The River Flows On (4 page)

Pearl was nowhere to be seen. That was by no means unusual when there was work to be done. As Mrs Baxter had been known to observe - ‘That lassie could get a job as a magician’s apprentice. The disappearing lady.’

It wasn’t Pearl who was bothering Kate at the moment. Two heads had snapped up guiltily when she had come into the room - one smooth, one curly. The former belonged to Barbara Baxter. Her mother hadn’t yet had time to wield the instruments of torture in preparation for the New Year. The second head belonged to Kate’s sister Jessie.

‘Would one of you two wee dafties like to tell me what you think you’re doing?’

She didn’t really need an answer. It was quite clear what they had been doing. They had pulled out a stool to stand in front of the range and put the big enamel basin which doubled as baby bath and additional laundry bucket on top of it. In it, covered in soap suds, one of them perched rakishly over his right eye, sat a very angry Mr Asquith. Only the fact that two very determined little girls were gamely holding onto him was preventing his escape - although that could only be a matter of time. The cat was slippery with soap and rapidly approaching the spitting stage. Kate knew an emergency when she saw one.

‘Quick, Jessie. A jug of clean water. Pour it over him to get rid of the soap. Barbara, go and open the front door. Shout down to your mother that he’s on his way so she doesn’t get a fright.’

Mr Asquith reached the front door in a quivering mass of outraged wet fur so quickly that Kate, following in his wake, didn’t have too many damp patches to mop up. She crooked her finger at Barbara to come in from the landing and ushered her back through to the kitchen.

Kate, hands on hips, had to suppress a smile. The two miscreants were looking at her like prisoners waiting for the judge to put on the black cap. Any minute now they were going to ask for a last cigarette. She saw Jessie extend a comforting hand under the folds of their pinafores to her friend.

‘Prisoners at the bar,’ intoned Kate. ‘What have you to say in your defence?’

The girls exchanged glances. Jessie seemed to have been elected spokeswoman. ‘Well, everything else is getting washed for the New Year-‘

‘You don’t wash cats!’ said Kate, half laughing, half horrified. ‘They do it for themselves. They’re very clean animals.’

‘Don’t tell Mammy, Kate,’ pleaded Jessie.

‘I’ll not tell Mammy,’ she promised. She pointed a finger at Barbara. ‘But you’d better swear your Mammy to secrecy. And don’t let me catch either of you doing such a daft thing again. Promise?’

Chapter 2

‘That lassie’s nearly asleep. She’s needin’ her bed.’

‘No, I’m not.’ Kate started up so abruptly from where she sat in the crook of her father’s arm that she nudged his other hand, the one holding his whisky glass. A few drops spilled on his waistcoat. Neil Cameron smiled down at his daughter.

‘No harm done, lassie. It hasn’t spilled on your drawing, has it?’ Kate had been spending some of the long hours waiting for midnight to strike by doing a sketch of the assembled company. The kitchen was full.

Mr and Mrs MacLean from across the landing were in and the Baxters too, except for Robbie. He was staying downstairs till midnight. The bairns of both families were tucked up in bed. Pearl and Jessie had gone only under protest but were now snoring softly behind Kate, the curtains drawn over the bed recess.

She retrieved her sketch pad which had slipped unheeded off her lap some time before and sat bolt upright, trying to look as wide awake as possible. She wasn’t going to miss the bells.

Lily jumped up to fetch a cloth from the jaw-box, the sink under the window. Neil accepted her dabbing at his front good-humouredly, lifting his whisky clear of the stain, his long slim fingers curled round the rough tumbler.

Kate had always been fascinated by her father’s hands. They were rough and calloused from his work in the shipyard, but there was a fineness about them. Once, he’d told her, he’d wanted to become a painter, an artist. When he’d been a laddie back at school in Lochaber in the West Highlands, he’d always been good at sketching.

‘And did you ever paint anything, Daddy?’ Kate had asked, sitting on his knee and looking up at him with shining eyes, because she was her Daddy’s pet, she knew she was.

‘Och, no my lassie, I never did, but maybe you will. Maybe you’ll become a famous artist one day.’ And he had smiled and started singing softly to her. Her favourite song.

‘
I’ll take you home again, Kathleen...
’

He had sung it tonight, earlier in the evening when everyone had been doing their party piece. The other children had stayed up for that. Jessie had recited ‘John Anderson, My Jo’, and Kate and Pearl had sung a duet.

‘
Oh rowan tree, oh rowan tree, thou’ll aye be dear to me, Entwined thou art wi’ mony ties o’ hame and infancy ...
’

Everybody loved
The Rowan Tree
, especially the bit about mother sitting ‘
wi’ little Jeannie on her lap, wi’ Jamie at her knee, oh-ho, rowan tree...
’ Singing of children who had gone on before was particularly poignant in the Cameron household.

When the sweet, sad melody was finished everyone had clapped. Mrs MacLean had cried and even Jim Baxter had dabbed his eyes.

‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘Would that song no’ bring a tear to a glass eye?’

Everybody laughed, happy to participate in the peculiarly enjoyable sadness of a Scottish Hogmanay.

There had been funny stories too. Lily repeated the tale of how Kate had got her name. ‘Kathleen, he wanted to call her. “It’s a bonnie name,” he said. “Well,” says I to him, “it may be a bonnie name, but everybody will think that we’re Irish. Worse, that we’re Catholics.” And then he says to me - “what would that matter?” ’

Everyone had laughed at that one. Neil Cameron, when he had first come down to Glasgow from the more tolerant atmosphere of the Highlands, had been unaware of how much it did matter. Lily, in full flood, went on with her story.

‘What did it matter? “Well,” says I, “there’s no Catholic going to get a start at Brown’s or Donaldson’s, is there? Or a lot o’ other places for that matter”.’

Mrs MacLean leaned forward in her seat, frowning in perplexity. ‘But Mrs Cameron, Kate’s a lassie. She wouldnae be looking for the start in the shipyards anyway, would she now?’

‘In the name o’ God, woman.’ That was Mr MacLean. ‘Mrs Cameron’s talking about the general principle. Is that not right, Mrs C?’

Kate allowed her concentration to drift. She’d heard the story too many times. She didn’t like the way her mother made fun of her father’s Highland naïvété, either. Mind you, if she was being fair, she had to admit that her mother had a point. It was hard enough for either sex to get a start anywhere. Being a Catholic made it that much harder. So Kathleen had become Kate. Only her father occasionally used her name in full. And Robbie.

He arrived at midnight, just after the toasts had been drunk. Neil Cameron, as master of the house, got up to let him in. They shook hands formally and wished each other a Happy New Year and many of them. Now that Robbie was away from the school and bringing in a wage, however small, his stock had gone up in the community. Not quite a man yet, but no longer a boy.

He handed over the traditional gifts: a lump of coal for the fire, a bottle of whisky, and some black bun that his mother had made the day before. They were talismans - offerings to the gods. Food and drink should guarantee plenty of the same in the year ahead and coal should ensure that the house would always be warm.

‘Thank you, Robbie. Will you have a wee dram yourself, man?’ Neil, smiling, threw a quick glance over his shoulder to Robbie’s parents. ‘Is he old enough? Will you allow him?’

‘It’s all right, Mr Cameron,’ said Robbie. ‘I’ve signed the pledge. I’ve decided to stay teetotal.’

‘Well done!’ said Neil, slapping him on the shoulder. ‘That’s a fine thing for a young man to do.’ Behind his back, several sets of eyebrows were raised. ‘And it makes more for the rest of us. Come away in then, and we’ll get you something
teetotal
.’ He laughed, laying a humorous stress on the word.

‘Lassie, will you pour Robbie a glass o’ yon ginger?’ He spun round towards the window. ‘Och, and would you listen to that? Is that not a rare sound?’ For out on the river the ships were blowing their foghorns, heralding the start of 1925 in their own special and time-honoured fashion.

Kate rose and went over to the draining board of the sink where the lemonade bottle stood. Robbie followed her and spoke in a low voice.

‘I’ve got a wee present for you too, Kate.’

‘Oh?’ Shyly, remembering how sharply she’d spoken to him that afternoon, she took the proffered bundle, wrapped up in a sheet of newspaper. It was a wooden carving of a robin, perched on a piece of mossy wood. He had painted the bird, its breast a startling splash of scarlet.

‘Och, Robbie, it’s real bonnie!’ On an impulse she stretched up and gave him a peck on the cheek, then blushed and threw an anxious glance over her shoulder.

‘It’s all right,’ came his soft voice. ‘None of them saw.’

Kate’s green eyes met Robbie’s cool grey gaze with extreme reluctance.

‘It’s all right, Kate,’ he repeated. He seemed on the point of saying something else. Kate wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to hear it. He opened his mouth to speak, hesitated, and gestured with a nod of his head to the carving of the robin which she held in her hands.

‘I’m not as good a painter as you, but I think I’ve managed it not bad. There’s always bits of wood left over at work.’ Robbie, like his father before him, was serving his time as a cabinet-maker and joiner. ‘I found the wee log down by the river. You know yon big trees, past where the rowan trees are? There’s a branch that got snapped off during the gales last month, so I broke this bit off for the robin to stand on.’

Somehow Kate had the feeling that wasn’t what he’d started out to say. She also had the distinct feeling that he was prattling on, which wasn’t like him at all. Giving her time to recover? Recover from what? Pushing the thought to the back of her mind, she smiled at him. ‘It’s lovely,’ she said. ‘Did you make a robin because of what Mr Asquith did?’

Robbie nodded his shaggy head. It was less unruly than usual this evening. His mother might not use the instruments of torture on him but she had obviously instructed him to wet his hair to dampen it down before coming upstairs.

‘You were that upset when he killed yon wee robin you’d been feeding... And I thought, well, he can’t get this one, at any rate. Can you, you wee monster?’ he went on, stooping to stroke the culprit who was snaking his way around his legs.

‘Happy New Year, cat,’ he said, scratching the sleek head. ‘Gosh, his fur feels real smooth. Has your Ma been polishing him or something?’

When Robbie suggested that Kate come out for a walk with him half an hour later, she opened her mouth to say no, but her mother forestalled her.

‘It’s too cold out there.’

Neil Cameron and Agnes Baxter exchanged a look.

‘Och no, Lily,’ said Agnes, ‘it’s quite mild really. Well, no’ exactly mild, but if they go well happed up, they’ll be fine.’

‘It’s too late,’ snapped Lily.

‘No, it’s not. It’s Hogmanay. There’ll be other people out walking,’ said Kate’s father, giving Agnes Baxter what looked suspiciously like a wink.

‘But-’ began Lily.

Neil Cameron’s good humour evaporated. ‘Enough,’ he growled, bringing his fist down hard on the table beside him. ‘Am I not allowed to be master in my own house?’ The whisky was beginning to do its work.

There was an embarrassed silence. Mr and Mrs MacLean glanced nervously at each other and murmured something about it being time they should be thinking of going home. Lily fixed Kate with a look. ‘You heard your father. On you go.’ She turned her gaze to Robbie. ‘But if the two of you are no’ back in half an hour there’s gonnae be trouble.’