by Emma Fraser
‘Let’s get him onto the stretcher, lads,’ he said. ‘Go carefully. His legs are likely broken. The planks will help – but only a little.’
As they moved him, Hamish screamed again, then mercifully fell silent. They laid his unconscious body on the stretcher and set it on the back of the cart.
‘Take him to the Infirmary. As quickly as you can. Avoid the potholes. I’ll let the boss know what’s happened, once I find out what went wrong.’
‘Is he going to be all right?’ Margaret asked, grabbing Alasdair’s arm.
‘You need to leave, Miss,’ he replied curtly. His expression softened. ‘There’s no more any of us can do here. It’s up to the doctors at the hospital now.’ He turned back towards the men. ‘Right. Those who have nothing to say about what happened, back to work.’
As the cart rolled away she looked up. Her father was standing at his office window, staring down. Doing nothing. Just looking.
‘What in God’s name were you doing down there?’ her father barked when she returned to the office. Mr Ferguson, her father’s manager, was standing next to him. Why had neither of them come to help?
‘There was an accident. Didn’t you see?’ Her heart was still beating so fast she felt light-headed.
‘It’s a shipyard, Margaret. There’s always accidents. You had no business to be down there getting in the way. I asked you to stay in my office until I returned. Why can you never do as you’re told?’
Tears stung the back of her lids. The day had started with so much promise. When her father had suggested she come with him to the shipyard she’d been thrilled. It was the first time he’d ever invited her to go anywhere with him.
‘I brought you here, Margaret,’ her father continued, ‘so you can see what your sons will inherit one day, not to be showing your undergarments to the men. Look at the state of you!’
She shook her head impatiently. ‘I wasn’t in the way. I helped. They needed a bit of my petticoat to use as a bandage. They had nothing else.’ What did the state of her clothing matter when a man had been badly hurt? ‘What do you think will happen to him? Can we go to the hospital to find out?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Margaret. I don’t have time to go checking up on the men every time one of them gets injured.’
‘But he’s really hurt! Don’t you want to make sure he’s all right?’
‘Ferguson will let me know in the morning. Now let’s get you home before the men have anything more to talk about,’ her father said. ‘Really, Margaret. I only left you for a short while. All you had to do was wait for me.’
It hadn’t been a short while. It had been over two hours.
He picked up his hat, but before they could leave there was a sharp knock on the door and without waiting for an invitation to enter, Alasdair strode into the office. His arms and hands were still covered with Hamish’s blood, the front of his shirt splashed with crimson. Taller than her father by a few inches, and muscular without being stocky, his dark hair was longer than most men wore it and tousled as if he’d just climbed out of bed. Despite Alasdair’s dishevelled appearance and workman’s clothes that contrasted sharply with her father’s hand-made suit and crisp white shirt, the men shared the same undeniable air of authority. And, while Alasdair’s manner with Hamish had been gentle and kind, his eyes were now slate-grey cold, and his full mouth set in a grim line.
‘What are you doing in here, Morrison?’ Mr Ferguson said, with an anxious glance at Margaret’s father. ‘I’m sorry, sir. The men know they aren’t permitted to come up to the office.’
‘I wouldn’t have had to if you’d come down. The front scaffolding collapsed. I’ve had to send Hamish McKillop to hospital.’
‘Anything you want to tell me can wait,’ Mr Ferguson said.
‘No it can’t. That scaffolding wouldn’t have collapsed if it had been erected properly and not in a rush. We’ve told you before. There’s too much cutting corners going on. Mr Bannatyne needs to be aware of that.’
‘Mr Ferguson runs the yard,’ Margaret’s father snapped.
Alasdair turned his wintry eyes to her father. ‘He might run the yard but he does it under your orders. That’s the third accident this month. The workers have the right to a safe workplace.’
Margaret had never heard anyone speak to her father like that before.
Her father’s face suffused with colour. ‘And who are you to tell me how to operate my yard? Get the blazes out of my office and back to work.’
Mr Ferguson stepped forward and took Alasdair by the elbow. ‘On you go, Morrison.’
Alasdair stared at the hand on his arm until Mr Ferguson released his grip. ‘I’ll go,’ he said quietly. ‘But the men won’t be working on that ship until the scaffolding has been checked.’ With a scathing look at Mr Ferguson, he turned on his heel and left.
‘Who is that whippersnapper? What makes him think he has the right to speak to me like that?’ her father demanded, his voice shaking with fury.
Mr Ferguson twisted the cap in his hand. ‘His name is Alasdair Morrison, sir – one of the time-served riveters and their foreman.’
‘Ian Morrison’s son?’
‘The same.’
‘Damn that man. And his son. How the hell did Morrison’s lad come to be working in my yard?’
‘He’s been here since he was fourteen – apart from the time he served in the war. He’s a good worker. The men look up to him – as they did his father.’
‘Fire him!’
‘You can’t fire him, Father! He helped. He’s only telling you something he thinks you need to know.’ Margaret had been listening to the exchange with growing dismay. She didn’t know what shocked her more: the way Alasdair had spoken to her father, or the way her father had responded. ‘You should have seen what he did! Hamish might have died if he hadn’t been there.’
‘Stay out of this, Margaret.’
‘Your daughter is right, Mr Bannatyne. We can’t fire him. The unions will strike if we do. And that ship needs to be finished on time.’
Her father knotted his hands behind his back, returned to the window and looked outside. ‘Is Morrison right about the scaffolding?’
Mr Ferguson shifted uneasily. ‘It was put up in a bit of a rush, sir. If you recall we’re on a tight schedule with the ships. But I told them to make sure it was robust.’
‘I pay you, Ferguson, to ensure the yard is run properly. These issues should not be my concern. If you can’t do the job I pay you for, I’ll find someone else. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘And as for Morrison. He’s a trouble-maker just like his father. I don’t care how you do it but get rid of him the first chance you can.’
Margaret stared out of the window as their chauffeur drove them home. So much for her father spending time with her. She’d imagined telling him about her lessons – how her tutor, Miss Fourier, made her practise her Latin and Italian until she could read a little Virgil and Dante in the original, or even what she’d found on her latest walk down at the seashore in Helensburgh. She hadn’t really been interested in seeing the shipyard – what girl would be? – and to begin with she’d found it every bit as grey, dirty and as unappealing as she’d anticipated. Stepping out of the car on arrival, the incredible noise of shouting, hammering, the screech of metal on metal, the rumble of horse-pulled carts on the cobbles, had pounded through her head, making it difficult to think, let alone speak. Nearly as bad was the smell of grease and oil, burnt steel, smouldering coal and hot tar. Lined with cranes and warehouses, virtually every inch of space on the quayside had been filled with workers – some no more than boys – almost identical in their flat caps and waistcoats, some loading and unloading carts, while even more swarmed over the steel girders supporting the half-built ships. But she’d soon become aware of a sense of purpose behind the apparent chaos. Her father had told her that the ship, rising high above her, was destined to be part of the Cunard line. It would be beautif
ul when it was finished and these men had made it from nothing and she’d been curious to see more.
However, to her dismay, her father had taken her straight to his office and instructed her to stay there until he returned.
She shuddered. Well, she had seen more of the shipyard, just not in the way she’d expected.
‘You don’t really mean to have Alasdair dismissed, do you?’ she asked her father now. He hadn’t spoken a word since they’d left the office, concentrating instead on the sheaf of papers on his lap.
He looked at her and frowned. ‘There’s no room for sentimentality in business, Margaret. Especially not these days. We have to stay competitive and that means producing ships as quickly and as cheaply as we can while maintaining quality. Clyde-built ships have the reputation for being the best in the world and I mean to keep it that way.’
‘But those workers. They’re the ones who build the ships. Don’t they matter?’
‘It’s up to them to take more care so that they don’t have accidents and can continue to work.’
‘Isn’t it also up to you – I mean Mr Ferguson – to make sure they don’t get hurt?’
‘In that accidents cost the yard time and money. Yes.’
‘But —’
‘Enough, Margaret! It’s bad enough having one of the labourers question me, without my own daughter doing it too.’ His expression softened. ‘There’s a lot to a business, my dear. I can’t expect a young girl to understand that.’
If he was right then she was glad she wasn’t expected to take over from her father. She wanted to press him further, but the day had already been spoiled.
‘When you have a son I’ll teach him all he needs to know,’ her father continued.
The thought of marrying – let alone having sons – seemed so far in the future she could hardly imagine it.
‘You will ask Mr Ferguson to let us know about Hamish, won’t you?’
‘Who?’
‘Hamish. The man who was injured.’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘And you’ll tell me?’
Her father patted her knee absent-mindedly. ‘I said I would. Now, Margaret, could you be quiet for a while? I need peace to think.’
Back at the house Margaret’s father dropped her off, telling her he had business in town. Disappointed they wouldn’t be spending the day together after all and shaken by what had happened, she felt a sudden longing for her mother. If only she were here and not in Helensburgh.
As her steps echoed in the large tiled hallway of their Glasgow home, images of the accident at the shipyard spilled through her head: Hamish on the ground; the pain and fear in his eyes; all that blood and no one sure of what to do. Until Alasdair had arrived, that is. Despite his being so much younger than the other men, there had been an almost palpable sense of relief amongst them when he’d taken control. He seemed to know exactly what to do, assuming he’d done the right thing. If Sebastian had been at the shipyard that morning, as a doctor, would he have done anything different than Alasdair had? Would Sebastian have removed Hamish immediately or also waited to tie a belt round Hamish’s leg to stop the bleeding? Or had Alasdair just been guessing it was the right thing to do? Perhaps the injured man wouldn’t survive because of the delay in getting him to hospital – or perhaps it was the only reason he was still alive.
She ran upstairs and along the corridor to her brother’s room. It still smelt of him; the tangy scent of tobacco mixed with the spiced soap he had used. Like Fletcher’s room, Sebastian’s had been left untouched. Their books, the shoes they once wore, their tailored suits, polo sticks and cricket bats were all where they’d left them, as if one day they would return and life would carry on as before.
She crouched in front of Sebastian’s bookshelf. They were still packed with his medical journals, volumes of chemistry, botany and materia medica along with medical tomes depicting gruesome illustrations of disease and injury. She’d often sat reading quietly in the chair by the window on the rare occasions Sebastian studied for his surgical exams.
She trailed her fingers along the spines until she found what she was looking for – Gray’s Anatomy – and heaved the tome of over a thousand pages over to Sebastian’s desk. She pulled out the chair and sat down. She couldn’t ask her brother’s advice, but she could find out for herself. She wanted to know what Alasdair had done and why.
Most of all, she wanted to know if he’d been right.
