Under Gemini (6 page)

“You mean, where do I live? Nowhere at the moment. I told you, I only came up from Cornwall today. I was going to stay with a girlfirend, only it didn't work out, so I've got to find a flat. I've got to find a job, too, only that's beside the point.”

“Where are you spending tonight?”

Flora told her about the Shelbourne, the luggage dumped in the hall, the potted palms, and the suffocating atmosphere. “I'd forgotten how depressing it was. But never mind, it's only for one night.”

She became aware that Rose was watching her with a cool and thoughtful expression in her dark eyes. (Do I ever look like that? thought Flora. The word
calculating
sprang to mind and had to be hastily slapped down.)

Then Rose said, “Don't go back.” Flora stared. “I mean it. We'll have something to eat here, and then we'll find a taxi and go and collect your luggage, and we'll go back to Harry's flat, and you can stay there. It's vast, and there are loads of beds. Besides, if I go to Greece tomorrow I shan't see you again, and we've got so much to talk about, we shall need an entire night to ourselves. And anyway, it's super, because you can stay in the flat after I've gone. You can stay there until you've found somewhere else to live.”

“But…” For some reason Flora found she was searching for objections to this apparently delightful plan. “But won't anybody mind?” was all she could come up with.

“Who should mind? I'll fix it with the hall porter. Harry never minds what I do. And as for Mother…” Something amused her. She left the sentence unfinished and began to laugh. “What would she say if she could see us now? Getting together, making friends. What do you think your father would say?”

Flora shied from the idea. “I can't imagine.”

“Will you tell him that we've found each other?”

“I don't know. Perhaps. One day.”

“Was it a cruel thing to do?” asked Rose, suddenly thoughtful. “Separating identical twins. Identical twins are meant to be two halves of the same person. Separating us was perhaps like cutting that person in half.”

“In that case, they may have done us a kindness.”

Rose's eyes narrowed. “I wonder,” she said. “why my mother chose me, and your father chose you.”

“Perhaps they tossed a coin.” Flora spoke lightly, because for some reason, it didn't bear thinking about.

“Would everything have been upside down if the coin had fallen the other way?”

“It would certainly have been different.”

Different. She thought of her father, of Seal Cottage by winter firelight, and the tarry smell of burning driftwood. She thought of tender, early springs and summer seas dancing with sun pennies. She thought of red wine in a carafe set in the middle of the scrubbed table and the comforting sound of Beethoven's
Pastoral
thundering from the record player. And now, she remembered the warm and loving presence of Marcia.

“Would you have wanted it to be different?” asked Rose.

Flora smiled. “No.”

Rose reached out for the ashtray and stubbed out her cigarette. She said, “Nor me. I wouldn't have changed a thing.”

*   *   *

Now it was Friday.

In Edinburgh, after a morning of cloud and rain, the sun had finally struggled through the murk, the sky was clearing, and the city glittered in a brilliant autumn light. To the north, beyond the deep indigo of the Firth of Forth, the hills of Fife lay serene against a sky of palest blue. Across Princes Street the municipal flower beds of the Waverly Gardens were ablaze with fiery dahlias, and on the far side of the railway line the cliffs swept up to the theatrical bulk of the castle with its distant, fluttering flag.

Antony Armstrong, emerging from his office into Charlotte Square, was taken unaware by the beauty of the afternoon. Because he was taking a long weekend, it had been an exceptionally busy morning. He had not bothered about lunch. He had not even raised his eyes to glance out of the window, imagining that the day was continuing much as it had started.

Preoccupied and anxious, he hurried to get to his car and drive to the airport. He was to catch the London plane and go in search of Rose. In spite of all that he was brought to a standstill by the unexpectedness of the sunshine reflected in still-damp pavements, by the glittering, coppery leaves of the trees in the square, and by the smell. It was a country smell, of autumn—a suggestion of peat and heather and wild uplands. It blew in with a freshening breeze from hills not after all so very far away. Antony, standing on the pavement with his raincoat slung over his shoulder and an overnight bag in his hand, took a few deep sniffs and was reminded of Fernrigg and of Tuppy. That he found comforting. It helped him to unwind and stop feeling so anxious.

Still, there was no time to waste, so he went and retrieved his car, drove out to Turnhouse, parked the car again, and checked in at the departure desk. Then, because there was half an hour to wait before his flight, he went upstairs for a sandwich and a glass of beer.

The barman was an old acquaintance, familiar after many business trips to London.

“Haven't seen you for a while, sir.”

“No. I guess it's been a month or more.”

“Do you favor ham, or egg?”

“Better give me one of each.”

“Going down to London?”

“That's right.”

The barman assumed a knowing expression. “Nothing like a weekend off.”

“It may not be a weekend. I may be back tomorrow. I don't know. It depends.”

“You might as well take the weekend, and enjoy yourself.” He slid the tankard of Export across the counter. “It's lovely warm weather down in London.”

“It's not so bad here.”

“No, it looks like a good afternoon. You'll have a pleasant flight.”

He wiped down the top of the counter and went to serve another customer. Antony took his beer and his plate of sandwiches over to a table by the window, shed his raincoat and his bag, and lit a cigarette.

Beyond the window, beyond the parapet of the terrace, he saw the hills, the shredding clouds, the flying windsock. He was hungry. The beer and sandwiches waited. Sitting there, watching the cloud shadows run across the puddled runways, he forgot about being hungry and let his mind return to the problem of Rose.

That required no conscious effort at all on Antony's part. As far as Rose was concerned his thoughts seemed to have taken on a will of their own, worrying away like an old dog digging up a bone, fretting around in circles and never getting anywhere.

As though the action were in itself some answer to his dilemma, he reached into his jacket pocket and took out her letter, although he had already read it so many times that he knew it by heart. It was not in an envelope for the simple reason that it had not arrived in an envelope, but rather in an untidy parcel around a small box containing the sapphire and diamond ring that Antony had bought her.

He had given it to her four months ago in the restaurant of the Connaught Hotel. They had finished dinner, the waiter had brought their coffee to the table, and somehow, quite suddenly, the moment had arrived: the time, the place, and the woman. Antony, like a conjurer, had produced the little box from his pocket, flipped it open, and let the light sparkle on the jewels within.

Rose had said, instantly, “What a pretty thing.”

“It's for you,” said Antony.

She looked up into his eyes, incredulous, flattered, but something else as well. He had not been able to make up his mind what that something else was.

“It's an engagement ring,” he went on. “I bought it this morning.” For some reason, it had been important that the ring should be in his hand when he asked her to marry him, as though he knew that she needed this extra leverage, this material persuasion. “I think—and I'm hoping that you think so, too—I think that we ought to get married.”

“Antony.”

“Don't sound so reproachful.”

“I'm not sounding reproachful. I'm sounding surprised.”

“You can't say, ‘this is so sudden,' because we've known each other for five years.”

“But not really
known
each other.”

“I feel as though we have.”

And indeed, at that moment, that was just how Antony did feel. But their relationship was unusual, and the most unusual thing about it was the way that Rose kept recurring in his life—turning up when he least expected to meet her, as though the whole relationship had been preordained.

And yet, the first time he had met her, she had made no impression on him at all. But then he had been twenty-five and in the throes of a love affair with a young actress doing a season in Edinburgh. And Rose was only seventeen. Her mother, Pamela Schuster, had taken the Beach House at Fernrigg for a summer holiday. Antony, home for a weekend, and escorting Tuppy to the beach for a picnic, had been introduced and eventually invited back to the Beach House for a drink. The mother was charming and very attractive, but for some reason Rose had been in a bad mood that afternoon. Antony had simply dismissed her leggy gawkiness along with her sulky expression and the monosyllabic replies she gave him each time he tried to talk to her. By the time he made his next weekend visit to Fernrigg, both she and her mother had gone, and he never gave the Schusters another thought.

But then, a year ago in London on business, he had come upon Rose having a drink in the Savoy bar with an earnest young American in rimless spectacles. Rose now was something quite different. Seeing her, recognizing her, Antony could scarcely believe it was the same girl. Slender, sensational-looking, she held the attention, open or otherwise, of every man in the place.

Antony moved in and introduced himself, and Rose, perhaps bored by her monumentally sincere companion, responded with flattering delight. Her parents, she told him, were on holiday in the south of France. She was flying to join them tomorrow afternoon. That had created a pleasant sense of urgency, and without much urging Rose abandoned the American and went out to dinner with Antony.

“When are you coming back from the south of France?” he wanted to know, already hating the thought of having to say goodbye to her.

“Oh, I don't know. I haven't thought.”

“Don't you have a job, or anything?”

“Oh, darling, I'd be useless in a job. I'm never on time for anything and I can't type, so I'd just be the most dreadful nuisance. Besides, there's no need. And I'd just be taking bread from some deserving mouth.”

Antony's Scottish conscience made him say, “You're a drone. A disgrace to society.” But he said it with a smile, because she amused him, and Rose took no sort of umbrage.

“I know.” She checked her elaborate eye makeup in the little mirror she had fished out of her handbag. “Isn't it ghastly?”

“Let me know when you come back from the south of France.”

“Of course.” She flipped the compact shut. “Of course, darling.”

But she hadn't let him know. Antony had no idea where she lived, and no address in London, so it was impossible for him to get in touch with her. He tried looking up Schuster in the telephone directory, but no number was listed. Discreetly, he made inquiries of Tuppy, but Tuppy only remembered the Schusters at the Beach House, and had no idea of their permanent address.

“Why do you want to know?” Her voice over the telephone was clearly curious.

“I met Rose again in London. I want to get in touch with her.”

“Rose? That pretty child? How intriguing.”

By the time Antony found her again, it was the beginning of the summer. London gardens were fragrant with lilac, and the parks veiled in the young green of newly opened leaves.

Once more Antony was south, interviewing a client for his firm. Lunching at Scott's in the Strand, he met an old school friend who asked him to a party that evening. The friend lived in Chelsea, and as Antony walked through the front door of the top-floor flat the first person he saw was Rose.

Rose. He knew after the way that she had behaved that he should be furious with her, but instead, his heart missed a beat. She wore a blue linen pantsuit and high-heeled boots, with her dark hair loose to her shoulders. She was talking to some man whom Antony did not even bother to inspect. She was here. He had found her. Fate had stepped in. Fate did not intend that they should be kept apart. Antony, brought up in a Highland household, was a great believer in fate.

He took a drink from a passing tray and went to claim her.

This time, it was perfect. He had three days in London, and she wasn't going to the south of France. As far as he could find out, she wasn't going anywhere. Her mother and father were in New York, where Rose planned to join them—sometime. Not just now. She was living in her father's flat in Cadogan Court. Antony checked out of his club and moved in too.

Everything went right. Even the weather smiled upon them. During the day the sun shone, spikes of lilac bobbed against the blue sky, windowboxes were filled with flowers, and there always seemed to be taxis and the best tables in restaurants waiting for them. At night a round, silver moon sailed up into the sky and bathed the city in its romantic light. Antony spent money like water—as though he were made of it—and the uncharacteristic orgy of extravagance culminated the morning he walked into a Regent Street jeweler's and bought the diamond and sapphire ring.

They were engaged. He could scarcely believe it. To make it true, they sent cables to New York, made telephone calls to Fernrigg. Tuppy was amazed, but delighted. She had been longing for Antony to get married and settle down.

“You must bring her up to see us. It's so long since she was here. I can scarcely remember what she looks like.”

Antony, gazing at Rose, said, “She's beautiful. The most beautiful thing in the world.”

“I can't wait to see her again.”