The Tangling of the Web (13 page)

Disgruntled, Sally started to walk towards the living room, but Josie hauled her back by grabbing her arm. ‘Even if Margo had,’ she whispered, ‘given them plenty of notice, they couldn’t have been here for her big do because …’ Josie paused, wrung her hands and inhaled before adding, ‘… you see, Sally, our Daisy was being a bridesmaid at …’ She hesitated again. ‘Now before I tell you, promise you’ll no holler and laugh?’

Sally shook her head and then nodded.

‘Paddy’s wedding.’

‘Are you saying some other woman has been stupid enough …’ Sally chuckled loudly, causing Josie to put her hand over Sally’s mouth.

‘Yeah. But don’t say anything. Luke’s peeved about it.’

When Sally and Josie eventually joined the others, Daisy was the first to speak. ‘Look, when I wrote and told Margo and Josie we would be coming home I didn’t know… ’ She stopped to glance at the far wall, where all the packing cases were stacked, ‘… that you were on the move.’

‘No need to concern, yourself,’ Sally quickly assured her. ‘Somehow we’ll find you a bed.’

‘But why are you flitting?’

It had been a long, difficult and tiring day, and the last thing Sally wished to do was to admit that Harry had deserted her, especially to Luke, who still had the habit of unnerving her. ‘I’ll let Josie explain the whole shameful story to you whilst I get on with making you some tea. When did you last eat?’

‘Early this afternoon, you see we’re stony …’

‘Luke, we are not penniless yet. We have … how much was it when we last counted it?’

‘Nine shillings and sixpence.’

The noise of Sally filling the kettle fortunately hid the sound of the wearisome sighs and groans that escaped her.

* * *

It took quite a bit of juggling before Sally had managed to get everyone a place to sleep. The wee small hours of the morning had crept up on her before she found herself with time to think about all that had happened.

When everybody was abed, Sally sat down to ponder. It wasn’t just Daisy and Luke arriving and expecting to be housed that niggled. It was finding out that Paddy had got himself hitched to a lassie just four years older than his twenty-one-year-old daughter, Daisy. And okay, his bride was an Aborigine and if he was to be believed native Australians matured more quickly, but surely the young lassie wouldn’t want an old man … Sally shivered and grimaced. Scratching her head, she then thought back to Daisy saying that what she loved most about Australia was the weather. She beamed from ear to ear when she had continued, ‘Know something, Sally, if you decided that in a week’s time you would have a picnic on the beach then you could be assured the sun would be shining that day.’

‘Not like here,’ Sally mused. ‘Aye, here you have to be quick and the minute the sun puts in an appearance you have to dash down to Portobello and fight for a space on the sand.’

Daisy had become dreamlike when she related what she had missed the most while she had been away in Australia. Naturally, what had brought her back to Scotland was the missing of family and friends and the longing to meander on the weel-kent streets. To Sally’s surprise, Daisy tearfully stuttered that she also missed her mother so very much. But then she had lived so different a life from Sally. True, they had the same mother, but in the twenty years that separated them Peggy had become a different person, possibly because she had married Paddy, Daisy’s father. No way would he have tolerated anyone mistreating his children.

Reluctantly, Sally had to address what the coming back of Luke would mean for her. Tonight as they ate warm buttered toast and drank cup after cup of tea he confessed he had come back because the reason he had gone to Australia was that he had promised himself that one day he would exact revenge on his father for having hastened his mother’s departure. Engaging Sally with a hostile stare, he went on, ‘But on Dad’s stag night he took me aside and told me a story … and now I know for certain my
father
, even although she begged him to put an end to her suffering, did
not
help my mother away.’

Sally, quaking inside, was not sure where Luke’s suppositions were going. Evidently, where his mother was concerned he still had scores to settle. Was he saying, albeit surreptitiously, that revenge for her lay here in Scotland? Luke, still smiling at Sally with a smile that never reached his cold eyes, then went on to say that he was satisfied, very satisfied, to know that there was a God and that at this present moment he had no need to wreak vengeance.

His second, more disconcerting, bombshell was that he intended to stay in Edinburgh and apply to join the Edinburgh City Police. She knew he would probably be accepted, because he was more than above the regulation height and had all the other necessary qualifications.

The following morning, the most pressing matter of the day for Sally was where Daisy and Luke could be housed once she and her children had to vacate spacious, elegant Elgin Terrace.

Deliberating on the situation, Sally thought that Daisy wouldn’t be a problem, as she could bunk in with Helen. But Luke, well, there just wouldn’t be room for him when they moved into Great Junction Street. It wasn’t, she lied to herself, that she didn’t wish to have Luke in the same house as herself. But well … She paused in her contemplations and blushed before admitting she would use the reason that fourteen-year-old Bobby had a leg problem, which meant he not only had to have a bed to himself but also a room.

So what could she do about Luke? A sly smile crossed her face when she recalled that she was going to seek out the old Leith rat-catcher’s son. Now she knew the rat-catcher had died a long time ago and that his son, who had carried on in his father’s footsteps, would now be nearing retirement age, but she was sure he still lived in or near Bowling Green Street. So she would take a wee detour on her way to the Four Marys and seek him out.

As luck would have it, finding the rat-catcher was easy. He still lived in the house where he had been born. What was even better was that he said that by visiting the flat in Bernard Street regularly he would be able to keep the vermin under control.

Sally waited until she got home from work at night before she said, ‘You’ll never know who came into the pub today.’

‘Dad,’ exclaimed Bobby.

This answer back-footed Sally. ‘No. A rat-catcher.’

‘Hope you told them where Maggie lives.’

‘No, Bobby,’ Sally, who was the only person not laughing, replied. ‘I didn’t, because he only puts an end to four-legged rats.’

Looking around the room, Luke asked, ‘But why do you need a rat-catcher?’

Sally laughed, ‘Of course with all that went on last night we didn’t tell you that I had got a flat for Josie, but the sitting tenants – two
very
small rats – frightened her. That’s why she’s coming to live with me in Great Junction Street.’ She appeared to grow pensive. ‘Imagine her wishing to crush in at Great Junction Street when she could have a wee flat all to herself once the rats are evicted. More tea or toast anyone?’

As luck would have it, Luke rose to the bait. Turning on his charm, which had captivated everybody but Sally, he smiled before saying, ‘Look, Sally, if the rat-catcher can get the pests out, I would be happy to move in.’

Sally put up her hand in protest; however, before she could beg him not to think about moving in there, Daisy interrupted, ‘And as we have never lived apart, I will go with you, Luke.’

This was not what Sally wished to hear. Luke going there to live with rats she was happy, very happy, about, but sweet Daisy, she … ‘No, you couldn’t,’ she quickly blurted. ‘You see it only has a cold-water tap, no bathing facilities and an outside lavatory.’

Both Daisy and Luke shrieked and giggled.

‘What’s so funny?’ demanded Sally.

‘Just that in the last five years or so,’ Luke said, winking to Daisy.

‘On and off,’ she added, patting him on the shoulder.

‘We’ve lived,’ continued Luke, ‘wild in the outback and back streets, and see those Australian rats, monsters they are, but when they heard we were moving in we didn’t need to evict them.’

‘You’re right there, Luke,’ Daisy managed to splutter through her laughter. ‘They committed hara-kiri by jumping out the window – without opening it.’

* * *

Waverley Station is a place of joy and sadness. Today as Sally stood on the draughty platform she felt as if her right arm was being hauled from its socket. Could it be only four weeks since the family’s life had been turned upside down? A month ago they were a family unit that was the envy of all their friends and neighbours. Then Harry left them and the real reason he had taken that shattering step was still evading Sally. And now Flora was taking the early morning train to Inverness. No longer would she be part of their everyday lives. No longer would she be Sally’s rock to cling to.

Just before the guard blew his whistle for the train to depart, Flora asked Margo, ‘Why are you always looking down the platform? Are you expecting someone?’

‘J-j-j-j-just my Johnny,’ Margo stuttered before waving to the man and woman running up towards them.

‘Good grief,’ Flora shouted before quickly hugging Bobby, Helen and then Sally. ‘Quick, I must get aboard before they reach here.’

‘But Granny,’ protested Margo, ‘He’s your son and she’s …’

‘The whore that has broken my heart,’ Flora replied, as she jumped aboard the train and banged the door shut.

‘Mum, Mum, please wait, I have to speak to you,’ Harry pleaded. ‘You’ve always got on with Maggie and she wants just to be friends with you.’

Flora lowered the door window. ‘I’ll speak to you again when you’ve come to your senses and begged Sally’s forgiveness. And as to be being friends with your bidie-in, let me tell you, it was Sally that gave her houseroom. As far as I’m concerned she’s a whoring
Jezebel
and I wouldn’t spit on her if she was …’

Whatever else Flora said nobody would ever know, as it was drowned out by the guard using his whistle to signal the train to leave.

Sally, Helen and Bobby waved and waved until the train was out of sight. Turning, they noticed, but were not surprised, that Harry, Maggie and Margo had scuttled away.

‘Sally,’ Rita called out from the kitchen of the Four Marys bar, ‘what are we going to call the soup of the day today?’

‘What’s in it?’ was Sally’s uninterested reply.

‘Anything that was lying about,’ was Rita’s exasperated retort. ‘But I don’t think you’ll sell many plates of it if you call it “anything-that-was-lying-aboot soup”.’

It had taken three years for the two women to reach this state of camaraderie. Both now not only respected each other but also valued each other’s talents.

Sally remembered vividly how vociferous Rita had been when she had floated the idea of providing wholesome lunches. ‘This is a Leith pub,’ Rita had exclaimed. ‘We’re no the Wee Windaes in Edinburgh, where they kid themselves on that they are a restaurant and serve your chips up in a basket.’

Nonetheless, Sally had persisted in the change from providing women to sex-hungry men to supplying nourishing meals to peckish workers.

So successful was the change that now the Four Marys was known as a place of respectability at lunchtimes. In the evening they still had more than a few males seeking solace in the Jungle, but Sally, after refusing to serve them any alcohol, very nicely sent them in the direction of the Henderson Street and Broad Pavement hostelries.

The other advantage of Rita finding out that she was a first-class plain cook was that her confidence was boosted. So much so that when Sally asked her last week if she thought she could run things on her own for five days whilst she went up to visit Flora, she had jumped at the chance.

Now Sally herself had learned quite a lot about the bar trade in the last three years. For instance, she knew that when she left Rita in charge she wouldn’t do anything to damage the good stock-taking record. She would, of course, have a wee fiddle that Sally could live with – like bringing in a bottle each of whisky and gin and then selling them over the counter by the nip and thus making a healthy profit for herself. This practice was widespread and normal in the trade.

Rita, chalk in hand, was now standing at the blackboard. ‘How about I call it Granny’s Broth? ’Cause that’s how aw grannies made their soup. Just threw in anything they could lay their hands on.’

Sally nodded.

‘Here, Sally, you’ve been awfy quiet since you got back from Culloden. Did you fight another battle or something up there?’

‘Culloden is no the problem. It’s … Och, Rita, it’s this blooming wedding that’s getting my goat. Imagine it. The divorce is just through and there is philandering Harry rushing to get hitched again, in a kilt no less and with a piper blowing him into the registry office along with a bimbo he’s got himself in tow with now.’

‘Could be worse,’ a pensive Rita drawled whilst placing two steaming mugs of tea on the table. ‘Ever thought, you could be your auld pal, Maggie? Aye, imagine how you’d feel if you’d scunnered aw your true pals and now your dream man had dumped you for a younger, bonnier model the minute he was free to get hitched again.’ Rita, sitting herself down in front of Sally, paused, lit up a cigarette, blew the smoke upwards and sucked in her cheeks before delivering the knockout blow. ‘Mind you, I always wondered why your Harry left you for Maggie, but as they say, men never look at the mantelpiece when they’re poking the fire.’

Sally completely ignored Rita’s remarks. She had more to think about than Maggie. ‘I’m really grateful to you for tending the pub whilst I was away. I just had to tell Flora face to face about Harry getting married again, and not to Maggie.’ Sally sighed. ‘But she already knew because not only had he sent her an invitation but he had also intimated that he and his next missus, Felicity, were going to ask Margo to be Matron of Honour.’

Rita cackled. ‘Matron of Honour. Your Margo and Harry wouldnae ken honour if it pitched up and bit them on the bum. By the way, forget them two traitors. That was a great idea of yours to get Josie to fill in behind the bar. Now there’s a real bonny face, and is she not wearing well at thirty-five?’