Under Gemini (36 page)

“Is she angry with me, too?”

“No, she's sorry for you. I told her the blame was entirely mine, which it was, and that you had simply been coerced into a situation which was right over the top of your head. You knew I'd told Tuppy?”

“Yes. Hugh said that he said you had to.”

“He's known for some time that you weren't Rose.”

“I didn't have a scar on my arm.”

“It's like something out of the Arabian Nights. The lad with the starred scimitar on his left buttock is the rightful prince. How was I to know Rose had a scar on her arm, silly bitch.” He took some champagne and sat gazing dolefully down into the glass. “Hugh arrived early this evening. I couldn't think what the hell he was doing until he fixed me with a cold eye and said that he wanted to talk to me. It was like being sent for by the headmaster. We came in here because there wasn't anywhere else to go, and I told him the whole long, complicated story. About you and Rose, and your parents separating, and about Rose going off to Greece, and you being in the flat when I came to London. And he said I had to tell Tuppy. Now. This evening. No more delay. He said that if I didn't, he would.”

“If you hadn't told her, I couldn't have gone through with it tonight.”

Antony frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I don't know. I suppose you can only lie for so long. At least, to somebody who trusts you. Somebody you love. And although I seem to have done nothing but lie for the past seven days, I'm not actually very good at it.”

“I should never have asked you to come.”

“I should never have said that I would.”

“Well, having decided that, let's have some more champagne.”

But Flora got off the table. “I have had quite enough.” She smoothed down her dress, and Antony laid down his glass and reached out to take hold of her shoulders and pull her toward him. He said, “You know, Miss Flora Waring, you are looking quite exceptionally pretty tonight.”

“It's Tuppy's tennis dress.”

“It's nothing to do with Tuppy's tennis dress, charming though it is. It's you. All bright-eyed and radiant. Sensational.”

“Champagne, perhaps.”

“No. Not champagne. If I didn't know you better I'd say you were in love. Or loved.”

“That's a pretty thought.”

“I still haven't worked out why the hell it isn't me.”

“We decided that ages ago. It's something to do with chemistry.”

He pulled her into his arms and gave her a resounding kiss. “I shall have to go to night classes. Learn all about it.”

“Yes, you do that.”

They smiled. He said, “I've probably told you before, but you are the most super girl.”

*   *   *

In love. Or loved.

Antony was no fool. All evening Flora had been aware of Hugh. He stood, head and shoulders above the rest of Tuppy's guests, his presence refusing to be either missed or ignored. But since they had made their entrance down the stairs together, they had neither looked nor spoken to each other, although his had been among the masculine arms which had swung her through the dance she had done with Jason.

It was as if they had an unspoken pact. As if he too had recognized that their relationship had become all at once so precious a thing, so delicate, that a clumsy word or a proprietary glance would be enough to snap it. The small, shared understanding was enough to fill Flora's heart with hope. Those reflections, which would have done credit to a daydreaming fifteen-year-old, surprised her. She was, after all, twenty-two, and her grownup past lay littered with friendships and affairs and half-hearted infatuations. She thought of London: coming out of a restaurant to satin-wet streets and the dazzle of neon signs with her hand in some man's hand, deep in his overcoat pocket. And that summer in Greece. She remembered a clifftop carpeted in wild anemones and her companion with his sun-browned body and thatch of sun-bleached hair. It was as though over the last few years she had given away small pieces of herself—had perhaps, broken a few hearts, and in return had her own heart chipped once or twice.

But it had never been love, just looking for love. Having been brought up by a single parent had made the search more confusing for Flora, because she had no example to follow, no idea of what she had really been looking for. But now, in the course of this incredible week, she had come upon it. Or rather, it had come upon Flora like some sudden explosion of light, taking her so unprepared that it had rendered her incapable of any sensible sort of reaction.

And it was different. Hugh was older. He had been married before. He was a hard-working doctor, tending to the needs of a remote, rural community. He would never be rich, and his future held no surprises. But with piercing certainty, Flora knew that he was the only man who could fill her life with the things that she really wanted: love, security, comfort, and laughter. She had found them all in his arms. And she wanted to be able to return to those arms whenever she felt the need. She wanted him beside her. She wanted to live with him—yes, in that terrible house—and stay in Tarbole for the rest of her days.

It had certainly never been like this before.

*   *   *

At midnight the members of the band, sweating with exhaustion after two encores of “The Duke of Perth,” laid down their instruments, mopped their brows with large handkerchiefs, and filed out in the direction of the kitchen, where Mrs. Watty waited to serve them supper and large tankards of export. As soon as that happened Antony and Jason, well-versed in procedure, produced the Fernrigg record player and the pile of records which Antony had brought with him from Edinburgh on the back seat of his car.

Most of the guests, even more exhausted than the band after the energetic dance, gravitated towards the dining room in search of sustenance and cool drinks. But Flora found herself sitting on the stairs with a young man who had driven all the way to Fernrigg from the far reaches of Ardnamurchan, where he ran a small salmon fishery.

He was in the middle of describing this venture to her when he realized that nearly everyone else had gone to eat supper.

“I'm sorry. Would you like something to eat? Would you like it here? I'll fetch you something if you like.”

“It's so kind of you, but in fact, I said I'd have supper with Hugh Kyle.”

“Hugh?” The young man looked about him. “Where is he?”

“I've no idea, but he'll turn up.”

“I'll go and look for him for you.” The young man stood up, dusting down the pleats of his kilt. “He's probably stuck in some dark corner with an old fishing crony, exchanging unlikely yarns.”

“Don't worry about me. Go and get some supper for yourself…”

“I'll do that at the same time. I'd better hurry or all the cold turkey will have gone.”

He left her. The record player had started up. A different music filled the air and after the jig of the accordion and the scrape of the fiddle, it sounded strangely alien and sophisticated, and reminded Flora of a life that seemed to have finished a long time ago.

Dance in the old-fashioned way,

Won't you stay in my arms.

Antony was dancing with a girl in a blue dress; Brian Stoddart, with the most elegant woman in the room, all black crepe and dangling earrings.

Just melt against my skin

And let me feel your heart.

She knew that Hugh would come and find her because he had promised. But after a little she began to feel ridiculous sitting on the stairs waiting to be claimed, and slightly anxious, like a young girl afraid of being stood up on her first date. The young man from Ardnamurchan did not return and Flora wondered if he had joined in the fishing discussion. Finally, unable to contain her impatience, she got up and went to search for Hugh herself. She went from one room to another, casually at first, and then less casually, and finally without shame, asking anybody she happened to find herself standing next to.

“Have you see Hugh Kyle? You haven't seen Hugh anywhere, have you?”

But nobody had seen him. She never found him. And it was not until later that she learned that there had been a telephone call, that a premature baby was on its way, and Hugh had already gone.

*   *   *

The storm blew up during the course of the evening, and by the early hours of the morning had reached full force. For Tuppy's guests, putting on cloaks and coats preparatory to departure, it came as something of a shock. They had arrived on a calm evening, and now they had to leave in this. The opening and shutting of the front door caused gusts of cold air to sweep into the house. Smoke billowed from the hall fire and the long curtains bellied in the draught. Outside, the garden shone with black rain, the gravel was puddled, and the air filled with flying leaves and small branches and twigs newly torn from trees.

At last, running down the streaming steps, hunched into coats and scarves, heads bent against the wind, the last couple left. Antony shut the front door and, with some ceremony, locked and bolted it. The household trailed exhaustedly up to bed.

But there was too much noise for sleep. The seaward side of the house took the brunt of the storm's fury. The squalls came in great gusts, shaking the very structure of the solid old walls, and the voice of the wind rose to something very like a scream. And beyond all this, distant but menacing, was the surging boom of long rollers driven inshore by the swell of the turbulent ocean to smash themselves into clouds of white spume on the margins of Fhada sands.

Flora curled up for comfort, wide-eyed, dry-eyed, and listened to it. She had finished the evening with a mug of black coffee, and the thud of her own heart was as disturbing as a clock which chimes through the dark hours of the night. Her head was filled with jigging music, with random images, with voices. She had never lain so wide awake.

The first gray rays of dawn were beginning to seep into the sky before she finally fell into a restless and dream-haunted sleep, peopled by strangers. When she awoke, it was day once more, still dark and gray to be sure, but the endless night was behind her. She opened her eyes, grateful for the cold light, and saw Antony standing by her bed.

He looked weary and unshaven and slightly bleary-eyed, his copper head tousled as though he had not taken the time to comb it. He wore a tweedy turtleneck sweater and an old pair of corduroys, and he carried two steaming nursery mugs and he said, “Good morning.”

Flora dragged herself out of sleep. Automatically she reached for her watch, but, “It's half past ten,” he told her. “I brought you some coffee. I thought you might need it.”

“Oh, how kind.” She stretched, tried to blink the sleep out of her eyes, pulled herself up on the pillows. He handed her the mug and she wrapped her hands around it and sat holding it, yawning.

He found her dressing gown and put it round her shoulders, turned on the electric fire, and came to sit beside her on the edge of the bed.

“How are you feeling?”

“Ghastly,” she told him.

“Drink some coffee and you'll feel better.”

She did so, and it was scalding and strong. After a little she asked, “Is everybody up?”

“They're gradually surfacing. Jason's still asleep, I shouldn't think he'll appear till lunchtime. Isobel's been up for an hour, and I doubt whether Mrs. Watty and Watty went to bed at all. Anyway, they've been beavering away since eight o'clock this morning, and by the time you put in an appearance, I doubt if you'd realize that there's been a party at all.”

“I should have got up and come to help.”

“I'd have let you sleep, only this arrived by the morning post.” He put his hand into his back trouser pocket and produced an envelope. “I thought perhaps you'd want to see it.”

She took it from him. She saw her father's handwriting, the Cornwall postmark. It was addressed to Miss Rose Schuster.

Flora laid down the mug of coffee. She said, “It's from my father.”

“I thought it might be. You wrote to him?”

“Yes. Last Sunday. After you'd gone back to Edinburgh.” She looked at him in apology and went on feeling guilty, trying to explain. “I had to tell somebody, Antony, and you'd made me promise not to tell anyone here. But I figured my father didn't count. So I wrote to him.”

“I hadn't realized the need to confess was so strong. Did you tell him everything?”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn't think he'd be very impressed.”

“No,” Flora agreed miserably. She began to slit the envelope.

“Do you want me to go away and let you read it in peace?”

“No, I'd much rather you stayed.” Cautiously, she unfolded the letter. She saw, “My dearest Flora.”

“Well, I'm still his dearest Flora so perhaps he isn't too upset.”

“Did you think he would be?”

“I don't know. I don't think I thought about it.”

With the comforting presence of Antony beside her, she read the letter:

Seal Cottage

Lanyon

Lands End

Cornwall

My dearest Flora,

I have already addressed the envelope of this letter as instructed by you. It is on the desk beside me now, proof that a lie, however well-meant, can never be contained or controlled but spreads like a disease, inevitably involving more and more people.

I was glad that you wrote to me at such length. Your letter took some reading and as you seem anxious for some sort of response, I shall try to deal with your problems in a fairly abbreviated way.

Firstly, Rose. The coincidence of your meeting like that was something that I always hoped would never happen. But it did, and so I owe you an explanation.

Your mother and I decided to separate within a year of getting married. We would have parted then and there, only she was eight months pregnant, and all the arrangements for the baby's birth had been made locally, so we continued to live together for that last month. During that time, we agreed that she should have the custody of the child, and bring it up by herself. She was going back to make a home with her parents, and she seemed quite happy to do this.