Saturday City Read online

  But something he was saying now was stirring the crowd to anger. Sandia listened in spite of herself.

  ‘I appeal now to our Irish brothers among us. Don’t let them use you as blackleg labour in the pits. I know well enough the circumstances that bring you here, the desperate bad harvest, the fact that thousands of your fellow countrymen are without a roof over their heads, evicted because they are expected to pay rents when they have no money, no jobs — and yes, I know well enough the job the politicians have done in Ireland. But the way to a better day is through the brotherhood of labour …’

  ‘Send the bloody Fenians back where they came from,’ shouted a dark-browed man in the crowd, hoarsely.

  ‘We’ve as much right here as you,’ bellowed a red-faced man next to him. ‘We need work —’

  ‘Ask him about the murderers in New York,’ screamed a woman. She turned dramatically to the Irishman, and what looked like a pound of sausages for Sunday’s dinner, wrapped in string and brown paper, fell to the ground in her agitation. ‘Do you deny the Fenians go there for money for guns and bombs to kill the people here?’

  ‘You and your like,’ shouted the Irishman imperturbably, ‘came to our country and trampled it under your feet. If you’re so keen to keep us, then you can’t object when we come here. We’re only returning the compliment.’

  ‘Oh God, why did we come here?’ Sandia groaned, as scuffles broke out in the crowd. Kirsten had her in an iron grip and would not let her move away. Eventually, however, the scuffling and shouting subsided. The Irishman spat and walked away in search of a drink and the woman who had challenged him picked up her battered sausages and, hat askew, continued her shopping. Duncan changed tack and was now talking about political aspirations in a general way, and, sensing a cooling-off, one or two more hotheads in the crowd drifted away.

  Sandia wondered if she dared catch a tram home on her own. She felt very inadequate and feeble compared to Kirsten, but then all kinds of arguments were daily meat and drink to the Mackenzie family. Sandia, for example, was perfectly happy to attend the Free Kirk with her parents as she had always done, but Kirsten had joined the Evangelical Union, because she argued that Christ had died for the whole of humanity, not for a small elect as the Calvinist Free Kirk believed. This made her think the poor were her equals, even the scabbiest beggar rattling a tin mug in the gutter. Sandia simply couldn’t see how that could be. It was just more of Kirsten’s outrageous nonsense and, really, after this escapade maybe she should indeed finish with Kirsten and go back to embroidering samplers and discussing novels with her quieter friend, Mirren Hood.

  ‘Oh please, no!’ she pleaded inwardly, as she heard her uncle call now for the vote for women as well as agricultural workers. There would be no getting Kirsten away now! In desperation, she saw Kirsten put up her arm and call in that commanding voice she got from her professor father, ‘You are right, brother. We shall never have justice for women until we give them the same power as men to judge the greedy and the drunken among those who rule over us.’

  It was frightening. The mob who had been concentrating on Duncan Fleming turned now almost as one to stare unbelievingly at this well-dressed female with her cultured tones who had dared to infiltrate their Saturday-evening meeting-place. Hoarse laughter and jeers were turned on Kirsten, with much gratuitous advice about where she should take herself. Sandia coloured as she heard swear-words used, and pulled her skirts away in time to avoid a gob of spit aimed in derision at her friend.

  ‘Give the young woman a chance,’ Duncan Fleming was challenging, but suddenly Kirsten and Sandia were being jostled and pushed and a red-faced woman was attacking Kirsten with her umbrella. Kirsten pushed her away and that was the signal for another wave of aggression from the crowd. Fists and voices were raised and it was all Sandia could do to keep her feet. Her hat was knocked askew and a jarring thump landed on her back, knocking the sobbing breath out of her.

  Just as suddenly her uncle was beside them, urging them away from the cobbled square as fast as he could move them.

  ‘Sandia,’ he breathed urgently, ‘what are you doing here?’

  ‘Don’t tell Mama,’ she pleaded.

  He rushed her on and as a tram slowed down near them, propelled both girls on to its platform.

  ‘It’s going the wrong way,’ sobbed Sandia.

  When he had bought three tickets, Duncan looked at both girls almost genially.

  ‘We had to get away from the mob. It gets like that sometimes,’ he said. ‘Introduce your friend, Sandia.’

  ‘Miss Mackenzie, meet my uncle,’ said Sandia briefly, still half-sobbing in her agitation. ‘Oh, Uncle, please don’t tell Mama or Papa.’

  ‘That isn’t my intention. My intention is to get you safely home.’

  ‘And what about Aunt Josie?’ cried the girl wildly. ‘What will they do to her, back there?’

  ‘She can handle any crowd,’ said Duncan easily. ‘She’s with union friends who are taking her on to a temperance meeting.’

  Kirsten had said nothing, content with observing Duncan closely as the tram swung and swayed through the busy, darkening street, where gas jets and paraffin lamps were being lit in shops and houses. The turn of events, though surprising, was entirely to her liking. Her pale face, too irregular and small-chinned for beauty, but wonderfully mobile and expressive, had taken on a rapt and dedicated air.

  ‘We get off here,’ Duncan ordered, when the tram had lumbered the length of Argyle Street Skilfully he began to lead them up side streets and along cobbled alleyways with the purpose of getting them back to Sauchiehall Street and so on their way home.

  At last he stood in the shadows at the end of the terrace in the West End until the door of his brother’s imposing house opened to swallow the breathless and fast-repenting Sandia into its roomy depths. He had no wish to meet with his half-brother tonight, or, more especially, to justify his presence to the plump, self-indulgent Clemmie, his sister-in-law.

  Sighing as one half of his mission was completed, he turned to take Kirsten safely back to her home at Gilmorehill. Against the pale night sky, delicate and translucent after the rain, he could already see the imposing spires of the university itself.

  Kirsten gave him a dazzling smile.

  ‘I have heard you before, you know. Once at an open-air meeting at Glasgow Green and once at a temperance rally.’

  ‘So you’re temperance-minded?’

  ‘Of course. Not that I think drink is the only problem. It’s so much more than that.’

  She looked at him a little shyly, wanting to say more, yet thrown into confusion every time her gaze met those dark, intelligent eyes.

  When they reached her parents’ commodious apartments on the ground floor of a red sandstone building, she said hesitantly, ‘I don’t know if I can ask you in. My parents are out. At a dinner given by Sir William Thomson at the university.’

  ‘The Atlantic cable man?’ asked Duncan, interested in spite of himself.

  Kirsten nodded. ‘The great professor of natural philosophy himself.’

  ‘He regards war as barbarism.’

  ‘And do you?’

  ‘Certainly. What else? I believe in the brotherhood of man.’

  She said on a low, concerned note, ‘You do look weary. Come in anyway and I’ll make you some tea.’

  He didn’t argue. He was beginning to realize how long it was since last he’d eaten. And the money he’d used for the tram fares had been the last he’d had in his pockets. He sat in the huge parlour before a dying fire while Kirsten made for the kitchen after informing him it was the maid’s night off. First she had lit two lamps and he was able to take in the florid magnificence of the white velvet mantel-valance, with its paintings of orange blossom and maidenhair fern, its green silk fringe and carved wooden balls fastened to the fringe for good measure.

  The mantelpiece itself was loaded with enormous amber vases, silver-framed photographs, conch shells and candlesticks. Another time the
vain show would have irritated him; tonight he was for the moment too tired and too comfortable to care.

  Kirsten brought in a tray with soda scones, ham and cheese as well as tea.

  ‘Eat up,’ she begged.

  ‘Just a cup of tea,’ he said politely.

  ‘You can leave your working-class scruples behind here,’ she advised him, teasing. ‘When we’re hungry here, we eat.’ As though to demonstrate, she cut a hunk of cheese and sank her teeth into it. ‘We’re a very radical family.’

  He laughed and took a buttered scone.

  ‘You look younger when you laugh.’

  ‘I’m hardly Methuselah.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were,’ she responded, blushing. ‘But do you eat enough?’ She blurted the question out. ‘You should take care of your health. You have a job to do.’ He was very thin; his moleskin trousers and rough jacket hung on his angular frame as though on a scarecrow.

  ‘Aye, well,’ he said, warmed by her concern, ‘I eat when the occasion arises. But empty bellies are commonplace where I come from. And there’ll be more, when the strike starts.’

  ‘There’s to be another strike? I heard Macdonald is against it.’

  ‘Aye, but Keir Hardie’s for it and he’s got the Hamilton men behind him. It’ll spread throughout the coalfield.’

  ‘Who’s Keir Hardie?’

  ‘A coming man. A young agitator the bosses would like to get rid of. He’s got a strong style of oratory.’

  ‘But Macdonald has the advantage of being an MP.’

  ‘Parliament has watered him down, as it always will so long as our men go in under the Liberal banner. The men see their wages being whittled away and they think the Lanarkshire Miners’ Union started by Macdonald is letting them down, so they’re joining the breakaway unions.’

  ‘Where do you stand?’

  ‘Somewhere between Macdonald and Hardie,’ he humoured her. It was no time to be going into the rough complexities of coal-mining politics. She was, after all, no more than a girl, and he began to feel the lack of propriety in the pair of them sitting there chatting, almost as though they’d known each other all their lives.

  ‘Let me help,’ said Kirsten impulsively. ‘You have no idea how I long to be involved. I have my temperance work and my poor visiting, but it is all so — so puerile.’

  ‘What could you do?’ he asked, with patient good nature. ‘I could run a soup kitchen. I could distribute warm clothing —’ She broke off, looking red-faced and a little embarrassed. ‘No, that’s not enough. I want to be involved at a proper political level, with a labour section of the Liberals whose concern will be with working men and women.’

  ‘I can see your heart is in the right place.’ He smiled to soften the somewhat patronizing comment. ‘I’m not turning down your offer of help. But this struggle at Dounhead, as you know, is about more than charitable soup. It’s about extending the franchise and it’s about the right to work and be paid a decent wage. It’s about keeping blacklegs out of the pits — Poles from the pogroms or starving Irish who are only compounding their own misery by accepting too little.’

  To his consternation he saw she was nearly in tears. She said, as evenly as she could, ‘Why does no one take me seriously?’

  ‘But I do!’

  ‘No. You don’t really. I can see it in your face. But women have to get involved. They must. I have two brothers who are doctors and one a scientific sort and I never have any difficulty keeping up with them mentally. Yet even Father, who agrees with me in theory, still half-wants to keep me at home, embroidering. No one thinks a woman should or can command.’

  ‘But that’s all changing,’ he said gently. Smiling, he put a hand to her eye and lifted away a tear. The hand was rough, grimy from Glasgow’s soot, and she drew a quivering breath at his touch. ‘I’m not sure I agree with you, anyway, about women not commanding. I know plenty of Scots households where the woman wears the breeks. My own wife works as hard at politicking as I do, and I have a sister, Isa, a doctor in the mission field in Africa. So don’t let’s have any more talk about feeble women. It’s your life. You can do what you want with it.’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded soberly. ‘But what real advance can women make, till they get the vote? You are in favour of that, aren’t you?’

  ‘What else?’ he replied lightly. ‘And I want it for farm labourers who live in outlying districts. We’re lucky to have it in Dounhead, since it’s a town, if a small enough one. But it’s an invidious situation when men who work the soil can’t vote.’

  ‘Gladstone is no help,’ she said fiercely. ‘He talks about joining the Women’s Liberal Association so that in time we may earn the vote. But we shouldn’t have to earn it. It should be ours by right.’

  He grinned. ‘Aye. He knows he can’t be seen supporting the women outright. He wouldn’t remain Prime Minister for long, if he did.’

  She changed tack. ‘Father’s half-agreed to let me try for Cambridge — women can go there now, you know — but perhaps I should stay in Glasgow and work for the suffrage.’

  ‘I think you could do a lot, if you put your mind to it.’

  She clapped her hands together.

  ‘How marvellous to meet a kindred spirit! Do you think the unions will come out for us eventually? That would rattle Gladstone’s composure.’

  He laughed. ‘If all the ladies were like yourself, he wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.’

  They smiled at each other, like conspirators. He thought she was an uncommonly bonnie young woman, with her rich, tumbling hair and sparkling animation. To his ironic amusement, he could feel the old Adam stir in him, making him feel about seventeen again. It was warm, he was fed: was there harm in staying a little longer? She’d be about eighteen or twenty, he’d guessed, and he was thirty-three. An old married man. It seemed irrelevant for the moment, though he knew it would not be the moment he put his foot outside the door.

  He lay back in his chair and said encouragingly, ‘You should think about going to the university. I could have gone once, you know — that was in the old days, before they built this great new pile at Gilmorehill in 1871.’

  She nodded, laying her head on her arm which was outstretched along the back of the sofa and gazing at him contentedly. She looks like a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, he thought, with a sophistication beyond her years. He was stirred and excited and amused by her and it made him talkative.

  ‘I remember once passing the Old College and hearing the “angry bell”, as they called it. The students were tearing along like mad, for the doors were closed whenever the bell stopped, and nobody else allowed in. It was a foggy afternoon, I remember; the gas jets were on all day long and the air was almost yellow. I thought of all the good Scots brains that had sat there —’

  ‘My father for one. He came from the Isle of Skye on a bursary, living off oatmeal and herring —’

  And your father’s friend Sir William Thomson for another, matriculating at the age of ten with his brother James, and winning all the prizes, because they were decided by the students’ votes in those days, but he would have won them anyhow.’

  ‘My brothers all copied Sir William.’ She smiled. ‘And so did I. We all used to carry a green notebook about with us, as he still does, in a gamekeeper’s pocket, so that he may go ahead with his calculations at any time.’

  ‘So you would like to do something scientific?’

  She blushed. ‘I don’t know. My father says I have a tolerably good mind — I can understand the various theories concerning electricity and magnetism and heat, and I shall explain to you how Sir William’s mirror-galvanometer works on the trans-Atlantic cable, if you like!’

  He smiled at her merriment.

  ‘But I am too much a woman to work in abstractions. There are plenty of technical advances being made here in Glasgow without me! What about you? What would you have studied?’

  ‘I don’t know. Language, maybe. Literature. But I was tied then as now to th
e colliers’ Rows. You have to choose what you’ll do in this life, and stick to it. Remember that!’

  ‘Oh yes. I shall never forget it. With me, it is the women’s vote.’

  Duncan put down his cup. He had drunk three cups of tea, and eaten well, and he felt warmed through to his marrow. It was with reluctance that he stood up to go, looking round at the rest of the richly-furnished room with a mixture of distaste and interest. In his mind, he suddenly saw Josie waiting about for him, her face pinched, stamping her thin-soled boots to keep warm.

  Suddenly uneasy and guilty about the warmth and comfort he had enjoyed, he said formally, ‘I thank you for your hospitality, lass.’

  ‘I wish we could have talked some more,’ she said impetuously. ‘Could I come to Dounhead some time, do you think? Meet your wife?’

  He was suddenly at a loss for an answer. Josie was sociable, hospitable towards those in need, but she could be rude and aggressive towards people she felt to be over-privileged. His pause registered and she said quickly, ‘I’m sorry. I presume too much.’

  ‘No,’ he protested. It was important somehow to make her understand. ‘It’s just that folks in the Rows don’t have all this —’ he waved his arm to indicate the room, the books, the comfort — ‘and they can be forthright if they think they’re being patronized.’

  ‘It was never in my mind to patronize.’ Her face went pale with hurt.

  ‘No. I know that. But you have to admit there is a gap, a gulf, between the likes of you and the likes of me.’

  ‘I find no difficulty at all in talking to you,’ she protested. ‘In fact, you are the only person who has ever understood how I feel about the vote. I had thought we could be friends.’

  Her directness excited him. Josie was suspicious of articulate people, but with this girl he felt he could open his mind. He was seduced by the idea of talking to her. There were so many things surfacing even now in his mind, things he had had to keep to himself for so long, because so few understood what he meant.