by Millie Gray
Bella seated herself unceremoniously and felt the teapot to see if it was still warm. Reassured, she shook it to see if there was enough left for a cuppa. It was only when she pushed back the chair to go and light the gas under the kettle that Rachel realised someone was there – Bella, to whom she owed so much and whom she could always depend upon to come and be with her, yet who in most ways was quite ineffectual. If only Bella had been more like Rachel’s beloved Auntie Anna, who had brought her up from infancy after her own mother had died in the Leith Poorhouse that was now the Eastern General Hospital. Auntie Anna had been the wise old woman who attended to all the hatching and dispatching within the condemned slum tenement at 18 Couper Street where they’d all lived – Auntie Anna, with her own three lassies and Rachel, all in one room and kitchen, where the only luxuries were a cold water tap and a commode (strictly for night use only). And yet Anna had been willing to share that subsistence-level existence with Rachel, her friend’s bairn, rather than see her put into the Poorhouse Orphanage.
“Feeling blue, are ye?” Bella asked, hoping that the glazed look in Rachel’s eyes wasn’t a sign she was getting bad again.
“Just thinking about Alice.”
Bella smiled. “Aye, she’ll be home in three months.”
Rachel shook her head. “No, she won’t.”
“But she only went out to Canada for a year and my Cathie says she’s awfy homesick, so she thought she wouldn’t even last out the year.”
“Aye, well, a letter this week tells me she’s met a mounted policeman and she’s in love.”
“Right enough. I could fall for a Mountie. Real guidlooking they horses are.”
“Well, it seems it was the man she fell for and not the horse,” commented Rachel tartly.
“Just think yourself lucky! All three o my lassies went to Canada for a year or two and no ane o them came back. You’ve still got your other four bairns. And, ken something?” Bella turned, looked over her shoulder and smiled. Rachel knew this was the sign that Bella was about to communicate with her departed spirits.
“That was both our mammies that came through the now and they both say they can see us travelling thegither – off to Canada we are to visit them aw.”
“They didn’t say anything about sending us the fortune we’ll need to get there, did they?”
“The spirit world’s no concerned wi money. But …” Bella had to think fast. “Aye, they did say travelling would soon be a lot cheaper. Anyway you should be glad Alice is going to stay in Toronto – and with Paul a lawyer now ye’ll soon be rolling in it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Bella. Paul’s qualified in law now right enough but he’s not going to practise it. He’s going into the police!”
“Could he no have jyned up at eighteen and saved ye putting yourself in the grubber to get him through uni-bloody-versity?”
“Well, not really. He’d have had to do his national service then.”
Bella shrugged. “Pretty expensive way to bide out o a war if ye ask me. But your Paul always had such a high and mighty opinion o himself.” It was then that Bella remembered she’d picked up a letter from the floor when she came in and she now laid it in front of Rachel. “Picked that aff yer floor.” Bella lifted the letter up again and closely scrutinised the envelope. “Nice writing. Wish I could write like that.”
Without a word, Rachel seized it from Bella’s hand. She was right in guessing it was from Hannah. She knew she must open the envelope that, as Bella had noted, was addressed in the most beautiful script. Hannah’s writing, of course. Her own Hannah, who’d always shown such promise at school. Rachel shook her head wearily as she slipped a knife under the flap of the envelope and slit it open. With a weary sigh she took out the single sheet of notepaper, already knowing what would be written there. It was sure to be what Hannah hadn’t had the courage to tell her by telephone. Oh, that telephone! Such a great way it had been of keeping in touch with events in the Outer Hebrides. Every week Rachel would go down to Carrie’s and wait, sometimes for hours, until Hannah found time to run to the call-box by the harbour and make her call. Last Sunday, Hannah had chatted gaily for ages to Rachel about everything – except that bairn number seven was on its way.
Rachel was still clutching the unread letter in her hand when Carrie walked in and joined the two women. “Mum!” she called out.
“Oh, it’s you again,” Rachel managed to croak. She looked straight at Carrie and saw that her face was drawn. Something was obviously worrying her. “Now, before you start, please don’t go on about you having that dry rot.”
“Mum, it’s not me that has dry rot – it’s the house. What I have is …” Carrie hesitated before blurting it out “… financial embarrassment…and…”
“Dry rot?” said Bella with some relish. “Now that’s a real bad thing. Everything faws off. But that’s what ye get for haeing a bought house. Now if ye’d been content with a Corporation house – they never get dry rot, for they ken the Council hasnae the wherewithal to fix it.”
Carrie and Rachel looked at each other and were both about to argue the point with Bella but wisely decided it was best to ignore her. Instead, Rachel firmly warned her daughter, “Look, Carrie, I’ve had quite enough this day from Paul, Alice and Hannah; so please don’t you start.”
“Aye,” joined in Bella. “No tae mention that sooner o a pup o Sam’s.”
“Are you saying he’s gone and got another dog, Auntie Bella?”
“No Carrie. It’s the collie that’s the sooner. Sooner pee on yer mother’s new carpet than anywhere else.”
Carrie allowed herself a slight giggle before Rachel went on. “Here’s Alice going to marry a Canadian, Paul’s joining the police, and Hannah’s expecting again…”
“And so am I, Mum,” said Carrie, bursting into tears.
“What!” exclaimed Bella. “But your Will’s been away six months. Oh, Carrie, when ye said ye were going to do a night-shift to pay for the dry rot I didn’t think ye meant – oh, no, ye couldn’t.”
“Auntie Bella, just what are you suggesting? Mum, did you hear what she said? Are you going to let her away with it?” exclaimed Carrie, who had to continue unaided, since Rachel was ignoring her plea. “If you must know, Auntie Bella, my Will docked at Garston for five days and I went down to see him.”
“Garston? Where the devil is Garston?” asked Bella, looking distinctly bewildered.
“South of Liverpool. And Liverpool, in case you don’t know it, Auntie, is a big port in England.”
“Oh, but Carrie, your neighbours will no know you’ve been to…wherever it is. So you’ll ken fine what they’ll be thinking!”
“No. What will they be thinking?”
“That you’ve had an affair. Or at best that you’re like Hannah an over fond o you ken what.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Auntie Bella. Sophie will be five when this baby is born. Mum, please tell her.”
“But she’s right, Carrie. You behaving like a wanton woman has got you expecting and how does that help you get your hands on the five hundred you need for the dry rot?”
Carrie snorted before haughtily replying, “The Building Society will lend us the money. But instead of being mortgage-free in twenty years, we’ll be back to twenty-five years.”
“So by the time you’re fifty you’ll maybe be debt-free.”
Tears welled up in Carrie’s eyes and she began to sob. “Yes, Mum. And now Will says it might be better if he stays on at sea until we’re out of the grubber.”
“Well, instead of greeting the way you’re doing you should just count yourself lucky that you won’t have a useless man around your feet.”
“Mum, my Will’s not useless!”
No one noticed that the outside door had opened again until an over-excited collie pup scampered into the kitchen. “Good grief!” exclaimed Rachel as the pup circled, jumped and urinated.
“Oh, the wee sooner,” Bella chortled merrily as she bent down to pat
the puppy.
Carrie huffed and puffed while Sam bounded into the kitchen with a washing cloth already in his hands. “Sorry, Mammy. I’ll soon have her trained,” wheedled Sam.
“No fast enough,” retorted Rachel, remembering vividly how Sam, as a wee laddie, would always say, “Sorry, Mammy,” whenever he’d displeased her.
“How’s the polis job going, son?”
“Well, as ye know, Aunty Bella, I’ve passed all my promotion exams – sergeant and inspector – but I’m still waiting to be actually promoted.”
“But your Mammy says ye were first in the exams.”
“So I was. But nobody makes it tae sergeant in under eight years.”
“So Paul will hae a long wait an all?”
“Naw, Auntie. There’s big changes coming and he’ll go into the CID. Me? I just love being in uniform and out in the community. Like last night. Listen to this,” said Sam, who was now aware that Rachel needed some cheering up. “Pimpernel Pete and me were chumming each other down by the back door o Crawford’s.”
“The whisky bond or the biscuits?”
“Carrie! Just hold yer wheesht and listen. And it’s the biscuit factory. There we were, guarding each other’s poke o chips, when we saw the back door into the biscuit factory was standing wide open. Hello! Hello! we thought. And we were right – for inside, sprawling on the floor, was a sailor. His language wasn’t English but there was no mistaking what he was saying an doing to the clapped-out auld hoor he was with…”
“Sam,” exclaimed Rachel, “that’s maybe the only way the poor woman can earn her crust.”
“She was short-changing him,” continued Sam defensively. “So the Pimpernel, who’d finished his chips afore me, asked what the problem was. Soon, out from the shadows comes Foxy Freddie, the nightshift labourer, who says his wife wasn’t keeping very well, so every night (at his break-time he swore to us) he nips out the back door and goes over the Links back into Halmyre Street, runs up the three flights o stairs to check the bairns are all in bed and sleeping, then runs back down the stairs, up Halmyre Street, over the Links and raps three times sharply on the back door at exactly twenty-five minutes after he left and John Campbell here lets him in. ‘That right?’ says the Pimpernel looking over at John Campbell who’s busy trying to hide a bogey loaded up with tins o biscuits, shortbread, Viennese Whirls, big dollops o butter and uncooked shortbread.”
“They’d be at the lash,” interrupted Bella.
“Aye, they were. But listen. Freddie then says that, after he’d been gone only twenty minutes, was there no a frantic knocking on the door? Johnny, thinking there must have been something awful wrong at Freddie’s house, flings open the door and – lo and behold! – Elsie the hoor – sorry, Mammy – the working lady o the night and her punter both faw in. Well, the lassie gets such a wallop she cannae go on because there’s more than her dignity been hurt and the wee sailor’s no for going on either as he cannae perform to a live audience. Sae the twa o them are now rolling about the flair, him trying to find out where she keeps her money and her screaming that a contract, though verbal, was binding. I’ve now finished my chips so I steps in to help the Pimpernel separate them and haul them to their feet. ‘Right,’ says Pimpernel Pete, ‘How much did you charge him?’ ‘A fiver,’ she replies as she produces the note and hands it to Pete. ‘Hold on,’ says Pete as the wee sailor goes to grab the note from his hand. ‘I think the solution is’ – and here he tells me out o the side o his mouth that we dinnae want to charge them and have all that paper work – ‘that we divvie the fiver atween ye baith.’ Nobody’s got change of a fiver but by doing a whip-round we gather up enough for Captain Cook and syne Pete tells Elsie she’ll get her share when he sees her in the Kings Wark pub the morn’s night.”
“So all’s well that ends well?” spluttered Carrie who was now in a fit of giggles.
“No. Ye see, after Romeo and Juliet depart, Pete turns his attention to the bogey and asks, ‘What have we got here then?’ ‘Just some raffle prizes for the Works dance on Friday,’ quips Freddie as he tries to push the lumps of butter and uncooked shortbread out of sight.”
“But why would they want uncooked shortbread?” interposed Bella.
“Evidently it makes brilliant crumble,” responded Sam before continuing his story. “ ’That’s right,’ says Pete and tosses Freddie a couple o bob, announcing, ‘An’ I’ve just bought the first six winning tickets.’ Then he goes over to the bogey and lifts six tins o shortbread.”
Sam bent down and out of a carrier-bag produced two tins of shortbread and said with a grin: “Know this? He sent one to you, Mammy, and one to you, Auntie Bella.”
“Oh, thanks a million, Sam. And such a bonnie tartan tin,” declared Bella. “But here, son, next time you’re in Crawford’s, just you mind, I wouldn’t half like trying the crumble stuff!”
9
AN ISLAND BREAK
Rachel felt truly like a queen as Sam steered his brand new Morris shooting-brake along the winding road. They were off to Mallaig to catch the ferry for the Outer Isles and the car was laden with everything she’d collected for Hannah and her increasingly large brood. She normally went by train to Mallaig but there was a limit to what she could carry, so when Sam said how much he would like a trip to the Hebrides to see Hannah, his mother had jumped at the chance.
She generally didn’t pay much attention to the scenery as her thoughts would dwell on Hannah and how she was managing – but today, sitting beside Sam in the front seat of the car, she was able to agree that Scotland was indeed a beautiful country. They’d stopped briefly in Callander to have some tea and a sandwich and now they were on their way to Tyndrum by way of bonnie Strathyre and even more breathtaking Lochearnhead where all you could do was wonder at the beauty of the rivers, lochs and mountains. They continued on to Bridge of Orchy and then tackled the steep climb up to the Black Mount. It was here that Sam had insisted on stopping to admire the view down to Loch Tulla which they’d just skirted. “D’ye know this is one o the best views in the whole o Scotland?”
Rachel silently agreed but her thoughts were carrying her beyond that scene and into the next part of their journey: to Rannoch Moor and Glencoe. Every time that Rachel passed through these glens it had been raining and the hills that rose steeply on either side seemed to loom so closely that she felt as though she were being trapped. The thought of all the betrayal and misery linked to those places lay like a dead weight upon her. She dearly hoped there was no truth in the ghost story of that MacDonald woman who had seen her husband slain by the treacherous Campbells and who had then been chased with her two infants far out into the open spaces where they had slowly died of hunger and exposure. It was still believed that she haunted those glens, waiting to entice a Campbell into the bleak moors where she would watch him die, as she and her children had, away back on that chill February in 1692.
“Penny for them?” asked Sam, intrigued by his mother’s mystical stare.
‘Oh, I’ve just been looking down into these glens that I hope – with a bit of luck – we’ll soon be whizzing through.” She paused for several minutes. “Sam,” she pleaded, “please don’t stop now until we reach Ballachulish.”
“Eh?”
“Look, Sam, just you drive as fast as you can and stop for no one.”
Sam laughed loudly. “Och, Mam, surely ye don’t believe that auld ghost story about the MacDonald woman. And let’s face it: I’m related through my father tae the Campbells and he’s from the conshie-objector side o the family, so she can hardly blame me for the Glencoe massacre.”
Rachel shivered. “See, the weather’s closing in. Let’s just get going.” She walked over to the car and settled herself in. It had been good to hear Sam laugh. The last few weeks must have been so hard for him but he’d said nothing. And it was all because both he and Paul, with their ordinary promotion exams behind them, had gone on to sit the accelerated police promotion exams. Both had done very well in the written submiss
ions – especially Sam, who had come third in the whole of Scotland. However, it was when they had to be interviewed by the panel made up of a psychologist, five senior officers selected from various Scottish Police Forces and a chairman who was none other than Edinburgh’s Chief Constable that things grew difficult for Sam. Asked which rank he imagined he might end up with, he had replied in his typically blunt way that, as he was still waiting to fill dead man’s shoes at sergeant level, which could take up to another five years, finally being promoted to inspector would seem reasonable.
Paul’s answer to the same question was, “No matter which rung on the ladder I’m on, I’ll always be aiming for the next one.” Naturally enough, Paul’s answer was far better in the panel’s eyes and so he became one of the twelve young men selected out of the four hundred who had applied for accelerated promotion. The other thing that still stuck in Sam’s throat was that, out of those twelve selected for stardom (as he saw it) six were from Edinburgh and not one, including Paul, had matched his own marks in the written exam!
Rachel vowed there and then that she would try to talk about that with Sam just as soon as they were clear of Glencoe. Suddenly she was jolted out of her thoughts when Sam announced, “That’s us through Glencoe and I never got one invitation frae a lassie to go for a dander on the moor.”
“You mean the Ballachulish ferry is within spitting distance at long last?”
“Well, a couple o miles further on I suppose you could do it.”
Rachel relaxed in her seat. She knew it was crazy to believe in ghost stories but you never could be absolutely sure, could you?
It was as they were merrily buzzing along by the banks of Loch Linnhe on their way to Fort William and from there on to Mallaig that Rachel decided that the time was right to speak to her laddie. “Sam,” she began confidentially, “about what happened at the accelerated…”
“Just leave it be, Mam.”
“Well, I can’t. Especially now that Paul will make it to sergeant before you.”