September

He said, “When I left Australia I never thought I’d be asked to a formal do. Besides, there wasn’t space in my back pack for a dinner jacket.”

  They all considered the problem.

  Archie said, “I’d lend you mine, only I’m wearing it myself.”

  “Dad, yours wouldn’t even go round Jeff.”

  “He could always hire one. There are places in Relkirk…”

  “Oh, Dad, they’re dreadfully expensive.”

  Archie was humbled. “Sorry. I wouldn’t know.”

  Across the table, Edmund eyed the young Australian. “You’re about the same size as I am. I’ll lend you something if you like.”

  Violet, hearing this, was taken aback. Sitting next to her son, she turned her head to look at him. He seemed unaware of her piercing regard, and his profile, composed and unsmiling, gave nothing away. Trying to analyse her unmotherly astonishment, she realised that the truth of it was that she had never expected Edmund to come up with such a kindly and impetuous suggestion.

  But why? He was her son, the child of Geordie. She knew that where important issues were concerned he would never be anything but generous — with both time and money — concerned and considerate. Violet could turn to him — and had done so many times — knowing that he would go to endless trouble to sort out a problem or help her make a decision.

  But little things…little things were different, the small gesture, the tender word, the trivial gift that had cost nothing but a few pence and a moment of time, but was significant because of the thought behind it. Her eyes strayed across the table to Virginia and the heavy gold bracelet that she wore around her wrist. Edmund had given her that bracelet — and Violet did not like to think what it had cost — like a tube of glue, to patch up their disagreement. But how much better had they not quarrelled in the first place, and so spared themselves weeks of unhappiness.

  And now he was offering Lucilla’s Jeff a favour. It would be no hardship to him, but the offer had been made so spontaneously that Violet was reminded of Geordie. Which should have filled her with pleasure, but instead left her sad because she could not remember when she had last looked at Edmund and recognised any characteristic inherited from his gentle father.

  As for Jeff, he seemed as disconcerted as she was herself.

  “No. I couldn’t impose. I’ll just hire something.”

  “No skin off my nose. I’ve some spare things at Balnaid. You can try them on, see how they fit.”

  “But won’t you need them yourself?”

  “I shall be decked out, like the man on a shortbread tin, in my kilt.”

  Lucilla, however, was deeply grateful. “You are a saint, Edmund. What a relief. Now all I have to do is find some garment to wear.”

  “Isobel and I are going shopping for finery in Relkirk,” Pandora told her. “Why don’t you come too?”

  Lucilla, surprising everybody, said, “I’d love to.” But their surprise was short-lived. “There’s a wonderful market in Relkirk, and a stall stuffed with glorious 1930s tat. I’m sure I’ll find something there.”

  “Yes,” said her mother. “I am quite sure that you will.”

  “Dad, you are a brute! You’ve bashed me right into the rhododendrons.”

  “I wanted to get you out of the way.”

  “You didn’t need to hit me quite so far.”

  “Yes, I did. You’re far too cunning a player to be left jostling around the hoop. Now, Virginia, you need to come just here.”

  “Which blade of grass did you have in mind?”

  Isobel’s lunch party, with coffee drunk, had amicably dispersed. The boys, abandoning Scalectrix, had gone to play in Hamish’s tree-house, and swing on his trapeze. Isobel had taken Vi to look at her border…not as grand or imposing as it had been in the old days but still something that she was always quite proud to show off and have admired. Archie, Virginia, Lucilla, and Jeff had decided to take advantage of Hamish’s labour and were engaged in a needle contest of croquet. Edmund and Pandora sat in the old swing-seat at the top of the grassy bank and watched them.

  It had turned into a pleasant and blowy afternoon. Clouds, in layers, drifted across the sky, but there were wide patches of blue in between, and when the sun shone, it became very warm. Despite this, Pandora, on her way out into the garden, had collected from the cloakroom an old shooting jacket of Archie’s, oiled khaki and lined with hairy tweed. Bundled in this garment, she sat with her legs tucked up beneath her. From time to time Edmund gave a push with his foot to set the old seat swinging. It needed to be oiled and made a hideous squeaking sound.

  A wail from the middle of the rhododendrons. “I can’t find the beastly ball and I’ve been scratched by a bramble.”

  “In a moment,” Edmund observed, “family fur is going to fly.”

  “It always did. It’s a lethal game.”

  They fell silent, rocking gently to and fro. Virginia took a swipe at her ball, which rolled placidly at least four yards beyond the spot that Archie had been indicating.

  “Oh, sorry, Archie.”

  “You hit it too hard.”

  “Nothing,” said Edmund, “is so obvious as the obvious remark.”

  Pandora made no comment. Squeak, squeak went the swing.

  They watched in silence while Jeff played his shot. She said, “Do you hate me, Edmund?”

  “No.”

  “But you despise me? Think little of me?”

  “Why should I do that?”

  “Because I made such a mess of everything. Running off with another woman’s husband, and he old enough to be my father. Leaving no word of explanation, breaking my parents’ hearts, never coming back. Sending waves of shock and horror to reverberate around the country.”

  “Is that what happened?”

  “You know it is.”

  “I wasn’t here at the time.”

  “Of course. You were in London.”

  “I never found out why you went flying off.”

  “I was miserable. I didn’t know what to do with my life. Archie had gone and was married to Isobel, and I missed him. There didn’t seem to be any way to turn. And then along came a little diversion, and it all seemed frightfully glamorous and grown-up. Exciting. My ego needed a boost and that’s what he provided.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “Oh, at some party. He had a horse-faced wife called Gloria, but she scarpered pretty sharpish as soon as she saw the way the wind was blowing. Went off to Marbella and never returned. Which was another reason for eloping to California.”

  Lucilla, with bits of leaf in her hair, emerged from the rhododendrons and rejoined the game. “Who’s been through the hoop, and who hasn’t?”

  The seat, gradually, stopped swinging. Edmund gave another push and started it up again. Squeak, squeak.

  Pandora said, “Are you happy?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think I was ever happy.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I liked being rich but I wasn’t happy. I was homesick and I missed the dogs. Do you know what he was called, the man I ran away with?”

  “I don’t think I was ever told.”

  “Harald Hogg. Can you imagine anybody eloping with a man called Harald Hogg? After our divorce, the first thing I did was to change my name back to Blair. So I didn’t keep his name, but I did keep most of his money. So lucky, to be divorced in California.”

  Edmund said nothing.

  “And then, when it was all over, and after I’d changed my name back to Blair, do you know what I did?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I went to New York. I’d never been there before, didn’t know anybody. But I checked in at the classiest hotel I could find and then I walked down Fifth Avenue and knew that anything I wanted I could buy. For myself. And then I didn’t buy anything. That’s a sort of happiness, isn’t it, Edmund? Knowing that you can buy anything you want and then discovering that you don’t want it.”

  “Are you happ
y now?”

  “I’m home.”

  “Why did you come back?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Reasons. Lucilla and Jeff were there to drive me. I wanted to see Archie again. And then, of course, the irresistible lure of Verena Steynton’s party.”

  “I have a feeling that Verena Steynton has little to do with it.”

  “Perhaps. But it’s a nice excuse.”

  “You never came home when your parents died.”

  “That was unforgivable, wasn’t it?”

  “You said it, Pandora. I didn’t.”

  “I wasn’t brave enough. I didn’t have the nerve. I couldn’t face funerals, graves, condolences. I couldn’t face anybody. And death is so final, just as youth is so sweet. I couldn’t bear to accept that it was all over.”

  “Are you happy in Majorca?”

  “I’m home there too. All these years, and the Casa Rosa is the first home I’ve actually owned.”

  “Are you going back?”

  All the time they had been talking, they had not looked at each other. Instead, they had watched, with patent intent, the croquet players. But now he turned to face her, and her head came around and her remarkable eyes, fringed with thick black lashes, stared into his own. Perhaps it was because she had become so painfully thin, but they seemed to Edmund more enormous and lustrous than they had ever been.

  She said, “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Perhaps I don’t know either.”

  She laid her head back on the faded striped cushions and returned her attention to the croquet. Their conversation, such as it was, appeared to be over. Edmund watched his wife. She stood in the middle of the verdant lawn, leaning on her mallet, while Jeff lined up to play a tricky shot. She wore a checked shirt and a short blue denim skirt, and her legs were long and bare and brown, and her canvas sneakers very white. Fit, slender, bursting into laughter at Jeff’s abortive attempt to get his ball through the hoop, she radiated the sort of vitality that Edmund associated with glossy magazine advertisements for sports clothes, Rolex watches, or suntan oil.

  Virginia. My love, he told himself. My life. But for some reason the words were empty as incantations that were never going to work, and he found himself racked by despair. Pandora had fallen silent. He could not imagine what she was thinking about. He turned to look at her and it took him no time at all to realise that she was fast asleep.

  So much for his entertaining company. He was torn between chagrin and amusement, and this healthy reaction to her perfidy served to fend off for the time being the deadly sensation that he had come to the end of his rope.

  26

  Monday the Twelfth

  Monday was one of Edie’s mornings for helping Virginia at Balnaid, and Virginia was grateful for this arrangement. She had never relished Mondays, with the weekend over and Edmund gone from her once more, dressed in his city suit, and leaving the house at eight o’clock in order to get into Edinburgh and his office before the worst of the rush-hour traffic. His departure left an emptiness, a flatness, a sense of anticlimax, and it was always something of an effort to get down to day-to-day living again and cope with all the tedious demands of simply keeping the house going. But hearing the bang of the back door as Edie let herself in always made everything, instantly, a bit more bearable. To know that Edie was there. There was someone to talk to, someone to laugh with, someone to dust the library and vacuum the dog hairs off the hall carpet. The clatter from the kitchen was comforting. Edie, dealing with the breakfast dishes, loading the washing machine with a weekend’s worth of dirty clothes, and talking to the dogs.

  “Now don’t you get under my feet, or you’ll get your tail trodden on.”

  Virginia, in her bedroom, changed the sheets on their big double bed, her regular Monday-morning chore. Henry had gone shopping. His mother had given him five pounds, and he had set off for the village, to visit Mrs Ishak and buy the allotted amount of sweets, chocolates, and biscuits that he was permitted to take to Templehall in his tuck-box, and which were meant to last him for a full term. He had never before been given so much money to spend on sweets, and the novelty of this, for the moment, had diverted his attention from the fact that tomorrow he was leaving home for the first time. Eight years old and going away. Not for ever, it was true. But Virginia knew that when she saw him again, he would already be a different Henry because he would have seen things and done things and learned things totally dissociated from his mother’s life. Tomorrow, he was going. The first day of ten years of regular separation from his parents and his home. The beginning of his growing up. Up and away from her.

  She folded pillowcases. They had only another twenty-four hours. All through the weekend she had resolutely put his inevitable departure out of her mind; pretended to herself that Tuesday was never going to happen. Henry, she guessed, had done the same, and her heart bled for his innocence. Last night, saying goodnight to him, she had steeled herself for a dam-burst of tears and lamentations. The weekend’s over. Our last weekend. I don’t want to go to school. I don’t want to leave you. But Henry had simply told her that he’d quite liked playing with Hamish, he’d hung by one leg from Hamish’s trapeze; and then, worn out by the day’s activity, had fallen almost instantly asleep.

  She spread crisp, ironed sheets. I’ll get through today and make it fun for him, she told herself. And then, somehow, I’ll get through tomorrow. After Edmund has taken Henry, after they’ve driven away and I can’t hear the car any longer, I’ll think of something diverting or industrious to do. I’ll go and see Dermot Honeycombe and spend hours looking for a present for Katy Steynton. A bit of china, or an antique lamp, or perhaps a little piece of Georgian silver. I’ll write a long letter to Gramps and Grandma. I’ll turn out the linen cupboard, sew buttons on Edmund’s shirts…And then Edmund will come home, and after that the worst will be over, and I can start counting the days until Henry’s first weekend home.

  She bundled up the soiled sheets and flung them out on to the landing, then put away a few random clothes and shoes, straightened a cushion. The telephone rang. She went to answer it, sitting on the edge of the freshly made bed.

  “Balnaid.”

  “Virginia.” It was Edmund. At a quarter past nine in the morning?

  “Are you in the office?”

  “Yes. Got here ten minutes ago. Virginia. Look. I have to go to New York.”

  She was not particularly perturbed. His flying off to New York was a regular occurrence.

  “When?”

  “Now. Today. I’m catching the first shuttle down to London. Flying out of Heathrow this afternoon.”

  “But —”

  “I’ll be back at Balnaid on Friday in time for the party. Probably about six in the evening. Earlier if I can make it.”

  “You mean…” It was difficult actually to take in what he was telling her. “You mean you’ll be away all week?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But…packing…clothes…” Which was ridiculous because she knew that he kept a duplicate wardrobe in the flat at Moray Place, with suits, shirts, and underclothes suitable for any capital and any climate.

  “I’ll do that here.”

  “But…” The implication, the truth of what he was saying, broke at last. He can’t do this to me. The bedroom window was open and the air that flowed through it was not cold, but Virginia, hunched over the telephone, shivered. She saw the knuckles of her hand, clenched around the receiver, grow white. “Tomorrow,” she said. “Tuesday. You’re taking Henry to Templehall.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You promised.”

  “I have to go to New York.”

  “Somebody else can go. Not you.”

  “There’s nobody else who can. There’s a panic on and it has to be me.”

  “But you promised. You said that you would take Henry. I told you that it was the one thing that I wouldn’t do. It was my condition and you accepted it.”


  “I know, and I’m sorry. But what’s happened is beyond my control.”

  “Send somebody else to New York. You’re the boss. Send some underling.”

  “It’s because I am who I am that I have to go.”

  “You are who you are!” She heard her own voice, shrill with scathing. “Edmund Aird. You think of nobody but yourself and nothing but your hateful job. Sanford Cubben. I hate Sanford Cubben. I realise I come fairly low on your priority list, but I thought Henry rated a little higher. You didn’t only promise me, you promised Henry. Does that mean nothing to you?”

  “I didn’t promise anything. I just said that I’d take him, and now I can’t.”

  “I call that a commitment. If you made such a commitment in business, you’d kill yourself to see it through.”

  “Virginia, be reasonable.”

  “I will not be reasonable! I will not sit here and listen to you and be told to be reasonable. And I will not deliver my child to a boarding school that I never wanted him to go to in the first place. It’s like asking me to take one of the dogs to the vet to be put down. I won’t do it!”

  By now she was sounding like a fishwife, and did not care. But Edmund’s voice remained, as always, infuriatingly cool and dispassionate.

  “In that case, I suggest that you call Isobel Balmerino and ask her to take Henry. She’s driving Hamish. She’ll have plenty of space for Henry.”

  “If you think I’m going to palm Henry off on to Isobel —”

  “Then you’ll have to take him yourself.”

  “You’re a bastard, Edmund. You know that, don’t you? You’re behaving like a selfish bastard.”

  “Where is Henry? I’d like to speak to him before I go.”

  “He’s not here,” Virginia told him with a certain malicious satisfaction. “He’s buying his sweets from Mrs Ishak.”

  “Well, when he comes home, tell him to ring me at the office.”

  “You can ring him yourself.” And on this biting exit line, she slammed down the receiver and put an end to the miserable exchange.

  Her raised voice had penetrated to the kitchen.

  “What was that all about?” Edie asked, turning from the sink as Virginia stormed in with a face like thunder, and arms filled with rumpled linen, to stride across the kitchen towards the open door of the utility room and hurl her burden in the general direction of the washing machine.