Time Shall Reap (21 page)

‘This is Donald,’ Helen said, proudly, ‘and this is his wife, Margaret.’

Elspeth had her hand almost shaken off by the broad, round-cheeked young man in the kilt, and by the cheery, dark-haired girl who came forward smiling, and Helen laughed in delight. ‘Me and Margaret’s having a job under-standing each other, but Donald’s translating for us.’

‘Margaret’s beginning to know most of what I’m saying now, aren’t you, dear?’ Donald spoke slowly and deliberately for his wife’s benefit, his eyes revealing his love for her.

‘Oh, yes. It was very difficult at first – I thought he was a foreigner.’ Margaret had a silvery laugh which didn’t stop at her lips, but spread all over her face and crinkled her eyes and nose. She was a reasonably pretty girl, but there was an indefinable beauty about her when she laughed, as if she were illuminated from within.

Elspeth could see that both Helen and Jimmy were besotted with her, and felt a small twinge of jealousy – Margaret was a real part of the Watson family and it was Elspeth who was the outsider – but she quickly stifled it.

‘It’s you that’s the foreigner here,’ Donald teased his wife, making her gurgle with laughter again.

‘No, no, don’t mind him, Margaret,’ Helen smiled. ‘We’re very pleased to have you as our daughter-in-law.’

‘I wasn’t the only one to be keeping secrets, though,’ Donald remarked, rather more seriously. ‘I got a right shock when I saw wee John here. You never told me, Mother, but it’s great to have a new brother at my age. He’s a real bonnie wee thing, isn’t he, Elspeth?’

Elspeth shot a pleading glance at Helen in the hope that her landlady would tell her son the truth, but she was dismayed to see the woman smiling proudly. ‘Aye,’ the girl said, very carefully, ‘he’s a bonnie bairn.’ She was afraid that by not correcting Donald she had irrevocably condoned a ghastly deception, but what else could she have done? She was dependent on Helen to look after John, and she would be for ever grateful to her for her kindness before and after the time of his birth. Surely it could all be put right at some time in the future couldn’t it?

The young couple were blissfully unaware of Elspeth’s quandary. ‘Donald wanted to wait until after the war before we were married,’ Margaret told them, tucking her arm through her husband’s, ‘but I persuaded him to change his mind. You’ve got to grab your happiness while you can in wartime, haven’t you?’

‘That’s true,’ agreed Elspeth, ‘for you never know what’s going to happen to spoil it.’

After Donald and his wife left to go to their hotel – ‘It’s really our honeymoon,’ Margaret laughingly remarked – Elspeth went sadly to bed. She still resented the fact that, in the eyes of the world, her child belonged to the Watsons. If only their baby daughter had been born alive, nothing like this would have happened. She had been so sorry for Helen at the time that she had gone along with the charade, and she would have to be a much stronger person than she was before she could end it ... but she must end it some day, however much it hurt Helen. In the mean-time, she would have to be content to let things drift on as they were.

When he learned that his son’s wife was expecting a baby in December, Jimmy grumbled, only half joking, ‘I’ll never hear the end o’ it when folk ken I’m to be a grandfather.’

‘It’s worse for me being a Granny,’ Helen objected, then gave a little laugh. ‘I must say I’m looking forward to it, though, but it’s hard to think our grandchild’ll be that far away we might never see it till’s the war’s done. I just hope and pray Donald’ll come back to Aberdeen wi’ his wife and the bairn when he’s out o’ the Gordons. He’ll surely not want to settle down in Hull? What d’you think, Jimmy?’

‘He’ll make up his own mind about it, lass.’

Elspeth was elated about Margaret’s pregnancy. When Donald came home for good with another child for Helen to fuss over, she might be more willing to relinquish John. Her hopes seemed to be doomed, however, for in the next instant, Helen was saying, ‘It just come to me. John’ll be an uncle when he’s only two year and three month.’

The young woman looked at Jimmy, appealing to him to say something, but he shook his head hopelessly and she knew that he, like herself, could not hurt his wife by reminding her that John and Donald were not really brothers.

‘We wouldna have room for them all here, of course,’ Helen went on, happily, ‘so you’ll not need to worry about having to leave, Elspeth, for Donald’ll get a house for his family, and he’ll likely make sure it’s near enough for me to see the bairnie every day.’

The two pairs of anguished eyes met again for a second, then Jimmy turned away rather shamefacedly. Elspeth did not feel angry; he was only shielding his wife, after all.

The letter Helen had been long awaiting arrived on the day before Christmas. ‘Margaret had a son on the 22nd,’ she told Elspeth, in great excitement, ‘and she says he’s to be called James, after his grandfather. That’s nice, isn’t it?’

‘Jimmy’ll be pleased,’ Elspeth smiled.

‘He’ll be like a dog wi’ two tails.’

Jimmy was indeed delighted. ‘He’ll be the fourth James Watson that I ken o’,’ he grinned, when he was told the news, ‘for I was named for my father, and him for his father before him, and it could go even further back than that.’

‘Now I can send on the baby jackets I’ve knitted,’ Helen said, then added, ‘I was feared to do it before, you see, in case ... well ... you never ken, do you?’

Elspeth held her breath. Had Helen remembered about her own dead baby at last? Was this the reminder she had needed? But Helen went on, ‘I was lucky wi’ John, but ...’ Breaking off, she hesitated for a moment then shook her head. ‘Ach, I’m sorry, Elspeth, I shouldna have said anything about things going wrong.’

Jimmy was still too busy thinking proudly of his new namesake to notice what she was saying, and Elspeth sighed as she stood up. Margaret’s baby had changed nothing ... except, perhaps, to show that Helen’s mind had exchanged her own confinement for Elspeth’s and vice versa.

The first few months of 1918 passed fairly smoothly for the inhabitants of the middle floor flat, with letters at odd intervals from both Donald and David, and from Margaret regularly once a week, telling his grandparents about the progress little James was making. Elspeth, although she was interested to hear about the baby, was more interested in what David wrote. He told her little about what he was doing himself, but he always asked her to tell him what she had been doing, and she sat down every Sunday and told him any little things she thought might amuse him. In his replies, he told her how much her letters cheered him, and in his last one he had said, ‘I keep seeing you in my mind in your apron and cap, your beautiful golden hair poking out.’ That had made a warm glow spread through her, but she was beginning to get a little worried because she had not heard from him for some time.

‘I wish David would write more often,’ she said to Helen one Saturday afternoon, when she came home and was told, once again, that there was no letter, ‘but he’s likely too busy fighting the Huns.’

‘It’s the same wi’ Donald,’ Helen sighed.

‘I’m sure they write as often as they can,’ Jimmy observed, sitting down on the mat with John to play with a box of lead soldiers of Donald’s that Helen had found when she was cleaning out a cupboard.

‘Bang! Bang!’ the little boy shouted, his deep brown eyes dancing ‘Don soota Derries!’

‘What things to learn the laddie.’ Helen ruffled the boy’s curls as she passed. ‘Shooting Jerries!’

Watching her son, Elspeth laughed when he pushed the Soldiers flat to the floor and came over to her, pointing to them ‘Look, Ep ... pie! All deaded!’

‘Oh, Helen!’ Elspeth was overcome. ‘That’s the first time he’s said my name, an’ it’s what my mother called me, for that’s what I said when I was little.’ She was as proud as if he had said ‘Mammy’, and Jimmy looked at her with pity.

A loud knock made them all jump. ‘Who could that be?’ Helen was already half way to the door, and when Elspeth heard the deep voice asking, ‘Mrs Watson?’ she jumped up and ran through to the lobby. ‘David!’ she exclaimed, then stopped, embarrassed. In her joy at seeing him after fifteen whole months, she had nearly thrown her arms round him.

‘Aye, Elspeth, it’s me.’ Her welcome had made hope spring to his eyes. ‘I hope you don’t mind me coming here, but they said at the tearoom you’d been on the early shift.’ Laying his kitbag down, he removed his bonnet and stood shyly holding it. ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs Watson.’

Helen beamed. ‘Come away in.’ Taking him into the kitchen she said, ‘Jimmy, this is Elspeth’s ... friend, David.’

Rising off his knees, her husband shook the visitor’s hand and said, hospitably, ‘Sit down, then, lad.’

Hovering over the young soldier, Helen said, ‘The supper’s ready – you’ll have some?’ Taking his acceptance for granted, she went to the stove and lifted a lid to judge if there was enough stew for this extra mouth, while Elspeth gathered the lead soldiers off the mat. John had forsaken them the moment the kilted figure had appeared, and was standing in front of David, his dark eyes huge circles in his chubby face. ‘Sodger!’ he said loudly, and beamed when David picked him up and set him on his knee.

When Jimmy asked him how he had fared in Belgium, he told them something of his experiences: not the gruesome details he knew would sicken them; not about the filth and discomfort of the trenches; but tales of the camaraderie and heroism he knew they wanted to hear. They lapped it up, even Helen, who set the table and dished up the stew and dumplings as she listened to him.

When they finished eating, Elspeth stood up. ‘It’s time John was in his bed, Helen. I’ll get him ready.’

‘No, no. You sit and speak to David, and me and Jimmy’ll do the dishes, then I’ll see to John.’

Just before nine, David said, ‘I’d best be leaving. My father doesn’t know I’m coming.’ He glanced at the girl with a smile. ‘I’ve been writing to him, as well, Elspeth.’

‘Oh, I’m real pleased about that, David.’

Jimmy got to his feet and clapped the young man’s shoulder. ‘You’re welcome back any time, lad. Mind that.’

‘I’ll walk wi’ you to the tram,’ Elspeth said, and lifted her coat from the peg in the lobby as they went out.

Taking his glasses out of their case in order to read the newspaper, Jimmy observed, ‘I don’t know how Elspeth feels, but I can see David’s real taken wi’ her.’

Helen nodded. ‘Aye, but she doesn’t want to get serious about him, in case he gets killed, like her first lad.’

Elspeth and David walked along the lane without talking, but at last he said, ‘Can I see you again, please?’

‘If you like, but I just want to be a friend, remember, nothing more.’

‘I’ll not try to make you change your mind, Elspeth, but I’ll keep on hoping. There’s not another lad, is there?’

‘There was once, but he was killed.’

‘Oh, I see now. You’re feared I’ll be killed, but I’m determined to come back, lass, and you’ll maybe have second thoughts once the war’s finished. Can I come and take you home from the tearoom on Monday?’

‘If you want, but let things bide the way they are. I’m not ready yet for anything else.’

When Elspeth returned to the house, Helen asked, ‘Are you to be going steady wi’ him?’

‘No, I said we could just be friends, and he understands why, for I tell’t him about John Forrest being killed.’

David accompanied Elspeth home from the cafe every day of the next week, but put no pressure on her. They sat and talked with Helen, or took young John for walks, and the girl realized that she had come to feel more than friendship for him. He was so good with the toddler, and got on so well with Helen and Jimmy, that she wished she could overcome her fears and let their relationship develop into something deeper.

When Sunday came round again, they decided to go to the beach, Helen insisting, when they offered to take the boy, that they go by themselves. ‘You’ll not want to be saddled wi’ the bairn seeing it’s your last day, David.’

Elspeth was fully aware that her landlady was giving her an opportunity to make up her mind – or rather, to change it – about David, but she was determined not to alter her decision. She was fond of him and would miss him a lot when he went away, but she couldn’t commit herself to another soldier.

Although it was a lovely, warm May day, the beach was not seething with people like it would be during June, July and August, and Elspeth’s spirits lifted at the mile-long stretch of golden sand lying invitingly before them when they alighted from the tramcar. Leaning over the railings, they watched in amusement as a small dog, barking excitedly, bounded in and out of the water to retrieve the stick his elderly master was throwing for him. Farther along, an oldish man and his wife were walking along the edge of the sea with their shoes off, giggling like children each time a wave came up to lap their ankles.

After a few minutes, Elspeth pushed herself away from the metal bars and said, ‘Come on down on to the sand, David.’

They went past the red brick Bathing Station and sat down on the grass to remove their shoes and boots, then Elspeth turned away to take off her stockings and stuffed them in her coat pocket, while David did the same with his long woollen socks. ‘I’ll race you along the beach,’ she cried, laughing at his expression of surprise.

He followed her gingerly down the granite steps and sprinted to catch up with her as she ran, strands of her golden hair streaming out behind her. She squealed and ran even faster, until they collapsed together, breathlessly, then, as they looked at each other, laughing and panting, Elspeth sensed a change in David’s mood – his eyes were serious and his smile had faded. Guessing that he was contemplating kissing her, her heart sank. One kiss would lead to more, and then where would it all end?

She sat up abruptly. ‘What a mess I must look.’

‘You’re the bonniest lassie I’ve ever seen.’

Embarrassed, she gazed out over the sea. ‘The water looks as blue as the picture of the Mediterranean in Mrs Robb’s hall. N-I-C-E it said, but she said the folk there on the Riviera pronounced it “niece”.’

His eyes following a seagull, David said, ‘Why did you leave the Robbs, Elspeth?’