Dear Hugo

by Molly Clavering

  “Oh, it’s all just part of living in a small place, my dear. You can’t keep out of things unless you want to be a complete hermit.”

  “Sometimes I think I’d like to.”

  Her laugh came clearly over the telephone. “You wouldn’t like it for long,” she said. “Are you feeling too much of a hermit to walk over the hill and have tea with us? Bring Pam, of course. We want to pick sloes and make sloe gin.”

  “What fun. I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I said, and hung up. No one could possibly want to be a hermit with Elizabeth in the neighbourhood!

  It is three miles round by the road to Carmichael, but only half that distance over the hill, and such a beautiful walk that it is a constant delight to go up the little path beside Piper’s burn, where this afternoon the last of the rowans were burning like fire, cut across a narrow ridge of heathery ground, and follow another stream down into the wooded glen with the roof of the Drysdale’s old house gleaming in the sun between the tree-tops.

  A tall pretty girl, so like Elizabeth that she could only be her daughter, met me on the gravel sweep in front of the door.

  “I’m Catherine Drysdale,” she said. “I waited to show you the way. The others have gone on. What an adorable poodle!”

  She stopped to make much of the delighted Pam, while I looked at her, thinking that this was what Elizabeth must have been thirty years ago. In the mild October sunshine her dark hair was full of bright glints, and the short-sleeved green jersey and tweed skirt showed her slender grace of shape. How much I should have liked to have a daughter like that, Hugo. Not just because she was so good to look at, but because I could see at a glance that she was sweet-natured as well. All I said was, “Are you on holiday just now?”

  She shook her head. “Only a day off. I’ve managed to get myself transferred to the new hospital at Langtoun. I thought it was time I was nearer home, for a bit, anyhow. London is a long way off.”

  “How pleased your mother must be.”

  “I think both the parents are pleased. I know I am,” said Catherine. “I like to feel that I’m within reach of home.”

  We were walking down the winding tree-shaded drive by this time, with the sound of the stream far below in our ears, and the yellow leaves falling quietly through the still air. Catherine made a sudden snatch at one and caught it.

  “That means a wish!” she said, laughing. “Why don’t you catch one too?”

  It sounded affected to say that I had nothing to wish for, though it was true enough. For I have what I need, and I am content, and I did not think that to wish for a slightly larger oven or a new vacuum-cleaner was the right kind of wish, somehow.

  I was still wondering how to answer, when Catherine nipped up another twirling leaf, like a conjuror taking half-crowns from the empty air, and said: “Perhaps you think it’s childish of me? But we’ve always done it—and I still like to wish—”

  “Oh, no, no!” I said hastily. “I think it’s a very good thing, if there’s anything you want to wish for, not too seriously—but I really haven’t—”

  “You’ve nothing to wish for? You have everything you want?” She stared at me. Then her vivid face sobered. “Or there’s nothing you could get just by wishing?” she ended.

  How could a young creature like that guess such a thing, unless through her own experience? Yet she seemed so untouched by sorrow of any kind. . . . We stood there for a moment with the coloured leaves dropping gently, inexorably about us, until suddenly she laughed, and the spell was broken.

  “What babies we are, to imagine that a dead leaf could make a wish come true!” she cried. “If we don’t hurry there will be no sloes left for us to pick!”

  She threw her leaves away and tucked her hand through my arm in a confiding gesture.

  “I like you,” said Catherine. “I thought you’d be just another of Mamma’s friends—nice, you know, but out of reach. But you aren’t a bit!”

  It is most disarming to be told that you are liked by the younger generation, Hugo. And I like and admire Elizabeth so much that it was all the more delightful to be accepted by her daughter.

  We did not talk much as we crossed the road beyond Carmichael’s open gate and went down a grassy track which plunged into a hollow, but our silence was a friendly one without constraint.

  Blackthorn bushes grew on either side of our path, and Catherine pulled one or two of the little hard black fruits like tiny damsons, with the same blue bloom, as we passed.

  “There’s a big thicket just round the next bend,” she told me. “I expect we’ll find the others there—”

  The others, I thought. It sounded as if there were several of them, and I wondered who Elizabeth had cajoled into joining this rather thorn-ridden enterprise, blackthorn bushes being, as their name implies, very adequately equipped with weapons.

  Catherine seemed to guess what I was thinking. “Ralph’s come home on leave,” she told me. “It was his idea first that we should have a sloe-picking expedition. He brought some rather horrible gin back from Germany, which he says isn’t fit to drink as gin, but he thought it might make quite good sloe gin. And you know Mother, how she loves making anything that isn’t just the deadly round of cooking meals—”

  “Indeed I do,” I said rather ruefully. “It appals me when I see all her jams and jellies, her bottled fruit and vegetables and home-made chutney and lemon curd. All I’ve achieved is some raspberry jam, and I don’t think it is going to keep.”

  “Well, it won’t have to, will it?” said Catherine in a very practical manner. “You’ve got this boy, Mother wrote about him and said he and Anthony had appetites to match. I expect he’ll finish most of it in the holidays—do you hear voices? I think they must be quite near—”

  We hastened our steps, guiltily conscious that we had been dawdling, and went round the bend to find a big scattered thicket of blackthorn, from the middle of which came a good deal of crashing and trampling, and muffled exclamations in manly tones far from resigned. The track crept to the edge of the gnarled dark bushes and dwindled away to nothing among them.

  “Confound these flaming thorns!” said a loud young voice, and Catherine chuckled.

  “That’s Ralph,” she said unnecessarily. “Hi, Mother! Where are you?”

  “In here!” called Elizabeth from a dense clump. “Have you brought Sara?”

  “Yes, we’re both here.” And she plunged dauntlessly in among the bushes.

  I followed rather more gingerly. The bushes were amazingly thick, and though I could hear people all round me, I could see no more than an occasional glimpse of tweed or an inch of flushed face from time to time. It struck me that if only Pam could pick sloes, his was the figure best suited for the job. I was seized and held by hundreds of sharp spined twigs with every movement, and soon had no breath to take part in the shouted scrappy conversation going on about me.

  But there is something about gathering wild fruits which rouses enthusiasm. I suppose it is a sense of treasure-hunting, and it fires almost everybody. I started to pick, pushing my way through impossibly small spaces recklessly in search of more and better sloes. At least there was no stooping involved, and the sunshine fell in bright patterns between the twisting black branches and small thickly set leaves, and the air was fresh, with the faint nostalgic hint of distant garden bonfires which is so essential a part of autumn. Quite suddenly Elizabeth spoke, startling me so that I jumped, a fatal move in those surroundings. A malignant branch above my head instantly seized my hair with every thorn available, and there I was caught, like Absalom, or like Abraham’s ram, unable to free myself.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Elizabeth.

  Her face peered at me through a tangle of twigs.

  “I’m caught by the hair,” I said angrily. “Do stop glaring at me like the Cheshire Cat, Elizabeth, and come and undo me!”

  “I can’t get at you,” she panted, after making one or two vain attempts to break her way to me. “One of the others will have
to try.” She raised her voice. “Lewis! Catherine! Somebody go and rescue poor Sara!”

  There was a tremendous crashing behind me, and presently I could feel someone gently freeing my hair from the thorns.

  Unable to look round and see who it was, I could only say gratefully, “Thank you so much, Lewis—if it is Lewis—”

  “It isn’t Lewis, it’s Lawrence,” said a voice which I recognised all too well.

  “Major Whitburn! What on earth are you doing here?” I demanded, and I’m afraid the gratitude had left me. But this was the third time this wretched man had caught me at a disadvantage!

  “Well, I was picking sloes, and now, if you’ll just keep still for a minute, I’ll get the last of these thorns out of your hair,” he said with provoking coolness. “But it’s no use your jerking like that, you know. It only fixes them more firmly.”

  This was true, though maddening, so I made myself stand absolutely still, and in a very few seconds he said: “All right now. Just go carefully until you’re clear of the bush.”

  “Thank you very much,” I said meekly, and moved as quickly as I could into more open ground, and away from Major Whitburn.

  Then fortunately Elizabeth called out that it was time to go back for tea, so I hastened to the path, where various more or less untidy figures were gathering, baskets in hand.

  “What objects we all are!” said Elizabeth, who never lets her appearance trouble her, perhaps because her good looks always triumph over old clothes and untidiness. “—except you, Joan. I’ve never seen you with a hair out of place. Oh, by the way, do you know Miss Monteith? Sara, this is Miss Whitburn. She and her brother live at Chapelwood.”

  Miss Whitburn, a little creature not in the least like her craggy-faced brother, was exquisitely neat and cool. Her calm glance as she murmured “How do you do?” made me feel a great gawk with her hair all on end, but she seemed quite pleasant. Ralph was a large young edition of Lewis Drysdale. He wrung my hand with a violence that ground my fingers almost to pulp, and grinned at me engagingly before loping ahead to join Catherine. The two squabbled loudly and without rancour as to the weight of sloes each had picked, all the way to the house.

  The usual magnificent Carmichael tea, baked by Elizabeth and set out by Catherine, was ready by the time we had made ourselves tidy. The apparently effortless ease with which the Drysdale family manage things fills me with admiration. There were the scones, the sponge-cake, the gingerbread, the home-made bramble jelly and raspberry jam glowing like dark jewels in their glass dishes; and yet the big house was spotless, and the silver glittering. Most admirable of all was Elizabeth’s air of having done everything without haste or flurry. I was thinking of this as I drank my smoking hot China tea and listened idly to the talk around me, which was of common acquaintances of the Drysdales and Whitburns unknown to me.

  Suddenly, in one of those pauses which occur without warning during a conversation, Miss Whitburn said in her clear, incisive accents: “By the way, Elizabeth, do you know a woman who lives somewhere in Ravenskirk with a small boy? An extraordinary person. Bill Wilson told me she appeared on the moor one afternoon right in the middle of them, ruined their afternoon and instead of apologising, rated them like a fish-wife for almost shooting her!”

  I sat there frozen with horror, my cup in my hand, feeling the colour rush into my face in a hot wave. I have always regretted not having outgrown this schoolgirl weakness of blushing when embarrassed, but never so much as then! The only saving grace was that I had my back to the windows, and the panelled dining-room at Carmichael, facing east, is rather dark in the afternoons. It couldn’t be too dark for me at that moment. I held my breath for what seemed like hours, but was probably about half a second, waiting to hear what anyone would say.

  At last: “What an extraordinary thing!” exclaimed Elizabeth. “I wonder who she can have been?”

  The others all began to speak at once. Lewis said that if old Bill had been letting off both barrels in his usual style he didn’t wonder the wretched woman was frightened. Ralph thought it must have been funny and wished he had been there. Catherine said she expected it was a visitor who didn’t know the way: only Major Whitburn remained silent—and me, of course, the “wretched woman” in the case!

  “You were there, Lawrence,” said his sister relentlessly. “You can tell us what she looked like. You know how vague Bill is about people.”

  Inwardly blessing the vagueness of this Bill, I listened anxiously for Major Whitburn’s reply. “Oh, it wasn’t anything much,” he mumbled. “Bill must have exaggerated the whole affair when he told you about it, Joan. I hardly remember it myself.”

  Under cover of the disappointed chorus which greeted this, I put my cup down and breathed again. I was too much relieved at the time to consider how improbable it was that the Major’s keen eyes had seen so little.

  This unwelcome thought came to me much later, just as I was falling asleep, and kept me awake for quite a long time. Or to be honest, it helped to keep me awake, because something rather odd and unpleasant happened after I had left Carmichael, glad for once to get away from that delightful and hospitable house—something which puzzled and worried me.

  I was pushing open the gate—it is stiff and required quite a shove—when I saw a man get up from the step in front of my door and come towards me. He was one of those oily, little men whom one associates with the buying of old silver, unwanted false teeth and sovereigns, wearing rather too pointed shoes, several rings and a jewelled, or near-jewelled, pin in his tie. He asked me if I was the lady who lived here. I said, yes, I was, and what did he want? At that he gave me a sort of knowing leer, and coming much closer to me than I liked, said:

  “Now, come, come, you know quite well what I want, don’t you?”

  Irritated and puzzled, I said that on the contrary I hadn’t the slightest idea, and that I had nothing to sell—nor did I wish to buy anything.

  “Ah-ha!” said he, with a grin that showed a great many gold-crowned teeth. “But it’s a quethstion of what you have bought, now isn’t it? What about that little bill you were going to settle latht April, eh?”

  I began to wonder if the young man could be mentally deranged, or if by some extraordinary lapse, I had overlooked “a little bill”! But I said firmly, at the same time moving so that I had the gate between us: “I think you must be making some mistake.”

  “Now, come, Mrs. Kilmartin!” he said reproachfully—he actually said Mithith. I didn’t realise that people did speak with that curious lisp in real life until then. But I was too eager to get rid of the little man with his boot-button eyes and golden teeth to have much attention to spare for his oddities of speech.

  I said I was not Mrs. Kilmartin.

  He didn’t believe me. He seemed to imagine I was pretending to be someone else.

  “Not Mrs. Kilmartin of Wallace Cottage? Oh, come, now!”

  “I am Miss Monteith of Piper’s Cottage,” I told him. “And don’t say ‘come, now’ again or I shall scream.”

  I must have looked capable of it, for he withdrew to a respectful distance, greatly to my relief.

  When he found that he could not make me admit to being anyone but myself, he tried to make me tell him where “Mrs. Kilmartin” was.

  “But I don’t know!” I kept on saying. “Wallace Cottage has been shut up ever since I came here in May.”

  Finally I did succeed in convincing him that he was wasting his time by cross-questioning me. He looked at his watch, a florid affair with a chromium wristband, and gave a yell of anguish.

  “I have mithed my train! I shall not be able to get back to Glasgow to-night!”

  “No, I’m afraid you won’t. But there is a good hotel in the village,” I said.

  “The expenth! My firm will be motht dithpleathed!” he cried.

  “If you don’t go at once you won’t get a meal,” I said. “People dine early in the Ravenskirk hotel.”

  As I turned to go in to the house I saw him
stumbling down the rough road in his horrible pointed shoes.

  An odd light was shed on my unknown neighbours, I felt. I wondered if they would ever reappear at Wallace Cottage at all.

  You will admit, Hugo, that I had some excuse for being kept awake! But that is no reason for me to keep you from your well-earned sleep, so I shall finish this long letter now without commenting on your last air-mail.

  CHAPTER VI

  NOVEMBER, 1951

  I had an unexpected visit from friends of Cousin Rex, just before lunch-time to-day, a dashing little woman beautifully dressed in pale-grey and pearls, and a cadaverous silent husband. Of course there was not a drop of drink in the house, there seldom is. I suggested (a) lunch, (b) coffee and (c) a cup of tea, all refused graciously on the plea that they must be on their way and would stop for lunch nearer home. They had only dropped in because they were passing and remembered Rex having mentioned me and my dear little house.

  Showed them the house. By great good luck I had done the flowers earlier (mainly branches of rhododendron leaves and the last few hardy chrysanthemums, which I had picked to save them from frost and wind). So they were at least fresh, though they were not likely to meet with Mamie R.’s approval. Her taste, I am sure, runs to dozens of long-stemmed roses all alike, or hot-house carnations, or those enormous shaggy chrysanthemums with heads as big as my floor-mop, and her eye as it passed over the glossy green leaves and modest little yellow and bronze flowers arranged in a bowl on a stand in one corner of the drawing-room, remained cold. All the same, it was an attractive bowl! She kept on remarking how clean the house was in tones of surprise. Surely this was a little unflattering? Also asked who did the garden, and on my replying with some pride that it was All My Own Work, made no further comment.

  What were my neighbours like, in the other little house? she wanted to know. I told her they had only just come back after an absence of several months, and I had hardly met them yet, and their name—she wanted to know that too—was Kilmartin. Signs of animation appeared on her beautifully maquillé face. Could they be the same Kilmartins she and her husband had met one summer at Cove? Rather amusing people, who played bridge. Replied baldly that I didn’t know, and as I had seen them leave their house earlier, I was afraid it was no use her calling to find out.