The Good Provider (8 page)

Craig thanked the man profusely and, taking Kirsty’s arm once more, hurried her along the road in a more cheerful mood.

‘It’s not far, Walbrook Street,’ he told her.

Dumbarton Road was broad and bustling but navigation seemed to come naturally to Craig and he turned confidently from the main thoroughfare into a maze of short, tenemented side streets. Finally he rounded a corner marked by a small clean-cut church, into a row of trim terraced houses set behind patches of what had once been grass. There was only one ‘side’ to the street. Even Craig paused at the sight of the spectacular skyline that towered over the green privet hedges. Cranes and masts and ships’ rigging and the blank gables of sheds and warehouses were cut from the odd beige glow that never seemed to leave the Glasgow sky.

‘Is this Walbrook Street?’ said Kirsty.

‘Aye. I never thought I’d be here.’

‘Like Mr Douglas?’ said Kirsty.

‘Well, hardly,’ said Craig. ‘I mean, we’re not goin’ to a prayer-meetin’, are we?’

Number 19 was only fifty yards along the street from the kirk corner. It had a plain black door and a transom of dove-grey glass and a low step of some marble-like material. It struck Kirsty as queer that such a fine row of houses would be sited in the shadow of quays and dockland cranes.

There was a bell-pull with a wrought-iron handle, above it a painted board of no great size:
Accommodation for Gentlemen – No Mercantiles – No Commercials
.

Craig hesitated. He stepped on to the step with Kirsty clinging to his arm, rang the bell and waited, stiff and tense and silent, trying to appear as un-mercantile and un-commercial as possible.

The outline of the woman was abruptly there in the open doorway, as if she had been seated behind it like a porter.

‘Aye?’ she said.

‘A – accommodations?’ Craig stammered.

‘I am vacant, as it happens. How long are you?’

‘What?’

‘Staying?’

‘Oh,’ said Craig. ‘Three nights, at least.’

‘Step inside, if you please.’

The place had the same sort of smell as Baird Home dormitories. For that reason it seemed unfriendly to Kirsty as she followed Craig over the threshold into the hallway.

Old Saint Andrew was quick to draw her eye. For the rest there was a huge lump of oak furniture, a sideboard perhaps, two plants with longboat leaves, and just the peep of a gas jet under a glass funnel to give light to the ground floor.

‘I am Mrs Agnes Frew. Names?’

‘Mr Craig Nicholson an’ – an’ Miss Barnes.’

‘Not related?’

‘No, we – we’re here to get married.’

‘Are you, indeed? Not in my house.’

‘No, I – I – we – Two rooms,’ said Craig.

‘Have you a recommendation?’

‘What?’

‘I prefer references,’ said Agnes Frew.

‘Mr – Mr James Douglas,’ Craig stammered.

‘Mr Douglas?’

‘From Bankhead, in Carrick. He told me—’

‘Oh, that Mr Douglas.’

Mrs Frew smiled. Kirsty assumed it was a smile. The woman was small and prim and seemed coated with a fine white powder about the face, head and shoulders. Her hair was gathered into tight, girlish buns worn like ear-muffs, hair that was neither quite white nor quite blonde. Her complexion too was bloodlessly pale. The only hint of colour was about her eyes which, as they were not back-lit like those of the patron saint, were pink and dull. It was impossible to guess at Mrs Frew’s age for she had the immutable and unchanging quality of wax statuary.

‘Mr Douglas,’ said Craig, ‘told me to come here.’

‘Presbyterian?’

‘Aye,’ said Craig.

‘Regular?’

‘What?’

‘On the Sabbath?’

‘Never miss a Sunday at Bankhead kirk.’ Craig answered with such sincerity that Kirsty was almost tempted to believe him.

She was unprepared for the woman’s question to her.

‘Pure?’ Mrs Frew enquired.

‘I – I don’t understand what you mean,’ said Kirsty.

‘Before marriage?’

Craig cleared his throat. Kirsty wondered if he would take umbrage at the personal nature of the question and would defend her against its unpleasant implications.

She was a good Christian girl, even if circumstances had prevented her attending the kirk very often. She bristled with resentment. Craig said nothing, however, merely gave her a nudge with his elbow to indicate that the question would have to be answered.

‘Aye, Mrs Frew,’ Kirsty heard herself say.

‘Mr Douglas,’ said Craig, ‘would not have sent us here otherwise.’

Mrs Frew gave another smile, as crimped and enigmatic as the first. ‘Mr Douglas knows how I am on purity. Blessed are the pure in heart, the Good Book says.’

Craig said, ‘For they shall see God – if I’m not mistaken.’

Mrs Frew was delighted. ‘You are not mistaken, Mr Nicholson. And the meek shall inherit the earth, will they not?’

‘They will, they will, ma’am,’ Craig unctuously agreed.

‘That’s the way of it,’ said Mrs Frew. ‘Now, it’s one shilling and sixpence for each room, each night, which includes clean sheets and a breakfast. Half past seven o’clock in the dining-room. I would prefer it if you paid me in advance, since Mr Douglas hasn’t been here for a while.’

They still had not strayed one foot from the vault-like hallway and no evidence of other guests had been seen or heard.

Stepping closer to the tiny gas jet, Mrs Frew held out her hand, not graspingly but close to her bosom, white against the ribbed black bombazine blouse.

Craig had already separated a single five-pound note from the sheaf in his trouser pocket and he tugged it out now and laid it solemnly across the landlady’s palm.

She looked down at it, smiling. ‘Three nights?’

‘At least,’ said Craig.

‘All paid in advance?’

‘Aye, we’ll collect the change before we leave.’

‘A sound arrangement,’ said Mrs Frew.

Any hopes that Craig might have nurtured of creeping into his beloved’s bed were dashed by the disposition of the rooms as well as that of the landlady. Kirsty was led upstairs while Craig, to his consternation, was left to cool his heels in the hall. His room, it seemed, was situated in the basement while Kirsty, like an angel, was to take her repose much higher up.

Mrs Frew said, ‘I see you’ve no luggage.’

Kirsty had already learned the value of a fib. ‘My basket’s bein’ sent on.’

‘Came away in a hurry, did you?’

‘A bit,’ said Kirsty. ‘Craig – Mr Nicholson – he has to see about a job tomorrow. I came along with him to buy my trousseau.’

Mrs Frew might have continued her line of enquiry if Kirsty had not paused on the half-landing to admire the picture.

Saint Andrew had indeed been rendered in stained glass, coloured lumps of the stuff fastened by lead beading into a wooden frame fixed to two long wooden feet. The stand was set upright before a second small gas jet which flared quietly and unflickeringly behind it.

Noticing Kirsty’s interest Mrs Frew paused on the steep dark stair above her.

‘Is it not beautiful?’

‘Aye, it certainly is,’ said Kirsty.

‘My husband made it. Specially for me,’ said Mrs Frew. ‘Before he died, of course.’

Below in the hallway Craig smothered laughter under a sudden bout of coughing while Kirsty, lips compressed, followed the woman upward into a region as dark as sin.

It was, as it happened, a pleasant if musty room. There was a narrow wooden bed with a headboard of polished mahogany and a spread of imitation silk. As soon as she had lighted the oil-lamp – no gas this high in the house – Mrs Frew removed the bedspread, folded it expertly and slid it into a large brown paper envelope which she popped into the bottom drawer of a tallboy. On top of the tallboy, Kirsty noticed, was a mirror, no fly-blown shard but a big clean square on a stand that could be tilted. She had seen drawings of such things in journals and had always longed to have one of her own. The wash-stand had a top of white marble upon which stood a jug of clean water and a basin. There was even a flowered dish to hold a piece of dry soap and a rail upon which were draped two towels. Tucked discreetly beneath the wash-stand was a chamber-pot in a pattern that matched the soap dish.

Kirsty sighed. It was, without doubt, the most elegant room she had ever been in, more austere, perhaps, than the parlour at Bankhead with its stuffed furniture and shelves of bric-à-brac, but more stylish too, in Kirsty’s opinion. Her weariness sloughed off at the sight of the bed, its pillow in a slip of cream lace. Though there was no fire lighted in the miniature grate the lamp itself spread a warm glow and softened the angles of the ceiling which jutted in all sorts of directions and of the heavy brocade curtains which hung on brass rods across the window bay.

‘View of the river,’ Mrs Frew said.

Kirsty gave the landlady a genuine smile.

This was not how she had imagined her first night in Glasgow, not by a long chalk. Oddly, she was relieved that she would not have to spend it in bed with Craig. She was happy to be alone, to savour the luxury of Mrs Agnes Frew’s establishment without having to contend with other novelties, with Craig.

The woman, who had been observing her closely, said, ‘You’re just a country lass, are you not?’

‘Aye, ma’am. I am.’

‘What is he to you?’

‘He’ll be my husband, as soon as we can be married.’

Mrs Frew breathed gently, hardly even a sigh.

‘You look too young for that sort of thing,’ she said.

‘I’m eighteen, Mrs Frew.’

‘I did not marry until late in life. It took my Andrew five years to persuade me.’ She breathed out again. ‘I must say that in retrospect there are times when I think I should have done it sooner.’

Kirsty did not know what to make of the woman. She was disconcerted by the fleeting revelation of lost happiness.

She said, ‘Has he been gone long; Mr Frew, I mean?’

‘These fifteen years.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it.’

‘Oh, no need to sympathise. I’ve no regrets. I have my comforts, and the Lord sustains me.’

‘Aye,’ said Kirsty, without cynicism, ‘I imagine the Lord is a great comforter.’

‘Do you say your prayers?’

‘Sometimes; not as often as I should.’

‘Do you attend religious worship?’

‘When I can.’

‘You’ll know, then?’

‘Know what, Mrs Frew?’

‘Perils and pitfalls,’ said the woman. ‘Pitfalls and perils. Traps for the unwary. Watch him.’ She turned down the quilted cover and gave it a neat dextrous flick that exposed a perfect triangle of cream linen sheet. ‘There can be a terrible strong corruption in young men.’

In the lamplight the woman’s eyes had become even pinker but her paleness had been lessened by the glow of the wick-flame.

Before Kirsty could find words to defend Craig, Mrs Frew said, ‘Breakfast. Half past seven. Prompt and punctual.’

‘Yes, Mrs Frew.’

The woman withdrew to the corner by the door. She left the lamp, would risk finding her way down three flights of steep steps without a light to guide her.

Kirsty gave the landlady a cheerful goodnight. She was relieved, though, when Mrs Frew went out and closed the door behind her and she was free at last to let her excitement have its head.

She was drawn to the window as if by a magnet. She parted the curtains and stepped into an alcove that was almost as large as the bothy at Hawkhead.

From this vantage point the city seemed less diffuse and somehow much grander. Her room was tucked under the eaves. Wisps of grass and weed had found root in the gutter, hung down like hair over the glass and fluttered in the breeze off the river. Beyond the privet hedge Kirsty saw a park of some sort, very flat and precisely bordered. There was a pavilion with a Chinese tower into which was set a huge round clock. She could make out the face perfectly and read the time; twenty minutes to ten o’clock.

If she had been at home in Hawkhead she would have been in bed by now, lonely as well as alone. Here in Glasgow she did not feel that sort of loneliness. Suddenly her heart was beating hard in her chest. She spread her fingers over her breast. She had never been so happy. In Carrick she had been nothing but the girl from the Baird Home, Clegg’s lass. Here in Glasgow she could become what she wished, a new person, wife to Mr Craig Nicholson.

The whoop of a steam whistle disturbed her thoughts.

Into sight came an engine spouting sparks. It passed along the plain between park and quays and drew behind it, clinking and chuckling, a caravan of coal wagons which rolled on monotonously until Kirsty grew bored with waiting for it to end.

Below on the pavement a middle-aged man and woman walked a pet dog, a terrier, strolled arm-in-arm along Walbrook Street. Perhaps Craig and she would walk like that, taking a breath of air before bed. Four dark-skinned men, heads wrapped in white scarves, scurried past the house, muttering to themselves. A two-wheeled cab, drawn by a lean, high-stepping horse, whisked under the lamp-standard and Kirsty glimpsed a taffeta skirt and a pair of jet black boots on the board.