The Tangling of the Web (9 page)

Fearing that she had returned to the main house to inflict a fatal injury on Harry, they now sped back up the stairs into the living room only to find Sally’s coat and handbag were gone, as was Harry.

Scampering like a scared rabbit, Sally emerged into Easter Road when, as luck would have it, a taxi drew up to let a passenger alight. Before the driver could put up his flag to signal he was for hire, Sally was in the back of the cab. ‘Albyn Rooms in Queen Street, driver,’ Sally instructed before she was asked for a destination.

‘Sure they’ll have been locked up for hours.’

‘I’m not really going to the rooms. You see, I’ve been invited by the owner to her penthouse flat for a meeting.’

The driver found the explanation about a meeting at four o’clock in the morning a bit odd, but he pushed down the flag and drove off in the direction of Queen Street.

Having settled up with the taxi driver, Sally alighted from the taxi and she was just about to ring the bell when the door opened and a suave, debonair, titled gentleman who she recognised stepped out. Lifting his Anthony Eden hat to Sally, he said, ‘Lovely morning. Sun will soon be up, but not, I fear, dear Ginny if it is she you wish to visit.’

Making no comment, Sally crossed over the threshold and without an invitation she ran up the stairs and barged into the flat and then the master bedroom.

The banging of the door off the wall startled Ginny and she sprang up into a sitting position. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten something, Billy boy,’ she asked whilst drawing the bedcovers further up over herself. ‘I did warn you that I am happy to have you share a nightcap with me, but I never – ever – share my bed with any
married
man.’

‘That right?’ Sally sarcastically responded.

Ginny arose from the bed. ‘Thought I might get a visit from you,’ she said, lifting her dressing gown and enveloping herself in it before looking at the clock, ‘but not at this unearthly hour.

‘So the louse has told you,’ she said as she sat down on the edge of the bed.

‘If you mean he’s announced he’s about to leave me and sell my home from under my feet so that he can come to you with the necessary collateral, then …’

Uncontrollable laughter from Ginny stopped Sally from going on.

‘So you think it’s funny gutting another woman, do you?’

‘No, Sally, I don’t. And as to Harry … Well, he may be able to warble a good tune but not dulcet enough for me. You see, I do not wish to offend you, but I wouldn’t have an affair with your husband – he’s on the slide now and the next ring that goes on my finger will come along with pots of dough and maybe, not necessarily though, a title thrown in. Lady Ginny has a nice ring to it. Wouldn’t you say?’

Sally couldn’t say anything. Had she got it wrong again? Feeling quite faint, she slumped down on the bed beside Ginny. ‘But you were the one who grabbed him for the second dance and you knew he was coming for me. Do you realise how humiliated I felt when you did that?’

‘Believe me, if I’d let him take up that conniving cow … Humiliation – that can be coped with. But what both of them had planned for you was for the whole assembly to see you crushed and beaten.’ Shaking her head, Ginny then put her hand over Sally’s. ‘You had no idea?’

Drained Sally could only shake her head.

‘Didn’t you see what was going on under your nose?’ Ginny continued.

‘No. And even now I haven’t got a clue. I just know he’s leaving me for someone I counted as … a friend.’

‘Then think. Really think. Who was there?’

‘You, Josie, Flora … a-a-a-and …’ Sally paused before adding. ‘
Maggie
… Oh no,’ she sobbed, ‘not my bosom pal, Maggie!’

Ginny could only nod her head before saying, ‘None other than.’

‘But I am the only person who has ever given her the time of day. I felt sorry for her. I pitied her. I invited her into my home and made her welcome.’

‘And Jezebel that she is … she has repaid you by stealing your man.’

‘But if you knew all that, why did you give us the rooms and all we required for Margo’s wedding for just the cost of the food?’

‘Mistakenly, I thought that when you were all here as a family enjoying Margo’s wedding he would appreciate all that he had. Think twice about throwing away the gold and picking up the dross.’

Sally half turned herself towards Ginny. ‘You did all that for my family but mostly myself … Why?’

A long minute ticked by before Ginny replied, ‘Everybody thinks I have it all. Did have once,’ she chuckled. ‘But a blue-eyed blonde fourteen years younger than me with legs that went on forever came along and, bingo, she poached my preserve. Now I accept I was luckier than you because I got sympathy for being ousted by a nubile twenty-five-year-old, whereas …’ she stopped to pick her words carefully but decided that truth was best and added, ‘… you have had the added ignominy of being replaced by an ugly older bitch.’

Sally ignored Ginny’s truthful comments on Maggie. ‘But you seem,’ she began quietly, ‘to be quite wealthy and readjusted.’

‘Seem. And right enough I was astute enough to get a good settlement out of him, which I used to start up my businesses. But the blow to my confidence and esteem when he dumped me …’ She now patted her left shoulder, ‘still haunts me and is responsible for this big chip on my shoulder.’

Sally nodded. ‘I’m different from you. Any settlement I get will be needed for a deposit on a house – that’s if they now give mortgages to women. I have no talent for getting a business up and running.’ Sally looked at herself in the dressing table mirror. Nervously, she stoked her hair before saying, ‘I’m just about to say hello to my forties – so what have I got going for me?’

Ginny seemed deep in thought and Sally was surprised when she eventually said, ‘Look at the time. It’s nearly six o’clock.’ She arose from the bed before announcing, ‘It’s breakfast time. So how about you and I nipping up to the Caledonian Hotel to have a good old Scottish breakfast and then I’ll send you home in a taxi?’

‘I can’t. I’m too upset. You see, I don’t know what to do. Be reasonable, how can I eat bacon and eggs when I don’t know what’s going to happen to my children, Flora and Josie?’

‘Well, if you persist in feeling sorry for yourself they’ll end up in the gutter. But if you get up off your backside and start putting up a fight, and I’ll hold your coat while you’re doing it, you’ll be surprised at what a woman on her own can achieve.’

Sally arrived home just before lunch and when she entered the living room she was confronted by her broken-hearted daughter Helen, her irate son Bobby, her embarrassed mother-in-law and Josie, who was trying to give the impression that she had led a blameless life and therefore she’d felt gutted that Sally could think she would be the type of person who would lead on her sister’s man and break up her home.

Knowing that she owed a lot to Flora, Sally decided to speak to her first. ‘Look,
Mum,
’ she said, deliberately using the term ‘Mum’ with emphasis so Flora could be left in no doubt about how much she loved her. ‘It is true Harry has left us – all of us – and we must leave here.’ Sally’s eyes became moist and she looked around the room that had known all of them and their so many happy times. ‘However, don’t panic. Ginny Strang has spent time talking to me and if we all put our shoulder to the wheel we will survive.’

‘So you are not going to beg Dad to come back?’ whimpered Helen.

‘No she’s no,’ Bobby answered for her. ‘If he wants to leave us for a zombie then just leave him to it.’ He turned to directly face Sally. ‘And tell him, Mum, that when he wakes up one morning and finds out he’s made one hell’ova mistake no to knock on our door!’

This statement rattled Sally. She still loved Harry … still thought of him as her ever-loving husband and caring father of her children. But how could she say to everybody here that she knew that if he did ever knock on the door and ask her to take him back she would welcome him in? Deciding not to say any more on the subject, she changed the topic and lightly announced, ‘Good news is, we’ll all be moving back to Leith.’ Sally looked directly at Josie when she explained, ‘But we won’t all be living together. Josie, you’ll have a wee flat of your own, and Mum, you, the bairns and me will be together.’ They all looked from one to the other and were aghast when Sally concluded with, ‘And we won’t starve: you see, Ginny is going to train me and then give me a job as a barmaid!’

Later on when she was alone in the house, Sally congratulated herself on having everyone believe that she was able to sort things out and that they would all be going with her.

In truth, she was terrified of what life now held for her. The major problem wasn’t the fact she that she would be holding down a full-time job that she had no experience of. Sighing, she thought,
If only that was the major obstacle.
Reluctantly she acknowledged that what was really causing her intolerable anguish was her having to accept that she was now deprived of Harry’s love and companionship. Since she was just a strip of a girl of sixteen years, he had been her rock to cling to. Now she had been traded in for an older model. Gentle tears spilled down her face as she wished just to be able to touch his hand and drift off to sleep to the peaceful rhythm of his snoring.

In addition to her being deprived of him, there was the problem of taking Josie down into the heart of the seedier part of Leith. Josie was very fond of male company, but she had never been exposed to women who made a living from degrading themselves.

Getting on with life and dragging her children, Flora and Josie seemed to be too large a task for her right now. She concluded she needed to escape, like she had done as a child when life with her mother had been intolerable – flee back into her private dream world; however, this time not with a doting mother but with Harry.

Sally accepted that her function in life now was, or to be truthful would continue to be, looking after all those who needed her. Rising to make a cup tea, she closed her weary eyes when she passed the mirror – she just didn’t wish to see the fear and despair in them.

She had just sat down to enjoy the newly brewed tea when footsteps in the hall alerted her. Looking up expectantly, she was surprised when Harry, suitcase in hand, walked in.

Trying to keep her hopes from soaring, she looked at the suitcase and then Harry before sarcastically saying, ‘Don’t tell me you’ve come crawling back already?’

Harry let the case slip from his grip and as it hit the floor the hollow sound told her it was empty. ‘No. Just come for some more of my stuff. And to thank you,’ he replied in a voice laden with irony.

Taking another sip from her tea, Sally deliberately allowed time to tick by.

‘Yeah,’ Harry continued with a derisive grimace, ‘thank you for getting me the sack from the Albyn.’

‘What?’ Sally exclaimed. ‘If you did get your books the only one to blame is … yourself!’

Harry’s contemptuous laughter echoed throughout the room. ‘You know something, Sally, I never saw you for what you are until Maggie pointed it out to me.’

‘Oh, the gospel according to St Maggie is what straightened you out?’

‘Aye, and a good life the two of us are going to have. Two people who have been made mugs of starting to grab a life for themselves. Mind you, I have to hand it to you Sally, I never dreamt for a minute that the wee mouse that you portray yourself as could persuade a hard nut like Ginny to say goodbye to her Saturday night’s best advert. You must have something on her.’

‘Believe what you like, Harry. I don’t give a monkey’s uncle what you or Maggie think.’

‘Right. The only things left now to settle between us are my access to Helen and Bobby and getting the house up for sale.’

‘Thought you knew all about the house and it was all yours? You, like me, have seen a solicitor?’ she lied. He nodded. ‘Then you’ll know I am entitled to a half share. It’s funny how we never pay attention to laws being changed until it suits us. Thank goodness Ginny is up to the minute in the law. So that means I’ll be taking one month, and a calendar one at that, to move out, and it will be me who shows the house to prospective buyers.’ She paused before drawling, ‘As to Helen and Bobby, they have said they wished you were dead and they will not visit you and your ugly …’

‘Sally, you don’t get it, do you? Maggie may be plain to you, but I love her and to me she is not only beautiful inside but also outside.’

Exactly five days after her wedding, Margo bounced into the house. ‘Hello, Mum, I’m just back,’ she crooned, ‘but I just had to come and see Dad and you straight away. Have to thank you again for my wonderful day. Remember it? I sure will my whole life through.’

Sally silently agreed that it was a day that the whole family would forever remember – but for many different reasons. She didn’t wish to speak to her daughter because how could she tell her the truth about her father? Margo had always held him in such high regard – put him on a pedestal. Reluctantly, Sally acknowledged she would have to say something and she was surprised to hear herself ask, ‘Where’s Johnny?’

‘Sent him, I did, on to his mother with our luggage. Oh Mum, what a fantastic honeymoon I’ve had. And okay, it was only five days in a bed and breakfast in Dunbar, unlike Annie, whose Auntie June, another fishwife, paid for them to have a fortnight in Lloret de Mar, no less …’ Margo stopped to add emphasis, ‘… but
my
darling Johnny was so loving and attentive to me I forgot to be jealous of Annie. And I know how we feel about each other will last forever.’

Sally nodded before saying, in a fatigued, laden, uninterested voice, ‘Glad you had a good time, dear.’

Her mother’s lack of enthusiasm caused Margo to look questioningly not only at her mother, but also around the room. The floor in front of her was littered with packing cases and cardboard boxes. Her eyes then took in her grandmother, Flora, who was sitting in the corner carefully wrapping up Sally’s best china in newspapers.

‘Oh Mum, you and Dad are moving to a bigger house,’ Margo exclaimed. Thinking that her parents were buying a bigger house so they could take in Johnny and herself to live with them, she rattled on, ‘Isn’t that just so like my dad to go out of his way to keep us all together?’