Silver Linings (2 page)

Kate smiled to herself as she remembered how she’d always been jealous of the Browns’ house in Glover Street. Now this was not because they had a big front room, a kitchen with a coal-fed range, a cold-water tap, a box room that their granddad slept in and a small lavatory for their exclusive use. After all, her family were lucky enough to have similar accommodation in Ferrier Street. No, it was because Glover Street was the first street you came to after you had come through the Hole in the Wall at Crown Street, just off Leith Walk. The other reason, which she now acknowledged was the more important, was that she and Hugh could lean out of the front-room windows and observe life in the raw that was forever going on in the street below. As they grew and matured, their arms, shoulders and legs, at first accidentally and then intentionally, would rub together. Kate quietly giggled as she remembered the pleasure she had felt in their innocent but reckless intimacy.

Biting on her lip her thoughts then wandered to 1912, when both families started going to the Gaiety Theatre down in the Kirkgate in Leith on a Saturday night. Life was so colourful there. When the picture jumped into her head of the smartly dressed orchestra rising up like spectres through a trapdoor in front of the stage, she tittered. Once the band was assembled and had started to play she was always immediately transported to a land of make-believe. The actors would then come on to the stage and she had especially enjoyed when her favourite actor convincingly took on the role of the ‘baddie’. Even today, twenty-five years later, she remembered his portrayal of ‘The Demon King’.

That was until her illusions were shattered when her mum had sent her to buy some sausages from the butcher at the foot of Leith Walk. She had just bounced into the shop when a vision before her filled her with horror. Now, her fright was not due to her seeing a dead pig hanging from a hook by its neck. No, it was the sight of the handsome, debonair Gaiety band leader’s bloody hands ripping the kidneys out of a lamb. She had inhaled deeply to get over the shock but, when she averted her eyes, her misconceptions went into free fall when she looked directly into the eyes of the man serving behind the counter. ‘Oh, no,’ she screamed inwardly when she was confronted with none other than the bloodied ‘Demon King’ himself. Yes, there he was, her favourite actor, serving Leith’s thrifty housewives with offal and then, with a licentious wink, he started to throw free marrowbones towards the customers who pushed each other out of the way in an effort to catch one.

Kate later discovered from her mother that all the people employed in the Gaiety Theatre only worked there part-time. Mum, with relish, had gone on to elaborate that the butchers were very lucky to have a talent that could be used to entertain people because that meant they were able to earn a bit on the side, and so help ends meet.

Back in the present, Kate glanced across at Kitty, who was now relaxed in sleep. She shrugged as her memories went swiftly back to the Gaiety Theatre of her youth.

She could not help but laugh out loud when she remembered how all working men wore ‘Paw Broon’ caps. These hats were removed when they entered the theatre, which resulted in every man then exposing a red rim tattooed on their foreheads. This badge of honour was the effect of years of labouring outdoors. On theatre nights the red badge was soon joined up by an alcoholic flush creeping up their faces. This was because on every level in the theatre, except the gods, there was a bar, and when the bell rang to say the show was about to start, or the interval was over, men downed their pints with such speed that colourful inebriation swiftly registered on their faces.

Kate now gave an involuntary shudder before screwing up her nose when she recalled how the smell of the beer from the bars mingled with the stench of the urinals. Indeed, at no level, no matter how much you had paid for your ticket, were you protected from this distinctive odour washing over you and no amount of Evening in Paris perfume could whiff it away.

Her mood changed and she chuckled when she remembered that everybody in Leith, except the cashier at the Gaiety – a rather dim, stout woman, who took the entrance money – knew that the rather accommodating Mrs Greenhill, who wore the biggest cape you have ever seen, was the mother of ten differently fathered children that she took everywhere with her. Nonetheless when she arrived at the pay desk she only purchased two tickets. One was for herself and one for a child that she was holding firmly by the hand. However, when she walked away from the cash desk, to mount the dangerously steep concrete stairs of the theatre, she appeared to move like a centipede. People gasped and sniggered when Mrs Greenhill banged her chest three times and then as many as up to sixteen feet could be detected marching in unison under her cape. When they arrived at the first floor a deep cough emanating from Mrs Greenhill then signalled that six of the feet should break free from under the cape and scramble up the remaining two flights of stairs to the gods. Once they reached there they took off their coats and spread them down on the benches, thus indicating to other customers that these choice front seats were reserved for the rest of the family, when they finally arrived.

Looking down over that twelve-inch brass rail, which prevented you from falling over into the Grand Circle’s upholstered seats, Mrs Greenhill would collapse down on the wooden bench and then loudly declare it to be a scandal that she was sent up here after her paying full first-rate prices for her children and herself to watch second-rate shows. ‘Does the management in here no ken that I suffer from vertigo?’ she would holler and swoon. When it became evident that no one was going to bother about her fainting she would quickly recover and grab the handrail before going on, ‘And that three of my bairns are noo addicted to Brasso because, when the acts are boring, they take to sooking this bleeding banister?’

Kate now willingly recalled that she had been a blonde, willowy eleven-year-old when the Gaiety began to have competition in the form of moving pictures. She vividly recollected how excited everyone was when the Leith Picture House opened in Lawrie Street, down off Constitution Street, in 1911. Dear, attentive, thirteen-year-old Hugh, who was an artisan apprentice in the shipyards, saved enough from his meagre weekly pocket money so he could treat her to a visit to the picture house.

By the time she was thirteen, and the First World War was looming, every Saturday night she would be burying her head into Hugh’s shoulders as
The Perils of Pauline
serial saw the heroine Pauline become a poor damsel in distress, faced with dangerous actions that were threatening her very life. One serial lasted a whole twelve weeks, so poor Hugh had no other option but to treat Kate to a visit to the Leith Picture House every one of those weeks so she could make sure Pauline survived the daft weekly cliffhangers. Kate shook her head, because now, at forty, she accepted the storylines of the
Pauline
films were always flimsy and that they relied on sensationalism. She also acknowledged that Hugh was not impressed by silly movies like
The Perils of Pauline
but he would shake with laughter at
Brewster’s Millions
. As time went by Kate’s taste in films took on a developing air of sophistication and she became enthralled by films like
The Old Curiosity Shop
and Cecil B. DeMille’s first shot at directing, in a film called
The Squaw Man
.

The last film Kate and Hugh sat through, before he marched off to war, starred a newcomer, Charlie Chaplin, in the thankfully hilariously funny film,
Making a Living
.

Tears now streaming down her face, Kate stood up and lifted a pillow from the bed, which she then placed under Kitty’s head. ‘So, Kitty, my dear, you believe I never knew sorrow.’ She huffed and grunted and then whispered, ‘Never knew sorrow? My dearest Hugh was a big man in every way. At seventeen, when he marched off to war, he was six feet tall, a gentleman, and I loved him. I wish,’ she continued, ‘I could forget just how much we loved each other – lay to rest the memories of the plans we made for when he would come marching home victorious.’

Sinking down on to the basket chair, Kate allowed her head to bend over and she cradled it in her hands. Rocking backwards and forwards, she now thought of that fateful day, 22 May 1915, when the 7th Royal Scots, Leith’s own Territorial Army, which Hugh had joined, set off for the front line. A train which they had boarded tragically ended up in a disastrous rail crash at Quintinshill, near Gretna. A simple error by a signalman led to the troop train colliding with a stationary passenger train. What was worse, before anyone could stop it, an express train from Glasgow bound for London ploughed into the wreckage, resulting in an uncontrollable fire. Between the collisions and the consequent inferno, 418 people were left either killed or injured.

When news of the worst rail tragedy ever to happen in Britain filtered into Leith, Gladys Brown ran panicking to her friend, Jenny Anderson. Throwing open the Andersons’ door she screamed, ‘Jenny, Jenny, all our braw laddies hae been killed. And not, mark you, in the blinking war, but in a blasted train crash here in Scotland.’

The noise of the slap that Jenny had made across Gladys’s face was still reverberating around the room when she pulled hysterical Gladys into a strong embrace. Holding her in her arms, Jenny looked towards Kate and whispered, ‘Dear God, Kate, it seems Hugh’s been killed. Quick, get Gladys a cup of hot sweet tea and lace it with a dram.’

Kate did hear her mother’s request but the thought that Hugh might be dead riveted her to the spot. With fists so tightly clenched that her knuckles were white she thought back to only the night before, when she and Hugh had walked hand in hand through the Links. They talked and talked about nothing except their future together. Hugh vowed he would come back and then they would tell their families of their love for each other and they would marry. They had even spoken about emigrating to America. All the films they had seen in the Leith Picture House had inspired in them the belief that they could go out to the Land of the Free and make a go of it there. After all, Kate had argued with Hugh, hadn’t Dunfermline’s Andrew Carnegie gone from rags to riches in 1835, emigrating to America and becoming the richest man in the world when he sold the empire he had built up for $480 million in 1901? Buoyed up by Kate’s enthusiasm Hugh conceded, and readily agreed, that they would make it in America and they would not be greedy. Just one million would satisfy them. After all, who really would ever need more than that?

All over Leith people were huddled together into whispering little groups. They were impatiently awaiting news of their loved ones. At the Leith 7th Battalion Royal Scots’ Drill Hall in Dalmeny Street, from where the lads had left earlier that day, lists of the names of the dead were eventually posted on the outside billboards.

‘Kate, you push yourself into the front of that rabble there and see what it says,’ her mother brusquely commanded.

‘Oh, Jenny,’ Gladys pleaded, ‘what will I do if it says … I mean, how will I break it to Dodd?’

Jenny’s only response was to tuck Gladys’s arm firmly under her own.

When ashen-faced Kate returned she inhaled two deep breaths before spluttering, ‘Oh, Mum, thankfully our Hugh’s name’s not on any of the lists.’

‘So it looks as if he’s okay?’ was her mother’s quick response.

‘He might be,’ Kate replied with less enthusiasm, ‘but the lad who posted the notices was also saying that the lists are not complete.’ Changing her tone Kate went on. ‘But, Mum,’ she almost sang, ‘he also said some, might be as many as fifty or even a hundred, have survived.’

‘That right?’ Gladys cried as she wrestled herself free from Jenny’s grip.

Kate nodded. ‘And they will either continue their journey onwards or come back here, and then after a while, they will be sent back off.’ She said no more to her mother and Gladys, but she inwardly screamed,
Back to the bloody useless war again!

The next morning, 23 May 1915, the rosy dawn found Kate sitting on a bench in Leith Links with her arms wrapped tightly about herself. She had been there all night praying and hoping. A long sigh escaped as she looked over the lush grass that had begun to take on a ghostly appearance when a thin mist started to drift upwards from it. Sheer exhaustion was seeping away any hope she had had about Hugh and, as despondency overtook her, she wondered if the phantom haze swirling at her feet was an omen. Lifting her eyes she stared long into the distance. Her heart jumped into her mouth. ‘Who can that be?’ she gasped. The tall figure was at one moment striding quickly towards her and then it was shrouded in the mist.

Eventually, the running upright figure was so close that the haze could no longer swathe it. All that Kate could make out was that it was a man dressed in a military uniform. She also noted that he was not wearing a regulation cap, a uniform irregularity which encouraged the filtering rays of the morning sun to light up the highlights of his gingery blond hair. ‘Hugh!’ she cried, half rising from the bench. ‘Is it really you?’

In three quick strides he was pulling her towards him. She was so overcome that her head reeled, her knees buckled and her tears cascaded, all of which took him by surprise. Instinctively he wished to comfort his beloved so he gathered her up into a tight embrace. As the warmth of his body radiated through her, she was grateful to acknowledge that this was no dream, no ghost – it was her Hugh, in person. He had survived and he had come immediately to look for her. Finding her was easy for him because he knew that she would be nowhere else except in the part of Leith Links that was their own special place.

Steadying herself, she rigorously patted his chest before she fell against him again. It was only at that moment that she realised just how much she had missed him – and he had only been away for a night and a day.

‘Come on, love,’ he whispered as he stroked her silken hair. ‘I’m not back for long so let’s not waste a minute.’

She hesitated but only for a short time. Then lifting her eyes to meet his she blurted, ‘Oh, darling, I want you so much. Really want you. So much so that I am very sorry I said no to you last night before we parted.’