The Girl with the Creel (2 page)

His voice sounded odd, trembly, making her suspect that he felt just as strange as she did, but he followed her out into the darkness of the November night. The cold air made her shiver, and he put his arm round her waist and pulled her close. They walked slowly for some distance before he muttered, ‘It's funny. I've always thought of you as Mick's wee sister, and now …' His voice trailed off, and when he spoke again it appeared to be with difficulty. ‘Lizann, you don't know what you've done to me.'

Not conscious of having done anything, she wished he would explain, but he said nothing more, and when they came to the small cluster of old houses that made up the Yardie, she said, ‘Goodnight, Peter, and thanks for seeing me home.'

His brief hesitation made her hope he was going to kiss her, but he dropped his arm. ‘Will you come out with me tomorrow night?'

‘Yes, if you like.' She didn't think her father would object; Peter had always been like one of the family.

‘I'll come for you about seven, then. Goodnight, Lizann.'

When she went into the house, Willie Alec said, sharply, ‘Is Mick not with you?'

‘No, Peter Tait took me home.'

He frowned. ‘Mick likely had other fish to fry.'

‘She'd been safe wi' Peter, though,' Hannah smiled. ‘D'you want a cup o' tea, Lizann, before you go to your bed?'

‘No thanks.' Climbing the stairs, she reflected that all she wanted was peace to recall the wonderful evening.

Practically sure that Peter had wanted to kiss her goodnight but had been afraid to, Lizann wondered if Mick was kissing Jenny. He probably was, for he'd had eyes for nobody else. He obviously liked her, maybe loved her? Did she love Peter? This happy yet oddly disturbing churning inside her, was that love? And did he feel the same?

At breakfast, Mick teased her about Peter. ‘Anybody'd have thought it was the first time you'd met, the way you looked at each other.'

Willie Alec's scowl made Hannah step in before he could say anything. ‘You'd likely been neglecting her, Mick, and Peter had danced wi' her because nobody else asked her.'

Lizann's heart cramped. Had he felt sorry for her? Was that all?

Mick dispelled her fears. ‘He didn't give anybody else a chance, he stuck to her like glue.'

Hannah poured herself another cup of tea. ‘It's a good thing somebody looked after her. Eat up now, or you'll be late for the kirk.'

Winking at Lizann, Mick did as he was told. Despite pressure from the American evangelists who targeted the area at intervals, Willie Alec had staunchly clung to his own beliefs, and, although Mick had quite enjoyed the catchy tunes of the hymns sung at the few Gospel meetings he had attended on the quiet, and the modern approach to the teaching of the scriptures, he hadn't been brave enough to go against his father and break away from the Church of Scotland. So he still went with Lizann to the morning services in the North Church in East Church Street, while their parents attended in the evening because Willie Alec preferred the shorter sermons.

‘I wish you hadn't said that about Peter,' Lizann observed, as they walked along the road. ‘You wouldn't have liked if I'd told them about you and Jenny Cowie.'

Her brother grinned. ‘It was just a bit of fun.'

‘I'm supposed to be going out with him tonight, and Father'll likely not let me go now.'

Mick looked surprised. ‘Don't tell me you and Peter … I never thought. I'm sorry, little sister, trust me to open my big mouth and put my foot in it. But you don't need to say it's him you're going out with. Say it's one of your chums. Father wouldn't be any the wiser.'

‘I'm not telling him any lies.'

‘Well, I'll stick up for you if he tries to stop you seeing Peter.'

‘Will you?' Lizann sounded more optimistic. ‘Thanks, Mick. Um, are you to be going steady with Jenny Cowie?'

‘I hope so, but she doesn't get out much. Her mother's an invalid, and her father's not fit to work, so she has to look after them. She can't have a proper job, either, just taking in sewing for other folk.'

‘Oh, poor Jenny, and she's such a nice girl.'

‘Aye, she is that.'

Entering the church, they walked sedately to their pew, for which Willie Alec paid half-a-crown per year and which was marked by a card reserving it for ‘William Alexander Jappy and Family'. The first two hymns were each followed by a prayer and then the Reverend Crawford gathered his loins to deliver his sermon. Coming to the end of a long ministry, he sometimes did not have the energy to prepare anything new, and as soon as he launched into his oft-repeated dissertation on the Ten Commandments – so oft, indeed, that his regular listeners could have prompted him if he stuck and many of the young fry cheekily mouthed along with him – Lizann settled back to think about Peter.

It took her some time to imagine him actually kissing her, and when she succeeded, it was so pleasurable that she opened her eyes guiltily in case something of it showed in her face. All eyes were turned towards the pulpit, however, some of them glassily unaware of what the preacher fondly imagined he was getting across to them with his thumps on the large Bible, some of them even closed in sleep. Relieved, she slid back into her daydream, and she was savouring a particularly tender kiss when the raising of the minister's voice disrupted her well-being. ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house,' he roared, ‘thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour's.'

The gnome-like white-headed figure let his burning eyes circle round his now wide-awake congregation, searching for the nervous, give-away signs of those who had sinned during the week, or were contemplating sinning in the week to come. ‘Yes, my friends!' he thundered. ‘The Lord can see right into the wicked hearts of those who do not heed His laws, and He has a long memory. They will be punished – if not at the time, at some time in the future – in a way befitting the nature of their sin.'

His eyes lit upon Lizann at this point, and for the first time in her life she felt herself shrivelling under his concentrated gaze. Had she sinned without knowing it? Was it wrong to dream of being kissed? No, it couldn't be. What would be the harm in just dreaming? But she'd been praying that the dreams would come true tonight, that Peter really would kiss her.

The slamming of the big Bible made her jump, and she was glad that the minister had turned his eyes to heaven away from her. ‘Amen,' he chanted, ‘and may the Lord add His blessings to these readings from His holy word!' He lowered his head then, revealing a small bald circle at his crown, and the two elders whose duty it was that day sent the collection plates (wooden handled and lined with red velvet) off along the pews, starting at the front rows – more expensive and cushioned with leather – where the most affluent townspeople sat.

During the uncomfortable silence which lasted throughout this ritual, Lizann took a surreptitious glance around her, unwilling to believe that the Reverend Crawford could suspect any of the people sitting within her range of vision to be in need of saving. None of them could ever have sinned nor would sin in the future, not even Mick … or would he? He was a bit of a lad amongst the girls, or so he made out to her.

The minister had descended from the pulpit to stand behind the altar, where the elders now laid their heavy burdens. Most parishioners could afford only a silver coin, few as much as a half crown, but there was a sprinkling of paper money, brown ten-shilling notes, pound notes in the different colours of the various Scottish banks, and reclining regally on top – dug up from underneath and strategically placed in full view by the elder on his way down the aisle – one large white English fiver. This, as everyone knew, had been donated by the frail widow of a long deceased skipper of a whaler whose fortune, as everyone also knew, would come to the church when she passed on.

Lizann often puzzled over this. How could the poor woman believe God was good when He had taken her husband from her as still quite a young man? Not only her husband. According to the huge black marble headstone in the kirkyard, their three sons had been ‘taken to God's bosom on the same day', which was a fancy way of saying they'd all gone to the bottom of the sea with their sailing ship.

The Reverend Crawford let his eyes skim over the money before giving thanks for the bounteous goodness of his flock, and after the last hymn he held his arms aloft to give the benediction. According to their age and ability, the men, women and children stood up quickly, or slowly, or painfully, and remained standing until the blessing was over and he had walked past them on his way to the door.

The shuffling queue waiting to shake his hand took a long time to reach the heavy portal, but, anxious as she was to find out, Lizann didn't dare to ask her brother anything until they were clear of the church. ‘Mick, why is it only Thou-Shalt-Nots he goes on about? Surely somewhere in the Bible there must be some Thou-Shalts?'

Mick cocked his head to the side for a moment and then grinned. ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me, how does that suit you?'

‘Och you! It still means something we shouldn't do.'

His face sobered. ‘Did you do something you shouldn't with Peter last night? Is that what's got you so worried?'

‘I'm not worried,' she protested. ‘I never did anything, and neither did he.' Hoping that Peter wouldn't be so backward tonight, she wished she knew whether or not kissing was a sin. ‘Have you ever broken any of the Commandments, Mick?'

He roared with laughter at this. ‘All ten, I'd think, at some time or other.'

‘You never stole anything?' she gasped.

‘I once took a thruppenny bit off the collection plate when I was a wee laddie, instead of putting in the penny Mother gave me to put in.'

She was relieved that that was all, but something else had occurred to her. ‘You never coverted anybody's wife, did you?'

‘Many's the time, and his ox and his ass … well, at any rate, his cat and his dog.'

He was making fun of her, but she had to laugh with him. ‘I suppose you've kissed lots of girls, and all,' she said, wistfully, after a while. ‘Is that a Shalt-Not?'

‘No, kissing's all right, thank God, or I'd have been struck down years ago.'

Lizann felt much happier knowing there was no law against it, but back home, she waited until dinner was over before she said, very cautiously, ‘Peter asked me to go out with him tonight.'

Hannah cast an anxious glance at her husband, who barked, ‘If you're thinking on going steady wi' him, you can put it right out o' your head. For one thing, he's ower old for you.'

Keeping his promise, Mick stepped in. ‘Five years is nothing, Father, and it's not like he's a stranger.'

‘She's just a bairn!'

‘I am not a bairn!' Lizann cried. ‘I'll be seventeen in April!'

‘That's still a bairn!' her father insisted.

Mick stuck doggedly to his guns. ‘She's old enough, and if you stop her seeing Peter, she could take up with some scoundrel and …'

‘That's enough!' his father thundered. ‘It's nothing to do wi' you. I'm her father, and I'm not letting her go wi' anybody yet!'

‘But I've promised,' Lizann wailed.

‘You'd no right to promise anything without asking me first!'

‘You weren't there to ask,' she ventured.

‘Peter should have had the sense not to …'

‘God Almighty!' Mick said, vehemently. ‘Anybody would think it was still the Dark Ages to hear you. Lassies of fifteen, never mind sixteen, have lads nowadays, and …'

‘Not my lassie!' Willie Alec's eyes were glittering dangerously.

‘It's no use, Mick,' Lizann said, her voice breaking, and bursting into tears she ran upstairs.

Giving his father a venomous glare, Mick charged out, slamming the outside door behind him, and Hannah, who had made no contribution to the argument, rose to clear the table, her lips gripped tightly together.

Gathering that his wife was also outraged by his decision, Willie Alec shifted himself to his armchair by the fire, but after a few minutes, he said, as if in defence, ‘I'm feared for her, Hannah.' Getting no answer, he added, ‘She's innocent as a babe.' A reply still not forthcoming, he fell silent, but when she was laying the dishes back in the dresser, he muttered, ‘She might take up wi' the first lad that makes eyes at her, a rotter, maybe, like Mick said, and we ken Peter wouldna …' Rising, he went purposefully to the foot of the stairs and called his daughter down.

It wasn't in him to apologize or admit he'd been wrong, so when Lizann made her reluctant appearance, her eyes still red and puffy, he mumbled, ‘Your mother … we think … ach! You can go out wi' Peter the night.'

Her heart leaping, she said, ‘What if he wants us to go steady?'

After a slight hesitation, her father nodded. ‘But not every night. I just saw your mother once a week when we was courting.'

Lizann was appalled at this. ‘I've only to see him once a week?'

Her fallen face made him relent. ‘Twice then, but that's plenty.' He stood up. ‘I think I'll take a walk to let my dinner go down.'

Lizann looked gratefully at her mother when he went out. ‘How did you get him to change his mind?'

‘I never said a word to him, it was what Mick said, that and his own conscience. You'll need to mind, though, just twice a week if Peter asks you to go steady, or your father'll put a stop to it.'

They sat quietly for the rest of the afternoon – Mick had brought home a wireless set some time ago, but Hannah never allowed anyone to listen to it on Sundays. As Lizann gazed idly at the fireplace, she couldn't help admiring the shining range, always kept spotless despite being the only means of cooking food and heating water. Since she left school she had been responsible for buffing the steel parts with emery paper until she could see her face in them, using a dampened rag to coat the larger areas with blacklead, then burnishing them with a curved brush with a handle on top. It was hard work, but worth it. And of course, after every meal, the pots – having been set directly on top of the hot coals – had to have the soot scraped off them with the old knife kept for the purpose, before they were washed and laid past in the corner press; the outside of the big black kettle was cleaned with a wire brush every night. There was an oven on each side of the range, one being utilized to dry the sticks one or other of them gathered from the shore for kindling, the other, being hotter and more dependable, produced perfectly baked puddings and roast meat.