When the Lights Come on Again (5 page)

Liz looked up. She said the words out loud, her voice high and breathless.

‘Nursing auxiliaries?’

Peter MacMillan gestured excitedly towards the newspaper. ‘Read on,’ he said. ‘You haven’t got to the best bit yet.’

Impatient, he snatched it from her hands and read the article out loud to her.

‘While VAD nursing assistants may be sought on a full-time basis if the crisis continues to worsen, the organization will also be happy to hear from girls and women who would be able to make their contribution on a weekend or evening basis, thus combining this valuable work with their domestic duties or existing employment responsibilities. The Red Cross will shortly be establishing an intensive programme of first-aid classes to which both sexes will be warmly welcomed. Initially, all those interested in becoming nursing auxiliaries should enrol for these classes.

‘There,’ he said triumphantly, folding the newspaper and tucking it under his arm. ‘What do you think of that?’

‘I think it’s the answer to a prayer,’ breathed Liz, hardly daring to believe her eyes and ears. Peter beamed at her and they began to walk together along the pavement, chattering excitedly.

‘It would be great experience,’ she said, ‘until I’m old enough to apply to the Infirmary again.’

Peter nodded enthusiastically. ‘Aye. They’d surely snap you up if you already had three years’ experience with the Red Cross.’ He handed her the roughly folded newspaper. ‘Take it home with you, lass. There’s something about a recruitment session one night next week up in Glasgow—’ He broke off. They were getting close to Queen Victoria Row.

‘I’d better not come any further with you, hen.’ His gaze went over her head. ‘I’d like fine to have popped in to see Sadie...’

His voice trailed off and he sighed. ‘But it wouldn’t do to be caught committing the unforgivable sin of talking to my own granddaughter in the street,’ he said wryly. He sketched her a very passable bow. ‘And now, like the great Houdini, I disappear.’

Liz grinned at his departing back. He was a hoot, he really was. Whatever would she do without him?

Once her father was safely out at an Orange Lodge meeting that evening, Liz spread the newspaper over the kitchen table and read the article out loud to her mother and Eddie. Her voice grew warm with excitement as she read it for a second time and the details began to sink in. This was a real possibility.

With growing excitement she read of plans to pay full-time VAD nurses a wage if the international situation continued to deteriorate. During the Great War they’d all been volunteers. If that worked out, she might manage to get away from Murray’s sooner rather than later. Her first step was obviously to enrol for the first-aid classes.

The recruitment evening for those was to take place in a church hall in Glasgow on the following Tuesday - thankfully another evening when her father was out regularly. If the classes were also on a Tuesday she was in clover.

Lifting her head from the paper, Liz saw her mother regarding her with a worried frown. No prizes for guessing why. Suppressing her irritation at how her father managed to dominate his wife even when he wasn’t there, she set about reassuring her.

‘He can’t object to me doing a class, Ma. Surely. I do other night classes, after all, and he’s never said anything about them.’

‘I don’t know, Lizzie,’ said her mother nervously. ‘He might think you were trying to get round him, do what he forbade you to do.’

‘Forbade me?’

The MacMillan family seemed to be living not only in a street named after the old Queen, but also during her reign. Liz turned eagerly to Eddie. He would back her up.

‘You can’t be serious, Liz.’ The words were clipped, his voice harsh.

‘Why not?’ she asked, genuinely puzzled by his reaction. He’d always been her champion and he knew better than anybody how devastated she’d been by their father’s ban on her going for the interview at the Infirmary.

‘Don’t you see, Eddie?’ she asked. ‘This would let me start nursing almost straightaway - well, it’s not quite nursing, but I’d be learning about first aid and there’s the possibility of becoming a part-time auxiliary—’

He interrupted her. ‘Don’t
you
see what this is all about, Liz? It’s all part of getting ready for war - and the more we do that, the more likely it is that we will go to war. We’ll be sucked into it.’

He rose to his feet, pushing his chair back with a loud scrape. The strength of his feelings clearly required movement. He strode about the kitchen as he made his points, gesturing wildly at the newspaper lying open on the table in front of Liz.

‘That,’ he began. ‘All of that. Everything that you read in the capitalist press. It’s designed to create the war mentality—’

‘Eddie,’ said Liz, beginning to get angry herself, ‘we’re talking about the Red Cross. You know? The organization that helps alleviate the sufferings of war? Do you know what VAD nurses did during the Great War? They worked at the front, in field hospitals, tending the wounded.’

Eddie snorted.

‘The vastly overprivileged daughters of the bourgeoisie and the upper classes playing at being Nursie?’

Liz lifted her chin, infuriated by that sneering response. Sitting beside her at the table, Sadie had gone very still. She hated arguments, especially on the rare occasions when they broke out between her children, but Liz was too angry now to consider her mother’s feelings.

‘Don’t talk rubbish, Eddie,’ she snapped. ‘If there’s going to be a war, there’s going to be a war. Nothing you or I do is going to make a blind bit of difference. And if it’s coming anyway, wouldn’t it be better to get ready for it?’

He stopped pacing, came forward and gripped the back of his empty chair. ‘Liz, for God’s sake! I never thought you were that stupid!’

Bristling, Liz sat up straight, more than ready to retaliate. Eddie, however, was in full flow. Taking one hand off the back of the chair he pointed once more at the newspaper.

‘That article’s appealing to naïve, idealistic girls like you who can’t see that it’s all designed to put the whole country - and the economy - on a war footing. People say we’re pulling ourselves out of the Depression. D’you know how we’re doing that?’ he demanded.

He answered his own question. ‘By gearing up for war, that’s how. Factories and businesses - and hospitals. If you join the Red Cross you’ll be part of the capitalist war machine too!’

That one took the biscuit.

‘That, Edward MacMillan, is the biggest load of—’

Seeing her mother’s shocked face, Liz stopped herself just in time. She flung Eddie’s words back at him. ‘So I’m naïve, am I? Idealistic too? Well, pardon me for breathing. I didn’t realize either of those were hanging offences!’

‘Och, Liz, you don’t understand!’ He gripped the back of the chair with both hands and looked down at her despairingly.

Her eyes flashing green fire, Liz lifted her face to him. ‘And you do, I suppose!’

Abruptly, Eddie folded his arms across his chest, his demeanour all at once much calmer. Frighteningly calm.

‘I’ve studied history,’ he said. ‘Politics too. I know how things happen. History repeats itself. All the time.’

Liz felt a tightness in her chest. The constriction rose into her throat and her head swam briefly. Shaking it to clear away the feeling, she met Eddie’s eyes. Then looked away again. Continuing this argument wasn’t going to get them anywhere - apart from upsetting Ma.

‘I think we’ll have to agree to disagree, Eddie.’

‘You think so?’ he asked stiffly. However, when Liz made an almost imperceptible movement of her eyes towards their mother, she saw by the answering flicker that he had caught the unspoken message.

‘Aye,’ he said, unfolding his arms, pulling out his chair and sitting down at the table. ‘You’re right. There’s obviously not much point in continuing the discussion.’ He put a smile on his face and turned to Sadie.

‘Shall we have another cup of tea, Ma?’

Four

In the middle of the following Tuesday afternoon, Miss Gilchrist sent Liz out on an errand. The office boy was off somewhere else, and there was an urgent letter to be delivered to Murray’s solicitors, who had offices further along the river towards Glasgow city centre.

Liz was glad of the break: to get away from Eric Mitchell’s leers, because the office was hot and sticky and because she had a decision to make. Tonight was the enrolment evening for the first-aid classes.

She had robustly defended the Red Cross to Eddie, but she had thought a lot about the points he had made. Could he possibly be right? Were they rushing pell-mell towards war, carried along by the sheer momentum of the thing?

There was a kind of terrible drama about it all which was almost exciting, and her chances of becoming a full-time auxiliary nurse were all tied up with the possibility of war. Did that make her a warmonger?

Walking along towards Jamaica Street Bridge, enjoying the breeze coming off the Clyde, Liz lifted her chin in defiance of that accusation. No, it damn well didn’t. Of course she didn’t want there to be a war, and she really couldn’t believe that her joining the Red Cross was going to influence things one way or the other. That was a stupid argument - and she would tell Eddie so ... as soon as they were speaking to each other again.

Stopping to cross the road, she glanced at the newspaper vendor who had his pitch at the junction where the Broomielaw gave way to Clyde Street. There was a poster on his stand.
Another Spanish city suffers aerial bombardment. Pictures.

Liz wondered who went to the aid of the injured and the survivors there: the Spanish Red Cross, she supposed.

She delivered the letter and stood for a moment on the stone steps of the lawyer’s office. The imposing entrance doorway was flanked by two huge stone figures, their limbs clothed in the garb of Ancient Greece. Their mighty heads bowed, they each supported a globe on their broad shoulders. That reminded Liz of her grandfather’s strongly voiced belief that Adolf Hitler wanted to rule the world.

She gazed out across the busy street to the river and the houses beyond it. There was a dirty big grey cloud hanging over the Gorbals. Good. A downpour was exactly what this oppressively hot day needed. She made her way down on to the pavement.

How would she feel if the bombs were raining down on Clydebank? What would she do if it was her own home town which was suffering?

Her shorthand and typing skills wouldn’t be much use then.
Let me through, I’m a stenographer. I can take dictation at eighty words per minute and sometimes I can even manage to read it back again afterwards.
No, she didn’t think so.

Eddie was going to accuse her of being part of the capitalist war machine once a day and three times on Sundays. Liz tossed her head, her generous mouth curving in reluctant amusement. A man walking past in the opposite direction threw her an admiring glance and tipped his hat. She didn’t notice him. Me and Adolf, she was thinking. Both of us out to rule the world.

She couldn’t believe it After all it had taken her to get here, the effort, the soul-searching, the sheer trouble it might be going to cause at home, and between her and Eddie, the woman sitting in front of her was telling her that she was too young to join the Red Cross.

‘But I’m eighteen,’ she said, quite consciously squaring her shoulders and drawing herself up to her full five foot six. Sometimes Liz found her few extra inches a problem. She was taller than most women she knew - and a good few of the men.

Tonight she was glad of her height - anything which would help impress the imposing-looking woman sitting behind a table in a draughty church hall at the top of Buchanan Street in Glasgow.

Pen poised over a list, she looked up at Liz, her eyes narrowing. She was middle-aged, beautifully dressed and formidably elegant, her smooth blonde hair swept back into a French roll.