‘A small one,’ Eleanor suggested. ‘I want to keep as much money spare as I can, to live on until Claire doesn’t need me to be at home.’
Already, Marion was moving through streets and villages in her mind, finding somewhere suitable for Eleanor and Claire.
The next day, Eleanor put her house on the market. I will go home, she decided, and although she had never lived in the Highlands, and stayed with Marion only for brief holidays and over Christmas, she knew where she wanted to be. She pictured the little market town where Marion lived, with its Victorian houses, and the new estates spreading up the hill behind. On the other side, dividing the town from the Black Isle, was the Cromarty Firth. I will have a home with a view of the Firth, she thought. I can look out at the water every day, and hear the wild geese talking and talking, as they gather overhead, telling each other the story of their own homecoming.
18
In the first week of the Easter holidays, Eleanor took Claire and Eilidh to Pitcairn. Kirsty went to stay with Fergus’s mother. Lambing had begun, and the Macleods at the neighbouring farm were having grandchildren to stay. Marion would be driven to the hospital for her fifth treatment by her friend Sue.
‘I feel bad leaving you,’ Eleanor said.
‘It’s time Eilidh had a break,’ Marion told her. ‘I’ll be all right. Fergus is taking some time off next week when you’re back, so the holidays are all taken care of.’
‘I’ll ring you from Pitcairn.’ She hugged Marion, and her sister, who had always been glossy with health, felt fragile in her arms, skin dry, hair thin and brittle, bones sharp beneath the skin. Eleanor drew back, afraid of hurting her. I ache all over, Marion had confessed. My bones seem to ache.
At Pitcairn, Eleanor cleaned the kitchen, vacuumed the hall and stairs, and stocked up the store cupboards. The weather was fine, and she worked with her father in the garden. She wanted the days to be full and busy, so that she would not fret about Marion, or long for Gavin too much. Claire and Eilidh lay in bed till noon, ran baths that used all the hot water, watched videos, and painted their nails. All the time, they talked in low voices and giggled, stopping at once when they thought anyone else could hear them.
On the Wednesday, Eleanor drove up to town, taking them with her. The girls were to go round clothes shops, spend saved-up birthday and Christmas money, and buy their lunch in McDonald’s. Eleanor impressed upon them several times the importance of being at the arranged meeting place at three o’clock. ‘Mum – we know.’ Claire exclaimed, ‘Stop going on about it.’ They clambered out of the car and waved goodbye. In the rearview mirror Eleanor watched them disappear into the crowd. Then the lights changed and she drove on, making her way up Union Street, the broad, traffic-laden road through the centre of the city, heading for the part of town where Mamie and Alice still lived, near the Duthie Park.
She went in with apologies for being without the girls. Mamie was out, but Alice was busy in the kitchen. She looked white and tired, and seemed thinner. Eleanor briefly laid her smooth cheek against her aunt’s dry one. Alice began to get out the cutlery for their meal.
‘Now then,’ she said, ‘I’d maybe best say a word.’
‘Is something wrong?’
‘Nothing wrong.’
‘Are you ill?’
‘Me? I’m fine.’ Alice was annoyed; she banged the soup spoons down on the tray.
‘I’m sorry. I thought—’
‘Mamie’s just away to the shop for a packet of crackers to go with the cheese. She forgot them yesterday.’ She looked directly at Eleanor. ‘Her memory’s not so good, these days.’
‘Oh well, I suppose …’ Eleanor wanted to say, ‘She’s getting old,’ but Alice was even older. How could you put it, without offending them? Alice was straight-backed, independent; she finished her crossword every day, read history and biography, attended the Women’s Guild, sang in the church choir. But Mamie?
‘It’s getting to the point when she doesn’t keep a thing in her head for five minutes together. But ask her what she wore to the kirk on Easter Sunday twenty year ago!’ Alice sounded more irritated than concerned. ‘I just hope this is not the beginning of something. You know what I mean. It’s nae easy to live with.’
The front door opened and closed: Mamie was back. She greeted Eleanor with exclamations of delight, and began emptying her basket onto the table. There was a smell of soup now, hot and savoury, as it heated. Alice stirred, turning down the gas, watching Mamie.
‘Where’s the crackers?’
A loaf of bread, a packet of butter and several boxes of matches lay on the table. Mamie looked up, flustered. ‘Would you credit it? I’ve forgotten the very thing I went out for.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Eleanor broke in. ‘I’m always doing that – going upstairs, then having to come back down to remember what it was I went for.’
‘Ach, I’m getting old.’
‘I’ll serve up the soup,’ Alice said. ‘Eleanor, the plates are just beside you.’
Eleanor handed them one at a time, then carried them through to the chilly dining room on a tray. Mamie had disappeared to take off her hat and coat.
‘She’ll be upstairs,’ Alice said. ‘I’ll cry her.’
Mamie appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Oh, is it dinnertime? You should have telt me.’
The soup was good; Alice had made it. Eleanor wondered what Mamie did with herself now, apart from knitting. They had oatcakes with the cheese, and Eleanor explained (for the third time) where the girls were, and when she was meeting them.
‘Now then,’ Mamie said, ‘I’ll clear away, and make a cuppie coffee – would you like that, Eleanor?’
‘Lovely. Can I help?’
‘No, no, I can manage fine. You away through to the living room – the fire’s on.’
It was sunny in the room at the front of the house. Eleanor, despite the soup, had got chilled in the north-facing dining room, and walked about, looking at all the familiar things: the Hummel figures, the faded watercolours. She could hear Alice and Mamie in the kitchen, going through the business of making coffee, opening biscuit tins. The dishes were washed, since it was best to get them cleared. And yet, Eleanor thought, they have nothing to do for the rest of the day. Why don’t they leave them? I’ll have to go soon.
She lingered by the sideboard, crowded with family photographs. David, Marion and herself, through several stages of childhood; their graduation photographs, holding rolls of cardboard to represent degree certificates, and wearing gowns that looked silly and false now, to Eleanor. Marion’s wedding photograph (how plump and young she looked, and Fergus’s hair quite long, his fringe shaggy), and then her own. Ian handsome and stern, herself flushed and excited. What an adventure I thought it would be, she realised, marrying him, moving to England, a new life. She picked up the photograph and studied it. I am so different now. She set it down next to one of David on his first two-wheeler bicycle, which he and Stanley had taken turns riding down the lane, the other one running beside it. One of them (neither would say who) had quite soon ridden it into the ditch, twisting the handlebars and scratching the chrome.
Mamie came in with the tray of coffee cups and biscuits.
‘Now dear,’ she said, when she had established again whether Eleanor took sugar and milk, ‘you haven’t told us about Marion. How’s she getting on with this treatment? Is it going to last much longer?’
But Eleanor had told them about Marion when they sat down to eat. Alice, coming in and hearing this, caught Eleanor’s eye, and shook her head slightly. Eleanor sat down with her cup of milky coffee, accepted a biscuit, and carefully, told Mamie again about Marion.
‘Dear me, poor lass.’ Mamie began brushing crumbs busily from her cardigan, to hide her distress. She is old, Eleanor thought, and she’s failing a bit, I can see that. A surge of pity for Mamie, who was growing vaguer and more muddled as Alice grew harder and sharper, obliterated everything for a moment.
As she drove bac
k into town to collect Eilidh and Claire, Eleanor was newly aware of her own vigour, electric and powerful. She was on the threshold of something. She felt strong, ready for whatever it was. It would happen, the new life to come. Before he had left, Gavin had said again that he was thinking of applying for a job onshore. ‘There are two or three coming up. To tell the truth, I’ve about had it with living like this.’ He must mean he wanted to be with her. Thinking of this, she grew warm with love and relief.
‘Are we going to see Auntie Mamie and Auntie Alice?’ Claire wanted to know as Eleanor walked with them to the car park.
‘No, back to Pitcairn.’
‘Aw – I wanted to see them as well.’
‘I thought you wanted to shop.’
‘We did, but I wish we’d gone with you now.’
‘What about you, Eilidh?’ Eleanor asked. ‘We’d planned to go home tomorrow, though.’
Eilidh shrugged. ‘I don’t mind.’
She looked tired, Eleanor thought. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I feel a bit sick.’
‘Back to Grandpa’s then, eh?’
As soon as they reached Pitcairn, Eilidh said, ‘Can I ring Mum?’
‘Of course you can.’
Marion said she was fine, resting a lot, but Eilidh went on being quiet.
Later, alone with her father in the garden, Eleanor said, ‘Probably just as well we’re heading back tomorrow. Eilidh seems a bit peaky – I think she’s sickening for home. For Marion.’
‘Aye, maybe.’ John held a branch of forsythia in one hand, and clipped it with his secateurs. In the wheelbarrow behind him was a pile of prunings. Eleanor took the rake and hauled it over the herbaceous border they were tackling, gathering up plant debris, dead leaves. The air smelt of spring, and was shrill with birdsong.
Everything is coming to life again, Eleanor thought, and Marion will soon start to get better. She must. Then she thought of Mamie and Alice, and stopped, looking round at her father.
‘Mamie’s getting forgetful,’ she said. ‘I think it annoys Alice.’
‘Old age. She’s just absent-minded. Alice never had much patience. By God, d’ye see that?’ Something hopped away suddenly through the shrubs, and he was after it. ‘Bloody rabbits! Ye canna keep them out.’
Eleanor picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow and went to empty it into the bonfire they were making. When her father joined her, having lost the rabbit, she said, ‘Will I make us a cup of tea?’
‘Aye lass, grand.’ He grasped the wheelbarrow. ‘I’ll be in in a minute.’
Eleanor went slowly up the garden. At the back door she turned to take off her muddy boots and leave them outside. Holding on to the lintel with one hand, she eased off first one, then the other. Straightening up, she looked back down the garden to see where her father was. The evening sun was low in the sky, and at first she was dazzled, giddy with bending, seeing only the translucent pink-edged blue of the sky, and the black silhouettes of the two lilac trees on either side of the path, branches just touching overhead. Then, as her vision cleared, between the trees, just coming into bud, a figure moved. It was not her father, it was someone slight, stooping a little, carrying a heavy bundle. Eleanor clutched the lintel of the door, her nails digging into flaking paint, and shut her eyes. When she opened them again, there was nothing moving by the lilac trees but a blackbird, flying up between.
The following morning they drove home, going over to the Black Isle before returning to Dingwall, so that they could collect Kirsty from her grandmother’s house. As they went through Munlochy, they saw the first of the Spring tourist coaches stopped by the spreading tree they knew as the Clootie Well.
‘Look,’ Claire said, ‘there’s people at the tree. Do they know about making a wish?’
‘I expect the bus driver has told them the story.’
The place was familiar. Water from an underground spring gushed through a pipe onto mossy stone. Above, every branch and twig of the spreading tree was hung with hundreds of strips of cloth, fastened there over several generations, each one attached with a wish, a prayer. Over the years, the rags had grown dirty and matted, packed layer upon layer until time and weather had stiffened them into permanency. The sight disgusted Eleanor; she could not imagine wanting to hang there any shred of material she had once held dear.
‘Do the wishes come true?’ Claire persisted. ‘Do you know anyone it worked for?’ Eilidh did; she had a fund of stories.
When the girls had gone up to the farm with Kirsty, to inspect new lambs, Nan Munro and Eleanor had tea, and talked about Marion. Nan was as old as Alice, but she seemed younger, still brisk and motherly. Eleanor could see she was disturbed about Marion, though she spoke calmly enough.
‘We’ll see how she goes when all this treatment’s finished.’ She stood with Eleanor in sunshine at her back door, watching the girls as they came down the track from the farm, Kirsty skipping from one side to the other, a long way behind the others.
‘Right,’ Eleanor said as they reached her, ‘let’s get you all home.’
Kirsty was breathless with running to catch up. She flung her arms round her grandmother, who stood still, submitting to this, and smoothing Kirsty’s hair away from her face.
‘Now mind,’ she said, ‘you’re to be a good girl for Mummy when you get home.’
‘Claire says we can make a wish at the Clootie Well,’ Kirsty announced. ‘To make Mummy better.’
Eleanor and Nan Munro looked at each other.
‘Ah well,’ the grandmother said, easing the child’s arms away from her. ‘Anything’s worth a try.’
On the way back, Kirsty wanted to stop by the tree.
‘I’ve got nothing with me that we could use,’ Eleanor told her. ‘It has to be something … a piece of material, whatever, that has a meaning, a value for you.’
‘Can we do it though?’ Claire asked. ‘Get something, and tie it on next time we come past?’
‘Yes, if you like.’
Eilidh looked out of the window, saying nothing.
At home, Marion had found the days long on her own, and though she had tried to be grateful for the rest, was almost tearful with relief when she saw Eleanor’s car turn into the drive.
‘How was Dad?’ she asked, when she and Eleanor eventually sat down to talk.
‘Fine. Pretty good. But I saw Mamie and Alice yesterday. Alice looks tired, quite unwell, and Mamie doesn’t remember anything for two minutes together.’
They’re getting old.’
‘They are old, Marion. Like an old married couple, in some ways. Get on each other’s nerves, but devoted really.’
‘Do you think so?’ Marion was doubtful. ‘I always thought what a pity it was Mamie never married again. She should have had children, a life of her own. Not just stuck with Alice, like a kind of glorified housekeeper.’
‘Perhaps. But what about you – how have you been?’
Marion managed a smile. ‘One more night in hospital,’ she said. ‘Then the scan a few weeks after that. So if it’s all right then … maybe they won’t do any more.’
‘You mean no radiotherapy?’
‘I hope not.’
‘You’ve had enough, haven’t you?’
‘I’m OK.’
But she was not, Eleanor could see that, could see how far she had travelled without her even in the few days she had been at Pitcairn.
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry I went away now.’
‘No, you were right. You mustn’t feel you have to hang round me all the time. I’m not much company, anyway.’ Marion did not want to talk about symptoms and aches. Tell me about Gavin,’ she said. ‘Have you spoken to him?’
‘Not since I went to Aberdeen But I told him I’d be back tonight. He’ll probably call.’ Eleanor flushed, warm with the thought of this, but could not talk about it till she had been home and spoken to him again.
‘You know what the girls want to do?’ she asked, turning the subject. ‘That awfu
l tree at Munlochy with all the rags hanging on it – the Clootie Well. Claire calls it the Wishing Tree. It’s a tinkers’ place, isn’t it?’
‘What about it?’
‘Kirsty wants to hang a piece of cloth on it and wish for you to get better.’
‘Oh, I suppose every little helps,’ Marion said, smiling.
‘I told her it had to be something you were sort of attached to. Not any old dish cloth.’
‘Well, now.’ Marion was thinking about this. Then, with more energy than Eleanor had seen her muster for weeks, she got up out of her chair. ‘Oh – oh. I did that too quickly.’
‘What is it? Do you want me to get something?’
‘Well, all right. Upstairs, in my chest of drawers, top left. Where my bras and knickers are – underneath at the back, in a piece of tissue paper.’ She sank back into her chair. ‘Would you mind?’
‘No, of course not. What is it?’
‘Wait and see. I wonder if you’ll recognise it.’
Eleanor went up to Marion’s bedroom. Fergus’s cord trousers over a chair, books on the floor, the window open to spring air, flowered curtains fluttering a little in the breeze. No sign that anything was different, or that anyone was ill, threatened. But on the bedside cabinet, on her side of the bed, Marion’s bottles of tablets. Eleanor looked away, and went to hunt in the drawer.
Under the cotton and silk, the pretty, sensible underwear, the special brassieres with their pocket for the prosthesis she knew Marion disliked and resented, Eleanor’s fingers found the rustle of tissue paper, and she drew out a small flat packet. When she opened it up, twelve inches or so of lace ribbon, creamy and a little brittle with age, slipped out and lay across her hand. Why had Marion kept it – from her wedding dress, a christening robe? Then Eleanor remembered, and knew. It was the tinker’s piece of ribbon, sold to their mother years ago, when they were children. Marion had taken it away; the boys had played soldiers with the clothes pegs.
The tinker woman had come back, to walk in their garden. Was she warning or reassuring, a prophet or just a hapless ghost? Eleanor’s hand closed round the lace, rough against her skin.
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