‘I did.’
‘D’you want my share?’
‘Certainly not. My treat.’ He’s in the money then, she thought. So often he had nothing, or a lot of money that seemed suddenly to vanish.
The second whisky mellowed them both: Eleanor became expansive, and they talked for a long time, the room growing stuffy, but warm at least. Later, in the cold bedroom that had once belonged to the two girls, and then just to Eleanor, she hugged a hot water bottle and realised David had not told her much at all. He had encouraged her to talk about Claire, and living in Scotland, and about Andrew. How convenient it would be, if she could like him. Marion thought so, anyway.
‘But what you’re saying.’ David had said, ‘is that he’s not The One. OK for now, but not what you really want.’
‘Oh, how would I know? I only ever had one serious boyfriend, and I married him. I don’t know any more than Claire, and she’s just beginning.’
‘A good place to be.’
‘Is it?’ She stirred in the chair, resettling herself. ‘What about you? Why haven’t you found some nice woman, got married?’
‘You always ask me that.’
‘I always wonder. Marriage, children, you’d have to settle then.’
‘And that’s the thing to do, is it? Settle?’
‘Och, I don’t know. It suited our parents. It suits Marion – she’s happy.’
‘Is she? With the worthy Fergus, the good doctor? He has a bad effect on me, makes me feel a real flibbertigibbet.’
Eleanor giggled. ‘Men can’t be … flibberti-things.’
‘Shallow then, useless. I don’t know how the human body works I only know the effect of alcohol on stomach, head and spirit. I don’t know how to put up shelves, fix a dripping tap, mend the lawn-mower. Not a real man.’
‘Real enough, surely,’ Eleanor said, ‘to fall in love with somebody.’
‘Oh, that.’ But he would not be drawn. There had been someone called Sally, that much she gathered, but the affair was over. Eleanor suspected she had been married.
In bed, she turned, curled tighter, was still not warm. The room, with its familiar furniture, was plain and cleared of all their make-up, clothes, toys, but in the dark she knew the bookcase was still under the window with rows of Enid Blyton, the battered copies of Little Women, A Dream of Sadler’s Wells, and the other favourites. In the wardrobe, an old dressing-gown covered her wedding dress. She realised the room smelled chilly, even damp. What if the house needed major repairs? Some of the window sills were rotten, she had noticed this time, and the outside paintwork was flaking, showing bare wood. Her father spent all his time in the garden. It was her mother who had cared for the house. If I had a man, thought Eleanor, growing confused in the first stages of sleep, would he take care of all that for me? Electric sockets, shelves, the falling-down shed in the garden. She dreamed that Claire had a boyfriend, and he was grown-up, with a beard.
In the morning, Eleanor went out early to the shop by the Post Office and bought sliced bread (a day old), butter (very expensive), and milk (full cream). Her father needed the extra fat, she decided, he had got leaner and hollower this year. She paid what seemed far too much for these things, and drove back to the house to make breakfast for them all. Ruby pedalled up shortly afterwards on her bike with its wicker basket. She came into the kitchen still wearing her woolly hat and gloves, and a padded jacket, looking round and rosy. Under the hat her hair was a fluff of thin grey curls, sticking up like a halo.
‘Aye, aye, Eleanor, fit like?’
‘I’m fine, Ruby, what about you? Pretty fit, anyway, look at you, still on that bike.’
‘Nae for much langer,’ Ruby said, hanging up her jacket. ‘My knee’s giein me gyp.’
‘Your knee?’
‘Arthritis, the doc says.’ She rolled up her trouser over one mottled leg and displayed a red knee. ‘See yon. See the size o it?’
‘Is it sore?’
Ruby snorted. ‘Ach, I’m nae een to complain.’ She rolled the trouser leg down again, and went to fetch her nylon overall. ‘You’ll be here to see your brither,’ she stated, as she poked around in the broom cupboard, reappearing with dustpan and brush, then going back for the vacuum cleaner and a duster.
‘Yes, I came down yesterday.’
‘I see he’s gotten a beard since last time.’ Eleanor could tell what Ruby thought of this, so did not ask. ‘And how’s Marion, and the bairns? Yon Ross was some hicht fan she was here in the summer.’
‘Nearly as tall as his dad.’
‘And the doctor?’
‘He’s fine.’
‘I speired him aboot my knee – he was very helpful. Mair nor yon Dr Cleland at the surgery. Him – he writes it a doon, but never says a word. Ye come oot wi anither prescription, and still nae idea fit’s wrang wi ye.’
Ruby began to unwind the flex of the vacuum cleaner, but made no move to plug it in. Eleanor went to rinse her cup at the sink.
‘An fit aboot yersel? Nae sign o a man yet?’
Eleanor laughed. ‘You think I should get married again, do you?’
It’s nae natural, at your age. Ye’re a bonny enough quine, fit wey have ye never taken anither man?’
‘Maybe I have.’
‘Hm.’ Ruby narrowed her eyes and sniffed. If there was no wedding ring, it hardly counted. Seeming to lose interest, she led her vacuum cleaner out. Eleanor heard it roaring away up the hall. She shut the kitchen door and read through her shopping list. Later, she might tackle Ruby about the bare cupboards, but she did not feel up to it yet. Something she was calling a hangover made her feel irritable and headachy. What business was it of Ruby’s – or David’s, or anyone’s – whether she had a man or not? I don’t want one, she decided. I really only want someone to put up shelves in the living room, and fix the cistern in the loo. A handyman. And a bigger hot water bottle.
‘Ready?’ David came in from the garden, where he had been having a smoke. She could smell it on him, that and the damp November air.
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘In the shed. He’s going to get some garden stuff at Asda as well.’
‘Right. I’ll tell Ruby where we’re going.’
In the hypermarket, David bought beer and whisky to take North with him; their father disappeared into the gardening section at the far end, and Eleanor was left to buy groceries. When she had done that, and packed them in the car, she went back to find the men and to see if there was any cut-price designer underwear, as a present for Claire. Then they must go; she did not want to drive home in the dark.
Suddenly, going through the do-it-yourself section, still in search of her father and David, she halted. Someone behind almost ran into her with a full trolley. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘sorry.’ But she still stood there, in everyone’s way. Ian. And he was present to her again in his suit and tie, neat, good-looking, capable. I was safe. I was safe when you were here. Nothing’s safe now. It was the house, decaying around her father. She could see Pitcairn was going down, no one was caring for it, but if they sold up, how could her father survive? ‘Your mother’s still here, for me,’ he had said, months after her death. Other people, well-meaning (especially the aunts), said, ‘He’ll have to move. He can’t stay in that great barn of a place on his own.’ Marion and Eleanor and David had all said that it would break his heart to leave. He had leaned on them, relied on their understanding, so that never, never would any of them tell him it was time to sell. I left Heatherlea, Eleanor thought, as soon as Ian was gone. She stood and stared at rows of screwdrivers and drill bits, till they were blurred by tears, and the haze of loss thickened around her.
‘Here you are.’ It was David, carrier bags clanking as he moved. ‘Eleanor? You OK?’
‘Yes.’ She blinked hard, found a tissue and blew her nose. ‘I was just thinking – being at Pitcairn, and you being here – I suppose that’s what brought it back.’
‘What?’ But he knew. ‘You’re all right, Eleanor, you�
��re much more all right than you ever were with him.’
‘Am I?’
‘Yes.’
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ she said.
‘No.’ They stood and looked at each other.
‘Was it?’
‘No.’
Eleanor took a deep breath. ‘Let’s go and find Dad.’
They drove home after lunch. Ruby had made lentil soup.
‘You could stand a spoon up in this,’ Eleanor’s father said. ‘Sticks to your ribs. Keeps me going all week, Ruby’s soup.’
Ruby herself had passed them on the drive, woolly hat pulled down, pedalling briskly.
When they had washed up the dishes and David had packed, he and Eleanor left. John Cairns stood in front of the house and waved them off.
‘Hist ye back,’ he said to Eleanor. ‘Bring Claire with you next time.’
How thin and shadowy he seemed, alone in front of his big house, in the threadbare clothes he wore for gardening, wore, Eleanor knew, almost all the time. A thin old man, beak-nosed and gaunt. She felt guilty, leaving him.
On the way home, they talked mostly about Marion and the children and David irritated her by fussing among her music tapes, changing them round, criticising her choice.
‘Leave me alone,’ she said. ‘I like them. Discuss it with Marion, she knows about music.’
‘Does she still play?’
‘Occasionally. She says she hasn’t time to practise. She was teaching Eilidh, but that seems to have stopped. Eilidh lost interest.’
‘But Marion’s doing fine, herself?’
‘Oh, you know, copes with everything, looks after everybody. The perfect doctor’s wife. She’s happy, I think. I sometimes envy her. Not envy, that’s wrong. But she does seem to have it all – family, teaching when she wants it, a good marriage, a lovely house.’
‘Good.’ David said. ‘Glad one of us is sorted out.’
‘You mean you’re not – I’m not?’ And they laughed, like children doing something behind the grown-ups’ backs, guilty, but not caring.
Driving North seemed an easier journey because it was the right direction to be travelling. By Elgin David was dozing. They moved through the darkening afternoon, closer and closer to Marion, and home.
5
‘The way you talk about it,’ Fergus had said, when he was first getting to know Marion, ‘I thought your family must have lived at Pitcairn for generations.’
‘No,’ Marion admitted, though was what she would have preferred to be the truth. ‘My father bought it when he inherited money after my grandmother died. That and becoming manager, then managing director. He was doing well.’
‘At what?’
‘Road haulage. He went in just to organise the schedules and do the books. He’d trained as an accountant, but he didn’t like the place he worked, it was deadly dull, I think. Anyway, when he started, there were only half a dozen lorries. But it grew – Eddie Shanks was very successful – so my father got the benefit. There must be, oh, thirty, maybe fifty lorries now. And removals and storage as well.’
‘Oh,’ said Fergus, light dawning. ‘He works for Shanks.’
So that was why they had Pitcairn: it reflected their new status. This was what Marion and Eleanor believed, as they grew up. They found that people assumed, because of the similarity of their name, Cairns, and the house’s name, that there must be some family connection. When they asked their mother about this, Faith answered vaguely.
‘Oh well, there might be some link there, years ago. Anyway, the house suits us as we are. I feel as if I’ve lived here all my life.’
David came closest to this. Marion was four, and Eleanor almost two, when David was born. Neither had any memory of their mother’s pregnancy, and Eleanor could not remember David not existing. Marion remembered being told she had a brother, and looking round, expecting to see a boy arrive. Later, a white-shawled infant,with a red face was held out then put away again in a high pram.
‘Odd,’ Marion said, when they discussed this, as they did from time to time, trawling their childhood, comparing memories, ‘when I was expecting Kirsty, I discussed the whole thing with Ross and Eilidh. Especially Eilidh – she was so interested. Wanted to feel the baby move, listen to it. She talked to the baby. It was so funny – we’d be in the Co-op and she’d pat my tummy and say, “This is the sweetie counter, but you can’t have any”.’
Eleanor only nodded, since the funniness of children is only in your own. She often felt, anyway, that she could never be as much in love with any child (even Claire, perhaps) as Marion was with hers.
‘But,’ Marion went on, ‘I suppose she was older. Well, a bit older than I was when David was born. And children are so much more aware now.’
However, when they looked back, it was not at the baby David, but the boy, and the trouble he got into, got them into. When he was four, they moved from their house in a granite terrace near the Westburn Park, not too far from school, out to Pitcairn House, which was in the country, near nothing at all. Marion remembered the Aberdeen house and Eleanor claimed to (We saw fireworks from our bedroom window one year. Once I banged my head on the gate when I fell); David told everyone he was born at Pitcairn.
‘You’re a liar,’ Marion scoffed. ‘You’re too young to know, anyhow.’
They moved in the autumn, and at first, Marion was unhappy. There were no other families within walking distance except the Mackies at the farm, and their children were teenagers. Occasionally, if their parents went out, Eileen Mackie came to baby-sit, and Eleanor was allowed to try out her red nail polish. David refused to stay in his bed, and once, roaring like a lion at the top of the stairs, slipped and tumbled all the way to the bottom.
‘He’s always doing that,’ Marion said, watching unmoved as Eileen rocked the yelling David, and Eleanor sobbed in fright beside her. ‘Will I telephone for the doctor? I know how.’
Eileen called her mother instead, and they decided David was not hurt.
‘My mum says get him checked over tomorrow,’ Eileen told John and Faith when they came home. ‘I’m awful sorry, Mrs Cairns, I’d put him to his bed, but he kept getting out.’
Eleanor and Marion had crept out of their room, and were peering through the banisters. Down in the hall, their father in a dark suit, their mother in a black dress with her peacock shawl, which shimmered purple and indigo in the light as she moved. She was like a tiny butterfly next to their father, and to Eileen, who was plump and fair. From here, her hair was a shining black cap, but they could see, faintly pink, a patch of their father’s scalp beneath his hair, light brown and smoothly brushed. Eventually, Eileen went away and their mother turned to come upstairs. The girls scurried back to bed. She went first to David, who was bruised but asleep, perfectly all right. Then she came to their room, bringing with her perfume, cigar smoke, the aroma of rich food: all the scents of the exotic world she had left, to come back to them.
In the morning, she was in her slacks and old jersey, cleaning out cupboards, her hair tied back in a scarf. She was irritable, so they kept out of her way.
Their first Spring at Pitcairn House, Marion cheered up. It grew light in the evenings and every day after school they explored the garden. A new henhouse was being built in one corner; they were going to have fresh eggs, Faith said. Their father walked them round on Saturday mornings, pausing to fill his pipe, and using it to point at what he wanted them to notice.
‘Rasp canes – need tying up. Plenty of fruit in August, though,’ or, ‘Another year and you’ll be able to climb that tree.’
‘Not David,’ Eleanor said. She was tall, and had caught up with Marion in height.
Her father laughed. ‘David too, I’ll be bound – I doubt you could stop him. He’ll fall out a few times, though, knowing him.’
It was Marion’s job to collect the eggs, as she was the eldest, and most careful. Sometimes, though, a hen would lay away, and all three would hunt. They were getting used to being in the country,
but Marion still longed for company. Sometimes a girl in her class at school would come to tea. Eleanor recalled them as if they were all the same girl, but Marion claimed there were several. Violet lasted longest: she was prim, with long hair bound tightly in plaits, a clean dress and white socks. She ate very little and seemed to like only baked beans, which Faith never bought, and chips, which the Cairnses had only on Saturdays, while Dad listened to the football results, and they all had to be quiet. Marion and her friend would disappear upstairs and giggle behind the closed door of the bedroom. Eleanor would hang around her mother, girning.
‘They won’t let me in, and it’s my bedroom too.’
‘Go and find David.’
‘Don’t know where he is.’
‘All the more reason – go and find him. He’ll be in the garden.’
Eleanor wandered about the silent summer garden. Everything was overgrown, because of the wet spring that went on till June, then the sudden blaze of a hot July. It was hot now, the sun fierce in a blue sky. Eleanor kicked stones, scuffing her sandals. A brown hen pecked around on the dusty path by her feet. One of the cats sat by a bush, gazing upwards, its eye on an invisible bird, ignoring Eleanor. No sign of David.
‘Davy!’ she called, then tried out a different voice, not liking the thinness of her own. ‘Davy!’ Deeper again, almost a grunt: ‘Davy!’ Still nothing. He might think it was Daddy shouting, if she could make her voice really deep. She came to the wall and climbed onto it, sitting astride a part that wasn’t too mossy, and felt dry. On one side, the garden, apple trees and fruit bushes, and the path dividing, going one way to the hens’ shed, the other back up to the vegetable plots, and then between the lilac trees to the house. On the other side, familiar now but still unknown, fields with cattle standing in clumps in the corners, as if they expected it to rain at last, and here and there small houses, their windows flashing in sunlight. Then hills.
Further to the left, if she swung a leg over and faced the other way, there were woods, where they got brambles in October, and David often wandered on his own, or with a boy from the village. Stanley’s father was a joiner, and they lived next to the Post Office and shop. Faith did not encourage Stanley at first; she thought him rough. Then his mother died suddenly, and she was full of pity. After that, he was allowed to come as often as he wanted to, and was often given his tea. His father, mourning, spent more and more time in the Pitcairn Arms.
David's Sisters Page 5
