by Maggie Craig
‘Oh, I say, I do beg your pardon. I don’t suppose this is really a very suitable subject for mixed company - certainly not for a well-brought-up young lady like yourself.’
Liz, who’d decided to take it as a compliment that he thought he could discuss such subjects with her, made a face.
‘And do you know how fed up well-brought-up young ladies get with that sort of censorship? Especially when the topic of conversation is our own bodies, and our own health?’
He grinned. ‘Yes. Cordelia tells me quite frequently.’
That was the second time in this conversation that he had mentioned the Honourable Miss Maclntyre.
‘You were saying,’ Liz prompted, ‘about when your father died?’
‘Yes - well, we lost a lot of money in the Crash, and basically he worked himself to death during the last few years of his life trying to leave Mother and me with something. We moved to a smaller house in Milngavie - it’s a very nice house, but we used to have a much bigger one. Out Strathblane way. Bit of land, a couple of ponies, that sort of thing, you know.’
She didn’t, but she sensed he wasn’t trying to show off in any way. She supposed he couldn’t help talking posh either.
‘Cordelia and her family were our nearest neighbours. They’ve still got their place out there.’
Childhood sweethearts, then. That must be it.
‘Would you know me again?’
‘Sorry, was I staring at you?’ asked Liz. ‘I was wondering if it’s going to work. Your mother trying to persuade my father, that is.’
‘O ye of little faith. Of course it will. Her powers of persuasion are legendary in Milngavie and Bearsden.’
‘But will they work in Clydebank?’
‘Of course they will. Liz?’ he asked, smiling diffidently at his still novel use of her first name. ‘Is becoming a VAD the only thing that’s worrying you?’
‘How do you mean?’
Adam Buchanan fixed her with a very level look. He might be extremely adept at talking nonsense, but there was a keen intelligence at work behind the quiet good looks.
‘There isn’t anything wrong at Murray’s, is there? I mean, are you having a problem with anything - or anybody - there? I could always speak to my uncle about it if you were.’
He looked so sympathetic, sitting there across the table from her. She was sorely tempted to tell him the whole story. She thought better of it. As Helen had said, they always tended to lay the blame at the lassie’s feet. She didn’t want Adam Buchanan to think badly of her.
‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘No, it’s just the nursing thing.’ Out of sight underneath the table she crossed her fingers so that the lie wouldn’t count.
‘You’re sure?’ He seemed disinclined to let the subject go, one arm along the back of the bench, his fair brows knitted in concentration.
Anxious to change the subject, she allowed her mind to leap ahead to something else which genuinely troubled her.
‘The only thing is ... my chances of becoming a nurse are all tied up with there being a war.’ She lifted her eyes to Adam Buchanan. ‘Do you think there’s going to be a war?’
‘Do you know,’ he said in a quiet voice, ‘I’m awfully afraid that there is.’
And for a moment, in a douce Glasgow café, two young people sat silent, gazing into the abyss which had opened up at the feet of their generation. The experience of the war to end all wars was something which belonged to their parents, not to them, a prospect they had never dreamed they would have to face. Yet every day the dreadful possibility seemed to be edging closer.
As Liz and Adam sat there in sombre contemplation, the door of the café opened. There was a sudden influx of cold, damp air, the noise of traffic from the road outside - and a young man who stood there with a student’s briefcase over his dark head, laughingly protecting himself from the downpour. By the way he was being greeted - and by the strong physical resemblance - he had to be the son of the café owner. He was also, Elizabeth MacMillan decided, the most handsome man she had ever seen in her entire life.
Fourteen
‘And?’ demanded Helen, busily engaged in bandaging the arm of a volunteer casualty.
‘And what?’
‘In the name of the wee man!’ Helen dropped the end of the roll of bandages she was holding and put her hands on her hips. ‘And what happened then? You can’t stop there.’
‘No, ye cannae,’ said the volunteer, who happened to be Helen’s young brother Dominic. The other three lads were there too, Finn as well. As a joke, Liz had bandaged one of his paws, unaware that Mrs Galbraith was standing behind her, tapping her foot and doing her best to look disapproving.
Liz shouldn’t have done it, of course, but she was in the oddest of moods today. Her whole future hung in the balance this weekend, dependent on the outcome of Mrs Buchanan’s visit to her parents the following day. Yet she was curiously light-hearted, ready to laugh at anything and everything.
She was probably hysterical. She had looked it up in her nurses’ dictionary before she came out this morning. Hysteria: Nervous disorder characterized by violent mood-swings. More common in women than men. A firm hand and sharp words, rather than sympathy, usually produce good results. Yep, that sounded about right. She should ask Helen to slap her face.
Her mother hadn’t made it to the exercise, nor had Mrs Crawford. Good-hearted soul that she was, she had volunteered to help a panic-stricken Sadie get organized to receive Amelia Buchanan for tea on Sunday afternoon. Liz coming home late - by car - had been the first surprise. Seeing the lace curtains twitching in several of the neighbouring houses, Liz had thought ruefully that her method of arriving home on this particular Friday evening was going to be the talk of Queen Victoria Row for some time to come.
Her escort being a well-spoken young gentleman unknown to her parents had been another shock, but when he casually mentioned that he was the nephew of Liz’s boss, the stern look on her father’s face disappeared as though someone had wiped it off with a cloth.
He offered young Mr Buchanan a small refreshment. A wee dram of his best whisky, perhaps? That was when Liz knew that Adam had really made an impression. Her father’s best whisky, kept tucked away in the sideboard in the front room, was his only whisky. Apart from at Hogmanay, William MacMillan never drank at home. Like most Scottish families, however - even some of the teetotal ones - there was always a bottle of whisky in the house for special guests and hot toddies to cure colds.
Adam had gracefully declined. Turning to Sadie, he had asked if his mother might have the pleasure of calling on her and her husband on Sunday afternoon. Sadie had more or less gone into a tail-spin, or, as Liz had put it to Helen, ‘I thought she was going to have kittens.’
She and Mrs Crawford were spending most of today baking and getting ready for tomorrow’s visit. That solved one problem. Her mother wasn’t going to find out Helen’s second name. Not yet anyway. That was just as well. Liz was in enough trouble as it was.
Adam had barely driven away in Morag when her father had barked out an order. ‘The front room, Elizabeth. Now. You’ve got some explaining to do, young lady.’
It had all come out. William MacMillan had listened to most of it in ominous silence. He had one question for his wife. Had she known that their daughter was attending Red Cross classes? On the point of rushing in to deny that on her mother’s behalf, Liz had been astonished when Sadie had answered for herself, admitting that she’d known all along about Liz’s Tuesday night activities.
The expression on her father’s face had been almost comical. He’d been so taken aback, especially when Sadie, screwing up her courage, had gone on to say that most people would think it was commendable that Lizzie wanted to do something to help other people.
Commendable. It wasn’t one of her mother’s words. Liz suspected she was repeating something Mrs Crawford had said. The unexpected rebellion on his wife’s part had rather taken the wind out of William MacMillan’s sails. He’d actual
ly said something about waiting to see what Mrs Buchanan had to say. Liz couldn’t quite believe that her father hadn’t come down on her like a ton of bricks, locking her in her room on a diet of bread and water, perhaps. Hence the hysteria, she supposed. She might possibly be able to allow herself to hope.
In the meantime, two members of the Gallagher family were growing impatient. Helen was looking curious and Dominic put it into words.
‘Come on, Liz. I want to hear the end of the story too.’ Despite having grown up in an overwhelmingly male household, the youngest member of the Gallagher family had none of the usual embarrassment of the adolescent male in female company. Over the months since Liz had met Helen, he had adopted her as an extra big sister.
‘You be quiet, Master Gallagher,’ she said, pursuing her lips. She picked up the bandage roll and went to work on him. ‘You’re supposed to be unconscious, or suffering from a poison gas attack or something. Any more cheek out of you and I’ll bandage you up like Boris Karloff in The Mummy.’
‘Do what you like,’ said Dominic cheerfully. ‘Only for Pete’s sake tell us the rest of the story. Helen’s going to explode of curiosity otherwise.’
Liz, feigning exasperation, let out a long and theatrical sigh. ‘Well, if you absolutely insist...’
‘We do, we do,’ chorused brother and sister in unison. Liz laughed. She loved all this banter.
‘Well ... his name’s Mario Rossi, his father owns the café near the Western and he’s a medical student and a friend of Adam Buchanan. What else do you want to know?’
Helen winked at her brother. ‘Well, was that fortune-teller we went to right? Is he tall, dark and handsome?’
‘Yes,’ admitted Liz reluctantly. ‘Although not as tall as Adam.’
‘Adam, is it? My, my, we are a fast worker.’
Liz gave a sigh of exasperation. ‘Adam Buchanan is very nice - a really friendly chap. He’s being so helpful to me over this VAD thing.’
Her friend pounced on the implicit admission. ‘Ah-hah! So the other one was something more than nice. Tell us, does he have liquid brown eyes?’
‘He does, as a matter of fact.’ Extremely beautiful eyes, she thought, and a fantastic smile. It sort of flashed, dazzlingly white against his darker skin. And he had beautiful hands, too, his fingers slim but strong. Funny how she’d managed to notice all that although she’d spent only a few minutes in his company: not very long at all, actually.
Shortly after Mario Rossi’s arrival at the cafe, Adam Buchanan had murmured something apologetic about time getting on. If Liz was worried about being home late, perhaps they should think of making a move?
Dominic, helpfully angling his elbow so that Liz could bandage around it, fluttered his eyes and tried for the soulful look. ‘And did he look at you with longing in his beautiful brown eyes?’
‘No, he did not,’ said Liz crossly, pausing in her bandaging. ‘He was friendly and jolly like Adam and he hopes that if I do become a VAD we’ll meet up from time to time at the Infirmary. I’ll probably volunteer to work there at the weekends if I get into the Detachment. That’s all. I think we could be good friends. Just good friends.’
‘Ah-hah!’ said Helen. ‘But that’s what Mrs Simpson said about the Prince of Wales. And look what happened to them.’
‘I shall treat that remark with the contempt it deserves,’ said Liz grandly. ‘Now, let’s get on with bandaging this extremely obstreperous casualty. He seems to have sustained some nerve damage from a poison gas attack. Anyway,’ she went on, applying herself anew to the task, ‘nothing can come of it. His family’s Italian, so he’s bound to be a Cath—’
She had stopped herself just in time. No she hadn’t. Both Dominic and Helen were looking at her with pursed lips and pained expressions.
‘Stop hiding your horns and your tail, Dom,’ said Helen in her driest tones. ‘We’ll need to bandage them too.’
‘Och, Helen!’ Liz frowned at her friend, annoyed that she might have offended her, especially after the bad feeling there had been between her and Eddie at the Empire Exhibition over the religious question. ‘You know I don’t think like that. But you also know what my father’s like. That’s all I meant. He’d kill me if I took a Catholic boy home.’
Janet Brown sauntered across the hall to them, throwing a laughing comment back over her shoulder.
‘Lizzie MacMillan!’ she boomed. ‘That grandfather of yours is an old devil!’
‘Why, what’s he done?’ Liz peered over Janet’s shoulder. Her grandfather was on the opposite side of the hall, looking rather dashing with a bandage around his head. He waved to her and she waved back. Helen gave him a wave too. Peter MacMillan was fond of young people and shared none of his son’s sectarian beliefs, and the two friends sometimes met at his house - especially when they wanted to get away from the noisy Gallagher household to have a more intimate tête-à-tête.
‘Asked me if I was winching,’ laughed Janet. ‘Said he could fill the gap if I was between boyfriends! I told him I was spoken for,’ she said smugly, stretching out her arm so that she could admire her engagement ring. Her fiancé was a boy who was nearing the end of his apprenticeship in the sewing-machine factory.
‘Mind you,’ she said, dragging her eyes away from the tiny stone. ‘At least he comes along and gives you his support, Liz. Unlike your brother. Off starting the revolution somewhere, is he?’
‘Aye,’ said Liz, ‘something like that’ She had tentatively asked Eddie if he would reconsider his refusal to come along to the exercise and he had told her with a toss of his dark head that he would have nothing to do with the march towards war. Honestly, she was getting tired of his attitude.
Turning back to Dominic, her mouth open to ask Helen to hand her the scissors, she observed something very interesting. Helen Gallagher was blushing. That was the second time a mention of Eddie’s name had provoked that particular reaction.
What had she just said? That her father would kill her if she took a Catholic boy home? Reverse the genders and the same would hold true for Eddie and Helen. Liz wondered if that was something else she needed to worry about. She also wondered if Helen’s apparent feelings towards Eddie were reciprocated.
Somebody was tapping a tumbler with a piece of cutlery.
‘If I could have your attention, please, ladies and gentlemen?’ It was Mrs Galbraith, up on the stage at the end of the hall. As the hubbub subsided, she began explaining how the next part of the morning’s programme was to be arranged.
‘So that we can all get the maximum benefit from the exercise, I’d like the helpers to complete what they’re doing and then form themselves into groups of six and we’ll go round the casualties.’
She paused and smiled. ‘To whom we all say a big thank you. After I’ve given you the say-so, please make your way to the canteen - through the door at the other end of the hall - where the ladies of the new Women’s Voluntary Service have kindly agreed to serve soup, tea, coffee and home baking.’
An appreciative murmur ran through the assembled company. For most of them it was their first contact with the WVS. Newly formed, it was another response to the growing crisis in Europe and the imminent possibility of war.
The first-aiders toured the room. Bandages and splints were examined, mistakes pointed out and sometimes rectified by demonstration.
‘Bear in mind, of course,’ said Mrs Galbraith, who was leading Helen and Liz’s group, ‘that in the real thing the injured would very likely be confused, perhaps suffering temporary memory loss because of the shock. That also would be part of our job - to coax them out of it.’
‘You can coax me any time,’ said the next patient, a shameless twinkle in his piercing blue eyes.
‘Behave yourself, Grandad,’ murmured Liz.
Mrs Galbraith was ready for him. ‘Please also bear in mind that real casualties wouldn’t be half so cheeky as this lot.’
‘Don’t put money on it, lass,’ said Peter MacMillan. She moved on to the next
patient, once more doing her best to look stern, but clearly delighted that Peter MacMillan had addressed her as lass.
The next casualties were a man and a woman lying next to each other on camp beds. Her leg had been put in a splint and he, like Peter MacMillan, had a bandage around his forehead. The bandage looked startlingly white against his thick dark hair. The two of them were chatting quietly to each other, oblivious to the approach of the stretcher party.
Many of the volunteer casualties were talking among themselves. What was different about this couple was the concentration they were giving each other.
As Liz watched, the man lifted one hand and stroked a strand of the woman’s chestnut-coloured hair behind her ear. The smile she gave him in response was very tender. They’re in love, thought Liz. It was like something you saw at the pictures. And they had to be nearly thirty years old...
Mrs Galbraith coughed. The pair on the camp beds turned their faces up to the group, expressions of intelligent interest and readiness to be helpful on their faces.
Mrs Galbraith went through the imagined injuries and the way they had been dealt with, then smiled at the couple.
‘Right then, once you’ve had the bandages removed, please do have something to eat. And thank you once again very much for coming, Mr and Mrs... ?’
‘Baxter,’ said the woman, smiling in response. ‘And you’re very welcome.’ She looked at her husband. ‘Aren’t they, Robbie?’
‘Oh, good grief,’ said Liz. ‘Whose brilliant idea was it to spread this over a whole day? We’re going to be dead on our feet by the end of it and it’s not even dinner-time yet.’
It had been decided that the volunteers should take their lunch breaks in two batches before returning for an afternoon session. Liz and Helen weren’t due to be off duty until one o’clock, and it was only twelve now.
‘What?’
Liz turned to Helen. She had made the oddest noise - something like a mouse’s squeak. She was staring across the hall, watching the young man who had just appeared.
