The Posy Ring

by Catherine Czerkawska

  ‘Maybe so, but I don’t see how. Maybe this is all the time we have,’ she said sadly. ‘How did you come to have it?’

  ‘It belonged to my mother. But her great-grandmother came from France, or so the story goes. The ring has been in our family for many years. It’s a poesy ring: a love token. The words are words of love but they are worn in secret, next to the skin.’

  ‘Oh my darling, this is a family treasure! Are you sure you want me to have it?’

  ‘You and no other!’

  ‘I’ll have to wear it in secret too. I shall put it on a chain, next to my heart. Oh Mateo, how can I bear to leave you? I think my heart will break with the pain of it.’

  ‘How can I ever bear to let you go?’

  TWENTY-NINE

  Cal stays the night and the one after that as well. Her mother’s old bed is much too small, so they make up the bigger bed in Viola’s room and move in there. She’s glad she cleared this room out first, since it isn’t half as odd being in here as she thought it might be. And the bed turns out to be very comfortable. It hardly creaks at all. She’s not used to sleeping – actually sleeping – with somebody else. It’s been a good long while since she did it. Cal seems equally unsettled by it at first. They toss and turn, feel too hot; he’s all bones and muscle and sharp angles, a foreign body in her bed. He manages to open the difficult window and the fresh air from the sea improves things. At last, they find a position that suits them, his chest to her back, their bodies neatly fitting together like two spoons. They fall fast asleep and wake to broad daylight, birdsong and the sound of rain.

  He says, into the back of her head, ‘Do you suppose she died in here? Your granny?’

  She sits up, plumping the pillow. ‘What a thing to say, Cal!’

  ‘Does it bother you?’

  She thinks about it. ‘Actually no, it doesn’t. But I think she died in hospital. The room overwhelmed me when I first came into it, and I’m glad I cleared a lot of it out, but I don’t mind sleeping in here. Well, I don’t mind it with you.’

  ‘And not just sleeping.’

  ‘And not just sleeping. But I often find myself thinking about the things that pass through my hands. Professionally, I mean.’ He’s grinning, wickedly, and she slaps him. ‘Stop it. But don’t you wonder about all these things? Who owned them? How did they live and die? What were they like? Who did they love and who did they hate?’

  ‘All the time,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘I do that all the time. But not everyone in our line of business does, you know. What are your favourites?’

  ‘Textiles. Clothes. Lace, although that’s hard to come by. Embroidery. I love embroidery. Women’s things most of all. Jewellery too, like the ring. But I know very little about the really precious pieces. Only costume jewellery.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that ring.’

  ‘Me too,’ she says. ‘Whose was it? What does the inscription mean? You and no other is plain enough, but a time will come? What time?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I’ve been thinking about the picture too. I think the ring predates the picture. I think it’s even older. It has a mediaeval look to it.’

  ‘I wondered that myself. But both of them seem…’ she hesitates. ‘I mean, OK, the ring inscription is in Old French. The portrait of Lilias is sixteenth century possibly?’

  ‘Yes. But it looks kind of foreign too. There’s something about it. It doesn’t look Scottish at all. And yet it seems Lilias was Scottish, if it’s the same girl, Lilias McNeill. It’s a mystery.’

  ‘I love a good mystery. The research is half the pleasure, isn’t it?’ she says.

  ‘It is. Do you want coffee?’

  ‘Are you offering?’

  ‘I am.’ He slides out of bed, finds a towel on the floor where he dropped it last night after his shower. He wraps it round his waist. He has a nice bum, she thinks. She can see his tan line. Even this early in the year, he has brown arms and shoulders. If it’s warm he must work outside, take off his shirt. She thinks of his arms and hands, working away at some piece of furniture or other. She has a little tremor of renewed desire.

  ‘Back in a minute,’ he says.

  She hears him pad down the stairs, with the clicketty-click of Hector’s nails on the floor beside him. He’s chatting amiably to the dog in the kitchen below, letting him out for a pee in the rain, calling him in again. She has a sudden intimation of joy, so intense and overwhelming that she has to close her eyes for a moment, clutching the bedcovers. How dangerous is this? she thinks. She can hardly bear his absence. It won’t get any better, will it? The ‘L’ word comes unbidden into her mind. Can this be love? If it is, she suspects she has never felt it before. Certainly never felt such intense and unexpected passion for and empathy with another human being.

  She has a sudden insight into her mother, into the reasons why Jess left home, her mother, the island, everything she had once held dear, and never looked back. Perhaps it was very little to do with Viola being an overbearing mother. Or the island seeming too small, too stifling. Perhaps none of that mattered. Maybe it was something at once as simple and as complex as love. The lightning strike of love at first sight. You and no other. If Jessica had felt like this about her father, but realised that Viola would never approve of a wandering musician, why wouldn’t she simply pack her bags and go if the opportunity arose, if the feeling was as mutual as it so clearly seemed to have been?

  ‘Whither thou goest, I will go.’ She surprises herself by saying the words aloud, as though somebody has put them in her head. ‘Thy people shall be my people.’

  ‘What?’ He’s back, bearing a tray of coffee, closing the door firmly against a disgruntled Hector, who promptly throws himself against it with a bump and a sigh.

  ‘Fuck off, Hector, there’s a good lad!’ he calls. They hear the dog patter away down the stairs.

  ‘Poor Hector. He’ll be feeling neglected.’

  ‘He’s spoiled rotten.’ Cal pours coffee for them both, climbs back into bed. They sit companionably for a while, drinking. He makes a very good cup of coffee: another of his virtues.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he says and then hesitates.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about the portrait of Lilias.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘How would you feel if I took some photographs of it and sent them to my mum? I know she’d want to see the real thing, but you can tell a lot from a good photograph. She’d be able to – I don’t know. Give us a ballpark figure, for the date I mean. She’s good. Knows her stuff.’

  ‘OK. Yes, why not?’

  ‘You wouldn’t mind?’

  ‘Why would I mind?’

  ‘I thought you didn’t trust me.’

  ‘I don’t make a habit of going to bed with people I don’t trust.’

  ‘Well, I thought that as well. Hoped that. But I can’t pretend I’m not intrigued.’ He looks around. ‘I just love all your stuff, hen!’

  ‘All of my stuff?’

  He takes her mug, puts it down alongside his own on the bedside table. Pulls her into his arms and slides down the bed with her. ‘All your stuff,’ he says. ‘All of it. Every last little bit of it.’

  *

  A day or two later, he goes back to Carraig. ‘I have to finish that dresser!’ he says. ‘I promised it to Mum’s customer, and I’m going to be late with it as it is and it’s all your fault.’ But he’s punctuating the words with kisses. She has work to do as well, not just clearing and cleaning, but her internet shop is badly in need of attention. The broadband is up and running, so she has no excuse now not to do some online selling. She has to take some photographs, measurements, examine things, describe them: all the time-consuming minutiae of online selling. Besides which she should be investigating the possibilities of taking space at a market. Cal has made one or two recommenda
tions and she really ought to chase them up if only by phone or email. Before he leaves, he takes a series of detailed pictures of the portrait of Lilias, and a few close-ups of the ring as well.

  ‘I’ve promised to send Mum some pics of the dresser, how it’s progressing, so I might as well send these at the same time. I know you don’t want a valuation.’

  ‘I do want a valuation. Or at least, I wouldn’t mind one. It’s just that I’m not absolutely certain that I want to sell.’

  ‘What is it with you McNeills and Neilsons?’ he teases. ‘You never want to sell things. Well, you never want to sell the really valuable things.’

  ‘How can you bear to lose something so precious?’

  ‘My father always says everything has its price,’ he says with an undertone of bitterness.

  ‘And do you agree with him?’

  He stares at her, candidly. ‘For him, it’s true. Not for me. Not really. There are some things I could never bear to sell.’

  ‘You mean Carraig?’

  ‘Aye I do. And everything in it. But it looks as though it’s going to happen anyway. The bugger is just cruel enough to sell it, contents and all.’

  ‘Don’t give up hope.’

  ‘That Clootie Tree had better be getting to work,’ he says, as he drives off.

  *

  Listings ended last week in her online store, and she has put nothing new on for weeks. Here she is, sitting in a house choc-full of collectables and some fine antiques and she really needs to get rid of some of them. So she spends the day taking photographs of the kind of things it’s reasonably easy to send through the post: some of Viola’s handbags and fancy shoes that look as though they have hardly been worn, a selection of costume jewellery, a wool coat with a distinct look of the 1940s about it, and a crepe de chine slip with lace trim. She hesitates over that, thinking that she might well wear it herself, but she knows that there are more where that came from. She keeps her mother’s Laura Ashley dresses and the Marimekko too, but finds a couple of 1970s pant suits lurking in Viola’s wardrobe and lists them as well. True vintage, she thinks. In one of the drawers, she comes across several hand-stitched cotton nightdresses, stored away for years. But like the linen sheets and tablecloths and napkins, the starch on them has turned sour and they smell peculiar. They’ll all need to be washed and ironed. A mammoth task.

  She’s becoming aware of just how difficult it is to sell personal items. Dealing is easy when you buy at auction or at a boot sale. You can appreciate things, cherish them for a time, and let them go with reasonable ease. She always thinks of it as rehoming. But when they are an intrinsic part of your own past, a past with which you are only just becoming familiar, then it’s so much harder. The impulse is to hoard, especially when, like Daisy, you have a great fondness for the past and a desire to know more about it. Again she thinks about Cal losing Carraig and its contents, wonders how he will ever be able to let it go, and feels a wave of resentment against William, whom she hardly knows. How can he do such a thing to his son?

  She works assiduously for most of the day, taking pictures, editing them, drafting out enticing descriptions, uploading information. She stops only to take Hector down to the beach in the pouring rain at lunchtime, throwing stalks of seaweed for him, which he brings back and kills, shaking them savagely and then depositing them at her feet.

  Later, Cal phones her to say that he has sent the photographs to his mother and has been working diligently on his dresser. He wants to see her soon, but he needs to finish the work, get it out of the way. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll work on. How about we meet up in the hotel for lunch tomorrow? We’ve never been on a date, have we? I’ve never yet bought you a meal!’

  ‘That would be very nice,’ she says, disappointed at not seeing him, but equally certain that he’s right to slow things down. ‘Let’s hope it’s not pissing down like today.’ The rain has come down in a steady stream all day, never once letting up. ‘Dreich’ is the Scots word for it.

  ‘I get a lot more done when the weather’s like this. There’s a leak in the corner of the workshop, but if it’s going to be sold I’m buggered if I’m going to fix it. Hell mend him. I’ve put a bucket under it.’

  Before he rings off, he sighs, his mouth close to the phone. ‘I should never have phoned you,’ he says. ‘I should just have texted.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because when I hear your voice, I want to fuck you.’ He whispers it, as though half ashamed to be saying it. ‘And go to sleep with you and wake up with you and do it all again. What have you done to me?’

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she says, firmly. ‘Get back to work. I’ve got a lot more to do as well.’

  ‘OK, OK, I’m going. Tomorrow, about one? In the hotel. I’ll book us a table.’

  THIRTY

  That night, feeling conflicted, Daisy goes back to sleeping in her mother’s old room rather than Viola’s. It would be too strange, and although they have slept together in this house for only two nights (and not just slept, she can hear him saying), she doesn’t want to be in there without Cal. But she sleeps well enough and in the morning the sun is shining on an island washed clean by yesterday’s downpour. She checks her online store and notes that there are lots of watchers and even a couple of bids, which bodes well for being able to run a business from the island.

  She takes Hector down to the beach, but this time they climb back up to the house along another path at the south end of the garden, closer to Scoull. It is beginning to be very overgrown already here and her trainers are soaked by the time they get back. It means traversing a wilderness of willow scrub, bracken, rampant brambles, small self-seeded elders and wild roses. By the time high summer comes along, it will be a jungle. She can’t see any way of taming it, although she can imagine Cal with a scythe might be able to make some inroads into the grassier parts. She’s momentarily distracted by the idea of Cal with a scythe, but practically speaking, perhaps she should turn her attention to the areas closer to the house first: the walled garden, for instance. Who knows what treasures might be hidden inside? Specimen plants, perhaps, brought here by the Neilsons. Possibly even older plants, surviving from the McNeill years. She wonders who first decided to establish a flower garden here, and when.

  She dries Hector with an old towel – rushing through damp undergrowth has soaked him – and remembers Cal’s instructions to check him for ticks, but is relieved to find none. They find his wiry coat hard to negotiate, but still every year Cal has to deal with a few. He has even left her with the appropriate tweezers.

  ‘Watch yourself in the undergrowth as well,’ he said. ‘They can carry very nasty illnesses.’

  It strikes her that for all its urban stresses and strains, you don’t have to worry about ticks and adders in Glasgow. Although there are a few bloodsuckers and snakes of the human kind. Especially at car boot sales.

  She leaves Hector in the house with biscuits and water and drives to the Scoull Hotel where Cal is waiting for her. He envelopes her in a bear hug, kisses her, pulls her closer, lets her go with some reluctance.

  ‘Lunch,’ he says.

  They are sitting facing each other, finishing pudding and drinking coffee, when a vision in layers of printed cottons, chunky jewellery, a bizarre knitted cardigan and bright blue sandals comes rushing into the restaurant.

  ‘Cal!’ she says. ‘Oh and Daisy. How nice to meet you again!’

  Cal has leaped to his feet in surprise. He embraces his mother, pulls out a chair for her. ‘What on earth are you doing here? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’

  Fiona sits down. ‘I got the first ferry of the afternoon. I brought the hatchback. I can take the dresser back if it’s finished, Cal. But I had to drive like a maniac to get here in time. I put my foot down on that last long stretch and kept thinking I’d meet a fucking police car round the next corner!’

 
; Daisy can’t resist looking round to see if anyone is upset by the profanity, but the restaurant has emptied, and there’s only a Latvian waiter, sorting out cutlery and napkins in the corner. Seeing the newcomer, he politely approaches their table.

  ‘Have you eaten?’ asks Cal.

  ‘Yes, I had something on the way. Stopped off in Inveraray. And then started looking in shops. Which is why I almost missed the ferry. It was so liberating. Such a novelty. I can’t remember when I last came away on my own. I thought I’d hate it, but I didn’t. I’ll have a coffee, though. And a pudding maybe? Could I have a pudding? Your dad doesn’t do puddings.’

  She says this so ingenuously that Daisy warms to her even more.

  ‘Mum, you can have anything you want. But what’s going on? Why are you here?’

  Cal orders a helping of sticky toffee pudding with ice cream for his mother. It is brought to the table by Elspeth Cameron – an unusually large portion, Daisy notices – and the two women embrace enthusiastically.

  ‘I haven’t seen you on the island for years!’ says Mrs Cameron. ‘I’ve missed you. We all have.’

  ‘I’ve missed you too. I’m on ... what did they used to call it in the olden days? Furlough. Or maybe not even that. French leave? An unauthorised absence?’

  ‘How long are you here for?’

  ‘Just one night. Probably.’ She looks momentarily sad. ‘Can I stay at Carraig, Cal? Is that all right? I know I could get a room here, but I’d really like to sleep in the cottage.’

  ‘Of course it’s all right. Why wouldn’t it be?’

  Fiona hesitates, looks from her son to Daisy and back again.

  ‘Mum, you’ve met Daisy, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes. We met in the shop. Daisy Graham. You’re Viola’s granddaughter. From Auchenblae.’

  ‘That’s right. My completely unexpected inheritance.’