David's Sisters

by Forsyth, Moira;

  ‘Maybe she’ll get married to him.’

  Clare made a face. ‘Maybe.’ She picked up a magazine and nicked through it.

  ‘Would you mind, if she did?’

  ‘I don’t know. He goes away a lot, on the rigs. So I suppose I wouldn’t see him that much. But it would be a bit pointless, I think, them living in the same house. Our house is so wee, and so is his. They’re practically next door anyway, so why would we want to put all his furniture in our house? Or ours in his?’

  They could buy another house, a bigger one.’ Eilidh considered this. ‘Mind, it would be a bit embarrassing them doing it if you were all living in the same house.’

  ‘Oh my God, it would be disgusting.’ Claire flung the magazine down. ‘Yuk.’ She began to laugh. I’d see him in his pyjamas, eh? Oh my God, that is so gross.’

  They both laughed. Then Eilidh said, growing solemn again, ‘But what about your dad? Would you not feel bad about him, if Auntie Eleanor got married to somebody else?’

  ‘Well, Gavin couldn’t be, like, my dad, could he? No way.’ Claire tried to picture her father, but all she could see was Gavin’s grinning face, his red hair. ‘Sometimes I can hardly remember my dad. Well, no, I remember him, but I can’t sort of think of his face, or his voice. Not really. I look at the photographs, that brings it back.’

  ‘Do you believe in heaven?’ Eilidh asked.

  ‘Yeah. Sort of.’ Claire tried to picture a place where you were happy all the time, with flowers, she supposed. Warm and hazy. Where her father wandered, or perhaps less improbably, Granny and Auntie Alice.

  ‘I don’t,’ Eilidh said. ‘I don’t even believe in God. Neither does Ross. Kirsty does. She still goes to Sunday School.’

  Claire sat back on her heels, nonplussed. She had not thought you could choose like that, just say, and mean it, I don’t believe. The idea both frightened and attracted her. It was like a door opening, and nothing beyond, just empty space, no floor even. It made you giddy.

  ‘Don’t tell my mum,’ Eilidh warned. ‘It might upset her.’

  Kirsty pushed the door open. ‘Is Neighbours on yet?’

  ‘In a minute.’

  Kirsty came in and got down on the floor beside Claire. That’s my jigsaw,’ she said.

  ‘It was Ross’s first, then mine,’ Eilidh reminded her.

  ‘Well, then it was mine, and there’s nobody younger than me, so it’s still mine.’ She broke up the picture and began again. ‘I used to think this one was really difficult, when I was wee.’ Expertly, she fitted the pieces together. ‘Is Auntie Eleanor coming for you?’

  ‘Yeah, at tea-time.’

  ‘Can we ask her, I forgot last time?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘About the Wishing Tree. She said we could go and hang something up for Mummy.’

  ‘OK.’

  The theme music began, and they all got on Eilidh’s bed to watch.

  ‘Mind, Kirsty. Can you not sit on the floor? There’s no room for you here.’

  ‘No. I’ll get a sore neck looking up the way.’

  They squabbled, settled down, fell into silence.

  Kirsty, hearing Eleanor come in later, was first off the bed and downstairs. ‘Can we go to the Wishing Tree, Auntie Eleanor?’

  Eleanor still had the piece of lace in the dashboard compartment of her car, wrapped in tissue paper.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘if your dad agrees. We could go straight after tea.’

  ‘And then can we go and see Granny?’

  ‘No, it would be too late. If you want to do that, it has to be another day.’

  Kirsty did not want to wait. ‘No, let’s go tonight.’

  Later, Eleanor stood by the car while Kirsty solemnly tied the lace round a twig, and Eilidh and Claire gave instructions. Below their voices, water splashed softly onto stone. For the first time, Eleanor looked closely at what hung there. Some of the rags were no more than scraps of blue checked kitchen cloth; others were recognisable pieces of clothing. Someone had even hung a grubby pair of trainers near the back. What was recently attached still had colour, and flapped in the breeze. The older rags, stiff and unmoving, were uniformly grey. She had a pang of dismay that wishing for Marion might have anything to do with this place – or the piece of lace that had come from someone long dead, and whose death had caused her mother and father such distress. Still, it was a way of getting rid of the thing for good.

  ‘Find a place for it by itself,’ Eilidh insisted. ‘Not beside all that manky stuff.’

  The lace hung there, looking clean and fresh, and very small.

  ‘I feel bad leaving it,’ Claire said. ‘It looks too nice. Where did you get it, Mum?’

  ‘It’s Marion’s. She’s had it for a long time.’

  Kirsty stood back, looking at the tree. ‘Will our bit get all dirty and hard like the rest?’

  ‘Eventually.’

  ‘That means the wish is over, it’s come true, or whatever,’ Eilidh explained.

  ‘Is that right?’ Kirsty looked to Eleanor for confirmation.

  ‘Oh, well. I’m not sure. Have you made your wish?’

  ‘No, I’m doing it now.’ Kirsty shut her eyes, clenched her fists, wished.

  Eleanor, turning back to the car, wished for Marion, tried not to wish for herself. You would need something else for that, she thought, not the tinker’s bit of lace.

  That night it rained, and she thought of the strip of lace dripping water onto the ground below. As she got up to draw the curtains and shut out the rainy night, the telephone rang. She expected it to be Gavin, who often called just before he came round, checking it was still all right, asking if she wanted him to bring a bottle of wine. But it was her father.

  ‘Eleanor, Marion’s not at home, Fergus tells me it’s her night at the hospital. But I said to him I’d speak to you myself. Not to bother her. I wondered if maybe you could come down for a day.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Mamie. Another death, she could not bear another death.

  ‘Mamie’s taken a tumble. Fell down the stairs and broke her hip. She’s in Foresterhill.’

  ‘Oh no. Will she be all right?’

  ‘They’re going to put in a pin. She’s shaken up, of course. But they can mend the hip.’

  ‘Oh dear. How did it happen?’ Had she lain in the hall in pain, waiting for someone to come? Eleanor was distressed by this picture, and felt her throat tighten.

  ‘By great good fortune, she knocked over the phone when she tumbled down, so she was able to reach it and dial for an ambulance.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about good fortune,’ Eleanor protested, ‘but I’m glad she didn’t have to lie a long time on her own.’

  She did not want to go to Aberdeen. Gavin was at home for another week and a half. But of course, she had to.

  ‘You want me to come and visit her?’

  ‘Well, I’m sure she would appreciate that, but what it is, Eleanor, the reason she took a fall: she was going through Alice’s things, it was high time, she’d been putting it off, she said. But anyway, she had a pile of clothes in her arms, no use to her, Alice was aye a beanpole, and something slipped onto the floor, and she tripped on it, came rattling down the stairs.’

  ‘So she didn’t manage to sort out the clothes, is that it?’

  ‘Well, it’s not just the clothes. She wondered – I wondered – it would set her mind at rest. Would you finish the job, Eleanor? Sort out what Alice left, the clothes and letters and whatnot. It’s nae a job for a man.’

  ‘But Mamie—’

  ‘Mamie says to me, ask the girls. She says to take what you want yourselves. Alice had a nice locket, and a string of pearls; she wants you and Marion to have them. There’s not much else – Alice didn’t go in for jewellery. Anyway, I told Mamie I’d ask you. She was a bittie agitated about it.’

  ‘I don’t think Marion would be up to it yet. Maybe in a couple of weeks.’ And Gavin would be away then, of course.

  ‘
Best get it over while Mamie’s in the hospital,’ he said. ‘I can see it’s distressing her.’

  ‘All right.’ Eleanor made up her mind. ‘I’ll come myself, and if there’s anything I don’t know what to do with, it can wait for Mamie. How about that?’

  ‘Aye, that’s grand. It’s a load off my mind.’

  ‘Give Mamie my love.’

  ‘They’re operating the morn. She’ll be out for the count the rest of the day. But I’ll look in anyway, in the evening.’

  ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow,’ Eleanor promised. ‘I have to sort out Claire, but I’ll come as soon as I can.’

  Fergus collected Marion next day. When Eleanor called in the evening to see her, she found her sister subdued, resting, but pleased to see her.

  ‘Kirsty said you hung that bit of lace at the Clootie Well.’

  ‘She was keen to do it.’

  ‘I know. Thanks.’

  ‘Listen, something’s happened.’ Eleanor told Marion about Mamie.

  ‘Could you wait a couple of days?’ Marion asked. ‘I’d like to come. Just – the first few days are the worst. And I’ve got thrush again, and another crop of mouth ulcers. I feel foul, I really do. Thank God that’s over. Well, I hope it is.’

  ‘It will be.’

  ‘Would you mind, if I came?’

  ‘Mind? I’d love it. I won’t know what to do with half the stuff, and it would be horrible to have to go through it on my own. But Dad obviously wants it done while Mamie’s in hospital.’ She cheered up at the thought of having Marion with her. ‘I’ll drive and everything. And we can stay at Pitcairn one night, come back next day.’

  ‘Maybe at the weekend?’

  But Claire would be away at least one night at the weekend. She wanted to spend it with Gavin.

  ‘Leave it till Monday or Tuesday, eh? Give yourself a chance. I don’t know how long Mamie’s going to be in, but surely it’ll be a week, at least?’

  So this was what they agreed. Eleanor arranged for Claire to stay at Sarah’s, and Fergus said he would take a day at home. The sisters would go down on Tuesday morning, and return Wednesday afternoon.

  They had travelled the road to Aberdeen many times together, and in the last few years, often in sadness, it seemed to Marion. They could not know, of course, that when they came home again this time, everything would look different, the very landscape changed by new knowledge. The world would look different because it was different, altered for ever.

  21

  All his parents ever asked him about was school. School, Highers, university. Marion was finishing her degree, going on to Teacher Training next year. Eleanor was first year, doing English and Psychology. Both were still living at home, though sometimes they stayed in Aberdeen overnight at the aunts’ house, or more often on the floor of someone’s student flat. Marion was getting engaged at Christmas. She seemed very settled, his mother said. She approved of Fergus, because he was going to be a doctor. And Eleanor had given up that silly idea about Art School. She might become a teacher as well. They had no worries about the girls.

  He supposed he would be a student too. He would have to go somewhere else – Edinburgh, St Andrews. He really could not go on living at home. The problem was, he had to get the Highers first. It was nearly May, and he had done no work.

  In the holidays and at weekends, he worked at the Mains, as he had done since he was fourteen. Sometimes, heaving bales of straw, or out with the tractor, he thought he would be happy enough doing this all his life. You could just do it: feel your muscles stretch and ache, suffer the cold wind, or the sun burning on the back of your neck, and not think about anything at all.

  He hated school. He seemed, this year, to have got too big for the desks and chairs, so that there was nowhere to put his long legs without entangling them in someone’s schoolbag, or scraping the desk over the floor. He was always in trouble, not major trouble, nothing serious, but they got at him all the time, nag, nag. He was late, his work was untidy (or not done at all); he wasn’t paying attention; he was disrupting the class. He had got too big, too restless, too old for school. Other boys he had grown up with were working now, earning. Look at Stan – apprenticed to his dad, learning joinery, saving for a motor bike. He had a steady girlfriend now, a tiny blonde girl called Irene, pert and possessive. But Stan was restless too. David knew that – they had seen each other several times lately.

  When they went to the Academy, they had been put in different classes. Stan had resisted the place from the start, cheeking the teachers, skiving off. Most of the time, he got away with it. He was popular: hard to discipline, but impossible to dislike. At primary school, David had been the leader, the one with ideas and schemes. Now Stanley had gathered different people round him; he had his own mates. David, intended for an academic career, university, was excluded. At first, he and Stanley still spent Saturdays together. By the end of first year, however, they had drifted away from each other.

  Just after his seventeenth birthday, David took a whole day away from school. He had skived off before, of course; everyone did it sometimes. But only the last day of term, or missing double Maths at the end of Friday afternoon. Everyone did that – not often, but once or twice. This was different. He had got off the bus and walked up to the school gates with everyone else. There he had stopped. The others flowed past him, through the yard and up to the main pupil entrance. He went on standing there, just staring at the school. Ian Johnson turned and saw him, shouted something. David shouted back: ‘Yeah, in a minute.’ Then they had all disappeared somewhere inside the building, and a bell rang.

  It had been raining, a mild misty April rain. They had been back two weeks since the end of the Easter holidays, but the weather was less like Spring than ever. Now, David realised the rain had stopped. Above him, clouds parted and the sun glinted, vanished, glinted again, then was suddenly hot and bright in a clear blue space. On the railings drops of water glittered; just next to him a blackbird sang its clear notes, over and over, high in a tree that had its roots within the school grounds. Its leaves had just unfurled, deep green and shining with newness.

  David thought of the dusty, stale-smelling classrooms, the drone of voices, the scrape of chairs, and the long hours indoors, doing boring things he hated. Then he turned and walked back through the side streets of the village, till he was on a country road again, heading for home. He had no idea what he was going to do. In a school blazer, shirt and tie, he was much too conspicuous to wander around Inverurie. He stopped by the side of the road, took off his blazer and tie and stuffed them into his schoolbag. Then he undid the top button of his shirt and rolled up his sleeves. The sky was entirely blue now, and the breeze hardly ruffled the long grass growing over the ditch. A glorious day. Looking round, David checked that there was nothing on the road, then he put his bag in the ditch. It was dry, muddy on the bottom maybe, but he set the bag on a large boulder. He brushed the disturbed grass over it again. Then he turned off the road and went up a farm track that edged the fields for a mile or so.

  He still did not know where he was going. Later, he could come back down, pick up his bag, eat his sandwiches, and hitch a lift home. If anyone asked, he would say he had missed the bus into Aberdeen. They would not know he was supposed to be at school. He was over six feet, thin, but with a dark growth of beard already that made him look older than seventeen.

  At the top of the hill, half hidden for most of the way by a group of Scotch pines, were farm buildings and a house. He would skirt these, circle the field on his right, and meet up with the path that led back down into Inverurie. Pupils from the Academy ran cross-country over this land in the winter term, so he knew the layout: it was familiar territory. He would not go into Inverurie, but double back through the bottom field. That would be the worst bit – rough walking, but quite close to the road, so someone might see, and wonder what he was up to.

  Thinking about this, he reached the top of the hill. Sitting on the farm gate, smoking, was Stanley.
Stanley had been watching him for fifteen minutes or so, but because he was short-sighted, had only just realised who it was coming slowly up the track, catching long grasses in his right hand, whistling faintly.

  They looked at each other in some surprise.

  ‘Aye, aye,’ Stanley said. ‘Out for a walk?’

  David grinned. ‘Felt like stretching my legs.’

  ‘You skive off?’

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘Want a fag?’

  They both sat on the gate, smoking.

  ‘What’re you doing here, anyhow?’ David asked.

  ‘Oh, the auld man’s in the hoose, seeing about a job. They’re pittin in a loft conversion or something.’ He shrugged. ‘I said I’d wait oot here.’

  ‘Do you like it?’ David asked. ‘Working for your dad?’

  ‘It’s a richt. I dinna mind the work, like. Lang as he stays off the booze.’ Stanley looked sideways at David. ‘Fit about yoursel? Stickin in at your books, eh?’

  ‘As you can see.’

  They both laughed. David put out his cigarette on the gate post, stabbing the cork tip till it twisted and frayed.

  ‘See,’ he said, ‘they think I’ll go to university like my sisters. Be an accountant or some bloody thing.’

  ‘Be all right though, bein a student. Drink, parties, women.’

  ‘Pity I’ve got to pass my Highers first.’

  ‘Ach, you were aye clever at the school.’

  ‘Not any more. Well, I don’t care, really.’

  ‘Aye, but the likes of you – you’re nae going to be a joiner, are ye? Tradesman.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with that.’

  ‘What about your dad – will he nae get you into Shanks’s place?’

  David snorted. ‘Catch me working for that capitalist!’ He thought of Eddie Shanks’s big red face, the way he slapped you on the back, making you cough, by way of greeting. His piggy eyes, his fat wife with her fancy house in Rubislaw Den, her big gold and pearl earrings, her daughters at Albyn School with accents far posher than their parents were ever going to manage. No, he would never work for Shanks.