Chapter 48

Rebecca

As my dad had advised, we had appointed a Scottish solicitor to deal with the transaction regarding the buying of a house. He said this would be the easiest way to go about it since the Scots law was different from that which prevailed in England. Rory being Rory, he found a young solicitor, Ross Donnochie, who after a few years working for others had now opened his own practice which he was running with the aid of his wife, who was a qualified legal secretary whom he had met in his first job. Laura was a stunning natural blonde with a bubbly personality and it was easy to see how the young lawyer had fallen for her.

After having our offer accepted we made an appointment to see him and he fitted us in for a late afternoon on the day after our celebrations. He already knew we did not need a Mortgage as my dad's firm was actually buying the property for us since I was a director and technically the firm was sponsoring both of us for our education. He told us the sellers had already bought another house elsewhere in the country as the husband had moved to a new job in another area. Now that the house had sold she was moving to join her husband at the end of the month. This meant we would have an entry date at the beginning of February.

When I learned of this I said "Things seem to move a lot faster in the housing market than in England."

"Often they do because we don't have the chain of buyers each depending on the previous sale going through. With the acceptance of an offer being legal and binding, in most cases you have to be sure that you have the money available from the sale of your own house before making an offer for another property. In this case his firm was giving him a bridging loan at low interest so he was able to go ahead and purchase beforehand that is probably why they agreed to your offer just below their asking price. They would be glad to have it sold so quickly. Sometimes though complications arise and things can become more protracted."

By the time we had finished our discussions it was after five in the afternoon, and Rory invited them both to dinner at the Old Course hotel. Laura was impressed that we were staying there.

"I did not expect new students at St Andrews would be able to afford to stay there and at the same time be able to invite their lawyer and his wife to dinner.

"My dad is footing the bill and he is in a generous mood right now. He was unexpectedly knighted in the New Year's honours list for services to industry in our area.

"Quite rightly so." Rory told them, "McFarlane enterprises take seriously the fact that their various businesses make them the major employer in the area and they are the life blood which keeps the town prosperous. They are sponsoring me through my university course, not because I am Rebecca's fiancé but because they think that I have the potential to go far in the company. They are also doing this for two other boys in the town because they think they will be able to instil in us the same loyalty to and concern for the area that they have."

"That's great to hear" Ross told us, "when so many companies are prepared to shift their manufacturing abroad because of cheaper labour which makes possible bigger profits."

Over dinner with Ross and Laura we gave them more information about the things our family tried to do in the area to insure that small businesses flourished and the amount of charity work which my mum did for the community. Ross whose politics were a bit left of centre wished that there were more companies and more employers like ours. We also learned that they were trying for a baby now that Ross had finally got his business off the ground and was moving into a reasonable profitability. By the time they left, we had promised them that if we needed the services of a lawyer in this area again he would have our business.

When we arrived back in Marchester David wanted to know all about our house and how we had obtained it so quickly. We related to him what Ross had told us. We also told him that he had a fan in the young man who, when he heard how we ran our business and the determination we had to keep our area prosperous as a whole was full of admiration. We also told him that if we needed the services of a lawyer again we would come to him.

"He was glad to hear that," Rory said. "He just needs a few more clients and he thinks he will be able to employ another young lawyer as an assistant in his new practice."

"In that case," David said with a laugh, "I am almost tempted to extend our loan scheme and ask if he needs some low cost capital for his venture."

I don't think my father was serious about that offer, but I was sure that Laura and I were going to become good friends and I thought I might just sound her and Ross out to find out if they would be interested in going down that route.

Rory

It was interesting seeing St Andrews and realising that we would be spending the first three but more probably four years of our married life in that lovely old historic town. I say historic because of the many things that had happened there and

t housed the third oldest University in Britain and probably the world's most famous golf course. That got me thinking about my dad. My mum visited his relatives in Scotland while he was alive, and I realised that some of them probably still lived there even if mum had drifted away from them. I made a mental note to ask her about them when we next visited her.

After work that evening I mentioned this to Rebecca,

"If it was your great great grandmother who gave her the locket then there is a good chance that your grandmother is still alive and probably aunts and uncles and cousins. You could have loads of Scottish relatives you know nothing about" she said with a giggle.

"It sounds as if some of them were quite fond of my mum so it makes me wonder why she didn't keep in touch with them."

"Yes that is a bit strange; you would think your grandmother would have wanted to keep in touch with her grandson. It sounds quite intriguing when you think about it. We should ask your mum and see if she feels like talking about it. I am sure something must have happened."

Rebecca was right; there must have been some sort of rift. I wondered if it would hurt mum to talk about it. The more I thought about it, the more I felt I should broach the subject with her if it did not upset her too much. With that in mind I asked Rebecca to sort out a date in her diary so that we could visit them in mid February. I suspected that in March and April she really would be down to swotting for her A Levels in a serious way.

Work proceeded as usual and from the beginning of February we started rehearsing for a concert after Easter, as the group wanted to raise funds which would boost the Church's contribution to Christian Aid Week which fell in May.

Along with meetings of the board to discuss possible loans we were going to be kept quite busy. We added to this by having Marjory and Kenny and Jessie and William to spend a long weekend at our house. Jessie and William had separate rooms but Marjory and Ken shared one with a double bed. Marjory had confided to her mum that she and Ken were intimate. Her mum had responded by saying. "Now I know why you like to spend weekends with Rory and Rebecca." She had also made sure that Marjory was on the pill.

It was the last weekend in February when we visited mum and we were amazed at how much little Emma had grown. I had often heard people say that children don't stay babies long and now I could see what they meant. At almost five months she was quite a big girl and weighed in the region of twenty pounds. My mum had giggled and said she thought she took after the Macgregor side of the family for their women were all quite tall, around the five foot eight or nine mark," she told us.

Later on I used that as an excuse to ask her about my relatives and why she had drifted away from them.

"Your Dad's younger sister still lived at home and I think she felt that she should have been the one to receive the locket as it was a family heirloom. A few months after your dad died, she visited me and more or less demanded that I hand it over. I was wearing it always by this time and I felt it was giving me the strength to cope so I refused. I know you will think me silly now, but then I felt I really needed it and did not want to give it up."

"I don't think you are silly at all," I told her. "Great grandmother had the sight and she gave it to you for that purpose. I don't discount that gift even if it is no longer common. Sometimes things like that don't manifest themselves now, not because they never existed, but due to the fact that people who may have inherited the gift no longer believe in it and block its flow. They actually shut it out of their life."

"Do you really think that your dad's great granny had that gift?" My mum asked. "I have often wondered, because looking back I feel guilty that I kept the locket. It is probably quite valuable because it is so old."

"Don't feel that way, you were given it and it served its purpose as great great granny knew it would. I believe she knew what she was doing. Is that what stopped you going back?"

No, I visited a few times after that but things were always a bit strained. I don't think your grandmother would have wanted the locket but I think she guessed what had happened between me and your aunt and found the strain hard to cope with. Add to that the fact that money was tight and I was struggling to bring up a young child and the visits just petered out. After your dad died, your granny seldom made the trip south. It seemed to be up to me to keep the link alive."

"Would it offend you if I made enquiries to see if my grandmother was still alive when I go up to Scotland to live?" I asked.

"Not at all my son, I knew when I gave you that locket that it would open the door to this kind of response. If she is, you can tell her that I often think about her and if she would like it, you can tell her I come and see her even though so much time has passed without contact"

I gave my mum a hug. "I will do that mum and thanks for keeping the locket. Rebecca and I will treasure it, and who knows, with its encouragement, maybe if we have a daughter she will be the recipient of that other gift, though I am not sure that would necessarily be a blessing."

As we moved into March things began to hot up on the wedding front as Marjory, Jessie, Rebecca and her mum started to look for a wedding dress and bridesmaid's dresses. They decided for me that I would not have to do anything as Rebecca wanted me in full highland dress on my wedding day. This would make it an unusual spectacle in this part of the world. These goings on certainly brought home to me that in just a bit over five months I would no longer be a single man. I smiled wryly to myself and thought, "not that I am a single man anyway, the wedding is just a ceremony that is catching up with the reality of our true situation.

My mum had made enquiries and found out that my grandmother was still alive and had obtained her address which she passed on to me. She now lived in the village of Stanley which was just the other side of Perth and this was probably about a half hours journey from St Andrews. As we were going up there at the beginning of April for a long weekend, I wrote to her explaining who I was and asking if I could come and see her.

Within a few days I had received a reply saying that she would be delighted to see me and hoped that if I was coming to study at St Andrews that I would be a frequent visitor to her home. She asked me to phone her so that she could arrange a time for our meeting. When I did so my grandmother broke down on the phone when she heard my voice. When she had regained her composure she apologised and said that she was overjoyed that I had got in touch with her and looked forward to seeing me again.