“Where is he now?” asked Edmund’s mother.
“Oh, in Edinburgh. He’ll be back about six.”
“And Henry? What’s happened to Henry? Shouldn’t he be back from school?”
“No. He’s stopped off to have his tea with Edie.”
“That’ll cheer her up.”
Virginia frowned, puzzled, as well she might be. The boot was usually on the other foot, and Edie the person who did the cheering. “What’s happened?”
Violet looked at Archie. “Do you remember that cousin of Edie’s, Lottie Carstairs? She was housemaid at Strathcroy the year you married Isobel?”
“Do I remember her?” His expression was one of horror. “Dreadful female. Nutty as a fruit-cake. She broke most of the Rockingham tea-set, and she was always creeping around the place, just where you least expected to find her. I never knew what induced my mother to employ her.”
“I think it was a case of any port in a storm. It was a busy summer and she was desperate for help. Anyway, Lottie only lasted about four months, and then she went back home to Tullochard to live with her aged parents. She never married…”
“That’s no surprise…”
“…and now, of course, they’re dead, and she’s been on her own. Becoming, apparently, odder by the day. Finally, she went over the top and was wheeled off to the nearest mental hospital. Edie’s her next-of-kin. She’s been visiting the poor creature every week. And now the doctors say that she’s well enough to be discharged, but of course she can’t live alone again. At least, not just yet.”
“Don’t tell me Edie’s going to have her?”
“She says she has to. There’s nobody else. And you know how kind Edie is…she’s always had a great sense of family responsibility. Blood is thicker than water and all that nonsense.”
“And a great deal nastier,” Archie commented dryly. “Lottie Carstairs. I can’t think of anything worse. When is all this going to happen?”
Violet shrugged. “I don’t know. Next month maybe. Or August.”
Virginia was horrified. “She’s surely not going to live with Edie?”
“Let’s hope not. Let’s hope it’s just a temporary measure.”
“And where on earth will Edie put her? She’s only got two rooms in that little cottage of hers.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“When did she tell you this?”
“This morning. When she was hoovering my dining-room carpet. I thought she was looking a bit down in the mouth, so I asked her what was the matter. I heard all about it over a cup of coffee.”
“Oh, poor Edie. I can’t bear it for her…”
Archie said, “Edie is a saint.”
“She certainly is.” Violet finished her tea, glanced at her watch, and began to gather her belongings: her large handbag, her papers, her spectacles. “That was very nice, dear. Most refreshing. And now I must take myself home.”
“Me too,” said Archie. “Back to Croy to drink more tea with the Americans.”
“You’ll be awash. Who have you got this week?”
“No idea. Just hope they’re not too elderly. Last week I thought one old boy was going to die of angina right there, in the middle of the soup. Mercifully, however, he survived.”
“It’s such a responsibility.”
“Not really. The worst are the ones who’ve signed a pledge and take no drink. Bible-Belt Baptists. Orange juice makes for sticky conversation. Have you got your car, Vi, or do you want a lift home?”
“I walked down, but I’d like a lift back up the hill.”
“I’ll take you then.”
He too gathered together his papers and heaved himself to his feet. For an instant he paused and then, when certain of his balance, made his way towards them down the length of the thickly carpeted room. He limped only slightly, which was a miracle because his right leg, from a stump of thigh downwards, was made of aluminium.
He had come to the meeting today straight from his garden and apologised for his attire, but nobody took much notice because this was the way he looked most of the time. Shapeless corduroy trousers, a checked shirt with a patched collar, and a threadbare tweed jacket that he called his gardening coat, though in truth no self-respecting gardener would be seen dead in it.
Virginia pushed back her chair and stood up and Violet did the same, but much more slowly, matching her movements to Archie’s painful gait. She was in no way impatient to be gone but, even if she were, would never show it, for her feelings towards him were sympathetic and fiercely protective. She had, after all, known him all his life. Remembered him as a boy, as a wild young man, as a soldier. Always laughing, and an enthusiasm — almost a lust for life — that was as catching as the measles. She remembered him endlessly active. Playing tennis; dancing at the Regimental Ball, swinging his partners nearly off their feet; leading a line of guns up the hill behind Croy, his long legs covering the heather with an easy stride that left all the others behind.
Then, he had been Archie Blair. Now, he was Lord Balmerino. The Lord and the Laird. Fine titles for a man thin as a stick, with a tin leg to boot. The black hair was now flecked with white, the skin of his face netted with lines, his dark eyes deep-set and shadowed by the jutting brows.
He reached her side and smiled. “Ready, Vi?”
“All set.”
“In that case, we’ll go…” And then, in mid-step, he stopped again. “Oh, God, I’ve just remembered. Virginia, did Edmund give you an envelope to give me? I called him last night. It’s rather urgent. Some document from the Forestry Commission?”
Violet was instantly suspicious. “You’re not going to start planting conifers, are you?”
“No, it’s about some access road they’re wanting to build at the edge of the moor.”
Virginia shook her head. “He didn’t say anything about it. Perhaps he forgot. Let’s go and look on his desk in the library. It’s probably there…”
“Right. I’d like to take it with me if I can.”
They moved at a leisurely pace out of the dining room and into the hall. This was even larger, panelled in pine with a massive staircase, heavily balustraded, rising in three short flights to the upstairs landing. Various items of undistinguished furniture stood about. A carved oak chest, a gate-leg table, and a chaise longue that had seen better days. This was quite often occupied by dogs, but at the moment was empty.
“I shall not come and look for Forestry Commission documents,” Violet announced. “I shall sit here until you have found them.” And she settled herself majestically on the dogs’ bed to wait.
They left her. “We shan’t be a moment.” She watched them go down the wide passage that led to the library and on to the drawing room, and on again through glassed doors to the soaring conservatory.
Alone, Violet savoured her momentary solitude, with the old house around her. She knew it so well, had known it for almost as long as she could remember. Its every mood was comfortably familiar. Every creak of the stair, every evocative smell. The hall was draughty, but the draughts did not bother her. No longer Violet’s home, but Virginia’s. And yet it felt much the same as it ever had, as though, over the years, it had assumed a strength of character all its own. Perhaps because so much had happened here. Because it had been the haven and the touchstone of a single family.
Not that Balnaid was a very old house. In fact, it was younger than Violet by a few years, and built by her father, then Sir Hector Akenside, and a man of considerable means. She always thought that Balnaid was a little like Sir Hector. Large, kindly, and lavish, and yet totally unassuming. At a time when men of newly acquired wealth were constructing for themselves huge monuments to their pride of startling hideousness, castellated and turreted, Sir Hector had concentrated his able mind on less glamorous but infinitely more important features.
Central heating, efficient plumbing, plenty of bathrooms, and kitchens filled with sunlight, so that servants (and there were plenty of them) would work in pleasant su
rroundings. And from the day it was finally completed, Balnaid never looked out of place. Built from local stone on the south side of the Croy, with its back to the village and the river, the face of the house smiled out over a view both domestic and magnificent.
The garden was large, rich with shrubs and mature trees. Sir Hector’s passion, he had planned and landscaped it himself, so that formal lawns flowed into drifts of unknown grass, daffodils, and bluebells. Azaleas, coral and yellow, grew in fragrant masses, and mown paths twisted away invitingly out of sight between tall stands of pink- and scarlet-blossomed rhododendrons.
Beyond the garden, and separated from it by a steep ha-ha wall, was an acre or so of parkland, grazing for the hill ponies; and, beyond again, the stone-dyked fields of the neighbouring sheep farmer. Then, in the distance, the hills. They swelled to meet the sky, dramatic as a stage-drop. Constant, and yet continually changing, as the seasons and the light changed: snow-clad, purple with heather, green with spring bracken, swept by gales…whatever. They were always beautiful.
Had always been beautiful.
Violet knew all this because Balnaid had been her childhood home, and so her world. She had grown up within these walls, played solitary games in that magic garden, guddled for trout in the river, ridden her stubby Shetland pony through the village and up on to the lonely hills of Croy. At the age of twenty-two, she had been married from Balnaid.
She remembered driving the little distance to the Episcopalian church in the back of her father’s stately Rolls-Royce, with Sir Hector, top-hatted, beside her. The Rolls had been decked out for the occasion with white silk ribbons. These somehow lessened its dignity, and it looked almost as incongruous as Violet felt, with her ample frame laced into a white satin dress of quite hideous uncomfortableness and a mist of inherited Limerick lace veiling her homely features. She remembered returning to Balnaid in the same opulent vehicle, but on that journey even the agonising tightness of her stays had ceased to matter, because she was, at long last, the triumphant wife of Geordie Aird.
She had lived at Balnaid, on and off, ever since, and had not finally moved out until ten years ago, when Edmund married Virginia. He brought Virginia back to Balnaid to live, and Violet knew then that the time had come for her to bow out and allow the old place to welcome its new young mistress. She made the property over to Edmund and bought a gardener’s derelict cottage from Archie Balmerino. This house was called Pennyburn, and there, within the estate walls of Croy, she had made a new home for herself. The restoration and refurbishment of the little house had kept her happy for a year, and she was still not finished with the garden.
I am, she told herself, a fortunate woman.
Sitting there, on the dog-smelling chaise longue, Violet looked about her. Saw the worn Turkey rug, the old bits of furniture that she had known all her life. It was pleasant when things did not change too much. When she said goodbye to Balnaid, Violet had never imagined that so little would change. Edmund’s new wife, she decided, would be the new broom, come to sweep away all the dusty old traditions, and she was indeed quite interested to see what Virginia — as young and vital as a breath of fresh air — would achieve. But, apart from completely revamping the big bedroom, freshening up the drawing room with a lick of paint, and turning an old pantry into a utility room that fairly hummed with deep-freezes, washing machines, drying machines, and attendant luxuries, Virginia did nothing. Violet accepted this, but found it puzzling. There was, after all, no lack of money, and to her it seemed strange that Virginia should be content to live with the worn rugs and the faded velvet curtains and the old Edwardian wallpapers.
Perhaps it had something to do with the arrival of Henry. Because after Henry was born, Virginia abandoned all other interests and immersed herself in her baby son. This was very nice, but came as something of a shock to Violet. She had no idea that her daughter-in-law would prove so deeply maternal. With Edmund away so much, and mother and child left on their own, Violet had secret reservations about this overwhelming devotion, and it was a constant source of astonishment to her that despite his upbringing, Henry had grown into such a delightful little boy. A bit too dependent on his mother, perhaps, but still, not spoiled, and a charming child. Perhaps…
“Sorry, Vi, to keep you waiting.”
Surprise made her start. She turned and saw Archie and Virginia coming towards her, Archie holding up the long buff envelope as though it were a hard-won banner. “…took a bit of searching for. Come along now, and I’ll drive you home.”
6
Henry Aird, eight years old, banged with some importance at Edie Findhorn’s front door, using her brass knocker shaped like a pixie. The house was one of a row of single-storey cottages that lined the main street of Strathcroy, but Edie’s was nicer than anybody else’s because it had a mossy thatched roof and forget-me-nots grew in the little strip of earth between the pavement and the wall. Standing there, he heard her footsteps; she unsnibbed the door and threw it open.
“Well, here you are, turned up like a bad penny.”
She was always laughing. He loved her, and when people asked him who his best friends were, Edie came on top of the list. She was not only jolly, but fat, white-haired and rosy-cheeked, and appetising as a fresh and floury scone.
“Did you have a good day?”
She always asked this, despite the fact that she saw him every lunch-time, because she was the school dinner-lady and served out the midday meal. It was handy having Edie doing this because it meant that she stinted on helpings of things he hated, like curried mince and stodgy custard, and was lavish with the mashed potatoes and chocolate shape.
“Yes, it was all right.” He went into her sitting room, dumped his anorak and his school-bag on the couch. “We had drawing. We had to draw something.”
“What did you have to draw?”
“We had to draw a song.” He began to undo the buckles of his satchel. He had a problem and thought that probably Edie could help to solve it for him. “We sang ‘Speed Bonnie Boat Like a Bird on the Wing over the Sea to Skye’, and we had to draw a picture of it. And everybody else drew rowing boats and islands, and I drew this.” He produced it, slightly crumpled from contact with his gym shoes and his pencil box. “And Mr McLintock laughed, and I don’t know why.”
“He laughed?” She took the drawing from him, went to find her spectacles and put them on. “And did he not tell you why he laughed?”
“No. The bell rang and it was the end of class.”
Edie sat on the couch and he sat beside her. Together they gazed in silence at his work. He thought it was one of his best pictures. A beautiful speedboat slicing through blue waters, with white water pouring up at its bow and a snowy wake at the stern. There were seagulls in the sky and, on the front of the boat, a baby wrapped in a shawl. The baby had been difficult to draw, because babies have such funny faces. No noses or chins. Also, this baby looked a bit precarious and as though at any moment it might slip off the boat and into the sea. But still, it was there.
Edie did not say anything. Henry explained to her, “It’s a speedboat. And that’s the lad that’s been born.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“But why did Mr McLintock laugh? It’s not funny.”
“No, it’s not funny. It’s a lovely picture. It’s just that…well…speed doesn’t mean a speedboat in the song. It means that the boat’s going very fast over the water, but it’s not a speedboat. And the lad that was born to be king was Bonnie Prince Charlie, and he was grown up by then.”
All was now explained. “Oh,” said Henry, “I see.”
She gave him back the drawing. “But it’s still a good picture, and I think it was very rude of Mr McLintock to laugh. Put it in your bag and take it home for your mother to see, and Edie will go and start getting your tea.”
While he did this, she heaved herself to her feet, put her spectacles back on the mantelpiece and went out of the room through a door at the back that led to her kitchen and b
athroom. These were modern additions, for when Edie was a little girl, the cottage had consisted solely of two rooms: the living room, which was the kitchen as well, and the bedroom. A but and ben it was called. No running water, and a wooden lavatory at the end of the garden. What was more astonishing was that Edie had been one of five children, and so seven people had once lived in these rooms. Her parents had slept in a box-bed in the kitchen, with a shelf over their heads for the baby, and the rest of the children had been crowded into the other room. For water, Mrs Findhorn had made the long walk each day to the village pump, and baths were a weekly affair, taken in a tin tub in front of the kitchen fire.
“But however did five of you get into the bedroom, Edie?” Henry would ask, fascinated by the logistics of sheer space. Even with just Edie’s bed and her wardrobe, it still seemed dreadfully small.
“Oh, mind, we weren’t all in there at the same time. By the time the youngest was born, my eldest brother was out working on the land, and living in a bothy with the other farm hands. And then, when the girls were old enough, they went into service in some big house or other. It was a sore wrench when we had to leave, tears all over the place, but there was no space for us all here, and too many mouths to feed, and my mother needed the extra money.”
She told him other things too. How, on winter evenings, they would bank up the fire with potato peelings and sit around it, listening to their father reading aloud the stories of Rudyard Kipling, or Pilgrim’s Progress. The little girls would work at their knitting, making socks for the menfolk. And when it came to turning the heels, the sock was given to an older sister or their mother because that bit of the knitting was too complicated for them to do.
It all sounded very poor, but somehow quite cosy too. Looking about him, Henry found it hard to imagine Edie’s cottage the way it had been in olden days. For now it was as bright and cheerful as it could be, the box-bed gone and lovely swirly carpets on the floor. The old kitchen fire had gone too, and a beautiful green-tiled fireplace stood in its place, and there were flowery curtains and a television set and lots of nice china ornaments.