by Gray, Millie
Looking down over that twelve-inch brass rail, which prevented you from falling over into the Grand Circle’s upholstered seats, Mrs Greenhill would collapse down on the wooden bench and then loudly declare it to be a scandal that she was sent up here after her paying full first-rate prices for her children and herself to watch second-rate shows. ‘Does the management in here no ken that I suffer from vertigo?’ she would holler and swoon. When it became evident that no one was going to bother about her fainting she would quickly recover and grab the handrail before going on, ‘And that three of my bairns are noo addicted to Brasso because, when the acts are boring, they take to sooking this bleeding banister?’
Kate now willingly recalled that she had been a blonde, willowy eleven-year-old when the Gaiety began to have competition in the form of moving pictures. She vividly recollected how excited everyone was when the Leith Picture House opened in Lawrie Street, down off Constitution Street, in 1911. Dear, attentive, thirteen-year-old Hugh, who was an artisan apprentice in the shipyards, saved enough from his meagre weekly pocket money so he could treat her to a visit to the picture house.
By the time she was thirteen, and the First World War was looming, every Saturday night she would be burying her head into Hugh’s shoulders as The Perils of Pauline serial saw the heroine Pauline become a poor damsel in distress, faced with dangerous actions that were threatening her very life. One serial lasted a whole twelve weeks, so poor Hugh had no other option but to treat Kate to a visit to the Leith Picture House every one of those weeks so she could make sure Pauline survived the daft weekly cliffhangers. Kate shook her head, because now, at forty, she accepted the storylines of the Pauline films were always flimsy and that they relied on sensationalism. She also acknowledged that Hugh was not impressed by silly movies like The Perils of Pauline but he would shake with laughter at Brewster’s Millions. As time went by Kate’s taste in films took on a developing air of sophistication and she became enthralled by films like The Old Curiosity Shop and Cecil B. DeMille’s first shot at directing, in a film called The Squaw Man.
The last film Kate and Hugh sat through, before he marched off to war, starred a newcomer, Charlie Chaplin, in the thankfully hilariously funny film, Making a Living.
Tears now streaming down her face, Kate stood up and lifted a pillow from the bed, which she then placed under Kitty’s head. ‘So, Kitty, my dear, you believe I never knew sorrow.’ She huffed and grunted and then whispered, ‘Never knew sorrow? My dearest Hugh was a big man in every way. At seventeen, when he marched off to war, he was six feet tall, a gentleman, and I loved him. I wish,’ she continued, ‘I could forget just how much we loved each other – lay to rest the memories of the plans we made for when he would come marching home victorious.’
Sinking down on to the basket chair, Kate allowed her head to bend over and she cradled it in her hands. Rocking backwards and forwards, she now thought of that fateful day, 22 May 1915, when the 7th Royal Scots, Leith’s own Territorial Army, which Hugh had joined, set off for the front line. A train which they had boarded tragically ended up in a disastrous rail crash at Quintinshill, near Gretna. A simple error by a signalman led to the troop train colliding with a stationary passenger train. What was worse, before anyone could stop it, an express train from Glasgow bound for London ploughed into the wreckage, resulting in an uncontrollable fire. Between the collisions and the consequent inferno, 418 people were left either killed or injured.
When news of the worst rail tragedy ever to happen in Britain filtered into Leith, Gladys Brown ran panicking to her friend, Jenny Anderson. Throwing open the Andersons’ door she screamed, ‘Jenny, Jenny, all our braw laddies hae been killed. And not, mark you, in the blinking war, but in a blasted train crash here in Scotland.’
The noise of the slap that Jenny had made across Gladys’s face was still reverberating around the room when she pulled hysterical Gladys into a strong embrace. Holding her in her arms, Jenny looked towards Kate and whispered, ‘Dear God, Kate, it seems Hugh’s been killed. Quick, get Gladys a cup of hot sweet tea and lace it with a dram.’
Kate did hear her mother’s request but the thought that Hugh might be dead riveted her to the spot. With fists so tightly clenched that her knuckles were white she thought back to only the night before, when she and Hugh had walked hand in hand through the Links. They talked and talked about nothing except their future together. Hugh vowed he would come back and then they would tell their families of their love for each other and they would marry. They had even spoken about emigrating to America. All the films they had seen in the Leith Picture House had inspired in them the belief that they could go out to the Land of the Free and make a go of it there. After all, Kate had argued with Hugh, hadn’t Dunfermline’s Andrew Carnegie gone from rags to riches in 1835, emigrating to America and becoming the richest man in the world when he sold the empire he had built up for $480 million in 1901? Buoyed up by Kate’s enthusiasm Hugh conceded, and readily agreed, that they would make it in America and they would not be greedy. Just one million would satisfy them. After all, who really would ever need more than that?
All over Leith people were huddled together into whispering little groups. They were impatiently awaiting news of their loved ones. At the Leith 7th Battalion Royal Scots’ Drill Hall in Dalmeny Street, from where the lads had left earlier that day, lists of the names of the dead were eventually posted on the outside billboards.
‘Kate, you push yourself into the front of that rabble there and see what it says,’ her mother brusquely commanded.
‘Oh, Jenny,’ Gladys pleaded, ‘what will I do if it says … I mean, how will I break it to Dodd?’
Jenny’s only response was to tuck Gladys’s arm firmly under her own.
When ashen-faced Kate returned she inhaled two deep breaths before spluttering, ‘Oh, Mum, thankfully our Hugh’s name’s not on any of the lists.’
‘So it looks as if he’s okay?’ was her mother’s quick response.
‘He might be,’ Kate replied with less enthusiasm, ‘but the lad who posted the notices was also saying that the lists are not complete.’ Changing her tone Kate went on. ‘But, Mum,’ she almost sang, ‘he also said some, might be as many as fifty or even a hundred, have survived.’
‘That right?’ Gladys cried as she wrestled herself free from Jenny’s grip.
Kate nodded. ‘And they will either continue their journey onwards or come back here, and then after a while, they will be sent back off.’ She said no more to her mother and Gladys, but she inwardly screamed, Back to the bloody useless war again!
The next morning, 23 May 1915, the rosy dawn found Kate sitting on a bench in Leith Links with her arms wrapped tightly about herself. She had been there all night praying and hoping. A long sigh escaped as she looked over the lush grass that had begun to take on a ghostly appearance when a thin mist started to drift upwards from it. Sheer exhaustion was seeping away any hope she had had about Hugh and, as despondency overtook her, she wondered if the phantom haze swirling at her feet was an omen. Lifting her eyes she stared long into the distance. Her heart jumped into her mouth. ‘Who can that be?’ she gasped. The tall figure was at one moment striding quickly towards her and then it was shrouded in the mist.
Eventually, the running upright figure was so close that the haze could no longer swathe it. All that Kate could make out was that it was a man dressed in a military uniform. She also noted that he was not wearing a regulation cap, a uniform irregularity which encouraged the filtering rays of the morning sun to light up the highlights of his gingery blond hair. ‘Hugh!’ she cried, half rising from the bench. ‘Is it really you?’
In three quick strides he was pulling her towards him. She was so overcome that her head reeled, her knees buckled and her tears cascaded, all of which took him by surprise. Instinctively he wished to comfort his beloved so he gathered her up into a tight embrace. As the warmth of his body radiated through her, she was grateful to acknowledge that this was no dream, no ghost
– it was her Hugh, in person. He had survived and he had come immediately to look for her. Finding her was easy for him because he knew that she would be nowhere else except in the part of Leith Links that was their own special place.
Steadying herself, she rigorously patted his chest before she fell against him again. It was only at that moment that she realised just how much she had missed him – and he had only been away for a night and a day.
‘Come on, love,’ he whispered as he stroked her silken hair. ‘I’m not back for long so let’s not waste a minute.’
She hesitated but only for a short time. Then lifting her eyes to meet his she blurted, ‘Oh, darling, I want you so much. Really want you. So much so that I am very sorry I said no to you last night before we parted.’
He laughed. Rocking her back and forward he teased, ‘Are you saying I should look forward to tonight?’
Her thoughts were now in turmoil. She tucked her head under his chin. This gesture allowed him to gently stroke her cheeks and he smiled when he felt the fire of the passion that was now soaring within her. He smiled, knowing that tonight they would make passionate, true love for the first time. Quickly his thoughts turned to where he would take her. He loved her so much that he wanted their first union to be in a lovely place. A quick roll in the long grass that surrounded the railway along the Seafield track was not good enough for his darling Kate. Behind a tombstone in Seafield Cemetery was also a definite no-no.
Kate, on the other hand, felt fear arising within her bosom. The terror that she tried to control was not that she would be letting her mother and church down when she allowed Hugh to make forbidden love to her tonight. Oh no, she was scared this promised one night of passion would be all that she would ever have.
* * *
Later that evening they sought each other’s hands when they alighted from the tramcar on Princes Street. Hugh had already explained that they could not book in anywhere in Leith where they might be recognised. He went on to explain that, this being the case, in the early afternoon he had nonchalantly sauntered into the Imperial Hotel on Cockburn Street and booked them in for one night in the name of Mr and Mrs Hugh Brown.
On reaching the Imperial Hotel’s reception area, Kate hung back as she did not wish the receptionist to see how young and childlike she looked.
Treasured memories of the only night they had spent together rose up within Kate now and swamped her every thought. She just couldn’t believe that twenty-five years had passed since she had waved goodbye to Hugh on that draughty train station platform. The pain of their parting was as raw and as real today as it had been on the morning after their wonderful night of love-making. They truly hadn’t wasted a precious second of their stolen time together – in fact they were clinging to each other so much that they hadn’t even had time for breakfast. Indeed, they had to scamper down the brae so that Hugh could catch the very early morning train that he had been instructed to board.
Often Kate wished she hadn’t dissolved into tears when she had clung to Hugh for the last time. Somehow she thought he should have remembered her smiling instead of seeing her scalding tears as they gushed from her eyes.
Kate had kept looking warily at the guard who had been poised to blow the whistle that would signal that Hugh should jump aboard. She vividly remembered Hugh fishing in his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe her sodden eyes, cheeks and nose before whispering, ‘Thank you, love, for last night. And know something, darling, it won’t matter what happens to me in this war because I will remember every detail of our time together. Believe me, last night’s memories will see me through whatever befalls me.’ He had grown pensive then and, increasing his grip on her, he tenderly whispered, ‘Now, my sweet, don’t you worry because I was careful and got off at Haymarket every time, so I did.’ This remark meant nothing to Kate but to others in Leith who were acquainted with the facts of life it meant that Hugh had been careful not to go full steam ahead into Waverley and therefore put her in the family way.
Reluctantly her memories jumped to how she had watched her beloved Hugh board the train that would take him out of her life forever and all she had been able to do was stand on tiptoe for one last goodbye kiss. The accursed whistle blew and then the train slowly began its departure from the station. Before she knew it the puffing locomotive had vanished in a swirl of smoke and steam. Even although the train was gone from sight Kate had continued to stand and frantically wave and wave until the guard finally said, ‘He’s awa, hen. Noo is it no time you got yourself hame to your mammy?’
However, canny Kate didn’t go straight home because she didn’t wish her mum to find out that she hadn’t spent the night with her pal Sheila. Sheila always called in for her in the morning so they could walk together to their work in the Leith Provident Department Store. If Sheila turned up on Mummy Anderson’s doorstep looking for Kate, in no time at all the cat would be out of the bag. Two and two would be put together and made up to at least seven and Kate would be on the next train to Glasgow, where she would be sorted out by her mum’s elder sister, Aunty Katherine – a fate that no one should suffer.
Well, reasoned Kate, that being the case and as the hour is still early I could call in for Sheila at her family home in Lorne Street. That would also give me plenty of time to work on Sheila and prime her as to what she should say, if she was asked, about where I spent last night.
Kate had no doubt that Sheila would cover for her. After all, how often had Kate lied for Sheila, who was forever going up to the Corner Rooms Dance Hall and making merry with sailors when her mother thought she was at a Band of Hope meeting banging a tambourine?
Sheila and Kate had linked arms as they strolled down Leith Walk and then on to Great Junction Street. ‘Do tell where you really spent last night?’ Sheila kept on urging.
‘Nowhere except in Leith Links and there were plenty of people about there.’ Crossing her heart before snuggling closer into Sheila, Kate then elaborated, ‘Believe me, Sheila, even if I was going to do what we must never do until we are churched, I couldn’t have done it in Leith Links last night. Honestly, you should have seen all the people milling about. Going on and on they were about the disaster.’ Kate had giggled. ‘And there was Hugh trying his best to make mad passionate love to me but the bench that could seat five always had six nosy parkers squashed up on it just gaping at us.’
Thinking back to that time, Kate was not convinced that Sheila had believed her story. They were both juniors in different departments in Leith Provident Department Store. Sheila was in the chemist part while Kate was employed in women’s undergarments, where Miss Stivens was the manageress and buyer.
Recalling the very name of Miss Stivens always caused Kate anxiety. So getting up off the floor and going over to gaze from the window, she wrapped her arms tightly about herself. It was as if she was trying to prevent Miss Stivens from invading her person.
From her first week of employment in the store people had whispered stories about Miss Stivens. The main story seemed to be that Miss Stivens had had an affair with a married man which had resulted in her having a child. The child was now the same age as Kate but she was in boarding school. Sherry Stivens had been residing in North Berwick with her wealthy widowed mother when she found herself pregnant. Unable to cope with such a shocking scandal her mother had immediately sold up in North Berwick before Sherry’s fall from grace became evident. Up until the baby was born, mother and daughter squirrelled themselves away in Melrose. After going through a long and troublesome labour, Sherry refused to give her baby up for adoption. This annoyed her mother, who wished to relocate back to North Berwick and renew acquaintance with her friends there. Left with no other option, as she saw it, Mrs Stivens purchased a house in the Trinity district of Edinburgh for herself and Sherry. As far as the people of Trinity were concerned, the baby, who had been christened Helen, was Sherry’s much younger sister.
The truth was Sherry Stivens had paid a high price for refusing to give up her baby. Sh
e was constantly at her mother’s beck and call and she couldn’t even go out for a cup of tea on her Wednesday afternoon off without her mother, her self-elected chaperone, trailing along with her.
When Kate arrived for work, the morning after the night she had spent with Hugh, everything seemed so unreal to her. Kate recalled in detail walking into the store that morning and there must have been an air about her because it seemed as if Sherry Stivens knew where she had been and what she had done. Kate remembered standing in the small, cramped staffroom and Sherry looking long and hard at her before she softy uttered, ‘You know, Miss Anderson, when a woman is in love and that love is returned by her suitor then that woman takes on an air of glowing beauty and a magic envelops her. Sometimes this results in her throwing all sense of decency and caution to the winds.’ She hesitated before adding in an almost inaudible whisper, ‘And the price for that could be exacted from her for the rest of her life.’
To say that Kate was startled by this announcement from Sherry Stivens was an understatement. She glanced up at the mirror that was hanging above the tea table to be assured that she looked no different from yesterday. She remembered thinking as she gazed at her image that she was right, there was no beautifying variation in her appearance. In fact, she felt that she looked so sad and dejected that she reasoned there was no way anyone could think she looked enchanting and sparkling.
Nothing more was said by Miss Stivens, but within three weeks Kate was panicking. Hugh had said he had been careful not to get her pregnant – alas not careful enough! All too soon Kate accepted that soon she would have to break her mother’s heart and own up to being pregnant. Why, she thought, was it that when a young lassie got into a scandalous mess that somehow the shame fell on her mother? People would judge that Kate had not been brought up properly. Every day that passed Kate wanted to shout, ‘It was me that indulged in sinful acts – not my mother. My mother does not deserve the red face and humiliation that I am going to heap on her!’ Kate also knew that if Hugh realised what had happened he would somehow get home to her. Make it all right for her and their baby.
