‘We’ll give her money, see that she never lacks for anything.’
‘Money! That’s all you know about. I’ve said it before, Norman, and I’ll say it again. Thank God Reggie has me. You’ve never understood him.’
Her knitting needles quickened and every now and again she gave a sharp little tug at the ball of white wool.
Norman stood up, crumpling his handkerchief between his hands.
‘I understand he’s dead.’
‘Don’t say that! You don’t know what you’re talking about. I keep telling you, Norman, Reggie is alive and well. You’re like a poisonous weed. Spreading gloom and depression. Julie must have felt it. You upset her. I could tell. I’m going to see her again as soon as possible and do my very best to reassure her. This dreadful war isn’t going to last for ever, I’ll tell her. Soon it will be all over and Reggie will be home.’
Chapter 13
D-day, Alec reckoned, had been the beginning of the end. He thanked God for the end but the whole business still sickened him. He could not forget the cost.
Wave upon wave of men, countless British, Canadian, American and all the rest, had been killed and mutilated in the process. Unarmed thousands of civilians had been caught in the centre of the fighting, had clung desperately to their homes and when their houses had been hit by bomb or shell they had run out to crowd together in search of shelter, only to be hit again and again and left to die in the smoking ruins of once serene little cities.
A soldier survivor of a typical battle for a French town had said:
‘We won the battle but, considering the high price in American lives, we lost.’
It reminded Alec of what he had read of the First World War. From his level, that of the ordinary man being sent in to fight, all wars were the same, just a reckless slaughter. It seemed to him as if some determined top brass had his hand on a tap of human life and turned it on and kept turning it on.
Life gushed out, as easy to come by and as cheap as water, and was swilled just as easily down the drain.
He was so sickened, he felt ashamed to be part of the human race. The top brass, and the politicians, the folk that were supposed to be so much cleverer than the likes of him - with all their brains, their civilisation, their so-called Christianity - was this the only kind of solution they could come up with? Was this the best they could do?
Now the European war was over and he was fortunate enough to be among the first to be released. Some poor mugs had been kept in because they were still needed in the Far East, but he was out, on his own, changed from a number in the Navy to a number in the Labour Exchange, or Buroo as it was known locally.
He had wasted no time in signing on at the Buroo and agitating for work. With a wife and seven weans to keep he could not afford to waste a minute.
As well as taking the precaution of signing on for Buroo money he hurried back to his old office, burst cheerily in, expecting the same old camaraderie; but most of the men he had known were no longer there and he did not even get a decent welcome from the girls. Afterwards, trying to piece together his shattered ego, he decided that they must all have acquired American boyfriends with fancy uniforms and plenty of money or men of some other nationality equally glamorous. Compared with a money-flashing Yank or a heel-clicking Polish officer he could see that he would seem dull stuff.
He shrugged them off and wished them luck. As for the men in the office, they were polite and amiable but at the same time surprisingly distant. He felt like a stranger, an uninvited guest who was putting a strain on the party.
The same applied to other men in other offices. He tried to storm quite a few. They were all ticking over very nicely without him. They all had their established routines. They were all fully staffed.
Despite the cheerful bantering bluster that gave energy to his long legs and sent them racing up stairway after stairway, three or four steps at a time, and his fist rat-tat-tat-tat-tatting on prospective employers’ doors, he began to feel embarrassed as well as bitter.
‘Damn them!’ he thought. But his thoughts did not help. Then he told himself: ‘Early days yet!’
He was barely demobbed and the war in Japan was not even over.
Yet he knew that more and more men would be coming home and it would get harder, not easier, to find work.
He kept trying, never letting up because he had always been an active energetic man. Now as well as his natural exuberance he had acquired a new restlessness. It seemed to have been born in the Navy and was tuned to the continuous movement of the ship. It was a kind of impatience that made the tiny overcrowded room and kitchen in Cowlairs Pend close in on him like the bars of a prison.
Worry about money tormented him, too. The overcrowding and the bad condition of the house had affected the children’s health. One or the other kept needing the doctor. Fiona coughed all the time and Madge was always dosing her with something.
Day after day he struggled to simulate normality, to ignore his worries. He tried to fit in with the children, be the same overgrown playmate he had once been to them, the loved and respected boss of the Jackson gang. But he found the same strange rejection here as in all the places he visited to ask about work. The gang had closed its ranks. His family resented him. His children had grown into an impertinent, unruly, rebellious mob and his wife had given way to being a slut.
He missed the way it had been before the war when he had been able to take Madge out for treats to cheer her up, when he had been able to burst into the house with an armful of presents for her and the weans. But it went deeper than nostalgia. His inability diminished him.
He tried to talk to Madge, to make half-joking yet desperately serious attempts to explain his feelings, not to mention his money worries, to her.
She swatted away his embarrassed gropings as if he were a fly on something she was going to eat.
‘Never mind feeling sorry for yourself. Think yourself damned lucky. What about me? I’ve been stuck in this dump with them wee middens of yours for years. You lumbered me with this lot and even that wasn’t enough. You had to have your fun with other women as well. I can’t even trust you with my best friends. You’re no use. Now you can’t even get a job. You that’s such a bloody charmer. You that’s so clever. You’ll be expecting me to go out to work to keep us next and how can I with me still feeding this wee midden.’
She indicated their latest, a plump infant of nearly three months, called Charlie, who was energetically sucking at her breast.
‘I don’t know what we’re going to do. I used to trust you. You were my man and I trusted you and somehow that made everything all right.’ She scratched her lank hair and shoved it behind her ear out of the way. ‘Now everything’s all wrong and I don’t know what’s going to happen.’
He got so fed up, he escaped to the pub and drank himself stupid a couple of times. He took the whole width of the Pend, bouncing off one side, staggering across the cobbles and bouncing off the other on his way home, and on his arrival he immediately tried to force himself on everyone in a desperate effort to ingratiate himself in their affections. Nothing but bedlam resulted. The older weans had shaken free of him, loudly sneering in disgust, ‘Get off!’ and the younger ones had screamed and sobbed and yelled:
‘Mammy, Mammy!’
Afterwards he felt guilty and ashamed, not only of worsening relations with his children but because he knew he could not afford to drink.
He was also angry at himself for giving Madge something else to nag about.
Fortunately, his inborn Glasgow humour kept coming to his rescue and sometimes Madge had to laugh in spite of herself.
‘Have a heart, hen,’ he’d say. ‘I admit I’m an unemployed rapist but don’t tell me I’m a hopeless wino as well!’
Sometimes they would chat together almost like normal and Madge would tell him all the gossip.
‘Catriona MacNair’s man’s coming back. She heard the other day and she’s in a right flap. He’s been a prisoner of w
ar, poor bugger. Still, he’s lucky compared with some. You haven’t met Catriona’s pal, the one she used to work with, have you? Julie Vincent, a bit of a haughty piece but quite a nice wee lassie all the same, comes from the Gorbals. Catriona and her used to work in Morton’s in Buchanan Street. Well, her man was shot down on D-day. It’s the queerest thing that, Alec.’
‘Queer? Being shot down? My God, hen, if you’d seen as many shot down as I’ve seen …’
‘No, no,’ she interrupted impatiently. ‘Julie’s mother-in-law.’
He laughed and shook his head.
‘Women! I don’t know what you’re talking about, hen.’
‘Catriona says Mrs Vincent wouldn’t have anything to do with Julie at first. Then Reggie - that’s Julie’s man - got shot down and from that moment, Julie’s never been able to get Mrs Vincent off her back!’
‘You’re sure it wasn’t Mr Vincent Catriona said?’
‘Don’t be filthy. Trust you to make a joke of the poor lassie’s trouble. You don’t care a damn about anybody.’
‘I’m sorry, hen. I’m sorry!’ He hastened to veer her back into the path of good humour. ‘You mean Julie’s man was killed?’
‘They weren’t sure at first but word came through that he was dead not long after he was posted missing. Och, that was a while ago now. Must be a year or more. Aye, he went missing on D-day. But that’s queer about her mother-in-law, isn’t it? Catriona says it’s fair tormenting Julie.’
‘She’s probably at the change of life. Remember Ma went a bit queer?’
‘Aye, poor soul. My God, if it’s not one thing it’s another. Women just get free of bringing up weans and then they’ve “the change” to suffer.’
‘Well, I never invented it, hen.’ He laughed, then realised too late that in laughing he had blundered.
‘Aye, laugh, laugh!’ Madge shouted in his face. ‘It’s a great joke for the likes of you. As long as you’re getting your f—ing way, you’ve nothing to worry about!’
‘Madge, the weans!’ he pleaded. ‘They’ll be talking like that next.’
She laughed bitter, ugly laughter.
‘Oh, listen to Saint Alec. I was just stating a plain fact in plain words.’ She shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t have cared, Alec. I would have struggled along being pregnant all the time, being trauchled and tired and mixed up and not being able to manage and I still would have been quite content and happy if I’d thought you cared.’
He groaned.
‘But, hen. I do care. My God, you go on like a gramophone record. You’ve got an absolute obsession, Madge. It’s really getting terrible.’
‘I’ve got an obsession? I’ve never lied to you. I’ve never …’
‘Oh, shut up!’
He couldn’t help it. It was just impossible to sit quietly listening to another long spiel about his heinous infidelities and in his rush to get up and escape he stumbled over Charlie who was sitting on the floor with a dummy teat stuck in his mouth. The dummy teat spurted out to dangle on its yellow cord and Charlie let out a scream of protest.
Madge hauled herself up.
‘You kicked that wee wean, you dirty big coward!’
‘I did not!’
Madge’s red shovels of hands punched out wildly and in desperation he gripped her by the wrists.
‘You’re mad!’
‘If I’m mad it’s you that’s made me.’
Her freckles were ugly brown blotches on an unhealthy grey skin and her eyes strained huge and wild with anger.
‘See him! See him!’ she shouted round at the now screaming children. ‘See what a rotten midden you’ve got for a daddy!’
To Alec, this was the last straw. He flung her wrists aside.
‘You’re a great help,’ he said bitterly. ‘A great help. Well, you might as well know it all and really get to work on me. The rent’s so much in arrears now we’ll never be able to make up the money. You said you didn’t know what we’re going to do. Well, I don’t know what we’re going to do either.’ His voice broke. ‘The way things look I’m going to be in the jail and you and the weans in Barnhill.’
The screaming and sobbing of all the children lifted to a crescendo at the mention of the word Barnhill. They all knew it was the poorhouse.
‘Shut up!’ Madge bawled above them. ‘And get away through to the room, the whole crowd of you. Charlie and all. Haul him out along with you.’
Alec lit a cigarette and thought bitterly of how any time now everybody would be celebrating VJ-day. The end of the war. What they had all been fighting for. Freedom. Victory. A decent way of life. What a joke!
As soon as the kitchen was empty and quiet, Madge faced him.
‘What are you talking about us all getting separated for? You’re my man and we’re your family.’
‘I know, hen. But with these doctor’s bills and the medicines and one thing and another … You must have seen it coming yourself. We’ve been robbing Peter to pay Paul.’
‘They’ll try and sell all our furniture, all our things, everything we’ve got, Alec.’ She gripped the back of a chair for support. ‘They’ll try and separate us.’
He grabbed her angrily into his arms.
‘If I could just get a bloody job. I’m going back down to that Buroo again. I’ll plead with them. To hell with collar-and-tie jobs and offices, hen. I’ll empty bins. I’ll sweep the streets. I’ll do anything.’
‘What if they don’t have anything? The rotten middens haven’t had anything so far.’
‘We’ll just have to do a moonlight.’ His handsome face, already fatigued and embittered by war, now creased with worry. ‘But where we’ll go I’ve no idea. Who’d take us in, with all our mob! How will we even get a lorry or something to move all our things?’
Madge thought for a minute.
‘I know!’
‘What, hen?’
‘The McNairs still have their bread van somewhere. That’ll do fine. And see over the West End where she lives, Alec, there’s big houses lying empty. It’s wicked! Why should there be houses lying empty and weans needing a roof over their heads? Some squatters have moved into one already. We could go there, too.’
‘Oh, just a minute, hen. I don’t know if I agree with squatters. Everybody can’t just go about taking everything they want!’
She pushed him roughly away.
‘You’re a fine one to talk! It’s all right when it’s taking a woman you want, is it? But it’s different when it’s taking a place for your wife and weans?’
‘All right, all right.’ He groaned. ‘But don’t you see, Madge, it’s illegal. They’ll have me in the end.’
‘No, they won’t. They won’t.’ She brandished her big fists but he could see that she was trembling. ‘Nobody’s going to take you away from me again. I won’t let them. Do you hear, you dirty big midden? I won’t let them!’
‘Och, Madge!’ He took her in his arms again. ‘If it’s what you want, hen, we’ll go right away.’
He shut his eyes and tried to blot out the terrible picture of chairs and rolls of linoleum and cots and brushes and mattresses and all the pathetic paraphernalia that they had collected over the years, not to mention the weans, all being crammed into an old bread van in the middle of the night and setting off rootless and defenceless yet still dependent on him, to he knew not where.
‘I’ll go and see Catriona,’ he said.
‘I’ll go and see Catriona,’ Madge corrected. ‘You stay here and look after the weans.’
‘But this house out her way … I’ll have to know exactly where, won’t I?’
‘We’ll all go then.’ She swung round towards the door and blasted it with an enormous yell. ‘Sadie! Agnes! Hector! William! Fiona! Maisie! Come back through here at once, and bring Charlie!’
Chapter 14
‘I can’t eat it!’ Melvin’s red-rimmed eyes glared down at the large chocolate cake. Brown crumbs speckled his moustache proving that he had tried. His mouth warped with bit
terness.
‘But, Melvin, I thought you said you’d been dreaming about a chocolate cake for years. Don’t worry about rations or anything. I’ll manage. Eat it, Melvin. It’s all yours. I made it specially.’
‘I can’t eat it, you fool. My belly’s shrunk!’
‘Oh, dear!’
This was yet another problem Melvin had brought home. During the day he could not eat and at night he could not sleep. The cavity bed had been out of the question.
‘I’m not going to sleep in that hole in the wall.’ He had swung away in an effort to hide the apprehension in his face but she had seen it and been moved to put her arms round him and comfort him like a child.
‘It’s all right, dear.’
He pushed her aside with a bluster of bravado.
‘I could if I wanted to. I don’t choose to, that’s all. It’s space I want now. Space to breathe and stretch myself.’
‘Yes, all right, Melvin, but what can we do? There’s no place else. Except the floor.’
‘Well, what’s wrong with that? It’s only a temporary measure. I’ve got plans, big plans.’
So she had pushed back the table and chairs and made up a bed as best she could on the kitchen floor. She crept in first and watched with a mixture of fear and compassion as he undressed to reveal the skeleton of the man he had once been. Yet he still had plenty of swagger.
‘I’ve got about five years’ pay lying. Think of that!’
‘That’s lovely!’
‘And I had a few pounds stacked away before that.’
‘Fancy!’
‘I’m going to speak to Da, get things moving about a new business.’ He hitched big bony shoulders inside his pyjamas. ‘You can’t keep a good man down!’
‘No, dear.’
She strained up to peer at his grey hair, his sallow face deeply carved with lines, before crumpling back with her feelings in disorder. He was an old man. An old man scratching himself and stomping over to come and lie beside her. She wished she could pluck herself out of the room and throw herself to the winds. She had crazy visions, rapid jerky pictures of herself escaping, being free, starting life again.
The Breadmakers Saga Page 48
