The Incomers Read online

  ‘I think you did not protest too much about my brother’s palm wine at the time,’ she says, ready to remind him of the time he disgraced himself and had to be put to bed in her family’s compound. But a look at his beaming face jams her tongue behind her teeth. He seems so innocent that she wonders how many children she looks after in this house. As he reddens with his bubbling enthusiasm, he dips his head and the golden mop of hair falls to hide his face. Ellie feels a pang that she might not live up to his expectations of her. When she smiles and pats his hand she sees him visibly relax.

  ‘Sure, I will make your wine. I will make you the best champagne in this Kingdom and we will sit in the garden and sip, and eat wild strawberries and we will watch the villagers struggle to the pub, past these stinky fish and chip shops you have told me about.’ She rubs her thumb over the torn cover.

  ‘You might regret giving me this book.’

  James pushes in his chair. ‘I have to go,’ he kisses her on the forehead.

  Before he leaves the room he pauses by the open door of the small bedroom and peers in at Nat, snoozing his afternoon away. Ellie smiles as she watches this young man she calls her husband back out of the room and ease the door closed without a sound.

  Ellie circuits the house with a duster, trying to keep busy, but every other minute she returns to the table and stares at the book. She puts the kettle on the boiling ring and rattles the caddy to see how long the tea will last before she is forced to go to the village shop. She opens the lid and sniffs the powdered rubbish that is not real tea to her. She misses her tea: she misses the bitter bite on her tongue and the burnt aftertaste left when the cup has drained back to the cracked clay. This dust she has here has the flavour of mud.

  She flicks the pages of the book, just to look at the pictures while she waits for the kettle to whistle, then sits to read a new page. When the growing season arrives she can make her own tea. There are many possibilities out there in the garden and the surrounding forest she has yet to explore. The afternoon gloom creeps across the floor to where she sits, forcing her to turn on the tall twisted wooden lamp that waits in the corner like a palm, giving instant light, illuminating what is now her life.

  In Ellie’s home village — in a remote district a few miles from the great river — light comes from daylight or oil lamps. The first day her father took her to the mission school in the big town was the first time Ellie saw electric lights. She remembers her tears and being mystified by many things in the town, but that small white switch which held the power to light up a whole room for intermittent periods of time was the most mystifying of all.

  The Pairty Line

  ‘Ye’ll never guess, eh? Effie MacCulloch hus seen the coon.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Doon at the burn collecting water.’

  ‘Git away wi ye. Whit wid she be daein’ that fur? Huv they no got running water up at the estate?’

  ‘Aye, but they say she cannae drink oor water, it makes her sick so she hus tae collect it fae the burn.’

  ‘Niver? Whit dis she look like?’

  ‘Mawkit, she walks aboot in bare feet and her hair is hingin’ wi’ grease.’

  ‘Lazy bitch.’

  ‘That’s no aw. She cannae clean her hoose eyther, that’s fur sure.’

  ‘How dae ye mean like?’

  ‘They say it’s a pig sty. Auld Mrs McGeever hud that hoose afore and it wis spotless. Noo apparently there’s rats running aboot and gress growing oot the chimney pot.’

  ‘Dirty bitch.’

  ‘Aye well, if ah git rats in ma hoose ah’ll be goan up there tae tell her.’

  ‘Good fur you.’

  Chapter Three

  ‘You can’t go out looking like that.’

  James stands in the doorway wearing the smile of a cub. Ellie reviews her best skirt and bodice, still warm from the iron and with her restless fingers twists the scarf she had intended to wrap round her hair; she snaps it tight in front of her eyes.

  ‘And what is wrong with this, Mr Factor-man?’ She flicks the tie across the room towards James as if to lash him but knows she will miss well short of the mark.

  ‘You’re going to Hollyburn Post Office, not a garden party at your President’s Palace.’

  Ellie turns from him; she does not wish to talk about the President’s Palace; she does not want to be reminded of home.

  James disappears out of the room and returns with a pair of his loose khaki trousers.

  ‘Put these on. They might be a bit tight around that magnificent rump of yours but they’ll do until you get some decent skirts and dresses.’

  Ellie fails to prevent the gasp that pops her lips open. She remembers packing all her fine clothes. Her mother, the finest seamstress in the village had taught her daughter well. Even at the age of fifty that wily old mama could still transform the cloth delivered for the designs of rich clients. The clients never guessed how mama somehow always over-estimated the amount of cloth needed. The result was that Ellie could combine or dye the off-cuts and create modern clothes of many textures, patterns and colours. As Ellie examines the trousers for size she mutters to herself that no man is going to change her style.

  James looks at his watch. ‘You better not leave the trip to the shops any later, you don’t want to scare the children spilling out of school at dinner time, do you?’

  Ellie lifts her bowed head and stares at her husband. ‘Why are you so mean to me today? These children will need to encounter this black woman sometime.’ She snuffs the tear that is trapped in her closed throat. ‘Or do you intend to keep me locked up in this witch’s hat forever?’

  ‘I’m only joking.’

  James pouts a hurt face but she does not care. Ever since they came to this house his list of rules has increased.

  ‘Come on,’ he says, ‘I’ll get Nat and give you a lift up in the Landrover.’

  Ellie holds up her hand. ‘No, you look after Nat; I want to do this alone.’ She sees a look of relief shadow his brows, then he says,

  ‘But you’ll be ages, I have work to do.’

  ‘I will take your bicycle.’

  ‘What?’ His laugh stings her. ‘You can’t even ride it.’

  Ellie masks what she thinks is the look of a stern king cobra. She will need to lay down some rules of her own soon, she thinks.

  ‘There is no need to laugh at me, Mr James Mason, I have been practicing on the road round the house while the baby takes his nap, I will be fine,’ she says as she traps her mass of tight curls in her scarf. Then she dumps the khaki trousers on the table, pulls on her short wool coat and gathers her skirt into one hand. As she hooks a string shopping bag over her head and shoulder she says,

  ‘If I am to be accepted in this place, they can get used to my fine clothes as well as my black face.’

  Her release is complete as she pushes off with the bicycle and feels the cool air chaffing her chubby knees where her skirt hitches over her thighs.

  Bicycling round the house had been easy and flat, but as soon as Ellie peddles through the estate’s main gates she feels her breath shorten. The road to the village is uphill and soon her legs tire. Perspiration soaks her armpits and trickles down her back to the cleft at her buttocks. At one point she wobbles so much she is forced to stop, just where a red and white sign shouts 30 to her. She begins to push the bicycle.

  A house sits on the bank above the road. Ellie sees a little girl of about ten years old appear round its side, struggling with a washing basket full of clothes. The girl stops dead and gapes. Ellie raises her hand and shouts, ‘Hello!’

  The girl’s eyes and mouth open wider, as if she had not expected words from Ellie’s mouth. Then she clamps her mouth closed, smiles and lifts her hand, dropping the basket.

  Ellie is about to move off when a tall skinny woman appears out the door and glares at her, then hustles the girl inside, banging the door hard, so hard Ellie can feel it slam in her face. The discarded heap of washing, with the yellow b
asket on top, looks like a mud turtle crawling back to his river bed.

  One smile will do for today, Ellie thinks. As Sister Bernadette would say, ‘You should always eat an elephant with a teaspoon.’

  As the road evens off she hitches up her skirt again, remounts and pedals hard to stop another wobble. Houses, two storeys tall, line each side of the road. Ellie sees a couple of women walking towards her; both are pulled bent by shopping bags. They chatter noisily to each other despite having cigarettes glued to their lips.

  Ellie has never seen women smoking outside before; she wants to stop and look but knows she should not. The women stop talking, stop walking. One dumps her bags on the ground and switches them round to different hands, never taking her eyes from Ellie. It is as if she is trying to stare her out. Ellie lowers her gaze and cycles on, pedalling faster until she at last spots the newspaper billboard James told her to look out for.

  The shop door opens into an airy interior with a wide counter at the back, leaving a long open expanse for Ellie to cross. On the right hand side of the shop is a cubicle made from panels of wood and glass, with a high counter to one side of it, below a notice board. The shop smells old and rotting and the dry air almost makes Ellie gag. Standing at the shop counter is a customer, a woman wearing plastic on her head. As Ellie approaches she can detect a smell like oily fish from the woman, or maybe it is something more intimate.

  This store is not like the markets Ellie is used to where every conceivable type of merchandise is crammed, higgledy piggledy, along each side of the road and in every inch of space in makeshift sheds. In good years the vast varieties of vegetables and fruit of different colours and sizes clamber for room on the tables and bins set outside the stores. Here, the fruit and vegetables are stacked in a dark corner on wire shelves, and the choice offered is potatoes, carrots, onion and turnip, or swede, as they call it here.

  One skinny leek hangs limp and pathetic over the side like a sea-sick sailor. No cooking herbs, no plantain, no decent fruit. Only apples and oranges and bananas and huge green apples which Ellie discovers, reading a hand-written cardboard sign, are called ‘cookers’. Some of the oranges look misshapen and rough. Ellie picks one up and examines it. A woman in a green apron works a silver machine that slashes through a lump of meat like a machete to grass. She carves off slivers onto a piece of wax paper. Her voice cuts into Ellie’s thoughts, never faltering the slicing stride, her muscles bulging against rolled-back shirt sleeves.

  ‘You don’t want to buy those oranges, hen, unless you know how to make marmalade, that is.’

  The fishy woman turns and looks at Ellie with suspicious eyes. The plastic on her head is one of those silly rain-mate things advertised in The Sunday Post. Ellie thinks it is ridiculous these are sold in a country where the rain drives straight at your face in horizontal sheets; a rain so cold and severe that a little piece of plastic is useless. Today it is not even threatening rain; the rain-mate must have another function Ellie is ignorant of.

  The slicing woman shouts to an open door lined on one side with cardboard boxes.

  ‘Can you come back here and serve this …’ Her face flushes and she looks back to her task.

  A tubby man who looks about the age of forty, but Ellie thinks would probably look younger if he lost some fat, pushes past the boxes. He is losing his hair but seems to be growing it long on one side to comb over his crown. He strokes it now as he looks around the room before his gaze settles on Ellie for a second, then moves away again. She waits; he almost looks at her as he shouts in a slow voice as if she is stupid,

  ‘What – can - ah – get – you - hen?’

  In her careful mission school accent, Ellie reads out her list to her audience of three and steps over to the meat counter while the man begins to place each item on the counter.

  ‘What is this?’ she says, pointing to a pinkish-grey dappled square that looks like dog shit.

  ‘That’s haslet. It’s lovely,’ the fish woman says.

  The lady in the green apron hands a loose sliver to Ellie. ‘Here, try it, hen.’

  She tastes a dry salted concoction that makes her nose wrinkle and her tongue stick to her mouth; it tastes like shit.

  Green-apron laughs, ‘No, ah’m no keen on it either.’

  The fish woman, clutching her purse to her breast, moves over to Ellie and looks her in the eye.

  ‘Dae ye normally eat lions and stuff then, ye ken,’ she says nodding towards the door, ‘ye ken, where you come fae?’

  Ellie looks at the woman and says in a slow clear voice, ‘Only when there are no humans to eat,’ and is relieved when she hears a snigger come from the sliced meat counter.

  A bell tinkles as the shop door opens and a small woman with short cropped grey hair enters. She is wearing trousers, which Ellie thinks is unusual for women in this country. Maybe she too much wears the trousers of her husband.

  ‘There – is – a – PARCEL – for – you – Mrs Winski,’ Funny-hair man says, drawing a box in the air. He addresses the woman in the same shouting voice he uses toward Ellie and she thinks if this is his natural voice, it must drive Green-apron crazy.

  Mrs Winski smiles and nods but says nothing. She moves to the vegetable rack and begins to prod potatoes and carrots with the same disgust Ellie has for them, then she begins to rifle through a rack of seed packets that Ellie had failed to notice. Ellie does not know how to cultivate here but she knows where to find out. Her teacher, Sister Bernadette, told Ellie’s class stories from her home in Scotland; told them each town and village has a building filled with books. A building you can walk into and find a book and take it home to read for a whole month.

  ‘Is there a library in this village?’ Ellie asks Funny-hair.

  ‘A library? No’ here, hen, no. You’ll have to go intae the toon fur that.’ His voice drops to a normal pitch now he discovers she can understand him.

  ‘The Toon.’ Ellie repeats, ‘What is this Toon? How far?’

  ‘Aucheneden,’ Fish-lady says. ‘Ye can get the bus there,’ she points to the shop door, ‘every twenty minutes fae the bus stop across the road.’ She holds out her purse and jingles money. ‘You need money, coins. To pay the conductress.’

  Ellie holds up her own beaded purse. ‘Yes, thank you.’

  The rest of the transactions are conducted in silence. Fish-lady with the plastic rain-mate pays for her haslet but lingers by the counter. Green-apron moves to the glass and wood cubicle which she opens out to allow her to push a parcel the size of a boot box through.

  ‘You’ll be alright for your sausages and cabbage now, Mrs Winski,’ she says.

  Mrs Winski smiles and nods her head.

  Ellie thinks she has cleared a high hurdle and leaves the shop with her purchases but as she closes the door she hears Fish-lady say,

  ‘Who let the nig-nog in?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, Lily,’ Green-apron replies.

  Ellie crashes blindly into the arms of a tall man standing outside the shop by her bicycle. She pushes herself off his coal-scented coat and looks up into a pair of sad, tired eyes. The black wiry hair that peeks out below his flat hat is speckled with grey.

  ‘Pardon, pardon,’ he says in a thick accent.

  ‘No, no, please, you must excuse me.’

  He bows to Ellie, clicks his highly polished shoe heels and touches his flat hat. As Ellie bows back, she hears the door open and watches him rush forward to relieve Mrs Winski of her burden.

  Mrs Winski turns to Ellie and smiles.

  ‘Good day to you, miss,’ she says. Then turns to her husband, hooks her arm through his and gives it a little pat.

  The Pairty Line

  ‘A bike? Whit, she rode it tae the shops, like?’

  ‘That’s whit ah said.’

  ‘Well, ah wished ah’d seen that. Did ye speak tae her?’

  ‘Well, ah niver actually seen her ma self, but ah hud it oan guid authority that she rode a bike tae the shops.’

  ‘Whit
wis she wearing?’

  ‘Some big clash o’ colours. Nettie Marshall said it wis like huvin’ yir eyeballs assaultit wi a packet o’ Smarties, eh?’

  ‘Ah wished ah’d been there.’

  ‘Ye widnae if ye hud smelt her.’

  ‘Whit dae ye mean, like?’

  ‘Stinkin’. Foreign cookin’ smells and stuff – ye ken like the Chinkies and thon greasy Eyties.’

  ‘NO!’

  ‘Aye, mingin’.’

  ‘That pair young fella. Imagine huvin’ tae live wi’ that?’

  ‘Aye, well, he made his ain bed, eh?’

  ‘Aye, ah suppose.’

  Chapter Four

  ‘You won’t need to go into the town. Dod, the gardener up at the big hoose will give you all you’ll need to plant a garden,’ James tells her as they lie in bed on Saturday morning. Nat curls nested between them, warm and settled with no intention of waking up.

  The library visit had appealed to Ellie and the notion of venturing to the toon appealed even more but now, here is her husband, her keeper, advising her it is not necessary. Ellie holds her disappointment close to her breast, like a talisman. She will wait to see what this Dod has to offer her, then she will decide for herself.

  A little brown bird with a bright red puffed-up chest perches on the windowsill and looks in at Ellie.

  ‘Hello, little friend, you seem hungry — or maybe just greedy, is it?’

  Nat sits on the floor playing; putting cotton reels into an empty tin tea caddy. Ellie picks him and his toys up, places him in the washing basket and drags it under the table. Her baby is starting to roll and will soon be crawling on his belly like a caterpillar, she thinks.

  ‘There, you will be safe from snakes and falling spiders under there,’ she chuckles. ‘Now do not move.’

  Ellie dips her hand into the oat bin and, with one hand balanced under the other to catch spills, she tiptoes to the back door, eases the handle down with her elbow and steps out into the cool morning. She pulls in a deep breath and enjoys the chill as it cleanses her lungs. The bird hops off the sill and onto the coal bunker from where it watches her scatter grain along the line of the window ledge.