She recognized the hands. For the second time that day, she looked up and found herself face to face with Hugh Kyle.
* * *
Her first reaction on seeing him was a surge of pure pleasure: instinctive, so great that it took all words, all breath away.
He said, “Good evening.”
He looked, if possible, larger and more overpowering than ever. He wore a bulky overcoat over his suit, and that caught Flora’s attention, becuuse he did not look like a man come out to dinner.
“But what are you doing here?” The joy sounded in her voice and it didn’t matter.
“I’ve come to take you home.”
Flora looked around her. “But where’s Brian?”
“Brian has already gone home.”
“He’s gone home?” She was being stupid. She knew she was being stupid. “But there was a telephone call.”
“There was no telephone call. Or if you like, I was the telephone call. It was the only way I could think of to get Brian out of the place.” His eyes were hard as blue glass. “And if you are thinking of going after him, he is now in his car and on his way back to Ardmore.”
His voice was even, and very cold. Flora’s pleasure was gone, dissolved to nothing, leaving a sinking sensation, like drowning, in her stomach. She realized that his coolness belied a scarcely suppressed inner rage, but she was too fuddled to try and discover what it was all about.
“He’s gone without me?”
“Yes, without you. Come along, I’ll take you home.”
His high-handedness made Flora feel she should raise some objection. “I … I haven’t finished my dinner.”
“From the way you were behaving when I found you, it doesn’t appear to be very appetizing.”
His voice was cutting. She became angry, and afraid, too. She said, “I don’t want to come with you.”
“No? I suppose you intend walking. It’s fifteen miles and a hard road.”
“I could get a taxi.”
“There are no taxis. Where’s your coat?”
It took some remembering. “It’s upstairs, in the ladies’. But I’m not coming with you.”
He called one of the young waiters over and told him to go upstairs and find the coat. “It’s navy blue. It has a tartan lining.” The boy departed and he turned back to Flora. “Come along, now.”
“Why did Brian go?”
“We’ll talk about it in the car.”
“Did you make him go?”
“Rose, people are beginning to be curious. Don’t let’s have a scene.”
He was right. The hum of conversation in the rest of the room had dropped. From various tables, faces were turned towards them. The thought of any sort of a scene was anathema to Flora. Without another word, very carefully, she got to her feet. Her legs felt rubbery and peculiar. Concentrating, not looking at anybody, she walked out of the room.
The waiter had found her coat. Hugh tipped him and helped her into it. She began painstakingly to do up the buttons, but her fingers were so clumsy that she had only done up two before he lost patience, took her by the elbow and propelled her ahead of him across the hall and out of the door.
Outside it was dark and drizzling, with a chill wind blowing up out of the west across the water. After the heat of the restaurant, the wine, and the rich food, the piercing cold struck at Flora like a solid thing, and she felt she had been pole-axed. The darkness swung around her. She shut her eyes and put her hand to her head, but Hugh grasped her other wrist and jerked her forward across the puddled car park to where his car waited. She stumbled and would have fallen had he not been holding her, and one of her shoes came off. He waited impatiently while she retrieved it and struggled it on again, and then she dropped her bag. She heard him swear as he picked it up and stuffed it into the pocket of his overcoat.
The shape of the car loomed up. He opened the door and bundled her in and slammed the door behind her. He walked around the front of the car and got in behind the wheel. The second door slammed shut. She felt suffocated by the hugeness of his presence. Her coat was rumpled up around her, her feet were wet, her hair was tumbled and blown all over her face. She slumped down into the seat and jammed her hands into her pockets and told herself that if she started to cry, now, she would never forgive herself.
He turned toward her. “Do you want to talk, or are you too drunk to talk?”
“I’m not drunk.”
He made no effort to turn on the car lights. She stared into the darkness and said, through teeth clenched tight with the effort of not crying, “Where’s Brian?”
“I told you. He’s gone back to Ardmore.”
“How did you make him go?”
“That’s no concern of yours.”
“How did you know where I was?”
“Isobel told me. You left your gloves at my house and I rang Fernrigg to tell you. Isobel told me that Brian had taken you out for dinner.”
“That’s not a crime.”
“In my book it is.”
He always pretends to be such a high-minded bastard.
“Because of Antony? Or because of Brian?”
“Because of Anna.”
“Anna knew all about it. Anna was in the room when Brian asked me out to dinner.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Why isn’t it the point?”
He said, wearily, “You know bloody well.”
She turned to look at him. Her eyes, by now, had become accustomed to the darkness, and the pale shape of his face loomed before her.
His wife had been dead for three years, and at heart I suspect he’s just as carnal as the rest of us.
Hugh had been in love with Rose. She had not wanted it to be true, but his sudden appearance, his resentment, made it true. In love with Rose. For this she felt she could have killed him.
“Yes I know,” she told him coldly. “You’re jealous.” She did not know if it was Rose who spoke, or the wine she had drunk, or her own miserable disappointment. She only knew that she wanted to hurt him. “Brian has things that you don’t have. A wife and a home. You can’t bear that.” It wasn’t any good fighting the tears. They were brimming over, streaming down her face, and this was his fault too. And something else had happened, because she was no longer Flora. She was Rose, totally Rose. Rose thinking up the cruelest and most wounding thing she could say. Rose, saying it. “Your wife destroyed you by dying the way she did.”
The last word hung in the silence between them. There was a short, considered pause, and then Hugh slapped her face.
It was not a very hard blow. If it had been, Hugh being the size he was, would probably have knocked her unconscious. But Flora had never been hit, by anybody, in all her life. Extraordinarily, it stopped her crying. Silenced by pain and humiliation, she simply sat there, her head ringing and her mouth slack with shock.
He reached out to switch on the lights of the car and she covered her face with her hands.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Blindly, Flora nodded.
He took her wrists and pulled her hands away from her face. The effort of making herself look at him was almost beyond her, but she did it.
“Why do you want so much, Rose?” he asked. “Why do you want everything for yourself?”
I’m not Rose. I am not Rose.
Reaction set in. She had begun to shiver. “I want to go home,” she told him.
9
FLORA
A thirst woke Flora in the night—a raging thirst as bad as some terrible form of torture. Her mouth felt dry and her head ached, and as soon as she woke, the horror of the previous evening broke over her, and she lay for a little in a welter of remorse, too overcome by misery even to be able to get up and fetch herself a glass of water.
Her eiderdown had slipped off the bed and she was cold. In the darkness she leaned down to pull it back into position again, and as she did this, she felt a stab of pain so intense that it took her breath away, and le
ft her gasping and clammy with sweat. After a little the pain faded, but not entirely. She lay cautious, very still, eyeing the pain from a distance, waiting to see what it was going to do next. She was still thirsty. Carefully, she reached for the bedside light, but as she eased herself up into a sitting position, she was gripped by nausea, shot out of bed, and reached the bathroom in time to be violently sick.
* * *
By the time the gruesome session was over, Flora—racked by retching, and with her stomach emptied of everything except pain—was in a state of collapse. She found herself on the bathroom floor, dressed only in her thin nightdress, and with her thudding head supported by the mahogany rim of the tub. Sweating, she closed her eyes and waited for death.
After a little, when it had not arrived, she opened her eyes again. The bathroom, from that worm’s-eye view, appeared enormous, distorted out of all proportion. Through the open door the passage stretched into infinity. The sanctuary of her bedroom seemed a world away. Presently, painfully, she pulled herself to her feet and, cautiously keeping close to the wall, made her way back to her bed. She fell across it exhausted and lay shuddering, without even the strength to curl herself up under the covers.
She thought, I am very ill. She was freezing cold. The window was open and the night air poured in over her and it was like being sluiced with buckets of icy water. She knew that if she hadn’t died in the bathroom, she was going to die here, of pneumonia. With an enormous effort she slid under the blankets. Her hot-water bottle had gone cold and her teeth were chattering.
She did not sleep again, and the night seemed to last forever. Her pillows became hot and lumpy, her bedclothes tangled and soaked in sweat. She prayed for the morning—for a day that would bring people and comfort and clean sheets and something to stop her head aching. But there were still many hours to endure before the dawn slid palely into the sky, and by then she had fallen into a sleep of sheer exhaustion.
It was Isobel who finally rescued her. Isobel, concerned because Flora had not appeared at breakfast, came upstairs to investigate. “… You’re probably just having a lie-in, but I thought I’d better…” She stopped when she saw the chaos of Flora’s room: clothes from the previous night still littering the floor, left to lie where Flora had dropped them; the tumbled bed; the blankets askew; a sheet trailing on the carpet.
“Rose!” She crossed to the bed and found Flora white as a ghost and with a fringe of dark hair stuck damply to her forehead.
“I’m really all right,” Flora told her in a desperate sort of a way. “I was sick in the night, that’s all.”
“My poor child. Why didn’t you wake me?”
“I didn’t want to disturb anybody.”
Isobel laid a hand on her forehead. “You’re raging hot.”
“I had such a pain…”
“… and you’re all untidy and uncomfortable.” Isobel twitched at the bedclothes in an effort to square them up, and then decided against it. “I’ll go and get Nurse McLeod and we’ll have you cozy in no time.” She made for the door. “Now don’t move, Rose. Don’t even think of trying to get up.”
When they came, bustling and busy, it was just the way she had dreamed. Concerned faces and gentle hands, clean linen, two hot-water bottles in woolen covers. A fresh nightdress, her face and hands sponged, the smell of eau de cologne, a bedjacket.
“Whose bedjacket is that?” asked Flora as they put it on her. She didn’t have a bedjacket of her own.
“It’s mine,” said Isobel.
It was shell pink, very lacy, with wide, loose sleeves.
“It’s pretty.”
“Tuppy gave it to me.”
Tuppy. Flora felt so guilty she could have wept. “Oh, Isobel, you’ve got Tuppy in bed and now me and the dance and everything.” She did weep, the helpless tears gathering in her eyes and spilling down her cheeks. “I can’t bear being such a nuisance.”
“You’re not a nuisance. Don’t even think such silly things. And Nurse is here to take care of Tuppy and she’ll help me take care of you too, won’t you Nurse?”
Nurse was bundling up the dirty bedclothes. “Oh, we’ll have her right as rain in no time. No nonsense about that.” She went from the room, heavy-footed, headed for the washing machine.
Isobel wiped Flora’s tears away with a tissue. “And when Hugh comes to see Tuppy,” she went on, “we’ll tell him…”
“No,” said Flora, so loudly and clearly that Isobel looked quite put out.
“No?” she questioned gently.
“I don’t want Hugh. I don’t want to see a doctor.” She took hold of Isobel’s hand, meaning to hold her there until Isobel was persuaded. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I’ve been sick, but I’ll get better now. It’s nothing.” She was filled with panic. Isobel was gazing at her as though she had gone mad. “I don’t like doctors,” she improvised wildly. “I’ve always been like this, ever since I was little…”
Isobel, with the expression on her face of one pacifying a dangerous lunatic, said soothingly, “Well, we’ll see. If that’s how you feel…”
Flora slowly let go of her hand. “Promise, Isobel?”
Isobel withdrew out of reach and instantly became more firm. “Now, I never make promises unless I know I’m going to be able to keep them.”
“Please.”
Isobel had reached the safety of the door. “You have a little sleep and then you’ll feel better.”
She slept and was deviled by dreams. She was on a beach and the sand was black and full of spiders. Rose was there, too, in a bikini, walking along the edge of an oily sea with a long queue of men following her. But all at once the men saw Flora and Flora had no clothes on whatsoever. And Rose started laughing. Flora tried to run away, but her feet wouldn’t move and the black sand had turned to mud. And there was a man behind her, he had caught her, he was hitting her face. He was going to kill her …
She awoke in a cold sweat to Nurse McLeod’s gentle shaking. She looked up at Nurse’s bespectacled, horsey face, Nurse’s crisp white hair. “There now,” said Nurse. “Time to wake up. Dr. Kyle’s here to see you.”
“But I’m not going to see him,” Flora told her clearly. She was still trembling from the nightmare.
“That’s too bad.” Hugh loomed up at the end of the bed, a hulk of a man, scarcely focused. “Because he’s going to see you.”
The dream faded into oblivion. Flora blinked, and his image resolved into detail. She stared at him glumly, feeling betrayed.
“I told Isobel not to tell you.”
“Like the rest of us, Isobel doesn’t always do what she’s told.”
“But she promised…”
“Now, then,” said Nurse, “you know Miss Armstrong never did anything of the sort. If you’ll excuse me, Doctor, I’ll leave you for a moment, and go back and see to Mrs. Armstrong.”
“That’s all right, Nurse.”
Nurse left them, with a rustle of her starched apron. Hugh, gently, closed the door behind her, and came back to Flora’s side. He sat, unprofessionally, on the edge of her bed.
“Isobel says you were sick.”
“Yes.”
“What time did it start?”
“In the middle of the night. I don’t know what time. I didn’t look at the time.”
“Well, let’s have a look at you.” He pushed back her hair to feel her clammy forehead. His touch was cool and professional. She thought, last night he slapped my face. The memory was so impossible to believe that it could have belonged to another nightmare. She prayed that it did, and knew that it didn’t.
“Did you have a lot of pain?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere. My tummy, I suppose.”
“Show me exactly.” She showed him. “How’s your appendix?”
“I haven’t got one. I had it out four years ago.”
“Well, that’s one possibility eliminated. Are you allergic to anything? Any food?”
&n
bsp; “No.”
“What have you been eating? What did you have for lunch yesterday?”
The effort of remembering was exhausting. “Cold lamb and baked potatoes.”
“And dinner last night?”
She closed her eyes. “I had a steak. And some salad.”
“And before that?”
“Oysters.”
“Oysters,” he repeated, as though approving her choice. And then, again, “Oysters?”
“I like oysters.”
“I like them too, but they have to be fresh.”
“You mean I ate a bad oyster?”
“It would appear so. Did you taste it? They’re usually unmistakable.”
“I … I can’t remember.”
“I’ve had trouble with the Fishers’ Arms and their oysters before. I see I’ll need to go and have a word with the proprietor before he kills off the entire population of Arisaig.”
He stood up, produced from some pocket a silver case containing a thermometer. “It’s funny,” he mused. “I haven’t had a call yet from Ardmore.” He picked up her wrist to take her pulse.
“Brian had scampi.”
“Pity,” murmured Hugh, and stopped up her mouth with the thermometer.
She was, it seemed, trapped, prostrate, at the mercy of his cutting tongue. To escape from him Flora turned away her face and stared bleakly out of the window. Slow morning clouds rolled across the sky. A seagull was screaming. She waited for him to be finished, to take the thermometer out of her mouth, to go away and leave her to die.
But the moments passed, and he did none of these things. The room seemed to have been invaded by a curious stillness as though everything it contained had been frozen or petrified. After a little, mildly curious, Flora turned back to look at him. He had not moved. He stood by her bed, holding her wrist, his eyes downcast and his expression thoughtful. The loose sleeve of Isobel’s bedjacket had fallen back and from folds of shell pink wool, Flora’s arm emerged looking, she thought, as thin as a stick. She wondered if she were suffering from some wasting disease, and he was trying to summon up the courage to tell her she was doomed.
She was rescued from this impasse by the arrival of Isobel, edging her head gingerly around the door before she entered, as though she were afraid that Flora might spring from the bed and start strangling her.