Footsteps sounded along the passage and running back to bed she pulled the quilt up to her neck to wait with fast-beating heart. ‘Don’t let it be Ruth,’ she prayed, ‘I never want to face her.’
She had learned only recently that she had pleaded with her visitors not to let Ruth come near her and now she wished they hadn’t listened. It would have made it easier, so much easier . . .
The door opened and Niall came in, dressed in a brown cashmere jersey that matched his eyes. His face was shiny and fresh looking – as if he had just washed – but it was so thin and his eyes held no joy – also the jaunty whistle which used to herald his approach was stilled. The grave lines of his face broke and he smiled at her, such a lovely smile – though there was a sadness in it.
‘You’re awake,’ he greeted her, as if to see her awake was an occasion for gladness. ‘Would you like me to bring up some breakfast for the pair o’ us? We could have it together up here.’
But she shook her head quickly. ‘No, you go ahead, I’m not very hungry yet, I’ve only just wakened. What time is it?’
‘Nine o’clock, but you’ve no need to hurry. You can lie as long as you like.’
‘Please don’t treat me like a child.’ Her tones were petulant. ‘And to hell with what the doctors say! I’ve had enough of bed to last me a lifetime!’
He drew a deep breath and went over to the window to stare out unseeingly. The doctors had warned him it would be like this, that it would be a long time before she was the woman he had known. He wanted to hold her, to feel the warmth of her body close to his, to convince himself that all the doctors were wrong and that she had been restored to him well and whole, but he saw now it would be a long uphill process.
‘I’m glad my father brought me back here.’ She gazed fondly round the room. ‘I don’t want ever to go back to – that other house. I hate it!’
It had been Niall’s idea to bring her back to Laigmhor but he said nothing of this, instead he said quietly, ‘There’s nothing wrong with the house, Shona, it’s . . .’
Her nostrils flared. ‘Oh, so it’s me then? I might have known you wouldn’t understand.’
‘No, it isn’t you, Shona, and I do understand.’ He strove to remain calm. ‘We – we all understand.’
‘Do you?’ she asked shrilly. ‘Does Ruth? Do the folk around here understand why I did it – why I took a baby that wasn’t mine?’
He swung round to face her. ‘No one outside the family knows, except my parents and the minister – it’s all right, mo ghaoil, believe me, it’s all right.’
A look of perceptible relief flitted over her strained features, she relaxed visibly and her voice was softer when she said, ‘Where are you staying, Niall? At Slochmhor?’
‘No, here, I’ve got the room next door to this. I thought it better for us to have separate rooms till you get used to things again.’
She nodded, looking at him strangely. His masculine body seemed very big in the small room and though she felt a relief at his words, something about the hard strength of him clawed relentlessly at her consciousness; an unwilling awareness of the comfort he had always given her unstintingly; the sweetness of how it had been in his arms – yet she knew she had nothing to give till she had regained her self-respect, a liking for herself again.
The doctors had told Niall to broach the subject of Ellie, bring her into the open instead of keeping her buried, but so far Shona had shown no inclination to mention her daughter’s name and he knew he had to try and bring out the things that she was reluctant to face. Going over to the bed he sat down and studied her. She was like a little girl in her flowery cotton pyjamas, her hair tumbling about her shoulders in thick luxuriant waves, the expression in her blue eyes oddly trusting – the way Ellie had looked when he had lifted her high, swung her round till she was dizzy . . .
‘Shona.’ He put out his hand and lifting a strand of her hair let it glide through his fingers. She pressed herself back on the pillows and he withdrew his hand as if it had been burnt. ‘I’m sorry,’ he sighed, finding it hard to have to apologize for touching his own wife. ‘I just thought you might like to talk – about things – about Ellie.’
‘No.’ It was a whimper of rejection. ‘How can you mention her name – when you—’ She halted, unable to voice the things on her mind and he stared at her, seeing accusation in her eyes, renewing a suspicion that he’d harboured for some time. She blamed him for Ellie’s death, it was plain to him now and the full realization hit him like a dose of ice water.
‘Shona, you canny believe that I – that I was the cause of Ellie . . .? It was an accident. I would have died to save her but I couldn’t—’
‘You let it happen.’ Her voice was cold, distant, reminding him of how she’d been that dreadful day when she had spoken with the remote, chilly voice of a stranger. ‘You should never have gone away and left her to cope alone.’
‘Ellie wasn’t an infant!’ He got up and began pacing the floor, agitation in every step. ‘She was a bright, intelligent child with a well-developed sense of responsibility . . .’
‘Unlike you,’ she chipped in bitterly. She turned her head away from him. ‘I don’t want to talk about it – and please stop that pacing, I can’t bear it. It might be better if we didn’t see each other for a while. You remind me too much of things I’d rather forget. Take your things over to Slochmhor, in that way we can be near – without being too near.’
He stared at her in disbelief, his heart heavy in his leaden chest. ‘Ay, I’ll do that, Shona – if it’s what you really want. I’ll be away in a couple of days anyway, the boat was restored ages ago but I haveny had much chance to use it. I was thinking to stay away for a month or so, see to a few things before the winter gales make travelling too risky – but I’ll cut it short if you think you might need me.’
She shook her head. ‘No, you do what you want, I’ll be fine here with Father – I need a lot of time to myself just now – so it’s as well if you go away.’
His brown eyes were shiny with hurt and he went to the door without another word. She listened to his steps receding downstairs and a sense of relief pervaded her being, mingling with an unaccountable sense of sadness for things lost, never to return.
Fergus knitted his brows and his black eyes snapped as he spoke to Kirsteen. They were in the kitchen. It was warm and quiet except for the ticking of the clocks and the smatterings of rain blowing against the window panes.
‘Hell, Kirsteen,’ he said heavily, ‘I canny believe this. You’re sure about this thing between Shona and Niall?’
She sighed, seeing in her mind’s eye Phebie’s troubled face when she had gone to take a strupak with her at Slochmhor. ‘As sure as I’ll ever be. Phebie was near to tears when she told me. In a way I was glad Niall was away – I don’t think I could have faced him just then.’
Fergus banged his fist on the table. ‘I was wondering why he suddenly decided to move his things to Slochmhor. Oh God! It canny be allowed to happen again,’ he said passionately, remembering with shame a long ago night when he had accused Lachlan of allowing his wife to die in childbirth. Now it seemed that the child Lachlan had delivered safely into the world had turned against his son, accusing him of causing the death of their daughter. ‘That old witch Behag has a habit of saying history repeats itself,’ he continued bitterly, ‘and much as I hate to admit it she has a point – warped as it may be. Christ Almighty, Kirsteen! It will destroy them, eat away until there’s nothing left but bitterness!’
She went to him and put her arms round him, stroking the taut lines of his jaw. ‘Weesht, weesht, my darling,’ she soothed, ‘it won’t come to that. Shona will see sense in the end. It’s too early yet for her to know what she’s really saying.’
‘That’s just it,’ he said wearily, ‘too early for so many things. Right now I want to run up those stairs and shake some sense into her – talk to her – try and make her see what she’s doing, but one wrong word could put her right ba
ck to the beginning and none of this damned mess will ever be sorted out. Oh hell! Sometimes I wonder why any of us ever have children. You bring them up, suffer with them, suffer because of them, and just when you’re deluding yourself into believing they’ve got their lives sorted out something like this happens. I canny take it the way I used to, I’m getting to be an old man, Kirsteen.’
She laughed and snuggled her head against his hard chest. ‘Havers! You’re just saying that because you want me to list all the things that make you a bull of a man both in bed and out.’
He smiled despite himself, and pulling her close, kissed her deeply. When he let her go there was a look in his eyes which she knew well. She caught her breath. ‘Do you think it’s wrong to feel as we do – at our age?’
‘It canny be wrong to love at any age,’ he answered seriously. ‘I just wish Shona felt the same about Niall – I thought theirs was a marriage like ours, that could ride out the rough as well as the smooth.’
‘Och, it will, Fergus, it will – just do as the doctors say and give it time.’ She sounded more certain than she felt and buried her face into his shoulder so that he wouldn’t see the doubts in her eyes.
Kirsteen, watching for signs of concern in Shona, was disappointed to find that there were none, and as the days passed she could keep quiet no longer. ‘It will be good to see Niall back again,’ she hazarded, unable to bear the unbroken lethargy on Shona’s face a moment longer.
‘Ay, it will indeed,’ Shona said in a manner that suggested it was the sort of answer expected of her and she wasn’t going to say anything to the contrary for fear of risking reprisals.
‘I can’t get through to her,’ Kirsteen later confided in Fergus, exasperation in her voice. ‘She doesn’t seem to be aware of anything – to feel anything – it’s as if she’s just switched off from everything that ever meant anything to her. She shows no concern for Niall – he could be lost in a storm for all she seems to care. She just sits in her room, huddled over the fire, staring into it – seeing nothing.’
Fergus’s eyes blazed and his temper finally snapped. ‘Oh, she’s aware all right! She’s just exerting every shred of that buggering McKenzie stubbornness of hers in order to keep herself divorced from us all! Goddammit! She looks at me as if I was some kind of rotten sore that has to be tholed. She’s trying to shut herself off from life for fear it hurts her again. Well, I’ve had enough, I’m going up right now to speak to her!’
‘No, Fergus, you know what the doctors said,’ Kirsteen appealed, but he shook her arm off and stomped out of the kitchen and up to Shona’s room, his face set and determined. She was at the fire, a cardigan thrown over her sagging shoulders, the hair that had been her pride unbrushed and unkempt looking, hanging about her shoulders in straggly ends. Her face was void of the sparkle that had once lit it to happiness or temper, her whole attitude was one of complete dejection.
Fergus stood looking at her, his temper worsened by the fact that she had given no indication of having heard his entry into the room.
‘Right, madam,’ he began harshly. ‘Just how long do you intend to keep this up? You’re not only depressing yourself, you’re depressing everyone around you! God knows we’ve been patient with you but it canny go on, Shona, I won’t have Kirsteen put out any longer – and look at me when I talk to you, dammit!’
At first he thought she wasn’t going to acknowledge that she had even heard him, but after a few interminable seconds during which his rage boiled to exploding point, she raised her head slowly and the eyes that looked at him were dull and lifeless. ‘Ay, you said something, Father?’
His nerves stretched. He couldn’t believe it. She was even a better actress than he thought or else she really had missed most of the words he’d showered on her. ‘You’re right, I did say something,’ he threw at her relentlessly. ‘And since you appear to be deaf I’ll say more. God knows you’ve been through a terrible ordeal, we all understand that. You’ve lost a child who was your life, but in behaving the way you’re doing you’re not being fair to her bonny name. You’re burying her, keeping her down, you won’t allow her to come out and become the precious memory she deserves to be. You’ve suffered, ay, but you’re not the only one, we’ve all experienced the hell you’re going through – and what about your husband? You don’t seem to give a damn for him and yet in his way he’s suffered more than you and for longer. You managed to lock yourself from reality, he’s had to thole it from the hellish moment he saw his own flesh and blood dying in that fire. Just think about that and you might stop wallowing in self-pity and start giving some of it away for a change!’
He paused, frightened, wondering if he had gone too far but she merely turned her gaze from him and switched it back to the red hot peats glowing in the hearth. A fresh burst of rage engulfed him and he plunged on, ‘That’s right, pretend you haveny heard! You don’t fool me and I won’t allow you to go on casting your gloom over this house! We’ve had our share of grief. It’s just over a year since we lost our son and by God it still hurts. That kind of pain never goes away but it has to be lived with if we are to carry on. It would be easy to go under, very easy, but for the sake of those who are left we all have to make the effort to go on. You are no exception, madam, believe me. Patience and gentleness haven’t worked with you, so maybe this will.’
He was panting now, his fist clenching and unclenching at his side, his black eyes glowing red in the firelight as he glared down at her. Again she looked up, tilting her head back so that she could see his face looming above her.
‘Will you please get out of my room, Father,’ her voice was level, betraying nothing. ‘I want only to be left in peace.’
‘I will not be told what to do in my own house!’ he roared, and Kirsteen, listening at the foot of the stairs, bit her lip, her knuckles on the banister clenched whitely.
‘Enough, Fergus, enough,’ she whispered though she knew everything he said was born of frustration and a burning desire to see his daughter happy again.
White fury bubbled in him such as he had never known for years, bubbled, fermented, boiled upwards to almost choke him. He raised his hand as if to strike, and it was only a great force of will that stayed him. His pupils widened, his hand dropped back to his side and he all but ran from the room, knowing if he stayed a moment longer he would do something he would regret for the rest of his days.
Towards the end of November, Niall came home, refreshed, ready to believe that his wife’s condition could only have improved during the time he’d been away. But when he went to see her, eagerly, his brown eyes alive with anticipation as he presented her with an enormous fluffy teddy bear with golden eyes, he received the same sort of reception as anyone else, the only difference being that with him she was more vindictive than he could ever have believed possible. It was as if she brewed small incidents in her mind till they were blown up out of all proportion to that which was real. Like Fergus, his patience had finally become exhausted and now his snapping point was reached. Against his better reason he raged at her till he was spent, but when he sat back, pale with retreating rage she merely said indifferently, ‘Niall, if this is the way you’re going to behave I think it would be better if you don’t come back. I don’t have anything that I want to say to you.’
Jumping up he went to the door, throwing back, ‘I think you’re right – you don’t have anything to say – nothing that I care to hear anyway. I’ve had it with you, Shona, all I can take and I’m damned if I need any more of it – oh God,’ despite himself his voice broke, ‘I wish Ellie was here – she could always be relied on for a bit of laughter when you were in one of your buggering pig-headed moods – but she isn’t here, is she? That’s the trouble. Maybe it’s just as well – I wouldny like her to see a mother so completely wrapped up with her own feelings she’s got none to spare for the poor buggers who have to live with her. Kirsteen and your father deserve medals putting up with the likes of you in their home!’
She liste
ned to the blundering sounds made by his hasty departure. A shiver went through her. He was wrong, so wrong! He had accused her of feeling nothing for others when all the time her heart was heavy with caring. She wanted to reach out, to her father, to Niall, to let them know how much she still loved and needed them, how much she longed to talk to them. Picking up the teddy bear from the chair where he had thrown it with such joyous abandon, she cuddled it to her breast, wishing it was Niall in her arms, close to her heart. Emotions piled in on her, the first she had experienced for many months, but uppermost was a feeling of fear, fear of losing a loved one, of losing Niall. She shook her head from side to side and whimpered, ‘Oh, Niall, I do love you – but I’m so – but I’m so – afraid.’ With a sudden movement she threw the bear to the floor as if it had bitten her. She mustn’t allow herself to become involved in that way again. It hurt, oh God! how it hurt – and she wasn’t ready to take that – ever again.
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