Authors: Millie Gray
The sight that greeted her of her sleeping daughter and Hans lying entwined under the blush-pink eiderdown caused her to cry out. ‘Kate, Kate, what is that man doing in your bed?’
Kate sat bolt upright. She then looked down at slumbering Hans’s contented face and she smiled sweetly before replying, ‘Sleeping, Mum. Just sleeping.’
‘I can bloody well see that he is sleeping, Kate. But has he done anything else but shut his eyes since you let him into your … bed?’
Kate giggled. ‘Mum, next week it will be 1944 and I am forty-three and as we all might not see tomorrow, Hans and I have decided to be together.’
‘Be together? He’s … he’s … he’s a Polish refugee and worse still he’s only a lowly porter.’
Kate was now out of bed and Hans was wide awake. ‘Hans dear, I’m just going downstairs to talk to my mum. Now you get dressed, at your leisure, and I will have some tea and toast ready for you when you come down.’
‘Tea and toast!’ Jenny exploded. ‘I would have thought with what he has had in here tonight he wouldn’t be requiring anything else but forgiveness. Fornication, Kate, in case you have forgotten, is a sin!’
Kate and Jenny were now back down in the living room and Kate could not resist giving the clock another loving pat. ‘You were saying, Mum, that he is only a porter. Think you might be wrong there. I mean, how many lowly porters do you know that are as skilled as my Hans?’
Time slowly ticked by. Jenny tried to think of an appropriate answer to Kate. None was forthcoming. ‘This has been some night,’ she eventually sulked. ‘Sodom and Gomorrah is what Leith has become.’
Kate dissolved into laughter. ‘Sodom and Gomorrah! And how do you come to that conclusion?’
‘Unlike you, I don’t think any of what I found out tonight … to be funny.’
‘Like what?’
‘Connie not being what she seems.’ Jenny was quite animated now. ‘And she could be … Worse still I then came home to find you, my daughter, shacked up with a Pole.’ She paused to take in a breath. ‘And when I think back to last September, which I really don’t wish to do, and all that was going on in Leith Links, I am convinced that …’ Jenny now drew herself up before whimpering, ‘Kate, with all this … this … God-forbidding sex going on I honestly believe that everybody now thinks that the continuation of the human race depends on it!’
* * *
Times were hard. Everything from food and clothes to coal and even adequate housing were scarce, yet somehow Santa Claus managed to still get through with presents for the children.
At five o’clock on Christmas morning the Anderson household was awakened by Rosebud shouting, ‘Dad, Kitty, Jack, Davy, Bobby, he’s been! I’ve got a doll and a pram to push it in. There’s also an apple … a rosy apple and a Mars Bar!’
Johnny groaned and rolled over in his bed. He was tempted to fall back into enjoying a long-overdue restful lie-in – that was until he remembered he was Rosebud’s daddy and he should be up and spending time with her.
On the other hand it took Rosebud hauling the bedcovers off Kitty to get her to rouse.
Sleepy Kitty squinted at her old grey metal alarm clock. ‘Oooh,’ she groaned, ‘it’s not even six o’clock, my usual time for getting up. Rosebud,’ she continued, ‘don’t you remember that I said to you that we were all supposed to have a long lie-in this morning?’
Kitty’s plea to Rosebud was ignored. For the next half hour Rosebud pushed and shoved the second-hand refurbished pram up and down the hallway – at least twenty times. Whilst she was doing that she also dangled the doll by the arm, leg or upside down … anyway at all except how you would expect to see a precious baby handled. Its clothes also had been on and off so often that they now required washing. Naturally the Mars Bar had been scoffed but when it came to eating her porridge, which Kitty had got out of her bed to make, Rosebud wasn’t hungry. It was then she said, ‘I wonder if Connie is up and if she would like a shot of my pram?’
Kitty glanced at the clock; it was now just past six. ‘Well, Connie will be up because she’s on an early shift this morning so let’s you and I go over and give her a peek at your new doll.’
The pram had been banged into Connie’s door at least three times but there was no response from the house. Kitty became wary because Connie had been so sick and upset yesterday. She decided then to go back to her own flat and get Connie’s house key.
Opening up the door Kitty shouted, ‘Connie, Connie, nothing to worry about, it’s only me, Kitty.’
There was no response. In fact it appeared to Kitty that there was a creeping feeling of unease in the house. Firstly she told Rosebud to go back and get Johnny, then she went from room to room looking for Connie but there was no one at home. Going back into the living room her apprehension mounted. Connie’s work clothes were hung on a chair by the fireside. This meant that wherever Connie was she was not at home, nor was she going out to work.
When Johnny joined Kitty he asked, ‘Where is she?’
Kitty shrugged. ‘She was a bit queasy yesterday but that wouldn’t explain where she has got to now. In an hour or so if she hasn’t come back I’ll ask Dora or Mrs Dickson … That’s it – Mrs Dickson will know where she is.’
Bounding down the stairs Kitty then rattled Mrs Dickson’s door handle before going into the house. She knew the old lady would be awake but not out of her bed yet. ‘Mrs Dickson,’ she called into the bedroom, ‘it’s me, Kitty. I’m just wondering if you know where Connie is.’
‘No,’ replied the old woman as she struggled up to a sitting position in the bed. ‘Something funny happened last night but I can’t remember what it was now. Think I’m getting the old folks’ disease. But ask Dora, she knows everything. Honestly if I sneeze twice she’s in here with a hanky.’
Kitty decided that it was too early to knock up Dora and she was just about to go back upstairs when she heard whoops of joy coming out of Dora’s house. Chapping the door she called, ‘Dora, Dora, can I ask you something?’
Eventually the door was slowly opened by Dora who was dressed in a voluminous nightgown that Kitty was sure must have at one time belonged to Queen Victoria. ‘Is there a problem, hen?’
‘Not really a problem, Dora. It’s just that I can’t find Connie. Do you have any idea where she might be?’
Dora scowled. ‘Not really, but a queer thing happened last night. You see I had just got all the Santa stuff sorted out and was getting into bed when I heard the stair door shut then a car or a taxi take off. Now that is unusual for around here.’
‘You think so?’ replied Kitty, who was deep in thought.
‘Aye, hen, I do. You see there are plenty of bikes and a few number thirteen buses that go up and down the outside road, but cars … well they’re for toffs and that’s no any of us, is it?’ Dora shook her head from side to side as the mystery of what had happened to Connie got to her too.
After Christmas, the next six days leading up to Hogmanay were spent with everybody wondering what had become of Connie.
Thankfully, on 31 December Kitty got a letter with a Whitburn, West Lothian, postmark. Ripping open the envelope, she was surprised to find it was from Connie. In the short communication, Connie briefly pointed out that she had had to go urgently to Glasgow to deal with an unexpected matter. Once she had got things sorted out in Glasgow she had then transferred herself to Whitburn where she had been born and raised. She then indicated that it was important, very important, that what had taken place in Glasgow should be laid to rest in Whitburn. When this was done she would then come home. In the meantime, could Kitty get her dad to speak to the managers at Robb’s and explain she had been called away suddenly but that she would be back to take up her duties again on 5 January. She closed by wishing everybody a very happy New Year.
Kitty, who had felt all week that Dora knew something about Connie that she did not, was even more put out when, after reading Connie’s letter, Dora said, ‘Aye, it all figures. Poor lassie. What a thing to have on your conscience.’
Hogmanay was a hard day for Kitty. She knew, because her mother and granny had drummed it into her, that if a house was not spick and span, coal burning brightly in the hearth and food and drink available when the bells rang and the tall, dark and handsome man ‘first foot’ arrived, then bad luck would follow the household for the whole year. Terrified of inviting this curse into her home, Kitty had spent the whole day cleaning the house from top to bottom and cooking. By eleven o’clock at night all she still had to do was put the glowing hot ashes from the louping fire into the outside ashcan before the bells.
She heaved a deep sigh as she remembered the problems she had had with the food. This was because the days of the mandatory red salmon sandwiches for New Year visitors were long gone. Unfortunately, they would not return until after the war when shipments of the tinned fish would start to come in again from Canada. Another problem, one that she had not anticipated, was that with Connie still at large there was no black-market butter to make scrumptious shortbread. Kitty had tried her best with Stork unsalted margarine but, when she sampled it, she knew it lacked the luxury flavour that butter would have given it. On the bright side she had managed to get a large tub of Cairn the butcher’s potted meat for the sandwiches. This delicacy, in everybody’s opinion – in Restalrig anyway – was to die for. Kitty herself just couldn’t believe how Mr Cairns got it to taste like roast beef.
All the shipyards in Leith had closed a couple of hours early on Hogmanay because there now was a growing belief that the war would soon be over and that the allies would emerge victorious.
Johnny and Jock were sitting nursing their second pint in their favourite watering hole when Johnny wiped the froth from his mouth with the back of his hand before announcing, ‘Aye, next year is going to be some year, Jock.’
Jock nodded and replied, ‘Aye, I think so too, son.’
‘Mind you, the main obstacle will be the invasion of Europe.’
‘You’re right there.’
‘Don’t suppose you have any idea of when, where and with what they will do it?’
Jock shook his head. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. Mind you, I don’t think wee Monty, who don’t forget sorted out Rommel’s hash in …’ Jock hesitated as he tried to remember the exact date and place.
‘October 1942, Jock, at El Alamein, it was.’
‘Aye, that’s right, Johnny lad, and do you know that was when the tide in this war turned. But that will make no difference, you mark my words. Oh aye, that Eisenhower, the big American bloke with the even bigger ego, will get overall command when the big push does come in Europe.’
‘Talking of the push, will they big concrete things, that seem to get bigger every day, have anything to do with the invasion?’
‘Big concrete things?’ Jock mused.
‘Aye, the massive ugly building-like things that are standing in the water at western corner …’
‘Do you mean they big prefabricated sections that are sitting in the big launching lagoon?’
‘Aye.’
‘Dinnae ken what they’re for … just ken they’re top secret. And, before you ask again, I really don’t know. I was only told that they are vital to the war effort and that we had to give priority to building these sections because they will eventually be married up with other bits being built on the Clyde.’
‘Hmmm,’ was all Johnny replied.
‘But what I do know,’ Jock whispered, leaning forward towards Johnny, ‘is that you shouldn’t be asking all these questions. Sure you go on too much about things that are no for eating. Honestly I am beginning to think that you’re some sort of double agent.’
‘Look, I only asked what they prefabricated buildings that we’ve spent so much time banging the gither are for.’
‘Best finish our pints and get ourselves home.’
‘Aye, but if we want to walk in on the first chime of the New Year how about we go and have a sit-in fish tea in the chippie up the road?’
‘See, is that no what I’ve just been saying that when you talk about food you keep yourself out of trouble.’
By the time Johnny got himself home his sons Jack and Davy, along with their pals – and thankfully Colin, Jack’s best mate, who was tall and dark – had been the house’s first foot.
Johnny immediately took himself into the kitchen where Kitty was making a pot of tea just in case any guests were teetotal. ‘Happy New Year, darling,’ Johnny chuckled before hugging Kitty tightly. ‘And I hope it is a good one for you.’
Extricating herself from her father’s embrace and lifting her sherry glass, Kitty sighed, ‘You know, Dad, I do so miss Connie. So how about you get yourself a dram from off the table there and we toast her good health.’ Both now had their glasses raised and Kitty continued, ‘Here’s to you, Connie, and thank you for helping me get through these last few years and whatever it is that took you away I hope you’ve got it sorted out now and you’re getting yourself back to us.’
Johnny nodded. ‘Aye, and I also say hurry back, lassie, because not only do Kitty and Rosebud miss you, but so do I.’
The SMT bus had just revved up and then sped out of Whitburn on Sunday 4 January 1944 when Connie accepted that she had to pass an hour before it would drop her off in St Andrew Square.
They were barely away from Whitburn’s Cross when the conductress relieved her of a bob for a single to Edinburgh. It was then that Connie snuggled down in her seat and for the first fifteen minutes, as they had called in at Blackburn, the old Livingston village, then on to the Calders, she tried hard not to think about anything except these places that had been so important to her in her childhood. Mid Calder was receding from view and she could do nothing other than go over the events of the last ten days.
These happenings she knew could alter her whole life and the very way she looked at it. To be truthful, it had been such an earth-shattering shock for her to accept the fate that had befallen her. As Sighthill loomed over the horizon she inhaled deeply, trying to convince herself that the decisions she had come to and what she had done, and would do, were the right things to do. Some would say that she should have heeded the teachings of the Bible. She shrugged. They could say that, but they didn’t have to live with her conscience; she did.