by Millie Gray
Once Kate had quietened their mother down and got her safely tucked back up in bed again she took the opportunity to say to Johnny, ‘Look, brother, we have had one of the best mothers in the world, never ever did she let us down. Always there to bolster us up and give us the courage to go on when we just wanted to lie down and lick our wounds, so now, I’m sorry, son, but it’s payback time.’
Johnny had nodded his agreement. He then thought back to how his mum had supported Kitty and taken on some of the burden when Sandra had died. How she had thought that he and Sandra had been too young to marry but had made life as easy as she possibly could for them. And when she was vacating the room and kitchen in Ferrier Street she had spoken to the landlord to let him and Sandra take over the tenancy. She had even left the fire still burning in the grate. It had been important to her that they and her grandchildren moved into a warm and welcoming house.
His face was now awash with silent tears but he managed a smile when he recalled that when his mother had cradled hours old motherless Rosebud in her arms his father had said, ‘You know son, if your mother could, she would, breastfeed the wee lassie for you.’ He was still mulling over his mother’s condition when he felt a gentle tug on his sleeve. Looking up, he became aware of Connie speaking to him, but her words and the manner in which she said them made him feel even worse. Oh yes, as he expected now, there stood faithful Connie . . . a stalwart of a woman whom he had grown to love. A woman he was so indebted to for taking on the job of mothering his children and running his household. But . . .’
Guilt now swamped him because he knew he should be begging her forgiveness. Forgiveness was necessary because he had deceived Connie by leading her to believe that she had filled the all-consuming, dark, pitiless void that Sandra’s premature death had left him with. But in all honesty he now knew that no one could ever mean to him what Sandra had. He did love Connie as much as he could now love anyone but – she was not Sandra. ‘Dear God please forgive me,’ he begged silently, ‘but I just can’t love and adore anyone like I worshipped my beautiful Sandra.’
Still keeping his secret to himself he lifted his hand up and placed it over Connie’s, which was now resting on his shoulder. ‘Sorry, love, you were saying?’
‘Just wondering, what’s amiss with you? And when you left to visit your mum you said we would have to talk when you got back so why not clear the air between us and let us just . . . be honest with each other?’
‘Connie, up until tonight I did not think there was anything that could ever happen to my mother. I thought she was indestructible. And now . . .’
‘And now? Look, Johnny, pull yourself together. Your mum is just getting old. After all, she is sixty-five.’
‘I know that. That, “Miss Know-all” of a sister of mine told me that half an hour ago and she also had the blasted cheek to say that as life expectancy in Leith right now is fifty-nine we are lucky to have had her for so long.’
Connie started to cackle. ‘For heaven’s sake . . . get a grip, Johnny. Your mum is failing but she’s hardly on her way over to Alec Stoddard’s to get boxed.’
‘I’m not an idiot, Connie. I ken that,’ Johnny spat as he roughly brushed Connie’s hand from his shoulder. ‘But she’s my mum and I just dinnae want to see her die slowly day by day. Change from the woman I knew. Don’t you realise Connie, she was the woman who could sort out any of my problems and do it without expecting a word of thanks . . . my mammy . . . my darling Mammy that I could always turn to.’ Sobs choking him he then spluttered, ‘Can’t you see that watching her turn into a dribbling confused stranger, who in the end will not know who I am, will be more than I can bear?’
Connie was now standing behind Johnny and she lifted her hands and began to massage his wracking shoulders. ‘There, there, son. I don’t want to see it either. But right now she is managing. What she requires is a wee bit of support. And she’ll get that because, Johnny, it’s payback time for all of us. And if we all work together she can still have a good life and know that we all love her.’
Johnny took out a handkerchief and began to noisily blow his nose. Sniffing he said, ‘Of course you and Kate are right. Aye, she said too that we have to look after her. So that means . . . Connie, remember I said we had things to discuss, well . . .’
‘Well what?’
‘Connie, I’ve been selected to stand for the Wider Granton seat for Labour. They are sure I would get it, but now . . .’
Connie was now in front of Johnny and she took his face in her hands and as she rubbed his cheeks she said, ‘Darling, that’s just so wonderful. And just think how proud all the family will be.’ She stopped to chuckle before adding, ‘Know what, I can just hear your mother standing in the Store butcher’s queue saying, “my son’s a right honourable now.”’
Pressing his hands over Connie’s, Johnny sighed before saying, ‘That is just it, with Mum the way she is, I can’t go.’
‘And do you think that Kitty, Kate or I would allow you to give up your dream? See you robbed of what you have worked for . . . denied the opportunity to be somebody?’
‘It’s not only Mum I have to stay for . . .’
‘No?’
He hesitated, and as he took hold of her right hand he muttered, ‘There is also you and the fact that I have put you in the family way again.’
‘So? Am I some sort of useless, delicate china doll? Don’t be daft. Just think of the lassie next door to us now. Same age as me she is and she has had to face her man no coming back from the bloody war and now she’s left with seven bairns, and those youngest two laddies of hers . . . well they’ll certainly no be going to Eton unless they own up to the fact it is just an approved school for posh delinquents!’
Half an hour after Johnny had left, Kate and Hans agreed that as his shop was doing so well, they could afford for Kate to give up full-time work in the Leith Provident store and work as a part-time assistant in Hans’ business. This arrangement would allow Kate to be at home with her mother, especially in the mornings when her mother most needed help and guidance.
They were now at the stage of relaxing with a cup of tea when Kate said, ‘Thank you, Hans, for making things easy for my mum. Now, before Johnny came in we were talking about what is bothering you. I now know about your family but what we didn’t discuss was why you didn’t tell me about how you felt about the concentration camps. Did you somehow think I wouldn’t understand? Not be as disgusted and moved to pity the way that you are?’ Hans could only look down at his feet and continually rub his hands together but reply he did not. ‘I am very well aware that awful memories are disturbing you. We both have to accept that they should have been left undisturbed in your subconscious but the newsreels have awakened them. Hans, my dear, they will not go back to sleep again so what I wish you to know is that I am here to help you to cope. Can’t you see that if I know what is troubling you I will understand your dilemmas and therefore I will be able to help you to come to terms with it all?’
Hans remained silent but his eyes were brimming with silent tears. Kate went over and knelt in front of him. She then placed her hands on his knees. ‘Darling,’ she whispered, ‘can’t you see that if we are to have any sort of future together you have to, and I mean right now, start to think about what you have to do to know peace again?’
Taking her hands into his and looking directly into her eyes he stammered, ‘Firstly, now you know how much I loved my wife and children, please tell me that you don’t feel threatened?’
Slowly shaking her head Kate lifted her hand to stroke his face. ‘No. No, my love. I love you because you are the most loving of human beings that I have ever met. If you had not loved your family, missed them, or deeply regretted what had happened to them how could you be the man that I love? The man I was so glad to marry.’ He didn’t respond so she tentatively asked, ‘You do love me don’t you?’
Encircling her tightly in his arms he rocked her backwards and forwards. Hoarsely he whispered, ‘Love you?
Oh, if it was not for you I wouldn’t care whether I live or die. Before I met you I just longed for death to end my suffering. Until you came into my life nothing made my grief bearable.’
She nodded. ‘So now what happened today to bring out this desire to tell me what you should have told me years ago?’
‘In the newsreel, I am sure it was my cousin Josef that I saw. He seems to be working with the Red Cross in a big house somewhere down in the South of England. Very good people they appear to be, and they are trying to reconnect some of the children who have survived the Holocaust with their relatives.’ He paused. ‘But for some there will be no one to unite them with . . . no one to care for them . . . no one to give them a home, love and hope.’
‘Are you saying you wish to visit where Josef is and perhaps . . .?’
‘If I could, I would wish to adopt them all but I know that if I managed to help one or two of these poor children then I will have done something.’ He looked Kate straight in the eye before adding, ‘But I . . .’ He halted and as emotion engulfed him his head shook from side to side.
Kate’s response was to get up off her knees and place herself on his lap. She then cradled his head in her hands. ‘But you are afraid of what I will think . . . or wish to do?’
‘Yes, you see, it has always been just you and me and we have not had to share our love, or life, or even consider anyone else.’ She nodded because she agreed that they had been selfish and had deliberately not allowed anyone into their world – their fairy-tale world – a world that they wished to exclude any contention from.
Hans waited but before Kate had time to reply he said, ‘You are over forty. You have never been a mother. Never sat up all night nursing a sick child and I would be asking you to take on a child or children who have been traumatised, so badly damaged by horrors that no human being should endure or witness. Kate, settling those little survivors will be so very difficult.’
Rising she sat herself down in the chair opposite him. Very quietly she said, ‘Hans, today is the day for confessions. You say, my dear, that I have never been a mother, never cried for the loss of a child. Oh, if only that was true. Still keeping her distance from him she poured out the story of the love she had had for Hugh. In graphic detail she described Hugh as he was to her then and still was to her today. With pride she told of how he was a tall, dashing, handsome lad whom she had loved so very much and still did – that was why she understood that Hans still loved his first wife and yet could also intensely love her too.
It was very difficult for Kate to go on and say that she had allowed Hugh to make wonderful physical love to her all night long. This act in 1915 was judged to be a disgraceful, lustful sin, and if it was, she was glad to have been a transgressor. She then went on to confess to Hans that never once in her whole life had she regretted that wonderful night – not even now. All that was left to tell Hans was that the reckless night of passion had resulted in Hugh accidentally leaving her, a vulnerable naive fifteen-year-old, pregnant. Unaware of her situation he had then gone off to fight and die in the First World War. Kate was now softly crying as she haltingly told Hans through wracking whimpers how she had fallen down some stairs and miscarried her baby.
The natural question for Hans to ask was if she had had any other lovers since Hugh, but he knew without being stupid enough to put such a crass question what the answer was.
Kate looked over to him and she was moved by the compassion she saw his eyes. ‘So, my darling,’ she murmured, ‘if you are saying that you wish to go and seek out Josef so you can adopt a child then I am more than willing to become someone’s mother.’
‘But how could we? There is the shop and now there is also . . . your mother.’
‘Well it is now May so it will soon be the first week in July and that is the week we have the Edinburgh trades holiday week. That means we can shut up the shop for at least seven days. And don’t worry about my mum. Connie will look after her whilst we are away. Taking on my share of the caring as well as her own will be no problem to Connie.’
Hans was now standing and he pulled Kate up on to her feet but then a frown passed over his face. ‘That all sounds very well but have you forgotten that your brother may be fighting an election in July?’
Kate gasped. ‘Oh, Hans, I was so taken up with you and my mum that I forgot to ask Johnny how the selection meeting went. Blast!’
The Taylor Gardens street party for the end of the war was still in full swing when Laura, accompanied by the new love of her life, Mike Bailey, bumped into Kitty, Dotty and the staff from Leith Hospital, who were enjoying the revelry.
When Kitty espied Laura she waved her arms wildly in the air and hollered, ‘Laura, Laura, it’s just great to see you.’
The two young women embraced before they began to dance around the street. ‘Oh, Kitty, isn’t it just wonderful that it’s all over. My mum who, as you know, never shows any emotion, just burst into tears and wiped them away on the bottom of her apron.’
‘No wonder, Laura. She will be so relieved that at last Eric, her quiet, docile laddie, who wouldn’t say boo to a mouse, will soon be on his way home from that hellish prisoner-of-war camp.’
‘I know that. And I do truly believe what my Granny says, and that is that our Eric is, “one of nature’s gentlemen” so the imprisonment won’t have changed him . . . but Kitty, I can’t but worry that being a prisoner of war may have changed him.’
‘We’ve all changed in five years, Laura. That’s how life is.’
‘But Kitty, what if my soft big brother is very different from what he was? What then?’
‘Och, Laura, as I’ve already said, since the blooming war started we’ve all had to grow up, mature, accept the blows.’ The hardest blow for Kitty in the war had been the loss of her brother, Jack. Losing him had been so hard to bear – even tonight she felt the need to cry for him – mourn for him. But pulling herself together she thought, no, tonight is a night for celebrating, so she grabbed Laura again and whispered, ‘But no matter what, Laura, underneath there are still parts of the old “us” there.’ Stroking Laura’s back she added, ‘Believe me, parts of us can never be changed. Our childhood made us the adults we are. And, I just know the bairns we were when we ran about the streets playing, and the values we were taught then, still live within us. Look . . .’ Both girls’ eyes were now drawn to the crowds who seemed to have lost all their inhibitions. Mature women who always made sure that their skirts were so long that their knees hadn’t been seen for years were now kicking their height in gay abandon and it appeared that it didn’t matter who saw the tops of their stockings.
Kitty and Laura then convulsed with laughter when old, drunken Sam insisted that Jean Irvine, the old maid schoolteacher, should take a swig from his screw-top beer bottle. Laura then managed to mumble through her giggles, ‘Aye, maybe you’re right and when my brother gets back he will still be his same old “roll with the punches”, just like Jean Irvine is doing now.’
Looking at Laura again Kitty thought that she wasn’t really enjoying the celebrations. ‘Look Laura, if your long face is because you are worrying about what your Eric will make of Edna’s shenanigans, just forget it. He’s besotted with Edna. Honestly, if she asked him to lie down so she could walk on top of him he would. And as to the bairn . . . I’m sure he will soon be daft about her too.’
A voice saying, ‘Here, Laura, have you forgotten that you came to this party with me?’ put an end to the girls’ chat.
‘No. No,’ Laura replied. ‘Kitty, meet Michael or, as I call him, Tricky Mike.’ Kitty nodded and smiled at Mike. She couldn’t help but notice that there was something so engaging about him. He was only about five feet ten in height but as he walked with such a nonchalant, aristocratic way he seemed much taller. However, it was not his height that was his main attraction, it was his engaging smile and as he looked at Laura, somehow Kitty knew that he would be the love of Laura’s life. She was just so thrilled for them both that she linked arm
s with them and without a word passing between them they proceeded to do a palais glide along the road. The scene was so happy and magical that looking at those young people you could see, with the evil of war laid to rest, that the future should be so much easier for them. By the very way they were cavorting around Taylor Gardens, you could see they were the future of the country and they would make a good stab at making it a better place for their future children.
It was well past midnight when Kitty and Dotty arrived at the door to Leith Hospital nurses’ home and they were surprised that the door was opened for them by the night sister who gleefully asked, ‘I do so hope you have had a good time tonight.’ She looked beyond them towards Doctor Dougal McNeill, and her voice chilled when she said, ‘Doctor you look to me to be well under the influence of Al.Co.Hol and I would therefore suggest you get yourself to wherever your bed is, and it is certainly not in this block!’ She then turned her attention to Kitty and Dotty again. ‘Ladies,’ she began her tone now professional, ‘that young man is trouble. Take my advice and steer clear of him.’
Dotty looked at Kitty and she was about to say that she agreed with the night sister but there was something about the way Kitty was looking at Dougal that had her think that far from shunning Dougal, Kitty might gladly submit to his charms.
PART TWO
EARLY JUNE 1945
Hans had just finished turning the keys in the double locks of his shop door when Maryann called out to him, ‘Aye, that’s lucky you finishing up for the day and poor wee me just starting.’
