by Maggie Craig
‘Going to stop hitting me now?’
Her eyes, which had closed, opened enough to show him a gleam of green. ‘Not a chance, pal.’
‘Wild woman, eh? I’ll have to use devious methods to pacify you, then.’
Which he did, to his and Kate’s complete satisfaction, until it was time for them to go and fetch Grace.
Chapter 25
Robert Baxter was walking with a spring in his step these days. People who knew him saw that he smiled more readily and that the look of defeat had gone from his eyes. Those who met him for the first time saw a darkly handsome young man with a charming smile and an air of quiet self-assurance. It made him very attractive - to both sexes - and it got him more work. He had lost the air of desperation which had hung around him before.
When Kate started working in Marjorie’s studio two days a week - Mondays and Wednesdays - Robbie matter-of-factly stated that he would confine his tramping around looking for homers to Tuesdays and Thursdays. On the other days he would look after Grace and do the housework and make the tea for Kate coming in. Kate had raised her eyebrows at that one, but wisely said nothing. The arrangement would give the three of them Fridays and all weekend to spend together. And if Grace’s doting grandparents or equally besotted young aunts and uncles offered to take her for a few hours at the weekend to allow Kate and Robbie some time to themselves ... well, so much the better.
What Marjorie paid Kate for the two days at the studio was a good wage, a lot more than the dole Robbie had been getting previously. If they were careful, it would allow them to live quite well. There was really no need for him to wear out shoe leather, searching for wee jobs. Except that there was every need for him to do it.
Kate said resignedly, ‘I suppose you feel you have to?’
‘Aye.’ Grinning, he had dropped a kiss on the end of her nose. He wondered how he had never noticed before that it turned up very slightly at the end. He adored it, but then he adored everything about her, from her chestnut-brown hair, dancing very satisfactorily on her shoulders, through her trim but shapely figure to her neat, size five feet, now shod in smart little brown leather shoes with no leaks. On his insistence, those had been the first big purchase from her pay.
She came home after that first week working for Marjorie and handed over her pay packet to him. That made him laugh, but there was a rueful tinge to it, and he handed the small brown envelope straight back to her.
‘No, hen, it’s your money. You earned it fair and square.’
‘It’s our money,’ Kate insisted. ‘Just like the money you earn is our money.’
Robbie smiled at her logic, but shook his head. ‘No, Kate. It’s best if you deal with money matters.’
‘But you’ll take some money out of this.’
He didn’t answer, and she saw that she was going to have a fight on her hands to get him to take any pocket money at all from her pay, but she was wise enough to bite her tongue for the moment.
‘Aye, I need to go out and look for work. To prove my manhood, like.’
‘I thought you had found other ways to do that,’ murmured his wife. Grinning, Robbie took her in his arms and kissed her. He couldn’t believe how lucky he was. Sometimes he wanted to shout it out in the street.
‘Kathleen Cameron loves me!’
He had found a poem in the course of his voracious reading by someone called Leigh Hunt which seemed to sum it up perfectly.
Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get,
Sweets into your list, put that in:
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kissed me.
He didn’t shout out his love to the heavens of course, but the knowledge gave him confidence, so that when he knocked on doors looking for any chairs that needed mending, or cupboards to be fitted out, the householder felt confident too, and he got a lot more jobs than he had previously.
One morning about four months after Kate had started working for Marjorie, he knocked on the door of an elegant modern flat in the West End of Glasgow. A woman in her thirties answered. She was very attractive, with a mass of blonde hair loosely piled on top of her head. She initially opened the door just a crack, made as though to swing it wide, then hesitated when she saw him standing there in his working clothes. However, she listened attentively while he politely asked her if she had any carpentry jobs that needed doing, her head cocked to one side, as though she was concentrating hard on what he was saying.
When she spoke, he understood why. She was foreign - French, he thought, her English heavily accented, but she nodded her head enthusiastically.
‘Yes, yes, I do have some work for you. Come in.’
She led him to a bedroom where a wardrobe was half-built into an alcove. The original builders had gone bankrupt, she told him, and she had not been able to find anyone to finish the work. Could he do it, did he think? Gesturing vaguely at the pieces of wood stacked up neatly inside the structure, she said that she thought everything necessary was there.
He checked the wood lying around, evaluated the half-finished job with a practised eye and calculated that it would take him the better part of the day to complete. He quoted her a price and she accepted without demur.
‘What is your name?’ she asked.
‘Baxter. Robbie Baxter.’
Busy unpacking his tool kit, his mind already on the job, he glanced up at the woman as she stood framed in the doorway. She wrinkled her nose. ‘Robbie?’
‘Robert,’ he explained, smiling at her.
‘Ah! Now I understand. Robert.’ She said it in what he assumed must be the French way, rolling the r softly on her lips and leaving the t unpronounced.
‘Aye,’ he grinned, copying her way of saying it. ‘Robert.’
‘I am Jeanne,’ she told him. ‘I shall fetch you to lunch at one o’clock.’
He had brought his own piece and a flask of tea with him, but if she wanted to feed him as well as pay him, he supposed that was all right.
Five minutes into lunch, he had worked out exactly what sort of a house he was in. If the rather racy paintings on the red-painted walls of the dining room hadn’t given him enough of a clue, the fact that they were joined at the table by three young ladies wearing various forms of elegant sleeping attire left him in no doubt. How much sleep anyone got in this house was probably debatable, he thought, hiding a smile as he applied himself to a bowl of the most delicious soup he had ever tasted.
He raised his eyes to find Jeanne surveying him with a smile.
‘Are you shocked?’
Robbie shrugged his shoulders, filling out again now that he and Kate could afford to eat properly once more.
‘Why should I be shocked?’ The surroundings were pleasant, the girls were chatting happily to one other and to him. There didn’t seem to be any compulsion. To be sure, it wasn’t something he would have wanted for his own - or Kate’s - sisters but nobody was in a position to judge anybody else, he reckoned. We all do what we have to in this world. He said as much to Jeanne. She smiled.
‘I think you are a very nice man, Robert.’
Robbie asked what the soup was. When he learned that it was cream of mushroom he told her that he’d never tasted mushrooms before - in soup or in anything else. All four women around the table expressed surprise.
‘Give him another plate, Jeanne,’ said one of the girls, an attractive redhead. Her name was Marie-Louise, although she sounded as west of Scotland as himself. No doubt she put a French accent on for her clients. ‘He could do with some fattening up.’ She gave him a wink and cut him a second slice from the loaf which sat on a breadboard next to the white china tureen which held the soup.
Towards the end of his second helping of soup, he became aware that no one at the table was talking. Looking up, he saw that all four wom
en were sizing him up with what looked like a professional eye. He had a horrible feeling that he knew what was coming next. He did.
Blushing a beautiful shade of dark red, he stammered an apologetic refusal of their offer to pay him for his day’s work not in money, but in kind.
‘One of my young ladies - or maybe all three?’ enquired Jeanne, looking at him over the soup tureen. As though she was offering me three for the price of one at the greengrocer’s, thought Robbie through a haze of embarrassment, shot through with an insane desire to burst out laughing. That and the real terror that his anatomy was going to react to an all too vivid image of himself entwined on a bed with the three girls. What a story to tell Kate!
‘It is not that we are short of money, you understand. We thought perhaps you might appreciate the offer.’
‘Th-thank you. It’s very kind of you. Th-thank you,’ he stuttered again. It’s very kind of you? What was he saying? ‘But I’ll have to say no.’ Surely that was definite enough. They would take no for an answer - wouldn’t they? He could feel the sweat breaking out on his forehead.
‘Quel dommage. What a pity. My girls would have enjoyed a handsome young man for a change.’ She swept him a glance which went from his head to his toes - and all points in between. ‘And you would have enjoyed it too.’
‘I-I’m s-sure ... but I-I’m a married man, y-you k-know.’
One of the girls spoke. ‘Darling, most of those we get in here are married men.’
The others laughed.
‘Only not the sort who are madly in love with their wives,’ said Marie-Louise, and just for a moment an expression of the most profound sadness passed over her face. It was gone so quickly that Robbie wondered if he had imagined it. He stood up.
‘I-I’ll be getting on then. Thank you for the meal. It was delicious.’
‘Any time,’ murmured the girl who had made the comment about married men. Somehow Robbie knew she wasn’t talking about mushroom soup.
‘Ow!’ He had hit his thumb with the hammer. Swearing softly under his breath, he extracted a handkerchief from his pocket and bound it round the offending digit. Kate would have bawled him out if she’d seen it. It was none too clean. For a moment he toyed with the idea of asking one of the girls for a bandage. No, daft idea. Presenting himself as a wounded soldier might well lead to other things.
He swore again. He was as human as the next man and he was too honest to pretend that the image of himself entwined with the three girls hadn’t flitted across the private picture screen in his brain several times that afternoon. Three of them together, just imagine it. He didn’t doubt that they could teach him a thing or two ... quite a few probably. But really tempted? Not in a million years.
Sitting on the floor by the almost finished wardrobe, he allowed his head to fall back against the wall and his mind to wander where his thoughts most often went these days - to Kate. Kate, her eyes bright and expectant, turning at the sound of his key in the lock. Kate, standing at the range stirring something, sinking back against him as he slid his arms around her trim waist.
He heard the doorbell ring and then voices - one male, one female. He wondered idly if Jeanne rented out rooms by the hour. Then his mind went back to Kate.
She was turning in his embrace now, lifting her lovely face for his kiss. He could feel the soft warmth of her breasts against his chest. Now he could see them in his mind’s eye, rising to the touch of his gently exploring fingers ...
Something else was going to be rising soon if he didn’t abandon this train of thought, he thought, his lips twisting in a wry smile. But not yet, not just yet. She was shy still - they both were - but she was beginning to offer him her own tentative caresses in return for his own. Caress. What a lovely word. He said it out loud, rolling it. around his mouth.
‘Caress.’
It was a rare word. Could he work it into a poem, somehow? He’d always liked reading poetry, now he was beginning to write it. He hadn’t had the courage to show Kate any of his efforts yet, but he would soon. Most of them were about her. He didn’t think she would laugh at him.
His mind drifted back to the mental image of her, beneath him in the gloom of the box bed, her hair shining against the dull gleam of a white pillow. She was so warm and willing, so loving ... His eyes snapped open and he scrambled to his feet. He was the luckiest man alive, and he wanted to get home to her right now. It was early yet and the days were beginning to lengthen as spring approached. They could go for a walk by the river before tea.
It took him twenty more minutes to finish the job and pack away his tools. Jeanne pronounced herself delighted with his work and paid him what had been agreed, plus an extra half-crown.
‘Call again in a month or two,’ she told him, as they stood in the lobby of the flat. ‘I might be able to find something else for you.’
‘Aye, of course.’ He wondered if he would. Maybe Kate would ban him from coming back once he’d told her the story. She’d be scared he wouldn’t come home with his virtue intact the next time. Aye, this was going to make a rare story.
A door opened behind them. Swinging around in automatic reaction, Robert Baxter stared at the couple coming out. An untidy bed, testament to what they’d been doing for the last half hour, was visible behind them. The girl was still doing up her blouse. The man turned to kiss her, one hand resting, casually proprietorial, on her breast. He squeezed it, and she giggled.
Robbie looked at them with horrified eyes.
‘Pearl Cameron!’ he thundered. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing here? You’d better have an explanation for this, young lady!’ Which, as he reflected afterwards, was a bloody stupid thing to have said. The explanation for what she had been doing was only too obvious.
Pearl jumped as though she’d been stung by a wasp, and went as white as paper. Her companion, however, raised his head and looked Robbie in the eye.
‘Well, if it isn’t the puritanical Mr Baxter,’ he drawled in his elegant, well-bred tones. ‘How very nice to see you again, old chap.’
It was Jack Drummond.
Chapter 26
It had happened at last. Kate felt like dancing out of Dr MacMillan’s surgery. Even when she had missed a period she hadn’t dared to hope. She was beginning to think she and Robbie weren’t meant to have any more children, but now the doctor had confirmed it.
She was walking on air as she went down Yoker Mill Road. It was March, but one of those days when you knew that spring was just around the corner. The sun was melting patches of snow on the top of walls, and crocuses were opening up in the gardens she passed.
Just like me, thought Kate happily. I’ve opened up to Robbie and now our child is opening up within me. He was going to be so happy. When they’d married he’d said that he wanted a house full of bairns.
She was going to miss the studio: the company, the sights and sounds, the smell of the clay, the satisfaction of seeing her designs transformed from paper into a three-dimensional object. Marjorie had given her a great deal of freedom to experiment and develop her ideas. Within a month of starting, Kate had developed a range of crockery which was to become known as Rowan Tree Ware. Marjorie was delighted with it and convinced it was going to become a huge success.
The two young women had developed an easy working relationship. Marjorie, Kate knew, would happily have taken it further. Kate had two objections to that. Politely but firmly she turned down every invitation to the Drummonds’ flat in the West End of Glasgow. There was no way she could sit and drink tea or sip cocktails with Jack Drummond - and she knew damn’ well that Robbie, normally the most amenable of husbands, would refuse point blank to do so. It was bad enough that she occasionally had to meet Jack at the studio, although he didn’t call in often. His interest in the pottery was restricted to the profits it produced.
The greatest obstacle in the path of her friendship with Marjorie was Grace. Not only had she blithely knocked a year off her daughter’s age when responding to Marjori
e’s friendly interest in the child - fingers firmly crossed behind her back of course - she had gone out of her way to avoid Marjorie ever catching a glimpse of the little girl. The resemblance was there. She couldn’t take the risk of Marjorie noticing it.
It took all the efforts of the madam and the three girls to stop Robbie punching Jack Drummond in the mouth there and then.
‘You’ll bring the police to the house and they’ll close us down and my girls will be out on the streets,’ said Jeanne urgently. ‘You wouldn’t do that to them, would you, Robert?’ She was pleading with him, her lovely face troubled. She gestured towards Pearl. ‘And she’s willing, this girl-’
‘My sister-in-law.’ The words were innocuous, a mere explanation of the relationship between Robbie and Pearl. The look which accompanied them was anything but. Pearl flinched under the force of it. She hadn’t known Robert Baxter was capable of such anger. Neither had he.
‘You won’t tell Kate, will you, Robbie?’
He was breathing heavily. They had dragged him to a couch in the hall and sat him down on it - a girl at either side of him, hanging anxiously onto an arm each. He shook them off.
‘It’s all right. I’m not going to hit him. Not here, at any rate.’
The girls looked alarmed, but they released their hold on his arms, although they remained seated like sentinels beside him.
Jack Drummond, leaning nonchalantly against the door jamb of the bedroom which he and Pearl had been using, brought out his gold cigarette case. He took one out, lit up and blew several smoke rings before he spoke.
‘Is that a threat, Baxter?’
‘Take it any way you like, Drummond.’
The air crackled between them. There was something in it Robbie didn’t quite understand, but one thing he knew. This man had hurt his Kate, and now he was hurting her sister - only the silly wee bisom couldn’t see that. She was pleading with Robbie now, begging him again not to tell Kate. He lifted a hand to stem the flow of talk.
