Mabel was herself English, born in Bristol to a family that, despite its earthbound name, had been seafaring for centuries, manning men-o’-wars, submersing in submarines and ferrying cargoes of slaves across the great wide ocean. The last male in the Orchard line — Mabel’s brother — had been torpedoed on the China Seas and there was a general sense of disappointment in the family that the nautical genes were going to die out with Mabel, who had decided to remain as chaste as a nun.
Although she had spent her whole childhood wishing for children of her own, Mabel had forsaken personal happiness and all thought of marriage and married love after her fiancé — Dudley — was shot through the heart at Tobruk, this in spite of the little Bible Mabel had given him as a parting gift and which had nestled snugly in the pocket of his uniform waiting to catch bullets and save his life — in the manner of a story she had read in a magazine. After it fatally failed to fulfil this function, Mabel was uncertain as to whether she should stop believing in God or in fiction. She chose the latter and never opened a magazine — or even a newspaper — from that day forward. After Dudley died Mabel trained as a nurse. If he had lived she had planned to fill her arms with so many babies that when they grew up there would be enough Orchards to crew the entire British naval fleet if necessary.
Mabel wore a plain gold crucifix around her neck, given to her by Dudley on his last leave, and the chain was so thin that it was beginning to disappear into the folds and rolls of flesh around her chin. For Mabel was fat. There was no politer word for it. Her personal God put no restrictions on appetite or intake, indeed, Mabel had a feeling that he actively encouraged her to eat. And her body, she reasoned, was made by Him, so what better way to praise His works than to develop more of it. It was God, after all, who had put all this bounty on earth — even lardy cakes and black bun — who was she to shun it? Lachlan, when he first met her, called her ‘the cow’ and she did possess a strange passing resemblance to a Jersey in the colour of her hair, the length of her lashes, the flesh on her ample fallow flank. Yet she was stately, almost majestic, in her bulk — more like a great tribal queen than a milch-cow and when she ate — which was often — she was as delicate as a cat.
‘Well-upholstered,’ mumbled Donald — who still had the power of speech, if little else, and had taken an uncharacteristic ‘shine’ to his new caretaker. Mabel was so relentlessly nice to him with her ‘God bless you’s and ‘Jesus loves you’s that he began to believe this propaganda and the idea that God might still love him, despite his flaws, wrought a strange change in his character and made him almost bearable. And, although now in his seventies, Donald was still capable of appreciating a female bosom and took considerable, albeit heathen, pleasure in trying to catch sight of Mabel’s butterfat breasts through her cheap blouses, as she bent over him to attend to some intimate bodily function or other of his.
Unfortunately for Donald, he was now paralysed down his left side and could not really put his thoughts into action.
Such servants as there were had now all departed. They had either been driven away by Donald (before he was blessed by God) or they had got tired of not receiving any wages (the Stuart-Murrays had always had a tendency to resent the idea that servants were supposed to be paid), and Mabel cheerfully took on all the work of the house. Her big dumpling-fleshed arms washed and wrung out any number of soiled bedsheets and stained clothes; she swept and scrubbed and shined and even found time to cook the kind of hearty food that her mother had cooked for her when she lived at home — suet puddings, boiled brisket and shin-beef stews, rissoles and scrag-end hot-pots, jam roly-poly and bread-and-butter pudding. Donald discovered that he rather liked this food and wished he’d met Mabel when he was younger; she would have surely have produced more wholesome and longer-lived heirs than either Evangeline or Marjorie had managed (although Evangeline could hardly be blamed for the First World War).
God’s favoured time for a little chat with Mabel was in the afternoons, so once lunch was done with and the pots cleared, Mabel would sit in the ladder-back chair in the corner of the kitchen, hands folded quietly in her lap as if in a private church and wait for God to find her. Naturally, God could, if necessary, communicate at any time, even, Mabel once shyly revealed to me, when she was ‘on the WC’, which was a natural act created by God Himself. But the afternoons were the best as far as both Mabel and God were concerned, after a nice lunch — boiled bacon and salad and new potatoes and a slice of apple pie with cheese was a favourite mid-day repast (of Mabel, not God).
Listening out for God was the only time her hands were idle; the rest of the time they were the busiest hands He ever fashioned. Mabel was particularly fond of knitting; sometimes she unravelled things on purpose just so that she would have something to knit back up again.
When I first met her, in the school summer holidays when I was nearly sixteen, Mabel had already been ensconced in the house for three months. The atmosphere in Woodhaven was quite changed. Everything was clean and orderly and, possibly for the first time ever in that household, everything was peaceful — but then Effie wasn’t there and peace and Effie never lived in the same room together.
Mabel was so kind to me, always asking, Was I all right? Was I warm enough? Did I need anything knitted? Would I like something to eat? To drink? Did I want to walk? Talk? Listen to the radio? It made me realize what a cold childhood I had had, how mean-spirited my mother had been, how distant my father, and last, but not least, how peculiar and perverse my siblings.
Effie had been living in London with Edmund, the businessman, all this while and had hardly ever visited the glen or taken an interest in its goings on, so it was quite a surprise for her when she came home, wild-eyed and teetering on the brink of an unsavoury divorce, to be greeted on the doorstep of Woodhaven by Mabel Orchard proudly (yet humbly) displaying a wedding-ring and introducing herself to Effie as ‘Mrs Donald Stuart-Murray’.
Silence.
‘And?’
— And I’m going to bed. Goodnight.
I saw Bob onto the train. It seemed the least I could do, in the circumstances. I walked down to Riverside to watch the London-bound train passing over the Tay but the fog was so thick that I could hardly make out the bridge, let alone the train. The river, what I could see of it, was a cold gunmetal colour. I could have sat down by the banks of the Tay and wept (although for myself rather than Bob), but I didn’t because I had a deadline to meet.
I had to fight my way into the English department. The Tower extension was under siege from protesters, a motley crew now as it seemed anyone with any kind of grievance had begun to attach themselves to the uprising to demand a new world order — students wanting free condoms or the tied-book loan period extending, antivivisectionists, diggers and levellers, even a sprinkling of Christians — I spotted Janice Rand and her balding friend holding a hand-made sign that said ‘Overthrow sin — let Jesus into your life’. I doubted that there would be enough room.
The lift to the extension was out of order, jammed open with a mop and guarded by a boy reading Culture and Anarchy who took the time to ask me if I’d done an Emily Brontë essay and if so could he borrow it? I ignored him and hurried up the stairs where I found the English department being stoutly defended by the redoubtable Joan, standing like a guard dog at the top of the stairs and murmuring something about boiling oil. ‘I think they’ve got Professor Cousins,’ she said, looking rather pleased at the idea.