My heavier luggage had been sent on by the carrier, so the day before term was due to begin I flung a few last minute trifles into my bike basket, said goodbye to Aunt Ethel – ‘See you on Friday!’ – grinned at Jessie MacAlister, who’d already started preparing Aunt Ethel’s tea, and set off on my Raleigh.
As I came swooping down the hill past the manse I saw Mistress McNiven waiting at the gate. I braked sharply and jumped off my bike to go and speak to her. She shook my hand and wished me well, then said, ‘You’re a clever girl, Eve – and there are so many more opportunities for women these days. If you do well at your exams you’ll be able to go on to university – Glasgow, or Edinburgh, and perhaps study medicine – or even the law.’ I was too young and selfish to hear the longing in her voice, but I heard the words – and for the first time since Apa had died, the future beckoned.
Chapter Fifteen
Walking through the school gates in my white blouse and navy gymslip on the first day of term was difficult, but I did it. And Pulteney Town Academy was very different from that awful girls’ boarding school. I was taught mostly by men, for a start, and you were allowed to ask questions in class. But above all, nobody here ever called my beloved Apa a coward. So, I did settle down.
Especially as Ewan was around too. Not that I saw much of him – he was lodging up at Keiss with his auntie and a tribe of cousins, and boys and girls didn’t mix much in school – but we could exchange the odd word, so I didn’t feel that much of an outsider.
Though I was, of course. My English accent was so different, and the other girls had known each other for years – they’d already formed their groups of friends. But they didn’t make me feel an intruder; the problem was on my side. The truth is, I was still very wary of girls – almost frightened of them. And I didn’t understand their language, so I tended to keep myself to myself. But I enjoyed the dancing and debating we sometimes did after school.
So all in all I was well satisfied with the arrangements made for me. I had pocket money to spend (Mistress McNiven had thought of that one) and the luxury of using a spotless W.C. – rendered such by someone else – and a proper bathroom with a gas geyser. And every day I was served with substantial well-cooked meals – well-cooked by someone else. I was becoming quite a sybarite. Especially as when I reached the croft on Friday evening there’d be one of Jessie’s tasty meat and potato pies only needing to be warmed up, with the carrots all ready prepared for cooking. And best of all would be seeing Aunt Ethel, waiting there with her sherry bottle – courtesy of Mr Henderson – looking so pleased to see me and sounding so eager to hear about all my doings of the week.
Yes, I was very happy that autumn in Wick. Until the telegram came.
It was one morning in the middle of October. We were out in the yard – it was break – and we all saw the telegraph boy cycle up. He dismounted at the gate and threaded his way through the crowd, over to the master on duty – who was my maths master. The boy handed the telegram to him and the master looked round the busy yard, spotted me, and came straight over, with the buff envelope in his hand. ‘This is for you, Eve.’
I opened it. MISS GUNN VERY POORLY STOP COME AT ONCE STOP FRASER.
I was running out of the yard, no coat, no hat – running back to Mrs Sinclair’s – I seized my bicycle and began pedalling. Pedalling, pedalling – ‘very poorly’ – ‘very poorly’ – pedalling, pedalling – faster Eve, faster. I bumped over the track to the croft, flung down my bike and hurtled through the front door yelling, ‘Aunt Ethel, Aunt Ethel—’
‘Shush, Eve,’ Mrs Fraser met me at the bedroom door, ‘It’s all right, you’re in time.’
Aunt Ethel was propped up on the pillows looking ghastly and breathing in great erratic gasps – but she managed a lopsided smile. I felt on my knees by her bed and she reached out her hand to me – Aunt Ethel, who never normally touched me – now she gripped my fingers as if her bones would snap.
I exclaimed frantically, ‘I’m here now, Aunt Ethel – I’ll make you better—’
Mistress McNiven’s hand was firm on my shoulder. ‘Quiet, Eve – let her speak.’
Aunt Ethel’s voice was a hoarse croak – I could only just make out her words.
‘Eve, I wanted to tell you – these last years – since you came – so happy –’ she drew in more of those terrible rasping breaths before repeating, ‘So happy. You were my gift from the Gods of the Himalcha – thank you, thank you –’ Her eyes closed and I could feel her strength ebbing away as her fingers loosened in mine. Then suddenly her eyes opened again and her head reared up in one final burst of strength, ‘Eve – seize the lamp!’ She gave a gurgling noise, and died.
I couldn’t believe it. I reached out to her, ‘Aunt Ethel – please – Aunt Ethel –’
Mistress McNiven drew me back. ‘She’s gone, Eve. The doctor said she should have gone hours ago, but she was waiting for you.’
Mrs Fraser reached down and closed Aunt Ethel’s eyes, then crossed her hands on her chest. Mistress McNiven said, ‘We’ll leave you a few minutes to say a little prayer, then Mrs Fraser and I will prepare her for burial.’
She was buried in the graveyard of the little church high on the hillside. I said, ‘But she was a Buddhist.’
‘She was a Gunn, Eve – this is where she should lie.’
Mistress McNiven and the neighbours arranged everything – I was scarcely alive myself. My world had collapsed once more.
But I hadn’t lost my entire world, this time. I still had Helspie, the croft – Aunt Ethel had left her half to me – and a routine to go back to at school. Except that Mr Henderson telegraphed to say he was coming to see me at the manse, where I’d been staying. When Mistress McNiven said she’d written to him I exclaimed, ‘But he’ll make me go back to boarding school!’
She shook her head. ‘There’s no question of his doing that, Eve.’ And he didn’t. He said I could stay at Pulteney Town, but I must remain in my lodgings at Wick over the weekends, to ensure I was being properly looked after. I didn’t argue – the croft was so empty now – besides, I was beyond arguing. But, he told me, I should remember that Pulteney Town Academy would not have been my grandfather’s preferred option – so I must prove the validity of my choice by working hard.
I did work hard. Or as hard as I could. But every so often my mind would go blank. Aunt Ethel had gone. I hadn’t seen always seen much of her, but she’d always been there, there in the croft – now she’d gone. Then I’d remember that I’d already been the last of the Courtneys – now I was the last of the Gunns, too. I started avoiding the other pupils because they would be talking of their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts – everyone else seemed to have relatives to spare. I had no one.
So it wasn’t easy to work, but mostly I did, somehow.
Until I caught measles. I felt ill and feverish and then found the rash on the last day of the autumn term. There’d been measles around, but most people at the Academy had already had it. Being brought up in India, I hadn’t.
Not a bad attack – quite mild, the doctor said. But measles was measles, so I had to stay in bed, and in a darkened room to protect my eyes.
It must have been a great nuisance to Mrs Sinclair, especially as her grandson had been sent up to stay – some problem at home. Fortunately young Tarn had had the measles himself, but I was still a burden to Mrs Sinclair and her maid. Not that I thought of that. I was too tied up in my own misery. It was so difficult not to think, lying there in the dark, not even being able to read.
Then I had the idea of bribing Tarn 6d. a day to sit on the window seat and read to me through a crack in the curtains. Tam was keen enough to be bribed. He rounded up a small pile of battered books – they’d have to be able to withstand stoving afterwards because of my germs – and rattled off the titles through the door: ‘Pride and Prejudice’ – ugh – ‘Persuasion’ – boring – ‘Bleak House’ – definitely not – then, ‘Jane Eyre’.
Which reminded m
e that I had at least escaped from that school, and found Aunt Ethel, and been her gift from the gods of the Himalcha – Don’t think, Eve – just find out the end of Jane Eyre’s story. One thing’s for sure, it won’t be anything like yours – since the last job you’d ever do is be a teacher.
I instructed Tarn to flick through the awful school part – giving him a brief resumé of the salient points and checking he knew who was who – and then ordered him to start with the grown-up Jane, setting out on her career as a governess to the bossy and unlikeable Mr Rochester. Tam manfully read chapter after chapter, in his west coast lowland accent, which I’d already learnt the basics of from his grandmother, and the pattern of which now became so embedded in my brain that I could speak it back to him whenever we stopped to discuss the sheer improbability of the plot.
‘Why did he no keep his wife locked up somewhere else? Small place like that, folk’d be bound to find out—’
‘Aye – he’d got plenty o’ siller tae spare—’
‘And another wee house tae use – daft, that was, keeping her up in the attic.’
We quite enjoyed the church scene, but the precise nature of Jane’s scruples as she paused outside Mr Rochester’s bedroom door before making her escape rather passed over both our heads (I still don’t understand how she’d managed to pick up the relevant knowledge at Lowood school – they didn’t even do botany there, as far as I can make out!). Tam and I were far more interested in the oh-so-convenient arrival of the coach to take Jane away, ‘As if it’d turn up just like that’
‘An’ in the middle o’ nowhere, too!’
The discovery that the family who’d given Jane refuge just happened to be her long-lost relatives provoked yet another chorus of: ‘I just dinna believe it!’
Neither Tam nor I were natural readers of fiction – we failed to suspend disbelief at all, let alone willingly. However, we did read the book through to its conclusion, though as Tam dropped it down on to the window seat I exclaimed, ‘Masel, I’d sooner gang tae Madeira any day than stay with a queer-tempered chap like that Rochester fellow!’
To which Tarn replied apprehensively, ‘Ye dinna fancy another story, d’ye Eve?’
‘Not if they’re all as daft as that one.’
Tam went in search again and came back with a grubby copy of ‘Randall’s Reference Book – A Commercial, Medical, Legal, Social, Educational and General Guide’ – 980 close-packed pages of facts and figures, the perfect antidote to Jane Eyre. We agreed that Tam would close his eyes, flick it open and then read whatever page he lighted upon. The English commercial traveller who’d left it behind (we assumed that he’d been English, since there was a definite bias in that direction – and the legal section was all English) had obviously hankered after London, as it often fell open at those pages. We also deduced an interest in sport combined with a certain unhappiness in his marital state, since it fell open too at ‘Matrimonial Law, Divorce and Judicial Separation ‘ along with ‘Sporting Seasons – Game, Wild Birds and Hunting and Fishing’. Although perhaps it was ‘Longest Rivers’, ‘Highest Mountains’ and ‘Comparative Rainfall’ on the opposite page that had aroused the original owner’s interest – it certainly did ours.
By the time Tarn took his sixpences and his accent home again I was allowed to sit up and read Randall myself. I did – anything to help me not to think. But most of the time I just slept. So I got better physically – but I still felt very dull and low-spirited. Caithness is so dark in winter, and then, to make matters worse, my menses started. I didn’t bleed much at first but – I didn’t like it.
I’d missed the beginning of term and could hardly be bothered to catch up when I did go back. Then one day the sun came out and all at once I had a sudden thought. Like Jane Eyre, I had another set of relatives – and they weren’t even as far away as Madeira. And just because they’d been annoyed with Anya for running off to India didn’t mean they wouldn’t want me. I could speak German already, I’d soon learn Magyar – I could go to Hungary and have a family of my own. Well, not father or mother, brother or sister – but aunts, uncles, cousins – I was brimming with hope as I wrote to Mr Henderson that night asking for their address.
He wrote back saying he would make some preliminary enquiries on my behalf.
I wrote to him again. He said he’d had a reply, but it was in German, so he was having a translation made. Wasn’t I happy in Wick? I didn’t see the significance of that question. And I didn’t see the significance of my mother’s family never having communicated with me. I didn’t think. I was only sixteen. I asked Mr Henderson to send me their letter.
He brought it up himself – but only the original. He said he’d forgotten the ranslation, so he’d give me the gist of the letter. I told him I could read German, but he didn’t hand it over. Instead he started to explain that Anya had been the only child of my grandfather’s second marriage – and that this second marriage had been much disapproved of by his sons from his first marriage. Then there was the question of Anya’s betrothal; they had looked upon this as almost as binding as a marriage, so her ‘defection’ as Mr Henderson termed it, had caused great distress – as had her decision not to marry Apa in a Catholic church. As a family they held very strong religious views, and felt that I would only truly be happy living among them if I were prepared to embrace the faith of my maternal forefathers.
At this point I demanded to see the letter myself. The expression of pity that Mr Henderson was unable to conceal as he handed it over was sufficient to warn me. I was able to keep my face steady, somehow.
It was even worse than I’d expected. If I agreed to finish my education in a convent then I would be received into one of their households – subject to my exercising the highest standards of probity and deportment. They would then endeavour to secure me a suitable husband, although this would not be easy because of the circumstances of my birth. I didn’t fully understand the terms used here, but it was clear that in their eyes my parents’ marriage in a protestant church had left me in some way – tainted.
I handed the missive back to Mr Henderson. ‘I’m not changing my faith. I’ll stay here’. In Wick, in winter.
Mr Henderson told me how wise my decision had been, since my grandfather had left me so well provided for – though it was naturally gratifying that my mother’s family had been prepared to offer me a home. A home!
We both pretended that my command of German was not as good as it was – though it was more than good enough to understand the last paragraph – strongly recommending that Mr Henderson should persuade me to stay in England, as they did not feel I would be suited to their way of life. In other words, they didn’t want me.
That letter tipped me over the edge: I’d lost Apa, Aunt Ethel – and now all hope of anyone else. I was on my own – completely. No-one to care what I did and didn’t do. So I stopped working and began climbing again – in Wick, in winter.
Oh, I know that on a fine day in winter at Helspie I’d gone up the Gob and down again, but now I began to climb round the Old Man of Wick – whatever the weather. But the Old Man and the geos cleaving the cliffs beyond were not formed from the sound red sandstone of the Gob. No, their rock was jagged, brittle – and dangerous. Yet every weekend I was out there, clinging to the cliff as waves crashed at the bottom and spray spurted up on to rock that was slippery, spiky – splitting. Very, very stupid. But I didn’t care. And if I did fall, nobody else would care, either, would they?
This was unfair to the people of Wick. I was spotted several times and told in no uncertain terms what a fool I was. Even my maths master got wind of what I was up to and tried to talk some sense into me. But I wouldn’t stop – I just didn’t care.
Until the day when one dodgy foothold broke off under my weight and went spinning down into the spray and the rock under my hand began to split – leaving me with no chance of using it to gain the next hold. No way up, no way left or right – and the tide was coming in. And then it turned out I did c
are, after all. I did not want to die. Definitely. Not.
If you can’t go up or sideways there’s only choice – down. So I climbed down. Down until the spray broke over me and soaked me to the skin, down until the waves whipped at my ankles, down until my desperate searching toe found a ledge of sorts. Along it, and up – climbing frantically, wet rocks slippery under my fingers, wind and rain lashing my freezing body – no time for think or test only move – move – MOVE.
Instinct, experience – and sheer luck, got me to the top again. I collapsed on to the soaking grass, panting. Then hauled myself up again and ran all the way back to Mrs Sinclair’s. The bathroom was vacant, the geyser waiting. I flung myself into the steaming water and lay there, quite sure about one thing. I wanted to live.
I did start working again, though only in a desultory way, and of an evening I read Randall until I was dazed by it. But I didn’t think. And at weekends I got on my bike and cycled for miles and miles, sometimes to Helspie, sometimes inland on rough, rocky tracks, mending puncture after puncture and coming back in the dark and falling off from time to time – but I fell light and rolled.
And if I felt really despairing I would go and stand on the headland of the Old Man of Wick, and look down and remember what it felt like to be at the bottom with the tide coming in. Then I’d go back and eat one of Mrs Sinclair’s excellent steak and kidney puddings, go up to my room, and read myself to sleep.
Then at last spring came, and with it the herring.
Chapter Sixteen
But Mr Henderson arrived before the herring. His visit was not unexpected, since the Headmaster had summonsed me to his office the week before to inform me that he would not be allowing me to take my Leaving Certificate this summer, since my maths was not up to scratch and my prepared Latin texts had remained largely unprepared.