Jennie About to Be (10 page)

Sophie and Charlotte wept but enjoyed it. They had make a pact to catch the bouquet together and had accomplished it with a little help from Jennie, who had been forewarned. Now they told her they meant to have a double wedding. Then they hurried back downstairs to the baronet. Aunt Higham had seen to the disposal of the wedding gown and the strapping of the last trunk to go down the back stairs. Now she and her husband waited for Jennie in the passage outside her room.

“God bless you and keep you, love,” her aunt said, embracing her. “You're as sweet a bride as your mother was.” She was wet-eyed. “Write to me,” she commanded.

“I shall, dear Aunt Ruth.” She gave her hand to her uncle.

“Thank you for all you have done for me, Uncle,” she said. “I can never forget it.”

He gave her a ponderously sober nod and didn't release her hand. “Eugenia, I shall tell you what I shall tell each of my daughters when the time comes. If anything goes amiss, you will always be welcomed back.”

She was profoundly moved, but she knew better than to show it. She said solemnly, “Thank you, Uncle Higham.”

Nigel came along the passage in his traveling clothes, and he and Jennie went down the back stairs to the kitchen to receive the congratulations of the servants. Nigel tipped them all handsomely, including Tamsin's successor. Then they went through to the foyer and were swept out on a tide of blessings and good wishes. Nigel's cavalry friends threw rice over them, and the younger children called from an upper window, “Good-bye, good-bye!”

About to step up into the maroon barouche, Jennie suddenly balked, freed her elbow from Nigel's hand, and walked around to the horses' heads. “Good-bye, David, good-bye, Jonathan,” she said. She kissed each nose.

The coachman grinned. After seven months he had suddenly become a human being. “Good luck to you, Missis,” he said, “and you too, Captain, sir.”

I
TWAS
an idyllic sail down the Thames aboard
Minerva
, on immaculate decks under new canvas. Exhausted and at peace, Jennie and Nigel rested in the spring sunlight, wrapped in their traveling cloaks against the fresh breeze that filled the sails. There was an older couple aboard; the man was a Scottish associate of one of Uncle Higham's partners. They were on deck, too, to watch the green land slip by on either side and the other shipping large and small, but they left Nigel and Jennie to themselves.

Minerva
entered the North Sea, and the idyll ended. Though Jennie had grown up at the edge of the North Sea and had often been soaked in its surf and its fogs, she had been on the water only in the finest summer weather, in their old rowboat whose leaks they could never stop so that someone had to keep bailing. Nigel was no more of a deep-water sailor than she was. They managed to eat dinner with the captain and the Sinclairs and to respond to the toasts that were drunk to them, but the sight of the lamps swinging in the gimbals was too much for Jennie. She retired with dignified thanks, trying not to clutch Nigel's arm too obviously. They reached their stateroom and collapsed on their berths, from which Jennie rose with a strangled cry to vomit into the chamber pot, with Nigel holding her head.

It was their first real intimacy. After that he bolted for the deck and lost his own dinner.

They spent most of the wedding trip being seasick. A stewardess had been engaged for this voyage to attend to Jennie and Mrs. Sinclair, but she'd overestimated her own capabilities and was of no use to them from the first night on. Mrs. Sinclair, a nimble little body whose stomach was apparently made of iron, moved briskly between the stewardess and the Gilchrists, dispensing brandy, broth, and advice.

“Yon lass below is far worse than you are,” she told Jennie. “If she reaches Banff alive, she'll do well.” She was helping Jennie brush her hair in a comparatively quiet interlude when Nigel had gone feebly out on deck.

“None of us will reach Banff alive,” Jennie said weakly.

“It's not that bad! I've seen it much worse. Besides, while you can think of nothing but your stomach, you aren't worrying about French ships.”

“I wasn't worrying about them in the first place,” Jennie protested. “But I wouldn't care if they sank us right now.”

Mrs. Sinclair laughed and said, “Ye'd drown that bonny lad of yours, too, just to ease yourself?”

“Believe me, Nigel wouldn't care either,” Jennie assured her.

She and Nigel slept in separate berths, when they could sleep. In any case the berths were too narrow for two; Nigel was crowded when he was alone in one. The imminence of spasms of nausea if one moved too quickly precluded the mere thought of lovemaking. The only caresses were comradely gallantries like the fetching of a wet washcloth to cool a feverish face, tenderly removing a victim's shoes, and loosening the clothing after a tottery session on deck.

“We're passing your coast,” Mrs. Sinclair told Jennie, but she didn't care.

The illness tapered off as wind and seas dropped and
Minerva
rode more easily. Appetites revived; they wanted more than beef broth and thin porridge. Very early one morning they were on deck to look at Scotland in the sunrise across pale blue water scattered with brilliants. Mrs. Sinclair pointed out Slains Castle on the cliffs among green fields, the old granite house honey-colored in the aureate light. A little farther on the surf played harmlessly in and out of the Bullers of Buchan, long chasms worn deep into the cliffs. They passed the ancient fishing town of Peterhead and moved on cautiously well off a long sandy shore studded with reefs and crags; the helmsman recited a distressing litany of lost ships' names.

They rounded Kinnairds Head outside Fraserburgh into clouds and showers, with just enough wind to carry them on to Banff. In the rain the royal burgh was a blurred huddle of grays, browns, and black between its white sands and the brilliant green of the surrounding land, and the harbor was full of shipping. The biting chill and damp didn't discourage Jennie; she had known such Mays in Northumberland, and she had the clothes for them, thanks to her aunt's insistence on the lambs' wool underwear and flannel petticoats. She felt better than well after the long sickness; she was in tearing spirits, like Nelson when he raced around that paddock as fast as he could go on a spring morning.

Alone for a few moments, watching Nigel as he stood talking with Mr. Sinclair, she remembered as if down a perspective of years how he had first appeared to her. Now again he shone new-minted for her, this time against the bleak, soaked background of the old town, and the sight of him thus was like the return of the sun; Bel fires were called for, to celebrate.
But in between we have seen each other at our worst
, she thought. Demoralized with nausea, weakened beyond shame. And if he loved me as he tended me the way I loved him when I was struggling to get his boots off and not vomit all over him, then we have nothing to fear.

They ate dinner with the captain and the Sinclairs that night, the first real meal since they'd begun the voyage. The captain, a Yorkshire man, joked about the way they'd spent their honeymoon. They slept well all night, and Jennie complained that it wasn't natural to have the floor flat and level underfoot. The stewardess brought them tea and hot water in the morning for the first time. She was very white, with dark violet circles under her eyes.

“How will you get home again?” Jennie asked, thinking she'd leave the ship as soon as she could.

“The same way I got here, ma'am,” the girl answered with spirit. “If I had the money, I still wouldn't travel overland. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.”

“You mean you'd risk nearly dying of seasickness?” Nigel said.

“It might be I'd stand it better, sir. Besides, the cook has been good to me.” Color stained her pallor, and Nigel teased her about it. He gave her a tip, which she refused at first, saying she'd been of no use to them, but he waved her out in the grand manner.

“Love goes where it's sent,” he said, “even into a—forgive the barracks room talk, my love. You won't hear any more of it, I promise you.”

“I've heard that old saw before, and I think it was around the bam-yards before it ever reached the barracks. I'm glad to see that you can shave yourself. I thought you might have to have a valet do it for you, and our marriage would become a triangle.”

“If anyone's going to cut my throat, I'd rather be the one.”

“Oy, it's a rare treat to watch you, Capting, sir,” she said. He grinned and nicked his chin.

“First blood to you.”

“Oh, Nigel!” She was upset. “Is it deep?”

“No, it is not, but don't watch me. It's unnerving. I want so much to swoop down on you, my hand's trembling. I shall be slashed like a Heidelberg student.”

They were seen off with a hearty breakfast and the good wishes of the captain and the first mate. Nigel had expected to hire a carriage to take them to Inverness, and a wagon to move their goods, but the Sinclairs were being met by their own chaise-and-four, and invited the Gilchrists to ride with them. Sinclair himself picked a man to transport the gear.

“He's a good man. He'll not take his own time or cheat you.”

The showers had passed in the night, so when they drove out of Banff, the sun was burning through the thinning mists and turned slate roofs to polished silver, blindingly bright. Old stone took on the lustrous nap of fur or velvet. The broad Moray Firth opened out on their right, changing from pewter gray to marbled green and blue and white.

“It's lovely country where you're going,” Mrs. Sinclair said, “but wild.”

“Much wilder a hundred years ago,” her husband said. “There's law and order in the hills now, except for the whisky-smuggling, but they consider that their God-given right,” he added dryly. “If they've a safe place to hide a still, then it must be meant for them to have a still. And who's to begrudge them besides the excisemen? There's no doubt that Scotland has profited commercially from union with England, but the profit doesn't go very deep.”

The combination of Jennie's greedy interest and his being on Scottish soil again loosened his tongue like wine.

“When you see the dispossessed, you will see it all. They're turning them out for sheep. Evicted off lands where their forefathers lived in time out of mind. Many times it's been fertilized with their ancestors' blood. ”

“Now, Roddie,” said his wife, “it's a fine day, and these young folk—”

“There were abuses in the clan system, certainly,” he said to Jennie. “A lunatic here and there, abusing his life-and-death powers, and his people with nowhere to turn. But a man nurtured with the knowledge of his responsibilities is a far different man from one who is simply a landlord.”

She said quickly, “But it isn't that way at Linnmore, is it, Nigel?” The men sat opposite the women, riding backward, and he smiled across at her, a caress with his eyes.

“No, Mistress Gilchrist, it isn't.”

Mrs. Sinclair laughed like a girl. The three of them were ready to keep a light mood; the firth was blue, the sun now shone with a rare unclouded splendor, the northern chill couldn't blight the exuberance of the new greens. Only Mr. Sinclair resisted.

“It's fine, the sheep,” Mr. Sinclair said. “We need wool and mutton, too. But no need to throw helpless folk onto the roads or across the seas. There's room for all! It's a wicked thing when a glen where once hundreds of souls lived now belongs to six hundred sheep, two shepherds, and three dogs.”

She wished she were sitting next to Nigel, so she could put her hand through his arm and draw from the contact the assurance that the Highlands were all she had dreamed them to be: wild, free, and uncorrupted. She was defensively angry with Mr. Sinclair; she wanted to tremble with indignation that he should so abuse her hopes.

Deliberately she turned to Mrs. Sinclair. “You must come to see us at Linnmore. I shall write you when the house is settled.”

Mrs. Sinclair nodded comfortably.

“And the ministers are hand in glove with the lairds,” said her husband. She leaned forward and gently touched his hands, folded over the head of his stick.

“There's nothing you can do about it, my lad.”

“It's an ill thing to exchange men for sheep, and they've barely begun. Before they've done, the Highlands will be a wilderness ridden with ghosts.” He sat back in the corner, his face turned to the window, his black shoulder cutting them off as if he were repenting his eloquence.

Mrs. Sinclair told them what they were passing, and insisted upon a stop at Elgin to stretch their legs and show Jennie the cathedral.

One felt that no human voice should be raised in the silence among the magnificent ruins. Battered, broken, given over to birds and little wild four-footed things, it rose in scarred grandeur toward heaven as its builders had intended. The successive destroyers, beginning with the Wolf of Badenoch in 1390 and ending with Cromwell's men, were dust now, but the cathedral still stood.

Nigel had been brought here once as a child. “There was an old man who could give you the whole story, chapter and verse, but all that stayed with me was the Bloody Vespers, when the Inneses and the Dunbars had an infernal row during a service. I always hated being dragged to church, and I thought it would be topping to have a battle instead of a sermon.”

Mr. Sinclair, who had been gloomily poking around with his stick, said, “Aye, it would be an improvement on some of the sermons I've had to endure.”

“They were great glovemakers in Elgin,” Mrs. Sinclair said. “Saint Crispin is the patron saint of shoemakers and glovers. There he is, knocked about a bit, and here he is again.”

Jennie hardly heard her. She was reading an epitaph on a tomb: