by Millie Gray
Turning to greet Maryann, Hans smiled. ‘Aye, I did intend to be all locked up by twelve thirty so I could get back to Kate but two couples came in to buy engagement rings.’ Unconsciously Hans started to rub his hands together. ‘Just as well I got new stock in yesterday.’
‘Aye, right enough I was wondering why the postie needed a signature from you yesterday.’ She chuckled. ‘I just knew, you being you and not a penny going the wrong way, and your Kate so against the “never never”, it just couldnae hae been a bad debt letter.’
Hans laughed. ‘No, no. See since the men started coming home I just can’t keep up with them all wanting to buy engagement rings, wedding rings and nice small gold watches.’
‘Right enough and it’s a pity you dinnae sell prams because by this time next year there will be so many bairns being born we’ll run out of nappies.’
By now Maryann was mounting the stairs to the Palace Picture House back door but she drew up abruptly and placed her hand over her mouth as blood rushed to her face. ‘Oh, Hans, forgive me for being so flippant. I mean . . . with Jenny just being buried yesterday I should have been asking how Kate and her brother were coping. And I know Alex Stoddard would have given Jenny a nice send-off. Bet he boxed her up in polished mahogany with shining brass handles.’ Hans did not reply so Maryann added, ‘Always gives Leith folk he kens a good send-off, so he does. And with him looking like a corpse himself you are assured of sympathetic support.’
Hans had now drawn away from his shop door and he just stared at Maryann in bewilderment. It was true that Jenny’s sudden death had been a shock for the family but both Kate and Johnny, although devastated to lose their mother, were relieved she had died of a heart attack. Their mother going through to the end of dementia would have been just so cruel for her and unbearable for them to witness.
‘Mind you, Hans, with your business booming you’ll no be wondering where the wherewithal will be coming from to pay for the funeral.’
Amazed that Maryann had the audacity to be speaking about Jenny’s private business and her not cold in her grave yet, Hans quipped, ‘There will be no need for anyone to pay for anything concerning Jenny. My dear departed mother-in-law had one-penny and two-penny fully paid up policies that will more than cover any expenditure. And if it is any of your business, which it is not, she also left Kate and Johnny a biscuit tin each.’
‘A biscuit tin each?’ exclaimed Maryann. ‘And what would they be wanting with an old biscuit tin?’
‘Oh they won’t keep them. They’re not old school so they will be depositing them in the bank.’
Maryann started to chuckle. ‘Och, Hans, I ken fine that you’re from Poland but you’ve been here long enough to ken that banks in Scotland, especially that one at the top of Bonnington Road that Jenny used, dinnae take old biscuit tins.’
‘Oh but they will be wanting those ones and they will also be happy to receive the five little home-savings banks that Jenny put a sixpence into each week for her grandchildren.’
‘Are you saying that every week she put a tanner into five of they wee home-savings banks that only the bank can open? ’
Hans nodded.
‘But for why?’
‘Obviously she wanted to leave something for her five grandchildren. And before you ask, what will be happening to Jack’s, his one is going to baby Jackie since he was killed recently and she made a surprise arrival just after that.’ Before Hans moved off in the direction of Morton Street he cocked his head and gave dumbfounded Maryann a sly wink.
He had just crossed over from Wellington Place and on to the grassy Links itself when he regretted having been so short and rude to Maryann. She had been a very good friend to him and she had tried to assist him whenever she could. He knew for a fact that if anyone mentioned to her that they were thinking of buying jewellery, watches or clocks she always recommended that they purchased from him. He also knew that she was a lonely woman and because he was one of the people she met up with on most days she liked being friendly with him and keeping him up to date with the local gossip. Today he had been unnecessarily rude to her and this was because he was still feeling the loss of Jenny.
Pulling up his coat collar to keep out the unseasonably cold wind, he thought, even the June weather, when you would expect sunshine and warmth, seemed to be mourning Jenny. He then started to rub his hands together – it was as if he was trying to lose the chill that had invaded him in the cemetery yesterday. Vividly he remembered how his Kate, who had insisted on going with her mother on her last journey, had never had a dry face all day. Yes, Kate’s tears had mingled with the rain that never stopped flowing.
As he strolled through the Links, Hans began to wonder if Jenny’s passing would have any effect on Kate and his cherished plans to go south. He smiled as he remembered how he and Kate had worked out all the arrangements. Connie, although pregnant again, had insisted that Jenny stay with her for the six days that they would be away. The only member of the family who had not been exactly ecstatic about their trip was Johnny.
‘Aye,’ he had spat through pursed lips, ‘you being away from 30 June to 6 July will be just dandy.’
‘Dandy?’ queried Kate.
‘That’s right . . . dandy because that means that you’ll not be here to cast your vote. Or have you forgotten that Thursday the 5th July is polling day? Not that you’ll be voting in the seat that I’m fighting but I would have thought you would have stayed faithful to our dad and been here to cast your vote. And just listen to that noise . . . that’s our suffragette auld granny whirling in her grave now she’s discovered that you’re not interested in casting your vote in the most important election of our lives.’
Kate’s lip was trembling but Johnny was not in a mood to go soft on her so he viciously added, ‘Kate, for heaven’s sake, don’t you realise for us to get the social change we are all crying out for, Labour has to win? That means all our supporters have to get to the ballot box.’
Kate, mouth agape, looked at Hans – who was also looking definitely contrite. Connie, on the other hand, was giving Johnny such hostile looks that had they been darts his face would have looked like a pin cushion.
‘Johnny,’ she began, ‘I think you are forgetting about all the help that Hans and Kate have given you with your campaign. Hans’ shop windows are covered in your and Jimmy Hoy’s posters. Kate has been out every day for three weeks now knocking on doors. Hans even borrowed his friend Bill Brown’s car so he could go out and join her after he had closed up the shop.’
Johnny looked sheepish and everyone was astounded when he asked, ‘And talking of Bill, how is he?’
‘Red hot, I expect,’ countered Connie, ‘or is your brain so taken up with getting elected that you have forgotten he was cremated last Friday at Seafield Crematorium!’
Gulping, Johnny whispered, ‘Right enough. He died . . . but I got to his service.’
‘Aye, but just. Black affronted I was when you burst in the back doors just in time for the final hymn. And in case you’ve forgotten it was “Abide With Me” which we are all finding hard to do with you right now. Honestly Johnny, you can think of nothing but this blooming election, so much so I hope you win because I could do with you being hundreds of miles away in London all week and me just having to listen to your mantras at the weekend.’
‘Look, could we all just cool it and try to find a way around things? Granny gets so upset when the family are at odds with each other,’ implored Kitty, who had been listening in to the conversation.
‘You’re right, Kitty,’ Kate replied before looking directly at Hans and suggesting, ‘Would us going a week later be so much of a problem?’
Hans shrugged.
‘You see, my dear, we could leave late on the Saturday . . . now that would be the seventh and return on Friday the thirteenth . . .’
‘But would you wish to be travelling all that way on Friday the thirteenth?’ Connie gulped. ‘You know how unlucky it’s supposed to be.’
> Kate shook her head. She wondered if she would ever get used to Connie being so superstitious but wasn’t it also like Connie to be thinking of what was best for all family members?
Hans was now nodding. ‘Of course, if we leave after closing time on Saturday and be back for opening time the next Saturday we will not lose too much business. So that is what we will do.’
‘But the trains are very busy on a Saturday so you are probably too late to book a sleeper now.’
Hans nodded again. ‘That’s right, Kitty, but I am thinking that I will be asking Bill’s widow, I mean Madge, if I could borrow his car for the weekend. That would mean that Kate would be able to sleep on the journey down . . . she needs more sleep than I do.’
‘But do you think Madge will be okay with that?’ Kitty queried.
‘Oh, yes, you see she does not drive and she was saying to me that she thinks she would like to just get rid of the car . . . just sell it.’
‘That makes sense because with Bill gone she won’t be having a regular income coming in,’ Johnny chorused, feeling great now that he had got his way and all his family would be standing with him – assisting him from now on and up to polling day.
Hans was now thinking that was all arranged then, but Jenny’s passing could change everything. He was at his front door when he wondered how he could diplomatically approach Kate, just a day after her mother had been buried, to ask if the sad happening would make any difference to their plans.
Kitty tightened up her silk scarf in an effort to keep out the chill wind that was blowing in the cemetery. It had been her intention to lay the bunch of pink roses that she had bought in Dick’s the florist in Great Junction Street on her grandmother’s grave, but this would not be possible because two of the gravediggers were still filling in the plot.
One of the cemetery’s attendants then stood up to mop his brow with his red polka-dot handkerchief and as the man lowered his hand he exclaimed, ‘Well if it’s not yourself. And I’m pleased to say I havnae seen you about these parts for a while now. Bet you’re back to talk to your mammy again . . . hope it’s good news this time?’
Kitty shook her head and the water from her soaking hair sprayed over the man but he seemed not to notice. ‘No, I haven’t come to talk to Mum, well actually I will before I go, you see I just popped in to put these roses on my granny’s grave but as she was only buried yesterday you haven’t finished filling it in.’
‘This auld buddy your granny? Shame it was. Now dinnae ken if you know it but every week she would come in here on a Friday. Sit down on that bench there that looks on to her man’s grave, where she is now, and have a wee chat with him. Loved him so she did. And we loved her coming because she always had a couple of newly-baked scones in her bag. Now no for your grandad but for me and Dod there. We’ll sure miss her. Great wee baker she was. Missed her vocation, she should have run a bakery.’
Kitty smiled.
‘See last Friday, Dod and me we kent that there was something wrang. She sat down right enough to talk to your grandad but she didnae have her message bag with her so we kent there would be nae scones for us. Next thing she starts to quiver and shiver and she looked at us but we kent she wasnae seeing us. I ran to the supervisor’s house . . .’ the man now pointed to the caretaker’s house in the grounds, ‘and got Elsie to make your granny a cup of tea but when I got back with the tea your granny was slumped on top of Dod and I could see that she wasnae breathing any more. Got an ambulance but they could do nothing. Poor soul, I dinnae ken what took her. Mind you I bet her old man was there to take her hand.’
‘It was a heart attack. And what I am pleased about, and I am sure you are too, is that it wasn’t too painful.’
‘It wasn’t?’
‘No. You see because she was so old and her heart wasn’t in good shape . . . it was quick. Good for her but . . .’ Kitty started to cry and sodden as the bench was she dropped down on it. The gravedigger sat down beside her and very tenderly he wiped her tears away. ‘I would just so have liked to have said goodbye to her. Thank her for being the best granny in the world.’
‘Now,’ the gravedigger said forcibly, ‘don’t you worry yourself about that. See it’s our job to keep the graves nice and tidy and after I heard you talking to your mammy I thought that whilst I’m working about she would like a word or two from me an all. Oh aye, your mammy kens the war’s ower and it will be no problem to keep your granny up to date tae.’
Instead of these comforting words consoling Kitty she howled even louder and the gravedigger was relieved when Laura came into the cemetery and took over comforting Kitty from him.
On leaving the cemetery the two girls strolled, arm in arm, over the Links and then got themselves seated at a table for two in Smith’s Tearooms on the corner of Morton Street.
The pot of tea for two and two fruit scones had just been deposited on the table and Kitty and Laura started to butter their scones. ‘You know,’ Laura blurted as she dolloped a spoonful of jam on to her delicacy, ‘Kitty, I just want to say how terribly sorry I am that I didn’t get to your Granny’s funeral yesterday. We have been pals since schooldays and I knew I should be there to support you . . . but, oh Kitty . . .’
This admission by Laura caught Kitty off balance and as she bit into her scone she managed to smear some of the jam over her face. Hastily fishing for a handkerchief from her pocket she firstly wiped the jam off her lips and then she dabbed her eyes that had welled with so many tears that they were cascading down her cheeks.
‘Oh Kitty, I didn’t mean to upset you,’ Laura blubbered, ‘it was just that I wanted you to know that I . . . look I was ready to come over to your house when all hell broke out at mine.’
Leaning over, Kitty put her hand over Laura’s. ‘Look, Laura, I’m not going to lie to you and pretend that I didn’t know that Eric arrived home three days ago and . . .’
Laura’s tears were now splashing. ‘Kitty, he looks so pathetic. You know how he was a sturdy lad . . . a bruiser really . . . well now he looks like some Belsen horror. Starved he has been and he’s . . . even quieter. You know how he wouldn’t really argue about anything . . . well, except Hibs and Hearts . . . but even football doesn’t interest him now.’
‘He’s staying at your mum’s?’
Laura nodded. ‘When Eric’s train got into the Waverley he was in such a hurry to get to his Edna and wee Billy that he took a taxi down to his home in Primrose Street. He told my mum that when he opened the door and threw in his hat, instead of Edna being there to catch it, it was her mum.’
‘Her mum? Are you saying it was Judy Fox who was in the house?’
‘Aye, Edna was out . . . well . . . she was out. But even although it was past ten o’clock, wee Billy was still up on the floor so Eric made a grab to cuddle the bairn into him.’ Laura paused to catch her breath. ‘But the wee laddie, and it wasn’t his fault because Eric had been gone five years, didn’t know who he was and he got such a fright that he started to bawl. His yelling woke up wee Ella and didn’t Eric then ask Mrs Fox whose bairn Ella was and didn’t she, because her head is befuddled with the booze, tell him it was Edna’s.’
‘What happened then?’
‘Eric left his kitbag and everything and dashed out of the house and never stopped running until he got to my mum’s house. My mum wasn’t being disloyal when she told him the truth about Edna. She then got her coat on and she went down to Primrose Street and gathered up all wee Billy’s things and the bairn is now living with us.’
‘Och, Laura, your mum doesn’t deserve all this worry and upset and neither does Eric. But give it a day or two and it might all settle down. I mean that wee Ella is such a darling wee lassie I could adopt her myself.’
‘Aye, she is a nice bairn but, oh Kitty, I really do wish that she’d never been born. I wish my poor brother’s heart hadn’t needed to be broken.’
A long pause fell between the girls and as Kitty lazily stirred her tea Laura could see that her thought
s were far away. Eventually Laura reached over and stroked Kitty’s face. ‘Penny for them.’
‘Just thinking about my granny. Such a shame that she won’t be here to see my uncle win, and keep your fingers crossed that he doesn’t lose the election. She was so proud of him. You see Aunty Kate always seemed to be the one that got on . . . she was a manager . . . she never put a foot wrong. Helped my granny buy their own house and my dad well he worked in the shipyards and he likes nothing better than to stand with his feet in the sawdust and down a pint,’ she giggled, ‘or two or three with the boys. And here talking of my granny being thrifty look at this.’ Kitty fished in her handbag and brought out the small savings bank that her granny had left for her. ‘She left me this.’
‘How much is in it?’
Kitty shrugged. ‘Don’t know. And I don’t care. But what I am going to do is keep putting a wee something in it every pay day.’
‘Talking of pay day, how about we cheer ourselves up and get ourselves up the Palais on Friday? A night boogieing our blues away is what we need.’
‘Would love nothing better and I could do it because my granny didn’t believe in this mourning for weeks, never mind months, but as luck would have it I’m on night duty for the rest of the week.’
‘Which ward?’
‘Accident and emergency would you believe. That means we will be kept busy with all the old drunks that have fallen over, the young men who are back from the war and after a couple of pints, they think they are still fighting it.’ Laura laughed. ‘You can laugh. But see now the nights are light, most of the wee laddies will be playing at “commando training” in Couper Street’s half demolished buildings.’ Kitty sighed. ‘Then the nursing staff will be run off their feet bandaging their grazed knees and sorting out their broken bones.’
The late Friday afternoon sun had at last some heat in it. Kitty was feeling very fatigued after having been drummed into doing two hours service in her Father’s campaign office. As it was important to her that she was very alert for her night-duty stint she decided to go and have a two-hour nap in her room in the nurses’ home. However, as she turned her face up to be kissed by the warming rays of the sun, she decided that before going for her nap she would just while away a few minutes sitting on a bench in Taylor Gardens. As she breathed in deeply she noted that she was not the only one appreciating the long-awaited change in the weather – the roses in the hospital gardens were all lazily wafting their perfume into the air.