The Girl with the Creel (33 page)

When Peter left for work on Wednesday, Elsie told her two sons to get ready to go out.

‘Oh, we're not going to the Yardie again, are we?'

She looked at Pattie's screwed-up face and couldn't help sympathizing with him. Because of the interest Hannah had taken in the boys when they were smaller, Peter had asked his wife to take them in to see her now and then, since she wasn't fit to go out herself. Elsie hadn't minded at first – Hannah always gave them a sixpence each, which had pleased them – but they were getting too big to be cooped up inside with a woman who kept kissing them like they were still babies. ‘I promised Hannah I'd look in the day,' she told Pattie, ‘but you and Tommy can bide here and play if you want. I'll ask Rosie McIntosh to keep an eye on you.'

As she dressed herself, her thoughts returned to what had been uppermost in her mind since Mick's visit the previous morning. She'd only given Lizann a warning, she'd never dreamt the stupid bitch would run away, but it was probably a good thing. If Lizann had stayed on in Buckie, Peter would likely have wanted a divorce so he could marry her; that would have been a financial disaster for his wife, for she would never get another man to hand over most of his wages.

Half an hour later, Elsie knocked on Hannah's door and walked in. ‘I'm going up the town,' she announced, breezily, ‘so if there's anything you need, I'll get it for you.'

‘Is the boys nae wi' you?' Hannah asked, her expression matching the whining accusation in her voice. ‘My wee grandsons?'

This really got Elsie's dander up. If Hannah thought she was the boys' grandmother, she must think Lizann was their mother. Well, Elsie Tait wasn't going to stand for that! No, by God! The old bitch was asking to be told a thing or two. Drawing up a chair, Elsie said, with feigned concern, ‘You'll be real worried about Lizann?'

‘I am that. Mick says she still hasna got over George and the bairnie. I wish I could go and see her but I canna get outside my door nowadays.'

‘You wouldna be able to see her supposing you could,' Elsie said, in a deceptively gentle manner. ‘You see, she was taking up wi' my Peter and I went to tell her to let him alone, and Mick says she's ran away and naebody kens where she is.'

‘Taking up wi' your Peter?' Hannah gasped, absorbing only one of these facts. ‘But he's her Peter.'

This was Bella Jeannie all over again, as far as Elsie was concerned, but she had to be more careful this time. ‘It's me that's Peter's wife,' she corrected, ‘but Lizann was encouraging him to her house. Nae that he needed much encouraging, for I'm sure he's been at her oftener than he's been at me since her man was drowned.'

‘No, no.' Hannah shook her head convulsively.

‘I warned her I'd tell the whole o' Buckie if she didna let him be, but I never thought she'd run away.'

‘My Lizann's run away?' It got through to Hannah at last, and her face crumpled, her bewildered eyes took on a wildness that made Elsie wish she hadn't tried to cause trouble. ‘I thought Mick would've tell't you,' she muttered as she jumped up, guilt making her add, ‘It's a secret, so you'd better nae tell onybody, and for ony sake, dinna let Mick ken I tell't you. Mind now, Hannah. It's a secret!'

As she had taken to doing every forenoon, Jenny went to see if Hannah had something for her dinner and, opening the door, she was astonished to hear her saying, ‘Mind and turn my mattress afore you put on clean sheets, Lizann.'

Thinking in delight that Lizann had come home, Jenny passed Hannah with a smiling nod, but there was no one in the bedroom. Back in the kitchen, she noticed that Hannah's eyes had a unnatural darkness to them. ‘Who were you speaking to just now?'

‘You, of course,' Hannah frowned. ‘And mind and polish the stair, and all, for you havena done them this week yet.'

‘Lou's going to do them this afternoon,' Jenny said, gently.

‘No, no, Lizann! You're nae to leave them for Lou.'

Her legs threatening to give way, Jenny grasped the edge of the table. Hannah was mistaking her for Lizann! She'd been all right yesterday, so what had brought this on? ‘Has anybody else been in to see you the day?'

Hannah smiled. ‘Just Jenny.'

Unable to be sure if there really had been someone or if the old woman was just imagining it, Jenny asked, ‘What was she saying?'

Hannah appeared to think about this, but her eyes were darting hither and thither slyly. ‘I canna mind. She was just in a minute.'

Jenny decided that it had been imagination. Her mind was gone again, poor thing, and she shouldn't be left on her own.

Lou arrived when dinner was over. ‘I made rice broth for her,' Jenny whispered, ‘and I'd to spoon it to her, for she's lost the use of her arms now, as well as her legs. And she's all muddled, for she thinks I'm Lizann. I don't know what's happened, but it's a good thing Mick didn't tell her anything before he sailed.'

Lou sighed deeply. ‘We'd better nae say onything, either, for she might go bizerk all together … and I'd best sleep wi' her the night.'

‘What's you two whispering about?' Hannah demanded, sharply.

Lou gave her a forced smile. ‘Jenny was saying she made rice …'

Hannah's brows shot down. ‘Jenny? Is she back? I thought it was just Lizann that was here.'

The other two exchanged agonized glances, then Jenny said, ‘I'm going home now, Hannah, but I'll see you the morrow.'

Hannah looked at her sister in perplexed suspicion when the door shut. ‘But she went away before Lizann came in. I'm near sure it was her that tell't me …' She broke off, gripping her lips tightly.

‘Tell't you what?' Lou prodded, though she could hardly think that Jenny had anything to do with Hannah's sudden deterioration.

‘Never you mind!' Hannah snapped.

Not wishing to upset her further, and believing in any case that she was havering, Lou stopped probing. If she and Jenny had got together and tried to get to the bottom of it they might have stumbled across the truth, because Peter Tait's wife was the only other young woman who ever visited Hannah. As it was, Elsie's unpremeditated villainy remained undetected.

PART TWO

1939–1942

Chapter Eighteen

‘There's something at the back o' my mind about you, Lizann,' Hannah observed one afternoon in March, frowning with the effort of trying to remember, ‘if I could only think what it is.'

Jenny had stopped correcting her about the name. It was easier to let her mother-in-law believe what she wanted to believe. She wished Mick had told Hannah the truth at the time, for there might come a day when her brain cleared and she would realize that it wasn't Lizann who washed her, dressed her, spoonfed her, potted her, put her to bed, and what would happen then? But Mick hadn't been capable of coping with the state his mother would have got herself into if she knew about Lizann. Oh, he had done his best to hide how he felt, Jenny couldn't deny that, but it wouldn't have taken much to knock him off balance altogether. That was why she had forced him – it had been easy since his resistance was at its lowest ebb – into marrying her as quickly as he could.

‘You need a wife to help you over your troubles,' she had declared, ‘and I've enough money to tide us over till you've squared the yard.'

They had been married immediately the banns had been cried, and the debt to the shipyard had been cleared, yet Mick still seemed to be living on a knife-edge, though he was everything she could have wanted as a lover.

She watched for him the following day and went out to speak to him before he came in. ‘I think your mother's beginning to know something's wrong. She said yesterday she'd something at the back of her mind about Lizann. Maybe you should tell her.'

Mick blew out a long breath from puckered lips. ‘But she still thinks you're Lizann, doesn't she? No, I think I'll leave it a while yet.'

Next morning, as Jenny was dressing her, Hannah said, ‘Your father'll be hame the day, Lizann. You'll have to make a big pot o' soup for him.'

As usual, Jenny just smiled at this, though she longed to shake the confused woman and tell her Willie Alec had been dead for years. ‘I'll get a bit of boiling beef after we've had our breakfast.'

‘She's back to thinking your father's still alive,' she whispered to Mick while they walked to the butcher's shop together.

‘Lou'll maybe be able to bring her out o' it,' Mick said, hopefully.

‘Lou wasn't feeling well yesterday, so maybe she'll not be coming.'

When someone knocked on the door in the middle of the forenoon, Jenny wondered why Lou was early and why she hadn't walked in as she normally did, so she was alarmed to see Sarah Smith, Lou's next door neighbour.

‘Your auntie sent me,' Mrs Smith explained. ‘She was in terrible pain wi' her stomach the whole night, and Jockie had to go for the doctor at seven this morning, and the ambulance took her to the hospital.'

‘Oh, my goodness!' Jenny gasped. ‘D'you know what it is?'

‘It sounded to me like a ulcer, or something like that.'

‘I'll tell Mick, she's his auntie. Thanks for letting us know.'

When Mick was told, he said, ‘It must be serious before she was put in the hospital, I'd better go and see her, for she's aye been good to us.'

He was gone for so long that Jenny prepared herself for bad news, but she was still shocked at his drawn face when he returned. He shook his head sadly. ‘She died before I got there. They said it was cancer, and she should have seen the doctor ages ago.'

‘Cancer?' Jenny exclaimed, her eyes as round as saucers. ‘Oh, my God! Yesterday was the only time I ever heard her complaining.'

They had both forgotten Hannah, who had been listening to every word but had got it wrong. ‘Lizann's got cancer?' she cried, hands jumping about on her lap. ‘But she's still a young lassie.'

Jenny burst into tears, and Mick knelt down beside his mother. ‘No, it's not Lizann. It's Lou.'

‘Lou hasna got cancer,' Hannah declared firmly. ‘She's never had a thing wrong wi' her. It was me took everything when we was young.'

‘Lou died in the hospital,' Mick said, slowly and gently, as if to a child, but his mother looked at him with blank eyes.

Standing up, he turned to his wife, who held out her arms and he went into them with a strangled moan. ‘Oh, Jen, I don't think she'll ever get over this, it's too much for her. It's too much for me.' His noisy sobs went on for some time, and Jenny, tears coursing down her own cheeks, held him tightly.

She saw a silent Hannah to bed earlier than usual that night, then went back to the kitchen. ‘Why were you away so long?' she asked Mick, who was sitting staring into the fire.

‘I'd to see this doctor and that doctor, and wait for them to sign a death certificate. Then I'd to go and look for Jockie. God knows how Lou put up with him since he stopped working, for he was in and out bars all day. He must have started after Lou went away in the ambulance, for he was blazing drunk by the time I found him. I said he'd better wait till he was sober before he arranged the funeral, and he started to cry and say he was sorry for how he'd treated her, and I'd to stay with him till he calmed down. Oh, Jenny, it's been awful.'

‘I could see you were worn out when you came back. I'm feeling a bit tired myself, so we'd be as well going up to bed now.'

He transferred his pity to his wife. ‘Oh, I shouldn't be carrying on like this when you … you must always be dead tired looking after my mother the way you do.'

‘I do get tired,' she admitted, not noticing his unintentional pun, ‘but just ordinary tired. I'm fine in the mornings.'

He fell asleep minutes afterwards with his arms around her, and Jenny smiled ruefully as she listened to his steady breathing. She had hoped for some loving, but he'd be feeling Lou's death even more than she did. As for Hannah … well, she'd probably forgotten all about it already and would be sound asleep by now.

Hannah was not sound asleep. Her unhinged mind was grappling with things she could not understand. Her sister couldn't be dead. Lou had always been healthy … like Lizann. Lizann? But it wasn't Lizann that had put her to bed, it was the girl that had looked after her ever since …? Since Willie Alec died? No, that had been Lizann right enough, to begin with … and she'd still come every day after she left the Yardie.

Hannah drew a deep breath, striving to remember why Lizann had stopped coming, for she had stopped, that was sure. Ah! She'd been expecting and then … something terrible had happened. Her man … had been drowned and … she'd lost the bairnie. But why had she never come back?

Her head spinning, Hannah did her best to delve through the mists that fogged her brain. There was something else! Something somebody had said. Not the girl who looked after her now – that was … Jenny Cowie! – it was another girl, not a nice girl. Peter Tait. Why had she thought about him? He'd been engaged to Lizann, but … he'd married … a blond hussy with a painted face …? What was her name? Elsie! Aye, that was it, and it was her that had come and said …? What was it she'd said? About Lizann?

Hannah felt herself shying away from it, but having enough sense to know she would lose the thread of her thoughts altogether if she let go of them, she persevered until it came back to her. Elsie said Lizann had run away. But why had she run away, and where was she?

Losing her concentration suddenly, Hannah's thoughts took a jump back in time. She didn't want Lizann here. It was her fault Willie Alec was dead. Her and that man she took to the house, that … George Buchan from Cullen. She didn't want them here! She managed fine with Lou coming in every day, and Mick's girl bringing in things she'd baked. Now she was a nice lassie, a thoughtful lassie, and Mick couldn't do better if he took her for a wife.