Cousins at War (12 page)

At the first chance she had, she looked for the two girls, and began by crowing, ‘I’d a letter today.’

‘Oh yes?’ Frankie sounded sarcastic. She had not believed Olive’s exaggerated description of ‘Neil’s’ kisses when he was on leave, and was not prepared to
believe anything else.

Polly, however, was agog to know what was in the letter, and Olive allowed her to take a quick look at the relevant part. ‘Could he improve on his kisses?’ she asked, then.

Olive gave a coy smile. ‘I don’t think so, but maybe he’s meaning something else would be an improvement on kisses.’

‘Yes, that’s what it’ll be,’ Polly exclaimed in delight. ‘He must really love you, and I bet you’ll treasure this for as long as you live.’

‘Yes, it’s the first love letter he’s ever written to me.’

If Olive had known how Alf and Neil had laughed together as they made up the flattering phrases, she would not have been so happy and would probably have scratched their eyes out but, in her
ignorance, all that concerned her was answering the letter. Should she tell Alf that she longed to see him, that she was in love with him, or was it too soon for that? They had only been alone
together twice, and it might scare him off, but surely it would be all right to admit that she had enjoyed the kissing as much as he had.

Callum Birnie had looked so downcast when Queenie refused to make another date that she had given in, and although his kisses hadn’t swept her off her feet, they had been
quite an improvement on his first one, and they were always getting better. Thinking it over as she went to meet him again, she remembered having heard her grandma saying, ‘Practice makes
perfect,’ and it seemed to be true. . . unless he’d been taking lessons. She giggled at this idea. She liked him very much, but she wasn’t sure that she loved him, and if she
wasn’t sure, she probably didn’t. She enjoyed being with him – they had the same sense of humour and could talk easily together – so it would be best to let their
relationship drift along. Perhaps love would come in time.

Callum was waiting for her outside the Picture House – he was always first – and his chubby boy’s face broke out in a grin when he saw her. ‘I was wondering if we should
go for a walk tonight? It’s too hot to be inside, isn’t it?’

‘It is hot. Where’ll we go?’

‘Where our feet take us?’ He took her hand and turned her round to go down Bridge Street. ‘I like that dress, Queenie. It suits you much better than the school
uniform.’

‘Thanks, and you look quite good yourself.’

‘It’s a new sports jacket. I pestered Mum till she gave in and bought it.’

‘It makes you look older.’

He seemed pleased. ‘That was the idea. Nobody’ll know that we’re still at school. I look stupid in a blazer at my age.’

She couldn’t resist teasing him. ‘I’d say looking stupid comes naturally to you.’

He laughed. ‘We’re a pair, then.’

It didn’t annoy her; she knew that he didn’t mean it, any more than she had. They often swopped insults this way, and Patsy had said it was a sign of affection, that no one could
make fun of a person they didn’t like – not to their face.

Their walk, which he had planned before meeting her, took them through the Arches, underneath which no one could ‘lay’ on the cobblestones, like Flanagan and Allen sang, because they
were occupied by fish houses, with scales and pieces of fish lying about the road. Queenie curled up her nose at the stench. ‘This is a beautiful place to take a girl, I must say.’

‘Watch your feet,’ he warned. ‘It’s slippery here.’

In a few minutes, they came out on Riverside Drive, with the Dee flowing swiftly and silently on their left, the last lap of its journey to the sea. At the opposite side of the water, on the
crest of the steep bank, a squat building was silhouetted starkly against the setting sun. ‘What’s that?’ she asked, a trifle uncertainly. ‘It looks eerie.’

‘That’s Craiginches, the prison,’ Callum laughed, ‘so you had better behave, or they’ll drag you inside.’

‘I wondered why there was such a high wall all round it.’ She shivered. ‘Do any of the prisoners ever escape?’

‘I think some have but they’re always caught.’

‘I don’t really like being here.’

Sliding his arm round her waist, Callum held her closely. ‘I won’t let any of the nasty men catch you.’

She had to laugh, and felt better for it. When they came to the gate to the Duthie Park, he said, ‘We can go in here and have a seat, if you like?’

‘Yes, I wouldn’t mind.’

There were few people about, and they found an empty bench with no difficulty. Sitting down, they both stretched their legs out and kicked off their shoes, the simultaneous timing making them
laugh. ‘It’s impossible to be grown up,’ Queenie said, in a moment. ‘We’re still kids, taking off our shoes because our feet are hot.’

He turned to her slowly. ‘I don’t feel like a kid when I’m with you.’

She enjoyed his kisses for some time, until he shifted his hands from her shoulders to her breasts. ‘No, Callum,’ she said sharply, drawing back from him.

‘Why not? I’m not going to do anything wrong. I just want to feel them.’

She pushed him away, and searched for her shoes with her feet. ‘I think we should go back now.’

Gripping her arms, he pulled her up. ‘We’re not going back yet. Come on, Queenie, let me. . .’

‘No!’ But his lips came down hard on hers, and his quick breathing alarmed her – he was consumed with lust! If she’d managed to put on her shoes, she thought,
distractedly, she would have kicked him, but she would only hurt her toes if she did it now. When one of his legs tried to prise hers apart, she lifted her knee and, with full force banged it into
his groin, making him yelp with pain and let her go. It was her chance and she took it, grabbing her shoes off the ground and running as quickly as she could.

He was doubled over and didn’t attempt to follow her, but she kept running until a stitch started in her side. After she got her breath back, she leaned against a wall to put on her shoes,
thankful that she wouldn’t have to walk over the fishy scales in her stocking soles. To make sure that Callum wasn’t coming after her, she took a quick glance behind her before walking
on. The sun had gone altogether, although it wasn’t pitch dark yet, but it was still frightening to be on her own in this deserted area. She imagined that she saw a man cowering in the
shadows of one of the Arches and broke into a run again to get past, but it was just a few wooden fish boxes, stacked rather higgeldy-piggeldy. Slowing down, she gave a hysterical giggle. She was
being paranoiac, but she hadn’t far to go now until she reached civilisation and could relax.

Patsy had been right. All men, young and old, were tarred with the same brush. Even Callum, whom she had thought was a nice boy, had turned out to be as bad as the men in Patsy’s office,
wanting to touch, wanting to claim her virginity. If she hadn’t got away from him, she’d have been in desperate straits. He might have made her pregnant, and what would she have done
then? Auntie Gracie would probably have thrown her out and Neil would have been shocked that she had let a boy do such a thing to her. Yes, Neil was different; he was a nice boy. He would never
touch any girl like that.

Well, that was the end of Callum, and she wouldn’t go out with another boy for as long as she lived. She would remain a spinster . . . not a vinegary spinster, but maybe like Miss Thomson
at school, gentle and kind. Teaching would be a good career, Queenie decided, as she left South College Street and carried on up Bridge Street, feeling safe amongst people. To give her face time to
cool down before her aunt saw it, she walked very slowly along Union Street, looking in shop windows but not seeing anything. Noticing that the Town House clock showed only five past nine, she
realised that she would have to wait a little longer before she went home. If she went in too early, Auntie Gracie would want to know why, and she wasn’t in a fit state to tell a convincing
lie just yet.

It was almost ten when she finally climbed the tenement stairs, tired out from all the walking she had done to pass the time. ‘What did you see tonight?’ Gracie smiled.

Queenie was ready with her answer, although her heart was hammering as she voiced the half truth. ‘We didn’t go to the pictures, it was too hot. We . . . met two girls in my class,
so we all went for a walk.’

Joe grinned. ‘Didn’t Callum object to having three females on his hands?’

‘No, he was quite happy about it.’

‘Come to think of it, I’m quite happy with you three.’

Gracie snorted. ‘Aye, you haven’t to lift a finger, have you? You get everything done for you. You wouldn’t know what to do if you’d to fend for yourself. I’m sure
you don’t even know where I keep the tea.’

‘In the caddy on the mantelpiece,’ Joe said, triumphantly.

‘That’s about all you do know, then.’

‘It’s all you need to know, isn’t it, Dad?’ Patsy smiled affectionately at her father. ‘Well, goodnight, I’m off to bed. You’ll be taking a cup of tea
first, Queenie?’

‘No, I don’t want anything.’

The two girls left the room together, and Queenie was glad that Patsy asked no questions as they undressed. She would tell them all in a day or two that she and Callum had had a quarrel at
school, to explain why they weren’t going out any more. It would be awful to face him tomorrow, but he would probably keep out of her way. She smiled in the darkness. She had surprised
herself as much as him by the knee-punch, but even though it had been a reflex action, it had done the trick and nothing had actually happened.

The pseudo love letters continued to flow, much to Alf’s and Neil’s amusement, but Olive believed every single word and was delighted that each one was more
affectionate than the last. She tried not to show how deeply she cared, but her feelings did intrude on what she wrote. ‘I’ll only be half alive until you come back to me,’ she
said in one letter.

Neil howled at this, but Alf said, guiltily, ‘She’s going to be real hurt when I tell her it’s all off.’

‘Oh, come on! Don’t go soft on me now. Olive’s too full of her own importance to care.’

‘It doesn’t look like that to me.’

‘She’ll be angry, not hurt, and you won’t be there for her to shout at. She’s not fully hooked yet, so wait till after our next leave, then you can call it a
day.’

Alf straightened his shoulders. ‘OK, I’m game if you are. It’s not me that’ll end up on the chopping block.’

‘She doesn’t know I’ve got anything to do with it.’

‘Maybe not, but I bet she’ll take her spite out on you.’

The laughter left Neil’s eyes. Had he built up trouble for himself in his attempt to be rid of Olive?

Over the long summer, Neil and Alf notched up many ‘scores’ in the little villages near the camp, vieing with each other in their descriptions of how they had
succeeded. Sometimes, they discovered that the girl one was describing had already been ‘done’ by the other, but it only had them helpless with laughter. There was no animosity.

‘This war’s the best thing that ever happened to me,’ Neil observed one morning.

Alf nodded eagerly, ‘Me, too. I just hope we don’t run out of steam.’

‘Come off it, man, we’re young yet.’

‘I’ll be twenty-one in December.’ Alf made it sound as if he were on the border line of senility, and Neil patted his hand sympathetically. ‘I forgot how old you were.
Aye, you’d better go canny.’ Dodging a sham right hook, he went on, ‘I just hope we get posted, I quite fancy a change of girls and I wouldn’t even mind if we were sent
overseas, for it would solve our problem with Olive.’

‘Our problem? It’s your problem, Neil boy, I can pull out whenever I want. To be honest, I was going to call it off the next time I wrote, for her letters are getting a bit too
serious for my liking.’

‘Ach, that’s the way she is. It’s you she wants now, thank God, and I know how her mind works. She’ll go all out to get you to say you love her, so make her believe you
do – that’s all I ask. Come to King Street with me again . . . just one last time, Alf?’

‘It’ll definitely be the last. It’s gone on long enough.’

Because it had been raining the day before, all the washing was still hanging on the pulley and Gracie was depressed at the sight of it when she went into her kitchen first
thing in the morning. Joe would complain, as he usually did, about ‘clothes flapping round his lugs’, and she didn’t care much for it herself – it wasn’t healthy
– but she hadn’t time to feel if any of the thinner articles were dry, so they would all just have to put up with it.

She was brusque with her husband when he came through and snapped at Queenie and Patsy for ‘scuttering about’ instead of eating their breakfast, but fortunately for her family, a
letter from Ellie banished her blues.

‘Kathleen was married last Saturday,’ she told them, after she had read it. ‘I was beginning to wonder about her, for she was twenty-four last month, and I’ve never heard
of her having a lad. She didn’t get that off her mother, for Ellie had lots of lads before she married Jack Lornie.’

‘I never knew him,’ Joe observed.

‘No, he was killed in 1917. He was a nice boy but he went and enlisted in 1915 when Kathleen was just months old, so she never knew her real father.’

‘Gavin was a good father to her though. Ellie was lucky there.’

‘He was too old for her, but they were happy.’

‘We’ve been happy too, haven’t we, lass? I have, anyway.’

Gracie looked self-consciously at Patsy and Queenie, then smiled, ‘Aye, we’ve been happy, and we’ve got two daughters now as well as a son.’

‘Did Kathleen have a big wedding?’ Patsy wanted to know.

‘No, it was in the registry office. It’s not the same as a church wedding, or having the minister coming to the house, but I suppose it’s just as binding.’

Patsy looked thoughtful. ‘I think I’d rather be married in a church.’

Queenie nodded, ‘Me, too.’

Gracie had been glad when Queenie stopped going out with Callum, though she didn’t know what had gone wrong, but now she looked fearfully at her daughter. ‘You’re both far too
young to be thinking of marriage. You haven’t got a steady lad, Patsy, have you?’