A Pinch of Salt

by Eileen Ramsay

  ‘Can ye no cry, Kate, love? Ye’ll feel better after a cry. Patrick’s . . .’

  But she wouldn’t let him finish. She didn’t want to hear the name, not then. Not for a long time could she bear to speak of him and she tried not to think, dulling her mind as she had always done by too much hard work.

  Mrs Peden’s man had returned from the war the way Charlie had returned from the first one. It would be years before the Mrs Pedens of the world could retire. The business would have to be kept going for her and for old Bessie . . . and ‘face it, Kate, for yourself.’ Hard work keeps painful thoughts away . . . so much salt, so many pounds of flour, the electricity bill to be paid, this new gadget called television that maybe she could afford one day for Charlie, for Charlie who had managed to cope until she had recovered and had then had another stroke, a serious one this time.

  From where she stood she could just see the corner of the Great North Road. Patrick must have gone that way and one day he’d come back. He would realize, she would make him realize that she had never meant the cruel things she had said. He would forgive her when she was able to explain that it was shock and hurt and disappointment that had made her say that she had never wanted to see him again.

  He must come back; he would come home and she would get over the shock of seeing the child every day. His illegitimate child. For Charlie’s sake she would welcome the child and she would try, my God, how she would try not to think of what might have been.

  Kate turned again to look at the hills. She would show them to Holly. She would show her the fairy ring and the Baker’s Burn and the primroses where little Patrick had played years ago. She would stand with her under the bridge while a train passed over their heads and she would wave to people on the train and she would tell Holly how her Aunt Bridie, the auntie in Canada, had wanted to own a pair of gloves.

  ‘And Holly will never lack for gloves, Mam. I’ll look after her and see she gets a good education.’ Kate stopped. She was doing it again. Oh, Kate, where has your obsession with other people and their education got you? Will you never learn? Holly might not want an education. She might want the bakery. No, don’t even think of plans. Think of Charlie and how you must get his children to him before it’s too late.

  Oh, look at the sun. It will be shining in the windows, sparkling on the glass. Patrick used to love to see the sun making paths across his books. That’s where I’ll write the letter, Mam; the most important one I’ve ever written. I’ll write it on the table where he used to do his homework.

  Kate walked back to the house. She was smiling. The sun was shining and surely, surely, Patrick, at last was coming home.

  She was still smiling when she entered the bedroom.

  He did not answer.

  Charlie love, guess what I’m going to do? I’m away tae . . . Charlie?’

  He was too quiet. Was he having a wee nap? Poor Charlie. His lungs, almost destroyed in the Great War, had refused to respond to the most modern of treatments and he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep for a few years now. He spent the long days dozing or listening to his beloved wireless. Kate leaned across him to switch it off.

  ‘Ach, Charlie love. I should have listened to you and written afore and now it’s too late.’

  Kate stood looking down at her husband. He was still lying propped up against the pillows; the lines that pain had etched on his face had been smoothed away. He looked quite young and so very peaceful. The new doctor had told her it might be like this and she had actually prayed for it. Charlie had wanted to die in his own bed.

  ‘I wouldnae like one o’ the homes, Katie, and not the hospital. D’you not think they maybe help an old buddie like me on my way?’

  ‘No, they don’t, Charlie,’ Kate had tried to reassure him, ‘but I’ll look after you at home.’

  And so she had. And now it was all over. Ach, Charlie, you never had much of a life. Kate took refuge in asking help of the one person who had never failed her. Mam, are you with my Charlie now? I was going to try to find his son for him and, as usual, I left it too late. Too late, too late. The world’s saddest words, Mam. Look after my Charlie for me.

  Kate leaned over again but this time to very softly, very gently, kiss the lips that were already cold. ‘I wish I’d loved you enough, Charlie.’

  She stood up and straightened her shoulders thinking, thinking of all the things that would have to be done and then went to phone the ‘new’ doctor. Robertson, that was his name, Ian Robertson.

  *

  ‘He seems to have vanished completely. Well, I told her I’d try and I’ve tried.’

  ‘Put an ad in the papers. Somebody’ll know where he is.’ George wasn’t really too interested. ‘Phone her and tell her.’

  Margaret continued to survey herself in the glass above the fireplace. She had almost got used to owning that magnificent mirror.

  ‘You should have come to the funeral, George. I never realized how popular he was. The whole village was there and a lot of the local farmers. Everyone but his son . . . and his son-in-law, of course.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Margaret. I can hardly find the time to see my own bairn at this fancy prep school, never mind dropping everything to go to Auchenbeath for a funeral.’ He said Auchenbeath as he might have said Outer Mongolia.

  ‘It’s not that far, especially in a Jag,’ muttered Margaret. She was still looking in the mirror but she was completely unaware of the beautiful unlined face reflected in its depths. She was hearing her mother.

  His last words were, ‘They’ll come now, Katie.’ That was what her mother had told her when she had telephoned to say that her father had died. ‘They’ll come now.’ The words would haunt Margaret all her life. Damn it, she told her serene and flawless complexion. I always meant to go down. And Elizabeth. He never ever saw Elizabeth. How could I do that to him?

  ‘I want Patrick home, at least for the funeral, Margaret.’ Her mother had sounded her old self; confident, self assured – hard. Whatever had mellowed her over the last months appeared to have evaporated. ‘Has he kept in touch with you?’

  ‘No, not a word since he was demobbed, but I’ll find him for you, Mother.’ In her guilt she would promise anything. Guilt and grief. Oh yes, there was grief. She had loved him and he had loved her. All her life, when she was unsure of everything else, she had known that her father loved her. And she had left him to die with just her promises. Tears started in the beautiful eyes. I meant to . . . I meant to . . . Were there more bruising words in the English language?

  ‘How do I put something in the paper, George?’

  ‘Get Pete Schwartz to do it. Personal column. He’ll know what to say.’ George got up from his desk and, putting his arms around his wife, led her to the luxurious blue sofa that set off her splendid colouring. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. Pete’ll find him for yer ma and we’ll all go down. Better late than never.’

  Pete Schwartz, the expensive and very clever lawyer who handled their business, did everything in his power but no Patrick Inglis ever answered his discreet advertisements in local and national press. Mr Schwartz might have had more luck if he had tried the Irish papers for Patrick had gone to Belfast to look for the priest who had been his chaplain in the army and to him he had poured out his grief and his shame.

  ‘Different paths, Pat,’ the priest had mumbled consolingly, his hand on the bowed black head at his knee.

  ‘What do I do, Father, and there’s the child, the little girl, Holly?’ The two men had gone to the window and watched the tousled-haired child as she stood solemnly in the garden, thumb in mouth, not playing, not crying. She had stopped crying. Patrick thought it was because there were no tears left.

  ‘Poor wee babbie,’ said the priest. ‘Well, we must try to make up for the blows life has already dealt the wee lamb, Pat. We’ll need to get you a job; not easy with all the men coming back from the war but at least you have an education. You’ve no relatives in Ireland, I suppose?’


  And Patrick had shook his head. It hadn’t been stories of his grandparents that had brought him to Ireland, but this gentle man who had kept him, and so many others, sane through the insanity that surrounded them.

  ‘We’ll need to find somewhere for you, and Holly, to live. You can stay here for a few days.’

  They had stayed eight years. Father O’Callaghan had found Patrick a job in a boys’ preparatory school and a cottage, hardly more than a hovel, to live in. Patrick never noticed damp and cold and mildew and Holly grew up not expecting anything else.

  Every Christmas Patrick wrote a card to Kate and Charlie and then sadly tore it up. They couldn’t possibly want to see him. God, he felt sure, had forgiven him his sins but people forgave less readily. Was that not true?

  The work in the school was pleasant, not too demanding. He was not, he felt, a gifted teacher, but he was thorough and did what the learned men who ran the school asked him to do. Holly went to the little school near their cottage and he watched her grow with amazement and delight as he had once watched trees and flowers. How much more wonderful, oh Lord, is your human creation.

  And the older she grew, the more he worried. While he sat at the kitchen table in the cottage, correcting the exercises of grubby little boys, Holly roamed the beautiful Irish countryside, making friends with all and sundry and picking up an incredible and not always acceptable vocabulary. She played with the little girls in her class but often he heard her talking to imaginary playmates. Was that normal and would she not miss the absence of a woman more and more as she grew up? He had to take her back to Scotland – and oh, how much he wanted to go – to see Kate, and Charlie, to ask their forgiveness, to see if some sense could be made of his life. And as the damp winters passed he knew with a certainty that he had to go home. He had to make his peace with his mother for his daughter’s sake and for his own.

  Again Father O’Callaghan, older and greyer, had the answers.

  ‘Educational journals, Pat. Or local papers. I can understand you wanting to go home with the child. It’s right you should make your peace with your family. You can’t work on a farm, you’ve not the strength for the mines, and so you must wait for a teaching place. It’ll come, lad. Just wait and pray and everything will be told you.’

  So easy, so easy, Patrick felt, for the priest to counsel patience. Would he have been the same? But all his life he had taken advice from those he trusted and so he waited and prayed and watched the child grow older and wilder and more dear by the minute. And he never once caught her in a spontaneous hug; he never once said, ‘Holly Inglis, you are my life and whatever has been wrong, you, no matter your coming, have been so very right.’ And the day came when he wished he had and he could not speak.

  22

  THERE HAD TO be a wall. Holly threw her long, skinny legs over the old dry stone dyke and with shoulders hunched, gazed at the hills while she munched her apple. This was her favourite place for sitting; she was in full view of the kitchen window should her father want her, although he never did, trusting her to get off to bed at a reasonable hour. Perhaps he didn’t care enough, but Holly preferred to banish thoughts like that. It was a beautiful evening, a light breeze ruffling the golden barley like the hands of a lover in his beloved’s hair. Through the trees, beyond the fields, she could just glimpse the river, in spate after recent storms, and rushing down to the Solway.

  ‘Humbly, I accept this Academy Award.’

  ‘Mrs Frazer, I have been invited to tea at Buckingham Palace . . . (You’re peeing yourself with envy, you old bitch).’

  ‘Prince Charles is a beautiful little boy, your Majesty. Of course he may sit on my lap.’

  ‘What, Maestro, you would like me to sing instead of Vittoria de Los Angeles . . .? Well, if you’re quite sure. I’m happy to help out . . . she has laryngitis, poor thing.’

  She laughed at herself, a happy, carefree, little girl’s laugh. Well, if you can’t laugh at yourself. Holly was very good at laughing at herself and the foibles of those around her. It was one of those ‘foibles’ that had sent her to the solace of the wall. Mrs Frazer, her class teacher, disliked her. Holly was well used to sneers and sniggers. Even in Ireland she had been aware of the laughter at her expense, the giggles, the words she didn’t understand, and she could never ask Dad. Dad was to be protected for he was absolutely no good at protecting himself; Holly had realized that very early in their relationship.

  Actual dislike, however, Holly had never known. In Ireland she had been surrounded by affection; from the priests and brothers at the lovely old school, from the villagers, the farmworkers, everyone – but here? Here was a dislike she could not understand. Why should Mrs Frazer be so angry when she worked so hard, when with hardly any effort she came first in every test the teacher could devise? Back home, thought Holly, didn’t darling Miss Day say wasn’t I the cleverest girl she’d ever come across and wouldn’t I be coming to take her very job off her? And why did Mrs Frazer always try to separate her from her beloved Grace, Grace with her beautiful dresses and her lovely shining curls; Grace who had been her friend from the first day she had stood in this horrible school?

  ‘Why does that woman hate me, Grace?’

  Grace had been flustered. ‘She doesn’t hate you, Holly. She says God says we are to love one another when she’s doing the bible bit in the mornings; you know, when you have to go outside because you’re a . . .’

  ‘A Catholic, with me horns and tail. Well, the old bitch’ll see my horns one of these days if she doesn’t pull herself together, so she will.’

  ‘Holly Inglis, stop pretending you’re so tough. My mammy won’t let me play with you if you talk nasty.’

  Holly was quiet. She did not want to be banned from the cosy, comfortable council house where Grace lived with her parents and little brother and where Holly Inglis was always warmly invited to tea, although she could swear sometimes she saw Mrs Patterson frown.

  But if the Pattersons were welcoming, Mrs Frazer was not. Perhaps she had no idea how to deal with an illegitimate child whose father flaunted his sin only a few miles from the very village where his mother had desperately struggled to pull herself out of the poverty into which she had been born. If only Holly would sit quietly docile like most of the other miners’ children (especially the Catholics) while she educated them. But Holly, her undisciplined ginger hair sticking out round her head, much in the way Kate’s black hair had done almost fifty years before, had no intention of sitting anywhere quietly. She would have her work finished almost before Mrs Frazer had written it up on the board and then she would be out asking questions, some of which Mrs Frazer could not answer, and for this would never forgive the child. Today she had used her withering sarcastic tongue, her only weapon against Holly. ‘Ask, ask, ask, Miss Inglis, always asking. Well, let me ask you a question you can’t answer today. Why don’t you ask your father for the answer? After all, he is a teacher too like me, isn’t he, Holly? I do seem to remember that there was . . . some story of the university. Did he receive an honours degree as I did . . . or did something get in the way? Answer me that, miss?’

  But Holly could not answer. She had sat there while Grace had held her hand for comfort, while the others had giggled at her scarlet, unhappy face, and she had hated Mrs Frazer with a most unchristian hatred. Now she sat on her wall at the end of the garden and played her make-believe game.

  One day I will be Britain’s first woman prime minister and Mrs Frazer will beg to come to tea at 10 Downing Street and I’ll spit in her eye.

  Really, prime minister, that was most unladylike. How do you get to be prime minister? Maybe Da knows. Quickly she rejected the idea of asking him. That was one of her self-imposed rules. Don’t ask Daddy anything you can find out for yourself and don’t ever ask him anything that might upset him. She had asked him once about babies. Heavens, what a to-do over nothing. Old Sean Maguire up the farm had explained it all so simply but Daddy had been flustered and emba
rrassed.

  ‘It’ll be in a book,’ was Holly’s answer to her own question but she could find no book with the title How To Get To Be Prime Minister. Holly had long since decided to read every book the local lending library had to offer. There was not much there, in one crowded classroom, and a great many of the reference books were out of date, but she was still learning a great deal. The library was open for two hours, three times a week and the librarian had long since given up all hope of keeping Holly in the children’s section. She had read them all; she loved stories of girls’ schools and stories set in boys’ schools; she read all the animal stories, the biographies, the poetry books. Then she started on the adult section, saying, quite untruthfully, that she was selecting books for her father. She read Agatha Christie and Zane Grey, J. B. Priestley and A. J. Cronin. Then, totally by accident, she discovered Mazo de la Roche. She had already fallen totally in love with each and every one of Georgette Heyer’s Regency heroes, but it was only when the wonders of television came to the small Scottish village that she discovered the Whiteoaks. She sat, with half the village, in Grace’s mother’s living room, and was enchanted by the poet, Eden; she lived all his agonies and ecstasies, and then rushed to the library to demand the Jalna series. Deep within their covers she discovered the earthier Rennie and abandoned wimpish, poetic Eden for ever.

  Holly did not limit herself to the novel; she read poetry and plays, few of which she understood, and it was these she often wanted to ask Mrs Frazer about, and she started to work her way through the encyclopaedias. She invented systems, first she would read from A to Z but A could be very boring. Then she thought that subject by subject would be good, except that she found herself lost in ballet when she should have been reading birds. The best way to read, she decided, was to open the book at random . . . No, I’ll maybe miss something. – No, you are more likely to find something and, anyway, by the time you are fifteen, you’ll have read every book in the place. – Why do you talk to yourself? – Because there is no one else to talk to.