Chapter Thirty-Five

 

ANNA AGED AT LEAST TEN YEARS OVERNIGHT after Gerry’s death and two months after the funeral, she decided she could no longer stay on at Glencara. The memories were too painful and besides, the place was so devastated that a large part of the main building had to be demolished and under the circumstances, it was not thought practical to rebuild it. A new occupant very soon arrived on the scene, especially with the attraction of being named as the Laird of Glencara and more particularly when he knew that the village had the same name as the mansion, from so many years before. The house had been built originally to stand on its own and the village had sprung up around it in time. The new Laird would also be the landlord of most of the villagers.

“And what does Glencara mean exactly, Mrs. Steiger?”

Well should the new owner ask ... but Anna looked quite blank for a few moments before she was able to answer.

“Glencara ...Glencara,” she said softly and with tears in her eyes as she remembered the days of her youth, “It means ‘The Valley of the Dear One’, she answered, but her voice was low and weak …’The Valley of the Dear One,’ she said again, more loudly the second time and then excused herself as she could say no more and turned her gaze across the field of buttercups with it’s radiant blaze of golden glory, streaking across to the horizon, as far as the eye could see. She told me once how she had frequently played there as a young girl and that often the laughter of youth repeated itself in her ears and I knew it would be a sad day when she would leave this place. She would make me smile when she told me how she remembered the games the children used to play and the silly little songs they sang, that meant so much to their future then. ... If the glow of the buttercup, held under the chin was yellow, then you would marry a prince ... but if there was no glow at all ...you were destined to be an old maid. She would giggle every time she told me ...There were never any old maids ...there was always a glow ...and she had married her prince.

I presumed that as there was no more work for me now at Glencara as a nanny, I would have to look for other employment when Anna had settled in her new home, a much smaller dwelling which she named simply ‘Cara’, but she was very anxious that I should remain on until the house was sold and then go with her to her new place and with Aggie too. The latter was to remain on as cook and I was to be companion/secretary to Anna herself since she had intended to resume her practice in psychiatry, the profession for which she was also trained and had worked in, before she met and married Gerry. The idea thrilled me and frightened me simultaneously as my typing was very rusty and my shorthand was nil, but Anna waved all my excuses of incompetence aside,

“You have the character I need Amy,” she would say “and besides Steven and I are setting up practise together and you’re like one of the family now ...we couldn’t let you go. You must stay with us. Oh! Please tell me you haven’t made other arrangements?” I could only shrug my shoulders and smile. “Well now, that’s settled then,” she said and busied herself with some files that she had retrieved from a drawer in Gerry’s roll-top desk, “I’ll need all the refreshers I can get. It seems like a hundred years since I did anything like this.”

I was glad that she was getting back to her normal self and I knew her well enough to realize that whatever she put her mind to, she would do well. Anna was a very capable woman and I stayed with her and with Steven for the next two years and was very, very happy.

It was of course, no surprise when Steven asked me to marry him as he had sold his house in Edinburgh and his divorce had been finalised. It was our intention, although he always took the initiative, to buy a bungalow nearby and I knew then that I could have been the happiest woman on earth as I had everything that a woman could want. I was surrounded by the most loveable people I had ever met and life was so unlike my formative years with mother. The wind was blowing nicely for me now, but there was still one little chink in the armour ... I liked Steven Capriano ... I liked him very much ...Yes, I loved him ...but I had fears that perhaps I was not in love with him ... . Not in the way you should be with a man, when you marry him and yet I felt I was being carried along in a cloud of destiny where I could only acquiesce as the wave of fate was so strong and determined to drag me with it. I felt if I did not yield to the wind, I would snap and with this thought in my mind, I said ‘Yes’ when Steven proposed. Anna and the boys were delighted for me and Stella and her clan were over the moon ... even Robbie, who by this time wrote me a letter in ‘real writing’ after all, he was eighteen and I have kept that letter since. It is very precious to me when I consider how he progressed in his academic and musical achievements. It read;- Dear Amy, ... but it was spelt ‘Deer’ ... I am so happy that you are getting married to Steven and I wish you every happiness. Will you please allow me to play the organ for your wedding? I am practising every day and I love playing. I love you too, Amy ...You gave me all I have. Take my kisses and a great big hug. ROBBIE.

There were a few other spelling mistakes, but only very minor ones and I could understand perfectly what he wanted to say, however, there was a strange P.S. at the bottom of his letter, but knowing Robbie, I think I can understand that too.

‘I am sorry they never found little Freya’ he wrote,’ I would have liked to have seen her at your wedding …’

 

***

 

Steven and I were married on the fifth of May 1952 and it was a gloriously sunny day. He was thirty six and I was forty two. We had known each other for nearly six years and he bought the bungalow as he said he would, in the village of Cairnra, only six miles from Anna’s place and we settled down very amicably to married life, despite the difference in our ages. I was happy, but I know I should have been happier and Steven was like a wondrous little boy, full of enthusiasm for the future as I walked down the aisle to join him at the altar. I was married in white ...with all the trimmings, but I felt old ... and tired ...and full of basic, unromantic wisdom. You see, although I was forty-two, I was still a virgin and I could see mother, in my mind’s eye, laughing as I walked back from the altar as Mrs. Steven Capriano, to Robbie’s playing of ‘The Bridal March’.

‘At last ...at long last, “ I could hear her say, “I hope you look after your husband better than you did your mother ...” and until that moment, I had convinced myself that I had relegated that lady to her rightful place in my memory ...somewhere at the back of my mind, but she hadn’t really left me and I knew she would have been at my wedding had she still been alive ...telling me what to do and how to do it ... I decided there and then, I would take the advice I was convinced she was giving me from wherever she was beyond the grave ...and I would put Steven first now and always in my life, whatever else happened.

“Sorry mother ...You’ll have to take a back seat from now on. How you chose to conduct your own married life was your concern; your business ...but mine is going to be different ... very, very different,” I murmured as I clung to Steven’s arm, knowing that the organ would drown my resolve and walked away from that altar as his wife ...I swore at that moment that I would do everything in my power to make Steven happy and I hoped with all my heart that soon ... very soon, I WOULD FALL IN LOVE WITH HIM. . . .