She was aware that Holly knew perfectly well that rest was, in this case, a synonym for talk and that the talk would be about her.
‘You’re looking a bit better these days, Patrick, but I do wish you’d come home. Holly is getting older and older and she does exactly what she likes. Such freedom isn’t good for a wee girl.’
‘There’s no harm in her, Mam. She’s learned some swear words from the people she played with but they don’t mean anything; they’re unpleasant from the mouth of a wee girl but they’re not words like “nigger”, which I find really offensive. And she learned an awful lot from her beloved “Brotheroam”, more than she knows, I think.’
Kate hesitated. There were still, after nearly eight years, things they had not discussed.
‘Have you ever heard from her mother, Patrick? Does the child never ask?’
‘As far as Holly is concerned, she sprang fully formed from the head of Zeus, Mam. She has no interest in her mother and none whatsoever, thanks be to God, in biology.’
‘She will ask one day, Patrick, she’s bound to and then what will you tell her?’
‘The truth. I always tell her the exact truth. Perhaps that’s why she hasn’t asked me yet. She doesn’t really want to know.’
He suddenly looked old and tired as he lay back in the chair. He’s dying, thought Kate with a sudden and painful clarity. My son is dying and I can do nothing to prevent it. She went to his chair and bent protectively over him. ‘Patrick, have you seen Dr Robertson?’
‘I’m fine, Mam. The cottage in Ireland was damp so I’m left with a wee cough. You mustn’t worry about me.’
‘Please come home to live. You could still get to school on time from here. You could buy a wee car; I’ll buy you a car. Holly would like that; we could all go to choose. If you came you could have your old room and Holly could have Margaret’s. I’ll ask her to help me redecorate. She could choose her own papers.’ Kate stopped, aware that she was almost reduced to babbling.
‘Holly’s not ready.’ Patrick thought for a moment before continuing. ‘I’m sorry, Mammy, but the house frightened her. Maybe she remembers being left here by her mammy; perhaps she remembers being wrapped up by a complete stranger and taken away again. I don’t know, but I won’t push her. God in Heaven, Mam, haven’t I done the lassie enough damage already? We get along fine and, oh, it’s such joy to be able to walk in that door every Sunday, to smell the bakery, to see you standing there at the table. Working, working, Kate Kennedy Inglis. Aren’t you always working? And here’s you wanting to take on another bairn after raising your own.’
Wisely, Kate decided not to force him. She might lose him again and she couldn’t bear that. No, she would be happy with her Sundays for now and see how things developed.
‘Let’s have some tea before you go. Is Holly still in the garden?’
‘Probably sitting on the wall. I don’t know what is it about walls but if there’s a wall around Holly Inglis will sit on it and make up some story. She has a grand imagination. Maybe she’ll be a writer.’
‘She’s clever enough to be anything she wants.’
Mother and son looked at one another sadly but it was Patrick who broke the silence. ‘And we’ll let her, won’t we, Mam? We’ll encourage her to be anything she wants.’
‘Right now it seems to be trapeze artist,’ Kate said. ‘Look at her now. She’s balancing on the wall talking to someone.’
‘A tramp most likely,’ laughed Holly’s father.
Kate’s heart started to do its strange little dance. It was no tramp. She knew that bulk and from the window she watched Ian Robertson lift up his arms and help her grand-daughter down from the wall. He turned and saw her watching from the window.
‘Hello, the baker,’ he called. ‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’
‘Go and bring Dr Robertson in, Patrick,’ she said and bustled off to the kitchen where she could recover her composure. What is wrong with you, Kate Inglis? A man comes for a cup of tea; it means nothing. You’re a convenient stop on the road, no more.
Without turning, she could tell he was in the room. It’s because he blocks out the light, nothing more.
‘Hello, Ian,’ she said, still with her back to him. She wasn’t yet ready to look in his eyes. ‘You’ve been up at one of the farms?’
‘No, Kate, no excuses today. I was out for a walk and just happened to see Holly the Magnificent crossing the Atlantic on a wire, and I rescued her just as she was about to be eaten by a shark. Kate Inglis, that was a most unladylike snort.’
‘I did not . . . snort, I mean.’
‘Yes you did.’
She looked up and saw the laughter in his eyes. He was teasing her. No one had ever teased her. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘Will you ask Holly to help me?’
‘Why? Aren’t I big enough to carry a tray or is it somebody dainty you need?’
‘No, a porter will do.’ I’m teasing him back. Am I flirting? Is this what flirting is? She pointed to the tray with a hand that shook a little but her voice, she was glad to hear, was normal. ‘Will you take the dishes into the front room? I’m glad you’re here. I’m a bit worried about my son. Perhaps you could have a look at him.’
Ian stayed after Patrick and Holly had caught their bus back home. Kate looked at Ian stretched out so naturally in Charlie’s old chair and she wanted to touch him. Her hand ached to reach out; to feel the tweed of his jacket. Dear God, she thought. What is happening to me? Never, ever, have I felt like this. It must be my age. Isn’t there something strange happens to women my age? Mam, Mam, help me.
Ian looked up and smiled slowly. ‘You remind me of a chum who was in medical school with me. He could hardly wait to dissect things. Do you want to dissect me, Kate Inglis? Feel free.’
Kate blushed furiously. ‘I was only wondering,’ she lied easily, ‘about whether I could ask you about Patrick. You must have come to some conclusions about his health. Is it wrong for me to ask?’
‘I’d be happy if he would come in to the surgery, Kate, but I can’t force him.’
‘But one day he’ll collapse . . .’
‘And if that happens, and I’m not saying it’s at all likely, we’ll deal with him. He’s not big built like me, Kate. I would imagine he’s always been thin?’
She nodded in agreement.
‘And then, perhaps he’s still a bit well, monkish?’ Again she nodded.
‘Maybe Mother just wants to do her duty as she sees it, to fatten her boy?’
‘Oh, Ian, you’re so calming. It’s so good to have a friend to talk to.’
He looked at her strangely and then he stood up, filling the room with his masculinity.
‘If it’s a friend you’re looking for, Kate, join the Guild or for you it would be the Union of Catholic Mothers. I’ve decided I want more than friendship. Life is too short, don’t you think? I’ll trot off now. I need to visit old Mrs Flett at the Railway Cottages.’
She stood transfixed as he walked to the door. She could do nothing; she could say nothing, she could not move to stop him going. At the door he stopped and stood for a moment looking out onto the Great North Road and then he turned.
‘You’re some woman, Kate Inglis,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back.’ Before she could move he had reached her in one stride. How did he not break her back as he wrapped her in a bearlike hug? Kate Kennedy Inglis found herself being thoroughly and professionally kissed . . . ‘for some scones,’ he finished with a laugh.
The door closed and he was gone but his aura stayed in the room and Kate sank into a chair and, for the first time in a long while, thought of herself and her feelings and not of Patrick or that wretched child.
24
HOLLY WON THE Dux medal and received it in a dress, just a little short, which had come in one of the occasional parcels from Glasgow with which her Aunt Margaret salved her conscience. Patrick did not attend; he taught until four o’clock and it never occurred to him to ask for time off. Kate
was there and Holly was secretly pleased to see her fashionably dressed grandmother among the crowd of miners and their wives who made up the bulk of the audience. Dr Robertson sat on the stage with the rest of the village hierarchy and Holly deliberately ignored his special smile of friendship. She didn’t know why she did it and was rather sorry after. The doctor was, after all, according to the girls ‘a bit dishy’ even though he was so old.
Granny Kate and Dr Robertson took her and her books to tea at the town hotel after the prizegiving and again Holly was burdened by regret that she had chosen not to wear the beautiful pale-green frock her grandmother had bought her.
‘You’re a really stupid brat, Holly Inglis,’ she told herself furiously as the doctor drove them to the hotel. She was aware that her grandmother was totally ignoring the fact that she was not wearing her gift, the prettiest dress Holly had ever seen. And because she was angry she became more morose than ever and had a thoroughly unhappy tea-party, spoiled even further by her intelligent awareness that the grown-ups were cheerfully pretending not to notice her sulks. She concentrated on licking the cream out of a chocolate éclair prior to eating the yummy chocolatey bits and, to her dismay, dropped a big dollop in her lap.
‘Oh fuck,’ she said in a voice that reached the ears of everyone in the dining room, and Holly stared in horror and rising embarrassment at her furious grandmother.
‘It could have been been my new dress, Granny Kate,’ she mumbled as she was hurried back to the car but her apology, if such it was, fell on deaf ears.
Dr Robertson drew them back to Patrick’s little council house and, while Kate paced the tiny front room downstairs, Holly found refuge with her books.
She heard her father come in and then the three voices talking, talking, talking. No doubt they were discussing one Holly Inglis, Dux and Academy Award-winning actress who swore in public and disgraced her family. She had wanted to be able to rush to meet him, to show him her prizes. Now? Would he be furious? Would he hit her? He never even raised his voice, but this time?
‘Well, Holly, show me your prizes,’ was all he said when he finally climbed the stairs to her room.
Holly looked at him. He was pale and tired. He didn’t really like teaching horrible little boys; they ran rings round him. ‘Oh, Daddy, I’ll never swear again,’ she said by way of apology.
‘At least wait until you learn some of Brotheroam’s good words.’
He wasn’t angry. He was just tired and he must be disappointed. She would make it up to him. ‘Look, Daddy, my prizes. I got lots. Old Frazer had to let me be Dux, horns and tail and all. I bet you were Dux too, weren’t you?’
‘No, I was never the cleverest in my class. Your Auntie Margaret was the clever one. I was a plodder, a mugwump, the Yanks call it; someone educated beyond his potential.’
‘I bet Mrs Frazer doesn’t know what a mugwump is.’
‘A singularly useless piece of information.’
‘It’s not useless, Daddy. No knowledge is ever useless.’ She hated the times when he was sad. Desperately she sought for something to get him out of his mood, his ‘I am a failure and worth nothing’ mood. ‘Look at this prize for geography, A Tale of Two Cities.’
He took the book. ‘Geography prize – and you don’t even know where Denmark is.’ But he was laughing. Who’d told him about her getting the belt for not knowing that Scandinavia was more or less the same as Denmark, Sweden and Norway? He stopped laughing and examined the leather-covered little volume. His face had changed, the laughter which made him look young vanished. ‘This must have made Granny very happy; she always wanted to read it. Well, maybe she has now.’
‘Me and Grace saw it at the pictures,’ said the best English student in the class happily and ungrammatically. ‘If I ever get married and leave you, Dad, it will be because my husband looks like Dirk Bogarde, gorrr-juss. Howard Keel is great for singing but, oh, Dirk Bogarde.’ She did not know, and would have been horrified to learn, that her grandmother liked Dirk Bogarde too.
‘Get yourself off to bed. You’re a bad girl.’
‘I’m a disgrace, I know. Are we seeing Granny on Sunday? I’ll wear her dress and give her this book. I’ve read it at the library,’ finished Holly honestly.
He turned away, looking exhausted, and Holly’s loving heart mourned for the grief she had so stupidly caused him. ‘Let me make you some tea, Daddy, and then I’ll go straight to bed.’
‘I’m fine.’ He tried to be firm, strict, a proper disciplinarian. ‘Things are going to change, Holly Inglis. I want no more swearing or spitting. I don’t know why that nice Patterson girl plays with you and I certainly hope you’ve never disgraced me in that house.’
The long speech left him looking even more drawn.
‘Don’t fret, Dad. I’m a credit to you at the Pattersons. They tell everybody you’re a wonder bringing me up alone. I stand with eyes downcast, looking vulnerable; butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth and all the old ladies sigh. “He’s suffered enough for one mistake,” they say, “and has he no made up for it?” ’
‘Bed. Clean your teeth, brush your hair and’ – dreadful punishment – ‘no reading.’
When he had gone Holly obediently prepared for bed and then sat with her toes curled up on the cold linoleum and thought of the day which should have been so happy for everyone and which she alone had spoiled with her stupidity and then she lay down on the bed and cried. ‘Oh, please God let it be tomorrow and I’ll wear the dress and I’ll be nice to Granny and I’ll eat the cakes without licking the cream and I’ll never, ever swear.’
But God was far too busy with the starving poor in China and Africa to put the clocks back for so insignificant a being as Holly Inglis.
‘I’ll put the milk bottles out,’ Patrick had said, ‘and the rubbish; your jobs, Holly.’
She smiled at him. So often he did her household tasks. She felt no guilt, not until later.
Holly went to bed and put out the light and, despite the problems that assailed her young mind, she was soon asleep. She found him next morning, face down in the mud that they had planned to turn into a vegetable garden. He was not dead. The doctor came, not Dr Robertson, and soon the ambulance to take him on the long journey to the nearest hospital. ‘A waste of good petrol,’ Holly heard one of the neighbours say. It was not meant unkindly, just stating a fact – Patrick was as good as dead – as he saw it. He was wrong. Patrick must have inherited more of Kate’s tenacity than he realized for he hung on. He fought a battle against the pneumonia that developed – and won – and then he began to fight the heart weakness that they had found and that he had suspected for several years.
Holly had been left standing in the rain watching the ambulance disappear down the street.
‘I’ll send the district nurse down,’ the doctor had said. ‘She’ll work something out.’
‘Work something out’. Holly knew what that meant. They would put her in a home. Holly tried to imagine herself at Buckingham Palace and her friend the Queen letting her help out with Prince Charles. She could not recall the Queen’s face. ‘Your Majesty,’ she called silently. ‘Where are you? Help me.’ This awful nightmare was the reality; her fantasies had deserted her. The picture of Dad with the mud all over his face kept intruding on her imagination.
‘Holly.’ It was Grace calling her, dear Grace with her mum there too, for the first time ever in the kitchen. ‘Come on, Holly, you’re coming home with us till we get your granny.’
This wasn’t fantasy; this was real. Holly ran forward and Grace’s arms went round her and they hugged, both laughing and crying.
‘Come on, lassie.’ Grace’s mother pried them apart. What if Holly were lousy.’ ‘Put some of your clothes in this wee suitcase. I want to get back to my soup and then I’ll phone your granny.’
Granny. No, oh dear God, no. Granny hated her, had always hated her. Wasn’t it her fault that Daddy wasn’t a priest? If she’d been a good girl and worn the green frock and behaved like a
lady, if she’d taken out the bin like a properly brought up young girl, Daddy wouldn’t have been upset and tired and his heart wouldn’t have failed or whatever the doctor said it had done when he didn’t realize – stupid ass, she’d spit on him – that a very intelligent twelve-year-old was listening.
The Pattersons’ council house was calm and quiet. Holly had been many times for meals over the years, more meals no doubt than Mrs Patterson had wanted to share with her daughter’s strange wee friend. Holly calmed in spite of her grief and fear. She was actually ‘staying the night’ in Grace’s gorgeous bedroom with matching bed, dressing table and wardrobe, and pink silk eiderdown together with pink ruffled pillow that was just for show. Brotheroam had shown Holly fine china and exquisite furniture; she had seen nice pieces in her granny’s living room – but this – this was a bedroom, this was fine living.
‘Holly, hen,’ said Mrs Patterson using the tenderest form of endearment she knew. ‘I’ll have to tell yer grannie.’
Holly looked at her, at her honest working-class face. Dear God in Heaven, how could she get her to understand?
‘My grannie doesn’t like me, Mrs Patterson.’ She curled up inside with embarrassment. Brotheroam had said that God loved her for herself, swear words and all, and He wasn’t interested in the slightest in her antecedents but lovely sweet dear Brotheroam had left the world of men behind and therefore didn’t really understand. ‘My mammy and daddy weren’t married and it’s been a real cross for my grannie to bear.’
Mrs Patterson, staunch member of the kirk, wife of not only elder but treasurer, had no tolerance for the young who anticipated marriage, but far less tolerance had she for those who ostracized the fruits of such unions.
‘Holly, lass, you’re a wean any grannie would be proud to own and you’re more than welcome to bide here, but we’ll need to tell yer grannie and ye’ll probably be sent to stay with her till yer daddy’s fine.’
The almost-incoherent story spilled out. The Pattersons heard about the dress Holly had refused to wear, about swearing in the restaurant, and Granny being furious and Daddy saying things had to change.
A Pinch of Salt Page 27