The River Flows On (45 page)

She wondered if she was being punished for what she had done to Robbie, wondered if God were really so vengeful. She didn’t know. She only knew that He didn’t listen. She heard Grace’s prayers every night, but said none herself.

‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, look upon a little child, pity my simplicity, suffer me to come to Thee.’ Then Grace would go off into her own personal litany, asking: ‘God bless Mammy and Daddy, Granny and Grandad Cameron, Granny and Grandad Baxter ...’ It went on, through her young aunts and uncles, until she came to the end. ‘And look after my wee brother, God. Amen.’

Neil James, Grace had declared firmly, reducing all the adults present to helpless tears, was in heaven now, playing with Mr Asquith.

Kate wished her own faith were still that simple. Please God, bring Robbie home. Let him find it in his heart to forgive me so that we can start again. It didn’t work that way. She knew it didn’t. She had tried.

Chapter 30

Kate felt manky. There was no other word to describe it. She was sweaty all over, and her hair, scraped back into a pony tail, was coming loose in wee wispy bits which were sticking themselves to the side of her head and neck. Well, there was nothing else for it. It was Hogmanay and the work had to be done. She had snapped Jessie’s head off when her younger sister had anxiously asked if she really thought she was up to helping with the chores.

Of course she was. She’d been back to the hospital for a check-up at the end of November and everything was fine. Back to normal. Jessie, frowning, had finally agreed that Kate could help, but she wasn’t to do anything heavy. When Kate had announced that she was going to wash the stairs, Jessie had briskly ordered wee Davie, now at secondary school and taller than both of his sisters, to fill the heavy galvanized steel bucket with soapy water and carry it out onto the landing for Kate.

‘Och, Jessie,’ he’d complained. ‘That’s women’s work!’

She’d given him a swift clout on the back of the head and told him to get on with it.

‘Psychology, eh?’ Andrew Baxter had commented, grinning when Jessie had given him a rueful smile in return.

Kate, squeezing the mop out over the grille set into one half of the bucket, smiled at the memory. That pair needed a bomb underneath them - particularly Andrew. She was beginning to hope that, having sown his wild oats, he might eventually be coming to realize just what he had in Jessie, but he was taking his time. She’d encouraged Jessie to take more interest in her appearance, persuaded her to cut her hair and wear it in a more flattering style, not scraped back into that old pony tail. She was one to talk - considering the way she herself looked at this moment.

Well, she would sort that out once she had done the stairs; she would have a bath and wash her hair to get ready for the New Year. She had made some resolutions, too. Facts had to be faced. It made her feel sick to contemplate it, but Robbie might never be going to come back - and she and Grace couldn’t stay with her parents for ever. If they were going to get a wee place of their own, Kate had to find a way of making a living. She had a talent. It was time she started using it. Life wasn’t going to get any belter unless she did.

Painting was a bit difficult in the confined quarters of the Cameron household, but she had started drawing again, using the illustrations of plants and flowers in Jessie’s old Botany textbook for inspiration. Lifting the dirt from the floor with long regular strokes of the mop, Kate sighed. She could never stop herself working out how things would look, transferred to pottery. She had to get back to it somehow - but that might take a wee while. In the meantime, she needed to make some money. That meant she had to do some paintings - pictures that would sell.

She had an idea for a set of four paintings of different wild flowers - small enough for her to be able to do at the kitchen table but attractive grouped together on a wall for display. She would go up to Glasgow next week and ask the gallery owner who had bought her Bluebell Woods pictures what he thought of the idea - and if he didn’t like it, she would think of something else. She would smarten herself up, do her hair nicely and borrow Jessie’s new coat. There’d be no stopping her once she was suitably titivated.

Lifting the mop and swabbing it over the floor, a memory came back to her. Agnes Baxter had once encouraged her to do just that.
Laddies like to see a bit of sparkle. Especially a certain laddie we both know.
Kate stopped for a moment, leaning on the mop. She would write to him. Try one more time. However hard it was to compose the letter.

She heard footsteps coming into the close from the street two floors below, and dipped the mop once more in the soapy water. It was getting a bit grey now. She’d have to get Davie to change it for her. That would please him. Women’s work, indeed!

The footsteps were getting closer. It couldn’t be Pearl, could it, coming home to wish everybody a Happy New Year?

Gripping the dark wood of the banister, she leaned over to see. No, it was a man. ‘Be careful if you’re coming up,’ she called. The floor’s wet.’

The man ascended to the half-landing on the floor below and turned his face up to look at her.

‘I’ll be careful,’ he said quietly.

Transfixed by that voice, Kate stared down at him.

‘Hello,’ said Robert Baxter, and started up the stairs towards her.

He was wearing an off-white sailor’s polo-neck jersey with a navy jacket on top. His dark hair was unruly as usual, and a bit too long, but he looked fit and strong and tall, his pale skin tanned by months of exposure to the sun and the sea. He wasn’t smiling. Somewhere nearby a door opened.

‘Daddy!’ There was a piercing shriek. Then all hell broke loose. In a flurry of curls and petticoats, Grace came hurtling out of the flat. She was hotly pursued by Towser, the Baxters’ old dog, although you’d never have guessed his age from the speed with which he was running after Grace. Woken from her trance, Kate yelled at her that the floor was slippy. Grace checked her speed not one jot. She did skid, in fact, but just before she reached Robbie. He laughed easily, caught her up and enfolded her in a great bear hug.

‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!’ Grace was delirious with joy. ‘Oh Daddy, you’re home!’

‘Aye, sweetheart. I’m home.’ He was hugging the little girl tightly, pulling her into his chest. He lifted his head and looked Kate in the eye. ‘I’m home.’

What he might have meant by that, Kate had no chance of finding out. Grace’s excited shouting had alerted everyone in the close. Doors were opened, faces broke into smiles, Towser tried to lick Robbie to death, and family and friends came out to shake him by the hand and clap him on the shoulders. He shot one final impenetrable look at Kate before they were both engulfed.

There were presents for everybody: ornaments for the parents; lengths of material for his sisters and Jessie; a simple camera each for Andrew and Davie; a Red Indian doll for Grace, complete with feathered head-dress.

‘She’s called Pocahontas,’ he told the little girl, his arm loosely about her as she sat on his knee. ‘Can you say that?’

Grace turned her face up towards him and repeated the difficult name.

He gave her a hug and dropped a kiss on her forehead. ‘Well done, sweetheart.’

Kate had to look away. The little tableau of father and daughter was too much to bear. Up at the window Alice, Flora and Jessie were holding the lengths of fabric against one other, trying to decide who should have what. At the table Andrew and Davie were excitedly examining their cameras. Only one person had been left out. Kate wondered dully if anyone else had noticed. Neil Cameron had. His words fell heavily into the happy chatter in the room.

‘Haven’t you forgotten your wife, Robert?’

Robbie, who’d been watching Grace making friends with her new doll, looked up.

‘No, I haven’t forgotten my wife.’

He locked eyes with his father-in-law. It was a look which said as clearly as though the words had been spoken, and what business is it of yours, anyway? From the expression on Neil’s face as the two men stared each other out, it was obvious that Kate’s father thought otherwise. Agnes Baxter, with a lifetime’s experience of defusing male aggression, rushed into the breach.

‘Och, Kate, pet,’ she said, ‘I’m that pleased for you. To have Robbie back, I mean. After the baby and all that.’

Robbie’s voice cut like a knife through all the other conversations going on in the room.

‘And all that?’ He was looking questioningly at Kate. ‘Where is the baby, by the way? Through in the front room?’

She rose to her feet in one jerky movement. Jessie was beside her immediately.

‘I’m going upstairs to have a bath and wash my hair, Jessie.’ She smiled brightly at her younger sister. ‘I can’t go dirty into the New Year, now can I? Will you come up with me?’

‘Aye, Kate. I will.’ She slipped her arm through Kate’s.

As the Cameron sisters left the room, Agnes Baxter began in a low voice to talk to her eldest son.

The two families were waiting together for the bells, as they had done so many times in the past. Money was tighter than ever but there was shortbread and black bun as usual and enough whisky for the men to toast the New Year, with lemonade for the women and children. The houses, stairs and close were as clean as many willing hands could make them. Every scrap of clothing had been washed. Everybody had washed themselves and their hair. The usual jokes were being told.

This Hogmanay, however, was like no other. Nothing had actually been said, although for a moment it had looked as though - astonishingly - Neil Cameron and Robert Baxter were about to exchange angry words. There were plenty of undercurrents, though: anxious looks and sudden silences.

Most members of the two families, especially the younger ones, felt the tension in the air without any idea of what was causing it. Agnes Baxter was unhappily aware that something had gone badly wrong between Kate and Robbie. She’d had her suspicions when he’d gone off like that, but the pair of them had managed to keep the full extent of the rift between them well hidden. Until now. Neil Cameron was on a knife-edge, she could see that. So could Lily. She kept clasping and unclasping her hands, darting anxious looks at her husband all the time.

Lily, Kate had to keep reminding herself, was the only person apart from herself and Robbie who knew what was really wrong. It had never been discussed - she didn’t have those sort of conversations with her mother - but Lily was shrewd enough. She would have worked out why Robbie had gone off to sea.

Kate was certain, however, that her mother had never told her father the truth. His belligerent defence of his daughter against what he saw as Robbie’s neglect of her tugged at Kate’s heartstrings, but it was misguided. If he knew what she had done ... but he did not, so she was not surprised when he could contain himself no longer.

It was well after eleven. Grace was sleeping soundly behind the curtains of the box bed. Davie was struggling to show how wide-awake he was, the last hour of the old year, as usual, dragging itself at a snail’s pace towards oblivion.

‘What are your intentions towards my daughter?’ The words boomed out in the sleepy room.

Robbie stood up. Neil, too, rose from his chair. They were squaring up to each other, both almost exactly the same height, both as stubborn as mules - and neither prepared to give an inch. The atmosphere in the room was electric.

‘My immediate intentions towards your daughter - who also happens to be my wife - are to take her out for a walk.’ There was a very faint emphasis on that my wife. ‘Do you have any objections to that, Neil? No? Good.’ He wheeled round to Kate.

‘Will you get your coat?’ he asked quietly.

He hadn’t given his father-in-law much time to answer. He’d never called him by his first name before, either. Kate fetched her coat. Her father spoke again.

‘I’m not sure that Kathleen should be going out in the cold. She’s been ill, you know. Or hadn’t you heard?’

Robbie’s voice was cool and unemotional. ‘I’d heard. Although not until a few hours ago.’ His eyes flickered over her as she stood doing up her coat and fastening a muffler about her neck. ‘She’s well wrapped up. A wee bit of fresh air will do her good.’