‘Och, you wouldn’t be without one of the weans.’
He made the mistake of sounding too sure of himself, even quite jocular. Her bonfire of anger immediately flared up again.
‘No!’ she bawled. ‘But I’ll make f—ing sure I’ll be without any more!’
‘I wish you wouldn’t use that cuss word, hen.’ He felt genuinely harrowed. He had always been pretty good-natured himself and he certainly had never laid down the law to Madge before. Anything for a peaceful life and a bit of loving, that was his motto.
This was so unlike her. Granted, she had never been quite the same since she found out about his wee bit of nonsense a few years back with her friend Catriona MacNair. Later on too she went a bit wild when she discovered he had made a date to go to the pictures with an old customer of his, Ruth Hunter, who was lodging with Catriona at the time.
It had only happened once with Catriona and it had meant nothing. Surely Madge had forgiven and forgotten that long ago? She was still friendly with Catriona, as far as he knew.
As for Ruth Hunter, he had never as much as touched the girl, worse luck. If he had told Madge once, he had told her a thousand times. Ruth and he had barely seated themselves that night when the cinema was bombed. The whole place had caved in and he had never set eyes on the poor cow again. Alec had been lucky to get out alive. He was about the only one who did.
‘Shocks you, does it?’ Madge flung back her head and roared with laughter, hands on hips, legs apart, the clinging blue of her nightdress straining.
‘I don’t like to hear it from you, hen.’
She climbed into bed over the top of him like a St Bernard dog with backside high up and knees digging down. He let out a howl as one knee almost ground into his crotch.
‘For God’s sake, Madge! You nearly denied yourself a lifetime of pleasure.’
‘You’ll have been getting your pleasure, all right.’ She flapped the blankets energetically and the hot sweet smell of her talcum powder puffed up his nostrils. ‘Sailors are supposed to have a girl in every port but, if I know you, it’ll have been every girl in every port.’
So that was it! Poor old Madge was terrified he had not enough to go round, and of course before this leave she had been deprived of it for a long, long time.
He struggled to encircle her with his arm.
‘Anyone would think, to hear you, that I had been away on a pleasure tour. Listen, hen, I’ve been concentrating on one thing and one thing alone - keeping alive. That’s the God’s truth. I’m telling you, Madge, half the time I’m scared rigid. I keep wishing I was a wee fella, about four feet nothing.’
She giggled, and taking advantage of her good humour he slipped his hand between her legs, hitching her nightdress up with stealthy fingers.
‘Why four feet?’ she wanted to know.
‘I’m a hell of a target at six feet, that’s why, and not only for Jerry planes and guns. It’s our own mob as well.’
‘Eh? Our own guys try and shoot you?’
Surprise slackened her, and he is in there with his hand right away, caressing the moistness of her, making her quiver and arch and make little absent-minded moans of protest.
‘It’s officers,’ he murmured in answer to her question, at the same time wriggling his other arm free to manoeuvre her nightdress up above her breasts. They hung to one side, tender-looking with delicate blue veins and coffee-coloured nipples beginning to harden. He tickled them with his tongue in between each word and felt them twitch as if his tongue were electrified.
‘When they look for volunteers everybody tries to merge into the background and disappear. I can’t. I try, but I stick out like your lovely wee titties!’
‘Get off!’
Her words held no conviction. Already she was enjoying herself too much and it made his pleasure twice as keen. His mouth searched with increasing urgency, moving down from her breasts to her abdomen until he was burrowing between her legs, his tongue sword-sharp with passion.
She began to moan and squeal with such abandon he was afraid she might waken the weans and they would come through from the next room.
He did not stop what he was doing but he whispered hoarsely, ‘Shush, hen, shush!’
But it only made her cry out all the louder:
‘Oh, God, Alec, I love you!’
Afterwards, when they were lying quiet and exhausted, she gave a big shuddering sigh and announced:
‘I hate you, you rotten big midden!’
He laughed as he reached for a cigarette.
‘You hate me to stop, you mean!’
‘You don’t care a damn about me.’
‘Madge, you’re my wife. There’s nobody to beat you in the whole world, hen.’
‘And you’ve tried them all.’
‘Och, now, Madge …’
‘It was bad enough trying to keep track of you when you were an insurance man and just going around Springburn. Now you’re gallivanting all over the globe. God knows where you’ve been and who you’ve been with.’
‘Madge, I keep telling you …’
‘I know what you keep telling me. You were telling me the same thing when you were sniffing around Catriona MacNair and Ruth Hunter.’
‘I’ll swear on the Bible if you like - I never touched Ruth Hunter. As for Catriona, you know what she’s like. She asked for it.’
‘Asked for it? Don’t give me that. She was just a wee lassie. You laid her before she knew what was happening. And her man away in the Army as well. You’re lower than a worm, Alec.’
‘Look, hen, it meant nothing to me, absolutely nothing.’
‘It meant a lot to her though.’
‘What? You must be kidding. She’s a nut-case. She couldn’t love a man if she tried.’
‘She can have a bloody wean without trying.’
‘All right! All right! So she had a wean. So I said I was sorry. I’ve been apologising about that for years. Are you never going to forgive and forget?’
‘The wean was killed. In the same raid that killed our mother.’
He puffed at his cigarette in silence for a minute.
‘I know. Poor wee bastard. She’ll have got over it by now, though.’
‘That shows how much you understand.’ Her voice cracked with bitterness. ‘You think you know all about women, Alec, but the truth is you’re such a randy bugger you never see past their arses.
He shook his head uncomprehendingly.
‘Anybody would think she was your wee sister, the way you go on.’
‘It’s not her. It’s you. And me. You’ve probably given me a wean.’ Her voice turned into itself, became incredulous, as if she could not believe what she was saying. ‘Another wean would make seven. Seven! You come here, have your way with me, then you buzz off to enjoy yourself somewhere else. You don t care about how I’m going to manage or how I feel.’
He began to get rattled.
‘Look, hen, will you get this daft idea out of your head once and for all? This bloody war isn’t a picnic organised specially for my benefit that I can get around and keep supplied with girls. If I thought I’d get away with it, I wouldn’t go back. There’s nothing I’d like better than to stay right here with you, believe me. You should see the build-up of men and hardware down south. My God, hen, there’s going to be a hell of a fight any day now. And I’ve a horrible sinking feeling they’re going to shove me in first!’
She started to laugh, quietly, gently, then louder and louder until she was seesawing between hysterical hilarity and moaning tears.
‘Women!’ he groaned to himself, but he pulled her into his arms and nursed her like one of his children.
‘Shush, hen, shush. It’ll be all over one of these days and we’ll be able to get back to normal.’
‘I used to trust you, Alec. I really trusted you. You always said it wasn’t your fault, it was just that the women wouldn’t leave you alone. And I believed you.’
‘Well, it was true.’
�
��You were always fighting them off, you said. You didn’t want anybody else except me, you said.’
‘Neither I do. Madge!’ He cuddled her closer. ‘I’m just counting the days to when I can come back here to you for good. That’s the God’s truth, so help me!’
She snuffled and wiped her nose on her nightie.
‘I miss Ma as well. She was a good soul, your Ma, and a great help with the weans and the book. God, I get tired at times, Alec. I just had to give up the book. Climbing up and down all them stairs collecting every day fair beat me. I don’t know how you used to do it and keep so cheery all the time.’
‘Don’t worry about the book, hen. It couldn’t be helped. I’ll get fixed up with something when I get out, either with the Co-op or the Prudential.’
‘I put most of the money straight into the Post Office. I had to dip into a few pounds. The weans were needing so many things and it’s not easy with me not working and sometimes I’ve to pay extra for things on the black market.’
‘We’ll manage all right.’
‘As long as I’ve got you, Alec. I’ll murder you if you leave me with all them weans.’
‘Don’t worry.’
‘I wouldn’t need to worry if you didn’t give me anything to worry about. How would you like it if I got off with one of them Yanks?’
He laughed, secure in the knowledge that Madge would never look at another man.
‘Which kind? A gum-chewing skinny one with steel-rimmed glasses and cropped hair or a gum-chewing hefty fella with tight trousers and a big bum.’
She tried not to laugh.
‘They get the girls all right. You should see the gum-chewing girls hanging on to their arms and all the kids running after them shouting, “Any gum, chum?”
He had seen the girls. Tarts mostly, with pencilled eyebrows and maroon mouths and hair curling on square-shouldered coats or tucked into ropey hair-nets called snoods. Gripping shoulder-bags, they bounced along on streaky orange-painted legs and dumpy shoes.
He was reminded of an experience with a right hairy he had met up with in Pompey. They had been getting along all right until she disappeared into another room, reappeared carrying a whip that looked like something out of Mutiny on the Bounty, and invited him to have a go.
‘Our boys hate them,’ Madge went on.
‘The girls?’
She dug an elbow into him with such force he yelped in protest.
‘The Yanks, stupid! Because they get all the girls.’
‘And the Poles, and God knows who else I bet! When I was crushing through the crowds at Central Station I could hardly hear a Glasgow tongue. I’m not surprised our lads are peeved. Outnumbered in their own backyard. Wait until after the war, though. Our turn’s coming.’
‘Not your turn.’ Madge’s voice hardened. ‘You’ve had your turn.’
‘For God’s sake! When I said that, I didn’t mean …’
‘You never mean anything you say. I found that out years ago.’
‘You’re not going to start that all over again.’
‘I never started anything. I never let you down. I never told you lies. I never slept with your friends.’
He groaned and turned over and tried to escape in sleep. Madge twisted away too, leaving a cold tunnel of air between them.
Depression suddenly knocked the props from under him. For the first time in their married life Alec felt Madge had failed him, somehow let him down. All she seemed to think about was herself. All he had heard since he had arrived home was one petty grievance after another. He hadn’t been kidding either when he said this might be his last leave. The whole of the Allied armies, navies and air forces seemed to be massing down south. He was beginning to think the only thing that prevented the British Isles from sinking under the weight of it all was the barrage balloons, important and aloof in the sea like fat cigars.
He felt sick at the thought of repeating the experience of his last visit to the French coast. His number had nearly come up then, not to mention a few times elsewhere. It seemed really tempting providence to have another go.
At the same time, like everybody else, he felt sure that it would be the other chaps that would cop it, not him.
His good spirits surged up as quickly as they had sagged. He rolled over and cuddled into his wife’s back. She remained stiff and cold and unresponsive. He slipped his hand between her legs and tickled her. Then, straining his head up, he whispered close against her ear in broad Glasgow accent:
‘Hullo, therr!!’
Chapter 3
At last Catriona wrote the letter:
‘My dear Melvin, I’ve been so worried about whether or not I should tell you all that has happened. I know you must have suffered terribly in all the fighting and then to be captured and held prisoner.
It was only because I couldn’t bear to think of you suffering any more that I put off telling you until now. But the war won’t last for ever and I’m beginning to worry about the shock you would get if you arrived back in Glasgow not knowing.
Melvin, my dear, there have been air-raids here and our place was hit. I told you that wee Robert had died. What I didn’t tell you was that he was killed. He and most of the others in the building were killed when Dessie Street was destroyed by bombs.
Your lovely flat has gone, Melvin. And the shop. But I’ve managed to salvage a few bits and pieces and some of the machinery from the bakehouse is still all right and in storage.
Please try not to get too upset, dear. Da is very keen to buy another business and as soon as this terrible war is over and you are home again we’ll be able to start afresh.
We’ll get another house too, don’t worry. Pass the time just now planning how nice you’ll make it and all the nice new things you’ll have.
You’ll understand now why I’m staying with my mother and father at present. Da is here too, and of course Fergus and Andrew.
Fergus and Andrew are doing well at Farmbank School. Andrew is still in the “baby class” but Fergus has only about another year to go before he sits his qualifying exam and moves to secondary school.
They send you their love. I’m sure you’d be very proud of them if you saw them setting off to school together each morning. They look so smart in their blazers and caps and white shirts and school ties and both with their school bags on their backs. Andrew is still quite plump and small but Fergus is fairly shooting up. I think he’s going to be very tall. He’s as thin as ever but very energetic. Andrew has plenty of energy as well and they both love football. I’m afraid when they arrive home each day they don’t look smart. Their caps and ties are askew. Their socks are hanging over their shoes. Their shoe-laces are trailing loose behind them. And you should see the filthy state of their faces, their shirts and their knees. Sometimes I get awful angry and rage at them. But then my mother rages at me. I’m afraid she tends to spoil them.
I don’t mind telling you, Melvin, I’ll be glad when we get another house. Things haven’t been too easy for me either. But I mustn’t complain. You’re worse off than me - away in a strange land and a prisoner. At least I’m getting on fine at my job and saving my wages as hard as I can so we’ll be all right for money. I didn’t even buy anything new for Julie’s wedding.
Julie is the girl I work with. She lives in the Gorbals and is getting married on Monday to an RAF officer from Kelvinside. I’m to be matron-of-honour.
I’d better sign off now, Melvin, as I promised mummy I’d scrub the bathroom and kitchenette floors. It’s about the only thing she’ll allow me to do. I mean, she insists on doing everything for the children, even washes and irons their clothes in case I don’t do it right.
I get so annoyed with her at times, but it doesn’t matter what I say, she talks me down and goes on doing exactly what she wants to. Honestly, Melvin, I do try. The other night she decided to take the boys with her to visit a friend. She’d had them out with her the night before as well and I had visions of them becoming so tired they’d be falling a
sleep at school the next day.
I said they weren’t to go, but of course they wanted to go. They love their gran because she lets them stay up late and spends all her sweets coupons on them. My father’s about as bad. He gives them bags of chips in bed and tells them ghost stories and then they’re up half the night- Fergus with nightmares and Andrew with indigestion.
But as I was telling you, the other night Mummy was taking them out again and when she refused to listen to me I tried to physically restrain her from taking them out of the house. I mean I actually got a hold of the boys and started pulling them back into the sitting-room, but what with them struggling and my mother punching at me I had to let go before I was half-way along the lobby.
I really don’t know what can be done with somebody like my mother. I’ve never known of anyone with such a strong personality. And yet sometimes I wonder about her strength. She seems to need people so much, it’s almost as if she’s afraid to be on her own. Maybe all that iron determination hides a very lonely and unhappy person underneath. Anyway she’s happy just now with the children here. But I was wondering, Melvin, if I shouldn’t be looking around for a wee temporary place. I’d have enough for a deposit and of course I’d keep working and what Da would pay me for his food and board would help.
I don’t want to hurt my mother and I feel guilty about leaving her but at the same time I don’t know if I can stand it much longer here.
For one thing, there really isn’t room. As you know there’s just one small bedroom and your da has that. Remember the sitting-room and the bed-settee where I used to sleep before I was married - well, Mummy and Daddy have that now and the boys have a mattress on the floor beside it. I’m on the sofa in the living-room, jammed up against that big old-fashioned table and wooden chairs. I used to think sleeping on that lumpy settee in the sitting-room was bad enough but at least it made down into a bed. This horsehair sofa is too short even for me and so narrow I’m afraid to turn in case I fall off during the night. Mummy rams the chairs and the table up against it to stop me falling out.
Talk about being in a prison. Every night I’m jammed in there and peering out through the bars of the chairs watching Mummy striding about as happy as a lark, getting the boys’ clothes and everything organised for the morning.
The Breadmakers Saga Page 40
