The Nickum (31 page)

‘What d’you mean, Pop? That
is
what happened.’

‘No, lass. It’s what you wish had happened.’ He looked earnestly into her eyes. ‘Isn’t it, now? We’re nae gan to judge you, so dinna be feared.’

Her face drained of all colour except for two triangular spots of rouge on her cheeks, the young woman dropped her eyes and began slowly. ‘Yes, Dad, you’re right.’

And so began the saga of the first few months of searching for employment, spending the precious money her ex-father-in-law had given her to last until she got on her feet, but it lasted only weeks at the rate Becky was spending it. This, naturally, was followed by weeks of scrimping on food, on make-up and eventually on a place to sleep.

‘You see,’ she explained. ‘It’s not like Britain. Hardly anybody in New York has a maid and that’s all I knew anything about.’

Emily was appalled. ‘But there would be places you can rent at a fairly cheap rate? There must have been other people in the same boat as you.’

Becky nodded sadly. ‘There were some that could afford a few cents a night for a bed, but there were the down-and-outs, like me, worse off still, that couldn’t even afford that.’

‘So you had to sleep rough? Oh, my poor lass.’

‘It was the only thing I could do, Mom, and it was there I met the person who was the means of setting me on my feet again.’

‘You mean the man who married you?’ Her mother looked rather brighter now.

‘Nobody ever wanted to marry me. It was Helga Andersen, a German refugee. She’d been on her uppers for a long time till somebody told her the quickest way to make money was to …’ Pausing, Becky’s face turned a deep scarlet and then she gripped her mouth as if she had taken a bite of some horrible-tasting substance and ended in a rush, desperate to get it out, ‘She said I should sell the only thing I had to sell – my body.’

She glanced at her father, who had gasped with shock. ‘It was the only thing I could do, Dad, and Helga took me back to her apartment, let me have a bath, lent me some make-up and a lovely dress to wear. After that she took me out for a meal before she took me to her patch – that’s what she called it – and showed me how to deal with the men in cars who stopped to speak.’

‘Oh, Becky,’ Emily said reprovingly, ‘you knew that was wrong. Why did you do it?’

‘It was either that or throwing myself off the Brooklyn Bridge, and it wasn’t so bad, really it wasn’t. Most of my clients were decent men whose wives refused them their rights, and only two or three caused any trouble. They were all willing to pay well for the service I gave them and I did meet a man called Charles Grover Goldstein the Third who was known to his friends as Buddy, and he was very kind to me, but he didn’t ask me to marry him. However, I soon managed to save enough to repay Helga and we shared the rent – and the other expenses – between us. It took me another year to put past enough to buy a place of my own in a better area, and so I was able to charge more.’

Jake shook his head in disapproval, but said nothing, while Emily used sarcasm to show how she was feeling. ‘So what made you give up your money-spinning and come home?’

‘I knew it couldn’t last for ever,’ the young woman admitted. ‘When your looks go, the men stop bothering with you. Helga’s on the downward slope now, but she wouldn’t hear of me helping her. It was her that suggested I should come home. And that’s when I realised how much I’d missed you all.’ She stopped suddenly, looking ashamed. ‘I’ve been so busy talking about my troubles, I forgot to ask. How’s Connie? I bet she’s got three or four kids by this time.’

Jake stepped in first. ‘It’s good you’ve remembered at last, but it’s not good news, I’m afraid. Your sister’s dead, Becky.’

‘Oh, my God! How did she die? In childbirth?’

‘Not exactly, though she did die giving birth.’

‘That doesn’t make sense. Dad, don’t do this to me. Don’t keep me in suspense.’

He gave it to her with no frills. ‘Gordie Brodie murdered her. Her and their infant son.’

‘No!’ she screamed. ‘Mam, tell me it’s not true. Please.’

‘It
is
true,’ Emily said quietly. ‘Just a few months after you went to America, and I couldn’t tell you because you never gave me an address to write to.’

Silence fell now, an awkward, accusing, threatening silence, into which in a few seconds Jake said, very deliberately, as though wanting to shock his daughter even more, ‘And that’s not all. Your young brother was killed at El Alamein, and you can surely imagine how your mother was feeling when we were told that. She believed she had no children left; two killed by another’s hand, but one responsible for her own demise.’

The very fact that he had said all this in perfect English was enough to make the girl realise how deeply he, too, had been affected. Jumping up, she ran to him, sitting on his knee when he held his arms out to her, and sobbing loudly into his shoulder, as if she were still a little girl. ‘I’m sorry, Dad, I didn’t want you to know how bad things were with me, and even when I was OK again, I couldn’t let you know. You’d have wondered why I didn’t speak about my first few years in New York, and I’d sworn to myself I’d never let you know about that.’

Father and daughter watched silently as Emily rose to make another pot of tea, saying as she rinsed out their cups, ‘Then I’ll heat up the pot of broth Millie made last night.’

‘Millie?’ Becky asked. ‘Who’s she? Had Willie got married?’

Thus another saga was begun, of Herbert Meldrum’s generosity, of Willie’s entry to the Univerity, of his reason for volunteering for the Gordon Highlanders. Becky had listened silently throughout, but now she said, ‘So Poopie was killed, too?’

‘And Malcie Middleton,’ Jake said. ‘You mind on him?’

‘I mind on him fine. Oh, Mam, Dad, it’s terrible to think all that bad things happening, and there was I thinking I was the only person in the world bad things happened to. I’ve been really selfish, just thinking about myself, and I never thought you’d be worrying about me.’

Shifting the newly refilled teapot farther back from the fire, Emily lifted the large black soup pot on to the swey above the heat. ‘Look, lass, I think we’d better put a full stop to all the bad things, eh? We can begin to look on the bright side now. We got word this morning that Willie has got an award for bravery – mentioned in Despatches, would you believe – so that’s some good news. Not the first, though. I should have told you, Millie Meldrum gave birth in this very house to Willie’s son, our grandson.’

Clapping her hands in delight, though her cheeks were still damp from her tears, Becky exclaimed, ‘That
is
good news, both bits. Is Millie living here?’

‘No, no, she was just visiting with her mother and father, but her labour had started before they came. She hadn’t told them – I don’t think she wanted to go to the hospital her father had booked for her, so she was quite glad to let Beenie Middleton do the needful. She was here anyway, with Tibby Grant. The dominie just took mother and son home not long before you arrived; just before we got that letter about Willie’s award.’

‘So Millie won’t know about that?’ Becky was quicker on the uptake than her parents.

‘No, of course. I’ll need to tell the postie the morn. He delivers here before he goes to the schoolhouse, so he can tell them. It was him that told them about Willie.’ Emily still hadn’t come to terms with her son’s death, but she said it as calmly as she could. Having her younger daughter back again did help.

The following day brought several visitors, expected and unexpected. Louie the postman was first, of course, taken in to see Becky again, then Beenie Middleton, who had seen her arriving from her next-door window and had run along to tell Tibby Grant, arranging that they would visit the Fowlies the next day. Both were very curious to hear what she had got up to in America. Not that they were told much; more or less a rehash of Becky’s first version, with Helga Andersen substituted for Charles Grover Goldstein the Third.

It was during his lunchbreak that Herbert Meldrum brought Millie and her tiny son, congratulating Emily and Jake on the return of their daughter before driving away with the promise that he would call for Millie after school.

Beenie and Tibby, already doting on the wee mite, made a great fuss of him, firing Becky with much of their enthusiasm. She had to admit that he was the most beautiful baby boy she had ever laid eyes on; not that she had ever had much time for infants.

Several teapots – and the rest of the soup pot – later, the two elderly ladies left in order to attend to feeding their own families, or, in Tibby’s case, her fostered family. The three Fowlies relaxed now. Visitors were all right up to a point, but, ‘Enough’s enough,’ as Jake put it, stretching his socked feet out to the fire, ‘but five adults an’ a wee bairnie’s mair than enough at ae time.’

They did have peace to eat the oatcakes – huge quarters of the large circles Emily browned on one side on the girdle on the fire and turned and set up on the trivet in front of the fire to brown on the other side – and crowdie cheese she laid out, and her girdle scones spread with home-made strawberry jam. ‘This is better than any of the fancy things I was eating over there,’ Becky commented, licking her lips. ‘You could make a fortune in New York, Mum, if you opened a restaurant.’

‘The Yanks’ll ha’e to forego that pleasure,’ Jake observed drily. ‘She’s mine.’

After their hastily devised meal, Becky insisted on helping to clear up, and Jake decided to take a wee stroll down the track. ‘I’ll be killin’ two birds wi’ ae stane,’ he explained as he took his old pipe and the little tin of shredded Bogie Roll off the mantelpiece.

‘I’ve never liked him smelling up the kitchen with that pipe of his,’ Emily remarked, as she handed the washed plates to her daughter, ‘but he doesn’t usually pay any heed to me.’

Knowing that he was giving them a chance to talk more confidentially, and waiting for the questions to begin, Becky just smiled, but had to wait until they were seated on the sofa by the fire before the inquisition actually came.

‘Now, lass, is there anything you haven’t told me yet?’

‘About what?’

‘About your time in America.’

‘I’ve told you everything, Mam, and I’m deeply ashamed of some of it, but that’s all that happened, honestly. I thought you and Dad would go mad at me and turn me away.’

‘I suppose that’s why you spun that story about a rich husband, but I’m glad you came clean after all. I can’t say I was happy about it, but I’ve no idea what happens in a city like New York. I suppose that kind of thing goes on a lot.’

Becky sighed. ‘That kind of thing goes on in every big city, Mam, but that’s not to say it’s right. I knew I was doing wrong, but it was the only way I could support myself. Anyway, it’s all over now, and I’m home to stay. I’ve given up my apartment, sold all my things and just took what I wanted with me. I’m going to make a new start here, Mam, and it seems to me, I came at the right time.’

‘You did, lass, you did. I was at my lowest ebb, I can tell you, but today’s been the turning point. We got word about the award this forenoon, and that eased my pain a wee bit after seeing his mother taking my grandson off, and then you arrived. Oh, Becky, you’ve no idea how glad I was to see you. At least I’ve got one of my daughters back. What are you planning on doing now?’

‘I haven’t made any plans yet. I think I’ll have a wee break first, but I won’t have to be too long in starting to look for a job of some kind. I don’t fancy going into service again, but there’s nothing much else I can do. Shopwork, maybe, or a receptionist in a hotel or for a doctor or somebody like that. I can’t type or do shorthand, so I’m no use for an office, and there’s nothing else I can think of. Anyway, I’d like to know more about what happened to Connie – that’s if you feel up to speaking about it.’

Until Jake returned, therefore, Emily went over everything that she knew about the tragedy, eventually bringing in the fact that it had been Willie who had spotted Gordon Brodie, and where and how he did. This, of course, also led to discussing Willie’s death and its aftermath for her.

‘I don’t know if you ever noticed,’ she said, a little hesitantly with her face still wet with tears, ‘I never loved him like I loved you and Connie.’

‘I know you were harder on him than you were on us, but I didn’t think anything of it, for we were good girls and he was always misbehaving.’

‘Aye, but you see, I never thought it was just bad behaviour. I thought he was spawn of the devil. Gramma Fowlie used to say was just a nickum, and I thought … well the Devil’s sometimes called Old Nick, so I thought Nickum meant little Devil, and some of the things he did would make you think they were work of the Devil, and … oh, Becky, I’m deeply ashamed of myself, for it turned out he was a hero, not a devil.’

The tears came flooding again, and her daughter placed an arm round her. ‘Don’t upset yourself, Mam. I don’t suppose he ever noticed you loved Connie and me more, and you were never too hard on him. He did need to be punished for what he did, you know.’

‘Well, he’s been properly punished now,’ her mother sobbed.

‘Some folk would look at it differently, though. God has taken him up to heaven, that’s how they would see it – as a blessing, not a punishment, and he had maybe done what he did for Poopie’s sake. Who knows? Atoning for not being there for him.’

‘A blessing? Oh, Becky, you’ve made me see sense at last. That must be it, and it definitely must have been for Poopie.’

‘There you are, then. So stop blaming yourself, and be proud of him.’

With time marching on now, Emily did not have time to feel depressed. Indeed, she had really no need to feel depressed; hadn’t she her grandson to love and her newly returned daughter? At first, she had been fairly worried about Becky, who had failed to find a job during her first month at home, and had decided to try for something in Aberdeen. It was her sixth attempt before she had the successful interview – as a salesgirl in Boots the Chemist in Union Street – and couldn’t believe her luck.

‘They said I had a lovely complexion,’ she boasted, when she bounced in on air. ‘I’m to be put on the make-up counter, and I’m on a month’s probation.’