“Oh, dear.” She felt a spasm of guilt. Probably someone had told Bobby everything, and he had gone in search of Jamie, meeting Ian instead, and thrown Malva’s accusations of Jamie at him. If she’d told him herself . . .
“What happened?”
“Well, Ian’s bloody dog took a hand, for the one thing—or a paw. Your father barely stopped him tearing out Bobby’s throat, but it did stop the fight. We dragged them apart, then, and Ian tore free and loped off into the woods, with the dog beside him. Bobby’s . . . well, I cleaned him up a bit, then gave him Jemmy’s trundle for the night,” he said apologetically. “He said he couldna stay up here—” He looked round at the shadowed kitchen; she’d already smoored the fire and carried the little boys up to bed; the room was empty, lit only by a faint hearth glow.
“I’m sorry. Will ye sleep here, then?”
She shook her head emphatically.
“Bobby or no Bobby, I want to go home.”
“Aye, all right. You go on, then; I’ll fetch Amy down to bar the door.”
“No, that’s okay,” she said quickly. “I’ll get her.” And before he could protest, she was down the hall and up the stair, the empty house strange and silent below.
82
NOT THE END OF
THE WORLD
THERE IS A GREAT DEAL of satisfaction in wresting weeds out of the earth. Backbreaking and endless as the chore may be, there is a tiny but unassailable sense of triumph in it, feeling the soil give suddenly, yielding the stubborn root, and the foe lying defeated in your hand.
It had rained recently and the earth was soft. I ripped and tore with ferocious concentration; dandelions, fireweed, rhododendron sprouts, bunchgrass, muhly, smartweed, and the creeping mallow known locally as “cheese.” Paused for an instant, narrow-eyed at a bull thistle, and prised it from the ground with a vicious stab of my pruning knife.
The grapevines that ran up the palisades had just begun their spring rush, and sprouts and ruffles of a delicate green tinged with rust cascaded from the woody stems, eager tendrils curling like my own new-grown hair—God damn her, she’d taken my hair on purpose to disfigure me! The shade they cast provided refuge for immense bushy growths of the pernicious thing I called “jewelweed,” not knowing its real name, for the tiny white flowers that winked like diamond clusters in the feathery green fronds. It was likely a fennel of some sort, but formed neither a useful bulb nor edible seeds; pretty, but useless—and thus the sort of thing that spreads like wildfire.
There was a small swishing sound, and a ball of rags came to rest by my foot. This was followed immediately by the rush of a much larger body, and Rollo swept past me, snatching the ball adroitly and galloping away, the wind of his passage stirring my skirts. Startled, I looked up, to see him bounding toward Ian, who’d come soft-footed into the garden.
He made a small gesture of apology, but I sat back on my heels and smiled at him, making an effort to quell the vicious sentiments surging to and fro in my bosom.
Evidently, the quelling wasn’t all that successful, for I saw him frown a little, and hesitate, looking at my face.
“Did you want something, Ian?” I said shortly, dropping the facade of welcome. “If that hound of yours knocks over one of my hives, I’ll make a rug of him.”
“Rollo!” Ian snapped his fingers at the dog, who leapt gracefully over the row of bee gums and basket hives that sat at the far end of the garden, trotted up to his master, dropped the ball at his feet, and stood genially panting, yellow wolf-eyes fixed with apparent interest on me.
Ian scooped up the ball, and turning, flung it out through the open gate, Rollo after it like the tail of a comet.
“I did want to ask ye something, Auntie,” he said, turning back to me. “It would wait, though.”
“No, that’s all right. Now’s as good a time as any.” Getting awkwardly to my feet, I waved him to the little bench Jamie had made for me in a shady nook beneath a flowering dogwood that overhung the corner of the garden.
“So?” I settled myself beside him, brushing crumbs of dirt from the bottom of my skirt.
“Mmphm. Well . . .” He stared at his hands, linked over his knee, big-knuckled and bony. “I . . . ah . . .”
“You haven’t been exposed to syphilis again, have you?” I asked, with a vivid memory of my last interview with an awkward young man in this garden. “Because if you have, Ian, I swear I will use Dr. Fentiman’s syringe on you and I won’t be gentle with it. You—”
“No, no!” he said hastily. “No, of course not, Auntie. It’s about—about Malva Christie.” He tensed as he said it, in case I should lunge for the pruning knife, but I merely drew a deep breath and let it out again, slowly.
“What about her?” I said, my voice deliberately even.
“Well . . . no really her, exactly. More what she said—about Uncle Jamie.” He stopped, swallowing, and I drew another slow breath. Disturbed as I was by the situation myself, I’d scarcely thought about its impact on anyone else. But Ian had idolized Jamie from the time he was a tiny boy; I could well imagine that the widespread suggestions that Jamie might have feet of clay were deeply upsetting to him.
“Ian, you mustn’t worry yourself.” I put a consoling hand—dirt-stained as it was—on his arm. “It will . . . work itself out, somehow. Such things always do.” They did—generally with the maximum of uproar and catastrophe. And if Malva’s child should by some horrid cosmic joke be born with red hair . . . I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling a wave of dizziness.
“Aye, I suppose they will,” Ian said, sounding uncertain in the extreme. “It’s only—what they’re sayin’, about Uncle Jamie. Even his own Ardsmuir men, folk that should know better! That he must have—well, I’ll no repeat any of it, Auntie—but . . . I canna bear to hear it!”
His long, homely face was twisted with unhappiness, and it suddenly occurred to me that he might be having his own doubts about the matter.
“Ian,” I said, with as much firmness as I could muster, “Malva’s child could not possibly be Jamie’s. You do believe that, don’t you?”
He nodded, very slowly, but wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“I do,” he said softly, and then swallowed hard. “But, Auntie . . . it could be mine.”
A bee had lighted on my arm. I stared at it, seeing the veins in its glassy wings, the dust of yellow pollen that clung to the minuscule hairs of its legs and abdomen, the gentle pulsing of its body as it breathed.
“Oh, Ian,” I said as softly as he’d spoken himself. “Oh, Ian.”
He was strung tight as a marionette, but when I spoke, a little of the tension left the arm under my hand, and I saw that he had closed his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Auntie,” he whispered.
Wordless, I patted his arm. The bee flew off, and I wished passionately that I could exchange places with it. It would be so wonderful, simply to be about the business of gathering, single-minded in the sun.
Another bee lighted on Ian’s collar, and he brushed it absently away.
“Well, so,” he said, taking a deep breath and turning his head to look at me. “What must I do, Auntie?”
His eyes were dark with misery and worry—and something very like fear, I thought.
“Do?” I said, sounding as blank as I felt. “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, Ian.”
I hadn’t meant to make him smile, and he didn’t, but he did seem to relax very slightly.
“Aye, I’ve done it already,” he said, very rueful. “But—it’s done, Auntie. How can I mend it?”
I rubbed my brow, trying to think. Rollo had brought back his ball, but seeing that Ian was in no mood to play, dropped it by his feet and leaned against his leg, panting.
“Malva,” I said finally. “Did she tell you? Before, I mean.”
“Ye think I scorned her, and that’s what made her accuse Uncle Jamie?” He gave me a wry look, absently scratching Rollo’s ruff. “Well, I wouldna blame ye if ye did, Auntie, but no. She said not a word to me about the matter. If she had, I should ha’ marrit her at once.”
The hurdle of confession overcome, he was talking more easily now.
“You didn’t think of marrying her first?” I said, with perhaps a slight tinge of acerbity.
“Ah . . . no,” he said, very sheepish. “It wasna precisely a matter of—well, I wasna thinking at all, Auntie. I was drunk. The first time, anyway,” he added as an afterthought.
“The first—? How many— No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know the gory details.” I shut him up with a brusque gesture, and sat up straight, struck by a thought. “Bobby Higgins. Was that—”
He nodded, lowering his lashes so I couldn’t see his eyes. The blood had come up under his tan.
“Aye. That was why—I mean, I didna really wish to marry her, to begin with, but still, I would have asked, after we . . . but I put it off a bit, and—” He scrubbed a hand across his face, helpless. “Well, I didna want her to wife, but I couldna keep from wanting her, nonetheless, and I ken well enough how awful it must seem—but I’ve got to tell the truth, Auntie, and that’s it.” He took a gulp of air, and continued.
“I’d—wait for her. In the woods, when she came to gather. She’d not speak when she saw me, only smile, and raise her skirts a bit, then turn quick and run and . . . God, I should be after her like a dog after a bitch in heat,” he said bitterly. “But then one day I came late, and she wasna there where we usually met. But I heard her laughing, far off, and when I went to see . . .”
He twisted his hands hard enough to dislocate a finger, grimacing, and Rollo whined softly.
“Let us just say that yon bairn might well be Bobby Higgins’s, too,” he said, biting off the words.
I felt suddenly exhausted, as I had when recovering from my illness, as though it was too much effort even to breathe. I leaned back against the palisades, feeling the cool papery rustle of grape leaves against my neck, fanning softly over my heated cheeks.
Ian bent forward, head in his hands, the dappled green shadows playing over him.
“What shall I do?” he asked at last, voice muffled. He sounded as tired as I felt. “I dinna mind saying that I—that the child might be mine. But would it help, d’ye think?”
“No,” I said bleakly. “It wouldn’t.” Public opinion would not be changed in the slightest; everyone would simply assume that Ian was lying for his uncle’s sake. Even if he were to marry the girl, it wouldn’t—
A thought struck me and I pulled myself upright again.
“You said you didn’t want to marry her, even before you knew about Bobby. Why?” I asked curiously.
He lifted his head from his hands with a helpless gesture.
“I dinna ken how to say it. She was—well, she was bonnie enough, aye, and a proper spirit to her, as well. But she . . . I dinna ken, Auntie. It was only that I always had the feeling, lying wi’ her—that I dare not fall asleep.”