The Glass Guardian

by Linda Gillard

  Perhaps I could come over in the spring, when things have settled down here? I have plenty of preparatory work to do on Janet’s book in the meantime.

  With very best wishes

  Stan

  Both hugely relieved and hugely disappointed, I drafted an email to Stan, expressing regret about his father’s health. When I read my response through, it was clear Sane and Insane Minds were still at loggerheads. I’d assured Stan we could keep things flexible - it was far too soon to think about cancelling his trip - but I’d also informed him I’d encountered problems with Janet’s archive which had led me to re-think the extent to which I wished to participate in his researches.

  Vague and non-committal, yet sufficiently worrying to throw the poor man into a panic about the fate of his proposed book. So I deleted the paragraph about Janet’s archive, let my invitation stand, but informed Stan I might be returning to London shortly for work meetings. (Chance would be a fine thing. I doubted I’d even get a Christmas card from the BBC.)

  This, I thought, would give me plenty of options. I could flee Skye if I had to, but I could also keep Stan lined up as a possible fall-back plan for avoiding spending Christmas alone. And there was always Tom. Not to mention Hector. In fact it seemed pretty unlikely I’d get to spend Christmas alone.

  But I still couldn’t tell if I was relieved or disappointed about Stan.

  I pressed Send anyway.

  The temperature plummeted. I offered up a prayer of thanksgiving to the inventor of the Aga and kept a fire going all day in the sitting room. The pond froze over, then disappeared under several inches of snow, so I now had a rickety bridge to nowhere. Eventually it was too cold for snow to fall and Tom took advantage of the clearer, colder weather to make a spectacular job of removing the bridge.

  Using his harness, he attached himself to a big willow that overhung the pond. He descended like a spider on to the ice, lowering himself gingerly to see if it would take his weight. I stood by anxiously with blankets, brandy, my mobile and the number of the Mountain Rescue team, listening for the sound of cracks, but the ice held and Tom was able to tiptoe across the surface, sawing through rotting timbers. Then he tied long ropes to the sections of bridge, attached the ends to the back of his van, got in and started the engine.

  Standing well back, I watched as the ropes went taut and then began to strain. There was a creaking and rending noise as the wood fell, followed by sounds like gunshots as the ice cracked and then split open. The old timbers slid across the frozen pond, piling snow as they travelled. When the remains of the bridge reached terra firma, I signalled to Tom, who stopped the van and ran back down, grinning like a schoolboy.

  ‘It worked then?’

  ‘Brilliantly. Destruction is definitely your forte. Many thanks. I’m glad to see the back of that eyesore.’ I looked at the black holes now disfiguring the pond’s white surface. ‘Shame it’s made such a mess of the pond.’

  Tom looked up at the sky, which was beginning to darken. ‘There’s more snow on the way. And the water’s freezing over already. You wait, by tomorrow it will look like a Christmas card again. You’ll forget the bridge was ever there.’

  Remembering how I’d fallen in and how I’d nearly drowned, I found I didn’t share Tom’s view. Even with the bridge gone, I doubted I’d ever forget the black and muddy depths of that pond.

  Tom was right about the weather. The combination of wind and snow meant we were plunged into white-out conditions for a couple of days. Even if I’d had the energy to clear the driveway to use the car, I wouldn’t have been able to see where I was going. I worked my way through the tinned soups Janet had always kept in stock and I made soda bread when the ordinary bread ran out. I sat tight, waiting for the weather to improve, so I could get back to London.

  For that was surely where I belonged. Hector was avoiding me and Stan hadn’t rung or replied to my email. If I was going to be spending Christmas alone, it would surely be better to spend it in London, with thousands of other lonely people, than on Skye, in a large, empty house - empty, that is, apart from a resident ghost.

  I’d considered offering hospitality to Tom, but as he was unable to reciprocate or even contribute financially, I wondered if another invitation to eat and drink at my expense might seem humiliating. He forestalled me anyway by saying he was going to spend Christmas in Inverness with a Gamblers Anon mate. They’d volunteered to work at a night shelter over Christmas, which Tom said would “keep him out of trouble”. I wasn’t surprised he’d made arrangements to be away from home. If you were a father who’d lost touch with your only child, I imagined Christmas could be a difficult time.

  Tom didn’t know my own Christmas plans had probably fallen through. I didn’t tell him because I knew he might be concerned about me coping on my own. I let him think my Canadian professor was still expected and that my Christmas was both well organised and eagerly anticipated.

  It was neither of these things.

  I waited, but Stan didn’t ring or email. And Hector didn’t appear.

  Time seemed to grind to a halt. I sat slumped by the fire, staring out the window at the hysterically whirling snowflakes, watching as the familiar contours of the garden disappeared, until in the end, I didn’t recognise my world; didn’t recognise myself.

  I finally came to the decision that I must leave Tigh-na-Linne after a morning spent poring over photograph albums. I should have guessed what would happen, but as one snowy day merged into another, I had a lot of time on my hands and pictorial research for my project seemed like a good idea at the time.

  I adjourned to the study where I at least had a different view of the arctic wasteland the garden had become. Janet had of course organised the many leather-bound photograph albums in date order, so it was easy to find what I was looking for.

  The pre-1914 photographs were heartbreaking. The Munro family were pictured outdoors on summer picnics, hiking, riding, fishing and swimming. Life appeared to have been one long summer, even on inclement Skye. By referring to the family tree in the old Bible, I could guess at the identity of those pictured.

  Hector was easily recognised. In black and white, the splendour of his hair was not apparent, but I was surprised to see how Byronically thick and curly it was before he’d been shorn for the army. In most of the photos he was smiling or laughing. It struck me that I’d rarely seen Hector smile, let alone laugh.

  He was often pictured with his siblings: his two brothers, Archibald and Donald (who appeared to be twins, about ten years younger) and his little sister, Grace (younger still), who was often captured gazing up at Hector instead of the camera.

  By the time Grace was twenty, all three brothers were dead. No shadow of the loss she was to experience darkened her laughing face, but someone - Hector’s father perhaps? - had written a quotation underneath a formal portrait of the four Munro children in which a solemn teenage Hector held baby Grace on his knee, flanked by the twins.

  .

  No sense had they of ills to come,

  Nor care beyond today.

  .

  There were formal commemorative photographs - studio portraits taken before the brothers went off to war. As they stood, proudly uniformed, under a fake, cloudless sky, beside what looked like a papier mâché stone balustrade, the brothers’ eyes were fixed on a distant horizon. The twins were young, fresh-faced and innocent; Hector, at thirty-four, had seen something of the world, but none of them could have imagined the horrors that lay in store.

  I just couldn’t bear it. Afraid my tears might fall and damage these precious photographs, I shut the album and put it back on the shelf. Then I snatched it down again and carefully removed one of the photos of Hector. It was one of him standing by the pond at Tigh-na-Linne. He looked as if he might be about to jump in. It was an informal shot of a young man, perhaps not yet 30, grinning at the camera - handsome, carefree, looking very solid. Much of his body was revealed by his modest Edwardian swimsuit and you could see that he was fi
t, his pale arms and legs slim, but sinewy. As I stared avidly at the photograph, I tried to imagine what it would feel like to hold this young man in my arms. And I’d have to imagine it for I never would hold him. When I clung to Hector’s phantom form, it was like trying to hold on to water, or a memory: the harder you tried to grasp it, the more it dispersed.

  I cast an eye round the study, looking for a frame to fit the photo. I spied a picture of me as a girl, dressed in my new school uniform. I removed my photo from the silver frame and inserted Hector’s. He smiled back at me, meeting my eyes in a way he seldom managed in our encounters.

  It was then, as I stood weeping over a photograph of a long-dead man - the friend I’d always known; a man I never knew - that I realised things had gone far enough. As soon as the weather allowed, I must leave.

  Clutching the frame, I went upstairs to pack.

  I stood the photograph of Hector on the bedside table and took a suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe. I packed all the clothes I thought I’d need for winter in London, but I didn’t pack everything - partly because there wasn’t room in the case and partly because I wasn’t prepared to face up to the idea of quitting Tigh-na-Linne for good. As I folded clothes and laid them in my case, I composed an explanation to Stan. I also tried to think what to say to Tom. I couldn’t just leave without asking him to look after the house. If he was spending Christmas in Inverness, I either had to drain the water system completely or leave the heating on. I decided I would deal with all this tomorrow, when I was feeling more on top of things; when I wasn’t trying to avoid catching sight of a photograph of a dead man who smiled at the camera as if he had his whole life in front of him.

  I walked over to the bedside table, opened the drawer and took out Hector’s journal. There was no point in taking it to London, especially as I still felt it would be an invasion of privacy to read it, but I could think of nothing else that was Hector’s, nothing that would make me feel as if the connection between us wasn’t entirely severed. Holding the journal, I gazed once again at the photograph in its silver frame. I picked it up, walked back to my case and buried frame and journal deep among my clothes.

  I filled a holdall with shoes and boots - randomly, they might not even have been pairs. By then I couldn’t see because I was weeping again. I zipped up the holdall and set it outside the bedroom door, then went back to the wardrobe to collect my smart winter coat and the velvet fedora I could never wear on Skye because of the wind. I lay the coat over my arm and wheeled the case across the room and out into the hallway.

  Where, standing in front of the memorial window, Hector was waiting.

  ‘You’re leaving.’ It wasn’t a question and he didn’t look surprised. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Trying to keep my voice level, I said, ‘What are you saying sorry for?’

  ‘For driving you away. Out of your home.’

  ‘You aren’t. I have to go to London,’ I said briskly. ‘For work. I have some important meetings to attend.’

  Hector didn’t reply at once, then, after a moment, he said wearily, ‘Ruth, we surely don’t need to lie to each other, do we? I understand the impossibility of... what we did. What I feel.’

  ‘What we feel, Hector.’

  He turned away and stared at the window, the colours brilliant now the snow reflected so much more light. ‘Is that what you see?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  He gestured toward the angel in the window. ‘Is that what I look like? To you?’

  ‘Yes. Well, you’re not dressed like that, obviously, but the face is a good likeness.’ It dawned on me then why he was asking. ‘Oh! You can’t ever see yourself, can you?’

  ‘No. I sometimes imagine I see myself reflected in your eyes. Very faintly. But it’s just a trick of the light.’

  ‘So when did you last see yourself?’

  ‘Whenever I last shaved, I suppose... September 1915.’ He continued to stare at the window. ‘Is my hair really that colour?’

  ‘Yes. It’s glorious.’

  ‘I’d forgotten... Someone once asked for a lock of my hair. Before I went to the Front. She said she knew she’d forget the colour while I was away. Of course, what she meant was, she wanted something to remember me by. In the event of my death.’

  ‘And did you—?’

  ‘I bought her a silver locket. She disliked gold. Thought it vulgar. And I put a lock of my hair inside.’

  ‘What was she called?’

  ‘Frieda. Elfriede von Hügel. Her mother was a Scot, but her father was German. So there was no question of our marrying. My mother was frail and it would have finished her. The Hun had killed her two younger sons and might yet kill her eldest, so marriage was quite impossible. But I’d proposed anyway... And Frieda had declined. For the sake of my family. She said they’d suffered enough. And I think she feared there would be more suffering. She was right about that... My eyes are surely not that colour?’

  I dragged my brain back to the window and stared at the face of the glass angel. ‘No. They’re paler. But brighter. The colour of delphiniums. The light blue ones.’

  Hector nodded slowly, as if filing away the horticultural reference for future use, then he turned and looked at me. ‘You remind me of her sometimes. Though I confess, my memories of Frieda are dim after almost a hundred years. Perhaps what I mean is, you enable me to remember her a little. Though I find I don’t really want to think of Frieda any more...’

  He laid the slightest emphasis on the name and there followed a long silence in which I thought my legs would give way beneath me. I fervently hoped they would, so Hector would spring forward and catch me, take me in his arms and prevent me, forcibly, from leaving. But instead I said, ‘I’m glad you gave her the locket.’

  ‘Aye, so am I. I hope it was some comfort to her.’

  ‘I’m sure it must have been.’

  ‘I regret there’s nothing I can give you. To remember me by.’

  ‘There’s not the slightest chance I’ll ever forget you, Hector. I’ve known and loved you since I was eight.’

  He tipped his head back suddenly and appeared to examine the ceiling, then he closed his eyes. He put a white hand to his temple and clasped his forehead. Eventually, he said, ‘Is there anything I can say that would make you reconsider?’

  I dropped my coat and hat onto the suitcase. ‘You could try explaining why you want me to stay.’ He didn’t reply, nor did his eyes meet mine. ‘What do you know that I don’t, Hector?’

  ‘Nothing. I know nothing.’ His chest rose and fell with a great sigh. ‘But I sense... everything!’ He stepped forward and took my hand. The chill surprised me, but no longer shocked me. It seemed you could get used to anything. ‘You must stay, Ruth. Until it’s finished. Or until it begins.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so exasperating, Hector! You must know more than you’re letting on.’

  ‘No! Only that something will end for me. And begin for you.’

  ‘Something has already begun for me!’

  ‘Something real.’

  ‘What I feel is real!’

  ‘Och, will you no’ stay then!’

  As I stared into his wide blue eyes, there was a pounding in my ears and my lungs seemed to stop working. As the room began to spin, I gasped, ‘Hector, please, I beg you... I just can’t bear it!’

  He didn’t appear to move, but all at once I smelled earth and blood, then cold water seemed to engulf me, knocking me off my feet, sweeping me away in a raging, icy torrent. As I sank down and down, I felt Hector’s limbs tangle with mine and gradually darkness closed over us. Then his body, like a surging current, buoyed me upwards until finally, gasping for air, I burst into the light and found myself beached, naked and half-drowned, among the twisted sheets of my storm-tossed bed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  When I woke, I felt as if I’d been in a deep sleep, possibly for a long time, but the level of daylight in the bedroo
m hadn’t changed. As I surfaced, I clawed at the sheets and blankets, drawing them automatically round my naked body, though I wasn’t actually cold. A faint crackling noise and a comforting smell of wood smoke told me that either I was hallucinating, or Hector had performed one of his pyrotechnic miracles before leaving.

  Rolling over to check the fireplace, I discovered Hector hadn’t left. He was lying beside me, propped up on one arm, apparently naked, regarding me with an enigmatic smile. I was so astonished to see him there, I sat up with a start, clutching the bedclothes.

  ‘You’re still here!’

  ‘Aye, so I am.’

  ‘Have you been watching me for long?’

  ‘A wee while.’

  I looked round the room and saw a phantom fire in the grate and my discarded clothes folded neatly on a chair, but there was no sign of Hector’s kilt or tunic. Then I remembered. A ghost wouldn’t wear real clothes. Through the open door, I could see my packed suitcase, standing in the hall like a rebuke.

  I rubbed my eyes. ‘Have I been asleep for long?’

  ‘Not long.’

  ‘Did you sleep?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you ever sleep?’

  ‘No.’ As I blinked in astonishment, he added, ‘I rest occasionally.’

  Aware he might fade away at any moment, I stared, trying to fix Hector’s image in my mind. He seemed relaxed. He looked like a man, not someone from a battered photo album. My hand moved toward him, seemingly of its own accord and traced the map of fine, auburn hair that curled on his chest. My fingertips sensed undulating muscle beneath skin that was neither warm nor solid, but still made me want to touch. It seemed a shame I had no clear memory of how we’d ended up in bed together. I thought I might have enjoyed recalling the details. Minutely.

  My palm came to rest on Hector’s chest. ‘There’s something I want to ask you. And I want you to give me an honest answer.’

  His look was guarded. ‘What d’you want to know?’