SHE HAD TO GET OUT, to get away.
Kirsty had thought that she would not sleep, but when she had hung up her clothes, washed her face, brushed her hair, done all the other things that she always did in the routine before going to bed, and had then slipped between the cold clean sheets, she had very quickly fallen into a deep sleep. However, she had wakened a few hours later and had lain for the rest of the night waiting for the wag-at-the-wall clock in the hall to tell her the hours as it marked them off.
What would he say or do in the morning? What had been wrong with him? His eyes, so wild and unbalanced; his breath, that horrid breath; his face so close to her own that she had wanted to be sick; and his heavy body pressed against hers. Silent tears streamed down her face and she turned her head into the pillow for fear that she would make a noise and someone might come. She could bear none of them near her: not him, not that little shadow on the stairs who was his wife, not the frighteningly calm Miss McNeil. Miss McNeil had called him Angus, Angus dear, him the Dominie, the headmaster, and she was not a relation but merely a pupil teacher, and his wife had allowed it and had not intervened. Surely Mrs Buchanan should have been the one to help him?
Kirsty tried desperately to see if there had been any fault in what she herself had done. She had been late returning from her night class, but that had been because of the rain. Anyone could understand that she should take shelter. Father would have understood: he would have . . .
She could not bear it. Great racking sobs tore at her. He would have been there to shelter her from the rain, to walk home beside her, to protect her from suddenly frightening men like Mr Buchanan who pulled her hair and called her Jezebel. Why Jezebel? Was she not the shameless woman in the Bible, the Queen of Israel, Ahab’s wife? How was she like Kirsty Robertson?
Like hurt children everywhere, Kirsty cried for her mother and the safety of her arms. But Mother was in Ayrshire, regaining her strength, almost ready to face life without her husband, and it would do her no good at all to be told that her daughter was lonely and frightened.
‘I can’t tell her,’ decided Kirsty, suddenly grown up, ‘but I have to get away from here.’
But where could she go?
The morning brought no answers, only a dull-eyed pupil teacher with a raging headache, but as the clock calmly announced that it was half-past five on a damp November morning, it also brought Miss McNeil to Kirsty’s room. She carried a tray with tea and hot buttered toast, a real luxury.
‘Mrs Buchanan has slept a little later this morning, Kirsty, and so I am doing breakfast.’
Kirsty said nothing and the other girl put the tray down on the small table at the window: a little window looking over the garden with the cherry tree that would be a riot of pink blossom in the spring.
‘I hope you appreciate how concerned Mr Buchanan was for you last night, Kirsty. He takes such a fatherly interest in any young girl living in his house, and when you were so very late . . . and then to come home arm in arm with two gentlemen who were not related . . .’
Kirsty was stung by this interpretation of a very innocent event. ‘I was not arm in arm as you put it, Miss McNeil, with anybody, and even if I had been . . . that man had no right to . . . to . . . pull my hair and . . . breathe on me.’
‘A fatherly overreaction, Miss Robertson. Mr Buchanan is responsible to the Board for not only the welfare but the morals of those pupil teachers in his charge, and we both saw you walking home in the dark arm in arm with two men who are not related to you in any way. If it should get to the Board . . .’
‘Oh, that’s nonsense and you know it. I shall apply for another position and leave . . .’
‘Three of us saw you, Miss Robertson.’ Miss McNeil paused as she saw the full significance of what she was saying sink into Kirsty’s understanding. ‘Certainly it was acceptable that you were out after eight o’clock in the evening because you were upon school business, but the Code states that a teacher may not be in the company of a man to whom she is not related – and there were two of them, Miss Robertson. Now Mr Buchanan is prepared to be lenient, on condition of course that your behaviour from now on is totally responsible. Hurry up and eat your toast. You’ve let it go cold, and it’s your turn to go and stoke the stoves.’
She turned and was gone. Kirsty stared at the door behind her for some time. It was true, it was all so appallingly true. Who would believe her if she were to tell her innocent little story when the full force of the Dominie, his wife and the senior pupil teacher was ranged against her? She gulped down the still warm tea while great sobs again shook her and then, hurriedly, she washed in the cold water in the ewer on the dressing table and dressed as quickly as she could. It would be a pleasure to hurry to the school to help with the fires that seemed to do no more than take the chill off the rooms. Anything would be better than to be here in this house.
Outside, November echoed her depression. The night’s rain was over, but clouds seem to hang like wet laundry from the trees and she walked out into the road to avoid the drips from the branches. Her mind was still busy with her problem, so she did not see the car until it was almost upon her. There was a scream of brakes, and the next moment she was being shouted at by a very angry driver.
‘You damned stupid woman! Are you trying to get yourself killed, walking in the middle of the road like a partridge?’
‘I’m sorry,’ began Kirsty, and then stopped, for blue eyes that had once merrily looked into hers were now staring down at her in a fury. She began to cry.
‘Look here, it’s all right, don’t cry, but you were in the middle of the road. Perhaps I was driving too fast: I’m horribly late.’ And then he peered down at her again through the November murk. ‘Good heavens, it can’t be but it is, it’s Miss Robertson, isn’t it? Look, get in and I’ll drive you home. What on earth are you doing so far from Aberannoch?’ He stopped his tirade and looked at her for a moment. ‘Can’t you talk?’
‘You haven’t given me a chance,’ sniffed Kirsty and tried to smile up at Hugh Granville-Baker through her tears.
‘That’s better. Now hop in off the road and I’ll take you home.’
How wonderful to climb into the beautiful car and to be whisked somewhere, anywhere. ‘I am home, Mister . . . or should I say Colonel or something?’
‘Good lord, no! A humble lieutenant at your service, Miss Robertson. What do you mean – home?’
And so she told him, but left out her misery and her fear and her loneliness.
‘A working woman! Well, I suppose I can understand that. Independence: it’s a great life, isn’t it?’ But Kirsty thought she detected a little bitterness in his young voice, the voice that still had that ability to churn her stomach with feelings she didn’t understand.
‘It was so good to see you,’ she said impulsively, and then blushed furiously for fear he would think her shameless. ‘I mean, someone from home. I . . . miss the village, and the children. Now, I must hurry to school.’
‘Burnside? Hop in. I pass it on my way. Ugly old place, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, and cold. I’m on fire duty this morning. But I can’t get into the car with you – school regulations for unmarried women.’
‘Good lord! How medieval and, of course, my car would be recognized. I don’t think there are five cars in the area. Well, I shall swear we’re related: we’re seventh cousins twice removed. Hop in.’
Kirsty looked at him. Oh, how she wanted to be in that magnificent machine, protected by him for even the few moments it would take to turn the corner. Then she heard the screaming in her head, ‘Jezebel, Jezebel!’
‘I can’t really, it’s only round the corner.’ She had to keep him, had to hear his voice just once more, just once. ‘The janitor would have to report me,’ she finished regretfully.
‘If you insist. You are sure you’re all right? I almost ran you down.’
‘I’m fine.’ Inside I’m crying, Hugh. Can’t you hear me crying? She smiled.
‘Delightful to see you again,’ he said politely, and then the devil of mischief danced in his eyes again, ‘cousin.’
Kirsty stood and watched as the dark blue car disappeared into the fog, then she walked through the gates and into the reality of school and the stoves that needed stoking before the senior teachers arrived to go over lessons with the pupil teachers.
The school was open, for the janitor had been there for an hour already and the great pot-bellied stoves in all the rooms were lit.
‘Morning, Miss Robertson,’ he said. ‘I’ve put a bucket of coal in every room, but there’s something bluidy wrong wi’ the stove in the Dominie’s class. It’s a stubborn bugger, a wee bit like himself. Come on back here where it’s warm when you’re done an’ I’ll make you a cup of tea wi’ a nice buttered bap.’
‘Thanks, Mr McGillivray,’ smiled Kirsty. The janitor was always the same. His complaints were constant: the stoves, the children, the Dominie, all, in his opinion, ‘thrawn buggers’ whose sole purpose in life was to ruin his clean school. Kirsty laughed and went off to work, cheered by his normality and looking forward to the tea which he always said ‘will pit hairs on yer chest, Miss, if you’ll pardon the familiarity’.
She was sitting toasting herself at the open fire in the janitor’s room when Bob Cargill arrived, and with him the memories of the night before came flooding back from the recesses of her mind where she had tried to bury them.
‘Morning, Kirsty. What a night! Did you see the rain, Mr McGillivray? What my grannie calls the stotting kind. “It comes down and goes back up.” That tea looks good. Any chance of a cup?’
‘I’ve mair tae dae than stand here feeding every useless pupil teacher that comes in,’ complained the janitor, but he was already filling a mug with the hot, sweet brew.
‘I hope your parents won’t be too worried, Bob,’ said Kirsty.
‘Fisherfolk are used to their men staying out all night, but I’ll be glad to get home. Was everything all right with you?’
Kirsty looked at his fresh, open face and longed to confide in him, to tell him that her world had gone mad, but she bit the words back, and then she heard the voice that she had been subconsciously waiting for, and to her horror she began to tremble.
‘Quick, lassie, pick up that spare bucket and pretend you were in here for coal.’
‘Morning, McGillivray, Miss Robertson, Cargill. Good to see you on time, Cargill. Give Miss Robertson a hand with that coal, laddie. Where are your manners?’ He was gone in a swirl of black gown, down the corridor to his room. Kirsty stared after him. How normally he had behaved. Had he forgotten? Surely he could not have forgotten.
‘Finish yer tea, lassie,’ said the janitor. ‘It’ll pit heart into you. Don’t show the Dominie you’re feard of him – he bullies the bairns who’re scared, and the teachers an’ all. Pit that extra bucket in Mr Wallace’s room, Mr Cargill. His bluidy stove eats coal.’
‘Come on, Kirsty, it’s Mr Wallace who’s teaching us this morning. Let’s get the best seats.’
Mr Wallace was already in his room and soon the other pupil teachers, including Miss McNeil, arrived. Kirsty could not concentrate, although as a rule she liked Mr Wallace’s history lessons. Had Mr Buchanan forgotten that terrible few seconds by the front door, or was he merely ignoring the event?
‘My dear Miss Robertson,’ Mr Wallace’s quiet voice interrupted her thoughts. ‘You are to take an examination in this subject on Saturday morning. Please try to at least pretend an interest.’
The tears started behind her eyes again. Oh God, was she going to cry every time anyone spoke to her for the rest of her life? Bob looked at her sympathetically, Nell Carson, a third-year pupil teacher, giggled and Miss McNeil frowned. When the hour was over and they were on their way out to the playground to collect the classes, she fell into step beside Kirsty.
‘Pull yourself together, Miss Robertson,’ she said. ‘The Buchanans have decided to ignore your questionable behaviour. Stay away from Mr Cargill in future, and pay attention to your studies if you want to be commended to the Board.’
A hot wave of fury swept over Kirsty. So that was to be their attitude. She was the one in the wrong because she had innocently walked home after dark with two young men. Nothing was to be said about the violence with which the headmaster had accosted her. Who would believe her if she were to complain? Hugh. A vision of his smiling face flashed into her mind; his warm, deep, cultured voice filled her head. ‘Seventh cousin, twice removed.’ What a ridiculous relationship. Could such a one even exist? She smiled and hugged the happiness to herself. Hugh would believe her and he would know what to do, how to help. And then the glow faded, for Hugh was gone and who could say if she would ever see him again? He was the knight and, since he was so obviously twentieth-century, his white charger was a dark blue motor. Would he ride into her life again? ‘Don’t be silly, Kirsty,’ she chided herself in an effort to cheer up. ‘You know where he lives. A letter would be forwarded to him, wouldn’t it?’
It was a dreadful day. Kirsty was in the infants’ classroom all morning and so never saw the headmaster. She dreaded the dinner hour: surely he would seek her out. But he never did. As usual she saw him stride purposefully through the school, and when he was out of the gates she went slowly to the female teachers’ cloakroom and washed her face in cold water. Then she sat down in the single armchair and closed her eyes to ease her blinding headache.
‘Time of the month, lass? You delicate ones never can endure it.’ It was Miss Purdy, the infants’ mistress. ‘I thought you weren’t yourself this morning.’
‘No, I’m all right, Miss Purdy, it’s just a headache. I didn’t sleep well.’
‘If you slept at all. You’re all right with the Buchanans, aren’t you, lass? She’s a wee mouse but nice enough, I think.’
Kirsty looked up into the honest, scrubbed face. ‘Yes, thank you. Everything’s fine.’
A chance missed. Should she say something? No, not yet. This was, after all, her first real conversation with Miss Purdy. She could hardly blurt out that she was suddenly afraid of the Dominie.
‘Here. I’ve a powder in my bag.’
The world swam before Kirsty’s eyes, and before she could fall her head was pushed firmly down between her knees.
‘I hope you haven’t been stupid, lassie. There’s only two reasons I’ve ever known for a lassie fainting. One is when it’s her time of the month, and the other is when she wishes it was.’
Released, Kirsty looked up at her. What was she saying? Why would anyone want to have . . . She blushed.
‘No, no. It’s just that I’m hungry. I couldn’t eat breakfast and I forgot my piece.’ Better not mention Mr McGillivray and his roll and tea.
Miss Purdy stared down at her for some minutes without speaking. ‘I’ve enough for two, lass. Go back to my classroom and I’ll fetch us both a cup of tea. Sit by the fire and warm up.’
Kirsty returned to the classroom, which was warm and quiet without the seventy-eight children who usually covered every inch of floor space. Miss Purdy had swept the floor and stoked the fire and it blazed invitingly. Kirsty flushed guiltily. Should she have cleaned up after the class instead of the senior teacher? She turned hesitantly when the infants’ mistress bustled in.
‘You’ve swept the floor, Miss Purdy.’
‘I can’t abide a mess, and the wee ones certainly make enough to please anyone, don’t they? Don’t fret, Miss Robertson. It’s not in your contract to sweep my floor before dinner, you know. Here, have a sandwich. My favourite moment of the day, lass – the only time I’m ever on my own.’
Kirsty ate the sandwich and drank the hot sweet tea, and then Miss Purdy insisted that she take the headache powder. When the bell rang for the afternoon classes, she not only felt better but knew that she had made a friend. She had told Miss Purdy all about her parents and the school at Aberannoch, and she had learned a great deal about Miss Purdy, who had spent her early womanhood looking after a disabled father and then, after his death, had cheerfully taken over the running of her brother’s home when his wife had died giving birth to their eighth child. There was no note of complaint in her voice, but Kirsty could appreciate why the infants’ mistress enjoyed a quiet break in her classroom.
‘You have my address, Kirsty,’ said Miss Purdy as they walked to the wobbly lines of small children. ‘Michael will certainly squeeze you in somewhere should you ever feel the need.’
Kirsty could say nothing. Those dratted tears once again hovering on the roots of her eyelashes, she smiled and hurried out to her afternoon class.
It was tea-time before she actually saw Mr Buchanan alone. It was Miss McNeil’s turn to help in the kitchen and so Kirsty found herself sitting in the cold dining room with the headmaster, her host, her employer.
‘Miss McNeil tells me you weren’t quite yourself this morning, Miss Robertson. Perhaps now you’ll agree with me about the value of eight hours’ sound sleep. No running around the town after class like one of the fisher lassies. I shall be writing to the Board at Christmas about your first full term with us and, of course, I want that report to be as positive as possible.’ He looked at Kirsty in a kindly and almost jovial manner.
‘He’s mad,’ thought Kirsty. She could not answer him. A sick feeling was growing in the pit of her stomach.
‘And your dear mother,’ he went on. He lowered his voice in that way Kirsty had supposed denoted pity and sympathy. ‘She will want to know that her child is progressing well in her chosen career: a credit to her mother’s upbringing and to the memory of her own dear husband.’
To Kirsty’s relief – for she had been sure that in another second she would have been violently ill – the door swung open and Mrs Buchanan bustled in with a tureen of soup. Miss McNeil followed with plates and hot bread.
‘Nothing like soup on a November evening, is there, lassies?’ she asked. ‘Will we have the blessing, Mr Buchanan, afore the soup grows cold?’
‘Before, Mrs Buchanan, before the soup grows cold,’ said the Dominie, almost gently, and Kirsty saw his wife wince slightly.
‘He’s a horrible little man, and I never noticed until last night,’ she thought as she bent her head for the blessing. ‘What a hypocrite he is, and Miss McNeil too, and me if I stay in this house a minute longer.’
She sat at the table and ate her meal, and she supposed she joined in the conversation, for sometimes she seemed to hear her own voice as if from a long way off, but her mind was busy, busy, busy. Hugh, with his merry eyes and his lovely voice – she could have told Hugh. ‘But you have no right to tell a complete stranger all your worries,’ she argued with herself. ‘He’s not a complete stranger, we’re friends.’ And they were. Somehow she knew that there was a bond between her and the young soldier that she did not understand but was ready to accept. They had met only twice, but it did not matter. The bond had been forged that first day as they stood together in the playground worrying about poor wee Tam and his wet trousers. She must have smiled at the memory, for Miss McNeil’s voice jerked her back to the tea-table.
‘A smile at last, Miss Robertson. Thank goodness. Do you know, Mrs Buchanan, I even heard the head of the French department – and we all know what a misery he is – complain that our pretty little Miss Robertson was looking unhappy today.’
Kirsty said nothing.
‘I do hope you are not unhappy, Miss Robertson?’ said Mrs Buchanan anxiously.
‘Good gracious, Mrs Buchanan. Why ever should the girl be unhappy? She has an excellent appointment, a fine home with good food, every chance for advancement like Miss McNeil here. Is that not so, Miss Robertson?’
‘If you say so, Mr Buchanan,’ said Kirsty. ‘Now, if you will all excuse me, I find I’m not very hungry this evening.’ She rose from the table, dissuading Mrs Buchanan – who was developing a remarkable resemblance to a clucking hen – from following her, and went upstairs to her room. What was going on in this house? Mr Buchanan had been so strange, so frightening, so brutal less than twenty-four hours before . . . and now it was all being passed off as if it had never happened. Something was wrong: with him, with Miss McNeil, who seemed to have a somewhat unusual relationship with him, and with the overanxious Mrs Buchanan, who had stood hidden on the stairs last night while her husband had berated a girl in his care. And the remarks of the infants’ mistress and the janitor . . . their protectiveness . . . had there always been undercurrents at Burnside School, and had she merely been too preoccupied or too grief-stricken to notice them? How she longed for the peace and beauty of Aberannoch. She would suggest that she and Meg go out there on Saturday afternoon, on their old second-hand bicycles, and have a picnic in the castle valley. They might even meet some old friend.
They did. They met Jamie.