Alec leaned over the iron sink to peer for a minute the window into the yard below.
He felt good. Life was good.
Turning back to his family and his tea he began to sing.
‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile …’
The children joined in, banging their spoons.
‘What’s the use of worrying? It never was worth while - so-o-o … !’
Chapter 8
Catriona’s baby was due in November and now, seven, nearly eight months pregnant, it looked as if she was not going to miscarry. The baby heaved and kicked violently inside her. She could actually see it lumping up her smock as she sat resting her aching back against a pile of cushions on one of the sitting-room chairs.
It was obscene. She averted her gaze from herself but her eyes kept returning to stare at the jolting, mountainous abdomen.
‘Is that the bell?’
Melvin flung down his newspaper as Catriona heaved herself up.
‘I’ll go.’
‘Sit still! I’ll see who it is.’
‘I want to go.’ She glared at him. ‘I’m fed up sitting still.’
He bulged his eyes heavenwards and reached for his newspaper again.
A tall good-looking man stood at the door. Despite her misery and the hundred and one aches and pains that plagued her, dragged her down with the ponderous weight, she experienced a tiny thrill. The slim body, the dark hair, the twinkling eyes, reminded her of young Jimmy Gordon, the confectioner in the bakehouse who had died so suddenly.
Her eyes shrank down, her cheeks crimsoned with the shame of her appearance. Shutting the door a little she whispered round it.
‘Yes?’
Alec grinned and winked at her.
‘Hello, you gorgeous doll. I’m Alec Jackson and I’ve lost my mammy.’
Her hand flew to her mouth to stifle an unexpected giggle.
‘I know I’m a big boy,’ he said. ‘But it’s true.’
‘Isn’t Mrs Jackson upstairs?’
‘Everybody in this stair must be dodging me, hen. I’ve knocked on every door and you’re the first wee soul that’s answered.’
‘Maybe she’s down in the shop.’
‘You’re a genius!’
Another almost imperceptible giggle was captured in her hands and timorous eyes peeped expectantly up at him.
He puckered his lips and bunched his fingertips against them to flick a kiss towards the gradually narrowing crack in the door.
‘And a gorgeous wee blondie as well!’
The door clicked shut and she shuffled flat-footed back across the hall, rocking from side to side, a tiny boat a-bob bob bobbing.
‘Well?’
Melvin’s mustachioed face rose from the top of his paper.
Catriona slumped into the cushions.
‘Well, what?’
‘What do you mean, “Well, what”?’ His eyes protruded with indignation. ‘Who was that at my door?’
‘Somebody looking for Mrs Jackson.’ She shifted about irritably, restlessly. ‘Anyway, it’s not your door!’
‘Not my door? Jumpin’ Jesus, you’re going off your nut like your mother.’
‘If it’s any kind of door, it’s our door. Everything’s always yours, yours, yours.’
‘Well, everything is mine!’
Her fists bunched on her lap as if keeping a tight grip on tears.
‘Nothing belongs to me and I don’t belong anywhere.’
‘What are you blethering about now?’
‘Oh, shut up!’
‘Don’t you tell me to shut up!’
‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’
Melvin tossed his newspaper aside and stretched to his feet menacingly to hitch and bulge huge muscles over her.
‘What are you going to do?’ she queried, her personal discomforts niggling her far beyond fear. ‘Challenge me to a wrestling match?’
He held his pose for a shocked second, then suddenly he flung back his head in a loud bellow of laughter.
She could not help laughing herself, although the hilarity that made her shiver in her nest of cushions was dangerously near the opposite extreme of heartbroken tears.
Melvin perched his heavy bulk on the side of her chair and put a gorilla arm round her shoulders.
‘That’s not a bad idea! Give us a kiss!’
Dodging his lips she pecked at his cheek.
‘Melvin, I’m sorry but I’m absolutely exhausted. I’m fit for nothing until I get a cup of tea. Would you like to make it, dear? You do it so much better than me.’
She watched him hesitate and saw in his face the fear that he might be endangering his manhood. She pecked him again.
‘I don’t know what I’d do without your strength at a time like this. I feel absolutely useless!’
He guffawed with laughter.
‘You are useless! Stay there. I’ll go and make the tea. But you’d better enjoy it and be grateful, do you hear?’
‘Yes, thank you, Melvin.’
He went through to the kitchen and she closed her eyes and sat with her arms hanging limply over the arms of the chair. She tried to relax. She tried to think pleasant thoughts to help her relax. It was no use. Her eyes opened; annoyance, vexation, harassment, elbowing for expression. Every few seconds she had to move, to hitch herself clumsily from one position to another, working herself through a hundred minute variations of body and limbs. And still she could not find a comfortable position.
Then she took an unbearable pubic itch. She looked furtively around to make sure that neither Melvin nor anyone else could see her, before having an exquisite scratch.
She felt sore, sore in the groin, sore in the back, sore in the breasts - her tiny boyish breasts now swollen, brown-stained, blue-veined.
In sudden pique she jerked her head from side to side at the same time bouncing her shoulders up and down, like a spoiled child stamping in a tantrum made worse by being so cruelly weighed down.
Her flurry of revolt against the injustice of it all gave her a throbbing headache and brought weak tears of defeat.
The only consolation she could find was that in a few weeks it would all be over. No more restlessness, no more having to trot to the lavatory every fifteen minutes and less at night. Her need to pass water had become so frequent she was like a sleepwalker staggering in and out of bed, in and out of the bathroom, the whole night long.
No more not being able to keep her stockings up, or fasten her shoes, no more indigestion and heartburn, no more gluttonous cravings that made her sick with shame.
For days now, unknown to Melvin, she had been consuming, one after the other, half-a-dozen rhubarb tarts. Fergus had caught her the other night and had stood, mouth drooling, dying for just one. But she had childishly clutched the box in her arms and told him to go away.
Porridge was another thing! She had greedily supped potfuls and potfuls of the stuff, often horrifying both Melvin and Fergus by wolfing into a tin of fruit salad immediately afterwards.
She would not be a bit surprised if, once the birth was over, she could never face porridge or fruit salad. She was perfectly certain that she would never, never look at that bottle-green bell-tent of a swagger-coat again.
Never! Never! Never!
Tears gushed faster. How did she know she would even be herself again. How did she know she would have the strength to survive the terrible unknown ordeal yet to come.
If only she could close her eyes and open them to find it had all been a nightmare. Hopefully, she tried it, though she knew there was no escape. The knowledge that she was trapped had been steadily closing in on her like unknown assailants in a pitch black room.
Terror that defied expression shuddered from her roots, clawed up years of black indoctrination, dogmatically instilled fear, ignorance, enforced severance from her contemporaries, imprisonment in her mother’s iron womb.
‘What’s wrong now?’ Melvin asked when he returned carryi
ng a tray of tea-things.
A minute or two passed as her sobs racketed wilder and she was unable to speak.
Unnerved by the unexpectedness of the outburst Melvin put down the tray and in his haste slopped tea into the saucers.
‘Hell’s bells!’ he roared. ‘Now look what you’ve done.’
‘M … M … Melvin!’ she managed to choke out eventually. ‘I’m … I’m … frightened!’
‘Frightened? Frightened of what?’
‘M … M … Melvin! M … M … Melvin!’
He smacked a shovel of a hand against his brow.
‘Jumpin’ Jesus!’
‘Please help me!’
He hesitated, his face screwed with an exasperation that quickly relaxed into a chuckle.
‘Come here!’ He stomped over and sat down in the chair opposite her. ‘Come over and sit on my knee.’
She nodded, jerky and hiccoughing with sobs. Eagerly her hands clutched at the arms of her chair. She pulled, and heaved, grunted and wriggled, rocked and kicked out her legs but was unable to get up.
Melvin began to laugh. Tears of laughter dripped down and wet his moustache.
‘Come on!’
She kept trying, breathless now, and skin shining with sweat, eyes big and soft and tragic like a seal’s.
Until she stood in front of him, her strange heart rapidly pittering, and above it her own heart pounding with grief.
She knew at that moment what it was really like to be a woman, and she would never forget it as long as she lived.
‘Come on!’ Melvin chortled, loudly smacking his knees. ‘Don’t just stand there like an elephant!’
She waddled a few steps, pushing her abdomen in front of her and thankfully eased herself down on his lap. Then with a long shuddering sigh her head collapsed back against his shoulder.
‘I know what you need,’ Melvin said, his hand already searching out her breast.
‘No.’
‘I know what you need, better than you know yourself!’
‘No!’
He pulled one tender milky breast from blouse and brassière, balanced it on his palm then flipped and smacked it up and down.
He was settled back in his chair, relaxed, taking his time, enjoying himself.
God who was a man, God who made all men, she thought, damn Him!
Chapter 9
The Exhibition flag on the tower was to be lowered at midnight on Saturday, 29 October, to signify the end of the Empire Exhibition to which Glasgow had been generous host.
Enormous crowds flocked to Bellahouston Park to enjoy the sights and smells and sounds of the Exhibition before the gates were locked for the last time.
Alec, Madge, his mother and the children went for an hour or two in the afternoon. Alec took the children on a screaming hilarious trip through the amusements park the giant wheel, the stratoship, the whirler, the crazy house with its walls and windows all out of perspective and its noisy mechanical cats. There they all wandered about eating new pink clouds of sugar called candy floss, and licking the latest thing from Canada - a whipped up whirl of ice-cream.
A special air of gay abandon stirred among the vast crowds a determination to toss all Scottish caution to the winds and whoop it up, enjoy themselves before everything packed up and went away.
Alec was no exception. He planned to take Madge and the family home and come back on his own to really have a time of it. After all, poor old Madge could not be expected to whoop it up. She was more likely to drop it down.
Anyway she had developed varicose veins, and something had gone wrong with her ankles, in fact she seemed to be puffing up like a balloon all over. He had never seen her look such a mess. Her hair, mousy at the best of times hung lifeless and greasy. One of the neighbours had cut it for her and made it too short at the back and too long at the sides. Patches of white skin showed at the nape of her neck but two lank tufts of hair kept straggling forward to cover her ears. Her freckles looked worse, too. Clusters of them seemed to have joined together to make brown smudgy patterns. The only decent things left about her were her eyes, wide-apart, bright candid blue, and that big-toothed grin she could always come up with.
‘I think it’s time I got you safely back home, hen.’ He squeezed an arm as far as he could round the swollen waist. ‘I don’t want you collapsing here and being trampled underfoot by a mob like this.’
His mother’s mouth worked with emotion.
‘He’s a good lad.’
‘Aye,’ Madge agreed, wiping away the remains of her ice-cream with the back of a red work-roughened hand. ‘Alec is good to me, so he is!’
She had never been a daft sentimental type, but the love in her eyes as she smiled up at him was suddenly embarrassingly obvious.
He gave her bottom an affectionate pinch.
‘Right home to bed with you!’
‘God! Home to bed, he says!’ She flung back her head with a shout of laughter. ‘And him has to go out collecting and me all the weans to feed and put down.’
‘Now, now,’ Mrs Jackson reprimanded. ‘Count your blessings. You’ve got a good man, he’s out day and night struggling to make enough to feed you.’
‘Och, I know,’ Madge agreed.
‘I’d come and see to the weans only I’m supposed to clean that … that what you call it?’
‘Bakehouse,’ Alec prompted.
Sometimes he thought she was going mad. In her bouts of forgetfulness his mother had been known to forget her own name.
‘That’s right. Clean that bakehouse before the late ones come in and you should see the place. You should just see what I’ve to do. I’ve to take a knife to that floor. Imagine! A knife to scrape it! It takes me hours and it’s just as bad again the day after.’
‘Och, it’s a damn shame.’ Madge scratched her belly. ‘I’d be over giving you a hand if it wasn’t for this.’
‘Come on, you gorgeous hunk of woman, you!’ Alec linked arms with her.
There was going to be open-air dancing after dark. He could hardly wait.
Ruth and Sammy took their time going round. Right from the first day Ruth had admired the Women of Empire Pavilion with its orange sunblinds, its fluttering pennants, its girdle of scarlet geraniums and pale forget-me-nots, its handful of pink lilies in the lily pond. To please her, Sammy went round the building with her yet again.
Ruth also liked the Keep Fit Pavilion run by the National Fitness Council for Scotland.
There had been quite a furor over that particular pavilion at first. Three eight-feet-high photographs of nude female statues had been a feature of the place, on mirror panels at the back of an open-air stage.
Indignant complaints were made about showing female figures and quite a battle raged as a result. Eventually a compromise decision was reached. The promoters of the pavilion decided that nude female figures, even though they were merely photographs of statues, were not quite the thing for the general public. They could, however, be shown discreetly in a more inconspicuous corner. And until they could be moved they were screened off from public gaze.
Ruth and Sammy had a last look at the two Scottish pavilions, one telling of the old Scotland of history and romance, the other showing the questing new life of Highlands and Lowlands.
They took the lift to the top balcony of the great steel Tower of Empire on Bellahouston Hill and stared proudly down at the Empire spreading below in miniature but in miniature that was majestic in scale.
Good old Scotland! Sammy thought.
The clachan was their next stop. Ruth loved the little highland village. He preferred the Palace of Engineering although the clachan, tucked away on its own and separated from the rest of the park by trees, had an almost magical charm. Its rough shingled walks, its sedge grass, its crooked burn, its loch, and its kilted piper pacing its banks playing Scottish airs, was enough to catch at any Scottish heart, even one that preferred to live in a Scottish city.
In the thatched, whitewashed cottage with the plaq
ue boasting ‘Highland Home Industries’, Ruth lifted one of the heavy walking-sticks topped by the traditional shepherd’s crook. ‘This would be a good gift for your father.’
‘Put it down!’ Sammy’s voice crackled with anger at her for spoiling a pleasant hour. ‘If he wants another stick, he can buy it for himself.’
‘All right.’
Ruth pouted her lips a little as she put the stick back. To her, Hodge Hunter was only the man she saw for herself in the present. Sammy had never discussed his father with her. She must see, of course, that his father was a bully. She must despise him. She had quarrelled with him more than once, given up abominable cheek, yet the dislike she professed never seemed to run very deep.
Sometimes she even said things like: ‘Your father must have been a fine figure of a man in his uniform, Sammy!’
Or: ‘I can see how he managed to get three wives. A woman likes a forceful virile kind of man!’
‘Forceful! Virile!’ he’d spat in disgust. ‘He’s already killed two of them. The one he’s got now is maybe trying her best to hang on but have you had a good look at her lately? He’s going to succeed in murdering her as well.’
‘Oh, now, Sammy.’ She had actually laughed. ‘Isn’t that going a bit far, love? The first one died in childbirth, and you never knew her. Your own mother had a heart condition, hadn’t she?’
‘He killed them both. He killed them,’ he insisted.
‘All right, love. All right.’
She tried to soothe him but he could see she did not understand.
He wanted so much to explain, but where could he start? To justify his attitude to his father would mean the raking over of too many painful years.
His brows pulled down, his eyes glittered and his jaw set with stubbornness.
Did killing only mean a dagger in the back, a bullet in the brain or poison in the belly? No, there were far more agonising, far more long-drawn-out, more subtle ways to kill. The murderer who used the subtle methods never reached a court of so-called justice.
His father was a murderer all right. He would never forget his mother’s last heart attack, and now he was watching the slow disintegration of another victim.
The Breadmakers Saga Page 24
