by Maggie Craig
‘Definitely.’
‘What about you, Helen?’
‘Well, I havenae got that much choice, have I? I’ll just wear my best blouse and my old coat and hat.’ Her eyes narrowed as she realized what Liz was up to. ‘No, thank you.’
‘I didn’t say a word,’ protested Liz.
‘No, but you were about to,’ said Helen sternly. ‘And don’t offer me the georgette dress again either. I’ve told you already. I’ll maybe buy it off you, but I’m not taking it for nothing - and I don’t have enough spare cash at the moment. What did it cost you again?’
Swiftly deducting ten shillings, Liz quoted her a price.
‘And the rest,’ said Helen laconically. ‘You really shouldnae tell lies, Elizabeth MacMillan. You’re no good at it.’
Liz looked at her with affectionate exasperation. ‘Och, Helen! You know I don’t really want any money for it at all. All it’s doing is hanging in my wardrobe attracting the moths. You’re so stubborn!’
‘Well,’ said Helen, her expression softening into an equally affectionate smile, ‘if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black, I don’t know what is.’ She turned to go back into the close. ‘Safe home, now. Oh,’ she added, suddenly remembering. ‘Ma told me to say you’re welcome here any time. You don’t need to wait for an invite.’
‘That’s very kind of her. I love visiting your family.’ Liz hesitated. ‘I’d really like to have you round to my house—’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Helen immediately. ‘I know your daddy wouldn’t exactly be keen on the idea. And you know my lot love having visitors. Don’t worry about it,’ she said again.
Liz couldn’t help worrying about it. The Gallaghers had given her such a warm welcome. It would have been fine to have had Helen over for the evening. They could have gone into Liz’s room and gossiped and tried on clothes and generally set the world to rights.
But it was out of the question. She’d told her mother about her new friend, but she had carefully forgotten to mention her last name. She hadn’t spoken about Helen at all in front of her father.
She’d told Eddie, of course, giving him Helen’s full name and watching with grim amusement as the prejudices with which both of them had been brought up warred with his new-found love for all mankind - black, white, Jewish, Mohammedan - even Irish Catholic. His egalitarian principles had won the day.
Naturally, when the visit to the Empire Exhibition had first been discussed, Eddie had lectured Liz on the morally indefensible nature of the British Empire. Visiting the exhibition did not in any way imply that he, Edward MacMillan, approved of the iniquitous system by which Great Britain kept half the countries of the world in subjugation.
Liz told him gravely that she understood this perfectly, and Eddie, equally as grave, told her that he would be delighted to escort her and Miss Gallagher to the Empire Exhibition next Saturday.
Nine
Bustling about making a pot of tea for her returning daughter, Sadie MacMillan listened with interest as Liz told her what had happened at the class that evening. Eddie, sitting at the kitchen table reading a history textbook, was ostentatiously keeping out of the conversation.
‘And we’re going to have this thing soon - they call it an exercise - where we’ll get to practise everything we’ve learned - dressing wounds and bandaging and all that.’ The words came tumbling out in her enthusiasm.
‘It’ll be on a Saturday in August and we’ve to ask all our friends and families if they’ll be volunteer casualties for us. They wouldn’t have to stay for the whole day - even half an hour would be helpful, Mrs Galbraith says, because that would make it like a real emergency, where you don’t know what’s going to be coming at you next.’
Liz paused at last to draw breath. ‘Would you maybe consider being one of our volunteers, Ma? You could ask Mrs Crawford to come with you.’
She looked expectantly up at Sadie, who was setting a cup and saucer in front of her. Liz was doing everything she could to encourage the friendship with the next-door neighbour, although sometimes she feared she was fighting a losing battle against her mother’s shyness and reserve.
Sadie was frowning, not wanting to disappoint her daughter. ‘I’m not sure, Lizzie...’
‘Oh, go on, Ma. Helen’s family are going to come. Well, her brothers, anyway.’
That would raise another problem. If the Gallagher boys came to the exercise she couldn’t expect them to change their surname to something more neutral just for her. Her mother would find out and she would have to ask her to keep that secret as well. Liz knew that was an unfair burden to lay on her. The alternative was a confrontation with her father ... although that was going to have to come sooner or later anyway.
Liz smiled up at her mother. She would cross that bridge when she came to it. It would do Sadie good to get out of the house. That was the important thing.
‘Go on, Ma,’ she said again. ‘You’d enjoy it.’
Eddie coughed and turned another page of his book. He definitely wouldn’t be one of the volunteer casualties. No doubt he would consider that as participating in the capitalist war machine.
‘Well,’ said Sadie, although she still looked very doubtful, ‘if it would help you and your friends, Lizzie...’
‘It really would, Ma.’
Eddie didn’t quite make tut-tut noises, but he wasn’t far off it. Liz was beginning to find his silent disapproval profoundly irritating. She was distracted from it by a sudden brainwave.
‘You could think about joining the Red Cross, Ma. Coming along to the class.’
‘Och,’ Sadie said dismissively, slipping the tea cosy over the pot and setting it on its stand, ‘you wouldn’t want an old wifie like me there.’
‘Ma,’ said Liz in exasperation, ‘you’re hardly an old wifie - and anyway, there’s all ages at this thing. I told you, Helen and I had a real hard job persuading them to take us on - they thought we were too young. They want older people too.’
Sadie’s face lit up.
‘I’d like fine to do something like that - something interesting, and useful, too.’ She shook her head. ‘But no, I’m too old for it’
‘Ma, Mrs Simpson was there tonight. She’s going to join the class.’
That stopped Sadie in her tracks. Even Eddie looked up from his over-studious scrutiny of his book. ‘Nan Simpson?’ he said. ‘You’ve got to be joking.’
Liz shook her head. ‘No, it’s the God’s honest truth.’
Sadie laughed. ‘Fancy her having the brass neck to show her face at something like that after the way she curses at Tam.’ Her face was alive with amusement.
The three of them turned at the sound of the front door opening. Even before William MacMillan entered the kitchen, the animation which had shone in his wife’s face only thirty seconds before had faded.
It was like a light going out, as if the leerie had been along on his morning round to extinguish the gas mantles. My God, thought Liz, watching it happen, now she really does look like an old wifie. And yet, less than a minute ago ...
‘Will you have a wee cup of tea, William?’ Sadie asked anxiously. She always sounded anxious when she spoke to her husband.
‘Aye. I will that.’
Liz blinked. His acceptance had sounded almost friendly. He too normally had a special tone of voice when he spoke to his wife: one of exaggerated exasperation. Tonight, however, there was an air of suppressed excitement about him.
‘Well, Lizzie? What would you say if I told you that I’ve very recently been entrusted with some very good news?’
‘I’d want to know what it was, Father,’ she said politely. That seemed to be the answer that was called for.
‘Well,’ he said again, ‘if your mother will stop fussing and pour us all a cup of tea, I’ll tell you.’
‘Aye, William. Right away, William.’
Liz suppressed the bubble of irritation at the deference in her mother’s voice. Couldn’t she stand up to him? Just onc
e? If Liz herself were married to a man like her father, she’d pour the blasted tea all over his head - leaves and all. That would set his gas at a peep.
‘Something amusing you, Lizzie?’
‘No, Father,’ she said hurriedly.
‘So, what have you been doing this evening?’
‘Oh ... nothing much.’ Nervously, she waited for him to quiz her further, but he didn’t, turning to look across the table at Eddie.
‘How about my son and heir? I hope you haven’t been misspending your youth tonight?’
Liz blinked. It wasn’t like her father to be jokey in any way, shape or form. Whatever his news was, it had to be very good indeed.
‘I’ve been studying, Father.’ Eddie put a paper marker in the book, closed it and reached behind him to place it on the sideboard. ‘For an essay I’ve to write on the causes of the Great War.’
Sadie, her preparations complete, smoothed the back of her skirt and sat down. Lifting the pot, she began pouring the tea. Her husband gave a long sigh.
‘How many times do I have to tell you? I like my milk in first!’
‘I’m sorry, William,’ she said, half rising from the chair she’d only just sat down in. ‘I forgot I’ll get a fresh cup.’
‘Sit down, woman!’
Sadie subsided into her chair.
‘What is your news, Father?’ Liz asked quickly. Anything to deflect the irritation from her mother. He might be in an unusually good mood, but he was still snapping at her. Liz supposed it had become a habit he couldn’t break: one he didn’t want to break. Fortunately he was unable to keep his news to himself for a moment longer.
‘I have this evening been to a meeting called by yard management for senior foremen and managers,’ he said, unable to keep the pride out of his voice that he now belonged to this august group. ‘Then, together with the management representatives, we all repaired to a public house for a small refreshment.’
Across the table, Eddie gave Liz an unobtrusive wink. William MacMillan had a tendency to use pompous language, which his children, with the cruelty of youth, had an equal tendency to laugh at.
Liz gave Eddie the ghost of a smile back, along with the silent signal which meant, We’ll have a laugh about this later.
‘The order books are full,’ William MacMillan announced, finally getting his big news out. ‘There’s work assured for the next five years. At least.’
‘That is good news,’ said Liz, and meant it. Anyone who had grown up anywhere along the Clyde knew the importance of a full order book.
She had been eleven when work had stopped on the 534. Now the ship which had borne that job number for so many years was the Queen Mary, the greatest passenger liner ever to sail the Atlantic. Since then another Queen had been ordered. She was nearing completion, her launch due to take place any day now.
People seemed to have forgotten the hard times, the two years during which this new ship’s predecessor had lain rusting on the stocks at John Brown’s, when Cunard had run out of money to build her and the whole workforce had been laid off. Liz would never forget those years, though. Never.
It had been shortly before Christmas 1931. She and Eddie, sliding along the icy patches on the pavements which all the feet before them had polished to thrilling - if hazardous - perfection, had come bounding into the close at Radnor Street. They were as high as kites as they ran up the stairs because it was nearly time for school to break up for the holidays. Then, bursting into the house, they had seen their parents’ faces.
Both William and Sadie MacMillan had been white to the lips, staring silently at each other from their chairs on either side of the range, her mother tearful and her father...
How had her father looked that day? Buttoned up, tight ... humiliated. At that age Liz hadn’t known what the word meant, but she had understood the feeling it described, had seen with painful clarity that William MacMillan was crushed by the knowledge that he wasn’t going to be able to support his family, that he was dreading the inevitability of having to go on the parish and accept the meagre dole money which would be offered.
Liz knew the importance of a full order book, all right So did her mother.
‘Oh, aye, William,’ Sadie was saying warmly. ‘That’s great news.’
He actually smiled at them both, and for a moment there was unusual unanimity in the MacMillan household. Then Eddie spoiled it all.
‘And do any of you know why the order books are full?’
His tone of voice was ostensibly calm, but as she turned to look at him, Liz realized that he wasn’t calm at all. He was furiously angry - and upset.
‘The books are full because the Clyde’s getting ready to go to war. Along with every other shipbuilding river in the country. That’s why. The mobilization has started. The river’s running to war.’
Startlingly pale, his voice shaking with emotion, he waved an unsteady hand towards the history book lying on the sideboard.
‘Wasn’t the last time bad enough? Haven’t we learned anything? No. We’re rushing headlong towards it: to bombs and fires and destruction. It’ll be even worse this time. Everyone will be involved: killed and maimed while they’re sitting at their own firesides. Like in Spain.’
His voice quivered with passion. ‘Can none of you see that? Are you all blind as well as stupid?’
‘Och, Grandad,’ said Liz, reporting it all to Peter MacMillan the next evening. ‘It was terrible. They kept shouting at each other and then Eddie stomped out of the house and didn’t come back till after midnight, and Father waited up for him and then they shouted at each other some more and Ma was crying all the time - oh, it was terrible!’
Peter MacMillan patted her shoulder before sitting down opposite her in front of the range. ‘There, there, lass. They’re too much like each other, that’s the trouble. Both hotheads.’
‘My father?’ she asked doubtfully. ‘A hothead?’
‘Your father has strong feelings,’ said her grandfather. ‘About a lot of things.’
‘He keeps them well hidden then,’ said Liz. She raised her arms, clasping them together on the nape of her neck, lifting her heavy hair. ‘I wish he wasn’t so against Catholics, either.’
Peter gave her a shrewd look. ‘You’re not walking out with a Catholic lad, are you, Lizzie?’
‘No, it’s not that. I’m not walking out with anybody.’
She told him about Helen, and their developing friendship. ‘If he knew I’d got friendly with a Catholic lassie—’ Liz stopped, a wave of anxiety flooding over her.
‘He’d try to stop you from seeing her?’
‘And the rest,’ she said drily. ‘I’d never hear the end of it. So I haven’t told him, and I feel like I’m denying her.’ She gave her grandfather a half-smile. ‘And I cannae invite her home because he’d have to know what her surname is and then he’d know that she’s a Catholic - and I feel bad about that too. Her family have been real hospitable to me.’
‘You can invite your friends here any time, Lizzie,’ said Peter stoutly. ‘You know that, hen. Don’t you?’
‘Aye, Grandad,’ Liz said, her voice soft. ‘I know that. And I appreciate it. I really do.’
Peter shook his white head. ‘I don’t know how your Granny and I managed to produce a child with ideas like your father has. As the Bard said, “we’re all Jock Tamson’s bairns”,’ he declaimed, quoting one of Robert Burns’ most famous lines. ‘How we raised a bigot I’ll never know.’
‘You did your best, Grandad,’ said Liz, edging herself gingerly back into her chair. It might be the end of July, but the range was lit, her grandfather using the excuse of the wet summer. She’d lay a bet the Queen Mary’s engine room wasn’t any hotter than this. ‘Calling him William Wallace MacMillan was a good start.’
Her grandfather’s face lit up. ‘Aye, that was your Granny’s idea - to call him after the national hero. We visited the Wallace monument at Stirling when we were courting, you know. She was scared, but I managed to
persuade her to climb to the top.’
He turned his face towards the open fire in the middle of the range. ‘She always rose to a challenge. Even if it scared her.’ He paused, gazing into the flames. His blue eyes, normally piercing and intense, went soft and dreamy. ‘Especially if it scared her.’
Before Liz could think of something comforting to say, his head snapped up again. ‘You’re like her, lass.’ Liz felt a warm glow which had nothing to do with the heat from the fire. ‘Now, of course,’ Peter went on, ‘your father forgets about the Wallace, likes to think he’s called after King Billy. As if Jenny and I would have done any such thing!’
Liz allowed herself an inner smile at the indignation evident in his voice.
‘Shall I make the tea?’ she suggested, sitting up in her chair.
‘Damn the fear of it. You sit there and make yourself comfortable and I’ll see to it. You’ve had a long day, pet.’
Resisting the temptation to help him, Liz did as she was bid. It was a novelty to be waited on, after all. In her own home, the division of labour was strictly traditional - which basically meant that she and her mother did all the housework.
Her grandfather, on the other hand, had always done his best to be helpful around the house. Right now he was cutting some of Sadie’s fruit loaf which Liz had brought with her. The slices were a bit thick, but he put them out neatly on a plate with a wee paper doily underneath them. Keeping up Granny’s standards. That brought a lump to Liz’s throat.
‘So, hen,’ Peter said once they were both settled opposite each other, ‘what else have you been up to lately? The Red Cross exercise is still going ahead?’
‘Yes, Grandad,’ she said. ‘It’s all arranged.’ He’d already promised to be one of the volunteer casualties. ‘And Helen and Eddie and I are going to the Empire Exhibition this weekend.’ She took a small bite of fruit loaf and chewed it thoughtfully. ‘At least I think we are. If Eddie’s still speaking to me, that is.’
