When the Lights Come on Again (13 page)

Once they got to Bellahouston, however, things began to go badly wrong. Firstly, and disastrously, Eddie the revolutionary was seized by a sudden fit of gentlemanly behaviour. He tried to insist on paying both his sister and her friend into the exhibition.

He did it with a bit too much of a flourish. Liz suspected that embarrassment was a factor in that, but the offer went down very badly with Helen, who bristled immediately.

‘I can pay myself in, thanks, Mr MacMillan,’ she said frostily, opening her purse and extracting a shilling with that stiff pride which only those who’ve ever been truly poor can understand.

Groaning inwardly at that rigidly formal
Mr MacMillan
, Liz then watched helplessly as the situation went from bad to worse. Spotting a volunteer first-aider sporting a Red Cross armband, Eddie proceeded to make a sarcastic comment about both girls’ involvement with the organization.

Helen, the sparks really flying now, answered back. That sent Eddie off into his son-of-the-revolution routine, pontificating about the capitalist war machine. Liz did her damnedest, but there didn’t seem to be any way of stopping him. Even the admiration which the exhibits evoked brought only a temporary respite. Such a pity, she thought, when it was all so interesting.

Stylish buildings - startlingly modern - had been specially built to provide pavilions to display the industry, produce, culture and achievements of the huge variety of countries which made up the British Empire.

They had come in by the Paisley Road West entrance, close to the two Scottish pavilions. Those were painted a rich blue on the outside, to match the colours in St Andrew’s flag, but also to contrast with the pastel hues of many of the other buildings. That information was volunteered by one of the policemen on duty, who also told them that the colourful paths which linked the different pavilions were made of red asphalt mixed with chips of white granite from Skye and pink granite from Banffshire.

On the other side of the main path from Scottish Avenue stood the Palace of Art and, some distance behind that,
An Clachan
, the Highland Village. Liz had read about the latter in the newspapers. It had traditional white-walled cottages from Skye and black houses from the Outer Isles, and even a burn with a wee bridge over it which flowed into a tiny sea loch. As a city girl, Liz thought the country scene in miniature was perfectly lovely.

Then you looked up and saw a skyscraper behind the Highland cottages. The Tower of Empire dominated the whole site and had quickly become the symbol of the exhibition.

According to people who knew about such things, lots of buildings in Glasgow were going to look like that in the future.

Glaswegians had nicknamed the structure Tait’s Tower after the architect who had been in overall charge of the design of the exhibition. They told each other proudly that the illustrious Mr Tait was a Paisley buddy, brought up only a few miles along the road from Bellahouston, and that he was already famous as the architect of Sydney Harbour Bridge.

As well as being tall, Tommy Tait’s tower was spectacularly futuristic in style. It reminded Liz of something out of a Flash Gordon film, and she said so to Helen.

‘Aye, Dominic would love it. He’ll need to come with us the next time. The Stratosphere Girl would be right up his street, too.’

That was a female acrobat who performed at the top of a two-hundred-foot-high pole. Liz could hardly bring herself to look at her. It made her feel real dizzy.

Helen seemed to be enjoying the exhibition, if not the company. Eddie had lapsed into a sullen silence. Honestly, he was as much use as a... Liz thought of the most useless thing she could think of. A stookie, that was it: a handy word which meant either sheaves of corn set up to dry in a field, a plaster cast on a broken arm or leg, or a stupid and silent person - one who made no contribution to the conversation.

Liz’s mouth set in a grim line. She tried giving her brother a dirty look, narrowing her eyes at him so he would get the message. He paid not a blind bit of notice. Stookie was exactly the right word.

Trying desperately to fill the conversational gap and having bought the exhibition guidebook, Liz began reading out snippets of information to her two companions as they walked around the site.

‘The tower is three hundred feet high and constructed on the highest point of the park.’ She looked up and gave Eddie a smile. ‘
We’ll
need to bring Grandad the next time. He told me that he and Granny once climbed the Wallace monument at Stirling.’ She bent her head back to the guidebook. ‘They reckon that you can see for eighty miles from the top of it.’

‘If it’s not raining,’ grumbled Eddie. The summer was proving to be depressingly wet.

‘Och, but that doesn’t matter once you’re inside the exhibition,’ insisted Helen. ‘Everything’s so colourful and interesting - even today, when it’s a wee bit overcast.’

Liz would have said that it was more than a wee bit overcast - gey dreich would have been her assessment of today’s weather. Trust Helen to look on the bright side. Unlike Eddie, who was watching her friend without a smile on his handsome face.

At the South African pavilion they tasted passion fruit juice, unlike anything they’d ever drunk before. The Empire Tea Pavilion offered them more familiar refreshment, but even there they found something unusual to admire: enchantingly polite Indian women, graceful in their flowing saris. The colours and materials from which they were made fascinated Helen. Eddie, still silent, stood looking at her as she crouched down to admire them, the women delighted by the interest she was taking in their national dress.

A second visit to the Highland Village provided some distraction, but strolling along a path which led away from it they soon found themselves outside the Roman Catholic Pavilion. It was a beautifully decorated building, but unfortunately it set Eddie off again, and on one of his favourite hobbyhorses too: the one about religion being the opium of the masses.

‘And the Roman Catholic Church is the worst of the lot,’ he said. To Liz’s growing dismay and anger, he went on to attack her friend’s faith. According to Eddie, Catholic priests had a complete stranglehold over their flock, who were apparently totally incapable of thinking for themselves.

In a state of horrified fascination, Liz saw Helen take a deep breath. She rushed so vociferously to the support of her Church that she sounded like the mother superior of a strict and particularly humourless order of nuns. Then, by some tortuous logic, they got on to the war in Spain...

When Helen described General Franco as a Christian gentleman rescuing priests and nuns from the excesses of the left-wing government, an increasingly desperate Liz began racking her brains for something which would distract them both. Eddie was about to blow a gasket. Any moment now.

Somewhere not very far away she heard the strains of bagpipes tuning up. The wave of relief was so powerful it threatened to make her go weak at the knees.

‘Oh, listen! Can you hear a pipe band? I think it’s coming from this direction!’

Cutting in between Helen and Eddie, she took them both by the arm and more or less frog-marched them in the direction of the music.

The next ten minutes passed pleasantly, if ear-splittingly enough, but when the pipers stopped playing and the drummers stopped drumming, Eddie looked across Liz to Helen, his dark brows angry over stormy grey eyes.

‘What you were saying just now,’ he began, ‘about Spain...’

In the name of the wee man... what had she done to deserve this? Liz looked around. They were standing in a large open area with a bandstand in the middle, not far from the main entrance on to Mosspark Boulevard. There had to be something here. Didn’t there?

Then she saw it. The building could only be the Australian Pavilion, judging by the animal which stood on top of it. Incredibly, a man was holding it by a lead.

‘Oh, look!’ she cried. ‘What’s that? It surely can’t be a kangaroo!’

Good grief, she sounded like one of the Bright Young Things she despised so much. But any sacrifice was worth it if it achieved the desired result. It did. Eddie shaded his eyes, the better to see, and Helen laughed in delight, clapping her hands like a child.

‘Och, the poor wee thing,’ she said with quick sympathy.

‘Poor big thing, surely,’ murmured Eddie. Helen either didn’t hear him or chose not to.

‘I wonder if it misses the sunshine,’ she said as they moved closer to the Australian Pavilion. ‘We’ve had so much rain.’

‘It doesnae seem to mind,’ said one of the exhibition attendants, who had overheard her. He gestured towards the kangaroo. ‘Princess Margaret Rose liked him too. She was here last week. Clapped her hands when she saw him, just like you did.’

He beamed at Helen’s pretty face. Liz, in the meantime, was sending up a silent prayer. Don’t let Eddie start on the royal family and the monarchy. Oh Lord, he was opening his mouth to do exactly that. He never thought to lower his voice, either. Helen would stomp off in high dudgeon and they’d probably get lynched into the bargain.

‘Oh, look,’ she said again, spotting a poster on a wall. She’d no idea what it was about, but it had to be about something, didn’t it? She was getting really desperate now. Hell’s bells, this was hard work.

‘It’s an advert for all the concerts they’re having during the course of the exhibition. Is there a concert hall, then?’

‘Oh, aye,’ said the attendant proudly. ‘There’s an entrance to it off Bellahouston Drive - no’ far from the junction with Paisley Road West.’

‘What a pity,’ said Liz, scanning the poster, ‘we’ve missed Gracie Fields. She was here two weeks ago.’

Well, she had shut Eddie up, but both he and Helen were now staring at her like stookies. When they weren’t scowling at each other, that was. Hadn’t they ever heard of the art of conversation?

‘You haven’t necessarily missed Gracie Fields,’ said the attendant. ‘She’s made quite a few private visits to the exhibition. Stood in front of the Atlantic Restaurant last week - you know, the bit that’s shaped like the prow of a ship? - and sang “Sally”. It was magic, it really was.’

The man shook his head, lost in admiration of Our Gracie. Then he added, on an afterthought, Paul Robeson’s coming back to do a second concert in September, if you like him.’

‘Paul Robeson? Oh, aye,’ said Helen with enthusiasm. ‘I’ve heard him on the records at work. What a voice! See when he sings “Ol’Man River”? It makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.’

‘You like Paul Robeson?’

It was Eddie the stookie who had spoken, apparently shocked into speech. Hallelujah, thought Liz, praise the Lord, a point of contact at last. Never mind if part of Eddie’s admiration for the negro singer who’d made his home in Britain for the past few years had something to do with the entertainer’s well-known communist sympathies. It was a start. If she could manage to keep the conversation on his songs...

‘I wanted to hear him last time,’ Eddie told the girls, as the attendant gave them a friendly nod before moving away, ‘but the tickets sold out real quick. Do you know,’ he said admiringly, ‘he gave his entire fee for the last concert to the Spanish Civil War Relief Fund.’

Bloody hell, thought Liz, here we go again. She really must stop swearing, even though it was only to herself. On the other hand, this pair would try the patience of a saint.

Then, for the second time in as many months, salvation came to Liz from the same quarter.

‘Well, hello there!’

She spun round. Standing there, smiling all over his face, his hat politely swept off, was Adam Buchanan.

Eleven

‘Miss MacMillan, how very nice to see you again!’ He turned politely to Helen. ‘And Miss...’

‘Gallagher,’ supplied Helen. ‘How are you, Mr Buchanan? It’s so nice to see you again too. Isn’t it Liz?’ she asked sweetly, turning to her friend with an expectant air.

Liz managed not to do a double-take. Helen’s bad temper had vanished like snow off a wall. What was she up to? For his part, Adam Buchanan was now looking at Eddie, waiting for an introduction. Liz did the honours.