North Sea Requiem

by A. D. Scott

  She shoved the bag under her bed. But she kept the family allowance book, putting it under her pillow. “I’m doing ma homework,” she called out.

  “Good girl.” Her father went into the sitting room. She knew she would be left in peace, as Dad would be busy cooking. Then he would waken Mum.

  That night, as she often did, she wanted to talk to Charlie, but she was scared, terrified her dad would find out. She was absolutely forbidden to visit Charlie when he was in his wee room out the back. The one time her dad had discovered her secret was because Charlie had nits—caught them from her. It was the first and only time he spanked her.

  “Never ever go out there again. You only play with him when we are all together,” he told her. “I’m only thinking of you, Maureen love—you might catch his disease. How could I cope with three of you sick?” It was the only time he admitted that Mum is sick, she remembered. Charlie isn’t sick, she told herself, he’s just different.

  Tonight was not a night to risk going down to the shelter. Tonight, when Dad woke Mum up for her tea, her mother started sobbing loudly and long. “It’s no’ my fault, I’m so sorry, Malkie, but it’s no’ ma fault.”

  Maureen thought she would put in the little balls of cotton wool she sometimes used to block out her mother’s crying.

  In the night, when her mother had quieted, and after her father had come in to say night-night, and she had heard him shut their bedroom door, she felt under the pillow for the small cardboard-covered book, making sure it was safe. She was scared but did not know why. She was trying to forget the shelter in the garden, the strange woman, Charlie, her mother, her dad, who was trying his best to pretend everything was normal, but Maureen could see how worried he was. Most of all she was trying to ignore the poster with Mrs. Ross’s face, looking out of the telephone box, smiling saying, Hello, Maureen.

  • • •

  Next morning Moira Forbes was coming in the back door and heard someone ringing the doorbell. It was barely light, but to her nothing and no one was strange.

  Mal answered. He was in pajamas and dressing gown. “Good morning.” He looked at his watch, his gesture and the look of surprise as exaggerated as a mime artist. “Nothing wrong, I hope?”

  His pallor, the way he tried to brighten his voice but the voice coming across as too bright, too controlled, his arms protruding from his pajamas, stick thin, worried the policeman, making him think there was more than one person unwell in the house.

  “Good morning, Mr. Forbes,” DI Dunne said. “We’d like another word with you, and I’d like your wife to join us.”

  “My wife is not well enough to talk to anyone. I’m right worried about her . . . woman’s troubles, I’m afraid. She might need an operation. The doctor will be around later.” He hadn’t called a doctor. But the policeman will never know that, he was thinking. “Come in, come in.”

  In the sitting room, Mal Forbes sat down without inviting the detective and constable to sit, making the policemen stand over him. In his despair, Mal Forbes had forgotten his manners—and betrayed his anxiety.

  He shot up out of the chair. “Sit down, sit down, do you want tea? Can I get you a drink? I’m so sorry. My manners. Sorry. It’s just the wife, she’s not at all well.”

  Moira Forbes was listening in the kitchen, hearing what she thought of as her husband’s working voice. The sitting room was at the front of the house, the bedrooms in between, so from the kitchen she could not hear the conversation. Not that that bothered her; she was sublimely unaware that their situation was critical. But she knew that her Malkie was upset at her.

  What were you thinking? He’d said again and again. Moira, this has to stop. You have to let her go. Then he said, We’ll be in real trouble when she tells everyone what you’ve done. He’d even cried a wee bit before shaking his head and washing his eyes and face and telling her he’d look after her. Take her to the doctor for help. That had really frightened her; she was certain that doctors were looking for an excuse to put her in the asylum along with all the loonies.

  Mae Bell she hated. Coming here, asking all those questions about Bobby and the accident. “What accident?” she’d asked. But the American woman said Robert had told her he was worried someone was out to get him.

  Moira vowed that the woman would never be found. Not wi’ all my pills inside her to keep her quiet. Moira was particularly proud that she’d thought of giving the woman her medicine inside the gingerbread. The woman had eaten a slice, said it was delicious but you could see in her face she tasted something strange—too late! Moira smiled, remembering the way the woman wrinkled her nose and took a sip of tea to take away the taste. But there was medicine in the tea, too! Moira laughed out loud at that recollection.

  Says she’s Bobby’s wife, indeed, Moira fumed. He loved me. Besides, all that happened years ago, the aeroplane disappearing, all that. What’s the point in looking for answers now? There aren’t any. They’re all gone.

  She was listening for the conversation with the police to end. Often she was certain she could hear through walls, but not this time. She went back to quietly stoking her rage.

  It’s her, thon woman, she’s the one made me put the wee lad in the cellar again. He should be out in the garden these evenings; he loves the flowers and the birds. Sings back at them so he does. Note-perfect.

  She started drumming her fingers on her thighs. Mal says we have to let her go. Give her answers, then she’ll go back to wherever she came from. Hah! I’ll make sure she goes back to where she came from—in a coffin—just like thon nurse.

  The boy had to be put in the cellar along with the American woman and Joanne. Normally he slept in the nice part of the shed. She remembered making lace curtains and cushions—when she could still operate the sewing machine—lately she couldn’t figure out how on earth the machine threaded. She bought him toys and made sure the bed was nice, but as he grew older he was less and less happy to be shut in a shed for long periods of time. That was when she had to threaten him with the cellar. She used the cellar more and more to hide him away. But that’s because I’m right tired.

  Moira told herself she had to hide the boy. In case someone sees him and takes him away. We look after him; we keep him safe and warm. We wouldn’t give him away to strangers, that was her logic.

  Although Maureen was curious about her little brother, she accepted her mother’s wisdom. “We don’t want him taken away, do we?” her mother had said. “He can’t help it he’s different—it’s the Lord’s judgment on his sins.” What sins a wee baby could commit was as yet beyond Maureen’s capacity to argue.

  “Yer dad, he’s a good job, brings in good money so we can have a nice house an’ nice clothes, an’ a wee holiday or two, and mind you never let your dad know you and Charlie is friends.”

  Moira Forbes used her daughter to help with the more difficult tasks of looking after the boy. Maureen could quiet him when he started shrieking, banging the doors to be let out. When Charlie was particularly difficult—kicking and pushing to get out into the garden, Moira would say to Maureen, “Keep him happy, talk to him. Don’t let the neighbors hear. We don’t want the shame o’ a backwards boy, do we? Think what your friends would say.”

  The time Nurse Urquhart had come to visit, asking about the boy, had been horrible and set her mum off on a bout of crying and screaming that lasted days if not weeks.

  “Mr. Forbes, the records show your wife had a boy five and a half years ago. You say he was committed to the hospital in Aberdeen, but I can find no record of that. If you won’t give me more information, I will have to tell the police.”

  Her mum tried to attack Nurse Urquhart at that visit, but her dad stopped her in time, saying Mum had forgotten to take her pills.

  No, Maureen decided, she didn’t want the shame of a loony brother, she didn’t want teasing at school. There was a girl in her class whose brother had polio. Some of the children tormented this girl, saying she couldn’t join their games; they would refu
se to have her on their team or refuse to sit next to her on the bus in case they caught polio. Maureen hated the thought of what would happen if they found out about Charlie. It had been bad enough being a new girl from Elgin with a different way of talking—one girl asked if she was from the moon. Another asked if she was a loony. They laughed at that.

  Now that she was eleven and a half, Maureen found it hard when she and Mum and Dad went on their “wee holidays”—mostly on the train to Aberdeen, where her mum went to see a doctor. Not a normal doctor but a doctor in this huge, dark hospital outside the city. It’s because your mum’s delicate, Dad explained, she needs medicine for her nerves.

  “Why can’t Mum go to the hospital here?” Maureen had once asked.

  “We don’t want anyone knowing, do we?” Mal Forbes replied.

  When they arrived in Aberdeen on the train, they then had to catch a bus to the hospital, which was way out in the countryside up on a hill, and could be seen for miles. A man in a uniform had to let you in, as the doors were locked. When Mum was with the doctor and she and her dad waited outside, they would watch the strange people wandering around, some talking to themselves, others saying nothing, just looking at the ground and shuffling their feet. If she walked like that, her dad would say, You’re walking like your slippers are too big.

  The times when Maureen begged them not to leave her brother alone, her mother insisted, It’s only two or three days, he’ll be fine. But Maureen knew how he hated being left alone with cold food, mainly biscuits, and only water. Milk goes off, her mother said, and lemonade is bad for your teeth.

  When her brother saw the biscuit tins he’d start this wailing noise that her dad said sounded like a wolf. Even though she did not know what a wolf sounded like, Maureen became upset; there was something haunting, scary even, about the boy’s cries; it was like being at the pictures watching Snow White, waiting for something bad to happen, knowing it was not all fine, like Dad said it was.

  Most of all, when they went away, Maureen was upset because her brother would have no one to empty his bucket for days. Her mum told her that as he was backwards, he wouldn’t notice. She doubted that; when they returned, the stink was so horrible, you could smell it all the way across the garden and in the kitchen—even with the door shut. Her mother told her not to be ridiculous, but Maureen remembered Mum wrapping a scarf around her mouth and nose when she went in to clean after a holiday.

  Maureen could hear the policeman in the hallway. He was leaving. She knew it was the policeman who came before from his voice. Maureen was ironing her school uniform. Dad said Mum always forgot to switch the iron off. She didn’t mind, she liked ironing. She heard the front door shut. She came into the sitting room and asked, “Who was that?”

  “Just something to do wi’ work,” her dad said, but she looked out the window and could see a policeman in uniform open the door for another man, who had a hat on and a raincoat. She thought he looked like the detective who came to the school after Nurse Urquhart was attacked.

  Her mum and dad were now arguing in a soft, half kind of way. She didn’t mind arguing; it was the crying she hated. Especially her dad crying. She went to the kitchen. She ate a spoonful of the porridge her mum had put out. Cold. Salty. Lumpy. She took the porridge and flushed it down the toilet. One time she had put it in the bin, but her dad found it and shouted at her for wasting good food.

  What’s good about watery salty porridge? she wanted to ask but didn’t. Her dad would slap her, but not hard, just a wee slap on her hand or arm. He wasn’t like Annie Ross’s dad, who, another girl had told her, hit hard enough to leave marks.

  Her parents were still arguing, shouting now, so she went out the back door, looked at the sky. No rain on yet. She wheeled her bicycle to the side gate, heard a noise from the shed, and ran to say bye-bye to her wee brother.

  “Help.” Followed by a banging on what sounded like a bucket. “Help, please help.” The voice was faint, and normally Mum had the wireless on loud so you couldn’t hear anything from the shed. She’s forgotten to switch it on, Maureen thought.

  “Help!”

  It wasn’t her brother. It was that woman Mum said was staying in the shed to help her brother with music lessons. It seemed strange to Maureen that a woman would stay in a shed, but then, her mother had been getting stranger and stranger these past months.

  “Charlie?” The boy had no name. He was just “the boy.” But Maureen had named him Charlie after Bonnie Prince Charles, who came from over the water to rescue Scotland. “Charlie, I have to go to school, but . . .”

  “Please help us. She’ll die if you don’t get help.” The woman no longer shouted. Her voice sounded funny, like when you forgot to wind up the old gramophone, Maureen thought.

  “Maureen! Get away from there!” Her mother was screeching in that voice that meant she was about to go “berserk,” as Dad put it. She ran back and grabbed her bike.

  Who the woman was, Maureen didn’t want to know. And why she had been there two weeks, she didn’t want to think about either. There was a lot Maureen didn’t want to think about—things like her mother, her brother, nits.

  Her father came out, shooed her mother back into the house, unlocked the side gate, saying, “Your mum’s not feeling great today.” Before he locked the gate after her, he said, “You’re a good girl, Maureen, but mind and keep quiet about . . .” He looked towards the shed. “You know.” He nodded. “And we don’t want them taking your mum away, do we?”

  “I’ll never tell no one.”

  He patted her shoulder and gave her half a crown. She put it in her coat pocket. It must be bad if Dad’s given me a whole half a crown, she thought as she cycled to school.

  Mal then made his wife a cup of tea and gave her an extra one of the extra-strong pills, enough to knock her out whilst he decided what to do to get them out of this disaster. He shook the brown glass bottle. The pills were nearly finished. He knew Moira was feeding them to Mrs. Bell and he went along with the scheme. Until I can work out a way to send her back to America or Paris or wherever. That had been before this latest disaster.

  Moira was weeping, quietly this time, weeping as easily and as naturally as breathing. Mal understood that she truly loved the boy; she was his mother after all, but she didn’t love him the same way he did. He loved the boy in ways he didn’t understand. He had given up so much—a job, his home, and his friends—for the boy. He had done something wicked to preserve their family. And now this.

  Even Maureen suffered for the boy’s sake, never having friends round to play, never having a wee birthday party in case anyone saw him. They’d all suffered. But he was worth it, their boy. One smile from him and everything was forgotten, forgiven.

  Mal looked out at the dying daffodils along the flower borders beneath the high timber fence. The boy loved daffodils. He would clap his hands and shout, dancing, dancing, whilst the daffodils and jonquils and narcissus did indeed dance in the wind.

  And now this. Mal was looking out of the kitchen window, staring at the shelter at the bottom of the garden, half hidden by a lilac bush and a rank of parallel rows of raspberry canes. Moira had calmed down, the medication taking effect, sipping her tea, totally unaware that disaster waited—whichever way this finished. But Mal knew. He was repeating to himself, How on earth are we going to get out of the mess? What on earth can I do to save us?

  “Does Malkie still love his precious wee Moira?” Her voice was that of a seven-year-old.

  “Always,” he replied. And he meant it. “You know I’d do anything for you.”

  He took her cup, took her arm, led her into the bedroom where the bed was still unmade. He took off her slippers, he held her hand until she fell asleep.

  He went back into the kitchen and turned on the wireless. He caught the news bulletin in the midst of a statement about a missing person. He heard the name, Mrs. Joanne Ross. He jumped up to switch the wireless off. He sat again at the table, his head in his hands, the tears dr
ipping onto the tablecloth. He sat there for a long time. Nothing, no solution came to him. So he made another cup of tea.

  It never occurred to him to take tea to the shelter. That was Moira’s job. He seldom went there—except when he had to help Moira move Joanne Ross.

  He didn’t go there because he did not believe it was his business. She’s not right in the head, he reasoned, she can’t help what she does, but it’s nothing to do with me.

  He’d done his part to save their family years ago. Moira and Maureen—keeping his family together was all he cared about. Then the boy came along. The calamity of their situation he refused to face. If the women die, he was thinking, there will be no witnesses against us.

  Imprisoning a child, letting him out in the dark of night, letting him sleep in the house the few days in the year when the neighbors were on holiday, was, he believed, kind, not wicked. People are cruel, he told himself. If they see him, they’ll laugh, say nasty things about him, about all of us.

  He was angry no longer, only tired; everything that had happened was because Joanne Ross and Nurse Urquhart could not stop interfering. He was scared yet accepting; Moira was ill, she was not to blame. Through the prism of distorted love he could deny his own past guilt and present complicity in acts so evil they could cost lives.

  He got up, put the kettle on, then decided to bake a gingerbread. Moira loves gingerbread. Everything vanished in the ordinariness of beating the butter and sugar, adding the treacle, the ground ginger. The smell: everything hung suspended with the smell of baking filling the house. For two whole hours he could deny his complicity. Then Moira woke up.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Mae was praying for Maureen to visit her brother. It seemed their only hope.

  “Charlie, why don’t you call Maureen?” she murmured, unable to find the energy to talk in the calm, soothing voice she used with the child.

  “Reeeen.” He was rocking back and forth, arms around his knees, keening, “Reen, Reen, come for Charlie.”