‘Now then,’ Fergus said later, as they got ready for bed, ‘did you change the alarm clock?’
‘They’re all changed – you saw to the central heating, didn’t you?’
‘Aye, but I can never remember, are we going to bed an hour later or earlier?’
‘Later.’
‘No wonder I’m tired.’
‘So am I. I’ve been tired all week. Longer.’
‘You do too much. Leave that now.’ For she was tidying up after him again, folding his trousers. ‘Come away to bed.’
So she did, and they lay with their arms round each other, and talked for a while, and kissed. Eventually she turned on her side and he curved round her, his knees behind hers, his hand on her breast. But his fingers kneaded, pressed.
‘Oh, Fergie, do you really … I’m so sleepy.’ But still his fingers probed, and she realised it was not love-making (which, after a while, she would have responded to) and she moved on to her back.
‘What is it?’
‘I thought … on Friday night, when we – but I wasn’t sure. Marion, can you feel a wee something, just there?’
‘Oh, doctors never stop working,’ she teased, but put her hand on her breast, growing cold as she did so.
‘There?’ he prompted.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. Now she sat up, put the lamp on again.
‘It’s sure to be nothing at all, but see Mary Mackay, anyway.’
‘But you should know.’
‘Aye, but I don’t want to be the one to … I don’t want – see Mary. I’ll make you an appointment when I go in tomorrow. When do you get back from the school?’
Marion was pushing, using all four fingers. It had gone, it was nothing. No, there it was again. ‘It seems to sort of move about.’
‘It was nothing the last time. That wee scare we had, after Kirsty was born.’
‘That was different. It was hard, didn’t move.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘A blocked milk duct or something. Anyway, it went away by itself.’ She was angry now, with fright. ‘God, Fergus, tell me. You should know.’
‘I’m sure it’s nothing. I’m sorry I—’
‘No, you’re right, you were right to say. I’ll see Mary, I’ll come down after work. About five.’ She lay down again. ‘All right, satisfied?’
He took her in his arms again, but she lay stiff, wide awake, touching and touching her breast, chasing the tiny elusive lump. So this, she thought, is what the long, dull, ordinary day was leading up to.
‘I was bored,’ she said to Fergus. ‘I was bored all day. But now I wish I was bored again. I wish nothing was happening.’
Fergus held her close, but eventually he slept, and slipped away. She would not tell anyone, even Eleanor. Not till there was something to tell. She would keep it to herself. Still she lay awake, seeing hospital beds, saying good-bye to her children, planning her funeral. This was useless, stupid. Pull yourself together, woman, it’s a wee lump, it’s nothing. She leaned on Fergus, warmed herself on solid flesh, listened to his breathing. I won’t die. I’m too busy to be ill. I have to see the children grow up anyway; Fergus would never manage the girls on his own. I have to get Eleanor settled with Andrew, or some other nice man. Make sure Dad’s all right, and there’s Pitcairn. Eleanor won’t know what to do about it, she needs me to talk it over with. (Her breast was sore with being prodded; the lump had gone again.) And it came to her suddenly that she had bought a bag of daffodil bulbs a month ago, to plant under the apple trees, and had forgotten all about them. The bag was still in the garage, the bulbs unplanted.
At last she slept, and dreamed of hospital waiting rooms, and searching for a space to put bulbs, in the garden at Pitcairn.
4
Sometimes, when Eleanor drove to Pitcairn, she went into Aberdeen first, parked, and shopped. This time, she went directly there by the back road, having no money to spend in the glittering city centre with its new arcades. What she needed was a job.
Ian had left her comfortably off. She had benefited from the surge in house prices in the South of England, which happened after she and Ian had stretched themselves to buy the detached house in Berkshire. Now she had no mortgage, and there was money in trust for Claire to see her through university – if she ever wanted to go there. Eleanor sighed, partly over Claire, partly because she had to slow for a tractor which she could not pass till they were well round the next bend. No, she had enough, the pension covered the basics, and there was still a small income from the money she had invested from the sale of the house. But there was nothing to spare, no money she could really call her own. The road straightened and she overtook the tractor, but there was a lorry ahead spraying water up from the wet road, so she resigned herself, deciding to stop at Baxters for something to eat.
If she said to her father, ‘I could do with a job,’ he would say, ‘Aye, it’s a shame you never finished your degree, like Marion.’ It had not seemed to matter then, when she went against her parents for the first time, marrying Ian as soon as he graduated, and setting off with him to the far end of the country. They had wanted her to finish her three years, get a qualification. Ian says there are plenty of jobs in London. What use is an arts degree anyway? Pity, she thought now, putting on the wipers to clear the lorry’s fine, gritty shower. Pity I was so hasty, so desperate not to lose him, so keen to believe that the only thing that mattered was his wonderful job offer, his career. What good did it do me in the end?
The first year had not been the glorious adventure she anticipated. Aimless and homesick, Eleanor had worked in a bookshop, then for an estate agent, giving up gladly when she was pregnant. After she and Claire moved back North, she had worked briefly in a solicitor’s office in Dingwall, a job Marion found for her. She was deputising for the ‘Properties Assistant’. When the real Properties Assistant recovered from her stay in hospital and returned to work, Eleanor had gone back to doing nothing. Not quite nothing, she told herself, but her poems, her water-colours, seemed trivial, and they did not earn her any money. Sometimes, she wondered if her life would have been different if she had been able to say to her mother, all those years ago, ‘I’m not going to university, I’m going to Art School.’ The Art School might not have taken her, her portfolio was not varied enough the teacher had said. He had meant, she thought now, that it was weak.
Fochabers. Eleanor turned off the road, and parked at Baxters, climbing the steps from the car park to the restaurant, turning up the collar of her mac. It was beginning to rain again. She bought vegetable soup and a sandwich, and sat at one of the window tables, looking out at the rain. She would get to Pitcairn by half-past two, three o’clock, at this rate.
The last part of the journey was best: the familiar road, the heavy trees gold and red, still dressed in early November, though leaves drifted in front of the car. The rain stopped; a ragged hole appeared in the clouds and weak sunshine washed the road with light. Home, Eleanor thought, as she always did, coming round the last bend, seeing the cottages on the right (Ruby lived in the last one), the Post Office and shop, the Pitcairn Arms, and then on the left, half hidden by leaves in summer, but visible now, the sign: Mains of Pitcairn 1; Pitcairn House 2. She slowed, and turned into the narrow road.
There were other houses on the way up now: bungalows on both sides, with flat tidy gardens and new conservatories on the south-facing sides. Once, but years before they had bought the house, the land had belonged to Pitcairn, and so had the farm. The farmland had been broken up and sold off, though the farmhouse was still there, just visible in the lee of the hill up on her right. It too had a conservatory now, but the Scotch firs had been cut down, and the place was run as a market garden by one of the Mackies’ daughters, and her husband. Not Eileen, who had been their baby-sitter, but the older girl. A middle-aged woman now, with grown-up children.
As Eleanor reached the drive, winding off to the left, she heard the crunch of conkers beneath the wheels. The great horse chest
nuts at the entrance to the drive loosed their five-fingered leaves, yellowing now, shook them over Eleanor’s car as she arrived.
There was the house. Square, solid, and built of that silver granite that refracts sunlight in flashes, intensifies the light around it. When the sun moved behind a cloud, the granite became cold and grey. Today’s sunshine, weak, and dappled through thinning trees, was enough to bathe the house in yellow light, and make it look its best. Eleanor took her car round the back, driving into the doorless outbuilding they had always used as a garage, and taking out her bag (she was going to stay one night, after all), went into the house through the back door.
David was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the Press and Journal. He looked up at the sound of the door, and was on his feet as she came in.
‘Hello, you got here.’
‘David – look at you!’ He had a beard, thick and dark as his hair. It changed him; his face was less boyish. He was older. Two years since she had seen him. He spread his arms wide, enveloping her. He was bigger than she remembered, more solid, smelling of tobacco, and some herby scent, and then of himself, skin, sweat, hair, his family smell, that she knew. ‘Oh, David.’ Absurdly, tears in her eyes.
‘Right then.’ David took her jacket, sat her down. ‘Tell me all – about Claire, and Marion and her brood, everybody.’
Eleanor laughed. ‘You’re the one who should talk. I bet Dad’s told you all about us. There’s nothing anyway, we have nice dull lives. Where have you been?’
‘Here and there. Round and about.’ He grinned, taking her cold hands in his warm ones. He and Marion had the same kind of hands: long-fingered and strong, like their father. Eleanor looked at them, watching her pale bluish fingers thaw out in his grasp, and turn pink.
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘It’s one of his golf days. I’m supposed to make the tea. Good, now you can do it.’
‘Hey, you’re a better cook than I am. There won’t be any food, there never is. Come on, David, I want to know. I can’t go back to Marion and say, “Oh, he’s been here and there.” She’ll be down on Saturday, I think, unless you’re coming back with me. Why don’t you? How long are you here for?’
‘Oh, a while. You’re looking great – a merry widow, now?’
‘Well, better, at any rate.’
‘The Highland life must suit. Maybe I’ll try it.’
‘Are you moving again?’
‘I’ve a flat in Edinburgh. Rented, so I’m free, really.’
‘And a job – are you working?’
‘In between. Moving on.’
‘Oh David, can’t you ever settle?’
‘Seems not. But it’s the new thing, mid-life change, swapping jobs. Did you know the average number of times people change career in a lifetime is five?’
‘Well, I should think you’ve pushed the average up a bit.’
‘And that’s not jobs,’ he went on, ignoring this, ‘it’s careers. Major change.’
‘So you’re not in insurance any more?’
‘Well, the last thing was a kind of partnership with these guys – we were importing clothes.’
This sounded even less likely than insurance. Eleanor recalled suddenly an afternoon in London’s Oxford Street, when David, off duty (he was a policeman then), had met her to go shopping for something for Ross’s christening. How interested he had been in the hats, and whether things matched. He had spent money on clothes for himself then, had worn silk shirts, soft leather jackets. She took in his appearance again, the beard, the jeans, the faded rugby shirt.
‘What sort of clothes?’ Eleanor asked.
‘Teenage stuff. It changes all the time, so you have to be one jump ahead. We were selling it in warehouses, wholesale.’
‘So, what happened? Wasn’t it a success?’ But nothing David did, she knew of old, was ever admitted not to be a success.
‘Huge – terrific.’ He shrugged. ‘But, hell, there was nowhere to go, except into retail, and the other guys didn’t have the experience, weren’t interested. Then the collapse of the Asian markets finished it – that’s where we got the stuff.’
‘But I’d have thought that meant you’d get it cheaper – with the pound being strong and everything?’
`Doesn’t work like that. They have other outlets, won’t sell to us just now. It would mean we were selling for less than it cost them to make. Even with sweated labour.’
‘Oh. Oh well …’ She couldn’t make sense of this. You could never be sure, with David.
‘Cup of tea?’ he said, getting up to put the kettle on. ‘Or coffee?’
‘Tea, please.’ He filled the kettle and went on talking as he got out mugs, and milk from the fridge.
‘No, the internet’s the thing. I’ve got this mate who’s teaching me how to design web pages, and the point is, you can do this anywhere. I get myself the hardware – well, I’ve quite a nice setup already – and the right software, and I could be working in Achiltibuie if I wanted to. Ullapool, Lochcarron, Skye. It doesn’t matter.’
The way you rattle off the names,’ Eleanor said, ‘you’d think you’d already done a tour of the Highlands.’
‘Maybe I have.’
‘So, will you move?’
‘I’m thinking about it.’ He busied himself with tea bags and hunted for biscuits. ‘God, you’re right, Dad has no food in this house. What was I supposed to make for us tonight? One tin of tomato soup, half a jar of marmalade, and that’s it.’
‘I know. Last time Marion was here, she went straight into Aberdeen and stocked up for him at Safeway.’
‘He says there’s a superstore now about five miles down the road,’ David said, bringing her tea. ‘I’m going to take him there tomorrow.’ They both peered into their mugs. ‘Do you think the milk was off?’
‘Probably.’ Gingerly, they sipped, made faces at each other, left the mugs on the table.
‘How long are you staying? You could come shopping with us.’
‘Oh, I have to go back in the morning. Look, why don’t you come home with me? Dad’s all right – Ruby cooks for him sometimes, and he has all these bar meals with his golfing cronies.’
‘I might just do that. Scout around. I’ll give Phil a ring tonight.’
‘Phil – is that the friend who designs web pages?’
‘Oh, he does a lot more than that. Phil Amers.’
‘So you’re coming?’
‘Yeah, why not. For a few days.’
‘Good.’ She smiled at him. ‘Good, I’m glad. It would be wonderful if you did move North. Then we’d all be together.’
‘Persuade Dad to sell up and come too?’
But Eleanor shook her head. ‘Oh no.’
David leaned back in his chair, tipping it on its hind legs. ‘Now then,’ he said, ‘tell me about you and Marion.’
So she did, and they talked until their father came home. Then they went out to the Pitcairn Arms and ate chicken and chips, since David and Eleanor had talked so long the shop was shut, and no food bought.
‘Dad, are you eating properly?’ Eleanor asked. He ate slowly, but finished his meal, relished it.
‘I’m well looked after,’ he said. ‘Ruby makes me a pot of soup, and whiles she brings a casserole.’
‘What about apple pie?’ David asked, waving the menu at them. ‘Ice cream?’
‘Is that it, apple pie or ice cream?’
‘Well, you could have Black Forest Gateau. Straight from the supermarket freezer.’
‘I bet the apple pie is as well,’ Eleanor retorted. ‘No, I’ll just have coffee. What about you, Dad?’
‘No, no, I’m fine. I’m not much of a sweet hand. Cup of coffee. And what about a whisky?’ He and David discussed malts. Her father knew malt whisky. Eleanor had heard him often enough on the subject. But David, who sounded so sure of himself, what did he know, really?
‘Your cupboards are bare, Dad,’ Eleanor said, reverting to what was bothering her as soon as the plates were
cleared away, and the coffee and drams set out.
‘Ach, I’m fine. I haven’t a great appetite these days.’
‘Maybe not, but you need to have something in the house – milk, bread. Let’s do what David suggested – go to Asda tomorrow, and get you stocked up before I go home.’
‘I thought I might go back with Eleanor for a few days,’ David said. ‘Would that be OK?’
‘Fine by me. You’ll see a difference in the bairns, eh?’
Before she went to bed, Eleanor inspected the pantry and made a list. She would speak to Ruby before she left. Her father put his head round the kitchen door. ‘I’m off upstairs. An early bedder, these days, especially after my golf.’
Left alone in the cold kitchen, Eleanor began to see dust, grime round the taps, an unswept floor. What was Ruby doing these days? Not much. She was getting on too, must be nearly seventy. Maybe it was time someone else came in to clean, but Ruby had been with them so long, had come in to clean and gossip and give Mum company, since they were all still at secondary school.
David was in the living room. He held up a bottle of whisky. ‘Want one?’
‘No bread and butter, but he’s got drink in the house. All right, a wee one.’
David had brought in an electric fire, since the coal fire in the living room had not been lit. The room was warming up. They sat in the wing chairs on either side of the fireplace, David in his father’s, Eleanor in the one that had been their mother’s.
‘This place is getting dirty,’ she said. ‘Look at the carpet. And bleak – since Mum died.’
‘It’s too big for him on his own.’ David handed her a glass, half full.
‘God, I’ll never drink all that.’
‘Try.’
‘Oh well.’ She let the first swallow burn down her throat. ‘David, who paid for the meal? I went to the loo and when I came back it was all settled, and we were leaving.’
David's Sisters Page 4