Chapter 30
Strange how in forty-seven years, having daily observed in the mirror the soft lines spreading around her eyes and across her brow while new white and grey strands gradually tinselled her mousey hair, and her back began to ache in cold weather and her knees reminded her they were not what they once were, not at any point had Rhona Gifford ever thought of Eric Shaw as aging too.
He had been preserved in her memory as raven-haired and taut skinned, young and handsome all this time.
The man standing before her looked back through eyes deeply lined where the sun had touched him over many summers, and where he’d once sported a dapper dark moustache were salt and pepper whiskers and a beard, neatly trimmed.
He wore glasses that added distinction to his still very fine bone structure.
Eric had also been transformed by time but there was still the hawkish glint in his eyes and, when he’d smiled in recognition of her, the curve of his lips recalled the vital young man he had been.
‘Forty-seven years,’ he said as the snow fell around them and Rhona pulled her coat tight around her body.
She’d shoved him out into the snow and over to the smoking brazier when she’d realised the volunteers were gawping at them like they were panto stars at the Christmas matinee show.
She shivered. ‘Aye, a long time,’ she said in a daze.
‘My daughter sent me the post this morning.’
This shook her out of her dream state. Of course he had children. She found herself wishing she had a story to tell him about a husband and a baby or two. Pain bloomed within her.
‘The post?’ she echoed, not quite understanding him, and still lost in wondering how they were supposed to unwrap the stories of their separate lives.
‘The Facebook post?’
She shook her head.
‘The viral Facebook post?’
This meant nothing to her, and something in her confusion was making Eric smile all the more.
‘Never mind. Suffice to say, there’s been a fair few people looking for me, and my Catriona saw a post about it this morning and sent it to me in Earlston.’
‘Earlston?’ She couldn’t form sentences, only grasping at snatches of meaning as he spoke.
‘That’s where I live now, in the Borders.’
‘Oh. I’ve… I’ve been right here,’ she said, then thought herself very stupid for it. But it was true; she had been right here all this time. He’d only been in the Borders? Hours away? If he’d wanted to find her, he could have come for her.
He seemed unable to stop smiling at every sound she made. It was bewildering and comforting at the same time.
‘So close?’ she said.
‘Aye, but I’ve been away, for years. In Australia. That’s where my girls live. Two of them, with their families.’
Rhona weakened at the words, her breath coming short and thin, thinking only of his having married and had little Australian children, who themselves probably had children. Rhona wasn’t anyone’s wife or mother or granny.
Not once did it occur to her that her story in the local paper and a social media search instigated by her meddling sister could have reached all the way to the other side of the globe.
‘I didn’t mean to startle you, turning up like this.
I just got in the truck and drove. I bought a copy of the paper on the high street.
’ He showed her the newspaper still gripped in his hand, the same one she’d stumbled upon earlier when she’d been intent on party games.
Eric was looking around the repair shop yard.
‘The whole place looks so different nowadays.’
‘Nothing’s changed,’ she contradicted him, because to her mind, Cairn Dhu was still very much the same town he’d ran away from, and she was still the same girl.
Neither of them spoke for a moment. Snowflakes settled on Eric’s hair, still as thick as she remembered, only now it was almost as white as the snow itself. The orange glow from the brazier’s dying flames turned his hair and face a warm honeyed colour on one side.
‘Why are you not in Australia now?’ she asked, knowing the answer wasn’t anything to do with her, or else he wouldn’t have needed to be found. He’d have come back for her.
He sniffed a laugh at this too. ‘I’m selling one of my sawmills.’
She reacted bodily to this news. ‘You work in mills?’
‘Bought them too. All over the South Coast of Oz, and here, and a few other places. Shaw Sawmills.’
All this time she’d thought of him as an outcast, shunned from place to place and unable to find work because of what he’d done, when in fact, he’d gone right into her father’s line of work.
‘Well, that’s wonderful,’ she heard her voice saying, thin in the icy air.
Eric had been a success, after everything.
‘But… you said you couldn’t support me.’ She saw the words escape upon the white vapour billowing from her mouth.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘And it was true. But I was determined to make something of myself. I couldn’t find any work here, so after a few months I bought my ticket and got the ship over there.
Australia was desperate for loggers and sawers then.
I was made foreman within a month. Bought the place after eight years from the old boss, and uh, well, he was my father-in-law by then. ’
Rhona would always be able to tell herself she received the news well. She didn’t sway on her feet or look away in surprise.
‘Oh yes?’ she said, nodding and smiling thinly. He wouldn’t be able to tell she was turning to ice inside.
‘Then we bought another mill, and when the girls got older and were in uni, I started investing in sites in the UK, and then…’ He stopped himself. ‘Sorry, I know this is a lot.’
She shook her head, starting to wonder if he could guess at the ache within her. ‘Not at all,’ she lied.
‘I couldn’t help coming here today. I saw that story and I knew it had to be you looking for me.’
She wanted to say he was wrong, that it was her interfering sister who’d brought him here.
She hadn’t been looking for him at all, but that wouldn’t be true.
Every day for forty-seven years her heart had been on the lookout for this man, and now here he was.
She steadied herself with a hand on the lapel of his coat.
His brow creased with concern. ‘Rhona? Should we go inside?’
‘No.’ Knowing she’d eventually have to go back in there and explain all of this when he got back in his truck and drove away was bad enough. She wasn’t taking him inside for them all to gawp at. ‘I’m just cold,’ she told him, and the words made him move.
‘Can I?’ he said, his hands held out as if to hug her.
Rhona wanted to throw herself against him, crash into his arms. A blinding whiteness came over her eyes at the thought of it. She had to look down at their feet.
‘Is your wife with you in the Borders too?’ she said, gulping for air and hoping he couldn’t detect it.
‘No. No, Rhona,’ he said with a sigh, dropping his arms. ‘Maggie passed away. It’ll be six years this January.’
Rhona hadn’t thought any feeling could be worse than standing in front of the man she’d waited for all her life only to find out he had long been in love with someone else, but now her heart gave way entirely and thick sobs came out of her.
He’d endured the loss of his wife, the mother of his children. The pain was too much to contain.
‘I’m heartsore to hear it, Eric. That’s terrible.’
His arms were around her in an instant and she cried uncontrollably.
‘How you must have suffered.’ Her longing had been nothing compared to his loss.
He squeezed her tightly and said nothing, but kissed the top of her head, and rocked her against his body until the tears subsided.
When he loosened his grip and she looked up at him, he wasn’t crying, though his eyes were steamy.
‘Rhona,’ he said urgently. ‘Are you married? Are you… somebody’s?’
The question came as such a surprise, a huge terrible laugh came out. ‘Am I whit?’ Laughing was a rotten thing to do with all of Rhona’s tears for Eric’s beloved wife still on her cheeks.
‘You’re not?’ he said. ‘What? Never?’
Rhona shook her head. ‘Of course not.’
He looked at her like she was a puzzle, his nose wrinkling as his brain worked and his eyes moved over her face.
‘I was waiting for you, silly,’ she said simply, because it was the truth.
She felt his grip tighten on her arms as though the ground was shaking beneath his feet.
‘Rhona… those first few months in Australia, when I was on my own, missing my mum and dad, missing you, they were the worst of my life. I… don’t know if I should say this but… I rang, looking for you.’
Nothing he was saying was making sense. ‘Who did you ring?’
‘I called your place. I still had your number, of course.’ He tapped his temple.
‘I called and your dad picked up. I asked after you, wondering if you’d want to speak with me.
I told him I was finally making a decent living – I never said where, mind you – and your dad said you were settled with somebody.
He said that you were happy at last, and I wasn’t to come crashing back in with my size elevens and ruin it all for you. ’
‘My dad said that?’ Rhona’s eyes swept the snow spotted sky as she tried to process this. Had that been what her dad was talking about that day, when he was nearing the end of his life, and he’d asked her if he’d done the right thing by her? Did he even remember the lie he’d told?
‘I was never settled with anyone,’ she said. ‘He made that up.’
Eric nodded slowly, letting it sink in, his eyes glazing like he could see himself hanging up that call, all those years ago, the hope that had kept him going finally extinguished.
‘I never forgot you,’ he said eventually. ‘I was just trying to turn myself into a man that deserved you. It hurt for a long while after, but I consoled myself knowing you were happy and you’d forgotten me and all the trouble I brought you. Then eventually, there was Maggie, and the kids…’
‘I never forgot you either,’ she said, stopping him. ‘Not for one minute.’
‘Rhona.’
Her name, when he said it, was as light as a snowflake, as warm as a flame. It was enough to erase so many of her tumbled thoughts, and a little of her sadness.
‘What a mess,’ she said.
Eric brought her close to him with his hands soothing in circles over her back until she could kid herself she was the girl she’d been in nineteen seventy-eight when the snows fell so heavily a whole country had stopped still.
But they’d lost their first chance at love, and been denied their second. No one got a third chance, and not at this age, surely?
Eric, the deep brown of his irises exactly the same as they had been then, the soft curve of his lips so familiar, inched closer until there was no space between them and their past selves at all, and tilting her face upwards with his fingers gently at her chin, he kissed her softly, unhurriedly, timelessly, as though they’d never been apart for a day in their lives.