The Breadmakers Saga Read online

  ‘Nonsense! Here, don’t just stand there, child, get this coat on. You don’t know what you want.’

  She hustled Catriona into a coat and buttoned it up with strong, deft fingers. Having fastened the top button, she tidied down the collar, whisked out some of the long fair hair that had become tucked inside and smoothed it neatly over her daughter’s shoulders.

  Suddenly she stiffened as if something terrible had just occurred to her.

  ‘He didn’t touch you, did he?’

  ‘Touch me?’

  ‘Like I told you Bad Men do?’

  Catriona’s mind wrestled to bring to the surface and sort out tales of Bad Men jostling against girls coming out of cinemas or theatres and injecting them with concealed hypodermic syringes, then carrying them off to sell them in the white slave market.

  Or Bad Men in cafés putting powder in girls’ tea then secreting them away to lock them in backstreet rooms.

  Bad Men that lurked behind bushes in the park or under the water in the swimming-baths. Everywhere there were Bad Men trying to touch girls and ‘dirty them’ and have their own way.

  ‘I don’t think he touched me.’

  She stared up at the purple threads on her mother’ cheeks and the large black pupils of her eyes.

  ‘God will punish you, you know. He has strange and mysterious ways of working. He’ll send his messenger of death during the night to take you away into the eternal darkness. Or someone you love will be taken forever from you. Or an accident will happen when you least expect it. He’s watching you, Catriona - you’ll be punished. Oh, you’ll be punished.’

  Before she realized what had happened Catriona was pushed and pummelled from the house.

  Rab Munro had escaped and he flew along Fyffe Street, eyes popping, the early morning air catching his lungs like champagne. He had just done a hard night’s work but he was not so tired that he had to lie in bed at home and listen to more of Hannah’s ranting and ravings about Catriona getting married to Melvin.

  Too restless even to wait at bus stops, he determined to continue on foot as far as the Main Road and then take the tram along to Dessie Street.

  Secretly revelling in the exhilaration of the air and the victory in managing to slip out while Hannah’s back was turned, he covered Fyffe Street with long rapid strides, head lowered, hands dug deep into pockets. Only when he’d turned the corner into Farmbank Road did his pace even out a little.

  He stared around. Farmbank Corporation Housing Scheme was certainly a better place than Clydend for the wife and family to live, he thought with satisfaction. He hadn’t failed Hannah there. He’d readily agreed that the MacNair building in Dessie Street was no place for her. No one could deny she was a good-living respectable woman. His mind turned over some of her qualifications for goodness with the usual mixture of pride, admiration, envy and sarcastic derision: President of the Women’s Guild, member of the Farmbank’s Help The Helpless Club, and Grand Matron of The Band of Jesus.

  He crossed to the James Street Public Park side of Farmbank Road and tramped along close to the railings, big hands bunched, head sunk forward, arms squeezed forward as if holding up his chest. He could hear the soft rustle of the bushes and feel them reaching out between the iron to tug at his sleeve. His nostrils widened with the smell of them and the new-cut grass.

  Often he escaped into this place. A wooded part at the other end was dark and jerky with squirrels. Without relaxing, his fingers poked at the corners of his pocket. Finding no nuts, he was both glad and disappointed.

  Pain settled on his head and down behind his eyes blurring them.

  Without looking one way or the other he crossed James Street, continued down Farmbank Road past the grey buildings of the Farmbank Infirmary, across Meikle Street, then walked straight on until he reached the Main Road with its loud clanking and sizzling of tramcars.

  He was thinking of bed, and Lexy. Sexy Lexy, they called her. Her bed, in one of the attic flats in the MacNair building, was wide and soft. He sunk into it in his imagination with a groan of relief. She’d be working now downstairs in the bakehouse, helping Jimmy Gordon cream and decorate the cakes, her spiky high-heeled shoes and bulgy calves almost completely hidden by the big white apron Jimmy insisted she tie round herself, but the apron and the long white coat did nothing to hide her hour-glass figure.

  The rocking-cradle motion of the tram shuggled him off to sleep until the conductor’s broad Glasgow bawl penetrated his snores and exploded in his ear.

  ‘Hey, you! You get off at Dessie Street, don’t you?’

  He leapt spluttering to his feet, clueless about where he was and deathly cold.

  ‘You doing an extra shift, eh?’ The conductor grinned up from underneath a cap pulled down over his nose. ‘Making your pile?’

  ‘Sure … sure …’

  He stretched an embarrassed smile at the conductor’s ticket machine and poured himself off the tram as it trundled away.

  The car stop was outside the high iron gates of the Benlin yards, and the equally high wall reared back along the Main Road as far as the eye could see, like a Scottish Bastille. Dirty newspapers flapped and skittered against it, and greasy fish and chip pokes moving more slowly and sporadically thumbed a nose at its bleakness, its harshness and its authority.

  Past the stop, the wall turned into the part of Dessie Street that ended in the River Clyde and the Clydend Ferry, and had become known locally as Wine Row because of the shebeens up the closes between the warehouses.

  Trams clanked back and forward along the Main Road as Rab stared across at the MacNair building. It was on the corner of the Main Road and the other end of Dessie Street that led to a jungle of side streets and grey-black tenement houses. The building itself wasn’t bad: old but solid, a roomy, double-windowed, double-countered shop with office, lavatory, store-rooms and bakehouse at the back and, above, four good-sized flats and two smaller attic flats. Old MacNair had a gold-mine here - no competition, nothing but tenements except the Anchor pub at the opposite corner, and then about half a mile down the Main Road the ‘Tally’s’, and he supplied both with pies, and rolls and bread for sandwiches, cakes, cookies and scones. There was nothing up the other end either except Granny’s Café and MacNair supplied her, too, and of course the Ritzy Cinema, the local flea pit.

  Sandy the vanman would be out delivering just now, his horse Billy clip-clopping, tail swishing, head up, ears cocked to listen for the Benlin one o’clock hooter that meant knocking-off time, a lively gallop to the stables, a big dinner and a long kip before brushing and grooming in readiness for the next morning.

  Rab strode across the road, past the shop door and plunged into the first close in Dessie Street. He suddenly felt sick.

  This had been his secret place. Shadow-dark even during the day, it titillated the senses with hot smells of new bread and mutton pies and spicy ginger cake from the bakery’s side door.

  Up the spiral staircase, round and round.

  Melvin MacNair’s flat was directly above the bakery.

  Catriona would live here. The fool of a girl - the very first man she’d ever known and she couldn’t wait to sleep with him.

  He fumbled blindly with the key of Lexy’s flat, then made straight for her bed to lie head back, his face bitter and haggard. He didn’t want Catriona to marry Melvin any more than Hannah did. Only he had more sense. He knew there wasn’t a damn thing either of them could do to stop it.

  He slept fitfully and wakened more ill-at-ease and guilty than if Lexy had been in bed, naked and pathetically vulnerable in sleep, beside him. It was as if some over-developed sixth sense warned him that Hannah was near.

  Still cold and dazed with sleep and lack of sleep, he left the house in long reckless strides and clattered down the stairs, his boots sending hollow drum-beats up to the roof.

  Until, unexpectedly, the ruddy-faced Hannah in war-like mood was blocking his path and he was clinging to the banister with the shock of seeing her there.
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br />   Catriona wept angrily beside her.

  Chapter 5

  The furnace heat of the bakehouse was immediately engulfing, and globules of sweat burst through every flour-dusted pore.

  There were two entrances, one through the dough-hardened curtain of sacking from the shop-end - a few steps across the lobby that remained a slippery menace despite frequent moppings and scrubbings - and the other through the lobby side door that opened into the close.

  The close and the stairs were washed regularly too but the flour had become part of the air, continuously moving and dancing a white haze in summer sunshine against the landing windows, in winter an irritant to the throat and chest, scraping up coughs as folk puffed round and round the stairs.

  It kneaded underfoot with the grease making a glassy paste to twist muscles and break unsuspecting bones. It lent even more variety to the diet of the rats that rustled deep in overflowing middens in the back court.

  It fed the army of cockroaches that burst up from the heat of the bakehouse to cover the floors of the houses above like a busy blanket, a crawling coverlet that magically disappeared with the click of a light switch.

  The humphy-backed cleaner who lived in one of the attic flats cleaned slowly and wetly, smiling to herself. Like the men who attend to the huge Forth Bridge, by the time she’d worked her way down all the stairs through the close, the bakehouse, the lobby and the shops, the stairs were filthy and it was time to start at the beginning again.

  Perhaps it was the frustration of this that made her the terrible torment, the practical joker of a woman she was. Old MacNair had warned her that if one more person was startled into screams by the sight of her kneeling in the shadows wearing a rubber mask, or if any more door-handles were found tied together or anything put through letter-boxes except letters, she would be finished for good, turfed out, lock, stock and barrel.

  So the cleaner cleaned on and the flour thickened the air around her and her cloth slapped across the lumpy grease and her pipe clay squeaked as she decorated the grey stone with white intricate squiggles and patterns, and the heat crept up her back and the pungent smell of food made her mouth water.

  The night shift had gone off. Big Baldy Fowler had stretched his muscles, rubbed his head in a cloud of flour dust, told the other bakers he was going for a kip, then gone upstairs as usual and made violent love to Sarah his wife.

  Rab had buttoned his old raincoat over his sweaty shirt and flour-thick trousers and huddled into it, his face grey-gaunt over the turned-up collar, and, with only a tired nod, he’d slouched away to wait propped and heavy-eyed at a stop for a tramcar to Farmbank.

  Melvin MacNair had carefully cleaned the two Scotch ovens with the scuffle, a long shaft or pole with a sack hanging on the end, a job he had always insisted on doing himself. Then he had hung his aprons in the lobby, washed himself in the lobby sink, changed his shoes, brushed himself down very carefully to remove even the slightest suspicion of flour, even brushed his hair and his moustache, donned a sports jacket and cap and gone smartly upstairs.

  Only old Tam was left from the nightshift. He folded up the morning paper, flapped it on to the bench, scratched through his wispy white hair, then stretched luxuriously. The scraggy little body in the blue and white striped shirt with the tight rolled-up sleeves lifted for a second out of the big white apron then shrunk down inside it again with a sigh of satisfaction. This hour, after the night’s work and before he went upstairs to face his wife and daughter, was to be savoured to the full. He had relished his breakfast: a big mug of strong sweet tea, a meat pie and a couple of hot rolls oozing with butter. He had enjoyed every item of the paper from the front-page headlines to the small printed sports results at the back.

  Now his bright pearl-button eyes twinkled around. Jumping to his feet he rubbed and smacked his hands together, his gorilla arms developed out of all proportion to his undersized body by years of chaffing and kneading up the dough.

  ‘Going to the match, son?’ He grinned at Jimmy the confectioner who was leaning over and staring very seriously into the mixing machine.

  ‘Sandy was asking,’ Jimmy replied. ‘He’s got a couple of tickets.’

  ‘Old MacNair gave me one.’

  ‘Gave?’ Deep-set eyes under jutting brows flashed round at him. ‘Old MacNair never gave anything. Either he sells at a profit or there’s strings attached.’

  ‘Oh, I can’t complain, son. He’s supplied me with many a good feed without knowing it.’

  ‘We work hard for all we get. And he gets most of it back for rent and food. Talk about daylight robbery!’ Jimmy’s words spattered out with machine-gun rapidity. ‘Have you heard that song about the company store? It could be our signature tune.’

  ‘Don’t bother about me.’ With a laugh he gave his hands another smack and rub. ‘I’ve a lot more to worry me than old MacNair’s baps. Anyway, son, you’re awful young and you’ve a lot to learn about folk. There’s a lot worse than old MacNair going around.’

  ‘Your Lizzie, for instance. I know what she needs. A nice big fella!’ Lexy flung her loud undisciplined voice at him as she passed with one of the cake tins she had been filling.

  ‘Who needs a nice big fella?’ Sandy the vanman, a giant bean-pole with red hair, a red nose and chronically sore feet, tiptoed gingerly into the bakehouse, his lips blowing and puttering, a habit he’d acquired while curry-combing his horse to keep the dandruff from flying into his mouth and up his nose.

  ‘Tam’s lassie.’

  Lexy clattered the cake tray down beside Jimmy then returned to the other end of the bench, buttocks and bosom bouncing. ‘How about you, Sandy?’ Winking a heavily mascara’d eye at the vanman she patted the white cotton turban that covered the steel curlers in her hair. ‘Or are you daft about me, eh?’

  ‘I’ve enough to contend with, with my horse!’

  Chortling to himself Tam went out into the lobby that separated the bakehouse from the front shop. The side door was open and, as he was untying his apron, the halfer appeared, his freckled face creased in his usual grin, the scone or padded bonnet that protected his head against the weight of the boards pulled down over his eyes.

  ‘Hi, Tam!’

  ‘Hi, son!’

  Hitching up his trousers the young halfer marched past him and into the bakehouse.

  Tam looped the tape halter of his apron over a peg before leaving by the side door.

  ‘I’m away!’ he called. Into the close with a jaunty jog trot and up the spiral staircase.

  Next to Melvin’s, his door was the cleanest on the stair. Every inch of it was exquisitely polished and the brass name plate and letter-box and keyhole glittered bright yellow.

  ‘Just let me catch any of them saying I don’t keep a clean house,’ Lizzie never tired of repeating. She had a bee in her bonnet about folk gossiping about her behind her back or trying to get at her in one way or another.

  Carefully he rubbed his knuckles on his jacket before knocking exactly in the middle of the door. Then he waited, small on the doormat, faded and floury, praying that Lizzie wouldn’t accuse him of spilling the white powder around on purpose.

  Sarah Fowler was thirty-five years of age and despite her blonde hair and her slim figure she looked every minute of it. Easing herself downstairs she clutched at the iron banisters. Pain dragged at her lower back, belly, buttocks and thighs with exquisite precision. Her patchily made-up face had long ago set in a twisted pattern of suffering that could not untwist even when she smiled and she smiled more than most.

  Reaching the first landing she rested thankfully between Melvin’s and Tam’s doors. Then, thinking she heard a sound from the latter, her nerves twitched into action and forced her feet down the rest of the stairs at twice her previous speed despite the pain. Anything was more bearable than a tirade from Lizzie - anything, she hastened to correct herself except the bagpipe moaning of Lender Lil, the mother-in-law to beat all mothers-in-law.

  She stopped again in the close to
get her breath back, shoved her message basket further up one arm and hugged her coat more tightly around herself.

  She was beginning to dread the mornings. First thing Baldy did when he came off work from the bakery was get into bed beside her and have his loving. Not that she was complaining. She was grateful for and flattered by Baldy’s attentions. It wasn’t his fault that she’d had one miscarriage after another until her inside felt red raw.

  That wasn’t the only thing she felt. She had become so tired, so continuously and indescribably tired, even coming downstairs to the shop was like an expedition to the other ends of the earth. And the cold … oh, the cold! She closed her eyes, her scalp contracting, her icy fingers bending stiffly inside two pairs of gloves.

  ‘Are you all right, hen?’ Sandy McNulty came out of the side door as if on stilts, a bread-board squashing his ginger hair down.

  Immediately Sarah’s face crinkled into a grin.

  ‘Och, aye. Just feeling the cauld as usual. It’s ma watery blood. Got any guid stuff to spare?’

  ‘We’re two of a kind, hen. See this red conk? Everybody thinks it’s a boozy yin. Booze be damned, I keep telling them. I’m just bloody frozen!’

  ‘Ah think we’ll have to emigrate, Sandy.’

  He winked at her as they emerged together into Dessie Street, he with his stiff bouncy lope as if he were trying to avoid stepping on white-hot coals and she with her slippered feet and small tired shuffle.

  ‘Just you say the word, hen, and ah’ll be there.’

  ‘Away with ye!’ She poked him in the ribs before turning to go into the shop and although it was only a gentle shove it nearly over-balanced his bread-board.

  Poor Sandy, she thought. She wouldn’t have him in a gift. She felt keenly sorry for the vanman with his thin blood and red nose and the agony he suffered with his feet but she wouldn’t exchange him for her Baldy, not in a thousand years.

  There was nobody like Baldy. He was a real hefty hunk of a man who looked more like an all-in wrestler than a baker. He hadn’t a hair on his head and he’d always been the same, with skin as smooth and shiny as a baby’s, but muscle-hard as if crammed with rocks underneath. No one had ever dared to torment him about his hairlessness. At school he’d sorted things out to his liking right from the start by beating up his fellow pupils in the baby class as a warning of what would happen if they even though of tormenting him. But he allowed them to call him ‘Baldy’ because he’d never been called anything else.