He gave her waist a squeeze. ‘Aye, it is, so I’d better not use this room again.’ Her patent shock made him go on, ‘I’ll sleep in the kitchen.’
She didn’t want him to sleep in Ricky’s bed, she didn’t want him to be uncomfortable, and the only other solution was to . . . She couldn’t take him to her bed, not yet. ‘It won’t be for long,’ she murmured.
Next day, a letter came summoning her to ‘compear before the Lords of Council and Session’ in two weeks’ time. ‘I suppose compear is a legal word for appear,’ she observed to Hugh, who was reading over her shoulder.
‘Parliament House, Parliament Square? That’s the building at the back of St Giles’ Cathedral. I remember seeing it once when I was having a walk when I first came to Edinburgh.’
‘Oh, Hugh, I’m all shaky. I don’t know what to expect, and what’ll I do when I see Bertram?’
‘Ignore him. He can’t do anything to you now.’
Her dreams had been fully taken up with the happy prospect of having her son back, but on the night before the fateful day, she dreamt that she was alone with her father in a huge room, empty except for a bed. He was advancing towards her threateningly, and no matter how hard she tried to run, she couldn’t move. Her feet seemed to be fixed to the floor, her arms tied to her sides, and she could only stand and watch as he came nearer and nearer until she could see the beads of sweat on his brow, the fire of lust in his glazed eyes, the wetness of his drooling lips.
‘You didn’t think you’d get away with having me locked up, did you?’ he sneered, close to her now, and her mouth was so dry that she had no saliva to spit in his face. ‘All the time I was in that place I was dreaming of this day,’ he went on, his voice pulsing with passion, ‘the day I could take my revenge on you. I’m going to kill you, Cissie, but not till I’ve had some pleasure from you.’ His voice changed now, coaxing, ‘Come to your Da, like a good lass.’
When his hands came up to take hold of her, desperation freed her arms and feet of their invisible fetters and she tried to shove him away, her whole body thrashing about wildly, but it was useless. At his touch, she screamed as loudly as she could, then struggled against the weight of his hand on her shoulder.
‘Cissie! Stop it! It’s Hugh.’
Sure that it was a trick, she still fought against her attacker until she was shaken rudely awake and looked up into Hugh’s alarmed eyes.
‘What’s wrong, Cissie?’ he cried. ‘You frightened the life out of me with your shouting. You’ve just had a nightmare, but it sounded like you were fighting for your life.’
She drew in a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I thought I was. Oh, Hugh, I didn’t want you to know about it, but I have to tell you, no matter what you’ll think of me.’
‘Nothing’ll change what I feel for you.’
She told him then how her father had raped her, but when Hugh realised that it had happened just after she had fled from his boyish attempt to make love to her, he groaned, ‘It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t scared you that night . . .’
‘No,’ she burst out, ‘I was scared long before that.’ She explained that, as a small girl, she had listened to the sounds of her father’s lust, and to the agonies her mother had suffered as a consequence. ‘If I’d let you do what you wanted that night, everything would have been all right.’
‘It wasn’t your fault, either,’ he murmured, drawing her even closer to him. ‘So you married Jim Robertson because you were expecting your father’s child?’
‘Jim knew whose it was, that’s why he married me. He was a good man, Hugh, just wanting to give my baby a name, and he didn’t deserve what happened to him.’ In the merest whisper, she told him of her father’s second drunken attempt at rape. ‘It was whitewashed in the papers, but Jim tried to save . . .’
Hugh’s mouth came down gently on hers. ‘I know the rest. I could never believe you’d let that Jim touch you – Ma said he’d a hump on his back – that’s what hurt me most. If only you’d told me about the baby, my darling, I’d have married you. I’d have said it was mine.’
‘I didn’t know what to do,’ she gulped. ‘I thought you’d be sickened at what I’d done.’
‘But it wasn’t your fault. Forget about it, my dear, and think of having your son back tomorrow.’
He cradled her in his arms for the rest of the night, and she could feel her fears – the fears her father and Bertram had instilled in her – diminish in the knowledge that Hugh would never inflict pain on her, would never force her to do anything she was unhappy about. She couldn’t love him any more than she did, and she felt like telling him he could move into her bed for good, that she wouldn’t be afraid if he made love to her, but she wanted their marriage to start off on the right foot.
In the morning, she remembered that she hadn’t told Hugh what had happened in her nightmare, nor that her father was out of prison, but she kept silent. It would only alarm him, and maybe she had let it grow out of all proportion.
Next day, Richard drove Cissie and Phoebe to Parliament House, off Edinburgh’s High Street. Hugh had wanted to go with them, but Cissie told him she would feel easier if he wasn’t there. When they were shown into the waiting area, Elma was already sitting on a form a good bit away from the door, and Cissie averted her eyes hastily as she plumped down on the nearest seat, praying that Bertram would not turn up at all.
They had to wait for some time in the cold corridor, and when Cissie shivered – with apprehension as much as the low temperature – Phoebe gripped her hand. ‘It’ll soon be over.’
At last she was called, and ushered through to a small courtroom to find James Latimer waiting for her. ‘They’ll hear your testimony first and then the witnesses’,’ he told her. ‘Just answer my questions slowly and clearly.’
She was told to take her place in the witness box, and on being asked to describe her life with her husband, she said she had been happy with him until after their son was born.
‘What happened to change this?’
Cissie’s breath was coming in laboured gasps now, and she could hardly bear to get out what the man wanted her to say. ‘My husband – started – doing things.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘Vile, horrible things, and punching me, and biting.’ She gathered strength as she went on. ‘My whole body was covered in marks and bruises.’
‘Can anyone corroborate this?’
‘No. There was nothing showing on my face – and I was too ashamed to let anybody know.’
‘I see. Go on. What finally led you to leave him?’
She spoke now of her brother’s unexpected visit, of Elma’s vicious lie, of being denied entry to her home and access to her baby. When she came to the end, the tears were streaming down her cheeks, but when she was asked if she would like some time to recover, she shook her head.
Latimer then said, ‘Did you make any attempts to gain admittance, or to remove your child from the house?’
After she had given an account of as much as she could remember, she was allowed to stand down, and she was so emotional that she lost track of what was going on, until she heard Bertram’s voice and her head jerked up.
He was standing, erect as usual, and had obviously been asked if the allegations she had made were true. ‘Do I look the kind of man who would ill-treat his wife?’
‘Is that a denial?’ asked the man on the bench.
Bertram turned to him, smiling. ‘Yes, sir, it is.’
Cissie’s heart sank. He looked the perfect gentleman, how could anybody doubt him?
Latimer took up the questioning again. ‘Did you love your wife, Mr Dickson?’
‘Very much.’
If she hadn’t known better, Cissie thought, she would have believed him herself, he sounded so earnest, and she felt like standing up and shouting, ‘He’s a liar!’
‘Yet you believed the maid’ – here the man consulted his notes – ‘Elma Jackson, when she told you that your wife had slept with
another man while you were away.’
‘I didn’t believe her at first,’ Bertram said, looking suitably pained, ‘but she was so insistent, I had to. Why would she lie about such a thing?’
‘Why, indeed? Had your wife ever told you of her brother?’
‘She said that her brother was lost at sea during the war. I did not know she had another brother.’
‘Mrs Dickson has said that you refused to listen when she swore to you that the man who stayed the night in your house was indeed her brother. It seems strange that any man would take the word of a maid before that of his wife. Had you any previous indication that she was unfaithful?’
Waiting for another lie to trip with ease from the smiling lips, Cissie was astonished when Bertram glanced at her and then said, in a voice that rang round the small room, ‘No, I had no reason to think so.’
‘Then why would you not listen to her?’
‘I was so shocked by what the maid told me, I was numb. It was as if I’d had all the wind knocked out of me.’
‘Mrs Dickson called at your office the following day. Were you still in a state of shock?’
‘Have you ever been told that your wife was unfaithful to you?’ Bertram countered. ‘If you had, you would know how it affects a man.’
‘Fortunately, I have never been in that position. Thank you, Mr Dickson, you may stand down.’
Cissie kept her eyes away as Bertram walked past her. And when Elma was called, she wondered if the girl would keep her promise to Phoebe, or if Bertram had talked her out of it. He was so silver-tongued he could make anybody say anything he wanted.
‘I told Mr Dickson that his wife hadn’t said the man was her brother,’ Elma was saying, ‘and when he asked if I’d be willing to swear they only used one bed, I said yes.’
‘They did not use only one bed?’
‘No.’
‘But why should you be willing to blacken Mrs Dickson’s character in this way? Did you not like her?’
‘I’d nothing against her, though it annoyed Cook and me to see her acting the lady when Bertram had told me she was once a spinner in his father’s mill.’ Elma coloured because she had inadvertently used his first name, and added, ‘I slept with Mr Dickson the whole time his wife was in the maternity, and I thought he wanted her out of the way so him and me could . . .’
‘Did he take you as his mistress after he sent Mrs Dickson away?’
‘Not for long. We took Ricky away so Mrs Dickson wouldn’t know where he was, and Mr Dickson slept with me the whole four weeks we were in Glasgow, but when we went back to his house, he told me I was a nanny now, and said I’d to sleep in the room next to Ricky. He treated me just like a servant again, and he took a lot of women home to spend the night with him. It was disgusting!’
‘This made you very angry?’
‘Yes, very angry and very hurt.’
Cissie held her breath. Was he trying to make Elma say she was only testifying against Bertram out of spite?
Elma looked sorrowfully at the presiding Lord of Session now. ‘I did an awful thing, telling those lies, for I knew the man was Mrs Dickson’s brother. They didn’t sleep in the same bed, he was in one of the guest rooms, and that’s the God’s honest truth, I swear to you.’
Cissie was so overcome with relief at this that she did not hear the rest of Elma’s testimony, nor Richard’s calm statement that his son was not to be trusted and that his daughter-in-law was the only morally fit parent to have custody of the child. She was not aware of anything until the Lord of Session said loudly, ‘Divorce granted, and custody of the child goes to the mother.’
Phoebe grabbed her arm and said, in an excited whisper, ‘That’s it, Cissie.’
‘I won,’ she said, in an awed whisper as they walked out of the courtroom.
Phoebe beamed at her. ‘And you got custody of Ricky.’
Her legs giving way now that the ordeal was over, Cissie sat down on one of the forms in the corridor. ‘I just can’t believe it!’ She looked at her stepmother for reassurance.
‘It’s true! Come on! Hugh’ll have his nails bitten up to the elbows worrying about what’s happened.’
Rising slowly, Cissie followed Phoebe to the door, but before she reached it, someone put a hand on her arm. ‘Wait, Mrs Dickson.’
When she turned round and saw the face of the girl who had caused all her misery, a red mist swam before her eyes. ‘Go away!’ she said, brusquely. ‘I’ve nothing to say to you!’
‘I wanted to tell you how sorry I am for what I did, Mrs Dickson,’ Elma pleaded, ‘though I don’t suppose you’ll ever forgive me. I love Ricky, and I’m going to miss him, but I’m glad you’re getting him back.’
‘I wouldn’t have lost him in the first place if it hadn’t been for you,’ Cissie snapped. ‘It doesn’t matter to me now that you’d been carrying on with my husband behind my back, but when I think of the torture I’ve been through since my son was kept from me, and what it must have done to him to lose his mother, I could kill you!’ Realising that her voice had risen hysterically, she stopped, in an effort to gain control of herself.
‘I tried to make it up to him,’ Elma whispered.
The anguish in the girl’s eyes made Cissie feel a touch of unexpected pity for her. It had not been entirely Elma’s fault. ‘Thank you for telling the truth today,’ she said, stiffly, ‘I only wish you had told it at the time.’
Waiting until Elma walked away and was well clear of her, she did not see Bertram coming up behind her and whirled round in alarm when he said, ‘I congratulate you, Cissie, on getting the better of me at last. I never thought you would have it in you.’
Her hand flew to her chest at seeing him looking at her with his old, charming smile. What was he after?
‘You’ll be happy to know that I leave for Canada next week, so this is goodbye for ever, and I wish you good luck in the future.’
She was so dazed that she shook the hand he held out, and he walked away, swaggering a little as if he had been the successful one, not she. Phoebe came hurrying back. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Cissie. I should have made sure you were right behind me. What did Bertram want?’
‘He said he was going to Canada next week. He even wished me luck in the future.’
‘Wonders will never cease. But I saw Elma speaking to you, as well, and I couldn’t get into the corridor because two of the Lords, or whatever they are, were blocking the doorway.’
‘She apologised to me.’
‘I hope you told her what you thought of her.’
‘Yes, I couldn’t help it, but I ended up feeling sorry for her. If Bertram hadn’t turned her head . . .’
‘She was as bad as he was,’ Phoebe said, vehemently.
‘I suppose she was.’
‘Are you ready to go? Richard’s waiting with the car.’
Outside, Cissie looked around her in the bright sunshine. ‘It’s like a different world to me now,’ she told Phoebe. ‘I only want one thing now – no, two things. To hug my son till he tells me to stop, and to marry Hugh.’
Holding the door of the car open, Richard said, ‘Phoebe and I are going to collect Ricky this afternoon, so one of your wishes will be granted in a few hours, Cissie, but we can’t do anything about the other one. That’s up to Hugh.’
‘He’s applied for a marriage licence already, he was so sure I’d get the divorce.’
‘We were all sure of that,’ Phoebe laughed.
‘Phoebe,’ Cissie sounded uncertain now, ‘do you think I’m wrong to marry Hugh? He’ll be my third husband, and we’re happy the way we are.’
Considering this for a moment, Phoebe said, ‘Maybe you’re happy, but I know Hugh’s not. As for it being your third marriage, that’s nothing. Some of the film stars I’ve read about have been married four or five times.’
Cissie had to laugh. ‘This time’ll be the last for me.’
Within ten minutes, she was dashing into the shop. ‘Oh Hugh, they granted me the divorc
e and gave me custody of Ricky. They’re sending me a copy of – what did you call it, Richard?’
‘The Interlocutor of the Lord Ordinary. It’s the verdict in writing.’
With his arm round his wife, he watched Hugh and Cissie dancing round the shop, then he said, ‘This is such a happy occasion that I think we ought to go upstairs and celebrate with the wine I brought.’
Phoebe winked at Cissie. ‘I told you we were all sure of the result.’
‘Good idea, Richard,’ Hugh said, locking the door. ‘We may as well close for an hour.’
All four enjoyed the wine but ate very little of the salad Cissie had prepared first thing that morning, and she was too excited to care. That afternoon, waiting in the shop for Phoebe and Richard to bring her son from Dundee, she could feel her excitement increasing, and it was not until almost four o’clock that she was struck by a dreadful thought.
‘What if Ricky doesn’t want to come?’
Hugh laid his hand over hers. ‘Phoebe says he wants to see his mother.’
‘Maybe he won’t like me. Maybe he . . .’
‘He’ll love you,’ Hugh interrupted. ‘Who wouldn’t?’
‘But he’s being taken away from his home, from the person who’s looked after him for as long as he’ll remember. Elma said she loved him, and I’m sure he must love her. I’ll be a stranger to him, and I won’t be able to give him as much as Bertram did. He’s likely got masses of expensive toys, and he’ll miss that.’
‘Richard said he’s taking as many of Ricky’s belongings in the car as he can.’
‘After living in that great big house, what’s he going to think of this place, Hugh?’
‘If I know wee boys, the sight of all the sweeties’ll win him round. We’ll just have to give him time to adjust.’
‘I’m glad Bertram’s going to Canada. I was worried in case he’d want to come and see his son occasionally.’
Hugh kissed her ear. ‘You’ve nothing to worry about now.’
Cissie wanted to believe him, and tried to put her doubts behind her, just as she tried to put aside the nagging fear that her father would appear and kill them all.
Waters of the Heart Page 33