‘Yes,’ she said. ‘David, it’s half past two. D’you think we could go and cash that cheque?’
He frowned and wondered why he thought the request was a rebuke. Then he cheered up, pulled himself together and said:
‘Excellent. Pay-up. What a nice lunch we’ve had.’
Standing rather vaguely, moving pound notes in and out of his wallet, he added, casually:
‘I suppose we’ll probably never see each other again. That’s rather how life works.’
BOOK FOUR
The Wake
NINETEEN
WHEN MORALS ARE no more, it’s time for efficiency at any price, and women, beyond all things, are practical. Mary’s own pregnancy, which she divulged to no one, made her more, not less, determined.
They buried the Colonel on a sunny winter’s afternoon, in a new grave in a cemetery on a hill. All the men were there except Pink, who felt he could not leave the car, so Stephen took his cord. Pink’s collapse, and the wintry sunlight streaming through bare trees, made the burial a more unnerving ceremony than usual. The moment of silence, afterwards, when all the men looked round like actors starved of words, was at last broken by the landlord of the Queen’s, an expert at funerals who had slipped in to take Stephen’s cord when Stephen had moved to the head. He said simply, ‘I’d forgotten there was so much gravel in the sub-soil up this end,’ and all the minds were diverted from the unseen figure in the box to the ground itself and to safety again.
After the wake, which in this part of Scotland is no more than tea and a whisky for the road, Mary got straight to work. Cathie, the maid or ex-maid, had been called down from her new house in the estate in the village but she was dressed as if for a queen’s funeral, in indirect respect. Her condolences were brushed aside – and ‘condolences’ was Cathie’s word. Mary, who was dressed neatly and smartly in a green suit, sat in the Colonel’s place at the end of the long refectory table and Cathie took one of the chairs at the side. The table was still covered with dirty cups and glasses and spread with the sandwiches and cakes that were left over from the funeral tea.
With the hat and the pram and the house, for she had married John, the policeman, the thickening of the neck and the hardening of the hand, Cathie’s very language had changed. She spoke now, aggressively, with little nods of the head. Her eyes were much fiercer. She said:
‘It’s many things that changed me, Mary. It’s no joke being married, either way. But a Bobby’s the Law and that affects everything. I get the side-long looks. And I’ll tell you for why. Just because he’s a good Bobby. That’s it.’
Mary frowned. She asked, ‘Do people object to him being strict?’
‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ Cathie said truculently. ‘I’m not listening to what they’re saying. They’ll aye gossip about something, some of those. I’m not caring what they’re saying.’
‘You’ve got a child?’
Cathie looked at her sulkily.
‘A-huh. Alan. Just a year old.’
Mary carefully avoided making the calculation.
‘Have you brought him with you today?’
‘No, John’s looking after him. John’s good with him.’
‘I’d like to see him.’
Cathie stared at her for a moment, then she seemed to judge that Mary was sincere. She cocked her head to one side and said:
‘He’s wee, but he’s tough. He’s going to be a real tough guy, Alan.’ Her pride and anger rose together. ‘And he’ll not be a policeman, I’m telling you that. It’s no easy and I know fine. I’m a Bobby’s girl and I married one, and you can take it and do what you like with it. They blame John for doing his job and he’s no friends that way. They used to blame my father for not doing his job. The watch committee and that was always on to something.’
‘Isn’t John happy, then?’
‘Would you be?’ she asked. ‘With no friends just to drink with; always that bit out of it, and parked in a wee place like this while there’s others better at sucking up and nothing else, climbing up the scale in front of you? Would you? I can’t see any man would.’
The difference in Cathie was extraordinary. She talked with one shoulder in front, her eyes filled with resentment.
She said, ‘And there’s no money in it.’
‘I thought the police were paid well.’
‘Tchah!’ she said. ‘Maybe on paper it’s all right and we get a Council house and all the rest of it. But there’s boys over there with nothing in their heads at all makes twice and three times the money on the contracts, at the gravel, or up in the hydro-electric. There’s others sitting by a petrol pump making more, and that’s no’ right. I know what they’re saying about us, just because we got a television. It’s the smallest screen and the longest payment and they all look at us. They watch with big eyes as the man puts the aerial up – Bob Mackintosh it was, and he makes a pile with his van on expenses and that. I came out the back of the house and I said it outright. I says “Why shouldn’t we have one like the rest of them?” Why not?’
‘Of course you should,’ Mary said, like a much older woman, ‘if you can afford it.’
‘Exactly,’ Cathie said, rising to her feet.
‘How’s John, in himself?’
‘Aw,’ said Cathie. ‘It’s ups and downs. I can’t blame him. He gets awful moods of it. That’s why I was anxious to get the television. He just sits sometimes hours on end, drinking his tea.’
There was the picture of life in the new house, with Cathie, now a bundle of practical energy and the big young man, with his elbows on his knees. Mary asked Cathie to sit down again and, with a glance at the clock, she obeyed. Mary said she would run her back in the car. When she offered her the job back Cathie said:
‘It’s no good me coming here if the others don’t like it.’
‘Don’t worry about that.’ Then, changing her voice with the subject, she asked, ‘Are you not going to have another baby?’
Cathie smiled for the first time.
‘Heavens alive,’ she said. ‘Give a lassie time. Alan’s no’ eighteen months yet.’
‘Did you have a bad time with him?’
‘No,’ Cathie said. Her mind slipped back to the room in the house in Aberdeen which had been used as a still-room, before it was a hospital. ‘It was a long time, but not bad.’
‘Who was with you?’
‘There were two at the end. A nice wee nurse was with me most of the time, but I think she knew less about it than me.’ Cathie smiled.
‘What did you talk about?’
‘You’re asking!’
‘You can’t remember?’
‘I can fine,’ Cathie said. ‘Just as if it were yesterday. We talked about dogs. I said about Miss Ferguson, you know, your auntie that keeps all the poodles. “A hundred and nine?” she says; she was amazed. I remember that fine. In a kind of a way I remember it better than what comes after.’
Cathie had relaxed now, and at last she said:
‘If you want to know I’m glad you’re back, Mary. Never mind the job like, we’ve missed you. I have really; I’ve said often I’ve wished you were here.’
As Mary nodded and said. ‘Thank you,’ she realised that her eyes were filled with tears. She said:
‘You’re the first one to say it,’ and the tears fell down her cheeks.
Cathie, putting the tears down to the Colonel’s death, said:
‘You’ve had an awful day of it.’
They both got up and after a moment or two Cathie insisted that she could make her own way back. She said again that Mary had had a day of it. Anyway, she went on, she wanted to get some bread on the way, for their tea. When Mary said she should take some from the kitchen Cathie cut her short. She said, with a frown, ‘No thank you. We’re not as poor as that.’
Mary showed her out of the house and coming out of the room they passed Macdonald. It was obvious to Mary that she had been listening at the door. She said rather grandly:
�
��Macdonald, Cathie will be starting again on Monday. She’ll be working in the mornings and those afternoons which she can manage.’
‘I’m glad, I’m sure,’ said Macdonald flatly, and nodded to Cathie, who returned her look with one that was not far short of impudence.
They passed on, but when Mary returned to the dining-room, she closed the door behind her. Macdonald was putting the plates on a tray.
Mary said, ‘I know you were listening.’
‘I wasn’t eavesdropping. As I passed by the door I couldn’t help hearing something you said.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know what your intentions are, but if you want to keep a secret I should have thought you’d be best not to spill it to a young girl like Cathie.’
‘I didn’t tell her any secrets.’
‘No? Well, that’s all right then.’
Mary said, sharply, ‘Two or three times in the last twenty-four hours you seemed to have been trying to insinuate something, Macdonald.’
‘Oh yes? What’s that?’
‘I wish I knew,’ Mary said. ‘It’s you who’s being so mysterious,’
Macdonald said, ‘Mary, we used to be very close.’
‘I’m not sure what that’s got to do with it.’
‘I’m not curious. I’m here if you want me.’ But she could not help adding, ‘I’d have thought looking after you and your mother for near thirty years would make me someone better to turn to than an embittered wee girl like that.’
Mary was rather pink in the cheeks, She gathered up the plates swiftly, as if her hands were saying to Macdonald’s, ‘You’re slow and laborious and boring.’
She used one of Pink’s expressions. She said:
‘It sounds to me as if you’ve picked up a fag end. I don’t know what you heard.’
‘I heard you ask her about Alan being born.’
‘Yes, I did. I happen to think Cathie’s had rather a rough time.’
‘If you don’t want to tell me, then I don’t want to know—’
Mary said briskly:
‘I really can’t think what you’re talking about, Macdonald. I suppose you’re getting all Shetland and mystic. But I do hope you’re not going to go ga-ga in your old age. That would be the last straw.’
‘A-huh,’ Macdonald said, continuing to clear the dishes. ‘Lerwick’s answer to Cassandra – whatever that may mean.’
The conversation then turned to Pink. Mary gripped the back of the chair at the end of the table as if to anchor herself. She poured herself some tea from the pot which was now cold.
‘Did you find out what happened?’
‘Yes.’
‘Something did go wrong?’
‘Yes,’ Macdonald nodded. ‘I don’t know how you knew.’
‘I saw him when we left and I saw him afterwards. I saw the boys gather round in here.’
‘He didn’t have anything to drink.’
‘He had a lime juice and soda,’ Mary said. ‘That’s odd enough. But I could have told without that.’
‘You can read Pink,’ Macdonald said, perhaps with envy. ‘You can read him better than I can.’ She waited amoment, then she went on, ‘Will you not have milk in that tea?’
Mary shook her head.
‘You used to have milk in your tea.’
‘I don’t now.’
‘So I see. Mind, I can read you all right. We were always very close.’ Macdonald seemed to be taking count of the number of cigarettes Mary smoked.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Mary said. ‘Is it a crime for me to smoke?’
‘No,’ Macdonald said. She was standing in her usual place, in front of the fender, at the far side of the table from Mary. She added, ‘I don’t wonder you smoke.’
‘Tell me what happened.’
‘It was Wee Alec told me, out there by the cars, when I took him his dram. He told me the episode. Pink didn’t manage it.’
Wee Alec was the young man with long hair and suède shoes who ran the Building, Contracting and Undertaker’s business.
‘Manage what?’
‘You know, at the grave. D’you know what happens?’
Almost as if it were a fact of life, not of death, Mary looked down at the ashtray and said, ‘I don’t suppose I know all the details.’
Macdonald said, ‘You’ve had nothing to eat.’
Quietly Mary replied, ‘Go on.’
‘They let it down with cords. It’s Pink who should hold the main one, but he didn’t manage.’
‘At the grave-side?’
‘Before that, so I gather.’
‘Walking through the town?’
‘No, he’s all right then, walking well, looking straight ahead of him at a point above the flowers on the hearse. I saw him going off. He was fine then. It’s when they got to the graveyard, out in the open like. Walking up there on the curve of the hill.’
‘What did he do?’
‘You know he’s got this thing about open spaces now. They’ve got a name for it. The doctor said—.’ She could not remember it. She continued, ‘When he came away from the cars at the gate Wee Alec said he sort of panicked. Stephen’s by him and he turns back to Peebles and Spud Davidson and some of the boys.’
‘Then?’
‘They come round him and he’s dithering, kind of, Wee Alec said. Anyway, they take him back to the cars.’ She paused and then added, ‘But Stephen coped.’
Mary said, suddenly, ‘You’re fond of Stephen.’
Macdonald brought her feet together.
She said, ‘Yes, Mary, I am. We all admire Stephen, the way he’s kept a straight road. The day you went he was out in the fields until the gang knocked off; on the potatoes then. I think your father would be glad it’s him, at the end.’
‘He always said he was wet.’
‘He’s not wet. And your father didn’t say things like that, at the end.’
Macdonald moved away and Mary began again.
She asked, ‘Did Stephen see much of him?’
‘To begin with, but not at the end. You wouldn’t have recognised him at the end. The last three months he never saw anybody but myself.’
Mary wanted to ask, ‘Why didn’t somebody send for me?’ but was afraid of ‘He didn’t ask’. She drank some more. Then Macdonald, seeing how weary she looked, said more softly:
‘If you’d been here, you couldn’t have done anything. There wasn’t any hope. He knew that. But he changed, Mary—’
‘You must tell me some day,’ Mary said, coolly, and Macdonald looked angry.
‘I will, some day.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.’
Macdonald did not reply.
‘– I promise I didn’t. We really all rely on you. I don’t know how you managed.’
But Macdonald was not friendly.
‘It was useful I’m big, after all. I had to carry him, in the bedroom, like. He never came downstairs again. I lived the two lives, one here and the other up with him. He moved into your mother’s room. He was thin, too, when he went.’
‘And not quite white,’ Mary said. ‘And aged about twenty; I saw.’
Then stubbing out her cigarette she went on:
‘It’s curious, isn’t it, how women know nothing about burials. These cords and things.’
‘Only hearsay,’ Macdonald replied steadily. ‘But we know quite a lot about birth.’
Mary felt the colour rising in her cheeks. Her arm was outstretched, reaching to the ashtray, and she let it rest for a moment, deciding whether she should take up the remark. But the decision was postponed because Pink came in.
He looked shiny. His hair was wet and smoothed down. He advanced rather hesitantly, and then as if he were speaking of a dinner party or a wedding reception he said:
‘It seemed to go off all right.’ He nodded at the table. ‘Jolly good tea.’ He congratulated Macdonald with a cock of his head.
Mary looked at him curiously and asked:
‘Sorry?’
He had taken, lately, to prefacing most of his replies like this, as if he had not quite heard what was said. It gave people the impression that his mind was always occupied elsewhere; that he knew no rest.
‘Not a bit of it. Just a wash and brush up.’
‘I suppose Stephen’s down at the farm,’ Macdonald said.
‘Trust old Stiffy,’ Pink winked. ‘He never misses a day.’
Pink did not fail to notice the edge in Mary’s voice. She spoke as if she disliked him. She did not look him in the eye as she asked:
‘Why didn’t you go with him?’
‘Not really an awful lot of point.’
Macdonald came to his rescue.
She said, ‘Stephen’s the farmer now. They’ve got it all organised.’
‘Then what on earth does Pink do?’ Mary asked across his face.
‘Sales, promotion of same; market,’ Pink replied.
Mary almost snorted.
‘Does Stephen do the dairy too, then?’
Macdonald said nothing and Pink, with an old technique of his, instead of saying, ‘Well, yes he does,’ said with enthusiasm:
‘Absolutely, he’s a bloody marvel at it.’
‘I see.’
‘Pink looks after the personnel,’ Macdonald said, charitably.
‘That’s it,’ Pink said. ‘Sort out their lives for them and that sort of thing.’
Mary said suddenly, ‘What have you been doing then?’
‘Just now?’
‘The others left an hour ago.’
‘I say,’ Pink said, moving his head sideways and looking at her from another angle, but she did not relax. ‘To tell the truth, chaps, I felt a bit lonely, so I wandered in here.’
Quickly sensing that the appeal had failed, he then added, ‘But if you want a time and motion study—.’ He paused, and moved his mouth as he searched for his next phrase. He, too, had begun to talk as if he disliked Mary.
‘Then may I inform you that I have just finished rather a tricky interview with one of our ex-employees?’
‘Who’s that?’ Macdonald asked.
Pink nodded mysteriously, and lit a cigarette. She mentioned the name of an Italian, ex-prisoner of war, whom Stephen had felt forced to have sacked. But Pink shook his head.
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