Watch Over Me (14 page)

I sat on the bench in the small garden that had been built around the well. St Colman’s waters were said to aid fertility. How ironic. I’d have to drink the whole well before it worked, I thought bitterly.

I could see the whole of Glen Avich at my feet and the black hills behind it. On my right, the winding road that had led me up here, lined with houses – including the McAnenas’ cottage. The light was on in Jamie’s kitchen. I wondered why he was still awake in the small hours.

I had done the right thing, of course. The last thing I needed was a night out with him. One touch and all the loneliness and sadness would have come rolling out, and God knows what would have happened.

And that was all over for me.

Because who would want me, who would want someone who can’t have children?

Which is why Tom had found someone else, a woman who functions properly, like women are supposed to. Women are not supposed to be barren.

There, I said it. The secret I couldn’t disclose to anyone, because it would have given away the true depth of my self-loathing, the sense of my own worthlessness. I could never say this aloud, it’s too raw, too cruel. If a friend of mine told me something like this, I’d be appalled. I’d say, how can you think like this, how can you hate yourself to this extent? How can you think that nobody will ever want you because you can’t have babies? And yet, I thought that of myself, this awful thing that I will never speak aloud.

I believed it; I believed in my very bones that nobody would want someone like me. Let alone Jamie McAnena, him and his lovely, lovely daughter with all to live for, his success as an artist, his beautiful soul, his handsome face, his voice that flowed over me like warm waters, calming me and soothing me and making me feel that all is right with the world.

He was going to find someone … suitable. A real woman, one whose body worked properly.

Oh no, Eilidh, you won’t start crying again. You WON’T. I hid my face in my hands, then hastily looked up.

Laughter.

Laughter from the bushes and hushed voices.

Coming my way.

I dived off the bench and hid behind a pine, my heart pounding. Who could be out at this time of night – well, apart from me?

A black silhouette came out of the bushes, someone tall. A woman. Followed by … I squinted, peeking from behind a tree … another woman, a smaller one. They were whispering and giggling and holding hands. It was clear what was going on.

Oh well, times are changing in Glen Avich, too. I resigned myself to stay hidden until they went. I didn’t want to embarrass them and also, I couldn’t exactly give an explanation to why I was out in the middle of the night. At least they had a good excuse.

The two girls held each other and kissed. I felt uneasy, not because it was two girls, but because I was seeing something I wasn’t meant to see.

There were tiny, solar-powered lights all over the garden, buried in the ground like shiny mushrooms. They gave a faint glow, like fairy lights dotted all over the place. The girls stepped on one of them in their embrace and I could see their faces: Silke … and …

Heavens above! Fiona Robertson! That shy wee thing, Mary’s granddaughter. She blushes furiously if anyone so much as looks at her. Oh well, still waters, as my mum always says about me.

I really, really, really wanted to go. I felt so bad intruding on them like this. I took a big breath and stepped out slowly, on tiptoes.

Fiona and Silke were now facing each other, holding hands, lost in each other’s eyes. The look on their faces was … amazing.

It was pure, unadulterated love.

No one had ever looked at me that way.
I
had never looked at anyone that way. Not Tom, that’s for sure.

I stood in the shadows, holding on to the tree, looking at them looking at each other.

And I had two revelations.

One was: I have never loved and now it’s too late.

And the other one was: everyone has a choice of how to live their lives. I don’t have to go back to Southport. I can actually choose to stay, sort it all out, tie up all the loose ends, with Tom, with my family, and
stay
.

We all have a choice.

I want to stay, I want to be home. More than anything, I want to be home.

The excitement is palpable, even I can feel it flowing through my substanceless body as I sit on a wooden beam, up near the ceiling. I can see Silke, you couldn’t miss her, so tall and striking with her pink hair. She makes me smile because she’s brave, fresh and free. Girls of my generation would have never been so daring.

And there’s my darling Maisie, chatting to all and sundry in her sweet, funny, confident manner. She’s wearing her pink fairy outfit, so she did manage to convince her dad to let her wear it! With a little help from Shona, for sure. Jamie was worried that she’d be cold. He must have ruled that she could wear the fluffy, light dress in spite of the chill in the air, as long as she wore it over her pink long-sleeved top and stripy pink and purple tights to keep her warm. Really, my son is like a mother hen sometimes. Shona has smeared a bit of Kirsty’s blue glitter on Maisie’s wee cheeks and her lovely flaxen hair is loose on her shoulders like a golden waterfall. The whole effect is so pretty, looking at her from up here, I feel like a hand is squeezing my heart.

Jamie looks smart in his blue and white checked shirt and dressy jeans. He’s standing with a group of fellow artists, a beer in his hand, quiet and unassuming as ever. I’m so proud of him. His work is by far the most remarkable of all those displayed, a beautiful collection of medals, small sculptures and jewellery, all with a Scottish theme, the usual symbols – the thistle, the deer – reinvented and reinterpreted anew. I’m proud of his work, and proud of his decision last night. I’d been terrified for so long, seeing him drinking alone night after night, wondering when it would start spilling into his life, into his work and into Maisie’s world. But he stopped it. When Jamie closes a door, it stays closed. He’s like his father – indecisive, dreamy, dithering and then, his mind will be made up and there will be no going back. I couldn’t resist touching his face last night, though I could see he was startled …

Eilidh just came in. She’s truly beautiful tonight. She’s turning a few heads, in her black dress and shining eyes, walking over to chat with Shona. Fraser and the girls have stayed in Aberdeen to attend Fraser’s nephew’s birthday party, and Shona is staying with Jamie. I can see how friendly Shona has become with Eilidh since she moved back up. The four-year difference between them was a huge gap when they were growing up but not anymore. Jamie hasn’t seen her coming in. Wait till he sees her in that dress!

Oh goodness me. Mary’s here. In a wheelchair. I feel like I’m positively
dissolving
with embarrassment. Had someone told me years ago that one day I would have been a ghost practically throwing an innocent frail woman down the stairs …

It did pay off though.

What am I saying? Elizabeth McAnena, you have no shame!

But it
did
pay off.

There, just like I thought. Jamie saw Eilidh. I smile to myself as I see his eyes grow wide with admiration, but he stays rooted to where he’s standing, awkwardly. Men. Trust Shona to do the right thing, take Eilidh by the hand and walk over to him and his pals, John and Ally – there they are, the three scallywags. I remember the three of them, barely ten years old, sitting in my kitchen having a piece and jam before going fishing together. John and Ally are both married now, one is a teacher in Kinnear, the other works in a bank in Aberdeen.

Ally is looking at Shona when he thinks nobody sees him. He’s always liked her and I think she liked him too, but then Fraser arrived on the scene and that was it. I’ve often wondered what would have been if Fraser didn’t turn up one day, visiting his cousins in Kinnear, down in Glen Avich for the day. After about a year of long distance courting and wearing down the road between London and Glen Avich, he realised that if he wanted Shona to marry him, he would have to move up here, so he did. A wedding, a gorgeous house and three daughters later, neither of them has ever looked back.

Shona had wanted to be a nurse but she never made it because she got pregnant, and then again and again. But don’t we all have regrets and learn to live with them?

My regret is a secret. Nobody ever talks about him. To them, it was a blip, a ‘thing that happens’. To me, it was a baby. Old enough to know his gender, too young to survive outside of me. I called him Charlie. Then Jamie came and everybody forgot. Everybody except James and me. They say that every woman has a baby story, one that she never shares or talks about. Well, that is mine.

Yes, we all have our regrets, and Shona is happy anyway, I can see it. She’s been making enquiries again to see if she could go back to college, start training next year. She’d make a great nurse, caring and efficient as she is. Scarily efficient, really. She used to keep all three of us in line and she’s still the only person that can boss Jamie around and get away with it.

The music is starting now. Jamie and Eilidh are sitting side by side in the front row, Jamie has Maisie on his lap. It will be Eilidh up next. Some of the audience will remember when she last stood in front of Glen Avich to read, over twenty years ago.

There she goes, standing in front of the microphone for a second, composing herself. She reads beautifully, her voice is like velvet as she leads the audience into sadness and loss and then to happiness again with the lovely poem for Lucy, Jamie’s favourite.

A second of suspended emotion, then somebody claps and the spell is over. Eilidh steps down and Silke hugs her, mouthing ‘thank you’.

Time for Maisie to go home, she’s half asleep in Shona’s arms. A flurry of goodbyes and then Jamie and Eilidh stand alone, one in front of the other. Until …

‘Jamie McAnena? Hi, how are you? I’m Emily,’ says the grey-haired woman in a blue pashmina and ethnic jewellery. ‘I love your work.’

And Eilidh walks away.

Tonight, everything’s right with the world. The awful, awful worry in the back of my head, the sense of shame, the hidden threat that I knew one day would take over my life – all that is finished. I’m sure of it, there’s no doubt in my mind – I’ll never go back there. Once the whisky was poured away, that was it for me.

I am free now.

Eilidh is beautiful tonight. She always is, in her jeans and t-shirts and trainers, but tonight, with that dress, and her hair all wavy and soft … I wish everybody would disappear and leave us alone.

But I see sadness in her eyes again. The same sadness I saw when she first arrived in Glen Avich. I wonder what Katrina said last night.

‘Eilidh … Thank you, you were amazing.’

‘Oh, I’m just grateful I remembered it all!’

‘Are you ok? You look a bit …’ I stumbled. Words. They are so … difficult.

She laughed. ‘No, it’s not me, it’s my eyes. I’ve got my father’s eyes, you know – he’s Jewish, they all have really sad eyes on his side of the family. Kletzmer eyes, he says.’

I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say next. So I came out with, ‘Your eyes are beautiful.’

Naff, naff, naff.

To which she smiled, blushed and took a sip of her white wine.

‘Jamie McAnena? Hi, how are you? I’m Emily. I love your work.’

I turned to see a woman of about seventy, with grey hair and startlingly dark eyes. Like I care that you are Emily and that you love my work! I didn’t say that of course. I nodded politely and took the woman’s hand, and Eilidh walked away.

Then something strange happened.

Emily released my hand.

‘Go after her,’ she said.

What on earth was she talking about? I don’t even know this woman! I stood, rooted to the spot.

‘Go on, Jamie McAnena,’ Emily went on. I looked into her face, there was a smile in her black eyes. ‘We can talk about your work another time.’

She turned away, in a cloud of perfume and soft blue cashmere.

It dawned on me. Emily Simms!
The
Emily Simms. The sculptor and patron of the arts.

Shit!

Oh well, whatever. I looked around for Eilidh and found her chatting with a group of girls. I took a deep breath. Here it goes.

‘Eilidh, would you like a walk?’

She looked up, surprised. ‘Are you not meant to be working?’

‘Yes. But I need some fresh air. Come with me.’

Eilidh looked around. ‘But … the evening sort of … just started. Silke will kill us …’

‘We won’t be ten minutes. Come on. I need a word.’

‘A word? That sounds serious.’ She laughed. ‘What have I done? Have I been feeding Maisie Irn Bru and Smarties for her snack or something?’

She grabbed her coat and without looking around for fear of someone talking to us and stopping us from going, we walked out into the freezing night.

‘It’s sooo cold!’ she said. ‘It’s lovely though. I love it when it’s really, really cold and you can see your breath like little clouds.’