Under Gemini (34 page)

“No, but you've been under a considerable strain.”

“Yes.” She looked down at the handkerchief and saw it covered with dark smudges. “My mascara's run.”

“You look like a panda.”

“I suppose I do.” She took a deep breath. “How did you know? About me being Flora?”

“Antony told me. I mean, he told me your name was Flora, but I've known for some time that you weren't Rose.”

“When did you know?”

“The day you were ill, I knew for sure.” He added, “But I've had my suspicions for some time.”

“But how did you know?”

“When Rose was here, that summer five years ago, she had an accident on the beach. She was sunbathing, or occupied in some other relatively harmless way, and she cut her arm on a broken bottle that some joker had buried in the sand. Just here.” He reached out and took Flora's hand, pushed up the sleeve of her dressing gown, and drew with his finger a line perhaps two inches long on the outside of her forearm. “It wasn't very serious, but it had to be stitched up. I pride myself on being fairly adroit when it comes to sewing people up, but even I couldn't do a job that left no trace of a scar.”

“I see. But why didn't you say anything?”

“I wanted to speak to Antony first.”

“And have you?”

“Yes.”

“Did he tell you everything? About me and Rose and our parents?”

“Yes, everything. It's quite a story.”

“He … he's going to tell Tuppy tomorrow.”

Hugh corrected her. “He's telling Tuppy now.”

“You mean, this very moment?”

“This very moment.”

“So…” She was almost afraid to say it. “So Tuppy knows I'm not Rose.”

“By now she does.” He watched her face. “Is that why you were crying?”

“Yes, I think so. I seemed to be crying for so many things.”

“But an uneasy conscience was one of them.”

Flora nodded—a miserable confession.

“You didn't like lying to Tuppy?”

“I felt like a murderer.”

“Well, now you don't need to feel like a murderer any longer.” He sounded, all at once, much more like his usual dry self. “So perhaps you'll get off that bed, and get into your dress and come downstairs.”

“But my face is all dirty and swollen.”

“You can wash it.”

“And my dress is all crumpled.”

He looked for the dress, spied it where she had abandoned it on the floor. “No wonder it's crumpled.” He stood up and went to retrieve it, shaking it out of its creases and laying it across the foot of the bed. Flora wrapped her arms around her knees and watched him.

“Are you cold?” he asked her.

“A little.” Without comment, he went to turn on the electric fire, pressing down the switch with the toe of his shoe, and then moved to the dressing table. Flora saw the green gleam of a champagne bottle and a couple of wineglasses.

“Did you bring those up with you?”

“Yes. I had an idea some sort of a stimulant might be useful.” He commenced, neatly, to deal with the gold wire and the foil. “It seems I was right.”

There was a pop as the cork flew out, an explosion of golden bubbles which he caught expertly, first in one glass and then the other. He set down the bottle and brought Flora over a brimming glass, and then he said, “Slaintheva,” and they drank, and the wine was dry and nose-tickling and tasted of weddings and the best sort of celebrations.

The bars of the fire reddened. The room grew bright and warm. Flora took a second courage-bolstering mouthful, and said, abruptly, “I do know about Rose.”

Hugh did not reply at once to this. Instead, he retrieved the champagne bottle and came to settle himself at the foot of the bed, his wide shoulders propped against the brass rail. He set the bottle handily on the floor at his side. He said, “What do you know about her?”

“I know that she had an affair with Brian Stoddart. But I didn't know that before he took me out for dinner. Otherwise, I promise you, I would never have gone.”

“I imagine he reminisced in some detail.”

“I couldn't stop him.”

“Were you shocked, or were you surprised?”

She tried to remember. “I don't know. You see, I didn't have time to get to know Rose. We just met in London for an evening, and then she flew off to Greece the next day. But she looked like me, and so I imagined that she
was
like me. Except that she was rich and she had all sorts of things that I could never hope to have. But that didn't seem to be basically important. I just thought of us as two halves of the same whole. We'd been separated all our lives, but basically we were still the one person. And then Rose went, and Antony arrived and told me what had happened, and that was the beginning of wondering about Rose. She knew Antony needed her, but she'd still gone off to Greece. That was one of the reasons I came to Fernrigg. I suppose to try and make up for what Rose had done.” It was all too difficult and Flora gave up. “It doesn't make any sense at all, does it?”

“I think it makes a lot of sense.”

“You see…”

But he interrupted her. “Flora, that first day I spoke to you on the sands by the Beach House, you must have thought I was some sort of a maniac.”

“No.”

“Out of interest, what did you think?”

“I … I thought you were perhaps a man who'd been hurt by Rose.”

“You mean, that I'd been in love with her?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“I never really knew Rose. She was certainly never concerned about me. And I don't think she even looked twice at Antony. But Brian was a different kettle of fish.”

“Then you weren't in love with her?”

“Good God, no.” Flora could not keep herself from smiling. “And what's that Cheshire Cat grin for?”

“I thought you must have been. And I couldn't bear it.”

“Why not?”

“Because she was so vile. And I suppose,” she added with the air of one determined to make a clean breast of the whole thing, “because I liked you so much.”

“You liked
me
?”

“That was why I was so horrible to you that night you brought me home from Lochgarry.”

“Are you always horrible to people you like?”

“Only when I think they're jealous.”

“I wish I'd known. I thought you hated me. I also thought you were drunk.”

“Perhaps I was, a little. But at least I didn't slap your face.”

“Poor Flora.” But he did not look particularly repentant.

“But if you weren't angry because of jealousy…” It took some working out. “Hugh. Why were you angry?”

“Because of Anna.”

Anna. It was Anna. Flora sighed. “You'll have to explain. Otherwise I shall never understand.”

*   *   *

He said, heavily, “Yes.” He had finished his glass, and now reached down to where the bottle stood on the floor, and refilled both their glasses. It was becoming as cozy, thought Flora, as a midnight feast.

He said, “I don't know how much you know about the Stoddarts.”

“I know about them, because Tuppy told me.”

“Good. That'll save a lot of time. Well, where shall we start? Five years ago, Rose and her mother came to stay at the Beach House, that you know. Looking back, I've never been able to work out why they came to Fernrigg at all. It was the most unlikely place for a couple of jet-setters like the Schusters, but perhaps they'd seen Tuppy's advertisement in the
Times,
or they thought it would be novel to get back to the simple life. Anyway, they came, and Tuppy is always very conscientious about her tenants. She feels responsible for them, as if they were houseguests. She invites them up to Fernrigg, introduces them to her friends, and I think that is how Rose and her mother met the Stoddarts.

“Anna was expecting a baby that summer. Her first. And Brian, perhaps frustrated by potential fatherhood, was amusing himself with the barmaid at the Yacht Club. She was a Glasgow girl who'd come up to Ardmore for the summer just to do this job, and I think she and Brian probably suited each other down to the ground.”

“Did everybody know about this?”

“Tarbole is a small community. Everybody knows everybody else's business, only in this case nobody ever talks about it, out of loyalty to Anna.”

“And she ignores what Brian does?”

“She appears to. But Anna, beneath that diffident exterior, is a very passionate and high-strung woman. Very much in love, and possessive of her husband.”

“Brian described her as an ostrich, only seeing what she wanted to.”

“How charming of him. And of course, most of the time she is, but in some women pregnancy unleashes a number of very violent emotions.”

“Like jealousy.”

“Exactly. This time, Anna didn't bury her head. She suspected he was carrying on with this girl, and she worked herself up into a highly nervous state. What she didn't realize, and thank God she never did, was that Rose had now appeared on the scene. The only reason I found out was through Tammy Todd who works at the Ardmore Yacht Club. Tammy and I were at school together long ago when we were both small, and I think he felt that perhaps I ought to know what was going on.

“One morning I had a phone call from Anna, very early. She was incoherent with anxiety because Brian had been out all night. He'd never come home. I tried to reassure her, and then I went searching for him and I found him at the Yacht Club. He said there'd been a party, and rather than disturb Anna, he'd decided to sleep the night there. I told him to go home and he said that he would.

“But later in the day I got another message to ring Anna. By now I was away out in the country, a two-hour drive from Tarbole, visiting the young son of a sheep farmer. The mother suspected appendicitis, but mercifully, as it turned out, she was wrong. Anyway, Anna told me she was hemorrhaging. I told her I'd get back as soon as I could, but that Brian was to call the hospital and get an ambulance. She told me that she was still alone. Brian had never come back. So I rang the ambulance myself and the hospital at Lochgarry, and I drove like the hammers of hell back to Tarbole, and when I got to the surgery I rang the hospital again, but it was too late. Sister told me that Anna had arrived, but she'd lost the child. She said that Anna was asking for her husband, but that nobody knew where to find him. I said that I would find him, and I put down the telephone and got into the car and went to the Beach House, and walked in and found Rose and Brian in bed together.”

“But didn't her mother know what was going on?”

“I honestly don't know. She certainly wasn't in the house at the time. As far as I can remember, she'd gone over to Lochgarry for a round of golf.”

“Hugh, what
did
you do?”

He put up a hand to rub his eyes. “Oh, the usual things. Lost my temper, flung my weight around. But of course it was too late to start being indignant, because Anna's baby was already dead.”

“And now she's having another one.” Hugh nodded. “And you weren't going to stand by and let it happen all over again.”

“No.”

“Were … were there any repercussions?”

“No. By the time Anna came out of hospital, Rose and her mother had gone.”

“Tuppy never knew? Nor Isobel?”

“No.”

“Nor Antony?”

“Antony was working in Edinburgh. He only met Rose fleetingly when he happened to be home for a weekend.”

“What did you think when you heard Antony was going to marry Rose?”

“I was appalled. But I told myself that all this had happened five years ago. Rose had probably grown up. I prayed that she had.”

“And Anna? Anna never found out?”

“Brian and I made a deal. The only one we're ever likely to make. The truth would have destroyed Anna. Thinking that Brian was running around with a little whore from Glasgow was one thing. Knowing that he was sleeping with Rose was another. It would have been disastrous, and inevitably it would have involved the Armstrongs.”

“And what did Brian get out of the deal?”

“Brian, despite his tomcat tendencies, had a hard head. Materially, financially, Brian had more than anyone else to lose. He still has for that matter.”

“You really hate him, don't you?”

“It's mutual. But this is a small place, a tight community. So when we have to, we endure each other's company.”

“He couldn't have been very pleased to see you that evening at Lochgarry.”

“No, I don't think he was.”

“Anna says he's got a black eye.”

Hugh looked amazed. “No? Really?”

“You didn't hit him, did you?”

“Only a little,” said Hugh.

“What will happen to that marriage?”

“Nothing will happen to it. Brian will probably continue to sow his wild oats, if the words apply to a man of his age, and Anna will continue to ignore his peccadilloes. And the marriage will survive.”

“Will the child help?”

“It'll help Anna.”

“It seems very unfair.”

“Life is unfair, Flora. Surely you've found that out by now.”

“Yes.” She sighed deeply. It was all very troubling. “I wish Rose had been nicer. I wish she hadn't become like that. Amoral and ruthless. Hurting everybody. She and I are identical twins. We were born under Gemini. Why is she like that?”

“Environment?”

“You mean, if I'd been brought up by my mother instead of my father, I'd have been like Rose?”

“No. I can't imagine that you would.”

“Besides, I envied Rose her environment. I envied her mink coat and her flat in London, and the way she had so much money she could go anywhere and do anything she wanted. And now I'm only sorry for her. It's a horrible feeling.” She rested her chin on her knees and looked thoughtfully at Hugh. “Now, I wouldn't want to be Rose.”