NOTHING STOPPED WORK in the forest, not even death. The morning after Freddie Tait died, Elspeth rose at her usual time, dressed and went to the stables. She shovelled out the dung, swept the floor, rubbed down, fed and watered her horse in silence. Nobody spoke, nobody sang. Frazer said he didn’t like this gloom. ‘It does nobody no good.’
Elspeth said she supposed this was true, but she couldn’t help it.
Work done, she walked back to camp, thinking she’d have to persuade Lorna to get up. But no, she was sitting at the table in the dining hut, sipping tea but ignoring her porridge. ‘They don’t give you a day off for having a broken heart,’ she said.
‘No,’ Elspeth agreed, ‘they don’t.’
‘They should, though. They should let you just lie and stare for a few days. Let you get used to your grief.’
Elspeth said she should eat. ‘It’s hard work out there loading trucks. You need to keep your strength up.’
‘Tell that to my stomach,’ said Lorna. ‘It’s working hard dealing with the tea. It’d just send the porridge back up the way it came.’
They walked together up the track to where they were working in the forest. Elspeth led the horse. Not that it was necessary. It would have followed her, anyway.
It was a good day, warm, cloudless. A couple of buzzards cruised the thermals high above them, birds hopped about in the branches of trees nearby and the ground beneath Lorna and Elspeth’s feet was dry. It didn’t get much better than this.
‘I woke up this morning, saw the sun and felt happy,’ said Lorna. ‘Then I remembered I was miserable and I wondered for a moment why that was. Then it came to me. Freddie’s dead.’
Elspeth took Lorna’s hand and squeezed it.
At first, when dealing with her sixty-logs-a-day quota, Elspeth had tried to divide it into thirty logs in the morning and thirty in the afternoon. But that left her struggling at the end of the day when her legs ached. Now, she did forty in the morning, fifteen after lunch and five after the afternoon break. But still she felt breathless and her joints were sore by the time the workday ended. She was getting too old for this.
Today the only sounds were of people working, saws and axes. The atmosphere was raw. It was a relief when two of the girls, unable to stand the silence, started singing ‘Mairzy Doats and Dozy Doats’. Everyone joined in, the chorus bellowing through the trees, getting louder and louder till everyone, even Lorna, heaving logs onto the back of a truck, was singing till her throat hurt.
Lunch was a treat – cheese sandwiches and strong tea. Elspeth sat with Lorna and asked how she was coping.
‘I’m bloody tired out and hoarse,’ said Lorna. ‘But now I know what to do when something bad happens. I’ll chop down a tree and drag it about. Being bloody tired out really helps.’
Elspeth looked up, saw Duncan approaching, ‘Uh-oh, here comes the boss.’
‘Moon,’ he said. ‘You’re to give a recital at the big house next Thursday night.’
‘Am I?’ said Elspeth.
‘Yes.’
‘May I point out that evenings are my own free time and nobody can just tell me what to do.’
‘Lady McKenzie is offering a five-pound fee to entertain her friends.’
Elspeth didn’t hesitate. ‘OK, then.’
‘I’ll drive you in the truck. Don’t want you falling off your bike on the way there.’
When he’d gone, Elspeth nudged Lorna. ‘Five whole pounds. The fish and chips and a drink in the pub are on me.’
Lorna said, ‘You’ll be alone with him in the truck. He’ll make a grab for you. I think he’s in love with you.’
Elspeth told her not to be daft. The whistle went. They drained their mugs, got up and went back to work.
The week passed slowly. On Sunday afternoon the local minister came to the camp and held a service for Freddie in the dining hut. They sang the twenty-third psalm, listened as Tyler spoke of his friend, but it was only when everyone stood up and sang ‘You’d Be so Nice to Come Home to’, Freddie’s favourite song, that Lorna cried.
When it was over, she went with Elspeth and Tyler to their spot by the river, filled their mugs with whisky, and talked till stars came out. They shared memories, dreams, plans and ambitions. When Tyler spoke of returning to Newfoundland, and, once again, asked Elspeth to marry him and come home with him, Elspeth kicked him on the shins.
‘You bloody tactless fool,’ she hissed, as they walked back to the camp. ‘Lorna was planning to go back with Freddie. You didn’t have to remind her that she can’t do that now.’
He shrugged and shuffled down the track to his hut. ‘Offer’s still open,’ he said. ‘Always will be.’
On Thursday evening she put on her uniform and went with Duncan to the recital. He was wearing a tweed suit, shiny with wear at the elbows and cuffs, a white shirt, blue tie and shoes polished to a mirrored gleam. His hair was sculpted into a skull-clinging gloss, thick with Brylcreem. The smell of it lingered in Elspeth’s nostrils all evening. He hardly spoke on the drive to the big house.
The recital was held in a huge drawing room, lit by a giant crystal chandelier. At the far end was a baby grand, complete with gold candlesticks, a candle aglow in each one. There were chairs – gold-leaf arms and red velvet cushions – lined up in neat rows. Elspeth felt sick with nerves.
There was a large buffet set out on a table, and several waiters, all wearing white gloves, wandered about with trays bearing glasses of champagne. Elspeth wasn’t offered one, but Duncan took a glass, sipped and coughed. It wasn’t to his liking.
Elspeth took off her jacket and beret, sat at the piano and ran through some scales to warm up since she hadn’t played in some time. But, eventually, at half past seven, the evening got underway. Elspeth discovered that being rusty didn’t matter at all. Hardly anybody noticed her mistakes. At the end of each piece, they clapped enthusiastically.
Halfway through the proceedings, there was an interval. Champagne for me, thought Elspeth. But no, she was dispatched to the kitchen, where the cook might have prepared a little something for her.
This turned out to be a good thing. Cook, an ample woman, red of cheek, kind of heart, gave Elspeth a sandwich with a slab of warm roast beef spread with mustard, a slice of fruit cake and a plate of small almond pastries.
‘Where did you get all this?’ said Elspeth. ‘Don’t they ration the upper classes?’
Cook said that there was them as has and gets and them as don’t and that’s how it is and how it always has been. And made Elspeth a second sandwich. The kitchen was large and warm, heated by a cooking range. Cook bustled, asked after Elspeth’s health, said it must be cold up in them forests in winter and if ever Elspeth needed a little something extra to eat, just to come to her. ‘Use the tradesmen’s door, of course.’
Sustained by the rush of sudden protein, Elspeth played well in the second part of the recital. Bach, Mozart and Schubert poured into the room, and she hit only a few wrong notes. Nobody noticed.
When she’d finished, people exclaimed in wonder at her talent. A few wished they’d stuck in at their piano lessons and some thought it such a waste that someone so musically gifted should work all day chopping down trees. ‘Surely there must be other things she could do. Entertain the troops, for example.’
But Elspeth said she loved the outdoor life. Which wasn’t true.
At ten o’clock, Lady McKenzie thanked Elspeth and led her to the front door. Duncan followed. As they stood on the front step, Lady McKenzie shook Elspeth’s hand and said they must do it all again sometime soon. Elspeth didn’t think so, and wondered when she would get her five pounds.
‘Duncan,’ said Lady McKenzie, shaking his hand. ‘We are all deeply grateful to you for allowing Elspeth to play and for bringing her along.’ She took two envelopes from the pocket of her silk jacket. ‘One for the musician. And the other is what’s due for the fertiliser.’
They drove home, Elspeth still wondering when she was going to get her money. Duncan stopped the truck at the end of the track leading to the camp. He turned off the engine, turned to Elspeth, put his hand on her knee and told her she was a lovely-looking woman. ‘And gifted, too.’
Elspeth thanked him, removed the hand and said, ‘Can I have my money now?’
‘What money?’
‘My money. I was told I’d get five pounds for playing at the recital.’
He tapped his pocket. ‘It’s here.’
She held out her hand.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I arranged it. I drove you there.’
‘I played the piano,’ said Elspeth.
He admitted that was true. Took out one of the envelopes and gave Elspeth two pounds.
‘I was told I’d get five.’
‘Who told you that?’ asked Duncan.
‘You.’
‘I said there was a five-pound fee. I didn’t say that was what you’d get. I’ve got my cut, you’ve got yours.’
Elspeth called him a bastard. ‘You’ve cheated me.’
Climbing out of the truck in a fury, she remembered the fertiliser fee. ‘Is that for the dung?’
‘It could be.’
‘I trundle dung for miles every Friday night and you sell it?’
He said nothing, scratched his cheek.
‘Don’t you think you could slip the stable people a pound now and then? We do all the graft, shovelling and such.’
He said, ‘And the horses do all the shitting and I don’t pay them, either.’ That was the way of things. He was head forester, he took the decisions, he had all the responsibilities and when a little something extra came his way it was only what he deserved.
Elspeth slammed the truck door and stumped up the track, cursing.
In the morning, she was still furious. She stamped about the stable, raged as she heaved muck outside. ‘He cheated me. He bloody stole my money.’ She was standing, one hand on her shovel, the other on her hip.
‘He’s awful fond of you,’ said Frazer.
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ said Elspeth. ‘I’d hate to see how he treats people he’s not awful fond of.’
Frazer said, ‘Duncan’s getting old.’
Elspeth said, ‘So?’
‘So he’ll have to retire. He’ll lose his house, everything. He’ll need all the money he can get.’
‘Including my money. I need all the money I can get, too. And I’m getting old. So are you, come to think of it.’
‘Yes, but the cottage where I live has been in the family for generations. My grandfather and great-grandfather lived there. When Duncan retires, he’ll have nowhere to go.’
‘That’s still no reason for taking other people’s money. It’s just not fair.’
Frazer asked where she’d got the notion that anything was fair. ‘Nothing’s fair. If it was, you’d be spending time getting pampered at that big house, and bloody Lady McKenzie would be here shovelling shit. He wagged his finger at her. ‘Get fair out of your head. It doesn’t exist.’
‘So Duncan gets away with cheating me. Taking my money.’
‘Ah now,’ said Frazer. ‘I may not believe in fair, but I do believe in justice. We all get what we deserve in the end. What Duncan really wants is you. You sitting by his fireside, you cooking his tea, you in his bed.’
Elspeth said, ‘Yuck.’
‘See, he’s never going to get what he wants.’
‘Too bloody right he’s not,’ said Elspeth. ‘Bloody bastard. I bloody hate him and I’ll bloody get even with him.’
Without even turning to look at her, he said, ‘No you won’t. Just leave him alone to dig his own grave. He’ll get what’s coming to him. One way or another, we all get what we deserve.’