Chapter Twenty-Four
MHAIRI
17 March 1931
Lochaline
The bell rang and the clacking looms came to an abrupt halt. Mhairi pushed back on her chair, glancing around the factory floor as the women stood and began unceremoniously streaming towards the doors, buttoning their coats as they talked.
It was late afternoon but the sky was already the colour of damsons, and bright lights glowed from the shop windows and terraced houses along the street. Figures streamed past in silhouette. It would be several weeks yet before the days grew longer and they could step out into daylight.
She saw her mother and Christina up ahead, heads bent in conversation – as ever – as they began to make their way up the hill, towards home. Effie had called in sick from the telephone box that morning, driving Mrs Buchanan into an apoplectic rage. She’d said a death certificate was the only sick note she would accept and that there would be no job waiting for her on her return this time! But Effie wouldn’t care. She was already halfway across Scotland, having set off beside Archie Baird-Hamilton in his blue sports car with a look in her eyes that Mhairi knew only too well. Would she be back?
Mhairi wasn’t sure, but today at least, it suited her to walk alone. Donald’s most recent letter had come yesterday and it had sat in her skirt pocket all day, next to her skin as she worked, his words memorized and playing on a loop in her head as she worked the treadles. He had begged her to come back to him, over and over, in every way it was possible to ask, and she had cried reading it. But nothing had changed; their circumstances remained as impossible as Effie and Sholto’s. The universe was against them.
The path summited the low hill and began to wind left, heading back towards the coast. Mhairi felt the breeze on her face, the growing heaviness in her belly. She was still not showing in her clothes, but when she bathed at night, she could see her body falling more easily into a rounded shape this time, as if her baby girl had laid the path for this child.
‘Mhairi!’
She looked back to find David coming up the track from the Forestry. Behind him, her brothers Angus and Fin were walking too, both of them long-legged and striding out – but she knew they would head left, back into the village, when their path met the road. It had quickly become routine for the men to have a pint after work.
Not David, though. Never him.
She stopped and waited as he jogged over, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his cheeks reddened from another day of exertions.
‘Another day done?’ she asked as he pulled up beside her with a puff.
He took off his cap and ran a hand through his dark hair. ‘Aye, though they all look the same.’
There was complaint in the comment. Back on St Kilda, chores had been decided by the men at their daily parliament outside Old Fin’s and set according to weather, season and need. Here, the jobs were mundane, repetitive and performed for profit. They did the same tasks day in, day out and the future was beginning to look like a very long, straight road.
‘I hear Effie’s taken off again.’
‘Aye,’ Mhairi grinned. ‘This morning. Mrs Buchanan had a fit. She thinks Effie’s the devil herself come to torment her, even though she’s the only person who’s been doing any tormenting. I don’t know how Eff’s put up with it, honestly; I’ve never known her so mild.’
‘Well, she’s not been herself since the break-up.’
‘Aye,’ Mhairi smiled. ‘It made me fair happy to see some of her old spark back in her when she told me her plan last night.’
Mhairi was still intrigued as to what was going on. Effie – supposedly sworn to secrecy – had been discreet, telling her only that she had some information that might be helpful to one of Sholto’s friends.
‘And is any of that “spark” down to the man driving her around in his sports car, do you think?’
Mhairi sighed. ‘I’m not sure. It’s far too early for her to think of anyone else in that way yet. She truly loved Sholto.’ In spite of Effie’s stoic insistence that she was looking to the future, Mhairi still felt guilty using the past tense. After all, she wasn’t with the man she loved either, but her love for Donald was nowhere near ending.
‘Mm,’ David agreed. ‘First love cuts the deepest, that’s what they say. It scars the heart.’
Mhairi glanced at him, hearing something in his tone that she couldn’t quite place.
‘Still, this new fellow seems like a bright prospect too,’ David continued. ‘The toffs really have a soft spot for her, don’t they?’
Mhairi shrugged. ‘I think her spiritedness appeals to them. They like novelty, and let’s face it, there’s no one quite like Eff.’
‘No, there isn’t,’ he grinned. ‘Norman looked like he was chewing a wasp when he was talking about that car.’
‘Effie doesn’t care about cars.’
‘I know, but this one sounds like a daredevil too. Y’ never know – Effie might actually have met her match this time.’
Mhairi swallowed. Was he right? Was she confusing first love for everlasting love – not just for Effie, but herself too? Effie was facing facts, but Mhairi...she was as anchored to Donald as she’d ever been.
‘Don’t look so sad,’ he said, knocking her affectionately with his arm. ‘I’m only playing...I know you and Donald are the real thing. Everyone does.’
They had been brought in from the cold now that the full truth had been revealed. Mhairi and her mother had talked at length about the love affair – how it had begun, Alexander McLennan’s abuses, and how Donald had tried to protect her from him. The pendulum of public opinion had swung fully in their favour, and it was Mary and Lorna who were now vilified. The St Kildans had rallied around her, but also the MacQueens, who had lost their grandson on account of the women’s deception and lies, which had left their daughter bereft. The only brightness on their horizon had been a telegram from Flora – finally – telling them that she had been reunited with James, and that they had married in Canada. She had written that she had ‘much to tell’ when she returned, little knowing that everyone already knew.
‘Have you heard from him?’
‘A letter came yesterday.’
‘And how is he?’
Mhairi sighed. ‘...He’s not doing well. He’s so alone; he hasn’t the heart to go to the pub with the others after work. He just sits in the flat.’ She glanced at David. ‘I’m worried he’s going to come up here.’
‘But he can’t,’ David frowned. ‘His bail conditions—’
‘I know. I keep telling him that, but...he’s desperate. I’m worried he’ll do something rash.’
‘You’ve got to make him understand that he has to wait. It can’t be easy remaining under police caution, but it won’t be for ever.’
‘It’s been four months now, though.’
‘Aye, so any day now they’ll surely release him from enquiries. They have no proof—’
‘They’re sticking with motive. They believe they can put a case together on that alone.’
‘You gave him an alibi, remember? They can’t disregard that because it’s inconvenient to them. Trust me, they’re just throwing their weight around because they’ve not got anyone else on the hook.’
She glanced at him, Norman’s name a spectre between them.
‘Did you try talking to Jayne again about...your suspicions?’
He winced. ‘Aye, I tried. I told her it’s about letting justice be done. Both of us going to the police and telling them we are each other’s alibis doesn’t mean she’s incriminating Norman. If he’s guilty, then the truth will out. It should come out. And if’s not, then there’ll be nothing for them to find.’
‘But...?’
‘She won’t do it. She says he wouldn’t be able to prove he had been at home alone all night, and she knows for a fact he didn’t do it.’
Mhairi tutted. ‘She can’t possibly know that.’
‘Of course not. She’s just frightened of him and what he’d do if he found out she was with me that night.’
Mhairi looked at him, hearing the bitterness in his words. He hated Norman, she knew that – he resented everything the man had done to keep him and Molly apart in the months before she died, believing his sister could ‘do better’ than David. There was no doubt David and Jayne had become good friends after Molly’s death, united by grief, but since moving back to Lochaline, she had noticed something else too. It was something she kept trying not to see, but couldn’t help recognizing – because she too had once been in love with someone who was married. She knew how it was to go years seeing someone in a certain light, only for something to shift so that they were recast in a golden haze. Did Jayne know?
Did David?
Their white terraced houses were in view now, the neat walled front gardens running down to the track, the smart new telephone box sitting proudly on the other side. Lights glowed in the windows of the smaller property wedged between the MacQueen and MacKinnon houses, where Mad Annie and Ma Peg lived; they looked after the children after school while Christina and Rachel finished their shifts at the factory.
‘Come to ours,’ David said, opening the gate for her. ‘Ma made some batter for drop scones this morning.’
‘Drop scones, you say?’ she smiled, needing no further persuasion.
They walked into the house. The younger ones were playing upstairs, and they found his mother prodding the fire in the front room and throwing on a bucket of coal.
‘Ah, Mhairi,’ Christina smiled, straightening up. ‘I’m just about to make some scones. Will y’ have one?’
David grinned. ‘Aye. I told her already.’
‘Good! We need to feed that baby up,’ Christina smiled, rubbing Mhairi’s arm affectionately as she passed her and went into the kitchen. They followed, David kicking off his boots as his mother poured batter onto the cooking plate. The drop scones sizzled as she reached for the pile of post left on the table and sifted through the envelopes.
‘Oh, look! A letter from Flora!’ she exclaimed delightedly. They could all recognize the handwriting immediately.
‘What does she say?’ David asked impatiently as his mother tore it open and excitedly began to read.
But Christina rapidly paled, the joy fading from her eyes as she went.
A faint burning smell came from the stove. The scones only took a matter of moments to cook – but Christina was oblivious as she looked up at them with a stricken expression.
‘What is it?’ David asked, seeing his mother’s distress. ‘What does she say?’
‘She says...I canna believe it...’ Christina’s voice was pale and thin as she glanced at the sheet of paper again. ‘...She says Lorna is dead.’
The words ricocheted around the room as Christina staggered to the chair.
‘That can’t be,’ Mhairi whispered, feeling the world tilt beneath her own feet. She hated the woman for what she had done to Flora, but she also couldn’t deny the nurse had always done everything in her power to help Mhairi and her baby.
‘But what happened to her?’ David asked.
His mother looked back at him with haunted eyes. ‘...She killed herself.’
They all recoiled. David spun on his heel, clutching his jaw and rubbing it hard. ‘...When? Why?’
Christina looked again at the letter. ‘Flora says she and James found them both in Quebec, with the baby. They were detained at Immigration. Lorna had fallen ill with typhus on the crossing.’
‘Typhus!’ Mhairi echoed. It had done for many an islander in years past.
‘They confronted Mary first, appealing to her better nature—’
‘ What better nature?’ David scoffed.
‘...But Mary said they have no proof the baby is theirs. All official paperwork has her down as the mother...’ Christina looked over, aghast, at Mhairi. ‘Is that true?’
Mhairi blinked. She hadn’t kept up with the ‘technicalities’ of the plan beyond helping Flora through the birth. She had scarcely been able to get herself through as it was, grieving her own dead baby and leaving Donald. ‘It must be.’
Christina looked away, staring into space, her chest heaving with pain. Just when she thought the situation couldn’t become worse, it did.
‘Ma?’ David prompted, restless to know more.
Christina looked back at the letter. ‘Flora says she confronted Lorna about what she’d done instead. She says Lorna had the decency not to lie about it...and that...she agreed to hand the baby back to them when she was due to be released from quarantine, three days later.’ She pressed a hand to her mouth as she stared down at the words. ‘...Her body was found in her room that morning. She’d stolen some pills from the infirmary.’
Mhairi pressed her eyes shut at the thought of it.
‘I can’t believe she would do that to herself,’ David mumbled.
But Mhairi could. She knew what it was to live with shame, but this had been of another order. Lorna couldn’t live with the guilt of what she’d done. She’d done a terrible thing, but it didn’t mean she had been a terrible woman.
She looked at Flora’s mother, so helpless in a kitchen thousands of miles away. ‘...Does that mean Mary’s still got the baby?’ Mhairi asked her.
Christina nodded. ‘Aye. And with Lorna dead, it’s her word against Flora’s that the baby is hers. My girl has no proof to say otherwise.’
David’s hands balled into furious fists. ‘So what’s she going to do next? She can’t just give up. Mary can’t be allowed to get away with this!’ he said angrily. ‘Surely James can do something? He’s a rich man. They can buy anything! Babies. Justice.’
Christina’s eyes tracked over the page. ‘Mary’s being deported back. She wasn’t allowed through without Lorna to provide for them financially...Flora and James will be on the boat too. Oh, they’re coming home!’
But Mhairi closed her eyes in despair. Flora had gone all that way, only to end up empty-handed?
Lorna had been the nurse to deliver Flora of her baby, an eyewitness who was respectable and upstanding, a pillar of the community. She could have undone her wrongs and still slipped away into a new life with Mary – not a perfect ending, without the baby, but a happy enough one at least.
Instead she’d chosen to fall deeper into the lie, taking her secrets with her to the grave.