The House of Lyall (52 page)

But she must stop this agonizing, she reprimanded herself, getting slowly to her feet again. She had things to do to show her gratitude for being enfolded in this woman's family … and Gladys had better do her share, too. Ruth's stomach lurched. She could foresee trouble – there was always trouble when Gladys was asked to do anything.

Bob Mennie took in hand to arrange the funeral – ‘It's a man's job,' he said – and his wife, Gladys, still unaware of her mother's dying revelation, left Ruth to do the catering while she went round the house earmarking all items she was laying claim to.

Ruth let her carry on. She couldn't very well have an argument while Ina's body was still in the house, and she had no claim on Ina's things. Strangely, it was Bob who told his wife on the morning of the funeral what he thought of her callousness.

‘This is still Ruthie's home,' he pointed out, ‘and you're not taking anything out of here without her say-so.'

Glaring fiercely at him, Gladys nevertheless stopped her ghoulish inspection.

Ruth had been in two minds about admitting that she had been a foster child, but she was so sickened by the way Gladys had behaved that she decided to wait until after the funeral. As soon as the last of the mourners had left the house, therefore, she made her announcement, her spirits lifting with the relief of getting if off her chest, and smiling at the expressions on the other two faces.

When it had sunk in, Gladys turned triumphantly to her husband. ‘She's not my mother's daughter, so she's not entitled to stay in this house.'

The bewildered man frowned. ‘You can't throw her and Colin out on the street!'

‘I'll give her time to find somewhere else, but everything here belongs to me.'

Bob glanced round disparagingly. ‘There's nothing worth much, in any case.'

‘We can sell what we don't want.' Gladys looked at Ruth defiantly. ‘I'll be back tomorrow, so don't you dare take anything, and if you want something for a keepsake, you'd better ask me first.'

Their departure left Ruth sitting forlornly alone. She didn't need anything to remind her of Ina, who would always remain a part of her, as the mother she had more than succeeded in being. ‘Oh, Mum,' she moaned, ‘why did you have to tell me?'

After a while, she began to wonder why Ina had been so desperate to let her know. Were there letters about her fostering amongst the receipts and other important papers kept in the old handbag in the sideboard? Had Ina, in a roundabout way, given her a chance to find her birth mother, who would surely be in better circumstances now and might be pleased to be reunited with the child she had given up all those years before?

The old handbag, with its cracked leather and torn lining, nevertheless yielded more information than Ruth had ever hoped for. All preserved together in one thick brown envelope were three letters from a home for unmarried mothers in Yorkshire, recording an application for, the acceptance of, and the actual fostering of Ruth Bruce, date of birth 20.4.19, by John and Georgina Brown. Unfortunately, there was no birth certificate, and Ruth's disappointment was so great that she abandoned all hope of ever learning who her real mother had been, and stuffed the envelope back in its original place among the other papers.

Thankfully, Bob Mennie – the brother-in-law she had never cared for much – had succeeded in persuading Gladys not to turn her out of the house. ‘Mind you,' he confided when he called to give Ruth the good news, ‘I don't think she'd really have done it, not when it came to the point.'

Ruth wasn't so sure. They had never been close, Gladys always jealous of her older sister, always quick to take her spite out on her. But she couldn't run down Bob's wife to his face. ‘No, I don't suppose she would.'

‘Have you found out anything yet?' he enquired. ‘About your mother … real mother, I mean?'

‘Not a thing. I did find out where I was born, though – in a home for unmarried mothers in Yorkshire.'

‘Well, that's something, isn't it?'

‘It's a start, but they're not allowed to give out any information in case the woman concerned doesn't want to be found.'

‘No? Well, don't give up hope. You'll maybe come across something else, if you keep looking. Now, are you not going to offer a starving man something to eat and drink?'

‘The kettle's on,' she smiled, feeling much better for his encouraging remarks, ‘and I was going to have a cheese sandwich if that'll do you?'

‘That sister of yours …' He halted, looking somewhat confused, then grinned. ‘She's not your real sister, of course …'

‘I'll always look on her as my sister,' Ruth said truthfully.

‘I could never get over the difference between you,' Bob observed now, ‘but I aye thought it was not having any kids that made Glad a bit sour, if you see what I mean. Anyway, I was going to say she doesn't feed me properly, not like a hard-working man should be fed.'

‘There's nothing coming over you that I can see,' Ruth laughed.

When her brother-in-law left, she washed up the dirty dishes and then took the old handbag out again. He was quite right – there could easily be something else in it, though she couldn't think what. She searched amongst the papers again, even emptying the brown envelope to see if she had missed something, but there were only the three letters she had already seen. Something urged her on, however, and she decided to clear out the whole bag; most of what was there wasn't worth keeping.

She spent a good hour opening folded sheets of paper, reading receipts, letters from Ina's old friends – possibly some who had long since lost contact with her but should be told of her passing, just the same – and ended up with three separate piles in front of her on the table: receipts for things like gas and electricity, coal, odds and ends of no importance, which could all be destroyed; receipts for larger items which were still in the house and which had better be kept; and a small bundle of letters from the women Ina kept in touch with.

Never one to procrastinate, Ruth got out the writing pad and wrote short, but friendly notes to Ina's friends. Maybe some of them had died, too, but at least those who were still alive would be glad she had let them know. The envelopes addressed and stamped, she felt like having another cup of tea and consigned the old everyday receipts to the fire while she waited for the kettle to boil.

Before she returned the other items to the handbag, she thought that it would be better for a good clean out, and pulled the lining away from the bottom to give it a shake, and as the dust and fragments of yellowed paper floated out, the lining tore a bit further and displayed the corner of another brown envelope which must have slipped down right out of sight … or perhaps it had been hidden there, she thought, in excitement.

Extracting this envelope, she found that Ina had written ‘Andrew Rennie' on it. Who was Andrew Rennie? There was only one way to find out, so she carefully pulled out the wad of papers which she had thought to be a padded base to the bag and smoothed them out. Her mother, Ina, had said she was paid an allowance, and here was proof of it. Andrew Rennie had been the solictor who had seen to the payments which had carried on until Ruth left school and started work. Fourteen years! A young girl, as she'd believed her real mother had been, would not have had been able to do that, so it must have been her father, who had obviously been a man of some means and most likely married. Well, she didn't want to know about him. She wasn't out for any financial gain. She just wanted to discover who her mother was.

Ruth went over and over the official notifications of ten pounds paid into the North of Scotland Bank every month. It was two pounds ten shillings a week, she realized, more than a working man could have earned at that time. But she had now come across the one person who would be able to give her the information she sought. Andrew Rennie would have known her mother, and he was under no obligation to keep her name and address secret, not like the home for unmarried mothers – unless he was a great friend of one or other of her parents. Should she go and see him? He could only turn her away. She'd be doing nothing legally wrong, so he couldn't report her to the police. Oh God, she'd have to go! She would always regret it if she didn't. Whatever happened, it was worth a try.

She rose early the following day, but knowing that solicitors' offices wouldn't be open at eight o'clock in the morning, she thought she would take a walk to clear her head. She hadn't slept well, with the turmoil her brain had been in. It was a lovely day, and she enjoyed ambling along the pavements, planning what to say. She would prefer to see Andrew Rennie himself – he must be a very old man by this time – but his files would have been kept and his successor in the practice would be able to lay his hands on the information she so desperately needed. There might be the matter of confidentiality to consider, but surely not after so many years.

She thought it might be best not to go there before half-past nine, and because it was hardly nine when she came on to Union Street, she passed time by window-shopping at Esslemont and Macintosh's store, then crossed the street when the clock on the Town House struck the quarter-past to have a look in Falconer's … she seldom shopped there, either; their prices were too high for her meagre income. At half-past, she headed for Bon Accord Square, her stomach churning, her heart beating twenty to the dozen as she climbed the steps to the office of Rennie and Dalgarno.

‘Can I see Mr Rennie?' she asked the young receptionist.

The girl gaped. ‘There's no Mr Rennie nowadays; there hasn't been for years and years. Would somebody else not do?'

‘It must be Mr Rennie,' Ruth persisted. ‘He's not dead, is he?'

‘I don't know. I'm not long started here, but I'll ask.' The girl picked up the telephone receiver and turned a handle on the small box switchboard at the side of the counter. In just a second, she said, ‘Miss Leslie, there's a lady here asking to see Mr Rennie … no, she says it must be him, nobody else.'

Replacing the handset, she looked at Ruth rather accusingly. ‘Miss Leslie'll be through in a minute.'

A bespectacled, middle-aged, rake-thin woman in black came out of a door at Ruth's left. ‘I believe you are asking to see Mr Rennie, Mrs …?

‘Laverton, and it's important.'

‘Mr Rennie retired some time ago, Mrs Laverton, but I can give you an appointment with Mr Dalgarno. He is the senior partner now, and he would probably be able to help you.'

Thinking this highly improbable in view of the secrecy surrounding her birth, Ruth stuck to her guns. ‘It's personal, something only Mr Rennie would know.'

Recognizing that this was a woman who would not be fobbed off, Miss Leslie tutted in vexation. ‘In that case, Mrs Laverton, if you leave your address and telephone number, I will contact Mr Rennie at home and let you know if he agrees to see you.'

Ruth gave her address and, although she felt at a disadvantage when she admitted that she had no telephone, she added loftily, ‘Perhaps you'd be good enough to write and tell me.'

While she walked home, unable to face sitting on a tramcar with other people, Ruth recalled Gladys's reaction two days ago to being told that her ‘sister' wanted to find her real mother. ‘All I can say is I think you're potty! A woman who gave up her baby all that time ago won't want to be reminded of it now. She's likely married with other children and doesn't want her man to know about you.'

‘I'm only trying to find out who she is,' Ruth had protested, ‘and even if I do, I'll maybe never pluck up courage to go and tell her who I am.'

‘What's the point of finding out, then?' Gladys had sneered. ‘Are you hoping she married into money so you can claim a share of it when she pops off?'

That, Ruth mused, had stuck in her craw. Money had nothing to do with it. Suppose her mother had married the richest man in Scotland – in Britain – she wasn't looking for any hand-outs. All she wanted was to see the woman who had borne her and keep a picture of her in her mind's eye, not to make herself known. She didn't blame her mother for abandoning a young infant – the poor thing had probably been forced into it by a pitiless mother whose only thought was to avoid scandal.

The following morning, Ruth received a letter.

Dear Mrs Laverton,

Mr Rennie sends his compliments and begs your forbearance for a few days, because he is not at liberty to divulge anything without first consulting the other parties concerned. He will, however, contact you as soon as possible to arrange a meeting.

Yours sincerely,

Margaret Leslie

Ruth returned the headed notepaper to the envelope with trembling fingers. The old solicitor must have got a shock when he learned that she was looking for her mother. Ruth's stomach gave a sudden lurch. But how could he have known who she was? She had given only her married name to Miss Leslie, no Christian name, so how could he have connected her with Ruth Bruce, which had been her name at the time she was born? He couldn't even have known of her as Ruth Brown, let alone Mrs Laverton.

There was something most peculiar about this … unless Mr Rennie was senile. If Miss Leslie had spoken to him on the telephone and was quoting his exact words, they could have been phrases he'd recalled using years ago, meaningless now, in which case there would be little point in keeping any meeting he arranged. Yet there was something still niggling at her about the wording of the letter. ‘…
not at liberty to divulge anything without first consulting the other parties concerned
.' It fitted too well to be accidental. The other parties would be her mother and … her father – whose permission would be essential before he could give out any information.

After turning it over and over in her mind, Ruth concluded that Mr Rennie must still have all his faculties. He had let her know in a roundabout way that he was aware of who she was – though heaven knew how he knew – and had given her a modicum of hope that he would tell her everything in a few days.