“Well, isn’t that splendid?” Two patches of color glowed on Tuppy’s wrinkled cheeks. “They’re really coming.” She smiled down at Jason. “What do you think of that?”
Jason knew all about Rose. He knew that one day Antony was going to marry her. But, “I’ve never met Rose,” he said.
“No, of course you haven’t. You weren’t living here when she and her mother stayed at the Beach House.”
Jason knew about the Beach House, too. It had once been a fisherman’s croft, tucked into the curve of the beach which lay to the north of Fernrigg. Tuppy had converted it into a little cottage and let it out in the summer to holiday people. But now the summer was over and the Beach House was closed and shuttered. Jason sometimes thought it would be a nice place to live. It would be pleasant to step out of the front door, straight onto the sand.
“What’s she like?”
“Rose? Well, she was very pretty. I can’t really remember very much else about her. Where is she going to sleep?” she asked Isobel.
“I thought the little single room, since it’s warmer than the great big double one, and the bed’s made up. I’ll do some flowers.”
“And Antony’s room?”
“Mrs. Watty and I will do that this evening.”
Tuppy laid down The Tale Of Two Bad Mice. “We must ask one or two people in…”
“Now, mother…” Isobel started in a warning sort of voice, but Tuppy took no notice of her. Perhaps because she was so happy, Isobel did not seem to have the heart to persist in her objections.
“… Just a little supper party. When do you think we should have it? Sunday night? No, that wouldn’t be any use because Antony will have to start back to Edinburgh. It’ll have to be tomorrow night. Tell Mrs. Watty, will you, Isobel? Perhaps Watty can lay his hands on some pigeon, or better still, some grouse. Or Mr. Reekie might be able to let us have some scampi.”
“I’ll see to it,” promised Isobel, “on one condition—that you don’t start trying to organize anything yourself.”
“No, of course I won’t, don’t be so silly. And you must ring up Mr. and Mrs. Crowther, and we’ll ask Anna and Brian Stoddart over from Ardmore; they knew Rose when she was out here before, and it’ll be nice for Anna to have an evening out. You don’t think it’s too short notice, do you, Isobel? You’ll have to explain, or they’ll think we’re very rude…”
“They’ll understand. They won’t think it’s rude at all.”
Mr. Crowther was the Presbyterian minister from Tarbole, and Mrs. Crowther taught Jason at Sunday School. He did not think it sounded a very gay party.
“Do I have to come?” he asked.
Tuppy laughed. “Not if you don’t want to.”
Jason sighed. “I wish you’d finish the story.”
Tuppy began to read again, and Isobel went away to do her telephoning and confer with Mrs. Watty. Just as Tuppy reached the last page, with the picture of Hunca Munca with her dustpan and broom, Nurse McLeod came in. With her starchy rustle and her big red hands, she whisked Jason out of the bed and bundled him good-naturedly out of the way, scarcely giving him time to kiss his great-grandmother goodnight.
“You don’t want to make your great-granny tired,” she told him. “And what Dr. Kyle would say to me if he were to come in the morning and find her all peely-wally, well, I wouldn’t like to imagine.”
Jason, who had sometimes overheard Dr. Kyle letting fly at something that had annoyed him, could imagine well, but decided to keep it to himself.
He went slowly through the door, not disliking Nurse, because it was nice that she was going to make Tuppy better, but wishing that she didn’t always have to be in such a hurry. Feeling ill-used, he trailed along to the bathroom to clean his teeth. In the middle of this, he remembered that tomorrow was Saturday, which meant that he did not have to go to school. And Antony was coming. Perhaps he would make Jason a bow and arrow. In good spirits, Jason finally retired to bed.
* * *
When the telephone rang at Ardmore House, Anna Stoddart was out in the garden. At that hour between daylight and darkness, the outdoors had a special magic for her and even more so at this time of the year, when the evenings were drawing in and the twilight was thick with nostalgia for the blue and gold evenings of the summer that was over.
It was easy to come indoors at tea time and draw the curtains and sit by the fire, forgetting about the scents and the sounds of outside. But then there would be a ruffle of wind against the windowpane or the scream of a gull or, at high tide, the whisper of the sea, and Anna would make some excuse, put on her jacket and gumboots, pick up her secateurs, and whistle up the dogs and go outdoors again.
From Ardomore the views of the coastline and the Islands were spectacular. This was why Anna’s father, Archie Carstairs, had chosen the site for his pretentious granite mansion. Indeed, if one did not mind being a mile from Ardmore Village (where there was a general store cum post office, and the yacht club, and little else) and six miles from the shops of Tarbole, it was a marvelous place to live.
One of the reasons Anna usually liked this time of the evening was the lights. Just before dark they came on, shining out at sea, along the coast road, from the great mountains which shouldered up inland; the riding lights of fishing boats, and the warm yellow windows of distant crofts and farms. The street lights of Tarbole stained the night sky with a reddish-gold reflection, and beyond that again Fernrigg stretched like a long finger into the sea, with at its tip, half-hidden by trees, Fernrigg House.
But this evening there was nothing to be seen. The half-light swirled in mist, a fog horn sounded out at sea, and Ardmore was isolated by the weather like a house forgotten at the end of the world.
Anna shivered. Being able to see Fernrigg across the sound had always been a comfort to her. Fernrigg meant Tuppy Armstrong. Tuppy was Anna’s touchstone, living proof that a person could live contentedly and usefully, surrounded by family and friends, never confused or lacking confidence, apparently totally happy. Tuppy, it always seemed to Anna, had lived her considerable life—and in many ways it had been a tragic one—in a straight line; never diverging, never faltering, never defeated.
Anna had been a shy little girl when she first remembered Tuppy, the only child of an elderly father more interested in his thriving business and his yachting ventures than his small silent daughter. Anna’s mother had died soon after Anna was born, so that Anna had been cared for by a series of nannies and insulated from children her own age by her shyness and her father’s considerable wealth.
But Tuppy never made Anna feel that she was either plain or stupid. She had always had time for Anna—time to talk and time to listen. “I’m just going out to plant bulbs,” she would say. “Come and help me, and while we’re working we can talk.”
The memory made Anna want to cry. She pushed it to the back of her mind because she could not bear to think of Tuppy ill, much less imagine Tuppy dying. Tuppy Armstrong and Hugh Kyle were Anna’s best friends. Brian was her husband and she loved him so much that it hurt, but he wasn’t her friend and he never had been. She sometimes wondered if other married couples were friends, but she never got to know the women well enough to be able to ask them and find out.
She was picking the last of the roses, pale shapes in the gloom. She had meant to pick them that morning but had forgotten, and now was gathering a bunch before the first frost could nip them. The stems felt cold in her bare hands, and fumbling a little in the half light she pricked her thumb on a thorn. The smell of the roses was faint and somehow old as though already they had died, and all that remained of their summer glory was their scent.
She thought, When they come again—the new buds and then the flowers—the baby will be here.
That should have filled her with happy anticipation, but instead was more of a talisman, like touching wood. She would not think of this baby dying, of it never being born. It had taken so long to become pregnant again. After five years, she had almost given up ho
pe. But now the living seed lay within her, growing every day. She was planning for it: knitting a tiny sweater, getting the old wicker cot down from the attic, putting her feet up in the afternoons the way Hugh had told her to do.
Next week she was going to Glasgow to buy a lot of expensive maternity clothes, and to have her hair done. A woman was at her most beautiful when she was pregnant—so the magazines proclaimed—and all at once Anna had visions of herself as a new person—someone romantic and feminine, loved and cherished.
The old-fashioned words started her. Loved and cherished They seemed to reach her consciousness from some remote past. But now with the new baby coming, there was perhaps real reason to feel hopeful.
Brian had always wanted a child. Every man wanted a son. The fact that she had lost the last one had been Anna’s own fault. She had worried too much and become upset too easily. But this time it was going to be different. She was older, less anxious to please, more mature. She would not lose this child.
It was nearly dark and, now, quite cold. She shivered again. Inside the house, she heard the telephone begin to ring. She thought that Brian would probably answer it, but turned toward the house anyway and began to walk up the garden, across the damp grass, up the slippery stone steps, across the crunching gravel, and through the garden door.
The telephone continued to ring. Brian had not appeared. She laid down the roses and, without bothering to remove her rubber boots, went across the hall to the corner under the stairs which, when he had built the house years ago, her father deemed a suitable place for the tiresome instrument. There were other telephones at Ardmore now—in the drawing room, the kitchen, and by Anna and Brian’s bed—but this one remained in its stuffy little nook.
She picked it up. “Ardmore House.”
“Anna, it’s Isobel Armstrong.”
Fear caught at Anna. “Tuppy’s all right?”
“Yes, she really is. She’s looking better and she’s eating quite well. Hugh got a nurse for us, a Mrs. McLeod from Fort William, and she’s settled down splendidly. I think Tuppy quite likes her.”
“What a relief.”
“Anna, would you both be able to come over for supper tomorrow evening? It’s rather short notice, but Antony is coming home for the weekend and bringing Rose, and of course the first thing Tuppy thought of was a party.”
“I think we’d love to come. But isn’t it too much for Tuppy?”
“Tuppy won’t be there, but she’s planning the whole thing. You know what she’s like. And she specially wanted you and Brian to come.”
“We’d love to. What time?”
“About seven thirty. And don’t dress up or anything, it’s just family, and maybe the Crowthers…”
“That’ll be fun.”
They chatted for a little longer, and then rang off. Isobel had not said anything about the baby because she didn’t know. Nobody knew except Brian and Hugh. Anna didn’t want anybody to know. If people knew perhaps she would never have it.
She came out of the little cubbyhole and began to take off her gumboots and her coat. She remembered Rose Schuster and her mother. She remembered the summer they had taken the Beach House, because that was the summer Anna had lost her baby. Pamela Schuster and her daughter were thus part of the nightmare, though that was not their fault, but Anna’s own.
She remembered now that where Mrs. Schuster had been frighteningly sophisticated, her daughter was almost indecently youthful. Their glamour had rendered the shy Anna inarticulate. Because of that they had had nothing to say to Anna. Indeed after a few cursory remarks, they had taken no notice of her at all.
But Brian they had enjoyed. In the warmth of their appreciation he had been at his best, amusing and charming, his wit a match for anything they could offer. Anna, proud of her attractive young husband, had taken a back seat and been glad to do so. She wondered when her Rose had changed, whether being engaged to someone as nice as Antony had taken some of the sharp edge from her personality.
Now she stood listening, wondering where she would find Brian. The house was silent. She went across to the drawing-room door, opened it, and found the room full of light and firelight, and Brian stretched out in the armchair reading the Scotsman. A tumbler of whisky stood close by his hand.
He lowered the paper as she appeared and eyed her over the top of it. The telephone stood on the table by his side.
She said, “Didn’t you hear the telephone ring?”
“Yes. But I guessed it would be for you.”
She did not comment on this. She came over to the fire, stretching her cold hands to the blaze, warming herself. She said, “That was Isobel Armstrong.”
“How’s Tuppy?”
“She seems to be all right. They’ve got a nurse for her. They want us to go over and have supper at Fernrigg tomorrow. I said that we would.”
“That’s all right by me.”
He began to go back to his newspaper and Anna said quickly, to keep the conversation going, “Antony’s coming home for the weekend.”
“So that’s the reason for the celebration.”
“He’s bringing Rose with him.”
There was a long silence. Then Brian lowered his paper, folded it, and laid it on his lap. He said, “Rose?”
“Rose Schuster. You remember. He’s engaged to her.”
“I thought someone said she was in America.”
“Apparently not.”
“You mean, she’s coming to Fernrigg for the weekend?”
“That’s what Isobel told me.”
“Well, I never did,” said Brian. He sat up, dropping the paper onto the hearth rug, and reached out for his drink. He tipped it back, finished it, got slowly up out of his chair and went over to the drink table to replenish his glass.
Anna said, “I’ve been out picking roses.” The siphon swished into Brian’s tumbler. “It’s raining. The mist’s coming in.”
“It felt like that earlier on.”
“I was afraid of frost.”
With the glass in his hand, Brian came back to the fireside and stood looking down into the flames.
Anna straightened up. There was a mirror over the mantelpiece and their reflections stared back at them, only slightly distorted: the man, slim and dark, his eyebrows sharp-drawn as though some artist had brushed them on in India ink; and the woman, short, reaching only to his shoulder, dumpy and plain. Her eyes were close-set, her nose too big, her hair, neither brown nor fair, frizzed from the damp of the mist.
So convinced had she been by her own visions of an Anna made romantic by incipient motherhood, that her reflection came as a shock. Who was this person who stared back at her from the faded glass? Who was this person, this stranger, standing next to her handsome husband?
The answer, came, as it always came. Anna. Plain Anna. Anna Carstairs that was, Anna Stoddart that is. And nothing was ever going to change her.
* * *
Following the urgency of Antony’s trip to London, the drama of their confrontation, and her eventual decision to accompany him, Flora imagined that once in Edinburgh they would get into his car and drive hotfoot or post-chaise, or whatever you wanted to call it, to Fernrigg.
But now that they were actually there, Antony’s whole personality seemed to change. Like a man coming home and shrugging on an old jacket and a pair of comfortable slippers, he relaxed, slowed down, and appeared to be in no hurry to get to Fernrigg.
“We’d better get something to eat,” he decided, after they had located the car, loaded Flora’s suitcase into the trunk, and settled themselves in.
She looked at him in surprise. “Something to eat?”
“Yes. Aren’t you hungry? I am.”
“But we had a meal on the plane.”
“That wasn’t a meal. That was a plastic snack. And I have a horror of cold asparagus.”
“But don’t you want to get home as soon as possible?”
“If we start now, we’ll arrive at four in the morning. The house
will be locked, and we’ll either have to sit outside for three hours, or wake somebody up and doubtless disrupt the entire household.” He started up the engine. “We’ll go into Edinburgh.”
“But it’s late. Will we find anything open at this hour?”
“Of course we will.”
They drove to Edinburgh and Antony took her to a small club of which he was a member, where they had a drink and an excellent dinner, and then coffee. It was all very leisurely and pleasant and completely incongruous. It was nearly midnight when they finally emerged once more into the outdoors. The wind of the morning had died, and the streets of Edinburgh shone black with a thin, cold rain.
“How long will it take us?” Flora asked, as they got back into the car, fastened their seat belts and generally settled down to the long drive.
“About seven hours with this rain. The best thing you can do is go to sleep.”
“I’m not very good at sleeping in cars.”
“You can always try.”
But Flora did not sleep. She was too excited, too apprehensive, and already suffering from a severe case of cold feet. The knowledge that she had burnt her boats, that she was on her way and there was not a mortal thing she could do now to change anything, left her feeling quite sick. If it had been a fine bright night she might have tried to still her nerves by observing the passing countryside, or even reading their route on the map. But the rain was incessant, and there was nothing to be seen but the black, wet, winding road, pierced by the headlights of Antony’s car, racing up to meet them in a succession of endless curves and bends, and falling away behind into the darkness to the hiss of tires on wet tarmac.
And yet, as they drove, the countryside made itself felt, even through the darkness and the deadening murk. It became more deserted, more desolate, the small country towns fewer and farther apart. They passed the long glimmer of an inland loch, and as they left it behind them the road began to climb, winding against the slope of the incline.
Through the half-open window came the smell of peat and heather. More than once Antony, with a murmured oath, was forced to brake the car to a standstill while a stray sheep or two, caught in the headlights, made its untroubled way off the crest of the road.