by Dee Yates
Tam looks from the woman to the print and back again. He takes the photo and scrutinises it, then looks back at Liz. He shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says slowly. ‘This is not your mother. This girl here in the photo, she died. She was killed when Glasgow was bombed in 1941.’ His eyes are moist. ‘I went to look for her. She’d been staying with her aunt and uncle. The house took a direct hit.’ He stares into the distance as though seeing again the devastation that he had encountered. Tears overflow and trickle down his cheeks. ‘There were no survivors.’ His voice cracks.
‘Did you know her well, Mr McColl?’
‘Know her well? She was my wife!’
‘Oh,’ breathes Liz. She hesitates, unsure how to proceed. ‘I’m so sorry, only she looks very like my own mother. How strange that I’ve bought the cottage where this girl, who looks so like my mother, used to live.’
‘No, you’re wrong there. She never lived in that cottage. We lived out on the moors, west of the village, on the family farm. My brother lived in your cottage with his wife, Fiona. But that’s by the by.’
A member of staff puts her head round the door. ‘Cup of tea, Mr McColl? And would your visitor like one?’
Liz gets up and goes to the tea trolley, coming back with two cups and a plate of biscuits. They sit side by side, sipping the tea and looking out of the window at a pair of chaffinches swinging on the peanut feeder.
‘Have you settled in well, Mr McColl? It must be a lot different from living in the village.’
‘Do you know, lassie, I love it here! I never thought I would. I suppose I’ve always liked my own company, not that it got me far,’ he added in an undertone. ‘Aye, I’ve made some friends. I’ve even joined the art class once a week. Not bad for an eighty-six-year-old!’
‘If you don’t mind me asking, what made you decide to come in here to stay?’
‘Och, I suppose I wasnae looking after myself so well. I’ve a wee bit of trouble with my heart – have done since I was a lad, so they said when I tried to join the army. It’s never been a problem, ken, not until recently anyhow. I took a pain in my chest and they sent me to the hospital. And when I was better, the doctor suggested that here would be a better place to stay than going back to my home again.’
‘Well, all I can say is that I love living in your home, and the view down the valley is beautiful. I’m very grateful that I can live there.’
‘Is there anyone with you or do you live on your own?’
She pauses. ‘No, there’s no one with me.’
‘I hope you’re taking good care of the garden. How are the lupins? They must be at their best just now.’
‘They’re beautiful. Everyone who passes says so. And yes, I’m trying to keep it tidy and up to the standard of the previous owner, though it’s hard work,’ Liz smiles.
‘There’s certainly a lot of it,’ the old man agrees. He looks tired now and is struggling to keep his eyes open. Liz looks at him, wanting to ask more, but he is clearly exhausted and elderly - and he has told her about a heart problem. It would not be fair to tire him further today. She will come back soon when he has had time to recover from today's visit.
‘It’s time I was going,’ Liz says, gathering her things.
‘Can I ask you one thing before you go? I had a little cat, Tabitha – black all over and with green eyes. My neighbours said they’d look after her for me – but you know how cats get attached to a house. I wouldnae like to think she’s there around the place and not getting looked after.’
‘Don’t worry Mr McColl. I’m a cat lover too. She’s introduced herself to me and seems quite happy to let me share her home, as long as I keep her well fed!’
Tam nods and smiles. ‘That sounds like my Tabitha.’
Liz stands and hesitates before saying, ‘Would you mind if I come and see you again?’
‘I would be upset if you didn’t! I’ve enjoyed our chat, though we’ve talked an awful lot about me. Next time, you must tell me about where you come from and why you’ve decided to move up here. How soon can you come?’
‘How about next Monday?’
‘Yes, I would like that. Goodbye, Liz – may I call you Liz?’
‘Of course you may.’
‘I had a sister once who was called Elizabeth. Such a pretty name.’ Tam’s eyes close and he is asleep before she reaches the door.
44. Revelations
June 2002
It seems as though the weekend will never pass. On Monday, Liz picks some flowers and takes them with her, as a sign that she is caring for the garden that he has so carefully nurtured. The day is sunny and warm and the nurse suggests she takes Tam out in the wheelchair around the grounds. As they saunter along, he points out to her the different herbs and flowers that are growing in the garden surrounding the care home and gives her instructions on how to care for similar plants around the cottage.
‘When did you move to the cottage?’ she asks him when they have made themselves comfortable with a cup of tea and a slice of cake in a shady corner of the garden.
‘My brother lived there first, with his wife. They were married at the beginning of the war. Fiona reckoned she was pregnant, but later my brother said she’d made it up, just so he would marry her. They did marry, but I don’t reckon they were very happy, maybe because of what had happened at the beginning, maybe because of other things.’ Tam pauses and for a moment seems lost in thought. ‘Anyhow, he went off to be a soldier soon after that and Fiona was left on her own. Alan was killed near the end of the war. They never had a child.
‘After the war had ended, Fiona decided to go and stay with her parents. They farmed in a neighbouring village and there was nothing to keep her where she was.’ He sighed, and was silent for a while. ‘Father took it hard, his elder son dying. He was no’ so well himself, Dad. You know, it wears you down after a while, farming does. Anyway, he took bad with his chest one day and was dead within the week.’
‘So, you had to look after the farm on your own?’
‘I tried. It was hard work. We were tenant farmers, ken; only the sheep belonged to us. It was Rob Cunningham who owned the farm and a lot of land besides and then he himself got ill and died and his son took over. Rob had been a decent man, but his son, he was a different kettle of fish. I think the long and short of it was, he had been sweet on my wife himself and was always looking for revenge, so now he had the ideal opportunity. He threw me off the farm – said I wasnae looking after it to the required standard. I’d like to have seen him have a go with it, out on the moor as it was – poor soil, the worst of the weather.
‘Fortunately for me, the cottage in the village was still empty since Fiona had left. It was always a labourer’s cottage and Neil Cunningham agreed to let me rent it. He must have preferred the money coming in to seeing it stand empty. It certainly wasn’t for love of me, that’s for sure. So I spent the rest of my working life labouring on other people’s farms. But it wasnae such a bad life, ken.’
The old man shivers. The sun has gone behind clouds and they can feel the first spots of rain on their skin. Liz wheels him indoors and round to his room.
‘Anyway, lass,’ he says once they are settled and watching the raindrops chase each other down the glass. ‘We were meant to be talking about you this time.’
‘All right. Where shall I start? I was born in London. Correction – I thought I was born in London, but I’ve recently found out I wasn’t. Anyhow, I was brought up in London – on the outskirts, that is – one of the London boroughs as they were called. My father was a minister in the church – at least, I thought my father was a minister, but it turned out he wasn’t at all.’
‘Stop! You’re confusing me. You were born in London – no, you weren’t. Your father was a minister – no he wasn’t. What do you mean?’
‘I’m sorry. This makes no sense to you.’ She looks at him, her eyes sparkling. ‘I was brought up in London, that’s for sure. I moved to Yorkshire, trained as a nurse and got married to a
doctor. We had a son and a daughter, both of them grown up now. Then we were divorced.’ She shrugs. ‘It wasn’t a bad marriage, we just weren’t alike. He never told me what he was thinking and, in the end, I felt he didn’t care for me, if that makes sense.’
‘It makes perfect sense,’ Tam replied quietly.
‘So that’s it really,’ Liz says with a shrug.
‘What made you come to Scotland and to such a small place as the village?’
‘My mother was born in Scotland. Some time when she was young, she came to visit the village or to stay – I wasn’t sure which. She often mentioned it.’ Liz pauses. ‘Last year she died. And later I thought, why don’t I go and see where this place is and what it’s like. When I arrived, I felt very strongly that this was where I wanted to be.’
‘What was your mother’s name? I might have met her.’
Liz takes a deep breath. ‘It was Jeannie.’
The old man starts. ‘Jeannie, did you say? That was the name of my wife too.’
There is silence between them for a minute.
‘Mr McColl, I had a letter from my mother two weeks ago.’
‘What do you mean? You said she died last year. You’re talking in riddles again!’
‘I know it sounds like it. My mother did die last year. This letter was sent from her solicitor. She had entrusted it to him until after her death, to be sent on to me after her affairs had been concluded. That’s why it has only now arrived. It contains some startling revelations. I don’t want to upset you, but I think you would want to hear what she says.’
Tam looks at her, confused by her words. ‘If you want to tell me, hen, I’ve no objections, though I can’t see why it should upset me.’
Liz takes from her bag a wad of paper and, unfolding it, begins to read.
9, Woodstock Avenue
Sutton
Wednesday 8th August, 2001
My dear Liz,
You and I both know that I am not long for this world. I have thought often, and I can leave it no longer, that it is time to set the record straight. I have led you to believe things that are not true, mainly to make life easier for you, but, if I am honest, because there were things I couldn’t face talking about. I need to talk about them now.
As you know, because I’ve told you before, I was born in Scotland, in a small village in Fife. When I left school, I wanted to work in a library. My parents let me go and live with my father’s sister in Glasgow. There I could get a good training in a bigger library than the one to be found in our village. Auntie Christine was very kind – more like a sister than an aunt and less strict than my parents, and I loved it in Glasgow! Anyway, war came and my parents insisted I go back to live with them. I was determined not to, so I went and enlisted with the Women’s Land Army. I was only seventeen, so I had to get permission, but my aunt signed that she was happy for me to join.
I was sent to a farm in the Southern Uplands of Scotland. It was miles from anywhere – nothing like living in Glasgow or even Fife – and I loved it. I learned how to milk cows, ride a Clydesdale horse and even deliver lambs. There were lots of less exciting jobs, like mucking out the stable and the byre, sweeping barns and back-breaking jobs, like harvesting potatoes and turnips.
It was there I met your father. I know it upset you that I could never talk about him. I remember how upset you were when you first saw your birth certificate and read the words ‘Father Unknown’. I know what you must have thought of me when you read that. I suppose it was my way of trying to block out the past. Not that it did, of course.
Anyway, I will tell you about him now. His name was Thomas but we called him Tam. I met him very soon after arriving on the farm. He lived with his father and brother on a farm much more isolated than the one on which I stayed. We bumped into each other, quite literally, at the farmers’ market and it was love at first sight. To this day, I’m not sure what it was that attracted me to him, but attracted I was, right from the start.
Liz pauses and looks at the old man. His face shows bewilderment. He shakes his head slowly from side to side. ‘This can’t be right. She was killed in the air raid on Glasgow.’
‘Would you like me to stop? I won’t carry on if this upsets you.’
‘Nay, lass. Carry on. Carry on.’
He wasn’t easy to get on with. He was moody and quiet and he had a rare temper which occasionally showed itself. What I struggled with most of all is that he would never say what he was thinking or feeling. All his feelings were bottled up inside and he kept me on the outside. At first it was fun to try and take him out of himself, but eventually it became hard work. I could only see it as a sign that he didn’t really care for me.
Then there was his brother. Alan was very different from Tam – open and friendly, everything that Tam wasn’t. He married Fiona, but he said he only did so because she told him she was pregnant. He claimed that she’d tricked him and only later admitted she’d made a mistake. Whatever the truth, they weren’t that happy together. Alan began to show an interest in me. After a while, Tam being so difficult, I couldn’t help being drawn to Alan. I found it difficult not to respond to him, though I knew in my heart of hearts that it was Tam whom I really loved. But I let Alan kiss me and I know that was very wrong. There was never anything more than a kiss, though I think Tam suspected there was more. I know he was jealous of my friendship with his brother. But no, you were Tam's child, no-one else.
Then one day, after Tam and I had had a disagreement, Tam unexpectedly revealed a little of his past. He told me about his mother dying out on the moors in the snow. He was the one who had found her. It had obviously affected him deeply. It may be explained how he was. Anyway, walking back home through the fields, he asked me to marry him. I said yes, I would. I suppose after his revelation I was confident that he would be more willing to share his feelings now, that things would get easier.
Alan said I was making a big mistake. I thought at the time it was because he wanted me and I wouldn’t respond. It turned out he was right. Alan went away and enlisted in the army. Tam had tried to go, but he was turned down because they found that he had a heart murmur – not that it ever stopped him from working as hard as anyone else, if not harder. I kept on trying with Tam. He was pleased about the baby (that was you, of course). But still he kept me at a distance most of the time.
Liz pauses again, checking that the old man is not too upset by what he is hearing. Tam looks at her in confusion.
‘But she must have written this years ago in the war… before she went to Glasgow. And she talks about you as though… as though…’
‘Let me read on, Mr McColl. Hear what she says next.’
Uncle Cameron, Auntie Christine’s husband, began to get poorly. I went to Glasgow once to see them. Then she wrote again, saying he was much worse and he asked to see me before he died. The snow had been very bad that year, but I said I would go as soon as I was able. Tam was really angry. The trouble was, I was getting near my time. I know he was thinking of my welfare, but there was no need to react the way he did and not even have a discussion about it. He even suggested the baby might not be his. That was nonsense and I told him so. It was what upset me the most – the fact that he didn’t trust me. It wasn’t the first time either, that this had been a problem. That lack of trust, it makes you love the person less after a while. If you really love a person, you trust them. Didn’t you find that? Anyway, after that argument between Tam and I, we hardly spoke for a couple of weeks.
Now, I come to the awful bit in the story. One day, when the snow had cleared, I went to Glasgow without telling Tam. I had arranged for Fiona to take me to the railway station. Tam had gone off into the hills to check on sheep. It was the last time I ever saw him.
My uncle was dying. I was so glad I made the journey. It was like coming home for me. But on the night of 13 March we were sitting by my uncle’s bed when planes, hundreds of them, started to bomb Clydebank, which was only a short distance away. We sat all night
watching the fires burn. My uncle couldn’t be moved and we didn’t want to leave him, so we just sat there next to his bed, my auntie and me.
The fires were still burning the next morning. I caught the tram down to Clydebank because I knew a family who came from there. Their two boys were evacuees, staying with the Cunninghams where I was a land girl. Their father had been killed and their mother returned to Glasgow and stayed there with the wee girl, though she sent the boys back to the farm when the threat of bombing increased. I had visited Alice already, so I knew where she stayed. When I arrived, I couldn’t get near. The whole area had been flattened. Fires were burning everywhere.
They came back, the bombers, the next night, presumably to finish off what they had started. This time they were much nearer. My aunt and I were sitting in the living room when a bomb exploded nearby. Auntie Christine took my hand and we ran from the room, hoping to reach the cupboard under the stairs. I remember we were nearly there. I can’t remember any more, though I’ve tried so many times to recall what came next.
Believe it or not, the next thing I remember was lying in a hospital bed with a baby. It was like a dream, or part nightmare, part dream. There must have been another bomb. I don’t remember being in labour at all. And there I was with a beautiful child – you. What’s more, I was unharmed. Of course I had cuts and bruises and I had a bang to my head that must have caused concussion, but otherwise, nothing. How we could both have survived is beyond me.
‘But I was there,’ Tam interrupts. ‘A couple of days later, when she didn’t come home and Fiona told me about the bombings, I went to Glasgow to try and find her. I saw the house. It was almost completely flattened – no roof, walls caved in, heaps of rubble everywhere. No one could have survived that. I saw it with my own eyes.’
‘And I would believe you, if it weren’t for this letter. Somehow, she must have survived. I’m evidence of that. Let me read on.’
