by Webster, Jan
*
Tina’s baby woke in his cot to a sound he had never heard before. It was a lone piper making his way down the street past the minister’s house, playing ‘The Flo’ers o’ the Forest’.
People came to their gates and close-mouths, laughing, crying, sometimes both.
Testing to see first if the ink was dry, someone put a poster in the Glasgow Herald office window. It bore the Union Jack and the one word — VICTORY!
At Kelvinside, Kitty and the children heard the university chimes strike through the November air. Mairi and Helen rummaged like Furies through drawer and press to find flags to put out.
At Finn’s factory, the men put down their tools. A woman sounded the hooter and smiled as though she’d forgotten how to stop.
Incomprehensible as ever, a hundred newsboys fled on to the streets with special editions, shouting above the cornet players and melodeon men.
Sandia took Catriona out into the street to point to the aeroplanes flying over the city in a victory salute.
In the evening, the students at the university joined in a torchlight procession. The Lord Provost climbed on the back of a lorry in George Square to communicate his civic joy to the dancers in the dark.
‘Listen,’ said Carlie to Donald as they sat by the window of their house in Queen’s Park. Someone had dragged a piano into the street and was playing a ragtime tune. Flames from a bonfire nearby illumined their watching faces.
‘Can you believe it’s all over?’ Carlie demanded. Donald shook his head. He was still very frail from his Russian experience, but earlier in the day they had gone by tram to see the celebrations in the centre of the city, and he had been none the worse.
With her head averted, she said, ‘Poor Wallace. I have thought of him all day.’
He drew her towards him, to sit on the arm of his chair.
‘There’s only one way we can make sense of the Wallaces.’
‘No,’ she denied harshly. ‘There’s no way to make sense of a young man dying.’
‘Your father wouldn’t agree. He’d say you must go on and improve things for the generation to come.’ He stroked her hair. ‘Carlie, I’ve been thinking. If your father doesn’t stand at the next election — and he says he won’t — what would you say if I tried for the nomination?’
‘I would say no. Think of your health.’
He made a small, testy sound. ‘I don’t propose to let this ramshackle body of mine dictate my life.’ As she began to protest further, he turned her head into his shoulder to silence her, kissed her ear and went on: ‘You don’t propose to leave the suffrage situation as it is, do you? Votes for women over thirty only?’
‘It’s better than nothing. It’s a beginning.’
‘Vote for me,’ he joked, ‘and I’ll extend the vote to all women over twenty-one.’
‘What else would you do?’
He thought for a moment, then said, ‘I’d fight for Glasgow and the West. We could become an industrial backwater, if we’re not careful. Do you remember what it was like when we were young, Carlie? This was a great city then, at the height of its power. Remember the Groveries Exhibition? The food, the clothes, the shops, the certainty it would all go on for ever?’
She nodded. ‘On a Saturday night it was like a fairy-tale.’
‘It’s not going to be like that in future. English firms are taking over wholesale and we don’t lead in things like marine engineering any more. We made the rest of the world rich with our money and our men, but what have we done for Scotland?’
‘I’ve seen my father give his life to politics,’ she said. ‘Do I have to sacrifice you too?’
A firework going off in the street suddenly and briefly illuminated his face for her: a face full of questions and concern. She remembered the room in Petrograd where she had found him, his life on the point of extinction. Perhaps he had been spared for a reason. She had the sense of things taken out of their hands, pre-ordained. Only momentarily. But it shook her.
He looked at her and saw there was no need for an answer.
‘For Wallace,’ he said, his cheek against hers. Someone was playing a bugle outside and a woman’s loud, screaming laughter echoed above it. For a moment, Wallace was almost palpable: his stubborn young face listening and waiting, as though to judge all they did from now on.
If you enjoyed Saturday City check out Endeavour Press’s other books here: Endeavour Press - the UK’s leading independent publisher of digital books.
For weekly updates on our free and discounted eBooks sign up to our newsletter.
Follow us on Twitter and Goodreads.