‘Whit’s the matter? Somebody walk ower yer grave?’
‘Just aboot, Jessie,’ Kathy replied. ‘That mad laugh o’ yours there, it sounded just like yer demented auld mother!’
‘Aye, well, as Ah’ve often said masel’, parentage will out.’ She winked at her niece. ‘You an’ me’ll talk efter the funeral the morra,’ she said firmly, turning to go. Then she looked again at the papers and photos on the floor. ‘Ah thought ye’d be reddin’ the place oot. Ah wanted tae tell ye tae look through it carefully, there might be somethin’ oan paper aboot Con gettin’ the money. Find it, then get ridda the resta that shite, hen. There’s nothin’ there worth sheddin’ a tear ower. Toodle-oo!’ And with that she was gone.
Kathy could hardly believe it. Ever since the day he had wanted to shoot the horse at Maggie’s fruit stall her opinion of Frank McCabe had been as low as she’d thought it possible for any human being to go, but there was a depth he would stoop to, had stooped to, that was even lower than that. Had that been why he was never away from Con’s house in the months before he died, in case the old man spilled the beans to his daughter? She had done everything but bodily lift him and throw him down the stairs, but he had stuck it out well, the insults, the complaints, the abuse. She thought back to the months and years after Lily’s death in the fire, of the constant panic she had felt trying to make sure there was enough money to pay for the essentials of life, a child thrown into the adult world of paying bills and keeping one step ahead of Con’s drinking. And all the time there had been money. She had always assumed there would be, though she had never asked. If it existed it would be blood money, and the thought that cash could make up for losing her mother was offensive, so she had never asked. Con would have drunk it, she decided, and that would’ve been fair enough, but the idea of Frank McCabe taking charge of it and never saying a word appalled her. Better that Con had wasted the lot on booze than putting it in McCabe’s hands. Well, if he had it, he wouldn’t have it for long, she decided. All through the long, weary months of Con’s dying her one thought had been to get it over with and to leave this place for ever, but now she knew she would stay here for as long as it took to prise McCabe’s mucky little fingers off the cash he had taken into ‘safe keeping’ all those years ago. So she spent the entire night searching the house for some sort of proof that it had ever existed, but she came up with nothing. Morning came, dawn broke, and the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece were creeping towards ten o’clock, the time of the funeral mass. She had a quick bath, made herself toast and coffee and then dressed again in black. What a joke, she thought, what a hypocritical joke. For this occasion a scarlet flamenco dress would’ve been more in keeping with her feelings, and she could’ve been persuaded to dance down the aisle too, castanets going like the clappers till they caught fire in her hands.
From a Glaswegian tenement to this. I first saw this cottage when I was in my early teens. You can’t miss it, high up off the road between Fort William and Glenfinnan. I’ve loved it since the first time I saw it, so where else would I put Kathy?
8
The Glasgow to Mallaig train, stopping at various stations along the way, including Fort William, departed twice daily, at 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. When she arrived at Queen Street at 5.30 that morning she had no idea of this, but she took it as a good omen that she could leave Glasgow so quickly. A short visit to the fancy toilet at the far end of the station was all she had time for. Never having given birth before and being unable to ask for information, she had no means of knowing what would happen in the aftermath. The child had been born on Saturday night and it was now early Monday. It wasn’t like a period – should it be? At first there had been small pieces of unidentifiable tissue in the heavy postpartum bleeding, but now that had stopped and the loss had slowed and turned into a brownish discharge. Was that supposed to happen? Was it normal? She smiled wryly to herself. Normal! What did that mean? Nothing about her situation was normal, nothing in her life ever had been. She had felt all her life that other people were living normal lives while she struggled with the absurd, all the while trying to pretend, to the outside world at least, that her life was just as normal as theirs. But what had happened over the last couple of days especially had upset everything and it was as much as she could do to maintain her understanding of which end was up. There had been a certain wonder over these days at the way the rest of the world was going on as usual, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. She had given birth to a secret, unfinished child, a dead child, and buried it beside the other Kelly women, her mother in particular, and then she had destroyed every last trace of what had occurred, yet she was walking about, still bleeding, of course, but as if she wasn’t any different from the Kathy Kelly she had once been. And every human being she had encountered since, those she knew and those she didn’t, treated her so casually that she almost felt they were pretending not to notice. Surely they must suspect something? Surely there was some difference in her that those who knew her must detect, and there had to be something so fundamentally odd about her behaviour that even those she had never met must wonder? And yet they didn’t seem to. She had bought her one-way ticket and received a civil smile at the ticket office, along with a friendly comment about the ungodly hour of the train’s departure, and she had answered in the same tone. The toilet attendant had taken her 10p, given her a ticket and let her through the little gate at the entrance, apologising that the ticket machine operating the turnstile had broken down again, bloody useless thing. She climbed the two flights of stairs and found her reflection in a long bank of mirrors along the wall on the left, and wondered how she could look so normal. There it was, that word again. Inside the toilet she changed her towel again. The discharge was less, but it was still there; how long would this go on? Could she count on it gradually lessening all the time, or was there a point in this alien process where she would suddenly bleed profusely again? She thought of this happening as she sat on the blue train seat, and imagined her horror as the red flood ran out of control. She sat on the low toilet and took a deep breath. This had happened to other women besides her, she told herself, it had to have, it stood to reason. Stay calm, deal with the crisis when it arrived, that made sense, and maybe there would be no crisis, maybe the worst was over. Still, better find a seat on the train near to the toilet, just to be sure. But no sooner had one problem receded than another demanded to be faced. It had started the morning after the birth, but she had been so preoccupied then that it had barely registered, and besides, she was wet in so many places that she couldn’t be sure what was coming from where or why. Her breasts were sore and she was leaking fluid from them, sometimes quite copious amounts of fluid. She had tried not to think about it because she had more than enough to think about, but now that other things were coming under control, the wetness seeping through her bra and down the front of her blouse took on a new importance. In the toilet cubicle she stuffed toilet tissue into each bra cup to soak it up, wincing slightly as it grazed her sensitive nipples, and quickly made her way down to the platform. And that’s when the true enormity of what had happened began to assert itself. She was leaking milk, she suddenly realised; her body was providing nourishment for a baby that would never suckle. As the train entered the first of two long tunnels at the exit of the station she felt a cry of the deepest pain trying to escape her throat, and lowered her head to contain it. She had never felt in the least maternal, not once in her life had she looked at a child and hoped that one day she could have one just like it, but the tragedy of producing milk when there was no child to feed overwhelmed her, and sitting in the quiet railway carriage in the early morning she turned her face to the rough material of the seat and sobbed into it. More than anything she had ever wanted, more even than wanting her mother, she wanted her child, the ache in her full breasts matching the pain in her empty arms, her empty heart. The loss of the child seemed to have tapped into a deep part of her that she had had no idea existed, but now it was raw, a
ching and weeping in sympathy with her uselessly over-full breasts. ‘Useless!’ she thought savagely. ‘Useless, useless, useless!’
The train pulled into Fort William four hours later, just before 10 a.m. She had managed to doze back and forth during the journey, which made her feel worse than if she had remained wide awake throughout. Short naps had always done that to her. ‘Feast or famine!’ Lily used to say with a smile. ‘Ye were aye the same as a baby, Kathy. Ye hadtae have a good three or four hours tae be bearable, less than that an’ ye were unbearable!’ She felt her eyes tearing up again. Everything had taken on a new emotional significance. Would her daughter have been like that too, she wondered, and instantly felt the pain of loss again. She would never never know that, would never be able to tell her daughter stories of her babyhood, because the dead child would have none. She shook her head as she got off the train and breathed deeply. The spring air was cool and clean, her breath like puffs of smoke as she exhaled. The tiny tourist office was inside the train station and she approached a woman putting out leaflets and asked for help in finding somewhere to stay.
‘It’s just before Easter, lass,’ the woman told her. ‘If you’re looking for a self-catering cottage or something like that, then lettin’ doesn’t really start till Easter, and most of that will be already fully booked. People tend to come here year after year, you see.’
‘I need somewhere for a few days while I look around,’ Kathy replied. She had automatically adjusted the way she spoke to something nearer to the English spoken by the woman. The words were the same, but the accent changed the sound, and there was something about her Glasgow vowels that sounded abrasive against the lilting, gentle tones.
‘Well, there’s the Alexandra Hotel across the road,’ the woman replied. ‘Unless you want bed and breakfast somewhere smaller. I could call round, I’m sure there would be no problem setting you up with that.’
‘No,’ Kathy said. ‘The hotel sounds fine.’ The last thing she could cope with right now was conversation, particularly the friendly sort; the slightest kindness, even from an unsuspecting stranger, and she felt she might collapse in a sobbing heap. She felt like a wounded animal with an instinctive need to be on her own. ‘Is there a Royal Bank here?’
‘Aye,’ the woman smiled brightly, ‘just down the High Street there on the left. Beside the church.’
As Kathy picked up her case and turned to leave the woman called after her. ‘If something comes up, a cottage that might suit, would you like me to leave a message at the hotel for you? I’m sure I’ll find you something. I’ll look through the books and even if there’s nothing there, there are bound to be cancellations.’
‘Aye, that would be good,’ Kathy said.
‘And it’s just for yourself?’ the woman asked. ‘And for how long?’
Kathy sensed there was more than business in the question, the woman knew perfectly well she was alone and was wondering why. ‘Yes, just for me,’ she replied. ‘My name’s Kathy Kelly and I’m hoping to find work here. I know the area from when I was a child.’
A slight exaggeration, but what the hell?
‘Aye, well, there’s a lot of that about. It’s a bit different actually staying here,’ the woman smiled gently.
‘That’s why I want to stay here,’ Kathy said, smiling back, ‘because it’s different.’
‘Off you go then, Miss Kelly,’ the woman smiled. ‘By the time you get across the road I’ll have called the hotel and let them know you’re on your way. My niece, Kirsty, works on Reception. And the minute I hear of anything suitable I’ll be in touch. Don’t you worry, we’ll get you fixed up!’ When Kathy was out of earshot the woman picked up the phone and dialled the number of the Alexandra Hotel. ‘Oh, hello, Kirsty,’ she said brightly. ‘Seona here. I’ve just sent a lassie over to you, Kathy Kelly’s her name. Looking for work and needs somewhere to stay till she finds it. Aye, one of them I’m afraid! Used to come here on her holidays when she was a child, probably won’t last more than a month, but there again, she might surprise us I suppose!’ There was a pause as she listened to Kirsty’s comments. ‘Aye, well, looks a nice sort of lassie, but awfy pale. Looks as if she’s been ill, needs a good sleep. See what you can do for her, and I’ll see you tonight in the bar of the Nevis Bank. Bye!’
The Alexandra Hotel dominated the far end of Fort William, sitting off the road on an elevated position above the main street, looking like a grey granite castle, but Kathy barely noticed how grand it was, it was simply a place to lay her head. And for two weeks after her arrival that’s exactly what she did. Her body returned to normal during that time, the bleeding stopped and so did the leaking breast milk, as she began to settle down again after the mental and physical turmoil of the last months. She did little apart from sleep for long spells, taking walks by Loch Linnhe in between. The wind coming off the snow still capping Ben Nevis was cold, or, as the tourist brochures preferred to describe it, ‘bracing and refreshing’. Even in March it numbed exposed areas of the body and stung tears to the eyes, so that everyone walked with their hands in their pockets, heads down. At the time she was aware that she was hiding, but looking back it had also been a kind of convalescence, a necessary period of withdrawal in order to adjust and regroup, though what would have happened if outside forces hadn’t brought it to an end she wasn’t sure. As she passed the desk after one of her walks, Kirsty, the receptionist, stopped her. There was a message from Seona in the Tourist Office, she should call straight away. The girl smiled and held out her hand, indicating the phone on the desk. Kathy dialled the number.
‘Oh, hello there!’ Seona replied, as though she had been waiting for this phone call all of her life. ‘I was wondering what kind of work you were after?’
‘Anything,’ Kathy replied.
‘Really? Oh, that sounds good!’
‘Not really,’ Kathy replied, ‘just desperate.’ Where in hell did the woman get that cheerfulness from? Were Tourist Officers bred in captivity?
‘I bumped into Major Angus on my way in this morning,’ Seona rushed on. ‘He and his wife live up at Glenfinnan and the old girl’s getting over a broken hip, so they’re looking for someone to give them a hand round the house, and the very best bit about it is that it’s live-in. He was going to advertise it, but I said I might know someone, so he’s holding off in case you’re interested. There’s not much at Glenfinnan, mind, but I thought it might be a good fill-in if nothing else, give you a chance to look around kind of thing. What do you think?’
‘Aye,’ Kathy said immediately.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Och, that’s great! Let’s see. It’s half eleven now, he’ll be going back up to Glenfinnan around three o’clock and I told him to call in, so maybe you could meet him here?’
When she came off the phone Kirsty was standing there, eyebrows raised quizzically, waiting for the full details as if she didn’t already know.
‘Major Angus!’ she said, smiling.
‘Yes. Do you know him?’
‘Och, everybody knows Major Angus,’ Kirsty laughed. ‘But don’t you believe what they say, I’ve always wondered if he makes half of those stories up himself!’
Kathy was about to ask what stories and which half, when Kirsty continued. ‘There’s no harm in him, honestly, and his wife is, well, you have to remember that she’s been married to Major Angus for a long, long time!’ She threw her head back and laughed.
‘What is he, a mad rapist or something?’ Kathy asked uncertainly, which made Kirsty laugh even harder.
‘No, of course not! He’s just a bit odd, but in a non-threatening way!’
‘You’d better explain,’ Kathy suggested.
‘Aye, well, maybe you’re right, but not here. When’re you meeting him? Three o’clock? I’ll call Seona and we’ll meet her in the Nevis Bank at one. If we meet here I’ll be on duty even if it is my lunch hour.’ She looked at Kathy’s concerned expression. ‘Relax, it’s
not whatever you’re thinking!’ she laughed.
‘You don’t know how bad my thoughts can be!’ Kathy replied.
When they met at the Nevis Bank Hotel Seona and Kirsty quickly got down to business. The first thing they had to tell her was that Major Angus wasn’t a major at all. He was Angus Macdonald, born and bred in Glenfinnan, and when he was a young man he had worked for the original major, a retired Englishman who had inherited his estate from his father. It took in much of the area around Glenfinnan, the hills that Angus had known all his life and considered his own. It was his job to drive the old boy in an ancient Daimler, from his house, a red sandstone mini castle high overlooking those hills, to wherever he wanted to go, and he rowed him out across Loch Shiel when he wanted to do a spot of fishing, and all the time the two of them fought ferociously. And not just verbally either, frequently their disagreements became physical.
‘My mother told me about them,’ Seona laughed. ‘You’d see this boat rocking from side to side in the water with these two daft creatures throwing punches at each other and yelling like bulls. Nobody bothered, they knew it was just the two of them at it as usual. As often as not the boat would capsize and they’d have to swim ashore, stopping on the way to shout a bit more and throw another couple of punches, and when they got out of the water they’d drive home to change, still roaring insults at each other. The next day they’d have bruises and grazes all over their faces, but they were still together.’
Chasing Angels Page 15
