Watch Over Me (3 page)

She wasn’t coming back.

It was the picture of a young girl, wrapped in winter clothes, her cheeks red from the cold, skating on a frozen lake. Janet had somehow managed to convey it all: the sense of joy on the girl’s face, the apprehension of skating on thin ice, the defiance that said,‘I dare.’ The cold and crisp air, the magic of the winter scene, with the icicle-covered branches, the pink-yellow sky, and the black silhouette of the winter trees in the distance …

That painting showed all of Janet’s talent, her promise as an artist. It was part of her final exhibition when she had graduated from Slade in London. Everybody knew that Janet Phillips was one to watch, the one that would make it.

And sure enough, she did.

Three years after graduating, she was in great demand, owned a flat in an upmarket area of London and was swamped with work. Her work was true and honest and amazing.

Her art meant everything to her; she would paint through the night and fall asleep at dawn on the sofa in her studio, among her canvases. When she was working on something, she couldn’t think of anything else, she couldn’t see anything else.

But after three years of this life, she started to feel the strain. Although happy, she was exhausted and physically drained. Her twin sister, Anne, convinced her to take a holiday in Scotland with a group of friends.

And that’s when we met and both our lives were turned upside down.

I walked into the pub one night after work. They were sitting at the counter, all wrapped up in the high-tech fleeces, water-proof trousers and walking boots that seem to be the uniform of people coming here from down south, several whisky glasses in front of them.

You know that thing about love at first sight? People debating whether it exists or not?

Well, it does.

I swear, it took me about a second to fall in love. And I’m not even the romantic type. You know, quiet and all that. Shy. Brought up to hide my emotions as deep as I could, in the best Scottish male tradition. I wasn’t even that interested in having a relationship, back then.

And still, there she was, there I was, everything changed in that second and it was never the same again.

We started talking and three hours later we were still together. Anne and their friends went back to their hotel, we went for a walk on the beach, among knowing smiles and innuendoes from the girls. We didn’t care. I didn’t even care about the people in the pub, most of whom had known me since I was born, and how tongues would start wagging. I didn’t care about anything, except not leaving her side.

I watched her blonde hair on my pillow. It was the colour of ripe corn, of golden fields in the summer. I watched her face as she was sleeping, I watched over her all night.

She went back to London a few days later, leaving me in a grey world, in a lifeless world where I wandered in a daze, not knowing what I was doing, where I was going.

I burnt my hand very badly. I am a blacksmith, like my father, and in my line of work, you better watch what you are doing or you end up hurt.

As she was bandaging my arm, Dr Nicholson smiled. The whole village knew about Janet and me. That is how things work in Glen Avich.

‘You are not the first and you won’t be the last,’ she said.

I looked at her.

‘To do something silly like that. You know, the day I met John, about thirty years ago, I missed my stop on the train back from university and ended up on the coast. My dad had to drive two-and-a-half hours to come and get me. There,
this
will heal in no time.’

A few stunned weeks later, after many a late-night session in the pub to drown my sorrow – and many a hungover day – she came back.

I opened the door and there she was. Golden hair, cornflower eyes, like the princess in fairytales. She had driven up from London with a small case full of clothes and laden with paints, canvases and a few paintings.

She looked scared. She clearly didn’t know how I’d react. I could feel the tension in her body as I held her and kissed her, and then I felt her relaxing in my arms. She looked at me, her face flooded with relief. She could read on my face that I was overjoyed to see her.

She looked relieved, but she didn’t look happy.

She wasn’t even in the door. We were still standing on my doorstep as she told me.

‘I’m pregnant.’

Everything spun around me and before my rational mind could process what she had just told me, I broke into a smile. She didn’t smile back. She didn’t look happy.

She was pregnant and she wasn’t happy.

* * *

We settled down to this new, unexpected life. At the beginning, it was like being under water, everything was surprising, fluid, unplanned. I cleaned and painted the spare room and turned it into a studio for her. She tried to work but morning sickness – all day sickness really – made it so hard. She was constantly exhausted, lying on the sofa or throwing up in the bathroom. She soon gave up on painting.

My mum was a godsend. She made Janet feel welcome, she did her utmost to help her settle in. Janet took to her and they became good friends. They would go for tea and a scone in the local cafe, up to Aberdeen shopping, or just sit in my mum’s kitchen and chat while I was at work.

The local girls had been quite taken aback by the sudden appearance of this London woman, her blonde hair, her designer clothes. They weren’t as ready as my mum to befriend her. My sister Shona pointed out to me that it wasn’t nice for them to see one of the few eligible bachelors in the area snatched by a newcomer. Of course, I hadn’t thought of that. My sister commented that men are useless that way – they never notice these things. My mum seemed to be the only person that Janet truly trusted. It goes against the stereotype of the wicked mother-in-law, I suppose.

Still, Janet was miserable. It was as simple as that.

I could see it, my mum and sister could see it, everyone could. People would wonder what on earth she had to be so miserable about – a man who adored her and couldn’t wait to marry her, a baby on the way, a lovely home.

But I understood. The pregnancy had taken everything out of her; the baby was sapping every ounce of her strength. Because her art required all her energy – emotional, physical, and mental – the two things just couldn’t coexist, for her. She was drained.

I didn’t know much about pregnancies, I had only seen my sister whenever she was down from Aberdeen, and apart from being a bit tired and nauseous, she seemed fine. Happy. I didn’t want to start discussing Janet behind her back but I had to ask my mum for advice. I was at a loss.

‘It happens sometimes. I was fine with you but with Shona … I was sick throughout, as big as a house and totally exhausted! She was my first – I just wasn’t prepared. But then, when the baby came, I was so happy I forgot all about it. Sometimes your dad and I tried to stay awake all night just to look at her …’

It didn’t happen that way for Janet. When the baby came, she didn’t seem better. Maisie was born after more than twenty-four hours of labour, she was in so much pain and I couldn’t help her. When it finished, Janet was exhausted, but rules were that I had to leave her there and come back the next day. Maisie must have been quite traumatised by the ordeal too, so she wouldn’t settle in Janet’s arms or at her breast. I left her holding the baby, sitting upright in her bed on the ward, and when I came back the following morning, she was in the same position, holding Maisie, with blue shadows under her eyes and looking like she was going to collapse. She told me she had held her all night because whenever she put her down, Maisie would start crying. She was so scared to nod off and drop her that she had pinched herself over and over again, so much that her arms were full of purple bruises. I couldn’t believe it.

‘Did the midwives not help you at all?’

‘I didn’t ask.’

As I held Maisie, my beautiful, sweet, wonderful wee girl, I didn’t know which feeling was stronger: happiness for her birth, or fear over her mother’s state of mind.

A fraught few months followed. Janet looked as if she was doing her duty to Maisie but not enjoying it much. Maisie was fed, changed, held – she was very well looked after – but Janet just didn’t seem … well, as enraptured as we were. Myself, my mum and Shona. And the rest of the village, really. Maisie was so pretty – she still is. The same blonde hair as her mum but not her cornflower eyes, she had inherited my own grey ones that were my father’s too.

Janet started leaving Maisie more and more often, with me, whenever I wasn’t working, or with my mum. She even tried to arrange for Maisie to stay over in Aberdeen with my sister for a few days – but I said no, she was only three months old, it was too early to leave her.

Even when someone else looked after Maisie, Janet still wouldn’t paint. I’d come home to a chaotic house and Janet sitting at the window in her studio, her apron on, but no painting done.

It was breaking my heart. I felt so terrible, so terrible that something that happened with me, one night of passion, had made her so unhappy. I knew it wasn’t my fault, and I knew I was doing my very best to try and make her better, but it didn’t help the guilt.

I felt like she was this beautiful tropical bird and I had caged her, though unwittingly, and now she was dying.

One night I couldn’t take it anymore and I told her so. She burst into tears and held my hands.

‘No, no, it’s not your fault.’ She was sobbing, she was distraught. ‘It’s not your fault, it’s not Maisie’s fault. I’ll do my best, I’ll try harder. I just don’t know who I am anymore. I try to paint and nothing comes. I’ll get better, I promise.’

In the next year or so, things improved. All of a sudden, she came back to life. She started painting again. She would paint all day, then on and on through the night. The colour came back into her face. She would sit down to dinner with us for ten minutes and then run back upstairs to her canvases. I missed her, and it seemed such a shame she wouldn’t spend any time with Maisie and me – but it warmed my heart to see her happy again.

Maisie was now a toddler with golden wavy hair that curled around her face like a halo, a sweet little face and those beautiful grey eyes that I would lose myself in. She always asked for her mum, she was forever trying to cling to her and stop her from going upstairs. I could see how much she missed Janet – but she was generally a happy little thing and didn’t seem to be overly upset by her mother’s continuous absence.

Janet started driving down to London every month or so, to take new paintings down to galleries, or attend events, or just see friends. One time, she was offered an exhibition and spent five weeks down south without ever driving back, and she kept finding excuses for us not to visit her.

I grew terrified that she’d go and take Maisie with her. I couldn’t sleep at night for fear that I’d awake and find them gone.

‘We can all go down to London. I can get a job. If that’s what you want, if it would make you happy …’

‘Oh, Jamie. You would hate London. You know that very well.’

‘But if that’s where you need to be …’

‘Stop it, Jamie,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t even want to talk about this, it’s not an option.’

I knew what she meant. She didn’t want me with her.

She did go, just like I feared she would. But she left Maisie.

She took a few clothes, her painting and her cat. She took her cat and left her eighteen-month-old daughter.

I was relieved and distraught and horrified all at the same time.

That day I decided that it was going to be Maisie and me. We’d be a family. We didn’t need anyone. Of course we had my mum and my sister and all our friends in the village, but the two of us were a wee unit in ourselves and would not allow anyone to come in and hurt us.

At the beginning, Maisie asked for her mum over and over and over again. Then, slowly, Janet’s memory faded from her mind and she asked less and less. Then she stopped. I didn’t give her an explanation. Maybe I was a coward, I don’t know, but what could I say? ‘Your mum left you because she was so unhappy here, she wanted to be in London and be a painter and yes, she could have still been a painter here, or take us to London with her, or even only you – as much as it would have destroyed me – but she didn’t. Why? Because she didn’t want me with her, and she didn’t want you either.’

I decided that if Maisie ever asks, I’ll find an excuse for what Janet did. Not to protect Janet but to protect Maisie.

The funny thing is, Janet’s selfishness and cruelty in leaving Maisie behind meant that I could keep her, so in a strange, twisted way, I am grateful.

Now it’s just us. Since my mother died unexpectedly three years ago, we are even closer. She is my life.

But when Maisie is in bed and the fire is dying, I sit looking at the embers with a glass of whisky and I feel a coldness inside, a loneliness that seeps into my bones. I feel myself withdrawing from life, rejecting it like something too dangerous, something only a fool would take his chances on.

I am frozen and I intend to stay that way. It’s safer and I have a daughter to think of. Nobody will ever break our hearts again.