September

  He took it. “That’s really neat. Thank you. But I don’t need a souvenir, because I’m not ever going to forget. Any of it.”

  “In that case,” she said lightly, “you can throw it away.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “So, put it in a tooth-mug of water, then it will neither wither nor die. You can take it back to America with you. But you’ll have to hide it in your spongebag, or the customs man will get you for importing germs.”

  “Perhaps I could dry it, and then it would last for ever.”

  “Yes, perhaps you could.”

  They walked on, into the wind. Small brown waves ran up upon the shore, and out on the water, the two fishing boats drifted gently, the fishers silent, absorbed, casting their lines. Virginia paused, stooped for a flat stone and chucked it expertly, causing it to bounce half a dozen times before it finally sank.

  She said, “When are you going?”

  “Sorry?”

  “When are you going back to the States?”

  “I’ve a flight booked next Thursday.”

  She searched for another stone. She said, “I’ll maybe come with you.” She found one, threw it. A failure. It disappeared at once. She straightened, turned to face him. The wind blew her hair across her cheeks. He looked down into her amazing eyes.

  He said, “Why should you do that?”

  “I just feel a need to get away.”

  “When did you decide?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it for some months.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “All right. Yesterday. I decided yesterday.”

  “How much have I got to do with this decision?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s not just you. It’s Edmund and Henry as well. Everything. Everything’s on top of me. I need time on my own. I need to stand back, and take the long view and get things into perspective.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “To Leesport. To the old house. To Gramps and Grandma.”

  “Will I be around?”

  “If you want to be. I hope you will be.”

  “I’m not sure if you appreciate the implications.”

  “Don’t I, Conrad?”

  “We’ll be skating on pretty thin ice.”

  “We don’t need to go out on to the middle of the ice. We can stay around the edge.”

  “I don’t think I’ll want to do that.”

  “I’m not sure about me, either.”

  “With your husband and your family an ocean away, I won’t just feel like a shit, but probably start behaving like one.”

  “That’s a risk I’m prepared to take.”

  “In that case, I’ll say no more.”

  “That’s what I want you to say.”

  “Except that I’m flying Pan Am, eleven o’clock in the morning, out of Heathrow.”

  “I’ll see if I can get on the same plane.”

  The worst of growing old, Violet decided, was that happiness, at the most inappropriate of times, eluded one. She should feel happy now, but did not.

  Now was the afternoon of her birthday, and to all intents and purposes everything was perfect. No woman could ask for more. She sat, cushioned in heather, high above the loch, and, despite a sinister-looking bruise of cloud that gathered in the west, the sun continued to shine, streaming down from a pristine autumn sky. Far below, but clearly visible, as though viewed through the wrong end of a telescope, the picnic party went about its business; small groups had dispersed to engage in their own activities. The two boats were out on the water. Julian Gloxby and Charles Ferguson-Crombie fished from one of them, Lucilla and her young Australian friend from the other. Dermot had drifted off on his own to search for wildflowers. Virginia and Conrad Tucker had made their way out along the top of the dam wall, and now could be seen walking, side by side, along the narrow shore on the far side of the loch. Edmund’s two spaniels accompanied them. From time to time they paused, as though deep in conversation, or stooped to pick up some small flat pebble and send it skimming and jumping out over the glittering water. The others had chosen to stay where they were, gathered about the remains of the fire, lazing in the sunshine. Edie and Alexa sat together. Mrs Gloxby, seldom seen off her feet, had brought her knitting and a book and was enjoying a spot of peace.

  Small sounds reached Violet’s ears. The buffet of the wind, a raised voice, the splash of oars, a birdcall. Every now and then the crack of guns from the far glen was carried towards them, borne on the wind across the summit of Creagan Dubh.

  Everything just as it should be, and yet her heart lay heavy. It is because, she told herself, I know too much. I am the recipient of too many confidences. I should like to be ignorant, and so, blissful. I should like to be unaware of the fact that Virginia and Conrad Tucker…that personable and attractive American…are lovers. That Virginia has come to a certain crisis in her life; that, with Henry gone, she is capable of making some disastrous decision. I should like to know that Edie is not still agonising over poor Lottie.

  And at the same time, there were uncertainties that she would prefer resolved. I should like to feel confident that Alexa is not about to have her heart broken, that Henry is not eating his heart out for his mother. I should like to know exactly what is going on in Edmund’s unfathomable mind.

  Her family. Edmund, Virginia, Alexa, Henry, and Edie. Love and involvement brought joy, but could equally become a hideously heavy millstone slung about one’s neck. And the worst was that she felt useless because there was not a mortal thing she could do to help resolve their problems.

  She sighed. The sigh was clearly audible, and realising this, Violet, with some effort, pulled herself together, assumed a cheerful expression and turned to the man who lay propped on one elbow beside her.

  She said the first thing that came into her mind. “I love the colours of the moor because they remind me of the most beautiful tweed. All russet and purple, and larch-green and peat-brown. And I love the beautiful tweeds because they remind me of the moor. How clever people are to be able to emulate nature so perfectly.”

  “Is that what you’ve been thinking?”

  He was no fool. She shook her head. “No,” she admitted. “I was thinking…that it’s not the same.”

  “What isn’t the same?” asked Noel.

  Violet was not certain why he had come with her. She had not invited him to join her on her walk, and he had not suggested that he might accompany her. She had simply started out, up the hill, and he had fallen into step beside her, as though without words they had made some prearranged assignment. And they had climbed together, Violet leading the way up the narrow sheep-track, pausing every now and then to admire the expanding view, to watch the flight of a grouse, to pick a sprig of white heather. Reaching the summit, she had settled herself down for a small breather, and he had made himself comfortable beside her. She was touched that he had chosen to be with her, and a little more of her reserve towards him melted away.

  For, meeting him for the first time, she had been wary. Though prepared to like the young man whom Alexa had chosen to love, she had kept her defences well up, determined not to be taken in by any brittle veneer of too-obvious charm. His dark good looks, his tall frame, his bright and intelligent blue eyes had caught her slightly off-balance, and the fact that he was the son of Penelope Keeling had further taken the wind from her sails. That was another thing that had occurred to cloud her day, for Noel had told her that Penelope was dead, and for some reason she found it painful to come to terms with this. Filled with the regrets of hindsight, she knew that she had no person but herself to blame for the fact that she had never again got in touch with that vital and fascinating woman. And now it was too late.

  “What isn’t the same?” he prompted gently.

  She gathered her flying thoughts. “My picnic.”

  “It’s a splendid picnic.”

  “But different. Missing out. Henry is not here, nor Edmund, nor Isobel Ba
lmerino. This is the first time she’s missed my birthday celebration, but she had to go to Corriehill to help Verena Steynton arrange the flowers for the dance tomorrow evening. And as for my darling little Henry, he is now committed to boarding schools for at least ten years, and by the time he is free to come again, I shall probably be six feet under the turf. I hope I shall be. Eighty-eight scarcely bears thinking about. Too old. Perhaps dependent on one’s children. My only fear.”

  “I can’t imagine you being dependent on anybody.”

  “Senility comes to us all eventually.”

  They fell silent. Out of this silence another spatter of distant and sporadic gunfire echoed towards them over the hills.

  Violet smiled. “They, at least, seem to be having a successful day.”

  “Who’s shooting?”

  “I suppose the members of the syndicate who happen to be here just now. And Archie Balmerino is with them.” She turned to smile at Noel. “Do you shoot?”

  “No. I never even owned a gun. I didn’t have that sort of an upbringing. I grew up in London.”

  “In that wonderful house in Oakley Street?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What a fortunate young man you were.”

  He shook his head. “The shaming thing is that I didn’t consider myself fortunate. I was sent to a day school and thought myself very hard done by, because my mother couldn’t afford to send me to Eton or Harrow. As well, my father had taken off by the time I was ready for school, and married some other female. I didn’t exactly miss him, because I’d hardly known him, but in some strange way it rankled.”

  She did not waste her sympathy on him. Instead, thinking of Penelope Keeling, she said, “It is not easy for a woman to bring up a family on her own.”

  “Growing up, I don’t think that ever occurred to me.”

  Violet laughed, appreciating his honesty. “Youth is wasted on the young. But you enjoyed your mother’s company?”

  “Yes, I did. But from time to time we had the most stupendous rows. Usually about money.”

  “That’s what most family rows are about. And I don’t imagine that she suffered from materialism.”

  “The very opposite. She had her own philosophy for living, and a selection of homespun truisms which she would come out with in times of stress, or in the middle of some really acrimonious argument. One of them was that happiness is making the most of what you have and riches is making the most of what you’ve got. It sounded plausible, but I never quite worked out the logic.”

  “Perhaps you needed more than wise words.”

  “Yes. I needed more. I needed not to feel an outsider. I wanted to be part of a different sort of life, to have a different background. The Establishment. Old houses, old families, old names, old money. We were brought up to believe that money didn’t matter, but I knew that it only didn’t matter provided you had plenty of it.”

  Violet said, “I disapprove, but understand. The grass is always greener on the other side of the hill, and it is human nature to yearn for what you cannot have.” She thought of Alexa’s little jewel of a house in Ovington Street, and the financial security she had inherited front her maternal grandmother, and knew a small stirring of disquiet. “The worst is,” she went on, “that when you achieve that green grass, you often discover that you never really wanted it at all.” He stayed silent, and she frowned. “Tell me,” she said abruptly, coming straight to the point, “what do you think of us all?”

  Noel was taken aback by her bluntness. “I…I’ve scarcely had time to form an opinion.”

  “Rubbish. Of course you have. Do you think, for instance, that we are Establishment, as you term it? Do you think that we are all very grand?”

  He laughed. Perhaps his amusement disguised a certain embarrassment. She could not be sure. “I don’t know about grand. But you must admit that you live on a fairly lavish scale. To achieve such a life-style in the south, one would need to be a millionaire ten times over.”

  “But this is Scotland.”

  “Precisely so.”

  “So you do think we’re grand?”

  “No. Just different.”

  “Not different, Noel. Ordinary. The most ordinary of folk, who have been blessed with the good fortune to be raised and to live in this incomparable country. There are, I admit, titles, lands, huge houses, and a certain feudalism, but scratch the surface of any one of us, go back a generation or two, and you’ll find humble crofters, millworkers, shepherds, small farmers. The Scottish clan system was an extraordinary thing. No man was any man’s servant, but part of a family. Which is why your average Highlander does not walk through life with a chip on his shoulder. He is proud. He knows he is as good as you are, and probably a good deal better. As well, the Industrial Revolution and Victorian money created an enormous and wealthy middle class out of a lot of hard-working artisans. Archie is the third Lord Balmerino, but his grandfather made his pile in heavy textiles, and he was raised in the city streets. As for my own father, he started life as the barefoot son of a crofter from the Isle of Lewis. But he was blessed with brains and a talent for book-learning, and his ambitions led him to scholarships, and eventually to study medicine. He became a surgeon and prospered and attained great heights — the Chair of Anatomy at Edinburgh University and a knighthood. Sir Hector Akenside. A resounding name, don’t you think? But he always remained a man without pride or pretension, and for this reason was not only respected but loved.”

  “And your mother?”

  “My mother came from an entirely different background. I have to admit that she was rather grand. Lady Primrose Marr, the daughter of an ancient and well-connected family from the Borders, who had, through nobody’s fault but their own, become totally impoverished. She was very beautiful. Famously so. Small and elegant and with silvery-blonde hair, piled up on her head, so that it looked as though her slender neck might break with the weight of it. My father set eyes on her at some ball or reception in the Assembly Rooms, and fell instantly in love. I don’t think she was ever in love with him, but by then he was something of a personage, and well-to-do to boot, and she was intelligent enough to realise on which side her bread had been buttered. Her family, although they could scarcely approve of the match, raised no objections…they were probably only too glad to get the girl off their hands.”

  “Were they happy?”

  “I think so. I think they suited each other very well. They lived in a tall and draughty house in Heriot Row, and that is where I was born. My mother relished Edinburgh, with all its social life, the coming and going of friends, the theatre and the concerts, the balls and receptions. But my father remained a countryman with his heart in the hills. He had always loved Strathcroy, and had come every summer for his annual fishing holiday. When I was about five, he bought the land south of the river and built Balnaid. He was still working, and I was at school in Edinburgh, so to begin with, Balnaid was simply a holiday home, a sort of shooting lodge. To me it was paradise, and I lived for the summer months. When he finally retired, he retired to Balnaid. My mother thought it a rotten idea, but he had a stubborn streak to him, and in the end, she simply made the best of it. She filled the house with guests, thus ensuring a fourth for bridge, and a dinner party every night. But we kept the house in Heriot Row, and when the rain fell with unceasing venom, or the bitter winds of winter blew, she invariably found some excuse to return to Edinburgh, or take herself off to Italy, or the South of France.”

  “And you?”

  “I told you. For me it was paradise. I was an only child, and a great disappointment to my mother because I was not only dreadfully large and fat, but plain as well. I towered over all my contemporaries, and was a total failure at dancing class because no boy ever wanted to be my partner. In Edinburgh society, I stuck out like a sore thumb, but at Balnaid it didn’t seem to matter how I looked, and at Balnaid I could be just myself.”

  “And your husband?”

  “My husband?” Violet’s war
m smile transformed her weathered features. “My husband was Geordie Aird. You see, I married my dearest friend, and at the end of over thirty years of marriage, he was still my dearest friend. Not many women can say that.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “At a shooting party, up on the moors of Creagan Dubh. My father had been asked to shoot with Lord Balmerino, and because my mother was away on some Mediterranean cruise, he asked me to accompany him. Going shooting with my father was always the greatest of treats, and I went to great pains to be useful, carrying his cartridge bag, and sitting, quiet and still as a mouse, in his butt.”

  “Was Geordie one of the guns?” asked Noel.

  “No, Noel. Geordie was one of the beaters. His father, Jamie Aird, was Lord Balmerino’s head keeper.”

  “You married the gamekeeper’s son?” Noel could scarcely keep the astonishment out of his voice, but there was admiration there as well.

  “I did. It smacks a little of Lady Chatterley, doesn’t it, but I can assure you it was not like that at all.”

  “But when did this happen?”

  “The early 1920s. I was ten and Geordie was fifteen. I decided he was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen, and when it was time for the luncheon picnic, I took my sandwiches over to where the keepers and the beaters sat, and ate them with him. You could say that I set my cap at him. After that, he was my friend; I was his shadow, he took me under his wing. I wasn’t alone any more. I was with Geordie. We spent whole days together, always out of doors. He taught me to cast for salmon and guddle for trout. Some days we walked for miles, and he showed me the hidden corries where the deer grazed, and the high peaks where the eagles nested. And after a day on the moor, he would take me home to the little house where his parents lived…where Gordon Gillock, Archie’s keeper, lives now…and Mrs Aird would feed me bannocks and scones and pour me strong black tea from her best lustre teapot.”

  “Did your mother not object to this friendship?”