by Webster, Jan
Finn had put the idea to her as they walked one calm day along the sands at Troon. Cunningly, knowing she could always be persuaded to do something for another’s good, rather than her own, he had pointed out, ‘It would be a great adventure for your father.’ She had turned the tables on him. ‘I’ll go if you come too. You deserve a break.’ He looked sharply at her, but read nothing in her face. In the end, he too agreed to come.
The South African war ended before they left. The sense of relief in Glasgow as elsewhere was palpable. Many of those who had set off in such high spirits with the London-Scottish would never see the bonnie Hills of Galloway again from a returning troopship. Six thousand men had died in action, three times as many had succumbed to disease, and now twenty-three thousand wanted nursing back to some kind of health. There was also some bad conscience over the concentration camps in which Kitchener had herded civilians, even children, and over the numbers, said to be 20,000, who had died there.
But it was over, that was the thing. And, once recovered from his appendicitis, the new king was due to take over the throne. Even if he was sixty-one, he was cheerful, lively and scandalous, which made a change after Victoria; and at fifty-eight his Queen, Alexandra, was glamorously youthful-looking, and the object of almost equal doses of commiseration and curiosity on the part of her subjects.
The hammering from the shipyards provided an incessant chorus on the hazy summer day when they set sail from the quay at Finnieston. Jack wanted to miss nothing. How it all had changed since the time when he’d stowed away, aged twelve, on the sailing-ship Titania. He thought of her mainly as a sailing ship because that was how he liked best to remember her, full-rigged, beautiful. But she had been sail-and-steam. And how bravely she had fought the ocean, then. But he remembered with photographic clarity the dreadful night when the captain and first mate had been swept overboard and the ship reduced to little more than a valiant matchbox. He’d seen some storms at sea since, but never anything to equal that. Steel boilers, steel ships, had changed everything. He looked up at the Colintrae’s three large dark funnels with respect, if without affection. A good ship, a sound ship. These hopeful emigrating souls milling around on deck in this day as in his, would be safe on board her, but beautiful, he decided, she was not.
‘Papa.’ It was Sandia beside him, breathless, excited. ‘We’re on our way at last.’ He smiled at her, remembering how she had badgered him at Gourock, when she was about four, to be shown the big ships. Now he pointed them out to her again — that one there was bound for Montreal; this one was just back from Calcutta, and that one probably returned from Cape Town with a cargo of fruit. And the one with the lascar seamen, that would be from the Far East, probably China.
‘The four-masters, Papa?’ Sandia nodded in the direction of the windjammers, knowing full well her father’s love was still reserved for them. His voice was gruff. ‘They’re still used on the grain routes from Australia. That one over there will be getting ready for New Zealand.’ She marvelled at his intimate knowledge of ships and docks, as detailed and certain as her knowledge of her own kitchens.
‘It’s not beautiful, but it has a certain romance of its own,’ opined Finn, coming up to join them and indicating the river banks strewn with the angular furniture of the shipyards, where the clatter of the riveters’ hammers never stopped.
‘Wait till we reach the Tail o’ the Bank,’ said Jack. How could he describe to them that swelling moment once Gourock was passed and the firth opened up to the open sea? How describe the feeling when eventually there was no land visible and nothing but the great element of unpredictable water to sustain you till New York?
He was determined not to make an emotional fool of himself and busied himself needlessly pointing out landmarks like the Kilpatrick Hills and Dumbarton Rock, the craggy peaks beyond the Holy Loch and the hills of Arran as the firth inexorably widened. Not a puffer or coaster missed his interested gaze and he instructed his companions in the difference between them and the hoppers and dredgers keeping the river from silting up and the channel clear for ships.
In the summer air, they could hear the music from the paddle steamers taking trippers to Rothesay. Sandia thought the sound of piano, melodeon, fiddle peculiarly appropriate that day, for the liner was like some great stage-set, peopled as it was with emigrants all set to enact the biggest drama of their lives. Unlike themselves, most of these people would never return to Scotland. Somehow, the thought shrank her grief to proportion. Determinedly, with no more tears, she set her face to the west.
Canada imposed silence on them by its scale and grandeur. There were times when Sandia thought it looked very like Scotland only conceived on a much larger scale. The huge spaces emptied her mind, made her glad when they reached resting points and human contact was restored. Tuned to the rhythms of the transcontinental trains, she let the gentler griefs of her widowhood wash up on her consciousness like an outgoing tide rustling through sand and shingle. It was strange how John Beltry and Dandy seemed to be twinned in her mind, as though she had lost both. As though the more recent grief had revived the earlier, attenuated one of Dandy’s going away. Sometimes, idly, she tried to picture him married, the father of children. She would not mind that, she thought. But they should have been hers.
Every other thought was put from their minds, however, by the warmth of the welcome at the Wilson homestead, where it was quite clear that Kitty was regarded as one of the family. Great preparations had been put in hand and every Scots-born homesteader for miles around had been invited to a party and barn-dance to greet the newcomers. The livery business and lodging-house were booming and Kitty seemed to thrive on the hard work involved, for her slender figure had rounded into womanly curves and even seeing Finn did not apparently shake her cheerful, back-chatting equilibrium. Sandia took in right away the proprietorial attitude of Fred Wilson and Kitty’s flirtatious response to it. A small thud of premonition jolted her stomach.
But that first night at the barn-dance everything went off like a firecracker. Melodeon and violin provided the music for reels, strathspeys and cotillions and the white-clothed trestle-tables groaned under their burden of plenty. Sandia noticed one or two dark-eyed, soulful creatures who joined lustily but inexpertly in the dancing and was told these were Doukhobors, a Russian sect arriving in the province in large numbers.
‘Uncle Duncan would take to them,’ said Kitty. ‘They won’t carry arms or fight. I don’t know if he would approve of what they do when they’re up against some kind of opposition from the authorities, though.’
‘What’s that?’ demanded Sandia.
‘They take off all their clothes,’ said Kitty, with a mischievous smile.
Sandia gazed at the Russians curiously. Did they find it so much different from their Tsarist homeland? She thought again of the people coming over on the ship with them, Scots bound for America and Canada to make a new life, and it seemed to her as though half the world was uprooting itself and settling down somewhere else. Finn had volunteered the information that a million and a half Scots had emigrated in the last century. What did it do to the country thus denuded? Maybe her Uncle Duncan’s internationalism would be thrust on them, whether they liked it or not.
What warmed her was that Kitty kept off the subject of her widowhood till they were alone in the latter’s bedroom and then simply put her arms around her and hugged her close. It was better than words. It was kinship, it was sharing. And talk came then, slowly and naturally, part of the filling-in process about each other’s lives since they had parted.
Then Kitty said unexpectedly, ‘I wish Finn Fleming had not come,’ and it came again, that thud of premonition. Sandia looked at her blankly, saying, ‘Surely you can afford to be friends now, dear. You’ve made a happy life for yourself here.’
‘Yes.’ Kitty’s face darkened. ‘And it wasn’t easy.’
‘Will you marry Fred Wilson?’
‘He wants me to.’
‘There’s a “but”
in your voice.’
‘But I don’t love him.’
‘In that case —’
‘Does it make any difference?’ Kitty challenged. ‘Did you love John, to start with, at any rate? It seems to me that folk who marry for friendship, respect, that sort of thing, have just as good a life.’
‘I think Finn has set a lot of store by coming here.’
‘Then why didn’t he come sooner?’ Kitty demanded.
‘Did you expect him to run after you?’ asked Sandia, in amazement. ‘Then it shows you don’t know Finn. He’s a very buttoned-up, inward-looking person. With a lot of pride. He’s clever, Kit. It sets him apart from the herd.’ She put a hand on her sister’s arm. ‘Don’t be hard on him, dear. If you don’t want to take up with him again, at least let him down gently.’
Kitty’s mouth hardened, but she said nothing more.
On the third day of the visit, Kitty and Finn disappeared together for about three hours. Ostensibly they had merely gone for an exploration of the little township. Fred Wilson, handsome in a thickset, solid way, had been taking the local doctor to a homestead twenty miles away where the mother was sick, and after he had settled his horse on return he made anxious enquiries about Kitty’s whereabouts. When Kitty and Finn did return, looking upset and, in Kitty’s case, even tearful, Fred’s expression became positively forbidding and Sandia waited fearfully for some kind of emotional storm.
Nothing happened that night, however, mainly because Kitty went out of her way to placate Fred and because Captain Jack embarked on some spellbinding stories about his seafaring days. His listeners had never heard of the famous Arran stowaway case, in which seven youngsters had stowed away at Greenock for Canada and been put out on the ice (save for one) on St George Bay, Newfoundland.
Sandia thought her father had something of the Ancient Mariner about him, sitting there in the snug timber house with his rapt audience about him. He described how the urchins, who’d been flogged and starved on the crossing, blundered about on the ice-floes till one drowned down an ice-hole and another was left behind to die, crying for his mother. The rest, temporarily blinded from the ice-fields, eventually reached the shore and were saved. Jack had had the full story from one of them, who had grown up to be a riveter at Greenock.
In the days to come, Kitty appeared to do her best to keep out of Finn’s way, but Sandia noticed them occasionally engrossed in conversation, and once, in a corner, what seemed to be an angry exchange. Even so, she did not know everything that went on, for she and her father were invited to visit all over the place, sometimes quite a few miles out into the prairie.
The visit was to end, as it began, with a party. An even bigger affair than the barn-dance, Sandia was assured, and it could go on till dawn. Everybody was coming, even the babies, who would be put to sleep in improvised cots. Provincial Canada was like that: friendly, extrovert, hard-working and fun-loving. Sandia began to see what Kitty liked about it.
The day of the party, Sandia found Kitty packing a wicker basket with goodies and covering it with a red and white checked gingham cloth.
‘What’s this?’ she demanded curiously.
‘At midnight, we have an auction lunch,’ Kitty explained. ‘It’s the tradition. Your beau is supposed to outbid all corners for your lunch-basket. If he doesn’t, it means he’s cooling off.’
‘I see,’ said Sandia thoughtfully.
It was a nerve-tingling, rumbustious affair. Thin and vibrant, the fiddles whined out country music and red-necked boys straight from the fields whirled their girls into exhausting patterns of dance. Grannies smiled from the sidelines and babies fell asleep in the corners, huddled among their parents’ coats and galoshes.
Sandia danced with an abstracted Finn, who answered her comments vaguely and monosyllabically. Captain Jack enjoyed popularity among the ladies, especially the older, widowed ones, as he stomped through the dances at his own pace, his broad back forbidding the frivolous passing of younger partners round the hall.
The auctioneer, a burly, middle-aged ex-Glaswegian called Alec Hardie, mounted the rostrum round about midnight to cat-calls and shouts of encouragement. All around him were the lunch-baskets of the young and eligible females, and some not so eligible, who stood adjusting their skirts decorously and putting hands up to fix combs or flowers in their hair.
When Kitty’s basket went up, there were several bidders and much good-natured joshing, but soon to Sandia’s mounting concern there were only two bidders left, Fred Wilson and Finn.
She moved to Finn’s side to caution him, but he did not seem to be aware of her. His eyes were fixed on Kitty, on the other side of the room. In a blue and white dress she looked distraught and beautiful. As though she were a girl of eighteen, Sandia thought. Not a woman of almost thirty.
The bidding went up, cent by cent, dollar by dollar, till it had the dancers gasping and incredulous. At ten dollars, Fred Wilson turned and strode from the hall and Finn took possession of the basket and carried it to Kitty in triumph.
His eyes glittered down at her.
‘Right,’ he said decisively. ‘Now they all know. You know what I’m asking you, Kitty.’
It seemed as though everyone in the hall waited for Kitty’s answer. She stood for a moment, shaken and indecisive, not taking the basket from Finn’s extended arms. Then, like Fred before her, she too turned on her heel and walked out.
Finn followed her. On the wooden balcony outside the hall he pulled her into the shadows, but she shook herself out of his arms.
‘Why are you punishing me?’
‘Because you punished me.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You made me suffer. I swore you wouldn’t get the chance to do so again.’
‘I’ve been clumsy, Kit. I’ve been taken up with my work. But I love you. You know that —’
He wasn’t able to finish his protestation. Fred Wilson had come up silently behind and caught him by the jacket collar, swinging him round so that his chin was neatly lined up for the punch Fred delivered.
Scrambling up from the porch floor, Finn bent his head and attacked Fred like a pile-driver. The two rolled over and over, grunting and struggling while Kitty screamed at them to stop.
Finn’s right fist landed a blow that seemed to leave his opponent temporarily stunned. Rising groggily, he dragged his man to his feet also, holding him at arm’s length so that Fred’s hands circled like useless windmills, much to the amusement of the young men in the rapidly-gathering crowd.
‘You can’t marry this oaf.’ His nose bleeding, his hair plastered over his eyes, Finn fixed Kitty with a grimly determined glare. Kitty covered her face as Fred at last tore himself free from his tormentor and with a bellow like an ox threw himself on top of Finn and began pummelling wildly at his head.
‘He’ll kill him!’ Sandia screamed. One heavy blow had gone home and brought Finn to a dazed standstill, his eyes glazed and incredulous, while Fred at last stood back demanding: ‘Have you had enough?’
Seeing the ugly turn of events, Hardie the auctioneer and another man took advantage of the lull to pinion Fred and lead him away. But shaking his head like a terrier with a rat, Finn staggered after him, taunting him to return to the fray: ‘Come on, you yellow bastard! Let me finish you off!’
Fred cast off the two men like an old overcoat and sailed in towards his opponent with a massive right hook that missed. He had to swing round again in a half circle in order to renew the attack but meantime Finn’s fist came up cleanly under his chin with a crack that some swore afterwards could be heard inside the hall. Fred fell with a thud like a railway sleeper and Finn stepped back with a smile and a gesture of primitive satisfaction. He put his pole-axing fist to his lips and kissed it.
There was a momentary hush before Bedlam broke. Helpers rushed to assist the unconscious Fred. They put a folded jacket under him and lifted his eyelids to see pupils rolled up into his head. Sandia, pink-faced and agitated, brought a sponge and
trickled water on to his temples.
Kitty confronted Finn, her eyes flinty with rage.
‘You — savage, you! You heathen and blackguard!’
He did not meet her eyes. ‘It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Proof of how I feel. I should bloody well have killed him.’ He looked at his raw knuckles and then, despite what he had just said, with ill-concealed relief at Fred, who was at last sitting up and regaining consciousness.
The next day was departure time. Sandia could not find Finn all morning, but an hour before they were due to leave he turned up and got their luggage together, ready for the station, as though nothing had happened.
Kitty had gone about her essential duties in the lodging-house and then changed into her formal clothes for the goodbyes. She was quiet and subdued.
She hugged her father and Sandia warmly and after a pause extended a hand coolly to Finn, who as formally shook it. Sandia was convinced then that it was all over between the two.
But later, in the train, she wondered. Covertly looking at Finn, she tried to guess at the emotions behind his grim, silent mask. He crossed his legs, uncrossed them. He rustled papers open, then folded them to look out of the window. She had the feeling of emotion that would not contain itself. If Kitty had wanted to push Finn towards realization of his feelings, she had succeeded. But what would Kitty do now? Marry Fred Wilson? And could that possibly work? It seemed to Sandia there were nothing but raw nerve endings all over the place. She was about to speak to Finn when she saw her father indicate by a minimal shake of the head that it was best to leave things alone. She decided he knew best.