And then Holly smiled. There would always be Grace and her mum and her dad. ‘Thank you,’ she said and allowed Mrs Patterson to kiss her. Mr Patterson shook her hand warmly and Grace, dear Grace, burst into tears and ran upstairs to the pretty pink bedroom.
Dry-eyed, Holly climbed into the fancy car. She hated the sight of Margaret’s hands on the leather-covered steering wheel. Where were you and your diamonds and your fancy car all these years, la-di-da aunty? she asked in her mind but Margaret saw only a very quiet little girl, obviously in mourning.
Dr Robertson was at the Toll House with Granny Kate and a loud, jovial man who said he was her Uncle George, her Aunt Margaret’s husband. Holly disliked him on sight. How different he was from Patrick. Kate did not touch her and for this Holly was grateful.
‘I’ve put you in your father’s room, Holly,’ said Granny Kate and Holly looked at her in astonishment.
At Kate’s thoughtfulness she smiled, her first real smile for her grandmother. ‘Can I go there now, please?’
A few minutes later Holly was sitting on the bed where Patrick had slept through his boyhood and early manhood. She wrapped the room round her bruised soul like a healing blanket.
‘We’ll do it up the way you want later, Holly,’ Granny Kate had said but nothing would ever ever be changed, Holly decided.
The room and its decoration was to lead to their first big row nearly four years later.
Holly had been pleased to be sent away to school. It meant fewer hours trying to make conversation with Kate. She came home on the bus from Dumfries every Friday night and went back on Sunday mornings and so she was able easily to keep up her friendship with Grace who was soon as familiar with the Toll House as she was herself. Despite her grief at the loss of her father and her uneasy relationship with Granny Kate, her teen years were a very happy time for Holly. She loved the convent, the beautiful old building with its polished wood and its carved ceilings; its tranquil gardens adrift with daffodils in the spring and a glory of auburn colours in the autumn. On her third morning an elderly nun called Sister Veronica had asked her to ensure that the embroidered cloth on her sewing machine table was always turned so that the perfect embroidery showed; Holly checked that cloth every time she passed the machine for six years even although the old lady died when Holly was in her third year.
Scholastically she did very well. She made friends but no one ever became so close as Grace. Every weekend Holly went home and was polite to her grandmother and polite to Dr Robertson who always seemed to be underfoot.
‘Do you think they’re living together?’ Grace asked once when they had, to their great surprise, found Kate and the doctor kissing in the kitchen. They had crept along to Holly’s room to sit stunned on the bed.
‘Don’t be silly, Grace. Granny Kate lives here and he has his own house.’
‘Oh, I don’t mean living together, I mean living together.’
‘You mean . . .’ At the horrifying innuendo Holly sat straight up. ‘Don’t be daft. My grannie’s a Catholic. They don’t do things like that . . . and, anyway, she’s too old.’
Grace saw more films than Holly. ‘They didn’t look too old to me.’
‘Well, I hope they’re past it. The whole idea is disgusting.’
‘Not with Dirk Bogarde, Holly Inglis.’
Holly laughed but spent a lot of that weekend watching her grandmother very carefully and Kate was well aware of the teenager’s scrutiny.
‘Holly,’ she said one morning at breakfast, ‘Dr Robertson would like to take you to Edinburgh, to the theatre. Won’t that be nice?’
Edinburgh. The lovely city she had planned to rediscover with Patrick. Holly stared down at her fried egg.
‘Holly?’
‘Why me?’
Kate looked at her almost desperately. ‘She’s deliberately keeping her distance from both of us, Kate,’ Ian had said during the latest of their constant discussions about Holly, ‘perhaps if I take her somewhere on her own, we could get to know one another better and then possibly you might come to some sensible agreement about our future.’
‘Oh, Ian . . .’ Kate had said despairingly.
He took her in his arms and gently and softly kissed away her doubts. Held like a child against his chest, Kate felt that she could face anything, Patrick’s death, Margaret, even Holly’s prickles. She had long ago been forced to admit that she loved Ian, that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. He wanted her to be his wife ‘Now,’ he said, ‘not next term . . . not maybe next summer . . . now, while I’ve still got my own teeth.’
‘I would even love you without teeth, Ian Robertson.’ She felt like a young girl. This was first love with all the benefits of maturity. Her heart sang when she thought about him; she moved around the bakery, working as hard as she had always worked, but a smile constantly hovered on the edge of her lips, and every now and again she had to stop to savour the feeling, to hold it close and give herself up to it. A blessing from God; it was real. it was passionate, and only the feelings of her grand-daughter prevented Kate from fully abandoning herself to it.
But now she had a plan; she would show Holly how valuable she was to her grandmother and how precious she would always be, even when Ian moved permanently into the bakery. She should have done it, she decided, when Holly was safely away at school, but she waited for the Saturday when Holly went off, seemingly quite happily, to Glasgow with Ian. Kate should have known; it should have been obvious when Holly had suggested Glasgow instead of Edinburgh.
‘I would like to go to Edinburgh one day, but I want to go alone. I hope you don’t mind.’
Ian’s car had hardly disappeared up the Great North Road before the decorators arrived from the south. By seven o’clock in the evening both they and Kate were exhausted, but it was the fulfilled exhaustion that goes with a day’s work well done. Holly’s room, Patrick’s room, was transformed. Gone were the shabby boyish curtains and bedcovers. Gone was the rather sombre wallpaper. The carpets, the furniture itself, all gone and replaced with a fashionable, feminine suite in beautiful light colours. Holly’s old friend, the queen, might well have chosen such a room for her little princess.
Holly was furious. She had returned from Glasgow, happy and stimulated. It had been a good day; two intelligent people with much the same interests and appetites. Holly had greeted her grandmother almost affectionately, but at least naturally, and, pleading exhaustion, had gone straight off to bed.
‘I do think it worked, Kate,’ said Ian, ‘and here we are so subtly being left alone together. How did the room turn out?’
He never did hear Kate’s opinion of the decorators’ skill. The door opened and a white-faced Holly stood there in the doorway, almost rigid with anger.
‘How could you?’ She hardly breathed the words, so strong were her emotions. ‘You had no right. It was his, just the way he was and I wanted it like that. I’ll never, ever forgive you, not as long as I live.’
At Holly’s dramatic entry Kate had slowly and tiredly got to her feet. The child’s angry face had drained away what little strength was left in her body.
‘But, Holly, I wanted it nice for you; I wanted it to be special.’
‘That’s your problem, isn’t it, Granny Kate? You never ask anyone. You, Almighty God, you decide what’s right for everyone. Well, I hate your sissy little girl room, I hate it and I’ll never sleep in it.’
Kate held out her hands beseechingly but Holly hadn’t finished with her. ‘And I hate you too. You’ve taken my father away from me and I hate you.’
She turned and ran from the room leaving Kate standing staring after her.
‘Sit down, Kate.’ Ian pressed her gently back into the chair. ‘I’ll go and see where she’s gone and then I’ll come back. Now, don’t move . . . and don’t worry. The world’s greatest actress has just given the performance of her life but that’s all it was, Kate, a performance.’
Kate didn’t even hear him.
All she could see was Holly’s drawn white face with those green eyes staring at her with hatred. ‘Oh, God, oh God,’ she rocked herself desperately, the way Deirdre had rocked her dead babies all those years ago. ‘I know how you feel, Deirdre. Now I know. Now I could really feel for you and give you help and comfort. The child was right. I never ask. Dear God in Heaven, when will I learn my lesson? She thinks I’ve taken her father away. I threw out some old blankets, that’s all they were, old blankets, needing to be replaced even when my poor Patrick slept in them.’
Ian. Dear, kind Ian. For the first time when dealing with a catastrophe Kate felt that she was not alone. There was Ian. Ian, who loved her and who surely knew how to handle little girls. They’d had a good day. He’d make it all right.
Ian was certainly trying. He found Holly in the newly decorated room, feverishly throwing clothes into a suitcase.
Sarah Bernhardt rides again, he thought, but his voice was all professional solicitude. ‘Where are you going at this time of night, Holly?’
‘The convent.’ The voice was muffled.
‘Well apart from the logistics of how to get from here to there at this time of night, there is the small matter of the terror a ring at the doorbell in the “wee small hours” would inspire in helpless nuns.
‘I’ll go to Grace.’
‘Fifteen miles, lugging a suitcase. Yes. You should get there by breakfast.’
She had stopped packing and was standing staring into the depths of the suitcase.
‘Did you never make a mistake, Holly Inglis?’
‘Everybody does.’
‘Were you forgiven for them?’
Holly wanted to shout, ‘Well apart from the mistake of being born,’ but she held the words in. If they came out they would be real and she would have to face them. ‘Of course I was forgiven for my mistakes,’ she said. ‘My father was the kindest, most understanding man in the whole world.’
‘Do you mean everybody including Holly Inglis is allowed to make mistakes, but Granny Kate has to be excluded?’
The girl said nothing.
‘She made a mistake with your room, Holly. Mind you, in the years that you’ve lived with her, have you ever sat down and said, Granny I feel so close to my father in my room. No, I see that grannies are supposed to be mind-readers. We’ll accept that. Granny Kate made another mistake, a bigger one, years ago, and she’s never forgiven herself for that. Your father forgave her; he understood. But you didn’t know her and you decided to hate her because she was upset when you were born. You’re not a child, Holly. You must be able to see what a shock the unexpected arrival of an illegitimate grandchild must have been.’
‘I wouldn’t have been shocked. I would have taken the baby and loved her.’
He looked down at her from his great height. Part of him wanted to wring her little neck – but for her, he and Kate would have been married years before – and another part wanted to take her in his arms and make everything better for her. He was too wise to touch her.
‘Holly, please, for the sake of the sleeping nuns and the poor unsuspecting Pattersons, give your grandmother another chance.’
She started to cry then and he let her sob. ‘I can’t stay in this room. There’s nothing left, nothing.’
‘Of course there is. It’s still the same room and we’ll see what Granny Kate did with the bedclothes; you could have those back if she hasn’t put them in the bin.’
They compromised on Patrick’s shabby old chair which Ian rescued from the heap awaiting pick-up by the refuse men. For the rest of Kate’s long life the chair sat beside the sea-green bed, reminding her of her up-and-down relationship with Holly.
‘What am I going to do with her?’ Kate asked Ian despairingly as they finally closed the bedroom door on Holly who had curled up in the chair and was sound asleep.
‘I’m more interested in what I hoped you were going to do with me,’ said Ian, ‘but I won’t bother you any more tonight, Kate. I’ve had about as much Greek tragedy as I can take for now.’
Kate kissed him goodnight and stood watching his car until its winking lights disappeared down the Main Street. It would have been so pleasant to have had him stay; to lie curled up beside him through what was left of the night and to wake with him beside her in the bed. Charlie had never slept in that bed. She had changed the entire room after his death.
You’d be the last to grudge me some happiness, Charlie. I wish it had been like this with you. Even those last few months hadn’t prepared me for love like this. You did, at least, get some physical satisfaction, Charlie. You had that much at least, didn’t you?
She went back into the house and, before going to her own room, went to peep in at Holly. She was still asleep, still curled up in the disgraceful chair. We’re going to do some talking tomorrow, young lady.
Talking to Holly was never easy. While Kate had been making resolutions about getting to know Holly, the girl had been deciding that her grandmother would be kept, in a dignified and perhaps rather tragic fashion, at arm’s length.
‘I’m sorry that I changed your room without consulting you, Holly,’ said Kate as she watched Holly demolish a huge cooked breakfast. Where did the food go? The girl was as skinny as . . . well, as Patrick used to be.
‘I shouldn’t have expected you to understand, Granny Kate. I mean, we don’t really know one another, do we?’
Was she being impertinent? ‘That’s my fault,’ said Kate who was determined to grovel abjectly if need be in order to win Holly over. ‘But we can change all that. For instance, you tell me you like St Catherine’s. You’re certainly doing very well. Have you thought of your future?’
‘Once I wanted to be the world’s greatest ballerina, but I’ve never had a ballet lesson. I thought I might be an actress . . . does that shock you?’
‘No,’ said Kate somewhat wryly. ‘If that’s what you want, Holly, I’m sure we can find out how one goes about it.’
‘Well, I think I could become a Hollywood starlet – I’ve got the right background, rejected by my mother, brought up in a cottage by my father – but I’d have to be beautiful to be discovered and I’m not even pretty.’
Is she serious? thought Kate. Do I try to convince her that she’s beautiful? She looks fine to me – when her hair is brushed.
‘Hollywood actresses don’t really act, do they, Holly?’
‘No, Granny Kate, but they die a lot and I’m good at dying. It’s real plays I’m interested in, like the one I saw with Doctor Robertson. I read plays at school but to be the character – on the stage – to say the words so that people really believe you’re real. Just hearing them was incredible.’ This was the real Holly. Kate warmed to her.
‘I loved words too, Holly.’ Could she tell of her longing to finish Dickens and Scott and that Fitzgerald fellow Patrick had liked? Holly gave her no chance.
‘That was a nice breakfast. Thank you.’ Her face had lost its animation and she had withdrawn again. For a moment Kate had thought Holly might share more of her dreams but she had obviously rejected the idea. Pray God she did not reject the dreams and put them for ever behind her.
‘If it’s all right with you, I’d quite like to go to Edinburgh University and study Liberal Arts.’
‘Whatever you want.’ Kate watched her as she cleared the dishes away and began to fill the sink with hot water. Was it too early to talk about Ian? I haven’t even told him that I’ve come to a decision.
‘I’m going for a drive with Doctor Robertson this afternoon. Will you be all right?’
‘Grace is coming.’
‘How nice. Ask her to stay to tea. I’ve got a lovely steak pie.’
‘Depends on her bus.’
‘She knows she’s welcome any time. Perhaps her parents . . .’
The look almost of loathing on the girl’s face shocked Kate. She hasn’t forgiven me. She’s never going to forgive me or . . . love me. I must not let her know that I care.
‘I
’m sorry, Holly, about the room and everything.’ She was begging.
‘It’s only a place to sleep, Granny Kate.’
Kate fled.
27
THAT WAS ONE of the joys of being with Ian. He never talked unless he had something to say. For over an hour they drove along the valley of the Nith and Kate lay back in her seat and let the peace and beauty of the countryside apply balm to her wounded spirit.
After a while she sat up straighter and smiled at him.
‘Was it so awful?’ he said.
‘H’m. I tried to remember everything you said about her being the great tragedienne. Sometimes I thought we were on the way to talking to one another, really talking; she told me she wanted to be an actress – West End, not Hollywood.’
‘Thank God for that.’
‘Ian. I almost told her we were going to be married.’ She held her breath. What would he say?
‘And are we? It’s some time since I asked, or are you becoming so modern that you are asking me?’
‘Oh, Ian, please don’t be flippant. I couldn’t bear it. I stayed awake all night worrying about Holly and realizing that . . . I can cope if you’re there . . .’
‘Like an elastoplast. Sorry, I know I’m being flippant. It’s because I can hardly believe what I’m hearing. Kate, I have booked a fearfully expensive and alcoholic lunch at a charming wayside inn. After filling you full of good food and champagne I had decided to attempt to lower my rather geriatric body to its knees beside you for one last romantic attempt. Now I can enjoy the food without looking forward to the athletics. Kate Inglis, will you marry me?’
‘Yes . . . please.’
‘Damn it, why are there no lay-bys on this atrocious road? I want to kiss you so badly. Actually, I want to kiss you rather well . . . and several other things at which I am woefully out of practice and which, in a lay-by, would get “Prominent Dumfriesshire Doctor arrested for indecency.” Kate, I could sing. I could shout. Singing’s better. Do you know any songs?’
A Pinch of Salt Page 29