‘What did your last slave die of?’ Flora snapped at her sister. Elvira had dumped all her clothes in a heap on the bedroom floor. ‘You can jolly well pick them up. We can’t expect Mrs Quinn to traipse after you… Come on, chop, chop!’
‘You’re as bad as Aunt Mima, ordering me about,’ her sister sulked, but she pulled her clothes off the floor and dumped them on a chair. ‘Satisfied?’
‘Will you be in for dinner tonight?’ Flora asked.
‘What’s it to you?’
‘I’m only asking you, so I know. If there’s just Pa and me, we’ll eat in the kitchen, not the dining room.’
‘I’ve got a meeting and I’ll be staying with Isa Lennox.’
‘I see. When will you be back then?’
Elvira shrugged her shoulders. ‘How do I know? I’ll be in the campaign office all morning, and meeting some friends for lunch. And by the way, everyone calls me Vera now, I don’t like Elvira.’
‘But it’s your given name, Mummy chose it for you. What’s wrong with it?’
‘It smacks of money and private education and all that stuff.’
Flora shook her head. ‘So, Vera, we’ll see you when we see you. I was hoping we could go shopping and take in a matinee, a film. We never seem to have time together, nowadays.’
‘I’ve no time for pictures… they’re all sentimental rubbish and a waste of good money, a sop to the downtrodden…’
Flora made a hasty retreat. She could not face another of Vera’s political lectures.
It was strange how Flora seemed to take up the mantle left by Mima after she passed away. Back at Kildowie, life went on almost as she’d left it in 1915, but there were subtle changes. Often there was just Pa and herself for supper, and lately there were no more cooks or maids, just a daily from the village. Vera was always out at political meetings with Sandy Lennox and his crowd of agitators. She used her home like a hotel and often stayed over in the city with friends. Flora suspected it was Sandy who took her back to his tenement flat at night.
Since the war, Vera had changed from a schoolgirl to an argumentative idealist full of theories on how the working classes must rise up and take their rightful place in government. There seemed a gulf between them. The war years and Flora’s experiences meant very little to her sister. For her generation, it was the past and best forgotten. The future was working for social equality, peace and liberty for the downtrodden. Deeds not words.
Vera had her own allowance. She drove a modest saloon car, but still liked to appear in smart outfits and wear her cropped hair in a Marcel wave. Appearance mattered, even if Sandy dressed like a tramp most of the time. What the attraction was puzzled Flora. She found him sullen and contemptuous of their background. Pa would not let him in the house, after his first visit.
Her one comfort was Rose Murray, her practising doctor friend, still happy in Bearsden with Hector and their children. They had a nanny for Hamish and Iris. Now she ran a surgery in the rough end of the city with a welfare clinic to help nursing mothers and babies. Hers was the true concern for the downtrodden and burdened women of the slums, Flora thought, restless to be useful outside the home. Their house was too empty now, but Pa clung on to the hope that one day it would ring with childish noise.
‘What can I do?’ she complained to Rose over supper one night. ‘I’ve done nothing useful but keep house and moan to you, since I came home.’ She sighed, as Rose was collecting up the family clutter in their drawing room; toys, papers and empty cups.
‘What you need is a job and some fun.’
‘Easy to say, hard to find, with things as they are,’ Flora replied.
‘I’ve been thinking about that and I have a solution,’ said Rose. ‘There’s a move afoot to provide advice to women from nurses and midwives. Birth control is what I mean, but it is a delicate subject, especially among certain churches. I see women worn down with too many mouths to feed, men, unemployed, with the fear of yet another pregnancy held over them. Many are coming for help too late. You’ve no idea to what lengths some will go to prevent another child. We have simple devices to help, but the very suggestion causes great disgust. Many are too poor to buy them. This is a battle worth fighting, Flora.’
‘I take your point, but I have no experience. I’m unmarried. What can I do?’
‘Read up on it: Married Love, for a start. I have a copy somewhere. We need to set up premises, form a committee, advertise discreetly… all the usual stuff. I know it will be opposed, but we both know deeds not words win the day. What do you think?’
‘I’m not sure I am qualified for this sort of work.’ Flora hadn’t heard of any of these ideas before.
‘Perhaps you could come and help in my clinic sometime and get a feel for what we are dealing with. I really could use your help.’ Rose had a gentle way of coercing that Flora couldn’t ignore. ‘As for the second of my plans for you, we have a concert party starting up, raising funds for limbless soldiers. I think you’d enjoy being part of it. There are lots of sketches and singing – do say you will join us?’
The thought of prancing on a stage did not appeal, but then she had entertained wounded soldiers in the war. This was a worthy cause, so how could she refuse? Hector’s work was connected to the hospital for the limbless soldiers and sailors at Erskine House across the Clyde. It was a mansion dedicated to helping war veterans. There were articles in the Herald about how they desperately needed funds, comforts and extra equipment. How could she ignore this, after all she’d experienced behind the trenches?
In the months that followed this conversation, Flora came to Rose’s clinic in a church hall close to the surgery to watch babies being examined. She made endless cups of tea, observed the poverty that brought mothers in shawls, lugging ragged toddlers while heavy with child. The kiddies often had skin rashes, headlice and rotten teeth. There were children with bandy legs, runny noses and squinty eyes needing light treatment. It made her think of her own privileged childhood and she felt ashamed that the accident of birth and family income gave some people great advantages over others. Life was indeed not fair.
Their newly formed committee began to make plans for a clinic in town but opposition was immediate. Landlords would not rent premises for such an immoral purpose. The local parish priest got news of their plans and began the protest, forbidding the women in his congregation to attend. Donations were slow to arrive. It was all taking time.
Only married women were to be advised but if someone wore a brass curtain ring, who would know, Rose said. As for unmarried women, such information might encourage sinful living, said one woman, who Flora recognised immediately as none other than Muriel Clegg, née Armour-Brown, Kit’s intended.
It was strange to think of Kit Carlyle once being her beau. Muriel was now a plump mother of twins and involved in charitable work across the city; a doctor’s wife, still connected to her father’s church. Her principles did not waver.
‘We must not risk inviting the wrong type of women into our office, to take advantage of devices. There’s enough immorality in this city as it is.’
Little did Muriel realise how close Flora had come to being such a woman. It was only luck that she was not carrying Kit’s child after that night together. They had taken no precautions. Flora had briefly hoped that she had conceived his baby. It would have been something of Kit to live on. Her life would be more fulfilled than it was now. Doors would close to her, though, as an unmarried mother.
Flora also turned up to the church hall rehearsals for the Starlight Troupe, at first out of duty, then she began to enjoy being back in a choir. The concert party consisted of about twenty volunteers. Billy Sanderson was the director, a dapper little man with a wispy moustache and wearing an obvious toupee. He lisped out his directions with flamboyant gestures that reminded Flora of one of her orderlies. He was called Cedric and had flounced around the ward like a pantomime dame. Yet he was one of the bravest men, carrying on under bombardments, when others were running for cover. Effeminate or not, Cedric won her respect for his courage and his care for patients.
Billy drilled his troupe like a sergeant major and at teabreak she was sitting down, when Rose brought over a young man.
‘I’d like you to meet Ivo Lamont. He assists Hector and has a wonderful tenor voice. This is Flora Garvie, my friend.’
Before her stood a tall, dark, handsome man with a patch covering his right eye. He smiled and held out his hand. ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance. I gather you were in the last show in France?’
Flora nodded. ‘Seems a long time ago now.’
‘Not to those of us who were there,’ he replied.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be insulting.’ She had clearly touched a nerve.
‘You’d rather forget things, perhaps?’
‘Exactly,’ Flora said.
‘I suppose it is time to move on, but it feels like yesterday. Some say those who keep remembering can never move forward.’
Flora saw the twitch in his cheek that so reminded her of Kit. This was not the sort of sad exchange she expected at a rehearsal. She turned away from him.
‘Have I said something wrong? I’m always putting my foot in it, Miss Garvie,’ said Ivo, smiling.
Flora stood up to take her cup back.
‘I’ll take that for you.’ He bent down, but then dropped it with a crash. ‘Sorry… mistook the distance.’
‘No, let me. I can see Billy champing at the bit to get on with the sketch.’
Rose helped her to clear up the mess. ‘Ivo’s a bit ham-fisted, badly wounded, but an excellent soldier. He works as a volunteer at the hospital.’
‘He’s not fit for work then? He seems fit to me.’ Flora gave him a nurse’s appraisal.
‘He’s not quite recovered yet. His family own an estate out by Loch Lomond. Money is the least of his problems; a nicer chap you couldn’t meet and I think he likes you.’
‘Rose Murray, are you matchmaking?’
‘Would I?’ Rose laughed, getting the evil eye from Billy.
Flora thought no more of this encounter with Ivo Lamont, but it appeared he had other ideas and made a point of seeking her out each rehearsal night. One night, after they had finished, he followed her out.
‘Look, I know it’s a bit of a cheek, but I have tickets for a symphony concert in the St Andrew’s Halls. I wondered if you’d like to come?’
Flora hesitated at first, but there was no harm in this invitation. When was the last time a man showed interest in her? ‘I’d be delighted,’ she replied.
To her surprise, for the first time in years, she meant it.