Faith (33 page)

She could never forget Barney’s introduction to snow. Stuart had collected his old childhood sledge from his parents’ home, and they bundled Barney up in warm clothes, sat him on the sledge and Stuart pulled him round to Harrington Park.

It brought tears to her eyes to watch Stuart hurtling down the slope with Barney tucked safely between his long legs. Barney yelled with glee; each time they got to the bottom he’d race right back up the hill, looking like a little gnome in his red woolly hat, matching red cheeks and Wellingtons. Laura squeezed on with them too, and yelled as loudly as Barney as the sledge gathered speed and she feared they would never stop.

That day she remembered how it had been a year earlier when she was rushed off to hospital with poisoning. She’d never had blissfully happy moments sharing Barney with Greg, he never played with his son, and he wouldn’t have understood that a day spent sledging was fun.

Stuart got taken on for another job at the end of February but that job only lasted two weeks, and once again they were back on the dole. That time Stuart took it hard, and paced about looking worried. He said if he’d known his five-year apprenticeship was going to lead to no work at the end of it, he’d have joined the Navy or gone to Australia.

‘I didn’t want you to live like this,’ he said despairingly when they had no money to put in the gas meter. ‘I don’t feel like a man when I can’t provide for you.’

She did try to reassure him it was not his fault, that joiners, bricklayers, plumbers and electricians were all having a hard time because of the recession. Every night in the newspaper there was someone voicing an opinion that the government should fire up the economy by building new houses and public buildings.

Laura found a job as a barmaid at the Maybury Casino in April, just after Barney’s third birthday. It was only two nights a week, and to her it was the ideal job, for Stuart could babysit Barney, and the extra money would be good for all of them.

She knew Stuart thought a casino was the equivalent of the gateway to hell, and that he didn’t like the idea of her being out at night in the company of other men, but he accepted her decision with resignation. He almost certainly expected that she would soon get tired of it, but perhaps the reason he didn’t make more objections was because he knew they really did need the money.

Yet from the first night Laura loved working at the casino. There was something about the Art Deco building, the soft lighting, plush decor, sophistication and the buzz of excitement in the air that made her spirits rise as soon as she walked in the door. It was some way from the town centre so she had no problem parking her car. She loved being able to dress up in the smart clothes she hadn’t worn since she left London, to be Laura again, not Barney’s mother or Stuart’s lady. She mixed with interesting people who stimulated her mind and she felt good about herself.

Stuart often joked that it was like having a mistress when she came out of the bedroom looking glamorous, and if he minded being left alone with Barney, he kept it to himself. Just a few weeks in to her starting at the casino, he got work again, and she’d be rushing out just as he got in, leaving him instructions about Barney, and his dinner that she’d left in the oven.

Two nights at the casino went up to three, and still Stuart didn’t complain, even though she often hadn’t got his dinner ready for him when he came home, and sometimes hadn’t even given Barney his. Yet on balance they were far happier that summer, they had lots to talk about, they could afford to go out for the day on Sundays, and Laura was much more enthusiastic about lovemaking. But by September, when the odd extra fourth night had become a regular one, Stuart became sullen.

‘Barney misses you,’ he said one evening just as she was leaving. ‘He doesn’t settle well now, he keeps getting out of bed and asking when you are coming home.’

Laura didn’t stop to think about what he’d said, she just heard the reproach in his voice and saw it as the first stage of him becoming like all his friends and their neighbours, a man who wanted his woman right under his thumb. She’d had too much of that with Greg.

‘Well, smack him then,’ she snapped. ‘He’s only trying it on. I’m stuck at home with him all day and I need more than that in my life.’

She saw Stuart’s expression harden. ‘So neither of us is as important as a bunch of losers drooling at you over the bar?’

‘At least they see me as a woman, not just some sort of glorified housekeeper,’ she snapped, and left without even saying goodbye.

Stuart was right to some extent, she did have men drooling over her. They said her English accent was sexy, and that she was beautiful enough to be a model. She felt high on the attention, and powerful too, and although she did love Stuart just as passionately as when they first met, there were times when she regretted moving in with him.

She didn’t have the status of a wife, but she couldn’t do exactly what she wanted to do either. There were times when she was tempted to jump in her car and drive down to London to see Jackie, Meggie and Ivy, but she couldn’t, not without money of her own, or hurting Stuart’s feelings. Besides, Stuart had her car during the day to get to work. The car was often a bone of contention, for since Stuart passed his driving test he always insisted on driving it when they went out together. He said he felt like a kept man if she drove, and he didn’t seem to understand that by taking it over he was snatching the last remnants of her independence.

His mother was another thorny issue. She interfered on many levels, quizzing Laura about what she cooked for her son, and even what she put in his sandwiches. She always sniffed with disapproval about her working at the casino, and made pointed remarks about Stuart being left to babysit Barney.

But the worst thing was that she kept asking Laura when she was going to get a divorce. Laura couldn’t tell her that she was afraid to start proceedings because Greg would find out where she was and might attempt to get custody of Barney. But by stalling Laura knew she was creating the idea in Mrs Macgregor’s mind that she was just playing with Stuart, and she was never going to marry him and have his children.

Laura wanted to have a baby with Stuart, but certainly not while they lived in such a poky flat, and how could they get somewhere better unless she worked too?

It was during the autumn of ’74 that things really began to turn sour. There had been many rows throughout the year, about the car which always seemed to need something repaired, about Stuart’s mother’s interference, or the cramped conditions in the flat. But mostly Stuart got shirty about her working so many evenings a week. Laura’s counter-argument was pointing out that she paid for repairs on the car, bought their fridge and a vacuum cleaner with her wages, and supported him during the times he was laid off.

It was an argument that couldn’t be resolved, for Stuart knew they did need the money she earned, and that she couldn’t get daytime work because of Barney. They always made their rows up passionately, but the bitter words they’d flung at each other at the height of the rows weren’t always forgotten, and resentment and anger simmered below the surface, ready to erupt again the next time.

Jackie was also a mild bone of contention with Stuart. He didn’t want to hear about the friend in London she had such an attachment to. Whenever Laura had a letter from her and she mentioned the latest property she’d renovated and sold on, he would look wounded, as if Laura was implying he didn’t do enough to improve their standard of living. He made up his mind even before he met her that she would look down on him.

In the last year Jackie had come up to Edinburgh several times to see Laura, and though Stuart was pleasantly surprised to find she wasn’t the snob he imagined, he was still wary of her because she came without her husband, stayed in a plush hotel, and splashed a great deal of money around.

He gradually grew to like her, mainly because she was so enthusiastic about the places in Scotland he took her to visit. Yet despite this, whenever he and Laura had a row he would still make caustic comments about her. He was clearly a little jealous of her affection for her friend.

Jackie grew to love Scotland so much she began looking for a cottage to buy along the Fife coast. Stuart huffed and puffed about this, for few Scots owned their own homes at that time. As he saw it, if wealthy English people came marauding over the border to buy property, the locals would soon have nowhere to live.

The pretty little two-up, two-down fisherman’s cottage Jackie eventually bought was in Cellardyke in Fife, right on the old harbour. She got local tradesmen in to renovate it, and in August, when it was finished, she asked Laura, Stuart and Barney to join her for a holiday there.

Stuart couldn’t take time off his work, but he was happy enough for Laura to go with Barney. Jackie drove up from London with a vanload of furniture, picking Laura and Barney up as she came through Edinburgh. Together the girls arranged it all in the cottage, hung curtains, pictures and equipped the kitchen.

It was the most fun Laura had had since Castle Douglas, for it was like their early flat-sharing days. Everything made them laugh, they chatted about old times eagerly, and filled each other in on all that had happened to them both in the past few years.

It was lovely warm weather and Barney could wander in and out, making friends with the neighbours’ children and watching the fishermen in their boats. The novelty of hanging out washing on lines right on the harbour, the clean salty air, and listening to the sea breaking on the shore at night, never ceased to delight Laura. She could understand completely why Jackie had fallen in love with the place.

In the afternoons they took long walks along the beach to Crail with Barney, swam and had picnics, then stayed up half the night drinking and giggling as they recalled old boyfriends, and discussed Roger and Stuart.

Late one night Jackie fell asleep on the sofa and Laura sat looking at her, remembering how her friend had always claimed that Laura was the one who would go far because she was shrewd and smart. It had seemed that way at the time, for Laura was the one with the ideas, determination and the ability to see the bigger picture, while Jackie had been indecisive and nervous about taking risks.

Jackie had always been pretty, but at thirty she was stunning. She’d had her long copper-coloured hair cut and permed into the latest ‘Afro’ style, and against the sofa cushions it looked like amber spun sugar. That night she was wearing skin-tight denim dungarees with a skimpy emerald-green top beneath, and her suntanned arms were laden with Indian bangles. She looked like a rock star, not a woman of property who spent most of her time chasing up builders.

Having a go-getting husband like Roger had undoubtedly helped Jackie get her business going, but Laura knew he wasn’t, as some people thought, the brains behind the business. He had encouraged her, and financed the purchase of the first house, but it was Jackie who had the ideas. She had done the homework about the areas she bought run-down property in, and it was her flair for design and eye for detail while converting them into flats which made her such large profits. Laura felt very proud of her doing so well. It also made her want to make something of herself too. And while she was with Jackie in the tiny cottage packed with her creative vibes, it seemed entirely possible.

Laura arrived back home in Edinburgh two weeks later, deeply tanned, glowing with health and brimming with optimism. But as she opened the street door in Caledonian Crescent and the musty smell and the darkness of the stairs hit her, she felt herself deflate.

Once in the flat, Barney ran eagerly into the living room to his toys but Laura stood in the doorway feeling only dismay. When they’d moved in nearly two years ago she’d been proud that she’d made it look so stylish and comfortable on a shoestring. But now she saw the white paint was turning yellow, the maroon second-hand sofa was threadbare, and the cheap carpet stained. The big print above the gas fire, a field of red poppies, which she’d once loved so much, looked horribly dated, and as for the Regency striped curtains, she could hardly believe she’d bothered to haggle with the woman who put them up for sale on a postcard. She ought to have taken one look at them and left.

Jackie’s cottage in Cellardyke had been all cream and pale blue, a pretty, spirit-lifting place. She hadn’t spent a fortune on it either; the curtains were cheap gingham, all the furniture was painted second-hand stuff.

All at once resentment that she had to live this way rose up like bile. Barney had nowhere safe to play outside in the sunshine, not even a bedroom of his own, and she doubted Stuart would ever earn enough for them to buy a house.

Barney was due to start school in September, which in theory should give her the opportunity to work all day. But she knew from mothers with school-age children that it wasn’t easy to find work between nine and three-thirty, and then there were the school holidays and having to take time off if the child was sick.

She was twenty-nine, yet she was still no further forward than she’d been at nineteen.

As she unpacked and put away their clothes, edging her way around the narrow space between her bed and Barney’s, the resentment grew stronger and stronger because she knew this wasn’t something she could talk over with Stuart. He was completely satisfied with this flat. If she pointed out how seedy everything was he’d say that most of their neighbours’ places were far worse. He’d probably relate, as he often had before, that until he was five, his whole family had lived in a one-bedroom flat which was smaller than this one.

Suddenly the differences between her mentality and Stuart’s seemed vast. He didn’t think beyond the end of the month: as long as he had work, a hot dinner and her in his arms at night, enough money to pay the rent, and his guitar and television, he was supremely happy.

But that wasn’t enough for her.

A week after Laura’s holiday in Fife, Robbie Fielding made one of his surprise visits to the casino. He was a director of the company which owned the Maybury and, by repute, a hard man who would sack anyone he didn’t think pulled their weight. Laura had met him several times before, but as he’d never taken her to task about anything, she didn’t quake in her shoes when she saw him walk in, as most of the staff did.