The Farm Girl's Dream

by Eileen Ramsay

  To Victoria’s delight, her mother tried to smile.

  ‘I’m fine now, lass. It was just—’

  ‘I know, but we’ll survive, Mamma, and we’ll do more than that. Just think. It’s the two of us against the world. Does the world have a chance? No.’

  Victoria found a bag of flour that the mice – she refused to think any more about the possibility of rats – had left inviolate and soon there were scones browning on the griddle iron.

  ‘I’m making up the whole bag,’ she said as Catriona, washed and dressed, re-entered the kitchen. ‘I hope I remembered your recipe properly. I should, since I’ve watched you bake often enough. We’ll have scrambled eggs and scones for breakfast, and boiled eggs and scones for dinner. We have plenty of vegetables for soup, and you can make that, Mother, while I start cleaning. Unfortunately, we’ve no bone for stock.’

  ‘There’s a wee grocer’s just round the corner.’

  ‘No.’ Victoria was in control. ‘We’ll be pioneers today and use only what we have. There isn’t time to go to the shops, and by the look of this place we’ll be too dirty to go anywhere. Here, Mother, doesn’t a scrambled egg scone taste wonderful?’ Catriona had to agree that it did.

  After breakfast Victoria went to dress while Catriona washed their few dishes, and then they started to clean. Everything the vermin had contaminated was taken out into the back garden and burned. The dirty paper that had lined all the shelves in the kitchen followed the foodstuffs onto the fire. The floors were swept and scrubbed, and after the floors came the walls and the shelves, even the doors. Soon the smell of dirt and decay was replaced by the healthy and not too unpleasant smell of carbolic.

  ‘Once we start polishing there’ll be a fresh smell of lemon in here and then we’ll get some apple logs for the fire. Won’t that be nice?’

  ‘I’ll do the privy,’ offered Catriona, anxious to make up for her weakness of the morning, ‘and you can get started on the front room.’

  Victoria dropped into a chair by the fire. ‘The front room? Mercy, Mother. Would you look at the time. It’s nearly four and we’ve been at it since before nine this morning. If I don’t eat I . . . I . . . don’t know what I’ll do.’

  ‘You’re right, lass. Look, I’ll start making the soup and it can be simmering while we finish. I’m glad we brought these oil lamps from the farm. They’re homely, aren’t they?’

  Victoria turned away. She was not ready for talk of the farm, and certainly not ready for odious comparison. ‘I’ll boil these last two eggs, Mother, to go with our soup. Or will it just be mixed vegetables, since there’s no stock for flavour? Doesn’t matter. Tomorrow we’ll investigate the wee shop.’

  *

  Did Arbuthnott Boatman deliberately choose an extremely wet day on which to take the new owner of Priory Farm around his property?

  John Cameron had spent the night very comfortably at the nearby Birkhill Inn. His handsome face and figure and the cut of his London clothes had endeared him to the barmaid, and his generous tip had won the heart of the groom who was to convey Mr Cameron the two miles to the farm. Sammy Taylor was not the brightest employee of the inn, but he knew horses and he knew farms. He looked at the hand-made leather shoes, at the polish and the fine tooling with something approaching anguish.

  ‘Ye’ll no hae a pair o’ galoshes, maister?’

  John shuddered at the thought of squeezing his beautiful shoes into a pair of ugly, but no doubt practical, galoshes. ‘Wore my last pair some years ago.’

  ‘There’ll be a puckle mud at the fairm.’

  ‘Which I shall be more than happy to wipe from my feet, laddie,’ said John grandly.

  He would go, as his father’s lawyer wished, to the farm and he would see the inventory, and then he would take the wind from Arbuthnott Boatman’s sails by telling him to sell up. He could hardly wait to change that pained, prune-faced look to one of surprise.

  Arbuthnott Boatman, in a sensible hooded driving cape and with his best-quality rubber galoshes pulled carefully over his second-best pair of shoes, waited at the once sparkling mullioned windows of the front room of Priory Farm. Catriona had been gone only a few days but already the house seemed to sag into itself, as if ashamed that it was not as immaculate as it had always been. Boatman saw, with some pleasure, the look of irritation on his new client’s face as he stepped from his cab into a puddle, which immediately oozed over the top of his shoes and ran down inside his silk-socked ankles. He hid his smile and walked out briskly, an expression of welcome painted on his face.

  ‘Mr Cameron, I’d have known you anywhere. You have the look of your father about you.’

  John avoided the outstretched hand. There was no need for pretence with this man. They did not like one another, but what did that matter? He, John Cameron, owned every mucky inch of this place, every wisp of hay, every hen – even, he supposed, every mouse that lurked in the warm barns. His father could hardly have shot them all, he decided with a quick flash of irritation. The other man was his employee. It was a good feeling.

  ‘It was always dinned into me that I resembled my mother,’ John said coldly. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, can we sign whatever we have to sign? I’m thinking of heading for Mexico. This damned war has ruined France, but with the proceeds from the sale of this little lot I should be able to live like a king in Baja California. And there’s America just over the border, if I feel the need for what passes there as civilization. Ever been to France, Boatman?’ He did not wait for an answer. ‘France is the country, Boatman. Such wine, such women, such food. I’ll miss French wines, but Mexican señoritas and excellent cigars should compensate. And they say there’s the odd vineyard, and lobsters, of course, jumping straight out of the sea into the pot.’

  ‘Sounds delightful,’ said Boatman drily. ‘But what of the farm? And, by the way, Cameron,’ he added, knowing full well that it was not only unprofessional, but none of his business, ‘you haven’t forgotten that you still have a daughter?’

  Did John flinch for a second at the word ‘daughter’? Had he missed holding his own child? Did he regret not hearing her first, lisping words?

  ‘Neither means a damn thing. The farm never has: sometimes I even wondered if I was my father’s son. As for the girl, I came back from business – important business – in Paris at considerable discomfort to be there within hours of her birth and they turfed me out. Never even saw her. I owe the girl nothing.’

  ‘I take it you want me to find a suitable tenant?’ The lawyer’s mind was working furiously. Could Catriona lease the farm? With Tam to help, really to run the place . . .

  John looked at him, his face a caricature of incredulity. ‘A tenant? You must be out of your mind, man. When I shed the mud from these shoes, I want to do it in every way possible. There’s a war on, in case you hadn’t noticed. I don’t intend to stay guarding the ancestral acres while waiting to be conscripted. Mind you, if all else failed, I’d be a farmer before I’d be gun-fodder, and I suppose if I made a show of farming, they’d give me a dispensation.’ He thought for a minute, obviously weighing up the advantages of a safe haven for the rest of the damned war against the lure of exotic places. Mexico. What did he know of it? He looked over at the barn and saw the short, broad shape of Bessie Menmuir carrying peelings to the chickens. He could find nothing alluring in the sight. But Spanish señoritas. Sunshine . . . ‘Show me where to sign. Sell, and sell now.’ He looked around him at the carefully tended farmsteading. ‘It should make a nice tidy sum.’

  The two men looked at one another and, for once, the lawyer’s guard dropped and his dislike of his client showed in his eyes. John Cameron blushed with embarrassment. Well, let them all hate me. What do I care? I am going to sell.

  ‘Shall I quote you the full legal terms of your father’s will, which is essentially the same as his father’s, or do you want it in plain English?’ Boatman waited, childishly and unprofessionally relishing the other man’s discomfort. How had a son
of the soil like Jock Cameron ever fathered a wastrel like this?

  ‘Get on with it, man. Spit out your legal jargon.’

  The farm can’t be sold, Mr Cameron. It’s yours for your lifetime, Cameron, and then it goes to Victoria.’

  ‘Victoria?’

  ‘Your daughter.’

  ‘My daughter? You mean he left the farm to the girl? A girl I’ve never laid eyes on.’

  ‘She is your child.’

  John laughed. ‘Either that or an immaculate conception, man. You wouldn’t catch Catriona in the barn with the ploughman. More’s the pity,’ he added under his breath. ‘She might have been more fun.’

  Boatman looked at him dispassionately.

  ‘Your late father made his will when you married in 1899. He left everything to you for your lifetime. Anything except the house and the land can be disposed of as you see fit, but it wouldn’t be wise to dispose of animals or machinery; you’ll get little rent for a farm without them. The farmhouse and the land become the property of your surviving legitimate children on your death. Victoria’s.’

  ‘What’s she like, the girl?’

  Arbuthnott Boatman considered both the question and his answer. Had John asked because he had a man’s normal interest in a child he had fathered? Perhaps there was a nice John Cameron under all the antagonism. ‘She’s a pretty wee thing. Very like you,’ he added honestly.

  John tried to picture a girl with his hair and eyes, his features, but all he could conjure up was a picture of himself just after his mother had died. He saw a pale, drawn face, shadowed blue-grey eyes that were used to smiling and were now wet with tears that he would not shed. He supposed the girl must be pretty.

  ‘Well, she’ll catch herself a man in no time, if she plays her cards right. Let’s hope she can keep him. Depends what her mother has taught her. There’s more to marriage than well-cooked meals, Boatman.’

  ‘Indeed, and as the Merry Monarch, Charles the Second, told us, there’s more to marriage than four legs in a bed.’

  John turned away in anger. What was the dratted lawyer trying to say, with his Charles II nonsense? All John knew was that, even in death, his father had thwarted him. He had tied him to this damned place. Well, he would not be tied.

  I’m off to Mexico, he thought. They can send me the money there. ‘Get the best rent you can for the place, Boatman. Shouldn’t be difficult in wartime, with people anxious for security and the government keen to make the country as self-sufficient as possible. I’m sure there’s an account at the bank that I’ll be able to draw on from overseas. Your firm must be big enough to have overseas clients. My grandfather dealt with your grandfather, or so my father was always fond of telling me. Old, established firm. Anyway, he had some way of making sure that I was always able to get funds in France.’

  ‘Of course.’ Boatman would not say ‘Mr Cameron’. ‘We have several agreements with the Bank of Scotland and I’m sure we can have the necessary paperwork drawn up before you leave. Have you a sailing date?’

  ‘Need to get myself a tenant first. How long should all this take?’

  ‘Who knows? I’ll advertise locally and nationally. Or maybe one of your father’s men would like the opportunity? They’re good workers and they know the land, the animals and the people. Perhaps Mrs Cameron . . .’ he began tentatively.

  John did not even have to think before rejecting that hare-brained idea. Catriona, his former wife, living in his home. ‘Don’t talk rubbish, man. What would a woman know about running a farm? She’d ruin it, and me, within a year. Besides, it’s poetic justice, isn’t it? She threw me out. Now the boot is on the other foot.’

  John looked down at his hand-made shoes and did not see the look of dislike thrown at him by Boatman. His anger still simmering, he ignored his ruined shoes and walked boldly through the mud away from the lawyer. ‘Do what you can, as quickly as you can,’ he shouted. ‘There’s more than the mud of Angus that I want to brush from my shoes.’

  ‘Good day to you,’ said Arbuthnott Boatman, but the words went unheard – or ignored.

  4

  IT WAS THE FIRST TIME in her life that Victoria Cameron had ever walked to the kirk. Every Sunday, for as long as she could remember, she had gone in a carriage with Grampa and the folk from the farm. Summer or winter, rain or shine, he had insisted on using his own father’s carriage, and Victoria had sat squeezed between him and the window and had looked across at the unfamiliar Sunday face of her mother. Catriona, her red hair firmly pinned down under her hat – which was anchored, but surely not to her scalp, with huge pins ending in improbable diamonds – her ruffled blouse buttoned up to and beyond her chin, had sat unsmiling as she in turn had examined her daughter for any speck of dirt or dust that had gone undetected.

  But their world had changed. Now there was a new church in a new town and they were alone, just the two of them. When the minister raised his hand for the final blessing, Victoria’s hand sought her mother’s and she squeezed the leather-gloved fingers gently. With God’s blessing and their own hard work, they would manage.

  The minister welcomed them at the door, introduced himself and said that he would call on them. He knew, as well as they, what a visit from the minister of the established kirk would do for their standing in the community.

  ‘You’ve taken on quite a job with old Mrs Thomson’s house, Mistress Cameron. It stood empty quite a while. Family wrangling, I believe, and no doubt a bit of legal wrangling, too. There’ll be a job of work to get it in order, I expect, but there was always a nice garden there – some grand gooseberry bushes at the bottom, if I remember properly.’

  Catriona had had little leisure in which to inspect the garden. All her time was taken up with making the house a fit place in which to live.

  ‘We had hoped soap and water and some new windows would cure its ills, Mr Brown, but I’m afraid neglect and some vandalism have caused major problems.’

  The minister shook his head in disbelief. ‘Vandalism. . . on Blackness Road, and you not too far from that nice private hospital for women. What is the world coming to? It’s the war, of course, not the militant suffragettes, I’m happy to say. Everything that is going wrong can now be laid at the feet of this unholy war.’

  ‘So no doubt everything that went wrong in Dundee before the war was caused by the suffragettes.’ Thus Victoria dispensed with the militant women. What is a holy war? she thought. The two words don’t seem to go together. Surely all war is unholy. But she hid her thoughts and smiled at the minister.

  ‘Well, if there’s anything I can do,’ he said, and he meant it, ‘you have only to ask. And I shall certainly drop in to see you both later this week. You’ll have met your neighbours – such good people, pillars of the kirk and the community.’

  Catriona mumbled something innocuous and they moved on.

  ‘Good neighbours who have done nothing but inspect us through their lace curtains, Mother,’ said Victoria as they walked off together.

  ‘Aye, but Mr Brown visiting can only help us, Victoria, and he knows that.’

  The streets of Dundee were quiet, the only people abroad being those on their way to or from their local church. Catriona and Victoria, chastely buttoned up to their chins in their best Sunday black, nodded and bowed to the people they passed, but no one stopped to chat to them, no one dropped into step beside them as they walked home.

  ‘It’ll be different when we know people, Mother,’ consoled Victoria, ‘when we’re accepted.’

  Catriona noted again the use of the formal ‘Mother’ and sighed for Victoria’s lost childhood, but she said nothing. They walked along, admiring the trees and talking of how lovely they would be in the spring. Suddenly Catriona stopped in the middle of the pavement and her heart, dead with grief for the past few weeks, began to swell and burst with renewed love and hope.

  ‘Look, Victoria, oh look.’

  The road outside their house was awash with people, and with carts laden with tools. V
ictoria, forgetting her newfound adulthood, kirtled up her skirts and ran, calling as she did, ‘Tam, Nellie, Bessie,’ and then, ‘Flash.’ It was Jock’s collie, who had stayed at the farm with Tam Menmuir.

  Tears of happiness were in Catriona’s eyes as she greeted her former servants – now, in her eyes at least, her equals.

  ‘We’d have come before, mistress, but we had to wait for a free day,’ said Bessie Menmuir. ‘We’re here to give a hand, like.’

  ‘But it’s Sunday, Bessie.’

  ‘Did the auld minister, bless his heart, not hold an early service the day, and he’ll be here himself as soon as he’s had his soup. Martha Livingstone wouldn’t let him out of the manse without he had his dinner. Noo, you and wee Victoria go and get out of your kirk finery, and in two shakes of a ram’s tail we’ll have this place tidied up. The laddies are in the garden. You’ll no mind that they took the liberty. Our Davie’s no a lad for wasting his time and he’s off to his regiment again the morn. Tam’ll get to your roof – it’s no looking sound – and I’ll put some soup on and some tatties. We brought you some tatties and some neeps for your pantry. They’ll rot in this rain if we do not use them up.’

  An hour later, Catriona went out to call in the Menmuir ‘laddies’ – grown men all. The wilderness at the back of the house was beginning to resemble a garden.

  ‘It was no that much work, mistress,’ said Davie Menmuir, a tall, strapping Black Watch sergeant, just finishing his leave from the Front. Married and widowed in the same year as Catriona’s own marriage, he had become quiet and introspective, but never surly. ‘The beds had been well laid out and a good gardener had known fine what he was doing. We had nothing to do, like, but just tidy up and get it under control a bit.’