Fantails (27 page)

MacNeish said he would put out vases for her in the pantry, “And never heed if you make a bit of mess with leaves and that. I’ll easy clear it up.”

As soon as lunch was over Logie went back to Fantails, fell on her bed, and slept. Sherry did likewise at the Painted Anchor. John went to bed as usual for his rest, Jane settled with a book, and Alison went off with scissors and a basket to the garden of Swan House and spent a happy hour arranging flowers for Hugh. She found enough late roses for the dinner table, dahlias and chrysanthemums and michaelmas daisies for a brilliant mixed vase in the drawing-room, hydrangeas in queer, subtle shades of green tinged with dull rose in a blue pottery vase in the hall, and on Hugh’s dressing-table a tiny vase of sapphire glass holding a posy, jewel bright—a single scarlet rose, two yellow daisies, catmint, late larkspurs, one or two nasturtiums, blue and magenta michaelmas daisies, late-flowering golden alyssum. They would tell Hugh someone had been thinking of him, someone had been sorry. She hoped that he would guess who it had been.

Last of all she took a gay vase to the kitchen, filled with all the brightest colours she could find. Mrs. MacNeish, knitting while her husband read out titbits from the paper, exclaimed in pleasure. “Eh! Isn’t that bonny and bright! It minds of my Granny’s garden at Lumphanan when I was a bairn! Thank you very much for thinking of it, Miss Hamilton—it was real nice of you.” When Alison had gone the housekeeper said to her spouse, “If that one comes across here I’ll be real pleased for the Doctor and for us as well.”

“You’re still barking up thon tree, then?”

“Ucha. I wouldna be surprised if they had got it all fixed up afore he went away yestreen. He’s taken to whustling to himself this past week or two, and once or twice I’ve thocht he looked real dreamy-kind. It would be a fine thing for all of us, if you ask me.”

“Mair washin’ up. The lassie’d likely come with her.”

“Robert MacNeish, I’m fair surprised at you, you lazy gomeril!”

“But on the other hand, there would be more points. Eggs, too, if she was to keep her hens.—‘Killer with glaring eyes attacks War Widow’—will you have that or ‘Smuggled Mink Hidden beneath Cripple’s Bed’?”

Mrs. MacNeish abandoned matchmaking for the delights of crime. “The both of them. The killer first and then the other yin!”

Three hours of sound sleep made a new man of Sherry. When he arrived at Fantails he found Logie waiting for him, with tea laid for two on a low table by the window. Colour had come back to her cheeks, her face had lost its drawn look, and the shadows that had circled her eyes had disappeared.

“I slept for hours. Did you?” she asked.

“M’m. Only just woken up.” He caught her by both hands and kissed the tip of her nose.

“I felt so romantic seeing you this morning when you hadn’t shaved—just like an old married couple. Jane has taken John to tea at the Vicarage. Alison, poor pet, is overtaking the arrears of housework that got all behindhand this morning, when I gather she was being a ministering angel to you. So we’re alone. The kettle’s boiling. Don’t let’s discuss anything that matters till we’ve had tea. I’m ravenous! Are you?”

“Starving. And even if I hadn’t been, that pot of Gentleman’s Relish would have produced an appetite on sight!” When they had had tea and cleared away, Logie curled up on the window-seat and Sherry stretched his long length in a deep chair beside her. She said, “You know, there’s always been the tiniest cloud hovering in the background of my mind, waiting to spoil everything, ever since I met you. I suppose it was a sort of instinct, telling me a storm might break!”

“And it did break, with a vengeance!”

“Yes. But I’ve always loved that nice fresh feeling after the rain.”

“Well, now I’d better tell you all about the Zara episode. Then we can make a fresh start with clear skies ... I’ve known her all my life. A whole crowd of us grew up in the same neighbourhood, went to the same parties and pony club and dancing classes, rode and tobogganed together, and so on. None of us cared much for Zara. She was apt to turn king’s evidence when there was trouble. Told tales of the rest of us without batting an eyelid. I had no use for her in those days. Then when I came back on my first army leave she’d suddenly become a glamour girl. Lost her puppy fat, learnt how to dress—though heaven only knows where she raised the money, she was beautifully turned out even then—and in short acquired It. I fell for her good and hard—and didn’t Zara love it! Led me a pretty dance, playing me off against someone with a title and more money than I had. That went on for several leaves—Zara was by way of doing her war service as a land girl to one of her father’s tenants, so she was always in the offing. Then when I came home for good she suddenly changed her tactics. The other fellow hadn’t come up to scratch, I fancy, though she told me she had turned him down. We got engaged—”

“Did you give her a ruby ring?”

“Yes—why? How did you know?”

“Something you once said about hating rubies.”

“Oh, I’d forgotten. Well, the stage was well set for the sort of wedding Zara wanted. Plenty of publicity and photographs in all the snob papers. Everyone who is anyone invited. Ceremony at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, reception at the Dorchester. You know what happened next! I don’t know Zara’s side of it. I suppose Solly had been looming in the offing before I came back. Or he may be the sort of fellow who enjoys taking other people’s property. He mayn’t have wanted Zara when she was free. At all events, apparently she couldn’t resist the bait of all those diamonds and millions—”

“Even with such a frightful hook!”

Sherry laughed. “Yes. Solly must have taken quite a bit of swallowing! ... I was beside myself. Convinced my heart was broken, though I’ve since realised it was my vanity that was hurt! And I was wild with Zara, wild with Solly, crazy with misery and anger and humiliation. Vee, poor dear, wasn’t much help. Minded the nine days’ wonder far more on her own account than mine! Quite unintentionally, she rubbed salt in the wounds. So I streaked off into the blue. Didn’t tell anyone where I was going—didn’t really know. Thought I might land up with cousins in Scotland. Saw a signpost pointing to Market Blyburgh, wondered if by a lucky chance Andrew might be on leave, and came here.”

“Didn’t you tell Andrew when you got engaged to Zara? It seems odd that he’s never mentioned her.”

“I didn’t write to him after I left Palestine until I came here. I’m no correspondent ... Thought I’d stay here for a night or two. But you were all so welcoming and natural and friendly, and I felt you liked me, and I suppose that bolstered up my self-esteem, which had taken a nasty knock. So I felt better and stayed on. I loathed the thought of going home, where everybody knew.”

“Why didn’t you tell us about it?”

“Partly because I couldn’t bring myself to speak of it. Partly, I suppose, because I didn’t want to show myself in the somewhat unheroic light of having been jilted for a richer man! It made me feel myself a laughing-stock. I didn’t want you to see me in that light.”

“Oh, but we wouldn’t have! You know we shouldn’t have. We’d only have been sorry.”

“I knew that in a way. But I just couldn’t.”

“But when we were engaged—why didn’t you tell me then?”

Sherry repeated what he had said to Alison. “I couldn’t bring myself to take the risk that you would think that I had asked you to marry me to salve my pride—to prove to myself and the world in general that I didn’t care a tinker’s cuss about Zara. And you
did
think that, you know, when you found out.”

“I know I did. But don’t you see that to find out like that was such a shock that it distorted everything? To feel you hadn’t trusted me—that you’d been hiding something from me.”

“I see that now. But every time I nearly told you, I couldn’t risk it. You meant too much.”

“I don’t see how I could have meant anything at all to you, so soon after you had been in love with Zara!”

“I was never in love with Zara, though I didn’t realise that for some time. I was obsessed with her, infatuated with her, crazy about her. She drew me like a magnet. But as for
loving
her! Meeting you was like being given wholemeal bread and honey after a diet of éclairs filled with synthetic cream.”

“Why did you ask the Hinterzhagens to come to Crail after the races?”

“Because that day I suddenly knew, seeing Zara at Harrawick, that I felt nothing for her but contempt. And it seemed only fair to you to let her see how the land lay—that she was nothing to me, you were everything. The others all played the same game, though you didn’t realise that, of course. Tried to make you feel they liked you and welcomed you among them, and at the same time let Zara see just what they thought of her. But for that I don’t suppose she’d ever have sent you those cuttings. She must have wanted to get her own back, guessed you didn’t know, and sent them on the chance of wrecking everything ... All the same, seeing her that day did suddenly bring home to me how little she had meant to me, how deep the roots of loving you had gone ... One can feel things unconsciously, without fully realising them, until something jolts one into awareness. I realised that day that if you were to leave me, hurt pride and wounded vanity and humiliation wouldn’t exist, although they practically filled the picture when Zara threw me over. Nothing would matter but the loss of you. Without you, I’d have nothing left ... What’s the barometer doing now, Miss Selkirk?”

Shading her eyes with one hand, Logie peered into the corners of the room, then scanned the ceiling. “Rising fast, Major MacAirlie. And not a single cloud on the horizon.” Smiling, she held out her hands towards him. “Come over here and see for yourself!”

Alison had finished mopping and dusting in the bedrooms. It was time now to feed the hens. Smiling to herself as through the closed door of the living-room she heard the murmur of two happy voices, she ran down to the yard. Miniver and her kittens came to rub against her legs as she was filling a basin from the com bin. She crouched beside them, talking to them softly, rubbing them behind their ears, while the impatient hens gathered complaining round the door. There was something very reassuring, very stable in an animal’s affection. No matter whether you rejoiced or grieved, no matter what crime or folly you might have committed, your dog or cat would welcome you and love you just the same.

She had scattered the corn, one handful for each hen, and was refilling their water-bowl when she heard someone coming quickly up the path from Swan House, and looked up to see Hugh at the gate. “You’re back!”

“I’m back. And I must say it’s very pleasant to have someone looking as pleased to see me as you do!”

Alison wondered just how much her expression had betrayed. Yet why should she hide all she felt for him? Why not give generously all she had to give, regardless of the fact that he had less to give to her? “Well, if I look pleased, it’s because I am! Have you had tea?”

“Not yet. I would have given it a miss, as it’s so late, but the MacNeishes have made such preparations that I haven’t the heart. I came to see if you would come along and keep me company while I have it? There’s so much to say.”

She hesitated. “I would love to. But it’s nearly John’s bed-time—” As she spoke the lane door opened to admit Jane and John. John flung himself on Hugh, clasping him round the knees, “We’ve been to tea with Mary and there was a boy called Alan and a white rabbit called Selina, and I can
nearly
walk on stilts!”

Jane looked proud and motherly. “He really can, though Mary’s were much too big for him. Couldn’t Michie make him a little pair?”

Hugh said, “I’m sure he could. We’ll ask him in the morning. Jane, do me a favour, will you? I want Alison to come back with me to Swan House for an hour or so. Will you put John to bed?”

Jane looked gratified. “Of course I will. I often do.”

“Can I come home and get my ducks?” John asked.

The measles quarantine was over. Hugh said, “Yes, come along.” They all went through the gate and down the path together.

“Who’ll put me to bed when I come home to live?” John asked.

“Jenny, I suppose,” said Hugh.

“Couldn’t Jane ever come and be a visitor like I’m a visitor at Fantails, and bath me? She plays polar bears and penguins with me.”

“You can ask her if you like.” They heard him saying as he went upstairs with Jane to get the celluloid ducks, “Will you come and visit us, Jane?”

Hugh looked at Alison. “Shall we tell them? Do you mind?” She nodded, smiling. “Why not?”

She wondered how Jane would take the news. It would affect her more than Andrew, seldom at home; incomparably more than Logie, going so soon to make a new life of her own. Would she mind leaving Fantails? Would she feel that she had no choice of her own, was being treated not as an individual, but as a parcel at the mercy of other people’s plans and decisions? Sensitive, impressionable, at an age of swiftly changing moods and phases, it was hard to tell how she would react.

MacNeish brought in the tea, then paused by the door to say, “I’ve put in a cup for you as well, miss. Likely you’ll have taken tea long or this time, but maybe you could do with more. And the wife was hoping you would try her shortbread.”

“Thank you—I’ll certainly have some shortbread. I used to live in Edinburgh, so I used to eat it often.”

“Ah, you’ll not often get the like of that south of the Border! There’s not a town that I ever saw that could hold a candle to Auld Reekie!’ So saying, he departed to the kitchen, where he reported to his spouse. “They had an awful cosy kinna look about them. She was sitting down to pour the tea as homey as could be. Ucha. We’ll be getting news afore long or I’m an Englishman!”

Hugh, hearing cheerful voices on the stairs, called, “Hi, John! You too, Jane! We want a word with you.”