The Farm Girl's Dream

by Eileen Ramsay

  ‘Flora, please. I’ve lost Robert, must you . . . No, no, forget I said that. I make you sound like the prize I get if I’m good, like Nanny in the nursery. “Eat all your toast soldiers and you shall have a chocolate biscuit.” Forgive me, I’m not myself. It’s all so . . . galling, mortifying. Of course I understand. You need time, space. We both do. I’ll go to town and help Julia. There are things she must want from Inchmarnock, Robert’s things. We must go through the treasures together. Some of Inchmarnock is entailed, you know, the house itself. My cousin or his son will inherit.’ He stopped as the memory of the boy who would not inherit intruded on his present grief. ‘I shall write you often and, when you are ready to see me, even just for dinner . . . I’ll stay at my club, I think. That would be best, it’s so impersonal.’

  Oh God, oh God, he thought, please help me to get through this added misery without breaking down. Quick and sure is the best way. Like putting down a beloved old dog. Have to do it oneself. Less pain that way. He reached into his breast-pocket and took out a little gold-wrapped packet. ‘Not an engagement gift. You see, dearest, I will never presume. Just a . . .’ He handed her the packet. ‘I won’t even kiss you, Flora. I do, in my heart and soul, every minute of every day. Goodbye, best beloved.’ And he was gone, and Flora saw the door swing shut behind him, and she heard him running down the great stone stairs. She knew that she could have called him back and he would have come, and he would never have left her and she wanted that so badly, so desperately. And she bit her lips to stop herself calling out his name.

  She held the packet against her cheek for a moment, feeling the warmth of his fingers, and then she opened it slowly. A watch, almost the image of the one that John Cameron had stolen, lay on a bed of velvet. She took it out and, through her tears, read the inscription picked out in diamonds on the back. Twice she rubbed her eyes. No, it was not exactly the same.

  Sandy loves Flora – always.

  19

  VICTORIA SPENT MOST OF THE voyage back to Britain writing letters to Eddie. When she worked with Alistair Smart, or sat with him in the ship’s dining room, she did not notice that he had changed subtly from the kind, thoughtful man who had sailed to India just a few months before. He was still kind and still thoughtful, and therefore seemed to Victoria to be just the same nice, old Mr Smart. But he no longer waited after dinner for one dance and, since Victoria spent the evenings walking around the deck looking at the moon, and wondering if Eddie was seeing the same moon, she failed to notice.

  They arrived back in Dundee in a downpour and Victoria laughed with joy.

  ‘Yes, my dear,’ smiled Alistair Smart rather sadly, ‘some things never change.’

  Catriona, Davie and wee Andrew were at the station to meet them, and after Mr Smart had greeted the family, he was taken off in his chauffeur-driven motor car while Davie loaded Victoria’s bags into a hired taxicab. She had acquired so many souvenirs that another bag had had to be bought – ‘They are so cheap. Mother, you won’t believe the prices. Wait till you see the brass plate I’ve brought you for the front hall, from Tibet.’

  ‘This seems like money for jam, Catriona,’ said Davie, as they squashed together in the back of the cab, ‘money for taking folk home from the station.’

  Normally Catriona would have agreed, saying that when the good Lord gave folk legs, He expected them to use them. But today she could think of nothing but the elegant woman who sat beside her, hugging wee Andrew, who in turn looked up wonderingly at the almost brown face above him, from his big blue eyes.

  ‘You’re that brown, Victoria, and you’re taller and thinner. You’re not a wee girl any more,’ said Catriona, when they arrived at Blackness Road.

  ‘She’s been round the world and back, Catriona, and here’s me thought I was a big man, with my free trips to France.’

  Victoria laughed. ‘India’s not around the world, but it’s a long way away. Mr Smart bought me a camera, Mother, and I’ve got some lovely snaps. I’ll show you an elephant, Andrew, a great big elephant with a big, long trunk and funny teeth that stick out of his jaw.’

  For a few minutes she was the young, silly Victoria as she pretended for her brother that she had a trunk and big ears. Andrew, however, who had never even seen a picture of the strange animal that his sister was trying to portray, was singularly unimpressed.

  When they looked at the photographs Catriona noticed, but did not mention, that there were more than a few snapshots with the same young man in them. In one, a rather indistinct picture of a young woman standing under a huge arch that appeared to be formed of carved elephants, the same young man was standing with his arm casually around the girl’s waist. Victoria looked at it for a long time, rather dewy-eyed, but apart from a dismissive ‘Well, that’s Eddie Welborn. I told you about him in my letters’, she said no more.

  Before she went back to work, Victoria had three days at home to rest and tell her family all about her experiences. They sat up night after night, exclaiming over the picture postcards, the Chinese porcelain, the embroidered blouses, the sandalwood boxes and, for Andrew, the carved wooden dolls that Catriona showed him and then put away on a shelf above his head, before they ended their short lives in his mouth. Victoria seemed to have remembered every meal consumed, not only on both voyages, but in the luxurious hotels in which she had stayed. And so well did she recount her experiences that Davie felt he could almost smell the curries and taste the fruits with their wonderful names. How much more exciting ‘papaya’ sounded than ‘apple’.

  ‘I shall try to prepare a curried meal, Mother,’ said the new, sophisticated Victoria. ‘I have brought packets of spices with me.’ And Catriona and Davie looked at one another and wondered anxiously if their Scottish digestions were a match for the exotic East.

  Victoria saw the looks and laughed. ‘Don’t worry. Here’s me that can barely boil an egg properly talking about oriental cookery. It’ll just be a wee sauce on your mince, Davie, just to give you an idea. Some of it I just couldn’t eat, but Eddie has a digestion that a horse would envy.’

  Had she any idea how many times the word ‘Eddie’ came into her conversation, or how her voice dropped and her eyes softened at his very name?

  *

  After three days Victoria went back to work and it was amazing how quickly the little house got back to normal, except that every morning Victoria was the first to rush to the front door to see if the postman had left any letters, especially thin blue ones. It was some weeks, of course, before he did and every day that he did not, Victoria retreated angrily upstairs to get ready for work. And, as she worked, she blamed the blameless postman for not delivering her letters.

  ‘It cannae be that you are expecting a letter, lassie?’ laughed Davie, and at the twinkle in his eye Victoria laughed herself out of her ill-humour.

  ‘Waiting’s so hard, Davie,’ she said.

  Davie smiled and there was a lifetime of experience written in his smile for those who could read. ‘There’s me could write a book about waiting, lassie.’ He leaned forward and gently touched her hand, so softly and quickly that she felt she could almost have imagined the intimate gesture. ‘It’s aye worth it, though, lass, aye worth it.’

  Victoria smiled at him fondly and tried to be patient. And the days went on, and eventually two or three blue letters came all at once, and then again there was a wait.

  Victoria went on working for Mr Smart, and she continued to write her own letters after tea in the room that looked out on to the garden so carefully tended by her stepfather. She set herself to helping her mother, and she loved and appreciated the time that she had been given to get to know her little brother.

  Most days she stayed at the office at lunchtime and ate a sandwich, but on the days when it was just possible that a letter might arrive, she hurried home at noon, and Catriona treasured those days.

  One warm day Catriona greeted Victoria at the door. ‘You will never guess who I met in Muirhead this morning?’


  Victoria took Andrew in her arms and was rewarded with a very wet kiss on the cheek. ‘Tora,’ he said rapturously and then immediately struggled to be put down.

  ‘Who, Mother?’

  ‘You are so brown, Victoria,’ said Catriona, ignoring the question for a moment. She had still not got used to having her daughter home after almost a year away in India, and she never tired of her daughter’s stories. ‘It’s actually becoming. Oh, what was I saying? Elsie, Elsie Morrison. You remember Elsie?’

  How could Victoria not remember Elsie, her first real friend. But had she been a real friend, for she had never been a recipient of the secret of Victoria’s first love? Only Mansfield Park knew that whole story.

  Unware that her daughter’s attention had wandered, Catriona went on. ‘She was fascinated to hear about your travelling. She’s left Glasgow and is back at home. She is, would you believe, one of these dreadful “votes for women” feminists. She is actually, behind the scenes, I should add, going to work for one of these ardent reformers. What’s the expression, dear, the Power behind the Throne? Locally, of course, in the first instance and then, who knows?’

  Victoria obligingly set up some skittles for her small brother and watched his pleasure as he immediately knocked them down. She pictured Elsie, her one-time best friend, who had accompanied her on so many rambles, who had been there every time she had met Robert, who had dumped her when the Camerons had fallen on hard times.

  ‘Perhaps with a view to becoming a councillor, Mother, or even, one day, Member of Parliament?’ asked Victoria drily.

  Catriona, an ardent believer in the natural order of things (man first, woman a long way behind), laughed at her daughter’s nonsense. ‘Away with you. What will you say next? Anyway, she is quite anxious to hear your views on votes for women, suffragettes and suffragists. According to Madame Elsie, she absorbed these notions practically at the breast. Her own mother went to all those dreadful meetings which the suffragettes held in Dundee before the war and, since Elsie was one girl among all those boys, her mother took her along too. Goodness, my poor mind was spinning with all the stories and the new ideas. She’s sure that now you are travelled, you will agree with her. She’s a great fan of Neddy Scrymgeour and thinks that his bad luck has run out . . .’

  Even in India, Victoria had kept abreast of local Dundee politics and she knew the name Edwin Scrymgeour, the prohibitionist candidate and vociferous critic of what he saw as a corrupt city corporation, who had fought and lost every election since 1908.

  ‘What bad luck?’ she asked. ‘I never heard of anything unpleasant happening to that family.’

  ‘Well, it’s surely bad luck to lose so many elections, dear – embarrassing too, I should think. Anyway, Elsie says his share of the vote in Dundee has crept up to twenty-eight percent and she thinks that he’ll defeat that dreadful Churchill at the next election. You know, that man isn’t really interested in Dundee. He just sees us as a safe seat. I think Elsie wants you to help her to help Neddy Scrymgeour kick him out. I did hint, delicately, that perhaps you might be rather too busy next year, but she asked if she might drop in. I was delighted to tell her that we have a telephone and that she should try ringing you first.’

  ‘She’s teaching, I suppose?’

  ‘Oh, aye, at a primary school along the Perth Road. Primary Four she has, forty-three eight-year-olds. You could forgive anybody anything who has to suffer that day in, day out.’

  Victoria was not so sure. ‘If she rings while I’m at work, you could ask her to the harvest dance.’ She looked up at her mother. ‘I’ve not thought about it for a long time, but she was at that awful dance when Grampa died. All her brothers were in the Forces – no, one was still at home. I still miss Grampa, Mother, There are so many things I want him to share.’ Victoria heard her favourite sound and stood up. ‘Quick, Mother, watch Andrew, that’s the dinner-time postie.’

  ‘Well, I was sure you weren’t coming home these dinner hours for my cooking,’ said Catriona fondly as she carried Andrew into the kitchen and tied him into his chair.

  Victoria hurried out into the hall and saw a thin blue letter on the rug at the front door. She carefully teased it open and read it three times, before following her mother into the kitchen. She was blushing as she saw her mother’s happy, knowing look.

  ‘He’s coming home, Mother. He’s had enough of the army and hates the thought of an office job. He’s coming back to Britain. He’ll go first to see his family and then, oh, Mother, he’s coming here. There’s a question he has to ask me.’

  ‘And what will you say, love?’

  Victoria smiled, but did not answer the question directly. ‘It’ll mean that I’ll go away again, Mother. You know that, don’t you? He hopes to have saved enough at least to get a tenancy somewhere. The Lake District, perhaps.’

  Catriona removed too big a piece of bread from her son’s mouth. ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way, Victoria. I left my mother. She left hers. Besides, if we all learn to drive one of these dreadful machines like Dr Flora, we can see one another often. The twentieth century is a grand time to live in, don’t you think?’

  ‘It is indeed,’ agreed Victoria, but she was thinking of Eddie Welborn and of the very exciting developments in her personal and public life, certainly not of politics, or of the real place of women in their new society. ‘Now I’ll need to eat this up quickly and get back to work. Mr Smart’s up in the air a bit just now. We’ve been asked to join a conglomerate of all the big jute industries. It’s all very exciting, but nerve-wracking. Cox’s, Gilroy’s, Kyd’s, oh, all the big companies want to form a textile conglomerate. This was a good year for jute, but things are looking a wee bit shaky now. Calcutta’s beginning to undercut Dundee. Luckily Mr Smart has his own family mills in Calcutta, but it’s still . . .’ She stopped and laughed as she saw the look on Catriona’s face. ‘Marriage and motherhood have changed you, Mother. You were always so interested in business.’

  ‘Oh, I still am, dear, but you’ll find that marriage changes your perspective on things. Right now, Davie’s lungs, Andrew’s teeth and your happiness are the most important things in my life and so whether your boss – nice and generous as he is – makes two million pounds’ profit this year or twenty million isn’t really top of my list.’

  ‘Marriage, if I get married,’ Victoria said as archly as only a girl who has had a written proposal of marriage can, ‘won’t change my interests, Mother. I think I’ll phone Elsie when I get home and go along to one of her suffrage meetings. Eddie wouldn’t want a wife who knew nothing but the price of potatoes.’

  ‘Sixpence halfpenny a stone,’ said Catriona immediately and they both laughed, well pleased with one another and the shape their lives were taking.

  *

  Dr Currie drove them all out to Priory Farm for the harvest dance. She had the night off, but refused to participate in the festivities. Some brightness seemed to have gone out of her since Lord Inchmarnock had sold as much of his Scottish estates as was not entailed and had gone away. She was still as hard-working as ever, if not even more so, but her laughter was not heard so often and her car was driven more sedately and rarely came screaming to a halt just inches from disaster.

  ‘I have letters to write and case notes to make, Catriona. I’ll come back for you all later.’

  She drove off and the family was soon caught up in greeting old friends, who admired Victoria’s sophistication and Andrew’s new tooth with equal enthusiasm.

  Because of several nights of working late before the formation of Jute Industries Ltd, Victoria had been unable to attend one of Elsie’s meetings, so they met for the first time in many years at the harvest dance. Victoria wondered if she would even recognize her old friend. Had she herself changed beyond recognition? Victoria stood at the door, where she had stood with Grampa, and waited for Elsie – Elsie who had taught her to dance, Elsie who had suggested that they go sketching in those enchanted woods, Elsie who had not wanted
to dirty her expensive shoes in the unrestored Blackness Road house. Forgive and forget. Elsie had lost five brothers in the Great War. Maybe such an experience would have turned Victoria too into a fighter.

  She saw Elsie arrive and it was as if it was all those years ago, although this time Elsie arrived without her usual fraternal escort. The two surviving brothers obviously preferred to be with their own families. The women looked at one another’s burst into tears and, with their arms around one another’s waists, went and sat in a corner, as it seemed for hours, talking about their lives since they had last seen one another. For Elsie those years had been mainly at university, where she had first become interested in politics. Now she was back in Dundee in her first year of teaching.

  ‘But you’ve done so much, Victoria. It’s hard to believe you won’t be twenty till next year.’

  ‘I’ve never really thought about it, Elsie. I was usually far too busy to think about what I was doing, what with school and Grampa’s death and the mills. I’m glad that’s over, but I don’t regret working there.’

  Elsie gave a delicate shudder of distaste. ‘You can’t mean it, Victoria. When I think of how you were raised. Your grampa worshipped you. We were sure he’d leave you the farm. My mother thinks there was maybe some funny business with lawyers there.’

  Victoria thought of their dealings over the years with Arbuthnott Boatman. ‘Nonsense, Elsie,’ she said sharply. ‘Grampa just never got round to changing his will. Perhaps he couldn’t bring himself to change it, to write his only child out. Anyway, I assure you that Mother and I are delighted with the house and the way things have worked out. She has a lady lodger from the Harris, now, a classics teacher, Miss Davis. Can you imagine if we’d had the boarding house when we were at the Harris?’

  ‘You could have had old Smelly Socks to board. You’d have got one hundred percent in everything,’ laughed Elsie.