Brow of the Gallowgate

by Doris Davidson

  He entered by the side door and exchanged his jacket for his long white apron before he went through to the front shop where his employer was counting change into a woman’s hand. The old man’s genial smile disappeared as soon as the customer went out, and his lined face bore signs of great anxiety when he faced his manager.

  ‘You’re back, are you, Albert? I’ve something to tell you, and I don’t know where to begin. I hope you can understand, but I’ve thought and thought about it, and it was my son made me see it was the only thing I could do.’

  Slightly puzzled, and not particularly interested in anything outside his own situation, Albert waited.

  ‘It’s like this. I’m wearing on for seventy, and since my wife died there’s nothing to keep me in Torry except the shop. Joe’s been at me for years to sell up and go to London, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’ve spent my whole life here, but when I was down there this time, he said he’d be a lot happier if I was where he could see I was eating properly.’

  He made a sucking noise with his tongue. ‘I’m not even bothering much nowadays, and there’ll come a time . . . If I sell, I’d have a bit of money, so I could pay him for my keep.’

  ‘You’d be a lot better with your son.’ Albert felt quite pleased for the old man. ‘Blood’s thicker than water, and you’d have somebody to look after you if you took ill.’

  ‘Aye.’ There was a long pause. ‘It’s just . . . you’ll be out of a job, Albert, and maybe out of a house, as well, if the new man wants it for some of his own relations. I’ll have to sell everything, tenement and all. I know it must be an awful shock to you, and I’ve had some sleepless nights over it.’

  ‘Don’t worry yourself about me,’ Albert assured him. ‘We’re going to be looking for a bigger house, anyway, for we’ve started our family, and I’ll easily get another job.’

  Mr Duthie’s face cleared so suddenly, it was like the sun bursting through after a shower of rain. ‘So little Bathie’s expecting? That’s one bit of good news, at any rate.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘Well, I’d better be off. I’ll have to think about clearing out my house and making up my mind what I want to take with me when I go to London. Joe hasn’t got room for all my stuff.’

  A worrying thought struck Albert then. ‘When were you thinking of selling up, Mr Duthie?’

  ‘Oh, I think I’ll leave it till after the winter. The beginning of the summer, more like. When’s Bathie due?’

  ‘The last week of May, but . . .’

  ‘It’ll not be before that, Albert, so you’ll have plenty of time to find another house, and another job.’ Patting the young man’s shoulder, he went into the back shop for his coat and hat.

  When he was left on his own, Albert marvelled at the strange coincidence. Here was he, with the wherewithal to buy a shop, and there was Joseph Duthie, wanting to sell his. But this little place wasn’t what he’d pictured in his dreams. Even the three rooms that the old man would leave vacant on the first floor weren’t what Albert had in mind for his family.

  They’d certainly be better than the two tiny rooms he and Bathie occupied at present, and he’d be helping Mr Duthie out if he bought this property, but it wasn’t what he wanted. It would be like breaking faith with himself if he knuckled under and used his mother-in-law’s loan for that.

  At seven, he locked up thoughtfully. Was it wise to break away, or should he accept what fate seemed to be offering him? Anyway, it was Bathie who should have been given that money, so he’d leave it to her to make the decision.

  All through supper, he tried to think how to broach the subject, and was still puzzling when he sat down by the fire.

  ‘You’re very quiet, Albert.’ Bathie had positioned herself on the rug in front of him, with her elbow on his knee. ‘Is there anything wrong? Don’t be afraid to say if there is.’

  He shifted a little, to avoid the spring that was digging into his left hip, then said, slowly, ‘Not exactly wrong, but I’d better tell you about it, my love.’

  She interrupted his recital only once. ‘You should have told me what you meant to do.’

  When he came to an end, he looked down at her pensive face. ‘It’s like fate meant me to buy this place, but . . .’

  ‘But the shop downstairs isn’t what you dreamt about? Albert, I look at it in a different way from you. I think, from the way it happened, that fate meant you to buy what you wanted, and just gave you a little push by telling you that you’d be out of a job and a house when Mr Duthie sold up.’

  ‘So you don’t think I’m reaching for the moon?’

  ‘It’s not reaching for the moon when you have the money to make your dream come true, and Mother won’t expect it back.’

  ‘She’ll have it paid back, every penny of it,’ he declared loudly. ‘I don’t want your father sneering at me for having to go cap in hand to them, not after what I said before.’

  ‘He wouldn’t. He’s not as bad as you think, Albert, and he quite likes you, now that he knows you better.’

  ‘Bathie, you’re the best wife in the whole world.’

  ‘I know.’ She gave a little giggle. ‘But you’re not the best husband in the world.’ Kissing his hand as his face fell, she added softly, ‘You’re the best husband that ever lived, Albert, dear.’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘It just doesn’t exist,’ Albert lamented, when they returned home one Sunday about three weeks later. ‘I’d better just forget my dream and offer to buy the place downstairs.’

  ‘It’s still only December,’ Bathie chided him, gently. ‘Some of the shops we’ve looked at were quite good, and remember, you can afford to alter one to suit you.’

  Her husband ran his fingers through his hair, two tufts springing on to his forehead like horns, one on each side of his middle parting. ‘No, Bathie. If I don’t get the right feeling about it, it’s no use. And it’s got to have a big enough house attached to it, that’s another thing.’

  ‘You’ll find it, Albert dear.’ Bathie had seen nothing amiss with several of the properties they’d looked at, but she respected her husband’s expectations.

  Her own thoughts had been concentrated on preparing for Hogmanay, which was drawing nearer. She’d wanted to invite the two sets of parents to a New Year’s Day meal, but had found opposition to her plan from more than one direction.

  In addition to Albert and his mother, her own mother had been very much against the idea. ‘There is not room for six people in your kitchen,’ Henrietta had told her. ‘And it’s too much work for you, in your condition. You must come here.’

  ‘But Albert’s mother and father . . .’

  ‘We will invite them, too.’

  ‘Ach, we’re only common folk,’ Wattie protested, when his son passed on Henrietta’s invitation. ‘We canna mix wi’ the likes o’ the Johnstones.’

  ‘They’re quite friendly, really,’ Albert said, earnestly. ‘They want it to be a proper family gathering, and Bathie’ll be disappointed if you don’t go.’

  Nell frowned, then glanced at her husband hopefully. ‘I can hardly wear the same frock I had on at the weddin’.’

  Wattie struggled with his thrifty conscience, but the thought of bonnie little Bathie being disappointed was too much for him. ‘I daresay I could let you ha’e you a pound or two to buy a new ane,’ he offered.

  The New Year celebration went off very well. Arthur Johnstone had been schooled by his wife not to talk about the bank, and he discovered that Wattie Ogilvie was actually quite a character, in his own droll way.

  Her dark hair shining like silk shot with faint traces of silver, Nell wore her new grey dress with ribbons across the bodice, and as she looked across at her husband, in the new shirt she’d also been able to buy out of the money he’d given her, she felt that they could hold their heads up beside the Johnstones, or anybody else, for that matter.

  Her usual reserve in the presence of her ‘betters’ being completely forgotten, she exchanged views with Henriet
ta on the problems of raising a family, and told her how it felt to be a fisherman’s wife when great storms were raging.

  ‘I’ll be glad when he gi’es it up,’ she smiled, ‘though he gets under my feet sometimes, even now, when he’s at hame.’

  Henrietta listened, with great interest. She’d never come in contact with anyone like Nell before, and was realizing how narrow her own life had been.

  It gave Bathie great pleasure to see the two sets of parents getting on so well together, and her cup of happiness would have overflowed if it hadn’t been for Albert.

  Arthur Johnstone had been very generous with the whisky, so he and Wattie were now laughing hilariously as they recounted some slightly risqué jokes to each other, but the spirits seemed to have had the opposite effect on Albert, who had withdrawn into himself and was obviously in a state of melancholia.

  The two mothers, having sipped a little port, were smiling indulgently at their husbands, although Nell was praying that Wattie wouldn’t disgrace her by coming out with some of the crude stories he bandied about with the other fisher folk.

  Bathie slipped her hand into Albert’s. ‘Cheer up,’ she whispered. ‘Our mothers and fathers will think we’ve had a quarrel. Everything’ll work out, you’ll see.’

  He turned towards her. ‘I’m sorry, it must be the whisky that’s making me feel like this. You’re right. It’s a new year, and a new beginning. Though 1889 was the best year ever for me, for that’s when I found you.’

  The Ogilvies all shook hands with the Johnstones and wished them Happy New Year when they left. Albert and Bathie walked as far as the foot of Market Street with his parents, then carried on over the Victoria Bridge into Torry.

  When they arrived home, Albert took Belle and Spanny outside for a few minutes before he joined Bathie in their bed. He gripped her breasts with more insistence than usual, making her cry out as his nails dug into her flesh, and she had to fight down a rising tide of nausea at the smell of whisky on his breath. Within seconds, he was on top of her, but to her great relief, he rolled off again almost immediately.

  ‘My cock winna rise,’ he mumbled, reverting, in his drunken state, to the common speech he’d overcome years before.

  Bathie listened to his deep, steady breathing with a touch of wry amusement, and before long, she, too, fell asleep.

  In the morning, Albert had no recollection of most of the previous evening, and when his wife told him what he’d done when they’d gone to bed, he was mortified.

  ‘Oh, my God, Bathie, I’m sorry. It was the drink speaking, and I’ll never touch another drop, Bathie, I swear.’

  She smiled. ‘We’ll see, Albert, we’ll see.’

  The weeks flew past for Albert, unable to find his dream, but dragged for his wife, who was finding her condition rather cumbersome. Her belly felt huge, and her breasts were heavy and tender. She stopped going out in daylight, imagining that everyone was looking at her and laughing. She’d had to let out the laces on her stays and the waistbands of her skirts, and she was only just into her seventh month. What would she be like by the time her child came into the world?

  ‘I love the way you look,’ Albert said gravely, when she voiced her fears one night. ‘There’s something, I can’t explain it, but carrying a child has made you even more beautiful to me. Let me feel my son, Bathie.’

  It was a request he often made since she told him about the infant’s movements, so she let him run his hand slowly over her bulging belly until he took a shuddering breath and let his arm drop.

  ‘Oh, Bathie. This is torture for me.’

  He seemed very irritated when he couldn’t get his arm into the twisted sleeve of his nightshirt, and his obvious need of her made her realize that he was frustrated at not being able to make love to her, although it was Albert, himself, who had decided to stop, a few weeks earlier.

  He lay down next to her, with his hands under his head, and she assumed that he was thinking about his still fruitless search for a suitable property, but she was wrong.

  ‘You know, Bathie,’ he said, after a few minutes, and never taking his eyes off the ceiling, ‘I went for years without taking a woman, though you maybe find that hard to believe.’

  ‘I do believe you, Albert.’

  ‘I only had one once, when I was just a laddie, to see what it was like, and it meant nothing to me. Yet here I am, hardly able to keep my hands off you. My sap rises every time I look at you, and I’m starting to fear you wakened the beast inside me, the beast that must have been there all along.’

  ‘You’re blethering.’ She used one of the expressions which she’d heard Nell often using to Wattie.

  ‘No, I’m serious, and if you ever think I’m behaving like an animal, I want you to tell me.’

  ‘If you’re worried about the time you had too much to drink, you never really did anything bad.’

  ‘I can feel there’s an animal in me, Bathie, and I’m feared I’ll disgust you some day.’ He changed position and turned away from her, and she lay wide awake wondering how it would feel to be treated roughly.

  The next day being a Wednesday, Albert took the dogs out in the afternoon to let Bathie have a rest. She didn’t doze off, as she often did, but lay thinking of the terrible scene there had been when she’d taken him home with her, smiling at the memory of how he’d stood up for himself. But she’d never discovered what had made her father climb down the way he did.

  She’d been in bed for less than ten minutes, weeping her heart out, when her mother had come up to tell her that he’d changed his mind and was now agreeable to the marriage, so what on earth could have happened during those few minutes? She hadn’t thought it strange at the time; she’d been so filled with happiness she could think only of Albert, but what had her mother said to her father? She was quite sure that it was Henrietta who had talked him round, but how?

  After puzzling for a minute, Bathie gave up. She would never know, and perhaps it was just as well. She used to have a strange feeling that things weren’t plain sailing between her mother and father, but since that night, they seemed to be much happier and more affectionate towards each other.

  Her thoughts turned to Albert’s proposal, and a peculiar disquiet assailed her. He’d kissed her, then said he couldn’t kiss her again, because he was afraid he’d do something he shouldn’t be doing until they were married. That was all he’d said, and she had jumped to her own conclusion. What if she’d misunderstood his intentions? Perhaps he hadn’t been proposing after all, but leading up to doing what he said he shouldn’t?

  Was that the only reason he’d wanted to marry her? Her stomach lurched, then she pulled herself together. She was being stupid. Of course he’d wanted to marry her, and not only for that. He loved her as much as she loved him, and their matings were a natural outcome of their love.

  Chapter Eight

  The potatoes were boiling on one side of the hob, the pot of stew and vegetables was bubbling on the other, when Albert burst in, excitement shining from his dark brown eyes, his red hair ruffled and falling over his brow.

  Bathie looked up from setting the table. ‘What is it? You look like you lost a ha’penny and found half a crown.’

  ‘I feel like it, and all,’ he crowed. ‘I’ve found it! The perfect property. The house has nine rooms, and the shop’ll do, though the whole place needs some attention.’

  ‘Nine rooms? Oh, Albert, that’s much too big for us.’

  ‘We’ll need nine rooms by the time we’ve finished, Bathie.’ His voice was pitched rather high. ‘I never mentioned it before, but listen. My name starts with A, and yours starts with B, and it came to me, when you first told me about the child, that we could carry on through the alphabet. That’s my new ambition.’

  ‘Oh, Albert.’ Consternation made her eyebrows meet. ‘Not twenty-six children? You surely can’t mean that?’

  ‘No, no. We’ll have as many as we can, starting with C, of course, seeing we’re A and B already. What d’you say
, Bathie? Think of the pleasure we’ll have just from making them, for a start.’

  She turned a deep rose. She always felt guilty when she thought of how much she enjoyed their couplings, because it was really something a decent woman should never admit, not even to herself.

  ‘It would be silly to have just three of us in nine rooms when we could have a proper family.’

  ‘Yes, Albert,’ she murmured. ‘I often used to wish that I’d had brothers and sisters – it wasn’t much fun being an only child – so I’d like to have lots of children.’

  ‘Come with me to see the house tonight, my love, for you’re going to love it as much as me, I promise.’

  After suppertime, Bathie put on her baggiest coat, to hide her condition as much as possible, although nobody would see her in the darkness outside, and set off arm-in-arm with her husband to an, as yet, undisclosed destination.

  ‘Where is it?’ she asked anxiously, after they’d crossed the Victoria Bridge and were going along South Market Street.

  ‘Wait and see, my love,’ was all that Albert would say.

  They walked alongside the docks, and on up Market Street itself, where Albert had been born and raised, then he led her across Union Street, Bathie’s heart sinking when they turned left into Broad Street.

  ‘Is it much farther? I can’t walk very far, not just now.’

  He halted at once. ‘I’m sorry, my love, I’ve been too anxious for you to see the place and tell me what you think.’

  He didn’t need to tell her that, she thought. It had been obvious from the minute he’d burst into the house, but how far did he still expect her to walk?

  He allowed her to lean against a wall for a short time, then said, ‘Are you ready to carry on?’

  The short respite had helped her a little, so he took her arm again, to walk her past Marischal College into the Gallowgate. She hoped that this wasn’t where Albert had found his ideal property, because it had once been the road to the Gallows and was now old and very run down. She couldn’t be happy living here.