Snow in April

  “Elizabeth!”

  It was her mother from London, sounding expectant, and Liz frowned. She was still smarting from Oliver’s abrupt rejection of the night before, and consequently not in the best of moods.

  Elaine Haldane, however, was not to know this. “Darling, so extravagant ringing in the morning, but I simply had to know how everything went. I knew you’d never call me. How did the dinner-party go?”

  Liz, resigned, pulled up a chair and slumped into it.

  “It didn’t,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “At the last moment Oliver couldn’t come. The dinner-party never happened.”

  “Oh, dear, how disappointing, and I was longing to hear all about it. You sounded so excited.” She waited, and then when her daughter was forthcoming with no more information, added tentatively, “You haven’t had a row or anything?”

  Liz laughed shortly. “No, of course not. He just couldn’t make it. He’s busy, I guess. Dad gave him lunch yesterday and they talked business the entire time. Incidentally, Dad’s going to buy Cairney.”

  “Well, that’ll keep him busy at any rate,” Elaine said, in a waspish fashion. “Oh, poor Oliver, what a prospect for him. He’s going through a very thin time. You must just be very patient, darling, and very understanding.”

  Liz did not want to talk about Oliver any more. To change the subject she said, “What’s happening in the great city?”

  “All sorts of things. We’re not going back to Paris for another week or two. Parker’s involved with some visiting firemen from New York, so we’re staying here. It’s fun seeing people, hearing all the news. Oh, I know what I must tell you. The most extraordinary thing has happened.”

  Liz recognized the gossipy tone in her mother’s voice, knew that the telephone call would last for at least another ten minutes. She reached for a cigarette and settled down to listen.

  “You know Diana Carpenter, and Shaun? Well, Diana’s stepchildren have disappeared. Yes, literally, disappeared. Off the face of the earth. All they left was a letter saying they’d gone to Scotland—of all places—to find their brother Angus. And of course he’s the most terrible hippie-type, Diana’s had a terribly worrying time with him. Spends his time seeking the truth in India or wherever it is these people think they’re going to find it. I would have thought Scotland would be the last place he’d come to, nothing but down-to-earth tweeds and haggis. I must say I always thought Caroline was rather an odd girl. She tried to go on the stage once, and it was the most terrible failure, but I never thought she’d do anything so bizarre as simply disappear.”

  “What’s Diana doing about it?”

  “My dear, what can she do? And the last thing she wants is to call the police in. After all, although the boy is only a child, the girl is supposed to be adult … she should be able to look after him. And Diana’s terrified of the papers getting on to the story and splashing it all over the front pages of the evening editions. And if that wasn’t enough, the wedding’s on Tuesday, and Hugh does have a certain professional reputation to maintain.”

  “Wedding?”

  “Caroline’s wedding.” Elaine sounded exasperated as though Liz was being very stupid. “Caroline is marrying Diana’s brother, Hugh Rashley. On Tuesday. The wedding rehearsal’s on Monday and they don’t even know where she is. It’s all too distressing. I always thought she was an odd girl, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I never met her.”

  “No, of course you haven’t. I always forget. Silly of me. But you know I always thought she was rather fond of Diana, I never thought she’d do this to her. Oh, darling, you won’t do it to me, will you, when you eventually do get married? And let’s hope it’s very soon now and to the Right Man. No mentioning names, but you know who I mean. And now I simply must go. I’ve got a hair appointment and I’m going to be late as it is. And, darling, don’t fret about Oliver, just go and see him and be cosy and understanding. I’m sure everything will be all right. And I’m longing to see you. Come back soon.”

  “I will.”

  “Goodbye, darling.” And then an unconvincing afterthought: “My love to your father.”

  * * *

  Later still in the morning Caroline Cliburn lay, supine on a bed of heather, the sun’s warmth like a cloak on the length of her body, her arm flung across her eyes against its dazzling brightness. Thus blinded, her other senses became twice as sharp. She heard curlews, the distant cawing of a crow, the lap of water, the tiny sough of some mysterious, unfelt breeze. She smelt the pure sweetness of snow and clear water and earth, mossy and damp and dark with peat. She felt the cool nose of Lisa, the old labrador, who lay beside her, and pressed her nose into Caroline’s hand.

  Beside her, Oliver Cairney sat, smoking a cigarette, his hands loose between his knees, watching Jody’s exertions as the boy struggled, out in the middle of the little loch, with a bulky rowboat and a pair of oars too long for him. Every now and then came an ominous splash, and Caroline would raise her head to investigate, see that he had merely caught a crab, or was driving the rowboat around in small circles, and satisfied that he was not on the point of drowning himself, lie back in the heather and cover her eyes once more.

  Oliver said, “If I hadn’t tied him up in that life-jacket, you’d be running up and down the bank like a demented hen.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. I’d be out there with him.”

  “Which would make two of you ripe for drowning.” The heather pricked through her shirt, a nameless bug walked up her arm. She sat up, brushing the bug away, screwing her face up into the sunshine.

  “You could hardly believe it, could you? Two days ago and Jody and I were in the middle of a blizzard. And now this.” The surface of the loch was still and clear, blue as summer with reflected sky. Beyond the distant reed-fringed bank, the moor rose in a series of swelling, heathery slopes, crested at the peak by an outcrop of rock, like a beacon on the top of a mountain. She could see the distant shapes of a flock of grazing sheep, hear in the still morning, their plaintive baa-ing. The rowboat, so manfully oared, creaked slowly across the surface of the water. Jody’s hair stood up on end, and his face was beginning to turn pink.

  She said, “It is a lovely place. I hadn’t realized how lovely it was.”

  “This is the best time. Now and for another month or two when the beech leaves open and the daffodils come out and all of a sudden it’s summer. And then in October, it’s beautiful again, the trees flaming out, the sky deep blue and all the heather turned purple.”

  “Won’t you miss it terribly?”

  “Of course I will, but there’s nothing to be done about it.”

  “You’re going to sell it?”

  “Yes.” He dropped the stub of his cigarette, stamped it out with the heel of his shoe.

  “Have you got a buyer?”

  “Yes. Duncan Fraser. My neighbour. He lives across the glen, you can’t see his house, because it’s hidden by that stand of pines, but he wants the land to take in with his own. It’s simply a question of doing away with the march fences.”

  “And your house?”

  “That’ll have to go separately. I’ve got to talk to the lawyers about that. I said I’d go down to Relkirk this afternoon and see them, see if we can thrash something out.”

  “Won’t you keep any of Cairney?”

  “How you do harp on a subject.”

  “Men are usually sentimental about tradition, and land.”

  “Perhaps I am.”

  “But you don’t mind living in London?”

  “Good God, no. I love it.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I work for Bankfoot and Balcarries. And if you don’t know what they do, they’re one of the largest engineering consultants in the country.”

  “And where do you live?”

  “In a flat, just off the Fulham Road.”

  “Not very far from us.” She smiled to think how close they had lived, without eve
r meeting each other. “It’s funny, isn’t it? London’s so big, and yet you can come to Scotland and meet your next-door neighbour. Is it a nice flat?”

  “I like it.”

  She tried to picture it, but failed utterly because it was impossible to imagine Oliver away from Cairney.

  “Is it big or small?”

  “Quite big. Big rooms. It’s the ground floor of an old house.”

  “Have you got a garden?”

  “Yes. Rather overrun by my neighbour’s cat. And a big sitting-room and a kitchen where I eat, and a couple of bedrooms and a bathroom. All mod. cons. in fact, except that my car has to moulder at the pavement’s edge in all weathers. Now what else do you want to know?”

  “Nothing.”

  “The colour of the curtains? Crushed elephant’s breath.” He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted out across the water. “Hey, Jody!”

  Jody paused and looked around, the oars held high and dripping. “I think you’ve had enough. Come along in now.”

  “All right.”

  “That’s it. Pull with the left oar. No, the left, you idiot! That’s the way.” He got to his feet and walked down to the end of the wooden jetty and stood waiting for the rowboat’s slow, splashy progress to bring it within reach. Then he crouched down to reach for the painter and draw it alongside. Beaming, Jody unshipped the heavy oars, and Oliver took them and tied up the boat while Jody clambered out. He came back up the jetty towards his sister, and she saw that his sneakers were soaking and his jeans wet to the knee. He was delighted with himself.

  “You did very well,” Caroline told him.

  “I’d have done better if the oars hadn’t been so big.” He struggled with the knots on the life-jacket and pulled it off over his head. “I’ve been thinking, Caroline, wouldn’t it be nice if we could stay here for ever? It’s got everything anybody could want.”

  Caroline had been thinking this at intervals throughout the morning; and then telling herself, at equal intervals, not to be such a fool. Now, she told Jody not to be a fool, and his face was surprised at the impatience in her voice.

  Oliver tightened the rope on the wooden bollard, shouldered the heavy oars and carried them over to the ramshackle boat house to put them away. Jody picked up the life-jacket and went to put that away as well, and they shut the sagging door and came back to Caroline over the springy turf, the tall young man and the freckled boy, with the sun behind them and the dazzle of water.

  They reached her side. “Up you get,” said Oliver and reached out a hand to pull her to her feet. Lisa scrambled up as well, and stood waving her tail, as if anticipating some pleasant excursion.

  “This was meant to be a walk of an exploration or something,” Oliver went on. “And all we’ve done is sit in the sun and watch Jody take all the exercise.”

  Jody asked, “Where shall we go now?”

  “There’s something I want to show you … it’s just round the corner.”

  They followed him, Indian file, trailing the small sheep tracks that netted the margins of the loch. They crested a rise and the loch took a sharp turn and at its end stood a small, derelict cottage.

  “Is that what you wanted to show us?” asked Jody.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a ruin.”

  “I know. It hasn’t been lived in for years. Charles and I used to play here. Once we were even allowed to sleep out.”

  “Who used to live here?”

  “I don’t know. A shepherd. Or a crofter. Those little walls are old sheep pens and there’s a rowan in the garden. In the old days, country people used to plant rowans at their doors because they thought they brought good fortune.”

  “I don’t know what a rowan looks like.”

  “In England they call them Mountain Ash. They have feathery leaves and bright red berries, rather like holly.”

  As they came closer to the house Caroline saw that it was not as derelict as it had first appeared. Stone built, it had retained a certain air of solidity, and although the corrugated iron roof had fallen into disrepair, and the door hung from its hinges, it was clear that it had once been an entirely respectable dwelling, snug in the fold of the hill, with the traces of a garden still visible between the drystone walls. They went up the ghost of the path, and in through the door, Oliver prudently ducking his head beneath the low lintel, and there was one big room, with a rusty iron stove at one end, and a broken chair, and on the floor, the remains of a swallow’s nest. The floor was cracked and gaping and stained with bird droppings, and the slanting sun rays danced with motes of dust.

  In the corner a rotted ladder led to an upper floor.

  “Desirable, detached, two-storey dwelling house,” said Oliver. “Who wants to go up?”

  Jody wrinkled his nose. “I don’t.” He was secretly afraid of spiders. “I’m going back to the garden. I want to look at the rowan tree. Come along, Lisa, you come with me.”

  So Oliver and Caroline were left alone to mount the rotting ladder, which was missing more rungs than it had kept. They climbed into a loft that was splashed with sunlight that poured through the holes in the gaping roof. The floor planks were rotten and breaking, but the crossbeams beneath them sound, and there was just space for Oliver to stand erect, in the very centre of the room, with the top of his head only half an inch from the ridgepole.

  Caroline stuck her head cautiously out of one of the holes in the roof and saw Jody in the garden below, swinging like a monkey from a branch of the rowan. She saw the curving length of the loch, the green of the first of the farm fields, cattle grazing, brown and white like toys, and in the far distance, the line of the main road. She withdrew her head and turned to Oliver. He had a cobweb on his chin and he said in Cockney, “Ow about it, lidy? With a lick of paint you won’t know the place?”

  “But you couldn’t do anything with it, could you? Seriously.”

  “I don’t know. It just occurred to me that perhaps it would be possible. If I can sell Cairney House then I could maybe afford to spend some money on this place.”

  “But there’s no running water.”

  “I could fix that.”

  “Or drains.”

  “Septic tank.”

  “Or electricity.”

  “Lamps. Candles. Much more flattering.”

  “And what would you cook on?”

  “Calor gas.”

  “And when would you use it?”

  “Weekends. Holidays. I could bring my children here.”

  “I didn’t know you had any.”

  “I haven’t yet. That I know of. But when I get married, it would be a desirable little property to have under my belt. It would also mean that I still owned a little bit of Cairney. Which should set your sentimental heart at rest.”

  “So it does matter to you.”

  “Caroline, life is too short to look back over you shoulder. You only lose the way and stumble and probably fall flat on your face. I’d rather look forward.”

  “But this house…”

  “It was just an idea. I thought it might amuse you to see it. Come on now, we must get back or Mrs Cooper will think we’re all drowned.”

  * * *

  He went first down the ladder, cautiously feeling for each surviving rung before he put his weight on it. At the bottom he waited for Caroline, holding the ladder steady between his hands. But half-way down, she became stranded, unable either to go up or down. She started to laugh and he told her to jump, and she said that she couldn’t jump, and Oliver said any fool could jump, but by then Caroline was laughing too much to do anything constructive, and finally, inevitably, she slipped, there was the ominous crack of rotted wood, and her descent finished in an undignified slither before Oliver finally caught her in his arms.

  There was a sprig of heather in her pale hair, her sweater felt warm from the sunshine, and the long sleep of the night before had wiped the smudges from beneath her eyes. Her skin was smooth and faintly pink, her face turned up to his, her m
outh open in laughter. Without thought, without hesitation, he bent and kissed her. Suddenly, it was very quiet. For an instant she stayed still, and then she put the palms of her hands against his chest and pushed him gently away. The laughter had gone from her face, and there was an expression in her eyes that he had never seen there before.

  She said at last, “It was just the day.”

  “What’s that meant to mean?”

  “Part of a nice day. The sunshine. Spring.”

  “Does that make any difference?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She moved away from him, out of his arms, turned and went towards the door. She stood there, leaning a shoulder against the doorpost, silhouetted against the light, her tangled hair an aureole about the neat shape of her head.

  She said, “It’s a darling house. I think you should keep it.”

  Jody had abandoned the rowan, had been lured back to the water’s edge, was skimming stones trying to make them jump, and driving Lisa insane because she didn’t know whether she was meant to plunge in and retrieve them, or stay where she was. Caroline picked up a flat pebble and threw it and it jumped three times before it sank out of sight.

  Jody was furious. “I wish you’d show me. Show me how you do it,” but Caroline turned away from him because she couldn’t reply, and she didn’t want him to see her face. Because all at once she knew why she had fallen out of love with the memory of Drennan Colefield. And, which was much more frightening, she knew why she had not told Oliver that she was going to marry Hugh.

  * * *

  Liz, coming to Cairney, found it quiet and apparently deserted. She stopped her car at the door, killed the engine and waited for someone to come out and greet her. Nobody did. But the door stood open, so she got out of the car and went indoors and stood in the middle of the hall and said Oliver’s name. Still no response, but domestic noises came from the direction of the kitchen, and familiar as she was with the house, Liz took herself down the passage and through the swing door, and surprised Mrs Cooper who had just come indoors from hanging out a line of clothes.

  She started elaborately, and placed her hand over her heart. “Liz!” She had known Liz since she was a child and would never have thought of calling her Miss Fraser.