The River Flows On (49 page)

‘Not too realistic? she had asked the man, her tongue firmly in her cheek.

The gallery owner had given her a look. ‘Tastes change - as you know very well, Kate Baxter.’ They were on good terms now. He had taken a few of her paintings over the past year, but he had never paid her this much for them. The few pounds she had earned had gone into the housekeeping or the emergency fund, but there was enough to do something more this time.

Robbie, watching her, narrowed his eyes at the expression on her face. She was up to something. She made him wait, spinning it out, getting her revenge for all the times he had teased her and Grace by doing exactly the same.

‘Right,’ she began. ‘Monday night,’ she said, ticking it off on her fingers, ‘you go to your literature class, and I stay at home with Grace. Yes?’ He nodded. ‘Thursday night Grace goes to Yoker and we both go to the drama group. Yes?’ He nodded again, a cautious smile beginning to steal over his face. She was enjoying herself. Whatever was coming was going to be good.

‘Saturday afternoon I go to the art club and Jessie usually takes Grace out somewhere.’ Kate ticked off her fourth point. ‘So can I take it you wouldn’t mind looking after Grace on a Wednesday night? When I go to my pottery class at the Art School?’ Like himself when he had told her about the resumption of work on the 534, she was bursting with the joy of it.

‘You’ve enrolled? Och, Kate, that’s great! That’s just wonderful!’ He threw his arms about her and kissed her soundly. ‘I knew I was right to encourage you,’ he said, laughing down at her. ‘Paintings and pottery, eh? You’ll be able to keep us all in the lap of luxury soon. We’ll be that rich we won’t know what to do with all the money. Right, Grace?’ He extended a hand to their daughter, bringing her into the embrace;

Kate smiled down at Grace and then up at her husband.

‘Huh! Maybe I’m hoping you’ll become a famous writer first.’

His eyes grew soft, as soft as his deep and gentle voice. ‘We’ve both got our dreams, lassie. Shall we dream them together?’

The following month they stood and watched another dream sail away from the Clyde: they and thousands of others. It was March 1936 and the 534, the
Queen Mary
now, was leaving the river of her birth for ever.

Spectators filled every vantage point. They lined both banks of the river and watched from the high ground overlooking it. Peter Watt had organized a tour for a group of his workmates and their families. They crossed on the Yoker Ferry to Renfrew, where a specially hired bus took them down past Erskine to Bishopton.

The view they had from there was everything they could have wished for. Resplendent in the bonnie colours Grace Baxter had longed for, the
Queen Mary
glided past them, her hull black and red, her superstructure white, her three funnels red with black bands at the top. Mary Watt wasn’t the only woman - nor man either - to have tears pouring down her face at the sight. The greatest liner ever built was steaming down the Clyde, taking a sure and steady course between the green hills, heading for the Firth and the open sea.

‘Och, she’s so lovely ... but it’s so sad to see her go!’

‘It’s what she was made for, Mary,’ said Robbie, ‘but you’re right. It is sad.’ His voice was husky. Kate, also unashamedly in tears, slipped her hand into his and gave his fingers a squeeze. He smiled at her and then raised his voice.

‘Let’s give her a proper send-off all the same. Three cheers for the
Queen Mary
, the pride of the Clyde!’

And the men who had helped build her opened their mouths and threw their bunnets in the air and did as he asked.

She had been part of their lives, in good times and bad, for almost six years. They had loved her and hated her, grown older in the building of her, put the skill of their hands and the strength of their backs into the work: aye, and their hearts and souls, too.

Two great Queens were to come after her. They would be proud of them too: proud to say that they were Clyde-built; that they had worked on them. There would be moist eyes and lumps in the throat when they left the river, but the
Mary
was special.

They had built her for this. Their eyes followed with pride her majestic progress towards the sea and her rendezvous with the ocean. That was her destiny. They had always known that.

Pride, then: overwhelming, intense and life-long. But sorrow too, the sweet sadness of farewell. One description of that day summed it up better than most.
She leaves a big gap in the landscape, and a hole in the hearts of thousands of Clydesiders.

PART IV

1939

Chapter 32

A war was inevitable. Everybody knew that now. The policy of Appeasement hadn’t worked. Robbie had never been in favour of it, declaring firmly that ‘yon wee nyaff, Adolf Hitler’ was a bully, and that bullies had to be dealt with. Never mind if the Prime Minister had come back from Munich waving a wee bit of paper and yattering on about peace in our time, sooner or later Great Britain was going to have to stand up to Herr Hitler and his Nazis.

Now, in the summer of 1939, frantic preparations were being made for war. Men were quietly being called up to the three services - the beginnings of the full-scale conscription which was to come in 1940 - and endless discussions were held about the advisability of evacuating women and children to the country. Places like Clydebank and Glasgow, filled with shipyards and other heavy industries crucial to the war effort, were bound to be targets. This war wasn’t going to be like the last one, where the men marched off and the women and children stayed at home. This time home was going to be one of the main fronts.

Anxious to do his bit, Robbie had volunteered for the Navy several months before war was declared, asserting that it was only a matter of time before he would be called up anyway. At thirty-two years old, he was in the prime of life, fit and healthy, and with valuable, if brief, experience in the Merchant Navy. He’d been whisked off at once for basic training.

Kate hadn’t stood in his way, but she prayed every day there wouldn’t be a war, that the statesmen could still sit down together and work it all out. That was becoming an ever more forlorn hope, and she knew that as well as anybody.

As summer drew to an end, different emotions were evident among the younger members of the family. The Baxter girls were excited at the prospect of young single women being called up, seeing an escape from the much more predictable future previously mapped out for them. Wee Davie, at nineteen not quite so wee, was also unsuccessfully hiding wild enthusiasm at the thought of getting into uniform. Neil Cameron sat in his chair and shook his greying head as he listened to the news bulletins on the family’s recently acquired wireless.

‘I can remember the last time,’ was all he said in his soft Highland accent, looking sadly up at the youngest member of his family, now as tall as himself. The nightmares had come back. It was Jessie now who had to help Lily calm him down.

Kate wasn’t sure if her sister had finally given up on Andrew Baxter. He too was eager to join up. He’d taken himself off to Spain a year after the
Queen Mary
had sailed away, joining the International Brigade to defend the beleaguered Republican government there against the fascists. Jessie had gone white when she’d read the letter he’d left for her.

Pale to the lips, she had spoken in an agonized whisper to an anxiously hovering Kate.

‘The silly bugger’s going to get himself killed.’

It was the only time she ever heard Jessie swear. The silly bugger, however, had not got himself killed, but had come back from Spain with his enthusiasm for fighting fascism undimmed.

In August Robbie was allowed home on a forty-eight-hour leave. They spent the second night of it alone, Grace safely dispatched to Yoker.

They ate, took a late evening walk by the river in the autumn twilight, and returned home to make love to each other in the big brass bed, falling asleep afterwards locked in each other’s arms. Waking, cold and shivering, in the wee small hours, Kate pulled the blankets up over both of them. Then, sure that he was sound asleep, she turned on her side away from him and succumbed to silent sobs.

He felt them though, stirring awake a moment or two later. His arms, warm and heavy with sleep, came round her, pulling her towards him. She turned into his chest, her hand resting on the solid and reassuring thump of his heart. He kissed her hair and murmured little words of comfort and they fell asleep together once more.

He woke her early and made tender, fierce and silent love to her. Only when the sensations had faded and they lay facing each other did he speak.

‘I don’t want you to come to the station to see me off.’

She started to protest, but he kissed her to stop the words.

‘Please, Kate. I want to remember you like this.’ He kissed her again. ‘Your lips soft and well-kissed.’ Another kiss. ‘Your body warm and well-loved.’ And another, his hand stroking her arm from wrist to shoulder. ‘Your hair needing combed.’

He smiled, trying to lighten the mood, but there was a plea in his grey eyes. She searched his face and answered it in mundane, ordinary words.

‘All right, but I am getting up to make your breakfast.’

‘What else do I keep you for, woman?’

Normally they sat opposite each other at the square table, with Grace between them. Today Kate, a pretty cotton dressing gown over her nightdress, sat at Grace’s place, although she couldn’t bring herself to eat anything. She was finding it hard enough to swallow a few mouthfuls of tea. They were both very matter-of-fact. They discussed practicalities. How would they organize money while he was away? How would they keep in touch with each other? Should Kate allow Grace to be evacuated to the country?

‘Maybe you should think of going too,’ he suggested, spreading his second slice of toast with butter bought specially in honour of his brief homecoming. There were dire warnings going the rounds about rationing being introduced if the war did come, in which case, whether he liked it or not, Robbie was probably going to have to put up with margarine when he was on leave.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You’re doing your bit and I think maybe that I want to do my bit too.’

‘How, exactly?’ He took a bite of toast.

Kate poured him another cup of tea. ‘Mary Watt says Peter told her that Brown’s are looking for more tracers - experienced ones. Apparently they think a lot of the young girls will join up if the war comes - they might even be called up like the men - so she says they’re considering taking on married women. People like me, who were tracers before they got married.’

He nodded his head, thinking about it. ‘Well, if they do, it would certainly keep you occupied. Stop you worrying so much about me.’ He smiled and touched her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. ‘And it’s important work - you’d be doing your bit all right. If it does come to war, there’s bound to be losses at sea. Oh!’ Too late, he realized what he had said. Kate bit her lip. He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. I’ll be as safe as houses. I’ll lay you ten to one that I end up in Scapa Flow.’

‘ScapaFlow?’

‘Aye, it’s way up north, in the Orkneys. A natural harbour formed by the islands. It’s where the German fleet sank at the end of the Great War.’

‘Thanks, Robbie, that’s very reassuring.’

He grinned. ‘They did it deliberately. Scuttled themselves because they were in enemy hands. The Flow’s really safe - honestly, Kate. We’ve had lectures about it during training. Look, I’ll show you.’ He dropped her hand and starting rearranging the dishes which lay on the table.

‘Right. Imagine that the teapot here is the main island. To the south-west of it there’s a few small islands and a bigger one called Hoy. We’ll use your saucer for that.’ He positioned it. ‘Then there’s these three wee islands that form a sort of a chain round the eastern side, shielding it from anything coming from that direction - and that’s where it would come from.’

His smile a little grim, he moved the milk jug, sugar bowl and butter dish into position.