Keepsakes from the Cottage by the Loch (Loch Cameron #6)

Chapter 13

THIRTEEN

Later in the day, there was a knock on the door of the classroom that Tara was working in. Emily had offered to finish up the preparation on her own, but Tara wanted to stay. She’d messaged her mum and dad so they didn’t think she’d just disappeared; as long as she was back for dinner prep, she thought it was okay to have an afternoon off.

She felt awkward, being in the same space as Ramsay, but she also couldn’t stop watching him through the classroom window. All these years, she’d thought she would never see him again, and here he was. There was a kind of solace for her soul in watching him walk around, talking to the builders. He seemed so sure of himself as an adult. His body, his posture and the way he held his head: she couldn’t stop looking at him. She had thirsted, hungered for him, and here he was, finally.

Was it sort of stalker-y to feel like this? Maybe. But it was just so intense seeing him again that she couldn’t quite bring herself to walk away.

She also wanted to stay near the memory of Ramsay; the Ramsay that she had loved, and who had loved her. The Ramsay who had existed before the day that he had betrayed her. The Ramsay who had existed in a time when both she and he were innocent children, hopeful for their future. She hated that feeling of being untethered to ‘normal’ that she’d had since being in Loch Cameron, and connecting to their past had helped to push it aside, albeit temporarily.

But, she reminded herself that she also needed to remember her own carefree self: the young Tara that had felt in a state of flow when she danced. In those moments, she could have done anything and been anyone; she had felt free, wild, and totally herself. If she felt a pang of nostalgia – or, more than a pang, it was an ache of deep loss – connected to Ramsay, then she had to realise that it was also her own, younger, freer self that she was also mourning.

After about half an hour of being back inside, Tara saw Ramsay walk to the car park, get into an SUV and drive off. As he got into the car, he sat in the driver’s seat for a moment, staring at the school building. Tara wondered whether he was looking for her. What he was thinking.

When he drove away, she felt an illogical pang of loss.

There was a tap at the door.

‘Come in.’ Tara looked up to see one of the builders who had been working outside. ‘Oh, hi. Can I help?’

‘Sorry tae disturb ye,’ the man apologised: he was stocky, her dad’s age, and Tara thought for a moment that he was too old to be doing such a physical job, out in the elements all day. However, she was hardly in a position to be giving life advice to anyone, and if this man was anything like her dad, he’d nod politely and even give her a kind smile, and then do exactly what he’d intended to do in the first place. ‘We just thought we should let ye have this one, since you wanted the other one.’

‘The other what? The time capsule?’ She watched as the man set down a different container on the wooden desk at the front of the room. It was also made of metal, but where the other was a large coffee container with a tightly fitting round lid, this was some kind of metal toolbox, with rusty hinges. She got up and went over to look at it.

‘Aye. This was buried a bit further out, and lower down. But, maybe it’s the same kindae thing, eh?’ The man tapped its metal carapace. ‘Looks like it’s been down there a lot longer. I remember this kindae toolbox from when I was a bairn – my faither had one not too different. They made these tae last.’ He paused, took out a rag from his pocket and rubbed at a spot on the box. ‘Hmm. See, ye can see the maker’s name and the date there. 1938.’ He nodded. ‘That’s definitely been down there a wee while, eh?’

‘Wow. I guess so.’ Tara peered at the date on the raised ironwork of the box. ‘Thanks. I’m not sure if I can get it open, though.’

‘Hmm. Okay, let me try.’ The man reached into his pocket and brought out a large screwdriver. He stuck it into the metal fastenings of the box and jimmied them for a minute or two before they popped open. ‘Aha. There y’are,’ he said, with satisfaction. ‘Must admit we were curious as to what’s in it.’ He looked on as Tara raised the lid.

‘Well, in the other one, there were a lot of letters from former pupils at the school,’ Tara explained. ‘I wonder whether there was some kind of tradition at the school for making time capsules. Perhaps the later one was inspired by the earlier one.’ She shrugged and opened the lid, which squeaked.

‘No mice inside, then,’ the builder joked as Emily popped her head around the door.

‘Hey. What’s going on here? Having a party without me?’

‘Come in! The builders – sorry, I don’t know your name?’ Tara said, apologetically, looking at the man.

‘Jack.’ The man nodded politely to them both.

‘Jack found this buried outside,’ Tara added. ‘We were just about to look at it. ’

‘Ooooh! What a day!’ Emily strode into the classroom and bounced on her toes as she stood next to Tara. ‘Let’s see, then!’

‘All right… here we go!’ Tara said, opening the metal lid fully.

Inside, there were more letters, and what looked like children’s toys. ‘Look at these!’ Tara breathed, handing Emily a metal toy horse, which still had its paint fairly intact.

‘Awww. This is lovely!’ Emily took it and showed it to Jack, who touched its head gently.

‘That’s bonny,’ he said. ‘Tae think it’s been down there all these years.’

‘What do the letters say?’ Emily asked Tara. Tara handed her a couple and opened one. Again, they were letters from the children, but, this time, the wishes were a little different.

‘I wish for dad to get home safe,’ Tara read aloud. She opened another. ‘I wish for dad to come home soon. I wish for Uncle Benny to stay safe on the front line. I wish for Mum not to have to work so hard. I wish for all the children in London to be safe. Dear me.’

‘World War Two, then.’ Emily read hers out loud. ‘I wish for peace. I wish for an end to the bombing. I wish that the people of Poland would be safe. These are all dated 1941.’

‘Sad that likely none of those wishes came true, aye,’ Jack sighed. ‘This is heartbreakin’.’

‘It is, isn’t it?’ Tara reached into the box and pulled out some more toy animals and set them gently on the top of the desk. ‘Ah, goodness. Look at this.’

She drew out a painting which was labelled Vision of Hope for the Future in a careful, adult hand. Tara read the text on the back of the painting aloud.

‘This is the winner of our school competition for a painting that best portrays our hopes for the future. The winner was Molly Taggart, aged 9. ’

‘Bless her,’ Emily said, as they all stared at the painting. ‘I wonder what she’d think of life now.’

Molly had painted a picture of a lush green field, thick with wildflowers and surrounded by trees. In the foreground, a group of boys and girls danced in a circle, holding hands, with the flags for their countries emblazoned on their vests. Everyone smiled, the sun shone yellow in a blue sky, and Molly had painted a swirly title for the painting which just said HARMONY.

‘It’s not all that different to something a child now would paint,’ Tara observed. ‘They’re all utopian at that age. Real life hasn’t got to them yet. They still believe in peace and love.’

‘Ouch. I still believe in peace and love, sometimes,’ Emily chuckled. ‘But I know what you mean. However, you can understand how appealing but also evasive peace and harmony must have felt to those children.’

‘Aye. So sad,’ Jack repeated. ‘Ye should frame that. Put it up for the wee bairns tae see.’

‘That’s a lovely idea. We will.’ Emily nodded. ‘Oh. What’s this? There’s a longer letter here too. It looks like this is written by an adult. This is turning out to be the most interesting day!’ She took it out and frowned as her mobile phone started ringing. ‘Oh, I need to get this. Tara, you take it.’ She handed the letter, written in a beautiful copperplate hand on thick, cream writing paper, to Tara and walked off to the back of the classroom to take the call.

‘Well, I best be off.’ Jack waved through the window and nodded politely to Tara. ‘We’d love tae know if ye find anythin’ else interestin’. What do people say, now? “We’re invested”.’ He gave her a warm smile.

‘Thanks, Jack. Really appreciate your help with this.’ Tara opened the letter and started to read it. ‘Of course. We’ll keep you updated.’

‘All right then.’ He left, and Tara looked back at the beautifully written words on the page.

At the top, there was a name and a date. Agnes Smith, 1941 , and then the school’s address.

Agnes Smith. Dotty had told her about Aunt Agnes many times, who was a schoolteacher in Loch Cameron. Dotty had always compared them, saying that she and Aunt Agnes were so similar. So bookish , Dotty would say, with apparent dismay that she could have given birth to a child that loved books so much.

Was this the same Agnes? She read on:

To whoever may open this capsule,

We, as the current staff and pupils of Loch Cameron Primary School, are burying this time capsule in 1941 as the Second World War rages on around us and in Europe. We are fortunate to live in a small, rural Scottish community, and, as such, have been relatively untouched by the bombing, though we have lost many of our young men to the war effort.

In a bid for hope for the future, I decided that the children would benefit from doing some kind of material activity to focus their hopes and dreams, and help them feel positive about the future, as the war drags on. As time goes by, our expectations that this would be a few months’ skirmish, easily ended by the superior mettle of the Allied troops, have well and truly been dashed. Now, two years in, many of us adults neither hope for nor believe in peace.

Yet, the children do, and I’m glad of that. When this capsule is opened, we hope that there is peace throughout the world, and an end to the terrible fighting. This war must be the final war. Humanity cannot face horror like this again.

Since this box will be locked away under the earth for many years, I also feel compelled to use the opportunity to write down some of the things that are torturing me, in the hope that, writing this, I may exorcise some of the ghosts that haunt me .

Hopefully, I will be dead by the time any human eyes read these words.

As a child, I lost both parents to pneumonia, within a month of each other. In the two months between January and March 1919, I went from a happy child with both parents alive – Father was in a protected occupation and never enlisted in the war – to an orphan. I write this to partially explain the reasons why, perhaps, I am the kind of injured person who seeks comfort wherever it is offered.

Teaching has always given me a sense of family. I have loved each child I have taught – even the naughty ones – like my own children.

I desperately wanted a family of my own. This is perhaps understandable when one considers the fact that my own family were taken away from me so dramatically. My care was given up to my spinster aunt, Poppy, who packed me off to boarding school as a solution. It was as a result of this that I became so dedicated to books, for they provided me with solace and comfort, and a way to escape my new life of loneliness.

Hence, perhaps it was a foregone conclusion that I would become involved with the first man that paid me any attention. Unfortunately, I fell in love – or, what I thought was love – with the headmaster of this school, Mr Paul McLeish.

I will not sully the pages of this fine notepaper with what passed between us, but, as a very na?ve young woman, I thought that the soft words and sweet entreaties meant something.

I was wrong.

Mr McLeish – Paul, though I have very seldom addressed him as such – will not leave his wife for me. He says that our time together was a mere dalliance, and that I should expect the attentions of married men, as a spinster, working in his school. He considered congress with me his right. That he has some kind of paternal oversight of me. That I, in a way, belong to him, as a single woman in his care, at the school.

There was a time when I greatly desired Mr McLeish’s attentions. I do not desire them any longer. I have made it clear that if it happens again, then I will leave the school.

I do not want to leave the children. I do not want to leave Loch Cameron, because it is my home. This is all that I know. So, I will endure seeing Mr McLeish every day and knowing what happened between us, because of the children. And because I will be damned if I let him win this battle of wills.

I will stay at the school. I will outlast him. And I will never, ever, make myself vulnerable to a man again.

Agnes Smith

Tara put the letter down and looked out of the window. It had to be the same Agnes: her own great-aunt, who might once have stood in the same spot as she stood now. Who had taught so many children here, and loved them all. Agnes Smith, who had endured the indignity of Mr McLeish, and, Tara was fairly sure, had taught at Loch Cameron Primary until she retired.

Tara was immediately sad and angry on Agnes’ behalf. Angry that her great-aunt had had to endure sexual harassment, and had no way to counter it, except to write this letter for her own catharsis. What must it have been like, to walk into work every day and have to see the man who had taken advantage of you in that way? Who had used you for sex and then cast you aside, not even thinking that he had done anything wrong? Worse, he thought that Agnes was his property in some way. That he was entitled to her body, because he was her boss.

What a world it was then, Tara thought. People think things are bad nowadays, but at least we have laws protecting us from this kind of thing. At least most people now agree that manipulating your employees for sex isn’t acceptable .

Suddenly, she remembered seeing some old black and white photos in the long hallway that linked the classrooms. Was McLeish there? Was Agnes?

On a whim, Tara went to look at them.

The school had organised a display of photos of the current members of staff in the hallway: Tara’s school had a similar display in the school reception. But, underneath the modern pictures of Emily and her fellow teachers, there was a row of older, black and white photos, leading to some that were sepia tinted. Tara followed them along, noting the way they had been painstakingly labelled with class years and names of teachers. Mrs Strong, Mr Irvine, Miss Hay.

The oldest photo was of a Miss Peabody, who taught at the school from 1794 to 1833. Tara’s eyebrows raised at that: she hadn’t known that the school was that old, and she read the caption to the picture, which was longer than the rest.

Muriel Peabody, schoolteacher at Loch Cameron Primary School from 1794 to 1833, when it was a “Dame School” – run by a local woman, who the locals paid a small fee to educate their children. Muriel eventually retired from ill health. She never married or had children of her own, but taught generations of local children in this village. She was greatly loved, and recently immortalised by Loch Cameron Distillery in their Old Maids range of whiskies, named after important women in the village’s history.

Wow , Tara thought. The picture must have been a new addition to the school wall, or perhaps it had always been there, but she had no memory of knowing about Muriel Peabody from when she’d been a pupil at the school. It was good to know that Muriel had achieved some posthumous fame for her dedication to Loch Cameron: Tara thought that she should remember to ask her mother about the whisky.

Her gaze moved along the line of photos. Finally, there he was. Mr McLeish, Headmaster, 1938–1943 , the caption read.

She stared at Paul McLeish’s face intently for a few moments. The trimmed beard, the small, mean eyes. She shivered involuntarily. He’d only stayed as Headmaster for another two years after Agnes had written the letter she still held in her hands.

And, then, there she was. Tara’s eyes alighted on a sepia tone picture of a stern-faced woman with her hair in a bun, wearing a sensible skirt and blouse, with a brooch at the neck, just like Dotty still often wore. Miss Smith, Headmistress, 1943–1980 , with Class 4 , the caption read.

1943–1980. A lifetime. Or, at least, a long time , Tara thought. She had got her wish: Agnes had outlasted Mr McLeish.

She stared at Agnes’ face. There was a definite resemblance to Dotty: the same eyes, though her mother’s face had more laughter lines. The same chin.

I’m so glad you stayed , Tara thought, touching her great-aunt’s face in the picture frame. I’m so glad you endured. But, at what cost?

It seemed that there was a history of spinsters that had taught at Loch Cameron Primary for most of their lives: Muriel Peabody, Agnes Smith. Both had been loved; both had loved the children in their care. Both had worked, all their lives. Both were dedicated to Loch Cameron, despite the difficulties they might have found living here as single women.

Yet, it seemed that Aunt Agnes had had to sacrifice herself as a woman – as a person worthy of love – to keep her job as headmistress. She had said at the end of her letter that she was determined to win against Mr McLeish, but she had also said I will never, ever, make myself vulnerable to a man again.

Tara wondered if Aunt Agnes had ever found love. Dotty had always referred to Agnes as a spinster, so Tara was fairly sure that her aunt had never married. Like the Old Maids popularised by Loch Cameron Distillery in their range of whiskies, the village clearly had its share of single women who had, for whatever reason, stayed unmarried. But did that mean that Agnes was unhappy? Or that she hadn’t still had relationships? Tara didn’t know, but she desperately wanted to find out now.

She was proud of Agnes: proud to be related to a woman like her, who had resisted powerlessness. Despite the setbacks in her life, Agnes had pursued what she loved, and that was inspiring.

Would Agnes have let heartbreak stop her living her life? No. She hadn’t. Not according to that letter, anyway.

The impact of seeing Ramsay again was hard. Finding his letter in the time capsule – and watching him read it – was heartbreaking.

But, she had to get over Ramsay Fraser. And maybe, as the phrase went, the only way out was through. Agnes had waited out Mr McLeish. She hadn’t run away. She had faced her demons, and stayed.

Then, I can do the same , Tara thought. I can at least not crumble next time I see him. And, at the end of the summer, I can go back to my life and leave him here. The thought of leaving Ramsay made her heart tug with grief, but, she rationalised, she didn’t have Ramsay now any more than she had a month ago, when she hadn’t seen him for ten years. She could return to her real life and leave behind this feeling of being lost. She needed to find herself again, reclaim the person she once was.

She took out her phone and snapped a picture of the photo to show Dotty later. Dotty would like to see it; she’d always compared Tara to Agnes. They were bookish, she’d always said. But, perhaps, Tara thought, there was another similarity between her and her great-aunt. If she had even a little of Agnes’ steely determination and resilience, then she would be proud.

And, I think I do , she said to herself, looking into Agnes’ eyes. I’m proud of you, Great-Aunt Agnes , she thought. I’ll do my best to make you proud of me.