Saturday City

by Webster, Jan

  ‘It will give gossip a chance to die down. You’re very young, you know. Younger than Tina. You should have a chance to see the world before committing yourself to one woman.’

  She shrank away from the naked misery on his face. ‘You’re asking the impossible.’

  ‘Even if Tina agreed?’

  He laughed shortly. ‘I don’t think that’s likely.’

  She pressed her joined hands into her lap. ‘She has agreed, Wallace. I’ve had a long talk with her. Pointed out to her what the gossip is doing to Alisdair. Tried to get her to see what she is doing to you —’

  ‘What is she doing to me?’ He jumped up, his eyes blazing, looking as though he were about to fly apart. Sandia knew a moment of fear that was purely physical, thinking he was about to strike her.

  ‘She is leading you on —’

  He stood above her, with both fists raised theatrically. Then he said in a low, powerful voice, ‘You meddling bitch! How did my mother ever come to have you as a friend, with your narrow little notions of morality? You destroy life — don’t you see that? Don’t you know that Tina and I have something genuine and good? She never loved Alisdair —’

  ‘She cares for his good name. That’s loving.’

  He stared at her as though her words had ceased to make sense. Then he put his sleeve up to his eyes and began to sob. The grating, despairing sound filled the room. It disturbed Sandia profoundly, so that she wished everything about the whole episode undone. Not that she had gone into it without much heart-searching.

  She said, as calmly as she could, ‘If money is any problem, I can help. Couldn’t you find work in London? For a while? Tina needs to be left in peace. She has had as much as she can take.’

  ‘I’ll do what she wishes,’ he said tonelessly. He wouldn’t look at her. ‘I hope you’re proud of what you’ve done, Sandia.’

  ‘You may thank me, one day,’ she said.

  *

  Finn saw the headline ‘SUFFRAGETTES BURN GRANDSTAND AT AYR RACES’, and felt a momentary irritation as he put the paper down and turned to his morning mail. What there was of it.

  The truth was, he had little sympathy for any predicament but his own just now. It had been a year of major strikes all over the country. Miners, transport workers, railwaymen. And the smaller strikes had added their quota of petty irritation. At first he had thought he would be able to ride out the storm. His own workers had twice been out on partial strike but had not entirely crippled production. It was the spares that could not be delivered that had done that. And now orders had died away to a trickle and the mail this morning contained nothing but bills. He had begun to rehearse in his head what he would say to Kitty if he had to close the factory down. He could not put the words together. It did not seem to be part of his nature to admit failure.

  The telephone shrilled beside him and he picked it up in an automatic gesture.

  ‘Finn? This is Cousin Carlie here. Can you get a message to Donald for me?’

  ‘I’ve had to lay him off, Carlie. With a dozen others.’

  ‘I know, Finn. But can you send a boy with a message? His digs are near you, aren’t they? Ask him to come to me. It’s urgent.’

  Unease broke over Donald all over again as he rang Carlie’s bell, later that morning. He had been unable to extract much from Finn other than the simple urgency of the command. ‘She sounded strange,’ Finn had said. ‘As though she didn’t want to be questioned.’

  The door opened slowly and she stood there, her right arm and hand in some clumsy sort of bandage. There was something wrong with her eyebrows and a large, angry patch on her forehead, shining with something like Vaseline. He stepped quickly into the narrow lobby.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Thank goodness you’ve come.’ He could feel her small free hand on his, damp with perspiration.

  She led him into the best room with its dark-green chenille cover on the table, its green plush chairs, turkey-red carpet and flourishing aspidistra. Her large typewriter stood on a solid oak desk by the window.

  As she sat down he saw that she was trembling.

  ‘For God’s sake, tell me!’

  ‘I called for you, because you’re the only person I can trust. I can’t be seen out of doors like this. I’ll need food —’

  The penny dropped for him.

  ‘It didn’t happen here, did it?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. I don’t want you incriminated.’

  Donald laughed. ‘Come clean, Carlie. I won’t help if you don’t.’

  ‘It was Aggie Fermoyle. She came up from London, specially to brief me.’

  ‘To get you involved in arson. That’s what it is, isn’t it? It wasn’t a bomb, was it?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Her teeth were chattering. ‘I wouldn’t get involved in anything like that.’

  ‘That woman chemist did. Black Jennie. She got five years. Only a woman would make a bomb in a marmalade jar —’

  ‘Aggie wanted to burn down Dounhead House.’

  His face was grim. ‘You talked her out of it?’

  ‘Yes. It was just a sports pavilion, in the end. I put too much petrol on the cotton-wool fuse. It licked back, caught my arm and face.’

  She began to weep, tears of reaction and shock. He put his arm round her, making soothing noises. ‘Where’s the Fermoyle woman now?’

  ‘She had to get back. We couldn’t be seen together, Donald, it was foggy and cold and I was so frightened —’

  ‘Let it be a lesson to you.’ He mopped her face ineffectually with his handkerchief. ‘Come on, now. Let me look at the burns. Do they hurt? What about a doctor?’

  ‘No doctor.’

  ‘You could say you pulled some boiling water over you, accidentally —’

  ‘Can’t risk it.’

  He stayed with her till she was calm. She sent him round the corner to a little town dairy where he could hear the lowing of the cows at the evening milking, and he brought back milk, butter, eggs, bread and scones. He cooked her an omelette and cut up her bread and butter.

  ‘You know what they are saying now?’ he argued, over the meal. ‘That your movement has undone all the good because of its excesses. You are put down as hysterical females. Look at some of the things you’ve done!’ He listed them on his fingers. ‘Blown up fuse boxes. Cut communication between Glasgow and London. Burnt the grandstand at Ayr races. Sent envelopes of red pepper and snuff to the Cabinet. Cut up a bowling green here in Glasgow, ruined the turf at Duthie Park in Aberdeen —’

  ‘It’s out of desperation. They withdrew the Franchise Bill. After all the starvation and imprisonment, how can we give up? Don’t forget I’ve been to jail, too. I still have nightmares about it.’

  ‘But putting pebbles down railway carriage windows!’

  ‘It stops the sash from working.’

  ‘Slashing works of art.’

  ‘I don’t agree with that.’ She touched her burnt arm. ‘I don’t think I’m in favour of arson, either. After this. Aggie talked me into it. But it’s too destructive.’

  ‘Thank God for a glimmer of sense!’ said Donald.

  Each night that week he brought in food and the evening paper. The patch on her face healed and faded and was scarcely discernible when she had lightly powdered over it with a swansdown powder-puff. She had singed her eyebrows and the front of her hair, but adopted a frizzy fringe that he quite approved of, to hide the fact.

  Her arm was a different matter. He bathed it gently and put on fresh dressings, but for several days she was in considerable pain from it. What frustrated her most of all was that she could neither write nor type. By the end of the week the pain was less. She was pale, but had stopped the periodic shivering and weeping which were the result of delayed shock.

  He had taken to sitting with his arm round her while they talked. It was a protective gesture she seemed to need. On the Friday he said gen
tly, ‘Let me help you off with your clothes. You should sleep in your bed tonight.’ She had been lying each night, fully clothed, under a quilt on the sofa.

  She lifted her chin so that he could undo her dress buttons. He saw a little pulse beating in her throat and it somehow disarmed him. He stared into her face and was not sure what he saw there — a waiting, an invitation, a question. He put his lips quickly to the pulse then drew back, placing a hand on either side of her face and drawing her to him to kiss her full on the lips.

  ‘No,’ she said feebly.

  ‘Why not, Carlie?’

  ‘I don’t want things to change.’ Her shaking left-hand fingers were undoing the buttons on the clumsy combinations. He turned away delicately while she climbed out of them and into the starched cambric night-dress with its blue ribbons and drawn-thread work round the neckline.

  ‘Here, let me.’ He rolled off the grey, hand-knitted stockings. ‘Is that better?’

  ‘My arm hurts abominably.’

  She put her head back against the settee, suddenly devoid of energy. He lifted her feet gently on to a petit-point footstool and covered her legs with a shawl. He sat down close beside her and her head sagged on to his shoulder. She seemed heavy with passivity.

  ‘Stay with me tonight,’ she said. Her teeth chattered slightly.

  He watched her face closely.

  ‘Carlie, do you know what you are saying?’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘I know.’

  ‘Is it what you want?’ He kissed her neck, under the ear. ‘My love, is it?’

  ‘Don’t go. Don’t leave me.’

  Later, in her bed, he said to her, ‘Have you ever slept with anyone before?’ She shook her head, her eyes glistening.

  ‘Then I promise to be gentle. I want it to be good for you, Carlie.’

  In the morning, before he went out, she leaned against him, her eyes closed.

  ‘It changes everything. You knew it would, didn’t you?’

  ‘I knew how it would be, making love to you.’ He turned her round in his arms, so that she had to look at him. ‘When I was with anyone else, I always wanted it to be you.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘You knew there had been others.’

  ‘Yes.’ She sighed. ‘I knew. Everything is known between us now, isn’t it? But this morning I feel as though I’ve peeled off a skin in the night and everything has the power to hurt and touch me.’ She shivered, but forced herself to smile. ‘I’m not sure I wanted to give so much.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘All right. Consider it unsaid.’

  *

  Kitty Fleming ran an expert finger along the dusty stair ledge as with her other arm she carried young Paterson downstairs for his breakfast.

  One servant, and that one peaky and undernourished, subject to colds and earache, wasn’t enough to help her keep up this place. She was almost resigned to leaving it, except for seeing Finn’s dream crumble. They would have to talk about it soon. She had to get him to understand they would survive, no matter how humble the place. They had each other. But she knew instinctively that although this would be enough for her, if Finn’s factory went part of him, made up of will and skill and imagination and masculine pride, would be destroyed also. She was very much afraid.

  The girls were dawdling over their porridge as she went in.

  ‘There are lumps in it!’ Helen complained.

  ‘Eat it up. Think of the starving children in Africa!’ Kitty upbraided her.

  ‘They can have mine,’ Mairi offered generously.

  Kitty looked hopefully towards her husband, willing him to smile.

  ‘Finn, what is it?’ she demanded quickly. He was sitting with an opened letter in his hand and a strange expression on his face.

  ‘They want to come back to Scotland,’ he said, dreamlike.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mother and Father. For good. Mother has been feeling very homesick and they want to see the children growing up. They want me to find a property for them, possibly a small farm or estate. Marie-Lou is going to the Argentine with her husband so they can hope to see little of her. And Bertram travels the world on business.’

  ‘Well, there’s a turn-up for the book!’ Kitty sat down, scanning her husband’s face carefully for his reaction.

  ‘Mother says,’ Finn went on, with slow deliberation, ‘that Father also wants to go into ways of helping me with the business, as he is convinced the automobile is now established as the best means of private transport and he commends my wish to extend into rolling stock and farm machinery as well —’

  They gazed at each other.

  ‘Dear God,’ said Finn. ‘I have prayed for deliverance, but this —’

  ‘Can you stand it if he tries to dictate to you?’ demanded Kitty. ‘You know how you struck sparks off each other when you were young.’

  She saw that the ink on the letter was spreading and that Finn, for the first time ever in her experience, had been shedding tears.

  ‘Oh, my dear, you can make it work!’ she said in a rush of tenderness.

  Finn struck the letter with his free hand and said simply, ‘This is our lifeline, Kitty. I don’t think the old man will be unreasonable. I can handle him, now.’

  The three children had come to stand near their parents, wide-eyed, puzzled, knowing something was afoot. Suddenly with a war-whoop Finn scooped them to him. ‘Gramps and Gran’ma are coming from America to see you,’ he informed them. ‘You will have to be very nice to them, and sing them your songs, and tell them your stories.’ The girls began to sing in unison now. They all held hands and trudged in a circle, round and round:

  ‘Ring-a-ring-a-roses A pocket full of posies, Tishoo, ’tishoo, We all fall down.’

  The little maid came in to see if it was time to clear the table. The master and mistress were lying on the floor, with the children shrieking and climbing over them, Sniffing, she retreated to the scullery till sanity was restored.

  Later that evening, Kitty said reflectively, ‘Finn, I remember reading in the Herald that Dounhead House is up for sale again. Would it not be perfect for the grandparents? I remember it when Aunt Tansy and Uncle Lachie had it — the grapes in the hothouses, the beautiful lawns, the lovely rooms.’

  Finn thought about it and then agreed. ‘He’d like to go back to Dounhead, I think. Have them raising their hats to him in the Rows. The prodigal returned. Yes, let’s try and get it for them.’

  While negotiations went on for the purchase of the house, Paterson and Honoria were busy packing up the house in Boston. Honoria’s feelings were mixed, because so much of her life was bound up now with the local church and community and she still remembered the thrill of belonging she’d felt that day long ago when Paterson had brought her here.

  But their longing to see Scotland again, and especially their newest grandchild, the little boy named after his grandfather, had become almost painfully obsessive. Once they had started talking about going back, nostalgia had taken over. Now it seemed to them it had always been there, at the back of their minds, the wish to go back to Scotland and spend their last days there.

  Honoria was nervous about the crossing. The sinking of the brand-new White Star liner, the Titanic, on her maiden voyage, was still fresh in everybody’s mind. Despite the fact that wireless had brought a fleet of vessels to the rescue after the collision with an iceberg, only 732 lives had been saved out of 2367. The image of husbands and wives dying in each other’s arms haunted Honoria, so much so that she almost pleaded with Paterson to change his mind. But their plans were too far advanced and, in the event, they had a calm and easy crossing and a welcome that exceeded all their expectations.

  Dounhead House was having bathrooms installed and other modernization work done on it, so Paterson and Honoria moved for the time being into the house at Kelvinside. There the little boy took over his grandfather almost entirely, mimicking his speech, his walk, his mannerisms and even, with that lock of stra
ight, fair hair falling over the eyes, managing to look at times almost comically like him.

  ‘It’s as though he’s had a new lease of life,’ Honoria marvelled. She took to life in Glasgow like a duck to water, loving the bands, the parks, the theatres, and taking Kitty and the little girls on lavish shopping expeditions to Sauchiehall Street, buying them tea in the Room de luxe and enjoying the serials at the pictures.

  Finn took his father down to the factory in his own car, waiting for the inevitable comments on its modern bodywork, which he himself felt was possibly less attractive than the art nouveau, curvilinear styles of earlier days.

  ‘In Scotland,’ he explained, ‘you must have a roof over your head. For the rain! And a windshield in front. Eventually I aim for a totally enclosed framework, with windows that will go up and down and even some form of heating for the interior of the machine, in the winter.’

  ‘I don’t know why you didn’t go in for the steam cars,’ the old man grumbled. ‘The Stanley steamers are still contenders in the States. They’re quieter, no fumes, easy accelerators. And easy to start.’

  Finn hid a smile. No doubt it would please his father if automobiles were more like railway engines!

  ‘One answer to that, Father, is that Leland’s Cadillacs have an electric self-starter now. Soon we’ll all have it and starting will be no problem.’

  The old man’s eyes were gleaming with interest as Finn took him round the shop-floor. Finn found he did not have to explain quite complicated matters — Paterson had the quick, instinctive grasp of the true engineer and it was at first chastening and then rewarding for Finn to realize how much he and his father had in common. Paterson felt it, too, that rapport between experts. It had already taken years off him.

  ‘We have to build a solid car for Scottish roads,’ Finn explained. ‘They’re not cheap, but they’re hand-crafted and they go for ever. Trouble is, when we have to retool — as we did when we went over from bi-bloc to mono-bloc engines — the expense is crippling. I have come round to thinking that it would be better to buy some components from the specialist manufacturers and go into the assembly business ourselves. Though I had to learn it the hard way.’