Still, there was no time to waste, so he went and retrieved his car, drove out to Turnhouse, parked the car again, and checked in at the departure desk. Then, because there was half an hour to wait before his flight, he went upstairs for a sandwich and a glass of beer.
The barman was an old acquaintance, familiar after many business trips to London.
“Haven’t seen you for a while, sir.”
“No. I guess it’s been a month or more.”
“Do you favor ham, or egg?”
“Better give me one of each.”
“Going down to London?”
“That’s right.”
The barman assumed a knowing expression. “Nothing like a weekend off.”
“It may not be a weekend. I may be back tomorrow. I don’t know. It depends.”
“You might as well take the weekend, and enjoy yourself.” He slid the tankard of Export across the counter. “It’s lovely warm weather down in London.”
“It’s not so bad here.”
“No, it looks like a good afternoon. You’ll have a pleasant flight.”
He wiped down the top of the counter and went to serve another customer. Antony took his beer and his plate of sandwiches over to a table by the window, shed his raincoat and his bag, and lit a cigarette.
Beyond the window, beyond the parapet of the terrace, he saw the hills, the shredding clouds, the flying windsock. He was hungry. The beer and sandwiches waited. Sitting there, watching the cloud shadows run across the puddled runways, he forgot about being hungry and let his mind return to the problem of Rose.
That required no conscious effort at all on Antony’s part. As far as Rose was concerned his thoughts seemed to have taken on a will of their own, worrying away like an old dog digging up a bone, fretting around in circles and never getting anywhere.
As though the action were in itself some answer to his dilemma, he reached into his jacket pocket and took out her letter, although he had already read it so many times that he knew it by heart. It was not in an envelope for the simple reason that it had not arrived in an envelope, but rather in an untidy parcel around a small box containing the sapphire and diamond ring that Antony had bought her.
He had given it to her four months ago in the restaurant of the Connaught Hotel. They had finished dinner, the waiter had brought their coffee to the table, and somehow, quite suddenly, the moment had arrived: the time, the place, and the woman. Antony, like a conjurer, had produced the little box from his pocket, flipped it open, and let the light sparkle on the jewels within.
Rose had said, instantly, “What a pretty thing.”
“It’s for you,” said Antony.
She looked up into his eyes, incredulous, flattered, but something else as well. He had not been able to make up his mind what that something else was.
“It’s an engagement ring,” he went on. “I bought it this morning.” For some reason, it had been important that the ring should be in his hand when he asked her to marry him, as though he knew that she needed this extra leverage, this material persuasion. “I think—and I’m hoping that you think so, too—I think that we ought to get married.”
“Antony.”
“Don’t sound so reproachful.”
“I’m not sounding reproachful. I’m sounding surprised.”
“You can’t say, ‘this is so sudden,’ because we’ve known each other for five years.”
“But not really known each other.”
“I feel as though we have.”
And indeed, at that moment, that was just how Antony did feel. But their relationship was unusual, and the most unusual thing about it was the way that Rose kept recurring in his life—turning up when he least expected to meet her, as though the whole relationship had been preordained.
And yet, the first time he had met her, she had made no impression on him at all. But then he had been twenty-five and in the throes of a love affair with a young actress doing a season in Edinburgh. And Rose was only seventeen. Her mother, Pamela Schuster, had taken the Beach House at Fernrigg for a summer holiday. Antony, home for a weekend, and escorting Tuppy to the beach for a picnic, had been introduced and eventually invited back to the Beach House for a drink. The mother was charming and very attractive, but for some reason Rose had been in a bad mood that afternoon. Antony had simply dismissed her leggy gawkiness along with her sulky expression and the monosyllabic replies she gave him each time he tried to talk to her. By the time he made his next weekend visit to Fernrigg, both she and her mother had gone, and he never gave the Schusters another thought.
But then, a year ago in London on business, he had come upon Rose having a drink in the Savoy bar with an earnest young American in rimless spectacles. Rose now was something quite different. Seeing her, recognizing her, Antony could scarcely believe it was the same girl. Slender, sensational-looking, she held the attention, open or otherwise, of every man in the place.
Antony moved in and introduced himself, and Rose, perhaps bored by her monumentally sincere companion, responded with flattering delight. Her parents, she told him, were on holiday in the south of France. She was flying to join them tomorrow afternoon. That had created a pleasant sense of urgency, and without much urging Rose abandoned the American and went out to dinner with Antony.
“When are you coming back from the south of France?” he wanted to know, already hating the thought of having to say goodbye to her.
“Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t thought.”
“Don’t you have a job, or anything?”
“Oh, darling, I’d be useless in a job. I’m never on time for anything and I can’t type, so I’d just be the most dreadful nuisance. Besides, there’s no need. And I’d just be taking bread from some deserving mouth.”
Antony’s Scottish conscience made him say, “You’re a drone. A disgrace to society.” But he said it with a smile, because she amused him, and Rose took no sort of umbrage.
“I know.” She checked her elaborate eye makeup in the little mirror she had fished out of her handbag. “Isn’t it ghastly?”
“Let me know when you come back from the south of France.”
“Of course.” She flipped the compact shut. “Of course, darling.”
But she hadn’t let him know. Antony had no idea where she lived, and no address in London, so it was impossible for him to get in touch with her. He tried looking up Schuster in the telephone directory, but no number was listed. Discreetly, he made inquiries of Tuppy, but Tuppy only remembered the Schusters at the Beach House, and had no idea of their permanent address.
“Why do you want to know?” Her voice over the telephone was clearly curious.
“I met Rose again in London. I want to get in touch with her.”
“Rose? That pretty child? How intriguing.”
By the time Antony found her again, it was the beginning of the summer. London gardens were fragrant with lilac, and the parks veiled in the young green of newly opened leaves.
Once more Antony was south, interviewing a client for his firm. Lunching at Scott’s in the Strand, he met an old school friend who asked him to a party that evening. The friend lived in Chelsea, and as Antony walked through the front door of the top-floor flat the first person he saw was Rose.
Rose. He knew after the way that she had behaved that he should be furious with her, but instead, his heart missed a beat. She wore a blue linen pantsuit and high-heeled boots, with her dark hair loose to her shoulders. She was talking to some man whom Antony did not even bother to inspect. She was here. He had found her. Fate had stepped in. Fate did not intend that they should be kept apart. Antony, brought up in a Highland household, was a great believer in fate.
He took a drink from a passing tray and went to claim her.
This time, it was perfect. He had three days in London, and she wasn’t going to the south of France. As far as he could find out, she wasn’t going anywhere. Her mother and father were in New York, where Rose planned to join them—sometime. N
ot just now. She was living in her father’s flat in Cadogan Court. Antony checked out of his club and moved in too.
Everything went right. Even the weather smiled upon them. During the day the sun shone, spikes of lilac bobbed against the blue sky, windowboxes were filled with flowers, and there always seemed to be taxis and the best tables in restaurants waiting for them. At night a round, silver moon sailed up into the sky and bathed the city in its romantic light. Antony spent money like water—as though he were made of it—and the uncharacteristic orgy of extravagance culminated the morning he walked into a Regent Street jeweler’s and bought the diamond and sapphire ring.
They were engaged. He could scarcely believe it. To make it true, they sent cables to New York, made telephone calls to Fernrigg. Tuppy was amazed, but delighted. She had been longing for Antony to get married and settle down.
“You must bring her up to see us. It’s so long since she was here. I can scarcely remember what she looks like.”
Antony, gazing at Rose, said, “She’s beautiful. The most beautiful thing in the world.”
“I can’t wait to see her again.”
He said to Rose, “She says she can’t wait.”
“Well, darling, I’m afraid she’ll have to. I have to go to America for a moment. I promised my mother and Harry. He’s made such plans, and he always gets into such a state if he has to change them. I must go. Explain to Tuppy.”
Antony explained. “Later, we’ll come,” he promised. “Later, when Rose is back again. I’ll bring her up to Fernrigg and you can get to know her all over again.”
So Rose went to New York, and Antony, bemused with love and good fortune, returned to Edinburgh. “I’ll write,” she had promised, but she didn’t write. Antony penned long, loving screeds which she never answered. He began to fret. He sent cables, but there was no reply to them, either. In the end he put through a wildly expensive telephone call to her home in Westchester County, but Rose was away. A servant answered the telephone in an accent so strong as to be practically incomprehensible. He could only gather that Rose was out of town, her address unknown, and her return date uncertain.
He was beginning to feel desperate when the first postcard arrived. It was a picture of the Grand Canyon with a scrawled and affectionate message that told him nothing. A week later came the second. Rose stayed in America the entire summer and during that time he received five postcards from her, each more unsatisfactory than the one before.
Plaintive queries from Fernrigg did nothing to help the situation. Antony managed to fend them off with the same excuses that he had started making to himself. Rose was simply not a good correspondent.
But, despite these excuses, doubts loomed and grew like monstrous balloons, like clouds darkening his horizon. He began to lose confidence in his own solid, Scottish common sense. Had he made a fool of himself? Had those magical days in London with Rose simply been a blinding illusion of love and happiness?
And then something happened to drive all thoughts of Rose from his head. Isobel telephoned from Fernrigg to tell him that Tuppy was ill: she had caught a chill, it had turned to pneumonia, a nurse had been engaged to take care of her. Trying to sound calm, Isobel did her best to reassure Antony. “You mustn’t worry. I’m sure it will be all right. It’s just that I had to tell you. I hate worrying you, but I knew you’d want to know.”
“I’ll come home,” he said instantly.
“No. Don’t do that. It’ll make her suspicious, make her think something’s really wrong. Perhaps later, when Rose gets back from America. Unless…” Isobel hesitated hopefully. “… perhaps she’s back already?”
“No,” Antony had to tell her. “No. Not yet. But any day now, I’m sure.”
“Yes,” said Isobel. “I’m sure.” She sounded as if she were comforting him, as she had comforted him through all the anxieties of his childhood, and Antony knew that he should be comforting her. That made him feel more miserable than ever.
It was like worrying about a grumbling appendix and suffering from acute toothache at one and the same time. Antony did not know what to do, and in the end, with a lack of decision that was quite foreign to his nature, he did nothing.
The nonaction lasted for a week, and then, simultaneously, all his problems came to a ghastly head. The morning post brought the parcel from Rose, untidily wrapped and sealed, postmarked London and containing his engagement ring along with the only letter she had ever written him. And while he was still reeling from the shock, the second telephone call came, from Isobel. That time Isobel had not been able to be brave. Her tears and her very real anguish broke through, and her shaking voice betrayed the shattering truth. Hugh Kyle was obviously worried about Tuppy. She was, Isobel suspected, much worse than any of them had guessed. She would perhaps die.
All Tuppy wanted was to see Antony and Rose. She was yearning for them, worrying, wanting to make wedding plans. And it would be so dreadful, said Isobel, if something should happen, and Tuppy was never to see Antony and Rose together.
The implication was obvious. Antony had not the heart to tell Isobel the truth, and even as he heard himself making that impossible promise, he wondered how the hell he was going to keep it. Yet he knew that he had to.
With a calmness born of desperation, he made arrangements. He spoke with his boss, and with as few explanations as possible, asked for and was granted a long weekend. In a mood of dogged hopelessness, he put through a telephone call to the Schuster flat in London; when there was no reply, he drafted a wordy telegram and sent that instead. He booked a seat on the London plane. Now, at the airport waiting for that plane to be called, he reached into the pocket of his jacket, and took out the letter. The writing paper was deep blue and opulent, the address thickly embossed at the head of the page.
Eighty Two Cadogan Court
London, S.W.1
But Rose’s writing, unfortunately, did not live up to the address. Sprawling, unformed as a child’s, it meandered cross the page, with the lines trailing downward, and the punctuation nonexistent.
Darling Antony.
I’m terribly sorry but I’m sending your ring back because I really don’t think that after all I can bear to marry you, it’s all been a horrible mistake. At least, not horrible, because you were sweet and the days we had together were fun, but it all seems so different now, and I realize that I’m not ready to settle down and be a wife, especially not in Scotland, I mean I don’t have anything against Scotland, I think it’s very pretty, but it isn’t really my scene. I mean, not for ever. I flew into London last week, am here for a day or two, not sure what happens next. My mother sent her love, but she doesn’t think I should get married yet and when I do she doesn’t think I should live in Scotland. She doesn’t think it’s my scene either. So terribly sorry, but better now than later. Divorces are such messy things and take so long and cost such a lot of money.
Love (still)
Rose
Antony folded the sheet of paper and put it back into his pocket, and felt the smooth leather of the box with the diamond and sapphire ring inside. Then he started in on his beer and sandwiches. There was scarcely time to finish them before his flight was called.
He was at Heathrow at half past three, caught the bus to the terminal, and then took a taxi. London was noticeably warmer than Edinburgh and bright with autumn sunshine. The trees had scarcely started to turn and the grass in the park was worn and brown after the long summer. Sloane Street seemed to be filled with light-hearted children going home from school hand in hand with smartly dressed young mothers. If Rose isn’t there, he thought, I shall sit down and bloody well wait for her.
The taxi rounded the corner of the square, stopping in front of the familiar red-brick building. It was a new block, very plush, with bay trees at the head of the wide flight of stone steps, and a great deal of plate glass.
Antony paid off the taxi and went up the steps and through the glass door. Inside there was dark brown wall-to-wall carpeting and palm t
rees in tubs and an expensive smell, mostly compounded of leather and cigars.
The porter was not behind his desk, nor anywhere to be seen. Perhaps, thought Antony, pressing the bell for the lift, he’s nipped out for an evening paper. The lift silently descended. Silently the doors slid open for him. As Antony went in they slid silently shut. He pressed the button for the fourth floor and recalled standing in that very lift with Rose in his arms, kissing her every time they passed another floor. It was a poignant memory.
The lift stopped and the doors opened. Carrying his bag, he stepped out, went down the long passage, stopped at the door of number Eighty-two and without giving himself time to think about it pressed the bell. From inside came the deep note of the buzzer. Setting down his bag and putting up a hand to lean against the edge of the door, he waited, without hope. She would not be there. Already he felt exhausted by what must follow.
And then from within he heard a sound. He stiffened, becoming suddenly alert, like a dog. A door shut. Another door opened. Footsteps came down the short passage from the kitchen, and the next moment the door was flung open. There stood Rose.
Staring at her like a fool, a number of thoughts flew through Antony’s mind. She was here, he had found her. She didn’t look too furious. She had cut her hair.
She said, “Yes?” which was a funny thing for her to say, but then this was a funny situation.
Antony said “Hello, Rose.”
“I’m not Rose,” said Rose.
4
ANTONY
That Friday was, for Flora, fogged in a curious unreality, a carryover from the events of the previous incredible day. She had intended to do so much and had ended up by achieving nothing.
Physically, she went through the motions of jobhunting and visiting various estate gents, but her mind refused to concentrate on the matters in hand.
“Do you want permanent or temporary work?” the girl at the agency had asked, but Flora simply stared at her and did not reply, obsessed as she was by images that had nothing to do with shorthand and typing. It was as if a well-ordered house had suddenly been invaded and taken over by strangers. They had caught Flora’s attention to the point where she could think of nothing else.