Under Gemini (11 page)

“Tuppy won't be there, but she's planning the whole thing. You know what she's like. And she specially wanted you and Brian to come.”

“We'd love to. What time?”

“About seven thirty. And don't dress up or anything, it's just family, and maybe the Crowthers…”

“That'll be fun.”

They chatted for a little longer, and then rang off. Isobel had not said anything about the baby because she didn't know. Nobody knew except Brian and Hugh. Anna didn't want anybody to know. If people knew perhaps she would never have it.

She came out of the little cubbyhole and began to take off her gumboots and her coat. She remembered Rose Schuster and her mother. She remembered the summer they had taken the Beach House, because that was the summer Anna had lost her baby. Pamela Schuster and her daughter were thus part of the nightmare, though that was not their fault, but Anna's own.

She remembered now that where Mrs. Schuster had been frighteningly sophisticated, her daughter was almost indecently youthful. Their glamour had rendered the shy Anna inarticulate. Because of that they had had nothing to say to Anna. Indeed after a few cursory remarks, they had taken no notice of her at all.

But Brian they had enjoyed. In the warmth of their appreciation he had been at his best, amusing and charming, his wit a match for anything they could offer. Anna, proud of her attractive young husband, had taken a back seat and been glad to do so. She wondered when her Rose had changed, whether being engaged to someone as nice as Antony had taken some of the sharp edge from her personality.

Now she stood listening, wondering where she would find Brian. The house was silent. She went across to the drawing-room door, opened it, and found the room full of light and firelight, and Brian stretched out in the armchair reading the
Scotsman.
A tumbler of whisky stood close by his hand.

He lowered the paper as she appeared and eyed her over the top of it. The telephone stood on the table by his side.

She said, “Didn't you hear the telephone ring?”

“Yes. But I guessed it would be for you.”

She did not comment on this. She came over to the fire, stretching her cold hands to the blaze, warming herself. She said, “That was Isobel Armstrong.”

“How's Tuppy?”

“She seems to be all right. They've got a nurse for her. They want us to go over and have supper at Fernrigg tomorrow. I said that we would.”

“That's all right by me.”

He began to go back to his newspaper and Anna said quickly, to keep the conversation going, “Antony's coming home for the weekend.”

“So that's the reason for the celebration.”

“He's bringing Rose with him.”

There was a long silence. Then Brian lowered his paper, folded it, and laid it on his lap. He said, “Rose?”

“Rose Schuster. You remember. He's engaged to her.”

“I thought someone said she was in America.”

“Apparently not.”

“You mean, she's coming to Fernrigg for the weekend?”

“That's what Isobel told me.”

“Well, I never did,” said Brian. He sat up, dropping the paper onto the hearth rug, and reached out for his drink. He tipped it back, finished it, got slowly up out of his chair and went over to the drink table to replenish his glass.

Anna said, “I've been out picking roses.” The siphon swished into Brian's tumbler. “It's raining. The mist's coming in.”

“It felt like that earlier on.”

“I was afraid of frost.”

With the glass in his hand, Brian came back to the fireside and stood looking down into the flames.

Anna straightened up. There was a mirror over the mantelpiece and their reflections stared back at them, only slightly distorted: the man, slim and dark, his eyebrows sharp-drawn as though some artist had brushed them on in India ink; and the woman, short, reaching only to his shoulder, dumpy and plain. Her eyes were close-set, her nose too big, her hair, neither brown nor fair, frizzed from the damp of the mist.

So convinced had she been by her own visions of an Anna made romantic by incipient motherhood, that her reflection came as a shock. Who was this person who stared back at her from the faded glass? Who was this person, this stranger, standing next to her handsome husband?

The answer, came, as it always came. Anna. Plain Anna. Anna Carstairs that was, Anna Stoddart that is. And nothing was ever going to change her.

*   *   *

Following the urgency of Antony's trip to London, the drama of their confrontation, and her eventual decision to accompany him, Flora imagined that once in Edinburgh they would get into his car and drive hotfoot or post-chaise, or whatever you wanted to call it, to Fernrigg.

But now that they were actually there, Antony's whole personality seemed to change. Like a man coming home and shrugging on an old jacket and a pair of comfortable slippers, he relaxed, slowed down, and appeared to be in no hurry to get to Fernrigg.

“We'd better get something to eat,” he decided, after they had located the car, loaded Flora's suitcase into the trunk, and settled themselves in.

She looked at him in surprise. “Something to eat?”

“Yes. Aren't you hungry? I am.”

“But we had a meal on the plane.”

“That wasn't a meal. That was a plastic snack. And I have a horror of cold asparagus.”

“But don't you want to get home as soon as possible?”

“If we start now, we'll arrive at four in the morning. The house will be locked, and we'll either have to sit outside for three hours, or wake somebody up and doubtless disrupt the entire household.” He started up the engine. “We'll go into Edinburgh.”

“But it's late. Will we find anything open at this hour?”

“Of course we will.”

They drove to Edinburgh and Antony took her to a small club of which he was a member, where they had a drink and an excellent dinner, and then coffee. It was all very leisurely and pleasant and completely incongruous. It was nearly midnight when they finally emerged once more into the outdoors. The wind of the morning had died, and the streets of Edinburgh shone black with a thin, cold rain.

“How long will it take us?” Flora asked, as they got back into the car, fastened their seat belts and generally settled down to the long drive.

“About seven hours with this rain. The best thing you can do is go to sleep.”

“I'm not very good at sleeping in cars.”

“You can always try.”

But Flora did not sleep. She was too excited, too apprehensive, and already suffering from a severe case of cold feet. The knowledge that she had burnt her boats, that she was on her way and there was not a mortal thing she could do now to change anything, left her feeling quite sick. If it had been a fine bright night she might have tried to still her nerves by observing the passing countryside, or even reading their route on the map. But the rain was incessant, and there was nothing to be seen but the black, wet, winding road, pierced by the headlights of Antony's car, racing up to meet them in a succession of endless curves and bends, and falling away behind into the darkness to the hiss of tires on wet tarmac.

And yet, as they drove, the countryside made itself felt, even through the darkness and the deadening murk. It became more deserted, more desolate, the small country towns fewer and farther apart. They passed the long glimmer of an inland loch, and as they left it behind them the road began to climb, winding against the slope of the incline.

Through the half-open window came the smell of peat and heather. More than once Antony, with a murmured oath, was forced to brake the car to a standstill while a stray sheep or two, caught in the headlights, made its untroubled way off the crest of the road.

Flora was aware of mountains—not the little hills of home, the familiar cairns of Cornwall, but real mountains, sheer, rearing their way up at right angles and forming deep caverns and lonely glens down which the road ribboned ahead of them. There was bracken in the ditches, shining with rain, and always, even about the sound of the car's engine, the suggestion of running water which every now and then became a torrent as a waterfall leapt from some distant unseen ledge down onto the rocks of a roadside stream.

The dawn on that wet, gray morning came so gradually that Flora scarcely noticed it. It was simply a paling of the gloom, imperceptible, so that slowly it became possible to pick up the white glimmer of a hillside croft and to see the damp shapes of flocks of sheep before one was actually in danger of hitting them.

There had been little traffic on the road all night but now they began to meet great lorries coming in the opposite direction, passing them with roaring Diesel engines and waves of muddy water washing across the windscreen.

“Where have they suddenly appeared from?” asked Flora.

“They've come from where we're going,” Antony told her.

“Fernrigg?”

“No, Tarbole. Tarbole used to be an unimportant fishing village, but it's a great herring port now.”

“Where are the lorries going?”

“Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Fraserburgh—anywhere they can sell the herrings. The lobsters get taken to Prestwick and flown straight to New York. The scampi goes to London. Salted herrings go to Scandinavia.”

“Hasn't Scandinavia got its own herrings?”

“The North Sea's been fished out. That's why Tarbole came into its own. Very prosperous we are these days. All the fishermen have new cars and color televisions. Jason goes to school with their children, and they have a low opinion of him because we don't have color television at Fernrigg. It cramps his style a bit, poor chap.”

“How far is Tarbole from Fernrigg?”

“About six miles.”

“How does he get to school each day?”

“He gets taken by Watty, the gardener. He'd like to bicycle, but Tuppy won't let him. She's quite right. He's only seven, and she lives in fear that some terrible accident will befall him.”

“How long has he lived with Tuppy?”

“So far, a year. I don't know how much longer he'll stay. I suppose it depends on Torquil's job.”

“Does he miss his parents?”

“Yes, of course he does. But the Persian Gulf is really no place for a child his age. And Tuppy wanted him to stay. She doesn't like the house without a little boy messing the place up. There have always been little boys at Fernrigg. I think that's one of the reasons Tuppy always seems ageless. She's never had time to grow old.”

“And Isobel?”

“Isobel's a saint. Isobel was the person who looked after you when you were ill, and coped when you'd been sick, and woke up in the middle of the night to get you a drink of water.”

“She never married?”

“No, she never married. I think the war had something to do with that. She was too young at the beginning of the war, and by the end all she wanted was to come back to Fernrigg to live. And the West Highlands aren't exactly teeming with eligible bachelors. There was a suitor once, but he was a farmer with every intention of buying a property on the Isle of Eigg. He made the mistake of taking Isobel to see it, and she was seasick on the way over, and when she got there it rained incessantly for the entire day. The farmhouse was intensely primitive, the loo was down at the end of the garden, she was seasick all the way home again, and after that the romance died an entirely natural death. We were all delighted. We didn't like the chap at all. He had a bright red face and was always talking about going back to the simple life. A terrible bore.”

“Did Tuppy like him?”

“Tuppy liked everybody.”

“Will she like me?”

Antony turned his head slightly and sent Flora a smile that was both rueful and conspiratorial, and not really a smile at all.

“She'll like Rose,” he said.

Flora fell silent once more.

*   *   *

Now it was light, and the rain had turned to a soft blowing mist which was beginning to smell of the sea. The road ran downhill through cuttings of pinkish granite along sloping hills planted with stands of larch and fir. They came through small villages slowly starting to stir for the new day and by inland lochs where the dark water shivered under the touch of the west wind. With each turn of the road a new and marvelous prospect presented itself, and when at last they came to the sea, Flora realized it only when she saw the salty waves breaking onto weeded rocks at the head of yet another loch.

For a few miles they drove by the shore. Flora saw a ruined castle, the grass about its walls cropped by sheep; a coppice of silver birches, the leaves turned the color of bright new pennies; a farm with sheep pens and a dog barking. It was all remote and very beautiful.

She said, “It's romantic. Such a corny word to use, but the only one I can think of. It's romantic country.”

“That's because it's Bonnie Prince Charlie country. Steeped in tradition and nostalgia. The birthplace of a thousand lost causes, the start of long years of exile and depopulation, and all those sterling Scottish women coming into their own.”

“Wouldn't you like to live here? I mean, all the time.”

“I have to earn a living.”

“Couldn't you earn a living here?”

“Not as a chartered accountant. I could be a fisherman. Or a doctor, like Hugh Kyle. He looks after Tuppy and he's lived here, on and off, all his life.”

“He must be a happy man.”

“No,” said Antony. “I don't really think he is.”

*   *   *

They were in Tarbole by half past six, driving down the steep hill to the little harbor, empty now of the huge fish lorries and enjoying a quiet soon to be shattered by the boats coming in with the night's haul.

Because they were still too early, Antony drove down to the harbor road and parked the car in front of a wooden shack which faced out over the wharves and piers and the cranes and the smokehouses.