A Crimson Dawn (11 page)

‘Come and watch me play footy in Lawson's Paddock,' he encouraged.

‘I'd rather read a book,' she always replied with a laugh, dodging out of the way before he could kiss her.

Tom was playful and uncomplicated, sometimes funny, occasionally bad-tempered. She enjoyed his company more often than not. Emmie looked out for Tom now, half hoping to see his lean, loping figure saunter out of the shadows, hands in pockets, watching out for her. But tonight there was no sign of him. Probably, with the long summer evenings, he was kicking a football around with his friends. She felt a momentary pang of disappointment.

Humming, Emmie pushed the bicycle up the back lane and into the yard. Laughter reverberated out of the open door. Beyond the scullery, the kitchen sounded full. She squeezed her way past a couple of neighbours, friends of Jonas's.

‘Here's our Emmie!' they cried.

Emmie smelled whisky on their breath as they made way for her. Jonas had a bottle out on the table he kept for special occasions. He was beaming. But it was the sight of Helen, her face red and puffy as if she had been crying, that made her stomach lurch.

‘What's ganin' on?' she asked breathlessly.

‘Oh, pet!' Helen threw out her arms. ‘What a day this has been! Haway in and see for yourself.'

There was laughter as they pushed her forward. A bearded, dark-haired man rose from a stool by the hearth. There was something familiar in his brawny stance and the keen, blue-eyed look. Her heart thumped.

‘Little Emmie?' He stared at her, equally disbelieving.

‘Rab?' she gasped.

‘Aye, it's the prodigal returned,' Jonas boomed.

Rab held open his arms and grinned. Emmie flew at him with a squeal of delight.

‘I cannot believe …! Why didn't you say -?'

They hugged tight and suddenly Emmie was overcome. A huge sob rose up inside and she burst into tears.

‘Emmie,' Rab laughed and cuddled her, ‘it's more of a shock for me. I turn me back for a minute and you've gone and grown up into a beautiful lass.'

‘A minute? Years, more like,' Emmie half laughed, half cried. ‘What's the beard for? Do all revolutionaries have to wear them?'

‘Aye, of course,' he chuckled. ‘I see you haven't lost any of your cheek.'

He loosened his hold. Emmie quickly wiped away her tears, trying to compose herself.

Helen fussed around, pushing Emmie into a seat at the table and pressing food on her, while gabbling out the story of Rab turning up on the doorstep at midday. The house had been a circus ever since, she complained, but the look of adoration she gave Rab told how happy she was.

‘I've a parcel of food on the bike,' Emmie remembered, pushing the plate of baking away. ‘I've had a big tea, thanks, Auntie Helen.'

‘Aye, tell us all about this society wedding you've been to,' Rab teased. ‘I hear I'm the only MacRae who isn't a personal friend of the Oliphants these days.'

Jonas let go an oath and Helen gave him a sharp look. Rab laughed.

‘It was a canny weddin',' Emmie smiled. ‘They're good people, so don't you mock. Some folk just talk of social change - others get on and do it.'

Sam guffawed. ‘That's one-nil to our Emmie, Rab!'

Rab pulled on his beard ruefully. ‘And apart from the debating society, what do they do at the Settlement to change the world?' he needled.

‘They give lectures in every kind of subject, and run music clubs - drama, art. Some of the unions hold their meetings there and they have campaigns to press for better conditions - sanitation and that. And there's the chapel—'

‘Ah,' Rab cried, as if he had caught her out, ‘religion - the opium of the people. It's just a bourgeois trick to keep the people passive.'

‘One-all,' Sam chimed in.

‘Don't talk daft,' Emmie said hotly. ‘You can be socialist and Christian at the same time.'

‘Course you can, pet,' Helen agreed. ‘Don't rise to the bait.'

But Emmie was stirred. ‘And there's the printing press. We print all sorts for the ILP and suffrage societies.'

‘Aye,' Jonas joined in, ‘our Emmie's a suffragette these days.'

‘Middle-class ladies chaining themselves to railings in between tea parties,' Rab goaded. ‘But what do they do for working-class lasses, eh? It's universal suffrage we need, not just for bourgeois women.'

‘Ding-ding! Two-one to Rab, Emmie,' Sam chortled.

‘Oh, shut up, the pair of you,' Emmie cried. ‘There's nowt bourgeois about the Runcies' printing press - come and see for yourself if you don't believe me. And you're wrong about the vote. Plenty men already have it, but not one lass does. We'll fight the lot of you to have our say in how the country's run no matter what class we're from. We don't care about that - we lasses stick together!'

‘Knock-out punch from Miss Emmie Kelso,' Sam shouted. ‘I declare her the winner.'

Laughter rang around the crowded kitchen. Rab uncrossed his arms and gave Emmie's hair a playful rub. She pushed him off and straightened it down.

‘Oh, lass, how I've missed all this. It's grand to be back,' he grinned fondly.

‘Aye,' she relented with a laugh, ‘I've missed you an' all.'

Emmie was so overjoyed at having Rab back that it was a couple of days before she thought about Nell's promise to come up to Crawdene. She was hardly surprised when her sister did not appear on the Tuesday or Wednesday; she was probably happy ordering Mrs Raine about in the doctor's absence, and inviting friends round to the house.

So it was a shock when Flora came rushing into the printing works, the day they returned from honeymoon.

‘Have you seen your sister?' she demanded, quite flustered. ‘Is she at the MacRaes'?'

‘No, Doctor. She never came.'

‘But Mrs Raine says she left on Monday, telling her she was going to stay with you. She was expected back two days ago.'

Emmie grew alarmed. ‘She talked about it, but didn't. I haven't seen her all week. Oh, miss, what do you think's happened? Shall we call the police?'

Flora looked aghast. ‘No, not the police.'

‘Maybe's she's gone to Dolly's.'

‘No, they had a falling-out - Nell thought Dolly too common.'

‘Her acting friends then?' Emmie suggested. ‘She was singing with those lads from the debating society the last time I saw her - the afternoon of the weddin'. Maybe she's gone to stay with a friend till you got back - you know she doesn't like to be on her own.'

‘Did she say anything to you?' Flora asked urgently. ‘Can you remember if she spoke of going away somewhere?'

‘No, nothing,' Emmie said, feeling guilty. ‘I meant to go round and see her. But you see, Rab came back — and the house has been full of visitors since.'

‘Rab!' Flora softened. ‘Oh, Emmie, that's good news. I'm so glad. I didn't mean to snap at you - it's just I'm worried about Nell.' She sank on to a chair.

‘Doctor,' Emmie said tentatively, ‘there is one thing.'

Flora looked at her in hope.

‘Nell wasn't happy about having to move - to come and live here. Maybe she's taken off somewhere.'

Flora covered her face with her hands and groaned. Emmie went to her and put an arm around her shoulders in comfort. Flora looked up at her with eyes welling with tears.

‘She's run away, hasn't she? She's planned this and it's all my fault.'

‘We don't know—' Emmie began.

‘Yes, I'm sure of it.' Flora cut her short. ‘I insisted that we would move into the Settlement to be with Charles and his work. Nell made a fuss, but I thought she'd come round to the idea.'

‘Aye, so did I,' Emmie admitted.

‘So that's why she's gone. I've driven her away.' Her look was harrowed. ‘I know your sister can be difficult, but she livens up my home - my life. I love her like a daughter.'

‘She'll be back,' Emmie said kindly. ‘She's never been as happy as with you, Dr Flora. I think she was a bit jealous of Mr Charles taking you away. This is her way of gettin' a bit attention. Anyways, she'll not last long on her own without money and that.'

Tears spilled down Flora's cheeks. ‘She's taken money from the surgery - and jewellery from my dressing table.'

‘Never!' Emmie was shocked. ‘Nell's not a thief.'

‘The money's not important. What hurts is that she has so little regard for me - that she couldn't talk to me first.' Flora's look was full of pain. ‘Why, Emmie? Why would she do that after all I've done for her?'

Emmie was speechless, too stunned that Nell could have stolen from the kind doctor and then disappeared without even a word to her own sister!

Flora shook her head. ‘I thought I knew Nell; now I'm not sure I know her at all.'

Word soon went round the Settlement and the community beyond that Dr Jameson's foster daughter had run away. No one had seen her since the wedding weekend or taken her in. But she had been spotted leaving Saltwell Park on the Sunday with a man who helped out at the drama club. Jackman was a drifter, a one-time music-hall artist, a good talker. He had left Gateshead too. Flora grew angry that Nell could have been so reckless, but as Charles pointed out, she was a grown woman who had just turned twenty-one and they could not stop her making her own mistakes.

The rumour about the stolen money and jewels spread too, probably by a disaffected Mrs Raine, who did not want to housekeep at the Settlement. Too often, Flora had to intervene in arguments between her housekeeper and the Mousys.

Weeks went by and no news came of Nell. Emmie experienced again the feeling of vulnerability and loss of someone close to her disappearing. She worried for her sister, yet felt bursts of anger that she had gone without thinking of the consequences. Rab seemed to sense her mixed feelings the most.

‘She probably felt guilty the minute she was gone,' he told her, ‘after the relief of getting away.'

‘Then why doesn't she write?' Emmie pointed out. ‘Even you sent a postcard so we knew you were alive.'

‘Maybe she thinks no one will be bothered that she's gone.'

‘She's just selfish, that's what.'

Rab said gently, ‘Nell may want to come home but thinks she won't be welcome after what she's done. It was different for me - I knew I'd be welcome.'

‘How?'

‘Because of those canny long letters you sent - made me feel like I was right there in Crawdene.' Rab smiled at her. ‘You've no idea how much they meant to me, Emmie.'

***

Rab's return compensated greatly for the worry and guilt over Nell's disappearance. Emmie thought life at China Street would return to how it was before Rab went away. But it could not. Nearly three years had passed and Rab had changed. He was still fun and full of conversation, able to infuriate and make his family laugh in equal measure. But at times he would fall silent, introspective, as if he was far away in a place where none of them could reach him.

‘Tell me what Glasgow was like,' Emmie would urge. He would describe tall tenements and noisy shipyards, large families packed into one or two rooms.

‘What about the shops, the theatres?'

Rab would shrug. ‘Where the rich folk gan, you mean? We took our entertainment where we could find it - in the bars or the cheap concert halls.'

He often talked affectionately about the characters in his boarding house, or those at his night classes.

‘And the lasses - what were Scottish lasses like?'

He would give her a strange look. ‘No different from anywhere else.' But after such questions he would go quiet, brooding almost. Someone had taught him to play the piano and he would disappear to the tin-roofed hall to play slow airs and melancholy tunes.

Emmie and Helen speculated on what had happened.

‘He doesn't like being asked about lasses,' Emmie said. ‘Even Sam can't get out of him whether he's been courtin'.'

‘I think he's had his heart broken,' Helen sighed, ‘and that's why he's come home. Not that he'll ever tell us.'

After a month of sleeping on the truckle bed in the kitchen, Rab moved out of the cottage. Now that Emmie had half the attic curtained off as her bedroom, there was no room upstairs, and they all knew he would have to go sooner or later. He rented a downstairs room in India Street from Mannie, a retired saddler and friend from the Clarion Club, and went back to work at the Liddon pit.

That autumn, he began teaching classes in politics and literature at the Miners' Institute in Blackton, so that Emmie saw even less of him.

One day, early in 1910, he sought her out.

‘Will you take me to see this printing press at the Settlement?' he asked, almost shyly.

‘You mean, that bourgeois printing press?' she smirked.

‘Aye, that one,' he smiled.

‘Why the sudden interest?'

‘I'm thinking of starting a news-sheet - a political one - let people air their opinions.' He eyed her, as if seeking approval. ‘I want to see how much it would cost.'

Emmie nodded. ‘Come down next Saturday while I'm at work and talk to the Runcies.'

By the time Saturday afternoon came, she was full of excitement and kept rushing to the door of the printworks whenever she heard footsteps cross the icy quad. Miss Sophie breezed in to discuss a fund-raising leaflet and found Emmie telling her employers all about Rab, right from the time he had fetched her as a frightened, sickly child from the station in Swalwell.

‘He doesn't sound like the two-headed radical monster my father thinks he is,' Sophie joked. ‘But maybe he should publish his news-sheet under a different name from MacRae.'

Just at that moment, Rab came stamping in out of the cold.

‘And why would I want to do that?' Rab asked with a quizzical smile, pulling off his cap.