Beneath the Abbey Wall

by A. D. Scott

  “I’m only here for a minute,” Neil told Joanne as he stood in the doorway, his hat pushed slightly back, an expensive-looking briefcase, the type solicitors usually carried, in one hand. “I’m off to the library archives. What time and where do we meet for the practice?”

  “Four thirty,” Rob answered as he squeezed past Neil. “The scout hut opposite the Royal Academy playing fields.”

  “I’m none the wiser,” Neil said.

  “Not one of the dirty-old-man brigade who watch hockey practice then.” Rob laughed. “I’ll pick you up.”

  “Good, here’s my address in town.” Neil scribbled on the back of a business card.

  Rob looked at Neil’s card with his address in Canada, his title, and qualifications. “Wow, an associate professor.”

  “Full professor if I get my PhD. Talking of which, I have work to do and must dash.”

  “I’ll pick you up around quarter past four. You can hold my guitar for me.”

  When Neil was safely down the stairs, Joanne made a grab for the card. “Let me see that.”

  “Please!” Rob held the card high. “And why so interested? Because you fancy him?” He saw her blush, one of the many things he loved about his friend; an almost-middle-aged woman—to him, anyway—a mother of two, and she still blushed. “You do. You do. You fancy Neil.” He said this in a singsong eight-year-old-in-the-playground voice, elongating “Nee-il” into two syllables.

  Joanne ignored him. She was looking at the card proclaiming Neil Stewart’s title, the crow-black print, the weight of the stock, giving him a status she had not considered before now.

  “He’s . . . ” Far and away beyond me, she was thinking.

  “He’s been to New York and he’s here in town for only a wee while, and I intend to pick his brains about the big wide world beyond the Grampians.” Rob was relieved to be having a cheerful conversation. “Maybe he’ll know some new numbers for the band.”

  “I’m sure he will.” Joanne was sure Neil knew a lot about many things, how to treat a woman included.

  * * *

  “Come on, let’s sit outside for a minute, I can’t hear myself think.” Chiara led Joanne to the grassy bank outside the hall. They sat on her coat, taking in the last of the diminishing sun. The sound of the band counting in the seventh—or was it the eighth—version of “Roll Over Beethoven,” was faint but clear, sounding as though they were playing inside a box, which was all the Scout Hall was, a large wooden box with a tin roof.

  “That Neil makes a big difference to their sound,” Chiara said.

  “He does,” Joanne agreed.

  “He’s certainly enjoying himself, and enjoying the adoring looks from the audience.”

  It took Joanne a moment to realize Chiara was talking about her. “Chiara, I was only listening to the music.” But she started to laugh when her friend pursed her lips and shook her head as if to say, Who are you kidding?

  “He’s gorgeous, he’s talented, he’s a mysterious stranger . . . fatal.” When Chiara saw her friend’s faraway eyes, a sensation that no good would come of any involvement with Neil Stewart made her shiver. The sun falling behind the hills, late-afternoon dampness gathering, added to her chill.

  “Let’s go back.” Chiara stood. As they walked up the track to the door of the hall, she looked up at her much taller friend. “I hope you’re not falling for Neil.” There was recklessness in her friend that few saw—except Chiara. Never been anywhere, or seen anything—sheltered upbringing, domineering father, an unlucky encounter with a man just back from the war who couldn’t believe he was alive . . . That was Chiara’s explanation.

  “Don’t be silly,” Joanne was too quick to protest. “He’s great fun, good to be around, and he’s leaving in two months.”

  “Aye. Just don’t forget it.”

  Rehearsal came to a stop. It was obvious everyone had enjoyed themselves.

  “I have to run,” Chiara said. “I’m helping Papa out in the chip shop. Let’s hope the home team has won; there’s nothing worse than a disgruntled lot of football supporters on a Saturday night.”

  Peter Kowalski, Chiara’s husband, held open the door for his wife as solicitously as a prince escorting his princess. Joanne knew this was not because Chiara was pregnant—it was how Peter always treated his wife. And in another life, his life before the war, he was not a prince but a Polish count.

  Rob and the drummer were packing up. Neil jumped down from the stage. “That’s what I like about my part, all I have is this.” He held up a harmonica, removed a box from his pocket, and stowed it away. “So, Mrs. Ross, plans for the evening?”

  “I’m not sure . . . ”

  “Good, because I was wondering if we could find this mysterious Jenny McPhee. I’d really like to meet her. I’ve come to the part on my history where the input of a tinker—sorry, Traveler, would be invaluable. And I hear Mrs. McPhee is a legendary storyteller as well as singer.”

  “Well . . . ” Joanne had a good idea where to find Jenny early on a Saturday night—if she was in town, that is, but she worried that if Clachnacuddin had been playing at home, and if they had lost, which was not unusual, the bar near the ferry, which the McPhees frequented, was not a good place to be.

  “Where are you two off to?” Rob intervened.

  “I was asking Joanne how I might meet Jenny McPhee,” Neil replied.

  “We could check the bar down the ferry,” Rob suggested.

  “I thought of that, but aren’t Clach supporters a bit wild?” Joanne was nervous of drunk men, singly or en masse.

  “Clach are playing away”—Rob laughed at her—“there is no way I’d be down there on a Saturday otherwise. Tell you what; why don’t you two get the bus and I’ll meet you there in say an hour? I want to get my guitar home.” He stroked his Fender Stratocaster.

  “Great.” Joanne had to force a smile; the fantasy of Saturday night alone with Neil had all but vanished.

  * * *

  Despite there being no legal documents to prove it, there had always been rumors that the Ferry Inn was owned by Jenny McPhee or perhaps her son Jimmy. Whoever owned it was not big on interior decorating. On the outside, iron bars, spaced to give the solid unadorned building a resemblance to a prison, protected the windows. Inside, the floor was scattered with sawdust, and the brass rail around the foot of the bar was green, sticky and stained with what could have been corrosion but was most likely dried blood.

  Rob had left his bike at home, borrowed his father’s car, and parked it a good half mile nearer town.

  “I’m meeting Joanne and Neil,” he had said when his father asked where he was off to.

  The possibility of the car disappearing from outside the Ferry Inn made him lie, indirectly, to his parents about his destination. Even in their circle, the Ferry Inn was synonymous with riots, stabbings, and the after-hours lock-up where patrons were supposedly guests of the publican, not men breaking the licensing laws.

  Jenny McPhee had arrived back in town that afternoon, her thinking done. Or at least that was what she told Jimmy. Her real reason for coming back was that the damp was getting into her bones, and she knew autumn (which was really early winter in these parts) was coming to an end—not a good time to be on the open road.

  She was in the tiny room at the back of the bar that served women and those too afraid to join the mêlée out front. Sitting at a table, hat resplendent with grouse feathers, she was looking as though she was about to conduct a séance, waiting for the spirits of the dead to come through, although the only spirit likely to be found would be in a bottle of The Glenlivet.

  “Here comes the young Pretender,” Jenny announced when Rob walked in, Neil and Joanne following behind.

  Rob bowed. As he expected, Jenny told him, “Mine’s a Glenlivet, a double.”

  “Let me get it,” Neil offered, and Rob did not refuse. “And you?”

  “A shandy.”

  “Me too,” Joanne said.

  Seeing the l
ook on Neil’s face, Rob explained, “I’m driving.” He did not feel like having the usual discussion about why he did not have a beer with whisky chaser habit.

  “Mrs. McPhee,” Neil started when they had settled around the table, sitting close, as this was the only way to hear one another over the noise from the public bar, “I’m interested in the folk tales of the Traveling people.”

  “Are you now?” Jenny took a good draught of the dram, smacking her lips in an exaggeration of an old crone, before sitting back and staring into the depths of Neil Stewart. Taking her time, she asked the Highland greeting, “So tell me, Mr. Neil Stewart, who are your people?”

  Rob grinned and nudged Joanne before sitting back in his chair to enjoy the contest. His family, the McLeans, were originally from the Isles, and he knew the “who are your people” question. He knew that when and if Neil could establish his credentials, Jenny McPhee might, just might, consider telling him whatever she thought Neil needed to know. Or not.

  “My mother was from Sutherland. She died three years ago,” Neil started. “She was a widow when she emigrated to Canada. I never knew my father.” He did not tell Jenny that after his mother’s death, he had had months of anger, fear, shock, even the edges of a light insanity that had blurred his thinking in the time after he had buried her in Canada, not her beloved Scotland, where she had always wanted to die. And that week, the week when she lay dying, she had told him.

  I have tried to be a good mother, she had said, and he had assured her over and over that she was the best mother anyone could wish for. And after two or three of these conversations, and his constant reassurance, she told him, I’m no’ the woman who gave birth to you. You were someone else’s bairn.

  I’m your son, you’re my real mother, nothing else is important, he had assured her, stroking her hair, which was still dark and thick although no longer shining. He had no further explanation; she went into a coma. It was as though she had emptied her body and soul and had no more to tell.

  As the years passed, he had admired his mother even more for bringing him to Canada, hiding the truth of his birth, saving him from a childhood of being a bastard child.

  “So, you’re a Stewart frae Sutherland.” Jenny was staring intently at him as though memorizing the map of his face. “That’s no’ a load o’ help, the place is hooching wi’ Stewarts.”

  Rob did not know if Joanne or Neil noticed, but Jenny could speak a Scottish version of the Queen’s English as well as most. So why was she slipping into the vernacular?

  “She told me she was born in Strath Oykel.”

  “That’s a long glen, that one.”

  “I have a picture of her, taken before she left Scotland.”

  The snapshot was about two and a half inches by three; the color less sepia than dirty ivory, and whoever had taken it did not have a steady hand. In the foreground was a smiling woman wearing a tightly belted coat and a head scarf. Not much of her hair was visible, and her smile showed no teeth, just a nervousness at having her picture taken.

  “My mother told me this was taken before she left.”

  “Oh aye?” Jenny McPhee was doing her best to look disinterested but her body seemed stiff, on alert, waiting for a blow to strike.

  “See, there in the background.” Neil pointed to the faint smudge of an odd twin-peaked mountain lurking on the horizon. “That’s the mountain called Suilven. The Sugar Loaf, she sometimes called it.”

  “Is it now?” Jenny handed him back the picture. She made no mention of the Travelers’ caravans just discernible in the far corner of the photograph, but she surely saw them.

  Neil was about to ask Jenny more when Jimmy McPhee came into the saloon bar.

  “Ma. Rob.” He nodded. “Mrs. Ross.” He looked at Neil.

  Rob introduced them. “Jimmy McPhee, Neil Stewart. Neil is from Canada and working at the Gazette for a couple of months.”

  Jimmy did not offer to shake hands—it was not his custom. He looked at Neil, sizing him up—that was his style. He wasn’t sure of what he saw, except that this stranger obviously had money and education, could look after himself in a fight, and although Scottish on the outside was something else inside. And Jimmy knew that although Neil might be bigger, he was softer, and he, Jimmy, could take him in a fight.

  “Neil Stewart,” Jimmy repeated. “My ma was a Stewart . . . ”

  “I must be off now.” Jenny stood. “Thank you for buying an auld woman a drink, Mr. Stewart.”

  If Jimmy was as surprised as the others at how quickly Jenny left he did not show it, only followed her out like the faithful watchdog he was.

  She moves surprisingly quickly for an old woman, Joanne thought.

  “I obviously didn’t make a favorable impression.” Neil smiled.

  “Of course not.” Joanne was indignant at the thought of anyone not taking to Neil.

  Rob too had been puzzled by Jenny’s reaction but dismissed it as another of her eccentricities. “Jenny McPhee takes some time to warm to strangers, that’s all.”

  “Good, hate to think my charm isn’t working,” Neil said, giving her the little boy lost smile that always made Joanne’s stomach lurch. “Another drink, anyone?”

  “Not here,” Rob said, “this place has all the charm of a mortuary.” He stopped. “Sorry, sorry. Me and my big mouth.”

  But his words had put a damper on the evening, and as they left and stood in the street, the drizzle and the sound of a shouting match further down the street—probably Clach supporters arguing over another defeat—made for miserable company.

  “Come on,” Rob told them, “I borrowed my father’s car. I’ll give you both a lift home.”

  Joanne sat in the backseat watching her evening disappear and the drizzle turn to rain. Rob drove to her prefab first.

  “Thanks for the lift.” She smiled. “I enjoyed band practice.” She waved at the departing car, but Rob and Neil were laughing at something and didn’t see her. As she opened the garden gate, her head caught an overhanging branch of the lilac tree. It showered her with rain and the slimy remains of autumn leaves.

  “Damn and blast it.” She had been meaning to trim the bush, one of the many jobs not done around her tiny refuge, the postwar emergency house that was supposed to be pulled down in two years’ time. Through the tears it was hard to find the keyhole. “Damn and blast,” she said again, but with no real anger, only tiredness.

  Making herself cocoa at twenty-five past eight on a Saturday night, she couldn’t shake the insidious internal voice that kept whispering, Why would he want to spend an evening with you anyway?

  So she did what she always did: turned on a classical concert on the BBC Third Programme; read her library book; fell asleep in the chair; came to at the sound of the national anthem that ended the evening’s broadcasting; went to her single bed in the smaller of the two bedrooms; slept until the dawn chorus, the persistent song of the blackbird that lived in her garden not allowing her to go back to sleep.

  CHAPTER 10

  It was not that Joanne Ross was being heartless over Don McLeod’s plight, more that her heart was occupied by Neil Stewart.

  Every day she was reminded of Mrs. Smart’s death, of Don’s absence, of the forthcoming trial, but a veil of enchantment enveloped her, shutting her off from reality.

  Joanne was not neglecting her children, had not forgotten her friends, was not indifferent to her parents-in-law’s concern about the collapse of her marriage, and she was working well in the still-unfamiliar role of reporter on the Gazette. It was rather that with the appearance of Neil Stewart, everyday life seemed less interesting, less vivid, than time spent with him. The hours alone with him, in the office, sharing sandwiches, which she provided, at her favorite thinking spot—the castle forecourt—weather permitting, were beguiling.

  What no one, not even Joanne, knew was that she was in the grip of an obsession that might be called love. It affected her sleeping, her ability to acknowledge that Neil would leave, back
to his life in the university. She read and reread Annie’s favorite geography book about Canada; she even reread the Anne of Green Gables series and loved the ending. She collected the brochures from the man from the Canadian High Commission who had come to town to recruit Highlanders to the emigration program. She dreamed of her new life in a custom-built ranch house with picture window and wooden floor and a large stone fireplace. She imagined a kitchen with a washing machine and refrigerators full of exotic fruit like melons and pomegranates, though she did not quite know what a pomegranate was. She had redecorated an imaginary bedroom at least six times. She planned and planted a garden with flowers and vegetables and maple trees—she knew no other Canadian tree except endless varieties of pine.

  The dreaming was no longer confined to her bed: filling her daytime, her work time, her alone in the evening with her knitting time; the dreaming crowded out all sense and all reality; crowded out Mrs. Smart and Don McLeod and John McAllister.

  Her daughters found her singing more often, dancing with them in the garden, playing silly games, always ready to tell a story, to take them for ice cream, where they usually bumped into her friend from Canada. They went on picnics with him to Cawdor Castle, to Castle Urquhart, to Culloden. He seemed to know more of Scotland than a Scot. He told stories about battles and empty glens and people leaving to live in Canada and America and New Zealand and Australia—which seemed a fine idea to Annie, especially Canada—she wanted to meet grizzly bears and Mounties and red Indian chiefs and visit Anne of Green Gables.

  At work, McAllister did not notice; he was often absent from the office, and when he was present, his mind was elsewhere. He thought Neil was not a stylish journalist—his ability to pitch his stories at a small-town audience lost in all his education—but he was hardworking, capable, and competent, all McAllister needed. He envied Neil’s ability to talk lightly and amusingly yet be a serious academic—in less fraught circumstances they might be friends. He noticed Joanne around Neil, thought it a foolish flirtation, but it irritated him nonetheless. And he thought less of Joanne for being so easily charmed; they all knew Neil was only passing through.