The River Flows On

by Maggie Craig

  ‘You hit him?’ Her voice rose in disbelief.

  ‘Aye, I thumped him one.’ A note of grim satisfaction crept into the carefully neutral voice.

  She shook her head. She had thought him the most peaceable man in the world. In a society where male aggression too frequently spilled over into violence, Robert Baxter had always seemed to Kate the last person to use his fists to resolve an argument.

  ‘I’ll be off, then,’ he said at last.

  They couldn’t part like this. Casting around for something - anything - to delay him, she pointed at the folder lying on the table. ‘You’ve forgotten that. Whatever it is.’

  He went over to the table, flipped the folder open and took out the pages lying loose inside it. He held them in his hand for a moment. Then, with a quick movement, he screwed them up, twisted them and tossed them onto the range fire. The papers flared up brightly and he grabbed the long poker from its hook to hold them down and stop them falling onto the hearth rug. The white sheets twisted and uncurled as they burned. Standing beside the range, Kate could make out a few words on the top page. To my Emerald-Eyed Kate. She looked up at him.

  ‘Poems.’ he whispered. ‘Mainly about you.’

  Looking away from her, he stabbed viciously at the papers, holding them till they were burnt to blackened fragments. She hadn’t thought it was possible for her heart to ache any more than it already did. She’d been wrong.

  The destruction complete, he hung the poker back on its hook, and made once more as if to go.

  ‘I thought your ship didn’t sail for two days.’

  ‘I can’t stay here with you.’ He drew his breath in. ‘At this precise moment I don’t know if I ever want to see you again.’

  She flinched visibly, and thought she saw an answering reaction in his eyes. For his sake, for both their sakes, she had to stop him leaving, make him stay here and listen to her side of the story. Clutching at straws, she blurted out a protest he clearly thought unworthy of her, his eyes narrowing in disdain as she said the words.

  ‘If you go to your Ma’s she’ll know that something’s up.’

  ‘I’m not going to my mother’s.’

  The mask, which had seemed to slip for a few seconds, was firmly back in place. Yet she couldn’t give him up without a fight, she couldn’t! Then it came to her. The wonderful news Dr MacMillan had given her today. Why, she had almost forgotten it! She closed the distance between them, reaching out to grip Robbie’s arm. She could feel the warmth of it through the rough cloth of his jacket.

  ‘You can’t go now. I went to see the doctor today.’ She tried to smile. ‘Robbie, we’re going to have a baby.’

  ‘Really? Do you tell me that, Kate?’ It was the first time he had used her name during this whole terrible afternoon and evening.’ We’re going to have a baby? How nice. Are you sure it isn’t another of Drummond’s bastards you were planning to foist off on me?’

  Kate Baxter lifted her hand from his sleeve, drew her arm back as far as it would go, and slapped her husband’s face. The force of the blow sent him half a step backwards, but he kept his balance - and his equilibrium. Kate looked at the red mark she had raised on his cheek, horrified at what she had done.

  He lifted the kitbag and slung it over his shoulder.

  ‘I’ll let you know where I am. Or maybe I’ll not.’

  Why had he said that to her? It was unforgivable, he knew that. He had absolutely no doubt that the child she was carrying was his. There had been so many joyful nights of love and passion. Or so he had thought. All a sham - all a bloody sham.

  What she had done to him was unforgivable too. He’d never been in any doubt about Grace either. Until today. His mind was filled with images of his beautiful wee daughter - so bonnie, so clever, so loving. Her voice was ringing in his ears. Daddy, Daddy! Lift me up. Daddy! A single tear rolled down his cheek. He wasn’t her Daddy at all. He gave an inarticulate sob and grasped the railing which separated the path from the river.

  He sniffed, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. His little family had been the centre of his universe. More fool him. He had been an idiot - a blind, lovesick idiot. Now he saw his life for what it was - based on a lie.

  He stood staring out at the Clyde, by the rowan tree where he had so often talked with her. He couldn’t say her name. He couldn’t even think it. Yet he knew very well why he had come to this place - to deliberately torture himself, to claw at the wound - to punish himself for living in a fool’s paradise.

  He had known, somewhere within himself, that she had married him on the rebound from Jack Drummond. But he had allowed himself to hope ... and he had never dreamt she would have let that bastard do what he had done to her.

  He gripped the railing even more tightly. His all too vivid imagination was torturing him with pictures of her with Drummond. He could see him kissing her, touching her, making love to her ... He let out another sob and swayed wildly, anchored only by the vice-like grip he kept on the railing.

  Maybe he should just slide into the river. Throw his arms above his head and let the water close over his face. Then she’d be sorry. Would she?

  He shivered violently. It was raining heavily now and two droplets of water had just run down the back of his neck. He didn’t bother turning the collar of his threadbare jacket up against it. Let it rain, let it fucking pour. He lifted his face to it, letting the water soak him, wondering if that’s what it would feel like to give himself up to the Clyde. He never knew what stopped him from doing it.

  The Frenchwoman didn’t look surprised to see him, or the state he was in, but then he supposed in her business it didn’t do to show surprise. She opened the door a little wider and murmured his name in her soft accent.

  ‘You have not come to cause more trouble?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘No.’ He shook his head, scattering water to both sides.

  ‘Bah!’ she said. ‘You are like a dog which has been swimming. Come in, straight away. Vite! She grabbed his arm, wrinkling her nose at the feel of the wet cloth, and pulled him into the flat.

  ‘I’ve got money,’ he said, leaning against the door, now closed behind him, his wet head tilted back against the smooth wood. ‘I can pay.’

  ‘You do not need money. Not tonight.’ She clicked her fingers and Marie-Louise, the red-haired girl, came forward from a shadowy corner of the hall. Her face was full of sympathy and the accent she used to speak to him was their own.

  ‘Ye cannae find it in your heart to forgive her?’

  ‘I cannae find it in my heart to forgive her.’ He got the words out, like a child repeating a lesson. Then he bit down furiously on his bottom lip. Marie-Louise made a tutting noise, lifted her hand to his face and traced the line of his lips.

  ‘Don’t do that. You’ve got a nice mouth.’ She took a step back and held out her hand to him. ‘Come wi’ me,’ she said. ‘First we’ll get you out of these wet clothes. After that I’ll make you forget all your troubles. Come on, now.’

  Robert Baxter looked down at her for a long moment. Then he let out a sigh, pushed himself off the door, and put his hand in hers. She led him to her bedroom as though he were a lost child.

  Chapter 27

  Without Grace, Kate knew she would have crawled into the box bed, drawn the curtains and cried for days. Only because she had to care for the little girl did she keep functioning: cooking, cleaning and washing as usual. As it was, she confined her weeping to the long and lonely nights, sobbing quietly so as not to disturb the child in her little hurly bed on the other side of the curtains.

  She went to bed every night at the usual time, but she slept little. At first she just lay, curled up in pain, holding on to a pillow - his pillow. She put off washing the pillowcase for weeks because there clung to it, very faintly, the scent of his skin.

  Then the thoughts began to torment her; guilt and remorse; an aching for Robbie and the hurt she had inflicted on him; and finally pain for herself. Would he ever come back? Or f
ind it in his heart to forgive her? How could he? She had done the unforgivable.

  It was hard too when she had to listen to everyone else expressing surprise at Robbie’s sudden departure, even although, in the midst of his own hurt and anger, he had tried to put them off the scent.

  ‘Robbie said the two of you had been planning this for a while, Kate,’ said Agnes Baxter, looking anxiously at her daughter-in-law. She was worried about her. The lassie was looking pale and drawn.

  ‘Aye, well, you know,’ stumbled Kate, making it up as she went along. ‘He hated being idle.’

  ‘You’ll miss him though.’ There was the smallest of question marks at the end of the statement.

  Miss him? Dear God!

  Unable to speak, Kate nodded. Her mother-in-law put a comforting arm around her shoulders.

  ‘That was a stupid question, eh? Well, never mind, the time’ll go past quicker than you think. He’ll be home soon. And you know you and Grace are always welcome here.’

  And Kate, wracked with guilt, wondered how warm that welcome would be if Agnes Baxter ever learned the truth.

  One short week after Robbie’s departure Kate knew she was going to have to admit defeat, give up the tenancy of the flat and go back to live at her parents’ house. It was the last thing in the world that she wanted, but she could see no alternative. There simply wasn’t enough money coming in. In fact, there was no money coming in.

  She had received a formally polite letter from Marjorie, curtly terminating her employment with the studio and enclosing a week’s pay in lieu of notice. Kate had wrestled with her stubborn pride for days over whether or not she should keep that money.

  Pride, in the end, had to give way to practicality. If she and Grace were going back to Yoker she would have to pay for their upkeep. The longer she delayed, the more the emergency fund would be depleted. There was more space now Granny was gone - she had died the previous summer - but with Pearl leaving, which had been another nine days’ wonder, and her father on the dole, the Cameron family was in no position to feed another pair of mouths. Jessie, newly qualified as a teacher, was earning, but precious little.

  There was Robbie’s money, of course, but she was certainly too proud to take that. Proud was the wrong word. She was too ashamed to take it - too ashamed to go up to the offices of the shipping company in the Broomielaw in Glasgow and ask for something from her husband’s pay. She had no right. Yet, came a treacherous voice every so often, if she did that she could keep on the flat, maybe even have Jessie to live with her for company ... not have to go back and live with her father’s drinking and her mother’s temper.

  She might have to take some of Robbie’s money for Grace’s sake. He wouldn’t mind that, would he? Often, during the hard times, she had sat and watched him put food from his own plate onto his daughter’s. Then she would remember that Grace wasn’t really his daughter, and the wound would open and bleed afresh.

  It made her toss and turn at night, doing endless calculations in her head, as she’d done once before when she’d been planning how to get to the Art School. Those had been happy sums, though. These ones only added to her misery.

  Two weeks after the SS Border Reiver left the Clyde a listless Kate answered the door to a smart double knock. It was Jack Drummond. He didn’t wait for an invitation, sweeping past her and into the flat.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Turning to face her as she followed him into the room, he raised his fair brows in a pained expression.

  ‘Really, Kate, I might have expected a more friendly welcome than that. God,’ he said, ‘you look terrible. What happened?’

  What happened?

  She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear - she hadn’t bothered combing it today - and wrapped her cardigan more tightly about herself.

  ‘My cat died.’ It wasn’t a lie. The bairns who lived in the close had come clattering upstairs yesterday afternoon to tell her that ‘the old cat’ was.lying out in the back court and, ‘We think he’s deid, Mrs Baxter.’ He was, and Kate had lifted Mr Asquith’s stiff little body onto her lap and, with Grace hanging around her neck, had cried inconsolable tears over it, alarming the children so much that they’d gone running for help. They’d cannoned into Peter Watt, coming through the close in search of her.

  ‘Robbie came to see me before he left. Asked me to look in on you now and again,’ he explained as Kate lifted her tear-stained face to him. That had set her off again and Peter had patted her shoulder, made her a cup of tea and then helped bury Mr Asquith under a lilac tree in a corner of the back court. The children had all been very solemn about it, conducting a brief but moving ceremony and putting a wee home-made cross on top of the freshly dug earth. Peter Watt had smiled at Kate over their heads and she had managed a shaky smile back.

  ‘Was that the cat that sat on my lap? Oh, that’s too bad,’ said Jack Drummond. He looked around the room. ‘Where’s my daughter?’

  Out playing with her friends, thank God, thought Kate, and only over my dead body are you going to see her. She folded her arms across her chest and gave him back look for look.

  ‘She’s not your daughter.’

  ‘No? I understand from my aggrieved wife that she is.’ Without waiting to be asked, he threw himself down into the armchair by the range. ‘I also understand that’s the reason why the gallant Robbie has taken himself off. Nursing his broken heart and his sense of betrayal on the high seas, so I hear. Sit down, Kate. We’ve got things to discuss.’

  ‘You and I have nothing to discuss!’

  ‘No?’ He took out a cigarette and lit it, looking up at her where she stood so stiff and unbending in the middle of the room. ‘I have a proposition to put to you. It might be in your best interests to hear me out.’

  Her heart began to thump. Was he going to offer her money to help pay for Grace’s maintenance?

  ‘My wife’s left me, you see. Nursing her broken heart. Off to Southampton to take a boat to America. Oh, I’ve no doubt she’ll come back eventually, but temporarily it leaves me rather bereft. And I’m a normal man - with normal needs.’

  Kate sucked her breath in sharply. ‘I rather thought my sister had been meeting those.’

  Jack Drummond shot her an odd look. He had misjudged her again - as he always had done. She could almost see the cogs turning as he re-evaluated, calculating what he could say to her to get what he wanted.

  ‘Your charming sister and I have agreed to part.’ His gaze swept once more round the flat. ‘A woman like you shouldn’t be living in a place like this, Kate.’ It was shabbier than usual. She’d been going through the motions, doing the bare minimum of cleaning and tidying since Robbie had left.

  ‘A woman like me? What sort of a woman is that?’ Her voice was sharp.

  He smiled up at her from the depths of the armchair, leaning forward, reaching out a hand to her.

  ‘A woman nothing like her sister. A talented and very lovely woman. A woman I’ve missed very much.’ His voice was very soft, his smile less confident - the little boy lost look. He was very good at it, she’d have to give him that. It was a pity she knew now that it was all an act.

  Ignoring the outstretched hand, she looked him over. She wondered if she’d ever loved him, or if she’d simply been dazzled by what he had seemed to represent: elegance, ease, wealth - an escape route from the poverty of her childhood and towards her dream of artistic achievement.

  ‘Come on, Kate.’ His voice was a coaxing murmur. ‘I can’t believe you don’t miss me, my darling. I’ve certainly missed you.’

  That, thought Kate, was probably true. It changed nothing.

  ‘I don’t miss you.’

  His eyebrows shot up in the amused gesture she remembered so well.

  ‘Playing hard to get, Kate? I can see your sister must have shared a few tricks of the trade with you. Pity. You used to be such an innocent. No doubt experience has its compensations.’ The blue eyes roamed from her face down over her body and ba
ck up again. The look sent shivers down her spine.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to live somewhere a little more spacious? With a separate bedroom for the brat?’ He paused and took a long pull on the cigarette. Then he looked her straight in the eye. ‘And a bedroom for you - and perhaps, now and again, for me?’

  The blood froze in her veins. There were so many things she wanted to say to him then. She turned her back so he couldn’t see the expression on her face. ‘And what would happen when you get Marjorie back?’

  ‘That would be up to you. I know how moral you are. Perhaps I would have to hope that Marjorie doesn’t come back to me too quickly. Think about it though, Kate. A nice little flat in the West End - near the Botanic Gardens maybe, so you could take the kid for walks in the fresh air. I daresay I could stretch to a nursemaid. You could go back to the Art School.’

  Dear God, that was cruel. He knew exactly what to offer. For a few seconds Kate could see that spacious flat. There would be a wee room for Grace, space for herself to paint... It would be a short tram ride away from the Art School, maybe even walking distance.

  She turned to face him, squaring her shoulders and drawing herself up to her full - if unimpressive - height.

  ‘Get out of my house,’ she said, her voice a splinter of ice. ‘And don’t ever come back.’

  ‘I can’t honestly believe you’d rather have him than me.’

  That made her smile, as did the incredulous look on his handsome face.

  ‘No, Jack, I don’t suppose you can believe that, but it happens to be true.’

  ‘You’re turning me down and you don’t even know if he’ll ever come back to you?’

  ‘I’m prepared to take that risk. I love him, you see. I think, probably, that I always have done. It just took me a long time to realize it.’