Goodmans of Glassford Street Read Online Free PDF Page A

from anything else, they wanted it back. The nurse returned a couple of minutes later with the suit and said the doctor would be there as soon as possible to examine the patient.
    They were standing in the long ‘corporation green’ corridor, discussing the shoplifter, nurses bustling to and fro into the various cubicles where a variety of patients waited, in various states of undress, for attention and medication.
    Suddenly, the calm efficiency was destroyed as their charge burst out from behind the curtain, pushed the young policeman – from behind – headlong over a hospital gurney, and made a mad dash for freedom. He burst through the swing doors, his blue hospital gown billowing around him as he disappeared from view.
    Miss Eden and the policeman dashed off in hot pursuit. They chased after him but lost him in the myriad of streets outside. Probably he was hiding in bushes somewhere. It was both exhausting and frustrating, and she felt glad when her duties for the day were finished and she was ready to leave. Until she’d seen old Jimmy snatch a pile of jumpers, of course. She waited until a policeman came and escorted a happy Jimmy away to his usual B. & B. at the police station. Then she left to walk up through George Square to Queen Street Station to catch a train to Springburn.
    Within minutes, she was alighting at Springburn and crossing the road to her tenement flat. She had been born and brought up there and seen a lot of changes in the area – none of them good, in her opinion. Springburn used to have a heart, but since the motorway had cut through most of it, everything had changed. The atmosphere wasn’t the same. It had none of the warmth and close community and neighbourliness that there had been in her parents’ day and in the childhood that she remembered. To her at least, it had a strange, even a dangerous feel now. In the small covered shopping centre with its empty echoes, women had had their bags snatched by boys in hoodies. Or so she’d heard. Not that anything like that frightened her. She met with law-breakers of all kinds every day and was very confident and capable in dealing with them. Her black belt in karate helped, of course. She still attended a karate club every week.
    Her flat had two bedrooms, a kitchen, a ‘front room’ as the sitting room had always been called, and a bathroom. Gone were the days when the lavatory was out on the landing and there was no hot water on tap. At least that had been a welcome change when the flats had been converted and modernised. The kitchen used to have a recessed or ‘hole in the wall’ bed. Now the bed was gone and in the recess was a round dining table and six chairs. Not that she entertained much. The table was rarely used for guests. It was bad policy to become friendly with the staff at work, and the neighbours were all out at their work during the day and she seldom even caught a glimpse of them. She supposed for most people, modern life meant a lonely life. One sign of this was the proliferation nowadays of dating agencies in newspapers and magazines and on television.
    The karate club was her only social life, but it was a small club and as far as she knew, everyone was married. She’d had one or two couples from the club to dinner and had been invited back, but only a very few times. A single person always proved awkward at dinner parties or any other kind of social occasion. Sometimes she was tempted to try one of the dating agencies. Not that she was desperate for a man. She liked her job during the day. It was never dull and she enjoyed the weekly visit to the karate club and the television on other nights. It wasn’t a bad life. She supposed, though, that it could be of extra interest to have a bit of companionship, especially as one got older. Someone to talk to about things. Her job, for instance, was so full of variety and interest, she often felt it would be nice to share her experiences with someone at the end of the