The Shadow of the Sycamores (16 page)

Throwing off the bedclothes, he went out into the narrow hallway, with the intention of going to the smaller bedroom to acquaint his wife of his decision, but the clatter of dishes told him that she was already up. When he went along to the kitchen, he discovered that she had been up for some time – the fire in the range was blazing merrily, steam was issuing from the big black kettle and two places were set on the pristine white tablecloth.

‘I hope you slept well, my dear,’ he said, cautiously.

Her expression was inscrutable. ‘Yes, thank you.’

Her bleary, red-rimmed eyes told a different tale but he thought better of arguing and sat down to drink the tea she
poured out for him. This was the normal procedure first thing in the morning. It was followed by him washing and shaving in the little scullery and then returning to his bedroom to dress in his black suit. He could cope with the buttons on his snow-white shirt but the task of fastening the stud at his high, starched collar was always carried out by one or other of his women-folk and they also saw to the fashioning of his dark tie.

Back in the kitchen for these two items to be seen to, he glanced at the wall clock and did not know whether to be glad or sorry that it showed quarter to seven, fifteen minutes before he had to open the shop. He sat down at the table again and gestured to his wife to do likewise.

‘You want to say something?’ she prompted.

His mouth was full of tongue, a most unusual experience, and the two sides of his throat seemed to be glued together so he made several chewing movements to get some moisture in his mouth. ‘I have been thinking, Catherine,’ he got out at last, ‘and I realise that I was totally unreasonable last evening.’

‘You could say that,’ she murmured dryly.

‘You must understand that I have not been influenced by what you said when I tell you that I have changed my mind. Fay is quite at liberty to marry that boy …’ His wife’s slight frown made him correct himself, ‘to marry the boy she loves. I still do not consider him … worthy of her but perhaps he will prove his mettle as he grows older. When I was under the impression that the courtship would end long before it came to marriage, I made a very rash offer but I am still prepared to honour it – fifty pounds and they may do with it what they will.’

He looked directly at his wife now, expecting her to be profuse in her thanks but she was regarding him coldly.

‘So that is your decision? Half of what you originally led them to believe?’

‘As I said, that offer was made when I thought …’

‘I am quite sure that Henry is not marrying Fay in order to get your money.’

‘Perhaps not but I am just as sure that he will not refuse it.’

She gave a small, lady-like snort. ‘I would not be so sure of that, my man, if I were you.’

‘We shall have to wait and see then. Now, I will get the pony and trap ready for you and you will go to The Sycamores to impart the good news … and bring Fay back with you.’

At The Sycamores, things had gone much further than either Joseph or Catherine could have imagined. When Janet told her husband the night before about ‘the poor young lassie’s father throwing her out’, he had applied his not inconsiderable knowledge to trying to find a sensible solution and had roused her in the middle of the night to tell her what had occurred to him.

‘In Scotland, there is what is called an “irregular” marriage ceremony. Both the parties concerned make a declaration of their commitment to each other in front of at least one witness and this has to be recorded in Aberdeen to make it legal.’

Janet looked somewhat sceptical. ‘But doesn’t the witness need to be a minister or a member of the clergy?’

‘No. Anyone is acceptable – an ordinary man or even a woman – and I am quite willing to fulfil the task.’

‘But Henry might want Max to do it … as his best friend?’

‘If that’s the case, Max will no doubt be pleased to step in and perhaps Fay would like you to be present too.’

Fay and Henry were given this news straight away and they lost no time in making their declaration of commitment to each other before Max and Janet, their chosen witnesses. By the time Catherine arrived at The Sycamores, bride, groom and witnesses were on their way to Aberdeen to have the declaration legalised. Catherine almost swooned when Innes Ledingham told her but, perfect gentleman that he was, he revived her with a small glass of brandy and sat with her for over an hour to make sure that she was well enough to drive the trap home.

As she drew nearer to Drymill, her heart began to churn with the fear of Joseph’s reaction to this latest development.
She expected him to fly into a red-hot fury but he closed the shop and stumbled, white-faced, upstairs to sit down.

‘Do not take it so badly,’ she urged. ‘How were you to know that they would take the law into their own hands?’

‘If I had not acted in such a ridiculous, uncalled for manner …’

‘It is too late for ifs. The deed will have been done by now and we will just have to accept it. You
will
accept it, will you not?’

‘I have no choice,’ he muttered, ‘but I would have wished things had turned out differently.’

‘At least, as Mr Ledingham assured me, they were in separate rooms last night so that is a blessing. Fay has committed no sin.’

At that moment, the irregular marriage was being recorded and thus made legal and, although the room was small, dim and not particularly clean, Fay scarcely noticed it. The wedding ring had been bought from a jeweller on their walk from the railway station and, when Henry slipped it on to her finger, she considered herself the happiest girl alive. The registrar was a tall, lanky man with grizzled hair and a bushy moustache, abrupt in his manner, even accusing – as if they were too young to be married. He had some difficulty in pronouncing Henry’s real first name and got it out eventually with a deep scowl. But what did any of that matter? In no time, the ceremony, as such, was over. Max and Janet signed their names in the large book on the table first, then Fay, then Henry who had been told that he must sign the foreign name to make it legal.

Out in the street again, Janet said that Innes had given her money to treat them to a meal before they went back, so they all trooped into the Royal Oak Hotel in the Castlegate where, for the first time, Fay wished that she could have been wed with all the people she knew and loved – even her father – around her. Noticing her sadness, Max did his best to amuse them by telling them anecdotes about his time on the farms. Janet took this up and had them smiling about some of the
awful kitchen maids she had had to put up with. Determinedly shaking off his despair at giving Fay such a drab wedding day, Henry told them something of his time as orra loon at Craigdownie and the bride surprised them all with quite humorous descriptions of awkward customers she had served in the pharmacy and some of the daft things they asked for.

‘Old Mrs Robbie used to come in for a “sleepin’ poother” for her cat because it kept her awake all night with its yowling. And wee Billy Fraser once asked me to make up a black-sugar-ellie bottle to look like the awful cough mixture his mother bought for him. I didn’t know that black-sugar-ellie was liquorice and water shaken together and left standing for days so I just gave him his usual mixture and told him it would do him more good than black-sugar-ellie – whatever that was.’

The whole party was in a more festive frame of mind when the meal was over so Max suggested that they had a look round the city for an hour or so before they got the train back to Corrieben. Having once spent a week’s holiday in Aberdeen with an old aunt, Fay guided them down Constitution Street to the beach. The sun was at its height now and it seemed the right thing to do to take off their footwear and skip along the sands at the edge of the sea, the ladies draping their long skirts over their arms in case they got wet. They were all laughing breathlessly when they reached the estuary of the River Don and sat down on the grass to make themselves presentable for the next part of their expedition – up King Street, long and straight, lined with tall tenements of glistening silver granite. Janet was fascinated by the bustle in the shops on the ground level and would have tarried a while out of curiosity if Max had not hustled her on.

King Street came to an end at the Castlegate, their starting point, but the Town House clock told them that there was still almost an hour before they had to catch the train back – time to have a quick look at the big stores in Union Street.

When Janet noticed that Fay was looking wistfully at a lovely display of wedding gowns in one impressive window, she whispered, ‘Your wedding was just as legal and binding in a plain
navy skirt and jacket as it would have been in one of them.’

‘I know but it would have been nice.’ Fay didn’t linger on the subject, however, she was too happy.

All four dozed off on the train – even Max, usually full of energy, had difficulty in keeping his eyes open while he was driving the trap from Corrieben back to The Sycamores.

Innes Ledingham welcomed them home, shaking hands with ‘Mr and Mrs Rae’ amid much laughter and wishing them good fortune. ‘I have had everything made ready for you,’ he murmured to Henry when he had a chance. ‘I have put in a small chest for Fay to keep her underclothes and that sort of thing but there should be room in the closet for her skirts et cetera. It will be a tight squeeze for two of you in that room but I am sure you will not object to that? Heh, heh.’

The small chuckle greatly embarrassed Henry. If only he could have taken Fay off somewhere, even for this one night, their wedding night, it wouldn’t be so bad but how could they be comfortable with each other when everybody would know what they were doing?

He need not have worried. He and Fay were so exhausted by the time they got to bed that the marriage was not consummated that first night.

The newlyweds went to Drymill the next forenoon and, when they related the events of the previous day, Catherine felt angry that her husband had deprived his daughter of a decent wedding. She was glad to see, when she looked at him, that he knew what she was thinking and that his eyes were pleading for her forgiveness.

As she had known, Henry was not happy about Joseph’s offer of money but, with Fay’s help, she managed to persuade the young man that it was purely a wedding gift – there were no obligations and there was no shame in accepting it.

The two men shook hands then and Catherine took her daughter in her arms as she had longed to do since they came in. ‘I never got the chance to tell you … what to expect,’ she whispered, ‘but you’ll have found out for yourself.’

‘Oh, Mother, don’t be so indelicate!’

Catherine thought nothing of this. It was natural that the girl did not want to talk about what had no doubt come as quite a shock.

‘Mr Ledingham has given Henry the whole day off,’ Fay went on, ‘so we are going to Ardbirtle in the afternoon to let his sister know we’re married.’

*    *    *

A flustered Abby didn’t know what to do. She hadn’t been expecting visitors and her washing from the day before was still lying all over the place. Pogie kept telling her she was getting to be something of a slut – he was always teasing her so she never paid any heed – but seeing her kitchen through the eyes of this dainty, elegant girl made her vow inwardly to change her ways.

‘Don’t bother doing that for us,’ Fay laughed as her new sister-in-law scuttled about folding up napkins, baby clothes and even her husband’s drawers. ‘It must be difficult to keep a house tidy when you have a baby to look after.’

‘That’s what I keep telling Pogie,’ Abby gasped, breathless with the idea of having to entertain a person like this as much as from her own activity.

Fay’s eyes had widened. ‘Pogie?’

Henry made the explanation, adding, ‘He’s a funeral undertaker and I hope none of the families he undertakes for knows what his own family call him. It’s not really dignified, is it?’

Fay laughed in delight. ‘It’s not but maybe it suits him.’

When the man in question came in, however, she revised her opinion. Judging by Abby, she had pictured her husband as a short, tubby man, rather like Henry in a way, but he was over six feet and straight-backed, wearing a perfectly fitting tailcoat and a tall bowler hat. His boots were highly polished and the creases in his trousers were like knife-edges.

Abby was making the introduction so Fay held out her hand and had it grabbed and pumped up and down enthusiastically.
‘My goodness, I’m really pleased to meet you,’ Pogie told her, his voice another shock – perhaps higher than usual in his excitement at discovering that he had a new sister-in-law.

‘And I’m very pleased to meet
you
,’ she smiled, looking into his keen grey eyes but noticing his bushy head of hair and equally bushy moustache, both mousy brown. ‘Apart from your clothes, you’re not what I imagined an undertaker to look like.’

His exuberance disappeared like magic, his face seemed to lengthen and sober, his mouth was drawn in. His expression was entirely different from that of a minute before and, when he spoke, his tone was low and mellow. ‘I do my best to be a credit to my profession,’ he intoned softly, then burst out laughing at her amazement. ‘I am something of a chameleon,’ he giggled. ‘I can change my mood to suit the occasion.’

‘All right, then,’ Abby said sharply. ‘We’ll have no more of the seriousness.’ She turned to Fay. ‘He doesn’t often take his serious manners inside the house.’

Pogie beamed at her fondly. ‘How can I be serious when I have a lovely wife, a lovely son and a lovely home, even it if can be like Paddy’s Market at times.’

Fay couldn’t help liking him. An undertaker he may be, and probably one of the best, but he was full of fun and he obviously doted on his wife and child.

At that moment, the baby, who had been sleeping peacefully in the cradle, gave a loud roar, at which Pogie hurried across and lifted him up. ‘A sore gut, is it?’ he asked, as the infant curled up as if in pain. ‘Let Father rub it.’ He held the child over his shoulder and rubbed his back gently until he gave a loud burp. ‘That’s the way, my fine fellow.’ He looked at his wife now. ‘Is it feeding time? See, I’ll turn your chair round for you, so the visitors can’t see you.’