‘They grow so fast,’ Seth told her. ‘That’s my wee laddie over by the bar there.’ Seth indicated the six-foot-tall sandy-haired man in a red Christmas jumper who waved back at his dad from where he was chatting with the other lads from the seal-spotting tourist boats.
‘They do, I can hardly keep up,’ Vic told him. ‘One minute she was a helpless newborn, the next she’s… well…’
Everyone at the table cast their eyes towards Clara, delightedly feeding herself great fistfuls of breadsticks and squashed banana, which was oozing out between her fingers. Echo had positioned himself by her feet, hoping for dropped scraps. The more discerning Bear slept on under the table.
‘And you work, Vic?’ Seth asked.
‘We both do,’ Angela replied. ‘Clara’s at nursery during the day.’
‘Aye, well, you ken what they say. It takes a village to raise a bairn,’ Seth said sagely.
‘We’d have been lost back at the start without Bea babysitting and taking Clara for walks so we could catch up with work or get some sleep,’ Vic replied. Angela smiled brightly at her big sister. ‘And thank God her nursery’s only down the road from our place in Warwick, and she likes it there. We miss Bea now she’s left us, though. It’s definitely harder on our own. My parents are in Gloucester, so…’ Vic shrugged and let the words fall away.
Angela and Beatrice didn’t have to look at one another to know what was going on in the other’s head. They were thinking of their own mum who hadn’t lived to see Clara born, and how bitterly she’d longed to stay to help with the baby and to see Clara growing up. Beatrice wrinkled her eyes at her sister, telling her she felt it too.
‘Aye, it takes a village,’ Seth said again, a solemn note in his voice. ‘We had Mary’s mother and her sisters nearby when Johnny was wee, they did a lot to help. I was away on the boat most days. Looking back, I missed a lot of things I should a’ been there for.’
Vic was nodding and carrying on the conversation between bites of pastry. ‘After Clara was born, Angela was exhausted from the caesarean. Nobody seems to remember someone’s just had major surgery; they just expected her to get on with looking after a baby while she was just trying to master getting up and walking again.’
‘You were there to help though, Vic, so we managed,’ Angela said as though that were the end of the discussion.
‘She needed all the help she could get after the surgery.’ Vic was talking across the table directly at Beatrice now. ‘And that’s without the rib-flare, the SPD, the sleeplessness, varicose veins…’
‘Well, that was delicious,’ interrupted Angela pointedly, crossing her cutlery on her plate and throwing a warning look at Vic before glancing towards Beatrice who was visibly wilting.
‘Oh, of course, that’s all forgotten about when your baby smiles for the first time, or when she says Mama,’ Vic threw in hurriedly.
‘Except Clara’s first word was frog.’ Angela laughed, hoping the subject of pregnancy woes could be forgotten.
‘Why don’t we do presents?’ Atholl asked, clapping his hands.
‘Good idea,’ Beatrice agreed, reaching beneath the table and drawing out a card. ‘This is for you,’ she said, handing it to Mrs Fergusson, who spilled a little of the champagne she was sipping in surprise.
‘Oh! Thank you, dear, I’ll open it later.’
‘Go on, Ma, open it now. It’s from all of us,’ Atholl urged.
Mrs Fergusson looked panicked as she turned the envelope in her hands, all eyes upon her. Once she’d opened it and glanced inside, she laid it down on the table and smiled. ‘Very nice.’
‘Oh, you’re not keen?’ Beatrice asked, confused.
‘No’ keen?’ she echoed, before looking down at her plate, a little guiltily.
‘On the mani-pedicurist?’ Beatrice urged. ‘We thought you’d like her visiting you at home. She only travels through Skye once a month. She does facials too, if you’d rather.’
‘Oh!’ Mrs Fergusson opened the card again, nodding. ‘I see. It says you’ve booked me in?’
‘Of course, Ma.’ Gene said, still hovering over Kitty’s shoulder where he’d been stealing bites of her food and was now looking narrow-eyed at Atholl then back to his mother.
‘Could you… could you no’ read that just now?’ Atholl asked gently, and Mrs Fergusson tightened her lips. By this time the whole table was in alarm and all thoughts of Christmas dinner abandoned.
‘Mum, what’s the matter?’ Atholl asked, unsteady, and Mrs Fergusson steeled herself to say out loud the secret she’d been keeping for months.
‘Macular degeneration?’
Kitty Wake repeated Mrs Fergusson’s words after she’d finished explaining what the doctor had told her during the trip to the eye hospital and everyone had fallen silent making Mrs Fergusson scold them about fussing, but with the troubled look of a woman who lived alone on Skye, a road bridge and a twisting drive away from her adult sons, from whom she had kept her secret for weeks now, not wanting to worry them when they were finally settling down after so long adrift.
‘Sheila’s helping me around the house and with reading important letters and such. Dinnae fash yerselves about me. I’ll be fine, and it doesnae hurt at all, that’s a mercy, is it no’?’ she insisted, though everyone knew that Sheila, the eldest of the Fergusson sisters, was kept busy with her own young family, especially baby Archibald, now a wriggling, rolling, chunky thing well on his way to his first birthday, and her husband always away in Edinburgh on business.
