Despite the Angels (26 page)

“Girls don’t play rugby. It’s rough, Dad thinks. He stopped; it was dangerous, he said.”

“He goes to the Internationals.”

“So? Lucy, don’t be an idiot. You’re good at badminton. Look at your cups,” she waved a hand towards the shelf of awards. “All you’d get from rugby is bruises. Or a broken neck. You should know. You’re the physio.”

“He loves dogs. I’d love a dog.”

“Me too. Most people like dogs. What does that prove?”

“And he has a younger sister. So he understands what I have to put up with. Now get out!”

“OK, I’m going. Bring him home, so I can see him.”

Lucy was reluctant to bring Martin home. She wasn’t sure of him yet. She wanted to be sure. She had met his parents and his siblings, and their dog. She preferred the dog.

“Of course you do, Lucy, the dog is the most sympathetic soul. None of them are meant to be in your life, but it doesn’t matter for dogs. They can love anyone.”

“So when am I to meet your family and get to know the people who are important to my girl?”

“Not yet Martin my pal. Steer clear of them if you want this girl, her sister will recognise you and give you your marching orders. She had enough of you, being your wife in the Médoc.” Roki was watching, amused.

“Roki, why do you persist in trying to ruin everything? This is not the right woman for Martin and certainly not the right man for my Lucy. Now, work with us on this. Stop him taking advantage again.”

“Surely she should learn from this, how not to be taken advantage of?” Roki grinned. “Excuse my grammar.”

“Hump your grammar.” Trynor was getting angry. “And I don’t excuse the content of what you’re saying. This is not a learning opportunity for Lucy. But it could be for Martin, to learn to stop taking advantage of her. Have you forgotten what he did in Scotland? That was bad.”

“She got her own back. Wouldn’t give us a job when she could have. He had a bad time after that. Had to ‘go on the parish’. Lost all his self-respect. Can you blame Martin for trying to get it back? I’m not going to stop him. Why’s it so important they get together? They’ve done it already, starting thousands of their years ago.”

“She and David have excellent energies when they can be together. And their baby has asked us to let her grow up with them. She felt it was helping her to develop something special, but never got past a few months. She’s had lives with each of them separately, but the energies just weren’t the same, she says. She wants to be a child with the two of them.”

“Do you think you want to have children, Martin?” Lucy asked, very quietly.

“Oh no, she always hears me when it isn’t appropriate!”

“I suppose. Haven’t thought about it.” Martin stood up. “Will you have another?”

“Good man, Martin,” Trynor was relieved, “avoid that question.” Trynor and Roki continued to argue, as they watched Lucy and Martin talk.
Lucy’s eyes were shining and she looked quite beautiful. She listened to Martin as though he was the only thing in her world, and Martin believed he was.

Lewis glanced at the clock for the hundredth time. The hands had barely moved, maybe less than a minute since the last time he looked. He sighed, turned his body on the chair so that the clock would be behind him and picked up the piece of wood and his knife. He was making another figure for Dawn, this one would be a cow. By her first birthday, next June, he planned to have a whole Noah’s Ark finished. He whittled carefully for a few minutes, tiny curls of wood coming off under his fingers and falling to his lap. The light was dim in the small room and the wind howling outside crept in occasionally round the edges of the window, making the candles gutter. He could just see the tiny horned head beginning to stick out of the little block of wood.

The clock whirred, then struck the quarter. Just another fifteen minutes and it would be time to set off for the station to meet them. He hoped Dr Ross had been able to help the wee one. Dorothy had such faith in the old doctor back in Cupar and had insisted on bringing Dawn to see him. It seemed as though they had been gone for weeks, but it was only two days. Not long now and they would be home, and with Hogmanay coming soon, maybe he and Dorothy would dance again. His hands fell still as his memory took over.

Lewis was in the forge, the sweat pouring down his body as he manoeuvred the hot metal in the flames. It was an unusually still day and though the doors were propped open no air moved, except for the tiny gusts from the bellows, when young Robert remembered to pump. Robert was the new apprentice, taken on a few months ago, so that he would be of some use to the master when Lewis got his papers next year, and moved on.

“Come on, lad, a bit harder!” Edward McIntyre came back in from the office and immediately noticed the slacker. He was a tough master, thought Lewis, but that suited me and I have learnt a lot from him. Maybe I can run my own forge one day. He gave the horseshoe another tap and held it back into the heat, wiping the sweat out of his eyes with the back of his wrist. Mr McIntyre was watching him, so he worked carefully, wanting to demonstrate his skill. He wondered later how long the girl had been watching from the doorway, and blushed often when he thought of how she had seen him stripped to the waist.

When the shoe was finished and given its last dowsing in water, steam billowed in front of Lewis, adding to the wet on his face and chest. He took a handful of hay out of the bale they kept by the door for the occasional bribery of their reluctant equine customers and rubbed it over his face and chest. It was not very absorbent, but he enjoyed its fresh smell. He became aware of a tiny gasp from the doorway and looked up. There was a young woman looking at him. At least he assumed she was, but as the light was behind her all he could see was a slim curvy outline, the shape of a hat, and a glow of gold under it where the sun was shining through her hair. He whirled around, reaching for his shirt.

“Ach, no, do not bother. I….” She broke off in confusion. Lewis shrugged into his shirt, pulling it closed across his chest and moving into the doorway so that he could see her better. Her face was pink, but her eyes still strayed to Lewis’ chest, where he could see bits of hay were sticking to him. He picked off some of the bigger pieces and dropped them on the ground. The young woman watched them fall, and it seemed for a moment that she would pluck them out of the air, but then she was reaching into her bag and pulling out a buckle, which she held towards him with a trembling hand.

“Can you mend this? The tongue has broken.”

Lewis took the buckle and turned it over in his hands. It was big and heavy.

“This is not yours, I think? It is too big for a pretty girl.” He stopped, astonished at himself for being so forward and very slowly raised his eyes to look at her. Then his world stopped and his heart flipped over, settling down eventually to beat forever in a totally different way, even in a different place. Unable to think clearly about anything, he stared at her smile. It seemed to light up the forge, light up the street, light up the…

“Yes, yes,” said Trynor, “the smile always gets you, doesn’t it? Just as you get the result by having flowers on your chest. Not quite flowers this time, but grass seems to have done the trick. Too good a signal to drop. We’ll use it again, I suspect.”

“Take the young lady into the office, Lewis; and take her order properly,” said the master smith, “while I try to get it through this thick young skull here how to keep a fire hot.”

Lewis did up his shirt buttons with shaking hands and led the young woman through into the little room so grandly called the office. He offered her a seat, then took her details into the big leather bound ledger. Aware of her eyes on him, he tried not to let his tongue creep out from between his teeth as he concentrated on making the pen do his bidding. He formed the letters as well as he could, to suit the importance of the occasion. He had noticed her before, in the town, but did not know her name.

“Dorothy Milne? Then are you maybe related to my cousin, Neil Martin?”

“Yes, he is my cousin, too!” They laughed and fell into a discussion about their families, how they shared a cousin and yet were not related. And eventually they found themselves agreeing to go to the Martin family’s harvest ceilidh the next week.

And we did, thought Lewis, as he glanced again at the clock, and we danced as though no one else mattered and were noticed by everyone, including the minister, sour old killjoy that he is. Neil and the others had good fun laughing at my expense over that. And I got teased unmercifully when I got back into the forge that first day with the buckle in my sweaty hands. Lewis grinned as he remembered how easy it had been, getting to know Dorothy, and how he had been able to say pretty things to her that would have tied his tongue with any other woman.  None of their teasing matters now, he thought, because she is my own sweet Dorothy, we have our little Dawn, I am saving a bit from my work in the foundry and I will have my own smithy one day, maybe over in Dairsie, to be nearer the family, so Dawn can play with her cousins. Of course, he thought with a happy sigh, she will have brothers and sisters of her own to play with. It was not too bad for Dorothy, giving birth to Dawn, so maybe we can have many more. We will have to give the next one an ordinary name, or they will all think we are mad. But she was a beautiful new baby, who cried to greet the dawn. So
what else could we call her?

“What indeed? Why break a habit of millennia? Even though
it was actually the moon the baby was looking at, not the dawn” said Trynor, smiling indulgently at his old friend.

There was a crash in the street and Lewis went to the window and looked down. It was too dark to see, but he could hear the wind howling. The clock chimed seven, so he began to put on his coat. It could take longer, in this wind, to get down the hill to the station. He banked down the fire, to hold its heat for their return. Bitterly cold draughts sneaked in around the window frame and under the door from the stairwell, defying even Dorothy’s rag snake, which was pushed against the bottom of it. It would have been cold on the train too. Maybe the tearoom at the station would be open and they could warm themselves before setting off on the walk back home. Lewis went quickly over to the shelves and took a few coins out of the jar behind the saucepan, locked the door of their room and clattered down the stairs to the front door. As he opened it, it flew inwards with the force of the wind and he saw a large hoarding bowling along the street. He dragged the door shut, gathered his coat tightly around him and strode as fast as he could towards the station. It was a wild night and chimney pots flew through the air, one crashing at his feet. Lewis turned up his collar and broke into a trot. He always felt uneasy walking through the dark and this was particularly unpleasant, with a disembodied enemy throwing missiles.

At last he reached the station and ran down the steps. It was a little less windy on the platform, as it was below the level of the street, but the crashing noises had not stopped. As he watched, a tile fell from the roof onto the platform.

“All into the waiting rooms, please!” The stationmaster was raising his voice to be heard over the wind. “It is dangerous to stay on the platform. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”  Lewis did as he was told and joined a large crowd who were waiting for friends and relatives. There were no seats left, but he squeezed into a corner and leant against the wall, closing his eyes and allowing himself to daydream again.

It had been a Saturday night, so they were going to the music hall down near Greenmarket, hoping for a good show, with some of the new songs the lads at the foundry had been whistling. It was a mild night and Dorothy suggested they set out early, to have time to walk down to the harbour and look at the boats.

“I thought you did not like to see the sea?” said Lewis, as he put on his jacket.

“I do not like the real sea, it is too big. But the harbours do not worry me, when there is a wall around the water. It makes it look safer. But it is thrilling to look at those boats and think of how far they have been, how brave they are to go. All the way to the South Pole!” Dorothy’s eyes glowed.

“I do not think you can get to the South Pole in a boat. I agree, though, they are brave to go so far. I am uneasy on the ferry. It is good there is the bridge now, it does not wobble like that little boat.” Lewis stopped and looked at Dorothy in alarm. “But do not say so to Neil, or I will never hear the last of it. He is a terrible tease.”

“I will say nothing. My sister always grumbles about how she had to do all my share of the work looking after the fire when we were young, even though I did all the washing. I could never manage the ironing; the irons get so hot in the fire and you have to get so close and spit on them to test them. It’s worse now, that we do not have a range like mother’s. Heating the irons against an open fire is even more nerve wracking. You see the result.” Dorothy smoothed her wrinkled dress and smiled up at Lewis. He leant forward and kissed her quickly, appreciating the relative anonymity of Dundee compared to their home town and silently promising to buy Dorothy a range as soon as he could.

“I do not know how you can work with those hot fires in the foundry, it makes me feel weak even thinking of them.” Dorothy grinned at him again, her blue eyes flashing mischievously. “It is a small miracle that we met. If I had had to come any closer to that furnace you would have had to pick me up off the floor in a dead faint!”