A dutiful daughter, p.18
A Dutiful Daughter, page 18
‘Mother!’
Helen gave no indication that she had heard. Even though she was now lying back on her pillow, the noisy breathing continued. A line of spittle ran from one corner of her mouth to her chin and her eyes were half open.
‘Oh no… oh no…’ Mirren kept whimpering as she ran from the house. Robbie was on his way up the final flight of stairs, whistling. ‘Thank God you’re home!’ She caught at his jacket, almost lifting him bodily up the final tread. ‘I think Mother’s had a seizure. Run to the doctor’s and tell him to come at once!’
Without waiting for a reaction she sped back into the kitchen to dampen a clean towel, knowing that whatever her condition, her mother would want to look as decent and respectable as possible for the doctor’s visit. As she bathed Helen’s face she noticed that one side seemed to have slumped downwards from her eyebrow to the corner of her mouth, as though her features had been melted then reset.
‘Your mother’s had an apoplectic seizure, my dear,’ the doctor said gently when he had completed his examination.
‘Is it… Will she recover?’
‘There’s no way of knowing at the moment. We must just keep her warm and comfortable and hope for the best.’ She could tell by his expression that he did not expect the outcome to be favourable.
Catherine Proctor was on the doorstep within the hour. ‘Paisley’s still a small community, for all that it’s a big town,’ she said, sweeping past Robbie and into the house. ‘I’ve come to help with nursing Helen.’
‘But she…’
‘Don’t bother telling me that she wouldn’t like it, Mirren. She’s in no fit state to know who’s with her, and you two can’t be expected to manage on your own at a time like this.’ Catherine went into the front room and stood looking down at Helen for a long moment. When she glanced up again tears shone in her eyes and on her cheeks. ‘We never thought when we were bairns together that it would come to this,’ she said, with a catch in her throat. ‘And the New Year not a week old.’
Helen lay for three days without regaining consciousness. Sometimes her eyes opened and even followed movement in the room, but she seemed to be unaware of what was being said when anyone spoke to her.
‘She’s not really awake,’ Mirren said to Robbie. ‘If she was, she’d be angry to see Aunt Catherine tending to her, but she doesn’t recognise any of us. She’s not the same person. It’s as if her eyes are windows in an empty house.’
‘She’s not an empty house, she’s our mother!’ he told her fiercely. Clearly he had always assumed that even though his mother was an invalid there was never any danger of her dying. Now that the possibility was with them, filling the air around them and clouding their futures, he found it hard to cope with the situation. After his first visit to the front room he had refused to return, and Catherine advised Mirren against trying to persuade him.
‘Best leave him to remember his mother in his own way. She knows nothing about it, and if she gets better you’ll find that he’ll more than make up for not seeing her just now,’ she said. And she supported Agnes, too, when she refused to give in to Logan’s demands that little Thomas should be brought to his grandmother’s bedside. ‘It could scare the wee laddie into convulsions, seeing his grandma like that. And that’ll not do Agnes much good in her condition.’
‘Mother would want to see Thomas more than she’d want tae see Mrs Proctor,’ Logan ranted at Mirren, who was past caring.
‘Aunt Catherine’s been a godsend to me the past few days, Logan. I’d as soon listen to her as to anyone else.’
‘Then let it be on your own conscience, for I despair of you,’ he snapped back at her and stormed from the house.
Even now he and Belle were of little use, claiming that they were both needed in the shop. It was Catherine who, with Mrs White’s help, cared for Helen during the day so that Mirren and Robbie could continue to go to work. For the first time in years Mirren knew the luxury of coming home to find a cooked meal waiting on the table for her, and the house clean and neat.
‘There’s plenty at home to look after my house and see to James,’ Catherine said placidly when Mirren tried to thank her. ‘And it means a lot to me to be able to help Helen in her time of need. It helps me to feel that I’m making up for all those daft wasted years when we were strangers to each other.’
‘Aunt Catherine, what happened between you?’
Catherine hesitated, then shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any harm in telling you now, lassie. It was one of those daft wee misunderstandings. Your parents met each other at a dancing class I taught, but the pity of it was that Helen was never much of a dancer, while Peter was very good at it.’
‘My father liked dancing?’ Mirren found it hard to believe that the quiet, withdrawn man she had known could ever have given a good account of himself on a dance floor.
‘Oh yes, he’d a grand sense of movement and he loved the dancing. When Helen stopped attending they went on walking out together, for Peter worshipped her… not that she seemed to realise it. He kept on with his dancing, though, because of his fondness for it. He’d always the hope that he’d be able to encourage Helen to take it up again, but instead she got it into her head that he only stayed at the class because he’d taken a fancy to me.’
‘Had he?’ Mirren, remembering the vivacious girl in the old photograph, wouldn’t have been surprised if he had.
Catherine, filling in a spare moment by cleaning cutlery, rubbed hard at a fork. ‘No, of course not, it was always Helen he wanted and anyway, I was walking out with my James. But she never had much faith in herself – it was the way she was raised. Your grandparents never praised her for anything, though they were always fast enough when it came to criticism. So one day Helen told poor Peter that he had to choose between her and his dancing, and of course he gave it up there and then. He never danced again, but even when we were both wed, Helen would have no more to do with me.’ She put the fork down. ‘Sometimes when folk get an idea in their heads it can be impossible to get it out ag—’
She stopped, lifting her head to listen. Mirren did the same, but by the time she had registered the sudden silence in the flat, Catherine was out of her chair and on her way into the front room. When Mirren got there her aunt was by the bed, holding one of Helen’s hands in her own.
‘Mother?’
Gently, Catherine smoothed the hair back from Helen’s forehead then laid her hand down.
‘Sit here by her, lassie, and say your farewells while I make us a cup of tea.’
Mirren let her aunt push her gently into the bedside chair. When she took her mother’s hand it lay in hers, inert but warm. It was hard to believe that Helen wasn’t just sleeping. ‘The doctor…?’ she heard herself say from far away.
‘After we’ve had our tea,’ Catherine told her. ‘She’s in no hurry for him now, God rest her.’
15
‘How much money did Mother leave?’ Logan asked bluntly when he and Belle came into the kitchen after paying their respects to the silent figure on the front-room bed.
‘How should we know?’ Robbie’s voice was sharp but the hand he laid on Mirren’s shoulder was gentle.
‘There’s a funeral tae be arranged and paid for. We have tae know how much money we can spend on it.’
Mirren felt her brother’s fingers tightening. ‘She always put her pension money in the black handbag down by the side of the bed,’ she said swiftly, unable to face a row. ‘The last payment was made just before she took ill.’
‘How much is in it?’
‘I don’t know – I never looked in it myself.’
‘I’ll fetch it while you make some tea, Mirren. Belle’s fair worn out by grief.’
‘So’s Mirren,’ Robbie called after his brother. ‘I’ll make the tea.’
When Logan opened the bag his eyes bulged. ‘Look at this!’ He drew a handful of notes from the bag’s roomy interior and went to the table to count them. Belle, her grief forgotten, leaned on his shoulder.
‘Seventy-four pounds, four shillings and ninepence halfpenny! Tae think,’ Logan said passionately, ‘of the times when Belle and me were in sore need of help and there she was, sittin’ on all that money and not sayin’ a word about it.’
‘It was for her old age,’ Mirren sprang to her mother’s defence, while Robbie chimed in, ‘She didnae give us any of it either, if that’s what you’re thinkin’.’
‘Why would you have needed it?’ Logan wanted to know. ‘You two were still livin’ comfortably in the family home while I was havin’ tae deal with all the responsibilities and expenses that marriage brings. I cannae believe that Mother withheld knowledge of that money from me!’ He gathered it up and stowed it away in an inner pocket. ‘At least we’ll not be out of pocket over the funeral.’
‘The nerve of him!’ Robbie exploded when his brother and sister-in-law had gone home. ‘Ye can be quite certain we’ll not see a penny of whatever’s left over once he’s paid the funeral expenses.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Mirren said wearily. ‘It’ll all be meant for him anyway, as Mother’s oldest son, and at least he’s going tae arrange the funeral. I don’t think I could bear to have to do that.’
Helen Jarvis was buried in Broomlands Cemetery, not far from her home. Mirren had fully expected that only the immediate family would attend the funeral, but to her surprise a fair number of people were waiting to pay their last respects when she and her brothers and Belle arrived at the cemetery. Vanni and Mrs White were there, together with the entire Proctor family, and she was startled to see Joe Hepburn among the group waiting by the grave. Despite the bitter cold of the January day, Agnes and Bob had brought young Thomas, wide-eyed and subdued in his new black clothes.
‘Bob thinks he’s too young for funerals but tae my mind it’s only right that he should represent his father,’ Agnes whispered to Mirren as they gathered at the graveside. ‘I’ll not have him sayin’ when he grows up that I kept him from payin’ his respects tae his granny.’
‘Mother and Crawford would both have appreciated that, Agnes.’
‘I’m not so sure they’d appreciate… this.’ Agnes bit her lip as she glanced down at her rounded belly. ‘Ye’d think I was further on than five month, but I was like this with Thomas too. I cannae help it.’
‘It’s not as if these folk are family,’ Logan said under his breath as they all left the cemetery and began the short walk to the Martyr’s Memorial church hall, hired for the funeral tea.
‘Vanni’s been kind to us and Aunt Catherine Proctor was Mother’s full cousin. She helped us a lot during those last few days.’
‘Aunt Catherine, is it?’ He gave her a sidelong glance. ‘You sound tae be well in with that lot already.’
‘Grace Proctor’s been my best friend since we were at school together. We didn’t even know we were cousins then.’
‘Hmphh. And there’s Agnes, flaunting herself before everyone. Ye’d have thought she’d’ve had the decency tae stay at home. Funerals arenae the place for women, ’specially when they’re in… her condition. And with her new man too!’
‘Bob brought Agnes and Thomas to pay their last respects to Mother, and as for flaunting herself, the poor lassie’s almost walking all doubled up, trying to hide her condition.’ Mirren didn’t want to quarrel with her brother today of all days, but it was hard to keep her temper. ‘Not that there should be any need for her to be ashamed, for there’s nothing wrong with a respectably married woman being in the family way,’ she added tartly, and Logan grunted, then hurried ahead to join his wife and father-in-law.
In common with many West of Scotland men, the Jarvises were all under six feet in height, which meant that Logan was dwarfed by his wife’s exceptionally tall father, still erect and burly in late middle age. Now that she had met him, Mirren could understand why her brother and sister-in-law were in such awe of Fergus Lamont. His shock of white hair surmounted a strong face with hooded eyes and a hard mouth that looked as though its owner always got in the final word. His handshake when Logan introduced them had almost crushed her fingers, and his lips had scarcely moved as he said, ‘It comes tae us all’ – the only words he was to speak to her all day.
‘Are you all right?’ Robbie arrived by her side.
‘I’ll be glad when it’s all over and we can get back home.’
‘I don’t know why Logan and Belle had tae hire the church hall and turn the day intae a circus.’
‘It’s the done thing, Robbie.’
‘Funeral teas are meant tae be for folk who’ve had tae travel long distances tae attend the burial,’ he pointed out. ‘Since everyone here lives in the town there’s little sense in feedin’ them before they set off for home.’
‘Mother would have wanted everything done properly.’ It was true what folk said, Mirren thought wearily. No matter how carefully any funeral was planned, someone was sure to find fault.
In the church hall Logan and Belle set themselves up as the host and hostess for the occasion and Mirren was more than happy to leave them to it. A row of trestle tables held plates of sandwiches, biscuits and cakes, with teacups waiting in a prim, somehow subdued cluster at one end. Most of the guests filled their plates with sandwiches, then scurried to the chairs set around the hall’s perimeter, where they balanced plates and saucers with difficulty. A few wandered restlessly, as though in search of a way out.
‘I was sorry to hear of your l-loss.’ Joe Hepburn appeared before Mirren.
‘Thank you.’
‘Losing a m-mother is like bein’ cast adrift in a boat without a c-compass.’
She stared at him for a moment, startled by his perception. He had put her own sense of bewildered helplessness into words that she would never have considered. But he was quite right.
‘Bob told me that your own mother died of the influenza just before the end of the Great War.’
‘That’s what it s-said on her death certificate. But in truth it was a lifetime of hard work and not enough nourishment that k-killed her. If the doctors had any courage they’d write that fact on the death certificates of most working-c-class folk.’
Mirren, suddenly sure that she was about to hear a political speech, shot an anguished glance past his right sleeve, which was swathed in the black armband he had donned for her mother. Fortunately she caught Catherine Proctor’s eye, and her aunt detached herself from the group she had been talking to and came over.
‘Can I have a wee word with you, Mirren?’ she asked, then when Joe, with a nod to them both, moved away, ‘Don’t tell me he was pestering you?’
‘Just starting one of his lectures on the rights of the working classes.’
‘Well meant, but even so this isn’t the time or the place.’
‘I wish Robbie wasn’t so friendly with him, Aunt Catherine. He’s sure to get into trouble if he goes around with firebrands like Joe Hepburn.’
Catherine led her to a seat. ‘Stop fretting over Robbie and start thinking of yourself for once. I hope you’ve written to your young man to tell him that you’ll be joining him soon.’
‘I can’t do that yet,’ Mirren protested, while thoughts of Donald’s impassioned Christmas letter swam to the surface of her mind. ‘It would be unseemly.’
‘Oh, tut! I’ve never seen the sense in periods of mourning for those who’ve gone before us. Now that poor Helen has no more need of your kindness, you must think of yourself… and your sweetheart. You’ve kept him waiting long enough.’
‘What would people say?’
‘What does that matter to you, since they’ll be here in Paisley and you’ll be in America? Even the Paisley gossips can’t clack loud enough to be heard that distance away. Write to him,’ Catherine said firmly.
Logan and Belle arrived the following evening to see to Helen’s few possessions. While his wife rifled through the few clothes in the cupboard, Logan reached under his mother’s bed and dragged out the old suitcase that had always housed the family papers, spreading its contents across the stripped and empty bed where Helen Jarvis had been forced to spend her final years.
First came the family’s marriage, birth and death certificates, then every letter that Logan and Crawford had sent to their mother during the Great War. Beneath them, at the bottom of the suitcase, lay an envelope with Last Will and Testament of Helen Louisa Jarvis on it in Helen’s best writing.
‘Ye didnae tell me that she’d made a will, Mirren.’
‘I didn’t know. Did you, Robbie?’
He shook his head as Logan ripped the envelope open and dragged out the single sheet of paper it held. He turned white then red as he read it.
‘This is a nonsense!’ he exploded, then, to Mirren: ‘It’s all your doin’! You took advantage of my mother when she was too sick tae think straight!’
‘Logan…?’
‘Everythin’ that I own tae my daughter Mirren Jarvis, in gratitude for all she has done for me,’ Logan read out, his voice thick with rage. ‘Everythin’!’
‘That means this flat and everythin’ in it,’ Robbie said. Most folk in Paisley lived in rented accommodation, but Peter Jarvis had taken the unusual step of buying his flat in order, he always said, to ensure that if anything happened to him, his widow and family would have a roof over their heads.
‘Let me see.’ Belle snatched the paper from him and scanned it. ‘It’s a trick. It’ll not stand up in law!’
‘It’s signed and witnessed,’ Robbie pointed out, reading over her shoulder. ‘Mrs White’s signed it, and an Albert R. Erskine. Who’s that?’
‘The clerk from the mill,’ Mirren said through stiff lips. ‘The man who brought her pension every month.’
‘What did she mean, in gratitude for all you’ve done for her?’ Belle wanted to know. ‘What did you do for her that we didn’t?’
‘Cooked and washed for her. Changed her bed and emptied her chamber pot and sat up at nights with her,’ Robbie said. ‘When did ye last empty my mother’s pot, Belle?’
