The bus twisted along narrow country roads, past farmhouses that reminded me of home, and as we drew near Leuchars, I tried to check my make-up in my powder mirror, but the bus was too shoogly. It was hard to look pretty in a shirt, tie and knee breeches. I noticed that the waistband on my trousers was tighter, but it was covered up by my jumper and trench coat, so I wasn’t too embarrassed. People seemed to look at me with more respect now I was in uniform, and an old man shook my hand as I got off the bus. Fife was flat compared to Stirling. Large fields stretched out, ploughed and ready for planting, and I could see the sea in the distance. There was a lonely hill and woods near Douglas’ house, which I found with a farmhand’s directions.
Douglas didn’t recognise me at first. It must have been my uniform and I was early, but when he shouted Agnes, and squeezed me in a great bear hug, I was the happiest woman alive. ‘I am so sorry about Jeff,’ he said. ‘But let me look at you. You look so rosy. The country life must suit you. Welcome to my humble abode, although none so humble as my more recent home, as you well know.’
The inside was neat and sparkling. Winter jasmine stood in a pottery jug on the table and seedlings were pricked out in trays on a deep windowsill. ‘Still growing your magic beans, Douglas?’ I asked.
‘They’re proving slightly harder to germinate than I anticipated, but I am more hopeful for my gentian, delphinium and daphne for the summer. An army friend sent them from his garden in Bute. I believe he got hold of them in Bombay. One of the more bizarre advantages of war. Cross-pollination.’
He offered to take my coat, but I kept it on.
‘So, how are you? You must be missing Jeff?’
My throat tightened and tears sprang into my eyes. Douglas looked dismayed and said, ‘They did their best to contain the outbreak, you know, but these things are very difficult when everyone is so run down. Did they let you see him before he died?’
I nodded. ‘Let’s not talk about sad things. I’ve come to see you.’ I tried to smile.
‘Jeff would have wanted you to be happy, Agnes. “Enjoy your youth, dear heart; soon it will be the turn of other men.” Theognis. A man who knew what it was to fall from grace, as I do, to my cost. But a cup of tea is the greatest cure of all, at least in the short term. You sit down and I’ll make us a pot.’
He wandered into the kitchen, leaving me by a new fire that licked round twigs and pine cones, searching with blue fingers for the small pieces of coal balanced on the wood, and pulling them down. There were brown, glazed pottery mugs on the tray he brought through. It was lined with a hand-crocheted doily, edged with bright glass beads.
‘We’ll have scones shortly,’ he said, ‘although they may not be up to your own high standard.’
‘You are making me feel like Mrs MacDougall,’ I said.
‘Ah, the veritable warrior of the stair. How is she? Still sniping at all and sundry?’ He sat down opposite me.
‘No, the guns have fallen silent.’
‘Most unexpected,’ he smiled, ‘but then I suppose you are hardly there now. Where did you say you were based?’
‘Laurelhill in Stirling. You would like it. It’s a nursery.’
‘Did you contribute to that insane vegetable submarine in the George Street exhibition? HMS Dig? I believe its conning tower was made out of leeks and rhubarb.’
I shook my head. ‘Jim mentioned the “Vegetables for Victory” show, but I couldn’t go.’ I didn’t mention I had saved my day off for his release.
He poured the tea. The teapot shook slightly in his hands.
‘Help yourself to milk and sugar,’ he said.
‘Sugar is a real treat. I used to feed my ration to the milkman’s horse,’ I said.
‘The toothless one? The one I was to ride into battle?’
‘He was called Flash.’ I laughed, pleased he remembered that first visit, and took a sip of tea.
‘Are you free for good now, Douglas? They won’t send you back to prison, will they?’
‘I think they’d like to,’ he replied. ‘They find my views… difficult. I am trying to get my conviction quashed by appealing to the Scottish Estates.’ He sipped his tea. ‘However, self-government remains my real focus.’
‘Even at the expense of your Greek poet?’
‘Never at the cost of culture. Never that. I hope to have finished translating his work in August.’
‘And will I be able to read it in Scots?’
‘Alas, no. Even my Sorley translation has been downgraded from Lallans, as I originally planned, to English. My publisher wants to put it before a wider audience and I agreed, albeit reluctantly. Money is the real master. More tea?’
I held out my cup.
‘Where will they find the paper for it all?’ I asked.
‘At this rate I will have to ask Sorley to bring some papyrus back from Cairo. And personal projects aside, we can’t get hold of enough paper to produce a comprehensive statement of SNP policies to take us forward. I am planning to stand in the Kirkcaldy by-election.’
I tried to look interested but I was thinking how beautiful his eyes were. They sparkled as he spoke, even though he was now blethering on about the new hydroelectric power stations and who would take control of them. ‘Can it be right that they suck energy out of the Highlands without directing any of it to the crofters?’
‘No,’ I said, realising too late that he was asking me a question and not sure if that was the right answer. I stood up, wondering if I might join him on the sofa, when I saw a girl coming up the path to the house.
‘That’s our scones,’ he said, unfolding his long legs to go and open the front door.
‘I got the last four, darling,’ the girl said, and I heard them kiss. She was holding his arm as they stepped into the room.
‘You must be Agnes,’ she said. ‘Douglas told me so much about your husband. I am sorry for your loss.’
Douglas slipped the coat from her shoulders as if he was unwrapping a present. ‘Agnes, this is Isabella. Bella, Agnes.’
‘How do you do?’ I said, holding out my hand. Her eyes were huge, kind, with a far-seeing, distant quality.
‘Bella is an artist,’ Douglas said. ‘Far better than a bear like me deserves.’
‘Have you come far, Agnes?’ Isabella asked.
‘Stirling.’ My throat was dry and I swallowed hard.
‘Stirling? Douglas, isn’t that where you said Mr Ford chased everyone round, scribbling in his book and scaring people? That must have been awful for you, Agnes, with Jeff in the Party and everything. You have been through so much.’
‘Yes,’ I said. Such a small word. The roar in my head was deafening. How could I have thought Douglas wouldn’t have someone, that it wasn’t only politics that filled him? I sat down and added more sugar to my tea. Isabella was staring at me. Douglas had gone into the kitchen to butter the scones, but I wasn’t hungry any more. She added a log to the fire.
‘So how did you two meet?’ I asked, just for something to say, and a little tea slopped onto the table as I set the cup down. Isabella watched the stain spreading on the cloth, but didn’t move.
‘At Mr Lamont’s house in Lochwinnoch. My mother became his housekeeper when we came over from South Africa. I used to visit her there to escape the madness of the art school in Glasgow.’
Douglas came back through with the scones dripping jam and offered me one. I put it on my plate and licked the sticky stuff from my finger. It was sweet and seedless.
‘This is delicious,’ I said, wondering how I could leave it without offending them.
‘My mother’s recipe,’ said Isabella. ‘She strains the jam to make a jelly. Better for the stomach, especially if you have diverticulitis or a sensitive digestion.’
‘You and your queer foreign ways,’ laughed Douglas.
Isabella laughed. ‘He always says that, but he is resisting progress.’
‘And you are betraying your good Scottish father,’ he replied. ‘What is the point in havin
g a name like Auchterlonie if you strain your jam?’
‘And what about all the Gossarrees on the other side? Don’t they count for anything?’ asked Isabella.
I looked puzzled, and he looked at me and said, ‘A quarter Basque, a quarter French, a quarter German, from an old Mecklenburg Junker family, and a quarter Dutch.’ He said it like a catechism. ‘Europa herself sits before you.’
‘Bravo,’ said Isabella, and kissed him.
I stood up. ‘I must be going,’ I said.
‘But you have only just arrived,’ said Isabella. ‘You haven’t had your scone.’
‘I’m sorry – I don’t feel very well.’
‘Forgive me. We are forgetting you are so recently bereaved,’ said Douglas. He moved beside me and stroked my hand. ‘You are being so brave,’ he added. ‘It must be very difficult for you.’
I wanted to blurt out, ‘It’s not about Jeff. It’s you I love,’ but Douglas was looking at Isabella. It was impossible to divide the plough from its share. ‘There is a bus at twenty past,’ I said, looking round at the clock on the mantelpiece.
‘Please stay,’ said Isabella. ‘You could lie down for a while and rest.’
I stood up and straightened my uniform. ‘No, must trot on,’ I said, in Sylvia’s voice, but they didn’t laugh. ‘I also have some business to attend to.’
They looked concerned. ‘We’re moving to Glasgow soon,’ said Douglas. ‘Be sure and look us up if you are through that way. We should be well-established after the wedding in August.’
‘Of course,’ I said, knowing I never would. I was crying inside. I wanted to remember every detail of his bonny face, the colour of his skin and hair, and the light in his eyes. ‘Thank you for the tea.’
I tried not to cry on the bus, but sobs kept escaping and a woman behind me asked if I was all right, and passed me her handkerchief. They were used to seeing grief these days and looked out the window to give me privacy, but I expect they exchanged looks over my head and mouthed the words ‘poor, wee soul’.
27
Next day, I watered the tomatoes without even seeing them, pouring can after can over the plants in a transparent hail of water. I thought of the drops clinging to the budding, green fruit as my tears. I would never see Douglas again. I thought of Jeff, his dust buried in a small pot, and the bairn in my womb growing, ripening towards the day it would be born. Strangers would see me as a tragic widow, a woman alone in the world, hand in hand with a child robbed of its father. They would assume he had died a soldier’s death, a hero’s death, and I would be left to live the lie. I didn’t know who I could tell that I was expecting a bairn, so I told no one. The dungarees hid the curve of my belly so well, and I was still very small, although Mrs Ogilvie exchanged looks with Jim at breakfast, as I sat picking at my food. I supposed they had heard me crying in the night and assumed I was disappointed in my trip to Ardhall; disappointed in love. They waited for me to mention it, but I never did. On the fourth day, Mrs Ogilvie announced that she had arranged tickets for a dance at the Miners’ Institute and told me that if I moped about for one more minute she would ask the Ministry of Agriculture to repatriate me to the city, as it was unlikely that any tomato could ripen under my baleful stare. I couldn’t think of any excuse not to go, so I put on the pink crêpe de Chine dress she lent me. ‘Pre-utility, thank God,’ she said. It was gathered under the bust, and with a cardigan over the top, my bump wasn’t visible. I didn’t think she had guessed.
The hall at the Institute was decorated with bunting and a GI swing band had set up with microphones at the far end. The men in their pale-green uniforms softened my memory of Douglas on the same platform. It was a different movie playing in the same cinema. I wondered if Bella had been in that audience at that rally, even as I was longing for him. I had betrayed Jeff with an empty dream, thought to drink from a cup that had already been drained. A spotlight shone on the brass instruments and the trumpeter jumped to his feet to encourage the folk who were filling the room. ‘Let’s get this room jumping,’ he shouted, and the drummer hit his cymbal, which shimmered.
‘They’re American, dear,’ said Mrs Ogilvie. ‘Very boisterous.’
‘But utterly adorable,’ said a voice behind me. I turned to see the blackest man I had ever seen. He bowed and held out his hand. ‘Would you do me the honour? Captain Arnold at your service, ma’am.’
‘Agnes Thorne,’ said Mrs Ogilvie, putting my hand in his. ‘She would be delighted, although you might need to remind her how to dance. It has been a quite a while.’
His face lit up. He pulled me into a dance hold and we swung off in a polka. It was like dancing the middle part of a Canadian Barn Dance at a ceilidh. He galloped me round the room, only just avoiding other couples. I was so dizzy I began to laugh, but tears were close behind. He led me off the floor for some lemonade as the music ended.
‘So what do you do, Agnes?’ he asked, passing me a glass.
‘I’m persuading tomatoes to grow at Laurelhill Nursery.’
‘Somehow I don’t think that is going to stop the Germans,’ he replied.
‘The wee, green ones are hard enough to stop a man in his tracks,’ I said, ‘and I have a pretty good aim.’
‘David and Goliath?’
‘Who are you calling David?’
He raised his glass. ‘Here’s to you, Agnes, and your war.’
‘Slainte mhath…’ I said, uncertain of his first name.
‘Raphael,’ he said, filling the pause.
A waltz struck up and he led me back onto the floor. It was good to be held kindly by a man. His chest was warm, and I liked the feeling of his hand on the small of my back. Mrs Ogilvie winked as she span past with Jim, who had gelled down his hair and put on an old dinner jacket from the 1920s. ‘You are seeing me at my most debonair,’ he had said as we left the farm. ‘This tux is my dark secret: there’s a trail of broken-hearted lassies from here to Timbuktu.’
I looked up at Raphael. ‘You sure look cute,’ he smiled.
My face was beginning to relax and my cheeks felt less tense as I sighed, drawing air into my lungs. I had been holding my breath for a long time.
‘You okay?’ he asked. ‘You got a problem with me being negro?’
I shook my head. ‘Why would I?’
‘You’d be surprised,’ he replied. ‘I must be the blackest man since Fred Douglass to pitch up in this godforsaken Arctic wilderness you call home. Although I believe he brought more than a little heat to the cheeks of Edinburgh’s abolitionist ladies in the nineteenth century.’
‘I’m not from Stirling,’ I said.
‘Oh, how many minutes down the road is the place you’re from?’
I punched him on the shoulder. ‘Where are your manners?’
‘I’m sorry, but Pennsylvania could swallow this whole country in two bites, fence it in and call it a farm.’
‘It might be a prickly mouthful.’
‘I believe it might, but I am willing to try,’ he replied, and pulled me closer. My belly pressed against his flat stomach and he pulled back. ‘I’m sorry, Agnes. I didn’t realise.’ He looked round the room as if he expected to see an angry man approaching.
‘It’s all right, I’m a widow.’
He looked down at me. ‘That is not all right. That is a tough call, and I am sorry for your loss.’ He led me back to Mrs Ogilvie and Jim.
‘You’d better look after this little lady,’ he said, and bowed before walking up to the bar and slapping one of the soldiers standing there on the back.
‘Aren’t you feeling well?’ asked Jim.
Mrs Ogilvie took a long sip of her lemonade, drawing it up through the straw. I knew that when she raised her eyes to me from behind the smokescreen of her blue, powdered lids, that I would see she had guessed, perhaps had always known. But instead she nudged Jim and squeezed past to go to the powder room. It was an invitation to follow her, though I wasn’t ready. I told Jim I was going to get some air and walked out into t
he night. I didn’t know how I felt about the child. I had always imagined knitting for my firstborn in a cosy nursery with a loving husband at my side. Not this world, at war.
The night air was unseasonably cold and my breath hung in front of my mouth like a veil. The Ochils were dark, glittering in the frost under a waning moon, which had just tipped past full the night before. The music grew fainter behind me as I walked, my trench coat buttoned up to my chin. I flexed my hands, but the cold was already in my fingers, licking the bones. The Forth slid, inky black, under old Stirling Bridge and my feet echoed on its cobbles. There was no one about. They were all at the dance, or dreaming of husbands, sons and brothers far away. It was a land of women now. The blackout blinds were pulled down on all the big houses, bleak like the empty mansion behind the flat, a pattern of abandoned lives, endlessly repeating. I needed to get off the street, to feel the earth under my feet. Sticks cracked as I began to climb up the path to the Wallace Monument. I wanted to raise myself up above everything; to look out over the small world that was my life in Stirling. An owl called as I reached the foot of the tower, which seemed to grow straight out of the rough rocks. The jaggy crown on its head loomed above me, as if it might slide down its misshapen body and crash round its feet, crushing me. I tried the handle. The door was unlocked. It creaked as I opened it and the smell of damp stone seeped into my clothes. The stairs spiralled round, past arrow slits. I thought I could hear the faintest sound of the trumpet over the water, carrying on the still air. The stairs grew narrower and the roof got lower, squashing me in and I walked in an ever-decreasing spiral, my hand trailing on the stone spine of the tower, as if I was winding the thread of my life onto a bobbin.
I tried to picture William Wallace, who had stood on this spot before the tower was ever built, looking out at the English camp lying in the Forth’s silver loops, and his ghost’s cold hands reached round my back and squeezed my belly. I couldn’t breathe. My legs were heavy as I reached the top, and pushed open the door onto the narrow walkway outside. The sky flew up above me, filled with stars. Ice cracked under my feet and I held onto the parapet in case I skited on the slippy surface and fell over. I was alone; alone with the bairn swimming in my womb; a featherlight touch as a foot moved, stretching, preparing for life. I looked over the edge. It was a long way down and seemed further with the cliff below. The trees clung to the rock and reached up to me, as if they would catch me if I fell. I imagined dropping into their arms; wondered if they would smile and stroke my hair, coorie me in, sing to me in their twig voices. I held onto the parapet, scared by my thoughts, and with my nail I scratched my name into the frost on the stone wall. ‘I can hold on,’ I said. ‘I am alive.’ The letters melted into the sparkling diamond sheet, black furrows on the late winter page, and then I heard the sound of the door at the bottom of the tower click open and feet tapping on the steps. They grew louder and faster as they took the measure of the tower. I looked round for somewhere to hide, but there was nowhere, so I pressed myself against the far wall, out of sight of the door. The hinge creaked as it swung open and a man coughed. ‘Agnes? Are you there?’
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