A Pinch of Salt

by Eileen Ramsay

  The family were all together for New Year’s Day, except Colm who was with his regiment somewhere . . . They had driven down in the big van to see Deirdre, whose two eldest sons had already joined the army.

  ‘They didnae want to wait to be conscripted; this way they got to choose their own regiments, Borderers, just like their daddy and their uncles.’ Deirdre seemed proud and not at all worried. ‘And what about you, our Pat? Will they call up you clever laddies?’

  ‘No they won’t,’ said Kate before Patrick could speak. ‘Let’s not talk about war the day. It doesnae seem like a real war anyway, not like the last one where we were in right from the start.’

  ‘It’s real enough, Mam,’ said Patrick, ‘and it’s going to get a lot worse.’

  He was right. By May of 1940 Norway had been overrun by Germany and many people blamed the hesitations and procrastinations of the Chamberlain Government. Sir Archibald Sinclair said that the trouble was that Britain was working a one-shift war while the Germans were working three shifts. Amery quoted Oliver Cromwell when he spoke in 1652 to the Long Parliament which he thought was no longer fit to run the affairs of the nation. ‘You have sat here too long. . . . In the name of God go’. And, helped along by Winston Churchill’s brilliance, the Government went. On 10th May 1940, Winston Churchill became prime minister.

  Patrick telephoned. ‘Did you hear his speech, Mam? Isn’t he great? Fiona says with a leader like him, we’ll easily beat the Germans, you’ll see.’

  For Kate it was merely echoes of ‘over by Christmas’. ‘You’ll no do anything daft, Patrick; you’ll not join up?’

  Patrick hesitated. Fighting for justice wasn’t daft. Watching Fiona Rutherford, listening to her speak, admiring the way her green eyes flashed with anger or amusement; that was daft. ‘If I pass my exams, Mam, it’ll mean God wants me to stay.’

  ‘You’ll pass, of course you’ll pass. Study hard.’

  ‘He was that excited, Charlie,’ she told her husband. ‘He’s all fired up. And you were right about his having a new wee friend. Fiona something or other. Oh, what will I do if he joins up? And where’s Margaret? If that girl’s been in one night this week . . .’

  ‘She’s playing tennis, Kate. There’s no harm in that. Even George belongs to the wee club they’ve got there. All the young folks are in it.’

  ‘Aye, I suppose tennis is safe enough. Never did our Bridie any harm. Mind you, she never found a man there, if she was looking for one. I worry about her sometimes as if I let her down, never really looked after her the way I promised my mam. She waits hand and foot on your auntie . . .’

  ‘Her step-mother,’ broke in Charlie.

  ‘Who’s perfectly capable of running a duster round the place.’

  ‘Colm,’ Charlie won the argument. ‘Till Colm marries, she’ll stay wi’ him.’

  Kate was quiet. If she hadn’t married Charlie she would be looking after Colm. Would Bridie have married? Had there been a nice fellow at the tennis club? Was there a nice fellow there who interested Margaret? In the privacy of darkness she could admit to herself that her daughter was a very pretty young woman, girl, she was still a girl. Maybe it was her fault that the girl was so reticent with her. They hadn’t sat down to talk to one another in . . . Had she ever sat down to talk to her children? Patrick, perhaps. She had almost always found time for Patrick. And Liam? He needed discipline. Charlie spoiled him. Not even fifteen yet and he had been at that tennis club till nearly midnight. Was Margaret in yet? Pity tomorrow was Monday and the busiest working day of the week but she would make an effort, she would find time to discuss further education with the girl. Maybe girls should become doctors and lawyers and such. There were plenty of women in Patrick’s classes and in his Literary Society, this Fiona – giving her opinion of Winston Churchill. Am I doing right, Mam, sending her to the university? I failed Bridie. I think though, Bridie always seems to be happy, especially with my bairns to spoil. She rolled over. ‘Charlie, what do you think about sending our Margaret to the university with Patrick?’ But Charlie was already asleep.

  *

  Long before Christmas Margaret had realized she was not pregnant. Her first period after her ‘indiscretion’ with George had been a few days late and she had gone almost mad with terror. One thing to tell Kate that she wanted to marry her vanman, another to tell her that she had anticipated matrimony and had been punished accordingly. Never had she been so relieved to see those stains in her knickers.

  ‘We got away with it, George, this time, but until we’re married it mustn’t happen again.’

  George held her gently. ‘You had me near as scared as you, sweetheart. See, God wasn’t angry for what we did. It was natural. You’re my woman now and we’ll tell your parents that we want to get married.’

  ‘No!’ Margaret almost shouted. ‘Then she’ll know I’ve been deceiving her and she’ll be furious. We’ll build up to it gradually. She’s been at me to work harder, not in the bakery, at the school, and she’s frightened Patrick fails and gets called up. What about you, George? Some lads have been conscripted since last May when they were still telling us there wasn’t going to be a war. Will you get called up? You’ll not volunteer?’

  ‘I’m no daft, Margaret, but I’ll have to go if I’m wanted, and I want everything right between us afore then.’

  She interrupted by kissing him passionately but he did not respond.

  ‘I meant all right with your parents. If you’re not ashamed of me, tell your mam, or is it that you don’t know whether you want to marry me or not?’

  ‘Of course I want to marry you, especially after . . . but we’re so young. I’m only sixteen, George. My mam wanted me to leave the school last year and work in the bakery. I like being at school learning things, I wanted to go to the university. I’m far brainier than poor Father Pat.’

  ‘Too brainy to get stuck with a vanman, especially one that could get called up and killed.’

  He turned away from her and began to stride towards the village.

  ‘George, no, don’t leave me. I’ll do anything . . .’ He turned towards her and in the moonlight his pale face and hair shone with an almost ethereal light. ‘I’d die if anything happened to you.’

  ‘I’ll no get killed,’ he muttered into her hair, ‘and I’m no going to be a vanman for ever. There’s money to be made out of this war, Margaret, and I’m going to make it.’ He looked down at her lovely face, at the tears glistening on the ridiculously long lashes and then gently he kissed them away. ‘My brother told me how to do it so you won’t get caught,’ he whispered and began to kiss her softly and then, as she relaxed against him, more urgently, parting her warm, moist lips with his tongue.

  She struggled a little, protesting, ‘It’s wrong, George,’ but the feelings she had been stifling since September awoke and began to scream for relief, and she responded with all her passionate young body. He grasped her hand and began to run, pulling her along with him, until they reached the shelter of the wood. The pine needles lay thick and dry under the trees and he pushed her down and they struggled to remove as much of their clothing as was necessary.

  It wasn’t right and wonderful as it had been the first time; in fact it was almost distasteful. Margaret was aware of her skirt round her waist and her knickers round her ankles and she wanted to protest, ‘No, not like this.’ Then he began to touch her and in spite of herself desire for him overpowered her. When he pushed himself into her she was almost as ready for him as she had been that night in the bakery. She climaxed quickly and lay there looking up through the branches to the starlit sky and waited while George moved violently on her soft belly. She felt the cold earth under her and held his head against her and tried to feel primitive and all-powerful but all she felt was the November cold seeping into her bones. Eventually he lay still.

  ‘Jesus, it’s cold,’ he said. ‘Come on, we’ll get our death up here.’

  On the way to the bakery he pressed her
again to talk to her parents. ‘We was supposed to announce our engagement at Christmas and here it is November and they don’t even know we’re walking out.’

  Kate was sitting at the fire when Margaret breathlessly opened the door.

  ‘Where have you been and don’t tell me the pictures because the late show finishes at just after ten?’

  Margaret was terrified. Was there dirt on her coat? Was her hair too untidy? ‘I was at the pictures, Mam, and then we went for chips to the Tallies.’

  ‘With the good food you get here you have to fill yourself with that greasy food. I’m all for helping poor refugees, Margaret, but I don’t want you standing around that wee cafe with all the riffraff from the village.’

  ‘There’s nowhere else to go, Mam, just the miners’ club and you don’t like me going there either because of the drink.’

  ‘You could bring the lassies here, miss. Haven’t we provided a lovely home for you?’

  ‘Yes, Mam, I’m sorry. I’ll do that.’ Margaret edged towards the door. If Kate shouted her back with, ‘What’s that mud on your skirt?’ Please God, please, don’t let her find out and I’ll never do it again. But Kate was already turning down the gas mantles and, apart from the glow from the ashes in the grate, the room was dark.

  ‘I know it’s Saturday, Margaret, but I don’t want you washing your hair for Mass tonight; it’s far too late.’

  Dutifully Margaret agreed and, closing the door, fled along the corridor to the haven of her room. Her knickers were full of pine needles. They were all over the place. My God, I’ve left a trail; she’ll kill me. She put on her dressing gown and lay on the bed waiting for her mother to fall asleep so that she could go to see if any pine needles were on the carpets. Her stomach felt sticky. That wasn’t romantic; nothing beautiful and right about skulking under a tree like an animal and after a few minutes of intense feeling there had been nothing but awareness of the damp and the cold. And it’s wrong; whatever George says, it’s wrong. I had a chance there to tell Mam. Why didn’t I? Because I was too scared and if she finds any pine needles she’ll know I was lying to her. Oh, God, Mam, go to sleep so’s I can have a bath and wash this off. She got up and crept to the door. All was quiet. She would risk it. She crept back to the front room and turned up the gas. She was exhausted by the time she had crawled inch by inch over the floor picking up pine needles here and there, not many, but enough for Kate to wonder and, Margaret thought, her mother was far from stupid. She would know immediately that they didn’t come from the chip shop.

  The next day was wet and cold, the kind of November day that makes staying beside a roaring fire with a good book an ideal occupation, but Margaret couldn’t settle. What was the point? Why study for Highers if Kate was going to insist that she leave school and work in the bakery? Why study if she was going to marry George? Marriage didn’t take brains. Surreptitiously she looked at her parents. Kate was writing a long letter. What did she find to say to her precious Patrick every Sunday? Charlie was struggling with a jigsaw with Liam who was good-naturedly taking out most of the pieces Charlie was putting in. Her father was only pretending to be stupid, she knew. Mind you, he wasn’t all that bright. Kate was the bright one. Why had she married Charlie? They could never have felt as she and George felt, could they? Her icy mother (whose eyes softened only when they looked at Patrick) and her poor father with his weak chest locked in a soul-stirring embrace was a ludicrous picture. She remembered yesterday afternoon in the bakery watching George loading the van. She loved looking at him, touching him, being kissed by him, making love. Had Kate ever felt like that with Charlie? She looked at the book in her lap. Was there anything wrong in wanting to have George and an education too? God, life was complicated, and there was her soul too. She had gone to communion that morning because if she had not Kate would have wanted to know why. Walking down the aisle to receive the wafer she had had a moment of terror that God would choose to punish her for her wickedness right there in front of the entire Catholic population of the village; she had expected a lightning bolt to strike her dead to her mother’s everlasting shame in the village. It hadn’t come. Was God too busy with the war? She had not been making a good confession in months either. She wanted to stop going. She wanted to go and say, I made love to my boyfriend, and thus get the whole sorry mess off her shoulders. But she could do neither. She was a wicked, proud girl. God would forgive her if she was truly sorry. Surely Father Brady would not judge her. He would not shake his head sorrowfully every time he saw her in the village. She knew that but still she could not tell him.

  The winter passed. Margaret lost weight. She couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t eat. Patrick came for Christmas and still Margaret could never find words to explain her feelings to her mother; she could not talk about getting engaged when her parents didn’t even know she was walking out and worse. And then there was Patrick.

  He was talking about the air force and one’s duty to humanity and Kate was distraught with fear that he would do something stupid. She took a day off, an unheard-of occurrence, and Charlie drove her to Edinburgh to confront their son. Margaret was left in charge of the bakery.

  George came of course. They made love. She had not intended it to happen but one kiss led to another and somehow she or George had pushed them along the passage to her bedroom and they were naked in the bed and it was the most wonderful experience that anyone had ever had in the entire world, until Margaret came to her senses. He had not withdrawn.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ George almost screamed at the girl sobbing into her pillow, ‘God will not send you to Hell. Hitler’ll go to Hell.’

  ‘And so will I, George. You’re not supposed to make love till you’re married.’

  ‘We make love and everything’s wonderful and I feel I’m the luckiest man in the world. I’ve got it all. The next minute you make me feel like I should be flogged at the cart’s tail, or whatever it is they do with, what is they cry them . . . seducers. I thought you wanted it too. I don’t remember ever forcing you. You want it and then when you’ve had it you do this going to Hell bit. I’m getting bloody fed up. I don’t know why you’re so scared of your mam; she’s aye been a good boss to me but if you can’t talk to her . . . let’s get married on our own for I’m fed up. It’s near a year, Margaret. Either it’s all over, or I find out about Gretna Green and you come away with me.’

  ‘We can’t get married in the church?’

  ‘Not unless you tell your mam.’

  ‘My mam hardly knows I exist. The only person exists for her is her precious Father Pat. She’ll not take a day off the day I run away.’

  ‘Maybe it’s for the best this way. I’ll never make anything of myself working for your mam. I’ll find out about marrying in Gretna and you have a few things in a bag and we’ll leave from the tennis club one night.’

  When he had gone, Margaret tidied up and packed her schoolbag with a few of her favourite clothes. The decision made, she was very calm. It was the right, the only thing to do. She returned to the bakery in case there were afternoon customers. I wish I could get married in church, in a beautiful white dress. One day though.

  They met at the tennis club and George had Kate’s small van. ‘We cannae steal this. After we’re married we’ll leave it at the nearest station with a note.’

  ‘Why, Charlie?’ said Kate when she eventually read the note. ‘She never even said she liked the laddie. Why should she do this? George always seemed such a nice lad despite the awful parents. What was the need for all this underhand business? Goodness, I only want the best for my children. I’ve tried to bring her up to know that and, all right, I did want better than a vanman for her; that’s what I’ve worked for. Could she not see that?’

  Charlie could only stare mutely at her. ‘She should have told me,’ he said. ‘I would have protected her.’

  Protected her, Kate thought. From whom? George . . . or me?

  17

  KATE AND CHARLIE received a letter
from Margaret a month after the wedding. In it she told them that she was happy, that she knew she should have spoken to them about her love for George but she hoped that they would forgive her. She and George were legally married and she would try to make everything right with the Church as soon as possible. They already had good jobs, she in a factory and George at the shipyards – they were desperate for workers in Glasgow – and they had a little flat. As soon as it was really nice she would invite her parents to come to see her.

  Kate read the letter which had come in the post together with a letter from Patrick in which he spoke about the obscenity of war. Was there, he asked, an even greater obscenity in young men who should be fighting to remove the blight from Europe, wasting their time in lecture halls, filling their heads with knowledge and principles which would do them no good in the world which Hitler and his ilk planned to create?

  Margaret received a short answer to her plea for understanding. She was assured of her mother’s love, but, that same mother asked, what had possessed her to carry on behind her back? She was also very hurt and disappointed by George. Why had he not straightforwardly asked for permission to marry her daughter, and did he realize what a predicament he had left the business in by going off like that? She also included an extremely generous cheque. She didn’t say so but she hoped Margaret would use it to make the flat nicer more quickly so that she could then carry through her promise of inviting her parents to visit.

  ‘What did I do wrong, Charlie? What possessed her? I’ve worked and worked so that she wouldn’t have to, so that she’d have a better life than mine and what does she do? What made her run off with the vanman?’

  Charlie looked at her sadly. ‘She maybe had to.’

  Kate stared at her husband. She was unaware of the talk in the village. To the villagers there was only one reason for a young girl to run away from home. A bun in the oven, they said. Serve hoighty-toighty Kate Kennedy right. That would teach her to think she was better than the rest of the village; her precious Margaret was not the first lassie to wed in a hurry.