Saturday City

by Webster, Jan

  ‘Now you’re not to blame Vera.’ Kirsten put on her most wheedling tones. ‘I want us to have a meal together. Vera’s prepared some fish. I’m feeling so much better I thought it would be like a party.’

  He pushed down the surge of disquiet he felt on seeing the hectic flush on her cheeks, and humoured her.

  ‘All right. We’ll have the little table by your chair there and a party it shall be.’ He gave Vera a reassuring smile. ‘It’s all right. You get home now, lass. I’ll take over.’

  When the girl had gone, Kirsten said almost truculently, ‘I won’t give in, you know. If I can get back to eating properly, my strength will come back. Now let’s talk about your speech. Let me help you with it, the way I did with the books in the old days.’

  He placed a small portion of the creamed fish in front of her, urging her to eat. ‘What I have to get over,’ he explained, ‘is the explosive nature of the ideas some miners have nowadays. Marxism, de Leonism, Sorelism — they flash about the valleys like wild electric storms. Somehow I have to convince both sides of the need for caution combined with open-hearted discussion of the grievances. I’ll be called weak, I’ll be called traitor, because I want conciliation, not bloodshed. But they’ll not shift me. I’ll not set man against man, class against class. It goes against everything that wise old man, my father, taught me.’

  ‘No, don’t give in,’ she said softly. ‘Your kind of politics is based on love, not hatred. Keep saying it. One day they’ll have to listen, when all else has failed.’

  She did not eat much. When they had finished, he carried her nearer the fire and they watched the flames for a time in companionable silence. In the cheerful glow from the coals, he thought she looked as though she might be gaining in strength, but knew it might be wishful thinking.

  ‘Duncan.’ She fished in her handbag and handed him something. He saw it was the small volume of Burns’s poems he had given her years ago. When he opened it, inside was the same pressed burnet rose. ‘I want you to keep it,’ she ordered.

  He smiled and nodded, speechless.

  ‘I have been reading Ae Fond Kiss again,’ she said. She quoted, ‘“Had we never loved sae kindly, had we never loved sae blindly —”’

  He finished it for her: ‘“Never met or never parted, we had ne’er been broken-hearted.”’

  ‘Do you think,’ she asked, not looking at him, ‘that we Scots are too sentimental for our own good?’

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ he agreed. ‘Like Rabbie, we wrap up our pain in bonnie parcels. Maybe because we can think of nothing else to do with it.’

  ‘It’s a fault in a practical people,’ she opined.

  ‘More of a paradox, I would say.’ He smiled at her. ‘Now you must go to bed and rest.’

  *

  She gave him a bright smile the next morning as he left for the House. ‘Come for me if you ever need me,’ he told Vera. ‘It will take only minutes to fetch me.’ But his mind was more at rest than at any time since he had brought Kirsten to the flat.

  He had read his notes for his speech to Kirsten and her eyes had kindled with love and approbation. Watching him dress in his best serge suit, she had said, ‘You look very — dignified.’ Walking through Palace Yard, he thought of the word she had selected with such obvious care. Dignified. They had both always wanted dignity so much — not for themselves, but for those who had it snatched from them by hunger, poverty, degradation.

  It wasn’t the dignity conferred by rank or even achievement he wanted, but the dignity that should be common to all humanity. Maybe only someone who had worn his brother’s cast-off jacket, or eaten his neighbour’s ill-spared bread, could know how he felt. But the sensation was real to him still, as real as in his childhood in the Rows, when a handful of oatmeal had fed them during his father’s drinking bouts and a scone from the farmer’s wife had been halved, then quartered, with ravenous, meticulous care.

  When he finally rose to speak, he was conscious that the House was prepared to give him all their attention. In his long career he had learned a thing or two: how to subjugate the irreverent and frivolous, how to wait for that moment of deep, attentive silence when there was the best chance of getting your message across.

  He didn’t spare them now. He painted a vivid, intimate picture of the unrest in the Welsh valleys and the danger of it spreading throughout the country, not only in the pits but to the other industries. And then he became conscious that he was saying things that weren’t in his notes, that his spirit was taking over in a way it had not done since his youth at the pithead.

  ‘I ask this House to take warning. Cynical old men must not be allowed to manipulate our lives. Young lions who have had not time to test their theories must not be allowed to plunge us into an armed struggle. If we become a nation divided, divided into those who want power without responsibility and those who cry “Send in the troops,” then our future becomes too terrible to contemplate. We could have civil war. We could have revolution. Brother against brother. But to those of my own Party I say: none of this need happen if the centre holds firm.’

  He became conscious of a young Welsh MP waving his papers at him, his face brindled with hostility and anger. ‘Go home, old man!’ shouted the young Welshman. ‘Do you think the poor can wait for ever?’

  Duncan deliberately ignored him, keeping his voice steady and strong as he went on: ‘Blessed are the meek. You may think these are strange words to utter at a time like this. But we need them. We need to be meek in the face of so much certainty by so many that they know what is good for us.’

  The House rumbled with laughter, but Duncan drew himself up for the peroration: ‘Let me tell my young friend I have sacrificed much — I will not tell you how much — for a life of service in this House. I have worked for peaceful advancement of our people. Peaceful. For I would remind him that life, no matter how circumscribed or narrow, how painful or frustrated, is a sacred gift and a mystery above politics. Do not let us now sacrifice peace and life for sectarian advantage.’

  There was a moment of silence and then they cheered him. Something in his demeanour this day had reached across party barriers and touched almost all of them. He saw affection on their faces and even though he knew it was tinged in many cases with an amused tolerance for his pacifism, he was touched by it almost to the point of tears.

  Going out into Central Lobby afterwards, someone tugged at his arm. He turned to see a Commons messenger with Vera at his side. Instantly, he forgot everything except the look on the girl’s face.

  ‘Tell me! Something’s happened?’ He grabbed her arm so hard he saw her wince.

  ‘It’s Miss Mackenzie, sir. I had to get the doctor, the pain was so bad. He’s given her something and he’s staying with her, but I thought I’d better fetch you, like you said.’

  Outside, the sky above the Thames was laden with clouds and the pavements flecked with rain. Everything seemed to take on a starker, harsher reality in his panic and urgency.

  The doctor gave him a measured, warning look as he went into the bedroom, but Duncan ignored him and went straight to Kirsten’s side. She was propped up against her pillows, her head with its mass of hair heavy on the frail stalk of neck.

  He gazed down at her without speaking for a moment — a moment that seemed as long as his life. Kirsten, my bonnie bird.

  ‘Are you in pain?’ he demanded. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Not any more.’ She patted the bed. ‘Come and sit by me, do. I want to hear how it went.’

  He looked to the doctor for guidance. The man nodded, his look indicating ‘Humour her,’ as snapping shut his Gladstone bag, he left, saying he had another urgent call to make, but would return later.

  Duncan sat down and covered both Kirsten’s hands with his own.

  ‘It went all right. But I want to know from you that what I did was worthwhile.’

  ‘You mean, going into Parliament?’

  ‘I mean the sacrifices we made. Both of us.’
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  She said in a gentle, girlish voice, ‘I never had any doubt of it. I wouldn’t have made them, otherwise.’

  He smiled then. ‘You are a very great comfort to me.’

  The drugs the doctor had administered began to take effect and she slept, but in a little she roused and began to talk quite rationally. ‘I am quite content to die for it, Duncan,’ she said. ‘For the vote. No one said it at the hospital, but something happened when they fed me forcibly, that time in prison. When they have killed a few more of us off, perhaps they will see the barbarity of it.’

  He gazed down at her, his face inscrutable. ‘“An affair of the heart,”’ he quoted. ‘You remember Keir Hardie saying that about Socialism? That’s what your Suffragettism is, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not altogether.’

  ‘It took the place of what you and I might have meant, had we been together,’ he insisted. ‘Nobody knows that better than I.’

  She took his hand and said with infinite kindness, ‘Don’t fret.’ She tried to smile at him, but something was darkening her eyes. He felt her hands clench spasmodically and knew her gasp of pain as though it had left his own lungs.

  She seemed to recede from him then, to some half-world that was not quite sleep. At six o’clock the doctor came, beckoned him into the hall and told him that the end could not be far off.

  She looked at him once more before she died. ‘Do you remember?’ she whispered. He put his ear close to her mouth to hear what else she wanted to say. He heard her give a little gasp, but it took him several moments to realize she was gone.

  Do you remember? He wanted to tell her he had forgotten nothing. But he had. He had forgotten great patches of days and years when she had not been paramount in his life. All he could remember now were the cold days, the early days, a thin jacket that let the wind tingle his bones, her hands counting his ribs.

  He touched her hair, where it curled at the temple, hearing Vera’s sharp cry of pain and protest as she entered the room.

  *

  The Peels’ house in Pollokshaws was of red stone, massive and solid, with stone lions on either side of its impressive front steps and a rolling lawn sweeping down to immaculate yew hedges.

  On Hogmanay, the last day of the year 1910, a small servant was scrubbing the steps, her bare arms purple from the cold, while a senior girl polished the brass nameplate, knocker and door-handles. This morning they did not mind the chores, for the house was ringing with Ne’erday excitement and with preparations for the big party to be held that night. And Cook had promised them ginger wine and shortbread if their work passed muster.

  The girls watched round-eyed as a motor lorry drew up on the drive and ashet after ashet of traditional New Year steak pie was carried round to the tradesmen’s door. (They would have their own pie in the kitchen, they knew, and the pastry would be golden and melting, the well-peppered steak and kidney and sausages floating in a gravy of indescribable richness.) The water ran into their mouths in anticipation.

  In the morning-room, a very small, plump girl in buttoned kid boots and a red dress pushed the Glasgow Herald down from her father’s face and climbed precipitately on to his knee. This was Catriona, Sandia’s baby, now aged two and well aware already of her autocratic powers over her father Dandy.

  ‘Song,’ she demanded, and he dandled her obediently up and down on his knee, singing ‘Boiled Beef and Carrots’. With her arms full of napery, Sandia came in, gave the baby an abstracted glance, and pleaded with Dandy: ‘Keep her out of the way, dear. She’s into everything and I’m never going to get it all ready in time.’

  ‘I warned you not to overdo it,’ Dandy grumbled. ‘Who’s all coming? From the family, I mean.’

  Sandia counted on her fingers. ‘Father. Kitty and Finn. Then there’s Carlie, Donald and Tina. And Wallace Fleming.’

  ‘Seems funny. Having Tina without Alisdair.’

  ‘He won’t come. I’ve asked him, but he’s determined to sulk and suffer and stay away from the family. So I thought I might as well ask Tina — I don’t like to think of her on her own in those awful lodgings when the clock strikes New Year. And I’ve asked Carlie to bring Wallace. I know we’ve never met him but he sounds a nice young man.’

  Catriona heaved herself farther up her father’s knee and delivered a smacking kiss on his balding forehead. Sandia ruffled her hair. ‘Do you love Mama, too?’

  ‘Love Mama too,’ said Catriona impartially. And Sandia’s eyes met Dandy’s in a deep, unspoken satisfaction. ‘Come on, old girl,’ he urged gently. ‘You said you’d a thousand things to do.’

  By the time the guests arrived, late in the evening, the house had been scrubbed, polished and decorated until the warmth of the Hogmanay welcome sparkled from every corner. The hall was hung with evergreen and in the reception rooms great yellow chrysanthemums held their dignified heads above a froth of maidenhead fern. The sideboards, laid with fine lace-trimmed linen, all but groaned under their burdens of cake, shortbread, black bun and other dainties, while the dining-room was laid with heavy silver cutlery, pyramids of fruit and sprays of spicy carnations.

  Crunching up the path towards the house, Kitty held fast to Finn’s arm to keep from toppling in her new hobble skirt.

  ‘I won’t be sorry to see this year go,’ she said into the dark. ‘Nothing but strikes and elections and the worry at the factory.’

  Finn pinched her arm and said, ‘We’ve hung on. And we’ve got Paterson, as well as the girls.’

  She stopped and rose on her tiptoes to kiss him, suddenly overcome by his staunchness. ‘Yes, we’ve got the baby. We’ve done something right!’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Finn, his mouth smiling against hers, ‘in 1911, every big pot in Glasgow and the West will want a Fleming Flyer. But then again, maybe not.’

  ‘We won’t think about it tonight,’ she said gamely. ‘Tonight we’ll have fun.’

  A taxicab decanted more guests on the pavement — Belfast friends of Dandy’s, from their accents — and a second brought Carlie and Wallace. Throwing open the front door, Sandia and Dandy greeted each arrival with a kiss and a hug. No one came empty-handed: the gifts were of china, linen, spirits or yet more black bun. Upstairs, perplexed by the comings and goings and the undercurrent of adult excitement, Catriona had sobbed herself robustly to sleep.

  The little maids staggered up and down from the kitchen with the soup, the steak pies, the creamed swede and mashed potato, the trifles, the jellies, the blancmanges, the tea and coffee and petit-fours.

  Tina, dark hair brushed up in a becoming top-knot, sat beside Wallace, unable to think of a single thing to say to this shy young man. At last he said, red-faced, ‘What sort of work do you do?’

  ‘I sell coats.’ With an unexpected glint of mischief, she added, ‘It doesn’t fit me for talking to young scientists.’ But once the ice was broken he found himself telling her about electrons and declaring that the atom would be shown to be mainly empty space. Heartened by her quiet, encouraging look, he decided she was brighter than she would have him believe.

  The weary servants cleared away the tables before midnight struck. They dipped plates into the water in the sink automatically, as automatically dried them and put them away in their cabinets and presses. Their faces were colourless with fatigue. ‘Like dish-cloots,’ said Cook, who by midnight was herself asleep with her head on the table.

  Sandia led her father, Captain Jack, into the hall, to stand beside herself and Dandy for the midnight rituals. The grandfather clock began to grind out the first strokes of the New Year. They threw the front door open and the night air reverberated with the sound of church bells and hooters, even the deep thrilling sound of ships’ sirens far down the river.

  At Glasgow Cross the crowds would be gathered to listen to the carillon of bells from the Tolbooth Tower. It seemed to Sandia she almost felt the Old Year rush out from the house like a presence, and the New One step boldly across the threshold, glittering with promise, some of it surely false.<
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  Who would come and who would go in 1911? She felt the frailty, the mystery, the pain of existence crush her chest as she looked around at those she knew and loved. She cried out, throwing wide her arms, ‘Happy New Year, everybody,’ and felt her tears rub against Dandy’s cheek as he swept her into an embrace smelling of tweed and shaving soap. She stood back from him, then kissed him carefully on the lips. ‘Happy New Year, Dandy, my love.’ His arms crushed her ribs.

  As they raised their glasses, something vulnerable in her father’s face sent Sandia to his side.

  ‘Absent friends,’ she toasted. ‘And the last of the windjammers.’

  ‘To Clyde-built,’ said the old man. They smiled at him approvingly. ‘Clyde-built,’ they toasted.

  Carlie muttered to Wallace, ‘It’s warships they’re building on the Clyde now.’ She peered, seer-like, into her sherry.

  Someone struck up ‘A Guid New Year to Ane and A’’ and Kitty passed among the guests with small portions of black bun.

  ‘What’s in it?’ demanded Wallace suspiciously.

  ‘Currants, raisins, almonds, ginger, cinnamon, Jamaica pepper. And so on,’ smiled Kitty. ‘Quite harmless really.’ But he shook his head. The glasses were filled up again. Someone suggested dancing and a lone male guest in a corner sang ‘Dark Lochnagar’ slightly off-key and with maudlin feeling. Mildly uneasy, Carlie wondered what had happened to Donald. Just then there was a crashing knock on the front door.

  ‘First-footers!’ murmured Sandia. It had to be a dark man or bad luck would follow. On the doorstep stood Donald, swaying slightly and looking somewhat pleased with himself, and by his side Alisdair, also smiling, but a little sheepishly.

  Sandia drew them both in, with hugs and kisses, and took their proffered gifts. Small packets of more black bun. She patted Alisdair’s cheek a little anxiously. ‘I really didn’t expect to see you but it’s all the nicer surprise.’ She added, ‘Tina’s here.’

  ‘Told you,’ said Alisdair, turning owlishly to Donald.