Capital Union, A

by Hendry, Victoria

  ‘He performed invaluable service for the Party, Agnes. His sacrifice will not have been in vain. I know that isn’t much comfort to you as his wife,’ he said. ‘We will all feel his loss keenly in the days to come.’

  But I wasn’t sure how Jeff drowning in his own lungs had helped any one. I had burned the divorce papers in the range and felt like I was destroying a weapon whose shiny blade reflected my true self.

  When they were gone, I rolled up the study rug and beat it in the garden. It made a hollow booming sound, but Mrs MacDougall didn’t look out. Upstairs I filled a bucket with disinfectant and wiped down all the surfaces and mopped the floor. I peeled the long, sticky strips of brown paper off the window and washed the glass with vinegar. Then I polished it with handfuls of newspaper, crushing the images of war, and the names of the dead, in my hand. I watched the faces of the politicians grow soggy and peel, and I threw it all in the fire, which sizzled and snapped. I sat on the floor of the empty study until midnight, but it didn’t become my room. Memories of Jeff played in my mind: I heard him singing with Douglas, saw him reading to me at the kitchen table about the war. I heard the mumble of his plans for the SNP, the dictionary that didn’t move past ‘C’. I was eighteen and I was a widow. It was almost 1943 and I was alone at Christmas.

  24

  On Christmas Eve, I walked across the Meadows to St Patrick’s Church. I wasn’t feart of the planes any more. I almost wanted to die, to feel an end to the grief that pressed on the back of my head as if its weight would bear me down to the ground, where I would freeze. The sadness was less for Jeff than for the death of my dream. My life with him had been no more than a gilded white lie I told myself. I had been stuck in his teeth, summer fruit picked without thought. Mother had been right about me. I wished Douglas had been the man to take me from my life on the farm, to carry me into a new world in his arms, command it with his voice to ‘open sesame’.

  The stars shone above the path across the Meadows, sending blue light through the trees’ branches that arched overhead. It was a cathedral without a roof, a long nave, the skeleton ribs of a whale that had swallowed me whole, like Jonah. I put one foot in front of the other, trying not to think about the future on my own, letting them carry me forward. I crossed the Cowgate, walked up the cobbled lane to St Patrick’s and went in the side door. It was brightly lit, and at the foot of the altar, the Virgin leant over the cradle to gaze at her child. Wooden animals slept at her feet. I put my hand on my stomach.

  The Mass began with Christmas carols. I sang the familiar words, but the woman in front of me turned round as if I was out of tune and I stopped singing. An hour later, as midnight approached, a hush fell over us. Above the altar, a silver cloth hung over the carving of Christ on his cross. We were waiting for his birth. There was no crucifixion here, but there were gaps in the congregation, and some women began to cry. Servicemen, home on leave, put their arms round their wives and stroked their bairns’ hair. Others, sailors from the port at Leith, stood grim-faced and alone, waiting to take Communion. I imagined Hannes somewhere far away, crossing himself as he received the wafer, genuflecting before the cup. I wondered what the prisoners were doing in Saughton – if Douglas was playing the harmonium at their service. We were all worshipping the birth of a child, who said we should love each other, but it was hard to find that love in this war. I had a cup of tea afterwards, and a piece of Christmas cake, before walking back over the Meadows. The ground was frozen solid, and the snowy ice cracked beneath my wellies.

  On Hogmanay, I went to bed. There seemed to be nothing to celebrate, although people crept out to the pubs with taped up torches, and huddled at the Tron at midnight. The seven hills of the city kept watch. We hid in darkness from the coming year, feart that Edinburgh’s first foot might be a bomber, but I knew they would be having a ceilidh at the farm with our neighbours. Mother always played the accordion, sweating as she smiled at the dancers flying past, insisting that she only drank tea, but accepting whisky because it was a special occasion. Once in a blue moon, she took what she called a Highland sherry, a wine glass filled to the brim, but then she only drank one. She said she would have to answer to the Lord in the morning for her sins, and winked at Dad, who always looked hopeful.

  As the days passed, it was so long since I’d had a blether with anyone, that my lips were sticking together. The postman brought letters of condolence from friends and family and there was one from Douglas. It had a blue sticker, with someone’s initials scrawled on it in black ink. I think it had been read before it was sealed in the prison and it made me feel like it hadn’t been sent to me. My eyes weren’t the first to read the good wishes. It was a burnt-out candle, a prayer for someone else.

  Dear Agnes,

  I offer my heartfelt condolences over the loss of your dear husband, Jeff. He was a tireless worker in the glorious cause of Scotland’s freedom, and he will be sorely missed. It might have made him happy to know that Sorley has been found, although wounded in both ankles. He pitched up at a hospital in Cairo after El Alamein. Perhaps his poem The Cuillin, his hymn to that glorious mountain range on Skye, might comfort you. Jeff helped me with this translation, and I know that you too will ‘rise on the other side of sorrow’.

  I hope that I will be leaving HM Guesthouse on March 10th, if not before, and that you will visit me at Ardhall. A friend has offered to entertain any sleuths, who might be in attendance, to tea in his pig sty, leaving us free to talk of more significant matters, perhaps of love, and all the things that warm the heart.

  Yours aye for Scotland,

  Douglas.

  I kissed the word ‘love’. Of all the words that poured from Jeff’s lips, it was the one I heard least, the one whose meaning he never understood. Douglas’ letter filled me with new energy. I stopped dithering about and on the sixth of January, 1943, I walked through the snow to the Assembly Rooms on George Street, and volunteered for the Land Army. I didn’t tell them I was pregnant. I tried not to think of it.

  I was to be sent to Laurelhill Nursery in Stirling at the end of the month. I had little to pack, and I mostly lay in bed in the guest room to keep warm, and listened to the wireless. On my last day in Edinburgh, Sylvia came to collect Jeff’s clothes for the Women’s Voluntary Service and drove me to the station. ‘Chin up,’ she said as she took out my bag, and closed the boot on his suitcases. ‘Best foot forward.’

  She cried as she waved me off, and I closed my eyes on the train, but couldn’t sleep. As we drew near Dumyat, I tried not to remember going to the rally with Jeff such a short time ago. It was too painful. My feelings belonged to two different people: the one who had married Jeff, and the one who had wanted to divorce him. I tried to think only of Douglas, imagine him as he stood on the platform at the rally, bold and brave. His name blotted out the small shadow of my husband that still clung to my heart like a wraith, twisting inside me. Stirling was quiet in the cold. A chimney sweep gave me a lift on his cart up to the nursery. ‘It’s a fine pass we’ve come to,’ he said, ‘when the nation is carried on the shoulders of a sweep and an army of lassies. Good luck to you, hen, not that you’ll need it here. They’ll treat you well. No POWs to mix things up.’

  He left me standing in a yard. Greenhouses stretched out to the side of the farmhouse, which stood on a low rise looking at the Ochils. There were houses close by, and the castle crouched on its cliff-top nest.

  ‘Welcome, my dear,’ said a woman coming out of the house. ‘I’m Mrs Ogilvie. We’ve been expecting you. I hope Rory wasn’t bending your ear on the way up.’ She was thin and elegant, even in her wellies. ‘Now, don’t stare – I used to be a catalogue model,’ she said, waving at her boots, ‘but Herr Hitler put the kibosh on that, and now I am stuck here. Now, let’s get you kitted out. They sent me a stack of the most hideous uniforms you can imagine. Why they want to dress you beautiful, young things as middle-aged men, I can’t imagine.’

  She threw scratchy shirts, ties and knee breeches on the bed in th
e spare room and said, ‘Take your pick. There is worse to come,’ and she held up a pair of brown lace-up shoes. ‘Just stuff them with newspaper, if they’re too long in the toe. They must have been expecting tattieboggles when they sent me this lot. Put on the dungarees for everyday wear. The other girls live out, and I don’t usually bring them in until picking time. You’ll meet the nursery man later. I believe they call him “Grumbling Jim” behind his back, but he’s not the ogre they make out. You’ll see.’

  Jim was standing at the door to the first greenhouse after lunch. He had steel-grey, curly hair, and was stocky, with very blue eyes. His shoulders were just beginning to stoop.

  ‘Another townie?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I replied.

  ‘That makes a change, then. Hard to tell in that get-up. Never was a uniformed organisation man myself. Luckily, I am too old for all that conscription palaver.’

  ‘You don’t look a day over twenty-one,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, a charmer – you’ll not get around me like that, young lady.’

  His skin was so wrinkled by the sun that he looked a hundred.

  ‘Did you fight in the last war?’ I asked.

  ‘Try the one before that,’ he replied. ‘Put me off for life. Empire is baloney, but I find it doesn’t pay to have an opinion, so I grow plants instead. Tomatoes won’t bother you with their beliefs. You can always find peace in a greenhouse,’ – he handed me a hosepipe – ‘but limited rain. The heaters dry everything out. Put that on a fine spray and off you go.’

  ‘Should I water everything?’ I asked. The vegetable seedlings stretched as far as I could see.

  ‘Everything except me,’ he replied, ‘and don’t forget their friends.’ He waved at the other greenhouses. ‘But if I see any of these boys paddling out the door, there will be hell to pay. I’ll be putting the kettle on at four. You’ll hear it whistle if you do the west greenhouse last.’

  It made me feel calm to water the tiny plants, each one a green thread in its tray. Jim had said they were called Blaby Special after a place in England. The sun broke through and shone on my face, warming the earth.

  Mrs Ogilvie put a hot meal on the table at 6.30pm on the dot, ringing an old school bell to tell us it was ready. I was famished and pleased to see she had roasted a chicken, but there was no meat on Jim’s plate. It was piled high with root vegetables and tomato jelly.

  ‘He is a vegetarian,’ said Mrs Ogilvie, ‘insists on it, although I tell him the world won’t stop turning if he has a mouthful of flesh.’

  ‘Some people don’t understand the meaning of the word vegetarian, although I don’t hold with labels, as I said. Pythagoras is my inspiration and he’s hundreds of years old,’ Jim proclaimed, salting his food without tasting it.

  ‘He’s dead, Jim,’ said Mrs Ogilvie.

  ‘That’s beside the point,’ he replied, ‘look how clever he was.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what went wrong for you, then. There isn’t a whole lot left between your ears,’ said Mrs Ogilvie, flicking him with her tea towel. ‘You’ll scare our guest off with your vegetarian nonsense, and she has only just arrived. You’ll have some chicken, Agnes, won’t you?’

  It tasted as good as Mother’s and the heart came back into me. I hadn’t eaten much at the flat. Mr Black had closed over Christmas. The woman in the post office hinted that he had had a nervous breakdown, and his wife was running the shop. I doubt Mrs Black would have served me even if I had gone in.

  25

  As the weeks passed, I began to feel at home. Jim planted out each crop of seedlings with the new moon, and muttered a Gaelic blessing over them. ‘It is the price you pay for being raised by a Highland Granny,’ he said. ‘I didn’t do it once and had to get up in the middle of the night and come to the greenhouse. The old ways gnaw inside your head until you do what they say. Darwin got it wrong. There is no survival of the fittest here. It is all to do with planting in the right season. You have to follow the moon for timing. She is the Earth’s clock.’

  ‘So you hold with the old ways, Jim?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve told you, I don’t hold with anything. It’s what you feel inside that makes the difference. The rest is just on the surface,’ and he squirted the hose at me. ‘Come and prick out these seedlings, madam, and, if you are very good, I might show you my special recipe for the compost, with the exception of my magic ingredient. That will go with me to the grave.’

  The tomato plants grew bigger in the early spring sun and Jim kept the heaters on as it was still cold at night. ‘The ministry men expect miracles,’ he grumbled, adding a little milk to the watering can.

  Mr Lamont rang the farm to let me know that Douglas would be released on the tenth of March and that he was starting a campaign to stand in the Kirkcaldy by-election as an SNP candidate. ‘He is in much better spirits now,’ he reported, ‘but come early as they are planning to let their jailbird fly with the dawn.’

  Mrs Ogilvie agreed that I could stay overnight at the Edinburgh flat so I could be on time for Douglas’ release. I arrived there at five to find Mrs MacDougall going out. She flicked a glance at my Ministry-issue trench coat, and decided to speak, after all. ‘This is a big improvement,’ she said. ‘I have to say, you sometimes looked a bit thrown together in those old clothes of Jeff’s mother’s. She was always so well turned out, but then that was back in the day. Glad to see you making a contribution to the war effort. It balances the scales.’

  I smoothed down my uniform, not trusting myself to speak.

  ‘I am sorry about Jeff,’ she said, ‘but I think it is better if we return to being nodding acquaintances. Our last… association wasn’t the most positive, although the Lord moves in mysterious ways. “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon,” Matthew 6:24, although we are but his handmaidens.’

  I heard her heels tapping down the street as I unlocked the door to the flat, but it jammed on the post behind it. When I got in, there was a booklet in brown paper, and I was surprised to find a condolence letter from Professor Schramml, postmarked Geneva. He was very upset to learn of Jeff’s death and wrote:

  Liebe Agnes

  Although we have never met, I feel sure you must have brought Jeff great happiness in the short time you were together. He sent me a picture of you on your wedding day and I must say I was struck by your loveliness.

  It grieves me that I am too old to take arms against the destructive force which is Hitler, and that the circumstances of war have brought so much tragedy into your young lives. In the not too distant future, I hope to return to my beloved Edinburgh, which was so good to me after the passing of my wife.

  Please give my kindest regards to Mrs MacDougall, if you chance to see her, as I am sure you will. I carry the memory of her most excellent soup close to my heart.

  Your most faithful servant,

  Dieter Schramml.

  I tried to imagine the kind-hearted professor in exile from the place he had made his home; all his possessions abandoned upstairs. I wondered if he would mind that I had lost his dictionary, or that an Austrian airman had slept in his bed. Maybe Professor Schramml would hate Hannes for being a Nazi. I wondered if Hannes really did support the Fatherland and Hitler, and had lied to me to escape.

  The flat was bitterly cold, and I pulled the mattress through to the kitchen to sleep by the range. There was no kindling so I got it going with torn-up pages from the London Scots for Home Rule booklet that had just come for Jeff. It was strange to see his name on a parcel, as if he was expected home. It seemed to be all about post-war reconstruction. I never knew Jeff had sent Professor Schramml a photo of me, but I wasn’t Mrs McCaffrey any more. That person had died with Jeff, and I wasn’t Agnes Thorne, either.

  Perhaps I was over-tired from travelling, or perhaps the work in the greenhouses had left me more bone-weary than I realised, but I slept in. By the time I cycled over to Saughton, I was just in time to see a piper leading a procession to the end of the drive with the tall figure of Douglas
at its head. There was a crowd of supporters and a newshound scribbling in a notebook while a photographer lined up a picture. ‘Any complaints, Douglas?’ he shouted. He was stooped from his time behind bars, thin and pale, and his beard was longer than ever.

  ‘None against the prison authorities, but the whole criminal system is in need of some reform, as is our whole social and economic condition,’ he said.

  His voice sounded just as warm and strong as I remembered.

  ‘What did you miss most behind bars? Have you changed your views? Do you have a message for Mr Ghandi on his fast?’

  But Douglas was walking on. He disappeared into a car before I could speak to him. A woman next to me said, ‘That was quite a moment. They composed a new tune for him on the pipes, Douglas Grant’s Welcome. We’ll be having the march and the victory yet.’

  ‘Where has he gone?’ I asked, trying to see if Mr Lamont was around.

  ‘I think they are heading into town for a supporters’ breakfast. I cannae mind where it was to be. Some nice hotel I expect, and then home to Ardhall. Are you a Party member?’ She was dressed from head to toe in blue and white.

  I wheeled my bicycle away without answering. I had been looking forward to this moment for so long, but he hadn’t seemed to be looking for me. Perhaps he had forgotten his letter in all the excitement of getting out.

  I tried not to cry on the train on the way back to Stirling. Douglas’ release was mentioned in three paragraphs on page three of The Scotsman, just above the Imperial Service Medal list of Scottish recipients, and a line about a child’s body being found in Leith Docks. No one knew who the poor wee mite was. I put the paper back on the seat where I had found it.

  26

  Mrs Ogilvie was so concerned at how upset I was when I got back to Laurelhill that she agreed I could go to Ardhall near Leuchars to see Douglas on the fourteenth of March. She even helped me to send a telegram saying when I would arrive.