Alison bolted through the doorway into the hall. With a smudge of peat ash on her forehead and her hair like a mop, she was in no mood to meet that penetrating grey gaze a second time. She had been prepared to resent Huntley Daviot and their first meeting had scarcely helped to endear him to her. He had seemed faintly amused by their encounter, although she had sensed a remoteness about him which set him apart. Certainly he hadn’t come to Craigie Hill to pay a social call. If Kirsty persuaded him to bend his dark, arrogant head so that he could pass under their lintel she could keep him in the kitchen!
Half angrily she mounted the stairs to scrub the marks of honest toil from her shining brow, wondering if that was why he had smiled.
He had gone when she came down again, her red hair smoothly brushed, her green eyes calm.
“That would be why they wanted the extra milk at the Lodge this morning,” Kirsty decided. “The Searles would be expecting him. He’s taken some butter and a dozen eggs. I’ve told him we can let him have a dozen till we run short, then he’ll have to be rationed, like the rest o’ folk. You can deliver them with the milk on a Saturday.”
For no accountable reason Alison flushed.
“I can’t see why he shouldn’t come for them himself,” she remarked. “I heard a car drive away just now.”
“He’s a busy man.” Kirsty gave her an odd, speculative smile. “And we’ve always delivered our butter and eggs with the milk. It’s one journey,” she added laconically to settle all argument.
Alison wondered about Calders as she prepared their meal, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask her mother about the occupants of the big house because she felt that Calders and Robin were too closely connected in Helen’s mind. Her son had made friends with the Daviots to his cost, Helen had admitted, although that had been all.
The meal finished and the table cleared, they sat over the fire for a while until Helen reached for her knitting.
“Off you go and get some fresh air into your lungs,” she suggested. “I’ve this bed-jacket to finish and it’s an intricate pattern. I need to give it all my attention.”
She lifted the delicately worked garment, spreading it out for her daughter’s inspection, her eyes lingering on the red-gold hair she had brushed and tended so lovingly for over twenty years. Alison’s return to Craigie Hill meant a great deal to her, yet she could never have demanded such a sacrifice from her. The fact that she had come of her own accord filled Helen’s heart with tenderness and a measure of peace. One day they would talk of Alison’s interrupted career and discuss the future, but not now.
“Off you go,” she repeated. “We’ll soon be losing the light.”
Although there was no lack of fresh air at Craigie Hill, Alison had wanted to explore farther along the headland ever since her return. The rocks and pinnacles round Sterne Point had always fascinated her and the old, disused lighthouse had been the focal point of many a youthful adventure.
Thinking of Robin in these days, her heart softened a little towards him. He had been the gay companion of her youth, the older, hero-figure of her girlhood. Wondering what had changed him, she found herself breasting the headland with a storm of confusion in her heart. So much had happened in her absence, so much of the past that had been tender and sincere had disappeared for ever. Jim Orbister had hinted as much and her mother had all but confirmed it. Calders and Craigie Hill had been linked by disaster, inexplicably drawn together by circumstances which had coloured all their lives.
She looked towards the big, deserted house half hidden behind its screen of trees, wondering what Huntley Daviot did there. Her mother had said that he had taken over the home farm on his father’s death, together with the supervision of the estate, but there was an efficient manager at the farm who knew all there was to know about sheep. Huntley could have lived a comfortable life anywhere, pursuing his every whim, yet he had chosen to return two years ago to take up his inheritance and now he was home again. His flying career had been abandoned. He had seen his duty elsewhere.
With memory pulling her farther and farther into the past, she remembered him as the remote, dark-haired schoolboy who had come on holiday to Calders, the boy a little older than herself who had worn an aura of mystery even in those far-off days. When rumour told them that he had gone from school to university, he had passed completely out of her orbit and her one remaining link with Calders had been the Scholarship.
It was plain that he hadn’t recognised her that morning. He had probably taken her for a village girl brought in to help Kirsty with the chores.
She smiled faintly at the thought of her unkempt appearance and the smudge on her forehead. No doubt she had looked every inch the part.
Tossing back her red hair, she faced the wind, determined to forget him. The Daviots and the Christies had never mixed, except once, and that was part of her mother’s sorrow.
Hurrying, as if by the sheer speed of movement she might escape the conviction, she climbed to the highest point of the cliff where the sea-mews circled and plunged and the puffins and guillemots and shags fussed and quarrelled among the rocks. In the crevasses far below the sea boiled continuously, heaving and swirling like an impatient monster straining at a leash, and clear and cold and white above it, set apart on its jutting promontory, Sterne looked out cross the waves.
Although it was no longer in use the lighthouse was still in amazingly good repair. As she drew nearer she saw that it had been recently whitewashed and, on closer inspection, that the rail fence had been renewed. She walked round it to where there had been a gate. It was still there, but facing her in all the repulsiveness of fresh black paint on a white board was a notice.
‘Private’, it said.
She read it twice before she could believe it. Someone had fenced off the Light and forbidden the public to use the headland. The white wooden railing marched straight across the promontory, barring her further progress.
Without second thought she climbed over it and walked briskly towards the cliff. She had always been free to come here, so why not now?
Out on the cliff edge she was entirely alone. She could sit there and thrash out her problems, readjust her life. Solitude had never daunted her; it was something she loved. The waves’ incessant thunder pounding the rocks beneath her and the cries of the seabirds high overhead were her own wild music, echoing some of the tumult in her heart. High up here above the sea she had nothing to hide. She stood thinking about her lost career, a small, curiously rigid figure silhouetted against the failing light, and then, abruptly, she turned with a new look of purpose in her eyes.
What was it her mother would have said? ‘If the heavens fall we may find a skylark in our hands.’
Walking with both hands thrust deeply into the pockets of her coat, she let the wind have its way with her hair, feeling its chill touch against her cheek and the sting of salt on her lips. It was
difficult to accept defeat.
When she approached the lighthouse again she stood looking up at it, idly at first, and then with a firmer purpose. The view from the top had always been worth the climb.
She tried the door, only to find it locked. But that was ridiculous! Nobody had ever forbidden them to go up to the Light. All the revolving mechanism had been dismantled years ago and taken away, but the spiral stone staircase and the iron outside platform were still in existence. She tried the door a second time, shaking the iron ring which served as a handle. “You’ll find it locked.”
The voice was coldly incisive and she recognised it even before she turned to look at the man standing behind her just inside the boundary fence. Huntley Daviot had followed her through the open gate.
“I saw the notice,” she agreed as coldly as she could, “but I hardly think it applies. This isn’t the first time I’ve come to Sterne. You can’t warn me off. It was never considered private property.”
It took him a second longer to place her.
“You were at Craigie Hill this morning,” he said.
“Yes.” Her mouth firmed. “When you came to see Kirsty.”
The eagle gaze held hers for a moment while he searched her face for some clue to her identity. .
“I’m Alison Christie,” she told him. “I live at Craigie Hill.”
He looked surprised, not so much by the revelation of her identity as by her second admission.
“I thought you were in London taking advantage of your scholarship,” he said indifferently.
“The Isobel Daviot Scholarship,” she informed him proudly. “But perhaps it doesn’t interest you.”
“On the contrary,” he said, “I find it more than interesting. Why are you here?”
He had driven her against the wall. He had more knowledge of the scholarship than she imagined.
“I came home to nurse my mother.”
“For how long?”
She shook her head, looking away, so that he might not see the hurt in her eyes.
“For as long as she needs me.”
“And the scholarship?”
“That will have to go. It was for three years. They’ll be up next spring.” “I take it your mother is seriously ill?”
“Yes.”
They stood facing each other, with the locked door of the lighthouse behind them. The light was fading and she thought that some of its greyness lay reflected in his face.
“It’s dangerous on the cliff,” he warned her. “That’s why I’ve had the fence renewed. The rock isn’t all gneiss. Some of it is soft sandstone, which is subject to erosion. You would be well advised to give the headland a wide berth.”
“And you?” she queried, thinking of the locked door.
“I live here,” he said.
She stared at him incredulously.
“At Sterne?”
“Why should it surprise you?” he asked. “I bought it some time ago when the Trust people offered it for sale.”
“I had no idea.” She couldn’t hide her chagrin. “But what about Calders? I understood you had come back to live there.”
He surveyed her with glassy distaste in his eyes.
“You must have been listening to clachan gossip,” he said. “Kirsty could have told you where to deliver my milk.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to say that she had delivered it at the Lodge, but she had already shown sufficient interest in him and been snubbed for her pains.
“I’ll leave your milk at the gate,” she informed him stiffly. “I wouldn’t dream of trespassing on your privacy.”
He laughed outright. It was so unexpected that she turned on her way to the gate to look at him.
“I’ll have to fix up a box,” he said. “Then we needn’t trouble each other at all. If you left my butter and eggs in the open once a week the hoodie crows would make short work of them even before I was up and about.”
He felt in his pocket and put a key in the narrow door and she knew herself dismissed.
“Don’t forget the box,” she said. “It will save me walking up from the gate.”
He followed her down the grass-grown path, closing the gate firmly behind her.
“You could, of course, leave everything at the Lodge,” he suggested. “It would save you more than a mile, and I go there every day.”
The suggestion confused her for a moment, although she was well aware that he visited the Lodge.
“I have the van,” she said stiffly. “There’s no reason why you should wait for you milk.”
“Just as you like,” he agreed indifferently. “You may have trouble sometimes, if the weather is bad, and I may not always be around to help.”
“I’ll have to take my chance on that,” she suggested. “There isn’t much shelter anywhere on the moor and the glen is only half my round.”
She hurried away, her hands still thrust deep into the pockets of her leather coat, as if to hide their rough unsightliness from his probing gaze. Being a Daviot, he made her too acutely aware of her lost career.
Jim Orbister was propping up the yard wall when she reached Craigie Hill.
“I thought I’d give you a look in,” he said, in his brash, matter-of-fact way. “There’s a dance at Lybster. Would you like to come?”
“I’d like to, but I’m sure I can’t,” Alison told him regretfully. Jim was easy to know. “Maybe later on, when things are a little more settled, Jim.”
“Your mother wouldn’t mind,” he persisted. “She says it would do you good. I’d bring you back in the car.”
The taxi she had hired in Wick was standing outside on the road. It seemed a long, long time since she had landed at the airport that day and Jim had met her by chance.
“I know how Mother feels,” she said, “but I’m not lonely. Honestly, Jim. There’s too much to do.”
“You’ll miss London,” he suggested tentatively.
“I must forget about it.” She found it difficult to lie to Jim Orbister. “Jim,” she asked briefly, “do you know why Robin went away?”
He hesitated.
“Maybe he was just restless. We all feel like that at times— wanting to kick over the traces.”
“It isn’t the whole truth, is it?” She looked directly into his blue eyes. “Something happened, something connected with Calders. Sometimes I think my mother knows what it was, but she won’t say. Do you think—it had anything to do with the Searles?”
“They were always there,” he admitted, “but I wasn’t seeing so much of Robin just before he left.”
“If you heard from him —if he wrote to you by any chance— you would let us know?” she asked earnestly.
“I wouldn’t wait to post it,” he promised. “I’d come straight down.”
“Thank you, Jim. I think if my mother only knew about him it would make all the difference when she went in for her operation.”
He glanced towards the house and she said, as he expected her to do:
“You’ll come in for something to eat with us.”
He talked with her mother about the land while she made the tea. Sheep, he said, were the only thing that mattered in Caithness and, if you had enough land and enough money, afforestation. But that was for the large estates.
When he finally rose to go it was quite dark. Alison saw him to the door.
“Jim,” she asked, “if I brought the van through to Wick one day next week would you service it for me? I don’t think it’s very safe.”
“I’ll take a look at it now,” he offered.
She shook her head.
“I couldn’t expect you to do that. You were going to the dance,” she reminded him.
“I asked you to go,” he said. “Since you won’t, I may as well look at the van.”
He spent an hour working on the engine while she saw her mother into bed.
“I’ll never be able to repay you adequately,” she told him as he washed his hands at the scullery sink.
“You never know!” He grinned down at, her. “One day I might send you a bill.”
She drew back, painfully aware of his nearness. “You do!” she said with unreasonable nervousness. “I’ll pay up willingly.”
“I hope so.” He dried his hands on the towel she offered him. “And don’t worry too much about—everything,” he added awkwardly. “When you bring your mother to the hospital you’ll want to stay in Wick. Cathie and I would like to have you. We’ve moved out to a bungalow on the Milton road. You’d be more than welcome, and Cathie would visit your mother after her operation if you had to come back here to Craigie Hill.” She drew a deep breath of relief .
“Jim, you’re being far too kind.”
As they crossed the yard he looked down at her in the light of the hurricane lamp.
“Don’t embarrass me,” he laughed. “We’re old friends.” He put his arm about her shoulders, drawing her towards the parked car. “You’ll remember that, won’t you, if you need anything done in a hurry? I’m always there, at the end of the telephone.”
She nodded, hardly k
nowing what to say. He was being kind because he had been her brother’s friend, but he hadn’t been able to reassure her about Robin.
“Do you think he’ll ever come back?” she asked impulsively.
“Robin?” He stood with his back to the light. “I don’t know. I used to think he and Cathie would make a go of it, but it fizzled out once he got to know the Daviots. Maybe he got big ideas.”
“It was more than that.” Her voice grew husky. “It was something that went very deep.”
“Maybe.” He stubbed the toe of his shoe idly against a tyre. “We may never know the truth,” he said.
“I wonder if it would help if we did,” she mused. “If only he’d write more often and not change his address so much! He seems so unsettled, roving about from job to job. Robin wasn’t like that.”
“No,” he agreed. “He was the settling type. It’s time I was on my way,” he added reluctantly. “You’ll remember what I told you if you should ever need help? The van’s a bit of a liability, by the way, but it might just see you through the winter with a bit of luck. If you like I’ll look out for something more reliable for you in the spring.”
In the spring, Alison thought as he drove away. So much could happen long before spring came again.
CHAPTER THREE
IT was breaking light the following morning when she rose. A storm had lashed the headland all night in a fury of wind and rain and every door and window pane rattled and shook. Over the sea an angry scarlet spread with the dawn along the horizon while grey, lowering clouds pressed down against the inland hills.
“It’s oilskins and gumboots this morning!” Alison remarked, finding Kirsty on her knees before the kitchen fire. “Where’s Neillie?”
“Out in the byre.” Kirsty spoke without turning. “He’s loading up the van for you. It’s a terrible morning.” Alison warmed her hands at the peats.
“I’d forgotten it could be so wet.” She shivered, drinking her early-morning cup of tea. “Thank goodness Jim Orbister had a look at the van last night.”
“It needs more than looking at,” Kirsty decided. “It’ll fall to pieces one of these days and at a right awkward moment, too. You mark my words.”
The Tender Glory Page 4
