There were signs and warnings everywhere. Hedges had been bulldozed away, leaving great scars of raw earth in their wake; men were working with picks and shovels, enormous earth removers growled away like prehistoric monsters, and over it all hung the clean and delicious smell of hot tar.
The lights were against us. We waited, engines running, and then the light went from red to green, and the bus rolled on, down the narrow track between the warning signals, and back on to the road. The woman next to me began to shift about, checking the contents of her basket, looking up at the luggage rack.
I said, “Do you want something?”
“Did I put my umbrella up there?”
I stood up and delved for the umbrella, and gave it to her, also a large cardboard box of eggs, and a bundle of shaggy asters, inexpertly wrapped in newspaper. By the time all this had been collected and delivered, we had reached our destination. The bus made a huge turn around the town hall, rolled into the market square and came to a final halt.
Because I had no baskets or encumbrances, I was one of the first out. My grandmother had told me the whereabouts of the lawyers’ office, and from where I stood, I could see the square stone building she had described, directly opposite me, across the cobbled market place.
Waiting for the passing traffic, I crossed over and went in through the door, and read the indicator board in the hall and saw that Mr D. Stewart could be found in room No. 3 and that he was IN. I went up a dark staircase, nicely decorated in sludge green and mud brown, passed beneath a stained-glass window that let in no light at all, and finally knocked on a door.
He said, “Come in.”
I went in and was delighted to find that his office, at least, was light, bright, and had a carpet. The window looked out over the busy market square, there was a jug of Michaelmas daisies on the marble mantelpiece, and somehow he had managed to create an ambience of cheerful business. He wore, I suppose because it was a Saturday, a sporty-looking checked shirt, and a tweed jacket, and when he looked up and smiled a welcome for me the doom-like weight that had lain in the pit of my stomach all morning was suddenly not so doom-like after all.
He stood up, and I said, “It’s a gorgeous morning.”
“Isn’t it? Too good to be working.”
“Do you always work on a Saturday?”
“Sometimes … depends how much there is to be done. You can get a surprising amount achieved when other people aren’t ringing you up on the telephone all the time.” He opened a drawer in his desk. “I changed the money for you at the current exchange rate … I made a note…”
“Don’t bother about that.”
“You should bother, Jane; your Scottish blood should make certain that I haven’t diddled you out of a single bawbee.”
“Well, if you have you can count it as personal commission.” I held out my hand and he gave me a bundle of notes and some loose change. “Now you’ll really be able to join the big spenders, though what you’re going to find to spend it on in Caple Bridge is beyond me.”
I stuffed the money in the pocket of my tinker’s raincoat.
“That’s what my grandmother said. She wanted to take me to Inverness, but I said I was having lunch with you.”
“Do you like steaks?”
“I haven’t had a steak since Father stood me dinner on my birthday. At Reef Point we lived on cold pizzas.”
“How long will you be?”
“Half an hour…”
He looked astonished. “Is that all?”
“I loathe shopping at the best of times. Nothing ever fits, and when it does I always hate it … I shall come back wearing a lot of unsuitable clothes and probably in the worst of tempers.”
“I shall say they’re charming, and coax you back into a good mood, then.” He glanced at his watch. “Half an hour … say, twelve? Here?”
“That’s fine.”
I went out again with a pocket full of money and searched for somewhere to spend it. There were butchers’ shops, and grocers, and game merchants, and a gunsmith’s and a garage. Eventually, between the inevitable Italian ice-cream parlour that exists in most small Scottish towns, and the Post Office, I ran Isabel McKenzie Modes to earth. Or more accurately, Isabel MODES McKenzie. I went in, through a glassed door, modestly draped in net, and found myself in a small room lined with shelves of unhopeful looking clothes. There was a glass counter filled with underclothes in peach and beige, and here and there were tastefully draped, sad, string-coloured pullovers.
My heart sank, but before I could escape, a curtain opened at the back of the shop and I was joined by a small, mouse-like woman, wearing a jersey suit two sizes too big for her, and a huge Cairngorm brooch.
“Good morning.” I guessed that she had started life in Edinburgh and I wondered if she were Isabel Modes McKenzie in person, and if so, what had brought her to Caple Bridge. Perhaps she had been told that the garment trade was brisker here.
“Oh … good morning. I—I wanted a sweater.”
As soon as I said the word I knew I had made my first mistake.
“We have some very nice jairseys. Did you want it in wool or bouclé?”
I said I wanted it in wool.
“And what size would it be?”
I said I supposed a sort of medium size.
She began to pull out shelves, and soon I was picking my way through sweaters in old rose, moss green and dead-leaf brown.
“H—haven’t you any other colours?”
“What other colour did you have in mind?”
“Well—navy blue?”
“Oh, there’s very little navy being worn this year.” I wondered where she got her information. Perhaps she had a hot line to Paris.
“Now, this is a charming shade…”
It was petrol blue, a colour that I am convinced goes with nothing and nobody.
“I really wanted something plainer … you know, warm and thick … perhaps a polo neck…?”
“Oh no, we haven’t any polo necks … polo necks aren’t being…”
I broke in rudely, but I was getting desperate.
“It doesn’t matter then, I’ll leave the sweater … the jersey … Perhaps you’ve got some skirts?”
It started all over again. “Did you want it in tartan, or a tweed…?”
“A tweed, I suppose…”
“And what is your waist measurement?”
Beginning to sound terse, I told her. There was more searching, this time through an unhopeful looking rack. She brought out two, and laid them, with a grand gesture, before me. One was unspeakable. The other not quite so hideous, in a brown and white herringbone. Feebly I agreed to try it on, was squeezed into a space as small as a cupboard, closed in by yet another curtain and left to get on with it. With some difficulty I struggled out of the clothes I was wearing, and pulled on the skirt. The tweed prickled, and caught at my stockings as though it had been woven from thistles. I did up the waist hooks and the zip and looked at myself in the long mirror. The effect was startling. The tweed zig-zagged around me like an op-art picture, my hips had become elephantine, and the waist band dug into my meagre flesh like a wire-cutter.
Isabel Modes McKenzie coughed discreetly and whisked back the curtain, like a conjurer.
“Oh, you’re lovely in that,” she said. “You suit tweed.”
“Don’t you think it’s … well, a little bit long?”
“Skirts are longer this season you know…”
“Yes, but this one nearly covers my knees…”
“Well, if you wanted, I could take it up a fraction … it’s very good looking … there’s nothing so good looking as a nice tweed…”
To get away, I might have bought it … but I took another look in the mirror, and was strong-minded.
“No. No, I’m afraid it really won’t do … it’s not what I wanted.” I undid the zipper and tore it off before she could talk me into buying the dreadful thing, and she took it back, sadly, averting her eyes discreetly from my
petticoat.
“Perhaps you’d like to try the tartan, the ancient colours are so soft…”
“No…” I pulled on my old, American drip-dry, un-warm skirt and it felt like a friend. “No, I think I’ll leave it … it was just an idea … thank you so much.”
I pulled on my raincoat, picked up my bag, and together, in sidling fashion, we made for the net-curtained door. She reached it first and opened it for me, reluctantly, as though letting a prized animal out of a trap.
“Perhaps if you were passing another day…”
“Yes … maybe…”
“I shall be getting my new stock next week.”
Straight from Dior, no doubt. “Thank you … I am sorry … good morning.”
Out and away, and into the blessed open air, I turned and walked off as fast as I could. I passed the gunsmith’s, and then, on an inspiration, turned round and walked back and went in, and bought, in two minutes flat, a large navy blue sweater originally intended for a young man. Relieved beyond words that my morning had not been a total failure, and clasping the sturdily wrapped parcel, I returned to David.
While he stacked papers and locked up filing cabinets, I sat on his desk and told him the saga of my disastrous shopping expedition. Spiced by his comments (he could do an Ediburgh accent to perfection) the story grew in its telling, and in the end I laughed so much that my ribs ached. We collected ourselves at last; David stuffed a pile of files into a bulging briefcase, gave a last look round, and then closed the door on his office and we went down the dingy stairs and out into the sunlit, crowded street.
He lived only a hundred yards or so from the centre of the little town, and we walked this short distance together. David’s old briefcase slapped and banged against his long legs and every now and then we had to separate in order to avoid a parked perambulator or a pair of gossiping women. His house, when we came to it, was one of a row—identical, small, two-storey stone houses, each set in its own plot of ground, fronted by a modest garden, and with a gravel path leading from gate to front door. David’s differed from his neighbours only in that he had added a garage, built into the space between his house and the next, with a concrete driveway connecting it to the street. And he had painted his front door a bright, sunny yellow.
He opened the gate and I followed him down the path and waited while he unlocked the door. He stood aside and waited for me to go in ahead of him. There was a narrow hallway with a staircase rising out of it, doors to right and left, and a kitchen visible through the open door at the back. It should have been very ordinary, and yet he—or somebody—had made it charming with close carpeting and leafy wallpaper, and groups of precisely arranged sporting prints.
He took my parcel and my raincoat from me, and dumped them, and his brief-case, on the chair in the hall, and then led me into a long sitting-room, with windows at either end. And it was only then that I appreciated the unique position of the unpretentious little house, for the windows to the south had been enlarged into a deep bay, and this looked out over a long narrow garden, sloping gently down towards the river.
The room itself was full of promise. Shelves of books, a stack of records, magazines on the low table in front of the fireplace. There were cushiony-looking armchairs and a little sofa, an old-fashioned cabinet filled with Meissen china, and over the mantelpiece … I went to look …
“A Ben Nicholson?” He nodded. “But not an original.”
“Yes, it is. My mother gave it to me for my twenty-first.”
“This reminds me of your mother’s flat in London … it’s got the same sort of feeling…”
“Probably because it was furnished more or less from the same house. And of course she helped me choose the curtains and the wallpaper and stuff.”
Secretly glad that it was his mother, and no one else, I went over to the window. “Who would have thought you’d have a garden like this?” There was a little terrace, with a wooden table and chairs, and then a lawn, scattered now with fallen leaves, and flowerbeds still filled with late roses, and clumps of purple Michaelmas daisies. There was a birdbath and an old, leaning apple tree. “Do you do the gardening yourself?”
“You could hardly call it gardening … as you can see, it’s not very big.”
“But having the river and everything…”
“That’s what decided me when I bought the house. I tell all my friends that I have fishing on the Caple, and they’re all enormously impressed. I don’t tell them that it’s only ten yards…”
There was a clutter of photographs and snapshots arranged on the top of the bookcase, and I was irresistibly drawn to them. “Is this your mother? And your father? And you?” About twelve years old with an engaging grin. “Is this you?”
“Yes, it is.”
“You didn’t wear glasses then.”
“I didn’t wear glasses till I was sixteen.”
“What happened?”
“I had an accident. It was a paper chase, at school, and the boy in front of me let a branch of a tree snap back into my eye. It wasn’t his fault, it could have happened to anyone. But I partly lost the sight of the eye, and I’ve worn glasses ever since.”
“Oh, what bad luck!”
“Not really. I can do most things I want…, except play tennis.”
“Why can’t you play tennis?”
“I don’t quite know. But if I can see the ball I can’t hit it, and if I can hit it, I can’t see it. It doesn’t make for much of a game.”
We went through to the kitchen, which was as small as a galley in a yacht and so tidy that I felt ashamed at the memory of my own inadequacies. He peered into the oven where he had left some potatoes baking, and then found a frying-pan, and butter, and took a bloodstained parcel from the fridge and unfolded it to reveal a couple of inch-thick Aberdeen Angus steaks.
“Will you cook them, or shall I?” he asked.
“You cook them … I’ll lay the table or something.” I opened the door that led on to the terrace, baking in the unseasonable heat. “Can’t we have lunch here? It’s like being in the Mediterranean.”
“If you want.”
“It’s blissful … shall we use this table?”
Talking, getting in his way, having to ask where everything was, I eventually got the table laid. While I did this, he had tossed a salad, unwrapped a crisp french loaf and taken small dishes of frosty cold butter from the refrigerator. With all this completed and the steaks gently sizzling in the pan, he poured two glasses of sherry and we went out to sit in the sunshine.
He shucked off his jacket, and leaned back, long legs stretched before him, and turned up his face to the heat.
“Tell me about yesterday,” he said suddenly.
“Yesterday?”
“You walked the Lairig Ghru—” he cocked an eye at me— “or didn’t you?”
“Oh. Yes, we did.”
“What was it like?”
I tried to think what it had been like, and found I could remember nothing save the extraordinary discussion I had had with Sinclair after lunch.
“It was … all right. Marvellous, really.”
“You don’t sound very enthusiastic.”
“Well, it was … marvellous.” I couldn’t think of any other word.
“But exhausting, perhaps.”
“Yes. I was tired.”
“How long did it take?”
Again, I could hardly remember. “Well, we were back by dark. Gibson met us at Loch Morlich…”
“Umm.” He seemed to consider this. “And what’s cousin Sinclair doing today?”
I stooped and picked up a piece of gravel and began to toss it, catching it on the back of my hand as though I were playing Jacks. “He’s gone to London.”
“To London? I thought he was on leave.”
“Yes, he is.” I dropped the stone, bent to pick up another. “But he had a phone call last night … I don’t know what about … we found a note when we came down for breakfast this morning.”
/> “Did he drive?”
I remembered the tiger roar of the Lotus, splitting the still darkness. “Yes, he took the car.” I dropped the second stone. “He’ll be back in a day or so. Monday evening, perhaps, he said.” I did not want to talk about Sinclair. I was afraid of David asking questions, and, clumsily, tried to change the subject. “Do you really fish from the bottom of your garden? I shouldn’t think there’d be room to cast … and you’d get all tied up in your apple tree…”
And so the conversation veered to fishing, and we talked about this, and I told him about the Clearwater river in Idaho where my father once took me for a holiday.
“… it runs with salmon … you can practically lift them out with a bent pin…”
“You like America, don’t you?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.” He was silent, supine in the sunshine, and encouraged by his silence, I warmed to the subject, and the dilemma in which, inevitably, I found myself. “It’s funny belonging to two countries, you never seem to quite fit into either. When I was in California I used to wish I were at Elvie. But now I’m at Elvie…”
“You wish you were back in California.”
“Not exactly. But there are things I miss.”
“Such as?”
“Well, specific things. My father, of course. And Rusty. And the sound of the Pacific, late at night, when the rollers come pouring up on to the beach.”
“And what about the unspecific things?”
“That’s more complicated.” I tried to decide what I really missed. “Ice water. And the Bell Telephone Company. And San Francisco. And central heating. And the garden centres where you can go and buy plants and stuff and everything smells of orange blossom.” I turned towards David, and found that he was watching me. Our eyes met, and he smiled. I said, “But there are good things over here too.”
“Tell me about them.”
“Post Offices. You can buy anything in a country Post Office—even stamps. And the way the weather is never the same, two days running. It’s so much more exciting. And afternoon tea, with scones and biscuits and soggy gingerbread…”