A Pinch of Salt

by Eileen Ramsay

  Charlie had heard the talk and agreed with it, but had said nothing to Kate. She would learn of it soon enough.

  ‘No,’ she gasped, ‘not my Margaret. She wouldn’t do such a thing. It was George, wasn’t it? You and your precious tennis club, running about half dressed. We’ll be the laughing stock of the entire village. Wait till you see the custom that finds its way to the bakery.’ In her distress she unconsciously wrapped her arms round her body as if to seek comfort from someone, even herself, and returned to her first problem. Why had Margaret not discussed George with her own mother? Where had she gone wrong that her only daughter could not confide in her?

  ‘Charlie, was I too strict with her? Should I have told her we were thinking of letting her go to the university too? She’s only seventeen, a bairn, Charlie, just a bairn.’ She moved around the room, picking things up and putting them down, tears of which she was unaware streaming down her face, and took refuge in anger. ‘I never want to see her again.’

  ‘Oh, lassie, lassie,’ cried Charlie. ‘You cannot mean that. It’s grief and hurt that’s talking. The blame’s no all yours, Kate. She could have told me and she didn’t, and I’ll carry that grief with me to the end of ma days but I’m no throwin’ out my own wee bairn.’

  She rounded on him, the need to hurt someone paramount. ‘Aye, you spoiled her, Charlie Inglis. One smile from her and you did what she wanted. You would have let her marry her precious George.’

  ‘Aye, I would, and why she didnae talk tae me, I’ll never understand. I’ll ask her just as soon as she walks in that door.’

  Kate looked at him and knew that his mind was made up. He did not often force his opinions or wants on the family but when he did no argument could move him. She hadn’t meant what she had said about not seeing Margaret either. That had been anger and unhappiness talking. ‘George isn’t welcome,’ she said. ‘Not a bit of character in that entire family.’

  She tried to put Margaret’s possible condition out of her mind and set herself to finding a second driver.

  ‘As if rationing wasnae enough to contend with,’ she complained. ‘Now with the call-up I’ve had just two replies to my advert for Geo . . . that job.’ Nothing would make her say George’s name again. ‘I wouldnae let either one of the dottery old souls near a bike let alone a van. It’ll be a grand summer job for Patrick if you can manage for a few weeks, Charlie. Here’s all this carry on over Margaret, and now Patrick’s trying to talk himself into joining up. Best have him work here for the summer. You help me persuade him that feeding the nation’s a war effort an all.’

  ‘Why don’t you learn to drive yersel’, Kate? You don’t need to be in the bakery every minute. Go out and meet your customers instead of stayin’ cooped up here.’

  The idea did not appeal, especially now that her customers, she felt, would be avid for further scandal about Margaret. Well, they would get nothing from her. In the bakery Kate became even more remote from her bakers, speaking to them politely, but only when absolutely necessary. Apart from attendance at daily Mass, her few excursions had been to see Bridie or to do such shopping as could be done in the village. She got into the habit now of telephoning her order and having Charlie fetch it in the van. They had no real friends of their own generation. In their early married life they had had no money for entertaining, then they were too busy with work and children, and Charlie had never really been well. He tired easily and after work he liked to sit in his chair by the fire as Liam had done, and to watch and listen to his children. Charlie had his wireless for companionship. Kate had her work and her letters to her son. She would try to have Charlie or even Liam communicate with Margaret. Her own letters were bound to be stilted. How could she pour out on paper what she had never been able to say face to face? For one thing, if she confessed to her daughter that she had never really been ‘in love’ with Charlie and that she had always wanted something better for her child she would be being disloyal to Charlie who must never ever know that she did not love him. Or did she? Charlie, dear, sweet Charlie who surely deserved so much more than she had given him. I love him now, she admitted to herself, but I could never tell him. Why not? He never, ever said he loved her. ‘That was rare,’ at the end of that. Was that the same as ‘I love you, Kate’? Not for Margaret, not for her child; no fear or trembling or distaste. For Margaret it had to be special; that was why she had worked so hard.

  She could speak to her priest.

  ‘Is it yourself or Margaret you’re thinking about, Kate?’

  ‘I don’t know, Father.’ As always, Kate strove for total honesty with herself. ‘I’m hurt and I’m angry and embarrassed to walk all the way down the Main Street to get here. I feel everyone’s looking at me and laughing. You see, I wouldn’t let her play with most of the village children, just one or two from better homes, clean homes. I’m not sorry for myself, Father, but I’ve worked so hard, every hour God gave man, and it was all so’s my bairns could have a better life than mine. I was going to let her go to the university; I should have told her but I’d always thought of the bakery for her . . . money for Patrick to get him through but the bakery for Margaret. A good job, independence. I had a chance, years ago, to get really big and I turned it down because I was scared, and I didn’t have much schooling but Margaret could have done it. She’s got the education. She’ll not be pressured into marriage, I thought, not throw herself away. Marriage for me hasn’t been easy, Father; my own fault probably, but I wanted better for my lassie.’

  ‘What makes you think George isn’t right for Margaret?’

  She looked at him. What could he possibly know of the intimate and, to her, degrading side of marriage? ‘She’s just turned seventeen, Father. Marriage to her is what she sees on the Saturday pictures, lovely music, roses. It’s not like that. It’s being up night after night with fretting weans and walking the floor with them at all hours so your man can get some sleep, and working till your half dead on your feet to pay the rent and put food in their mouths.’

  ‘Loving George and being loved by him will let her hear the music, Kate. At least enough of the time to make it worthwhile.’

  Oh to have the courage to shout out, ‘Sanctimonious twaddle.’ Was that what he saw when he walked around the village, people with nothing who thought it all worthwhile because of love? If he wasn’t a priest she would say he saw too many Saturday matinées himself.

  ‘And there are the children,’ he went on, ‘they make it worthwhile.’

  Her face softened. ‘Enough of the time to make it worthwhile, Father.’

  ‘You’ll let Margaret know that she’s welcome?’

  ‘Aye, but how I wish I could understand where I went wrong.’

  Briskly she walked back through the village. She felt a little better after her chat with Father Brady. At least he was more responsive than her mother or that pheasant she had talked to all those years ago in the cottage garden. I’ve failed with my daughter but there are my sons. Liam will have the bakery when he leaves the school, and there’s Patrick. How many women would he comfort in the years ahead? It was a glorious vision. He must not leave the university.

  He passed his examinations, not well but he passed, and he came home for the long summer holidays. Summer 1940.

  Night after night they sat together with the blackout curtains stretched across the Toll House windows and prayed for the people in London and the south of England. One night a bomb fell on the Main Street, the only bomb ever to hit Auchenbeath.

  They had heard the planes flying low overhead, that horrible, low humming noise. Were they friends, were they enemies?

  ‘It’s the Luftwaffe,’ called Liam excitedly, ‘I wish I could see them. Let me go out, Dad.’

  Patrick grabbed his brother who was heading for the door. ‘No, you fool, that one sounds too low.’

  ‘They’ll not bomb Auchenbeath,’ said Liam struggling fiercely in his brother’s surprisingly strong grip. ‘They’re away to bomb the bridges on the For
th and the Clyde.’

  And then he stayed, paralysed in his brother’s arms as there came that frightening whistle, heard too often over London that awful summer but never before over Auchenbeath. There was a loud dull thump and the house shook and ornaments, including Mary Kate’s wally dug, Kate’s greatest treasure, were thrown from the mantelpiece and shattered on the hearth below.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ prayed Charlie, ‘we’ve been hit. Put out that lamp, Patrick, I’m away to open the door.’

  ‘I’ll get our gas masks,’ said Liam excitedly. ‘Wait, Daddy.’

  ‘No,’ screamed Kate, ‘Patrick, stay here. You too, Liam.’

  She grabbed her younger son and held him back forcibly while Charlie and Patrick ran out onto the Main Street. The night was alight with the flames from a fire and there were already people running from all over the village towards it. Liam pulled himself from her arms and she hurried after him into the night. About halfway down the street flames were shooting into the sky which was now empty.

  ‘It’s the Co-op, Dad,’ said Liam, who had caught up with his father and brother.

  Patrick was laughing, half through hysteria and relief and half through genuine mirth. ‘No, Liam, Jerry did us a favour. He dropped his bomb on the local eyesore.’

  And so he had. A bomber limping home after one of the nightly raids on London had shed the remains of his cargo as he headed for the sea and Germany and it had hit the ghastly brick structure which some well-meaning town council had erected to fill what they saw as the pressing personal needs of the occasional lorry driver who visited Auchenbeath on his way up or down the Great North Road.

  Kate stood silently and watched the flames destroy the little building but it was not the remains of the public lavatory she saw but the pit at Auchenbeath all those years ago when she had been looking for the doctor. The voices of the Civil Defence unit and the wardens as they scurried around were the voices of women waiting for their men, their husbands, their sons. She forced herself back to 1940.

  ‘Come on, Liam,’ she pulled at her younger son’s resisting arm. ‘We can do nothing here and no one has been hurt, thank God.’

  ‘No, I want to watch. I’ve never seen a fire. We’ve been bombed, Patrick. Will we be on the wireless like London and all they places?’

  ‘Sweet Jesus,’ groaned Patrick. ‘Auchenbeath and London. We shouldn’t say them in the same breath.’

  Auchenbeath got its mention, at least in the local press, but it was a very small item since that night had been one of the worst nights of the summer for Britain. The skies above the gallant little island nation had been crossed and recrossed by the enemy in their attempt to totally destroy the capital, and by those immortal little British Spitfires which had sent the survivors back across the sea dropping their unused bombs anywhere as they desperately sought their own safety.

  For the rest of the long university break, Patrick spent many of his free hours in the little chapel. His mother was not so delighted as she thought she would have been.

  ‘He wants to join up, Charlie. He’s got chums in Clydebank and Edinburgh and some of the laddies have already left and joined the air force. Help me talk him into staying at the university,’ begged Kate.

  ‘We fought so that they wouldn’t have to’. Charlie was staring at pictures only he could see in the fireplace where a small fire burned to combat the late evening chill, ‘And, my God, what was it for? Never again, we said. Yer brothers, most of my friends. Our bairns’ll be safe, we said; we’ve saved the world for them, we said.’ He looked up at her. ‘I dinnae want my laddie in the war, Kate, but he’ll maybe have no choice if he waits.’

  Kate was desperate. ‘Patrick’s precious air force has saved us. That’s what the papers are saying. The German air force is gone, useless; the war’ll end now and he should stay and finish his education so’s he can help the way he’s best fitted for when the laddies get back.’

  Charlie looked at her for a full minute. ‘It’s not over, Kate. Face reality. It’s just started.’

  And so it seemed.

  The Battle of Britain went on into September as Germany desperately tried to crush her cocky little enemy. Seven hundred British pilots and crews died, but in death they were victorious. Patrick, still torn by conflicting emotions, returned to Edinburgh and his studies.

  ‘They’re bound to call me up this term, Mam. Maybe I should enlist in the air force. I should have been up there this summer.’

  ‘They were near all killed, Patrick. God has other plans for you. Accept his will,’ Kate reasoned despairingly.

  Patrick put his arms round her in an unfamiliar, consoling gesture. ‘I won’t die if I’m meant to be a priest, Mam.’ With that Kate had to be content.

  The war not only went on; it escalated. Kate hired a woman to drive the van. Bessie had driven a field ambulance in the First War and had never touched a vehicle since.

  ‘I tried for this one, Mrs Inglis, and if it gets much worse, and it will, and they change their minds, I’ll go. Too old, they said; why, I could drive this van right up the Miller’s Burn and not spill a pie.’

  ‘Cows don’t buy pies,’ said Kate drily. ‘If you can keep the van on the main road between here and Thornhill I’ll be pleased enough.’

  With petrol rationing, Charlie, and Liam when he wasn’t at school, found themselves two-wheeled transportation. Kate put the big van in storage and pies were delivered locally on bikes, but sales and profits fell drastically.

  Molly died in the spring of 1941 and Bridie, who had found herself, through Colm’s foresight, the legal tenant of their council house, decided to stay to make a home for her brother for when the war ended.

  ‘I get money from the army as his dependent, Kate,’ she said when Kate tried to persuade her to do something else with her life. ‘I’ll be here to help him when he gets back if he needs me. We’ll grow old together.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, Bridie.’ Kate was angry. ‘You’re not forty yet; you could marry, have children.’

  ‘I’m going to sit out the war doing nothing. You should try it, Kate. Leisure’s a grand thing.’

  But Kate couldn’t sit, especially after Deirdre’s two boys were lost in the summer of 1941. She was often on the bus between Auchenbeath and Thornhill. Deirdre, who had seemed so jaunty just a year ago, had shrivelled up like an old plum in just a few days, and Kate sat and talked to her or cleaned her house around her, or stood in Deirdre’s kitchen and cooked and talked and waited for Deirdre to answer her, to say anything.

  ‘I don’t need to go to school, Auntie Kate,’ Alice, Deirdre’s oldest girl, said resentfully, ‘I can stay at home and look after Mam. The doctor says it’ll just take time.’

  ‘Your mother likes you to go to school, don’t you, Deirdre love?’ said Kate to the silent form in the chair, but Deirdre sat, rocking tirelessly, pressing invisible babies to her empty breasts.

  ‘I’ll need to go if I’m to catch the last bus, Alice. I’ll be back on Saturday.’ At the door she turned, ‘Talk to your dad about that chair. He should maybe burn it or put it in an outhouse till your mam gets better.’

  She walked the mile to the main road alone. Before, when Kate and Charlie and their children had visited, one or more of Deirdre’s lively children had skipped along beside their auntie who always brought chocolate or new clothes, but now they would not leave Deirdre even to walk through the wood with her.

  Who’d stay with me if my mind went? It was a tired and dispirited Kate who allowed herself a little self pity. Liam wouldn’t notice I was ill unless I fell in the engine he was tinkering with. Margaret, dear God, Margaret. Margaret who had confounded the gossips of Auchenbeath by not producing a child in her first few months of marriage. Here she was now, months later, and still no word of a child. Not that Kate was in a hurry to become a grandmother. She was still not reconciled to her daughter although Charlie and Liam had both gone to see Margaret in war-torn Glasgow. Kate had been in a state all the time they were
gone. What if a bomb should drop on them – but she had to have first-hand news of her daughter; she had to know that Margaret’s letters were not a sham and that her child was indeed happy in her marriage.

  George, it seemed, had something called asthma, and had failed his physical.

  ‘God knows what they’re paying in the shipyards, Kate, but they’re living like kings,’ was Charlie’s awed announcement.

  Where was George’s money coming from? One more worry. And Patrick, never robust and lately more emaciated than ever. She had never thought of him as pretty but the thinness accentuated his dark eyes and his face was almost ethereal in its beauty.

  ‘There’s more eating that laddie than guilt about not being in the war,’ Charlie had said once and Kate, whose innate honesty compelled her to agree with him, had taken refuge in anger again.

  ‘All of a sudden you know everything about Patrick. You paid little heed to him for years and now you can see inside his head.’

  ‘When did you ever let me pay attention to him? Once or twice on the cart with his daddy, but he was aye Mammy’s precious bairn, wasn’t he, Mammy’s precious boy that she was going to make a priest.’

  Kate reeled back from the unexpected attack. ‘I never forced him. You can’t say that. You cannae force a vocation, Charlie.’

  ‘You damn well tried.’

  ‘I never did. I wouldn’t even let myself pray for such a blessing on this house.’

  They stared at one another and then turned away, silent. Too much had been said already but more guilt had been added to Kate’s burden. Something was bothering Patrick. Was he in doubt about his vocation? Was he unhappy at the university? Surely he had been glad to go, to be the first person ever in the Kennedy or Inglis households to remain in full-time education. She turned to her sure comfort. I’m right, am I not, Mam? The laddie should have the benefit of a grand education and then, if he wants to be a priest at the end of it, after meeting all the folks from all parts, will he not be a better shepherd to his flock? They’re no all unlettered folk like us in the Catholic Church.