The House of Lyall

by Doris Davidson

  ‘But Esmerelda was a gypsy.’ Andrew had recommended this novel as a favourite of his mother’s.

  ‘I know, but it’s still a lovely name.’

  Thomson came in then with a daintily set tea-tray and, of course, begged for permission to take the tiny babe below stairs, and when the two young women were left alone, Marianne said, ‘She’s more like Robert than you, but babies change so quickly, don’t they?’

  ‘I hope you’re none the worse for what happened,’ Flora murmured, awkwardly. ‘It’ll take time to get over it, but at least you won’t have to see him ever again.’

  ‘Thank goodness, and I’ll have to forget what he did … or try to.’

  The funeral was over – quite a good turn-out considering – but despite the darkness in the one-roomed house, Moll Cheyne couldn’t bring herself to open the curtain. She had missed Alfie since the very second he drew his last struggling breath, and this mark of respect was all she had to remind her of how quickly he had gone.

  When she’d had to tell him they’d to move out of the cottage, she had pleaded with him to let her write to Marion – she’d had no reply to the letter Mary McKay had written for her – but he was, had been, a thrawn, independent man, and above all else, as far as his daughter was concerned any road, unforgiving. ‘I don’t … want her … charity,’ he’d managed to get out.

  ‘She can well afford it.’ Moll had wanted to shake him for being so stupid. ‘The sawmill’s stopped payin’ you, so we’ll nae be able to rent a decent hoose, an’ we’ve nae money laid by.’

  She could still remember how agitated he’d got at that, which was why she hadn’t suggested taking another cleaning job although Alfie needed her constant nursing, anything to get a few bawbees. He’d have said she was wanting to show folk he couldn’t support his own wife, when, poor soul, he’d put himself in an early grave with being so determined. They hadn’t got a decent house, of course, just one garret room two stairs up that Mary McKay had found for them, so damp that if she hung her coat up on the hook on the back of the door after being out to buy what little food she could afford, it had green mould on it before she needed to put it on again.

  But there wasn’t a soul in Tipperton could say she had neglected Alfie. She’d gone hungry herself so she could give him something he liked – though he hardly ate anything at all – and she’d picked up all the lumps of coal she saw lying on the road, fallen off the cart. She hadn’t cared that folk might speak about her, hadn’t cared about anything except looking after Alfie, until …

  Moll let out a hopeless sigh. She had gone begging to the council to help with the shilling rent she couldn’t pay at the end of their third week there, and had been told, ‘We do not pay rent for anybody. If your landlord evicts you, it will be the Institute for you.’

  The Institute, Moll thought angrily. She would have sold her soul to the devil to keep this from her dying man, but while she was out, the factor had called, given Alfie their notice to get out and told him it was the poor’s house for them. That was what had killed her husband! He was still alive when she went home, and had managed to tell her, in laboured breaths and with deep shame in his eyes, about his visitor, but had stopped breathing almost as soon as the two dreaded words ‘poor’s house’ had passed his lips.

  Her hands came up to her head in anguish. If only she had ignored his pride and written to Marion again … but it was too late now. There was no sense in telling her that her father had died. She wouldn’t want to know, not after all this time. And the fine lady needn’t feel any responsibility for her stepmother, either. Moll Cheyne had a good pair of hands on her, and a sister in Glasgow who wanted her to go and live there, so she didn’t need anybody’s help … especially not Madam High-and-Mighty Marion’s.

  But, by God, the girl shouldn’t get away with ignoring her father’s plight. She hadn’t done anything for him while he was ill, but she could damn well pay for a gravestone.

  It was the least she could do.

  Marianne’s wish to put the rape behind her was doomed to failure. Two days after Duncan Peat’s funeral, Robert Mowatt went to Laurencekirk station to collect a parcel from the London train. Seeing Hamish getting off, he thought this chance of a private talk with him was too good to miss. As the future Lord Glendarril, Hamish had the right to know, and his wife certainly wouldn’t tell him.

  While Carnie was stowing the luggage on to the high-slung carriage, the doctor moved forward. ‘I’d like a word with you, Hamish. It’s … um … a bit delicate, so if you tell Carnie to pick you up at my house, you can ride along with me.’

  The arrangement made, Hamish got up on the small trap and listened as Robert’s story unfolded. ‘Grace Peat dead?’ he said sadly, when he received the first piece of information. ‘Oh, poor Duncan! I had better go and see him before I go home.’

  ‘No, no, Hamish, you can’t do that! Wait and hear me out!’

  Hamish had been registering sorrow up to this point, but his nose wrinkled in puzzlement at the vehemence in his friend’s words, and a look of total incredulity flooded his face in a few moments. ‘That can’t be true!’ he exclaimed. ‘For goodness’ sake, he’s a minister of the Church! He wouldn’t lay a finger on the lowest maidservant, let alone –’

  ‘He was a monster at the end,’ Robert stressed firmly, ‘and there is no blame whatsoever attached to Marianne, I can assure you. She called at the manse with the best of intentions and he flung himself on her. She did try to fight him off, but I very much doubt if any woman could have. The deranged have the strength of the devil, you know. It took three men to carry him out when …’ Breaking off, he looked at Hamish in appeal. ‘I had to certify him.’

  ‘I can’t believe that Marianne … that he … raped her.’

  Picking up a trace of suspicion in these last words, Robert said hastily, ‘Speaking as her doctor, Hamish, I advise you not to let her know I have told you. Perhaps I was wrong in doing so. She feels deeply ashamed although she has no need to be, and the sooner she can erase the attack from her memory the better.’

  At the gate of the doctor’s house, Hamish professed to be grateful for being acquainted with the facts, however unpalatable, but the thought of his wife being raped by a mad Duncan Peat gnawed at his innards as he transferred to the carriage to make the last leg of his journey. By the time he reached the castle, his mouth was bone dry, his head was pounding, his stomach churned and he staggered slightly when he set foot on the driveway.

  Carnie eyed him anxiously. ‘Was the doctor saying something to upset you, Master? There’s been that many stories goin’ round, you’d be best no’ to heed any o’ them … an’ if I was you, I wouldna say anything to Lady Marianne. I ken for a fact she’d been to see Duncan Peat the day he was taken away, for she left her bicycle and the doctor got Peter Wink to take it back to the castle, and I’ve the feeling he did something, the minister, I mean …’ The old man pulled himself up. ‘Ach, I’m just a bletherin’ skate, as bad as the rest o’ them.’

  Marianne jumped to her feet when her husband entered what had been the Blue Room but which was now a delicate shade of cream. The nervous tic at her cheek and the way her hands opened and shut convulsively told him that what Robert had told him was true, and he had to force himself to kiss her cheek. ‘I left as soon as I could after the Coronation. Father is still down there, but I was worried about you.’

  ‘I got home all right,’ she said stiffly.

  The restraint between them was practically tangible; neither could smile at the other and it was as if they were strangers, looking away in embarrassment each time their eyes met.

  At last, Marianne said, ‘Why don’t you sit down, Hamish? You must be tired after your journey. I’ll ring for a pot of tea.’

  Her mundane manner in the face of what he had learned nudged him out of control. ‘I don’t know how you can stand there so calmly!’ he spat out. ‘As if nothing has happened!’

  Her face blanched. She had known that the rumou
rs would eventually reach his ears, but she hadn’t expected him to have heard before he even crossed the threshold. ‘Who’s been telling tales?’ she asked, her sarcasm a screen for her fear of the consequences.

  ‘So it’s true?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re speaking about.’

  ‘I’m speaking about Duncan Peat. How could you let him …?’

  Shaking her head, she wrung her hands in anguish. ‘Hamish, I did not let him!’

  ‘No? That’s not what I’ve been told.’

  This snapped her self-control now. ‘All right, believe what you like and who you like, but I swear I did not let him do anything.’

  ‘But it’s him! A man of God! It would be against all he ever stood for to … fornicate with another man’s wife when he had just lost his own.’ Giving a gasp as an unwelcome thought struck him, he took a step towards her and stuck his outraged face close to hers. ‘I must have been blind. You had been carrying on with him even before Grace died! Perhaps Ruairidh is his child?’

  Without stopping to think, Marianne gave him a resounding slap on the cheek. ‘How dare you speak to me like that? I’ve never let any man touch me except you.’ She couldn’t say more. The insult was too great to bear, and putting her hands to her eyes, she burst into a flood of tears.

  Love for her overcoming all else, Hamish put his arms around her, and the stiffening of her body did more to convince him that she had been taken by force than further denials would have done. ‘I should not have said that, Marianne,’ he mumbled, ‘and I am deeply sorry.’

  Marianne had been fearing Hector’s return, fearing the anger he would direct at her; he was bound to blame her. He wouldn’t take the word of a shop-girl, even though that shop-girl was the mother of his two grandsons. On the morning of the day he was due to arrive, she asked Hamish to tell his father about Duncan Peat before he brought him back to the castle. ‘He might have cooled down by the time he reaches here,’ she explained, thinking that it was highly unlikely.

  She worried when they took so long to arrive back from the station, and she trembled with dread at what her father-in-law would say to her when they did turn up, but she never dreamed how he would be brought home.

  Lord Glendarril had died of a seizure on the station platform. Robert Mowatt helped Hamish and Carnie to carry him in, laying him out on top of his father’s desk in the study rather than in his bed upstairs.

  Then Carnie turned to Hamish and astonished them all by saying, ‘Will I go to Brechin for the undertaker, your Lordship?’ He was the only one who had realized the import of the death.

  Hamish looked in horror at Robert. ‘Oh, my God!’ he moaned, then, gulping back a noisy sob, he hurried out of the room.

  The doctor put a hand on Marianne’s arm to prevent her following him. ‘Leave him just now, your Ladyship.’

  ‘Don’t call me that. I’ll always be Marianne to you and Flora.’

  ‘Thank you, my dear. Hamish has had a terrible shock, and –’

  ‘Were you there when it happened?’

  ‘No, Carnie came for me, but I was too late.’

  ‘Do you know if Hamish had time to tell him about …?’

  ‘If you think he died because of you, forget it. I’ve been telling him for months that his heart wasn’t up to all the rushing about he was doing, but he wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘But if Hamish had told him about Duncan, wouldn’t that have been bad for his heart, and all?’

  ‘My dear Marianne, stop torturing yourself. I was expecting it to give out at any time. In any case, I have just remembered. Carnie said Hector hadn’t even set foot on the platform when he clutched his chest, and he and Hamish had both rushed to help him down. Then he collapsed altogether and Carnie came for me. Rest assured, my dear, your father-in-law died knowing nothing of what happened.’

  Hector looked so peaceful after the undertakers had done their job. Hamish ordered the funeral for a week later, and so began seven days of what Marianne could only think of as the ‘lying in state’. What seemed like millions of people – glen folk, relatives, men with whom he had done business, lords and ladies, dukes and duchesses, earls and countesses – milled around the castle before and after the burial service, and if it hadn’t been for the self-effacing Miss Glover, Marianne wouldn’t have coped. Because a new minister had not yet been appointed to the parish, Hamish had asked Mr Munro from Arbroath, a great friend of his father’s, to take the service, a task which the elderly man was only too honoured to shoulder.

  Marianne’s deep sorrow for the loss of the man who meant more to her than her own father had ever done was made much worse on the day of the funeral by the shaking that assailed her when she neared the church, and when she was passing the manse, it was all she could do to keep moving, for Duncan Peat’s lust-distorted face kept swimming before her eyes. Hamish, of course, was too immersed in his own grief to pay any heed to her, and it fell to Robert Mowatt to help her into the kirkyard, between the lines of people from near and far who had known and liked Hector Bruce-Lyall.

  Her old horror of graveyards returned at that moment, and she clung to the doctor’s arm as a ghostly Hector floated past her, looking at her accusingly and shaking his head. She was practically paralysed with terror before the service ended, and Robert had to whisper, ‘Bear up, Marianne, it’s all over now,’ before she could put one foot past the other.

  The glen folk had always accorded her the courtesy of referring to her as Lady Marianne, but when the mourners returned to the castle and she heard someone calling Hamish ‘your Lordship’, the realization of her entitlement to the title did much to restore her equilibrium, and to boost her confidence amongst the high-born guests in her home.

  She had been pleased to see Andrew Rennie and his aunts in the kirk, but when she invited them to the funeral tea, Miss Edith had said, ‘Thank you, your Ladyship, but we must go home,’ and Andrew had said, sotto voce, ‘Well, you’ve got your wish, Lady Glendarril.’

  The line of people had moved on and she hadn’t had another chance to speak to them, to tell them that she was still just Marianne, the same as she had always been.

  Most of the women, not worthy of the title they held, had talked more to Miss Glover than to her, and even when they did address her directly, their manner was condescending. Only one had singled her out and had a conversation with her.

  ‘I saw them all giving you the cold shoulder,’ she had begun, ‘but don’t you worry your pretty young head about it. I got much the same treatment when I married Clarice’s cousin and I’ve survived. In fact most of them have forgotten by now that I ever was a shopkeeper’s daughter and had no right to mix with the likes of them. I’m Lady Matthewson, by the way, Barbara to you, and my daughter’s Hamish’s age. He used to come to Maxton House sometimes to play tennis with Pam – before he met you – but why don’t you get him to bring you over to see us some time? Once the mourning period is past?’

  Marianne hadn’t known what to say. She was pleased to be invited, but was afraid that, if she did pluck up the courage to go, Lady Matthewson might change her mind about welcoming a shop assistant to her home. ‘Is your daughter not with you today?’ she enquired.

  ‘Pam’s touring Europe at present. She thought a lot of Hector, though, so she’ll be very disappointed at not being here for his funeral.’ Barbara Matthewson’s eyes were caught then by someone she knew and, excusing herself, she walked away.

  The parlour maid seemed ill at ease the day after the funeral when she knocked and opened the morning-room door. ‘There’s a … woman at the door asking to see you, m’Lady.’

  Marianne raised her eyebrows. ‘Didn’t you ask who she was?’

  ‘I did ask, m’Lady, but she wouldn’t tell me.’

  Marianne frowned and began, ‘Tell her I do not wish to see anyone at –’ but before she could finish, a figure appeared in the doorway, a figure from her past – a past, moreover, that she did not want to be reminded of, especially now.
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  ‘Oh, m’Lady, I told her to wait outside,’ the maid was excusing herself, but the woman came right into the room saying, ‘I think her Ladyship will see me.’

  If the maid noticed the sneering emphasis, she gave no sign, but scuttled out so quickly that the door swung shut with a thud.

  Marianne regarded her visitor coldly. ‘What do you want?’

  Sitting down as if she were well accustomed to being in such opulent surroundings, Moll said, ‘I wouldna have needed to come if you’d ta’en some notice o’ the letter I sent a while back.’

  Marianne was genuinely puzzled. ‘I received no letter from you.’

  ‘Oh, so that’s the wey o’ it, is it? You’re sayin’ you never received it, are you? Well, let me tell you, m’Lady, it was Mary McKay that wrote it for me, an’ it was her that posted it, so I ken fine you received it, unless you’re cryin’ Mary a liar?’

  Marianne could feel her self-confidence draining away with each sarcastic word. Moll had made her feel like a child again, a silly child who had run away after stealing five sovereigns … but surely her father’s wife wasn’t here because of that? ‘When … was … the letter sent?’

  ‘I can tell you that easy enough,’ Moll sneered. ‘It was the twenty-second day of June, that’s when, just days afore we was put oot o’ the hoose.’

  ‘Put out? But why …?’

  ‘Your father had to stop workin’ wi’ his chest, and we got a notice to quit or we’d be evicted, an’ I got Mary to write an’ ask you if you could send us some money so we could rent a decent place. A fat lot you cared, for you never answered, but Mary got us a room in Bridge Street.’

  She had stopped for breath, but Marianne said nothing. She had never thought of her father since she left, had never even wondered if he was well or otherwise.

  ‘Aye, my fine leddy,’ Moll went on in a few moments, ‘that’s made you think. Here’s you in your castle, wi’ every blessed thing you need an’ servants to run after you, and there was me and your father in one room wi’ the damp runnin’ doon the wa’s.’