The last time Eleanor and Marion saw their mother was on a visit made two years earlier. They had come for Christmas shopping in Aberdeen, choosing a Tuesday which would be quiet, and meaning to go back on the Wednesday morning. Marion had two days teaching at the end of the week.
‘I can’t afford to lose it, if I buy all the things the kids want,’ she told Eleanor as they drove down on the Monday afternoon.
‘They’re really pleased we’re coming, you know,’ Eleanor said. ‘Mum and Dad. Somehow, the fact that it’s just the two of us.’
It was growing dark when they turned off the main road, and the house was shadowy, only one window lit at the front as they came up the drive. But someone had heard the car, and the front door opened as the engine died. Both their parents stood framed in the yellow hall light as they got out.
‘Now then, good journey?’ Faith leaned forward and kissed them in turn as they reached the top of the steps. ‘Come in, come in, it’s a cold night. Dad will put the car away for you.’
Inside the warm hall, the familiar smell of Pitcairn: wax polish, coal fire, and something damp and sweetish, that might be just the dish of apples on the sideboard. In a blue bowl on the brass-topped table were shaggy chrysanthemums, and across the varnished floorboards, rag rugs their grandmother had made. Then they were in the living room, where their father had built up the fire. Marion and Eleanor sank onto the Chesterfield together, and stretched out their feet. Eleanor kicked off her shoes.
‘Tea? A cup of tea? I didn’t want to start supper till you got here.’
They had stopped on the way and did not need tea, but could not refuse anything here, at home, where they were the girls again, looked after.
‘Lovely. Do you want a hand?’
‘No, no. Dad will get the tray for me. Sit where you are.’
‘Oh, it’s nice to be here.’ Marion leaned back and closed her eyes.
Firelight glinted on the gold rims of their grandmother’s tea-set, brought out when there were no children around to put it at risk. Once, Eleanor had said, ‘I love that tea-set so much,’ and since then, Faith had always used it for Marion and for her. There was gingerbread too, thickly buttered, but Faith did not really want them to eat it.
‘You’ll spoil your supper,’ she said, but they each had a piece anyway, and drank their tea, and grew hot in front of the fire their father kept piling with coal.
They talked family: children, houses, and in Marion’s case, husband. Eleanor had gone out once or twice with a teacher from the Academy, but she did not mention that. She had enjoyed the concert and film, but had been bored by him, and sorry she was bored. Not worth telling.
‘Mamie and Alice are coming to lunch tomorrow – so you won’t have to visit,’ Faith said. Marion and Eleanor groaned, and laughed. ‘Oh, the aunts.’
‘Good,’ decided Eleanor. ‘I love seeing them. They never change.’
‘I thought that’s why they got on your nerves.’ Faith had not forgotten an impatient remark Eleanor had made twenty years ago.
‘Och, you know what I mean. I don’t mind that now, it’s sort of reassuring. I’ve had enough changes the last few years.’
‘You have that, lass.’ John put his hand on her shoulder as he rose to collect the cups and saucers, and take the tray out for his wife.
They ate in the kitchen.
‘I suppose I’ll have to use the dining room tomorrow,’ Faith said. ‘I hardly ever do these days – don’t even heat it. I can’t say I like it much now.’
‘That’s just because it is hardly used,’ Marion told her. ‘Unused rooms are uncomfortable.’
‘Like my spare bedroom in the cottage,’ Eleanor said. ‘You’d think in such a tiny house there wouldn’t be any unused rooms. But it’s full of boxes.’
‘Still?’
‘Och, I’ve nowhere else to put the stuff.’
‘Maybe you should throw it out,’ her mother suggested.
‘Mum, it’s books mostly. You can’t throw out books.’
Faith raised her eyes. ‘Oh, books.’
‘You probably still associate the dining room with your ballet classes,’ Marion said.
‘Very likely. If your father had ever got rid of those mirrors for me …’
‘Now then,’ John broke in, ‘we’re not going over that again. It’s a question of finding someone else who could make use of them.’
Faith shook her head, smiling. ‘Well, well, tell them our news, John. Never mind the mirrors.’
‘What news?’ Eleanor looked from one to another, but could tell from their faces they were pleased. It was nothing bad. John got up and went to the dresser for his glasses, and picked up an envelope lying there.
‘It’s David,’ Faith announced, before he could sit down again. ‘We’ve heard from David.’
‘At last!’
‘What – not a letter?’ Eleanor exclaimed. ‘Good heavens, fancy him writing a letter.’
‘Well, a note. On a wee card.’ John took it out of the envelope. On one side, a reproduction of a Botticelli Madonna; on the other, a few scrawled words. Eleanor realised with a tiny shock that the very handwriting, large and black and looped, jolted memories. She kept still, listening as her father read.
‘Moving to Edinburgh before Christmas, back to being a Scot at last. Will be in touch. Love to all.’
Silence, as they took this in.
‘Well,’ Marion said.
Faith started piling up dishes. ‘I have no idea what he means by saying he’ll be back to being a Scot. Presumably he didn’t stop being Scottish just because he was living in England.’
‘Is there an address?’ Marion took the card from her father. ‘No – not even a phone number.’
‘But he’s going to be in touch,’ John said, taking his glasses off and beaming at them. ‘Back for Christmas.’
‘Oh, that’s what I was going to ask. Fergus wants to know – well, we all do. Are you coming up to us this year?’ Her parents looked at each other.
‘Are you sure?’
‘There’s Alice and Mamie …’
‘Oh them too.’ Marion waved away objections. ‘Fergus’s mother will put them up. We’ll manage. Or,’ she grinned at her sister, ‘Eleanor could clear out her boxroom.’
‘You’ll have David too,’ their father prompted. ‘David will be here.’
‘Maybe.’ Faith rose from the table. ‘Poke the fire up, John. We’ll take our coffee through.’
Later, Eleanor tapped on Marion’s bedroom door. Marion was sitting up in bed with a cardigan round her shoulders, reading her way through a selection of her mother’s Woman and Home.
‘Do you want any of these?’ she asked.
‘No, I’ve got the Scots Magazine and the Reader’s Digest.’
‘I thought you always re-read What Katy Did when you came home?’
‘So I do. But one night isn’t quite long enough these days. I just fall asleep. Anyway, I love that page in Reader’s Digest – what’s it called – you know, “Life’s Like That”.’
‘Why, for goodness sake?’
‘Because mostly it isn’t like that. Life is like … oh, something else. Not like anything in Reader’s Digest.’ Eleanor sat on the edge of the bed. ‘It’s freezing in here.’
‘I know. Heating went off at nine o’clock as usual.’
They grimaced at each other.
‘We grew up in this,’ Eleanor said. ‘How did we survive?’
‘Hardy.’
‘I suppose.’ Eleanor flicked over the pages of a discarded magazine. ‘Mum’s not too chuffed about David, is she?’
‘You can hardly blame her.’
‘Dad’s thrilled.’
‘He always is. David’s still the blue-eyed boy.’ Marion sighed, and leaned back on the pillows. ‘Mum’s sharper with him, with all of us.’
‘And you think that as far as David’s concerned, she’s quite right?’
‘Yes, I do. He’s so unfair to them. Why can’t he write, call them up, make sure they have his address? It’s not much to ask. What on earth is he doing that’s so secret?’
Eleanor only shrugged, so Marion went on, ‘You ought to know, if anyone does. I mean, he was forever staying at your house at one time.’
‘Yes.’ Eleanor bit her lip, and went on leafing through pages of recipes.
Marion looked at her in silence for a moment, then said, ‘Oh well, Mamie and Alice tomorrow. Lots of news and good advice.’
‘The aunts. You don’t really want them at Christmas as well, do you?’
Marion smiled. ‘Och, where else are they going to go, if Mum and Dad come to us? They’d have a wee chicken on their own, and drive each other crazy.’
Eleanor laughed. ‘So they’ll come and drive all of us crazy instead? Let me help, then. I’ll make a pudding.’
‘No thanks. I know your pudding. You can come and make table decorations and fold napkins. I know your strengths, Eleanor Cairns, and they don’t lie with pudding making.’
They gazed at each other, startled.
‘Now,’ Eleanor said, ‘I can’t imagine anyone calling you Marion Cairns.’
‘Sorry, don’t know why—’
‘Oh, I never liked Ian’s name much anyway. But women didn’t keep their own names when we married. Eleanor Cooper. Hm. Doesn’t suit me. But maybe I’ve gone back to being single. Nice to think you could go back to being young.’
‘It’s because we’re here.’
‘Being the girls. Is David still “the boy”, do you think?’
‘To Dad he is.’
Eleanor got up, stiffly. ‘I’m frozen. Must get a hot bottle, and go to bed.’
‘Up early,’ Marion warned. ‘I want to be in Marks by half nine.’
Eleanor groaned, but nodded, ‘Aye, OK,’ then went back to her own room.
At Pitcairn, they slept in the rooms they had had as teenagers, when Marion had demanded a bedroom of her own, and moved out of the one they had shared as children. It meant her room was always more grown-up than Eleanor’s, for Eleanor could not bear to leave the nursery bedroom, with the beech tree at the window and wallpaper with pink roses and blue forget-me-nots. And yet, the rooms were very alike now, with single beds and low bookcases their father had made, and empty wardrobes that held only their wedding gowns and the dresses they had worn as each other’s bridesmaids. Marion’s bookcase was full of stories about girls who became air hostesses, nurses, ballerinas; on the top shelf a row of pottery rabbits alternated with china figurines, dressed in pink tutus. Eleanor’s books were the old childhood classics: Enid Blyton adventures and Little Women, and the School Friend annuals. On top of hers, a row of sea shells, collected long ago, and so brittle now many were chipped and broken. The posters of pop stars, the clothes and make-up and long playing records, had years ago been cleared out. Childhood remained; adolescence had been swept away. No wonder, Eleanor thought, huddling round the burning hot water bottle, that coming back here is like being a child again.
Not meaning to, or wanting to, she began to think of David, when he had stayed with her that last time. New Year. January. Black ice, and the funeral cars going so slowly in freezing air they seemed to move through silence. Not a sound all the way to the Crematorium. There must have been sound, after that. A hymn, words, farewells, some sort of conversation. Eleanor could recall only silence, and the coffin gliding away in hollow stillness. Think of other things. But she could not. In the end, she put the lamp on and read ‘Life’s Like That’ until her eyelids fell and she could put the light off and try again to sleep, numb and heavy, not thinking at all.
Marion woke early, as she always did. Her mother was downstairs already. The bedroom doors at Pitcairn still sprang open in the night, and though the fitted carpets they now had stopped them moving very far, Marion could hear Radio 4 very faintly from the kitchen. She lay listening to the sober murmur of the news, lulling herself with the illusion of being young again, a daughter, someone who did not have to get up and cope with waking a household, getting everyone organised for the day. The thought of the Christmas shopping kept her from sleep; she would have to get up.
The kitchen light was on; outside, daylight crept up the garden. Faith was making pastry. Gently, she lifted a rolled-out disc and laid it in a pie dish.
‘You’re an early bird,’ she said, looking up.
‘Ach,’ Marion shrugged, ‘it’s years since I was able to lie in.’
‘Well, you would have a family,’ her mother smiled, as she began to roll out the second disc.
‘What are you making?’
‘Apple pie. I thought we’d have a pudding, since Mamie and Alice are coming.’
Marion filled the kettle. ‘I’ve not much in the way of cereal,’ Faith went on, watching her. ‘Your dad likes his porridge.’
‘I’ll have toast.’ Marion moved about the familiar kitchen. ‘You must be relieved to hear from David,’ she said as she made herself tea and waited for the toaster.
‘Oh, I’ve given up worrying about him.’
Marion knew this was not true. ‘I suppose he’s old enough to take care of himself now,’ she said.
‘He always thought so.’ Faith pinched the edges of the pie crust, and put the dish in the pantry. Then she began to wipe up the table, clearing it. Marion sat at the other end, spreading marmalade on her toast.
‘He’s thoughtless, though,’ she said.
Her mother paused, looking up. ‘Och, Marion, people say boys are easier – you know? I hear other women say that about their children. It wasn’t true for us – David was the difficult one.’
Marion thought of Ross, who was easy-going, quiet. ‘I suppose, even as a wee boy, he was always in trouble.’
Faith sat down suddenly, the cloth still in her hand. ‘I used to blame Stanley,’ she said. ‘You mind on that lad, Stanley?’
‘Yes, of course I do. He was never away from the place when we were kids.’
‘I used to blame him – no mother, and his father forever in the Pitcairn Arms.’ She sighed. ‘But it was David – David was the leader. I saw that when Stanley came back that time, told us what had happened to David. And years before …’ She hesitated.
‘What?’
‘They had a spell of lighting fires, him and Stanley. Down in the woods, up the lane – they near set the henhouse alight one day. It was all David’s idea – he was fascinated by fire. I was terrified they’d do it sometime there was nobody to catch them.’ Her face tightened.
‘But they never did any real damage,’ Marion protested. ‘It was just a bonfire or two – wasn’t it?’
Faith stood up, drawing the cloth across the table to catch the rest of the crumbs, sweeping them into her cupped hand, held at the edge. ‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘I hope that’s all it ever was.’ She looked up at the clock. ‘You’d better get Eleanor out of her bed, if you want to be in the town early. It’s terrible trying to get parked at this time of year.’
Marion got up. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and see if she’s awake.’
They were gone all morning, and came back in time for a late lunch, the back seat of the car full of bulging carrier bags.
‘Well?’ Faith asked as they came into the kitchen. ‘Success?’ ‘Yes,’ said Marion, and ‘No,’ said Eleanor.
‘Oh come on, Eleanor, you’ve bought heaps of things.’
‘Ach, I hate shopping.’
‘I just can’t do it any more,’ Faith said as she turned the soup down to a simmer and put the lid back on her stockpot. ‘My legs hurt. Shops don’t have chairs now, so you can have a wee rest.’ She went to get rolls from the bread bin. ‘I’m getting old, that’s my trouble.’
‘No, you’re not.’ Eleanor squeezed her mother round the waist, her tiny mother who seemed even smaller these days, and fragile. Faith shook her off, smiling, and put the rolls in a basket.
‘I’m not so spry as I was. And neither’s Dad.’ Marion halted with her arms full of carrier bags, hearing something like caution, almost a warning, in her mother’s voice.
‘He’s all right, though?’
‘Well, he’s got angina.’
‘When – when did he get that?’ Marion put her bags down, and Eleanor stopped in the middle of taking off her jacket.
‘He’s been breathless for months, but I couldn’t persuade him to see the doctor. Then, a couple of weeks back, chest pains in the night, so I got Martin Cleland to come in, next morning.’
‘You never said!’
‘Nothing to say. No sense in worrying you girls.’
‘But – what are they going to do about it?’
‘Oh, he’s down for some procedure where they put a balloon inside an artery or something. Don’t ask me. He’s got tablets for now, and Martin says there’s nothing to worry about. But the specialist has to decide, about the balloon thing. He’s seeing him in December.’
Eleanor and Marion stood there for a moment, watching their mother shave curls of butter into a flowered china dish, getting on with things, not looking at them.
‘I wish you’d said,’ Eleanor muttered, as she hung up her jacket.
‘I’ll take this lot upstairs, out of the way,’ Marion said, gathering packages.
‘Right, then, Eleanor, take the bread and butter through.’
The dining room fire had been lit, and the first chill just removed from the atmosphere, but the room was still bleak, and smelled of soot. Against the left-hand wall, opposite the window, stood the piano, long out of tune, where Marion had practised, and their mother, or Ruby, had played for the ballet classes. The long polished table was set with silver and glass, and the press door at the side of the fireplace stood ajar, showing on the shelves more glass, napkins and spare flower vases. It was an ordinary dining room, rarely used, a little musty, until you turned to the wall on the right of the door. All the way to the end, there were full-length mirrors fitted, and halfway up, a wooden barre. As Eleanor put the basket of rolls on the table, she caught sight of herself in the looking-glass world, the other dining table and chairs, the other fire burning silently in the grate, the other Eleanor fair and solemn, hair falling forward. Then all this dissolved and for a moment only she saw the row of little girls again in their leotards and pink practice shoes, heads poised, arms arched, one, two three, one two three, heads up, tummies in, and again, one two three …
‘Now then,’ Faith said behind her, ‘you could get the white napkins out.’
‘I wish Dad would get rid of these mirrors.’
‘Oh, he’s promised me that for years. And the room redecorated. This gloomy paper, it’s long overdue for a change.’
‘It could be a really lovely room – the fireplace, and the big window.’
‘Och, it’s hardly worth it now. This house is too big for us. I’m only setting the lunch in here because it keeps Mamie out of my kitchen.’
‘You’re not thinking of moving though?’
‘No, no, I’m too old for that palaver. Pitcairn will see us out. Then you girls and David can please yourselves.’
‘Don’t. You and Dad are going to live for ever.’
Faith laughed. ‘Oh aye.’ She raised a hand. ‘Hark, is that them now?’ Faintly, along the drive, came the chugging of the aunts’ Morris Minor.
Eleanor went through the hall to the front door, but her father was there before her. She thought how gaunt he seemed, but he still moved briskly, so he could not really be ill. Angina was common, wasn’t it? You didn’t die of angina. They could ask Fergus, when they got home.
Mamie and Alice eased themselves stiffly out of the Morris Minor, Mamie in purple and blue, all floating scarves and sweet scent, a plump butterfly of a woman, her rings flashing as she waved to them in the sunshine of this mild November day. Alice came more soberly behind, thin and upright as her brother, and plain, in her grey coat and hat.
Eleanor’s heart, chipped with anxiety about her father, squeezed by the past, by David’s careless note, relented and relaxed, and she ran down the steps to meet them, and take the flowers Mamie held out, the parcels Alice carried.
Next morning, going home, Marion said, ‘They seem quite well, don’t they, Mum and Dad? I’ll ask Fergus about Dad’s angina. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, though. Do you?’
‘They’re both fine,’ Eleanor assured her. ‘Mum’s never been ill, has she?’
‘All that exercise when she was young, the dancing.’
‘And those classes – remember? When we were at the Academy, and she wanted to make a bit of money herself.’
‘Is that why she did it, do you think?’ Marion sounded surprised. ‘I thought it was just that she missed teaching, and we were getting older, and anyway, both of us were utterly useless at ballet. So she took in all those other would-be Fonteyns.’
‘Those dreadful little girls on Saturday mornings, shrieking and laughing. How long did it go on?’
‘A few years – till around the time David left school? Can’t remember now. She could never have made much money at it. How many parents would bring their children all the way out there for a ballet class – the middle of nowhere.’
‘Those awful mirrors,’ Eleanor said.
‘I know.’ Marion laughed. ‘If you’re at the fireplace side of the table, you get a nice warm back, but you have to sit and look at yourself eating.’
‘Yes, and the back of Mamie’s head, nodding up and down. I try not to look.’ Eleanor had been conscious all through lunch-time of her reflection, and of Mamie’s plump rear view, the fluffy white hair less buoyant from the back, and showing pink scalp beneath. Even then, in the middle of the flow of reminiscence and gossip that made up family talk, she had been able to conjure them again, the row of little girls, hopping down the room, Ruby thumping on the piano, and her mother, tiny and dark, shouting instructions.
‘Nearly home – thank goodness.’ Marion could see the necklace of lights strung out along the Kessock Bridge, the reflected glow of Inverness like a reddish haze across the dark blue sky. She was worrying about whether she had bought the right presents, and beginning to regret asking everyone up for Christmas. It would be all right – it always was, in the end. She closed her eyes and leaned back, while Eleanor drove them home.
Marion had no need to worry about Christmas after all. Three weeks later, their father telephoned her at eight in the morning, as she tried to get Ross out of bed and into the shower, and Fergus burned toast in the kitchen.
‘Dad? What is it?’ Her heart leaping up, the certainty of something wrong.
‘It’s your mother. I thought you’d better know, you and Eleanor. I had to get the doctor out last night, she wasn’t well.’
‘What’s happened – is she all right?’
‘Well, no. Not just yet. She’s in the hospital. A wee stroke, the doctor says. Just a wee one, but she’s not awake yet, not speaking or anything.’
‘Oh God.’
‘I’m away up to the hospital again in a while,’ he went on. ‘But I thought you’d want to know where she is.’
‘But how bad is it? Look, Dad – we’ll come down. I’ll ring Eleanor – we’ll come down.’ And then she thought, I’m in Dingwall today, they’re relying on me, I’ll have to leave it till after school. Drive down in the dark. She knew from her father’s voice that it was bad, that he was shaken. No question, they should go at once.
‘No, no, she’ll be fine. The doctor said the first twenty-four hours were what mattered. They can’t tell yet what the damage is, but if she pulls round out of this – they tell me folks make a good recovery.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Anyway, she’s in the best place. The nurses are awful kind. I’ll phone you again when I’ve seen her.’
‘Look, Dad, I’m teaching today. Phone Eleanor, or phone the surgery and they’ll put you through to Fergus. Can I ring the hospital – is that where you’ll be?’
‘I couldn’t say. Probably. Aye, I’ll bide at the hospital. See how she gets on.’
Marion found her pulse was racing. The day was growing dark and confused, and when she put the phone down, she did not know what to do first.
Their mother died that morning. Eleanor called her at school, and she came out of her classroom in a rush, to pick up the telephone in the school office, knowing what the news must be, but not believing it.
‘I didn’t know what to do,’ Eleanor said, her voice full of tears held back. I’m sorry, Marion, I should have left it till you got home, but I felt you had to know.’
Marion went back to the classroom, and taught for the rest of the day. She and Eleanor would go to Aberdeen next morning, when they had made all their arrangements.
Claire was to go to Marion’s house after school and stay the night. Marion took a casserole out of the freezer; made a list for Fergus; found someone to take Kirsty to Highland-dancing; reminded Ross about his football kit; brought the ironing up to date; made sure someone would give the old cat her tablet, feed all the animals, and leave the Betterwear catalogue at the front door. When Eleanor said, ‘I’ll drive if you like,’ she could only sigh with relief.
As they drove down the A96, a faint haze of snow drifted through the air towards them. Pitcairn House seemed bitterly cold, the fires unlit, newspapers spread on the kitchen table, unwashed dishes in the sink. Both sisters, bleakly facing how it was going to be at Pitcairn without their mother, set to work.
‘Ach, don’t worry about cleaning,’ her father said, finding Eleanor with a brush and dustpan, about to sweep down the stair carpet.
‘We want to leave everything tidy for you.’
‘I’ve Ruby,’ he said. ‘She’ll come in an extra day or so, now, maybe.’ Eleanor realised he had thought of this already. ‘Your mother would have done without Ruby, you know. She said there was no need, with just the two of us. But I persuaded her. She was company, anyway, Ruby’s a cheery soul.’
‘But she’s getting on, Dad. You think she’ll want more work? Maybe Susan Mackie – what’s her married name, I always forget – maybe she knows somebody.’
‘We’ll see,’ he said, which meant he would not. ‘Anyway, what I came to tell you – where’s Marion?’
‘In the kitchen, I think. She was going to make us something to eat.’
‘Well, I’ve had Alice on the phone. They’re coming in past. Would there be something for them as well?’
‘Oh, I’m sure we can manage.’ Eleanor went to find Marion. ‘The aunts are on their way. Can we feed them?’
‘You should see the freezer, Eleanor. Mum has everything labelled – soup, casseroles – you’d think she knew. There’s enough to feed Dad for months.’
‘But she didn’t know. Marion, it was right out of the blue, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, yes. Of course it was. She was organised all the time – always plenty to eat. Too much for just the two of them, really.’
‘She was like you.’ Eleanor saw this as if for the first time. ‘You are like Mum – not to look at, or only a bit. But you’re methodical, the way she is … was. Oh Marion.’
‘I know.’
They stood looking at each other, and Eleanor fought back tears.
‘Right,’ Marion said, turning away. ‘I’ll get more soup out.’
Mamie was tearful; Alice seemed as usual, if a little more grave. Mamie embraced them, Oh dearie me, we saw her a week syne, and naethin wrang ava. Alice touched Marion on the shoulder, and said what a shock it had been. Sitting down to eat seemed pointless, but the organising of it (you sit there, no that’s fine. I can manage – who’s for soup?) a relief. Mamie, protesting that they didn’t need more than a bite, nobody had an appetite at such a time, had a bowl of soup and several sandwiches. Alice, to Eleanor’s surprise, also ate well, and seemed almost cheerful by the time Marion filled the coffee cups. Their father hardly touched his food, and got up before everyone else had finished, to go out and ‘see to something in the garden’.
‘Go and look for him,’ Marion murmured to Eleanor as Mamie and Alice vied to wash up and clear away. ‘See he’s OK.’
Eleanor put on her coat and boots and walked down the garden. Her father was standing by the wall near the henhouse now dilapidated, looking out over the fields towards the woods. Eleanor had a sudden memory of herself, seated astride the wall, watching the tinker family, hearing their dog bark.
‘You all right, Dad?’ She slipped her arm through his.
‘Aye, lass.’ He patted her hand, but did not move, and they stood there together for a moment in silence. Oh, why did she die? Eleanor thought. He’s going to be so lonely.
‘Dad, do you remember that family – two wee boys – the woman came to the back door and told our fortunes. I think she came every year round this way, with her family, but I can only recall the one time. They were tinkers, I suppose, and they had a sort of camp – over there.’ She pointed towards the woods. Her father did not answer at once. Thinking he did not remember, Eleanor went on, ‘There was something else. For some reason, they’re connected in my mind with that terrible fire at the Mackies. The barn – did their hayloft not go on fire?’
‘It did.’
She saw that he did remember. He shook his head. ‘Poor souls,’ he said. ‘Aye, I mind on them. Her and her bairns. They appeared every summer for a few years. Her man took work on the farms, but he was a shiftless cratur. Folk employed him because they felt sorry for her. What made you think of them just now?’
‘I don’t know. Standing here – this is where I was when I saw them first.’ Eleanor called up the memory again, herself balanced on the wall, then running inside for some reason. ‘She had a baby too, didn’t she? As well as the boys.’
‘It was a terrible thing to happen,’ her father said, and there was a note in his voice of something more than regret for people he had scarcely known, more than thirty years ago. Eleanor looked at him.
‘What?’ she asked, but as she spoke, memory unlocked.
‘They died in the Mackies’ fire.’
‘Oh – oh, that was it. I remember the fire.’
‘Dan was in two minds about letting them take shelter there for a night or two. I think in the end he said no, he didn’t like her man at all. But the weather was heavy, and a storm forecast. They must have gone in after all, when the Mackies were in bed.’
‘They all died?’ Eleanor saw herself and Marion, up at the window, a fierce glow in the sky.
‘No, just the woman and her baby. Somehow the boys got out, or maybe they weren’t in the barn. I canna mind now but the man had been out drinking, and he wasn’t back. They found him in a ditch the next morning, still fu’, and knowing nothing about it.’
John Cairns turned to go back up the garden to the house, and Eleanor followed him. ‘What happened to the children?’
‘Oh, the Welfare must have taken care of them. What’s it now, Social Services? I dinna ken what happened to the fellow. Never saw him again.’
Eleanor paused by the bench at the back door, and turned to look down the garden again. Her father stopped with her, waiting. The lilac trees were bare, the garden brown and grey in weak November light.
‘What an awful thing to happen,’ Eleanor said. ‘How did – I mean, did they ever find out how the fire started?’
‘The man smoked. Could have been one of his fag ends. Dan wasn’t keen on having them at all for that very reason.’
‘And his wife and baby burned to death?’
‘A tragedy. You know, Eleanor, some folk say they see her whiles, going round the doors, carrying her bairn.’
‘Her ghost?’
‘Ach, I’ve nae time for stories like that. Neither had your mother. But Ruby swears she’s seen her here. Though why the poor soul should haunt this house, when she died up at the Mains, goodness knows.’
‘But he was out,’ Eleanor said. ‘How could it have been his fault?’
‘A cigarette end can smoulder away a good long time.’ He hesitated. ‘Did your mother speak to you about it?’
‘Mum? No, why? I have a sort of memory of the fire – well, the excitement of it. Was that not the night David went missing? Out late with Stanley.’
‘Oh, we got him home well before the fire started.’ Her father was emphatic. ‘No, no, your mother always had a fear he’d something to do with it – him and Stanley, with their matches. They were terrible lads for lighting bonfires. But there was no question – he was home before it started. I don’t know that he was even up at the Mains that night. They denied it, anyway.’
Eleanor thought of heat smouldering beneath straw, the smoke threading through, the first tiny lick of flame.
‘They played with those boys, him and Stanley,’ she said.
‘What boys?’
‘The tinkers’ kids.’
Before her father could reply, Alice opened the back door.
‘We’re away,’ she said. ‘But we’ll be back the morn, just to see you’re managing, see if there’s anything wanted.’
‘There’s no need,’ John Cairns said, as he and Eleanor stepped into the kitchen, shutting the door behind them. ‘Chisholms are coming out this afternoon. I phoned them and we decided yesterday – the funeral’s to be on Friday. So I’m fine.’
Alice seemed to hesitate. She spoke directly to her brother, as if Eleanor were not there. I’d like a word,’ she said, ‘afore we go.’
Mamie was in the living room with Marion; Eleanor could hear her voice, querulous, rambling. She looked from her father to Alice, saw the likeness between them, and how, for once, her father looked as old as his sister, for all the seven years between. There was some tension she could not understand, and she wanted to protect her father.
‘It could wait,’ he said, passing a hand across his eyes.
‘Just as you like.’ But she did not move. Then she turned to Eleanor. ‘Ask Mamie if she’s ready, would you, Eleanor?’
‘All right.’ Eleanor went out, and Alice shut the kitchen door behind her. For a moment, she thought of waiting, of standing there to listen. But of course, you couldn’t do that sort of thing. She heard her mother’s voice suddenly, its warning, advising note, and hurried down the hall to Marion.
In the afternoon, they saw the minister and the undertaker. At six, Marion cooked a meal none of them had appetite to eat. On the Friday, they would come to Pitcairn with their families, and stay on, just the two of them, over the weekend. Something had to be done about Faith’s things.
‘Only,’ Marion said, as they made a pot of tea before they went to bed, ‘I don’t know if I can face it.’
‘Let’s put it off, then, if Dad doesn’t mind,’ Eleanor suggested. ‘It doesn’t seem true, anyway, that she’s dead, that she’s not coming home.’ She sighed. ‘I wish she’d been brought here, not taken to the funeral place. She should be here.’
Marion poured tea into mugs, and set the tea-pot down. ‘It doesn’t matter, really. I mean, she’s not here any more, at all.’
‘But that’s what I’m saying. I can’t believe it.’
‘Well, we’re going to have to.’
‘Not yet,’ Eleanor said, her eyes filling with tears. ‘Not yet.’
Their father seemed very calm, as if he had managed better than Eleanor could, to believe what had happened. And yet, he talked about Faith as if she still had an opinion which must be taken into consideration.
‘She would want you lassies to sort out her clothes, and take her bits of jewellery away with you. Take whatever you want. It’s no use to me.’
‘Let’s not do anything in a hurry,’ Eleanor said.
‘Well, well.’ He seemed to accept this, and looked down into the fire Eleanor had lit, cradling his mug of tea. After a moment, he said, ‘There’s one thing exercises my mind, lasses. One thing there is a hurry for.’
Marion and Eleanor looked at each other. They had talked of this on the way here, unable to decide what to do about it.
‘David,’ Marion said.
‘We need to speak to him. He’ll have no idea at all.’
‘Well, how could he,’ Eleanor burst out, ‘if he never gets in touch?’ She felt, under all the new grief, anger with herself, guilt again. It was because of me he lost touch, kept away.
Their father went to find David’s card, and the envelope it had come in. But the postmark was blurred.
‘It’s London, at any rate,’ Marion decided. ‘WC something.’
‘But that just means he posted it in the centre,’ Eleanor pointed out. ‘Maybe he’s been working there. Look, I have phone numbers somewhere, in the old address book, for one or two of his friends. I’ll look them out.’
‘Och, I’m sure if we put our minds to it, we can find him,’ Marion said, patting her father’s knee.
‘Aye, that’s the ticket. I wouldn’t want him not to be at the funeral. Terrible for him not to be at the funeral.’
Eleanor felt something almost like jealousy, as she watched her father sink back in his chair, looking not at them, but at something in the past or future, at David.
In the morning, he stood at the front door to see them off. Beside him, as they turned for a last wave, the ghost of their mother, small and straight next to her husband’s stooped figure, the light in the hall behind them, and on either side the stone urns, yellow-leafed ivy trailing down from them over the top step. Upstairs, a curtain seemed to move in their parents’ bedroom window, a trick of light, a shimmer of winter sunlight on the glass.
‘I feel so bad leaving him,’ Eleanor said. She blinked away tears, swallowing hard.
‘We’ll be back,’ Marion promised. ‘Only a couple of days.’
For a long while they drove in silence. On either side, the landscape lay bleak and bare, the sky stone grey, heavy. Then, when they were beyond Inverurie, Marion said, ‘Do you remember my friend Violet?’
‘Was she the one with incredibly long pigtails?’
‘Yes, and lovely frocks. Well, I thought they were lovely then.’
‘I remember Violet. She was there when the gypsy came. Or just after – she said they were dirty.’
‘What?’
‘Tinks. That’s what she called them, you must remember.’
Eleanor was about to begin on the story her father had told her, when Marion said, ‘You know, Violet didn’t believe me when I said my mother used to be a dancer – on stage. We had quite an argument about it. She accused me of making up stories and I got really upset.’
‘Violet had a narrow view of life, as I recall.’
‘I suppose she did. She wouldn’t go to the Academy – she wanted to work in Esslemont and Mackintosh in Aberdeen, and sell ladies’ outfits. So she did. Anyway, we went out to the back door, Mum was there doing something, and I said to her, “Violet doesn’t believe me about you being a ballet dancer. She says I’m telling lies”.’ Marion paused, remembering the angry, hurt feeling, the belief that her mother would put things right.
‘What did Mum say?’
‘Nothing. She just picked up her skirt – it was summer, she had a dress on for once, and she whirled across the yard – entrechats, well, some sort of jump, and then she twirled round and round. It was so amazing.’
Then Marion, and Eleanor (who had not witnessed this, but saw it now), watched her again, transformed, their tiny, unyielding mother, spinning across the yard and out onto the grass, brown hens squawking and fleeing as she pirouetted past them, skirts flying, head flicking a second behind her shoulders, face composed and aloof. Suddenly, it was over, she was straight and still by the coal bunker, holding her skirts with curved fingers, then swooping down in a deep, deep curtsey.
‘Oh Marion.’ Eleanor was blinded by tears, and had to slow down, come off the main road, stop the car.
‘What a disappointment we must have been,’ Marion said, gulping down a sob, trying to laugh. ‘Two great lumps of girls, far too big for ballet.’
‘Kirsty,’ Eleanor blew her nose. ‘Kirsty can dance.’
‘Well, she has the ability, I suppose. Even if it’s for Highland dancing.’
The car grew cold, but they sat on, unable to move further, caught by the past.
‘We’d better get on,’ Marion said at last. Eleanor, who was no longer thinking of the tinker woman, turned the key, and started the engine. Then they drove on, the space between themselves and Pitcairn lengthening behind them.