The Girl with the Creel Read online

  ‘But … he’s married already … isn’t he?’

  ‘He’s getting divorced …’

  ‘Willie Alec would never let her wed a divorced man.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that. George is a real decent lad.’

  ‘You’ve met him?’ Peter was astonished.

  ‘Aye, I’ve met him, and that’s all I’m telling you. The best thing you can do, Peter, is find another girl.’

  ‘I’ll never stop loving Lizann.’

  ‘That’s up to you, but you haven’t a hope in hell of getting her.’

  Offended as well as discouraged, Peter was dourly silent for the rest of the way, but as they parted company at the Yardie, he looked at his old friend in deep entreaty. ‘Mick, let her know I didn’t mean her any harm … please.’

  ‘I’ll tell her, but I can’t see her ever forgiving you.’ Mick went inside wishing that he had found out the whys and wherefores before he lashed out … but Peter should have kept his big mouth shut.

  Mick had to wait until their parents went to bed before he could tell Lizann what had happened, and when she found out that Peter actually was the culprit, she said mournfully, ‘I knew he was the only one it could have been, but I didn’t want to think it was him.’

  ‘I was that mad, I thumped him before he’d a chance to say anything,’ Mick muttered, sheepishly. ‘He said he saw red when Mother told him it was George you were out with. He wasn’t trying to make trouble for you.’

  ‘He did, though,’ Lizann gulped. ‘And George’ll be back in Cullen now, and goodness knows how long it’ll be till I see him again.’

  Mick pulled a face. ‘For any sake, don’t tell Father he’s gone home already or he’ll wonder how you know. If he thought I’d poked my nose in, I’d be for it. As it is, he’ll likely tell Mother to let you out in three days and maybe you’ll have heard from George by that time.’

  * * *

  It was a week later, when Lizann had almost given up hope of hearing, before the letter arrived, and it took all her courage to lift it off the mat. She was desperate to know what Katie had said, but she was afraid it might be bad news. Stuffing the envelope inside her cardigan in case her mother saw it, she went up to her room and slit the top with trembling fingers.

  All it said was, ‘She’s agreed to it,’ and she was disappointed that George had taken Mick’s advice so much to heart. Surely he could have written a proper letter, telling her he loved her and what Katie had actually said? But at least she knew that everything was going to be all right … and she wasn’t confined to the house any longer.

  ‘You’re awful chirpy the day,’ Hannah observed that forenoon. ‘I hope you’ve forgotten all your nonsense now.’

  Lizann nearly told her it wasn’t nonsense, but deemed it best to let her mother think she had got over George … until he came back to claim her. The fat would be in the fire then with a vengeance, but as it said in the Bible, ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ She wasn’t going to worry about it until the time came.

  Peter still had not got over his confrontation with Mick. He had told his mother he had walked into a door, and thanks to the cold compress she’d put on the swelling on his jaw was almost gone, but it was more than flesh and blood could stand to think that Lizann might one day be George Buchan’s wife. He honestly hadn’t meant to cause trouble for her, but he was glad now that he had told Hannah. Surely Willie Alec wouldn’t let his daughter waste her life on a divorced man … and anyway, maybe he wouldn’t get divorced. Maybe his wife wouldn’t agree to it.

  The more Peter thought about that, the more likely it seemed, and he turned his mind to planning how to console Lizann when the time came. He would be sympathetic, and he wouldn’t scare her off by rushing her, but gradually, as she got over her disappointment, he would let her see that he still loved her, had never stopped loving her and never would. He could imagine himself stroking her black curls, taking her in his arms and kissing her, but nothing more than that, for Hannah would have told her to keep herself pure until her wedding night.

  With the impact of a blow from a sledge-hammer in his solar plexus, he remembered that Lizann wasn’t pure. She had already given herself to the man she hoped to marry. Swallowing the bitter, brackish liquid rising in his throat, Peter wondered what George Buchan looked like. All he’d been able to make out when he saw them was that he was fairly tall and quite well built. Maybe Lizann preferred broad men to skinnies like himself? Maybe he should try to build up his body? He could send for one of those chest expanders advertised in the American detective magazines he bought occasionally, or a pair of Indian clubs. Or even apply to Charles Atlas for information on how to have a body like his, bulging with muscles though he had once been a ten-stone weakling … or so he claimed. Of course, Peter mused, that could be a downright lie to entice fools like him to pay through the nose for some kind of course that wouldn’t have any effect. A chest expander would be best. He’d heard that it could be months, maybe years, till a divorce came through, so he’d have plenty time to make himself into the kind of man Lizann seemed to prefer.

  Having made his decision, Peter took a pile of old magazines out of his wardrobe and started leafing through them.

  With the coming of summer, Hannah was easier in her mind about Willie Alec being at sea. Every winter she was on edge from the time he sailed on Monday till he came back on Friday or Saturday, and near out of her senses with worry when there were gales. He never told her what it was like to battle against the elements, but she knew it must be dangerous. The boats never went out in a storm, but storms could spring up out of nowhere, and when Willie Alec was away she listened every night to the trawler waveband on the wireless, to the skippers speaking to each other or to their wives. Not the Buckie skippers, worse luck, for none of the drifters had wirelesses, but they must get the same weather – the wild nor’easters that tossed the boats around like matchboxes, and the anticyclones, whatever they were. A lot of Buckie women had been left widows quite young, with little bairns to bring up, so she could count herself lucky to have her man so long … but …

  Hannah’s mind, never completely free of worries, jumped to Lizann. She had got over that awful row real quick … too quick, maybe. If she loved that George Buchan as much as she said she did, she’d still be moping for him, but apart from the first week or so, she’d been going about as happy as a lark. But just lately something was obviously bothering her again, for she was that jumpy and short-tempered even her father had noticed it.

  ‘It’ll have taken her a while to realize she’ll never see the man again,’ he had said before he went away on Monday. ‘She was strung up that tight about me keeping her in, she likely didna think further than that at the time. She’d calmed down by the next day, so maybe she hoped he’d try to see her. I’m real surprised he didna, but it showed he didna really care about her. Ach well, she’s bound to forget him come time.’

  But it was six months already, Hannah reflected, and if Lizann hadn’t forgotten him by now, maybe she never would. Maybe it was a true saying that a woman never forgets her first love … but Peter had been her first love. George had been … her first lover, that could be what the saying meant. Hannah couldn’t tell, one way or the other, for Willie Alec had been both to her – though there had once been a time …

  Breaking into her mother’s wavering thoughts, Lizann trailed in as if all the troubles of the world were on her shoulders, and watching the effort it took her to lift the bulging shopping bag on to the table, Hannah felt a touch of pity for her. ‘Was that load ower heavy for you?’ she asked, in some concern.

  ‘No, I was tired anyway.’

  ‘Aye, you’re looking a bit run down. I’ll get out the Hall’s Wine, it aye picks me up.’

  ‘I don’t want it. I’ll be fine.’

  Lizann had no peace to think until she went up to her room at night. She wasn’t run down, she was miserable. She’d been expecting George to come any day to tell
her he was free, and instead … Mick had knocked the bottom out of her world, though he’d just been trying to explain why she was having to wait so long.

  ‘Mancie Will was telling me his cousin in Glasgow divorced her man last year,’ he had said when he was home the weekend before last, ‘and it was three years from the time he walked out on her till she got free of him. Apparently, the divorce judges or whatever they’re called have to be sure a couple are really … irreconcilable. That means they’d never even think of getting back together again.’

  ‘Three years?’ she had gasped, her senses swimming with shock.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, little sister, I didn’t … I thought if you knew that, it would stop you wondering why George hadn’t written to you, and he’s been away from his wife since the end of February, so that’s only two and a half … are you all right?’

  She had assured her brother that she was fine, but every night since, she had been haunted by thoughts of what could happen in two and a half years, of what could have happened already in the time he had been back in Cullen. George might have got together with Katie again, been … what was it? … reconciled with her. What if they’d only had a tiff and he’d been amusing himself with her till it blew over? But surely he could have written to let her know, one way or the other, even though it meant breaking his promise to Mick? He must know she would be worrying.

  Dash it all! She was tired of waiting, and more tired of being kept in the dark. Maybe she should have stuck to Peter? She hadn’t seen him for weeks after the row he had caused, and she’d felt like walking past him when she did, but he had stopped her.

  ‘Lizann, I’m truly sorry,’ he’d said. ‘You’re the last person in the world I wanted to hurt, but it was out before I thought.’

  His sorrowful look made her say, ‘I’m sorry Mick punched you.’

  His eyes had brightened. ‘I suppose I asked for it.’

  She had caught sight of him going past the window occasionally since then and had thought there was something different about him, but she couldn’t make up her mind what. It was only this morning, when she had seen him coming and had a better chance to study him from behind the curtain, that she realized what it was. His face had filled out, his body not so boyish, and he looked all the better for it.

  George had been a man the first time she saw him, broad but without an ounce of superfluous fat on him. He was completely different from Peter, whose blond hair was brushed back neatly, clothes always spick and span. George’s brown head, on the other hand, looked as if he’d hacked at it without looking in a mirror, and his clothes – there was nothing to say for them except they’d seen better days. But just thinking about him like this, with his dear face fresh in her mind, she could feel the love she had for him gaining strength once more, and she knew she could never go back to Peter. It was George she wanted, and if he didn’t come back to marry her, she was prepared to remain an old maid.

  When Peggy May Cordiner returned from Yarmouth that November she had news for Lizann. ‘Me and Ned’s getting married when we find a house,’ she announced, almost breathless with excitement. ‘And you ken old Mrs Dey next door to us? Well, her Norrie’s trying to get her to go and bide wi’ him in Lossie, and if she does, he’s promised to let us have it as cheap as he can, so I’ll maybe be Mrs Edward Yule by Christmas.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Lizann murmured, happy for her friend, yet envious that she wasn’t having to do any waiting.

  Her lack of enthusiasm communicated itself to Peggy May. ‘Have you still nae had nae word from George?’

  ‘I’m beginning to think I’ll never get word,’ Lizann said, dejectedly. ‘It’s near eight months since he sent the note about Katie agreeing.’

  ‘But your Mick said divorces took three years, didn’t he? Dinna lose heart, Lizann. Time flies, as the man said when his wife threw the alarm clock at him.’

  Nevertheless, time did not fly for either of them. First 1933 inched into 1934, which dragged on into 1935, and all the while, along with her own fear that George had never meant to marry her, Lizann couldn’t help feeling sorry for her friend; if Ned Yule wanted to make Peggy May his wife he could surely find another house and not have to wait for old Mrs Dey to move out. And Peggy May, beginning to wonder if her fiancé was not as keen as she thought, was almost sure that George Buchan was going to let Lizann down.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘I sometimes feel like giving that Mrs Dey a good shake,’ Peggy May confided the evening before she left for Yarmouth, ‘but poor soul, she doesna want to give up her house, and you canna really blame her, now can you?’

  Every bit as downhearted as her friend, Lizann shook her head, her thoughts not actually on the old woman. ‘I wish George would write and let me know how the divorce is going …’

  ‘He’ll just be waiting, the same as you.’

  ‘But … he must realize what this not knowing’s doing to me.’

  Peggy May eyed her sympathetically. ‘You should write to him. Mick got his mother’s address for you, didn’t he?’

  ‘George and me both promised Mick we wouldn’t write.’

  ‘Well, then, you can’t do nothing!’ Unsure of her own romance, Peggy May’s patience was wearing dangerously thin, but the tears which had sprung to Lizann’s eyes made her hasten to say, ‘I tell you what! I’ll look for him down there, and if I see him I’ll …’

  ‘Don’t tell him to write,’ Lizann begged, afraid that this would bring bad luck. ‘Just ask if he still feels the same about me.’

  Lizann was on edge when it was time for the fisher quines to come home.

  ‘What’s the matter wi’ you?’ Hannah demanded one forenoon.

  ‘I’m waiting for Peggy May,’ Lizann answered, honestly. ‘I wanted to ask if Mrs Dey’s given up her house yet.’

  Believing that her daughter had got over the man from Cullen, Hannah took this reply at its face value. ‘I dinna ken why you canna be like her and find a lad.’ She paused and eyed the girl slyly. ‘You wouldna have far to look, for Peter Tait would …’

  Lizann decided to ignore this. Her mother’s mind was like a butterfly these days, flitting from one thing to another and never lingering long.

  It was 2 December – a freezing fog blotting everything out – when Peggy May tapped and popped her head round the door. ‘Have you a minute, Lizann? I’ve something to tell you.’

  She waited until her friend got her coat from the lobby and threw a shawl round her head, then they walked round the corner into one of the posies – the tiny alleyways between the houses where even the weather had trouble reaching. ‘Yes?’ Lizann asked, breathlessly, her legs almost buckling under her with apprehension of what she was about to hear.

  Peggy May did not prolong her agony. ‘He wasna there, but I got Ned to ask some of the Cullen men, and they said George was still biding wi’ his mother. He’s waiting there till he gets his divorce, and he’s on a boat fishing cod round about Iceland.’

  Relief made Lizann feel faint and she was glad there was no room for her to collapse. Peggy May gave her a little time to digest the news, then said gently, ‘So you’ve been worrying yourself sick over nothing. It’s all going to be all right, and by the looks of things, you and George’ll be wed afore me and Ned.’

  Lizann was ashamed for not having asked before. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Is Mrs Dey still …?’

  ‘I havena been hame yet, but in her last letter Ma said nothing had changed.’

  When Lizann returned to her house, not even Hannah’s accusing, ‘Where have you been? You ken I dinna like being left by myself,’ dampened her spirits. George and Katie hadn’t got reconciled, and there were just three months to wait now.

  Having been adamant for so long that she would never give up her home, Mrs Dey surprised her son just before Christmas. ‘I can see I’ll get nae peace till I shift to Lossie,’ she sighed, ‘but I want one last Hogmanay in my ain hoose.’

  And so, on the day after New Year’s Day
, Peggy May was given the key to what was to be her marital home. When Norrie Dey apologized for leaving it in a mess, she laughed, ‘Me and Ned’ll easy clean it up.’

  The wedding was arranged for 1 February, which did not give Jess Cordiner much time to arrange everything, but Dozy had been saving for years to give his only child a big wedding. Most of her friends were green with envy when Peggy May entered the church on her father’s arm wearing a lovely creation of white tulle and lace, dotted with pearls. Her maid of honour, the daughter of her mother’s sister, was dressed in pale pink taffeta with a long spray of pink roses fastened to the skirt to allow her hands free to bear the bridal train.

  Lizann wasn’t jealous of anything – she wouldn’t have been jealous if the bridal gown had been topped by a diamond-studded tiara instead of a wired head-dress edged with looped lace caught up with pearls – but she couldn’t stifle her resentment that Peggy May had got the man she loved, while she herself didn’t know if the man she loved still loved her.

  Then she told herself not to be pessimistic. Of course George still loved her, and the only reason he had never written to tell her so was her father. Like Mick had said, if George played by Willie Alec’s rules it would be easier to win him round, but it was awful having been left up in the air, not sure of anything, for what felt like half a lifetime. Still, in another month, maybe a few days more, George would be coming to claim her. She was old enough by now not to need her parents’ permission … but there could be trouble. Would George manage to hold out against any fierce opposition from her father? More to the point, would she?

  In his mother’s house in Cullen, George too was sitting in a brown study. When the divorce papers had come, he had thought it would be all over in a week or two, then, realizing that there was no letter telling him when the case was to be heard, he had resigned himself to wait until the solicitors or whoever gave him a date when he had to appear. And there hadn’t been a letter from anybody.