‘Hi, Nick!’ he said. ‘Look who’s here . . . Do you remember Janet Brooke?’
He stressed the surname ever so slightly. Nicholas’ black brows lifted the fraction of an inch, and something flickered behind his eyes. Then he said: ‘Of course. Hello, Gianetta. How are you?’
It came back to me sharply, irrelevantly, that Nicholas was the only person who had never shortened my name. I met his eyes with an effort, and said, calmly enough: ‘I’m fine, thank you. And you?’
‘Oh, very fit. You’re here on holiday, I take it?’
‘Just a short break. Hugo sent me away . . .’ It was over, the awkward moment, the dreaded moment, sliding past in a ripple of commonplaces, the easy mechanical politenesses that are so much more than empty convention; they are the greaves and cuirasses that arm the naked nerve. And now we could turn from one another in relief, as we were gathered into the group of which Marcia Maling was still the radiant point. She had been talking to Hartley Corrigan, but I could see her watching Nicholas from under her lashes, and now she said, turning to me: ‘Another old friend, darling?’
I had forgotten for the moment that she was an actress, and stared at her in surprise, so beautifully artless had the question been. Then I saw the amusement at the back of her eyes, and said coolly: ‘Yes, another old friend. My London life is catching me up even here, it seems. Nicholas, let me introduce you to Miss Marcia Maling – the Marcia Maling, of course. Marcia, this is Nicholas Drury.’
‘The Nicholas Drury?’ Marcia cooed it in her deepest, furriest voice, as she turned the charm full on to him with something of the effect that, we are told, a cosmic ray-gun has when turned on to an earthly body. But Nicholas showed no sign of immediate disintegration. He merely looked ever so slightly wary as he murmured something conventional. He had seen that amused look of Marcia’s, too, I knew. He had always been as quick as a cat. Then Hartley Corrigan came in with some remark to Marcia, and, in less time than it takes to write it, the whole party was talking about fish. The men were, at any rate; Marcia was watching Hartley Corrigan, Alma Corrigan watched Marcia, and I found myself studying Nicholas.
He had changed, in four years. He would be thirty-six now, I thought, and he looked older. His kind of dark, saturnine good looks did not alter much, but he was thinner, and, though he seemed fit enough, there was tension in the way he held his shoulders, and some sort of strain about his eyes, as if the skin over his cheek-bones was drawn too tightly back into the scalp. I found myself wondering what was on his mind. It couldn’t just be the strain of starting a new book, though some stages, I knew, were hell. No, knowing him as I did, I knew that it must be something else, some other obscure stress that I couldn’t guess at, but which was unmistakably there. Well, at any rate, I thought, this time I couldn’t possibly be the cause of his mood; and neither, this time, did I have to worry about it.
I was just busily congratulating myself that I didn’t have to care any more, when the gong sounded, and we all went in to dinner.
4
Debatable Land
It became more than ever obvious, after dinner, that the awkwardness of my own situation was by no means the only tension in the oddly assorted gathering at the Camasunary Hotel. I had not been over-imaginative. That there were emotional undercurrents here seemed more than ever apparent, but I don’t think I realized, at first, quite how strong they were. I certainly never imagined they might be dangerous.
By the time I got back into the lounge after dinner, the groups of people had broken and re-formed, and, as is the way in small country hotels, conversation had become general. I saw with a little twinge of wry amusement that Marcia Maling had deserted the Corrigans and was sitting beside Nicholas. It was, I supposed, a change for the better. She could no more help being pulled into the orbit of the nearest interesting man than she could help breathing, but I wished she would leave Hartley Corrigan alone. She had much better spend her time on Nicholas; he could look after himself.
Alastair found a chair for me in a corner, then excused himself and went off to see about weighing and despatching the salmon he had caught that day. I saw Corrigan get up, without a word to his wife, and follow him from the room. Alma Corrigan sat without looking up, stirring and stirring at her coffee.
‘Will you have coffee? Black or white?’
I looked up to meet the bright gaze of the younger of the two teachers, who was standing in front of me with a cup in either hand. She had changed into a frock the colour of dry sherry, with a cairngorm brooch in the lapel. It was a sophisticated colour, and should not have suited her, but somehow it did; it was as if a charming child had dressed up in her elder sister’s clothes. She looked younger than ever, and touchingly vulnerable.
I said: ‘Black please. Thank you very much. But why should you wait on me?’
She handed me a cup. ‘Oh, nobody serves the coffee. They bring it all in on a huge tray, and we each get our own. You’ve just come, haven’t you?’
‘Just before dinner.’ I indicated the chair at my elbow. ‘Won’t you sit down? I’ve been deserted for a fish.’
She hesitated, and I saw her shoot a glance across the room to where her companion was apparently deep in a glossy magazine. Then she sat down, but only on the edge of the chair, remaining poised, as it were, for instant flight.
‘The fish certainly have it all their own way,’ she admitted. ‘I’m Roberta Symes, by the way.’
‘And I’m Gianetta Brooke. I take it you don’t fish?’
‘No. We’re walking, Marion and I – that’s Marion Bradford, over there; we’re together. At least, we’re climbing, sort of.’
‘What d’you mean by sort of?’ I asked, amused. The Skye hills had not struck me as being the kind you could sort of climb.
‘Well, Marion’s a climber, and I’m not. That’s really what I mean. So we go scrambling, which is a kind of halfway solution.’ She looked at me ingenuously. ‘But I’m dying to learn. I’d like to be as good as Mr. Beagle, and climb on every single Cuillin in turn, including the Inaccessible Pinnacle!’
‘A thoroughly unworthy ambition,’ said a voice above us. Roderick Grant had come across, and was standing over us, coffee cup in hand.
Roberta’s eyes widened. ‘Unworthy? That from you! Why, Mr. Grant?’
He turned and, with a sweep of one arm, indicated the prospect from the lounge windows.
‘Look at them,’ he said. ‘Look at them. Thirty million years ago they thrust their way up from God knows where, to be blasted by wind and ice and storm, and chiselled into the mountain-shapes you walk over today. They’ve been there countless ages, the same rocks, standing over the same ocean, worn by the same winds. And you, who’ve lived out a puny little twenty or thereabouts, talk of scaling them as if they were—’
‘Teeth?’ said Roberta, and giggled. ‘I know what you mean though. They do make one feel a bit impermanent, don’t they? But then it’s all the more of a challenge, don’t you feel? Mere man, or worse still mere woman, conquering the – the giants of time, climbing up—’
‘Everest!’ Colonel Cowdray-Simpson’s exclamation came so pat that I jumped, and Roberta giggled again. The Times rustled down an inch or two, and the Colonel peered over it at Nicholas, who was nearest the radio. ‘Turn on the wireless, will you, Drury? Let’s hear how they’re getting on.’
Nicholas obeyed. The news was nearly over: we had, luckily, missed the conferences, the strikes, the newest atomic developments, the latest rumours from the U.S.S.R., and had come in just in time for a fuss about the seating in Westminster Abbey, a description of the arches in the Mall, and a hint of the general excitement in a London seething already towards its Coronation boiling-point three days hence. And nothing yet, apparently, about Everest . . .
Nicholas switched off.
‘But I think they’re going to make it,’ he said.
‘It’s too thrilling, isn’t it?’ said Marcia comfortably.
‘It’s certainly a magnificent effort,
’ said Colonel Cowdray-Simpson. ‘They deserve their luck. What d’ye say, Beagle? What are the chances with the weather?’
‘Fair enough.’ Beagle looked faintly uncomfortable at being thus appealed to in public. I remembered, with a quickening of interest, that this unassuming little man had been involved in an earlier attempt on Everest. But he seemed unwilling to pursue the subject. He groped in his jacket pocket and produced his pipe, turning the conversation abruptly. ‘I’d say they had a chance of better weather there than we have here, at any rate. I don’t like the look of the sky. There’s rain there.’
‘All the better for the fishing,’ said Mrs. Cowdray-Simpson placidly, but Roberta moaned.
‘Oh no! And I wanted to start really climbing tomorrow.’
‘Quite determined to conquer the Cuillin, then?’ said Roderick Grant.
‘Quite!’
‘Where d’you intend to start?’
‘I don’t know. I’m leaving that to Marion.’
‘Garsven’s not hard,’ said someone – I think it was Alma Corrigan. ‘There’s a way up from the Coruisk end—’
Marion Bradford interrupted: ‘The best first climbs are Bruach na Frithe and Sgurr na Banachdich, but they’re too far away. Garsven is within reach, but of course it’s just plain dull.’ Her flat voice and uncompromising manner fell hardly short, I considered, of being just plain rude. Alma Corrigan sat back in her chair with a little tightening of the lips. Roberta flushed slightly and leaned forward.
‘Oh, but Marion, I’m sure Mrs. Corrigan’s right. It doesn’t look hard, and there must be a wonderful view—’
‘There’s a wonderful view from every single one of the Cuillins,’ said Marion dampingly.
‘You’ve climbed them all?’ asked Roderick gently.
‘If you mean do I know what I’m talking about, the answer is yes,’ said Marion Bradford.
There was a little pause, in which everyone looked faintly uncomfortable, and I wondered what on earth made people behave like that without provocation. Colonel and Mrs. Cowdray-Simpson returned to The Times crossword, and Roderick Grant lit a cigarette, looking all at once impossibly remote and well-bred. Nicholas was looking bored, which meant, I knew, that he was irritated, and Marcia Maling winked across at me and then said something to him which made his mouth twitch. Roberta merely sat silent, fiery red and unhappy. As an exercise in Lifemanship, it had been superb.
Then Hubert Hay spoke for the first time, completely ignoring both Marion Bradford’s rudeness and the hiatus in the conversation. I remembered Marcia’s definition of him as sorbo, and felt amused.
‘If I were you,’ he said cheerily to Roberta, ‘I’d try the Bad Step. Wait till high tide, and then you won’t break your neck if you fall. You’ll only drown. Much less uncomfortable, they say.’
He had a curiously light, high little voice, and this, together with his odd appearance, produced a species of comic relief. Roberta laughed. ‘I can swim.’
‘In climbing boots and a rucksack?’
‘Oh well, perhaps not!’
‘What on earth’s the Bad Step?’ I asked.
Hubert Hay pointed towards the west windows. ‘You see that hill beyond the river’s mouth, between us and the Cuillin?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s Sgurr na Stri. It’s a high tongue of land between here and the bay at the foot of Garsven. You can take a short cut across it, if you want a scramble. But if you follow the coast round to Loch Coruisk and the Cuillin, you have to cross the Bad Step.’
‘It sounds terrible. Is it a sort of Lovers’ Leap?’
‘Oh no. It’s only a slab of gabbro tilted at a filthy angle – about sixty degrees—’
‘Not as much,’ said Roderick Grant.
‘No? Maybe you’re right. Anyway, it hangs over the sea, and you have to cross it by a crack in the rock, where your nails can get a good grip.’
‘Your nails?’ said Marcia, horror-stricken. ‘My God! D’you mean you have to crawl across?’
Nicholas grinned. ‘No, lady. He’s talking about your boots.’
‘It sounds just my style,’ announced Roberta buoyantly. ‘After all, who minds drowning? Let’s go round there, Marion, and come back over Sgurr na Stri.’
‘I’ve made up my mind where we’re going,’ said Marion, in that flat, hard voice which carried so disastrously. ‘We’re going up Blaven.’
There was a sudden silence. I looked up sharply. I had been right, then, in thinking that some queer reaction took place every time that name was mentioned. This time it was unmistakable. And I was not imagining the note of defiance in Marion Bradford’s voice. She knew that her announcement would fall on the room in just that kind of silence.
Ronald Beagle spoke then, diffidently. ‘Is that quite – er, wise, Miss Bradford? It’s not exactly a beginner’s scramble, is it?’
‘It’s easy enough up the ridge from this end,’ she said shortly.
‘Oh, quite. But if the weather’s bad—’
‘A spot of rain won’t hurt us. And if mist threatens we won’t go. I’ve got that much sense.’
He said no more, and silence held the room again for a moment. I saw Nicholas move, restlessly, and I wondered if he felt, as I did, a discomfort in the atmosphere sharper than even Marion Bradford’s rudeness could warrant.
Apparently Marion herself sensed something of it, for she suddenly stabbed out her cigarette viciously into an ashtray and got up.
‘In any case,’ she said, in that tight, aggressive voice of hers, ‘it’s time someone broke the hoodoo on that blasted mountain, isn’t it? Are you coming, Roberta?’
She stalked out of the room. Roberta gave me an uncomfortable little smile, and got up to follow her. For an instant I felt like advising her to stay, then decided that, whatever the cross-currents of emotion that were wrecking the comfort of the party, I had better not add to them. I merely smiled at her, and she went out after her friend.
There was the inevitable awkward pause, in which everyone madly wanted to discuss Marion Bradford, but, naturally, couldn’t. Then Marcia, who, as I was rapidly discovering, had no inhibitions at all, said:
‘Well, really! I must say—’
Colonel Cowdray-Simpson cleared his throat rather hastily, and said, across her, to Ronald Beagle: ‘And where do you propose to go tomorrow, Beagle?’
‘Weather permitting, sir, I’m going up Sgurr nan Gillean. But I’m afraid . . .’
I got to my feet. I had had enough of this, and I felt cramped and stale after my journey. And if Murdo and Beagle were right, and it was going to rain in the morning, I might as well go out now for an hour. As I turned to put my coffee cup on the tray, I saw, to my dismay, that Nicholas had risen too, and was coming across the room in my direction. It looked very much as if he were going to speak to me, or follow me out, and I felt, just then, that a tête-à-tête with Nicholas would be the final straw. I turned quickly towards the nearest woman, who happened to be Alma Corrigan.
‘I’m going out for a short walk,’ I said, ‘and I don’t know my way about yet at all. I wonder if you’d care to join me?’
She looked surprised, and, I thought, a little pleased. Then the old resentful look shut down on her face again, and she shook her head.
‘I’d have liked to very much.’ She was politely final. ‘But, if you’ll forgive me, I’m a bit tired. We’ve been out all day, you know.’
Since she had already told me, before dinner, that she had spent the day sitting on a boulder while the men fished the Strath na Creitheach, this was a very efficient rebuff.
‘Of course,’ I said, feeling a fool. ‘Some other time, perhaps.’ I turned away to find Roderick Grant at my elbow.
‘If I might—’ He was looking diffidently down at me. ‘There’s a very pleasant walk up to the loch, if you’ll let me be your guide. But perhaps you prefer to go alone?’
‘By no means,’ I assured him. Nicholas had stopped when Roderick Grant spoke, and I knew that
he was frowning. I smiled back at Mr. Grant. ‘Thanks very much: I’ll be glad of your company.’
Nicholas had not moved. I had to pass him on my way to the door. Our glances met; his eyes, hard and expressionless, held mine for a full three seconds, then he gave a twisted little smile and deliberately turned back to Marcia Maling.
I went to get my coat.
5
Loch na Creitheach
At half-past nine on a summer’s evening in the Hebrides, the twilight has scarcely begun. There is, perhaps, with the slackening of the day’s brilliance, a sombre note overlying the clear colours of sand and grass and rock, but this is no more than the drawing of the first thin blue veil. Indeed, night itself is only a faint dusting-over of the day, a wash of silver through the still-warm gold of the afternoon.
The evening was very still, and, though the rain-threatening clouds were slowly packing higher behind us, in the south-west, the rest of the sky was clear and luminous. Above the ridge of Sgurr na Stri, above and beyond the jagged peaks of the Cuillin, the sun’s warmth still lingered in the flushed air. Across this swimming lake of brightness one long bar of cloud lay sullenly, one thin line of purple shadow, struck from below to molten brilliance by the rays of a now invisible sun.
We turned northwards up the valley, and our steps on the short sheep-turf made no sound in the stillness. The flat pasture of the estuary stretched up the glen for, perhaps, half a mile, then the ground rose, steep and broken, to make the lower spurs and hillocks that were Blaven’s foothills. One of these, the biggest, lay straight ahead of us, a tough little heather-clad hill which blocked the centre of the glen and held the southern shore of the loch. To the left of it curved the river: on the east a ridge of rock and heather joined it to the skirts of Blaven.
‘Isn’t there a path along the river?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, but if you want to climb An’t Sròn – that hill in front – for a view of the loch, we’d better keep to the Blaven side of the glen. There’s a bog further on, near the river, which isn’t too pleasant.’