Saturday City

by Webster, Jan

  Finn swore. His face was taut and strained. ‘Then do your bloody worst,’ he said shortly.

  He watched Donald walk away along the works corridor, then on an impulse called him back.

  ‘I hear you’re seeing quite a lot of Carlie.’ His gaze was savage. ‘Does she know you’re still going around with Chrissie Macausland?’

  *

  On her way towards the train for Dounhead, Carlie saw the parade of strikers from Finn’s factory marching towards a demonstration in George Square, Donald at their head. He saw her hovering on the pavement and gave her a brief, preoccupied smile. Something twisted inside her at the sight of him, so thin, shabby and febrile. What had he said? ‘I’m tougher than I look.’ She begged leave to doubt it. He looked barely strong enough to hold up his end of the home-made banner.

  Still, she had to leave him to his fate, today at least. She had other things to worry her. She had to try and tell her mother she was seeing her half-brother, Kirsten’s son Wallace, who had turned up in Glasgow to carry out some research work on wireless telegraphy. Not only seeing him, but liking what she saw. Her father had written to her, explaining that Wallace had been brought up in the country and was somewhat shy of meeting people. He felt sure Carlie would help him to make some contacts.

  It seemed like a sort of treachery to her mother, that was the trouble, yet if she had refused to meet Wallace it would have upset her father. Why did she have to have such complicated family relationships? There was the further complication that she liked Wallace for his own sake.

  She hadn’t known what to expect. An anarchist show-off, perhaps, or an intellectual high-flyer. In the event, the result of her father’s grand passion was a quiet, conventional young man, greatly taken up with the niceties of removing his hat, pulling out restaurant chairs and opening doors for her.

  She had recognized some element of herself in him, a sort of quiet, amused balance. He had her father’s gaze, direct and questioning, and Kirsten’s rounded chin. He was obviously dedicated to his scientific career, impressed by being in the city where the great Lord Kelvin had lived and worked.

  ‘He started it all, you know,’ he told her, ‘with the result he published in 1853.’

  ‘What result was that?’

  ‘If I mentioned things like square roots and electrical circuits and oscillation, would they mean anything to you?’

  ‘Not a great deal!’

  ‘I thought not. The old man’s search was to relate electricity to ponderable matter and he admitted at the end of his days he knew little more than when he started out. There’s humility for you. If politicians had that kind of humility, we should all be much better off.’

  Startled, she had led him on about politics but found he had a great resistance to them. He was suspicious of Lloyd George, disliked Asquith and would not talk about the Labour Party.

  ‘My foster-parents didn’t bring me up to take an interest,’ he explained. ‘I don’t see any reason to question their values.’ He had met her curious gaze blandly and Carlie had decided there and then he was a lot more complex than she’d at first realized.

  The Rows at Dounhead hadn’t changed all that much, even if Blériot had just flown the Channel, thought Carlie. There were still the communal privies, still the smelly middens with pig bins alongside where householders dumped their potato peelings for the pig farmers to collect. Someone had told her about Keir Hardie bringing a Government minister out to see such houses and keeping him standing near the middens as long as he could, in the hope he would pass out from the smell. On the other hand, the little houses of the Rows themselves sparkled with self-respect and elbow-grease, their windows bright with pot plants and plaster ornaments, clean lace curtains looped back with gleaming brass.

  The sour-milk cart passed her as she turned into the Rows, and farther along she saw children clustered round a great, grave, Russian dancing bear, gyrating with immense offended dignity on its hind legs. It was difficult to describe the feelings aroused in her by these familiar sights. About equal parts outrage and identification. It was home. Warm, rough, hospitable. It was not at all difficult to understand why Josie wanted to stay here. It had a dimension not to be found elsewhere.

  She clicked up the sneck of her mother’s door and surprised Josie by the sink, peeling potatoes. Her aunt, Nellie Daly of the swollen legs, had died two years before, and Josie lived alone except for those times when Duncan came back from London, having refused Carlie’s invitation to live with her in Glasgow.

  Pictures of Duncan were everywhere, on mantelpiece and dusty dresser. Duncan with Keir Hardie, Ramsay Macdonald. Duncan with Bernard Shaw and the Webbs. Duncan with his friends from the Socialist International — the Belgian Camille Huysmans, the Frenchmen Vaillant and Jaures. Duncan in America, outside Jane Addams’s settlement houses for the poor in New York. Duncan with the roustabout Socialist Tom Mann, when he’d preached syndicalism in New Zealand … He doesn’t belong to us, Carlie thought all over again. All she has are his pictures.

  It made her specially warm in her greeting. She had brought a box of cakes from Glasgow and handed these to Josie now, expressing the wish for a good, strong cup of tea. While Josie made the tea, she kept up a stream of gossip — about Kitty’s babies, Sandia’s little girl, the freelance work she did for the Glasgow newspapers, her weekends working for the Suffragettes, mostly nice girls from Hillhead and Langside, she told her mother, but too few from the poorer districts.

  Josie toasted her knees under the big print pinny and fed the grate with lumps of shiny coal while she listened. At last Carlie found the courage to bring up the subject of Wallace. She did it as matter-of-factly as she could, then turned to Josie with a vulnerable face and said, ‘You don’t mind my seeing him, Maw, do you?’

  Josie studied her feet for what seemed like an interminable age. Then she looked up and with a slow, unconvincing smile said, ‘I can’t see the harm to it.’ But two fat tears fell on to her hands.

  ‘Then I won’t see him again,’ Carlie cried. ‘Not if it upsets you.’

  Josie found her composure. ‘Poor boy,’ she said. ‘What would he think if you turned against him? He’s done nothing wrong.’

  ‘Maw,’ Carlie lied, ‘Kirsten Mackenzie means nothing to my father now. It was all a very long time ago.’

  Josie gave her daughter a very clear-sighted, direct look.

  ‘Learn not to give too much of yourself to any man, Carlie,’ she advised cryptically. ‘If I had my time again, I would be my own woman and campaign for women in Parliament. I would like to see women far less dependent on men.’

  ‘You could have been Dounhead’s answer to Mrs Pankhurst,’ Carlie teased. She was glad to have got the Wallace business over and prepared to forget the uncharacteristic tinge of bitterness in her mother’s last words. As for not giving too much of yourself to any man, she remembered Donald walking in the Glasgow street, his restlessness and discontent, and wondered if it was already too late for her.

  *

  The rain pelted down on the Glasgow cobbles and washed the bright colour of the trams even brighter as they sped along their water-logged grooves like so many drunken dowagers. In Pettigrew and Stephens they waited in vain for customers and in the Room de luxe at the Willow Tea-rooms the waitresses had no one to serve till the downpour was over. August, and Glasgow steamed like a tropical city in the grip of the monsoon while the rain impartially washed Kelvinside mansion and Gorbals slum.

  ‘Lovely holiday weather.’ Carlie had just stepped outside the newspaper office and put up her umbrella when someone nudged under its shelter and uttered the customary banality.

  ‘Donald! Look at you! You’re soaked!’ she scolded.

  He steered her in the direction of the Ca’doro. ‘Then join me in a cup of tea while I dry off.’

  Seated in the tea-room, she said, ‘I can’t stay long. I’ve got to meet Kirsten Mackenzie in an hour. She’s coming up from London for the big political meeting tonight in St Andr
ew’s Hall. Adela Pankhurst, Lucy Burns, Margaret Smith, Alice Paul — they’re all coming.’

  ‘Why do you bother?’ he demanded moodily. ‘The women’s vote is such a small part of the political packet.’

  ‘You mean I should join your revolution in the streets?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I believe in socialism by evolution, not revolution. I’m a pacifist, like my father.’

  ‘You can’t be a pacifist and a Suffragette.’

  ‘Yes, I can. We never set out to hurt anyone. But I’m not getting involved in argument this afternoon. Is it true the men are going back at Finn’s place? I heard a rumour in the News office.’

  He nodded grudgingly. ‘We’ve negotiated a settlement.’

  ‘For more money?’

  ‘We’ve had to concede that under present circumstances there will be no increase. It’s the only way we could avoid sackings —’

  ‘So you’ve put the whole firm in jeopardy and gained precisely nothing?’

  ‘No. We’ve strengthened our negotiating position. For the future.’

  She was silent. She could not escape the feeling that Donald used the factory as a focus for a deeper discontent in his own nature. It seemed he simply had to be at odds with someone. She longed to help him understand this, to come to terms with himself. He looked up now with that restless, challenging stare of his and said, ‘I’ve something else to tell you. I’ve got Tina away from that man of hers.’

  She looked at him in total astonishment ‘You’ve done what?’

  ‘No help for it.’ He spread his hands. ‘She can’t take any more. She’s got a job in Pettigrew and Stephens in Sauchiehall Street. A nice refined saleslady’s job. And a room in a clean tenement, with an old widow who makes her meals. I spent yesterday helping her move out.’

  ‘What about Alisdair?’

  ‘He’s making all the customary noises. Doesn’t make a scrap of difference. She won’t go back.’

  She said, stiff-lipped, ‘Will you see much of her?’ Instantly she regretted the question. There was a smirk of satisfaction on his features, as if he derived a perverse pleasure from upsetting her.

  ‘I’m the only one she trusts. She hates her father. I have to give the poor girl what support I can.’

  Suddenly it was important that the meeting that night should be an immense success. ‘I must go,’ she said coldly, rising to her feet.

  ‘You want to be careful.’

  She glared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Throwing stones. Sending yourselves as human letters to Downing Street. And the Lytton woman scratching Votes for Women over her heart with a hatpin. You lose public support when you do daft things like that.’

  ‘Losing support?’ she demanded furiously. ‘On the contrary. We are gaining support all the time in Scotland.’

  ‘I don’t like to see women losing their dignity, that’s all.’

  She could cheerfully have struck him. He knew it. His thin, dark, goading face waited for it. Trembling, she picked up her umbrella from the stand by the door and welcomed the onslaught of the rain in the street.

  *

  ‘I think the world is going off its head,’ said the middle-aged man in pince-nez, watching Miss Alice Paul being brought down from the roof of St Andrew’s Hall. ‘Suffragettes lying in wait to assault Cabinet ministers. Strikes everywhere. The country’s changing and not for the better.’

  Standing beside him, Carlie and Kirsten exchanged smiles.

  ‘If he had no vote, perhaps he too would be prepared to lie on a roof and get wet, waiting for Lord Crewe,’ said Kirsten, sotto voce. She watched the rebellious Suffragette being led away by the police. The workman who had spotted her watched too. ‘I didnae want to give her game away,’ he told anyone who would listen, ‘but I thought she needed help.’

  ‘You know,’ Kirsten said, ‘I believe the people here are on our side.’

  ‘Try to look as though you’re not a Suffragette,’ Carlie advised, as they moved towards the hall entrance. ‘The police will try to keep us out.’

  The queue stood patiently in the rain. Miss Alice Paul’s exploits had set up an expectant hum of speculation. If she had been prepared to wait for hours up on the roof, in a deluge, what further surprises might her sisterhood have in store for the meeting inside?

  ‘I heard your father speak in the House the other evening,’ said Kirsten. She clung to Carlie’s arm while the rain pattered down noisily on the silk drum of the umbrella above their heads. ‘He was speaking against the money spent on Dreadnoughts, to keep up with the German Navy. But the spirit of the House was against him. I think I am with the man in the pince-nez we have just heard. The country is changing. There is aggression everywhere. Unions, workers, government. I don’t like it, Carlie. I don’t like it a bit.’

  Carlie looked at the other woman’s face, darkly illumined by the street lamp. It was a face burned on the public imagination by Kirsten’s exploits in pursuit of the vote. Three times now, Kirsten had been in prison, for offences ranging from breaking windows to chaining herself to railings. The last time she had gone on hunger-strike and been forcibly fed. No doubt that accounted for the flaccid look of her skin, the boney frailty of her hands.

  Feeling something that was much more painful than anger, Carlie said lightly, ‘Perhaps we should not say too much about aggression, in view of the dust we are kicking up ourselves!’

  ‘But we hurt no one!’ protested Kirsten, echoing her own defence to Donald. ‘It is only ourselves we hurt, our own lives we offer.’

  They were nearly at the great doors to the hall. Carlie tried to keep her face averted from the large policeman, but a warm glow of self-satisfaction was spreading across his ruddy features as he recognized her.

  ‘Ah! Miss Fleming, isn’t it? Well, I’m afraid we can’t have you in the hall tonight, miss.’

  ‘Why not?’ demanded Kirsten.

  ‘And Miss Mackenzie, isn’t it? Thought I knew you, from the papers.’

  Carlie was about to argue when there was a sudden sharp surge from the people behind. Voices demanded, ‘Let them in!’; others cried, ‘It’s a free country,’ and some even, ‘Votes for women.’ In the good-natured but determined jostling the policeman’s protesting face was gradually carried out of sight and Carlie and Kirsten swept into the hall. Carlie began to laugh. Inside there were still plenty of seats.

  Suddenly she heard a small sound, like a moan, and felt Kirsten’s grip at first tighten then slacken on her arm. Turning, she was just in time to catch the older woman as she slumped against her, face ashen, eyes closed.

  With the help of a man who had jumped up from a nearby row, Carlie fought to get Kirsten back out through the crowds and into the entrance hall for air. The irony of it was killing, after their luck in getting inside. Someone thoughtfully provided a chair and a woman offered smelling salts. Kirsten’s head jerked up and her eyes opened, but as though they had weights on them.

  ‘You’re ill,’ Carlie accused her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘No.’ Kirsten’s tongue ran round her dry lips. ‘I’m all right. Go back in, Carlie. You may be needed.’

  ‘Certainly not. I’m taking you to my house and calling a doctor.’

  In the dark of the cab going out towards Queen’s Park Kirsten said in a weak but firm voice, ‘I shall be all right. And there is no point in calling a doctor. I will not see him.’

  As it was getting late, Carlie decided she could leave the decision about calling the doctor till the morning. She helped Kirsten undress and put her in her own bed. She would sleep on the settee. She made Kirsten some hot milk and saw that she looked better. But even so, she lay wakeful through the night, listening in case the other called.

  The lemony Glasgow sunshine was filtering through the cream lace curtains when she woke to realize that her fitful night had ended in a last hour of deep, drugging sleep. Noises told her that Kirsten had risen and was moving about in the ki
tchen.

  ‘You shouldn’t be up.’

  ‘I’m better.’ Pale-faced and sunken-eyed, Kirsten scarcely looked it. But her smile was defiant. She had made tea and toast and they sat down together.

  ‘What did they do to you, in that prison?’ Carlie demanded. ‘It looks to me as though they have half-killed you.’

  She had said the words unthinkingly, not even looking for an answer. She was certainly unprepared for the effect they had on Kirsten, who rose, making retching noises, and fled to the kitchen sink.

  After a few minutes, she returned and sat down, her hands pressed against her left side. She was deathly pale.

  ‘They make your mouth into a pouch, you know.’ The words tumbled out. ‘They pour brandy and milk into it and make you swallow. And when that doesn’t work, they put a tube up your nostril and pour egg and milk into it, through a funnel.’

  ‘No, don’t,’ Carlie protested, white-lipped.

  ‘The pain is excruciating, the worst pain ever. You have it here in your breast, and you think your ears are going to burst. And when that doesn’t work, they put you into a rubber cell and place a steel gag in your mouth and try it all over again.’

  Suddenly, with a moan, Kirsten vomited again and again. Tears were running down her face and her grey-streaked auburn hair had escaped from its pins and fell down her back. Carlie led her into the parlour and sat with her till she was feeling better. Then she brought her water and a towel and, after she had washed, helped her pin up her hair.

  ‘Don’t talk,’ she pleaded. She covered Kirsten with a shawl and left her to rest, wondering if she should send for Wallace. She felt a strange indecision. Kirsten’s powerful will had prevailed in the matter of the doctor. Perhaps she should do nothing till she had spoken to Kirsten again.

  In a little while she went back into the parlour and it was as though Kirsten had read her mind. ‘Don’t tell your father about this. Or Wallace. It is merely the reaction to what I have been through and I am determined to fight it on my own.’ She smiled, and patted the settee beside her for Carlie to sit down.