IT WAS A FRUSTRATING WINTER. The year ended almost as it had begun with storms and high winds, and Kirsty wondered whether the East Coast was now to experience a hurricane such as had struck Glasgow and the West in January. It was snow, however, and not wind that hurled itself around Aberannoch Castle School. Blizzards swept across the country and in the romantically named ‘Silver Thaw’ of December 21st, there were three thousand street accidents in the City of London alone. To Jamie-John’s delight, there was a white Christmas.
The new term did not begin well as several children could not return on time, and it was almost February before classes were in full swing. The antiquated heating system in the castle tried valiantly to battle with the elements but finally, on a blistering cold day in February, admitted defeat and collapsed. Kirsty and the other teachers did duty bringing in coal and keeping the huge fires burning. They had stepped back in time: back to 1910. Several of the youngsters caught colds and Kirsty and her mother nursed them devotedly. The scourge of influenza, which had wiped out more people in one year than had been killed in the war, must not be allowed to attack the children, and to that end, all the healthy pupils were kept well away from the invalids. Jamie-John was one of the healthy ones and Kirsty was so busy with feverish, fretful youngsters that she saw very little of her son. Even when she was free from duty in the sick-room there was always so much administration to do. The bigger the school grew, the more paperwork found its way onto the Colonel’s beautiful desk in the library. A full-time secretary was needed and, as soon as she had time, Kirsty promised herself that she would write and tell the Trust so.
At least the weather kept Lady Sybill away – but it could not prevent her influence from breaching the castle walls. A huge parcel for Jamie-John arrived from Hamley’s at Christmas, and in January a hamper from Fortnum and Mason reached them.
‘Lady Sybill thinks we’re starving to death in the snow,’ screeched Jamie-John with delight as he danced around his mother while she unpacked exotic fruits.
‘Avocado pears and mangoes are just the thing,’ said Kirsty sarcastically.
‘Oh, it was nice of her, Kirsty,’ said Jessie. ‘Be fair. And it’s for all the children this time, not just Jamie-John. I wonder how you eat avocado pears?’
‘And what they taste like, Grannie,’ said Jamie-John.
If Kirsty hoped that the luxurious gift would soon be eaten up and forgotten, she was disappointed. The children tried to grow trees from the huge stones in the fruits, and for weeks every windowsill in classrooms and dormitories held jam jars where precariously balanced pits tried to germinate. One or two even succeeded.
The vitamin content of his share did not keep Bob from contracting influenza.
‘I’m feeling a bit seedy, Kirsty,’ he said one afternoon after he had taken his French class. ‘I think I ought to get to Auchmithie to my mother. If this takes its usual course, I’m in for a week or two. Best stay out of the way.’
‘Nonsense, Bob.’ Kirsty spoke brusquely to hide the fear she experienced. He looked almost as bad as when he first came to the castle. ‘By the time you get to Auchmithie, you’ll be really ill. You must stay here. Mother and I will manage your meals, and I’ll ring the doctor and ask him to come to see you.’
He was already too weak to protest. The doctor promised to visit the invalid some time in the morning after his surgery, and Kirsty was forced to stay away and allow her mother to attend Bob in his rooms.
‘I’m going to stay with him, Kirsty,’ announced Jessie when she eventually emerged from the sick-room. ‘He’s already running a fever and I’ll try to get it down.’
‘I’ll help,’ began Kirsty. No need to hide from Jessie. ‘Mother, I have to see him, to know he’s all right.’
‘No. You have nearly thirty children to consider and you’ll have Bob’s class as well as your own for a day or two – if you can even get a supply teacher to come out here. I’ll take care of him as if he were Jamie-John, Kirsty.’
Kirsty wanted to protest. Bob was not strong; he had been gassed. Influenza was a killer. ‘You’re right, of course,’ she said, ‘but I’ll come over first thing in the morning with some tea. Are there plenty of logs and coals in his room? If only the heating system worked.’
‘Stop fussing, Kirsty. I’m taking sensible precautions. Bob’s not very strong – he reminds me of your father, always overdoing it.’
It was two weeks before Bob was well enough to return to class, and at the end of that time Kirsty was almost totally exhausted. She had not realized just how much her mother contributed to the life of the school, and for a few days had found herself doing not only her own and Bob’s work but Jessie’s as well.
‘This is ridiculous, Kirsty,’ said Meg one day when she found the headmistress trying to coach rugby in the school gymnasium. ‘You’ll make yourself ill, and then where would we be? I’ll go home at afternoon playtime and get some clothes. Ask Irene to take the whole school out to look for signs that winter’s over.’
‘It’ll be dark by afternoon playtime . . .’
‘Then it will take them longer!’
‘Very funny, Meg. What about Will?’
‘He won’t mind. In fact, I may bring him too, if that’s alright with you. He can’t fish in this weather and he’s bored to tears at home.’
‘Jamie-John will be thrilled. Oh, you’re a good friend, Meg, and a godsend if you can really move in till Bob’s well.’
The first thing Meg did when she returned was to banish Jessie from the sick-room for a few hours.
‘How sick do you have to get before you realize you’re wasting precious time, Bob Cargill?’ were Meg’s bracing words to the invalid. ‘I’ll send Will in to keep you company. Don’t worry. He doesn’t talk much.’
Will’s quiet presence in the sick-room freed Jessie to return to her duties as Matron, and gradually the school got back to normal. Bob was still very weak, and Kirsty watched him anxiously to make sure that he was not throwing himself head first into too many activities. The weather made outside sports an impossibility, but Bob and Will started a chess club which nearly all of the oldest boys and girls joined. Jamie-John wanted to join too.
‘Och, let the lad join, Kirsty. He’s bright enough. I just didn’t think chess would appeal to the really wee ones.’
‘We said twelve and over, Bob, and we have to stick to it. We can’t change rules for my son. He can wait till next year.’
‘Lady Sybill’s going to send me a real ivory chess set,’ announced Jamie-John when Kirsty went in to tuck him up that night.
Kirsty stood stock-still, fear clutching at her stomach, and looked at her son. ‘What did you say, Jamie-John?’
‘I said, Lady Sybill is . . .’
‘I know what you said,’ Kirsty interrupted illogically. ‘When did you speak to Lady Sybill?’
‘I telephoned her at tea-time. She was really pleased, she told me to ring her any time I wanted, but I know you don’t like me to talk to her. Why not, Mummy? She’s nice and she likes me. She says I remind her of her own boy.’
So she hadn’t told him. At least that was something.
‘That’s nice, Jamie-John, but you’re not Lady Sybill’s boy, you’re mine, and the chess club rule was, “children twelve and over”, and you’ll be twelve in May. That isn’t long to wait.’
‘I’ll wait to join your silly little chess club, but meantime I’ll teach myself to play chess. Lady Sybill might even bring the set. She says she’s coming up as soon as the weather gets better. She’s bringing her own car – it’s a Daimler. She has a chauffeur too, and she’ll take me for a drive.’
‘What about the other children, Jamie-John?’
‘They won’t mind. They all know I’m special, Mummy,’ he said in such a matter-of-fact tone that Kirsty ached to box his ears. ‘They know you’re my mother, and there’s grannie and Auntie Meg and I call Mr Cargill “Bob” when I’m not in class, and I live in the castle all year. Of course I’m different.’
Kirsty fled, and her feet found their way to Bob’s rooms.
‘I’m sorry to burst in on you like this. It’s Jamie-John,’ and she told him her worry that her son was changing, was being spoiled, being bought by Lady Sybill and her wealth.
‘Here, sit down and I’ll make a cup of tea. A chess set isn’t the end of the world.’
‘It’s the beginning, Bob. Every time I deny him something, he’ll ring Lady Sybill and she’ll buy it for him to spite me.’
‘Has she told him she’s his grandmother?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Bob thought hard for a long moment. ‘Kirsty, isn’t it possible that he already knows? He sees that portrait almost every day.’
‘He’s grown up with that, he doesn’t look at it.’
‘He must be aware of it. Be realistic, Kirsty. He’s almost twelve and he’s bright. He may not want to know it, but possibly he’s faced the fact and decided, subconsciously, to use the situation to his advantage.’
She cried out almost as if she had been slapped. ‘He couldn’t be that devious, not my Jamie-John.’ She turned to face him; her lovely face was so ravaged by fear and grief that he acted spontaneously. His arm went around her and he pressed her slight form to his. He sought her lips and she offered herself up to him willingly, hungrily. At last he drew away. ‘Oh God, Kirsty, I never meant . . .’
‘That’s what they all say,’ she laughed weakly. ‘Oh, Bob, please stop apologizing for loving me. You do love me, don’t you? I’m not making an absolute complete fool of myself?’
His answer was to kiss her again, a kiss that fused their very souls together. This time, shaken by the violence of their emotion, it was Kirsty who drew back first. She stood up and smoothed her skirt.
‘It mustn’t be a mistake, Bob, not this time. I came . . . oh, God, I probably came to hear you say you loved me. No one, not Hugh, not Jamie, no one has ever used the words . . .’
‘I love you, Kirsty,’ he said, so simply that she had to believe him. ‘I’ve probably loved you since you were sixteen years old, but you don’t want to hear me say it tonight. Jamie-John – tell him, Kirsty. Tell him before Sybill does. Tell him the way it was, the way you want him to hear it. He’ll be able to live with the truth, you’ll see.’
Simple. Just tell him the truth! How difficult in fact it was to find the words that would tell a twelve-year-old boy the circumstances of his birth. Kirsty went over explanations in her mind several times, and she rehearsed them with Bob when they stole a moment or two alone together.
‘First explain his birth, Kirsty, and then we can really plan for the next big thing you’ll have to explain – if there is anything to tell him about.’
‘Oh, there is, Bob, there is,’ breathed Kirsty from the comfort of his one good arm, but when she came to explain to Jamie-John, the clever words faded away like mist in the morning. And then the thaw came, and the spring and, eventually, Lady Sybill.
‘You have had the winter to think, Mrs Cameron. I’m sure you have come to the right conclusion.’
‘Yes, I have.’
Lady Sybill smiled in triumph. ‘There, that wasn’t too terribly hard, was it? A million pounds and whatever I choose to leave him. We’ll set up a Trust, of course, to administer until he’s . . . what would you suggest? Twenty-five, thirty? It will pay for a decent school . . .’
‘I’m sorry, Lady Sybill. I haven’t made my meaning clear. I have no intention of changing my son’s name to Granville-Baker, or pretending that Hugh and I were married. Hugh loved me. I do know that, and I hope we would have been married, but it wasn’t to be and I won’t negate what Jamie Cameron did for both of us . . . for money.’ She put as much loathing as she could into her voice. ‘Can’t you just love him because he’s your grandson?’
There was no chance for Lady Sybill to answer what had probably been a rhetorical question, for at that moment the door burst open and Olga Pacholek almost fell into the room.
‘Mr Cargill says you’re to come, Mrs Cameron. Jamie-John’s away for a run in Lady Sybill’s car.’
Kirsty started up out of her seat in alarm and turned to face the door, but Lady Sybill remained calm.
‘And why shouldn’t he, my dear? My chauffeur . . .’
‘. . . is having his tea in the kitchen,’ Olga finished for her.
*
Jamie-John hadn’t really meant to drive the huge car. He’d been showing off to Olga, who thought everything he did was absolutely wonderful, and since his mother didn’t seem to think he was so special these days it really was quite nice to have someone admire everything he did.
‘Lady Sybill won’t mind,’ he had told Olga. ‘You’ll see.’
‘Why not?’ Olga asked, but he shied away from that difficult question; he didn’t really know why not, and he didn’t want to know. It was one of those horrible grown-up things that always made his mother look sad.
‘I’ll tell your mother,’ Olga had yelled after him. ‘She’ll murder you!’
That threat had made Jamie-John release the brake. He had only wanted to start up the car, but what could a boy do? For a second he caught a glimpse of Olga’s terrified face as the huge monster slid away under his hands, and then he was too busy trying to handle it to think of much else. The driveway was nice and straight and flat and after a few yards he began to feel that this driving thing was easy. The car did all the work, all the driver had to do was steer. Jamie-John Cameron relaxed, sat up straight and looked around him. Then he sobered suddenly, for an incredible realization had just come to him. What on earth was he going to do when he reached the gates? He had no idea at all of how to stop. And then he saw the woodland path that led into the Dell, and he pulled on the wheel with all his might to turn the car off the road. His mother was going to be furious, but she would be even angrier if he was out on a public road. In the castle grounds he would be all right, surely?
The car was going faster . . . the road to the Dell ran downhill. Jamie-John had been to the Dell a million times, it was one of his favourite places to sit when he needed time and space to be alone. The Dell was quiet and peaceful, and once he’d even thought it was like being in church: it had that lovely calm feeling. But he had never noticed that the slope into the Dell was quite steep. The car had taken over: it was going faster and faster and faster. Desperately the child tried to steer. The tree, the tree! He had missed it – well, bumped it a bit but, oh, no, another tree . . . Where had it come from? He couldn’t, he couldn’t. Jamie-John Cameron screamed for his mother.
*
Bob Cargill had run down the driveway towards the road when Olga told him about Jamie-John’s escapade. He felt as weak as a newborn baby, but fear lent him strength. He reached the gates and leaned against them as he scanned the road for signs of the car. That was when he saw the smoke rising from the Dell.
‘Oh, Christ, oh Christ!’ he sobbed and started back up the driveway. When he reached the entrance to the Dell, he stopped and looked down. The huge car had side-swiped a tree and was on its side. Something was on fire – no flames yet, just smoke, but any minute . . . He started forward.
‘Oh, thank God, chaps.’
The soldiers seemed oblivious of the flames that began to lick hungrily about their boots. They paid no heed to Bob’s greeting, but gently, very gently released the child from the tangled metal and then carried him to the side of the road where they laid him down well away from the car. Bob flung himself down beside Jamie-John and pulled off his coat just as the car exploded with a ‘whoosh’, which reminded him only too clearly of the crash that had cost him his arm and his liberty. Instinctively he covered his head and ducked.
‘I don’t know where you fellows came from but . . .’
Bob was alone in the Dell as he knelt beside the child and covered the slight body with his jacket while tears of which he was unaware rolled down his face. He was still there when the others arrived.
*
Jamie-John was taken to the hospital in Arbroath, the same one Kirsty had visited with the children from Aberannoch all those years ago. There were no laughing children now, with arms full of meadow flowers, just Jamie-John, bruised and broken but miraculously holding tenuously to life. Kirsty sat in the waiting room with her mother and Bob, and waited and waited and made bargains with God:
Let him live and I’ll never, ever scold him again.
Let him live and I’ll change his name to anything Sybill wants.
Let him live and I’ll do anything, anything.
A nurse brought tea and Bob gulped his down thirstily. Kirsty sat with her hands around her cup, absorbing its warmth. They did not speak, but just sat and somehow knew that they drew strength from one another. She did not ask her mother to lie down, to go home. Suddenly Jessie looked her years. ‘She should be retired,’ thought Kirsty. ‘She’s an old woman and she’s still working, working, for me . . . and Jamie-John.’
‘Let him live for her, if not for me. I’ll do anything, anything.’
She did not know she sobbed and Bob pulled her close to him and she wept against his chest.
‘Let him live and I’ll give up Bob.’
She looked at him, so drawn and pale. He was exhausted, not yet well after his influenza and yet he had, he had . . .
‘Bob, how did you manage . . . was he thrown from the car . . . they think his legs are broken . . . was that when he was thrown?’
‘I don’t know, Kirsty.’ Bob stared straight ahead as if he was seeing not the polished floor of the waiting room but a burning car and a little boy. ‘The mind plays strange tricks. The car . . . he must have tried to miss a tree. Maybe he pulled too hard on the steering wheel, I don’t know, I can’t drive. But the car had toppled over. It was on the left, on its left.’
‘Then Jamie-John would have been thrown the other way, Bob.’ It was Jessie who spoke, her tired eyes brimming with tears and admiration.
‘I don’t know, Mrs Robertson. It happened so fast, but that policeman was wrong. I wasn’t the hero, it was the other chaps. The laddie was already out of the car when I got there.’ He stopped talking, his mind busy. Had there indeed been ‘other chaps’? Was it a trick of the smoke, the flame? Had his mind gone back to his own crash when two old German farmworkers in dirty uniforms had pulled him from his burning plane?
‘What other chaps, Bob?’ Kirsty was very pale but very alert.
‘I thought I saw two soldiers, lads on manoeuvres maybe, who happened to be passing.’
‘Mrs Cameron?’ The doctor had come in. ‘You can see your little boy now but only for a moment.’
They had all started up, but the doctor went on, ‘And only his mother. Dad and Grannie must wait a little longer. He’s a very sick little boy.’
‘Will he be all right?’ Kirsty was desperate.
‘He’s very ill, Mrs Cameron. The broken bones will heal, but there are internal injuries. Come along. Five minutes, and then I want you all to go home.’
Jamie-John was lying in a long iron bed that made his small body look even more tiny and frail. His face was very pale and there was a large ugly bruise under one eye. He was so very still as Kirsty leaned over him. Was he even breathing?
‘I can’t leave him, Doctor.’
‘Then you must stay in the waiting room, Mrs Cameron. I’m sorry, but we’re moving Jamie-John. There is more work for us to do and there’s nothing you can do to help. Really, it will be better if you rest so that if . . . when he comes round . . .’
‘I’ll send the others home, but I must stay.’
Kirsty stayed for nearly a week, and at the end of that time Jamie-John’s eyelids fluttered and he opened his eyes. Those beautiful blue eyes, Hugh’s eyes, looked calmly at his mother.
‘I hurt, Mummy,’ he whispered.
‘I know, darling,’ she tried to smile back through the tears that threatened to spill over. He had come back to her. Had his father, his fathers, brought him back for her to love and cherish? She didn’t know, she would never know. She kissed the child gently on his pale cheek and turned to look at the nurse who had just entered.
‘There,’ said the nurse triumphantly. ‘Didn’t Mr Harris say it would be today if at all? I’ll get him.’
Mr Harris, older and greyer, was still senior consultant and Kirsty had got to know him quite well during this past week.
‘Are you angry, Mummy?’ whispered the little voice.
‘Oh, Jamie-John, how can I be angry? I nearly lost you.’ And he might never walk again, but she would not say that, not yet, not yet.
‘I bet Lady Sybill’s furious.’
‘No. She loves you too, Jamie-John, very much. She’s been to see you every day. Who do you think can afford all these wonderful toys?’
As yet Lady Sybill only knew one way of proving her love, but she’ll learn, Kirsty thought.
‘I think we must leave this young man alone now, Mrs Cameron.’ It was Mr Harris. ‘He’ll exhaust himself chattering, and you need to go home.’
Kirsty stood up. Home. A hot bath. A long sleep. The school and all the children who had filled Jamie-John’s room with loving messages. Her mother . . . and Bob.
‘I’ll go home, darling, and tell everyone. But I’ll come back soon. We have so much to look forward to . . . you’ll see.’
She kissed him again, but already the eyelashes were resting delicately on the child’s cheeks.
‘There’s a little colour there, Mr Harris?’
‘There will be more tomorrow. Now go home and get a decent night’s sleep.’
Bob was waiting in the corridor. Somehow she was not surprised. At first he didn’t see her as he contemplated the pattern on the polished linoleum. Was it the same linoleum that they had walked on with their flowers all those years ago?
He looked up anxiously as he heard the click of her heels and she smiled at him. He said nothing, but held out his good hand to her and she took it and together they walked to the door.
‘I promised to give you up if he could get better, Bob.’ There, she had said it. She had got her son back. Had she to give up the man she loved, loved with a mature and lasting love, in exchange for her son?
‘I promised all sorts of daft things myself in a burning plane, Kirsty love, but the God who helped me through hell didn’t hold me to them.’
She looked at him, long and hard. Was he right, or was she just hearing what she wanted to hear? Would God hold her to all her promises?
‘I promised never to even scold him again.’
‘Well, I know that’s a really daft one! Read your Bible, Kirsty. Christ got righteously angry and threw the moneylenders out of the temple. Unchecked, Jamie-John will turn into even more of a spoiled brat.’
‘My son is not a spoiled brat,’ she said, but she was smiling as he opened the door and they stepped out into bright sunshine.
‘We’ll need to buy a car for the school,’ said Bob. ‘I’ve spent a fortune on taxis this week. There’s never a train when you want one.’
Kirsty turned back to look at the hospital where her little son lay. ‘He’s still very ill, Bob. His legs . . .’
‘Will get better tomorrow or the tomorrow after that.’
‘Yes, Bob. Everything will work out tomorrow, everything.’ She turned to him, naturally, spontaneously, in the open air for all the world to see if they chose. ‘I love you, Bob Cargill, and I want to be your wife.’
He drew her close and kissed her hair, her eyes, her lips.
‘What price the education code now, you strumpet?’ he said and bent to kiss her again, hard, as if to seal a bargain. ‘I’ve waited a long time to hear you say that.’
‘Let’s go home, Bob, to all our tomorrows.’