The Girl with the Creel Page 26

  ‘No, no, Lizann! You’re nae to leave them for Lou.’

  Her legs threatening to give way, Jenny grasped the edge of the table. Hannah was mistaking her for Lizann! She’d been all right yesterday, so what had brought this on? ‘Has anybody else been in to see you the day?’

  Hannah smiled. ‘Just Jenny.’

  Unable to be sure if there really had been someone or if the old woman was just imagining it, Jenny asked, ‘What was she saying?’

  Hannah appeared to think about this, but her eyes were darting hither and thither slyly. ‘I canna mind. She was just in a minute.’

  Jenny decided that it had been imagination. Her mind was gone again, poor thing, and she shouldn’t be left on her own.

  Lou arrived when dinner was over. ‘I made rice broth for her,’ Jenny whispered, ‘and I’d to spoon it to her, for she’s lost the use of her arms now, as well as her legs. And she’s all muddled, for she thinks I’m Lizann. I don’t know what’s happened, but it’s a good thing Mick didn’t tell her anything before he sailed.’

  Lou sighed deeply. ‘We’d better nae say onything, either, for she might go bizerk all together … and I’d best sleep wi’ her the night.’

  ‘What’s you two whispering about?’ Hannah demanded, sharply.

  Lou gave her a forced smile. ‘Jenny was saying she made rice …’

  Hannah’s brows shot down. ‘Jenny? Is she back? I thought it was just Lizann that was here.’

  The other two exchanged agonized glances, then Jenny said, ‘I’m going home now, Hannah, but I’ll see you the morrow.’

  Hannah looked at her sister in perplexed suspicion when the door shut. ‘But she went away before Lizann came in. I’m near sure it was her that tell’t me …’ She broke off, gripping her lips tightly.

  ‘Tell’t you what?’ Lou prodded, though she could hardly think that Jenny had anything to do with Hannah’s sudden deterioration.

  ‘Never you mind!’ Hannah snapped.

  Not wishing to upset her further, and believing in any case that she was havering, Lou stopped probing. If she and Jenny had got together and tried to get to the bottom of it they might have stumbled across the truth, because Peter Tait’s wife was the only other young woman who ever visited Hannah. As it was, Elsie’s unpremeditated villainy remained undetected.

  PART TWO

  1939–1942

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘There’s something at the back o’ my mind about you, Lizann,’ Hannah observed one afternoon in March, frowning with the effort of trying to remember, ‘if I could only think what it is.’

  Jenny had stopped correcting her about the name. It was easier to let her mother-in-law believe what she wanted to believe. She wished Mick had told Hannah the truth at the time, for there might come a day when her brain cleared and she would realize that it wasn’t Lizann who washed her, dressed her, spoonfed her, potted her, put her to bed, and what would happen then? But Mick hadn’t been capable of coping with the state his mother would have got herself into if she knew about Lizann. Oh, he had done his best to hide how he felt, Jenny couldn’t deny that, but it wouldn’t have taken much to knock him off balance altogether. That was why she had forced him – it had been easy since his resistance was at its lowest ebb – into marrying her as quickly as he could.

  ‘You need a wife to help you over your troubles,’ she had declared, ‘and I’ve enough money to tide us over till you’ve squared the yard.’

  They had been married immediately the banns had been cried, and the debt to the shipyard had been cleared, yet Mick still seemed to be living on a knife-edge, though he was everything she could have wanted as a lover.

  She watched for him the following day and went out to speak to him before he came in. ‘I think your mother’s beginning to know something’s wrong. She said yesterday she’d something at the back of her mind about Lizann. Maybe you should tell her.’

  Mick blew out a long breath from puckered lips. ‘But she still thinks you’re Lizann, doesn’t she? No, I think I’ll leave it a while yet.’

  Next morning, as Jenny was dressing her, Hannah said, ‘Your father’ll be hame the day, Lizann. You’ll have to make a big pot o’ soup for him.’

  As usual, Jenny just smiled at this, though she longed to shake the confused woman and tell her Willie Alec had been dead for years. ‘I’ll get a bit of boiling beef after we’ve had our breakfast.’

  ‘She’s back to thinking your father’s still alive,’ she whispered to Mick while they walked to the butcher’s shop together.

  ‘Lou’ll maybe be able to bring her out o’ it,’ Mick said, hopefully.

  ‘Lou wasn’t feeling well yesterday, so maybe she’ll not be coming.’

  When someone knocked on the door in the middle of the forenoon, Jenny wondered why Lou was early and why she hadn’t walked in as she normally did, so she was alarmed to see Sarah Smith, Lou’s next door neighbour.

  ‘Your auntie sent me,’ Mrs Smith explained. ‘She was in terrible pain wi’ her stomach the whole night, and Jockie had to go for the doctor at seven this morning, and the ambulance took her to the hospital.’

  ‘Oh, my goodness!’ Jenny gasped. ‘D’you know what it is?’

  ‘It sounded to me like a ulcer, or something like that.’

  ‘I’ll tell Mick, she’s his auntie. Thanks for letting us know.’

  When Mick was told, he said, ‘It must be serious before she was put in the hospital, I’d better go and see her, for she’s aye been good to us.’

  He was gone for so long that Jenny prepared herself for bad news, but she was still shocked at his drawn face when he returned. He shook his head sadly. ‘She died before I got there. They said it was cancer, and she should have seen the doctor ages ago.’

  ‘Cancer?’ Jenny exclaimed, her eyes as round as saucers. ‘Oh, my God! Yesterday was the only time I ever heard her complaining.’

  They had both forgotten Hannah, who had been listening to every word but had got it wrong. ‘Lizann’s got cancer?’ she cried, hands jumping about on her lap. ‘But she’s still a young lassie.’

  Jenny burst into tears, and Mick knelt down beside his mother. ‘No, it’s not Lizann. It’s Lou.’

  ‘Lou hasna got cancer,’ Hannah declared firmly. ‘She’s never had a thing wrong wi’ her. It was me took everything when we was young.’

  ‘Lou died in the hospital,’ Mick said, slowly and gently, as if to a child, but his mother looked at him with blank eyes.

  Standing up, he turned to his wife, who held out her arms and he went into them with a strangled moan. ‘Oh, Jen, I don’t think she’ll ever get over this, it’s too much for her. It’s too much for me.’ His noisy sobs went on for some time, and Jenny, tears coursing down her own cheeks, held him tightly.

  She saw a silent Hannah to bed earlier than usual that night, then went back to the kitchen. ‘Why were you away so long?’ she asked Mick, who was sitting staring into the fire.

  ‘I’d to see this doctor and that doctor, and wait for them to sign a death certificate. Then I’d to go and look for Jockie. God knows how Lou put up with him since he stopped working, for he was in and out bars all day. He must have started after Lou went away in the ambulance, for he was blazing drunk by the time I found him. I said he’d better wait till he was sober before he arranged the funeral, and he started to cry and say he was sorry for how he’d treated her, and I’d to stay with him till he calmed down. Oh, Jenny, it’s been awful.’

  ‘I could see you were worn out when you came back. I’m feeling a bit tired myself, so we’d be as well going up to bed now.’

  He transferred his pity to his wife. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t be carrying on like this when you … you must always be dead tired looking after my mother the way you do.’

  ‘I do get tired,’ she admitted, not noticing his unintentional pun, ‘but just ordinary tired. I’m fine in the mornings.’

  He fell asleep minutes afterwards with his arms around her, and Jenny sm
iled ruefully as she listened to his steady breathing. She had hoped for some loving, but he’d be feeling Lou’s death even more than she did. As for Hannah … well, she’d probably forgotten all about it already and would be sound asleep by now.

  Hannah was not sound asleep. Her unhinged mind was grappling with things she could not understand. Her sister couldn’t be dead. Lou had always been healthy … like Lizann. Lizann? But it wasn’t Lizann that had put her to bed, it was the girl that had looked after her ever since …? Since Willie Alec died? No, that had been Lizann right enough, to begin with … and she’d still come every day after she left the Yardie.

  Hannah drew a deep breath, striving to remember why Lizann had stopped coming, for she had stopped, that was sure. Ah! She’d been expecting and then … something terrible had happened. Her man … had been drowned and … she’d lost the bairnie. But why had she never come back?

  Her head spinning, Hannah did her best to delve through the mists that fogged her brain. There was something else! Something somebody had said. Not the girl who looked after her now – that was … Jenny Cowie! – it was another girl, not a nice girl. Peter Tait. Why had she thought about him? He’d been engaged to Lizann, but … he’d married … a blond hussy with a painted face …? What was her name? Elsie! Aye, that was it, and it was her that had come and said …? What was it she’d said? About Lizann?

  Hannah felt herself shying away from it, but having enough sense to know she would lose the thread of her thoughts altogether if she let go of them, she persevered until it came back to her. Elsie said Lizann had run away. But why had she run away, and where was she?

  Losing her concentration suddenly, Hannah’s thoughts took a jump back in time. She didn’t want Lizann here. It was her fault Willie Alec was dead. Her and that man she took to the house, that … George Buchan from Cullen. She didn’t want them here! She managed fine with Lou coming in every day, and Mick’s girl bringing in things she’d baked. Now she was a nice lassie, a thoughtful lassie, and Mick couldn’t do better if he took her for a wife.

  Satisfied that she’d sorted everything out, Hannah fell asleep.

  When Peter Tait saw Lou’s death in the newspaper he decided to attend the funeral, but when he told Elsie her eyes narrowed. ‘How do you know this Louise Flett, any road? It says she was seventy-three.’

  Thankful that his wife hadn’t connected her with Mick’s Auntie Lou, he answered cautiously. ‘I’ve known her for years. She’s a nice old body.’

  ‘I’ve never heard you speaking about her, and you’re not going. They might dock it off your wages, and we can’t afford it.’

  ‘I am going … whatever you say!’

  He sighed as she flounced away with her mouth screwed up. She got more on his nerves every day, and if he hadn’t his two sons to consider he would walk out on her. He suspected that she took other men in when he was at work, though the only person he had ever caught in his house – one day he had come home early with a streaming cold – was young Lenny Fyfe, and he was just a kid.

  Having asked off work for an hour, he took his black tie in his pocket the following morning. He didn’t expect to know many of the people at the funeral, but when he turned up at Rannas Place the only person he recognized was Mick Jappy. His eyes going round the men assembled in the street and remembering Mick once saying his uncle took a good bucket, he guessed that the wee man with the red nose must be Lou’s husband. He looked as if he’d had a good few drams already … to steady his nerves.

  When the service in the kirkyard was over, Mick came across to speak to him. ‘It’s good of you to come, Peter.’

  ‘Och, well,’ Peter said, slightly embarrassed because he wasn’t there for the reason Mick thought, ‘you’ve always been my best pal. How’s your mother taking this? I hope it hasn’t set her back again.’

  Taken by surprise, Mick burst out, ‘She went out of her mind again not long after Lizann went away. You’d think she knew, but none of us ever told her.’

  An icy hand clutched at Peter’s stomach. ‘So you’ve never heard from Lizann, then?’

  Mick shook his head sadly. ‘Not a word.’

  ‘Does Hannah not wonder where she is?’

  ‘She’s that muddled she thinks Jenny’s Lizann, and I can’t see myself ever telling her. God knows what it would do to her.’

  Peter touched his shoulder sympathetically. ‘Aye, it’s maybe better to keep it from her. It’s a good thing you’ve got Jenny.’

  Noticing the other mourners moving away, Mick said, ‘Are you coming back to Lou’s house?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’ve to go back to work.’

  ‘Right. Well, I’d better see to Jockie. He looks like he’ll keel over any minute, and God knows what he’ll be like by the end of the day.’

  ‘You’ll let me know if you ever hear from Lizann?’

  ‘Aye, I’ll do that.’

  As Peter walked back to the yard, he wondered again where Lizann had gone, and why she had left. It must have been sudden, when she hadn’t told a soul she was leaving. Not even the clamour of metal hammering against metal, reverberating non-stop through the window, could get Lizann out of his mind for the rest of the day, and when he went home he was still puzzling over her disappearance.

  ‘Did you see anybody you knew at the funeral?’ Elsie asked.

  He hadn’t meant to tell her, but it came out. ‘Just Mick Jappy.’

  ‘Mick? Did he know the old woman, and all?’

  ‘She was his auntie.’

  ‘Lou? I didn’t realize … oh, I see now why you were so anxious to go. Has he heard anything from Lizann?’

  ‘I don’t think he ever will … not now. I wish I knew why she went off like that.’

  Elsie longed to tell him it had been her doing, but, knowing what his reaction would be, she said instead, ‘Mick thought it was something Jenny said, didn’t he?’

  ‘That’s what he said, but I can’t believe it. Jenny’s a nice girl, a kind girl. She wouldn’t hurt anybody. I wish I’d gone back to see Lizann again, and I would have, if you hadn’t kicked up such a stink about it. She mightn’t have gone away if she’d talked things over with me.’

  ‘She might have made you go with her,’ Elsie sneered.

  Past caring what she thought, he said, ‘If she’d asked me, I’d have gone to the ends of the earth with her!’

  Stung, she lashed back, ‘That wouldna have bothered me, for there’s mair than one man waiting to get into my bed.’

  ‘You can take whoever you like into your bed as far as I’m concerned,’ Peter said quietly. ‘I’ll not be sharing it with you again.’

  ‘Oho,’ she taunted, ‘and where’ll you sleep?’

  ‘With the boys … when I’m here.’

  She looked wary now. ‘When you’re here? What d’you mean by that?’

  ‘I’m going to sign on a boat to get away from you.’

  ‘The hard work would kill you!’

  ‘I’d be better dead than sleeping with you!’

  Realizing that she had pushed him too far, Elsie sidled up to him. ‘It wasn’t true about the other men. I just said it to get back at you. Come up the stair and I’ll show you.’

  He shoved her away. ‘I wouldn’t touch you if you were the only woman on this earth.’

  ‘You didna aye think that.’

  ‘More fool me. I should have known what you were from the minute I set eyes on you.’

  ‘Oh, aye? What am I, then?’

  ‘A common tart. My mother was right, I should never have married you.’

  ‘Your mother was a goddam’t nosy bitch!’ Elsie shouted.

  ‘She was a damn sight better a woman than you’ll ever be!’

  Wanting to wound him, she was on the point of telling him what had really happened on the morning of her last row with Bella Jeannie when it occurred to her that he would blame her for his mother’s death and might lash out at her in his anger. Instead, she started to undo the buttons of her blouse,
hoping to tempt him into forgetting why they were at each other’s throats.

  ‘Stop that!’ he roared. ‘You’re wasting your time!’ He spun round and stalked out, slamming the outside door behind him. He was disgusted that baring her breasts was her answer to everything; they didn’t excite him any more. God, he wished he hadn’t tried to do the right thing by her in keeping away from Lizann.

  He walked for hours, welcoming the night when darkness engulfed him. His heart was aching for the woman he loved, yet he had begun to smart from the vile insult his wife had thrown at him. It was degrading to think that while he’d been working to provide her and their sons with a decent standard of living, she’d been entertaining other men, for he hadn’t believed her when she said she’d lied about it. She must have laughed at him on the rare occasions he’d needed her over the past few months, likely compared him with her other lovers.

  Peter was miles away from home when he eventually sat down on a bank at the side of the road to take stock of his situation. He had said, on the spur of the moment, that he would sign on a boat to get away from her and he damned well would. At least he would be free of her for five days at a time; he could surely manage to put up with her for the two days he would be ashore.

  Shafts of daylight were peppering the black sky before he reached his house again, in time to wash and shave and change into a clean shirt before going to work, but when he went in he was annoyed to see Elsie sitting by the fire with a blanket wrapped round her. Thinking she was asleep, he tried to creep past but her eyes jerked open.

  ‘So you’ve come back at last?’ she said sarcastically. ‘Where have you been till …’ She shot a quick glance at the clock, ‘… till twenty past six in the morning? You must have been wi’ bloody good company.’

  ‘The best!’ he snarled. ‘I was by myself … walking and thinking.’

  ‘And have you changed your mind about going to sea?’

  ‘No.’ He made for the door into the lobby but she jumped to her feet, the blanket falling to reveal that she was wearing nothing underneath.