Seed Time

by Amanda Gilmour

Heather placed her hand on her queasy belly—Alec’s gift fluttered: her secret. Father could never know or else he’d beat the bairn out of her. She grabbed the war office telegram from Gordie’s hands, and then she was outside running downhill, stumbling through frosted April greenery. The rising sun ignited thousands of frozen cobwebs in grass, gorse and the spaces in-between.
‘Heather! Wait, lass!’ Gordie called.
She knew he was grieving for his brother, but she had to get away. Fat tears rolled from her eyes, blurring the haar blanketing the Moray Firth. Sweat pricked her scalp, and the scrunched telegram lay limp in her damp palm. She slowed down to a fast walk. What was she going to do? Oh, how she wished it was her coarse brute of a father who was dead, not Duncan.
Gordie still called her. His voice was closing in. Heather stopped mid-field and sat amongst reams of drookèd grass. She flattened the telegram out on her lap, scanning her eyes over the words but the content hadn’t changed: we regret to inform you Private D. R. Falconer, SEA, HRS, was killed in action on the 2nd of April 1916. She couldn’t give a fig what they said. It couldn’t be true! A surge of rage coursed through her, flushing her pale skin pink. She tore the telegram in half, and then into quarters, and kept tearing until tiny pieces lay around her, and buried her face in her hands. What would folk think of her?
She wasn’t sure how long she stayed in that spot, but a plan formed. Gordie had proposed to her in February. Father had been so angry that she’d turned him down. He couldn’t thole her beloved Duncan, but he thought Gordie would make a fine husband. Accepting the proposal now, was the only way to protect the bairn and herself from Father, but would Gordie still want her, knowing she carried another man’s child: a bastard child? Still, the bairn was his brother’s, so he might accept it, or perhaps he didn’t need to know. She stood up and shielded her eyes from the sun, searching the yew-lined horizon, and then she spotted him coming fleet-footed, like, through the path she’d made.
‘Gordie! I’m here!’ She cried, and she started running towards him. Grass chaved at her hands. Her thoughts raced faster than her steps, and she thought her heart would explode in her chest. If they married soon, she could say they conceived the bairn on their wedding night. When it was born, she could pretend it had come early - like Maggie Croft’s twins. A shadow crawled over her. She looked up, and he was there, right in front of her, back-lit by the sun.
‘Do you still want to marry me?’ She asked, shy like, but she was panting, trying to catch her breath, and he must have thought her a madwoman!
‘What?’ His face looked queer, like.
‘I, I want to marry you. I’ve changed my mind.’ She flushed pink around the gills.
He said neither nay nor yea, just nodded. She threw her arms around him, weeping into his shoulder for her stricken heart, and her treachery, but most of all she sobbed with relief for her bairn. Over Gordie’s shoulder, the God-like presence of Ben Wyvis watched her, as it cushioned the lapping firth.