by Isla Dewar
‘You’re married?’ asked Hamish.
‘I was.’
‘Divorced?’
‘My wife died,’ said Jimmy.
Hamish said he hadn’t known that. ‘I’m very sorry.’ Then, telling Jimmy to enjoy his game, headed for his study.
Izzy and Jimmy had an enjoyable round. He played well, she didn’t. This suited him. They joked about how often she missed the ball and she pointed out that Mark Twain had said golf was a waste of a walk. ‘I may be rotten at the golfing bit. But I’m enjoying the walk.’
He said he’d grant her that. He showed her how to hold the club and keep her eye on the ball. He said, ‘Wiggle your hips.’
‘Is that necessary?’
‘I don’t know. I just like to see you do it.’
They deliberately didn’t mention Izzy’s father. It would have spoiled their fun.
Afterwards, they went back to the clubhouse. Jimmy wanted a beer. But Izzy wasn’t allowed into the bar. ‘Sorry,’ said the steward. ‘It’s men only.’ When they headed for the lounge, the steward blocked the way and told them there was a dress code. ‘We don’t allow women in trousers to enter the lounge.’ Izzy snorted, wheeled round and walked out. Jimmy followed. They walked home, enjoying a friendly bicker about Izzy’s gender and dress sense.
‘If you weren’t a woman wearing trousers, I’d be enjoying a beer right now,’ said Jimmy.
‘I could have waited outside. Watched you swig your beer through the window and looked sad. You’d have felt guilty.’
‘Ah, playing the guilt card. Trousers or not, you’re a woman.’
She said she’d thought he already knew that.
When they got back, Joan took Izzy aside. She wanted a word in the kitchen. She shut the door. ‘That man you’re with has been married.’
‘I know,’ said Izzy. ‘But he isn’t now, so it’s all right.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Thirty-four or thirty-five.’
‘That’s quite a bit older than you.’
‘Ten years,’ said Izzy.
Joan picked up a cup that was already clean and started to wash it. She never was good at awkward conversations. Needed something to do with her hands while she was involved in them. ‘An older man, a man who has been married, will expect certain things from a woman.’ She finished washing the cup and started to vigorously dry it.
‘Like what?’ asked Izzy.
‘Things,’ said Joan. ‘Relationship things.’
Izzy stared at her blankly, what on earth was the woman talking about? Then she realised. ‘Oh, you mean sex?’
‘Yes, if you must put it that way.’ It wasn’t a word Joan ever said.
‘I do,’ said Izzy. ‘But sex, don’t worry about that.’
She meant that she and Jimmy made sure she didn’t get pregnant. Her mother took it to mean their relationship was chaste. ‘Good,’ she said.
On Sunday they went to church. It wasn’t as full as it had been when Izzy was last there. A few of the pews were empty. Hamish’s sermon was quieter than the ones she’d heard as a child. He spoke about people in peril, lives being wasted and the yearning everyone had to know their loved ones were safe.
Outside, Hamish introduced Jimmy to his parishioners. ‘Izzy’s American doctor friend,’ he said. People nodded and said they were pleased to meet him. Izzy noted that one or two people went on their way without shaking Hamish’s hand. This was odd.
Later, they enjoyed some quiet banter over lunch and, as pudding was brought to the table, Izzy was asked to do her custard prayer.
‘Aw, Dad,’ she said.
‘Did it when she was a lass,’ said Hamish. ‘Lovely thought, thanking God for the custard. Thanking God for the simple pleasures in life is important.’
Jimmy said it surely was.
They played cards in the evening, they chatted and avoided talking about the business of women flying.
In the days that followed, Jimmy and Izzy took long walks through the woods, stopping regularly to kiss, to hold one another. She showed him the village school she’d attended, and Elspeth’s cottage. ‘I had my happiest times in there. You’d love Elspeth.’
They explored the local antique shop and Jimmy bought a pewter tankard to take home to his dad. ‘It’s very old,’ the shopkeeper said, ‘used to belong to Bonnie Prince Charlie.’
‘Really?’ said Jimmy. ‘No kidding.’
Izzy snorted. ‘And I’m Mary Queen of Scots.’
‘Talking of Mary Queen of Scots,’ the shopkeeper enthused, ‘I have one of her teaspoons on display here.’ He pointed to a spoon with a crest on the handle. Izzy snorted again and left the shop.
They held hands walking to the manse. Jimmy said, ‘You’re happy.’
Izzy said, ‘Yes. I am really happy. Don’t spoil it by talking about it. If you do that, it slips away.’
She was right. They were hardly in the door when Hamish came out of his study. ‘Izzy, a moment.’ He jerked his head to the interior of his dusty, cluttered room. When Jimmy moved with her, Hamish said, ‘Alone, if you don’t mind.’
Izzy sat down, folded her hands in her lap. This was familiar – the two of them in the study, the door closed, her father looking grim. A lecture was in the offing. ‘What do you want?’ Izzy said.
Hamish folded his hands on the top of his desk. ‘The truth.’
Izzy said, ‘Ah.’
‘You lied to me, you lied to your mother. You’re flying, aren’t you?’
‘I am,’ said Izzy. ‘How did you find out?’
‘The truth will always out. It’s a small world. I hear things. Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘Couldn’t face the fuss,’ said Izzy. ‘It was easier not to tell you.’
‘It was easier to lie?’
Izzy shrugged, and said she hadn’t really thought of it as lying. ‘More not telling the whole truth. I thought you’d worry. You’d try to stop me.’
‘A lie is a lie. And I hate lies. You know that. You didn’t just lie to your mother and me, you lied to yourself. You let yourself down. You were off living the high life, doing what you wanted to do. What if you’d crashed and died? What if you met an enemy plane and were shot down?’
‘Oddly enough,’ said Izzy, ‘there are very few incidents of our pilots seeing enemy planes. Anyway, I’m fine. I am a pilot third class and proud.’
‘You are a silly girl trying to do a man’s job.’
‘No,’ said Izzy. ‘I’m not trying to do it. I am doing it. And the people who employ me must be happy with what we women do. We get the same pay as the men.’
‘You get equal pay?’
Izzy told him yes. ‘Why shouldn’t I? I do the same job as the men.’
He shook his head and wondered what the world was coming to.
‘And now you are seeing a man who is considerably older than you and who has been married. A man like that will expect a lot from a relationship. He’ll want more than a girl like you should be prepared to give.’
Izzy asked what he meant by that. He told her she knew exactly what he meant.
Izzy said that he knew about Allan. ‘You know what we did.’ To mention the act by name wasn’t possible. Not here, in this study – scene of many lectures and scoldings.
‘What you did with Allan was an act of compassion, a gift to a man who was off to fight for his country. Lust is a different matter. I want you to stop,’ he said. ‘Stop flying and stop seeing that man.’
Izzy said, ‘No. I won’t do either of those things. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of lust. It’s good for the circulation and it keeps you warm at a time when it’s cold what with coal being rationed.’
She crossed her legs, folded her arms and stared at him. He stared back. There was no shouting, no flashes of temper. Just two people glaring at one another, jaws clenched and unrelenting. In the hall the grandfather clock ticked, beyond the window, a blackbird hopped across the lawn, and, from the kitchen, the sounds of a meal bei
ng prepared. But the silence in the room was awful. Two people were falling out of love. Or, at least, they were realising that the adored one was not the person they thought.
Izzy was no longer Hamish’s little tomboy girl who’d hung on his every word. She was a woman who lived her own life. Hamish was no longer the kindly, joking father whose only wish had been that his family be good and be seen to be good. He was an authoritarian who was demanding too much of his daughter. So, they stared.
At last, Hamish said, ‘Please God, you are not turning into one of those ghastly modern women.’
‘I may well be,’ said Izzy. ‘You haven’t turned into anything. You’re still an old-fashioned man.’
‘Don’t be rude.’
Izzy said, ‘I’m not being rude. You’ll note I didn’t say ghastly.’
He told her he blamed Elspeth for all this. ‘She filled your head with nonsense.’
‘She only taught me that it wasn’t wrong to pursue happiness.’
He laughed. ‘Happiness, Izzy, only the foolish pursue that. You were brought up to respect your parents, yourself and your God.’
Izzy squirmed. She was ten years old again. She hated that. She told him he was treating her like a child. That, he told her, was because she was behaving like one. ‘You know nothing about respon sibility. I suspect you know nothing about being a woman, either.’
Izzy gasped.
‘Make no mistake, I love women.’ Hamish launched himself into his lecture. ‘They give you all they have. They love you and they give you their life. They are soft vulnerable creatures. Men keep a little bit of themselves back from love. It’s the burden of responsibility. They have to be strong for their families.’
‘The burden of responsibility,’ Izzy scoffed. ‘That’s just an excuse for not helping with the washing-up.’
She wanted this lecture to be over. She wanted to be in the kitchen with Jimmy, drinking tea and eating scones.
Hamish told her she was being childish. ‘You’re a silly woman living a man’s life, doing a man’s job and behaving like a slut.’ He wondered if, perhaps, she’d abandoned her religious beliefs.
Izzy said she had. ‘I don’t believe in God. But I’m not a slut. That’s a terrible thing to say. To your own daughter, too. To anybody, in fact.’ She sat, fists clenched on her lap, face pink with defiance. She watched her father carefully, waiting for his fury.
It didn’t come. He scratched his chin. He agreed with her. He’d said a terrible thing. He just wasn’t going to admit it. It had been a heat-of-the-moment thing. He wanted her to be safe, to know she wasn’t going to get hurt. It would be one less worry in worrying times. If Izzy did as she was told – stopped flying, stopped seeing that man – he could stop fretting about her and concentrate all his anxiety on the absurd rumours about his German sympathies that were still being whispered throughout the village. People were avoiding him.
Still, he thought, the girl is a fool – a stubborn fool. He would put her in her place. He raised his eyebrows and smiled. He smiled harder, then laughed, flapped his hand, waved her from the room. ‘I’m not going to have a theological discussion with you.’ He laughed some more. ‘Izzy the pilot, loose woman and atheist. Come back when you’ve grown up.’
Izzy said she’d come back when he stopped being so narrow-minded. ‘And I am grown-up.’ She pointed to her eyes. ‘Look, I’ve just had a fight with you, and I’m not crying. That’s a first.’ She headed for the door.
‘I’ll pray for you,’ her father said.
‘Don’t bother.’ Izzy walked out.
Hamish wasn’t around for supper. He excused himself, saying he had a meeting with the church elders. Everybody in the house was sleeping when he returned. Next morning, Izzy and Jimmy left for Edinburgh. Hamish had gone out early to visit the cottage hospital.
‘He’s in a huff,’ said Izzy. ‘He hates it when I don’t do what he says. And he thinks I’m childish.’
Joan walked to the gate with them. ‘He has his problems.’
Izzy asked, ‘What problems?’
Joan said, ‘Oh, nothing. Nothing he can’t deal with. Nothing for you to bother about. I wish you would pretend you agree with him. Just for the peace of it. That’s what I’ve always done.’
‘He’s asking too much,’ said Izzy
Joan took her hand. ‘I know. But, it’s only because he loves you. He wants to be proud of you.’ She took Izzy’s hand. ‘I’m proud of you. And so envious. I’d love to do what you’re doing.’
Izzy put her arms round her mother. ‘I’ll write.’
She and Jimmy walked down the road, caught the bus to Perth, then the train to Edinburgh, where they booked into the North British Hotel. They hardly spoke on the journey. In the hotel they climbed to their room on the first floor, undressed, climbed into bed and made love.
Afterwards, Izzy said, ‘Sorry.’
‘For what?’ he asked.
‘For all that. For my father. For having a fight with him when you were there.’
He told her to forget it. ‘I fought with my folks all the time. They didn’t like me smoking, said I drank too much, said I had no respect for them, all the usual things.’
‘Do you still fight with them?’
‘Hell, no. That was over years ago. You’re just having the fight you should have had when you were sixteen. He’ll get over it and so will you.’
Izzy said she supposed so. ‘It was the worse kind of argument. No bawling or shouting, no sobbing. It’s the hardest kind of fight. If one person cries, then the other can put their arms round them and tell them to stop. You can make up after that. One good thing, though, I didn’t tell him about my motorbike. He’d really hate that.’
‘Izzy, I love that you fly. I think it’s great. But that bike is an embarrassment.’
‘You think?’
‘I know.’
She laughed, rolled on top of him, kissed him. Outside, a train rumbled out of Waverley Station. He shut his eyes.
He’d bought her the spoon that the shopkeeper had said once belonged to Mary Queen of Scots, Izzy would laugh when she saw it. He thought he might give it to her on their last night here, after they’d eaten, and when they were in bed together. He’d tell her to think of him every time she used it to put sugar on her porridge. It was something to remind her of him. ‘When I’m in France,’ he would tell her. He had it all planned, he would assure her he hadn’t asked for the posting. They needed experienced doctors in the field hospitals. He’d hold her and tell her he would come back to her.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Someone To Watch Over You
WHEN ELSPETH HAD returned to work after her holiday, the swelling on her cheek where Duncan had punched her had developed into a splendid bruise – purple at the centre turning to brown then yellow round the edges. There had been jokes and comments, but she stuck with her story. She’d fallen off her bike. She had enjoyed elaborating on her mishap. She had, she said, been cycling in the dark, hadn’t seen a pothole in the road, hit it and had been sent sailing over her handlebars. ‘A beautiful short flight through the gloaming’, before landing on her face.
On her first morning back Duncan had given her a small nod. He assumed that having given Elspeth money for her fare home and a ride to the bus stop, he’d been forgiven for his outburst. Elspeth had ignored him. She hadn’t forgiven him. She wanted revenge, dreamed of it. But so far hadn’t worked out what form her vengeance would take. Nothing as awful as causing him pain – just a little humiliation, she decided. Making him blush publicly would be very satisfying.
‘You’ve gone all quiet,’ Lorna said. ‘You’re not the same.’
Elspeth said, ‘I’m just a bit down. I shouldn’t have gone home. I got a taste of normal life. I forgot what living here was like. Now I’m back and I’ve remembered. It’s been a shock.’ She was sitting on her bed replying to the letter from Izzy that she’d read at her cottage. In it Izzy had confessed to a new fear of flying after the
accident that killed Diane.
Lorna said, ‘I don’t think it’s that. You’ve gone into yourself. Not speaking much. You’re all stiff and wary. You’ve been like that since you fell off your bike.’
‘Have I?’ said Elspeth.
‘I know getting back in the air after such a dreadful accident must be hard,’ Elspeth wrote, ‘but you must try not to be wary.’
‘You know what you have to do,’ said Lorna. ‘You have to get back on your bike and peddle like mad till you’re not scared any more. That’s what they do with people who have almost drowned. They throw them back into the water.’
Elspeth said she didn’t think that was true. ‘You must fly through your fear,’ she wrote to Izzy. ‘You know how it was when you fell off your bike when you were little. You had to get right back on it again and peddle like mad till you weren’t scared any more.’
Ten days later Izzy’s reply arrived. ‘You were right. The more I fly, the less afraid I am. But now, my life is in another turmoil. Firstly, Jimmy’s gone to France. I miss him and I worry about him. He said he would come back, but I don’t know if he will. He’ll probably go back to America from there. I don’t think I’ll ever see him again. And, I’ve had a dreadful row with my father. He found out that I was flying . . .’
Izzy described the fight with Hamish. ‘Thing is, how did he find out about me? Who could have told him? Whoever it was, I hate them. Also, I’m feeling really queasy these days.’
Elspeth told her to take Milk of Magnesia to settle her stomach. ‘It’s just stress,’ she wrote. ‘Jimmy will come back to you, I’m sure of it. As for who told your father about your job, well, it could have been anybody. It’s a small world.’
She was awash with guilt as she wrote this, so quickly went on to describe the weather. ‘Autumn now, I can smell cold days coming. It’s funny how during summer, I forget about winter. Now I remember how it is – blinding rain in my face, snow trickling down the back of my neck and oozing over the top of my boots, cold winds slicing through me – and I’m dreading it.’ She didn’t mention her own troubles.