We began our descent of the steep slope among tangled trees and shrubs. My boots encountered scrubby patches of grass, spongy moss, rotted leaves, tree roots and muddy ridges. Even though I was following in Jamie’s footsteps, I misjudged my footing several times and slid down the glenside helplessly for a few inches, sometimes more. If he had not clasped my hand tightly, I would have fallen. But I did not complain. The daring feeling of being without my corset and petticoats in the daytime, and the sheer elation of being with Jamie, drove me on.
“This must be the one.” He had stopped and was leaning breathlessly against the broad trunk of a pine tree, so tall that its green–black mass obliterated the sky. We stood in the gloom, our feet sinking into the mulch of pine needles around the trunk. “Huzzah!” he concluded in triumph.
The tree stood on an earthy but solid-looking ledge. I stepped carefully to the edge and peeped over. I saw nothing but more trees, stretching downwards in a solid mass, all the way to the bottom of the glen. “I understood,” I began gently, not wishing to deflate him, “that the blocked cave is underneath this tree.”
“It is.” He was still smiling, but his eyes questioned me.
“Jamie, there is nothing here but more trees.”
His face straightened in discontent. He pushed himself off the trunk and came to the edge. “It is there,” he insisted, peering down the glenside. “MacGregor says so!”
I looked around, unsure whether to feel disappointed or relieved. “Could he have been mistaken? Or perhaps this is not the right tree after all.”
At that moment we heard the sound of someone climbing up the slope. I turned to see MacGregor’s tam-o’-shanter bobbing between the tree trunks. He had crossed the valley and was making his way towards us, pulling himself up with his stick and grunting with the effort. When he reached the pine tree he stopped, gave me an inscrutable look and turned to Jamie. “Mr Jamie, sir, a message from your father. Will ye go back to the house as soon as ye can?”
“Why? What has happened?”
“I dinna ken, sir. He says for yersel’ and the young lady to go back, if ye please.”
I could see Jamie was not satisfied with this, but he did not challenge MacGregor’s words. “How did you know where we were, MacGregor?” he asked.
The gillie remained inscrutable, deliberately not looking at me in my strange garb. “I saw ye’s from the hill. Miss Graham waved to me. I got on with my work, then a wee while later Bridie came out the house and called to me that Master wants ye back.”
“Well, now you’re here,” said Jamie, in no hurry to obey his father’s request, “you can be of help. Miss Graham and I are looking for the entrance to the cave where the tree fell across. Is it near here?”
MacGregor’s expression changed. When he spoke, his face was grimmer and his voice gruffer. “It is indeed, no more than a few yards away, down there.” He pointed with his stick, further down the hillside. “Ye may see the roots of this pine tree below the ledge, that were exposed when the land slid away and the great oak fell.”
So Jamie was right; the pine tree did show the way to the cave. I looked at him, but he was still looking at the gillie. “Have you been down there, MacGregor?” he asked sternly.
“Aye, sir.”
“So it is not as dangerous as Mrs McAllister thinks?”
MacGregor’s face closed up again. “It is dangerous for young persons to go clambering about there.”
“Have you been into the cave yourself?” asked Jamie.
“No, sir. The tree canna be moved by beast nor man.”
I was relieved. Jamie and I had obeyed the instruction of the ghostly visitor by finding the tree she had pointed out. But it looked as if I would be spared the ordeal of a visit to the inside of the cave. MacGregor waited in case Jamie had anything else to add, then he said, “Now, sir, will ye come back up to the house, as the master asks?”
Jamie nodded, and with a questioning glance at me, took hold of my hand. Together we followed MacGregor back up the glen to the spot where I had left my clothes.
“You go on,” I said to Jamie. “I will follow when I am dressed.”
When they were out of sight I changed, but I decided to retain at least one form of freedom: I let my hair down around my shoulders. Then I bundled the trousers and smock, and made my way between the gorse bushes to the bridge that led to the garden.
The sun was almost overhead now, bleaching the castle stone and outlining the base of the building with a narrow strip of shadow. I stepped onto the bridge, conscious that my legs were weary and I was ready for my luncheon. But halfway across, I stopped, and put the bundle of clothes behind my back. MacGregor was nowhere to be seen, but Mrs McAllister, Doctor Hamish and Jamie stood in a little knot outside the front door. The doctor looked on while Mrs McAllister, wearing her plumed hat, carried on an animated conversation with Jamie. Even from a distance, I could tell that she was scolding him, and as I came nearer, I heard her.
“You thoughtless boy! Do you ever think of anyone but yourself?” Without pausing for him to speak, she answered her own question. “No, of course you do not. Go upstairs and get ready this minute, and be quick about it!”
Her gaze fell on me as I approached. “And as for you” – she narrowed her eyes against the sunlight and scrutinized me – “that dress is too thin and you must put up your hair. You cannot go to town looking like a farmer’s daughter.”
When she saw my blank expression, she turned impatiently to her son-in-law. “Hamish! Have you not told Catriona of our plans? You are as forgetful as your son!”
The doctor made a gesture of apology. “It is regrettable, Jean, that today’s outing has been delayed, but it is no matter. I asked Jamie to be ready for an early luncheon, and to tell Catriona, as she had gone to bed and I knew I would be leaving before breakfast. Clearly, it slipped his mind.” His eyes flicked to Jamie. “Do as your grandmother says, and put on your good suit. We must finish quickly – we are awaited at one o’clock.”
As Jamie passed behind me, he relieved me of the bundle of clothes. Doctor Hamish saw, but made no comment about it, addressing me in his usual kind way. “Let me enlighten you, my dear. I am concerned that you might be rather bored with day-to-day life here at the castle, so I have arranged an excursion to the surgery, and to Drumwithie itself. I thought it might be interesting for you to visit our wee town, though of course it is hardly a town at all, compared to Gilchester.”
I was touched. “I am not at all bored, but how considerate you are!”
“MacGregor has orders to bring the trap round,” continued the doctor, “but I shall ride down on Jennie, so that I may see my afternoon patients as usual and ride back up for supper.”
“Thank you very much,” I said warmly, hoping the words conveyed my true appreciation of the invitation.
“It is our pleasure.” He slid a glance at Mrs McAllister. “Is it not, Jean?”
She gave an unsmiling nod. “Your hair, Catriona?” she reminded me. “Luncheon is waiting.”
I ran into the Great Hall, and down the kitchen corridor, all the while calling, “Bridie! Bridie!”
Bridie came out of the kitchen door, smoothing her apron, her face expectant. “Aye, miss?”
“Have you a moment to come up and do my hair?” I asked. “We are going out and I am not tidy. Did you brush my skirt?”
She was as eager to help me as I was to have her help. Quickly, she took the roast chicken off the spit and set it on a platter to keep warm by the fire. “I’ll be with ye as soon as I can change my apron, miss.”
It turned out that Bridie was practised with the brush and pins. She told me she had two younger sisters, whose hair she had often attended to when they were all girls at home. When she had finished, the tangle of strands had been smoothed into a neat roll, pinned on top, and set off by the elegant placing of my grandmother’s mother-of-pearl comb. Bridie made no comment, of course, but when I put on my cleaned, pressed skirt and stood before the mi
rror, I saw her behind me, pink-faced with pride.
“Thank you, Bridie.”
She dropped a miniscule curtsey, her flush deepening.
“And now I must rush,” I said. “They are waiting for me.”
In fact, they were waiting for Jamie. When he appeared, in a grey suit, with a bowler hat in his hand, I tried not to gasp; I had never seen him look so formal, or so normal. But as we took our places, the old Jamie returned. “Hrrmph!” he exclaimed. “I hope Bridie has cooked a horse, because I could eat one! And I would wager Cat could too. We have wandered all over the valley this morning.”
“Jamie Buchanan, all you think about is food,” said Mrs McAllister, though not disagreeably.
“Not true!” protested Jamie. “I have been known to think of poetry, for instance. And even, sometimes, young ladies.”
It was impossible not to smile. I did not look at Jamie’s grandmother, but I was sure she was looking at me curiously. Under the table, Jamie’s fingers enclosed mine. Perhaps she saw that too. “Be quiet and make haste,” she scolded. “We must not be late at the surgery.”
The necessity of eating quickly silenced us all. After luncheon, when Doctor Hamish had departed on his horse, I collected my hat and parasol, and Jamie donned his bowler. It made him look unnatural, like a boy dressed as a man. I suppressed the urge to laugh.
“Did you enjoy your climb up the glen this morning, MacGregor?” he asked as he handed his grandmother into the trap. “It is a fine day for it, is it not?”
MacGregor did not turn round from the driving seat. “Aye, sir.”
Mrs McAllister and I put up our parasols, though we scarcely needed them, so short and shady was the journey downhill. But a lady without a parasol on a sunny day was not an acceptable sight, and had not been so for a hundred years. Perhaps, I reflected, we would still be carrying them in a hundred years’ time, when, as my father had confidently predicted, people would be travelling around the world in flying machines.
The trap drew up outside a low stone house. It had the small windows and slate roof of most of the other houses in Drumwithie, but instead of opening straight off the street, it had a courtyard surrounded by a low wall, with a well-swept path to the polished door. Inscribed on a brass plaque beside the gate were the words Dr H.G. Buchanan, M.D. A notice in one of the glass door panels read, Surgery hours, morning 8 to 12 o’clock, afternoon 2 to 5 o’clock. Closed Saturday afternoons. Please ring the bell and enter.
So this was where Doctor Hamish worked. My seat in the trap afforded me a good view of my surroundings. Further along the street was a row of shops and a church, and down the hill, away from the older part of the village, I could see the gate to the station. Drumwithie was, as the doctor had intimated, a small town, not picturesque, but with an air of timelessness and peace.
Jamie helped his grandmother and me down from the trap. We stood on the sunlit cobbles while MacGregor set Kelpie clip-clopping towards the public house on the corner.
“That man had better not take more whisky than is good for him,” observed Mrs McAllister. “The track up to the castle is narrow.”
“I can drive us, Grandmother,” Jamie reassured her. “And anyway, you know MacGregor only gets drunk on Saturday nights.”
“Do not use that vile expression, Jamie!” she exclaimed as he opened the front door for her. “If you must describe the condition, the word is intoxicated.”
Two doors led off the simple hallway, one marked Waiting Room and the other Surgery. From the waiting room emerged a woman in a white apron and nurse’s cap. She was small and thin, and about Mrs McAllister’s age. “It’ll be a fine day ye’ve brought with ye’s!” she said good-naturedly.
“Good day, Spencer,” said Mrs McAllister. “This is Miss Graham, Doctor Hamish’s relation from England, who is spending the summer with us.”
Spencer looked at me admiringly. “Aye, I’ve heard all about the lassie. Drumwithie is a braw grand place, is it not, Miss Graham?”
I could not help but feel self-conscious. What had Doctor Hamish been saying? But I had learnt that “braw” meant broad or large, and by association, good. “Yes, very braw,” I said shyly.
Jamie laughed. “We’ll make a Scot of you yet! May we go in, Spencer?” he asked the nurse, indicating the surgery door.
“Aye, Mr Jamie, the surgery is closed until two o’clock.” Spencer knocked, listened, and opened the door. “Here they are, Doctor.”
“Behold!” cried Jamie, striding in. “The lion in his lair!”
Doctor Hamish rose from his seat at a mahogany desk. His “lair” was a small but well-appointed consulting room, with an examining couch, a sink with polished brass taps and cabinets full of bottles and bandages. The air, like that in every doctor’s room I had ever entered, smelled of alcohol rub and floor cleaner. “Yes,” he said, smiling at me, “this is where I spend my days.”
“And where he would incarcerate me!” Jamie waited for his grandmother and me to sit down in the patients’ chairs, then he perched on the edge of the couch. “Can you honestly see me here, Cat, dealing with boils and ulcers and hypochondriacs?”
“Jamie!” It was Mrs McAllister. “Do not start. Catriona does not wish to hear your grievances.”
“She already knows them!” retorted Jamie.
His grandmother was struck by this. She regarded me stiffly. “So he has been telling you more than folk tales?”
I glanced nervously at Jamie, who shrugged. “He has told me of his reluctance to study medicine,” I told Mrs McAllister. “We have talked about education in general.”
I hoped that would be the end of it, but Mrs McAllister pursued her point. “And what is your opinion?” she asked sharply. “Should Jamie become a doctor, or follow this ridiculous notion of being a poet?”
Doctor Hamish came round the desk. “If you please, Jean, may we leave this subject for another occasion? Catriona has come here to be shown the surgery.” He offered me his arm. “Now, my dear, I will show you where the real work is done.”
He took me through a side door to a large, light room. Its high ceiling showed that it had been more recently constructed than the rest of the house. In the centre was a scrubbed table, and steel trays of surgical instruments waited on trolleys, half-covered with clean cloths. Doctor Hamish was evidently rather more than a country doctor.
“I had no idea you were a surgeon!” I exclaimed. “How wonderful for the people of Drumwithie, to have a hospital on their doorstep!”
The doctor smiled delightedly, his face pink above his whiskers. “I am only able to perform minor operations here, of course. But I am, if I may say so, ahead of many doctors in obstetrics. Childbirth, that is. In this room I have brought several babies into the world by Caesarian operation, and helped women through complicated labours. Without doubt, lives have been saved.”
I was so impressed, I was silenced. But Jamie, who had appeared in the open doorway, spoke for me. “Father, tell Cat about the paper you wrote in that medical journal, about the reduction in the infant mortality rate of Lothian since this little cottage hospital was established? And about the medal you’ve got from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh?”
Doctor Hamish looked modestly at the floor. “The medical profession is endlessly striving to improve, as I’m sure you understand, Catriona,” he said. “I am merely doing my bit.”
“Hrrmph!” said Jamie, and turned back to the doctor’s room. I looked at his father, expecting to see impatience in his eyes. But there was something else there. In a flash, I realized what it was. Jamie’s melodramatic refusal to follow him into medicine was only partly born of a desire to be a poet. There was a greater, and more painful, reason for his contempt: if he could not be an even more pioneering doctor than his father, better respected by his colleagues and better loved by his patients, he would rather not enter the profession at all.
I approached the doctor. “May I say that I wish with all my heart that my dear father were here to
see this? Mother, I’m sure, will be very impressed when I tell her about it. I am so grateful to you for bringing me here, and showing me your work. It is inspirational.” Inspirational to everyone, I told myself silently, except the one person who had allowed the arrangements for this visit to “slip his mind” because he did not want to come.
“Thank you, my dear,” said the doctor warmly. “It was, I confess, a large part of my desire to bring you to Drumwithie. David and I are cut from the same cloth, you see. In our youth, our discussions of our plans and ambitions were endless. We differed in some ways – our opinions about female education spring to mind – but we are – were – both men of action.”
I remembered Mr Groves, the factory foreman, hollow-eyed beside my father’s grave. Father had built his factory on progressive lines and his staff was as loyal to him as I could see that the population of Drumwithie was to his cousin. “Indeed,” I agreed. “You have both achieved great things.”
Jamie flung open the door and we said our goodbyes. Outside, he suddenly stood very still, intent upon my face. “I have just noticed how very elegant you look, Cat!”
Mrs McAllister had the decency not to comment on my discomfort. “The way you rattle on will be the ruin of you, my boy!” she warned Jamie. “Come along, no dawdling. I have errands.” But as Jamie fell into step behind us, she murmured to me, “You do look nice, Catriona. And so you should. Jamie is forever at odds with me about this, but I will not have him, or anyone in a party from Drumwithie, appear in the village less than smartly dressed. It is not seemly for one in his position. People must know their place.”
“Bridie dressed my hair and brushed my skirt,” I said.
Mrs McAllister nodded with satisfaction. “I am glad to hear it. She needs more to do; she is getting stout. Now, I wish to make some purchases at Campbell’s, and perhaps you do too?”
“Haberdashers,” explained Jamie.
“Do you need any ribbons, my dear?” asked Mrs McAllister. “Or sewing thread? And …” – she lowered her voice once more – “Mrs Campbell also keeps a small selection of stockings.”
The Devil's Promise Page 10
