The Good Provider (44 page)

‘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.