The Wedding Ring Quest

It was the perfect answer. Nathan, whose mother had been a heavy-lidded, sloe-eyed daughter of Portugal and deeply fond of cake, was a fitting combination of Dumfries and Oporto.

‘Twice as much,’ Ross agreed.

With the war over, he had plans this time, since a prodigal amount of leave stretched ahead that would take them through Christmas. The two of them were bound for Dumfries, where Ross’s older sister lived with her surgeon husband. He hadn’t seen her in years, but that was nothing because he had always been a prodigious correspondent and so was Alice Mae Gordon. She had promised them a good visit and hinted that she knew of a piece of property in need of a landlord in nearby Kirkbean. ‘In sight of open water,’ Alice had written, to further entice him.

He stood a moment more, wondering at the half dread he always felt, hoping his son hadn’t changed too much since the last visit, but well aware that children grow. Will he remember me? he always asked himself. If he passed me on the street, would I know him?

Ross took the customary deep breath and continued up Flora Street, his eyes on a yellow house, where flowers still fought the good fight against late autumn. He knew that in Scotland, the flowers had long surrendered to winter, but this was lovely Devon.

He walked slower because his leg pained him and because there was always that moment when he wondered who would greet him. For the first time since Inez’s death, for the first time in the terrifying and fraught years since, he wanted a wife to greet him, too. It was a heady thought and he entertained it cautiously, thinking of all the times he had assured his officers and wardroom confidants that he would find another wife when the war ended. Maybe the time was now.

Ross stopped outside Number Six Flora Street and looked up at the second-storey window that he knew was Nathan’s room. His heart skipped a little beat as his dear son looked down on him. The boy disappeared from the window and Ross watched the front door. It slammed open and his son hurtled outside and into his open arms.

Ross was home from the sea.

Chapter Two

For someone without much choice in the matter, Mary Rennie had finally had her fill of relatives. Maybe it was the season; more likely it was her Cousin Dina. Maybe it was simply time for an epiphany.

Her father, long dead, had been a clergyman in the Church of Scotland. He knew a thing or two about epiphanies, especially the January 6th one involving the Christ and the Magi. Mary had a different epiphany in mind, the one where you realise something startling that probably should have happened years ago.

She blamed it on her propensity to be a late bloomer, but there she was, twenty-seven years old and tired of relatives, especially Dina. And so she told Mrs Morison, her only confidante, when they were peeling potatoes in the kitchen.

Mrs Morison was cook and not generally the peeler of potatoes, except that Betty, the scullery maid, had a toothache and Mrs Morison never seemed to mind a good chat with Mary, especially over tea and biscuits on a raw October afternoon in Edinburgh. Dinner was a long way off, and there was time to peel and chat and drink tea.

‘Oh, my dearie, Dina is engaged to that prosy foreign fellow and she is blue-devilled,’ the cook announced, after heaving herself up to retrieve more biscuits. ‘Never trust a man from over the border.’

Mary smiled to herself. She had never been over the border, herself, but Papa had assured her years ago that Englishmen were only doing the best they could and Presbyterians could be charitable.

‘Aye, Mrs M.,’ she said, applying herself more diligently to the potatoes. She stuck the potato on the end of her knife and wagged it at the cook. ‘But why must I suffer because she is engaged? She whines and carries on, and I don’t know why. Isn’t a bride-to-be supposed to be cheerful?’

Mrs Morison peered at her over the top of her spectacles. She lowered her voice and leaned closer. ‘I think she is already afraid of her wedding night.’

‘That’s months away,’ Mary whispered back. ‘Besides, I would think that once you find a man to love, that wouldn’t be a consideration.’ She leaned back as another epiphany followed hard on the heels of the first. ‘Ah. Maybe she doesn’t really love Mr Page?’

Mrs Morison gave her a sage look and shook her head, tut-tutting as she peeled.

‘Then why...?’ Mary put down her knife. ‘Oh, dear. Is she afraid she’ll never get another offer?’

She considered the matter. It was probably true. Dina Rennie wasn’t high on good looks. Mary couldn’t help but smile, remembering the time last summer when one of the street sweepers neighed when Dina passed by. But it was wicked to joke about Dina’s long face, or so Papa would have told her. Mrs Morison was saying something, so she glanced up.

‘You have the family looks—all of them, I think,’ Mrs Morison was saying. She shook her head and returned her attention to the root vegetable in her lap whose skin was starting to turn a little brown from lack of attention.

Maybe, but none of the money, Mary thought, knowing that the cook was too kind to mention it. Not that any of the Rennies were particularly attractive, she knew, but Papa had married a Maxwell from Spring Hill and there was the difference: lips a little fuller than the Scottish norm, a trim and tidy figure, deep auburn hair—none of the Rennie carrot hue—and snapping green eyes. Mary felt the freckles were a discount, but Mama always said they were a happy sprinkle across her nose and no detriment.

‘I wish I had money,’ she admitted, because she knew Mrs Morison was no tattletale. ‘I’m twenty-seven and something should have happened to me before now.’

* * *

When she lay in bed that night, Mary considered her age and virgin state. She smiled in the dark, remembering how carefully her Aunt Martha had skirted around matters of procreation, how it was accomplished and women’s subservient role. Since they were much the same age, Dina had been party to the same conversation, her eyes wide, her mouth a perfect O. Mary had listened to Auntie’s red-faced circumlocutions and kept her own counsel. Before Mama had died when Mary was fifteen, she had been more plain spoken.

There had been a quiet admonition, though, a coda to the conversation about men and women and What They Did. ‘Remember this, my darling daughter: some day there will be a man who will meet all your requirements. Wait for him, because he will be worth it,’ Mama had advised, making no effort to disguise that lurking Maxwell twinkle in her eyes.

Too bad Mama had died two weeks later, killed by the wasting disease. Papa had never enjoyed good health, so he took the opportunity six months later to join his wife in a better place than a Montrose rectory where the chimneys drew badly and no one was ever warm.

‘And so I came to Edinburgh,’ Mary informed the ceiling, that night of her epiphany. ‘They are good to me here. I lack for nothing, but I have become part of the furniture.’

* * *

The matter was on her mind a week later after All Saints Day. Although Aunt Martha never would have admitted it, she was a superstitious woman. She never went below stairs with her Christmas cake recipe on All Hallows Eve, when ghosts walked. Mary and Mrs Morison were far too kind to ever tell the good woman that even ghosts weren’t interested in the Rennie Christmas cake.

It always puzzled Mary that Auntie kept the fruit-cake recipe squirrelled away in her bedchamber, as though it were a great treasure and liable to be stolen in so unprotected a place as the kitchen. Mary was the last person who would ever have told Auntie that Mrs Morison had long ago copied the recipe and kept it among her own well-used recipes in that kitchen so open to thievery and who knew what else.

‘It is time,’ Aunt Martha announced and handed over the much-creased paper with all the ceremony a Scot ever indulged in. ‘One dozen this year, if you please.’

It was always one dozen, four of which remained at home to be consumed around Christmas, after a six-week curing. The other eight were sent to friends and family.

Mrs Morison nodded and accepted the recipe, promising to take it to bed with her and put it under her pillow, until it was safe again upstairs with Mrs Rennie. ‘Lord love her,’ the cook had murmured after her employer went upstairs.

The only thing that saved the cakes from rejection was the thick layer of marchpane Mrs Morison applied to two of the cakes that remained at the house on Wapping Street. Mrs Rennie had looked more thin-lipped than usual the first time Mrs Morison applied the coating, but Uncle Samuel had nodded his approval, so that was that.

He had approved even more of the other two cakes remaining hearthside. In her desperation to make the cakes less dry—perhaps she had had her own epiphany—Mrs Morison drowned the other two cakes in rum. True, the recipe did include rum, but only a Scottish amount. ‘I fear my hand slipped,’ Mrs Morison had fibbed to her employer, the first time she served that particular rendition.

Uncle Sam had done more than nod his approval. He held out his plate for another slice. ‘And make it thicker,’ he added, his voice only slightly slurred.

So rum it was, and marchpane, for the Wapping Street cakes. The cakes to be mailed had rum, but not quite as much.

* * *

Making the cakes was a week-long event, with Monday and Tuesday taken up with endless chopping of glacé cherries, candied peel, sultanas and currants. Almonds generally were halved. Mrs Morison baked the homebound cakes on Wednesday, giving them ample time to cure or ferment in a dark space. The cook had been gradually adding more and more rum to the marchpane cakes, as well, which wouldn’t get their mantle of thick icing until closer to Christmas.

For the entire week, Mary had joined Mrs Morison and the scullery maid, now minus a tooth, in the ordeal of Christmas cakes. Dina hadn’t the patience for all the chopping and dicing, which Mary found a relief. She loved her cousin, but a few hours of non-stop talking gave Mary a headache. Dina’s conversation had taken a decidedly querulous turn, now that she was engaged, and was even whinier than usual.

Perhaps I am envious, Mary thought, as she diced candied cherries and candied peel to Mrs Morison’s exacting specifications. I would like a husband because that would mean children and I do enjoy wee ones.

Thursday had seen the construction of four more cakes, also baked, doused and sent to a dark corner to rest and lick their wounds.

The last four of the yearly cakes were in process on Friday, when Dina stormed into the kitchen and upset everything. Mary had finished cracking the eggs into the soft butter and caster sugar. As she stirred and Mrs Morison gradually added flour, Dina strode around the kitchen, fire in her eyes. She was waving a small object. Mary wished her cousin would go away. Mixing the batter was her favorite part of the whole process. She wanted to enjoy, without drama, the smoothness of the batter and the buttery fragrance as it competed with vanilla bean.

But Dina needed an audience. With a pang, Mary realised she had for too long unwillingly furnished that audience. I am too complacent, she told herself, as Dina wound herself up like a top. What would she do if I walked away?

Mary was fated never to know. By now, Dina had tears in her eyes.

‘I ask you, has there ever been a stingier husband-to-be than Algernon Page?’ she fumed.

‘What is it, my dear?’ Mary said at last, because it was required of her. She continued swiping down the sugar crystals in her mixing bowl, thinking Dina might get the hint.

Not Dina. Her cousin stuck a small ring in Mary’s face. ‘That...that cheapskate sent me this paltry bauble for Christmas! He thinks I’m going to wear it.’