Chasing Angels (35 page)

And it wasn’t just Miss Smith. As Lillian, Kathy supplied the romance that was missing from the lives of a certain slice of ordinary women everywhere. They married men who wanted to be
looked after in every possible way and, in return for all the washing, ironing, cleaning and caring, they wanted a little spark that proved they weren’t being taken for granted, even though
they knew they were. A smouldering look across a crowded room, a hand holding theirs, the caress of a finger against a cheek, a single red rose, all totally out of the question as far as the men
they had married were concerned. Such things never occurred to them and, even if they had, would have been labelled ‘soft’. Lillian Bryson provided that missing spark, and let the
intellectuals scoff, because if it made a difference, if it lightened the lives of those women for even an hour, well, that was worth doing. She wouldn’t have been in the least surprised if
Angela Crawford turned to Lillian in moments of extreme stress, of which there must be many in her life in Moodiesburn, and the truth was that it filled a gap in her own life too. You could keep
the sex. She had tried that and the very thought of it thereafter had made her feel sick, but romance was something else, something Lillian Bryson brought to Kathy Kelly’s life too. But, that
apart, Rory was right, though she would never admit it to him. The longer she was Lillian the less chance there was that she might take a chance and try to write beyond chiselled-featured,
impossible heroes.

Her correspondence with Ishbel set her thinking of other loose ends in her early life, of her other adversary, Nigel Dewar, and his acolyte, Ida, in Govan. Con was three years into his illness
when the chance came to find out what had become of the corduroy-loving pharmacist. He would’ve taken over Wilson’s by now, he might even have bought it out and be strutting about,
white goatee bristling with pomposity, master of the little he surveyed. She had been called to Glasgow because Con was ill with another infection that he wasn’t supposed to recover from,
only, of course, he did, and she took the opportunity to stroll down memory lane. The chemist shop across from Fairfield’s Shipyard had gone, as had Fairfield’s, but it didn’t
take much searching to find a shopping centre nearby in which was housed an updated Wilson’s. They were everywhere. Had she been asked what changes she noticed in her native city, she
would’ve said Glasgow had turned into one giant shopping centre made up of countless smaller shopping centres. She went into the shop and asked the woman behind the counter if she might have
a word with Mr Dewar, receiving in reply a strange look. Well, could she then see the duty pharmacist, Kathy suggested, in her best English. Out came a white-coated woman in her thirties. Lillian
came smoothly to her aid with a plot.

‘I was looking for Nigel Dewar,’ she smiled. ‘He was a colleague of mine many years ago. We lost touch when I left the country.’ ‘
Ahem
,’ said her
conscience, but she ignored it. ‘I just thought it would be nice to meet up again.’ But what, she wondered, would she say if a silver-haired Nigel was produced from somewhere? She would
cross that bridge, she decided, if and when she came to it.

‘Oh, that was a bad one!’ said the pharmacist quietly, beckoning her, as she was a fellow pill-counter and therefore of impeccable character, into the pharmacy. ‘You
wouldn’t have heard about it, seeing as you were out of the country, but I understand it caused quite a fuss at the time, though there’s no one here now who was there then.’

Nigel, it transpired, had been accosted in the old shop by two men, relatives of a woman who claimed Nigel had deliberately tried to make a sale, instead of giving her sound advice about the
urgency of her child’s condition. If an unknown lady doctor hadn’t been there at the time, the woman claimed, her baby could’ve died, and her relatives wished to have a word with
Mr Dewar about the incident. There had been what the Glasgow Courts liked to call ‘a fracas’, and the police had been called to eject the men, but an hour later Mr Dewar had dropped
dead of a heart attack in the pharmacy. There were so many thoughts going through his ‘ex-colleague’s’ mind at that moment. There was ‘Hooray!’ and ‘Damn it to
hell, Ah shoulda been here tae see it!’ She desperately wanted to ask if Ida had been dragged off in a straitjacket, foaming at the mouth, for some reason, about letting Fenians in to Govan
chemist’s shops. But uppermost in her mind was the need to keep a straight face and mouth words of shock and a few platitudes, difficult though this was to accomplish. Thanks to the
enthusiasms of youth she was now carrying Ishbel Smith on her conscience and, of course, you should never speak ill of the dead, even if you spoke exceedingly ill of them when they were alive and
they had richly deserved it. Some you win and some you lose, but still, amid the philosophy there had to be room for a slight snigger or two as well, surely?

‘So when did you last see Mr Dewar?’ the pharmacist asked.

‘Must’ve been just before Easter 1973. That’s when I went abroad,’ Kathy replied thoughtfully.

‘I’m sure it was about then that it happened. It was definitely around Easter, but I can’t say for sure which year.’

‘
Ah can
!’ Kathy thought, but she shook her head in an acceptably mournful manner and tut-tutted, as tradition required.

‘I’ve often wondered, actually,’ the pharmacist said, ‘who the lady doctor was. I know Mr Dewar was a friend of yours, and we’re all human, we all make mistakes
after all. There but for the grace of God and all that, but by all accounts he did make a bit of a mistake. The doctor called for an ambulance to take the baby to hospital and apparently it
wasn’t a minute too soon, she saved the child’s life.’

‘And there was another pharmacist working with Nigel at that time, as I recall,’ Kathy said, ‘a Mr Riddell was it? Tall, quiet, losing his hair, but he’ll be long gone
now too.’

‘You mean Mr Liddell?’ the pharmacist said.

‘Yes, that was it, Liddell. I suppose he’ll be dead now too.’

‘No, no he’s not!’ replied the pharmacist. ‘He’s nearly eighty now but you’d never think it to look at him. He spends all his time sailing his boat, bright as
a button and fit as a fiddle.’

It was like a fairytale, it had such symmetry, such justice, somehow. ‘Well,’ said a delighted Kathy, ‘if you should see him, could you please pass on to him Kathleen
Kelly’s very best good wishes, and tell him that there is a God after all? He’ll know what that means.’

‘I will indeed! But isn’t life strange? Poor Mr Dewar!’

‘Mmm,’ Kathy said sadly. ‘As you say, poor Nigel!’, and she would’ve sworn that she sounded as if she meant it.

14

So, finally she was on her way home. As she sat in the train she had visions of Jessie’s house being scrubbed out by a team of white-suited individuals wearing masks and
rubber gloves, cleansing the abode of all outside contamination. But was there another, more specialised team, waiting in the wings, she wondered, to scrub the pink-and-white mausoleum clean of the
pollution brought in by the first one, and perhaps another after that? She had called Rory the night before to tell him what time she would be arriving at Glenfinnan, and as she was talking she
suddenly realised that she was trying to keep the conversation as brief as possible, in order to restrict the contamination she would be leaving behind on Jessie’s phone. It got to you, she
thought, it really got to you, and once again she thought of Harry living in Jessie’s strange little world all these years and almost forgave him for disappointing her ambitions for him.

Whenever she had been in Glasgow at the behest of Con’s various illnesses, Rory had been instructed to make sure the cottage was kept heated and Cat kept fed. She had never got round to
finding a name for the kitten he had rescued from the murderous intent of whoever had drowned the rest of the litter, and Cat he had remained. He wasn’t the brightest of felines or perhaps he
had suffered oxygen starvation before Rory had hauled him out and revived him. He seemed to hold Kathy personally responsible for the entire episode, and no matter how well she cared for him,
whenever he got within striking distance he would lash out with his claws and screech at her. Rory, though, Cat adored, climbing on his knees when he visited the cottage, twisting himself around
his legs, purring loud enough to lift the roof, and occasionally he would disappear and be found at Rory’s door, having walked the couple of miles from Drumsallie to Glenfinnan.

‘How come he hates me and loves you?’ Kathy asked, nursing yet another scratch. ‘Doesn’t the daft thing know I saved his life?’

‘No you didnae,’ Rory replied calmly. ‘I did. As I remember it, you stood there shaking, it was me warmed him up.’

‘Aye, well,’ she conceded, ‘I was there, and I gave him a home, yet he lives just to attack me. He sinks those claws in even when I’m putting out food for him, for
God’s sake. Now that’s not natural behaviour for a cat, is it? How d’you explain that?’

‘Och, well,’ Rory replied, staring into the fire and petting the besotted feline, ‘it’s a well-known fact that cats are good judges of character.’

She had lost count of her visits to Glasgow and resented every one. Having graduated from running the tearoom to being a guide, she had embraced the history of the Jacobites enthusiastically,
while managing to keep her personal opinion of Bonnie Prince Charlie to herself. The Tourist Centre had expanded in recent years to include another extension, this time housing a small exhibition
of the charming Prince’s little adventure. It was decided that two fibreglass models would be commissioned, one of the Prince as he had arrived in Scotland, wearing a clerk’s black suit
as a disguise, and the other of a Highlander of the day. When the chosen artist arrived to discuss the commission, Kathy was away affronting Con’s doctors and nurses with her refusal to give
up her life and devote it to what was left of his. She was away, too, when the figures were delivered and arranged in the exhibition. When she arrived back, anxious to see the results, Mavis and
the others were almost dancing with excitement, happy, she had thought, at how well it had all turned out. The first figure, of the Prince, had been placed at a table by the entrance, and then
there were various information points, maps etc., and finally, turning to the right, was the figure of the 1745 Highlander, complete with kilt, philabeg and drawn broadsword. The others had gone
back to work, leaving her to browse over their handiwork at her leisure, or so she thought till she examined the figure more carefully, and looked at his face. It was Rory! ‘Oh, my
God!’ she shrieked, and Mavis and the others rushed in, all of them helpless with laughter.

‘How? Who?’ she stuttered, shocked to her toes.

‘We thought it would be a nice surprise!’ Mavis giggled.

‘A nice surprise?’ Kathy repeated. ‘But it’s … it’s…’

‘Aye, it’s Rory!’ Once again everyone collapsed in heaps of laughter.

Kathy was furious that they should all find it so funny. ‘Why is it Rory?’ she demanded.

‘The artist guy wanted a typical West Coast male,’ Mavis replied, dabbing at her eyes, ‘and he saw Rory putting his boat out on the loch. He went after him before we could stop
him!’

‘And you’re telling me that you
tried
to stop him, are you?’ Kathy asked, and once again the assembled company collapsed in a communal howl.

‘Not really,’ Mavis admitted eventually. ‘I mean, who were we to argue with an artist?’

‘You should’ve dragged him away, shown him Donnie, or Lachie even, shown him the nearest German tourist!’ She looked around her colleagues, her friends, as they held on to each
other for support in their mirth. ‘And why is it that you all find everything I say so bloody hilarious?’

‘Shown him Donnie?’ Mavis screeched. ‘You mean you’d rather I had to live with a thing that looked like him even when I’m working?’

‘And you think this
thing
is going to be any easier to have around?’

‘Well, it’s a damned sight easier than Donnie anyway, at least I can trust it not to burst into one of his songs!’

‘I’d prefer it to be Donnie, songs and all! Rory Macdonald is rarely a bundle of laughs, but this is like having him staring at you in his worst mood!’

‘Aye, I know!’ Mavis chuckled. ‘He wasnae too happy about posing, but he did it under protest. We made him promise not to tell you, so that it wouldnae spoil the
surprise!’

‘This object is here under my protest,’ Kathy replied sourly. ‘Look at the eyes, they follow you around!’

‘I know! The cleaner refuses to be in here on her own because it’s so lifelike!’

‘So why are you laughing? Can we not get it changed?’

‘Course we canny!’ Mavis replied. ‘The money’s been spent. What d’you expect us to say to Head Office? That the cleaner’s scared of it and Kathy Kelly says
it’s too like the man the artist chose to model it on?’

‘But it’s … it’s
horrible!
’

The others danced around with renewed glee. ‘I know! I know!’ Mavis giggled. ‘And you havnae seen the best of it yet, wait till the next tourist bus comes in!’

So they all waited excitedly until a busload of German tourists arrived and were encouraged in to the exhibition. The leading group reached the figure of the Prince and, thinking he was real,
tried to pay him an entrance fee. The dedicated staff tried to stifle guffaws. ‘They all do that!’ Mavis whispered to Kathy. Then they found their way to Rory Mark II, and one by one
they looked around to see if they were being observed. Staff eyes were averted and hands busied themselves with nothing, and thus reassured each tourist carefully picked up Rory’s kilt and
looked underneath.

Kathy gasped and the others danced around holding each other and giggling. ‘They all do
that
as well!’ Mavis shrieked. As she clapped her hands the ever-present cigarette fell
from between her fingers and burned her thumb. ‘Ouch!’ she shouted.

‘Serves you right!’ Kathy said happily.

‘Know what I think we should do?’ Mavis asked, struggling to regain control of her cigarette.