A dutiful daughter, p.28
A Dutiful Daughter, page 28
‘Did she…’ Ella hesitated, then pushed on, ‘did she hurt badly?’
‘I think it was more uncomfortable than sore,’ Mirren lied, not particularly keen to recall the details.
‘I mind when I was wee, the woman that lived through the wall from us had a bairn and she screamed as if her throat was bein’ cut.’ Ella’s eyes were dark with the memory.
‘Agnes roared a bit – but I think it was just with the effort of it all.’
‘Was there a lot of blood?’
The air about Mirren took on an ominously grey tinge. She swallowed, then said carefully, ‘Not much. It all happened so quickly.’
‘I thought it took a long time tae have a bairn. One of my aunts told me once that my mother was in labour with me for thirty hours.’
‘It must be different for different folk then, for it was very quick with Agnes.’ Too quick. Mirren wouldn’t have minded thirty hours at all, for then the birth would have been in the capable hands of Agnes’s mother, who had finally arrived just before Mirren left, quite put out to discover that she had missed all the excitement.
Ella’s eyes were huge in her pale face. ‘What was it like when the baby actually came?’
‘I don’t know,’ Mirren confessed. ‘I fainted just as one of the neighbours came in to help Agnes, and the next thing I knew was the noise of the wee lad yelling. I felt such a fool, Ella. I was shakier than Agnes was afterwards. Poor Bob had to walk me to the shop, when all he wanted was to be with her and the wee one.’
‘It must’ve been bad if ye fainted.’ There was a tremor in Ella’s voice.
‘It was just the shock of it all and worrying about delivering the bairn on my lone. I might have dropped it – and then there’s a cord to cut, isn’t there? I wouldn’t know how to do that.’
‘Ye’d have found out if ye’d just stayed awake. Now we still don’t know any more than we learned in the school playground.’
The greyness intensified and Mirren stopped walking, putting a hand on a house wall for support. ‘Mebbe I should ask Agnes to put the baby back and then go through it all again for your benefit.’ She had meant to speak sharply, but instead it sounded to her own ears as though a thick woollen scarf had been wrapped over her mouth.
‘Here, you’re lookin’ a bit peely-wally.’ Ella peered into her face. ‘Put yer head between yer knees.’
‘Not out in the street,’ Mirren objected thickly.
‘Bend down, then, as if ye’re lookin’ at something on the ground.’ A hand caught the back of her neck and forced her head down. Although she felt stupid, she had to admit that it helped to combat the nausea and giddiness. When Ella gave in to her muffled squawks and let her stand upright again, the nausea was gone and the greyness had retreated to the perimeter of her vision, where it hovered.
‘How d’ye feel now?’
‘A bit better.’
‘When did ye eat last?’
Mirren had to think for a minute. ‘At the dinner break.’
‘That was ten hours ago! No wonder ye’re feelin’ faint.’
‘I’m not hungry.’ At that moment she felt as though she never wanted to eat again.
‘You are, but ye just don’t know it.’ Ella opened her parcel and plucked out a piece of fried fish. ‘Eat that.’
‘I couldn’t!’
‘Yes, ye could,’ Ella insisted, and to her surprise Mirren discovered that she was right. Under her friend’s supervision she ate all the fish and even managed a few chips.
‘Is that better?’
‘A bit. Are you not eating anything?’
‘I’d not be able to keep it down.’
Mirren frowned. Recently Ella had taken to handing over her fish supper to Robbie, claiming that the summer heat had ruined her appetite. ‘You’ll waste away to nothing if you don’t start eating again.’
Ella made a strange noise that sounded like a collision between a laugh and a sob. ‘No fear of that. I’ll just get bigger and bigger even if I never eat another morsel. Mirren, I’m expectin’.’
‘Expecting? You can’t be!’
‘If I’m not, then there’s somethin’ else wrong with me, for my monthlies haven’t come and you know me, I’ve always been that regular that you could put the kettle on by me.’
‘It could be the hot weather. When are they due again?’
‘Tomorrow. But Mirren,’ Ella’s voice was so small that it was almost away to a whisper, ‘mind I felt awful sick on Sma’ Shot Day? I’ve been like that every mornin’ since.’
‘Oh, Ella!’
‘I know!’ They gazed helplessly at each other.
‘You’ll have to tell Martin.’
‘Why should I tell him?’ Ella asked, puzzled.
‘He’s going to have to take responsibility.’
‘No he’s not, for it’s not his wean.’
‘But… you wanted to marry him.’
‘Only because marryin’ him would have made me free of my aunts.’
‘If it’s not Martin’s, then whose is it?’
Despite the warmth of the night Ella wrapped her arms protectively about her body. ‘Vanni’s.’
‘Vanni’s?’ Again Mirren reeled back against the house wall, but this time, fortunately, the fish that Ella had made her eat was doing its work and the grey dizziness was kept at bay. ‘Vanni Perrini?’
‘Aye.’
‘It can’t be him!’
‘If it’s not, then I don’t know whose it can be, for there was never anyone else but Vanni.’ A softness came to Ella’s voice, and the grip she had on herself seemed to loosen into an embrace. ‘Mind me tellin’ ye that I knew there were men more lovin’ than my father was? It’s Vanni I was talkin’ about.’
‘But he’s married!’
‘I know that, but ye cannae choose who tae love, Mirren; it just happens.’
‘Does he know about…?’
Ella shook her head. ‘I needed tae be sure, then when I was, I couldnae give him the added worry, with Maria bein’ so difficult these past weeks.’
A terrible thought struck Mirren. ‘You don’t think it’s because she knows about the two of you?’
Ella gave another strangled laugh. ‘If she knew, d’ye not think we’d have heard about it by now? I’d be out on my ear and God knows what she would have done tae my poor Vanni.’
‘You’ll have to tell him.’
‘I know,’ Ella said bleakly. ‘When I can find the right time.’
‘What d’you think he’ll do about it?’
‘He’ll be pleased – there’s no doubt of that. He loves bairns, and he loves me.’
‘Are you sure of that? He’s married to someone else.’
‘I know, but you’ve seen for yerself the way Maria treats him. He does love me, Mirren, and he’ll want the two of us… the three of us tae be together. I know it.’
‘Maria won’t allow it.’
‘She’ll have tae,’ Ella said, an uncertain tremor in her voice.
23
Unusually for the west of Scotland, used to wet summers, day after day brought a dry heat as rich and ripe and sultry as the heart of the roses blooming alongside pinks, lilies and geraniums in the gardens of those fortunate and wealthy enough to have ground of their own. The cat’s cradles of washing lines in every communal back court blossomed with clothes drying almost as soon as they were pegged out on the lines, while the town’s parks blossomed with local citizens taking the air. A flotilla of miniature sails decorated the boating pond at Barshaw Park and in the narrow streets, ill-fitting windows that had been stuffed with newspaper and rags to keep out the winter draughts were forced open to ventilate frowsy, overcrowded little rooms. The bowling greens were busy again, and the cycling-club members, bells jangling impatiently at anyone who accidentally got in their way, sped on swift wheels into the countryside to exhaust themselves and overstrain muscles weakened by months of disuse.
Housewives, some perhaps forced during the winter to burn the linoleum covering their floors in order to keep their families warm, dragged kitchen chairs or wooden crates to the closemouths, where they sat fanning flushed faces with newspapers, as many buttons unfastened as common decency would allow, skirts eased back above their knees and legs splayed. Small children playing in the gutters were clad only in short vests, and dogs panted in whatever scraps of shade they could find, and became irritable and snappy. Cats scratched and small girls playing hopscotch burned the soles of their bare feet as they bounced nimbly over the sun-heated, chalked stone pavement flags. Whenever the water carts appeared, half-naked children swarmed from buildings and back courts to run alongside, desperate for the touch of cool water spraying their skin.
The sprawling mill buildings, snugly warm in the winter, were just as warm in the summer although, in the twisting department, working with bare feet brought some relief. The ice-cream vendors who brought their barrows to the mill gates at the midday break did a roaring trade. Even when the sun went down there was little ease, for the air remained still and sultry, and the cobbles and flagstones that had absorbed the sun’s heat all day threw it back into the night air, to filter in through the open tenement windows and make sleep almost impossible.
The fried-fish shop reminded Mirren of stories she had heard about hell, where the sinners laboured in the heat from the flames. ‘You’d think that in this weather folk wouldn’t want hot food,’ she muttered to Ella out of the side of her mouth as they coped with a queue of folk fresh from the cinemas and eager for nourishment. Ella simply shrugged and rubbed an arm over her damp pale face and kept on working.
Vanni had the worst job of them all, toiling over the vats of bubbling fat, constantly mopping his face and throat with the towel kept close to hand and emptying jug after jug of tap water. Maria, who had reacted to the heat in the same way as the town’s dogs – by becoming snappier than ever – had decreed that he was not to be allowed to drink lemonade as he was swallowing all their profits. The chief target for her acidic tongue-lashings, Vanni had lost his ready smile, and between the heat and his wife’s nagging, his lovely dark eyes, normally sparkling with life and humour, were like dusty glass beneath half-lowered lids. Mirren, heart-sorry for the man, could well understand why Ella was reluctant to add to his problems.
Now that she knew of the secret relationship between them, she saw how hard he and Ella worked at ignoring each other. The easy banter there had once been between them had vanished and, if their hands happened to brush together when they both stood at the vats, they immediately pulled away from each other. At the end of the evening, going through his usual ritual of handing both assistants a bundle of fish and chips, Vanni gazed past Ella’s shoulder instead of meeting her eyes, and she did the same with him. Their precautions were so elaborate that Mirren began to fear that Maria would notice and suspect.
‘It’ll be a relief when this heat breaks,’ Ella said limply when they left the shop. ‘My corset’s so tight on me now that I feel as if I’m being cut in half.’
‘You surely shouldn’t be wearing tight clothing. It’ll damage the baby.’
‘Not as much as Maria and my aunts’d damage me if they knew the truth. I can manage for a wee while longer,’ Ella insisted. ‘It’ll all work out – you’ll see.’
Even so, Mirren worried about her all the time – in the mill, in the shop and at home, tossing and turning in the wall bed, trying to recall the persistence of a cold draught coming through the ill-fitting window or the sound of rain on the glass panes.
Grace Proctor’s next letter bore American stamps and was postmarked Boston. After much discussion, Grace wrote, she and Anne had accepted the positions of nursery maids to the two doctors’ families, and in doing so they found themselves plunged into ‘yet another great adventure. Anne is writing to Mother and Father, but of course she won’t tell them all that happened, since Mother would only worry and Father might think that we are not capable of looking after ourselves, which is quite wrong.’
Mrs Fitz had sent their train tickets and all the papers necessary for their journey, explaining that they would be met at Boston’s North Station on arrival. Grace wrote:
So it was a matter of packing our trunk and setting off on our next journey. It passed without any problems, even when we crossed into America at Vermont and had our papers checked by the immigration officials at Newport. Everything was correct and we were allowed to continue on our way to the North Station. Our train was late in arriving there and there was no sign of the chauffeur Mrs Fitz had promised would meet us. After we had been waiting for a good half-hour with our baggage around us, a big burly man approached and asked in a strong Irish accent if we were the Proctor sisters. Upon Anne saying that we were, he picked up our luggage and marched off with it, telling us to follow on behind.
I wasn’t at all sure of him, but when I asked Anne in a whisper if she thought he had been sent by Mrs Fitz she was very calm and said that he must have been, for how else would he have known our names. ‘In any case,’ she said, ‘he has our luggage away with him, and we must follow, for I’m not letting it out of my sight.’ He hurried us into a large limousine with glass between the driver and the passenger area and off we went, driving all round the streets of Boston, with me getting more and more nervous by the minute. So was Anne, I could tell, though she tried hard not to show it.
After about twenty minutes of this, Mirren, I had worked myself into such a certainty that we had been kidnapped and would never see Mrs Fitz, or anyone else, ever again that when the car stopped in traffic I had the door open in a trice. I grabbed Anne’s hand and, before she could say a word, we were both out of the car and running for our lives. Fortunately we had stopped beside a large park, and off we flew across the grass, away from the street. When I looked back to see if the Irishman was chasing us I could see him staring at us from the car, his mouth and his eyes wide open.
It was almost as good as reading one of Mr Dickens’s books. Mirren, heedless of the need to get to work, turned the pages, frantic to find out what had happened to her friends.
When we finally stopped running I was in tears with worry. There we were, in a strange city in a strange country where nobody knew us, and all that we possessed in the world had been taken off to goodness knows where by an Irishman. All I could think of was that I bitterly regretted leaving Paisley. I would have given every tooth in my head in return for seeing you and Mother and Father and my brothers and sisters at that moment. Then, by a mercy Anne recollected that she had Mrs Fitz’s letter in her pocket, with the address on it. So she hailed a taxi cab, for all the world as though she was used to doing such things every day of her life, and ordered the man to drive us to the house, where we found everyone in quite a state of worry as to what had become of us.
Fortunately Mrs Fitz was very understanding, though as Anne said to me later, quite sharply, she could well have been wondering just what sort of ninnies she and her friend had hired to care for their innocent little children. She even brought in the chauffeur to tell us how sorry he was for having frightened us. A very nice man, he is; his name is Tommie. Mrs Sheridan, my new employer, is just as friendly as Mrs Fitz, with a beautiful house and two sweet little children. I know that I will be very happy here, which is just as well, for here, Anne says, we stay! I have enclosed a respectable version of our travels for you to show to Mother.
Anne’s letter to her parents gave the impression that the journey to America had been an easy business with no problems whatsoever. ‘They seem to be very well suited,’ Catherine Proctor admitted when she had read Grace’s ‘respectable’ letter. ‘But I can’t keep up with them at all. Last year at this time they were both right here under this roof with no thought at all of ever leaving Paisley. And now they’ve been in Canada and moved from there to America!’
‘It’s as well that Grace did go away from here.’
‘Aye, I’ll grant ye that. She’d have broken her heart if she’d known of poor George’s death. But this travelling around bothers me. When all’s said and done, they’re still two young women on their own.’
‘Not on their own any more. They’re both with families now, and being well looked after. I’m sure they’re settled now.’ What on earth would Aunt Catherine say, Mirren wondered, if she had heard about her daughters escaping from a limousine in the heart of Boston and fleeing hand in hand across a city park from a large, puzzled Irishman?
‘Aye, well… I suppose so,’ Catherine said, then her eyes filled with tears, ‘but there’s times I can’t help thinking about the way things might have gone if George hadn’t been so badly injured in the war. He and Grace could have been married and settled by now, and I’d have had my two lassies where I could see them whenever I wanted. Mind you, even if she had wed George they might well have gone away together, just as you would have gone with your Donald if Helen hadn’t been so poorly. D’you pine for him, Mirren?’
‘No. What’s done is done, and I’m happy enough with what I have now.’
‘Have you been at the dancing recently?’
‘It’s too hot for that just now, and Ella’s… her stomach’s not right with this heat, so we’ve not bothered over the past week or so. We’ll get back to it soon enough. Agnes was fair delighted with the wee cap and booties you knitted for Robert.’
‘How are they both?’
‘Grand, and Thomas is as proud as punch to be a big brother.’
‘Bless him. I enjoyed making the wee clothes for Agnes.’ Catherine’s eyes misted again. ‘She’s fortunate to have little ones to care for. They grow up so fast; in no time at all they’re off to the school, then next thing you know they’ve gone even further – too far away altogether.’ Then she blinked, and added cheerfully, ‘And you just have to be pleased for them, for there’s no turning the clock back.’
It was as if her aunt’s mention of his name had stirred Donald, far off in America, and brought him back into Mirren’s life.
