The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Evidently she changed her mind about saying something, but something had made her think
June wasn’t going to tell Isa that Tam thought Rodney Shaw was a nasty piece of work. But she had often seen with her own eyes Frank going off somewhere, all dressed up, when he should have been working – so the factor had every right to be angry with him if he found out. “I hope no-one’s been telling tales?” Isa gave June a beady stare over the top of her cup.
“Frank’s a hard worker. He’s entitled to a bit of fun.”
June had heard it all before. She was going to stop this conversation right now.
“Look,” she said, smiling over at the playpen. “Sadie loves her new jumper.”
Isa’s expression softened.
“I wanted a wee girl after Frank. But it wasn’t to be.” June had a moment of fellow feeling with her difficult neighbour.
“We had a lovely photo taken of Sadie. Would you like to see it?” she asked, scooping Sadie up and blowing a raspberry into her neck.
“Shall we show Isa you lying on that furry blanket?” She led the way through to the front room.
Isa admired the photographs and then peered closely at June’s wedding picture.
“How long have you been married?”
“Five years.” Already June was regretting taking Isa through their house, telling her anything.
“And when was this one taken?” Isa picked up the fourth photograph and stared at it.
“Last Christmas,” June said. “At my mum and dad’s.”
“Last Christmas,” Isa repeated, looking puzzled. “But – ”
Evidently she changed her mind about saying more, but clearly something had made her think.
It was only later, when June was giving Sadie her last bottle of the evening, that she realised what that something could be.
Last Christmas was just six weeks before Sadie was born. But in the photo there was June in her best dress, cinched in at the waist, clearly not about to have a baby. . .
Rumours
Diffidently, Tam asked Elizabeth if the rumours about Lady Annabel selling up were true.
“You got this from Isa, I suppose?” Elizabeth asked. Tam nodded.
“I know she talks a lot of blethers, but no smoke without fire, as they say.”
Elizabeth had gathered, that day in Rosland House, that Lady Annabel was concerned about the future of all her properties.
But she replied to Tam truthfully that if selling Rosland was her ladyship’s plan she had not told her farm manager.
Tam’s worried face cleared.
“Good to hear that, Mrs Duncan. June and me wouldn’t want to up sticks again so soon.”
“Believe me, Tam, if there’s anything I think my staff should know I will tell them.”
A couple of weeks after that conversation Elizabeth wondered if she knew anything at all about what was happening on the estate.
Lady Annabel had been closeted in Rodney Shaw’s office several times, with the door firmly shut.
The mystery of Bonnie Boy’s injury remained just that, a mystery.
If Rodney Shaw had made inquiries he never reported any results to Elizabeth.
And the men were saying that Shaw and Frank Robertson had almost come to blows the other day. While there had always been bad feeling between them it had never escalated so far before. No-one seemed to know what they’d argued over. On the bright side, Andy had taken to calling in at the farmhouse and asking if he could do anything for them. Tibbie had asked him to cut some kindling sticks and move a wardrobe from one room to another.
Elizabeth was grateful – Tibbie wasn’t up to chopping wood any more and she herself hadn’t enough hours in the day.
There were things she could call on the estate to do – sort the leak in the roof, mend the shed door, because the house and the shed were estate property. But she didn’t want to ask any of the men for help with more personal chores.
She wanted to show that she could cope with managing the farm and with everything else.
Sometimes she found herself thinking about Donna Mackay and her life in California. What must it be like not to have to think about anything, apart from which colour to paint your nails?
Still, her matchmaking plans were off to a good start.
Andy had stayed to eat with them again, and Elizabeth had come downstairs one evening after supervising the girls’ bath time to find him drying the dishes for Tibbie.
That was good.
It would be perfectly natural then for him to be there when Crystal was home. She began dropping Crys’s name into conversation whenever she could, and she read snippets of her letters that could be shared.
“Crys isn’t coming home for the agricultural show,” she told him one afternoon in her office.
He wasn’t over for a social call this time, but to check up on Bonnie Boy’s hoof.
“She wouldn’t have wanted to run into Struan Scott anyway, I suspect. But she’s got a lot of work – modelling bridal gowns, of all things, in a department store in Oxford Street! She’s sorry she’ll miss the show. She always loved it.”
“Wasn’t there some story about her and candyfloss?” Andy chuckled.
“It was the first year there was a candyfloss stall.” Elizabeth laughed at the memory.
“Dad gave her some money and she went straight over and spent the lot! Six sticks. She had all this pink fluff – ”
The door opened, banging against the wall, and Tibbie almost ran in, clutching Libby by the hand.
Elizabeth stood up, her heart beating fast. Tibbie never came to the estate office.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Flora was playing with her dolly in the garden,” Tibbie gasped out. “But she’s not there. I’ve looked all around and called and called. I can’t find her anywhere!”
Laughter
June put a sleeping Sadie in her pram and lifted it over the back doorstep. She pulled the hood up and fixed a net in front of it in case of insects.
Today, she was going to paint their kitchen cabinet. It needed smartening up.
Both she and Tam hoped that the rumour about Lady Annabel selling up wasn’t true – or if it was, that the estate would be bought by someone who would keep all the staff on.
Propped up on the kitchen table was the script for the SWRI drama, For Love Or Money.
As June drew the brush up and down the doors of the cabinet she muttered her lines to herself.
Peggy was right – she did have a lot to say. But, with Tam’s help, she was almost there. His rendering of the other characters’ lines had reduced them to helpless laughter, but at the end of next month the SWRI would start up again and rehearsals would begin in earnest. More tomorrow.