The River Flows On

by Maggie Craig

  ‘Och, Robbie!’

  ‘Hey, hey, hey!’ He bent at the knees, laying the parts of the easel carefully down on the floor before crossing the room to her, pulling her into his arms.

  ‘You’re a daft bisom, Kathleen Baxter. What are you greeting for?’

  ‘Because I don’t deserve you.’

  ‘Well, that’s true enough,’ he said, and laughed softly when she punched him on the shoulder. He held her so they could look at each other.

  ‘It’s a sin to waste talent, hen. Now, give me a kiss and let’s get this thing assembled.’

  A few weeks later, Robbie, home from work, came into his house and looked around the kitchen in a way which made Kate, sitting at the range with Grace on her lap, laugh out loud. A million miles away from being a domineering husband, he was nevertheless used to finding his meal ready for him to eat as soon as he came home. It was the way things were. Not tonight, though. The table was bare.

  ‘We’re having fish suppers tonight,’ she announced gaily, lifting Grace off her knee and standing up to kiss his puzzled face.

  ‘On a Tuesday?’ he asked. ‘Have you robbed a bank or something?’

  ‘Better than that.’ She crossed to the table, opened her handbag, took some notes out of her purse and counted them in front of his incredulous eyes. Forty pounds. Except when he’d paid off the Border Reiver, he’d never seen so much money all at once.

  ‘Forty pounds?’ Then realization struck. ‘You got forty pounds for your painting? The oil of the street scene? The one with the tram in it?’

  Kate nodded, beaming all over her face. Inspired by his gift of the easel, she had not only immediately done a water colour of Grace’s dandelions but also a large canvas of the view from their window on a wet summer’s night: figures scuttling for shelter out of the rain; a brightly lit tram trundling through the twilight. She had revelled in using oil paints to capture the way the shiny puddles on the road reflected the warm yellow of the tram’s interior lights. She had known it was good, had known the gallery would like it too.

  ‘Not too realistic? she had asked the man, her tongue firmly in her cheek.

  The gallery owner had given her a look. ‘Tastes change - as you know very well, Kate Baxter.’ They were on good terms now. He had taken a few of her paintings over the past year, but he had never paid her this much for them. The few pounds she had earned had gone into the housekeeping or the emergency fund, but there was enough to do something more this time.

  Robbie, watching her, narrowed his eyes at the expression on her face. She was up to something. She made him wait, spinning it out, getting her revenge for all the times he had teased her and Grace by doing exactly the same.

  ‘Right,’ she began. ‘Monday night,’ she said, ticking it off on her fingers, ‘you go to your literature class, and I stay at home with Grace. Yes?’ He nodded. ‘Thursday night Grace goes to Yoker and we both go to the drama group. Yes?’ He nodded again, a cautious smile beginning to steal over his face. She was enjoying herself. Whatever was coming was going to be good.

  ‘Saturday afternoon I go to the art club and Jessie usually takes Grace out somewhere.’ Kate ticked off her fourth point. ‘So can I take it you wouldn’t mind looking after Grace on a Wednesday night? When I go to my pottery class at the Art School?’ Like himself when he had told her about the resumption of work on the 534, she was bursting with the joy of it.

  ‘You’ve enrolled? Och, Kate, that’s great! That’s just wonderful!’ He threw his arms about her and kissed her soundly. ‘I knew I was right to encourage you,’ he said, laughing down at her. ‘Paintings and pottery, eh? You’ll be able to keep us all in the lap of luxury soon. We’ll be that rich we won’t know what to do with all the money. Right, Grace?’ He extended a hand to their daughter, bringing her into the embrace;

  Kate smiled down at Grace and then up at her husband.

  ‘Huh! Maybe I’m hoping you’ll become a famous writer first.’

  His eyes grew soft, as soft as his deep and gentle voice. ‘We’ve both got our dreams, lassie. Shall we dream them together?’

  The following month they stood and watched another dream sail away from the Clyde: they and thousands of others. It was March 1936 and the 534, the Queen Mary now, was leaving the river of her birth for ever.

  Spectators filled every vantage point. They lined both banks of the river and watched from the high ground overlooking it. Peter Watt had organized a tour for a group of his workmates and their families. They crossed on the Yoker Ferry to Renfrew, where a specially hired bus took them down past Erskine to Bishopton.

  The view they had from there was everything they could have wished for. Resplendent in the bonnie colours Grace Baxter had longed for, the Queen Mary glided past them, her hull black and red, her superstructure white, her three funnels red with black bands at the top. Mary Watt wasn’t the only woman - nor man either - to have tears pouring down her face at the sight. The greatest liner ever built was steaming down the Clyde, taking a sure and steady course between the green hills, heading for the Firth and the open sea.

  ‘Och, she’s so lovely ... but it’s so sad to see her go!’

  ‘It’s what she was made for, Mary,’ said Robbie, ‘but you’re right. It is sad.’ His voice was husky. Kate, also unashamedly in tears, slipped her hand into his and gave his fingers a squeeze. He smiled at her and then raised his voice.

  ‘Let’s give her a proper send-off all the same. Three cheers for the Queen Mary, the pride of the Clyde!’

  And the men who had helped build her opened their mouths and threw their bunnets in the air and did as he asked.

  She had been part of their lives, in good times and bad, for almost six years. They had loved her and hated her, grown older in the building of her, put the skill of their hands and the strength of their backs into the work: aye, and their hearts and souls, too.

  Two great Queens were to come after her. They would be proud of them too: proud to say that they were Clyde-built; that they had worked on them. There would be moist eyes and lumps in the throat when they left the river, but the Mary was special.

  They had built her for this. Their eyes followed with pride her majestic progress towards the sea and her rendezvous with the ocean. That was her destiny. They had always known that.

  Pride, then: overwhelming, intense and life-long. But sorrow too, the sweet sadness of farewell. One description of that day summed it up better than most. She leaves a big gap in the landscape, and a hole in the hearts of thousands of Clydesiders.

  PART IV

  1939

  Chapter 32

  A war was inevitable. Everybody knew that now. The policy of Appeasement hadn’t worked. Robbie had never been in favour of it, declaring firmly that ‘yon wee nyaff, Adolf Hitler’ was a bully, and that bullies had to be dealt with. Never mind if the Prime Minister had come back from Munich waving a wee bit of paper and yattering on about peace in our time, sooner or later Great Britain was going to have to stand up to Herr Hitler and his Nazis.

  Now, in the summer of 1939, frantic preparations were being made for war. Men were quietly being called up to the three services - the beginnings of the full-scale conscription which was to come in 1940 - and endless discussions were held about the advisability of evacuating women and children to the country. Places like Clydebank and Glasgow, filled with shipyards and other heavy industries crucial to the war effort, were bound to be targets. This war wasn’t going to be like the last one, where the men marched off and the women and children stayed at home. This time home was going to be one of the main fronts.

  Anxious to do his bit, Robbie had volunteered for the Navy several months before war was declared, asserting that it was only a matter of time before he would be called up anyway. At thirty-two years old, he was in the prime of life, fit and healthy, and with valuable, if brief, experience in the Merchant Navy. He’d been whisked off at once for basic training.

  Kate hadn’t stood in his way, but she praye
d every day there wouldn’t be a war, that the statesmen could still sit down together and work it all out. That was becoming an ever more forlorn hope, and she knew that as well as anybody.

  As summer drew to an end, different emotions were evident among the younger members of the family. The Baxter girls were excited at the prospect of young single women being called up, seeing an escape from the much more predictable future previously mapped out for them. Wee Davie, at nineteen not quite so wee, was also unsuccessfully hiding wild enthusiasm at the thought of getting into uniform. Neil Cameron sat in his chair and shook his greying head as he listened to the news bulletins on the family’s recently acquired wireless.

  ‘I can remember the last time,’ was all he said in his soft Highland accent, looking sadly up at the youngest member of his family, now as tall as himself. The nightmares had come back. It was Jessie now who had to help Lily calm him down.

  Kate wasn’t sure if her sister had finally given up on Andrew Baxter. He too was eager to join up. He’d taken himself off to Spain a year after the Queen Mary had sailed away, joining the International Brigade to defend the beleaguered Republican government there against the fascists. Jessie had gone white when she’d read the letter he’d left for her.

  Pale to the lips, she had spoken in an agonized whisper to an anxiously hovering Kate.

  ‘The silly bugger’s going to get himself killed.’

  It was the only time she ever heard Jessie swear. The silly bugger, however, had not got himself killed, but had come back from Spain with his enthusiasm for fighting fascism undimmed.

  In August Robbie was allowed home on a forty-eight-hour leave. They spent the second night of it alone, Grace safely dispatched to Yoker.

  They ate, took a late evening walk by the river in the autumn twilight, and returned home to make love to each other in the big brass bed, falling asleep afterwards locked in each other’s arms. Waking, cold and shivering, in the wee small hours, Kate pulled the blankets up over both of them. Then, sure that he was sound asleep, she turned on her side away from him and succumbed to silent sobs.

  He felt them though, stirring awake a moment or two later. His arms, warm and heavy with sleep, came round her, pulling her towards him. She turned into his chest, her hand resting on the solid and reassuring thump of his heart. He kissed her hair and murmured little words of comfort and they fell asleep together once more.

  He woke her early and made tender, fierce and silent love to her. Only when the sensations had faded and they lay facing each other did he speak.

  ‘I don’t want you to come to the station to see me off.’

  She started to protest, but he kissed her to stop the words.

  ‘Please, Kate. I want to remember you like this.’ He kissed her again. ‘Your lips soft and well-kissed.’ Another kiss. ‘Your body warm and well-loved.’ And another, his hand stroking her arm from wrist to shoulder. ‘Your hair needing combed.’

  He smiled, trying to lighten the mood, but there was a plea in his grey eyes. She searched his face and answered it in mundane, ordinary words.

  ‘All right, but I am getting up to make your breakfast.’

  ‘What else do I keep you for, woman?’

  Normally they sat opposite each other at the square table, with Grace between them. Today Kate, a pretty cotton dressing gown over her nightdress, sat at Grace’s place, although she couldn’t bring herself to eat anything. She was finding it hard enough to swallow a few mouthfuls of tea. They were both very matter-of-fact. They discussed practicalities. How would they organize money while he was away? How would they keep in touch with each other? Should Kate allow Grace to be evacuated to the country?

  ‘Maybe you should think of going too,’ he suggested, spreading his second slice of toast with butter bought specially in honour of his brief homecoming. There were dire warnings going the rounds about rationing being introduced if the war did come, in which case, whether he liked it or not, Robbie was probably going to have to put up with margarine when he was on leave.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You’re doing your bit and I think maybe that I want to do my bit too.’

  ‘How, exactly?’ He took a bite of toast.

  Kate poured him another cup of tea. ‘Mary Watt says Peter told her that Brown’s are looking for more tracers - experienced ones. Apparently they think a lot of the young girls will join up if the war comes - they might even be called up like the men - so she says they’re considering taking on married women. People like me, who were tracers before they got married.’

  He nodded his head, thinking about it. ‘Well, if they do, it would certainly keep you occupied. Stop you worrying so much about me.’ He smiled and touched her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. ‘And it’s important work - you’d be doing your bit all right. If it does come to war, there’s bound to be losses at sea. Oh!’ Too late, he realized what he had said. Kate bit her lip. He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. I’ll be as safe as houses. I’ll lay you ten to one that I end up in Scapa Flow.’

  ‘ScapaFlow?’

  ‘Aye, it’s way up north, in the Orkneys. A natural harbour formed by the islands. It’s where the German fleet sank at the end of the Great War.’

  ‘Thanks, Robbie, that’s very reassuring.’

  He grinned. ‘They did it deliberately. Scuttled themselves because they were in enemy hands. The Flow’s really safe - honestly, Kate. We’ve had lectures about it during training. Look, I’ll show you.’ He dropped her hand and starting rearranging the dishes which lay on the table.

  ‘Right. Imagine that the teapot here is the main island. To the south-west of it there’s a few small islands and a bigger one called Hoy. We’ll use your saucer for that.’ He positioned it. ‘Then there’s these three wee islands that form a sort of a chain round the eastern side, shielding it from anything coming from that direction - and that’s where it would come from.’

  His smile a little grim, he moved the milk jug, sugar bowl and butter dish into position.

  ‘See? The wee islands form a natural defensive barrier.’

  Kate lifted a teaspoon and drew it between the dishes. ‘Why couldn’t something come through here? Or here? They’ve got submarines, haven’t they, the Germans?’ She lifted her eyes from the tablecloth and looked anxiously at him.

  ‘Because the channels are too narrow, and too shallow. They’re also partially blocked with old wrecks. They did that the last time - to make a better barrier. Nothing’s going to be able to get through. I’m telling you - it’s as safe as houses up there.’

  ‘But there’s no guarantee you’ll go to Scapa Flow.’

  ‘No, but we’ll hope for that, will we?’ He changed the subject. ‘Tell me what you and Grace are going to do today, so I can think about you both while I’m on the train.’

  ‘Well, first I’ll go and collect her from her Auntie Jessie. Then I’m taking her to the park. Jessie said she might come too, seeing as how it’s Saturday. In the afternoon we’re going to the pictures, and Mary and Peter Watt have asked us to have tea with them tonight. Mary said Peter would see Grace and I home afterwards.’

  ‘They’re good friends,’ Robbie said. His eyes strayed to the clock.

  ‘What tram are you going for?’ she asked.

  ‘I think there’s one about seven.’

  ‘Ten minutes, then. Are you all ready?’

  His eyes were soft. ‘You’re being gey brave, Kate Baxter.’

  She sniffed, and raised the back of her hand to her mouth. ‘I’m doing my best!’

  ‘That’s all any of us can do,’ Robbie said gravely, and rose from the table. ‘Stand up and give me a hug.’

  Only just before he left the house did her courage fail: when he kissed her and held her for the final embrace. She swayed against him, her body bending like a reed.

  ‘Oh, Kate,’ he breathed into her hair, ‘my beautiful, lovely Kate. Be strong, lass. I need you to be strong...’

  She took a
great shuddering deep breath, forced the tears back and lifted her face to him. Her reward was to see that special slow smile which lit up his grey eyes, the smile that was reserved for her alone. He stroked the chestnut waves back from her forehead. ‘My nut-brown maiden,’ he murmured, and kissed her.

  ‘I love you, Kate Baxter,’ he said when he lifted his head.

  ‘And I love you, Robert Baxter.’

  Another kiss, deep and passionate.

  ‘Will I not get dressed quickly and come down to the tram with you?’ she whispered against his mouth.

  ‘No. Don’t wave to me either. Promise me you’ll go back to bed for a wee while. It’s early yet... and I want to think about you lying there, all warm and cosy.’

  ‘Robbie-‘

  ‘Promise me you’ll do that, Kate. Please?’

  She could not refuse him.

  One last longing look at each other, one last kiss, one last whispered I love you. Then he was gone. Kate put her back against the front door and listened to the sound of his footsteps going down the stairs and out of the close. Oh Robbie, my love!

  She couldn’t do it. She ran through to the front room. He was looking up at their window and she could see by the look on his face that he was glad she had broken her promise. He smiled and mouthed to her that the tram was coming. Kate smiled back and blew him a kiss. A grin lighting up his face, he returned the gesture. The tram trundled between them, blocking her view. It seemed to stop for no more than a few seconds before moving off again. Did she imagine a flash of white at one of the windows, a hand waving? She didn’t know.

  She watched it for as long as possible, her face pressed up against the glass. Then, with a groan at her own stupidity, she thrust up the sash window and stuck her head out, watching the progress of the tram along Dumbarton Road for another few precious yards until she could see it no more.