‘Well, it’s high time everybody was unmixed and back to normal.’
‘I doubt if anybody will ever be the same again.’
He finished his tea and dabbed at his mouth with his napkin, taking care not to spoil the silky twirl of his moustache.
She watched him, marvelling at his debonair good looks and at the same time cringing inside with a sore heart.
Despite Reggie’s tall sinewy body, he would always be to her the same evasive, vulnerable little boy.
She still remembered the time years ago before the war when she had been whipped away to hospital to have her appendix removed. A tiny startled Reggie had not even kissed her goodbye. Yet he had rapidly developed a dangerously high temperature and such alarming symptoms that he had very soon to be taken to the hospital himself.
It eventually occurred to one of the hospital doctors what the cause of the child’s unidentifiable illness might be. By this time her operation was over and she was enjoying the luxury of her private flower-filled room and the chocolates and fruit everyone had brought her.
Norman had decided it was better not to tell her about Reggie. She had never forgiven him for that. Afterwards, she raged at him with quiet persistence to make certain he never made such a stupid mistake again. Her little boy might have died while she was lying there idly flipping through magazines and eating chocolates. Her son had needed her, but it took a young doctor, a man with more perception than Norman, to realise this. He brought Reggie into the private room so that he could be reassured that his mother was all right.
Then he was all right. It was the first time she realised what a passionate child he was and she looked ahead with fear to the time when he might be at another woman’s mercy. A cruel, ignorant or insensitive girl could use Reggie’s vulnerability to suit her own purpose and make his life a misery.
In two days he would be marrying Julie Gemmell from Gorbals Cross. Tomorrow afternoon he was bringing her to meet them for the first time. At best the girl would probably sit dumb and allow Reggie to do all the talking. The atmosphere would be polite and restrained and in no time at all they would make excuses and leave. Panic began to grow and swish inside her like brooms.
Reggie was on the verge of ruining his life. He did not know anything about Julie Gemmell. How could he? There was not enough time for any of them to find out anything.
If only she could talk to the girl on her own, plead with her, if necessary. Then it suddenly occurred to her that she could. All she needed to do was to take a subway train from Byres Road to Bridge Street. She had sat many times in the subway on her way to the centre of the city, staring idly at the map above the windows opposite, so she was familiar with the route. Across the map snaked the blue River Clyde and the underground railway formed a circle that crossed, or, rather, went underneath the river at two places.
She eyed Reggie and Norman, calculating what their reaction would be to her plan of ‘bearding the lion in its den’ - so to speak.
Their immediate horror, she felt sure, would swamp her intentions and prevent her from moving an inch from her chair. Both her husband and son tended to be over-protective. They had always underestimated her, she felt sure.
She decided that it would, at this stage, be simpler and safer not to discuss the matter with them.
Rising, she gathered the dirty teacups on to the trolley. Norman rose too.
‘I’ll see to that, my dear.’
‘No. You go along with Reggie, Norman. I’ll follow later.’
‘I insist you go and powder that pretty little nose of yours.’
‘Norman,’ she said evenly. ‘I have other things to do. I want to follow on later.’
‘Oh. Oh, very well, my dear. Ready then, son?’
She wheeled the trolley out without daring to look at either of them. Already she was protesting to herself with apprehension.
She heard the front door close and hurried back to peer out of the sitting-room window.
Anyone could see they were father and son. They were both tall, and lean, and fair, and they both had the same crooked smile, but Norman stooped as if his head kept tugging his shoulders forward. His step had slowed and he had lost most of his hair.
Her anxious eyes strained to follow the two men all along the crescent until they disappeared inside one of the terrace houses at the other end. Then she retreated into the bedroom to change into her dusty pink suit and hat and to arrange her fur tippet, a present from her parents, high around her throat. Then she tucked her handbag under her arm and smoothed up the fingers of her gloves.
She decided to cut through the Botanic Gardens. That way was most pleasant and she would not be seen from her mother’s house.
The iron gate creaked open and she carefully descended the steep steps to the river bank and the bridge. On the bridge she stopped for a minute to gaze at brown water bulging slowly and the green mountains of trees on either side, gently swinging and bouncing and dipping down.
She would have liked to stay there enjoying the peace for a few minutes more and then go to join Reggie and Norman at her mother’s house. She would have been welcomed into her mother’s spacious hall by Jessie, her mother’s servant, who would have taken her fur. Jessie had worked for her mother for as far back as she could remember. Over the years she had become silver-haired, rather deaf, and a bit of a hypochondriac, but she could still do a decent day’s cleaning and fortunately her age saved her from being called away to the forces or munitions. She just continued serving the family and cleaning the house and trying to ignore the war as if it had never happened.
If only it had never happened. Still, it was really too bad of Reggie. One could not blame everything on the war. He should have had more sense.
She turned away in exasperation and distress, her heels clipping on the bridge, then up the steps at the other side and through the main part of the Botanic Gardens. She emerged from the Queen Margaret Drive entrance, at the corner of Great Western Road.
Great Western Road was busy with traffic. This part especially tended to be difficult to cross because of the intersection of Queen Margaret Drive and Byres Road opposite.
Her fingers tightened round her handbag as she waited until the traffic cleared and she could walk across and make her way down Byres Road. She moved purposefully enough, yet she had a fragile quality that stirred men to help her on to buses and immediately to rise and offer her their seats. Even the colour of her and the texture of her clothes had a delicate perfection.
‘Bridge Street, please,’ she asked at the subway ticket counter. ‘Thank you.’
A wind sucked up from the subway with an earthy smell. It flurried the fur round her throat and her soft rose-coloured suit as she descended and it brought with it a wave of fear.
Yet she knew she could not allow her only son to ruin his life without trying to do something about it.
She drew on the thought for courage as the subway train thundered her away into darkness.
Chapter 5
History was in the very air of the place. At night it whispered up from the river and drifted through the narrow streets in Scotch mist. During the day it swirled with the dust in the tenement closes. All the time it clung to the old grey walls.
Gorbals was famous for the manufacture of firearms, drums, spinning-wheels, cuckoo-clocks and swords. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it was so celebrated for its sword-manufacturing that Gorbals swords were judged to be as good in temper and edge as those made by the famous Andrew Ferrars. Its harquebuses or handguns were equal to those of Ghent, Milan and Paris and by the first quarter of the nineteenth century the only individuals in the west of Scotland who manufactured guns were found in the Gorbals. Gorbals was a busy place, especially during the wars between England and Scotland.
The beginning of the nineteenth century also saw cotton-spinning as one of its principal industries. Since then numerous iron-founding and engineering works had been erected within the old Barony, including the famous Dixon’s Blaz
es that lit the sky over Glasgow like a giant ball of fire.
Julie’s father, Dode Gemmell, had been a moulder in one of the foundries. He had sweated his strength away at the furnaces and outside in the cold Scottish winds he had caught chill after chill. The chills became pneumonia and the pneumonia, tuberculosis of the lungs. He had been forced to give up work and for a long time now he had been on the dole.
He wore a checked cloth cap, or ‘bunnet’, and a white muffler instead of a collar and tie, except when Julie had visitors. Then Julie shoved a clean collar at him and said:
‘Right, you bachly auld tramp, make yourself respectable or I’ll be disowning you.’
‘You canni dae that, hen,’ he’d chortle. ‘Anybody can see you’ve got the Gemmell beak!’
He was a good-natured, cheery man despite his sucked-in face and eyes set in dark brown parchment; his gummy grin made no secret of the fact that he had not one tooth in his head. He hawked and coughed a lot and hung about the close or one of the street corners at Gorbals Cross, rubbing his hands and shuffling from one foot to the other. Always eager to plunge into energetic conversation on football or any subject at all, he would jerk his head and give a cheery ‘Aye!’ of greeting to anyone who passed, friend or stranger, it made no difference.
He was proud to belong to the ‘Red Clyde’, a staunch supporter of the Gorbals Labour MP George Buchanan, and an enthusiastic admirer of Jimmy Maxton, the long-haired fiery-eyed member for Bridgeton.
He identified warmly and experienced keen fellow feelings with workers in other districts, towns or countries and his admiration for Soviet Russia knew no bounds.
Ordinary working men in Russia had successfully risen up in revolt against the injustices and indignities that all working men suffered. This knowledge gave Dode’s life real hope. He followed the Russians’ progress in the war as if they were his much cherished brothers.
At some Red Army victory he would proudly shout to passers-by, ‘What do you think of Old Joe now, eh?’
He had never been much of a drinker of the ‘hard stuff’ but the moulding had been thirsty work and made a man need a few pints.
No longer fit for work, he still enjoyed his beer and Saturday night in one of the Gorbals Cross pubs had become a ritual. He eagerly looked forward to the arguments about football and politics, among the noisy, sweaty crush of men. He shouted and cursed and laughed with them in the coffin-shaped bar with the sawdust floor and enjoyed the complete lack of restraint that the absence of women afforded.
Sometimes, if his horse came in or if one of his mates won a few bob, there would be whisky as well as beer and he would get a ‘wee bit fu’. He was even cheerier and friendlier in his cups and Julie could never bring herself to be angry with him for long. Although she would punch him on the arm and scold:
‘Do you want to disgrace me? You drunken auld rascal. Away through to your bed!’
She never invited any friends to the house on Saturdays. Sunday she considered to be her best day because she had time to prepare everything and also to do a bit of shopping. The whole of Scotland might be as quiet as a grave on Sundays with shops, pubs and all places of entertainment closed and everybody observing the Scottish Sabbath. But in Gorbals it was always different.
Most of Glasgow’s large population of Jews at some time or other had lived here. Many still did and most of the small shops and businesses in the area were owned by Jewish families who kept Saturday as their ‘Shabbos’. As a result the Christian Sunday to them meant business as usual, and all the shops did a roaring trade and the Gorbals streets were crowded.
Mrs Goldberg who lived downstairs from Julie was a very orthodox old Jewish lady and her beliefs prevented her from doing anything on her Sabbath, even cooking, or lighting a fire. So every Saturday morning before leaving for work, Julie ran in to Mrs Goldberg’s house and lit her fire and made her a cup of tea. On the way home she looked in again to see to things and each time the old lady gave her the same greeting.
‘A goot voch to you, Julie.’
And Julie would laugh and give the Jewish greeting back.
‘And a bessern to you, Mrs Goldberg!’
The last visitor to the Gemmells’ had been Catriona and she had come on a Sunday. Julie remembered with pride how clean and tidy the house had looked. The tiny room and kitchen flat with the cavity or hole-in-the-wall beds had been so spotless it was practically antiseptic. She had been especially proud of using napkins at tea-time. She had made them from an old tablecloth and they looked really classy. Her only worry had been that her dad would forget what they were for and do something terrible with his, like using it for a hanky.
She knew that the MacNairs were business people and quite well-off but no one, not even a MacNair, was going to be allowed to say that just because the Gemmells came from an old Gorbals tenement they were dirty or ignorant.
She was as good as anybody anywhere and so was her dad and so were their neighbours. It was not their fault that there was not any hot water in their tenement and the lavatories had to be shared and were outside on the landings. In fact, in a cupboard-size room and kitchen with a smoking iron grate, and a lightless lavatory as cold as the North Pole, and only a shoe-box of a sink served by one cold water tap, it was difficult to live decently. It took guts. Those who did keep clean and respectable - and that meant the majority of Gorbals folk - were better, not worse, than people from the so-called better-class districts. Julie believed the people of Gorbals deserved a Victoria Cross.
That Saturday, after leaving Catriona at St Enoch’s Square, she swung along, skilfully weaving in and out and round about the waves of people that surged along Argyle Street. There was a bounce to her walk and a jiggle of buttocks and breasts and a bounce of hair. It was good to be young and in love and buoyantly alive in dear old Glasgow.
She loved the place almost as much as she loved Reggie. Sometimes she felt so happy she almost bounced right up in the air and floated along high above the crowds in heady communion with the city.
Dear old, dirty old, friendly old, beautiful old Glasgow!
She could see the Tolbooth at Glasgow Cross now but she turned off to the right before the Cross and went down Stockwell Street towards the river.
Stockwell Street used to have a well called the Ratten Well that was notorious for its impure water, and the Ratten Well featured in the story of how Stockwell Street came by its name. There had been a skirmish there between a small party of Scots led by Wallace and the English, and afterwards the victorious Scots flung the dead English into the Ratten Well to Wallace’s cry - ‘Stock it well, lads, stock it well!’
It had been in Stockwell Street that the wealthy Robert Dreghorn, or Bob Dragon as he was nicknamed, had his bachelor town-house. He was the ugliest man in Glasgow. Tall and gaunt he had an inward bend to his back and an enormous head with one blind eye, one squint eye and a Roman nose that twisted to one side until it nearly lay flat on his cheek. Bob Dragon had an appreciation of beauty and used to follow admiringly any pretty girl he saw in Argyle Street, only being diverted if he noticed another prettier girl coming the opposite way. Then he would about turn and follow her until an even more beautiful one caught his eye and changed his direction and so on, backwards and forwards, criss-cross, round and round.
If Bob Dragon had still been alive he would certainly have followed Julie as she crossed the Victoria Bridge swinging her handbag, admiring the view of the river and the other bridges coming across it. Bouncily she sang to herself a tune that was always being played on the wireless:
‘Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition.
Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition …’
Now at the other side, her feet were on Gorbals ground.
The Victoria Bridge led straight into Gorbals Street, the Main Street, and five minutes along it brought her to Gorbals Cross.
Her heart warmed to the old grey tenements. Their age, their cosy familiarity made her feel wonderfully safe. They crowded ro
und her winking their tiny glass eyes in the sun, their close mouths dark caves of shelter.
Children in multi-coloured clothes swirled and bobbed around all the streets like vegetables in a broth pot.
Street songs and games frothed into the air.
‘The big ship sails through the eeley ally o’
The eeley ally o’
The eeley ally o’
The big ship sails through the eeley ally o’.
Little girls were playing peaver and Julie hopped into their midst and took a kick at the peaver.
‘Hey you!’ somebody shrilled. ‘Whit do you think yer daein?’
Further along others were intent on another game.
‘In and out the dusty blue-bells,
In and out the dusty blue-bells …’
Reaching the Cross, Julie waved to her father who was at the corner rubbing his hands and shuffling from one foot to the other, and showing all his gums like a delighted infant as he laughed with a neighbour. Immediately he spied her, he returned her wave and scuttled up their close to go and put on the kettle.
Gorbals Cross was really a circle with an iron-railinged Gents’ underground lavatory and a clock standard in the middle. Four streets led off the centre like spokes of a wheel. Their close was on the corner of Gorbals Street and she crossed the road towards it and entered its dark tunnel-way swinging her handbag and jauntily whistling.
As usual Julie went in to attend to Mrs Goldberg before going upstairs to her own house and by that time her father had the tea-pot ready on the table and was taking the fish suppers from the oven where they had been keeping warm since he brought them from the local fish-and-chip shop.
Before starting to eat she filled a big kettle and also a pot full of water and put one on the gas ring and the other on the fire to heat. As well as hot water to wash the greasy dishes after the meal, she needed water to wash her hair and also her underwear and the blouse she planned to wear to Kelvinside the next day.
Immediately the meal was over she chased her father out of the way with a few extra shillings in his pocket and reckless orders to enjoy himself.
The Breadmakers Saga Page 42
