And he squeezed Nellie’s hand and looked away as the tears ran down her cheeks.
They arrived in Edinburgh very late at night, and left the station to find themselves in the middle of a blinding snowstorm. The wind dashed snowflakes against the windows of their cab and caused the driver to slow to a crawl and to use some extremely Scottish words beneath his breath.
‘I wonder if Lizzie’s still up?’ Biddy said as Nellie opened the big front door. ‘She knows you’re bringing us back, doesn’t she, Mrs Ga … I mean Nellie?’
‘Yes; I rang her earlier though and said we would be late,’ Nellie said, ushering them inside. Dai, who had stayed to pay the cab-driver, joined them in the hall, beginning to take off his coat, already damp across the shoulders even in the short dash from the car to the house. Nellie unbuttoned her own coat, then glanced up the stairs, beginning to smile. ‘Ah, here she comes, tearing about, as usual! Lizzie darling, we’re back! Take Biddy and Dai into the kitchen and make them a hot drink, will you? I just want a word with your father. He’s in the study, I take it?’
Lizzie, bouncing down the stairs, kissed her mother and Biddy, then stood on tiptoe to kiss Dai’s cheek before turning back to her mother. ‘Oh Mam, I’m glad you’re back, things have been a bit difficult here … yes, me Da’s in the study, go and have a word. I’ll make a tray of tea for everyone and get out the biscuits.… I can make some sandwiches if you’re really hungry, or I can heat up some soup.’ She turned to examine Biddy and Dai as she led the way across the hall to the kitchen. ‘You two look very happy – but you can tell me what’s been happening whilst Mam explains to me Da why she ran off like that. Come on.’
She bustled them into the kitchen and Biddy, looking over her shoulder, saw Nellie hesitate outside the study for a moment, as though she dreaded what was to come. Poor thing, Biddy thought, fancy having to tell Mr Gallagher what had happened all those years ago! Nellie was still wearing her damp and travel-stained coat, too.… Biddy would have advised her to take it off, but suddenly Nellie straightened her shoulders, tapped on the door and opened it, then went through and closed it softly behind her.
‘Come on, Bid. You can give me a hand with the soup,’ Lizzie said gaily, as they entered the kitchen. It was a large room with a flagstoned floor and a bright fire, before which three or four dogs lounged at their ease. Biddy entered the room rather carefully – she knew almost nothing about dogs – and looked around her whilst Lizzie went through a narrow doorway into what Biddy now saw was a very commodious pantry. ‘It’s leek and potato, made with cream – do you like that?’
Assuring Lizzie that she loved leek-and-potato soup, Biddy shot a quick and anxious glance at Dai, now standing beside her. ‘Will she be all right? Nellie, I mean,’ she hissed. ‘Oh, poor Mrs Gallagher, Dai.’
‘She’ll be fine,’ Dai whispered back. ‘A grand feller, is Stuart. I’ve no worries there.’
‘Oh, good,’ Biddy said, turning back to the kitchen and trying not to imagine the scene in the study. Dai said it would be all right and he was older and wiser than she, he probably knew best.
But privately, Biddy had her doubts.
Nellie slipped inside the study and closed the door behind her. Stuart was sitting behind the desk, writing something on a pad of paper. He glanced up and stared expressionlessly across at her for a moment, then he bent his head over his work once more. He continued to write, finished his sentence, blotted the page, then put down his pen and leaned back in his chair. For the first time in their lives together, the glance that he sent her across the desk was cold and antagonistic.
‘Ah, Nellie. So you did decide to come home.’
It was like a slap in the face, but though Nellie swallowed nervously she did not flinch. This was the reaction of a man who had been terribly worried and deeply hurt and she could scarcely blame him. She had not expected to be welcomed back with open arms – had she?
‘Did you doubt it, Stuart?’ she said, her voice trembling a little. ‘I rang Lizzie and explained I’d gone to meet Dai’s ship, I rang later and said I was bringing him and Biddy home here for a day or so.… Did you think I’d do that if I didn’t mean to return?’
‘Lizzie said you’d rung,’ Stuart said heavily. He spoke without raising his eyes from the page before him. ‘But your note gave no explanation for leaving the way you did. Lizzie told me you fainted when she gave you Biddy’s message about Dai’s ship being overdue. That doesn’t seem a normal thing to do. Not for a friend’s boy, anyway.’
‘No. But … Dai’s my boy, Stuart.’
That jerked his gaze up to meet hers, his eyes wide, darkening with shock, an expression of incredulity replacing the censure for a moment. ‘
Your
boy? Dai Evans is … I don’t understand.’
‘No. You couldn’t possibly understand, but I’m here to explain, Stuart.’ She took a step nearer the desk, trying to control the trembling which was racking her. ‘Will you listen to me? It’s – it’s rather a long story and it starts rather a long time ago.’
‘Will this
explanation
include the name of your lover, the name of the man who was so important to you that you insisted we move to Edinburgh? Will it include what you’ve been doing these past two days?’ Nellie began to speak, feeling her face grow hot, but he overrode her, his voice rising to something perilously close to a shout. ‘No, no, don’t pretend indignation, I’m not a fool! There’s always been something, something you wouldn’t tell me, and I’m well aware that you had no message about Dai’s ship, no telephone call to this house telling you he was safe. You went off somewhere else, then heard about Dai and used the information as an excuse for your sudden flight.… Nellie, I’m not a fool!’
Nellie put both hands to her hot cheeks and felt all her resolve, all her determination, draining away. How could she tell him, when he was so angry with her, so eager to believe her unfaithful, wicked? Yet if she did not tell him, did not make him listen, their relationship would founder, their marriage would become a mockery.
‘Don’t judge me, Stuart,’ she said tremulously, trying not to glance at his hands, curled now into fists. She had never known him so angry and unyielding, not in all the years they had known each other. ‘Not until you’ve heard the facts. As I said, it’s a long story. May – may I sit down?’
He tightened his lips, scowling at her, but he nodded ungraciously. ‘Very well … but pull the chair round to face me, if you please.’
She did as he asked, then sat down, facing him. It was impossible not to feel like a prisoner in the dock, on trial for her life, but she took a deep, calming breath, then began to speak, though she lowered her eyes as she did so, unable to meet the scorn in his glance. ‘Years ago, before we married, I – I went with a man and fell for a child. I was very young and ignorant, Stuart, and very frightened, but my child’s father had promised to marry me so when he did not come back for me, I decided to go to his village on the Isle of Anglesey and find out once and for all what had happened.
‘I went to Davy’s house – his name was Davy Evans – and found he was married to a dear girl called Bethan. She told me that Davy’s ship had been sunk and Davy was drowned, and when I explained my state she asked me to stay with her, and to let her adopt my baby when he was born. She had no child, you see, nothing to remind her of Davy, and she said, truly, that the child would have a good life with her, and an inheritance. All I could give him would have been the shame of illegitimacy.
‘So I agreed and in due course I gave birth to a son. I called him David, after his father. Everyone believed that Bethan was his Mam – we had kept my secret well – and when the baby was old enough I went back to Liverpool without him.
‘Later, Davy went home. He hadn’t been drowned, he’d been picked up by another vessel and taken to America I think it was, and when he got back to Anglesey he found he had a son. Stuart, we neither of us loved each other, it was just – just a mistake for us both. Davy settled down happily with Bethan and their boy and quite soon after that they had a girl, a sister for – for Dai, as they called him.’
As Nellie finished speaking Stuart looked across at her once more. His eyes were still cold. ‘And when did your lover turn up again? Quite soon after Dai did – is that it? Freed by his wife’s death, wanting you all over again? Finding you married to another man was clearly no bar to what
he
had in mind. And you couldn’t resist the chance to see him again … you’ll tell me that was all, I suppose? That you just wanted to see him, nothing more?’
‘Who, Davy? Stuart, of course he didn’t turn up, I’ve never seen him from that day to this and besides, Dai says his father has remarried.’ Nellie smiled slightly. ‘A girl young enough to be his daughter … typical of Davy, I imagine. But can’t you see, Stu, that I couldn’t tell you before? You knew I’d had a baby, I told you that, but I could scarcely tell you that my friend Bethan had passed the child off as her own, even to her husband! It wasn’t my secret to share, was it?’
‘None of that matters; I accept that you had an affair with this Davy Evans and that Dai’s your child. But what matters to me is where you went these past two days? Why did you run away?’ Stuart leaned across the desk now, his expression almost pleading, his eyes full of pain. ‘If Davy Evans isn’t your lover, who in heaven’s name is?’
‘It’s you, Stuart, it’s always been you,’ Nellie said. Tears ran down her hot cheeks and dripped off the end of her chin. ‘There’s never been anyone else but you for me, Stuart, and you must know it! I went to Grimsby as soon as I got Biddy’s message because I felt I must
do
something, be as near as possible to my boy. That’s absolutely all there was to it. Stu, I’ll swear it on the bible if that’s the only way to convince you … but why should it be? We’ve never lied to each other, why should you think I’d lie now?’
‘And coming to Edinburgh? When you’d quite made up your mind to stay in Liverpool?’
‘That was stupid, but I thought Dai wanted to marry Lizzie and – and they’re brother and sister, or half-brother and sister, anyway. He came round to the house in Ducie Street and asked me whether I would object to his asking “my girl” to marry him. And Stu, when anyone says “your girl” to me, I think of Lizzie at once, because she is my girl. I just never thought of Biddy.’
She was watching his face and saw, for the first time, a glint of what might have been amusement lighten his dark eyes. ‘You thought Dai wanted to marry our girl? Nellie Gallagher, you want your head examinin’! And that was why you insisted that we leave the ‘Pool?
That
was the reason you left your beloved home?’
‘I know; I’ve been every sort of fool,’ Nellie said ruefully. ‘Do you remember me telling you I thought it would do Lizzie good to move up here? Well, that was why. I was terrified that she and Dai might want to marry … oh Stu, it was a nightmare, and I couldn’t tell you, couldn’t say why I was afraid. And of course quite soon I realised I’d made an awful mistake, that Lizzie and Dai were just friends, but I couldn’t go back on it, could I? We were here, and you were settled into the job … so I had to make the best of it.’
‘And … and you honestly set off in this dreadful weather, just to try to meet Dai? Just to see your boy? There wasn’t anything else? Anyone else? You’ve not met Davy since you and he were lovers all those years ago?’
His eyes were soft, the expression in them anxious, but lovingly so, now. Nellie jumped up from her chair and ran round the desk. She cast herself into Stuart’s arms and kissed him violently, then collapsed onto his lap with a blissful sigh.
‘Oh Stuart, darling, if only you knew how much it hurt me to see you looking at me as if I was a stranger! I swear on – on Lizzie’s life that I went to meet Dai and nobody else, and that I wouldn’t want to see Davy if he turned up on our doorstep tomorrow. The last time I saw him, in fact, was when I was nursing in Liverpool. He was one of the injured to come onto my ward and I was so totally out of love with him that I applied for the job in France so that I wouldn’t even have to set eyes on him again.
And then you and I met, so in a way you could say that not loving Davy brought us together.’
Stuart’s arms went round her in a tight hug and he pressed his face against her tear-wet cheek. ‘Oh Nell, sweetheart, if only
you
knew! I love you and trust you, only a fool would do otherwise, yet there has always been a little ache in the back of my mind because you’d never explained properly about the child you’d born, the man you’d … been with. It wasn’t jealousy exactly, it was because I couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t be frank with me. And it hurt.’
‘Well, now you know,’ Nellie said contentedly. ‘Do you mind about Dai, darling? Only he needed me and perhaps in a way I needed him. And now we’ve found each other, I’d hate to have to send him away.’
‘He’s a grand lad; I can’t think of anyone I’d sooner have as a stepson,’ Stuart said. ‘But I’d rather that Davy fellow never knew.’
‘Dai and I feel the same,’ Nellie said fervently. ‘Dai couldn’t think of me as his mother – Bethan was all the mother he had or needed – but I hope we’ll always be close. Oh Stu, no one ever had a nicer husband than you.’
‘That’s the truest word you ever spoke,’ Stuart said. He tipped her off his lap and stood up, putting an arm around her shoulders and turning her towards the door. ‘I bet all that talking’s made you thirsty; let’s go and find ourselves a drink.… God, woman, your coat’s wet! Take it off and we’ll put it over the airer in the kitchen. It’ll be dry by morning.’
They went across the room and into the hall, where Nellie took off her coat and kicked off her short boots. Stuart found her slippers and put them on her icy feet and was about to open the kitchen door when Nellie caught his hand.
‘Stu, the children are in there. I’d rather not face them tonight. Shall we go straight to bed?’
Stuart squeezed her shoulders, his expression very tender. ‘Well, I still think you should have a hot drink after that long journey, but if you feel you can’t face …’
The kitchen door opening cut his sentence off short. Lizzie stood framed in the doorway, a tray in her hands. She smiled at them. ‘Ah, I was just about to bring your drinks through! Biddy and Dai have gone up – Biddy’s in my room, Mam, and Dai’s in the room over the porch – but I thought you’d like a hot drink and some sandwiches.’