with a small saucy hat atop and velvet streamers behind.
He grinned at her foolishly. ‘You’re not late at all. Would you like some hot chocolate?’ You could tell she wasn’t used to crowds and was a bit in awe of everything around her. Probably that little hat had been a mistake. But it was Carlie, rioting red hair and all. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, he was so pleased to see her.
She smiled back at him and, refusing the chocolate, said, ‘Let’s have tea later. First tell me how you are and everything you’ve seen and done.’
She wasn’t joking, either. He had to give her a lengthy catalogue of his stay in the clinic, his holiday with his mother and Hamish Macleish, and Alisdair’s verdict on his present state of health, and all the while she was dragging him into pavilions to enthuse over vulgar displays of furnishings and food or tapping her feet to the military band and looking as though she might take off up one of the avenues any moment in a solitary waltz.
Eventually they were both footsore and weary. He looked longingly at McKillop’s Lager Bar, but she persuaded him they would be better to have a proper high tea at Prince’s Restaurant nearby.
‘Finnan haddie, poached egg, toast and tea.’ Carlie read from the menu and looked at him doubtfully. ‘It’s one and sixpence, Donald.’
He dismissed her objections, ordering scones and cakes as well.
‘A feast,’ she pronounced gravely, watching the plump waitress inexpertly lay the table. ‘Listen! I’ve got something I’ve been saving to tell you. Guess what?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘I’m going to London.’
He didn’t know what he’d expected her to say. Not this. Not when he’d looked forward so much to their being together again.
‘On a visit?’ he asked stupidly.
‘No, silly. To work.’
‘You can’t.’
‘Why can’t I?’
‘Because I don’t want you to.’
She looked up at the hovering, interested waitress, blushed and waited till she saw the girl’s retreating back, then said, ‘What do you mean by that?’
It was his turn to shift about in his chair and look embarrassed. ‘I’ve only just come back. That’s what I mean. And I’ve missed you.’ He grabbed her hand. ‘Terribly.’
She pulled her hand away, but gently. ‘Well, it was lonely for me when you were away. It’s not been the same at home, since Mother took Nellie Daly in.’ Nellie was her mother’s unmarried sister, legs swollen to enormous size from some unspecified complaint. She’d brought with her a bevy of Catholic plaster saints and a tendency to discuss her complaints in embarrassing detail. Josie was forbearing, but often Carlie was not.
Carlie went on, ‘I’ve been taking shorthand and typing lessons. I thought I might be able to help my father in London, and perhaps other MPs as well. Those who could pay. But what I’d really like to do eventually is work on a magazine or be a reporter on a newspaper.’
‘They’d never have that.’
‘They might. Women are starting to do all sorts of things.’ He sat with his face growing more and more thundery, till he burst out:
‘Isn’t Glasgow good enough for you? What is it about London that’s so special?’
‘Opportunity.’
‘Money, you mean.’
‘You can afford to be superior. I can’t. I’d get eight shillings in Glasgow as a typist, but twice that in London.’
‘What about spiritual values, like loyalty to Scotland, being a companion to your mother?’
‘How is it being disloyal to move around? You’ve done your share.’ Her eyes shadowed at his second jibe. ‘As for my mother — I’ve told you what it’s like at home. I can’t stand the boredom any longer. I must get out and stretch myself.’
He attacked from a different direction.
‘You’ll be no help to your father. You’re a political idiot.’
‘Donald!’ Now he really had wounded her. She turned her face away, looking out over the restaurant’s balcony at the Kelvin, faintly hearing the screams from the switchback railway.
‘Well, politically naïve, at any rate,’ he amended. ‘It is naïve to think women, all women, should have the vote. Those shawlies down in Govan and the Gorbals wouldn’t use it if they had it, any more than they do soap.’
She was too angry to answer. He felt a perverse pleasure in thus upsetting her.
‘You don’t even know about the Taff Vale business, do you?’
‘It means unions can be penalized if they go on strike.’
She glared. ‘It’ll just bring more people into the unions, out of a desire for justice, that’s all.’ She rose to go. ‘Are you coming?’
‘Have another cake.’
‘It would choke me.’
Outside, he said in conciliatory tones, ‘Let’s go somewhere quiet. I’ll take you in the tram to some gardens I know. We can talk. Properly.’
In the tram they were both silent. He put his arm round the back of her seat, and she didn’t object. When they got to the gardens, he sought out a sequestered spot where they would not be disturbed, then put his arms around her, staring into her face. Somewhere in the distance a band played. There seemed to be bands all over Glasgow that summer. The voices of children down by a pond wafted to them as though from another world.
‘Kiss me, Carlie.’ She kissed his cheek.
‘No, like this.’ He took her lips. He put his hand on her nape so that she could not move her head. His other hand moved up and down her slender back. At last she protested, ‘No, Donald. Someone might see,’ but he pulled her down on the grass and kissed her again. The little hat went askew on her hair, her hands struggled frailly to stop his wandering ones. At last he lay back, but holding one of her arms in a pinion lest she move a fraction from him.
‘Carlie.’ He looked up into the moving fretwork of a sycamore tree. ‘You know what I want, don’t you? I want you wholly. All of you.’
She sat up, fixing her hair, straightening her hat.
‘You could give me a bairn, like my father did Kirsten Mackenzie.’ Her voice was low, her look, scared and accusatory.
‘There doesn’t have to be a baby every time you do it. There are ways of avoiding it. I learned at the clinic. A lot of people were lovers there. It was quite accepted.’
He put his hand under her skirts, but she pushed him away, her face red with determination and fright.
‘No, Donald I’m scared. I don’t want to get tied down with babies, not for a long time. I want to go to London and find out what I can do, first.’
‘Will you come back to me?’
‘I don’t know. I think so.’ She studied him, tenderly but objectively. She had always felt responsible for him, had always given in to him. But something in her at this moment resisted, would not be rushed or overwhelmed. She kissed him swiftly, stood up and said in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘We must go. You’re meeting Finn.’ She refused to notice his dejection but made instead towards the ga
tes.
*
‘This is good,’ said Finn. He was looking at the sketch Donald had done of the Marienbad cotton millionaire’s specifications for his custom-built car. ‘I could use you in the firm. You’ve got a natural flair.’
Donald looked suitably modest. ‘He knew exactly what he wanted. I just followed instructions. He wants it to be ready for Christmas, as a surprise for his wife.’
Finn nodded, tucking the paper away in an inside pocket. ‘Any time you get fed up with your law studies, I’ll give you a job. Mind you, you’d need to start on the shop floor, get your hands dirty.’
‘Come to think of it,’ said Donald, ‘I’ve always liked machinery. I could be an engineer manqué.’
‘Well, my offer’s always open!’ Finn grinned at him. ‘What say we eat now? Talking business always makes me hungry.’ In the sober, businessman’s restaurant, Finn disposed of mutton broth, steak pie and suet pudding, but Donald was restless and picked at his food.
‘Tina says you work too hard,’ he accused Finn. ‘I’ve been instructed to make you enjoy yourself. I wish we could find a couple of women, have a few drinks, take in a theatre —’
Finn picked up the glass of water in front of him and drank abstemiously. ‘I’m temperance myself. There’s too much evidence of what drink can do to a man in Glasgow for me to lower my guard.’
Donald stared at him moodily. In his expensive tweed suit and hard collar, the faint odour of Euchrisma coming from slicked-down fair hair, Finn looked staid, confident and, it had to be admitted, faintly boring for someone generally regarded as an up-and-coming tycoon.
Testily, Donald said, ‘What do you do with yourself when you’re not working?’
‘I go in for climbing.’ His Boston accent overlaid with the broader West of Scotland vowels, Finn gazed keenly at his younger cousin. ‘Scotland has such wonderful scenery. I like the loneliness of mountains. I can think and plan there, come back refreshed. Nature, unlike women, never lets you down.’
There was a faint note there of frailer passions and Donald looked at his cousin with a little more approbation.
‘How about the music-hall? Would that corrupt your notions of propriety? I tell you, Finn, you mustn’t let the terrible Scottish need for respectability get too great a hold on you! There’s more to life than the kirk and suet pudding.’ And he looked with distaste at the second helping of the latter which a matronly waitress was heaping on to his cousin’s plate.
‘Where do you suggest?’ demanded Finn, looking apprehensive.
‘The Britannia.’
‘But that’s a well-known rough house.’
‘I know.’ Donald grinned mischievously. ‘What do you say we give it a try?’
Finn gave in, with what was really a feigned reluctance. He was actually quite amused by this younger cousin. After years of struggle, he felt he could turn his back on the factory for five minutes without problems arising. His friend Sir Peter Frensham, a great help in the beginning in rustling up financial support, had not always been the practical support he might have been. When business interfered with ‘fun’, wherever that was obtainable, he was woefully liable to let business look after itself. Or let Finn cope as best he could. Finn felt like someone whose head had been under water for a long time. Maybe it was time he came up for air.
On the way to the theatre he became a little more confidential. ‘You see side-stepping two quarrelling urchins — ‘I read Thoreau. You should try him, Donald. He’s very strong on solitude. “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.” That’s what he says. And “You can’t kill time, without injuring eternity.”’
‘Is eternity what you find on the mountains, then?’ demanded Donald,
‘Something like that. Although when I hear Handel played, or Bach, it’s the same thing. An exaltation.’
‘I don’t think I should be taking you here,’ Donald qualified, outside the music-hall. He looked longingly at a barrow where people were buying rotten eggs and bad fruit to throw at the turns they didn’t like, deciding Finn wouldn’t want any part of such direct criticism.
All the best seats were gone. They were obliged to sit at the back to watch the ragged chorus, the bosomy female singer, the eccentric dancer and the obligatory Glasgow comic, innocently ribald in his baggy suit, striped stockings and red nose. But in any case, the show that held their riveted attention went on in the aisles and the seats around them. Infants peeled oranges and threw the peel at one another. Men already well gone in their cups passed whisky flasks and beer bottles along the rows. One was spectacularly sick, emptying seats all around him at breakneck speed. And when the comic went flatly into a sentimental rendering of ‘My Old Dutch’ fruit and eggs whizzed indiscriminately through the air, splattering impartially against skin, clothes and stucco and adding their odours to an atmosphere already richly redolent.
When the curtain had dropped, Donald hopefully suggested a drink, and a bemused Finn, gamely declaring it was as well to know how the other half lived, found himself agreeing.
‘It must only be a small glass of light beer,’ he stipulated, but Donald had his hand on his arm and was indicating, with fierce forward jabs of the head, two young women leaving the theatre ahead of them. ‘My landlady’s daughter-in-law, Chrissie Macausland, and her friend Big Nellie,’ he hissed. ‘Come on, I’ll introduce you.’
Finn suddenly bore an uncanny resemblance to his grandfather, the old minister James Galbraith. In tones of horror he objected ‘Mrs Jessup’ll have my milk and biscuits awaiting me at home.’ But he was too late. The crowds pushing their way out had held up the girls’ progress and Chrissie had spotted Donald, falling upon him with loud, welcoming cries.
‘This is Mrs Macausland.’ Donald effected the introduction. ‘Her husband is away fighting the Boers —’
‘And this is a Miss Nellie Byers, to a Mr Donald Balfour and —’ Chrissie interposed, then stopped questioningly.
‘My cousin, Mr Finn Fleming,’ Donald finished off.
Finn could see that Chrissie Macausland was, in fact, a decent and presentable young woman in well-pressed navy serge. Her friend, however, sowed seeds of grave doubt in his mind. She had one of those mouths that kept breaking into smiles despite its owner’s efforts to stitch it up with decorum and probity. And Donald would never have referred to her as Big Nellie, in the low Glasgow fashion, had she not been known for a certain laxity of manners and possibly, even, of morals.
Uncomfortably, he began to make his excuses, but Donald would have none of it. He wanted to buy the ladies a drink, but there was no place suitable. It was agreed after much laughter and discussion that they should all go back to the Macausland home. Chrissie’s mother-in-law was away on a visit to her other son, who had just become a father, and as Chrissie put it, ‘We can have a wee bit of a baur and not disturb a soul.’
Trudging through the now rain-soaked Trongate towards the Macausland residence at Glasgow Cross, Finn hissed in Donald’s ear, ‘What, for heaven’s sake, is a baur?’
‘A bit of fun,’ answered Donald easily. ‘You’ll like Chrissie, Finn. She can play the piano and sing like a lintie.’ A little reassured, Finn walked on. He was seeing a side to Glasgow he had never known before and it intrigued him in spite of himself. Nellie Byers had an infectious laugh, big and sumptuous, like her bosom. Once in the cosy tenement kitchen, his gaze lingered on that bosom.
Decorously covered by a white lawn, pin-tucked blouse, it was decorated with a seed-pearl brooch, a fob watch on a velvet ribbon, a string of coral beads and a lace jabot, reminding him of one of those crammed shop windows in The Arcade in the city.
‘What’ll you have?’ Efficiently Chrissie stirred the fire to life, removed a sleeping cat from the rocking-chair, brought forth bottles of whisky, port and ginger wine and cut black bun into fingers.
‘Is the ginger wine non-alcoholic?’ demanded Finn. Chrissie nodded and the other two went into fits of laughter. Donald took over the
pouring from Chrissie. Turning his back, he poured a measure of whisky into Finn’s ginger wine, winking at the girls as he handed over the glass.
It was quite pleasant in this working-class home, Finn admitted. The gas mantle plopped, the fire blazed, the chenille curtains cosily shut out the damp night. Donald and Chrissie had gone off into the front room to play the piano and sing a duet, and he found himself talking to Nellie.
‘Have you got a lassie?’ she asked him teasingly. She sipped the dregs of his glass, playfully, then poured him another, this time putting in the whisky quite openly.
‘I’m a businessman, you see,’ he explained to her, carefully. ‘I’ve been building up my business, and I haven’t had much time for women.’
‘But you had one, once?’ she asked, percipiently.
‘Oh yes.’
‘What was her name?’
He grinned at her, a little foolishly. Then he wagged his finger. ‘I’m not telling you that.’
‘Go on. You got a photo of her? Let me see.’
‘Nellie.’ He was having difficulty getting his tongue round the simple syllables. The word came out more like Ne-ollie. Funny that. ‘Don’t pry, Ne-ollie.’
She began to tickle him. He fell about, gasping and helpless. She put her hand into his inner jacket pocket and brought out his wallet. Skilfully she rifled through it till she found what she was looking for, then put the rest back in his pocket.
‘Give it me back.’ He was serious now. Angry even.
She danced about the room keeping out of his reach, trying to look at the photograph more clearly. ‘She’s lovely, Finn. Honest. You love her, do you?’ She placed it on the mantelpiece for all to see, but stood guard before it.
He sat down, suddenly boneless. He put his head in his hands. ‘I’m dizzy,’ he protested. She pulled his hands away, laying his head on her shop-window bosom, stroking his hair.