Fortunes of the Heart (30 page)

“There’s the door. And I want you out of it. Take the booty
with you and –”

Here Daniel started to protest but, with a fierce shake of
his head, his father would have none of it.

“You’ve utterly shamed me before my own family. Destitute,
indeed. Humph. So we want not a farthing. Not a farthing do you hear? Now get
the fuck out of it.”

As when he had left before, Kate found Daniel in Mr
McGregor’s back shop.

“I’m really sorry, Mammy. I did do it for the best. If he
wasn’t so damned pig headed he’d see it. His father’s dead and his brothers and
sisters can now admit it was Dadda’s fault, not yours – not that that would
make them any readier to accept us, but they do see it as unfair that he should
be penniless. His sisters gave me this jewellery –they said it was Dadda’s
share of what his mother left –and Uncle Desmond gave a velvet purse of
sovereigns – I used some coming up here from Liverpool.”

Daniel placed two soft cloth pouches on the table in front
of his mother.

“Danny, I can’t use any of this. Dadda wouldn’t let me. It
would kill him to think we were living on his brothers’ and sisters’ charity.

“Well, I’m not taking it back.” Daniel shrugged. “I got it
for you and Jenny and Hannah anyway. He can’t live for ever.”

Mr McGregor agreed to keep the pouches for Kate hidden under
the floorboards in a tin cash box.

That night. not long after Daniel had packed his kitbag and
taken a tearful farewell of his Mammy in the privacy of Granny’s single-end,
Pearce brought the day to a dramatic conclusion.

In a screaming fit of impotent fury, he collapsed and Dr
Clancy had to be called at last.

“It’s his heart,” Dr Clancy said, shaking his head. “I
should have seen him long before this. A severe attack, and he is showing signs
of having suffered a brainstorm of some sort in the past. I’ll give you a
prescription ... tut ... really ... try to keep him quiet ...”

The thought of how he had been shamed before his family in
Ireland by his only son, Daniel, grew like a cancer within his brain. For days
and nights on end, he would sit, sunk in apparent apathy, muttering obscenely
to himself about that bastard boy.

Daniel Robert Kinnon had at last got his revenge on his
father.

Chapter 22

With Daniel gone again life continued as before, but Pearce
was now definitely an invalid and if anything more irascible than ever. The
bright spots for Kate in the week were her mornings with her friend and
employer Mrs Scott.

Jenny by comparison was happy and cheerful, being in the
house with Pearce as little as possible and spending all the time she could
with her boyfriend Brian.

Early in April she told her mother that Brian had been
saving hard and they thought they could be married in June. Kate was ecstatic.

“Jenny, that’s great news. A June wedding would be lovely.
You and Brian can find yourselves a nice wee single-end nearby. It will be
grand to see you settled.”

However, in the last week in April, Jenny came home from a
meeting with Brian in tears. She refused to talk to Kate about it and retreated
to her sofa bed in the hall. Next day she was at the mill as usual and instead
of meeting Brian as she usually did, she came straight home.

“Have you and Brian had a wee fall out?” Kate said.

Jenny burst into tears and fled from the tea table to her
sofa bed in the hall.

“What’s got into that damn girl now?” Pearce said. Kate
followed Jenny out to the hall.

“What’s wrong, darling? Lovers do have these quarrels. It
can be a frustrating time. I’m sure everything will be all right.”

Jenny clung sobbing to her mother. “Brian won’t see me again
... we were on the Glasgow Green ... it was a lovely evening ... just getting
dark ... and I let him ... it was the most wonderful night of my life.”

Kate shuddered.

“You gave yourself to him?”

“Oh, Mammy, he said I’d been with another man ... how could
he know? He said he wasn’t taking second hand goods and the wedding was off.”

By the third week in May, Kate’s worst fears were realised.
Jenny was pregnant again. This time there would no abortion. Jenny would carry
the baby to term – a January baby – and Kate was determined she would stand by
Jenny and her baby come what may.

The one problem could well be Mrs Delaney, but Kate would
face that difficulty in due course when Jenny began to show.

As the months passed and Jenny’s bulging belly was witness
to the whole world of the result of the most wonderful night of her life, there
were several immediate repercussions. The first thing that happened was that
the financial mainstay of the Kinnon household, the high and mighty Mistress
Josephine Delaney, opted to take herself, her voracious appetite, and most
importantly, her money out of their house of shame. Kate’s cheeks still burned
with embarrassment every time she thought back to the day that Mrs Delaney had
given her ultimatum.

“I tell you now, Mrs Kinnon, either that unwed mother leaves
or I do: It’s as simple as that.”

Kate made as if to put the coal-filled hod down on the
hearth, while she mentally debated the best way to tackle this latest threat to
her family’s security. But even before she could get a single word out, she
found her red-faced lodger was too quick for her. Mrs Delaney pointed a podgy
finger at the gleaming copper hod.

“And while we’re at it – there’s no point in your leaving
extra coal for my fire, thanks all the same, Mrs Kinnon. For I shall not be
here to use it. I’ve given you my ultimatum; either Jenny – that dishonoured
girl – goes from this house or I do. It’s perfectly simple, you know, a
clear-cut choice.”

Kate rose from the hearth and turned to face her lodger.

“Mistress Delaney. You surely don’t expect me to throw my
own daughter out into the street?”

The woman’s only reply to this was a vigorous nodding of her
head. Kate watched in fascination as Mrs Delaney’s double-chins wobbled like
jellies, while her flint-hard eyes bored into her. There was a silence between
them which was accentuated by the delicate ticking of Mrs Delaney’s antique
clock on the mantelpiece. When the silence became unbearable, Mrs Delaney put a
hand to her over-fussy hair-do and, as she patted it into place, the firelight
caught the diamonds in her rings and gave off great beacons of light which all
but dazzled Kate. Even so, rather than feeling intimidated by the other woman’s
wealth Kate, in some strange way, found strength, and anger even, to face up to
this spoiled, selfish, over-rich woman.

“You may have diamond rings, my fine lady, but you’re still
my lodger. And what I say goes in this house.”

Kate squared back her shoulders with a new resolve.

“Right then, Mrs Delaney, if you insist that I choose
between you and my daughter, let’s face it, there really is no choice. You are
the one who will have to go, and as you yourself have said, the sooner the
better.”

The decision taken, Kate walked to the door and was turning
the brass knob when Mrs Delaney’s voice stopped her.

“Mrs Kinnon, I think you’ll find your dear husband does not
agree with your decision. In fact, he told me only yesterday that as far as he
is concerned, it will be the workhouse for Jenny.”

Kate’s face suffused with rage and she had to control a wild
urge to walk over and slap the self-satisfied smirk from the stupid woman’s
face. Instead, she held on to the door knob as if her hand were welded to it,
as she fought to regain her composure.

“Oh indeed, Mrs Delaney. Well, of course I do know you and
Pearce have shared many a confidence during your long years under my roof. And
those cosy little afternoon tête-à-têtes with me running myself stupid catering
to your sweet-tooth. And we can all see the result of that overindulgence too.
Seems to me that poor misguided Jenny isn’t the only one to have a fat belly.”

There was a sharp intake of breath and a fluttering hand
raised to the region of her heart, as the obese woman stared in horror at her
suddenly voluble land-lady.

“Mistress Kinnon, nobody ever spoke in such a manner to me
in all my life. I would ask you to remember your place, my good woman.”

Kate, ever aware of, and hyper-sensitive to, any reminder of
her humble beginnings, suddenly saw red.

“Oh, I’ll remember my place, all right. My place is here.
It’s your position that concerns us right now. What I say goes. I demand that
you leave. Pearce is in no position to order anyone about, far less demand that
his poor, misguided, wronged daughter be sent to rot in the City Workhouse. But
you, madam, you can go to hell, and be quick about it.”

That very same evening, a somewhat subdued Mrs Delaney left
in a decided huff. She took with her a crocodile-skin overnight case which
would be sufficient for a short stay at a city-centre hotel and indicated to
Kate that a carrier would collect the rest of her belongings in due course.

Apart from the loss of income accruing from Mrs Delaney’s
departure Kate felt herself to be well-rid of the spoiled, useless bitch.
Perhaps Jenny had, all unwittingly, done her Mammy a favour after all.

Life settled down to some sort of pattern for the Kinnons,
Hannah and her inseparable rag-doll as usual spending the days next door with
Granny
Gorbals
. Kathleen, devoting Mondays,
Wednesdays and Fridays exclusively to the arthritic Mrs Scott, the kindly old
woman in
Garnethill
who already had proved herself to
be more good friend than demanding employer and with her re-acquired bucket and
deck-scrubber, setting out on one or other of her cleaning jobs on Tuesdays and
Thursdays. The majority of the stairs she swept, washed and disinfected were
reached via beautifully tiled entrance closes, and like so many other poverty
stricken immigrants to the Second City of the Empire, it was the height of
Kathleen’s ambition that she herself would one day live in a wally close. On
Saturdays she took over the running of Mr McGregor’s newsagent cum sweetie
shop.

A sigh escaped Kate’s lips on the morning of December 23rd,
1898 as she set off yet again. While she kept the dream of living in a posh
building with its tiled wally close and stained glass windows, she knew in her
heart of hearts that, for the moment at least, she was certainly not even an
inch nearer to achieving her ambition.

Ah well, she thought, at least I’m now working in such grand
settings. And while I sweep and scrub the stairs, and dust down the ornate
doors and banisters, I can still dream. Lucky to have all these wee jobs–
things could be a lot worse.

Kathleen wrapped her coat closer against the biting East
wind and, with head bent against its bitter onslaught, she battled out to face
yet another day.

Meantime, back in the family’s top-flight room-and-kitchen,
another equally well-ordered routine had become established over the past few
weeks and months. Pearce was now ministered to by Jenny. Each morning, the
minute that poor Hannah had been wheeled away from the scene of operations, a
set pattern of events got underway. It was now his disgraced daughter Jenny
who, day after weary day, cared for the irascible and ungrateful old man, sunk
back into his depression, lethargy, and frequent temper tantrums following the
departure of Mrs Delaney.

If ever the old saying about familiarity breeding contempt
was true, it was certainly borne out in the execution of the essential daily
rites in the Kinnon household. Each day it was not only the girl’s belly which
grew in size. Almost in equal proportion grew each day the mutual dislike, if
not the downright hatred, between Jenny and her father. That particular
morning, in the last month of her already difficult pregnancy, no sooner had
Jenny waved off her Mammy from the front-room window, than matters which had
been simmering for so long suddenly boiled over.

Apart from being ungainly as she bore all before her with
the enormous bulk of the unborn child in her belly, Jenny always felt
particularly nervous and awkward when dealing with her father. Quite apart from
anything else, like a hawk with hooded eyes he watched her every movement as
she lurched and clattered her way around the crowded kitchen.

This was the situation every day, but that particular
morning it was clear, from the very first moment when she slopped his tea over
into the saucer, that they had got off to a bad start. It mattered not a jot
that Pearce himself, with his shaking hands, more often than not, spilled his
tea. What offended him was that his slovenly slut of a daughter had had the
temerity to present the cup and saucer in such a state. His face contorted with
rage as he shouted at the hapless girl.

“Good God Almighty. Can you do nothing right, girl?”

What further infuriated him was that rather than answer in
kind, Jenny instead chose the path of silent insolence. As so often in the
past, notably in his dealings with Spud Murphy the carter on that memorable day
of the flitting, silent insolence was the one thing which Pearce either could
not or would not suffer. So on seeing the look of utter disdain on Jenny’s
face, he clattered the half-empty cup back down on the saucer with such force
that the teaspoon fell to the
linoleumed
floor. In
his rage, he looked first of all at the teaspoon where it lay, at the cup
sitting in its puddle of now cold tea, and finally at Jenny.

“Jenny;” he roared, “I demand that you start all over again.
Take away this damned cup. Bring me a napkin and a fresh cup of tea, and for
the love of God, serve it decently.”

Still without a word, Jenny, with elaborate care removed the
offending cup, and set about doing his bidding. As she this time prepared a
tray, her seething thoughts were bubbling inside her brain. She knew, of
course, her father was already in a foul mood.