Brow of the Gallowgate

by Doris Davidson

  A round of hearty applause, and some table-thumping from Charlie, made the man smile as they all lifted their glasses in a toast.

  Gavin rose, grinning bashfully. ‘My wife and I, and our daughter, thank you all for your good wishes.’

  Bathie felt her heart filling with gratitude to him for remembering to include Kathleen in his little speech, and she dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief.

  ‘Good luck in your new life, Charlie and Vena,’ Gavin continued, ‘and give my kindest regards to Flo and Hetty when you get to Wanganui, also to Mary and Jeannie Wyness. Tell them I remember them both very well.’

  When the minister stood up to leave, Albert went to the door to see him out, and came back smiling. ‘Now we can all relax. Does anybody want another drink?’

  ‘No, thank you, Albert.’ Gavin got to his feet. ‘We’ll have to go, too, because we still have a few odds and ends to attend to before we leave in the morning.’

  ‘Oh, it’s early yet,’ Albert began, then caught Bathie’s eye, and stopped.

  ‘It’s true, we do have to finish packing, Father.’ Ellie laughed and rose out of her chair. ‘Come on, Kathleen.’

  Gavin turned to his two sisters-in-law now. ‘Gracie and Ishbel, you will be welcome to spend a holiday with us any time, and that goes for you, too, Albert and Bathie. I’ve known you for so long, it doesn’t feel strange to be a real part of your family at last, though I never dreamt I’d end up by being your son-in-law.’

  Bathie felt choked, but Albert said, in a somewhat husky voice, ‘And we’re very pleased to welcome you into our family, Gavin. Good luck in your new practice, and, Ellie, you’ll write to let us know how you all settle in?’

  His favourite daughter ran round the table to kiss him warmly. ‘I’ll write every week, and thank you, Father, for all you’ve done for me.’

  Bathie stood up to hug Kathleen, while Gavin shook hands with Albert, and Ellie embraced her brother and his wife then her five sisters. When Gavin came towards her, Bathie, already perilously near to breaking down, couldn’t hold back her tears, and he held her shoulder as his eyes searched hers.

  ‘No tears today, Bathie. I’m happier than I’ve been for many a long year, and I’ll always think fondly of you . . . and Albert.’ His hold tightened for a second.

  ‘Good luck, Gavin,’ she whispered, acutely conscious that they were the focus of all attention, especially Albert’s. ‘We’ll always think of you fondly, too.’ Her voice growing stronger, she went on, ‘But we’re being silly. This isn’t a final goodbye – you’ll all come back to see us, very soon.’

  When Gavin took Kathleen’s hand and went out, Ellie held back and went over to her mother.

  ‘I promise to look after him – I do love him, you know.’

  Bathie gulped, but her eyes didn’t waver. ‘I know that, Ellie, and he’s a very lucky man. Just keep him happy.’

  ‘I mean to.’ Ellie hesitated briefly. ‘He told me how he felt about you, so I hope you’re not . . .’

  ‘I’ve always had a great affection for Gavin,’ Bathie said, quietly. ‘That’s all. Affection, so always remember that.’

  They joined the others, who were waiting at the foot of the outside steps, then Gavin took one of Kathleen’s hands, Ellie took the other, and goodbyes and good wishes were called after them as they walked into the close. Bathie was last to go inside, feeling that all emotion had been drained out of her as she put one foot past the other automatically.

  She was glad when Gracie said, ‘Vena’s going to help me with the clearing up, Mother, so you go and sit down. Ishbel, don’t bother sneaking off upstairs. You can help, too.’

  ‘I’m sneaking off upstairs, at any rate,’ Charlie remarked, which made them all smile.

  Alone in the parlour, Bathie was hit by reaction to all the days of preparation and the strain of that day, so she was weeping silently when Albert joined her.

  ‘Bathie.’ He stood in front of her, looking down at her solicitously. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind about Gavin and Ellie? I know how you felt about him.’

  Anger and exasperation swept through her. ‘No, you don’t know how I felt about him. It was never love. I tried and tried to make you understand that, but you wouldn’t listen. You were too . . .’ She stopped, searching for a word.

  ‘Thrawn?’ he suggested, with a smile.

  It was the best thing he could have said, and she burst out laughing, the tears still running down her face. ‘That’s it, exactly. You’re as stubborn as an old mule. As I told Ellie before they left, I’ll always have a great affection for him, but I’m honestly glad he’s found true love at last. They both deserve all the happiness they can get.’

  Satisfied, he changed the subject. ‘I’ve been considering employing a man for the shop. Once Charlie goes, there’ll just be Gracie to help you and me both, till Ishbel leaves school.’

  ‘She’s old enough to do a bit more in the house now.’

  ‘Aye, well, but I need somebody to help me.’

  ‘Whatever you think, then, Albert.’

  He picked up the morning paper, which he’d had no chance to look at before, and read until his two daughters came in, Ishbel looking somewhat aggrieved.

  ‘That’s everything washed and put away, Mother,’ she said. ‘Can I go upstairs now?’

  Bathie smiled. ‘Yes, off you go, and Gracie, I think you should have a seat for a while. You deserve it.’

  The girl flopped down on the couch with a grunt. ‘Thank goodness there’s not a wedding in this house every day.’

  Both Bathie and Albert agreed wholeheartedly with that sentiment.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  The excitement of Ellie’s wedding had barely faded when Charlie received notification that they would be sailing on 3rd January, 1921. That unsettled everyone, but it was nothing compared with what occurred three weeks before Christmas.

  Henrietta Johnstone fell downstairs and her husband had struggled in vain to lift her. Their doctor told Bathie later that her mother had suffered a seizure and so had felt nothing when she fell, and that her father’s heart – much weakened by another bout of bronchitis – had given out with the exertion.

  Not only horrified and devastated by their deaths, Bathie was burdened down with guilt. She’d been so involved with her own life that she’d paid little attention to her parents recently.

  She’d sent Gracie or Ishbel to Ferryhill occasionally to find out how they were, but it was her duty to have gone, and she should have made the effort.

  They’d always come regularly to see her before her father became too feeble to leave the house. Her mother must have worn herself out looking after him, when Bathie could quite easily have installed them in her house. There had only been one spare room since Charlie and Vena came back, but Gracie and Ishbel could have doubled up to give their grandparents a sitting room and a bedroom on the middle floor.

  Over the three days leading up to their funeral, Bathie retreated further and further into herself, and her movements became more and more mechanical. Albert was left to arrange everything, even to detailing Gracie and Vena to organize the funeral tea. Vena had also taken it on herself to soothe the Johnstones’ young maid, who had found her master and mistress lifeless when she’d run downstairs to find out what had caused the noise she’d heard.

  Most of Arthur’s banking contemporaries had either died before him, or moved away from Aberdeen when they retired, so the funeral was quite small, but Bathie wouldn’t have taken in who was there and who wasn’t, in any case.

  Albert, Gracie and Vena were still in the process of clearing out the house when it was time for Charlie and his wife to leave. Fortunately, in a way, Bathie’s senses were so numb that their departure hardly registered with her.

  Gradually, however, she came back to life, mourning the sudden deaths of her mother and father in a natural manner, and facing up to the fact that her eldest son and his wife had also vanished from her life, possibly for ever.


  It was Gracie who sank into despondency then. She took no interest in anything, her face became haggard, her eyes stared pathetically out of deep, dark sockets and her clothes hung on her almost-emaciated body. But she assured everyone who asked that there was nothing wrong.

  Bathie was extremely thankful when the girl came upstairs one day at the beginning of April, and said that Joe Ferris, Albert’s young assistant, had asked her out. Surely this would take her out of her depression and bring her back to health?

  When Gracie came down after dressing that evening, she already looked different – her eyes shining incongruously out of their deep hollows, her face less drawn and her walk with some purpose to it.

  ‘Does this skirt look all right, Mother?’ She twirled round to let Bathie see the full effect.

  ‘You look fine, dear. Just go out and enjoy yourself, it’s a lovely night for it.’

  ‘I don’t see why you didn’t help with the dishes,’ Ishbel grumbled. ‘You know I don’t like drying.’

  ‘You should have told me,’ Bathie said, quickly. ‘I’d have let you wash them.’

  Gracie’s laugh was a tonic to her mother. ‘She doesn’t like washing them, either. She doesn’t like doing dishes at all.’ She walked to the window with a spring in her step that had been missing for months.

  ‘Have you any home lessons, Ishbel?’ Bathie asked. ‘If you have, you’d better go and do them, right now.’

  The lanky schoolgirl tossed her auburn curls and pulled a face, but did as she was told, and Albert laughed, fondly.

  ‘She’s another Ellie.’

  ‘Here’s Joe, now.’ Gracie whirled round from watching the street, and hurried out to meet the young man. Excitement made her skip down the outside stairs, but she was sure of one thing. She wouldn’t allow Joe to do anything like that sailor had done on Armistice Night, it was too easy for emotions to get out of control. The guilt of it had come back to haunt her a few weeks ago, eating away at her until today – when Joe had asked her out so shyly.

  Gracie had known him for weeks – her father had employed him before Charlie left – and she’d worked alongside him when they were busy, so she didn’t consider him a stranger. She had talked to him easily in the shop, and was soon laughing and joking with him while they walked down the street together, surprising herself as much as the young man.

  At last, he stopped and turned to her seriously. ‘You know, Gracie, I’ve wanted to ask you out for quite a while, but you always looked . . . a bit proud. I felt you wouldn’t want to be seen walking out with an ordinary grocer’s assistant.’

  ‘My father was just a grocer’s assistant when he married my mother,’ she told him. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m sorry if I made you think I was looking down on you, I didn’t mean to. I suppose I’ve been a bit unhappy for a long time, but I feel much better now.’ Glancing sideways at him, she smiled. ‘I was being stupid about a boy, you see.’

  ‘Oh.’ Joe sounded rather dismayed. ‘I didn’t know you were going out with anybody else.’

  ‘It was just somebody I met once. He promised to write, but he didn’t. We were ships that passed in the night.’ She gave a wry grin. ‘It was a long time ago, Joe.’

  ‘How would you feel about going steady with me?’

  She held her head on one side, pretending to consider, then laughed. ‘I wouldn’t mind.’

  They started meeting two or three evenings a week, and Albert and Bathie were very pleased that the girl was acting normally at long last. Ishbel teased her, of course, but Gracie could take it now.

  ‘You’re only fourteen,’ she admonished her sister one day. ‘You’ll have to wait till you’re older before you know what you’re speaking about.’

  ‘Wait till you’re older, that’s all I’m ever told.’ Ishbel stamped upstairs, leaving Gracie and their parents laughing.

  Hardly a day went past that there was no letter from one or other of Bathie’s far-flung family, and answering them all was a labour of pure love for her.

  When Flo told her that Will’s boss was going to retire, and had offered Will a partnership in the building firm, she was delighted for them, especially when she read the postscript Flo had added. ‘I’m expecting a baby at the beginning of November, so I bet you’ll be pleased about that.’

  Bathie was delighted, and hoped that her other daughter in New Zealand would be telling her the same thing in a short time. Hetty’s letters were usually filled with descriptions of the modernizations they were having carried out in their house, but the letter which arrived a few days later made Bathie uneasy.

  ‘We’re getting rid of the old furniture we bought at first, and buying new. Martin’s mother has been a great help, for she advised me where to go, and what to buy. She lent Martin the money to buy the house in the first place, because she was left very well off when her husband died, and she says we can take our time about paying her back. It’s really kind of her.

  ‘I can’t understand why Mary and Jeannie are so distant with her, she is their sister, after all. I’m sure Martin knows why, but he won’t tell me. It must have been something she did long ago, maybe before she left Aberdeen, even, so you might know what it was, Mother.’

  Yes, Bathie thought, she knew. It had almost slipped her mind who Hetty’s mother-in-law was, but she would never forget what Bella Wyness had done. It was best that Hetty knew nothing about that dreadful business, and there was no cause to warn her to be on her guard against the woman – not yet. Bathie couldn’t even mention her resurrected fears to Albert. He’d only laugh at her for worrying about nothing.

  She cheered up a little when Ellie wrote that she, too, was going to have a baby, due about the end of November.

  ‘Gavin’s nearly jumping his own height, and Kathleen’s absolutely up in the clouds about it. I’m keeping quite well, apart from a touch of morning sickness, and we’re going to come to see you before I grow too big to travel comfortably. Gavin’s arranging for a locum for the first three weeks in July, so I hope that’s suitable for you.’

  Bathie laid the letter down. Yes, she decided, she was every bit as pleased about Ellie’s coming child as she was about Flo’s, and, boy or girl, it couldn’t have a better father than Gavin McKenzie.

  After Albert read the letter, she said, ‘That’s two grandchildren on the way, and they say everything comes in threes. I wonder who’s going to be next? Helene or Hetty?’

  His eyes were soft as he looked at her. The excitement had made her eyes sparkle and brought the colour back to her cheeks. She looked like his old Bathie, the sixteen-year-old who had captivated his heart, and she was only three years short of fifty.

  ‘As long as it’s not Gracie,’ he smiled.

  Each letter now was opened with feverish haste, and, when no more pregnancies were announced, Bathie watched Gracie’s face apprehensively for signs of morning sickness.

  The days went past uneventfully. The girl looked happy, her face and body had filled out since she’d started keeping company with Joe. She was blooming with health – so different from the pathetic, thin creature her mother had feared was sinking into a decline a few weeks earlier. Bathie was certain that Gracie was not pregnant.

  It was Charlie who surprised her, the first paragraph of his next letter going straight to his important information.

  ‘Dear Mother, We’re going to have a baby in December!! After all these years of thinking it was impossible, Vena had a small operation, and the next thing was she was expecting. I can’t tell you how happy we both are, and I’m sure you’ll be pleased for us.’ His letter carried on, ‘I’ve started working on a sheep station a good bit out of Wanganui, and there’s a house along with the job, so things are looking up for us.’

  Bathie was pleased that they were settled, but his other news was more important to her. Vena would make a wonderful mother – look how she’d coped at the time of Ishbel’s birth, and James’s – and Charlie would be a good father.

  She was
content now that she knew the third mother-to-be. The babies’ births would all be fairly close, Flo’s in early November, Ellie’s in late November, Vena’s into December, so there would be plenty to celebrate at Christmas, 1921. But, first, there was Ellie’s visit to look forward to.

  Albert was amused at first to see his wife cleaning rooms and sorting out bedclothes, but began to worry that she was doing too much, too quickly. ‘Slow down, Bathie,’ he told her, one dinnertime. ‘There’s still two weeks to go. You’ll wear yourself out before they come.’

  ‘No, I feel good. Waiting to be made a Granny three times within a month is wonderful medicine, better than a tonic.’

  He covered her hand as she laid a plate down in front of him. ‘It does my heart good to see you so happy, my love.’

  ‘You haven’t called me that for a long time, Albert.’

  ‘Bathie, you’ve always been my love, no matter what I did to make you think otherwise, and you’ll always be my love till the day I die.’

  She laughed at his earnestness. ‘Maybe I’ll die first.’

  Frowning, he said, ‘It’s nothing to joke about. My life would be empty without you, Bathie.’

  She pulled her hand away from his, but bent to kiss his forehead. ‘And mine would be meaningless without you, but we can’t choose who’s going to go first, so eat your dinner and stop arguing.’

  On the day that the McKenzies were coming, Bathie rose early. Ellie and her husband were to sleep in one of the attics, and Kathleen was to be in the room next-door to them, so she lit the fires in both rooms and ran over the furniture with a duster before making breakfast.

  A letter from Donnie made her sit down for a minute, but it was just the usual chat about how he and Helene were coping in their small newsagent/tobacconist’s shop in South Norwood.

  ‘It’s going to take a bit of time till we’re established,’ he wrote, ‘but things are coming on not too bad. Hope all at the Gallowgate are keeping well, and that you are still hearing from the folk in New Zealand. What a surprise we got when you told us Flo and Vena and Ellie were all expecting about the same time. We’re not thinking of starting a family yet, not till we’re on our feet, but mistakes can happen. Ha, ha!!’