The Good Provider (40 page)

‘Eh?’

‘You heard.’

‘I never heard a word about who’ll pay me.’

‘I’ll pay you, you bastard. Now drive.’

Craig hoisted himself into the back and sat back. He was winded, heart pounding. Sweat trickled down his spine. He did not dare look at the child. He convinced himself that he could still feel the pressure of her tiny fists as they clung trustingly to him. He snuggled her lightly against him and closed his eyes. He heard the crack of the whip, felt the surge of the hackney carriage as it started away from the kerb.

He kept his eyes closed.

He whispered, ‘There now, there now, my wee lamb. You’ll soon be all right.’

She died somewhere under Dumbarton Road’s gas-lights, amid the bustle of the crowds.

Craig did not know that she was gone. He did not admit that he had lost her until he put her tenderly into the arms of a prim nurse in the great tiled hall of the Western Infirmary.

‘What’s this, Constable?’

‘Scalding,’ Craig said. ‘She needs attention.’

‘She’s dead.’

‘Don’t bloody tell me that,’ Craig said.

The nurse held out the bundle, touched back the fold of cloth, and Craig saw that he had carried naught but a little corpse through the city streets, that he had been the trusting one.

‘Now do you believe me, Constable?’

‘I believe you,’ Craig said.

Kirsty said, ‘I hope your supper’s not burned.’

She took the plate of stew from the small oven and put it on the table while Craig took off his tunic and unlaced his boots.

‘Have you been at the baths again?’ she asked.

Craig shook his head.

‘Then why are you so late?’

‘I had – there was work to do.’

‘You’re supposed to finish at eight.’

‘Things happen.’

‘What things?’

‘I had a report to fill out.’

‘Oh! About what?’

‘Nothin’ much,’ he said. ‘Butter some bread, will you?’

She cut three slices from the morning’s loaf and spread fresh butter upon them, put them neatly on a side-plate and laid it before him. He looked tired. There were ash-coloured bruises under his eyes and a furrow between his brows. He lifted his fork and stirred the stew and began to eat almost, Kirsty thought, mechanically.

‘You’ll want your tea now?’ Kirsty said.

‘Aye.’

When she lifted the heavy kettle from the hob Craig twisted his head and stared at her, watched the stream of boiling water pour into the teapot, steam rising.

He turned once more to his supper, stiffly.

‘Was it,’ said Kirsty, ‘a busy day?’

‘Aye, it was,’ he said.

‘I’ll put a hot bottle in your bed.’

‘Aye, please.’

She did not press. She realised that something had happened, something, perhaps, so unpleasant that he did not want to tell her of it. He was, she supposed, being protective since she was in a condition of expectant motherhood. She brushed his shoulder with her palm and he did not flinch away, did not stop eating, forking the food into his mouth and swallowing as if he did not like the taste.

‘Is it all right?’

‘It’s fine.’

She lifted his tunic from the chair-back, shook it out.

‘Your jacket’s wet,’ she said. ‘Is it rainin’ outside?’

‘It’s dry,’ he said. ‘Cold but dry.’

She waited. He did not tell her what had caused the dampness all down the breast of his coat or what it meant. She thought of the river, the ferry steps, the dark, mysterious quays, but the stain on his coat did not have the river’s earthy, metallic smell; something else, something that made her nose wrinkle but which she could not identify.

‘Craig—’

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I near forgot.’

He unbuttoned the top pocket of his tunic, took out a brown envelope and removed from it three tickets of yellow card. He held them out and Kirsty took them, read the print.

‘A concert,’ she said. ‘Does this mean we’re goin’, Craig?’

‘I thought you might enjoy it.’

‘I’m sure I will. The third ticket—’

‘For old Frew, if she fancies it.’

Smiling, Kirsty kissed his cheek.

‘You’re not a bad stick, Craig Nicholson,’ she said.

The Greenfield Burgh Hall was a splendid monument to civic pride. In the fifteen years since it had been erected a good deal of money had been poured into expansion and decoration. The floor was of polished oak, the seats padded in leather. The gallery was a beautifully shaped horseshoe with mouldings in the Italian style. Glass-globed gas-lights added to the brilliance shed by six mammoth gasoliers that hung from the half-domed ceiling. The platform was framed by Corinthian columns, backed by row upon row of carved chairs which climbed to the impressive bronze pipes of the Thomas Mackarness Memorial Organ. An ingenious arrangement of red velvet curtains, painted flats, and potted plants from the Parks Department hothouses reduced the width and depth of the platform, however, made it a more intimate stage, complete with footlights, upon which performers, amateur and professional, would do their stuff.

The Chief Constable, in full evening dress, acted as Master of Ceremonies. Much as he liked the sound of his own rich tenor rolling round the hall he kept his remarks brief and the evening skipping along merrily.

J. C. Wilson was the first Negro that Kirsty had ever seen. She was taken not only with his coal-black cheerfulness but by the pace and agility of his ‘eccentric’ dance and the strange songs he sang while accompanying himself on an enormous banjo. Kirsty was not the only one to be impressed by J. C. Wilson. Mrs Frew was quite round-eyed and Craig’s friend Archie Flynn got so carried away that he stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled shrilly until Craig gave him a dirty look that made him stop at once.

In the foyer Kirsty had been introduced to Archie and to a young man named Peter Stewart. She had been surprised at how youthful they appeared, hardly more than children she thought, and was surprised to realise that they were no younger than Craig.

‘An’ this is Kirsty, my good lady wife.’

‘Pleasure to be meeting you, Mrs Nicholson.’

‘Aye, we’ve heard a lot about ye, Mrs Nicholson.’

The young men’s eyes were shy but appraising. She could tell that she impressed them and that Craig was proud of her, even in her present condition.

Sergeant Drummond made a point of asking after her health. He assured her that the ‘new’ house in Canada Road would be to her liking. He also addressed several words to Mrs Frew, bowing graciously and might, Kirsty thought, even have kissed her hand if her fingers hadn’t been stuffed in a brown fur muff.

Kirsty was shown to other policemen too and, glancing surreptitiously round the rows before the gasoliers were dimmed, noted that she was as smart in appearance as any other woman in the group, except for the wives of the ‘bigwigs’ who occupied the front rows. She was flanked by Craig and Mrs Frew with Archie and Peter Stewart, both in uniform, left and right of her. She looked in vain for Hugh and Beatrice Affleck before the lights went down and the red velvet curtain, on a drooping wire, closed with a shiver and opened again.

She just had time to say to Mrs Frew, ‘Is your brother not here?’

‘Somewhere,’ Mrs Frew whispered.

After the Negro dancer a section of the City of Glasgow Police Choir came on to a mixed reception of cheers and counter-cheers, to put it politely. But they delivered
The March of the Cameron Men
and
The Gathering
with such heartfelt and rousing sentiment that even those Glasgow keelies who thought that Prince Charles was the name of a racehorse cheered and clapped in patriotic fervour.

Abracadabra – an amateur magician from Maryhill Division – fared less well, poor bloke, for when he swept a pigeon from under his multi-coloured cloak it promptly flew up into the half-dome and, excited by all the attention, spotted several hats and hair-dos a hundred feet below its tail. It would not be cajoled down by Constable Abracadabra, though he tempted it with a broken biscuit and called out ‘Here, Sammy, come tae Daddy John then, there’s a good boy,’ while suggestions from the body of the hall for disposal of the bird grew ever more ribald and inventive. Eventually Abracadabra left the stage in confusion and the pigeon, it was to be assumed, fell asleep. Apart from an occasional croon and the odd feather no more was heard or seen of it as the evening’s entertainment progressed through bagpipers, fiddlers, comics, dancers and singers, and a faint restless murmur swelled among the males in the audience as Miss Phoebe Donaldson, second-top of the bill, prepared to reveal her talents to the wondering gaze. To rapturous applause Chief Constable Organ made the introduction.

The red curtain closed, shivered, swished open to reveal two startled coppers caught in the act of shoving a grand piano out from the wings.

‘By Jeeze, they’re stealin’ the furniture.’

‘Take that man’s name, officer.’

‘Ye’d be better buyin’ a bike, Davy.’

Cheers, remarks and demands for an encore were stilled as a woman marched briskly into view. She was fifty if she was a day, gaunt and foxy and with a chest as flat as an ironing-board under a stiff-starched blouse.

‘Is that
it
?’ Archie cried. ‘Is
that
her?’

‘That’s the accompanist,’ Mrs Frew told him.

‘Aw!’ Archie nodded.

Silence; pin-drop silence.

Phoebe Donaldson came out like a flower of modesty, a woman of almost six feet in height, an Amazon in an evening gown of sky-blue silk, the bodice pouched, the collar low-cut with just a breath of chiffon on the décolletage. Pale-blue gloves covered her arms but her shoulders were bare and breathtakingly white and the shadow of the little ‘salt-cellar’ at the base of her throat ran directly into the deep soft shadow of her breasts.

‘Dear God!’ Archie moaned.

‘A commanding presence, indeed,’ said Mrs Frew.

‘Dear God!’

Miss Donaldson arranged herself in stage centre, hands folded below her bosom.

‘Steady, lads,’ came Sergeant Drummond’s muttered command and the men of Greenfield, all ranks, got a grip on their emotions.

A handful of notes flew from the fingers of the gaunt repetitrice. Miss Donaldson filled her lungs.

‘Steady.’

She sang.

In a rich vibrant contralto she sang
We’ll Meet Beside The Dusky Glen
and
My Love She’s But A Lassie Yet
and, as advertised, quivered deliciously when she lifted her chin to project the higher notes.

Applause was thunderous. They would not let her go even after
What Ails This Heart O’ Mine
. It was, after all, her voice and not her figure that made Miss Donaldson special, a quality of pathos that plucked at one and all and made every eye grow misty. When she took her bow and left the stage the ovation was such that Mr Organ prevailed upon her to return, which she did with a pleasant smile. After a pause she struck into
The Vacant Chair
as softly as if she were confiding the pain of loss to each member of the audience individually.

It was in the middle of the third verse that Peter Stewart broke from his seat and, crushing past knees, bolted up the aisle towards the exit door. Craig went after him at once.

Nobody paid much attention for the air was moist in all parts of the hall and the rim of the balcony was marked by scuts of linen and lace, sniffings into handkerchiefs. For all that she too was affected something in the abrupt manner of Craig’s departure drew Kirsty’s attention from the figure on the stage. The instant that the last note floated from Miss Donaldson’s lips she excused herself to Mrs Frew and, lost in the deafening ovation, squeezed out into the aisle and headed for the foyer.

Sergeant Drummond and Hugh Affleck had been quicker off the mark than Kirsty. She found the policemen gathered in a corner beyond the cloakroom door, Craig holding Peter Stewart in his arms, the young man sobbing as if his heart would break.

‘Craig, what’s wrong?’ she said.

When he turned she saw on Craig’s face an expression of such sorrow that, if he had been alone, she would have run to him and thrown her arms about him. But this mourning was a man’s thing, secret and private. Sergeant Drummond gave her a warning scowl and Kirsty stopped in her tracks. Hugh Affleck had put an arm about Stewart’s shoulders too and, as Kirsty watched, gently disengaged him from Craig and led him a few steps further into the corner of the corridor. Laughter from the hall, the music of a comical Scotch song; she guessed that Mr Harry Lauder, on stage now, would soon sweep away tears with broad, rough-hewn humour.

Craig glanced at her and looked down at his shoes, sheepish and guilty. He fumbled for and lit a cigarette and let Sergeant Drummond bring Kirsty an explanation.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Kirsty. ‘Is he ill?’

‘Och, no, nothing like that at all.’