by A. D. Scott
Mae knew how that felt. “How are the boys?” She needed news of the band, of Paris, of her real life, like she needed sunshine.
“All missing you. The customers too. Keep asking for ‘la Belle Mae Bell.’ ”
She laughed. She loved the way the French said her name. “Mae Bell ain’t so belle anymore, honey.”
“Give it time.”
“And a hairdresser.”
“Mae, if you need money—or anything . . .”
“No. I’m fine. I might need help to get the adoption worked out. And if not, I’ll need even more help.” She didn’t need to say it. He understood. And felt the same. The boy was family. There was no way they would leave him behind.
They talked the rest of the day in between Mae’s naps. In the early afternoon, when she was deeply asleep, Charlie found Mrs. Ross chopping vegetable for the cock-a-leekie soup, McAllister’s favorite.
“Elsie, tell me what really happened—all of it.” He sat at the table, offered to help. She refused, shocked at the idea of a man chopping carrots.
As she talked, Granny Ross scraped and scrubbed, moving back and forth between table and sink and cooker.
She told him all she knew, and being in the house for nearly two weeks, she knew most of it.
“It started wi’ this foot in a boot in Nurse Urquhart’s washing basket.”
That made him stare.
“Then there were these anonymous letters. I think they started ’cos Mrs. Bell put thon advert in the paper asking about her husband.”
“My brother.”
“Really? Can a darkie marry a . . .” She stopped.
He wasn’t in the least offended.
“Can a black man marry a white woman? Well, now, many think it shouldn’t be so, but in Paris, things are different. They met in New York at the club we were playing in. They married in the U.S., but it wasn’t easy for them there. Bobby stayed on in the service after the war, he loved aeroplanes, and he was posted to Scotland. He and Mae were apart for much of the time. Me and the band had plenty of work in Paris. We needed a singer, so Mae joined us.”
“Aye, and young men being as they are, and him lonely no doubt, your brother made friends in Elgin . . .” She had no way of saying it. “The baby, he must have come out black.” She looked at Charlie, took in his gentle face. “Maybe no’ as black as you, he’s a brown color, but with hair just like yours.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“Oh aye, but don’t tell Mrs. Bell. I have a friend works in the orphanage who let me visit, bring the wee lad some clothes and a toy, a teddy bear that was ma eldest granddaughter’s.” She remembered going into the big room where the wee one played and seeing the wee lad sitting on his own in a corner. His big eyes were staring at her, and him not knowing what to do with the bear broke her heart. So she cuddled the bear and gave it back to him, and he cuddled it and smiled at her.
“He smiles just like you. He’s called Charlie. Mrs. Bell said his big sister named him Charlie, but thon madwoman only called him ‘the boy.’ ”
“I’m really pleased he has such a fine name. And you know, our grandfather was Scottish. My grandparents worked on his plantation. Robert was born much lighter-skinned than me, but definitely black.” For the second time that day, Charlie Bell was close to tears. He changed the subject to one marginally less difficult. “Mae said the mother died.”
“Aye. There was an accident when Mr. McAllister and young Rob McLean rescued Mrs. Bell and my daughter-in-law Joanne.”
That was not what Mae told Charlie, but he accepted Mrs. Ross’s version. Probably best for this Rob character if they stick to an accident story, he thought.
“Elsie, why did the husband go along with it all? I mean he must have known the boy wasn’t his? He must have known his wife had . . .” It was his turn to search for an acceptable phrase.
“People see what they want to see,” she said. “God rest her soul, the wife—she was completely mad,” Mrs. Ross said, “And what she did—locking up an innocent wee bairn, locking up Mrs. Bell and Joanne, and Joanne nearly dying, and as for Nurse Urquhart . . .” She hit a turnip a hefty whack, cutting it clean in two. “It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
They turned when they heard the front door open. “I’ll give you a lift home, Mrs. Ross,” a voice called out.
Charlie saw a tall man, in black corduroy trousers and black polo neck jumper, coming towards the kitchen, towards the smell of vegetables and chicken and the sight of Charlie Bell.
“Good heavens, you’re Charlie Bell. I heard you play in Paris.”
“You must be McAllister.” Charlie stood, hand out, a grin so like the wee boy’s it made Mrs. Ross decide to visit him again the next morning.
“Thanks for the offer of a lift, Mr. McAllister.” Granny Ross was taking off her apron. “I have my bicycle, so no need for you to drive me home. The soup only needs another hour or so.” She finished tidying up the knife and chopping board. “You two go off to the sitting room, get yerselves a dram. No doubt Mrs. Bell will be needing your company.”
McAllister insisted Charlie lodge with them. “There’s a spare room.” They talked late into the night but Mae left them alone after supper. Charlie helped her up the stairs.
“Night-night, Charlie. Sleep tight.” When she said this, she knew she sounded like Joanne. It made her shiver. It was how they and wee Charlie comforted each other. Night-night, sleep tight, don’t let the bugs bite. Mind you cover up your nose and don’t let the midgies get at your toes.
That and “Dream Angus.”
• • •
“I can’t stay here a day longer,” Joanne was saying as McAllister fussed with book and pillows and cards and flowers, all spilling over the bed and bedside table and floor. He’d already been told off twice for bringing in too many books. “I’ll climb out the window and walk home if you won’t take me.” Her voice was now trembling, the tears almost there. “Please take me home.” She wanted her wee house. She clung to the image of it, the feel of it. She knew she could make her life again if she was given time. How she would look after herself, and her girls, she hadn’t considered.
“Have you finished this one?” He held up a Graham Greene she had put to one side.
“Not yet.”
Joanne didn’t tell him she couldn’t read. And that it terrified her. The letters were jumbled. She had to search for words, unable to recall the meaning. She’d asked Jean—not Annie, because Annie would know this was not good—what a word meant. Hungry was the word, and Jean had told her, and she was furious with herself. And scared.
Her memory was unreliable and what she could remember was unpleasant. She was trying—again and again—to recall a cheerful moment, some incident of sun and laughter, but always a darkness would appear: her father, her husband, the boy rocking, Mae Bell’s voice fading in and out like the wireless on a stormy night. And the dark, the stinking, crushing dark.
“Three weeks is not a long time after an injury like yours,” he said.
“McAllister, I want my home, my own bed, I want . . .” He could hear the frustration edge towards anger and felt helpless.
“Hello.” The faint voice came from behind the curtain.
McAllister parted the floral screens and a woman he thought he recognized said, “Hello, I’m Joanne’s mother.”
From the corner of his eyes he saw the flash of panic on Joanne’s face and the way she gripped the bedsheet.
“Can I come in?”
“Yes, of course.” Joanne had no choice. It was a confrontation she knew she had to have, although she would have preferred it at a time and place where she could walk, talk, and do something else, like make tea or look out of a window, or anything other than lie there, stuck.
McAllister came over, kissed her forehead, and said, “I’ll come back later.”
“No. Stay.”
Joanne’s mother sat at the bedside, wanting to hold her daughter’s hand. Feeling she did not have the ri
ght.
It was afternoon visiting time, and outside the two-bed room—the other bed empty—visitors with flowers and fruit and cards and smiles walked past, often glancing into the half-open doorway, hoping to see another’s tragedy.
On the bus to the hospital, for she had come to visit without telling her other daughter and her son-in-law, Joanne’s mother had been thinking of her late husband, their life together, their younger daughter, and the years without her.
Pride. Now he was dead, she could now acknowledge the word. Pride. Maybe not forbidden in the Ten Commandments but certainly one of the seven deadly sins. Perhaps the most destructive of the seven deadly sins, she thought.
It was pride that made him the man he was; pride that made him cast out his daughter. And pride that made her acquiesce.
She had agreed to send Joanne to school when she was six. She had agreed to Joanne’s joining the WAAF as soon as leaving school. Yes, there was a war on, but Joanne in the woman’s army meant no Joanne at home—an eighteen-year-old, at home, in the village, at church, there for all to see. There to remind her father and her mother of that overheard conversation, the one that had been the cause of everything.
Her pregnancy with Joanne she’d tried, unsuccessfully, to hide, knowing the gossip a pregnancy at her age would cause. Her husband was more than mortified. He was furious when at five months she realized she was expecting and had to break the news to him. Furious, embarrassed, and if he could have sent her away for the duration of the pregnancy and then given the baby out for adoption, he would have. The shame of having sex at their age, even though married, was unbearable to him.
On the day of Joanne’s christening, after the service, Mrs. Innes had gone to the vestry to meet her husband, baby Joanne in her arms. Her husband was hanging up his robes and did not speak. She always thought this was his time to come down from wherever celestial place he had soared to in his sermon. From the room next to the vestry, the room where the elders kept the communion wine and wafers and parish record books, came the sound of coins being poured out. Three male voices could be heard.
One said, “You count the silver, I’ll take the copper and thruppences.”
There was the noise of a chair being moved. Another voice, younger, said, “The minister christening his own bairn—at his age. Who’d have thought the old goat had it in him to father a child?”
Another voice said, “Hold your tongue,” and another said, “Shoosh, he’s next door changing out of his robes.” Then came the sound of a door shutting.
Mrs. Innes did not turn, afraid to. She could feel her husband’s rage. Feel her husband’s shame at the words. She knew he was aware of the shifty looks at her condition from the ignorant of the parish. But that phrase—the old goat—he would never forget that insult. And never forgive his innocent wee baby, the cause of the gossip.
She pulled the shawl around the sleeping child’s head and left. She waited ten minutes on the church porch, then went home to join her other daughter, her aunt and uncle and two family friends who were to join them for the Sunday roast she had left in the oven, and to toast the baby’s head in nonalcoholic elderflower champagne she had made in the spring.
That night, when he had come back from wherever he had gone to conduct the evening service, she knew within one second of seeing the look of utter loathing he gave the baby that he would never forgive the child for bringing shame on his name.
Mrs. Innes looked at her daughter Joanne, her pale face disappearing in the hospital pillows. She was awaiting her daughter’s approval, or forgiveness, or blessing. “I hope you’re feeling better.”
“I’m much better, thank you,” Joanne said. “I’m going home soon.”
“That’s good.” There was a silence. “Elizabeth said you and the girls can stay with them until you’re fully recovered.”
“Yes, she told me. But I’m living with McAllister now.” Joanne saw her mother flinch and was glad. Then she felt guilty. “Thank you for coming to visit, Mother. We’ll talk properly when I’m out of here. Now I have to sleep.”
Her mother nodded. She could not expect more. “I’ll see you when you’re better.” She nodded to McAllister, uncertain if she should touch her daughter, so she didn’t, and left.
A whisper of a woman, he was thinking when he saw the tears on Joanne’s cheeks. “Joanne, I’m . . .”
“If you say ‘sorry,’ I’ll murder you,” she spoke with her teeth clenched, eyes shut. She opened her eyes, “For goodness’ sakes, don’t look so miserable. After we’re married I want our house, not your house, to be only a wee bit out of town, with a view, and trees. But near enough to the academy so Annie can cycle—and . . . What? What are you grinning at?”
“So you will marry me?”
“McAllister, what choice do I have? You’re the most annoying, interesting, intelligent . . . and I love you.”
This time he was the one near to tears. “I’ll start looking for a house tomorrow.”
“No, we will start looking when I come home.”
• • •
There were so many visitors to McAllister’s house that the kettle never went cold. Rob and Frankie, fascinated now by Charlie Bell as well as by Mae, were the most frequent.
When Mr. Angus McLean called, one morning not long after nine o’clock, Mrs. Ross was unsure whether to let him in, as Mae Bell was still in a dressing gown.
“Are you decent?” Mrs. Ross had asked Mae as she sat in the kitchen. “Only Mr. McLean the solicitor is here.”
Mae laughed and later told Charlie the expression, and they laughed over the phrase for days.
“I’m sure Mr. McLean will think of me as an invalid in hospital, Mrs. Ross.”
Granny Ross doubted that; no invalid she’d ever seen had a black dressing gown embroidered with red dragons.
They remained in the kitchen. Five minutes into the conversation, Charlie Bell joined them, though not in his dressing gown. Angus McLean shook hands, then continued. “As I was saying, your marriage certificate makes a great deal of difference. And no one can dispute that Malcolm Forbes is not the child’s father.”
“I also brought my birth certificate to show Bobby was my brother,” Charlie said.
“I don’t think we’ll need it. The point is, no one knows what to do with the boy now his mother is dead, and the husband will be in gaol a long time. There is an inclination to grant you temporary custody of the child, and to allow your application for adoption to proceed.”
“What are my chances, Mr. McLean?” All Mae Bell wanted was to have the son of Bobby Bell live with her and his uncle Charlie.
“In light of his mental difficulties and the circumstances, I believe the chances are good.” He did not say that a child like Charlie had a minimal chance of being adopted otherwise. “No one wants the scandal; the welfare authorities did not follow up on Nurse Urquhart’s report of a child being neglected, so . . .”
“How soon can we have him with us?”
“I believe immediately, if somewhere can be found for you to live around here for a few weeks.”
“You can all live here.” Mrs. Ross spoke as though it was her house, but she knew it was right.
“I have to return to Paris in two days; can wee Charlie come join us before then?” Charlie asked, using the Scottish word he had learned, and delighted in, from Elsie, his new best friend.
“Unlikely, but I’ll do my best.” Angus McLean would do more than his best; he would shame and blackmail the department to allow the child out.
“When we, I, adopt him, can I have his name changed to Charles?” Mae shuddered every time she thought of the name on the boy’s birth certificate—Malcolm.
“Of course. I can help you there.”
When he left, Mae said, “Mental difficulties! The way he was treated of course he has problems. Yes, he’s strange”—she smiled at Charlie—“but he has perfect pitch. I’ll make a singer of him.”
“And I’ll teach him the sax.”
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When McAllister came home that evening, having gone straight to the hospital from work, Mae told him wee Charlie would be coming to stay next day. “If that’s okay with you?”
“More than okay; I’m delighted. Hopefully Joanne will be out of hospital soon. She’ll be delighted too. And the girls.” He paused, still absorbing his news. Then he grinned, not his usual intimidating grin, more like a shy schoolboy who has won the prize grin. “Joanne and I are to be married.”
Charlie and Mae Bell called out their congratulations. He and Charlie toasted the good news with his best single malt, Mae with tea.
“And Paris for the honeymoon,” Mae decided.
“Where else?” McAllister smiled. “But don’t tell Joanne; I want to surprise her.”
TWENTY-SIX
The Highland Gazette limped along short-staffed, but advertising was still steady, thanks to the charms of Frankie Urquhart and the organizational skills of Fiona. Don McLean could tell from his writing that Rob was in shock; there was none of the usual vim, none of the usual superlatives Don was renowned for putting his wee red pencil through. He missed them. McAllister was spending half his time at the hospital, so his work was also suffering. Above all, in Don’s opinion, with no Joanne to cover the small articles, the minutiae that made up a local newspaper, the Gazette was losing its character.
“The McLean residence.” Margaret was trying out the accent and tone of a ladies’ maid. A brochure from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama had come in the morning’s post, reminding her of her youthful dreams to go on the stage, impossible for a young woman of her birth.
“How would you like the job of temporary junior reporter on the Gazette?” Don asked. He knew she could write. He knew she knew everyone. And he believed in the power of middle-aged women.
“When do I start?” Margaret did not have to think; the offer tied in with her scheme. Plus she was bored.
“Let’s see, it’s Friday, how about we meet tomorrow and you start on Monday?”
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
