Ian was scandalised. ‘Mairi McGloughlin, what a thing to say.’
‘Are you sure you want to marry such an old fuddy duddy?’ Mairi asked Bella. She was amazed at herself. New clothes, the admiration of young men who had not grown up with her and who had not, thank Heaven, seen her in Ian’s old dungarees and her rubber boots, had been, she felt, good for her morale. She could never have spoken like this before Bella even a year ago. ‘Take your pride in hand, Ian, before it ruins the best thing that ever happened to you. Get married now. You’re on your way. What more do you want?’
‘I want nothing more than Arabella Huntingdon,’ said Ian and it was at Bella that he was looking.
‘Shall I come to you in my shift, like maidens of old, my lovely poet? Is that what you want?’
Mairi got up but they did not notice her going; their eyes were only for one another. She would go out, one last walk along the capital’s exciting streets. Tomorrow she would return to Windydykes farm and she would put her lovely clothes away with a prayer that she might soon need them again.
Ian was not in the hotel when she returned and eventually she ordered a light meal from room service. She checked Ian’s room again before she got ready for bed but still he had not returned.
He knocked on her door just before she went down for breakfast the next morning.
‘I should have got a message to you,’ he said and he was blushing with embarrassment. ‘I took Bella home.’ Then he looked at her directly. ‘I stayed with her.’
‘Have you had breakfast?’ asked Mairi demurely.
Ian looked at his wee sister and the hot colour came and went in his face and then he laughed. ‘You’re a wicked girl, Mairi McGloughlin,’ he said. ‘Come on. We’ll have breakfast and then get that train home. I’ll need to get a second book out faster than ever now.’ He steered her away from the lift to the staircase where there was more privacy. ‘We have decided. I’m going home but I will get a special licence and as soon as it’s granted she’ll come north. Maybe there’ll be time for Milly to make you a bridesmaid’s dress.’
Mairi threw her arms around him. ‘Oh, Ian, I am so happy for you and Bella, so happy. Bella doesn’t mind not having a big wedding?’
‘Mind? Can you picture the eyes of the villagers if she turned up in her petticoat, and I wouldn’t put it past her, especially after last night,’ he finished quietly, enjoying his memories. ‘She is so wonderful, Mairi, and I don’t deserve her but I’ll try to make her happy. Come on, are you hungry? One last big breakfast you don’t have to cook.’
They went downstairs into the magnificent dining room which always filled Mairi with awe. Ian seemed not to notice his surroundings, to take for granted the elegant furnishings, the linen and china, the dutiful but not servile waiters. Oh, yes, he would fit very easily into Bella’s world. But Mairi, though she could enjoy this life for a few days now and again, would only really be happy among her fields. She would only be really happy when . . . no, O, that way madness lies . . . she would not think of Robin.
‘Are you going to ask Robin to stand up with you?’ The words blurted themselves out.
‘That would be wonderful but I doubt there’ll be time. It shouldn’t take too long to get the licence, and by the time even a cable got to Rome and Robin got leave – if it’s the middle of a school term – we’ll be married. Married, Mairi, can you believe it? Married, to the most wonderful woman in the entire world.’
His infatuation did not get between the lover and an enormous breakfast. Mairi, on the other hand, ordered tea and toast and had trouble forcing the toast down. Robin loved Ian and with Ian gone there would be one fewer reason for Robin to return to the village.
Her lovely new clothes were packed into her suitcase. It was a new suitcase and had looked so exciting in the farm kitchen but in the opulence of the hotel bedroom it seemed shabby.
‘Never mind, little suitcase,’ she consoled it. ‘I think you’re marvellous and I will use you every time I travel.’
She sat back on her heels as a picture of a nine-year-old Mairi in a flannel nightgown sitting at a window waving to the London train came into her head.
‘What did I tell you I would wear?’ she asked the long-ago train. ‘I think I used to have a passion for red gloves but I don’t remember. That wee Mairi no longer exists. And this Mairi has grown out of thinking brilliant red is a colour for redheads.’
*
Ian took out his jotter and his pen when they were settled in the carriage and Mairi tried to lose herself in a book but she was still too excited by train travel and so, until the conductor came to call the first sitting for lunch, she looked out of the window at the wonder that was England, that green and pleasant land.
Faster than fairies, faster than witches . . . The poem from childhood came back, word for word. Robin had recited it so well at his Dux prizegiving. She would tell . . . no, she would not.
The words ran through her head as they raced through the countryside and halted for a moment when the conductor dragged Ian from the depths of Creation.
‘Did you not order lunch, sir, the first sitting?’
Ian blinked at him several times and then smiled. ‘Lunch, of course. My sister must be hungry.’
He was beginning to speak like Bella, if not to sound like her. His accent was Scottish but his language was different.
I like it, thought Mairi. My brother the poet. I wish, I wish that Dad had lived to see him acknowledged, to read these beautiful words.
*
Colin was not alive to read his son’s words but hundreds of others were. The small leather-covered book sold out within a few weeks of publication and was reprinted. Then letters with foreign stamps arrived and yet more letters from Ian’s publisher: the book was to be translated into French, into German, into Russian. Ian was asked to contribute to literary journals and even to be an after-dinner speaker.
He took it all in his farmer’s stride. ‘Goodness, Mairi,’ he said. ‘It’s an awesome thing that a man can put money in a bank just by sitting at his own fireside. If I did everything these people are asking me to do I’d never have time to write. And as for being an entertainment after too many well-fed people have eaten too much food . . .’
The wedding was to be at the beginning of May and Arabella arrived, together with her maid and her chauffeur and several suitcases, and installed herself in Arbroath’s best hotel. The Big House stood empty waiting for its new tenant and they drove up one day so that Arabella could say goodbye to it.
‘I loved this house, Mairi,’ she said. ‘The best games of my childhood were played here, and here I saw Ian for the first time, my knight in shining armour. I would like to have been married from here.’
‘Why did they sell?’ There, it was out. It was none of her business but Mairi wanted to know.
Bella seemed to understand her worry. She smiled as she turned away from the house and walked towards the car. ‘Oh, nothing so melodramatic as trying to thwart us. It’s retrenchment, nothing more. Not everyone made money out of this ghastly war, and poor Uncle Humphrey was harder hit than many. He needed to raise some money and it was a simple choice between Scotland and England. No one really looked on this place as home, just really a little place to come to for shooting.’
Mairi looked at the ‘little place’. The farmhouse of Windydykes plus the steading would no doubt fit nicely into the ballroom.
‘And your home, Bella, in Surrey?’
Bella looked at Ian, who was contributing nothing. ‘Well, I suppose it’s a bit grander, would you say, Ian. It’s older, Mairi, Elizabethan. When you come we’ll go round. I don’t believe I have been in every room; should be quite fun, Ian. We might find some ghosts or some treasure. He won’t be able to say he has nowhere quiet to write, Mairi, and there’s plenty of room for you. I shall enjoy having a sister, if you’ll let me enjoy it, that is.’
Mairi had the terrifying notion that Bella’s idea of having a sister was
to spend as much money on said sister as possible. She abhorred the idea but she rightly interpreted Ian’s warning look and said nothing. There would be plenty of opportunity to avoid Bella’s well-meaning generosity. They would be married on Saturday, a simple ceremony with Mairi as maid of honour and young Angus as proud groomsman. Milly and Mairi would serve a wedding breakfast at the farm and the newlyweds, with Bella’s maid, would drive off on their new life together straight from there.
Ian had asked Robin’s father to act as Bella’s father since Sir Humphrey had refused to participate in something he could not approve, but at the very beginning of the ceremony, just as they stood quietly waiting for the arrival of the bride, there was an interruption. A second car hurtled to a stop at the door and there was Rupert.
‘I couldn’t not be here, Bella my sweet. I don’t approve, think you’ll make one another miserable in a month, but here I am to give you to the poor poetic blighter, if you want me to. Maybe that’s some kind of blessing that will bring you both luck.’
Bella started to cry and threw herself into her cousin’s arms but as Mairi began to wonder if a weeping bride would be welcomed by her groom, Rupert stopped her.
‘Come on, old thing. If he sees you with great red-rimmed eyes he might well throw you back at me and I’ll have driven five hundred miles on devilish roads for nothing.’
Bella sniffed, breathed deeply, and blew her nose delicately on a piece, it seemed, of gossamer. Then she awarded Rupert a tremulous smile and took his arm. ‘You don’t mind, Mr Morrison,’ and, preceded by the Dominie and followed by Mairi, began her walk down the aisle.
It is doubtful if Ian even saw Rupert. His eyes were on Bella’s beautiful face. She had chosen to wear not white but a dress in her favourite salmon pink and a small pink hat with a tiny veil that just covered her eyes. Mairi’s new dress was in pale green and she too looked lovely.
She stood behind Ian and Bella as they made their vows in strong, clear voices and she tried hard to think only of them. This was their day and it would be as happy as the small family group could make it.
There, it was over, they were man and wife. Mairi heard a burst of glorious music and looked round and only then realised that the music was in her head. There was no one in the church but the small party.
‘There should have been music.’
Bella had certainly given up a great deal to wed the man of her choice. Had she married Rupert or someone like him, there would have been organ music and banks of exotic flowers, rich, well-dressed guests, bridesmaids in beautiful designer gowns, but Bella seemed to be perfectly content with her simple wedding. She threw her bouquet which Bert caught and dropped as if it were red hot.
With Rupert’s car there was plenty of room for the entire party and the minister to be driven back to the farm and if Rupert winced at the paucity of his cousin’s reception he gave no sign but danced with Mairi and then with Milly to the tunes played by Mr Morrison’s ancient gramophone. Bella and Ian had eyes only for each other and they had to be reminded to eat and to cut their cake, made three weeks before by Mairi, and decorated with roses by Milly.
Then it was time for them to go and Rupert helped his cousin into her fur coat, since the day had grown chilly and they had a long drive ahead of them.
‘You’ll come and see us soon, Mairi,’ begged Ian, ‘and you’ll keep in touch about . . . everything, the farm and everything,’ he finished lamely.
‘Of course I’ll keep in touch. Bella’s postie will get as tired of me as old Davie got of Bella.’
‘This is the worst time for me to leave you in the lurch . . .’
She stopped his worries with her hand. ‘Ian, haven’t I three men coming for interviews tomorrow and I have Angus and Bert as soon as the school is out? You have a whole new life ahead of you . . .’
‘Which I can’t enjoy to the full if I have a wee sister to worry about.’ He turned her around so that they were both facing the little house where they had been born and brought up. ‘It’s not so easy to leave now as I thought it would be, Mairi. Part of me stays here.’
‘Aye, but it’s time for you to leave, Ian. I’ll come to visit you both as soon as I can and I’ll write to you every week. There, I can say no fairer than that.’
‘After our honeymoon trip . . .’ he began but she turned him again to the car where his wife was waiting.
‘I know there’s room and I know Bella really wants me . . .’
‘And if you don’t get a better offer,’ he interrupted her and they both laughed.
‘Bella waited for you and the look on her face says you were worth it, but this is her wedding day and you have kept her waiting long enough.’
She walked with him to the beautiful sleek motor car where Rupert was standing talking to his cousin through the open window.
‘Bye, Bella, be happy,’ she said sincerely as she kissed her sister-in-law.
Ian turned to Rupert and saw the outstretched hand. ‘Welcome to the family, Cousin,’ said Rupert and Ian could say nothing but only shake the hand that had once been withheld from him.
He hugged Mairi and then slipped in beside his wife; the chauffeur started the engine and the motor car, with Bella and Ian almost hanging out of the window waving, drew away from the farm.
Mairi was left with Rupert but there was no shyness now. ‘Well, that’s that,’ he said. ‘They make a handsome couple.’ He gestured to his own car. ‘Must be off,’ he said. ‘Staying with friends in the area.’
‘Goodnight then, Captain Grey-Watson,’ said Mairi.
He laughed. ‘Goodnight, Rupert,’ he said. ‘Are we not family now? It’s a strange new world, Mairi, and perhaps it will be a better place for us all. Make some sense of four years of carnage, I do hope,’ and to Mairi’s surprise and even greater embarrassment he bent and kissed her very lightly before he climbed into his motor car and drove away.
It was a lovely evening and Mairi stood for a while just reliving the last few hours – Bella’s beauty, Ian’s obvious happiness, Rupert’s generosity of spirit.
‘It’s a strange new world,’ she repeated to Milly who had come out with a shawl for her, ‘and a better place for us all.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
On 21 June 1920, mid-summer’s day, Mairi woke up feeling, for some unaccountable reason, serene and at peace. She was, as far as she knew, about to lose the home where she had been born and where she had laboured, lived and loved, laughed and cried, mourned and rejoiced, during all those years. There was no reason, except that it was a perfect morning, for her to feel so happy.
The sky was a deep blue, and the fields stretched out in all directions from the farmhouse like the spokes of a particularly verdant green wheel. She could hear the hens clucking happily just outside her window as they searched in the dust for crumbs or seeds.
And then she heard the sound of the postman’s bicycle bell and she ran downstairs without bothering to tie back her hair. A letter. It had to be a letter from Ian. But he was on his honeymoon and had promised postcards. Who else would write? Robin?
It had to be Robin.
She threw the door open. ‘Hello, Davie, you’ll have a cup of tea and a bap?’
‘I won’t say no,’ he said, which was what he always said.
He handed her the letter. She looked at the writing and the bright day dulled. It was not from Robin. Neither was it from Ian. She looked at it as if she stared hard enough she might see through the cheap envelope to the ill-written signature. The envelope was flimsy and her name, Miss McGloughlin, was written in block letters in a poorly educated and laborious hand.
‘Are you no going to open it, Mairi?’
Mairi looked from the envelope to the old postman’s honest craggy face. ‘I can’t think who it could possibly be from. There’s an old friend writes to me sometimes when she’s needing something but even her writing is better than this.’
Davie Wishart sighed and flexed his bunions inside his c
omfortable old shoes. ‘Have you got the kettle on, lass?’
Flustered, Mairi looked up again from the letter. ‘Sorry, Davie. I hoped it was from . . . my brother.’
‘On his honeymoon? You’ll be lucky. What a bonnie bride she must have made. You’ll have a likeness somewhere.’
‘The beautiful bride and, Davie Wishart, her very handsome groom had a likeness taken in London. When it arrives I’ll show it to you.’
Davie made himself comfortable at the table and began to spread butter on a soft, fresh morning roll. ‘A fairy story, my missus calls it, except it’s the poor boy marrying the princess.’
‘The princess married an up-and-coming poet,’ Mairi reminded him as she poured the boiling water into the teapot.
‘Aye, imagine a farm laddie writing poems. It’s the war has changed everything for the better.’
Mairi decided not to remind him of the legion of farm laddies who had written poetry before Ian McGloughlin and whose poems had not stopped the worst war the world had ever seen. But it was going to be better. It would never happen again. At last the world had learned a salutary lesson. She smiled at Davie, poured the tea, and turned again to her letter. It had been written from an Arbroath address but it was not one with which she was familiar. She turned the lined piece of grubby paper over but the signature meant nothing to her and she turned back to the beginning of the letter.
Dear Miss McGloughlin,
I saw in the paper about your bruther.
Oh, no, thought Mairi, a begging letter. Many of those had come among the letters of congratulations.
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