The River Flows On (12 page)

‘No bother,’ she said, her voice very soft. Sliding her hand out of his, she rose to her feet, moved across to the kitchen table and put an arm around her sister’s shoulders.

‘Come on then, Jess. Everyone’ll be wanting tea soon. Let’s get organized.’

Jessie raised huge eyes to her. ‘What’s wrong with Barbara, Kate? One minute she was fine and the next she wasn’t. What’s the matter with her?’

‘I don’t know, Jessie,’ said Kate, and then with a cheerfulness she was far from feeling, ‘but I’m sure Dr MacMillan does. Now, up you get and see if there’s enough water in the kettle.’

Over Jessie’s head, her eyes met Robbie’s. They did their best to smile at each other.

In the event, Dr MacMillan didn’t know what was wrong with Barbara. Nothing to worry about at the moment, though, he told the Baxters confidently, the lassie was fine now. Lots of rest over the next few days and keep an eye on her. It might be an isolated incident, but since something similar had happened before, they should bring her in to see him if it occurred again.

Then Barbara herself came skipping through, apparently as right as rain and none the worse for her experience. Robbie rose to his feet, glowered at her and told her in no uncertain terms to sit down and stop dancing about like a wee daftie. Barbara ran up to him, cocked her head to one side, and said, ‘Och, Robbie.’ He sank to his knees and wrapped his arms around her.

Kate, seeing that the eyes visible over Barbara’s shoulder were too bright, immediately caused a diversion, insisting that everyone sat down at the kitchen table for their. tea, and sending Jessie to fetch the rest of the family. The Cameron family came with them and the evening became one of high spirits and gaiety. They talked about the eviction and Neil and Agnes’s part in preventing it. They discussed Kate’s new job. Jim Baxter joked that his wife had pressed Dr MacMillan to stay for two cups of tea and a large buttered slice of her home-baked fruit loaf because he was a handsome young man, not long qualified.

‘But a fine physician,’ said Neil Cameron in his deep, soft voice, holding out his own teacup to Agnes for a refill.

‘He is that,’ agreed Jim Baxter, ‘and a fine man, too. “I’ll get my fee the next time,” he says to me when I saw him out. “I know everyone’s a bit short at the moment.” That’s what he said. A fine man.’ Jim looked round the table for confirmation.

Kate caught Robbie’s eye and knew exactly what he was thinking. Please God, don’t let there be a next time.

Lying in the box bed that night, Kate found sleep elusive. It had been an eventful day. Faces swam in front of her mind’s eye: Miss Nugent, stern and disapproving, peering at her over those ridiculous glasses; Robbie and her father, both of them so delighted that she’d got a start; Agnes Baxter saving the day at the eviction.

How had she done that? By making fun of the man - turning aggression into ridicule. The way she had looked him up and down... Kate turned onto her back, eliciting a sleepy protest from Pearl.

Then there was Barbara, lying so still and silent in her brother’s arms; Jessie, desperately worried about her best friend, not understanding what was wrong; Robbie, staring into space...

She had felt so tender towards him tonight. Had wanted to put her arms around him and comfort him, draw his head down onto her breast and let him bury his face there and cry like a child if he wanted to.

Yet earlier, when he had stood shoulder to shoulder with her father and the other men, she had seen quite clearly that Robert Baxter was no longer a boy, but a man. And that was a most uncomfortable thought, especially when taken in conjunction with her desire to hold him to her breast. She turned once more onto her side.

‘Kate, in the name of the wee man, go to sleep.’

She stared into the darkness, towards the shelf at the foot of the bed. The thought of holding Robbie like that...well, it made her blush. Thank goodness it was so dark in here. She would never hear the end of it if Pearl or Jessie caught her blushing over Robbie Baxter. Ridiculous!

Pearl was snoring again. Kate wished she could fall asleep, too. Two other faces replaced Robbie’s in the blackness - the young couple who’d been saved from eviction. This time. The factors and the sheriff’s officer would be back, as sure as fate - and perhaps at a time when no one was around to stop them.

It was a terrible way to live. No money, no prospects, no hope - maybe not even a roof over their heads. Oh God, wouldn’t it be awful to have no home? What did that pair today have? Their children? Love?

In her mind’s eye Kate saw the woman’s face when she had seen her husband elbowing his way through the crowd to get to her. There had been love there, all right, as they had clung onto each other. They had both been so thin, their clothes so shabby.  Probably, like so many people in Clydebank, they went without so that their children could have enough to eat and be warmly clad.

People with no money shouldn’t really have children, should they? But children went along with love. The thought of the mechanics of how that happened made her blush again. She was a bit hazy about the details, but she knew enough to find it a bit frightening. It must hurt...

Her own father and mother had once been in love. Look what had happened to them. Lily seemed to have nothing but contempt for Neil, and he drank too much - because of the war and because life had defeated him. Both her parents were disappointed people. She wondered if that was how love always ended up. At least for people like us?

The blankets were moving at her feet. Mr Asquith was making his way up the bed.

‘Come here, baudrons,’ she whispered. ‘Come and give us a cuddle.’ She adjusted her position as far as she could so that the cat could settle into the curve of her body at her waist. Oh, he was nice and warm. ‘You’re the only man for me, Mr A,’ she told him. The cat began to purr, a soft and comforting sound in the darkness.

Sleep was still a long way off. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop thinking about the Art School and she couldn’t stop doing calculations in her head. The trouble was, no matter how hard you added money up, it didn’t make it grow anymore.

Something came back to her, pushed out until now by the events of the day. Hadn’t Miss Nugent - the old battleaxe - said something about an extra sixpence if you went to night school? Cat and sister murmured their protests as a restless Kate moved yet again.

‘Sorry,’ she muttered, more to the cat than to Pearl. She stroked the former, a little absent-mindedly, but it was enough for him to deign to remain in position and resume his purring.

Kate barely noticed. She was on to something here. There were lots of evening classes held in Clydebank - there might even be a painting one. It wouldn’t be like the Art School, of course, but it would keep her going. The local ones weren’t nearly as expensive - between about a shilling and half a crown a session. If she could scrape that out of however much of her five shillings pay her mother let her keep, she could earn more money which she could save towards the Art School. It wouldn’t leave much over for anything else, and she was going to need some new clothes - and an overall - for work.

Her brain was busy calculating. Sixpence extra a week over fifty-two weeks made one pound six shillings. It would take her almost two years to save the two guineas - and then there was the cost of materials - so it might take three years. If she did two evening classes - maybe a dressmaking one so she could make her own clothes? She’d have to pay for the cloth, of course, that would cut into the money a wee bit... This needed careful working out, but it was a real possibility.

She laid a light hand on Mr Asquith’s smooth fur. She could do it. It might take her two or three years, but she could do it. She’d have to think of a safe place for the money she was going to save. Lily would have it off her like a shot, and if her father found it in a weak moment it would end up in Connolly’s Bar. Maybe she would ask Agnes Baxter to keep it for her - or Miss Noble.

She hugged the thought to her. It made her feel as warm as the cat under her hand. It’s going to be different for me, she thought. I don’t want the life my mother has or that girl Lizzie endures. I don’t want to have a baby every year or be thrown out of my house because I haven’t got the money to pay the rent.

I am going to make something of myself. For a start, I’m going to the Art School. Come hell or high water. However long it takes.

PART II

1926

Chapter 7

In the two years Kate had been working at Donaldson’s she had never known Miss Nugent raise her voice. She didn’t have to. By sheer force of personality, and by the position she held over them, she ruled the tracers with a rod of iron. The Chief Tracer had strict rules of conduct for her girls, and she made sure that they were obeyed.

One of the strictest was that contact with the men working in the yard was to be avoided at all costs. This was not too difficult, given that the girls worked office hours. By the time they arrived at work at ten to nine, the men had been in for over an hour, and went home correspondingly early. That arrangement, Kate had to admit, had a lot to recommend it. The girls arrived and left by the small door within the main gates which Kate had used on her first visit to Donaldson’s. For the 3000 men who worked at the yard, the gates had to be thrown open wide. When the hooter sounded at the end of the working day, no one wasted any time in leaving the workplace. Finding yourself in that stream of humanity flowing joyfully out into the street on its boisterous way home might well be an overwhelming experience for any girl.

The measures taken to prevent Miss Nugent’s young ladies from coming into contact with the trainee draughtsmen working on the floor above them, seemed, however, to have less to do with safety. They too worked office hours, but were required to be at their drawing boards five minutes before the girls started and left five minutes later than they did at night. That didn’t stop them leaning out of the windows and wolf-whistling while the girls were crossing the yard on their way home, much to Miss Nugent’s tut-tutting disapproval.

It had embarrassed Kate at first, but she had learned to take it in her stride. Like the other girls, she soon became adept at throwing the occasional bit of banter back up at the smiling faces. Despite retaining a good measure of her own natural reserve, she was quite capable of giving as good as she got. After all, she was over eighteen now, no longer a schoolgirl.

If she did, very occasionally, meet any of the draughtsmen on the stairs, they were unfailingly polite and courteous to her, especially, it had to be admitted, a young man called Peter Watt. The other girls teased her about him - until they found out about Robbie.

He had waited behind one wild winter’s afternoon to see her safely home - a fatal mistake. Kate had told him off for it, but by then the damage had been done. All the girls had seen him, standing by the main gate and turning with a smile as Kate approached. When Bella Buchanan, one of the girls who’d started with Kate two years before, had spotted her and Robbie at the cinema two weeks in a row, the bush telegraph had swung into action. Within twenty-four hours every tracer in Donaldson’s knew Robbie’s name, what age he was, where he worked in the yard and that he and Kate lived up the same close in Yoker.

‘Childhood sweethearts!’ Bella declaimed. ‘That’s dead romantic!’

Aware of the tendency among some of her charges to hang back for that five minutes which separated their departure time from that of the draughtsmen, Miss Nugent wasn’t above coming into the large washroom where they all went to comb their hair and put on their hats before leaving, in order to shoo them home.

Nor was there much chance of meeting and chatting to the draughtsmen during the day. The drawings emanating from that office, which provided the girls with their tracing work, were either delivered to their own room, or fetched by Miss Nugent herself. Kate always smiled when she remembered how Bella had tried to circumvent that rule.

‘Shall I go up and get the next batch of drawings, Miss N?’ she had asked innocently, turning her sweet, blue-eyed gaze upon her supervisor. ‘To save you the climb up the stairs?’

‘Thank you, Miss Buchanan, but no. I think I can cope with the stairs. I’m not quite in my dotage yet.’ Miss Nugent had smiled frostily at Bella over the pince-nez specs.

‘In the name of the wee man!’ Bella declared that lunchtime as the girls congregated in the washroom to  titivate in front of the mirrors. ‘How does that old witch ever expect me to find myself a man?’