Dire Consequences

By Janet Scott

A Scottish tale set around the Falkirk area of Scotland in the period between the First and Second World Wars.
Mystery and romance is centred around the canals linking the historical city of Edinburgh with the industrial city of Glasgow.
An exciting insight into the local society at this time of great change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Janet Scott
• Release date: Apr 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310576195

Book preview

Dire Consequences

Published by Janet Scott at Smashwords

Copyright 2015 Janet Scott

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Acknowledgements.

I want to thank my late cousin Betty's son John Kelk who has not only complimented me on my story but has patiently introduced me to the wonder of computer technology, which has awakened me to the possibility of being able to introduce the lifelong tales trapped in my imagination, to an audience. Had I not been given John's practical help and his sister Elizabeth's unending encouragement I would never have started this task. I also have persevered on this exciting venture due to the chance remark of a friend Agatha Rae who asked me who had written a poem I had quoted to her. When I told her I had composed the poem she said, You should write a book. So I allowed her to read the three chapters of ‘Dire consequences’ I had scribbled at that time. She never ceased asking me from then on if I could please finish the story. Of course that was before I was introduced to the wonders of I.T. Thank you Agatha for having faith in me. It really did spur me on to going ahead and I hope you will enjoy the outcome.

Contents

Chapter 1: The View

Chapter 2: The Will

Chapter 3: The Phoenix

Chapter 4: Murder Most Horrible

Chapter 5: Hidden Secrets

Chapter 6: The Detention

Chapter 7: The New Factor

Chapter 8: The Plan

Chapter 9: The Ceillidh

Chapter 10: The Kiss

Epilogue

Chapter 1: The View.

Mary Ferguson had a panoramic view of the low lying area, ‘The Carse of Stirling’, from her bedroom window. At dawn on the morning of the 9th of May 1930 she looked out as the sun rose and the familiar scene became gradually visible. She stared out trying to get some comfort from this beloved view.

She followed the course of the river Forth as it, slowly made its way along the middle of the fertile valley. To the west she could glimpse the contour of Ben Lomond and the northern high peaks of the Grampian Mountains.

The Ochil hills formed the northern boundary of the valley, they were much gentler than the higher northern mountains, stretching from the outskirts of the town of Stirling in the west and disappearing into the Kingdom of Fife in the east.

It was a bright morning. Mary could see Wallace's Monument, a huge stone tower which looked like a pepper pot at the western end of the valley. It was built as a tribute in memory of William Wallace the Scottish freedom fighter. Its position was significant - chosen to overlook the site of his most successful battle at Stirling Bridge. It marked the start of the ‘Hill Foots’ (This being the local name for the area where the hills swept down to the valley.)

Mary would normally have been delighted to see such a clear morning view.

The seventeen years of her confined life had been brightened by reading the Waverley Novels, ‘Kidnapped’, and any other Scottish tales relating to her ‘View’.

She could imagine drovers leading their cattle from Highland strongholds south along the worn pathways of the Ochils to the Big Market at Stenhousemuir in the middle of the low lying plain.

The September Tryst Fair had become a local annual event. This farmer's market was a very popular event. It had grown into a ‘Fun Day’. Mary's strict father never allowed her to go to this event. Now his restrictions can be forgotten, she sadly thought.

During the wee small hours of that fateful May morning Mary had been awakened by the sound, which she had grown to dread, coming from her father’s room. The familiar moaning, grunty sound did not stop as it usually did after a few minutes. It grew and grew to an unbearable high pitched rattle. Then a cold gasp, which seemed to come from the very pit of her father’s being sent Mary racing towards his room. She knew he was dead before she even reached that silent place! Mary felt nothing but an overwhelming tiredness. She did not remember wrapping herself in a blanket and returning to her room.

There she sat on the winnock bunker shocked into inactivity. Her thoughts returned to the happy day when she had moved into that bright bedroom. She was just five years old then but she could remember the details of that special day.

Mammy had been so excited! Until then she had shared her mother’s bed. Daddy was due home the following week. It was December 1918 and there was a feeling of euphoria in all the homes whose men had been lucky enough to survive the war.

Mother felt doubly blessed because her younger twin brothers Tam and Andy had returned the previous month. They had returned to their mother Jean’s cottage in the mining village of Redding just a mile east from their sister’s home. Mary had been delighted by all the exciting comings and goings since their return.

Mammy and Granny had been constantly singing as they went about their daily tasks. As for Tam and Andy, they seemed to have all the time in the world to spend with Mary.

Every day they took her up to the ‘special’ woods where they taught her to climb trees fish with a stick and worm, find birds' nests, and whistle through reeds they found at the edge of the Burn. They used to carry her shoulder high on their return along the canal bank.

Everyone had helped to paint her new bedroom and Granny had presented her with a home-made patchwork quilt and curtains to match. She could not remember what her father looked like, but she could not wait for his return. Surely he would think she was beautiful. After all she looked very like her mother, the same long black hair, rosy cheeks and blue eyes. Her mother was slender and tall and she felt that she too would be like that one day, since her uncles told her that mammy was chubby when she was a girl.

Tam and Andy got jobs as miners at the Redding pit. So they were then too busy to spend as much time with Mary. She hoped that Daddy would be able to fill this gap in her life. It was with this hope in her heart that she stood holding her mother’s hand as a Band played a welcoming bagpipe tune and the train puffed into Larbert Station.

Mary would always associate the smell of train smoke with the first sight of her father. She could still feel the sooty taste, at the back of her throat when she thought of how her mother reacted on that momentous occasion. At first she jumped up and down excitedly calling Alan! Alan! as she searched frantically through the uniformed men pouring off the train.

Then when a thin hand reached out and touched her and a hoarse sound Annie, gasped from the direction of the gaunt figure she jumped back, knocking Mary down in the process. In the confusion that followed, all that Mary could remember were the tears trickling down the sad face of the strange officer who tried to pick her up from the crowded platform.

She had never seen a man cry before and the sight frightened her. She could not believe that this shadow of a man was her father! Her mother must have recovered her composure because she took over and Mary just obeyed her orders. Her next memory was of their arrival at Canal cottage in a horse drawn carriage. People she had never seen before were in their front room eating Granny’s delicious baking and drinking from bottles supplied by Tam and Andy. They all seemed determined to celebrate the return of her father. It was Mammy, with the help of Granny, who ordered everyone out of the house. Once all was calm the ‘hero’ was helped up to bed. Mary too was packed off to her new room. She could hear her mother talking to Granny in the kitchen and, to her dismay, weeping sounds were rising up between the anxious words.

The next day she saw a look in her mother’s eyes which she had never seen before, a look which she grew to hate. Nothing was ever explained to Mary. She was dying to ask why her father did not want to meet her in those first weeks after his return. He stayed in his room and apart from mother and Dr MacKay who called every few days nobody was allowed to see him.

The days passed and Mary started school. She enjoyed school from that very first day.

During the day her life was happy. It was night she dreaded.

It was then that she had to endure those awful ‘grunty’ sounds from her parent’s bedroom, accompanied by the pleas of Mammy as she tried to silence them.

It’s alright you’re at home now Alan, she pleaded.

When the struggling sounds subsided there was a silent few minutes before Mary would hear her mother going to the toilet.

Sometimes she held her breath during those quiet moments half expecting the noise to start again. It occasionally did but usually, except for her mother’s weary sighs, all was quiet.

Although these dramas continued to disturb Mary’s sleeping hours, during the day things improved.

Daddy spent the winter days of 1918 sitting on his big chair in front of the kitchen fire. Tam and Andy had carried that chair from Granny’s house. It had been a family favourite. Granny had crocheted a bright cover and stitched a new cushion in colours to match it.

She also made a matching footstool on which Mary used to sit every evening in her pyjamas all scrubbed and ready for bed listening to her mother reading exciting stories.

Gradually her father started to take an interest in these tales. He would look forward to the next episodes and would sometimes discuss them. Mary could actually remember the first time he laughed.

It had something to do with an incident in one of the stories.

Mammy had laughed too. Mary had