A Pinch of Salt

by Eileen Ramsay

  Liam got fed up with the strained atmosphere and took himself off, without a word, to Margaret in Glasgow.

  They didn’t even know he was gone until one night the telephone rang. Charlie answered it for he knew that at night the caller was usually Margaret. He listened for a while and then held the receiver out to Kate. ‘Do ye no want to speak to her? Here’s a grand chance. She’s got our Liam with her. He says he’s near old enough to leave the school so he’s left. Speak to her.’

  Kate sat clutching at the folds of her dress around her stomach. Her mouth was dry. At last she managed. ‘Liam? Is he all right?’

  ‘Yer mam’s had a bit of a scare, Margaret. If you keep the laddie till I get over wanting to blister his backside for the shock he’s given her . . .’

  ‘Could you not have spoke to her, Kate?’ he asked sadly when he replaced the receiver.

  She looked at him with painfilled eyes. ‘I wanted to, Charlie, as God’s my witness, but the words wouldn’t come. I couldnae lift myself from the chair.’

  Kate the all-powerful, the invincible, admitting to weakness. Charlie was dismayed. ‘Let’s put you to yer bed and I’ll get the doctor.’

  At this sign of devotion Kate smiled. How afraid Charlie still was of the telephone. He could be persuaded to answer it and he had forced himself to chat on it so that he could have conversations with his absent son and especially his daughter, but the initial act, the actual asking at the exchange for a number, that was still an almost insurmountable challenge.

  ‘I’m fine now and the books have to be done. You listen to yer wireless and later we’ll have a wee cup of tea. You can tell me what you think of this eggless sponge I’m trying.’

  He sat down in his usual chair by the fire but made no move to turn on his wireless. He was staring into the fire. Was he trying to conjure up the faces of his absent children? Did the pictures refuse to come as they sometimes denied themselves to her? Kate tried to shake off the mighty feeling of foreboding.

  ‘It’s you and me by ourselves again, Charlie, at least for a while. The house feels empty and quiet.’

  He looked up at her and smiled a gentle smile; a smile without the growing warmth that she had used to fear. He was fond of her, she knew, but it was a long time since he had approached her in bed. She had failed there too. Was there to be no end to her failures? Her daughter had run away and although she wrote letters and occasionally telephoned when she knew her mother would be up to her elbows in flour and therefore unable to speak to her, she had never returned to Auchenbeath. No doubt she feared the reception from her mother. And Liam had run off to his sister without even a note or a word of explanation. Liam, her baby, her direct link with her dead father. She had made the wrong decisions there too. Could mothers ever get it right? Why was bringing up children so complicated? Surely the hardest part should have been over with the actual giving of birth?

  Sighing, Kate went to the table and sat down at her books. The profits were minimal but still there was more money in the bank in the Main Street than she had ever dreamed of when she was Liam’s age. She could close the bakery and never bake another pie and, oh, that sounded sweet – no baking, no deliveries, no tradesmen, no slow payments, no decisions – no challenge.

  Stop feeling so sorry for yourself, Kate Kennedy. You have a business to run, people to keep employed, that silly old ambulance driver for one. The army would be desperate afore they hired her. Liam can have a wee holiday in Clydebank; that’ll cure him of thinking a bombing’s a grand time, and Patrick. Dear Blessed Virgin, I never pressured the laddie into thinking he wanted to be a priest, did I? Did I ever once say the words, ‘Patrick, how happy I would be if you were to be a priest?’ Mam, have you ever heard me say that to him? I wanted it, dear God how I wanted it, but only if God chose him. Oh, Mam, I’ve made a right mess of everything and I cannae tell how. What did I do that was wrong?

  The question was still with her as she went to bed and as she lay sleepless beside Charlie, but the thin steel inside that had been steadily forming over the years refused to break, nor even to bend.

  I’ll away up to see Patrick and we’ll have a real talk, and Liam will come back and I’ll find time for him too. After all, the bakery’s not near so busy, and Margaret . . . I’ll ask her and her . . . husband to bring him home and stop for a few days. It’ll be good for them to get out of Glasgow, and I’ll keep the business going for Liam even if I have to do both the baking and the delivering. I can only do my best and if that’s not good enough I can’t help it. And Charlie; I’ve failed with him too. Maybe there’s a chance to do something about that. It cannot be that awful. Margaret likes it well enough. Maybe if I’d known what to expect when we were first wed and if Charlie had been, well, if he’d been patient and gentle. There’s something missing in me that seems to be in every other woman including my own daughter. She turned to her sleeping husband, very gently, so as not to wake him. You’re no Clark Gable, Charlie, but maybe, if I hadnae been so frightened of the whole thing, we’d have been happier. Could we talk, do you think, or would you brand me a wicked woman at my age to be thinkin’ on such things?

  The next morning, Kate rose refreshed even after so few hours sleep. ‘I’ve decided to go to Edinburgh, Charlie,’ she said as she put his breakfast on the table in front of him. ‘Eat up that nice fresh egg. I doubt the king and queen are getting eggs like that.’

  ‘I doubt they’re worried about eggs. Did our Deirdre not always say the nobs ate kippers?’ Charlie neatly severed the top of his egg. ‘You can still get a kipper. What about Deirdre if ye go tae Edinburgh?’

  ‘Bridie can go. The bairns like their Auntie Bridie.’ She sat down across from him and played with her toast. ‘I’m going to spend a night in a hotel, Charlie, for I’ll never get to Edinburgh and back the one day. Do you want to come?’

  ‘Army barracks was hotel enough for me, Katie. I’d like fine to see the laddie but I’ll bide here. Forbye, Liam might take it into his head to honour us with his presence.’

  ‘And pigs might fly. I’d better find out about hotels. I’ll ring Patrick to ask him.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, did you hear that?’ Charlie interrupted her.

  ‘I hate the wireless these days, Charlie. You know I—’

  ‘Shut up, for God’s sake, woman. The Japs have destroyed the American fleet at some place in the Pacific – Hawaii – I think . . . some kind of precious stone, he said.’

  Pearl Harbor, Kate heard, what a really pretty name.

  18

  SHE HAD BEEN expecting the telephone call but yet, when it came, she was shocked.

  ‘I’m doing the right thing, Mam,’ said Patrick. ‘You must believe and have faith in me.’

  ‘I’m trying, Patrick,’ Kate wept into the receiver, ‘I was coming up to tell you to follow your conscience, not to do things for me, but for yourself.’

  ‘I hope I’m doing them for God, Mam. I’ve had a bad time this year, a lot of thinking to do.’ He stopped and she waited for him to elucidate further but after a few minutes he went on. ‘But I’m fine now and so at rest, you can’t believe. I’ll get over this, Mam; the Americans will come in after this terrible bombing and we’ll crush Germany and the Japs. I’ve talked to the university authorities – there’s no problem about continuing where I leave off – please God, I’ll be a better man for having gone. I would probably have been called up anyway and, this way, enlisting off my own bat, I’ve got into the air force.’ He tried to sound happy and excited but she could feel that he was saying what he hoped she would want him to say. ‘You know I’ve always been fascinated by planes, and won’t our Liam be pleased to have a big brother one of “the boys in blue”?’

  When the connection was finally severed and she could hear what she assumed was the air of England humming along the wires she wearily lowered herself into a chair and leaned towards the fire for greater warmth. The bakery was always warm but somehow she felt chilled, so cold and so old. Alre
ady she felt as if he were a million miles from her. Well, no use sitting here all day moping and feeling sorry for yourself. That wouldn’t change his decision; he was gone and she would have to make the best of it. It would make him a better man. Oh, Patrick, love, weren’t you as good as they already come? No, those were the sentiments of a doting mother. Come on, Kate, you have bread and pies to bake.

  ‘He’s joined the air force, Charlie,’ she said baldly as Charlie emerged from the bathroom and sat down at the table for his breakfast.

  ‘I heard the phone.’

  ‘We’ll just think about having everything wonderful for him coming back. And Liam and Margaret too,’ she added hastily. They were all her children and she loved them. Would she not be forgiven for thinking her firstborn a little special? Didn’t every mother think the same? ‘Liam’s room could do with a bit of paint, a man’s colour; high time we painted over the ducks and rabbits. We should have done it long since. You can see Sam the painter on your deliveries this morning and fix a time. Handy, with the laddie away for a few days.’

  He said nothing for a while but stirred and stirred his porridge as if it was still cooking on the fire. ‘I canna see his face,’ he said and she knew he was thinking of Patrick, not Liam. ‘Tell me why that is. I’m thinking and thinking and trying to see his face; he was only here a few weeks ago, and in my heart I can see a wee laddie, sitting up wi’ me on the cart and laughing. I cannae see the man at all. He loved that old pony.’

  ‘Aye, he did. There’s folk waiting for pies, Charlie. I have great faith in America. It’s a rich country and with them in now . . .’

  ‘Not afore time,’ said Charlie bitterly into his porridge.

  ‘Well, they’re in now and it’ll soon be over. I’ve a slice left of that wheat bread you like. It’s a bit stale but if I toast it, you’ll never notice.’

  The house seemed even quieter in the days that followed, the days of waiting for Patrick’s first letter. Kate knew that was a silly fancy and dismissing it from her mind, made more of an effort to talk to Charlie, to fill the great gaps made by Liam’s absence. That Charlie missed the boy more than she did was obvious. She had always been busy but when Charlie was home from his rounds there had been Liam with his football scores and his cars, cars, cars.

  ‘Maybe Margaret will bring him home for Christmas, Charlie, and then we could discuss leaving school. There isn’t a job for him here but we could let him have a bit of pocket money and old Tom might take him at the garage as an apprentice or something.’

  The decision taken so easily, in the depths of the night, to try to salvage – no there was nothing to salvage – to create a relationship with her husband, was not quite so simple to handle in the light of day. Charlie was not the same man he had been in the early days of the marriage. It was not that he had callously dismissed her overtures, he simply did not recognize them. His mind was full of Liam who refused to return. George had got him a full-time job in a garage and he laughed at Kate’s idea of a little pocket money for helping old Tom with his broken-down bus and his unreliable taxi.

  ‘I’m making a fortune, Mam,’ he confessed into the phone, ‘and Margaret and George are great to me. You should come up and see their place. They’ve got a cocktail cabinet, but George won’t let me have any so don’t get your dander up, and there’s gold taps in the bath that’s shaped like fish, the taps I mean, and George is getting Margaret a fur coat for Christmas. I cannae come for Hogmanay; I’m working.’

  ‘You’re going to Mass, aren’t you, Liam?’

  ‘Och, Mam, I’m too old for that stuff; if Margaret goes to Midnight Mass I’ll go with her. She went the Sunday after our Pat joined the air force and she says she means to get married again in the church one day, but my dad and George have never been to the kirk and they’re fine.’

  Kate swallowed hard. What to say? ‘They weren’t baptized in the Church, Liam.’

  ‘I’ll have to go, Mam. See you.’

  The telephone was indeed a mixed blessing. It could bring a distant loved one right into the living room but if the conversation got too hot to handle it was only too easy to hang up.

  ‘He’ll come home when he misses his mammy waiting on him hand and foot,’ said Charlie.

  ‘I cannae compete with gold-plated fish.’ She didn’t tell him about the fur coat. That sounded too much like a fallen woman. ‘How about everybody here for Hogmanay, Charlie? We’ll put all our coupons together and have a right feast and we’ll blow our petrol on bringing Deirdre and the family. She’s about ready for a wee outing. I’ll write to Dave and let him know when you can fetch them.’

  The party was a grand success. Kate had provided more than enough food, allowing her conscience to slip a little because it was New Year’s Eve and there was, after all, a war on. Offered extra eggs, bacon and butter, she happily paid out for these precious commodities. It would be a Hogmanay to remember. It was. For the first and last time in her life Kate Kennedy Inglis found herself entertaining well into the first hours of the New Year. A few hearty villagers stumbling around in the dark, enacting the age-old ritual of the First Foot that ‘no bloody Jerry is going to stop, Mrs Inglis’, arrived at her door and were welcomed in with 1943.

  ‘Don’t give them any more drink, Charlie,’ she ordered at four o’clock in the morning.

  ‘Lassie, lassie, there’s a war on. Is it not the first party we’ve ever been to in the dark? We’ll not know who they were the morn’s morn and they’ll never mind they were here.’

  At last, at last, the merry revellers left and Kate began to tidy up.

  ‘Leave that, Kate,’ said Charlie. ‘You’ve been grand, lassie. I know ye hate strangers in yer house.’

  Kate looked at him, the dim warm glow from the coals in the hearth showing all the grey the years had painted in his dark curls. ‘I didnae mind at all, Charlie Inglis. It took a war to bring my neighbours to my door for anything besides a loaf of bread.’

  It was easy, after that, and completely unexpected. Kate had forgotten her 1942 resolution and had not yet made any for 1943. When Charlie turned to her she rested for a moment against him as if at last her tired spirit knew where it should lie and then she kissed him, the first time in her life that she had ever done so.

  He held her for a second, without speaking, without breathing almost.

  ‘Oh, Katie, lass, my wee Katie,’ he whispered.

  Was it better for having been denied so long? Kate did not think. All she could do was feel and react, and abandon herself to the feelings that surged up out of the depths of her very being. She was a quivering mass of sensations that had to be satisfied. As dawn broke she whispered her husband’s name with tears streaming down her face and fell into an exhausted but satisfying sleep.

  ‘And a Happy New Year to you too, Mrs Inglis,’ was all Charlie said when at last they woke.

  Everything was different but at the same time nothing was changed. They ate, they slept, they worked, but at last they did it together. It was not that every night was a glorious night of passion; usually they were too tired to do anything but hold each other tenderly for a few minutes before sleeping, but even those few moments were fulfilling. When they did make love Kate gave herself with desires only to please and to be pleased and without any thought of distaste. Who that other woman, the harder, frightened one, was, she could not remember. She waited for the mornings to bathe and wept over the benison of hot water and the younger Kate who had missed so much.

  No point in trying to find out why, she told the ghost. Oh, Mam, you had this with my dad. I wish I’d had the joy and the . . . it’s the closeness, Mam. . . when life was so hard. At four o’clock in the morning with fretting bairns and an oven that won’t fire, you can feel so alone, Mam. But the hard parts are all over now.

  Poor Kate.

  Patrick was stationed in the south of England and he seemed to spend any free time he had in writing to his relatives. He said nothing at all about air force life, apart from
telling them that he loved the work and was very happy. He had met the Catholic chaplain and had told him of his dreams and desires.

  ‘He’s wonderful,’ he wrote, ‘and was in the air force long before the war started. A grand life, he says, but I still think that if God wants me for one of his priests my destiny will be a small village not unlike Auchenbeath. I miss the country and you both.’

  And so his letters continued throughout the war. Kate and Charlie heard second-hand about the courage and audacity of Britain’s armed forces but neither Patrick, nor Colm when he surprised everyone with a letter, said anything at all about what their own units were doing. Kate wondered if their reticence was misplaced. Did one worry more, imagine worse, when one was kept so unconsciously in the dark, for she never imagined for a moment that either man was being deliberately secretive? That Colm was overseas was readily apparent and it seemed that Patrick was to remain in England. Kate was pleased.

  Strangely, she worried more about Liam. Auchenbeath sometimes heard the planes of both sides flying over – it was a sound Kate was to hate for the rest of her life – but Glasgow was often a target and she waited for the news that she was almost sure had to come. She felt almost fatalistic about it; obviously she had been a bad mother to both Liam and Margaret, for they had both run away from her. Sitting night after night in a blacked-out room she felt that she wanted to change things, to go back and do things differently, to spend more time with her children, to love and be loved; at least to let them know that they were loved for they seemed to need to have what she felt was obvious put into words. Had she felt so unloved herself that she had been afraid or unable to love others openly?

  The next morning, however, as she helped prepare the day’s pies and worried about how she was possibly to keep these desperate women employed when she had fewer orders and more difficulty in getting ingredients, she remembered the early years in a cold, damp cottage, miles from anywhere, with a sick husband, a young baby, and less than ten shillings a week coming in to the house, and she straightened her aching back again. I did what had to be done, she told herself. I kept them from starving, and I kept a roof over their heads and clothes on their backs, and we all had to sacrifice a little to have that.