KIRSTY ROBERTSON AND JAMIE CAMERON were married on New Year’s Eve, 1915. There were no guests, no reception and no honeymoon. The bride was attended by her mother and by the groom’s sister, Cissie, who had taken two days’ holiday from her lucrative employment in the south of England. Jessie had made an effort to provide a special dinner but none of the wedding party seemed very hungry: even seventeen-year-old Cissie could not be tempted.
‘I just seem that tired these days, Mrs Robertson,’ she explained.
‘You don’t look well, lass, and your hair’s a funny colour. I thought it was fashion at first, but it’s not, is it?’
Cissie explained that there was a dust that hung in the air in the factory all the time, day and night, although, she hastened to assure her brother, she was not allowed to work at night. She was underage and her employers in the munitions factory were honourable men.
‘I’ll walk Ciss home,’ said Jamie to his new bride after the dishes had been washed and put away. ‘I doubt anyone wants to see the New Year in.’
‘Good night, Mrs Robertson, Miss Robertson.’ Cissie stopped talking and laughed. ‘Here’s me still crying you Miss Robertson: it’s Mrs Cameron now. I’d never have believed when I was at the school that my brother would wed the Dominie’s lassie, though mind, he aye thought the sun rose and set on your head, didn’t you, Jamie?’
‘Aye, lass, but Kirsty’s your sister now. It’ll be Kirsty and Cissie atween you.’
‘Good night, Cissie,’ said Kirsty and impulsively hugged the younger girl.
‘Good night . . . Kirsty, and a very Happy New Year to you, to us all. I’ll no’ see you the morn, we’ll all leave the newlyweds in peace, and I’m away south on the first train I can catch.’
‘Leave the newlyweds in peace,’ said Jessie bitterly when Kirsty had closed the door behind her husband and new sister-in-law. ‘Whatever for? I’ll go off to bed . . .’
‘Oh, don’t, Mother, we can’t go to bed and leave Jamie alone on his first night in the house.’ She looked at her mother. ‘We’ll get used to it, really we will.’
‘It’s not right, Kirsty. What bride sleeps with her mother on her wedding night?’
‘That’s the way it has to be. It’s the way Jamie wants it . . . and me too,’ she finished softly.
They sat down in the big armchairs before the fire and Jessie took up her sewing, new sewing, a baby’s dress.
‘Oh, Mother.’
‘No one has seen it. I’m knitting, too. Some preparations have to be made.’
Kirsty lay back in the chair and as she rested she felt the baby move and her hands went protectively to her stomach, still almost flat. Four mouths. There was no way to disguise the fact that the Cameron baby would arrive suspiciously soon after his parents’ wedding. The village would know, and most of the town of Arbroath, that the Dominie’s lassie was nae better nor other lassies and had anticipated matrimony. And she’d mairrit a fermer laddie, her with all her education, her that her faither had aye said he’d intended for the university. He’d be turnin’ in his grave, John Robertson.
‘But you’d be pleased with Jamie, Father,’ said Kirsty to the silent ghost.
For Jamie had not abandoned Kirsty when his fears about her condition were realized. Never once had it occurred to him to reject her.
Two days after he had left her at the station he had come to the cottage.
‘Will you take a walk with me, Kirsty?’
Kirsty had looked at him standing there on the doorstep, his cap twisted in his hand, his Sunday tie around his neck.
‘Jamie, you know . . .’
‘Aye, I know, and we have to talk. Will you come, or will I say what I have to say here on the doorstep?’
They had walked away from the village, away from the Dell, up towards the pine woods. It was a cold, crisp, clear night and they had no difficulty in finding a good path.
‘The Jerry aeroplanes will have no problem finding targets tonight, will they, lass?’
‘Are we to talk about the war, Jamie? I have corrections to do.’
He turned to face her. ‘I want you to marry me. I’ll not have you shamed in the village, or your mother, or the Dominie’s memory.’
Had she expected it? If so, not so baldly.
She looked into his face, but could not read the expression. His face was blank, only the eyes shone with the intensity of his feelings, but she could not interpret those emotions . . . love? Lust? Anger?
‘I can’t marry you, Jamie,’ she said sadly and turned away from him to walk back to the cottage.
She had not gone far when he caught up with her, but he must have stood watching her and thinking: thinking of what? The shame to the Dominie’s memory. Why should he care that she and her mother were shamed? He did not say they, she, meant anything to him.
‘You’ve forgot Ella Grieve, the tinkler lass?’
‘No, I remember her.’
‘You remember she had a bairn and her with no man. They hounded her family from the area and she was but a tinkler lassie that nobody really expected tae ken better. You’re the Dominie’s lassie, Kirsty, next below the meenister on the steps to the Deity.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly. I know people will talk and wonder, but it will be over eventually.’
‘And the bairn? Hugh Granville-Baker’s bairn. Is he to be laughed at and cried the bairn of a whore?’
The word tore at her entrails like her mother’s knife through the carcass of Jamie’s hare. No, her mother was gentler, far. She stared at him for a moment, wide-eyed with horror, and then turned and ran, gasping for breath, towards the road.
A whore. Was that what people would say? Could she bear it? Could she tolerate being shunned and perhaps even spat at in the street? And her mother? Would Jessie be able to continue as a senior member of the castle sewing ladies, now meeting in the Manse? How would her precarious state of health, her fiercely won new serenity stand up to the knowledge of her daughter’s shame?
‘I should keep running,’ thought Kirsty desperately. ‘I should run and run into the sea, and that would solve the problem.’ She stopped, bent over to ease the stitch in her side, and looked back to where Jamie still stood like a sentinel on the path. ‘How can I marry him? How can he even ask me?’
She was crying as she let herself into the cottage. Jessie rose expectantly.
‘Did you know?’ Kirsty’s voice was harsh.
Jessie looked troubled. ‘Know what, lass? I hoped . . . well, that you two could . . . one day.’
‘Jamie asked me to marry him, to save my name, for Father’s sake, I think, or maybe even for the baby or for Hugh, though why he should care what folk say of an illegitimate child . . . What kind of marriage could we have? I loved Hugh, Mother. I could never, ever marry anyone else.’
She picked up her notebooks and carried them along to her room. Corrections had to be done. She was still the teacher, still the Dominie’s lassie.
*
Jamie Cameron let himself into the byre where he slept above the beasts and cursed himself for a fool.
‘You think yourself a poet, man, and you can’t find the words to tell a lass what you feel. I should have said, “Kirsty, lass, I love you, I’ve always loved you, and I want to marry you even though you love someone else.” He’s dead. The Captain’s dead, and I want to protect her: I have to protect her, for who else will? I can’t see Lady Sybill welcoming a cottage lassie into her family, even though the lass is a teacher. Would he have married her if he’d come back? Did he know about the child?’
Jamie relived and relived his moments with Kirsty. Should he have held her in his arms as his whole body cried out for him to do? No, she would have hated that. She loved another. ‘I should have told her I’d ask nothing from her, just the right to care for her, to have her share my name, not my bed.’ A vision of Kirsty in Hugh’s arms came into his mind and he thrust it away. ‘With my body I thee worship. With my heart and soul, too, Kirsty. Oh, yon was a cheap shot calling her a whore. I hurt you, my lass, and I could cut out my tongue. I wanted to shock you, to let you know what it will be like for you, to frighten you into letting me take care of you and the bairn. It should have a castle by right, and it’s to be born in a cottage. Should I tell the Colonel? He’s a decent man. Maybe he knows already, or is Kirsty Robertson too proud to tell him, to ask him for help?’
Neither Jamie nor Kirsty slept much that night, nor for a few nights after that. Jamie continued to berate himself for his lack of finesse and Kirsty saw the word ‘whore’ swim in the air above her everywhere. ‘I can stand it for a few months. People will tire of laughing at me, there will be some new scandal. I’ll get a job – there are plenty available with all the men at the war. Maybe I could give lessons to slow bairns here in the cottage. Who has money to pay? Should we move away? Where? Where would we go? If I marry Jamie we could stay. People will still talk but they’ll think the baby is Jamie’s. And when he’s in school he won’t be shamed.’
She remembered the illegitimate lass at Burnside who had always got the strap harder than anyone else, who had been picked on constantly. ‘That never happened at Aberannoch school when Father was the Dominie. It won’t happen now. This is a nice place to bring up a bairn.’ If she married Jamie he would expect other children, wouldn’t he? How could she be with Jamie as she had been with Hugh? ‘I like Jamie well enough: it wouldn’t be too bad, would it?’
Round and round went the questions but no answers came. Every morning she walked to the station and every night when she came back, Jamie was waiting at the station to walk her to the cottage.
‘Please, Jamie. Why are you doing this?’
‘There’s riff-raff around since the war. I’ve no work in the dark and can spare the time to walk you home.’
They walked in silence for a while.
‘I was upset the other night, Jamie. I should have thanked you for the proposal. It’s not every man who would take on another’s bairn.’
‘Bairn?’ Jamie sounded surprised. ‘I wasn’t thinking of the bairn, lass. It’s you I love. Of course I’d love the bairn. They’re easier than lassies. You love a bairn, it loves you back.’
Kirsty held the words, ‘It’s you I love’, in her mind to savour later. ‘I’d forgotten you knew a lot about children,’ she said.
‘Aye, maybe even more than you, Miss Teacher,’ he laughed.
‘People will talk if you walk me home every night.’
‘Marry me to save my name, lass.’
‘This is too serious for humour, Jamie.’
‘Laughing’s aye better than greeting, lass. I did enough of that, and maybe so have you. I don’t ask to take his place. Think on it, Kirsty.’
‘It wouldn’t be fair to you. I can’t stop loving Hugh because he’s dead. I’ll always love him, and I’m carrying his child. The baby will always be there to remind you.’
‘I’ll hold no grudge against a helpless bairn, Kirsty, and I’m the best judge of what’s good for me. Think on it, lass.’
*
And Kirsty thought and decided to accept Jamie’s offer. It had been an incident in school which triggered her decision. Sadie, the same lass who had seen her unwell, seemed always to be watching her closely, slyly.
‘I’m imagining things,’ Kirsty told herself, ‘but she seems rather insolent. Not so bad that I could punish her or report her to the Dominie – and what would I say? “I think Sadie has found out that I’m pregnant.” But if she does suspect . . .’
The suspicions came to a head when Kirsty overheard several of her class talking and giggling in the corridor.
‘Fur coats and nae underwear: that’s these stuck-up teachers that think they’re better nor abody else.’
‘Miss Robertson’s no stuck-up, she’s aye been really nice.’
‘Aye weel, she’s been affie nice tae somebody, I’m thinking.’
Kirsty turned with flaming face and returned to her classroom, where Miss Purdy sought her out.
‘I brought you a cup of tea, Kirsty. Are you all right, lass?’
‘The children, the girls . . .’
‘You can’t hide much from such big lassies, Kirsty. They’ve more experience of life than you have, for all the mess you’ve got yourself into. My mother used to say it was the good girls that got caught – the bad ones knew how to take care of themselves.’
‘I must stay until Christmas. Another month’s salary will make so much difference. The staff don’t suspect, do they?’
‘No one has . . . said anything.’
The inference was obvious and really, thought Kirsty, if the children suspected, then the staff – both ladies of indeterminate years, and married men – must be considering the possibility too.
That evening Kirsty told Jamie she would marry him.
‘I want to be totally honest with you, Jamie,’ she began. All day she had been rehearsing her speech and she knew that Jamie might reject her when she had finished. ‘I’m marrying you because I’m a coward. The girls in my class were laughing at me today, and I realized I couldn’t bear the shame. It’ll be bad enough that the baby arrives so soon after the wedding, if you still want to marry me, that is.’
‘I love you, Kirsty. I always have,’ he said so simply that there was no doubting his sincerity.
‘I like you. I don’t love you, but I’ll try to . . . one day. Do you still want to marry me knowing that?’
‘Your father was the only good thing in my life growing up, Kirsty. Your friendship. The things we shared, the wee triumphs, the tragedies. Do you remember when you fell down and tore the frill of your new apron? What a vain wee thing you were, but you were that clean, and smelled so sweet, like the meadow after the rain, and you sat beside me when nobody else would . . .’
‘I sat beside you because we were the top of the class, Jamie, and I admired your intelligence.’
‘We were friends.’
‘Friends, good friends. Is that enough for a marriage?’
‘It’ll dae. I’ll not ask more and one day, when your grief is no’ sae new, maybe there’ll be room for more.’
‘I’ll try.’
Jessie was delighted, of course, and wanted the wedding to take place as soon as possible, but Kirsty held out for the holidays. She could resign properly; there was no need for anyone to know anything other than that she was to be married.
‘I’ll move my things out of the big room and leave it for you and Jamie. He will want to live here, won’t he? You can’t possibly go down to the Camerons’ cottage.’
‘Mother, sit down, please, and listen.’ Kirsty had wondered how to tell her mother the truth about her marriage, and this was the opportunity. ‘Jamie and I will have a marriage in name only. Maybe later, after the baby is born . . . He wants me to have some time to . . . well . . . he hopes I’ll get over Hugh.’
‘You mean you’re not in love with Jamie? Oh, Kirsty lass, marriage is hard enough where there’s love.’
‘We’ll make do with liking and respect, Mother, for now anyway.’
‘But Jamie’s a man. He’ll want . . . and you, Kirsty. You’ll want . . . children.’ Jessie was becoming more and more confused.
‘Mother, I’ll move my things out of the wee room. Jamie’s delighted. He’s been sleeping on the straw of a byre since he was twelve. Give us time, please, and we’ll work it all out.’
And so they had arranged the strange wedding. Kirsty had decided not to invite even Meg or Miss Purdy, thinking that others would be hurt if left out and so it was better, in a time of war, to have a small wedding.
‘It’s so small it hardly exists at all, Kirsty. What would your father say?’
‘He’d thank Jamie and he’d thank God for Jamie.’
*
Kirsty, Mrs Cameron, sat with her mother on the evening of her wedding day, because she was too shy to face her groom alone.
‘We’ll start as we mean to go on, Mother. When Jamie comes back I’ll make cocoa, or maybe I’ll offer him a dram since it’s Hogmanay.’
‘Best stay away from the alcohol,’ warned Jessie quickly as she heard Jamie knock at the door.
‘Don’t chap, Jamie,’ Kirsty greeted her husband.
‘You’re the tenant here now,’ said Jessie. ‘I gave your name to the grieve, and he said he’d inform the factor.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Robertson. That was a kind gesture.’
‘Only right, Jamie. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll away to my bed. We can have a long lie-in tomorrow since it’s New Year’s Day.’
‘Cattle don’t care about holidays. I’ll be up at five, but don’t worry about me. I’m used to doing for myself. Good night to you both.’
Kirsty watched her husband walk across the tiny kitchen and enter the small bedroom that for two years had been her own.
‘Good night, Jamie, and thank you.’ Strange words to say to your husband on your wedding night. She looked down at the slim gold band on her finger and felt the baby turn in her womb. Into her mind leapt an image of Hugh, so strong that she could almost feel his presence. It would not be banished, but stayed with her while she readied herself for bed and while she tossed and turned in the bed beside her mother.
‘I’m married to one man, and my heart and mind and my very body are filled with the sound and smell and the child of another. Oh, Hugh, you must leave me in peace. Your child will grow up as Jamie Cameron’s child. Leave us in peace.’
But the spectre or dream only smiled and, in her sleep, Kirsty smelled the scent of honeysuckle.