by A. D. Scott
“I got them from Frankie,” Rob said, and he was supremely satisfied when Mrs. Urquhart checked her son and found that he too had them.
“Most likely he caught them from you,” she had said, and banned the boys from playing together until the nits were conquered, to no effect.
They laughed when Rob recounted the story. “I was always terrified of your mum, I can’t imagine her scared of anything,” he finished.
“Aye, me too. Only . . .” Frankie gestured to the waiter for more coffees. “She had a wee accident two days ago. Fell off her bike, she says. But Mrs. Colquhoun across the road, her lass Jenny said a car hit my mother. It was pouring rain, and the driver, who must have known he hit something, he didn’t stop. Mum’s knee is bandaged, not much damage, gravel rash and the like on her hands and her knees, but she was really shaken, and the bike’s a write-off. Jenny Colquhoun is saying it was deliberate, but she’s only thirteen so no one pays her much attention.”
“What does your mother say?”
“That’s just it, she’s saying nothing . . . and you know how normally you can’t get her to shut up.”
“That’s all?” Rob saw his friend’s face. “Sorry, I mean, what else happened?”
“Nothing.” Frankie stubbed out his cigarette. “But I know something is wrong.”
“Her age?” Neither Rob nor Frankie knew much about a woman’s life cycle, but they knew there were times when there was nothing you could say or do without being in the wrong.
“Aye. That’s likely it,” Frankie agreed even though in his bones, he knew there was more to it.
They let the subject rest because out the window and across the street they watched a very unusual person struggle with an umbrella that had turned inside out in the wind, before chucking it into a rubbish bin, then running across the road and straight into the Castle Brae café.
They watched her shake her raincoat at the door then take a table next to theirs. They listened as she ordered coffee and toast and eggs “lightly scrambled.”
“I’m not sure we’re up to that,” the waiter told her. “How about a nice spaghetti bolognese?”
“For real?” she asked.
The waiter nodded towards his mother, a large, round woman dressed all in black. “Third-generation Scots and not one drop of her Calabrian blood diluted.”
Mae Bell laughed. “Molto bene,” she said.
“You speak Italian?” the waiter asked.
“New York Italian . . . only to order food,” came the reply.
Rob and Frankie were completely captivated. They were more than captivated when Mae Bell crossed her legs, the sheer nylons shimmering, making that swoosh, that singular sound that made Rob think of sex.
“Can I trouble you for a light?” She had a cigarette, a Lucky Strike, Rob noticed, in a holder, and was leaning towards Frankie. He produced a Zippo. Before he had a chance to open it and strike it up, she clasped a hand around his. “Can I see that?”
The badge of the USAF was engraved on the shiny silver surface.
“Oh my,” she drawled, “that was my late husband’s squadron.”
“You must be Mrs. Bell.” Rob was trying not to stare. Unsuccessfully.
“Oh please, I’m not much older than you boys, call me Mae.”
A good ten years older, Rob calculated, but he said nothing.
“I got the lighter as a present when I arranged for a dance band to play at the air base,” Frankie explained. “I’m Frankie Urquhart, music promoter.”
“Pleased to meet you, Frankie.” She held out her hand. “And you are?”
“Rob McLean, Highland Gazette.”
“Joanne’s colleague.” The cigarette remained unlit. The pasta arrived. Mae Bell excused herself, and when the waiter had produced a sparkling white napkin, which no one had ever seen in the café before now, Mae tucked it into her cleavage and started to eat.
The young men turned away to allow her the privacy necessary to eat spaghetti, but were too awestruck to leave even though they both had to be back at work.
When Mae Bell pushed aside the plate and reached for a cigarette, they dawdled, taking time to pay the bill, taking time to say cheerio even though they normally would part with nary a word other than “See ya.”
“Bye, Mrs. Bell. Nice to meet you.”
“Hope to see you again.”
“It’s been great to meet you.”
“Hope you enjoyed your meal.”
“See you again.”
“Cheerio.”
“Bye.”
“See you soon I hope.”
Falling over each other’s sentences, hoping that the other would have the courage to offer a phone number, offer a tour of the town, a suggestion to meet up again, they left, waving through the window, taking in Mae Bell’s smile, her wave back. They walked down the brae in a dwam, parting on the high street, neither saying much; Mrs. Mae Bell was like no one they had ever met before—but had dreamed of plenty.
• • •
Joanne had written a follow-up story on Robert Bell and the unsolved mystery of the plane that went missing. She found many articles about the accident in the archives, and her interview with Mae read well. Although short and in the Women’s Page—human interest, McAllister called it—over the next weeks, it became a second talking point with the Gazette readers, reviving memories of the search in the North Sea in atrocious weather, with nothing ever found of the plane or the men on board.
Then, to Joanne’s chagrin, Mae Bell became communal property: with McAllister the connection was jazz; with Rob, stories of New York; with Frankie Urquhart it was love—No, Joanne corrected herself, lust—an emotion I know all too well.
Is lust an emotion? was her next thought. I must ask Mae. This thought annoyed her even more. When do I have a chance to talk to Mae? She’s always surrounded by her court of admirers. Court of admirers?
“Penny for them,” McAllister said as he came into the reporters’ room.
“Is it a ‘court of admirers’?”
He laughed. “Are we talking about you? I hope not. I want you all to myself.”
It did not work as either a quip or a compliment. That innocuous phrase, all to myself, that inference of ownership, sent Joanne into a panic.
She stood. “I’ve an interview with a poacher whose defense in the magistrate’s court is that all those named Fraser have a divine right to fish the waters of the Conon. The argument has not gone down well with the Fraser clan chief. Must dash.”
She was down the stairs and out into Castle Wynd before she remembered that the interview with the defendant was tomorrow. But I knew that, she told herself. Her heartbeat was loud; her breathing noticeable. What’s wrong with me?
A coffee would only increase her agitation, but her feet took her across the bridge and into Gino Corelli’s café, coming to a halt at her favorite window table. But she moved to the back. Being on display in front of all the passersby was not what she needed. She took a table beneath the mural of Vesuvius painted in Neapolitan ice-cream colors, a mural her youngest daughter had christened Muriel.
She tasted the espresso, which she was teaching herself to like because it was McAllister’s drink, and shuddered.
“Grappa, I put it in the coffee.” Gino was standing beside her and saw her face after her first swallow. “It is good for the sadness.”
“Sadness? What sadness?”
He said nothing, just patted her on the arm. His look was that of a dog owner saying, Good puppy, good girl, there, there.
Panic she had to admit to. But the cause? She would need the emotional equivalent of the Rosetta stone to work that out.
“Finish the coffee. Go an’ see your godson.” From Gino this was an order. After shooing her out of the café as though she was indeed a lost puppy, he followed her out to the pavement, watched her walk towards the cathedral, made sure she turned towards his daughter’s house, that she did as she was told.
Once in her best friend Ch
iara’s kitchen, holding baby Andrew, all did indeed seem right with the world, or at least in this small corner.
She and Chiara chatted, cooed, making small sounds to delight the baby, exchanging all the details of the everyday life of mothers, outsiders, alone in a small circle of friends.
But Chiara wasn’t fooled. She’ll tell me when she’s ready, she thought.
As Joanne was unable to identify the cause of her restlessness, she was unable to share with her friend. But sensing herself being examined, Joanne smiled, saying, “Sorry, I’m not good company today.”
Chiara smiled back. “Cheerful or not, it’s good to see you.” Chiara knew not to press Joanne, so she said, “I liked your article about the missing aeroplane.”
It took Joanne only a moment to connect this with Mae Bell; so obsessed had she become over the American woman—a woman she hardly knew but whom she had already made into a fantastical creature who represented not-from-here, so that the missing aircraft, the missing crewmen, the mystery of the whole accident were the least part of the story to Joanne.
“Thanks. Though I’m not sure it’s my story anymore.” Joanne sat down again at the kitchen table.
Wee Andrew was back in his pram, fed, changed, and asleep. Chiara rejoined Joanne, stirring sugar into the fresh tea, tasting in, putting it down again in horror. “No matter how much sugar I put in, I don’t get the point of tea. Feeding the wee one, it’ll be months before I can drink an espresso again.” She saw that Joanne was lost in thought, in a dwam. Chiara savored the Scottish word, a favorite of hers. “Daylight dreaming” was the translation Joanne gave her, and she had laughed, clapping her hands in glee. I love that, she’d said.
“Mae Bell must have been deeply in love,” Joanne said, as though speaking to herself. “Six years on and she is still in love with her husband.”
“I can’t bear to think how you’d feel if that happened,” Chiara added. “Not knowing . . .”
“I’m not sure I could love anyone that much.” This time Joanne’s voice was so faint, Chiara wondered if she’d heard right. So she let it go.
But when, five minutes later, Joanne said she had to get back to work, and after she had hugged her friend and seen her to the door, and remarked on the weather and asked her to say hello to the girls, Chiara went back into the kitchen. Deciding that one very small coffee would not keep wee Andrew awake all night, she made coffee, sat to savor the three sips of bitter dark sinful liquid and think about Joanne’s visit, and knew she had heard right.
I’m not sure I could love anyone that much.
In a straight-out Scottish accent, but with Italian open hands and shoulder shrug, she said to the sleeping baby, “What are we going to do with your auntie Joanne? Eh?”
There was no reply.
FIVE
Maybe, Joanne thought as she cycled across town to work, she was restless because she knew there was no certainty a magistrate would grant her a divorce, no matter how compelling the reasons. Hopefully, her soon-to-be-ex husband would migrate to Australia, hopefully with his new wife, and that would end that chapter of her life.
Maybe it was because McAllister had declared his intent to “court her.”
Perhaps it was the appearance of Mae Bell in their small highland town. Or a longing for spring to burst through. Whatever the cause, discontent continued to rumble inside Joanne like distant thunder. So she decided to reinvent herself.
A haircut? Too expensive.
A tight, straight skirt à la Mae Bell from that length of tweed she had been hoarding for the last six months? She would have to take the bus instead of cycling everywhere.
A good story, front page in the Gazette, might solve her discontent; then she would be a real news reporter, not a woman relegated to writing up school events and church happenings and plum duff recipes. The attitude of Mal Forbes still rankled. Then again, he was expressing the views of at least ninety-nine percent of the population. Her daydream of becoming the Martha Gellhorn of Scotland was looking highly unlikely.
She pushed her bicycle up the last steep yards of Castle Wynd, then ran up the steps to the office. Mal Forbes was the first person she encountered as she walked into reception.
“You’ve no right taking that booking, they’re my clients.” He was leaning over the counter, talking to Fiona, whom Joanne couldn’t quite see but could imagine. “I don’t care if they phoned the order in, I’m the one who deals with that account, so don’t be thinking you’ll get commission out of this.” He was waving a sheet of paper at Fiona.
Fiona was looking at the floor, miserable, trying to hide behind her fringe of thick dark hair.
Without thinking, Joanne intervened. “Leave her alone, she’s only doing her job.”
Mal Forbes turned, looked at Joanne, and, as Joanne later told Chiara Kowalski, he snarled.
She also told Chiara she’d never seen anyone who looked and sounded so like a nasty wee dog—a cross-breed, some mixter-maxter of corgi and terrier and collie that’s always yapping, going for your ankles, making you want to kick him. (Always a “him” to Joanne.)
“This is my department, Mrs. Ross, so keep your nose out o’ it.”
“You are bullying a member of staff, Mr. Forbes.” She needed a very deep breath to control the itch to slap the man, but Joanne had learned over years of marriage that violence was never an answer.
“Aye, aye, what’s going on here?” It took an appearance by Don McLeod to end the standoff, and to get Mal to gather his papers and leave, but not before he passed a little too close to Joanne, making her feel the heat of his anger, even though he didn’t actually touch her.
“You all right, lass?” Don asked Fiona.
“Fine, thank you, Mr. McLeod.” She gave a half-smile. “Please don’t worry on my behalf. Mr. Forbes is a good boss, and I’m learning a lot. His bark is worse than his bite.”
Joanne stifled a laugh. Her picture of Mal as a wee terrier was obviously shared.
Don made for the stairs; Joanne followed. The reporters’ room was empty. Joanne started to speak; she wanted to ask Don more about the disappearance of, and search for, Robert Bell. The sound of Rob’s and McAllister’s voices made her stop.
“Later,” Don said. “Let’s get this edition out first.”
But later never came; the attack on Nurse Urquhart made them forget “later.”
• • •
“None o’ the shinty boys would do this,” Frank Urquhart said when the police asked, at the hospital, who would do such a thing to his wife.
He was shaking; his son, Frankie, was pacing. The cigarette smoke was thick, and both men were finding it hard to comprehend what had happened. “I know the lads joke around . . .” Coach Frank was saying.
“But no one would do this,” his son finished.
“It hardly touched her face,” the doctor told them. He didn’t tell them how badly damaged her throat was, that he privately doubted he could save her larynx, that the acid had run down her chest and etched deep rivulets in her breasts. “Her clothing saved her—and her quick thinking.”
Nurse Urquhart had had a few seconds to snatch at her uniform and pull the acid-soaked fabric from her skin before losing consciousness from the pain. Her hands were a mess, the strength of the acid eating into fingertips. Again, the doctor doubted that all of the fingertips could be saved, but as Nurse Urquhart was still in surgery, he couldn’t yet say how bad the damage was.
“I’m very sorry about your wife . . . and your mother.” He nodded at the Urquhart men. “I’ll let you know the results as soon as the operation is over.”
It was the lack of reassurance that they could save her that Frankie noticed. He didn’t tell his dad. But he knew. Saving her life was what it was about now. Her throat, he thought, how will she breathe? How will she eat? Will she be able to talk? He knew now was not the time to share his terror with his father. So he took himself and Coach Urquhart outside for fresh air and a cigarette.
Unfortunat
ely, it had been a vital five minutes before Nurse Urquhart had been found. After the school bell released the schoolchildren into the playground, their shrieks alerted the teacher, Miss Rose. By that time the injuries were critical.
WPC Ann McPherson had taken the phone call and was on the scene within three minutes. The smell of burnt flesh and acid was revolting, but her main task was to help Miss Rose gather up the children and keep them away from the sight of Nurse Urquhart. Later the policewoman’s task was to try to make sense of the children’s stories.
At first, clearing the gawping, jittery semicircle of children seemed as hopeless as rounding up a flock of seagulls, and as noisy. Then the headmaster appeared with a brass handbell, and the steady clanging caused a murmuring hush. The ambulance arrived next, bells shrill. Next the uniformed men with the stretcher ran into the playground, and started the children off again, agitation and curiosity running through the crowd like a tsunami.
“In your lines.” Miss Rose’s voice was as loud as the bell and all the more startling, as she was as sweet and as rounded as her name. “Class monitors, lead your groups back to the classrooms.”
The headmaster was watching, along with Detective Inspector Dunne, who had just arrived, had instantly recognized Nurse Urquhart—in spite of her injuries—and was furious. Mostly with himself. I should have taken this whole incident with the foot more seriously, he was thinking.
“No,” the headmaster told them, “you can’t question the children yet. They’re in shock.” He told the inspector he would deal with the questioning himself, along with Miss Rose.
DI Dunne said nothing. Then, in his usual reasonable, quiet voice: “We need to find whoever did this as soon as possible.”
The headmaster relented and allowed that WPC McPherson could assist.
It took nearly an hour and a half of talking to the five classes of children and their teachers before the report came back to the headmaster. “No one saw anyone or anything until they went outside for morning break.”
WPC McPherson agreed. “None of the children saw anyone or anything strange.”
