Time Shall Reap (18 page)

‘Why should he mind?’ Helen lifted the baby out of the pram. ‘You’re Jimmy’s bairn and all, aren’t you, my pet?’

This final proof of what Helen believed made Elspeth feel like seizing her child and running off with him, but she realized that it might be better to have a word with Jimmy first. He would surely be willing to reason with his wife.

When he came in at teatime, Helen told him that Elspeth was thinking of going out to work, at which he scratched his head in wonderment. ‘It’s funny you should speak the day about getting a job, lassie, for one o’ the lads was saying this morning that his auntie’s in charge o’ the cafe in the Market, and she can’t get lassies the now – they’re all making munitions.’

‘It’s more wages,’ Helen conceded, ‘but they work long hours and Elspeth wouldna want that.’

‘I wasna saying she should make munitions.’ Jimmy rolled his eyes to the ceiling. ‘I was meaning she might get a job as a waitress, and that’s a step up from being in service, I would think.’ He glanced at Elspeth triumphantly.

A little frown creased her forehead. ‘I don’t know the first thing about waitressing, though.’

‘You’d manage fine. Go down to the cafe the morrow and ask for ...’ His face fell. ‘Och, I never thought to ask what her name was.’

‘Och, you, you’re useless,’ Helen chided him, fondly. ‘Just ask for the lady in charge, Elspeth, and tell her it was her nephew said she was needing waitresses. You might as well try – there’s no harm in asking.’ She brought the discussion to an end by rising to put the baby back in his pram, and starting to clear the table.

When Helen went to the lavatory, Elspeth seized her chance. ‘Jimmy,’ she began, rather apprehensively, ‘do you think it’s a good thing for me to leave John wi’ Helen? She still thinks John’s hers, and the longer it goes on, the harder it’ll be for her to give him up to me.’

‘I was feared for this,’ he said, sadly. ‘Some women can’t face losing a bairn. I’ve heard o’ some that go off their heads altogether and steal another woman’s out o’ a pram ... I suppose that’s just what Helen’s done, when you come to think about it. John’s a substitute for the poor wee thing that didna live. She needed comfort, and she’s got it from him, but she’s aye been a strong woman, and I’m sure she’ll get her wits back in another week or two.’

‘I hope so.’

‘Just keep going along wi’ her, Elspeth, for she’s been through a real bad time.’

‘Aye, so she has.’ Elspeth felt annoyed at herself for mentioning it. She should be glad that Helen was so fond of John, for it meant that she would have no worries about leaving the woman to look after him.

When Elspeth returned from her mission the following day, she was babbling with excitement. ‘I’ve to start at seven the morrow morning. Miss Mackay was pleased I went, and she says I’m just the kind o’ girl she was looking for.’

Helen nodded approvingly. ‘Aye, you’re neat and clean, and you’ve a bonnie face. That would be important in a cafe.’

‘We’ve to wear black dresses, and white aprons and caps, and they supply them but we’ve to launder them, and the early shift’s seven to three, and the late shift’s three to eleven.’ Elspeth stopped, breathlessly.

‘Hold on, my brain’s spinning.’ Helen, holding baby John on her knee, was rocking him gently as the girl prattled.

‘You’ll not mind me working shifts? It’ll be near midnight before I get home if I’m on late.’

‘No, no, lassie, it makes no difference to me.’

‘They’ve some busy spells, when the fish market porters come in for breakfasts or dinners, but in between there’s sailors off the boats, and soldiers passing through, and country women waiting for a train.’

Helen burst out laughing. ‘I suppose I’ll get a report every day about the goings on at the People’s Cafe.’

‘Och, you,’ Elspeth smiled. ‘You’re making fun o’ me.’

The clock in the steeple had struck six before Meg Forrest got away from the committee meeting in the kirk vestry. Wheeling her bicycle down the stony path, she felt irritated that Mrs Black, the minister’s wife, hadn’t been firm enough to get them to make up their minds about the Harvest Festival. If old Mrs Proctor, the banker’s wife, had been there, she’d have had it organized in record time, but she had sent her apologies.

Meg shivered as she reached the road. The vestry had been cold, but she would be warm enough by the time she got home, for she’d have to hurry. As she pedalled round the corner into the High Street, two girls came out of Miss Fraser’s workshop, a little ahead, the small one shouting, ‘Cheerio, Nettie,’ as she disappeared into a low cottage.

The other girl looked round, startled, when Meg dismounted beside her. ‘Oh it’s you, Mrs Blairt ... Mrs Forrest. What a fear you gave me.’

Meg smiled at the confusion over her name. ‘You’re Nettie Duffus, aren’t you? Have you ever heard from Elspeth Gray since she went to the town?’

‘No, she’s never wrote, and she’s never been to see us. I think she’ll not want to come back, for it would remind her about John For ... oh!’ Nettie’s face turned scarlet.

‘It’s all right, Nettie,’ Meg assured her. ‘I ken’t about her and John, and I’ve something to tell her. I don’t want to ask her folk for her address, though, in case she never tell’t them about my John.’

‘I don’t think Lizzie kens where she is, any road. I asked her myself last week, for I thought I’d like to write and see how Elspeth was getting on, and she looked at me real funny. I think there must have been a row about Elspeth going to Aberdeen.’

Meg was disappointed. The new grandfather clock in her parlour would have to remain where it was, though Blairton would not be pleased, for he moaned every day about having to squeeze past it before he could get a seat.

Helen Watson had been correct in supposing that she would get a daily report about the cafe. Elspeth came home full of it the very first afternoon, her worry about John forgotten for the time being. ‘D’you ken this, Helen?’ she said, after she had exhausted everything else. ‘We’ve to serve from one side and take the dirty dishes from the other side.’

‘Mmphmm?’ Helen’s mouth held a safety pin – she was in the process of changing the baby.

‘Miss Mackay says though it’s just a little cafe for working folk, she wants it run like the big restaurants.’

‘I hope you’ll not expect your big rest-your-ant ideas in this kitchen.’ Helen laid little John down in his pram and looked proudly at the girl. ‘I took John out in his pram this morning, and Mrs Norrie from number six come into the shop behind me, and she says to me, “I see you’ve had your bairn, Mrs Watson? What a bonnie wee thing he is.” Well, he is, isn’t he, Elspeth?’

After a slight pause, Elspeth murmured, ‘Aye, he is.’ She could not imagine what John Forrest would have said about her letting Helen carry on with her fantasy. It was as if she were denying their son, but she would never have been in this predicament if he had still been alive. Anyway, if the neighbours thought the baby was the Watsons’, it would stop any gossip about her, and once Helen remembered and accepted that her own baby had died, it could all be put right.

When she persuaded her landlady to let her take the infant out in the pram herself after that, she had to bite her tongue when the kindly women of Quarry Street said, ‘You’re the lassie that lodges wi’ Mrs Watson, aren’t you? This’ll be her bairnie?’

She found it hard to smile and nod, when her heart was telling her to shout, ‘No, he’s mine! Mine and a poor, dead soldier’s.’ After feeling particularly resentful one day, she went home and burst out, ‘Helen, this has gone on long enough! I can’t stand any more of it!’

‘My goodness, lass, what’s up wi’ you?’

The woman’s expression of concern made the girl take a deep breath. ‘It’s time to face facts. Everybody thinks John’s your baby, and ...’

‘But John is my baby. Do you not mind the awful labour I had? Not that I’m complaining, for the lambie was worth it.’

‘Aye, I mind the terrible time you had,’ Elspeth began, ‘and I mind how sorry I felt when Doctor Robb said ...’ She broke off, unable to remind her landlady what had been the outcome of that labour.

Her eyes narrowing, Helen said, a little impatiently, ‘I think you’re working too hard at that cafe. It’s making you muddle things up in your mind. I didna like to say anything before in case you didna want to speak about it, but I suppose it’s wi’ me having John so quick after you lost your bairnie that’s made you ...’

‘I didna lose my baby!’ Elspeth shouted. ‘It was you!’

Shaking her head and tutting, Helen said, sadly, ‘I ken how you must feel, but you’ll get over it, lass.’

Utterly defeated, Elspeth turned away. It was no use, for Helen would not be told, but it would all come back to her one of these days.

As the weeks passed, Elspeth found little time to dwell on the rights and wrongs of allowing people to believe their mistaken conclusions, and gradually put it to the back of her mind. She loved her job, and found herself parrying the teasing – even giving back as good as she got – of the bluff, hearty regulars to the cafe, with their store of witticisms. They had no counterparts in Auchlonie, where the men were more dour and serious, their few jokes lacking the snappiness of the city workers. The servicemen she had to deal with, however, were mostly single men out for a lark with any young girl, and she soon learned how to rebuff their amorous advances without causing offence, and to smilingly refuse if one of them, bolder than the rest, asked her to go out with him.

She could never keep company with anybody again, and, in any case, not one of these boys caused the slightest flutter in her heart. Nobody could ever replace her lost love.

1917

David Fullerton was sitting outside on the verandah, the penetrating February wind making him shiver in spite of the sunshine. The doctor had told him this morning that he was fit enough now to go into the town, instead of just walking round the hospital grounds – but he did not feel ready yet. He could not face other people, normal people, with this terrible guilt in his gut. How could he be glad to be alive when his friends and comrades had all been killed, their bodies blown to bits and scattered over a Belgian field?

The horror of the trenches engulfed him again. The filthy, rotting stench filled his nostrils, and the ghostly rats crept round him looking for something to eat; dead human flesh – or the living, if they were not careful. Their own food had to be gulped between bombardments, and sleep also had to be snatched during the lulls. Mud-caked clothing rasped against his skin once more, and his feet ached within the confines of rock-hard, ill-fitting boots. His whole body crawled with lice, and he scratched his head in a vain effort to rid his hair of them. His mind returned to his closest friends, the three young men who had been with him through so much.

They were what had made everything bearable; they had been in it together, till death did them part, but never for one minute believing that such a time would ever come. They had been a happy-go-lucky lot, singing without a care as they marched, if the pipes weren’t playing in front of the column. They had teased each other, told crude jokes, even argued and quarrelled at times, but always there had been the easy feeling of close brotherhood, the knowledge that they were facing danger together. They had helped each other to bear the sarcasm of their NCOs, to obey without question the commands of their officers. Other units were wiped out by the shelling, other men were shot, but it could never happen to them.

And his friends hadn’t known about it, David thought, with some gratitude. They couldn’t have had time to realize what was happening. He, himself, could only remember the terrific explosion close beside him, and being lifted off the ground by it. He discovered later that he had been thrown some feet away from where he had been crouching, and must have lain unconscious for several minutes – or several hours – but he had gradually become aware of screams and groans, the heart-rending noises of men in mortal agony. That was when he had started to search for his friends. It had meant nothing to him when he came across other comrades writhing in the throes of death – they were not his special three – and he had kept looking until he found them.

He shouldn’t think about it. Every doctor he had ever seen had said he should try to forget, to blot it from his mind, but he couldn’t. Even when he was asleep he could see them, the bits of them – arms, legs, broken bodies – in the mud and against the sand-bagged walls of the dug-out. He vaguely remembered scrabbling in the debris then, scouring for someone else who was still alive, and going back to the wounded men he had callously passed before, but the screaming and groaning had stopped. He was the only living person left. It was then that he’d heard a low moaning sound and had lifted his head, hope rising in his breast until it came to him that the sound was issuing from his own throat.

Reliving the horror of Ypres, as he had done every night and day for months, he shivered again. They told him afterwards, those dim faceless figures who had rushed to help him over the last few yards to the base, that he had been crawling on hands and knees when they saw him. Later still, doctors said he had travelled more than five miles, but though he could hear them, he could not tell them what had happened. His mind had been blank for weeks, and he wished now that it had stayed that way, because, by the time he had begun to notice his surroundings, he was in a hospital in England and the nightmares had started. They said he was lucky, but how could he be, when he was the only one of four – the only one of a hundred – still alive? He had shut himself off from the world and wished from the depths of his still-beating heart that he had been killed along with the others.

‘It’ll take time, but you will forget.’ He had heard the useless words from medical men – men who worked out what went on inside the human brain – in Belgium, in England and now in Aberdeen, his home town. It was easy for them to say – how would they have reacted in the same situation? – but it would remain with him for the rest of his days.

David was so deeply involved in his horrific memories that he didn’t hear the nurse approaching. ‘Right, Fullerton,’ she said briskly. ‘Doctor Menzies says you must go into town this afternoon. Walking round the grounds is all right as far as it goes, but you’ve got to try yourself properly.’ The alarm in his eyes made her add, kindly, ‘You can ask somebody to go with you this time, if you’re scared to go on your own.’