The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Sometimes a piece was irretrievably lost, as in her own case. But you could try to join other pieces together, to make a satisfying picture.
Noticing how Andy enjoyed Tibbie’s cooking, a thought crossed Elizabeth’s mind, but before she could explore it Tibbie spoke. “That was a bad knock you got. I mind it happened to my husband once – cow kicked him in the shin. He was laid up for weeks.” “I didn’t know he was a farm worker, Mrs Duncan.”
“He was a stonemason,” Tibbie said, “but he used to help his brother out on the family farm. What a mess his leg was in! Matthew was a wee boy at the time. He was sitting on the gate; saw it happening.” There was a pause.
“It didn’t put Matthew off?” Andy asked. “He still wanted to work on a farm himself?”
Tibbie nodded. She looked white around the mouth, as she always did at the mention of Matthew, her only child.
“Flora, eat up,” Elizabeth said, more sharply than she intended, to change the subject.
“Shan’t.” This was Flora’s favourite word this week.
“Come on.” Elizabeth picked up Flora’s fork and speared a piece of potato. “Here, have one for baby Sadie. And one for Tomcat up at Glenmore. When they’re all finished you can have a chocolate.”
“I don’t believe in bribing children to eat.” Tibbie sniffed her disapproval as she pushed her chair back and stood up. “I’ll make a pot of tea.”
Libby looked shyly at Andy.
“Can we do a jigsaw again?”
“Mr Kerr won’t want – ” Elizabeth began.
“I’d like to,” Andy said. “Really, I would.” Elizabeth nodded to Libby.
“All right, but take your plate through to the kitchen first.”
She popped another fried potato slice into Flora’s mouth.
Barbed wire
“Come to any conclusions about what happened to Bonnie Boy, about the barbed wire?” Andy asked.
Elizabeth wondered if she should say anything to Andy about the strands of wire Tam had found. She’d had to tell Rodney Shaw, of course, and he’d advised her not to talk about it. He said he would make his own inquiries. But she told Andy about her talk with Jimmie.
“I believe him,” she said. “He’s always been truthful and he loves animals. He’d never do anything that would harm them.”
“It was Rodney Shaw who first saw Bonnie Boy limping?”
“Yes.”
Elizabeth wondered if he’d told Lady Annabel. She was afraid of where Shaw’s “inquiries” would take him. Jimmie would be his first suspect; an easy target for bullying.
“You don’t think that, maybe...?” Andy stopped. “No, even he –”
“What? You think Rodney Shaw had something to do with it?” Elizabeth clattered the fork down on to Flora’s plate.
“No, forget it,” Andy said. “Stupid idea.”
He reached for another piece of fruitcake. “How’s Crys? I heard it all ended in tears with Doctor Scott.”
Elizabeth looked at him. The thought that had begun to cross her mind earlier returned.
Andy was a few years older than Crys, certainly, but so what? He was unmarried; a nice, steady man, good with children. The next time Crys was home she’d ask her and Andy here together.
“She’s upset, but she’ll get over it,” she told him. Libby came back with a jigsaw and Elizabeth cleared the table so the pieces could be spread out. The more she thought about it, the better her idea seemed. Life was like a series of jigsaws, really.
Sometimes a piece was irretrievably lost, as in her own case. But you could try to join other pieces together, to make a satisfying picture.
Her sister and their childhood friend. Why hadn’t she thought of it before?
Some nefarious gossip
A photograph of Sadie had been sent to Paisley, to Tam’s aunt. Sadie, lying on her tummy on a blanket and smiling right at the camera, was so adorable that Tam and June ordered a copy for themselves, as well as the photograph of the three of them.
Both, now framed, were added to the mantelpiece in the front room to sit beside their wedding photo and one of them taken last Christmas with June’s family.
June was dusting the mantelpiece and admiring the pictures again when she heard Isa’s door bang shut.
When the last visit to watch television next door had ended on a sour note, with June telling Isa she didn’t want to hear any unpleasant tittle-tattle about their neighbours, June had thought that Isa would stop speaking to her altogether.
But Isa acted as though nothing had happened. A few days after that visit Isa had handed in a little jumper for Sadie that had a picture of Andy Pandy knitted into the front.
Much as she would have liked to break contact, June didn’t have the heart to refuse the gift Isa had clearly gone to a lot of trouble to make.
Now, as she heard a knock at her own door, she knew it must be Isa.
She looked at Sadie, propped up on cushions in her playpen and wearing the Andy Pandy jumper. That should put Isa in a good mood.
But when she came in, and June put the kettle on for morning coffee, Isa only seemed to have one subject on her mind – her son, Frank.
“He’s been like a bear with a sore paw this past week or so. I can’t get a civil word out of him.”
“Didn’t you say his girlfriend had moved away with her family?”
“It’s not that,” Isa scoffed. “Frank’s never been one to be upset over a lassie for long. It’s always the other way. Many’s a time I’ve opened my door to find some girl in tears asking for him.”
June spooned coffee into cups.
“What do you think is wrong?”
It was a question she would put to anyone in the circumstances, but asking Isa anything felt like she was conspiring with her in some nefarious gossip. She didn’t really want to know the answer.
“I think Rodney Shaw’s been getting at him again. I saw them having an argument in the farmyard, but I couldn’t hear what it was about and Frank wouldn’t say.”
More on Monday.