Jennie About to Be (49 page)

Alick stood staring up at the broadsheets, and she shared his suspense and anxiety as he searched them all for his own name, afraid that it was there but that he couldn't find it. She scanned them quickly. They were shipowners' advertisements in English. She put her mouth close to his ear and said, “You're not there. It's all about ships.”

“And that's what I'm needing.” He wiped his forehead.

“They make everything sound very fine. And
dear
. How many of these people today can afford a passage?” She read one aloud. “But that ship won't be here for another ten days. Another one goes in a fortnight and will stop at Fort William only if enough passengers will be embarking here.”

He gave her a look of utter despair, and she knew he was thinking the words he had said to her when he looked up from Nigel's body.
I am a hanged man
.

“But there are ships here already,” she argued. “Those people we walked with—they must be sure of something; they can't be simply hoping against hope.”

“No, they have paid their passage already. They sail today.”

“Then let us go and see for ourselves. Someone might lose heart and decide not to go, and you'd be there—”

“We'll just be stepping in here first.” He breasted the stream, towing her behind him and in through the door where the straw-headed lad had gone. When it had shut them off from the street, he said, “A friend of mine who is in the Army is married to the Sassenach woman who owns this place. He is away in Spain.”

They stood in a square entry with steep stairs going up directly ahead, a closed door on either side. A confusion of voices and the pervasive scents of food, ale, and tobacco seeped out around the one to the left.

“Wait here,” Alick ordered. He went into the noisy room. By the light from the window on the stair landing she saw that the steps were passably clean, though the floor wasn't, what with all the coming in off the street. She sat on the third one up, averted her eyes from the condition of her brogues and ankles, and leaned her head against the wall. When she shut her eyes, she began to swoop back and forth in dizzying downward swings, like a courting woodcock. Only
he'd
have known exactly where he was going.

It seemed to her that she had not been this tired all the time in the hills, except for that first scarifying day.

Someone came in, talking, from the street. Through her lashes she saw a youngish couple with a child, and at sight of her drooping there they instantly subdued their voices and quieted the child, with the instinctive good manners of the Gael. She closed her eyes and began the woodcock descent again.

“She looks 'alf-dead,” said a strident Cockney voice so close that she jumped.

“I am
not
!” she said at once, opening her eyes and sitting up.

“Alick, you scoundrel, what 'ave you been up to?” The woman with him was taller than he, and stout, wearing a serviceable figured cotton dress and a white fichu. Her sleeves were rolled up above her elbows, and her bare muscular arms were folded across her considerable bust. Her pale hair was done up in a little bun on top of her head, and she looked down at Jennie from small yellowish eyes under almost non-existent eyebrows. Her nose was ludicrously tiny for the rest of her, but the surprise was the long humorous mouth that was twitching now with both amusement and dismay.

“Up you go, love!” she said vigorously.

“Where?” Jennie asked.

“We are having a room here,” Alick said politely.

“You're coming up, too?”

“Of course 'e is, love,” the woman said. “You don't think 'e's deserting you now, do you?”

She switched around Jennie and ran up the stairs. Jennie pulled herself up, gazing at Alick, and he nodded. “It will be all right.”

The woman waited by an open door to the right of the landing. “'Ere you are, love, my finest!” She waved them in. “Kept special for the gentry and me man's kinfolk and his old whisky-smuggling comrades.” She winked outrageously at Alick. “No nahsty little animules in the bedding, and my own bedroom right below, so it's quiet as the grive. Do you tell me 'er nime, laddie, or is she Lady X?”

“Jeannie,” said Alick reluctantly. “Nancy MacNichol.”

Jennie put out her hand. “How do you do, Nancy?”

“Nancy's always flourishing, but she'll do better when 'er man comes back.” She looked cannily into Jennie's eyes. “Whatever made you choose this one to run away with, dearie?” She threw back her head and laughed boisterously at Jennie's confusion.

“Never mind Nancy! She's only teasing you. Now then, Alick—”

Jennie didn't listen. She was looking about her as if she had been transported in her dreams like a maiden in a fairy tale from one country to another, and was still dazed. Moving like a sleepwalker, she leaned against the doorway and untied the brogue laces without seeing what she was doing. She stepped out of them and then walked onto the scrubbed floor.

The room smelled clean and was well lighted by two windows with white curtains. The bed was made up with a blue and white woven coverlet, a plain nightstand beside it. A scarred armoire had a wall to itself. The washing stand held a white earthenware basin and ewer, and there were clean towels on the rack. A small square table stood between the windows, with two straight chairs drawn up to it. There were three candlesticks on the narrow mantelpiece, holding candles of varying lengths; a fire was laid but unlit in the little grate.

Nancy was chaffing Alick in her loud, roistering way, but he didn't speak. Jennie went to the windows. The misty white heat of the sun burned through the glass. She looked out over a clutter of roofs toward the pale sheen of Loch Linnhe and the ships riding at anchor; the fort stood on a promontory off to the right, its flag hanging limp.

She was actually
here
; the room was real, Nancy MacNichol indubitably existed, and Alick was still there, though as silent and dark as a shadow. So why did everything out there except the sea gulls have no more substance for her than a series of very pale watercolors?

“Niall always told me you were the deep one, Alick, you sly dog,” Nancy was saying. “Now I believe it! Eloping with an English lidy! Now, young miss, what'll it be first, 'ot water or 'ot tea, or both together?”

Laboriously Jennie turned her attention back to the room. “Both,” she said gratefully.

Nancy slapped Alick familiarly on the shoulder and went out. They heard her heels on the bare stairs and her lusty welcome to a newcomer off the street.

“She's heard nothing,” Alick said to Jennie. “I am knowing by the way she
is
, you see. She is not one who can be hiding things; she has only the one face.” He reached into his shirt and brought out the little velvet sack. “Here is your money.”

She tipped the sovereigns out onto the table. There were twenty-four left now. She counted off fifteen and pushed them toward him. His gaunt cheeks were dark red under the beard, and he pushed the money away. “I have a little. I will be taking just enough to finish paying for my passage, no more.”

“You will need something when you get there.”

“And you will be having to pay for your journey back to England.”

“Take half then.” He was still obdurate, and she flared at him. “Alick,
take
it! This is no time for a duel of wills! We were comrades out there on the moors; why should it change when we're inside four walls at the end?”

He turned his head sharply away, and the tilt of his bonnet half hid his face, but she could see his free hand knot into a fist, open, and clench again.

“I know I try your patience, Alick,” she said humbly. “But I have done so much damage to your life, at least I can see that you don't arrive penniless in America.”

Without meeting her eyes, he picked up twelve coins and put them in his purse. “Thank you. I will be off to the ships now. If I find a place, I will be staying on the vessel till she is sailing.” His voice was strained as if something pulled too tightly around his throat.

“But how will I
know
?” she demanded. “I have to know if you are safely away.” She felt inexplicably close to tears.

“All you are needing to know is that I am gone, and you will be going home,” he said flatly on his way to the door.

She followed him, speaking to the back which she had followed for so many miles. “Alick, if they—
if
the other thing happens, you must tell them
at once
where I am, so they'll know you didn't do away with me. And I'll tell them that you didn't force me to go with you. I came because I was terrified of my husband. He struck me, you defended me, and we were running away from him, not knowing he was dead but
because
I was afraid of him.”

He stood with his hand on the latch, and she couldn't tell whether he heard her or had simply shut her off. “I can swear he almost killed you,” she said unsteadily. “And I really was afraid of what he had become.”

“If I find passage, I'll be somehow letting you know,” he said over his shoulder and looking past her. “You will be giving the ship a day's start, if you please, and then Nancy will tell you when the coaches come and go.”

His thumb pressed down on the latch, and the door clicked open. She could not believe it was over like this. She wanted to make some gesture, but what? They had suddenly become completely alien to each other. Her hand moved on its own and just brushed the folds of the plaid. He swung the door open wide and walked out of the room.

She listened to him going away down the stairs and then fell face down across the bed. In the darkness the room spun about her, and she sat up dizzily, in time to see three gulls flying on translucent wings between her and the sun, calling to each other in the harsh skirling cries remembered from Pippin Grange. She was rocked with the violence of sudden endings: Papa's death in Ember Lane; Tamsin dying like a little bird; Nigel struck down in the hollow by the Pict's House; and Alick gone like this.

There was a rap at the door, and Nancy came in with a tray which she set on the table. The boy followed with a heavy iron teakettle from which he filled the ewer, grinning self-consciously and very scarlet around the ears.

“Angus, take those brogues back with you,” Nancy said, “and give them a good brush.”

“Thank you!” she called after him. She walked in her stookinged feet to the table and lifted the padded cozy off the teapot. Fragrant steam rose from the spout; the substantial slices of bread and butter looked as exquisite as rose petals. Nancy poured the tea. She had brought two cups, and Jennie speculated wryly that this astringent company was as good as anything to fetch her back to the realities of the situation.

Nancy put two lumps of sugar in Jennie's cup without asking. “You need it, love. God knows what that wild man of yours 'as drug you through. Though I can guess, being married to one of 'em myself.” She looked affectionately into her teacup, as if seeing her Highlander's face there. “Och, aye, as this lot says. Lord, I laugh sometimes! What a lingo! And their English is as queer as the Gaelic. But I like 'em, you know. Would you think a London bird like me could endure it?”

“No,” said Jennie truthfully. “How do you happen to be here?”

“My first man—'e was from Portsmouth—and me started this little business when we was posted 'ere. Giles was going to be the great landlord be'ind the bar when 'is time was up. Well, it was the 'eart that took him off before 'is time. Big 'andsome man in the prime going down like a great oak.” She stirred her tea rapidly.

Jennie said, “That was how my father died.”

“Then you know what it's like. The suddenness, and not believing it's so. But I 'ad friends 'ere, and this place was filling a demand. That's what business is, supply and demand. A family can come in and get a decent meal; I never 'ad no goings-on and never will. And Niall MacNichol's a good man. But 'e better come 'ome to me,” she said calmly. “I'm not losing two of 'em.”

Suddenly her hand shot across the table and took Jennie's left one, turned it over palm upward. “Yes, it's a wedding ring, right enough, not one with the stone turned round.” She chuckled. “I said to Alick when he asked for a room, ‘Where's your marriage lines then?' and he never quivered an eyelid. “ ‘We 'ad a handfast wedding,' 'e says, 'and she's wearing 'er mother's ring.' ”

Jennie smiled. Her head kept wanting to turn to the windows. The farther shore was half-veiled in haze, its heights almost invisible. Loch Linnhe was white and still, the ships lying above motionless reflections. Little boats scuttled back and forth between the anchored vessels and the Fort William shore.

Nancy rose briskly. “You're anxious, and no wonder. You'd best be washing yourself while the water's still 'ot. I brought you some soap, rose-scented it is, too. And eat your bread and butter, love! You're so puny 'e'll 'ave to shake the sheets to find you!”

“I'll do my best, Nancy.” She took a sovereign from the velvet bag she'd left on the table. “I'd like to pay you for the room now and for all this help.”

“Alick's already paid for the room. When 'e comes back, I'll expect you downstairs for a good dinner. Is there anything more you need? A change of underwear? I'll wager it'll be better than whatever you're wearing under that outfit.”

“It would be nice,” Jennie admitted. “And a dentifrice and a tooth-brush. I've been cleaning my teeth with twigs.”

“Aye, I can find you something.” She shook a finger in Jennie's face. “And don't
worry
!”

The tea had quieted Jennie's stomach, and she ate bread and butter as she undressed, trying not to wolf it. She wished she could enjoy fully the sensuous pleasure of the hot water and the perfumed soap, and genuine towels to stand on and for drying herself. But she couldn't even prolong the experience; she had to hurry back to the windows, wrapped in the coverlet from the bed.