This was too awful to contemplate, and he turned his mind to Beth herself. It was after one in the morning, so where the devil could she be? Remembering that she always went to Glasgow by train, he felt some degree of relief. She hadn’t gone to see her solicitor, thank God, but she should have left word to let him know where she had gone. Maybe she’d had an accident? For all he knew, he could now be the owner of all her worldly goods.
He savoured this lovely thought for some time, then common sense prevailed. If she had been in an accident, the police would have come and told him. This led to a more disturbing thought. Any normal husband would have reported his wife’s unexplained absence, but he wasn’t any normal husband – he was a blackmailer and a thief, and the last thing he wanted was bobbies sniffing around.
Then it crossed his mind that there was quite a bit of cash in the safe at Le Denis. He could help himself to the lot and scarper. He would have enough to get him anywhere in Europe, maybe even farther, and there were hundreds of rich widows in the world just waiting to be fleeced. He could assume a new identity, and begin a new life.
For some time, he pictured himself surrounded by admiring females, then his castle-in-the-air disintegrated abruptly. Beth would never let him get away with it, and he’d be as well going to bed and waiting for further developments.
***
Emerging from the deep sleep of exhaustion and finding that she was not alone in bed, Katie thought for one delicious moment that George had come back, then the events of the previous day bulldozed into her consciousness. Her elation vanished as she remembered that her bedfellow was Beth, who had seen her through the whole horrific business.
The woman at her side stirring, Katie said, shyly, ‘I’ll get up and light the fire to make some tea.’
Beth rolled over and smiled. ‘That’s a good idea. I don’t know about you, but I’m famished.’
There was a moment’s silence, then Katie murmured, ‘I’m sorry, but there’s nothing in the house. You see …’ She tailed off, her cheeks reddening with embarrassment.
Guessing, correctly, that she had no money, Beth smiled, ‘It’s all right, I’ll dress and go and buy something.’
Neither of them having had anything to eat for nearly twenty-four hours, they made short work of the bacon and eggs Beth brought back, and demolished six slices of toast between them, then she leaned back with a satisfied sigh. ‘The time has come, the walrus said …’
‘I haven’t thanked you for all you did,’ Katie murmured. ‘I’d never have survived yesterday if you hadn’t been here.’
‘All part of the service,’ Beth laughed.
Katie looked suddenly puzzled. ‘Beth, did I dream it, or did you really tell me last night you were Dennis’s wife?’
‘I did and I am. I got your letter and I came here to find out exactly what my dear husband had been up to … but things took it out of my head.’
‘Yes, things took everything out of my head, and all. I’m sorry if my letter upset you, but I was mad at Dennis …’
‘It didn’t upset me. It just proved he’s the stinker I suspected he was, but I … well, I loved him. Not any longer, though! You said he’d been blackmailing you for months, so what finally drove you to write? Or would it help if you started from when and how you met him? I’m a good listener.’
Katie began even further back, at the time she went to the Howe of Fenty, to explain where Mr Gunn fitted in, and why she had eventually ended up in Peterhead. There was no bitterness as she described how Dennis had treated her, but her eyes darkened when she came to what had finally made her crack. ‘I felt awful when I discovered Sammy had died, and I often wondered why I hadn’t been told, so you can understand why I saw red when Dennis said he had destroyed the letter the superintendent sent me. He actually sneered about it, and the only way I could get back at him was to write to his wife. I didn’t stop to think how you would feel.’
‘I’m glad you wrote, it helped me to make up my mind. He’s an out-and-out waster, and I’m going to divorce him.’
Katie heaved a deep sigh. ‘George wants me to divorce him, and all. He’s living with a girl in Buckie, so I do have grounds, but I don’t want a scandal.’
‘But the scandal won’t be about you, it’s not your fault. Be sensible, Katie. Why should you keep yourself tied to a man who doesn’t want you?’
‘You think I should go ahead, then?’
‘Yes, I do. Cut yourself completely off from the past and learn to live freely again.’ Beth stopped, pursed her mouth for a moment, then said, ‘I’m in no hurry home, not to that twister, so do you feel like taking a walk? The fresh air would do us both good, then I’ll treat you to lunch in the Seafield Arms.’
There was an underlying motive behind this proposal. Beth still had something to find out, and she needed time to work out the delicate questions she would need to ask.
Chapter Thirty-two
When Katie came in from the coalshed, Beth noticed that the scuttle was less than half full – mostly just dross – and she made a mental note to do something about it … after she had cleared up the other matter.
‘I really enjoyed that,’ Katie smiled. ‘I’ve never had a meal in a hotel before, though I served plenty in my time.’
Beth’s laugh was a little edgy, because she knew she could procrastinate no longer; it had been niggling at her, eating at her very core, ever since she opened Katie’s letter. ‘I don’t suppose you know who lived in this house before you, do you?’ She tried to sound nonchalant, though her nerve ends were raw with apprehension, and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to know, after all.
The question was so unexpected that Katie looked at her in amazement. ‘I’ve no idea who was here before us.’
‘Oh, well, it doesn’t matter.’
Katie wouldn’t let it rest. ‘Why did you ask that?’
‘I said it doesn’t matter,’ Beth said, her disappointment making her tetchy. ‘I thought this was where … somebody I knew used to live, but maybe it’s not the right house.’ It was the same house, she was sure of that, but she added, ‘I must have made a mistake. It was a long time ago.’
‘In that case, I can’t help you. If my Grandma had still been alive, she’d have been able to tell you where to go. She knew everybody in Seatown, for she came to this house when she married Granda.’
The blood drained from Beth’s face, and she could feel the pulsing of her heartbeats in her ears and throat. She had not expected this, never had the slightest suspicion. ‘What was their name?’ she whispered.
‘Mair. Mary Ann and William John Mair.’
‘Ah!’ It came out in a long breath as Beth struggled to come to terms with what this information meant.
Wondering why she looked utterly thunderstruck, Katie said, ‘Did you know my Granda and Grandma?’
‘Yes, I knew them.’
She had closed her eyes, and her voice was so strange that Katie waited in suspense for her to speak again.
‘Katie, would you mind telling me when you were born?’
Mystified as to where these questions were leading, Katie replied, ‘The fourth of June, nineteen hundred and seven.’
Beth took a handkerchief from her sleeve to wipe her eyes, then said, unsteadily, ‘I never dreamt … when I read your letter … the name Katie didn’t mean anything to me except the girl Dennis had …’ She stopped and swallowed. ‘I had you christened June, you see, after your birth month.’
‘You had me christened?’ Katie’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. ‘You’re my mother?’ Her initial joy changed to resentment that this woman – who, for most of her life, she believed had died giving her birth – had stayed away for so long after abandoning her. ‘Grandma thought June was too fancy,’ she said, stiffly, ‘and she called me Katie, after her own grandmother.’
Aware that Katie’s emotions were acutely fragile, Beth blew her nose. ‘I’d better tell you everything, so you can understand why I did what I did.’
<
br /> Katie listened with an expression of resignation as she learned that Lizzie Baxter, as Beth had been then, had met the young William John Mair in Portknockie when he had been visiting one of his shipmates. ‘It was love at first sight,’ Beth went on, ‘for me, anyway, and after we’d kept company for a good few weeks, William John took me to Cullen to meet his folks. His father made me very welcome, but it was like his mother couldn’t bear the sight of me, I don’t know why.’
‘I know,’ Katie said, quietly. ‘You’re the daughter of the man that jilted her when she was young. It was in the letter she left, and she said she never forgave him.’
‘So that’s it!’ Beth cried. ‘I wish I’d known at the time, I wouldn’t have felt so hurt.’ Wondering if the brutal truth would be too much for Katie, if she should water it down, she decided against it. ‘Your father always wanted something better than he had, and when somebody told him there were fortunes to be made in America, he was determined to go over there and get rich. I knew he resented you from the minute you were born – he was jealous of the love I gave you – but I couldn’t believe it when he said you were the only thing holding him back. I thought at first it was an excuse for him not going, that he’d got cold feet, but he came home one night, half drunk …’
Her abrupt stop made Katie say, ‘Go on. What happened?’
‘He said we were leaving Portknockie in the morning to get the boat from Greenock, and I’d have to leave the bairn with his mother, and when I told him I’d never do that, he said he would smother you. Well, I pleaded and pleaded with him for ages, but it ended up with him saying he would go by himself if I hadn’t got rid of you by the time he came back, and then he went out. I was nearly demented, for I was very young, not long seventeen, and I loved him in spite of the other girls he took up with, in spite of knowing he was capable of killing his child to get his own way. And so … there was only one thing I could do. Oh, Katie, you can’t imagine the agony it was, but I bundled you into a basket and pinned a note to your shawl …’
‘I know, I found it among Grandma’s things.’
‘It was the middle of the night, and his mother had been so nasty to me I just left you on the doorstep.’ There was another silence as Beth recalled the heartbreak of her walk along the coast road on that July night nearly twenty-five years before.
In a strained voice, Katie said, ‘Why did you come back from America? And what happened to … my father.’
Beth sighed deeply. ‘He caught a fever just weeks after we went to Detroit, and I nursed him till he died. I was left penniless, so I took a job in Morton’s factory, and … well, to cut a long story short, I married the boss three months later. I didn’t love Tom at first, but he was a good man and I had twelve very happy years with him before he was killed in an accident.’
‘I’m glad you were happy.’ Katie pointedly stressed the word ‘you’.
Caught up in her memories, Beth did not recognize the sarcasm. ‘I was a widow again, but not destitute this time. The factory had been converted into an automobile plant, and I’d more money than I knew what to do with. All the fortune hunters of the day swarmed round me, and I got so sick of it I rented out Tom’s house and booked a passage to Scotland. I came straight to Cullen after I landed.’
‘But you didn’t think of coming to see me?’ It was clearly an accusation.
‘Katie, I was aching to see you, to know how you’d grown up. I wanted to take you away with me, but I wasn’t sure if you’d want to come. You’d have been thirteen, old enough to be angry at me for deserting you.’
‘I didn’t know you deserted me, for my Grandma told me you died when I was born.’
‘So that was how she explained it?’ Beth shook her head at Mary Ann’s cruel invention. ‘I was terrified of her, Katie, after the way she treated me the only time I met her, and even though I was a lot older when I came back, my stomach was in knots when I was walking down from the station. Then I spotted her coming out of the butcher’s, and I couldn’t face being humiliated in the street, so I turned and took the next train out. The only way I could bear to leave you again was telling myself your grandmother would be looking after you properly.’
Katie sighed. ‘I suppose she did look after me properly … but I always thought she didn’t even like me, till I found her letter telling me everything.’
‘If I’d known you weren’t happy, I’d have confronted her that day, but … oh, what’s the good of crying over spilt milk? Anyway, I started looking for somewhere to settle, and I chose Peterhead because I fell in love with Dennis.’ Beth gave a wry smile. ‘I couldn’t have done much worse, could I? He really took me in.’
‘Me, too,’ Katie said. Knowing that her mother had made an effort of some kind to come and see her, she felt slightly warmer towards her.
‘After a while, though,’ Beth continued, ‘I could see the kind of man he was, but I let things drift because I still loved him.’ She pulled a face and added, ‘I’d like to wring his blasted neck now.’
The ghost of a smile touched Katie’s lips, and Beth went on, ‘I was knocked sideways when I got a letter from the very house where I’d left my baby. I thought a family called Buchan had moved in when the Mairs died, and I really came to find out if any of them knew what had happened to my daughter. I’d no idea Katie Buchan was really June Mair.’
‘I’ve never been June,’ Katie burst out, defiantly, ‘and I don’t feel like a June, so I’m going to keep on being Katie, whatever you think.’
Beth realized that the barrier Katie had erected between them would take a long time to breach. ‘I don’t mind. I stopped being Lizzie when Tom called me Beth, and I thought it sounded nicer. Katie’s a lovely name, and I couldn’t wish for my daughter to have turned out any better.’
Katie looked at her doubtfully. ‘I still can’t think of you as my mother.’
A great sadness swept over Beth, and she wondered if the barrier was too great to be broken, after all. ‘That’s not surprising, since I was only a mother to you for the first month of your life.’
Hearing the pain behind the words, Katie said, ‘I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t really your fault, but I can’t …’
Beth was unable to keep back the tears which spilled out, and the sight of them coursing down her cheeks made Katie move over to kneel beside her. As she hesitated, wondering if she should say something or just leave her to cry, Beth turned with a hoarse sob and held out her arms. In the next instant, they were holding each other tightly, Katie’s eyes overflowing, too, and for the very first time, she knew the comfort of a mother’s arms.
Beth was weeping for the infant she had abandoned, for the years of childish development and growth she had missed, and with joy at having found her daughter again. Katie, on the other hand, was weeping for the grandfather who had loved her, for the simple-minded youth who had set himself up as her protector, for the grandmother who had hidden her love until it was too late. Then, and only then, did she spare a few tears for the woman who had borne her, the woman who had been forced to leave someone else to bring her up.
‘Oh, Katie,’ Beth said at last, with a catch in her voice, ‘I knew you’d come round.’
Drawing in her breath, Katie pulled away, scrubbing her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve. ‘I don’t know … give me more time, Beth. It’s been an awful shock, coming on top of … everything else. Once I get over that, maybe I’ll …’
‘Yes, I guess I’m rushing you. I should let things take their own course.’ Beth took out her handkerchief to dry her tears. ‘Now, I think we need a cup of tea.’
After the refreshment, Beth got to her feet and picked up her handbag. ‘Katie, don’t go flying up in the air at me, but I know you’re short of money, so …’
Katie’s face turned scarlet. ‘I won’t take anything!’
‘You never had anything from me in all those years, and I’ll be cut to the quick if you refuse. I’ve got plenty. I took quite a lot out of the bank the other day, and
I never leave anything in the house in case Dennis finds it.’ She took out a roll of notes, peeled off some and laid them down on the table. ‘I can’t have my new-found daughter starving herself to death. Pocket your pride, Katie, it’ll get you nowhere. Buy coal and whatever else you need.’
At the door, she turned with a grin. ‘Dennis is in for the shock of his life tonight. Doesn’t that make you feel good?’ She left without waiting for a reply.
Even the thought of Dennis reaping a fitting harvest from all his treachery didn’t matter to Katie at that moment, and sitting down in the armchair which had once been her beloved grandfather’s – where he had so often taken her on his knee and made her feel the most important person in the world – she drew her legs up under her and curled into a tight ball. If Beth had claimed her when she was thirteen, she thought miserably, she would have been saved all the anguish she had gone through in later years. That would always rankle in her mind, keep her from being a loving daughter. She gave a low groan. ‘Oh, Granda, I’d give anything to have you here now to tell me what I should do about Beth.’
All day, Dennis had the feeling that the sword of Damocles was about to fall on him. It grew so strong that he wondered if he should go home to pack and make himself scarce before his wife turned up, then he laughed at himself for worrying. Even if Katie had written and Beth had gone to see her, he would deny everything, and she loved him so much she would believe him. As the old saying went, ‘There’s none so blind as them that don’t want to see.’ Or something like that.
When his staff left, he transferred all the money in the cash register to the safe, for it wouldn’t do to be found helping himself at a time like this. Putting on his trilby, he locked up and set off for Queen Street. His step faltered when he saw the car outside the door, then he strode inside, bracing himself for the attack, not the defence.
The Three Kings Page 35