Time Shall Reap (31 page)

Elspeth sank weakly into her chair, her mind too confused to think properly, and did not move until Laura appeared again about ten minutes later, her face streaked with tears, her breath coming in short hiccups. Her respirator and haversack were slung over her shoulder and she stood with her cap in her hand looking at her mother as if at a stranger. ‘I’m leaving,’ she said, flatly, ‘and I’ll never come back. You’ve ruined my life, and I despise you.’

‘You can’t leave, Laura!’ Elspeth’s voice was high with desperation, in contrast to the girl’s calmness. ‘Things’ll look better after a while. You’ll get over this, and you’ll meet somebody else, and ...’ Appalled by the sheer hatred in her daughter’s eyes, she stopped.

Losing her grip on herself at last, Laura cried, ‘How can you have the effrontery to say that? You, with your supposed eternal love for that John Forrest? You should understand how I feel, if anyone should. I’ll never be able to love another man now, thanks to you, and I’ll never forgive you. Never! Never! Never!’

The crash of the front door echoed through Elspeth’s head, and, as once before when her life had disintegrated around her, she found that she couldn’t weep.

Coming to the open doorway, David said, ‘Laura told me she was leaving, and I thought of doing the same, for your lies and deceit ...’

‘I didn’t tell you any lies, David!’ She had to defend her-self, although he was regarding her with disgust. ‘Ask Helen if you don’t believe me.’

‘You both knew what I thought, and you didn’t correct me.

Elspeth, fighting for her marriage, her very existence, burst out wildly. ‘Don’t leave me, David!’

‘I only said I was thinking about it,’ he said, harshly, ‘but I’m not going to. I worked hard to pay the mortgage on this house, but it’s mine now and I mean to keep it. You’re the one that’s leaving, first thing in the morning, and I’ll sleep in the spare-room tonight.’

Flowing now, her tears gave no relief. ‘Please don’t put me out, David, I’ve been punished enough. You’re upset the now, but you’ll get over it.’

He pushed her aside as she stood up, and when the spare-room door clicked shut, she collapsed once more into her chair. When would this nightmare end? The sword of Damocles had fallen at last, the retribution she had dreaded over the years had overtaken her, more severe than she had ever imagined. She had sacrificed her love-child twenty-one years ago, and now she had lost both her husband and her daughter.

As Laura stumbled blindly towards Quarry Street, she tried to convince herself that it wasn’t true. She needed corroboration, explanation or, better still, denial ... but, if it wasn’t true, why would her mother have incriminated herself like that?

Taking one look at the girl’s anguished face, Helen Watson knew that the fatal moment had come, that Elspeth had told her daughter the truth, and that she, Helen, must own up to her part in the deception. ‘Come in, Laura,’ she said, as cheerfully as she could with her lips frozen and her heart somersaulting in panic. ‘Jimmy’s working late the night, so we’ll have the house to ourselves.’

Laura laid her haversack on the floor. ‘I’ve left home.’ It came out calmly, in spite of the boiling anger in her heart, in spite of the sickening agony in her innards, in spite of the scream waiting in her throat – the scream which, once released, might carry on for ever. ‘My ... I’ve been told why John and I can’t marry, but I want to hear your side of the story.’

‘Laura, I’m heart-sorry for you and John, but I’m sure your mother’s tell’t you the truth.’

‘A bit late, wouldn’t you say?’ The girl couldn’t help the bitter sarcasm. ‘And I still want to hear it from you.’

‘If that’s what you want.’ Helen sat down, gesturing to the girl to do likewise, but Laura shook her head, and after a brief pause, the older woman began. ‘Your mother was a pathetic wee creature the first time I met her ...’ Her version differed from Elspeth’s only by beginning a few months later – in the train instead of on the road to the cottar house in a snowstorm. Strangely enough, neither of them mentioned the time she had spent at Rosemount Viaduct, letting their listeners conclude that Elspeth had gone to Quarry Street as soon as she arrived in Aberdeen.

The girl said nothing until she heard why the confusion over whose child it was hadn’t been corrected. ‘So it all stemmed from not wanting her character blackened?’

‘That meant a lot in those days,’ Helen reminded her. ‘It was a real disgrace for a single lassie to have a bairn.’

‘She’d have got over it,’ Laura said, sarcastically. ‘It would have blown over and been forgotten.’

‘It might have, if I hadn’t lost my baby and my wits. I’d come to believe John was mine, and your mother didn’t want to hurt me by claiming him, and it was just before she married your father that Jimmy brought me to my senses.’

‘I can’t excuse her for not telling Dad right from the start, but even if she’d only owned up when they were married, John and I would never have ...’

The girl’s bitterness and the naked torture in her eyes were like stakes being driven into Helen’s heart. ‘It was my blame at the start, and it wasn’t easy for her to give her bairn up when she was wed. She wasna thinking o’ herself, it was your father she was thinking o’, and me and Jimmy, and John. It near broke her heart to leave him. Can you not understand how she was placed, lassie, and have some pity for her?’

Picking up her haversack, Laura said, stonily, ‘It’s you two living a lie all these years that I can’t stomach. I’ll never forgive her for what’s she’s done, nor you, either.’

The tears came again when Laura was walking down the lane, and she was at the edge of the quarry before she realized that she had walked up the grassy bank. Bewildered, she looked at the opposite side, and could see the observation platform which had been built to give sightseers a safe view of the awe-inspiring hole. A cable, slung between two pylons, spanned the chasm, and she remembered Jimmy once saying that this was known as the Blondin, although the famous tightrope walker had never attempted to walk across it. Suspended from the cable were the wire cages used to transport stone and men from the quarry floor. Shifting her gaze, she could see, just below the edge, flights of wooden steps fixed against the sheer side, and found her eyes following them down, down, down, hundreds of feet to the bottom, where the idle pieces of equipment looked like toys.

To her left, the machinery of the crusher was grinding slowly – the mills of God? – yet the whole place had an air of unreality about it in the semi-darkness, a sense of doom, and as she stood on the brink looking down, she wondered if she was being given a sign of what to do. Was this what fate had decided for her? Was this to be the end? Jimmy had also told her once that several suicides had taken place here over the years, but even as she contemplated it she knew she hadn’t the courage to jump. There could be no easy way out for her. She must face the excruciating ordeal of telling John the whole distasteful story, to explain why they could never marry.

Turning, she went down the bank again and continued on her way to the tram stop at the end of the lane, the lines having been extended, years ago, to Hazlehead, not far from Oldmill Hospital where her father had been a patient in the first war. This route was one of the most beautiful in Aberdeen, but she saw nothing of the graceful trees and colourful gardens on her journey, and was still in a state of limbo when she reached Union Street. Forcing herself to think, she booked into a rather second-rate hotel near the railway station, and spent most of the night going over her mother’s terrible revelation, positive that this evening would remain for ever in her mind as the worst in her life.

When Jimmy arrived home – about fifteen minutes after Laura had left – his wife led up to the ghastly confrontation by telling him about her other visitor first. ‘Elspeth was here this morning and it’s gone a lot further between Laura and John than you tried to make out, for they meant to get wed.’

‘Oh, surely no’. That wouldna be possible.’ Jimmy, a week short of his sixty-fifth birthday, felt too tired, after a full day’s work and two hours’ overtime, to contend with a situation like this, but he knew that his wife wouldn’t let it rest.

‘Me and Elspeth both ken’t that,’ she was saying, ‘and we racked our brains trying to think how to stop it, but the only thing was for her to tell the lassie the truth, and Laura come here a wee while ago to get my side o’ the story. She’s left home, Jimmy, and she says she’ll never forgive her mother, or me either.’

‘Poor Laura, but it’s better to be out in the open at last.’ Jimmy bent down to remove his boots. ‘She’s young, though, and she’ll get over it – it’s Elspeth I’m sorriest for. Fate aye has something up its sleeve to knock her down wi’. It’s a great pity the lassie walked out, but David’ll understand what his wife went through, for he’s a good man.’

‘That’s right,’ Helen said, in some relief. ‘He’ll not let Elspeth down. He’ll stand by her.’

After a gruelling night, and an equally gruelling train journey the following forenoon, Laura telephoned to Turnhouse Aerodrome from a kiosk in Princes Street. ‘John, I must see you,’ she said, when the operator eventually located him. ‘I’ve something awful to tell you.’

Her voice sounded strained, but he knew how prone she was to exaggeration. ‘I can’t come to Aberdeen just now.’

‘I’m not in Aberdeen, I’m in Edinburgh.’

‘But I can’t drop everything and run, we’re going up on a recce tonight.’ A vague foreboding had stolen over him. ‘What’s up? You’re not due back for more than a week.’

‘John, it’s vitally important, but I can’t tell you over the phone. Can you meet me outside the ’drome?’

Sensing her urgency, he said, ‘OK, make it fifteen hundred at the main gate.’

Laura booked into a small hotel off Leith Walk, and lay on the bed to rehearse what she would say, but after half an hour she decided that it was impossible to cushion the lethal blow. It would have to be short and simple. Plain facts. She washed her face before going to catch the bus to Turnhouse, and had just arrived when John appeared.

‘What’s all the mystery, Laura? You sounded so serious.’

She brushed off his arm when he tried to link it with hers, and burst out, forgetting, in her misery, to make it plain and simple, ‘Oh John ... my mother’s your mother ... your mother and father knew about it ... but my father didn’t.’

Her incoherency alarmed him, but he could see that she was nearly out of her mind and tried to calm her down. ‘I don’t know what you’re getting at, my dearest dear, but whatever it is, you’ve got it all wrong. I thought you knew the story by this time. Your mother lodged with my mother during the first war, that’s all.’

‘She’d an illegitimate baby and ... oh, God, it’s all a bloody, bloody mix-up!’

He shook his head in bewilderment. ‘I can’t understand what you’re saying, Laura. You’re not making sense.’

‘I’m too upset to think straight.’ Her voice held a sob.

‘Would tea help? There’s a wee place along the road.’

The tearoom was empty, but they chose a secluded corner, and John waited until two steaming cups were set in front of them before saying, ‘Now, Laura, tell me slowly.’

Trying to be rational, she spoke deliberately as if to a child. ‘I was telling Mum and Dad about us, then Mum told us to listen without interrupting.’ She repeated Elspeth’s tale as fully as she could, and ended by asking, ‘Now do you understand? We’re half brother and sister.’

John’s face had drained of all colour. ‘But why did ... what ...?’ He straightened up suddenly. ‘No, it’s not true.’

‘I wish to God it wasn’t, but Helen told me exactly the same. Her baby was stillborn, and all the neighbours thought you were hers ... and losing her own baby made her think you were hers, too.’ John’s stupefied expression made her wonder if her reaction had been the same, until she recalled her angry outburst at her mother. At least John was quiet. ‘They let my father think you were Helen’s, and he only learned the truth last night along with me, and when I said I was leaving for good, he said he would, too.’

After a pause, John muttered, ‘I can’t believe it.’

‘That’s what I said, at first, but it’s true. We have the same mother, so we can never marry. It’s against the law.’

She started to weep quietly, but John thumped his fist on the table, making the girl at the counter look at them in surprise. ‘It’s like the end of the world,’ he moaned, trying to keep his voice low. ‘How can I go on seeing you every day without ... oh, God, Laura, I can’t believe you’re my sister. It’s unthinkable.’

They didn’t speak for some time, then John glanced at his watch. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll have to go back, darl ... er ... Laura. Laura, oh, Laura!’

He buried his face in his hands, and she stroked his head. ‘I know, I’ve been through it all myself a dozen times. I’m going to apply for a posting and I won’t let you know where they send me. I’m never going back to Aberdeen, so there won’t be any chance of meeting accidentally there, either. It must be a clean break, it’s the only way.’

When he could bring himself to speak, John said, brokenly, ‘I hope you won’t be angry, but I can’t forsake my parents, no matter how much they were involved in the deception. They brought me up, and had to make sacrifices to put me through my apprenticeship. I know they were disappointed when I gave up my job to join the RAF, but they didn’t try to stop me. I’ll always consider them as my mum and dad.’

‘Of course you will.’

He walked her back to the bus stop. ‘Let me kiss you one last time, Laura,’ he pleaded as the bus approached.

Her anger at her mother and Helen for causing so much trouble was dispelled by a rising flood of nausea. ‘Oh, no! We can’t even kiss each other goodbye – it’s a sin between brother and sister.’

Jumping aboard the vehicle, she wept quietly for the entire journey, but in her hotel room she flung herself face down on the bed, great sobs breaking from her in wave after wave. At last, sapped, she walked across to the wash-basin in the corner, and, catching sight of her reflection in the mirror, she thought that even John wouldn’t find her attractive now, but what did it matter? What did anything matter any more?