The Good Provider (22 page)

She had decided weeks ago that if her suspicions were correct she would not put herself into the hands of the district’s midwife, Mrs Curran, though the woman had a good reputation and had been trained in her profession, nor would she creep into the tiny damp waiting-room in Banff Street where Doctor Godwin, the same practitioner who had attended the infant McAlister, took his ‘down town’ surgery three nights in the week.

Kirsty had learned from Mrs McNeil that Doctor Godwin’s main practice was conducted from his house in Dowanhill Gardens, had learned too, from listening to all sorts of gossip, that anyone who valued their privacy did not entrust themselves to the Banff Street place with its thin walls and ill-fitting inner door but struggled to scrape up the half-guinea fee that Doctor Godwin charged those who made the climb uphill in search of a consultation.

She was admitted by Doctor Godwin’s wife, a woman of severe aspect but with a kindly voice, and taken directly through an echoing hallway to a room at the rear of the house.

Doctor Godwin was disconcertingly youthful, very clean and very slender, smooth-shaven and might, if he had had any hair at all upon his head, have been judged handsome.

‘And you are?’ he asked, from behind his polished desk.

‘Kirsty Nicholson.’

He wrote the name down upon a pad of paper with a fat pen, looked up, smiled reassuringly.

‘Address?’

Kirsty told him.

He said, ‘That’s just round the corner from my room in Banff Street.’

Kirsty said, ‘Yes, Doctor. I know that.’

He nodded, made no mention of the half-guinea fee. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

She said, ‘I think I’m expectin’ a baby.’

He lifted the pen again and, without awaiting her answer, made an amendment to the note upon the paper pad, saying, ‘Ah, so it’s
Mrs
Kirsty Nicholson, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘First pregnancy?’

‘Yes.’

‘How long have you been married, Mrs Nicholson?’

‘Five months, an’ a half.’

Smiling, he opened a drawer and took out a rubber-limbed instrument. ‘Well, let’s see what’s what, shall we?’

His examination was thorough, his questions frank.

Kirsty responded with equal candour, tried not to blush or hesitate but was too embarrassed to feel much pleasure when, at length, the doctor confirmed that she had conceived and was indeed some nine weeks into a normal pregnancy.

While Kirsty dressed, Doctor Godwin returned to his desk, made more notes and then, with pen still poised, told her what to expect by way of ‘changes’ in her bodily functions and in physical discomfort. Rising, he went to a deep cupboard at the back of the room and, still talking, busied himself within it. He enquired about her husband, the nature of his occupation, talked about the ‘responsibilities’ a mother-to-be had to an unborn child, warned her against lifting heavy weights, against ‘straining’ and, still out of sight, against allowing her husband to be too ‘strenuous’ after the lights were out. He came out of the cupboard with a brown bottle in his hand, gave it to her, took her half-guinea, told her that the peppermint mixture would relieve any inclination to sickness, told her to call upon him again if she should feel it necessary, here or in Banff Street as she preferred, and assured her that, if she wished it, he would attend her personally during the final weeks of her confinement and deliver the baby at home.

‘Is there somebody who can look after you for a day or two?’ Doctor Godwin asked as he ushered her towards the door.

‘My – my husband.’

‘I meant a woman; your mother, say.’

‘No.’

‘Nobody?’

She thought fleetingly of Mrs Frew but discarded that notion immediately.

‘Nobody,’ Kirsty said, ‘except my husband.’

‘I’ll have a word with him,’ Doctor Godwin promised.

‘When?’

‘In due course,’ the doctor said and, reaching past her, opened the door and turned her over to his wife who saw her politely out into the Gardens once more.

Puzzled by her lack of any very definite emotion, Kirsty walked carefully down the long hill into Partick.

She thought, strangely, of her own mother, her real mother, wondered if she too had experienced this odd sort of nothingness when she had first discovered that a baby was on the way; if she had been filled with joy or with rage. By the time she reached Canada Road, however, her emotional vacuum had begun to fill with trickles of doubt and apprehension. She seemed to see the streets clearly for the first time, the squalor that lurked behind dowdy curtains and unwashed windows, to scent the stink of poverty from the closes. She hated the thought that her baby would be born to this inheritance, into such a world. Why such snobbish nonsense should impress itself on a brat from the Baird Home who had known nothing but slavery to a farmer in the wilds of the Carrick hills was a puzzle in itself. She fretted over that question too as she entered the close of Number 11 and climbed, puffing a little, upstairs.

The moment she got indoors she brewed a pot of tea, buttered a slice of bread and, still wearing her coat and hat, seated herself at the table.

She examined her feelings cautiously; not tearful, not sorry for herself, she felt, if anything, annoyed that everything would be changed by the baby’s coming, turned again on its head. She felt secretive too, not ashamed but possessive; yet through her grievance came little twinges of fear, like the pains in a tooth touched by cold air.

The job at Oswalds’ would be sacrificed. She certainly did not regret that, but with it would go the six shillings that helped lift them above the line of most of their neighbours. There would be an extra mouth to feed and, even with occasional ‘night work’ from Danny Malone, Craig brought home no more than twenty-two shillings a week. She should have been happy this day of all days but all she could think about was money or the lack of it, and how, after the baby arrived, they would be pushed to make ends meet, would become like everybody else in the Greenfield.

She drank a second cup of tea, ate a second slice of bread and butter then got up and fished the doctor’s brown bottle from her shopping basket and hid it behind the pipes in the box below the sink. She did not want Craig to find it, to ask questions before she was ready to give answers. No doubt she would have to tell him the glad tidings soon but she would choose the time with care, catch him in just the right mood.

She did not imagine that Craig would desert her even though she was protected by nothing more legally binding than a wedding ring. No, she was afraid for Craig, of how he would stand up to the burden of responsibility, to fatherhood; afraid too that he would write to Dalnavert and that Madge Nicholson would come hot-foot to Glasgow to snatch away her grandchild.

Suddenly impatient with her own silly imaginings Kirsty buttoned her coat again, found her purse and shopping basket and, with a deep settling sigh, went out to walk down to Mr Kydd’s to buy something nice for tea.

August was a quiet month in Mrs Agnes Frew’s boarding-house. The academic year had not yet begun and a majority of parish ministers had gone off on ‘exchanges’, seeking a breath of country air or a sea breeze to blow away the cobwebs. Nessie Frew would not, of course, entertain her brother’s suggestion that she open her doors to city visitors or holiday-makers pausing in Glasgow before heading out to the coast.

There was no meat upon the table that night but the dish of macaroni-and-cheese was tasty enough and the fig pudding to follow was positively delicious. Sister and brother ate at a dropleaf table in the kitchen, for Cissie, who had never shaken off her winter’s bronchitis, had been shipped to an uncle’s farm on Islay in the hope that two weeks of fresh milk, sea air and rest would quell the wheeze once and for all and restore her to full health.

Sister and brother ate and talked and, in due course and roundabout fashion, Mrs Frew informed Hughie of her young friend’s altered state.

Hugh Affleck did not so much as raise an eyebrow.

He said, ‘I think you’ve developed a soft spot for that girl, Nessie.’

‘She’s decent, well-spoken, and a Christian.’

‘Can the same be said for the husband?’

‘I’ve heard nothin’ to the contrary. He seems to treat her well enough.’

Hugh Affleck applied a dollop of Worcester sauce to a second helping of macaroni and spread it carefully with the blade of his knife.

‘Is it Canada Road they live in?’ he asked.

‘Yes, in a single-end,’ said Mrs Frew, wrinkling her nose.

‘Bottom side?’

‘Number eleven, I believe.’

Hugh Affleck made mental note of the address.

He had met the Nicholsons only once, in April. He had not clapped eyes on either the girl or boy since. Nonetheless he had been kept abreast of their progress by his sister to whom other folks’ affairs were a substitute for a lack of activity in her own. He regretted that Nessie and his wife, Beatrice, did not rub along and that he could not persuade his daughters, Gladys and Patricia, to visit their forlorn old aunt. The girls bitterly resented her ‘preachiness’, referred to her, cynically but not without wit, as ‘Auntie Modern’. Nessie, in turn, regarded her nieces as frivolous and flighty and, though she did not say it in so many words, as downright sinful in their lack of Christian fibre.

Hugh Affleck said, ‘How long until her baby arrives?’

Why he should feel that the girl’s pregnancy made any difference to his plans for the Nicholsons Hugh Affleck could not be sure. But it did. He recalled the girl vividly; freckled, cheerful, pretty, candid but not silly. Though the boy had not seemed to him to be the stuff from which criminals are made, Hugh was wary of snap judgments; in his time he had bumped into many charming characters who hid murderous natures behind their smiles.

Nessie Frew answered, ‘March, I believe.’

‘Is she also employed?’

‘I told you, Hughie – in Oswalds’ cake place.’

‘Rather her than me,’ said Hugh Affleck. ‘I wonder what miserly pittance they pay her there.’

‘I have not had the temerity to enquire, Hughie.’

‘Have a guess.’

‘Ten or twelve shillings a week, I suppose.’

‘Less.’

‘Less?’

‘Oswalds’ is another of those damned—’

‘
Hughie!
’

‘Well, it is; a slave market, a sweat-shop.’

‘It suits Kirsty. She is not required to work all day for her wages, she can attend to her housekeeping in the afternoons.’

Hugh Affleck did not argue the point. He finished off his macaroni, watched his sister slip on a pair of cotton gloves and, stooping, bring the fig pudding all brown and steaming from the oven. Discreetly he took a little notebook and the stump of a pencil from his pocket and, while Nessie was busy with serving, jotted down the Nicholsons’ address.

Sergeant Hector Drummond knew better than to do his drinking in public houses within a five-mile radius of Ottawa Street police station. He had been a bachelor in Barracks far too long to be blind to the disasters that overtook coppers who could not wean themselves from the whisky bottle. Besides, the mere whiff of a constable in a Greenfield drinking-parlour was enough to send half the customers scuttling for the exit and push the other half into pugnacity, for the police were unloved and unappreciated by all and sundry. The rank and file of the Greenfield force nipped up to a cosy public house in Glasgow for company and a quiet pint, in mufti, of course. But he preferred to spice his drink with a breath of fresh air and popped down on the train to The Railway Arms at West Kilpatrick, a rural hamlet fifteen miles down the Clyde shore. It was here too that Superintendent Affleck might be found when he was in the mood for a dram and an evening of shop talk with his old companion from the Burgh.

If the weather had been kinder that late August evening the pub would have been packed but with dusk coming early on melancholy grey rain there was only a handful of agriculturals at the bar. They paid not the slightest attention to the sergeant who, though he sported not one item of uniform, still managed to look, somehow, like a policeman. His taste in plain clothes had been shaped by a thousand hours in heavy serge and he did not feel comfortable in anything less sober and confining. He wore a high-collar, off-the-peg suit from the Greenfield Co-operative Society’s warehouse and boots with soles like boiler-plates and a cap as flat as a cowpat that sat, without tweak or rake, dead level on his cropped grey head. He had been in the pub for half an hour, nursing a pint of draught bitter and a dram of Old Highland, before Hugh Affleck arrived.

Hugh Affleck took off his coat and hat, hung them where he could keep an eye on them, and carried his drink from the bar to the little table by the window.

‘So it’s yourself, Hughie, is it now?’

‘It is indeed, Hector.’

Drummond and Affleck had been young beat-constables together back in the dim and distant, though even then it had been obvious that Hughie, with his ‘background’ and education, would rise to better things. Off duty, however, rank was set aside and the men met on equal terms, friendly and easy.