Fortunes of the Heart (37 page)

“Yes, Kate, there is someone. But I would not wish to be
seen like this, stuck here in the kitchen wall-bed.” Kate smiled gently.

“Pearce, my love. There would be no problem in getting you
cosily established in the good front room. Jenny could give me a hand. Sure,
there’s not a pick of flesh on you, no weight on you whatever.
Stoorie
Sanny
from the next close
would very soon help you through there.”

Pearce smiled weakly, then quickly frowned when Kate went on
to say: “Only trouble is, I don’t know where on earth to start looking for
Daniel.”

Pearce tried in vain to lift his weary head from the pillow.
Then, summoning all his strength, he shook his head.

“
’Twas
not Daniel I had in mind as
my favoured visitor.” Kate cocked her head on one side.

“Pearce, you’ve fair got me puzzled. For I know it certainly
is not Granny
Gorbals
that you’re desperate to see.”

Pearce waved a trembling hand towards the battered wallet
which lay on the bedside chair.

“In there. Her address is in the inner pocket.”

Soon a note had been hand-delivered to one Mistress
Josephine Delaney, now of
Monteith
Row, Glasgow
Green, requesting her urgent presence at the death-bed of her old and valued
friend Pearce Claude Kinnon.

A short time later, Josephine arrived in a flurry of furs,
feathers and furbelows and was immediately ushered into the over-heated front
room. What words passed between them, Kate would never know, for she observed
Pearce’s need for privacy at this solemn moment. When a weeping Josephine
Delaney finally emerged from the room, she dabbed at her eyes with her dainty
lace handkerchief and said in her refined Irish accent: “Pearce years ago
mentioned a little red velvet jewel box he wished me to have as a memento, but
today I could not catch where he said it was. When you find the box can you
have it sent to me?”

Mrs Delaney had a strange faraway look in her eyes, and Kate
wondered if she realised had she met Pearce in a different time and in a
different place, then how altered everyone’s lives might have been, with her
the respected chatelaine of Laggan House, instead of merely the tolerated,
paying lodger of an indigent gentlewoman in Glasgow Green, had not
irresponsible youthful passions and lust dictated otherwise.

She replaced her handkerchief in her embroidered
moire
reticule. That done, with ladylike elegance, she drew
on her fine, long kid gloves and only then did she extend a hand towards her
former landlady. She smiled bravely through her tears.

“Goodbye then, Mistress Kinnon. Thank you so much for having
observed
Pearces’s
last wishes in sending for me. I
do appreciate that gesture more than you will ever know.”

Kate, for once dumbstruck and struggling for words with
which to reply, might just as well have saved herself the bother. For it was at
once apparent that Mistress Josephine was determined to have the last word.

“I shall not be attending the funeral. I already have my own
memories of our dear Pearce. And I prefer to remember him as he was in life. My
only regret is that I never really knew him as a young man in the proper
setting of Laggan House. Ah well.”

She dabbed daintily at a tear trickling down her cheek.

“’Tis life, Mistress Kinnon, ’tis the way of things. So,
this must needs be good-bye. You and I shall not meet again – at least not in
this life. So, I bid you adieu and thank you again. You did exactly the right
thing in sending for me. Goodbye. Goodbye.”

And with a flurry of furs and trailing skirts, Josephine
Delaney took her not-too-sad farewell of Kate Rafferty Kinnon.

As she always had done with her grand, ladylike ways and her
inborn superior manner, she left Kate feeling like the not very bright kitchen
skivvy. Kate shook her head sadly as she retraced her steps to her husband’s
bedside.

Yes, Kate, you were the one who bore his children, and put
up with his temper tantrums. I’m damned if the already over-jewelled, spoiled,
pampered bitch of a Delaney is going to get any red velvet jewellery box – if
it exists.

She pursed her lips as she approached the inert, lifeless
body of what had been Pearce Claude Kinnon. She gazed down at his waxen face
through the mist of her tears.

A fine state of affairs, this. Not only does Josephine think
to inherit his worldly goods, she even has the last of his words spoken on this
earth. There’s nothing left for me now.

She jumped in surprise when Pearce’s hand moved, and he
spoke so quietly that she had to bend over, her ear almost touching his lips,
to hear.

“In my box ... the one I keep our documents in ... birth
certificates, marriage lines ... the small key on my watch fob ...”

He stopped for so long Kate thought he was dead.

“... a red velvet box ... my grandmother’s necklace ...
given to me for my bride ... give it to ...”

Death bed words or not, I’m damned if I’m going to give it
to Mrs Delaney.

“... make sure ... make sure ... my little Theresa gets it
... Katy girl.”

Kate knelt at her husband’s bedside. There would be much to
arrange in the hours and days ahead, that she already knew. But for the time
being, she knelt and prayed and, for that moment at least, Kate and her Pearce
were together in death as they never had been in life.

“Mammy, are you all right,
darlin
’?
I know this is a ... well ... a sad day for you. But I’ve never seen you look
like this. Not even at the height of my problems. What is it, dear?’

Her daughter came and knelt beside her and stroked Kate’s
work-worn hand, as all the while she awaited her mother’s reply. When it came,
Jenny was startled.

“Oh, Jenny lass. I’m just sitting here thinking; the world
is unevenly divided. Some with more money than they can ever use, and others
with not two farthings to rub together.”

Jenny frowned.

“’Tis a fact of life, Mammy. Sure and we all know that. Why,
even the hymns tell us that.”

Kate smiled sadly.

“I was just thinking, what a wasted life it had been for
your poor Dadda, God rest his soul. And all my fault, of course, for having
taken him away from the rich, good life at Laggan House. Now he’s dead, I just
feel so guilty.”

Jenny rose to her feet and glanced at the wall-clock.

“Listen, Mammy, I’m going to make you a wee cup of tea.
We’ve still got time. And it’ll maybe stop all this havering. Can’t think
what’s got into you this morning.”

As Jenny turned away towards the sink, Kate reached out and
caught hold of her daughter’s hand.

“What little money he had in life he spent on us. Aye, and
even on that ill-fated holiday for us, doon the waiter.”

Jenny looked down with compassion at her Mammy where she
still sat at the kitchen table. She laid a comforting hand on her mother’s
cheek.

“Come on now, Mammy, we’ve important things to do. We’ve
still to set the table for the funeral tea before we leave for the Necropolis.
And you said it yourself, Granny
Gorbals
will be in
any minute with some home-baking for the feast.”

Jenny gave her mother a last, loving embrace, gently
disengaged her hand and went over to the sink to fill the black kettle from the
goose-necked tap. Once she had set the kettle on the hob of the blazing fire,
she again turned to her mother.

“Tell you what, Mammy. You put out the mugs and I’ll go in
next door and help Granny through with the baking. Then we can all have a wee
cup of tea together before we get dressed for the funeral. All right, dear? It
might cheer you up a bit to have a wee blether with Granny.”

By the time that Jenny and Granny
Gorbals
returned, both laden with plates piled high with pancakes, soda-bread,
potato-cakes and even fingers of shortbread, Kate had still not stirred
sufficiently to lay out the necessary three mugs. And the kettle on the hob was
boiling furiously.

Jenny made no comment, but after laying the plates of
sweet-bites on the table, she set about making a pot of tea.

Granny, her burden also deposited, came over and, throwing
her arms wide, embraced her old friend and neighbour. The two women stayed
locked in their silent embrace.

Once they were all seated round the table, Granny glanced
over at the still-sleeping figure of Hannah.

“Aye. Just as well to let the poor girl sleep as long as
possible. Once we’ve arranged the table for the funeral tea, time enough then
to get her ready in her go-chair. Then Jenny can wheel both Hannah and wee
Theresa in next door for me. I’ll look after the pair of them while you and
Jenny are at the funeral up at the Necropolis.

Kate shook her head sadly.

“Granny, Granny. What would I do without you?”

The old woman stretched over a hand which she laid on Kate’s
arm.

“Now, Kate. Don’t go getting yourself worked up. You’ll have
enough upset before this day is through. That you will.”

Kate gave a sad smile.

“You’re right, Granny. I’ll be glad when this day’s work is
over. And that’s the truth. Mind you, poor Jenny has already had a time of it
with me and my grieving.”

“We had all better get a move on,” Jenny said. “Or at this
rate, poor old Dadda is going to be late for his own funeral.”

The afternoon of Pearce’s funeral, the whole street turned
out, after having first drawn the blinds on every window, in the accepted and
properly respectful manner. Not that any one of the neighbours had had much
time for the cantankerous old man in life, yet in death it was a totally
different matter. They came, not only out of a mark of respect to the
universally liked Kate, but also out of a much more mundane reason. Knowing
that the Kinnon household was locally famed as a
guid
meat-hoose the mourners were well aware that they’d be sure of a substantial
funeral tea after the cemetery rites had been observed.

The day itself dawned dull with a grey, depressing drizzle
and occasional sleet which dripped and whinged away throughout the morning, almost
in the same way as Pearce himself had for so many years.

The local Episcopalian rector was persuaded to conduct the
short interment service at the-graveside in Glasgow’s vast Necropolis instead
of the priest from the High Anglican Church Pearce had preferred.

The one bright spot in the day was when Kate, surrounded as
she was on all sides by her daughter Jenny, her friends and neighbours, leant
forward and laid a carefully hoarded pressed shamrock on the top of his coffin.
At that very moment, as if right on cue, the sun broke forth from the grey,
overcast sky and it was as if a searchlight beamed down on the tiny part of
dear old

Ireland which would go with Pearce to his grave. As the
coffin was lowered into the depths of the earth, a lone piper played a haunting
Scottish lament. This last touch had been Kate’s own idea.

She remembered that the one happy time in their married life
had been the one all-too-brief start of that long ago and ill-fated holiday
doon the
wafter
in Royal Rothesay. She could still
recall the look of rare pleasure on her husband’s face each time they had gone
down to the pier, there to listen to the local band of pipers who often greeted
the packed incoming boats of happy holidaymakers.

When she was making the myriad and essential arrangements
for the funeral, the thought had come to her:

I wasn’t able to make him happy very often in life, so
perhaps there’s something I can do for him in death, to give him a good
send-off.

In the days that followed, she had racked her brains well
into the wee small hours for what that special something might be. Then in a
flash, one morning at dawn, it came to her.

I know, I could use some of the money that Danny left with
me, that Pearce would never let me spend, to pay a piper, to help him on his
way to the Other Shore.

She had actually seen a walking funeral while on the Island
of Bute and the memory of it had stayed with her. Apparently, it had been some
local dignitary and as his friends and mourners had bade him a sad farewell. At
the harbour, the final, memorable mark of respect had been a haunting dirge
played by a lone piper, resplendent in the regalia of full Highland dress.

As Kate relived the stirring memory of it, so strengthened
her resolve to make sure that Pearce got the full and final respect due to him
as the scion of the landed gentry. Throughout their life together, this respect
for his exalted station in life had been all too sadly missing, as she knew to
her cost in her dealings with the sad, embittered man he had become latterly.
As his widow, it was up to her to ensure that her husband, materially poor as
he had been throughout his life, and solely on account of his disastrous
marriage to herself, would at least never have to lie in a pauper’s grave.

So it was, as the haunting notes drifted in the air around
them, Kate and Jenny bade their own farewell to Pearce Claude Kinnon.

Later that same day, at the funeral tea of cold boiled ham,
eggs, tomatoes, soda-bread, pancakes, meringues, and even shortbread and a
quivering jelly, all washed down with liberal helpings of whisky for the men
and sherry for the women, Kate reflected that her life would never be the same
again. True, she still had poor Hannah, Jenny, and the bairn, her wee job at
the newsagents, and her cleaning jobs, but never again would she ever have to
submit to a bitter husband’s fierce rages, black moods of depression and
dictatorial manner. No. No matter how she looked at it, life in the years ahead
would take on an entirely different pattern and a new meaning for Kate Kinnon.

While Kate was thus sunk deep in her own thoughts, all
around her the mood and noise level of the funeral tea was becoming more
exuberant, as the good food and excellent whisky and sherry began to work its
magic.