Saturday City

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kate was standing on a hillside looking out towards water and islands. It was a beautiful day. No mist. Just golden sunshine, bathing the pale strip of shore below, the little knots of dark green forest, the white farm cottages dotted here and there. These were the Western Isles, the beautiful, fabled places of song and legend, whence her forebears had sprung. It was right she should be here. Soon the silence would tell her why. Or the shadowy figure by her side.

  ‘Findlay,’ she said. She could not see the shadow’s face, but he held out something she recognized as a clatch-iron. Little children went down into the dark on one of those. Findlay and his brother Tam.

  ‘I had to wash them and put them to bed. They fell asleep as soon as they came up the pit.’ Grannie Fleming? Had she spoken? Did she know the pit had taken Findlay as well as little Tam?

  ‘Listen! Listen!’ Kate cried. But there were so many voices. Her children playing down the burn. And Jack? Young Jack? ‘Don’t cry,’ she told him. He had never wanted to leave Greenock. He had wanted his ships, his lovely ships. ‘God will take away all pain,’ she told him. Shall I see my ships in heaven? ‘Yes, yes. And Clemmie too.’

  ‘She’s wandering,’ said Tansy. She moved over to the set-in bed where Kate lay, propped up by half a dozen pillows, her old, veined hands plucking at the patchwork quilt. How pretty her hair looked, thought Tansy irrelevantly, the snow-white strands tumbling down over the clean cambric nightgown, curling and waving like a young girl’s. It moved her as nothing else had. She gentled one of the roving, plucking hands in her own.

  ‘Can I get you something, Mother?’

  Kate’s eyes opened and she stared.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Tansy, Mother. Could you take a little broth?’

  Kate’s eyes closed again and she lapsed into sleep. Carefully, not to wake her, Tansy picked her way to the fireside and sat down on the rocking-chair. They’d bought this when her father was alive. It had been in the front room then. You were only allowed to sit in it with reverence, rocking it gently. Her mother had polished the arms till they glittered, and crocheted a white crimson cover for the back. She’d taught them to take care of her treasured pieces. Poor mother! They were few enough.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Josie whispered from the chair opposite. Tansy felt Josie’s presence was the only one she could have borne. There had always been goodwill between them. Strange, when they were so different.

  Tansy shook her head.

  ‘I came as soon as I could, Josie.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You’ve been good to her. Better than a daughter.’

  ‘I’ve been here,’ responded Josie simply. ‘And she never failed me. Are you sure you won’t lie down? You must be exhausted. What was the crossing like from France?’

  ‘Rough, but I don’t get sick. Josie,’ she burst out, ‘she didn’t know me. I wanted to come sooner. But Hamish needed me, too. He has cancer, Josie. He’s in the hospital in Paris.’

  ‘She’s old and confused. Don’t take on.’ Josie rose and put a hand on Tansy’s shoulder. ‘Come into the front room. We can talk there.’

  ‘It seems strange, coming back to Dounhead now,’ said Tansy, staring round the little front parlour. Dounhead House was a convalescent home now, an annexe to one of the county hospitals. She had never found out what Lachie sold it for; he had refused to tell her. The faded print of ‘The Light of the World’ caught her eye and she did not see it now as she once had, artistically in bad taste, but as a sort of icon that had sustained her mother in her widowhood and old age.

  ‘She wants you to have that picture,’ Josie nodded, ‘and her cameo brooch. The Apostle spoons have to be sent out to Jean in New Zealand and Isa gets her wedding-ring and chatelaine.’

  ‘She said all this?’ asked Tansy, dumbfounded.

  Josie smiled. ‘Not once, but many times. In the winter when we had a chat by the fire, she liked to portion out her bits and pieces. Jack’s to get the family Bible, Duncan poor old Findlay’s few bits of books, and Paterson the wag-at-the-wa’ clock, if he wants it.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘There’s a tea-cloth with Ayrshire embroidery I’ve always admired. And the rocking-chair. She says I’ve to take care of it.’ Josie dabbed her eyes. ‘She’ll make a lady of me yet.’

  Kate felt as though she stayed out of her body for longer and longer spells. The spirit had to get used to its new freedoms. Oh yes, she believed in the spirit. What else was it dragged you through the days when the flesh was tired and unresponsive? It was tugging now, like a ship from its moorings.

  ‘There, Kate. Do you see it? The steamship Comet. First ever built. Built in Scotland.’ There was pride in her father’s voice. ‘Never forget you saw it. Tell your children.’ Her feet had been bare on the gorse and heather, the skin of the soles so hardened she could run as fast as the red deer. She saw them leap now, the red deer, against the waterfall. Was there ever sight so lovely? No wonder she came back to look.

  Voices saying ‘Mother.’ Was that Jack? And that Duncan? Faces hovered. Other young faces. Too many. She sat up suddenly and looked around the room. The faces turned towards her. Was her Duncan’s beard grey, like that of an old man?

  She held out her arms to them. There were things she wanted to say. Don’t grieve. I want to go. But they receded so fast they became a blur, caught up in whirling sky and sea and sunlight. She saw the Land of the Apple Trees, Tir-Nan-Og, the beautiful land of the leaping deer. And she cried as loudly as she could, ‘Findlay!’ for she wanted him there, too, and in an instant she saw him.

  Josie folded back the snow-white sheet over the lifeless face, put the pennies on the eyes. There was nothing to fear. This was a state of peace. And she had seen it many times in the Rows. These tears that fell from her own eyes were immaterial, and soon would dry.

  *

  Carlie saw her Aunt Tansy off on the train after the funeral. Nearly all the family had attended, but Donald had not been there, a fact that grieved his mother. She and Donald had become totally estranged as the years went by and he had even refused to meet her in Glasgow for a brief talk. His relations with his father Lachie were a little better, but Lachie seldom left Arran now and had not come for the funeral.

  Carlie had at one time shared Donald’s resentment against his parents, particularly Tansy because of the extravagant way she and Hamish Macleish appeared to live on the Continent. But she had come to understand that there were always two sides to a story. Josie pointed out that it was Lachie who had let down the marriage in the first place, by his absences: Tansy was an open-hearted if ambitious woman who needed to give and receive love, and if she was fashionably and, yes, extravagantly dressed, it had to be remembered that Macleish was younger and the worry of losing his devotion surely would be always present …

  When Tansy had pleaded with her, ‘Try to see him, Carlie. Keep an eye on him for me,’ Carlie had not resisted. Ever since she had returned to Glasgow, she had hoped Donald would get in touch. There had been times when she had been too busy to think of him — when she had been moving into her apartments and going the rounds of the newspapers to line up some freelance journalism. All this and her work for the suffrage kept her busy enough, but at the back of her mind were always the wish and the hope to see Donald.

  She knew, of course, that he worked for Finn. It was on the shop floor, too, although he’d been offered something better. It was as though, Sandia had told her, he wanted to defy the family at every turn. Sandia had warned her that Donald had changed out of all recognition, half-hinting that Carlie would be well advised to have nothing more to do with him.

  But the need to reassert herself with him was strong in her. She was curious and proprietary. He could not have changed so much she would not be able to re-establish some kind of relationship.

  Rather than write to him, she decided she would simply go to the factory one evening and wait till he came out.
It did not seem such a good idea when she got there, because the men looked so much alike in their grimy overalls. But she spotted him, in the middle of a group, and waved tentatively, calling his name.

  ‘Carlie!’ He was, she realized, embarrassed at being accosted in front of his work-mates. He scraped the gutter with the toe of his boot, keeping his hands in his pockets and his head low. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said immediately. ‘I just wanted to see you. Didn’t you know I’d come back?’ They began to walk slowly up the street.

  ‘I’d heard.’

  ‘But you didn’t get in touch?’

  ‘That was your prerogative. You were the one who went away.’

  She said nothing, deciding that it had been a mistake, after all, to see him. What Sandia had said was true. Even his voice had changed and was rough, gibing, goading, bitter, the aggressive weapon of the Glasgow proletariat. Once he had spoken carefully, with accent, and once his hands with their clubbed, tubercular nails had been as white as a woman’s. Now they were filthy with oil. His hair was long and unkempt. Worst of all was the expression on his face, hard, defensive, giving nothing away. But she tried again.

  ‘Your mother asked me to try and see you. Couldn’t we meet somewhere, when you’ve had time to change? What about the Ca’doro? We could have tea — high tea.’

  ‘Who’s paying?’ He gave her an amused, speculative glance, but there was a glimpse of the old, affectionate spirit and her heart rose.

  ‘I will, if I have to,’ she retorted. ‘Shall we say seven, then?’

  She did not go home to her own place, but bought an evening paper and read it in the restaurant. Lord Kelvin, the former Sir William Thomson, had died and was to be buried next to Sir Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey. She felt a twinge of chauvinism, wondering why he could not have been laid to rest in his own city. His distinctions and honours, one hundred and eighty of them, took up a full column of print.

  Donald appeared on the stroke of seven, cleaned up and wearing a good tweed overcoat she recognized from the old days. But she was shocked all over again at his thinness and the stoop of his back. The resentment she had shared with Tansy had dissipated. She was back on his side again, whatever he’d done, however he’d behaved. He was simply Donald.

  ‘So London couldn’t hold you?’

  ‘Why didn’t you ever write?’

  They faced each other like jousting knights.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t stay there.’

  ‘I suppose it was your way of getting back at me. You always were a spoiled child.’

  A buxom waitress staring down at them, thinking they were involved in argument, was surprised to see the smiles break on their faces. She took their order and retired in confusion.

  ‘So you didn’t find yourself another man, then?’

  ‘What happened to you? Opted out, have you?’

  She suddenly grabbed his oil-grimed right hand and stared at the orange-tipped fingers. ‘Nicotine. That must do your chest a lot of good.’

  ‘I take a drink as well. And go about with women.’ The tone was joking, but his stare was steady, challenging.

  She dropped his hand, suddenly frightened. ‘What’s happened to you?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t know you.’

  He took a battered tin case from an inner pocket, offered her a cigarette, which she refused, and lit up.

  ‘I was a big, soft lump of a laddie when you went away,’ he said, ‘and now I’m a man. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘That’s not what we’re talking about.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘We’re talking about standards. Aren’t you doing a job beneath your ability? And why don’t you take care of your health?’

  He smoked furiously for several seconds, tapping non-existent ash from the tip of his cigarette. His nostrils were white, which always happened when he got angry. The waitress placed two plates of sole and chips in front of them and Carlie began to pick at the food, while he ignored his.

  At last he said in a low, bitter voice: ‘What sort of standards are we on about? My mother’s? Gad about Europe and take all you can from any mug who’ll stand it? My father’s? Talk about improving the lot of your pitmen and then go away and paint pictures?’

  ‘I just mean ordinary, decent standards,’ she protested.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t taught ordinary, decent standards,’ he gibed. ‘So I’ve had to make my own.’ He lit a second cigarette from the first.

  ‘You remember when you went away to London? It took me a while to forgive you for that, but it was a good thing for me, in the end. I was too dependent on you. A bad thing, that. But I was a mess. I didn’t know where I stood with anything — my health, my work, my parents, you, life.’

  ‘I had my problems, too,’ she protested. ‘We’ve all got to grow up.’

  ‘Yes.’ He gave her a brooding look. ‘Well, I made a great discovery. I discovered I wanted to do a very ordinary job and be with very ordinary folk. I discovered I had no ambition, in the ordinary sense, except to live from day to day.’

  ‘I see.’ But she did not.

  He shook his head at her. ‘You don’t see. I wanted — I suppose I wanted the solidarity of being ordinary. Let me put it this way. I remember, when we lived in the big house and you came up from the Rows to play with me, I envied you because you were going back there. Where lives were lived. Not played at. Lived.’ He gave a rueful laugh. ‘I suppose I’ve ended up more of a socialist than you or even your father.’

  She said, ‘I think it’s just a way of getting back at your parents. Particularly your mother.’

  He spread his hands. ‘Could be. Who’s to understand the springs of his own nature? But there, that’s the way it is.’

  ‘What about the women you spoke of?’ she asked, quickly.

  ‘I don’t need to tell you that sort of thing,’ he responded moodily. ‘Shall we say I haven’t been all I should be, and leave it at that?’

  ‘I’m not your moral arbiter.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I’d just like to know the facts, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m not particularly proud that I found out what it was all about from a married woman.’

  ‘Who?’ she demanded, pale-faced.

  ‘My landlady’s daughter-in-law. Her man’s no good to her. Lost a leg in the Boer War.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘There’ve been others. You asked for the truth. I even see Alisdair’s wife sometimes. Not con amore, however. She’s another kettle of fish entirely.’

  ‘Alisdair’s wife? You mean Tina?’

  He nodded. ‘Their marriage is a total disaster. She can’t live with him, and she can’t make up her mind to leave him.’

  ‘So she comes to you?’

  ‘Not exactly. I look in on them from time to time. He prescribes for me, you know. She started writing to me —’

  ‘What sort of letters?’

  ‘Pitiful. Saying she thought she was falling in love with me.’ Carlie looked grim. ‘Did you encourage her?’

  ‘What do you take me for? Of course not. I can listen though. And she has to talk to somebody. Their marriage has never been consummated.’

  Stunned, Carlie questioned, ‘Whose fault is it?’

  ‘Hers to begin with, she says. Then his. Now it’s blurred. All I know is her life’s a torment.’

  She said slowly, ‘She probably sees you as a vulnerable person, like herself. You are, you know. You’ve got a skin too few.’

  He shook his head. ‘Not any more. Not me. You’re the vulnerable one at the moment, Carlie. Am I not right?’

  Sudden tears shot into her eyes at his perception.

  ‘I’m missing my political friends, like Aggie Fermoyle.’

  ‘Glasgow will soon fold its hospitable wings about you,’ he said, a gentle note in his voice for the first time. ‘This is where you belong, after all.’ She stared at him to see if the warmth was false. Apparently it wasn
’t. ‘I love this place. You know the Yanks think it’s a copybook city? They send folk over to see how our trams are run and to praise our councillors! I can see what’s underneath, but I still love it.’

  Afterwards, they dodged the clattering, swaying trams and he walked with her back to her rooms.

  ‘You must take care of yourself,’ she warned him as they parted. ‘You’re too thin for my liking.’

  ‘I’m tougher than I look,’ he promised her. He touched her chin with his forefinger, but did not kiss her. ‘I’ll be seeing you.’

  The smart little donkey clattered along the edge of the tram rails in Sauchiehall Street, led by a page-boy in a green uniform and drawing a cart laden with flowers.

  Sandia drew Dandy Peel’s attention to it.

  ‘It’s going to the Willow Tea-room. Miss Cranston does the flowers herself, although they say the architect Macintosh has the final say,’ she told him. He looked covertly at her face, smiling a little, knowing how she longed to pattern herself on the stylish Kate Cranston, yet not having the latter’s totally elegant touch nor her disdain for public opinion, which on occasion found the Cranston élan too much for the Glasgow decorum.

  ‘Your tea-rooms have more — more warmth and genuine homeliness,’ he told her. ‘I prefer them, myself. But if you want to eat at the Willow Tea-room, let’s go there and I’ll help you criticize.’

  Kate looked up at the white façade of ‘The Willow’ as they approached. She sniffed. Never mind what visiting pundits from abroad said about it, or the raptures the papers went into over its modernity, she thought this brainchild of the famous Charles Rennie Macintosh was on the plain side, too severe and simple to linger in the mind. Climbing the winding stairway to the Room de luxe, however, and seated on a Macintosh-designed ladderback chair, she could not restrain a vexatious sigh of admiration for the three red camellias and their dark-green glossy leaves, so discriminatingly arranged by Kate Cranston herself on a tiny willow-pattern soup plate at the centre of the table.

  ‘Drips and dangles,’ commented Dandy, grinning as he took in the hanging lights, drips of pink glass, in the centre of the room. The lights in particular had come in for some gentle newspaper satire. Neil Munro had written about his coalman Duffy, a beloved contemporary fictional figure, being shown round the Willow and asking what all those ‘drips and dangles’ were. ‘Airt, that’s Airt,’ he’d been informed, and Dandy’s look of smirking enjoyment showed it was an attitude he shared, however Philistine.