Chasing Angels (11 page)

‘Where dae ye think you’re goin’, lady?’ Mrs Smith demanded.

‘Ah’m off,
Miss
Smith,’ Kathy replied calmly.

Mrs Smith bounded across the workroom and grabbed her by the arm, propelling her back to her stool. ‘You’ll sit oan your arse!’ she shouted.

Kathy said nothing. Leaning forward she lifted a pot of thick, brown glue from the table, turned to where Mrs Smith was still holding her by the arm, and slowly poured the glue over her head.
There wasn’t a movement or a sound in the room as the women watched the glue coating Mrs Smith’s carefully coiffed hair, then run over her glasses to her face before dripping down her
cardigan in thick, brown stripes. Then an intake of breath broke the silence, closely followed by Mrs Smith’s screams of rage. Her hands flew to her perfect hair, which lifted off her head;
she had been wearing a wig. Kathy wondered in a detached way if there was anything real about the woman; would she claw at her now two-tone cardigan and blouse to reveal a robot underneath? Mrs
Smith lifted a pair of scissors from the workbench and came at her, screeching like a banshee, but Kathy sidestepped the assault and neatly put her foot out, tripping her, so that she landed in a
heap on the floor and lay yelling on her back. Before she could get up again, Kathy put her foot on top of the older woman’s stomach and pressed hard enough to discourage her. ‘If you
know whit’s good for ye, ye’ll stay there, ya miserable auld bitch!’ she said very quietly. She reached for another pot of glue. ‘Wan move, wan merr noise oota ye, an’
ye’ll be drinkin’ this!’ She moved the pot menacingly in the direction of Mrs Smith’s mouth, and smiled as it was promptly shut. ‘Right, fine,’ she said
brightly, smiling at the other women, all of them standing back, their eyes wide with shock. ‘Ah’ll be off now,’ she said conversationally. ‘Y’know, if wan o’
youse lot had had the guts tae take her oan years ago, ye wouldnae have hadtae put up wi’ a’ this –’ she threw her arms wide to take in the workroom and Mrs Smith, the glue
pot still in her hand, and the glue from the pot flew out, landing in a long, lazy arc against the wall, ‘a’ this
shite!
Ye should think black burnin’ shame o’
yersel’s that she’s been treatin’ ye a’ like this, ye deserve everythin’ ye got, every wanno ye!’ And with that she removed her foot from Mrs Smith’s
stomach, carefully replaced the glue pot on the table, and walked out, never to return.

At the Employment Exchange the following day she was asked why she had left Hodge’s. She said the smell of glue made her sick and was immediately sent after a job in Wilson’s
chemist’s shop in Govan, across from Fairfield’s shipyard, which she got. The staff were all female, apart from the two pharmacists, a pleasant man of about sixty, Mr Liddell, whom she
liked, and another in his thirties, Mr Dewar, who regarded himself as a cut above everyone else. The women were addressed by their Christian names regardless of age, while the two pharmacists were
‘Mr Liddell’ and ‘Mr Dewar’ to the women, and Desmond and Nigel to each other. Mr Liddell was very tall and slim, with what was left of his white hair carefully slicked down
with Brylcreem, which he bought every week with his staff discount. Looking up at him from below, as everyone had to, there was an illusion of his body gradually tapering to a point, with the sheen
of the Brylcreem adding to the way the light reflected off his shiny bald head beyond. A little way short of that he had horn-rimmed, half-moon specs perched on a long sharp nose, with a little
bump at the end that seemed to have been put there specifically to keep his glasses in place. He wore a white coat at all times and was polite but distant, and he gave the impression of being a man
serving out his last few years before retirement, keeping his head down and putting in the time, all the while discreetly itching to be gone to the little boat he kept off Largs and sailed whenever
he had a free moment. It was his idea that Kathy should become a trainee dispenser in the little pharmacy, filling prescriptions that then had to be checked by whichever pharmacist was on duty. She
was aware that Nigel Dewar checked everything she did with what seemed like undue thoroughness, and she felt slightly uneasy with him. He moved around the pharmacy and the outer shop with a kind of
deliberate energy, as though now that he was here, everything would work as it should. He was a small man with a ferretlike face, receding mousy hair and a wispy goatee beard and moustache, and he
had a liking for wearing corduroy; he seemed to have trousers and jackets in every colour. Everything about him seemed to have been carefully and precisely worked out to convey some picture of
perfection he held in his mind of what a wonderfully offbeat character he was, from his velvet waistcoats, his collection of bow ties, the ever-present desert boots, and the contrived way what was
left of his hair was carefully arranged to fall over his brow. For some reason he thought it added to his self-constructed eccentricity that he drove an elderly red BMW that was forever breaking
down and was his pride and joy. Pompous, that was the description of him that came most easily to mind, and she disliked him on the spot. She noticed the way he always seemed to undermine Mr
Liddell in very subtle ways, and his almost imperceptible impatience with the older man, even in front of others. He didn’t ever say anything out loud, but he treated Mr Liddell with an
exaggerated deference that the older man didn’t seek, somehow calculated to give the impression that he did.

His great collaborator in the shop was Ida Stewart, a woman in her late fifties who had worked at Wilson’s for many years, and Kathy was sure that she wasn’t the only one who caught
the little sarcastic, amused ‘what can you do with him?’ looks concerning Mr Liddell that passed between them. Though Ida was on her feet all day she wore stiletto heels, if not the
kind Jessie wore with such aplomb, and her girlishly golden hair was piled high on her head in an impossible confection of curls, framing a too perfectly made-up face. She was forever nipping to
the loo to refurbish the overall effect, and seemed to spend most of her wages, albeit with her staff discount, on the latest cream guaranteeing to reduce wrinkles, or make-up claiming to disguise
them. She was clearly enamoured of the much younger Mr Dewar in an oddly coquettish kind of way, forever smiling overmuch when she spoke to him, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushing with
pleasure when he spoke to her. Kathy could imagine her going home and mentally replaying her conversations with the bearded one over and over again till they were permanently committed to memory.
It wasn’t so much a sexual attraction to the man as to his lofty position as pharmacist, an expression of Ida’s lack of self-esteem. She was flattered by being on close terms with
someone she saw as an educated, important man, even if she had to call him Mr Dewar while he called her Ida, and she protected her association with him, deliberately placing herself between him and
any of the other women he had cause to speak to. But mostly he spoke to Ida, and Kathy formed the opinion that Ida kept Mr Dewar fully informed of everything that happened in the shop, and she felt
also that Ida’s opinions were sure to be those expressed first by Mr Dewar. And Mr Dewar, who hadn’t interviewed Kathy for the job, she felt equally sure, didn’t like her, whereas
Mr Liddell did, which in turn meant she wasn’t Ida’s favourite person either, though there was no telling which came first. Nothing was said, but there was a slight atmosphere, and she
was always glad when her shifts with Mr Dewar were over, whereas she liked working with Mr Liddell. It seemed that Nigel Dewar always had some niggly thing to say, and always with a slight, patient
smile that she instinctively distrusted. He would comment on how she wrote out prescription labels – ‘It’s clearer if you do it this way, Miss Kelly’ – or how she
lifted the gallon glass containers of the common cough linctuses – ‘If you drop it, you see, we lose that much profit’, whereas Mr Liddell rarely found fault, and when he did
there was no feeling that he enjoyed it. Their shifts together passed easily, either in companionable silence, or with him giving her details of the conditions the prescriptions were supposed to
cure, and she never felt on probation with him in the way that she felt sure Wee Nigel wanted her to feel with him.

The other thing she liked was that the shifts, from 9 a.m. till 5 p.m., or from 2 p.m. till 9 p.m., kept her away from ordinary life in Moncur Street, and from her relatives, for longer than the
hours alone suggested. Working shifts involved different living arrangements from other people, so it was possible to avoid Con for weeks on end. She would hear him go out or come in, but as they
were inhabiting different time scales there was no necessity to actually meet. At nine o’clock, when the pubs closed, he would make his way unsteadily homewards as she was leaving the shop,
and by the time she got home around 11 p.m. he would be in bed, sprawled in an armchair or, depending on how drunk he was, lying on the floor fast asleep. There were no arguments, no fights and no
sobbing, well, none that she was present to hear, and she had decided long ago that her days of lifting his dead, sodden weight off the floor and into bed were over. So she locked the door behind
her, stepped over the deeply snoring heap on the floor and went to bed. Even without her shifts their lives had gradually separated, but they certainly helped to confirm the arrangement. From her
meagre wages as a trainee dispenser, plus whatever she found going through Con’s pockets, she made sure the rent and electricity were paid, and what was left over after she had fed and
clothed herself and paid her fares, was carefully hoarded away for come the day. She had no idea what the day was, maybe it was just a habit she had learned from her mother, but either way, she
somehow believed that the day would come when her hoard would be needed.

The other welcome spin-off from working in Wilson the Chemist’s was that she had a legitimate excuse for seeing less of Jamie Crawford, her childhood companion. He had achieved his first
ambition in life and was an engineering apprentice at the Albion Motor Works in Scotstoun, now he had only to settle down into married life and produce a couple of children and his dream existence
would be complete. She had no idea how it had happened, but without being asked she somehow found herself eased into the frame as his future wife. It was so taken for granted, not just by Jamie
himself, but by everyone in the neighbourhood, that she would wonder if there had been a discussion that had been erased from her memory by some kind of blackout. She hadn’t entered their
marriage into whatever internal plan she held in her mind for her future, but even so, she didn’t tell Jamie this either; something would evolve, she thought, it would all work out without
hurting him, though she had no idea what or how. She’d been a coward, she knew that. She should’ve told him right at the start, nipped it in the bud, but the start had been so insidious
that she didn’t know when it had occurred, and besides, he was Jamie, he’d been there all her life, stalwart, loyal; how could she deliberately hurt him? The thought of causing him any
kind of pain made her feel physically sick, so she played for time, while waiting for the something that would help her to escape the future Jamie had mapped out for them both, something painless.
She lied to him, that was how she had handled it, and she knew she was doing it at the time too, it wasn’t just in 20–20 hindsight; all she could think of was buying time and lying was
the easiest way of doing it. Working different hours across the Clyde from each other meant that inevitably they saw less of each other, so feeling insecure, or perhaps sensing her increasing
distance, even if she thought she had it contained within her own mind, he kept pushing for some sort of commitment. It wouldn’t be for ever, she told him, and the money she was making was
going into the bank. She had a tendency to blush when she told a barefaced lie to a decent person, so she trained herself to completely empty her mind during these conversations, and Jamie’s
face beamed with delight, believing, she knew perfectly well, that the money was going towards their future together. She didn’t actually say that, but she phrased it in such a way that he
would take that meaning; it was a deliberate lie, she couldn’t pretend otherwise. But after reassuring him in this dishonest way, his demands would stop, though not for long. Soon he would be
back with the same complaints, that she was never there, not even on Saturday nights, that they never saw each other. It was as though she was administering a verbal painkiller that wore off after
a while, and so she force-fed him another, higher dose, then another. He wanted to get engaged, a measure of his desperation, she sensed, he needed her to wear his ring, his brand, to be sure he
had her. It was a simple, blameless enough request, but instinctively she fended him off. They were saving, weren’t they? Why spend hard-earned cash on something they didn’t need? They
didn’t really need a ring, did they? And reluctantly he gave way. It was only because he wanted everyone to know that they would end up married, he said, and all the time she knew it was
because Jamie wanted to know, yet she refused him even that. And she didn’t know why, that was the odd thing. He was a good man, he didn’t drink or smoke, he was reliable, devoted, and
once his apprenticeship was over he would earn good money and be able to provide for his family. Looking at the families she had grown up around and still lived among, Jamie was a catch, everyone
told her so. ‘That Jamie o’ yours is a good man,’ that was the general opinion. ‘He’ll no’ gie ye ony trouble,’ and knowing female looks would be
exchanged; every woman knew what was meant by ‘trouble’. And it was true, all true, and yet, well she didn’t know, but thinking ahead to their projected life together one question
kept repeating in her head no matter how much she reminded herself of her luck:
‘Is that all there is?’

‘That Crawford boy willnae wait for ever!’ Aggie would tell her with glee whenever she saw her granddaughter. ‘Ye don’t know when ye’re well aff, that’s your
trouble!’