The Farm Girl's Dream

by Eileen Ramsay

  ‘I should hae a look at the gutters, mistress,’ he said. ‘There’s already a few leaves come down and we’ll not want the drains blocked.’

  Catriona looked at him and sighed. If only she didn’t always feel so tired these days, she could cope better. It was just tiredness that prevented her from climbing up that ladder herself and attending to the gutters.

  ‘I’ll hold the ladder for you, Davie,’ she said, conscious as always of his emaciated figure. What a fine lad he had been, when she had first come to Priory Farm. But better not to think of those – what would Victoria call them? – walnut shell days.

  Davie, for his part, hated to admit that he now needed a woman to help him do a simple chore. He began to reject her offer, but then thought better of it. That would give birth to the thought they were all avoiding. They might just have to mention why Catriona should not be holding heavy ladders.

  They worked companionably and quietly together until Davie had been all the way around the house.

  ‘Well, that’s a grand job done, mistress. I’ll wash up at the pump and be on my way home.’

  So easy to let him go, to take his help for granted. But old habits of hospitality die hard.

  ‘I’ve a rabbit stew in the oven, Davie. You’ll take your tea with me afore you head out for the bus?’

  He washed at the pump in the back garden, then went into the kitchen, where the table was now laid for two. How companionable it all looked: the coals glowing in the grate, the cat snoozing on the rag rug with old Flash curled up beside him, the dog’s eyes wide open and following the path of his mistress as she moved slowly – not quickly and sharply as she usually did – from stove to table, from table to sink.

  Davie sighed.

  ‘You’re tired, Davie,’ said Catriona, misreading the sigh. ‘Here, have some bread, I baked it this morning.’

  ‘Bread dipped in rabbit gravy,’ said Davie contentedly. ‘I wouldn’t call the king my brother with a meal like this in front of me.’

  She smiled at him and cut another slice. ‘Davie,’ she began tentatively, ‘I’ve been meaning to say thank you. You know, for that day in the town. Yon policeman told me how you hammered John.’

  He blushed and stammered something incoherent.

  ‘You’re a good man, Davie Menmuir,’ said Catriona. Then, afraid that she had said too much, and more than she had meant, she busied herself refilling his plate.

  ‘I wonder where he’s gone,’ she said as she sat down. She neither knew nor cared where John had gone, but she had to make conversation, for Davie never would and they would just sit there, eating stew and avoiding what would one day have to be acknowledged. ‘It was aye France he was off to before, but they’d no welcome him in the middle of this, would they?’

  ‘There was two ships in the harbour that day, the policeman told me. One had come from India with a load of jute for the mills. The other was going to Mexico. Mexico,’ Davie savoured the name. ‘Have you ever heard of a place called Mexico?’

  ‘Mexico?’ Catriona thought for a moment. ‘Is that one of thae places in Europe where they’re aye having revolutions? I’m sure I’ve read the name in the Courier. Part of Spain, is it? I’ll fetch Victoria’s atlas. She was good at the geography.’

  She got up from the table and went to the dresser, and eventually she unearthed a heavy green-bound book, which she carried back to the table and laid in front of Davie. ‘Do you mind the geography lessons we had when we were at the school? Capitals and rivers.’ Catriona laughed, the laugh of a carefree young girl, and he laughed with her.

  ‘For a minute there you looked just like you looked the first day I saw you at the farm,’ he said. And she saw admiration in his eyes and tensed.

  ‘That was a lifetime ago,’ she replied, ‘and we’re different people now.’ She riffled quickly through the pages. ‘K . . . L . . . M . . . Mexico. Goodness, it’s half a world away. It’s nowhere near Spain. That’s the United States. Goodness, Davie, it’s a place stuck on to the bottom of the United States of America. How could you ever get all the way to a place like that? And what language would they speak? They’d never speak English there, would they, Davie?’ She held the atlas, and as he looked down at the huge green and brown mass that was Mexico, she saw his strong brown hands on her starched clean tablecloth. Those hands have never willingly hurt anything in their life, she thought. His wife should have lived. He should have had children. She felt a slight fluttering in her insides and sat down quickly. Davie jumped to his feet.

  ‘Catriona, lass, you’re unwell. What can I do?’

  She ignored his use of her given name. She ignored the almost overwhelming impulse to break down and cry, and have him take care of everything as easily as he had rid her gutters of leaves.

  ‘You can eat your stew, Davie Menmuir, and I will eat mine.’ She closed the book and put it back in the drawer. ‘Talking of jute ships minds me on Victoria. She loves her new job. I don’t know how to thank Dr Currie for everything she has done for this family. Victoria would still be in that mill. Sometimes I have nightmares about it. Jock would have given heaven and earth to keep her out of the mills. Look at Nellie Bains. She took a way out of the mills, didn’t she? Maybe more misery before her than behind her, though. An illigitimate child! Dear God, Davie. Can you imagine the shame of having an illegitimate child? And my Victoria took up with her again – even took her out to tea. I’ve nothing against Nellie, but I’m not Christian enough to want my Victoria associating with her.’

  *

  Completely unaware that she was causing Catriona Cameron such heartache, Nellie Bains was tackling her number one enemy – dirt. She was being helped or hindered by her son, Jimmy, who, perhaps because he was immersed totally in water only every Saturday evening, was fascinated by the lovely liquid slopping around in his mother’s pail and kept getting in her way.

  ‘If you put yer hands in that bucket again, I’ll clout yer ear. You’ve dirty water up tae your elbows.’ Nellie glared at her son, who grinned back at her with that engaging smile that turned her knees to water. ‘I mean it this time, ye wee toe-rag.’

  ‘That wean’s got you wrapped round his pinkie, Nellie.’ The voice came from up the stairs and Nellie lifted her head and looked up through the wrought-iron banisters.

  She sighed. ‘The dirtier that water, the happier the wee rogue is, Mrs Dow.’

  ‘Ach, I’ll come down and mind him for ye.’ Mrs Dow removed her ample bosom from where it had been resting on the banister and followed it down to the landing that Nellie was scrubbing. ‘Tell ye what, Nellie. It’s a braw day. I’ll tak the wean doon to the drying green and give him a wee push on the swing.’

  Nellie looked at the girth of her neighbour and at the swiftly moving lightning bolt that was her son. ‘Are ye sure? He’s a right wee handful,’ she said, pushing her damp hair back from her forehead, but Mrs Dow gathered the baby up in her arms and he buried his dirty face in her neck quite cheerfully.

  Nellie smiled. ‘Thanks, Mrs Dow. You’re a grand neighbour.’

  ‘Lassie, lassie, it would be a poor world if we couldnae help one another.’

  Mrs Dow set Jimmy back on his feet again. It was safer to walk hand-in-hand with him down the stairs. She held on to the banister with one hand, Jimmy with the other, and Nellie watched their progress, Jimmy’s feet touching, at the most, every third stair.

  Ach, he’ll be safe enough wi Mrs Dow, thought Nellie, She’s never drapped a bairn yet. And she knelt down to get on with her once-every-five-weeks job of washing the stairs, the landings and the stairwell.

  It had been a rainy month and there was an amazing amount of mud on the stairs, hence the dirty water. Still, without wee Jimmy’s help, she got on more quickly.

  Two urchins took delight in running up part of the stairs that she had just scrubbed and then, with an almost believable ‘Sorry, missus’, ran back down again. At the third attempt Nellie collared one of them. ‘Run doon my clean stair again
and I’ll skite ye both off that wall,’ she said. After that they contented themselves with making occasional rude noises at her from the mouth of the close.

  Wee toe-rags, thought the good-natured Nellie. My Jimmy’ll no behave like that when he’s big. Mind you, if I get what I’m wantin, there’ll be nae stairhead for him to play in.

  That thought cheered her up and she bent to her scrubbing with renewed energy. The stairs would be dirty again before nightfall, but for a few perfect hours they would be as clean as Nellie Bains could make them. She fought the dirt as fiercely as her man was fighting his enemy, somewhere on the Front. Eventually she finished and stood, with aching back, watching her son squealing in delight as he soared through the air on the makeshift swing. It was good to rest after her hard work and Nellie took satisfaction from the sight of her child and the knowledge of the clean stairs behind her. She should take him upstairs and feed him his tea. There was some broth left and, if she soaked a slice of stale bread in it, the baby would be perfectly content.

  Seems a shame to dirty my clean stairs right away, though, she thought and went over to the green to play with Jimmy. Mrs Dow cheerfully surrendered her charge and Nellie gave herself up to one of the real pleasures of motherhood.

  ‘Wheee,’ she yelled, as she pushed the wooden swing into the air.

  ‘Wheee,’ answered Jimmy, as well as he could while the wind tried to blow the breath from his little body.

  Nellie stood pushing until she was exhausted and, finally refusing the repeated entreaties of ‘More’, she climbed happily back up her already dirty stairs.

  Five hours later she was back downstairs with the three-legged milking stool that had been one of her legacies from her family’s tied cottage at Birky. It had been too rickety for the dairy maid and so it had been deemed good enough fer a wee bit lass like Nellie. Nellie had been savouring the last of her plate of deep-fried chipped potatoes, liberally sprinkled with salt and vinegar, when Mr Flett from across the stairs had knocked on the door to remind her that she was also supposed to renew the gas mantle. It had got broken in what he had called a stramash when the next-door pub closed its doors the previous Saturday night.

  ‘And here’s me, on my own without a man, going out to a dark closie at this time of the night. Do you not think that self-righteous bugger could hae done it himself and told me how wonderful he was the morn’s morning?’ She checked that Jimmy was asleep, left the door unlocked so that she could get back in and hurried down the dark stairs. She eyed the broken mantle and she eyed the stool. Since Jimmy’s birth she had not been quite the slip of a girl that she had been when she had inherited the stool. She sighed, but decided that life would be easier for everyone if there was light in the close. She positioned the stool and balanced tentatively on it.

  ‘Tak care noo,’ a male voice boomed out of the darkness and Nellie dropped the shade with fright. How often had her mother told her not to get herself into such situations?

  Nellie took a deep breath and peered into the poorly illuminated close, where the figure of a man loomed. And then her generous heart began to beat, but not with fear – with anticipation. It was a soldier: from her precarious perch on the stool she could smell the dirt and sweat that no doubt he himself no longer noticed. She placed her hands on her hips and swayed provocatively towards him.

  ‘They’ve nae baths at the Front?’ she asked pertly.

  ‘Naw, Nellie lass. There’s an awful lot Dundee could teach the French. I’ll no be too dirty for a wee kiss?’

  Too dirty! Too dirty! Nellie threw herself off the stool and into his arms and for a few blessed moments the ill-lit stairwell was the most beautiful place in the world. At last the soldier pulled himself away.

  ‘I’m lousy to, Nellie. The wee buggers are in my hair and under my arms and places I’ll no mention, but gin I’m scrubbed you’re going tae see them for yourself.’

  ‘I cannae wait, Tam Sinclair,’ said Nellie boldly and almost pulled him to the stairs.

  He laughed. ‘Away, ye bold lass. Ye’ll need to boil everything, including me.’

  ‘Pity I wore my brush out on the stairs,’ she laughed, close to tears. ‘For it’ll take more than water to get the dirt off you. And the smell of you. Can you no smell yourself?’

  ‘Ach, I’m past smelling, or feeling, or even hearing, Nellie. We’ve had that much of everything, we notice nothing now.’

  ‘Is the war over then, lad?’

  ‘Naw. I finally got some leave, and if God is as good as you’re always telling me He is, then it’ll be over afore the end of my furlow.’

  ‘Furlow. Now there’s a word for the wean.’

  ‘How is he, Nellie? Is he well? Does he remember me?’

  Their arms around one another, they had reached the door of their tiny home. Nellie opened it and Tam saw a welcoming fire, polished linoleum and the crib. He tiptoed, in his great mud-caked boots, over to where his son lay. They looked down at the child, who lay like a reluctant angel on the pillow. His thumb was in his mouth and his dark eyelashes fanned his plump cheeks.

  Tam stretched a filthy finger down to his son and gently touched the small head. ‘This is real, Nellie. I never knew it till now, but this,’ he gestured at the child, ‘was what we’ve all been fighting for these last years. I’ve seen dead bairns, Nellie, and I suppose I prayed to hold mine in my arms.’

  ‘Well, we’ll get ye clean first,’ said the practical Nellie, who could scarcely contain herself at hearing words like that from her Tam. She wanted to cry, she was so happy, so she took refuge in making herself busy. ‘I’ll boil some water and you get out of those clothes. Pit them in the sink at the stairhead. I’m no having any of your lodgers crawling along my settee.’

  ‘Nellie. How can I get to the stairhead without my clothes?’ demanded the modest Tam.

  Nellie put her hands on her ample waist and laughed with joy into her man’s dirty bearded face. ‘This close has seen worse, Tam my lad, a lot worse,’ she said and turned away, so that he could not see the tears of joy in her eyes. ‘Wrap yoursel in a blanket off the bed, ye daft gowk, and I’ll meet you at the door and take it back along to the sink.’

  Tam tiptoed out on to the landing and quickly began to undress. The top half was easy, but once he had wrapped the thin, clean blanket around his shoulders, getting his lower half undone without dropping his covering was difficult. He was reminded of the days of childhood, modestly trying to preserve his dignity behind a threadbare towel at family picnics.

  ‘Cover yourself, our Tam,’ his mother’s voice came back to him. Not a voice with which to argue. He had become so used to taking orders that it had never occurred to him to argue with Nellie.

  ‘Yes, sir. No, sir.’ How many more times would he say those words? And later there would be a job in this brave new land for which they were fighting and dying, and he would be back to saying, ‘Yes, sir. No, sir.’ But at least he’d be living. Sometimes the dying was the cleanest part of it. ‘Dear God, don’t let me tell Nellie any of the real truth of the glory. Glory!’ He stood at the sink and the tears for his lost innocence made tracks in the dirt on his tired face. Oh, he was fell tired. Oh, to hold Nellie’s warm, clean body, to lose himself and his memories in her, to be reborn, the old Tam, who had never stolen, never lied, never killed.

  ‘Tam Sinclair, if you don’t come back in this house, I’ll be forced to dae something I tellt my mother I’d never dae up a closie in Dundee.’

  He laughed. ‘Nellie, Nellie. I’ll no lay a finger on you till I’m clean.’

  ‘Well, stop standing there like a tumshie in a field, Tam. Come on.’ Her arms were round him and her breath was warm on his neck. He could feel her warmth through his towel. Her voice was no longer bold, but the real voice of the real Nellie. ‘I want to make the most of every moment we’ve got together. First we’ll get you clean and then I’ve some soup, Tam. Then, well, you know what we’ll do, and then we’ll sleep, stuck thegither like two spoons in a drawer. But ye’
d better get a move on, for that son of yours is up with the birds and he’s oot of the cot and in my bed.’

  Tam saw the picture in his mind and it was a lovely picture. ‘Ach, Nellie,’ he said as he thrust the blanket into the sink and began to sprint, as naked as the day he was born, for the haven of his home, ‘that would never never do.’

  Her laughter and then her lovely self followed him, and he heard the bolt shoot home in the door.

  12

  Las Estrellas, Mexico

  CONSIDERING THAT SOME OF THE battles of the bloody civil war had raged very close to them, the tiny village of Las Estrellas looked quite lovely in the sunlight. The bunting, hung everywhere to celebrate the end of the civil war, added to the air of festival. Ragged, barefoot children ran shrieking around in the dirt, sending clouds of red dust scurrying into the air. The dust immediately draped itself on the nearest object – dog, or peasant, or sidewalk table. For the children it was good to run for the sheer joy of being alive. For years they had run – from bullets, from machetes, from plunging horses – and they had run quietly, their eyes staring in horror, soundless mouths wide open, too terrified to scream. Now they ran and yelled in the hot sunshine and their elders sat at the rickety wooden tables and washed the dust down into their stomachs with warm beer or fiery tequila, distilled from the Mezquite that grew everywhere in this otherwise almost barren land. A hairless dog chased its own tail until it was exhausted and then it too lay down in the dust.

  John Cameron, brown as a nut from his months with the guerrillas, sat at a table on the verandah where there was some shade and sipped the raw red wine that was produced in the area. Now that this blasted war was at last over, maybe the peons could get back to tending their grape vines, most of which had withered and died in the past few years. He laughed at himself for his bad luck in running away from one war, only to be caught up in another one, and for his good luck in managing to make money – even though he was unsure as to the value of pesetas in real terms – out of that war. Gun-running was extremely profitable, and here in Mexico there was money to be made if one had a brain and no conscience.