Red Alert, page 18
‘Well, the answer’s yes.’
‘But we’d have to get our degrees first and decent jobs so that we’d manage OK financially.’
‘Yes, of course. I thought of teaching. I mean, it’s pretty precarious to try to live on any paintings I’d be able to sell at first. Teaching would give the security of a regular wage while I try to get established as an artist. What were you thinking?’
‘Much the same.’
‘Is that what we’ll do then?’
‘OK. I guess that’s it settled. All being well with our degrees, we should have no problem getting into teacher training and now that they guarantee you a job for your probation year, that would make a good start.’
It wasn’t until much later, after Hamish had gone back to his digs, that Betty realised that it wouldn’t be fair to subject him to full-time ghastly treatment by her mother. Their marriage wouldn’t stand a chance with the constant barrage of hatred and every kind of abuse her mother would hurl at them.
In the end, Betty decided that the best thing for all concerned was to get her mother into a good care home or nursing home where she’d have proper health care and supervision. She could apply to a private place because her mother had been left plenty of money by Betty’s father. And once her mother was in care, the NHS would, Betty believed, take on the burden of payment when her mother’s money ran out.
Betty contacted her local doctor, social services and even the Citizens’ Advice, and was promised help and someone to come out and assess the extent of the problem. She was told, however, that there should be no problem in getting a placement if things were as bad as she claimed with her mother’s infirmity and mental health problems.
‘I’ll come and visit you, Mother,’ she assured her.
An appointment was made for a carer and social worker to visit, with a view to a possible placement in a care home in Summerston, which was not too far away, and Betty had had good reports of its reputation.
She couldn’t help it – the thought of having the house free of her mother’s hatred was incredible. It was so wonderful, she did a wild dance around each room. She told Hamish but he stuck to his determination not to move in with her until after they were both awarded their degrees.
She prayed that they would succeed in getting their degrees. Soon they would know. Oh, life could not be so cruel as to make her fail. Not now. They had both worked so hard. She just knew everything was going to be all right. Oh, how happy she was! She was dancing in her mind:
Every step I take this morning
lands on a cushion of air.
All we did last night was kiss
and today you flavour everything
my mind touches.
Your voice sounds in the rumble
of a passing car. The valerian blue
of your eyes swims on top of a puddle,
promising birds safety
and a place to bathe.
A boy with short, brown hair
gelled to spikes, holds his mother’s hand
while crossing the road. I see you
in the way his eyes tug at her,
checking she is still there.
He gives a little kick with each step
as if the promise of a future
nips at his heels.
An old man at the bus stop, round
like Santa. You in fifty years. Cheeks
bunched in a grin, wearing an apple blush
like you last night when you brushed
my right breast with your arm.
Caught myself smiling at him,
wanting to know
how we carry the years,
yet don’t want to spoil the dance
of every blood cell
through the chambers of my heart,
like millions of tiny breeze-blown flowers.
37
He was back. Sandra could see Tommy visibly shrink even before Simon Price said a word to him. It was not only painful to look at Tommy’s hopelessness and depression; she was suffering the pain of it as well. She couldn’t bear to see Tommy like this. She hated Simon Price for ruining both their lives. They had once been carefree and happy together. So full of plans for the future. Tommy was a sensitive and brilliantly talented young man with everything to live for, to hope for. It was wicked that he had been reduced to this. The course was nearing its end. All of their work, including Tommy’s, was ready for the show. They were all on tenterhooks about whether or not they would get their degree. Tommy had lost every vestige of hope that he would get his.
Then Simon Price said he hadn’t a chance in hell.
‘You?’ he sneered. ‘No way!’
Just after he’d said that, Price was giving them a last lecture about Charles Rennie Mackintosh and leading them around the building, explaining Mackintosh’s thinking and intentions behind the architecture of the place.
‘He purposefully made some areas dark to make a contrast with the lighter areas. Like this dark part which leads on to the light area of the “hen run” and makes that light all the more startling. If we …’
Just then, Tommy unexpectedly raced over to a metal ladder, clambered up it and pushed at the hatch above.
‘What the hell?’
Before Sandra could even think what was happening, Simon Price had raced after him. In what seemed a matter of seconds, Tommy had pulled himself through the hatch and out onto the roof. The wind whipped at his T-shirt, moulding it to his slender body. He staggered at first, leaning into the wind to catch his balance. Beyond and below, the rooftops of Glasgow spread out like a patchwork blanket as far as the horizon, and a shiny sliver of the Clyde sparkled at the edge of his vision, the only sounds the rushing of the wind and the slight, far-away hum of the traffic on Sauchiehall Street below.
He turned precariously round, his arms spread wide for balance, and called back down through the open hatch, ‘I’m sorry, Sandra. I’m no use. I can’t stand it. I can’t go on, I just can’t any more. I’m going to jump. I can’t take any more of Price’s torture.’
‘Calm down, Pratt. Tommy, I’m sorry,’ Price called. Visions of tomorrow’s papers flashed through his mind, with no doubts about who would play the villain of the piece.
‘You’re a brilliant artist,’ Price called up through the hatch. Price slowly levered himself up, head and shoulders through the hatch, his hands gripping the lead guttering firmly.
‘Come on, Tommy. You’re over-reacting. Yes, I’ve been hard on you, maybe too hard. OK, I can be a bastard but I’ve only been trying to toughen you up. I’ve had rejections and been told I was no use in my day. So have all artists. Have you never heard what Van Gogh suffered? You need to be bloody tough to survive. I had to toughen you up. You’re such a brilliant artist, you have to survive for everyone else’s sake. And of course you’ve got your degree, the same as everybody else. You’ve got your degree, the same as your classmates. Do you hear me?’
Slowly, gently, his voice calming as if talking to a frightened animal, he stretched out his hand.
‘Please, Tommy, give me your hand and we can both come down out of here.’
There was a moment’s agonising hesitation before Tommy did as he was told. Price grabbed his hand and pulled him over and down the hatch. At the foot of the stairs, he said, ‘My God, don’t you ever do anything like that to me again.’ Then to Sandra, ‘Take him home. Wrap him up and give him some hot, sweet tea. He should be OK. But just keep an eye on him and make sure you’re both here early tomorrow.’
The shock of what had happened and, worse, what could have happened, robbed Sandra of her voice. Obediently, she led a grey-faced Tommy away.
‘I told you,’ she said eventually. ‘How many times have I told you …’
‘I know, Sandra. I’ve been a fool. I’m so sorry. But I thought, you see, that you were just praising me because you love me. Like I love you. And he is so talented and I just thought he must be the one I should believe as far as my art is concerned.’
‘No, it’s that bastard Price who’s been the fool. It’s not surprising you got so depressed, when he kept rubbishing you and your work. It was really wicked of him.’
‘At least his intentions were good. He believed he was doing the right thing for me.’
‘Bollocks! He’s just a wicked bully. You let him off with it and so he went to town on you. I’m telling you, he enjoyed bullying you, that was all.’
Tommy drew Sandra into his arms.
‘I appreciate your faith in me. It’s really wonderful how you’ve always believed in me and stuck by me, Sandra. I don’t deserve you.’
‘There you go, knocking yourself again. I could scream at you, Tommy. Have confidence in yourself. You must from now on. Just keep thinking to yourself, “I’m a brilliant artist and I’m going to be famous, not only here, but all over the world.” Make a mantra of it. Keep on saying it over and over until you’ve convinced yourself deep down.’
Tommy couldn’t help laughing.
‘You and your wild imagination.’
‘Tommy!’ Sandra warned.
‘OK, OK. I’m a brilliant artist and I’m going to be famous, not only here, but all over the world. I’m a brilliant artist and I’m going to be famous, not only here, but all over the world.’
‘That’s better.’
He kissed her gently at first, then with growing passion. Later in bed, they spoke of the degrees the next day. That was the Thursday when all the officials at the Art School would be there. Then the Friday was the show, when family and friends could come and everyone would party until midnight.
They were both so excited now at the mere idea of it all, they couldn’t sleep for what seemed an age. Eventually, happily exhausted, sleep overcame them.
The street was closed, from under the library all the way past the Newbery Tower and the Mackintosh building, to allow for the celebrations.
There was a small stage set up and a local indie band was blasting out music, the raucous guitar riffs bouncing off the stately walls of the Mackintosh façade. A group of students bounced around in a heaving mass in front of the band. One of the girls had jumped from the stage and was crowd-surfing, held aloft on a raft of hands. Others filled the streets in small groups, singing, dancing and generally letting their hair down. Drink flowed freely and there was a pungent sweet aroma wafting on the breeze as some of the students lit up, with little regard to where they were.
Sandra flung her hands up high, her red hair a vivid curtain swinging about over her cavorting body.
Tommy was laughing uproariously and stumbling about, trying to keep up with Sandra.
Hamish kept swinging a joyous Betty off her feet, round and round and round, making her skirts fly up and reveal glimpses of her thong.
Kirsty and Greg had been invited and were joining in with as much wild abandon as everyone else.
Kirsty believed, as they all did, that this day was the beginning of freedom and a new, wonderful and fulfilling life.
‘Yeehah!’ somebody yelled and the sound echoed in everyone’s heart.
Other B&W titles
by Margaret Thomson Davis
THE BREADMAKERS
THE NEW BREADMAKERS
THE CLYDESIDERS TRILOGY
THE TOBACCO LORDS TRILOGY
A DARKENING OF THE HEART
THE DARK SIDE OF PLEASURE
BURNING AMBITION
THE GLASGOW BELLE
LIGHT & DARK
WRITE FROM THE HEART
A DEADLY DECEPTION
GOODMANS OF GLASSFORD STREET
DOUBLE DANGER
THE KELLYS OF KELVINGROVE
COPYRIGHT
First published 2008
by Black & White Publishing Ltd
29 Ocean Drive, Edinburgh EH6 6JL
www.blackandwhitepublishing.com
This electronic edition published in 2013
ISBN: 978 1 84502 646 2 in EPub format
ISBN: 978 1 84502 647 9 in Mobipocket format
ISBN: 978 1 84502 246 4 in paperback format
Copyright © Margaret Thomson Davis 2008
The right of Margaret Thomson Davis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Ebook compilation by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay
Margaret Thomson Davis, Red Alert
