“It was his fault. ’Twas your precious son who started it.”
Then, as if this cryptic statement explained in full their earlier dramatic outburst, he shut his mouth like a clam.
Kate’s face now suffused with colour, for it was already apparent to her that this could be a long-drawn-out discussion. She banged a clenched fist on the table with such force that not only did her items of shopping jump, but Pearce himself started, as if shot from a cannon.
“Listen, the both of you. I demand to know what has happened.”
Daniel opened his mouth to reply but his father was too quick for him.
“Oh no, you don’t, m’lad. I’ll have my say first, even if it kills me.”
By now, almost puce in the face, Pearce was half-way out of his chair as if preparing to do battle with his son. Seeing this, Kate frowned and, laying a hand on her husband’s shoulder, eased him back to a sitting position.
“Kill you? Humph. Keep up that rage and it might very well do just that, Pearce. For goodness sake, calm yourself.”
“Calm myself. Calm myself? Good God Almighty, woman. Do you know what your precious, wonderful son did? When he was in Ireland, no less. Aha, and we didn’t hear a word about his exploits there in the first few days of his visit. Oh, no. We’ve been all round the bloody world and planets beyond, listening to a lot of stupid blethers about flying horses and the like and ...”
Pearce stopped to regain his breath, if not his composure, and although Kate knew there was much that she could have said in reminding him of what enjoyment and laughter he’d had from those very same tall-tales, she thought it expedient at this point to hold her tongue.
It was instead Daniel himself who jumped into the breach.
“Mammy, I’m not ashamed of what I did. I did it for the good of the family.”
No sooner were these words out of Daniel’s mouth, than his father grabbed hold of his walking-stick and, waving it in his son’s face like a man demented, he screamed: “Liar. Liar: You bloody bastard, Daniel Kinnon: You did it to shame me. Good of the family be damned: You wanted to shame me with your devilish plot.”
At this fresh outburst, Daniel looked to be on the point of collapse, as he nevertheless got to his feet and took a step back from the still frantically waving walking-stick. Kate, between the heat of the room and the intensity of hatred generated from the two men in her life, felt physically sick and mentally exhausted. She put her head in her hands and awaited the denouement of this drama, which she knew was bound to come any minute now.
With a renewed strength born of his hatred for his only living son, Pearce rose unsteadily from his chair and, by leaning heavily on his walking stick, tottered across until he was standing eyeball to eyeball with Daniel. Then, throwing his stick to the floor where it clattered and bounced off the gleaming brass fender, he clutched for support at the front of his son’s jacket. Then pulling the ends tight, as if he had it in mind to throttle the life out of his first-born, he glared into the face before him.
“As of this minute, you’re no son of mine. So take yourself and your ill-gotten gains and get the hell out of it. Do you hear? Get to buggary.”
“Pearce. For heaven’s sake. Do modulate your language. Granny Gorbals will hear you.”
Still clutching on to Daniel, her husband swivelled his hand and cast her a look of utter loathing.
“Listen you; I don’t care if the whole world hears me. I want this useless windbag out of here and damned quick about it. He can take the spoils, the loot of his ill-conceived venture, and go.”
“God Almighty, Pearce. You keep going on about ill-gotten gains, loot, spoils. What in God’s name did Daniel do? Rob a bank or something, is that it?”
For reply, Pearce almost spat out the words at her. “Worse. Much worse. He shamed me. Why, he actually ...”
When it seemed that words had failed his father, Daniel brought his own hands up in front of his chest then, throwing them wide apart, he managed to cast off his father’s strangle-hold on him. This was done with such force that Pearce, caught completely off-guard, tottered and fell back, giving his head a glancing blow on the table’s edge as he crashed to the floor. Like a stranded whale, there he lay, a look of stunned amazement on his face, especially when neither Kate nor Daniel made the slightest move to assist him to his feet.
In the heavy silence that followed, Kate was aware of the sound of a distant tramcar. The next thing she heard was Danny Boy, yelling:
“Right, father, if that’s the way you want it, so be it. You can believe what you like, but the only reason I approached your sisters and brothers at Laggan House was to tell them you were destitute. And that’s why your sisters gave me some of their jewels to sell. They had no difficulty in believing that I was who I said I was. It seems I’m now the image of what you were as a young man. When you got dear Mammy into trouble and –”
As if her head weighed a ton, Kate shook her head wearily and held up the palm of her hand.
“Daniel, no more. Please. But, is it really true? Did the Kinnon sisters give you jewels? To help us?”
Danny Boy nodded.
“Aye, that they did, Mammy. And Uncle Desmond gave me a velvet bag full of golden sovereigns and –”
Pearce had by now crawled further along the floor where, by holding on to the leg of the table, he managed to drag himself upright. Drawing together whatever small semblance of dignity he could muster, he drew himself to his full height.
“Right, Daniel, we’ll have no truck with mention of Uncle Desmond, the Kinnons of Laggan House nor their jewels and money.”
Here he pointed a trembling forefinger to the other side of the room:
“There’s the door. And I want you out of it. Take the booty with you and –”
Here Daniel started to protest but, with a fierce shake of his head, his father would have none of it.
“You’ve utterly shamed me before my own family. Destitute, indeed. Humph. So we want not a farthing. Not a farthing do you hear? Now get the fuck out of it.”
As when he had left before, Kate found Daniel in Mr McGregor’s back shop.
“I’m really sorry, Mammy. I did do it for the best. If he wasn’t so damned pig headed he’d see it. His father’s dead and his brothers and sisters can now admit it was Dadda’s fault, not yours – not that that would make them any readier to accept us, but they do see it as unfair that he should be penniless. His sisters gave me this jewellery –they said it was Dadda’s share of what his mother left –and Uncle Desmond gave a velvet purse of sovereigns – I used some coming up here from Liverpool.”
Daniel placed two soft cloth pouches on the table in front of his mother.
“Danny, I can’t use any of this. Dadda wouldn’t let me. It would kill him to think we were living on his brothers’ and sisters’ charity.
“Well, I’m not taking it back.” Daniel shrugged. “I got it for you and Jenny and Hannah anyway. He can’t live for ever.”
Mr McGregor agreed to keep the pouches for Kate hidden under the floorboards in a tin cash box.
That night. not long after Daniel had packed his kitbag and taken a tearful farewell of his Mammy in the privacy of Granny’s single-end, Pearce brought the day to a dramatic conclusion.
In a screaming fit of impotent fury, he collapsed and Dr Clancy had to be called at last.
“It’s his heart,” Dr Clancy said, shaking his head. “I should have seen him long before this. A severe attack, and he is showing signs of having suffered a brainstorm of some sort in the past. I’ll give you a prescription ... tut ... really ... try to keep him quiet ...”
The thought of how he had been shamed before his family in Ireland by his only son, Daniel, grew like a cancer within his brain. For days and nights on end, he would sit, sunk in apparent apathy, muttering obscenely to himself about that bastard boy.
Daniel Robert Kinnon had at last got his revenge on his father.
Chapter 22
With Daniel go
ne again life continued as before, but Pearce was now definitely an invalid and if anything more irascible than ever. The bright spots for Kate in the week were her mornings with her friend and employer Mrs Scott.
Jenny by comparison was happy and cheerful, being in the house with Pearce as little as possible and spending all the time she could with her boyfriend Brian.
Early in April she told her mother that Brian had been saving hard and they thought they could be married in June. Kate was ecstatic.
“Jenny, that’s great news. A June wedding would be lovely. You and Brian can find yourselves a nice wee single-end nearby. It will be grand to see you settled.”
However, in the last week in April, Jenny came home from a meeting with Brian in tears. She refused to talk to Kate about it and retreated to her sofa bed in the hall. Next day she was at the mill as usual and instead of meeting Brian as she usually did, she came straight home.
“Have you and Brian had a wee fall out?” Kate said.
Jenny burst into tears and fled from the tea table to her sofa bed in the hall.
“What’s got into that damn girl now?” Pearce said. Kate followed Jenny out to the hall.
“What’s wrong, darling? Lovers do have these quarrels. It can be a frustrating time. I’m sure everything will be all right.”
Jenny clung sobbing to her mother. “Brian won’t see me again ... we were on the Glasgow Green ... it was a lovely evening ... just getting dark ... and I let him ... it was the most wonderful night of my life.”
Kate shuddered.
“You gave yourself to him?”
“Oh, Mammy, he said I’d been with another man ... how could he know? He said he wasn’t taking second hand goods and the wedding was off.”
By the third week in May, Kate’s worst fears were realised. Jenny was pregnant again. This time there would no abortion. Jenny would carry the baby to term – a January baby – and Kate was determined she would stand by Jenny and her baby come what may.
The one problem could well be Mrs Delaney, but Kate would face that difficulty in due course when Jenny began to show.
As the months passed and Jenny’s bulging belly was witness to the whole world of the result of the most wonderful night of her life, there were several immediate repercussions. The first thing that happened was that the financial mainstay of the Kinnon household, the high and mighty Mistress Josephine Delaney, opted to take herself, her voracious appetite, and most importantly, her money out of their house of shame. Kate’s cheeks still burned with embarrassment every time she thought back to the day that Mrs Delaney had given her ultimatum.
“I tell you now, Mrs Kinnon, either that unwed mother leaves or I do: It’s as simple as that.”
Kate made as if to put the coal-filled hod down on the hearth, while she mentally debated the best way to tackle this latest threat to her family’s security. But even before she could get a single word out, she found her red-faced lodger was too quick for her. Mrs Delaney pointed a podgy finger at the gleaming copper hod.
“And while we’re at it – there’s no point in your leaving extra coal for my fire, thanks all the same, Mrs Kinnon. For I shall not be here to use it. I’ve given you my ultimatum; either Jenny – that dishonoured girl – goes from this house or I do. It’s perfectly simple, you know, a clear-cut choice.”
Kate rose from the hearth and turned to face her lodger.
“Mistress Delaney. You surely don’t expect me to throw my own daughter out into the street?”
The woman’s only reply to this was a vigorous nodding of her head. Kate watched in fascination as Mrs Delaney’s double-chins wobbled like jellies, while her flint-hard eyes bored into her. There was a silence between them which was accentuated by the delicate ticking of Mrs Delaney’s antique clock on the mantelpiece. When the silence became unbearable, Mrs Delaney put a hand to her over-fussy hair-do and, as she patted it into place, the firelight caught the diamonds in her rings and gave off great beacons of light which all but dazzled Kate. Even so, rather than feeling intimidated by the other woman’s wealth Kate, in some strange way, found strength, and anger even, to face up to this spoiled, selfish, over-rich woman.
“You may have diamond rings, my fine lady, but you’re still my lodger. And what I say goes in this house.”
Kate squared back her shoulders with a new resolve.
“Right then, Mrs Delaney, if you insist that I choose between you and my daughter, let’s face it, there really is no choice. You are the one who will have to go, and as you yourself have said, the sooner the better.”
The decision taken, Kate walked to the door and was turning the brass knob when Mrs Delaney’s voice stopped her.
“Mrs Kinnon, I think you’ll find your dear husband does not agree with your decision. In fact, he told me only yesterday that as far as he is concerned, it will be the workhouse for Jenny.”
Kate’s face suffused with rage and she had to control a wild urge to walk over and slap the self-satisfied smirk from the stupid woman’s face. Instead, she held on to the door knob as if her hand were welded to it, as she fought to regain her composure.
“Oh indeed, Mrs Delaney. Well, of course I do know you and Pearce have shared many a confidence during your long years under my roof. And those cosy little afternoon tête-à-têtes with me running myself stupid catering to your sweet-tooth. And we can all see the result of that overindulgence too. Seems to me that poor misguided Jenny isn’t the only one to have a fat belly.”
There was a sharp intake of breath and a fluttering hand raised to the region of her heart, as the obese woman stared in horror at her suddenly voluble land-lady.
“Mistress Kinnon, nobody ever spoke in such a manner to me in all my life. I would ask you to remember your place, my good woman.”
Kate, ever aware of, and hyper-sensitive to, any reminder of her humble beginnings, suddenly saw red.
“Oh, I’ll remember my place, all right. My place is here. It’s your position that concerns us right now. What I say goes. I demand that you leave. Pearce is in no position to order anyone about, far less demand that his poor, misguided, wronged daughter be sent to rot in the City Workhouse. But you, madam, you can go to hell, and be quick about it.”
That very same evening, a somewhat subdued Mrs Delaney left in a decided huff. She took with her a crocodile-skin overnight case which would be sufficient for a short stay at a city-centre hotel and indicated to Kate that a carrier would collect the rest of her belongings in due course.
Apart from the loss of income accruing from Mrs Delaney’s departure Kate felt herself to be well-rid of the spoiled, useless bitch. Perhaps Jenny had, all unwittingly, done her Mammy a favour after all.
Life settled down to some sort of pattern for the Kinnons, Hannah and her inseparable rag-doll as usual spending the days next door with Granny Gorbals. Kathleen, devoting Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays exclusively to the arthritic Mrs Scott, the kindly old woman in Garnethill who already had proved herself to be more good friend than demanding employer and with her re-acquired bucket and deck-scrubber, setting out on one or other of her cleaning jobs on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The majority of the stairs she swept, washed and disinfected were reached via beautifully tiled entrance closes, and like so many other poverty stricken immigrants to the Second City of the Empire, it was the height of Kathleen’s ambition that she herself would one day live in a wally close. On Saturdays she took over the running of Mr McGregor’s newsagent cum sweetie shop.
A sigh escaped Kate’s lips on the morning of December 23rd, 1898 as she set off yet again. While she kept the dream of living in a posh building with its tiled wally close and stained glass windows, she knew in her heart of hearts that, for the moment at least, she was certainly not even an inch nearer to achieving her ambition.
Ah well, she thought, at least I’m now working in such grand settings. And while I sweep and scrub the stairs, and dust down the ornate doors and banisters, I can still dream. Lucky to have all these wee j
obs– things could be a lot worse.
Kathleen wrapped her coat closer against the biting East wind and, with head bent against its bitter onslaught, she battled out to face yet another day.
Meantime, back in the family’s top-flight room-and-kitchen, another equally well-ordered routine had become established over the past few weeks and months. Pearce was now ministered to by Jenny. Each morning, the minute that poor Hannah had been wheeled away from the scene of operations, a set pattern of events got underway. It was now his disgraced daughter Jenny who, day after weary day, cared for the irascible and ungrateful old man, sunk back into his depression, lethargy, and frequent temper tantrums following the departure of Mrs Delaney.
If ever the old saying about familiarity breeding contempt was true, it was certainly borne out in the execution of the essential daily rites in the Kinnon household. Each day it was not only the girl’s belly which grew in size. Almost in equal proportion grew each day the mutual dislike, if not the downright hatred, between Jenny and her father. That particular morning, in the last month of her already difficult pregnancy, no sooner had Jenny waved off her Mammy from the front-room window, than matters which had been simmering for so long suddenly boiled over.
Apart from being ungainly as she bore all before her with the enormous bulk of the unborn child in her belly, Jenny always felt particularly nervous and awkward when dealing with her father. Quite apart from anything else, like a hawk with hooded eyes he watched her every movement as she lurched and clattered her way around the crowded kitchen.
This was the situation every day, but that particular morning it was clear, from the very first moment when she slopped his tea over into the saucer, that they had got off to a bad start. It mattered not a jot that Pearce himself, with his shaking hands, more often than not, spilled his tea. What offended him was that his slovenly slut of a daughter had had the temerity to present the cup and saucer in such a state. His face contorted with rage as he shouted at the hapless girl.
Fortunes of the Heart Page 22
