The Gourlay Girls Read online

  Florence was out trying to scrounge some bits of coal lying about in one of the coal yards.

  ‘Ah need tae go,’ Granny announced, her small rheumy eyes betraying some anxiety.

  Teresa said, ‘Can’t you wait a wee while until someone else comes in, Granny. There’s only Wincey just now.’

  ‘What’s up wi’ her then? Is she paralysed, or what?’

  Teresa rolled her eyes. ‘You know fine she’s only a wee slip of a thing, and there’s not much more of me. I don’t think we’d be able to lift you. The girls won’t be long. Just try to hang on a wee while longer.’

  ‘Ah cannae.’ Granny’s voice rose to a wail. She was obviously in genuine distress.

  ‘All right, all right, we’ll do our best,’ Teresa said hastily. ‘I’ll fetch the chamber pot,’ she said, giving it its proper name. It was a chanty to everyone else. Once the chamber pot was ready at Granny’s feet, Teresa told Wincey, ‘Now you get a grip of her at one side and I’ll hang on at the other and we’ll both try and heave her up.’

  In a matter of seconds both Teresa and Wincey were scarlet faced and panting with their exertions. Granny felt like a solid and immovable mountain. But eventually they did manage to prise her out of the rocking chair and stagger forward with her.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Teresa gasped, ‘till I pull her knickers down. Hang on.’

  Like grim death, Wincey hung on.

  ‘Right, lower her down now.’

  The lowering down proved to be worse than the raising up. Wincey felt her legs and her back would never be the same again. Once safely deposited onto the chamber pot, Granny’s face acquired an expression of deep concentration and Teresa cried out, ‘Och, not number two, Granny!’

  Granny grunted, ‘Ye’ll be auld yersel’ wan day.’ This was an expression Granny often used in self defence.

  ‘Never mind,’ Teresa said to Wincey. ‘I’ll empty it, dear.’

  Afterwards Wincey swung the outside door to and fro to allow comparatively fresh air to waft in. She also opened the kitchen window while Teresa masked a pot of tea ‘to help us get our strength back’.

  ‘Are you two tryin’ tae freeze me tae death noo?’ Granny wailed.

  ‘Now, now, Granny,’ Teresa said, ‘a nice cup of tea will soon heat you up.’

  ‘There’s never any biscuits these days,’ Granny complained. ‘I used tae enjoy a nice digestive tae dip intae ma tea.’

  ‘Never mind. Once we get another machine, we’ll be able to make more money, as Charlotte says. Then you can have your digestives.’

  ‘Ah’ll believe that when ah see it.’

  ‘Are you all right, dear?’ Teresa gazed anxiously at Wincey.

  ‘Yes, fine, thank you.’

  ‘Here, drink up your tea.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re such a polite wee girl. Where did you learn such nice manners?’

  Wincey shrugged. ‘My mother, I think. She was …’ An idea occurred to her. ‘She was from the Highlands, like you.’

  ‘Ah, that explains a lot dear. As well as your nice voice. You don’t sound a bit Glaswegian. Your parents died in an accident, did you say? Or was that Florence? I get mixed up with all her stories.’

  ‘I’d rather not talk about it. It upsets me even to think about. Please don’t ask me.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, dear,’ Teresa interrupted hastily. ‘It’s not like me to be nosy.’

  ‘Ha,’ Granny snorted. ‘That’s a laugh!’

  ‘Now, now. I’ve never asked Wincey anything about her background before, have I, Wincey?’

  ‘No, everyone’s been very good. I’m so grateful.’ And she was. She didn’t feel that she’d ever been accepted just as herself before. To her grandfather she had been nothing more than a sex object. To her grandmother she had been a younger edition of her mother, and it was only too obvious that her grandmother hated her mother. To her mother and father, she barely existed at all. They were so caught up with all their clever, articulate friends. She was a joke. They often laughed at her shyness and the way she could get tongue-tied. Sometimes she even stuttered. She never stuttered here, no longer even felt shy. She was as happy as could be, as long as she was able to blot out the past and keep her guilty secret locked safely away in a dark recess of her mind.

  5

  ‘What does Nicholas think of Galsworthy getting the Nobel prize for literature?’ Mathieson asked once he’d led Virginia into the kitchen. ‘I’ve just made a pot of tea—do you want a cup?’

  ‘Yes, all right.’

  She sat down on one of the wooden chairs at the table and watched her ex-husband limp towards the press at the side of the grate and fetch a cup and saucer. The kitchen was almost identical to the one they’d had when they lived together in the Calton. It even had the same furniture. Yet Virginia experienced no feelings of nostalgia. In those days Mathieson had been as totally immersed in politics as Nicholas was now totally taken up with writing. She suspected that this obsessive devotion was one of the things that both men knew right from the start they had in common.

  Nicholas had been good to Mathieson while he had been lying in his hospital bed, unable to move or talk. Nicholas had kept him in touch with everything by reading the newspapers to him every day. She suspected that, with such a silent listener, Nicholas had also poured out his heart to Mathieson. He’d certainly told him all about his passion for writing, even reading out chapters of his new novel to him.

  At first, when she’d discovered that Nicholas had gone to see Mathieson, she was both horrified and afraid. After all, she had been having an affair with Nicholas and had had his child. That was before she had met Mathieson. She was married to him by the time it was discovered that Nicholas had not been killed in the trenches. And when she’d married Mathieson, he knew nothing about either the affair or the baby.

  After Nicholas had returned, they had restarted their affair and eventually she confessed everything to her husband. She told him she was leaving him. As a committed socialist, Mathieson had always hated the rich and powerful—men like Nicholas’s father. As well as the munitions factory in which Virginia’s brother had been killed, George Cartwright had owned property in many of Glasgow’s most notorious slums. At that point, however, Mathieson had not met Nicholas. She tried to tell him how different Nicholas was from his father, but he had refused to listen and became more and more enraged. That was when he had taken his stroke. For a long time she had blamed herself. She had been so distressed that she had stopped going to see him in hospital. She couldn’t bear to look at his grotesquely distorted face. She had believed that he was not aware that she was even there, that he was not aware of anything.

  Nicholas had been appalled when he heard this. ‘I know what it’s like to lie alone and confused in a hospital bed.’ And that was when he took over the visits. It must have been during this time that Mathieson had come to accept that Nicholas was indeed different from his father. Nicholas had learned to embrace socialism himself since his experiences in the war. He wasn’t as radical as Mathieson, but a socialist nevertheless.

  ‘I express my beliefs in action,’ Mathieson once told him. ‘I spread the word by teaching and I take an active part in protests and the like. You express your beliefs in your writing. Who’s to say which of us is more effective, Nicholas?’

  The divorce had been traumatic for all of them, even though they’d all agreed that for Mathieson to divorce Virginia on the grounds of adultery was the best and quickest solution. Long before Mathieson had got out of the hospital, she had already set up house with Nicholas.

  If anyone had told Virginia before Mathieson had taken ill that one day he and Nicholas Cartwright would become firm friends, she would never have believed them. But friends they had become. She often thought that they got on better together than she’d ever got on with either of them. They seemed at times to have far more in common.

  ‘We’ve been thinking, and talking about, nothing else but Wincey,�
� she told Mathieson now.

  ‘Oh yes, of course,’ Mathieson said. ‘It’s awful for you both, and I suppose it hasn’t got any easier as time has passed.’

  ‘It’s got worse, if anything. It’s beginning to affect our relationship.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ He poured out two cups of tea.

  She shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t know. All the tension and worry, and not being able to do anything, I suppose.’ She took a few sips of tea. ‘I as much as told him this morning that he was totally selfish and didn’t care about Wincey. He’d just announced, you see, that he was going back to work in his room.’

  ‘He does care, Virginia.’

  Miserably, she nodded.

  ‘It’s just not being able to do anything, not knowing.’

  ‘We’ve all done everything we can, especially Nicholas. What more do you expect him to do?’

  ‘I know. I know.’ After a few minutes she added, ‘I’m dreading Christmas.’

  ‘There’s a few weeks to go yet. You could still hear good news.’

  ‘Do you really believe she could still be alive, James?’

  ‘People go missing all the time and many of them do turn up again, often in another big city, like London.’

  ‘London?’ Virginia echoed incredulously. ‘How on earth could the child get to London?’

  Mathieson shrugged. ‘It has been known. I’ve read about cases like that, haven’t you?’

  ‘I suppose so, but I can’t imagine Wincey being so resourceful. She’s always been such a quiet, slow kind of child. She never did very well at school, you know. Not compared with Richard. Richard has always been so clever, and self-confident, and outgoing.’

  ‘And everybody’s favourite,’ Mathieson said.

  Virginia paled. ‘You don’t think … I mean, have we been unfair or unkind to her? Did we neglect her? Oh James! Whatever she might have believed anyone else thought of her, she definitely knew her grandfather thought the world of her. We used to smile when he called her his clever girl. Poor Wincey. She was probably so grief stricken, she couldn’t cope, didn’t know what to do except run away from the awful truth of her grandfather’s death.’

  ‘Maybe she imagined she’d have nobody to care about her after he’d gone.’

  ‘But we did care about her, James. Maybe we’ve been thoughtless. Maybe we didn’t spend enough time with her, pay her enough attention. But we did care. We still do.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ he soothed. ‘Children are always getting strange ideas into their heads. I haven’t worked for a lifetime as a teacher not to know that, and especially young people of her age. Once they get into their teens, life can be terribly difficult for them—and for their parents.’

  ‘I’m sorry to keep bothering you like this, James. You’ve been very supportive.’

  ‘You’re not bothering me. I only wish I could be of more help.’

  ‘Were you not at the College today?’

  ‘It’s Saturday.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘I really have lost track of things, haven’t I?’

  ‘It’s time you showed some common sense like Nicholas. Get on with your life. You’re not going to do yourself or anybody else any good by cracking up.’

  ‘It just shows you, though. Saturday, Sunday, come hell or high water, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t make any difference to Nicholas as far as his writing is concerned.’

  ‘It’s the nature of his work, Virginia. You always knew that.’

  She sighed. ‘I suppose so.’ Then after a minute, ‘Would you like to come to lunch tomorrow. Maybe you’ll be able to drag him away from his desk.’

  It was Mathieson’s turn to sigh. ‘You just can’t accept it, can you?’

  She thought he was going to add, ‘Just as you could never accept the time and commitment I gave to politics.’ She almost dared him to say it, so that she could argue with him, take her frustration out on him. After all, she’d helped him as much as she could and in every way she could. She even spoke at political meetings. But in the end she’d seen that all of Mathieson’s passion was for politics. His political work and the time he spent on it took precedence over everything else.

  It seemed to her now that, although Mathieson’s work and Nicholas’s were very different, they had much the same attitude to it. But Mathieson added nothing to his statement and so she repeated, ‘Will you come?’

  ‘Yes, all right. But don’t expect me to go into Nicholas’s room and drag him out.’

  ‘Maybe if I ask George or Jimmy as well?’

  George Buchanan was Labour MP for the Gorbals. James Maxton was MP for Bridgeton.

  ‘Maxton’s too busy fighting Ramsay Macdonald and opposing rearmament just now to be socialising with us. Buchanan’s been having a go at Macdonald as well. I’m hard put to it to decide which of them is the more brilliant speaker. I think George is the more fiery one—him and his red hair, but they’re both equally charismatic as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘So they’re in London just now?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  ‘Oh well, make it about one o’clock, James. That’ll give him a morning on his own. He surely can’t complain about that.’

  ‘One o’clock it is. And try to discipline your mind to concentrate on something else. Invite some of Nicholas’s friends for supper. He won’t mind that and you enjoy listening to them.’

  ‘I suppose I could. You know them only too well, don’t you. None of them would leave their desks early enough to come for lunch. Writers!’

  ‘Well, you know what Nicholas always says. He’d never have continued with his writing in the first place if it hadn’t been for you.’

  ‘I sometimes wonder now if I did the right thing.’

  ‘I’ve never been more certain about anything, Virginia. You did the right thing. One day, it might be Nicholas receiving that Nobel prize. In my opinion, Nicholas is a far better writer than Galsworthy, and his work shows him to be far more committed to social reform.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I always say what I think.’ At least this was true.

  ‘All right, I believe you. But living with a writer is not easy.’ She wanted to say, ‘any more than it was easy living with a politician.’ But she didn’t. And she left Mathieson’s house feeling even more frustrated than when she’d arrived.

  6

  ‘You’re really a very smart girl,’ Teresa said. ‘You’ve picked up sewing so quickly.’

  ‘I’d like to learn the cutting too,’ Wincey said eagerly.

  Teresa looked doubtful. ‘Oh, that’s a bit more tricky, dear. Maybe you’d better leave that to Charlotte and me for a wee while yet.’

  ‘Yes,’ Charlotte agreed. ‘But you’re doing very well, Wincey. I will let you do some cutting eventually, but it’s so important—it’s not a thing you can rush. I could start taking you out with me and show you the measuring and fitting. That’s very important too.’

  Wincey shook her head. ‘No, I’d rather stay here and work.’

  ‘You are a funny child,’ Teresa said. ‘Any of the other girls would jump at the chance to see into some of the houses that Charlotte goes to. You can’t be that shy. You’re not shy with us.’

  ‘It’s different here. I feel at home. I’m not frightened any more.’

  ‘What on earth is there to be frightened of?’

  Wincey shrugged. ‘I don’t like posh places or posh people.’ Granny, who had been dozing by the fire, spoke up with a splutter, ‘Bloody parasites, the lot o’ them. Ah’d put them up against a wall an’ shoot them.’

  ‘Now, now, Granny,’ Teresa said. ‘You know fine well you would never do any such thing.’

  ‘They’ve done it tae oor kind though.’ Granny raised her voice. ‘Shot decent pacifist lads an’ poor fellas who were aw tae bits wi’ shell shock. Called them cowards an’ shot them in cold blood.’

  ‘Yes, all right, Granny. Just try and calm down now. You know what getting too exci
ted does to you.’

  Getting excited caused Granny to lose control of her bladder. Sometimes, a whole row of Granny’s knickers festooned the pulley above the kitchen table.

  ‘They as good as killed poor Johnny, the way they tormented him in prison. Did ye know that?’

  ‘Yes, Granny, we know how poor Johnny Maclean was treated in prison. You’ve told us before.’

  ‘Aye, but no’ often enough, it seems. They’ll be doin’ the same tae Jimmy Maxton if we let them get away wi’ it. He’s a pacifist as well, don’t forget.’

  Wincey imagined how amazed and fascinated Granny and all the Gourlays would be if she told them that she had met Maxton—first of all when she’d gone with her mother and father to hear him speak, and later when he had been invited to Kirklee Terrace. Like Mathieson, he had been a school teacher and she’d heard him say that he had been converted to socialism by speakers such as Keir Hardie, Philip Snowdon and Ramsay Macdonald. But none of these men, Wincey felt sure, could match James Maxton as a dramatic and witty speaker. During the war, he was dismissed as a teacher, charged with sedition, found guilty and imprisoned for a year. Her father said that his suffering in prison was still etched on his lantern-jawed face. His long hair was, her father suspected, one of the ways Maxton had of cocking a snook at the establishment and its conventions. In appearance at least, he was very unlike his fellow socialist MP, John Wheatley—a short, serious man with a chubby, bespectacled face. Wheatley had been both her father and mother’s favourite. They admired his courage and intelligence and supported his campaign for better housing in Glasgow. Wheatley had proposed a scheme for the building of municipal cottages instead of tenements in Glasgow, and he’d succeeded in getting his Housing Act passed successfully. His plan was to create a partnership between political parties, local authorities and building employees and build as many new council houses at modest rents as possible.