The New Breadmakers (12 page)

‘Father,’ he called out. No reply. Was he sitting on his big chair in the dark, hands gripping his heavy walking stick, waiting?

The evil old bastard.

So much for the Quaker belief that God was in everyone. Maybe that was the true reason he had never fully committed himself to them. He couldn’t accept all of their beliefs. Where was the good in his father?

He wasn’t crouched in his big chair waiting in the dark.

‘Father!’

The house was empty. Except for the ghosts of a thousand terrible memories.

After lighting a lamp, he began packing two large suitcases with clothes and toiletries and everything he could lay his hands on that his mother might need or want.

His father, no doubt, would still be at the police station. He was halfway back to his own place in Springburn when he saw the old man or rather heard him – feet stomping, stick thumping. Then his big hunched-shouldered form loomed up through the billowing fog.

Sammy stopped in front of him. ‘Mother is with me and she’s staying with me from now on. I’ve collected all her things. Don’t you ever dare come near her again, do you hear? If you put a foot near my house or if you make any attempt to contact her in any way, I’ll make sure you’ll regret it. I’ll tell the newspapers. I’ll tell everybody. I’ll shout from the rooftops, if necessary, everything you’ve ever done. I’ll ruin you. Do you hear me, Father?’

Then, before his father could say or do anything, Sammy pushed roughly past him and was swallowed up by the fog.

The Springburn library was a darkly weathered sandstone building which had been built with money provided by Andrew Carnegie, the millionaire philanthropist. As a regular reader in the library, Chrissie already knew that it contained a large stock of engineering books and shelves full of left-wing novels. The American writer, Upton Sinclair, was one of the most popular authors.

The children had a separate department and Miss Cruikshanks, the head librarian there, was a stickler for silence and clean hands. Children would have their hands examined on arrival and, if they did not pass inspection, they would be sent out. Chrissie had often seen children hunkered around puddles outside trying to wash their hands before trooping back in.

If speaking was absolutely necessary, it had to be done in hoarse whispers, even in the adult department. In the staff room at the back, conversation over a cup of tea and a biscuit or lunchtime sandwiches had also to be conducted in hushed tones. Miss Cruikshanks, tiny and hunchbacked, was severe in her reprimands if she heard any voice raised. Although, due to her strange eating habits, she could make a surprising amount of noise over her tea break or her lunch. A pear could make quite a riot as her teeth eagerly squelched and chomped at it. She could even make a baked potato sound as if it had a life of its own. No one had the nerve to comment on any of this. At least not to her face. Miss Cruikshanks, despite her small stature, ruled the place with a conscientiousness that gave no quarter.

As Betty Paterson said, ‘She could throw you out on your ear without a blink of the eye.’

Behind her back and at a safe distance, the young library assistants often enjoyed a giggle at her expense. Betty Paterson was a bit of a mimic and could do an impersonation of Miss Cruikshanks that was a little bit too cruel for Chrissie’s liking. The poor woman couldn’t help being a hunchback and maybe she suffered from deformed teeth as well. One thing was certain, she knew about books and Chrissie admired Miss Cruikshanks’s knowledge. What Miss Cruikshanks didn’t know about books and authors wasn’t worth knowing.

The worst of it was that Chrissie, as a library assistant, had hardly any time to spend on the bookshelves. She and the other assistants had to spend most of their time on what was called ‘ruling the books’. Everything was recorded in these large notebooks. Everything. And there were particular record books, or rule books as they were more usually called, for each thing. Each of them had to be ruled in a certain way. Columns had to be carefully drawn up with a ruler and pen and ink. Coloured ink. If you didn’t rule it properly, you had to start all over again. Even the amount of toilet rolls had to be recorded. Old newspapers had to be kept and folded neatly and added to monstrous piles in the storeroom with equally important bits of string. Nothing was thrown away. Each light bulb had to have a date scratched on it and had to be entered into a book. When the bulb was finished, the brass part was broken off and stored. There were thousands of these bits of numbered brass in the store.

Books had to be ruled to record meter readings. One book had to be ruled for pencils and pens, another for dusting – the whole place had to be dusted every morning and the dusting carefully recorded. Every receipt from firms, for instance who supplied soap for the toilet, had to be recorded, as did every penny that was charged for the public toilet. There were also statistics to be noted of the number of readers who came in and the number of books borrowed and which particular book each reader had borrowed.

Chrissie had begun to rule books in her dreams. Once she had quite a frightening nightmare about being lost among the piles of yellowed newspapers and oceans of string in the basement storeroom and being unable to make her escape back upstairs.

Chrissie had never imagined being a librarian would be like this. All right, the Corporation paid for everything and had to know where every penny of their money was going. ‘But come on,’ Betty Paterson said, ‘who’s to know how many toilet rolls and elastic bands we use? Nobody comes to check, do they? Have you ever seen a councillor come here to check how we rule the books or anything else?’

The main thing should be, everyone agreed, that libraries and librarians, and councillors for that matter, should concentrate more on seeing that the public bookshelves were always well supplied with good books to read.

Fair enough, there was already a pretty good stock on the shelves. But it was Miss Cruikshanks’s obsession with storing everything and never throwing anything away that ruled the roost. Once old and much-borrowed books had begun to fall to bits or had to be removed from the public domain, they were entered in the record book and stored.

Betty always rolled her eyes at this. ‘Who’s to know if we burned the lot of them? What use are they to anyone now?’

The other assistants, including Chrissie, were shocked at this idea – it seemed too reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s orgy of book burning. Anyway, Chrissie for one loved them too much, not only for their fascinating contents, but as physical objects as well. Sometimes she took interesting ones home to read – after first asking Miss Cruikshanks’s permission, of course, and following her order to mark in the appropriate rule book the titles and date of borrowing. Chrissie would add the return date when she brought them back. Glasgow Corporation might not bother to check up on anything but Miss Cruikshanks’s beady eye certainly made up for them.

Big Aggie Stoddart, even many months later, could still be heard to say to friends and acquaintances, ‘Fancy, she gave up a good job at the Co-op to bury hersel’ doon in that Springburn library wi’ that wee hunchback wumman.’

Chrissie had been well warned that she’d live to regret the day she took the job. She didn’t really. What kept her going through the constant ‘ruling of the books’ was her ambition, and her dearest hope of one day getting to the Mitchell.

As it turned out, there was indeed hope. The Mitchell had always been staffed by men. Women were the ones relegated to the local libraries. Men could be head librarian at a local library but only if it had a separate toilet. Only recently, a male librarian had been transferred back to the Mitchell when it had been discovered that the local library in question did not have male toilet facilities. Shades of ‘ruling the books’?

Since men were called up for National Service, the Mitchell had been getting shorter and shorter of staff and requests kept going out to local libraries for volunteers to go and fill the vacancies. To Chrissie’s surprise, she’d heard they were having difficulty in finding volunteers. Let them come to me, she thought. They won’t have to ask me twice.

Eventually, they did approach Springburn and again, to her surprise, no one wanted to go.

‘I’ll go,’ she told Miss Cruikshanks.

Miss Cruikshanks eyed her suspiciously. ‘Why?’

‘I’ve always wanted to work in the Mitchell. It’s a marvellous big place.’

‘Big is the operative word, Miss Stoddart. You obviously don’t realise the amount of work that is entailed in such a place.’

‘I don’t mind, Miss Cruikshanks. Honestly.’

‘Very well.’

Chrissie could hardly contain her excitement. As soon as her father came in from his shift, she cried out to him, ‘Daddy, they’re sending me to the Mitchell. I’m starting in the Mitchell on Monday.’

‘Good for you, hen,’ Jimmy said, without much enthusiasm. He was always exhausted after a shift. ‘It’s a rare big building, that.’

Aggie groaned. ‘Whit’s up wi’ you? Always goin’ on about buildings. What do buildings matter? It’s what’s in them. That’s what I say.’

‘Millions of pounds’ worth of books and archives and manuscripts,’ Chrissie burst out excitedly. ‘They have a whole collection of books about Robert Burns, and books and letters written by him. They’re priceless, Mammy.’

‘Aye. Aw right. Eat yer fish supper before it gets cold.’

Aggie had been out buying the fish suppers when Chrissie had arrived home. She was still in her headscarf and voluminous swagger coat. She tugged off her coat, flung it aside, then dumped the suppers onto the waiting plates.

Sixteen-year-old Maimie, who had triumphed in getting a good job at the Co-op, was as unimpressed as Aggie at Chrissie’s news.

‘I bet they don’t pay as good as the Co-op,’ she managed, despite cheeks bulging with chips.

‘Money’s not everything,’ Chrissie said.

Aggie let out a derisive howl. ‘Would you listen to that. Talk about comin’ up the Clyde in a banana boat!’ She splashed tarry-looking tea into the cups. ‘Ah don’t know what we’re goin’ tae dae wi’ her.’

‘For goodness’ sake!’ Chrissie said.

Sometimes she wondered if she really belonged in this family. She fantasised that she’d been adopted or found on the Stoddarts’ doorstep when an infant and one day her real parents would arrive and claim her. Parents who wouldn’t mind one bit about her working in a library or having Catholic friends. She remembered how she’d been given a right walloping by her mother when it had been discovered that not only had she been consorting with girls from the Catholic school on her way home from her Protestant school every day but she’d actually set foot in a chapel with some of them. This had been an unforgivable sin in both her mother and her father’s eyes. Her father was normally not as aggressive as her mother and seldom resorted to physical violence. On that occasion, he’d bawled at her and, although not hitting her himself, he had approved of the battering her mother had meted out.

‘What’s wrong with being friendly with the girls at that school?’ Chrissie had asked plaintively.

‘You know fine they’re aw Papes.’

‘What’s wrong with being friendly with Catholics?’

The severity of the battering had at least taught her to keep her mouth shut on the subject and also to be more discreet as far as her friendships were concerned. Ailish O’Donnel was her best friend. Sometimes she even had secret thoughts about Ailish’s brother, Sean. Well, quite often, in fact. She had never let on to Ailish about that. She could just imagine the shock and horror it would cause in her house, and probably at the O’Donnels’ as well, if she and Sean ever got together in a romantic way. She could never understand what all the fuss was about. What good was religion when it made people hate each other? Ailish and she sometimes spoke about this. Ailish didn’t see why it was necessary either. Why didn’t both sides just let each other be?

‘Makes me mad,’ Chrissie said.

‘Me too,’ Ailish agreed.

But mostly they never mentioned religion. They just enjoyed being best friends. Chrissie wanted to keep it that way. So she didn’t risk doing anything about her crush on Ailish’s brother – because that was what it was becoming. She no longer thought about how she and Sean had once gone to the pictures together because they had only been children then. Now she thought of him in a different way altogether. She was beginning to fantasise about him. It was difficult to ignore him when she saw him so often – just in passing, on the stairs or in the street. He was two years older than her and rather good-looking. Clever too, she bet, with his good, steady job in an office. And he dressed every day in a collar and tie instead of a muffler like most of the other blokes she knew. His hair was smooth and a rich, glossy black, like his father’s. Although his father’s hair was now going grey.

Chrissie sighed every time she thought of Sean. His eyes were so dark and sexy. She could not get him out of her mind. She wondered if she dared stop him one day and speak to him. Not just to say ‘Hello’ or ‘It’s a nice day’, but to really have a conversation with him.

She began to think about how she could do it. She could perhaps get him talking about books, as Ailish said he was a great reader. She imagined what she would say. Then what he would say. In her imagination, one thing led to another.

Her fantasies were beginning to become more vivid. Sometimes they made her blush. Sean just needed to look at her now and she blushed.

It was terrible!

Word was spreading about her knowledge of herbs and other remedies. It surprised Catriona. She had helped her mother’s piles, so perhaps it was Hannah who was telling everyone – at least in the Band of Jesus, where she still ruled the roost.

Certainly quite a few of the ladies from that particular organisation had come to Botanic Crescent asking for help. There had been Mrs Dawson, who had been bothered with constipation, and Mrs Green with her varicose veins. Catriona hadn’t been confident enough to risk doing anything with the varicose veins, which had been like big bunches of black grapes. She’d given Mrs Green willow herb for the pain but advised her to go to her doctor. Mrs McGurk had been miserable with diarrhoea and a stomach upset, and Catriona had given her
arsen alb
and told her to alternate it with
carbo veg
every hour for a day, then every two hours the second day.