A dutiful daughter, p.10
A Dutiful Daughter, page 10
It was the first time for weeks that she had asked about him.
‘I got a letter last week. He doesn’t have much to say – you know Donald, he was never a great letter writer. But he’s fine, still working away and saving for our house.’
‘Imagine,’ Grace said. ‘One day you and me might be sitting in America talking about the old days in Paisley. And I’m sure that we’ll both be very happy with our new lives.’
Bob and Agnes had decided to marry at the beginning of August so that they could take advantage of the annual Paisley Fair Fortnight, when the mills closed for the summer holidays. Mirren, with no money to buy clothes for the event, was rescued by Anne Proctor, who loaned her a particularly stylish cream-coloured georgette dress with a matching hem-length jacket. A single button fastened the jacket at the waist, and the cuffs and collar were dark blue, as was the brimmed straw hat. Both dress and jacket, a little too large for her, had to be pulled in with safety pins, each placed where it wouldn’t be seen.
‘Just don’t take the jacket off,’ Anne had said as Mirren revolved before her for final inspection. ‘If you do you’ll get us both red faces, for the pins at your waist’ll easily be seen.’ Then, with a frown: ‘You know, Mirren, you should eat more. You’re too thin.’
Agnes wore a jersey-silk jacket and matching skirt striped in light and dark green. The tailored style and shawl collar suited her slight figure but beneath her small black velvet hat, decorated with a pale-green silk bow pinned at one side, her face was knotted with worry.
‘Am I doin’ the right thing?’ she burst out as soon as her mother ushered Mirren into the small flat.
‘For any favour lassie, will ye tell her? I’m tired of sayin’ it, but she’ll no’ believe me,’ Mrs McNair said wearily.
‘Of course you’re doing the right thing. You and Bob are perfect for each other.’
‘I couldnae sleep last night for wonderin’ if yer mother was mebbe right and I was turnin’ my back on Crawford.’
Mirren rescued the pale-green glove from her sister-in-law, who seemed bent on twisting it into a rope. ‘I knew Crawford for longer than you did and I can promise you that he’d want this marriage for your sake… and for Thomas’s. The wee lad needs a father. Where is he?’
‘Ben the hoose.’ Mrs McNair indicated the other room in the small flat with a jerk of the head. ‘I set him down in a chair tae look at a picture book and he’s been well told not tae move till he’s fetched.’
Mirren glanced at the sunlight streaming in the single kitchen window. It was a perfect August day. ‘You’ll not have a fire on…?’
‘No, but the armchair’s up against the grate.’ They had guarded against leaving Thomas alone in a room with an empty hearth ever since the day when, aged fifteen months and too small to reach up to the handle of the closed door, he had tried to escape boredom via the chimney. Showering soot all the way, he had been carried by his mother at arm’s length to the landing, where he had been forcibly detained on several sheets of newspaper while a tub was filled with warm water. It had taken a good hour to rid him of the soft clinging soot and a day or two to clean the stuff from the front room, the rest of the flat, and the clothes Thomas and Agnes had been wearing at the time.
‘Do I look all right? D’ye think Bob’ll like it?’ Agnes’s mind, which had been conditioned to worry from the day her young husband had gone off to war, settled on a fresh problem.
‘You’re beautiful and he’ll be fair delighted with himself for having had the sense to choose you,’ Mirren assured her, and the young woman glowed.
‘You look lovely too, doesn’t she, Ma?’
‘Aye, ye’ll make a bonny bride when yer own turn comes, lass.’
Mirren flushed with pleasure and thanked her lucky stars for the Proctor family’s generosity and dress sense.
‘Look…’ Agnes lifted back a tea cloth that had been laid on the draining board by the sink to reveal two perfect roses, one pink and one red, lying on a nest of tissue paper. Each flower, just opening into full beauty, nestled against a spray of fern. ‘Bob sent them, the pink one for me and the red one for you.’ She lifted them reverently, her eyes star-bright. ‘Wasn’t that kind of him?’
‘And there she is, wonderin’ if she should marry the man,’ Mrs McNair put in, raising her eyes to the shabby ceiling. ‘If I was you, our Agnes, I’d run tae that church as fast as my legs’d take me just in case some other woman gets a hold of him first.’
By the time the roses were pinned on and Mrs McNair had arranged her favourite bunch of artificial violets on her own lapel, they were due to leave for the North Church, where Agnes and Bob were to be married in the vestry. While Mrs McNair, in black as always, skewered her practical hat to her head with large hatpins, Mirren opened the front-room door and Thomas bounced free, spotless in a little sailor suit Bob had bought for him. The sight of his mother, grandmother and aunt in unfamiliar finery brought on an attack of shyness and it took some coaxing and bribery in the form of a penny before he agreed to leave the flat.
When they turned the corner into Love Street, Bob and Robbie and a third man were waiting at the door of the church. ‘He came!’ Agnes said joyfully.
‘Of course he came. Did you think he’d jilt you?’
‘Of course not.’ Agnes beamed at her sister-in-law. ‘Not my Bob!’ As she almost ran along the pavement, Bob, a pink rose identical to hers on his jacket, hurried forward to take both her hands. Mirren, following at a more sedate pace with Mrs McNair, smiled at the couple, then felt the smile chill on her lips as she looked beyond them to the man by the church door. Today his black hair, longer than was usual for 1920, was sleeked back and he wore a pinstriped suit with a red rose on the lapel instead of a shirt and braces, but there was no mistaking his height and the gangly way he held himself, or the long thin face, dominated by direct blue eyes under shaggy brows.
‘Isn’t this a stroke of luck!’ Robbie chortled as Mirren reached the church door. ‘I’d not realised that Bob and Joe were related. Joe, this is Mirren, the sister I’m always talking about.’
Joe Hepburn’s dismay at this second meeting was as great as Mirren’s. His hand barely clasped hers and their greetings were muttered, but nobody noticed in the scurry to get into the vestry where the black-robed minister awaited them.
In order to involve Thomas in their wedding day, Bob and Agnes had allowed him to choose the venue for their wedding breakfast, which meant that once the brief ceremony was over the small group walked from the church to Nardini’s ice-cream parlour in Moss Street, where Bob ordered large dishes of ice cream with raspberry sauce for all.
Mrs McNair found the whole thing embarrassing, especially as the sight of the little party dressed in their best and with flowers in their lapels aroused the interest of everyone else in the parlour. ‘I could have made sandwiches, and wee sponge cakes as well,’ she explained earnestly to Mirren and Joe Hepburn. ‘We could have gone back tae my house and had somethin’ proper tae eat.’
‘I know, Ma, but we needed tae let Thomas be part of the day,’ Agnes explained, her attention divided between mopping red-and-white smears from her son’s face and admiring the narrow gold band circling the third finger of her left hand. Crawford’s wedding and engagement rings had been put away carefully in a small satin-lined box.
‘I l-like ice cream.’ It was almost the first time Joe Hepburn had spoken, and it was the first civil thing Mirren had ever heard from him. He smiled at Thomas and dug his spoon into the crimson-splashed mound of ice cream on his own plate.
‘Me too. I think I’ll have exactly this sort of feast at my wedding if I ever have one,’ Robbie agreed enthusiastically, while Mrs McNair poked her own spoon at the melting heap before her.
‘I cannae take tae it myself. It’s awful cold.’
‘That’s why it’s called ice cream, Ma, because it’s cold.’
‘I know that! Ye’re gettin’ awful cheeky, our Agnes, now that ye’re callin’ yerself Mrs McCulloch,’ her mother told her, and Agnes flushed and giggled and rolled her eyes at Bob, who was also pink with pleasure. ‘Just wait till yer teeth have reached my age. They cannae be doin’ with hot and cold when they get older. It jabs right through the gums. We’ll all go back tae my place for a wee cup of tea after, will we?’
‘I’ll take your ice cream, Granny,’ Thomas offered.
‘Ye will not,’ his mother said swiftly. ‘Ye’ll make yerself sick, and we don’t want that tae happen when your granny’s left tae look after ye. Lean over here a minute; ye’ve got cream all over yer face.’ She took a handkerchief from her bag, folded it and spat neatly to moisten it. When she tried to wipe her son’s face he shied away from her, and Bob, who had scraped up the last of his ice cream, took out his own snowy handkerchief.
‘Over here, son. It takes a man’s ’kerchief tae dae a man’s work, eh?’
‘Aye,’ Thomas agreed gruffly, slipping from his chair and going to stand by his new stepfather, who used one corner of the handkerchief to wipe cream and raspberry sauce from the small pursed mouth before tying it round the child’s neck to protect his sailor suit.
‘There, that’s the sailor all shipshape again.’ Bob lifted the little boy up onto his chair while Agnes beamed proudly at her new family. Watching the three of them, Mirren wished that her mother could have been there to see their happiness.
Joe Hepburn left them when they emerged from the ice-cream parlour, after shaking hands all round.
‘We’ll need tae have ye over once we’ve settled in,’ Agnes told him, and he ducked his head briefly and said, ‘Aye, m-mebbe.’
‘Hold on, Joe, I’ll come with ye.’ Robbie planted a kiss on his sister-in-law’s cheek and shook Bob by the hand. ‘It was a grand wedding and I hope you’ll both be very happy… the three of you,’ he added, bending down to shake Thomas by the hand.
‘Joe might not come visiting,’ Bob warned his bride as the rest of the wedding party set off for Mrs McNair’s flat. ‘He’s always been a solitary kind of man, not like Molly at all. It was tae do with his upbringin’.’
‘What about his upbringing?’ Agnes wanted to know.
‘It was all a bit of a mixter-maxter from what I heard. The old man – that’d be Joe and Molly’s grandfather – was a right rascal, fond of the drink and of… well, too fond of the sort of company a decent man shouldnae seek,’ Bob improvised, a red wave rising from his high white collar. ‘And a bully too, in his younger days. Joe’s father was the opposite: a decent, God-fearing soul who’d never say boo tae a goose.’
‘Weak,’ Mrs McNair diagnosed crisply.
‘I’d not say that. Just… not good at making decisions since his father had never allowed him tae have a crack at it. It was Molly’s mother that ran their house and seemingly she was bent on makin’ sure that her son was neither a drinker nor a womaniser… nor a man who couldnae make up his own mind. Molly said her mother was harder on Joe than on her lassies. It sounded tae me like a strange kind of household,’ Bob finished.
‘Me too.’ Agnes shivered and tightened her grip on his arm. ‘We’ll not have that sort of life at all, will we?’
Thomas was staying with his grandmother for a few days so that the newly married couple could enjoy some privacy in Bob’s flat, then the four of them, Agnes’s mother included, were going off for a week to the seaside. There was no such pleasure on the horizon for Mirren; after taking a cup of tea with what was left of the wedding party, she hurried home to change out of her wedding finery and see to her mother before going off to work in the fried-fish shop. Maria and Vanni never took time off, nor did they ever consider that their assistants might like to have a holiday. Usually Ella went with her aunts for a week in Troon, ignoring Maria’s mutterings, but this year, as her Aunt Margaret was in indifferent health and the holiday had been cancelled, Ella had decided to go to work as usual.
‘And yer mother never said a word about it, even when you and Robbie went off all dressed up?’ She shovelled just the right number of chips onto a waxed paper square.
‘Nothing at all, but she had me running after her from the moment I got back. I scarcely had time to change out of my good clothes.’ Mirren passed the big salt container and the vinegar bottle along the counter and watched, her stomach rumbling, as Ella distributed just the right amount of each, then tucked and folded the paper. She hadn’t had time to eat anything before hurrying out, and tonight the smell of chips and fried fish, which she normally couldn’t stomach, was tempting. But wherever she was, whatever she was doing, Maria had eyes as sharp as an eagle’s and nobody, even Vanni, dared to eat even one crispy little chip that wasn’t paid for.
‘A fish supper, is it?’ Ella tossed a glance over her shoulder at the empty tray and told the next customer, ‘Ye’ll have tae wait for the fish, but it’ll not be long.’ Then, flashing the warm smile that captivated everyone: ‘And it’s worth the waiting. Vanni’s the best fryer in the town. Is that not right, Vanni?’
‘That’s me.’ He tossed a grin over his shoulder then went back to his work, shoulders hunching as Maria’s voice cut like a cold knife through the hot air. ‘He’d be the fastest too, if he didnae waste time chatterin’.’
‘I hope I never turn out like your mother,’ Ella said on the way home. ‘I know she’s not well and that must be terrible for her, but it’s surely not a reason to be so nasty about Agnes. Will the wee one keep visiting her?’
‘Agnes says yes. It gives her and Bob a chance to have some time on their own every other Sunday.’
The last part of the walk home, once Ella had gone, seemed even harder than usual for Mirren tonight. Her feet dragged along one after the other like whining children having to be pulled along a road, and every muscle in her legs and back ached. It would have been quite easy just to give up and lie down on the hard stone pavement and drift into a deep sleep. When she finally managed to trudge up the slope from the bottom of Maxwellton Street she found Robbie already sitting at the closemouth.
‘I thought I’d get a breath of fresh air.’ He reached up a hand and drew her down beside him; then, easing the packet of fish and chips out from under her arm: ‘And I was hungry.’
‘What would you have done if I hadn’t brought anything home with me?’
‘Sent ye back for it.’ He started to unwrap the paper, sniffing appreciatively.
‘Wait till we get upstairs,’ Mirren protested, but he was already breaking the battered fish in two.
‘I’m too hungry tae wait. Anyway, it’s nice eating out in the fresh air… like a picnic. Have some.’ He held the packet out to her.
‘What about Mother?’
‘Asleep. I looked in on her five minutes ago, and she’s well away. Go on.’
Mirren took a piece of fish. It melted in her mouth, and so did the next piece. Between them they devoured the food, eating with their fingers, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the hard step while tramcars rocketed noisily along nearby Broomlands Road. When they had finished they wiped their greasy fingers carefully on a clean area of the newspaper in which the fish supper had been wrapped, and sat on, enjoying the soft warm twilight.
‘It was a nice wedding, wasn’t it?’ Robbie said suddenly. ‘I think Agnes has done the right thing.’
‘There’s no doubt about it. I just wish Mother and Logan could understand that.’
‘Ach, there’s no changing some folk.’ There was a pause before he said soberly, ‘One of the lads who just finished his apprenticeship was turned off today in the factory.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there’s not enough work for everyone.’
The serious note in his voice awakened an anxious tremor in Mirren’s stomach. ‘Was he in the same department as you?’
‘No.’
‘Well then… you’ll be all right when your time comes.’
‘There’s rumours going round, Mirren. The factories are letting men go, just here and there, one or two at a time. But it’s happenin’. I’m wonderin’ if it’s worth finishin’ my time at all.’
‘Of course it is! You’ve only got a few more months to go.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then they take you on as a tradesman. And if they don’t,’ she rushed on, as he opened his mouth to speak, ‘there are other places… plenty of them!’
‘I don’t know. Joe says there’s unemployment coming and the first tae go’ll be the younger men like me, because once apprentices become time-served men the employers have tae pay them full wages.’
‘What does Joe Hepburn know about employment!’
‘He goes tae a lot of meetings and he’s attended classes too, so he’s got a good idea of what’s going on in this country.’
‘He’s got no right to worry you over something that might not happen.’
‘Joe’s a fair man,’ Robbie protested. ‘He’d not say anythin’ unless he believed it.’
‘We’d best get in.’ Mirren began to scramble to her feet. ‘Mother might have wakened up.’
She was stiff from standing all evening, and Robbie offered her his arm. ‘May I have the pleasure of your company, my lady?’
She laughed, but as they started up the stairs she was glad of his support.
9
‘Robbie’s out,’ Mirren said hurriedly.
‘I know that.’ Joe Hepburn, hat in hand and wearing the same dark suit he had worn at Agnes’s wedding the day before, looked as embarrassed as she felt. ‘That’s why I’m here. It’s you I came tae see.’
‘I can’t think why.’ It was an inane thing to say, but she was so taken aback at the sight of him on her own doorstep that her brain wouldn’t function properly.
Colour flooded his face. ‘I c-came tae say that I’m s-sorry for the way I behaved at G-George’s house.’
‘Oh. You’d best come in,’ Mirren said reluctantly, stepping back. Somehow his apology was even more difficult to cope with than his rage on that first occasion. In the kitchen she remembered to offer him some tea.
‘I got a letter last week. He doesn’t have much to say – you know Donald, he was never a great letter writer. But he’s fine, still working away and saving for our house.’
‘Imagine,’ Grace said. ‘One day you and me might be sitting in America talking about the old days in Paisley. And I’m sure that we’ll both be very happy with our new lives.’
Bob and Agnes had decided to marry at the beginning of August so that they could take advantage of the annual Paisley Fair Fortnight, when the mills closed for the summer holidays. Mirren, with no money to buy clothes for the event, was rescued by Anne Proctor, who loaned her a particularly stylish cream-coloured georgette dress with a matching hem-length jacket. A single button fastened the jacket at the waist, and the cuffs and collar were dark blue, as was the brimmed straw hat. Both dress and jacket, a little too large for her, had to be pulled in with safety pins, each placed where it wouldn’t be seen.
‘Just don’t take the jacket off,’ Anne had said as Mirren revolved before her for final inspection. ‘If you do you’ll get us both red faces, for the pins at your waist’ll easily be seen.’ Then, with a frown: ‘You know, Mirren, you should eat more. You’re too thin.’
Agnes wore a jersey-silk jacket and matching skirt striped in light and dark green. The tailored style and shawl collar suited her slight figure but beneath her small black velvet hat, decorated with a pale-green silk bow pinned at one side, her face was knotted with worry.
‘Am I doin’ the right thing?’ she burst out as soon as her mother ushered Mirren into the small flat.
‘For any favour lassie, will ye tell her? I’m tired of sayin’ it, but she’ll no’ believe me,’ Mrs McNair said wearily.
‘Of course you’re doing the right thing. You and Bob are perfect for each other.’
‘I couldnae sleep last night for wonderin’ if yer mother was mebbe right and I was turnin’ my back on Crawford.’
Mirren rescued the pale-green glove from her sister-in-law, who seemed bent on twisting it into a rope. ‘I knew Crawford for longer than you did and I can promise you that he’d want this marriage for your sake… and for Thomas’s. The wee lad needs a father. Where is he?’
‘Ben the hoose.’ Mrs McNair indicated the other room in the small flat with a jerk of the head. ‘I set him down in a chair tae look at a picture book and he’s been well told not tae move till he’s fetched.’
Mirren glanced at the sunlight streaming in the single kitchen window. It was a perfect August day. ‘You’ll not have a fire on…?’
‘No, but the armchair’s up against the grate.’ They had guarded against leaving Thomas alone in a room with an empty hearth ever since the day when, aged fifteen months and too small to reach up to the handle of the closed door, he had tried to escape boredom via the chimney. Showering soot all the way, he had been carried by his mother at arm’s length to the landing, where he had been forcibly detained on several sheets of newspaper while a tub was filled with warm water. It had taken a good hour to rid him of the soft clinging soot and a day or two to clean the stuff from the front room, the rest of the flat, and the clothes Thomas and Agnes had been wearing at the time.
‘Do I look all right? D’ye think Bob’ll like it?’ Agnes’s mind, which had been conditioned to worry from the day her young husband had gone off to war, settled on a fresh problem.
‘You’re beautiful and he’ll be fair delighted with himself for having had the sense to choose you,’ Mirren assured her, and the young woman glowed.
‘You look lovely too, doesn’t she, Ma?’
‘Aye, ye’ll make a bonny bride when yer own turn comes, lass.’
Mirren flushed with pleasure and thanked her lucky stars for the Proctor family’s generosity and dress sense.
‘Look…’ Agnes lifted back a tea cloth that had been laid on the draining board by the sink to reveal two perfect roses, one pink and one red, lying on a nest of tissue paper. Each flower, just opening into full beauty, nestled against a spray of fern. ‘Bob sent them, the pink one for me and the red one for you.’ She lifted them reverently, her eyes star-bright. ‘Wasn’t that kind of him?’
‘And there she is, wonderin’ if she should marry the man,’ Mrs McNair put in, raising her eyes to the shabby ceiling. ‘If I was you, our Agnes, I’d run tae that church as fast as my legs’d take me just in case some other woman gets a hold of him first.’
By the time the roses were pinned on and Mrs McNair had arranged her favourite bunch of artificial violets on her own lapel, they were due to leave for the North Church, where Agnes and Bob were to be married in the vestry. While Mrs McNair, in black as always, skewered her practical hat to her head with large hatpins, Mirren opened the front-room door and Thomas bounced free, spotless in a little sailor suit Bob had bought for him. The sight of his mother, grandmother and aunt in unfamiliar finery brought on an attack of shyness and it took some coaxing and bribery in the form of a penny before he agreed to leave the flat.
When they turned the corner into Love Street, Bob and Robbie and a third man were waiting at the door of the church. ‘He came!’ Agnes said joyfully.
‘Of course he came. Did you think he’d jilt you?’
‘Of course not.’ Agnes beamed at her sister-in-law. ‘Not my Bob!’ As she almost ran along the pavement, Bob, a pink rose identical to hers on his jacket, hurried forward to take both her hands. Mirren, following at a more sedate pace with Mrs McNair, smiled at the couple, then felt the smile chill on her lips as she looked beyond them to the man by the church door. Today his black hair, longer than was usual for 1920, was sleeked back and he wore a pinstriped suit with a red rose on the lapel instead of a shirt and braces, but there was no mistaking his height and the gangly way he held himself, or the long thin face, dominated by direct blue eyes under shaggy brows.
‘Isn’t this a stroke of luck!’ Robbie chortled as Mirren reached the church door. ‘I’d not realised that Bob and Joe were related. Joe, this is Mirren, the sister I’m always talking about.’
Joe Hepburn’s dismay at this second meeting was as great as Mirren’s. His hand barely clasped hers and their greetings were muttered, but nobody noticed in the scurry to get into the vestry where the black-robed minister awaited them.
In order to involve Thomas in their wedding day, Bob and Agnes had allowed him to choose the venue for their wedding breakfast, which meant that once the brief ceremony was over the small group walked from the church to Nardini’s ice-cream parlour in Moss Street, where Bob ordered large dishes of ice cream with raspberry sauce for all.
Mrs McNair found the whole thing embarrassing, especially as the sight of the little party dressed in their best and with flowers in their lapels aroused the interest of everyone else in the parlour. ‘I could have made sandwiches, and wee sponge cakes as well,’ she explained earnestly to Mirren and Joe Hepburn. ‘We could have gone back tae my house and had somethin’ proper tae eat.’
‘I know, Ma, but we needed tae let Thomas be part of the day,’ Agnes explained, her attention divided between mopping red-and-white smears from her son’s face and admiring the narrow gold band circling the third finger of her left hand. Crawford’s wedding and engagement rings had been put away carefully in a small satin-lined box.
‘I l-like ice cream.’ It was almost the first time Joe Hepburn had spoken, and it was the first civil thing Mirren had ever heard from him. He smiled at Thomas and dug his spoon into the crimson-splashed mound of ice cream on his own plate.
‘Me too. I think I’ll have exactly this sort of feast at my wedding if I ever have one,’ Robbie agreed enthusiastically, while Mrs McNair poked her own spoon at the melting heap before her.
‘I cannae take tae it myself. It’s awful cold.’
‘That’s why it’s called ice cream, Ma, because it’s cold.’
‘I know that! Ye’re gettin’ awful cheeky, our Agnes, now that ye’re callin’ yerself Mrs McCulloch,’ her mother told her, and Agnes flushed and giggled and rolled her eyes at Bob, who was also pink with pleasure. ‘Just wait till yer teeth have reached my age. They cannae be doin’ with hot and cold when they get older. It jabs right through the gums. We’ll all go back tae my place for a wee cup of tea after, will we?’
‘I’ll take your ice cream, Granny,’ Thomas offered.
‘Ye will not,’ his mother said swiftly. ‘Ye’ll make yerself sick, and we don’t want that tae happen when your granny’s left tae look after ye. Lean over here a minute; ye’ve got cream all over yer face.’ She took a handkerchief from her bag, folded it and spat neatly to moisten it. When she tried to wipe her son’s face he shied away from her, and Bob, who had scraped up the last of his ice cream, took out his own snowy handkerchief.
‘Over here, son. It takes a man’s ’kerchief tae dae a man’s work, eh?’
‘Aye,’ Thomas agreed gruffly, slipping from his chair and going to stand by his new stepfather, who used one corner of the handkerchief to wipe cream and raspberry sauce from the small pursed mouth before tying it round the child’s neck to protect his sailor suit.
‘There, that’s the sailor all shipshape again.’ Bob lifted the little boy up onto his chair while Agnes beamed proudly at her new family. Watching the three of them, Mirren wished that her mother could have been there to see their happiness.
Joe Hepburn left them when they emerged from the ice-cream parlour, after shaking hands all round.
‘We’ll need tae have ye over once we’ve settled in,’ Agnes told him, and he ducked his head briefly and said, ‘Aye, m-mebbe.’
‘Hold on, Joe, I’ll come with ye.’ Robbie planted a kiss on his sister-in-law’s cheek and shook Bob by the hand. ‘It was a grand wedding and I hope you’ll both be very happy… the three of you,’ he added, bending down to shake Thomas by the hand.
‘Joe might not come visiting,’ Bob warned his bride as the rest of the wedding party set off for Mrs McNair’s flat. ‘He’s always been a solitary kind of man, not like Molly at all. It was tae do with his upbringin’.’
‘What about his upbringing?’ Agnes wanted to know.
‘It was all a bit of a mixter-maxter from what I heard. The old man – that’d be Joe and Molly’s grandfather – was a right rascal, fond of the drink and of… well, too fond of the sort of company a decent man shouldnae seek,’ Bob improvised, a red wave rising from his high white collar. ‘And a bully too, in his younger days. Joe’s father was the opposite: a decent, God-fearing soul who’d never say boo tae a goose.’
‘Weak,’ Mrs McNair diagnosed crisply.
‘I’d not say that. Just… not good at making decisions since his father had never allowed him tae have a crack at it. It was Molly’s mother that ran their house and seemingly she was bent on makin’ sure that her son was neither a drinker nor a womaniser… nor a man who couldnae make up his own mind. Molly said her mother was harder on Joe than on her lassies. It sounded tae me like a strange kind of household,’ Bob finished.
‘Me too.’ Agnes shivered and tightened her grip on his arm. ‘We’ll not have that sort of life at all, will we?’
Thomas was staying with his grandmother for a few days so that the newly married couple could enjoy some privacy in Bob’s flat, then the four of them, Agnes’s mother included, were going off for a week to the seaside. There was no such pleasure on the horizon for Mirren; after taking a cup of tea with what was left of the wedding party, she hurried home to change out of her wedding finery and see to her mother before going off to work in the fried-fish shop. Maria and Vanni never took time off, nor did they ever consider that their assistants might like to have a holiday. Usually Ella went with her aunts for a week in Troon, ignoring Maria’s mutterings, but this year, as her Aunt Margaret was in indifferent health and the holiday had been cancelled, Ella had decided to go to work as usual.
‘And yer mother never said a word about it, even when you and Robbie went off all dressed up?’ She shovelled just the right number of chips onto a waxed paper square.
‘Nothing at all, but she had me running after her from the moment I got back. I scarcely had time to change out of my good clothes.’ Mirren passed the big salt container and the vinegar bottle along the counter and watched, her stomach rumbling, as Ella distributed just the right amount of each, then tucked and folded the paper. She hadn’t had time to eat anything before hurrying out, and tonight the smell of chips and fried fish, which she normally couldn’t stomach, was tempting. But wherever she was, whatever she was doing, Maria had eyes as sharp as an eagle’s and nobody, even Vanni, dared to eat even one crispy little chip that wasn’t paid for.
‘A fish supper, is it?’ Ella tossed a glance over her shoulder at the empty tray and told the next customer, ‘Ye’ll have tae wait for the fish, but it’ll not be long.’ Then, flashing the warm smile that captivated everyone: ‘And it’s worth the waiting. Vanni’s the best fryer in the town. Is that not right, Vanni?’
‘That’s me.’ He tossed a grin over his shoulder then went back to his work, shoulders hunching as Maria’s voice cut like a cold knife through the hot air. ‘He’d be the fastest too, if he didnae waste time chatterin’.’
‘I hope I never turn out like your mother,’ Ella said on the way home. ‘I know she’s not well and that must be terrible for her, but it’s surely not a reason to be so nasty about Agnes. Will the wee one keep visiting her?’
‘Agnes says yes. It gives her and Bob a chance to have some time on their own every other Sunday.’
The last part of the walk home, once Ella had gone, seemed even harder than usual for Mirren tonight. Her feet dragged along one after the other like whining children having to be pulled along a road, and every muscle in her legs and back ached. It would have been quite easy just to give up and lie down on the hard stone pavement and drift into a deep sleep. When she finally managed to trudge up the slope from the bottom of Maxwellton Street she found Robbie already sitting at the closemouth.
‘I thought I’d get a breath of fresh air.’ He reached up a hand and drew her down beside him; then, easing the packet of fish and chips out from under her arm: ‘And I was hungry.’
‘What would you have done if I hadn’t brought anything home with me?’
‘Sent ye back for it.’ He started to unwrap the paper, sniffing appreciatively.
‘Wait till we get upstairs,’ Mirren protested, but he was already breaking the battered fish in two.
‘I’m too hungry tae wait. Anyway, it’s nice eating out in the fresh air… like a picnic. Have some.’ He held the packet out to her.
‘What about Mother?’
‘Asleep. I looked in on her five minutes ago, and she’s well away. Go on.’
Mirren took a piece of fish. It melted in her mouth, and so did the next piece. Between them they devoured the food, eating with their fingers, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the hard step while tramcars rocketed noisily along nearby Broomlands Road. When they had finished they wiped their greasy fingers carefully on a clean area of the newspaper in which the fish supper had been wrapped, and sat on, enjoying the soft warm twilight.
‘It was a nice wedding, wasn’t it?’ Robbie said suddenly. ‘I think Agnes has done the right thing.’
‘There’s no doubt about it. I just wish Mother and Logan could understand that.’
‘Ach, there’s no changing some folk.’ There was a pause before he said soberly, ‘One of the lads who just finished his apprenticeship was turned off today in the factory.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there’s not enough work for everyone.’
The serious note in his voice awakened an anxious tremor in Mirren’s stomach. ‘Was he in the same department as you?’
‘No.’
‘Well then… you’ll be all right when your time comes.’
‘There’s rumours going round, Mirren. The factories are letting men go, just here and there, one or two at a time. But it’s happenin’. I’m wonderin’ if it’s worth finishin’ my time at all.’
‘Of course it is! You’ve only got a few more months to go.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then they take you on as a tradesman. And if they don’t,’ she rushed on, as he opened his mouth to speak, ‘there are other places… plenty of them!’
‘I don’t know. Joe says there’s unemployment coming and the first tae go’ll be the younger men like me, because once apprentices become time-served men the employers have tae pay them full wages.’
‘What does Joe Hepburn know about employment!’
‘He goes tae a lot of meetings and he’s attended classes too, so he’s got a good idea of what’s going on in this country.’
‘He’s got no right to worry you over something that might not happen.’
‘Joe’s a fair man,’ Robbie protested. ‘He’d not say anythin’ unless he believed it.’
‘We’d best get in.’ Mirren began to scramble to her feet. ‘Mother might have wakened up.’
She was stiff from standing all evening, and Robbie offered her his arm. ‘May I have the pleasure of your company, my lady?’
She laughed, but as they started up the stairs she was glad of his support.
9
‘Robbie’s out,’ Mirren said hurriedly.
‘I know that.’ Joe Hepburn, hat in hand and wearing the same dark suit he had worn at Agnes’s wedding the day before, looked as embarrassed as she felt. ‘That’s why I’m here. It’s you I came tae see.’
‘I can’t think why.’ It was an inane thing to say, but she was so taken aback at the sight of him on her own doorstep that her brain wouldn’t function properly.
Colour flooded his face. ‘I c-came tae say that I’m s-sorry for the way I behaved at G-George’s house.’
‘Oh. You’d best come in,’ Mirren said reluctantly, stepping back. Somehow his apology was even more difficult to cope with than his rage on that first occasion. In the kitchen she remembered to offer him some tea.
