by Kiley Dunbar
Without another word, he let the door open and Beatrice passed through.
After everything she had been through in recent months, she’d thought nothing could ever surprise her again; shock her and shake her, make her nerves sing and snap with anxiety and tension, yes, but surely nothing could simply surprise or delight anymore? Nevertheless, the room took away her breath and made her eyes widen in wonder. ‘Hah! What’s this?’
Atholl watched his guest through sharpened eyes, his arms folded as he leaned on the door frame. Beatrice stepped right up to the antique wooden bed with its tower of plump mattresses and quilts stacked one atop another, a confection of vintage lace and down, ponderously piled as high as the top of her head, and all canopied over with a flouncy awning suspended between the four intricately carved bedposts, the canopy almost touching the sloping, beamed ceiling itself.
‘How on earth are you supposed to get into it?’
Saying nothing, Atholl unfolded an arm and pointed a finger to the end of the bed, indicating she should walk around. Sure enough, on the other side of the mattress mountain was a wooden ladder, its rungs twined with gold ribbon and white silk roses, the same decorations which held back the fairy-tale bed’s four pale green chintzy curtains, tying them to the bedposts.
‘It’s incredible, but this can’t be safe, surely? What if you forget you’re up there, get up for a drink of water in the dark and fall to your death? There’s no way I’d be able to sleep up there!’
‘Your own wee room doesn’t look quite so small now, I take it?’ Atholl said, his eyes sly and glinting.
Beatrice felt a flush of irritation rise in her chest turning her cheeks red, a feeling which wouldn’t have been quite so strong had she not found herself struck by the way he was rolling up his shirt sleeves to expose modestly muscled forearms, dark and freckled with the summer sun, and realising she had let her eyes linger there a second too long.
There was a hint of laughter in his eyes telling her that even if he hadn’t picked up on her appraising glance – and she really hoped he hadn’t – he definitely knew he’d aggravated her by being right about her preference for the other room after all.
Scanning the furnishings once more to avoid his smirking, she caught sight of the mustard-yellow chaise along the wall and the antique roll-top bath in the corner, at least twice as big as the sad little tub in the first room, and there were fluffy white towels on a stand beside it.
‘I’ll take it,’ she heard herself saying, before immediately cursing her newly acquired petty streak. She wasn’t going to show Atholl the sneaking shame that was threatening to burn her cheeks again, so she defiantly raised her face to his. ‘I’ll be going in the morning anyway. I’m sure I can survive one night.’
Not wanting Atholl to offer to bring her suitcase from the rejected room, she flounced back out into the corridor, making him press himself against the doorframe to let her past.
She didn’t care if his face was set sternly or if he overheard her remarking to herself, ‘What was I thinking, coming here?’, but she caught his exasperated shrug of resignation as she trundled her case into the princess room. That shrug told her he thought it wise to leave the emotional Englishwoman to fizz and boil by herself.
But she wasn’t done with him yet. She still had to risk asking the insistent question that had been worrying her since her arrival.
‘Is there a phone I can use?’ She held her mobile out for him to look at the greyed-out bars. ‘There’s no signal here. How do you manage?’ It came out more curtly than she wanted, but it was too late now.
‘Do you really need it? Can you no’ live without checking Instagram for a few hours?’
Beatrice had no intention of telling him she wanted to ring her sister to let her know where she was and why she hadn’t called round today.
‘Do you even know what Instagram is?’
She’d only briefly flirted with Instagram herself when looking with Angela – who’d been scoffing and disinterested – at glamorous celebrity parents showing off over engineered and very expensive baby slings and carriers. If tested now, she’d have been unable to explain exactly how to use the app, but again this was something he didn’t need to know. She never had settled on which carrier she’d like best, and it was irrelevant now.
Atholl was still huffing, pink-faced at her question. ‘Well, no, but my point is, this is life here and now.’ He gestured to the low window by the landing, and she followed his gaze to the rain running in fast streaks down the pane. ‘This is the holiday you’ve been looking forward to for months.’
Beatrice thought how he couldn’t be more wrong on that score. The first she’d heard of Port Willow was around about glass number three yesterday. Atholl was still talking and his pale, freckled cheeks were still flushing a rather lovely, livid pink. ‘You need to stop gazing into yur phones and start looking about you.’
‘I get the impression you’re not just referring to me here?’
‘You, the other visitors, you’re all the same.’
‘That’s a fine attitude to have when you run a hotel.’ She felt her hands ball up tight, her chin jut out, and the angry agitation rising in another wave, bringing her close to tears yet again. She always hated how confrontation did that to her. No matter how convinced she was she was in the right, if she had to put up a fight there was always too much adrenalin and a shake in her voice and a loud heartbeat in her ears. Every time this made her even more cross until her only recourse was bursting into tears and accepting her defeat or retreating into silence, avoiding the fight altogether.
‘This isn’t my hotel, and I don’t run it,’ Atholl was insisting. ‘At least, I’m no’ supposed to be running it.’ His own jaw was jutting now.
‘Either way, can you afford to be rude to your guests like this? Hoteliery is a tough business to be in right now, you know?’
‘Ye don’t say?’ Atholl snapped back before pulling his lips tightly closed and lowering his eyes for a brief moment, long enough for her to catch his frustration, not just with her, but with himself. He seemed to think for a moment before huffing, ‘There’s a pay phone in the bar corridor.’
Silence fell between them and Beatrice fortified herself not to utter the apology on her lips even though her legs were trembling and she was suddenly mortified to think how she must look, wishing more than ever that she could just slip invisibly away from everyone’s prying eyes and hide out in peace.
Yet she held firm on her spot. Atholl had been rude and didn’t deserve an apology, but from the way his blazing eyes lifted again to meet her own she knew she’d riled him too. She had been snarky and that wasn’t like her at all, not usually anyway.
The old Beatrice Halliday would never behave like this, but then again, the old Beatrice hadn’t been anywhere near as brittle and bitter and bashed about by life as this, and she would never have hightailed it to the Highlands without thinking through just exactly what she’d do when she got there. She didn’t have a list, or a plan, or anything. She hadn’t even told anyone she was leaving.
A creak on the stairs helped fracture the tension in the air. Gene Fergusson was at last making his way one slow step at a time, the teapot rattling on a tray as he climbed.
Atholl held Beatrice’s gaze as though he was going to say something else, but when he at last opened his mouth, a loud call came out that startled her.
‘Echo!’
He turned sharply and marched along the corridor before calling out again. Beatrice watched on as a shaggy black and white collie bounded up the stairs to meet him, his tail swinging wildly, knocking on the oak spindles.
As Atholl passed his brother, Beatrice heard him say, ‘I’m getting away from this confounded inn for the rest of the day.’
The dog followed in his master’s wake as Atholl crossed the threshold of the inn and strode into the cool of the summer rain. Beatrice wasn’t aware that she was still staring at the space on the staircase that Atholl had occupied until Ge
ne shuffled awkwardly past her into the room with the towering bed at its centre, the scent of freshly made shortbread piled high on a dish at last stealing her attention from the infuriating red-headed Scotsman.
Chapter Three
Telling Angela
‘You’re where? Look, Vic’s home from work, we’ll come and get you, just stay put.’
‘I’m fine, honestly, Angela. And don’t be daft. You can’t bring baby Clara all this way in the car. Anyway, by the time you get here it’ll be morning and the trains will be running again.’
‘Well… if you’re sure? Is it really so bad that you want to leave right away?’
‘It’s all right…’ Beatrice stared at the framed picture above the payphone of a grinning, rain-soaked Gene Kelly swinging himself round a lamppost. ‘It’s just a bit… eccentric. I’ll be OK for one night. Can I, uh, come over for dinner tomorrow? I’ll pick up some nice bits from M&S on my way?’
‘Of course you can, and you don’t need to bring anything. But, Beatrice… why are you there? The last thing I heard you were planning on clearing out your spare room and suddenly you’re in… where are you again?’
‘Port Willow. Oh, I don’t know, I just felt the need to get away. I do deserve a summer holiday, don’t I?’
Beatrice knew her sister would also be thinking of the Greek island summer holiday that she and Rich had booked earlier that year, before so much had gone wrong between them. They’d have been there today, in fact, and she’d probably have been throwing on a nice dress right about now and getting ready for dinner after a long day at the beach. But Rich had said he couldn’t face it, ‘not with things the way they are’, and Beatrice had made the decision to cancel the whole thing.
‘But Scotland? Alone? And on a whim? Bea, why didn’t you tell us? We could’ve planned it properly, come with you, maybe?’ said Angela.
Beatrice shrugged, cradling the receiver to her ear and twiddling the curled cable. Angela knew the heart of her sister better than anyone. Hiding her sadness from Angela had been next to impossible, but Beatrice had done her best over the past few months. Angela couldn’t have anticipated this desperate dash to the Highlands. Nobody could.
‘Is this because of Mum?’ Angela prodded.
‘What?’
‘Well… you ring me up out of the blue saying you’ve suddenly signed yourself up for Gaelic lessons in the Highlands, and I’m just wondering why? You know, you could have picked cookery lessons in Florence, or, I don’t know, pottery painting in Delft?’
Beatrice couldn’t help but snort a laugh.
‘So… why Scotland? Are you there trying to reconnect with Mum or something? We always did promise her a trip to Scotland, an ancestry trail kind of thing. You remember, don’t you? She always talked about wanting to rediscover her Scottish roots…’
A little hitch in Angela’s voice halted the conversation and each sister knew the other was holding back the tears that persisted in sneaking up on them recently, taking away their breath and plunging them back into the horrible feelings of loss. Beatrice let her head hang, listening to the phone line crackling, the buzzing connection bridging the miles between them.
A Scottish adventure had been on their mum’s bucket list, one of many things she never had the chance to experience. Their mother was born in Aberdeen but her parents had relocated to Warwickshire when she was a teenager. She always talked about her Scottish childhood with a fond, faraway look, and her recollections evoked an era that sounded somehow earlier than the nineteen-sixties when she’d lived there. Nostalgia did that, Beatrice supposed.
Their mother had described a time of neighbourliness, of safely playing kerby-ball – whatever that was – in the streets until late at night, and of not having much money but being happy. Despite their mother’s fondness for the place, she’d never been back as an adult, but she had spoken in a soft hybrid accent for the rest of her life that evoked the Granite City she always referred to as home.
‘It’s not that,’ Beatrice said, but thinking all the time that Angela might have a point, and realising that throughout her journey northward she’d been struck by little moments of recognition as she heard echoes of her mother’s accent in the voices of the Scottish strangers she’d encountered.
Her eyes flicked open wide as it struck her that one of the many discomforting things about Atholl Fergusson had been this unconscious sense of recognition. She’d heard her mother’s restrained Scottish brogue in his voice, a familiar reminder of lost home comforts in every sound he uttered. The thought shook her as she replayed his words.
‘This is life here and now,’ he’d said in his own particular way, a gravelly gruffness that carried passionate force behind it fading to soft breathlessness at the ends of sentences…
‘Are you still there, Bea? Hello?’
‘I’m still here.’
‘You know, maybe a holiday isn’t such a bad idea after all. Are you sure you want to leave in the morning?’
‘What would I do with myself here?’ Beatrice dismissed the idea of the willow-weaving lessons in an instant. ‘I’ve never travelled on my own before and…’
‘Peep peep, mind yersel’,’ came a jolly voice from behind Beatrice, and she pressed her body to the wall to let its owner past.
Beatrice watched the woman trundle by and couldn’t help but smile at the sight of her. Obviously another employee of the inn, her thin grey hair was set in tight rollers around her head. She was wearing a white apron and wellies, with her sleeves rolled up revealing fleshy milk-white forearms, and she was pushing a wheelbarrow through the narrow hall from the bar room towards the kitchen with a great sack of frozen chips as cargo.
When the woman passed out of sight, Beatrice whispered, ‘I don’t think I belong here, Angela.’
A long beat passed between the sisters allowing Beatrice time to tell herself yet again that she didn’t quite know where she belonged anymore. Attaching herself so closely to Angela and her little family had helped for a while, but she knew all along that they needed their own space.
‘Bea…’ Angela’s voice was soft. ‘We’re worried about you. Wouldn’t it be easier just talking about it a little bit? Easier than hiding away in your house? Easier than running away from yourself to Scotland?’
Beatrice heard the shaky breath down the line, Angela holding together her emotions for her big sister’s sake.
‘I’m fine, honestly. I’m getting better. Much better. Ah, would you look at the time. I’d better get myself tidied up for dinner.’
‘Well, OK, but keep in touch?’
‘I will. I’ll text when I can get a signal on my way back tomorrow.’
‘You know we can always clear out your spare room together at the weekend? How does that sound?’
Beatrice let the kindness pass unanswered, trying to force a smile into her voice. ‘I love you, sis.’
‘You too, Bea.’
Beatrice reached for the button on the receiver cradle and let the line die, knowing Angela wouldn’t hang up first. Keeping the phone in her hand she let herself slide down the painted Artex onto the floor. She listened to the dial tone for a long time, crouching on the carpet, thinking of her sister’s concern. Talk about it. Everyone wanted her to talk about it, but there were no words profound enough to give it all utterance.
And suddenly, out of nowhere as far as she could tell, there was Rich in her mind’s eye, his face pale with the shock as she held the pregnancy test out for him to see.
Why now? Why would this particular painful memory want to intrude now? She found herself listless and tired, crumpled against the wall, letting it all play out before her.
In the end she hadn’t been able to tell him the news on Big Fat Positive day. A strange kind of awkwardness and embarrassment that you shouldn’t really feel with your own husband had crowded out the words when Rich got in from work that night. Suddenly she was suffused with worry that he’d think it had all happened too quickly. With the reality of
two pink lines staring them in the face and the hypothetical mini-Rich suddenly becoming fact, the idea of being a parent seemed a whole lot less cutesy and fun.
So she bottled it, keeping the news to herself for nearly a whole week, and, she had to admit, it was lovely. Nobody in the world knew about it except her and her sesame seed. She had found herself smiling dopily while they watched Question Time and Rich was swearing at the telly, amazed he couldn’t guess something was up, but he didn’t.
Had she been waiting for some other sign of the baby’s existence, other than the test strips, before telling him? Some morning sickness maybe, which perversely she was looking forward to? During those secretive, happy days she’d jumped straight into planning; taking folic acid and knocking the caffeine on the head, and she rang the health centre and got a ‘booking in’ appointment straight away – all before telling Rich – and she’d been shocked to discover she’d have her first midwife appointment in less than three weeks, and found herself hoping for the same lovely midwife that Angela and Vic had.
In all it had taken five days to tell Rich, and she had really worked hard to set the scene with his favourite dinner (steaks, the nice onion rings she made from scratch, peppercorn sauce, Belgian beers, and the caramel profiteroles he loved). And yes, he did turn a little ashen on hearing the words and Beatrice had rushed to make him a sweet tea, which he didn’t drink, now she came to think of it. He kept saying, ‘Oh My God’ over and over, but he had smiled and hugged her, so that was a relief, and after that he was pretty quiet, just letting it all sink in.
‘A sticking plaster baby.’ That’s what Rich’s dad had called it when they found themselves unexpectedly faced with him a few nights later when he’d stumbled into the hallway, doused in vodka with the staggering walk that told them he’d been in the pub all day.
She remembered the hope on her husband’s face as he blurted out that they were having a baby. She knew he was wishing for a fatherly reaction, an embrace maybe, some effusion of pride, anything. His mum, after all, had taken the news well, and she’d sobbed happy tears and promised that in the autumn she’d make the journey back from her sunny expat life in Portugal with her new husband, excited to meet the new arrival. But telling his dad was a different matter entirely.
