SHE COULDN’T SAY SHE WAS glad it had happened, never glad, but it had brought everything, the seething mass of suppurating undercurrents out into the open.
‘Into the open,’ said Kirsty to herself as she tugged furiously at the weeds threatening to strangle her aquilegia, ‘is not exactly the right word. It never quite smelled the pure, fresh air.’ She looked up from her digging, saw the open windows of her little kitchen and smiled at the knowledge that somewhere inside those four strong walls, her mother was preparing dinner.
‘And Hugh might come,’ she told the weed and, with a mighty tug, wrestled it free from the flowers and threw it into her pail.
In two years they had done wonderful things to the cottage. It was amazing what a difference hard work and talent made for there was, at least for that first year, very little money. When Kirsty had qualified, her first salary of £65 per annum had seemed a fortune, and now when they had an extra $2.10s. and the prospect of an annual increment of another £2.10s. more per year to look forward to, they felt secure and more than content. They had even opened a bank account in their joint names. One day, they would have a holiday. For now it was enough to have their own home, to go to bed at night content to be together.
‘Grand farmer you’d make.’ Kirsty hadn’t seen him arrive, but she looked up and smiled in pleasure. She smiled because she was always pleased to see Jamie, her first friend, but also because he was very good to look at. The skinny laddie had grown into a powerfully built young man, but the blond hair that still hung thick over his weather-beaten face no longer looked like a haystack but more as if art rather than nature had made it fall like that.
‘D’ye need a hand?’
‘Haven’t you done enough?’ For it was Jamie who had ploughed the overgrown garden. ‘Anyway, I enjoy struggling with weeds as a change from verbs and multiplication tables.’
He smiled. ‘I was on the train this afternoon. Was I not in Arbroath before I sat down in my seat?’
‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it, although I still like my bicycle on good days like this, but what a boon the new railway will be in the winter.’
‘Aye, 1914 has brought us amazing progress. Well, if you don’t want a hand, I’ll get home. The wee ones will be in, needing help with their homework.’
‘And Cissie?’
His face darkened and he straightened up from the wall. ‘She’s supposed to be in the Supplementary Class. The Dominie wants her to go to the secondary school, but it’s the dairy at Pitmirmir or the kitchens at the castle for the likes of Cissie.’ His face, his whole demeanour had changed. ‘My regards to your mother, and thank her for the shirt. Don’t I feel like a toff in a handmade shirt.’
Jessie had made Jamie a new shirt as a thank-you for all the labouring he had done in the garden. She had thought to pay him, but he had seemed ready to be insulted when she made the tentative suggestion.
Had he made the silly remark about feeling like a toff because he had picked up the sound of a car on the road from the castle? He touched his hair, almost mockingly, and walked away, not quickly but yet he seemed to cover the ground. Kirsty watched him lightly vault over the dry-stane dyke at the corner and then she turned to welcome Captain Hugh Granville-Baker.
Hugh’s letter to his father had been attended to at once by the Colonel, who was disciplined about everything. Colonel Granville-Baker had written to his factor about the Dingle cottage, which was almost dilapidated but sturdy. Oh, the joy of receiving that long-looked-for letter from the factor offering them the cottage as soon as repairs were made. The Colonel’s man had had trouble finding Kirsty, for by the time he had received his orders from his employer she had moved in with Meg.
She no longer had nightmares about that dreadful day, but she could never forget it. It was Miss McNeil who had taken charge, showing a practical side Kirsty had never imagined.
‘Poor old man,’ she had said as she walked into the bedroom, ‘hasn’t he got enough to deal with? He’ll need a doctor, Mrs Buchanan. Better send her before she falls down.’
And Kirsty had gone for the doctor and by the time he had arrived, Mr Buchanan was out of Kirsty’s bedroom and into his own.
‘I’m reporting him to the Board,’ Kirsty had told Miss McNeil as they waited outside.
‘Oh, it’ll make a lovely story for the Arbroath Herald. The nationals will pick it up too, and they’ll all wonder how far he got with you.’ She had allowed that to sink in. ‘Probably be a picture. You’ll see it on new stands at every station as you go to visit your mother.’
Kirsty had jumped to her feet. ‘I won’t pretend it never happened. He’s a wicked man . . .’
‘A sick man, Kirsty.’ For a moment a look of such remembered horrors passed across Miss McNeil’s face that Kirsty was jerked out of her self-absorption. ‘You don’t know what evil is yet, lassie.’
‘I won’t stay here . . .’
In the end, Kirsty went to live with Meg and her family because it was announced to the community that the Dominie’s ill health made it difficult for Mrs Buchanan to manage. The Board met in closed session and Mr Buchanan was retired early on medical grounds.
‘It’s up to you, Kirsty,’ the doctor had said after he had examined Mr Buchanan. ‘If you want to press charges, I will have no option but to inform the police of what really went on here tonight. Had you been physically harmed, lassie, I would be the first at the police station’ – he gave no thought then or at any other time to the emotional shock Kirsty might have suffered – ‘but I want you to think of Mrs Buchanan, who has surely suffered enough. I can ensure that Buchanan is retired and that he accepts medical treatment, but there’s no need for the world to know his shame. A good night’s sleep and you’ll be fine, lassie, and it’ll be the spring holidays in a day or two. You can get away to Ayrshire and breathe nice clean air. In the meantime you have friends among the fisherfolk you can go to, have you not?’
Kirsty had agreed for Mrs Buchanan’s sake and had been welcomed warmly into Meg’s close, loving family. She had been happy there, but after two months of sharing a bed with Meg, and the washing facilities with all members of the large family who were at home, she had been overjoyed to find the letter marked ‘Aberannoch Estates’ on the table.
‘A cottage just outside the castle gates, Meg, and it’ll be ready in June.’
The cottage had welcomed her from the start. Even in its semi-dilapidated condition she had admired it. It was honey-coloured in the warm spring sun when Kirsty and Meg first went to see it, and honeysuckle and wild roses bound up with brambles rioted over everything.
‘There’s room for flowers and vegetables and a drying green. Look, Meg,’ Kirsty had cried in her joy as she struggled to pull her skirts from the briars. ‘There was a well-laid-out garden here, and it will be again.’
And two years later it was a joy, a garden that provided enough flowers to satisfy Kirsty and more than enough vegetables to supply a small family. Kirsty had no thought of the picture she made as she stood in the evening sun, but young Hugh certainly appreciated it as he drew up in his latest car, a gift from his mother for his last birthday.
‘Miss Robertson,’ he said, touching his hat but without the mockery Jamie had used. ‘Your beauty is an antidote to too much Indian sun.’
His voice was serious; so too was his face. He laughed lightly as he saw Kirsty blush. How different she was from the girls he saw in London.
‘Father and I have been fishing, Kirsty, and have an embarrassment of sea trout. Can Mrs Robertson help us out of our predicament?’ He was reaching into the car as he spoke and reappeared with three large fish. ‘We could drive into Arbroath and give two of them to your friend Meg to smoke.’
‘You’re very kind,’ said Kirsty, dimpling with pleasure. ‘Come in and give them to Mother and we’ll see what she suggests. I’d need to change if we’re to go to the town. I couldn’t be seen in this old dress.’
‘At least in this enlightened age you can be seen. No more pretending to be related – and I find I’m very glad we’re not: related, I mean.’
He saw her blush again in confusion and, carrying the trout, he followed her into the little cottage, effectively cutting out all light to the interior as he filled the doorway. He couldn’t understand the attraction Kirsty held for him. She was so young, so innocent, so inexperienced. Perhaps it was her very freshness which appealed. He tried to picture her in her cotton frock at a dinner in the Officers’ Mess among all the regimental silver and smiled at the bizarre picture. ‘But with the correct dress,’ his mind suggested, and he pushed the suggestion away. No, he didn’t want a Kirsty in silk and satin with crimped hair and rouged lips.
‘Captain Granville-Baker, how very kind, but we can’t possibly use three huge fish.’ Mrs Robertson smiled at him. ‘Put them on the table and do sit down.’ She didn’t add, ‘Your height is overpowering in such a small room.’
‘Hugh thought we might take them to Mr Stewart to smoke, Mother. I’ll change my dress if you say it’s all right.’ Kirsty looked anxiously at her mother, for it was already after eight.
‘We wouldn’t be more than an hour, Mrs Robertson. Actually, I haven’t told Kirsty yet, but I’ve been recalled to my regiment. Rather nasty goings-on in Europe at the moment. Nothing to worry about, of course, but Father thinks we may have had our last day of fishing for a while. I’m glad we’ve had such a glorious holiday. Mother’s in Europe, and Father and I have done nothing but walk and ride . . .’
‘And fish,’ Kirsty finished for him, and he laughed and looked doubtfully at the trout.
‘We did overdo it a bit, but they just kept jumping to the fly today. Pity to let them go to waste.’
‘Go and change your dress, Kirsty. I don’t want you driving through the town in your gardening frock,’ said her mother.
‘I think she looks perfectly lovely,’ said Hugh as he stood up when Kirsty hurried from the room. He looked at Kirsty’s mother and saw the dilemma in his eyes reflected in hers. ‘Perfectly lovely,’ he said again, as if he had learned something that he had been struggling to learn for some time.
Dear Kirsty,
I had hoped it was all going to be a bit of a damp squib. Can you believe we’d all been worried about Mexico, where there have been some real fisticuffs for some time. There’s a chap called Villa who is rebelling with the people against their new President, Carranza, who was in fact Villa’s chum until this coup. All to do with agrarian reforms, and as a farmer; I find myself in sympathy with Pancho . . . sounds like a comedy act, doesn’t it . . . Pancho Villa? Anyway, we’re leaving the Mexicans to sort themselves out because of this trouble in Sarajevo . . .
Kirsty knew all about Sarajevo. Hadn’t she been pointing it out on the map of Europe to her class since June 28th, when the news of the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Emperor of Austria, had stunned the world? So stupid, too: the man was a liberal even when it had been against his own interests. Thank goodness for the summer holidays. On June 11th a bomb had exploded in Westminster Abbey – more work of the suffragettes? She could not belong to a group that did such stupid things, no matter how splendid the cause. Now Mr Chamberlain had died . . . a Minister had been murdered in Paris. The world was going insane. No doubt by the time school reconvened in September everyone would have cooled down. Kirsty put the last box of books neatly on the shelf and left her classroom. Everything would be fine after the holidays.
But on August 4th, a particularly glorious day, Britain declared herself at war.