The Farm Girl's Dream

by Eileen Ramsay

  ‘She said she couldn’t be bought—’

  ‘She meant only that money wasn’t necessary, Sandy. Victoria liked Robert. If she had—’

  It was his turn to interrupt. ‘I know, Flora. The children might have made a go of at least friendship, if they had been left to get on with it. But Julia pushed before either of them was ready.’

  ‘She meant well, Sandy. Oh, dear God, you have lost your only child. Don’t lose your wife too.’

  ‘The boy I have in my heart and soul,’ he said sadly. ‘My wife I lost a long time ago. How like you to think of her, Flora, but she wants a divorce too. She has a . . . friend. I’ll give her the grounds; it’s quite easy to do, you know. Some people make a nice little living out of, shall we say, indelicate photographs. At least Julia won’t have the trauma of being the one divorced. She can divorce me and, as for money, even after this damn war that’s not a problem. I’ll sell the estates up here, the stuff that’s not entailed – I couldn’t bear to be in Scotland without my laddie – and Julia can take the proceeds and live abroad. She’s actually talking about the United States. Titles still count there, even with some of their top society people. It’s too soon, of course – maybe in a year or two – but I wanted to ask you . . . Will you wait for me, Flora?’

  Flora leaned forward on her three-legged stool. She put her arms around his neck, as she had done twenty years before, and she kissed him lightly on the lips.

  ‘I’d wait for you for ever,’ she replied softly.

  It was unfortunate that Agnes Johnstone, Catriona’s next-door neighbour, should choose just that moment to come into the kitchen to see what on earth was happening to the long-promised pots of tea.

  17

  VICTORIA THOUGHT SHE MIGHT BE sick with excitement. She was not; but she was very sick with the motion of the great liner as it sailed across a stormy Bay of Biscay.

  Her first thought, when she could stand up again without wanting to die, was that she should have been working. This was not a pleasure cruise; she was a working woman. The stirrings of joy began to defeat the qualms of nausea. She was going to India. She staggered up on deck to look for her employer.

  Alistair was standing by the rail, wrapped in a long fur coat, deep in conversation with another traveller, but he hurried across the deck as soon as he saw her. ‘My dear Victoria,’ he said with evident relief. ‘How nice to see you above decks. Come, stand by the rail and enjoy the sea breeze. Or would you prefer a chair out of the wind? There will be quite a change in the heat in a day or two. Would you believe you shall soon have to guard your complexion?’

  Victoria, who had heard from the medical officer that her employer had asked for her constantly and had ordered several delicacies to tempt her palate, smiled at him warmly. ‘I have wasted enough time already, Mr Smart. I am quite ready to take dictation.’

  ‘My dear girl, get yourself well. Enjoy the voyage. There’s dancing every night, and as soon as the sun comes out we shall have deck games. I hope I have not lost my skill at quoits. There is to be a treasure hunt too, and although you have missed your first opportunity to dine with the captain, we have been asked to cocktails. I have no idea what a cocktail is – some new craze from America, I suppose – but I am assured we will enjoy the experience.’

  ‘Sounds fun.’

  Fun. That was not a word that had figured too much in Alistair Smart’s vocabulary. He usually preferred a good book. The ship’s library possessed the latest John Buchan and he had put his name down for it. He took a deep breath and told his secretary of the fancy-dress party that was to take place. It was only right that she should enjoy such frivolity.

  *

  By the time they were approaching Egypt, Victoria had forgotten her appalling sea-sickness. The ship was full of young army officers and their wives, young men who were going out to work in the jute industry, civil servants. Victoria soon found herself an accepted part of a lifestyle she had previously only seen from the outside. The army, however, preferred to keep to its haughty self.

  ‘Their loss,’ laughed Victoria, who quite forgot her employer for long hours of every day, as she walked and talked, and ate delicious food and danced away the glorious starlit nights. She met Mr Smart at mealtimes and, after dinner, he would ask her for one dance. Then he would retire to his cabin.

  ‘We haven’t done any work, Mr Smart,’ Victoria would remind him every few days.

  ‘Plenty of time for work, my dear. Enjoy yourself.’

  And Victoria did.

  And then there was the treasure hunt. The clues did not seem, to Victoria, too difficult. She worked them out, one after the other, and ranged over the ship in search of the next clue. So did Captain Edward Welborn. They met behind the second lifeboat from the right.

  Eddie Welborn was quite happy to find himself behind the lifeboats with Miss Cameron. He had wanted to speak to her since she had first appeared on deck, but too many constraints had got in the way. First, as an officer raised from the ranks, he felt insecure as a member of this august ruling class of officers and gentlemen. He had been told that Victoria was ‘trade, m’boy, and you don’t mix with shopkeepers, not if you want to wear a gong one day’.

  Eddie was not sure that he wanted to become a general. He wasn’t even sure that he wanted to stay in the army. He had gone in because there was a war on, and his father’s little Lake District farm could not support three sons. He had become an officer because, he said, ‘everyone else bought it’. The general who had recommended his promotion remarked, ‘best foot soldier I’ve seen since the Boer War.’ Eddie was going out to India to see if he might like to leave the army and take a good job in jute. But he knew he would hate the sun: it had already blistered his skin. How he could bear three years of it, in or out of uniform, he simply could not imagine. He had sat in the shade with a book for two weeks and listened to Victoria’s laughter, wishing that he had enough courage to defy the rules, as he had once defied the German army.

  ‘So she’s a shopkeeper,’ he had argued with himself, ‘and you, Edward Welborn, are a sheep farmer in funny clothes.’ But until he had found himself behind the lifeboats he had not plucked up the courage required to defy convention.

  The two young people looked at one another and at the hiding place contained in the clue. Who would reach for it first?

  ‘You go,’ said Eddie.

  Victoria looked at his honest, freckled face and the clear blue eyes and she smiled. ‘No, you go,’ she replied. ‘If I’m totally honest, I have to say you were here first.’

  Eddie looked at her and thought that she was even prettier than he had believed and that her simple flower-patterned evening frock was much more becoming than all the expensive creations that the officers’ wives were wearing. ‘Shall we work together on it?’ he asked now. ‘After all, either you will follow me around or I will most certainly follow you.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ said Victoria and blushed. ‘I mean, the working together bit.’

  ‘Come along then. Twice I heard giggling. There are others looking for our clue.’ Boldly he took her hand and Victoria shyly allowed it to rest in his. His skin was not so soft as she had thought it would be. After all, he was an army officer. She wasn’t sure what they did, but she was sure it involved delegating, rather than doing.

  ‘Your skin’s quite hard for a gentleman,’ she said and blushed again furiously at her boldness.

  Eddie looked down at his hand. ‘It’s masquerading,’ he laughed. ‘It’s a farmer’s skin and it’s taken four years of war to soften it.’

  A farmer. In seconds their shyness was gone, like snow in summer, and Victoria heard all about the difficulties of sheep farming in the Lake District. In return Eddie was told a little about the Priory, about Grampa and old Tam Menmuir, but nothing about John Cameron.

  Hand in hand they continued the hunt and, two hours later, to their great surprise but even greater joy, found themselves the winners.

  ‘The prize is a bottle
of bubbly,’ said the ship’s captain, ‘and you shall receive it at the ball on the last night. I take it you’ll be partners.’

  They looked at one another. Victoria knew perfectly well what the military said about the others on board. Civil servants might be tolerated. Trade was anathema, unless they were owners of the firms – and even then they were suspect. She also had to think of her employer.

  ‘We shall certainly be there, captain,’ said Eddie boldly, ‘and I shall ask the young lady to have the last waltz with me.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Victoria and blushed again, for surely sophisticated world travellers did not say such naïve things to young men.

  Eddie seemed to see nothing amiss. ‘Would you care for some tea before . . . retiring, Miss Cameron?’

  Miss Cameron would care. They sat in one of the ship’s lounges and drank tea and ate delicious little butter biscuits. And they talked and talked until Victoria felt that there was nothing she did not know about the Welborn family. She in turn told Eddie almost everything about her own family. But she could not bring herself to speak about her father, so she skirted over Andrew’s birth.

  Eddie, for his part, had heard about the baby’s birth and the marriage some weeks later of Victoria’s mother and stepfather, and he had reached his own wrong conclusions. But he had never before judged anyone without seeing for himself and he did not start now.

  It was after two in the morning when Eddie, with a soldierly salute, left Victoria at the door of her cabin, but it was some time before she fell into a deep, untroubled sleep. She sat watching the moon on the water from her porthole and thinking that really life aboard ship was romantic and Eddie Welborn was the nicest young man. Catriona would like him. But how would she meet him? Catriona lived in Dundee and Eddie Welborn was going to India and might well stay there. Victoria smiled at the moon.

  ‘What’s for me will no go by me,’ she told it and, happier than she had been for some time, Victoria Cameron slipped into bed and was soon sound asleep.

  *

  ‘I won the treasure hunt,’ Victoria told Alistair the next morning at breakfast.

  ‘I know, my dear, with a Captain Edward Welborn.’ He held up the daily newspaper that was printed on board. ‘Well done you. I hope you have saved your prettiest frock for the ball. I shall certainly come to see you receive your prize.’

  ‘You won’t mind if I give it to Eddie? I slowed him down a bit.’

  ‘Not at all. Now, perhaps we could make a few notes about letters to send back upon arrival in India.’

  He watched Victoria as she bent conscientiously over her notebook. Eddie, she had called him Eddie, and they had only just met.

  But that’s as it should be, he told himself. You are her employer, Alistair, and she is young enough to be your daughter.

  Unbidden, the ghost of another young girl came into his mind. It was an old memory and had been locked firmly away, so it was rather hazy. No, Victoria is nothing like Mabel. Mabel was fair and frail and . . . But there is something in the tilt of the head, in the clear, untroubled look in the eyes. Almost enjoying the pain, Alistair remembered.

  Where’s your pride, Alistair? She’s an office girl. She’ll never command respect.

  He should never have listened to his father. He should have married his Mabel. They could have had a year before the dreaded tuberculosis took her. No point in wondering whether money could have helped keep the killer at bay.

  *

  The remainder of the voyage was not enjoyed by Alistair Smart. Victoria and young Welborn were soon inseparable and, as if to rub salt into a wound that he could not know was gaping, Eddie came every day to ask punctiliously for Alistair’s permission to take Victoria away – to dance, to play deck tennis, to swim, to walk in the moonlight, hand in hand, around the deck. Alistair watched them and he tried to be happy for Victoria. And, because he was a thoroughly decent man, he made no excuses about pressure of work to keep the girl by his side.

  ‘This is as it should be,’ he said. ‘Every young girl should have a shipboard romance. Good heavens, what would it be like to go back to Dundee and not to have flirted madly with a gay young blade?’ And he almost convinced himself that it was he who had begun the whole thing and that he was quite proud of himself.

  Victoria, for her part, was experiencing thoughts and sensations that she had never before encountered. Robert had been a dream, a fairytale and, like too many other fairytales, it had ended in horror. She had not been in that lovely library with the boy when he pulled the trigger, but too often in the night she had awakened with a cry, sure that her sleep had been disturbed by the blast of a shotgun. She had been able to tell Eddie about Robert and he, who had seen more horror than Victoria could ever imagine, had held her hand tightly and prayed for the courage to hold her in his arms and to kiss away the nightmares.

  And all too soon they were approaching Bombay.

  The noise, the smell, the heat, the crowd – it was all overwhelming.

  Victoria and Alistair disembarked at Bombay, the gateway to India since Charles II had been given it as a wedding present from the father of his Portuguese wife. They were to stay in a hotel suggested by the firm for a few days, before setting off on the long, dusty train journey across the subcontinent to Calcutta. Victoria’s earliest childhood memories were awakened by the sight of the overworked horses that pulled the Indian taxis. Oh, Grampa would have laid about him with a whip, had he seen his own animals so badly abused. Her anger helped her tolerate the amazing smells of India as they trotted towards the hotel.

  Alistair Smart was not so lucky, and the smell of urine and dung, and dirt and incense, and . . . and . . . stuck in his throat and tortured his eyes. He was made even more unhappy when he saw that the unattached soldiers from the ship were also unloading their baggage at the hotel. He had watched Victoria floating around the deck in the arms of Edward Welborn and had forced himself to smile with everyone else at the attractiveness of the young couple. And he had consoled himself that the army was off to Delhi, while he and Victoria were bound for Calcutta.

  Two nights after their arrival he sat in his white dinner jacket among the palms of the hotel foyer and watched Victoria and Edward dance with each other again.

  He’s holding her too close for decency, he raged, and then he scolded himself for being an old fuddy-duddy. ‘Tomorrow we’re off. By the spring that boy will be nothing but a memory.’

  The music stopped, but Victoria and Edward did not. They continued to waltz out of the ballroom and into the fan-cooled foyer.

  Alistair could do nothing but sit quietly and pretend to be engrossed in the week-old Times, while Victoria and Edward stopped and gazed at one another.

  It was like one of those dreadful Hollywood films, except that the piano player was no longer playing. Edward was not much taller than Victoria. Alistair watched him bend his head and kiss her. He watched as her arms stole up around his sunburned neck.

  I hope that hurts, Alistair thought to himself. Then, because he was a good man, he tried again to find the answer to the crossword clues. I should have said . . . But I couldn’t . . . She is in my employ. She is young enough to be my daughter. We are going to Calcutta tomorrow. She will forget him. Please God, let her forget him. But why? Why should she forget him? Because he is an army officer, Smart, and you think he will go away and forget her, and she will be hurt.

  Once again he buried his head in the newspaper and, oblivious to everyone and everything, Victoria and Eddie wandered out on to the verandah.

  ‘I love you, you know, Victoria.’

  ‘I know.’

  Eddie looked at her. He was not experienced at telling young women that he loved them, but he had a suspicion that ‘I know’ was not exactly the answer he had expected.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Oh, Eddie, I’m confused. I don’t know what love is. I love my mother and my wee brother. I loved my grandfather. I don’t know what I felt for Robert, but
it’s not the same as I feel for you. I always saw him as a knight in shining silver armour . . .’ She fell silent, ready almost to burst into tears. She knew that this conversation was probably the most momentous of her whole life and she did not want to spoil it.

  ‘I’d look stupid in armour, Victoria, and I hate horses. Well, they hate me. They always want to stand on my feet. I’m no god. I’m a normal man and I want to see you every day for the rest of my life. Now that, to me, is love.’

  ‘It would be nice to see you every day too, Eddie,’ said Victoria simply. And she smiled shyly at him and he held her hand again.

  ‘Now, you’re going to be in Calcutta for three months and then back to Scotland.’ He was once again the experienced army officer – capable, in charge. ‘I must go to Delhi with the regiment, but I can be demobbed almost at any time, Victoria. And I want to go back to the Lake District and try to find a tenancy somewhere. I know a lot about sheep. We could write to one another. There’s a bus or a train from Scotland that passes quite near us, so it must go back the other way as well. We could see one another. My mother would be happy to meet you.’

  ‘Yes, Eddie, and my mother would like to meet you. My stepfather’s father still lives on my grampa’s farm. It would be interesting for you, wouldn’t it, to see a Scottish farm?’

  ‘Yes, it would. Victoria, I’m rather tired of talking. I’d quite like to kiss you again, if you don’t mind.’

  Victoria did not mind, and by the time she went to bed that night she had quite decided that life would be insupportable if she was not to see Eddie Welborn every day of her life. How she would live through the next few months she could hardly imagine.

  18

  WHILE VICTORIA PLAYED DECK TENNIS and quoits in the sun, Priory Farm trembled under the weight of a deluge.

  Tam Sinclair stood in a ditch up to his knees in muddy water. He stretched his aching back, whacked his freezing hands against himself to try to restore the circulation, and laughed.