September (1990) (72 page)

"Alexa."

She looked and saw him, and her flushed face lighted up, and she disentangled herself, reaching out her hand to him.

"Noel. Where have you been?"

"I'll explain. Come and have a drink. . . ." And he took her hand, and pulled her firmly off the dance floor, Alexa meanwhile calling her thanks to the young soldier over her shoulder, but doing nothing to resist Noel's masterful progress. He led her out of the tent, through the library; he searched for a peaceful spot, and decided that half-way up the staircase was as goo
d a
place as any.

"But, Noel, I thought we were going to have
a d
rink."

"We will in a moment."

"You're taking me to the Ladies'."

"No, I'm not."

On the half landing it was quiet, and softly lit. He sat on the wide, Turkey-carpeted stair and drew her down beside him, and took her head between his hands and kissed her warm, flushed cheeks, and her brow, and her eyes, and then her sweet and open mouth, thus stilling her laughing protests.

It took a long time. They drew apart at last. After a bit, he said, "I watched you dancing, yet that was all I wanted to do."

"I don't understand, Noel."

He smiled. "Nor do I."

"What has happened?"

"I took Pandora home to Croy."

"I didn't know where you'd gone."

"I love you."

"I looked for you, but . . ."

"I want you for always."

"You have me."

"Till death us do part."

She looked, quite suddenly, almost frightened. "Oh, Noel . . ."

"Please."

"But that's for ever."

He thought of the old couple, arm-in-arm, setting off in the darkness for home. Together. "I know." He had never felt so confident, so unafraid, so certain in the whole of his life. "You see, my darling Alexa, I am asking you to marry me."

Pandora shut the door behind her. Inside the house, with curtains drawn and doors closed, it was very dark, the great hall illuminated only by the glow of red ashes from the dying fire. She was alone. It was the first time in her life that she had had Croy to herself. Always, there had been others around the place. Archie, Isobel, Lucilla, Conrad, Jeff. And long before them, her parents, their servants, the constant stream of visitors an
d f
riends; always somebody, coming or going. Distant voices, distant laughter.

She switched on the light and went upstairs, down the upper passage to her room. She found it all just as she had left it, flung with clothes, the bed crumpled, the empty whisky glass still on the bedside table, along with her radio and a dog-eared paperback. The dressing
-
table was littered with bottles and jars, dusted with spilled face-powder; the wardrobe door hung open, and random shoes lay about the floor.

She tossed her bag onto the bed, and went over to the bombe desk. Here lay the letter that she had been writing before succumbing to exhaustion and taking to her bed to have one of her little toes-ups. She picked it up and read it through. It did not take very long. She folded it and put it into an envelope and licked the flap and pressed it down. She left the envelope on the blotter.

She went into the bathroom. This, too, was in its habitual state of disorder, with damp bath-mat and towels on the floor, and the soap lying, forgotten and soggy, in the bottom of the bath. At the basin, she filled a glass with water and drank it down, watching her own reflection in the tall plate-glass mirror. Her jars of pills stood on the shelf below this, and she reached for one of them, but clumsily, or perhaps her hand was shaking, because, inadvertently, she knocked over the bottle of Poison that stood alongside. It tipped and fell, and she watched this happen, and it all seemed to happen quite gradually, like watching a slow-motion film. It wasn't until it hit the basin and had smashed into smithereens that she put out her hand as though to save it.

Too late. All gone. The basin filled with shards of glass, and she herself, almost anaesthetized by the concentrated scent of the precious golden perfume. . . .

Bugger.

No matter. No good trying to clean it up, because she'd only cut her fingers to ribbons. Isobel would dea
l w
ith it. In the morning. Tomorrow morning, Isobel would deal with it.

She stowed the jar of pills safely away, deep into the pocket of her mink coat, and then, carefully switching off all the lights, and closing her bedroom door, went back downstairs and into the drawing-room. She turned on the main switch, and the huge chandelier, suspended from the centre of the ceiling, sprang into a thousand facets of glittering crystal light. Here again, the fire was nearly dead, but the room was still warm and comfortingly shabby and familiar with its crimson damask walls hung with the old portraits and oil-paintings that Pandora had known all her life. It was all so dear. The battered armchairs and sofas, the mismatched cushions, the little green velvet footstool where she had sat, as a child, while her father read aloud to her before she went to bed. And the piano. Mamma used to play the piano in the evenings, and Pandora and Archie would sing the old songs. Scottish songs. Songs of loyalty and love and death . . . nearly all of them quite dreadfully sad.

Ye banks and braes of bonnie Doon, How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair . . .

How lovely to be able to play as Mamma had. But then, being given lessons, the young Pandora had swiftly tired of them, and her gentle mother, as always, had allowed her to have her own way. And so she had never learned.

Another regret to add to all the others. Another missed opportunity of joy.

She went to the piano and lifted the lid and haltingly picked out the notes with a single finger.

It's a long long time

From May to December But the days grow short .

Wrong note, try again.

. . . short

When you reach September

Not much of a performance.

She shut the piano lid, went out of the room, across the hall and into the dining-room. Here, more detritus. The table uncleared, empty coffee-cups, port glasses, crumpled napkins, chocolate wrappings, the scent of cigar smoke. The sideboard was laden with decanters, and she found an open bottle of champagne, still three
-
quarters full, which Archie had capped for future consumption with some patent stopper. Carrying this, she went back across the hall and out through the front door.

Archie's Land Rover waited for her. She climbed up behind the wheel, into its smelly and battered interior. She had never driven it before, and it took a moment or two to work out the complexities of ignition, gear, and lights. But finally, she got the hang of them. With only sidelights burning, the old engine chuntered into life, and she was off.

Down the drive between the dark masses of the rhododendrons, across the cattle-grid, up to the right, headed for the hills. She drove very slowly, with immense care, feeling her way by the dim lights, as though she walked on tiptoe. Past the farmhouse, through the steadings. And then, Gordon Gillock's house. She had been afraid that the sound of the car engine would disturb Gordon's dogs, and they would start raging and barking and waking their master. But this did not happen.

Now she switched on the full beam of the headlights and was able to pick up a little speed. The road wound and twisted, but she knew every inch of the way. After a bit she reached the deer-fence with its tall gates. The last obstacle. She drew to a halt, pulled on the handbrake, and, leaving the engine throbbing, climbed down and went to open the gates. The bolt was rusted and awkward to pull free, but she finally achieved this, and the gates, weighted, swung open of their own accord. Back into the Land Rover, through the gap in the fence, and then the whole procedure all over again
-
pulling the gates shut, and bolting them closed behind her.

Free. Now she was free. Nothing more to be afraid of. Nothing more to worry about. Lurching and bumping, the Land Rover crawled its way up the unmade track, headlights pointing to the sky, and the sweet damp air pouring through the ill-fitting windows cool upon her cheeks.

Behind, the world dropped away, became smaller, infinitesimal, unimportant. The hills closed ranks, drew her close, like comforting arms. This was Pandora's country. She had carried it all through the wasted years in her heart, and now she was back for good. This was reality. The darkness, the feeling of belonging. Warm and safe and comforting as the womb.

You are my womb, she told the hills. I am returning to the womb. She began to sing.

Ye banks and braes of bonnie Doon, How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair . . .

Her voice, thin and cracked and out of tune, sounded lonely as a curlew's cry. Too banal. Something cheerful.

Oh, the black cat piddled in the white cat's eye

And the white cat said "Gorblimey." "/'ra sorry, s/r, if I piddled in your eye But I didn't know you were behind me."

It was some time before she reached the loch, but time didn't matter, because there was no hurry now, no stress, no urgency, no panic. All had been attended to, nothing forgotten. Familiar landmarks came and went. The Corrie was one of them. She thought of Edmund, and then did not think of him.

She knew at last that she was drawing close to the loch when the bumping ceased and the land levelled out, and the wheels of the Land Rover ran smoothly over close-cropped grass.

In the beam of the headlights the dark waters lay revealed, the farther shores invisible, melding into the moors. She saw the black shape of the boat-house, the pale sickle of the pebbled beach.

She switched off the engine and the lights, reached for the bottle of champagne, and climbed out onto the grass. The heels of her sandals sank into the soft turf and the high air was very cold. She pulled her mink close about her and stood for a moment listening to the silence. Then she heard the piping of the wind, the ripple of water on shingle, the distant soughing of the tall pines that stood at the far end of the dam.

She smiled, because it felt just as it had always felt. She walked down to the water and sat on the turfy bank above the little beach. She set the champagne bottle beside her, then took the-jar of sleeping pills from her coat pocket, unscrewed the cap and shook the lot out into her palm. There seemed to be an awful lot of them. She put her hand to her mouth and shovelled them in.

Their taste and texture caused her to shudder and gag. Impossible to chew or to swallow. She reached for the champagne bottle, tore off the stopper, tilted it t
o h
er lips, and washed the noxious mouthful down. The wine still fizzed and bubbled. It was important not to start vomiting. She drank more champagne, rinsing out her mouth as though she'd just endured a tiresome session at the dentist.

An amusing thought came to mind. How smart to do it with champagne. Like being poisoned by an oyster or run over with a Rolls-Royce. What else was smart? She'd once heard of somebody's mother who'd died of a heart attack in the Food Hall at Fortnum and Mason. Presumably she'd been laid out . . .

Her mind wandered. There really wasn't time to sit here, remembering that poor dead lady.

. . . laid' out by some kindly swallow-tailed gentleman; stowed away behind the jars of Larks' Tongues in Aspic. . . .

She stopped to jerk off her high-heeled sandals and, straightening, felt her head reel as though some person had struck her a blow on the back of the neck. There is, she told herself with some deliberation, no time to lose. She shed her coat, left it lying, got to her feet, and walked the little distance that separated her from the loch. The stones were agony beneath her bare feet, but somehow it was a detached sort of agony, as though it were happening to another person.

The loch was cold, but no colder than other times, other remembered summers, other midnight swims. Here, the shore shelved steeply. A step and she was ankle-deep, another, and she was up to her knees. The filmy skirts of hen dress dragged heavily with the weight of the water. Another step. And another, and that was it.

She plunged forward, out of her depth, and the water closed over the top of her head. She surfaced, gasping and spluttering for air. Her long wet hair clung to her naked shoulders, and she began to swim, but her arms felt feeble, and her legs were shrouded and tangled in layers of sodden chiffon. She could perhaps kick the
m f
ree, but she was too tired . . . always too tired . . . to make the effort.

More restful, surely, just to float with the tide.

The hills were blurred now, but they were there, and that was comforting.

Always tired. I'll just have a little toes-up.

She saw, with grateful wonder, the night sky filled with stars. She laid back her head to gaze at these, and the dark water flowed over her face.

Chapter
11

Saturday the Seventeenth

It was five-thirty in the morning when Archie Balmerino looked at his watch, realized the time, and heaved himself reluctantly out of the armchair in which he had been sitting, placidly sipping the last of the malt whisky, and having a crack with young Jamie Ferguson-Crombie.