by Dee Yates
So when, on that warm Sunday morning in late August, only a few days after his walk in the woods with Jeannie, Angus Thompson announced the text on which his sermon would be based, Tam knew without a doubt that it was a message sent from above with him in mind.
‘Brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.’
A slow blush spread up Tam’s neck and over his cheeks. He was grateful to a local farmer who had stopped him on the way to enquire after his father and made him so late for church that he had crept into the very back pew, where none of the congregation could now see his discomfort.
In a haze of embarrassment, he heard that Christians, while living in the world, were not to follow the ways of the world. Their behaviour in work, at home and in their relationships with family and friends must be irreproachable. In any case, the preacher pointed out, the pleasures of the world soon turned to dust and ashes.
It was not the first time Tam had heard such words. But now their significance hit him like a train coming out of a tunnel. It was easy enough to follow the teachings of the Church when nothing stood in the way, but now, now that he had met Jeannie! She was so beautiful, so alluring, so desirable in every way.
He raised his eyes and looked through the wavy glass of a nearby window onto a distorted world of fields and hills. A bumble bee, trapped unwillingly within the ecclesiastical walls, droned noisily up and down the pane of glass and he felt himself to be as trapped within the church as the small creature.
Raising his head, Tam looked round the assembled villagers. Thomas Crawford, overcome by the warm surroundings, was dozing quietly, every so often jerking upright when his head declined too far from the vertical. Known to be in the throes of a mild flirtation with the barmaid while his wife of twenty-eight years stayed at home looking after his elderly mother, he seemed noticeably unperturbed by the words that were raining down on the congregation.
Bruce Craigie, older brother of the erstwhile bellows pumper, appeared similarly detached, sitting close to his sweetheart of the moment and glancing at her fondly as often as he could without it becoming too noticeable.
On the other side of the aisle, Catriona Mathieson, the grocer, who it was widely rumoured had tampered with her imperial weights so that customers consistently left her shop with less than they bargained for, gazed into the middle distance with a small smile fixed on her face. Perhaps she was calculating her takings for the week – by fair means or foul. None of them seemed upset by the parson’s words, if they even heard them.
When at last the sermon came to an end and the congregation rose for the final hymn, Tam wiped the perspiration from his brow and joined them, thankful that the ordeal was over. He emerged into a warm midday and took a deep breath.
‘Now then, Tam! How’re you doing?’ Angus Thompson’s greeting made him jump. He had assumed the minister had gone to disrobe.
‘Er… I’m fine, thank you, Mr Thompson. And yoursel’?’
‘Only you looked a little troubled, I thought, while I was talking. Is there anything I can help you with?’
‘Och, no. I’m fine. A bit on my mind at the moment, but nothing I can’t sort out myself.’
‘Good! Well, you know where to find me if you want me. Goodbye for now, Tam. God bless you.’ The minister turned away with a smile and walked briskly towards the manse, his robes billowing in the summer breeze.
Tam sighed. If only he had half the self-assurance of that man, he would be grateful.
Dust and ashes… dust and ashes. As Tam cycled out of the village, the minister’s words brought back the feelings of six years before. He slowed the bike and came to a stop at the side of the road. He gazed across the fields towards the forest, where, only a few days ago, he had walked with Jeannie in the stillness of the evening. The horror of that earlier time swirled through his body. His mother dead and so, so cold by the side of the river. His mother in his arms and his mother laid out in her bedroom far from help. And he was reminded of his decision never again to let himself get close to anyone.
Tam heard footsteps behind him. He turned and his heart gave a lurch. It was Jeannie, though she didn’t look particularly pleased to see him. In fact she looked as though she had been crying.
‘What’s the matter, hen?’ he asked, inclined to put his arm around her but fearing to do so when villagers were still making their slow progress homeward.
‘Nothing.’ She swiped her hand quickly across her eyes.
‘I don’t believe you. I can see well that you’re upset about something.’
‘I had an argument at the farm, that’s all.’ She sniffed. ‘Not that it’s any of your business.’
‘With Rob Cunningham?’
‘No, with Neil of course. I’m beginning to wish I’d stayed in Glasgow with my aunt.’
‘And then you wouldn’t have met me.’
‘What do you care?’ Jeannie turned away and her shoulders slumped.
‘Of course I care. I care about you very much. Look, I suppose what I was trying to say the other night…’
‘Then you really do like me, Tam?’ She turned back and stared at him, frowning.
‘Of course I do. Haven’t I said so?’
‘Then why were you behaving as though you didn’t?’
‘I, er, wasn’t. I’m only anxious that we don’t rush things. After all, we’ve only known one another for a week or two. And if there’s going to be a war… well, everything is so uncertain.’
‘Apart from how we feel about each other.’
Tam’s tender look belied the battle that was going on inside him. He glanced around. The road had cleared now. ‘Let’s go into this field and sit down a minute.’ He pushed open a wooden gate far enough to allow them access and shut it behind them. Propping his bike against the wall, they sat on a patch of dry grass. Jeannie moved closer. Gently, he took hold of her hand and brought it to his mouth, kissing her fingers in turn. In front of them, swallows skimmed the surface of the ripening corn, swooping near the resting couple and soaring upwards until they were no more than black dots in the blueness.
‘You’ll be called up to fight. It’s happening already.’
‘Not to us, it isn’t. Not yet anyway. Farmers, miners, railwaymen and suchlike. They’re saying we’re needed to keep the country running.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Aye. Alan and Neil are exempt, and I’d have been called up already for six months’ military training if they’d wanted me. I shouldnae think it’ll affect us out here. Life will go on much as usual, you’ll see.’ Tam kissed her forehead, paused and kissed her lightly on the lips. He hesitated, heart thumping, wanting to kiss her again but glanced at his watch and jumped up. ‘I can’t stop,’ he said, offering her his hand. ‘There’ll be hell to pay if I’m late back. Are you sure you’ll be all right if I leave you here?’
‘Of course.’ Jeannie nodded brightly. ‘I was on my way to see some girls from the village when I saw you. I’ve been given time off, seeing as it’s Sunday. Shall I see you this week, Tam?’
‘I hope so.’ He pushed his bike back onto the road, leaned over to kiss her again and pedalled off at speed. His head was full of her words, her face, the taste of her kisses. The words of the sermon had vanished from his thoughts as though they had never been there to trouble him.
19. Moves
1991
She is in the middle of seeing a patient, when the phone rings. She leans across the table and picks up the handset. ‘Liz Deighton speaking.’
‘Hello, Liz. It’s David. I needed to hear your voice.’
‘Do you mind if I ring you back,’ she says, her heart beating fast. ‘I’m with a patient at the moment.’
‘Don’t be too long then,’ he replies. ‘I’m missing you so much, I can’t concentrate on anything.’
There is little opportunity to meet. For two weeks
he is on holiday with his family. He rings when he returns and she says she will see him on the Sunday evening after church. He seems uneasy about this but agrees. Her husband wants to know where she has been and she tells him, saying that David had meetings to discuss with her.
They meet on the race course, hardly an ideal place for an assignation, except that it covers acres of land, making it possible to get away from the crowds. But who knows whether the person walking their dog might be a near neighbour, a work colleague or a patient? When she gets into her car to drive home, he walks back over to her. She winds down the window.
‘Will you marry me?’ he asks.
Romantic though she is, even she thinks this question is unexpectedly premature.
*
At the supermarket checkout one day, she looks up to see him waiting for her. He accompanies her to the car. ‘I had to drive over,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t wait to see you again.’ They arrange a walk in the afternoon.
His good mood of the morning has evaporated. His wife has found one of her letters in his coat pocket and has flown into a rage. How could he have been so careless? Liz thinks, when she has persuaded him to tell her the reason for his bad humour. She waits for repercussions but none come. Perhaps he has told his wife that it is not what she thinks; maybe that the letter is from a deluded parishioner who thinks she is in love with him.
*
But this recklessness cannot continue. They have been spotted on the race course. He is reported to the boss. A letter is not long in coming. Either he will end this liaison or they will end his job. In the eyes of the Church it would do their cause no good at all if its vicars were to be seen carrying on such extramarital relationships.
A few days later, she enters the bookshop and there he is at the far end, flicking idly through the CDs. She walks slowly through the crowds until she is by his side. He looks up.
‘I can’t speak to you. We can’t meet again.’ His eyes stare at her, haunted. Then he turns and purposefully walks away through the shop without looking back. There is no explanation, no word of comfort. She stands rooted to the spot, looking at his departing figure. When he has disappeared, she runs through the shop and back to the car park and drives unsteadily away.
She knows that whatever happens, her marriage is over and she tells her husband this. There is little recrimination. Both realise they have tried and failed to improve the state of their marriage. At Christmas, when Tim and Rebecca are home, they will talk to their children about it, then Mike will move out and go to live with the woman he loves. She will stay in the house until it is sold.
There are no tidings of comfort and joy. Liz learns later that David has driven up and down the main road several times on Christmas afternoon, in the vain hope of glimpsing her out walking. She does indeed go for a lonely walk, but they manage to miss one another.
A month later, they meet by chance at the house of a mutual friend. She still has no idea of the reason for his decision and forces him to tell her about the Church's ultimatum. Within a week, he is writing to her again. The following month they meet. It is as though they have never been apart.
Rumours are rife in the village. At times there is a lull, but not for long and never completely. At other times, she is cast adrift in the peaks and troughs, feeling herself battered and bruised by the flotsam that is flung at her. For him it is worse, for he is hung around with all the vestments of his life that he swore to jettison – and has not the courage to let go.
Eventually she decides to move away from the village in which she has lived for so many years.
It is his idea that she look at an area to the east of where she has lived. She hasn’t heard the names of any of the small villages that long ago formed the focus of the farming communities, before the Victorians joined them together with iron rails and built stations to afford them a certain notoriety. Now the stations are shut and the farms struggle to survive. She suspects that the reason for his suggestion lies less in a consideration of her welfare and more in a desire to move her out of harm’s way ‘over the border’, but she keeps her counsel. He comes with her one day to view the property from the outside, but he will not let her arrange to take him in. He might be recognised and it wouldn’t do, in any case, for them to be thought of as a couple. But he likes the cottage. He thinks she will be happy there.
She has never considered houses that important. It is people that are important. As long as she is with the people she loves and who love her, she can live anywhere. Up until now there have always been her children, but now they have left home and there is no love left. When she finds the railway cottage, however, it is love at first sight.
It has, of course, many imperfections, some of which she doesn’t find until after she moves in. In time, she will learn that there is rising damp, that the tall ceilings attract the heat and leave her shivering at ground level and that the roof light in the kitchen leaks, but when she arrives there has been a heatwave for several days. Ivy covers the red brickwork. Honeysuckle tangles round the door. She stoops to avoid its drooping tendrils and its exquisite aroma fills her nostrils. The living room is stuffy from its two days spent under lock and key. She flings open the windows and leaves the door wide. The cat, freed from his cage, strolls outside to examine the front garden, before sitting down at the edge of the fish pond to admire its inhabitants.
The cottage is her refuge, her sanctuary, her port in the storm. No one can reach her there. Very few people know where she has gone. Safely installed, she can relax. The gossip surrounding her flitting is, as friends predict, a nine days’ wonder.
The garden between her house and the muddy track leading to the row of cottages is small but has a variety of mature shrubs and trees, some of them outgrowing the narrow space.
A few days later he comes to visit. The heatwave is continuing. They sit in the garden, drinking tea. With no more than a flicker of warning, a nine-carriage express train hurtles past. For a few seconds, the noise in the still air is conversation-stopping. Then the train is gone, its departure singing up the wires. He curses it beneath his breath.
‘I don’t know how you can stick that sound,’ he says grimly.
‘Whose suggestion was it that I move here?’ she responds evenly.
Summer gives way to autumn. She begins to decorate. The bedrooms are first in line. She is busy at work, there are long drives at the start and finish of each clinic, but, even so, there are days when she can spend hours up the ladder. It is usually when she is at the top of her stretch with a paintbrush that the phone rings and he wants to talk.
She puts no demands on him. She does not ask him to visit, waits for him to say that he will, always puts aside anything that she has planned so as not to inconvenience him.
‘Let’s see what happens in the future,’ he says.
But things will only happen in the future if we make the decision to make them happen, she thinks. And is that what he really wants?
20. Unplanned Arrivals
September 1939
At Blackford Farm the wireless was still switched on, though just now it was emitting nothing more harmful than a programme of dance music. Yesterday there had been the announcement that Hitler, the German Chancellor, had invaded Poland. This had been followed by the demand from France and Britain for Germany to withdraw. Since then there was silence, at least on the part of the aggressor, and the whole country was holding its breath.
Jeannie was sweeping up the contaminated wool that had been hacked from the fleeces at clipping time. The last of the remaining sheep had been rounded up, penned in the shed, clipped, dipped and gone skittering off back to freedom, lighter and happier than a few hours before. She shovelled the rubbish into a bucket, stood the broom in a corner and walked across the farmyard to the house. It had been a long morning and she was hungry.
‘There’s one or two now have got land girls to help,’ Robert was saying to his wife, ‘and more likely to, if this goes on.’
Jean
nie glanced at Agnes who looked anxious. Jeannie’s heart sank. She turned to Robert.
‘Aye, more bad news, lass. They’re conscripting all men from eighteen to forty-one into the armed forces. But I’ve told her it won’t affect Neil. He’s needed here on the farm. She doesn’t need to worry.’
Jeannie's heart stills. ‘What about Alan and Tam? Will they have to go?’
‘Well, no, not Alan anyway, as he’s the eldest. I’m not so sure about Tam, though they’d find it hard to manage without him.’
Jeannie crossed to the sink to wash her hands and so that the farmer couldn’t see her struggling with tears. ‘Letter for you, Jeannie, lass,’ he said kindly.
She recognised her father’s writing. With a sigh, she slumped down in one of the chairs and tore open the envelope. A frown creased her brow as she read.
‘Problems?’ enquired Robert.
‘Only the same as usual. My father says I’m needed at home. There is plenty for me to do there. It’s not true. I’m much more needed here on the farm. I’m not going and that’s that.’
There was silence as Robert and Agnes considered her outburst.
‘Well, we don’t want you to go either. You’re a good worker and we need your help, but we don’t want you falling out with your family,’ Agnes said.
‘My father will get over it. We never did see eye to eye.’ And she slammed the letter down on the table, just as Neil entered the room. His hands and forearms were caked with grease.
‘The tractor and binder are ready for cutting the corn in the lower field,’ he said. He turned to Jeannie. ‘You’d better eat up. You’ll need all your strength for making those stooks.’
‘Don’t worry, lass,’ Rob smiled. ‘Neil will show you what you have to do. Come and eat your dinner the noo… we will need energy for the task. Then we’ll get on while the sun is still shining.’
