A Pinch of Salt

by Eileen Ramsay

  Kate laughed in delight.

  ‘You think I’m joking, Mrs Inglis, well I’m not. And you, Inglis, how would you like to see a huge picture of your wife staring down at you from a billboard?’

  ‘I would not, sir. Kate’s not that sort of woman.’

  ‘More tea, gentlemen,’ said Kate ironing over the difficult moment as women had done for centuries. ‘Can you stay to see the architect, Mr McDonald?’

  Kate sighed with relief when he agreed but added that he was dining with Doctor Hyslop and so could only spare a few hours.

  Late that night, as Kate lay unresponsive under her husband’s bucking, sweating body, she went over and over the plans drawn up by the architect. The bathroom was going in at the same time as the kitchen, much against Charlie’s will, which, no doubt was why he was exercising it at the moment. ‘Makes more sense,’ had said McDonald, ‘too much upheaval, one improvement after the other and really, Inglis, in this day and age, a bathroom is basic, wouldn’t you agree?’ And Charlie had agreed. Now, at last, he lay still across Kate and then rolled off. She did not move. Sometimes when the business was going particularly well or, like today, there was some interaction with a man like Mr McDonald, Charlie would try to do ‘it’ twice. She never used the euphemism ‘making love’, there was nothing, she felt, about love in this almost violent use of her body. Thanks be to God, he had stopped the passionate kissing which she sometimes thought she hated more than the intercourse. At least down there she wouldn’t choke. Poor Charlie. The words came into her head often at times like this though why she should be sorry for him she did not know. He was getting what he wanted, wasn’t he? No, he wants more, and so do I, but how. Stop thinking and pay attention to him . . . it was too late.

  He was asleep. She slipped out of bed and past her sleeping children. Soon they would have their own wee rooms. They were sound, wee lambies; nothing had disturbed their rest. The kettle was gently steaming on the stove; she had known hot water would be needed. She filled the basin, pulled off her nightgown and began to scrub herself clean. There was a poet died in the war who’d talked about the benison of hot water. When there was money to spare for such nonsense, she would buy his book. Brooke, that was it, Rupert Brooke.

  You knew what you were talking about, Mr Brooke.

  11

  HOW QUICKLY THE world moved in the days when her children were growing up. It seemed to Kate that every tooth, every new word, every inch of growth was marked by some equally momentous – but perhaps retrograde – step in the world. Outside the Toll House life was becoming noisy, dirty and very, very fast. Kate tried hard to tolerate developments that made her life easier. She applied for an automatic telephone in November 1927 when she heard that just such an exchange had been established in Holborn. How much more convenient and private than waiting for connections to be made. Besides, she was quite sure that Masie Ward at the Post Office listened in to every conversation, and surely she couldn’t if the line was automatic. Kate had great faith in science. Sometimes Maisie mentioned village matters in the bakery that she could only have heard by eavesdropping. Not that Kate’s telephone conversations were exciting or scandalous. She ordered flour or butter or assured the waiting grocers that Inglis Pies would certainly be delivered. Had she ever let them down?

  They had moved into the Toll House six months after having signed the contracts, six months that Kate felt went so slowly as to make her almost scream with vexation. What took workmen so long? She wanted to visit them every day but restrained herself urging Charlie instead, or Liam, who would have made a much better employer, to check as they were passing, that everything was being done as the architect had planned. She did supervise the connecting of the ovens and the installation of her bathroom. It seemed to her that every child, every man who was out of work, and every woman in the village (all of whom should have been at home looking after their families) also supervised the unloading of the bath.

  ‘Have you nothing better to do with your time?’ she asked a group of women tartly as she tried to manoeuvre past them to see that the delivery was in pristine condition. She was nervous and embarrassed and a little guilty that she could afford such luxuries and so spoke more sharply than she had intended.

  ‘Stuck-up Mick,’ said one of the women, ‘I mind when she was at the school and no a pair o’ shoes to her name and look at her so la-di-da now.’

  Kate heard and lifted her head proudly. She was now stuck-up and she had earned that bath by the sweat of her brow, and if these workmen would do their jobs quickly she could enjoy bathing her children in it.

  What is there in the human condition that made some of the villagers resent her and her family once they had moved into the Toll House? To almost everyone, even people she had known all her life she became Mrs Inglis while Charlie remained Charlie. Kate was so busy that it was actually several years before she even noticed that hardly anyone addressed her as Kate and by then she was too busy with her growing children and her business to admit that she cared.

  Patrick and Margaret were at the village school and every July Kate took an afternoon off to watch them climb up onto the platform of the Kirk Hall to collect their prizes. She and Charlie, together with Liam and Mollie, sat in their best clothes and tried not to let their pleasure and pride show. That could come later, when they were safely inside the gates of the Toll House.

  Kate shook hands with the headmaster, an old man now, nearing retirement. He had been headmaster when she had attended; she, with every other child in the school, had been terrified of him and the tawse he carried everywhere, and here he was shaking her hand.

  ‘Well, Margaret is certainly your daughter, Mrs Inglis. Everything comes so easily to her. If she is a worker like her brother as well, she will go far.’

  Kate heard only that Patrick was a worker. ‘Oh, he does work hard, doesn’t he? I sit with him every night after school while he reads his book and learns his lessons. He likes to get everything off by heart.’

  ‘Children like Margaret have to, Mrs Inglis. Margaret now. I’m quite sure you don’t have to go over everything with her a dozen times.’

  Kate laughed, the pride in her children’s prizes still bubbling inside her. ‘Margaret’s daddy does her work with her. I can hardly get the pair of them to sit down for fifteen minutes to be quiet for Patrick, before they’re away playing somewhere.’

  ‘I should have thought five minutes would be enough for Margaret,’ said Mr Cairns drily, and so bound up was Kate in her plans for her son that she did not understand and promised to make Margaret work harder.

  At the Toll House the family gathered for tea to celebrate the prizes. Charlie had wanted to buy the children presents but Kate had over-ruled him.

  ‘You would spoil the bairns, given half a chance, Charlie Inglis. Presents are for birthday and Christmas, not for doing their lessons well,’ but Charlie had slipped them each a half crown and felt better for it for he had a feeling that their grandfather had been handing out sixpences.

  ‘Was there ever a family more blessed?’ said Kate later. The meal had been cleared away. Patrick was sitting in the window seat reading his new book and Kate could hear Margaret screaming with pleasure as Charlie and Liam pushed her higher and higher in the garden swing.

  ‘That one should hae been the laddie,’ said Mollie as she poured herself one last cup of tea. ‘She won’t read her new book till she’s made to.’

  Kate sprang to her daughter’s defence. ‘She’ll read it in her bed, the wee besom. She knows fine I think books are unhealthy in the bedroom but I’m always finding them under her pillow.’ She looked again at the early evening sun distorting itself as it pushed past the bubbles in the windows. It lay across Patrick as he sat engrossed in his book and moved on to her comfortable upholstered furniture and gleaming fireplace. On a small table there was a blue Wedgwood bowl full of roses whose scent filled the room. How different it was from the room in which she had grown up. And down the hall there was a b
athroom with a bath, a handbasin and a lavatory, and everything with running water. Bridie and Colm came for their Saturday baths but not Liam or Molly.

  ‘Liam’s frightened he’ll drown in all that water, and it hot into the bargain,’ laughed Charlie.

  ‘The Council will need to put indoor plumbing in the village. In a year or two everybody will have a hot bath on a Saturday night just by turning on a spicket.’

  ‘Aye and we’ll all have these cursed telephones and motor cars and fly away to the sunshine for our holidays.’

  Kate was not ready to agree with Charlie’s ridiculous ideas. He was only joking anyway, wasn’t he? But Charlie refused to be drawn.

  It was time for Liam and Molly to go home. They had promised to watch Bridie and Colm play tennis at the local court. Kate wasn’t so sure that mad dashing around on a tennis court was a suitable sport for a young girl but there was one redeeming factor. Knees had become the most prominent feature of all young women of the late 1920s but at least the tennis skirts of Auchenbeath had not yet caught up with prevailing fashion and for a few hours every evening the knees of the athletic girls, and especially of young Bridie Kennedy, were decently covered.

  Margaret, as usual, caused the delay by demanding to go with her grandparents.

  ‘It’s already past your bedtime, Margaret,’ scolded Kate. ‘You can watch Auntie Bridie at the weekend.’

  Margaret was well aware that she would never change her mother’s mind once it was made up. She could not, however, acquiesce quietly in any decision that concerned herself and usually argued till her overburdened mother slapped her. Kate hated slapping the child, a fact of which Margaret was also well aware but she still felt compelled to put up a fight.

  Margaret argued and Kate threatened all the way to the front door while Liam muttered ‘maybe just this once’ under his breath.

  It happened so quickly. Kate opened the door on to the main road for her father and then turned to Margaret who was still muttering under her breath.

  She said ‘Enough, lassie,’ and slapped Margaret hard. Liam, already on the road, turned as if to protest. Neither he nor the driver of the lorry that had just hurtled round the corner even saw one another. There was a thump, a horrible noise of metal on bone, and then an appalling screech of brakes and of people screaming.

  Kate could remember very little of the hours that followed. Everyone was screaming except herself and Liam, who lay on the road in his best suit like a tailor’s dummy that had been tossed aside because it is out of fashion. She thought she slapped Margaret again, on the face this time, to stop the hysteria. Always she could see the imprint of her hand on the child’s cheek. The lorry driver vomited on to the road, or was that Charlie?, and it had to be the driver who kept sobbing, ‘I didn’t see him, I couldn’t see him.’ Molly said nothing, not for months.

  ‘He died instantly, Kate,’ said Dr Hyslop as he once more bound up the wounds of the Kennedy and Inglis families.

  ‘There was no time . . . I always hoped he would see a priest,’ Kate whispered.

  ‘I said “Into thy hands, oh Lord,” ’ said Patrick. ‘I don’t know why, Mammy, but Grampa went flying and I said it. It didnae hurt him, did it, Doctor Hyslop? It was a horrible noise,’ and then he began to cry.

  ‘Shock,’ said the doctor, ‘just like his sister and his granny.’

  ‘She’s not his granny,’ snapped Kate and instantly hated herself for saying it.

  ‘Oh yes she is, Kate,’ said the doctor mildly, ‘and she’ll need them even more now.’

  That was when Kate realized how much she had always needed her father. For a few months after Mary Kate’s death, Kate had been more mother than daughter to Liam but as he had learned to cope with his grief, his steady, quiet love had surrounded her. She remembered his smile as he had taken his piece tin from her, ‘Thank you, Allanah.’ He called no one else that, not even Margaret whom he almost worshipped. She remembered the early days of the bakery when he had tramped the village proudly pushing a pram full of pies and even a baby as well. It was shame that had made Charlie follow his father-in-law. If the job didn’t demean Liam Kennedy, it certainly couldn’t demean Charlie Inglis. One or two had laughed at Charlie; no one had ever laughed at Liam.

  She did not ask Father O’Malley to bury her father but she did ask him to pray. The wee kirk was full of mourners; miners Liam had worked with over the years, boys now men, who had survived the war and been friends of his sons; women to whom he had delivered pies, and to Kate’s joy, Dr Hyslop.

  ‘Wouldn’t he have prayed for me, Kate?’ said the doctor when she thanked him for coming. ‘I won’t come back for the wake, I’ll look in on Mrs. Kennedy.’

  Molly was unable to attend her husband’s funeral. She lay in bed and silent tears coursed down her cheeks. If Bridie lifted a cup of tea to her lips she drank it but otherwise made no move.

  ‘I’ll need to stay with her, Kate,’ Bridie had explained. ‘Doctor Hyslop says it’ll take time. I can bake from the house if you want me to, but I can’t leave her.’

  ‘I interviewed two lassies this morning, Bridie. I’ll take them both on. They can at least learn how to keep the place clean if they cannae bake. Tell Colm to take his dinner with us; that’ll save you to nurse Molly.’

  But Colm preferred to keep to his own routine and to take turns sitting with his step-mother.

  ‘There’s neither of them bairns, Kate,’ Charlie consoled her. ‘You’re like one of yer own hens; you want Bridie and Colm roosting round you. You’d be really happy if all three of them would move in here for you to look after. Poor Auntie Molly; she was right fond of yer father, Kate. She’ll take a while to get over it.’

  Kate turned away. How long would she take to get over it? She could hardly bear to look at Margaret for every time she did she heard that dreadful sound of the lorry hitting Liam’s body. She’s only a wee lassie and it was your own fault for hitting her. That’s what made him turn round. She deserved the slap. No, she didn’t. She’s only a bairn; her fault, your fault. The words went around in her head until she thought she would scream.

  Charlie had no idea how to comfort Kate; he could not hold her in his arms as easily as he could hold and soothe Margaret. Kate had never been one for physical contact, for the easy embrace. She had never had them as a child, of course, since Liam was not demonstrative and all Mary Kate’s outward pourings of physical affection had flowed over whichever of her children was baby at the time. That her mother loved her, Kate had known. It had not needed to be said to be real. But now, when she really needed tenderness and love, she had no idea how to seek them and poor Charlie had no idea how to give them. He tried to show her his sympathy and love in the only way he knew how and for the first time in their married lives he was pleased to feel Kate cling to him. She forced herself to look into his face while he moved on her and tried to see only his face and not Margaret’s and certainly not Liam’s. But she could not block it out and at last she cried and the tears washed away Liam’s face and she fell asleep for the first time in her husband’s arms. She woke stiff and sore from lying on his bony arms and remembered that she had not washed herself. Charlie heard the bath water running, shrugged his shoulders in exasperation, and went back to sleep.

  If Kate had not become pregnant that night she might have become a very wealthy woman. Mr McDonald was, as he said, doing very well.

  ‘People will always have to eat, Mrs Inglis. Come on, we survived the strikes and it’s time to grow. I know we have always advertised your pies as “home-baked” but I think you must face the fact that you must automate. People in the Borders want Kate Inglis pies; in the Shetlands they want them and I want them to have them. Faster transportation is the answer and preservatives. Be realistic. You can’t bake a pie in Auchenbeath at four o’clock in the morning and sell it in Edinburgh at nine.’

  ‘I never thought of selling them anywhere but Auchenbeath,’ Kate almost whispered, ‘or Thornhill with Deirdre near there.
I can’t take all this in, Mr McDonald. I work so hard now and I have so much, more than I ever dreamed of . . . my own home, my own business, money in the bank for my children’s future.’

  The grocer looked around the spotless kitchen. ‘How many times have I sat in a kitchen with you over the years?’ he asked Kate. ‘You don’t mind my saying you look older? How you manage to remain so pretty though, I’ll never understand.’

  Kate raised her hand as if to stop him but he went on.

  ‘An old man can say that, can he not, without causing offence. The business, two lovely children, your husband to nurse every so often . . . you’re a remarkable woman. Why don’t you consider some domestic help?’

  ‘People like us don’t get people in to do our work for us, Mr McDonald.’

  ‘Why ever not? You work too hard, Mrs Inglis. Time to work with your head and not your hands. Get a housekeeper to look after the house. Another bank loan to extend the bakery or—’

  The door had opened and Charlie and the children came in. Patrick stood quietly by the door and smiled shyly but Margaret rushed to Mr McDonald. ‘You’ve got a new car; it’s beautiful and a new driver. He wouldn’t let me get in . . .’

  McDonald rose, lifting the girl up in his arms. ‘Hello, Charlie. I’m glad you’re back; want to have a word but first we’ll see about giving Madame here a wee hurl, and you too, Patrick. Do you want to see my new car?’

  ‘Yes please, sir,’ said Patrick although he was not too interested in cars – they reminded him of Liam – but felt it would be impolite to tell the complete truth. ‘Is it all right, Mammy?’