Faith - Lesley Pearse [112]
Compared to her old home in Shepherds Bush it was gracious, and luxurious, by comparison with the squat in Castle Douglas, but the climb up the dingy stairs put her off before she’d even seen inside the flat. The poky hallway led into one gloomy room with a kitchen in a recess, one bedroom and a tiny bathroom, but the fact it was self-contained did nothing to lift her spirits. She felt ashamed she couldn’t be overjoyed – Stuart might very well have found a place where they had to share the bathroom.
Yet she bit back her disappointment and suggested they painted it all white to brighten it up. With the £200 she’d still got in the bank, they could buy a second-hand bed, a little one for Barney, some cheap carpet, and maybe a settee too. They could make it nice.
By Saturday night the bedroom was painted. They had a double bed and a single one for Barney, made up with sheets and blankets Mrs Macgregor had given them. Stuart had fixed a pole across the alcove to hold their clothes in and they even had curtains at the window and a bedside light made with a Chianti bottle.
‘We’ll make it all grand in time,’ Stuart said as he hugged her. ‘I’ll be making good money, we can buy a telly and a stereo before long, and till then I’ll entertain you with lovemaking and my guitar.’
That was all she wanted or needed then. All through October, November and December while Stuart was working, she spent her days scouring the second-hand shops for oddments they needed, copying recipes from magazines in the library to cook economical, tasty meals for them, taking Barney on exploratory walks, and working on the flat to prettify it.
She loved Edinburgh with her whole being, from the steep cobbled wynds and the extraordinary towering ancient tenements in the Old Town, to the magnificence of the Castle and Holyrood palace. She got books on the city’s history from the library and made Stuart laugh when she gleefully revelled in the darker side of it, with Burke and Hare the notorious body-snatchers, or the ghosts said to frequent the Old Town. She cried when she heard the story of Bobbie of Greyfriars churchyard, the dog who sat on his master’s grave for years after his death, and she felt indignant that Mary, Queen of Scots had been treated so badly. She couldn’t wait for spring so they could climb up to Arthur’s Seat, or go to the beach at Portobello.
She was happy, really happy. She soon grew used to the other people who lived ‘on the stair’ taking an inordinate amount of interest in her, and the cooking smells which wafted up and remained trapped. She didn’t mind the biting cold, going to tea with Stuart’s parents almost every Sunday and living on far less housekeeping money than she had with Greg.
There was a cosiness about living with Stuart which she’d never experienced before. He took care of her in every way, from a cup of tea when he got up to go to work, to insisting she wasn’t to carry heavy shopping home but to wait for him to go with her. He was always enthusiastic about the meals she cooked him, he wanted to play with Barney when he got home, and though they couldn’t afford to go out much, the evenings and weekends with him were joyful times.
But happy as she was with Stuart, she found it hard to accept that most Scots males were chauvinists. She had no problem with the ‘You’re just a wee lassie, let me lift that for you’ attitude of gentlemanly Scotsmen, for Stuart was like that too, but she hated the way so many of them showed little regard for their wives and took no part in their children’s upbringing.
She got to know many women with children around the same age as Barney, but friendly and warm as these women were, it irritated her that they were resigned to an endless round of cooking,