Eventually she could not stand it any longer. Her nerves strained far beyond caring about money or accommodation or anything, she waited until Melvin left for work one night and then hurriedly began flinging clothes into a case.
‘Why are you doing that?’ Fergus’s pale eyes watched her curiously.
‘Don’t just stand there!’ she cried. ‘Quick! Get a box or a message bag or something and stuff in everything you want to take. Tell Andrew to do the same. We’re going back to stay at Granny’s for a while.’
Out in the dark cold street, hurrying penguin-like, stiff-armed with heavy cases and parcels tucked underneath, she was palpitating, sweating, choking with terror in case Melvin should suddenly materialise out of the fog and confront her.
Now even her mother’s home in Farmbank seemed a haven of peace and safety in her mind. She had staggered the length of Great Western Road with the boys hurrying and complaining behind her when a tap on her shoulder made her jump and brought a high-pitched strangled sound to her throat like the squeal of a trapped animal.
Both Fergus and Andrew giggled at her unexpected reaction and Fergus said:
‘I only wanted to ask if we were going to see Dad in the bakehouse first.’
Shivering, huge-eyed with hatred, she whirled on them. She even hated Andrew for laughing at her and not understanding how terrified and ill she felt.
‘No, we’re not. Stop that idiotic snickering, both of you! Get in front of me so that I can see what you’re doing and hurry up or we’ll never get to Farmbank tonight.’
Never before had Glasgow seemed so enormous, or so teeming with strangers, prosperous, successful strangers of good character with orderly lives and respectable homes to go to. Struggling along the road with the cases bumping against and wobbling her legs and the parcels under her arms beginning to come undone she felt ashamed, a failure, an inadequate, an embarrassment, someone who did not fit in, who was no more than a piece of flotsam blown along the street by the wind.
The journey to her mother and father’s house was one of the worst in her life. She had no clear recollection how she eventually got there.
There was only the relief of the door opening and the lighted lobby sucking her in. The babble of voices, her mother’s, her father’s, Fergus’s, Andrew’s. Then a hot cup of tea being forced into her hands.
‘That man won’t dare come here. And if he does he’ll have me to reckon with,’ her mother assured her. ‘Don’t worry, Catriona, you’re safe here!’
But even on the sofa crouched behind the bars of the chairs she did not feel safe. Nor did she feel at home.
An urgent obsessive need to defend herself had become all powerful. Alerted by this into a continuous high pitch of tension, she could not, dare not, sleep.
Rootless, isolated, she listened to sounds lapping far away outside her. The boys giggling and bouncing on the bed-settee next door, her father’s mock growl as he chastised them, only to make the giggles and the squeals swell louder and louder. The strong monotonous thump-thump of her mother’s feet as she strode busily, happily about.
‘Now, now, come on, boys, that’s enough nonsense! Finish your piece on jam and say your prayers. Granny and Grandpa are going to bed. Come on, Robert, get through to the bedroom and leave them alone. You’re worse than they are.’
‘Our Father which art in heaven …’
‘Fergus, don’t you dare carry on like that while you’re saying your prayers. Do you want God to strike you down dead for making a fool of him? Clasp your hands and close your eyes. Now both together.’
‘Our Father which art in heaven …’
Chanting voices balancing along the edge of hysterical laughter.
Doors shutting. Giggles muffled by blankets. Long black silence.
Sleep stealing across. Then jerkily deserting her.
Dusty grey light. A mosquito net through which shabby furniture looms over her. Everything was too big and too close in the overcrowded room, including her mother now up and dressed and pinning an old felt hat on top of her thick coiled hair.
‘I’m going along to see if I can get anything for you and the children’s breakfast. They might have some dried egg and I could whip up a nice omelette. I looked in your bag, by the way, and found your ration books. I won’t be long. You get up and set the table and put the kettle on. Your daddy’s away to work but I haven’t wakened the boys yet.’
She went away humming cheerfully to herself but she had only been gone five or ten minutes and Catriona was struggling, shivering into her clothes when the letter-box clanged impatiently.
Secretly cursing her mother for the headache the noise had triggered off she hurried to open the door and was caught off guard to find Melvin.
The sight of his broad-shouldered figure, his bushy moustache, his bulbous eyes, his twitching face filled her with undiluted hatred.
Pushing past her he said:
‘What’s the meaning of this?’
For a moment she was tempted to run from the house instead of following him back into the living-room but she had no shoes or stockings on.
‘I left a note.’
‘What do you mean - you left a note?’ He pulled out a piece of paper and stared incredulously at it. ‘“Melvin, I’m leaving you”!’
‘There wasn’t any use saying anything else.’
‘What do you mean, there wasn’t any use saying anything else?’
Sheer animal self-preservation made her wish he were dead. A basic need to defend herself, to survive at all costs, took overriding possession of her. Eyes normally guileless pools of amber, narrowed to yellow slivers of malevolence and suspicion. Soft vulnerable mouth hardened and twisted and became ugly.
‘Aw, shut up!’ she flung at him and snatched up her stockings and turned her back on him as she tugged them on.
‘What do you mean - shut up?’
‘Go away! Die! Disappear!’
‘Oh, charming! You’re a great wife, you are! Supposed to be a goody-goody Christian as well.’
‘I don’t want to be anything to you. Just go away, Melvin, and forget you ever saw me. That’s all I ask. Just leave me in peace. I don’t want to have anything more to do with you.’
‘Don’t talk rubbish. You’re my wife. Get your coat on. We’re going home right now.’
‘No!’
‘What do you mean - no?’
‘Goodbye, Melvin.’
‘What do you mean - goodbye?’
‘I’ve a thumping headache.’
‘Well, hurry up then. Get your coat on and come on home. I can’t stand here all day. I’ve been slaving my guts out in the bakehouse while you’ve been here snoring and enjoying yourself.’
‘You’d better go before my mother gets back.’
‘Is this the case you took? I’ll pack it. You get your coat on.’
‘Are you deaf or stupid or something?’
Immediately he tucked clothes into the case, she swooped on them and scattered them wildly over the floor. Words tumbled recklessly from her mouth.
‘I don’t want to have anything to do with you. I hate you. I loathe you. I despise the very sight of you. Can I make it any clearer than that? Get out! Get out of here before I get my mother to fetch the police.’
He suspended in uncertainty for a minute. Then he began to shake like an old man. He looked like his father.
‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’
‘It’s finished, that’s what I’m saying.’
His face twisted, screwing out tears. His voice howled up an octave.
‘You can’t leave me. Not after all I’ve suffered for you and worked for you all these years. If you leave me I’ll have suffered and worked all these years for nothing.’
The hatred for the chains of guilt he was welding came straight from hell.
‘I wish you were dead!’
He was blubbering now and moaning.
‘I will be dead if you leave me. I’ll commit suicide. I�
�ll kill myself.’ He stretched out hands, doughy brown floury hands with black treacle hardening under square nails. ‘Catriona!’
‘Don’t touch me!’
‘I’ll kill myself.’ He began banging his head against the wall. ‘I’ll kill myself. I’ll kill myself!’
‘You’ve wakened the children.’
She could hear their half-awake, half-frightened voices growing louder and keener with apprehension.
‘Mummy, where are you? What’s wrong? Mummy!’
Hatred built up like steam pressure in her head. She wanted to pounce on Melvin like a wild animal, strangle him, exterminate him, rid herself of him once and for all. Then, suddenly, the violence of her emotions exhausted her. Words dragged out heavily:
‘I don’t care what you do, Melvin, I don’t care about anything.’
Right away Melvin brightened.
‘It’s all right, boys,’ he shouted, mopping his face with a big greasy handkerchief. Then after noisily trumpeting into it he began issuing instructions to her.
‘Tell them to come on later. Tell them to explain to your mother about me coming for you. Tell them …’
She made her way through to the sitting-room, ignoring the rest of what he was saying. Then having seen to the children she allowed Melvin to hustle her from the house.
She longed for help. For days afterwards she thought continuously of her two friends Julie and Madge. Julie had disappeared without a word. Mrs Vincent had called to enquire about her. It was from Mrs Vincent she learned that Julie had left her job at Morton’s. The manageress at Morton’s had told Mrs Vincent Julie had gone away to live and work in England.
Madge was no longer in Huntley Gardens. Apparently the police and the owner’s men had broken into the house and moved Madge’s furniture out on to the street and when she tried to stop them they had manhandled her and Alec had lost his head and set about them with his fists. He had been arrested and was serving a sentence in prison.
Madge and the children were in Barnhill. She had gone twice to the institution to see Madge but on both occasions Madge and the children were out. Apparently they were put out every morning and had to stay out all day. It was only at night they were given a roof over their heads.
If it had not been for Melvin she would have had Madge living with her in Botanic Crescent. Despite the obvious harassment of adding the noise and problems of seven children to her own two, it would have been a comfort to have her friend beside her.
Melvin had nearly burst a blood vessel at the mere idea. Completely recovered from his weeping fit he raged on at her. She had never really had any hope of him agreeing to give shelter to Madge and the children and she had not nearly enough energy left to fight him.
She wept in secret for her friend. It was dreadful to think of a woman, any woman, losing all her possessions, her security, her home, being unable to protect her children.
She knew only too well what it was like.
Like a monster for ever crouched in some secret corner, the night of the air-raid towered up and spilled long shadows of horror across her mind. Recent glimpses of other insecurities added to her distress. She felt again the rootlessness and the shame of walking the streets with nowhere to go.
She cupped her hands across her mouth and nursed herself.
Now Melvin had made a will. He had told her quite casually, making no secret of the fact that he had left the new house to Fergus.
‘You’re no flesh and blood of mine, you see,’ he had explained to her in front of the child. ‘Fergus is my son!’
It was like the air-raid happening all over again every time she thought of it. It was as if she were already dispossessed like Madge, homeless, without any rights or place.
All her life, as far back as she could remember, she had longed for security, had played houses by herself as a child and pretended she had one. Continuously, day and night, it had been her dream.
She realised now that it was a basic need for every woman and it did not matter about the size of the place or what it looked like. It was the feeling of having it that mattered, of belonging, of having roots, of being safe.
Once again the world caved in, dust parched her throat. Things loved disintegrated, were temporary, unreal, like everything else.
And she was frightened.
Chapter 19
Julie moaned and retched violently over the kitchen sink. The brown paper blind was drawn down in case someone from outside might see and it enclosed the room in a funereal stillness.
Her skin clung like wet ice and prickled with pins and needles. She willed herself not to faint.
She kept remembering how when she was sick as a child one of her mother’s hands supported her brow, the other had cuddled tightly round her shoulders. She remembered a cotton apron, a soft body and a strong voice.
You’re all right, hen. Mammy’s here. You’re Mammy’s brave wee lassie.
She had been thinking about Mammy a lot recently. She used to clamber into the kitchen bed beside her when Dad was on nightshift and Mammy would sing her to sleep, often with a proper song or rhyme but sometimes with just a few repetitive words, lilting softly.
Mammy’s bonnie wee lassie,
Mammy’s bonnie wee lass.
The sickness died down and she forced herself to wash her face at the cold water tap. Then she brushed her hair and slashed on fresh lipstick. She spent most of the time alone in the house but she was determined that she would keep herself looking decent. Her father had never been one to stay indoors and now, because he felt helpless and did not know what to do, he kept well out of her way.
Despite all her efforts, however, her hair lost its bounce, her face pinched in.
Her morning sickness was supposed to go away after the first few months but nearly nine months had passed now and she was still plagued with it; sometimes it lasted, off and on, for most of the day. It only needed her dad to hawk or give one of his phlegmy coughs to set her rushing boking to the sink.
As soon as she had discovered she was pregnant she stopped working in Morton’s and told a story about going down to live in England. Her first thought was of the disgrace. Shame hardened around her, locked her into herself. She vowed that if anyone said anything she would spit in their eye and tell them to go to hell. She froze out her father, her glittering eyes warning him not to mention her pregnancy, daring him to utter one word.
A job in a small general store in one of the back streets of Gorbals helped her financially until her condition became too obvious. Then she left and shut herself up in the house and told her father he must do all the shopping. She would not put her foot outside the door except to go to the lavatory and she suffered agonies trying to avoid that because the lavatory was outside on the stair. She always listened just to make sure the stair was quiet before hurrying out.
Her father tried his best but often lost the shopping list she gave him and did not remember all the messages and sometimes, despite her angry warnings that she was not coming to the door for anyone, he forgot his key.
At first she whiled away the long hours by busying herself scrubbing and polishing and cleaning out cupboards until every inch of the place sparkled and she could have defied anyone to find a speck of dust or even the faintest smudge of a fingermark anywhere.
Then she got so fat and heavy and ungainly she could not manage the cleaning. She still kept the house as best she could but it was a difficult and breathless task to reach up or bend over or kneel down and once down it was a terrible struggle to get back up.
Food acquired an urgency, became intensely important, something to drool over and dream about and look forward to. If her father forgot to bring the sweets or biscuits she had been craving for, disappointment was so keen she sometimes shamed herself by bursting into heartbroken tears.
Proud and bitterly ashamed, hard and resilient, yet with an aura of vulnerability about her, she wandered through the house like a bewildered child.
Her only contact wit
h outside, apart from her father, was the papers and from them she soaked up a miscellany of news. She read copies of the Glasgow Bulletin avidly, hoarded them, re-read old ones. She fastened especially on serious items in an effort to exercise her mind and keep herself from stagnating as each long, blank hour followed another.
‘It is an accepted fact that war is accompanied by a lowering of the standard of morals and conduct. Within the lifetime of a generation it has been possible to observe the effect of two wars upon delinquency and crime and if the results have been very much as one would expect they are not the less deplorable on that account … The culminative effect of six years of war has been to weaken the moral fibre and the powers of resistance. The stages of dissolution through which Britain has passed are familiar and need not be recapitulated but the black-out, the break-up of homes, the destruction of property by bombing, rationing and the black market have all left their marks upon the civilian population.
Since each war is more barbarous than the last and since the 1939-1945 conflict was fought with an unparallelled savagery and at closer quarters than its predecessor it follows that life has never been held so cheap as it is today.
The picture of early post-war Britain which has its counterpart in the United States is unlovely. London has its crime wave which ranges from highly organised theft to kidnapping and worse. Glasgow has been shocked by a particularly brutal murder and everywhere crime is on the increase …’
Now she flung the papers aside. War … war … It was enough to make anybody sick.
Mammy used to say, ‘I’m glad you’re not a boy, hen. They just take boys away and use them as cannon fodder.’
She took an unexpected pain in her abdomen but it eased away after a couple of minutes. She blamed it on all the retching she had been doing and a strained muscle was the last thing she wanted with her date only about a couple of weeks away. She did not know much about birth but she imagined that strong abdominal muscles would be a better help than weak ones.
The Breadmakers Saga Page 53
