by Anne Doughty
‘The trouble is,’ I began uneasily, ‘I’m not a free agent. Everyone talks about equality, and women pursuing their own careers these days, but attitudes don’t change that quickly. As far as most of my family and relatives are concerned, we might as well be living in eighteen sixty-eight as nineteen sixty-eight,’ I said, a sharpness in my voice that quite surprised me. ‘Of course, my husband’s very understanding,’ I corrected myself hastily. ‘But his family’s a different matter. It’s a touch of Dombey and Son, you see. Or rather Grandson, to be precise.’
Suddenly, I was aware of time passing. I stood up abruptly. Mr Cummings rose too.
‘It’s hard, Mrs McKinstry, I know it’s hard,’ he said as we shook hands. ‘But remember, you’ve only got one life to live. You can’t give your best if your heart’s not in it.’
He looked so incredibly sad that I stopped where I was, ignoring the press of customers around the entrance to his tiny cubicle.
‘I needn’t talk, you know. I did what others wanted of me. But there’s a price to pay. It can cost you dear for the rest of your life.’ He released my hand, suddenly aware he was still holding it, long after the handshake could properly be said to have ended: ‘If you take the job, I expect I shall have to call you Madam,’ he added, with an awkward attempt at lightness.
‘If I take the job, Mr Cummings, you’ll have to call me Jenny,’ I replied.
He went ahead of me to the main entrance. At the door I put my hand lightly on his arm. ‘Thank you very much for your advice, Mr Cummings,’ I said firmly. ‘If I do take the job, I’ll need every friend I’ve got. I’ll let you know on Monday.’
I turned away quickly and didn’t dare look back at him. I couldn’t trust myself not to burst into tears.
The mizzling rain was heavier now. The dim light of the afternoon had faded further towards dusk. From the square-cut ledges of the City Hall came the squabble of hundreds of starlings as they began to roost for the night. Double-deckers swished past the office workers who poured in from the roads and avenues around the city square. I made my way towards the long queue for the Stranmillis bus.
‘Jenny.’
I stopped in my tracks, puzzled and confused, so far away in my thoughts I didn’t recognise the familiar voice.
‘Keith!’ I exclaimed, as my eye moved up the worn duffle coat and discovered the familiar face of my brother-in-law, smiling and brown after his vacation job.
‘The very man. How’s yourself?’
‘Fine, fine. When did you get back?’
‘Only last week. Job was great, paying well, so we stayed as long as we could. Heard things were moving here. Come on an’ we’ll have a coffee. Colin won’t be out for half an hour yet, will he? Tell us all your news.’
‘I’d love to, Keith, but I can’t. Colin’s in London with William John and I’m due up at home at five thirty. I’m running late as it is and you know what that means.’
He reached out for my briefcase, dropped his arm lightly round my shoulders and turned me away from the bus queue.
‘Surely I do. I’ll run you up. Bella’s on a meter round the corner. Come on. We can talk on the way.’
It took me all my time keeping up with Keith’s long strides. He wasn’t much taller than Colin, but put together quite differently. While Colin was fair like his mother and moved as if he had all the time in the world, even when he was in a hurry, Keith was dark and spare and full of edgy tension. In the last year, he’d grown a beard. Now after a summer in Spain he was deeply tanned and there were fine lines etched round his eyes. His face had lost its youthful look. Though still only twenty-two, it was Keith who now looked the older of the two brothers.
‘Keith, what’ve you done to poor Bella?’ I asked as we stopped by his ancient Volkswagen.
‘Isopon,’ he replied briskly as he searched in his pockets for his car keys. ‘I was afraid the rust molecules might stop holdin’ hands. Bella’s going to have to last a long time. No company car for the prodigal son, ye know.’
There was not a trace of malice in his voice despite the fact that Colin had had a red Spitfire for his twenty-first. You’re a better person than I, Keith McKinstry, I thought, as I settled myself on the lump of foam rubber he’d used to mend the collapsed passenger seat. He accelerated as the lights changed and overtook the crawling traffic ahead.
‘How’s your father, Jenny?’
‘Pretty good, thanks. He’s still managing to go into work two days a week though sometimes he lets Gladys Huey collect him and bring him home.’
Keith nodded easily. He and my father got on well. On the few occasions the two families had been together they talked agriculture and politics. They had ended up with a considerable respect for each other, even where they had to disagree.
‘And your dear mother?’ he continued, raising an eyebrow.
I sighed. ‘’Bout the same. Bit worse, perhaps. I think she’s been seeing a lot of your mother. You know how I feel about that. When they’re not trying to score points off each other they just reinforce each other’s prejudices.’
‘You’re right there,’ he said, with a short, hard laugh. ‘I’d a pretty cool reception when I got back. Cut off my allowance for a start. They know fine well I can’t get a grant with the old man coining it.’
‘Keith, why? What reason did they give?’ I asked, outraged.
‘Ach, Jenny, it’s simple. Quite logical. If I’m independent enough to go against all their wishes in my choice of company and in my course of study, then I may as well be totally independent. Just simple blackmail.’
I looked at him in amazement. How could he be so steady, so easy? How could he possibly manage without a student grant or an allowance?
He shook his head and glanced at me as we drew up at traffic lights. ‘So that’s that. Know any good hotels that need a waiter? Speek Engleesh var gud,’ he went on, grinning broadly.
I had to laugh, but what he’d said wasn’t at all funny. ‘Oh, Keith, you can’t manage a job in your third year, you need all the study time you’ve got.’
‘That’s what Siobhan says.’
‘Well, she’s right. Tell her we’ll have to work out something. When can you come to supper? I’ll talk to Colin about it. We might be able to help.’ I stopped short, aware of the implications of what I’d just said. Unless we could persuade William John to change his mind, the only real way I could help Keith was out of my own salary. And that was bound to cause trouble in both families.
‘Did Maisie quote Paisley at you?’ I asked as the traffic came to a halt yet again.
‘Paisley?’ Keith sounded horrified.
‘I thought I’d better warn you,’ I went on quietly. ‘I think the pair of them have been going to some of his services. My mother has a whole set of new catchphrases and you know she’s never original. We could even be in for a religious phase.’
‘Oh Lord. Your poor father. How does he stand it, Jenny?’
‘I honestly don’t know,’ I said sadly. ‘He seems to let a lot of it pass over him. But then I suppose he hasn’t much alternative. Daddy’s always been a realist, as you know.’
We crawled slowly into Shaftesbury Square and I spotted the newsboy I’d met on the way down.
‘So the march is off, Keith. Are you very disappointed?’
He smiled and shook his head. ‘The march isn’t off, Jenny. Don’t pay any attention to the papers. If the organisers can’t get it together, the Young Socialists will still march. There’s a meeting tonight. It’s got to go ahead. It’s just got to. Even if there’s only a handful of us.’
I opened my mouth to protest and then shut it again. ‘And Siobhan’s going too,’ I said quietly.
‘Of course.’
We stopped at the pedestrian crossing opposite the front gates of Queen’s. Students streamed in front of us, clutching books and ring files. Five years ago, I would have been among them, walking along this very pavement, hurrying up the hill, past the Ulster Museum, the great grey
block of the Keir Building and the familiar shops of Stranmillis village.
‘How’re we doing?’ Keith asked as he accelerated again.
I saw the lights go out in the bakery. ‘About half past, I expect,’ I said, as casually as I could manage.
‘Sorry we’ve been so slow. The bus would have been even worse.’
We turned into Rathmore Drive and stopped outside the Victorian villa with the beech hedge that had borne the name of ‘home’ for me ever since I was six years old.
‘I wish we’d had time for that coffee,’ he said.
‘So do I,’ I said unhappily as I got out and came round to the pavement.
He looked down at me and smiled. ‘Perhaps she’ll be in a good mood,’ he suggested lightly.
‘Oh damn that, Keith,’ I said vehemently. ‘It’s not my mother I’m worried about. It’s time I learnt to cope with her. It’s you and Siobhan. D’you think there’ll be trouble?’
He nodded easily. ‘Of course there’ll be trouble. But there’s no other way. And you’ve forgotten something. We do have one weapon.’
I couldn’t think what it could possibly be. That was the whole point. All I could think of were crowds of students and young people, unarmed, totally unprotected, up against a force of trained men who’d been ordered to work them over. The thought of it made me feel sick with fear.
‘The cameras, Jenny, the cameras,’ he said as he leaned into the back seat and brought out my briefcase and basket. ‘I can’t promise you it won’t be nasty, perhaps very nasty, but the cameras will be some protection.’
He stood looking down at me, a slight reassuring smile on his face. ‘It’s one thing people just hearing about police brutality, it’s another thing when they see it themselves in their own living rooms at teatime. And the B Specials know that now too. It’s some protection. All right, not a lot. But some.’
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
‘Now don’t worry. I’ll give you a ring Sunday night when we get back,’ he went on, bending down to kiss my cheek. ‘Don’t take the Saturday newspapers too seriously. Wait till you get the Sundays.’
I looked up at him and managed a smile. At least I could try to take the comfort he was offering me. ‘Good luck, Keith. Give Siobhan my love,’ I said firmly. ‘Supper next week. We’ll make a date on Sunday.’
‘Right ye be.’
‘Thanks for running me up.’
‘And good luck to you, too,’ he said, raising his eyes heavenward at the thought of my mother.
‘I’ll need it,’ I said, laughing ruefully as I opened the garden gate and hurried up the crazy paving path between the rosebeds.
Chapter 2
George opened his eyes. The log cracked again in the fire and a spark arced through the air and struck the log basket. Lucky it didn’t get as far as the new rug, he thought, as he straightened himself up and reached for the polished brass poker. Edna would not be well pleased if she came home and found a scorch mark on it and the fire so low it was almost out.
He’d been thinking about the specifications for those new tractors Bertie had brought back from the exhibition in Birmingham and the next thing he knew he was away back in Ballymena fitting a new axle on a traction engine with old Willie Prentice. Years ago that was. The only place you’d see that engine now was in a museum. Wasn’t it funny the things that came back to you if you nodded off for a minute or two after your lunch.
He glanced at the clock. It was nearly three. Surely he hadn’t slept that long. He leaned over for another log without getting out of his chair. He tried to place it in the hottest part of the glowing embers but the pain caught him unexpectedly and the log fell short.
‘Bad luck, George, you should’ve stood up in the first place,’ he said aloud. He put a hand to his chest and straightened his shoulders cautiously. ‘And if that’s the way the wind’s blowing you’d better take your pills and forget all about hoeing that rose bed.’
He stood up awkwardly, clutched at the back of his well-worn wing chair and waited for his knee joints to respond to the call for action. His pills were in the drawer of his bureau but as he picked them up he remembered he could never swallow them without water.
The kitchen was empty, spotless and shining. He looked around and shook his head. Surely to goodness the new cleaning lady would suit. He’d heard her working like a Trojan all morning and when she’d brought him his sandwich before she left, it was on a tray with a cloth and had bits of parsley and tomato to make it look nice just like those pictures in the women’s magazines. But there was no pleasing Edna these days. It was a long time since she’d had a good word for him. There wasn’t much he could do about it now.
He swallowed the pills, rinsed the glass and turned it upside down to drain by the sink. Then he looked at it and thought again. He dried it and put it away. As he closed the cupboard door the pain surged. He put out his hand and held on to the sink.
‘Go away,’ he said to it. ‘Come tomorrow, when it doesn’t matter so much.’
He felt the sweat break on his brow and wondered if he should sit down. But the kitchen was not a place where he ever felt comfortable. Edna hated him in the kitchen and if she arrived back from town just now she’d make a fuss and say he’d been doing something he’d been told not to do. How was she to get her jobs done if she couldn’t leave him for five minutes? She always said five minutes when she’d been gone most of the day.
‘Come on, George, get going. Tell yourself it’s downhill.’
He made his way back along the hall and into the dining room. To his surprise the pain began to ease.
‘Great stuff,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Let’s get this fire made up while the going’s good. Shure, what does it matter if I have to sit here the whole afternoon, so long as I’m all right for Jenny coming.’
Gladys would laugh if she could hear him. His secretary for twenty years and his friend and confidante for most of them, she’d told him only last week that he mustn’t talk to himself or people would get the wrong idea.
‘An’ d’ye not talk to yourself, Gladys?’ he asked her teasingly.
‘’Deed I do,’ she replied promptly. ‘But I make sure no one’s listening.’
He made up the fire and sat down gratefully. The pain had eased a lot but it had left him feeling weak. Or maybe that was the tablets. Whatever it was, he’d have to behave himself today. Rest, the doctor said. Rest. There hadn’t been a lot of rest in his life and it didn’t come easy to him now. But he could read. Wasn’t he lucky he had good eyesight and enough books to thatch houses with, as the saying was.
He picked up a small leather-covered volume from his side table. A spot of Goldsmith in the dying months of the year. Sweet Auburn, perhaps. A link with times long past when the world was simpler, if not better. He opened it and looked at the familiar handwriting inside the cover. ‘To Daddy with love, because your old copy is falling apart. Happy Birthday, Jenny.’
‘Daddy, can we go up to Granny’s house before we go home?’
He looked down at the small hand clutching his arm and the earnest regard in the dark eyes. ‘It’s a bit of a walk for you, love, and it’ll be wet after the rain.’
‘But I have my boots, Daddy. Granny McTaggart says I could go anywhere in my seven league boots.’
Mary McTaggart laughed and took the brown teapot from the stove. ‘Have anither drap o’ tea, George. I think ye may go, for she’s talked ‘bout nothin’ else all week. She’s had Lottie gae up there three or four times a’ready. She’d ’ave gone hersel’ if I’d let her.’
He looked at his watch. Edna would be expecting her back for bedtime at seven and the Austin was not exactly the world’s fastest car.
‘Please Daddy. I’ve had such a lovely holiday with Granny McTaggart and she’s told me all about you when you were a little boy.’
‘Oh dear,’ laughed George, looking up at the old woman who had always been so kind to him. ‘Has she told you all my secrets?’
‘Yes,’ said the child promptly. ‘But I can keep a secret, can’t I, Granny?’
‘Oh, ye can do mony a thing, my little lady. I hope yer auld granny is still here in ten years time to see ye.’
‘When I’m sixteen and all grown up?’ she said, as she fetched a small pair of Wellingtons from a corner of the big kitchen where those of Mary’s youngest son and his family were lined up against the wall.
The rain had cleared and the late August sun was warm on their faces as they avoided the puddles in the farmyard, George stepping carefully in the brown leather shoes he wore in town. Five months now since the move. A hard time it had been. Worries about the loan on the showroom, the tractors and trailers he had ordered from England, the cost of the glossy catalogues he’d distributed with reapers and binders and combines too big and too costly to stock. The mortgage on the house in Stranmillis, the only one Edna had liked, was far more than he had planned and the work it needed took up every hour when he was not at the showroom. But it had been his own choice. For the first time in his life he was his own boss. You couldn’t have that and peace of mind as well.
In this last month things had begun to move. The war years had been profitable for farmers with every bite of food sure of its market and a good price guaranteed, and the three years since had been good too, though labour had to be a problem with wages so low. The farmers were beginning to spend what they had accumulated, confident now that the old hard times were past. First they bought a motor car for themselves, then they put in a bathroom for the family and then they looked at their old-fashioned and worn-out farm machinery. Having a tractor was the first step. He’d be sad himself to see the plough horses go, but the change had begun during the war on the big farms and now he was sure the smaller farmers were beginning to follow on. A tractor could do the work of a couple of men.