‘That makes two of us,’ she retorted bitterly. ‘I certainly know what kind of horror you are now.’
‘I’ve been a good husband to you,’ he shouted indignantly. ‘I’ve given you a good home.’
‘This isn’t my home. It isn’t a home at all.’
‘Look at all the things I’ve provided you with. I’ve even made you a present of Betty’s clothes! What more could any man give you?’
She shook her head, the sickness and the shivering swamping her again.
‘Nothing, nothing. I’m sorry for everything I said.’
‘A fat lot you gave me! You’d neither a stitch to your back nor a penny to your name.’
‘I said I was sorry.’
‘You ought to be down on your knees to me in gratitude.’
Her eyes flashed fired and hatred at him again. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
‘What the hell are we standing here in the middle of the night arguing for?’ He suddenly scratched his moustache as if a better idea had occurred to him. ‘I’m away through to the kitchen and after I do my press-ups I’ll show you the way to express your gratitude! Come on! Don’t just stand there!’ He chortled. ‘There’s been enough hot stuff on this carpet for one night. Let’s see what you can do in the kitchen!’
Chapter 23
The room was heavy-clouded with smoke and thick with whisky fumes.
Sandy had dozed off in one of the chairs beside the fire. Tam sat nodding opposite, short legs splayed out, big muscly arms crossed over his chest.
Men were draped, in drunken stupors, over different chairs.
Francis and Eddie MacMahon and wee Andy Tucker were propping each other up on the settee. Josy McWhirter’s cherubic face had flopped down and hung by his fat chin on the edge of the table.
Only Rab and Baldy were awake and still steadily drinking; Baldy with his sleeves rolled up and his unbuttoned shirt hanging open to the waist like a heavy-weight ju-jitsu expert or a huge all-in wrestler, and Rab leaning back, dark-jawed and big-boned, absently sliding his glass backwards and forwards across the table from one hand to the other.
Nobody noticed that Baldy had stopped speaking and was staring across at the window and at the clock on the mantelpiece, then at the window, then at the clock, then at the window.
Until suddenly a low snarl began to raise the hairs on the back of everyone’s neck and by the time the snarl had increased in volume and menace to become first a growl as Baldy reeled from the table, then a terrifying gorilla-like roar, everyone was on their feet, restraining hands outstretched at the ready, mouths open in an agonized panic-stricken search to find the right words.
Baldy shot both arms up and sent the table, bottles, glasses, ashtrays, spluttering all over the room.
‘The bloody cowards!’ His big chest expanded. ‘The bastards!’ Lunging at the mantelpiece, despite the half-dozen or so men hanging on to him, he grabbed the clock and sent it hurtling through the window with an explosion, then a tinkling of broken glass. A couple of white ‘wally dugs’ flew through the air next.
‘Baldy!’ Rab shouted as one of the china dogs hit the wall. He fought to twist Baldy’s tree-trunk arm behind his back. ‘You’re wrecking your house, man!’
Baldy heaved round and sent Rab flying. ‘What bloody good is a house to me now!’
Rab struggled to his feet again.
‘Sarah wouldn’t want you to be getting into a state like this.’
‘Aye!’ Tam cried. ‘That lassie worshipped the ground you walked on. Think of her!’
‘I am thinking of her, you stupid fool!’ He yelled all the louder but tears were spurting, streaming down. ‘I promised I wouldn’t let any of them bastards touch her. She’s my wife!’
After she had recovered from the shock of what the Lord Provost had told her, Sarah refused to believe it. Not that she had the temerity to suppose anyone as important as the Lord Provost would tell a deliberate lie, but because his words and the words of the learned judge - ‘… you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead …’ - were beyond her realm of comprehension, had no place, did not belong in the world where the authorities and the powers-that-be had always commanded her secret awe, respect and admiration. She put the whole thing down to some sort of stupid mistake on her part. ‘Sarah, hen,’ she told herself, ‘ye’ve picked them up wrong.’
Yet in the deeper lonelier layers of her mind she could not convince herself. She had done a terrible thing and she would be punished terribly. The thought came rushing in on a white horse of fear but was beaten back again.
It was the idea of respectable folk (the Baillies were going to be there) calmly walking her along and putting a rope round her neck that confused her. Even the holy yin seemed to think it was all right.
So it must be all right.
Yet she couldn’t believe it.
But it was true.
The waves were surging in and in. And the cell was small. Nowhere to escape, nobody to turn to. She was sorry.
Sometimes the shame of having disgraced Baldy and the MacNairs and the street was too much to bear.
She couldn’t sleep.
There had been dirty washing in the lobby press, and the furniture and all the ornaments were dusty.
If folk were coming in and out looking after Baldy they would see it and Baldy would get a showing up. She should have left the house clean and tidy.
Her cheeks burned.
Had she really seen her house for the last time; her cosy fire, her chair with the velvet cushion, her bonny china with the roses all around?
No, in her heart she knew that was impossible. Soon, she would be going home again.
Baldy would come in. He was a lad, her Baldy, but they’d always rubbed along that well together.
He had been good to her. Never once had he complained. And what had she done in return? What kind of wife had she been to him?
‘Och, Baldy, lad, ah feel that ashamed!’
In the morning she would go down to old MacNair’s. It was a lovely shop that. The best shop in Glasgow. Warm as toast and smelling just as tasty and always somebody ready to have a laugh and nice wee blether. Many a laugh she’d enjoyed in there.
No more mornings.
She felt frightened. It was morning now.
The city magistrates and the governor and the town clerk’s deputy and the chief constable of Glasgow and the doctor and the holy yin were there.
It seemed truly terrible to be putting all these important folk to all this trouble. She fumbled with her cardigan and with fast-beating heart endeavoured to answer their questions with fitting politeness. She crinkled her face up and smiled apologetically round and round at them all.
It was a very serious and dignified procession and she tried to keep decently in step.
No more steps.
The waves came pounding over her. Horror was the scaffold. Terror was the instinctive need to keep alive.
Impossible to escape.
No time to bridge the hopeless gulf between her and her executioners.
The pain that had continuously dragged low down at her back and her abdomen flared into unbearable anguish, and at the last moment, before a man put the cap over her head, she felt grateful for the custom of making condemned women prisoners wear rubber underwear.
Fear beyond all measure. Darkness - and death long-drawn-out.
There was only one thing left that Jimmy could do, and that was to go to Duke Street Prison.
He knew his being there, standing outside the big bleak wall in the early morning with the collar of his jacket turned up and his hands dug deep into his pockets, could do nothing to stop what was going to happen to Sarah. But he imagined she needed a friend close by and this was as close as he could get.
His eyes, black-shadowed in an unshaven face, stared up at the prison.
At one time, when an execution took place a man could be seen hoisting a square black flag on a flagstaff at the western end of the prison roof w
hile the prison bell tolled a dismal announcement that the criminal had paid the penalty.
Now there was only the posting of a notice on the front wall.
No notice had been posted yet. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.
He wondered if there was a God. He had waded through the writings of Thomas Paine and other atheists and sceptics. He had come across some shocking atrocities in his reading about the history of the church.
All this weighed heavily against the existence of a deity, his mind tried to tell him. Still, in his heart he was not convinced. There was such bitterness, such derision in so many of the atheistic books and pamphlets. He wondered why they got so worked up about something they did not believe in.
As far as the church and some of the worst parts of its history were concerned, it seemed more reasonable to blame the men who had perpetrated the atrocities in God’s name rather than God.
One had, he decided, to go back to the root of the matter. A Christian meant a follower of and a believer in Christ.
Did he believe in Jesus Christ?
He had no time for droning-voiced hypocrites who hid behind dog collars. Or all the pomp and jewelled crowns and expensive robes and impressive trumpeting of all the churches in the world put together.
But what had they got to do with Christ? The Christ who was a tradesman - a carpenter. The Christ who, when He went into the temple and found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money changers at their business, made a whip of cords and drove them all, with their sheep and oxen, out of the temple, and poured out the coins of the money-changer and overturned their tables.
It needed only a little imagination to see that it took lot of nerve to do things like that, or a very strong character - or something more.
The miracle was that, despite the difficulties of translation, of words themselves as a means of communication and the human limitations of the men who recorded the books of the New Testament, in spite of the changing customs, despite men’s varying interpretations of Him, the spirit and the reality of Christ had survived all down through the ages.
Yes, he believed in Him!
A creaking, scraping sound alerted his attention, made his eyes dart round, his chest tighten, his breathing become difficult.
A prison officer had opened the gate and stepped out, a piece of paper in his hand.
No, Jimmy thought. No! He stared helplessly, the words of the notice drumming in his mind and building up to pain in his chest, cramping his shoulder and making him feel breathless and more breathless.
No … No …
He wandered away, climbed on a tramcar and trundled back to Clydend, his face a sickly putty colour, his whole attention now focused on the seemingly insurmountable difficulties of reaching the quietness of home, the relaxation of bed. Gasping, fighting to keep calm, he got off the car at the Main Road a few steps away from Dessie Street. The street was strewn with glass and broken pieces of pottery.
His feet crunched and clattered and stumbled over them into the close. Stop to lean against the coolness of the wall. On to the stairs, the banister hard and strong under his hand pulling him up.
Pain knifing him.
The first landing reached. Rest again, head rolling against wall. Pray for quietness to help keep calm. He wanted to live.
Noise swelled and reverberated around him like a riotous tenement symphony. Baldy shouting and sobbing. Rab and Tam and Sandy and a cacophony of other voices vying with each other in loudness.
Then from somewhere behind the door near which he had propped himself came another sound.
A girl was screaming.
Chapter 24
Catriona followed Melvin from the front room, across the hall and into the kitchen like an obedient child. Outwardly silent and subdued, she reeled inside, frantic for escape. She had been up all night imagining and dreading the hour of Sarah’s execution. The hour was near. Now she longed for peace of mind to pray. She needed every last ounce of energy to plead with God to forgive Sarah in case more punishment awaited her after death. She wanted to beg Him for mercy. Somehow she had to gather the courage to say: ‘“Thy will be done”, but if it is Your will that Sarah should die, please comfort her!’
She had to fight down revulsion and bitterness and hatred and ask His forgiveness for Sarah’s executioners because it said in the Lord’s prayer, ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.’
Before she dared open her mind to God it had to be very carefully prepared because He could see in every dark and secret corner. She had to be still and quiet, in awe and reverence.
Instead she was teetering on the verge of panic.
Melvin could not expect sex now. Not now! It was impossible. It could not be right. Surely it was obscenity to the point of madness to even think of sexual intercourse at a time like this?
Somehow her legs conveyed her into the kitchen where she had to hold on to the back of a chair for support.
Melvin was too busy to notice.
He stripped off his jacket, then his shirt and, naked to the waist, began limbering up. Muscles and veins bulged like balloons at bursting point as he jerked himself into different poses. Grunting, he grabbed his wrists and made his chest puff high like a woman’s. He dropped his arms and made his shoulders swell up like the hunchback of Notre-Dame. He whipped round, arms held high, fists curled, and snorted over his shoulder at her.
‘That back development’s out of this world, you know. It has to be seen to be believed!’
He faced her again, hand clamped on waist, and began high-stepping up and down. He dropped low to squat on his heels and bounced to his toes again. He finished off by lying on his stomach and doing a few press-ups. Then he rolled around, gave his moustache a good scratch and grinned up at her.
‘Come on then, darlin’! Let’s see what you can do!’
She could hear Baldy upstairs, and the other men, and the thumping and the crashing. The world was noisily disintegrating. The child might waken at any minute and be frightened.
Was Sarah frightened now?
‘Come on!’ One of Melvin’s broad hands groped up her skirt. ‘Let’s see you!’
She screamed - jerky, ceiling-pitched, staccato bursts, piercing. She clawed for the door, his hands imprisoning her.
The quick patter of feet in the hall and Fergus shouting.
The hands releasing. Escape. Into the hall, fight with the handle of the front door. The landing. Jimmy in the shadows. In exquisite gratitude she clung to the Harris tweed jacket, moved her face and lips in the warm hollow of his neck, prayed to melt safely inside him, be one with him, protected by his gentleness and understanding.
Suddenly love alerted her. All thoughts of herself forgotten she stared up at Jimmy’s face.
‘Jimmy, love … Lean on me … I’ll take you home, I’ll help you upstairs.’
He shook his head.
‘Oh, Jimmy!’
With desperate, fumbling fingers, she loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt.
‘What the hell …?’ Melvin’s iron grip wrenched her away. ‘Right on my doorstep, too! I knew he was an impertinent bastard but this is bloody ridiculous!’
Jimmy twisted against the wall, his head to one side.
Panic swirled round Catriona again.
‘He’s ill! Can’t you see? Are you always blind? Oh please, please, Melvin - help him!’
‘I know him,’ Melvin sneered. ‘I’ve known him a lot longer than you. He’s been to the prison. He’s been working himself into a stupid tizzy over a useless dirty slut like Sarah Fowler. I’ll deal with you at work tomorrow, Gordon. Right now I’ve a thing or two to say to my wife!’
The door crashed shut and they were in the hall and she was aching to kill him!
Only for Jimmy’s sake did she pin down her voice and emotions.
‘Go get a doctor. Please, please, oh, please, Melvin! I’ll do anything. I’ll promise. I’ll never speak to
Jimmy again. Only do something, anything to help him!’
‘Watch where you’re going. You’ll dirty the linoleum!’ Melvin raised his voice indignantly. ‘Walk on the rugs. What do you think I put rugs on this floor for? I went to a lot of bother to get those rugs and place them just right to protect the good linoleum.’
‘Dirty the linoleum? You’re worrying about dirtying the linoleum?’ She laughed with hysteria. ‘You’d think there was nothing more to life.’
‘But there isn’t!’ Melvin said, genuinely astonished at her ignorance. ‘That’s all life is - a fight against dirt.’
Darkness billowed around her. Wildly she struggled against the black cloth.
She fought with her fists, her feet, her teeth, her nails, all the strength that was in her, but Melvin’s muscles bulged, proud of their superior strength, and the black cloth snaked around her, smothering her, whirling her down …
Consciousness returned and it seemed that she had never stopped struggling.
Only now she was in the bedroom, and she was trapped in a tunnel of blankets and her hair was flopping from one side to the other of a lumpy pillow.
‘Take it easy,’ Melvin was saying. ‘Just take it easy, OK?’ Reaching over he heaved her into a sitting position. ‘The doctor’s been and had a look at you. He’s upstairs now but he’ll pop in again later.’
‘Jimmy!’ She flung the blankets aside and would have been out of bed but Melvin’s iron arms restrained her like the bars of a prison.
His face acquired a solemn expression. ‘It’s too late.’ He gave a long serious sigh. ‘He wouldn’t do as he was told, you see. We were always telling him - his mother, Sandy, Lexy, your father, Tam, and nobody more than me. Take it easy, we all kept warning him, don’t get so worked up about everything - keep calm - don’t bother - why worry? But we just couldn’t do anything with him. He was always sticking his neck out; always ruffling himself up, and other folk, too.’
‘Oh, no.’ Catriona shook her head.
The Breadmakers Saga Page 18
