The Girl with the Creel (45 page)

‘She wouldn't have wanted you to grieve for her so long, either.'

Despite Adam's brave attempts now at keeping cheerful, Lizann could see that his health was steadily deteriorating, but she went along with his pretence that nothing was wrong. They listened to Henry Hall again, to Geraldo and Roy Fox, and laughed at Arthur Askey and Stinker Murdoch in
Band Waggon
. They enjoyed most of the other comedians, too, although Adam wasn't too keen on Max Miller's risqué jokes. Gradually, Lizann put her fears for him to the back of her mind.

Feeling quite down one afternoon in June 1941, Jenny wished she had someone to talk to, and so, putting wee Lizann in her pram and making Georgie hold the handle, she walked along to Main Street.

Elsie was still washing up her dishes, but left them in the sink while she spoke to her visitor. ‘This heat gets me down,' she sighed, putting her hands under the swell of her belly, ‘and I was going to put my two horrors out to play for a while, so's I can get some peace.'

Jenny looked contrite. ‘Oh, I'm sorry. I'll come back another time.'

‘No, no, it's just them I want rid of. Georgie can go with them, if you like. Pattie'll take care of him.'

Jenny hesitated. She had never entrusted her eighteen-month-old son to anyone else and Pattie wasn't four yet, but it would give Elsie and her a chance to talk. ‘All right,' she murmured. ‘Be sure and keep hold of him all the time, mind.'

‘I'll mind,' the boy assured her, ‘but I'm going to get my black sugar ellie first.' He raced upstairs and came back with a bottle of water blackened by the chunk of rock-hard liquorice he'd been shaking in it since the afternoon before, which process had also formed a creamy froth on top.

‘I'm going to play bools,' Tommy announced, taking his bag of marbles out of his pocket, ‘and I'll let Georgie play if he wants.' At only three, he was almost as tall as his brother.

‘Me and my chums'll likely be playing Hoist the Flag,' Pattie said, adding condescendingly. ‘Him, and all, if he wants.'

‘Out you go,' Elsie laughed. ‘I'm not caring what you do as long's you keep away from the old harbour.'

The boys scampered off, and making sure that baby Lizann was asleep in her pram, Jenny looked at Elsie. ‘Have you been listening to the wireless lately? Or reading the paper?'

‘I'm nae interested in the war, if that's what you're asking. I've enough to keep me going wi' two loons and this lump.'

Gasping, Jenny said, ‘But things aren't going well for Britain. Does it not worry you that your Peter could be killed … and my Mick?'

‘They'll not be in the fighting. It's likely all on land.'

‘There's been a lot of ships lost already.'

‘I didn't think …' Elsie's mouth tightened.

Sorry for putting her worry into her friend's mind, Jenny forced a smile. ‘Ach, they'll likely be all right. As my father used to say, “The devil looks after his own.” Mick did say in his last letter it looked like the balloon was going up, but I thought he was joking, and surely they'll get home before they're sent away anywhere.'

Their conversation took its usual turn now, with Jenny telling Elsie that Georgie was poking his fingers into everything nowadays, and Elsie recounting the trouble her two caused. Almost an hour had passed when an avalanche of small bodies burst in again, demanding something to eat.

Jenny gave a horrified gasp. ‘Look at the state of you!' she scolded her son.

Elsie roared with laughter. ‘They're like three blackies. What've you been up to, Pattie?'

He stuck out his bottom lip. ‘Why is it always me you pick on?'

‘It's you that always needs picking on.'

‘It wasn't my fault this time. It was Johnsy Elrick that lighted the fire, and we was just jumping over it.'

‘You could have got burnt!' Jenny exclaimed, imagining Georgie falling in the fire and being rushed to hospital.

‘It wasn't blazing,' Pattie defended himself. ‘The sticks was damp, so it was just a lot of smoke.'

‘It's a good scrub you'll need,' Jenny told her son angrily. She had almost forgotten her daughter, who gave an indignant howl now at being disturbed by all the noise. ‘We're going home now, pet. Georgie's been a bad boy.'

Elsie laughed again. ‘Your troubles are just beginning. I'm used to it. Sometimes my two's clarted in a lot worse than smoke.'

When she was outside, Jenny grabbed Georgie by the hand and hauled him along the pavement. ‘It's not only you I'll have to scrub. Everything you've got on as well, so there'll be no rest for me after suppertime.'

Once she got him home and saw the tear balanced on the edge of his bottom eyelid, however, she relented. Leaving the baby in the pram, she took him in her arms for a cuddle, not realizing until after she let him go that she had got soot on her clothes, too. ‘Och,' she sighed. ‘I'm as bad as you now.'

*   *   *

Pattie and Tommy had gone out to play again, so it was only when they came in for supper that Elsie filled the galvanized bath and left them to scrub each other, shutting her ears to the noise they made as she laid the table. When she went back to them they weren't much cleaner, because the water had so much soot in it. Making them stand, she sluiced them down with cold water from the kettle, laughing herself when they started to giggle. She filled a basin for them to wash their feet, and shook her head ruefully at the black scum left sticking to the sides of the tub when she emptied it.

By the time she had cleaned it thoroughly, Pattie and Tommy had dried themselves, but, because the supper would spoil if it wasn't dished up, she made them sit down as they were. Looking at the bare sturdy bodies, reddened by all the scrubbing and rubbing, she thought that Peter would have enjoyed the whole carry-on, and so, after putting the boys to bed, she sat down to write to him. She never had much to say, but tonight she filled four whole pages describing the afternoon's incident. She paused when she came to an end, because she usually just signed her name, but this time, she wrote, tongue in cheek, ‘Your loving wife, Elsie.' He could make what he liked of that, she thought.

As her pregnancy wore into its seventh month, Elsie's fear that Lenny Fyfe was the father began to border on certainty, but she knew she could do nothing about it. She should have tried to get rid of it much earlier on; it was too late now. She couldn't even confide in anybody; a single woman having an illegitimate child caused a dreadful scandal, but a married woman …! It would be enough to make the walls of Jericho come tumbling down – or, nearer to home, the doors of her father's kirk to slam in her face.

The hot July was followed by an even hotter August, and sitting one day with Jenny beside the old Buckpool harbour, in the full rays of the sun, Elsie moaned, ‘You ken't what you were doing, having your bairn at the end of the year. You hadna been puggled wi' the heat like me.'

Jenny had sensed some time ago that Elsie wasn't happy about this third baby, and supposed it was resentment at Peter for putting her in this condition as much as the heat that was making her ill-natured. ‘You should stay inside or sit in the shade, then. Um, are you to be having Tibbie …?'

‘I'd be just as well. And my mother's volunteered to come for a week.' Elsie dragged a weary hand across her brow and then down between her breasts. ‘I'm sick fed up o' this, Jenny. I wish it was past.'

‘Not long now,' Jenny smiled.

‘Six damned weeks!'

As it happened it was only three days later that Elsie was relieved of both child and fear when her mother said, ‘It's a girl – blond with bonnie fair skin like her dad's.' Then she turned to the midwife. ‘I aye thought a seven-month baby had nae nails, but this ane's got perfect wee fingers.'

Tibbie, still pushing firmly on the mother's stomach, muttered, ‘Ach, it was just an old wives' tale.'

Feeling the afterbirth slipping out, Elsie closed her eyes thankfully.

Peter arrived home when Norma was two months old, and as soon as he saw his lovely daughter he felt ashamed of his previous doubts. No one, not even he, could dispute that she was his. But it didn't make him feel any more charitable towards Elsie.

Not able to sleep well on the couch, he wasn't sorry when it was time to rejoin the corvette on which he and Mick both served. ‘I don't know when I'll be back,' he told Elsie, when he was leaving. ‘It depends on where we're sent, and it could be long enough … a year or more.'

Lizann had been worried for weeks by Adam's hacking cough – not helped by the hard work of the harvest – and when he came home for supper one day, the greyness in his face made her jump up in alarm. ‘Adam! Are you feeling all right?'

He seemed to have some difficulty in sitting down, and she went across to help him, but suddenly he stiffened, his hand going to his chest. ‘Oh lass,' he moaned, ‘the pain … the pain …'

His eyes were fixed on her as if asking her to do something, but she didn't know what to do. ‘Lie back,' she urged. ‘Lie back and rest.'

Fighting for breath now, he shook his head, and she realized from the look in his eyes that he was frightened. ‘You'll be fine in a minute,' she assured him, praying it was true, and to her relief he did lie back in a minute. ‘Pains … for days,' he admitted. ‘… that's … the worst.'

‘Try to relax, Adam, and I'll go and ask Dan to phone for the doctor.'

She didn't like leaving him, but being so anxious about him that her brain wasn't working, she didn't think of asking one of the neighbours to go instead. She ran out with Cheeky at her heels, and tore up the track to the farm, ignoring the stitch that started in her side. She rapped on the door, and gasped as loudly as she could, ‘Mr Fordyce! Mr Fordyce!'

Meggie Thow reached the kitchen door as Dan came out of the dining-room, and he pushed her aside roughly in his haste to find out what was wrong. ‘It's Adam!' Lizann panted. ‘Phone the doctor!'

As he turned away she took off again, but when she burst into the cottage she could see she was too late. Dropping to her knees, she took hold of the still warm hands. ‘Oh, Adam,' she wailed, ‘if I'd known … I wouldn't have left you on your own.'

The lifeless eyes looked back at her accusingly, and she rocked back and forth like a child with shame, tears edging down her cheeks.

When Dan ran in a few moments later he took in the situation at first glance and pulled her to her feet. ‘Lizann,' he crooned, enfolding her in his arms, ‘don't take it so badly, my dear. You must have known it was coming.'

Her tears flooded out then, and she wept quietly on his shoulder until the doctor arrived.

Waiting until two weeks after Adam's funeral, Dan Fordyce made his way to the Laings' cottage. He could procrastinate no longer, otherwise his workers would start asking questions.

When Lizann opened the door to him her face fell, and knowing that she thought he was going to tell her to vacate the house, he smiled to allay her fears. ‘May I come in? I want to discuss something with you.'

When they were seated at opposite sides of the fire, he said, ‘Meggie is finding it difficult to do as much as she used to, but she has been with my family so long I haven't the heart to pay her off. I thought of retiring her on a pension, but knowing how proud and independent she is, I'm sure she wouldn't agree to it, and I don't suppose she has anywhere to go. The only solution is for me to engage someone to help her.' He paused, his eyes searching for some reaction to let him know how the wind blew, but Lizann was gaping at him as if she didn't know what he was getting at. Sighing, he carried on. ‘I'm asking you if you'd like to take on the job?'

Her mouth closed and her eyes widened. ‘Me? But Dan, you've been so good to me already. I can't take any more favours from you.'

‘I'm not doing you a favour. I need your help, honestly.'

‘But … what would Meggie say?'

‘It's not up to her to say anything, but she should be pleased.'

‘What about Cheeky? She wouldn't want him in her kitchen.'

‘Probably not, but he can go in with the other dogs. I shouldn't have sprung it on you like this, so I'll let you think it over and I'll come back tomorrow. It'll save you having to look for another job, remember, or finding somewhere else to live. I don't know how much Martha and Adam paid you …'

‘They couldn't afford to pay me anything, I worked for my keep.'

‘You will have wages plus your keep if you agree.' He stood up. ‘Don't feel I am forcing you, my dear. It's only a suggestion.'

Reaching the farm track, Dan let out a long sigh. It was up to Lizann now. If she accepted the job, he would see her every day, and she might come to feel something for him. If she refused, she would go away and he would never see her again. That was unthinkable.

Lizann remained sitting when Dan went out. He had surprised her so much that she still hadn't got over it, but she would have to think about it. Like he said, it would save her having to find a job, and she would have a roof over her head. That was what had been worrying her. She couldn't have faced living as she had done before the Laings practically adopted her, but working with Meggie Thow? She didn't fancy that.

Looking round the kitchen, Lizann realized that, whatever she decided, the cottage would have to be cleared out so that the new man could move in. If she asked, Dan would likely hire a lorry to take Adam's furniture and things away, but he wouldn't help her with anything else if she turned down the job he had offered. Should she take it? She would get on all right with him – Adam always said he was a good boss – and working with Meggie might not be so bad.

As she tried to picture what it would be like, it dawned on her that Dan couldn't go for walks with her and Cheeky when she was his maidservant; Meggie would have a fit if he did. She hated the thought of losing his companionship, but she would lose it anyway if she had to leave Easter Duncairn.