The Shadow of the Sycamores

by Doris Davidson

  Opinions about this were divided not only in the Rae household but also all over the country. Henry and Billy backed Mr Baldwin, the Prime Minister, in his stand against such a marriage, while Fay and Mara, romantics both, hoped that the new king would thumb his nose at the cabinet and marry Mrs Simpson when her second divorce was final. In December, Edward settled the controversy himself by broadcasting his intention to abdicate – saying simply that he could not carry out his duties as king without the support of the woman he loved.

  So Henry had another proclamation to make and Edward’s brother, the Duke of York, came to the throne as George VI. The date of the coronation was not changed so all the souvenirs already made bearing Edward’s name had to be sold off cheaply and others made with George and Elizabeth on them.

  The whole business had taken a toll on Henry. ‘I’m sick of all this rush,’ he declared one evening. ‘I’m going to retire when the coronation’s past.’

  He had expected some argument from his wife but nothing seemed to affect Fay these days – good news or bad news, they were all one to her. ‘Should we get the doctor in to your mother?’ he asked Mara after Fay had gone to bed that night.

  She shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know. Father. Some days she’s better than others. I think she gets depressed – you know, losing two sons, then my marriage coming to an end, it was bound to tell on her.’

  ‘She was fine for a while, when Billy came first,’ Henry reminded her.

  ‘That was because he was somebody young for her to look after. Maybe I should have stayed at Corbie Den and not come here to make her feel she’s not needed any more?’

  ‘It’s a pity you never had any children, Mara,’ Henry said without thinking, ‘that would have …’ Realising his gaffe, he hurried on in embarrassment, ‘I mean … I’m sorry … oh, Mara, I know it wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘I would have loved to have children,’ she said quietly, ‘but things didn’t work out that way.’

  ‘No.’ After a long pause, he said, ‘James Ferguson hasn’t written for a while.’

  ‘I’ll hear soon enough if … anything has changed.’

  In one of life’s eerie coincidences, the news came the very next forenoon. Mara had swept the kitchen floor, taken the mats out to shake them and was putting them down on the linoleum again when someone knocked at the front door. ‘I’ll go,’ Fay said, moving slowly.

  Noticing a car sitting in the road, Mara wondered who it could be but was still shocked when her mother brought in James Ferguson. ‘Leo?’ she gasped.

  ‘Yes, my dear. I’m afraid he passed away last night, peacefully in his sleep, they told me.’

  ‘I’m glad of that.’ Mara couldn’t think what else to say.

  ‘I wanted to let you know myself. I wanted to tell you how grateful I was to you, taking him off our hands for so many years.’

  ‘I didn’t do it to take him off your hands. I loved him, I still do.’

  ‘Yes, I know, and I am sorry if I have upset you. He was a very lucky man to have you to look after him …’

  ‘Not lucky altogether though,’ she murmured. ‘He was such an upright man, kind and understanding, until …’

  ‘Yes, it must have been as hard on you as it was on any of us.’

  Fay broke into the uncomfortably long silence that fell now. ‘Would you care for a cup of tea, Mr Ferguson?’

  ‘No, thank you. I have left my wife in Aberdeen doing some shopping and I promised to be back in time for lunch.’ He stood up awkwardly and held out his hand to her. ‘Leo used to tell us how you welcomed him into your home when he was courting Samara. Thank you for that.’

  Mara got to her feet. ‘I’ll see you out.’

  She went right to the car with him, wanting to ask a question she did not want her mother to hear. ‘When’s the funeral?’

  His sad eyes dropped. ‘They are burying him tomorrow at the nursing home – they have a graveyard in the grounds. I … I’d rather you didn’t come, my dear. It’s going to be painful enough for me as it is.’

  ‘I’m his wife,’ she whispered. ‘I should be there. I want to be there.’

  ‘Yes, of course you must come. I was wrong there and I am sorry.’

  ‘I understand.’

  After asking the details of where and when, she let him drive off. She didn’t really know how she felt. She hadn’t been expecting it to be so sudden yet his father had said it was for the best – that Leo had been in a dark world of his own ever since he was taken there.

  Thankfully, when she went inside again, her mother said only, ‘It had to come, Mara, dear.’

  ‘I know.’

  That evening, when Billy went out to meet some friends, she told her parents that she was going to the funeral, sure that they would be against it. Henry’s mouth pursed in disapproval but Fay rushed in before he could say anything. ‘He was her husband, Henry, and no matter what happened between them, if she wants to go, it is not up to us to stop her.’

  Mara was glad she had decided to go to the funeral. There had been no lengthy eulogy, no words of praise, until she stood up. ‘He was a brave man,’ she had begun, the strength of her voice surprising even herself. ‘The life he knew before he went into the army was tragically taken from him and, although he once walked proudly and erectly, he spent his last years – so many years – in a wheelchair. I loved him with all my heart and I will always remember him as he used to be, a decent, loving young man any girl would have been proud to have as a husband. I was the lucky one.’

  She had turned away then, blinded by tears, but now, on the train home, she felt better than she had done for some time. James Ferguson had taken her for a meal afterwards, mainly to tell her that Leo had left everything to her. She had said that she didn’t want anything but, after he told her to take time to think about it, common sense took over. She had often worried, lately, about how they would manage when her father retired. She would have to look after both parents and couldn’t take a job so there would just be young Billy’s board money coming in – although the council might give her father a small pension. Her inheritance – in the region of ten thousand pounds apparently – would mean that she need never worry again. It was a good feeling!

  In the week leading up to the coronation celebrations, Henry was more grateful than ever for Billy’s help and, on one wet and windy night, they made the church their last call. Although it was June, it was quite cold outside, and the kirk itself seemed to be even colder. While Billy ran up into the organ loft to make sure that the pipes were in perfect condition for the special service of thanksgiving for the new king and queen, Henry walked slowly up the centre aisle checking that every row of pews was spotlessly clean and the hassocks were all in place.

  They had shut the heavy oak door behind them but he could still feel an ice-cold draught gnawing at his feet and he thought of leaving the two choir enclosures and the pulpit area until another night – there was still plenty of time. Yet something made him carry on.

  Discovering a hassock missing from one row of pews, he wondered if someone had shifted it. It didn’t turn up anywhere else and his hands and feet were actually ‘dirling’ with cold so he decided to forget about it and check the two stalls where the choir always sat or stood.

  ‘You check the left side,’ he instructed Billy, who had made his appearance again, ‘and I’ll take the right.’

  The fifteen-year-old being quicker on his feet, he reached the pulpit first and stopped in amazement at what he saw. He beckoned Henry to join him and they looked down on the beautiful sight of a young girl curled up beneath the lectern with an infant in her arms. She was using the missing hassock as a pillow and was sound asleep.

  ‘What’ll we do?’ whispered Billy.

  Henry scratched his head uncertainly. ‘I wonder where she’s come from?’

  ‘They’ll get a chill if we leave them here.’

  ‘Aye, you’re right. We’d better waken her.’ He gave a few genteel coughs
but the girl didn’t stir so he bent down and patted her gently on the shoulder.

  She sat up instantly. ‘Please don’t make us go away,’ she pleaded, her blue eyes moist with tears, her cheeks still rosy from sleep.

  ‘It’s too cold here for you. Have you nowhere else to go?’

  The tears spilled over. ‘My father threw me out … because of the baby.’

  Billy raised his eyebrows hopefully and Henry nodded his agreement. ‘You’d best come home wi’ us, then.’

  ‘But … what about … your wife? What’ll she say?’

  ‘Fay’ll not mind,’ Billy said unexpectedly.

  Henry didn’t contradict him. A baby to look after might be what his wife needed to get her back on track again. ‘Everything’s going to be fine, lass,’ he assured the girl.

  Everything was fine. There was one more to feed but two more hands to the plough, as the farmers would say. Fay was delighted to have an infant to attend to and young Maggie was only needed to feed him. Pressed to give him a name, she plumped for Henry, who said, ‘No, we don’t want two Henrys in the house.’

  After some thought, Maggie remembered how she had admired the hero in Little Women and called her son Laurie.

  ‘But his real name was Laurence,’ Mara pointed out.

  ‘I know but I like Laurie better.’

  They all did, although little Laurie would have kept on smiling and gurgling with laughter no matter what he was called.

  It was Henry who approached the rather delicate subject of registering his birth. ‘It’s the law,’ he explained, ‘and I’ll come wi’ you if you want. You can wait till he’s older before you have him baptised.’

  A Registry Office for Births, Marriages and Deaths had been introduced to the town many years before so it was not the church’s Session Clerk they had to approach. When the Registrar – George Mavor, grandson of Willie Rae’s old drinking crony – asked Maggie for the father’s name, she turned to Henry in some confusion. ‘I don’t want to land him in trouble.’

  ‘Just put in your own name, then,’ Henry suggested, and, although Mavor frowned when he learned that she was not quite sixteen, the infant was registered as Laurie Fiddes.

  Most of the concerts and parties put on as celebrations for the coronation held no appeal for any of the Rae household but, when Henry said there was to be a dance the next Saturday night, Billy said shyly, ‘Would you let me take Maggie? She needs some enjoyment.’

  Getting unanimous approval, he put the question to the girl herself and was disappointed that she didn’t seem too keen. ‘It’ll be good fun,’ he coaxed her.

  ‘I can’t dance,’ she whispered tearfully.

  ‘That doesn’t matter; we can watch everybody else. Anyway, the last dance I went to, half the people couldn’t dance but they soon picked it up.’

  Mara altered one of her old summer dresses for the girl, a pale blue shirtwaister, and, to brighten it a bit, she embroidered a few lazy-daisies, white with yellow French knots in the centre, on the left shoulder. On the actual day, she washed Maggie’s long hair and brushed it into ringlets, with the result that the girl drew loud gasps of admiration when she came into the kitchen, ready to go.

  She looked the picture of health now. Instead of the poor little waif she had been when Billy found her, her face and figure had rounded out, her chestnut hair shone like well-buffed bronze. Her blue eyes had lost their look of fear and worry and she even whistled gaily as she went about her chores, despite Fay’s caution that it wasn’t ladylike. The blue dress finished the transformation from pretty girl to lovely young woman.

  This was the first of many outings she had with Billy, whose well-scrubbed face was now sporting a light coating of fair down on chin and upper lip.

  ‘Shouldn’t I be shaving?’ he asked Henry one day, as they set off on their daily rounds, his much larger than the older man’s now.

  ‘Time enough, yet.’ Henry ran his hand proudly over his neatly trimmed beard and thick moustache, both an impressive silver-white. Then, seeing how disappointed the young man was, he corrected himself. ‘Aye, I suppose you should be shaving. I’ll give you a shot o’ my old cut-throat but you’ll need to take care. One slip and you could lose your nose.’

  They both smiled at that and the three females had great amusement as they watched Billy giving himself his first shave, very carefully. Fay, however, reprimanded her husband later for giving him such a dangerous implement. ‘What if he cuts himself?’

  ‘I used to nick myself every day,’ Henry grinned, ‘and I’m still here to tell the tale. Tell me this, my Fairy. Do you like my whiskers? You’ve never said one way or the other.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t like them at first,’ she admitted. ‘They tickled when you kissed me goodnight but they made you look real smart in your dress uniform.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, regretfully. He probably would never have a chance to wear it again. ‘D’you mind that picture Jack Rennie took to put in the Advertiser at the time of George V’s coronation? Even if I say it myself, I was a fine figure of a man then.’

  ‘Indeed you were.’

  ‘Not now, though. My back’s getting bowed, I’m tottery on my legs when I’m tired and my brow’s got that many wrinkles it’s like a sheet o’ corrugated iron.’

  His wife held out her arm and patted his hand. ‘No, no, my Tchouki. You’ll always be the handsome young man who came into the druggist shop to get his thumb bandaged. I remember it as if it were yesterday.’

  ‘And I can remember how bonnie you were … no, my Fairy Fay, you’re still bonnie. Bonnier than any other woman I’ve ever known.’ He pulled her face nearer so that he could kiss her.

  Coming in from hanging out the nappies she had washed, Mara said, ‘Ho ho! What’s this? You should leave the kissing to youngsters like Maggie and Billy.’

  ‘You don’t think they’re …?’ Fay murmured in surprise. ‘They’re far too young to be kissing.’

  Henry gave a loud guffaw. ‘No younger than we were, my Fairy, and I’ve never regretted a minute of our married life.’

  ‘Neither have I,’ she assured him but her face showed that she was a little perturbed about their young lodgers.

  She was also very much afraid that young Billy would give himself a nasty cut with the open blade when he was shaving and made Mara buy a safety razor for him.

  Only about three weeks later, Henry had a nasty shock. He hadn’t felt like going to kirk with the young folk and had spent the forenoon pottering about the little garden at the rear of the house. Fay had been the gardener at one time and then Billy had stepped in when she took on looking after little Laurie. But he felt he really should do it himself as master of the house. He was leaning on the hoe catching his breath when Jim Barron looked over the wall.

  ‘I thought I might find you here, Henry.’

  ‘You thought right, then, Provost.’ Henry was not too taken with the current holder of the position, who had taken over from Leslie Main about a month before. There was something about him – he was younger, of course, though that didn’t necessarily count against him.

  ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. At the council meeting last night, the motion was made that … we should … ask you to retire.’

  ‘And it was carried unanimously?’ Henry smiled.

  Barron shifted uneasily. ‘Not exactly unanimously.’

  ‘No matter, I’ve been expecting it. Will young Billy be getting the job?’

  The Provost’s face, already pink with embarrassment, turned a deep crimson. ‘Um … not exactly. The feeling was that we need more than one street sweeper to clean the town properly and we will be appointing an overseer and three men, Billy being one.’

  Henry gave a relieved sigh. ‘As long as he still has a job.’

  ‘Oh, yes, he will still have a job but there is one more thing, Henry. This house was … um … it came with the job if you can remember that far back?’

  ‘I’m surprised you can remember, Pr
ovost.’ His sarcasm was lost.

  ‘I don’t remember, of course, but it’s on record. It was part of your salary and, now that you will no longer be working for the council …’

  His heart heavy, Henry said, with forced brightness, ‘You want me to move out? Is that it?’

  ‘We would like you to vacate the premises as soon as possible.’

  ‘There’s more than Fay and me in the house now.’ Henry realised that it was probably useless but it was worth a try.

  ‘So I believe and … um … that is another thing, isn’t it? The house was provided for you and your immediate family – not for the waifs and strays you seem to have a habit of picking up.’

  ‘Yes, I see what you mean, Provost, and I assure you that we will leave the house as we found it – in a better state than we found it – but that’s neither here nor there. If you give me a date, I’ll make sure it is kept.’

  The florid-faced man seemed even more uneasy. ‘Your retiral date is one week from yesterday and it was agreed that we should give you another week to vacate the house. That lets our overseer take over his post on the first of May.’

  Henry held his head erect, despite feeling that his whole body was caving in, but not one glimmer of a clue to his despair would he give this upstart. ‘Very well, Provost. It will be as you say. I will stop working as from next Saturday and leave the house free for the Saturday after that. Good day to you.’

  He felt sick when he went inside, his whole body trembling with anger, with fear for the future. ‘I’ve to retire next Saturday,’ he told Fay who looked at him speculatively.

  ‘You’ve been expecting it, though?’

  ‘Aye but I wasn’t expecting the rest. We’ve to give up the house in another two weeks.’ Then his voice broke and he sat down with his head between his hands.