by Annie Murray
‘Yes.’ She smiled. ‘As some of my own victims would testify.’ Dr Reid chuckled and she saw his eyes crease at the corners just the way Fergus’s used to, which was a joyful agony.
‘Come along.’ Elspeth Reid bustled along the passage. ‘Let’s go and stow your bag and make a nice hot drink. You must be starving, you poor wee girlie.’
Fifty-One
Annie was amazed by Fergus’s parents.
She had been both longing to meet them and dreading the crushing weight of emotion that she knew must be contained in that large, stone house in Scotland. And as she walked about the place, in any part of it, she knew that Fergus must once have done the same. Washing her face in the bathroom and seeing her own thin, strained features in the mirror, she knew he must have stood in this very spot where she stood now. The bedroom that had been shelter for his lovely young body since his infant years was only next door. Every step along the landing and down the staircase would have been as familiar to him as his own body and he had often talked to her about the house. His presence was all around her. It was terribly painful, but it was also lovely and reassuring to feel him exist here as he existed nowhere in her Birmingham setting except in her own mind.
She rested for a while, and afterwards, for much of that day, she and Dr and Mrs Reid spent the time talking.
When she went down for what Dr Reid called luncheon, there was a shepherd’s pie with cabbage and extra swede. (‘We’re overrun with swede in the garden.’) And as soon as they were seated at the table in the big, echoing dining room with its dark wooden furniture and long curtained windows looking out to the green of the garden, they both began talking and Annie hardly had to say a word.
‘When we got the news,’ Mrs Reid said, spooning cabbage on to her plate, ‘we just couldn’t believe it. I still can’t, fully. After all, he was in a hospital . . .’
‘Well, there do tend to be a lot of sick people in hospitals,’ Dr Reid said.
‘You know what I mean, Dugald,’ his wife said. ‘All those poor lads dying . . . And our poor lamb being taken not by the war exactly, but in it.’
‘It’s all part of war,’ Dr Reid said. ‘Think of the epidemics at Scutari – more died from infection than bullets.’
‘I know, I know.’ Mrs Reid put the half-empty bowl of cabbage down on the table. ‘But knowing the facts doesn’t necessarily prepare you. The mind doesn’t work like that.’
‘Well, yours doesn’t, my dear, of that I’m sure.’ Dr Reid spoke drily, but there was no malice in what he said. He smiled at his wife and their eyes met, full of sad understanding.
‘I felt the same though,’ Annie said. ‘I just thought he would be safe. Even though I know it’s not just those in the front line who get killed. Enough boys on the wards have told me things . . .’
They asked her then about her work and Dr Reid was very interested in the First Southern General and Annie telling him about the teaching rooms all converted to wards and therapy rooms, the Great Hall full of beds.
But soon they started on Fergus again. Through the meal, followed by weak tea, then a walk along the farm tracks in a brisk wind, then more tea, and later the evening meal, with some lulls in between, Fergus’s parents reminisced unaffectedly, and without reserve, about their son.
‘He was such a good student,’ Mrs Reid said as they walked. They took Seamus, who, old as he was, set off on his long legs as if he was on springs. The damp wind buffeted their faces and snatched at words so that everything had to be said loudly and facing the person you were talking to. ‘Always very good at school, keen and clever . . .’
‘Even if the wee laddie could hardly get his clothes on the right way round,’ his father said. They were walking alongside a stone wall and as Dr Reid spoke, his voice cracked and he stopped abruptly.
His wife, in her firmly tied hat once again, took Annie’s arm, glancing back as her husband fought for control of his emotions behind a handkerchief.
‘Oh, dear,’ she said. ‘It takes us like that – every day, on and off.’
‘I know,’ Annie said, her own eyes filling. The two women looked at each other with silent understanding and Elspeth Reid squeezed her arm.
‘I hope this isn’t all too much for you, dear. I suppose Dugald and I . . . Well, we’re here all day just with each other and somehow you don’t know how to help each other because you’re suffering yourself. So, we end up not saying anything. Your being here allows us to remember our boy with someone who loved him. But we don’t want to overwhelm you.’
‘Oh, no,’ Annie said. ‘It’s . . .’ And she was in tears herself. ‘It means so much,’ she sobbed, as Mrs Reid put an arm round her shoulders. ‘No one at home really knew him. And when so many other people are dying, it just seems . . . You just have to go on.’
‘You do,’ Mrs Reid agreed tearfully. They could hear Dr Reid coughing behind them. ‘And that’s the hardest thing of all. Going on with the empty chair that you know will never be filled.’
She drew herself up and turned Annie towards the view.
‘Over there, those are the Lomond Hills – that’s our highest point, here in Fife. It’s not like the highlands! Mind you, they look very fetching with a dusting of snow, do our hills. Fergus loved this view. He used to come up here a lot with old Seamus here, whenever he came home.’
Dr Reid came and stood beside them, seemingly recovered. Annie was still arm in arm with Mrs Reid, and standing on her other side, he suddenly reached for Annie’s hand and held it tenderly in his own.
After dinner they sat in the cosy sitting room at the back, a fire cracking and roaring in the grate. It was a comfortable house, with big leather armchairs and oil paintings of cold-looking mountain landscapes which Annie assumed to be in Scotland. In one, a group of men with guns were filing through the heather. There was a profusion of brass fire tools inside the fender and the side tables were piled with books and periodicals.
Mrs Reid handed Annie a cup of tea.
‘Come nice and close to the fire, dear, next to me. Come along now, Seamus,’ she said to the dog, who was stretched right along the hearthrug, giving off smells of hot, damp fur. ‘Do move over and let our young friend Annie have some room as well!’ The dog got up with a grunt, gave Annie a look of gentle reproach and curled up again on the rug. ‘Now – shall we show you some photographs?’
Out came the albums. Dr Reid sat back, listening, chipping in, holding his cup and saucer as his wife regaled Annie about each of the sepia prints.
‘Dugald was always keen on taking photographs,’ she said. ‘He had a camera even when I met him! I’m so glad now.’
Annie thought of her cousin Georgie taking his pictures and her heart twisted. Thanks heavens for these cameras! Otherwise, what would she and Clara and everyone else have had to hold on to?
And there was Fergus, a round-faced child in a floppy hat and white Victorian petticoats, gazing round-eyed at the camera. Annie gazed back at him. There were already the eyebrows, a child’s, but still arched at the same angle she remembered.
‘He’d have been almost two there,’ Mrs Reid said.
‘Wasn’t he beautiful!’ Annie said.
The boy grew and thinned out, the shoulders widened, his poses almost all sporting – with a cricket bat, rowing a boat, running along plastered in mud, an occasional posed studio portrait, his graduation from medical school. And in each Annie drank in the sight of the man she had loved so much, seeing his happy, healthy boyhood and the fruits of all his hard work as he grew into a caring, well-qualified man with the urge to help and heal – he had been living that out as he died.
She looked up at Dr and Mrs Reid, her face wet with tears. They, now, seemed calmer. Mrs Reid leaned forward and laid another chunk of wood on the fire, which crackled and spat.
‘You have so much to be proud of,’ Annie said. ‘You gave him a wonderful upbringing and he was so kind, so keen to be of service to others. He was the finest, nicest man I ever met.’
‘Thank you, dear,’ she said.
The next day they were expecting Fergus’s sister Isobel with her two children. Though she was full of a sense of comfort and gratitude towards Fergus’s parents, Annie felt much more nervous about meeting his sister. She had seen photographs of her in the album along with Fergus’s, a pretty, confident-looking girl pictured running or on horseback and later, standing in a ball gown on the arm of a tall, dark-haired and classically good-looking man with a moustache, on the steps of an impressive-looking building.
‘Oh, that was the ball Angus took her to when he proposed – right outside the university!’ Mrs Reid said. ‘Angus is a teacher of science at the university. Chemistry. Though he’s out east somewhere at the moment.’ She gazed sadly at the picture. ‘None of us knew what was coming, of course. Now they’ve the two little boys – I hope they recognize their father when he . . .’ Annie heard her stop herself saying if he gets home . . .
‘What are the boys’ names?’ she had asked. ‘And how old are they?’
‘Oh, they’re twins,’ Mrs Reid said. ‘They’re coming up to their sixth birthday.’ She rolled her eyes fondly. ‘They certainly keep our Isobel on her toes.’
Annie wanted to ask more. Was she close to Fergus? Will she like me? And other foolish, unanswerable things. Fergus always spoke affectionately of her.
‘Would you like to walk down to the station with me, to greet them?’ Mrs Reid asked.
Annie looked doubtfully at her. ‘Perhaps you’d prefer me to stay here and give you some time to yourselves?’ she said. The arrival of Isobel made her feel suddenly awkward, an outsider who would be in the way.
‘No,’ Elspeth said. ‘Don’t be silly. She’s looking forward to meeting you.’ She looked intently at Annie and smiled gently. ‘She wants to meet the woman who her brother loved so much.’
It was another beautiful clear day, though still breezy. Waiting on the quiet platform, the only ones there, they saw the plume of smoke in the distance long before the rhythmic sound of the train came to them. Standing in her hat and coat, Annie felt her innards tighten. No matter what kindly Mrs Reid said, she still felt fraught with nerves at meeting Isobel.
Even as the train slowed, a hand was waving out of the window.
‘There she is!’ Mrs Reid said as it moved ahead of them so that they walked along the carriages to meet it.
Annie saw a lovely face with big, grey eyes smiling at them and soon Isobel descended from the carriage, an elegant camel coat tied over a darker brown skirt, a deep brown hat with a long feather curving from the brim and a little bag held by a strap over her left arm. But though she was elegant she hurried to them like an excited child.
‘Hello!’ She held her arms out. ‘Hello, Mother!’ She kissed and embraced Elspeth, with a certain skill in not entangling their hats, and then, arms held out, ‘And this is Annie – I’m so happy to meet you!’
‘Well, where are the boys?’ Elspeth asked indignantly as the two young women embraced. ‘Have you not brought my wee grandsons to see me?’
‘No,’ Isobel said, ‘I left them with Angus’s mother ’til tomorrow. I can’t stop long and I promise to bring them up very soon. But oh, it is nice to have a little rest from the wee darlings – and I wanted to see you and Annie without having to answer a hundred questions every five minutes and have them careering round the house with Seamus like a couple of hoodlums!’
Annie had to confess to a certain relief at this as well and was warmed by Isobel’s enthusiasm for meeting her.
‘Anyway,’ she said, as they left the station, ‘it’ll do Mrs M good to see what it’s like having to deal with two at once!’ She grinned wickedly.
‘Oh, dear,’ her mother said, from which Annie concluded that Angus’s mother was evidently a bit difficult. ‘I do hope they’ll be all right.’
During a lunch of lamb chops, Isobel chatted with her parents, updating them on news of Angus and the children, but she took care to include Annie in the conversation, explaining things that she would not understand and often smiling at her.
Afterwards, when the two of them were in the sitting room and Mrs Reid still somewhere about the house, Isobel said, ‘Oh, I see the fire has been lit in your honour!’
‘Has it?’ Annie said, surprised.
‘Oh, yes. Mother doesn’t hold with fires until at least October. It’s our cold Scots blood, you see. She must think you’re a soft southerner.’ Again, the teasing was good-humoured.
‘Well, I suppose I am,’ Annie said, as she had been feeling cold most of the time since she had been there.
‘You’re very thin,’ Isobel said. She sat down across from Annie, looking closely at her. ‘I . . .’ A spasm of grief crossed her face. ‘I loved my brother a great deal. He was always very good to me – well, almost always.’ She struggled to find a smile. ‘I don’t know if that’s unusual – some siblings fight like cats and dogs but he was always so easygoing and such fun. I miss him terribly. But for you . . . I know you’ve lost someone who you loved and hoped to make a life with.’
Her eyes filled and Annie felt her chest tighten so that she could hardly breathe, her own eyes already spilling tears. She nodded, looking down.
‘I always thought . . .’ She wiped her eyes, trying not to start sobbing out all her sorrow in the face of Isobel’s kind sympathy. ‘When I was young, I always said I would never marry. I wanted to do other things, great things, I thought – you know, make great changes in society, in the world.’
‘That sounds ambitious.’ Isobel smiled tearfully.
‘Until I met him,’ Annie said. ‘Fergus – our Fergus.’ She looked up at Isobel. ‘I know we were only engaged, not married. But I hope you don’t mind me saying that?’
‘No. Of course not. He was crazy about you. He wrote and told me he’d met the most astonishing woman and how you’d made a proper man of him.’
‘Me?’ Annie said, startled. ‘He said that?’
‘He did. You probably thought we Scots are all dry, puritanical types, but Fergus was very emotional, when he was with people who knew him. If he said that, he must have loved you like anything.’
‘He did,’ Annie said. ‘And he was the love of my life – of that I’m sure. He changed me.’ More tears came. ‘He made me know what love is. And it’s made me suffer more and sometimes I curse that. But I know really I would never be without it.’
Mrs Reid soon came in and once again, they all talked and talked. They took another walk and very quickly, Annie realized that Isobel was to become a genuine friend.
‘If you had married Fergus,’ Isobel said as they walked the track again, the thin sunlight on their faces, ‘you would have been my sister-in-law.’ She squeezed Annie’s arm. ‘And I would have loved that. I’ve always wanted a sister. You have one, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Annie said. ‘Margaret – she’s my elder sister.’
‘But no brothers?’
‘Our brother John died in infancy.’
‘Oh, how dreadful! And are you close to your sister, Margaret?’
‘Yes. I’d say so.’
Isobel was silent for a moment. ‘Well, I don’t suppose you’d be needing another one? My husband is from a whole string of boys and now I’ve got sons . . . Sometimes I feel as if I live in a male clubhouse! It can be rather lonely at times.’
Annie was deeply touched by this.
‘I’d like that. Will you write to me?’
‘Of course – as long as you write back. Real writing, not the weather.’
Annie laughed. As if she would write about the weather! ‘Real writing. Yes – I will.’
Fifty-Two
‘Daisy?’
She looked up from her bench in Pa’s workshop that Friday morning to see Margaret hurrying towards her, a strange expression on her face.
Daisy was helping with an order they had received for
a set of plated silver sports trophies to be sent to somewhere in Scotland. She stood up, wiping her hands on a rag. The lathe kept turning at the other end of the workshop. All Daisy knew about these small parts they were turning out day after day, was that they were for Mark 4 tanks. A few of the women workers had glanced up as Margaret came in, then respectfully went back to their work.
She held out an envelope and then Daisy understood the look on her face. It was from Brighton.
‘Take it out of here and read it if you like,’ Margaret said very quietly.
Daisy nodded. She took it up to the attic, and only then looked closely at the handwriting. Once again, it was not Den’s and she did not recognize it. Unlike the rather stylish hand of Lucinda Bailey, the VAD, it was looped, rather childish writing, and the top line of the address was smudged. Her heart was thudding but she felt a sense of fate come over her. This would decide things. Something outside her control would decide her future and what she deserved in this life.
She had given Stephen no reason to hope. Despite his hurt glances, she had not been to Hollymoor to visit for the last few Mondays and when she was teaching on Tuesdays she had been distant, treating him like any other of the men there, polite, encouraging, but nothing more. She had avoided his eyes and, she realized, soon he had stopped seeking out hers. It was better that way, she knew. Stephen had her on a pedestal. She could not bear to think of the look that would come over his face when she was forced to tell him the truth. The shame of it washed through her even at the thought of it.
Calmly, her hands not even trembling, she slit the envelope open and drew out a single sheet of paper. There was neither an address nor a date at the top, as if the writer was not well versed in the art of letter writing. The lines of the letter sloped downwards and the spelling was shocking. ‘Dazy’ was crossed out and replaced with the correct letters of her name:
Dear Daisy Tallis,
I am writing for Denis Pool and he says to tell you that he has the bandages off of him now and is going along allright he can see and he says what he wants to see is you when you can come doun.