When the Lights Come on Again by Maggie Craig Page B

Fenian, pape, left-footer. She’d probably used some of them herself, she thought guiltily ... when she was a wee lassie and hadn’t known any better.
    As the liberal-minded young lady she was now, she’d never have dreamed of coming out with any of them in front of an actual Catholic. She knew exactly why Helen Gallagher had done so. The girl was issuing a challenge, testing Liz to see whether or not the two of them could be friends.
    This was exactly what she needed, of course - a Catholic friend. Her father would love that. But she liked this girl. She really liked her. She saw her old schoolmates occasionally, but they’d all moved on. Everyone was busy working and doing different things. There was no-one she was particularly close to.
    It had been a long time since she’d had a really good laugh like the one she and Helen Gallagher had just shared. With everything that had happened over the past days and weeks she could do with a friend - and right now she couldn’t have cared less whether she was a Roman Catholic, a Jew or a Mohammedan.
    ‘I told you,’ Liz said, looking Helen straight in the eye, ‘I’ve got nothing against Catholics.’ The train, which had stopped at Charing Cross, lumbered back into the tunnel. Nobody had got into their carriage. Helen was still surveying her with that appraising gaze. For someone so pretty, she could look real stern when she chose to.
    ‘Mind you,’ Liz went on, not entirely happy at being put on the spot like this, ‘my brother Eddie does say that religion is the opium of the masses.’
    ‘Your brother Eddie says a lot more than his prayers, doesn’t he?’ Helen Gallagher’s tone was deceptively mild.
    ‘He doesn’t say his prayers at all. He’s an atheist.’
    About to add more, Liz caught herself on. Her defence of her big brother had been automatic. She loved Eddie dearly - nothing could shake that, not even their current estrangement. Although if she were being strictly honest, she might have to admit that he had taken to preaching lately - an odd thing for an atheist to do.
    He’d always loved arguing the toss about politics. However, since he’d joined the Communist Party last year, he’d shown a wee bit of a tendency to ram his beliefs down everyone else’s throat - as with Liz over the Red Cross business. All the same, he was her brother.
    ‘Och, Eddie’s all right,’ she said. ‘You’d like him. Honestly.’
    Helen looked doubtful, but tactfully changed the subject.
    ‘So where do you work?’
    ‘I’m a junior stenographer. I work for a shipping company down at the Broomielaw.’
    ‘That sounds like a good job.’
    Liz shrugged her shoulders.
    ‘Don’t you like it there?’
    Liz looked out of the carriage window. They were clanking up to the surface now, passing Queen’s Dock and Yorkhill Quay on their way to Partick Station. She turned back to Helen, who was looking at her with an expression of keen interest on her face.
    ‘I hate it,’ she said.
    ‘That’s a terrible thing to have to put up with,’ said Helen a quarter of an hour later as the two girls climbed the stairs from the platform at Singer station up to street level. Her voice was full of sympathy and righteous indignation. ‘Is there not anybody you can report him to?’
    Liz sighed. ‘I tried telling Miss Gilchrist - she’s the boss’s secretary - when it first happened, but all she did was read me this lecture about girls having to be careful not to lead men on - as though I’d done anything of the sort!’
    Her voice rose as she recalled the outrage she had felt at the time. The suggestion that she had encouraged Eric Mitchell in some way had been humiliating and hurtful.
    She certainly didn’t flirt with him. She was too shy to flirt with anybody. She knew she was quite shapely, but she couldn’t help that. That was the way she was made, and she went out of her way not to wear clothes which emphasized her figure. Did she somehow sit or stand in the wrong way?