Rose Cottage (3 page)

‘That’s very kind of you, madam. Is her ladyship well?’

‘Very well. We all are. I’ll tell her you were asking. And do come and see us. Mother will be so pleased.’

So it had been arranged. Angie had been kind, the train had run on time, Angus had met it with the pony-trap, and I had found Kirsty in capable charge at Gran’s cottage, with Gran herself in bed, and so relieved and happy to see me that she had gone almost straight to sleep. In the morning, with a visit from the district nurse and calls from two neighbours on their way home from the kirk, and Kirsty’s busy presence,
there had been no time for any private talk with Gran. The nurse, when I questioned her, was so professionally discreet that I was sure she knew nothing. Kirsty went back next door at lunchtime and I took Gran her soup and toast, but she looked tired, so when I went up to collect the dishes I smoothed the quilt over her, drew the curtains, and left her to sleep.

Then walked up the hill to sit in the sun and listen to the curlew’s song.

Gran was sitting up against her pillows when I went upstairs after washing the supper dishes and saying goodnight to Kirsty, who had eaten with us.

‘Well, and did you have a nice walk?’

‘Lovely. How are you feeling now, Gran?’

‘I’m fine. Now pull that chair up where I can see you properly. Hm. Very smart, I’m sure. Where’d you get that skirt, London? So they have tartans there now, do they?’

‘England’s pretty civilised these days. But you’ve had me worried, you know. What’s it all about? If you say you’re not really ill—’

‘I’m not. I’ll be up and about again in a wee while, but I can’t say I’m not glad of a bit of a rest just now. It’s a lot of standing, cooking, and my legs aren’t as good as they were. Once this stomach’s settled, I’ll be as good as new, forbye a bit of the rheumatism when the weather’s no’ right.’ A trace of her girlhood’s accent had come back, I noticed, to mix quite kindly with the familiar North-country lilt.

‘You want to go back to work? Truly? You don’t have to, you know.’

‘What would I do with myself if I didn’t? Nay, lass, we’ve had all this out and settled, so say no more. I’m as well here as I’ll ever be, with folk I know, and with you coming home when you get your holidays, and the family for ever in and out of the door. It suits me fine, for all I miss Todhall and the folks there. Now tell me about yourself and this grand London job, for all I’d have thought you should have something better than working in a shop.’

It was plain that, whatever she had to say to me, she would say it in her own time, so I stifled my curiosity and told her as much of my London news as I thought would interest her. I had only seen her once since my marriage, a flying visit in the summer of 1945, as soon as term ended, to tell her about Jon and that I was giving up my school job and going, at any rate until our affairs were sorted out, to London. I had offered to stay with her at Strathbeg, but, predictably, she would not hear of it. I must make a new life for myself now among my new friends (she meant, but did not say, ‘better myself’) and try to let time heal the wounds of war. Not that she put it like that, but once again I knew what she meant; ‘stay where you’re more likely to meet somebody else when you’ve got over it.’

I knew she was hoping that this would be my news, but she bore very well with the daily doings at Platt’s Plants, and then in her turn she brought me up to date with the happenings in the glen, and the affairs of the family at the House.

‘I phoned them,’ I told her, ‘and Mrs Drew asked me to go over and see them.’

‘Well, of course you have to. Her ladyship’s always asking after you. She’ll tell you about it herself.’

She was not looking at me as she spoke, but at something beyond the bedroom window. Not the blue hilltops of the summer evening; something further away even than they.

We had come to it at last. I said gently, ‘Tell me what?’

The roughened hands moved on the quilt. ‘It was something I heard not long syne. Something the family are doing at Todhall.’

‘Yes? Do you mean them turning the Hall over into a hotel? I heard that, too; in fact, I think they’ve already started.’

‘Aye, they have. Annie Pascoe wrote me. Jim and Davey are working there.’ Jim Pascoe was the Todhall carpenter, and Davey was his son. His wife, ‘Aunty Annie’ to me since childhood, was my godmother.

‘Do you mind very much, Gran?’

‘What’s the use of minding?’ Recovering herself, she was brisk. ‘It was a nice house, and I liked my kitchen – better than the one I’ve got here – but it had to come, and I’m well enough myself back here in the glen, and now with my own home. No, it’s not the Hall, it’s the house. Our own house. Rose Cottage.’

‘What about it? Do you mean they’re altering that as well? Or are they selling it?’

‘Not selling it, no, not yet. But there was talk of
converting it – making one of those hotel places where folk fend for themselves, I forget what they call them.’

‘Annexes? Self-catering cottages?’

‘That would be it. Like a hotel, but you do your own cooking. So if our cottage has to be made over, they’ll be making big changes there, too.’

‘I suppose they’d have to, yes, surely. There’d have to be a better bathroom, and I dare say they’ll put an electric cooker in, and a few other things, like a fridge and a washing machine? But Granddad always said the building was sound, so they won’t have to pull any of it down, will they?’

‘That’d be enough, the electric stove, I mean. They’ll be taking the fireplace out for it, or if they make the back-place into one of those wee kitchens – kitchenettes, they call them’ – the word held a world of scorn – ‘they’ll surely take out my old kitchen range and put a sitting room fireplace into the front room.’

‘I suppose so. Gran, do you mind very much? I think – yes, I think I’ll mind, a bit. And it was your home and Granddad’s for all those years. You weren’t hoping to go back one day, were you?’

She wasn’t listening. A hand moved, briefly, to touch my knee. ‘So that’s it, Kathy. That’s why I asked you to come.’

‘I don’t see—’

‘Listen. You never knew it, and nor, thank the good Lord, did your Aunt Betsy, but just aside the fireplace, on the left near the mantelshelf, there’s a cupboard let into the wall.’

‘Is there? Really? I never saw one.’

‘No, you wouldn’t, not without you knew where to look. Not to look, at that, but feel. It’s tiny, no more than a tin box built into the wall, and it’s been hidden – papered over – these many years. Do you mind the time we put that pretty paper on, with the autumn leaves and berries?’

‘Not really. Was it – yes, wasn’t it soon after Granddad died, just before Aunt Betsy came to stay? You and – you did it yourself, didn’t you?’

‘That’s right. Lilias and I did it together.’ A silence, that I took care not to break. After a while she said, heavily, ‘For all that your Granddad was gone, that was a happy time.’

I waited. When she spoke again she was answering, I knew, what had not been said.

‘And then Betsy came. She was a good woman, your great-aunt, make no mistake about that, for all she was never one to be easy with. Nor to share secrets with, neither. So she never knew about the cupboard.’

‘Gran, you said to the left of the fireplace. Do you mean behind the picture there?’

‘I do. A holy text. Your aunt thought a lot of that text.’ A twinkle. ‘She was a tidy body about the house, your Aunt Betsy, and a good enough cook, but she was never great with the mop and duster. You might say that she dusted kind of reverent, without disturbing things, nor lifting them about, so she never noticed it. But I made sure. I only opened it up again the once, when she was from home, to put—’ – a pause – ‘to put Lilias’s bangle away. You’ll remember that. They sent it over from Ireland after the accident. It was all there
was, and I didn’t want Betsy to see it, and maybe … Oh, well, never mind that. So then I made a real job of it, plastered it over nice and flat and matched the paper up, so if she ever did lift the picture down she’d not see anything, forbye a bit of a bubble in the pattern, where the keyhole is. Oh, it was safe enough, even at the spring-clean, or when we had to paper again. That’s what your granddad used to call it, “the safe”.’

I said slowly: ‘I’m getting there, I think. There’s something there still, in the “safe”?’

‘That’s right. In all the clamjamphrie of the flitting, and giving the family a hand with their gear, I never thought about it. Nor at the time when your Aunt Betsy was took. The district nurse came most days, and Annie Pascoe helped out when I needed it, and what with one thing and another I never gave a thought to the safe. Maybe I was still thinking we’d be back there one day.’ A sigh, and another look through the window at something far away and long ago. Then back to me. ‘So what’s there will still be there – that is, until they start pulling the fireplace out and find it.’

‘What is there, Gran?’

‘Family things. Not valuable, except maybe for the five golden sovereigns that Sir Giles, as was the Squire then, gave your Granddad on our wedding day, and which he’d never dream of spending, but all things I’d sorrow to lose. My ring that your Granddad gave me when we were promised, and the brooch my lady gave me for a wedding present, lovely it was, you’ve seen it, pearls and those green stones, I misremember the name.’

‘Peridots.’

‘That’s it. And there’s your Mum’s bracelet like I told you, and the letters your Granddad wrote me from France when he was fighting, if letters you can call them; one of them was written on a bit of cardboard torn off a box, and it got to me just as if it had been in a proper envelope, and registered at that. And his medals, he got two, and his watch and his wedding ring and a whole bundle of papers – my marriage lines, and your Mum’s birth certificate and – well, all that sort of thing.’

‘My birth certificate, you mean?’

A silence.

‘It’s all right, Gran dear. I’ve seen it.’

‘You’ve seen it?’ She was sharp. ‘How?’

‘A copy, that’s all. I wrote to Somerset House for a copy. I wanted to see it for myself, and make sure. You see, I’d told Jon all about us – my family, I mean. I showed it to him. You do understand, don’t you?’

‘Aye,’ she said, ‘I do. And you did right.’ The clasped hands shifted on the coverlet. ‘Well, then, I don’t need to tell you you’d get nothing from that. He’s not on it.’

‘No.’ A pause, then I leaned forward to touch the old hands, lightly. ‘Gran.’

‘Eh, what now?’

‘Look, Gran, I’m not sixteen any more and still at school. I’ve been married and widowed, and I’m twenty-four, and people think differently, anyway, since the war. I know you’ve always said you didn’t know who he was, but if you’re just trying to save me from hearing something I won’t like—’

‘Kathy love, don’t. It’s true I don’t know. You have to believe me. She never told me. And guessing doesn’t get you anywhere.’

‘Guessing? You can guess?’

My voice must have been sharp. She glanced up at me, then with a little gesture as if smoothing the air, said uncertainly: ‘It was nothing as anyone knew. Nothing to tell you.’

‘What was it? Gran, dear Gran, you must tell me, you really must. I’ve a right to know anything, anything at all.’

‘It’s true, you have,’ she said, then, as if reluctantly, ‘all right. All I can tell you is what they said in the village at the time. There was gipsies camped in the lonnen – you remember Gipsy Lonnen?’

‘Yes.’ It was a lane near Rose Cottage, a short cut to the station that the village rarely used.

‘They were there that time, when she left. In the lonnen, with tents and a caravan. And they’d gone next day. So folks said she’d gone with them.’

‘They would. Maybe she did. But that doesn’t mean it’s anything to do with me, with who fathered me, I mean. I was six years old when she left.’

‘Yes. Well. The tale went that it was one of them, that she went with him some time when they’d been there before, and that when she left she went back to him. That’s all. I told you it was nothing. Folks will say anything, and next time round they’ll believe it.’ She touched my hand again. ‘I’m sorry, love. That’s all there is. And now that she’s gone, we’ll never know.’

Silence again. I stood up and went to the window. It
was still light, the tranquil blue-grey twilight of the Highland summer. Somewhere a thrush was singing. I turned and spoke gently.

‘Ah, well, it hardly matters now. I’m myself, and owing no one, except you and Granddad and Jon. Thanks for telling me, and let’s forget it.’ I went back to the chair and sat down. ‘Okay, Gran. Now, have I got this right? You want me to go to Todhall and get your things from the safe before someone else finds them.’

‘That’s it. But there’s more.’

‘More?’

‘Aye. Now I’ve got my own place here, I’d like fine to have the rest of my things sent up. The furniture, I mean, and some of the stuff that I left for your Aunt Betsy to use. Not all the furniture, I’ve neither room nor need for the beds and such, but there’s my sideboard, and the good bits and pieces in Betsy’s room, and some of the pictures and ornaments, and my rosebud tea set, and his rocking chair. I don’t need the table, there’s a good one here, and plenty chairs … I’ll make a list. I’ve talked to her ladyship about it, and you’re welcome to go there and take what you want. She’s sent word that the men are to keep away till she tells them. So you’ll go, won’t you?’