Saturday City Page 7

  ‘I am surprised your parents let you go,’ said Sandia tartly. Often recently she had compared Kirsten’s freedom with her own lack of it.

  ‘They trust me,’ Kirsten said.

  ‘Then perhaps you should not speak so warmly of my uncle,’ Sandia said impetuously.

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’ Kirsten’s face was scarlet.

  Sandia had not realized she would bring forth such a reaction. ‘Oh, I didn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Oh yes, you did.’

  ‘Please don’t let’s argue. I have something I want to tell you —’

  ‘No, we must settle this first. Do you think I am — well, taken up with your uncle? Because it’s really not so. It is just that he is quite exceptionally interesting —’

  ‘And good-looking,’ returned Sandia. Then she relented a little, seeing how miserable and crestfallen Kirsten was looking. She wanted her in a more cheerful frame of mind before imparting the secret.

  ‘I am sure you are not the sort of girl to flirt with married men,’ she assured her friend. ‘You would much rather argue about theology or magnetism or votes for women.’ She patted Kirsten’s hand but Kirsten continued to look put out and on the verge of tears.

  Sandia, however, could wait no longer. ‘I’ve got something terribly important to tell you,’ she burst out. ‘Do you remember the young man we saw that night in Cranston’s Tea-rooms? Well, I’ve met him again and his name is Alexander Peel. Dandy for short.’

  Kirsten gave her unwilling attention.

  ‘I had been shopping for Mama one day and a package fell from my basket. He picked it up and came after me and we — we spoke. He said he hadn’t forgotten me and, Kirsten, we’ve been meeting most afternoons, here in the park. I’m hoping to see him now, this very afternoon.’

  Kirsten managed the glimmer of an amused smile. ‘You’re a dark horse. Do your parents know?’

  ‘Of course not. We haven’t been properly introduced, so how can I tell them? We were wondering, Dandy and I, if we could say you had introduced us? He’s a student at the university, you see. He’s from Belfast, and wants to be a shipping engineer.’ She was breathing fast, her face animated. How could she convey to Kirsten his big, blond presence and easy masculinity? There was a kind of swooning response in her that frightened her.

  ‘You may say it if you like,’ said Kirsten. ‘It is better you take him home than continue to meet in secret.’ As she would have to do, were she and Duncan … She said abruptly: ‘I must go now, Sandia. Please thank your parents for the invitation.’

  Sandia quickly forgot about her friend, deciding she would puzzle over Kirsten’s somewhat moody attitude later. Meanwhile, she wanted to be open to the delicious probability of seeing Dandy at any moment. Her skirts trailed through the frost-rimed leaves, making small crackling sounds. She felt cold but wonderfully, almost painfully, happy and alive.

  ‘For madam.’ Dandy jumped from behind a rhododendron bush, producing a crumpled bunch of violets from his coat pocket with a flourish. His sandy-lashed blue eyes smiled down at her. She wanted to touch his cold face but a sense of decorum stopped her hand half-way to the gesture.

  That was the trouble. With Dandy she scarcely knew the meaning of decorum. He caught her hand and for a little she didn’t care who saw. It was bliss to feel her fingers caught up in the snug wool warmth of his mittens. She wanted to run about like a child, to be chased and caught, to be kissed by him. She wanted to behave in a most unseemly and irresponsible fashion. She must have taken leave of her senses.

  ‘Sandia!’ He pulled her towards the shrubbery. ‘I have to kiss you. No one will see us here!’

  It was sweet and alarming and joyous and frightening and she could not stop. When he pulled her down on to a bench she went straight into his arms again. He was crushing her, lifting her skirt, touching her knee. But for her hose and bloomers, he would have touched skin. She drew away from him in sudden terror of sin.

  ‘Sorry.’ He did not look a bit sorry. He looked pink and lost and frightened and nearly as bewildered as she was. She said gently, ‘I’ve asked my friend Kirsten to tell the parents she has introduced us. She has agreed.’

  ‘Now I can take you out properly. If they agree.’ He looked so pleased she had to turn away from him for a moment. He hooked her face around with his finger.

  ‘I want you for mine, Sandia. Hear me?’

  She felt a sudden rush and crush of emotion. She had a momentary wild desire to get up and run back to the nursery, to the easy, domesticated tasks of brushing hair and tying sashes and pleasing Mama.

  But Dandy was looking at her so lovingly and longingly that she cast herself adrift from all doubts, and like a brave, inexperienced swimmer, set out from the shores of childhood, determined not to look back, if she could help it.

  Chapter Four

  ‘Mr and Mrs Duncan Fleming,’ intoned the superior person in a red coat and satin breeches. At the entrance to the large parlour stood Clemmie and Jack, receiving their guests, and beyond them, Honoria and Paterson, waiting to shake hands as they were introduced.

  Clemmie’s smile was strained as her Dounhead in-laws came forward. It was too bad of Jack not to have insisted they wore formal dress, like everybody else, especially when she had offered one of her own old gowns to Josie. She saw Josie’s gaze alight with a satirical gleam on her own gown and then Honoria’s — the one a deep plum red with black lace decolletage, the other ice-blue taffeta set off by Honoria’s magnificent diamond and sapphire pendant.

  Josie wore a cheap-looking brooch at the high neck of her black dress (which at least she had brushed, for a change) and her only other concession to the occasion was the care she had taken with her red hair, which she had set off with a Spanish comb. Her smile glimmered at Clemmie’s cool greeting, but Duncan, coming up behind, shook Clemmie’s hand warmly and placed a kiss on her cheek. His clothes looked cheap and coarse compared to the dark suitings around him, but Clemmie conceded he had a natural dignity and presence that helped one to overlook his dress.

  The house in Ashley Terrace had never looked better. The maids had coaxed the rich colours from the Brussels carpets with stiff brushes and vinegar-and-water spongings. They had steamed the velvet curtains into fresh lushness and polished brass door handles and window fitments till they glittered like the sun. The dining-hall had been set out with snowy napery, decorated with fern and carnations, set with twice-polished silver and fluted china. In their flowery alcove, the ensemble which would provide music for dancing entertained the arriving guests with light airs from the Continent.

  Into this gracious and animated scene crowded the jowly bankers and their alert, assessing wives, the shipping magnates, wealthy drapers, sharp-eyed lawyers, trenchant clerics and scholars, eligible sons and flirtatious daughters of Glasgow’s haut monde.

  Banished to bed, the younger members of the household scuttered recklessly from their rooms at intervals to peer through the banisters, down through the prismatic glitter of the chandeliers at the tinkling, chattering, awesome kaleidoscope underneath. It wasn’t fair, Kitty told her cousin Finn, that Sandia only should be allowed to attend. When her mother sent for Alisdair to be carried down for five minutes, to be petted and kissed all over his golden ringlets, she sobbed vehement tears into her cambric nightgown.

  Although she had a considerable domestic staff in her new domain, Clemmie had required extra help for the occasion, and down in the kitchen Tansy’s cook, Mrs Batters from Dounhead, glowered dourly at the uppity ways of Clemmie’s cook, Mrs Jessup. The little kitchen and scullery maids, half-silly with excitement, nipped and pinched at the lavish food whenever they got the chance and hid away treasures in odd corners for future sustenance. Which was why there were ashets of ham and tongue in the laundry cupboard and fruitcake wrapped in a napkin all but stopping the pendulum of the kitchen clock.

  Clemmie had decided that six courses would be enough, but afterwards, in case anyone should complain of hunger pangs, cake
-stands piled with baker’s delicacies would be on hand. The men, especially, often liked to finish off a meal with something like gingerbread with butter.

  Other rooms on the ground floor had been opened up and transformed, so that the men could retire for their port and cigars while the ladies repaired the ravages of mutton juice or Atholl brose to their chins and décolletages.

  Before Jack began on the real business of the evening, which was to get Paterson involved in telling as many people as possible about the potential of their Dounhead-Boston Trust, he pulled Duncan to one side.

  ‘You’re going to contest the Dounhead election?’ he enquired. ‘Then I can introduce you to a man who will do your cause no harm at all.’ He indicated a well-known Glasgow Liberal politician. ‘He’s a friend of Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the Financial Secretary to the War Office. Get him behind you and you’ve a fair chance of getting the Liberal nomination.’

  ‘I don’t know that I want it,’ Duncan said.

  ‘But you’ve just said —’

  ‘I said I would stand for the seat Lachie has vacated. But I’m thinking of going in as Independent Labour.’

  ‘That’s foolhardy, man.’

  ‘It might be premature,’ said Duncan good-humouredly, ‘but don’t call it foolhardy. I haven’t decided yet, so maybe it would be as well to meet your Liberal friend, in case I decide to sail under his banner.’

  Jack grinned. ‘We’ll make a politician of you yet, man.’

  When the music struck up for dancing, the men emerged from their consultations well pleased with deals put in hand. After the first dance with his wife, Jack danced with Josie, whose feet seemed to be happily at one with the music, although her face remained cool and impassive.

  ‘You look a little solemn,’ he chided her. ‘You weren’t hurt by Clemmie’s offer of the gown, were you? I tried to explain to her it was a matter of principle with you, not to dress up.’ Josie’s mouth relaxed in a slight smile. ‘It didn’t worry me. All this does. No harm to you, Jack, but I despise most of your friends.’

  It was his expression that tightened now.

  ‘They’re hard-working people who have earned their rewards.’

  ‘Factory-owners, iron-masters, ship-builders. All these fine feathers on their wives’ backs have been purchased at the price of workers’ health and lives.’

  ‘Come on, Josie,’ Jack argued in a low voice. ‘It takes men of vision to provide the work.’

  ‘I don’t deny it. But what’s to stop them paying proper living wages? You see that old charlatan over there, talking to Lachie and Tansy? He’s a big Glasgow baker, isn’t he? It only takes a year or two for him to work his men into the grave.’

  ‘He came up from nothing,’ Jack protested. ‘It’s human nature to compensate for the hard times with a bit of high living.’

  ‘Aye, well,’ said Josie, ‘all this makes me feel uncomfortable. I belong in the Rows, where folk may not have very much, but will share what they do have.’

  It was with something like relief that Jack led his partner back to the family group. He wondered if the fact that Duncan was dancing with the young Mackenzie girl had something to do with Josie’s deepening ill-humour.

  ‘Come and sit by me,’ said Kate kindly to her daughter-in-law. Josie glared at Dr and Mrs Mackenzie, who were seated on the other side of Kate, talking animatedly with Honoria’s father, the old minister, James Galbraith.

  ‘You’ve the bonniest head of hair in the company, Josie,’ said Kate conciliatingly. She leaned over and with a mischievous twinkle added, ‘Fine feathers don’t always make fine birds,’ a statement reinforced by the passage of the baker’s ill-favoured daughter in a lumpy galop.

  ‘I only came to please Duncan,’ Josie muttered.

  ‘Then don’t look as though you mind him dancing with Kirsten,’ said Kate very quietly.

  Kirsten’s gloved hand in Duncan’s as they danced was cool. ‘I hear you hope to stand for the constituency of Dounhead.’ Conscious of Sandia watching them from the sidelines, she kept her voice deliberately light and formal.

  Duncan affirmed that this was true. ‘I would like to go in under the Labour banner, pure and simple,’ he said, ‘but the time doesn’t seem to be ripe for that.’

  She took him over to meet her parents, anxious her father should like him, for he could use his considerable influence among the Liberals to help his adoption as a ‘Lib-Lab’ candidate, if it came to that. She then joined Sandia on the pale-blue horsehair sofa for a dish of sherry trifle, her demeanour gentle, friendly and decorous. Only Sandia noticed the feverish sparkle in her eyes, and she put that down to the heavy lacing of sherry in the sweet they both enjoyed.

  As the evening wore on, the little orchestra became more abandoned, fiddle and percussion alike persuading the staidest of feet into reels and strathspeys, galops and polkas. The bankers’ wives were heard to dissolve into girlish giggles; the shipping magnates sailed the perilous musical seas at full rig; in corners and alcoves and on the stairs, unwise confidences escaped from careless lips, maiden daughters behaved with unmaidenly gaiety, and the elderly bakers and drapers stared with maudlin nostalgia into their cups.

  Tansy, looking flushed and beautiful and totally in her element, had no shortage of partners. Josie sat beside a pale Lachie, finding a certain rapport in their mutual boredom and disapprobation.

  As for Kate, she found herself after a bit sitting quietly with her old friend, the minister James Galbraith. She had not expected him to come, but she had underestimated his wish to please Honoria and make her visit home to Scotland a success in every way.

  Nevertheless, he looked a great, craggy eagle thrust into a cage of gaudy parakeets. Smothering a smile, Kate teased him: ‘I hadn’t thought you would fancy a gathering of this nature, Reverend.’

  He was well aware she was twitting him and answered her with great affection: ‘I have seen a great open-mindedness come upon the Church in general. And I do not mind this, Kate, for the bedrock of truth is always there, in the Bible. I would wish the Kirk had declared Biblical infallibility, as the Roman Catholics have declared Papal infallibility. But maybe it is better as it is. “In my Father’s house are many mansions.”’

  Kate forebore from putting forward her own opinion, which was that much present-day Christianity was like a piece of elastic, able to be stretched round any moral attitude. She wanted to drink in every detail of this Glasgow scene, to remember the dazzling gowns, the jewels, the cosmopolitan manners. It was very worldly of her, no doubt, and James Galbraith would castigate her if he knew how entranced she was by it all. But it would be good to remember back in the cottage at Dounhead, in the winter when the dark set in early and the only music was the pit horn.

  *

  Paterson slipped away from the noise of the dancing to the smoking-room and found Duncan there, pouring himself a small port.

  ‘How’s the man?’ demanded Duncan genially. ‘Is it getting too much for you in there?’

  Paterson gazed at him levelly. ‘Josie didn’t seem to be pleased about you dancing with that young thing.’

  ‘She’s a family friend. A clever young woman who might end up in Parliament before me. Nothing more.’ Duncan waved a dismissive hand.

  ‘I mind how you used to flirt with Honoria,’ said Paterson tartly. ‘You seem to have the looks the ladies go for.’

  Duncan let out a hoot of merriment.

  ‘I would have thought that with your money, you’d have the edge on me nowadays.’ He cuffed the top of Paterson’s fair, straight hair. ‘Not that you’re so bad-looking yourself, for an old man in his thirties.’

  At last Paterson relaxed and smiled.

  ‘Jack’s kept me at it,’ he admitted, seating himself and helping himself to some port too. ‘This Dounhead-Boston Trust is getting bigger than I expected. I never thought there was so much money in Glasgow. I’ve had to put up more on my side, for I want chief say in its disposition.’

  ‘Have you h
ad trouble? Raising the wind, I mean?’ Paterson coloured. ‘I’ve done it,’ he said shortly. ‘Never mind how.’

  ‘Did O’Rourke help?’

  ‘He did, if you want to know.’

  ‘And he is sound?’

  Paterson shifted a little uncomfortably. ‘As far as I can make out.’

  Duncan decided it was none of his business. He found it would be no trouble at all to find a point of argument with his brother, but he recognized his feelings as those left over from irresponsible childhood days, when they had fought simply for the sake of it.

  How could he preach the brotherhood of man if he couldn’t get on with his own brother? He saw the delicious irony of it and made fresh efforts to be pleasant.

  ‘Those are two fine boys you and Honoria have. Bright and intelligent. That Finn is like you, a born engineer.’

  He saw from Paterson’s look how closely his brother’s thoughts had been following his own. They exchanged grins and Paterson acknowledged, ‘Bright enough. There will be more for them in America when they’re grown up than there was for you and me as children here.’

  ‘You think the old country’s washed up?’

  ‘It stands to reason, Dune. Look at the pace of emigration. And without wanting to start an argument, it’s the best that leave, the best in brains and guts.’ He gave Duncan a searching look. ‘Why don’t you join the trail? I can take you into the business, pay the fares for Josie and the baby to join you. You’ll come out to a world you never knew existed —’

  Duncan played the theme along indulgently.

  ‘What would I do?’

  ‘You could manage men. From what I hear, you’ve had plenty of experience.’

  ‘You mean exploit them.’

  ‘No, I don’t mean that’

  ‘I represent the colliers. I could come out and start a union for the mineworkers. From all accounts, it’s an even harder job out there than here.’