It was too much. She could bear no more. She moved quickly away up the stairs and when she had gone a few steps she turned and saw that he had not moved. He was so tall that she was eye to eye with him. ‘I was so afraid there was no God, Ian, but there is. You brought Him back with you.’ And she turned and ran lightly up the rest of the staircase.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The village postman cycled out to the farm more times in the last two months of 1919 than he had done in the whole of his career. Arabella wrote to Ian almost every day and Mairi soon learned to recognise her writing and her distinctive, expensive stationery. But other envelopes began to arrive too and Ian grinned or groaned each time he saw one, depending on its thickness.
These were letters from publishers interested in his poetry.
Just before Christmas Ian told Mairi that an extremely reputable publishing house had offered to bring out a limited edition of his poetry in the spring and, possibly more importantly to the lover if not to the poet, Arabella was spending Christmas with her uncle at his Scottish estate.
‘Now that I’m going to publish, Bella thinks Sir Humphrey will take me more seriously.’
Mairi looked up from the shirt she was sewing. ‘And if he doesn’t?’
‘She’s of age. I would prefer that she not be at outs with her family but . . . if it has to be . . .’
‘You’ll still marry her?’
‘I don’t expect you to understand, Mairi,’ he said and she could hear the embarrassment in his voice, ‘but I ache for her.’
Dear God in Heaven, how self-absorbed the nicest of men were. Women didn’t ache, didn’t lie awake night after night, longing, longing. Mairi sighed.
‘Robin’s father walked up with Bert this afternoon after school.’
Immediately Ian looked contrite. ‘How is Robin? We’ll visit again before the New Year if you like. Bella arrives on the twentieth. Perhaps just before that. What do you think?’
‘He didn’t come to talk about Robin, not mainly. It’s Milly. He wants her to keep house for him. His daily is getting married at ne’erday and since Milly will be looking for a job and a home’ – she looked at him as if hoping that he would either confirm or deny this – ‘and he already has the boys most of the time . . .’
‘Sounds good, Mairi. An ideal solution.’
Mairi cut off the thread and folded up the shirt. It was a Christmas present for Ian but she assumed that he would not know that most of it had been sewn right under his very nose. ‘An ideal solution to what, Ian?’
He had got up to put some coal on the fire but he recognised the iciness in her voice. ‘Mairi, I’m sorry. Have I not been listening? My mind is so full of thoughts of seeing my work in print, in a book, Mairi, with covers and my name on the spine, and Bella, sitting where you’re sitting, reading my new poems in her lovely voice. Ach, I’m selfish. I was thinking that if the Dominie needs Milly and has room for all of them in that cold barn they call a schoolhouse, it would be an ideal solution.’
Arabella Huntingdon sitting in the front room reading poetry? He had left his brains as well as his naivety in that prison camp. ‘Ian, we have to talk about the future. If you marry . . . when you marry Arabella, you don’t expect her to live here?’
He laughed and it was his nice real Ian laugh. ‘Can you see Bella living here?’ He looked at his sister’s white, set face. ‘Gosh, Mairi, I didn’t mean that it isn’t a perfectly comfortable, probably the most comfortable of the small farms, but Arabella is a lady, oh, God, I didn’t mean that either. What I mean is, she has her own home. I told you that. But I won’t live with her there until I can support her.’
‘And what about me?’ She had not meant to say that; she had been absolutely determined that she would never say it but it was out now. Her fear was Ian’s now.
‘You can live with us,’ he said easily, ‘you know that. You’re my wee sister. Bella wants to treat you like a sister.’
‘But your Bella is a lady. I’m a farmer, Ian. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be, and if you leave I will have to leave too. They won’t give a woman the lease, not a single woman my age.’
Obviously he had never thought the whole thing through. He was in love and his beloved loved him in return. Mundane, practical matters like leases had never crossed his mind.
‘But you won’t need it, Mairi. I’ve spoken to Bella. Where I go, you go.’
She was angry again. ‘And if I don’t want to go where you go? If I was old or married, then it would be different, I could run the farm with everyone’s blessing, but since I’m still quite young and have no husband, they’ll conveniently forget that I ran this farm for years with the help of a woman and two wee boys. The first man back from the war that has experience and wants a lease will get my home.’
‘Robin?’
‘Is going to Italy.’
There, she had said it and now the tears that she had kept dammed burst out of their prison. ‘His father told me a week or so ago. Robin will leave the sanitorium but he won’t come home. He didn’t want to be released back here, not yet, not until he’s convinced himself that he’s well.’
Ian remembered the urchin who had asked him if he was the daftie. Oh, yes, Robin would have to be quite sure of his mental health before he ran the gauntlet of the village.
‘But then he’ll come home and you’ll marry?’
She managed to stop sobbing. Ian could not cope with tears and he had suffered so much; she did not want him to have to deal with them – not hers, Bella’s maybe. If rich, beautiful women in love ever cried . . .?
‘We never once talked of marriage. We never said the words . . . marriage or love, never once.’
Ian wondered if he should tell her about the letter. Robin is afraid that he might kill you. No, he could not tell her. He took her in his arms, awkwardly. She was his sister. They were not used to embracing one another. ‘Mairi, Robin loves you; I know he does. He’s not a farmer. He’s a teacher. And he won’t teach here in the village. Where is the nearest town that needs a Classics master? Maybe Dundee, maybe Edinburgh. Who knows? When you marry Robin, you’ll have to leave the farm. This way it’s just a little earlier. I wish I could stay and be a farmer for you but I never wanted to farm. I will stay until I can afford to leave. If there hadn’t been Bella, I would probably have stayed for ever and written my poems to keep me sane. But I love her and I need to be with her and I can’t ask her to live here. You do see that?’
‘Of course I do.’ She blew her nose loudly and dried her eyes. ‘I’m sorry and I never meant to cry and upset you. Goodness knows, if Robin asked me to go with him, I’d leave without even closing the door behind me, wouldn’t I? And I don’t expect you to stay here for me but, Ian. I couldn’t live with you and Bella in a big mansion house. I’m a farmer. I don’t know how to talk to her. I don’t know how to dress. I’d embarrass you and I couldn’t bear that.’
It was obvious that such a thought had never crossed his mind. ‘Och, Mairi, you’re havering. You and Bella always look so nice. But let’s leave this for now, please. We’ll talk to Bella and her aunt and uncle at Christmas.’ He stood up because he was so excited that sitting down he could not contain his excitement. ‘What a ne’erday we’ll have and then, because of Bella, we’ll have to start celebrating Christmas in the English fashion. I’ve an idea, Mairi, for Bella and for Milly’s bairns. We’ll get a Christmas tree and put candles on it and presents under it for Bert and wee Jean, and maybe even Angus too, although he thinks he’s grown up. What do you say?’
She could not bear to disappoint him and so she tried to sound enthusiastic. Was love enough to smooth all the bumpy paths that he was preparing to walk along? And what would Miss Arabella Huntingdon really think when she saw, daily, the conditions in which her love had grown up? There’s nothing romantic about an outside privy, even in the height of summer.
*
Arabella came the first time when the house smelled of w
ood smoke and baking bread and Christmas cake. Mairi thought that she looked like a fairy lost from her Christmas tree in her silver white fur coat and tight little hat. She had gifts for under the tree and Milly and the children exclaimed over the beauty of the wrappings, paper and ribbons so expensive that Mairi blushed at the waste. She could not bring herself to thank Bella for the packages or exult at their beauty. All she could think of was that they made her home-made efforts look so provincial and she hated herself for her jealousy.
‘Will you take some tea, Miss Huntingdon?’ she asked stiffly and Bella looked at her in surprise.
She slipped off her fur coat and threw it over a chair and Jean and Bert, together, rushed to pick up the glorious creation. Jean fetched her mother’s best padded coat hanger from the old wardrobe and they hung the coat up neatly on a nail at the door.
‘Thank you, darlings,’ said Bella but she was laughing and Mairi found herself hating her for her easy laughter.
‘Mairi, please, we are to be sisters. You must call me Bella.’
‘Bella,’ said Mairi and tried to say it naturally. ‘You’ll take some tea?’
And all the while Ian stood loving them both and wondering why on earth everything was going wrong. Bella tried and Mairi tried but the visit was a trial for everyone and, too soon, before they had really talked, Bella stood up and Ian almost ran to get her lovely coat.
‘I’ll walk you back,’ he whispered.
‘Silly, I didn’t walk all that way in these,’ she said pointing to her soft leather boots. ‘Uncle’s motor is waiting. Let’s take Bert and Jean. Come on, you two, if your mamma agrees you may have a ride in the motor.’
They ran into the scullery shouting for Milly and Arabella looked at Mairi.
She seemed to sense that she should not offer such a treat to her and instead thanked her for the delicious baking. ‘You must teach me, Mairi; if I am to be a farmer’s wife, I must learn about the food that a farmer likes.’
‘Ian’s a poet, Bella, and has little idea about what he’s eating. I’m sure your cook will manage.’
Oh, how she hated herself for that mean, twisted voice that spat out these remarks. What was wrong? Was it that Arabella was so beautiful and elegant and, more importantly, nice, and did not deserve her animosity? Was it because she, Mairi, was jealous of the way that Bella and Ian looked at one another, at the way they let their hands touch over the homely tea table? How can I live in the same house and watch them love and know that Robin does not want me? Will I become the mean, twisted maiden aunt that their children will mock? She ran out after them into the beginnings of the first snow of the winter.
‘Bella!’ she called. ‘Come back soon. This house is brighter with you in it.’ And then she ran back inside because she was so embarrassed by her own spontaneity.
‘Bonny lassie, that,’ said Milly as she boiled the kettle for water for the dishes. ‘She’s not really seeing herself as the wife of a working farmer, though, is she?’
‘I don’t think so, Milly. More like Marie Antoinette playing at being a shepherdess with her specially built perfect wee farm. Ian will give up the lease as soon as he’s making a living from his writing and then they’ll go to England and live in her big house.’
‘I always thought you had to be dead to make a living as a writer, if you know what I mean.’
‘The world wants to hear from the poets of the war; to make sure we don’t get into such a mess again.’
‘Well, amen to that, but what about you, lass? If I leave with the weans next week, you’ll be on your own when Ian gets wed.’
‘I’ll manage, Milly. There’ll be plenty of men needing work.’ She would not worry Milly by telling her that it was highly unlikely that the estate would give an unmarried woman a lease on the farm. If Ian and Bella were married before September, Mairi would be out of, not only her occupation and her life but her home too.
*
Ian was not too sanguine about the prospects of an early wedding. ‘I can hardly bear to be so close to her and know that we have to wait so long,’ he told Mairi next morning as he poured fresh cream on his porridge. ‘The Grey-Watsons won’t even see me. Bella says she’ll leave before Christmas if her uncle remains so obdurate . . .’ He flushed as he saw her look of surprise at his vocabulary.
‘Nothing else to do in prison but read what’s there, Mairi. In Germany it was a German–English dictionary.’
Mairi smiled stiffly. He’s beginning to sound like them, she thought. Even Robin, a Greek and Latin scholar, did not use such words around her.
‘Obdurate? I suppose that means he’s a thrawn old bugger.’ She tried to smile.
He beamed warmly. ‘Aye, but he’ll come round. He loves Bella. He’s been her guardian since she was three years old. He’ll come round.’
Sir Humphrey agreed to meet Ian early on the morning of 24 December. It could only be a short meeting. There were so many social engagements that had to be fulfilled. Ian, of course, had nothing to do but look after his stock; for working-class labouring farmers there were no social engagements.
Mairi pressed his suit and washed and ironed his best shirt. Then, when he was dressing, she took her Christmas present from the little pile under the tree and took it up to him.
‘Does it spoil Christmas if you open your present before midnight?’
He took the parcel. ‘Not if it’s that lovely shirt a wee lassie has been working on for weeks.’
She smiled happily and went downstairs to wait. He had noticed. She would be more careful in . . . no, there was no future. His future was with Bella. He would never again sit by the fire in this farmhouse and pretend not to see his sister make his gift.
‘But that’s right,’ Mairi told herself. ‘That is the way it should be and it’s what I want for him.’
When he had left for the Big House, she sat quietly reading by the fire. Since Ian had come back she had found renewed delight in the written word and in the few minutes each day when her hands were not busy she took one of Ian’s books and made a new acquaintance or renewed an old one. She felt she might read a great deal more in the years ahead. It would be something to do, she thought, thoroughly sorry for herself.
*
Ian, meanwhile, had every right to feel sorry for himself. The interview with Sir Humphrey, his landlord, was not pleasant. He was shown into the magnificent panelled library where a fire was consuming, at one go, more wood than he would use all day, and where exotic hot-house flowers pretended that it was not mid-winter.
Sir Humphrey was seated behind his desk. He did not get up when Ian was announced and he did not ask him to sit. Ian stood in front of the desk and remembered how he had felt when the officers had tried to break his spirit. He had managed to resist then. He would not allow his spirit to be broken now.
‘I have to say I’m surprised at your effrontery, McGloughlin. Can’t say I expected it from your father’s son.’
‘I never expected to fall in love with your niece, Sir Humphrey, if that is the situation that insults you.’
‘You’re the uneducated son of a tenant farmer, man. You’re not fit to clean her boots.’
If he had expected Ian to blush with shame at such an insult he was disappointed.
‘I couldn’t agree with you more, Sir Humphrey.’ He would not say that it was Arabella who had done all the running. ‘But I have fallen in love with her and she with me.’
‘She’s a very wealthy young woman . . .’ Ah, he had scored a hit. Ian pulled himself up and stood, if possible, taller and straighter, and a muscle worked in his jaw.
Sir Humphrey looked at him. ‘Unworthy,’ he said. ‘I think I know that it’s not her money, but, Ian,’ and here he stood up, ‘you must see that it wouldn’t work. I know you are going to publish some poetry but, dear God in Heaven, do you seriously think being the author of some maudlin verses makes you the equal of a Huntingdon? You have nothing in common, lad. Bella thought it was romantic to champion y
ou; you and she against the world. But when her world turns against her, and it will, then what? How long will the great romance last?’
‘If Bella’s family and friends spurn her for marrying a decent hardworking man who will love and cherish her all her days, then she’s maybe better off without them, Sir Humphrey.’
This time it was Ian who had scored the hit. Sir Humphrey went an alarming shade of red. ‘How dare you! When did you leave school? When you were twelve, thirteen? How can you even converse with our kind of people?’
Ian laughed. ‘Sir Humphrey, even for an aristocrat, Bella is appallingly ignorant, but I’m remedying that. I came to ask, not for your permission but for your blessing. If you can give us neither, then I will tell you that I will offer to let Bella go. I love her and would not harm her. But if she will not leave me, then as soon as I can afford it, I will marry Arabella Huntingdon.’
‘We’ll see about that. I own the house you live in, remember?’
Ian had not expected this. He would not get angry, he would not. He leaned forward and held onto the edge of the heavy oak desk. ‘Then you would punish my sister too. I had not thought it of you, Sir Humphrey.’
The laird slumped back down in his chair. ‘If I throw you out to sleep under a hedge I play into your hands. Bella will merely insist that you move to Surrey with her. She is of age.’ He picked up a pen, thrust it into a solid silver inkwell and then began to draw circles on the blotter in front of him. He looked up at Ian who still stood ramrod straight. ‘Damn you, boy. Can’t you see it’s for you as well as Bella? She’ll make you miserable in six months. She’s used to balls and parties. Damn it all, she’s welcome at court.’
‘And I’ll take her away from all that? You do Bella an injustice, Sir Humphrey. She is a finer woman than you realise. If we think we can make a marriage work . . .’
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