He thought about this. ‘My mother goes for walks.’
‘When she’s tired? That’s freaky.’
‘Well, she comes back in a better mood, anyhow.’ He grinned. ‘I think she gets so she’s had enough of little kids. She’s a primary teacher. She’s the head now, but she teaches as well.’ He was trying to remember what Kate’s mother did. Had they been told? We weren’t told much, he thought, she’s my cousin and I don’t know anything. ‘What does your mother do?’
‘She used to be a nurse. She hasn’t had a job for a while.’
For a few moments they concentrated on the jigsaw.
‘It’s annoying about this bit – it’s kind of crucial,’ Andrew said. ‘I’ll have another look on the floor.’
He knelt down. Beneath the table he was facing Kate’s long legs in black trousers and her feet in pink socks. She had long narrow feet. As she had done, he lifted the edge of the rug, then ran his hand over the carpet, feeling the grittiness of scattered crumbs and finding a small green button, which he put on the window sill. He tried again. Kate’s foot moved, and his hand brushed her toes, so that the foot drew back sharply.
‘Sorry.’
‘It tickled.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s Ok.’ She came down beside him. ‘You have to sort of smooth your hand over – like this.’
‘That’s what I was doing.’
They were both under the table.
‘Did you play like this – with a rug over the table like a tent, you know? When you were little.’
‘No.’ She looked at him. ‘Did you?’
‘Me and Jack.’
‘I don’t have any brothers or sisters.’
‘You had friends though.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘It’s not the same, I suppose,’ he offered.
‘I never even had cousins.’
‘I suppose we didn’t count.’ He tried to think whether his father had any nieces or nephews. He did know that, of course.
Kate was digging in the pocket of her trousers. She turned to sit with her back against one of the table legs, knees bent.
‘I’m gasping for a fag,’ she said. ‘You want one? We could go outside if it bothers your Mum. Or blow it up the chimney, eh?’
‘I don’t smoke.’
‘Everybody does in my school. Nearly everybody.’
‘I play rugby,’ Andrew explained. ‘You can’t smoke if you play rugby. I know one guy that does, but he’s shot.’
‘I don’t play rugby,’ Kate pointed out and for the first time, the faint ghost of a smile flitted across her face.
‘Obviously.’ He watched her take a cigarette out, and from the half empty packet, a blue plastic lighter. ‘You’d better go outside. My mother’ll go mental if she smells it in the house.’
Kate put the cigarette and lighter away again. ‘That’s what I reckoned. I’ve been going outside. It’s bloody freezing though.’
‘Where d’you live exactly?’
‘A sort of suburb of Newcastle. Like a small town, with its own shops. Totally dead, believe me.’ She shrugged. ‘We go up the Bigg Market Saturday night but you don’t always get into the clubs. A lot of them ask for IDs now.’
‘I thought you were only fourteen?’
‘Nearly fifteen.’
For a moment Andrew felt as if he were younger than she was. Trying to be hard, he thought, but I bet she’s not.
The door opened and after a few seconds, Jack said,
‘Hide and Seek eh? Can anybody join in?’
‘Air raid warning,’ Andrew said, coming out. ‘Whole of Ross and Cromarty destroyed. This is the only house left standing.’ He was doing a Second World War project for Higher History.
Kate emerged after him, tucking her cigarette packet away again. She retreated to the chair she had been sitting in earlier, and the abandoned book.
Jack studied the jigsaw. ‘You’ve nearly finished.’
‘Bit missing. Thought it might be on the floor.’ Andrew pointed out the gap.
‘It’s here,’ Jack said, picking up the piece with the brown corner, and fitting it to the handle of the plough, completing it.
Andrew glanced at Kate but she was flicking through her book. He nudged Jack out of the way. ‘Pure luck,’ he said.
‘Powers of observation.’
‘Big head.’
‘Entirely justified.’ Jack fitted three pieces in quick succession.
‘Fuck off – I was getting on fine without you.’
‘Language, language, in front of ladies.’
Andrew nudged again, Jack nudged back, and they elbowed each other round the table, kicking at knees and ankles, each trying to knock the other off balance.
Jack stopped suddenly and moved away towards the fire. He dug at it with the poker. ‘Where’s Mum?’
‘Out with him.’
‘Where?’
‘A walk.’
‘It’s dark.’
They looked up together at the window. The garden was so dim now they saw only their reflections, and Kate’s. She was watching them.
The back door opened and they heard voices. Something tensed in both boys. Kate saw it and felt something tighten in her too, the old familiar clench of anxiety.
‘That’s them,’ Andrew said.
‘You going out tonight?’ Jack asked.
‘McGhee said he’d come round if his Dad would give him a lift.’
‘That geek.’
‘You went out with his sister, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah, but the older ones always get the brains. Natch.’
They both laughed. Kate glanced from one to the other. ‘Who’s McGhee?’ she asked.
‘His best mate.’ Jack grinned, shoving at Andrew again. ‘Old friend of the family.’
‘You’re not very nice about your friends,’ she said.
They looked at her blankly. ‘Who isn’t?’
Frances came in and was struck again by how all three seemed to belong together. Kate was flushed with the heat of the fire and for the first time looked animated instead of sullen. I will have to talk to her, Frances thought, but she dreaded it. ‘Anyone want tea?’ she offered.
‘Go on then,’ Jack said. ‘Christmas cake as well?’
In the kitchen, Frances hunted fruitlessly for the teapot for several minutes before remembering it had got broken at lunch-time. She would have to find her grandmother’s Coalport pot, kept in a cupboard and never used. She could not for the moment recall which cupboard so began dropping tea-bags in mugs instead. Around and between her legs the grey cat wove in and out, asking to be fed. Absently, she bent and picked him up, and he nestled against her, purring, pushing his head under her chin.
On the edge of thought, Susan hovered. ‘I wonder where she is?’ Frances murmured to the cat. Beneath her heart, a thin line of uneasiness hardened and she longed for Alec to be gone.
If they had stayed together, there could have been another child.
6
Frances had moved up to the house at Finnerty five year earlier. Before that, she and the boys lived in a small house with a patch of garden in the centre of the market town of Dingwall. She had saved up for this second house, wanting it for a long time. When she inherited some money from her grandmother, the house became possible. Buying it, she felt she had almost regained the status she would have had as a married woman. Two incomes make it easier to buy a good house but she had done it on her own.
It was not that she had kept her eye on any particular house, only on the idea of one away from the town on a hill, with a view of the Firth. The one she found was old and shabby and some of the ‘improvements’ made by the previous owners had to be undone. But it was a comfortable roomy place, and the garden was mature and sheltered.
‘I won’t move again,’ Frances told people who seemed surprised she had taken it on, when the Dingwall house was so ‘handy’ and her boys likely to leave home in a few years.
&n
bsp; Finnerty Farm, whose land surrounded her house (the original farmhouse), was owned by two brothers, one of them unmarried. You don’t meet many men as a primary teacher and her friends thought how nice it would be to see Frances fixed up. She deserved it, the married ones said, at least those who did not know Albert Ramsay. None of them knew about Kenny, just then hovering on the edge of her life. She had met him through a hill-walking club she briefly joined in an attempt to get herself away from the narrow circle of teachers.
Kenny did not do much more than hover at the edge even now, her friends observed, wondering if they might live together when Andrew left home. Goodness knows, it would be the making of him.
After Alec left, Frances drove to the supermarket and met there (as you always did in such a small place), half a dozen people she knew, including Christine, her senior teacher.
In the Station Café over a pot of tea and scones, they exchanged Christmas stories. Christine had daughters at the Academy and was Frances’s informant on the habits of teenage girls.
‘You put Don’s sneezing fit over the pudding into perspective,’ Christine said, when Frances had told her about Alec’s and Kate’s arrival on Christmas night.
Frances laughed. ‘Everyone behaved with great restraint. Even my father.’
‘How long is it since you’ve seen your ex?’
‘Five or six years. That was the first time for nearly seven years before.’ France buttered her scone. ‘It was the only time really, after the first year or so, when I tried to do anything about our situation. It must have been when Jack went up to the Academy. I suppose since they were becoming teenagers I thought I had a duty to let them see their father.’
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing much. I took the boys to Glasgow for a long weekend, to a hotel with a swimming pool and fitness room. The weather was foul so we didn’t do the any of the things I had planned. They weren’t much interested in the Burrell or Kelvingrove anyway. We got tickets for a match at Ibrox, through someone Albert Ramsay knew. I thought if Alec came up and met us, he could take them to that. I saw myself going to the Galleries then, but he didn’t even arrive till the Sunday. Let us down as usual, and me sitting in that hotel room feeling absolutely a fool. Still, the boys enjoyed the game, though I was terrified we’d go to the wrong end or something and get involved in violence. But there was nothing like that. Everyone was so nice, making room for us, lending Andy a scarf, buying them pies at half time. I thought, my God, there are some nice men in the world after all.’
‘So Alec turned up on the Sunday?’
‘He was like a stranger. He was a stranger. He had made an effort, he’d brought them presents and he left them with an enormous amount of cash. But despite all I’d said in my letter, he seemed to have the idea they were younger than they really were and the presents weren’t quite right. Well, Andrew liked Jack’s. I can’t even recall now what they were.’
‘How were the boys with him?’
‘Polite. I felt I’d made a huge mistake and upset my kids for nothing. They were very quiet that night, just watched TV in their room and said they were glad we were going home next day.’
‘Did Alec say anything about seeing them more regularly? I mean, you always gave me the impression he wanted to, you were the one who cut him off. It doesn’t sound like it.’
When Frances didn’t answer, Christine poured fresh tea for them both.
‘That’s what everyone thought,’ Frances admitted after a moment. ‘I let them. After all, there was some truth in it. Anyway, we set off home the next morning, and Jack said, when we were about half way up the A9, he said it’s OK Mum, I’m not bothered about seeing Dad. I thought Andrew was asleep in the back, but he wasn’t, he sat up and said, we don’t know him, do we?’ She shrugged. ‘I didn’t bother after that. No contact, nothing. I guess Alex must have felt the same.’
‘So he didn’t – ’
‘No.’
‘Oh well, if that was his attitude, after you’d made such an effort – ’
‘I don’t think it was ever his attitude, to be honest. It was Susan’s.’
Frances was dismayed to find herself talking so much about this, however safe she felt Christine was as a confidant, her oldest friend here, who knew more of her life than anyone but Kenny. She stopped, then just as Christine was about to change the subject, added,
‘Anyway, it appears Kate’s been in a bit of bother at school so he wants her to stay here for the rest of the holidays. God knows what I can do. I’m hoping you can give me a few hints about dealing with teenage girls.’
‘Frankly,’ Christine said with a smile, ‘I’d advise you to have as little to do with them as possible!’
By the time Frances drove up the hill again it was dark. Jack and Kate were watching television; Andrew and his friend Ross McGhee were in his room in front of the computer. Frances put her head round Andrew’s door.
‘Are you staying for tea, Ross?’
‘Yeah, he is,’ Andrew said, not looking up.
‘Would that be all right?’ Ross asked.
‘Fine.’
How polite other people’s children were. Did that mean Kate would be polite with her too? There was something about the girl Frances did not trust. I don’t know her very well, I must try to be fair, she thought. Perhaps what troubled her was the heart-stopping likeness to Susan. Or perhaps it was the impossibility of reconciling this Kate with the infant who had been taken away from her.
When the telephone rang in the evening she assumed it was Alec, who had promised to call Kate regularly, but it was Kenny, just back from spending Christmas with his former wife, her present husband and his grown-up son and daughter-in-law.
‘How are you? Good Christmas? Survived it?’
‘Yes, survived,’ Frances said. How about you?’
‘Missed you. Missed Jock. Calum and Gail don’t give him enough to eat. He’s looking terrible.’
‘Rubbish. That dog’s far too fat. Like you. I expect you’ve put back all the weight you lost on your diet.’
Kenny sounded momentarily gloomy. ‘Oh I dare say. But it’s enough to drive you to it, staying with your ex-wife. My ex-wife, at any rate.’
‘It didn’t drive me to it. Or drink either. I know you’ve been drinking a lot, Kenny, you always do.’
He had picked up her allusion and brushed aside this reference to his drinking. ‘How do you mean? You didn’t spend Christmas with your former spouse, did you?’
‘I did.’
Silence, while Kenny put together all the facts he could muster about Frances’s marriage.
‘What happened?’
‘He turned up on Christmas night.’
‘On his own – or with – ’
‘Oh no, but he had her daughter with him, my niece Katy who’s about fourteen. She calls herself Kate now.’
‘Well, well.’
‘Why don’t I come over tomorrow? Or you come here? We can catch up then.’
‘You come to me. It sounds as if your house is full of people I’d better not meet.’
‘Only Kate, now. She’s staying over New Year but Alec’s gone back south.’
‘Right then.’ He paused, and she could hear his slightly asthmatic breathing. ‘Tomorrow. When?’
‘I’ll come after lunch. We can decide what we’re doing about Hogmanay, if anything.’
‘I was hoping to drink myself into oblivion as usual. Only joking,’ he added hastily.
‘I wish you were. See you tomorrow.’
As usual, he left her feeling an odd mixture of exhilaration and dismay. The dismay, of course, was constant: that she should choose only two men in her life of any importance to her, and both were drunks. Or who, at any rate, she thought, trying to be fair, are much too fond of drink.
The next day, when she came back from Kenny’s at five o’clock, she asked Jack if Alec had called.
‘No, don’t think so.’
‘Where’s Katy?’
Frances was taken aback. ‘She won’t know her way around! I hope she sticks with Andrew or he makes sure she knows where to get the bus – ’
‘Don’t worry, Mum. She’s well used to looking after herself, I’d say.’
‘Do you think so? Should I make supper at the same time as usual?’
‘Call Andy and ask which bus they’re getting.’
‘As long as Kate’s with him …’
Jack drifted back to the television and Frances began to prepare the meal, half listening to the radio news, but really thinking about Kate, remembering her as a baby and remembering Susan too. After all this time it was impossible to see Susan straight. None of them knew her now, had not known her for thirteen years. Even then, given what happened, they had obviously not known her as well as they should have done.
Frances felt that old combination of anger and frustration. They could still be prodded into life, the emotions that had created a breach lasting years. Looking back, Frances did not blame her father for his reaction. She had been grateful for her parents’ support after Alec and Susan left, sheared off from the family like branches from a lightning struck tree. She had imagined them flourishing elsewhere, rooted in a different soil, but perhaps they had not. She was beginning to see them differently.
What had happened to Susan? How was she unstable? She recoiled from the word, standing by the sink, her hands in cold water, a potato in one hand, knife in the other. She was lost now to the kitchen and the reasonable radio voices.
She was in the house where she had grown up, she and Susan and Gillian. There, in the comfortable West End of Aberdeen, in a stable home with two fond parents, they had lived through their childhood and adolescence. They had gone out every weekday morning in navy uniforms to walk a mile and a half to the High School. They had come home at half past four to television and tea and homework, to a life so safe and ordinary there were no excuses at all for oddness.
‘It’s because she’s the middle one,’ Frances had once heard her mother say to their Aunt Barbara, a childless schoolteacher. ‘Don’t you find it’s the middle ones that are awkward?’
Tell Me Where You Are Page 5
