Charlie came into the bakery one morning with a smile on his face that made her remember the bold little Charlie with the tight dark curls and the naughty blue eyes; the dear, sweet, funny Charlie she was finding again after twenty years. But this was not what she had expected.
‘Good morning, Grannie,’ he said and, putting his arms around her, he whirled her into a mad dance until he started to cough and she had to help him into a chair.
‘Grannie?’ she asked, when the coughing had subsided.
He nodded. ‘Aye. You’ll go to Glasgow now, lassie? Did ye not hear the phone? George, from the hospital. A wee lassie, as bonnie as her grannie.’
Kate knelt on the floor beside his chair and first a wave of the purest joy swept every fibre of her being, to be followed by the utmost misery. Her new joy was too tenuous, too tender a flower to withstand this onslaught.
‘A bairn, Charlie, and she didn’t want her mammy.’ And she burst into tears.
Charlie patted her heaving back. ‘You’re the first one to know, lassie. I’m to tell George’s folks when I’m down the village. It’s to be Elizabeth after the princess. Is that not a bonny name?’
‘Elizabeth.’ Kate pulled herself together and stood up. ‘Aye, Charlie, a bonny name. We’ll see if she’s bonny too when her mammy brings her down to see us.’
‘Och, lassie, lassie. A new baby cannae travel and there’s a war on. It’s plain she wants you, or George wouldnae have phoned. Like enough, she thought a baby would be a lovely surprise and you two could make up.’
It was as if she had not heard the end of his conversation. ‘Auchenbeath is safer than Glasgow. She should have been here, or I should have been there, Charlie. Why didn’t she tell me? Nine months, nine whole months; I could have got her room ready for a lying-in or she could hae had our room; it’s bigger.’ She was quiet for a time, her memory showing her the magical moments of long ago, that first cold, frosty morning when all the fears of childbirth had abated and she had for the first time exulted. ‘Waiting for your first bairn is the most wonderful, precious time in your whole life, Charlie. I cannot describe it so’s a man would understand, but the time I was expecting Patrick all I thought about was how I missed my mam more and more every day; how I wanted to share . . . the hopes, the fears, the countless wee joys. To the end of my life I’ll know that my daughter didn’t need me, didn’t even want me.’
‘It wasn’t like that at all, Kate’. Charlie tried desperately to comfort her. ‘Yer gettin’ yersel’ worked up for nothing. You’ve no spoke in years. No doubt she’s been thinkin’, “Wait till Mammy hears about the baby; she’ll be up like a shot, if she has to push the old bus.” ’
‘And so I would, Charlie Inglis. I’d have been up like a shot, and I’d have pushed Tom’s old bus through the hills if I’d had to.’ She stood up and wiped away the tears and the momentary weakness. ‘You’d better get yourself some tea if you’re away on your run and I’ll look at the pies. I cannae trust Mrs Thomson to get them baked just right.’
She returned to the bakery where the women were listening to the wireless. She would have to let two of them go, there just weren’t the orders these days. It never occurred to her to tell them that she was a grandmother. ‘If you have nothing to do,’ she said, ‘I suggest you find some machinery to clean and a good scrubbing would certainly improve your table, Mrs Flett.’
The workers had noticed the new tenderer Kate who had blown in with the New Year. ‘She’s blown out again,’ said Mrs Thomson. Quietly, they invented work for themselves until the pies came from the ovens and were set out ready to be wrapped with the waxed paper imprinted with the design of a coach and horses and the words, ‘Toll House Bakery’. Kate looked at the wrapping but saw the old paper that had said Kate Inglis Bakeries and wondered again if she had done the right thing by refusing to expand and, indeed, by selling her original recipe to Mr McDonald. ‘He filled it full of preservatives, God rest his soul,’ she said to herself. ‘In the end, all he was selling was my name.’
She had seen the name in the shops in the village. Why they chose to buy synthetic bread when the real thing was baked half a mile up the road was more than Kate could understand.
‘Nothin’ so queer as folk,’ Charlie had said when she had told him, and looking now at her pies cooling on the table she had to agree.
‘The bike’s getting a bit much for you,’ she suggested to Charlie as he got ready to follow Miss Peden as she went off with the van. Nothing, nothing must harm him now. ‘We’ll maybe have to lay old Bessie off and let you have the van back.’
‘Away, woman, I’m happier with the bike, especially in weather like this. We’ll think again next winter. Forbye, if ye let Bessie go, she’ll away and join up and then where would Britain be – more danger on our own side.’
Had he always been able to make her laugh? She needed to laugh in the days that followed, days of worrying and fretting over Liam and Patrick, but now, for the first time, mainly over her daughter. The bakery was so quiet that her absence would hardly have been missed had she gone to Glasgow as she desperately wanted to do. Several times she made up her mind to telephone Margaret but could not bring herself to pick up the receiver. Mam, Mam, help me do the right thing. I can’t condone that she did a wrong thing, running away with George and no getting married in the church, but I can understand now and forgive. I want to forgive and maybe even be forgiven. Oh, if there had just been a bit more time, more time for me to get used to this . . . Oh, Mam, this quiet new joy and peace. Has my lassie always had it? The peace as well as the joy? The longer Kate delayed, the more impossible it became. She should ring and ask me. She doesn’t even need to say she’s sorry she ran away. She should just say, Mammy, will you come up to see my wee girl?
Eventually, just before Christmas – did everything awful happen at Christmas time, the time of peace and joy? – Margaret phoned. Kate did not even recognize her voice, so changed was it by years of living among soft west coast accents.
‘I’m sorry, Mam, there’s been an accident.’ Stunned, Kate listened but there was absolute silence on the line. She shook the receiver as if that would help. ‘It’s Liam,’ began the voice again. ‘Oh God, Mam, he’s dead,’ and then Margaret’s control snapped and she broke down crying and George had to finish the phone call.
Liam, it seemed, had built himself a motorcycle and had ridden it everywhere and in all weathers. He had skidded in the slush and slid right under the wheels of an army transport lorry.
With her eyes on Charlie who was lying white and speechless in his chair, Kate managed to tell her son-in-law that she and Charlie would get the first available bus or train to Glasgow. Then she spoke to the operator again and asked to be connected to Dr Wyllie.
‘Aye, I thought you would need him, Mrs Inglis,’ said the girl on the exchange, thereby confirming Kate’s suspicions that she listened to almost every conversation, but she was too shocked herself to complain. What did it matter? What did anything matter?
‘I can’t come up, Margaret.’ She phoned again herself. ‘I can’t leave your father. No, the doctor says it’s just a wee shock but I can’t leave him even to bring . . . Liam back. Can you leave your work, you and George? I’ll arrange everything here.’
They came by train, bringing the body of Kate’s youngest child with them. Unable to stay in the damp, cold waiting room, Kate walked the length of the platform and waited. No matter how hard she tried, she could not picture the boy’s face in her mind. He’s dead, Mam. She sought refuge and comfort from the beloved ghost. My baby’s dead and I didnae know him. I cannae even mind what he looked like. I see a picture and I don’t recognize it. And Charlie? My God, Mam. Charlie’s in what they story writers cry flat despair. He’s no eating, no sleeping, lying there like some zombie. Oh, Mam, what’ll I do if he dies too? Never once in our life together have I said I love you, Charlie, and I do; even with this pleasure that’s come to me so late, I’ve never actually said the words.
He’s beginnin’ to look up and smile the way Dad did whenever you came in the room. So many years of eating and sleeping together and not being together, Mam. Oh, dear God, the awful waste there’s been and now we’ve found something and I don’t want to lose it afore I really have it. I’m that frightened for Charlie I cannot think on my bairn. Oh, don’t let me make it all wrong again.
The train was pulling in and just in time for Kate to regain the iron control of herself that she had almost lost. A young woman stepped down on to the platform. Surely Auchenbeath had never bred such a figure of elegance; black fur coat, neat little feathered hat, shoes that looked like they had been cast on the dainty feet that wore them, white, white face and a very red luscious mouth.
For a long moment the women looked at each other while the young man behind Margaret seemed to hang suspended from the train, almost afraid to step down, and then Margaret stepped forward and hugged her mother; the breach was healed. In a reversal of roles she tried to console her mother.
‘I’m so sorry, Mother, so sorry,’ she repeated as if she was sorry for not only the death of her brother. ‘It was so fast he couldn’t have felt a thing.’
With her arms still protectively around Kate, she looked along the platform for the undertaker’s men and signalled to them. ‘We phoned in case you’d not been able, Mam, but I’d forgotten how strong you are, how efficient,’ she finished, almost bitterly.
The coffin was closed.
‘I’d like to have seen him,’ were the first words Kate spoke to her daughter. ‘I hoped he was peaceful like his grandfather.’
‘I’ve got the taxi for us, Mrs Inglis.’
Kate looked at her nervous son-in-law for a long moment. ‘George,’ was all she said, but it was enough.
She was disappointed later when she had time to wish they had brought baby Elizabeth with them. A bairn, especially Margaret’s, might have been good for Charlie. As it was, he struggled up in the bed and tears of joy washed his face.
‘And you a mammy,’ he murmured as quite naturally they embraced. Charlie had not held his daughter in his arms since she was six years old.
‘You’re spoiling that little madam,’ Kate had said and although it had not been said with any real malice he had set the little girl down from his knees.
‘Is Patrick coming?’ Margaret asked her mother as they sat around the table later.
‘Compassionate leave,’ said Kate calmly. Perhaps if she’d seen the boy’s face this whole nightmare would be more real. It was as if it was happening to someone else and she was merely observing.
‘I’ve closed the bakery the day of the funeral. I told the men, Wednesday; that should give Patrick time to get here,’ continued Kate and did not realize how much she had shocked her daughter.
‘You’re never baking tomorrow?’
‘There’s a war on, Margaret. My bakers have men and boys at the front; they need the money . . . and the occupation. I’m sorry your room’s as you left it. If I’d had time . . . I’ll say goodnight to your father for you, will I?’
But Margaret had already spent a long time with Charlie. ‘I’ll stay a wee while and help you nurse him, Mam, if you’d like, and then I must get back to Elizabeth. George’s sister is her nanny, works out grand. I’ve brought you some photographs. They’re doing a sort of colour wash now; really lovely effect. You can see her big blue eyes, but she’s fair like her daddy.’ She put a restraining hand on Kate who was beginning to clear the table. ‘We’ll do that, if you want to get off to bed.’
And Kate, who suddenly found that she could not bear to see her daughter go to her old childhood bedroom with this nervous man who was her husband, was only too pleased to leave the dirty dishes on a table for her daughter to wash.
Margaret had set a coloured photograph of baby Elizabeth on the table beside Charlie’s side of the bed. Kate lifted it up and looked at it. A bonny baby. Flesh of your flesh, she told herself, and tried to feel something.
Patrick was on the doorstep in the morning when she opened the bakery.
‘I got in about three, Mam, and don’t tell me I should have come straight home. I’ll appreciate my lovely warm bed better tonight. How are you coping, Mam? Are you all right?’
Now I am, she thought exultantly. With my son beside me I can cope with anything.
‘Aye, love,’ she said softly. ‘Go see your dad; he’s brighter I think since Margaret came but he took it awfully hard.’
Margaret was already at Charlie’s side and the brother and sister sat with him for hours. Kate insisted that she take in a breakfast tray.
‘I could have got that, Mam,’ said Patrick and Margaret together. They were united in their love for their father and their sorrow for their young brother and the blow his death had dealt Charlie and it seemed to Kate that they viewed her with something like suspicion. Did they think she felt no grief? Would they have loved her better if she had fallen apart so that someone else would, for once, have had to carry on the load of this family? My God, how could they not know that she wanted to pull her hair out and scream and scream and fight with this God she kept trying to find but who kept taking from her those whom she loved? And she did love Liam. Had loved him. Love was more than kissing and hugging and spending every minute listening to your children; it was toiling in the dark hours of the night when you were dead tired and hungry and everyone else was asleep, just so that they could indeed sleep soundly, accepting that there would be a hot meal on the table in the morning, clean clothes in the wardrobe and shoes that would happily keep out rain or snow on shoe trees in the hall.
Kate returned to the bakery.
‘Can you not just tell us what to do the day, Mrs Inglis?’ suggested Mrs Thomson. ‘Folk’ll not mind if it’s not so perfect.’
‘I’ll mind, Mrs Thomson, but thank you. My family are all here to help. If you get the deliveries ready, I’ll start the food for the wake. All Liam’s friends from school are coming.’
‘Always sad that it’s a funeral that fills the house.’ Mrs Thomson had the last word.
All day Kate stayed in the bakery and Margaret and Patrick between them prepared the meals and looked after Charlie. Patrick brought soup into his mother and insisted that she drink it.
‘You do too much, Mam, you always have. Auchenbeath could have made its own bread tomorrow.’
‘They’d have bought Kate Inglis Bakeries at the Co-op. I had to keep going, lad. Margaret can’t see it, and God knows it isn’t the money. Isn’t the amount in the bank already indecent? I’m responsible for a lot of people. They’ll have a paid holiday tomorrow, but the day after they’ll have to run to catch up. I’ve never let a customer down yet, Patrick, not since afore you were born and that’s something worth hanging on to.’
Patrick refilled the soup bowl and put it down before her with a slice of her own thick bread liberally spread with butter. She scarcely noticed the appalling waste. ‘Come on, Mam, eat up, and then I think a wee rest would be a good idea.’
‘Take to my bed afore bedtime?’ Kate laughed with something approaching real laughter. ‘Wouldn’t your poor father get the shock of his life if I crept in aside him?’
They sat quietly for a moment while Kate finished the bread. ‘That was delicious, Patrick Inglis, but I could have buttered a whole loaf with that amount of butter.’
‘It was good for you.’
‘And what about you? There’s so much I feel I don’t know about you, Patrick.’ For a moment she thought she saw a dark shadow pass across the young face but dismissed it as a trick of the firelight on his stubble. He hadn’t shaved. Dear God, her son was a man who needed to shave. ‘Here’s you all grown up and we never seem to have had time to sit down and talk, and you’re here now but it’s illness and death that’s brought you. Did I neglect Liam, Patrick? Was I a bad mother to the three of you? I was always here where you could find me if you needed me, wasn’t I?’ Desperately she sought assurance.
‘I can’t remember y
ou ever sitting down, Mam. You must have, to nurse Margaret and Liam, but you seemed to be baking or washing or ironing. Weren’t the sleeve creases on our shirts the envy of every other bairn in Auchenbeath?’ He stood up and gently pulled her to her feet. ‘Enough for now, you need to rest. I’ll pray by Liam for a while and then we should have an early night.’
‘Don’t stay too long. You’ve spent over much time on your knees lately by the look of you.’ She reached up and touched his face. He bore her no ill will; perhaps Liam had not either. She could find peace. ‘God bless you, Patrick.’
When she had gone, he looked around the bakery at the carefully covered pies and tarts laid out on the tables, at the best cups and saucers and plates taken down from the big store press and washed again before being used.
‘God have mercy on me, a sinner,’ he said and went quietly to kneel by the coffin of his young brother.
This death was not a punishment; he believed that. If he thought God was a vengeful God who wanted to punish him for his human weakness he could not go on. As he knelt he allowed the memories to return. He gave himself up to them as part of his punishment. Had he not avoided them too long? Days when he should have been studying when he could not for thinking of Fiona – Fiona with her warm smile, her childish, pure laughter. Walks beside her on the Pentland Hills when it had been enough to listen to her attractive voice as she ventured opinions on everything under the sun. Evenings in the coffee bars, part of the group around her. What was it she had? Not beauty; there were many more attractive girls in his classes; not intelligence; even he could tell that sometimes her opinions were naïve. She was good to be with. Simple as that. She made people feel happy; with Fiona there was laughter. And that one night of madness, that one time only, dear God, there had been more. John Christie, one of their Great Books Society friends had joined up and been killed within weeks.
A Pinch of Salt Page 21