Eventually, of course, he could not ignore it. For the first time in her life Susan was not out every night or restlessly moving from room to room like a prisoner under house arrest. She became suddenly, remarkably still. Through the warm summer of her pregnancy she lay dreaming in the garden, her book or magazine neglected, eyes closed, listening to the low murmur of music from Grace’s portable radio. She was still a potent presence, but for a few months the house became an oasis of comfort and peace, as it had never been when she lived at home during her teenage years.
As soon as Katy was born and she had made a swift physical recovery, swifter, Grace told him, than was natural, Susan revived and shook off the sleepiness and slowness of the last five months. She took up her old ways and more often than not, Jim saw with increasing irritation, it was Grace who was left to look after the child. He kept himself apart, not caring for babies. He was proud of his grandsons of course, but Frances had conveniently kept all the mess of infancy well away from them in Northumberland. He could not be doing with the smell of nappies and milk, every room steamy with drying clothes, and those terrible wailing cries that sent him straight to his business room, the door firmly shut. When Susan had said she was going to stay with Frances for a while, that Frances was going to help look after Kate so that she could get a job, he was relieved.
Then he discovered he missed her, missed the slow graceful girl who had dozed all summer in his garden, missed the bright child she had once been, so quick to learn. In absence she became girlish again. Thinking of her now, he saw her in the doorway with both hands clasped round the handle, smiling, her hair cut in the old-fashioned heavy pageboy she wore when she was young, and her jeans and loose shirt. That was how she looked when she wanted to coax something out of you, that dimple at the corner of her mouth she’d had since babyhood, her light breathless voice, and the restless way she shifted and turned on her heels, unable to stand still. Susan.
As if in echo of all those old quarrels he felt his heart speed up. Louder and faster it beat in his chest and he leaned further back in his chair, the paper slipping to the floor, pages loose and fanning out. He had that sensation again, as if his head was filling with blood, hot and tight that burning feeling, the beginning of anger. The shrieks and shouting, the slammed doors and final yells, the empty house when she had roared off in her blue Triumph, the only sound Grace weeping softly at the kitchen table. It was always him she blamed, never Susan.
Perhaps he dozed. His daytime naps skimmed the surface of sleep, the senses remaining, however faintly, alert. He thought he heard the front door open and someone come in. Grace would wake him as she always did. You haven’t been sleeping in that chair since I went out, surely?
No-one spoke and no-one came in. He went on lying back in the big armchair, eyes closed, with the strange sensation that someone was moving softly about the room. There was a scent of some summer flower he recognised – lavender or stocks? No, nothing so strong, fainter and sweeter even than roses, a young smell, fresh. He shifted in the chair and lapsed into dreaming again, Grace fussing about the church flowers, Susan as a little girl in a red and white frock, running up the garden after a ginger cat.
When the telephone began ringing he struggled free of sleep and heaved himself upright, unable to tell what was happening. The door – no – the phone. A cold air had entered the room and he felt stiff and chilly. Blast Grace, she must have turned the thermostat down again, forever saving on bills, as if they were hard up.
When he went into the hall to answer the telephone, he saw that both inner and outer front doors were wide open.
Bewildered, he snatched at the phone. ‘Yes?’
It was Frank, about golf on Friday.
‘Just a minute, Frank – with you in a second. Grace must have left the door open – place is freezing.’ He shut both doors. There was no sign of Grace. ‘Sorry. With you now.’
When he put the receiver down again he knew the house was empty and Grace had not come in. He rubbed his hands over his face. Cup of tea, that was the thing. He glanced at the clock, gauging when his wife might be back. Soon, if she got the bus and hadn’t met some crony. Still, he could have his tea on his own and cut himself a slice of gingerbread.
He set about dealing with this, but behind his methodical preparations, punctuated by grunts as he knelt to get out the gingerbread tin or leaned across the sink to fill the kettle, lay the uneasy sense of something not quite right. He put down the kettle and went into the hall. Silence. No-one had come in while he slept; it was ridiculous to think so. He began to go upstairs, taking his time, listening. Friends living in a nearby street had been burgled while they watched television. Two young men had gone upstairs and cleared out Janet’s jewellery drawer and taken Gordon’s wallet lying by the bed. Now they all kept their doors locked in the evening.
Cautiously he went into the main bedroom. No drawers had been opened, nothing had been moved. With a sigh of relief he went into the other upstairs rooms but everything was orderly and peaceful. As he stood there telling himself all was well, he became aware of a perfume lingering, faint now, but once heady and sweet like summer flowers after rain. One of Grace’s pot plants, he supposed. The house was full of them.
He was in the kitchen making tea when Grace arrived home.
‘You left the door open,’ he said as she came in and set her basket on a chair, ready to show him her novels and the World War II memoir borrowed for him.
‘What?’
‘The front door. It was wide open.’
‘I shut it after me when I went out. You know that fine.’ She put her hand on her breast, suddenly alarmed. ‘Jim, no-one’s been in, have they?’
‘No, you can rest easy. I checked upstairs.’ He frowned. ‘The door couldn’t have been on the latch properly.’
She dismissed this. He had been dozing, she could tell from the way his white hair, still thick round the back of his head, was ruffled. She reached up a hand and smoothed it down.
‘You’re all untidy,’ she said. ‘Are you making a cup for me as well?’
‘Haven’t you had it? Art Gallery tearoom with your pals?’
‘I didn’t meet a soul down town.’
‘We should phone the girls tonight,’ he said, handing her a knife so that she could cut the gingerbread.
‘Any reason in particular?’
‘Keep in touch, that’s all. We’re the ones with the free time, so we should ring them up.’
‘I wonder how Kate’s getting on,’ Grace sighed. ‘Poor lassie.’
‘She’s in good hands,’ he reminded her, carrying the tray to the living-room. ‘She’ll come to no harm with Frances. Best thing that could have happened.’
‘Susan going off for weeks?’
‘I meant Alec taking her to Frances.’
They sat down together and he opened the library book she had brought him. Sometimes it was hard to remember the life he had had before retirement. The days meandered by now, unmarked. He thought of saying to Grace, one of your plants has a very noticeable scent. Then he decided not to bother. His dreaming and bewildered awakening, the open door, the scent of flowers, seemed less real and he felt confused about what had actually happened.
‘That girl,’ Grace said suddenly, ‘in Miss Gibson’s old house. I met her, coming along the road.’
Getting off the bus on the main road opposite the crescent, she had seen the girl ahead of her, in denim jacket and tight black trousers tucked into boots. The high heels thrust her forward, so that she seemed to lean over the handles of the buggy she was pushing. Supermarket carrier bags hung from these on either side, bumping against her legs as she went. She was about ten yards ahead of Grace, who was finding her basket heavy and saw the gap between them widening before they reached home. She would have liked an excuse to say ‘hello’, to speak to the child perhaps. If she hurried, she would be passing the gate as the girl dragged her pushchair up the steps to her front door.
Just then, unno
ticed by the mother, one of the child’s shoes, a miniature trainer with blue laces, tumbled on to the pavement and rolled into the gutter. Grace quickened her pace, picked up the shoe and began to trot after the girl, her basket lurching uncomfortably from side to side. A few steps behind, she called:
‘Excuse me! Hello? You dropped this.’
It was a moment before the girl realised someone was talking to her. She looked round and saw Grace, breathless, holding out the shoe.
‘Thanks. She’s always losing them.’ As she let go of the buggy, the weight of her shopping tilted it back till she caught it again.
‘Let me hold it,’ Grace said, ‘while you put your wee girl’s shoe back on.’ She put down her own basket and took the buggy handles. She’d had a big pram for her girls, coach built. You didn’t get these flimsy lightweight pushchairs then, but it felt familiar all the same, gripping the handles, looking down on the curls of fair hair, as the mother bent to fit on the shoe. The fair head turned, and the child looked up curiously at Grace.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’ The child gazed, then looked back at her mother.
‘Mammy!’
‘Look – the lady found your trainer. You nearly lost it, you silly girl.’ She stood up. ‘Thanks.’ She had a crop of copper-red hair with a pinkish tinge. Dyed, Grace decided, not liking the colour or the heavy makeup she wore. Then when the girl smiled her thanks her face brightened and she was almost pretty. Grace picked up her basket and they walked on side by side.
‘How old is your wee girl?’
‘Twenty two months. Two in June.’
‘What do you call her?’
‘A nuisance, most of the time!’ She laughed. ‘She’s Lauren, and I’m Debbie.’
‘I’m Grace Douglas. We live two doors along from you.’
‘I know.’
‘Are you settling in now?’
‘Oh, we’re not staying long. My boyfriend’s back soon, he’s working in Bahrain. We’re getting our own house when he comes home.’
‘You’re not a relative of Miss Gibson, then?’
Debbie looked blank. ‘Who? No, we’re just renting.’
This meant, perhaps, a series of tenants. Grace fretted, wondering whether to tell Jim. She held Debbie’s gate open while the buggy was wheeled in.
‘See ya.’ Debbie smiled her wide smile, and the child unexpectedly waved a small hand, opening and shutting her fist. ‘That’s right, say ta ta to the lady.’
Grace waved back, seduced. Andrew had waved like that as a toddler, fingers opening and closing.
She wanted to tell this story to Jim and did try, but he seemed preoccupied, even dazed.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked, sharp with sudden anxiety. ‘No pains or anything?’
‘Pains?’ He glared at her, offended. ‘Of course not.’
‘I wonder if we’ll ever have any more grandchildren,’ she sighed. Jim picked up his library book again and turned the pages, ignoring this.
Grace sat dreaming in her chair for a few minutes longer, the mug of tea forgotten, thinking of Jack and Andrew.
Shortly after midnight Frances put her book down and was drifting into sleep when someone tapped lightly at her door. It was always ajar and when Frances sat up and said ‘What is it?’ Kate came in.
‘Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you. I just wanted to ask something.’
Frances switched on the bedside lamp and pushed her pillows up behind her. ‘What?’
‘I know the doctor sort of explained, but I didn’t listen really. Well, I listened, but it didn’t stay in my head, if you know what I mean.’
Frances said with a smile, ‘About ninety per cent of conversations with doctors are like that.’ She patted the bed. ‘Come and sit down.’
Kate sidled up to the bed and sat on the very end of it. ‘If I did have an abortion, would I be like, asleep?’
‘Asleep?’
‘Would they give me an anaesthetic so it would be over when I woke up?’
I should have looked this up, Frances thought, I ought to know.
‘I don’t think so. We could go back to Dr Geddes and ask her.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Have you changed your mind?’
With a prickling of apprehension she became aware that this encounter in the shadowed bedroom was important. What she said, what Kate believed, could make all the difference in the world. To the baby, she realised, to the baby which might become like Gillian’s baby, consigned to oblivion, forgotten already. But not by me, she thought, not by me. That another family baby should vanish, become nothing, less than nothing – the very idea gripped her heart with anxiety.
‘I don’t know,’ Kate whispered. ‘I’m scared. I’m scared about it being born, you know. It hurts, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, it does, but it’s soon over – you forget. Memory is treacherous. People would only ever have one child, wouldn’t they, if it was so bad? And most of them have two, three, or even more.’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’
Backtracking: ‘It is up to you.’
‘If I have an abortion, would it be soon?’
‘As soon as it could be arranged. If they could still do it. I don’t really know. It would have to be very soon.’
‘Would it be like a kind of operation?’
This was the moment when Frances might have said something anodyne and reassuring, promising to look it up and refer to the doctor.
‘To be honest, Kate, at the stage you’re at, it would be more like a very early birth.’
‘You’re kidding!’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know much about it, but I do know that. It wouldn’t be so painful or difficult, because the baby is very small. But you would have to go through labour, yes.’
‘I’d be as well doing it, then,’ Kate said, after a moment. ‘Properly.’
‘It’s not just about a birth,’ Frances said, pulling herself up, remembering to be an aunt, conscientious. ‘Who’s going to look after the baby?’
‘Me?’ Kate gave a little shrug, half a smile.
‘Aye, that’s right. You.’ Frances smiled back. ‘With a bit of help.’
Kate shivered. ‘I should have told you, shouldn’t I? But I kept thinking it couldn’t really be true, especially when I didn’t get any fatter, I got thinner really.’ She put her hands low on her stomach, pressing. ‘But it is true.’
‘Go back to bed,’ Frances said. ‘You’re getting cold. Tomorrow Alec will be here and we can talk to him about it.’
‘You think he’ll totally freak? Go mad at me?’
‘Does he ever do that?’
‘No,’ Kate admitted. ‘It’s Mum who freaks out. I don’t blame her,’ she added hastily. ‘I mean, I can be quite annoying sometimes.’
‘All mothers lose their tempers occasionally.’
Kate’s mouth twisted. ‘It’s more than occasionally.’
‘She’s like your grandfather. He can be a bit fiery.’
‘I’m going back to bed,’ Kate said. ‘Sorry, I just panicked a bit.’
When she had gone, Frances lay awake thinking first that this was the nearest to an ordinary conversation she had had about Susan for years and then that whatever she had said had probably been the wrong thing to say.
If the baby did come, Kate’s life would be spoiled, and the whole thing would never end. Yet if Susan had not had Kate, if she had not come confident and blithe to her parents and said take me in, Kate would not exist. It was like saying Jack or Andrew might not have lived. Unimaginable.
If Kate had not been born, Susan might not have come to stay with Alec and Frances, and she and Alec would never have become lovers. Frances sighed and shifted in bed. So much going wrong because of one act of sex. Or perhaps not. Perhaps the alternative lives they might have lived were lesser lives. She and Alec might have drifted on unhappily for years.
She thought of Kenny’s undemanding warmth and kindness, of the job she
loved, of how Jack and Andrew, unhampered by a semi-alcoholic father, had grown straight and true. Maybe you did me a favour, Susan, she thought. So let it happen, let the baby be born, and thrive, and be loved and cherished. Why not?
4
Frances’s call had come out of the blue, a godsend, though Alec knew it must be about Kate. He had a faint twitch of anxiety in case she was she skiving off school again, but he shrugged it off in the relief of being on the move, having a purpose. He packed quickly and left early, glad to be on the road.
This meant he arrived in Dingwall in mid-afternoon, so when he got there no-one was at home. He walked round the house and stood in the back garden for a moment. From here, Ben Wyvis lay like a sleeping beast in sunshine, its long back black against blue sky. Below he could follow the firth out towards Invergordon. One or two rigs were visible, like crane flies on the water. It was very quiet. Something brushed softly by and looking down, he saw the old tabby cat strolling on along the path. Absurdly, he wanted to call her back, receive some sign that she remembered him. He associated this cat with Christmas and a row with Frances. Then later, wasn’t there an infected paw, a crisis with visits to the vet? She had survived all that into steady old age. I have survived too, he reminded himself, but thought the cat probably more intact.
He returned to the front of the house, and stood in the lane listening for Frances’s car. Surely she wouldn’t be too long – she had asked him to come. It was cold and a cloud drifted over the sun with heavier, blacker clouds in its wake. Perhaps he would wait in the car. The cat had followed him and sat by the front door. It occurred to him to try to open it, just to show her he couldn’t let her in, but it opened at a touch and swung ajar. The cat went in, and so did he.
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