After the Armistice Ball

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘Oh goodness me, no,’ I said, thinking that I had no idea and deciding not to check, ‘I’ve upset and offended one of your neighbours, I’m afraid.’

  The old woman’s head bobbed up instantly at this and I saw the twinkle in her eye intensify as though someone had turned the gas up to full. She stood straight again and wiped her hands, beaming.

  ‘Well now, Mrs Gilver madam, how did you manage to do that?’

  She knew my name; this was more like it.

  ‘I say, I don’t suppose you’d like a hand with that?’ I said, stepping along to the gate and coming into the garden. ‘I could do with something to work off my bad temper and you look as though you need a rest.’

  She held the bucket out towards me wordlessly, and eased herself back against the wall with her feet splayed. Crushed eggshells was what the bucket contained, and I took off my glove before grabbing a handful and crouching down amongst the cabbage seedlings to set about my inexplicable task.

  ‘I was charged with giving a little something to Mrs Marshall to say thanks for her trouble. From the Duffys, you know. And it seemed to me the most natural thing in the world to have a little chat about this and that, but the lady seems to think I was prying and – oh bother!’ A clump of eggshell, still with some of its contents clinging about it, dropped on to a seedling and bent it down. I flicked it away.

  ‘Och, you shouldn’t worry yourself about her, madam. She’s far too big for her boots. It’s no as if she was slaving for them. In and out in the morning as fast as you could blink she was, but even that was too much trouble.’

  ‘Well, it beats me why she should take the job if she had no taste for it,’ I said, glad to have someone with whom I could share my many thoughts on Mrs Marshall. The old woman rocked with laughter.

  ‘Aye well, her man, Sandy, he was in about the wee hoose painting and papering for them and when madam said did he know of any “domestic help” he just said his Aggie would do it and glad, never thinking a woman would grudge to work with the two good hands God gave her.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I imagine that would cause a little coolness.’

  ‘Well, Sandy was none too cool, I can tell you. Fit to be tied more like it. He’s near had enough of her airs and graces, for it’s not what he’s been used to.’ I wondered how she knew all this. Did the hot-tempered Sandy and the frosty Agnes have screaming matches in the garden? Did the sound carry this far?

  ‘No,’ she said again, ‘Sandy has never been used with seeing a woman too proud to turn her hand. Why, his mother still grows all her own vegetables, madam, and she’s over eighty, God love her old bones.’ She brought this out with great enjoyment and watched me closely to see if I was catching up with her.

  ‘I see,’ I said, with an inward whoop of delight that my gamble had paid off so lavishly and I was not grovelling around in the dirt for nothing. There is no greater source of scurrilous gossip than a mother-in-law with a grudge in her heart and if ‘Sandy’ had worked for the Duffys he might have well have told his mother something I would like to know. ‘Well, Mrs Marshall,’ I said, playing her at her own game, ‘if she felt that way, I suppose my dropping in with a tip was just about the last straw.’

  ‘I wish I’d been there to see it,’ she said. ‘Oh, but madam, to think here we are laughing and there that poor lassie is. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust is what we’re promised, but please God there’s not many of us bound for that kind of end.’

  ‘Did you know her?’

  ‘Naw, not me. I didn’t know the family at all. They don’t belong here. They just bought that wee hoose to play in, I think. No that any folk round here would want they wooden hooses. Built as hidey-holes for Edinburgh and Glasgow folk and that’s all they’ve ever been. Mind you, they had theirs lovely. Sandy showed me what they were putting up and it must have been a palace. Shame to think all that new paint and paper and all they curtains gone just like that.’

  I privately agreed with her, but thankfully said nothing because she clapped a hand to her mouth in horror.

  ‘Devil take my tongue,’ she said. ‘Listen to me going on about paint and paper when they’ve lost their bonny lassie. Oh dear God, it’s true what they say. It’s as well we don’t know what’s coming, or we’d none of us get out of our beds in the morning.’

  ‘Were you at the inquiry?’ I asked, knowing the answer, but making the most of Mrs Marshall, to whom I felt sure one could say anything.

  ‘I was not,’ she pronounced. ‘Although I heard you were, madam, and if you don’t mind an old woman speaking her mind, you should have known better. My own man, God rest his soul, was taken home ten years since and I would no more have gone to his funeral than I don’t know what. A graveside’s no place for a woman, and as for a courtroom! Aye, I know there’s plenty of those clackety pieces from Gatehouse went and now we’ll not say a word to them for all they’ll say is that Mrs Gilver was there so there can’t be harm in it. I don’t know!’

  ‘But you’ll have heard all about it,’ I said, rightly surmising that none of what had preceded required a response. ‘Does your Sandy have any idea what caused it? He must know the place well.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘He’s near gone daft with thinking about it, madam. Here, just mind out and not put too much down at once! That bucket’s to do the whole row and you’d not want to be scratching it back up again if you’re short at the end. It gets terrible under your nails.’

  I was warming to Mrs Marshall as much and as quickly as I had cooled to her daughter-in-law.

  ‘He cannot think how it happened,’ she went on. ‘Mind you, once it was going he’s not surprised it went like it did. They kept the place that hot! Sandy was fair sweating when he was working there, if you’ll pardon me. And he tellt them and tellt them they could not have it so warm with new paper or it would be hanging off again. But soft-born, soft-bide, eh?’ She gazed innocently at me, crouched in the earth, scrabbling in the bucket of eggshells, and I smiled in spite of myself.

  ‘Mind you, it’s all just habit, this lighting fires in God’s good spring, for I know they found it close. I walked past this one day and every door and window in the place was wide open. New curtains all blowing out and getting clarty, so I think madam was just digging in her heels and refusing to do what she was told solely because she was told it. A stubborn old woman is a terrible thing, is that not right?’ She chuckled and smoothed her apron.

  When I had worked my way up the row to the top of the vegetable patch and almost to the cottage door, Mrs Marshall stumped inside and came back with a glass of water for me and one for herself, and we sat companion-ably on the bench against the house wall looking down the row of cabbages with, I daresay, equal pride. Mrs Marshall sighed heavily.

  ‘Poor soul,’ she said. ‘Her mother will be lost without her, and maybe that sister of hers will be sorry now she wasn’t more like what a sister should be. I cannot stop thinking about it. Daft like, for I didn’t know the lassie. I’m not even sure now which one of they girls it was that died. The younger one, they said. But there wasn’t a spit between them. So was it the bonny, cheery one or the other one with the – I shouldna say this, but – with the face that would turn the milk?’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ I said, having no trouble applying these descriptions to Clemence and Cara, ‘that it was the pretty little thing who died, and her elegant sister who is still with us.’

  ‘Aye well,’ said Mrs Marshall, ‘God gathers his own.’ She seemed to recollect herself and shrug off some unwelcome thought. ‘It’s not like I ever heard any harm of Teenie-bash.’ I took this to be a reference to Clemence. ‘It just beats me how two lassies fae the same mould can be so different in theirselves. Mind you, two girls together can just as easy be at daggers drawn every day of their lives as they can be chums.’ She gave a shout of laughter. ‘I had nine, madam, and there’s ways that’s easier – although the work would kill a mule – for they all jist have to shake down and get on with it.
’ I nodded solemnly and I did agree with her, as a matter of fact. I had often thought that had my boys been girls I should have been quite happy to add to their number until they were well diluted by siblings. Of course, had my boys been girls, I should have been obliged to keep on in pursuit of an heir for Hugh, even as far as matching Mrs Marshall’s nine, and I quite saw that if it might kill a mule it should certainly have done for me.

  ‘I was sure there was three,’ Mrs Marshall was saying when I turned my attention back to her. ‘But Aggie said definitely jist the two lassies. And that’s right enough, is it, madam? So I turned to Aggie and I said, “Well, who was the wee bit thing I saw riding a bicycle up fae the wooden hooses on the Tuesday night?” As if the devil was after her, mind. “I’m sure I don’t know,” says Aggie. “Your eyes are not what they were.” Cheeky besom. “Och well,” says I, “it was probably one of the other maids.” That shut her up. The other maids. She didn’t like that, I can tell you.’ Mrs Marshall wheezed with laughter again, and did not seem to notice me staring, open-mouthed. This must indeed have been ‘one of the other maids’. The poor creature, having begged or borrowed a bicycle from who knows where, racing up to Gatehouse to . . .? To send a desperate letter to one of her friends? Or to try to procure a way out of her troubles? But in Gatehouse? Was that possible? Or perhaps the furious pedalling itself was the idea.

  ‘Madam?’ said Mrs Marshall bringing me back from my wool-gathering. I drained my glass of water and stood up, forced to screw my hands into my back just as the old lady herself had done. She beamed at me, hugely entertained by having got a soft-born besom to do an a honest job of work. I held out my hand to her.

  ‘Thank you for a most pleasant morning, Mrs Marshall.’

  ‘Well, you know where I am, madam. Don’t go past the door.’

  Returning to Gatehouse on the midday bus, I was met at the door of the inn by Mrs McCall, who happened to be passing along the corridor and who clutched my arms in her big hands and asked me in a shocked voice what in the Lord’s name had happened? What has she heard, I thought? And was about to ask her the same thing, when I caught sight of myself in the fish-eye glass above the fireplace. This glass never throws back a flattering rendition of one’s face, tending to give more bulbous prominence to the nose than is usual and making one look, overall, as though one’s features have been painted on to a child’s balloon blown up a bit too far. Now, though, I looked really quite savage. My hat was askew, my hair was sticking straight out to the sides (I assumed from having been squashed into my collar as I crouched) and there was a smear of dirt across one cheek. Looking down I saw that the hem of my coat was earthy and my stockings, frankly, a disgrace. Fearing that if I told her I had been planting cabbages I might lose any little scraps of dignity I had left, however, I made no explanation but ordered a bath and luncheon in my room and swept upstairs.

  In the afternoon, refreshed, although still rather in need of a manicure, I sailed forth to deal with the girl in the post office. I had had a tremendous idea in my bath and was eager to set it in motion.

  The post office was quiet, as I had expected, the people of Gatehouse being the sort to deal with all High Street business such as letters and parcels nice and early in the morning and not dash in and out in the careless way that city dwellers do. I have never quite been able to understand the exact nature of the moral rectitude that springs from doing things in the morning rather than the afternoon, but since it served my current purpose I had no quarrel with it. The postmistress herself, Miss Millar, was just visible up a ladder in the back-shop with a list in her hand and a pencil behind her ear. I leaned companionably against the counter at the telegraph desk and smiled at the girl.

  ‘I wonder, my dear, if you will be able to help me with a little matter,’ I began. The young person glanced very briefly to the side as though to check that her boss was well out of the way and then leaned towards me eagerly.

  ‘I find that I need to send a telegram to a friend of mine. She is also a friend of poor Mr and Mrs Duffy,’ I added hastily, seeing her face fall, disappointed at this prosaic beginning. ‘But the difficulty is this. I know that poor Mr and Mrs Duffy have gone off for a few days before they go home to begin to make the funeral arrangements. So I cannot be sure whether they have told this particular friend yet, about the terrible thing that happened. Do you see my problem?’ The girl shook her head slowly, and I saw that I should have to be rather more frank than felt comfortable. ‘You see, my dear, if I send a telegram to my dear friend and make no mention of it, she will, if she has heard the news, think me terribly callous. If, however, she has not heard and I do mention it, then not only will I give her the most frightful shock, but I might offend the Duffys. After all, it is their decision how and when people are to be told.’

  ‘But – pardon me, madam – but won’t your friend have read all about it in the papers?’ said the girl.

  ‘The papers? The newspapers? Oh, yes,’ I gabbled. ‘Well, no, because this friend is very, very sensitive, and in poor health and doesn’t read the newspapers for that reason.’

  ‘Well, madam,’ she continued, ‘can you telephone to this friend and ask a member of the household whether she has been told?’ I could feel a prickle of perspiration begin at the back of my neck. Confound the girl.

  ‘I had thought,’ I went on, ‘that if you showed me your list of telegrams sent – you do keep a note of them, don’t you? – I could look and see if there had been anything sent to my friend.’ This was my wonderful plan. My vision had been of the girl, docile and eager to help, sliding a list of names across the counter to me, and of my thus finding out all manner of things.

  ‘But her father might have sent word from Edinburgh, before he came here, madam,’ the girl persisted. ‘Or he might have telephoned. I don’t mind of him coming in here, but he might have rung her up from the hotel. Or they might have sent letters. We don’t even see the letters, madam. The postman picks them up and they’re sorted and off to Kirkcudbright.’ I nodded, more and more vigorously as she ran through all of these things I had never thought of. ‘What’s your friend’s name, madam?’ she said suddenly. ‘And I’ll check.’

  I gaped at her and blushed. ‘Gordon-Strathmurdle,’ I blurted, the least authentic-sounding name of anyone I know in the world.

  ‘Oh no, madam,’ said the girl. ‘I would have remembered a name like that.’ I blushed even deeper. ‘And besides,’ she said, generous now that we both knew which of us had the upper hand, ‘there were no telegrams sent from the Reiver’s Rest all week except that one to you yourself.’ I smiled my thanks and fled next door to let an ice-cream sundae in Frulliano’s cool my cheeks from the inside out.

  Alec had had a rather less eventful day than mine, closer to what we had both foreseen in the way of gently coaxing information from simple bucolics who did not even know it was happening. No dressings down from shop girls for him; no mud nor eggshells. There had been time before our rendezvous, however, to compose a report which skated over these less triumphant episodes. I had even made notes for myself and although I had lost my nerve at the last moment and hidden them amongst my nighties, still I was eager to pass on what I had learned.

  ‘I’ll begin, shall I?’ I said. ‘I have found out first, that Cara sent no telegrams, nor did Clemence, and Mrs Duffy sent only the one to me that we knew about anyway. Also, that the Duffys were troubled about something and very keen to be alone, to the extent that they did not want their housekeeper to linger in the cottage a moment longer than she had to each day. Lastly, that Clemence and Cara were at odds with one another over something, so perhaps their mother did not want the housekeeper to hear them quarrelling – she’s quite terrifying, by the way.’

  ‘The telegrams are good work, Dandy,’ said Alec, ‘but forgive me for being frank, won’t you? The rest of what you have just told me are not “findings out” but your interpretations of findings out. I want to hear the facts, not the theories, then we can add them to my facts
and build our theories together.’ This last sounded so very enticing that it took away some of the sting. I dashed upstairs, got my notes from my underclothes drawer and started again.

  Alec listened in silence, making a great deal of work out of clearing and refilling his pipe, while I relayed Aggie Marshall, old Mrs Marshall and young Miss Telegram in turn, missing out the worst of my blunders, and scrupulously avoiding any reference to cabbages.

  He puffed steadily for a long moment after I had finished, and I lit a cigarette of my own, rather wishing I could share his pipe, which smelled mellow and cool against my more acrid smoke (best gaspers from the grocer cum tobacconist up the street). Gentlemen’s brilliantine too always smells so much more dignified than the poisonous cocktail we pour over ourselves in pursuit of a lasting curl. Why did men always keep the best of everything for themselves?

  ‘So two different people commented on how hot the house was,’ said Alec. ‘Three including Sandy Marshall. I caught up with him myself and that was one of his main themes.’

  ‘And his mother makes two, and who is the third?’ I asked.

  ‘His wife,’ Alec said. ‘She told you the range was never cold when she went in in the morning. Yes. That may very well be significant when we put it alongside something else I found out today.’ I noted that Alec did not feel he was compelled to report verbatim what his informants had divulged, not too scared to mess things up with interpretation before I could mull them over. ‘Mr McNally, the coalman, had something very interesting to say. I included him in my round-up of possible visitors for the sake of completeness and I’m very glad I did so. Not least because pickings were otherwise rather slim – don’t you think it just a bit suspicious that they seem to have kept themselves quite so utterly to themselves, Dandy? A couple of ladies glimpsed on a distant cliff-top is about it.’