Capital Union, A (14 page)

I don’t remember that first week after Jeff’s death. I think I just sat in the flat, and then Sylvia drove me to Morningside Cemetery on Balcarres Street with Jeff’s ashes in a plain urn on my knee. It was too snowy to take the car up the drive. The graves ran in concentric circles round the hillside, locked away from view behind high, sandstone walls and wrought iron gates. It was a place of memory, of sadness. I read the names of the dead as we walked past the gravestones; the lists of family members memorialised with the date of their death; the day they never knew was coming. I pictured them getting up in the morning never knowing it was to be that day when everything stopped, and all the things they meant to say, or do, or put right, became impossible. I hugged the urn of the man I had betrayed, the man who had betrayed me, and tears ran down my cheeks at the confusion of it all. The ground was so cold that the gravediggers had had to warm the earth with braziers to dig a hole that was deep enough. The coals lay smoking to one side. I buried Jeff’s ashes in his parents’ grave beneath their grey, granite headstone on the seventeenth of December. Their names were picked out in gold, but Jeff’s name was scratched in bare letters, and someone had added mine: ‘Mourned by his loving wife, Agnes’.

‘I thought it was expedient to put yours on now, dear,’ said Sylvia. ‘Saves them chiselling away at the thing when it’s your
turn.’ At the bottom of the stone, moss filled the legend ‘Until a’ the shadows flee awa”.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that they would never add my dates here. The love that had sewn me to Jeff was unpicked, and only the marks left by the needle in the old cloth of our marriage remained. Sylvia held my arm, and Mrs MacDougall stood a short distance away beside a stone angel, which dripped icicle tears beneath a tree. Although Jeff wasn’t Catholic, I said a prayer for him. He couldn’t complain now. My words carried over the graves: ‘Come blessed of my Father, take possession of the Kingdom prepared for you.’

Sylvia sighed and Mr Lamont stood with his chin lowered into his scarf, watching. He only found his voice again at the wake at the Bruntsfield Hotel, reading out telegrams of
condolence
as if a great body of people were present. I didn’t know many of their names. ‘He loves a platform,’ said Sylvia, and slipped a sandwich to her dogs under the table.

The animals near my feet comforted me and I lifted the edge of the cloth to see them. ‘You should get yourself a dog, Agnes. It would be company for you. You don’t want to knock round that rotten, old flat by yourself. Turn into a Mrs MacDougall hiding in graveyards. You are far too young and gorgeous, as I never stop telling you. Take it from an old
blue-stocking
who knows.’

I was too tearful to speak. She squeezed my arm.

‘Let’s hope Douglas makes it,’ she said. ‘We could use him in the department now, if the Ancient Greeks in Aberdeen will let him come after this war is over.’

Mr Lamont stopped stirring his tea. ‘I believe he will be released in March, all being well, although the Ministry of Labour are putting some pressure on him to clarify what he’ll do on his release.’

‘They wouldn’t lock him up again?’ said Sylvia.

‘Well, my dear,’ said Mr Lamont, ‘the issues are still the same. Talking of which…’ He turned to me. ‘Would you mind most awfully if I came by with the motor to collect Jeff’s
papers for Douglas? He is a terrible magpie when it comes to the written word. Never throws a scrap out. You’d think
everything
ever penned was gold. He’ll want to take up the reins from where Jeff left off.’

I felt a sense of relief. I didn’t want to see if there were any more photos of a life I had never shared, tucked into the papers that had destroyed us, silent in their dark niches. ‘You can take his typewriter, too, Mr Lamont. Jeff wanted you to have it, although one of the letters jumps above the line.’

‘You are most generous in your grief, my dear. If the SHRA can ever be of any assistance to you whatsoever, you must
telephone
me. I’ll advise the Scottish Mutual Aid Committee of your current predicament as an indigent Edinburgh lady.’

‘I’m no Edinburgh lady,’ I said. ‘I am an Ayrshire lass and I will work for my living.’

He gave Sylvia a look.

‘Not on the farm, dear. You can’t bury yourself in the
country
,’ said Sylvia. ‘I would miss you.’

I squeezed her hand. ‘It’s all I know, but don’t worry, I’m not going all the way down to Ayr. I’ll join the Land Army. There’s a nursery at Laurelhill. That won’t kill me.’ But I didn’t know what choice I would have. Perhaps they would send me South like the other lassies? I’d seen them in a Ministry film, filling shells with dust in a factory. Their eyes were red-rimmed, and they had looked up and smiled at the camera as a plummy voice talked about their heroic contribution to the war effort.

Mr Lamont and his friend emptied Jeff’s study that
afternoon
. ‘Forgive the haste in your time of grief,’ he said. ‘Are you quite sure you don’t want to see if there is anything of
sentimental
value?’

‘Jeff always kept this door shut,’ I said. ‘It was his ain room.’ I sighed.

‘He performed invaluable service for the Party, Agnes. His sacrifice will not have been in vain. I know that isn’t much comfort to you as his wife,’ he said. ‘We will all feel his loss keenly in the days to come.’

But I wasn’t sure how Jeff drowning in his own lungs had helped any one. I had burned the divorce papers in the range and felt like I was destroying a weapon whose shiny blade reflected my true self.

When they were gone, I rolled up the study rug and beat it in the garden. It made a hollow booming sound, but Mrs MacDougall didn’t look out. Upstairs I filled a bucket with disinfectant and wiped down all the surfaces and mopped the floor. I peeled the long, sticky strips of brown paper off the window and washed the glass with vinegar. Then I polished it with handfuls of newspaper, crushing the images of war, and the names of the dead, in my hand. I watched the faces of the politicians grow soggy and peel, and I threw it all in the fire, which sizzled and snapped. I sat on the floor of the empty study until midnight, but it didn’t become my room. Memories of Jeff played in my mind: I heard him singing with Douglas, saw him reading to me at the kitchen table about the war. I heard the mumble of his plans for the SNP, the dictionary that didn’t move past ‘C’. I was eighteen and I was a widow. It was almost 1943 and I was alone at Christmas.

On Christmas Eve, I walked across the Meadows to St Patrick’s Church. I wasn’t feart of the planes any more. I almost wanted to die, to feel an end to the grief that pressed on the back of my head as if its weight would bear me down to the ground, where I would freeze. The sadness was less for Jeff than for the death of my dream. My life with him had been no more than a gilded white lie I told myself. I had been stuck in his teeth, summer fruit picked without thought. Mother had been right about me. I wished Douglas had been the man to take me from my life on the farm, to carry me into a new world in his arms, command it with his voice to ‘open sesame’.

The stars shone above the path across the Meadows,
sending
blue light through the trees’ branches that arched
overhead
. It was a cathedral without a roof, a long nave, the
skeleton
ribs of a whale that had swallowed me whole, like Jonah. I put one foot in front of the other, trying not to think about the future on my own, letting them carry me forward. I crossed the Cowgate, walked up the cobbled lane to St Patrick’s and went in the side door. It was brightly lit, and at the foot of the altar, the Virgin leant over the cradle to gaze at her child. Wooden animals slept at her feet. I put my hand on my stomach.

The Mass began with Christmas carols. I sang the
familiar
words, but the woman in front of me turned round as if I was out of tune and I stopped singing. An hour later, as
midnight approached, a hush fell over us. Above the altar, a silver cloth hung over the carving of Christ on his cross. We were waiting for his birth. There was no crucifixion here, but there were gaps in the congregation, and some women began to cry. Servicemen, home on leave, put their arms round their wives and stroked their bairns’ hair. Others, sailors from the port at Leith, stood grim-faced and alone, waiting to take Communion. I imagined Hannes somewhere far away,
crossing
himself as he received the wafer, genuflecting before the cup. I wondered what the prisoners were doing in Saughton – if Douglas was playing the harmonium at their service. We were all worshipping the birth of a child, who said we should love each other, but it was hard to find that love in this war. I had a cup of tea afterwards, and a piece of Christmas cake, before walking back over the Meadows. The ground was frozen solid, and the snowy ice cracked beneath my wellies.

On Hogmanay, I went to bed. There seemed to be nothing to celebrate, although people crept out to the pubs with taped up torches, and huddled at the Tron at midnight. The seven hills of the city kept watch. We hid in darkness from the
coming
year, feart that Edinburgh’s first foot might be a bomber, but I knew they would be having a ceilidh at the farm with our neighbours. Mother always played the accordion,
sweating
as she smiled at the dancers flying past, insisting that she only drank tea, but accepting whisky because it was a special occasion. Once in a blue moon, she took what she called a Highland sherry, a wine glass filled to the brim, but then she only drank one. She said she would have to answer to the Lord in the morning for her sins, and winked at Dad, who always looked hopeful.

As the days passed, it was so long since I’d had a blether with anyone, that my lips were sticking together. The
postman
brought letters of condolence from friends and family and there was one from Douglas. It had a blue sticker, with someone’s initials scrawled on it in black ink. I think it had
been read before it was sealed in the prison and it made me feel like it hadn’t been sent to me. My eyes weren’t the first to read the good wishes. It was a burnt-out candle, a prayer for someone else.

I kissed the word ‘love’. Of all the words that poured from Jeff’s lips, it was the one I heard least, the one whose meaning he never understood. Douglas’ letter filled me with new energy. I stopped dithering about and on the sixth of January, 1943, I walked through the snow to the Assembly Rooms on George Street, and volunteered for the Land Army. I didn’t tell them I was pregnant. I tried not to think of it.

I was to be sent to Laurelhill Nursery in Stirling at the end of the month. I had little to pack, and I mostly lay in bed in the guest room to keep warm, and listened to the wireless. On my last day in Edinburgh, Sylvia came to collect Jeff’s clothes for the Women’s Voluntary Service and drove me to the station. ‘Chin up,’ she said as she took out my bag, and closed the boot on his suitcases. ‘Best foot forward.’

She cried as she waved me off, and I closed my eyes on the train, but couldn’t sleep. As we drew near Dumyat, I tried not to remember going to the rally with Jeff such a short time ago. It was too painful. My feelings belonged to two different
people
: the one who had married Jeff, and the one who had wanted to divorce him. I tried to think only of Douglas, imagine him as he stood on the platform at the rally, bold and brave. His name blotted out the small shadow of my husband that still clung to my heart like a wraith, twisting inside me. Stirling was quiet in the cold. A chimney sweep gave me a lift on his cart up to the nursery. ‘It’s a fine pass we’ve come to,’ he said, ‘when the nation is carried on the shoulders of a sweep and an army of lassies. Good luck to you, hen, not that you’ll need it here. They’ll treat you well. No POWs to mix things up.’

He left me standing in a yard. Greenhouses stretched out to the side of the farmhouse, which stood on a low rise
looking
at the Ochils. There were houses close by, and the castle crouched on its cliff-top nest.

‘Welcome, my dear,’ said a woman coming out of the house. ‘I’m Mrs Ogilvie. We’ve been expecting you. I hope Rory wasn’t bending your ear on the way up.’ She was thin and elegant, even in her wellies. ‘Now, don’t stare – I used to be a catalogue model,’ she said, waving at her boots, ‘but Herr Hitler put the kibosh on that, and now I am stuck here. Now, let’s get you kitted out. They sent me a stack of the most
hideous
uniforms you can imagine. Why they want to dress you beautiful, young things as middle-aged men, I can’t imagine.’

She threw scratchy shirts, ties and knee breeches on the bed in the spare room and said, ‘Take your pick. There is worse to come,’ and she held up a pair of brown lace-up shoes. ‘Just stuff them with newspaper, if they’re too long in the toe. They must have been expecting tattieboggles when they sent me this lot. Put on the dungarees for everyday wear. The other girls live out, and I don’t usually bring them in until picking time. You’ll meet the nursery man later. I believe they call him “Grumbling Jim” behind his back, but he’s not the ogre they make out. You’ll see.’

Jim was standing at the door to the first greenhouse after lunch. He had steel-grey, curly hair, and was stocky, with very blue eyes. His shoulders were just beginning to stoop.

‘Another townie?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I replied.

‘That makes a change, then. Hard to tell in that get-up. Never was a uniformed organisation man myself. Luckily, I am too old for all that conscription palaver.’

‘You don’t look a day over twenty-one,’ I said.

‘Oh, a charmer – you’ll not get around me like that, young lady.’

His skin was so wrinkled by the sun that he looked a hundred.

‘Did you fight in the last war?’ I asked.

‘Try the one before that,’ he replied. ‘Put me off for life. Empire is baloney, but I find it doesn’t pay to have an opinion, so I grow plants instead. Tomatoes won’t bother you with their beliefs. You can always find peace in a greenhouse,’ – he handed me a hosepipe – ‘but limited rain. The heaters dry everything out. Put that on a fine spray and off you go.’

‘Should I water everything?’ I asked. The vegetable
seedlings
stretched as far as I could see.

‘Everything except me,’ he replied, ‘and don’t forget their friends.’ He waved at the other greenhouses. ‘But if I see any of these boys paddling out the door, there will be hell to pay. I’ll be putting the kettle on at four. You’ll hear it whistle if you do the west greenhouse last.’

It made me feel calm to water the tiny plants, each one a green thread in its tray. Jim had said they were called Blaby Special after a place in England. The sun broke through and shone on my face, warming the earth.

Mrs Ogilvie put a hot meal on the table at 6.30pm on the dot, ringing an old school bell to tell us it was ready. I was famished and pleased to see she had roasted a chicken, but there was no meat on Jim’s plate. It was piled high with root vegetables and tomato jelly.

‘He is a vegetarian,’ said Mrs Ogilvie, ‘insists on it, although I tell him the world won’t stop turning if he has a mouthful of flesh.’

‘Some people don’t understand the meaning of the word vegetarian, although I don’t hold with labels, as I said. Pythagoras is my inspiration and he’s hundreds of years old,’ Jim proclaimed, salting his food without tasting it.

‘He’s dead, Jim,’ said Mrs Ogilvie.

‘That’s beside the point,’ he replied, ‘look how clever he was.’

‘Well, I don’t know what went wrong for you, then. There isn’t a whole lot left between your ears,’ said Mrs Ogilvie,
flicking
him with her tea towel. ‘You’ll scare our guest off with your vegetarian nonsense, and she has only just arrived. You’ll have some chicken, Agnes, won’t you?’

It tasted as good as Mother’s and the heart came back into me. I hadn’t eaten much at the flat. Mr Black had closed over Christmas. The woman in the post office hinted that he had had a nervous breakdown, and his wife was running the shop. I doubt Mrs Black would have served me even if I had gone in.