THE FIRST FEW MONTHS OF 1921 were sheer hell for Kirsty. She had told Jessie that she had walked out of the flower shop on New Year’s Eve because of Netta’s demands, and if Jessie ever felt that it was silly to throw one job away when there was no others available, she made no complaints. Every day, when the weather allowed, Kirsty walked into Arbroath and looked for a job, any job, but the ones that were available were always given to returned soldiers. Every Friday she went to the bank and withdrew the minimum amount of money needed to supplement her income so that they could live reasonably for the next week, and panic rose in her throat as she saw the balance dropping, always dropping. She would have to leave Aberannoch, and Jamie-John. There was nothing else for it. Only in an industrial city could work be found. She began to frequent the library, too, on Fridays. She was no longer interested in whether or not John Buchan was writing, or Picasso was painting or Elgar composing. The city newspapers listed jobs available and surely, surely soon there would be a factory somewhere advertising for unqualified help.
Once a month, with Jamie-John, she visited Meg and Will in the fishermen’s cottages, and that weekend she withdrew a shilling less for Will always gave her fish to take home. Meg’s husband was a quiet, shy man and he would not make the journey out to Aberannoch when it was Meg’s turn to visit, but he loved to sit quietly in a corner of his front room and play with Jamie-John, who always gravitated towards Will when the women had stopped fussing over him. Meg no longer spoke about babies. After three years she had decided that there were to be no children and she made the most of the nephews and nieces, who arrived with amazing regularity every year, and of Jamie-John.
Meg’s two oldest brothers, Alex and Tam, had survived the war and were more political than ever. Often when Kirsty visited, the entire clan would assemble and the adults would drink quantities of strong tea and talk and talk while the children played with Grampa or quiet Will, neither of whom took much part in political arguing.
‘The war tae end all wars,’ Alex would quote every time he had the chance of an audience. ‘A country fit for heroes. Well, if grinding poverty and ill health is whit this country thinks its heroes deserve, then I want nane o’ this country. We’ll change things, Kirsty. Come and join us. Whit has Britain done for you? A widow woman wi’ a wee laddie, and they’re tellin ye they dinnae gie a damn that yer man’s deid, that a woman wi’ your education is washed up like one o’ faither’s auld boats. And oor Meg that loves bairns wi’ a passion and wis that guid wi’ them? Do they say, “Take yer love o’ bairns and yer talent for teachin’ them intae the schools?” No, they gie the jobs tae men because they’re men, no’ because they’re better teachers – and some o’ the pare bit walkin’ wounded that’s teaching these days. It breaks yer heart tae see them, jumping in the playground when a laddie that needs his backside skelped slips up behind them and claps his hands.’
‘Men have families to keep, Alex.’
‘And you don’t? Come on, lassie. We want equal rights for all, men and women baith, and a clever lass like you should join the movement.’
For a moment she longed to tell him that she would if she were staying in Angus, but she could not speak, not yet, not until she had found a job, any job that would keep a roof, albeit a rather leaky one, above their heads.
Alex’s talk of job opportunities and civil rights reminded Meg that Kirsty still had found no work. She interrupted her brother.
‘Kirsty, Tam’s wife is in the family way.’
‘Oh, how nice.’
‘She works in the shop on the High Street, and she’ll need to leave. It’s mainly selling. The fish is usually cleaned down here.’
‘Ach, Kirsty’s too fine for gutting fish.’
Tam seemed not to resent his grandfather’s supposition that what was good enough for the wife of his grandson was not good enough for his granddaughter’s friend.
‘There’s nae workin’ wi’ the fish, Grandfather, juist sellin’ them. Kirsty could dae that, and it’s nae caulder than Netta Spink’s flower shop, Kirsty.’
‘It’s very good of you, Tam. To be honest I’d actually thought of moving away – getting a job, maybe even in England.’
‘England?’ Meg made it sound as uncultivated and as far away as Outer Mongolia. ‘Why on earth would you want to go to England? And what about your mother and wee Jamie-John?’
‘I’d leave them until I could find another house.’
‘My case entirely, Kirsty,’ said Alex triumphantly. ‘You’ll maybe land a job, lassie, that pays you half whit it pays the man beside you, but a hoos? Gin there was one available who’d gie it tae a young lassie when there’s veterans wi’ families lining up like shoals of mackerel ready tae dive intae the net? Join the real world, Kirsty, and fight for the rights of women here in Angus.’
Kirsty’s head was buzzing when Meg and Will had finally seen her onto the train and it started its ponderous run to Aberannoch. Selling fish, the Dominie’s lassie selling fish? Why not? ‘Oh, Father,’ she thought, ‘you wanted so much more for me and I’ve let you down badly. I’ll take the job and do it as well as I can, but a life of fish? We used to laugh together at dear Meg because she always smelled of fish. Your grandson smells of it now, but his little tummy is full of it lovingly caught and cooked for him by fine, fine people who are giving me a chance. I won’t have to uproot Mother. And I’ll join the Women’s Suffrage Movement, and maybe Alex’s people too.’
Jessie was at the station to meet them.
‘Mother!’ cried Kirsty, her heart beginning to beat rapidly. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing, dear,’ Jessie said as she wrinkled her nose in distaste at the smell of her small grandson wriggling delightedly in her arms. ‘I thought you might be tired and I came to help.’
‘Will took him on the boat – no, no, not out to sea, but he was allowed to “help”, weren’t you, my lamb?’
‘I’m a fisher laddie, Gramma,’ said Jamie-John.
‘Not if I have anything to do with it,’ smiled his grandmother grimly. ‘Hot baths for you two, and then lovely macaroni and cheese.’
‘Yum, yum,’ said Jamie-John. ‘We had roast beef, Gramma, and we’ve brought all my fishes with us for tomorrow.’
‘There’s a letter from the estate, Kirsty, probably about the leak. I hope they won’t put the rent up.’
‘I’ll get him off to bed first. Don’t worry, Mother. The Stewarts are giving me a job and so, even if we have to contribute to repairs, we’ll manage.’
Kirsty could tell from the expression on her mother’s face that Jessie did not relish the idea of her daughter working in a fish shop. A mulish expression came over her own face: it was honest work and she was lucky to get it.
‘We’ll talk about it after I get him off to bed, Mother, and then I’ll see what the factor has to say.’
Deliberately they changed the subject: no talk of any business until Jamie-John was in bed and everything tidy again for the morning – Sunday, a day of rest. There had been too many for Kirsty Cameron lately, and she could almost look forward to going back to work. Next time she went to the bank, it might even be to put money in. She smiled as she walked along beside her skipping son who was recounting, with a bit of embellishment, his adventures.
She was so tired that she almost decided to leave the letter until the next day. If she ignored it and went to bed, she knew that she would worry about its contents; if she read it and learned that the rent was going up, she would worry just as much.
‘I’d best see what the factor has to say about my complaints,’ she said as Jessie was about to retire to Kirsty’s old room.
Kirsty neatly and carefully slit open the letter with her father’s old brass opener and read it. Then she sat down abruptly on the chair beside the table and let the letter flutter from her fingers.
‘He wants to see me,’ she said, her face as chalk white as the expensive paper. ‘The Colonel. Tomorrow. Oh, Mother, he must know about Jamie-John. What if they want to take him from me?’
*
Colonel Hugo Granville-Baker had not immediately recognized his son’s face in that of the small child whose perambulator he had righted. He had thought the child handsome and had said so to the mother, the Dominie’s lassie, if he recalled right. He’d heard she’d married some farm laddie. A bit of a comedown after all that education, but rumours of the state of the morals of the new Mrs Cameron had infiltrated the castle walls more easily than English spears had ever been able to do, and he had sighed, said, ‘Ah well, who am I to judge?’ and dismissed them from his mind. Or tried to, because that small face with the big blue eyes and the engaging gap between the front teeth kept coming between his eyes and the papers he was reading.
‘Dear God in Heaven above,’ he had exclaimed loudly in his club one night when he had tried vainly several times to locate the price of his shares, and his disturbing of the peace and earned him several loud ‘Tut-tuts’ from aged members. The child was Hugh’s. There could be no doubt! He pored over baby pictures, pencil sketches, portraits. The eyes, the teeth, the set of the little ears, the curling black hair. The child was his child, born again. But how? Mind you, the boy had always loved Aberannoch and had been there on leave several times, and by himself. And then one day the Colonel had opened the little parcel of Hugh’s effects and the bloodstained letter had slipped from the back of the paybook where it had rested for five years: a letter of love that had never been posted because the writer had died before he finished it. The Colonel had cried over that letter as he had not wept when the news of his son’s death was brought to him. He was a man, for God’s sake, a Colonel in His Majesty’s Forces. His crying would be done inside where only God could see it.
But another man had acknowledged Hugh’s child. Had he thought it his own? Was the girl promiscuous? His grandson the child of a slut? He would tear him from her! No, no, slowly, slowly. Watch and listen as you have done all your life, Hugo, and come to an educated man’s conclusion. Now the girl was widowed, it would be easier to take the child. Nannies, prep school, Eton, Sandhurst. Hugh again, all to himself, without Sybill and her wretched blue-blooded interference.
*
‘Shall I come with you?’ asked a trembling Jessie next afternoon.
‘No. I’m sure it’s nothing. I was overwrought yesterday, I overreacted. He didn’t mention Jamie-John. He can’t know, and even if he guessed, I can deny it. Jamie saved us. He’s Jamie’s child in the eyes of the law.’
‘The Colonel is so wealthy, and Lady Sybill – she’s related to lords.’
‘Then she won’t want to acknowledge a bastard grandson,’ said Kirsty brutally, and was furious with herself when she saw Jessie wince. She kissed her mother softly. ‘Don’t worry, Mother. I won’t let anyone take Jamie-John away from us. If we have to, we’ll go to England and get a job there. I’ll change my name, anything. No one will take my child.’
Bravely said, but after a few minutes in the Colonel’s magnificent panelled library, a room she had seen only once before, Kirsty laughed at her foolishness. The Colonel never even mentioned Jamie-John.
He had poured coffee into cups of a porcelain so fine that Kirsty had marvelled that it could even tolerate the weight of the liquid.
‘Milk or cream, Mrs Cameron? Sugar?’
Would he get to the point?
‘Mrs Cameron, I have a proposition to put to you.’ He saw her stiffen and regretted his choice of words. How often had he gone over this conversation in his head, and still he hadn’t got it right? ‘Not just me. The Board.’
She looked at him strangely. Of course, for her the Board had always meant the school board, and he laughed. It was almost the same thing.
‘Several friends and colleagues of mine met here over the New Year period, Mrs Cameron. We are all men with one particular thing in common: we lost at least one child in the war.’ His face clouded for a second, and he paused and did not say, ‘For some it was an only child.’ ‘We don’t want marble memorials to our children. No cold winged ladies on great columns bearing their names. We want a living memorial. They were young. We thought of the young who survived, who should have a chance to do with their lives what our boys . . . and girls had no chance to do. In short, a school, Mrs Cameron. A school here . . . for orphans. What do you say?’ He looked at her excitedly.
‘I don’t know what you want me to say, Colonel. It’s a lovely and generous idea, I think.’
‘I want to turn the castle into a school. A great deal of work has been done already, and the first group of boys will be here in August. Later there will be girls, and perhaps even children from Belgium and France. We can’t mend all of Europe’s wounds, but maybe some. And we want you, in a way a casualty of the war, to be our first teacher.’
There, he had said it. Should he have started with that? Her face had lit up. An enchanting little thing. With her eyes shining like that, he could understand what Hugh had seen in her. The war had not been kind. He looked at her hands, rough and red, on the Crown Derby. The thin gold wedding ring. Would Hugh have put one there, had he survived? She was looking at him very straightly and directly.
‘Why me, Colonel? You important men must know many men who would want a job like this?’
‘I liked your father, Mrs Cameron. I know he taught you well, and your references from former colleagues are exceptionally good. And then, you are the mother of a war orphan and will surely have an affinity with these children.’ He could not say what his heart wanted him to say: ‘And because my son loved you and you are the mother of his child.’
‘Could I explain a little more of what we have in mind – our long-term plan, as it were. We have ten boys from Glasgow, London, Liverpool. I think that’s the first lot. Their ages range from five to ten, and you are used to teaching a wide age range in one classroom. Next year, we’ll add a class and another teacher, a man to help with physical education, although I hope to find an old soldier in the area who’ll come in once or twice a week. Each year we’ll add a class, and perhaps we’ll have girls too. The top floors will be turned into dormitories, and we’ll need a matron. I thought of Mrs Robertson. Some rooms on this floor will be converted into a flat for you, or whoever takes the job. You would need to be on the premises, you see. This room we would keep the way it is: ideal for interviews, don’t you think, and a lovely view of the gardens?’
He rose and invited her to join him at one of the windows. Below them lay the walled gardens.
‘Pretty bleak now, Mrs Cameron, but see the snowdrops, and in a week or two there will be thousands of daffodils, and in the summer, roses. Do you like roses?’
She did not answer, her eyes full of unshed tears. He left her and returned to the fireplace while she composed herself.
‘It’ll be hard work: practically twenty-four hours a day for a while, but worthwhile, I think.’
‘My son?’ she asked softly.
‘Oh, there’ll be room for him,’ he said lightly. ‘Ten boys or eleven? There are a couple of nippers. They’ll be company for one another.’
‘I’ll take the job, Colonel.’
He reached out his hand and she put hers into it, and as they shook hands she looked up into his eyes – Hugh’s eyes.
He offered to send her home in his chauffeur-driven car, but she needed to walk, to think, to pinch herself to make herself believe it was true. A job doing the only thing she was good at, a generous salary and a rent-free home! And Jamie-John would be growing up in his father’s old home. Hugh had never played in the walled garden where Jamie-John would play, but he had been there, had loved it.
Hugh’s father watched her walk away and his hand fingered the wallet, inside which was Hugh’s letter. By rights it belonged to the girl, and he had meant to give it to her. She should know that her lover had been thinking of her just before he died. But the time wasn’t right for her to know that he was aware of the boy’s parentage. For her sake she had to believe the job was hers because of her ability.
‘You wouldn’t have thought of a woman for the first teacher if she wasn’t your grandson’s mother, Hugo,’ his conscience told him and he replied to it firmly. ‘We wouldn’t ever have thought of a school as a memorial if it wasn’t for the boy.’
*
‘What does he want from you, from Jamie-John?’ asked Jessie when the news was broken to her.
‘From me he wants a devoted and caring teacher, Mother – and Jamie-John? I don’t know. He said he could come too, quite lightly. Perhaps he doesn’t know. He’s only seen him once.’
‘How often will he be there? If he’s there constantly he’ll see the child . . .’
‘Don’t worry, he won’t be there, not often. There’s a Board, a Trust, of eight men. The Colonel has given the castle and the gardens, but not the farms, and each of the others has put in money to keep it running. They have lawyers and accountants and bankers to make the money . . . well, make money, I suppose. The children’s families can’t contribute. I start, with a salary, from today, and you too. We need to supervise the conversion of the castle and ordering of supplies: books, crayons, slates, chalk, toilet paper, food, everything . . . sheets. The lawyer is coming tomorrow to see both of us. Oh, Mother, you will come with me and be Matron, won’t you?’
‘I don’t know, Kirsty. The idea is exciting but terrifying, and what will everyone in the village think?’
‘About what? There will be other jobs, Mother. We’ll need cleaning staff and a cook and a janitor. The Board or Trust will pay the gardeners, if they want to stay on with eleven little boys running all over the place. I’m terrified, but oh, so thrilled. It’s the chance of a lifetime. Teaching, Mother! The only thing I ever wanted to do . . .’
‘In Hugh’s home, Kirsty, with memories of him everywhere.’
‘My memories make me happy, and just think, you didn’t want Jamie-John to have an Angus accent.’
‘No,’ Jessie brightened.
‘Glasgow’s much worse,’ Kirsty laughed and went off to put her son to bed.
*
The next day all three of them set off for the castle. The Colonel watched for them from the drawing room windows, and as he saw his grandson skip between his mother and his grandmother a groan of agonizing pain forced itself between his lips. Could he bear to see the child, the unacknowledged child, to hear his laughter echoing in the empty rooms?
‘The ladies are here, Matthew. No need for me to interview them. I’ll see you at lunch.’
The Colonel’s manservant, who acted as butler when the Colonel was at the castle, opened the door to the little family.
‘Good morning, ladies, young gentleman,’ he said. ‘Mr Matthews will see you in the library.’
They followed him up the stairs slowly as Jamie-John’s sturdy little legs struggled with the height and depth of each stone step.
A man rose from the chair by the Colonel’s desk and came towards them and, to her surprise, Kirsty saw that he was quite young. She had thought all lawyers were elderly, balding, stooping figures, but this man was no more than thirty and certainly seemed to have all his hair. She realized that she was staring and blushed, pulling her hand away, conscious for the first time in months of how rough and red her skin was.
‘I’m Matthew Matthews, Mrs Cameron, Mrs Robertson, lawyer for the Aberannoch Trust.’
*
They could never be ready in time. Kirsty would stand in a dust-filled room and look at bare walls and floors and try to see the rooms filled with beds or desks, and could not. For weeks the workmen seemed to do more harm than good as they pulled down one wall here, erected two there, discovered dry rot in a floor and pulled everything out again to replace the bad with good. Then came an army of women with buckets of hot soapy water who scrubbed and cleaned and rinsed and, under Jessie’s eagle eyes, left not one speck of dirt. The painters came and soon there was a ‘Blue Dorm’ and a ‘Yellow Dorm’. The smaller boys would be in ‘Blue’, the older ones in ‘Yellow’.
Matthew Matthews came in often from his office in Arbroath, and never seemed to flinch when Kirsty discovered that they had completely forgotten yet another item without which the school could not possibly function.
‘I had a telegram from the Trust yesterday,’ he told Kirsty one morning in late July. ‘Sir John’s found five more boys in Edinburgh.’
Kirsty looked at him in mock despair.
‘Seems only right to have two Scottish cities represented,’ he said.
‘Sixteen boys?’
‘The Trust thinks you should hire another teacher.’
They were sitting on boxes in what was supposed to be the classroom and Kirsty looked around. ‘Another teacher? Where? We’re supposed to open in two weeks.’
‘You must know someone – a married woman, perhaps.’
‘A married woman – not necessarily a widow?’
‘A good teacher, Mrs Robertson. Someone who can relate to boys, some of whom are quite disturbed by trauma.’
‘There’s room for five more desks in here, if we can get five more desks, and I just might know someone. She lives in Arbroath.’
‘I live in Arbroath and I’m going back there now. May I drive you? There isn’t much time.’
‘Well, that’s very kind of you.’ Kirsty looked at the watch pinned to her blouse.
‘It’s lunchtime,’ said Matthew. ‘We could have a bite somewhere.’
‘A bite,’ Kirsty echoed in confusion.
‘Yes.’ Matthew laughed and it was, Kirsty decided, a very nice sound. ‘Food, Mrs Cameron. You seem to manage very well on air, but I starve following you around this great barn with my notebook. If we drive in, on business, to Arbroath, to see this teacher, well, why not stop at the inn and have a little lunch? You do eat, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Good, then may I take you to lunch?’
Kirsty hesitated. Lunch? She had never been out to lunch, to any meal with a man. A picnic, oh, a picnic, once, oh so long ago, she had gone on a picnic.
‘Mrs Cameron?’
She blushed. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Matthews. No, I mean, yes, I would like to have a bite.’
‘Good, we could discuss converting another room. Bigger boys in here, little ones . . .?’
‘Somewhere with a view of the gardens,’ said Kirsty, picking up her hat. ‘Oh, my mother. I forgot. My mother and son are in the flat. I should tell her.’
‘I’ll wait outside.’
A few minutes later Kirsty joined him and turned to wave to a small figure with face pressed against a window. How Jamie-John would have loved a ride in a motor car!
‘I’ll drive him around the courtyard when we get back, Mrs Cameron,’ said Matthew, and Kirsty smiled gratefully at his discernment.
‘You have children, Mr Matthews?’
‘No. I’m unmarried.’
‘This is a business meeting,’ thought Kirsty, ‘but I’m glad he’s not married. It wouldn’t seem right having lunch, even a business lunch, with a married man.’
They couldn’t talk in the car for the wind, and the noise of the motor took the sound away. Kirsty lay back against the leather upholstery and submitted to the enjoyment of speed.
*
They lingered over lunch. There were so many things to discuss. A simple little thing, lunch in a public restaurant with an attentive and, yes, an attractive man. Matthew was a different man from Mr Matthews the lawyer with his codes and figures and strictures, and Kirsty Cameron felt light years away from Mrs Cameron, head teacher of the soon – God and the plumbers willing – to be opened Aberannoch Castle Preparatory School for the sons of servicemen. The most important decision in the world was whether or not to have syllabub or apple tart for pudding, or even whether to have a dessert at all. Kirsty relaxed and visibly softened. It was with real regret that she finally stood and announced that they must see Mrs Barber soon, or they would arrive just as she was preparing an evening meal for her husband.
Matthew’s hand lingered on hers a little longer than strictly necessary as he handed her into the car. They were each aware that a new stage in their relationship had been reached. They were Matthew and Kirsty, and already took it for granted that there would be another lunch soon.
‘Or a concert, Kirsty, or a play. I’ll find out what’s on in Dundee. You need a break from constant concern about the school.’
A play – she had been to a play once when she had been at Burnside Primary. The breathless hush when the curtains opened, when the lights went up . . . she could never forget it and now she would go again.
But for now, Cinderella had better go back to her fireplace and her cinders.
‘Lovely, Matthew, I would enjoy that very much, but now we must see Mrs Barber and then I must get home to Jamie-John.’