The Back of Beyond

by Doris Davidson

  ‘It’s not true!’ Gwen cried. ‘It was me!’ She gulped and ended, ‘I’m Nicky’s real mother, and … Ken Partridge is his real father.’

  The two men exchanged utterly shocked, perplexed looks, obviously wondering which of the women to believe, then Alistair said, bitterly, ‘Gwen’s telling the truth, Dougal. She wouldn’t tell a lie like that.’ His head drooped for a few seconds before he addressed himself to his sister-in-law. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am for causing you all this trouble, Marge, but I honestly did think …’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she told him, ‘I can see why you made the mistake, but Gwen wasn’t to blame for what happened. I made Ken take her out for a walk, and I should have realized they were both too vulnerable. He was going home on embarkation leave so it was his last night here, and … well, she was upset about not hearing from you for so long, and surely … you can understand … and forgive?’

  He glared at her and spat out, ‘I can neither understand, nor forgive. The pair of you have made a fool of me all this time, and … oh God!’ He shot a look of what might have been apology at his old friend and barged out.

  Dougal regarded the two women with distaste. ‘What am I supposed to do now? I’ve just learned that my son’s not my son, and my wife isn’t even his mother.’ He glowered at Marge. ‘That is true, I take it?’ Her mute nod made him continue, ‘Am I expected to carry on as if nothing had happened? Or am I meant to hand the boy over to Gwen? Damn it all, Marge! I love that kid! I can’t just turn my back on him because you two played silly games when he was born. If Alistair hadn’t seen that snap and stumbled on the truth, he wouldn’t have been any the wiser, and no more would I.’

  ‘That’s true,’ she admitted. ‘And don’t blame Gwen for that, either. It was my idea that she should hand her baby over to me – in fact, the whole plan was my idea.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to explain everything,’ Gwen interrupted. ‘I’d better go after Alistair.’

  Guessing where her husband would be headed, she went up the rough track. She had been relieved when Dougal said that he loved Nicky – it meant that he wouldn’t need much persuading to take the boy back to London – and she was almost sure that he and Marge could sort out their differences. After all, she hadn’t been unfaithful. Her only sin lay in claiming that the child was hers and Dougals’s.

  Gwen had to go all the way up the hill before she saw Alistair, squatting on the stony ground beside the tower. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she muttered, stroking the crown of his head.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ he growled, jumping up and pushing her. ‘How could you let me go on believing it was Marge, when all the time it was you! You and a ginger-headed soldier! Get out of my sight, for I don’t want you anywhere near me! Ever again!’

  He gave her another shove, and knowing that any argument or attempt at explanation would be useless, she turned and retracted her steps. She deserved his scorn, his disgust. She had known all along, right from the night it happened, that Alistair would never forgive her if he found out.

  She would have to face up to life without him … and probably without her children, too. All three of them.

  Chapter 27

  Lexie was on her way to lock the shop door when a woman with a vaguely familiar face walked in. ‘My goodness!’ the incomer exclaimed. ‘It’s not Lexie, is it?’

  ‘Yes, I’m Lexie Fraser, but …?’

  ‘You likely won’t remember me. Nancy Lawrie …’

  Her legs buckling, Lexie grabbed at the wooden counter. This was something she had never imagined, not in any of the various scenarios she’d played over in her mind. Was she about to learn where her father was?

  The other woman was looking at her in some concern. ‘Are you all right? I heard the police want to talk to me, but I wanted a quick word with Alec first. Is he handy?’

  With a low moan, Lexie slid to her knees and, Nancy, running round the counter in consternation, half-lifted her on to the courtesy chair. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong, but … look, I waited till nearly closing time, so what if I lock up and make some tea for you?’

  Not waiting for an answer, she stepped back to turn the key in the lock, and then led her charge through to the house. While the tea was being made for her, Lexie took stock of her visitor. Nancy’s figure was fuller than when she was a girl, but she still had the same almost jet black hair, with just a few silver strands showing in it, although it had been cut into a neat bob instead of hanging loose to her shoulders. Her face was rounder than Lexie remembered, her cheeks not quite so rosy, but her brown eyes were still as dark, with perhaps a hint of sadness in them now. That was natural, Lexie mused, for this must be the first time she’d come back to the village which had once been her home, and twenty years was a long time to be away, however well she was wearing.

  ‘Are you feeling any better?’ Nancy asked, handing her a steaming cup.

  ‘Yes, thanks. I’m sorry I was …’

  ‘It was my fault, a ghost from the past, but I only want to see your father.’

  Lexie’s mouth went dry again. ‘He’s not still with you?’

  ‘Still?’ Nancy was clearly puzzled. ‘He never was with me, you should know that.’

  Trying to swallow the bitter bile burning her throat, Lexie whispered, ‘Didn’t he run away to be with you?’

  ‘Me and Alec? What on earth made you think that, Lexie?’

  ‘They all said you were expecting to him, and that’s why …’

  ‘So the gossips got it cockeyed as usual. I was expecting, that was right, but not to Alec. He’s the finest man I ever knew.’

  This was not how his daughter regarded him, Lexie thought. He had abandoned his wife and child, whoever he had gone off with. There was still something she wanted answered, however, although she could scarcely bring herself to speak. ‘But …,’ she croaked, ‘… who was the father?’

  Her face flushing, Nancy murmured, ‘Tom Birnie.’

  ‘The doctor?’ Lexie gasped, unable to believe this.

  So the story was told of how a forty-year-old doctor had taken advantage of a naïve seventeen-year-old girl, had sworn that he loved her, and she had believed every word.

  ‘A month or so after I told him I was pregnant,’ Nancy went on, ‘he rented a room in Edinburgh for me, and said he’d come to see me as often as he could. He promised to marry me and buy us a decent house after his wife divorced him.’

  ‘Did he keep any of his promises?’

  ‘He came to see me once, then his wife’s mother took ill, and she went to Stirling to look after her, so he wrote saying he couldn’t tell her about me till the old woman was better. That was the last I heard from him.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought Dr Birnie would be so … after he said he loved you?’

  Nancy blew a derogatory raspberry. ‘Some men swear they love a girl to get their evil way with her, but I was lucky, in a way. Tom had paid three months’ rent for the room, and I got a job at the sheet music counter in Princes Street Woolies – that paid my keep and let me save a wee bit every week. The landlady, Mrs Will, was really good. When I’d to stop working, she let me have free board for helping in the house – she had other lodgers, you see – but she didn’t really need help. She was a wee ball of energy.’

  The tale went on and Lexie learned that when the baby was born, Mrs Will had looked after it so that Nancy could take another job. ‘Was it a boy or a girl?’ she asked.

  ‘A boy. I called him Alexander, after your father.’

  Lexie’s heart, and her stomach, plummeted rapidly. If people knew that Nancy had called her son Alexander, they would be in no doubt as to who the father had been, but Nancy had noticed her discomfiture. ‘I didn’t know what to do when I found out I was expecting,’ she explained, hastily. ‘Tom swore it couldn’t be his and I knew Ma and Da would wash their hands of me if they knew, so I was at my wits’ end. Alec noticed I was crying one day and when he asked what was wrong, I just came out with it. He too
k me to Tom’s house and threatened to tell his wife if he didn’t take responsibility for what he’d done. That’s what made Tom get me the room, and I want to let your father know that things didn’t turn out too badly for me, after all.’

  ‘But he’s not here!’ Lexie burst out. ‘He never came home from choir practice the night after you disappeared. That’s why we all thought he’d gone to be with you.’

  ‘But … but …’ Nancy floundered, ‘I didn’t know. You’ve never heard from him?’

  ‘Not a word, and it was really the finish of my mother. She was never very strong, if you remember, and after Dad went away, she just pined and pined. She’d nothing left in her to fight the cancer.’

  A silence fell between them as her words dried up, each trying to find a reason why Alec Fraser had left his family, and two full minutes had passed when a loud rapping on the porch door made them both jump. ‘I can’t speak to anybody now,’ Lexie whispered.

  A second knock was followed by a man saying softly, ‘Lexie?’

  ‘It’s the Detective Inspector,’ she said in relief, rising to let him in.

  Roddy Liddell came straight to the point when he saw her companion. ‘You’re Nancy Lawrie, I take it?’

  ‘How did you know …?’

  ‘Someone told Constable Robbie that she had seen you going into the Post Office, so I came to make sure there was no mistake.’

  ‘No mistake.’ Nancy’s smile, however, was somewhat forced. ‘I can’t think why the police want to see me, though, not after twenty years.’

  ‘Yes, a search for you should have been instigated at the time,’ he admitted.

  With no prompting, Nancy launched into a brief outline of her story, after which he leaned back, sighing. ‘I originally thought it was your body we’d found.’ Nancy’s strangled gasp made him add, ‘I’m sorry. You obviously don’t know about that.’

  ‘I hadn’t got round to telling her,’ Lexie defended herself, ‘and I always hoped it wasn’t Nancy’s, because it could have meant my father had killed her.’

  Nancy took hold of her hand before saying, ‘Alec hadn’t it in him to kill a spider, let alone another human being. Your father was a gentleman, Lexie, a truly gentle man.’

  Liddell politely refused Lexie’s offer of tea, his mind too occupied with solving the crime. ‘I wonder …?’ He looked at Nancy speculatively. ‘Would there be any likelihood of the doctor – Birnie? – paying Lexie’s father a large sum of money to keep his mouth shut and leave Forvit altogether?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past Tom to have tried,’ Nancy said, ‘but I can’t see Alec taking it.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have taken money from anybody,’ Lexie agreed.

  ‘I remember you telling me that he hadn’t even taken his bankbook with him,’ the Inspector pointed out, ‘and no money was missing from the shop or the church. Does that not suggest that he’d had ample funds to live on for some time? Of course, there’s another side to the coin. Alec Fraser himself may have seen an opportunity to make some money. He could have blackmailed Birnie, threatened to get him struck off the medical register … a very lucrative, ongoing …’

  He broke off, regarded the two outraged faces for a moment, then shook his head. ‘I can see you don’t think much of that idea, but you must agree that my best bet now is to find Birnie, and get the truth out of him.’

  ‘If you’re lucky,’ Nancy put in. ‘He doesn’t know what truth is.’

  Liddell turned to Lexie. ‘We will keep up our appeal for information on your father’s whereabouts …’ He pulled pensively at his ear lobe. ‘The thing is, twenty years on, it’s going to be difficult, especially if he doesn’t want to be found …’ He got to his feet. ‘I’ll keep in touch, Lexie, and if either you or Miss Lawrie hear anything that could be of use, please let me know. No, don’t get up, I’ll see myself out.’

  ‘He’s nice,’ Nancy remarked after he was gone, ‘and he fancies you.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Lexie mumbled, but her blush revealed that she quite fancied him. ‘It’s getting late, you won’t get a train back to Edinburgh from Aberdeen tonight. I’ll make up a bed for you here, if you like.’

  ‘No, it’s all right. With that Inspector coming, I didn’t get time to tell you the end of my story. After Alexander was born, I got a job in the office of a big furniture store, and … well, I married the manager a year later.’

  Lexie clapped her hands. ‘You’re still together, I hope?’

  ‘Still together and still in love … even after nearly eighteen years. We had a daughter – she’d have been fourteen in three weeks if she’d lived, but she died at three months.’

  ‘Oh, Nancy, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It was hard at the time, but we got over the worst of it, and we had Alexander. Greig has been a wonderful father to him, and put him to George Herriot’s and then on to St Andrews’ University. He’s studying law now, and seems to be doing very well.’

  ‘So you’re Mrs Greig … what?’ Lexie wanted to know.

  ‘I’m Mrs Greig Fleming, and proud of it.’ Nancy gave a slightly embarrassed laugh. ‘He’s waiting in the hotel bar. He took me to Oldmeldrum to see my mother before we came to Forvit. You see, I started buying the Aberdeen Press and Journal to keep up with the north news, and I saw my father’s death in it a few years ago. I took a note of the address, but I couldn’t pluck up the courage to write to Ma. Then, when I heard the bobbies were looking for me, Greig said we could do the two things in one go.’

  ‘What did your mother say when she saw you?’

  ‘She broke down, Lexie, and everything’s just fine between us again. She asked us to go back and spend the might there.’ She swallowed then continued, ‘I’ll only need to find out where Alec is to make my happiness complete.’

  ‘The police are doing all they can.’

  ‘Aye. Anyway, I’d better get going. Cheerio, Lexie, and I’ll keep in touch.’

  Of the six persons in Benview that night, one slept soundly, three somewhat fitfully and two didn’t even try. Nicky was completely ignorant of the trauma which had laid bare the true facts of his birth, David and Leila suspected that trouble was brewing and Peggy had been aware before she went to bed that something was not as it should be. She would have been horrified to learn that her sisters had sat up all night wondering when their men would return, and, as time went on, if they would return at all.

  ‘I’m nearly sure Dougal won’t hold anything against me,’ Marge observed at one point. ‘He’ll come round once he’s got over the shock. He loves Nicky like he was his father, and that won’t change.’

  Gwen shook her head. ‘Did you see Alistair’s face when I said … He’d been so sure it was you who …’ A sob came into her voice now. ‘He thought it was his duty to let his old friend know the truth, and he didn’t consider how Dougal would feel.’

  ‘He knows how it feels himself now, though,’ Marge said, somewhat drily. ‘If only I hadn’t interfered. I should have guessed what would happen. Both you and Ken in an emotional state and being paired off like that … it had to come. Don’t blame yourself, Gwennie. If it had been me, I’d likely have done it months before.’

  Gwen dabbed her eyes with the tight wad of damp handkerchief. ‘I know you’re trying to make me feel better, Marge, but it’s not helping. There’s no excuse for what I did and I’ll have to take my punishment for it.’

  ‘But it was me who made you hide it,’ Marge burst out. ‘I made you play along with a stupid plot that couldn’t possibly stay hidden for ever …’ She paused, then added, with a glimmer of a smile at her lips, ‘… though we might have got away with it if David hadn’t kept those dashed snaps.’

  ‘No, that wasn’t what did it. Alistair has suspected for a long time that Dougal wasn’t Nicky’s father, but he never had any doubt about you being his mother. He … he trusted me, that’s why he’s so upset.’

  Raising her eyebrows, Marge asked, ‘Would you rather we hadn’t pretended?
Would you have preferred if I’d let you write to Alistair to tell him you’d had a baby to another man? Or would you have waited and sprung it on him when he came home?’

  ‘I don’t know. It would have hurt him just as much whenever I told him, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Since we’re being honest, I guess you’re right. On the other hand, maybe it hit him harder because he practically found out for himself. The only difference I can see is that if you’d told him at the time, he might have learned to accept it before he came home. Time does blunt …’

  ‘But he was a prisoner of war and I couldn’t …’

  ‘You didn’t know he was a prisoner. You just hadn’t heard from him for a long time, then you were told he was missing and you thought he might have been killed. Maybe you hoped …’ She clapped her free hand over her errant mouth. ‘I’m sorry, Gwennie, I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘I never wished him dead, if that’s what you were going to say, but I … did sometimes wish the baby wouldn’t live. I know I wouldn’t hear of an abortion, but now you know.’

  Marge looked her straight in the eye. ‘I’d better tell you that I often wished the same thing, so now you know, too.’

  Needing both shaking hands to steady the glass Marge had given her some time ago, Gwen took a good gulp of the neat whisky, hoping that it would give her the strength to survive this terrible ordeal. Not being a drinker, however, the fiery liquor almost took her breath away, and a few seconds passed before she managed a hoarse, ‘Marge, do you think Alistair will ever forgive me?’

  ‘I’d love to say yes, but I doubt it. Maybe you should come back to London with us for a while, to let him … you know, start missing you. That might do the trick.’

  Gwen mulled this over for a few moments, then shook her head. ‘I’d rather not leave him, not in the state he’s in. Mind you, I wouldn’t be surprised if he throws me out when he comes back, but I don’t want to depend on you and Peg.’

  ‘Are you forgetting Mum’s house is yours now?’ Marge’s voice now became sharply sarcastic. ‘You can settle in there and brood for as long as you like.’