The Shadow of the Sycamores Read online

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Her voice was icy. ‘Your meaning is perfectly clear.’

  ‘No, I dinna mean what you think I mean.’ His frustration at being unable to express himself properly was making Willie revert to his old way of speaking. ‘Let me try and explain, lass. Aye, I did come to love Janet – but just like a friend – then like the sister I never had, a sister I could tell things to – like you said, things I couldna tell you. She was easy to speak to – she didna find fault, she listened and advised and said what she thought but never – never, I say – laid down the law to me. Can you not understand that?’

  ‘I understand I was right all along – you did love her.’

  ‘Oh, Nessie,’ he groaned, ‘you still dinna understand. I loved her like a sister, I tell you, but I love you like a wife. Like a man should love his wife, though I must admit the years have ta’en their toll on me. The urge is there many a nicht, but … the flesh is weak,’ He leaned across and took her hand. ‘I’m not young and erect like I once was, Nessie, I’m auld and … limp.’ His eyes twinkled roguishly for a moment. ‘The truth is I would if I could, lass, but I canna.’

  Nessie swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘I’m sorry, Willie. I should have known you would never do anything wrong. Anyway, fancy me worrying about something like that at my age.’

  Willie got up and pulled her to her feet. ‘No, no, my dear, everybody needs to feel loved – there’s no disgrace in that – and, just to prove what I’ve been saying, come up the stair and I’ll squeeze you till you beg for mercy.’

  Needless to say, she did not beg for mercy. She savoured his cuddles and kisses and hope rose within her as he caressed her in places he hadn’t touched for many a long year. Hope, though, was the only thing that rose and, even if she felt slightly cheated, she was relieved that he went no further. Two eighty-year-olds could never recapture the passion they’d had at forty.

  Jerry had meant to go to see his parents when he became a father but his mother’s letter made him change his mind. They would be upset enough about Janet’s death without him adding to it by springing a daughter-in-law and a grandson on them and, anyway, Anna wasn’t well enough yet to be travelling.

  Besides, he had something else on his mind. The birth of his baby had not brought the joy that he had expected. After they were given the good news, the older men who worked with him eyed him as if they pitied him and, after puzzling over this for a whole day and night, he tackled the head gardener the following morning. ‘Why does everybody keep looking at me like that? You all knew Anna and me had to get wed.’ It was not something he was proud of but it was the truth.

  Dod Lumsden looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, it’s like this, lad … um … how long had you been seeing her afore the wedding? A couple o’ month, maybe?’

  The young man nodded. ‘That’s right but what’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘You didna ken her afore that?’

  ‘No. Tina thought she should get to know somebody her own age and Mrs Miller agreed to her seeing me.’

  Lumsden rubbed his chin pensively. ‘Can you mind the first time you … made love to her?’

  Colouring, Jerry muttered, ‘I can’t see that it’s any of your business.’

  ‘Either it’s nae but I still think you should ken …’

  ‘I should know what?’ A little feeling of unease was hovering round the pit of the youth’s stomach now.

  ‘Look lad, somebody needs to set you right aboot things. You see, from the time a man plants his seed in a lassie’s belly, it tak’s nine month till it’s born.’ Noticing that the young eyes had clouded, he asked, gently, ‘When did you plant your seed in her?’

  This being met with a puzzled silence, Dod heaved a deep sigh. ‘Godamercy, laddie! You dinna ken what I’m speaking aboot, do you? Well, we’d better leave it there. I dinna want to cause trouble atween you and … your wife.’

  He walked away, shaking his head and Jerry was left wondering what the man had been trying to say. He and Anna had only known each other for … five months at the very most and they’d been seeing each other for at least a month before he gave her that first wicked kiss. He still felt ashamed of it for the boys at school used to say that was what could make the girl have a baby. She hadn’t liked it but that’s when his seed must have got inside her. Not quite four months before she gave birth. Dod Lumsden had been blethering. Nine months? For elephants, maybe, not human beings!

  But he couldn’t put the disconcerting information out of his head and, when he went home that night, he asked Anna what she knew about the length of time a baby grew inside its mother.

  There was no hesitation. ‘What a funny thing to ask. You should know. It took our wee William Henry four months, didn’t it?’

  It was what he wanted to hear. Dod Lumsden had never had any children. What did he know about it?

  Jerry would not have been so sure if he had known how Tina Paul’s mind was working. She had been mulling it over for days, had tried to make herself believe that Anna and Jerry must have been meeting in secret months before it had been arranged for them. She wondered if she should tell Mrs Miller but she would only get the blame for not knowing what was going on. She always got the blame – no matter what – and she would likely get the sack for real this time.

  Desperate to find confirmation one way or the other, she thought of asking Charles Moonie. Surely he would know if Anna had been meeting Jerry on the quiet. The thing was, since the day he had been told that his walks with Anna must stop, he had been dour and uncommunicative. She had put it down to pique but maybe he thought he was being punished when he had done nothing wrong.

  Tina’s thoughts stumbled, then picked up speed and skated over something that had been nibbling away at her peace of mind since wee William Henry was born. Each time it had suggested itself, she had pushed it from her, although she knew she would have to face up to it at some point. Not yet. Not today.

  Having made her decision, the nurse stood up purposefully. She had set aside at least thirty minutes morning and afternoon to check that Anna was coping with motherhood. The birth had had a strange effect on the girl and her short periods of seemingly withdrawing from the world were growing longer. She would sit staring into space, eyes glazed over, even when her infant was howling for a feed but, as soon as Tina touched her, she snapped back to normal. It was worrying yet Tina always managed to assure herself that things would sort themselves out as time went on.

  Fay was concerned about both her children. There had been no letter from Leo Ferguson for an impossibly long time and Mara was going about as if she were just half-alive – not even that some days. The situation did look black but she had to keep her daughter’s spirits up. There had been stories of men going missing in combat and turning up nearly a year later, having lost their memory or perhaps being badly wounded and taken to a French or Belgian hospital and being nursed back to health.

  ‘It could happen, couldn’t it?’ Fay asked her husband one night.

  ‘Aye, Fay, it could happen but I some think we’ll need to start being realistic. It’ll be all the harder for her when the word does come.’

  ‘I know but I can’t bear to be the one to shatter her hopes.’

  ‘D’you want me to say something, then?’

  ‘No, please don’t.’

  ‘You know, it just came to me. It would be Leo’s father they would tell. He would be the next of kin.’

  Fay took a moment to consider this – it was something she had not thought of. Then she said, her voice lifting with hope, ‘He would have let Mara know if anything had happened to Leo. Surely he would?’

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t know about her.’

  ‘Leo said he told him they were engaged and he was going to take her to meet them in Edinburgh next time he came home.’

  Henry couldn’t help noticing that she was using the past tense but he let it go and, in a moment, she said, ‘You know, we haven’t heard from Jerry for a good while. I ho
pe he’s all right.’

  ‘What a woman you are for worrying. If anything was wrong with Jerry, the Superintendent would let us know. He’s likely found himself a girl to keep him busy. Better than coming home to see his dull parents.’

  ‘He’s only seventeen, for goodness sake.’ Her husband’s raised eyebrows made her exclaim, ‘Yes, I know we were just sixteen when we married but that was different and, besides, he didn’t answer the letter I wrote telling him about Janet.’

  ‘Ach, you know what he’s like at writing. Stop worrying, for any sake, Fay. He’ll come walking in one of these days with a wife and then there’ll be a baby. How will you feel about being a grandmother, my Fairy?’

  ‘A lot better than I feel now.’

  ‘In that case, the quicker it happens, the better.’

  On his daily walk, his constitutional, Willie usually called at Abby’s house to catch up on her news, then, after going into the countryside for a mile or so, he looked in on Fay on his way home. Sometimes, he met his son on his peregrinations and stopped for a chat with him. Henry was usually quite glad to stand for a few minutes with his wheelbarrow, besom and shovel at the ready. Their talk was often about the weather, bad or good, but lately it had been about Mara and the likelihood of her fiancé coming back from the war.

  This was their topic on the afternoon a few weeks after Janet’s funeral and, after standing for a while, Willie accompanied Henry on his round for over an hour while he carried on with his duties. Their lengthy discussion evolved around the question of whether or not Mara should be warned that there was little hope for Leo now.

  Willie was mulling this over as he walked back home, his feet dragging with being on them for so long. Poor Mara. She had always been a quiet girl with no interest in boys and he had often wondered if she would ever find a lad. Then Leo Ferguson had come into her life and she had blossomed like a rosebud in the summer sun. He had brought her out of herself – she was livelier, fun to be with and she radiated supreme happiness. But now …?

  Willie heaved a long, sad sigh as he entered his own house, hoping that maybe his wife would be able to think of a way round the problem. Having had more experience of life than Fay, she should be able to find the words to tell Mara gently, to help her to cope with the deep sorrow she would feel at the loss of her loved one. ‘Nessie,’ he called, hanging up his coat and bonnet on the peg in the porch. ‘Are you there, lass?’ Perturbed by the silence – she hardly went out at all these days – he walked into the kitchen. ‘Nessie, are you …’

  Then he saw her – she was lying on the hearthrug and her face a peculiar bluish-grey. He bent over to touch her forehead, recoiling when he felt no warmth. Oh, no! Dear God, no! But she couldn’t be dead! She couldn’t be. Leaning forward again, he lifted one of her hands and held it for a few moments but could feel no pulse.

  His legs buckling suddenly, he felt behind him for the arm of his chair, plumping down on it just in time. His senses were swimming; his heart was thumping like he had just run a mile at full tilt; his chest was as tight as a drum; he felt sick.

  He closed his eyes for a moment but that made him feel even worse. He would have to sit here till he felt better. No, no, he should be going for the doctor. But what use was a doctor to his dear wife now? She was gone!

  His heart slowed down gradually, his breathing eased and, though he could still taste the brackish bile in his throat, he was more or less able to marshal his thoughts. He would just sit for another few minutes and then he’d better get somebody. Doctor Hay? Pogie Laing? Henry! He wasn’t far away – he’d know what to do … wouldn’t he?

  Willie’s tortured thoughts veered abruptly. He hadn’t felt as bad as this on the morning Nessie found Janet dead in her bed. Nothing like as bad! That proved he hadn’t loved her in the same way as he loved his wife, didn’t it? Nessie would be pleased when he told her that. His stomach gave a mighty lurch. Fool that he was! Nessie was dead! His beloved wife of thirty-odd years was dead! Damn it, he couldn’t for the life of him remember when he had wed her. For the life of him? He didn’t want a life now. They should be going to eternity together.

  He took time to consider this. He could easily do it. His cut-throat razor would do the job nicely. He staggered to his feet, swaying a little as he let go the armrest of his chair, but, before he could take even one shaky step, someone knocked on the front porch door. He turned round uncertainly, then decided to ignore it.

  Pogie gave another knock, then turned the handle and walked in. Seeing Willie first, tottering on his feet and with a look of great shock on his face, Pogie was on his way across to find out what was wrong when he saw Nessie. ‘Good God Almighty!’ he exclaimed. It was no profanity, for he was as devout a man as ever walked on two feet. ‘What happened, Willie?’

  Getting no answer, he bent down to check for a pulse but there was none. Her hand wasn’t ice-cold but she had definitely been dead for some time. His first thought was that his father-in-law had killed his wife, after a heated quarrel perhaps, but he was eighty, for heaven’s sake, too old to let passion of any kind get the better of him. Straightening up, he stretched out and guided the man gently back into his seat. ‘Willie, can you tell me what happened?’

  There was no reaction whatsoever for quite a while, then tears welled up in the faded, red-veined eyes. ‘She was fine when I went out … but that’s how I found her when I came back.’

  ‘It looks like she has had a heart attack but we need the doctor to issue a death certificate before I can do anything.’

  And so Pogie took over, asking a neighbour to fetch Doctor Hay and trying to calm Willie as he sobbed, ‘I wasna here for her … I should have been here … I bade ower lang wi’ Henry. I could have been back earlier, man.’

  Pogie assured him that it would have made no difference and this was confirmed by the doctor when he had examined the body. ‘She died of cardiac infraction, a massive heart attack, about …’ Halting, he asked, ‘How long were you out?’

  ‘I went out about half nine, I’m usually back about twelve but I was speaking to Henry for a long time the day, discussing something we …’ His voice tailed off and he looked hopelessly from one man to the other.

  Pogie stepped forward. ‘It’s all right, Willie. You were not to know what had happened.’

  ‘No, indeed, Willie.’ Having signed the death certificate, the plump little doctor slapped his battered old hat at its usual rakish angle on his head. He had worn it this way since he was a young student and did not care that it made him look a slightly ridiculous figure with his thick white hair flowing from all round it. ‘You see, Willie, a person can be as right as rain one minute and drop down dead the next – as in your wife’s case. It should be of some consolation to you that she had not suffered. In fact, she had probably been dead before she hit the floor.’

  The old doctor had never been known for his tact but his words did go a long way to help the bereaved man. Not only that, after he left Oak Cottage, Hay sought out Henry to inform him of the tragedy so Willie had his son with him before Pogie had finished measuring for the coffin.

  For the second time in three weeks, Pogie took over all the funeral arrangements and Abby and Fay promised to organise the catering. Abby also wrote to her two sisters in Aberdeen, telling them of their stepmother’s demise. ‘I know they left home because of her,’ she explained to her husband, ‘but this would be a good excuse for them to make things up with Father. It wouldn’t be like crawling back or climbing down, would it?’

  Neither Jeannie nor Bella, however, jumped at the chance of reconciliation with their father. Although Abby had told them that Nessie had changed to being a gentle and caring woman, it seemed they could only remember the harridan she had once been. They still blamed Willie for not protecting them so the only replies they sent were two impersonal printed cards, deckle-edged and black-rimmed, regretting that they could not attend the funeral.

  But, proving how different she was, as soon as Kitty got the
news, she wrote a long letter to her father from London, saying that she wished she could be there but she couldn’t get time off her work. She did make it plain, however, that, if he needed her, she would give up her job to come home and look after him.

  Willie, as only to be expected, wouldn’t hear of this, asserting firmly that he would easily manage. ‘I dinna ken what you’re fussing aboot. I’m nae a bairn.’

  So Abby conveyed his refusal in a tactful letter.

  Nessie’s funeral was just as quiet as Janet’s. As Fay remarked to Henry when they went home, ‘It’s really sad, isn’t it? People outlive their friends and if they’ve no family, there’s nobody left to mourn for them.’

  ‘At least Janet and Nessie had us,’ her husband pointed out. ‘We’ve always looked on them as family.’

  It was on the tip of Fay’s tongue to say that the two women were closer family than his two eldest sisters – neither of whom she had ever set eyes on – but she did not want to upset him further.

  Jerry had been meaning to take his wife and son to meet his parents at the weekend but, again, his mother’s letter changed his mind. First, it had been Janet and now Nessie. How could he spring his surprise on them at a time like this? In any case, as the days had gone past, he hadn’t been altogether sure if it would ever be a good idea.

  For the past two weeks, his wife hadn’t allowed him to sleep with her. He had done his best not to come in contact with her when they went to bed but the old mattress they had been given along with the bed sagged in the middle and he couldn’t help rolling against her. This was what had caused the friction between them and she had ended up one night by shouting, ‘I’m not going to let you hurt me again. It was your fault, I’d to suffer all that pain so you can sleep on the couch in the kitchen.’

  Since she had shown no sign of improving, he had decided to postpone their visit to Ardbirtle. His father might not notice anything but his mother’s eagle eyes would notice that something was wrong about their marriage. Knowing her, she would try to find out what had happened … and he couldn’t tell her. He didn’t know himself. What had he done to make his wife hate him? And what could he do to stop it?