One particular afternoon, Chrissie came back from a walk to find Isa laying into Netta, her niece’s slight body hanging limply over Isa’s knee as her mother continued to smack her.
“Isa,” Chrissie shouted. “That’s enough.” She came over and lifted Netta from her sister’s knees. The poor child could barely speak or stand. Chrissie took her through to her bedroom and laid her on the bed. She stroked her head and soothingly spoke to her.
“I’m sorry,” whispered Netta. “I know I’m very naughty. I’m sorry . . .”
“There, there. It’s all passed. You get some sleep now. I’ll bring you some tea later.” She waited at the bedside until the poor child was asleep and peaceful.
She came in to the living room and shut the door behind her. Then she turned to her sister. “Isa, this has to stop.”
Her older sister turned angrily. “Don’t you tell me how to look after my children.”
“Isa, you’ll kill her one day with beatings like that. It’s not right. It’s too much. You never did that to Maggie or me.”
“Netta’s not like you two. She keeps doing such dangerous things. Today she was swinging from a branch above the cliffs. I saw her from the harbour. My God, she could have fallen and broken her neck or been drowned in the firth.”
“So she arrives home safely and you beat her to within an inch of her life? It doesn’t make sense, Isa.”
Suddenly Isa burst into spasms of tears and sobs. “Chrissie, I don’t know what comes over me. It’s like my mind is just taken over and I don’t know what I’m doing. I just lash out.”
Chrissie came over to Isa’s side and pulled her close.
“I couldn’t bear to do her harm, Chrissie. I’m trying to protect her. She has to learn to stay safe. I keep thinking . . .”
But Isa could not go on and speak of her fear of losing another child in her care. When it rolled over her, she drowned in it, losing her reason, all sense of proportion. What if Netta had fallen onto the cliffs and died? How could she live with herself then? Every incident where her own children came close to danger led to the nightmares of Eliza’s death returning. Again she relived the last moments of her sister’s life and convicted herself anew of her death. No one understood this burden she carried. It was never spoken of. Isa repressed it in herself, but the nightmares were vivid and the emotion they aroused was raw and real, undiluted by the intervening years.
Her anger was exacerbated by other troubles. She had had no relations with Peter since Netta’s birth, six years ago. She could not stand another pregnancy and the doctor had warned them both that it would not be wise. Peter still wanted to come to her and said he would use protection, but Isa found she had no faith in that idea. The two of them were much too fertile to risk that. But abstinence was not good for either of them. It made Isa bitter and edgy and she found fault in almost everything Peter said or did. She was aware of a seething energy within her. Somehow when Chrissie was there it was easier, because she had emotional support from someone who understood her and to whom she felt close. Peter came home tired at the end of shifts and wanted a meal on the table and peace and quiet to sleep. If he had been on night shift this was not easy. Isa tried to keep the girls quiet with books, jigsaws and colouring books on wet days and on good days they cleared off down to the beach. It all added to her stress and sense of being out of control.
And for Peter the enforced abstinence fuelled a hunger for sex and closeness that grew and grew. Sometimes after a shift that ended in the evening, a group of men in the office would go to the railwaymen’s club in Burntisland. At home he never drank, but when out with the others he had a dram and a pint to relax and join in the laughter and banter. Behind the bar there was a very attractive barmaid of Peter’s age who clearly had taken a fancy to him. She knew he was married, but that was not what she wanted. Just a bit of excitement every now and again would do her nicely. Peter was very dapper and polite, and had a good line in patter. She noticed a lovely twinkle in his green eyes and a smile that lit his face when he laughed. When she saw him coming in, she took time to refresh her lipstick and to fluff her gold-brown curls at the mirror behind the bar.
“Well, Peter, how are you this evening?” She greeted him with a warm smile.
“All the better for seeing you, Maureen,” he said in jest.
“And what will it be tonight?”
“The usual whisky chaser if you please. You’re looking well, as always,” he ventured.
“Why, thank you, Peter. The effort’s not wasted then.”
“Don’t tell me that’s all for me?” He caught her gaze, then allowed his eyes to wander over her shiny hair, creamy complexion, the carefully painted red pout, and her curvaceous figure, wrapped closely in deep-blue velvet. He looked back to her sparkling blue eyes, his hunger almost leaping across the bar.
She saw it in him. She leaned over the bar and held his gaze.
“I finish soon. We could go somewhere, if you like, after your pint,” she whispered as she placed the glass on the counter.
Peter raised the glass to his lips. The beer slid down his throat and he felt himself renewed, invigorated. After the years of enforced celibacy at home, there was no way he was going to turn this down.
21
That autumn, Isa’s health was again a source of concern. She was having “woman’s troubles”. Every month she would be laid up for a week in pain, with terrible abdominal and back cramping, as if in the early stages of labour. She would lose so much blood that she could barely function for several days afterwards. The weakness and enforced bed rest was getting her down.
Despite his wife’s incapacity, Peter’s mood remained positive. He began to be quite adept at helping around the house when Isa was not well. There was no softening between them, though. She would undress for bed in the privacy of the bathroom and once she got into bed Peter went through the same procedure. They had become protective of their naked bodies as they held themselves back from each other. There was little intimacy left. No sharing of secrets or dreams. Just the routine exchanges required to keep the household going. Off-season, there were no visitors lodging with them either and no other adults to take the pressure off the lack of communication.
Isa noticed Peter seemed to be doing overtime, yet there was no difference in her allowance for housekeeping. She tackled him about it one evening when the girls were in bed.
“Peter. You worked overtime on your day shift three times this month and you had two extra night shifts.” She paused.
Peter, who had been reading the paper, felt suddenly on guard. Isa heard it in his reply.
“There’s been a lot of goods movement on the lines this month. Must be the build-up to Christmas. Factories moving their stock down south for the shops in London. That’s the direction most of the trains are going.”
“I wasn’t questioning why you were working extra. It’s just that usually we’d save the extra. You would ask me to bank it or you would give me extra in the housekeeping. We could be putting by for Christmas ourselves.”
Peter had to think quickly. “I’ve no’ had the extra pay yet, Isa. They’re giving it out at the end of the month. Some new wages clerk has created a new system. Basically means the company get our money for longer, along with the interest.”
“What a nerve! Did you not get any chance to be consulted?”
“Are you serious? You know what the railway company is like. All decided from on high and we just have to like it or lump it. But don’t worry. When I get the extra at the end of the month we’ll bank it, right enough.”
He thought he had done pretty well there, thinking all that out on his feet.
Isa was left with a strange feeling of being kept in the dark. She almost believed Peter’s explanation. It seemed to make sense. Yet why had he not told her of the new arrangements? That was the kind of thing that would have annoyed him, for he was good with money and would have seen the implied benefits for the company at the men’s expense. Wh
y had he not come home complaining about it the very first he had heard of it? Perhaps it was a sign of how much wider the chasm between them was becoming.
*
Margaret and Netta had music lessons through in Dunfermline on a Saturday morning. Now that Margaret was nine and eminently responsible, they sometimes took the bus themselves if Isa was poorly. They loved this. Travelling on their own turned the familiar experience into an adventure, even though it was a short run from Aberdour. They wore their thick winter school coats with colourful berets, their music satchels resting on their knees.
Dunfermline was very familiar to them. This was where they came to swim in the winter when the sea got too cold. Afterwards there was the lovely treat of a poke of chips from the little Italian café near the swimming baths. If Chrissie was with them, she used to hide her chips in her pocket since to be seen eating chips out of a poke on the street was deemed very common by her peers. She would walk along swinging her arms nonchalantly, then surreptitiously put her hand into her coat pocket, draw out a chip and pop it quickly into her mouth. Netta and Margaret thought this was hilarious.
Pittencrieff Park in Dunfermline, known to the locals as “The Glen”, was also a favourite haunt for the family. Many Saturday afternoons might be spent walking through the woodland, buying paper bags of peanuts with which to feed the squirrels and perhaps stopping for refreshments in the tearoom on the hill. The girls thought it the grandest place, with its round tables, linen cloths and waitresses in black dresses and lace aprons taking their orders for scones and cakes.
One Saturday morning in December, they were walking back from their music lesson swinging their satchels and humming snatches of the tunes they had been learning when Netta glanced across the street and started to wave, but then dropped her hand to her side.
“Margaret, look over there. Is that Daddy?”
Before she even looked, Margaret began, “Daddy is working today.” But she looked anyway and there, on the other side of the street, was a man the spitting image of her father, in his best coat and hat, with a woman on his arm she had never seen before. The children were used to big family gatherings with both sides of their family and Margaret knew that woman was no aunt, cousin or sister. But she was also sure her father was supposed to be working in the station in Aberdour. It was very confusing. Both children sensed they should not wave or call or cross the street and ask to be introduced. In fact it was all so strange they just wanted to move away as quickly as possible. Had they been mistaken? Could the man have been someone else? But in profile his nose had that funny hook shape caused by a fall their father had had when young, which had broken his nose. And his hat and coat were the ones that hung in the hallway behind the door. The confusion left them sick and troubled. They spoke in whispers on the bus home.
“I don’t think it could be Daddy after all,” said Margaret in her big-sister voice after a while. “He said he was going to work.”
“But it looked so like him, Margaret. We will just need to ask him tonight when he gets home.”
Margaret felt as though her insides were draining away. Instinctively she sensed danger in that course of action. She did not understand why, but she knew they had to keep quiet. They could not ask him. They could not tell their mother.
“Netta, that’s not a good idea. They’ll just think we’re stupid, mistaking a stranger for our own father. It was a coincidence. That’s all.” The big word seemed suddenly reassuring. Yes, it was just a coincidence.
*
Since his promotion to chief controller in Burntisland, Peter had had a telephone installed. It was a condition of the post that he must be contacted in any emergency. An extra advantage was that prospective boarders could also telephone a booking ahead of their arrival. It stood on a neat little wooden table, draped with an embroidered cloth, in the long hallway between the doors to the sitting room and the girls’ bedroom.
Netta loved getting to the phone first and answering in the phrase her mother had taught them. She could sound quite grown-up, she thought.
One afternoon, just in from school, she had dropped her bag on the floor and was unwinding her scarf from her neck when the phone rang. She picked it up.
“Good afternoon. You’re through to Willowbank. How may I help you?”
The woman’s voice on the other end was unfamiliar.
“I would like to speak to Mr Peter Swan, if I may.”
“I’m sorry, he’s not available but I can get Mrs Swan for you. Just hold the line.”
Before she could put down the phone to call her mother through the voice at the other end became harsh and sharp.
“What would I want to talk to her for?” And the phone went dead. Netta felt all strange inside. It did not feel right. There was something in the way the woman had spoken which left her uneasy. She went to find her mother in the kitchen.
Isa was busy making pastry for a fruit pie. She always found pastry-making soothing: the careful sifting of fat and flour, the mixing in of the water, then the kneading and the glide of the rolling pin over the paste.
“Good day at school, Netta?”
“Yes, Mummy. It was fine.” She paused. “I answered the phone right now.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know. It was a bit strange. She asked to speak to Daddy but when I said he wasn’t here and asked her if she would like me to get you, she was very rude, Mummy.”
“What did she say?”
“She said . . .” Here Netta took a breath and mimicked the woman’s voice: “‘What would I want to talk to her for?’ Then she put the phone down.”
Isa laid down the rolling pin and sat back in the chair. Who would speak in such a tone about her? She was on good terms with the neighbours and the church people. She had not fallen out with anyone in the family.
“Netta, think carefully about the woman’s voice. Was it anyone you knew?”
Netta knew this was important, but no matter how much she tried she could not recognise the voice. “No. I didn’t recognise her, Mummy.”
“Do you think it could be a wrong number?”
“No. She asked to speak to Mr Peter Swan.”
Isa said nothing but her face was ashen.
“We can tell Daddy when he gets home and he will maybe know.”
A chill gripped Isa’s heart. “No, I don’t think you should worry about that. I’ll talk to your father. Do you hear me?” She continued firmly, turning Netta to look at her. “I will talk to him. You get on with your homework.”
Netta headed through to her room and sat at her little desk. She knew her message had upset her mother. It had made her feel strange too. But she was glad her mother was going to sort it out. She got her books out and was about to start her maths exercises when suddenly she recalled the same uneasy feeling she had experienced that Saturday in Dunfermline when she and Margaret had seen someone they thought might have been their father with a strange woman. Could this woman, the woman on the phone, be the same one? What was going on? Why had she been so rude about her mother? She could not wait to talk to Margaret. She would feel better when Margaret was home.
In the kitchen, Isa too was mulling over things. She remembered the strange smell of perfume on Peter’s shirt last week as she had picked it up to wash, which he told her had been caused by new soap in the cloakroom at work. He said he’d had a washdown at the end of his shift because he’d been so tired. Then there were the extra shifts without any sign of more money coming, and now this phone call from a woman who wanted to talk to him but definitely not his wife. She could only see one way to read all the evidence and she did not like the conclusion it pointed to.
She did not notice that she had put the pie in the oven, cleared the table and washed the dishes, as the certainty mounted within her that Peter had now betrayed her with lies and subterfuge to have an affair. She stood with her hands in the soapy water, shut her eyes and let the pain spill out of her. All her life she had had to be strong in ord
er to cope with what life threw at her, but she was a mess, really. She knew herself to be fragile, a series of broken, jagged pieces trying to be a complete person, but struggling to hold herself together. There was so much pain, so much self-doubt, so much guilt, such a desperate sense of failure. She had failed to protect Eliza. She had failed to look after her mother. Her father had been so disappointed in her as a substitute mother for her sisters he had been thinking of putting them in a home. And look at her now! Her husband was deserting her for another woman; her sister had to intervene to prevent her from harming her own child. What kind of person was she? She had so much wanted to be someone who would be respected, admired, someone who was capable. But it seemed all she was capable of was letting everyone down.
She stumbled through to the hall, her hands still dripping wet, her feet in house shoes. She grabbed a coat and headscarf from the hall stand and went to open the door. Netta came out of her room on hearing the door, expecting her sister’s arrival.
“Oh, it’s you, Mummy. I thought it might be Margaret.”
Isa wiped a hand across her face and turned away from Netta.
“Are you going out, Mummy? Will I get my coat on too?”
“No. You stay here. I have to go.” Her mother sounded so strange: there was anger in the sharpness of her voice, but she was almost sobbing. As she wrenched the door wider, she added, “It’s the only way.” Then she stepped out and slammed the door shut behind her.
Netta was stunned. What did her mother mean – “It’s the only way?” Why was she leaving Netta on her own? Anxiety made her heart beat faster. She opened the door to see where her mother was headed, just in time to see her turn the corner in the direction of the station. Was she going to catch a train? Was she planning to run away? Was it because of that woman? She stood on the doorstep, unsure, anxious for what seemed like hours but was only minutes, then she caught sight of her father returning from work, carrying the shopping he’d been asked to pick up on his way home. Netta ran out on to the street and flung herself at him.
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