The Good Provider (11 page)

‘It might not be so easy.’

‘Och, I’ll take practically anythin’ to get started.’

Mr Affleck nodded. ‘Provided it’s not on the docks or in the mart?’

‘I’ve had enough of cattle.’

Mr Affleck finished his whisky, poured himself another and, without offering a second dram to Craig, put the bottle away in the cupboard.

Standing by the sideboard, he said, ‘I’d better go through and placate my sister. Perhaps we’ll meet again. I’m here for supper, sometimes, on Thursdays.’

‘We’ll be gone,’ said Craig, ‘before next week.’

‘If you can find a place.’

‘Don’t tell me there are no rooms to rent in Glasgow?’

‘Precious few,’ said Mr Affleck.

‘In that case why isn’t this house full?’

‘Because my sister has no need of the income and does not put herself out to attract residents,’ said Hugh Affleck. ‘I’d say that you pair were fortunate to be taken in. Our Nessie’s very fussy.’

Craig dabbed the coal of his cigarette into a porcelain ashtray.

‘Anyway,’ said Hugh Affleck, ‘I wish you both well. Who knows, perhaps we’ll bump into each other, since Glasgow’s such a narrow place.’

‘A small world?’ said Kirsty.

‘Oh, very,’ Hugh Affleck said, and went out into the hallway and left the young couple alone.

There was a smell of spring threaded in the smoke reek and the dull metallic odour of the river. It seemed to exude from the hedges, plane trees and worn rugs of grass that lay before the houses. Arm in arm, like the couple she had seen from her window, Craig and Kirsty strolled the length of Walbrook Street and back again. There was a light in the pavilion and, by peering through a gap in the hedge, Kirsty could see a handful of men within the building, gathered at a table; a committee in session.

Tonight, even with Craig’s arm in hers, she felt unsettled, the mood caught from Craig. He was quiet, almost sullen, and would not be drawn into a discussion of his prospects.

‘Perhaps Mr Affleck’s right,’ Kirsty said, ‘about taking what you can find to get started.’

‘I’ve seen cattle slaughtered,’ Craig said. ‘I want none o’ that trade.’

‘The docks then?’

‘I want somethin’ better – for both of us.’

‘How long will it take to find a job?’

‘There’s enough in the kitty, still,’ he said.

They walked on, in silence. The rattle of traffic came from Dumbarton Road, behind a rampart of tenements, but Craig seemed almost afraid of the thoroughfare, of its attractions.

Kirsty said, ‘At least we’re comfortable where we are.’

Craig said, ‘I don’t like it.’

‘I thought the supper was—’

‘It costs too much,’ Craig said. ‘Two rooms like that.’

‘Mr Affleck seemed to think—’

‘Him!’ said Craig with derision. ‘To hear him talk you’d think I was nothin’, that that sister of his was doin’ us a big favour by takin’ us in. God, it would cost us thirty-five bob a week to stay there.’

‘Aye, it’s a lot.’

‘Two rooms,’ Craig said.

‘We – we spent too much, Craig. I shouldn’t have bought—’

‘You deserve fine clothes. I don’t grudge it.’

‘I know, but—’

‘What time is it?’ he interrupted.

‘About half past eight.’

‘I’m tired. We’ll go back now.’

They walked back to the boarding-house, passing the lighted windows of the terrace residences, seeing the lamps glowing warm behind the curtains, observing the quiet comings and goings of the folk who lived there, hearing, outside one house, a singsong to the strains of a piano and a violin. He did not kiss her at the door but found the key on its string by fumbling through the letter-box, fished it out, opened the door, pushed in.

The gloomy hall seemed friendlier now, almost familiar, though she had been there only one night. Kirsty thought of her room and the privacy and pleasure of it. She would be sorry to leave Walbrook Street, even though she realised that Craig was right; it was too expensive and could not be permanent, was not the place for them. He gave her a peck upon the cheek and watched her from the hallway as she ascended the staircase past the gaslit stained-glass screen. Just as she reached the bend in the stairs, where it grew dark, a door opened to the left of the hall and she heard Mrs Frew enquire who it was there, heard Craig’s voice; the low sullen mutter of conversation. No doubt he would be reassuring Mrs Frew that he was not about to sneak upstairs, to make her his wife before marriage. Kirsty sighed. She had hardly thought of that subject all day long. She listened while the voices went on and on, paused for a minute, and then continued. She could not imagine what Craig would have to say to the woman, what he might want from her.

In due course she heard doors close, heard the stairs to the basement creak, and it was quiet within the house again. She went on up to her bedroom and took off the powder-blue costume, hung it on a hanger and brushed the skirt carefully. Already there was mud around the hem. She took a duster to her shoes, put them under the bed, seated herself upon the edge of the bed, hands in her lap. The freight-yards did not seem so noisy tonight. Perhaps she was growing used to the din of trains, the rumbling of wagons. She did not feel sleepy, though her legs and back still ached from the long day upon Glasgow pavements. She glanced from time to time at the costume on its hanger, at her reflection in the mirror, felt empty, almost bored. Mr Affleck had called Glasgow ‘a narrow place’; perhaps he was right.

It was around ten when she heard the street-door open. She had been at the window only minutes before, staring out at the docks and the sky and had seen no pedestrians in the street. Perhaps it was Mr Vass returning from his lecture at the university, though he had claimed that he would be late and she did not think that ten o’clock was ‘late’ for a city person. She parted the curtains and stepped into the alcove once more.

The wind had dropped, cloud had lifted, the sky had its own shine to it, deeper than the reflections of the city’s lights. And there was Craig, boater upon his head, striped blazer buttoned, walking rapidly along the pavement away from Number 19. Kirsty felt suddenly cold. She clasped her arms about her body, shivering. Craig knew nobody in Glasgow. She imagined that he was seeking company, hurrying to a public house or, worse, to find a girl, a woman, one of the kind she had heard about so often, one of the kind that her mother had been.

Frantically she knelt by the window and fumbled with the brass handles. The window seemed to weigh a hundredweight and rose reluctantly as she thrust against it. Craig was almost out of sight before she managed to open the window and push her head and shoulders through the space and, craning out, looked towards the church corner.

Hands in pockets, hurrying, Craig crossed Walbrook Street at the corner. He did not, as Kirsty expected him to do, turn into Dumbarton Road. He headed for what seemed to be a blank brick wall and, as Kirsty watched, bewildered, stopped on the pavement before it. It was only then that she noticed the pillar-box. Craig took a letter from his pocket and put it carefully into the box, turned and came diagonally back across Walbrook Street, heading for the boarding-house.

Immediately Kirsty withdrew. She closed the window. She knelt in the alcove, forehead pressed against the cold glass until she heard the street-door open and close.

Craig must have borrowed paper, envelope and ink from Mrs Frew, had even purchased a stamp from her, perhaps. He had written a letter in the privacy of his room and had slipped out to put it in the mail. Kirsty knew at once that the letter would not be addressed to Craig’s father but to his mother. In it, perhaps, he begged for understanding and forgiveness, inviting Madge Nicholson to come hotfoot from Carrick to drag him home again.

For hours Kirsty lay awake, fretting, fearful that Madge Nicholson would divulge her whereabouts to Mr Clegg and that he would come for her or, more probably, would report her to the authorities. It had been too good to last, her escape with Craig, like a dream come true. She should have known better than expect it to last.

When, over breakfast, Craig told her his plan she was too relieved, and too confused, to put up an argument, and meekly let him take her into town to be fitted for a wedding band.

The ring, Craig said, would make all the difference. It would make it very much easier to obtain a room to rent if they presented themselves as man and wife. Nobody would ask impertinent questions, would doubt that they were legally married. Look, Craig said, how it cost them twice as much money at Mrs Frew’s. If, he said, they had had a wedding ring Mrs Frew would not have asked if they were man and wife but would have thought they were on their honeymoon, or something, and they might have saved the best part of four shillings. God knows, he said, they would soon whack through the rest of the stake unless they behaved sensibly; that meant saving every penny from now on, and that meant finding a place of their own at a reasonable sort of rent. The wedding ring would be an investment, part of the saving. Nobody would ever guess that they weren’t married since no landlord would ask to see the marriage certificate. Wasn’t it just common sense, Craig said, to put the cart before the horse for a while so, once they were settled and had saved a bob or two, they might have a stylish wedding, all legal and proper, and a proper honeymoon too?

He made no mention of the letter. Kirsty did not have the temerity to ask him about it. She was too taken aback, too confused by his long harangue, hunched over the breakfast cups, to put up arguments against his plan. She wanted to be his wife and if it was not possible to be so under law then she must accept the next best thing. Craig was right. Who would know the difference?

The ring was bought from a small shop in Argyle Street. The jeweller was all attention, even although the plain golden band was not by any means expensive and the bridegroom indicated that he wanted one off the shelf, one that fitted, and that it would not be necessary to leave it to have it engraved.

‘An’ when’s the happy day, sir?’

‘Next Wednesday,’ Craig said.

‘Ah, wedding bells, wedding bells. Be a big event, will it?’

‘Big enough,’ said Craig.

‘All the relatives?’

‘Put it in a box, please,’ Craig said.

‘Of course, sir, of course.’

The jeweller, a man in middle life, small and pale and shabby, took Kirsty’s hand and held it while he eased the gold band from her finger.

Craig paid in cash, of course, and Kirsty turned away as he laid two pound-notes upon the worn wooden counter. The jeweller snapped the ring into a tiny box upholstered in purple velvet.

‘Do this way, sir?’

‘Aye, that’ll be fine.’

Craig put the box into his pocket, collected nine shillings in change and they were out in the dusty street again and heading rapidly away from the shop.

Kirsty had not imagined that her ‘wedding day’ would be at all like this. She had not dwelt on the meaning of it, only on its trappings, of being, for one day, a special and distinctive person, loved and admired by all. But there was no romance in Craig Nicholson. He was too gauche to guess at Kirsty’s needs. He did not suggest a wedding feast in a smart restaurant, did not even lead her to some shady and secluded spot in one of the parks, to make a ceremony of it. He stopped her by a shop-front under the spidery bridge that spanned Argyle Street and carried trains into Caledonian Central.

The moment, however perfunctory, would remain vivid in all its details until Kirsty’s dying day. Pigeons swooped and crooned among the girders overhead. Horse-drawn trams clashed past on their lines and carters’ voices echoed raucously, accompanied by the grumble of the big, iron-rimmed wheels on the cobbles. All about them were the real folk of Glasgow, not the west-enders, all moving, moving like a sluggish tide along the pavements of Argyle Street in the gusty March morning.

A contretemps with beer barrels and two burly draymen had drawn a crowd. Kirsty could see a policeman’s hat among it and, yards along the road, cowered down by the stinking wet wall of a fishmonger’s shop, a raddled female clad in a cape of cracked brown tarpaulin, barefoot and filthy, sucked on a bottle. The thunder of a train overhead bore down oppressively and droplets of brown water flicked across her cheek.

‘Take it,’ Craig shouted. ‘Here, take the damned thing.’

He gripped her wrist and turned it, turned her hand palm uppermost and put the little box upon it.

‘Put it on, Kirsty,’ he cried.

The yell of steam from high above was heathen and barbaric and the hiss of brakes jolting the carriages to a halt at the platform within the station echoed in her head. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to cry, holding the little box of purple velvet in her fist.

‘Put it on,’ he shouted, ‘then we can start.’

Jostled by a gang of four men in aprons and flat hats who marched line abreast along the pavement, Kirsty stepped back and away from Craig, separated from him.

She found a refuge of sorts by a broken pipe which splashed into a drain in a niche between a flesher’s and a grain-store. She opened the miniature box with her thumbnail and picked out the hammered gold ring. She glanced up at Craig on the pavement’s edge, separated from him by the strutting apprentices. Across the street she saw a dray-horse making water, a young girl in a bulging shawl, an infant knotted against her breast, and the vagrant by the fishmonger’s step suck from her bottle once more.