Faith Read online

  That offer sounded very much like she meant sharing her bed and it made him feel uncomfortable. ‘You haven’t given me your mother’s address,’ he said as he got to the door. ‘Could I have it?’

  ‘Surely you don’t want to go there,’ she replied, pulling a face. ‘It’s full of doddery old folk dribbling and wheezing.’

  ‘Not my favourite kind of place to visit,’ Stuart agreed. ‘But I feel I must go and see her for old times’ sake.’

  Belle took one of the cards for the guest house and scribbled the nursing-home address on the back.

  ‘Is Roger still at the same address?’ he asked. ‘I thought I ought to see him too.’

  ‘Yes, still in Kensington. Though why you’d want to look him up I can’t imagine! You’ll only get chapter and verse on how badly Jackie treated him.’

  ‘He was another person who was good to me when I most needed it,’ Stuart said evenly. ‘Goodbye, Belle, look after yourself. The clouds will pass.’

  Stuart decided against returning to Edinburgh. Instead he walked down to Crail harbour. Everything was just as he remembered, the picturesque tiny cottages huddled up against one another as protection from the harsh weather, the sense of all those men and women who had made their living from the sea for so many centuries. Crail had always been a more prosperous place than its neighbours; in fact he remembered from history lessons at school that for a time it was the wealthiest of the Royal Burghs. Marketplace, the street Belle’s house was in, was where merchants sold their goods, and the Dutch influence of the design of the Tolbooth across the street from Kirkmay House was evidence of the important trade and ideas that came to Crail from across the North Sea.

  Tourists were bringing new prosperity now. Many of the old cottages had been renovated for holiday lets, and he noted an art gallery, a pottery and a café that would never have been thought of when he was a boy.

  But the harbour was still the same, with the crab stall, the boats and the heaps of lobster pots. He glanced up at the high grey stone wall where the old castle had been centuries ago and saw two elderly ladies sitting on a bench having a picnic. Suddenly he was reminded of sitting on that same bench with Laura and Barney some twenty-two years ago. He could see Laura in a pink sundress and Barney with a bucket and spade asking when they were going to look for crabs.

  He didn’t want those kind of memories, not now Barney was dead and Laura in prison. So he turned round and walked purposefully towards the coastal path to Cellardyke.

  As he walked, Stuart carefully analysed everything Belle had said, and the more he thought about it the odder it seemed that she was still so bitter and angry about everything. It was after all two years since Jackie’s death.

  Maybe the bitterness wasn’t through grief alone? It could be that things were bad with Charles, or that she felt trapped in a place she didn’t really belong in. They could even have financial problems and were waiting for Jackie’s estate to be settled to solve them. Worries about money were always debilitating, just as bad as broken hearts.

  As he picked his way along the coastal path, looking at the sun glinting on the sea and the waves washing over the low black rocks which were a feature of this stretch of coast, he tried to turn his thoughts back to happier thoughts of Fiona, Angus and himself as children searching the rock pools for crabs and small fish. But his thoughts wouldn’t go the way he wanted them to; the earlier memory of Laura and Barney on that bench had opened a door he’d rather have kept closed.

  The day he first met them.

  It was right at the end of July ’72, a warm, sunny day on the west coast of Scotland, by Castle Douglas. A week earlier he’d finished his five-year apprenticeship as a joiner and he had to decide whether he was going to start up on his own or join another company. It seemed a good idea to have a bit of a holiday first, so he hitch-hiked over to Castle Douglas to look up some old friends who were squatting in an old house there.

  It was a disappointment to find all but one of his friends had moved on to Ibiza. Only Ewan was left, and the others had been replaced by a bunch of English hippies. Ewan had always been mad as a bucket of frogs: small and stocky, with flame-red hair which he’d started growing at fifteen and had never cut since. He embraced the whole peace and love thing chapter and verse. He ate brown rice, grew his own dope, consulted the Tarot cards at least once a week and believed every way-out philosophy going. Yet give him a few whiskies and he’d revert to early programming from his father, and he would fight anyone.

  The house was not the sturdy, small stone cottage Stuart had expected either, but a rambling, dilapidated old farmhouse at the end of a long rutted track. The London hippies were a welcoming bunch, though, if a little spaced out, and the weather was good, so Stuart thought he might as well stay for a while and help Ewan fix up a few things around the house.

  Stuart knew that he was often referred to as a part-time hippy by those who considered themselves the real thing. He wore his hair long, he had the obligatory cheesecloth shirts and flared loons, smoked a bit of dope and listened to Cream, Traffic and Led Zeppelin. But he had always had a work ethic; he had wanted to be a joiner like his father since he was six and old enough to hold a saw. He would hitch-hike to rock concerts and drop a bit of acid now and then at the weekends, but nothing had ever got in the way of going to work and serving his time, for he believed having a trade was all-important

  Yet that first week in Castle Douglas, he lay around like all the others smoking dope, listening to them talking about going to Marrakech, or overland to India, and for the first time ever he considered dropping out as they had done.

  He was weary of being treated like a kid by the older men at work, of the jokes about his long hair, his girlfriends, and the kind of music he liked. He was an oddity because he didn’t down eight pints of beer after work or get into fights, and there was a faint implication that this made him unmanly. But he didn’t need alcohol to make himself feel good, he felt that way by doing a job well, by walking through the park, reading a book or playing his guitar. At work the other men had no real conversation and he was often frustrated and irritated by their narrow views. It would be so good to travel, to mix with people with broader outlooks and who wanted to challenge the old regimes.

  The day that his life changed for ever started early. He was sleeping on an old mattress on the floor of one of the outhouses, and as there was nothing over the window, the sun came in and woke him just after five. The day before, he’d scrubbed out the room and painted it all white, and as he lay there looking around him, he thought he’d better get up on the roof and check there were no loose tiles, otherwise it would leak when it rained.

  All at once he was fired up. If he could get some work near here he could save enough money to travel next winter. Josie, the girl who looked like a Red Indian squaw, had already asked him if he’d like to go to India with her group of friends.

  He was still up on the roof at eleven that morning, wearing just a pair of shorts. He’d taken all the tiles off, patched up the felt beneath with some he found in a shed, and he’d nearly finished putting the tiles back when he saw a yellow Volkswagen Beetle driven by a woman coming up the track.

  Knowing that none of the others were up yet, he climbed down and waited for the car to reach him.

  As it came nearer he saw there was a little boy of about two kneeling up on the back seat. And the woman driving was beautiful.

  Everything seemed to go into slow motion then, every detail of the scene in front of him so clear and bright. The long waving grass in the fields either side of the track, the intense blue of the sky, a row of tall fir trees down by the road, the sound of birdsong, and the heat of the sun on his bare shoulders.

  The car stopped. The door opened, and she got out, but leaned on the open door.

  ‘Is this Ewan’s place?’ she called out.

  She had an English accent, long, shiny auburn hair, and wore a little suntop with no bra. He was struck by how brown she was, a deep gol
den colour that he rarely saw up in Scotland, especially on redheads. When she moved away from the car door he saw her legs. Long and slender, equally brown as her arms, and the smallest pair of denim shorts he’d ever seen.

  ‘Yes, it’s Ewan’s place,’ he said, hardly able to get the words out because of how she looked.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ she said and smiled. ‘I was beginning to think I was lost without trace.’

  The fact she had a car and a child suggested that she was several years older than him, but the warmth of her smile, and the appraising way she was looking at him, was all he cared about.

  ‘I want a drink, Mummy,’ the little boy shouted from inside the car, and she leaned back in and moved the seat so he could get out.

  ‘May we have a drink?’ she asked, coming closer to Stuart, holding the little dark-haired boy by the hand. ‘This is Barney. We’ve been driving all night and I’m just about wiped out.’

  Stuart pulled himself together then, and rushed into the house to get some water and put the kettle on for tea.

  She sat on the bench outside, the boy beside her, and it was only when he handed her the water that he saw how tired she was. She could hardly keep her eyes open, and though she rallied enough with the water to explain that she was Laura Brannigan, and that she’d driven up from London because a friend had told her Ewan would put her up, it was clear she really was all in.

  Barney wasn’t a bit tired, for he’d been asleep most of the way. He drank two glasses of water, then asked where the toys were.

  ‘Toys?’ Stuart said stupidly.

  ‘I told him there would be lots of other children because it’s a commune,’ Laura said.

  ‘It’s nae a commune,’ Stuart said. ‘Just a bunch of hippies and there’s nae weans.’

  To his surprise she laughed. ‘Your accent is so lovely,’ she said. ‘I thought I wouldn’t be able to understand anything anyone said to me. But your voice is like music.’

  She told him she’d left her husband, Gregory Brannigan, because he was carrying on with another woman, and that she’d gone down to stay in Cornwall for a while. ‘I couldn’t find anywhere there to live,’ she said, her lovely face clouding over. ‘Then I met Rob, Ewan’s friend, and he told me about this place. He said that he thought I could get my head together here, and that the women all helped one another with the children. I thought it sounded perfect for us.’

  Stuart guessed that Rob, who was well known for his tall stories, had spun Laura this yarn in the hope that she’d be sufficiently grateful to go to bed with him. Perhaps he hadn’t thought she was desperate enough to drive all this way, but it was wrong to have misled her and Stuart didn’t think Ewan or any of the others would be happy about having such a young child here.

  He couldn’t bring himself to tell her this, not now she was so tired, so instead he asked if she’d like to have a sleep in his room and offered to look after Barney for her.

  ∗

  As Stuart walked on into Cellardyke, images from that day kept coming back to him. He knew nothing about small children then; as the youngest in his own family he’d never come into close contact with any before. But he blundered his way through that day, just letting the two-year-old tag along behind him. Fortunately Barney turned out to be the easiest kid in the world to take care of; he played with sticks, stones, anything to hand, and was delighted when Stuart drew different faces on some pebbles and told him a story with them. He was a nice-looking kid too, with his dark hair and eyes, peachy skin and a wide smiley mouth. When Stuart made him a sandwich later, he didn’t complain that the bread was stale, or that there was nothing to put in it but Marmite. He just ate it, even the crusts.

  But stronger still than the image of Barney was that of Laura. Several times that day he peeped round the door to see if she was awake yet. And each time he looked he was stunned by her beauty. She lay on her side, one arm curled round her head, the other stretched out behind her, a glimpse of white breasts showing above her suntop. Her shorts were so brief he got an erection at the sight of her bottom, and he covered her up with a blanket because it made him feel guilty.

  There was no doubt in his mind that he fell in love with her then, for when the others got up and he told them about her arrival, he found he was worried that one of the other five men would snatch her from him.

  ‘We cannae have a wean in the house!’ Ewan said, looking troubled. ‘We’ve got enough bother with the folks in the village as it is.’

  ‘You can’t send her packing now,’ Stuart said. ‘I don’t think she’s got anywhere else to go.’

  By the time Laura woke up, Barney had charmed everyone, and as Laura had brought not only a box of groceries with her but a lump of best black Kabul, all reservations about them staying vanished.

  It was a magical evening in every way, for it was warm enough to sit outside playing guitars and singing. The chilli someone cooked was good, and everyone was relaxed and happy.

  Stuart couldn’t remember the names, or even many of the faces, of that bunch of hippies from London any more. Yet he could remember how he sat with his back against the trunk of an old apple tree surrounded by them, Laura beside him. Every now and then she would smile at him and put a hand on his arm, and he knew he was teetering on the edge of something mind-blowing.

  He asked her about her husband during the evening, but she just put her finger on his lips as if to silence him. ‘Greg was the biggest mistake in my life,’ she said, and he could see sadness and regret in her eyes. ‘The only good thing to come out of our marriage was Barney. Don’t ask me any more about it, Stuart. I just want to put it behind me.’

  Barney came and sat by him as it grew dark, and gradually his head slumped down on to Stuart’s legs as he fell asleep.

  ‘I should put him to bed now,’ Laura said. ‘Are we to sleep in that same room tonight?’

  Stuart managed to lift the child up into his arms and stand up. ‘That’s my room,’ he said. ‘But I suppose I could find somewhere else to crash.’

  ‘You don’t need to,’ she said, once again touching his arm in that delicious familiar manner which made his pulse race. ‘I’ve got a couple of lilos and sleeping bags in my car – we could share the room. I looked around earlier and everywhere else is pretty rough.’

  As he stood up from tucking Barney into the bed, she came right up to him, put her hands on his cheeks and looked straight into his eyes. ‘You are the sweetest man,’ she said softly. ‘You let me sleep, you took care of Barney, and now he’s got your bed. All without asking me anything.’

  Then suddenly she was kissing him, her arms going round him tightly, and Stuart felt as though he was shooting off to another planet.

  He shook himself out of his reverie as he finally reached Cellardyke, delighted to see it still looked much the same as when he was a child. The pub had been smartened up, with a restaurant above it, and the sweetie shop was now a hairdresser’s, but there were still washing lines on the tiny beach inside the harbour. He remembered seeing vast old ladies’ drawers and men’s woolly combinations hanging there, much to Angus’s and his amusement. Now it was pretty duvet covers and Babygros. But the old cottages tucked around the harbour were even quainter than he remembered. He recalled how excited Jackie had got when he first brought her here with Laura and Barney. She was practically jumping up and down with it. He thought she’d forget all about it once she got back to London, but she didn’t. Just a few months later she bought the first cottage, got men in to renovate it, and that summer Laura and Barney came over to have a holiday here with her. He still had a snapshot of Barney sitting on the bench outside it. He tore up all the ones of Laura after they split up, but he couldn’t bring himself to destroy that one.

  He made for the pub and ordered a pint. It was quiet in there, only a couple of old men with their dogs in the bar, and they merely nodded at him and went back to their conversation.

  As he sat back in a chair by the window, he found himself slipping ba
ck to that first night with Laura and reliving it.

  She kept tickling him as he tried to blow up the lilos, and only told him she had a pump when he was purple in the face with the exertion. If it hadn’t been for the little boy sleeping in the room, he would have thrown her down on it there and then. But once he’d got one blown up, he laid the sleeping bag on it, then lifted the child on top and zipped the bag up round him.

  ‘Do I need to blow up the other one too?’ he asked, and she shook her head, smiling seductively at him.

  His head told him it was wrong to make love to a woman with her small child so close, and he felt too that he ought to know more about her first, but when she began opening the buttons on his shirt and kissing his chest, all he wanted was to possess her.

  He’d had about five different girlfriends before, but they paled into insignificance beside Laura. She was like a tigress the first time, clawing at him, devouring him in a way that was both thrilling and frightening. He came far too fast, and collapsed against her breasts feeling a failure, but she lifted his face up and kissed him.

  ‘We’ve got all night yet,’ she said.

  Even now, twenty-three years and scores of other women later, that night was the one Stuart could hold up as the very best in his life. Since then he had made love all over the world, in luxurious hotels, romantic hideaways, in swimming pools, cars, fields and even trains, but nothing could ever top that night on an old stained mattress in a farm outhouse.

  It had everything – wild passion, exquisite tenderness and raunchy fun – and Laura taught him more about women and sex that night than most men learn in a lifetime. When dawn came creeping through the window, they were sated, lying entwined and dripping with perspiration. For him it was love, the kind that could only come once in a lifetime. He was ready to lay down his life for her, and he believed then that it was the same for her.

  ‘On holiday?’

  Stuart was startled by the question, and surprised to find it was asked by an attractive blonde with a couple of empty glasses in her hands.