Arbroath,
Scotland.
It
was still quite dark at six in the morning, and there was frost on the windows
when he came downstairs. He stirred the
embers in the kitchen fireplace, crouching in his khaki greatcoat, and in
minutes the fire was ablaze again, its light flickering on the low ceiling.
A thin blanket of snow had fallen
during the night. In the yard outside,
the old man filled the blackened kettle from the pump by the back door, and set
it on the iron grid over the kitchen fire.
When he carried her tea upstairs on
the Chinese lacquer tray his wife lay in just the same position on the
pillows. Her face was gray and taut, and
she gave him no sign of recognition.
He put the tray on the table and sat
beside her on the bed, poured the tea, and took her hands, warming them.
"How d’you feel, then,
Janet?"
She smiled. It was a detached, affectionate smile, but
she said nothing.
She left the tea untouched and lay
still, her eyes fixed on the patchwork quilt.
It was lighter now, but there was
little to see in the room. The bed, a small night table and a narrow, painted
closet. On the table was a colored
photograph of an auburn-haired young woman.
She stood in brilliant sunshine in front of a big, colonnaded gray stone
building, dressed in a nurse’s uniform.
The old man made some comment about
the cold, but Janet made no reply.
She’d never been like this before.
He could tell she was fading, and inside him he knew she’d be gone before the
day was over.
Without shaving on this December
morning, he dressed in clothes he had worn yesterday and the day before. Down
in the kitchen he took a writing pad and a stub of pencil from the drawer in
the table and wrote a brief letter. The
writing was clear, rounded and labored, and the words unlettered and
elementary, but a blend of candor and affection compensated for whatever the
note may have lacked in fluency. It
assumed what was now inevitable, gave a compassionately untruthful reassurance
that there had been no pain, and added that there was no need to come all the
way home to Scotland.
He folded the letter and slipped it
into his pocket. It took more than
thirty minutes to walk to the post office in the village. On his way through the beech wood he heard
the sharp crack of shotguns, and voices calling through the trees.
He walked down the sweeping road to
the wrought-iron gates at the entrance to the park. Beyond the gates, on the road to Invercairn,
one or two cars passed, the sound of their wheels muffled by the snow.
Across the fields, between the road
and the river, pheasants strutted, their tails rigid, and hares froze as he
passed. At the water mill, icicles hung
from the rotted woodwork of the wheel, like frozen stalactites.
It was warm in the post office, with
the sweet smell of kerosene. Behind the
counter, Lizzie McPhearson, post-mistress at Invercairn for more than forty
years, was writing numbers in her ledger.
"Hamish Jackson. Look at you
squinting, man. You've left your
spectacles at home again!"
“Aye, I have too, Lizzie. I think
I’ll forget my own head one day soon!”
He drew his own and his wife's
pension money and, stooping to read his shopping list, bought a few small
items: some tobacco, a new pencil, six
envelopes, and an air-mail postage stamp.
"How's Janet, Hamish? Is she any better today?"
"No. She's sleeping. That's all
she does now, sleeps."
"Never you mind. Winter's nearly half-way gone. She'll soon be right as rain. And Ian Lawson's the best doctor in
Aberdeenshire . . ."
The telephone rang, and Lizzie
McPhearson was no longer with him.
Hamish filled the envelope,
addressed, sealed and stamped it, and mailed it in the red pillar box outside.
Snow fell over the fields as he
walked home. Not far from the edge of
the village the big black Rolls Royce from the castle drove past, traveling in
the same direction. He recognized
McLeod, the chauffeur, who seemed not to notice him. As it passed, a small girl waved from the
rear window.
When he reached the cottage Ian
Lawson, the doctor, was waiting, his estate car parked in the yard outside the
back door. A black Labrador dog crouched
on the passenger seat, its nose pressed to the windscreen. It barked as the old man approached. The two men shook hands, even though they were
now meeting nearly every day.
"Hello, Hamish, how is
she?"
"Nae so bad, doctor. She slept all night again. Hardly stirred. They must’ve put something strong in them
tablets."
"They'll give her some rest,
and take the pain away. Shall we take a
look at her?"
Hamish led the doctor up the short,
steep staircase, and paused at the door, uncertain of what they might find in
the cold room.
Janet was asleep. He touched her arm and she opened her
eyes. Leaving her with the doctor he
went down to the kitchen, putting on the kettle for the doctor to wash his
hands.
Through the kitchen window he could
see the shooting party from the castle emerging from the wood -- four men,
three women, some children, and a cluster of jumping dogs. Several loaders walked behind them, their
guns under their arms, their barrels broken.
Each carried a clutch of game birds.
The black iron door bell jangled in
the kitchen on its coiled spiral. Then, at the door stood a small boy, dressed
in a blue Arran jersey, corduroys and boots.
"Hello, Master Alexander."
"Good morning,
Jackson." The child's manner and
self-assurance were more those of a grown man than a boy of eight.
The boy carried two cock pheasants,
their limp necks tied together with coarse string.
"Grandfather says would you
like a brace of pheasants? We shot them
this morning."
Hamish thanked the boy, taking them.
"Jackson?"
"Alex?"
"Grandfather says Mrs.
Jackson’s dying. Is she really going to
die?"
Hamish paused. "Aye, laddie. I do believe she is."
The boy did not reply. Hamish looked down at him. The child stepped back a few paces, his eyes
fixed on the old man. Then he turned and ran back to the shooting party, who
were by now half-way up the slope to the castle. He was calling them excitedly, but Hamish
could not hear the words.
The doctor was upstairs for nearly
an hour. When he came down he did not,
as he usually did, reach for his coat from the hook on the door. Instead, he sat down by the fireplace.
Hamish waited by the window, still
in his Army coat, his hands deep in the pockets.
"We've . . . we’ve done all we
can, Hamish. You were at the hospital
during the operation, and here for the past few weeks. You've seen it all. We've talked about it often, haven’t we? If she was younger there'd be some hope but,
well, you're both in your eighties . . ."
"She's going to die today,
isn’t she?"
“Well . . . yes, I think it’s likely.”
He shook his head. “I can’t be
certain."
The doctor rested both hands on the
old man's shoulders.
"I'm sorry, Hamish, but there's
little we can do now."
In the yard, the dog barked again as
they appeared together. The wheels spun
on the snow-covered ground, and in seconds the car was gone.
Throughout the afternoon Hamish sat
by the kitchen fire. From time to time
he made hesitant visits to the upstairs room.
Each time she was in the same position with the same expression. Her breathing was barely audible. But there was a little warmth under the
blankets.
It was dark shortly after four in
the afternoon. He lit the lamp and put
it on the kitchen table. There were no
more callers from the castle. Outside the window, an inch or two of snow had
settled on the sill.
At seven he went back to the room,
but this time there was no breathing, and no warmth. Her eyes were closed, and one arm seemed to
reach toward the bedroom door.
For a moment he sat beside her on
the bed holding her outstretched hand, which he had done so many times during
the past months, to comfort them both.
He slipped under the covers, lying
with one arm across her already colder body.
After months of broken, watchful nights he slept until mid-morning;
waking to see the garden under heavy snow, still falling.
* * *
Melbourne,
Australia.
Six
days later, on Christmas Eve, radio station 3XY forecast 90 degrees. Dressed in her uniform, Sister Christie
Jackson steeped out into the already hot Australian summer sun and unlocked her
mail box in Glenhuntly Road, Melbourne.
There were three Christmas cards, a
Telecom reminder and a letter postmarked Invercairn, Scotland.
Her father rarely wrote, but she
always looked forward to his letter at Christmas, in time for Hogmanay, the
Scottish New Year.
Standing on the sidewalk, waiting
for a # 67 tram, she opened the envelope. On a sheet of yellow ruled notepaper,
the writing was clear, rounded and labored.
But there was no letter; not the
usual end-of-year family news. There was nothing in the envelope but a
hastily-written shopping list, in pencil:
pension,
stamp, envelops, tobaco, pencil.
Standing among strangers at the tram
stop, Christie Jackson laughed aloud.
"Oh, Dad," she said. "You silly old fool! You forgot your spectacles again!"
Still laughing, she stepped down
from the tram at Prince Henry's Hospital, screwed up the note, and tossed it
into a nearby trash bin.
