For Faughie's Sake

by Laura Marney

  ‘Huh! Typical idealistic socialist. It’s pathetic; that man sickens me.’

  Jenny’s unexpected vitriol made me laugh so much I nearly honked my pickled onion through my nose.

  ‘That’s a bit harsh, even for you. You love Walter.’

  As usual she blanked my sneaky Walter-love jibe.

  ‘Och, they’re all getting carried away with this small victory,’ she said. ‘They’re forgetting we have to satisfy Luxembourg that we have the means to pay for public services and employees – police, teachers, dinner-ladies; old Joe, the lollipop man, for instance, who’s going to pay his wages? Not to mention all the coffin-dodging pensioners we have.’

  ‘You can talk: typical politician; only looking after your own interests. You yourself are foremost amongst Faughie’s coffin-dodging pensioners.’

  ‘For Faughie’s sake, I told you not to mention coffin-dodging pensioners!’ she said, and then spoiled it by laughing.

  She was on great form. Despite working in committee meetings every night, sometimes until one in the morning, and still opening the shop first thing, it was obvious Jenny was thriving on the buzz of running the country.

  ‘So, what’s the word on the street?’ she asked. ‘How does Faughie think we’re doing?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know! You know a lot more people than I do, you ask them.’

  ‘They won’t tell me, they talk behind my back but they’ll never say it to my face. That’s what you’re here for: to tell me what they’re saying about me. I need to be able to respond. You’re my eyes and ears out there.’

  I giggled but carried on licking my finger and dragging it across the paper, gathering the delicious remnants of fish, chips, grease and salt, and sooking it off my finger.

  ‘Seriously, I can take it.’

  I stopped licking.

  ‘Well, nothing terrible. Since you announced your middle name at the election I’ve heard people referring to you as Captain Haddock. You know, as in …’

  ‘Aye, I get it: Tintin. Well,’ she reflected, ‘an alcoholic beardy sailor, I’ve been called worse things.’

  ‘And Walter is Captain Birds Eye.’

  Jenny snorted.

  ‘But I haven’t heard anything bad.’

  ‘And the Claymores, the filum people?’

  ‘Nope, everyone seems happy enough.’

  ‘Good. So remember: keep your eyes open and your ear close to the ground.’

  ‘Yes sir!’ I gave her an exaggerated salute. ‘So, now that you’re El Presidente, d’you not think –’

  ‘Interim Leader. And I might get voted out at the referendum.’

  ‘– it’s time you did the decent thing,’ I continued, ‘and made an honest man out of young Captain Birds Eye.’

  ‘Pfffff.’

  ‘No, hear me out: apparently unmarried politicians aren’t popular with elderly voters. People might think you’re gay.’

  ‘Hah! Let them, probably get me a few more votes.’

  ‘It’s probably worse for Walter; a spinster looks like a career woman but an old unmarried man just looks sad.’

  ‘Walter isn’t sad.’

  ‘I know that! I’m just spindoctoring. Think what it would do for your popularity: a fairy-tale happy ending for two of Faughie’s most popular pensioners.’

  ‘Forget it, Trixie.’

  ‘Everyone loves a wedding.’

  ‘Not going to happen.’

  ‘I don’t know why you and Walter bother keeping up this silly pretence, it’s obvious you love each other, everyone can see …’

  Jenny thumped her fist on the table. ‘Enough!’ she yelled.

  I think we were both a bit shocked.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jenny. I didn’t mean to wind you up, it was only a bit of banter.’

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  I started folding up my fish paper.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘tired, stressed, whatever, I’m overreacting. Don’t go home, I’ve hardly seen you in ages.’

  ‘Ok,’ I said, in awe of what I’d just heard. Was Jenny actually admitting that she missed me?

  ‘I keep everything so tight, you know?’

  She balled her fist and held it low on her stomach.

  ‘Walter says I’m so secretive I owe myself a shite.’

  I didn’t really know what that meant, but I laughed anyway.

  ‘For years I wanted him to marry me,’ she said, ‘I dreamed of it: my big day, my big white dress.’

  It took an effort of will for me not to slap the table and shout: Yes! I knew it! Instead I gave up ironing my chip paper with the flat of my hand and watched it slowly unfold itself as though it were alive.

  ‘Well if you’ve dreamed of it why not go for it? What is it they say? Carpe diem: seize the day. Neither of you is getting any younger, why don’t you just carpe the firkin diem and get hitched?’

  ‘And play Darby and Joan? Can you honestly see me in a lavender anorak? Och, I’m too busy for that nonsense, I’m too busy carping the firk out of every diem.’

  ‘But what about your big white dress?’

  ‘You’re new here, Trixie,’ she sighed. ‘You don’t know. The gory details.’

  She said it in such a doom-laden voice I wasn’t sure I did want to know the details, especially not gory ones. I was still reeling from the revelation that Jackie was my father. That hadn’t exactly had a positive effect on our relationship.

  Jenny sighed again, a big heavy sigh.

  ‘So,’ I said, as gently as I could manage, ‘when you say “gory”?’

  Chapter 53

  ‘I was engaged once, you know,’ Jenny began, ‘not to Walter, to Bernard. He was handsome, a decorated soldier, and had only just come home to a hero’s welcome. He asked me to dance at the ceilidh in Bengustie hall. They would always play a slow smoochy one, the last dance of the night, the “moonie” it was called. Bernard asked me to dance the moonie with him.

  ‘He was twenty-two, a grown man, and he couldn’t dance, not properly, but he had all the moves. He did it slow and in time to the music so that nobody would see. He slid himself across me, right here, and oh my god. I felt it. I felt it right through his clothes and my clothes. It was one of the most exciting things that ever happened to me, I mean ever,’ she stressed like a teenager, ‘including being elected Interim Leader. He walked me home that night. We were engaged two weeks later.

  ‘That’s what you did in those days. In a small village you knew what your options were and Bernard was a catch. His family were respectable and they had a good bit of land out by Gaffney.’

  ‘Out where Walter lives?’ I asked.

  ‘Exactly. But more of that later.

  ‘Now, since he’d come back, Bernard was the man of the house. His dad had died on the fishing boats the year before, leaving his widow to look after the farm and bring up Bernard’s wee brother, but she wasn’t fit for it. Luisa her name was – fancy name, fancy lady. She had a dodgy hip. It wasn’t that bad, but she played it up every so often, hirpling around to get sympathy. She leaned on Bernard, I mean, depended on him; used him as a replacement for her husband. Och, not in that way, but he was under a lot of pressure from her and from whatever else was going on in his head. Anyway, Luisa didn’t want a common village girl like me for her son’s wife. First she accused me of being pregnant and when I assured her I wasn’t, she said, ‘Well then, what’s the rush? The wedding can wait until we’ve got the harvest in.’ And Bernard agreed. He did everything he could to please her.

  ‘Anyway, it gave me time to get to know my fiancé, but the more I knew the less I liked. Don’t get me wrong, he was sexy and very charming, that’s what had attracted me to him, but at times he could be cruel. Malaya did that to him. Sometimes he would sob in my lap and say he’d never been forgiven for the things he’d done.’

  ‘And what had he done?’

  ‘He’d never tell me but it must have been bad. He was in Malaya.’

  ‘Sorry, J
enny, as you know, I’m not big on history.’

  ‘No, I didn’t know much about it either but years later I read up about the Briggs plan: forced relocation, quelling of rebellion and general terrorising of the Malaysian population. It’s gruesome reading. Nowadays Bernard would be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder but then they were just medically discharged.

  ‘Luisa didn’t want anyone getting close. She didn’t want anyone ruining his war hero reputation. And meanwhile his brother – and this is where it gets interesting for you, Trixie – his baby brother, Walter, he was easy to get on with.’

  I perked up immediately, ‘So that’s how you met Walter?’

  ‘You don’t meet people in Inverfaughie, you grow up with them. Walter’s two years younger than me; we’d been in the same class all through primary, we were friends.

  ‘I don’t remember his dad, but Walter must have got his nature from his dad’s side. You know what he’s like: gentle, easy-going. Bernard was … There was a sour atmosphere around him. I didn’t know what to do. I told my parents but Mum said it was just pre-wedding jitters. They wouldn’t hear of me breaking it off, not with a decorated war hero who would inherit that land. Bernard said he’d been having second thoughts too but that we should leave things as they were, give it a few weeks before making any decisions.

  ‘I thought about it, and worried about it, until eventually I decided I had to tell him it was over. I went to see him but his mother said he was out ploughing the haugh and shut the door on me. Walter, he was only fifteen at the time, a kid, was heading out to go fishing in the wee lochan; there was a big pike up there eating all the other fish. He pleaded with me to go with him; he said it was so big it would take both of us to get it in the boat.

  ‘Walter and I were just climbing into the rowing boat, laughing and splashing each other, when Bernard came crashing through the bushes at us. It was terrifying, the look on his face; I thought he was going to murder us. He hauled Walter off the boat and punched him so hard in the stomach it knocked the wind right out of him. Walter crumpled and fell to his knees and Bernard started kicking him in the head and all over his body, anywhere he could land a blow; he wasn’t going to stop. Walter curled into a ball; his hands were on his head and I could see the blood spurting out between his fingers. I was screaming for Bernard to stop.

  ‘I was already in the boat so I lifted an oar and whacked Bernard on the shoulder with it. It was the closest I could get. Bernard turned and pulled it out of my hands. I knew that if he used it on me or Walter we were finished. Bernard was crying and screaming that I was carrying on with his own brother. I swore to him I wasn’t but there was no reasoning with him.

  ‘Behind him I could see Walter stagger to his feet. Bernard came at me and poked me hard with the oar but it glanced off me and had the effect of pushing me and the boat away from him. Bernard must have heard Walter move and turned back to see him up and running. You only know Walter as he is now, a doddery old man, but back then Walter could run like the wind. He was only fifteen and a skinny big kid and despite the beating he’d taken he managed to outrun Bernard. He had to; he was running for his life.

  ‘When he realised he couldn’t catch him, Bernard turned back to me. I was frantically paddling with my arms, anything to get away from him, but I was still in the shallows. He strode right into the water and just as he leaned forward to grab the boat he sunk. We were in deep water now. He had completely disappeared. I peered down into the water looking for him. It’s something I remember vividly; it was so strange because, after the screaming and violence, there was suddenly only the sound of birdsong.

  ‘Something grabbed my arm. Bernard pulled me out of the boat and capsized it over our heads. It was dark under there and all I could think of was getting out, but Bernard kept fighting me. We struggled in the water; Bernard was pulling me under. I kicked and punched, I don’t remember how I got out from under the boat or out of the water or even how I got back to the village, but I did. All the men ran up to the lochan: my father swore he was going to kill him.

  ‘Bernard wasn’t there. Everyone thought he had run away, but they started to search the lochan. While they were waiting for Jock Pirie to bring his boat, my dad found Bernard under a tree in the shallow water.’

  Chapter 54

  Was Bernard dead or alive? I was hooked like a big pike, caught up in the story.

  ‘There was an inquest,’ Jenny continued, which at least answered that question.

  ‘A lot of debate went on about the injuries on Bernard’s body and the time it took me to reach home – there was a discrepancy of thirty minutes. I don’t know what happened during that half-hour, I have no memory of it; the doctor said I was in shock. I was never accused, it wasn’t a criminal case so there was no jury, but you can be sure that I was tried in every house in this village – and found guilty in some of them. The Procurator Fiscal returned a verdict of death by misadventure.

  ‘Luisa never saw it that way, of course, and made sure everyone knew how she felt. At the gala day she caused a terrible scene. In front of the whole village she cursed me for a kelpie and threw fish at me. Believe me, you can wash and scrub as hard as you like but in a small place like this the smell lingers a long time.

  ‘Luisa made my family’s life a misery. She told everyone I was a murderess; huh, she wanted them to drown me as a witch. It might have been hundreds of years ago but when it comes to drowning women for witchcraft, this village has form.

  ‘She wore black every day, she even shaved her head to remind everyone of her grief. Of course they felt sorry for her, but they didn’t believe I had murdered him. Or at least I hope they didn’t. You never really know up here. It got so bad mum and dad had to bar her from the shop. Others thought we had been too harsh on the poor distraught woman and stopped shopping with us in solidarity with Luisa. They bought everything from Inverness. It was a disaster; my parents were on the way to losing their business. That’s why I had to go away to London.

  ‘I came back every year for Christmas – she couldn’t stop me doing that. The first few years she came and stood outside the shop as a protest. Some years she’d shout at me in the village and some years she’d just blank me; there was no telling how it was going to go, but she never gave up hating me. I think I told you before why I came back?’

  ‘Yeah, your dad died and your mum had flu and you stayed to help, that was it, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It wasn’t the whole story. I did stay until mum got better but at that time I started receiving anonymous letters. No, not what you’re thinking. It wasn’t Luisa; they were too eloquent. At first I didn’t know who it was. It was frustrating because I would have liked to have replied. The letters were clever and interesting. I wanted to speak to this person.’

  ‘Did you find out who was sending them?’

  ‘It sounds creepy, but the letters started to mention that they had seen me in the village at a certain time or place, so I knew they were watching me.’

  ‘That is creepy.’

  ‘I wasn’t scared, I was fascinated. One day I got dressed up and went out, paraded myself around the village, then walked up to the old quarry. I knew that if my mystery correspondent was going to follow me all the way out there they’d have no hiding place. Obviously it was Walter. You knew it was him, didn’t you?’

  I made a reluctant face but admitted it with a nod. We moved on.

  ‘He was so clever. If he had written, “Meet me at the quarry at such and such a time”, I probably wouldn’t have gone. He let me decide if we were going to meet. That’s Walter.’

  ‘So that’s when it started. Wow! Yours must be the longest courtship on record.’

  ‘It didn’t start. Nothing started. Remember, there was still Luisa to contend with. She was older, and even more bitter. Walter was a big mammy’s boy. He would never confront her, never stand up to her. He said he couldn’t make her suffer any more than she already had; it would kill her. I wished it would. He sa
id we couldn’t risk meeting again until she passed. She had a bad chest infection and the doctor had hinted that she might not last the year. We’d have to gird our loins and content ourselves with secret billets-doux.’

  ‘Who’s Billy Doo?’

  ‘It’s French for love letters. We developed a system of dead letter drops, leaving them stuffed in a dry stane dyke up on the Bengustie Road.’

  ‘Like spies.’

  ‘Some letters got lost: strewn across the moors, eaten by a sheep, or maybe blown on to the loch and out to sea. Luisa relapsed a few times but always recovered and five years later, except for sneaky glances when he passed me in the village, nothing had changed. Ours was a relationship of the imagination. I needed more than that.

  ‘I wrote and asked him to meet me in Inverness – there was a history conference on at the college there, he could pretend to go to that. I wanted us to run away. I had the shop and he had Luisa but we weren’t shackled to this place, we could leave, I had to convince him of that.

  ‘At the last moment Luisa had one of her wheezing attacks and he couldn’t leave her. I think she smelled a rat. I wanted to give up then. I knew I was too young for that kind of abstinence; my loins were fed up with being girded. I cursed Walter for his weakness and cursed his mother for destroying my life. Yet Luisa and I had so much in common: we both loved Walter and we both spent our lives wishing each other dead.’

  ‘So your wish came true?’

  ‘She died two years ago.’

  ‘You’re kidding; only two years ago!’

  ‘She was nearly ninety. The old witch hung on as long as she could. I think she suspected. By then both Walter and I were council members. I don’t know why we hadn’t thought of it years before. Luisa still had all her marbles and she did not like it one bit but she was too feeble to do anything about it. Being council members meant we were able to meet in public, talk, be normal with each other. It was a good way to get to know him. I mean, I knew him through the letters obviously, but all those years I longed to hear his voice, see his wee mannerisms, look into his face.’