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Tonight, Eric had recommended the local sausages, and served three glistening, brown links of pork with fried potatoes and spicy beans, which he proudly told Carrie were his own recipe. She’d taken to coming for dinner at the inn on the nights she wasn’t working. She wasn’t a fan of cooking for one, and since she got a free dinner at the restaurant Tuesday to Saturday now, before her shift started, she was saving so much money on food that she enjoyed allowing herself at least one dinner a week at the inn too. Plus, Dotty and Eric were good company.
‘Ah, I was hopin’ ye’d come in, dear. I’ve got somethin’ fer ye.’ Dotty waved at Carrie across the bar and went back out to the reception desk. ‘Wait a mo. They’re here somewhere.’
She reappeared and approached the table, handing Carrie three faded leather notebooks.
Carrie turned them over in her hands, noting that the covers were still a dark blue, but the spines were faded to grey. They looked like they had spent a lot of time on a bookshelf: Carrie wondered where exactly they had lived for so long.
‘What are these?’ She looked up at Dotty.
‘They were your Great-Aunt Maud’s, it looks like,’ Dotty answered, adjusting the waistband of her lilac tweed skirt.
‘Great-Aunt Maud?’ Carrie frowned. ‘Why do you have them, Dotty?’
Dotty sighed. ‘Well, I dinnae if ye heard, but ma very great friend Myrtle passed away. She ran the little café on the high street.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.’ Carrie frowned. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘Aye, well, no reason for ye to,’ Dotty said quietly and wiped a tear from her eye. ‘She wasnae very auld, just unlucky with her health. Anyway, I was up at her cottage, clearin’ it oot with her family, and we found those. I was goin’ tae toss them oot, but then I realised they were Maud’s. And so they belong tae ye.’
‘Goodness. Thanks, Dotty. That’s so kind of you. I’m glad you checked.’ Carrie opened one of the notebooks and surveyed the neat copperplate handwriting that filled every page. ‘Oh! It’s a diary! Look. There are dates all the way through it.’
‘I didnae look much, but aye. That’s a nice thing tae have.’ Dotty smiled. ‘Why don’t ye read them over dinner? If ye can make oot the handwritin’.’
‘I will, Dotty.’ Carrie opened the first book and squinted at the page. After a moment or two she got used to the antique handwriting and settled in to read.
12thJanuary 1958
Mother gave me this diary for Christmas, no doubt thinking I would use it to record the mundane life of a postmistress. Perhaps she thinks that the new first-class stamp or the number of passport applications I approved last week deserve recording. Or, more likely, like everyone else, she assumes I am a lifeless old maid at twenty-eight, my clothes stitched to me like a doll, never torn off in passion. And so I will be amused by something else to fill my day, seeing as a man never will.
But Mother and everyone else are wrong. I have a secret life, and I will use this book to write about it.
Wow, Carrie thought. This was already far more interesting than she had thought it would be.
William and I have been seeing each other for a year. Of course, I’ve known him for longer than that. Loch Cameron is a small village. William was three years ahead of me at school, but all boys were just spotty ne’er-do-wells as far as I was concerned, then.
Of course, the war came when I was nine, and William joined up like a lot of the boys when he was fourteen and I was eleven. He went off with the whole group of them and I forgot about him soon after, because why would I think of a boy I hardly knew who had gone away to war? It wasn’t like we were his family. You were supposed to be sixteen to join up, but all the boys lied and the navy officers turned a blind eye, that’s what everyone said.
I was too young to join anything, and by the time I was old enough, the war had ended and the boys that were left came home. William was one of them. He wasn’t the boy he’d been, though.
I remember one day, seeing him standing by the loch. He was alone, staring into the water as I passed by. I was carrying books from the library for Mother, and I dropped them onto the cobbles. William jumped about a mile into the air at the clatter as they hit the ground. I laughed and said something stupid like “Whoops a daisy,” but when I looked up from where I’d crouched down to get the books, William was white as a sheet. I reached out and took his hand and said, “William, are you all right?” He snatched his hand away and muttered something. I don’t know what it was, and I left him staring into the loch.
Then he married Clara, about a year after that meeting at the loch, in 1946. He would have been nineteen or twenty then, and I was seventeen. Clara was just a few months older than me; they waited until her eighteenth birthday to marry but as soon as she walked down the aisle in the chapel, I could see she was pregnant already. I think everyone knew, but nobody said anything. Things were different, after the war. William had fought unimaginable terrors already and he was still so young. No one wanted to wait until they were married to have sex anymore. Death had been around us for too long. We needed to live.
After the chapel wedding, they did the deadly predictable ‘passing through the stones’ up at the castle. At the time, I thought little of William, or of any man. I wanted only to get away from the village; to see the world. But I do remember watching him dancing solemnly around those big boulders, and thinking of that day at the loch where I dropped the books behind him. And the look he gave me: so scared, so lost. That moment bonded us somehow, though I didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t know that I’d seen into his soul for the first time.
Oh my goodness,thought Carrie. Great-Aunt Maud had had a secret lover? And a married one at that!Carrie couldn’t remember a William ever being mentioned when she was a child. What had happened to their relationship? How long had it gone on for?
Carrie put the book down and ate the rest of her dinner thoughtfully. She had no idea that her great-aunt had been this good a writer, or as perceptive a chronicler of Loch Cameron. Or such a romantic! She was intrigued to know more about who William was and the secret life he’d had with Maud. It was tragic, but also daring, which surprised her less. Even when she was a child, she’d known her great-aunt was feisty. Maybe, during and after the war years, you just took what you could get. There was so much loss. Maybe Maud had felt as though some of William was better than none at all.
THIRTEEN
‘So, when we reach the chorus, we need a powerful higher voice to come in,’ June called as she sat at the piano, explaining a new song to the choir. ‘Now. I’ve noticed that Carrie has a lovely soprano, and I thought she could take the lead on this song, where the second verse comes in. As a solo.’
‘Oh, no. I couldn’t.’ Carrie held her hands up as if to fend off June’s suggestion. ‘I’m happy just being in the regular chorus.’
‘Tut, tut. Modesty will get you nowhere in this life, madam.’ June shook her head imperiously. ‘Turn to page two of the sheet music. Can you sight-read?’
‘No. I used to, but I’ve forgotten it all now,’ Carrie confessed, her heartbeat getting faster. She was the centre of attention, and it felt weird. ‘Really, I’m fine. I don’t really want to do a solo.’
