Moira Forsyth is the author of two previous novels, Waiting for Lindsay and David’s Sisters, and a poetry collection, What the Negative Reveals. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in many anthologies. She works in education and is a Director of Sandstone Press. Moira Forsyth lives in the Highlands of Scotland.
Praise for Moira Forsyth’s previous novels
Forsyth writes with warmth and sensitivity, exploring the ways in which an ordinary family is changed by tragedy.
The Times
. . . haunting and evocative . . . assured and polished.
Yorkshire Post
At times uncomfortable but never less than compelling, this is a work of near poetic accomplishment.’
Caledonia
[Waiting for Lindsay] is a lyrical and melancholy novel about loss, relationships and passing time, but it can also be read as a Robert Goddard-style mystery.
Publishing News
A haunting first novel.
Inverness Courier
‘Waiting for Lindsay’ is a confident debut presenting real, difficult lives in a fluid telling that washes out the dark nooks and crannies of loss and love.
Highland News
An evocative, atmospheric read about a family contending with more troubles than most.
Press & Journal
An enthralling read.
Family Circle
. . . written with polish and assured style.
Pocklington Press
Tell Me Where You Are
Moira Forsyth
First published in Great Britain 2010
Sandstone Press Ltd
PO Box 5725
One High Street
Dingwall
Ross-shire
IV15 9WJ
Scotland
www.sandstonepress.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this production may be reproduced,
stored or transmitted in any form without the express
written permission of the publisher.
Editor: Robert Davidson
Copyright © Moira Forsyth 2010
The moral right of Moira Forsyth to be recognised as
the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
The publisher acknowledges subsidy from the Scottish Arts Council
towards publication of this volume.
ISBN-epub: 978-1-905207-52-7
Ebook by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore.
For Malcolm and Esmé
Part I
Not Just the Turkey in the Dream
1
On Christmas Eve, Frances dreamed about the turkey. In the dream it was not yet dead. It had turned itself over, staggered onto drumstick legs, and emerged from the butcher’s white plastic bag. When she went down the garden to the summerhouse, boots crunching on frosty ground, and opened the door, it tottered across the wooden floor towards her, its skin mottled and bluish, but not completely bald: a few tufts of feathers adhered to its body and its head was the head of a live turkey, complete with beak, beady eyes and dark purple wattles quivering on the neck. Its beak opened and closed, and Frances understood that it was talking to her, telling her something. Of course it spoke Turkish, so she couldn’t understand a word.
In the dream she made this little joke and smiled at it, all the while paralysed by dismay which ran underneath her freezing feet like an electric current. For she knew the turkey must, if still alive, have suffered horribly in its journey from farm and butcher to Frances’s summerhouse. Was still suffering. She stood shivering in the dark December dawn, torn between fearful pity and anxiety about what on earth they were to eat for Christmas dinner instead, since there was no longer any question of it being the turkey. Somehow, she had to rescue and rehabilitate it.
Then, with a heavy flap of its naked wings, it hurried past her, down the steps and out of the summerhouse. She must have cried out and her own cry woke her.
The bedroom was dark and cold. Too early for the heating to have come on, much too early for daylight. Frances lay on her back, waiting for the dream to fade.
Of course, the turkey really was in the summerhouse, which was suitably cold and out of reach of the cats. Nothing could have been more dead than that lump of flesh, weighing her down on one side as she walked back to the car, the handles of the bag cutting into her fingers through woollen gloves.
She turned in bed with a sigh, tugging the duvet round her. After a moment, she realised she was not going to get any more sleep, so she flung back the covers and stood up, the bones in her legs creaking. She bent and stretched a few perfunctory times, then put on an old pullover of Jack’s she used as a dressing gown, and went down to the kitchen.
The cats in the basket chair looked up as she came in. The grey tom stretched, paws reaching across the little tabby, so old now she took her time waking and getting up for breakfast. The grey cat jumped down and rubbed himself against the backs of Frances’s legs as she filled the kettle. A few yards from the kitchen window were the woods, and she became aware of an unusual whiteness beyond her own reflection. She switched off the light and looked again. Snow, a fine powdering, the first white Christmas for years. She remembered the dream now, rising up in her with a rush, a taste almost of fear. Soon she would have to go down the garden to fetch the bird. She switched on the light again, and filled the kitchen with reality. The cats mewed round her, asking to be fed.
Upstairs, her sons stirred but did not wake as Frances carried the radio up to the bathroom. She looked in on both of them. Andrew’s room smelled of beer and more strongly of the rank aroma of young maleness. Jack’s room also smelled of unwashed clothes brought home from Halls and left in a heap on the floor. As Frances went into the bathroom and turned on the shower, the water pipes rumbled and the central heating heaved into life. Half conscious that his mother had been there, Andrew turned over, kicking at his duvet, so that the red climbing sock, filled by Frances late the night before (while the boys were in the pub), rolled off his bed and landed on the floor with a thud.
At sixteen and eighteen they were too old for Christmas stockings but still had them, still had a tree with decorations kept since childhood, and the traditional dinner she had always cooked. It would have been the same if they had gone on being a family of four instead of three. Then, they might even have been five or six. She had meant to have more children; she had meant to have a daughter. There you are, Frances thought, vigorously rubbing herself dry, that’s how it goes. She could switch off the past now as swiftly as she turned off the shower: a second’s delay and it was gone.
In his bedroom next to the bathroom, Jack emerged from heaped-up covers, annoyed to find himself awake so early. His feet stuck out, cold at the bottom of the bed. Everything here was too small for him now. It was bloody freezing in this house. In halls, you lived in a fug of stale heat twenty-four hours a day. His mother said it was unhealthy but you got used to it, used to wearing a tee-shirt all year round. No-one wears jumpers he had explained to Frances, going through possible Christmas presents for his grandmother to give him. He pulled up his knees, pretending to be still asleep, in the hope that soon he would be. Then, with a suddenness amazing to him, he realised it was Christmas morning.
When they were kids they were up at four, tearing open parcels. Were there any parcels here? He had his present already, having gone with his mother to buy an I-Pod in Inverness several days ago. There must be parcels though. He kicked to feel the heavy stocking at the foot of the bed, the mysterious weight of it creating an echo of childhood excitement. Something rose in the air, and thrust itself off the bed with a thud. He had dislodged the tabby which had sneaked in,
believing, like Jack, it was too early to get up. There was something else; he felt the weight of it between his feet. Satisfied, he turned and settled again. In a moment, the cat jumped back and nestled behind his knees, where she had a quick wash and then, like Jack, sank back into sleep.
Outside, the clear sky paled and the moon faded to a papery hemisphere. Frances went downstairs to light the oven before venturing out to fetch the turkey. The dream skirted the edge of her thoughts but it seemed ridiculous now.
Her breath clouded the air in front of her and the snow sparkled in the light from the back door. The summerhouse was dark, smelling of soil and damp wood. The deck chairs were stacked in the corner and terracotta pots, cleaned out ready for spring, lined one wall. On the potting bench, scattered with dried geranium leaves and a few crumbs of compost, was the butcher’s bag with the turkey inside. Frances snatched it up and went out, tugging the door shut behind her. Usually the bird was stuffed and trussed by this time, indeed, actually cooking. She would never have the meal on the table by two at this rate. She blamed the late finishing of term and the weight of work her new job had given her, that she was so far behind. Not that it mattered, but her parents would fret, not being used to eating at what they called ‘odd hours’.
As she began work in the kitchen, mug of tea and half eaten toast on the table beside her, the telephone rang.
‘I’ve got my hands covered in oatmeal – Jack?’ A rumbling from someone’s room, a stirring, not urgent enough. She wiped her hands on her apron and went to pick up the phone.
It was Gillian.
‘Happy Christmas! You all set? We’re leaving in about five minutes. We’ve got snow, would you believe it – real snow! The folks are in a state of course, fussing about weather forecasts and dangerous roads. It’s not much – a covering. How is it up in the frozen north?’
‘Running late,’ Frances said, ‘so I’m not hurrying you. You really should have come yesterday Gill. I knew they’d panic about travelling on Christmas morning.’
‘I know, but I truly couldn’t get here till last night. Work. Better than letting Dad drive, eh?’
‘We’ve got snow too, but it’s a lovely morning. How are you?’
‘Fine, apart from hating Christmas. The price you pay.’
The price his wife pays too, thought Frances, though she may not know it yet. There was no point in saying this, since it was an old story and when you have only one sister left, there is no sense in falling out with her. So Frances said merely, ‘Go easy on the road.’
About twelve, when she was still in the kitchen, the room redolent of roasting fowl, Jack appeared barefoot in tracksuit bottoms, hair ruffled. He needed a shave and his chin and neck were scabbed with dried out spots. And yet, she thought with an impulse of love, he is a good looking boy. She could not see, as she still did with Andrew, the child’s face shadowing the adult’s.
‘Happy Christmas, Mum.’ He went to the sink and ran the cold tap, filling himself a mug of water and drinking it off. ‘Nice smell. When are we having dinner?’
‘About two. When Gill gets here with Granny and Grandpa.’
‘Who’s driving?’
‘Gill – that’s why they’re so late. She was working till yesterday afternoon.’
‘They’ll make it today then. In about five minutes, probably.’
Frances was amused by the way he had managed to comment on both his grandfather and his aunt in the same breath, but chose to defend her father. ‘Don’t be cheeky about Grandpa.’
‘You’re the one who says he’s lethal behind the wheel.’
‘Gill’s probably more lethal,’ Frances admitted, ‘but I’m sure she won’t terrify them by going at her usual speed. Is Andrew awake?’
‘Don’t know. You want me to chuck him out of bed? Throw cold water on him or something?’ He sat on a stool and stretched out his long legs.
‘Go and have a shower – mm?’
‘In a minute. Cosy in here.’
‘You could light the fire in the living-room.’
‘I could open my presents.’
‘Or wait for Andrew?’
‘Wait for everybody?’
‘You wouldn’t have suggested that a few years ago.’
‘I’m not suggesting it now, I’m still going to empty my stocking first.’ He sloped off upstairs. In a few minutes, she heard Radio 5 Live and the sound of the shower.
Frances made a fresh mug of tea and took it to the living-room, where she set a match to the fire and stood looking out of the window at the bare winter garden. Grass showed patchily through the thin covering of snow, and the weak sun rising gleamed on the summerhouse windows. A robin perched on a clothes pole, his breast bright against the grey and white around him. She was captured by the peacefulness of the moment. There were no tractors out today, no traffic on the road at the bottom of the lane. Then she heard the tha-thud, tha-thud of hooves on frozen ground as John Ramsay came down from the farmhouse at the top of the hill to feed his cattle in the field adjoining the end of Frances’s long garden. If she went up to the back bedroom where her parents would sleep tonight, she’d be high enough to see the black stirks crowding the wire manger, and John in wellingtons and flat cap heading back to his Land Rover. She was grateful every time she paused in this way that she lived here, and was content.
Her thoughts drifted back through the years and she began to think, as she always did on Christmas morning (like touching an old sore), of the last Christmas they had had with Alec.
It was no different from the ones before it, all the years they lived in Northumberland. She and Alec always had the neighbours in on Christmas Eve. It was a sociable street full of young families who went in and out of each others’ houses all the time.
They had mince pies and mulled wine, the house festive with holly and tree and tinsel. At ten they said their goodbyes, ushering excited children out into the frosty air to sweep them off to bed at last, where they would, for once, try to get to sleep. At eleven, she and Chris from next door put on coats and scarves for the walk to church and Alec poured what he called his last drink. As she wound her scarf round, leaving, she said,
‘Remember to get the kittens from next door. Better do it now, before Irene Soutar goes to bed.’
‘Oh, she never goes to bed – sits up with the TV all night.’
‘Don’t forget, Alec,’ she said, going out on this last word.
When she came back an hour later, full of good wishes and the choruses of familiar carols singing in her head, she found him on the sofa, drink in hand. The kittens were still in their basket in Mrs Soutar’s kitchen. Irene Soutar was an elderly widow: she had agreed to take delivery of the kittens for that one evening. Alec was to fetch them in when the children were in bed, to sleep in their basket till morning.
He had become engrossed in an old film or he had dozed off with too much wine. What did it matter? He had forgotten, and jumped up guiltily when Frances, coming in with a breeze of cold air, said, ‘Where are they?’
He had been drinking since lunch-time, so she knew she should have gone herself. It was daft to rely on him.
‘It’s after midnight!’ she snapped, flinging on her coat again. ‘I just hope she’s still up, that’s all. You’ve ruined it – as usual.’
He shrugged his apology, his eyes glazed with prolonged drinking.
‘Aw, hey, I’ll go round first thing in the morning. I’m sorry – c’m’ere, forgive me eh? It’s Christmas, after all.’
Looking back when it had all changed, she acknowledged the marriage must already have been disintegrating. Perhaps what happened only cut short an inevitable end. Still, she did not think he would have gone so soon, left to himself.
In that dark first hour of Christmas morning, the kittens still next door, the boys asleep, her husband contrite but not sorry, she was angry. So she turned on him, not caring what she said.
‘You’re useless, Alec, bloody useless.’
‘I know,’ h
e said, with a shrug, and filled his glass again, since there was no reason why not, and he needed another drink after all this drama. ‘You love me anyway!’ he called after her, sinking back onto the sofa. He changed channels, looking for something else to take his mind off whatever it was he had to take his mind off.
Mrs Soutar was still up. ‘Come away, hinny – I was beginning to think you’d changed your mind.’ She let out a gasp of throaty laughter. ‘Thought you’d landed me wi them for a Christmas present.’
There they were, the black one for Jack, the tabby for Andrew, asleep in a basket by the radiator. They raised their faces to Frances as she knelt beside them, and when she carried the basket into the hall, woke and looked round in surprise, nosing the cooler air.
‘I hope they settle,’ she said, as Mrs Soutar opened the front door. ‘I’m really sorry to disturb you so late.’
‘Nae bother to me.’ Mrs Soutar began coughing. ‘It’s a bitter night. Heh – mind the step now – it’s slippy.’
Frances paused on the path. ‘Happy Christmas,’ she said.
‘Aye, and the same to you and the bairns.’ Even after the door was shut, Frances could hear the harsh coughing, and music loud from the television.
Alec had had an attack of conscience and was washing up glasses in the kitchen. He began making coffee for both of them.
‘You get the beasties then?’
‘I did.’
‘Told you she’d still be up. Happy now? All your plans in order?’ He grinned at her, and came to see the cats.
Tell Me Where You Are Page 1