Sometimes she sets the table for breakfast and one night the breadknife was lying on the table within my reach and, Melvin, I know this is wicked, and I pray that God will forgive me, but a terrible feeling came over me.
I was lying there very quiet and still, just watching Mummy striding about and singing to herself and folding the boys’ clothes, and suddenly this terrible feeling came over me. I wanted to grab that breadknife and plunge it into my mother again and again. Just for a minute the temptation was almost overwhelming. I was frightened at myself, Melvin.
It made me remember poor Sarah that time in Dessie Street when she stabbed her mother-in-law to death. Maybe that was what she felt. I’m frightened in case that feeling comes over me again. I think I’d better look around and try to find some wee place. We can get a bigger, better house after you come home.
I said ages ago that I’d better sign off and here I am pages later, still writing. I seem to have got quite carried away. It’s just that it’s so frustrating living at Farmbank like this and there’s no one I feel can talk to about it
Poor Madge has troubles enough of her own with all that crowd of children in a wee room and kitchen in Springburn. They haven’t even an inside toilet.
My friend, Julie - that’s the girl I told you about, the one I work with who’s getting married on Monday - she’s so happy at the prospect of her marriage to her marvellous Reggie she’s blissfully unaware of anything or anybody else.
I hope everything goes well for her. I wouldn’t like to see her get hurt. I don’t know why, but I worry about Julie a lot. I try to feel happy for her but instead I just feel sad. I can’t help it. I wish I wasn’t going to the wedding.
Honestly, I’m dreading Monday. I know it sounds stupid but even the thought of it depresses me.
Now I feel guilty as well at writing all this to you and making it such a morbid letter.
But of course it couldn’t be a cheerful one when its purpose was to tell you about the air-raid.
I know how you’ll feel, Melvin, and I’m so very sorry about the house and everything but it wasn’t my fault. There was nothing I could do.
Just try to think about the lovely new house you’ll have and all the nice things you’ll put in it and I’ll keep everything all beautifully clean and polished just the way you like it, I promise.
You’ve always been a strong man, Melvin, and I know you’ll be able to weather this bad news and get over it and start planning for the future like I’ve said.
If your Da can do it - you can do it.
Please try not to worry. Everything will work out all right.’
She signed the letter, folded it, put it in an envelope and carefully printed the address.
The house was quiet and empty. Her father was out at the pub. Her mother had taken the boys to the pictures.
Catriona gazed bleakly around at the outsize furniture, dark relics of the Victorian age which had once belonged to her grandparents.
Melvin had often said that it was a disgrace, the way it had been ruined. The table was scratched and burned and ring-marks overlapped in a maze of patterns.
A handle was missing from one of the sideboard doors and it kept squeaking open to reveal a higgledy-piggledy assortment of cups and saucers and plates, a sticky jar of jam, a piece of margarine on a saucer, a jug of milk and a bowl of sugar.
A bulge of damp dross in the grate occasionally spat out bluish flames or puffed black smoke.
The house in Dessie Street had been warm because of the bakehouse underneath.
Catriona crossed her arms on top of the letter and made a nest for her head. There had been times when she had hated the house in Dessie Street because of the way Melvin made a god of it and bullied her into endless scrubbing and polishing.
Yet she wished she could go there now. She longed to go home, to shut the door behind her, to wheel Robert’s pram into the warm kitchen.
‘Where’s my wee boy?’ she always used to say before she lifted him out and dandled him on her knee and took off his blue knitted bonnet and coat. He always smiled hugely, his eyes melting up at her with adoration. She saw him now in the crook of her arm and nursed herself with tense-faced, monotonous anguish.
Chapter 4
Gorbals! The name exploded in his mother’s face like one of the ten thousand pounders Reggie’s bomb-aimer dropped from his Lancaster over Berlin.
‘Oh, no!’ Muriel Vincent allowed her husband Norman to coax her into a chair. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘I’m sure if we discuss the matter in a …’
‘Oh, be quiet.’ She snipped Norman off, then softened round to her son who seemed far too young to be sporting a thick handlebar moustache: ‘Reggie, tell me it’s not true.’ Her voice changed again. ‘It’s one of those silly university pranks, isn’t it?’
Reggie retreated behind a bravado of laughter.
‘Good Lord, the “Varsity”? I was just a kid then.’
‘You’re only twenty now.’
‘Twenty-one actually, mother.’
‘Only a boy.’
She remembered him as a skinny child, trotting jerkily beside her towards his first day at Kelvinside Academy. She remembered his hand twisting in her loving grip. He always had a tantalisingly elusive quality. Something of him kept evading her no matter how she kissed or cuddled. Not that she had been a possessive mother. She was sure she had not. He had led a normal happy life with lots of friends of both sexes. No one could accuse her of trying to keep Reggie to herself, of being selfish, or of not wanting him to get married. Her whole life had been devoted to seeing that he got the best of everything. She had always sacrificed herself for Reggie and she had been delighted when he had shown obvious interest in Sandra Brodie, whose father was one of the partners in the well-known firm of Glasgow solicitors, Ford, Brodie and MacAllister.
The Brodies had a detached villa in Bearsden.
Only a few weeks ago she had been enjoying afternoon tea in Mrs Brodie’s elegant lounge and weaving with Mrs Brodie delightful plans for Reggie and Sandra’s wedding. Over teacups and sighs they pictured Reggie, tall and dashing in his RAF officer’s uniform, and Sandra, beautiful and superior-looking in Brussels lace and sweeping train.
Definitely a superior type of girl, Sandra, and so perfect for Reggie. Such a good background. Bearsden, of course, was the district, and Sandra had gone to the private school in Bearsden and graduated from there to another fee-paying school off Great Western Road, then on to teachers’ training college.
Mr Vincent edged his pipe to one side of his mouth to allow his words to escape from the other.
‘I must admit this has come as rather a shock to me too, son. The Brodies. Solid people.’
‘I know, Father. It’s just one of these things!’
‘Just one of these things?’ Muriel cried out. ‘How can you sound so casual about ruining your whole life?’
‘Oh, come now, Mother. How do you know my life is going to be ruined? You don’t know anything about Julie. You haven’t even met her yet.’
Muriel thought of the book which she had innocently acquired at the local lending library not so long ago. The picture it vividly painted of the Gorbals had left an imprint of horror in her mind.
In sordid, stinking rabbit-warrens of tenements, people who were worse than animals urinated in kitchen sinks, got raging drunk on ‘Red Biddy’ and sprawled in their own vomit. Gorbals women had been depicted as completely immoral and the men apparently roamed the streets in gangs and fought each other with razors. No doubt the inhabitants would not all be like that, but still …
‘The Gorbals!’ She shuddered. ‘Of all places!’
Reggie flushed.
‘I thought … I was hoping … Oh, come on, Mother, be a sport, let her come and stay here.’
‘Here? In Botanic Crescent?’ She refused to believe he could be serious. She patted her finger-waved hair that curled in a spaghetti roll against her pearl earrings. ‘And her unemployed fa
ther as well, I suppose. I can just imagine him popping into your father’s bank and asking for a loan!’
‘Holding it up, more like,’ her husband guffawed between comforting sucks of smoke.
‘What do you think you’re laughing at?’ She turned on him, her eyes shocked. ‘How dare you make a joke of this. How dare you! If you had any backbone you’d do something!’
‘Muriel, my dear, what can I do? Under Scottish law Reggie has been free to marry without parental consent since he was sixteen.’
‘Trust you to talk about the law and remind me of Ford, Brodie and MacAllister’s. Reggie might have had a partnership. The Brodie money could have been his too, one day. And the villa in Bearsden.’
She began to cry, her sobs rushing away with her while she struggled to catch them and subdue them in her lace-edged handkerchief so that the neighbours would not hear.
She could visualise the peaceful crescent outside, with its elegant sweep of terrace houses, in one of which her mother and her father, the Reverend John Reid, still lived. At this end stood the mellow red-sandstone tenement which Norman and she had occupied since their marriage. Norman could not afford one of the terrace-type houses. They were very large, of course. The flats, although spacious, meant much less work and no one could criticise a close like theirs with its tiled walls and Sunday hush every day of the week and each landing church-like with its stained-glass window, ruby red and royal blue.
They were just in the crescent and no more. Botanic Crescent looped up off a green houseless part of Kelvin Drive.
Not that there was anything wrong with Kelvin Drive or any of the other Drives or Roads or Gardens in the district. Few districts could compare with Kelvinside for sheer beauty and convenience. After all, they were only ten minutes away from the centre of the city.
But here in this quiet little crescent, so near to the busy Great Western Road, yet separated from it by the Royal Botanical Gardens, the River Kelvin and - immediately across the road - the loop of green grass and trees of the crescent, they were in a secret little backwater, a private place of their own. Here Muriel Vincent had been born and brought up. Here she had taken her doll for its daily outing, crossed the road, swept through the gate, bumped the pram down the steep steps to the Kelvin, paraded with dignity along the banks, stopped occasionally to tidy the pram covers, then returned via the other steps that emerged at the tenement end of the crescent where she now lived.
She belonged here, cushioned with beauty and the sighs of trees and the serenading of birds and the sleepy humming of insects.
The idea of coarse, loud-mouthed people - because she was sure the girl’s father would not be her only relation - invading this peace appalled her.
What would the neighbours think?
Her weeping loudened brokenheartedly.
‘Mother!’
‘Muriel, my dear!’
She clutched at Reggie’s hands and clung to them, squeezing them tightly against her cheeks and mouth, cupping the smell of her perfume in his palms.
‘I can’t sleep at nights.’ Her eyes widened up at him as she strained to discern his face through her tears.
‘All the time you’re away, Reggie, I’m sick with fear. Nobody knows but your father. I keep a brave face for outside. I tell them I’m glad you’re doing your bit for your country. I tell them I’m proud and I am proud, Reggie. Even though I’m ill with fear at the thought of you flying that bomber. Every night I’ve gone with you to Germany. Every night I’ve lain awake watching those German searchlights trying to find you in the sky so that their guns can shoot you down.’
‘Mother!’
‘I have. Oh, yes, I have, Reggie. And I’ve prayed and prayed and you’ve always come back safe and I’ve been grateful. I’ve always thought one day it’s going to be all over and everything’s going to be all right and you’ll be settled with a nice girl and have a happy life. It’s the only thing that’s kept me sane.’
‘You mean the whole world to Mother, Reggie, and she’s never let you down. She’s worked hard to do her bit for chaps like you when they happen to be in Glasgow. She slaves in that church canteen every spare minute she can.’
‘I know, Father.’
‘And I’ve always kept a brave face for you, Reggie. Have I ever made a fuss like this before when you’ve come home on leave?’
‘No, of course not, Mother.’
She struggled to find courage now. She released her hold of his hands.
‘All I’ve ever wanted was for you to be happy and to get the best out of life.’
‘I know.’ His voice was weakening with misery until his father suddenly announced:
‘I’ll go and make a cup of tea.’
Immediately Reggie brightened with gratitude.
‘Righteo, Father.’
‘Oh, yes, you do that!’ Muriel called bitterly after Norman’s retreating figure.
Then in the trap of silence that sprang between them, she wondered how she could reach her son.
Impossible to fathom the Reggie she knew in the setting of the Gorbals. Impossible that Reggie should have anything to do with a product of such a place.
Kelvinside and the Gorbals, although both districts of Glasgow and their inhabitants all Glaswegians, were surely poles apart. She was reminded of the quotation, ‘East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet.’
‘Wait until you see her, Mother. She’s A1. Absolutely splendid.’
‘You used to say Sandra was splendid, a really nice girl.’
‘So she is.’
‘You’ve known Sandra for years and she adores you.’
‘Mother, I’m going to marry Julie before I go back on “Opps”. I was hoping you’d understand.’
‘Don’t talk about going back,’ she wailed. ‘You’ve only just arrived.’
‘There’s something big building up, Mother. I think it’s the invasion. We’re been giving Jerry hell these past few months. I think it’s to soften him up before our troops move across the Channel.’
Dabbing at her tears, she shook her head.
‘Poor Mr Churchill, he has so much to worry him. I’m beginning to feel that I’ve more than enough to cope with myself.’
‘It’s because of this, you see. I mean because of me having to go back not knowing when I’ll get leave again that …’
‘I still maintain it’s not like you at all,’ she interrupted. ‘Mrs Brodie said that you told Sandra you didn’t think rushed wartime marriages in registry offices were fair to a girl.’
‘I still don’t, actually. Anything could happen to a chap and that’s a pretty bad show for the girl he leaves behind.’
‘Oh.’ She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘I suppose the RAF pay good allowances.’
‘Yes, that’s what Julie says.’
‘Oh, Reggie, Reggie!’
‘No, no! She didn’t mean it like that! We want to start saving for a house of our own, you see.’
‘Why isn’t she here tonight? Why isn’t she telling me it’s not like that?’
‘Steady on! This was my idea.’
‘You don’t want to rush into marriage, Reggie.’
‘The way things are, I believe it might have been better to wait. But I’m crazy about Julie and …’ He flashed her an unexpected grin. ‘You know how determined women can be. You’re quite a strong-minded gal yourself.’
‘Are you going along to see Nanna and Pappa?’
‘Yes, of course.’
Just then Norman rattled the tea-trolley into the sunlit high-ceilinged room. He brought it to a halt in front of the chair near the window where she was sitting. The peach china edged with gold took on an extra lustre and became pearlised in the sun.
She noticed with a ripple of irritation that he had cut the home-made fruit loaf too thick. Anyone would think he had never heard of rationing. Not that she grudged Reggie anything. If the loaf had been cut in small pieces he could have taken two. It was just not the done thing to serve
large thick slices.
In Bearsden, Mrs Brodie offered her guests the tiniest of sandwiches and pinky-fingers of cake, exactly one of each for each person.
Tucking her handkerchief into the pocket of her dress she proceeded to pour tea from the silver tea-pot. Next to Reggie, the tea-pot was her pride and joy. She would match her silver tea-service with any in Bearsden. The shapely tea-pot and sugar bowl and cream jug were family heirlooms handed down from generation to generation.
‘The napkins, Norman.’ She spoke in the quiet, gentle monotone of the long-suffering. ‘And the hot water.’
Reggie half rose from his seat.
‘I don’t want anything to eat, Mother.’
She passed him a cup of tea and a plate with a look of reproach and he sunk back down with the weight of it.
‘I wouldn’t say anything to Nanna and Pappa about all this, Reggie. Not tonight at least. Let them enjoy your visit for a few hours, all right?’
‘I’m not ashamed of Julie. She’s a wonderful girl. I’ll be proud to have her for my wife.’
His father patted his pockets as if to make sure his tobacco was still there.
‘It may very well be that she is a nice girl, in her own way. The point is you were already committed, my lad.’
‘No, I wasn’t, Father. The truth is …’
‘Norman!’ Muriel interrupted. ‘The hot water.’
Her eyes jabbed daggers into his before smoothing back to Reggie again.
‘Nanna and Pappa will be so glad to see you. They barely caught a glimpse of you the last time you were here. I knew no good would come of you going to that dance-hall in town. I suppose that’s where you met her. I know you wanted to show that English RAF friend you had with you around and give him a good time while he was here, but what was wrong with the Bearsden Town Hall? Or your own church, or local tennis club dances? You always enjoyed them before.’
‘Everything’s different now, Mother. The war has mixed us all up.’
The Breadmakers Saga Page 41
