SIX

The Fostering Breast

Four days before Christmas Craig brought her the glad tidings.

‘Guess what,’ he said, ‘we’ve been allocated a police house.’

‘Where?’

‘Canada Road; the upper end,’ said Craig, grinning. ‘The building’s only six years old.’

‘How big is the house?’ said Kirsty.

‘Kitchen an’ two bedrooms, would ye believe.’

‘When do we take possession?’

‘Well, it’s supposed to be ours from the first o’ the year but I’ve agreed to hold off entry until the end of January.’

‘Why?’

‘Because o’ the circumstances.’ Craig studied the buttons of his tunic and carefully began to unfasten them. ‘Because o’ the family that’s there at the moment.’

‘What family?’

Craig said, ‘Oh, some constable from Percy Street. I don’t know him at all. Macgregor’s his name.’

‘Dismissed?’

Craig shook his head. ‘Dyin’.’

The kitchen was full of steam. She had put out washing on the lines in the backcourt that morning but there had been rain and she had brought it in again, draped it on the high pulley where, in the heat from the stove, it had given off a soft haze of steam for hours on end. If Craig had not been uncommonly prompt she would have had the place tidied and ventilated. As it was he had caught her unprepared. She felt a sudden wave of anxiety and seated herself at the table, her hands in her lap.

Craig said, ‘It’s no’ our fault. About Macgregor.’

‘No,’ Kirsty said.

Craig draped his tunic on a chair and seated himself too. He stooped to unlace his boots. They were caked with mud which, Kirsty had learned, indicated that he had made a patrol along the railway embankment late in the afternoon. She had an irrational fear that he would be mown down by a train, though Craig had assured her there was not the slightest danger of that happening.

He looked up, squinting. ‘I thought you’d be pleased, Kirsty.’

Kirsty said, ‘I am.’

Craig said, ‘You won’t even have to meet him, y’know.’

‘Who?’

‘Macgregor.’

‘I – it’s not that, dear.’

‘They’re goin’ home, back to Islay where they came from. Maybe he’ll get better in the sea air.’ Craig paused. ‘If it’s not that, what is it?’

‘Everythin’ seems to be happenin’ at once.’

‘We’ll have a couple of months to settle in the house before the baby arrives. I’ll do all the heavy work, never fear.’

‘Aye,’ said Kirsty. ‘It’ll be grand when we’re in.’

Craig removed his other boot, set the pair against the fender, not too near the fire. When the mud had dried he would take the boots out into the back yard and scrape off the caked dirt with an old penknife, bring them back for Kirsty to polish to a high black shine.

He did not draw his chair back to the table but remained by the grate, toasting his brow and his hands at the coals.

The stewpot bubbled.

‘You don’t want to go at all, do ye?’ Craig said.

‘Of course I do.’

‘You don’t want to go with me.’

‘Craig—’

Three months ago she would have flung herself from the chair, would have wrapped her arms about his neck, would have fussed over him and given him reassurance. But tonight, now, she felt too selfish and too uncertain to play the comforter with conviction. Besides, Craig no longer seemed to need her.

Craig said, ‘You’d rather stay here, wouldn’t you?’

‘No. I’m your wife an’—’

‘You’re not my wife, Kirsty.’

‘I am,’ she said. ‘Everybody thinks I’m your wife.’

‘That doesn’t make it a fact.’

‘Tell me about the house,’ said Kirsty. ‘Have you seen it yet?’

He turned his head and glowered at her. His dark eyes were sullen and secretive but there was no animosity in them. He seemed to see her now with disciplined control, that dispassion with which he observed the denizens of Greenfield’s meanest streets and hovels, not with pity or disgust but with patient calculation.

‘Aye,’ he answered. ‘Hector Drummond took me up there when the note came down from Headquarters that the house was for us.’

‘Tell me,’ said Kirsty, feigning enthusiasm.

‘Top floor, of four. Eight families in the close. All burgh employees.’

‘Policemen?’

‘Six lots of coppers at least.’

‘A – a community, then,’ said Kirsty. ‘It’ll be nice.’

‘It’ll be safe,’ Craig said.

She did not ask him to explain, believing, wrongly, that she understood.

 

Later that night, after Craig had gone to bed, Kirsty took a late supper with Agnes Frew in the parlour.

‘So you’re leaving us, Kirsty,’ the old woman said. ‘I’ll confess I’ll be sore grieved to see you go.’

‘I’m not off to the moon,’ said Kirsty. ‘I’ll still be at St Anne’s every Sunday.’

‘After the baby comes that’ll stop.’

‘Craig can look after baby for an hour or two.’

‘He’ll be on duty.’

‘Not every Sunday,’ said Kirsty.

‘This won’t be your only child,’ Mrs Frew said. ‘You’ll have more. Soon you’ll be so tied to your family that you won’t have time for the kirk, let alone me.’

Though she suspected that the prediction might be true, Kirsty said, ‘Nonsense.’

She had made a pot of tea and had buttered oatcakes. Seated on a spindle chair at the occasional table, she ate and drank with the delicacy of a lady born to the manor. The prospect of going back to Greenfield did not appeal to her. She no longer wanted a place of her own, to be alone with Craig night after night, listening to his silences.

‘I know somebody who’ll be sorry,’ said Agnes Frew.

‘Hmmm?’ Kirsty had been day-dreaming, teacup to her lips. ‘Who?’

‘David Lockhart.’

Kirsty was taken aback. ‘What’s Mr Lockhart got to do wi’ me?’

‘I’d a letter from him this morning. He enquired after you specially; asks to be remembered to you.’

‘I hardly know the man.’

‘But you made an impression, Kirsty. He says he hopes to see you again next time he’s in Glasgow.’

Blushing, Kirsty asked, ‘How – how often is he in Glasgow?’

‘From time to time.’

‘When he visits his brother, I expect.’

‘Oh, so he told you about Jack. You obviously got on well.’ Mrs Frew spoke with an archness that Kirsty did not like. ‘Jack’s lodging’s very small and he’s prohibited from having overnight visitors. When David visits, the pair of them usually put up here.’

‘He – he seemed very pleasant,’ said Kirsty. ‘As a person I mean; a very pleasant person.’

‘Are you blushin’?’

‘It’s the heat in this room,’ said Kirsty quickly.

Mrs Frew tried not to smile. ‘That’s what David said about you; the exact words – a very pleasant person.’

‘He’s just being polite.’

‘He never said it about Cissie, and she was here for years.’

‘Mrs Frew, I’m—’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Mrs Frew. ‘I know you’re married. Even so, it’s nice to be noticed by a gentleman, isn’t it?’

‘He could hardly fail to notice me, could he?’ Kirsty glanced down at her stomach. ‘What does Mr Lockhart do?’

‘After his ordination he’ll return to China.’

‘China?’

‘His parents are missionaries.’

‘China,’ said Kirsty. ‘When – when will he go?’

‘In six or eight months, I suppose,’ said Mrs Frew.

‘For – for how long?’

‘For ever,’ Mrs Frew said.

‘You mean he won’t come back to Scotland?’

‘His parents never did. Mission work is a calling, you see, a vocation. David and John were born to it.’

‘Born in China?’

‘No. David was born in Inverness before his parents set off for Nanking. His mother was my friend as well as being a distant relative. She writes to me still from time to time. But somehow or other when furlough time comes around there are always reasons why they cannot leave.’

‘But David, his brother too—?’

‘The boys could have been educated in China but Amelia and Richard elected to send them home,’ said Mrs Frew. ‘They were put into the care of Amelia’s brother, George, and stayed with him in Invermoy while they attended Inverness Academy.’

‘Do all missionaries have to study medicine?’

‘Of course not,’ said Mrs Frew. ‘Devotion to duty and strength in the Lord are all that’s required, particularly for the China stations. David and Jack, however, are destined to take over the administration of the schools and hospitals that their parents founded, to run the North China Missionary Society in course of time.’

Kirsty had no real notion where China was. She knew only that the people there were heathens, had slanted eyes and wore pigtails. She listened in fascinated interest as Agnes Frew talked of the vast and mysterious land across the seas; and suddenly Canada Road did not seem so far away after all. She wanted to ask the widow if she thought David would be happy in China but the question, she realised, had no validity. He had been born to it, his whole life shaped for service in a foreign land. She could not imagine the young man for whom she had cooked sausages on a foggy morning in Walbrook Street striding the hills of China, healing the sick and preaching the Gospel.

‘Chung-kuo,’ Mrs Frew was saying. ‘The Middle Kingdom. That’s what the Chinese call their homeland. The rest of us dwell in the Kingdom Outside. Isn’t that ridiculous?’

Kirsty nodded, though she did not think it at all ridiculous.

Mrs Frew rose abruptly. She opened a little cupboard to the right of the fireplace, knelt and rummaged on the shelves for a moment. Idly Kirsty put the supper dishes on to the wooden tray.

Mrs Frew got up.

‘See.’ She held out a book, a big soft quarto bound like a Bible in black morocco. ‘It’s all in here. All about China. David gave it to Andrew and me years and years ago, when he first stayed with us. Oh, he was hardly more than a child then. It was the first time he’d been away from his mother and father.’

Kirsty took the book into her hands.

Mrs Frew had opened it at the flyleaf upon which was written in a large round script: To Uncle Andrew and Auntie Nessie, With All My Love, From David. Christmas 1883.

With sudden clarity Kirsty saw herself in the mid-winter of that year, when she was four years old, curled in the cot in the bleak and echoing dormitory of the Baird Home, crying into her pillow for the mammy she had never known, crying and trying to hide her tears.

‘Take it,’ said Mrs Frew. ‘Take it and read it, dear. It’s most informative.’

‘Thank you,’ said Kirsty.

She stared at the handwriting, the ink faded from black to sepia, the edges of the pages deckled yellow: With All My Love, From David.

She brushed her hand lightly over the paper as if to smooth it and, at that moment and for the first time, felt within her body a queer sharp little dig as if the new life inside her had served a reminder of its presence, had given her, in remonstrance, a sign.

 

Christmas celebrations began with a musical recital in St Anne’s by the Greenfield Choral Association which performed a grand recitation of the sacred cantata The Good Shepherd and other gems from the seasonal repertoire.

Mrs Frew clucked approvingly over the choir’s perfect balance and fine modulation of tone but Kirsty had no clue what lay behind her feelings of joy and exultation, why the music lifted her so and seemed to hold her suspended or why it made her raise her eyes to the vaulted roof and to the dim enigmatic shapes of painted glass in the depths of the nave, so quiet and tranquil and unmoved behind the heads of the choir.

When a quartet, composed of one lady and three gentlemen, sang Love Divine, All Loves Excelling Kirsty found tears trickling down her cheeks. She tried to hide them but Mrs Frew, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief too, patted Kirsty’s hand approvingly as if such a reaction was only to be expected.

They walked home, arm in arm, with Kirsty exclaiming, ‘Was that not wonderful?’ and Mrs Frew saying, ‘It was, dear, it was,’ until they found Craig in the kitchen, trousers unbuttoned and boots off, slumped snoring in a chair before the fire with the remains of his supper still on the table waiting to be cleared away. Kirsty sighed, slipped off her coat and rolled up her sleeves while Mrs Frew, with a sniff, took herself into the parlour to sip a little glass of brandy before bed.

As Constable Third Grade, Craig drew Christmas Day duty. Dinner was postponed until late evening so that he might take his place at the head of the table.

With the goose cooking, pies and puddings all prepared and the dining-room table laid with silver and best linen, Kirsty put on her good new dress and took tea in the parlour with Mrs Frew. She drank two glasses of sherry while the tea was masking in the pot and was only saved from a giggling fit by the arrival of Hugh and Beatrice Affleck. They brought a gift for Nessie and a ‘reminder’ for Kirsty, an album of blank grey pages which, Hugh Affleck said, would soon contain photographic records of her babies and, in years not so far ahead of her, would give her something to look back upon.

For an hour they drank tea, ate sausage rolls and currant cake and laughed. Hugh Affleck was at his very best. He told hilarious tales against himself and against the dignity of the burgh police until the tears ran down Kirsty’s cheeks. She was sorry when, at a quarter to six, the Afflecks explained to Nessie that they were dining with the Mackinnons at seven o’clock and had to pick up the girls at home first. Carrying their gifts, unopened, they took their leave.

‘My nieces can’t stand to visit me,’ said Agnes Frew when the house was quiet again, ‘not even at Christmas.’

She looked so down in the mouth that Kirsty gave her a kiss and a hug and poured another glass of sherry to cheer her up.

Craig came home with cheeks flushed and a faint smell of whisky on his breath. He said that Hector Drummond had given them all a dram when they finished shift and had wished them a merry time but had warned them not to imbibe too heavily since they were all required on duty on Boxing Day when the wild boys of Greenfield, dogging work, were prone to brawl and booze and engage in acts of petty theft. Washed, Craig put on a tweed jacket and flannel trousers and knotted a ridiculous spotted cravat into the collar of his shirt. He looked, said Mrs Frew with uncommon candour, as if he had just moored his yacht at Plantation Quay.

Dinner was pleasant enough. Gifts were exchanged at the end of the meal. Craig had bought a pendant for Kirsty and a cameo brooch for Mrs Frew. He received from the widow a pair of smart black kidskin gloves which could be worn with his uniform in cold weather without offending regulations; from Kirsty a beautiful red rubber ‘diving cap’ and a pair of goggles to keep the water out of his eyes when he swam underwater. Kirsty’s gift to Mrs Frew was a bottle of Lily of the Valley perfume. In turn she received a baby’s shawl of Honiton lace so fine that it could be drawn smoothly through a silver napkin ring if not quite through Kirsty’s wedding band. But after that the evening turned flat and listless, for they were all tired.

It was not much after eleven when, with the great mound of pots and plates all washed and put away, Mrs Frew retired and Craig and Kirsty were left alone in the kitchen.

On the shelf above the fire was propped a single card, a greeting from Mrs Frew to Kirsty and Craig.

Craig took it down and glanced at it. ‘Did the postman bring this?’

‘No.’

‘What did the postman bring?’

‘Some cards for Mrs Frew, that’s all.’

‘Nothin’ from Carrick?’

‘No, Craig, nothin’.’

He replaced Mrs Frew’s card and lit a cigarette, holding the match cupped in his hand for a moment or two, watching the flame. He shook it out and flicked it into the hearth, inhaled, blew smoke through his nostrils.

Kirsty said, ‘Did you send them somethin’, dearest?’

‘Aye, somethin’ for each o’ them.’

‘Perhaps tomorrow—’

‘I thought Dad might’ve written, since it’s Christmas.’

‘Christmas doesn’t mean much. He’ll write at New Year, you’ll see.’

Craig shrugged, pretending that he did not care.

Kirsty put an arm about his waist and her head on his shoulder. Craig blew tobacco smoke over her head.

‘She must’ve stopped him,’ Craig said. ‘Mother, I mean. She’ll have put the kibosh on communication.’

‘When we’re in our new house –’

‘That’s all I keep hearin’.’ Craig curled his lip sarcastically. ‘When we’re in the new house. When the baby’s born.’

Kirsty disengaged herself. Though he had been cheerful all evening she sensed now that Christmas meant nothing to him, served only to rub the wounds of disappointment that he kept hidden from her.

‘When we get married—’ he murmured, and blew out a smoke ring. ‘When the bloody cows come home!’

‘Craig,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong wi you? Don’t you like the job?’

‘Aye, I like the job fine,’ he answered. ‘What I don’t like is bein’ away from it.’

Kirsty gasped – ‘Oh’ – and swung away from him. She found herself at the sink, a washing-cloth in her hand. She wiped the dry draining-board, wiped it again.

He came to her quickly, placed his hands on her shoulders and drew her round. Her belly protruded, keeping them apart. Craig held her at half arm’s length. He leaned forward, kissed her.

‘I didn’t mean you, love,’ he said.

Kirsty blinked, striving to keep tears from trickling from her lids, praying that she would not weep.

Dispassionately Craig kissed her again, upon the tip of the nose.

Kirsty heard herself say, ‘I know you didn’t.’

Craig smiled, nodded. ‘All right then?’

‘All right,’ said Kirsty.

 

They drank keg Export from the taps of the railway bar in the North British station and warmed their fingers and toes at the coals in the grate of the huge black iron fireplace that dominated the refreshment room. Jack ordered a second half pint to wash down the three smoked mackerel and the baked potato from which he had made a second breakfast. He had every right to be peckish; he had been up before six to struggle through from Glasgow and had had only a heel of bread and a cup of coffee extract in his lodgings with which to fortify himself for his journey to the capital. There was snow in the clouds and a taste of winter on the wind and the draughts that slithered through Princes Street Gardens and down the steps from the Waverley Bridge were snell enough to chill the blood of all but the most hardy travellers who were on the road that Boxing Day.

The Lockhart brothers would have gone north before Christmas as was their habit – Jack had been free of Anatomy since the 21st – but David had been invited to take part in a Christmas Day service in St Giles. As the offer had come directly from his Professor of Divinity, and the Reverend Matthew Walters was a prime supporter of ecumenicalism and union in the Presbyterian churches, it would have been churlish of David to refuse. Uncle George would have missed their company at the festive board in his house in Invermoy parish but he was a gregarious man with many friends in the parish and no doubt he had found a hearth upon which to plant his boots and a host with which to split a bottle of good Madeira wine. He would have the boys for the New Year, the best of Highland celebrations, but would have to content himself with the knowledge that this would be the last they would spend together; soon his nephews would be gone from Scotland and he would not see either of them again unless he packed his bag and shipped out for Shanghai.

Twenty-two months separated the Lockhart boys but they were so alike in appearance they might have been been taken for twins. Jack was a little taller than his brother, a little leaner too. By temperament he was less outgoing, perhaps because he lacked David’s ease of manner and had had to work harder at his studies, at games, at making friends. There was no envy or animosity between them, however. Jack accepted David’s leadership while David in turn had nothing but admiration for his brother’s thoroughness and determination.

‘Did the Lesson go well, then?’ Jack asked.

‘Seemed to,’ said David. ‘All I could see out there were grey stone piers and tattered flags.’

‘No congregation?’

‘Pale faces floating in a fog of history.’

‘Oh, come now, David.’

David grinned. ‘It’s like preaching from a rock in the ocean, if you must know.’

‘Weren’t you nervous?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘I should have been.’

‘I was too cold to be nervous.’

‘Was old Matthew pleased, do you think?’

‘He took me for supper afterwards with Guthrie and Pettigrew and old Neb.’

‘Neb? Really? Where did you eat?’

‘At Guthrie’s house.’

‘My, you are moving in exalted circles.’

‘Guthrie knew Father rather well in the old days. I think he was under the impression that I was a starving waif and that he was giving me a treat – like an orphans’ tea-party,’ David said. ‘No, I mustn’t be cynical.’

‘No,’ said Jack. ‘You mustn’t.’

‘Still, it’s odd how deferential these granite pillars of the kirk can be.’

‘What’s your definition of “deferential”?’ Jack said.

‘They seem to covet Father’s life-style, his years in the field, acting for God. They regard mission work as real Christianity. They are under the impression that Mother and Father suffer all the time.’

‘Suffer? They love the work,’ Jack said.

‘Of course they do,’ said David. ‘But the “talkers” truly imagine that they sacrifice everything to minister to the heathen.’

‘Sacrifice a house in Marchmont Terrace, a generous stipend and the adoration of the old ladies of Edinburgh?’ said Jack. ‘It sounds little enough to me – by way of sacrifice, I mean.’

‘Do you know what Neb told me – this, mark you, after a twenty-minute sermon on Disruption Calvinism – he clutched my wrist as if he were drowning in his own verbosity and quoted: For every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account. And he keeked at me as if he expected me to absolve him from something or other, as if the fact that I’d tramped the hills of China with Dad had bestowed upon me some special grace.’

‘What nonsense,’ said Jack.

‘Absolutely,’ said David; he paused. ‘Do you remember much about China?’

‘Of course; don’t you?’

‘This and that,’ said David. ‘When I think hard about it.’

‘Don’t you think about it?’

‘Not often.’

‘I do,’ said Jack.

‘Are you dyin’ to get back?’

Jack did not hesitate, did not ponder his reply. ‘Yes.’

David said, ‘What do you remember?’

Jack laughed. ‘I remember the harmonium.’

‘The harmonium,’ said David. ‘Lord, yes, on the hill track out of Honan. That must have been the very first time that Dad took us both with him.’

‘When the donkey died.’

‘Yes.’

‘There we were with this gigantic great harmonium couped over in the dust, Dad prancing round it, wringing his hands.’

‘He was very fond of that harmonium.’

‘Lord knows, it cost enough,’ said Jack.

‘Yes,’ said David. ‘Do you remember how he had us all put our shoulders to the wheel and heave it upright and then fitted us into the shafts like coolies. He was not going to give in.’

‘What I remember,’ said Jack, ‘is how we had gone but a quarter of a mile or so before we had a dozen willing helpers, not even converts. They just seemed to appear, materialise, and dragged the thing up the hill to Fanshi in no time at all.’

‘And Mr Wang, do you remember him?’ said David.

‘How could one forget him, with his bad temper—’

‘And his opium kit.’

‘It always struck me as odd,’ said Jack, ‘that Dad would entrust our language teaching to an opium-eater.’

‘Perhaps he didn’t know,’ said David.

‘Oh, he knew. Of course he knew. I think he had his eye on a miraculous conversion. I wonder what happened to Wang.’

‘He died,’ said David. ‘Mother wrote to us, don’t you recall, some six or seven years ago.’

‘The poppy finally killed him.’

‘Cholera, I believe.’

‘There wasn’t much to kill; all skin and bone.’

‘Aye, but could he talk, could he tell tales!’ said David.

The northerly wind surged across the platforms and rattled the doors of the refreshment room and the young men turned from the fire and glanced at them, almost as if they expected to see a Chinaman there, the spectre of Mr Wang summoned by the very mention of his name.

Two girls, escorted by their father, entered. They were young, pretty as painted china in loose sacque overcoats with facings of blue-black velvet and neat little boots with pointed patent-leather toes – twenty or thirty guineas each upon their backs – conscious of their breeding and their appealing style. Father was a musk-ox of a man, his belly filling his double-breasted overcoat, and the silk tile-hat set square on a bush of greying pomaded hair. He lumbered to a chair, seated himself upon it and raised one hand to summon service while his daughters settled themselves, giggling, and, within seconds, caught sight of the Lockhart boys and went into a dove-dance of flirtation.

‘What do you think of them, David?’ murmured Jack.

‘I can’t imagine them on skates, can you?’

Jack laughed. ‘Falling on their little bottoms – no, I can’t.’

‘Are they still givin’ us the eye?’

‘In trumps,’ said Jack.

‘I wonder why.’

‘Because we’re handsome, well-set-up young fellows.’

‘What can come of it, though?’

‘Nothing. It’s amusement. Practice, I suppose. Come now, David, you haven’t turned priggish on me, have you?’

‘Certainly not,’ David said. ‘I just—’

‘Papa is castin’ a cold eye over us now.’

‘He can probably calculate our circumstances to the last farthing.’ David inched round in his chair and glanced casually at the family group. ‘By Gum, though, ain’t he fierce!’

‘Probably beats the servants.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’

Jack put down his glass. ‘I do rather care for the little dark one, though.’

‘Can you see her in Fanshi in August?’ said David. ‘Can you imagine her wielding a mopping-cloth in the baby-school?’

‘No,’ said Jack reluctantly. ‘That I cannot do.’

‘They aren’t for us, lad. Never will be, their sort.’

‘No harm in lookin’, Davy.’

‘No harm at all,’ David conceded but turned again to face the fireplace and, with legs thrust out before him, settled his hands over his chest as if he intended to sleep.

‘I’m glad I’m not Popish,’ said Jack. ‘Shouldn’t at all like to be a priest.’

‘Celibacy may have its advantages,’ said David.

‘I thought you liked Miss Dickie. Is that all off?’

‘It was never on,’ said David. ‘Oh, Sarah’s all right.’

‘I’ll say,’ Jack put in. ‘More than all right.’

‘It’s pointless, Jack. Pointless.’

‘Because we’re going overseas so soon?’

David said, ‘I don’t want to fall in love.’

‘I thought you liked being in love.’

‘I mean seriously.’

‘Dad loves Mother.’

‘I’m sure he does,’ said David.

‘Made in Heaven, that one.’

‘Yes.’ David fished in his vest pocket and brought out a pocket-watch, clipped open the cover. ‘It’s time to go.’

‘Must say I’ll be glad to get home,’ said Jack.

David buttoned his overcoat and adjusted his scarf. ‘Do you mean to China, with Dad and Mother?’

‘I meant Invermoy, actually,’ said Jack. ‘But yes, I admit that I will be glad to return to China, to be set on the right path at last.’

‘Can you remember what they look like?’

‘Mother and Dad?’

‘Yes. I can’t, not clearly.’

‘I can; from the photograph.’

‘That’s old. They’ll have changed.’

‘We’ve changed, that’s for sure,’ said Jack. ‘I doubt if they’ll recognise you come August.’

‘If I go back,’ said David softly, ‘come August.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I’m not sure I want to go back.’

‘I can’t believe my ears.’

‘Oh, I expect I shall.’

‘It’s not a matter of what you expect, David; it’s what is expected of you.’

‘No call to get het up, Jack.’

‘After all the planning, the study, the money that Uncle George has laid out—’

‘Come on, I think I hear our train.’

‘Bother the train!’

‘You won’t say that if we miss the connection at Perth.’

‘David, tell me that you didn’t mean it, about not going back.’

‘I’ll be in Nanking in August, never fear. Trained and ordained.’

They moved across the refreshment room, David in the lead, his brown leather portmanteau clutched in his fist.

As they passed the girls, each sipping hot Russian tea from a glass, he stared at them deliberately and his sudden scowling attention made them flutter, flush and look away. He went on, Jack at his heels, out of the warmth and on to the cold reaches of the platform towards the great clouds of white vapour and roiling black smoke that hid the locomotive.

Jack caught him by the sleeve.

‘David, the truth now.’

‘Jack, you idiot, I meant nothing by it.’

‘Word of honour?’

‘Word of honour.’

‘Cross your heart.’

Ruefully David studied his brother as steam hissed and billowed about them and then, with his index finger, he carefully traced the sign over his heart.

‘Is that better?’ David asked.

Jack nodded, grinned with relief, and let his brother steer him towards the waiting train.

 

Tickets for the Greenfield Burgh Police Annual New Year Concert were at a premium. Chief Constable Organ was a great one for fostering good relations with the public and the concert, under his patronage, had become quite an event in the burgh. On Thursday evening the Greenfield Hall would be packed, not only with officers, their friends and relatives but with a wheen of those ragtag citizens who spent most of the year cursing the police blue-blind but who, when it came to the bit, could not resist a cheap night’s entertainment.

Craig had requested three tickets. He had received them at the muster that morning. It did not occur to him that he had never before taken Kirsty out for an evening that had to be paid for, and he was keen to surprise her, and old Frew, that night at supper. He had been careful to make discreet enquiries to ensure that the concert did not clash with some holy singsong at St Anne’s.

On and off all morning Craig thought about it as he did his rounds of the streets. He took his dinner – paid for, of course – in the dingy back shop of Dinaro’s Café which lay a few hundred yards off his patch. There he met up with Archie Flynn and Peter Stewart who were also taking their half-hour rest period.

Archie had ‘found’ a printed copy of the concert programme slapped to a wall near the Baffin Bay and had removed it before some urchin could deface it. The constables discussed the programme with enthusiasm, particularly the ‘star’ attractions: J. C. Wilson was a Negro who did ‘eccentric dancing’, whatever that meant; Mr Harry Lauder was a purveyor of humorous Scotch songs; and the beautiful Miss Phoebe Donaldson was a singer of legendary reputation who, only a couple of weeks ago, had reduced the stalwarts of the Patrick Burgh Force to jelly with her rendering of Tell Her I’ll Love Her.

‘Not a dry eye in the house, so I heard,’ said Archie Flynn.

‘Och, they would all have been at the whisky,’ said Peter Stewart. ‘It would be alcohol they would be sheddin’.’

‘I hear she’s a real stunner,’ Archie said. ‘Fergusson’s seen her in Glasgow. He tells me she’s got the biggest pair o’ globes he’s ever clapped eyes on. When she hits her top notes, Fergusson says, she quivers.’

‘Quivers?’ said Peter. ‘What quivers?’

‘For God’s sake, man!’ said Craig. ‘What do you think quivers?’

‘Not her bloody vocal chords,’ said Archie.

‘You mean her—?’ said Peter.

‘Nearly pops out her dress,’ said Archie.

‘My God!’ said Peter, dusky-cheeked.

‘All that an’ music too for sixpence,’ said Craig. ‘Three cheers for Organ, eh?’

‘Aye, if Phoebe does pop out o’ her dress,’ said Archie, ‘they’ll make him the bloody Provost on the spot.’

They laughed uproariously and embellished on the theme of Miss Donaldson’s lily-white bosom while they ate their fried-egg rolls and drank hot tea. But they also kept an eye on the clock in case Sergeant Drummond came to check on them.

Craig carried the laughter with him into the cold gusty streets. He did not feel cold, clad in lamb’s-wool combinations and heavy serge uniform. He had stamina too now and did not tire in the course of the long shift.

One of Hedderwick’s big wagons had broken an axle. The load had shifted and part of St John Street was closed. Craig jawed the workers and told them to get a move on, borrowed four bollards from the yard and set them up to signpost the diversion and kept himself warm and occupied for a full two hours steering cart traffic round into Banff Street until the repair was completed and the wagon hauled upright and driven off.

Night came swiftly, sullenly. Bruised winter gloaming showed up the prickling lights of the city. Spurts of fire from a foundry vent only made it more lonely. Craig stopped in a close that already had its gas-lamp lit, took out the three concert tickets and looked at them again. He thought of Phoebe Donaldson and wondered if her breasts were really bigger than Kirsty’s and if they would feel as soft and heavy in a man’s hands. Hastily he stuffed the tickets back into his pocket and plodded on to check on Joseph McGhee’s pawnbroking shop and to inspect and sign the Pledge Book which was part of his daily duty. He found old Joe half asleep in his cane chair with the Evening Citizen on his knee and a little marmalade cat draped like a collar about his neck. He went on into Brunswick Lane to make sure that the apprentice at Hannah’s Gas Appliances had fitted up the new set of shutters and padlocked them properly. There had been three break-ins at Hannah’s in as many months, for copper tubing and lead sheets were like magnets to thieves. All was secure. The caretaker, Mr Pritchard, gave him a signal through the window of his cubby.

The embankment: trains rolled and chattered past one after another. It was not the time for suicides or accidents, not the quiet-line time when the glinting iron tracks brought out the daft and the despairing or children keen to risk their lives in dangerous play. Craig did not need a lamp tonight. He knew his way along the slope, could make himself stand without flinching only feet below the Dumbarton Express as it thundered past, the faces of passengers flickering in the windows like silhouettes in a kinegraphic machine. He came down into the street at the bridge, checked his watch and gravitated up towards the corner where Constable McNair would meet him and take over the watch.

He was twenty minutes early, did not want to loiter in case he was being observed by a sergeant or an inspector. He looked up to the corner and then went on up North Sydney Street, a nondescript three hundred yards which stole into Peter Stewart’s beat at the corner where, beyond the long low sheds of a cotton-waste dealer’s yard, stood a lone tenement, an old smoke-grimed stump inhabited, as far as Craig had heard, by peaceable tenants.

He was still some fifty yards from the building when he heard the scream. It was piercing and prolonged and sucked off into a gasping cry that made him think, just for an instant, that it came from the throat of a murder victim. Craig was already running.

Far off, not in North Sydney but up in the narrows of Friar Street, he saw a small crowd of men assembled outside the Rembrandt, a cosy little public house, saw them turn too. Sensing danger, he fumbled for his whistle. The hairs on the nape of his neck bristled when the scream broke out again, from above his head this time.

He stopped. He looked up. A white face, thin white arms jutted from a third-floor window. Craig asked no questions. He tugged his whistle from his pocket and his truncheon from its holster and went into the close and up the stairs three at a time. By the time he reached the second landing he could hear another sound, a man’s voice, not deep and angry but shrill, pathetic. ‘Oh, help, help, help me. Help me. Please, help me.’

Craig recognised the voice; Peter Stewart’s.

He paused before the half-open door, pushed it tentatively with his foot. ‘Peter,’ he called. ‘It’s Craig. I’m comin’ in.’

He had no notion of what crime had been committed but the fact that Peter was in need of assistance tempered Craig’s urgency with caution. He stepped carefully into the tiny hallway, glanced to his left. The girl was indistinct against billowing net curtains. She was no longer screaming, thank God. Her hands swung limply by her sides. Head cocked, she rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet crooning to herself in a sweet grieving whine that made the hair rise again on Craig’s neck.

‘Craig. Here, Craig. Please, Craig.’

The inner door was ajar. Craig tapped it with the truncheon and stepped into the kitchen.

There was never any question of criminal charges of negligence or neglect. The Cadells were honest, upright Christians. Father was a cobbler in a closet business on Dumbarton Road, as industrious and temperate as a man could be. He had gone that evening with his wife and five of his seven children to a prayer meeting at the Revivalist Mission in Scotstoun. They had left home only a quarter of an hour before the accident occurred. Irene Cadell was fifteen years old, a sensible girl. Eldest in the family, she was well used to caring for her brothers and sisters. No blame could be attached to Irene for what happened. No blame could be attached to anyone. A hundred thousand identical pots bubbled on fifty thousands hobs across the city. Innumerable children played on the floor below leaded ranges. Why little three-year-old Susan had reached up and pulled on the protruding handle of the pot would never be known. Perhaps she had stumbled.

Though Irene had been in the room with the child her back had been turned and the first thing she had heard was the clash of the big pot as it fell from the hob, her sister’s shriek of agony as a quart of boiling water splashed over her head and shoulders.

Irene had run next door but had found the house empty. In panic she had flung open the bedroom window and screamed for help. By chance, sore chance, Constable Stewart had been approaching the tenement at that moment. He had sprinted upstairs and into the house to find wee Susan Cadell writhing upon the carpet, the pot upturned on the fender. She had been unable to utter a sound. She had swallowed a quantity of boiling water and that, coupled with severe shock, had rendered her mute. She was scarlet, blistering and blind. She plucked with her little fists at the collar of her dress while she rolled on her back on the sodden carpet.

When Peter had lifted her in his arms she had gone into a spasm, rigid and jerking, had stopped breathing. Peter later admitted that he had panicked. All that he had learned by rote in Sergeant Mannering’s Ambulance and First Aid Class had vanished from his mind. Blood, wounds, he could have coped with – but not this drenched and choking child. Smothering her convulsions, he had called for help while the elder girl, her reason quite gone, had remained at the window, screaming.

‘Put her down, damn it, Peter,’ Craig snapped. ‘Here, man, on the dry floor.’

‘Craig she’s—’

‘Let her go, Peter.’

‘Take her. You take her. Please take her.’

Kneeling, Peter Stewart thrust the child at Craig and Craig, stooped over, received the little body into his arms. She was still alive, still twitching. He had no clue as to whether she was choking from obstruction or from the scalding. First Aid: the child was not comatose but convulsive. He stretched her out upon the boards and opened her lips with his fingers, brought her tongue forward, a little soft moist thing against his forefinger, and she gave a snorting sigh and spluttered out some water.

‘Peter, pull yoursel’ together, for Christ’s sake,’ Craig shouted. ‘Fetch me a cloth, a clean one.’

Still on his knees Peter peered at Craig as if he did not understand the words. Craig turned, slapped him with loose knuckles across the cheek. ‘A cloth, a towel. An’ a big blanket. Quick.’

‘Wha’ – what?’ Peter Stewart said.

The child was still twitching. Craig noted that a vast area of her head and upper body had been drenched. But water scalds, if he recalled rightly, did not penetrate down through the layers of skin; there might be hope for her yet if he could obtain immediate expert assistance. He left the child where she was, pushed Peter to one side, found the hole-in-the-wall bed. He ripped off a blanket and undersheet, spread them on the floor, picked up the child and placed her face down. He could not understand why she did not seem to react to pain, why she was so silent. He glanced towards the door. The elder girl was nowhere to be seen. Rapidly he wrapped sheet and blanket around the child. He left a flap of the top so that her face would not be covered. He lifted her as gently as possible in his arms, well supported. She was still twitching. Her head lolled against his forearm like that of a new-born baby.

He nudged Peter with his boot.

‘Get up, man, for God’s sake. I’m takin’ her to the Western Infirmary.’

Peter nodded, a glint of sense in his expression at long last. ‘Aye, that’s—’

‘You stay here with the other one. She’s in a bad way too. Root out a neighbour. Find out where the family’s gone. Might be the pub. Might be anywhere. Send somebody to find them and bring them back. Do you hear me, Peter?’

‘Aye.’

‘On your feet then.’

Peter scrambled up as Craig, the bundle in his arms, turned towards the kitchen door.

‘Cr-Craig?’

‘What?’

‘D-don’t t-tell anyone. Promise me you – you won’t.’

‘Christ!’ Craig said.

He ran out of the Cadells’ house, downstairs into the street.

He was three hundred yards from Dumbarton Road. The Western Infirmary was the nearest hospital. He might, he supposed, have tried to find a doctor or have run the half-mile to Ottawa Street but he felt the child clinging to life through him, trustingly. He ran as fast as he could towards the thoroughfare.

Passers-by stepped hastily out of his path as if he were a ruffian; and Craig ran towards the lights of Dumbarton Road and, when he reached it, ran straight into the middle of the road through the growling traffic. He spotted a hack at the stance at the bottom of Peel Street. The cabbie spotted him at the same moment and reached for the brake and the whip to speed away from trouble.

Craig bawled, ‘YOU WAIT,’ charged across the road and, loosening one hand from the bundle, grabbed the horse by the snaffle.

‘What the hell d’you think—’ the cabbie began.

Very distinctly Craig said, ‘I am gettin’ into your hack an’ you are goin’ to drive me to the Western Infirmary as fast as you bloody well can. Right?’

‘Eh?’

‘You heard.’

‘I never heard a word about who’ll pay me.’

‘I’ll pay you, you bastard. Now drive.’

Craig hoisted himself into the back and sat back. He was winded, heart pounding. Sweat trickled down his spine. He did not dare look at the child. He convinced himself that he could still feel the pressure of her tiny fists as they clung trustingly to him. He snuggled her lightly against him and closed his eyes. He heard the crack of the whip, felt the surge of the hackney carriage as it started away from the kerb.

He kept his eyes closed.

He whispered, ‘There now, there now, my wee lamb. You’ll soon be all right.’

She died somewhere under Dumbarton Road’s gas-lights, amid the bustle of the crowds.

Craig did not know that she was gone. He did not admit that he had lost her until he put her tenderly into the arms of a prim nurse in the great tiled hall of the Western Infirmary.

‘What’s this, Constable?’

‘Scalding,’ Craig said. ‘She needs attention.’

‘She’s dead.’

‘Don’t bloody tell me that,’ Craig said.

The nurse held out the bundle, touched back the fold of cloth, and Craig saw that he had carried naught but a little corpse through the city streets, that he had been the trusting one.

‘Now do you believe me, Constable?’

‘I believe you,’ Craig said.

 

Kirsty said, ‘I hope your supper’s not burned.’

She took the plate of stew from the small oven and put it on the table while Craig took off his tunic and unlaced his boots.

‘Have you been at the baths again?’ she asked.

Craig shook his head.

‘Then why are you so late?’

‘I had – there was work to do.’

‘You’re supposed to finish at eight.’

‘Things happen.’

‘What things?’

‘I had a report to fill out.’

‘Oh! About what?’

‘Nothin’ much,’ he said. ‘Butter some bread, will you?’

She cut three slices from the morning’s loaf and spread fresh butter upon them, put them neatly on a side-plate and laid it before him. He looked tired. There were ash-coloured bruises under his eyes and a furrow between his brows. He lifted his fork and stirred the stew and began to eat almost, Kirsty thought, mechanically.

‘You’ll want your tea now?’ Kirsty said.

‘Aye.’

When she lifted the heavy kettle from the hob Craig twisted his head and stared at her, watched the stream of boiling water pour into the teapot, steam rising.

He turned once more to his supper, stiffly.

‘Was it,’ said Kirsty, ‘a busy day?’

‘Aye, it was,’ he said.

‘I’ll put a hot bottle in your bed.’

‘Aye, please.’

She did not press. She realised that something had happened, something, perhaps, so unpleasant that he did not want to tell her of it. He was, she supposed, being protective since she was in a condition of expectant motherhood. She brushed his shoulder with her palm and he did not flinch away, did not stop eating, forking the food into his mouth and swallowing as if he did not like the taste.

‘Is it all right?’

‘It’s fine.’

She lifted his tunic from the chair-back, shook it out.

‘Your jacket’s wet,’ she said. ‘Is it rainin’ outside?’

‘It’s dry,’ he said. ‘Cold but dry.’

She waited. He did not tell her what had caused the dampness all down the breast of his coat or what it meant. She thought of the river, the ferry steps, the dark, mysterious quays, but the stain on his coat did not have the river’s earthy, metallic smell; something else, something that made her nose wrinkle but which she could not identify.

‘Craig—’

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I near forgot.’

He unbuttoned the top pocket of his tunic, took out a brown envelope and removed from it three tickets of yellow card. He held them out and Kirsty took them, read the print.

‘A concert,’ she said. ‘Does this mean we’re goin’, Craig?’

‘I thought you might enjoy it.’

‘I’m sure I will. The third ticket—’

‘For old Frew, if she fancies it.’

Smiling, Kirsty kissed his cheek.

‘You’re not a bad stick, Craig Nicholson,’ she said.

 

The Greenfield Burgh Hall was a splendid monument to civic pride. In the fifteen years since it had been erected a good deal of money had been poured into expansion and decoration. The floor was of polished oak, the seats padded in leather. The gallery was a beautifully shaped horseshoe with mouldings in the Italian style. Glass-globed gas-lights added to the brilliance shed by six mammoth gasoliers that hung from the half-domed ceiling. The platform was framed by Corinthian columns, backed by row upon row of carved chairs which climbed to the impressive bronze pipes of the Thomas Mackarness Memorial Organ. An ingenious arrangement of red velvet curtains, painted flats, and potted plants from the Parks Department hothouses reduced the width and depth of the platform, however, made it a more intimate stage, complete with footlights, upon which performers, amateur and professional, would do their stuff.

The Chief Constable, in full evening dress, acted as Master of Ceremonies. Much as he liked the sound of his own rich tenor rolling round the hall he kept his remarks brief and the evening skipping along merrily.

J. C. Wilson was the first Negro that Kirsty had ever seen. She was taken not only with his coal-black cheerfulness but by the pace and agility of his ‘eccentric’ dance and the strange songs he sang while accompanying himself on an enormous banjo. Kirsty was not the only one to be impressed by J. C. Wilson. Mrs Frew was quite round-eyed and Craig’s friend Archie Flynn got so carried away that he stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled shrilly until Craig gave him a dirty look that made him stop at once.

In the foyer Kirsty had been introduced to Archie and to a young man named Peter Stewart. She had been surprised at how youthful they appeared, hardly more than children she thought, and was surprised to realise that they were no younger than Craig.

‘An’ this is Kirsty, my good lady wife.’

‘Pleasure to be meeting you, Mrs Nicholson.’

‘Aye, we’ve heard a lot about ye, Mrs Nicholson.’

The young men’s eyes were shy but appraising. She could tell that she impressed them and that Craig was proud of her, even in her present condition.

Sergeant Drummond made a point of asking after her health. He assured her that the ‘new’ house in Canada Road would be to her liking. He also addressed several words to Mrs Frew, bowing graciously and might, Kirsty thought, even have kissed her hand if her fingers hadn’t been stuffed in a brown fur muff.

Kirsty was shown to other policemen too and, glancing surreptitiously round the rows before the gasoliers were dimmed, noted that she was as smart in appearance as any other woman in the group, except for the wives of the ‘bigwigs’ who occupied the front rows. She was flanked by Craig and Mrs Frew with Archie and Peter Stewart, both in uniform, left and right of her. She looked in vain for Hugh and Beatrice Affleck before the lights went down and the red velvet curtain, on a drooping wire, closed with a shiver and opened again.

She just had time to say to Mrs Frew, ‘Is your brother not here?’

‘Somewhere,’ Mrs Frew whispered.

After the Negro dancer a section of the City of Glasgow Police Choir came on to a mixed reception of cheers and counter-cheers, to put it politely. But they delivered The March of the Cameron Men and The Gathering with such heartfelt and rousing sentiment that even those Glasgow keelies who thought that Prince Charles was the name of a racehorse cheered and clapped in patriotic fervour.

Abracadabra – an amateur magician from Maryhill Division – fared less well, poor bloke, for when he swept a pigeon from under his multi-coloured cloak it promptly flew up into the half-dome and, excited by all the attention, spotted several hats and hair-dos a hundred feet below its tail. It would not be cajoled down by Constable Abracadabra, though he tempted it with a broken biscuit and called out ‘Here, Sammy, come tae Daddy John then, there’s a good boy,’ while suggestions from the body of the hall for disposal of the bird grew ever more ribald and inventive. Eventually Abracadabra left the stage in confusion and the pigeon, it was to be assumed, fell asleep. Apart from an occasional croon and the odd feather no more was heard or seen of it as the evening’s entertainment progressed through bagpipers, fiddlers, comics, dancers and singers, and a faint restless murmur swelled among the males in the audience as Miss Phoebe Donaldson, second-top of the bill, prepared to reveal her talents to the wondering gaze. To rapturous applause Chief Constable Organ made the introduction.

The red curtain closed, shivered, swished open to reveal two startled coppers caught in the act of shoving a grand piano out from the wings.

‘By Jeeze, they’re stealin’ the furniture.’

‘Take that man’s name, officer.’

‘Ye’d be better buyin’ a bike, Davy.’

Cheers, remarks and demands for an encore were stilled as a woman marched briskly into view. She was fifty if she was a day, gaunt and foxy and with a chest as flat as an ironing-board under a stiff-starched blouse.

‘Is that it?’ Archie cried. ‘Is that her?’

‘That’s the accompanist,’ Mrs Frew told him.

‘Aw!’ Archie nodded.

Silence; pin-drop silence.

Phoebe Donaldson came out like a flower of modesty, a woman of almost six feet in height, an Amazon in an evening gown of sky-blue silk, the bodice pouched, the collar low-cut with just a breath of chiffon on the décolletage. Pale-blue gloves covered her arms but her shoulders were bare and breathtakingly white and the shadow of the little ‘salt-cellar’ at the base of her throat ran directly into the deep soft shadow of her breasts.

‘Dear God!’ Archie moaned.

‘A commanding presence, indeed,’ said Mrs Frew.

‘Dear God!’

Miss Donaldson arranged herself in stage centre, hands folded below her bosom.

‘Steady, lads,’ came Sergeant Drummond’s muttered command and the men of Greenfield, all ranks, got a grip on their emotions.

A handful of notes flew from the fingers of the gaunt repetitrice. Miss Donaldson filled her lungs.

‘Steady.’

She sang.

In a rich vibrant contralto she sang We’ll Meet Beside The Dusky Glen and My Love She’s But A Lassie Yet and, as advertised, quivered deliciously when she lifted her chin to project the higher notes.

Applause was thunderous. They would not let her go even after What Ails This Heart O’ Mine. It was, after all, her voice and not her figure that made Miss Donaldson special, a quality of pathos that plucked at one and all and made every eye grow misty. When she took her bow and left the stage the ovation was such that Mr Organ prevailed upon her to return, which she did with a pleasant smile. After a pause she struck into The Vacant Chair as softly as if she were confiding the pain of loss to each member of the audience individually.

It was in the middle of the third verse that Peter Stewart broke from his seat and, crushing past knees, bolted up the aisle towards the exit door. Craig went after him at once.

Nobody paid much attention for the air was moist in all parts of the hall and the rim of the balcony was marked by scuts of linen and lace, sniffings into handkerchiefs. For all that she too was affected something in the abrupt manner of Craig’s departure drew Kirsty’s attention from the figure on the stage. The instant that the last note floated from Miss Donaldson’s lips she excused herself to Mrs Frew and, lost in the deafening ovation, squeezed out into the aisle and headed for the foyer.

Sergeant Drummond and Hugh Affleck had been quicker off the mark than Kirsty. She found the policemen gathered in a corner beyond the cloakroom door, Craig holding Peter Stewart in his arms, the young man sobbing as if his heart would break.

‘Craig, what’s wrong?’ she said.

When he turned she saw on Craig’s face an expression of such sorrow that, if he had been alone, she would have run to him and thrown her arms about him. But this mourning was a man’s thing, secret and private. Sergeant Drummond gave her a warning scowl and Kirsty stopped in her tracks. Hugh Affleck had put an arm about Stewart’s shoulders too and, as Kirsty watched, gently disengaged him from Craig and led him a few steps further into the corner of the corridor. Laughter from the hall, the music of a comical Scotch song; she guessed that Mr Harry Lauder, on stage now, would soon sweep away tears with broad, rough-hewn humour.

Craig glanced at her and looked down at his shoes, sheepish and guilty. He fumbled for and lit a cigarette and let Sergeant Drummond bring Kirsty an explanation.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Kirsty. ‘Is he ill?’

‘Och, no, nothing like that at all.’

‘Why is he so upset?’

‘Did your husband not tell you of it, lass?’

‘Tell me what?’

‘Two days ago there was a girl who – well, she died, poor soul. Constable Stewart was present.’

‘And Craig?’

‘Yes, he was also there.’

‘Why did he not tell me himself?’

‘Some men—’ said Hector Drummond; he paused. ‘I’m thinking that the best thing is for me to take them back to my lodgings for a wee drink. We had better not go to a place of public refreshment since we are in uniform. But my landlady will not object, I’m sure.’

‘Come to Walbrook Street, if you like.’

‘That,’ said the sergeant, ‘would not fill the bill.’

Kirsty looked at her husband. ‘Craig?’

He gave no sign that he had heard her. He sucked in smoke and let it seep through his nostrils, hands in pockets. In the corner Hugh Affleck was talking quietly and intently to Peter Stewart who had stopped sobbing and was nodding his head.

She wanted Craig to tell her what had happened, to explain why he had kept it from her; yet she had a vague understanding of the system to which Craig now belonged and of his need to be among his own kind.

‘I’ll go home with Mrs Frew,’ said Kirsty.

‘I’ll see to it that he’s not late,’ said the sergeant. ‘Leave it to us. There is nothing at all to worry about.’

The pleasure of the evening had been dissipated. Kirsty turned on her heel, returned to the hall and, caring not for the tuts of annoyance, pushed past the knees and took her seat. She looked up at the little figure on the stage in his over-long kilt and enormous sporran; everything exaggerated. She tried to concentrate on the words, to pick up on the waves of laughter that swept the audience but it was too late. She was glad when the concert came to an end.

As the curtain fell, Mrs Frew turned to her.

‘He was much affected,’ she said. ‘I suppose there was a death?’

In the seat by her side Archie Flynn shuffled restlessly. He might have slunk off without a word if Mrs Frew had not stayed him with a hand on his arm.

‘Was there, Archibald?’ she demanded.

‘Er – aye.’

‘How bad was it?’

‘They never told me much about it.’

‘Archie, what happened?’

‘A wee lassie died; scalded wi’ boilin’ water.’

‘Was it murder?’ said Mrs Frew.

‘Naw, pure accident.’

Mrs Frew sighed. ‘I suppose they’ll be going for a drink somewhere.’

Kirsty said, ‘Yes.’

‘Oh,’ said Archie. ‘Where?’

‘Sergeant Drummond’s house.’

‘Right,’ said Archie. ‘I know where that is,’ and, with a gruff goodnight, detached himself from the widow and hurried off into the crowd by the door.

 

She lay awake as long as she could, propped comfortably against the pillows and big bolster with a hot-water bottle against her feet. She sipped warm cocoa and, by the light of the oil-lamp, flipped over the pages of the book on China that Mrs Frew had loaned her. Anxiety, guilt and a faint irritating sense of having been shut out of Craig’s life were soothed in the quiet bedroom with its solid mahogany furnishings.

She turned the pages, the quarto volume resting against her tummy, her knees raised. She looked at the funny Chinese names, the postcard-sized photographs and engraved plates that appeared on every page. There was a wall that stretched for a thousand miles; a wall that, in the photograph, looked unimpressively like the dyke that straggled over the Straitons from Hawkhead. She tried to imagine what the Great China Wall was really like, its size, its scale. But she could not make that leap. She was hampered by lack of experience. She turned to another page, saw the face of a Chinese pirate that reminded her so much of Mr Clegg that he might have been a long-lost brother.

Reaping the Rice Harvest: As soon as a boy grows old enough he learns to stand for long hours in the rice field, bent over to plant the seedlings in the ooze. Bare legs and a bowed back; only the broad straw hat added a touch of the exotic to the picture.

The Temple of Heaven, Peking. It was a bit like the bandstand in the Groveries, really. Feeling better, Kirsty snuggled down with a little grunt of amusement. The Temple of Heaven was nothing like the Kelvin bandstand. But she preferred to pretend that it was. She felt no desire at all, no itch in the legs, to travel, to see these strange and wonderful sights for herself. She had had all the novelty she could cope with, thank you, in this past year and in the year to come would have more of it, no doubt. For all that, it was nice to lie against the big wooden bedhead with the oil-lamp purring and the taste of sweet cocoa in her mouth and muse on the mystery of foreign lands. In her tummy her baby blew a little bubble that made her wince and change position.

The book fell shut.

She opened it again not at pictures or text – at the beginning, at the flyleaf, at the inscription.

She put her fingertips lightly against the paper and, closing her eyes, imagined that she could feel the writing against her skin, as a blind girl would. With All My Love, From David. She could not imagine him in overcoat and scarf in a flooded rice field or standing by the Temple of Heaven or walking along the Great Wall. She could only imagine him here and, with a little impatient huh at her silliness, closed the book again and put it firmly to one side.

 

She opened the door cautiously, for Craig had made her aware that, even in broad daylight, you could not be too careful.

‘Well,’ David said, ‘I see you’re still here.’

‘For another fortnight,’ said Kirsty.

‘And then you’ll be off to a home of your own.’

‘Did Mrs Frew tell you all that?’

‘She mentioned it in a letter, I believe.’

‘How long will you be stayin’?’

‘Overnight.’

‘I’ll make your room ready.’

‘Wait.’

‘What is it, Mr Lockhart?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Where is Aunt Nessie?’

‘Shoppin’.’

‘It’s not inconvenient, is it, my dropping in without prior notice?’

‘Oh, no. She’ll be pleased to see you. It’s been very quiet since the New Year.’

‘I – I didn’t know that I would be in Glasgow, you see. It was rather an impulse, to call on my brother unexpectedly.’

‘John Knox?’

‘The very same; you remembered.’

‘It’s an uncommon name,’ said Kirsty. ‘Let me take your portmanteau up to your room.’

‘In your condition; certainly not.’

‘I’m not—’

‘Take no chances, Mrs Nicholson, no chances at all.’

‘I keep forgettin’ that you’re a doctor.’

‘Well, after a fashion.’

‘You mean you’re not—’

‘Oh, yes, trained and qualified. I’ve done my stint of mending broken legs and curbing fevers but I don’t really feel like a doctor.’

‘What should a doctor feel like?’

‘Confident, in command of everything.’

‘And you aren’t?’

‘I’ve had no opportunity to cultivate that aspect of the healing art. Straight from the ward to the lecture room again. One minute, it seemed, I was lancing a carbuncle and the next I was debating Adoration, Confession and Supplication with a German-born professor with an accent like Scotch broth. Perhaps, Kirsty,’ he said, ‘you should close the outside door.’

‘What?’

‘The door,’ said David.

‘Aye,’ said Kirsty, and closed it.

‘Do you know what I’d like, Kirsty?’ David said.

‘No, what?’

‘A nice hot cup of coffee, if such a thing can be arranged.’

‘Will it do in the kitchen?’

‘Perfectly.’

‘Come on then,’ said Kirsty.

 

David said, ‘You’ll miss that young woman when she goes, Aunt.’

‘I admit it. I will,’ said Mrs Frew.

‘You’ll be on your own again.’

‘I’ve been on my own before.’

‘Why don’t you employ some other girl, a resident?’

‘It wouldn’t be the same.’

‘No,’ David said. ‘I can understand that.’

‘David, why are you here?’ said Nessie Frew.

‘I came to see Jack.’

‘You didn’t spend much time with him,’ said Nessie Frew, glancing pointedly at the clock on the mantelshelf above the parlour fire.

‘We had supper together,’ David said. ‘But he’s a wee bit under the weather since we came back from Inverness and I didn’t want to keep him late.’

‘He’s not ill, is he?’

‘Heavens, no,’ said David. ‘The course of study has intensified, that’s all. He’s an obsessive worrier, our Jack. He believes that he might fail his examinations.’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘Oh, it crossed my mind,’ said David, ‘from time to time.’

‘You still haven’t answered my question,’ said Nessie Frew.

‘I thought I had.’

‘I may be old, David, but I’m not senile. What do you have to say to me?’

David hesitated. He sat back in the small overstuffed armchair, trying, it seemed, to find a comfortable position for his hips. He had a tumbler of whisky and soda-water in his hand for he had no stomach for sherry, and brandy, for some reason, made his lips swell.

‘Out with it,’ said Mrs Frew.

‘I’m – I’m considering – just considering, mind you – not going back to China,’ David said; he squinted at the woman anxiously. ‘I thought that I should – I mean, seek the benefit of your advice.’

‘What did your Uncle George say?’

‘I haven’t mentioned it to him yet.’

‘Jack?’

‘Jack is, as you may imagine, aghast,’ David said. ‘He can’t believe that the thought even crossed my mind. Everything is clear-cut for our Jack, always has been. The whole weary business of getting an education has only been a prelude to “real life”, to returning to China and taking up the work.’

‘Have you lost interest in the work, David?’

‘It’s not that. No, I haven’t, of course not.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘No, I’m not sure, not at all sure.’

Neither approval nor censure showed in Aunt Nessie’s expression. She seemed wary, as if he had put her on the spot, had forced upon her a responsibility which she could not shoulder lightly.

She rose, poured herself another inch of sherry from the decanter on the occasional table and returned to her seat. She put her knees together, her ankles together, straightened her spine and tucked in her chin.

‘Have you lost your belief, David? Answer truthfully.’

‘It isn’t a crisis of that kind, Aunt Nessie.’

‘Do you not have faith?’

‘I ask myself – and this is the nub of it – “How best can I serve?”’

‘And what’s your answer?’

‘There are more sick bodies in Glasgow than in Fanshi.’

‘Sick souls too, David?’

‘Yes, sick souls too.’

‘What’s led you to this profound conclusion?’

‘Observation.’

‘Is there a girl involved?’

He was taken aback. ‘No. No, I assure you –’

‘What about Miss – what is her name?’

‘Miss Dickie; Sarah Dickie.’

‘Won’t she go with you to China, is that it?’

‘No,’ said David vehemently. ‘That is not it. There was never anything serious – anything at all, in fact – between Sarah and me. My uncle and her father promoted a childhood friendship into something much more than it was. Sarah is infatuated with a farmer’s son.’

‘And are you jealous?’

‘She loves him,’ said David. ‘He’s a pleasant chap with excellent prospects; a good God-fearing young man too. Perfect for Sarah Dickie. She could never be wife to a missionary, could never settle in China.’

‘You don’t care for Miss Dickie, in other words.’

‘I don’t – don’t love her.’

‘No other?’

‘No other.’ David shook his head. ‘It isn’t that.’

‘David, what do you want; to doctor, to administer to the sick?’

‘I truly do not know. It was a mistake, Aunt, I see that now. Being both doctor and minister – it’s a different sort of thing.’

‘In a civilised country like our own, perhaps, but—’

‘China is not uncivilised. Far from it. It’s different, incomprehensibly different.’

‘Full of heathens parched for the living water of the Word. Jesus Christ cannot be hidden, David.’

‘Dozens of societies plough men and money into the work. The Baptists, the Friends, the Danes, the Americans. Heavens, Aunt Nessie, it’s almost a hundred years since the LMS took a hold on mainland China.’

‘And still they are hungry for the blessing of His love,’ said Nessie Frew. ‘Your mother and father will be bitterly disappointed.’

‘It’s their life, Aunt Nessie. Fanshi is their citadel, not mine.’

‘They gave up everything for God’s work.’

‘Including their children.’

‘David, that’s cruel.’

‘Uncle George, you too, Aunt – you mean more to me than Mother or Father. Jack and I have never been important to them.’

‘You are important to them. You’ll inherit the Mission, the new hospital—’

‘Make it bigger, make it better, make it more famous. Convert more benighted heathens than the Berlinners or the Evangelicals. Cure more cases of goitre and St Vitus’ dance. Perform more surgical operations—’

‘Please.’ She raised her left hand. ‘That’s enough.’

‘I thought you might understand, might – might help me.’

‘Help you?’ said Nessie Frew.

‘Help me to find out what’s really in my heart.’

‘Have you prayed, David?’

‘Often, and devoutly.’

‘What did God say to you?’

David did not answer her.

She said, ‘Did you not listen to Him?’

David said, ‘They’ll have Jack. He’s twice the man I am, anyhow.’

‘They want both of you.’

‘I know.’

‘For God’s work.’

‘For the glory of the Fanshi Mission, you mean.’

‘They must be told,’ said Mrs Frew.

‘When I reach a final decision, one way or the other, I’ll write to them,’ said David.

‘I think you’ve already made up your mind.’

‘Aunt, if I stay, will you give me room here?’

‘What?’

‘If I decide to become a minister—’

‘Not a doctor?’

‘– and to apply for a parish—’

‘Here, do you mean; in Glasgow?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with Glasgow,’ David said ingenuously.

‘Well, certainly, yes, there must be plenty of work to do in this city, that’s true.’ She drank her sherry in a single swallow, made a wry face. ‘Preaching. Serving the spiritual needs of the populace. But I thought that you—’

‘I didn’t say that I had lost faith, Aunt Nessie, only that I had lost my inclination to return to China.’

‘The ideal is—’

David said, ‘My one regret will be that I’ll be letting Jack down.’

‘You won’t try to change his mind for him, I trust.’

‘Absolutely not.’

She turned the sherry glass in her fingers, looking at it and not at the young man.

David said, ‘Will you give me shelter, Aunt Nessie, for a while at least?’

‘Yes, you have made up your mind,’ said Nessie Frew.

‘Sort of, I suppose.’

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you room here. When will you come, do you think?’

‘In April,’ David said.

 

He had been up very early and, dressed in a soft tweed sports coat and flannel trousers, had seated himself at the kitchen table with Craig; Craig in dark serge uniform with buttons gleaming and the belt already clenched about his narrow waist.

Kirsty had seen them in apposition but not, as now, in contrast; it made her uncomfortable. She concentrated on cooking and serving breakfast and listened to their stilted conversation without comment. She sensed Craig’s distrust of the ‘toff’; he answered David’s questions about the arduous nature of police work with a curtness that was almost impolite. He, Craig, finished his meal and hurried off, helmet in hand, with no more than a nod of farewell.

David said, ‘He doesn’t like to talk about it, I see.’

‘Not to anyone, not even to me.’

‘I wonder why?’

‘He doesn’t want to worry me.’

‘Is it dangerous, do you think?’

Kirsty shrugged. ‘Things happen.’

‘Violent acts?’

‘Yes.’

Kirsty felt strangely reluctant to discuss details, those that she had gleaned, of Craig’s occupation. David gave a little nod, as if he understood. A strand of fair hair stuck up untidily from his crown and Kirsty had to resist the temptation to smooth it down.

She removed the plates and ran them under the cold-water tap and put them in the basin in the sink. There was a wash to do and she studied the band of sky, tinged with daylight, that showed over the rooftops. In the window glass she could see David’s reflection. Now that she was not looking at him he wore a serious expression, grave, not surly. When she turned around he started.

‘I must be off too,’ he said.

‘Did you see your brother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is he farin’ well?’

‘Well enough. He has to be examined at the end of this month and the prospect makes him nervous.’

‘Were you nervous when you were examined?’

‘Of course,’ David said. He finished the tea in his cup and got to his feet. ‘Will my aunt be out of bed yet?’

‘She should be,’ said Kirsty.

‘I want to say goodbye.’

‘Will you be back soon?’

‘No, not for – some time.’

‘I’ll say goodbye too, then.’

‘The new house?’

‘Aye, in a fortnight,’ said Kirsty. ‘When do you sail for China?’

‘At the end of May – if I sail at all.’

‘I thought—’

‘No, it isn’t settled; not quite.’

He offered his hand and she took it awkwardly. His skin was dry and warm and smooth, the grip strong. Questions clamoured in her mind but she bit her lip and held them back.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Goodbye again, Kirsty.’

 

Sergeant Byrne had a brother who when he retired from the Force supplemented his meagre pension by doing removals. He stabled his cuddy and a four-wheeled cart in Whiteinch and pulled two or three hands from the street corner when he needed muscle to hump heavy furniture. He was a careful man, honest and dependable and Craig left the flitting to him.

Every inch of space in the four-wheeler was needed to take the Nicholsons from Walbrook Street back to Canada Road for Mrs Frew, in a fit of generosity, had scoured her attics and basement and had come up with an amazing number of items which, she declared, were superfluous to her needs and just cluttered up the place. Kirsty, she claimed, would be doing her a favour by taking them away. Tables, chairs, a double bed with mattress and a walnut headboard, brass oil-lamps, a brass coal scuttle, a brass log box, three Indian rugs with some wear in them still, a selection of vases in pretty glazes and a big box full of cutlery, Best Sheffield, and china. Kirsty protested, of course, but Mrs Frew was adamant and Craig hefted and hoisted the lots single-handed into the hallway from which, after he had gone off to do his duty, Sergeant Byrne’s brother lifted them away into his cart.

It was an emotional farewell, as if she, Kirsty, were going to China and not just along to Greenfield.

Mrs Frew shed tears. Kirsty shed tears. They might have hugged each other half the morning if brother Byrne, with a delicate cough, hadn’t indicated that he was ready to help Mrs Nicholson up on to the cart and wanted to be speedy in case the weather changed to rain.

Mrs Frew came out on to the step, discarding ‘respectability’ for once, and waved her lace handkerchief as the cart trundled off. Kirsty looked back over her shoulder and wept too as Walbrook Street slipped away from her and Mr Byrne and his three rough assistants exchanged glances but preserved a decent silence.

That night Craig came home from Ottawa Street to his own home at No. 154 Canada Road and found it, for the most part, all spick and span. He had already spent three evenings there doing a spot of painting and revarnishing, though the house had been left spotless by the departing tenant, had been inspected as a Police Dwelling by the appropriate committee man and signed off as sound and sanitary.

In view of Kirsty’s condition, however, Mr Byrne and his boys had donated an hour of their time to putting up a bed in the front room, setting out rugs, tables and chairs just where Kirsty had wanted them and had even helped her unpack and stack away the stuff from the boxes. One of the lads slipped out and found a coalman who lugged three bags upstairs to the bunker in the hall. Though Mr Byrne had been paid in advance by Craig, Kirsty tipped him an extra two shillings, for so quick and thorough had they been that all was squared away by mid-afternoon and she even found time for a bite of dinner and a wee rest before she went out to shop.

It was strange to return to Canada Road, to look down its diminishing perspective and see, in the haze, the place where Craig and she had first lived as man and wife. She was apprehensive about meeting old neighbours but, that first afternoon, she did not. She came back with her shopping from Dumbarton Road and paused, looked up at the nice clean façade of the almost new tenement with its large windows and neat net curtains and roller blinds, with the sharp clean smell of lysol solution coming out of the close and the half-inch steps in front of each door on the stairs as white as snow. It was the same place, the same stretch of the Greenfield – and yet it was so very different.

She went on up, fumbled with the key and let herself into the apartment and stood for a moment, the basket and purse still in her hands, and looked into the rooms in the afternoon light and waited for the elation to catch her up, for the feeling of delight that she had anticipated in being a wife in her own home to rise within her. But, to her sorrow, it did not. She went into the kitchen and unpacked the basket and set about the business of preparing Craig’s supper as if she had been here for months or years, as if the fine new house held no novelty at all. It would be different, she decided, when the baby came for it was a fine house in which to raise a family, spacious, clean and respectable, though it wasn’t Walbrook Street and never would be, no matter how she worked to make it so.

Craig came home early. He was only five minutes’ walk from the station now, and miles from Cranstonhill Baths. He found the fire blazing brightly and the table covered with glistening new oilcloth and the kitchen warm with the smell of supper. He gave Kirsty a big hug even before he removed his tunic and boots and he glanced at the list of eight things that she required him to do – repair the pulley rope, change the gas globe in the hall, and the like – and grinned and winked at her.

‘Aye, Mrs Nicholson, I see you’ll be keepin’ me busy now we’ve a home of our own.’

Kirsty, at the stove, managed a smile.

‘Oh, I’ll find plenty for you to do, Craig Nicholson, never fear,’ she said.

He wrapped his arms about her waist and laid his palms lightly on the apron that covered her stomach. He kissed her neck and watched over her shoulder as she ladled broth into a bowl.

‘It’ll be all right now,’ he told her. ‘You’ll see.’

‘Aye,’ said Kirsty.

He gave her a gentle squeeze. ‘Don’t you believe me?’

‘Of course I do, daftie,’ said Kirsty, the ladle dripping in her hand.

She inclined her head and bussed him on the cheek and Craig, reassured, nodded and made his way to a chair at the table and waited to be served.

 

Seven families, in addition to the Nicholsons, occupied the close at No. 154 Canada Road. Mr McGonigle, tenant of the ground floor right, was a fireman at the Cyrus Street station. He had been a police constable until the Extension Act of 1891 at which time he had elected to transfer to the Fire Department to which he had been attached for six years. Mr Chapman, second floor right, was an inspector in the Office of Weights and Measures and had been employed in that capacity for twenty-three years. All the other breadwinners were coppers.

The Walkers, third floor left, had a sergeant for a daddy and an eldest son already in blue and four more pups all keen and eager to reach an age when they too might don uniforms and strut the streets of the Greenfield. Father’s rank made the Walkers kings of the close and bestowed on Jess Walker all the airs and graces of a potentate’s wife. Nobody seemed to like her much. Young Mrs McAlpine hated her and was quick to buttonhole Kirsty and try to enlist her as an ally in the sniping war. Kirsty was cautious. By discreet enquiries she learned that Joyce McAlpine’s husband, Andy, was on his last warning for ‘the drink’ and would be summarily dismissed if caught boozing on duty again; learned too, from Mrs Swanston, the close gossip, that Andy McAlpine was prone to thumping his pretty little blonde wife but that he put on boxing-gloves before he did it since he did not want the neighbours to see bruises. The McAlpines had two small girl children and Joyce McAlpine confided in Kirsty, as if she was a bosom chum, that she would bear the bugger no more, would not let him near her when he was in an amorous mood, no matter what he did to persuade her.

Constable John Boyle and his wife Morven, leading lights in the Free Church, were humourless and unsociable. Upon their one child, Graham, they lavished the best education that money could buy. The boy marched off every morning in the distinctive uniform of a pupil of Kelvinside Academy and every morning endured the taunts of the hoi polloi with the stoicism of a martyred saint, his long foal-like face implacable, vengeance already simmering in his heart.

The Nicholsons shared the top landing with the Pipers.

‘Pipers by name, pipers by nature,’ Constable Jock would cry cheerfully as he dashed downstairs of an evening in kilt and sporran, bagpipes swinging in a long black-painted wooden box; while Mrs Piper adopted as her war cry the odd phrase, ‘My, my, but it’s a sair fecht for us weemen,’ and would greet all and sundry with that observation in lieu of more orthodox conversation.

Strange wails and strangled shrieks pierced the door of the Pipers’ apartment at all hours of the day and night, for the Pipers were that worst of all creatures – Glasgow-born converts to the culture of the Gaels. While Daddy and the three boys wheezed into their chanters, Mammy and the three girls practised those weird, plaintive dirges known as ‘mouth music’ to the cognoscenti. Such musical enthusiasms might have been very commendable in a Highland glen where the nearest neighbour lived on the other side of a mountain but they played hell with peace and quiet in the confines of a close in the Canada Road.

Snapped out of a snooze in a chair by the fire Craig would start up and shout, ‘What’s that, what’s that?’ and when Kirsty assured him that it was only the Pipers at it again he would growl and shake his fist at the wall and vow that some bloody night he would go in there and murder the whole damned lot of them; and then a snatch of song would rise sweet and lilting out of the bedlam and Craig would sigh and tut and, chastened, say, ‘Ah, well. Ah, well,’ and let the magic of the old art soothe the anger in his breast.

Public and private lives were so closely entwined in tenement society that Kirsty was not at all surprised that within a week or two of their arrival everybody in the close seemed to know all about them. It had not occurred to her that Craig had acquired a certain notoriety by the unusual manner of his entry to police ranks, that the capture of Skirving and Malone was an event not easily forgotten. To some Craig was a hero; to others a charlatan who had weaseled his way into the Constabulary by less than ethical means. For all that, Kirsty was accepted and made welcome. She found consolation in the company of women whose husbands’ shifts were also essays in mystery and who were separated from the community at large by the very nature of their employment. On Sundays, rain or shine, Kirsty made a pilgrimage to Walbrook Street, drank tea with Mrs Frew before service and walked arm in arm to St Anne’s with the widow. She could not, however, linger afterwards for she had a man to feed and a house to run and was slowed by the weight she bore before her as February progressed and the month of her delivery drew near.

It was on a dull and drizzling Tuesday about the middle of the month. Supper was over, dishes washed and dried, the kitchen all neat and cosy. Craig lay in his favourite chair, his stockinged feet on the end of the hob, a Gold Flake in his mouth and a novel, Hunted Down, open on his lap. Kirsty was sewing up frayed cuffs on one of Craig’s shirts, squinting at the tiny needle and fine white thread in the gaslight when a knock sounded upon the door.

‘Who can that be?’ she asked, glancing up.

‘Bert Swanson, maybe,’ Craig answered, stirring himself. ‘He said he might drop in to see if I wanted a few frames o’ billiards down at the gymnasium. But I don’t feel like it.’

Craig put down his book, yawned, stretched and went out into the hallway to open the door to the caller.

Kirsty returned to her stitching.

She heard voices, paused. She heard a peculiar sound, almost like a sob. She had just struggled to her feet, pushing herself from the chair, when the kitchen door swung open and Craig, a hand over his eyes and shoulders heaving, staggered into the room.

Hard on his heels came his brother Gordon.

‘Craig?’ said Kirsty. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

It was Gordon who answered, for Craig waved her away and slumped at once at the table and hid his face between his arms.

Gordon said, ‘It’s our dad. He’s dead.’

‘Dead? But how – when—?’

‘Last week, last Wednesday.’

‘Was he sick? An’ why wasn’t Craig told?’

Embarrassed, Gordon answered, ‘He – Dad just dropped. Nobody knew what caused it. He just dropped. He just dropped like a stone in the yard at the Mains. He just dropped down dead at the door o’ the byre.’

‘Were you there with him, Gordon?’

‘Aye, I was close enough t’see it happen. Straight down on to the cobbles on his face, he went. Split his brow wi’ the fall. It was funny how he hardly bled at all.’

‘What was the cause?’

‘Heart stopped.’

Kirsty experienced a prickle of disappointment, not so much grief as selfishness. She had had a picture of Bob Nicholson with his grandchild on his knee, his small hard brown hands about the white shawl. She regretted that she had been cheated of the pleasure of that reunion, of repaying the man for his kindness to her, regretted too that her baby would never know its grandfather and that he was closed off for ever from them all and their future achievements.

‘When will he be buried?’

‘It – it was Saturday last,’ said Gordon.

Craig jerked up and whirled around, his expression fierce, eyes red and wet and glaring. ‘Christ, could some o’ you no’ have told me?’

‘How could I tell you, Craig, when I never knew where you were?’

‘I wrote—’ Craig sniffed and wiped his nose on his wrist. ‘I wrote t’ Da half a dozen times. Did he no’ tell you?’

Gordon swallowed. ‘I – I don’t think he got the letters.’

Craig was on his feet. Gordon retreated half a step as if he feared that his brother was going to snag his head and knuckle him again as had happened from time to time when they were growing up.

‘He must’ve got the letters,’ Craig said. ‘They were sent to him. All stamped. I mean – what about the gifts I sent at Christmas?’

Gordon shook his head.

Kirsty said, ‘If the letters didn’t arrive, Gordon, how did you know where to find us?’

‘She told me.’

Gordon had changed. He was not as Kirsty remembered him. He had not grown taller but he had broadened out a little, had developed a crop of pimples about his mouth, had coarsened. He smacked no more of carefree ebullience but had the mark of the farmyards on him, long hours in cold byres. His nails were bitten down and rimmed with dirt; she wondered that Madge Nicholson had allowed him to slide into untidiness.

‘Mam?’ said Craig; changed question into exclamation. ‘Mam!’

Gordon said, ‘He often used t’ say to me, when we were goin’ to work, that he’d told you not to write. He said he knew you’d do the right thing by Kirsty an’ would net a good job.’

‘He never even knew I was a policeman?’

‘Nah.’

‘But the letters—’ said Kirsty.

Craig dragged a chair to the table and pointed at it.

‘Sit down, Gordon. She’ll make ye some supper. Kirsty?’

Gordon glanced up, awaiting her invitation too.

Kirsty said, ‘Aye. You must be hungry.’

‘The letters,’ said Craig, ‘will be hid in one o’ her drawers, slipped away under linen or blankets.’

‘Aye,’ said Gordon.

He wore his one and only jacket, apart from the suit he had preserved in the mothball-reeking wardrobe, flannel trousers, a scarf and a soft cap. He carried a little case, a thing of pasteboard and cord with a cheap tin lock, a lady’s case, that he kept perched on his lap as if he were afraid that, even here in his brother’s kitchen, some ruffian would sneak up and steal it from him. Kirsty felt a sudden terrific wave of pity for Gordon, saw that he was still shocked and suffering. She took the case from him and put it on the dresser, took off his cap and put it on top of the little case and then she put an arm about him.

Craig, fingers trembling, was in process of lighting a cigarette.

‘Do you want one, Gordon?’ Kirsty said.

‘What?’

‘A smoke.’

‘Gordon doesn’t smoke,’ said Craig.

‘Aye, but I do.’

‘Give him one, Craig.’

She stood by Gordon’s side while he extracted a Gold Flake from the paper packet that Craig held out to him, put the cigarette into his lips and craned forward to the match flame. Frowning, Craig scrutinised his brother as Gordon inhaled, as if he were watching a trick done by a trained collie.

‘She’ll not know you’re on the gaspers?’ he said.

‘Nah.’ Gordon managed a grin, just. He looked up at Kirsty. ‘Thanks, Kirsty.’

‘How did you get here?’

‘The train; then I walked.’

Craig said, ‘She gave you the address, didn’t she?’

‘Aye,’ said Gordon. ‘She told me where the Greenfield was an’ all. But she never told me it was so bloody far. God, man, I thought I was walkin’ the length o’ the Clyde.’ He glanced up at Kirsty once more, grinned. ‘It’s some size o’ place this.’

‘You get used to it, Gordon,’ said Kirsty.

Gordon said, ‘You’re big.’

‘I’m due in five weeks.’

‘I never knew.’

‘Did she not tell you?’ said Craig.

Gordon ran a hand over his hair, took the Gold Flake from his mouth and angled it between his fingers.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘She wants you back.’

‘Hah!’

‘It’s true, though. She sent me here t’ tell you t’ come back.’

‘If she got the letters, if she read them—’

‘She did, Craig. By Christ, we both know that now.’

‘Well, if she did, then she knows I’m settled in work, wi’ a house—’

Gordon interrupted. ‘She’s taken on the farm.’

‘What?’

‘Persuaded Mr Sanderson; told him you’d be comin’ back.’

‘She can bloody well untell him, then.’

‘Right after the funeral, in the parlour on Saturday. She laid on a tea.’

‘Christ!’

‘She had it all worked out, Craig.’

‘Did she no’ cry?’

‘Aye, at first. She cried louder, though, when she learned there was nothin’ to come from the Burial Society.’

‘Twenty quid,’ said Craig, nodding. ‘He gave it t’ us. He cashed it in.’

Kirsty crossed to the stove and greased the small frying-pan with lard. ‘Who paid for the funeral, Gordon?’

‘Mr Sanderson.’

‘God Almighty!’ said Craig. ‘Did she ask him?’

‘He’s on the board o’ the Burial Society. He knew the twenty quid was gone before Mam did. I think he was the one who told her the truth.’

Kirsty said, ‘Will she have to pay it back?’

‘Eventually,’ said Gordon. ‘As it is I’m to come off the day work.’

‘It’s the bloody day work pays the bills,’ said Craig.

Gordon spread his hands, wafting smoke across the table. He appeared to be more comfortable now that he had shared the burden of responsibility with Craig and trusted his brother to extricate him, somehow, from the fate that Madge Nicholson had in store.

‘She says she’s ready to pitch in,’ Gordon said. ‘She says she’s done it before, when we were young.’

‘Lyin’ bitch,’ said Craig but softly, without heat.

‘She thinks that you an’ me, an’ Kirsty—’

‘Kirsty?’

‘She knows you’re married. Did you not say so in one o’ the letters?’

Kirsty said, ‘I wouldn’t be in this state, Gordon, if we weren’t married, would I?’

‘Suppose not,’ said Gordon. He was more interested in other aspects of the situation. ‘Anyway, Mam’s got this notion you’ll come home now, to Dalnavert—’

‘She must be bloody daft.’

‘– an’ we’ll all live in the farmhouse, work the ground, build up the yield—’

‘Dad could never make the place pay.’

‘We’re young, though,’ said Gordon. ‘So Mam says.’

‘How long would we stay young, scratchin’ away at yon bit o’ ground?’

‘Dalnavert’s no’ so bad, Craig.’

‘Cut it bloody out, Gordon,’ said Craig. ‘I know fine well what you’re up to an’ I’ll have none o’ it.’

‘Mr Sanderson’s given her a year.’

‘It’ll take five at least, plus capital.’

‘There is no money. She owes Mr Sanderson twenty quid.’

‘The burial never cost that, nothin’ like it.’

‘There wasn’t so much as a ha’penny in the kitty, Craig.’

‘She was fast off the mark findin’ that out.’

‘It was easy to discover,’ said Gordon, ‘since there was nothin’ to discover.’

He glanced up at Kirsty as she broke an egg into the pan and the sizzle of frying filled the kitchen.

‘Is that for me?’ Gordon asked.

‘Aye.’

‘I’m starved, right enough.’ He tilted his head and ostentatiously surveyed the kitchen, ceiling, window and floor. ‘No’ bad. Small, though.’

‘This is Glasgow,’ said Craig.

‘Some place,’ said Gordon. ‘Glasgow.’

‘You’ll need to stay,’ said Kirsty. ‘I’ll make up a bed in the front room.’

‘How many rooms?’

‘Two,’ said Craig. ‘An’ that’s two more than most folk have got.’

‘Do ye say?’ said Gordon.

‘How’s Lorna?’

‘Fine.’

‘Upset?’

‘Aye, very upset. It was the shock as much as anythin’.’

‘Did the wallin’ an’ the drainin’ o’ the high field ever get finished?’

‘I did a bit.’

‘How much?’

‘No’ much.’

Kirsty put down a plate of ham and egg, and returned to the stove to make tea for them all. Inside her the baby was active all of a sudden, stirring and clamouring and clouting her. The shock, she supposed, of the news had disturbed her system and the sympathy of the infant within her body.

Gordon ate hungrily. The butt of the cigarette smoked in a tin ashtray by his side. She watched him, saying nothing. Craig too was silent, lolling back in the wooden chair, lids lowered, his eyes with that dark, brooding emptiness; not emptiness but indrawnness. She wondered what was churning in his mind, what thoughts and speculations, what feelings were in his heart. His tears had all dried up and his mouth was firm. He looked fit and mature in contrast to his brother.

Craig said, ‘Is the new lease signed?’

Mouth full, Gordon mumbled, ‘Aye, but just for a year.’

‘Whose name?’

‘Mine,’ said Gordon.

‘Christ, so you can carry the can?’

‘An’ yours,’ said Gordon.

Craig, Kirsty noticed, did not seem unduly surprised.

‘I thought as much,’ said Craig. ‘By God, but she’s desperate to have me back, is she not?’

Gordon said, ‘We’ll never do it on our own.’

‘What are the financial arrangements?’

‘The debt an’ first payment deferred until May.’

‘Will Mr Sanderson accept the value o’ stock in the fields an’ growin’ crops?’

‘Aye,’ said Gordon. ‘You know how kind he is. He’s keen enough to lend a helpin’ hand.’

‘But he expects me back, doesn’t he?’

‘I think he does.’

Kirsty dumped the teapot on the mat on the table. ‘Craig?’

Craig said, ‘I get a hankerin’ for the place, times, I admit.’

‘Craig?’

Gordon swabbed his plate with bread and popped the piece into his mouth.

‘What did you think I was doin’ here?’ Craig said.

‘Hadn’t a notion,’ said Gordon. ‘Dairyman, somethin’ along those lines.’

‘Well, like I told you, I’m a copper.’

Gordon said, ‘How does it pay?’

‘Now I’m out of probation, it pays twenty-two shillin’s a week.’

‘An’ this place, what does it cost?’

‘Five pounds and ten shillings a year.’

‘So you’re no’ exactly starvin’, eh?’

‘Far from it,’ said Craig.

Gordon, without being asked, took another cigarette from the packet on the table and struck himself a match. He watched Kirsty pour tea into a cup.

‘Would they take me too?’ Gordon said. ‘To be a copper?’

Craig laughed. ‘You’re o’er wee, Gordie.’

‘I’m no’ wee.’

‘For a Glasgow policeman you are.’

‘Big enough t’ run Dalnavert, though?’

‘Are ye?’ said Craig. He signalled. ‘Kirsty.’

She poured tea for him too and then, as the brothers fell to talking once more, she went out of the kitchen and into the front room.

It was cold there, that same still clammy winter feel that the bothy at Hawkhead had had. She had not asked about Mr Clegg and Gordon had offered no information. That part of her life was over. Clegg would not pursue her now, could not harm her. Clegg was a small man tied to a handful of acres of rough hill-land and she was wife to a Glasgow policeman. She might have been in China for all Clegg knew.

She stood by the window, by the cheap curtain, and looked down into Canada Road, her hands upon her stomach. The baby had stopped kicking now. Below, a gang of young men, laughing at their own wit, slouched up from the direction of Dumbarton Road, from the pub perhaps, if they were in work and had a bob or two to spend midweek. Mr Boyle and his wife came stepping over the road, prim and solemn even in the way they walked; had been at a prayer meeting, probably, or a Bible group. They vanished below her into the close.

From the kitchen came the sound of laughter, not raucous but warm. Craig was glad to see his brother. Gordon’s presence had taken the sting from the news of Mr Nicholson’s death. For Gordon too, probably. They had each other, they had Lorna, and their mother still. She had nobody, and never had had anybody – except herself.

She wondered why she had not pressed Craig to marry her, and found no logical reason for her reluctance to bind herself to him. She did not know if he loved her, did not know what the word meant. It meant, she supposed, belonging – and not much more. She belonged to Craig all right. She would belong to him until he rejected her. That was it. She could not give up the faint, deep-buried fear that he would reject her, that she would lose not his love but the security he provided. The baby would not be like Craig. The baby would be her blood, her child. She would know then what love really felt like, the strange thistledown bondage of having a relative; a daughter, a son. It was, Kirsty thought, the only relationship that she could trust, the only love, perhaps, that she would ever know that wasn’t demanding – aye, and in its way demeaning.

‘Kirsty?’

She did not turn from the window, did not answer at first.

‘Kirsty, this tea’s gone cold.’

‘I’m comin’ ,’ she said.

‘Kirsty?’

‘I’m coming.’

 

Craig would not stop talking. It had been months since she had heard him string so many words together. He lay by her side in the bed, hands behind his head, nose pointed at the pelmet above the window and went on and on and on about Gordon, Lorna, his dad, about Bankhead and Dalnavert and his mother.

Kirsty lay in that queer position which gave her most relief from the weight of her stomach, left arm tucked against her hip, one knee cocked, the blanket drawn up over her shoulders. She was weary but not sleepy. Even Craig’s long monologue, delivered in a quiet voice, did not make her drowsy. She needed to know what was in Craig’s mind, whether the prospect, the chance of going back home again had a strong appeal for him, whether or not it was that that had loosened his tongue or just the excitement of seeing his brother once more. Gordon had chosen to sleep in the kitchen. He had curled up on a mattress of old blankets in the alcove and was snoring even before Kirsty turned off the gaslight and closed the fire door on the grate.

‘Nothin’ to worry about from Clegg,’ said Craig. ‘He canna touch you now we’re married. Anyway, he has another servant. Hired her from the McSweens. You remember yon clan from down in Galloway that come up for the harvests; well, them. She’s only fourteen year old an’ not quite right in the head. Mr Sanderson made a fuss about it, apparently, but Clegg had a signed paper, and that was that. Gordon says she’s got a temper like a bloody wildcat so may be old Clegg’ll have to pay for his fun.

‘Even if I’d been there, there was nothin’ I could have done. It was a defect in the heart, the doctor said. Funny how it never showed a sign. Aye, he was fond o’ the bottle, right enough, but he never lifted a hand against any o’ us unless Mother forced him to it. She did most of the beltin’ when we were young. I daresay we needed it, an’ all.

‘I wish he’d got the letters, though. It would have pleased him to learn I’d become a copper. By God, though, if he’d survived he’d have been up here at the toot when the bairn was born. He’d have been desperate to see it. He was always proud o’ the Nicholson name.

‘He was fond o’ you, Kirsty. I think that’s why he gave us the twenty pounds. If I’d known it was all he had salted away I’d have thought twice about takin’ it, I’ll tell you.

‘It was what he wanted, though. It was his dearest wish for you an’ me to—’

Craig was silent for a moment or two.

‘Imagine just droppin’ down dead like that. God, you never know the minute. They carried him into the bedroom in the Mains until the doctor arrived. Muddy boots, bloody head an’ all. That’s the Sandersons for you. They always had a soft spot for you, Kirsty; the Sandersons.

‘Did I tell you I’ve learned to swim, by the way?’

‘No. No, you didn’t,’ Kirsty said.

‘Well, I have. Near enough. Never been a Nicholson who could swim before. Dad would see bathers on the beach an’ say, “If God had intendit us t’ be fish he’d have given us gills.” I don’t think he’d have minded me learnin’ to swim, though.

‘He’d have liked my uniform. He was always keen on uniforms. He loved the kilties when the battalion camped at Sands. Remember?’

‘I never got to see them,’ said Kirsty.

‘He took Gordon an’ me down to look at them. “Would you fancy bein’ a soldier, son?” he asked me.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I never said anythin’. I was frightened, I remember, that he wanted me to be a soldier just to get rid o’ me. You know what it’s like when you’re wee, when you don’t know what they want and how you can give it.’

Craig sighed and shifted position slightly.

He said, ‘There are worse places than Dalnavert.’

Kirsty said, ‘Do you want to go back?’

‘Do you?’

‘I’ll go where you go, Craig.’

‘Aye, you’ll have to,’ Craig said.

It was the truth; the advent of the baby bound her to him more than the ring, more than a marriage certificate would have done. She could not fend for herself, not with a baby to feed.

She said, ‘It’s all right here.’

‘I’ll say it is,’ Craig exclaimed. ‘Own house, good job.’

‘Tell Gordon—’

‘She’ll never manage wi’out me, though. She’ll have no option but to take me back in.’

‘It’s why she sent Gordon,’ Kirsty reminded him.

‘I could turn Dalnavert into a payin’ farm in ten years. It would be hard, no denyin’ that, but it might be worth it,’ Craig said. ‘Anyway, I should really go back wi’ Gordon, just to see her.’

‘Can you get time off?’

‘For a bereavement – och, aye.’

‘She’ll make you stay.’

‘Nobody makes me do anythin’ I don’t want to do.’

‘I thought – I thought we were settled,’ said Kirsty.

‘Gordon canna handle the farm on his own.’

‘Craig—’

‘She’ll expect me to come back with him.’

Kirsty raised herself on her elbow. ‘Give yourself time, Craig. Don’t rush into it.’

‘Aye, that’s sense,’ he conceded.

‘When’s your next full day off?’

‘A fortnight.’

‘Wait until then.’

‘She’ll be mad if I don’t show up,’ Craig said. ‘If I don’t go back wi’ Gordon my name really will be mud. She’s my mother, after all.’

‘She’s read your letters; she’ll understand.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Sleep on it, at least,’ Kirsty said.

‘I wonder what he’d have done.’

‘Who?’

‘Dad.’

Kirsty held her tongue and, after a minute, Craig grunted, kissed her perfunctorily on the brow and turned heavily on to his side.

‘Goodnight, dear,’ Kirsty whispered.

But he did not answer her.

 

The brothers left the house together. It was cloudy, not cold though, and at that early hour Canada Road had a clean and peaceful air. A midden cart ground off towards the depot and a pair of burgh council lamplighters were working their rounds, poles across their shoulders.

Kirsty stood in the front room window, her cheek against the glass and watched Craig and Gordon walk towards Dumbarton Road. There Craig would direct his brother on to a tram and, she knew, would give him money, a pound or thirty shillings; she had seen Craig in at the savings and had no need to ask the reason. She did not grudge it. She was too relieved that Craig had not committed himself, had not sent her round to Ottawa Street to say that he would not be on duty, that he had not gone home to Dalnavert.

It was not up to her to persuade him to stay in Glasgow. She had more sense than to argue with him, try to convince him that their new life was better than the old life, the city better than the country, that Canada Road offered more chance of happiness than Dalnavert.

Happiness: she was not sure now what that word meant, what images it should conjure up and what visions for the future. She was so heavy, so tired that she could not see beyond the delivery, could not imagine what it would be like to give birth.

Craig and Gordon were out of sight. From the close below came Mr Swanson and after him came John Boyle and then the Walkers, father and son. In twenty minutes or so Mr McGonigle and Andy McAlpine would come trudging in from night-shift and soon Canada Road would be bustling with children on the way to school and wives to the shops.

Kirsty felt a strange yearning to be part of it, to be quickly absorbed into the community, her and her children. There was nothing to prevent it happening, nothing except Craig, and Madge Nicholson’s influence upon him.