A Pinch of Salt

by Eileen Ramsay

  Except Grace, of course. She had met Grace on the first day of her time at the little primary school where Dad had enrolled her when he had got the job at the boys’ school in the big town nearby.

  ‘It’s bigger than Ballinsheen, Holly,’ he’d said, ‘but it’s a village school and we like villages better than towns, don’t we?’

  Holly didn’t know whether she liked towns or not but she was prepared to like the village if Dad said so and she certainly liked Grace. Grace was everything that she was not. She was spotlessly clean and remained clean all day, no matter what she did. She had a frock, starched and ironed, for every day of the week, and two for a Sunday. Her long blonde hair always hung in the most beautiful, structured ringlets, and Holly thought that she looked like a fairy princess. Grace took highland dancing lessons and had a wardrobe full of kilts and costumes, a drawer full of medals, and shelves groaning under the weight of cups and shields. Standing proudly in the kitchen – the kitchen being the living room of a council house as against the back kitchen where cooking and washing was done – was a piano and on this amazing instrument Grace had a weekly lesson, and, being Grace, practised for half an hour every day without having to be told. Holly thought she was wonderful and could never quite understand why Grace had chosen her to be her friend, for if Grace looked even more beautiful and well-dressed beside her fairly unkempt friend she always came second in academics. They were good little girls and remembered all their lives the only time they had ever had the tawse.

  They were in primary six and studying Scandinavia. Holly and Grace, sitting side by side by virtue of being top students, were talking not about geography but about the blueness of Howard Keel’s eyes as seen on a bubble-gum card, and the magnificence of his voice as heard by Grace at the pictures in Dumfries.

  ‘Holly Inglis, come out here and point out Denmark.’

  Lost in the fathomless depths of her heart-throb’s eyes, Holly would have been hard put to find Scotland.

  Mrs Frazer smiled grimly. Grace would know. At last that dreadful child would be bested. But Grace, not having a taste for either Heyer or de la Roche and possessing a decided preference for real flesh and blood heroes like Howard Keel, had even less idea of the whereabouts of Denmark than her friend.

  ‘Hold out your hand – both of you.’ The rest of the class sniggered. How the mighty had fallen. Mrs Frazer whacked them both three times, making quite sure that the belt bit into Holly’s wrist, but, if anything, hitting poor Grace harder because of her disappointment.

  ‘Why didn’t the old bitch say Scandinavia?’ complained Holly in the playground. ‘Well, for all I care, Norway, Denmark and Scandinavia can all fall into whatever blasted ocean is up there.’

  The unpleasant incident was almost the end of their friendship. Grace’s mother had sighed resignedly when Grace had brought the grubby little Inglis child home in primary three. Everyone in the village was talking about Patrick Inglis returning after all these years, not to Auchenbeath, which would really have been rubbing his poor widowed mother’s nose in it, but to a neighbouring village. Over the years she had become quite fond of the child, taking pleasure in Holly’s delight in her home cooking, her admiration for the tidy, well-furnished little house, and hardly objecting at all to her religious denomination. ‘Not her fault, the poor wain, never asked to be born. That father of hers should take more care of her, not that he ill-treats her, mind. It’s just that she’s allowed to run wild, and he never notices her dresses are too short until they hardly cover her bum, and as for her knickers, well, goodness knows what she sits in. And why they didn’t move in with that hoity-toity mother of his . . .’

  But now, for the first – and last – time Grace had got the belt, and Mrs Patterson well knew that it was Holly who had led her daughter into sin.

  ‘This is what comes of letting you be friends with that riff-raff,’ sniffed Mrs Patterson as she examined her daughter’s hand. ‘You’re not to play with her any more, Grace. I want you to be Dux and they won’t give it to you if you get tarred with the wrang brush.’

  Grace looked at her parent in some surprise. Everybody knew that Holly would be Dux, the title given to the pupil with the best all-round marks, but the more important thing was to change her mother’s mind about banning her friend. ‘Mammy, they were my bubble-gum cards. I was showing them to Holly. Mrs Frazer doesn’t like Holly because she’s poor . . .’

  ‘It disnae help her being a Papist either,’ suddenly said her father from behind the Daily Record and, sensing an ally, Grace turned to him.

  ‘Daddy, have you ever heard of a teacher not liking somebody because she was clever?’

  ‘Ach, lassie, teachers are no better nor worse than anybody else but if your teacher doesn’t like Holly, all the more reason you should stick by her.’

  That settled it. Mr Patterson very rarely emerged from behind his paper but when he did, everyone paid attention. Now Grace could get back to the vexing question of Dux. Next morning, in the playground, she brought it up with Holly herself.

  ‘Holly, they couldn’t not let you be Dux, could they?’

  ‘Because I didn’t know where Denmark is?’ laughed Holly. ‘I don’t know, Grace. The Dux medal goes to the person with the best marks and that’s me, but grown-ups can do anything they want. I want the medal, for my dad and to spit in my grannie’s eye . . .’

  ‘Holly Inglis, that’s a dreadful thing to say.’

  Holly looked at her friend and thought before speaking. How could Grace, whose family was so close and loving, ever understand? She hardly understood herself. Her grandmother was always asking them to move in with her into the historic Toll House and she was forever complaining about the length of Holly’s dresses and buying her beautiful new ones that Holly simply refused to wear. It was because of Granny Kate’s eyes; Holly knew it but she couldn’t explain it. Granny Kate’s mouth said, ‘Patrick, bring Holly here; there’s plenty of room and I want to look after you both.’ But her eyes said something else. Holly knew why of course. She knew all about her father’s frustrated plans to become a priest. She had asked him once and he had told her everything but the telling had distressed him so much that she had decided then and there never to ask him anything again.

  So, she would argue with herself, he decided to get a baby. What’s so awful about that? Awful for a priest, certainly, but he had been a university student, a soldier. Her grandmother had the right to be disappointed but not to be unforgiving. She couldn’t have loved him very much in the first place if she threw him out just because he had a baby. And what a baby! The best. No, your Majesty. I quite agree. My grandmother must be very peculiar not to rave over a grand-daughter like me. Her loss, you’ll agree, dear ma’am.

  Holly remembered nothing of her life before Ireland and she never asked. Some things, she had decided, it’s better not to know. Her life was the meadows around Ballinshean, the ruined castle where wild flowers grew all over the walls and where she could be a princess to her heart’s content. It was Sunday afternoon tea in the drawing room at the monastery with Brother Jerome; those afternoons, when from the age of three she would sit perched on a chair sipping tea from a fragile porcelain cup because ‘she has to learn, Patrick,’ and listening to the beautiful, cultured voice telling her of countries and peoples and paintings and music. Next to Patrick she loved Brotheroam, as she called him, and she missed him with a pain that would not go away and that she hid because her unhappiness would hurt Patrick.

  ‘We’re going home, Holly,’ Patrick had told her one Sunday after she had changed out of the best dress, the clean socks and shoes, the hair ribbon, the little white gloves that she always wore for Brotheroam who wanted her to be a lady.

  ‘I am home, Daddy. Do you know Brotheroam says only an uneducated man needs to resort to swearing when he’s angry? There are words, says he, that would knock the socks off the opposition and he’s going to teach me them, starting next Sunday.’

  But next Sunday h
ad found them in Scotland, a country that had absolutely nothing going for it, thought Holly Inglis, till she met Grace. She had met her grandmother whom Patrick had telephoned all the way from Ireland. She had gone to the Toll House in her best blue frock, Brotheroam’s favourite, and something about the iron gates around the bakery had frightened Holly and she had hung back and cried and generally behaved badly.

  ‘We all need time, Patrick,’ her grandmother had said and, to Holly, the mouth had smiled but the eyes had not. Every Sunday they went to the Toll House and had lunch and afternoon tea with Grannie Kate and Patrick was miserable because Holly was mutinous. And Kate? What did Kate think on these Sunday afternoons?

  ‘I hate my grannie, Grace. She pretends to want us because she wants my daddy, and one day she’ll want to know me and I’ll spit in her eye, so I will.’

  ‘Holly Kennedy, that’s a terrible thing to say about your own grandmother. My mother would wash your wicked mouth out with soap. And, anyway, you’ll never have enough spit in you to spit in all the eyes you want; you’re too wee.’

  ‘Want a bet, Grace Patterson?’ And, hand in hand, the two little girls ran laughing round the playground.

  23

  KATE DID NOT deserve to be hated by her grand-daughter; treated with suspicion, yes – but out and out hatred – no. She was aware that the child disliked her and so she felt guilty. With her usual honesty Kate decided that she had earned Holly’s animosity but, unlike Holly, she was prepared to work to make things better. She tried to find out what the child preferred to eat but her questions were met with hostility and a sullen, ‘I eat anything, but I specially like anything me Da makes.’

  Holly was unaware that her Sunday afternoons with Brother Jerome had taught her more than an appreciation of the world’s finer and gentler qualities; she had also absorbed, like the proverbial sponge, many of the priest’s upper-class sounds. That voice she used when speaking to Patrick and to her schoolmates, until they laughed at her and mimicked her. She used a heavy Irish accent with people she did not like as if she were unconsciously distancing herself from them and, at the same time, giving them what they expected. Her voice brought her grandmother both pain and pleasure. She knew it was not the girl’s real voice but, at the same time, it sounded exactly like that of the long-dead Mary Kate.

  ‘Hello, the baker. Any chance of a cup of coffee?’

  The voice startled Kate, so deep in thought had she been and, no doubt, she convinced herself, that was why her heart had started to beat so rapidly.

  ‘Doctor.’ She greeted him with genuine pleasure. ‘Of course there’s coffee. In fact, there’s some lunch, if you have time.’

  Ian Robertson, the village doctor, came in smiling, bending almost from the waist to get his considerable bulk under the low doorway without banging his head, something he had done several times in the early days of his visits to this most reluctant of patients.

  ‘I was hoping you would say that, Mrs Inglis, for all I have in my bag is a rather tired cheese-spread sandwich.’

  He smiled again and she stood for a long moment caught by his eyes before she managed to pull her gaze away. Had his presence always confused her? She had known him now, the new doctor as he was called, how many years? He had come to Auchenbeath just after the war. The village grapevine said he had been a serving soldier who had come back from active service in the jungles of Burma to find a hole where his house and his wife and two children should have been. She now knew that was true, for they had become friends over the years as they had both slowly recovered from their losses. He had treated her without, she felt, much sympathy when she had collapsed after learning of Holly’s birth. He had looked after Charlie with skill and tenderness all through his final illness and, although she had never consulted him since, he had got into the habit of stopping at the Toll House on his way to and from outlying patients. First he had come for bread or pies and then, one day, he had dropped in when Kate and the bakers were having a morning break. He had been invited to join them and now came quite regularly, more and more often when Kate was alone.

  ‘Have a cup of coffee and a scone while I heat up some soup,’ Kate said briskly, ‘and do please sit down. There is a lot of you, you know.’

  ‘My wife used to say that. Ian, you’d make a better door than a window, she’d say.’ He drank his coffee quietly for a moment and then stood up again and towered over Kate.

  ‘Mrs Inglis, Kate. I’ve been meaning to ask you for some time. Couldn’t we call each other by our Christian names? We’ve known each other for years.’

  Kate surprised herself. ‘I’d like that,’ she said. ‘There’s no one left who calls me Kate now.’

  When he had gone the bakery seemed very empty. ‘Well, it is,’ said Kate to herself. ‘He’s a very tall man.’ She found herself thinking of him as she prepared a shopping list for Sunday’s lunch and, for the first time in years, it was not Patrick or winning over a resentful little girl that took most of her attention, but the effect the doctor had on her.

  ‘I wonder if he’d like a lemon meringue pie,’ she thought as she twiddled with her pencil. But, of course, it was whether or not Holly would like it that was important. Holly, Patrick’s daughter, who knew perfectly well that her grandmother had turned her back on her and who now fought for her friendship because without Holly she could not get Patrick. She would ask Dr . . . Ian for advice the next time he dropped in. It was so nice to have a friend to talk to. That was it; that was what she had missed most since Charlie’s death, just someone to talk to. ‘If he comes on Monday, I’ll ask him to try the pie. After all, a man living on his own won’t make pies.’

  Ian Robertson did not bake and had no need to try to master the art for he was certainly offered plenty of home cooking. Every unmarried woman for miles was delighted to have a single man in the village, and there were homes where he was offered more than food, but he had become adept at avoiding potentially unpleasant or unprofessional situations. His visits to the bakery were noticed and commented upon but Kate, of course, heard little local gossip, and her employees kept quiet about any rumours that affected her. Now, totally unaware that in many homes she was already either living with or about to be married to ‘the new doctor’, Kate set about winning over her reluctant grand-daughter.

  ‘Patrick is the only person, well maybe apart from Bridie, whom I’ve loved from the start. I wish I loved Holly. Maybe other grandmothers just see their grandchildren and worship them immediately but I’ve never seen Elizabeth – I’m not grand enough for her mother – and as for Holly? If she’d let me get to know her, maybe I’d get to love her, and Patrick won’t come home for me to look after him until Holly is happy here.’

  That Patrick needed looking after, Kate well knew. She had been shocked by the sight of him when he had turned up that day after the almost incoherent phone call from Ireland. He had always been thin but now he was practically emaciated and his eyes shone from his death’s head skull with an unnatural brightness. He had shrugged off her enquiries about his health.

  ‘I’m fine, Mammy, a bit of a cough now and again, but I’ve never been fat, you know that, and I’m not a big eater, not since the war.’

  They had talked for hours and hours while Holly had slept in the chair that she had slept in eight years before.

  ‘Oh, Patrick, love, I’m sorry I was so cruel. I should have stood by you; your father would have. Such a good man, your father. If you’d just written once, I would have come over to Ireland to fetch you and Holly.’

  ‘So many things we should have done with our lives, Mam, but I wanted to make my peace with you and Dad,’ – Had he meant to say ‘before it’s too late,’ Kate wondered – ‘and to let you know Holly. She’s a lovely wee lassie.’

  Kate remembered her grand-daughter’s shocking language at the tea table and said nothing.

  ‘I hate bluidy peas,’ the child had said and Patrick had muttered, ‘Holly, Holly, stop showing off,’ and the girl had kicked
the table leg, Mary Kate’s grandmother’s table brought all the way from Ireland, and had said ‘bluidy, bluidy, bluidy peas. I’ll spit on them, so I will now,’ she said, with her defiant eyes fixed on her grandmother.

  ‘She’s being silly since she’s shy,’ Patrick had tried to excuse the disgraceful behaviour, and Kate’s hand had itched to smack the little backside.

  ‘There was a brother at the school where I taught, a Lord’s son, a real gentleman, and he took Holly to tea every Sunday and taught her her manners.’

  Again Kate looked unconvinced but she said nothing.

  ‘If I’d stayed at home he was going to teach me really good swear words,’ had said the outrageous little girl and Patrick desperately had tried to convince his mother that the absent brother Jerome, scholar and gentleman, had been about to do no such thing.

  Holly’s behaviour had toned down, at least in her grandmother’s presence, and the Sunday afternoons became less and less of an ordeal. Kate knew to say nothing unfavourable about Holly’s clothes because if she did, Holly would be sure to turn up the next Sunday wearing a frock that long since should have been used for dusters. After lunch Patrick would insist that they wash the dishes and Kate had worried about her best china in the girl’s not always too clean hands. There was no need; Holly was gentle with fine things.

  ‘Brother Jerome had really lovely cups,’ she told her grandmother who wisely decided not to rise to the bait.

  ‘I’m sure he had, dear. Now, why don’t you have a little play in the garden while Daddy and I have a little rest.’