Daughter of the Tide

by Leah Fleming

  Only then did she write to Ewan telling him of her change of circumstances, but of Anna she said not a word. What he didn’t know wouldn’t harm him, she reasoned. It was all turning out for the best. She would write to him when she was settled and when she knew for certain that Mor-Anna was his child.

  PART TWO

  Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly,

  Blow bonnie breeze o’er the bonnie blue sea;

  Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly,

  Blow bonnie wind and bring him to me.

  One

  Pitlandry House, 1945–46

  ‘Look, Anna, see the sheep and the horses in the fields! We’re on our way at last, away from the rough sea on a puffer train.’ Minn was dangling her baby on her knee, looking out of the carriage window, her heart racing with excitement at the thought they would have a new home in the Borders. She was sitting opposite a young sailor who snored all the way to Glasgow. The train was packed with troops, sitting in the corridors, smoking and playing cards and eyeing her up with interest.

  They could stare all they liked for she was finished with romance. From now on her head would rule her heart in the same way it dictated that she still wouldn’t tell Ewan about her baby. It was better to rely only on herself to provide for them both. This was to be a fresh start and no looking back. She would always love Ewan but they were not free to be together yet. She must prove worthy of his love and trust in her.

  Her eyes flitted to the sailor’s kit bag dangling precariously from the shelf above with a tag which read ‘HMS’ and nothing else. No one showed the name of their ship. Minn kept glancing back at the label. What was the missing name?

  She was never called by her Sunday name, Mairi. Why had she stuck with Minn all these years? Who wanted to own up to a name that sounded like a well-known household polish? Now she was back in service she could be any name she liked. Perhaps a new name would distance her from Phetray, from island gossip, adding a touch of mystique… perhaps not. For Anna’s sake she would certainly stay Broddick. She sat daydreaming out of the carriage window recalling that first dreadful journey south on her honeymoon. Just thinking about Ken made her shiver with guilt and fear. This journey must be a fresh start. The past was the past and there was no going back.

  Anna slept fitfully in her arms as the train chugged on through the grandeur of lochs and glens towards the outskirts of Glasgow. Soon it was time to alert the guard and go in search of her case and battered pushchair. As Minn alighted from the train with the help of many pairs of hands, she sniffed the soot and the smoke and saw the bustle of passengers rushing for connections. She took a deep breath.

  You’ve done it, mo ghaoil! You’ve put all the bad luck behind you. From now on it can only get better. A new start deserves a new name, so onwards and upwards Mairi Broddick!

  Minn stopped to gaze out of the window of the bus to the Christmas card beauty of the fir trees dripping with fresh snow as they stepped down in Pitlandry to walk the last few yards to the house.

  A robin hopped on the dripping branches flicking them with wet snow and Anna screamed with delight as they walked through the wrought iron gate down the slushy path between the lawns, gazing at a soft rise of hills and fir trees frosted with icing. She crossed her fingers as she took that first look at Pitlandry House for luck. She still could not believe her good fortune in finding a position in such lovely countryside.

  The house nestled in a hollow beside a rolling tributary of the river Tweed: a fine stone house built in the eighteenth century for a family of merchants, secluded, set back from a minor road by an avenue of tall poplars. She was coming as domestic help to Colonel Hubert Lennox and his ailing wife, Dorinda, who were renting this rambling old mansion with only a local cook and gardener and some sporadic daily help.

  *

  It was obvious as soon as she arrived that this place was far too big for the couple. It was proving hard to cling on to pre-war standards without adequate heating and with all the restrictions of post-war rationing and little help. Her appointment was made through the agency by their son without even giving Minn an interview. Her job was to make sure that the house did not freeze his parents with the chill.

  Young Mr Lennox had written explaining that his parents were too frail now to adapt to change, and while he was away on business he wanted to be sure they did not neglect themselves. His sister lived in London and would visit when she could.

  Minn’s experience with Lady Rose so many years ago had swung the position in her favour. ‘This is not a post for some old trout. I want someone young and energetic who will not mind the draughts and the chills. You may burn as many logs as is necessary to keep them safe and your young child too. It will do the folks good to hear a baby around the place.’

  She suspected that no other applicant wanted to be stuck out so far from buses and comforts in such inhospitable surroundings but this hideaway was going to suit them both fine.

  The Lennoxes were a charming couple who staggered up and down the dusty staircase among dingy, dog-haired sofas trying to keep up Edwardian standards with virtually no staff. Minn drew a deep breath and set about spring cleaning all their living rooms, beating carpets and rugs choking in the dust of years. She found the old nursery bucket pram and Anna was sat up to supervise all the sponging-downs and vacuuming with Edie Lawrie, her devoted slave, who came twice a week from the village to do the rough work.

  Minn was so busy those first weeks after her arrival that there was no time to dwell on the past year’s tragic events. Her job was to organize the household, see to the deliveries and the everyday running of Pitlandry until such time as the colonel’s army son, Henry, returned from his regiment.

  She was given a small cottage attached to the old stables. For the first time in her life Minn had her own space, and was told to furnish it from some of the rooms in the old servants’ quarters in the house. She distempered the walls and polished up the stone floors, found rugs and a table and chairs, a bed and washstand and even a wooden cot for Anna. It was like being given the key to a treasure trove of riches. In the evening she had her own kitchen fireplace to hug and the choice of any books from the colonel’s library.

  Sometimes she kept pinching herself to see if all this was not some dream that they had wandered into by mistake. One of the first things she did was to set her figurine proudly on the mantelpiece. It had survived the journey intact wrapped in woollen baby clothes. She wanted everyone to see she knew the genuine article.

  There was no electricity, no modern conveniences, but then this was no different to conditions on Phetray; here, though, there was privacy to wander through the woods and by the river and feed the horses in the fields, and she could jump on carts to get lifts to town.

  She found the colonel’s motor sitting on bricks in the garage so she hinted to them that she had driven vans for years, and Mrs Lennox suggested they might license their car again. This would enable her to chauffeur them into town for appointments and fling herself round the stores while they took afternoon tea in the Pitlandry Hotel.

  Minn began to enjoy a freedom from worry and shame for the first time in years. So much so that she was even reluctant to boast in her infrequent letters to Ewan the dramatic change in her fortunes. It was too soon for them to meet up. Much as she loved him, the birth of a child and Ken’s death on those rocks had shattered something precious between them: something she was finding it hard to define.

  In the silence of the night, in her heart of hearts she knew Ken’s disappearance must have caused his family such grief and puzzlement. She alone could have put them out of their misery but it was too late now without raising suspicion of them both.

  Ewan was part of the Phetray conspiracy and Phetray had no place here in Pitlandry. There were no reminders here of her secret past. Here there was peace and beauty to share with Anna. All that had delighted her in the Crannog was here in abundance: the fine porcelain in glass cabinets, beautiful furniture to
polish and examine closely, the gracious proportions of each room with walls lined with portraits and hunting scenes.

  It would be her joy to restore it all to its former glory, to fill the bowls with evergreens and flowers, to repair the soft furnishings and draperies and make the old couple as warm and comfortable as possible in this draughty barn.

  She suggested they decamp into the sunny morning room, which could be freshened up and well heated. Here they could sit with their papers. A writing bureau was moved for their correspondence and sometimes meals were taken in the old kitchen so there was constant warmth and less upheaval.

  Now that Christmas was coming round again and all the family were returning for the holidays Minn took delight in preparing the drawing room, dining room and bedrooms for the coming celebrations, and there was always somewhere safe for young Anna to toddle.

  For her sake alone she had placed her wedding portrait prominently in her little sitting room so that no tongues would crack about whether she was one of the many dubious ‘widows’ with posthumous children. Here she was Mrs Broddick: Mrs Mairi Broddick. This fresh start was honoured with her best name.

  As Minn went about her Christmas preparations one winter morning, she stamped her feet in the snow sniffing the air with a strange excitement. There were trees and hills all around Pitlandry; afternoons off were spent wandering through the parkland with Anna in the pram trying to identify an oak from an ash, a rowan from a beech, kicking the leaves into crunchy piles. There were no howling gales and salt spray to stunt the growth of a forest. Shrubs were sturdy and full of berries.

  It was the lushness of this border country that stunned her senses. Pitlandry was like living in a woodland paradise, with no sea lapping at the door whispering, reminding her of their treachery.

  Not that paradise did not have its own noisy side. Minn smiled, staring into the old stables, which were piled high with boxes, wheels and spare parts for motor engines. Strange vehicles came and went in the night leaving drifts of weird tarpaulin shapes by the stable door. She never knew what might be parked up each morning outside her cottage door, but one thing was for certain, Captain Henry Lennox and his band of merry men would trough the last of the bacon rations at the kitchen table.

  The captain appeared one morning in the October after her arrival blocking her in.

  ‘Do you mind not parking that crane outside my door. I can’t get out!’ she yelled out of the bedroom window forgetting that the neat plaits she coiled round her head were dangling down like a schoolgirl’s braids. ‘How am I expected to get a pram under that?’ She was addressing a tweed cap thinking it was workmen.

  The cap was raised and a pair of eyes appraised the vision in the window from under bushy eyebrows the colour of a foxtail. That was when she recognized him from the photograph on the mantelpiece, which had the pride of place above all others.

  ‘Sorry… You must be the new housekeeper. Didn’t Pa explain? I run my business from the back of the house.’ He raised his eyebrow in a question. Minn flushed with embarrassment but he just laughed and waved. ‘Give me two shakes and it’ll be shifted.’

  Captain Harry came and went like the tide. A week would go by and then a convoy of assorted vehicles would trundle up the rutted back lane scattering mud in all directions. Sometimes the whole driveway to the main entrance was littered with army surplus equipment and the lanes outside Pitlandry would be lined with vans and lorries with strange number plates. Men in brown felt trilby hats would exchange wads of banknotes as if in some horse-dealing auction.

  Colonel Hubert explained that his son was running a haulage business transporting goods and ex-army supplies now redundant because of the demobilization of troops. Minn wondered why he chose such an out-of-the-way base when it would be easier to find central premises in the nearby towns closer to the main routes south out of Scotland.

  Occasionally he stayed overnight but mostly he came and went in one day. ‘Now you see me now you don’t,’ he would wink and raise his cap. He certainly brightened up his parents by his visits, never arriving at the house empty handed. Sometimes there were chocolates with foreign labels or a box of stockings for his mother, which she pushed aside.

  ‘What do I want with these at my age? Here, Mistress Broddick, you share them with Cook. They’ll look better on your slender legs. When my son comes bearing gifts I start to worry… What’s he up to now, Hubert?’ The colonel was deaf and smiled benignly. Minn was grateful for such bounty, keeping the stockings safe in a glass jam jar.

  Harry was the Benjamin of the family, born when his mother was ‘on the turn’. Cook whispered. He was a beloved indulged only son, for his elder brother, Roderick, had fallen in the Great War. His handsome face peered from behind an ornate silver frame on the grand piano. Daisy, their daughter, was married and had a line of daughters with her on the piano. The portraits were colour tinted and each child and grandchild shared that same sandy gold hair.

  Harry was the joy of their old age, and Minn sensed the warmth and affection between them all. How different from the stiffness between her meagre family. A child should know it is loved, she sighed, and I never was, but Anna must have love in abundance.

  A mother, a father and a child, that was what she wished for Anna, but Ewan was still abroad unable to give them the security that clung like ivy to the walls of Pitlandry House. His letters were often delayed and forwarded from Phetray. They were few and far between these days. Anna’s first birthday had long past and Minn still withheld knowledge of her child. She feared she was leaving it too long but what could she do?

  Sometimes when she heard car wheels in the night, and the torches flashed under her window, Minn worried just what caper the captain was really up to. Sometimes he disappeared for weeks and the house settled down to its old routine until the vehicles lumbered down the lane roaring their arrival again.

  Harry was a born tease. He took delight in teasing her about her accent. ‘Where’s the Highland lilt? Where’s the whiff of the dark isles? You could give Princess Elizabeth lessons!’ He picked up her child with enthusiasm. ‘Little Anna gets more stunning by the day, a real Shirley Temple! Now her hair is black as a raven’s wing and you with hair of flax. Such a mysterious combination, Mrs Broddick.’ He did not question her background and she was grateful.

  Minn tried to stay unruffled and not rise to his baiting but she was unused to such teasing and didn’t know how to react. One afternoon he returned from the town with a handmade wooden trike with three sturdy wheels that Anna could trundle across the cobbled yard and pretend to ride. From that moment he was hers and she ran to him, the minx, like a puppy waiting for a dog biscuit, tugging at his pockets.

  It was the oldest trick in the book to get to the woman through the bairn. Minn stepped back on guard from this charming young employer. All her mother’s dire warnings were ringing in her ears. He was not particularly good looking: rugged, foxy, with bright blue eyes and creases on his cheeks from grinning a lot. He wore tweeds and outrageous shirts, gaudy ties that didn’t quite match. There was no mistaking his accent, his breeding, his affluent generous manner, and she was suspicious of his obvious charm.

  Men like him could take this Pitlandry paradise for granted, the land, the house, the elegant surroundings, driving an open-topped sports car with a foreign name. He was everything Ewan was not: worldly with a shrewd business sense, more English than Scottish and no sailor. Yet she sensed he was fishing for a response from her, flirting with an ease that unsettled her. This was new territory and she was afraid.

  All the troubles in her life came from the men around her. A storm of rekindled passion for Ewan had thrown her marriage off course and nothing would be in its expected place ever again. It was safer to be wary and polite, until Harry laughed and called her ‘Mrs Danvers’, a gibe that meant nothing to her until she took Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca off the shelf.

  Anna had no such qualms about the man who bounced her on his knee and brought her pop-up pictur
e books and sang nursery rhymes, to her delight. Minn felt so guilty that this might have been Ewan’s privilege not Harry Lennox’s role. She was robbing him of the pleasure of knowing all about her antics.

  Then, out of the blue, Ewan wrote saying he was soon to be demobbed and wanted to study art in London, of all places. He wrote to say he had won a travel scholarship and would she go abroad with him? Minn panicked that he might call on them unexpectedly. He was from the past with all its secrets. She wanted no reminder of her perfidy, however much Ewan was a part of her heart.

  How could she contemplate dragging a child round war-torn Europe: a child he didn’t even know existed? Minn agonized whether to reply. Perhaps he was trying to forget the past as much as she was. Going abroad was his way of dealing with it all. How could he now afford to support a woman and child? Was the strain of this enforced separation beginning to tell on him too? They were out of touch with each other. Better to let things slide for a while longer, she reasoned long into the night.

  How she longed to feel his arms around her again, to be loved and warmed by his body, but here in Pitlandry House she felt safe from the pressure to face the future. Here she spoke only her refined English like a foreign language. Here there was beauty and security and no one was interested in her history.

  Harry Lennox was another matter. What was he up to? Was he amassing a fortune on the black market? If so, good luck to him, she mused. He was taking his chance as she was taking hers. Is this why he had dumped his parents in this country hidey-hole? Was some of the stuff on secret display not exactly surplus to army requirements but gently removed from the stockpiles by stealth? What the eye does not see, the heart does not miss? Was that how she was treating Ewan?

  Lately she kept watching her daughter, her fierce stubborn tantrums, the way her hair curled tightly and those dark eyes. Whose eyes were those? Was it possible after all that she was Ewan’s child? How could she deny him knowledge of her?