The Good Provider (37 page)

‘A – a community, then,’ said Kirsty. ‘It’ll be nice.’

‘It’ll be safe,’ Craig said.

She did not ask him to explain, believing, wrongly, that she understood.

Later that night, after Craig had gone to bed, Kirsty took a late supper with Agnes Frew in the parlour.

‘So you’re leaving us, Kirsty,’ the old woman said. ‘I’ll confess I’ll be sore grieved to see you go.’

‘I’m not off to the moon,’ said Kirsty. ‘I’ll still be at St Anne’s every Sunday.’

‘After the baby comes that’ll stop.’

‘Craig can look after baby for an hour or two.’

‘He’ll be on duty.’

‘Not every Sunday,’ said Kirsty.

‘This won’t be your only child,’ Mrs Frew said. ‘You’ll have more. Soon you’ll be so tied to your family that you won’t have time for the kirk, let alone me.’

Though she suspected that the prediction might be true, Kirsty said, ‘Nonsense.’

She had made a pot of tea and had buttered oatcakes. Seated on a spindle chair at the occasional table, she ate and drank with the delicacy of a lady born to the manor. The prospect of going back to Greenfield did not appeal to her. She no longer wanted a place of her own, to be alone with Craig night after night, listening to his silences.

‘I know somebody who’ll be sorry,’ said Agnes Frew.

‘Hmmm?’ Kirsty had been day-dreaming, teacup to her lips. ‘Who?’

‘David Lockhart.’

Kirsty was taken aback. ‘What’s Mr Lockhart got to do wi’ me?’

‘I’d a letter from him this morning. He enquired after you specially; asks to be remembered to you.’

‘I hardly know the man.’

‘But you made an impression, Kirsty. He says he hopes to see you again next time he’s in Glasgow.’

Blushing, Kirsty asked, ‘How – how often is he in Glasgow?’

‘From time to time.’

‘When he visits his brother, I expect.’

‘Oh, so he told you about Jack. You obviously got on well.’ Mrs Frew spoke with an archness that Kirsty did not like. ‘Jack’s lodging’s very small and he’s prohibited from having overnight visitors. When David visits, the pair of them usually put up here.’

‘He – he seemed very pleasant,’ said Kirsty. ‘As a person I mean; a very pleasant person.’

‘Are you blushin’?’

‘It’s the heat in this room,’ said Kirsty quickly.

Mrs Frew tried not to smile. ‘That’s what David said about you; the exact words – a very pleasant person.’

‘He’s just being polite.’

‘He never said it about Cissie, and she was here for years.’

‘Mrs Frew, I’m—’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Mrs Frew. ‘I know you’re married. Even so, it’s nice to be noticed by a gentleman, isn’t it?’

‘He could hardly fail to notice me, could he?’ Kirsty glanced down at her stomach. ‘What does Mr Lockhart do?’

‘After his ordination he’ll return to China.’

‘China?’

‘His parents are missionaries.’

‘China,’ said Kirsty. ‘When – when will he go?’

‘In six or eight months, I suppose,’ said Mrs Frew.

‘For – for how long?’

‘For ever,’ Mrs Frew said.

‘You mean he won’t come back to Scotland?’

‘His parents never did. Mission work is a calling, you see, a vocation. David and John were born to it.’

‘Born in China?’

‘No. David was born in Inverness before his parents set off for Nanking. His mother was my friend as well as being a distant relative. She writes to me still from time to time. But somehow or other when furlough time comes around there are always reasons why they cannot leave.’

‘But David, his brother too—?’

‘The boys could have been educated in China but Amelia and Richard elected to send them home,’ said Mrs Frew. ‘They were put into the care of Amelia’s brother, George, and stayed with him in Invermoy while they attended Inverness Academy.’

‘Do all missionaries have to study medicine?’

‘Of course not,’ said Mrs Frew. ‘Devotion to duty and strength in the Lord are all that’s required, particularly for the China stations. David and Jack, however, are destined to take over the administration of the schools and hospitals that their parents founded, to run the North China Missionary Society in course of time.’

Kirsty had no real notion where China was. She knew only that the people there were heathens, had slanted eyes and wore pigtails. She listened in fascinated interest as Agnes Frew talked of the vast and mysterious land across the seas; and suddenly Canada Road did not seem so far away after all. She wanted to ask the widow if she thought David would be happy in China but the question, she realised, had no validity. He had been born to it, his whole life shaped for service in a foreign land. She could not imagine the young man for whom she had cooked sausages on a foggy morning in Walbrook Street striding the hills of China, healing the sick and preaching the Gospel.

‘
Chung-kuo
,’ Mrs Frew was saying. ‘The Middle Kingdom. That’s what the Chinese call their homeland. The rest of us dwell in the Kingdom Outside. Isn’t that ridiculous?’

Kirsty nodded, though she did not think it at all ridiculous.

Mrs Frew rose abruptly. She opened a little cupboard to the right of the fireplace, knelt and rummaged on the shelves for a moment. Idly Kirsty put the supper dishes on to the wooden tray.

Mrs Frew got up.

‘See.’ She held out a book, a big soft quarto bound like a Bible in black morocco. ‘It’s all in here. All about China. David gave it to Andrew and me years and years ago, when he first stayed with us. Oh, he was hardly more than a child then. It was the first time he’d been away from his mother and father.’

Kirsty took the book into her hands.

Mrs Frew had opened it at the flyleaf upon which was written in a large round script:
To Uncle Andrew and Auntie Nessie, With All My Love, From David. Christmas 1883.

With sudden clarity Kirsty saw herself in the mid-winter of that year, when she was four years old, curled in the cot in the bleak and echoing dormitory of the Baird Home, crying into her pillow for the mammy she had never known, crying and trying to hide her tears.

‘Take it,’ said Mrs Frew. ‘Take it and read it, dear. It’s most informative.’

‘Thank you,’ said Kirsty.

She stared at the handwriting, the ink faded from black to sepia, the edges of the pages deckled yellow:
With All My Love, From David.

She brushed her hand lightly over the paper as if to smooth it and, at that moment and for the first time, felt within her body a queer sharp little dig as if the new life inside her had served a reminder of its presence, had given her, in remonstrance, a sign.

Christmas celebrations began with a musical recital in St Anne’s by the Greenfield Choral Association which performed a grand recitation of the sacred cantata
The Good Shepherd
and other gems from the seasonal repertoire.

Mrs Frew clucked approvingly over the choir’s perfect balance and fine modulation of tone but Kirsty had no clue what lay behind her feelings of joy and exultation, why the music lifted her so and seemed to hold her suspended or why it made her raise her eyes to the vaulted roof and to the dim enigmatic shapes of painted glass in the depths of the nave, so quiet and tranquil and unmoved behind the heads of the choir.

When a quartet, composed of one lady and three gentlemen, sang
Love Divine, All Loves Excelling
Kirsty found tears trickling down her cheeks. She tried to hide them but Mrs Frew, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief too, patted Kirsty’s hand approvingly as if such a reaction was only to be expected.

They walked home, arm in arm, with Kirsty exclaiming, ‘Was that not wonderful?’ and Mrs Frew saying, ‘It was, dear, it was,’ until they found Craig in the kitchen, trousers unbuttoned and boots off, slumped snoring in a chair before the fire with the remains of his supper still on the table waiting to be cleared away. Kirsty sighed, slipped off her coat and rolled up her sleeves while Mrs Frew, with a sniff, took herself into the parlour to sip a little glass of brandy before bed.

As Constable Third Grade, Craig drew Christmas Day duty. Dinner was postponed until late evening so that he might take his place at the head of the table.

With the goose cooking, pies and puddings all prepared and the dining-room table laid with silver and best linen, Kirsty put on her good new dress and took tea in the parlour with Mrs Frew. She drank two glasses of sherry while the tea was masking in the pot and was only saved from a giggling fit by the arrival of Hugh and Beatrice Affleck. They brought a gift for Nessie and a ‘reminder’ for Kirsty, an album of blank grey pages which, Hugh Affleck said, would soon contain photographic records of her babies and, in years not so far ahead of her, would give her something to look back upon.

For an hour they drank tea, ate sausage rolls and currant cake and laughed. Hugh Affleck was at his very best. He told hilarious tales against himself and against the dignity of the burgh police until the tears ran down Kirsty’s cheeks. She was sorry when, at a quarter to six, the Afflecks explained to Nessie that they were dining with the Mackinnons at seven o’clock and had to pick up the girls at home first. Carrying their gifts, unopened, they took their leave.

‘My nieces can’t stand to visit me,’ said Agnes Frew when the house was quiet again, ‘not even at Christmas.’

She looked so down in the mouth that Kirsty gave her a kiss and a hug and poured another glass of sherry to cheer her up.

Craig came home with cheeks flushed and a faint smell of whisky on his breath. He said that Hector Drummond had given them all a dram when they finished shift and had wished them a merry time but had warned them not to imbibe too heavily since they were all required on duty on Boxing Day when the wild boys of Greenfield, dogging work, were prone to brawl and booze and engage in acts of petty theft. Washed, Craig put on a tweed jacket and flannel trousers and knotted a ridiculous spotted cravat into the collar of his shirt. He looked, said Mrs Frew with uncommon candour, as if he had just moored his yacht at Plantation Quay.

Dinner was pleasant enough. Gifts were exchanged at the end of the meal. Craig had bought a pendant for Kirsty and a cameo brooch for Mrs Frew. He received from the widow a pair of smart black kidskin gloves which could be worn with his uniform in cold weather without offending regulations; from Kirsty a beautiful red rubber ‘diving cap’ and a pair of goggles to keep the water out of his eyes when he swam underwater. Kirsty’s gift to Mrs Frew was a bottle of
Lily of the Valley
perfume. In turn she received a baby’s shawl of Honiton lace so fine that it could be drawn smoothly through a silver napkin ring if not quite through Kirsty’s wedding band. But after that the evening turned flat and listless, for they were all tired.

It was not much after eleven when, with the great mound of pots and plates all washed and put away, Mrs Frew retired and Craig and Kirsty were left alone in the kitchen.

On the shelf above the fire was propped a single card, a greeting from Mrs Frew to Kirsty and Craig.

Craig took it down and glanced at it. ‘Did the postman bring this?’

‘No.’

‘What did the postman bring?’

‘Some cards for Mrs Frew, that’s all.’

‘Nothin’ from Carrick?’

‘No, Craig, nothin’.’

He replaced Mrs Frew’s card and lit a cigarette, holding the match cupped in his hand for a moment or two, watching the flame. He shook it out and flicked it into the hearth, inhaled, blew smoke through his nostrils.

Kirsty said, ‘Did you send them somethin’, dearest?’

‘Aye, somethin’ for each o’ them.’

‘Perhaps tomorrow—’

‘I thought Dad might’ve written, since it’s Christmas.’

‘Christmas doesn’t mean much. He’ll write at New Year, you’ll see.’

Craig shrugged, pretending that he did not care.

Kirsty put an arm about his waist and her head on his shoulder. Craig blew tobacco smoke over her head.

‘She must’ve stopped him,’ Craig said. ‘Mother, I mean. She’ll have put the kibosh on communication.’

‘When we’re in our new house –’

‘That’s all I keep hearin’.’ Craig curled his lip sarcastically. ‘When we’re in the new house. When the baby’s born.’

Kirsty disengaged herself. Though he had been cheerful all evening she sensed now that Christmas meant nothing to him, served only to rub the wounds of disappointment that he kept hidden from her.

‘When we get married—’ he murmured, and blew out a smoke ring. ‘When the bloody cows come home!’

‘Craig,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong wi you? Don’t you like the job?’

‘Aye, I like the job fine,’ he answered. ‘What I don’t like is bein’ away from it.’

Kirsty gasped – ‘
Oh
’ – and swung away from him. She found herself at the sink, a washing-cloth in her hand. She wiped the dry draining-board, wiped it again.