Poor wee Alexander. Gina had called him after Sandy, and he had been the light of Gregor’s life, and hers, from the day he was born. They had worshipped him, and they’d come to Gina’s house every day to take him out, in the pram until he was old enough to walk himself. He’d been such a bright boy, drinking in everything she told him about the different trees, and the wild flowers, and the birds. He could name them all without any help in no time at all, and he’d been so pleased when they told him he was very clever. He had only been four and a half when the tragedy struck. Meningitis. Gina had not been able to have any more children.
She was still almost certain that it was Alexander’s death that had started Gregor’s health deteriorating so quickly. It had affected him as badly as it had affected her, but he had been a great comfort to her. She would never have got over it if he hadn’t been there, but only a couple of months later, he’d begun to forget things, to be bad-tempered, and he had never been like that before. It was a year or so after that before he grew senile altogether, not able to do a single thing for himself, and she had nursed him day and night for seven long years. Not that she minded, for he would have done the same for her if their positions had been reversed. Gina, of course, had wanted her to get a proper nurse in, but she had stuck to her guns. It was her place to look after her husband.
By the time Gregor died she was so worn out that she didn’t even feel like arguing when Gina told her to sell the house and come to live at Bieldside, and it had taken her a month or two to get her strength back. She might have known that they wouldn’t get on, together all day like that, and it was probably because she had interfered too much that Gina had taken a job. Her daughter had done very well, and was now an active partner in a pair of boutiques, as they called dress shops now – out all day, though she came back at dinnertime.
When Gina came home for lunch, she was alarmed at being told that her mother had been asleep in the lounge for an hour and three-quarters. Hurrying through, she made up her mind to be firmer. This couldn’t go on. ‘Mother,’ she said gently, ‘it’s time for lunch.’
‘Already? I just shut my eyes for a minute.’
‘Marion said you’d been sleeping for nearly two hours.’
‘Oh no, I couldn’t have been.’
‘Oh yes, you were. I’ve let you have your own way ever since you came here, but I’m putting my foot down now. You are not to do any housework in future. I’d have thought you would have had enough of it, anyway. You’ve been here for over twenty-two years, and you kept house for seventeen of them, so …’
‘I didn’t do the heavy work, there was always a cleaner.’
Gina felt her anger rising. ‘Don’t quibble. You didn’t even stop working when I did get a housekeeper in. Goodness knows what they must have thought of me for letting you go on the way you’ve been doing, and it’s got to stop. I mean it.’
Mysie frowned and made to stand up, but her legs wouldn’t take her weight and she sat back heavily. ‘Oh, Mother.’ Gina was concerned now. ‘You’re not fit, and I’m only doing it for your own good.’
‘You can’t expect me to sit about all day doing nothing,’ Mysie muttered, but she knew in her own heart that what her daughter said was true. She wasn’t fit any longer.
‘You could knit, or take up embroidery, or read books. Oh, there’s plenty of things you could do to pass the time.’
‘Pass the time? Aye,’ Mysie observed, mournfully, ‘that’s all I’ll be doing from now on, I suppose – passing time. Well, maybe it’ll not be for much longer.’ Letting her daughter help her to her feet, she went through to the dining room.
Mysie took to lying in bed later in the morning, watching television in the lounge all forenoon and having a nap in the afternoon. In spite of this, she often felt ready for bed in the early evening and went upstairs at eight. ‘I’m stiffening up,’ she informed Gina one day. ‘All this sitting about’s not good for me.’
Her daughter had noticed that she was very unsteady on her feet, but had assumed that it was just the ageing process. ‘It would be a lot worse for you if you were on your legs all day. Do you want me to get the doctor in to have a look at you?’
‘He’d laugh at me.’ Mysie hadn’t much faith in doctors.
Gina talked things over with her husband that night. ‘Do you think I should stop going to the shop and stay at home to look after her?’
After considering briefly, Campbell said, ‘I don’t think she’d be happy about that, and she would still be sitting all day. Her arthritis is getting worse, and she’ll soon be off her feet altogether. Anyway, you would just get on each other’s nerves again, and that’s why you went out to work in the first place.’
‘I would never forgive myself if anything happened to her and I wasn’t here.’
‘Forget it, Gina,’ he advised. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to her for a long time yet. I know she’s old, and her legs are a bit dodgy, but her heart is as sound as a bell. You should be retiring next year, in any case, shouldn’t you.’
‘Don’t remind me that I’ll be sixty-five on my birthday,’ she pouted. ‘Anna and I are the same age – we were in the same class at school – and we’re going to have to discuss what to do with the shops soon, but we haven’t mentioned it yet.’
‘You should have packed it in when you were sixty.’
‘Anna didn’t, but I suppose we will have to sell them.’
Although the subject wasn’t mentioned again, Mysie knew that it had only been shelved. Within herself, she knew that her legs were … on their last legs – she chuckled at the thought – and that it was just a matter of time before she would be as dependent on someone else as Gregor had been on her during the last few years of his life. It was inevitable. Her body would give up gradually, bit by bit, and she’d be very fortunate if her brain lasted as long as her heart. Gregor’s hadn’t.
She would hate for Gina and Campbell to have to put up with a senile old woman, dribbling at both ends … it was quite unthinkable. But it had to be thought about, planned for.
Two days later, she voiced her idea after they had finished their evening meal. ‘I want to go into a home.’ Their wary, shocked expressions told her that they thought she had gone over the edge. ‘I’m not mad, I know what I’m saying. I want to go into a home. I’ve given it a lot of thought, Gina, and I don’t want you to be tied to the house looking after me.’
Gina found her voice at last. ‘But I wouldn’t mind …’
‘I know what it’s like, remember, and it wasn’t so bad for me, because I loved Gregor with all my heart.’
‘But I love you, Mother, and I’m quite prepared to stop work to be here with you … I should have stopped long ago.’
‘My mind’s made up. The places they have nowadays, private nursing homes they’re called, they’re not like the places the old folk were put into long ago. They were more like lunatic asylums, but the new ones are like … hotels, and there’s people to look after you, day and night, if you need it. And because they’re run privately, you can move if you don’t like the first one you go to. I’ve read all about them.’
Campbell spoke now. He hadn’t wanted to interfere before, but he could see that Gina was on the verge of tears. ‘Look, Mother, if you’ve made up your mind, I wouldn’t think of trying to make you change it, but you’ve lived here for so long that I’d have thought you would consider it your home.’
Mysie held up her hand. ‘I’ve outlived my usefulness, and it’s time I was moving on.’
‘Oh, Mother,’ Gina burst out, ‘you don’t have to move on. I’ll stop working right now and I’ll be here every day with you.’
‘And that’s just what I don’t want,’ Mysie said, firmly, and turned to her son-in-law. ‘Campbell, if you understand what I’m getting at, will you please explain to Gina?’ She rose unsteadily and picked up the walking stick she had lately been forced to use. ‘I want no more arguments, and I’ll be in the lounge if you want me.’
&n
bsp; Making her laborious way through, she smiled to herself as she heard Campbell quietly calming the now hysterical Gina. He would likely be reminding her about the terrible life his own mother had given his unmarried sister until old Mrs Bisset died. The old lady had been inclined to be violent, so that might help Gina to see what her mother was afraid could happen.
Resigned to following Mysie’s wishes, Gina drove her to inspect several private nursing homes over the next few weeks. Most of them seemed quite pleasant, but the younger woman always had faults to pick, and it wasn’t until they found Sunnyfields that Mysie put her foot down. ‘I like this place,’ she told her daughter. ‘But you’d better find out what they charge.’
Back in the car, she said, ‘It’s too much. I’d never dream of paying that every week.’
Gina turned to her seriously. ‘You don’t need to worry about the financial side of it, Mother. You’ve never touched Gregor’s money, nor what you made off the house in Ashley Road, and it’s been gathering interest all this time.’
‘I wanted to have something to leave you when I die,’ Mysie protested, rather plaintively.
‘I don’t need anything, Mother. Campbell and I are quite comfortably off, as you should know. I can’t understand why you’re so set on going into a home, but if Sunnyfields is where you want to go, I’ll arrange it for you.’
‘I’d like to think it over a bit longer.’
Mysie thought it over that night. She had liked the place, recently built on the outskirts of the city, and all on one level. It was set in its own grounds, and it would be like living in the countryside again. The single rooms were light and airy, but you didn’t have to be cooped up there all the time. There was a common room where the residents could sit and talk to each other, a TV room if you felt so inclined, a dining room for those fit enough to get to it, and those who weren’t had their meals served in their rooms. Best of all, there was a welcoming feeling as soon as you went through the door, and Mrs Warrender, the woman who ran it, was very pleasant. She was a woman of between forty and fifty, stout and motherly with a gentle manner. Yes, Mysie decided, she would like to live there, even if the fees were exorbitant. If Gina didn’t need her money, what else was there to do with it?
The arrangements were made very quickly, and within three weeks, Mysie was installed in Sunnyfields Private Nursing Home, with Gina’s solemn promise that she and Campbell would visit her every Sunday.
Chapter Thirty-one
1984
There was something vaguely familiar about the young man who had rung her doorbell, Gina thought, although she was almost certain that she had never seen him before. ‘Yes?’
‘Mrs Bisset? You won’t know me, but I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes, if you don’t mind. I’d better explain that my name is Ewan Duncan and I’m …’
‘Ewan Duncan?’ Now she knew why he’d looked familiar. ‘You must be Sandy’s son? No, you can’t be – you’re too young.’
‘I’m your brother’s grandson,’ Ewan said, quietly. ‘May I come in?’
‘Of course.’ Smiling, Gina showed him into the lounge. ‘How did you find me? How did you even know about me?’
‘My grandmother remembered that she had cut the announcement of your wedding out of the newspaper. Don’t ask me why.’
‘Sandy’s wife kept that all this time? That’s fifty years ago. But it still doesn’t explain how you found me.’
‘I went to your in-laws’ house to ask where you lived now, but, as you’ll know, they died some time ago and it was your husband’s brother who inherited the house. He gave me your address, so here I am.’
‘Yes, so here you are.’ Gina was still perplexed as to the purpose of his visit. ‘Why were you so keen to find me?’
His manner became guarded. ‘I wanted to know more about my family history, that’s why I asked my grandmother, and …’
‘She told you I was the skeleton in the cupboard?’ Gina gave a rippling laugh. ‘What do you want to know about me? There’s nothing interesting, apart from the fact that I was born on the wrong side of the blankets.’ She could joke about it now.
‘It’s not really you I wanted to find out about. You see, I’ve bought a house in Burnlea, and I discovered that it had been built on the site of an old croft. When I mentioned to my grandmother that it was called Rowanbrae, she said she was sure that was where my grandfather had been born. This made me a bit curious, and when I looked up the Evaluation Rolls I learned that several James Duncans had leased it. Going by dates, the last of them must have been my great-grandfather, but apparently my grandfather had never told Grandma anything about his early life. I was a bit disappointed when I heard that, but when she told me that he’d had a sister, and gave me the clipping, I decided to come and ask if you knew anything about the croft, or about a possible fire?’
‘A fire?’
‘It seems the crofthouse was unoccupied for some time, and I presume it had either been abandoned as unprofitable, or left derelict, perhaps burned down, accidentally or intentionally.’
Gina’s eyebrows lifted. ‘You’ve really been digging things up, haven’t you?’
Unwilling to reveal what he had dug up, Ewan grinned self-consciously. ‘I was fascinated by it, but I haven’t found out very much yet. As far as I can make out, no one lived there from some time after 1910, until the bungalow was built early in the thirties, the feu having been sold by the Phillips, who owned all Burnlea at that time. The rest of their estate was sold in 1962, but I don’t know if they had both died and one of their family disposed of it, or if they had family at all.’
‘I know they had a son,’ Gina butted in. ‘Sandy used to be quite friendly with Bobby Phillip at one time, but I was too young to pay any attention to what was said about him.’
‘It doesn’t matter – I don’t suppose he could tell me what I want to know, anyway. Burnlea is quite a township now, but I’m just trying to find out about the original Rowanbrae croft – as a matter of interest. Can you help?’
Gina sighed. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about it. I was born in Aberdeen, you see, and my mother never spoke about the croft.’ She sat up eagerly. ‘But you could go and ask her. I’m sure she would tell you everything you want to know.’
Ewan felt his pulse quickening. ‘Your mother’s still alive?’ It was a stupid question, he realised, as soon as he asked it, but Mrs Bisset looked to be over sixty although she was made up to the teeth, and he hadn’t thought of asking before.
‘Mother’s still going strong. It was her own decision to move into the home two years ago. She’s ninety-five now.’
‘Is she still quite …?’
‘She’s perfectly compos mentis, if that’s what you mean. Her legs are crippled with arthritis, but her brain’s still as clear as ever. I’m sure she’d be pleased to answer your questions.’
‘Which home is she in?’
‘Sunnyfields. Do you know it?’
‘Yes, I do. Would it be all right if I went this afternoon?’
‘You can’t wait to get going, can you?’ Gina chuckled. ‘Well, my husband and I visit her every Sunday, so I expect she’ll be pleased to have someone on a Saturday for a change.’
‘Great!’ Ewan made to rise, but Gina motioned to him to keep sitting. ‘I never knew if Sandy’s child was a girl or a boy, but he must have had a son, if your name’s Duncan, too?’
‘Yes, my father’s name’s Sam.’ Impatient to carry on with his quest, he stood up abruptly. ‘You’ve been a great help, Mrs Bisset, thank you very much for listening to me.’
‘I’m your Aunt Gina … well, I would really be your father’s aunt, of course, so you’d better just call me Gina.’
‘Dad’ll be surprised when I tell him. I’m sure he doesn’t know anything about you.’
Gina smiled as she got to her feet. ‘It’s quite exciting to learn I’ve got relatives I didn’t know existed, we must have a meeting some time to get to know each other. Oh, it
’s a good thing I remembered. My mother married again, and her surname is Wallace now. Did your grandmother ever remarry?’
‘No, she didn’t.’ Too keyed up to discuss anything else, Ewan stood up and took his leave quickly. He started his car and drove off in the direction of the city, but when he found a suitable spot he drew in to the side to think. It had never occurred to him that his great-grandmother might still be alive! Gina had said that her brain was still quite clear, but what about her memory? Hopefully, she would be like most old people and remember the distant past more clearly than the recent past.
Glancing at the clock on the dashboard, he saw that it was only ten to twelve – too near lunchtime to go to Sunnyfields – and he didn’t fancy going home to Angie to make small talk with her and her parents, he was far too excited. The sensible thing would be to go in somewhere for a meal, but he wanted to be alone. Remembering having seen a Chinese carry-out in Holburn Street, he drove off again, and within fifteen minutes, he was sitting on a bench in the Johnstone Gardens – a small haven of peace off Queen’s Road which was not so crowded as the other public parks – eating sweet-and-sour pork from one foil dish, and special fried rice from another. By his side sat a can of Coke he had bought in a grocer’s shop to quench his thirst.
Lighting a cigarette, he wondered what he would say to the great-grandmother he was going to see. He could hardly come right out and ask her about the skull he’d found – the poor old dear would probably drop dead with shock. He would have to be very careful and take it step by step, but how?
At five past two, he was shown into the large, airy common room at Sunnyfields, the young nurse telling him, ‘That’s Mrs Wallace in the chair next the rubber plant.’
He was rather disappointed at how old she looked. She was gazing out of the window; her face was very wrinkled and her skin had a transparency about it. Her hair was done up in some kind of coil at the back, but it was pure silver, with no trace of yellow. Walking past several old people who smiled vacantly at him, Ewan was very relieved when her rheumy eyes turned on him with a normal curiosity. ‘Hello, Mrs Wallace,’ he said brightly. ‘May I talk to you for a while?’
The Road to Rowanbrae Page 33