A Changing Land(106)
Claire watched a triangle of sun enter the partially opened bedroom curtains. The elongated strip of heat travelled silently until sometime later it struck the soft flesh of her bloodied thigh. She would take the Cobb & Co coach from Wangallon Town once her recuperation was complete. Claire flinched at the unwelcome heat pricking her skin and focused on the washstand with its ceramic water jug and matching bowl. It was a long journey to Sydney, over 650 miles. On their last trip south the eight-seat passenger coach took 35 hours to travel 135 miles. Claire began to heave herself up until she was standing. The jolting and boredom of the trip south was almost too ferocious to contemplate, especially when a single 135 mile leg included an overnight stop. She took a tentative step forward as new warmth, agitated by her movement, trickled down her leg. One could expect a minimum of five nights’ stopover en route as long as dry weather prevailed and the coach or horses didn’t suffer a break down. At the washstand Claire poured water into the ceramic bowl and sobbed quietly. She cried for her lost baby whose soul was winding its way heavenward, and for the man who was her husband. This time, however, Claire refused to cry for herself.
Catherine Jamieson was not a woman Maggie Macken conversed with. Indeed, on prior occasions when she could feign not having seen her approach, Maggie would fiddle with the contents of her handbag and cross the main street in the village of Tongue in order to avoid the older spinster. Today, however, no such escape seemed possible for as Maggie stepped from the curb, Mrs Jamieson followed. Maggie caught the woman’s reflection in the window of the grocery store and saw the determined swing of her arms when she doubled back to the telephone booth. Attempting to give an air of an errand just remembered, Maggie scrambled in her purse for coins as she ducked in the pillar-box red door of the booth and dialled her sister in St Andrews. Maggie could usually rely on a string of complaints to issue forth from Faith with the subject, her sister’s bank-teller husband, centring on ungratefulness. She listened as the telephone rang out and then stopped altogether. Damn. Unused coins fell into the change box. A sharp tap of knuckles sounded on the glass behind her. Maggie wondered how obvious it would be if she chose to ignore her stalker and try another of her ever unhelpful sisters. Instead she took a deep breath and opened the door.
‘Why, Maggie Macken. I do believe you went out of your way to avoid me,’ accused Mrs Jamieson with a wave of her finger. The woman had gone grey prematurely and Maggie patted her own brown hair as a lock of grey fell onto Mrs Jamieson’s brow. ‘Well?’
Maggie pursed her lips and surveyed her antagonist with one unblinking stare – from the beige of the woman’s sturdy walking shoes and paisley dress, to a face ruined by loneliness.
‘So you sent young Jim over for Sarah’s money, I hear?’
Maggie began walking along the pavement in the direction of her car. She’d parked it next to the tourist walk with a mind to visit the ruin on the hill once her errands were completed. The fortress remained Jim’s favourite spot and was the place where he’d first met Sarah Gordon. Wouldn’t she obliterate that day if given the chance, Maggie thought. She’d not been to the ruin herself for many a year. But now there was a need for her to return there, to revisit the very spot where two lives were altered; hers and Jim’s. History had repeated itself, for Jim’s life had been thrown into chaos through chance, and hers through poverty.
Behind her Mrs Jamieson puffed to keep pace. ‘The village is agog with the millions he could inherit,’ she called out. ‘I bet you’re very pleased with yourself. Having been jilted by Ronald Gordon you now manage to get your haggis and eat it as well.’
Maggie crossed over the narrow road, passed the white facade of the pub, and walked towards her car. Why the fates interceded to have Sarah Gordon bedded down for the duration of her stay at this woman’s B&B over two years ago was beyond her. ‘Whatever are you talking about, Catherine Jamieson?’ Maggie could feel her cheeks burning.
‘Revenge. You didn’t get the Australian you stole from me.’
Maggie opened the rear door of her car to place her bag of groceries on the cracked upholstery. ‘You lost him yourself,’ Maggie said with controlled slowness. ‘You with your airs, why I’m sure you chased him away.’
Mrs Jamieson grabbed Maggie by the arm. ‘Ronald Gordon never would have stayed. If you’d truly listened when he spoke of his homeland, you would know that. Besides, he was already married.’
Maggie winced under the older woman’s grip. She shook herself free. ‘He didn’t ask you to go back to his famous property either though, did he?’