‘You are not to take that poor child to the Exhibition tomorrow. She’s not fit for it.’
‘Aw, shut up!’
He went away with his shoulders contorted into a grotesque hump that almost hid the back of his head. In a moment or two they could hear him cheerily whistling.
Chapter 3
From early morning, a rustle of excitement gathered momentum in the air. Purposeful crowds surged through the streets and squeezed together on buses, and tram-cars and trains rocking and rollicking them as they sped towards Ibrox and Bellahouston.
Limousines purred along, fat with distinguished passengers. Family cars honked and rattled, windows busy with expectant faces.
The sun grinned down at Glasgow competing for attention with an exuberant gusty wind.
Soldiers lined the packed pavements of Union Street to keep the boisterous crowds in check as King George VI and his Queen made the twenty-five-minute journey from Central Station to Ibrox in an open landau drawn by four of the famous Windsor Greys, with outriders and postilions.
All along the route, tenement buildings leapt to life with whirling, lurching, rippling flags. Open windows were crammed with spectators fluttering handkerchiefs.
Inside Ibrox Stadium sixty-thousand people jamming together in good-humoured breathlessness. Great masses of children energising the crowd, Scouts, Cubs, Boys’ Brigade, white-bloused Girl Guides like banks of daisies. The whole arena animating suspense, rocketing every now and again into cheers of relief.
The children screaming at everybody and everything. The stand filling with notables, lawyers, bright stars from the Scottish Offices in their silk hats; Lord Elgin’s party and the little girl who was to present the bouquet to the Queen; James Bridie, Will Fyffe, Sir Harry Lauder, all receiving resounding yells of welcome.
A groom busying himself about the lawn, paddock and pitch raising ear-splitting cheers. A policeman at the east end of the stand engaging in a nice bit of vaulting, falling on his face, and nearby Cubs roaring their hearts out.
Then twelve trumpeters appeared, scarlet and gold on the skyline like a row of toy soldiers, their fanfare blowing away in the wind and drowned by the great shout that welcomed the King and Queen as the Windsor Greys swept into sight.
Compared with the children the hearty cheering of the grown-ups was a performance without shape - self-conscious, ill-timed, hedged with Scottish shyness. Alec let out a slightly derisive hurrah, then laughed and glanced round at his family to see if they too were laughing. He had the girls up on his shoulders and Madge had Maisie struggling in one arm trying to pull herself up by Madge’s hair and Hector stamping and jumping about on her hip in his efforts to see over the heads of the crowd.
‘My God!’ Hilarity escaped from Madge in jerks and spasms. ‘I’m being murdered here.’
‘Ma’s meeting us at Bellahouston. She’ll take them off our hands.’
‘At Bellahouston? You’re a scream! How are we going to find your ma at Bellahouston?’
‘We’d better find her. We want to enjoy ourselves and not be lumbered with this lot.’
Alec heaved his shoulders up and down, making Sadie and Agnes squeal with delight. And the squeals mingled with the cheers like a great fan, vivid with gaiety, pageantry and colour. The ceremony became a confused flicker of impressions distorted by excitement.
The King’s voice fighting determinedly to defeat its stutter:
‘Scotland believes that the best means of avoiding trouble is to provide against it, and that new enterprise is the safest insurance against the return of depression. It is in this spirit that the Exhibition has been built, and I see in it the symbol of the vitality and initiative upon which the continued prosperity of Scotland must rest.’
The strong confident voices of the people joining together to deliver with gusto the Twenty-fourth Psalm:
‘Ye gates, lift up your heads on high …’
The machine-like smartness of the services led by the Navy and dressed by the right.
The fly-past seen from the start as sweeps of shadows at intervals across the grass.
Then the hurrying, pushing and heaving towards Bellahouston Park and the great Empire Exhibition of 1938.
Only one thing marred Tuesday the third of May for Sammy Hunter, and that was his promise to go to Balornock in the evening, when he and Ruth had been invited to have supper with his father, his stepmother and five of his eight brothers who had come up from England especially to be at the opening of the Exhibition. Then later in the week there was to be a return visit.
All his brothers had scuttled off to various parts of England as soon as they were old enough, getting as far away as possible from Balornock. Normally they only returned once a year, for Hogmanay, but the Exhibition was something that could not be missed.
The sixteen turnstiles at the Mosspark entrance clicked merrily, but as Sammy and Ruth crushed along in the queue, the thought of the two evenings with his father hovered over the back of his mind, black shadows threatening to engulf and reduce to insignificance the wonderful achievement of the Exhibition opening up in front of his eyes.
‘We should have come earlier.’
Head tipped forward as he walked, he flashed a glance round at Ruth from under his brows, but Ruth’s starry-eyed attention refused to waver from the impressive entrance with its sweeping curve, its slender pillars, its high fluttering flags.
‘If your father’s comin’ to us on Saturday we haven’t much time to get the house all ready,’ she told him absently. ‘We’ll have to do the shopping on Saturday afternoon.’
Shadows lengthened and leaned forward. Yet he wanted his father and mother and brothers to come over on Saturday to see his new home. He was proud of his house, proud of the work that he and Ruth had done to it. They had transformed it from a rotting brown hovel, with rusted grate and flaking ceiling and wallpaper hanging from the walls, to a modern, tastefully decorated home.
Ruth, of course, was his greatest pride and joy. A great cook and housekeeper, a wonderful lover and wife, she had the same passionate enthusiasm for setting a table, whipping up an omelette or bewitching him to the shuddering point of ecstasy in bed.
Often he wondered what she saw in him and then the miracle of their relationship seemed like a fragile bubble liable at any moment to burst in his guts and leave nothing but himself.
‘Don’t remind me of my father. Why do you always have to bring him up?’ he grumbled.
‘He’s here, isn’t he?’ She shrugged. ‘We could bump into him, couldn’t we?’
‘In all this crowd there shouldn’t be much chance of that.’
‘Who cares?’ Ruth clutched his arm and squeezed it tightly against her breast. ‘Isn’t this wonderful?’
They were inside now, staring at the Exhibition’s greatest promenade and beyond it and above it in the distance the tree-encircled Bellahouston Hill with Tait’s Tower on top - a giant of steel and glass that dominated the gleaming white city of palaces and pavilions below and the scores of smaller buildings spread gaily over the park from the foot of the hill, poetry in pastel shades of blue, red, yellow and french grey.
Who cared? He cared!
This was to be a day of days, a time of pride for Glasgow and the whole of Scotland. He wanted to bask in the glory and pleasure of it like everybody else. Nothing should be allowed to spoil it, especially for Ruth. Determination put length and purpose into his step, and Ruth began to giggle as she clipped along beside him.
They began pointing things out to one another, the lofty flagstaffs, the lake with its submarine floodlights and batteries of milky fountains, the pavilions competing with one another in splendour.
By the time they had worked their way round to the British Pavilion, even Ruth’s effervescent spirits were beginning to go flat.
‘Sammy, it looks wonderful, but couldn’t we save it for another day? We could come some Saturday afternoon, couldn’t we, love? Or any evening after this week.’
H
e squeezed her hand in acquiescence although he was keenly disappointed. He had been especially looking forward to seeing around the United Kingdom Government Pavilion with the great gilded lions at the doors of its entrance hall. This pavilion was said to be one of the most impressive in the Exhibition.
A pool or moat with a bridge across it from the main exit ran the entire length of the building. Scientific research was the theme of the exhibits inside and he had read in the papers how really sensational it was. The entrance hall was ninety-five feet in height and the exit had a gigantic steel and glass globe representing the world floating in space.
‘My feet are killing me.’
Ruth hopped on one foot as she bent down to remove a flimsy high-heeled shoe, wiggle her toes and empty the shoe of grit and dust.
‘We could take one of the auto-trucks,’ Sammy suggested.
The thought of him with his self-conscious downcast glower perched back to back with another passenger on one of the little open auto-buses for everyone to see made Ruth’s eyes brighten with mischievous laughter.
‘I think I’ll survive. But only if we don’t trail round another pavilion. Can we just make our way round to Paisley Road now, love?’
‘Wear sturdier shoes next time,’ Sammy growled, but both of them knew he didn’t mean it.
They both liked to look smart. Ruth always wore high-heeled shoes and Sammy changed his shirt and put on a fresh starched collar every day of his life. Ruth was very particular about his clothes and he about hers. They always went shopping for clothes together, although going into the ladies’ departments of a shop even with Ruth hanging on one arm was always an agony to Sammy.
He sighed.
Dust was swirling up with the wind and the shuffling of a hundred and forty-five thousand feet, parching his throat, stinging his eyes, and dragging heavily at his spirits, but perhaps it was only the thought of the impending journey to Balornock that depressed him.
He tried to throw the mood off in a sudden bluster of bravado.
‘Come on, then, step it out smartly or you won’t get any supper. The rest of the horrible Hunters will have eaten it all.’
‘Sammy!’
Squealing in protest, stumbling, choking with laughter, she clung to his arm and struggled to keep up with his rapid strides.
‘Sammy, will you stop it? Do you want me to get angry with you?’
‘I’ll have no insubordination from you, woman! You’ll go over my knee as soon as we get home. You’ll get a good thrashing if you don’t watch your tongue!’
He came to an abrupt halt outside one of the Scottish pavilions high on terraced walls, patterned after North Country dykes, and boasting a many-windowed tower, an immense statue of St Andrew in the entrance hall and a huge aggressive-looking lion rampant emblazoned in scarlet on the outside wall.
This Scottish lion standing on its hind legs, chest puffed, tail cocked, tongue curled, forepaws bunched up like fists sparring for a fight, was the emblem of the Exhibition.
There was something about Sammy, as he stared up at it, shoulders back, red hair spiking in the wind, that resembled the Scottish symbol. He had an aggressiveness, a prickling - ‘I’m ready for any comers - try me if you dare!’ - outer covering that completely hid the man underneath.
‘Good old Scotland!’
‘Oh, Sammy, we’re not going in, are we?’ Her eyes, her body and her voice softened towards him. ‘Honestly, love, I’m exhausted. I’m not nearly as strong as you, don’t forget.’
He turned away. ‘Oh, there’ll be plenty more chances before October.’
The lofty Paisley Road entrance was in sight now but he stopped again, telling Ruth and himself that they could not leave without spending some time admiring the cascades, yet knowing that he was only succumbing to delaying tactics.
He stared solidly at the two giant staircases and the multi-coloured cascades leaping down from the top of the hill between them.
‘Imagine that at night. Imagine this whole place floodlit.’
‘It looks marvellous right now. Everything does. I’ve never seen any place so marvellous.’
‘Its a grand achievement, this Exhibition. It shows what Scotland can do.’
A pause grew in significance between them. Until at long last he broke the silence.
‘All right. All right. Come on. We mustn’t keep his bloody Majesty waiting!’
Chapter 4
‘It’s only fair that I should go home with Ma,’ Alec told Madge. ‘After all, Ma’s the one who’s been stuck with the weans all day.’
Madge readily agreed.
‘Aye, it’s a damned shame.’ She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and laughed. ‘Come on, hen.’
‘Not you, gorgeous. You go straight home and keep the kettle boiling for me.’
Their cheerfulness grafted across the weary wailing of the children. Even Maisie, normally a gooing, dribbling cottage-loaf of good nature, was brokenhearted.
‘These weans need their bed,’ Mrs Jackson accused her daughter-in-law. ‘It’s terrible!’
Madge’s freckled nose creased up.
‘Och, right enough. Poor wee buggers!’
Alec gave her an encouraging pat on the shoulder, rubbed Maisie’s baby head lolling helplessly against it and fondled the bottoms of his other three children, clinging round his wife’s coat-tails.
‘On you go with your mammy and you’ll be all right.’
‘Da … dae!’ Hector lamented and the twins took up the cry like a death-song.
Madge shifted Maisie on to her other hip so that she could give Hector a shaking.
‘Shut up! Silly wee midden.’ Her tone was good-natured despite her words. There was always a hint of a cheerful guffaw behind everything Madge said. ‘You heard your daddy. He’s to take Gran home. She’s tired and fed up and I don’t blame her.’
‘Those weans need their bed.’ Mrs Jackson spoke like a gramophone unable to get past one groove. ‘It’s terrible!’
‘Och, I know,’ Madge sympathised and struggled with her free hand to grab the clothes or whatever part she could of Agnes, Hector and Sadie. ‘And they’ve still to go all that way in the tram. I’d better get started.’
‘Right. See you later on, hen.’ With a quick convivial wave to his wife, Alec shepherded his mother off and both were soon carried away by the same crowd that was jostling Madge and the children, whose cries were fast reaching a crescendo.
‘It’s a disgrace,’ Mrs Jackson told Alec afterwards. ‘Fancy, poor tired wee bairns like that out on the streets when they should be in their beds. I always had you scrubbed spotless and asleep hours before this. These weans are always out till all hours. It’s terrible.’
‘Aye, there’s not many like you, Ma,’ Alec said, adding to himself, ‘Thank God,’ because half the time his mother talked a lot of nonsense. She had been out scrubbing here, there and everywhere and had never known when he was in bed and when he wasn’t.
‘Well, I’ll leave you here, Ma.’ He put an arm round her shoulders and gave her a squeeze, when they’d left the tram-car and reached her close in Castle Street. ‘You’ll be as right as rain now.’
Her parchment skin tightened bulging her eyes with panic.
‘Aren’t you coming up for a cup of tea, son?’
‘Some other time, hen.’
She leaned closer to him and gave him a conspiratorial nudge with a bony elbow.
‘I might manage a wee nip of whisky in it. Just seeing it’s you.’
He spread out his palms and shrugged in a gesture of helplessness.
‘It’s the weans, hen. You heard them. They like me to be there.’
She struggled to nod her agreement, almost an imperceptible movement at first as if her scraggy neck had locked.
‘Aye.’ Her nod suddenly loosened, became briskly enthusiastic. ‘You’re a good lad.’
For no apparent reason a blotchy redness was creeping up from her neck to make her face look patchy.
&n
bsp; ‘Cheerio then, Ma.’
‘Cheerio, son. When will I be seeing you again?’
The words hung uselessly in the air and he was away- spring-legged, shoulders swinging; his piercing whistle vying with the clash and clang of the tram-cars.
He was wondering what to do next when he literally bumped into Rita Gibson, a girl he used to work with, in more ways than one.
‘Whoops!’ He grinned down at her. ‘No need to rush me, gorgeous. Take it easy. I’m willing.’
‘Oh, it’s you, Alec. Still the same as well. An arse for a mind.’
‘Aren’t you lucky then, bumping into the only man in the world who’s got two?’
‘Aye, and my man’ll kick you in both of them if he finds you with me.’
‘I’ll bet five bob that right now your man’s either at the Exhibition or in the pub.’
She smirked an invitation up at him.
‘Five bob? Is that all?’
He winked and jerked his head to indicate better things round the corner.
‘Come on, hen!’
The house in Balornock was up near the park and Stobhill Hospital, a cottage facing Little Hill Golf Course in as near the country as one could get within the boundary of Glasgow.
It was a lonely place on a rough track that led to Auchinairn, and hidden from the Balornock Corporation housing scheme by the hospital buildings and the tree-thickened end of the park.
The nearest building to the cottage was the hospital morgue and many a nightmare the proximity of the place had given Sammy. He could vividly remember the terrors of coming home from school on dark winter nights, or returning from an errand and having to pass the place, a red brick coffin set well apart from the rest of the hospital. Worse still were the punishments imposed by his father. The ‘sentry duty’, the ‘standing watch’, the torment of being propped against the morgue and left there alone in the dark.
‘Now, just ignore him,’ Sammy urged Ruth, automatically lowering his head and his voice as he approached the house. ‘Don’t get upset.’
Ruth made no reply as the garden gate squeaked open. They walked in silence through the shadows of the thick bower that made a low-roofed tunnel towards the door. Heavy trees crushed around the cottage blocking the windows and darkening the interior.
The Breadmakers Saga Page 21
