The House of Lyall

by Doris Davidson

  ‘Ruthie.’

  The weak voice shattered her reverie. ‘What is it, Mum?’ she asked anxiously, jumping up at once and bending over the bed. ‘Is the pain getting worse?’

  ‘That’s not what –’ Georgina Brown, Ina to her friends, broke off and looked earnestly at the younger woman. ‘Something’s preying on my mind, Ruthie. I should have told you a long time ago … but I kept putting it off.’

  Ruth took the wasted hand in hers. ‘I can see it’s upsetting you, Mum, so don’t bother telling me just now. Do it another time …’

  ‘There won’t be another time.’

  ‘Don’t be silly! Of course there will.’

  ‘I know in myself I haven’t long to go now, and –’

  Her heart cramping, Ruth cried desperately, ‘Don’t say that! You maybe feel a bit low just now, but you’ll feel better soon.’

  Ina shook her head. ‘I know I’ve got cancer, and I know you know, so you needn’t pretend. I can feel my strength slipping away tonight and I can’t go to meet my Maker with this on my mind. Sit down, Ruthie, lass.’

  Her entire body apprehensive, Ruth sat down, leaning forward so that she could keep holding her mother’s hand. ‘All right, but don’t overdo it. If I think it’s too much for you, I’ll stop listening.’

  With her free hand, Ina pulled her handkerchief from the sleeve of the bedjacket Ruth had knitted for her last winter, and held it ready to wipe the tears she knew would come. ‘I want you to listen to it all … and say nothing. I’ve had to screw up my courage … to speak about it, and I don’t want you stopping me … before I’m done.’

  Her voice was gaining a little strength, but there were many pauses between sentences, even between phrases. ‘I’m going back … to when me and Jack was wed and … planning on having a big family. We wanted three girls … and three boys … because we loved bairns … but the years went by … and we’d no luck.’

  Stopping to take a few deep breaths, Ina flapped the hankie to prevent any interruption, and waited a few seconds before going on.

  ‘We’d been wed for three years with still no sign … there was none of that testing in them days to see if it was the wife’s fault or the man’s … and I’d given up hope when I met a woman that had been at the school with me. She asked how many bairns me and Jack had … and when I told her … she persuaded me to …’

  The handkerchief was put to use here, but her look of appeal kept Ruth from saying or doing anything, and she waited for what she prayed was not what she had begun to suspect. Her faith in God, however, was to be severely shaken.

  ‘I’m not your real mother, Ruthie!’ Ina burst out, dabbing at her eyes. ‘Me and Jack fostered you … when you was eight weeks old.’

  Her lips scarcely able to form the words, Ruth asked, ‘And Gladys?’

  Ina shook her head. ‘The doctor said it was looking on you as mine … that had stopped me worrying about conceiving … and that’s how Gladys happened.’

  ‘So you’re her real mother?’

  ‘Look, lass … I’m her natural mother … but I love you as much as I love her … more, maybe. She’s not half the woman you are … more’s the pity. If you hadn’t been here to look after me … she’d have likely put me in a home.’

  ‘No, she’d never have done that! She’d have shifted you to her house!’ Feeling obligated to stick up for Gladys, Ruth secretly agreed with her mother. But Georgina Brown was not her mother – any more than Gladys was her sister! She was overwhelmed by a wave of something she had never known before, not quite self-pity, nor bitterness, nor anger … more a sense of insecurity.

  ‘Oh, Ruthie,’ Ina groaned, ‘Don’t look so lost. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.’

  Ruth attempted to pull herself together, but there was one thing she had to know. ‘You said fostered. Why didn’t you adopt me?’

  ‘At first, we thought we might … have to give you back … if your real mother claimed you … but when we didn’t hear anything … we hoped they’d forgot we had you. Me and Jack spoke about adopting you … but we were scared to rock the boat, and once Gladys was born … well, we couldn’t afford it. You see, we got so much a week for fostering you, but them that adopted got nothing. And I got the money … for your keep right up … till you started working.’

  ‘But after Dad died, you were really hard up,’ Ruth reminded her, ‘and you had your own child to think about, so why didn’t you send me back to where you got me?’

  ‘It never crossed my mind, lass. As far as I was concerned … you were mine and … it was up to me to … provide for you.’ There was a long pause, the effort of the sustained speech obviously too much, then Ina whispered, ‘I’m awful tired, Ruthie … I need … to sleep.’

  Ruth jumped up, alarmed by her mother’s extra pallor. ‘I’ll make some Ovaltine for –’

  ‘I don’t want … just settle me … there’s a … good lass.’

  Barely five minutes later, Ina was breathing steadily, if a little shallowly, and Ruth went into the scullery to make herself a cup of tea. Her legs were shaking as she waited for the kettle to boil, which was not surprising in view of what she had just been told. It was a great shock to learn that the woman she had always thought was her mother wasn’t her mother at all, and she hadn’t found out where she had come from or got any clue as to who her real mother might be. Oh well, she’d have to contain her curiosity until morning.

  Making herself as comfortable as she could in the wide easy chair at Ina’s bedside, Ruth shut her eyes. She had learned over the past few months to make the most of every minute’s peace she got.

  Not being called upon even once to lift Ina to the commode, or to turn her to her other side, or to give her a sip of water, as she usually had to do several times a night, Ruth had slipped into a deeper sleep than she’d had for many weeks, and woke to the sound of the milkman rattling bottles outside. Before her body was fully mobile, her brain told her that her ‘patient’ had passed away, so she was not surprised that there was no pulse when she felt for one.

  She flopped back into the depths of her chair, uncertain of what to do, unsure of how she felt. She was glad that her mother was free of pain at last but wished that she’d had the chance to ask her more about the fostering. Where had she, an infant at the time, been living for the first eight weeks of her life? Who had looked after her? Had her biological mother died, or had she been a poor young girl who couldn’t afford to keep her? A girl who had been abandoned by the father of her child? Abandoned by her own father as well, likely. Thrown out of her home, she may well have taken her baby to an orphanage, or left her somewhere for someone to find. Dear God, there was no end of places she might have gone to after that, so how on earth was Ruth Laverton to find her?

  But she must stop this agonizing, she reprimanded herself, getting slowly to her feet again. She had things to do to show her gratitude for being enfolded in this woman’s family … and Gladys had better do her share, too. Ruth’s stomach lurched. She could foresee trouble – there was always trouble when Gladys was asked to do anything.

  Bob Mennie took in hand to arrange the funeral – ‘It’s a man’s job,’ he said – and his wife, Gladys, still unaware of her mother’s dying revelation, left Ruth to do the catering while she went round the house earmarking all items she was laying claim to.

  Ruth let her carry on. She couldn’t very well have an argument while Ina’s body was still in the house, and she had no claim on Ina’s things. Strangely, it was Bob who told his wife on the morning of the funeral what he thought of her callousness.

  ‘This is still Ruthie’s home,’ he pointed out, ‘and you’re not taking anything out of here without her say-so.’

  Glaring fiercely at him, Gladys nevertheless stopped her ghoulish inspection.

  Ruth had been in two minds about admitting that she had been a foster child, but she was so sickened by the way Gladys had behaved that she decided to wait until after the funeral. As soon as the last of the mo
urners had left the house, therefore, she made her announcement, her spirits lifting with the relief of getting if off her chest, and smiling at the expressions on the other two faces.

  When it had sunk in, Gladys turned triumphantly to her husband. ‘She’s not my mother’s daughter, so she’s not entitled to stay in this house.’

  The bewildered man frowned. ‘You can’t throw her and Colin out on the street!’

  ‘I’ll give her time to find somewhere else, but everything here belongs to me.’

  Bob glanced round disparagingly. ‘There’s nothing worth much, in any case.’

  ‘We can sell what we don’t want.’ Gladys looked at Ruth defiantly. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow, so don’t you dare take anything, and if you want something for a keepsake, you’d better ask me first.’

  Their departure left Ruth sitting forlornly alone. She didn’t need anything to remind her of Ina, who would always remain a part of her, as the mother she had more than succeeded in being. ‘Oh, Mum,’ she moaned, ‘why did you have to tell me?’

  After a while, she began to wonder why Ina had been so desperate to let her know. Were there letters about her fostering amongst the receipts and other important papers kept in the old handbag in the sideboard? Had Ina, in a roundabout way, given her a chance to find her birth mother, who would surely be in better circumstances now and might be pleased to be reunited with the child she had given up all those years before?

  The old handbag, with its cracked leather and torn lining, nevertheless yielded more information than Ruth had ever hoped for. All preserved together in one thick brown envelope were three letters from a home for unmarried mothers in Yorkshire, recording an application for, the acceptance of, and the actual fostering of Ruth Bruce, date of birth 20.4.19, by John and Georgina Brown. Unfortunately, there was no birth certificate, and Ruth’s disappointment was so great that she abandoned all hope of ever learning who her real mother had been, and stuffed the envelope back in its original place among the other papers.

  Thankfully, Bob Mennie – the brother-in-law she had never cared for much – had succeeded in persuading Gladys not to turn her out of the house. ‘Mind you,’ he confided when he called to give Ruth the good news, ‘I don’t think she’d really have done it, not when it came to the point.’

  Ruth wasn’t so sure. They had never been close, Gladys always jealous of her older sister, always quick to take her spite out on her. But she couldn’t run down Bob’s wife to his face. ‘No, I don’t suppose she would.’

  ‘Have you found out anything yet?’ he enquired. ‘About your mother … real mother, I mean?’

  ‘Not a thing. I did find out where I was born, though – in a home for unmarried mothers in Yorkshire.’

  ‘Well, that’s something, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s a start, but they’re not allowed to give out any information in case the woman concerned doesn’t want to be found.’

  ‘No? Well, don’t give up hope. You’ll maybe come across something else, if you keep looking. Now, are you not going to offer a starving man something to eat and drink?’

  ‘The kettle’s on,’ she smiled, feeling much better for his encouraging remarks, ‘and I was going to have a cheese sandwich if that’ll do you?’

  ‘That sister of yours …’ He halted, looking somewhat confused, then grinned. ‘She’s not your real sister, of course …’

  ‘I’ll always look on her as my sister,’ Ruth said truthfully.

  ‘I could never get over the difference between you,’ Bob observed now, ‘but I aye thought it was not having any kids that made Glad a bit sour, if you see what I mean. Anyway, I was going to say she doesn’t feed me properly, not like a hard-working man should be fed.’

  ‘There’s nothing coming over you that I can see,’ Ruth laughed.

  When her brother-in-law left, she washed up the dirty dishes and then took the old handbag out again. He was quite right – there could easily be something else in it, though she couldn’t think what. She searched amongst the papers again, even emptying the brown envelope to see if she had missed something, but there were only the three letters she had already seen. Something urged her on, however, and she decided to clear out the whole bag; most of what was there wasn’t worth keeping.

  She spent a good hour opening folded sheets of paper, reading receipts, letters from Ina’s old friends – possibly some who had long since lost contact with her but should be told of her passing, just the same – and ended up with three separate piles in front of her on the table: receipts for things like gas and electricity, coal, odds and ends of no importance, which could all be destroyed; receipts for larger items which were still in the house and which had better be kept; and a small bundle of letters from the women Ina kept in touch with.

  Never one to procrastinate, Ruth got out the writing pad and wrote short, but friendly notes to Ina’s friends. Maybe some of them had died, too, but at least those who were still alive would be glad she had let them know. The envelopes addressed and stamped, she felt like having another cup of tea and consigned the old everyday receipts to the fire while she waited for the kettle to boil.

  Before she returned the other items to the handbag, she thought that it would be better for a good clean out, and pulled the lining away from the bottom to give it a shake, and as the dust and fragments of yellowed paper floated out, the lining tore a bit further and displayed the corner of another brown envelope which must have slipped down right out of sight … or perhaps it had been hidden there, she thought, in excitement.

  Extracting this envelope, she found that Ina had written ‘Andrew Rennie’ on it. Who was Andrew Rennie? There was only one way to find out, so she carefully pulled out the wad of papers which she had thought to be a padded base to the bag and smoothed them out. Her mother, Ina, had said she was paid an allowance, and here was proof of it. Andrew Rennie had been the solictor who had seen to the payments which had carried on until Ruth left school and started work. Fourteen years! A young girl, as she’d believed her real mother had been, would not have had been able to do that, so it must have been her father, who had obviously been a man of some means and most likely married. Well, she didn’t want to know about him. She wasn’t out for any financial gain. She just wanted to discover who her mother was.

  Ruth went over and over the official notifications of ten pounds paid into the North of Scotland Bank every month. It was two pounds ten shillings a week, she realized, more than a working man could have earned at that time. But she had now come across the one person who would be able to give her the information she sought. Andrew Rennie would have known her mother, and he was under no obligation to keep her name and address secret, not like the home for unmarried mothers – unless he was a great friend of one or other of her parents. Should she go and see him? He could only turn her away. She’d be doing nothing legally wrong, so he couldn’t report her to the police. Oh God, she’d have to go! She would always regret it if she didn’t. Whatever happened, it was worth a try.

  She rose early the following day, but knowing that solicitors’ offices wouldn’t be open at eight o’clock in the morning, she thought she would take a walk to clear her head. She hadn’t slept well, with the turmoil her brain had been in. It was a lovely day, and she enjoyed ambling along the pavements, planning what to say. She would prefer to see Andrew Rennie himself – he must be a very old man by this time – but his files would have been kept and his successor in the practice would be able to lay his hands on the information she so desperately needed. There might be the matter of confidentiality to consider, but surely not after so many years.

  She thought it might be best not to go there before half-past nine, and because it was hardly nine when she came on to Union Street, she passed time by window-shopping at Esslemont and Macintosh’s store, then crossed the street when the clock on the Town House struck the quarter-past to have a look in Falconer’s … she seldom shopped there, either; their prices were too high for her meagre income. At ha
lf-past, she headed for Bon Accord Square, her stomach churning, her heart beating twenty to the dozen as she climbed the steps to the office of Rennie and Dalgarno.

  ‘Can I see Mr Rennie?’ she asked the young receptionist.

  The girl gaped. ‘There’s no Mr Rennie nowadays; there hasn’t been for years and years. Would somebody else not do?’

  ‘It must be Mr Rennie,’ Ruth persisted. ‘He’s not dead, is he?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not long started here, but I’ll ask.’ The girl picked up the telephone receiver and turned a handle on the small box switchboard at the side of the counter. In just a second, she said, ‘Miss Leslie, there’s a lady here asking to see Mr Rennie … no, she says it must be him, nobody else.’

  Replacing the handset, she looked at Ruth rather accusingly. ‘Miss Leslie’ll be through in a minute.’

  A bespectacled, middle-aged, rake-thin woman in black came out of a door at Ruth’s left. ‘I believe you are asking to see Mr Rennie, Mrs …?

  ‘Laverton, and it’s important.’

  ‘Mr Rennie retired some time ago, Mrs Laverton, but I can give you an appointment with Mr Dalgarno. He is the senior partner now, and he would probably be able to help you.’

  Thinking this highly improbable in view of the secrecy surrounding her birth, Ruth stuck to her guns. ‘It’s personal, something only Mr Rennie would know.’

  Recognizing that this was a woman who would not be fobbed off, Miss Leslie tutted in vexation. ‘In that case, Mrs Laverton, if you leave your address and telephone number, I will contact Mr Rennie at home and let you know if he agrees to see you.’

  Ruth gave her address and, although she felt at a disadvantage when she admitted that she had no telephone, she added loftily, ‘Perhaps you’d be good enough to write and tell me.’

  While she walked home, unable to face sitting on a tramcar with other people, Ruth recalled Gladys’s reaction two days ago to being told that her ‘sister’ wanted to find her real mother. ‘All I can say is I think you’re potty! A woman who gave up her baby all that time ago won’t want to be reminded of it now. She’s likely married with other children and doesn’t want her man to know about you.’