Last of the Line

by John MacKay

  ‘My father tried to stop her going?

  ‘Your father was very like your grandfather, very straight, very traditional. You know that yourself, I’m sure. He told Mary not to go. He used to do that, tell her what to do. He was that bit older, of course. Yes, he said she shouldn’t be going so far on her own.’

  ‘But she went anyway?’ smiled Cal, thinking of the side to her character that he had not known.

  ‘She was an independent girl.’

  ‘Did you hear from Mary when she was over there?’

  ‘Oh yes, we wrote all the time. And she loved Canada. She missed home, but there was no talk of coming back. Of course there were so many Scots over there, Lewis folk as well, so she wasn’t so lonely. She was working in a bank and she and Jean shared a flat. Oh, but she was having such a good time and she kept asking me to go over too.’

  ‘So what happened? Why did she come back?’

  Kate-Anna looked sharply at him.

  ‘But you know why.’

  ‘She got pregnant didn’t she?’

  Kate-Anna’s mouth crumpled as she pressed her lips together to control her emotions. For a moment she could only nod her head.

  ‘It’s the age-old story,’ she sighed at last. ‘He was a Canadian, a handsome boy. She met him at a dance I think, and she fell for him hard. He seemed to know how to sweep her off her feet. His father had a business, the family must have had money, but that’s not why Mary went with him. There was more to her than that. She said they had fun together and he was good to her. I think she thought they would get married. They certainly talked about it.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Brian. Brian something, I can’t quite remember. He was tall and dark. She sent me a photo of them together and he had a look about him that was so different from the boys at home.’

  ‘A photo?’ asked Cal eagerly.

  ‘Yes, but I don’t have it any more. I gave it back to her when she came home. She asked me to.’

  Cal couldn’t keep the disappointment from his face. Perhaps he might find it back at the house. Would he be able to see the man who might be his father?

  ‘So what happened?’ he prompted.

  ‘What happens so often. She fell pregnant by him.’ Kate-Anna paused for a time and started again on a different tack. ‘You might remember a sensible, respectable woman, but she was young once. We all were. Young and passionate. At that age when someone special comes into your life they become everything to you and you can’t think right without them. You do anything to make them happy. And sometimes that is stronger than the fear of doing wrong. Well that’s what happened to Mary.’

  ‘What did she tell you about it?’

  ‘Nothing. I didn’t know until she came home.’

  ‘Why did she come back?’

  ‘Because he left her.’

  Cal hung his head.

  ‘He told her that she couldn’t have the baby. He said he would lose everything. His father would disown him. A story as old as the hills.’ She placed her teacup on the table. ‘Well, Mary said no. She told him the there was no way she would get rid of the baby and so he left her. He told her he didn’t want to see her again. Well of course she had to leave her job and she had no family in Canada herself. So she came home.’

  ‘With the baby?’

  ‘I believe so. I never knew about the baby until after she’d come home. First she went to Glasgow for some months. I’ve always thought the baby must have been born there. Mary never said exactly when.’

  ‘But you must know.’

  ‘I don’t. I only ever heard this years later. At first Mary just said she’d come home because she’d broken up with Brian and had been very upset and homesick. It was only later when there was word that Jean was coming back for a visit that she told me, because she thought I would find out. Anyway, Jean never came. But Mary wouldn’t talk about the baby or anything. It was too painful for her and so I didn’t ask.’ Kate-Anna was dabbing her eyes with a paper handkerchief.

  ‘So you don’t know what became of the baby?’

  ‘No, I don’t. Mary once said that she still saw the child from time to time, but, of course, she couldn’t say who she was to her. That was very hard for her.’

  Cal sat back in his seat and sighed.

  ‘I do know that no good came of Brian.’ Kate-Anna continued. ‘Mary must have heard through Jean. It sounds like he took to the drink and died young. A car crash I believe. She never said much. It was all so, so sad. You can understand why she just wanted to forget about it.’

  ‘Do you think it’s at all possible that I was that baby? That I was Mary’s son?’ Kate-Anna looked taken aback, but she listened intently as Cal explained his reasoning. ‘I need to know when I’m at that graveside tomorrow if I’m burying the woman who was my mother. If you know, please tell me.’

  ‘Calum, if I knew, then I promise you I would say. But I don’t. I know Mary had a baby. But where it is, or who it is, I honestly don’t know.’

  16

  THEY CONTINUED TALKING into the night. Kate-Anna described a Mary with whom he was unfamiliar. A woman who spurned the many suitors. Only one had ever been allowed to come close, and that relationship had ended in a broken engagement. ‘She said that she wasn’t doing right by him. He was a good man, but she didn’t love him and never could.’

  ‘Why? Did she still love Brian, despite what he did to her?’

  ‘I think so. What he did was bad but he was young and from what I can gather, his father was a difficult man. It probably wasn’t his choice. Who knows, maybe he might have come back to her when he became his own man, but that wasn’t to be.’

  ‘So she was holding out hope for him?’

  ‘There were women here, old women, who lost their loved one in the wars and never loved again. There was only the one for them and he was gone forever. But that wasn’t Mary. It was more that she’d had her adventure and it turned out bad.’

  It had been such a waste, Kate-Anna said, Mary would have been a wonderful mother. She had adored children. She had caught her occasionally lost in wistful thought that hinted at deep sadness, never acknowledged. Kate-Anna didn’t know whether Mary had ever wanted to leave the island again. Even if she had, circumstances changed and the chance was gone. Her father never recovered from what he saw as his daughter’s shame and her mother ailed after him. Whatever the motivation, guilt, duty or simply love, Mary had remained at home to care for her and by the time she was gone, she herself was of an age that limited prospects.

  Cal’s mother had died around the same time as Mary’s. Frayed threads wove together in his mind. When Mary had come to the city to stay with him and his father, it had ostensibly been to help support them. Thinking on it now, perhaps it had been to play the role that life had denied her, the chance to be mother to her son. But Cal had simply wanted his meals cooked and his laundry done. They had enjoyed each other’s company, but he had not recognised any connection tighter than what had gone before. His father had made it impossible anyway, with the resentment he bore like an open sore. Cal and his father had weighed her down with their domestic demands and the tension between them. Twice, it seemed, Cal had been the cause of her ambitions being dashed, yet she had shown him nothing other than love and devotion.

  Kate-Anna showed him photos that took the two young classmates through adolescence into young adulthood, then on to middle age and finally to one taken just a few months before, at New Year. ‘It seems barely any time ago. That was the first I knew she wasn’t well. And it was only by asking. Mary would not have said.’

  ‘Why is that?’ he asked. ‘Why say nothing about these things?’

  ‘That’s just how she was, and her people before her. It’s like that here. It’s hard to keep your privacy, because everyone knows what’s happening with everyone else. Everything is noticed. And because it’s hard, people sometimes become secretive. But knowing Mary, I just think she didn’t want a fuss. She dealt with it on her o
wn and that was just her way.’ Kate-Anna’s voice wavered tearfully as she continued. ‘About two months ago it was clear she was losing too much weight. And she kept going over to town with Mairi. My, but that girl’s been good to her. She couldn’t keep it hidden for ever.’

  ‘And how was she?’

  ‘Very… What’s that word? Stoical, that’s it. She just accepted it was her time.’

  ‘And did she say anything more to you about seeing her child?’

  ‘No.’

  It was very late when Cal finally left. Kate-Anna had stood in the doorway waving him off. Now he sat at the window of his room, whisky in hand, looking out over the loch. He was not who he thought he was. There were those who said it wasn’t where you were from that mattered, but where you were going. He didn’t believe that. The two were not mutually exclusive. You are what you are, he thought, and, although that should not limit what you become, it must inform it.

  Three days ago he would have been thrilled to think he might be related to a wealthy Canadian family. It would have seemed the answer to all his problems. He would have dreamt of flying the Atlantic and presenting himself before a gathering of the family and announcing to them that he was the lost son of their lost brother, Brian. And they would welcome him with tears and emotion, thankful that all the hurt and shame was in the past and that Brian had come back to them, in a way. And he would be accepted as one of their own and would share in their wealth and be given a place in the family business, whatever it was. Oh, he could have dreamed that readily enough.

  For now, he felt nothing but sadness. The excitement of having a new family might return, but for the moment he dwelled upon the love and passion of two young people and the tragedy it had wrought.

  The truth was bitter. A young man denied his love, a young woman cast away and a child left rootless and hollow. And for what? Respectability? Snobbery? But then, what might a father do if he didn’t understand and believed his son, in whom he had invested so much, was throwing his life away on some girl? Maybe his motivation had been love also.

  Fate had brought these two young people together, they had fallen in love and the result had been wretched, lives spoiled and chances lost. And it would linger on through him as he wondered what might have been.

  Tomorrow, in a graveyard where the land met the ocean, should he stand up and proclaim Mary as his mother? The thought unnerved him. Cal reflected back down the years to a day when the rain poured down from weeping skies and ran down his neck and into his shoes. That day, too, he thought he had been standing over the coffin of his dead mother. She had given him unconditional love and her loss left him bereft. He remembered that day like no other because, until that moment, she was still physically tangible. Her spirit was gone, but he could have held her hand if he wanted, cold though it might be. When she went into the ground, that was all gone. Nothing was left. As the lumps of mud rapped on the coffin lid, he had been cut adrift.

  And tomorrow. Tomorrow he must go through it all again.

  17

  IT WAS A night of disturbed dreams. Faces, real and imagined, scenarios unsettling, congregated in Cal’s subconscious.

  By the darkest hour, night sweats made sleeping impossible. He pulled himself from his bed and poured another whisky, then sat at the window and looked again into the blackness.

  This had been the hour of anticipation when he was a boy. It was the start of the journey, either for the train from the city or the early boat from the island. It was an hour unseen and unknown at any other time of the year.

  And he knew that if he stepped outside he would shiver, regardless of the temperature. It was the tremble of expectation. Today would be the start of another journey for him, the voyage to discover who he really was.

  The water of the loch lapped onto the shore. Everything else was silent and still in the dark. Then came a faint hiss in the distance that grew to the rush of a car on the road, the headlights sweeping past then fading away to nothing again. Another one for the early ferry.

  The whisky filtered through to his anxious mind and he fell asleep in the chair.

  He was woken by the crowing of a cockerel somewhere out of sight. Today would be a day of firsts and lasts. When again would he ever be roused from sleep by the king of the dawn birds?

  A grey light felt its way across the shadows, bringing form and detail to the land and the loch.

  His interrupted sleep and troubled thoughts had left Cal feeling tired and fuzzy. He made straight for the shower. The water sprayed across his head and torso and forced life into his dulled nerves. He didn’t allow time to push him on, remaining beneath the massaging water until his body was soft and red.

  The face looking back from the shaving mirror was puffy and lined. As he studied it, he identified features that he had never recognised before. The shape of his eyes was like Mary’s, and his nose was a masculine version of hers. But what of his brown hair that could turn blonde in the sun? So unlike the dark hair that ran in what he knew of as family. Was it the Canadian in him?

  He shaved carefully and the process seemed to tighten his skin. When he returned to the bedroom, he felt refreshed and ready to face what was to come.

  The thought of wearing Colin’s clothes made him uncomfortable, but it was practical sense. Driving over to town to try to get a suit there would mean cutting things fine and there would no certainty of finding one.

  Porridge and milk in the dining room put a lining in his stomach to last the day. The furniture was laid out differently from previous days and he realised it was in preparation for the funeral purvey later in the morning.

  ‘I hope it goes well,’ the receptionist said gently to him. An old dog seated at the door stood up lamely as he left. The black of her coat was greying and the eyes were dull. He clapped her on the head and rubbed her side and it was as if she smiled up at him. Then, satisfied, she settled back down in her berth.

  A sheep watched him as he walked across the car park. Birds chirped and sang and a family of ducks flurried across the water’s surface when the car engine growled into life.

  Black clouds were gathering on the horizon like an invading army. It was going to be very wet. Cal arrived at Mairi’s house just before the rain, but it would be upon them before he left, of that he was sure.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ she greeted him.

  Colin was seated at the breakfast table in T-shirt and shorts, his hair all tangled, obviously just out of bed and embarrassed to see someone in the house so early. He nodded an acknowledgment. Across from him was a girl Cal hadn’t seen before. She was about thirteen, with a perfect complexion and her hair tied back in a ponytail. The resemblance to her mother was evident.

  ‘Emma, this is Cal,’ Mairi introduced them.

  Emma smiled shyly and then she and her brother left the table and disappeared through to the back of the house.

  ‘They are going to the funeral. They want to. I’m worried it might be a bit much for Emma at her age,’ said Mairi.

  ‘If they want to go, it’s hard to stop them.’

  ‘They both thought the world of Mary.’ Mairi made an effort to hold back the tears. ‘How did you get on with Kate-Anna last night?’

  ‘She had a lot to tell. And I was right. It looks like everything I told you was true.’

  ‘Such as?’ asked Mairi, sitting at the table.

  ‘Mary was in Canada and she had a baby.’

  ‘In Canada?’

  ‘Kate-Anna thinks the baby was born in Glasgow and that Mary gave it away before she come home.’

  ‘Gave it away?’

  ‘Had it adopted.’

  ‘And Kate-Anna told you this?’

  ‘She was sure about the baby being born, but not so sure of the rest of it.’

  ‘What else did she say?’

  ‘That was about all. Mary had written to her from Canada.’

  ‘Did she say where the baby was?’

  ‘Kate-Anna didn’t know.’

 
Mairi sighed.

  ‘Mary goes to Canada. She falls in love with a guy and she gets pregnant. The guy dumps her because of pressure from his family. She comes home, has the kid, knows she can’t bring it up herself and gives it to somebody who can. You can see how it all comes together.’

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Mairi.

  ‘That’s why Mary wanted to see me when she was dying. She wanted to tell me.’

  ‘There must be ways of knowing for sure. Your birth certificate, that kind of thing.’

  ‘I’ve got somebody checking it out for me. I’ll know by the time of the funeral. I want to know for sure if I’m burying my real mother. You live all your life believing something to be true and then you find out it’s not. That’s what I mean about secrets. Wouldn’t it be better to know?’

  ‘Not always,’ said Mairi. ‘And what if you’re wrong? How would you feel then?’

  ‘I’m sure. I know you doubt it, but it’s true.’

  ‘D’you want to try on this suit then?’ Mairi changed the subject. ‘I’ve laid it out on my bed, if that’s okay. Just at the end of the hall. Colin and Emma are in the other rooms.’

  The scents and decor of her bedroom were purely feminine and Cal imagined her there, despite himself. Bottles of perfume, cans of spray and pots of cream cluttered the surface of the vanity bureau. A hairdryer lay on the floor. The only masculine intrusion was the black suit, white shirt and black tie lying on the bed. Cal quickly swapped trousers. Mairi had correctly estimated that he and her late husband were about the same height. However, there was at least an extra inch in the waist. The collar of the shirt was a good fit, but Cal couldn’t fill the jacket. The touch of the material on his skin disturbed him. This was a dead man’s suit.

  He looked at himself in the mirror. It would do. He began to knot the tie.

  ‘How is it?’ asked Mairi from the other side of the door.

  ‘It’s good. Come in. See what you think.’

  She peered cautiously round the door, and then came into the room, looking him up and down, nodding her head in approval.