Monday Girl (9 page)

‘I’ll have to hurry if I’m going to beat that three to the bathroom. I’ve to spruce myself up tonight – it’s my Thursday girl.’ He laughed and winked as he went out.

Renee turned round quickly to see if her mother had noticed, and was horrified to see that Anne was right behind her, and was blushing like a young thing. My God, the girl thought, she must have believed he was winking to her.

Over the weekend, Renee was very excited at the prospect of a whole Monday evening with Fergus – a real date. He had slipped his reply into her hand on Friday, when she passed him in the dining-room doorway, and she’d gone into the bathroom to read it.

‘Darling,’ it said. ‘Half past seven Monday outside Woolies. Love, Fergus.’

She had been in a state of euphoria ever since, and her spirits were not in the least dampened on Monday morning, when she saw the rain lashing down. It couldn’t last all day. Half past seven! Half past seven! The words went round and round inside her head, even after she started work.

She kept glancing out of the window, but the rain hadn’t stopped, then she remembered a little rhyme her granny used to say to her on wet days when she was a small girl.

Rainy, rainy, rattlestanes, dinna rain on me.

Rain on Johnny Groat’s hoose, far across the sea.

She repeated the jingle to herself during the rest of the forenoon, crossing her fingers childishly whenever she could, to make sure it worked. It was still raining when she went home at lunchtime, but not quite so heavily, and by half past five it was off altogether. She’d been sure that it would be.

After teatime, she quickly helped her mother to clear up, then rushed to wash as soon as Jack came out of the bathroom, before anyone else went in. She dressed herself extra carefully in the green Grandholm flannel dress she had made at school, and which she kept for best. Then she rubbed a little Pond’s Vanishing Cream into her face before powdering it and applying a touch of lipstick. She imagined that the Tango shade was a bit too orange for her, so she flapped her powder puff over her lips to tone it down.

Her hair had grown again and was curling under at the ends in a lovely stylish page-boy, but she swept the sides up and pinned them with kirbigrips. Perfume now. She hadn’t used much of the ‘Evening in Paris’ that Granny and Granda had given her at Christmas, so she tipped it on to her finger and dabbed it behind her ears.

Her heart was palpitating as she walked down the stairs. There was no sign of Fergus – he must be getting ready to meet her – but Jack’s eyes lit up when she walked into the living room.

‘You’re looking really bonnie, Renee,’ he said. ‘I think it must be a lad you’re going to the pictures with tonight.’

She couldn’t meet his admiring, teasing eyes. ‘Don’t be daft. I don’t have to be meeting a lad just because I’ve tried to make myself look nice.’

‘You don’t have to try to look nice,’ he said softly, but Mike Donaldson came in at that moment and prevented him from saying anything else.

‘If you hang on a minute, Jack,’ Mike said, ‘Tim’s nearly ready, so we can all get the same bus.’

Jack smiled pleasantly. ‘OK. There’s no desperate rush for me. What time are you meeting your chum, Renee?’

‘Half past seven, but I want to be there in plenty of time. I hate having to wait for other people, so I try never to be late myself. I’ll just go and wait for the bus, in case you lot don’t make it.’

She’d been standing at the stop for a few minutes when she saw the bus coming, and heaved a sigh of relief that the three boys wouldn’t be in time to catch it, but they came racing round the corner and jumped on as it was moving off.

‘Phew! That was close.’ Jack was puffing as he took the seat beside Renee, while the two Donaldsons sat down in front of them, laughing breathlessly.

Tim turned round and spoke to Jack. ‘Is Fergus going out, or is he staying in again to keep Mrs Gordon company?’ Renee had noticed the amused glance that had passed between him and his brother, but she was afraid to look at Jack, though her stomach was sinking at what Tim had implied. ‘What d’you mean?’ she demanded. ‘Do you think something’s going on between Fergus and my mother?’

‘Tim’s just blethering.’ Jack’s voice held a note of warning. ‘He should keep his stupid jokes to himself.’ Tim coloured as he turned to the front again.

Jack nudged the girl and laughed. ‘He’s a great comic, Renee, take no notice of him. You know what he’s like. Where are you meeting your pal?’

‘Outside Woolies,’ she replied, without thinking, her mind still preoccupied by what Tim had hinted. Had Fergus really stayed at home with her mother all those other Mondays, before he met her at the classes?

She felt sick at the idea of what might have been going on, but tried to make excuses for him. He’d only been passing the time until half past nine, and he’d been sitting talking, that was all. She was his Monday girl; she was his first, most important one, not her mother.

Tim and Mike went off the bus at the stop before Woolworth’s, and Renee wished that Jack had done the same. It would be awful if he came off at the same place as she did. But that was how it happened, and she wondered if this was where he had originally meant to go, or if he suspected the true identity of her ‘pal’.

They crossed the tram lines on Union Street, and walked along until they came to the first entrance into the store which boasted ‘Nothing Over Sixpence’.

‘I’ll just leave you, then,’ Jack remarked. ‘One of my mates works in the Club Bar in Market Street a few nights a week, and Monday’s aye slack kind, so I promised I’d go in to keep him company.’ Whistling, he walked away. Renee was grateful for her narrow escape. He hadn’t been checking up on her, after all. Not that it mattered, really, because he already knew how she felt about Fergus, but it was safer for her if he didn’t find out about this meeting.

She watched the passers-by hurrying to keep a date, or strolling arm in arm already partnered. She felt very grown up, waiting for a boyfriend, and there were only a few weeks left until she’d be sixteen and could broadcast her love to the world, or, more specifically, to her mother.

When the next bus from Cattofield drew up, she watched hopefully, but Fergus didn’t come off. Nor the next bus, nor the next. At eight o’clock, she walked a little bit along the pavement, to save people thinking she’d been stood up, but she kept turning round to watch the bus stop at the other side of the street. She was certain that he’d come, but why was he so late? Tim’s remark came back to her, but she laughed it away. Fergus and her mother? Never in a million years!

The Town House clock had chimed quarter past before he ran round the back of a bus and across the street. ‘I wondered if you’d still be waiting,’ he said. ‘A button came off my only decent shirt, and your mother offered to sew it on.’

Renee rejected the unwelcome thought that sewing on a button shouldn’t have taken three quarters of an hour.

‘I thought you’d changed your mind,’ she pouted.

‘Oh, no! My God, Renee, I’ve been counting the minutes till I could have you all to myself again. Your mother kept me speaking for a while, that’s all, and I couldn’t get away without being downright nasty to her.’

His black eyes bored into hers, and her heart melted. She couldn’t suspect him of . . . anything like Tim had suggested. It was impossible. ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked brightly. ‘How about going to the Bay of Nigg? There shouldn’t be so many folk there.’ He took her hand and led her back across Union Street to wait for a bus.

On the journey, Renee told him that her father used to take them to the Bay of Nigg in the car. ‘That was the Erskine that Uncle George had eventually, but it was my favourite evening run. Through Torry, down St Fittick’s Road, then up past the lighthouse and the Torry Battery. Dad told us that it was full of soldiers during the war. I don’t think he was ever there himself, though. He was mostly in France and Belgium.’

‘Your mother doesn’t speak about him at all.’

‘She wouldn’t, would she? It’s a long time since he died –

1933, that’s six years ago – and it would be like asking people to pity her, and she’s not like that.’

‘No, she’s not like that. Did he take you right round to Sinclair Road and into Torry again? Because that’s what we’ll be doing tonight.’

‘Yes, that’s the way we always went, and it just used to take us about twenty minutes in the car.’

Fergus smiled. ‘It’ll take us a lot longer than that, though, going on our own feet.’

‘It was always my favourite run, but it’ll be my extra-special place after this.’

They were the only two people still on the bus when it reached the terminus, and the conductor winked knowingly when they went off. ‘The grass’ll still be too wet for lying on.’

‘We’ll find a dry bit, don’t you worry.’ Fergus laughed and winked back.

Renee’s face had turned red with the embarrassment of what they were meaning, and she was very relieved when the vehicle turned round immediately and went back towards the city centre. Fergus also seemed more relaxed now that they were away from the crowds, and slid his arm round her waist possessively.

The sea, to their right, foamed white and angry amongst the huge rocks in the bay, and the wind whipped their faces with a force built up during its uninterrupted passage from the north.

Renee shivered in her lightweight coat, so Fergus drew her closer against him. ‘I can see I’m going to have to heat you up, my little Monday girl,’ he murmured, then stopped to kiss her before they rounded the bend to Girdleness Lighthouse, where he led her off the road, towards its high surrounding wall. ‘If we stay at this side, we’ll be away from the wind,’ he told her, ‘and it won’t be so wet, being sheltered. I’ve been thinking about this since Thursday.’

So had Renee, and she waited, trembling with expectancy as much as the cold, while he spread his coat on the still damp grass, then flopped down and held his hand out to her. She lay down beside him, to be transported away from their wild surroundings by his searching and equally wild love-making. After it was over, they lay for a few minutes, then Fergus stood up. ‘It’s getting too cold now. Come on, my darling, my first day of the week, first before anyone else, Monday girl. We’ll walk right round and into town, then it’ll be time for you to go home. The pictures would be coming out about half past ten, so you should be home about the right time if we put a step in.’

The girl would have been quite happy to stay there and let him make love to her over and over again. She felt that she could never have too much of it. She was the luckiest girl in the world to have such a lover. Who else but Fergus would ever have thought of making love in the shadow of a lighthouse?

‘Come on, Renee,’ he said. ‘If we don’t get moving, you’ll be late, and your mother won’t let you out again.’

That was true, she realised, so, not wishing to jeopardise her future opportunities of being with him like this, she jumped up, and they carried on walking along the barren road. When they reached Market Street, Fergus stopped.

‘One of my pals lives over there, Renee. You’ll manage to get the bus OK if I drop in on him for a while, won’t you? I can’t take you right home, anyway.’

She was disappointed that he wasn’t going to see her on the bus, or even just to the bus stop, but tried not to let it show. ‘I’ll manage,’ she said, forlornly, and watched him as he walked across the street and disappeared inside the doorway of a high tenement.

Before she turned to carry on up the hill, a familiar voice spoke softly behind her. ‘So it was Fergus, after all.’ Whipping round, Renee saw that she’d been standing in front of the Club Bar, and Jack Thomson must have seen and heard them.

‘I thought it might be,’ he added, wryly, ‘but I thought you’d have more sense than to be taken in by him.’

‘You’ve been spying on me!’ She felt very indignant. ‘Why can’t you leave me alone, Jack Thomson? It’s nothing to do with you if I want to go out with Fergus or anybody else.’

‘I wish it was. And I wasn’t spying on you. I came out with Alfie, that’s him up there, and I saw Fergus leaving you, so I thought I’d better take you home.’ She tried to shake off his hand, but he gripped her elbow firmly as he took her up on to Union Street. ‘It’s not a very great place for a young lassie to be walking about on her own at this time of night,’ he added.

She sat in the bus, silent and resentful, and when Jack glanced at her, she became conscious of her creased skirt and untidy hair. He would know what she’d been doing with Fergus. What could he be thinking of her?

He spoke then, apologetically. ‘Look, Renee. I know it’s none of my business, as you told me yourself, but you’re a young, decent girl, and I don’t like to see him making a fool of you.’

‘Fergus isn’t making a fool of me!’ She was angry now. Jack carried on with his lecture. ‘You’ve never come up against anybody like him before, and no more had I till I came to the town to work, but I’m telling you, he’s bad, through and through. He’s only playing with you, like a fisherman plays with a fish, and once he’s caught you, he’ll throw you back and start trying to catch some other young, innocent lassie to do the same to her.’

Renee’s temper had been rising all the time he was speaking, and she burst out now, her eyes blazing, although she tried to keep her voice low to prevent the other passengers hearing, ‘You’re just jealous because he’s had a lot of girlfriends and you haven’t any, but he’s only serious about me, not any of the rest of them. He told me that himself.’

‘He’s a liar, and you shouldn’t believe him.’

‘I know he’s telling me the truth, and he’s only going out with them till my mother agrees to him going with me. When I’m sixteen, it’ll all be out in the open, and you’ll all see it’s me he really loves. He won’t need any other girls once I’m old enough.’

Jack shook his head. ‘Oh, Renee, Renee. That’s the trouble. You’re not old enough to understand what he’s at. You said I was jealous. Well, I
am
jealous, and angry, but it wouldn’t be so bad if it was a decent bloke you were going out with – somebody that would respect you and treat you right – but Fergus . . . ! That’s it. I’m saying no more. I’ve warned you, and that’s all I can do.’ He ran his fingers through the front of his hair, making his quiff stick up jauntily. ‘I’m only trying to save you from getting hurt, for you
will
be hurt if you carry on with him.’