The Tangling of the Web (11 page)

However, Sally was totally wrong in thinking that Rita was crushed by her arrival. On the contrary, Rita had found it difficult not to cheer when diminutive Sally walked in. Never in her life had she seen someone quite so unsuitable to be a barmaid in Leith. The poor soul, as Rita saw Sally, was not only on the short side to square up to a drunken man but she also appeared too ladylike to hauckle any belligerent hag towards the door. Rita had to stifle a sly snigger when she pictured short-statured Sally dealing with the Four Marys’ self-appointed madam – none other than big, bellicose Nancy Greenfield. Rita vowed there and then that the meeting between those two women was something she just couldn’t miss. After all, it would end in what Rita wished to see: Sally falling flat on her face. On the other hand, glancing at Sally’s ample bosom Rita was forced to acknowledge that with her having been endowed with a bust that would be the envy of Marilyn Monroe, if ever she did fall over she would bounce straight back up.

Deciding that it would be best to try and break the ice with Rita, Sally sweetly smiled before suggesting, ‘How about you and I have a cup of tea, then you can take me down to the cellar and show me how to change a barrel?’

‘Tea’s no a problem,’ replied Rita, cocking her head in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Just get yourself in there and do a mask. However, before I could take you down into the cellar you’ll need to take your shoes off. Sure, heels that height …’ Both Sally and Rita simultaneously gazed down at Sally’s essential stature builders. Rita then slowly continued, ‘… will end up with you breaking your neck …’
Especially if I give you a good shove,
she thought. ‘… when you career down the rickety steps.’

Without replying, Sally walked behind the bar, where she reluctantly fished in her bag and brought out a pair of flat-soled plimsoles. Once she had exchanged her footwear, she was disconcerted by Rita’s cackle. ‘What’s so funny?’ Sally asked.

‘Just that with the bar being so high and you being so wee all the customers will see is your heid.’

Twenty minutes later, Sally led a disgruntled Rita out of the cellar. ‘You sure you’ve never changed a barrel before?’ Rita hissed through clenched teeth.

‘No,’ was Sally’s jubilant response. She should of course have confessed that Ginny had foreseen that Rita would be obstructive rather then willing to teach Sally the basics in how to run a bar. This being the case, Ginny had taken Sally into one of her other bars, the Royal Stuart in Easter Road, and had spent three nights devoted to Sally’s tuition.

Sally’s eyes were now sweeping the barroom. First she noted the original ornate cornices that were in need of a lick of paint, as were the narrow, worn floorboards. The black leaded fireplace, where the coals burned brightly, Sally felt added atmosphere to the room and it should be left as it was, even although the tiled surrounds were chipped in places. Turning to Rita, she asked, ‘Know something?’

‘No till you tell me,’ a piqued Rita responded.

‘These booths do nothing for this place.’ Sally and Rita both looked over towards the six open-fronted cubicles. Cocking her head from side to side, Sally then suggested, ‘So I think we should have them taken down – immediately.’

‘Immediately?’

‘Yes. Like today. So go and find a joiner.’

‘Do you think that’s wise?’ a wide-eyed Rita gasped.

‘Most certainly,’ a smug Sally confirmed before going over and peering into the nearest booth. ‘Them being away would give the place a sense of space and openness,’ she hollered back to Rita.

‘You could be right, but I don’t think Nancy, her motley pals and their paying clients will be too chuffed.’

‘Ah. That is the other matter I have to bring up today.’

Rita eyes widened.

‘From now on,’ Sally continued, unaware that Rita thought she was a fool to try and change the way the pub, which was a goldmine, was run, ‘everyone who comes into this establishment is to act with propriety – that means they will not pick up men for …’ Sally paused, gulped and sighed before adding, ‘… whatever they pick them up for. And any man arriving here drunk from another pub will be thrown out without being served as much as a nip.’

Rita’s response was to throw another two large lumps of coal on the fire, although she thought it wasn’t necessary, because things in the Four Marys would soon be red-hot!

Disgruntled Josie, who seemed reluctant to alight from the taxi cab, was given a gentle push by Flora, who then fished in her bag for a ten-shilling note to pay the taxi driver, who had turned around to face the women. ‘Here,’ she said, pushing the money towards the man, ‘and I’ll give you a wee tip if you’ll help us get these cases and boxes into the house.’

The driver glanced into the gloomy courtyard where Flora had indicated the house was. ‘No, luv,’ he drawled, ‘I’m particular where I go. And if my wife found out I had gone into that close I would end up singing soprano.’ He now scrutinised Josie and Flora. They certainly weren’t the usual Leith fallen women whose faces and bodies were prematurely aged by their dubious trade and too much alcohol.
I wonder,
he thought,
what’s brought them down to this hovel?
Getting out of his cab, he came round and hauled two over-laden suitcases and three badly packed boxes from the taxi and dumped them on the pavement before dropping Flora’s change into her outstretched hand. ‘That’s as far as I’m prepared to help you,’ he said, ‘so let’s be having the wee tip you promised me.’

Before she answered, Flora looked down at all of Josie’s earthly belongings. They looked just like how Josie herself felt right now – alone and abandoned. ‘Tip?’ she eventually spat. ‘Aye, you certainly could do with one, and here’s mine to you: hold on to that wife of yours because the women about here are very choosy about whose money they take for a service.’

By now Josie had picked up the over-packed suitcases and begun walking towards the dark, eerie vennel. Looking down at the three cumbersome boxes, Flora huffed before lugging them up into her arms.

Flora had just started to climb the stairs when she heard a scampering and then a shriek that sent her blood curdling. Throwing the boxes down, she bounded up the rest of the stairs in three leaps. Once inside Josie’s flat, she saw that the unshaded electric light bulb was swaying backwards and forwards, casting shadows around the room.

Her attention then rested on Josie, who was perched on the bunker, and it looked to Flora as if she was trying to open the window to jump out. ‘What’s going on, lassie?’ exclaimed Flora, but her voice trailed off when she saw that Josie was not alone in the room. Two rats, fighting on the table over a scrap of food, had joined her.

Without uttering another word, Flora grabbed a baseball bat, which had obviously been used by the previous occupants to deter the rats, and she began swiping at the vermin until she had them running towards the open door. Once the rats had scampered over the threshold she kicked the door shut, gave a quick prayer of thanks to whoever had left the baseball bat, and then she sank down on a chair.

‘Oh Flora,’ Josie lamented. ‘How can you still say that Sally has done all she can for us when she has no room in her life for you now and she’s put me in this rat hole?’

Offering a hand to assist Josie down, Flora replied quietly, ‘She’s had a hard time. Wish I could have put everything right for her because I owe her.’

Josie huffed again.

‘The best daughter any mother ever had, she is.’ Flora continued, ignoring Josie’s sarcasm. ‘And I know she’s just gutted that she’s only able to look after her own bairns right now.’

Josie’s answer to that was another ‘huh’.

‘Well, you can “huh” all you like, but the truth of it is she’s been good to us – both of us. And Josie, in no time at all you’ll realise that you have to, and can, stand on your own two feet. And know something else, Josie, a husband and a couple of bairns pulling at your skirts are what you need.’

Josie knew she should respond to Flora, but memories were now flooding in on her. A husband – she’d nearly had one, and she just knew he would have been a good one, but that blooming stupid war had taken him from her. And without really thinking it through she had given away the most precious thing she had ever had – her daughter. She didn’t mean to start sobbing, but she thought just how much better her life would be right now if she was sharing it with … ‘Damn and blast,’ she shouted before thinking,
Why didn’t I given her a name?

Oblivious to Josie’s daydreaming, Flora continued, ‘And Sally did say she would make room for me when she gets into her flat at 68 Great Junction Street next week. But – och, Josie. I’m just too old now to be anything but a burden to her and it was me who decided that I should go back to my own wee croft house in Culloden.’

An uneasy silence fell between the two women that was only broken when Flora said, ‘Look, Josie, if you think you cannae thole the rats, and remember they’ll only come into the house when the tide goes out, or get the enthusiasm …’ Flora looked about the room, ‘… to get the rat-catchers in and do the place up … how about coming to bide with me in Culloden? There’s plenty of room there. Could give you a room all to yourself, and the window looks straight over the Moray Firth.’

Flora’s offer hit Josie like a bomb. She knew she would have to answer Flora and she would have to be diplomatic. So she took her time and analysed every word before she uttered it, which was unlike herself. ‘Flora,’ she began, going over and taking Flora’s hand in hers, ‘I’m going to tell you a secret.’ Josie eyes roamed around the room as if to make sure there were no inquisitive rats about. ‘Now,’ she continued, ‘this has to be kept between us. You see, it will come as a real surprise to Sally, but our Daisy is on her way over from Australia.’

‘Are you saying your half-sister Daisy in coming back home?’

Josie nodded.

‘Ah well, I never said, but I thought that when Paddy took her and Luke away to the other end of the earth, I … well … your Daisy and Luke were brought up in Iona Street and right enough it might be classed as Edinburgh but you can hardly describe it as the outback.’

Josie pondered as she tried to work out exactly what Flora was saying, but as an answer evaded her, she said, ‘And Flora, believe me, I am so grateful for your offer, but I have to be here to welcome Daisy and Luke home.’

‘Suppose you’re right, but is it not an awful gamble you’ll be taking? They are your kith and kin, but – you hardly know them.’

Now it was Josie’s time to contemplate and Flora was surprised when she said, ‘Look. I know what you’re saying – so believe me when I say that if things don’t work out with Daisy and Luke when they arrive I’ll be on the first train to Inverness.’ Josie became pensive again before confiding, ‘But I’m a city lassie and the isolation of … Besides that I have to be close to that bitch of a sister of mine. Oh aye, Sally thinks she’ll manage without me, but she won’t. Never has.’

It was difficult for Flora to hide her laughter. Of course Sally was right in taking the opportunity to get Josie to be responsible for herself, but it was also right that Josie knew Sally was close at hand to support her – and if necessary get her out of the holes she continually dug for herself – not the other way around. Looking at Josie again and recalling her awful history, Flora conceded Sally was a necessity that Josie could never survive without.

When the bar door banged off the wall and the woman catapulted herself in she thought there was no one behind the bar. That was until Sally, who had bent over to massage her aching calves, appeared.

‘What can I get you?’ Sally enquired politely.

Jerking her thumb and looking to where the cubicles used to be, big Nancy replied in a voice that came from the soles of her boots, ‘The stupid idiot who had my workplace, better known as a Nancy’s cubbyhole, knocked down.’

Sally knew this was crunch time. She either stood her ground with this woman who was built like an Amazon or she shut up shop. Oh yes, Sally accepted she was dwarfed by Nancy, who in her bare feet stood a good eight inches taller than her. She also noted that Nancy’s shoulders were as broad as a wrestler’s, and it didn’t take much imagination to think that if ever Atlas required a rest from carrying the world on his back then Nancy would be more than able to stand in for him. The only things Sally could see about Nancy that marked her as feminine were her long blonde hair, which was swept up over her head and kept in place by four well-polished tortoiseshell hair combs, her sparkling green eyes and her Madonna-like face.

Stepping up onto an upturned lemonade box, Sally said, ‘The person you’re looking for is me. And believe me – in no way am I a stupid idiot.’

‘That right?’ Nancy answered, leaning further over the bar, which caused Sally to fall back but not far enough to tumble off the box.

‘It is,’ Sally retaliated loudly ‘And please note … are you a Miss or Mrs?’

Nancy cackled before responding, ‘I’ve missed nothing. And when you get out of hospital you would be doing yourself a favour to remember to call me Mrs Greenfield.’

Sally gulped. Her knees buckled. But she drew herself up and pointing to a recently hung notice on the wall she said, ‘Like it says there. From today, and that means right now, with the approval of the Leith Police, there will be no more soliciting in this saloon bar and the management will not serve anyone they consider to be inebriated.’

Nancy laughed. She removed the offending notice from the wall and flung it out of the now open door.

‘Atta girl, Nancy, you tell her the story o’ the three bears. And while you’re at it explain that we rule in here – no her or the thieving bloody brewers and if they dinnae like it they can sling their hooks,’ the slurred voice of Sam Steele, who had come into the bar with another six worthies, spat.

‘Now, sir, I don’t know who you are and what you think you’re going to get away with, but let me tell you … you had better go back to the bar that allowed you to get into the state you’re in because you’ll not be served here tonight or in the future unless you are sober.’

Raucous laughter echoed around the now very busy pub. Nancy, taking her cue from Sam, got behind the bar and began pulling pints. ‘Drinks on the house, boys, because Little Red Riding Hood is in charge and she’s incapable of blowing out a candle never mind barring all of us.’