Eileen Campbell - Barra’s Angel

Eileen Campbell

Fourth Estate

An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © 1999 by Eileen Campbell

First published in Great Britain in 1999

The right of Eileen Campbell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN: 9781857029772

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2016 ISBN: 9780007401864

Version: 2016-01-04

This book is dedicated to the following:

My husband Robert, for more reasons than I can squeeze on this page. You have my love, my gratitude, and my admiration – always. (And I forgive you for buying the motorcycle on our anniversary!)

My daughter Laura. I don’t know why I was awarded the special privilege of being your mother, but I’m more thankful each day that I was. The infinite pleasure of knowing you would be gift enough.

My son Andrew, who can tap-dance with the best of them – and who carries my heart on his wings.

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

Rose glanced over her shoulder at the kitchen clock. Ten to four. Barra would be out of school soon, but when he’d arrive home was another matter. She sighed, and continued scrubbing the tatties. The velvety sound of Nat King Cole soothed her in her labours and she hummed along to her favourite, ‘Nature Boy’. The song reminded her of her son each and every time she heard it, and she smiled. For wasn’t it Barra himself in every line?

The smile dissolved, tugged downwards into a frown. If only Chalmers could see what she saw, could try to understand the boy – just a wee bit. Rose placed the tatties in the pan and dried her hands, tutting at her husband’s scarf which hung carelessly on the back-door knob. Three times this week she had hung it on the hallstand, and three times Chalmers had taken it off; only to leave it dangling behind, having decided at the last minute that the April sunshine would last another day.

Rose reached for the scarf, holding it for a moment against her cheek. Her heart lurched, an uncomfortable habit that had begun just weeks ago. Please God, let me be wrong. I couldn’t stand it … Then fury, white-hot and suffocating, rose within her.

Well, Chalmers Maclean, if it’s Sheena Mearns you want, you can bloody well have her! Rose wrapped the scarf around the doorknob, once, twice, three times, twisting it within an inch of its life.

She gave the stew more of a skelp than a stir, and walked back into the living room. The LP had come to an end and the needle whished irritatingly at its centre. Rose shook her head. Her husband was an electrician, for God’s sake. You’d think he could get the damned thing to work properly!

She lifted the arm back on to its rest and switched off the radiogram. Throwing her small frame heavily into the chair, she snatched yesterday’s newspaper from the basket by the fireplace. Her eyes scanned the headlines. Halfway through the ‘swinging sixties’ and the world’s going to hell in a basket, thought Rose – what with Mods and Rockers, and free love all over the place!

The Craigourie Courier also contained a full-page report on the previous Tuesday’s Budget, which had resulted in an increase in the price of a fag and a dram. And this from a Labour government!

Rose snorted. Who could you trust any more?

Unable to concentrate, she folded the paper and returned to the kitchen. Well, at least she’d have some company when Barra got home. The Easter holidays started today, and she’d be opening the house for the bedders next weekend. Wouldn’t that be enough to keep her mind off things?

Rose gazed out at the ancient forest bordering her home, and knew that it wouldn’t; for Barra would likely be spending every minute he could lost among the trees, giving her even more to worry about.

It was Rose’s ever-present nightmare that Barra would be ‘molested’ (they were using that word more and more on the telly) while wandering in the woods which separated the Maclean household from the Whig at the other end. The Whigmaleerie was, in fact, the full name of the café but, as the building housed Drumdarg’s only shop, bar and café under the one roof, the property had simply been referred to as the Whig for as long as anyone could remember.

The front was given over to the shop and the bar, with the back divided neatly between the café and the kitchen. Maisie Henderson owned all of it, and lived in the four rooms above with her bidie-in, Doug Findlay. It was no secret that Maisie and Doug ‘lived in sin’, but they were popular enough for folks to turn a blind eye to the fact. Besides, they had been together for ten years now, and everyone assumed they would marry some day.

Rose had been glad of Maisie’s friendship when she first arrived in Drumdarg, and the pair had become even closer over the years. Rose had found an easy comfort in Maisie’s company that she had never shared with anyone else. Yet even Maisie paid scant regard to Rose’s complaints about the inordinate length of time Barra spent in the woods.

More than once, Barra had come upon some poor inebriated soul attempting to navigate the forest trail and had helped him back to the Whig, and the inevitability of yet another ‘one for the road’.

‘It’s the boy’s nature,’ Maisie would insist. ‘Y’might as well accept it.’ And, despite Rose’s most earnest entreaties, she could not encourage Barra to stay out of the forest. Chalmers, who had been known to stagger along the trail himself on occasion, could understand her anxiety even less than Maisie.

‘I’d have given my right arm to live wi’ the woods at my back when I was his age,’ he would assure her; often, and in a voice that brooked no argument.

As soon as Chalmers had felt sure his electrical business could support it he had bought the house at Drumdarg; this despite Rose’s concern over such a foreign idea as ‘paying a mortgage’. Once installed, however, Rose had decided to make the best of it and, realising that the front room and the spare bedroom were destined to remain empty most of the time, set about contributing to the family coffers by planting a ‘Bed and Breakfast’ sign at the end of the road. A large carefully printed notice in the shop window of the Whig soon followed, and it wasn’t long before the ‘bedders’ started arriving.