IT WAS NOTHING LIKE HIS dreams of glory. It was dirt and squalor, and blood and fear – and more: it was smells, the sickly smell of earth soaked by rain and blood, the palpable smell of raw terror, but even worse, above everything else, it was noise. Shrieks, from men and machines, the booming or cracking of guns, whinnies or squeals from wounded horses, shouted orders, muttered prayers to God, to the generals, to mothers – and somewhere, at all times of the day or night, the sound of sobbing. Robert Fotheringham pulled one foot out of the clinging mud that invaded everything and then, with an almost unbearable effort, the other foot, and turned round so that he could lean his head against the wall of the trench. Tomorrow, just a few hours away, there was to be a big offensive, but first there was something he had to do. Yes, he wanted to write to Victoria. If he tried hard he could just remember what she looked like, and if he tried really hard he could smell her – clean, sweet, fresh – although that lovely scent made him hungry for something that he did not really understand and was becoming more and more elusive. It could not cope here: it was too lovely, too innocent, too pure to exist in this charnel-house. He looked out across the no-man’s-land where death and destruction waited in hungry anticipation and he saw not miles of smoke-blackened French farmland that had once been fertile, but his home, his beloved Inchmarnock, and red rowan berries blazing on the trees and great copper beeches raising their mighty arms to the skies above the Kingdom of Fife, and below them drifts of purple autumn crocuses and among them Victoria, her empty sketchbook in her hand. She raised it to him and she laughed.
‘I was trying to sketch it,’ she said, and the autumn sun shone on her dark hair and Robert reached out to touch her, to put her between him and the insanity to which he had willingly, happily, proudly bondaged himself – but she was not there.
He felt in the pocket of his battle-dress and pulled out the little gold pencil that Pa had given him for his fourteenth birthday. Paper? What could he write on? Pa’s letter was there, with its message of fondest love from Ma. Ma? He saw her too easily. He sighed. He would write on the back of Pa’s letter.
My dearest Victoria,
Tomorrow we’re going over the top. Isn’t that a silly expression for a major offensive? But a humble private, even one with an honourable stuck in front of his name, doesn’t tell the High Command what he thinks. He just does.
It’s not as I saw it . . .
No, he could not tell her what it was really like. He could not say, ‘It’s so awful that grown men are blubbing like babies and I am so scared, not that I will die, but that I will be hurt so badly that I will cry too, and I just couldn’t bear to lose face like that.’ He could not say, ‘I have never been hurt before,’ because only the people one loves are capable of inflicting real pain.
It’s different, it’s real. I find that if I remember the woods and you, and the way the sun makes your hair shine, and how stern you were when I picked Pa’s primroses, then somehow I remember why I am here, why I must stay and do the right thing, why we must never, ever allow this monstrous insanity to happen again . . .
‘Fotheringham, stop mooning there, laddie. Did ye no hear the pipes?’
The pipes. Pipes, bugles, shouted orders. Fall in, fall out, fall in, fall out. How in the name of God were they expected to fall in when this ghastly mud gripped the boots so that merely to lift them was an effort? He folded up the letter, scribbled Victoria’s name and address on the grimy envelope and stuffed it back into his pocket. His rifle – oh, dear Lord, where was his rifle? The sergeant would kill him if he’d let it slip into the mud. Kill him, that was funny. Robert Fotheringham was laughing as he followed his platoon over the top. But he was not laughing while utter chaos and bedlam broke out all around him, when he could see nothing but smoke and occasional flashes of fire. Where was the sergeant? Where was the enemy? They were everywhere and they were nowhere. He could see and hear nothing that made any sense, so he was certainly not laughing when the shell exploded and sent his cloth bonnet flying into the air like a partridge; sent him, bleeding, back down into the welcoming embrace of the mud.
*
‘France, the only civilized country in the world, Victoria. I loved it there.’ John Cameron stopped walking and turned to look at his daughter. She was his flesh and blood, good lines there – peasant stock no doubt, the aristos would say, but good stock for all that. ‘We should go there, together. A decent dress, your hair . . . Wait till you see the restaurants, the little sidewalk cafés. Every woman looks like one of those mannequins in the tea-room at Draffen’s: such elegance. And the countryside.’ He kissed his fingers with a very Gallic moue and Victoria laughed up at him.
‘You are funny, Father,’ she said and she smiled, because really, did any girl in Dundee have a more handsome, elegant and cosmopolitan father than hers? He even spoke some French, learned, he explained, on business trips.
‘Like the one I was on when you were expected, lass. I rushed from Paris – rushed, Victoria – to get home and what happened? They turfed me out. My own wife in league with my father against me, as if I were responsible for the vagaries of French timetables, for the appalling weather in the English Channel.’
‘It was May,’ said Victoria shortly. How often had she heard that soft May discussed and described: never better blossoms on the flowering cherries, never a finer crop of spring flowers.
‘Aha. There speaks the non-sailor. The English Channel, my dear, is like a woman and has a mind of its own, which it’s constantly changing, and always without warning.’
She smiled. She wanted to believe him. It would just be so wonderful if he and Catriona could make up, but even though Victoria had persuaded her mother to give ‘Mr Dundas’ a temporary welcome, she saw no thinning of her mother’s antagonism, even though Victoria had explained that the ‘Mr Dundas’ charade was so clever really, if only one was prepared to listen. ‘He wanted to see you, Mother, and me. Isn’t that romantic?’
Now Victoria said, ‘It’s a shame Mother couldn’t rent the Priory, Father. I wish you would live in it. I’m so glad you didn’t sell.’
‘Sell? Victoria! Would I sell my only child’s birthright?’ His eyes were wide-open and honest.
‘Mother would have made a good farmer.’
‘Your mother is a grand housekeeper, lass, always was, but the truth is she couldn’t run a business. The men would have taken advantage of her.’ He stopped, sensing that Victoria felt allegiance to the farm folk and he didn’t want to alienate her, not when the next rent from the farm was six months away. Besides, Catriona was a good cook, almost as good as some French women he’d known. And she was attractive. If Menmuir wasn’t so old and doddery, John might have thought there was something besides fellowship in his constant ‘dropping in wi some tatties’. My tatties, thought John, although he could hardly complain, since they were being given to his wife – ex-wife – and his daughter, and he himself ate one or two. That potato soufflé she’d made last night, for example . . .
‘When this blasted war is over, Victoria, I’ll take you to France. We’ll go and see some of those marvellous châteaux, and Paris. The sights, the sounds, the smells . . .’
‘But I like all the sounds and sights and smells here, Father,’ said Victoria, sweeping out her arm to encompass the view, which stretched across acres of fertile farmland to the banks of the great River Tay. ‘Grampa and I used to explore every nook and cranny of the farm and then, when I was bigger, we would go out into the countryside. We’d take scones wrapped up in cloths to eat, and a jug of sweet milk to drink, and he’d tell me about all the people who had lived here, and why our farm is called the Priory. It’s built from stones from an old abbey. Did you know that?’
John forgot that when he was a child his father had been a working farmer with no time for stories. ‘No, he was always on at me about lessons and chores. No wonder I hated farming – muck and glaur from morning to night. Do you know what glaur is, Victoria? It’s mud that seeps everywhere and won’t let you get yourself clean.’
Victoria recognized the bitterness in his voice and was distressed. She fished in the pocket of her dress. ‘Look, Father.’ She held up two perfect halves of a walnut shell.
He took the shells from her with a pitying look. ‘No, don’t tell me, that nonsense about the walnut shell. “Put your nice day in here, wee John, and when the cold wind blows, bring it out and it’ll warm ye.” Silly notion, Victoria. It’s good hot coal and fine foods and wines that warm ye, and coats and boots with fur linings. And you won’t get those by struggling away in this patch of mud, till they cart you off dead to throw you into more Angus mud.’
Desperately she tried to repair the day. ‘No, Father, it’s a lovely idea. This could be our first walnut shell day – yours and mine. We’re here together; we have had our picnic.’ She looked up at him with those eyes so like his own and smiled shyly at him. She really was a fetching wee thing. ‘I always wanted to know you, you know. I used to worry so much that you didn’t want me. Maybe,’ she began tentatively, ‘we could really get to know one another.’
He smiled at her, his well-practised, devastating smile that never failed. It didn’t fail him now. She tucked her arm into his and sighed happily.
‘Don’t hang on to idle dreams, lass. Life is tough and you have to fight for what you want. Come on, we had better be getting back. I’m out of cigarettes. Eight pence they asked me for ten State Express yesterday. I had to have Black Cat at fourpence-halfpenny.’
Without thinking he stopped and swung his arm, and Victoria saw her grandfather’s walnut shell sail in an arc through the air and land far out in the silvery waters of the Tay. She choked back a sob. She guessed that he would not appreciate tears. Tears were for babies, not modern young women. It wasn’t his fault. She had not told him that that particular shell had actually been given to her by her beloved grandfather. He didn’t understand, but she would make him understand. Like so many women before her, Victoria forgave him. She stifled her fears and vowed to change him. She could do it, she just knew she could, and how happy Catriona would be.
*
That same afternoon Dr Currie threw her car through the wonderful wrought-iron gates of Professor Dobson’s home on Perth Road, narrowly missing two Italian flowerpots, a gardener, who swore under his breath with amazing fluency, and two of Dundee’s matrons, who had had to walk to the soirée and were therefore doubly annoyed.
They could not, of course, let their ire show. Not only was Dr Currie Dundee’s leading female medical practitioner but, gossip had it, she was related to several of the finest families, not in Scotland – insular, surely – but in England, and her little eccentricities like motoring and smoking cigarettes were therefore to be tolerated. The good doctor knew exactly what was going on in their minds and despised them for it, while at the same time she admired such virtues as they undoubtedly possessed.
‘Got more than enough patients, Maudie,’ she yelled to Mrs Lionel Brewster, who was in jam. ‘Never hit anyone I didn’t want to yet,’ she added to Mrs Samuel Taylor, who was in jute. She forced the car to a halt just the right side of her host’s prized rose garden, jumped out with an amazing show of well-shaped and expensively stockinged leg and swept the bewildered ladies before her down the fairly steep driveway to the door, where several attendants waited to take their wraps.
‘Price of sugar must be playing hell with jam-making,’ she went on for no apparent reason, except perhaps to add to their shock with her use of the common word for the Kingdom of Beelzebub. The huge entrance hall was already full of all the local dignitaries, whom the university’s professor of music and his wife, Jessie, had gathered together at an extortionate two shillings a head to drink tea and listen to a little music, all in aid of the Boxes for Jocks campaign.
‘I hope to God if I have to listen to music, Archie,’ said Dr Currie as she kissed her old friend, ‘that it’s you playing the piano and not some ghastly soprano screeching away.’
‘Both, except that she doesn’t screech.’
‘Spare me, Archie, you old liar. Every soprano screeches – the only bearable human voice is a basso profundo. Well, I’ll park myself in the back row so that I can escape if it’s unbearable. Being a doctor does have some advantages. If I leave, no one will know whether I’m on an errand of mercy or merely bored out of my tiny mind.’ She knew perfectly well that her host would not be insulted by her pre-performance criticism of his entertainment and turned to his wife. ‘You’ve done wonders with this hall, Jessie, and those stained-glass windows are a delight.’
She moved away and joined a group of local businessmen and their wives, who were all bemoaning the atrocious rise in prices.
‘Do you know, I told Jessie I would make her some egg salad sandwiches. Three shillings a dozen for local eggs. Can you believe it? Still, I’ve done my bit.’
‘It’s not just the prices,’ said Alistair Smart, owner of a local jute mill. ‘It’s the shortage of manpower. I can’t get an office boy for love nor money. Three weeks I’ve advertised in the Courier, but nothing but the halt, the lame and the lazy have turned up. And no, don’t tell me I shouldn’t turn away someone who’s lame – the poor man didn’t have any of the skills I need. I did give him a chance, but every time he added up a row of figures, and it took him all day, he got a different answer and none of them right.’
Dr Currie moved closer. ‘What else does your office boy have to do, Alistair?’ she asked.
‘Well, adding up accurately is vital. Then he mustn’t be afraid of the new telephone system – up-to-the-minute my firm is – a neat hand, of course, and an ability to look a customer in the eye without being shy or bold. Impossible to find.’ He looked at her hopefully. ‘Don’t tell me you know a boy with all those talents, Flora?’
Dr Currie smiled at him and slipped her arm through his. ‘I may just have the answer to your prayers, Alistair. Let’s slip out before the singing . . .’
They wandered out into the lovely garden, which sloped down towards the Tay. Flora led her reluctant escort down to a seat under some gnarled old apple trees.
‘This had better be good, Flora. Archie and Jessie always have the best musicians.’
‘It’s a soprano, Alistair,’ replied Dr Currie, as if that explained everything. ‘Don’t fret. We’ll hear her down here and with less damage to our eardrums. Now, this job. I just happen to know someone who is young, smart, intelligent, able to use the telephone, very good at figures and with a fine, legible hand.’
‘And why isn’t this paragon in the army?’
Flora Currie held up her cigarette for him to light and gave him a straight answer. ‘Because she’s a girl.’
‘A girl. I’ve never heard of an office girl. How old is she?’
‘Sixteen. She’s my landlady’s daughter – really university material, but the family fell on hard times. Give her a chance. I think the only thing she can’t do is make tea.’
He laughed. ‘Miss Jessop makes my tea. It will be hard enough having another female around the place, without having one who might usurp her rights.’
‘Good. Come on, there’s your soprano. I’m going to stay down here to smoke. When may I bring Victoria in?’
‘Just an interview: I’m not promising. If Miss Jessop objects . . . Very well. Tell her to come tomorrow at eleven.’
Dr Currie smiled and lit her cigarette. She had done her part. It was up to Victoria to win round the formidable tea-making Miss Jessop.
*
Victoria was too tired to eat that night when she came home from the mill. Catriona had made a rabbit stew, with two rabbits that Tam Menmuir had brought her, together with some carrots that ‘will nae last the winter, missus’ and an earthenware bowl containing eggs that had been preserved in glass water. Catriona had wept over the simple goodness of her friends, who had little themselves but were always ready to share. But even the enticing smell of the stew could not tempt Victoria’s appetite.
Catriona looked at her. The girl was too thin. My bairn is fading away in front of my very eyes, she thought. She’s gone from wee lassie to auld woman, and what can I do to stop it?
She heard the sound of the front door opening. Dr Currie was home. That should encourage Victoria to make a pretence of eating.
The doctor came in. ‘Come along, Catriona,’ she ordered, as she saw the state of apathy in which the girl sat. ‘Major surgery required. Put that wonderful stew to the back of the boiler, pour me a cup of tea to hold me and then – we are going to give Madame Victoria here a bath.’
Victoria jumped up. It was years since she had had to be bathed. She looked at her mother in alarm, but Catriona looked just as puzzled as she.
‘I’m clean, Dr Currie. I’ll have a bath on Saturday night for the kirk.’
‘You’ll have a bath tonight, my dear, for the office.’
She laughed at their expressions and told them of Victoria’s opportunity and, as she had known, Victoria brightened up and, her fatigue forgotten, became once again an excited sixteen-year-old.
‘Now, you haven’t got the job yet, but he’s fairly desperate. Gosh, how rude! I didn’t mean that to come out the way it sounded, but Mr Smart has a secretary, a formidable elderly spinster, whom he inherited from his father, and she’s the hurdle over which you, my dear, will have to jump. As far as I can gather, she won’t mind how much office work you do, just so long as you don’t run round after Mr Smart. She likes to do that herself. She is also unbelievably efficient and may make you wish you were back in the mill. She is, although you are to pretend you don’t know, a teeny weeny bit afraid of the telephone.’
Victoria clasped her thin, reddened hands together. ‘And I’m not, thanks to you, Dr Currie.’
‘If I needed an office girl, I would hire you myself, Victoria. But now we need to get the smell and stour of jute out of that lovely hair of yours, and out from under your fingernails.’
‘And out of my nose, Dr Currie. Oh, just think, Mamma, if I get this job, I may never sneeze again. Did you know, Dr Currie, that lots of the mill lasses take snuff to clear their nostrils?’
‘Well, it’s a blessing that’s a bad habit you never developed.’
An hour later a very sweet-smelling, happy girl with a rediscovered appetite sat down to eat. Victoria looked at her mother and at their lodger, who in such a short time had become such a part of their family. What could she say? What could she do to let them know how much they meant to her?
Dr Currie looked at her and smiled softly. ‘Don’t fret, Victoria. Words aren’t always necessary between people who care for one another.’