The Weeping Tree

by Audrey Reimann

  She was shaking violently -as violently as when she'd dropped into his arms a year ago. He rinsed a cloth under the tap and held the cold drench of it to her forehead, but she grabbed his hand and started to cry. 'Take me away, Andrew. I've got to go back. I can't stop here...'

  'All right. But what's up?'

  'I'll tell you. Not here. Please ... please ... Andrew?'

  It was as if she had been struck dumb, for she could not speak at all on the way from Ingersley to the station at North Berwick. It took her two hours to quieten and tell him what was wrong and even then she could not tell him everything, for he'd never understand why she had lied to him for all this time.

  Now, at five o'clock, with only seven hours left, they strolled the beach at Portobello, barefoot and hand-in-hand. Andrew put his arm about her waist and made her come closer so that he could feel her hips moving in harmony with the swing of his left leg, her head resting against his shoulder as they went. He said, 'I don't think the Commander would have recognised you, love. You are eighteen now. You were fifteen when he sent you to Guthrie's, and that was only because your gran was dead and you had nowhere to go.'

  She smiled up at him, and love for her came stabbing through him like a physical thrust that was as exciting as it was painful.

  'They wouldn't be able to send you back to Guthrie's if we were married.' He wanted desperately now to be married to her, to be with her, to love her and know her body. He stopped. They were too far down the beach. 'Let's go back,' he said.

  They turned to retrace their steps and she slipped her arm through his. He could feel, through the thin stuff of her dress, her firm round breast pressing against his arm. She said, 'Jessie Fairbairn says a girl can legally call herself married in Scotland without going to church.'

  'How?'

  'By habit and repute. You have to live with your man and use his name. Then, after a time you announce before witnesses that you are his legal wife…by habit and repute. It's how Jessie married.'

  'I didn't know.' He stood stock still. 'What difference can a registrar or a preacher make, anyway? We'll legalise it on my next leave.' He took her in his arms and, not caring a whit if anyone saw them, kissed her long and hard until his head was reeling with the honey taste of her mouth and the sweet, urgent response in the body that was pressed so close he had to stop before he embarrassed himself and her. He asked, 'Does spending every minute of my time with you -wanting to spend every day of my life with you…count as living together?'

  'It must do.'

  'And you call yourself Flora Stewart?' he said. She had stuck to the Stewart name ever since he'd lied to Mr Davidson, saying she was his sister.

  'Yes.'

  'Then we're married.' He kissed her again. 'Come on, love,' he said. 'We'll have our own wedding feast. I'll buy you fish and chips on Portobello High Street.'

  She laughed and clung to him. 'What about the ring?'

  'There's a jeweller's shop near the cafe. Let's run ..’ He grabbed her hand and ran with her across the soft sand until they reached the esplanade, where they put on their shoes. Then, arm-in-arm and sedately, they went to the jeweller's shop. Andrew bought twin plain gold bands and demanded that the jeweller engrave them while they waited: Flora Stewart. Married Andrew. 2.9.39, and on his, Andrew Stewart. Married Flora. 2.9.39. The jeweller said that usually people bought the rings well before their wedding day and chose to inscribe a message of love not a matter of fact. But he said it affectionately and shook their hands and wished them a long and happy marriage.

  Andrew put the rings into his pocket and they crossed to the noisy cafe, where he bought plaice and chips with peas, bread and butter and tea; the most expensive fish supper on the menu. There they toasted the marriage with cups of tea and whispered endearments over the laden enamel-topped table. 'We'll put the rings on at Waverley Station, before I go,' he said.

  Flora's eyes were brimming with tears of love and fear for him mingling unbearably. 'How much longer have we got?' she asked.

  'Three hours.' 'Let's go quickly then.' An hour later, on a station jam-packed with soldiers, sailors and civilians, couples clung together, backs to the crowd, whispering farewells and last-minute declarations of love, and in their midst Andrew could not find a seat anywhere.

  'We have to find a quiet place,' he said, and took her out of the station on to the bridge that faced the steep-sided valley that was once a loch. They went hand in hand through the Saturday crush in Princes Street Gardens across the road from the famous shopping boulevard. They walked beneath the shadow of the two-hundred-foot Scott monument that resembled the spire of a Gothic church, and hurried through the people who were strolling past the classical National Gallery. Further on a great bronze trooper on horseback faced the castle and the medieval Old Town - a maze of steep cobbled streets, steps and alleys that clung to the ridge of the Royal Mile which dropped steeply from the castle at the top to the Palace of Holyrood House at the foot. They were searching for a quiet corner of the gardens where they could exchange rings and seal their solemn promises with kisses.

  They reached the West End of the city before Andrew found the place he was looking for. Under the shadow of the castle that loomed on its rock high above them, and in the dark hollow behind St Cuthbert's church, a place that saw sunlight for only a few hours each day, was a graveyard surrounded by an eight-foot wall. The gate was unlatched and he led Flora through it, closing it carefully behind him, into the tree-filled green gloom and dank dampness that was cool and welcome after the heat of the day.

  The silence was astonishing. On two sides of the little graveyard trams, motor cars and buses were rattling by, yet inside, under the wall where the sound was muffled by the overhanging trees, nothing stirred.

  Flora dropped Andrew's hand to study the tombstones, though the sun was going down behind the castle and long shadows came slanting across the hollow where the graveyard lay. He could only just make out the names on the sandstone obelisk and memorial stones. Flora turned to him and said, 'This is the place we learned about in school. The graveyard where the grave robbers ...'

  '...carried out their gruesome trade,' Andrew said. 'The Resurrectionists dug up the dead to sell the corpses to the anatomy students at the medical school.' He put his arms about her and held her tight. you're not scared, are you?'

  'No,' she whispered. 'I'm on holy ground. I'm safe with you.'

  He had lost the light-hearted air of this afternoon and now she could feel his tension - a kind of desperation in the bones and sinews of his strong arms. He stopped kissing her and said, 'I'm not interested in history or the dead beneath our feet. I want us to make our vows and put the rings on.'

  She whispered, 'Andrew, 1 want to be married properly. 1 want you to love me,' for her head was light with longing, and love and desire was flaming in her.

  There was a weeping willow whose branches touched the ground, making a cave, a secluded vaulted area around the trunk. 'We won't be seen under the weeping tree,' Andrew said. He bent double and took Flora into the dappled darkness of the den of leaves and branches, there to sit on the dry grass with his arms about her.

  'I wonder what this tree has seen,' he said. 'Do you think it was weeping in the eighteenth century when the bodies were being snatched?'

  She laid her cheek in the hollow between his neck and shoulder. 'It's not going to witness weeping and wailing today.'

  Andrew unwound her hair, let it fall and fanned it out about her shoulders. She said softly, 'It's as good as a proper wedding isn't it?'

  'Every bit,' he breathed. 'Lovers marry over an anvil at Gretna Green. A weeping tree is more fitting for a wedding than a blacksmith's shop.' He buried his nose in her hair and smelled the sweet cleanness of it. He said, 'Do you know the words of the marriage service?'

  'Yes.'

  'Have you been to a wedding?'

  She said, 'Dozens. I've sung at choral weddings at St Philip's.'

  He pulled her up into the kneeling position he ha
d taken. Then he leaned forward briefly and said, 'You say them. I'll follow.' He slipped his hand into his pocket, brought out the rings and laid them on the sandy space between their knees. 'I'm ready.'

  He was deadly serious and a tremor went through Flora as she faced him and clasped his right hand. The scent of dry grass and the soft brush of the willow leaves was making her feel solemn yet faint as she said, 'Do you, Andrew Stewart, take me, Flora Macdonald, to your lawful wedded wife?' A lump in her throat made the words strangled.

  He held her hand steady. 'I do.' And, not letting go, 'Do you, Flora Macdonald, take me, Andrew Stewart, to your lawful wedded husband?'

  ‘I do,' she whispered. 'Will you promise to love me and keep me only unto thee, forsaking all others, as long as we both shaIl live?'

  'I will.' Andrew nodded solemnly to her.

  'And I promise to love and honour and obey you, my lawful wedded husband, until death us do part.'

  He picked up the smaller ring. 'Give me your finger.' She put out her left hand and he slipped on the ring, then held out his left hand for her to do the same.

  Flora said, 'Now say after me. With this ring I thee wed. With my body I thee worship and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.'

  He said the words slowly and deliberately and then he put his arms about her there, under the weeping tree, and felt desire burning through her in the lips that clung to his own and the arms that were winding about his neck and the soft hands that were threading through his hair.

  He was trembling as he took off his tunic to make a pillow for her head, and shaking violently when she pulled him down on top of her. She waited, lips parted, eyes gone misty with tears and love and longing. He said gently, 'I want you so much, Flora. Would you believe me if I told you I want you so much I'm in pain from wanting?'

  'And me,' she murmured. 'I want to do it before you go.'

  'What if you have a baby?'

  'Jessie Fairbairn says you can't get a baby the first time,' but his mouth was on hers and there was nobody to see them in the dark little cave that the weeping tree made for hem.

  He unfastened her dress, spread it open and tenderly caressed the soft creamy skin of her breasts. She was his, his wife, and he loved her to distraction. He was dazzled by the beauty of her body that seemed to absorb and reflect the last of the light that came glancing over the tree, piercing the leaves and throwing light and shade over her. His love was a stabbing pain in him and yet he felt humbled that she had chosen him.

  He was hard and hot and needful and she was helping him out of his clothes and he could not hold himself back. His mouth locked on to hers, tasting the sweetness of her, while he slid his hand along her slender white thighs and slipped his finger into the hot, slippery, tight little depths of her and felt her opening for him, moaning softly. It was happening so fast, for her as well as himself. He had never dreamed it would feel this way – never dreamed that he would be on fire, desperate for her as he lowered himself in against the quick resistance of her virginal state.

  But the pain that made her cry out was over quickly and she was moving under him, now wrapping her long legs around him and pulling him in higher and tighter and faster until in the sweet madness of love they came together, softly crying the other's name until they subsided, sated, and could lie content, side by side, their arms about one another.

  Every so often they kissed without passion, then each would kiss the other's ring, the symbol of unending love. They lay until it was dark, awed with wonder at what they had done. Andrew said, 'We belong to one another for ever now. We made the big promise. The one we can never break.'

  A nearby clock struck. Andrew counted eleven chimes before taking her back through the dark summer gardens, stopping every few paces to hold her in his arms.

  It was eleven o'clock. Flora must catch the last tram to Portobello, and they must be brave because tonight thousands of lovers would be parting. Andrew held on to her hand as the tram came trundling towards the stop. He said, 'Promise me if you need anything you'll go to Ingersley and find Ma.'

  'I will.' She kissed him for the last time as the tram pulled up, then climbed aboard, blinded by tears.

  Chapter Seven

  January 1940

  Andrew's oil-soaked boiler suit made him clumsy as he heaved himself up the steel ladder to the washroom area beside the stokers' mess deck at the end of his watch. The Rutland was ploughing through atrocious Atlantic seas late on a wild January afternoon. The strain of the last four hours had been felt by everyone from the chief engineer down. They had been detached from station in the North Sea to see off the V-boat attacks on the Atlantic convoys. The convoys, endlessly zigzagging to confuse the enemy, but always at the speed of the slowest, a sluggardly six and a half knots, were a slow-moving target. All the convoys were having a desperate time of it, but this one had at its centre one of the Empress Line ships which had carried evacuees to Canada. Now it was returning with Canadian troops to Liverpool and Greenock. A corvette and two merchant ships had been sunk in the last attack.

  Though Andrew's action station was the engine room, he'd been on deck after the action and seen ships blazing furiously; seen men by the dozens covered in burning oil, some dead, some soon to die, all half drowned, being pulled from the sea into the corvettes that were the outriders of a convoy so mauled it felt as if they were bleeding to death.

  The Rutland was built for speed, and the slowness of her progress as she searched for V-boats on the outer edge of the convoy was taking its toll. On Andrew's watch a pipe had ruptured. Steam under pressure had scalded his hands even through the heavy gloves he'd worn to turn off the valve, replace the pipe and see the engine getting back up to pressure. Now the fear was that strain on the bearings could affect the propeller. The Rutland would be an easy target if she had to stop.

  It would be simpler to wash all this grease off himself in the tub, he thought, and it was there in the hot water that tiredness set in. His hands were raw and painful while he cleaned himself. Here, in the midship bowels, the decks rose and sank, the water slopped from side to side of the tub that was barely larger than a dustbin. He had never suffered from sea-sickness, so that could not be the reason for the weariness that assailed him as, done with washing himself, he stood, took his bar of hard soap and pasted it all over the boiler suit, stamping on the hard cloth to wash and rinse it. He could be put on a charge for washing his boiler suit here but he was too tired to care.

  Then, wearing only a towel, and with the blisters on his hands broken, he twisted and wrung his boiler suit then hung it over the pipes and made his way to the mess where Greg and five ratings waited for the blower to call them to night defence stations.

  The mess, as always, was crowded and smelled of the unwashed bodies of thirty stokers - a smell that had become familiar to him; familiar and strangely comforting. Off duty men slept, their hammocks slung so close together that he had to bend his head to reach his own, which, since he was a leading stoker, he had chosen at the end of the line, nearest the door. One of the stokers said, 'Anyone know where we're going next?'

  'Christ! They never tell you where we're going. All it takes is one drunken sailor in a bar and we're up Shit Creek,' Greg said.

  'I'll make a guess that we're heading up the Clyde.'

  Andrew put on clean underclothes then ate his meal from the hot plate where it lay, saved for him from midday. They saw how his hands were, and one of the stokers helped him treat and bandage them then made him a cup of cocoa, breaking off chunks from the block of raw chocolate, pouring on boiling water, stirring and adding dollops of thick, sweet condensed milk. He ate and drank quickly, then went to his locker and took out his letters, three of them Flora's and one from Ma. He'd read them all, over and over, the letters being all he had to remind him.

  He slung his hammock, unfolded his blanket and, with his boots and tunic made into a pillow and the snoring man next to him quiet for once, took out Flora's letters. The throb of the engines, and the
ever-present hum of motors fanning hot stale air from one compartment to another, was familiar and steady.

  30 October Dear Andrew, It doesn't matter that you can't change your allowance. Your Ma needs it and I never thought the navy would treat us as married. It's not the same as having wedding lines that are official no matter what Jessie says so I wear my wedding ring round my neck on a chain I bought from Woolworth's. I found part-time work in a munitions factory. The pay's quite good 25/-week and I can look after Mr Davidson and save for our house as well. There's been a lot of air attacks on the Forth. Four German bombers were shot down, one at Port Seton, and they even had two dead German airmen lying in St Philip's church. They had policemen standing watch over the coffins draped with German flags which upset a lot of people, me too, seeing those swastikas. On the coffins, not the police. We are getting identity cards. I'm worried (because of Guthrie's as you know why) but it's no use worrying and too late to send me back. Love, Flora

  She used to put SWALK, for 'Sealed with a Loving Kiss', over the sealed flap of the envelope. Since September she'd drawn a picture of a weeping tree in the corner. He hadn't told her how much this secret sign meant to him, nor had he told anybody about their private wedding under the weeping tree. He took out the letter dated 30 December and read, Dearest Andrew, I have only had two letters from you the last one in November. I hope you are getting mine ...

  Andrew smiled yet again reading this. She perhaps didn't know why they were delayed - that all their letters were read and censored before they could be sent. Even then delays were inevitable, for the ships had to be in a home port for the mail to be posted. The last letter he'd writen to her might get back before he did if their mail had been put on to one of the Liverpool-bound ships.

  I got my identity card in the name of Flora Macdonald. I didn't want them to ask too many questions. And they just gave it to me. Good job Mr Davidson can't look at it. Every day we hear of ships being sunk. Even neutral ships with women and children on board. I'm glad you get good food and plenty of it. Better than us surely. I am not feeling too good but I expect it's because of rationing. Butter 4 oz a week each. Sugar 12 oz a week each. Bacon or ham 4 oz. It's not much but I can make do for me and Mr Davidson. Potatoes, bread and vegetables are not rationed. We have a chicken for Hogmanay. I don't think the widow woman next door will first-foot us. She really hates me. I love you so much. I can't wait to see you again. Love from Flora.