by Janice Brown
‘‘I didn’t recognise the name, you see. I said to Walter, I hope Lesley’s not taking in lodgers, now that her dear mother’s gone.’’
Lesley stared at her.
Ruby said hurriedly, ‘‘I almost didn’t take the parcel, you see. Is Mr Crawfurd new to the village?’’
‘‘But you’ve met him, Mrs Robertson. I’m sure Mrs Crawfurd often sends him with things to your shop.’’
She nodded and smiled as if of course she had. But had she? What did he look like? Why was Lesley getting parcels for him? But Lesley was saying goodnight, and thank you again, and better not keep you standing in this bitter, cold wind, and abruptly, quite rudely in fact, the door was being shut in her face.
‘‘So what’s the news?’’ he said.
‘‘This and that. She’s back at work. Said she missed the children.’’
‘‘It’s a shame she never had any.’’
Ruby made no comment. She lifted Walter’s empty bowl and went to microwave his main course. The roast potatoes looked a bit leathery, as she’d half expected – roast potatoes never reheated well – but Walter ate without complaining. Nor did he push the green beans to one side. The minute she observed this, Ruby felt sure in her heart that something was amiss.
‘‘Well, I think I can solve your mystery,’’ he said. ‘‘I remembered after you went out. We put in a new boiler for a chap called Crawfurd about three years ago. He said they knew our next door neighbours. He lives in that great big house across the river, the one with the turret. Sandy hair and a big droopy moustache, like one of those wee terrier dogs. I see him at the bus stop some mornings.’’
When supper was over, the mugs dried and put away and all the worktops disinfected, Ruby sat for a little while in the front room, fighting vainly against the hardening of her heart. She looked over the top of her magazine at her husband of thirty years. His curls had receded neatly, like his late father’s, leaving his head looking very clean. His eyebrows had become bushy, but she encouraged him to trim them each month with the help of her needlework scissors. Not that she sewed these days. Fine stitching made her finger joints ache. Walter’s hands, reddened by honest toil, lay one on top of the other on his cardigan front.
She had always respected Walter. He was the breadwinner, and his firm had an excellent reputation because of his own high standards and his insistence that the men follow suit. He kept his tools out of the house, and took off his shoes as soon as he came in. He knew how to fix almost everything so that she rarely needed to have workmen in her house, and he always showered before bed, where he was affectionate but undemanding. Until now this had always been enough. There had never been a shadow between them until now.
Old friends
Wisdom, Roderick McKinnon reckoned, had been simpler in the old days. Before medical progress rendered it redundant, he had devised a foolproof method of predicting the sex of the next baby. He would write down ‘‘Boy’’ or ‘‘Girl’’ in his personal diary, on the day of the first visit, while assuring the mother verbally of the opposite. By this means he had quickly acquired a reputation for astonishing insight and cleverness. Some of his patients possibly still believed it. He himself felt less and less certain. He hoped he was still learning. It was just that the amount one had to learn seemed to grow greater with every passing year. The very concept of wisdom had become more obscure to him. He had seen great courage, and more determination to fight the odds than he himself would have possessed given the same circumstances, but he had also watched seemingly ‘‘intelligent’’ men and women ignore his warnings and bring themselves to a premature death. He had an idea in his head now as he walked towards the Crawfurd house, where the cold February sun hung motionless in the bare branches of their ancient beech trees, but he wasn’t sure if it was a wise idea or a foolish one.
‘‘Just passing, Edith. Thought I’d check up on you, since you never come to see us at the surgery.’’
She led the way to the front sitting room. As always the room overwhelmed him with its beauty. He and Marjory came from working class backgrounds. They’d inherited nothing but their genes. My shoulders and your mother’s brains, and thank the Lord it was yon way round, had been his father’s pronouncement. Even now, accepted without question as an equal by Edith Crawfurd, in a room like this he felt very aware of his roots.
‘‘Sherry?’’ she asked.
‘‘A small one.’’
He sat in the rocking chair, a modern heirloom. Hand carved with its trademark Mouse, it had, he recalled, taken three years to come after the order was placed, arriving perfectly in time for her seventieth birthday. But who would inherit after Duncan died, apart from the taxman?
‘‘Well then, any problems, or just the same old friends?’’ he began. It was impossible not to rock. He placed his glass on the shelf beside him.
‘‘Fit as a fiddle,’’ she said.
‘‘Let’s have a wee look at your blood pressure.’’
She unbuttoned her sleeve and let him tighten the grey cuff around her upper arm. The pressure was a little high, but he felt there was no need to up the dose. Duncan’s grandmother, deaf but otherwise hale, had lived to well over a hundred. Edith’s arms and legs were losing bone mass – few woman her age could defy osteoporosis – but she was still straight, still elegant. Was that important in these times? To her it would be, he thought. Her hair had a natural wave, with whiter strands around the face. Marjory had told him, not disapprovingly, that she paid an expensive hairdresser from the city to come to the house.
‘‘So how are the legs? Still getting down to the shops and back again?’’
She had broken an ankle some years earlier, which had taken its time to heal.
She made a little face. ‘‘Not so often. We go into town sometimes but Duncan does a weekly order on his computer. I’m fine on the flat, though.’’
‘‘I wanted to talk to you about Duncan,’’ he said. He took a small sip of the sherry.
‘‘Yes?’’ she said.
The moment of truth. He felt as he had felt in his youth, waiting for the whistle, when his broad shoulders had made him an obvious but unenthusiastic prop forward.
‘‘I’m feeling a little concerned,’’ he began.
‘‘About Duncan? My Duncan?’’
‘‘Yes. And I hoped you might help me, keep me right, as it were.’’
She had poured sherry for herself, although she hadn’t touched it. Nor did she now. She picked what might have been a hair from her skirt, then placed her hands in her lap.
‘‘Tell me,’’ she said, looking beyond him at the now shadowed garden.
Hurt
The box wasn’t very big. It looked old but nice. Dark red, the shape of a heart. It took her a while to get it open, because the gold hook and the button it was caught on were so small. If it was sweets inside, they’d be really wee ones. The last time, he’d left chocolate coins wrapped in gold paper. Just two, but they were big. She’d eaten one on the way back to the van, and one in the dark after she was in bed.
But this time it wasn’t sweets. It was a ring with a stone on it. It was the smallest ring she’d ever seen. She didn’t know you could get rings that small. She thought maybe it was a pearl, because her Nan wore pearl earrings. It was too big for all her fingers, but stayed on her thumb without falling off. It was like a crown for a fairy queen.
Chocolate was better. If she wore this, they’d take it off her. If she hid it, they’d find it. They’d ask where she got it, and she had promised him not to tell anyone they were friends, not ever.
She put it back behind the stone. Then she changed her mind and, leaving the box, put the ring back on her thumb. It was so small, there must be somewhere in the van to hide it.
The twins found it before supper. She saw them whispering. They whispered together, then Josie got her by the ankles, and Martine pushed her over and sat on her tummy, holding one wrist down on the floor between the bunks, pulling at the arm whic
h ended in the hand whose thumb was locked in her mouth, pressing hard against her teeth. Then Martine started bouncing on her, really hard, thumping the breath out of her body.
It hurt so bad she opened her mouth and screamed as loud as she could.
The door of the van opened. The twins instantly jumped off her and onto the beds. She rolled over on to her front, the thumb with the ring again wedged against her top teeth.
‘‘She’s got a gold ring! She let a dirty man touch her bum an’ she’s got a gold ring!’’
Dad yelled at them to be quiet, grabbed her by the arms, and got her to stand.
‘‘Shut up! An’ take that bloody thumb out yer mouth!’’
The thumb was red, and white where she’d bitten down on it, but there was no ring. It had slipped silently past her tonsils and down into the dark.
Amber
At three am Lesley gave up trying to get back to sleep. She put on her dressing gown and went downstairs to make some hot milk. Last night’s scrambled egg pan sat in the sink. It was an easy, filling supper, but there was something so disgusting about a pan with water and the remains of cooked egg in it that she had left it unwashed. Now that she could. Now that there was no-one standing behind her.
The Robertsons’ outside light flashed on, then off seconds later. A cat on patrol along the bottom of the hedge? Mrs Robertson was getting sillier and stranger by the day. I hope Lesley’s not taking in lodgers.
The glass disc began rattling in the milk pot. She lifted it off the heat before it could boil over. Had she been unkind, not inviting the woman in? She poured the milk into a mug, stirring in a squeeze of honey. You’re doing so well, Lesley. You’re being very brave. Being back at work had nothing to do with being brave. With her financial situation more secure than she’d expected, she could stop working, but who would there be to talk to? Her days would be as lonely as the nights.
Duncan looked so much younger without his moustache. When they finally found a website with what they needed, he’d let out a sound that was almost a boyish whoop of glee, before pressing a finger to his lips. It cheered her to see him enjoying their conspiracy. That’s what he called it.
She’d meant to phone earlier to let him know that she’d left the minister’s useful information on Mrs Flaherty’s answer phone and that the replacement sugar bowl had arrived. She’d checked to be sure it hadn’t been damaged in transit. The staples were embedded in the cardboard, and she had to use a nail file to lever them out. Inside, the bowl and lid were separately wrapped in tight layers of bubbled plastic.
She had to find scissors to cut the plastic wrapping, so much Sellotape had been used. The last piece of wrapping fell away and to her great relief all was well. It looked like new, although it had been advertised as ‘‘Used.’’ Did anyone ever use their best china? The cabinet in the dining room contained a set of the same vintage, rarely used even when Mother was alive, and what was left of her grandmother’s dinner set.
Mug in hand she went back upstairs. The string of beads she’d been wearing all day lay coiled on the bedside table beside her watch and reading glasses. She’d never been much of a one for beads, or jewellery of any kind. Wearing them to work had been rather out of character, but finding them in a drawer, she had liked the feel of them, and the colour.
‘‘Lesley, are those amber?’’ someone in staff room said. ‘‘Can I have a look?’’
She’d begun clearing out, Lesley explained, handing them over for inspection.
‘‘They’re gorgeous. You know, if they’re amber they might be really old. I saw one like this on the Antiques Road show. It made more than £400.’’
‘‘Lesley, anything else you’re thinking of throwing out, could you bring it here first?’’ one of the other teachers said.
She wondered if she might ask Duncan to look on the web again. On the other hand, she’d be nervous about wearing them if they were really valuable.
Being the centre of attention was embarrassing but gratifying at the same time. She didn’t usually wear beads, although she liked seeing jewellery on other women, earrings in colours that matched a blouse, or enamelled lapel brooches to brighten dark suits. Where then had it come from, this misbegotten, perverse idea that while it was fine for other women, wearing jewellery was in her case a sign of vanity, something to gain attention from men, or provoke envy from women? Even if it had been true once, it wasn’t now. She was too old to make other women jealous, even if she wanted to, and the contents of an entire street of jewellers’ shops would hardly be enough now to attract a man.
The sugar bowl had been a wedding present, according to Duncan. Not something she would ever have. This mug in her hands was stoneware, with the school crest on one side, and the dates of the centenary on the other. Not that she needed presents. If she needed anything, she could afford to buy it herself now. She might buy a new washing machine, the kind with the tumble dryer function. It would be lovely to get rid of the pulley. The women in the staff room would know which make was best.
Duncan was so funny. He thought he lived a very simple life, but really he was fussy about so many things. Proper coffee. Writing with a fountain pen, and blue-black ink. He refused to wear synthetic materials. Braces on his trousers rather than a belt. Proper shoes no matter what he was doing.
What had made him shave off the moustache? She’d always assumed he wore it as an act of homage to the Captain, whose portrait hung half way up the stairs. She remembered him as a silent figure in the background of parties, or rather of the beginnings of parties, as he never seemed to stay long.
If she ever had to choose wedding china, she’d have something without a pattern. No tangled roses or butterflies or hand-painted gold rims. It would be beautiful, of course, but plain. The way the amber necklace was plain. The way the full moon was plain. It would be used every single day of its life.
As she switched off the bedside light, it occurred to her that she was involved in three conspiracies, not one. She’d shared Mary Flaherty’s troubles with the minister, helped Duncan find a sugar bowl and she was storing Mr Robertson’s fish tanks. All conspiracies with men, and two of them married!
Don’t let her spoil the rest of your life.
Easy for Dr Gordon to say. Young and handsome and kind to stupid middle-aged women who thought momentarily and quite mistakenly that he resembled their lost lovers. How easy life was for men like him. She felt for the necklace on the bedside table, and raised the cool, uneven lumps of amber to her lips.
‘‘I would have been a good wife,’’ she told them. ‘‘I would have let my husband have all the fish tanks he wanted.’’
The world too much
When Dr McKinnon left, Mrs Crawfurd returned to the kitchen. The pleasant, authoritative female voices on the radio which had previously been discussing pension plans were now debating the virtues of breastfeeding. She switched them off. She had been weighing flour for a batch of fairy cakes – most of them to go into the freezer, but a dozen to be iced for Duncan to share with the library staff. He was well regarded at work, she believed.
The daisy-patterned paper cases were as she had left them, crisp and frilly in their trays, and the cooling racks were waiting on the worktop. The maxims of Miss Scott the Cookery Mistress, immaculate in white, spoke to her still across the decades. Good cooks think ahead and tidy as they go.
Instead of putting her apron back on, she switched off the cooker, and made her way, one hand lightly touching the dado rail, through the corridor and up the back stairs to the small second floor room which had begun life as a maid’s bedroom and was now her sanctum. Duncan had helped her with the colours. They had found a replica Owen Jones wallpaper in exactly the correct shade of muted pinkish red to suit the ancient Crawford tartan curtains and carpet. North-west facing, the quality of light in the room was often poor, which was a soothing thing when the world became too much. It pleased her that there was no clock, no calendar, no rack of magazines, nothing by which to gues
s the date or time. A gold-framed blackwork representation of York Minster hung above the mantelpiece, silk on linen worked by herself when a girl. On the opposite wall was a back and white photograph of her late parents in front of the bungalow in Rangoon. Her father had one hand on the bonnet of the newly arrived Austin 12, the other arm round her mother, tall, slim and looking like a film star in her sunglasses.
She sat in the Indian rosewood armchair. Turning it slightly so that she could look out at the hills, she settled a mohair shawl over her knees. After a little while she drew it higher, until it was over her shoulders. She fussed at it, trying to tuck the sides in tight around her.
Once upon a time there had been nothing but fields beyond the mixed hedge of holly, hawthorn and beech, planted in her grandfather’s time. As a child she had crouched to look through the gaps at the Clydesdales, with their pale brown foals sleeping in the sun. She had only one other memory of that era; being given a white enamelled pail with a royal blue rim (or was it a colander?) to fill with gooseberries – pale green, perfectly veined, enormous to a child’s eyes. Hard and sour when raw, they were wonderful when grandma’s cook made them into pies with the thinnest, crispiest pastry in the world.
Under siege
‘‘I’m not asleep, dear.’’
Dr McKinnon ceased tiptoeing and approached the bed in a normal fashion.
‘‘Your feet are freezing,’’ his wife added moments later.
He removed them from her pleasantly warm calves, switched on the bedside light and opened ‘‘Fortress Malta: An island under siege.’’ He had left the submariners trying to maintain good spirits the previous evening in Chapter Seven, and was not hopeful that things would improve. Chapter Eight was entitled, ‘‘Valour at Sea’’, which was worryingly unspecific.