Authors: Jean S. MacLeod
“I don’t go out alone, if that’s what you’re asking. Sometimes Huntley takes me with him when he goes to Dingwall or Inverness, and he calls in most days.”
In a rather pathetic way she was underlining Huntley Daviot’s interest in her and, of course, it could be true, but even Tessa had said that he was still living in the shadow of his former love. Leone was still there, the ever-present, dominant influence in his life. He still mourned her, still found it impossible to return to Calders, which he had been preparing for a bride.
“Perhaps you would like to come to Craigie Hill some time,” she suggested, moving towards the van. “I could pick you up and you could come for tea with my mother.”
“No!” The sharp refusal stopped her in her tracks. Tessa’s face was frozen, her dark eyes bleak. “I don’t visit,” she added hurriedly. “I find it a terrible bore.” Taken completely aback, Alison didn’t know what to say.
“You can come here and use the piano, if you like,” Tessa added, “but I won’t go to Craigie Hill.”
“You must please yourself,” Alison answered a trifle sharply. “My mother would have been glad of your company. She’s tied to the house just now, waiting to go to Wick for an operation.”
“I’m sorry,” Tessa said. “I didn’t mean to be rude. It—was just that I thought she wouldn’t want to see me.” Alison started the engine.
“I can’t think why,” she said as she drove away.
The sharp little encounter puzzled her all the way home. Quite apart from feeling sorry for Tessa Searle, she had felt strangely drawn towards her, although Tessa herself had not been particularly friendly. She had been hostile about her visit to Sterne, for example, and the fact that Huntley had been helpful with the van. That might be natural, of course, if she were in love with Huntley.
Poor Tessa! She had been so eager to insist that he took her around with him whenever he could, but it seemed that Huntley was chained to a memory.
She thought of Leone Searle, feeling that she understood.
“You’ll need to let Neillie take the van,” Kirsty greeted her arrival. “You take far too long.”
“And who would do the milking?” Alison asked. “I’m sorry I’m late, Kirsty, but the van broke down.” It was no use explaining the technicalities of plugs and damp to Kirsty in her present mood. “I had to get help.”
“Are you ready for your porridge?” Kirsty asked, standing with the pot in her hand. “It’s gie thick, but there’s a time to tak’ porridge off the hob, as ye know!”
“I’ll take it any way,” Allison assured her. “I’m so hungry I
could almost eat the pot!”
“I’ll boil you an egg,” Kirsty offered, mollified.
While she was still at the table her mother came down to sit in the chair beside the fire.
“Kirsty was getting ready to send out a search-party,” Helen said with her quiet smile. “You were longer than usual.”
“The van let me down.” Alison poured her a cup of tea. “And I suppose I stayed gossiping a while at the Lodge.” She buttered a slice of toast. “Mother, what happened to Tessa Searle?”
There was a small, abrupt silence. Helen sat with her tea cup in her hands, sipping the tea slowly, as if she had need of its sustaining power.
“There was an accident,” she said. “She was hurt in Huntley Daviot’s car.”
Alison drew in a swift breath.
“No wonder he goes there so often,” she said. “Perhaps he feels he was to blame.”
“Perhaps.” Helen went on sipping her tea. Her eyes were fixed on the fire, but they seemed to be gazing deeply into the past. “Folk talk that way. He brought her back here when they had done all they could for her at Inverness. She’s not been far from the Lodge since.”
“Will she always be crippled?”
“I wouldn’t say she was crippled.” Helen’s voice was sharp. “She walks awkwardly, but that could come right.” “You don’t like her,” Alison suggested.
Helen got up to put her empty cup on the table. “That’s not the way of it at all,” she said. “I think she hasn’t the courage to face up to her troubles.”
She wouldn’t say any more, although Alison knew there was far more to be said. She felt stunned by the knowledge of Tessa’s accident and Huntley’s part in it, yet why should she believe that it even remotely concerned her?
CHAPTER FOUR
MAJOR SEARLE came to the door when she delivered the milk to the Lodge the following morning.
“Tessa tells me you would like to use our piano,” he said, standing beside the van. “I’d be happy if you would.”
“So long as it wouldn’t upset you too much.” Alison was thinking about Leone, who probably had played as well as sung. “It was a most generous offer on Tessa’s part.”
“She needs young company.” His weather-beaten face creased in a smile. “I feel you would be good for her.”
“I can’t promise to come very often, just at present,” Alison told him. “There’s so much to do at Craigie Hill, but later on I’ll have more time on my hands, I expect. I haven’t forgotten Caithness’s long winters!”
“They can be very pleasant if one knows how to make the most of them,” he pointed out. “I fish a lot and the young people have been skiing on the moors these past few years. We may be isolated up here, but we do know how to enjoy ourselves.”
“I used to love the winters,” Alison confessed. “When the lochs were frozen over there was lots of fun, skating and sledging on the hills. Are you—more or less settled with us, Major Searle?”
He looked guardedly towards the house.
“It’s difficult to say. Nothing would please me better, but it will all depend on Tessa.”
Whether she marries Huntley Daviot or not, Alison thought. “We leased the Lodge for six months the summer before last,” he continued reminiscently. “My older daughter, Leone—Leone Searle, you know—needed a rest. She had been advised by her doctors to get right away from the concert platform for a spell and we saw this place advertised. She fell in love with it at once.” And she also fell in love with Huntley.
“It can be lovely in summer,” Alison agreed.
“It did Leone good to be here.” He sighed. “It was only Tessa who hated it at first, but after a while she seemed to settle in, and when there was talk of us leaving it was Tessa who minded most. She had made friends.” He hesitated. “Your brother among them.”
“Robin?”
“Yes. He was a very generous young man, including her in everything. They went to Scrabster a lot, and over to the Orkneys, sailing. Tessa soon became an expert. The summer before last they raced for a whole week at St. Margaret’s Hope and I went up with them to renew my acquaintance with Scapa Flow. I was there during the war. Did you ever see the chapel the Italian prisoners built? It was a work of art and love. These men made the most of their captivity, by jove! The only pity is that it hasn’t been looked after.”
He would have run on endlessly, glad of an audience even at that early hour, but Alison had her round to finish. Tessa hadn’t put in an appearance so she supposed she was still in bed. The curtains remained drawn at the windows of both downstairs rooms, although she could be busy in the kitchen.
“Will you tell Tessa I’ll come to see her quite soon?” she said, letting in her clutch. “And thank you for offering me the use of the piano.”
“You’re welcome, m’dear,” he assured her. “Come whenever you can.”
For no particular reason she thought that he looked a rather forlorn figure standing there with the milk bottles in his arms, the old soldier who had fought his last fight, the war horse put out to grass.
Sterne appeared completely deserted when she reached the headland, but the fence had been mended and the gate securely fastened. The aftermath of the storm lay all along the shore, the tide-wrack piled high on the rocks and the waves still pounding the foot of the cliffs. Yet high above her as she drove along the narrow, twisting road the sky was blue and clear. There was a stillness that could almost be felt, and far inland, above Morven and Coire na Feama, the seagulls were making their way back towards the coast. The flash of sunlight lay across the moors and on the forest pines. Where there were trees in this vast, empty land they were strong and beautiful. She envied the people who planted trees.
Putting down the lobster-pot, which she was returning, she opened the gate. There was no sign of life anywhere, not even the sheep. They had been chased back on to the moor, no doubt, when the worst of the storm was over.
She put a bottle of milk in the lobster-pot and set them down on the step. Sterne was deserted.
On her way home she caught a brief glimpse of Huntley Daviot at the entrance to the glen. He was standing near a parked jeep, talking to another man. When the van came level with them he turned to salute her, but that was all. He looked preoccupied, and the man with him was a stranger. The jeep was parked close to the back entrance to Calders and it looked as if they had walked through the grounds.
Could he be planning to sell the house? It was an odd hour to be showing a prospective customer over the estate, she mused, and hardly the time of the year to invest in a place like Calders, but the other man could have spent the night at Sterne.
Driving faster than usual, she was back at Craigie Hill as the postman turned in from the road.
“I’ll take the letters up, Dan,” she offered to save him the extra walk to the house. “It’s a lovely morning, isn’t it?”
“As fine as you’ll ever see!” he agreed. “We’ll be in for a spell o’ good weather now.” He handed over the mail. “There’s one from Wick, from the hospital. Will it be to say they’re takin’ your mother in?”
Alison’s heart lurched.
“I wonder,” she said, taking the letters from him. “She’s been waiting for word.”
“The other one’s from Canada.”
“Yes—yes, I see.” Her heart was pounding now, drumming in her breast like the waves against the headland out there under Sterne. “I’ll take them in.”
Clutching both envelopes tightly, she drove round the gable end of the house into the yard. They had come together, the two letters her mother had been waiting for. On from the hospital and the other from her son. Kirsty eyed them with frank curiosity.
“Dan Linklater would be telling you who they were from before he handed them over,” she observed dryly, “and the news will be all through the glen if there’s one from abroad.”
It was Kirsty’s way of asking.
“There is one, Kirsty,” Alison told her. “From Canada.”
“And high time, too!” Kirsty pursed her lips. “What’s he doing in Canada now? Young folk don’t realise how much a letter means when they take it into their heads to put the seas between them and their homes. This will mak’ your mother feel far better about going to Wick, even if he doesn’t say he’s coming back.”
“I must take it up to her,” Alison said. “Do you think she’ll be awake?”
“If she isn’t, just you waken her,” Kirsty advised. “That letter’s been far too long in coming.”
Helen’s bedroom window was open, with a little wind stealing in from the sea. She sat up as soon as Alison crossed from the door.
“Was that the post?” Her glance went eagerly yet fearfully to the envelopes in her daughter’s hand. “I thought I heard Dan’s bike. He always rings his bell when he comes up the brae.”
Alison put her letters on the bedcover.
“I’ll get your glasses,” she offered huskily. “There’s one from Canada.”
But Helen chose to open the buff envelope first. “It’s from the hospital,” she said simply. “I’m to go in at once. Tomorrow, in fact.”
Her voice sounded quite steady, but she kept her eyes on the summons she had received for several minutes before she looked
u
p
.
“We’ll have to make arrangements,” she said. “Maybe Jim Orbister could come for me.”
“I’ll see to it.” Alison’s voice was not quite steady. “You’re not to worry about the details.”
Helen felt for the other envelope with its Montreal postmark.
“I wonder what he says.” Her fingers shook a little as she slit the envelope. “He doesn’t know about my operation, of course.”
Alison turned from the bed. For weeks now she had felt that she would never be able to forgive Robin, but at least he had written. She knew that there had only been one or two letters from the other side of the Atlantic during the past year, but miraculously this one had come at the right moment.
She stood by the window, looking down at the bedraggled garden while her mother read it through to the end. When she turned back into the silent room Helen’s face was radiant.
“He’s well,” she said. “And he’s got a job which he seems to like.”
Alison waited.
“Is that all?” she asked at last.
Helen was reading the letter a second time.
“He says he’s content, but I wonder if he really is. It’s a job in a city.” She held out the two flimsy sheets. “Read it for yourself.”
Almost reluctantly Alison read what her brother had to say. It was very little, when all came to all. He had gone to Canada because he hadn’t been able to get a work permit in New York for any length of time. He was well; he had this job as a costing clerk with a large timber concern in their city offices; he had comfortable lodgings with a Scots couple in a growing suburb, but there the information about himself ended.