Monday Girl (4 page)

‘He’s likely out with his fancy woman,’ Anne said, unthinking, one evening.

‘What’s a fancy woman?’ Renee had never heard the expression before, and was intrigued by the image it conjured up.

‘It’s a man’s lady-friend when he’s got a wife already.’

‘Was Auntie Jenny not fancy enough for him?’ The girl smiled as she thought that ‘fancy’ was the last word she would have used to describe her sour-faced aunt.

‘What’ll you be wanting to know next?’ Anne sounded exasperated by the questions, and obviously wished that she had guarded her tongue. ‘I’d say Jenny had only herself to blame for the whole thing, though. She nagged about him reading so much, and she couldn’t stand him pottering about with his bits of wirelesses. I suppose that’s why he started going out – to get away from her nagging.’

‘I love to see him making the wirelesses,’ Renee said. ‘He let me watch him one Sunday. Do you know, he makes cases for them as well, and cuts out a sort of sunray pattern with a fretsaw? It’s something like the one we’ve got. Did Daddy make it?’

Anne’s face softened. ‘Yes, he did. Your father was always pottering about, too. He used to make crystal sets to start with. I think there’s still a crystal lying around somewhere. It was funny hearing a voice coming out of it for the first time – that would have been before you were born. The year before – 1922. Wireless was a really marvellous invention, wasn’t it?’

‘Look for the crystal, Mummy, please, and maybe Uncle George can show me how it works.’

Two days later, Anne handed her daughter a small, red circular box, rather like a pillbox. ‘I knew I hadn’t thrown it out, but it had slid down the back of one of the sideboard drawers, and it was just luck I found it.’

‘What is it?’ The girl had forgotten about her previous request, and read the label with interest. ‘Receptite. The perfect wireless crystal. Guaranteed supersensitive.’ She looked up, her eyes dancing with excitement. ‘Oh, great! I hope Uncle George comes straight home from the shop tonight, so he can show me how it works.’

‘Don’t pester him, though.’

Renee lifted the round lid and took off the protective layer of cotton wool to look at the small, grey stone nestling in another layer of soft whiteness. ‘Oh, it just looks like a bit of granite, or something, not like a crystal at all.’ Her disappointment was only momentary. ‘It doesn’t matter what it looks like, as long as it does the trick.’

It was almost half past eight when George Gordon took Renee and Jack, who had also expressed an interest, upstairs to perform the miracle. After fiddling about for quite a while, he succeeded, with the aid of some coiled wire and a pencil, in letting them hear a few faint squeaks. ‘It needs to be amplified,’ he said, apologetically. ‘Earphones, or a loudspeaker.’ Going downstairs, just after quarter to ten, Renee wondered why her mother hadn’t called up to her, at half past nine, that it was time she went to bed, but soon discovered the reason. Bill Scroggie, who didn’t usually come home until after everyone else was in bed, was sitting by the fire, looking very excited. He had already told his landlady his good news, but had to repeat it for the benefit of the other three.

‘Lena and me are getting married, and we’re not going to wait, for her mother says we can get a room from her.’

‘Oh, Bill, that’s great!’ Renee’s eyes were shining, although she had not taken the same interest in Bill’s romance since Uncle George had come to live there, and hadn’t realised that he was so serious about Lena Wilson. Jack Thomson held his hand out to his room-mate. ‘Aye, that’s good news. Congratulations, Bill, and when’s the wedding?’

‘We’re going to see about it the morrow in our dinner hour, but it’ll be as soon as we can manage, seeing we’ve got a place to stay. We canna afford a big wedding, just Lena’s father and mother and mine, my brother for best man and Lena’s cousin for bridesmaid.’

‘Make sure you’re the boss, Bill.’ George smiled ruefully as he came forward to shake hands.

Over the next few weeks, Renee and Jack listened eagerly to the wedding plans unfolding, putting forward a suggestion now and then, especially about what Bill should wear.

‘You can get a good suit at the Fifty-Shilling Tailor,’ Jack suggested, one day. ‘One of my mates at the yard got his marriage suit there, and he was very pleased with it.’

‘You’ll need a grey tie.’ Renee had studied an article on wedding etiquette in one of the magazines her mother got from Mrs Fraser, next door. ‘And a white shirt. And, if it’s a navy or dark grey suit you buy, remember you’ll have to wear black shoes.’ This caused great amusement, because Bill always wore tan shoes, no matter which other colours he was wearing. They had often teased him about it.

‘Tan shoes aye seem to fit me better,’ he said, ‘but I’ll get black this time, for I must look smart for my wedding.’

The big day arrived at last, and Anne and Renee, escorted by Jack, went to Rosemount Church to see the small group going in, and to throw confetti at them when they came out, some thirty minutes later. Renee thought that Lena Wilson, now Scroggie, was really beautiful in her dusty pink costume and matching picture hat. Her dark hair had been permanently waved, and curled appealingly round her face, which was absolutely radiant. So, too, was Bill’s – red, perspiring, but radiant – though he seemed embarrassed when his mother aimed a camera at him. His fiery mop had been tamed with brilliantine, making it much darker, but nobody could say he wasn’t smart. His black shoes, uncomfortable though they may be, went very well with his parson-grey fifty-shilling suit; his white shirt, and the grey tie under the Van Heusen collar, were just right for the auspicious occasion. He beamed at his three friends when they scattered their confetti, and Renee reflected, wistfully, that it would be a few years yet before she’d enter the most exciting stage of a girl’s life, when love blossomed and ended in a union like Bill and Lena’s.

‘You’ll be looking for another lodger now, I suppose, Mrs Gordon?’ Jack remarked when they were going home in the bus.

Anne looked thunderstruck. ‘Oh, my! With all the excitement about the wedding, I forgot about that, but, yes, I suppose I’ll have to.’

‘I know it’s not up to me,’ Jack began, cautiously, ‘but one of the lads that works with me was saying he was fed up with his digs, and I said you might be able to take him. But only if it’s OK with you,’ he added.

Anne was glad that she’d be spared the bother of having to find another boarder. ‘You’re the one who’ll be sharing a room with him, so if you think he’ll fit in, it’s OK with me.’

 
Chapter Four

The newly-weds came to visit quite frequently, and Renee and her mother gradually gathered that their marriage wasn’t all moonlight and roses. Coming on his own one evening, Bill Scroggie confided in them. ‘We’ve been having a few rows, but Lena and me would get on fine if it wasn’t for her mother. She’s aye poking her nose in, and Lena gets wild if I say anything.’

‘It’d be far better if you’d a house of your own,’ Anne said.

‘Oh, aye, but my mother-in-law says there no need for us to look for another place when she’s got plenty of room. She doesn’t want Lena to leave her, that’s what it is. It’s not the money, for Lena’s father’s got a good job – a riveter with Hall, the shipbuilders.’

‘If you found another house without telling her,’ Renee suggested, ‘she couldn’t stop you from moving into it, could she?’

‘I wouldna be too sure about that.’ There was frustration in Bill’s voice. ‘And there would likely be one helluva row. Och, I’m that fed up I feel like emigrating. I saw an advert in the paper last night for a chauffeur/gardener in Canada, and it would suit me fine, if I could get Lena to agree.’

‘Apply for it, Bill.’ Anne sounded decisive. ‘I’m sure she’d go with you if you got the job, and you’ll have to do something to save your marriage.’

‘Aye, right enough. Maybe I will, then.’ Bill looked much happier when he left.

Anne and Renee discussed his situation until George Gordon came home, about a quarter of an hour later, then Anne went to make him a cup of tea and the girl told her uncle what Bill had been saying. ‘I hope he gets his Canadian job. Mother-in-law trouble’s the very devil – nearly as bad as wife trouble,’ he added.

‘If Lena won’t go with him, he could divorce her and go on his own. Maybe he’d meet somebody else over there.’ Renee felt that her solution was only common sense.

‘Getting a divorce isn’t as easy as you think,’ George said sadly. ‘Your Auntie Jenny won’t agree to divorce me, so I’m left high and dry, and there’s nothing I can do about it.’

‘You couldn’t marry your lady friend, anyway.’ Renee blushed, because she had almost said ‘fancy woman’ and, moreover, it was really none of her business.

‘Why can’t I?’

‘I’m sorry, Uncle George. I shouldn’t have said anything.’

He turned serious. ‘No, go on. Why couldn’t I marry her if I was free?’

She looked embarrassed, avoiding his eyes as she said,

‘She’s married already, isn’t she?’

‘Oh, that one? I was finished with her before your Auntie Jenny ever found out, but she wouldn’t believe me.’

‘Oh.’ Renee’s sympathies went out to her uncle. ‘But you’ve found somebody else that’s not married, have you?’

‘I have that, Renee.’ He was smiling now. ‘A very respectable lady I’d like fine to spend the rest of my life with. She’s got her own house, as well, but, as I said, she’s very respectable. It’s a case of marriage or nothing with her. You understand?’

At thirteen, Renee didn’t quite understand the implication of what he was saying, but she thought she’d better not ask. Anyway, she’d other, better things to think about.

The new lodger, who had moved in a week after Bill Scroggie’s wedding, was making her heart flutter every time he looked at her with his smouldering, almost black eyes. Fergus Cooper was a Tyrone Power type, with dark brown curly hair and perfect white teeth. He was nineteen, the same age as Jack, and she was just beginning to recognise what lay behind the long mysterious looks he gave her when her mother was out of the room. His previous landlady, he’d told them, was a terrible nag, a terrible cook and a terrible housewife, and he drew such a vivid picture of his dirty room and the awful food that Renee had been most upset for him. She just couldn’t understand how anyone in her right mind could treat him like that, he was so nice.

Fergus Cooper now occupied all her dreams, waking and sleeping, and the current speculations about the new king, Edward VIII, and the American divorcee, Mrs Simpson, made them all the more colourful. When the king abdicated for the love of his ‘Wallis’, Renee lay in bed beside her mother, making up romantic fantasies in which Fergus renounced an inheritance before he gathered her in his arms and kissed her, then took her away to an exotic island in the Caribbean to live happily ever after.

Maggie upset her granddaughter quite unintentionally on one of her visits, by remarking to Anne, ‘I wouldna trust that new lodger ye’ve got, Annie. He doesna half fancy himsel’, an’ there’s something aboot him . . .’

Anne Gordon laughed. ‘Rubbish! He’s quite a nice lad. He’s very good-looking and he knows it, that’s all.’ But Renee had resented the criticism of her heart-throb.

One Sunday, just after teatime, Bill and Lena Scroggie appeared, full of happiness and excitement. ‘I got that job in Canada I was telling you about,’ Bill began, ‘and, would you believe it, Lena was fair pleased?’

‘Aye,’ his wife put in. ‘I was just as fed up as Bill with my mother interfering, though I tried to stop him from arguing with her, for the sake of peace, but we never told each other what we were feeling.’

Bill carried on. ‘I thought she’d be angry with me for writing about the job behind her back, but . . .’

‘We’ve been to see about our passage to Canada, we’ve got all the papers, and we sail on Friday.’ Lena beamed fondly at her husband.

‘Aye, we’ll be leaving bonnie Scotland on the first day of

1937,’ he said, his eyes growing serious. ‘It’s something we’ll never forget for the rest of our lives, I suppose.’

Renee resolutely pushed her own never-to-be-forgotten date, 24th August 1933, the day of her father’s funeral, to the back of her mind and said, ‘It’s great, isn’t it. I wish I could go to Canada.’

‘Maybe you will, some day,’ Bill consoled. ‘You never know what lies in front of you . . . maybe it’s just as well. But we’ll be pleased to see you if you ever do cross the Atlantic.’

Lena nodded emphatically. ‘Yes, we will. We’ll write and give you our address once we’ve settled in. There’s a house goes with the job, so that’s a big relief.’

‘She’s been planning the way she wants the place to look.’ Bill laughed. ‘She’s even picked the colour of the . . .’

‘I want to choose my own colours,’ Lena explained. ‘The house is part-furnished, but I want my own curtains and things like that, and we’ll have to buy more furniture, and . . .’

‘You see?’ Bill threw up his hands in mock resignation.

‘She’ll have the whole of my first year’s wages spent before I ever get them.’

Anne suddenly remembered the real reason for their departure. ‘What’s your mother saying about all this, Lena?’ The girl looked sad. ‘She’s not very pleased, I can tell you, and she’s stopped speaking to Bill.’

‘I’m the black-hearted villain that’s taking her little girl away from her,’ Bill said ruefully, and Lena slipped her hand through his arm.

‘My life has to be with Bill, though I’m sorry about leaving her, but that’s the way I want it to be.’ Her baby-blue eyes looked adoringly at her husband.

Bill smiled. ‘Well, lass, we’d better be moving. We’ve a few more folk to see yet. Will you say goodbye to Jack for me, Mrs Gordon? I’m sorry I havena seen him, he was a good room-mate.’

Anne nodded. ‘I’ll do that, Bill, and I’m sure he’ll be disappointed that he’s missed you.’

‘This was the only chance we had,’ Bill said, ‘and we can’t wait any longer. We’ve still a lot of packing to do as well.’ He stood up, and pulled his wife to her feet. ‘Well, cheerio, Mrs Gordon, and Renee.’ He gripped Anne’s hand for a moment.

‘Cheerio, Mrs Gordon, and remember, you and Renee’ll be made welcome if you ever manage to come to see us.’ Lena shook hands with both Gordons.