A Pinch of Salt

by Eileen Ramsay

  Finally Holly stood up and stretched. ‘You must be exhausted, Granny Kate. I’ll wash these and then go to bed.’

  Kate knew better than to leave her alone to let the memories of the pain come back as they surely would. Tonight, this Blessed Christmas morn, Holly should have a barrier between her heart and Ruaridh’s unthinking cruelty. ‘Let’s leave them, dear. Perhaps Grampa Ian’s Santa will wash them but if he doesn’t . . . who cares?’

  They walked along to Holly’s room and Kate went with her and, for the first time, helped her grand-daughter undress. ‘Try to sleep, my dear,’ she said as she tucked her into bed.

  ‘I’ll try, Granny Kate, but when the pain comes I’ll think of you and that will help.’

  ‘Shall I stay?’

  ‘No. I’ll be fine. I’ve got to face it alone sometime. You know I’ve never really liked The Toll House but somehow tonight it feels . . . I don’t know how to explain it, but as if . . . there were other people here.’

  ‘There are. They’re called love, Holly.’

  Kate kissed her grand-daughter gently and went back along the corridor to her own bedroom. ‘They’re all called love.’

  Welcome to the world of Eileen Ramsay!

  Keep reading for more from Eileen Ramsay, including a recipe that features in this novel and a sneak peek at Eileen’s next book, The Crofter’s Daughter . . .

  We’d also like to introduce you to MEMORY LANE, our special community for the very best of saga writing from authors you know and love and new ones we simply can’t wait for you to meet. Read on and join our club!

  www.MemoryLane.club

  Dear Readers,

  I wanted to be Georgette Heyer when I grew up – but failed Higher Latin because I was reading her books instead of Caesar’s The Gallic Wars. I had written a Scottish-set Regency as part of my Master’s degree at university in California and was thrilled when an agent, to whom I was introduced shortly after returning to Scotland, sold the book to an American publisher. The publisher did not ask for another and the agent said, ‘Write a saga, write about what you know.’

  I thought about what I knew, and made a list: teaching, music, dance, motherhood, travel and love. I would write about love or loving, and that was where I stuck until one day a picture of the village in Dumfriesshire where I grew up came into my mind. A coal-mining area, there were still acres of fine farmlands and woods where thousands of primroses rioted every spring, and there were streams running into the mighty River Nith that were deep enough for us to swim in and shallow enough so that parents did not worry.

  There was a school at one end of the village. On my first day, aged five, I met my first friend and, although our career paths were very different, she is still my friend today. A little house next to the school had been the site of a toll gate and in the middle of the main street a shop had replaced a public lavatory that had been bombed during the war – or perhaps it was the other way around. We did not live there during the war.

  At the other end of the village stood the Roman Catholic Church and just a little farther out was the home of the much-loved, local doctor. Was there anything this doctor could not do? He was at the pit if there was an accident, at the primary school if there was a playground accident and – since most babies born in the area were born at home – he knew every household and every baby very well.

  Local tales of difficult births or tragic accidents resurfaced and the blank pages of my notebook began to fill with ideas. I remembered being in a first-aid class taught by the doctor and I remembered my friend’s aunt who gave me lunch every Friday because I wouldn’t eat the school meal – which was perfectly fine, by the way. I remembered Friday afternoons when we wrote compositions, which I loved, and the days when the teacher read to us, a few pages of a classic novel that I then checked out of the local library. And I remembered the evening when my soldier father returned from the war and I remembered being terrified when this tall strong stranger threw me up into the air.

  I had all the ingredients I needed for my story. I saw my heroine and her fight for an education, and I saw the boys who went to war – the man or men my heroine and her daughters would love or with whom they would imagine themselves in love. And somehow the toll gate became a bakery and my heroine became a baker who could, if she so chose, become a very wealthy woman.

  I hope you’ll understand her and love her as much as I do.

  Best wishes,

  Eileen

  Kate Inglis steak pie

  You will need:

  900g/2lb stewing steak, cut into cubes

  1 tbsp plain flour, seasoned with salt and pepper

  1 tbsp butter

  2 onions, sliced

  2 carrots, chopped

  2 sprigs fresh thyme

  570ml/1 pint stout (or hot beef stock)

  salt and pepper, to taste

  225g/8oz shortcrust (or puff) pastry

  plain flour, for dusting

  1 egg, beaten

  How to make the pie:

  1.Pre-heat the oven to 190°C/gas mark 5.

  2.Toss the stewing steak in the seasoned flour. Set aside.

  3.Melt the butter and sauté the onions until soft. Add the carrots and thyme for 5 minutes, then the stewing steak and any remaining seasoned flour. Stir thoroughly, then quickly add stout (or beef stock). Bring to a simmer.

  4.Put mixture in an ovenproof dish and place in oven for 2½ hours until sauce is reduced and the meat tender. Place in pie dish.

  5.Meanwhile, dust a clean work surface with flour and roll out pastry to the thickness of a pound coin. Place on top of pie dish and pinch to seal edges, then trim. Make small slit in the middle of the pie. Brush pie lid with egg. Cook for 45 minutes or until golden-brown. Delicious served with greens or peas.

  Kate Inglis loaf

  You will need:

  500g strong white flour

  1 tsp salt

  1 tsp sugar

  I sachet of fast-action yeast

  3 tbsp melted butter

  300ml lukewarm water

  What to do:

  1.Combine flour, salt, sugar and yeast. Make a well and add melted butter and water. If the dough feels stiff, add a little more water (1–2 tbsp). Combine well, then knead. Once smooth to the touch, place in a lightly buttered bowl, cover, and leave in a warm place for one hour until doubled in size.

  2.Pre-heat the oven to 220°C/gas mark 7.

  3.Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.

  4.Knock back the dough and shape into a round. Score and place on a lined baking tray. Prove for another hour until doubled in size.

  5.Place in oven for 25–30 minutes until hollow when tapped on the base. Serve with fresh salted butter.

  Enjoy this sneak peek at Eileen’s new novel The Crofter’s Daughter

  CHAPTER ONE

  In the spring of 1900 Mairi McGloughlin discovered that she loved the land. She was just nine years old: in fact she had just passed – not celebrated – her ninth birthday. With her best friend, Violet Anderson, she was walking home from the village school. They skipped and walked down Pansy Lane and then Mairi saw the first of the year’s snowdrops, virginal white, the lovely heads standing straight and tall on delicate stems, their dark green leaves cradling them protectively.

  ‘Look, Violet,’ she said, her voice full of awe, ‘snowdrops.’

  Violet skipped on the spot, not losing the beat. ‘Seventy-eight, seventy-nine – they’re just flowers, Mairi – eighty-four, eighty-five.’

  Mairi knelt down in the damp soil beside the flowers and she spoke for herself. ‘No, they’re not, Violet, they’re more, they’re harbingers of spring.’

  She was top of the class and had seen that posh word in one of the Dominie’s reserved books.

  ‘Harbingers of spring,’ she said again, liking the sound of the phrase. ‘Look at them, Violet. They’ve come up out of the ground and they’re pure white; the muck hasnae stuck to them.’

  ‘Ach, y
ou’re daft, so you are, Mairi McGloughlin. Of course dirt doesnae stick to them.’

  ‘Well, why not, since you’re so smart, Violet Anderson? Why doesn’t muck stick to them?’

  For a moment Violet was perplexed. She had not expected to be questioned on something unquestionable, on an irrefutable fact. ‘It just disnae because . . . because God made them.’

  ‘Aye, and he made Billy Soutar too and all the mud in Angus is stuck to him.’

  At the thought of Billy Soutar, the little girls dissolved into laughter and ran giggling down the path, all thoughts of flowers and muck and their place in the great scheme of things gone from their minds.

  They parted at the end of the lane. Mairi had to continue another mile to the farmhouse but Violet’s father’s cottage sat four-square to the road almost beside the path. Her mother was in the garden throwing potato peelings to the hens that bustled frenetically around her feet as if terrified that there would not be enough for all.

  ‘There’s scones just out the oven, lassies,’ she called as she went on feeding the hens, ‘and a nice jug of fresh milk in the larder, for Violet.’

  Mairi sighed. Pheemie Anderson was a fine baker. ‘I cannae today, Mrs Anderson. I’ve a pot of soup tae put on for the week.’ The pot of soup would have been ready if her brother, Ian, had not let the fire go out. Ian’s head was usually busy with anything but what he was supposed to be doing and yesterday he had got so involved watching a blackbird building a nest that he had forgotten not only to keep the range stoked but also to bring in the cows. Mairi had gone for the cows but too late to save her brother from their father’s righteous anger. This morning Ian had been too sore to go to school and Mairi had lied and told the Dominie that he had a cold. Mr Morrison had said nothing but at hometime he had given Mairi a lovely bound Shakespeare.

  ‘If Ian is still unwell tomorrow, tell him to read Richard II and I want him to go on with his history book and the composition he was going to write for me.’

  Glowing, Mairi had put the precious book carefully in her bag. She and Ian and the teacher’s horrible son, Robin, were the only children who were allowed to read the reserved books. Ian and Robin had fought for the position of top of the class for seven years since the day they had entered the little school together. Sometimes Robin was top, sometimes Ian. Robin always beat Ian in the arithmetic examinations and Ian beat Robin at compositions. Aggregate scores were what counted for top place and Mairi was hoping that Ian would be Dux. Then maybe, just maybe, Father would allow him to stay on at the school beyond the date when most farm boys left.

  ‘He’ll need to count well enough to buy in seed, not be diddled, and to pay his men what they’re worth. He doesnae need to speak poems.’ That was Father, who would never understand his son, mainly because he would not try.

  Mairi carried on up the road until she reached the farmhouse. The dogs, Ben and Dog, rushed out to meet her and she hugged them both, careless of the fact that they were working dogs and not, according to Father, to be petted like lap dogs. Dogs were the most satisfactory of all animals. They loved totally and without question; everything these strange human creatures did was perfect and Mairi, with her cuddles and scratching of just the right spot under the ears, was the most perfect of all. They even tolerated Ian’s forgetfulness and waited patiently when he forgot to feed them. Their master did not have the same forgiving nature.

  ‘Oh, you beautiful babies,’ crooned Mairi. ‘Have you missed me then?’

  Their tails wagging vigorously, to show her how much she had been missed, they followed her into the house.

  ‘You’d best lie down in the kitchen while I see where Ian is.’

  If they could have, they would have told her that Ian was ploughing with his father. Mr McGloughlin had promised his wife that the children would attend school but here was Ian, perfectly well and doing nothing. He did not have to sit down to help with the plough.

  When Mairi realized that the house was empty, she cut herself a slice from a loaf of bread that she had baked herself. She spread it liberally with their own butter and sat down at the scrubbed kitchen table to eat it. Then she changed from her school frock into a working day dress and began to prepare vegetables for the soup: carrots, turnips, leeks and a cabbage all grown either in the garden or on the farm. She washed some of their own barley and left it sitting in a bowl of water while the stock simmered on the range. The stock she had made from the bone of the mutton joint that had been their Sunday and Monday dinner. The soup started, she peeled potatoes and then went out into the garden to gather some of the last of the Brussel sprouts. How good it would be when the spring vegetables began to appear; Brussel sprouts were, unfortunately, such a serviceable vegetable. Mairi could not think of one good thing to say about them and, in fact, sometimes wondered why farmers bothered to grow them. She was only nine years old, not a great age, but, in all that time of living and experiencing, she had never met anyone who admitted to liking them.

  ‘When I’m choosing the garden vegetables,’ Mairi informed a particularly tough plant, ‘there will be no sprouts.’ She sat back on her heels beside the plants. There would be flowers. That’s what there would be and something called asparagus that she’d seen in one of the Dominie’s books, and strawberries, of course, which grew beautifully in Angus soil under Angus skies, and potatoes, even though Father grew them on the farm. The Dominie had a book about growing vegetables and it said that potatoes cleaned the ground and left it nice and ready for the next crop. Yes, asparagus. Mairi had never eaten, never even seen asparagus, but the gentry liked it and so it must be good. The Laird had a glass house called a succession house and he grew peaches in it. Peaches. Mairi had seen them when the Laird had given a picnic for his tenants. Oh, earth, soil, good clean dirt was a marvellous thing; it grew potatoes and peaches both. Even the word peach was good. Peach. When she was a farmer she would have a succession house and she would have a peach tree in it. The Laird would help her. He was a nice old man. He did not chuck her under the chin and expect her to like it as so many elderly and not so elderly men did. He had spoken to her, one gardener to another. Yes, she would not be afraid to ask the Laird. No doubt he had asparagus. She would go to see it at the next picnic.

  Mairi jumped up. She had better get the sprouts and the tatties on. If Ian had done nothing to annoy Father they would have a nice time sitting around the table together, even though the soup would not be at its best until tomorrow. But if she made a nice Shepherd’s pie and that and the sprouts were ready to be served just as Father walked in from the fields, maybe he would speak to Ian with the soft voice he always used for Mairi and that her brother very rarely heard addressed to himself. She stopped at the back door, her eye caught by a glimpse of white against the garden wall – more snowdrops.

  ‘When I’m the farmer,’ began Mairi, and then she stopped, for she would never be the farmer. She was a girl. She would grow up and keep house for her father until Ian married and then, unless she herself married, she would share the chores with her sister-in-law, for it was Ian who would be the farmer, Ian, who was only completely happy when he was reading a story or scribbling away in his secret notebook.

  ‘It’s daft,’ said nine-year-old Mairi McGloughlin, ‘but it’s the way it is and there’s nothing I can do about it.’ She thought for a moment and smiled a slow sweet smile that was older than time. ‘I’ll marry Jack Black and bully him.’

  Her future decided, Miss McGloughlin hurried into the kitchen and finished preparing the evening meal. Then there were a few precious minutes to do her homework. She was clever like Ian and the horrible Robin and so the sums took her no time at all. The parsing and analysis of the three sentences took her a little longer because she was happier just reading and understanding lovely words than cluttering up her mind with parts of speech and suchlike nonsense. Ian now, and that spoiled brat who lived in the Schoolhouse, could happily parse and analyze all the day long. She was about to say that such a failing showed
just how horrid was Robin Morrison when she realized that the same label would have to attach itself to her beloved Ian. She vented her spleen on Robin by viciously slicing two sprouts into slivers and tossing them into the soup pot. Father would have been sure to ask her what on earth she was trying to do to his laboriously grown vegetables. Sprouts were cooked whole. Everybody knew that.

  Colin McGloughlin and his son, Ian, were welcomed home by the smell of good food, beautifully cooked. Ian had managed to keep his mind on his work all afternoon long and so his father was as pleased with him as he ever got. A good hammering had done the boy the world of good, which proved that Ian did not need ‘patient understanding’ as the Dominie was always saying, but discipline. There was a time for books and a time for remembering to mend the fire and, of the two, the fire was the more important. Without a fire, wee Mairi could not cook and he had never yet seen Ian ready to eat his books instead of a succulent Shepherd’s pie. For a moment Colin toyed with the idea of approaching the School Board to allow Mairi to stay at home. There was necessity; he was a widower with two children. Ach no, he had promised Ellen and besides, the lassie was only nine. She could finish the primary school and then she could stay at home where she belonged and take care of the house. She would not do hard farm work, not his wee lassie. Too much work had killed her mother, a shop girl from the town who should never have married a farmer. But Mairi should be spared the hard work that was the lot of every daughter of the farm and if she did marry, and she had to he supposed, she should marry onto a farm that was owner occupied where there was a bit of extra money for a kitchen maid as well as a dairy maid. But not yet, not for a long time yet.

  The little family ate their meal and washed it down with mugs of hot sweet tea. Then Colin went to the fire and sat down, the dogs at his feet. He would sit for an hour or two and then, once he had seen the children to bed, he would take himself off to his lonely room.