The Road to Rowanbrae Read online

  He kissed-her, reassuringly. No … well … perhaps, but not intentionally. Not only did you show them up as useless wives, you also outshone them with your beauty.’

  ‘Oh, Gregor, you’re teasing me again.’

  ‘I mean it. That green dress was made for you, set off all your charms. I could see the other men drooling over you.’

  Chuckling, she jumped up. ‘Now I know you’re teasing.’

  ‘Honestly, but you look beautiful to me whatever you wear. Even the very first time I saw you, with that huge white apron hiding your trim figure, and the mob cap covering your lovely brown hair, I thought you were beautiful. When you worked here as housekeeper to my aunt, in a tweed skirt and jumper with a little pinny to keep you clean, I thought you were beautiful. When I saw you in your cook-shop …’

  She tutted playfully. ‘Gregor Wallace, you couldn’t have thought I was beautiful when my face was streaked with flour and I was sweating like a pig.’

  ‘I did, my dearest, and every time I look at you, even yet, my heart flutters like the wings of a trapped butterfly.’

  ‘I think there’s a bit of a poet in you, Gregor, do you know that? You’ve a proper way with words.’

  ‘I only speak the truth.’

  Mysie lay that night beside her sleeping husband wondering if she had been too stubborn in refusing to employ a maid. Would Gregor prefer her to sit back and do nothing? But she’d be bored stiff sitting down all day – she didn’t fancy the coffee mornings his friends’ wives indulged in – and a man soon got tired of a bored woman. How had Gina coped with being a wife? It was difficult to picture her with an apron on, never mind cleaning out a fire. But Gina always landed on her feet, so she probably had a maid and a cleaning woman and would be as happy as a sandboy.

  Having thought of her daughter, it was natural that Mysie’s mind turned to her son. Where would he be now? Gregor had said that Sandy would have six weeks’ training before he was posted, and it was six weeks past since he left, so he could be at any one of the dozens of aerodromes scattered over Britain. But they usually got leave after their training, and he must have been home. He must have been in Aberdeen and he still hadn’t come to see her.

  Trying to ease the ache inside her, she let her thoughts turn again to what Gregor had been saying earlier. Fancy telling her that she was beautiful. He had been teasing, of course, but she loved him for it. If only he would let her bob her hair like Amy and the rest. She always felt so old-fashioned beside them, but Gregor said that her hair was her crowning glory. He didn’t have the agony of brushing out the tangles every morning and sticking in dozens of hairpins to keep it under control. Maybe she should just have it cut some day, without telling him? He couldn’t do anything then – but she didn’t want to annoy him. She had never been so happy in her life as she was now, and wished that she had married him when he first asked her. If he had been stepfather to Sandy and Gina, they wouldn’t have turned out the way they did.

  Sandy and Gina. Her thoughts always came back to them, and she wished that she knew how they were. If only she could see them again, to let them know how sorry she was for what had happened that night. Sandy’s child must be five years old by this time, and she had never seen it, boy or girl, and probably never would now.

  Being without a servant was intolerable to Gina – the house in Bieldside was far too big for her to run. Why did all these girls want to go into the forces? Munitions she could have understood, there was more money there, but Molly had joined the ATS, Iris, who had come after her, had gone into the WAAFs and Rita, shy little Rita, had left three weeks ago to become a Wren. The army, the air force and the navy, not quite in the same order as the popular song. Campbell was impossible these days, too, frustrated at being graded 4F at his medical, but he didn’t need to take it out on her as if it were her fault. Everything she did or said was wrong – his shirts weren’t ironed properly; he could write his name on the dust on the furniture. At lunch that very day, he had said he couldn’t eat the vegetable stew she’d put in front of him though she was sure that she had cooked it long enough, and had sneered, ‘I can’t understand you. Your mother was a cook, wasn’t she?’

  To Gina, this was the worst insult he could have thrown at her. ‘You’ll be sorry you ever said that, Campbell Bisset!’

  ‘I wasn’t demeaning her.’ He sounded exasperated. ‘I meant that she must have been a good cook before she could have run a cook-shop, and I’m surprised that you never managed to pick up even the rudiments of cookery.’

  All afternoon, she brooded over his unreasonableness, and as soon as he appeared at night, she said, ‘I want a divorce.’

  ‘You know I’m a Catholic, Gina, so there can be no divorce.’

  ‘I just wanted to make sure, for I’ve a proposition to make. I’ll live with you, your wife in everyone’s eyes, but we’ll have separate bedrooms and I’ll live my life as I please. You can please yourself, too, and do whatever you like. Nobody would know. I promise to act like a loving wife in front of your parents and friends.’

  His ready agreement surprised her, ‘All right, if that’s what you want, but I’ll make one condition. You’ll have to learn how to cook and keep house properly, otherwise I’ll throw you out.’

  ‘Always the gentleman,’ she sneered.

  He let her sarcasm go. ‘And there would be no maintenance. You’d have to stand on your own two feet for a change.’ After a long pause, Gina said, ‘Okay, we have a bargain. I’ll cook and clean like a good little wife, wash and iron for you, sew on your buttons, and you let me live my own way.’

  The steady ring of the telephone made Mysie jump. She wasn’t at all happy about having to answer this new contraption, but she would likely get used to it. Picking up the receiver, she said, loudly, ‘Hello?’

  ‘Amy here. May I come to see you – say about two?’

  Wondering why Amy Parker wanted to see her, Mysie nodded, then realised that the woman wouldn’t see. ‘Two would be fine.’

  The doorbell rang at exactly two o’clock. ‘I hope you don’t mind, Maisie, but I’m in a bit of a pickle,’ Amy said, as she sat down in the sitting room.

  ‘If I can help you at all …?’

  ‘You can save my life. I can’t find a new cook for love or money. I’ve never done any cooking before and I’m making a bit of a mess of it. Would you … give me a few lessons?’

  Mysie laughed. ‘I’d be glad to, but I was never trained, you know. When I started as a cook first, I’d to depend on an old recipe book my employer gave me.’

  ‘You’re better than any of the cooks I’ve had. Some of the girls are in the same boat as me, and we wondered if you …’

  ‘You want me to take a class?’ Mysie joked.

  ‘I’m quite serious, and we would pay you for your time.’

  ‘But I can’t teach people to cook. I’m not qualified.’

  ‘Please, Maisie?’ Amy’s eyes were beseeching. ‘I have to do something, otherwise Ben’s going to rebel at having fried fish morning, noon and night – burned to a cinder, I might add.’

  Laughingly agreeing to the proposal, Mysie suggested that those who wished should turn up at Ashley Road at two o’clock the following Wednesday, and Amy left after a cup of tea, her last words being, ‘You’re a saviour, Maisie, do you know that?’

  At teatime, Gregor scowled when his wife told him what she had arranged. ‘Don’t you have enough to do, without taking all those helpless creatures under your wing?’

  ‘I can spare an hour or two a week,’ Mysie said, having been thinking it over ever since Amy Parker went home, ‘and I won’t let them pay me. It’s funny, really, when you come to think about it. Here am I, daughter of a drunken blacksmith, widow of a penniless crofter, telling the gentry how to cook.’

  Her husband’s scowl deepened. ‘They’re not gentry. If you researched into their backgrounds, I’m sure you would find that they come of working class stock, perhaps only a generation or two back. You’re as goo
d as any of them, Maisie – better.’

  ‘You’re biased,’ she chuckled. ‘From scullerymaid to lecturer, that’s me, and a few other things in between. Don’t forbid me to do it, Gregor, for I’m quite looking forward to it.’

  His face clearing, he slipped his arm round her waist. ‘Oh, Maisie. You’re so full of life, so willing to tackle anything. That’s why I love you so much. Don’t ever change.’

  The cookery classes were great fun, Mysie thought, glancing round her kitchen some months later, and she was sure that the other four women enjoyed them as much as she did. In actual fact, the lessons had replaced their coffee mornings, some gossip being relayed – although she wouldn’t allow them to say anything malicious about anybody – clothes and new hairstyles discussed, even recipes exchanged.

  It had been a bit difficult at first, with food rationed, but it had been an extra challenge, and she believed that she had risen to it. Amy Parker had obviously thought so. ‘Maisie, you’re a genius,’ she had exclaimed, the week after she had been taught how to tenderise meat by pounding it with a wooden potato masher. ‘Ben said I must be seducing the butcher to get meat like that – to get meat at all.’

  The others had laughed uproariously, but it had been a great boost to Mysie’s morale at a time when she was somewhat unsure of her prowess as a teacher. They had progressed from meat to fish and fowl, and soon she would have to demonstrate how to prepare a Christmas dinner. It was all quite exhilarating, and gave her something to look forward to, now that she had almost given up hope of Sandy or Gina ever coming to see her again.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  1941–2

  It was not that she was tired of giving cookery lessons, Mysie mused, it was just that she was running out of ideas. It was more than a year since she had started, and, although there were no ‘classes’ during school holidays because some of her ‘students’ had young children, she still had conducted over fifty and had covered almost every aspect that she could think of. After main courses, she had concentrated on soups and other starters, then, some weeks later, it had been a selection of desserts. Following this, she had gone on to breakfast dishes and snacks before she started on bread, cakes and biscuits. The cakes had been quite a problem, with few fresh eggs to be had, but she had experimented on her own until she found a successful way of using the powdered kind. At present, she was on garnishes and decoration, and had tried out a recipe for making marzipan with soya flour, which wasn’t too bad. What else was there? she wondered.

  When Gregor came home, he asked, ‘How did your class go, my dearest? Did anyone bring an apple for the teacher?’

  He often trotted out this old chestnut, but Mysie laughed as usual. ‘I’m trying to think what to give them next. I’m sure they could all cope on their own now, for they know as much about cooking as I do.’

  ‘Maybe they do, but I doubt if any of them will ever measure up to you. You have that extra something – ingenuity.’

  ‘They can’t expect me to carry on for much longer, can they? There’s a limit to everything.’

  His eyes twinkled under his greying eyebrows. ‘Not to my love for you.’

  ‘Oh, Gregor, be serious. I once suggested stopping but they said they wanted to carry on. I’m really worried.’

  ‘You’ve been worried ever since I knew you, but all right, I’ll be serious. I’m sure they don’t expect you to carry on giving them lessons. They enjoy your company, and they’d be quite happy to come here even if there were no classes.’

  ‘Do you think so? I enjoy their company, too.’

  ‘Well, tell them next Wednesday that you are stopping your classes, but invite them to keep on coming every week.’

  So ‘Maisie’s Cookery Classes’ came to be known as ‘Maisie’s Afternoons,’ and her worries about them came to an end, but she still had worries of a different kind. Sometimes, when she was trying to get to sleep, she was plagued by her old fear that what lay under the garage at Rowanbrae might yet be uncovered. What if the man wanted to make a pit to look underneath his car? What a shock he would get if he dug up … she could still see that face, that horrible unlimed face with the teeth bared in a grotesque grin, and even if she hadn’t killed Jeems, she had concealed his body. She would never be free of that guilt.

  Her trembling often woke Gregor, who held her tightly until she calmed down, and she would thank God for having such an understanding husband. He knew everything about her, all her secrets, and he still loved her. She was a very lucky woman even if all three of her children were lost to her.

  There had been much activity over the past week or two around El Alamein, even the ground crews had been kept at it, but now there was a lull, a brief respite before the next onslaught – Rommel wouldn’t give in easily. But all tanks and aircraft were ready, all nerves taut as wound-up springs. Every soldier and airman, whatever his rank, whatever his trade, knew that the following day could be his last, so there was a constraint in their manner towards each other. A few of the more cocky were laying bets on how long it would take to rout the enemy, but mostly they were quiet, reading or writing letters home in the blistering Egyptian sun.

  Sandy Duncan lay with his back against the tent, thinking. His life had never amounted to much, and it would be no great loss to the would if he were killed. He had been told that his squadron was being sent overseas before he had ever written to Libby, and, although they had been given embarkation leave, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to go home. Instead, he had gone to London with some single blokes who were looking for a good time, and they had danced in Services clubs or gone to entertainments meant for the forces. Some of them had been drunk occasionally, but he hadn’t. He had taken a few drinks, but he hadn’t forgotten that he was a married man, and he had refused to get involved with any of the willing females who hung around anyone wearing a uniform.

  Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, he had thought of his wife a lot during that leave, and had considered, several times, buying a writing pad so that he could let her know how he felt, how he missed her, how he regretted leaving her, but what good would it have done? He had accepted, even then, that the chances of his being killed would be greater once he left Britain, that he might never return from the journey on which he was about to embark.

  His mind turned again to the probability of his death. Not a soul would mourn his passing if he did lose his life. Libby would be free to take another husband, and Sam would lose a father he wouldn’t remember. He had only been four when his father left him, and he would be coming up for seven now. He could hardly remember his own father, Sandy reflected, but his mother … his mother would care if he were killed, provided she knew about it. Her life had never been easy, and some of the things he had done had placed burdens on her that must have been insufferable, but he knew now that she had loved him in spite of everything. How could he ever atone for all the misery he had inflicted on her? Coming to an abrupt decision, he turned to the man sitting next him. ‘Alf, may I borrow your writing pad, please?’

  Mysie was worried about Gregor’s health. He was working far too hard, too long hours, with half the amount of help he’d had before, and, at sixty-eight, he should really be retired. His face was drawn and haggard, his high cheek-bones standing out starkly. His eyes lacked their old sparkle, and his movements were much slower. Looking across the fireside, her heart ached with love. ‘Gregor, you should go to bed when you’ve read that newspaper. You’re looking very tired.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  She smiled fondly. He hadn’t taken in a word she had said. ‘Gregor! I’m sure they could manage without you for a week or so. Why don’t you take a holiday?’

  Frowning, he lifted his head. ‘A holiday?’

  ‘You need a rest.’

  ‘I’m resting now.’

  ‘A long rest, Gregor. We could go away for a few days.’

  Heaving a sigh, he laid his newspaper down on the floor. ‘Do you want to go away, my dear?’

&
nbsp; ‘Not me. I’m afraid you’ll work yourself into the grave.’

  ‘Nonsense. I am a little tired, but I can’t stay off. We are very busy just now. Treble the number of divorces we used to handle before the war.’

  ‘It’s the husbands being away – the wives meet other men.’

  ‘I suppose so. I think I’ll go up and read the rest of the paper in bed. Do you want a quick look at it first?’

  He picked it up, handed it to her and lay back to wait until she read it. The front page held only depressing news about the war, so she turned to the Births, Marriages and Deaths. She always tried to read that, in case someone she knew, or used to know, had died. Her sharp gasp of dismay made her husband sit up. ‘What …?’

  ‘Sandy’s been killed.’

  Forgetting his exhaustion, he jumped out of his chair and she rose to be clasped in his arms. ‘Oh, Gregor,’ she sobbed, ‘I wish I could have seen him before he went away to the war. I wish we could have made up our differences. Now I’ll never know if he’d forgiven me for what I said.’

  ‘Hush, my dearest. I’m sure he had forgiven you long ago, but being Sandy, he wouldn’t have liked to climb down.’

  ‘But that’s both of my sons dead now. I know I really lost Sandy years ago, but I always hoped … it’s a lot worse now. If only Gina would come back … it wouldn’t compensate for Sandy’s death, but it would help me to bear it.’

  ‘Will I contact her in-laws to find out where she lives, and then ask her to come to see you?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Gregor, please! She might listen to you, but I’m sure she wouldn’t listen to me.’

  ‘I’ll phone the Bissets now, and if I get Gina’s address, I’ll go to see her first thing in the morning.’

  Leaning against him, Mysie whispered, ‘I don’t know what I would do without you, Gregor.’

  ‘I’m sure you would cope better than I would without you.’

  In bed, she talked far into the night about Sandy – what he had said and done when he was a small boy; his deep jealousy of Doddie which had resulted in the fire; the mischief he had got up to with Bobby Phillip during their school holidays; his homework sessions with Miss Wallace; his wildness when he was at the university; the nights he stayed out so late – and her husband held her closely in his arms, letting her relieve her son’s life to ease her sorrow.