The Courage of Hamish
by ELIZABETH MILNE
ILLUSTRATED BY ABBETT
There’s a lot to be said for having your own dream girl, provided you can wake up in time to make your dream come true
HAMISH MACALLISTER was blissfully happy: He was asleep. Lightly, almost surfaced, in the delicious condition of knowing that he was asleep and having a most wonderful dream.
As soon as he became aware that he was dreaming, he woke up. For a few moments his eyes remained hopefully shut, then recognizing that the spell was broken, and because he was essentially an extremely practical young man, he promptly forgot the dream and went into his early morning muscle stretching, routine.
A dozen deep breaths, expand the ribs, flex the toe-joints, then extend the legs.
At full length, his feet emerged at the end of the bed to discover the air distinctly chilly. The afterglow of bliss faded. It was a very ordinary Thursday morning.
When he reached the town hall an hour later, the desk in front of his was still vacant. It would take a minor miracle to get Judy Alford to her place in time, and he had been working for ten minutes before a furtive scamper, a whiff of some flowery scent, conveyed to him that she had actually arrived. He didn't glance up.
As usual, at the tea break, she pushed back the curl that always strayed on to her forehead, and swung round on her stool to join the group at the trolley. When Hamish dropped only one lump of sugar in his cup, she raised her eyebrows at him inquiringly.
"Training?" she asked, her hazel eyes mischievous.
"Training," he explained briefly.
"What on earth for?" .
"Oh-just training," he said, crisply, without smiling.
He hated half-sweetened tea and she knew it.
She made a face and ate the extra sugar herself.
"Supplies energy, didn't you know?" she went on cheerfully.
"Then you heed it. At least I can get here in time."
"Ooh, yes! Old Potts caught me this morning and tore off a strip."
But she didn't look worried. Judy Alford didn't worry about anything so unimportant as being late for work in the morning.
"You'll be late once too often," Hamish said severely.
"It's Susan,"· Judy continued, unperturbed. "She's a menace."
Susan was her young sister. He knew a great deal about the Alford family, because she talked about her sister and numerous brothers all the time and it was only civil to listen. Sometimes it occurred to him that a big family had a lot of fun:
"What's she done now?" he asked, smiling at her.
"Gone off with my best nylons," Judy said indignantly. "And I couldn't find another pair without a run in them."
She straightened a surprisingly long, very slender leg.
He looked at it carefully. "I don't see any run."
"Good! If a man doesn't, no one else will."
Suddenly, astonishing himself as well as her, he exclaimed: "Heavens! I dreamed about you last night! I've just remembered."
"What did you dream?"
To his horrified embarrassment, a wave of heat rose painfully at the back of his neck.
"It's a bit vague..." His voice trailed off.
" Oh Hamish!" Her face was alight with interest. With her snub nose and long silky hair, she looked about twelve instead of eighteen. "Nice or nasty?"
"Oh. Ah nice I think. But I don't remember much. . . . "
She gave a sudden grin."I ought to put my mother on to you: "
"Why? What does she do?"
"Believes in dreams, has a book full of them. "She'd soon straighten you out."
"That would be pretty clever when I can't even remember what it was..." He broke off.
Because suddenly he did remember. He had been lying on cushions in a gondola under a canopy of willows with Judy Alford in his arms.
For a split second, the recollection was as vivid as the dream: dappled sunlight, a languorous drifting, the gentle lap of water, a waft of flowery fragrance.
He muttered something, rose abruptly and left the room for a glass of water. By the time he had swallowed it, he felt almost normal, temperature down, stomach steady, knees stiff.
OF all queer tricks, he marvelled. Judy Alford!
"That's absolute rot," he heard her say, as he returned, fortified. " It's crazy to make him wing-half."
Hamish grinned. Judy was involved in one of her frequent arguments with the boys over a team, selection for next Saturday's football match. She thought she knew more about it than they did, because one of her brothers was a reserve wing-half in a junior club, and her father had once kept goal in a cup final.
The boys had obviously been baiting her. Judy was pink-faced, furious, belligerent and untidy. Now Hamish could see the run in her stocking, and a satin shoulder strap that had slipped from its moorings.
No, Judy Alford was quite definitely not his ideal girl. How on earth did he come to dream about her?
His ideal girl wasn't a bit like Judy Alford. His ideal girl was at least two inches taller than Judy, a gentle-voiced, smooth-haired, poised creature who would move through his life
 |
This was the most breath-taking dream to date.
He was carrying Judy Alford
across the threshold --- continued on page 8 |
with grace and fill it with comfort. No last minute scrambles, no opinionated explosions like the one he was listening to at this moment. No arguments about football! Judy Alford simply wasn't his type.
Odd, then, that at five thirty he should feel so curiously deflated to see her dash out of the building and as good as padlock herself to the arm of a rugged naval type who was waiting by the corner.
Hamish walked rather pensively to the river, hired a skiff and bent doggedly to his sixty minute rowing practice. But somehow his heart wasn't in it. He kept worrying about that ridiculous dream.
PERHAPS that was why it recurred, this time in colour, with embellishments for which he could find no shred of excuse in his subconscious. He wasn't accustomed to waking with a heart which thumped like a jungle drum, and for once, he forgot his stretching exercises.
In the office, with Judy perched on the stool in front of him, her legs twisted in a complicated lock round its spars, the situation clicked back to normal. Dreams were interesting but not important.
She told him about her mother's rheumatism and Susan's ambition to sing with a band, and he found himself watching for the triangular gap in one of her teeth where her cricket playing brother had hit her for six.
Only nibbling memories of a naval uniform stirred him up and shifted things slightly out of focus.
The naval type had been at least six foot three, dark, blue-eyed, with a jutting chin and a gleaming smile.
Smooth, Hamish thought disgustedly. How could a girl be taken in by mere good looks like that? But what business was it of his, anyway?
Hamish enrolled for a six month jujitsu course. He had to find someway to put himself into a sleep too deep for these pointless dreams. Because for an unromantic Scot with a strong dash of prudence, he was enjoying them too much.
THEN came the morning when the desk in front remained vacant. At first, he assumed she was late again, but as the hours crept, stretched and dragged themselves into the longest day of his life, there was still no Judy.
Next day she was back, legs twined, chin propped on her fist, as though she had never been absent.
Without willing it, he stopped by her desk. "What...? I mean, where were you yesterday?"
Her smile was as warm as a sunbeam. The sight of the tiny damage to her tooth gave a frightening twist to something in his chest.
"Hallo, Hamish," she said lightheartedly. "Gerry and I went up to London for the day."
The something in his chest became a sharp pain. "Gerry! Is he the naval type?"
"Yes. He's on an oil tanker. Exciting job that. Takes him to all sorts of romantic places," she went on. "Persian Gulf, Kuwait. . . ."
Whereas I, Hamish brooded, work in the town hall a couple of streets from the house in which I was born.
"Don't tell me you missed me?" Judy inquired.
"Why shouldn't I . . . ?" he began and swallowed.
"It was a day left over from my holiday," she explained. "Gosh, you've no idea what fun we had. We went to a matinee, and then in the evening we had dinner, and danced."
With Judy Alford gliding over the floor, a navy blue, gold-braided arm round her waist! Hamish blinked. As though a bubble, or a dream had exploded in his face.
"That must have been grand," he exclaimed stupidly, then recoiled to his own desk and sat down dizzily.
She swivelled round to face him.
"You look a bit queasy, I must say," she remarked kindly. "What did you have for breakfast?"
"Can't quite remember."
To avoid her eyes, he reached for a drawer and jerked it open. It came too far and crashed to the floor.
"Oh, Hamish! " Half-laughing, she slid down and knelt beside him.
"Look at you! Shot to pieces! It's all this training nonsense. Self discipline and no sugar, and I bet your landlady can’t cook for toffee!"
"She hasn't a great deal of imagination," he admitted. The flowery fragrance was all round him. "Eating alone isn't much fun," he heard himself say.
"Well, then, don't eat alone," she answered reasonably. "Invite someone to go out with you sometimes."
"Oh," he lied hastily, summoning up an unconvincing grin, "of course, I take a girl out occasionally."
Smiling, she glanced up. For such an ordinary girl she had remarkable eyes. Deep enough to drown in. "Do you?"
HIS voice had gone. All those super-trained muscles had locked themselves into paralysis.
"Well-who?" she inquired, with a long steady look.
Her eves were the colour of water with the sun on it.
He looked round wildly. "Oh well, I'm going to ask Anne Lomax out tonight."
Judy replaced the last pencil in his drawer and stood up.
"Why not?" She gave him a peculiar little one sided smile. "Best of luck, Hamish."
Hamish was normally a mild man, slow to anger. Now the blood of forefathers who had fought savagely in the glens drummed in his veins. She could have her Gerry, though he couldn't admire her taste. There were plenty of other girls.
Defiantly, he went over to Anne Lomax, who was tall, low voiced, languid and sweet.
She said: "Hamish, how wonderful! The seafood at Laurent's is out of this world! "
Hamish smiled weakly, agreed to Laurent's, and in the lunch break drew out his entire savings.
Anne was all right, he supposed. Attractive, conscientiously charming. And dull as a ditch. His jaw ached with suppressed yawns. The seafood settled in the region of his breastbone and swam there.
AT ten thirty, he took her home, shook hands at the gate and went in search of an all night chemist and stomach pills.
In the morning, he met Judy going into the town hall. She smiled brightly, much too brightly for his overshadowed mood.
"Hallo, Hamish, you're late! Have fun?"
"Yes," he lied.
Didn't dream either, he might have added, for the first time in two weeks; just lay there in misery.
"Where did you go? " she asked.
"Oh, Laurent's," he said airily.
"Gosh, I should think you're broke, aren't you?"
"Once in a, while, you know," he said, nonchalantly, inwardly thinking despondently of the week of solitary roll and coffee lunches ahead.
"You should get Anne to cook a meal for you herself," Judy said. kindly. "I took classes in hoe cookery with her last winter."
That evening, Anne Lomax asked Hamish if he would like to come to supper with her in her fiat.
So Anne Lomax wasn't only a gay girl used to going to the most expensive places.
She could cook, too. She was, in fact remarkably like his ideal girl. Why then didn't the prospect of supper with her fill him with joyful anticipation?
Hamish spent the first two hours in Anne's fiat weeping over onions, chopping garlic, whipping cream and sieving soup, while the kitchen filled with heavy Continental smells.
By midnight, when the exotic dish at last appeared on the table, Hamish had lost his appetite. No doubt, the meal was a triumph of the culinary art, but Hamish was used to good plain cooking served up at regular hours.
AT one-thirty he telephoned for a taxi and arrived at the door of his home in a state of gorged and staggering exhaustion. Breakfast was rejected in favour of fruit salts. In the office, he gazed heavily at Judy's prim ankles and brooded on emigration.
At the tea break, when he turned in silent revulsion from the canteen buns, she demanded: "What’s wrong with you, Hamish? If this is still training, it isn't doing you a bit of good, because you look awful! What are you training for, anyway?"
"You asked that before. Nothing in particular. It's something to do."
He hadn't intended to sound forlorn, but a rebellious digestion had completely robbed him of morale. Gone was the pride that had led him to pit Anne Lomax against the glamorous Gerry.
Her voice was cool. "What did you think of Anne's cooking?" He managed a wan smile. "She can cook!" Judy insisted. "I know!"
"So do I," he agreed, "but did she have to take four hours to prove it?"
There was a thoughtful silence.
Then, unexpectedly, she inquired: "Can you use a hammer? "
He looked at her.
"Well, can you?" she persisted. "I mean well enough to bang in a nail without hitting a finger?
"I should hope so!"
Curiosity and indignation brought a flicker of returning spirit.
She eyed him appraisingly, then shrugged. "It wouldn't be any use. You probably have other plans."
He said carefully: "If you mean by that, a date, you're wrong. For me, from now on, girls are out."
"In that case," but she still sounded doubtful, "I suppose you could come along to our place and help the boys build a garage in the garden. It would be at least a little more useful than hitting a silly punch-bag or counting up calories!"
All the rest of the day he fought against a rising tide of optimism. After all, there was no ring on her finger; she wasn't engaged to Gerry. Formidable opposition, he reminded himself. Nevertheless, in sheer perversity, his stomach calmed and his spirits soared.
Judy's heels were hooked gaily over the spar on her stool. Surely she wouldn't have invited him home merely to help build a garage?
Apparently she had.
The garden contained several piles of new bricks, a miniature sand dune and some partly erected metal scaffolding. Once inside the back door, Hamish was greeted by a pungency of fresh coffee, a reverberation of male voices arguing about the composition of cement, and a burst of jive music from somewhere upstairs.
Judy's mother, a small serene looking woman in a flowered, apron, greeted them with warm inconsequence, supplied Hamish with one of the enormous beef sandwiches she was mass producing on a wooden platter, and advised him to ask Dad for a set of overalls.
With a wave of the carving knife, she introduced Stan, Lex, Mark and Susan, ranging in age from thirty to sixteen, all with the same fair hair and hazel eyes as their mother.
After one bite and two minutes of silent observation, Hamish discovered simultaneously that he was ravenous, that he possessed one or two controversial ideas on garage architecture himself, and that, if he clung much longer to the security of polite reserve, he was in danger of being stuck with the bottom job of ladder holding.
LATER, in the fraction of time which elapsed between dropping into bed and plummeting into sleep, he tried to work it out.
He had had a whale of a time. His palms were blistered and his fingers like sandpaper, his back ached, his neck was stiff and his throat parched. That, he told himself, was the result of too much talk. He had burbled like a leaky bath tap to everyone but Judy, who had been inexplicably evasive all evening.
At this point, conscious thought was extinguished by sleep and the most breath-taking dream to date. He was building a house, designed rather like a Gothic garage, tiled with splendid beefsteak. sandwiches and flaunting a ship's bell above the porch. He awoke as he carried Judy Alford across the threshold.
No chance of private speech with Judy occurred until the next afternoon, when he halted hesitantly by her desk.
"Any more help needed with the building programme? " he asked her wistfully.
She bit her pencil and considered. "Gerry's still on leave; he'll be lending a hand tonight. But you can come, too, if you like."
There and then, Hamish decided he would wipe the floor with Gerry before the evening was out.
" Gerry! What can you see in that tailor's dummy?" he exploded.
She lifted her brows, a pained expression on her face.
"Gerry's very nice. Don't be rude about him," she protested.
"How long have you known Gerry?" he asked fiercely.
She hesitated. Then:" Since early childhood," she said.
She burst out laughing at Hamish's grim face. "Oh, Hamish, you are an ass. Go away."
So! Gerry was coming tonight! The jolly Jack Tar. The rugged, salt stained seafarer. Yo-ho-ho and what ever it was. Hamish set his teeth and bitterly regretted the passing of keel-hauling and ropes' ends.
AT five-thirty, when Hamish left the office with Judy, Gerry was there. Judy walked between them chattering gaily, apparently oblivious of the antagonistic looks Hamish was bestowing on Gerry. Gerry didn't seem to notice either. 'Wretch! He probably thought Judy was as good as his already.
The other young Alfords were out tonight. Judy, Hamish and Gerry were on their own.
Hamish plunged into his borrowed overalls and had laid six bricks before Gerry uncovered the second trowel which Harnish, with impulsive cunning, had buried in a pile of sand. He would show Judy that height and good looks and a row of white teeth weren't everything. Not for nothing had Hamish been training.
"I say, " Gerry protested once from his perch on the roof. "No need to work as though you were building an escape tunnel.
" Huh, thought Hamish. Just because he's so slow.
If there had been a building record to beat, Hamish would have beaten it that night.
Then Judy's mother came out of the house to call them in to supper.
She looked up at Gerry on the roof. "You shouldn't be doing that, Gerry. You're supposed to be on leave, not working."
Gerry grinned down at her. "But I enjoy it, Mother."
Mother! Gerry, Judy's brother! Hamish sat down weakly on the nearest pile of bricks.
He appealed to Gerry. "You and Judy. But you don't look like the rest of the family."
"I take after my father," Gerry said easily, stepping off the ladder and wiping his hands.
Hamish turned on Judy, who was looking hard in another direction.
" You told me. " he accused.
Judy' s face was pink. "I never said he wasn't my brother."
"As good as. " Hamish accused.
But he wasn't annoyed. He didn't even mind being laughed at by Gerry. The world, when he came to look at it, was a wonderful place. How could he have thought all those unpleasant things about Gerry? Gerry was a charming fellow.
"Supper," reminded Judy's mother, "is getting cold."
By the time they sat down, Judy had recovered her composure.
"Mother," Judy said, "Hamish dreams a lot. Very pleasant dreams." She looked at Hamish out of the corner of her eyes. "I said you'd interpret them."
" Ah! " Judy's mother raised her brows expectantly. "Go on then, Hamish. Let's hear them."
"I-well, I usually dream about people and sunshine and houses and," carefully, he kept his eyes away from Judy," home cooking sometimes, and flowers."
Gerry snorted.
Judy's mother smiled.
"Well, go on. " Judy urged her. "Tell him what it means."
"My dear child, why should I? He knows perfectly well already."
Gerry offered: "Sounds like indigestion and a mortgage."
Judy looked at Hamish, a teasing, questioning look. Hamish took a quick gulp of coffee to send his heart down to its proper level.
Boldly, when Judy cleared the supper things, he followed her into the kitchen and shut the door firmly.
Judy. .. he said.
She looked down then. And suddenly she didn't look at all like the girl who argued so hotly about football. She was all gentle and feminine and shy.
"In this house, that's no use," she said softly. "If you want to speak privately, we'll have to go out."
IN the dark, they skirted a mound of half-solid cement and halted behind a section of garage wall.
"I-I thought you'd like to hear about those dreams," he began in a hoarse voice.
Then some of her hair drifted against his chin. Mingled with the smell of new mortar came a faint fragrance of flowers.
"I thought you'd never have the courage," she said, as he took her in his arms. "That's' why I misled you about Gerry."
He drew her close, and gasped gasped:
" Help! Now I know what training does for you.
Then he kissed her. It was the most wonderful, undreamlike experience of his life.
Poor insubstantial dream girls everywhere, he thought deliriously, and kissed her again. »»»»»» the End
© by Elizabeth Milne, 1959
