“Your wish?”
“For my birthday. I wished for your happiness.”
Beneath the warm flesh of his chest I felt his tremulous heart beat. If I could, I would have given him my organs, my life's blood. In lieu of those impossible offerings I poured out what I had: love, gratitude.
“Something happened by the river,” he said.
“Yes.” A nurse padded by in the corridor. “The companions moved you to safety.” I stroked his chest, wanting him to know and understand before it was too late. “They've been with me all my life.”
The faintest of smiles passed over David's face. “Maybe Barbara sent them.”
“Maybe she did.” At once the idea seemed right. My mother had sent back emissaries from that far country. Then I told him everything I had tried to tell Samuel, including what had come of my attempts to confide. “I wanted to send them away,” I said. “I'm so glad I didn't.” While I spoke David's eyes fell shut. I leaned forward to wipe his face. I found myself remembering our last visit to Barbara's
grave. Surely no day had passed without my father thinking of my mother.
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Lily and I emerged from the hospital to discover that victory over Japan had been declared. Ballintyre was probably the only house for miles around that did not fling open the curtains and turn on the lights. The funeral the next day was dominated by Aunt Violet. Her train from Edinburgh was late and she hurried down the aisle of Saint Cuthbert's just as the organ started. In the high-pitched voice Mrs. Nicholson had imitated, she launched into the opening hymn.
Afterwards she played the part of chief mourner. “A tragedy,” she kept saying, “but at least he didn't suffer.” When the guests had gone, she raised her veil to glare at Lily. “The undertaker told me we'd lined the coffin with lead. I don't know what you were thinking of. Every penny counts now.”
“It was what he would have wanted,” said Lily quietly.
We went to Mr. Laing's office for the reading of the will. It was very brief; everything was to be divided between Lily and me. Violet asked how much that was, and Mr. Laing said to the best of his knowledge less than five hundred pounds. I had given no thought to the practical consequences of David's death; now Mr. Laing made clear that Lily could not remain at Ballintyre. Even if she had the money, the lease was in David's name, and the owner was anxious to repossess. “So, Miss McEwen,” he said awkwardly, “I'm afraid you'll have to move.”
“No,” I exclaimed. “It's our home.”
“Hush, Eva,” said Violet. She turned to Mr. Laing. “Lily can stay
with me. We're neither of us as young as we used to be, and I could do with the help.”
“That sounds grand,” said Mr. Laing.
I looked at Lily, waiting for her to disagree, but she sat clutching her gloves. Overnight she had shrunk from being the mistress of Ballintyre to a poor relation, a burden to herself and others.
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Next day, as if by prior arrangement, Lily and I rose early and, after a hasty breakfast, left the house, where Violet lay sleeping, and headed down the lane. The soft, tearing sound of the cows grazing in the nearby fields accompanied our conversation.
“Can't we find a way to stay?” I asked.
“You heard what Mr. Laing said. We lived on David's pension. That would pass to his widow, not to me. Besides, old Buchanan is very keen to get us out. We've been paying this tiddly rent for ages.”
“But living with Aunt Violet ⦔
“I don't see, Eva, what choice I have.”
Lily's voice was thin as a reed, and at once I felt ashamed. After all, I had no home to offer. “Anyway,” she continued, “I'm not sure I'd want to stay here by myself. David did try to warn me. Last spring he said he worried about what was going to happenâ”
A shrill cry broke her words. Thirty yards ahead in the branches of an ash tree a magpie dipped and swayed, its plumage glinting in the sunlight. As we drew closer I could see the shining rim around each dark eye.
“Remember the old rhyme?” Lily asked.
Almost unthinkingly I recited:
“One for sorrow, two for mirth,
Three for a wedding, four for a birth.
Five's a christening, six a dearth,
Seven's heaven, eight is hell,
And nine's the devil his ane sel'.”
“When you were born,” said Lily, “the midwife saw six magpies fighting in the garden.”
“I know. You chided her for being superstitious.”
With a final shriek the bird swooped over the hedge. We walked on. “David used to think you would marry,” Lily said, “and that would solve everything. After you brought Samuel home, he got his hopes up.”
I turned to her, amazedâhadn't she been opposed to my marrying Samuel?âbut she was looking at the hawthorn. The flowers that year were especially creamy and abundant.
Later that afternoon, when Violet and Lily were going through the china, I sat down to write to Samuel. I began with my father's death, and then I found the words that I thought would please him. He was right: I had conjured up the companions out of my lonely childhood. If we were married, I would never see them again. As for Canada, I would be happy to go so long as Lily could come too.
As I wrote, I kept glancing over my shoulder. I thought of David's rescue, and my hand shook so, I could barely pen the sentences. Then I thought of Lily, hunched in her seat at Mr. Laing's, and I went on. Surely the companions would understand that I was only trying to correct the mistake I had made by mentioning them in the first place. “I don't mean any of this,” I whispered. “I'll just keep you secret, like I do from Lily.”
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Ten days later I came down to breakfast to see an envelope by my place. At last. Another step, and I saw that it was my own letter. Next to Samuel's name someone had scrawled:
Not known.
After a moment, I recognised the writing. Only three months ago the same hand had written
Marry me.
I sat down, oblivious to Lily's offers of tea and toast but accepting both. Today we were sorting the linen. “David kept the bits and pieces Barbara brought from Glenaird. You'll want those, won't you
?
”
“Yes,” I said. Then I noticed she was watching me with a strange mixture of earnestness and embarrassment. “What is it?”
She shook her head. “Before you came downstairs I was sitting here at the table with the place opposite, and it was as if I were waiting for David. I could hear you moving around and I was sure it was him.”
“I feel the same. I keep thinking he's just stepped out to feed the hens or see if his cabbages have grown. I don't want to stop. There's plenty of time to be sensible.”
I gazed at Lily and she returned my gaze. Through the open window came the rustling of the wind in the apple tree, a bird cheeping, the distant clatter of a tractor in the meadow, and, in the midst of all these other sounds, a creaking noiseâas if someone had opened and closed the garden gateâand, even more faintly, the crunch of gravel. We sat there, not moving, hardly breathing, as David passed by.
One of the first stories I told Anne about Samuel concerned the would-be suicide. A young man, a navigator, whose jaw Samuel had been rebuilding for six months, had tried to slash his wrists but was foiled by the pedicle graft growing between his right arm and his mouth. When Samuel heard the news, he rushed to the unit. “For God's sake,” he scolded the navigator, “don't kill yourself until the pedicle is established. It needs another fortnight at least.” The two of them had burst out laughing and, later, so did Anne and I.
But that was hours, days, weeks after I arrived at the school. That first day when I climbed down from the train at Perth Station, I could not imagine ever laughing again. Mrs. Thornton, the headmaster's wife, had come to meet me. Her shelflike bosom and massive green hat reminded me of Aunt Violet, and at first she seemed just as stern. In a matter of minutes she had organised a porter to
load my suitcases into the car, and we were driving with erratic speed through the town and into the countryside. For the last few weeks, as Lily and I emptied Ballintyre, the sounds of harvesting had filled the echoing rooms. Here, a hundred miles north, the stooks of corn still waited to be gathered in. While Mrs. Thornton pointed out landmarksâHuntingtower Castle, the Ochil HillsâI wondered what on earth I had done, coming to such an isolated place.
“Lovely,” I said flatly.
I felt her quick glance. “When Frank and I came here from London,” she said, “I cried every day. Now I wouldn't live anywhere else. I hope you'll come to feel that way too, Miss McEwen. Oh, my goodness.”
The car swerved, and I thought there must be something in the road.
“My dear, I forgot to say how sorry I am about your father.”
“Thank you,” I said. It was a relief to hear anyone, even a stranger, offer sympathy, and for the rest of the journey I was able to pay attention to her conversation. At the school, she handed me over to the Polish couple who took care of the sanatorium. “Their English is not good,” she warned, “but they have hearts of gold.”
In the kitchen Mr. and Mrs. Plishka stood side by side, stout and smiling, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. “How do you do?” they said in unison. Mrs. Plishka did the cooking and cleaning, Mr. Plishka the heavy work. As soon as Mrs. Thornton left, they introduced me to the most important member of the household, Tizzie. The calico cat nuzzled my hand. “She likes,” said Mrs. Plishka, and I caught the gleam of a gold tooth.
I had not seen the matron's flat when I came for my interviewâthe headmaster had offered some vague, awkward excuseâand now
I climbed the stairs and wandered, marvelling, from room to room: a bedroom, a sitting room, a bathroom, and a kitchen, all for my sole use. From the sitting room window, I had a view across the cricket pitch to the main school. On the flagpole above the clock tower fluttered the white cross of Saint Andrew, and beyond, on the far side of the river, rose the bare hills.
I had arrived the day before the boys, and once I had unpacked and organised my possessions, there was little to do. Mrs. Lancaster, my predecessor, had left the ward and surgery immaculate. On the desk lay a sheaf of notes. “The toilet window sticks, especially in winter.” “Do not leave the sitting room door open. Tizzie will sneak in.” “Dr. Singer inclined to be chatty.” Next to the notes a book recorded the details of every patient, over and over the same minor ailments: cuts, sprains, colds, measles, chicken pox. In ten years not a single death.
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The following day brought a flurry of introductions. Soon after nine Dr. Singer came by, and I invited him in for tea. A lanky young man with reddish hair, his singsong accent reminded me of Bernard; later I learned he too had been born near Oban. At first our stilted conversation seemed to belie Mrs. Lancaster's description, but when he knocked the begonia off the tableâhe was praising the viewâand saw that I wasn't upset, he grew more voluble. His practise was based in a village halfway between the school and Perth, and many of his patients lived on remote farms. “It's hard,” he said, “having no colleagues.” His ears reddened, almost to match his hair, as he confessed the muddle he'd made of his first case of diabetes.
I was still washing our teacups when the next visitor arrived. A woman in a pleated skirt and blue cardigan, looking scarcely older than a schoolgirl, appeared at my sitting room door, her arms full of roses. As Anne introduced herself, the fragrance of the flowers drifted towards me, and briefly I was back at Ballintyre, where year after year David had tended his roses with tea leaves and ashes.
While I chose a vase, Anne gazed around the room. “You've made it so much nicer,” she said. “Mrs. Lancaster kept it like a dentist's waiting room. I am glad she's gone. I knew she'd say something dire when she learned I was expecting.”
At this last sentence dimples appeared in both cheeks. I offered congratulations. With her wide eyes and bobbing manner, Anne reminded me of a wren. She told me she and her husband, Paul, had come to the school the year before; he taught mathematics; only three of the other masters were married. “As for single women,” she added, “you'll have to be careful we don't gobble you up.”
I tried to smileâspinster, spinsterâbut my face must have betrayed me. Anne retreated into practical matters: where to buy stamps, how to get to Perth. Before she left, she drew me a map of the short distance to her house.
That night, sitting by the fire, I was surprised to realise that I longed for the companions. I had not seen them since the day by the river. Going to Glasgow, I had hoped to be rid of them. Now what I dreaded was abandonment. I had lost David, lost Samuel; was I to lose them too? “I'm sorry,” I said. “You know I only wanted to help Lily.”
In the Plishkas' part of the house wireless music flared, then muffled again. The curtains hung motionless, the blue vase sat on the mantelpiece, the begonia squatted on the table. Nothing moved.
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The first week at the san was the exact opposite, medically speaking, of my experiences at the infirmary. A steady stream of boys came to the surgery, claiming nothing more serious than coughs and upset stomachs. In return I offered spoonfuls of medicine and small jokes. Mostly I diagnosed nerves about the start of school. Certainly that was true for the skinny suntanned boy who arrived one rainy morning with a badly gashed knee; he had slipped running to class.
“What's your name?” I said, fetching the iodine.
“Scott. I'm a new boy.”
“Like me.”
As I cleaned the wound, Scott squirmedânot, he explained, from pain but in fear of being late. When I promised a note for the master, he grew still and began to tell me about his summer holidays. His days on the beach at Elgin sounded much like those I had once passed with Mrs. Nicholson's children.
After Scott left and I had written him up in the surgery log, I found myself standing at the window, watching the rain, close to tears: no cinema, no shops, no library, no trams, and no patients who really needed me. Worst of all, no Samuel. For a few days after David collapsed on the riverbank, I had believed that my peculiar choices made sense. Now I could no longer remember why telling Samuel the truth had seemed so important. And what had prevented me, after my botched attempt, from simply lying to make amends? I pictured his face when he first caught sight of me on the evening of my birthday, how he had held me as we danced.
I fetched my coat and walked the short distance to Anne's house. Fidgeting on her doorstep, I tried to think of an excuse for my visit,
but at the sight of me her dimples appeared. “Eva,” she exclaimed. In an instant, she had me seated by the fire.
“I hope I'm not interrupting,” I said feebly.
“Not at all. I was just looking at some skirts, to see if they could be let out. Are you good at sewing?”
“Dreadful.”
She laughed, a surprisingly throaty sound that again made me think of a small bird. “I suppose living in Glasgow, there was no need with all those shops and tailors.”
“Actually I swapped with my friend Daphne. I cleaned her shoes or went to the library in exchange for mending.”
“We could do that. It's none of my business,” she went on, “but I can't help wondering why you took this job. I mean Glenaird isn't exactly the centre of the universe.”
I told her the parts of the story that could be told: not Samuel, not yet, but how my grandparents had worked at the Grange, and how Barbara at the age of fifteen had been sent to Troon as a housemaid, and about David and Lily and losing Ballintyre.
“Oh, how awful,” said Anne. She asked if I still had relatives in the valley, and I shook my head. The flu epidemic that took Barbara had also carried away her parents; her surviving uncles and aunts had passed on in the twenties.
Anne nodded sympathetically and bent to tend the fire. “The Grange is only half a mile away,” she said. “The Rintouls live there, but they don't mind people walking through the grounds.” Then she confided the shadow in her life: her brother, Oliver, had been in the final stages of the Italian campaign and had come home utterly changed. “He wanders around like a beggar. The neighbours don't recognise him.”
“It's early days,” I said. I described some of the remarkable recoveries I'd seenâthe man who, after a month of silence, greeted me one morning; the sailor, so fearful of water he refused to bathe, who now swam with pleasureâand she seemed comforted.
As I walked back to the san, I started making bets. If I held my breath for eight steps, the furniture would have moved. If I held my breath for ten, one of the companions would be there. But when I opened the door of my sitting room, everything was exactly where I had left it.
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On the next dry afternoon, I asked Mrs. Plishka for directions and walked up the main road to look at the Grange. Larger than Larch House, it was built of the same grey granite. A copper beech, like the one by Barbara's grave, grew near the front door, and from the first large branch hung a swing. So this was where Barbara had spent her childhood, had polished the brasses and seen her future husband. I longed to look through one of the dark windows, but as I stepped closer, somewhere inside a dog began to bark forlornly.
I followed the drive up the gentle hill. Around the bend, I came upon an immensely tall conifer with spongy reddish bark. I was standing looking at it, wondering what kind of tree this was, when a pain stabbed my side. Not appendicitis, I thought, paging through a textbook; not kidneys.
“It's a California redwood.” The girl stepped from behind the trunk.
“You're here.” I was so pleased I almost embraced her
“In California they have whole forests of these trees. Some of them are big enough for a car to drive through the trunk.”
She watched me with her bluebell eyes. The pain throbbed and was gone. “How did it get here?” I asked.
“The first owner of the Grange went to America and brought several back. This was the only one to survive.”
“You seem to know an awful lot about it.” The girl tossed her braids and began to edge away. “Do you want to go for a walk?” I added quickly.
“Not today. You should go home too.” With a final flick of her braids, she stepped behind the tree.
As I headed back to the san, I noticed neither the light on the hills nor the sheep in the fields. The girl was here, and surely the woman had come too. My loneliness blew away, like dandelion seeds in the wind.
A few days, perhaps a week later, I was at my sitting room window, drawing the curtains, when I saw a dog on the cricket pitch. No, not a dog, a fox trotting across the dewy grass, head held low. I had last glimpsed one with David, in the lane by Ballintyre. How pleased he would be when I told him. Then, as the animal disappeared behind the pavilion, the sorrow returned, as keen as the day by the river.
“He was very glad you were coming here,” the woman said. She was standing behind me.
She smiled and seemed to understand that I could not speak.
“When we lived near Fort William,” she continued, “a family of foxes had their earth at the back of our cottage. In the evenings we would watch the cubs play.”
“You lived near Fort William?” For a moment I was so startled that even my sadness was forgotten.
“My husband was working on the railway as an engineer. Later,
of course, we moved to Troon.” She pointed to the door. “I think you have a visitor.”
Mrs. Plishka, a dab of flour on her red cheek, held out a plate. “Scones,” she said. “For breakfast, with honey.”
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From then on the companions came often, singly and together, and were more forthcoming than they had ever been. The girl knew not only about the redwood but where to find the last blackberries and the best chestnuts. The woman spoke of her husband and sons; for their first anniversary her husband had made her a stainless-steel toast rack. “Dear man,” she said. “It held six slices. He couldn't understand why I laughed and laughed. Such an unromantic gift.”