When the Lights Come on Again (8 page)

‘I hate it,’ she said.

‘That’s a terrible thing to have to put up with,’ said Helen a quarter of an hour later as the two girls climbed the stairs from the platform at Singer station up to street level. Her voice was full of sympathy and righteous indignation. ‘Is there not anybody you can report him to?’

Liz sighed. ‘I tried telling Miss Gilchrist - she’s the boss’s secretary - when it first happened, but all she did was read me this lecture about girls having to be careful not to lead men on - as though I’d done anything of the sort!’

Her voice rose as she recalled the outrage she had felt at the time. The suggestion that she had encouraged Eric Mitchell in some way had been humiliating and hurtful.

She certainly didn’t flirt with him. She was too shy to flirt with anybody. She knew she was quite shapely, but she couldn’t help that. That was the way she was made, and she went out of her way not to wear clothes which emphasized her figure. Did she somehow sit or stand in the wrong way? Was that what Miss Gilchrist had meant?

‘Aye,’ said Helen. ‘They always try to blame the lassie, don’t they? Could you not change your job?’

‘Not really. Eric Mitchell’s in the same Orange Lodge as my father.’ Helen’s eyebrows went up at that, but she said nothing, and Liz went on. ‘He put in a good word for me to get the position - besides, it’s not that easy to find another job.’

She told Helen why, listing her unsuccessful attempts and the difficulties about getting a reference. ‘I don’t think I’m a very good shorthand-typist, anyway.’

‘Because your heart’s not in it?’ suggested Helen, for Liz had also confided her burning desire to become a nurse. Handing her ticket to the collector, Liz followed the other girl out of the station.

‘Well,’ said Helen, as they emerged on to Kilbowie Road, ‘I’ll say goodnight, then. I go up the way.’ She gestured with her hand in the direction of the Holy City. Built where Kilbowie Road gave way to Kilbowie Hill proper, the tenement terraces overlooked the sewing-machine factory and the rest of Clydebank. ‘It’s been nice talking to you,’ she said.

Liz blurted out a question. ‘D’you fancy going to the dancing together one night?’

Helen Gallagher looked suddenly awkward, her graceful poise and self-possession evaporating. Her nervous stammer had come back. ‘I d-don’t know. I’m n-not sure if my d-daddy w-would let me...’

‘What’s the matter? Is he scared you might get a lumber from a Proddy?’ asked Liz. Getting a lumber was the local slang for completing an evening by being walked home by a boy who hopefully then would ask you out on a proper date on a subsequent evening.

She smiled broadly at Helen. If a Catholic could happily use an insulting name for herself, then Liz was happy to match her with
Proddy
- though somehow it didn’t sound nearly so bad as
Fenian
.

‘I don’t suppose you’d fancy going to the flicks instead?’

‘That would be great,’ Liz said cheerfully. ‘Do you know what’s on at the end of the week?’

They made a date, wished each other goodnight, and went their separate ways. Walking down the road towards Queen Victoria Row - thank goodness the rain had finally stopped - Liz felt happier than she had in a long while.

She and Helen Gallagher had clicked. It was wonderful to have found someone she could talk to about Eric Mitchell. Confiding in her mother had always been out of the question. Like her brother, Liz tried not to burden Sadie with her problems. Their mother worried too much as it was.

As Liz crossed Dumbarton Road and walked past John Brown’s, an uncomfortable thought surfaced. If her father found out that her new friend was a Roman Catholic, she’d be for the high jump. Well, she’d have to make sure that he remained in blissful ignorance.

Six

‘Well, that was all very interesting.’

The girl sitting next to Liz didn’t look so sure. She was Janet Brown, who’d been in Eddie’s class at school. They’d just had their first lecture on the effects of poison gas and how to deal with an attack of it.

‘I don’t know,’ said Janet slowly. She gave a little shudder of distaste before walking over with Liz to the long trestle tables at the back of the hall where they got their tea and biscuits midway through the evening.

‘All that stuff about how the gas gets into your body. It’s a bit frightening.’ She handed Liz a cup of tea, her face troubled. ‘D’you no’ think so, Liz?’

The lecturer had gone into some detail about the effects of poison gas: how it attacked the eyes, the ears, the throat, the skin. Everybody knew of the horrors of its use in the Great War. Nobody who’d seen films or photographs of soldiers blinded by mustard gas could ever forget them.

Liz squared her shoulders. She and Helen were only a few weeks into their probationary period with the Red Cross. They couldn’t afford to give the impression that they were too young to cope with all the grisly details. Besides, Janet was looking really worried. Agreeing with her wasn’t going to make her feel any better.

‘Och, yes,’ she said, ‘it does give you a bit of a thought, but look at it this way, Janet. At least we’re being trained how to deal with it. We’ll be able to help ourselves - and other folk. And didn’t the speaker say that the government’s planning to issue protective masks to everybody?’

‘Oh, aye,’ said Janet. The lines on her forehead smoothed out. “That’s true. I suppose you’re right, Liz.’

The lecturer had shown them drawings of the masks, emphasizing how important it was that the straps which held them in place should be fastened very tightly to keep the gas out. How effective they were really going to be was another matter, one on which Eddie had already offered his opinion.

He and Liz had agreed to make up their quarrel. He had approached her first, pointing out how upset their mother-was about their disagreement. For exactly the same reason, Liz had been on the point of saying something to him. So they had shaken hands on it and agreed to disagree as amicably as possible.

The government was using psychology, he declared, promising the distribution of gas masks to keep folk busy and make them think there was some way they could protect themselves if the threatened war did come. When it came to offering protection from mustard gas, Eddie maintained, the psychology became kidology. No gas masks issued to civilians were going to be any good at keeping that out.

In any case, he’d gone on cheerfully, it wasn’t going to be much use sitting there wearing your wee gas mask if a dirty great German bomb fell on your head ... but Liz wasn’t going to repeat that particular comment to Janet.

She laid a comforting hand on the other girl’s arm.

‘Maybe it won’t come to that. We’re not at war yet, are we? Perhaps the statesmen can sort it all out.’

She only wished she could believe that herself.

‘But are you really not going to get married, Liz? Not ever?’

Liz flicked back a wayward strand of brown hair before she answered Helen’s question. They were sitting opposite each other in the small tearoom near Singer’s station to which they had got into the habit of repairing after their class.

She had dealt with the problem of her father’s disapproval by simply not telling him what she was doing on a Tuesday evening. She was getting away with it because William MacMillan was so regular in his habits.

Coming home from his own night out, he pushed open his front gate at exactly twenty-five past ten. You could set your watch by him. Sadie MacMillan did, timing her husband’s supper of tea and cheese on toast for exactly half past, giving him five minutes to get in, hang up his coat and wash his hands.

Their father’s precision had always given Liz and Eddie a private chuckle, but now she was grateful for it. The Red Cross class finished at half past nine, which gave her time to have a cup of tea and a chat with Helen and still be safely home a quarter of an hour before her father.

‘Och, maybe when I’m really ancient,’ Liz conceded, with all the insouciance of a young woman not long past her eighteenth birthday. ‘When I’m about thirty-five or something.’

She lifted her cup and took a sip of tea. ‘But only if Robert Donat or Cary Grant are available. Or maybe James Stewart,’ she added, placing the cup back in its saucer and giving every appearance of considering the matter seriously. ‘I quite like him.’

‘Well, Robert Donat will be ancient himself by then,’ Helen pointed out. ‘And I think Cary and James are probably spoken for.’ She gestured towards the door of the tearoom. ‘Added to which, the chances of you bumping into any of them out there on Kilbowie Road are no’ all that high.’

‘No bother,’ said Liz confidently. ‘I’ll be a sister at the Western Infirmary by then - maybe even the matron. Cary Grant’ll be visiting Glasgow to open some big new picture house and he’ll fall ill with an exotic ailment—’

‘Which only you can cure?’ suggested Helen.

‘Aye,’ said Liz, nodding her head enthusiastically. ‘Or maybe he’ll be injured heroically saving some child in the crowd from going under the wheels of a tram—’

‘And you’ll patch him up and nurse him back to health, and he’ll be so smitten that he’ll whisk you back off to a life of luxury in Hollywood. By which time, of course, you’ll have done your best work and found a cure for various dreadful diseases which have afflicted mankind for centuries and people will be calling you the Florence Nightingale of Clydebank.’

Picking up the last tiny morsel of her Tunnock’s caramel wafer, Helen popped it into her mouth. Then she wet her index finger and dabbed it over the wrapper to get any last crumbs. She had a tendency to eat treats slowly and with great delicacy because, Liz assumed, she didn’t get very many of them.

As she’d suspected when she first met Helen, the Gallagher family were as poor as church mice. Her father Brendan and her three grown-up brothers were casual labourers, taking work as and when they could get it. Along with her younger brother Dominic and her mother Marie, the whole family lived crammed into a two-apartment house in the Holy City tenements.

Having finished her biscuit at last, Helen spoke again. ‘They’ll probably put up a statue to you on the pavement in front of the town hall.’

‘That’s it,’ said Liz. ‘Do you doubt it?’

‘Not a bit,’ Helen said stoutly. Then, lifting her hand from the biscuit wrapper and holding it palm downwards, above the table, she rocked it from side to side in a balancing gesture. ‘Well ... there’s maybe a few details that don’t quite add up...’

They grinned at each other. A few short weeks after their first meeting they had become firm friends, close enough to trade the occasional amiable insult - and a great many confidences.

They had learned the hard way to be careful about two subjects: religion and politics. Helen’s church was very important to her. She had little interest in politics, and disapproved of extremes in either direction. However, she did have a strong sense of justice and, like Liz, she hated unfairness with a passion.

They talked about silly things too. That was what Liz liked most about her friendship with Helen. They could be having a great serious discussion one minute and the next they’d be on to the latest fashions. Liz had always enjoyed talking with her grandfather and Eddie, but neither of them was much good on what length skirts were going to be next season.

Taking a final sip of tea, Helen pushed her cup and saucer away and fixed Liz with her cornflower-blue eyes. The picture of innocence. Liz pursed her lips and returned the look with a wary one of her own. Miss Gallagher was up to something.

‘Seen Mrs Buchanan’s wee boy recently?’

‘Who?’

‘Come off it, MacMillan,’ said Helen robustly. ‘And while you’re at it, pull the other one. It’s got bells on. You liked him. You know you did.’

‘He was all right,’ conceded Liz, ‘but we don’t exactly move in the same circles. Do we?’

‘I don’t know about that. We see quite a lot of his mother.’