rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_eb9e1476-9d95-5a8a-ada2-b57c3c129026">CHAPTER 4
Murdo Macrae had risen at five-thirty for as long as he could remember, and the first hour of the day had always been his own time; a time to ease himself into the needs of the day, and to enjoy a mug or two of strong tea and the first fill of his pipe. Even Gallus, without ever having being told, understood this.
Murdo had raised several dogs over the years, but none had had the quick high spirits of the Westie. And though Gallus was on the go from dawn to dusk, not even he disturbed this, the most precious hour of the day.
Right now the terrier was lying under the kitchen table, quivering with unease.
‘D’you have to do that just now?’ Murdo sighed.
Helen, in a candlewick dressing-gown, her hair plastered to her head under an ancient hairnet, was yanking the heart from a cabbage with a knife which might well have been the envy of her ancestors.
‘I need to get the soup on,’ she answered.
‘It’s ten past six in the morning, Helen.’
‘I can read the time, thank you. Some of us did have an education, y’know.’
‘Will this soup be ready for the breakfast, then? Or am I too ignorant in believing that it doesna’ take six hours for a cabbage to cook?’
Whack!
Murdo needed to go to the bathroom. His bowels, like the rest of him, were used to a certain routine, a routine that did not include his wife’s presence at this time of the day.
He rose.
‘Where d’you think you’re off to?’
‘The bathroom, if you don’t mind.’
‘Open the window, then. And don’t go mad wi’ the toilet roll.’
The moment had passed. Murdo sat down, dejected.
That’ll be my piles back,’ he murmured. The inference was clear. Helen would be responsible for the inevitable onset of this adversity.
‘Don’t go blaming yir piles on me! Blame herself if you want someone to blame. Stravaiging about the place giving me orders!’
‘Wha …?’
‘Her wi’ the Alice band!’
‘Who?’
‘Madam Cunningham to you and me. Thinks she’s the lady o’ the manor when she’s here.’ The cabbage was scooped into a large earthenware bowl to await further torture. ‘Well,’ Helen continued, waving the knife dangerously close to her husband’s beard, ‘I had enough of that last time round. She’s no’ even close to being a lady. Not like Alfie. Not a bit like Alfie!’
Murdo relit his pipe. It tasted sour, and there was no sign of another mug of tea. He had liked Alfreda Cunningham a lot, admired her even. But how on earth his wife could consider Alfreda a lady when the wild besom had met her end in a backstreet brawl in some dive in Marseilles (accompanied by a twenty-year-old waiter she had picked up in Monte Carlo, no less) was beyond him.
Alfreda Cunningham had been the only woman he’d ever known who had smoked Havana cigars, the bigger the better. And that was the way she had lived. Everything had had to be bigger and better, including presumably the young waiter. Murdo embarrassed himself with the thought, and reached down to calm his dog.
Well, Alfie was gone. Forty years old, and this big old empty house was all she had left behind her. This house – and her son, Stewart Cunningham, as different from his mother as night from day.
For a moment, Murdo cast his mind back to the years of half-terms and holidays when the bairn had walked by his side, hanging on Murdo’s every word as the ways of the countryside were gently and carefully explained to him, learning to love and respect the cruelly beautiful land of his birth.
Stewart the boy had filled an empty, lonely corner of Murdo’s heart, but it had been Stewart the man who set off to gouge out a living in that foreign, heartless, concrete city – London. Murdo knew he had no right to the hurt he’d felt then, and he’d buried it a long time ago.
‘They’ll only be here for a couple of days, Helen. They’ll be back down south for Easter.’
‘He’s going to sell this place out from under us, Murdo,’ Helen warned, pulling off the hairnet to expose her still vibrant brown hair, hardly touched by the silver that had long since claimed Murdo’s own.
He rose again, and gathered her in his beefy arms. ‘No, he’s no’ going to be doing that,’ he soothed. ‘Dinna fash yirself wi’ wild imaginings, Helen. We’ve a home here – as long as we want it. Stewart wouldna’ do less.’
‘There’s something behind it, Murdo. I can feel it in my bones.’
‘Bonny bones they are, too.’ Murdo smiled, lifting his wife’s chin. ‘Educated bones.’
His teasing had the desired effect. Helen relaxed against him, a forlorn smile lifting the corners of her mouth. ‘Yir an awful man,’ she sighed, pulling gently away from him. ‘But it’s no’ Stewart I’m worried about. It’s her. She’s got far more influence on him than us.’
‘Hmm, maybe … At any rate, I’m no’ going to stand still for a change o’ residence at our age. OK now?’
Murdo reached for the kettle, and filled it under the splashing of the old taps. ‘If there is anything behind it, it wouldna’ surprise me if he’s going to sort out something wi’ the fishing rights. That river’s a wee goldmine, and there’s many a one around here who’s making a bob or two hiring out a stretch of it to the tourists.’
‘Well, if that’s the idea, he needna’ think I’m getting tartanned up to put on a show for a bunch o’ foreigners!’ Helen’s temper flared once more.
Murdo gave up on his tea. ‘I’ll be in the vegetable plot if you want me,’ he murmured. Gallus had anticipated the move, and was already scraping at the back door.
Thank God for dumb animals, Murdo reflected, pulling on his wellies. A minute later, the pair set out together into the misty haze of the April morning.
‘It’s going to be a fine day,’ Murdo informed Gallus, his natural good humour restored.
Gallus looked up at his master. ‘I suppose you already knew that, though,’ Murdo said, tickling the dog’s rump with his walking stick.
Gallus barked. Of course he knew it.
Hattie finished making her bed, pulling the quilt over the blankets and smoothing its faded roses with the palms of her hands. She gathered the pitcher and glass from her bedside table, and carried it into the kitchen-cum-living room which made up the other half of the cottage. Only then did she walk back to the bedroom and switch off the light.
While Hattie had sat in the chilling dampness of her tiny prison cell, Alfreda had had the old scullery converted into a toilet, demolishing the outside shed which had served that purpose for so many
