‘You can imagine what she would say if she knew I was seeing George.’ She stayed quiet for a while as the bus groaned its way along the winding road to Auchenbeath. She looked out of the window but she was not seeing the trees, the hillsides that in spring were covered in primroses; she was seeing George, George whose hot mouth and seeking hands both excited and frightened her so that she would do almost anything to be with him, to sit with him in the darkness of the picture house, sweating hands tightly clasped, or more daringly to walk with him on the hillside beyond the bakery.
‘The world’s full of Georges,’ Patrick disturbed her thoughts, ‘and an awful lot of them are at Edinburgh University.’
‘You’re daft, Father Patrick. There’s only one George, but I’ll see about the university. Maybe I’ll come in your last year and we could get a room together and I would look after you because you’ll starve to death on your own.’
But Kate had taken steps to ensure that her son did not waste away from hunger at the university. Margaret and Patrick could sense her excitement as they walked in from school. Kate waited until the whole family were seated around the table at their tea.
‘And guess where we are going on Saturday?’ she asked the expectant faces. ‘Edinburgh. We’re away to look at rooms for Patrick. There’s an area called Morningside, Patrick love. It’s a very nice part of the city with good clean homes and this lady offers her rooms to students. She takes three students and she does a full breakfast and an evening meal. I spoke to her on the telephone today. Your daddy will drive us up in the van, she’ll see you come from a good family and that you can pay her charges. Aren’t you excited, lamb?’
‘He’s terrified,’ said Margaret before she could stop herself.
‘Go to your room and stay there, miss. You have a genius for spoiling everything with that tongue of yours. Well, maybe we won’t take it with us on our trip.’ Kate was furious.
‘Mammy, she just meant I was nervous about all the changes,’ said Patrick, as usual trying to be the peacemaker between these two women whom he loved and whom he knew, loved each other. Why couldn’t they show one another? Was it because they were women? Mysterious beings. His mother and his sister were the only two he knew really well and half the time he couldn’t figure them out. ‘And I am,’ he went on. ‘University’ll be a right change and then there’s living with folk I don’t know and all.’
‘You’ll get used to it in no time at all, will he not, Charlie? Here’s your Daddy has been in foreign lands, Patrick. That’ll be the next thing for you. You’ll be phoning us up and saying, I’m away to France or Italy or some such place for a grand holiday with my pals, for I want you to have friends, lambie. Don’t we, Charlie, no sitting night after night studying. You’re to join clubs and do exciting things in your free time.’
‘Can I not go?’ demanded Liam, and got a hug from his mother for making his big brother laugh.
The day’s outing was a great success. The drive itself, through the magnificent Dalveen Pass, was an excitement in itself. Charlie, his heart in his mouth, as he crept slowly along the road with its perilous drop on his left side, almost spoiled the day before it started. ‘Next time, if there is a next time, you can drive, Margaret.’ He looked at the horrified realization that her daughter could actually drive a motor car dawning on his wife’s face and hurriedly added, ‘or you, our Liam, for Daddy’s frightened we fall off the edge.’
Liam hooted with laughter for he loved cars and would want nothing better, and Margaret breathed slowly again and deliberately kept her face to the window so that her mother had no chance of seeing her eyes until any suspicion roused by Charlie’s ill-judged remark had faded. Mam would undoubtedly want Patrick to learn to drive first. The knowledge that her daughter had been driving for years would not please her one bit.
Yet again Margaret misread her mother. Driving was yet another twentieth-century step with which Kate was having to come to terms. She would be excited and pleased when her children learned to drive but because she basically distrusted the motor car, she would always be afraid when they were driving.
In Edinburgh itself there was panic again, for although Charlie had no fear of a big city, when he had lived in Glasgow he had walked the streets pushing a barrow, driving in unfamiliar towns was a different matter. It was the castle that saved the day, for everywhere they went they were conscious of it towering above them and the excitement of actually seeing it took away the terror over being lost.
‘Can we not go up and see it better?’ asked Liam peevishly.
Kate smiled at her youngest. This was going to be a day to remember. ‘We’ll do better, lambie. We’ll find the direction to Patrick’s house, if he likes it that is, and then we’ll find a nice place to eat our picnic, and after your daddy and me has talked to the landlady, we’ll take the tour of the castle, and you’ll see swords and crowns and all kinds of things.’
Eventually, with Patrick almost beside himself with suspense, they found the neat little row of terraced houses, and surveyed them from afar. Auchenbeath was nothing like this.
‘Very posh,’ said Margaret enviously.
‘Don’t talk slang,’ said Kate automatically but not angrily for she felt the same herself. If the house were as nice inside Patrick would be bound to be happy there. They went back to the car to eat their sandwiches.
‘Save the apple for cleaning your teeth, Patrick. We want to make a nice impression. Liam, you’ll have to stay in the van with Margaret; it’ll look like a tinker’s flittin’ if we all go in,’ ordered Kate, ignoring the look of disappointment on the girl’s face. She knew Margaret would love to see inside the house where her brother might stay for the next three years but she would have plenty of opportunities later. ‘We’ll go and see one of the nice big shops on Princes Street, lamb, maybe find something special for a good lassie,’ she finished to ease the disappointment.
The house was well furnished and comfortable. Mrs McGregor was as neat as her house, and as well upholstered. The bedroom Patrick would have had a single bed, a wardrobe, an easy chair, and a little table and chair by the window which looked out over the garden.
‘That’s an apple tree, Patrick,’ said Mrs McGregor. ‘But a country boy like you would know that. It’s particularly beautiful in the spring and, of course, Mrs Inglis, my students are always more than welcome to the apples.’
The kitchen and the bathroom were inspected and approved, and the ladies discussed suitable meals for growing young men with all the enthusiasm of good cooks. ‘He’ll not starve in this house, Mrs Inglis, and I can easily make him a piece to take. That would be extra, of course, or he could buy his own things and keep them on a separate shelf. Most of my young men prefer to do that. It is a little cheaper, I suppose, and allows for differences in taste.’
A price was agreed and Patrick was registered to come up in September so that he could get used to Edinburgh before the start of term.
‘You’re not the Kate Inglis of Kate Inglis Bakeries by any chance, are you?’ asked Mrs McGregor at the door and when Kate modestly said that she was, Mrs McGregor shook her firmly by the hand. ‘I have admired your products for years, Mrs Inglis, and your courage in running a business. Had I been allowed to work as I wished to do when a young girl, I would not now have to supplement my income by letting my rooms. Not that I am not delighted to welcome healthy young men into my home. Mr McGregor and I were not blessed with children,’ she finished sadly.
Kate and Charlie said all the right things and returned to the van. ‘Well, he’ll be all right if she doesn’t talk his head off,’ said Charlie in answer to Margaret’s questions. ‘She sounds like an old primer I had at the school, the day or two I was there, that is.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Kate. ‘Mrs McGregor is a most superior person and her home is lovely, as clean as our own. You will be quite at home.’
‘As bad as that,’ Margaret whispered to her brother.
‘I won’t see much of her, Mammy,�
� said Patrick somewhat loudly, ‘but it’s a nice room with a big tree just outside the window, Liam. I’ll sit there and study and pretend I’m at home.’
Could he have said anything better calculated to please his mother? The rest of the day was just as perfect. They spent hours in the castle where Kate cried when she found her brothers’ names in the War Memorial. ‘I never knew, I never knew,’ she sobbed. ‘All these years. I wish my da had seen this.’
‘Come on then, lass, let’s take Margaret to the shops,’ said Charlie who had seen some names that had brought back unpleasant memories for him too.
Kate agreed and they walked down Princes Street where Kate thrilled her daughter by buying her a dress in Jenner’s, the most wonderful shop Margaret had ever seen in her life. Just wait till George saw her in this.
‘Are you not having something for yourself, Kate,’ teased Charlie, ‘something blue to match your beautiful blue eyes?’
‘Away you go with your nonsense, Charlie Inglis,’ said Kate although she was pleased at his silliness, ‘have we not a son to outfit for the university and fees to pay and lodgings? I’ll tell you what we will do for a treat. We’ll have a meal in a restaurant, not fish and chips but a proper meal, soup and meat and pudding, and even coffee after. What about that, Miss Inglis?’
‘Can I wear my new dress?’ breathed Margaret and a side street was found and eyes modestly turned away while she got herself into the dress in the back of the van.
‘We’ll all have to stay a step behind Miss Jenners here,’ said Charlie and Kate looked at their daughter and agreed that, yes Margaret was quite a pretty young woman but there was much more to life than beauty and forbye was it not only skin deep.
‘Mammy’s just frightened you’ll be swept up by yon fellow on the white horse afore you’re twenty,’ whispered Patrick to his crestfallen sister. ‘She thinks you’re a right smasher as well.’
Kate heard and was moved by her son’s maturity. How she wished she could explain to her daughter all the fears that lurked in her mother’s mind. The girl thought marriage was undying passion. There was no such thing; that was only on the celluloid screen the lassie devoured with such enthusiasm. She glanced across at Charlie, nervously trying to find the wee restaurant a guide at the War Museum had recommended. I think I’ve grown to love him in a sort of way. We’re used to one another. Even that had settled down to a few mintues once in a while. He’s a good man, doesnae drink, or beat up the bairns or me for that matter. Maybe that’s all there is if you’re lucky. I don’t want my wee lassie tied down with weans and a man and work, work, work. Not for a while yet. Maybe she should go to the university. My God, what would Auchenbeath say if Kate Kennedy sent two bairns to the university?
14
THE SUMMER PASSED too quickly for everyone, especially Patrick. The news from Europe was bad, for the wee German laddie, whom Margaret had talked about a few years ago, was causing more and more trouble. He had annexed Austria, and then, despite all promises and declarations, had marched into Czechoslovakia. A bloodless annexation of Poland was finally what he wanted and Britain issued an ultimatum. Colm, whose unit had calmly been preparing for a war seen by most as inevitable, had tried for years to prepare his sister for the fact that she had an eighteen-year-old son and that there was going to be a war, at least in Europe.
Kate refused to listen. She had great faith in Chamberlain whom she classed as a perfect English gentleman, someone like Dr Hyslop, well educated, calm in a crisis, reasonable; a man who would never let you down.
Adolf Hitler, unfortunately, was not a middle-class Englishman.
Kate and Charlie left Auchenbeath with Patrick and Liam and everything Kate could find to make her son’s life comfortable in Edinburgh after the bakery officially closed at noon on Saturday August 2nd, 1939. Margaret was left with a list of chores to do.
‘George’ll be up to wash the big van; you could give him a cup of to in the bakery, lass,’ suggested Kate, and Margaret did.
‘There’s a dance the night at the miners’ club. Let’s go to it, Margaret,’ suggested George.
Lovingly Margaret poured him some tea, deliberately pressing close to him as she passed.
‘My mam thinks only painted women go to dances.’
‘She’s away. She’ll never know. Come on, for once I can come up here and take you out without having to slink along to the pictures like a criminal.’
The wireless was on, as it always was in the bakery. Margaret and the girls knew all the latest songs by heart. Now some dance music was playing and George got up and pulled Margaret away from the table. They danced frenetically for some minutes and then, exhausted, rested against one another. George pressed Margaret close against him and began to move slowly around the room with her to the beat of the love song now being crooned across the sound waves. She felt him stirring and instinctively pushed herself closer against him. They stopped dancing and stood kissing and stroking until George almost threw her away from him.
‘God, you’ll get more than you bargained for if we go on like this. I’ll away and finish the van.’
Trembling, Margaret sat down on the hard wooden bench. It was wonderful. Love was wonderful. She wanted George to come back, to dance with her again, to kiss her the way he had just done. Clark Gable couldn’t kiss like that, nor Ronald Coleman. I’m going to the dance with him, she decided. It would be so nice to go to the miners’ club with George, to walk boldly down the main street of Auchenbeath, not to sneak around like a criminal. It was highly unlikely that anyone would tell Kate; she had no casual acquaintances and the women who worked in the bakery were too much in awe of their employer to indulge in gossip in her hearing and if Charlie was told, well, she would handle that problem when it confronted her. She had always been able to deal with him.
George arrived for her at the appointed time. He was quiet on the way into the village.
‘It’s no right, Margaret,’ he finally said, in answer to her questions. ‘It’s no right we should be seeing each other without your mam knowing.’
‘Wait till our Patrick’s well settled; she’s that nervous the now. She’d take it hard.’
‘Take what hard, that you’re going out with a common vanman?’
The question was so unexpected that Margaret laughed. ‘Don’t be daft. My mam has a million faults but being a snob’s no one of them. It’s just, oh, I don’t know, George; it’s just not the right time.’
‘You know her best, I suppose, but Margaret, would it not be better to tell her afore we . . .’
He stopped and Margaret turned to him breathlessly, ‘Afore we what, George?’
‘We’d sure enough have to tell her if we want . . . to get married.’
Margaret squeezed his hand tightly. Was that a proposal? Her ideas of love and romance were all culled from Saturday matinées. She should now hear bells and birds and perhaps even glorious music. Better still, George should go down on his knees, singing. Romance had nothing to do with parents and certainly not with a marriage like theirs. What did they know of love, of the passion that had overpowered Rhett Butler when he had carried Scarlett O’Hara up those stairs, the feeling that was surging up inside her now, that made her want to . . . to . . . melt?
‘Margaret?’ George’s voice was funny, as if he was choking somehow. ‘Here’s the village,’ he said, almost as if he were a tour guide. ‘I’m looking forward to the dance. Now, not too many dances with other laddies, you’re my girl, Margaret Inglis.’
Heady stuff. She was George’s girl, she would not want to dance with anyone else. But she did dance with others. Almost every man in the hall wanted to dance with her. George refused to ask anyone else and, over the shoulders of her partners, she would see him glowering at her from the side and she revelled in the power she had over him and that she seemed to assert over these others. Yet when she danced with George there was such a feeling of rightness that when she was gyrating savagely around with someone else, she
ached to be with George instead.
Margaret rejected the sturdy young miner who asked for the next dance.
‘I’m with someone,’ she said demurely and turned into George’s arms.
George was jealous. ‘Nice of you to remember. Come on, it’s hotter than hell in here. I want a drink.’
Margaret was even thirstier than George. The first two alcoholic drinks she had ever had slid down as easily as the nice cup of tea her mother recommended in hot weather.
‘Come on, it’s the last dance and I’m dancing it with my girl.’
It could hardly be called dancing. Margaret was unaware of her feet and could not have given them coherent instructions if she could have found them. She moulded herself to George and he pivoted her around the crowded room, intoxicated not only by too much alcohol but by the smell and feel of her in his arms.
The night air sobered them up a bit and, arms around one another, they stumbled along the road towards the bakery.
‘It’s bloody cold all of a sudden,’ said George.
‘If my mam’s not back, you can come in for a minute to warm up.’
Margaret had the key to the bakehouse. Even if Kate were back she would be nowhere near the bakery. Only the big van was there. Margaret and George slipped into the nice warm, welcoming bakery. They did not risk a light but stood in the moonlight and one kiss led to another; kisses to which Margaret abandoned herself as she had never been able to do in the back seat of the one-and-three seats at the local picture house. She took off her coat only because it was so hot, and a moment later they were lying on it and George’s hands were reaching places he had never hoped to touch. He slipped his hands up inside her blouse and undid her bra and perhaps there was one moment when she could have said no, but she wanted his hands, his mouth. When she felt his hungry mouth closing over her hard little nipple, wetness flowed from that awful place down there and she pushed herself against his hardness. She helped him tear off her clothes and she lay stretched out wantonly in the moonlight watching him pull off his own clothes. She could think of nothing but how wonderful he was, and that these feelings which were over-whelming her, had to be appeased. He entered her, pulling her hips up closer and with primal instincts, virgins both, they struggled to satisfy themselves and each other. Even the sudden pain when he thrust more deeply was soothed by the mutual climax that left them lying together, soaked with sweat and overwhelmed by it all. It was better than anything George had ever heard of; no one had ever achieved such a climax, and Margaret lay, her whole body pounding with the fever of lust fulfilled, and glorified in her power.
A Pinch of Salt Page 16