So what. Jenny’s private schemes for the two of them did a quick change of direction. “One day he will fall in love with me and I shall marry him, and go with him to live in Edinburgh and we’ll have a little house in Ann Street and go to symphony concerts together.”
The thought of living in Edinburgh was, truth be told, fairly daunting. Jenny hated towns but perhaps Edinburgh wouldn’t be too bad. They could come home for weekends.
But Fergus did not stay in Edinburgh. After he qualified, he was offered a transfer to the main office of his firm, and moved to London. London? For the first time Jenny knew a nudge of doubt. London. Could she bear to go so far away from her beloved hills and loch?
“Why don’t you go to London?” her mother asked when Jenny finally left school. “You could go to college there. Perhaps share a little flat!”
“I couldn’t bear it. It would be worse than Kent.”
“Edinburgh, then? You ought to get away from home for a bit.”
* * *
So Jenny went to Edinburgh and learned shorthand and typing, studied French and went to art galleries, and when she became homesick, climbed Arthur’s Seat and pretended she was on the top of Ben Creagan. By Easter, she had finished the course and been duly presented with a Certificate, and it was time to go home. Fergus would probably be home for Easter as well and she wondered if he would notice a change in her.
He would probably look at her, like people did in books, as though seeing her for the first time, and perhaps then he would recognize what Jenny had known for years. That they were made for each other. And at last all those elusive day-dreams would come true. It would, of course, mean living in London, but by now Jenny knew that living anywhere without Fergus was no fun at all.
As her train drew into Creagan, she hung out of the window and saw her mother waiting for her, which was odd, because usually it was her father who met her.
“Darling!” They hugged and kissed, and there was the business of getting cases off the train and making their way out into the yard where the car waited. It was now nearly dark, street lights were on, and the air smelt of hills and peat.
They came through the little town and turned on to the side road which led to home. They passed Inverbruie.
“Is Fergus back?”
“Yes. He’s home.” Jenny hugged herself. “He’s—he’s brought a friend with him.”
Jenny turned her head and looked at her mother’s neat profile. “A friend?”
“Yes. A girl called Rose. You may have seen her on television. She’s an actress.” A friend. A girl. An actress? “He met her a couple of months ago.”
“H—have you met her?”
“No, but we’ve all been invited to a party there tomorrow night.”
“But—but—” There didn’t seem to be any words for the shock and the desolation which she felt. Mrs. Fairburn stopped the car and turned to Jenny. “This is why I came to meet you at the station. I knew you’d be upset. I wanted to talk it over.”
“I just—I just don’t want him to bring anyone here to Creagan.” Even to herself this sounded pathetically juvenile.
“Jenny, you don’t own Fergus. He has a perfect right to make new friends. He’s a grown man with his own life to live. Just as you have a life to make for yourself. You can’t spend it looking over your shoulder and mourning for childhood fancies.”
The worst bit was not that she actually said this, but that she had been so perceptive in the first place.
“I—I really do love him.”
“I know. It’s agony. First love is always agony. But you’ll have to grit your teeth and see it through. And don’t let anybody see how much you mind.” They sat in silence for a bit. Then, “All right?” her mother asked, and Jenny nodded. Mrs. Fairburn started the car up again, and they moved on.
“Do you think he’ll marry her?”
“I’ve no idea. But from what Daphne Fenton tells me, it sounds perfectly possible. She says he’s bought himself a flat in Wandsworth and Rose is making his loose covers.”
“Do you think that’s a bad sign?”
“Not bad, exactly. But indicative.”
Jenny fell silent. But as they turned into the gates of the Manse, she stirred herself. “Perhaps I shall like her.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Fairburn. “Perhaps you will.”
* * *
And she did try to like Rose. But it was difficult, because, without realizing it, she had seen Rose on television, in a hospital drama, where Rose had played a nurse. Even then Jenny had thought that she was a bore, with her heart-shaped face struggling with a variety of emotions, and unbearable distress being conveyed by a slight tremor in her well-bred voice.
In real life, Rose was pretty enough.
Her hair was silky black, loose and curly around her shoulders, and she wore a low-waisted dress with unexpected bits of beading and glitter stitched to its loose folds.
“Fergus has told me so much about you,” she said to Jenny when they were introduced at Inverbruie. “He says you were practically brought up together. Is your father a farmer too?”
“No, he’s the bank manager in Creagan.”
“And you’ve always lived here?”
“Born and bred. I even went to school here. I was in Edinburgh for the winter, but it’s heaven to be back.”
“Don’t you get—er—rather bored in such a desolate spot?”
“No.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come to London. Nowhere else on earth to live, I always say to Fergy. Come to London and we’ll keep an eye on you—” She reached out and closed her fingers around Fergus’ arm. Fergus was at that moment engaged, happily, in conversation with somebody else, but she drew him physically away from this person and back to herself. “Darling, I was just saying, Jenny must come to London.”
Fergus and Jenny looked into each other’s eyes: Jenny smiled and found to her surprise that it was remarkably easy.
Fergus said, “Jenny doesn’t like city life.”
Jenny shrugged. “It’s a matter of taste.”
“But you can’t stay here always.” Rose sounded incredulous.
“I will for the summer.” She had not, in fact, thought about it, but now discovered, in an instant, that her decision was made. “I’ll get a holiday job in Creagan, I expect.” She decided to change the subject. “My mother was telling me about the flat in Wandsworth.”
“Yes…” Fergus began, but that was as far as he got because Rose took over.
“It’s heavenly. Not very big, but full of sunshine. Just a few little touches and it will be quite perfect.”
“Has it got a garden?” Jenny asked.
“No. But there’s a window-box or two. I thought we could plant geraniums. Real scarlet ones. Then we can pretend we’re in Majorca or Greece. Can’t we, darling?”
“Whatever you say,” said Fergus.
Scarlet geraniums. Dear heaven, thought Jenny, he really is in love with her. And suddenly she couldn’t bear to stand there any longer, watching them. She made her excuses and turned away. She did not speak to either Rose or Fergus for the rest of the evening.
* * *
But she could not escape Fergus, because he sought her out the very next day, spring-cleaning the summer-house.
“Jenny.”
She was actually shaking dust out of a rush mat when he appeared, unexpectedly, around the side of the summer-house, and for an instant she was startled into immobility.
“What do you want?” she managed at last.
“I’ve come to see you.”
“How nice. Where’s Rose?”
“She’s at home. She’s washing her hair.”
“It looked perfectly clean to me.”
“Jenny, are you going to listen to me?”
She sighed noisily and looked resigned. “It depends on what you’ve got to say.”
“I just want you to understand.
To understand the way things are. I want you not to be angry. I want to feel that we can still at least talk to each other. And be friends.”
“Well, we’re talking, aren’t we?”
“And friends?”
“Oh, friends. Always friends. Friends whatever we do to each other.”
“And what have I done?”
She glared at him accusingly, and then threw down the rush mat.
“All right, so you don’t like Rose. You might as well admit it,” he said.
“I don’t feel about Rose one way or the other. I don’t know Rose.”
“Then isn’t it a little unfair—on both Rose and myself—to make a snap judgement?”
“I just don’t feel I have anything in common with her.”
“That’s just because she told you that you ought to get away from Creagan.”
“And what possible business is it of hers?”
Now his temper was rising to match her own. She saw his jaw muscles tighten, a familiar sign, and she was pleased because she had made him angry. It somehow eased the hurt inside her.
“Jenny, you stay here for the rest of your life, and you’ll end up a country bumpkin in a seated tweed skirt with nothing to talk about except dogs and fishing.”
She turned on him. “You know something? I’d rather be that than a third-rate actress with a mouth like a button.”
He laughed, but he was laughing at Jenny and not with her. He said unforgivably, “I do believe you’re jealous. You always could be quite impossible!”
“And you, perhaps, could always be a fool, but I never realized it until now.”
Fergus turned on his heel and walked away, across the lawn. Jenny watched his progress, her temper dying as swiftly as it had blown up. Words spoken in heat and haste were all very well, but they could never be taken back. Nothing could ever be the same again.
* * *
Jenny found a job in Creagan, working in a shop which sold Shetland pullovers and pebble-jewellery to tourists. Around July, she was told by her mother that Fergus and Rose were engaged, and were to be married in September in London where Rose’s parents lived. Just a quiet wedding, with a few of their close London friends. But meantime, they had returned to Inverbruie and there was to be another little party and Jenny could not find the courage to go. After they were married, she told herself again, it would be different. She would become dynamic; go abroad perhaps; get a job in the French Alps as a chalet girl, or be a cook on a yacht. However, she was growing cold and there were trout to be caught for supper. She stood up, clambered down the heathery bank, untied the painter, pushed the boat out into the water and began to row.
Fishing was special, because when you fished you thought about nothing else. She took the boat a long way up the loch and then shipped the oars and let the wind drift her back towards the shore. Now, there was enough breeze to stir the surface of the water, and she began casting.
She heard the car coming up the road, but was too engrossed to pay attention to it. There was another bite or two, and then at last she hooked a fish, and concentrating on nothing else, began gently to reel it in. She netted it out of the water, and dropped it in the bottom of the boat.
As if on cue, she heard a voice say, “Well done.”
Startled by this interruption from the business in hand, she looked up and saw, all at once, a number of surprising things. She had, without realizing it, drifted to within yards of the shore; the car she had heard on the road had stopped and was now parked a little way off; and Fergus, a solitary figure, stood on the bank and watched her.
He was bare-headed, the wind ruffling his dark hair. He wore a tweed jacket and a pair of corduroys, tucked into green rubber boots. Not dressed for fishing. Jenny sat in the rocking boat and looked at him, and wondered if he had come upon her by chance, or if, in fact, he had come looking, to ask why she had refused to come to the party, to try to persuade her to change her mind. If he did this, then they would have another argument, another row, and she knew that rather than repeat their last painful set-to, she would prefer never to have to speak to him again.
He grinned. He said again, “Well done. You handled that very neatly. I couldn’t have done better myself.”
Jenny did not reply. Instead, she busied herself in reeling in the loose line, securing the barbed fly. With care, she laid down the rod, and then looked up again at Fergus.
She said, “How long have you been there?”
“Ten minutes or more.” He put his hands in his jacket pockets. “I came to find you. Your mother told me you’d come up here. I want to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“Jenny, don’t get your hackles up. Let’s call it pax.”
It seemed only fair. “All right.”
“Come and get me then.”
Jenny made no move to do this, but even as they spoke she was being blown inshore, and as she hesitated, she felt the first bump as the keel touched stone. Before she realized what was happening, Fergus had waded out and grabbed the bow, thrown one long leg over the gunwale and was aboard.
“Now,” he said, “give me the oars.”
* * *
There didn’t seem to be very much alternative. With a couple of clean strokes, he had turned the light craft, and then they were headed back out into the middle of the loch. It was ten minutes or so before he looked about him, decided they had come far enough, shipped the oars, and turned up the collar of his jacket against the cold edge of the wind.
“Now,” he said, “we’re going to talk.”
It seemed sensible to take the initiative. “I suppose my mother told you that I didn’t want to come tonight. I suppose that’s what it’s all about.”
“Yes, it’s about that. And other things, too.”
She waited for him to enlarge on this, but he did not continue. Across the thwarts, they looked at each other, and then suddenly smiled. And all at once Jenny was filled with a curious contentment and peace. It was a long time since she’d sat in a boat with Fergus, in the middle of the loch, with the familiar hills folding away on all sides and the sky arched above them, and have him smile at her like that. It made it easier to be honest, not only with him, but with herself.
“It’s just that I don’t want to come. I don’t want to see Rose again. It’ll be different when you’re married to her. But now…” She shrugged. “It’s cowardice, I suppose,” she finally admitted.
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“Perhaps it isn’t me. Perhaps I’m all twisted and back to front. You said that day by the summer-house that I was jealous, and, of course, you were quite right. I suppose I always thought of you as my property, but that’s wrong, isn’t it? No person can ever belong to another person, even after they’re married.”
“No man is an island.”
“I always thought that bits of a man had to be an island. You can’t creep inside somebody else’s head.”
“No. You can’t do that.”
“Just like you can’t go on being a child. You have to grow up whether you want to or not.”
He said. “Did you get that job in Creagan?”
“Yes, but it folds up in October when the shop closes down for the winter. I’ve decided that then I shall be enormously enterprising and find myself an occupation that’s very well paid and miles away. Like America or Switzerland.” She smiled, wryly. “Rose would approve of that.”
Fergus stayed silent. His eyes, watching her, were unblinking, intensely blue.
“And how,” she asked politely, “is Rose?”
“I don’t know.”
Jenny frowned. “But you have to know. She’s at Inverbruie.”
“She’s not an Inverbruie.”
“She’s not…?” A curlew flew overhead, its cry mournful, and the water slapped and whispered against the planking of the boat. “But Mother said…”
“She got it wrong. My mother didn’t say anything about Rose being here; your mother just took it f
or granted that Rose was with me. We’re not going to get married. The engagement’s off.”
“Off? You mean—? But why didn’t Mother tell me?”
“She didn’t know. I haven’t got around to telling my own parents yet. I wanted to tell you before I told anyone else.”
For some reason, this was so touching that Jenny wondered if she were about to burst into tears. “But, why? Why, Fergus?”
“You just said it. No person can belong to another person.”
“Didn’t—didn’t you love her?”
“Yes, I did. I loved her very much.” He could say that, and she didn’t feel jealous in the least, just sad for him because it hadn’t worked out. “But you marry a life as well as a person, and Rose’s life and mine seemed to run along parallel lines, like railway tracks, without ever actually touching.”
“When did all this happen?”
“A couple of weeks ago. That’s why I came north for the weekend; I wanted to explain it to my parents, and let my mother see I wasn’t dying of a broken heart.”
“And aren’t you?”
“Perhaps a little bit, but not enough to show.”
“Rose loved you.”
“For a bit she did, yes.”
Jenny hesitated, and then said it, “I love you.”
* * *
It was Fergus’s turn to look as though he were about to burst into tears. “Oh, Jenny.”
“You might as well know. You’ve probably always known. I never thought I could say that to anybody, least of all to you, but for some reason it seems to be quite easy. I mean, you don’t have to do anything about it, but you might as well know. It doesn’t change anything. I shall still find that marvellous job and winkle myself away from Creagan into the wide, wide world.”
She smiled, expecting him to smile back at her, approving of this sensible, mature scheme. But he did not smile. For a long moment he simply looked at her, and she felt her own smile die beneath the sadness in his face. Then he said, “Don’t.”
Jenny frowned. “But, Fergus, I thought that was what you wanted. For me to get away from Creagan, and stand on my own feet.”
“I couldn’t bear you to go away and stand on your own feet,” he told her bluntly.