“You may remember – even last Fair Friday night, I worked late as usual – to get extra money for our ice creams, donkey rides and other treats during that accursed, ill-fated holiday. You can’t have forgotten that. Although when I see all this jollity ... on what is almost the very anniversary of poor wee Isabella’s death ... well, it just beats me. It really does.”
At this point Kate laid a placatory hand on her husband’s sleeve.
“Pearce, my dear, listen. It isn’t at all what you think and –”
With an angry gesture, he shook himself free of her hand.
“Kate, what I think is this: I came home early for once in a lifetime of Fridays, because I just could not concentrate on columns and figures, nor indeed on any other aspect of business. My mind kept going back in time to last Fair Friday night, and how very happy we all were, at the prospect of our first ever holiday doon the wafter and ...”
At this mention of Rothesay and the scene of his own shame and self-reproach, there was a strangled cry from Daniel who was sitting on the stool before the fire. It was this sound more than anything which as yet had been said, or even worse, left unsaid which finally finished what was left of Kate’s composure.
Like the old woman she now felt herself to be, she lowered her arms with a great effort, almost as if they were dead weights. Then with a cry like that of a wounded animal, she sank, utterly exhausted, into the nearest kitchen chair. Like one in the throes of a nightmare, she looked around with a dazed expression. Then as the full realisation, not only of the loss of her wee Isabella, but of the way in which she had misjudged her husband finally dawned on her, she started to weep and went on sobbing as if her heart would break. All the while wild thoughts went racing through her brain.
My God. How I’ve misjudged him. All these long years, all these Friday nights of our Kinnon Ceilidhs this last year. He really has been working overtime. To provide for us. Not dallying with some fancy woman, as I had thought. Oh. my God.
As it finally dawned on her just how very wrong she had been in her rash assumptions, she knew in that moment that nobody is totally bad – not even Pearce Claude Kinnon. By now, almost in a state of shock, she held out a trembling hand to him and pleaded.
“Oh, Pearce. Will you ever be able to forgive me?”
Pearce, who assumed it was the riotous party scene which had met his arrival home Kate was pleading forgiveness for, stared at her, then thundered: “Forgive you? Humph. When what you’ve been doing is little short of dancing on poor wee Isabella’s grave?”
For a moment, words failed him. Then, raking his fingers through his hair, he said: “Forgive you, did you say, woman? No. Never in a million years.”
With tears of rage, frustration, and grief spurting from his eyes, he turned on his heel, went out of the door, and left the flat.
On his return next day, after a night of wandering blindly, aimlessly through the Fair Friday streets of revelry and drunken debauchery, he was a changed man. He steadfastly and cruelly ignored Kate and the three remaining children, just as, as he told them, they had ignored not only the death, but also the extended mourning period he himself deemed necessary for his own, but dearly-departed Wee Isabella.
As the autumn slowly gave way to winter Pearce’s behaviour at home alternated between long periods of silence when he would sit for hours blank eyed in his chair beside the kitchen fire, and outbursts of rage when Kate would hurriedly take the children to Granny Gorbals until the manic spell had passed and the shouting and swearing gave way once more to a deep lethargy.
Chapter 2
In the second week of 1891 Kate chanced to be passing the entrance to the Fruit Market when she heard some sort of disturbance just inside. Men were shouting and swearing, not that swearing was an unusual occurrence at the Fruit Market, but the voices sounded angry. One of the voices was Pearce’s, she was sure.
Venturing closer to the uproar, she saw Pearce brandishing a tally board.
“Your tally is wrong,” Pearce shouted. “You’re not going to get paid for stuff you didn’t deliver.”
“Even with your bowler and your fancy talk you can’t add up right. I’ll not be cheated again. Last week you cost me money. Today I had a witness do my tally.”
For a moment, it looked as if they would come to blows, but a second bowler hat approached and demanded to see Pearce’s tally board and that of the witness.
The witness started to say something but was waved to silence by the authoritative newcomer who studied both boards.
“Aye, they don’t agree.”
The carter pointed at Pearce. “He missed the count. He was standing there in a dwam. You could have walked Barnum and Bailey’s circus past and he wouldn’t have noticed.”
Murmurs of agreement sounded from the men standing round.
The newcomer initialled the witness’s board and turned to Pearce.
“My office, Mr Kinnon, if you please.”
“You’re going to take his words over mine, Cameron?” Pearce blustered.
“Mr Cameron, if you please. Yes, you’re out here tally clerking because you were making too many mistakes in the ledgers at your desk and blaming everyone else. Now it seems you can’t even be trusted to do this job. You can pick up your pay poke at the office on Friday as usual. We’ll pay you up to today.”
Kate hurried away from the market before Pearce saw her.
Pearce arrived home late that evening, surly, morose, but – Kate was relieved to see – quite sober.
“They’re letting men go at the Market. There’s not enough work.”
Kate waited in silence.
“I’ll need to start looking for other work,” Pearce finally said and sat staring at the fire with his back to Kate.
Next morning, Kate was up betimes and got Hannah washed and dressed earlier than usual. Danny, Jenny, and Pearce were all still sleeping, so she wheeled Hannah out of the door as silently as the squeaky old go-chair would allow. She had no compunction about going to Granny’s door this early, for like many old people of her generation and class, the habit of early rising was a deeply ingrained one and the hard-working Granny would have counted it a mark of shame to be still abed beyond the hour of six o’clock, whatever the morning.
As she and Granny sat over their ritual cup of tea, Kate poured out the tale of Pearce’s loss of his job.
“There, there, Kate, don’t worry, dear, everything’s going to turn out all right. You’ll see.”
It was Granny’s kind words and sympathetic manner which finally broke the dam of Kate’s misery. After the storm of weeping had subsided, Granny said with all the wisdom of her seventy-five years.
“Kate, when you’ve lived as long as I have, you learn what are things worth worrying about. There’s no point crying over what’s past and can’t be mended. What you have to think about is what to do next.”
Granny’s cure for all ills was a wee sweet bite and she urged her young neighbour to accept a pancake liberally spread with some of her latest boiling of blackcurrant jam. By the time Hannah too had been provided with a nice jammy doorstop, Kate was once again in control of her emotions. She cast a speculative look at Granny.
“Granny, how is it you can take things so calmly?”
Granny opened her mouth to reply, but just then she caught sight of Hannah. By now the girl was covered in blackcurrant jam from ear to ear, while what looked like a purple stream was meandering down the front of what had been a fresh white blouse. The fingers which Hannah was waving around in her usual un-coordinated fashion were also thick and sticky with blobs of blackcurrants. Granny, with a smile, rose to her feet to get a damp cloth from the sink with which to mop up Hannah. Only when that was done and the soiled cloth again rinsed out and draped over the goose-necked tap, did she return to her battered horsehair armchair. She looked intently at Kate, as if weighing up in her own mind exactly what she wanted to say.
“How do I keep so calm, you ask? Well, no secret. Nowadays I know
better than to question the Will of God, I just accept it, that’s all. Mind you, when my dear Patrick died, I took it really hard. Why him? Why him? I kept asking.”
Kate cleared her throat, as if uncertain as to whether or not to speak.
“Granny, please don’t talk about it if it upsets you. But ... what ... what exactly was it that happened to your husband? You vaguely mentioned once to me he had been killed in an accident. But you didn’t go into any details. Was it at his work? Was that it?”
Granny shook her head sadly and the movement caused one of the steel pins to become dislodged from her bun. It fell to the floor, but contrary to her usual houseproud antics, Granny left it where it lay at her feet. It was clear to Kate that her innocent question had triggered off a painful memory for the old woman.
“No, Kate, he wasn’t killed at work. It might have been easier to accept had that been the case. I still ... even after all these years ... still find it difficult to talk about. But here, wait a minute. You can read, can’t you? Just give me a second.”
Granny got to her feet and moved over to a ledge above her wall-bed. With some difficulty, on account of its great weight, she finally managed to lift down her Family Bible, which she then bore back in triumph on her outstretched hands. With great reverence, she placed the Bible on top of the oil-clothed table and then after some fumbling of the brass clasp with her arthritic fingers, she lifted back the heavy gold-tooled leather cover. Inside, next to a single pressed flower, there was a newspaper cutting, now yellow with age. This she lifted carefully and handed over to Kate.
“Just read that, my dear. I think that this is the right time, for it often helps when in trouble to know that others have travelled an even harder road in this journey of life. My prayer is that you yourself will find comfort once you realise what I have endured.”
By now thoroughly intrigued at this unexpected development, Kate just could not imagine what she might be about to read. Resting the fragile piece of paper in the palm of her left hand, she bent her head to read as best she could the faded print.
As if Granny could not even bear to look at the scrap of paper, far less even think of the message it carried, she went over to Hannah and together they played a noisy game of pat-a-cake.
Thus left in peace, Kate read the bare facts of an appalling tragedy on Monday February 19th, 1849, when seventy people were trampled to death in Glasgow’s Theatre Royal at Dunlop Street. It seemed there had been a little smoke and some sparks from the front of the gallery. But this had at once been extinguished by the simple expedient of one theatre-goer stuffing his cap into the outlet pipe. The band, which had stopped playing on the dreaded shout of “FIRE,” again started playing, there were relieved shouts of, “All’s right.”
One galleryite had even called for three hearty cheers. The tragedy, the awful irony, of the situation was that before they reached the third cheer, a fireman appeared. There were renewed shouts of, “FIRE”, immediately followed by blind panic and a mass exodus towards the one and only stairway ...
“And your poor husband was one of the seventy killed, is that right, Granny?”
The old woman turned away from a now over-excited Hannah and again approached the table. She nodded.
“Aye, indeed, Kate lass. My poor Patrick. His night at the theatre. He had saved up for weeks. It was to be a grand treat. ‘Twas the great new Irish comedian you know, Hudson, direct from London’s Covent Garden, no less.”
“Oh, Granny, what a terrible waste of life. I wonder you can bear to think of it at all, even after all these years.”
Granny dabbed at her rheumy eyes with a rag which she had hurriedly taken from the pocket of her sack-cloth apron.
“The truth is, Kate, I can’t. But, like I say, I thought it might help take your mind off your own worries. You see, in that awful tragedy, most of them were just young men, either just starting out on life, or with wee bairns and wives at home. And then there were three wee lassies and even a bairn of three tender years amongst the victims.”
“Oh Granny; but you know, you’re right. Even just hearing about it all puts my stupid worries into perspective.”
With all the wisdom of her years, Granny nodded. She patted Kate’s hand.
“That’s the best news I’ve heard in many a long day. Meantime, what about a wee taste of the cup that cheers? I’ve just had an idea as to how we can help your finances, now that they’re taken a tumble.
As the two women later sipped the hot, sweet tea, they put their heads together to discuss Granny’s brainwave.
The idea was so simple that Kate could hardly wait to put it into practice. With such a business head on her bowed shoulders there was no doubt about it; Mrs Abigail McGarrity, otherwise known around the Candleriggs as Granny Gorbals, was a true survivor.
Chapter 3
Kate made her way through the cold streets of mid-January 1891. After Pearce’s increasing lack of concentration and irascibility at work had finally been too much for his employers and he had been dismissed, Granny Gorbals had suggested that for a determined woman there was always work to be found in the more affluent neighbourhoods where proud housewives would pay to have someone else take their turn to wash the tenement stairs. So Kate trudged on to an area of wally closes and affluence. If anything, the horse-drawn traffic seemed even heavier than usual and Kate had to step nimbly to avoid being drenched with the upthrown filth, slush and horse-dung emanating from the filthy gutters.
Even at that early hour, the pavements were black with pedestrians; in the main women with babies happed up tightly in shawls and held close to protect them from the cruel, biting wind. But Kate noticed ahead of her a frail looking woman hobbling along with the aid of a stick and clutching a shopping basket in her other hand. By this time, most of the younger men, those who were lucky enough to have found employment, had already departed for their own labour, be it in foundry, shipyard or chemical factory. Here and there, a sprinkling of older men, with hand-me-down suits and worn, cracked boots loitered around the many street traders’ barrows, in the often all too vain hope of securing a morning’s work in lifting packing cases or some such menial and poorly paid task. Work that Pearce was not physically suited for, even if he would condescend to lower himself that far.
Kate’s eyes took in the busy scene all around her. Then catching sight of a group of unemployed younger men hanging around the corner of Glassford Street, she hurriedly averted her eyes. With the cancer of unemployment spreading its tentacles throughout the Second City of the Empire, such aimless groups of dispirited men hanging about the street was nothing new. On nearly every street corner, on every bit off waste-land, groups of such men were huddled together for mutual support in their misery.
With head bent low on her chest, Kate neither heard nor saw the horse-drawn tramcar until it was almost too late. Had it not been for quick thinking on the part of one of those very same unemployed men, then the old lady with the stick would most assuredly have been killed. As it was, the man’s puny, undernourished arms dragged her back from the horse’s hooves just in the very nick of time. He wheeled her round and threw her over to the safety of the pavement, where she landed with a crash as her spine collided with the stone wall of a warehouse. Then, with the sudden force of the action, the man himself overbalanced and for a horrifying and mind-stopping second, he teetered on the edge of the pavement, from where, had he toppled over into the roadway, he himself would have been trapped under the tramcar. As it was, by the grace of God and by a superhuman effort on his own part, the rescuer managed to right himself sufficiently to keel over to the pavement rather than to the roadside. So, the brave man landed in a heap at the old lady’s feet. Like a tableau of the ‘Drunkard and his Wife’ such as Kate had often seen at one of the enjoyable Penny Geggy dramas in the park, or even at a Temperance meeting, the two participants remained frozen to the spot in statue-like pose.
The man was the first to recover his wits, as somewhat gingerly he rose to his feet
and dusted down the threadbare suit. He rescued his flat tweed bunnet from the filthy gutter where it now lay.
Kate rushed up to the pair and helped the old lady to her feet, steadying her as she trembled. The man was wiping bits of mud and horse-dung from his bunnet with his jacketed elbow. Then, grinning sheepishly at them, he said in the broadest of Glasgow accents:
“Uch. never mind. It’s supposed to bring good luck.”
Kate smiled back at him.
“Good-luck, did you say, sir?” the old lady said in a quavering voice, “If anybody’s lucky today its me. Had it not been for you, your quick thinking, your bravery ... I shudder to think what might have – indeed, what would have happened.”
Her rescuer gave his bunnet a last spit and polish with a rag which he removed from his trouser pocket. That done, he jammed it on his head, gave it a ritual tap and pulled the skip low over his eyes. He peered up at her from under the rim.
“Best thing, Missus, try not to think aboot it. It was a bloody close shave, I’ll grant you that. But it seems you’re not wanted jist yet awhile up there with all the heavenly angels. When your time’s up, you’ll be the first to ken. Will ye be aw right to gae hame?”
Kate nodded
“I’ll see her home if you could pick up her bits o’ messages?”
Feeling that she really must do something to repay the man for his brave and unselfish act, Kate started fishing around inside the depths of her own wicker basket. However, one horrified glance from the eyes squinting up at her from under the bunnet’s rim, was more than enough to strangle at birth any idea which she might have harboured as to making any monetary recompense to the old lady’s saviour. Seeing that she had changed her mind, the man gave her a cheeky grin.
“Well, hen, here’s her basket. Much as I’d love to stay here bletherin’ with the pair o’ ye aw day, I’d best be gettin’ back to my pals. They’ll be takin’ the mickey oot off me, thinkin’ I’ve clicked with a new girl-friend. So, tata the noo. And for the love o’ God, mind how you go, Missus.”
Fortunes of the Heart Page 13
