The River Flows On (47 page)

His voice was gruff. ‘You haven’t realized it too late. Not as far as I’m concerned.’ His next words were tentative and uncertain. ‘Do you want to start again, Kate?’

Kate lifted her chin. It was courage that was needed here, not tears. Courage enough not to settle for second best. For both their sakes.

‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘I do. But not if I have to go around apologizing for the rest of my life. Not if it’s always going to be cast up at me. Not if you don’t allow me to make mistakes sometimes.’

There was a catch in his voice. ‘Make as many as you like - just as long as you come back to me!’

‘Och, Robbie!’ Was it her or him who closed the distance between them? No matter. They were in each other’s arms.

‘Hush, now. Hush. Don’t fight me,’ he added, for she was struggling a little in his embrace.

‘Och, Robbie!’ She looked up at him, impatiently wiping away a tear. ‘I was trying to be all grown-up and calm about it, and here I am crying on your shoulder. Like I’ve always done.’

‘That’s what shoulders are for,’ he said comfortably. ‘And I’ve cried on yours too, haven’t I?’ He pulled her head down. ‘Now cry. Cry for as long as you like.’

‘But Robbie ...’

His arms tightened around her. ‘Dae as you’re tellt, Kate Baxter.’ He gave her back the words with which she had comforted him the night his beloved sister Barbara had died. ‘It’s all worth crying for, isn’t it?’

There were to be many more tears in the days and weeks that followed - but no recriminations. That they had decided as they had stood by the Clyde at midnight, listening to the ships’ foghorns heralding the arrival of 1934 in the time-honoured way. A new year, and a new start for them, Robbie had said.

It wasn’t an easy time. Until they found a new place of their own, their only privacy was a nightly walk by the river. That was where they talked it all out. They were very frank with each other - and the tears were not all on Kate’s side. Robbie got upset too, especially when he asked her to forgive him for breaking their wedding.vows.

‘I hated myself for doing it, Kate. Each time - afterwards, I mean - well, I felt disgusted with myself.’ He paused, and reached for her hand as they walked. ‘If it’s any consolation, the last time was six months ago.’ He swallowed, and she realized he was forcing himself to tell her this. ‘I did it all at the beginning. I think I went a wee bit mad after I left here... ’ His voice trailed off.

‘I won’t pretend that it doesn’t hurt,’ she said when she felt able to speak. ‘It does. But I think - maybe – I can understand why you did it.’

He stopped and took her other hand in his. ‘I don’t deserve your forgiveness, Kate.’

‘Aye you do,’ she whispered, looking up into his troubled face.

‘Och, Kate,’ he said. ‘Och, Kate.’

She took him to their baby’s grave and he stood there for a long time with his head bowed. She gave him the time he needed, but when he raised his head at last she was beside him, wordlessly offering him the comfort of her arms. He arranged for the stone Kate hadn’t been able to afford and when the spring came they went with Grace to lay daffodils in front of it in memory of Neil James Baxter.

‘We’ll plant some daffodil bulbs for your wee brother later on,’ Robbie said, squeezing Kate’s hand and smiling down at Grace. ‘Flowers that’ll go on living from year to year.’

In private, Kate had told him anxiously that there could be no more children.

‘We’ve got Grace, haven’t we?’ He read the question in her eyes. ‘Grace is my daughter,’ he told her, ‘our daughter. In every way that matters.’

‘Then why did you sign your postcards
R. Baxter
?

He looked nonplussed. ‘Because it didn’t seem right to put
Daddy
on something that everyone was going to be reading.’

‘That was all?’

‘Did you worry about that? You’re a daft bisom, Kate Baxter, d’ye know that?’ His smile slipped. ‘Och, but lassie, I’m sorry you had to go through so much on your own.’

He had listened gravely as she had recounted the story of her haemorrhage, and how she had woken up in hospital afterwards to be told of the operation. When she finished speaking, he pulled her into his arms for a few moments, trying to imbue her with some of his own strength.

She was so thin. Maybe he would take her to Millport for a few days once the weather got a bit better. Shovel food and fresh air into her.

When he released her from his embrace his smile was wry. ‘No wonder Neil wants to punch me in the mouth.’

Kate’s father, in fact, had thawed a little. Watching like a hawk when they came back into the house on New Year’s morning, he had relaxed visibly when he had seen that they were holding hands. He had unbent further the next day when Kate had shown the womenfolk of the two families the beautiful pearls Robbie had brought her back from America.

‘I got them in Boston,’ he told her when he gave them to her, ‘and wondered if I would ever be able to give them to you. I felt so unworthy of you by then,’ he went on, his voice husky and his eyes bright with unshed tears. ‘You made one mistake. I’d... Well, I’d deliberately gone and done what I did.’

‘Don’t torture yourself about it,’ she said softly.

‘If you promise me the same,’ he said earnestly. ‘Shall we agree to forgive each other, Kate?’

‘Aye,’ she said, ‘we’ll agree to forgive each other.’

Chapter 31

‘Robert Baxter, why are you grinning like an eejit?’

He had just come through the door of their new home in Dumbarton Road, not far from their first house at the foot of Kilbowie Road but with a bit more space this time. The two-apartment room and kitchen had been funded by Robbie’s accumulated pay from his months on the
Border Reiver
.

His eyes were sparkling. He had swung the door shut and was leaning against it, his arms behind his back.

‘Guess,’ he told Kate who, a mixing bowl in the crook of her left arm, was creaming sugar and margarine together for the start of the sponge cake she was making.

‘Och, I’ve no idea.’ She glanced at the Be-Ro recipe book open on the table, propped the wooden spoon carefully against the side of the bowl and ran her index finger down the list of ingredients, more concerned with doing a mental check of her cupboards than in answering him.

‘Shall I tell you then?’

‘Aye, go on. Grace! A wee bit less raspberry, pet.’ Grace was ‘helping’ her mother by finishing off the Eiffel Towers. Since this involved dipping the cooled baked cakes in a glaze made from raspberry jam and water and then rolling them in dessicated coconut, the potential for disaster was quite considerable. She should have known better. Kate set the mixing bowl down on the table and looked around for a damp cloth. There had been one here a minute ago.

‘Kate, for Pete’s sake. Pay attention!’

He was beside her, grabbing her by the waist and whirling her around the room. Grace clapped her sticky hands together in delight. Her rather winked at her and kissed her mother soundly on the cheek. Grace chortled.

‘Robbie! Put me down! I’m covered in flour!’

He laughed. ‘Who cares? Now, are you going to ask me again why I’m grinning like an eejit?’

Kate raised her hands in surrender. His enthusiasm was infectious.

‘All right! All right! Tell us what you’ve got to smile about.’

He released her and started ticking them off on his fingers.

‘One. I’m married to the most beautiful girl in the world.’ He kissed her again before waltzing across the room to lift Grace into his arms. ‘Two. I’ve got the bonniest wee daughter in the world.’ He planted a kiss on her cheek too.

‘You’re daft, Daddy.’ Grace laughed and took his chin between her small hands.

‘As a brush,’ he agreed. He paused for effect. Kate, also for effect, folded her arms over her flowery wrap-around pinny and tapped her foot. They grinned at each other.

‘All right. I’ll ask you. What’s number three?’

‘Number three, my dear girls,’ - he was going to burst if he didn’t get it out soon, - ‘is that work is restarting on the 534! Next week! The day after Easter Monday!’

And then they were all three dancing round the room, and Robbie, tasting of raspberry jam, was kissing both of them and Kate was crying and laughing at the same time.

Clydebank was a town transformed. The Cunarder was to be launched that September and there was no time to be lost. Men streamed joyfully back to work. That first day back, at the beginning of April 1934, they were led through the gates of Brown’s by two kilted pipers, and the streets of the town were decorated with bunting.

Some were worried how they would cope with the hard work after so long being idle, but they set to work with a will. One man was told sternly by a foreman that his tools were a bit rusted.

‘You should see my frying pan,’ came the reply.

But the pots and pans were full again. The men were working and there was food on the table - and Clydebank was noisy once more. Living so close to the yard, Kate could hear it constantly: the clang of hammers and machinery and the constant hum of talk. It was more than that. In the yard and out in the town itself, people were light-hearted again, chatting and telling jokes. Men no longer stood aimlessly at street corners all day. The pall of despair had lifted. Maybe, folk said, work starting again on the 534 was the turning point for the whole country to get back on its feet. Maybe the Great Depression itself would soon be over.

Kate Baxter was happy too. It wasn’t only that she’d caught the general mood of optimism, powerful though that was. It was more that she started each day with a joyous thankfulness that she and Robbie had been given a second chance - that they had given each other that second chance.

They made good use of their fresh start. They took pleasure in each other’s company by day and delighted in their nights together, private in the front room while Grace slept snugly in the box bed in the kitchen. They had bought a brass bedstead second-hand. They’d got it cheap - a real bargain. People were beginning to find them old-fashioned, but Kate had always wanted one of her own. She made the bedspread herself out of heavy white cotton which was on special offer at Clydebank Co-op, and used what was left to make pillowcases which she decorated with cutwork.

‘Mmm,’ murmured her young husband. ‘What more does a man need than you with your hair spread all over a white pillow, your arms flung up beside your head and your fingers tightening around the rails of the bedhead? Och, Kate, my bonnie lassie, my nut-brown maiden ...’

They made time for their family and friends, seeing a lot of Mary and Peter Watt and their young son Adam, whom five-year-old Grace treated with great condescension. The two families went on trips together: up the West Highland line on the train on days out;
doon the watter
on the pleasure steamers which plied the Firth of Clyde.

They worked hard and they played hard. Kate went back to the art club, experienced enough now that she could take on some tutoring of the newer members. Encouraged by Mary and Peter, she and Robbie got involved with a local drama group, Kate quickly becoming the set designer, painter and general stage manager. Robbie did the carpentry work for her and found time to write a play about the Cunarder which the group performed. It was sharp and witty and full of topical jokes and the plucky young lovers he put into it bore a remarkable resemblance to Kate and Robert Baxter.

He had re-written the poems he had burned, shyly offering them to her one Sunday evening before having to leave the house while she read them because he was so embarrassed. He apologized profusely for them on his return a quarter of an hour later, telling her how bad they were.

‘They’re very derivative,’ he started. He’d been attending an evening class in English literature, and was beginning to acquire the vocabulary. ‘There’s a lot of the other Robbie in there - Burns, I mean.’ He smiled sheepishly. She stopped him with a hand over his mouth.