Ghost Walk

by Alanna Knight

  Mr Macmerry smiled. ‘Was and still is, lass. Been here for years. Ever met him?’

  ‘No, but I’d like to look in on him. Say hello.’

  Mrs Macmerry had recovered from the shock that I was remotely connected with RCs. She shook her head, regarding me tight-lipped to make it quite clear that visiting a priest indicated feet trembling on the very threshold of Popery.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll make you welcome,’ said Jack’s father, his magnanimity earning a scorching look of disapproval from his wife.

  ‘We don’t need a Catholic church. There’s just a handful of them in the village. Nothing like our own congregation,’ she added proudly.

  ‘Nothing like. He has to go out to the remoter places and take services in the house for Catholics who don’t have a church,’ said Mr Macmerry, a piece of information which caused Mrs Macmerry to open her mouth in protest and then close it sharply again as we entered the road to the farmhouse.

  ‘There are still some old families like our laird Lord Verney who never turned at the Reformation and stayed loyal to the Stuarts. His carriage was at the railway station meeting that young nun who was on your train,’ said Mr Macmerry, handing me down from the dogcart.

  So that was the explanation, I thought, of why she looked so well-groomed. My mind raced ahead, picturing her visiting her family for the last time before taking her final vows.

  Setting foot for the first time in the house where Jack had been born and bred, square-faced and unimposing on the outside, I was pleasantly surprised by the interior. Dating from the beginning of the century, the kitchen was large and comfortable, originally intended to seat a large family and servants round an immense table, the size of a room in itself.

  When I remarked upon this I learned that the Macmerrys lived very economically in a positively feudal system. Nothing was wasted. The wives of their farm labourers dealt with Mrs Macmerry’s domestic requirements. Without wages. This service was expected of them as part of the rent-free accommodation they enjoyed in the tiny row of dwelling houses along the roadside and the model cottages on the Verney estate.

  Mrs Macmerry added to this account by telling me proudly that the younger members of the workers’ families were also recruited and expected to follow in their parents’ footsteps, if they were willing and had no other ambitions.

  If, however, they yearned for pastures new beyond the confines of the Eildon Hills, her disapproving expression told me that this was regarded as a sense of betrayal. She might have deplored the laird’s religion but she approved of his politics. The slave owners of America’s deep south could have learned nothing new from Jack’s mother.

  ‘We’ve put you in the best room, next to the bathroom and WC,’ she told me proudly as I followed her up a wide uncarpeted stair. ‘Come down when you’re ready. We have our supper at seven.’

  Left alone, the room met with my immediate approval; white-washed walls and low ceiling beams, an oak floor well-polished, spread with a few bright rugs. Made by Mrs Macmerry with help from the farm labourers’ wives, I fancied that the church’s annual sale of work would be an event not to be missed.

  Untouched walls were a pleasant change from the present fashion prevalent in most Edinburgh houses for heavily embossed wallpapers where every inch of floor was adorned by some small table or potted plant.

  Very agreeably, Jack’s home had changed little in the passing years and still clung to the uncluttered style that had existed before Queen Victoria ascended the throne, apart from the laird’s modern installations of running water and gas. Looking around approvingly at mahogany furniture, a large bed with snowy white covers and an armchair, chest of drawers and a vast wardrobe, I had been honoured indeed. This best bedroom was the one Jack and I would have after our wedding.

  The bow window with its upholstered seat looked towards the Eildon Hills. In the foreground and reaching as far as the eye could see before lines of trees intercepted, were fields of sheep. I had never seen so many, certainly their presence would be a singular advantage should I ever find myself sleepless and need to count them in the recommended manner.

  Unpacking my valise I withdrew my most recent purchase: The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katherine Green, and the latest exploits of Amelia Butterworth assisting a middle-aged police constable whose ‘sense of probability’ and specialised knowledge in cigar ash and different grades of writing paper I found immensely satisfying. Despite his contempt for what he dismissed as ‘women’s fiction’ I felt that Pappa would have thoroughly approved of PC Ebenezer Gryne.

  Like a guilty secret, I tucked the book away at the back of the drawer, alongside Thou Art the Man featuring female detective Carolis Urquhart, a one-time lady’s companion. The life of the author, Mrs Braddon, was almost as sensational as her books and certainly more scandalous. Rumour had it that she lived with her London publisher John Maxwell, a married man with two children, whose wife was confined in a lunatic asylum (shades of Jane Eyre and Mrs Rochester, indeed!) Mrs Braddon bore him two children, showing an independence of convention to be met with the approval of the women’s rights movement.

  This was the country of the ‘shilling shocker’, scorned and shunned publicly and vociferously by upright intellectuals but, according to gossip when we were in America, authors like Robert Louis Stevenson found them vastly entertaining leisure reading.

  Danny went so far as to wonder if in his days of hardship in California, Stevenson added to his meagre income by writing ‘such tongue-in-the-cheek nonsense’, under a pseudonym, all traces of which would have been destroyed by high-minded Fanny Osbourne, who spent sleepless nights guarding her husband’s literary reputation.

  Danny had encouraged my leisure reading. I could never find enough books to read and he certainly wasn’t afraid that they were secretly encouraging my ‘morbid’ ambitions, as Jack called them.

  We had both encountered enough violence and bloody deaths first-hand to realise that no fictional representation could ever equal the horrors of real life, but I recognised the resolve, the ambition that burned within me, in the heroines of these books.

  The seeds were there in my blood waiting to be cultivated and long before I read Lady Audley’s Secret, smuggled into Gran’s house in Orkney, those seeds had been helped to grow and thrive with Pappa’s help. Our games of ‘observation and deduction’ on railway journeys had certainly helped me solve my first case.

  And had I been a boy, my constant moan, I would most certainly have been encouraged to follow my illustrious father into Edinburgh City Police. No one would have had anything but praise and commendation for my decision. It would have been expected of me.

  But a female. Shocking, outrageous! Life was so unfair.

  And thinking of Pappa I knew that I could no longer delay writing to Vince and Emily to inform them of my impending marriage. They would be delighted, both were very fond of Jack, but I doubted whether my sister, with a young baby, would even contemplate the journey from Orkney. True my stepbrother might have news of Pappa’s present travels with his companion Imogen, but as junior physician to Her Majesty’s household, it seemed unlikely that Vince would be free to make the journey from London.

  With letters, short and little more than invitations, hastily written, I went downstairs and was rewarded by an open door and a glimpse of the farmhouse parlour where doubtless important and influential visitors were entertained.

  Here, alas, Mrs Macmerry had bowed to the conventions of the day and provided a well-off hostess’s background of hospitality: wax fruit and tropical birds under glass, some rather sombre thundery landscapes encased in heavy gold frames seeing their reflections in a gleaming highly-polished table and a set of rigid chairs daring visitors to lean back and relax.

  I headed towards the kitchen, identified by the pleasant aroma of roasting meat. As a future member of the family, indications were that meals would be served here, for which I was truly thankful.

  Mrs Macmerry’s brief nod acknowledged my presence w
hile two old labradors lying by the fire idly glanced in my direction. Even before her sharp warning to: ‘Bide now!’, deciding I wasn’t worth the effort of an exploratory sniff, they feebly wagged tails and resumed their slumbers.

  Informed that it was early yet for supper but would I like a cup of tea, I accepted gladly.

  After I had consumed two cups and my second scone with jam and cream plus a large slice of fruit loaf, a performance Jack’s mother watched with some astonishment – having politely declined a third cup – she asked weakly:

  ‘What would you like to do now?

  I asked for directions to the post-box.

  ‘There’s no collection until morning.’

  This was a mere excuse as I had already decided I was going in search of Father McQuinn who would soon settle that most urgent question and prove that Sister Mary Michael could not have heard from Danny three weeks ago.

  ‘I think I’ll take a walk,’ indicating the letters and my sketchbook.

  ‘Jack didn’t tell us you were an artist,’ she said accusingly.

  Was this hint of bohemian loose living to be held against me, I thought, as modestly declining such aspirations I wondered whether Jack had revealed my true vocation and I hoped earnestly not to be present when he launched that thunderbolt on his family.

  I met his father at the gate with two collies, his working sheepdogs, trailing obediently at his heels. I hadn’t enough wool to make me interesting to them either.

  ‘Where are ye off to now, lass?’

  I told him and was given even more precise instructions about the post-box.

  ‘There’s a grand view of the Abbey just down the road there.’

  Off I went. As soon as he was out of sight, I turned the opposite way clear of the house and made my way into the village we had passed through in the dogcart.

  At once I saw my destination. Father McQuinn’s church, its exterior somewhat shabbier than the prosperous Presbyterian kirk.

  The door was open. Empty pews, a few candles bravely burning and the lingering smell of incense.

  I called: ‘Hello?’ No answer. Back across the path to the modest and minute cottage adjoining the church, raising my hand to ring the bell, the door was opened by the priest himself.

  At first glance I was disappointed. I had hoped he might look like Danny but there was not the least family resemblance.

  He was on his way out, in a tearing hurry, formally clad in biretta, stole, clutching a rosary and leading a scared looking lad of about twelve years old.

  ‘Father Sean McQuinn?’ I said smiling and introducing myself. ‘I am Danny’s wife.’

  ‘Danny? Danny who?’ He stared at me for a moment before realisation dawned. ‘Oh – Danny. You must be Rose, of course.’

  Shaking my hand briefly, he indicated the small tearful boy at his side. ‘Sorry I can’t stop now. The lad’s father,’ he whispered. ‘He’s dying. Can we talk later.’

  ‘Of course. I’m here for a few days.’

  And rushing down the path, he shouted over his shoulder. ‘I’ll be in church later this evening. After Mass. We can talk then.’

  That would be fine I thought. Just an hour or two.

  But it was not to be. As I walked back towards the farm, the rain began and so it remained, unyielding in its ceaseless downpour and holding me trapped for the rest of the evening.

  The Macmerry’s main meal was at midday. Supper was a lighter version, meat and potatoes again but without the soup and with cake or scones substituting for a dinnertime rich plum duff or bread pudding served with cream.

  Afterwards I looked out of the rain-streaked window.

  ‘Oh dear, I could do with a walk.’

  Jack’s father came to my side. ‘Ye canna go out in that, lass. Ye’ll catch yer death.’ And shaking his head. ‘Set in till the morn, I’m afraid, lass.’

  And so it was. With neither excuse nor opportunity to leave the house I discovered that Jack’s parents obeyed the ancient country laws, bed at sundown to rise with the dawn.

  I wasn’t sorry to retire early either, rather than remain sitting idly at the kitchen table watching as Mrs Macmerry attended to the final chores of the day.

  My offer of assistance was declined with considerable embarrassment by his father, his ‘Bide where ye are, lass,’ managing to indicate that they might both be answerable to Jack for allowing me to get my hands dirty.

  I went upstairs, gratefully deciding that I was more tired in Eildon than I ever was in Edinburgh. Something to do with the air, I thought.

  I would see Father McQuinn in the morning, get it over with, my mind at rest before Jack arrived. Snuggling down into white linen sheets and snowy pillows smelling of lavender, I realised that Jack knew no such luxury under my spartan roof at Solomon’s Tower.

  My last thoughts before I slept were of him. Curiously I dreamed of Jack too which I did very rarely. Opening a door, he was waiting and, smiling, he took me into his arms.

  For the very first time, my familiar dream had forgotten Danny.

  I awoke haunted by a feeling of guilt that Jack had now replaced him.

  Chapter Six

  Next morning I came downstairs to the sound of female voices in the kitchen.

  Mrs Macmerry had a visitor, a neighbour, Mrs Ward.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Miss Faro,’ she said with a polite smile that made no bones about looking me over very candidly, so that I had the curious feeling of being well-discussed before I made my entrance. Her subsequent manner indicating that she had heard a lot about me, and none of it very good.

  It happened that Mrs Ward was also a long-time friend of the Macmerrys, as she revealed with a somewhat triumphant smile that her daughter and Jack had been friends since they were in the cradle together.

  I needed to know no more after that. The drift of the talk I had missed was instantly revealed; that Mrs Ward, her daughter and Jack’s mother had entertained hopes that the cradle would be exchanged in due course for the wedding bed. Hopes that this wretched intruder across the table had blighted.

  Mrs Ward had taken all there was to see of me in a glance – wild cloud of hair, a sleepy and dishevelled look – and I knew that once she took her departure, that first meeting would be the talking point of the village for a long while to come. It would make no matter how I shaped out in the end, first impressions were what counted and I would never redeem myself in their eyes.

  Leaving, Mrs Ward again shook my hand, formally polite. ‘It has been a pleasure, Miss Faro.’

  I looked sharply at Jack’s mother whose expression was impenetrable. She made no attempt to correct the mistake.

  Watching her take Mrs Ward to the door, where they stayed longer than was necessary, I wondered if she had not mentioned that her future daughter-in-law was a widow.

  Surely Jack must have told her, I thought desperately, as she returned and asked with careful politeness how I had slept.

  ‘You’ll no doubt be wanting just a slice of toast and a wee cup of tea, a mite of porridge, rather than a farmer’s breakfast.’

  She couldn’t have been more mistaken. From under covers on the kitchen range delicious smells of fried bacon drifted towards me and, always hungry, I sat down to a hearty farm style breakfast, the kind I did not doubt that labourers frequently consumed at a much earlier hour.

  Jack’s mother watched, clearly astonished. Having expected a lady-like refusal she was utterly taken aback at my ready acceptance of second helpings.

  ‘For such a wee lass, you certainly have a big appetite,’ she said as I demolished the second slice of thickly buttered toast.

  I treated myself to a little mind reading and decided her alarm was justified. She was picturing all Jack’s hard-earned pay going on food. I could hear her telling his father: ‘She’ll be eating him out of house and home.’

  I didn’t bother to apologise or to explain the reason why I ate so heartily when food was set before me. So often in Arizona I had gone without eating
for days on end. Square meals were not at the forefront of my mind as I trudged across the red desert with a baby, bent on survival and trying to keep ahead of the renegade Apaches. With only a fast-emptying water skin to keep us alive, I knew all about starvation.

  ‘What would you like to do today?’ she asked, briskly clearing the table and making room for a flour bowl and an assortment of baking dishes.

  ‘I realise you will be very busy and I don’t want to disturb your routine. I think I shall explore. Or,’ indicating the appearance of a bag of flour, ‘perhaps I could make myself useful,’ I added with a brave attempt at a smile at Jack’s father who had just come into the kitchen.

  ‘Nay, lass, there’s no need for that,’ he said. ‘You’re here to enjoy yourself, have a nice wee holiday and get acquainted with Jack’s homeland. You could start by having a look at the Abbey.’

  The offer to make myself useful had not gone past the canny Mrs Macmerry. ‘She could always gather a few eggs later, Andrew. That would be a help.’ Clearly she wasn’t rapturous either about the prospect of having to entertain me until Jack arrived.

  I said yes to eggs and, their usual hiding-places indicated from the kitchen door, and regretting the absence of my bicycle, I set off down the farm road.

  Not for the Abbey but in the direction of Father McQuinn’s church.

  The door was open. This was a Friday and I had a fleeting notion that today all good Catholics went to confession.

  Greeted by incense, sanctuary lights gleaming on statues of saints, but no Father McQuinn, I decided I would try the house next door. Presumably he had a housekeeper or someone I could make an appointment with.

  A rotund, rosy-cheeked middle-aged woman came to the door. Flourishing a duster and scrubbing brush she presented a picture of bustling health and energy.

  ‘The Father’s out on his morning calls at the moment, dear. He shouldn’t be long. Call back later, a couple of hours, say. He’ll be delighted to see you then.’