The House of Lyall

by Doris Davidson

  When it was over, she expressed her surprise that no one had come to the door, not even Thomson, and Hamish murmured, smiling at her fondly, ‘They are human, my darling. They know what a husband will do to the wife he feared was lost to him.’

  ‘And they likely know you hardly ever slept with me,’ she said, embarrassed at reminding him.

  He took hold of one of her tresses of coppery hair and twirled it round his finger. ‘I wasted a lot of time fretting about you and Andrew.’ He put his finger on her mouth as she started to speak. ‘Yes, I know that you denied it several times, but a man in love is not always rational.’

  ‘A man in love,’ she sighed rapturously. ‘Oh, I never thought I’d hear you describing yourself like that.’

  ‘You will hear it over and over again for as long as we live,’ he assured her.

  This little exchange, of course, only served to keep them in bed, and when they did eventually go downstairs, the two maids in the dining room kept their eyes down. Even Hector didn’t look at them, eating his lunch as though he hadn’t a minute to spare, but when the servants had withdrawn, he could hold back no longer.

  ‘You might have waited until night-time,’ he muttered. ‘You know what these lassies are like. It’ll be all round the glen in no time that you two spent the whole morning in bed together.’

  Stretching out to clasp Marianne’s hand, Hamish said, ‘We don’t care. You maybe will not believe this, Father, but we only discovered today the true extent of our love.’

  The suggestion of a twinkle now appeared in Sir Hector’s eyes. ‘And you couldn’t wait?’ He gave Marianne a quick glance and then smiled. ‘I don’t blame you, though. She’s a damn fine-looking girl.’

  When he, too, went out, Hamish said, ‘I’d better go with him, my dear. I don’t want to get his back up by staying off work all day, but my heart won’t be in it.’

  She returned to her room and lay down on the bed to think. So much had happened since she’d woken up and had felt stifled with the heat. She had enjoyed walking barefoot one the carpet of pine needles in the early morning, had enjoyed her cooling dip in the loch, had even, if she was scrupulously honest, enjoyed – revelled in – Jamie MacPhee’s flattering remarks.

  She wouldn’t have been able to look anybody in the face again if she had done what he wanted, especially Hamish. If Duncan Peat ever got to know about it – which he wouldn’t for she wouldn’t even tell Grace – he would say that God had intervened to stop her from committing adultery. And maybe he’d be right! He was a dedicated minister, she had discovered, having met him in several of the little cottages when someone died or was seriously ill. He had the knack of saying the right thing, of sympathizing as if he truly meant it, of consoling someone who had just lost a husband, a parent, a child, as though that person was the most important thing in the world to him. And they would be, at that moment. It was a great gift to have.

  Suddenly recalling what Flora Mowatt had said about him, Marianne shook her head in disgust at the very thought of him hurting his wife. Flora must be mistaken. He wouldn’t harm a single living creature!

  Anyway, Marianne mused, at least she had done two good turns today. With Duncan having broken his leg – she’d go tomorrow to see how he was – he’d be grateful for help in the garden, and Jamie MacPhee would be glad of the job.

  And now, having figured everything out to her own satisfaction, she was free to think about Hamish. It was strange how a misunderstanding on both their parts had caused them to lose two years of real happiness, but they would make up for it. Oh yes, they would make up for it!

  Some time later, when she was telling herself that she had better not be too long in dressing for dinner – she wanted to look her best when Hamish came home from the mill – it occurred to Marianne that she owed it to Miss Edith to let her know that their marriage was perfect at last. She had intended inviting them for wee Ranald’s christening, but she would write a proper letter instead. Then another, more sobering thought entered her mind. What about Andrew? He was the only other person who knew how things had been between her and Hamish, but would he be more hurt if she told him how things were now? Perhaps it would be better just to say they had improved a little, and tell him the whole truth at some other time.

  Chapter Twelve

  The summer of 1902 saw preparations for celebrating the coronation in full swing in Glendarril. The dominie and his wife, helped by some of the older children, had freshened up the assembly hall – which also served as a gymnasium, as a sewing room where Mrs Wink showed the older girls how to knit and to stitch, and at other times, where her husband taught the boys woodwork – with two coats of paint, cream from the ceiling to the dado placed well above the reach of even the tallest child, and dark brown from that demarcation line to the floor so that sticky or inky fingermarks would not ‘stand out like sore thumbs’, as William Wink put it with his usual inability to recognize a pun, although he had made it himself. The same treatment was accorded to the classroom, only one since there were hardly ever more than a dozen pupils on the roll in any one year.

  The walls of the hall were then festooned with red, white and blue bunting, and taking pride of place opposite the door were pictures of Edward the Seventh and Queen Alexandra. Trestle tables were to be set up in the playground on 26 June if it was dry, and the whole population of the glen would be sitting down to a repast fit for the Royal couple themselves, which the ladies of the WRI had volunteered to prepare and serve. For weeks, the scholars had rehearsed ‘Hearts of Oak’ and ‘The British Grenadiers’ with which to regale the adults between courses, and Mrs Wink was praying that the joyful solemnity of the occasion would rub off on Johnsy Gibb and Davy Marr and make them think twice before tugging any pigtails or, even worse, using them to tie two heads together, which usually resulted in all-out warfare between the sexes.

  Still, all in all, it was an exciting time for the country folk, especially for those men who still remembered acting as ghillies at the August shoots Edward had joined as the young and handsome Prince of Wales. One old lady could recall a much more initimate relationship with him but knew that boasting about it, even after forty-odd years, would make some people doubt her son’s legitimacy.

  Lord Glendarril and family, of course, would be attending the real ceremony in London, and Lady Marianne (as she was still known although not yet entitled to the title) had looked out the robes and coronets – last worn at Victoria’s coronation by Hector’s parents – and had put them on display in one of the public rooms for a whole day so that anyone who wished could come to see them.

  ‘Marrying into the gentry hasna gone to her head,’ the wives told each other, when they were walking back down the long drive, having viewed the robes, ‘for there’s nae a pick o’ side to her.’

  Naturally, there were those who disagreed on principle with the decisions made by their employers, as there are in any workforce. Ettie Webster was one such. ‘I couldna get ower it when I heard her saying she was putting her laddies to the school here when they’re the age,’ she sneered the following evening, at a meeting of the Women’s Rural Institute in the kirk vestry. ‘It just shows she’s no’ real gentry, for their father and their grandfather, and his father afore him, like enough, was sent to a private school in England some place to be teached, so I thought the laird would’ve wanted his sons to –’

  ‘The laird did want them to go to his old school,’ interrupted Flora Mowatt, ‘but their mother wouldn’t hear of it. She said she didn’t want Ranald and Ruairidh to be brought up thinking they were better than other children in the glen. Mind you, Ranald’s just three and Ruairidh’s hardly two so she might change her mind when the time comes.’

  Grace Peat – president of the WRI – shook her head. ‘I don’t think she will. In any case, she has been a good friend to me and I do not want to hear anything against her.’

  Loud murmurs of agreement to this showed that most of the wives regarded ‘Lady Marianne’ as a frie
nd. After all, they whispered to each other, didn’t she stand and speak to them if she met them on the road any time, even if she’d to come off the bike she’d taken to using for getting around? More to the point, she had started a sort of clothes-exchange for babies and toddlers, even for girls and boys at the school, which was a great help to the mothers with a puckle bairns.

  Judging that she had allowed enough time to be wasted, Mrs Peat said, ‘Now, we must get down to business …’

  The meeting proceeded until two committee members rose to make the tea. This was the signal for a hubbub of chattering to break out, discussing the possible consequences of Lady Marianne’s boys attending the glen school (a far more important subject to them than the crowning to take place hundreds of miles away), and when they went home, most of the women with daughters under school age were already weaving dreams of being mother-in-law to a Lord one day. Those who had only sons but were still capable of bearing children resolved to produce a girl next time, no matter that they had sworn to their husbands after their last confinement that he need not expect them to have any more.

  Grace Peat was no different from her fellow WRI members and was so excited that she didn’t stop to think when she went home. ‘Oh, I hope it’ll be a daughter I have!’ The words were scarcely out when her hand flew to her mouth.

  Too late! The minister’s head jerked up from the sermon he was preparing. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you are … pregnant?’

  His wife flushed, all her dreams for the future disintegrating. ‘Yes, Duncan. I … I didn’t know how to tell you.’

  ‘I am not surprised. Have you forgotten how ill you were when you had pleurisy two years ago? Robert Mowatt as much as said you were not fit enough to have a child. Does he know about this?’

  ‘Y-yes … and he has warned me that I may have a difficult time.’

  ‘So! Well, you are taking your life in your own hands and it will not be my fault if anything happens to you.’

  Knowing her husband as she did, Grace let him have the last word. It was an awful thing for a man of God to think, never mind say out loud, but at least he hadn’t punched her as he so often did when he was angry with her. It was fear of his violence that had kept her from telling him of her condition, made her pull the strings of her corsets so tight she could hardly breathe, and when he found out that she was due in three months … Thank goodness the baby seemed small – or at least the bulge around her middle not so very big. If anything bad should happen to her it was more likely to be as a result of what he would do to her than the actual birth.

  Marianne was the most excited in the whole of the castle, with the exception of Jean Thomson, who was to be accompanying her mistress to London. Hamish was looking forward to seeing old school friends again, but his father was quite blasé about the whole thing.

  ‘We’ll get down there in one day, not like in my parents’ time when there was no railway. It took them a week, and I can remember my mother telling me she felt so faint at times they had to stop at the first inn they came to, and some were not fit for decent folk. Of course,’ he added with a smile, ‘she was always having fits of the vapours. It was fashionable in her day.’

  They were to be staying in his house in Piccadilly, which he used any time he was in the capital on business, which was also when he felt obliged to take his place in the House of Lords. The married couple whom he paid to look after the building while he was not in residence had been advised that he and his son and daughter-in-law would be there for about two weeks and, augmented by several temporary maids and boys, the caretakers had made the rooms ready. In spite of all Marianne’s pleas, Hector would not allow Hamish to take her on ahead so that she could see a bit more of London. ‘You’ll not like it,’ he told her.

  ‘Maybe you don’t,’ was her spirited reply, ‘but I’m sure I will.’

  Hector grimaced at Hamish. ‘This wife of yours will be the death of me, too saucy for her own good. I sometimes wish we had picked someone else to be the mother of your boys.’

  Noticing the twinkle in his eyes, Marianne just grinned. She was proud of her two sons, and so were the glen wives. When they had been at the castle to view the robes and coronets, the sight of the two fair-haired, blue-eyed little boys racing around the lawns had made them smile, they bore such a striking resemblance to their father. Ranald had more than his share of devilment, but also a great deal of charm, which saved him from being punished for the scrapes he got into, whereas Ruairidh was much quieter, and often the butt of his brother’s exuberant pranks. None the less, if either one got on Nurse’s wrong side, the other manfully defended him. She was going to miss them while she was away, Marianne mused, on the day before she had to make the journey, but this would be more than counterbalanced by her introduction to London society, the realization of all her dreams.

  * * *

  The Bruce-Lyalls arrived in Piccadilly on the evening of 23 June, three days before the coronation, and Hamish forbade Marianne to leave the house the following day. ‘You had better take time to recover from the long hours of travelling,’ he told her. ‘You will want to look your best on the day.’

  She was anxious to explore London, but his last sentence made her think. She did want to look her best to meet the cream of the nobility, so she had better do as her husband said. She was reclining on a brocaded chaise longue in the drawing room in the late afternoon when Hector burst in and sat down heavily on an uncomfortable-looking chair by the window.

  ‘You’ll never guess,’ he panted. ‘The King …’ He stopped to wipe his perspiring brow, then began again. ‘They are having to postpone the coronation. Right this minute, the King’s appendix is being removed.’

  ‘Is that serious?’ Marianne asked. ‘How long before …?’

  ‘It is fairly serious in a man of his age, and I really do not know how long it will be before he is fit enough to be crowned … months rather than weeks, I should think.’

  ‘Does that mean …? Will we have to go home and come back?’

  ‘No, no, it is better that we stay in London, just in case …’

  Not comprehending what he was hinting at, she felt a surge of excitement go through her. She would have plenty of time now to get to know Hector’s titled friends, to do all sort of things she had not expected to do. She would start by exploring this house tomorrow and make friends with the caretaker’s wife, who would be able to keep her right on etiquette, etc.

  Moll Cheyne had been kept awake all night with Alfie coughing. Deep barks, on and on, till she’d thought he was going to choke, and a cold hand had squeezed at her heart. It was the middle of summer, she mused as she raked out the ashes in the grate, setting aside the cinders which would start the fire today, so it wasn’t just a cold he had, and if he died, God forbid, what would she do? He hadn’t been fit for the sawmill for a few weeks now, and if he was off much longer, they’d likely be put out of the house, for it went with the job.

  Shovelling up the grey dust that was left in the ash-pan, she took it outside to throw on the midden, carefully shielding it from the draught when she opened the door, for she didn’t want it blown inside again.

  ‘How is he the day?’ asked a voice, as she turned to come back into the house.

  She looked up into the concerned face of the foreman sawyer. ‘Oh, it’s you, Joe. He’s nane better. I was up near half the nicht tryin’ to ease his cough. I’m right worried.’

  ‘You must be.’ Joe Bain was silent for a moment but, realizing that he had no option, he handed her an envelope. ‘I’m sorry, Moll, it’s nae my doin’. I hope things … go a’ richt for you.’

  He whipped away and she went back inside. She didn’t have to open the envelope, she knew what was inside, but she slit the top anyway, and took out the small slip of paper to read the dreaded words.

  NOTICE TO QUIT

  You are hereby requested to vacate the house you meantime occupy by 26 June. Failure to do so will result in eviction.

  Sh
e sat down by the flickering coals in despair. What would they do? If Alfie got any worse, she’d have to give up her little cleaning job to look after him, and with nothing coming in, how could they afford to rent a place to live? She had often wished she had some other means of cooking in the summertime when it was too hot with the fire on, but she was glad of it now, for her very bones felt numb with the cold – no, with shock, that’s what it was. She’d thought Alec Murchie, the owner of the sawmill, would give them a few months’ grace, but the twenty-sixth was less than a week away. She should really keep this bad news from her ailing man, but how could she, when he’d have to be hauled out of his bed in such a short time and made to go God only ken’t where?

  Mary McKay could likely get him into the poor’s house, but it would have to be the last resort, and what about herself? She didn’t fancy going back to what she’d been doing before she got wed, though she’d kept her figure, maybe a wee bit more curvy than it was, but most men liked a woman they could get a proper grip of.

  While she waited to ask Mary what they could do – the nurse usually called in next door every second day at ten on the dot to see Maggie Burnett’s old mother-in-law – she made a start on going through drawers and shelves to see what she would take when she left the house; very little likely, for she’d have no place to put it. She was on the second drawer of the dresser – the furniture all belonged to the mill and would have to be left for the next tenant – when she found a bundle of clippings she had taken from newspapers. She was an incurable hoarder of advertisements she thought might come in handy, corn cures and patent medicines for all kinds of complaints, when a vague memory stirred within her of something else she’d once cut out for future use, something she hadn’t wanted Alfie to know she had kept.