The Heart Beats in Secret

Then it was February 1967 and I noticed snowdrops beside the surgery door. Maybe they grew there every spring but I only noticed them that February afternoon when the front windows were open and Dr Ballater was whistling, a thin, windy whistle, lilting and sweet.

I opened the door softly, hung my coat on the hook in the hallway and checked my hair in the mirror. Combing it back into place with my fingers, I wondered if it might be time for a trim.

Dr Ballater was still whistling when I entered his room and noticed the tea tray was already placed on his desk. He asked me to marry him.

Abrupt as that.

I said nothing, and he apologized, the meat of his face flushing red.

‘I should let you come in the door properly. I should let you settle.’ He turned away from me, adjusting the mugs on the tray. ‘Can I pour you a cup of tea?’

‘Yes. Thank you, Dr Ballater.’ The words felt brittle in my mouth.

‘George. Please,’ he said, and his hands shook a little as he filled a mug, or maybe it was just that the pot had been overfilled. ‘There. Milk? Sugar?’

‘Yes. Please.’

A splash and then two spoonfuls, heaped, and he placed the mug in front of me, awkwardly passing me the spoon, too, in case I wished to stir my tea. I did and then crossed my ankles.

‘So, will you?’

‘I … I don’t know. I didn’t …’

‘No, no. I’ve rushed things, I’m sure. You didn’t expect this. I can see that now. But I do … I should think you will need to marry someone. You are not the kind of girl who wouldn’t. I should be glad if you would have me. I can always find another nurse.’

The wind caught the curtain, blowing it out into the room with a curve like a bell, and I thought of those snowdrops outside. They must have been there every year. They must.

‘Here, this is for you, Felicity,’ he said, my name sounding too soft as he held out his hand stiffly, giving me a twenty-pound note. ‘Take it. You might like to go buy yourself a dress from Edinburgh, or something of that ilk over the weekend, and think, think about it. We will speak next week.’

The steps out of Waverley station were always windy, and I hadn’t worn my working shoes. My good shoes – low heels, patent leather toes and a clever covered buckle – made an unfamiliar click as I climbed the steps. I’d worn my trench coat, too, which might be protection against any rain, but wasn’t really warm enough at all. The weather was bright and brisk with thin grey clouds wisped high over the castle as I walked towards Woolworths. This was silly, I thought. I didn’t need a dress. I didn’t want a dress. Maybe I should head to the top floor for a coffee in the tartan-carpeted restaurant. Instead, I browsed the book selection. Twenty pounds would buy me a very solid armload of stories. But that wasn’t what Dr Ballater had in mind.

So, instead I found a white pillbox hat made of thick felt, which matched my trench coat and looked stylish. I also bought a leather bag with a good shoulder strap and two stout handles. The kind of thing you might take for a weekend away somewhere. Paris. Bruges. Would Dr Ballater take me to Paris? Would we sit together on a terrace drinking coffee, or a glass of wine, even? If I said yes, I would find out, I supposed. That was the trick of it. I had to give him an answer and things were going to change whatever it might be. The shop girl wanted to wrap my hat and place it in a smart box, but I told her that I would like to wear it. She paused, then said, Of course. I told her I could carry my bag, too, just as it was.

I stepped out of the shop into a different day, the sky slate grey and a sharp wind. My mother would say that I really did need a pair of gloves, but the new leather handles felt good in my bare hand, and a brave face conceals all shivers. Which was something else she might say. I turned the collar up on my coat and adjusted my purse under my arm. If you didn’t know, you might just think that I had arrived in town from parts far flung and sophisticated rather than dumpy old East Lothian forty minutes away. Yet if that was true, and if I were really that person, why on earth would I come here? What would I want to see? Old stones and old folk standing in the rain.

That morning, I’d told my parents about Dr Ballater’s suggestion.

‘Oh,’ said my mother.

‘And how are you going to respond?’ Dad asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘No,’ said Mum. ‘It looks like you don’t.’

‘Do you like him? You do, don’t you?’ Dad asked. ‘I knew his family during the war. Good people. He might be as good a chance at happiness as any.’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Mum. ‘He is older, isn’t he?’

‘Felicity has always been an old soul.’

‘Yes,’ she said, and it didn’t sound like encouragement. They didn’t say anything else, just sat together at the kitchen table, over half-cups of tea and the crossword puzzle like every other morning for the last hundred years. I kissed them both and said I’d be home again in the evening in time for tea.

I crossed Princes Street towards the gardens, pushed along by a swift, rushing wind and my mind filled with the words of the old hymn – so wild and strong, high clouds that sail in heaven along – so filled, so full I could almost sing. But best not to. Spring wind or no, Edinburgh might not approve. I kept my peace and walked sedately into the garden. Past the gate, down and down the steps in my pinching shoes, no angel blocked the way, no flaming sword to bar my path, but a gardener walked towards me holding a giant arrow under his arms. He smiled and nodded at me and, looking the other way, I saw another gardener on the slope beside the steps, surrounded by dozens of small potted plants. I wondered if I imagined them, summoned them somehow. Only once I was sitting down did it occur to me that they must have been working on the floral clock. That would have been interesting to watch. Still, it felt so good to sit down and slip my shoes off for a moment.

You are not the kind of girl who wouldn’t.

What the hell did that mean? What kind of girl was I?

Predictable. Suggestible. Polite.

The castle looked down from its rock foundation like Edinburgh’s broken tooth against a threatening sky. I took off my hat and folded it in half, opened it again and set it on my skirt. A sensible skirt my mother had made me in hunter-green tweed with flecks of purple. The kind of material that might be fashioned into an interesting tea cosy.

Then the rain started in earnest. Princes Street was crammed with cars, so I headed east. The North British Hotel has a lovely lobby, and I figured I could loiter there until it dried up a little. Stepping inside, I was surprised to see so many other women standing about. Mostly my age or younger, although also here and there, older women checking their watches and watching the crowd. A woman stepped forward, holding a clipboard. She wore her dark hair in a neat chignon, a serviceable broach pinned to her lapel.

‘Your interview number, please. Do you have it to hand?’

‘No, I—’

‘Did you not receive one by post? With your interview invitation?’

‘No. I didn’t.’

‘Oh dear. Another one. There have been so many slip-ups and confusions today. Some days run smoothly, and others … well, if you give me your name and details, I will add you to the list. Don’t spend a moment on worry, dear. It will come right in the end. Teaching or nursing? Teaching?’

‘No. Nursing.’

‘Ah, my apologies. I’m usually right with my guesses. Clever of you to catch me out. And better luck for you. Not so much of a crowd for nursing here today. Your name?’

‘Felicity. Felicity Hambleton.’

‘Perhaps doubly lucky, then. By name and by nature. It will be your turn soon.’

‘Thank you.’

She smiled and turned to speak to the next girl come in from the rain, a redhead in NHS spectacles clutching a soggy brown envelope to her chest.

So, nursing interviews. I’d never call it answered prayer, but maybe a way forward. I looked more carefully around the room and saw a sandwich board propped up near the reception desk.

Agnew Employment Agency:

Canadian Recruitment

Teachers:

Protestant School Board

of Greater Montreal, Quebec

Nurses and Midwives:

Various – Montreal, Quebec,

the Northern Territories

Near the doors to the hotel ballroom, folding chairs were arranged in a row, and girls sat waiting, shuffling along each time a name was called. Teachers or nurses: so that was the game. For some, it was easy to guess. I looked for wristwatches, writers’ calluses, inky fingers. I could imagine chalk dust brushed out of tweed skirts that morning, shoes polished before bed last night. My own shoes looked the worse for wear, water spots marking the patent leather toes, but you pay a price for glamour in Scotland. And, as the lady said, I might just score a few points for being distinctive. I sat down, opened my handbag and applied more lipstick.

Let’s see. Canada. The frozen north. What did I know about Canada? Cold and snow. Ice hockey. Indians. French. Oh dear. I hadn’t thought of that. Any job in Quebec would require French, wouldn’t it? Proper working French, which was likely a notch or two more advanced than mes lunettes sont sur la table. I tried to remember the other posters that hung on the French room wall at school. Les légumes verts. Les saisons. Chaud. Froid.

When my name was called, I was thinking about imperfect conjugations. What the hell – let it happen, whatever it would be. It was sure to be better than a walk in the rain. I picked up my new bag, smiled at the girl sitting next to me and stepped into the ballroom.

The interview was brief, the interviewer a thin, pale man in heavy glasses, sitting at one of the many small tables in the room, each with another interviewer just like him. He held a red Parker Duofold with a gold nib, but most of the notes were taken by the woman beside him. She sat very straight in her chair, her papers set at an angle on the tabletop, and she was writing with her left hand. She paused at the end of my name.

‘Avec un y,’ I said, quickly. ‘Not ie.’ The woman smiled. I crossed my ankles and straightened the hem of my skirt over my knees. The interviewer apologized for misplacing my details. There had been problems with the administration. Might I be able to send a fresh copy early next week?

‘Of course, of course. Pas de problème.’

He asked about my experience and my training, nodding as I mentioned the University of Edinburgh.

‘That is one of the reasons why we are here. The best programme in Europe, it is. We’re lucky to be able to scoop up girls like you.’

‘Are there no appropriate Canadian nurses?’

‘Yes, yes, of course. Still, the Edinburgh degree programme is cutting edge, and there’s a greater chance of real bilingualism here than, say, in Edmonton. Your French is good, I assume?’

‘Bien sûr.’

‘The proximity to France, no doubt. And the Auld Alliance, too, I should think. Now then, Church of Scotland?’

‘Yes. Does that matter?’

‘No, it isn’t crucial. For the teachers, yes, with board regulations, but in the hospital, it can still help. Montreal is a city of Presbyterian expats, at least on the anglophone side.’

‘Quite.’

‘So, not the north? No grand polar adventure for you? Is it Montreal you want?’

‘Yes. Yes, I suppose it is.’

His assistant spoke out in a clear, crisp voice.

‘You will do nicely.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, but she kept her face set and slid an envelope across the table towards me.

‘Here is a packet of information from the agency. In it, you will find a copy of the contract, details about immigration, and about Montreal as an international city. And, naturally, about the agency’s involvement with your career. There are forms to finalize as well. You will find it all quite self-explanatory. If you have any questions, there are telephone numbers for our representatives in London.’ She wrote a note next to my name, glanced at her watch, and looked past me towards the doors. All settled.

‘Thank you,’ I said again. The interviewer stood to shake my hand.

‘You’re welcome. Enjoy Canada.’

Outside, the rain had stopped, and the afternoon was brash with daylight. I stepped away from the shadow of the hotel and onto the still-wet pavement. Pigeons, hundreds of pigeons clattered up before me, a broad arc of flight over the gardens and, above the castle, the sky was slashed open into gold, bright gold. All those wings and gold, too. My breath felt sharp and new, and, away to the west, the pavements shone.

No one, it seems, is born just once.

3

PIDGE: 2006

MY MUM TOLD STORIES WHENEVER WE TRAVELLED. We’d be hitchhiking out from the camp in the cab of some truck, headed to Ottawa, or Montreal, and I’d sit up on Felicity’s blue-jeaned knees, her long hair tickling my face as I leaned back into her skinny chest and all the way she’d make the driver laugh with her tall tales and stories, her toothy laughing smile. Sandy Gibb the Glass Man, astronauts at Expo and swimming pregnant in a moonlit lake. She could make a story of anything. Maybe I should have told her about this trip. I told the gallery that I needed time away to sort through my grandmother’s things. They filed that under ‘personal reasons’ and then reasonably told me to take as much time as I needed. I told Mateo that I would need to organize the details of her estate, and he said that he understood. I told myself I’d be cleaning the bungalow. Before I left Ottawa, I’d imagined lots of cleaning. All those large windows and the wooden floors, too. Linoleum tiles in the kitchen. Then the bath to scour, old pots to scrub, and Persian carpets to shake out in the sunshine. It seemed like therapeutic work. Cleansing. Solitary.

Mateo said once that it was my aloneness that first caught him. I wondered if he meant loneliness, if he was mistranslating, but he said no, he meant aloneness. He said it was intriguing.

Maybe it was living at the camp with Felicity. There was lots of time then to be alone. In the night when she was at the birthing house. Or in the afternoon, when she opened her books and settled down to work at the small table in our cabin and she liked to have the space to herself, so she sent me outside. In the summer, there were always lots of children to play with, but as soon as the nights got too cold for tents, the field would empty and I’d be alone again.

When I was a little older, around nine or ten, Felicity started to take me with her to births, particularly when there were small children. She had me tell them stories and invent games to keep them entertained and distracted. Rika thought it best for children to keep away from a birth, but she never made rules, only suggestions. I’d heard Rika talking about this with Felicity one afternoon, and because they were talking about children, I listened.

‘What about when a mum wants them there?’ Felicity asked. ‘Should we come up with some pretence to get them outside anyway?’

‘No. Always only tell the truth. She needs to go so far into herself to open for the baby, and lies aren’t going to help that.’

‘And neither are kids in the room?’

Rika laughed. ‘You got it, babe. It can be hard to open for one baby when you are listening to another one prattle.’

I lay above them on the top bunk with my National Geographic. They probably forgot I was there, but it didn’t matter. They never kept anything from me. I’d heard everything, all the complications and contradictions. I learned how things can be difficult when babies come and how sometimes they don’t. How it’s possible to hope for two things at once. Release. Safety. Or time and space. I looked up from my magazine and let my eyes trace the lines on the river maps pinned to the wall. Blue ink meant water, and in this neck of the woods, the names were beautiful. The Ottawa, the Picanoc, the Gatineau, La Pêche.

‘If she really wants them close, then make space by all means. But often she only thinks she wants them so that she can keep an eye on them. So, we give the kids a safe, cared-for space away from her, and likely she’ll choose to be quiet and alone.’ Rika was always teaching like this and Felicity wanted to learn. She’d come to the camp pregnant, and after I was born, she decided to stay and help out.

I tried to explain all this – the work, the help, the study, and Rika – to Mateo in our early days, but he was more interested in my stories of long days spent alone in the woods, of climbing trees and swimming naked and summer nights and winter afternoons spent in snowshoes out on the ice. I told him how I lay down flat on my back on the snowy lake and imagined the cold depth of the water hidden beneath me, the hollow sky above me. I told him that lying there alone, I felt contained like a coin in my own pocket and perfectly happy.

On my own, the travel felt long. I arrived in Edinburgh late in the evening and found the hotel, just as Mateo had suggested. In the morning, the streets were wet, and through the window in the hotel’s breakfast room, I watched tourists with umbrellas, golf bags and suitcases pass by on their way to the trains. Pigeons huddled on the damp rooftops, and I drank strong tea, thinking about the house.

It sits away from the village and you can see the sea from the house, but not the sands. For the sands, you need to cross a footbridge and walk out past the flat lands, the marshlands and scrub trees. You pass through places where the way is lined by barbed-wire fencing, keeping the sheep in and the dogs out, and then places where the path is only a trace through open landscape. It is a bit of a walk to get to the beach, but a good walk.

Closer to the house, the shore is thick with black silt washed down from farmland nearby. A small stream cuts through the mud, a snaking path for the running tide. The bay is wide, open like a bowl, but the sea here is narrow, a silver band between East Lothian and Fife leading into the North Sea. When the tide fills the bay, it comes in quick and strange, leaving a wide sandbar dry across the mouth. That’s where the geese gather at night and where the shipwrecks sit. Felicity never let me walk out that far. She said they were just rusty submarines left over from the war and not particularly interesting.

The house was a place we visited in winter because in the winter Felicity got homesick. Gran kept the back bedroom ready for us, just in case. She knew that Felicity found the white winters at the camp hard. The days were quiet and short, the trees were bare, the path deep with snow and she had to tuck my trousers into the tops of my knitted socks to keep me warm.

When it got too quiet, too cold, and too bright, she pulled down the army surplus backpacks from the rafters and filled them with sweaters, skirts, books and warm scarves. We’d leave behind the textbooks, their precise illustrations, and the river maps. Then Felicity would bundle me into my thick winter coat, rub my face with Vaseline to keep the wind away, and we hitchhiked off to the city to find the airport bus. We never had enough pennies to commit to an annual flight, but whenever we needed to, we managed to fly. Felicity said that this was yet one more advantage of staying away from the public schools: flight was always possible. She also said that there were ample books at the camp to fill anyone’s brain usefully, and that if there was anything extra that I wanted to know, I could always ask Bas.

I could ask Bas anything and he gave me answers like small prizes slipped into my waiting hands. He was the one who told me pine needles keep you healthy like oranges do. He showed me how to hold hens’ eggs up to a candle to see the chick growing inside, and taught me that adult loons leave the lake a whole month before their children every autumn. The next generation migrates alone, relying on instinct, and he said instinct was a feeling and feelings matter. In return, I told him all the things I knew. That some grown-ups kept their eyes open at the table when we said the blessing. That all my mother’s hair was fair and curly – under her arms, too, and even under her skirt – while mine was dark and flat. That some spider-webs could outlast thunderstorms. That pennies smell like blood and blood smells like fish and that you couldn’t smell bruises at all.

I suspect my gran had something to do with the enough pennies when it came to airplanes. We never had much. We didn’t need much, really. Life in the woods wasn’t about pennies, and mainly the camp was self-sufficient anyway. We grew plenty of food in the fields across the lake and sold what we wouldn’t eat at the road-end all through the summer. Pies, tarts and deep baskets of strawberries and raspberries from the gardens, and wild blueberries from the rocky places along the lakeshore. What we couldn’t eat or sell, we saved. Bas made berry schnapps and wine coolers, and throughout the summer and into the fall, the canning kettle boiled on the woodstove and the air in the farmhouse kitchen was thick with sugar, vinegar and cloves. Felicity said she came by canning honestly, and told me about Gran’s preserves: rosehips, apple chutney, gorse wine and bramble jam. Saving things up must be in her blood and she crinkled her forehead a little fiercely when she said it, though no one would ever say she wasn’t authentic. A good camp word, authentic. Rika used it like a compliment, as though some folk weren’t and might only be acting. Did adults do that? I wasn’t sure. When I asked Bas, he shrugged and pulled the dressing-up box from the cupboard, asking who I was going to be that afternoon. I acted out every story my mother told me. A pirate tree-nymph. A mountaineering beaver. Or my favourite role of all: the Blessed Virgin herself. Bas always made time for stories, layering me with blankets, helping me to belt a pillow to my middle that I might stagger my way towards Bethlehem. He played every innkeeper with arms open wide, and with a straight face and a shining eye, found a footstool for my swollen virgin ankles and wondered if I might like a mug of tea.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Did they have tea then?’

‘I’m not sure. Maybe that comes later. It’ll be the wise men who leave some with you, but I don’t think you’ve met them yet, have you?’

‘Are you foolish, Bas? Or wise?’

‘Probably foolish, your holiness. Most probably.’

‘I think you’re wise. You know how to make bread. That’s wise, isn’t it?’

‘Wise enough for this world. Would you like some jam, too, m’lady?’ He spread it thick and I ate it stickily with fingers and lips jelly red.

Bas always knew what to offer, how much to ask, when to be silent or serious or good. He was good at keeping a story going. Much later, I realized the gentleness that took, and the strength.

Stories are fragile things, eggshell thin and porous.

After breakfast, I picked up a few groceries in a small convenience store near the hotel. Enough to live on for a little while, I thought, and there would be shops to explore in Aberlady once I’d settled in.

Then I turned in the car at the rental agency and found the bus. It shuddered out of the city, through suburbs, past rows of stucco houses with gravel yards or small lawns and the occasional incongruous palm tree. Most of the people on the bus were old, chatting with their neighbours, holding shopping bags. A pile of free newspapers at the front of the bus sat untouched, and I thought about leaving my seat to collect one but looked out the window instead.

The road passed on through small towns and smaller towns until at last the way opened up and I could see the colour of the fields and the line of the coast. The clouds had lifted, or maybe the wind had blown them back out to sea. It was a windy landscape, with small, crooked trees and hawthorn hedges along the roadside, and white birds hovered high above the waves, holding the wind in their wings. Then a wooded stretch, denser now, and in between the trees, old cement blocks sat heavily – anti-tank defences left over from the war. I remembered Felicity telling me about them, and about the railings set in the churchyard’s stone wall. They had been sawn off when the country needed more metal for airplanes, leaving iron coins set into the stone. She showed me how to press my thumb in each one – one a penny two a penny – and how to climb up the loupin-on stanes, that long-abandoned set of steps that Victorian ladies used to climb up to their high horses.