GRAMMAR
Parsing and Analysis of Simple, Complex and Compound Sentences.
What else, what else was there to English grammar? Kirsty’s mind refused to work. Hugh was returning to the Front and this evening they were going to visit the Aberannoch Dell for a last time. His staff were to provide a picnic. She stopped trying to conjure up English grammar out of her head, which seemed to be full of images of Hugh Granville-Baker: his eyes, his lips, his hands with their long, slim, but strong fingers, the way his hair curled darkly at the nape of his neck but shone almost like gold at his wrists.
COMPOSITION
The Garden
A Visit to the Harbour
Libraries
The ’45
Our Bodies and Alcohol
The Life Story of a Bird
A Walk in the Woods
‘A Walk in the Woods’. Perhaps she should rub out that title. Even writing it made her fingertips tingle. The Merit Class essays would surely not talk of the delicious delights of soft kisses, sweeter than the wild strawberries that grew in the wood. They would not mention the heady perfume of the honeysuckle that made her forget everything until a breathless Hugh pulled her up to stand beside him for one last kiss. Somewhere, not so very far away, men were dying. How could that be when the Aberannoch Dell was so peaceful, a bower formed by briar roses and bramble blossom? The School Year. What else had she done last year? How would she improve this year?
She took a new page.
GEOGRAPHY
What matter? The class and their teacher would be interested only in the geography of Europe.
HISTORY
Who cared about the landing of the Romans or the Saxons? In Europe history was being made; geography was being unmade; and in Scotland in August 1915 Kirsty Robertson fell in love with Hugh Granville-Baker in the Aberannoch Dell. There was history and geography for you.
Jessie watched her daughter chew the end of her pen. Her attention was wandering from the job she had set herself and Jessie knew what – or rather who – was on the girl’s mind, and her own heart was troubled. It wouldn’t do; it just wouldn’t do. But how to tell a girl who had wandered around for three days as if her feet didn’t even feel the hard ground beneath them? Thank God he was leaving tomorrow, and when he came back on his next leave surely he would have come to his senses and realized the extent of the gulf between the king in his castle and the maid in the cottage at the end of his mile-long driveway.
‘Perhaps we should ask Hugh for a meal this evening, Kirsty?’ she said. Keep it casual. A lonely boy needing company. They could have a nice supper and then play ‘Freddie the Fox’ on the card table – a silly child’s game, but just the thing to distract from the knowledge the morning would bring.
‘Look at these peas. I pick them every day, and every day more appear. Hugh can help us eat them.’
‘We’re having a picnic, Mother.’ Kirsty turned to her mother, her eyes shining. ‘The staff are preparing it. Doesn’t that sound elegant? It won’t be cheese sandwiches . . .’
‘What’s wrong with cheese sandwiches?’
‘Nothing, when you make them,’ laughed Kirsty. ‘Oh, Mother, I’m so happy. He’s so wonderful, isn’t he?’
Jessie wanted to plead, ‘Don’t fall in love, Kirsty’, but she could see that Kirsty already had, and girls in love saw and heard only what they wanted to see and hear.
‘He’s a nice laddie, Kirsty. He must have lots of friends. It’s unusual for him to come back on his own, isn’t it?’
A little of the light went out of Kirsty’s eyes but Jessie hardened her heart. ‘If his parents were here, if there wasn’t a war on, the castle would be full of young people, Hugh’s friends, the ones he grew up with, the ones he sees in London.’
‘He didn’t want to stay in London with his society friends, Mother,’ said Kirsty quietly. ‘He wanted . . .’
‘What, dear? To see for himself how the estate was handling the harvest, and it’s nice that you’re here to keep him company. That draughty old place must be miserable if you’re on your own. He must rattle around like one of these little peas.’
‘Don’t spoil it, Mother, please.’ Kirsty stood up and turned her back on her mother. ‘I know I’m in a dream,’ she said in a voice so low that Jessie could hardly hear, ‘and I’ll wake up. When I’m sane I know that, and then sometimes I say, it doesn’t matter that he lives in a castle and that I live in a cottage. When we’re together we laugh, and talk and talk . . .’
‘And kiss,’ Jessie thought. ‘Please, God, nothing else. Innocent kisses among the wild flowers. A romantic dream for a boy escaping from the hell of war . . . but my wee girl? She has seen no hell to hide from. Her memories are not his memories.’
Jessie sighed and said aloud, ‘Have a lovely picnic, my dear, but tomorrow, Kirsty, tomorrow Cinderella has to come back from the palace. I don’t want you hurt, my wee lass. There are no glass slippers in real life.’ There, she’d said it, as much as she could say. ‘I’ll take these peas down to the Camerons. Jamie brought me a hare this afternoon and I know he doesn’t have time to grow vegetables.’
She doubted that Kirsty even heard her go.
Jamie Cameron saw Kirsty drive off in Hugh’s car. He’d managed to avoid her since New Year’s Eve. Several times he’d started a note of apology, or a poem, a poem that would explain, but he couldn’t get further than ‘I’ve loved a lass for near ten year’, and he didn’t think that was very good poetry. He saw the way Kirsty looked at Hugh, just the way he would like her to look at him. He couldn’t tell whether there was love in the Captain’s eyes. What twinkled there – amusement, friendship, affection? Maybe all three. ‘I’ll kill him, gin he hurts her,’ thought Jamie fiercely, and his mind shied away from all the ways that she could be hurt. ‘She looks right in a big fancy car. Maybe he’s no’ just killing time. Why shouldn’t he love her like I love her?’ But no one could ever love Kirsty like that. Sometimes the power of the passion inside him frightened Jamie, and to rid himself of it he would walk for miles, or sit at the slit that passed for a window in the byre where he lived since he had stopped sharing with all his brothers, and he would write and write and write. He wrote about the countryside, and he wrote about the sea, which he could see from the hill above the cottage, and he wrote about his mother and his brothers and sisters and he tried, so hard, to write about his love for Kirsty.
The briar blooms sae fresh and fair,
But fairer far is Kirsty . . .
Damn, he was stealing from Burns and she wasn’t fair, anyway, she was dark, except that fair meant beautiful to look at. That’s what the Dominie’s dictionary told him, and Kirsty, oh aye, she was fair.
‘Where was he taking her in his big car, and her with her best blue frock on?’ He’d seen them wandering around the castle grounds – the ‘Policies’ as Lady Sybill cried them. Jamie’s feelings were in a turmoil too. He didn’t want Kirsty to go out with Hugh Granville-Baker, but if they were going out together why couldn’t it be to the fancy restaurants where the nobs took their lassies, and not just for a walk in the woods like farm laddies? Kirsty was good enough for the swanky places and if Hugh Granville-Baker did not agree then he, Jamie Cameron, would personally draw his cork for him. Coming to that decision made him feel a great deal better and he went off to inspect the traps he’d put in the woods. The gamie didn’t like it, but finding nourishing food for seven bairns and his mother – his father seemed to manage on whisky and great doorsteps of bread and cheese when he was sober – was not easy on one lad’s wages. His mother had offered herself for the harvest; his mother, pregnant again and her near forty, cutting hay with a scythe while her man slept it off under a tree.
‘One day I’ll hit him.’ Jamie made another decision that raised his spirits. ‘Soon I’ll be strong enough tae handle him. Honour they father and they mother,’ the words sprang unbidden into his head. ‘I’ve tried, Lord, ye cannae say I haven’t tried.’ He jumped the dry-stane dyke and skirted round the field. ‘What a bonny sight is a field of barley.’
*
‘If I ever thought of having champagne,’ said Kirsty, ‘I would never have thought my first sip would be at a picnic.’
‘Why not?’ asked Hugh as he refilled her crystal glass and then his own. ‘Champagne, cold chicken breasts, asparagus and luscious strawberries. Here, pop a strawberry into your glass. Now, how does that taste?’ He held the dripping fruit to her lips and, her eyes on his, she bit it.
‘No,’ she whispered, strangely breathless. ‘Champagne is for drinking and strawberries are for eating on their own.’
‘Not even with cream, Miss Purist?’
She shook her head. She was drinking champagne; she was sophisticated, witty. ‘A strawberry, my poor disadvantaged boy,’ she said, ‘is at its best picked warm from the sun.’
‘Next year, Kirsty. Next year the war will be over and we’ll pick strawberries and eat them straight from the field.’ He was so close, so very close. It was so right, so inevitable, so perfect. He leaned over her and his lips met hers, warm, soft, sweet from the taste of strawberries and very slightly sour from the champagne. She looked up over his shoulder and saw the wild pink roses and the white blossoms of the bramble, and she could smell so strongly the scent of honeysuckle, and then everything was blotted out by Hugh, the strength of him, the feel of him. The blood raced in her veins, faster and faster and she could hear his breathing and hers, mingled, and words . . . what was she saying, what was he saying? It didn’t matter, nothing mattered but this feeling. She would die; she could not bear this pleasure.
‘Hugh, Hugh,’ she heard a voice shriek, and it was hers, and he fell against her and she could feel the tears running down her cheeks.
‘Oh, God, Kirsty, I didn’t mean . . .’
She put her hand over his mouth. ‘Don’t talk, don’t talk,’ she begged.
She had to hold him, to hold the moment, for even as she smelled the blossom which waved above her, something, something deep, deep inside, told her that nothing would ever be so perfect again.
*
Jamie had seen them kiss as he slipped through the Dell with his rabbits. They did not see him and he was no voyeur: he would not watch, he could not watch. ‘Oh, Kirsty lass,’ his heart cried. ‘What I’d give tae have you look at me like that.’
He was unaware of the tears that streamed down his cheeks as he handed his mother the rabbits. ‘I’ll kill him gin he hurts her,’ he vowed as he climbed the ladder to his loft.
I’ve loved a lass for near ten year.
I’ll love her till I die . . .
‘I can’t write poetry. It stinks. Oh, Kirsty lass, could I find the words . . .’
*
In the Dell, the honeysuckle, the briar roses and the bramble blossoms slept. Hugh and Kirsty tidied up their picnic, a slow job, for they stopped too often to kiss.
‘Oh, Kirsty, Kirsty, my dearest girl . . .’ Hugh began, but she stopped the words with her lips or her hand.
‘Don’t speak, oh, Hugh, my heart, don’t spoil the moment.’