The Grace Girls (35 page)

She had taken ages the night before deciding on what she would wear for this special outing. She decided on smart beige trousers and a black polo-neck with her camel three-quarter-length swing coat for travelling, and a lovely mid-brown suit with fur at the collar and cuffs. She had got this from Liz’s mother’s catalogue last winter, and was delighted that it fitted her so well, now that she had lost a little bit of weight. She also wore Claire’s gold charm bracelet and a nice big cameo brooch that matched both outfits perfectly.

Even before she arrived at Sarah’s house with her suit carefully folded in Sophie’s brown leather overnight case, the trip on the train and bus during this festive time of the year had made her feel quite excited. The city looked lovely with all the Christmas decorations and coloured lights glittering, and people seemed chattier and cheerier. Heather had been very grateful to a well-dressed old couple she met in George Square who had shown her to the correct bus stop then insisted on waiting with her until the right bus came along. ‘We’re not in any rush, hen,’ the old woman had told her. ‘We’ve no family apart from ourselves, and we’re just having a wee day out in Glasgow to look at the decorations and to pass the time. Christmas and New Year hangs long on yer hands when you’ve no family, isn’t that right, Archie?’ she’d said to her husband who nodded solemnly in agreement. ‘We were never blessed wi’ children, ye see,’ she had whispered, ‘but it was nobody’s fault. Ye just have to accept these things in life.’

The couple had stood chatting to her for a good twenty minutes, giving her a run-down on their day from getting up at six o’clock in the morning until they went to bed after the news at half past nine at night.

‘We live in a nice part of Bearsden,’ the old man had t
old her. ‘And we have good neighbours and a nice postm
an, Walter, who has a cup of tea with us nearly every morning. I used to work in the sorting office in the post office and Walter knew me from coming in to collect the post.’

‘We’re very lucky, really,’ the old woman had said, her small bird-like face beaming. ‘And we’re involved with the church and everything; we had a lovely Christmas dinner out in the village hall with all the other retired members of the church.’

‘Well, isn’t it lovely you have each other?’ Heather had said, feeling a bit strange when she realised that they were obviously Church of Scotland. Catholics would always have said with members of the
parish
.

Fleetingly, she thought of Claire and her husband, and wondered how people like Mona could take against nice people, like this elderly refined couple, just because they went to a different church. It was the same God after all. People were people, and it was how nice they were to others that counted.

‘Here it comes,’ Archie said, pointing his brass-handled walking stick as the Govanhill bus came into view.

Heather looked back at the helpful old couple as she waited for the bus to stop, thanking them profusely for all their help.

‘It was a pleasure, my dear,’ the woman said, linking her husband’s arm now. ‘It passed a wee while for us, and after you’ve gone on the bus, we’ll walk back to Argyle Street and get ourselves a nice cup of tea in Lewis’s tea-room.’

Heather felt almost tearful as she waved to them from the bus window, and then spent the rest of the journey thinking about her Scottish grandparents who had died about five years ago, only a few months apart, and then she thought about the Grace grandparents back in Ireland who she hardly ever saw. People like Liz who had grandparents who lived just around the corner were lucky, she thought.

By the time the bus reached her stop in Govanhill, she was glad to get off it and have her mind distracted from the sad thoughts of lonely old people by the chirpy Sarah who was waving and jumping about to make sure she didn’t miss the stop.

It was exactly as Sarah had described it. A busy wide roa
d, with cars and lorries running up and down it regularl
y and high, three-storey, sandstone tenement buildings on either side. A row of shops was just visible further on. It was obviously a good part of Govanhill, as all the houses had gleaming windows and letter boxes, and the small gardens were very well kept with small clipped box hedges.

At first glance, Heather found it strange seeing her friend in her casual clothes, her straight, brown hair tied back in a ponytail, as she was more used to seeing her in a for
mal skirt and blouse for the office, with her hair carefully w
aved and set. Sarah’s narrow-legged black corduroy trous
ers looked really fashionable, topped with an oversized bright blue sweater with a big cowl neck. She was also wearing a lovely pair of two-tone black and grey ankle boots that were obviously a new style in the Glasgow shops.

‘You look absolutely terrific – I’d hardly have recognis
ed you!’ Heather told her, eyeing her workmate up and down in open admiration as they stood at the bus stop. ‘And what a fabulous jumper! Where did you get it?’

‘Believe it or not, my mammy knitted it!’ Sarah told her with wide eyes, in her high-pitched Glasgow accent. ‘I saw the pattern in a magazine a few weeks ago and I showed it to her, but she said she was far too busy to do it until after Christmas. And guess what?’ She put one hand on her hip for a bit of drama. ‘She knitted it secretly while I was at work and gave it to me for part of my Christmas!’ She shook her head, her ponytail swinging from side to side. ‘I couldn’t believe it . . . Imagine going to all that trouble to have it ready for me – hiding it in the bedroom so’s I wouldn’t see it.’

‘That was really nice of her and you look fantastic in it,’ Heather told her workmate.

‘And you look lovely too,’ Sarah said, standing back to get a good look at Heather’s outfit. ‘That’s a really posh coat you’ve got on, and the colour really suits you.’

Heather glowed at the description of her coat, and suddenly felt all sophisticated being in a different part of Glasgow with her fashionably dressed new friend. Rowanhill suddenly seemed a long way off.

‘Oh, I meant to tell you,’ Sarah suddenly said, ‘Marie’s got a bad cold and she won’t make it. I wasn’t talking to her myself, but she’s not been too well all Christmas according to her mother.’

‘Oh, that’s a pity,’ Heather said, genuinely disappointed
. Marie, the other girl from Seafreight, was quiet compared to Sarah but very nice and friendly.

‘Och, it doesn’t really matter,’ Sarah told her, ‘because Barbara, my oldest pal from school, has brought a girl from her office who’s nice enough, so there’s still four of us going. They said they’ll meet us in at the Pavillion as they’re going into Glasgow early to get something to eat.’

‘It’s a shame that poor Marie is missing the show,’ Heather said sympathetically. ‘Maybe she’ll make it out another night with us.’

‘My mammy and daddy can’t wait to meet you,’ Sarah said, taking Heather by the arm. ‘They love any of my friends coming, because the house is quiet since our John and our Mary got married. There’s only me left, and my mammy still cooks and cleans as if there was the five of us.’

They started walking down the street now, linking arms, with Heather glancing this way and that at the ho
uses and traffic, whilst listening attentively to Sarah’s news. ‘My mammy’s made a steak pie with mashed potato
es and gravy, do you like that?’

‘I love it,’ Heather said, swinging her mother’s overnigh
t case as she went along. She felt so happy tonight that it wouldn’t matter what Mrs Fox served up. Heather knew she would love everything.

Sarah’s mother and father gave her the same warm welcome as her friend had, and Heather was amazed how si
milar the furniture and curtains were to her own famil
y’s. She hadn’t been too sure about Sarah’s religion as they had never talked about the subject, and Fox was one of those names that was hard to pin down as being Irish Catholic or Scottish Protestant. But the minute Heather spotted the pictures of the Sacred Heart on the walls and statues of Our Lady she knew they both had a Catholic upbringing in common.

The dinner was lovely, and Sarah’s father made the two girls a beer shandy afterwards, which they drank as they were getting changed into their evening clothes.

Mrs Fox had been pink-faced with delight when Sarah told her how much Heather had admired her handiwork with the blue jumper. ‘Do you or your mammy knit yourselves?’ she had asked, as she cleared up the dinner plates.

‘We all do,’ Heather told her. ‘Me, my mammy and my sister Kirsty. But it’s more sewing my mother does, so she doesn’t have a lot of time for knitting the more complicated things like the jumper. She only does baby things or something small like a tea-cosy.’

Sarah’s mother looked thoughtful. ‘Do you feel you could tackle that kind of jumper yourself, hen? It looks harder than it is. It’s really only a couple of cables up the front and then it’s all ribbing for the neck.’ She paused, her head to one side, thinking. ‘If you like, you can have a loan of the pattern, hen. And if you get stuck you can always send it home with Sarah and I’ll help you out.’

Heather looked across the table at her friend. ‘Would you mind if I had the same jumper? I wouldn’t wear it to work or if we were out together or anything.’

‘Not at all,’ Sarah said, shaking her head. ‘And anyway, you could do it in a different colour.’

Heather turned back to the older woman now. ‘That would be great, Mrs Fox. I’d love to have a loan of the pattern.’ The red jumper she was in the middle of knitting could wait, Heather thought. She would run into one of the wool shops in Glasgow on her way back for the train tomorrow and start on this new fashionable pattern straightaway.

‘I’ll look it out, and leave it on the sideboard for you in the morning,’ the friendly Glasgow woman told her.

Sarah’s bedroom was a bit bigger than Heather and Kirsty’s room, but the fact she had it all to herself made it lu
xurious in Heather’s eyes. The double wardrobe, the double bed with its nylon-padded bedspread and match
ing pillows, the dressing-table and the three big drawers – all to herself.

Apart from a slight reluctance to share the bed with her friend, Heather felt that her workmate had everything she wished for herself.

T
hey had arranged to meet the others outside the Pavillion, and as they crossed the road towards the theatre, Sarah was all excited as she pointed out the two girls waiting for them. They were both quite small, the dark-haired one around Kirsty’s height and the other girl, a curly red-head, was even smaller. ‘Barbara’s the one with the short dark hair, and she’s absolutely brilliant,’ Sarah told Heather as they walked towards them. ‘She’s a really good laugh when she gets going. That wee Patsy’s not a close pal, Barbara only brought her to use up Marie’s ticket.’

The introductions were quickly made but, unlike the glowing description Sarah had given of her old friend, Heather found Barbara to be a bit quiet and stand-offish. She put it down to the fact they had only just met and that some people took a wee while to warm up.

The other girl, Patsy, seemed very nice and friendly and she smiled a lot. They hadn’t much time to chat as they had to find which part of the theatre their tickets were for, and then find their seats. There was one difficult moment when they stood at the end of the row of seats deciding who would sit where, but Barbara suggested that it would be best if Heather went in first followed by Sarah and B
arbara and Patsy coming in last. Heather thought it didn’t really matter since they were all together, but Barbara
seemed to feel it was a very important issue.

The show was great. Heather laughed and laughed until tears streamed down her face and her sides hurt. It was the best fun she’d had in ages, and definitely the best fun she’d had all this Christmas. The bar in the Pavillion was packed at the break, so Sarah suggested that Heather and Patsy go and find a table while she and Barbara went to fight their way through the crowds to get them each a drink.

Patsy was nice but, if Heather was honest, the girl was a tiny bit boring when she went on about her work in a solicitor’s office. She talked and talked in a low voice, going into a lot of detail about a new phone system that had been introduced, and Heather had to lean across the table to catch everything she said over the babble of noise. After a while Sarah and Barbara came pushing their way back from the bar, looking hot and flustered from queuing and pushing.

‘Is gin and tonic all right?’ Sarah asked, putting a drink down in front of Heather.

‘For me?’ Heather said, looking startled. ‘I usually only drink bottled shandy when I’m out . . .’

Sarah shot a glance at Barbara. ‘I told you she wouldn’t want that.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Heather said quickly, suddenly sensing a change in the atmosphere.

‘It won’t exactly kill you,’ Barbara said, giving an
irritat
ed sigh. ‘And if you don’t want it one of the rest of us will have it.’ She looked over at Sarah and rolled her eyes. ‘I just thought it would be nice for us all to have the same drink and it was easier to order at the bar.’

‘Barbara paid for the drinks herself,’ Sarah blurted out, her face flushed and red. ‘She got a Christmas bonus and she thought she’d treat us all. I thought since you’d had the few drinks at the office party, that you were game enough to try a new one out.’