The Shadow of the Sycamores (2 page)

The Session Clerk was still tidying up his papers in the vestry – Willie’s journey home and back plus his confrontation with his mother-in-law had taken but a mere twenty minutes – but where the inkwell had been there now stood a tall bottle of Black and White whisky. ‘Oh, it’sh you again, Willie? I did not expect you back. What can I do for you this time? Nothing has come over your son, I trust?’

‘No, he’s still fine but it’s like this, John.’ He drew a chair up to the opposite side of the wide desk. ‘I was … thinking, it’s maybe nae such a good idea for my only son to have a
foreign name. Folk’ll maybe think my Bella …’ He gave his head an abrupt shake as if to ward off the unwelcome supposition. ‘No, you’d best take out the Russian name and write in …’ He resorted to passing over the slip of paper he had been carrying.

The Session Clerk frowned as he read out, ‘Henry Bruce McIntyre William Rae? That’s an awful long name for the infant.’

Willie smiled sheepishly. ‘You ken what a wumman’s like.’ He explained the origin of the moniker and added, ‘So if you’ll just take your penknife or whatever you use and scrape out the foreign name and write that in, I’d be much obliged.’

A second small glass had mysteriously appeared and was being filled to the top. ‘We will have another drink to the newborn,’ Gow enunciated carefully, as he held it out. ‘You must be very proud to have made a son after … um … so many females. How many of your girls are still alive?’

Willie did not regard this question as indelicate but he had to think for a moment before he could answer. It was not something that came up very often in conversation. ‘Eh … Jeannie, Bella an’ … Abby.’ He looked bewildered for a second. ‘Oh, I’ve forgot Kitty. She’s a wee moosie and it’s easy to forget her. So that’s four.’

‘The boy is your thirteenth, if I remember correctly, so that would be … eight that died. My, my! Poor, poor Bella. She was such a bonnie young thing at one time, I remember. You know, I would not have minded …’ Halting in some confusion, he looked at the two empty glasses. ‘It is time for another toast.’

Glasses filled, he held his aloft. ‘To Bella, the poor dear departed. May she find more happiness in heaven than she did here on earth.’

‘To Bella,’ Willie echoed, obediently, not knowing how to take Gow’s last few words.

It was some time later before the Session Clerk got back to the business in hand. ‘I am truly sorry, Willie, but I cannot do what you asked of me.’

‘What was I asking?’ The extra drink had not helped Willie’s memory.

‘You asked me to change the name on this birth certificate but it is against the law to change what has been written on a document of this type. And it is not just the certificate I would have to change – there is the register, as well. Do you see? That would be a double crime and I could be put in jail for it.’

Willie was struggling to keep a grip on his senses. ‘But … but … Govey Dick, John, Isie McIntyre’ll tear me limb from limb if it’s left like this and she’ll never let me forget it. Is there nae something you can …?’

The other man held the empty bottle upside down over his own glass to shake out any remaining drops. ‘You should have thought about it properly before you came here in the first place.’

His tone irritated Willie but Gow was not a man to argue with – particularly not after having drunk almost half his whisky. A compromise was called for.

*    *    *

So it was that Tchouki Henry Bruce McIntyre Rae got his name – there was no room on the certificate for the William – and Isie McIntyre got the upper hand of her son-in-law. Willie held no grudge against John Gow but their long and frequent drinking sessions were perforce reduced almost to the point of non-existence over the next few years.

Having spent six whole hours at her old aunt’s bedside waiting for her to die – not out of any compassion for the feeble ninety-year-old but to ensure that no one else got at her tin moneybox – Nessie Munro was not in the best of humours. Somebody had forestalled her, probably one of her cousins. There were only a few pieces of silver left – a shilling, two florins and a half-crown – and, when she lifted out the partitioned tray to take out all the guineas and sovereigns that she believed lay underneath, all she found was Auntie Kirsty’s birth certificate. Her hopes had been dashed! Instead of living comfortably for the rest of her life on her aunt’s money, she would have to find a man rich enough to keep her in a manner better than she had been accustomed to. There weren’t many of them around! She’d been looking for years.

In her anger, Nessie lashed out with the whip, making her pony, a shelty, buck violently and she had just got her breath back when it set off at the double. She had to hold on for dear life now, her very teeth rattling in her head. When the animal tired, it came to such an abrupt halt that Nessie went flying out of the trap on to the road. She skidded along the gravelly surface and came to rest in the ditch. ‘God dammit!’ she roared, never having been one to consider blasphemy an unpardonable sin. ‘God dammit to hell!’

Checking that she was still all in one piece, she moved her limbs gingerly but everything seemed to be working. The only harm she had come to, as far as she could tell, was a bleeding hand, where it had come in contact with the stones – and there was blood seeping through her right stocking so her leg had been scraped and all.

She stood up, dusted herself down and limped over to see if the trap was damaged in any way. Finding nothing untoward, she had a look around to take stock of her whereabouts. Not far ahead, three spires rose at different heights into the sky and she knew that she was not far from Ardbirtle which, despite being such a small town, boasted three kirks. At this end was St John’s Episcopal, the Roman Catholic St Mary’s stood at the far end and the Parish Kirk, for the ordinary folk, was about the middle of the main street. It had the highest spire.

Only five more miles and she would be home, she thought thankfully. Looping her skirts over her arm, she climbed up to her seat again, testing the reins gently, for she did not want a repeat of the mad dash.

Her shelty took only two steps and stopped, nichering as if in pain. She got down again, her heart sinking when she lifted his right hind leg. However it had happened, the shoe had worked loose and buckled and was now lying diagonally across the hoof. Although she had a short temper, Nessie was also a woman of resourcefulness. ‘It’s all right,’ she soothed, ‘we’ve not far to go but we’d best cry in by the smiddy.’

Taking the rein, she walked in front of the poor animal, hoping that the spits of rain would come to nothing, but, as she should have known, this was a bad day for her. Before they had even reached St John’s, it was teeming down.

The smiddy was empty, the fire barely glowing, so work had likely finished for the day, but she was desperate. There was a notice at the side of the door, however. ‘If smith urgently required, go through gate and knock at back door of Oak Cottage’.

This Saturday, his mother-in-law having taken his three oldest daughters with her when she went to air her own house, Willie had just returned from a furtive visit to The Doocot when he heard the rain battering against his kitchen window. He could have bidden a while longer, he mused, for Isie hated getting wet and wouldn’t come out in this but he didn’t feel like going out in it either. Abby and Henry were bedded and it was a
treat to sit at the fire without Isie harping on about something. He unlaced his boots and took them off, holding his feet up to the heat and smirking at the steam that spiralled up from them. She was never done complaining about his sweaty socks.

He was relaxed, legs stretched out, when someone rapped on the back door. He tutted in annoyance, got to his feet and yanked the door open, expecting the caller to be a man needing his services and was quite taken aback to see a woman standing on the step. Bedraggled though she was, he couldn’t help but admire her.

‘Aye?’ he asked, cautiously.

‘Are you the smith?’ Her voice was low and soft.

‘That’s me. What can I do for you?’

He took her inside out of the rain and, while she described her ‘accident’, he let his imagination run riot. He could picture himself taking the pins from her thick chestnut hair, making it fall to her shoulders or farther so that he could run his fingers through it. He could see himself putting an arm round her waist …

‘Will you manage to do it today?’

‘Eh?’ Willie dragged his mind back to reality.

She gave a shy smile. ‘Will you manage to shoe my shelty?

Positive that his mother-in-law would not be coming back that night, Willie chose his next words carefully. ‘Is somebody expecting you home?’

‘Nobody.’

Their eyes locked, both mature enough, wordly-wise enough, to know what was going to happen. The mutual attraction had been instant … and overwhelming.

If Isie McIntyre had been aware of what was going on in her absence, she would have braved the thunderstorm that rumbled on for most of the night, the lightning flashing, cascades of water descending from the skies. Always afraid for her chest, she also had her granddaughters to consider so she eventually told Jeannie and Bella to sleep in the spare room, while she took Kitty into her bed.

Their late night resulted in none of them stirring until five past ten on Sunday morning. There was no food to make any breakfast but Isie insisted that they all washed their faces in cold water and that the girls raked their fingers through their tangled locks to make them look presentable. As for herself, it would have taken too long to replace all the hairpins that had fallen out so she just gave the top of her grey head a few pats, jammed on her black bonnet and tied the ribbons under her chin.

They had to watch their steps once they went outside, for great lochs of water covered much of the road and it was ten minutes to twelve before the sorry-looking quartet trailed into Oak Cottage, skirts soaked up to their knees. Hours too late!

There was no sign that anything out of the ordinary had happened. The shelty had been shod, its owner had gone on her way satisfied both in mind and in body, for fate had been kind to her after all, and because Isie and her three granddaughters had to change into dry clothes, Willie’s rather hangdog expression went unnoticed.

In less than four weeks, Nessie Munro became Mrs William Rae, her first task being to tell Isie that she wouldn’t be needed there any longer. ‘You’re welcome to visit,’ she went on, making it sound almost like a dare.

When Willie feebly protested at this, his bride snapped, ‘Please yourself but I’m not stopping if she’s to be here. It’s not as if she hasn’t a home of her own to go to.’

He had often wondered why Isie never sold her house but guessed now that she must have foreseen this very eventuality.

Willie Rae’s remarriage, seven long years after his first wife’s death, caused quite a stir in the town. Being the blacksmith, he was well known, particularly to the men who owned horse-drawn vehicles of some kind, and being a tall, muscular, handsome widower, he had been eyed hopefully by all the unattached females. Willie, however, had had no eye for any of them. He had believed that the fire had gone from his loins
since his beloved Bella had passed on, stamped out, perhaps, by his mother-in-law.

It was as if the old besom had made a pact with God to prevent him from enjoying himself, Willie had sometimes thought, but it was different now. Either Isie had done something to incur the good Lord’s wrath or the deity had simply taken pity on
him
– though he didn’t care how it happened. It
had
happened and his nights would no longer be lonely.

The marriage had also made a drastic change to the lives of Willie’s three eldest daughters. Neither Jeannie nor Bella could stand their new stepmother and handed in their notice to the local shops where they had served. Defying their father, they left to find work in Aberdeen and Kitty, newly turned thirteen, went with them. Not one of the three made any attempt to pay a visit home – all, in fact, said that they couldn’t afford the fare. Even after six whole months, Willie still swore that he couldn’t understand why they’d been so anxious to leave home and so ‘sweir’ to come back but his acquaintances could have told him.

‘I was surprised he put up wi’ his mother-in-law for so lang,’ commented Tam Mavor when their old crony had scuttled out of The Doocot one evening. ‘And, to my mind, that Nessie’s a deal worse than Isie McIntyre.’

His brother nodded. ‘God kens what he thocht he was at, taking her for a wife.’

Ben Roberts snorted loudly. ‘I bet he only thought of one thing but I wouldn’t be surprised if he got more than he was asking for with Nessie.’

Geordie ran his stubby fingers through the remaining wisps of his cotton-wool hair. ‘He surely wouldna object to getting’
mair
than he asked for?’

‘You’re as bad as he is.’ The landlord’s top lip curled up in a sneer. ‘Do you not get enough yourself? Is that it? Are you jealous of Willie?’

Geordie’s lined face registered deep outrage at this. ‘Me jealous? About him and Nessie Munro? I wouldna touch that wumman wi’ a greasy pole!’

‘Not with a pole but …’ Ben gave a lewd cackle. ‘By God, there’s plenty of her to touch and she’s not bad-looking … if you look at her properly.’

‘If you look at her quick,’ was Geordie’s sarcastic retort.

It seemed as though Tam had stopped paying attention to the conversation. He was so intent on burrowing in his left ear with his cranny but he had been thinking of another side to Willie’s marriage. ‘It’s his bairns I’m sorriest for. That two youngest havena had much o’ a life since they got her for a stepmother. Isie McIntyre maybe ruled Willie wi’ an iron rod but she looked after his bairns as well as Bella would have done hersel’. That laddie hasna grew a inch since Nessie took ower the reins – or didna take ower, it should be, for it’s poor Abby that does the work. He must be near eight but my Kirsty’s bigger than him and she’s nae five yet.’

‘He was the last o’ the litter, of course, and runts never grow big.’