Fortunes of the Heart (17 page)

No sooner were Daniel’s arms around Kate’s neck than Pearce
let out a howl of rage. In one bound, he was at their side. Without another
word, he grabbed his son by the scruff of the neck and threw him with maniacal
force across the room, where he collided with a sickening crunch against the opposite
wall.

This was altogether too much for Mrs Graham, who at once
strode to the centre of the room and stood there, arms akimbo.

“That, Mister Kinnon, sir, is quite enough,” she said in a
quiet, controlled voice. “I demand that you leave this room ... my kitchen, may
I remind you ... and leave at once. Do you understand me, sir? At once, I say.
I take it that you have finished with this disgusting display of violence?”

Pearce sneered.

“Finished? Finished, did you say? No, indeed, I have not yet
done with it. In fact ... if truth be told ... I’m just getting started.”

He grabbed hold of Jenny’s lovely new doll and, swinging it
by its fancy lace dress, he threw it wildly against the opposite wall, as if
aiming directly for Daniel’s tear-stained face. It just missed Daniel’s head.
The doll’s pretty little head ricocheted off the wall and smashed to
smithereens on the stone floor.

Amidst a flurry of lace petticoats, fur-trimmed bonnet, and
ribbons, there the doll lay, battered beyond recall.

Part
Two – Life Goes On

Chapter 1

A year after the fateful holiday, by nine o’clock on a
Friday evening, the Kinnon Ceilidh, as Kate called it, was in full flight.
Started to raise the children’s spirits from Pearce’s frequent black moods,
these evenings were the ideal time since Pearce was never home before eleven
o’clock on a Friday. Kate had her own suspicions as to why, but thrust them
aside to join the children in merry making.

Much of the puff candy had been eaten and Kate, laughing and
protesting all the while, had been prevailed upon to execute a spirited
Highland Fling. Hannah was laughing noisily and rocking to and fro in her own
peculiar way, and the other two, Jenny and Daniel, were clapping hands and alternately
imitating both the actions and the ear-splitting squeal of playing the
bagpipes. Into this hive of riotous activity, the door of the kitchen suddenly
burst open – and there Pearce stood, his face suffused with rage.

For an instant, it seemed he was almost too angry even to be
capable of speech. But despite this, the wild staring eyes themselves spoke
volumes. When eventually he did manage to splutter incoherently, it was the
ravings of a man pushed to the very edge of sanity by his bereavement. When at
last in control of himself, he stared with loathing at the erstwhile
merrymakers and yelled at them in a voice which could no doubt be heard by the
half of
Candleriggs
.

“And just what the bloody hell is going on here?”

The very sight of him, far less his harsh words, was enough
in itself to halt Kate in mid-Schottische. She stood there in an agony of
misery, embarrassment and indecision, one hand on one hip, the other raised
high above her head.

She felt she was standing there with her mouth agape, not
only at the interruption but also at the surprise, indeed the shock, of seeing
Pearce home so early on a Friday night. Almost without volition, she said the
first thing that came into her head.

“Pearce. You’re home early. But ... it’s Friday. So ...
what’s happened the night?”

Looking at her as if she’d taken leave of her senses, the
enraged figure, still framed in the kitchen doorway, waved aside her words, and
said: “What’s happened indeed. I’ll tell you exactly what’s-happened – I’ve
come home early from work after working my fingers to the bone to provide for
you all and keep you in a measure of comfort – I’ve come home early from work
and caught you all out. That’s what’s happened, my fine lady Kathleen. And just
how long has all this been going on – all this unseemly merriment in our house
of mourning? How long? Just tell me that.”

Unable to take in this new and unnerving situation and still
totally ignoring his question, Kate said in a voice tinged with wonder: “But,
Pearce. You’re never home early on a Friday night. That’s been your habit for
more years than I care to remember.”

His face darkened and the beetle brows drew even closer
together as he thundered at her: “Woman. Are you daft? What is it with you?
It’s Fair Friday. We can finish work a bit earlier, if we wish. But in past
years, I’ve never chosen to claim that special privilege; preferring rather to
work on the additional hours for the sake of the extra money, for our common
good, I might add.”

Kate put out a hand, about to speak, but Pearce had not yet
finished.

“You may remember – even last Fair Friday night, I worked
late as usual – to get extra money for our ice creams, donkey rides and other
treats during that accursed, ill-fated holiday. You can’t have forgotten that.
Although when I see all this jollity ... on what is almost the very anniversary
of poor wee Isabella’s death ... well, it just beats me. It really does.”

At this point Kate laid a placatory hand on her husband’s
sleeve.

“Pearce, my dear, listen. It isn’t at all what you think and
–”

With an angry gesture, he shook himself free of her hand.

“Kate, what I think is this: I came home early for once in a
lifetime of Fridays, because I just could not concentrate on columns and
figures, nor indeed on any other aspect of business. My mind kept going back in
time to last Fair Friday night, and how very happy we all were, at the prospect
of our first ever holiday doon the
wafter
and ...”

At this mention of Rothesay and the scene of his own shame
and self-reproach, there was a strangled cry from Daniel who was sitting on the
stool before the fire. It was this sound more than anything which as yet had
been said, or even worse, left unsaid which finally finished what was left of
Kate’s composure.

Like the old woman she now felt herself to be, she lowered
her arms with a great effort, almost as if they were dead weights. Then with a
cry like that of a wounded animal, she sank, utterly exhausted, into the
nearest kitchen chair. Like one in the throes of a nightmare, she looked around
with a dazed expression. Then as the full realisation, not only of the loss of
her wee Isabella, but of the way in which she had misjudged her husband finally
dawned on her, she started to weep and went on sobbing as if her heart would
break. All the while wild thoughts went racing through her brain.

My God. How I’ve misjudged him. All these long years, all
these Friday nights of our Kinnon Ceilidhs this last year. He really has been
working overtime. To provide for us. Not dallying with some fancy woman, as I
had thought. Oh. my God.

As it finally dawned on her just how very wrong she had been
in her rash assumptions, she knew in that moment that nobody is totally bad –
not even Pearce Claude Kinnon. By now, almost in a state of shock, she held out
a trembling hand to him and pleaded.

“Oh, Pearce. Will you ever be able to forgive me?”

Pearce, who assumed it was the riotous party scene which had
met his arrival home Kate was pleading forgiveness for, stared at her, then
thundered: “Forgive you? Humph. When what you’ve been doing is little short of
dancing on poor wee Isabella’s grave?”

For a moment, words failed him. Then, raking his fingers
through his hair, he said: “Forgive you, did you say, woman? No. Never in a
million years.”

With tears of rage, frustration, and grief spurting from his
eyes, he turned on his heel, went out of the door, and left the flat.

On his return next day, after a night of wandering blindly,
aimlessly through the Fair Friday streets of revelry and drunken debauchery, he
was a changed man. He steadfastly and cruelly ignored Kate and the three
remaining children, just as, as he told them, they had ignored not only the
death, but also the extended mourning period he himself deemed necessary for
his own, but dearly-departed Wee Isabella.

As the autumn slowly gave way to winter Pearce’s behaviour
at home alternated between long periods of silence when he would sit for hours
blank eyed in his chair beside the kitchen fire, and outbursts of rage when
Kate would hurriedly take the children to Granny
Gorbals
until the manic spell had passed and the shouting and swearing gave way once
more to a deep lethargy.

Chapter 2

In the second week of 1891 Kate chanced to be passing the
entrance to the Fruit Market when she heard some sort of disturbance just
inside. Men were shouting and swearing, not that swearing was an unusual
occurrence at the Fruit Market, but the voices sounded angry. One of the voices
was Pearce’s, she was sure.

Venturing closer to the uproar, she saw Pearce brandishing a
tally board.

“Your tally is wrong,” Pearce shouted. “You’re not going to
get paid for stuff you didn’t deliver.”

“Even with your bowler and your fancy talk you can’t add up
right. I’ll not be cheated again. Last week you cost me money. Today I had a
witness do my tally.”

For a moment, it looked as if they would come to blows, but
a second bowler hat approached and demanded to see Pearce’s tally board and
that of the witness.

The witness started to say something but was waved to
silence by the authoritative newcomer who studied both boards.

“Aye, they don’t agree.”

The carter pointed at Pearce. “He missed the count. He was
standing there in a
dwam
. You could have walked
Barnum and Bailey’s circus past and he wouldn’t have noticed.”

Murmurs of agreement sounded from the men standing round.

The newcomer initialled the witness’s board and turned to
Pearce.

“My office, Mr Kinnon, if you please.”

“You’re going to take his words over mine, Cameron?” Pearce
blustered.

“Mr Cameron, if you please. Yes, you’re out here tally
clerking because you were making too many mistakes in the ledgers at your desk
and blaming everyone else. Now it seems you can’t even be trusted to do this
job. You can pick up your pay poke at the office on Friday as usual. We’ll pay
you up to today.”

Kate hurried away from the market before Pearce saw her.

Pearce arrived home late that evening, surly, morose, but –
Kate was relieved to see – quite sober.

“They’re letting men go at the Market. There’s not enough
work.”

Kate waited in silence.

“I’ll need to start looking for other work,” Pearce finally
said and sat staring at the fire with his back to Kate.

Next morning, Kate was up betimes and got Hannah washed and
dressed earlier than usual. Danny, Jenny, and Pearce were all still sleeping,
so she wheeled Hannah out of the door as silently as the squeaky old go-chair
would allow. She had no compunction about going to Granny’s door this early,
for like many old people of her generation and class, the habit of early rising
was a deeply ingrained one and the hard-working Granny would have counted it a
mark of shame to be still abed beyond the hour of six o’clock, whatever the
morning.

As she and Granny sat over their ritual cup of tea, Kate
poured out the tale of Pearce’s loss of his job.

“There, there, Kate, don’t worry, dear, everything’s going
to turn out all right. You’ll see.”

It was Granny’s kind words and sympathetic manner which
finally broke the dam of Kate’s misery. After the storm of weeping had
subsided, Granny said with all the wisdom of her seventy-five years.

“Kate, when you’ve lived as long as I have, you learn what
are things worth worrying about. There’s no point crying over what’s past and
can’t be mended. What you have to think about is what to do next.”

Granny’s cure for all ills was a wee sweet bite and she
urged her young neighbour to accept a pancake liberally spread with some of her
latest boiling of blackcurrant jam. By the time Hannah too had been provided
with a nice jammy doorstop, Kate was once again in control of her emotions. She
cast a speculative look at Granny.

“Granny, how is it you can take things so calmly?”

Granny opened her mouth to reply, but just then she caught
sight of Hannah. By now the girl was covered in blackcurrant jam from ear to
ear, while what looked like a purple stream was meandering down the front of
what had been a fresh white blouse. The fingers which Hannah was waving around
in her usual un-coordinated fashion were also thick and sticky with blobs of
blackcurrants. Granny, with a smile, rose to her feet to get a damp cloth from
the sink with which to mop up Hannah. Only when that was done and the soiled
cloth again rinsed out and draped over the goose-necked tap, did she return to
her battered horsehair armchair. She looked intently at Kate, as if weighing up
in her own mind exactly what she wanted to say.

“How do I keep so calm, you ask? Well, no secret. Nowadays I
know better than to question the Will of God, I just accept it, that’s all.
Mind you, when my dear Patrick died, I took it really hard. Why him? Why him? I
kept asking.”

Kate cleared her throat, as if uncertain as to whether or
not to speak.

“Granny, please don’t talk about it if it upsets you. But
... what ... what exactly was it that happened to your husband? You vaguely
mentioned once to me he had been killed in an accident. But you didn’t go into
any details. Was it at his work? Was that it?”

Granny shook her head sadly and the movement caused one of
the steel pins to become dislodged from her bun. It fell to the floor, but
contrary to her usual
houseproud
antics, Granny left
it where it lay at her feet. It was clear to Kate that her innocent question
had triggered off a painful memory for the old woman.