“Daddy! Daddy!” she cried out in distress.
“What’s got into ye, lassie? Dinnae cling tae me like that.”
“Daddy, there’s something wrong with Mummy. A lady phoned for you and said she didn’t want to speak to Mummy, and now Mummy is running away.”
“What?” He spoke sharply. “What do you mean Mummy is running away?”
“She put on her coat and said she had to go and it was the only way. Daddy, who is the lady? Why does she not like Mummy?”
“Which way did your mother go?”
“She went down the street and turned left. She might be going to the station.”
“Come on! We need to catch up with her.” Peter dropped the shopping on the doorstep. He ran through in his mind all the different trains that might be coming into the station. Where might his wife think of going? How had she found out? What the hell was that silly Maureen thinking of, phoning his house? He’d never given her his number.
Netta was speeding on ahead and he was a little out of breath behind her. He paused briefly to catch his breath. He had to keep going. He had to get Isa back.
Netta ran on ahead and as the road rose to form the bridge over the railway line, she saw her mother sitting on the bridge parapet, her legs over the side. Suddenly she realised what her mother intended to do.
“No. No, Mummy. No!” she yelled and ran as fast as she ever had done, right up to where her mother sat, and held her arms tightly around her mother’s waist, burying her head into her side.
“Mummy, no,” she sobbed. “No, you can’t do this. We need you. We love you. I won’t let you do this, Mummy.” She began to tug at her mother to try and pull her off the bridge, but it was as if Isa was in a stupor and could not work out where she was or what was happening.
Peter was at her back now, physically hauling her off the parapet. He swung one leg back round and got the other over too then pulled her into his arms, sobbing.
“My God, Isa, what were you thinking? How was I going to live without you? How was I going to live?”
In a soft, tired voice, Isa said, “It wasn’t my fault . . . not my fault.” Then her voice faded and she passed out in Peter’s arms as Netta held on, her arms tightly wrapped around her mother’s waist.
*
Isa lay still, on her back, tightly wrapped in the white sheets and green hospital blanket. Occasionally she opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling, drifting in and out of a drug-induced stupor. In moments of clarity, she remembered and relived the day of the phone call, the strange, unreal walk to the bridge. The cold stone under her hands, the cement dust in her fingernails. Looking down at her slipper-shod feet dangling over the parapet and the shiny metal rails below her. The vertigo coming over her in waves, like something magnetic: drawing, pulling her towards those gleaming rails. Then her mind would lapse into fog again.
The doctor ordered rest and treatment for pernicious anaemia. Her blood count was severely low. He attributed the depression in part to her physical condition but wanted to keep her under safe observation until she was stronger.
Peter and the girls came to visit but often she was asleep or staring at the ceiling, oblivious to their presence at her bedside. Neighbours were helping with the girls.
Guilt made Peter especially anxious and attentive. He brought flowers or fruit every day and his gifts piled up on the locker and filled the ward’s flower vases, completely ignored by Isa. She still swooned in swirling memories and odd glimpses of her present reality. When the doctor was happier with her physical health, the medication was gradually reduced so that she had longer periods of awareness. It was then that she started to piece everything together.
One night, Peter came to visit on his own. Isa was awake.
“Isa,” he whispered. “Oh, thank God. I’ve been so worried. How are you feeling?”
“Peter.” She spoke hoarsely, her voice unused in weeks. “Who is she?”
His heart sank.
“Isa, you know you are the only woman for me.” It was a struggle to stop himself from weeping.
She leaned on one elbow and pulled herself higher up the pillow. “No more lies, Peter. I need the truth. I want the truth. You owe me that much.”
He looked at his hands gripping his knees. “It’s over, Isa.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“But it’s done.” He looked up angrily. “I told the stupid bitch never to phone me. It was only ever about sex for both of us. Not an affair. We’re not in love. It meant nothing.”
“I need to know. I have to walk down the street, go into shops, go to church. I need to know who she is. I can’t be suspicious of all my neighbours.”
There was a long pause. Peter reached for Isa’s hand but she snatched it away. He dropped his voice.
“It was Maureen at the railway club bar in Burntisland. You don’t know her. She knows it’s over.” He looked up at her, his eyes openly pleading. “Isa, please.”
“Please what?”
“Let’s put this behind us. We can—”
She cut across him, a new strength in her voice. “I want a divorce.”
22
Peter knew he could not handle things on his own. He walked round to the McKays’ home to ask for Chrissie. They went for a walk and he told her everything.
“I know I was wrong to go with Maureen, but she practically threw herself at me and Isa would never let me near her.”
“You knew Isa was terrified of getting pregnant. She was told she could lose her life if she tried to give birth again.”
“I know, Chrissie, but I told her she didn’t need to get pregnant. I would have made sure of that. There are ways—”
“I don’t want to know. That’s between you and Isa. You say she’s asked for a divorce?”
“Yes, but Chrissie, I don’t want a divorce. It’s over with Maureen. It never was anything serious. I just want to get back to normal. I can’t lose Isa and the girls. Please help me. Help me get Isa to see sense.” He began to tremble. “I can’t bear it, Chrissie. I want her as my wife. No one else.”
Chrissie looked at her distraught brother-in-law and realised that he was speaking the truth. “I’ll talk to her. We’ll work on her together.”
*
Isa was still frail. The doctor had ordered that she rest even when she came home. He prescribed a daily bottle of liver extract, liver ash and iron. Margaret hated the smell of it when she poured it into a glass for her mother to drink. Isa had to hold her nose to allow herself to swallow the foul mixture.
Margaret tried some cooking. She made scrambled eggs for her mother’s breakfast and set it nicely on the best china. She picked a flower from the garden and put it in a tiny rosebud vase on the tray. Isa appreciated the trouble her older daughter was taking. She remembered when she was a child herself and her mother had nursed her when she was sick. The thought made her sad. She had been without her mother’s love and guidance for most of her life. Had her mother lived she knew her life would have been very different. She would have kept her father sober. She would have saved his huge wages and moved them out of the tiny cottage into a bigger one. Isa would have finished her schooling and been employed as a secretary, perhaps, or a teacher.
But there would still have been Eliza’s death. Isa was beginning to realise that Eliza’s tragedy was the key to understanding her own troubled life and relationships. She went over in her mind her anguished recollection of her life as she had stood at the sink in the aftermath of the phone call for Peter. It had led her to believe that all the pain and heartache she had experienced was her punishment. How could she expect happiness when she had caused so much tragedy? Eliza had died because she had not kept her safe. Her mother had died of a broken heart as a result. Her father had turned to drink and soldiering to escape his grief. She was not a good wife. Peter would not have needed an affair if she had loved him properly. She was not a good mother either, for she was far too strict with her daughters. But how cou
ld she know how to be a good wife and mother when her own mother was not here to guide her? If only she had brought Eliza safely home that day.
She had convinced herself she had to bring this all to an end, draw a halt to the endless chain of consequences that all went back to that tragic day. That was why she had grabbed her coat and left. That was why they had found her on the bridge. But she had not made the jump. She had to remember what had stopped her.
As if groping through mist, she felt the return of that insight she had had as she tried to find the courage to jump. As she had sat on the bridge she heard again her mother sobbing into her father’s arms just a few nights after Eliza’s death. “I should have got Belva to look after them. I’m a bad mother, John. I didn’t organise properly for my children. I should never have left it to Isa.” At the time, all those years ago, only days after the tragedy, Isa had thought her mother blamed her for Eliza’s death. But on the bridge, when she replayed the words again, that was not what she heard. Her mother had blamed herself for not making the right arrangements, for being a bad mother. She had never blamed Isa. This was what had come to her on the bridge.
She shut her eyes and lay back on the pillows as the tears came. “Oh Eliza, I am so sorry,” she sobbed. “So sorry.” All the guilt, the weight she had carried with her since the day of her sister’s death could be suppressed no longer. It racked her. Exhausted, she lapsed back into weakness and felt the room recede, all sense of time and place dissipate. She felt a featherlight pressure on her arm and a voice she had not heard since childhood softly murmur, “I’m safe, Isa. Don’t blame yourself any more.”
She opened her eyes, knowing there would be no one physically in the room, that nothing in it had changed, and yet aware that she had had the most profound experience of her life. A deep peace fell over her and wrapped her in sleep.
*
Chrissie came. Isa revived in her helpful, calm presence. She tidied up, cooked, took the girls out, sat quietly by Isa’s bed with her sewing. One afternoon she broached the task Peter had set her.
“I’m so glad to see you improving, Isa. You aren’t nearly as pale as you were. Your appetite is better too. You are getting stronger every day.”
“I do feel better. But Chrissie, are the girls all right? They are so tentative when they come to see me.”
“They don’t want to tire you or upset you, so that probably makes them careful, but don’t worry. They just need you to get better.”
Isa clutched her sister’s hand, her face anxious and intense. “I want to get better for them. I have to. I can’t believe I nearly left them motherless, Chrissie.”
Chrissie took a deep breath. “Thank God you are still with us.” She clasped Isa to her. They held each other wordlessly. Isa was quiet and her face relaxed as Chrissie drew back from their embrace. Chrissie was worried she might raise the issue in the wrong way, or too soon, but it had to be said. “And Peter. What about you and Peter? He told me, Isa, that you had asked him for a divorce.”
“What!” Isa’s bright eyes flashed at Chrissie. “He had no right. That is something between him and me. He’d no right getting you involved.”
“Isa, before you go off on your high horse, listen to me. He is worried sick about you, about the girls, about the family. He wants to make it work. He begged me to help him. He’ll do anything to sort things.”
“You know he was having an affair? That the woman even phoned the house and spoke to Netta—”
“Yes, he confessed to it all and said it was the biggest mistake of his life. He’s finished with her. He doesn’t go to the railway club any more. He knows he made a huge mistake. But Isa, we all make mistakes. Sometimes we just need another chance to show we can do it right.” She paused. “Do you remember what Dad always said when you burned the dinner? ‘Dinnae greet, lass. We can aye hae a bit bread and cheese. You’re only learning. Mistakes are easy made. Don’t give up. That’s the real mark of success. To give it another go.’ And you did, and you became so good you earned a living from your cooking. Nothing comes easy. We have to work at things, even relationships. We’re none of us perfect.” Chrissie paused. She saw Isa was quieter. “I’d best go down and see to the tea.” She hesitated, then bent down to kiss her sister’s pale cheek, before leaving the room.
Isa lay back on the pillows. Why was she asking Peter for a divorce? Because he was far from perfect? She knew that even more so now: he was weak, easily influenced, unreliable. But he was the father of her children. He was generous, earned good money, worked hard, lived soberly. She knew he loved her, in his own way; he just wasn’t all that she had hoped for. She had wanted to look up to someone who was principled and she had not seen Peter’s tendency to hide behind lies when it suited him until it was too late. But maybe she wasn’t all he had hoped for either. She had withheld her body from him and, with it, her love and respect. Could she blame him for turning to another woman? She thought of her own withering self-analysis that had taken her to the bridge parapet. She was not perfect: not a perfect wife, not a perfect mother. Peter had as much right to be disappointed in her as she had to be in him. But did that have to mean the end of their marriage?
She paused in her train of thought. Had she not just received the most amazing gift of forgiveness from her sister? What a release, to let herself receive that and find some healing from the lifelong pain of guilt she had carried. Was she about to load Peter with a similar burden of guilt about his affair by making it end their marriage?
What had he said to her when he had hauled her off the bridge and held her to him, before she passed out? “How was I going to live without you? How was I going to live?” These words surely were his declaration of love, and they called forth a strong response in her, a recognition that this was also her own question. How could she live without him?
A shaft of sunlight streamed through the window on to the counterpane. She was aware of its warmth on her body. It felt like a thaw, like she was coming to life again. She turned to look out of the window. Amongst the wintry grey cloud, a patch of blue sky was emerging. She needed a new start: new vigour, new commitment. This life had been given to her at birth: she had not chosen where it would be lived, nor into what circumstances or family she would be born, and it had not been an easy life. In fact it had been so hard she had sometimes despaired of it, and only weeks ago she had almost thrown it away. But here, now, she realised that was no longer her desire. This was her second chance, her fresh start. Instead of destroying her life she could make up for past mistakes by how she lived now: by gifting Peter with the unconditional kind of forgiveness she had received from Eliza. Her life was not just hers after all: she had daughters who needed their mother, a husband who needed his wife, and sisters whom she had mothered, who were all willing her back into life. Wordlessly, she let her longing for renewal shape itself as she lay in the sun’s warmth until she knew for sure.
“Peter,” she called.
Acknowledgements
This book is an imagined account of life in the early twentieth century for my grandparents Isa and Peter. So my first thanks is to them for inspiring this story. To my mother, Margaret, and my aunt, Netta, I owe a huge debt of gratitude for their carrying the family story and passing it on to me. When I began this project, after my mother’s death, my aunt had lost her sight, but as I wrote each section I read it out loud to her and she gave me her feedback. Sadly she died without knowing that the book was to be published, but she had heard the whole of the first draft. Her encouragement inspired me to seek publication.
Early on in my research when I was trying to establish the facts about Eliza’s death, I was put in touch with Sandra Reid at Falkirk library, who found newspaper reports, death certificates and a coroner’s report, which helped to authenticate the account of Eliza’s tragic death, for which I am hugely grateful.
I am indebted to my first reader outside the family, Helen Watt, and to ex-colleague Liz Young from Denny who discussed the written form of t
he braid Scots with me, thus allowing a more accurate portrayal of the Falkirk dialect.
My husband, Alan, has encouraged me from the start and early on saw what needed to be elaborated upon, refined and honed. Without his guidance and encouragement, the project would have been a much lesser thing.
Isabel Jackson
Her Sister's Gift Page 27