David's Sisters

by Forsyth, Moira;

  Slowly, they walked through the shop that was laid out between the restaurant and the entrance, pointing things out to each other, Marion pausing by a clothes rack, David at the shelves of gourmet food, Eleanor by the pile of wicker baskets, all shapes and sizes, at the door. When one stopped, they all did. Why, it’s like happiness, Eleanor realised, this sort of bubble we are in. It could not of course be happiness: here was Marion with cancer, David an alcoholic – more or less – and Eleanor herself, with her diminished but permanent parcel of guilt, in love with someone who would never marry her. Worse, all their lives, they had been deceived. Fundamental truths had dissolved in the space of an afternoon; nothing was the way they had believed it to be. David, who did know the truth, had been half-destroyed by it. How, then, could the lightness, the sweetness of the afternoon be anything other than an illusory peace. They were like ordinary people, breaking their journey.

  Perhaps, Eleanor thought, as David held the door open for Marion and her to pass through, out into the sunshine, this is all that happiness is.

  The place was busy; they had had to park at the far end of the grounds among the trees. Halfway there, Marion realised they had bought nothing to take to their father.

  ‘Get him some of that whisky-flavoured marmalade,’ David suggested, ‘thus combining the two foods he always seems to have in supply.’

  ‘I’ll go back,’ Marion said. ‘I’m more likely to find something sensible.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Eleanor hovered anxiously.

  Marion, fighting irritation, said only, ‘I’m fine, Eleanor. I’ll go.’ She turned and walked back to the shop.

  At first, when she came out again, she could not see Eleanor and David. Then there they were – near the car, standing close together, talking. They were beneath the trees, in shade, but Eleanor’s hair gleamed for a moment in a shaft of sunlight as she moved. David, much taller, loomed over her. He waved his hands around illustrating a point, as he talked. But to Marion, for a few seconds, it looked as if he were casting a spell. She stopped, and something that was nothing to do with illness, or treatment, made her catch her breath. What if he stays? What if he really does stay, this time?

  John Cairns sat on the bench at his back door, looking down the garden. There was so much to do at this time of year, and look at him. Foot strapped up, hobbling on crutches. Irritated, he kicked with his good leg at one of the crutches leaning beside him on the bench, and it crashed to the ground. ‘Ach!’ With a grunt, he bent down to retrieve it. Then glanced at his watch. They had said they would arrive some time in the middle of the afternoon. Almost without being aware of it, he was listening for the car.

  When was the last time he had had just the three of them in the house? Not since they were young, and all still living at home. He closed his eyes, hearing his wife’s voice, his young wife, who had rested her dark head on his shoulder – though she was so small she scarcely reached it, leaned rather on his arm – and said, ‘We’ll take him, John, we can give him a good home.’

  That had not been here, at Pitcairn. It was in their much smaller house in Aberdeen she had said that, their daughters tiny, Eleanor not much more than a baby herself. His memory was playing him false. It was harder, these days, to get the memories clear in his head, separate out one thing from another. He did remember what she had said: ‘As long as she doesn’t change her mind. That’s all I worry about.’

  ‘It can’t be an easy thing for her,’ he had warned, ‘giving up her bairn.’

  ‘Oh,’ Faith shuddered. To lose a bairn, that must be the worst thing in the world.’ She was thinking of herself as she spoke, not Alice.

  Inexorably, his thoughts travelled back to the fire at the Mackies’, to the tinker quine who had died with her baby. The worst thing in the world. They had gone through that too, in a way, the summer David disappeared. He rubbed his hand over his face, reluctant to let the memory in, so painful it still was, and hearing Faith’s voice in his head as she wept in his arms at night, angry and frightened.

  ‘Do you know something?’ she had said, sitting up in bed, blowing her nose, defying the tears. He did not want to hear, but knew he must.

  ‘We’ve been over it,’ he began.

  ‘I used to dream Alice had come back for him. When he was a baby, little, I used to dream she had stolen him back. Once, I even thought …’ She shook her head. ‘But now – now I almost wish she had.’

  ‘You don’t mean that, you don’t mean it,’ he soothed, his arms round her as she leaned on his chest, breathing hard, trying not to cry in case she woke the girls. Anxiety was like a stone in his chest, immovable. He was helpless; they could do nothing. Worse than anything had been the way she cried, his wife who rarely wept, and never did again, like that.

  Never, he thought, looking up to see a cloud covering the sun, darkening the shadows among the bushes, between the lilac trees. The scent of the lacy cones of blossom travelled up the garden towards him, heavy and sweet. For a moment, he fancied he saw her again. Oh, not the tinker, not her but his wife, tiny and quick-moving, her feet scarcely touching the ground. He leaned back and rubbed his eyes. When he looked again, the garden was empty, the only movement a blackbird, flying up between the trees.

  No, no, he scolded himself. There were no ghosts here at Pitcairn. It was all in the imagination. Then he turned, tilting his head, listening. He thought he heard Eleanor’s car, the sound of it on the drive, his children coming home.

  Epilogue

  Across the fields from the Mains of Pitcairn, moving slowly in windless air, came the hot smells of charred wood, burnt straw, and something else, not so natural, or clean. They came in a haze of what was no longer smoke, but an invisible vapour that settled on paths and trees with a fine dusting of ash. You could not see it now, but it caught in your throat when you breathed in. At the farm, the air still quivered above the ruins of the barn, but that may have been no more than the heat of the afternoon, which was even heavier and more intense than the previous day.

  At the far end of the garden at Pitcairn, under the apple trees, it was cooler, and you could hardly smell smoke any more. Eleanor sat with her back to one of the tree trunks, laying her selection of leaves in a circle. At Pitcairn today, she counted, there were four grown-ups, three children and two cats. One cat was their own, young and skittish; the other was an elderly tabby from the Mains, that spent more than half its time here. Eleanor had a leaf for each member of the family. She included the tabby cat. It rolled over on its back next to her, the fur on its stomach the colour of honey, and stretched out a paw to touch one of the leaves. There were only four so far, because it took Eleanor so long to choose the best one for each person.

  Her father’s was a horse-chestnut leaf, from the tree at the end of the drive. It had five fingers: one for each member of the family at Pitcairn (not counting cats, this time) because he looked after all of them. Her mother’s was a pair of sycamore wings, like a tiny dancer.

  Hearing her name, Eleanor paused and looked up. She was at the end of the path near the apple trees, out of everyone’s sight. Her mother was calling.

  ‘I’m here!’

  Faith was standing on the path, a few yards away. ‘Aunt Alice wants to take some snaps with her new camera.’

  ‘Do I have to come? I’m busy.’

  ‘It won’t take long.’

  ‘My leaves might blow away.’

  Faith turned to go back up the path towards the house. ‘Hurry up,’ she said. ‘We’re all waiting for you.’

  Reluctantly, Eleanor rose and left her game.

  They were by the bench at the back door. As Faith reappeared, Alice raised her camera and pressed the button: click.

  ‘Oh,’ Faith said. ‘I haven’t even brushed my hair.’

  Mamie had her compact out and was peering into the little mirror. Eleanor’s father was sitting on the bench waiting, with Marion next to him, nursing her doll.

  ‘I’m wanting back to my runner beans,’ he said.
‘I was in the middle of tying them up.’

  ‘Where’s David?’ Alice asked. ‘I thought he was here a minute ago.’

  David was discovered in a tree, and made to come down. Eventually, Alice had them all arranged: adults on the bench, children kneeling in front. As soon as the first photograph was taken, John Cairns was off, back down to his vegetable plot.

  ‘I’ll take one of just the bairns,’ Alice said.

  ‘We’d better hurry up then,’ Faith warned. ‘Look at these black clouds.’

  As he worked, John could hear the women talking. The sharp rise of Faith’s voice told him David was being awkward, and he sighed. Then they must have gone indoors, for it went quiet. A few minutes later Eleanor strolled past the fence that bordered the vegetable garden, singing to herself and waving a bunch of leaves.

  Later, as he hoed round the carrots, he felt a drop of two of rain in the sultry air, and was glad to see Faith appearing at the gate.

  ‘Am I getting a fly cup?’ he asked her, resting his hoe. ‘I could do with one, it’s thirsty work the day. I felt a spit of rain a minute ago – we’ll get a thunder clap soon.’

  ‘I’ve the kettle on,’ Faith said, coming up to him. ‘John – there’s an awful thing happened.’

  ‘What’s that?’ But he could tell from her face, from the steady way she walked, that there was no crisis over one of the children. When David fell from the horse-chestnut and cracked his head, she had come flying down the garden, white and breathless.

  ‘Sheila Mackie’s been in.’

  ‘Ah. How is she?’

  ‘Och, you know Sheila. Never any self-pity.’ Her face was grave.

  ‘It’s a terrible blow, all their hay harvest gone, and—’ John began. Faith reached out a hand and plucked a twig from his sleeve. ‘Is there something else?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  He waited, then she looked up full into his face.

  ‘There were two bodies found,’ she said. ‘Dead in the fire – they must have been trapped.’ He gripped her arm, as if to steady her, but really for himself. ‘The tinker and her baby,’ she went on. That young woman who came to the door yesterday. Sheila said Dan had turned them away in the end, he was scared the man would smoke in the barn. But they must have gone in anyway.’

  ‘Good God,’ he said, his grip on her arm slackening as they moved a little apart, no longer looking at each other, but at the brown earth below, cracked and dry in the heat.

  ‘What did David say?’ he asked at last.

  ‘I told you. They were nowhere near the Mains. Nowhere near,’ she repeated.

  ‘I hope to God they werena. I couldna bear it if for one minute I thought –’

  She raised her hand and laid it on his lips, pressing gently, silencing him. ‘The other bairns are all right,’ she said. ‘The two wee boys were out of the place.’ Her voice sharpened. ‘And her man was found in a ditch with an empty bottle this morning. They think he left a cigarette end in the barn before he went out, and it smouldered away …’ She stood back, watching her husband’s face lighten.

  ‘Davy and Stanley – you think they were playing with these loons?’

  ‘That’s what I think. Davy is scared to say, he knows he was supposed to be home long since, not supposed to be with these laddies at all. But they were raking away somewhere, down the woods as usual. Forgot the time.’

  ‘Aye, that’s what it will have been.’ He paused. ‘It’ll upset the bairns if we tell them.’

  ‘They’ll hear it anyway, bound to.’ She patted his arm. ‘But we’ll not talk of it in this house.’

  In the distance, the first rumble of thunder growled like a beast stirring beneath the horizon, so low did the black clouds there seem.

  ‘Come in,’ Faith said. ‘It’s away to rain at last.’

  ‘Right.’ But when she had gone, he stood for several long minutes, leaning on his hoe, gazing at the earth.

  Down by the apple trees, Eleanor laid out her leaves again, this time in a circle. The cat had gone, and she was alone. Often on Sundays, she and Marion played together all day, and sometimes David joined in, because Sunday was the one day Violet and Stanley were not allowed to come. Violet went to her aunt’s house in Aberdeen for dinner, and Stanley went to his Granny’s house straight after Sunday school. He looked a different boy in white shirt and pressed shorts, his hair shiny with Brylcreem, smoothed flat. Sometimes he did turn up at tea-time, and was allowed to stay for an hour. However, today he and Davy were in awful trouble for coming home so late the night before, so she did not think Stanley would reappear for a while.

  The hot, heavy weather had made everyone irritable, and they had all fallen out soon after the aunts came at dinner-time. Eleanor had been glad to be alone, but now she was bored. The leaf game was silly; she couldn’t be bothered with it any more. What was she going to do anyway, now she had one for everybody? The air seemed to press in on her, stifling. She had heard thunder once or twice, but it was still so far away it did not frighten her. Then, all at once, the branches overhead moved in a new flurry of breeze, and a few drops of rain pattered through, softly at first, then faster and harder, knocking leaves sideways, stinging on her arms and legs. Someone was coming along the path, someone she felt rather than heard. Turning, she saw through the trees a dark figure carrying a bundle. For a moment, she thought it was the tinker lady, who was camping by the woods yesterday. Somewhere, a cry that was thin as the wind, echoed in the darkening air.

  Then she saw it was Aunt Alice, come to bring her indoors, Aunt Alice carrying her jacket and an umbrella, so that she would not get soaked running up the long garden to the back door. Suddenly, making her jump, the tabby shot past her, its tail stiff and horizontal, mewing with disgust at the rain, making for shelter.

  ‘Come away, Eleanor,’ Aunt Alice said. There’s going to be a real downpour.’ She handed Eleanor her jacket, and spread the black umbrella over them both. ‘Ready?’

  The rain was sweeping across the garden in torrents now. Eleanor kept close to Aunt Alice, and they began to run, both of them laughing, because they were soaked through in a minute.

  ‘There now,’ Alice said, shaking her brolly out of the back door as Eleanor ran past her into the kitchen. ‘Is that everybody?’

  ‘No,’ Faith said. ‘Goodness knows where David is.’ Outside, the rain poured down, a grey curtain veiling the garden.

  ‘He’ll be in his camp,’ Marion said. ‘He’s got a camp behind the henhouse.’

  Across the sky, a yellow glitter of lightning. Instinctively, they all stepped back, and John began to close the door. Faith took his arm, and held it.

  ‘David,’ she said, But Alice was stepping out already, her umbrella whipping open, catching in the wind, her skirt twisting round her legs.

  ‘I’ll go,’ she said, and plunged outside again. ‘I hope the lightning won’t get her,’ Marion said, and Eleanor, in fright, burst into tears.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ her mother said. Everyone else laughed, but Faith was unsmiling. Standing by the door, she waited for Alice to bring David in.

  Down under the apple trees, a gust of wind swept up Eleanor’s circle of leaves, and whirled them into the air. The beech leaf she had found for David, that was lightest of all, blew up and over the wall, out into the field and away.