When Katie came in from the coalshed, Beth noticed that the scuttle was less than half full – mostly just dross – and she made a mental note to do something about it … after she had cleared up the other matter.
‘I really enjoyed that,’ Katie smiled. ‘I’ve never had a meal in a hotel before, though I served plenty in my time.’
Beth’s laugh was a little edgy, because she knew she could procrastinate no longer; it had been niggling at her, eating at her very core, ever since she opened Katie’s letter. ‘I don’t suppose you know who lived in this house before you, do you?’ She tried to sound nonchalant, though her nerve ends were raw with apprehension, and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to know, after all.
The question was so unexpected that Katie looked at her in amazement. ‘I’ve no idea who was here before us.’
‘Oh, well, it doesn’t matter.’
Katie wouldn’t let it rest. ‘Why did you ask that?’
‘I said it doesn’t matter,’ Beth said, her disappointment making her tetchy. ‘I thought this was where … somebody I knew used to live, but maybe it’s not the right house.’ It was the same house, she was sure of that, but she added, ‘I must have made a mistake. It was a long time ago.’
‘In that case, I can’t help you. If my Grandma had still been alive, she’d have been able to tell you where to go. She knew everybody in Seatown, for she came to this house when she married Granda.’
The blood drained from Beth’s face, and she could feel the pulsing of her heartbeats in her ears and throat. She had not expected this, never had the slightest suspicion. ‘What was their name?’ she whispered.
‘Mair. Mary Ann and William John Mair.’
‘Ah!’ It came out in a long breath as Beth struggled to come to terms with what this information meant.
Wondering why she looked utterly thunderstruck, Katie said, ‘Did you know my Granda and Grandma?’
‘Yes, I knew them.’
She had closed her eyes, and her voice was so strange that Katie waited in suspense for her to speak again.
‘Katie, would you mind telling me when you were born?’
Mystified as to where these questions were leading, Katie replied, ‘The fourth of June, nineteen hundred and seven.’
Beth took a handkerchief from her sleeve to wipe her eyes, then said, unsteadily, ‘I never dreamt … when I read your letter … the name Katie didn’t mean anything to me except the girl Dennis had …’ She stopped and swallowed. ‘I had you christened June, you see, after your birth month.’
‘You had me christened?’ Katie’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. ‘You’re my mother?’ Her initial joy changed to resentment that this woman – who, for most of her life, she believed had died giving her birth – had stayed away for so long after abandoning her. ‘Grandma thought June was too fancy,’ she said, stiffly, ‘and she called me Katie, after her own grandmother.’
Aware that Katie’s emotions were acutely fragile, Beth blew her nose. ‘I’d better tell you everything, so you can understand why I did what I did.’
Katie listened with an expression of resignation as she learned that Lizzie Baxter, as Beth had been then, had met the young William John Mair in Portknockie when he had been visiting one of his shipmates. ‘It was love at first sight,’ Beth went on, ‘for me, anyway, and after we’d kept company for a good few weeks, William John took me to Cullen to meet his folks. His father made me very welcome, but it was like his mother couldn’t bear the sight of me, I don’t know why.’
‘I know,’ Katie said, quietly. ‘You’re the daughter of the man that jilted her when she was young. It was in the letter she left, and she said she never forgave him.’
‘So that’s it!’ Beth cried. ‘I wish I’d known at the time, I wouldn’t have felt so hurt.’ Wondering if the brutal truth would be too much for Katie, if she should water it down, she decided against it. ‘Your father always wanted something better than he had, and when somebody told him there were fortunes to be made in America, he was determined to go over there and get rich. I knew he resented you from the minute you were born – he was jealous of the love I gave you – but I couldn’t believe it when he said you were the only thing holding him back. I thought at first it was an excuse for him not going, that he’d got cold feet, but he came home one night, half drunk …’
Her abrupt stop made Katie say, ‘Go on. What happened?’
‘He said we were leaving Portknockie in the morning to get the boat from Greenock, and I’d have to leave the bairn with his mother, and when I told him I’d never do that, he said he would smother you. Well, I pleaded and pleaded with him for ages, but it ended up with him saying he would go by himself if I hadn’t got rid of you by the time he came back, and then he went out. I was nearly demented, for I was very young, not long seventeen, and I loved him in spite of the other girls he took up with, in spite of knowing he was capable of killing his child to get his own way. And so … there was only one thing I could do. Oh, Katie, you can’t imagine the agony it was, but I bundled you into a basket and pinned a note to your shawl …’
‘I know, I found it among Grandma’s things.’
‘It was the middle of the night, and his mother had been so nasty to me I just left you on the doorstep.’ There was another silence as Beth recalled the heartbreak of her walk along the coast road on that July night nearly twenty-five years before.
In a strained voice, Katie said, ‘Why did you come back from America? And what happened to … my father.’
Beth sighed deeply. ‘He caught a fever just weeks after we went to Detroit, and I nursed him till he died. I was left penniless, so I took a job in Morton’s factory, and … well, to cut a long story short, I married the boss three months later. I didn’t love Tom at first, but he was a good man and I had twelve very happy years with him before he was killed in an accident.’
‘I’m glad you were happy.’ Katie pointedly stressed the word ‘you’.
Caught up in her memories, Beth did not recognize the sarcasm. ‘I was a widow again, but not destitute this time. The factory had been converted into an automobile plant, and I’d more money than I knew what to do with. All the fortune hunters of the day swarmed round me, and I got so sick of it I rented out Tom’s house and booked a passage to Scotland. I came straight to Cullen after I landed.’
‘But you didn’t think of coming to see me?’ It was clearly an accusation.
‘Katie, I was aching to see you, to know how you’d grown up. I wanted to take you away with me, but I wasn’t sure if you’d want to come. You’d have been thirteen, old enough to be angry at me for deserting you.’
‘I didn’t know you deserted me, for my Grandma told me you died when I was born.’
‘So that was how she explained it?’ Beth shook her head at Mary Ann’s cruel invention. ‘I was terrified of her, Katie, after the way she treated me the only time I met her, and even though I was a lot older when I came back, my stomach was in knots when I was walking down from the station. Then I spotted her coming out of the butcher’s, and I couldn’t face being humiliated in the street, so I turned and took the next train out. The only way I could bear to leave you again was telling myself your grandmother would be looking after you properly.’
Katie sighed. ‘I suppose she did look after me properly … but I always thought she didn’t even like me, till I found her letter telling me everything.’
‘If I’d known you weren’t happy, I’d have confronted her that day, but … oh, what’s the good of crying over spilt milk? Anyway, I started looking for somewhere to settle, and I chose Peterhead because I fell in love with Dennis.’ Beth gave a wry smile. ‘I couldn’t have done much worse, could I? He really took me in.’
‘Me, too,’ Katie said. Knowing that her mother had made an effort of some kind to come and see her, she felt slightly warmer towards her.
‘After a while, though,’ Beth continued, ‘I could see the kind of man he was, but I let things drift because I still loved him.’ She pulled a face and added, ‘I’d like to wring his blasted neck now.’
The ghost of a smile touched Katie’s lips, and Beth went on, ‘I was knocked sideways when I got a letter from the very house where I’d left my baby. I thought a family called Buchan had moved in when the Mairs died, and I really came to find out if any of them knew what had happened to my daughter. I’d no idea Katie Buchan was really June Mair.’
‘I’ve never been June,’ Katie burst out, defiantly, ‘and I don’t feel like a June, so I’m going to keep on being Katie, whatever you think.’
Beth realized that the barrier Katie had erected between them would take a long time to breach. ‘I don’t mind. I stopped being Lizzie when Tom called me Beth, and I thought it sounded nicer. Katie’s a lovely name, and I couldn’t wish for my daughter to have turned out any better.’
Katie looked at her doubtfully. ‘I still can’t think of you as my mother.’
A great sadness swept over Beth, and she wondered if the barrier was too great to be broken, after all. ‘That’s not surprising, since I was only a mother to you for the first month of your life.’
Hearing the pain behind the words, Katie said, ‘I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t really your fault, but I can’t …’
Beth was unable to keep back the tears which spilled out, and the sight of them coursing down her cheeks made Katie move over to kneel beside her. As she hesitated, wondering if she should say something or just leave her to cry, Beth turned with a hoarse sob and held out her arms. In the next instant, they were holding each other tightly, Katie’s eyes overflowing, too, and for the very first time, she knew the comfort of a mother’s arms.
Beth was weeping for the infant she had abandoned, for the years of childish development and growth she had missed, and with joy at having found her daughter again. Katie, on the other hand, was weeping for the grandfather who had loved her, for the simple-minded youth who had set himself up as her protector, for the grandmother who had hidden her love until it was too late. Then, and only then, did she spare a few tears for the woman who had borne her, the woman who had been forced to leave someone else to bring her up.
‘Oh, Katie,’ Beth said at last, with a catch in her voice, ‘I knew you’d come round.’
Drawing in her breath, Katie pulled away, scrubbing her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve. ‘I don’t know … give me more time, Beth. It’s been an awful shock, coming on top of … everything else. Once I get over that, maybe I’ll …’
‘Yes, I guess I’m rushing you. I should let things take their own course.’ Beth took out her handkerchief to dry her tears. ‘Now, I think we need a cup of tea.’
After the refreshment, Beth got to her feet and picked up her handbag. ‘Katie, don’t go flying up in the air at me, but I know you’re short of money, so …’
Katie’s face turned scarlet. ‘I won’t take anything!’
‘You never had anything from me in all those years, and I’ll be cut to the quick if you refuse. I’ve got plenty. I took quite a lot out of the bank the other day, and I never leave anything in the house in case Dennis finds it.’ She took out a roll of notes, peeled off some and laid them down on the table. ‘I can’t have my new-found daughter starving herself to death. Pocket your pride, Katie, it’ll get you nowhere. Buy coal and whatever else you need.’
At the door, she turned with a grin. ‘Dennis is in for the shock of his life tonight. Doesn’t that make you feel good?’ She left without waiting for a reply.
Even the thought of Dennis reaping a fitting harvest from all his treachery didn’t matter to Katie at that moment, and sitting down in the armchair which had once been her beloved grandfather’s – where he had so often taken her on his knee and made her feel the most important person in the world – she drew her legs up under her and curled into a tight ball. If Beth had claimed her when she was thirteen, she thought miserably, she would have been saved all the anguish she had gone through in later years. That would always rankle in her mind, keep her from being a loving daughter. She gave a low groan. ‘Oh, Granda, I’d give anything to have you here now to tell me what I should do about Beth.’
All day, Dennis had the feeling that the sword of Damocles was about to fall on him. It grew so strong that he wondered if he should go home to pack and make himself scarce before his wife turned up, then he laughed at himself for worrying. Even if Katie had written and Beth had gone to see her, he would deny everything, and she loved him so much she would believe him. As the old saying went, ‘There’s none so blind as them that don’t want to see.’ Or something like that.
When his staff left, he transferred all the money in the cash register to the safe, for it wouldn’t do to be found helping himself at a time like this. Putting on his trilby, he locked up and set off for Queen Street. His step faltered when he saw the car outside the door, then he strode inside, bracing himself for the attack, not the defence.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ he demanded, angrily.
Beth raised her eyebrows. ‘Doing a good turn to a friend.’
This took the wind out of his sails. He had meant to make the accusations and to soothe Beth’s ruffled feathers if she threw any at him, but Katie couldn’t have written, and he didn’t want to aggravate his wife if it wasn’t necessary. ‘What friend?’ he asked, less aggressively.
Beth smiled mysteriously. ‘More than a friend, really.’
‘Another man?’ This had never crossed his mind. ‘So you’ve been whoring around when I was slaving my guts out? You’re not getting away with that.’
‘No?’
He was rattled by the peculiar way she was looking at him. ‘Who is he?’
‘It wasn’t a he, it was my daughter.’
‘Daughter?’ He sat down heavily on the sofa. ‘You never told me you’d a daughter.’
‘There’s a lot of things you didn’t tell me.’
‘Such as?’ He felt better now. If she’d been seeing her daughter, she hadn’t been to Cullen. ‘Get on with it,’ he snarled, ‘you’ve a lot of explaining to do.’
Beth glared back at him with deep contempt. ‘I don’t have to explain anything to you, Dennis, but I will, and it might surprise you to know it’s through you I found Katie again.’
‘Katie?’ he gasped. ‘Katie’s your daughter?’
He listened with his mouth agape while she told him of her earlier life, but when she accused him outright of marrying her for her money, he hastened to sidetrack her.
‘You said you’d done a friend a good turn,’ he began, sarcastically, ‘then you said it was Katie. What did you do for her?’
She described the disastrous consequences of Angus Gunn’s visit, and ended, caustically, ‘He’s another slimy creep who got what he deserved.’
‘An-another c-creep?’ Dennis stammered.
Beth stood up. ‘I’ve packed all your belongings and I want you out of my house right now.’
He stared at her incredulously. ‘You surely didn’t believe what Katie said about me … ?’ Her cold eyes told him that it was useless, and his tone changed. ‘Where can I go at this time of night?’
‘I’m sure there’s dozens of women falling over themselves to get you in their beds.’
‘You can’t do this to me, Beth. You said you weren’t going to pay off any more of my gambling debts, and I asked Katie for some cash. I swear that’s the only reason I went to her. It’s you I love.’
‘Love? The only person you’ve ever loved, Dennis McKay, is yourself. Now hand over all the keys and get out. I packed all your things into a suitcase and left it in the hall, so don’t forget to take it with you.’
‘Beth, please?’
‘I’m selling up and divorcing you. I’ve put one hundred pounds in the case to keep you till you find another job – and before you get your hopes up, you won’t get a penny more from me.’
He sprang to his feet and grabbed her hands. ‘You can’t throw me out. You said you loved me.’
Furious, she struggled free. ‘I loved the man I kidded myself you were, but I’ve seen the light. You’re a liar, a cheat, a thief and a blackmailer – a big round O, that’s what you are, and you’ll never amount to anything. You should be behind bars, and you’d better go before I change my mind and hand you over to the police. Oh, and you may as well know, I’m going back to America once I’ve settled all my affairs, and I’m going to ask Katie to go with me.’
‘You’re a bit late with the mother-hen act,’ he sneered.
He jumped back as the palm of her hand connected with his cheek. ‘Give me the keys,’ she hissed, ‘and get out.’
He threw his key-ring on the floor, but couldn’t help a parting shot as he went to the door. ‘Did your precious daughter tell you she’d to get rid of Sammy Gunn’s baby?’
The vase missed him by a fraction of an inch, and Beth’s voice followed him into the hall. ‘Yes, she did, and that was all your fault, too, you … you …’
Not waiting until she found an appropriate word, he lifted the suitcase and slammed the front door behind him.
Katie rose next morning feeling less confused than when she went to bed. At least she knew now that her father and mother had been married, which would be a slap in the face to Ina Green for casting aspersions on her legitimacy; she had seen George for the narrow-minded bigot he was … and Dennis would have got his come-uppance by now. Beth wouldn’t have let him get round her this time.
She made herself ready to go out, her hand hovering over the notes on the table before she picked them up and put them in her purse. There would be no more scavenging on the beach for sticks nor living on bread and margarine, whatever happened … not for a while, at any rate.
After ordering coal and buying as many provisions as she could carry, she returned home and was laying her basket on her table when Beth arrived. ‘You look much better today,’ she smiled, ‘and I’m glad to see you took my advice and did some shopping. I just wish you could have seen Dennis’s face last night, though, when I told him you were my daughter. He looked as if he’d swallowed something that didn’t agree with him – you know, green about the gills. He tried to bluff his way out of everything, and when I said I was divorcing him and told him to get out, he was nearly down on his knees begging me to let him stay.’
Katie couldn’t help murmuring, ‘Poor Dennis.’
‘Poor Dennis, my foot! He deserved what he got, and I hope it teaches him a lesson.’ Beth paused, then said, gently, ‘I’ve something to say, Katie, but first I want to know how you feel about me now?’
‘Well, I don’t condemn you any more for leaving me. I did yesterday, but now I’ve had time to think, I know you didn’t have any choice. It still feels funny being able to put a face to the mother I thought I would never see, but I do like you, and that’s half the battle, isn’t it?’
‘It sure is!’ Beth beamed. ‘It’s just a small step from liking to loving. Now to what I wanted to say. I’ve decided to sell up and go back to America, and I …’
Katie was aghast at this. ‘You’re not going to leave me again, are you?’
‘I thought … I want you to come with me.’
‘To America? Oh, I couldn’t!’
‘What is there to keep you here? A tumble-down old house, where you were never really happy?’
‘That’s true enough, but still …’
‘By the time everything’s settled, we’ll likely both be free. You might find a rich husband over there, like I did.’
‘I don’t want …’
‘You think you can’t trust men again? I know, I’ve been through it … twice, but I did have one good man. You’ve been unlucky so far, Katie, but somewhere, maybe in Detroit, the right man’s waiting for you. All that aside, we have to give it a try, just you and me, a mother and daughter getting to know each other, doing things for each other …’
Katie felt a surge of excitement. ‘Yes, Beth, I’d like that.’ Her happy smile faded. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t help calling you Beth …’
‘Beth, Mother, Hey You, I don’t care what you call me, as long as we’re together. So now that’s settled, I’ll have to see my solicitor and I’ll ask him to start proceedings for divorce, and I’ll get him to put the house and restaurant up for sale, as well. We can ask him to handle your divorce and sell your house, if you like, or would you rather have a solicitor nearer Cullen? Whatever you decide, we’ve a lot of work ahead of us, before we cross the Atlantic to start our new life.’
‘Oh, Beth,’ Katie laughed, ‘I’ve never met anybody like you before, and I think I’m beginning to love you already.’
‘Good. It will work out, I’ve no doubt about it now.’
After Beth left, Katie was so happy that she wished she had a friend to tell about having a mother, a mother who could make lightning decisions, a mother who must surely be the most lovable woman in the world, then she remembered that she was not entirely friendless. Jumping up, she put on her coat and headed for the shore.