A Week in Winter: A Novel (48 page)
Read A Week in Winter: A Novel Online
Authors: Marcia Willett
Maudie finished the coffee in her big blue and white cup and picked up the samples. No reason, now, why she should not order something special; something, perhaps, for the trip to Canada at Christmas. She caressed the fine woollen squares, letting them slide over her fingers: Muted Blue Douglas, Ancient Campbell, Hunting Fraser, Dress Mackenzie. It was difficult to decide, impossible to choose. Suddenly, from nowhere, a memory slipped into her mind: Hector talking to someone at a party.
‘Of course, my mother was a Douglas,’ he was saying, ‘descended from the Bruce, she used to say. It’s a very pretty tartan. Subtle and understated.’ He’d smiled down at her, sending her a tiny, private wink, a pressure of his elbow pressing her hand close against his side. ‘Just the thing for you,’ he’d said. ‘We must buy some and have something made up for you …’
Maudie closed her eyes for a moment, the better to remember that little wink, so intimate, so gut churning, his heart-warming smile.
‘Darling Hector,’ she murmured. ‘How I miss you.’
She removed her spectacles, selected the square marked ‘Muted Blue Douglas’ and, rising from the breakfast table, went to make a telephone call.
The lone walker on the hill paused to remove his jersey. The late afternoon sun slanted from the west, touching the slopes with fire, warming the grey, rough granite outcrops. He was looking forward to a cold drink, his own bottle of water long since finished up. The early spring day had been unseasonably hot, the blue air still, the distant view hazy. Below him the deep lanes would be cool and dim, twisting and descending beside icy moorland streams, their steep, dark, rocky sides streaked with fern and mosses. As he tied the sleeves of his jersey about his waist he watched the small figures in the garden below him. It was several years since he’d walked these hills but the farmhouse was a familiar sight; a landmark. The cream-washed walls glowed warmly in the sunshine and, in the open-fronted barn, a man was piling logs into a barrow.
The last time he’d been here the house had been for sale but now it was clearly occupied. Washing hung on a line stretched across the yard and, once again, he could hear children’s voices as they clambered on to the swing beside the tall escallonia hedge. A young woman was encouraging them, her laughter mingling with their cries, pushing them gently as they clung together on the swing, shrieking with delight.
The schoolmaster smiled in sympathy, touched by the simplicity of the scene, and then paused, staring intently. It seemed that another woman, tall and slender, was standing in the shadow of the escallonia, watching the happy group by the swing. Yet, as he watched, a rippling breeze shook the branches so that the sunlight danced and trembled and he saw that, after
all, the figure was simply a delicate fusion of light and shade. The house, built at the moor gate, in the shadow of the hills, always reminded him of some verse he’d known from childhood. As he set off, descending rapidly, his face to the west, the lines were clear in his mind.
From quiet homes and first beginning, Out to the undiscovered ends,
There’s nothing worth the wear of winning, But laughter and the love of friends.
The sun was dipping towards the sea and smoke was rising, drifting up from the chimneys of the cottages which huddled in the village in the valley. Long shadows, indigo and purple, crept upon the slopes and now, in the quiet spring evening, he could hear the rooks, quarrelling in the wood below, and the high, plaintive cries of the lambs.