She pulled her utility tokens out of her pocket and smiled. ‘Lead on, Macduff,’ she said, and we wandered over the grass to South Street. Her pleasure in the material at the haberdasher’s didn’t last long, and with much dark muttering about the low thread count, she selected a length of sky-blue cotton for a new dress. ‘I might even get a romper suit for his majesty out of the scraps,’ she said, waving a hand at Dougie, who was now fast asleep with a bubble unpopped between his lips.
There was no sign of Jim at the ILP Hall where we had arranged to meet, and after ten minutes fat raindrops began to fall from the sky, which had deepened to a battleship grey. The drops jumped off the river surface in tiny explosions of white, and water began to rush along the gutter and gurgle in the drains. Mrs O dragged me into the hall, saying, ‘I am not an SNP supporter, but I certainly didn’t sign up for Perth’s only monsoon.’
To my horror, their annual conference was in full swing. There was the same Saltire on the table and Douglas, dressed in a kilt, was speaking from the podium, just as he did in my memory. I leant against the back wall to get out of sight, but, after taking sixpence admission and issuing us with tickets, a very kindly, old lady led us to seats in the back row. She waved her hand to get the others already seated to move along, and we sat down. Mrs O pulled the pram alongside her in the aisle. There was no escape. I slid down as far as possible in my seat. My palms were damp. ‘Are you all right, Agnes?’ she asked.
I sat up. ‘Yes, fine.’ She followed my gaze to the podium.
‘Is that the famous Grant?’ she asked.
I nodded.
‘How fascinating,’ she whispered. ‘Tall.’ And she raised her painted eyebrows in an arch. ‘Positively larger than life.’
‘Stop it,’ I said, afraid the faithful might start turning round to see who was talking, and draw his attention to us.
Douglas hadn’t changed. His voice was as appealing as ever.
‘It does not take a genius,’ he boomed, ‘to realise that the only reason Scots lassies are forced to go south and work in munitions factories in England, is that the Westminster government refuses to invest in Scottish industrial infrastructure. We are not short of land on which to build, but they are short of the will with which to do it.’
The audience cheered. I felt uncannily that Jeff might be sitting next to me, a ghostly supporter rising to his feet, and I kept my eyes straight ahead, afraid to look in case I would see him. Douglas held up his hands for silence. ‘And so I say to any young women affected by this, who are isolated from those they love – money, or no money – get on a train and come home. Give the ticket inspector your name and contact the Scottish National Party at our headquarters in Glasgow for assistance as soon as you can. Don’t let the fear of fines or imprisonment stop you. This is a matter of principle.’
There was a murmur of approval. Someone at the side of the stage waved a bundle of leaflets. ‘Well reminded,’ said Douglas. ‘Leaflets on this subject, and others, are available at the back of the hall on your way out.’ He took a sip of water. ‘Again, dear friends, in order to break the stranglehold Westminster has on Scottish affairs, and in furtherance of our primary aim, which is self-governance, we have written to the Prime Ministers of independent states in the Commonwealth to ask them to support our cause. Has Canada been the poorer since independence from Britain in 1867? No!’ he shouted into the silence. ‘Ask yourself this. If the Commonwealth is a happy family of self-governing states, but Scotland is the only one without self-governance, then are we not soft in the head? Are we the saftest o’ the family to continue as we are?’ There was a loud cheer and someone shouted, ‘Never.’
I felt the old tiredness wash over me. I thought we were already independent within the union. I wondered if they would drag a Bruce or a Wallace out onto the stage again to wave a broad sword at our neighbour England, while Germany slid across the world in an army of tanks.
‘We need to find Jim, Mrs O,’ I whispered.
‘I’m just beginning to enjoy it,’ she said. ‘I’m feeling something patriotic stirring in my breast.’ She gazed over at Douglas. ‘Hasn’t that brave man been to prison again? I saw a leaflet about it.’
‘Please,’ I said, and the spell was broken.
We crept out and stood under a nearby tree that still dripped with water, although the rain had passed. Everything was washed clean. Mrs O shoogled the pram. I looked up from straightening Dougie’s covers to see Douglas strolling over to us. His head was bent over his pipe, which he was struggling to light.
‘Agnes,’ he said, ‘I thought it was you. And this is?’ He smiled at Mrs O, who almost dropped him a curtsey.
‘This is Mrs Ogilvie. She runs Laurelhill Nursery with Jim. Mrs O, Douglas Grant.’
She reached over the pram to shake his hand. ‘A pleasure to meet you.’
‘What a bonny, wee soul,’ Douglas said, looking at the baby, and he reached into his jacket pocket to slip some coins into the foot of the pram. ‘Got to handsel the bairn with silver,’ he said. ‘We don’t want him to be poor when he grows up.’
‘Thank you, Mr Grant,’ said Mrs O, with a dazzling smile.
He drew in deeply on his pipe and let the smoke out through his nose like a lazy dragon. ‘Well, my apologies, ladies, but I can’t stop. One of the Clydeside apprentices is up next. He has been striking against Bevin’s ballot-conscription into the coalmines. It is imperialism run amok,’ he said. ‘Good afternoon to you, and remember to come and see us in Glasgow, Agnes.’
Mrs O was still gazing after him when Jim pulled up in his van, and tooted his horn. ‘Sorry, girls,’ he shouted, from the window. ‘Got a flat tyre just outside Perth. All ship-shape now, thanks to a passing farmer.’ He jumped out to open the door. ‘Just move those leaflets over. Some SNP stuff the seedsman forced on me. Wants to know how many Scottish casualties there are in the field. All very hush-hush, according to him. Now, let’s get the wee man home.’ He lifted Dougie up with a kiss. ‘He’ll have to grow among the onions for now.’
I wish I had known then that it would only be a year until the end of the war. I danced on VE Day in May 1945 at the Miner’s Institute, and remembered Raphael, who claimed he loved me in long letters. When he went missing in action just a month later, I regretted the loss of a friend, but my heart didn’t stop as it had when Jeff died, or when Douglas kissed his Bella. Those scars had healed over and, if I didn’t think about the past, then the future looked like a land I could inhabit. Mr Lamont told me in a letter that Douglas was looking for a new university job in Classics, but he didn’t hold out much hope of success for a man imprisoned as a conscientious objector; the Scots had such long memories. A man called Bruce Watson had become the new Chairman of the SNP, but I didn’t care. They belonged to a world I had left.
It was June 1946 before I received Professor Schramml’s letter saying he was in Edinburgh and would like to meet the woman who had made Jeff so happy. I had rented out the flat to a man from a London company, which had advertised that it was re-establishing its provincial offices in Edinburgh, and I stayed on at Laurelhill. Anyway, I couldn’t have left even if I’d wanted to because of the Standstill Order. The government was worried we would all abandon the farms and rush off to look for better wages, but I was happy where I was. My pay was going to go up to sixty shillings a week, and Jim’s to eighty. Falkland Terrace seemed somehow remote, and I assumed that Mrs MacDougall had indeed kept everything in the Professor’s flat ship-shape against the day he would return. ‘No one should think we keep a dirty house in Scotland,’ she’d once said, as she rubbed at the banister on the stair with beeswax and a duster made out of an old pair of flannel bloomers.
Mrs Ogilvie was sitting at the kitchen table cutting the flaps off a bullock’s heart, and smiled to herself as I read the Professor’s letter out loud. The oatmeal stuck to her fingers as she pushed it into the cavity, and sewed up the hole. The water was already boiling on the stove. She dropped the heart in, and set her
timer for an hour, twisting the face on the clock forward. ‘How exciting,’ she said, wiping her hands on a clean dish towel, ‘but I wonder if he has got the wrong end of the stick?’
‘Why would you say that?’ I asked.
She picked up a knife and began to scrape some potatoes, dipping the blade in cold water to rinse off the skin. ‘Only that we have lived together all these years and you have never once mentioned Jeff, unless you were asked.’
‘Haven’t I?’
‘No, Agnes. Never once. I have a good ear for these things. Call me an old romantic. I would know if you missed your husband.’
I rolled some breadcrumbs together on the table. I didn’t want to look up. I squashed the doughy bread flat.
‘You don’t need to tell me, if you don’t want to. Are you going through to Edinburgh?’
‘Yes,’ I sighed. ‘I should look in on the tenant and see that the old place is okay.’
‘You do that,’ she said. ‘And if ever that burden, whatever it is, gets too heavy to carry alone, then you know you can share it with me.’
‘I know,’ I said, and she reached out and touched my cheek with a starchy finger from the potatoes. ‘That’s cold,’ I said, jumping up.
29
Mrs Ogilvie had decided to take wee Dougie to play with her sister’s bairns while I got the train to Edinburgh. I was curious to meet the Professor, and see the flat I’d tiptoed round come to life. I took out my darning as we travelled past the still sleeping Ochils, dozing as if they had all the time in the world to stretch out a lazy hand and swat the raindrops, which bit at their necks like midges. They shrank grain by grain and were carried unnoticed into the Forth and out to sea, where they would disappear forever. They didn’t care, but time was passing faster for me. I felt older since I had become a mother, strained with worry for Dougie’s future without a father, although there was no shame in that as there once was. There were fatherless bairns running about all over the country, happy shadows of their lost parents; fathers blown limb from limb on the battlefield, and if their paternity was ever in doubt, not one of the mothers would admit to those snatched moments with American GIs at the dances. Every child was held up as a testament to his tragic father, no questions asked. Only the men who returned counted the dates off on their fingers over pints in the pub, and in the end they smiled drunkenly at the memory of their own snatched moments, and agreed that it was war, after all, and best not remembered too closely. At least it was life.
The pill box still stood at the West End when I walked up from Haymarket to catch the tram from outside St John’s, and when the door opened on the upstairs flat that had so many memories for me, I saw that Professor Schramml had eyes as black as coal and the kindest face I had ever seen. He kissed my hand with old world style and led me into his drawing room, which had been polished until it shone. The neighbours’ flats opposite were still obscured by heavy net curtains, but he had pulled his aside and fresh branches of pink blossom stood on a carved table in the window.
‘I am glad to meet you, Professor,’ I said. ‘Jeff was gey fond o’ you. He told me how you used to put the world to rights as you walked to work.’ I had put away the bitterness. I wasn’t that lassie any more.
‘I must offer you my most sincere condolences,’ he said. ‘It was an agony to me to hear of his suffering from Sylvia and be so far away in Geneva. You must have been very upset.’
‘Aye, it was a difficult time,’ I replied, as honestly as I could.
He patted my hand and poured me a glass of cherry brandy. ‘A little schnapps?’ he asked.
The glass was like a giant’s thimble. He drained it in one with a shout of ‘Prosit!’ and waited for me to do the same. I took a sip and then, as he gestured to me to up-end the glass, I drank it down. The clear liquid bit at the back of my throat as if it could burn away the lie of the last days of my marriage to Jeff. He refilled the glasses. ‘What would Mrs MacDougall say, Professor?’ I said. ‘It is only two in the afternoon.’
‘That dear lady believes I can do no wrong. Is it any wonder that I am forced to seek refuge from my angelic reputation in a little earthly pleasure?’
I laughed, drained the second glass too fast, and choked. ‘Coffee?’ he asked.
I nodded. He brought through a little, silver percolator with two wee china cups and a jug of cream. ‘It is wunderschön to be reunited with my possessions,’ he said. ‘I missed them, but my time away was a small sacrifice compared to those others made.’
‘I have a confession, Professor,’ I said. ‘I am sorry I borrowed your dictionary and lost it.’
‘And why would you have need of a German dictionary in Scotland? Did you think the defences wouldn’t hold?’
I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t told anyone about Hannes. He had cost me dear. ‘I borrowed it to help someone, a friend.’
‘A friend?’
‘Someone who became a friend to me when I needed one.’
‘Indeed.’ He smiled and passed me a small plate of biscuits. They were shaped like crescent moons. ‘Ein Kipferl?’ he asked.
They were sweet and buttery. ‘My late wife taught me how to make these when we were courting. I feigned interest in home baking to see her lick the mixture from her fingers, and hoped to wipe the flour from her nose. There is no limit to what a man will do for love, or the price he might have to pay.’
He tapped his waistline and pinged the elastic of his red braces. ‘I dare say Mrs MacDougall’s stair cleaning rota, which she delights in enforcing, will soon have me trim again.’ He put a biscuit in his mouth and chewed. ‘I really don’t see why we can’t pay someone to do it.’
‘Hadn’t you noticed there was a war on, Professor?’
He laughed. ‘If I closed my eyes, I could believe the dear lady was standing before me,’ he said. ‘You are quite a mimic.’
‘I believe she has high hopes of your skill with a duster.’
‘I like to make an effort for my neighbours,’ he said, and looked at me with his head on one side. ‘You are very beautiful, Agnes.’
I blushed.
‘I can see why you would be well loved.’ He stood up. ‘More coffee?’
At that moment, I heard a key in the door. The Professor walked into the hall. ‘Grűss Dich,’ he said in his warm voice. ‘Schöner Spaziergang? Unser Gast ist schon angekommen.’
It was strange to hear German in the flat. A picture of Hannes lying injured in bed flashed before my eyes, and then Professor Schramml came back into the room, followed by a man holding a coat over his arm. ‘There is someone I would like you to meet,’ he said, and stepped aside.
The man behind him was tall and dressed in a navy-blue suit. His brown eyes looked earnestly into mine and he held out his hand. It was Hannes. My hand shook as I took his and he bowed over it. There were tears in his eyes when he straightened up. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and passed it to me. I dabbed my eyes. I felt like I was seeing him for the first time, as if I could look at him and not be letting anyone down. I felt shy.
‘Surprise, no?’ said the Professor, like a child who had arranged a Christmas present in secret and hidden it behind the tree.
Hannes sat in the seat opposite me and stretched out his long legs. I had never seen him at ease before. He had been taut with fear, trapped as I had been. Now he was himself. I blew my nose again.
‘Oh, it is too much of a shock,’ said the Professor in dismay. ‘If only my wife had been here, she would have known what to do.’
‘I wanted to thank you,’ said Hannes, in slow English, looking straight at me.
‘Yes, he wrote to me. A most expressive letter telling all about the kleine Schottin who saved him, like a Flora MacDonald, although he was not a prince. Perhaps you believed him unworthy of your kindness? How could you know the true man? He was a Nazi then, as most were, but you must believe he didn’t choose it.’
‘Were you a Nazi?’ I asked.
‘I was a Messerschmitt
test pilot.’
‘Not a very good one,’ I said.
He looked more hopeful, and stopped twisting the watch on his wrist.
‘Ah, the wunderbares Scottish sense of humour,’ said the Professor. ‘I have missed it. But all joking aside, this man only just survived the war himself.’
I looked at Hannes. He was very thin.
‘I was captured in Russia,’ he said, and his hand shook as he reached for the cup Professor Schramml had placed in front of him.
‘Yes, he weighed just seven stone when they released him. He was lucky to get out at all.’
‘So you didn’t get back to your farm from Ireland?’
‘I tried, but they came for me and said the land would be confiscated if I didn’t fly again. They didn’t want to lose one of their pilots. We were only just mastering the machines. They were too fast to control at first.’ He put the cup back on the table. ‘I am ashamed now, Agnes. Bad things happened that I couldn’t stop. Maybe you don’t want to speak to me? Can you forgive me?’
‘I am happy to see you,’ I said.
He looked less uneasy and moved forward on his seat.
‘You see,’ shouted the Professor. ‘I told you not to worry. He wrote to me and apologised for using my flat during my exile. I had to meet the man who was rescued by the good fairy downstairs and, of course, I wanted to meet you, my dear.’ He poured another round of schnapps. ‘Slainte mhath,’ he said. ‘Down the hatch. If only Jeff could be here.’
I exchanged a look with Hannes. He had spared the Professor the story of Jeff’s breakdown before going to prison; the day my husband stopped being a friend to me. Hannes’ hand twitched, as if he wanted to reach out to me. I wanted to hold his strong fingers and sit in silence with him. Professor Schramml stood up. ‘Perhaps I should leave you two alone. After all, I am new to you both and you are old acquaintances. I shall go down and discuss the finer details of stair cleaning with my mentor, Mrs MacDougall, and come back a better man.’
Capital Union, A Page 17