September

  “Yes.” She was awake.

  “What time is it?”

  “Just after seven.”

  “Seven in the morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve been here all night.” He stretched, easing his long legs. “I fell asleep.”

  “You were asleep by the time I came up with the coffee. I thought about waking you, but then I decided against it.”

  He blinked, clearing the sleep from his eyes. He saw that she was no longer wearing her jeans and sweatshirt, but a white toweling robe, wrapped closely about her. She had bundled herself up in a blanket, but her legs and feet, protruding, were bare.

  “Have you been there all night?”

  “Yes.”

  “You should have gone to bed.”

  “I didn’t like to leave you. I didn’t want you to wake up and feel you had to go, and not be able to find a taxi in the middle of the night. I made up my spare bed, but then I thought, what’s the point? So I just left you to sleep.”

  He caught the tail end of his dream before it faded into oblivion. He had lain in his mother’s garden in Gloucestershire, and known that someone was coming. Not his mother. Penelope was dead. Somebody else. Then the dream was gone for good, leaving him with Alexa.

  He felt, surprisingly, enormously well, energetic and refreshed. Decisive. “I must go home.”

  “Shall I call you a taxi?”

  “No. I’ll walk. It’ll do me good.”

  “It’s a lovely morning. Do you want something to eat before you go?”

  “No, I’m fine.” He pushed aside the rug and sat up, smoothing back his hair and running his hand over his stubbly chin. “I must go.” He got to his feet.

  Alexa made no effort to persuade him to stay, but simply came with him into the hall, opened her front door on to the pearly, pristine May morning. The distant rumble of traffic was already audible, though a bird was singing from some tree, and the air was fresh. He imagined that he could smell lilac.

  “Goodbye, Noel.”

  He turned to her. “I’ll ring you.”

  “You don’t need to.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “You don’t owe me anything.”

  “You’re very sweet.” He stooped and kissed her peachy cheek. “Thank you.”

  “I’ve liked it.”

  He left her. Went down the steps and set off, at a brisk clip, down the pavement. At the end of the street he turned and looked back. She was gone, and the blue front door stood closed. But it seemed to Noel that the house with the bay tree had a special look about it.

  He smiled to himself and went on his way.

  JUNE

  4

  Tuesday the Seventh

  Isobel Balmerino, at the wheel of her minibus, drove the ten miles to Corriehill. It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon and the beginning of June, but although the trees were heavy with leaf and the fields green with growing crops, there had, so far, been no summer at all. It was not exactly cold, but it was dank and drizzling, and all the way from Croy her windscreen wipers had been working. Clouds hung low over the hills and all was drowned in greyness. She felt sorry for the foreign visitors, come so far to see the glories of Scotland, only to find them shrouded in murk and almost invisible.

  Not that this troubled her. She had made the complicated journey, cross-country and by back roads, so many times before that she sometimes thought that if she were to dispatch the minibus on its own it would manage very nicely, getting itself to Corriehill and back with no human assistance, reliable as a faithful horse.

  Now she had come to the familiar junction and was nearly there. She changed down and swung the minibus into a single-track lane hedged with hawthorn. This lane led up and on to the hill, and as she climbed, the mist grew thicker; prudently she switched on the headlights. To her right appeared the tall stone wall, the march boundary of the Corriehill estate. Another quarter of a mile, and she had reached the great entrance gates, the two lodges. She turned between these and bumped her way up the rutted drive lined with historic beeches and deep verges of rough grass which, in spring, were gold with daffodils. The daffodils had long since died back, and their withered heads and dying leaves were all that remained of their former glory. Some time, some day, Verena’s handyman would cut the verges with his garden tractor, and that would be the end of the daffodils. Until next spring.

  It occurred to her, sadly, and not for the first time, that as you grew older you became busier, and time went faster and faster, the months pushing each other rudely out of the way, and the years slipping off the calendar and into the past. Once, there had been time. Time to stand, or sit, and just look at daffodils. Or to abandon housekeeping, on the spur of the moment, walk out of the back door and up the hill, into the lark-song emptiness of a summer morning. Or to take off for a self-indulgent day in Relkirk, shopping for frivolities, meeting a girlfriend for lunch, the wine bar warm with humanity and conversation, smelling of coffee and the sort of food that one never cooked for oneself.

  All treats that for a number of reasons didn’t seem to happen any longer.

  The driveway levelled off. Beneath the wheels of the minibus, gravel scrunched. The house loomed up at her through the mist. There were no other cars, which meant that probably all the other hostesses had been, collected their guests, and gone. So Verena would be waiting for her. Isobel hoped that she would not have become impatient.

  She drew up, switched off her engine and got out into the soft, drizzly air. The main door stood open, giving on to a large paved porch, with an inner glass door beyond. This porch was stacked with an enormous amount of expensive luggage. Isobel quailed, because it seemed to be even more lavish than usual. Suitcases (hugely big), garment bags, small grips, golf bags, boxes and parcels and carriers, emblazoned with the familiar names of large stores. (They’d obviously been shopping.) All of these tagged with distinctive yellow labels: SCOTTISH COUNTRY TOURS.

  Diverted, she paused to read the names on the labels. Mr Joe Hardwicke. Mr Arnold Franco. Mrs Myra Hardwicke. Mrs Susan Franco. The suitcases were heavily monogrammed, and the golf bags had prestigious club labels hanging from their handles.

  She sighed. Here we go again. She opened the inner door.

  “Verena!”

  The hallway at Corriehill was immense, with a carved oak stairway rising to the upper floors, and much paneling. The floor was scattered with rugs, some quite ordinary and others probably priceless, and in the middle stood a table bearing a varied collection of objects: a potted geranium, a dog’s lead, a brass tray for letters, and a massive leather-bound visitors’ book.

  “Verena?”

  A door, distantly, shut. Footsteps came up the passage from the direction of the kitchen. Verena Steynton presently appeared, looking, as always, tall, slender, unfussed, and perfectly turned out. She was one of those women who, maddeningly, always appeared co-ordinated, as though she spent much time each day selecting and matching her various garments. This skirt, this shirt; that cashmere cardigan, these shoes. Even the damp and muggy weather, which ruined the hairdos of most right-minded women, didn’t stand a chance with Verena’s coiffure, which never wilted under the most adverse of circumstances, and always appeared as neat and glamorous as if she had just come out from under the drier. Isobel had no illusions about her own appearance. Stocky and sturdy as a Highland pony, her complexion rosy and shining, her hands roughened by work, she had long stopped bothering about the way she looked. But, seeing Verena, she all at once wished that she had taken the time to change out of her corduroy trousers and the quilted sludge-coloured waistcoat that was her oldest friend.

  “Isobel.”

  “I hope I’m not late.”

  “No. You’re the last but you’re not late. Your guests are ready and waiting for you in the drawing room. Mr and Mrs Hardwicke, and Mr and Mrs Franco. From the look of them, slightly more robust than our usual run of clients.” Isobel knew some relief. Perhaps the men would be able to h
ump their own golf bags. “Where’s Archie? Are you on your own?”

  “He had to go to a church meeting at Balnaid.”

  “Will you manage?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, look, before you whisk them away, there’s been a slight change of plan. I’ll explain. We’d better go into the library.”

  Obediently, Isobel followed her, prepared to take orders. The library at Corriehill was a pleasant room, smaller than most of the other rooms, and smelled comfortably masculine — of pipe smoke and wood-smoke, of old books and old dogs. The old-dog smell emanated from an elderly Labrador snoozing on its cushion by the ashy remains of a fire. It raised its head, saw the two ladies, blinked in a superior fashion and went back to sleep.

  “The thing is…” Verena started, and at once the telephone on the desk began to ring. She said, “Damn. Sorry, I won’t be a moment,” and went to answer it. “Hello, Verena Steynton…Yes.” Her voice changed. “Mr Abberley. Thank you for calling back.” She pulled the chair from the desk and sat down, reaching for her ballpoint pen and a pad of paper. She looked as though she was settling in for a long session and Isobel’s heart sank, because she wanted to get home.

  “Yes. Oh, splendid. Now, we shall need your largest marquee, and I think the pale-yellow-and-white lining. And a dance floor.” Isobel pricked up her ears, stopped feeling impatient and eavesdropped shamelessly. “The date? We thought the sixteenth of September. That’s a Friday. Yes, I think you’d better come and see me, and we’ll talk it over. Next week would be fine. Wednesday morning. Right. I’ll see you then. Goodbye, Mr Abberley.” She rang off and leaned back in her chair, wearing the satisfied expression of one with a job well done. “Well, that’s the first thing settled.”

  “What on earth are you planning now?”

  “Well, Angus and I have been talking about it for ages, and we’ve finally decided to take the plunge. Katy’s twenty-one this year, and we’re going to have a dance for her.”

  “Heavens above, you must be feeling rich.”

  “No, not particularly, but it is something of an event, and we owe about a million people hospitality, so we’ll get them all off in one smashing do.”

  “But September’s ages away, and it’s only the beginning of June.”

  “I know, but one can’t start too early. You know what September’s like.” Isobel did know. The Scottish season, with a mass exodus from the south to the north for the grouse-shooting. Every large house filled with house parties, dances, cricket matches, Highland games, and every sort of social activity, all finally culminating in an exhausting week of hunt balls.

  “We have to have a marquee because there’s really not space for dancing indoors, but Katy insists we must fix up some corner as a nightclub so that all her yuppie friends from London can have their little smooch. Then I’ll have to find a really good country dance band, and a competent caterer. But at least I’ve got the tent organised. You’ll all get invitations, of course.” She gave Isobel a stern look. “I hope Lucilla will be here.”

  It was hard not to feel a little envious of Verena, sitting there planning a dance for her daughter, knowing that that daughter would be helpful and co-operative and enjoy every moment of her party. Her own Lucilla and Katy Steynton had been at school together, and friends in the lacklustre fashion of children thrown together by their parents. For Lucilla was two years younger than Katy, and had a very different personality, and as soon as school was behind them, their ways had parted.

  Katy, any mother’s dream, had dutifully conformed. A year in Switzerland, and then a secretarial course in London. Graduated, she’d found herself a worthwhile job…something to do with funding for charity…and shared a small house in Wandsworth with three eminently suitable friends. Before long, she would doubtless become engaged to an excellent young man called either Nigel, Jeremy, or Christopher, her blameless face would appear on the front page of Country Life, and the wedding would be predictably traditional with a white dress, a great number of small bridesmaids, and ‘Praise My Soul the King of Heaven’.

  Isobel did not want Lucilla to be like Katy, but sometimes, as at this moment, she could not help wishing that her darling, dreamy daughter had turned out to be just a little more ordinary. But even as a child, Lucilla had shown signs of individuality and gentle rebellion. Her political tendencies were strongly left-wing, and at the drop of a hat she would involve herself, with much passion, in any cause that caught her attention. She was against nuclear power, fox-hunting, the culling of baby seals, the cutting of student grants, and the planting of tracts of horrible conifers in order to provide pop stars with tax-deductible incomes. At the same time, she voiced much concern over the plight of the homeless, the down-and-outs, the drug addicts, and the poor unfortunates who found themselves dying of AIDS.

  From an early age, she had always been intensely creative and artistic, and after six months in Paris working as an au pair, she was accepted at the College of Art in Edinburgh. Here, she made friends with the most extraordinary people, whom, from time to time, she brought to Croy to stay. They were a funny-looking lot, but no funnier than Lucilla, who dressed from the Oxfam shop and thought nothing of wearing a lace evening dress and a man’s tweed jacket and Edwardian lace-up boots.

  With art school behind her, she stayed in Edinburgh but had failed entirely to find any sort of way in which to earn her keep. No person seemed inclined to buy her incomprehensible paintings, and no gallery wished to exhibit them. Living in an attic in India Street, she had kept herself by going out to clean other people’s houses. This had proved strangely lucrative, and as soon as she had saved up enough to pay her fare across the Channel, she had taken off for France with a back pack and her painting gear. Last heard of, she was in Paris, staying with some couple she had met on the road. It was all very worrying.

  Would she come home? Isobel could write, of course, to the poste restante address her daughter had given her. Darling Lucilla, be here in September because you have been asked to Katy Steynton’s dance. But it was unlikely that Lucilla would pay much attention. She had never enjoyed formal parties, and could think of nothing to say to the well-connected young men she met at them. Mummy, they’re quite gruesomely square. And they’ve all got hair like tweed.

  She was impossible. She was also sweet, kind, funny, and overflowing with love. Isobel missed her quite dreadfully.

  She sighed and said, “I don’t know. I don’t suppose so.”

  “Oh dear.” Verena was sympathetic, which didn’t make it any better. “Well, never mind, I’ll send her an invitation. Katy would so love to see her again.”

  Privately, Isobel doubted this. She said, “Is your dance a secret, or can I talk about it?”

  “No, of course it’s not a secret. The more people who know, the better. Perhaps they’ll offer to have dinner parties.”

  “I’ll have a dinner party.”

  “You are a saint.” They might have sat there making plans for ever had not Verena, all at once, remembered the business in hand. “Heavens above, I’ve forgotten those poor Americans. They’ll be wondering what’s happened to us. Now, look…the thing is” — she rummaged on her desk and produced some sheets of typed instructions — “that the two men have spent most of their time playing golf, and they want to play tomorrow, so they’re going to give the trip to Glamis a miss. Instead, I’ve fixed for a car to come and fetch them from Croy at nine o’clock tomorrow morning and take them to Gleneagles. And the same car will bring them back some time during the afternoon when they’ve finished their game. But the ladies want to go to Glamis, so if you could have them back here at about ten o’clock, they can join the others in the coach.”

  Isobel nodded, hoping that she would forget none of this. Verena was so efficient and, to all intents and purposes, Isobel’s boss. Scottish Country Tours was run from a central office in Edinburgh, but Verena was the local co-ordinating agent. It was Verena who telephoned Isobel each week to let her know how many gue
sts she could expect (six was the limit, as she had no room for more) as well as to fill her in with any small idiosyncrasies or personality problems of her guests.

  The tours started in May and continued until the end of August. Each one lasted a week and followed a regular pattern. The group, arriving from New York, began their stay in Edinburgh, where they spent two days sightseeing in the Borders and the city itself. On Tuesday their coach brought them to Relkirk, where they dutifully plodded around the Auld Kirk, the local castle, and a National Trust garden. They were then transported to Corriehill, to be welcomed and sorted out by Verena. From Corriehill they were collected by the various hostesses. Wednesday was the day for Glamis Castle and a scenic drive to Pitlochry, and on Thursday they set off yet again in the coach to view the Highlands and to visit Deeside and Inverness. On Friday they returned to Edinburgh, and on Saturday they flew home, back to Kennedy and all points west.

  Isobel was certain that by then they must all be in a state of total exhaustion.

  It was Verena who, five years ago, had roped Isobel into the business. She explained what was involved and gave Isobel the firm’s handout to read. It was effusive.

  Stay as a guest in a private house. Experience for yourself the hospitality and historic grandeur of some of Scotland’s loveliest homes, and meet, as friends, the ancient families who live in them.…

  Such hyperbole took a bit of living up to.

  “We’re not an ancient family,” she’d pointed out to Verena.

  “Ancient enough.”

  “And Croy’s not exactly historic.”

  “Bits of it are. And you’ve got lots of bedrooms. That’s what really counts. And think of all that lovely lolly…”

  It was this that had finally decided Isobel. Verena’s proposition came at a time when the Balmerino fortunes, in every sense of the word, were at a low ebb. Archie’s father, the second Lord Balmerino, and the most charming and impractical of men, had died leaving the estate in some disarray. His unexpected demise took him, and most other people, quite by surprise, and because of this, stupendous death duties creamed off most of the inherited family wealth. With the two children, Lucilla and Hamish, in the throes of their education, the large and inconvenient house to keep going, and the lands to be maintained in some sort of order, the young Balmerinos found themselves faced with certain problems. Archie, at that time, was still a regular soldier. But he had joined the Queen’s Loyal Highlanders at the age of nineteen simply because he could think of nothing else he particularly wanted to do, and although he had thoroughly enjoyed his years with the regiment, he was not blessed with a driving ambition to succeed and knew that he would never make Major General.