The Road to Rowanbrae

by Doris Davidson

  After the nightly ritual of helping his wife with bathing Sam and putting him to bed, Sandy sat down by the fire-side and buried his head in the newspaper. Libby started ironing – she didn’t have the chance while Sam was running about – but when she put the ironing board away, she took a deep breath and said, ‘Sandy, would you put that paper down so we can speak.’

  Laying it on his knee with a sigh, he looked up. ‘What do you want to talk about?’

  The altering of that one word infuriated her. ‘You’ve always got to prove I don’t sp … talk proper, haven’t you?’

  ‘Is that all you wanted to say?’

  ‘I haven’t started yet! I’d like to know why you hardly ever make love to me now? You couldn’t get enough before.’

  He grimaced wryly. ‘Maybe I got too much.’

  ‘Are you blaming me?’

  ‘No, I’m not blaming you. What I meant was … maybe I burned myself out.’

  ‘Or maybe you don’t love me any more?’ Tears of self-pity sprang to her eyes as she plumped herself into a chair and took her handkerchief out of the pocket in her cardigan.

  Sandy gave another deep sigh, ashamed of his lack of feeling towards her, but her primitive attempts to arouse him in bed had repelled him for some time. ‘I just don’t have the same drive nowadays,’ he muttered. ‘Give me time, Libby, and maybe I’ll get over it.’

  In bed that night, next to a wife who had clearly taken umbrage at being denied love, and who was lying with her back to him, Sandy thought over his situation. It had taken him less than a year after their wedding to see Libby for what she really was, less than another year for him to tire of her perpetual sexual demands, and the only thing that made him stay with her was his love for his son. At first, he had hoped that she would improve, and give the girl her due, she had tried, but he knew now that his mother had been right. He should never have married Libby.

  He was ashamed to ask any of his associates to the house, not that it wasn’t presentable these days. It was his wife who wasn’t presentable. She still wore gaudy colours and too short skirts. She still plucked her eyebrows and daubed her cheeks with bright red rouge. She still used garish lipstick and peroxided her hair. She held her knife and fork as if they were pens, and crooked her little finger when she was drinking tea. On top of all that, her harsh voice – even though she no longer spoke in the common dialect – grated on his ears. The wives of his friends would laugh at Libby behind her back if they ever met her, and, much worse, they would pity him.

  He had often thought of taking Sam away with him, but where could they go? He hadn’t been in contact with his mother for nearly three years, and in any case, it was against his nature to admit to her that he had been wrong. He couldn’t afford to buy a second house, nor to rent one, because he would still have to maintain his wife. He was stuck with Libby, like being in prison, with no remission for good behaviour.

  ‘Another new dress? You’ll land me in the bankruptcy courts, Gina.’ Campbell Bisset scowled at his wife.

  ‘Our coffee morning’s at Dot’s tomorrow,’ Gina whined, ‘and she’s seen all my dresses before.’

  ‘So what? I bet they’ve all to wear things more than once.’

  ‘She does, and you should hear the rest of them laughing at her behind her back.’

  ‘They’re a bunch of cats – bored, useless wives, like you.’

  ‘Oh, thank you very much. You’ve a great opinion of me.’

  His eyes softened. ‘You know what I think of you. As far as I’m concerned, you’d be the most gorgeous girl in the world no matter what you wore – sackcloth, even.’

  ‘That’s more like it, but I can’t let my friends see me in any old thing, even if most of them haven’t much dress sense. Diane’s growing quite fat and the horizontal stripes she wears make her look fatter still. Sylvia often wears red, and with her colour of hair, that’s suicidal. Rose has a …’

  ‘You win.’ Campbell threw up his hands in mock surrender. ‘You’ve got more dress sense than any of them.’

  ‘Well, I have,’ Gina said, seriously. ‘I’d be mortified to wear some of the things they turn up in.’

  Winking suddenly, he grabbed her. ‘You know something? I much prefer to see you wearing your birthday suit.’

  ‘Oh, you lecherous brute,’ she gurgled.

  In his haste, Campbell almost tore off the item which had precipitated their discussion.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The outbreak of war came as a blessing to Sandy, who spent the afternoon of the 3rd September 1939 toying with an idea which had come to his mind after Chamberlain’s broadcast. No one would be any the wiser about his home situation if he left to join one of the armed services. His colleagues would think he was mad to give up his career, but they would admire him for his patriotism. It was a heaven-sent way out.

  Several times over the next three months he almost took the drastic step, but his courage always deserted him at the last minute, and it was well into December before he actually did it. Afraid of Libby’s reaction, he didn’t tell her until the night before he was to leave, and she flew at him like a madwoman.

  ‘I know you don’t care about me, but what about Sam?’ she shouted, after exhausting her flow of expletives.

  ‘You’ll get an allowance from the Air Force, and you’ll get my share from the firm.’ He had started up on his own just over a year ago, and had other two solicitors in partnership with him now, so what Libby would receive should be ample to provide for her and Sam.

  ‘You should have told me before this. I had a right to know, and I’d have liked a bit of warning. I know you’re dying to get away from me, but don’t think you can take up with other women when you’re away, for two can play at that game.’

  ‘You’re welcome to “take up” with whoever you like,’ he said coldly, ‘but if you do, I’ll claim Sam when I come back.’

  ‘If you come back,’ she taunted.

  ‘I suppose you’d be pleased if I was killed?’

  ‘I didn’t say that, but there’s nothing between us now, and I’d like a man who would love me the way I am.’

  He felt a pang of shame at having shown his contempt of her so obviously. ‘I can’t help how I feel, and if you want to file for divorce, I won’t contest it, but I’ll fight for my son.’

  With a venomous glare, she said, ‘There’s no point in saying anything else, then, is there? I’m going to bed.’

  ‘I’ll sleep down here on the settee. I have to catch an early morning train, so I won’t disturb you.’

  As he undressed, Sandy’s only regret was that he would have to leave Sam, but he could do nothing else and perhaps things would be different after the war. Perhaps he himself would have changed, even if Libby hadn’t.

  Mysie had been unable to put Doddie out of her mind since the war started, the very word ‘war’ bringing it all back. She had loved him, but with fiery passion, not with the deep, satisfying love she felt for Gregor. Doddie and she had been very young, of course, grasping at life as if they were the only two people who had ever been in love, and it might not have lasted if he had come home. Poor Doddie. He had even murdered to save her life, but she had never understood why he had left her to dispose of the body. That was why she still wasn’t sure that he had done it. That was why she sometimes woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, trying to remember about that second knife.

  Hearing her husband’s key in the lock, she stood up and went into the hall, but one look at his face told her that something was wrong. ‘What is it, Gregor?’

  ‘I’d better tell you,’ he said, gently. ‘I heard today that Sandy is in the Air Force.’

  It seemed as if an icy skin formed on Mysie’s blood, slowing the flow and making her feel faint. ‘Has the call-up started already?’

  ‘Apparently he volunteered and left Aberdeen some time last week. I can’t understand him. I gather that his business is building up well, and it’s senseless for him to gi
ve it up now.’

  ‘Sandy never had much sense.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘He never stopped to think before he did anything.’

  Gregor was relieved that she was taking it so calmly. ‘He’ll regret it, and if he had asked my advice I would have warned him against it, but I haven’t seen him for almost a year.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have taken advice, anyway.’

  Her legs trembling, Mysie went into the kitchen to dish up the supper. She hadn’t seen her only surviving son since the night he and Gina had walked out five years before, but what had made him leave his wife and child? She jumped when Gregor touched her arm – she hadn’t heard him following her through.

  ‘Don’t be upset, my dear. Perhaps this is a good thing. By the time the war is over, Sandy may have come to his senses, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he came home and apologised to you for what he did.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  The hope in her eyes touched him deeply. ‘I can’t promise it, but it’s a possibility. In wartime, a man comes face to face with himself. It’s a time of testing.’

  A little comforted, Mysie stretched up to kiss him.

  ‘You’re so jealous,’ Gina pouted, her eyelashes fluttering. ‘Bob and I only sit and talk, or sometimes we put on a record and dance a bit. It’s nothing more than that, Campbell.’

  ‘You’re playing with fire, my girl, and you won’t know how to cope if it gets out of control.’

  Gina laughed. ‘I can handle Bob, and, anyway, he’s had his call-up papers and leaves in ten days. Don’t be a spoilsport. I get so bored at nights. You didn’t need to join the A.R.P. just because you failed your medical.’

  ‘It doesn’t give you the right to take another man.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake! How often do I have to tell you? Bob and I haven’t made love … not yet. But if you don’t stop being so stuffy, I will let him have his wicked way with me.’

  Her teasing laughter pained him, but he said no more. Gina would please herself anyway, and ten days would soon pass.

  In May, when Mysie was scanning the personal columns, she suddenly put down the newspaper and turned to Gregor in distress. ‘My mother’s dead, and I didn’t know. I should have gone to see her long ago.’

  Gregor, almost sixty-six now and stooping a little, took her hand and gripped it. ‘I didn’t realise she was still alive – you never spoke about her. If only I’d known, I could have taken you to visit her.’

  ‘I should have told you, but I lost touch with her years ago. She married a man …’ Mysie stopped, guiltily. ‘It was my fault. I didn’t like the man she married, so I stopped writing to her, and now it’s too late.’

  ‘We’ll go to the funeral. It says it’s tomorrow – I’m very sorry about your mother’s death – would you like me to stay at home with you today?’

  ‘No, no. I’ll be all right. It’s just … well, she’d a hard life, and I don’t know what happened.’

  ‘You’ll find out tomorrow.’

  The address in the announcement turned out to be the cottar home of her youngest brother, Pat – the baby she had seen in the cradle at the time of her father’s funeral – and she had to explain to him who she was.

  ‘It was Edmund tell’t me to put the death in the Aberdeen paper, for we didna ken where you were,’ he said, awkwardly, eyeing Gregor with open curiosity.

  Mysie guessed that he was wondering who the distinguished-looking man was. ‘This is my husband, Gregor Wallace.’

  The two men shook hands, then Pat took them inside to meet her other brothers and sisters, but only Edmund, a year older than Mysie, had any recollection of her. It was as if she was meeting complete strangers, and when Jessie, four years her junior, bobbed respectfully rather than shaking hands with her, she felt more ashamed than ever at not having made an effort to visit before.

  ‘Louie Gill died aboot three year after him an’ Mother got wed,’ Pat told her, ‘but she was still cook at Tinterty so she just kept on workin’ as lang as she was able. She’d to gi’e it up five year ago, so we took her here, an’ Betty’s had to nurse her for twa year, for she took a shock, a cebeerial hemridge, the doctor said it was.’

  Mysie bit her lip to keep her from crying. ‘I’m glad she’d somebody to look after her. I dinna ken what she must ha’e thought o’ me, her auldest lassie, never comin’ near her.’

  Looking uncomfortable, Edmund muttered, ‘She thought you was dead. Beldie McPherson, her up at Lethen, she’d a cousin in Burnlea … I think her man had the shop at that time …’

  ‘Rosie Mennie?’ Mysie whispered.

  ‘I never heard her name, but it was her tell’t Beldie that your man … eh … Jeems Duncan had walked oot on you, an’ she said Rowanbrae had burnt doon, an’ she never said you’d got oot, an’ we thought you’d been burnt alive. It was a while till I ken’t you was workin’ as cook at Burnlea Hoose, an’ I kept it fae Mother, for she’d ha’e been upset that you never wrote to her. It was best leavin’ her thinkin’ you was dead.’

  ‘She often spoke aboot you, Mysie,’ Pat put in. ‘Mair so the last wee while afore she died.’

  Mysie was so overcome with guilt, and with relief that her mother hadn’t known of her neglect, that she let herself go in a paroxysm of tears, while the others stood by watching her helplessly. After several minutes she said, ‘It’s as weel she didna ken the terrible things I’ve daen, for …’

  ‘Maisie!’ Gregor’s sharp warning made her brothers and sisters look at each other, wondering what she had done that was so terrible, but not daring to ask. At last, Pat said, somewhat enviously, ‘Weel, it looks like you’re settled comfortable enough noo.’

  They made stilted conversation until it was time for the funeral service, but Mysie knew that there was too big a chasm between them ever to be bridged. This would be her last contact with her family, and it was probably just as well.

  On the way back to Aberdeen, Gregor said, sympathetically, ‘It was an ordeal for you, my dear. We shouldn’t have gone.’

  ‘I only wish I’d seen my mother before she died.’

  ‘She thought you were dead, and it would have grieved her more if she’d known what you’d been through.’

  ‘I caused a lot of it myself. Oh, Gregor, do you ever regret marrying such a bad woman?’

  ‘You weren’t bad, you were a victim of circumstances, and I’ll never regret marrying you. I know you’re depressed about your mother, but she was well looked after and you’ve nothing to reproach yourself with. Now stop fretting, my dear. I’m sure no more tragedies will befall you.’

  Mysie doubted if she would ever stop fretting, although her fear had lessened considerably since the byre at Rowanbrae had been converted into a garage, but that secret would always be a link in the chain, the strongest link with her past, and it would never break. Gregor was right about one thing, though. She had lost her father and her first husband – not that she had ever felt anything other than contempt for either of them – her lover, her three beloved children and now her mother. Surely no more tragedies could befall her.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  After his initial training, Sandy Duncan was given ten days’ leave, which he decided to spend in York. On his first day, he took a walk round the city walls, and wondered suddenly what he was doing there. He should be in Aberdeen with Sam … but if he went back to Marquis Road he’d have to face Libby again. The thought of his wife made him uneasy. He had been unfair to her, now that he came to think. She had tried to improve herself, and he had no fault to find with her housekeeping, nor in the way she looked after their son. It was Libby herself who had annoyed him, but if he’d only had patience, advised her on her clothes and her make up, as well as on her speech, she might have become more like a solicitor’s wife should be. She couldn’t help her background, and remembering her as she had been when they met, he realised how much she had changed, and it had all been for him.

  She had actually loved him, yet he had thought
it was only security she was after. In fact, he had sometimes wondered if Sam was his, but one look at the boy had reassured him that he was the father. Before he left, Libby had threatened to ‘take up’ with other men, but that had been said in the heat of the moment, at a time when she had a legitimate grievance against him for leaving her. She hadn’t really meant it, but it was too soon to admit to her that he had been over-hasty.

  Coming down the last step off the wall at Lendal Bridge, he decided to wait for a while – six months or a year, perhaps, to be sure he wasn’t being sentimental at being so far from home – then he would write to her, under the pretext of asking about Sam. If her reply was friendly, he might go back to see her, and it could work out all right for them in the end.

  For the rest of his stay in York, he explored the museums, walked through the Shambles, spent some time in the Minster, found the house where Guy Fawkes had been born, and kept his mind steadfastly off his wife and son.

  When his leave was over, he was told he was being posted to Dyce to train as a fitter – less than three miles from his home. Fortunately, his C.O. listened sympathetically to his appeal against it, and he was sent to Leuchars instead.

  ‘We haven’t been invited out for a while,’ Mysie observed. ‘Not that I’m caring, I’m quite happy being at home with you.’

  Gregor smiled. ‘I’m more than happy to stay at home with you, but I have been wondering why we’ve been more or less dropped from the social round.’

  Mysie sat down on the floor beside his chair. ‘Do you think I shocked them when they were here? We’ve just been to the Parkers once since then, and nobody else has invited us.’

  ‘You did shock them – but only into seeing how idle they are. They don’t have to lift a finger in their own homes, and they discovered that you had no cook, not even a maid, and yet you produced a magnificent feast.’

  ‘Did I overdo it, Gregor?’ Mysie looked at him anxiously.