There was a surprising number of men visiting the Dundee Hospital for Women, but only a few were there to see new babies, as most babies were born at home. Davie moved across the antiseptic waiting room to position himself beside another man. That way, he thought, he could blend in better. He hated the antiseptic smell. It made him remember the trenches and the military hospital. It made him remember pain and, more importantly, fear, and he did not want to be reminded of the fear. It was strange to think that the selfsame smell could be associated with birth.
The other man held up his parcel to Davie. ‘Wallace’s pie for the missus,’ he said. ‘She hates the food here. She’s dying for a beer too, but I was scared to risk it.’
The door opened before Davie had an opportunity to explain the contents of his own brown-paper parcel, and the nurse appeared. She was as starched from head to toe as Davie was around his neck and he stood awkwardly, his bonnet in his hand. How clean she looked, how efficient. Perhaps she wouldn’t let him in.
The nurse did not smile. She looked them over one by one, and each expectant visitor was left feeling inadequate in some way.
‘Dae ye think she’s starched underneath as well?’ whispered the man next to Davie. ‘If this is the nurse, God helps us all when the matron sees us dirtying up her nice clean hospital.’
‘This is a hospital,’ said the nurse, glaring at them both, ‘not a variety hall.’ Suddenly she stopped as a loud ‘atchoo’ split the frozen air. ‘Who sneezed? No one with a cold may come in. How old are you, miss?’ She swooped on a girl who stood with her mother.
‘Thirteen, miss.’
‘Too young. Come, the rest of you. No more than two to a bed and do not, I repeat, do not touch the beds at all. When the bell rings, do not dawdle. Leave at once.’
‘Righto, sergeant,’ said the happy-go-lucky man beside Davie. Davie admired his bravery. The nurse did not.
‘Mr Menmuir?’
Davie clutched his parcel. She was looking out for him. Why?
‘Yes, nurse,’ he said.
She smiled graciously. ‘Mrs Cameron has been moved out of the general ward to the room that Dr Currie reserves for her private and special patients. If you will follow me.’
Thankful that he had asked his mother to put a crease in his trousers, Davie followed the starched back down a long corridor, through some swinging doors and into yet another corridor.
‘Mrs Cameron is in room B. She may have her young man with her . . .’
Davie held out his hands for inspection, as he had done all those years ago at school, and the nurse smiled gently. ‘It never occurred to me that your hands would be dirty, Mr Menmuir. I was just going to ask you if you were the one who sneezed. We don’t want our young man catching a bad cold, do we? No? Then in you go. I think Miss Cameron is there too.’
Victoria was indeed in the room but Davie had eyes for no one but Catriona. She was lying back against the pillows and, to him, she looked like the young girl who had come to Priory Farm twenty years before. He felt awkward. He had never seen her with her hair down, and he had certainly never seen her in a nightgown. He blushed and she smiled at him and held out her hand.
‘Well, Davie, have you come to see the bairn?’
‘Aye, and your good self.’ Somewhat nervously he handed her the parcel. ‘The lady at Draffens said it was quite respectable and fitting to buy this.’
Catriona had undone the string and opened the parcel. In her hands she held a fine knitted shawl. It had cost Davie a princely 14s 11d and he had swithered between the shawl and a lovely bedjacket at the same price, but had decided, in the end, that the jacket was too intimate a gift.
Catriona held the soft wool between her fingers and did not look up.
He panicked. ‘It’s to put round yer shoulders, but if ye don’t like it . . .’
She looked up and he saw that her eyes were filled with tears. ‘It’s the finest shawl I’ve ever had, Davie, and I’m proud to put it round my shoulders.’
Victoria smiled as she thought of the drawer full of Catriona’s own exquisite hand-knitted creations.
‘And what about this young man?’ she asked Davie, who was still gazing in a tongue-tied way at Catriona. ‘Have you no time for him?’
For the first time Davie noticed the little crib near the window.
‘Isn’t Dr Currie wonderful?’ Victoria went on. ‘Mother gets to have Baby . . .’ She stopped and laughed with delight. ‘We can’t keep calling him Baby. We will have to choose a name for him. Think, Mother. Will you call him after one of the royal princes?’
Catriona shook her head. She had had plenty of time to think of a name for her baby. ‘Andrew, I thought,’ she said. ‘A good, strong Scottish name and all his own, no one else’s.’
Victoria leaned over the crib. ‘Hello, Andrew,’ she said softly and picked up the tiny shawl-wrapped bundle. ‘Here, Davie, do you want a shot? He won’t break, you know,’ she added, as she saw the look of mingled hope and dismay on Davie’s face.
‘Pretend he’s a lamb, Davie,’ said Catriona.
‘What, and throw the pair wee soul over my shoulder? No, I’m no frightened tae touch him, just amazed at the wholeness if him. Would ye look at the fingernails.’
‘Mrs Cameron. I’m sorry to disturb at visiting hours but there are forms to be filled in.’ It was the nurse again. She read off Catriona’s name, address and date of birth. ‘The father’s details aren’t down here, Mrs Cameron. I take it our gallant soldier is still at the Front.’
Catriona and Victoria looked at one another.
‘No, he’s not at the Front, nurse, he’s . . .’
‘My wee brother and I have no father, nurse,’ said Victoria firmly. ‘You may just leave that bit blank.’
Catriona looked at Davie, and she saw the love and tenderness in his eyes as he held the infant in his arms and gently soothed him. He looked up and smiled at her, and Victoria saw the look that passed between them.
‘Mother?’ she questioned.
‘Maybe you’re wrong, Victoria,’ said Catriona, although she still gazed at Davie. ‘Maybe wee Andrew is going to have a daddy, after all.’
The nurse was becoming impatient. She could sense the atmosphere in the room, but she had too much work to do to wait while these people ironed out their lives.
‘That’s all very nice,’ she said, ‘but there’s still a space on my form.’
‘Menmuir,’ said Davie, but the beaming smile on his face was directed at Catriona. ‘David Menmuir, Esquire.’
15
Las Estrellas, Mexico
JOHN CAMERON HAD NOT FULLY appreciated the difficulties he would encounter in trying to form a relationship with the daughter of Don Alejandro. The girl was escorted everywhere by one or other of her brothers. There was always a stout Mexican matron in heavy black silk with her in the coach, or in the motor car when the Padrón wanted to show the villagers that their sleepy part of Mexico had moved firmly into the twentieth century. And there were always servants running behind and beside her to pick up anything she might drop, or to anticipate her slightest wish – to pick that flower, to hold and soothe that baby, to visit that church.
La dama Lucia became very devout in the weeks after the corrida. ‘I have not done all the things my dear Mother Mercedes asked me to do, Papa,’ she said demurely. ‘I have not prayed novenas or visited the sick and so, from now on, I will visit the mission regularly and light a candle at the statue of the Virgin.’
Don Alejandro could deny her nothing. Besides, he knew that none of the men in the village would dare to raise their eyes to stare at his daughter. If he knew of the gringo gun-runner – and he must have known, for he was informed of every single thing that happened in his village – it never occurred to him that his gently reared and cosseted Lucia would find the bold stare of those blue-grey eyes a challenge.
John contrived that they should meet in the garden at the mission, and there he fell in love with her haltin
g English as much as with her beautiful dark eyes. She, for her part, loved to hear about that wild, beautiful country far across the world, where there was grass all year round, and rain, and soft, delicate flowers so unlike their own strident, exotic reds and oranges.
‘Stay here and pray enough for both of us, Inez,’ she ordered her duenna. ‘I was allowed to walk alone in the gardens at the convent. What harm can come to me here? Besides, I must be a little free sometimes, to walk, to pray, to dream.’
And John Cameron watched her enter the garden and set out deliberately to seduce her. For him it was a game. He had never known anyone like her.
He did not listen to Pedro’s warnings. He laughed at them. He thought Pedro’s fears and grim forebodings of swift and frightening restitution were the result of too much tequila, too much raw red wine.
‘This is not the Middle Ages, Pedro. Good heavens, I’m only talking to the girl. I’m helping her improve her English. She’s quite good – learned it from some old nun in a convent – but it’s stilted, book English. Her father should be paying me.’
‘He will, Señor Juan,’ said Pedro seriously. ‘I beg you to be careful.’
And since neither Lucia nor John liked to be told what to do, they enjoyed their rebellion, and what had begun as a game became much more serious.
Lucia told John how to get on to Alcantarilla property without being seen by the guards, who were really there to look for stray cows and did not expect stray adventurers. One night, after she had been sent to bed while her father and her brothers remained smoking their cigars and drinking their imported brandy, she let herself out of a side door and made her way to a dried-up creek some distance from the great house and hidden from it by some sage brush and stunted bushes.
And there Lucia Alcantarilla was kissed for the first time by a man who was not related to her, and she liked the experience very much indeed.
My God, she’s so ready, thought John as the soft, white hands caressed his sunburned neck and the soft, red lips parted under his.
He thrust her away. ‘Lucy, no,’ he said and wondered at the words he heard being spoken in his own voice.
‘Don’t you like kissing me, Juan?’ she asked. ‘Me, I like it very much.’
John looked down into the dark eyes, where the tears sparkled as brightly as the jewels in her ears, and he was almost lost.
‘Lucy, you don’t know what you’re doing, but I do. I’d best go now – before it’s too late.’
She wanted to cling to him, but she remembered her noble birth. An Alcantarilla would never beg: they did not have to do so. ‘You will come again, Juan,’ was all she said, ‘to tell me of this Scotland and your estate.’
‘We’ll meet at the mission,’ he replied, and that was what he meant. It was foolish to trespass on her family’s land and yet more foolish to dally with an innocent young girl, who did not really understand the forces at her command, even if she pretended to. But John was lonely and Lucia Alcantarilla was very beautiful, very desirable and very rich, qualities that he had always admired in a woman. He found that he could not keep away from her. And several times he rode out to the ranch, where he waited alone and cold by the creek, and Lucia did not come.
Then one night he heard a soft footfall and there she stood in the moonlight and he thought he had never seen anything so lovely. He kissed her and the blood leapt in her veins, to pulse with the blood that was leaping in his. Much later she struggled only a little when he began to undo the buttons of her gown.
Lucia had been told little of the real ways of men and nothing at all of the desires of women. She did not know what was happening, but the sensations clamouring in her body made her breathless. She could not bear it, but she did not know what it was that she could not bear. She clung to John as tightly as he clung to her, and she went where he guided her, and she screamed at him for ease of this torment. Then at last there was a wonderful explosion of release and Lucia lay back, exhausted, exhilarated.
John lay against her for a few minutes and then came terrifyingly to his senses.
God in heaven, what had he done? He pulled himself away and began to tidy his clothes. He did not look at her. He did not want to see her again. Would there be a look in her face, in those great eyes, that would tell the world – and especially her father – what they had done? He shivered.
‘Is that what men and women do together, my Juan?’ she asked wonderingly. ‘Well, I like it very much, and Inez was wrong. It did not hurt at all.’
‘You must go back to the house, Lucia.’
She twined her soft arms around his neck. ‘When will you come again, my Juan?’
He pulled the arms away, but gently. ‘Lucia, I must go, and you must go back quietly to the house and . . . and have a good hot bath. The ground is dirty. Look at your dress.’
She shrugged. When had Lucia Alcantarilla Medina needed to consider her dress? ‘It is nothing. I will give it to one of the maids. Tomorrow, you will come tomorrow.’ And he promised that he would, so that she would turn and run back to her house.
He had to get away, to get out of the state and then out of the country. He would like to run tonight, but he was waiting for a bank draft from . . . a client. Too much money to lose. Oh, but the girl had been sweet. Wonderful . . . He would like to go back, again and again, but that way spelled madness. He was not as fearful of el padrón as the peasant, Pedro, but he knew that no man would like his daughter’s virtue taken before her wedding. John smiled to himself. ‘Some Mexican aristocrat is in for a surprise. He’ll thank me for waking her so gently.’ He hoped Lucia’s husband would see her initiation in that light. But now he had to make his arrangements, he had to get away.
My John, my Jean, my Juan. He was tired of them all, these clinging women. Why could they not love lightly, as he loved, and not seek to own him? Much against his will, he stayed in the village of Las Estrellas and went every day to the telegraph office and he waited, and while he waited he sat in the cantina and drank young red wine, and the wine warmed his blood and he thought of Lucia. He had to see her again.
Did the wine cloud his judgement? He was not quite so careful this time as he rode to the Alcantarilla ranch. Lucia was sitting on a tree stump by the creek and for perhaps the first time in his life, John Cameron felt some regret when he saw her. She was beautiful – even more beautiful than she had been just a few weeks ago – but she was pale and the great, dark Spanish eyes were sad.
‘Lucia,’ he said softly.
She looked up and saw him, and what man could have resisted the joy that he saw springing into her eyes?
‘Juan, oh Juan. I thought you didn’t love me any more.’
‘Love you?’ He rushed to her and knelt at her feet and put his head against her legs. ‘Love you? Oh, Madonna, I adore you, as I have never loved any other woman. But, Lucia, I’m not worthy of you.’ For once John Cameron spoke the truth, but the girl was too young, too innocent to realize this.
She was not so young that she did not understand the danger in which they stood.
‘You are a crazy man to come here in the day, my Juan. My brothers have such feudal ideas, especially José Luis. He is a medieval man, my brother, and thinks to marry me to one like him. You must go away . . .’ She saw the disappointment in his face and smiled. ‘Only a little distance into the hills, mi corazon,’ she said coaxingly. ‘There is a hut. See, I will draw it for you in the sand. The vaqueros use it, but not at this season. I will come when I can.’
He held her close. ‘Come now,’ he begged.
‘Oh, Juan, you will never understand. Trust me: we have to go so slowly. To my brothers and Papa you are as nothing. We have to think, to talk . . . Go.’
He got up from the ground at her feet and thought that he would ride back to town. But then he looked down into her eyes and decided that it would be as well to wait in a hut as to wait in the dusty, dilapidated heap of clapboard structures that was Las Estrellas.
She came that night, bringing bread and wine, but they did not talk and they did not think. And for two weeks John hid in the hut and waited for Lucia Alcantarilla Medina. And he was as drunk with her young freshness as he was with the raw Mexican wine.
‘I must go into town soon, Lucia,’ he whispered one night as he kissed her goodbye. ‘My money will be here and I can’t risk losing it, especially if I am going to prove to Don Alejandro that I can support his daughter.’
‘Soon, Juan. Maybe next week. It’s not easy for me to get away. That’s why I was so late tonight. Alvaro insisted that I play cards and I could not say no, or my father would have been suspicious. Alvaro is my favourite and I love to play cards with him. Or at least I did, before I met you.’
‘We should take a break, querida. I will go into town to wait for my money and you can be a loving daughter, just for a few days. Now, don’t be careless.’
But Lucia had been careless. She had not seen her brother as he stood by the creek and wondered who had drawn a map in the sand to a vaqueros’ hut, and why. She did not see the trembling and the ready tears in the eyes of her maids, as they prepared her for bed each night, for she was too anxious for them to be gone so that she could throw on some riding clothes and steal from her father’s house. She was in love with love, and with the power she had over this foreigner. She was half-frightened and half-exhilarated by the efforts she had to make to outwit her duenna and her brothers and father, and by all the restrictions that had pinned her, like a butterfly to a collector’s board, since the day she was born.
John left the hut reluctantly, but the money was too important to lose. He took up his place at the table in the little cantina and it was there that Don José Luis Alcantarilla found him.
*
John Cameron had never been so near the aristocratic figure of José Luis and he found himself wishing that he was not quite so close now. The young man’s powerful figure in his beautifully cut clothes, his very air of supreme assurance and arrogance thrust the near-squalor of the room into stark relief. José Luis Alcantarilla Medina was sublimely indifferent to the effect he had on other people, but he was not unaware of it. He smiled now at John Cameron, but it was a smile that did not reach those beautiful, dark Spanish eyes, eyes so like those of his enchanting sister.
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