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  ‘The best man’ll take a fancy to you,’ he joked. ‘It’ll maybe be your wedding next.’

  Bathie hoped that he was wrong, because the young girl she’d employed to take over from Annie, who had been promoted to nursemaid when Maggie left, didn’t seem to be very bright.

  But Albert wasn’t wrong. Bill Niven, a policeman friend of Dan’s, asked Annie out, and there was a new romance to be discussed by the young Ogilvies.

  Phoebe, the new general maid, was not very particular with the cleaning, and her cooking was diabolical.

  ‘I can’t eat this,’ Ellie announced one day, pushing her plate away from her in disgust.

  As Ellie could usually stomach anything, this was truly a disaster, so Bathie had a quiet talk with Phoebe later.

  ‘I’m doin’ my best,’ the girl said, looking surly.

  ‘I’m afraid your best isn’t good enough, and unless your cooking improves, I’ll have to look for another maid.’ Bathie didn’t say anything about the state of the house – that could come later, if necessary, and she hated complaining.

  For a few days, the meals were a little more appetizing, and then Phoebe came running into the parlour in tears.

  Bathie looked up in concern. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘The mutton’s burnt to a cinder,’ the girl sobbed, ‘an’ the tatties are boiled dry. I shoulda tell’t you I couldna cook.’

  Remembering her own first attempts, Bathie knew how she must feel, and said gently, ‘Would you like me to show you how to do things properly?’

  ‘Would you?’

  Over the next few weeks, the mistress schooled her maid, trying to be as patient as Nell Ogilvie had been with her, but although Phoebe’s cooking did improve slightly, it still left a lot to be desired.

  ‘Do you want me to tell her to go?’ Albert said, one day, struggling to chew an underdone pork chop. ‘I know you don’t want to do it, but we can’t go on like this.’

  ‘Wait another week,’ Bathie pleaded. ‘She is trying.’

  ‘She’s trying my patience,’ he remarked, dryly.

  He didn’t have to sack the girl, however, because Phoebe came in one morning and asked to speak to Bathie alone.

  In the parlour, she said, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Ogilvie, but I’ll ha’e to hand in my notice.’

  Bathie’s heart leapt, but she kept her joy from her voice. ‘Has something happened, Phoebe? Have any of my children been upsetting you?’ It could only have been Ellie, she thought.

  ‘No, it’s nothing here. My Da an’ Ma have fell oot, an’ my Ma’s takin’ us back to Elgin, that’s where her folk are.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that, and I’m sorry you’ll be leaving us.’ Bathie felt rather hypocritical, but what else could she say?

  When Annie learned about Phoebe’s imminent departure, she said, ‘You needna bother lookin’ for onybody else, for I’ll easy manage the cookin’ an’ cleanin’ as weel. Hetty’s nae a baby now, and the other five dinna need me.’

  Feeling a great weight lifting from her shoulders, Bathie smiled. ‘I’ll give you a hand, so we should manage quite well between the two of us.’

  The whole family was delighted with this arrangement, and poor Phoebe’s departure went almost unnoticed.

  Annie was still ‘going steady’ with Bill Niven, and there was no word of anything serious in it yet, so Bathie banished to the back of her mind the thought that there would come a day, in the not too distant future, when the only maid she had would also be leaving. She would worry about that when the time came.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The gaslight flickered a little in the draught from the door, and Bathie lifted her head to smile at Albert as he came in, his lined face and sandy hair, which had once been so fiery red, making her heart fill with love for him.

  ‘You look tired, Albert. Sit down and put your feet up.’ Her own feet were resting on the opposite end of the padded fender stool. ‘You should take it easier now you have Charlie and Donnie helping in the shop. You said yourself they’d a way with the customers.’

  ‘They have that,’ he admitted. ‘And they can slice the ham and the cheese as good as I can myself, but the shop’s my whole life, Bathie, you know that. I’d be lost sitting about the house like a woman.’

  She was one woman who had no time to sit about, Bathie thought ruefully, not since Annie had left to be married to Bill Niven, her policeman. The romance hadn’t been altogether smooth, both of them having stubborn natures and refusing to climb down when they fell out over anything, but it must have been true love, for they always made it up in the end.

  Bill hadn’t exactly proposed, according to Annie. ‘I ken’t he’d been tryin’ to say somethin’ for weeks,’ she giggled, ‘but he couldna come oot wi’ it, so I played a wee trick on him.’

  ‘A wee trick?’ Bathie had been intrigued.

  ‘I tell’t him another lad had asked me oot, an’ I was fair ta’en wi’ him, an’ you shoulda seen Bill’s face.’ She gave another low giggle at the memory of it.

  ‘That was rather cruel, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I ken, but it worked. He hummed an’ hawed, then he says he didna like the idea. “That’s a shame,” I says, “but there’s nothin’ you can do aboot it, if I want to go.” Mind you, I was a bittie feared he would tell me he didna care.’

  ‘It would have served you right if he had.’ Bathie had felt quite indignant. ‘But he didn’t?’

  ‘No, he stood a minute, pluckin’ up his courage, I suppose, an’ then he says, “If you were my wife I would soon put a stop to this,” an’ I looked at him an’ says, “If I was your wife, I wouldna want to go.” That’s when he kissed me like he’d never done afore, an’ I tell’t him the truth.’

  ‘What did he say to that?’

  ‘He says, “So I’ll set the date, then?”’ Annie had laughed with delight. ‘He’s goin’ to see the minister the night.’

  Remembering, Bathie smiled to herself. Bill Niven had set the date, and had seemed happy enough about it the next time he’d called at the house, joking to Albert that Annie was a little torment, and had put the noose round his neck. He’d looked at Annie then, with so much love in his eyes, that they had all known that the marriage would be a success.

  After Annie left, Bathie had employed a young girl to help in the house, but had found her stealing money out of her purse one day, and had given her a week’s notice.

  The next girl had spent most of the time avoiding work of any kind, and had quickly followed her predecessor. It was after her dismissal that Bathie had decided to take over the whole running of the household herself, and she felt years younger. She hadn’t time to think about herself, although she sometimes tumbled into bed at night ‘dirt done’, as Nell Ogilvie would have put it.

  There wasn’t the same work in the house, anyway, since Albert had insisted on having the gas put in – no oil lamps to fill and keep trimmed, and the kitchen range didn’t have to be kept burning all year round for cooking, not when there was a gas stove.

  Now, with Ellie newly fourteen, and Flo coming up for twelve, she made them help with the dish-washing and tidying up, and after an initial grumbling period, they’d both knuckled down. In fact, they were quite a big help, and saw to their younger sisters, as well. Flo, especially, was very good, and supervised ten-year-old Gracie and Hetty, who was seven, when they were getting ready for school. Ellie and Hetty shared a room, Flo and Gracie were together and, of course, Charlie and Donnie had the room they’d had since they were first moved out of the nursery. It was all very convenient. The only thing that Bathie regretted was that Hetty had been the last of her children. After all, she would be thirty-five next birthday, and there weren’t many fertile years left.

  There had been no more traumas like the time Charlie had been lost and Donnie and Hetty had contracted scarlet fever, thank God, the only sad event being the death of Spanny a year before. The spaniel had been seventeen years old, of course, and had been failing for some time
, so Bathie had been rather expecting it, but the children had been inconsolable for days. That was why she had firmly refused to allow them another pet.

  She glanced at her husband again, at the dark hollows in his cheeks, his general appearance of ageing, but Albert wasn’t an old man. He was hardly forty-three, a man at the prime of life, and her stomach turned over at the thought of what her life would be without him. He often said that the shop was his whole life, but Albert was hers.

  He’d been half dozing, and looked up in surprise when she sat on the arm of his chair, but quickly slipped his arm round her waist. ‘You can still make my sap rise, Bathie.’

  She blushed like a young thing. He always came out with things like that at the most unexpected times, although she should be used to it. ‘Albert Ogilvie, you’re a terrible tease.’

  ‘I’m not teasing, I mean it, and I wish we could . . . ’ He’d been about to say he wished they could make more bairns, but had recalled the doctor’s words on the day of Hetty’s birth.

  Well, he had been careful – though it had been difficult to remember to stop on the rare occasions he’d allowed himself to make love to his wife – but Gavin’s warning had been seven years ago, and Bathie was surely fully recovered by this time. She was the picture of health, looking down at him with her lovely blue eyes, still as full of life as they were when he’d met her first, the same wavy dark hair, though it wasn’t in the bonnie ringlets it was then, and had a sprinkling of silver through it.

  Gavin McKenzie couldn’t expect him to spend the rest of his life thinking, even before he mounted her, that he’d have to come out of his wife at the crucial second.

  He threw caution to the wind, his thoughts firing his desire. ‘We started going through the alphabet, but we’ve only reached H, it’s maybe time we tried to carry on.’

  Bathie could feel a stirring in her loins, and hoped that Albert meant what he was saying. She’d wondered, at first, and with a touch of disappointment, why he had stopped so abruptly when he was at the height of his passion, but had eventually realized that he was afraid he’d make her pregnant. Something must have made him change his mind, or did he think another child would rejuvenate him?

  His free hand slid over her flat stomach. ‘Women were made to bear children, my love, and it’s a shame to waste what the good Lord blessed you with.’

  Sliding his hand up to cup her breast, he moaned, ‘I still go mad wanting you, and I’ve held myself back too long.’

  She leaned down to kiss his brow, her own need building up inside her. ‘Charlie and Donnie aren’t home yet, Albert,’ she murmured. ‘We can’t go to bed just now.’

  ‘They won’t be in for a while.’ He removed his arm from her waist. ‘Do I have to take you here on the floor?’

  She was shocked at his coarseness, but followed him into the bedroom, where he undressed her, cursing under his breath when some of her tiny buttons proved stubborn.

  ‘Turn off the gas, Albert,’ she whispered, shy with him because of his unseemly haste.

  ‘The gas stays on,’ he said harshly. ‘I’ve never seen you standing in front of me naked.’ His emotions, as well as his manhood, were rampant now, and he gave himself up to them.

  As the last of her garments fell to the floor, he said, ‘You’ve aye made me do it in the dark, when I was wanting to see you ready for me, and wanting me as much as I wanted you.’

  As she attempted to go under the blankets, he barked, ‘No, don’t go covering yourself up. Let me look at you properly.’

  His fingers fumbled with his own buttons now, and she stood, ashamed of her nakedness, until he let his trousers fall, together with his drawers, and stepped out of them.

  Her face flamed at the sight of his huge organ, but she couldn’t take her eyes off it, and her shame increased.

  At last, she dragged her eyes up, past his broad chest, covered with reddish hair, past the pulse beating at his neck, to his face, contorted with passion, and Mary Wyness’s words – spoken so many years ago – came into her head: ‘My Ma aye says she’d to shut her eyes an’ think aboot somethin’ else every time my Da wanted it.’

  If Mary’s father had acted like this, Bathie thought, she wasn’t surprised that Mrs Wyness had shut her eyes, and she must have been glad when he walked out on her.

  Albert, blissfully unaware of what was going through his wife’s mind, grabbed her shoulders to swivel her round against the wall, then pressed in between her thighs. ‘You’ve always been so passive, Bathie, and never let me see if you got any pleasure. Did you not like what I did to you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she faltered. ‘I did like it. I liked it very much, Albert, but it’s not a woman’s place to show pleasure, and I don’t very much care for what you’re doing at this moment.’

  His laugh was brutal. ‘We’ll do it my way for a change, with the light on so I can see you, and standing up or lying down, Bathie, you’re going to show me you like it.’

  Her involuntary expression of disgust enraged him. ‘I used to think I should try another woman, just to see what a whore did, but I respected you. I even thought about trying Bella Wyness. She made it quite clear she was willing, and she just turned to Charlie when I stopped short of obliging her.’

  ‘Stopped short?’ Bella’s name evoked hateful memories, but she hadn’t known that Albert was involved with the girl. ‘Did you . . . touch her, is that what you mean?’

  ‘She was asking for it, swinging her paps at me whenever I passed, so I tickled them up a few times. But one night she came down to the kitchen in her gown, and just about asked me to take her, and I very nearly did.’

  Sickened, she tried to push him away, but he was much too strong. ‘I loved you, Bathie, and I never laid her on her back, though it took all the willpower I had to refuse her.’

  She stopped struggling – whatever it was that had got into Albert tonight must be temporary. He practically threw her across the bed, and she shuddered as he forced himself in. As he pounded into her, she thought about Mrs Wyness, dead these many years. In a short time, however, she felt herself responding to him, and was more ashamed and angry than ever.

  When he released her, she felt sore and bruised, but it was her pride that had been hurt more than anything, and she began to weep quietly as she slipped her nightdress on.

  Albert’s rough manner changed just as abruptly as it had started. ‘Oh God, Bathie,’ he groaned. ‘I’m sorry. I told you once there was a beast inside me, and I can’t explain why it came out tonight. Maybe I was too tired to fight it, but I should never have told you about . . . Bella. She never meant anything to me, just a bit of fun.’

  His dark eyes were contrite as he took her hand. ‘Bathie, say you forgive me, for everything?’

  She shook her head miserably. ‘I can’t, Albert. I thought it wasn’t ladylike to show pleasure, and I thought you’d know.’

  ‘Please, Bathie? I know you’re disgusted with me, but some men are like that all the time.’

  When she didn’t answer, he pulled on his nightshirt and went to the door. ‘I’ll leave you to come to yourself.’

  She lay shivering when he went out. Not that she was cold – her whole body felt on fire – but because he had been disappointed in her, and if he’d nearly had a bit of fun with Bella Wyness, all those years ago, it was her own fault. Her gorge had risen at the very mention of the slut’s name, and this was another sin, almost as bad, that the girl had committed, but at least Albert had had the grace not to give in to his passion that night, and she should be thankful for that.

  Hearing voices in the kitchen, she wondered which of their sons had come home. They went twice a week to the gymnastic club in the Porthill Hall, which had been built across the Gallowgate from them a few years before, but they never came home together. They would go their separate ways; with their own friends, for they weren’t old enough to be meeting girls.

  Her anger and disgust at her husband was abating. She’d been lucky that he hadn’t acted th
at way before, and she was sure that he would never repeat what had almost amounted to rape. It would be best, though, if she gave him no cause to do anything like that again, so she would show him her pleasure in future, and let him study her naked body, even let him have the gas on if he wanted, for it was a wife’s duty to fulfil her husband’s needs, after all.

  Swinging her feet on to the mat, she put on her wrapper and went through to the kitchen. Donnie was speaking to his father, but fired with new determination she broke in, ‘Are you coming to bed, Albert?’

  Charlie had met Vena Bruce after club. He usually gave her a light kiss when he left her, and he rather liked it, but sometimes, when he went to bed after he’d seen her home, he’d dreamt about kissing her properly, and had been surprised that his drawers were sticky when he woke up in the morning.

  Tonight, however, after overhearing two of the older boys speaking about their ‘wet dreams’, he’d realized that that was what happened to him, and had made up his mind, there and then, to give Vena a real kiss, to see if the wet stickiness would occur when he was awake.

  The only place he knew where they wouldn’t be disturbed was in his own back yard, where they’d have the choice of three stores to go inside. He’d been rather afraid that she might refuse, but she seemed quite willing when he suggested it, and they’d walked about a bit until he was sure that Donnie would be home before he took her back up the Gallowgate.

  There was no sign of anyone as he led the girl through the close, and his fingers seemed all thumbs when he opened the unlocked hasp on the first store they came to. Closing the door behind them, and knowing that its own weight would make it swing open, he found a stick to jam it, then grabbed Vena and kissed her quickly.

  ‘Oh, Charlie,’ she giggled, ‘you’re doin’ it ower rough. It’s like this.’ She put her arms round his neck and melted her supple body against him, her lips meeting his in a long, lingering kiss, her tongue poking between his teeth.

  When she stopped, his first real thought was that there was no wetness in his drawers, then he felt a strange power surging up inside him, and remembered Bella Wyness. His shame hadn’t let him think about her for years, but now he was growing big and hard like he’d done with her. ‘Let me feel your tits,’ he muttered, using Bella’s words.