The New Breadmakers (15 page)

Nothing Teresa said or did ever succeeded in shutting him up. Dermot was usually out either with pals or embroiled in some fight or other. Now he was more often than not working in the pub. So he was of no help. Sean occasionally stayed in to see what he could do but Teresa insisted, ‘There’s no use you spoiling your Saturday night, son. Away you go to the pictures or the dancing or wherever and enjoy yourself. I can manage your daddy all right. It’s no’ as if he does any harm.’

It was enough to put anybody off drink, especially drinking to excess. It had certainly cured Sean of any desire to do so. Now and then, he enjoyed a few pints but that was all. To give Dermot his due, he too only ever had a few pints – he said it was because he had to keep fit. Dermot had always been a great one for fitness and exercise. Sean couldn’t quite agree with his mother that his father never did any harm. He knew what she meant. Unlike many another drunken man, he’d never raised a finger against her. But he did a lot of harm, in Sean’s opinion, by provoking their Protestant neighbours at every opportunity, as aggressively as he could. There was no need for that.

Sean personally had quite a few friends who were Protestants or Rangers supporters and he had no problem with any of them. He would often go to a match with them. Like everyone else, they’d separate at the turnstiles. He would go to the Celtic end of the ground and his mates would automatically make for the Rangers end. They’d sometimes meet up afterwards for a drink if they could find one another. Funnily enough, when Celtic lost, his Rangers pals always seemed to find him no bother. But he could live with that. Often they went together to international matches and just appreciated the skilful football, all the usual poisonous sectarian divisions forgotten – for ninety minutes at least. If it was a Scotland versus England match, they always formed a solid united front. England was the Auld Enemy, after all.

Although Ailish never mentioned her friendship with Chrissie Stoddart, he had known about it for years. Ailish was no more bigoted than he was. She also shared his love of books. As far as fiction was concerned, he was a Dickens man. And of course, he admired Upton Sinclair. In their own ways, what great social reformers both authors had been. Then there was Robert Burns. What a genius! Sean was a great fan of the poet and could recite the whole of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ off by heart.

Sean had gone to his first Burns Supper recently and thoroughly enjoyed it. Except for the over-enthusiastic consumption of whisky. Like Burns, too much (or even a little) of the hard stuff upset his stomach. Most people didn’t know that about Burns. Alcohol didn’t agree with the poet, it upset his stomach. Ailish had made Sean laugh by stating with much feeling – which was unusual for her – that, if Burns were alive today or if she had been alive in his time, she’d be queuing up for him. Ailish was usually such a quiet wee soul. As far as he knew, she hadn’t even gone out with a boy. Time she did and he’d told her that more than once. She always replied that she was perfectly happy the way she was. That was all very well but she was in her twenties now. Most girls of her age were married and having families. It surely wasn’t natural to be happy and single and content with just working and going out with a girlfriend. The same applied to Chrissie. A couple of times, Sean had nearly said this to Ailish but her friendship with Chrissie, he guessed, was regarded by both girls as such a big secret that it added a welcome bit of excitement to their lives. Still, having boyfriends would have been a much better and more natural way of spicing up their lives.

Sean didn’t see why not. They were both pretty in their own ways. Ailish was also well read and intelligent. So was Chrissie. Or so Ailish said. He occasionally dropped into their conversation a discreet question about Chrissie.

‘How is Chrissie these days?’ he’d say carefully. ‘Do you ever see her?’

Or ‘What’s Chrissie up to these days? Any idea?’

And Ailish would say something about bumping into her on the stairs or in the library. Or she’d say she’d just happened to serve Chrissie in Copeland & Lye’s.

He knew Chrissie was now working in the Mitchell. You didn’t get in there as an assistant librarian without being very intelligent. Sean often remembered, always with embarrassment and intense fury at himself, how he’d once taken her to the pictures and behaved like a right idiot. He had been really keen on her and desperate to make a good impression. And what did he do? He’d halved the bar of chocolate he’d bought for the occasion, instead of presenting the whole of it to her. He’d sat beside her in the hall as stiff as a poker with nerves and never even plucked up the courage to hold her hand. OK, he was only a young lad at the time and she was only a wee lassie. But, all the same, what must she have thought of him? She had turned out a very presentable young woman. Not all skin and bone like some but with nice feminine curves. Nice glossy dark hair too and big, soft brown eyes gazing up from under her fringe.

He liked that. Sometimes a thought would come to him. Maybe he could … Then he’d remember, and the same old embarrassment would sweep over him. He wasn’t going to risk making a fool of himself like that again.

Whistling cheerily, Baldy Fowler carried the bread board packed with freshly baked loaves through to the busy front shop and dumped it on the counter in a warm haze of floury dust. Gone were the days when they had employed Sandy, the giant beanpole of a van man, to deliver bread all around the district in his van drawn by frisky Billy, the horse.

‘I’m off then,’ Baldy announced to Melvin as he untied his white apron. ‘The others knocked off about half an hour ago.’

‘It’s a wonder they stayed that long,’ Melvin said.

‘Och, you know fine they did their full shift. They’re good lads.’

‘Are you seeing your lady friend tonight then?’

Baldy’s big roar of laughter startled some of the queue of customers who weren’t used to his exuberant ways.

‘She’s making my tea at her place and then we’re going to the pictures.’

One of the customers said, ‘When’s the big day going to be then, Baldy? We’re all waiting on an invitation.’

‘What big day?’

The customer turned to the woman standing behind her. ‘He thinks we’re daft.’

Still laughing, Baldy strode back into the bakehouse to hang up his apron and to collect his coat and bunnet. There was a door from there that led out to the close.

The daily queues in the shop that stretched out on to Byres Road always reassured Melvin that the business continued to be successful. After all, what other bakery, or shop of any kind, could attract such queues? The suicide sensation was long past and, for most people, forgotten.

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he told Catriona when she spoke about a new kind of store that was ‘bound to come’, as she’d put it. Indeed, they were already proliferating all over Britain, according to her. Supermarkets, she called them. Even if they did come to the West End, or anywhere else in Glasgow, how could they compete with McNair’s delicious, freshly baked bread, cakes and biscuits?

‘But people are lazy,’ Catriona tried to explain.

‘Aye, you for a start.’

‘When they’re in the supermarket for other things and they see bread or packets of biscuits or boxes of cakes, the chances are they’ll just pick them up while they’re there, rather than bother going to any other shop.’

‘We’re not just any other shop. We’re McNair’s,’ Melvin said proudly. ‘No one’ll find better bakers in the whole of Glasgow than McNair’s.’

‘I know that but what I’m saying is …’

‘Aw, shut up.’

Catriona began to worry about Melvin. She could still feel surges of hatred for him, but such intensity of emotion quickly fizzled out nowadays. Maybe the strength needed to keep hating was becoming too much for her. Or maybe it was all the herbal sedatives she was taking. Sometimes she even felt sorry for Melvin. He didn’t look well. He was a mere shell of the man he used to be. He smoked too much and it was giving him a chesty cough. She tried to persuade him to take some of the herbal cough mixture she’d made up.

‘Stop fussing, woman.’ Angrily he pushed her aside. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’

She tried to make him cut down on cigarettes. All to no avail.

‘Mum, I wish you’d stop nagging at Dad,’ Andrew said eventually. ‘After all, he leaves you to do whatever you want without complaining.’

She felt so hurt by this she couldn’t speak. When she thought of how Melvin had nagged at her for years! Not in front of the boys, of course. Certainly not since they’d grown up. It was not the fact that film stars, footballers and every other popular icon smoked and even doctors recommended smoking to calm the nerves that Andrew was pointing out. He was just taking his father’s part against her. Was it because he loved Melvin more than her? Andrew’s love was what had always made up for everything else in her life. For him, she had suffered a terrible marriage. It was the only way she believed she could give him – and Fergus for that matter – a secure and happy home life. As far as she was able, she had hidden her own unhappiness so that the boys could be happy. She had never said a word to the boys against their father. Never complained to them about anything. When she thought of the lie she had lived, she realised she had made a terrible mistake. She ought to have left Melvin years ago. And told the boys why. But where could she have gone? Especially with young children and without a penny to her name. How could they have understood then any more than they would understand now?

She began to realise, remembering little things, an occasional word or look, that Andrew did indeed favour his father and viewed her with increasing criticism. She couldn’t bear it. But she didn’t know what to do. Life went on. She tried to be as good as possible to both boys but especially to Andrew. Fergus was a grown man now and seemed perfectly happy in Aberdeen and with the music he had become so absorbed in. His father didn’t approve of any of it. ‘That stupid skiffle rubbish,’ Melvin called it.

She quite enjoyed Lonnie Donegan, the famous skiffle player, herself. Most of his music had a catchy, cheeky rhythm to it. Fergus had explained that it was ‘folk songs with a beat’. Melvin disapproved of young people in general but specially of those who were slightly younger than Fergus, not yet in their twenties. ‘Teenagers’ was the latest word for them. She believed Melvin had a point in a way when he said that this new category was being pandered to at every turn. Certainly many businesses were aiming to attract the younger customer. Concentrating on them, in fact. Young people had more earning power now and were happy to spend all they earned. They were completely taking over, it seemed, from the society or generation who believed in being thrifty. Earnest discussions on the ‘youth question’ took up much space in newspapers. Nineteen-year-old dramatists appeared and seventeen-year-old singers were becoming stars. Before the war, the stars had been in their thirties, or older. Men like Johnny Rae or Donald ‘Babbling Brook’ Peers. Now youths like Tommy Hicks, or Tommy Steele as he’d become, were grabbing the limelight. If a young man was described as ‘angry’, he was listened to with almost reverential attention.

Youth, everyone was told, was in revolt. Youth, Catriona believed, had always been in revolt – the difference was that now, for the first time, they were becoming economically independent. She had read somewhere that teenage earnings were now more than fifty per cent higher than before the war. The few shillings of spending money before the war had now become pounds.

Andrew had not been swept up in this kind of revolt. He didn’t wear Teddy boy clothes or dash about on a motorbike or indulge in ‘blow-waves’ or Tony Curtis hairdos. Nor did he go to the other extreme of sporting the fringe, beard, bold, checked, open-necked shirts and nostalgic melancholy of the skiffle groups. He was more interested in sport, regularly going to football matches, but also playing football himself. Recently he’d taken up karate. He had done well at school, got the necessary qualifications and was now studying to become a physiotherapist. As part of his training, he was getting experience in hospitals and all sorts of places. It was all very exciting. What he hoped to do eventually, once he finished his course, was to work with football teams. Catriona had been thrilled and touched at first when he’d spoken of training as a physiotherapist. She’d thought that it was because she was interested in therapies and he admired what she was trying to do. She’d even had secret dreams of Andrew working in one of the other back rooms, treating patients. She had lovely visions of them working together, being partners. She struggled to be firm with herself and forget her disappointment, though. Physiotherapy was a good profession and he would be especially happy working with sportsman. She was glad for him. As long as he was healthy and happy, that was all that really mattered.

She hardly ever saw either of the boys now that Fergus was in Aberdeen and evenings during the week were devoted to Andrew’s karate club. At weekends, he would be off to see some team or other. His favourites, she gathered, were Rangers and Partick Thistle.

If Fergus was home at weekends or during the summer holidays, he would spend most of his time playing skiffle with some of his odd-looking friends. Even the girls he went out with looked strange with their loose sweaters, black stockings and longish, carefully disordered hair. They seemed unaware of the new trends in music – rock ’n’ roll was all the rage and now there was this new band from Liverpool, The Beatles, that everyone was going mad about. But it was still skiffle with Fergus.

Melvin’s main interest was television. They never went to the cinema together any more.

‘Why should we go out and spend good money on seeing a picture when we can watch one on the television, in the comfort of our own home?’

It was always money with Melvin. Even on television, his favourite programme was
Double your Money
with Hughie Green. If she went out to the cinema, or anywhere at all, it was with Madge or Julie. She didn’t mind so much now that she had her work – and of course she never stopped reading and studying, especially books on homeopathy. Quite a few people had seen her postcards and phoned up for an initial appointment. They in turn told others. What impressed everyone on their first visit was the time she took to listen to them and talk to them compared with their doctor. At the doctor’s surgery, you were in and out in double-quick time.