The Nickum (32 page)

‘You’ll pass,’ her father said, grinning like he’d won the pools. ‘You’ve aye been a bonny lass, and you’ve a fine figure now, and all.’

‘Jake, what a thing to say to your own daughter!’ Emily said, indignantly.

‘Nothing wrang in that. She
has
got a fine figure, and that’s what they need.’

‘There’s just one thing, though,’ Becky said now. ‘With the pay I’ll get, it’s going to be a struggle to pay bus fares every day and pay for my keep as well.’

Jake said nothing to this. He had no illusions about his daughter, and knew she was capable of milking them dry, if she felt like it. Emily, however, trusted her implicitly. ‘Ah, you don’t need to pay for your keep. If you’re away all day, you won’t need anything at dinnertime, just your supper at suppertime.’

‘Are you sure?’ Becky was the picture of innocence, but Jake still had doubts.

The matter was settled in a way that none of them had anticipated, not even Becky. By this time, Millie Meldrum, MA, had taken up a post in the Central School and was still lodging with her aunt in the Spital. There had been a bit of a struggle to decide who was to look after her son, but eventually the two grandmothers settled on sharing him. Every alternate Sunday afternoon, therefore, Herbert drove her and the baby to the Fowlies, and took them back the next week. It was an ideal solution for everyone concerned, except Sophie Chalmers, who was slightly miffed at being left out, but was talked into seeing that taking the infant to Aberdeen would be one too many change for him and also rather too much for her.

Thus it was that, when the Meldrum family arrived on the Sunday after Becky’s good news, it was Millie who exclaimed, ‘But there’s no need to worry about lodgings, Becky. You can come to my Auntie Sophie. She’s got a spare room and she’ll be delighted to have Willie’s sister. She was very fond of him, you know.’

Becky was more than delighted when she arrived at the Spital to be told that Sophie wouldn’t take anything for her board, and started her new job in high spirits. Because it was something she did know a great deal about, she was quite at home on the cosmetics counter, and could charm even the most difficult of elderly females into purchasing expensive brands. She was, therefore, kept on as a permanent member of the staff.

Everything went smoothly now, and Emily accepted Margaret Meldrum’s invitation to join them for Christmas dinner. Jake hadn’t been all that happy about having to be on his best behaviour for so long, and was worried in case he made a fool of himself over which item of cutlery to use, but Becky managed to get round him, as she usually did.

Hector Meldrum collected them, and Margaret apologised for not having the ingredients she would have liked to make the kind of Christmas dinner she had been used to making before the war, but there was nothing wrong with what she did produce, and it was six really satisfied – and quite merry – adults who sat round the fire in the evening. Billy was allowed to be a little later in going to bed, and was sitting happily on whoever’s knee he happened to be on, chomping into an ivory animal meant to help his teeth to come through.

‘He’s very good,’ Becky smiled. ‘Some babies would be fractious with so many folk around them.’

Millie giggled. ‘He’s happiest when people are fussing over him. He loves company.’

Emily’s mind went back over the years. She had always made a fuss of her girls, and it had only been Gramma Fowlie who made more of Willie. Not wanting to spoil the atmosphere, however, she said nothing of this.

The good feeling, luckily, remained with them even after Herbert Meldrum drove them home at half past eight, and, completely exhausted, they had a last cup of tea and went to bed.

The normal daily and weekly routines were going well. Becky and Millie came home on the bus together every Friday evening and returned to the city every Sunday after-noon. They hadn’t become close friends as may have been expected, because Millie was usually busy preparing her English lessons for the next day, while Becky had chummed up with Sally Cromar, one of her fellow assistants from Boots’ beauty counter. They went to the cinema together sometimes, took walks if it was good weather, went into a tearoom or café for a coffee – a taste Becky had acquired in New York – and flirted with any boys who looked at them, although Becky was less exuberant than Sally. Her experiences with men were not something she wanted to repeat.

One night, however, as they sat in a small café just off Union Street, Sally said, ‘There’s a man over there hasn’t taken his eyes off you since he came in. Don’t look round, he’s coming over.’

Becky froze, hoping that whoever he was had mistaken her for somebody else. She didn’t want to get involved with anybody – not yet, anyway.

‘Hello, Becky, I thought it was you.’

Recognising the voice, she looked up in astonishment. ‘Jackie!’

‘I’m called Jack these days. I heard you were home, but I wasn’t sure if you’d want to see me.’

Sensing an atmosphere now, Sally got to her feet. ‘Look, Beck, I’ll leave you two to talk. I meant to go home early at any rate.’

‘It’s OK, don’t go,’ Becky began, but her ex-husband said, ‘Thanks, I’m very grateful, but we’ll have to find a better place to talk, Becky. This is too public.’

‘I’ve lodgings in the Spital, if you want to see me home. I don’t think my landlady will object.’

He said nothing for some time as they walked along, and then, finally, ‘You didn’t get married again?’

‘No, did you?’

‘No.’

That was it, but Becky knew that it wouldn’t stop there. He would want to know what she had been doing, and she couldn’t tell him that. Or maybe she should. It would be best to be perfectly honest … but not at first.

When she let herself into the house, she told him to wait there for a minute, and went to ask for permission to take someone into her room. ‘A man friend?’ Sophie asked, eyebrows raised in slight disapproval. She hadn’t really taken to Becky, who was nothing like her brother.

‘Yes, but he’s my ex-husband and he only wants to talk. I left him in kind of a hurry, you see, and I think he wants to find out why I didn’t tell him.’

‘And why didn’t you?’

‘It was his father who told me to leave, and … oh, it’s a long story.’

‘Righto, then, as long as that’s all there is to it.’ Yet the elderly woman still came out to take a look at the young man in question, before nodding amicably and retreating into her sitting room.

‘You’ve obviously made a good impression on her,’ Becky smiled, somewhat nervously.

‘I can do – on some women.’ The meaning was quite clear.

She sat down on the edge of her bed, but pointed to the only chair available, in case he thought of joining her. ‘Now, you wanted to talk?’

‘I wanted to know why? You left me without a word, and I want to know what I did wrong?’

She inhaled deeply. ‘You did nothing wrong. Really, Jackie – Jack – it wasn’t your fault, it was mine. I was a spoilt brat, always wanting my own way, and I loved living the good life – getting lots of new clothes, spending as much as I could and getting away with it.’

‘I was happy for you to have everything you wanted.’

‘I know, but I took advantage of you. I knew you wanted a family, and when I did fall, I didn’t want to have to through all the growing fat and the pain of gving birth, so … I had an abortion.’

‘What? I never knew that. I thought you had miscarried.’

‘Your father tumbled to it, though, and told me to get out, that I wasn’t a proper wfe for you.’ Pausing for only a moment, she added, ‘And I wasn’t, Jack. I wasn’t.’

‘It was up to me to decide that,’ he murmured quietly.

‘Yes, I can see that now.’ She looked at him earnestly. ‘Wouldn’t you have felt the same?’

‘No, I wouldn’t. I loved you, Becky, still do, with all my heart, and I’d rather have you back than have a dozen kids.’

‘No you wouldn’t. Not after you hear what I did in New York.’

‘I don’t want to hear what you did in New York. I don’t care.’

‘Please, Jack, I have to tell you. We can’t have any kind of relationship unless you know.’

Giving a vague nod, he settled back in the chair and let her go ahead. She left nothing out, not even excusing herself for the downward spiral in which she had been forced to travel, noticing that he dropped his eyes after she introduced the word ‘prostitute’, but jerking his head up again when she called herself a ‘whore’. ‘No, Becky,’ he protested, ‘I’ll not let you say that about yourself. You were forced into it by circumstances, and nobody could blame you for that.’

‘Not many people would see it that way.’

‘Not many people love you like I do. Oh, Becky, can’t you see I don’t care what you did over there? It’s what you did while you were still here that puzzled me, but now I know there was no other man involved, everything else is forgotten. I want you back, and if you don’t want a family, that’s fine by me.’

‘I couldn’t do that to you,’ she protested.

‘You could, and you will. Please, my darling, give us one more try. Marry me again, and we’ll—’

‘Live happily ever after?’ She smiled sadly. ‘It won’t happen, Jack. You’d soon come to resent me for not giving you children, and start remembering what I did.’ She regarded him thoughtfully for a moment or so, the clearcut features, the neat wavy hair, and suddenly, as she looked into the dark brown eyes that were showing the full depth of his feelings for her, she felt a surge of affection for him; more than affection, she realised in some surprise. She had never felt this way before, about him or anyone else, and it was nice – very nice. Most enjoyable. But would it last?

Having obviously sensed a change in her, he asked, ‘Do you want to think about it, my dear?’

‘I probably should, but you know me. I make up my mind quickly.’

‘And live to regret it sometimes, no doubt, so I’ll leave you to consider everything properly, and then I’ll ask you again. I’d rather wait a while and be sure of you than grab you now and chance losing you again some time later.’

‘All right, then, but you know something? I think I just grew up.’

He grinned then, the same boyish grin she remembered, and after he had gone, she lay back on the eiderdown and recalled the way he had made love to her when she was his wife. The first few weeks had been a bit wild, but nothing like as bad as she’d had to put up with in New York, but after that Jackie had been gentle, considerate, respectful even, and she knew for sure that they had a future together.

It was a week before she saw him again, ambling in some embarrassment up to the beauty counter in Boots. ‘Outside, at six tonight?’ he asked, turning away relieved when she nodded.

Emily Fowlie was really exhausted as she sat down on the Sunday afternoon after little Billy had been collected by his mother and other grandfather. As she remarked to Jake, ‘I’m really feeling my age these days. I’m turned fifty-seven, soon be sixty, and I’m just not fit to look after a boisterous three-year-old for a whole week at a time.’

‘Aye he’s a bit of a handful, right enough, but I’d say his other gramma looks sixty-five at the least, an’ you dinna look a day over forty.’

‘Get away with you, Jake Fowlie.’ But she was pleased, just the same.

On the following Sunday afternoon, when Billy was taken back for Emily’s stint of having him, Margaret Meldrum turned up with her husband, because Millie hadn’t come home that weekend.

‘She’s busy marking exam papers,’ Margaret explained to the other grandmother. But she waited until the two men had taken the little boy out for a walk, as they had taken to doing every week, before unburdening herself. ‘I’m feeling it a real strain looking after him now he’s bigger. He’s into everything, touching things he shouldn’t be touching.’

‘You don’t need to tell me,’ Emily smiled. ‘He’s the same here, just like his father used to be.’

‘Of course, I’ve never had anything to do with boys before,’ Margaret excused herself, ‘but it’s one thing after another. He’s a right wee …’

‘Nickum,’ Emily ended for her.

‘How did you know that was what I was going to say?’ Margaret was completely taken aback.

‘That’s what Jake’s mother used to call Willie, but I thought he was the devil himself. I always did, and I’m ashamed of myself for it now.’

‘And so you should be. Your Willie turned out to be a true hero. I always knew he was the salt of the earth. So did Herbert, that’s why he took such an interest in him. He’d have been the happiest man on earth if Willie had been our son-in-law.’

Emily swallowed hard. She would never get over losing her son without ever having told him she loved him. ‘Ah well, it wasn’t to be.’

During that week, when little Billy came rushing in crying and covered in what she recognised as muck out of the midden, she hugged the chubby little body before stripping and scrubbing him, recalling sadly that she had been furious with Willie when he had done exactly the same.

Nothing of any real consequence happened for a few weeks, but about ten days before Christmas, when much preparation was going on in the schoolhouse kitchen, Margaret was busily tying up little gifts she had bought for various tradespeople and for her little maid, Fanny, who had replaced Janet some time ago. Billy had been playing with the cat on the heathrug in front of the large fireguard that protected him from the fire, and as long as he was happy, and quiet, she wasn’t really bothered about how he was amusing himself. He had asked her once what she was doing and she had answered him honestly, ‘I’m wrapping up Christmas presents.’

Shortly after this, he had run out to fetch something, and when she saw him coming back with a towel, she thought nothing of it. It was only when the cat started yowling that she turned round to ask, impatiently, ‘What are you doing to that cat?’

‘Kissmapezzie,’ he replied.

Understanding only the first syllable, she half-snapped, ‘Well, stop trying to kiss him and leave him alone.’

There were a few minutes’ silence, but when the yowling began again she rounded on him. ‘I told you to stop trying to kiss him. Can’t you learn to do what you’re told?’