Dr. MacIntyre said, “I used the same sentence many a time.” The past tense was definite. There was kindliness and understanding in his eyes. He seemed to be telling David to accept the unfairness and the inequalities, not as a proof that difficulties were too big ever to be overcome, but rather as a challenge which, if well met, promised its own private reward. It was the inner success—the sense of striving for completeness— and not the outward signs of success, which really mattered.
In that moment a lot about Dr. MacIntyre became clear to David.
And then the door opened. Mrs. Lorrimer, Dr. MacIntyre’s daughter, came once more into the room. She had the same expression of worry on her face with which she had welcomed Fenton-Stevens and David this afternoon when they had first arrived.
“That boat is in sight, Father,” she said warningly. She was middle-aged, tall, and thin, with her fading blonde hair caught in a heavy knot at the back of her head. Her blue eyes had faded, too, and so had her skin. There was the same bleached vagueness about her whole appearance. She was dressed in brown. She always dressed in brown because she had been told at the age of twenty how well she looked in brown. David couldn’t know that, of course. All he knew was that her dress was very correct, very safe, and dull enough to be very expensive. She looked old, he decided, to be the mother of the three young children on the mantelpiece.
“Is it, Mary?” Dr. MacIntyre said, refusing to be hurried. On a clear day like this the little steamer which brought mail, merchandise, livestock, and occasional passengers to the various islands could be seen miles away. There was no need to get worried about it. “Where’s Fenton-Stevens?” he asked. “I thought he was with you in the garden.”
“That was a long time ago.” There was a note of remonstrance in the cool, precise voice. “Eventually,” it went on, “Mr. Fenton-Stevens went over to explore the west shore with the children. I’ve been reading upstairs.” Somehow there was a slightly complaining effect, just a touch of self-pity, in the way she phrased her words. But Dr. McIntyre either ignored it or preferred not to notice.
“How nice,” he said. “The rest would do you good, Mary.”
His daughter did not acknowledge that probability. Father, she decided, was having one of his annoying moods. “Have you that letter ready for the boat, or can it wait until next week?” she asked.
“The boat won’t arrive for another hour, Mary. I have plenty of time.”
“I told the children to be sure to return for the boat,” Mrs. Lorrimer said. “They can take the letter down to the jetty, and perhaps Angus will slip it into the post-bag for you.”
“He always does,” her father said genially. “We’ve a damned good postman here, Bosworth. He never breaks a rule because he has never made any.” David saw Mrs. Lorrimer flinch slightly at her father’s choice of adjectives. But its purpose was achieved: no further suggestions were made to plague Dr. MacIntyre. And having established his own unflustered world again the old man turned towards his desk with a glint of humour in his eyes and picked up his pen. “I’ll join you later,” he said to David. “Have a look at the hollyhocks.”
That sounded a very pleasant way of spending half an hour. But unfortunately Mrs. Lorrimer was a very polite hostess, and insisted on accompanying David towards the garden.
3
MRS. LORRIMER REGRETS
Dr. MacIntyre’s house had been originally a row of three small cottages. The thick walls had been kept, the unnecessary doors had been plastered over, the windows had been enlarged and given shutters for protection in the winter, and a deep-gabled slate roof had been substituted for thatch. It stood very white and brightly smiling in the sunshine. A grey stone wall had been built across a short field to join the south-west corner of the house at right angles, and within the sheltered crook of this arm a garden had come to life. Here all the warmth in the air was trapped and held, and the hollyhocks grew.
David looked out over the bleak hillsides and then back at this smiling corner. “How remarkable to see anything growing except heather,” he said.
Mrs. Lorrimer seemed hardly to notice the pleasure of the soft green grass underfoot. She ignored the excellent crop of vegetables, and looked critically at a rose bush which showed symptoms of withering. “It is very limited gardening, of course,” she said. “There are so many things that simply refuse to grow here.” She sounded as if it were necessary to concentrate on what couldn’t be grown in the garden, rather than on the things that could. David wondered if her garden at home could grow bananas or coconuts, and if it could not, did that prove it was not a very good garden.
“Fine crop of hollyhocks,” he said tactfully.
Mrs. Lorrimer looked frowningly at their bright reds and pinks, glowing with all the warmth and life of a Renoir painting. “It is so very odd,” she said almost apologetically, “that Father ever came back here.”
“Perhaps he likes living here.”
“But he is so out of touch with everything.”
David thought of the room which they had just left.
Mrs. Lorrimer’s exact voice continued, “We thought he should retire to some place near us in Edinburgh. My husband is a Writer to the Signet there, you see.” There was a slight pause to allow that fact to sink in. “Edinburgh really would have been much more of a spiritual home to him. Or Oxford.”
David had flinched at the phrase. He said quickly, “I’ve always thought that a—a spiritual home is just not a matter of geography.” He cleared his throat nervously, and was thankful that none of his Oxford friends had heard him use the phrase.
“You mean, it does not matter where one lives?” Mrs. Lorrimer was shocked: she was probably thinking of Glasgow.
“Emotionally or physically, yes. We all feel happier or less happy in certain places. But if there is any spiritual home, surely it is what we have collected inside our own heads? After all, Descartes thought out half of his philosophy when he spent a day in a Bavarian stove. And he lived much of his life in foreign armies, although he wasn’t at all warlike. I don’t think he would call the stove or the barracks his spiritual home: they were just places that suited him for examining his own thoughts. He didn’t have to talk to people there, I suppose.” Now, he thought, let’s drop all this stuff about spiritual homes and enjoy the garden instead.
“Really!” Mrs. Lorrimer murmured. Inside a stove—but how ridiculous. Was he being facetious? Surely he didn’t mean that people who talked of spiritual homes had few resources inside their own minds? She stared at him blankly. He was looking now at the row of hollyhocks against the wall, his hands deep in the pockets of his grey flannel trousers. She admitted with a certain amount of effort that he was not disagreeable to look at. He was tall, and carried himself well. Even when he was standing negligently, as he was at this moment, he did not slouch. He wasn’t handsome like George Fenton-Stevens, of course, just as he had not his charm of manner either. Grey eyes under strong eyebrows. Black hair, thick and rather too long, but then barbers were difficult to find in this part of the world. A mouth which was pleasant enough when it smiled, but it seemed to fall naturally into a firm line. Rather too strong a face, Mrs. Lorrimer’s taste decided as she completed her inventory. Still, he was not unattractive. Mrs. Lorrimer determined to try again.
“Were you at school with George Fenton-Stevens?”
“No.” David turned away from the hollyhocks.
“Where did you go to school?”
“In London.” There was a fleeting smile. This insistence on schools always amused him: the safe conversational gambit, becoming suddenly less safe when London was given so broadly. That might, people always thought as they withdrew their cloaks just an inch, mean even a Board school. Mrs. Lorrimer obviously thought so.
“Oh!” She was vaguely distressed, as if she had been talking to a legless man and had asked him how he liked dancing. “But you are at Oxford?”
“Yes.” This time he looked at her very directly. “On a scholarship,” he s
aid very clearly. Just as your father was, he thought. Just as more than half the men at Oxford are.
“How interesting,” she was saying, but her voice was far from interested. “And what are you going to do after Oxford?”
“That isn’t decided yet.” It wouldn’t be, until he had First Class Honours. If he didn’t get that, then his choice of career would narrow down.
“Really?” Mrs. Lorrimer was amazed. “I thought young men always knew at this stage of their lives what they were aiming for.”
They know, he thought. Most of them know, but only some of them can talk about it. There is nothing like a nice little private bank account to let one talk confidently about the future.
Mrs. Lorrimer was saying, “Mr. Fenton-Stevens is thinking of the Foreign Office, I hear. A diplomat’s life must be so interesting, don’t you think?”
David agreed politely, but there was a strained look about his mouth.
What an odd young man, Mrs. Lorrimer decided. He talked so little about the things that really mattered. This was not what George Fenton-Stevens had led her to expect from his friend. Brilliant talker, editor of this magazine, secretary of that society, leading light in the Union... Why, he had made David Bosworth sound really quite interesting. She picked one of the roses, and looked at its soft petals without seeing them. She liked young men handsome and well-mannered, with nice families and definite careers and high hopes. Who didn’t, with three growing daughters to be launched into successful marriages?
She tried once more. “And how is Lady Fenton-Stevens?” David turned to look at her with some surprise.
“Charming woman,” Mrs. Lorrimer said, on the strength of one chance meeting some three years ago in Edinburgh. Not that Mrs. Lorrimer approved of all the publicity which Lady Fenton-Stevens managed to attract in the newspapers.
David only smiled, and Mrs. Lorrimer felt uneasy. If she had been a mind-reader she would have been horrified.
“You are a friend of the family’s, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Not exactly. I’m staying at Loch Innish as a tutor. George’s young brother and his cousin need some grounding, and George and I are doing some reading together too when we get time for that.” David made an effort to end this question and answer conversation. “The Lodge is an interesting old place. It must have seen a lot of fighting in the days when the McDonalds owned it. Their coat of arms is carved over the entrance, you know.” And a Margaret McDonald is the housekeeper, and a Malcolm McDonald is the head gillie—but let that pass, he thought tactfully.
“Oh, these McDonalds were very good sheep-stealers and pirates themselves,” Mrs. Lorrimer said lightly. “It isn’t wise to investigate any of the past history round here. All these Highlanders were very wild.”
“Fortunately for us!” David said, with a laugh. “Or England might have found herself being attacked by Norsemen who had settled quite cosily in these mountains.”
There was a tolerant silence. Oh, God, David thought, isn’t that letter finished yet? And then, as his eyes left the garden, searching for some possible piece of conversation which would not leave them feeling this hidden antagonism, he found his release. “Hello!” he said. “There is someone in rather a hurry.” He pointed to a small thin figure scrambling over the hillside with more energy than grace.
“That’s Betty,” Mrs. Lorrimer said. “I wonder where the others can be.” There was a motherly note of anxiety in her voice which made her sound human for the first time.
“Oh, they’ll be all right, Mrs. Lorrimer,” David said. “George is really awfully good with children. He handles his small brother and shrimp of a cousin very well.”
Mrs. Lorrimer looked strangely at the young man beside her. But she did not reply, for her attention was gathering on her daughter, now within polite calling distance.
“Don’t jump like that, Betty. It’s dangerous. You’ll sprain your ankle.”
The girl, one of those long-legged pole-like creatures who haven’t yet become conscious of their sex, waved cheerily back, but she stopped leaping from mound to mound obediently and settled into a jogging run.
“I wish I had had three boys,” Mrs. Lorrimer said, as if to herself. “It would not matter if they were to thicken their ankles, or break a nose, or have a scar on their cheek. Just look at you, Betty!”
Betty, red-cheeked and breathless, looked. She had seaweed stains across the shoulders of her blouse, her skirt was wet at the hem as if she had waded in the sea and had misjudged the height of a wave, there was a long red score on her leg still bleeding slightly, and her shoes were caked with the black earth of the peat bog.
“Doesn’t hurt a bit,” she assured her mother cheerfully, looking down at the cut on her leg. “We were exploring the rocks, trying to show George the seals, and I slipped into a pool. It’s nothing.” She surveyed David gravely, with frank curiosity. To her a man meant someone who could run more quickly and climb more rocks than she could. He also meant someone who paid no attention to her, but just let her come along with her sisters. But this man was smiling as he watched her. She felt he was sort of on her side.
Mother was asking questions again. Betty said wearily, conscious of her audience, “Oh, Moira and George have gone to the village to see the boat come in. I came to get Grandpa’s old letter.”
Just wait until I can talk to you alone, my girl, Mrs. Lorrimer thought. “And to wash and change.” She looked angrily at the scarred leg. “Put some iodine on that. And wear your stockings. You are much too big a girl to go running about with bare legs.”
Betty’s red cheeks deepened in colour as she was disciplined in public. She glanced nervously at the man standing so silently beside her mother.
“Yes, Mummy,” she said dutifully.
Old letter, indeed, Mrs. Lorrimer thought. “And where’s Penelope?”
“She stayed to see if the seals came. Don’t worry, Mummy,” she went on quickly, seeing the frown on her mother’s face. “She isn’t climbing over the rocks. She’s sitting on the shore. She can’t fall off there.” Betty, with her natural good humour once more regained, moved towards the house. She called over her shoulder to David, “Aren’t you going down to see the boat come in? There are horses on board today. Once there was a storm, and the waves were so big that when the horses were swimming ashore—”
“Betty! You are late,” Mrs. Lorrimer interrupted.
“Yes, Mummy.” Betty moved another three feet. “You couldn’t see their heads,” she finished for David’s benefit, and then ran.
David felt himself abandoned once more to Mrs. Lorrimer’s quiet disapproval. If only she wouldn’t be so polite and stay here with him. If only she would go away and do what she wanted to do. It would be pleasant to stretch out on the grass and wait here for George to return. Or it would be pleasant to explore the island. This was a perfect day for exploring.
He said suddenly, “I say, Mrs. Lorrimer, why don’t you let me go over to the Atlantic shore and bring your daughter home? She may forget all about time over there.” David looked towards the western path across the island. “I suppose if I follow that I can’t go wrong?”
“There is a stretch of sand at the end of that road. She is probably there. I suppose she will be all right, really. But I never know what these children are up to next. Cave-exploring, rock-climbing, diving through Atlantic breakers. They think they are indestructible.” Mrs. Lorrimer spoke with a certain relief. She really had wasted so much of this afternoon already.
“I’ll find her, and bring her home to tea. Don’t worry. No trouble at all. I should like a walk. Yes, really I should,” David said quickly, and started towards the road. Just at that last moment he had felt Mrs. Lorrimer was about to change her mind after all.
He was perfectly right about that. She remained standing there, hesitating. But she was too late now. She turned and went indoors.
He would have been amused if he had known that Mrs. Lorrimer had already started worrying about him, and wo
rrying all the more because she couldn’t imagine why she should be worrying. But all he was thinking about was the fact that he was free for the next hour, that he was actually going to be left alone. He never seemed to be able to be alone over at the Lodge—not until the others went to bed. They were gregarious animals, and assumed that everyone wanted to be like them: an afternoon spent by themselves would seem to them intolerable. This, David decided as he looked with keen pleasure about him, is sheer luxury. The air tasted of heather and bracken and sea. There was silence—so much silence that it was almost a sound; for here, in the middle of the island, the murmur of the waves had faded in the sloping moorland, and the solitary falcon overhead made no cry.
He remembered his errand, and increased his pace slightly. If he must play nursemaid to get this hour he was quite willing to do it: the walk across the island was well worth it. For somehow, from the photograph in MacIntyre’s study, David had formed the idea that Betty was the eldest child—she was easily identified, freckles and all. So he must keep his eyes open for some pigtailed creature with a passion for seals. But perhaps, he thought hopefully, she had gone home already, taking a short cut, like Betty, across the hills. That would make things perfect.
On the west side of the island there were no houses whatever. The scattered trees had disappeared too—the last ones he had passed had been only man-height, with all their meagre branches growing eastward. The sun’s reflection dazzled his eyes for a moment; and then he saw, at either end of the stretch of shining sand, black rocks, bared like giant teeth, jutting boldly up against the enormous breakers. As he watched a small fragment of the black rock moved and dived into a spent wave. Another piece of glistening rock raised itself and then lay down again. Good Lord, he thought, there are seals after all. He stood still; if he moved they would take fright. He remembered, dutifully, to look for the Lorrimer child. She wasn’t there.