The Tartan Touch (3 page)

“Is this Mrs. MacGregor a friend of yours?” he interrupted me.

“No,” I said carefully, “an acquaintance only
.
”

“How long have you known her?” he insisted. It was queer how set he was on knowing about a woman whose existence he’d known nothing about a few minutes before.

“I’ve known her all my life,” I responded thoughtfully, “She had known my mother, you understand, but my father couldn’t abide her at any price, so she never came up to the manse.”

“Were you lonely, Kirsty?” he asked me gently.

I gave him a proud look and shook my head. “One cannot be lonely when everything is familiar about one,” I observed.

“I see,” he said.

I frowned, wondering if he did. “Will I be lonely in Australia?” I asked him.

“I don’t know.” At least I couldn’t complain about his honesty.
“You’ll have Mary to keep you company.”

“Your ward? What is she like?”

He hesitated. “I don’t know how to describe her,” he said at last, “I think you’d better wait until you meet her. She’s young and very Australian and used to having her own way. She’s pretty enough to twist any man around her little finger.”

I considered what he had to say carefully. Truth to tell, I was a little afraid of meeting his pretty ward. “Will you marry her when she’s ready for you?” I demanded suddenly.

To my surprise he looked embarrassed. “How dare you ask such a thing?” he retorted
.

I couldn’t see that there had been anything in my question to offend him. There must be some reason for his interest in his cousin’s daughter, and what would it be if it wasn’t marriage? Men often had to wait for a girl to grow to an age when it would be proper for them to be wed.

Then I remembered that it was I he had married scarcely an hour since, and I blushed.

“A marriage of convenience isn’t a marriage at all,” I said bluntly. “I’ve no mind to pretend to be anything I’m not. It may be Mrs. Fraser in public, but in private I’ll know I’m still Miss Kirsty MacTaggart, and so will you!”

“I’ll try and remember,” he said dryly.

I knew he was mocking me and so I lapsed into silence. It was a relief, in a way, not to have to make conversation, for I had never driven so far from home before. I was expecting to be in London in no time and when we slipped through between Glasgow and Edinburgh, avoiding both cities, the land was so dull after my beloved Highlands that I thought we were already in England.

But we did not cross the Border for several hours yet. There were great signs beside the road, so there was no mistaking it. I wondered at Mr. Fraser’s stamina if he thought he could drive so far without a break, for I myself was exhausted and could only think longingly of sleep, when I didn’t think of the picnic I had provided in the hamper on the back seat.

Is it far to London
?
” I asked him timidly, when Scotland was left behind us.

“We’ll stop shortly and eat,” he soothed me.

“I’m a mite peckish,” I admitted.

His
grey eyes slid over my face. “I reckon you’re bushed besides,” he said kindly. “You can sleep in the back seat after lunch.”

It had already been a long day. The manse had been so dark and lonely after we had buried my father. I had gone from room to room looking for comfort from my own thoughts, but there had been none there. The manse had been his house, never mine. His ghost was at home there, mine was nervously seeking new things and new places to see and experience, even if he were dead and I still amongst the living.

That last night I hadn’t slept at all. I had heard the breeze in the trees and the Highland cattle leying at the dawn. I had been too excited to sleep and my conscience had been uneasy. Work is the panacea for every ill, and for all Mr. Fraser’s fine words, I couldn’t be sure that being a female influence on his niece was real
work
!
I would cook, of course, and keep the house as well, but was that an honest exchange for my keep? I wished there had been someone whom I could have asked. I was too frightened to question Mr. Fraser on the subject
.

When the sun had at last come up, flooding the glen with its welcome light, I had risen from my bed, stifling my doubts in a new anxiety that I would look a fright at the altar with nothing but my three-year-old white dress to wear. I tried all the others in my wardrobe, packing them as I rejected them, greeting softly to myself. I had my plaid, I reminded myself. Many a MacTaggart had had nothing more than a plaid to warm them. A plaid and a glass of whisky, I had added with a burst of honesty. Not even his calling had made my father a teetotaller, not even his miserable nature had made him see evil in having a dram whenever he could afford it.

The trouble with tears is that once one has begun it
is difficult to stop, so I was glad of the walk along by the
burn
to my wedding. When I arrived, I was clear
-
eyed and resolved to make the best of my destiny. I had my shoes in the one hand and the hamper of food in
the
other, hardly a fitting mate for Mr. Fraser, neat as a pin in his suit and holding a broad-brimmed pork-pie hat, the like of which I had never seen before.

So it was not surprising that now I could hardly keep my eyes open as the scenery swished past us, sometimes pretty, sometimes drab, but never-ending. We stopped and we ate, and Mr. Fraser complimented me on
the
bannocks and the griddle-scones, for he seemed to have a taste for such things, and then we went on our way. For a long time I fought the sleep that weighted my eyelids, for I was afraid that in such an unaccustomed position I might snore, and that was a thought not to be dismissed lightly
.
But in the end it got the better of me and I slept.

I was afraid all the time we were in London. I was afraid of the traffic, and afraid of the tall, box-like building that was the hotel where we stayed. I was afraid of the enormous department stores where Mr. Fraser took me to buy some clothes, for he thought badly of those I had brought with me, and I was afraid of spending so much money, for how was I ever to repay him?

Mr
.
Fraser had no such scruples. He ordered a suite for us at the superior hotel as though he did such things every day. Two bedrooms, he wanted, and another room where we could sit and have our meals if we were not inclined to go down to the restaurant
.
My own bedroom had a view across Hyde Park that was apparently to be much admired, though it ill compared to the glen and the Highlands I knew so well. The bed was soft and
the sheets were perfumed with I know not what, and I longed for my own cot at home with sheets smelling of the open air and much washing. It was well we were not there for long, for I was sadly homesick.

We were waiting for my passport and then we were to fly straight to Australia.

“What would you like to do today, Kirsty?” He was kind enough to ask the same question every day, though in the end he decided it all himself.

“Whatever pleases you, Mr. Fraser.”

He gave me an impatient look. “Don’t you think you could call me Andrew?”

I licked my lips. “I could,” I said reluctantly.

“After all, I call you Kirsty,” he pressed me.

“And without my permission
,”
I said darkly.

His eyebrows shot up, “My word,” he said, “in the Murchison, no one will call you anything else!”

“Are they so forward, the people there?” I asked demurely. He hadn’t the least suspicion that I was teasing him
.

“They’re friendly,” he grunted.

“Is that what it is,” I murmured, “to be familiar with the opposite sex!”

His grey eyes stared at me. “Kirsty, if I thought you—”

“Yes, Mr. Fraser?”

His anger died. “I’ve given you a crook deal, haven’t I?” he said at last. “Perhaps I should have left you to work it out for yourself.”

It was my turn to be puzzled. “But that wouldn’t have suited you,” I reminded him sharply.

“No, I suppose not,” he answered gently.

His words threw me into an uncomfortable confusion
.
Had I failed him already?

“I’m very—very adaptable,” I tried to reassure him.

“And I don’t suppose Perth in Australia is so different from Perth in Scotland.”

“That’s all you know! London frightens you half to death as it is!”

That made me feel sulky as well as uncertain. “It does not!” I denied brazenly.

He gave me a look of pure contempt. “Wait until you see the Murchison!” he threatened me.

“Wh-what’s it like?” I asked him, I longed to know about the place where he lived. I could make no picture in my mind that would satisfy me
.
The world was such a very different place from what I had thought it to be.

“Oh, it’s quite a place,” he said. “It’s in the back-blocks, you understand, free as air! It’s gold-mining country, only the yellow stuff is about played out now. We have mines of our own on Mirrabooka, so I’m a miner as well as a Cocky.”

“A Cocky?” I repeated, mazed by his talk.

“That’s what the miners call the sheep station owners,” he said.

“Do you really get gold out of your mine?” I asked him. I thought it a highly romantic thing to have a goldmine of one’s own.

He almost smiled
.
“Some,” he said. “There are a couple of tin mines further back that we still keep open, but mostly it’s just sheep.”

Sheep was something I thought I knew about. “How many sheep do you have?” I asked.

“My word, I wouldn’t know. Depends on the time of year and whether the wet has kicked through.”

“Oh,” I said. “I expect the land is poor,” I added wisely. “The feed isn’t very good at home either. The crofters can only run very few sheep over the
hills,
sometimes no more than two to the acre.”

Mr
.
Fraser’s laughter sounded like the crack of a rifle. “I run a sheep to the square mile, or thereabouts!” he said.

Then where did he get his money from
?
Every crofter that I knew relied heavily on his few sheep to subsidise his living.

“Perhaps tin makes a lot of money?” I hazarded, aware that I was on the point of asking a most personal question about the size of his income.

“You’re out there! The mining may have put Western Australia on the map, but it’s the wool that keeps me there. My last wool cheque was more than twenty thousand dollars.”

It sounded a great deal of money. I frankly did not believe him. “From a few sheep?” I chided him.

He sighed. He must have thought me very stupid
.
“I reckon my station is as big as a couple of Scottish counties,” he said.

My eyes grew as big as saucers. “Is—is Australia
very
big?” I asked nervously.

“You can’t believe it,” he assured me. “You have to see it for yourself! Nothing is what you expect. Take the Murchison, There’s the Big Bell Mine, not a century old, but already half abandoned. And Kalgoorlie, where the gold is. And all of it on some of the oldest rocks in the world!”

“And are there really kangaroos?” I put in eagerly.

“Too right, there are!”

I was reduced to silence at the thought. A great gladness of the spirit rose within me and I was longing to be quit of London to see this place for myself. Four years no longer seemed like a prison sentence. I was convinced that life was beginning for me now, despite having to be married to Mr. Fraser.

“Mr. Fraser, do
you
like London?” I asked him cautiously.

“In its way,” he grunted. “I like a bit of space myself.”

I sighed happily, sure now that the Murchison and I would get along very nicely. “So do I!” I said.

There was a new sympathy between us after that conversation. Mr. Fraser went round to Australia House to get them to help him to hasten the Passport Office for my passport and it was with us the following morning. It was very new, a shiny navy blue, with my name written in large letters in its place in the front. Only it wasn’t my name, for it read Mrs
.
Andrew Fraser, and my name of Kirsty MacTaggart was written in much smaller letters inside.

Still, I was not complaining, for now there was nothing to keep us in London any longer. I longed for the feel of the wind in my hair and to breathe air that none had breathed before me and to be rid of the traffic and the endless noise. Cities are all very well, but you need, to accustom yourself to them gradually. I have never had the time to do so.

On our last night in London, Mr. Fraser took me to the theatre, and very wicked I felt too. Oh, I could see for myself that my father’s ways were dead and done for, and I would not have chosen to make them mine, but the truly delicious sensation of guilt as we sat on those velvet chairs and watched the players on the stage before us, so close that I could sometimes glimpse their make-up, was a pleasure that no one could take away from me.

Mr. Fraser, who is not a mean man, bought chocolates in the interval, brushing aside my thanks with one of his impatient looks.

“It’s quite customary,” he said.

“Is it so?” I retorted. I was in a good mood to be impertinent, for the envious glances of other females in the audience when they saw Mr. Fraser had not been
lost on me. I had never thought to relish such reflected glory, but he had an air that brought all eyes to him wherever we were.

“You’d better enjoy them while you can,” he said flatly. “Mary eats them by the pound if she gets her hands on them!”

It was the first box of chocolates I had ever been given. I clutched them to me throughout the production and the whole way back to the hotel in the taxi. Mr. Fraser gave me a kindly look as we entered our suite
.

“Goodnight,” he said. “Sleep well.”

I held the chocolates more tightly than ever. “Goodnight, Mr
.
Fraser,” I said.

In the morning, he woke me himself. I had been dreaming of the manse and that my father was alive, far away from the luxury of the life I was living now.

“
Ciamar a Tha
?”
I asked him in Gaelic, forgetting where I was.

“
Tha gu math
,”
he answered easily. “I am well.”

“Oh, Andrew,” I said, “I didn’t know you had the Gaelic!”

“A few words,” he dismissed it lightly.

I sat up and hugged my knees, well pleased with life, “Whoever would have thought it!” I remarked with pleasure.

“With a name like Andrew Fraser?” he reminded me haughtily.

“And with an accent such as yours!” I laughed at him.

“While you speak the Queen’s English, I suppose,” he said, offended.

“Well, so I do!” I claimed. “Don’t I?”

‘You speak Gaelic better!” He picked up the telephone beside my bed and ordered breakfast for us both.