The River Flows On

by Maggie Craig

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes, please.’

  Chapter 11

  Mr Asquith, lying in front of the range, stretched luxuriously.

  ‘Makes you feel warm just to look at him,’ said Neil, smiling at Jessie, who was sitting on the rug beside the cat.

  ‘Mmm,’ she agreed, sending Mr Asquith into paroxysms of pleasure and demented purring by stroking him from the tips of his ears to the tip of his tail. ‘Look how long he is when he does this.’ She beamed up at her father. He had wee Davie on his knee and he was singing to him.

  ‘This is your big sister’s song,’ he told his son, before launching into, ‘I’ll take you home again, Kathleen...’

  Kate, sitting at the table reading, exchanged a happy glance with her sister. Neil was making another heroic effort to stay off the drink. It was nearly a month now since he’d been to the pub and there was no alcohol in the house. So far, so good.

  She bent her head to the magazine Marjorie had lent her. It had an article devoted to new developments in ceramics, complete with photographs. There were so many interesting things going on. Down in England a potter called Susie Cooper had joined Clarice Cliff as one of the names to watch.

  In Glasgow too, small studios were springing up to produce pottery with a difference – miles away from the mass-produced ware most people, rich and poor, had in their homes.

  Finishing the text of the article, Kate studied the pictures in detail. Ideas were forming in her head. She reached for her sketch pad and pencils, lying at the ready on the table in front of her.

  Granny was in her usual corner, diagonally behind Kate where she sat facing the range.

  ‘Jenny!’ she hissed.

  Kate threw her the swiftest of smiles over her shoulder. ‘Sorry, Granny,’ she said, ‘but I’ve got to get this down on paper.’ Ideas were like that, she’d found. They seem so clear in your head, but they disappeared like snow off a wall if you didn’t capture them right away.

  There was a knock at the front door. Kate hardly heard it, absorbed in the sketch growing under her pencil.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Pearl sang out, eager as always for any distraction.

  A rowan tree, Kate thought – that would make a good motif. If she drew it naturally first, and then worked out how to stylize it... Engrossed in the work, the familiarity of the voices at the door didn’t penetrate her consciousness until the visitors were actually in the room.

  ‘Kate’s communing with her muse,’ drawled a light, amused voice.

  ‘Yes, her tongue’s sticking out in concentration.’

  Kate’s head snapped up. Suzanne Douglas and Jack Drummond were standing on the other side of the table. They both looked pretty pleased with themselves. Behind them she saw Marjorie’s face, peering over their shoulders.

  ‘You don’t mind, Kate, do you?’ There was a tinge of anxiety in Marjorie’s voice. ‘We thought we’d just drop in.’

  ‘As we were in the neighbourhood,’ murmured Suzanne, turning her head and laughing up into Jack’s face. He was looking at Kate, his eyebrows raised in enquiry. Is this all right?

  Kate caught a glimpse of her mother’s face as she hovered behind the unexpected visitors. Lily looked completely panic-stricken. No, it damn’ well isn’t all right, Kate thought, a pang of sympathy for her mother, as intense as it was unexpected, shooting through her.

  People like these, in their expensive and beautiful clothes, with their cultured accents and exquisite manners, were like some alien species to her mother. Lily could have dealt with the King and Queen coming to the door more easily than she was going to be able to cope with Marjorie Donaldson and her friends.

  Lifting Davie gently off his lap, Neil Cameron spoke.

  ‘You’ll be Kathleen’s friends from the Art School?’ he asked in his soft accent. ‘Let’s see if we can find you all a seat. Lily?’

  As he rose to his feet, drawing himself up to his full height, Kate saw Suzanne Douglas give him an appraising look.

  Lily recovered herself. ‘Perhaps youse would all care to step through to the parlour?’

  Kate cringed. Her mother was unsuccessfully putting on the pan loaf. Kate saw Suzanne Douglas smother a snigger. She also saw Marjorie elbow her discreetly in the ribs.

  ‘Oh no, Mrs Cameron, it’s fine and cosy in your kitchen. It is Mrs Cameron, isn’t? I’m Marjorie Donaldson. She held out her hand. Lily took it – and bobbed a curtsy.

  Jessie, Kate knew, was about to die of embarrassment, any second now. Her own sympathy for her mother had been swallowed up by irritation. Why didn’t she know how to behave?

  Kate was suffering from a considerable amount of embarrassment on her own account too. It was one thing to sit in a tearoom with her fellow students, as equals, setting the world to rights. It was another to look at paintings and then sip champagne with Jack Drummond, or drive out to the country with him, chatting merrily all the way. They’d had several Sunday afternoon dates although, at Kate’s insistence, without the champagne. Usually they went to some little place for lunch or afternoon tea.

  It was, however, quite another thing for her Art School friends to visit her here, in the poky and cramped two rooms which housed the Cameron family. How must her home look through these sophisticated eyes? Poverty-stricken? Squalid?

  Maybe she would just join Jessie, Kate thought wryly. They could both slide gently to the floor and regain consciousness once the visitors had left. Pity there wasn’t really enough space to do it.

  Marjorie, a friendly smile on her face, ignored Lily’s disastrous gesture and turned to Neil, obviously determined to manage the introductions single-handedly if she had to.

  ‘Mr Cameron? I hope you don’t mind us dropping in like this. I believe you work with my father, don’t you?’

  Neil Cameron smiled down at her from his great height, his handsome mouth quirking.

  ‘I’m not sure that with is the right word, lass, but it’s nice of you to say so. May I introduce the rest of my family?’

  Kate was proud of him. Their house might be too small and more than a little shabby. There might be laundry hanging down from the pulley above the range, but the Cameron family was going to rise to the occasion.

  This, Kate felt sure, had been Suzanne Douglas’s idea – a bit of a wheeze, a good laugh. ‘Let’s go slumming, see where the little mouse lives.’ Jack, in his usual relaxed fashion, had gone along with it. If he’d thought about it for two minutes, he must have realized how embarrassing it would be for Kate. Honestly, he was hopeless!

  Behind the backs of the visitors, Lily was making frantic signals to her and Pearl. Pearl shook her head. Kate fixed her with a look and, murmuring an excuse, grabbed her sister’s wrist as unobtrusively as she could, and let the way out into the lobby.

  ‘We havenae got enough good cups and saucers, Kate,’ Lily said in an agonized whisper, ‘and no’ even a biscuit to gie them a cup o’ tea anyway. What’ll we do?’ she wailed.

  ‘It’s all right, Mammy, I’ll go down and borrow some cups and saucers from Mrs Baxter and ask her if she’s got anything in her tins.’ She could be confident enough about that. Agnes Baxter devoted one day per week to baking for her family – enough tasty treats to last the week, kept fresh in airtight biscuit tins. ‘She’ll maybe have some empire biscuits or shortbread left.’

  She patted her mother awkwardly on the arm. It was a strange feeling this, a mixture of irritation and sympathy. How could she expect a woman like her mother to cope with the likes of Suzanne Douglas? ‘We can do a baking the morn and give it back to her then.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Lily, nodding her head vigorously, ‘that’s what to do – but Pearl and me’ll go.’

  ‘Och, Mammy,’ wailed Pearl in her turn, ‘I want to stay and talk to the visitors.’

  Lily gave her a swift clout on the ear. ‘Kate’ll talk to them – and Jessie. They’ve both got the gift of the gab wi’ folk like yon.’ She gave Kate a look which made it clear that this was not a compliment
.

  Jack Drummond stood up as Kate walked back into the kitchen, then sank once again into her father’s chair. Marjorie sat opposite him, chatting animatedly with Neil, who’d perched himself on the old stool beside her. Suzanne Douglas sat on an upright chair between them, looking round the shabby room with a little smile playing on her lipsticked mouth. She looked like an exotic bird of paradise in a farmyard full of old brown hens.

  Mr Asquith, rudely evicted from his place in front of the range by the arrival of the visitors, jumped onto Jack Drummond’s lap.

  ‘Hallo, cat,’ he said, glancing down and stroking the beast with his beautiful hands. He looked up suddenly, catching Kate unawares. Blushing, she turned away. Seeing Jack sitting in her mother’s kitchen was strangely unsettling. When it came to watching him smooth the cat’s fur with those long elegant fingers, unsettling didn’t begin to cover how it made her feel. Suzanne caught her eye. Kate didn’t care at all for the look the girl gave her.

  She couldn’t know – could she? By tacit agreement, she and Jack had kept their developing relationship to themselves. Kate wasn’t quite sure why. Except that she was more comfortable having him drop her a few streets away when he brought her home from their Sunday-afternoon outings. Except that she was happier allowing people to think that those afternoons were spent with a group of friends, and not one particular one.

  Kate had a shrewd idea that Pearl had her suspicions – maybe Robbie, too. She wasn’t sure. It was ages since she’d had a decent conversation with him. They no longer went to the pictures together and they had lost the old camaraderie. Since she had met Jack Drummond.

  Lily and Pearl returned, bringing Robbie with them. He walked stiffly into the room and Kate guessed that Lily had asked him to come and help out in the conversational line. More introductions were made. Marjorie looked up at Robbie with a genuine smile, Suzanne tried a vampish look from behind her blackened eyelashes and Jack extended a languid hand. ‘So you’re the famous Robbie!’

  If looks could kill, thought Kate, I would be lying dead on the floor, whether there’s enough space or not. Robbie’s dark brows, meeting in a reproachful line, spelled the message out quite clearly. Kate Cameron had discussed him with another man, and he didn’t like that one little bit.

  Not that he had anything to worry about. Not really. Jack Drummond didn’t go in for deep conversations. Their afternoons together were about having fun, he declared. They laughed and joked and enjoyed the countryside. Kate had started letting him kiss her – but nothing more than that. ‘Fun,’ she would remind him, pushing him away. ‘Remember?’

  ‘Are you artistic like Kate, Mr Baxter?’ Suzanne was asking, laying a hand on Robbie’s jacket sleeve as he settled into a seat beside her, hurriedly placed there by Jessie. He flashed her a quick smile of thanks over his shoulder as he sat down.

  ‘I’m a cabinet-maker, Miss Douglas,’ answered Robbie. ‘I don’t know whether you consider that artistic.’ The smile he’d thrown to Jessie faded as he looked at Suzanne. One lock of dark hair, as usual, flopped onto his forehead. A kitchen full of handsome men, thought Kate, even if one of them is only just managing not to glower like a thundercloud. Pearl’ll be in seventh heaven.

  ‘A cabinet-maker, how fascinating!’ exclaimed Suzanne Douglas, her arm resting lightly on Robbie’s. ‘Do tell me more.’ She’ll be purring soon, thought Kate sourly. She could give Mr Asquith a run for his money. Lost in the thought, she looked up and found Jack Drummond’s eyes on her. When he raised one of Mrs Baxter’s best china cups to her in salute Kate had the feeling he knew exactly what she’d been thinking.

  Pearl was in seventh heaven, her eyes nearly popping out of her head. Suzanne was dividing her attention between Robbie and her, basking in the younger girl’s unabashed admiration of her clothes and make-up. She glanced away occasionally, smiling at the other men in the room. Anything in trousers, thought Kate, and was absurdly cheered up when she saw the expression on Robbie’s face grow more and more disapproving as he watched Suzanne Douglas.

  Marjorie, she had to admit, seemed to be taking a genuine interest in her father. She’d even managed to draw a terrified Lily into the conversation, asking her the occasional gentle question so she wouldn’t feel left out. Marjorie was talking to her father now about his childhood in the Highlands.

  Jack, on the other hand, had hardly participated in the conversation, just sat there looking around him, taking in the shabby, cramped room, the drying clothes, Granny snoring gently in the corner. Maybe this hadn’t only been Suzanne’s idea. Had they both thought it would be fun to come and gawp, as they might have gone to Wilson’s Zoo in Sauchiehall Street to look at the animals?

  Robbie, who had also dropped out of the conversation, saw it too. Kate could tell that by the look on his face. Like her, he was getting angry. As soon as was reasonably polite, he rose and excused himself.

  Kate followed him, murmuring something about seeing him out. Opening the big front door, she went out after him onto the landing, pulling the door shut behind her.

  ‘Don’t go yet.’

  Ready to head off down the stairs, he looked at her quizzically.

  ‘Why not? You’ve got your smart friends in there, haven’t you? What do you need me for?’ But he stayed all the same, leaning on the cool painted wall of the landing, tilting his unruly head back against it and letting out a long breath before he spoke again.

  ‘I’m surprised they didn’t bring us bags of monkey nuts. See if we would do some tricks for them.’

  ‘Robbie...’

  ‘What?’ His eyes were fixed on the long window on the opposite wall. During the day it flooded the stairwell with light. There was nothing to be seen out of it now but the moonless night sky.

  ‘What?’ he asked again. He was very pale in the dim light of the gas-mantle above his head, his eyes and hair dark against his white skin.

  Kate shook her head. The two of them had always had the uncanny tendency to share the same thoughts. She couldn’t disagree with what he’d just said.

  Robbie looked at her for a moment. Then he let out another long breath.

  ‘I’ll be off, then.’

  Kate took them both by surprise when she suddenly leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. His skin was cool under her lips.

  He went completely still. ‘What was that for?’

  ‘It wasn’t for anything It was just for you.’

  ‘A farewell kiss?’ he suggested, his voice raw-edged. ‘Goodbye, Robbie, and thanks? It’s been swell?’

  ‘Robbie...’

  ‘Don’t bother, Kate. Go back to your friends. They’ll be wondering where you are.’

  Dismayed, she stood and watched him go down the stairs. He didn’t look back up at her.

  Chapter 12

  ‘So, the gallant Robbie is my rival for your affections? Is it his witty conversation or his dashing character which appeals to you most?’

  ‘Don’t make fun of him.’

  Jack, sitting beside her in the confined space of the Morris Cowley, turned those very blue eyes on her.

  ‘Oh, so that’s how the wind blows, it it?’

  ‘No, it is not. I just don’t like you talking my friends like that.’

  Before he could stop her, she had the door open and was crunching noisily over the shingle on her way to the edge of Loch Lomond. When she got there she stopped and looked across to the mountains on the other side. It was the middle of March, a bright and sunny day, but cold. She wrapped her arms about herself.

  She heard footsteps on the stones behind her and then two strong arms slid round her waist, under her own. His voice was a warm murmur against the chilly flesh of her ear.

  ‘Cold, Kate? Why don’t you come back to the car and let me do something about that?’

  Angrily, she broke away from him and starting walking along the shore. They were at Millarochy Bay, north of Balmaha on the eastern and quieter side of the loch. Once the weather got warmer it would be busy on
a Sunday afternoon, full of campers and cyclists, but today it was deserted. Since the very beginning, Jack had shown a preference for quiet and lonely places. Even when they went in somewhere for lunch or afternoon tea, as they had today at Drymen, he chose the quietest hotel or inn he could find.

  ‘Kate.’ He had caught up with her, laid a restraining hand on her arm. She whirled round, her voice quivering with rage.

  ‘Are you ashamed of me? Because I come from a poor family?’

  He took out his gold cigarette case, extracted a cigarette and lit up. Kate watched him hungrily. Every gesture had an easy grace which spoke volumes about his background and the easy wealth with which he’d been brought up.

  ‘Your background doesn’t matter to me one little bit. Quite the reverse, in fact. I think you’ve done marvellously to get on as well as you have. You’ll probably never have any idea how much I admire you. For sticking to your principles, among other things.’

  She met his blue eyes. Sometimes he said things she didn’t understand. Oh, she knew what the words meant, but she couldn’t figure out whether he was being his usual determinedly light-hearted self, or if something deeper was being said. He dropped his cigarette onto the beach, his eyes following it, so she couldn’t see the expression in them.

  ‘Maybe I’m ashamed of myself sometimes.’ His fair head snapped up. ‘After all, my little Red Clydesider thinks I’m a wastrel, doesn’t she? A capitalist and a parasite?’

  ‘I think,’ Kate said severely, hugging herself and trying to suppress a shiver, because it really was cold, ‘that you should get yourself a job. You’re an educated and intelligent man, after all.’

  ‘And if I - distasteful as the prospect is - got myself a job, would you look on me differently?’

  Kate’s stomach lurched. What was he asking? There was such a huge gulf between them ...

  ‘Do you know why I really want to keep our outings to ourselves?’ he asked.