‘We’ll not need to buy a thing, Mother,’ said Victoria as she unpacked a second copper jelly pan. ‘That means that what’s left of the fund can be used to improve the farm. Oh, Eddie is so clever and has such plans. If only Mr Smart . . .’
She stopped talking, but Catriona pressed her. ‘Mr Smart what, dear?’
Victoria looked perplexed. ‘He hasn’t been himself since we came back from India and he hasn’t done a thing about replacing me. I’m worried about him. I hope he didn’t pick up some germ there.’
Catriona could imagine just what illness ailed Mr Smart. She had seen his eyes as he watched her daughter, and she ached for the man, but that was the way of the world. Victoria was far too young for Alistair Smart, and Catriona hoped he would soon realize it and put his foolishness behind him. He had been so generous and always so unfailingly courteous. Well, the young ones would soon be married and busy on their farm with their new life. An advertisement for secretarial assistance should go into the pages of the Courier soon, and the sooner the better, thought Catriona, giving her already scrupulously clean sink another wipe.
And Elsie had taken Victoria to a meeting in the Caird Hall. This votes business was another nonsense that Catriona could well do without. The sooner Victoria was married and away from the sphere of Elsie’s influence, the better. Elsie had taken to popping in once or twice a week during the school dinner hour, and Victoria was certainly enjoying having a friend to talk with again. Better when they were discussing dresses and petticoats, though, rather than women’s rights. Catriona rubbed her kettle until she could see her face in it. This war had done no good to anyone and had merely, as far as she could see, turned the world on its head.
‘And when you’re standing on your head,’ said Catriona as she attacked the dust that had dared settle on her clean floor, ‘you’re no use to man nor beast.’
‘Who is standing on his head?’ It was Davie at the door, looking for his dinner.
Catriona laughed. ‘There’s nothing like getting angry for getting brasses clean. Away and lift the bairn, Davie, and we’ll maybe have peace to eat our dinner. I’m glad Elsie has classes this afternoon, for Victoria has another fitting at Draffen’s and, according to Miss Morrison, yours truly has no eye for the latest fashion. She’d have Victoria walking up the aisle like a dressmaker’s dummy, if I wasn’t there to say No. Victoria’s mooning over Eddie’s letters all the time: I don’t think she knows what she’s doing half the time.’
‘Don’t underestimate my lassie, Catriona Menmuir. Remember she’s been all the way to India and back again, and run a big office full of men that say “Yes, Miss Cameron” and “What do you think of this, Miss Cameron?” She’ll let Elsie talk, but I’ve yet to see her pay attention to anything she’s said.’
‘Except this suffrage nonsense.’
Davie took his undisputed courage in both hands. ‘Maybe the lassies are in the right of it, Mistress Menmuir,’ said he and ran off up the stairs to fetch Andrew.
21
Las Estrellas, Mexico
AFTER THE CRUEL TWIST OF fate that had left her a widow, Lucia Alcantarilla Cameron had passed the long, hot days in prayer. At least, she had tried to pray, but for what? Mother Mercedes told her that she should pray for the repose of the soul of her husband, so cruelly killed on their very wedding day, but Lucia did not want to pray for a dead man. She wanted to pray that it was all a horrible mistake and that the accident had not happened and the snake had not killed Juan. She wanted to pray that one day, perhaps today or surely tomorrow, her father would come to the convent and he would say, ‘Ninita, you are forgiven. I have come to take you home, so that you may have your baby in the luxury and comfort into which an Alcantarilla-Medina-Cameron should be born. As far as we can, we will put these awful months behind us.’
But he had not come.
Sitting under the jacaranda trees, Lucia had remembered the discussions between her father and her brothers, when it became obvious that the child-widow was about to become a child-mother.
‘We will take her to Mexico City. Surely a doctor can be found there who will abort this child.’ That was Alvaro.
And then the shocked tones of José Luis. ‘Cut out your tongue in shame, Brother. To abort a child is a sin against God’s law.’
Abortion was, to the religious José Luis, a sin. Those who whispered, therefore, that he had known of the snake in the unused guest chamber were wrong. For surely if to kill an unwanted baby was murder, then conniving at the death of a man who had seriously embarrassed one’s family must also be murder and just as much against the laws of God.
‘No reputable doctor will do it.’ This from Jaime. ‘We should take her to the United States, Papa. There you can pay for anything.’
But to el padrón also, abortion was a sin. He would have none of it. ‘My daughter will return to the convent of the good sisters. When this child is born, they can find a home for it and my little girl will come home and be herself again. We will find her a suitable husband and she will forget this madness.’
But no one asked the girl, who could never again be as she had been before. She had loved a man and she agreed with her father and brothers that she had sinned, but she was a married woman with her mother’s ring upon her slender fingers and there was no need to hide her away in shame. The baby was her compensation for the loss of all her dreams, and so she would change those dreams. Papa would see the baby, his first grandchild, and he would love him. But Don Alejandro did not even say adios to his daughter, as she left to hide her mistake away in the cloisters. Lucia did not understand that it broke his heart to banish his treasure, and that he did it only because, after hours of prayer and thought, he had come to the conclusion that what he was doing was best for her.
José Luis had accompanied her. ‘Everything is going to be all right, Ninita. This man took advantage of you, but the sisters will never tell and no one, except your future husband, need ever know. It is a bad dream, Lucia, but all dreams, good and bad, come to an end. See, I have bought for you some dream-stealers.’
He handed her the jeweller’s box and, when she would not take it, he opened the box. As if she were a child who could be humoured into taking her present, he showed her the beautiful silver earrings shaped like delicate spider’s webs, from which dangled a tiny silver eagle’s feather. In the centre of each fragile web hung a small turquoise. The indigenous peoples of the Americas believed that if they hung a representation of a spider’s web above their baby’s cradle, any bad dream flying through the air would become trapped in the web and would not disturb the child’s slumbers. Clever jewellers had taken the legend and turned it into money.
José Luis had bought her the pretty baubles because he loved her, and he was sorry that he had had to make her cry. The old Lucia would have delighted in them, and would have thrown her loving arms around her brother’s neck and kissed him. The new, mature Lucia had turned her head away and looked out of the dusty windows of the car.
‘Lucia,’ pleaded José Luis, ‘try to understand. The blood of hundreds of years of Spanish history flows in your veins. It must not be mixed and weakened. You have had a shock and, unfortunately, you are to have a child. But you will never see the baby and therefore will not love it. It will be as if this year had never happened. Papa talks of taking you to Europe. Think, Lucia. Paris, Rome, Seville, the city of your ancestors. You will come home and there will be celebrations and a real marriage, to someone who is worthy of alliance with you. There will be other babies. Wear your earrings, Ninita, and let the bad dream go away.’
But Lucia did not wear her dream-stealers and she did not answer her brother.
And she did not speak much to Sister Mercedes, who loved Lucia and who did not judge and wonder how it could be that there was to be a baby and there had been no wedding night.
They walked in the convent gardens and the nun described the great cities of Europe, which another young Mexican girl of good family had seen years b
efore.
‘It is strange, Lucia – and you must write to me and tell me if it is the same with you – but everywhere in Seville I saw and heard Beethoven, who was not of course a Spaniard.’
But the nun looked at the stricken face of the child beside her and stopped speaking of Beethoven, who had written so powerfully of the rights of man. What, she wondered, of the rights of women and of this unborn baby, condemned even before his birth by the very people who should have loved him most?
‘Mozart, too, set operatic work in Seville, Lucia.’ The nun tried again, but she fell quiet at the realization that perhaps Don Giovanni was not the best opera to discuss with a girl who, according to her father, had been violated.
Lucia saw her difficulties and smiled politely. ‘I prefer Beethoven, Madre,’ was all she said.
For the months of her confinement Lucia was biddable. She rose each morning and went to the chapel and seemed to pray. She ate a little of everything that was presented to her, but only smiled when coaxed to eat and reminded that she was eating for two. Every day she walked in the shade of the gardens and sat reading in the cool of the evening. Twice Don Alvaro arrived in secret and she awoke to his presence like a flower to the sun.
‘Don’t let them take my baby away, Alvaro,’ she begged.
‘I don’t know how to defy our father, Lucia. If he knew I was here . . . We must pray for time, little sister. Papa loves you.’
Her delicate hands gestured that thought away.
‘He does, Lucia, but I think perhaps he does not know how to love. He mourns for you as if you were dead. He truly believes that this is the right thing to do, and maybe it is best.’
She stood up imperiously. ‘Leave me, Alvaro.’
‘Please, Lucia, listen. To deal with Papa you must be as devious as he. Wait. The Sisters have been asked to give your baby away. I will know where he is, Sister, and I will keep my eye on him and his well-being until we can convince Papa that he should return to his family.’
She would not ask the only question she wanted to ask: Did my father murder my husband? She smiled at her brother. Poor Alvaro. He knew how to love.
‘I hope you find someone worthy of your love one day, mi hermano,’ she said.
‘I love you, Lucia, and Papa too when I am not afraid of him, and even José Luis.’
‘He is a cruel man, Alvaro.’
‘No. He is, as he sees it, just, Lucia. How unfortunate to be born the oldest son of Don Alejandro. I am forgiven much, because no life or death decisions depend on my competence.’
‘There must be more than competence. There must be feeling.’
‘Papa feels, Little Sister, and so too does our brother.’
‘So they banish me with my sin to the convent and they will take my child away, an Alcantarilla Medina to be raised by some peasant.’
‘You will change them. Papa can deny you nothing. How he missed you during the civil war. “Is she safer with the sisters than with me?” he would ask. “The war rages close. Should I bring the rose of the Alcantarillas here, where I can defend her honour with my blood?” And, yet, despite his care, it was in his house that . . . well, you know, Lucia. And he blames himself.’
‘Was it so great a sin to love a man who is not of our people?’
Alvaro thought of the man, John Cameron, but he could not say to her, ‘Only that man, Lucia, for he knew you were only a child.’ So he took his sister’s hand and wondered that the hand of a pregnant woman should grow so thin. And he promised that he would help her and he walked with her in the garden.
Then Alvaro went home and dared his father’s wrath by admitting that he had visited his sister. And his father smiled sadly. ‘Do you think one blade of grass grows on my acres that I do not know about, Alvaro? I am doing what is right, ninito, for all of you. I am arranging a great alliance in Spain for your sister. She will thank me when she sits at her table with many fine sons around her. But not the child of Cameron, Alvaro. The man was a cheat and a liar and he seduced a sixteen-year-old child. The snake was too good for him. Visit your sister when you must, but do not come whining and confessing your trangressions to me. And, for the sake of peace in my unhappy home, keep out of your brother’s way, for he does not have my forbearance.’
A few months later Alvaro stood by the altar as his oldest brother took a wife. And when José Luis was safely on his wedding journey, Alvaro went back to the convent and what he saw there made him send his groom back immediately for Don Alejandro.
The child comes before its time and my sister does not try to help. You must come and tell Lucia that she is loved and that you will bring her and her baby home.
And Don Alejandro drove through the night to the convent and found the door to his daughter’s rooms barred to him.
Inside the room, the girl lay on the narrow white bed and held in her hand the jewelled crucifix she had held on her wedding day. The pains gripped her tired body, and at last she could bear no more and cried out. The old nun who sat by her bed stood up and went to the door.
‘It is time, padrón,’ she said to the tall man who knelt at the prie-dieu in the corridor.
‘If I could suffer her pain for her, I would,’ said Don Alejandro. ‘Do your best for her, Sister.’
‘You should not have put her here, Father,’ whispered Don Alvaro. ‘She is a flower, and flowers die without sun. There was no sun for my sister without the love of her family.’
Don Alejandro stared blankly at his youngest son and wondered why he did not strike him for his insolence. Sun! There had been no sun for him either, for the last nine months, but soon it would be over and Lucia would come home and forget all her troubles. New clothes, jewels, travel, new friends – the girl whom José Luis had just married would be a perfect companion for his beloved daughter. Soon the baby that had ruined Lucia’s life would be born and she could come home and be his little girl again. He willed it to be so.
Three hours later the sobbing nuns held out the squalling baby to him. ‘She did not try, padrón,’ they wailed. ‘Her heart was broken.’
He ignored the wailing child: he felt no love, no pity, for it. He ignored his youngest son, who wept quietly by the bed. He knelt and kissed his daughter’s clasped hands. Gently he removed the heavy emerald-encrusted wedding band and the jewelled crucifix. They had been his wife’s jewels and then, for so short a time, his Lucia’s. He handed them to the nun who held the baby.
‘Get rid of it,’ he said coldly. ‘I never want to hear from you again. Go outside until you can behave like a man, Alvaro,’ he ordered, as he pulled the young man to his feet and thrust him into the corridor.
He waited until they had gone, sobbing, from the room and then Don Alejandro knelt down on the bare floor beside the body of his child and began, very quietly, to weep.
22
LORD INCHMARNOCK TOO WAS A man who was having to adjust to circumstances. He had been taken by complete surprise when his Flora had told him that she would find it difficult to choose between him and medicine. His upbringing had not really prepared him for a strong, capable and yet intensely feminine woman. Everything he had been brought up to believe in was as much under fire as the men in the trenches during the war.
‘I love you dearly, Sandy,’ she had said and he could not doubt the sincerity in her voice, ‘but I have accustomed myself to living without your love. I am a doctor, and I find that I cannot give that up while I am still useful. Don’t make me choose between you.’ She had stood up then and moved away from him, and Sandy had looked at Flora and seen that she had never been more beautiful, or more desirable, and he had wondered at this mysterious chemistry, for to most she would have looked tired and even gaunt. She had turned back to him and put out her arms, as if to hold him, then she had dropped her hands by her sides. And she had spoken eloquently about her calling and her patients.
He cast his mind back all those years and saw the young Flora – Flora, whose every unexpressed wish had been answered by an
army of faithful servants. She tore a flounce on her dress and somehow it was mended. She soiled her gloves and they were returned to her clean. She was hungry and every dish that could tempt her appetite was prepared in case Miss Flora should prefer . . . That dratted war had changed things – and not all of them for the better. Women who had been brought up to expect that there would always be servants to do things for them had dirtied their hands for the first time, and had enjoyed the experience, and his Flora more than most. He had jilted her for the flighty Julia, and Flora had squared her delicate shoulders and become a doctor: she had been present at births, at deaths and at every human condition in between. Now he wanted to take her away from it all and make life as sheltered and charmed as it had once been, but she did not want that. She wanted him, but she wanted her life of service too.
Was Britain ready for them both yet? He could no longer stay in Scotland, because in that beautiful country he had been too happy and then too sad. Perhaps after several years had passed he would not see Robert everywhere, would not turn with a start because the set of the shoulders of a young man who had just entered the room made him think, ‘Robert’. One day he would surrender to the knowledge that Robert would not return.
England, then? No, not yet.
Australia. That was the place. As soon as the divorce was final he would go to Australia and buy some land. He and Flora would marry and no one there would care that he was divorced. Flora could practise medicine. From what the ambassador had told him, she would be welcomed with open arms. Pity he didn’t know a thing about sheep – but he could learn, would learn. If that laddie Sinclair could step out of a jute mill in Dundee and take to farming like the proverbial duck to water, then how much easier for him, who had grown up on the land. With Flora beside him, he could do anything.
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