Also by Leah Fleming
The Olive Garden Choir
The Wedding Dress Maker
The Daughter of the Tide
First published in the UK in 1999 by Judy Piatkus (Publishers) Ltd
This paperback edition published in the UK in 2019 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Leah Fleming, 2019
The moral right of Leah Fleming to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (PBO): 9781789543254
ISBN (E): 9781789543360
Author photograph © MKI Photo
Cover images: Shutterstock
Head of Zeus Ltd
First Floor East
5–8 Hardwick Street
London ec1r 4rg
www.headofzeus.com
In memory of my sister, Audrey
1935–1977
‘Life is a rainbow which also includes black’
—yevgeny yevtushenko
‘My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So it was when my life began
So it is now I am a man:
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The child is father of the man’
—william wordsworth, ‘My Heart Leaps Up’
Also by Leah Fleming
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
1 Freya’s Necklace
A Wednesday Afternoon in May 1949
Early on Friday Morning
September 1937
May 1949, Friday
September 1939
May 1949, Friday
Dressing Miss Forsyth, June 1942
May 1949, Friday
2 Stepping Stones Garnet
Rae, 1944
Summer 1944
May 1949, Friday
August 1944
May 1949, Friday
Ten Days in March 1945
On The Tenth Day, 1945
May 1949, Friday at Noon
Park Royal, Spring 1945
May 1949, Saturday Morning
3 Amber
Snapshots from The Royal, 1945
May 1949, Saturday Morning
Hogmanay, 1945
A Secret Outing
Saturday, Midday on Shap Fell, 1949
4 Jet
February 1946
Nothing To Write Home About, March 1946
Homeward Bound, July 1946
Saturday Afternoon in Kendal, 1949
5 Citrine
In the Winter of 1947
The Texas Rangers, Autumn 1947
Spring 1948
Saturday Teatime in Kendal, 1949
6 Jade
Dancing on the Green, Summer 1948
Showdown
Christmas 1948
Window Shopping in Kendal, May 1949
7 Turquoise
Into 1949
Forks in the Path, March 1949
Late Afternoon in Kendal, May 1949
8 Lapis Lazuli
The Same Saturday Afternoon at Brigg Farm
Staying On, June 1949
9 Amethyst
Back to Griseley, June 1949
On Carrick Sands, September 1949
Acknowledgements
About the author
An Invitation from the Publisher
‘A golden yoke
Forged with pride
Worn with sorrow.
Circlet of chains
And stones polished
Like glass tears.’
It was like cycling straight into an oil painting: into a canvas of sea and mountains, islands and shore, into a rainbow of colours as far as the eye could see. A brassy sun hung in an enamel blue sky; the turquoise sea shimmered underneath, lapping on to dark rocky outcrops and islands overlooking Fleet Bay, two sides of this canvas framed by brown-mauve hills to the north. The foreground glinted with dots of shorebirds fishing on the edge of the tide: gulls, wagtails, waders, and black and white flashes of oyster catchers kleep-kleeping in alarm at the sight of a small boy careering towards the sand, shouting, ‘Come on, Auntie Netta! Race you to the beach!’
The young woman skidded to a halt, her fingers pumping the brakes of her sit up and beg bicycle, the wind whipping strands of red-gold hair across her eyes, blinding them from the seascape for a second. She paused to drink deep the precious scene for it had been carried with her into exile so many times, tucked safe at the back of her mind in reserve for dreich Yorkshire evenings.
The picnic to Castlehaven and Carrick Sands was always the high point of her holiday back home in Stratharvar; a precious ritual. Who would be first to catch sight of the shoreline and the barrack-like towers of the huge ‘cow palace’ at Corseyard, or run around the walls of the Viking fortress? It was always Gus who was first to scatter the brown Ayrshires from their grazing as he tore across the green machars.
Netta wheeled her pushbike slowly over the humps, scouring the coastline to see what had changed since their last picnic a year ago. Thankfully there were no jagged stumps of wartime coastal defences to spoil the beach, no barbed wire and fences with KEEP OUT signs thrown up on other coasts when fear of invasion was real.
‘Come on, Auntie Netta, you’re such a slowcoach!’ yelled Gus as he turned impatiently. His aunt was not in her usual hurrying mode but plonked herself down on a grey boulder while he skimmed pebbles over the surface as she had taught him on her last visit. There’s no rush, she thought to herself, we have this day all to ourselves to explore together. This is our time.
Usually her visits followed a familiar route march. First she would arrive in Kirkcudbright by train, but, this time thanks to the loan of some petrol coupons she arrived in style in an old Ford van, parking by the harbour square. Then she usually stopped to steady her nerves with tea and scones upstairs in the Paul Jones Tearoom before catching the bus, looking out over the harbour as if from the prow of a boat, admiring the fishing fleet anchored in the estuary. This time she watched from the window for a glimpse of her stepmother, Peg Nichol, puffing along the street in her faded cotton frock and handknitted cardigan, weighed down with the weekly shopping; her wicker basket stuffed with extras from the High Class grocers in Cuthbert Street. With her was young Gus in shorts and Aertex shirt, itching to go crabbing somewhere on the edge of the harbour.
Netta liked to tiptoe up behind the boy to surprise him with an ice cream cone from Angelini’s Café. She’d watched him gulp it down while Peg sniffed about spoiling his dinner and warned him not to put sticky fingers on the car bonnet. Then they all piled into the van to wend their way westwards around the twisting lanes towards the coast and Brigg Farm.
Gus was already sunburned, having shot up inches since Netta’s last visit. The journey gave them all time to pass pleasantries, to warm to each other again for the sake of the child who bounced up and down in the back with the messages. Gus was dying to know what goodies Auntie Netta had brought from England in her leather case and hatbox.
She watched for the first sights of home: the bumpy track up the hill towards the grey Galloway farmhouse which stood four-square, lintels edged with red sandstone, attic windows jutting out of the roof, glinting in the afternoon sunshine.
Her father, Angus Nichol, would be hovering somewhere in the courtyard of the old whitewashed farm buildings ready with his usual gruff greeting, ruddy face weatherbeaten by fifty summers, sandy hair frizzled by salt and sun. Gus raced up the stairs ahead of her, hovering by the door of her old childhood bedroom with its iron bedstead, pegged rug and wash stand. The summer curtains were thin and barely closed, faded by sunshine from the southern aspect. He hovered excitedly while she unpacked, eyes scanning her luggage just in case…
‘Thank you for my birthday present. I’ve got a farm and tractor and loads of cars now. Jamie Paterson’s got a wee sister called Maisie and I’ve got a new calf. Do you want to see my pageant costume? We made helmets out of silver paper with real horns. The Sunday school teacher said mine was the best, so she did… and I got my photo in the paper, do you want to see it?’
Gus raced off down the passage to bring back a crumpled account of the carnival procession from the Galloway News and his battered Viking helmet. She looked down at his dark pixie face with its shock of black hair and those piercing blue eyes; such a strange mixture, more Irish than Scots.
‘How long did this take you?’ asked Netta, amazed by his achievement. ‘It’s very good. Did Father find you the horns?’ Gus nodded, eyes still fixed on her luggage. One of their rituals on her arrival was for the suitcase to be opened and Gus to finger through the piles of clothing for any lumpy packages. ‘What’s this in your shoe? Is it a shoehorn?’
‘No.’
‘Is it toothpaste?’ Netta shook her head with a smile. ‘Look and see.’ It was a rolled up copy of the Beano. Gus ferreted about until he also found the packet of Liquorice Allsorts and the picture book and crayons. ‘Thanks, Auntie Netta! Come and see my toy farm. Father made it for me.’
His whitewashed bedroom at the back of the farmhouse was changing from an infant’s bedroom to a Boys’ Own den, with battered pre-war toys and half-made models cluttering the floor. He had a homemade wooden garage crammed with Dinky toys; a high bed covered with a candlewick bedspread in airforce blue. A moth-eaten stuffed animal of uncertain breed was tucked by the pillow. Yumpy had gone everywhere with Gus when he was small, on picnics and car rides, now he was relegated to the bed. ‘I spy Yumpy!’ Netta laughed and Gus looked crestfallen. ‘Mammy says I’m too big for a suckie.’
‘I expect Yumpy’s too old to play now so he stays in bed all day to keep it warm for you,’ Netta reassured him. Trust Peg to give the orders. All the Nichols were secret suckie sniffers. Netta’s old rag doll still sat on a wicker basket chair in her Griseley home. It was sad day when a little boy must give up his comforter but she supposed it was for the best.
‘Tea, folks!’ Peg shouted from the banister rail. ‘Wash yer hands afore ye sit down, Gus!’ He dunked his hands in the bathroom wash bowl and they trooped down together into the kitchen. There was a fine spread of ham and eggs, and a custard trifle with hundreds and thousands melting rainbows of colour on to the cream.
This was the moment when Netta always knew that she was a visitor and no longer a daughter of the house ready to take her family as she found them. Hands were washed, napkins unfolded and the holiday began.
On the first evening she would usually walk around the fields to view the stock with Father, admiring his fine herd of Ayshires and his field full of Belties, the black Galloway cattle with a white band round their middle, famous for providing succulent beef.
There had been Nichols around Stratharvar for two hundred years: Nichols who had supped with Rabbie Burns at the Murray Arms in Gatehouse of Fleet; Nichols who had built up a dairy herd second to none in the district, supplying produce to the huge creameries; Nichols who carved their names on the black oak desks of Stratharvar school and lined the pathways of the parish kirk.
The farm lay nestled in the hollow between two hummocks, sheltered by trees, a good mile from the coastal gusts. Above it were some ancient cairn stones set on a hilltop.
On her second day back Netta would always walk up to the top of the hill for the panoramic view over Wigtown Bay. On the third day she took herself off shopping to Castle Douglas. The fourth, if it was fine, would be a ride to Gatehouse of Fleet and Mossyard beach so Gus could collect the beautiful shells blown off course by the Gulf Stream. Then on the fifth day came their picnic ride to Castlehaven, to the small galleried broch heavily restored but still a magical haunt.
To Gus it was a real fort where pirates were driven off the rocks by warriors and old sea dogs were repulsed from Carrick Shore, but its origins were as old as the ports and townships of the Stewartry itself, part of an ancient Gallovidian defence system. He was too young yet to understand the technicalities but already he had a feel for its history.
Now Gus had abandoned his own tricycle in favour of the slippery rock pools. Netta watched his progress as she sniffed the briars and honeysuckle gorse, the hedgerows full of blossom, the sculpted shapes of thorn bushes carved by the sea winds, that tangle of sea and meadow flowers and salt wind – the smell of home. The cows grazing on the shoreline ignored their intrusion after a while so she unloaded her knapsack, unpacking Peg’s contribution of thick Spam sandwiches, a bottle of still lemonade, ginger buns and slices of fruit loaf. This was the mid-week ritual of Netta’s stay which was always observed, rain or shine; the solemn waving off, the race to be first to see the sea, the picnic and the story.
For as long as she could remember, Netta had loved this special place where the pink marsh orchids glistened in late spring, the wild flowers lined the inner walls of the fort now encrusted with lichen and rocky alpines in the crevices, the squills the grassy promontories. Here they could pretend to be guards on sentry duty, imagining life in Viking times. Gus had caught her excitement about times past and Netta fed him stories of the Norse Gods in Valhalla and Asgard. For each visit she prepared another tale from the lives of Odin, Thor, Baldur and Loki, who had fought terrible battles against evil monsters and goblins.
Once she had found a battered copy of the Lives of the Gods in the Griseley Bookshop. Censoring all its more bloodthirsty details, Netta had prepared her story for this visit. The storytelling usually came after Gus had stuffed down his picnic in order to let his meal settle before they pedalled off on the rest of their day.
‘What’s it today? he asked, munching his apple. He knew their routine by now.
‘Another story of the old Gods and the rainbow bridge, I think. I thought we might look at one of their Goddesses for change… Freya, wife of Odur, who lived with their daughter Hrossa in Asgard. This is the story of Freya and the necklace Brisingamen.’ She told him the story of the young Goddess who, against her husband’s wishes, went off in search of the mountain of the Giant Women, the Goldsmiths of Middlearth, leaving her child with her husband in the palace. Freya was lured by dwarves who kissed and entrapped her. Then, when she found the Goldsmiths and they showed her that golden necklace, Freya clasped it and it seemed to make her more beautiful than ever. On her return to Asgard her husband had gone away in search of her and she was sorely distressed. She searched all over the earth for him but he never returned and she was left heartbroken.
‘What did she do next?’ asked Gus, puzzled.
‘She kept on searching and stood on the Bifrost bridge, the rainbow bridge between heaven and earth. Remember we’ve been there before? Some say she stood there weeping like a fountain until Goddess Frigga came out to comfort her and remind her that she still had a beautiful daughter, Hrossa, to look after. From then on Freya wore that cursed necklace, not out of pride but out of shame. When she weeps, her tears fall as rain on the earth and sometimes we see her rainbow bridge with all the colours of the world in it.’
Gus fidgeted, disappointed with this girlie story. There were no monsters in it… He munched the rest of his apple in silence before racing off again on his trike to lead the way to Carrick Sands, past the big house at Knockbrex which stood back from the rocky inlet like a toy fort. He wanted to see if the tide had washed up any messages in ships’ bottles on the beach opposite Ardwall Island among the seawood and flotsam, driftwood and metal strewn over the grey pebbles and sand. This time he was in luck.
‘Look! Come and see, Auntie Netta! I’ve found a helmet.’ Gus was waving an object excitedly. He watched his young aunt in her pleated shorts and plimsolls, picking her way through the boulders and shingle to the line of seaweed where he lifted up a leather helmet like a dead animal, slimy and with barnacles clinging underneath. He’d noticed that when he walked with her in town she always got wolf whistles from the seamen on the harbour. She pretended not to notice but he saw her freckles go pink.
Now she shuddered as he offered the mask for her to inspect. The face that must once have donned this pilot’s mask was probably sunk fifty fathoms deep in some lonely grave at the bottom of the Irish Sea like Long John Silver.
‘Put it down, it might have fleas!’ His aunt shook her head, not wanting to touch the slimy object.
‘Mammy’d say that.’ Why did grown-ups hate getting dirty and muddy and greased up? ‘Do you think it was a Spitfire pilot’s or a Jerry’s?’ Gus and his friend Jamie would play war all day long if allowed to.
‘I don’t know, dear.’
‘Did you know any soldiers who were killed in the war?’ Gus asked in his matter-of-fact voice, hoping she would tell him another adventure story like the ones in his comic. She nodded but said nothing. Why did everyone always clam up when he asked about the thing called war? He knew it was a great big adventure he had missed out on. The big boys played Japs and Jerries in the playground, knocking the littler ones over, but Mammy said nice boys didn’t fight. Gus was secretly a pirate so he always fought back. Netta was family and she didn’t usually mind. Now his auntie was staring out to sea and looked sad, like the woman in her soppy story.
He looked down, poking among the seaweed. ‘Have you got a golden necklace?’
‘No, but my mother had a lovely one made from polished pebbles all the colours of the rainbow: amethyst, amber, quartz, turquoise, all linked together with a golden chain. Father bought it for her on their wedding day.’
‘Do you wear it?’
‘No, Peg has it.’
‘Why? I’ve never seen it but I’ll ask her to show it to us,’ said Gus, burying the helmet in the sand.
‘No, Gus, I’d rather you didn’t.’ He could tell by her pursed lips that he was not going to be told why but it was worth another question.
‘Jamie Paterson telt me that you’re no my real auntie. Are you ma big sister then?’
Netta shrugged her shoulders. ‘Something like that but I like being called Auntie
Sometimes it was hard to understand who anyone was. This auntie kept coming back to Galloway, taking him on trips, telling him all about people in the brown photographs until he fell asleep with her chunnering. Mam sniffed a lot when she arrived and plumped up the cushions just as she did when the Minister called after church and she had to hide the Sunday Post out of sight quickly. But Carrick Shore was their special picnic spot and Gus liked his auntie’s company sometimes. No one else would play French cricket with a piece of driftwood or spot oyster catchers, rock pipits, seagulls and bobbing sand birds for his I Spy Club.
As the afternoon wore on the sky darkened and an anvil of heavy cloud over the bay threatened an outburst. It was time to turn back eastwards again to Brigg Farm, home for evening milking. He wished he had a proper bicycle not a trike. Trikes were for babies and the wheels kept sticking in the gritty tracks, making his legs tired.
*
This picnic outing marked the turning point of each visit. The days would run quickly downhill after that. Netta watched Gus bending over his collection of shells and thought of herself at that age on the same shoreline, watching her mother painting, her wispy red hair fading outwards at the sides, hunched over her sketching or looking up to capture the brightness of the beautiful scene.
Griseley seemed so far away, with its dark stone dykes and tall chimneys, sooty mills amongst grey fells where time dragged. While in Yorkshire she yearned for this place. Now, her time here was ebbing fast, this rationed time. Netta remembered that she was here for a purpose.
It was time to make demands again. She must not go back to Yorkshire empty-handed this time. Don’t forget your New Year’s resolution. You can do it! was the vow she had made to herself a week ago. Now there were only a few days left to execute the mission but courage was failing her as it always did.
*
The next day it poured down, heavy driving rain blown in from the sea lashing the grey walls of the farmhouse. Netta made herself useful mending Gus’s torn trews and fixing buttons to his shirts. She could relax if there was a thimble on her finger and a needle in her hand. Peg was baking in the kitchen, listening to the wireless, not in a talking mood. Counting the days, no doubt, until this visit ended. Gus had gone to play at his friend’s farm, out of their hair.
Netta took the mending basket into the cool parlour with its dark treacle-coloured paintwork, black oak furniture and heavy moss green velvet drapes at the window. The china cabinet gleamed with china cups and saucers, souvenirs from Musselburgh and Largo Bay. On the walls were sepia portraits of the Nichols family in suits and black bombazine dresses with white mutches – stern, forbidding ancestors who had frightened her as a child. There was the smell of old soot and damp and disapproval in this room. She spotted two of Grandpa John Kirkpatrick’s watercolours of Kirkcudbright harbour and the Toll Booth. The two fishing boat sketches that had always hung close by were gone but she could see faint marks on the distemper where they’d left their mark. His paintings were becoming sought after. He’d been a colleague of Hornel and Jessie King and the other famous Kirkcudbright painters.
Stepping back into the parlour was like stepping back a hundred years. Nothing much had changed but the drawers of the cupboard were neatly tidied out, lined with fresh copies of the Galloway News. As she rooted round to find the old photograph albums she fished out sepia postcard scenes, rosette prizes from cattle shows, Sunday school attendance tokens. Nothing of interest to her here. Her world had turned and left this Stratharvar way of life far behind many years ago.
The first album was in the bottom cupboard: a heavy leather-bound book with a stiff gold clasp, full of yet more ancient Nichols posed in their finery, sturdy Galloway farmers with handsome faces. A smaller album was full of Peg’s old family photos: Peg MacBain, her stepmother, as a young girl in uniform, stiff and starchy even then. She was after all one of Mother’s distant cousins who’d come to nurse the invalid and stayed on to wed the widower. There was one unframed photograph of Peg and Angus on their wedding day outside the parish kirk porch, looking awkward in the sunlight. The photo was pristine, still in its cream folder with tissue paper lining. There was a blue leather album of Gus in his toddler days and Netta closed that quickly. Where was her picture taken with Mother at Ayr? Where were her own baby days kept? There was only one picture of her, grinning in pigtails; a line-up on the bench outside Stratharvar School when she was nine before Peg came and her world changed forever.
All that sixth day indignation rankled in Netta’s mind. Eventually she sought out Angus with a mug of tea as he was tidying up in the byre.
‘I was looking for a snapshot of myself when I was a bairn to show Gus and yon one of Mother to take back to Griseley with me. Where would I be finding them?’ Angus paused, looking at her square on with his blue eyes.
‘Don’t be asking me then, it’s Mother’s stuff. What’s brought this on, Netta?’ he replied.
‘Nothing, only it’s about time I took some more snaps back with me to put on my own mantelpiece. Tell me where to look?’
‘That’s Peg’s department, she had a clear out a while back. She did say the drawers needed sifting through. She’s awful sensitive on that score. Best not to bother her with it. I’m sure they’re put away safe somewhere.’ Angus slurped his tea quickly and returned to his job, not looking at his daughter.
Why did she always have to tiptoe around her own home on eggshells in case she cracked the fragile veneer of welcome? Why did she have to behave like a visitor or a prisoner on parole? All she was asking for was some blessed snapshots, but Netta could feel her heart thudding at the thought of facing Peg with the real demands of her mission. It felt like asking for the Crown Jewels. Why did her courage always fail her at the last? Was it because all her past was shut away in some press, out of sight in a neat box labelled: DO NOT OPEN?
Netta woke with a start from a dream. Mother was still drifting away from her, far out to sea on a boat, bobbing on the waves while she was left alone on the shore, trying to keep the misty figure in sight. Netta stumbled out of bed half asleep, fumbling for the light, crying out as she stubbed her toe. Why were there always these same dreams, yearnings for the sound of beloved voices and shapes? This dawn half-light promised only shadows and echoes, silhouettes on the wall made by lamplight. She felt as small as in that school snapshot, a child again in a Fair Isle jumper and tartan kilt.
One morning Netta had gone to school in sunshine, rushed out of the door to catch the school charabanc which stopped for her at the end of the track and returned home to only tears, silence and darkness. Mother was asleep on the bed, cold and different. ‘Say goodbye to your mammy, hen,’ urged Peg MacBain gently, but Netta turned away in disgust. ‘That’s no my mammy!’ she cried, rushing down the stairs and into the darkness. The sky was flushed with autumn constellations and she had searched in vain for a shooting star to wish her mother back home again.
The world was painted in such different colours then, when Mother was alive, Netta thought as she sat on the bed. Mother was the smell of treacle scones and honeycomb, warm butter and currant spices; the smell of all the colours of the rainbow in her artist’s palette. Yet how quickly all those familiar colours and smells had faded when she’d passed away. Mother had been one of the only good and certain things in Netta’s life. It was she who’d first said that the rainbow in the Galloway sky was really the handle of God’s basket, carrying the whole world safely through storms and tempests. Mother had said it was made of silken threads. Father had roared in disbelief: ‘Come, Jeanie, don’t fill the bairn’s head with the jewels of untruth. It’s stuffed with enough nonsense as it is.’ Mother just looked up from her sewing and smiled so sweetly.
‘What’s the world without colour, Angus Nichol? Why, the very ark of the rainbow is in the child – the sunset in her hair, the sea-shifts blue and green in her eyes, the sand and pebbles dust her cheeks. Is she not a very rainbow of God’s mercy?’ Her loving words made Netta’s red hair and freckles just about bearable.
‘She pleases the eye, as well you ken, but it’s the colour of her heart which will be the making of her. Rainbows are nothing but tricks o’ light on water and there’s no ark without tears, Jeanie.’
So the heavens darkened and the light went out of her world when Mother was taken away in that wooden casket and put in the cold earth. It was hard even now to think of that sad time, all dressed in black and grey.
There was so little left to remind her once Peg got her thick ankles under the table at Brigg Farm. Father looked sad and his moustache drooped above a clown’s downcurved mouth. He worked all day in the fields with his men and came home silent. Netta knew that he never looked at his daughter again without wincing for she was the image of his loss.
How quickly Mother’s things were cleared away from Netta’s loving touch: her tortoiseshell hairbrushes and combs, the silver-topped bottles, the bangles and beadwork purse and that special necklace. Her clothes were packed away and the cupboard rattled with empty hangers on the rod. Each time Netta came home from school there were further changes. Peg MacBain did not go back to Kilmarnock but stood at the range dishing out meals and clean laundry, feeding the hens and polishing the dark oak. Soon the smells of home became Peg’s own peculiar sour smells, of meat pie and scouring powder. Her smalls hung over the pulley to dry. Netta wished she would disappear. Peg loomed over her childhood like a dark shadow, black hair peppered with oatmeal, pinafore floury and greasy over her heavy bust and rounded belly. Netta always thought of her as a plain clothes and porridge sort of woman.
Angus Nichol changed with her staying. Netta saw that he could look at Peg now without wincing and they shared little jokes. Netta was too young then to recognise the signals but she sensed a strange dark smell of a different spice in the air.
All these thoughts raced through her head again as she dressed quickly and made for the narrow staircase up to the loft with her lamp. She must not leave empty-handed again, without her photographs and everything else that belonged to her.
*
‘Who is that up in the loft?’ Peg stirred from her sleep. Angus chuntered and snuffled but did not move. Until that buzzer in his head woke him for the milking he was dead to the world. Peg could hear footsteps above. Surely Gus was not awake at this hour? It must be Netta rooting through the cases. Angus had said she was on about photographs. Let her search, there was nothing up there of interest. The sooner that young woman was on her way back south to England the better. Her visits had to be endured, but her coming brought Peg out in itchy bumps. Like the proverbial bad penny she rolled up each summer with her fancy presents and now swanking a borrowed motor car. They were not fooled for one minute by all her dainty clothes and eagerness to please. Netta was only a jumped up seamstress for all her big ideas, making fancy gowns for women with more money than sense. It was about time the girl faced the truth and settled down to her life in England.
Netta was far too like Jeanie Kirkpatrick for Peg’s comfort: the same red-gold hair and tall graceful figure. ‘A race horse out of a stable of nags,’ Angus had laughed, describing Peg’s second cousin. He was proud of his beautiful wife and pretty daughter which made Peg all too aware of her own dumpy figure, the dark brows which almost met over the bridge of her nose and double chin. Peg had learned early that plainness was her lot but that didn’t make her useless and fragile like poor Jeanie who, for all her beauty, was weak in her chest. Peg had proved to be the sturdier of the two, a reliable workhorse. She had been glad enough to escape the drudgery of life in Kilmarnock even if it was only exchanging one kitchen sink for another, and that isolated down a track two miles from Stratharvar, the nearest village.
No one could ever fault Peg’s housekeeping. You could see your face in her polished surfaces and her thrift in the darned heels of Angus’s stockings. She kept hens and ducks, helped with the cheese making, scoured the dairy and kept bees. Each Sunday she warmed the pew in the parish kirk and was a stalwart of the Ladies’ Guild. Had she not answered the call of war duty by taking in evacuees from Glasgow? What she had been called to do in the name of mercy was above the call of Christian duty. And was it not she who kept all those toerags up to scratch with moral lectures, meals and motions? Peg firmly believed in regular bowel movements as the key to health and happiness: Beecham’s Pills, Syrup of Figs, Sennacot tablets… she was a martyr to them all.
What was that stampeding above her head, enough to wake the dead? She would have to rise and give that girl a piece of her mind, disturbing them at this hour! There was no making any sense of Netta. What a disappointment to her father she had proved; a thorn in their flesh right from the start. After all they had done for her, still she kept wanting more.
Peg spied her photograph in its silver frame on the windowsill. The child had spoiled that portrait with her scowl. Resentment still festered like a pimple on the chin. Netta had even spoiled their wedding day, the minx, with all that business with the beads! How would Peg ever forget the scene?
Peg ordered the party dress from Wee Alec Kerr, the travelling outfitter, from their Children: From Cradle to Young Miss Galloway catalogue. It was to be Peg’s own special surprise for Netta to soften the blow when she told her the news. Peg had even collected the outfit from the store herself, packaged it in brown paper and left it on the table for the girl to find after school.
‘What’s this? It’s no my birthday…’
‘It’s for you, a braw new frock for the wedding.’ Peg straightened herself, waiting for the blast.
‘What wedding is this then?’ Netta fixed her piercing blue-green eyes on Peg in disbelief. ‘You’re no marrying my pa, are you?’ She rummaged through the packaging and took out the turquoise taffeta frock with its puff sleeves and stiffened underskirt, flinging it across the floor. ‘I’m not wearing that!’
‘You’ll do as you’re told, you ungrateful lassie! I declare tae God I’m no having you turn up at ma wedding in black mourning. Pick it up at once! It’s been ordered especially. Think yourself lucky. Many a wee lassie would think herself Princess Elizabeth in yon bonny goon. Try it on, I chose the shade to go with yer hair.’
‘You’re no my mammy and you cannae make me!’ Netta picked the frock off the floor as if it was a duster and flung it on the kitchen table. ‘I’m no going to yer rotten wedding! Who said you could marry my pa? He’s married already.’
‘Aye, but your mammy’s away to live with Jesus, God rest her soul, in a far better place out of all her earthly suffering. Yer faither needs a woman about the house and since I’ve been doing this job for months, we decided it was aboot time we settled things properly afore the tongues of all the Stewartry start to wag. ’
‘You’re never going to be my mammy, I don’t like you,’ answered Netta, mouth pursed tightly in defiance.
‘And I don’t like you much so that’s the truth telt and the devil shamed! We’ll both have to make the best of it.’ Peg stood firm with her arms folded over her bosom.
‘Nobody asked you to come here,’ snapped Netta, trying to fix her gaze out of the window and in the yard.
‘As a matter of record, young lady, as I recall my second cousin Jeanie Nichol herself begged me to help yous all out when she took to her bed…’
‘We’d’ve managed!’ came the fierce reply.
‘Och, aye! I didna see you soiling yer fingers in the byre or at the sink.’
‘I do the hens.’
‘And the hen money has brought you this fine dress to be my flower girl. You ought to be grateful I’m asking you. Look, this has real smocking on the bodice. I’ll treat you to some sandals with straps and long white socks…’ Peg could see the child wavering. Wee Alec had chosen well for her but Netta didn’t want to give Peg the satisfaction of acknowledging it. ‘It’ll have to do,’ she said grudgingly.
‘It’ll have to do! A good skelping is what you need, not a new dress.’ This argument was going nowhere.
‘My pa loves my mammy, not you.’
‘Well, she’s no here to get his meals on the table or warm his bed. I may be no good with the painting or much to make a portrait of, but he knows this plain woman’s grateful. I’m strong, built to last… more than yer poor ma was, being sae delicate. Besotted though he was by her fair looks and artistic fingers, she was a town incomer not an in-born country bred like me.’
‘Are you going to give him a bull calf then?’ Country girls knew all about birthing and offspring and Netta was no exception.
‘Wash your mouth out!’ Peg’s arm swung out to clip the cheek out of the child. Netta ducked and darted to the door.
‘Just you wait till I tell Faither about yer lip.’
‘I don’t care, I hate you! I shall tell my mammy what you’ve done. It’s no fair!’ The girl raced across the yard up the track towards the top of the hill.
Peg turned back to her chores. Taking on Netta Nichol was the price she must pay for a warm fireside. ‘Dear God, send me enough cloth to warm her coldness,’ she prayed and straightened out the dress. Once there were other kiddies at the hearth the girl would soon fall in line.
*
On the morning of the wedding Netta took her time fixing up her liberty bodice and the garters round her white stockings. Peg had starched her petticoat and bound the child’s wiry hair into tight ringlets. The dress was hung up ready for the trip to church. Angus was looking stiff and shiny in his best suit. His hair plastered down, his cheeks flushed from the drinking spree at the Stratharvar Hotel. Peg had squeezed into the dark pink two-piece suit that just about skimmed over her bulk, thanks to her new Spirella corset. She had let Mary MacCrindle shampoo and set her hair into a crimped wave flat against her ears and she wore her new floppy straw hat to one side. The finishing touch was the necklace of polished stones that Angus had pushed towards her in its blue box.
‘Here’s something to go with your outfit. It’s yours now. Shame to waste a good bauble.’
He did not touch her or offer to put it on her neck. When he looked at her there was only resignation and gratitude in his eyes, never a spark of desire or admiration. Peg could live with that. When she gave him a son, then she might shine brighter in his eyes. She was sitting by the dressing table when Netta appeared in the doorway.
‘You can’t wear that!’ She pointed to the necklace in horror. ‘It’s my mammy’s, not yours!’
Angus turned sharply to his daughter. ‘Of course she can. I bought it for Jeanie. It’s for me to gie it to whom I please.’
‘But it’s mine! Mammy said it was for me to have the rainbow necklace. She can’t have it!’ The child stood defiantly, expecting him to back down.
‘Haud yer wheest! She did no such thing. Jeanie wore it on her wedding day. Peg is yer mother now.’ Angus made towards the child.
‘That pink blancmange is no my mother. If I can’t wear my beads, I’m no going to yer wedding…’
He dragged the girl, taffeta skirts rustling, out into the passageway and took his razor strap to her backside. This is for cheeking Peg on her wedding day! Never talk to my wife like that again or you’re no a daughter of mine. This is her home now. You can stay in your room all day for all I care but Peg can choose what she wants to wear without your permission, missie. Do you hear me?’
Steely-eyed, red with tears and with a stinging backside and crumpled dress, Netta stood stony-faced with the rest of the small congregation gathered for the service. Later they went to the Stratharvar Hotel for high tea and she drank lemonade while the grown-ups drank whisky. Then Netta was sent to stay next door with the Patersons for a long weekend while Peg and Angus took the train to Edinburgh for their honeymoon.
Peg had no stomach to wear Angus’s gift after all the carry on. A dead woman’s promise had spoiled the pleasure of it all so she made do with the corsage of roses and white heather. The necklace was put carefully back in its box and she never touched it again.
Peg lay wide awake now. Only two days of the visit left. It was no use stirring up old wounds. Netta could turn the attic over all morning if it kept her out of the kitchen. What she’s really after is no up there, Peg thought to herself, and it’s no hers for the taking either.
Netta opened the trap door and sniffed the dusty air. A moth fluttered towards her lamp, casting flickering shadows. The floor was cluttered with the flotsam and jetsam of departed Nichols packed in boxes and cabin trunks; a musty graveyard, overgrown and neglected in the usual out-of-sight, out-of-mind way of most attic dumping grounds. All the history of the ancient family must be at her feet but she was in no mood to explore the distant past.
What she was looking for would be tucked away in cardboard boxes and leather attaché cases; stuff flung up here in the last ten years or so. It would take some sifting through so she would start at her feet and work backwards. The dust was gritty in her throat and her back was aching already but Netta was not deterred. Even if it took all day she would find the bits and pieces of her past among this lot. She would not give Peg the satisfaction of ignoring her requests. There were so many important details of her own journey that were hazy; her memories were often distorted and all mixed up in her brain.
Netta edged herself down on to the floorboards and cleared a space for the lamp. She dusted the nearest square box and opened it. It was a gas mask of all things! How she had hated fire drill and air raid warnings, the smell of the rubber up her nose choking her like a dentist’s mask sending her to sleep. She was made to carry this wretched box across her chest for a whole year until they grew lax at the School and she transferred to the Academy. Inside the box was tucked a handwritten programme for some concert but it was not in her own fancy script but a misspelt list of items. The wartime concerts, of course, with the evacuees from Glasgow. Glory to heaven! There was one bright spark in her schooldays which had brought fireworks to Stratharvar: Wilma Dixey and her brother Malky, the Lang Gang; Miss Lennox and Miss Murchison, their teachers. What a shot in the arm to such a dozy village they were! How Netta wished she had a snapshot of them all lined up on the stage for that first Christmas shindig but film was scarce and saved for only the most important occasions. The coming of the evacuees had been a shock to Stratharvar School and they had certainly changed the direction of her life forever. ‘Oh, Dixie!’ Netta sighed. ‘We were always trouble, you and me. We didn’t have a very good start, did we?’
A few weeks after war was declared the Dixeys exploded into Brigg Farm like Catherine wheels: a girl of ten with a shock of straw-coloured hair which stood up like Strewwelpeter’s, and a small boy of about six with knees like doorknobs who looked as if he’d not seen a square meal in years. They seemed to be labelled up and parcelled in brown paper, carrying gas masks and paper bags, following behind Peg’s ample rump like stray pups. Netta, being in her Anne of Green Gables dreamy phase at the time, was not looking forward to sharing all her things with strangers. It was enough trying to be nice to Peg as part of her war effort.
The Nichols were late getting to the Hall where the fifty-two evacuees from Glasgow foisted on Stratharvar were gathered for selection and distribution. The hall was in chaos with kids tearing round more like squealing piglets running amok in an auction market than at a sorting office. The best ones had long been chosen: the ones with leather suitcases and clean clothes, faces without suspicious scabs and sores. Peg was given the last two, bed wetters by the looks of them: the eldest was Wilhelmina, a skinny malinky longlegs, with Malcolm Aloysius, her brother, welded to her sleeve.
Peg looked at their labels suspiciously. ‘Are these ones Papists? Am no having Papes in ma house.’
‘I’m sorry, Mistress Nichol, but these are all that’re left.’ The Billeting Officer was nearly hairless with the racket and complaints. ‘They’re a mixed bunch from the Cowcaddens end of Glasgow city and that’s not Kelvinside as you probably ken.
‘Still, the Reverend Mackay did warn us on Sunday in his sermon: “Duty is a two-edged sword, no satisfaction without the pain of sacrifice”. Is that no what he said?’
Peg sniffed, guessing that the big three of the village, Minister, Doctor and Headmaster, would have had first pickings of the teachers and their offspring, not these scruffy wee toerags. Netta had never seen so many strangers in Stratharvar, poking curious fingers into gardens and peering into windows, while pulling faces.
They loaded their reluctant cargo on to the pony and cart and headed back down the twisting lanes to the farm. It was a fine autumn afternoon, trees turning golden, wisps of white clouds in a blue sky, with the scent of woodsmoke from the stone cottages by the roadside. The evacuees stared out with glum faces.
‘Where’s the picture hoose and the shops, missus? It’s all cows and fields,’ said the girl, looking around her with dismay.
‘This is real countryside,’ Netta offered proudly. ‘We’ve got streams to jump over and trees to climb, dens to make and the sea just down the road. Only the beach’s all fastened up for the war, but I know a fine sandy cove to make sand castles.’
‘Is that all? We’ve got a zoo and a swing park and alleys to chase, and a dose of sweetie shops. I never saw nae proper shops here… And ma name’s Wilma, missus, what’s yourn?’ The girl turned to Netta with grey-flecked eyes fixed enviously on her thick coat and shiny shoes.
‘Jeanette, but it’s Netta at home and Nettie in the school.’
‘Like yon Jeanette Macdonald and Nelson Eddy? I seed them at the Essoldo picture house. Do you like the talkies?’
Netta shook her head with disdain. ‘Peg says they’re the devil’s flea pits, don’t you?’
‘Aye, you’ll walk a long way before you’ll find me in one of they time-wasters. You’ll no be needing any of that stuff here, we make our own entertainment. We’ve a Post Office and a Jenny a’things shop, a paraffin cart and lots of delivery callers. Plenty going on on a farm tae keep you out o’ mischief!’
‘And in the summer the tallyman calls with his ice cream van,’ added Netta, hoping to impress.
‘Not any longer, he won’t, hen. He’ll be off to one of them camps for Eyeties and enemy aliens.’
‘Whit’s that stink?’ The two children pegged their fingers to their noses in disgust.
‘Just muck spreading… from the cows, you’ll soon get used to the pong. It clears yer chest.’
‘It smells like shite! Malky, we’re goin’ to have tae live in shite,’ whispered Wilma.
‘Any more o’that bad language, young lady, and I’ll wash yer mouth out with Oxydol!’
‘Ma maw washes ma hair with Persil tae bring out the colour, so she does. She says I’ll look like Jean Harlow if we keep it up. I didna want to be evaporated doon here.’ Wilma hugged her parcels close to her chest. Netta looked at Peg’s lips twitching into a smirk and burst out laughing herself.
‘Whit are yous twos grinning at?’ snapped Wilma, suddenly on the defensive.
‘You’ve been evacuated, not evaporated… you’re not a can of milk!’ laughed Netta.
‘I’m no dumb cluck, that’s whit I said. You must have tatties in yer ears.’ This girl was not easily put down.
‘Suit yersel, I know whit I heard,’ Netta mimicked.
Just you speak properly, Netta Nichol, I’m not having you picking up the patter from the likes of this girl. She’s as coarse as heather!’
It was not the best of starts. As they climbed the track up to the whitewashed farm the two strangers fell silent, watching the huge fat stock cattle eyeing their progress. They clung together at the sight of Angus in his huge boots, his corduroys held up with a black leather belt. He looked like a whiskery, sandy-haired giant to them. Malky hid himself under Wilma’s thin coat, cowering away from the sight of the bull calf being led out into the field.
‘This’ll be your job to milk him each morning,’ teased Angus. Malky buried his head in his sister’s thigh.
‘He’s just blethering, Malky, don’t you be scared. You’ll soon get the hang of it.’
Netta couldn’t look her father in the face. These two idiots didn’t know a bull from a cow.
When they sat down to a plate of beef stew Malky poked around his plate suspiciously, picking out each lump of meat from the vegetables with his fingers. There was a stunned silence for a second.
‘Use yer knife and fork, son,’ whispered Peg, looking to his sister for support but she was no better. Netta was sniggering at their lack of table manners when Wilma sprang to his defence.
‘Ma maw says we’re to use oor fingers, it’s mair hygienic. Fingers first and tongue after to lick the juice. No washing up after us.’ She stared at Netta’s gaping mouth. ‘And you’d better shut yer mouth, there’s a train coming.’
‘Well, in this house, Wilma Dixey, you’ll do whit we do. We eat civilised, and I’ll be seeing you two eat civilised too. Just pick up they forks and knives and follow what our Netta does,’ said Peg from the top of the table. The battle to tame the evacuees had begun.
Next came the palaver with the zinc bathtub and the undressing. Netta had wondered if either of the evacuees had ever seen water before, the fuss they made. Wilma was in high dudgeon, squealing for the cruelty man to rescue them from the torture of having knots combed out and searched for nits. They were sewn into their vests, which were lined with more brown paper against winter’s chills, and afterwards Peg lifted up their clothes with a pair of tongs, dumped them in a basket and put them on the compost heap to rot down. Wilma was shown how to scrub the muck out of Malky’s ears properly. Once dried by the firelight, with flushed cheeks and shiny noses, they took on a much healthier glow. After a mug of cocoa and shortbread biscuits for supper, it was up the wooden hill for the tired pair.