Hero is a Four Letter Word Read Online Free PDF Page A

fabric and lace in her lap, and his father’s hand cradles his head lovingly. There was another child in the painting at one point, Jennet knows, but then he was painted out. Her Da had told her it was a common practice of the day when a child died. She can see the darkish smear by the husband’s hip, the place where two different shades of black don’t quite match. Nobody knows what happened to the little boy, which means that he probably died young. She brushes her fingertips over the blotch where the boy’s chubby cheeks would be in apology for his short life, the grief of her father’s passing welling momentarily against the hollow of her throat, and swallows hard.
    Clearly this was a family that adored one another, and it breaks her heart a little more that the boy-child is missing. The surviving boy’s name was Thomas, Jennet knows that, but the father’s name she doesn’t recall ever having learned. A quick peek at the back of the canvas is no help – it’s been papered over by the framers.
    The next painting is Thomas with his own children, a brace of four boys and a young girl cuddling a strangled looking spaniel. The children are dressed as adults, as they did in the day, down to the little powdered wigs. The second eldest boy features in another portrait, in a much more portable size than the family ones, with a young man they say was a great favourite of his among the townspeople. Here they are both about twenty, hands around each other’s waists in a congenial manner, and smiling conspiratorially. Whether the young man was a friend or a lover, no one can be sure, but Jen’s Da had always liked the idea of the two men finding contentment together.
    He would have, considering.
    After that is another two family portraits, one more with a child painted out, and then they give way to muted, black-and-white tin-types, silvery daguerreotypes, sepia-faded photographs, and finally the colour-muted family photo portraits from the twentieth century. There are photographs here of every generation of Carterhaughs for as long as the medium has existed.
    The appalling legacy of children dying in their first decade marches on, and without realizing it, Jen finds her hand splayed over her own, slightly paunchy stomach by the time she reaches the end of the row. She has no siblings, but her father had a sister once. The very young woman is grinning out of a photo taken at some pleasure chalet or other. She looks so very much like Margaret Selkirk that they could be the same person. And Jennet, she’s been told, strongly favours her late aunt Jane.

    It takes four months of good, hard scrubbing, painting, and furniture rearranging, a visit to Edinburgh to meet with a website designer, several long days filling out paperwork and standing in government queues, but eventually the Carterhaugh Manor Bed and Breakfast is open for business. Everyone in Selkirk takes a tromp thought the house, shakes the hand of Lady Carterhaugh and takes a cup of coffee in the dining room the first Saturday, just for curiosity’s sake. When her neighbours ask why Jen decided to follow through with the plans, she says “It’s something to do,” instead of “I don’t know if the living would last.” The latter is the truth, but it’s too honest for polite company.
    Their first customers, three days later, are an American couple come over for a research trip, delighted to be able to stay right where the fairy stories they’re writing about originated. Within an hour Jennet is sick to death of talking about an imagined history and what it all might mean , a headache forming at the crest of their brash, broad voices. She begs out of the conversation by making up a phone call to a friend she’s meant to be making.
    Once she’s ensconced in her apartments, curled in her squashy reading chair, she does indeed call one of her friends in Selkirk.
    “Jennie!” Karen says. “I haven’t heard from you since … well, never you mind that.