THE GREAT WAR SAGAS: Box set of 2 passionate and inspiring stories: A Crimson Dawn and No Greater Love

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘Ooh, teacher,’ Sam mocked. ‘Bit middle class, isn’t it?’

  Emmie intervened. ‘I hope you two aren’t ganin’ to argue like this at me weddin’?’

  ‘If I was you,’ Sam winked, ‘I wouldn’t invite him. He’ll probably stand up halfway through the service and start singing “The Red Flag”.’

  ‘Well, at least I still remember the words,’ Rab laughed. ‘Not like some class traitors.’

  Bafflingly, Rab never made any comment on her own planned marriage. Until one day, when she went round to India Street with a box of eggs from Jonas. In the yard, a rickety table piled with exercise books was abandoned in the mellow sunshine. The sound of classical music being hesitantly played on a piano was drifting out of the open door. Entranced, Emmie stopped and sat down on a stool by the door to listen.

  When it was over, Rab came out, startled to find her there. Still moved by the notes, Emmie blurted out, ‘Who taught you to play like that?’

  His face was reflective. ‘A music teacher in Glasgow - she lived in the same boarding house.’

  ‘Was she the one … you know, when we talked of being in love …?’

  Rab nodded. Emmie’s insides twisted.

  ‘What happened to her?’ she asked quietly.

  He gazed at the table with the pile of books unmarked and Emmie thought he would not answer.

  ‘She had TB,’ Rab said abruptly. ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Emmie murmured. She stood up and put the eggs on the table.

  ‘Don’t go,’ Rab said suddenly. ‘I’ll fetch another stool.’

  He brought out two mugs of lime cordial and they sat in the warm yard enjoying the moment. They talked of the Settlement and his teaching; they reminisced about the past. Emmie had not had such a long conversation with Rab in months. It was relaxed and affectionate. But there was an underlying awkwardness. Perhaps it was because Emmie had conjured up his dead lover or because each knew that their relationship was about to change. In less than two weeks, Emmie would be married. As Mrs Tom Curran, she would have a new set of priorities and obligations. One of them was not likely to be sitting in the sun chatting to him about literature and politics.

  Suddenly, the light-hearted tone of the conversation died.

  ‘Why are you getting wed, Emmie?’ Rab asked abruptly, searching her face.

  Emmie’s heart jumped. ‘Cos - I want to.’

  ‘It won’t be the same. You’ll have to give up your work, be at Curran’s beck and call.’

  Emmie flushed. ‘It won’t be like that. I’ll be carrying on at the Settlement.’

  ‘Have you discussed it with Tom?’ he asked.

  ‘Not exactly. But I’ll work until - well, till we have - if we have - bairns …’

  His look made her cheeks burn.

  ‘What’s it to you, any road?’ Emmie exclaimed.

  Rab leaned close and took her hands in his. ‘Look at me, Emmie. You’re a free spirit, like me. Just when you’re growing up - beginning to see a bit of life - you turn your back on it all. For what? A bit more space to call your own and the title of missus. You’re making a big mistake. Marriage to Tom won’t suit you. It’ll tie you down, lass. You’re too young to be enslaving yourself to Curran.’

  Emmie snatched her hands away. ‘Enslaving? That’s rubbish! I’m marrying ’cos I love Tom. It’s nowt to do with two rooms in Berlin Terrace. Just ’cos you think marriage is a waste of time, doesn’t mean everyone else does. You’re still mad at me interferin’ with you and Miss Sophie. That’s it, isn’t it? Well, I’m sorry about that. But it doesn’t give you the right to tell me who I shouldn’t marry!’

  She sprang up. He stood and reached out to stop her going.

  ‘Emmie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I didn’t realise you felt that strongly for the lad.’

  ‘Well, I do,’ Emmie said, so flustered she just wanted to escape. Shaking off his hold, she rushed from the yard, leaving him staring after her.

  ***

  The next time Emmie saw Rab was at Sam’s wedding, but they hardly spoke. Rab kept in the background. Sam had asked Tom to be his best man. Emmie saw Rab slip away before the end of the tea party.

  A week later, it was her turn and any thoughts of Rab were pushed from her mind in the preparation and excitement of the day. Jonas hired a charabanc to take the wedding party down to Gateshead. Emmie was touched to see how Flora and Mrs Mousy had decorated the chapel and hall with ribbon and greenery and small sprays of flowers.

  The afternoon passed in a blur of images: Charles Oliphant leading them through their vows, Tom’s beaming face, serious words of congratulation from Barnabas Curran and jokes from Jonas. She remembered the fiddlers striking up a dance tune and Tom taking her in his arms and pulling her around the floor in a polka, more enthusiastic than nimble. Then her next memory was of a sea of faces, friends waving them away as a hired trap took the married couple back up the hill to Crawdene. When she thought about it later, she could not remember seeing Rab among the waving well-wishers.

  She sat in her new kitchen while Tom coaxed the reluctant stove into life. It belched smoke at them.

  ‘Let’s just gan to bed,’ Emmie yawned. But Tom was determined to get it going.

  Emmie made ready for bed in the adjoining room. As she sat on the edge of their bed in her nightgown, wondering how long lighting a fire could take, she guessed that Tom was feeling as nervous as she was.

  Finally, she heard him clearing up the hearth and going to wash in the scullery. When he joined her in the bedroom, he undressed with his back to her, pulling on a nightshirt that had been neatly starched and pressed by his mother. They climbed between the chilly sheets and shyly rubbed each other to warm up.

  ‘Right then, lass,’ Tom whispered, ‘let’s gan to it.’

  He kissed her warmly on the mouth, stroking her dark hair away from her face. His hands fumbled with her clothing and Emmie tensed for what would come next. Helen had told her to think of something pleasurable, like a trip to the seaside or a concert, to help her relax.

  ‘It’ll make it gan over quicker,’ Helen had said with a laugh.

  Unbidden, the memory of sitting in a sheltered yard, listening to classical music, came to Emmie. She forced the image away. She thought of sitting by the fireside in China Street while Jonas read out the newspaper, of racing Sam and Rab up to Lonely Stones above Blackton Heights, of snowballing with the MacRae boys, of Helen singing her to sleep as a child . . .

  Tom moved over her, kissing and squeezing, exploring her with nervous fingers. She must concentrate on pleasant thoughts of her new husband; Tom grinning at her from the audience in a choir concert, waiting for her at the street comer, slipping her kisses in the shadows. She was lucky to have him; he was one of the best-looking lads in the village, with a steady job and prospects at the pit. As Tom’s wife she would have security and standing in the community. Today, she had shed her old identity as the Kelso lass from the slums taken in by the radical MacRaes. More than that, she was distancing herself from their colourful notoriety - the family who eschewed chapel for the socialist Sunday school, who hung out a red flag on Empire Day, whose mother was too busy going to meetings to keep her doorstep whitened or windows cleaned, whose eldest was nicknamed Radical Rab and peddled anarchy and social revolution in his news-sheets.

  As Tom made love to her for the first time, Emmie realised how strong her desire had been to escape their shadow and forge a life of her own. She clung to Tom, the man who was offering her this new life. Although she would always be grateful to the kind family for taking her in and treating her like one of their own, it was exciting and frightening to have cut herself loose from the apron strings of the MacRaes.

  Afterwards, she lay in Tom’s hold, relieved it was over without too much pain and exultant that she was properly Mrs Curran. A fierce thought seized her:

  she would make a success of her marriage. She and Tom would make each other happy. She would prove
Rab wrong.

  Chapter 11

  By the end of October, Emmie had given up work at the Settlement and singing for the choir. It was not that Tom had forbidden her to go, just that it did not fit in with his shifts. She cut down to half-days, then twice a week, then nothing. Tom needed a good hot meal in the late morning, before going on the back shift, and his bait made ready. Emmie did the shopping while he slept and left the noisy jobs of sweeping, banging mats, possing the washing and wielding the iron to the afternoon.

  Tom slept lightly and complained if he did not get enough sleep. In the evening, when he returned from the hard labours of loading tubs of coal below ground, he expected a hot bath in front of the fire and a nourishing meal.

  One evening, she came back from the weekly meeting at the Co-operative Guild to find him sitting at the table in his filthy clothes, bad-tempered and unfed.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ he demanded.

  ‘The Guild,’ Emmie said in surprise, pulling off her jacket and hat. ‘You haven’t even washed—’

  ‘There’s nee hot water,’ he grumbled.

  ‘It’s in the pot - what’s that smell?’ Emmie rushed to the stove to find the source of the burning. What remained of the broth was stuck to the bottom of a blackened pan. ‘Why did you let this burn?’

  ‘I didn’t burn it, you did,’ Tom accused.

  ‘You could’ve taken it off the stove,’ she said in exasperation, ‘or helped yourself.’

  ‘And you could’ve been here to serve it out. I slog me guts out all day long, don’t I deserve a little attention at the end of the day?’

  Emmie bit back a retort; he looked exhausted. There was no point in falling out over a pan of soup. She set to, filling the tin bath with hot water and putting together a hasty meal of egg and fried potatoes.

  ‘Scrub me back, Emmie lass,’ Tom smiled in forgiveness. He whistled as she did so, splashing her with water.

  ‘Give over, Tom!’ She tried to duck out of the way, but he grabbed her and gave her a wet hug and kiss.

  ‘I just want to have you here with me,’ Tom told her. ‘It’s what keeps me ganin’ all the day - thinking of you back here waiting for me. I’m the luckiest lad in Crawdene.’

  Emmie felt a flood of affection for him. She should be more content staying at home - a home that she had helped furnish and decorate. It still thrilled her to think it was hers and Tom’s alone. Few lasses her age in the village had so much.

  The following week, Emmie did not go to the Guild. Helen came round the next day to see if she was sick. Her calling out at the back door woke Tom. He stalked around the kitchen, scowling at the women, and Helen soon took the hint.

  ‘Call in on your way back from the shops,’ she told Emmie. ‘I’ve a turnip and leeks from the garden.’

  ‘Best not to come round on a morning,’ Emmie whispered at the back door, as Helen left.

  Tom grew to resent the occasions when Emmie rushed round to China Street for a recipe or advice on housekeeping.

  ‘Why did you bother gettin’ wed when you spend all your time round at their house?’

  ‘I don’t,’ Emmie protested. ‘I just gan when Uncle Jonas has some’at from the allotment for us - or for one of Auntie Helen’s recipes.’

  ‘Well, these leeks have got nee flavour. Any road, me mam makes a better leek puddin’,’ he declared. ‘You should ask her.’

  As Emmie’s visits to the MacRaes dwindled, the number of times her mother-in-law visited increased. Mrs Curran would call in with a cake or steak and kidney pie, an invitation to Sunday dinner or a piece of advice.

  ‘I don’t wish to interfere,’ she would always begin, ‘but this is the way Tom likes his…’ and she would launch into instructions on how best to bake pastry, or darn socks, or fold an ironed shirt.

  Emmie tried to concentrate and remember these household tips, feeling like the worst of apprentices. She realised how much Helen had done for her and how little she had enquired into domestic details. Or perhaps the Currans were just more fastidious than most about cleanliness and order.

  To forestall these lectures and to get out of the house, Emmie took to visiting the Currans instead. She looked forward to an hour of chatter and companionship with Louise, when they would sit and sew or work on a hooky mat together.

  ‘You’re lucky having your own place,’ Louise told Emmie. ‘It’ll be grand when me and Sam can do the same. Sam’s not as good at saving as our Tom.’

  Yet when Emmie and Tom went round for Saturday tea or Sunday dinner, Emmie could see how happy Louise and Sam were, even though living under the strictures of Barnabas Curran’s rule. Sam laughed off any carping by his father-in-law and flattered his mother-in-law over her cooking. He ignored the snide remarks about Helen’s lack of domestic skills. He even agreed to go to chapel.

  ‘You shouldn’t let them talk like that about your mam,’ Emmie reproved, when they were walking back from chapel one wintry Sunday.

  ‘I don’t see you rushing to defend her either,’ Sam pointed out.

  ‘Aye, but she’s your mam,’ Emmie hissed, glancing round to make sure no one overheard, ‘and it’s not right.’

  ‘Mam wouldn’t give two hoots for what the Currans say about her,’ Sam said in amusement, ‘so neither will I.’

  Emmie let it go, not wanting to argue. She enjoyed Sam’s company, all the more because she was seeing less and less of the other MacRaes. Once a week, Peter would deliver groceries to the Reverend Mr Attwater’s manse at the end of Berlin Terrace. Emmie would listen out for the horse-drawn van, and waylay Peter on his return.

  ‘I’ve made a custard tart for you,’ she would call, beckoning him in. He would sit on the same chair, methodically cutting up the tart into quarters and eating them in a clockwise direction, while Emmie plied him with questions.

  ‘How’s Mam? Shall I get your da some baccy for Christmas? Are they workin’ you hard? Is Rab still at the knife-grinding?’

  Sometimes Peter would reply and sometimes not. His mam was knitting socks for orphans in Manchuria, or was it Manchester? Mr Attwater had ordered a goose for Christmas. Rab was doing a job in Gateshead, but Peter didn’t think it had anything to do with knives. Emmie always sent him away with a sugar lump for the horse and a kiss on the cheek. He always thanked her for the sugar and wiped off the kiss.

  Just before Christmas, Emmie had a tearful argument with Tom.

  ‘But I hardly ever see them. Why can’t we gan round to China Street on Christmas Day? Auntie Helen asked us before your mam.’

  ‘They don’t even believe in Christmas,’ Tom scoffed. ‘No, we’ll gan to chapel, then dinner at Mam’s. They’re expectin’ us.’

  ‘Then can we gan to China Street for our tea?’ Emmie pressed him.

  ‘You can if you want,’ Tom said grudgingly.

  Emmie thought of the humiliation of turning up at the MacRaes’ without her husband on her first Christmas as a married woman. She burst into tears. Tom hurried to console her.

  ‘What you cryin’ for?’ He hugged her to him. ‘We’ll have a grand first Christmas. Think of it - waking up in our own home, just the two of us. Then the best dinner you’re ever likely to eat and maybe a bit singsong with Sam and our Louise.’ He kissed her. ‘And if it means that much to you, we can call in on the MacRaes on our way home, eh?’

  Emmie hugged him in gratitude.

  ‘Aye, that’d be canny,’ she sniffed and smiled.

  ***

  By Christmas Day, Emmie was feeling unusually tired and unwell. She could not face half the food on her plate at dinner and Tom’s mother insisted she lie down for the afternoon. It was dark and icy underfoot by the time they walked home.

  ‘Better give the MacRaes a miss, eh?’ Tom suggested.

  ‘But I’ve got their presents,’ Emmie said. ‘We’ll just stay a few minutes.’

  ‘I can take them round the morra—’

  ‘No, Tom, please,’ Emmie insisted, though she wanted nothing more than to l
ie down and stop feeling sick.

  They found the family in the middle of a raucous card game. Jonas and Rab were slamming down cards, Helen sweeping them off the table with shrieks of excitement while Peter held up the game with questions.

  ‘Put out your seven of spades!’ Jonas bellowed, as Emmie and Tom walked in.

  Helen sprang up and rushed to embrace her.

  ‘I knew you’d come! Didn’t I tell you, Rab, she’d come?’

  The game was abandoned as they made room for the visitors by the fire. Emmie rejected tea or anything to eat.

  ‘Just a cup of water would be grand,’ she smiled.

  ‘She’s not well,’ Tom said stiffly, ‘we won’t be stoppin’ long.’

  ‘By, you look pale as milk,’ Helen fretted, putting a hand to Emmie’s forehead.

  ‘That’s what comes of being locked away by young Tom,’ Rab teased. ‘Pair of love birds.’

  ‘Currans not feeding you well?’ Jonas joined in. ‘You should have more meals round here, Emmie.’

  ‘It’s nowt to do with me mam’s food,’ Tom said hotly. ‘And I don’t keep her locked up.’

  Helen glared at the MacRae men. ‘Don’t listen to them, Tom, they’re only teasing.’

  ‘Tom, give out the presents,’ Emmie said swiftly. There was soap for Helen, tobacco for Jonas, a tin of humbugs for Peter and a handkerchief for Rab, embroidered with his initials.

  ‘It’s not much but…’ Emmie almost let slip that Tom had given her no money for presents. She had saved on the housekeeping to buy them gifts.

  ‘They’re grand, pet,’ Helen assured.

  ‘I’ll think of you every time I blow me nose,’ Rab grinned. ‘I’ve something for you, Emmie.’

  He rose and went to his canvas bag, pulling out a parcel wrapped in newspaper.

  ‘That looks classy,’ Tom sneered.

  Rab laughed good-naturedly and handed it to Emmie. She unwrapped it to find a slim book of poems; a well-thumbed collection of nineteenth-century Romantics. Rab scratched his close-shaven beard while watching her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, with a quick glance at Tom, ‘I’ll look at it later.’