by Jane Yeadon
It was part of her wedding outfit. It’s a long skirt and smells of mothballs. Much as she can be a bit tricky about some things, she always makes an exciting ceremony of taking it out of its trunk, shaking it free from rustling tissue paper, then handing it over to us.
She seems to like watching when we take turns wearing it. It might be old but it’s lovely and, even if it’s so long we’ve to hike it up, it floats into a bell shape when we twirl about in it.
Elizabeth, tears now dried, fingers the flimsy material. ‘It’s got such a soft feel but what’s the colour? It’s kind of funny.’
Granny gives a romantic sigh. ‘That’s old gold and it’s made of silk. Ah! But those were the good old days when girls had tiny waists.’ She looks at us: her pale blue eyes gleam behind the spectacles. ‘You two might have a bit to grow up the way but certainly not out, because it looks to me as if the skirt already fits there. You’d have been lost in the blouse, though.’
‘Where’s it?’ I ask.
‘Long gone, I’m afraid.’
‘Mum’s dress is lovely too,’ says Elizabeth, climbing into the skirt and stroking the sides. But on this occasion we seem to have lost our audience. Granny’s apparently lost in her own world and has forgotten that we’re here. It’s probably what happens if you live on your own. You start speaking to God.
‘Oh, Lord, I do hope that Betty’s done the right thing.’ Now she’s muttering, but loud enough for us to hear.
Elizabeth stops mid-twirl. ‘I don’t think you should worry about Mum,’ she says.
Granny starts, and if it had been anybody other than her, I’d have sworn she’s gone a bit pink. ‘I’m sorry! You’re right. Of course, Eliza – it’s only—’ she falters. ‘Would Dod be a bittie short in the grain?’
‘What does that mean?’ Elizabeth’s voice is sufficiently cold for Granny to drop the subject and for me to think she’s criticising Dod.
And there I was thinking that Granny liked him! There’s no doubt that she absolutely loves his driving. Whenever she gets into our car, she holds onto her hat, leans forward and, as soon as the car starts, she shouts, ‘Faster, Dod, faster!’ She seemed to like being in his company as well, but after the wedding and this remark I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s because, recently, Elizabeth and I heard him scold her for wanting to pinch some peats off a stack we were driving past.
‘That’s stealing,’ he’d said.
‘Och, Dod, I’m just wanting one or two.’
But Dod, putting his foot down in more ways than one, said, ‘It’s easy seen ye dinna ken the hard work involved in cutting them.’
Maybe Elizabeth’s thinking about this conversation when we’re getting ready for bed because she says, ‘I think that Granny’s looking a bittie sad. Well, you know how she always makes us kneel at the side of the bed to say our prayers?’
‘Uh huh. Says it awful Mum doesn’t make us do it at home.’
Ignoring this, Elizabeth presses on. ‘What d’you think about us singing her that song she taught us. She loves hearing it.’
‘The Peat Fire Flame?’ Och, Elizabeth! It’s no very cheery – she aye greets when she hears it. I’ve a better idea,’ I say, then, prepared to make a sacrifice. ‘After we do the Lord’s Prayer, she likes us to God Bless our favourite people.’ I pause, thinking about the mischief of keeping Granny anxiously waiting for her name to appear, which it does, but usually after Mum, Dod, Elizabeth, Rabbit and Belinda.
‘Mm.’
‘Well, this time, I’ll put her name first.’
‘That certainly would be a first,’ says Elizabeth coldly. ‘Sometimes you can be a right wee pig. No, let’s put a tartan rug between us, pretend it’s a fire and sing her that song. She really does love it. Poor Granny. She doesn’t ask us for anything and she did give us the bonny frocks.’
So we surprise Granny, warm our hands over the imaginary flame and, though I know that Mum would prefer electric, we sing about people yearning for the light hill folk apparently long for. When Granny cries, I do not say to my sister, ‘I told you.’ Instead, when it comes to the God Bless bit I keep my word and give her hard work at writing a mention, too.
22
A LITTLE HELP GOES A LONG WAY
It’s Sunday, and after going to church, the next highlight’s a visit to our grandfather’s grave. It might be in Nairn but it seems a long way from Fern Cottage. I’m tired and am only halfway there, whilst Granny and Elizabeth are practically out of sight.
‘Come on, Janie. You’re making me feel like a duck trailing her young. Catch up!’
But I can’t. Neither Elizabeth nor Granny consider that someone with shorter legs than them has to work twice as hard. Nor are they fussed about stepping on cracks in the pavement or crossing a road dominated by apparently blind old women cycling on basket-bearing bikes. Eventually, however, I get to the last frontier before the steps leading up to the cemetery. It’s called the Jubilee Footbridge and spans the River Nairn. The water’s so fast flowing, deep and brown it could be home for loads of kelpies. Avoiding them means a race over the bridge and managing to catch up, just as Granny’s asking, ‘Do you remember your grandfather, Elizabeth?’
‘Oh yes. He used to sit me on his knee and call me his little lady.’ Elizabeth is matter of fact, whilst Granny, who’d been looking rather glum (again), perks up. For someone with bunions, she’s remarkably light-footed and practically bounds up the steps. ‘Come on, slow-coaches!’ she calls down from the top.
She’s got a very acute sense of smell, which might explain her thing about peat fires. The bunch of sweet peas she’d asked us to pick from her garden, and which she now holds in her hand, seem a better deal.
‘Dolly Mixtures are the same colour but don’t smell half as bonny,’ I say.
‘You’re right. These are my favourite flower. I had them in my wedding bouquet,’ she explains, then, pointing to a nearby water tap, says ‘Fill up that green vase, will you, Janie?’
She means the metal-green fluted one placed on our grandfather’s gravestone. I’m curious to know what water sounds like dropped into it from a distance, but Granny stops the experiment, saying, ‘Please don’t start guttering about – if you splash in any more, you’ll get us all wet.’
The flowers make a sweet statement, colourful against the grey of the gravestone. Granny looks hard at it, pats the top of it, nods her head as if she’s been having some secret discussion, then blows her nose.
Seagulls wheel above us. Sometimes they make such a clatter of noise you’d think they were the leaders of an angry Nairn gossip group, but today there’s only a few, their cries desolate in the still air.
‘They sound like lost kittens,’ I say.
‘More like the cries of the souls of lost sailors,’ Granny says, at which point my sister raises her eyebrows.
I’m about to ask if the rippling voice of the nearby river would be confusing for men of the sea, but Granny tucks her hankie up her sleeve and, taking both our hands, says, ‘Time to go home, and let’s walk together this time. When we get back, you could maybe read me a wee passage from the Bible, Elizabeth? I’d like that. You’re fair coming on with your reading. The doctor says I’ve got something called glaucoma and reading small print’s especially difficult for my old eyes.’
I could boast that my sister’s had plenty practice with the Red Letter but I’ve a feeling neither she nor Granny would like to hear that.
Monday promises more excitement.
‘There’s four-leaf clovers in the grass bit under the old apple tree. Go and see if you can find any,’ says Granny.
Her garden wall, like all the others in that street, backs onto the Nairn Show Field, where preparations are underway for the Annual Agricultural Show. High hessian sacking’s been put up between the house gardens and the entire length of the field to block access and the view. However, if we climb Granny’s apple tree, which stands knee-deep in the middle of a patch of long raggedy-looking grass, we can just glimpse
a little of what’s going on in the field. It mightn’t be much but there’s a bit more to see there than what’s supposed to be flourishing in the growth below.
‘Granny says clover’ll bring good luck and, if we get any, she’ll show us how to press them.’ Even to myself I sound dubious, but Elizabeth’s more determined.
‘We’ll never find anything in grass this long. We’ll need to cut it first, an’ I bet Granny’ll be pleased when we do. There’s a lawn mower in the garden shed. I’m sure it’ll be easy to use. Come on.’
We didn’t expect the machine to be so heavy. It needed our combined strength to lug it out from behind an old chair, a broken wicker basket and some rusting pails of distemper paint. An ancient shovel gets knocked off a peg on the wall in the process.
‘That could’ve brained me,’ complains Elizabeth and gives the machine a spiteful yank.
As we eventually manage to haul it from the shed, then over the gravel-chipped, box-hedged path leading to the grass, I start to think there’s something to be said for a raggedy green patch that surrounds an old apple tree. There’s storybooks with pictures so like it, if it wasn’t for the prospect of finding those good luck leaves, I might have argued about continuing with the plan.
Elizabeth, however, is steely-eyed; and when we finally make it onto the grass she grips the machine handle, saying, ‘Jane! Don’t bother sitting down. We’re going to have to do this together.’
It’s a slow job. The machine’s blades, which originally looked so dangerous, are reluctant to turn and when, with a deal of sweat and back-breaking effort, we get a sufficient run to get the mower to move, they seem to merely flatten the grass.
‘I don’t know why there’s a roller,’ pants the head gardener. ‘The blades are doing that instead of their proper job.’
As the machine is forced along, it makes an ugly rasping sound like it’s echoing our disenchantment.
Normally we’d love to see the sun, but today we’re hot enough without it beating down on us. My face feels as if it’s on fire.
‘You’ve got dirt on your lips,’ observes Elizabeth.
I scrub at it until she says she thinks it’s actually freckles. An hour passes and, apart from three bald, pale wiggly-looking cut-grass swathes, we’re not much further on. The machine’s voice is heard less and less, and certainly not by Granny. She’s busy inside with Jessie Catto, who’s her typist. She so small she’s dwarfed by a typewriter machine built on the lines of a traction engine but driven by the smoke of Jessie’s fags instead of steam.
As well as books that carry a Christian message, Granny writes romantic stories: surprising, really, when she talks so fondly of our grandfather but often tells us that she thinks kissing’s vulgar. We might wonder if she’s saying the same to Jessie, who’s getting married to Frank soon. But they’re deaf to anything outside, where a squawking seagull scolds us from the top of one of the house chimneys.
‘If Dod was here, he’d cut it in seconds with a scythe,’ I say, looking at my hands, ‘and he wouldn’t get blisters either.’
‘No, and I think we’re cutting off the clover heads as well.’ Elizabeth gives the machine a reflective kick. ‘I bet it’s nice down at the beach.’
There’s a roaring noise in my head. I’m unsure if it’s the distant sound of Nairn’s sea reaching us on the warm air or my brain’s being boiled. The fruiting season for the garden’s strawberries and raspberries is past, and the plums growing on their tree near the house are still too sour to taste.
‘I’m that tired I canna even be bothered going inside for a drink,’ says Elizabeth. I’d agree if I’d the energy. We’re leaving times between action and exhaustion so long now that small birds are coming down from their vantage point in the apple tree to peck at grubs we’ve made homeless. Someone in the show field must be hammering in a fence post nearby – signs that at least some industry’s taking place somewhere close. It makes an oddly soothing sound as we throw ourselves down on one of the newly cut strips and close our eyes.
This, we are shortly to find out, is as stupid a move as is trying to cut Granny’s grass.
23
SHOWIES TIME
Sunshine glints on the blade.
We’ve raced upstairs, slamming into the bathroom, locking the door, then, together, peeping through its window onto the garden below. Down beside the apple tree, an old man in khaki overalls leans towards the scythe he’s holding. In as practised a way as Lala sharpens his razor, he starts to sweep a sharpening stone over the cutting edge. The metallic rhythmic sound reaches us through the window we check and re-check is secure.
‘That must be Granny’s gardener. I didna know she had one. I wonder if she knows he’s such a horrid manny,’ says Elizabeth, her voice trembling. ‘If she heard him using all those swear words, she’d give him a week of Bible readings.’
I’d be glad of Rabbit’s company, but Mum had said, ‘Why don’t you leave him at home with Belinda? He’d keep her company.’
I was about to argue when she’d held her finger up, before continuing, ‘You know, she’s probably still recovering from yon bad fall she had recently. She must’ve had a terrible fright. It’s a wonder she didn’t have her head cracked open. Precious things need to be kept safe, Janie.’
Considering the present situation, I imagine both she and Belinda would be pleased I’d heeded her warning.
‘But that manny wouldna really have cut off our heads, would he?’ I manage, despite chattering teeth.
Elizabeth nibbles a nail, sniffs, then says, ‘Maybe not, but I’m glad we didna stay tae find out, and that this door’s got a lock on it.’
I’d have stuck out my tongue if my busy teeth hadn’t stopped it. It’s probably best they did, because the man’s seen us looking out at him and shakes his fist before getting back to sharpening his scythe.
It’s early evening and, after what seems to have been a long week, Mum and Dod have come to collect us. We haven’t much to put in our suitcase, but it’s leather and weighs a ton. Still, we’ve managed to slide it down the stairs. Now, and only leaving a slight chip on the newel post, it’s waiting collection.
Heaving it into the car, Dod says, ‘I’m hearing you quines have been having a go at hay-making.’
‘Oh, but you’re an awful tease,’ says Granny, who’s come to supervise. It must be the tone of Dod’s voice because she hears everything that he says. ‘I think Hamish was sorry he gave the girls such a fright. It’s just a pity that he’s so short in the grain.’
I register disapproval in the words but fail to make a connection. Dod’s never threatened us with a scythe!
Meanwhile Granny carries on, ‘But he was in a bit of a hurry to get on with helping the folk at the show field. He’d only popped in to give a quick cut to my grass. He wasn’t expecting to find it turned into something like a battleground. In a way, I suppose, it’s my fault. I told the girls to go out and look for luck.’ She smiles a little. ‘And they certainly didn’t expect to get Hamish! You know, I’d quite a job coaxing the two of them out of the bathroom. Who knows? They might still be behind that locked door if I hadn’t said you might take them to the Showies when you came to collect them.’
Elizabeth and I exchange excited glances. We’re never out late.
Nairn has acres of green links and, soured of recent garden activities, we’d been coaxing Granny to take us there. With its background of the Moray Firth and hills, enchanting in a paler blue behind it, it’s got an area that forms a natural amphitheatre. It’s where the Nairn Games are held. Two or three weeks beforehand, on a nearby piece of rough ground, the travelling fair people start to arrive. We’d been watching them set up their amusements, stalls and rides. They’re all in such brightly decorated colours you couldn’t fail to notice them, even if you’ve to wait until night-time before the Showies actually start.
And even supposing Granny did take us to them, then I bet Elizabeth would fall into the outside paddling pool first.
&
nbsp; ‘I don’t know why you bother going near it. You’re always falling in. You’d be useless in a circus,’ I’d said, as we inevitably trailed back to the house to dry her out. ‘You should stick to paddling in the sea. You manage fine there.’
Her reply was predictable. ‘I dinna want tae join any old circus an’ I only go look at the paddling pool to please Granny. She says it’s one of Nairn’s finest features. Anyway I’m trying to get better at balancing but the wee wall surrounding it’s a bit narrow. It’s easy to slip off and if I didn’t always fall in first, I bet you would as well.’
Now we hear Granny saying to Mum and Dod, ‘I’ve found the paddling pool exerts a strange siren call to Elizabeth, so I’d advise avoiding it and heading straight for the Showies. It would make a nice end to everyone’s holiday.’
So we’re going! In our excitement, Elizabeth and I hug each other, then Granny, and, on account of the vulgarity of kissing, give her a swift goodbye peck before getting into the car.
As we drive off, I look back and see her waving both hands, and imagine her going back into that big house – full of shadows and huge bedrooms where mirrored wardrobe doors swing out unexpectedly with your reflection strangely coming towards you. I suppose she’ll make for the sitting room. There, our grandfather’s framed photograph sits over the enormous, highly polished radio, which is never switched on because she says she can’t hear it. Then all she’ll have for company is the memory of our grandfather and our visit.
As if reading my thoughts, Elizabeth says, ‘Granny could have come with us. I bet she’d love a go on these.’ We’re parked near the Showies and she means chairs, swaying high up and suspended on flimsy-looking chains. They clink in the light sea breeze. ‘I dinna fancy goin’ on them,’ I say. ‘They could easy take off and land at Cromarty.’
‘Maybe, but I bet she’d love the music,’ says Elizabeth.