‘I tellt you I dinna ken where she is. I wish she’d been born yeld,’ said Watson, cross that all his niece’s shortcomings seemed to be blamed on him.
‘Watson!’ said the minister ominously.
‘Sorry, Mr. Helliwell. It’s just sometimes – well, if she had been barren –’
‘Giving birth is not the sin, Watson, just remember that,’ said Mr. Helliwell. Ninian Jack looked doubtful. Mr. Helliwell drew out a fat watch, and examined it. ‘I think we have given her long enough, though, Mr. Jack. Let us draw the Session to a close.’
The Session elders shuffled and bowed their heads.
XVII
Minutes of the Kirk Session meeting held at Letho Parish Church on the 12th. of June, 1808. Meeting opened with prayer.
Today the minister preached on the text of the Gospel of St. Mark, Chapter Twelve.
The Heritors of the parish met on Thursday.
Miss Helen Lyall of St. Cuthbert’s parish in Edinburgh and Mr. Hugh Fairlie of this parish were married yesterday in Edinburgh.
Nan Watson, maiden of this parish, having been summoned to appear before the Kirk Session accused of a trilapse of fornication, being with child out of wedlock, failed to appear.
The poors’ funds were counted and distributed.
Closed with prayer,
Ninian Jack,
Session Clerk.
Chapter Five
I
Sunday grew mild towards evening, and a raspberry-red field around a settling copper sun proclaimed finer weather to come. Monday dawned misty but the vapour was quickly burned off, and by the time Murray decided to set off for a ride to his lands north and east of the village, around half past nine, the sun was already hot, baking in the stableyard and casting the heat up off the cobbles to remind Murray of Italy or Spain. Blair had already commented on the similarity, and was at this moment, Murray had observed, sitting in a sunny spot on the terrace surrounded by the scent of the potted orange trees, Mrs. Hamilton’s Memoirs of Modern Philosophers in his ample lap and his beaming face, eyes shut, turned towards the sky like a sunflower.
Murray, settling his horse, was about to mount when Kennedy appeared in unexpected but stylish riding gear, including a dazzling parsley mix coat, at the sight of which Murray’s instinctive reaction was to calm his horse again.
‘I was wondering if I might come with you,’ Kennedy said with unaccustomed humility. ‘I feel a need of exercise, and it is such a fine morning.’
‘By all means,’ said Murray, trying to sound happy. He nodded to the groom to fetch another suitable horse. ‘I fear some of my business may be a little tedious for you, but you are certainly welcome to accompany me if you wish.’
Followed by Atalanta, the deerhound, and some of the spaniels, Murray and Kennedy set off at a comfortable pace through the shady trees to the front of the house, then down the hot curving gravel of the main drive. High above them in the scalded sky a lark rose singing for the open spaces. The broad parkland, elegant though it was, gave no shelter to the drive – only the horse chestnuts, holding bright candles of blossom in foppish fingers, gave scattered pools of shade to sheep and deer - and it was with considerable relief that they passed at last between the solid sandstone columns of the gateposts with their conical caps and slid, panting and sweating, into the shade of the woodland where the drive descended to the river. The spaniels ran about in the undergrowth, shaking paths through the fleshy bluebells, and even the dignified Atalanta, close by Murray’s stirrup as if attached by a thread, allowed her nose to twitch at the scents of the woodland. Birds sang here in the cool, and a blackbird, nosed from cover by the livery snout of a spaniel, raised a cry of alarm and made a low rush for safety. They could hear the river now, down to their left, and caught the occasional glimpse of it through the trees, brown dappled gold in the sun. Murray would have enjoyed the whole experience had he been alone with the dogs, but Kennedy, refusing to be awed by natural beauty, distracted him by a monologue of somewhat inane anecdotes and memories of their shared university days. Murray began to feel irritated, both by Kennedy and by the little black flies that started to form a network about his face. The horses started to twitch and swipe their tails, and a spaniel sat down suddenly in the path in front of them and began an angry scratch at the back of his head. Kennedy alone seemed impervious.
When they finally reached the main road, Murray suggested a brisk trot to blow away the flies, and they bobbed along for a few hundred yards with Murray trying to observe at that speed any defects in his estate walls, or fallen timber in need of attention. Kennedy, unable to continue his anecdotes, began to whistle jerkily. In the distance they could see, periodically between the trees, the fawn coat of another horseman approaching them, and as they came to the main gateway of Cullessie House, they could see him resolve into Mr. George of Dures. Kennedy seemed disposed to stop and wait, perhaps with foresight, for Mr. George tipped his hat to greet them and indicated that he was intending to visit Cullessie and call on the Kirks, if they were in.
‘I fear,’ he said, ‘that they will be lonely and without amusement while the Fairlies are in Edinburgh, for Mary and Louisa are the only girls near their age in the parish.’
‘Mrs. Helliwell has been very good to them,’ said Murray, ‘but it is true that there is little of general amusement here. It is a pity.’
‘Particularly when the weather is approaching what Miss Kirk might think of as seasonal,’ Mr. George smiled. ‘We should perhaps arrange some outing to a place of interest. They can know little of Fife.’
‘What about a bathing expedition?’ said Kennedy. ‘That is sure to be acceptable to Miss Kirk as being good for her health, and I am sure Mrs. Helliwell can find some plants or something to amuse her.’
‘A bathing expedition!’ said Murray, pleased with the idea as he sweated in his green riding coat. ‘That would be ideal.’
‘To St. Andrews, of course,’ said Mr. George. ‘Then those who do not wish to bathe can visit the castle or the cathedral, or admire some of the mediaeval curiosities.’
‘Must it be St. Andrews?’ Kennedy looked suddenly reluctant.
‘But surely it must,’ said Mr. George jovially. ‘It is by far the best beach, and there are machines, you know, for the ladies, on West Sands. Come, we shall put the proposition to the Misses Kirk now, and see if we cannot arrange the whole thing for this week.’
‘I am afraid I must decline,’ said Murray, ‘though I should be happy to be one of the bathing party. I have a great deal to do this morning. But Kennedy, I am sure, will be delighted to visit the Misses Kirk, will you not?’
Certainly Kennedy looked pleased with the idea, and set his horse to amble up Cullessie’s dogleg drive beside Mr. George. Murray bade them farewell and continued along the road, his feelings a mixture of regret at not seeing the Kirks, mild guilt at disposing so readily of his guest, and principally a happy relief at being, as he had intended all along, alone and busy about his work.
II
When he met Kennedy again at dinner, everything was arranged, it seemed. The Georges were both to come, and the Misses Kirk, Kennedy and Murray, and Mrs. Helliwell, partly as chaperone and partly because she felt that her daughter Anna, whose health was not generally good, would benefit greatly from the sea air. The plan, apparently, was to travel to St. Andrews in the afternoon, stay at an inn where they would have supper, bathe early the next day and return to the inn to breakfast and change, and after a stroll about the town they would dine and come back home. According to an acquaintance of Mr. George’s, the tides would be favourable on Thursday – for if they were wrong it would be a very long walk to the sea – so the party was to leave on Wednesday, amply provided with towels, maids, changes of clothing, boxes for seashells, fashions for the seaside, eyeglasses for the views, and suitable guidebooks for instructing the uninitiated in the mysteries of the ancient city. Blair, seeing the opportunity for a quiet day in which to pursue his own interests, cheerfully decli
ned an invitation, claiming that at his age the sea air was not good for his rheumatism. It induced, he said confidentially, rust in the joints.
Robbins was in his pantry, cleaning the second best decanters with lead shot, when he was summoned to the drawing room to be told of the expedition. He returned to the servants’ wing – pleasantly cool on a day like this – with a list of requirements which seemed to him a little excessive for an overnight journey to a town not far away. Mr. Kennedy’s insistence on fishing tackle being found, cleaned, and packed, for example, was almost certainly unnecessary.
He found Mrs. Chambers, the housekeeper, in her office counting and checking the laundry against long lists on her desk. The napkins from dinner were already in the basket for washing and she had drawn one out to tut over it, holding it long-sightedly away from her. She looked up apologetically as Robbins entered.
‘Oh, Mr. Robbins, before I forget. If you should chance to see Carlisle at any time, will you please ask him not to bring in irises for the house? There is not good cutting in them, and the yellow has stained this napkin – look, one of the gentlemen must have left it under the flower arrangement when he rose from the table.’
‘Well, I’ll try, ma’am, but you ken what he’s like.’ Their eyes met in mutual understanding. Robbins was a good twenty years younger than Mrs. Chambers, and young enough, too, for a senior position in a household, but though she may have had her doubts at first Mrs. Chambers would now have supported him anywhere. The head gardener, Carlisle, was however a different matter, and had a certain streak of what could charitably be called independence.
Robbins explained the gentlemen’s plans for Wednesday and Thursday.
‘They’ll be needing towels, then, and some brandy, and the travelling medicine case from the press there. I see no need for a maid to go – Mrs. Helliwell and Miss George will doubtless take theirs – but perhaps Daniel or William could attend them. Whose carriages are going?’
‘As I understand it, Miss George, Mrs. Helliwell and her daughter are to travel in the Georges’ chaise, while our own barouche is to be devoted to the luggage and the Misses Kirk. The gentlemen are to ride.’
‘Well, I suppose, it is not far.’ She made a final sigh over the state of the napkins and tossed them back into the basket. ‘And do you think,’ she said, with deliberate casualness, ‘that Mr. Murray means anything by Miss Parnell Kirk?’
Robbins folded his arms and blew out, propping himself against one of the laundry baskets.
‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘I don’t know that I’d like to say.’ He thought. ‘She’s a pretty enough wee thing.’
‘She’s that,’ agreed Mrs. Chambers, ticking off four bedsheets.
‘I think he likes her well enough,’ Robbins added cautiously.
‘You think?’ said Mrs. Chambers, quite as if she did not care.
‘Oh, aye. But what I think – if that were to count, you understand –’
‘Indeed.’ Mrs. Chambers did not bother to look in his direction as she tried to drag another bedsheet from the basket.
‘I think, you see, that pretty and all as she might be, he could do a lot better. The Kirks are all right,’ Robbins went on, looking about him, ‘but they’re not the class of Mr. Murray. Can I give you a hand with that?’ he asked as Mrs. Chambers seemed still to be hauling the sheet from the basket.
‘I fear it has caught on something, Mr. Robbins. If you could pull, I shall see if I can release it.’ Robbins took the sheet tails from her and tugged. She leaned over the basket and rooted amongst the linen briefly, before dragging out something that released the sheet suddenly to fall about Robbins’ ankles in a heap. When he had gathered it away and looked up, Mrs. Chambers was holding a stone hot water bottle.
‘Now where did that come from at this time of year?’ Robbins asked.
‘That is indeed the question, Mr. Robbins.’
‘Oh, is it perhaps from Mr. Kennedy’s room when he was ill?’
‘No,’ replied Mrs. Chambers, looking closely at the bottle, ‘I collected that one myself, I remember distinctly. Yet this is one of ours ... I shall return it to the landing closet later. Perhaps Mr. Smith fetched one for Mr. Blair in the night and forgot to mention it.’
III
The weather remained hot and grew hotter. For the next couple of days, the ladies and gentlemen looked forward with growing enthusiasm to their bathing trip, while in the servants’ quarters of the various houses tempers were short. The Fairlies’ kitchen maid was still missing, the Helliwells’ cook’s pastry failed and she threw a fit of hysterics, Daniel and William quarrelled over which of them was to attend the gentlemen to St. Andrews and Robbins had a heated argument with Carlisle, the head gardener, who swore that he had never brought irises near the house and was Mr. Robbins trying to tell him his job? Mrs. Chambers returned the hot water bottle to the landing closet, but failed to discover who had removed it in the first place.
IV
At last, after dinner on Wednesday, Kennedy and Murray rode down to Cullessie to let the Kirks know that the barouche would be with them shortly. The ladies bade a cheerful goodbye to their aunt and were quickly helped in with their luggage, and the party left along the potholed dogleg of the drive, Murray watching his wheels a trifle anxiously. At the turn-off from the main road to Letho village, they met the Georges with Mrs. Helliwell and Anna, the ladies in Mr. George’s chocolate brown chaise, and the convoy set off on the Cupar road, escorted by the gentlemen on horseback, and with enough equipment to withstand a short siege. They caused a little stir at Cupar, cutting something of a dash through the market town, and the Kirks seemed quite excited to see shops and people and everything three times the size of Letho. But they were quickly through it again and crossing the broad slope of farmland to Guardbridge. Here they waited, Anna in a state of high impatience, while a flock of sheep was chivvied across the narrow bridge towards them. The shepherd’s boy assistant sat on the parapet of one of the angular passing places and cheered as they finally crossed the Eden, waving at the polished carriages with their furniture glinting. Then it was up the hill and over and on to the flat land by the estuary, shining in the light, and Anna with her head out of the window crying,
‘I can see it! I can see St. Andrews! I can see the sea!’ while her mother tried in vain to drag her back in and not put them all to shame.
The road wove along the shore, flat like a ribbon, but always with the same end in sight, the silhouette that Murray knew like the face of his own home. Jagged down to the shore, the solid tower and spire of St. Salvator’s, the cathedral’s square St. Rule’s tower and the double-spiked empty arch of the ruined chancel, and the lower, finer spire of Holy Trinity, each known and named like his family, and cluttered with as many memories. He breathed in deeply, and the air was fresh, not hot and heavy. He smiled.
The best inn for bathers was up on the cliff, near the sea. The maids from the Helliwell and George households, accompanied by Daniel still cowed from the lecture on behaviour he had received from Robbins before he left, were waiting for them: they had arrived in a waggonette at dinner time, with the larger trunks. The building was modern and comfortable and the ladies’ two bedchambers and sitting room overlooked the sea, from the long narrow strip of the West Sands stretching away from them on their left, round St. Andrews Bay to vanish behind the headland where the castle stood in ruins far to their right. Over supper, Mr. George explained to the Kirks that there were two further beaches, Castle Sands, a rocky inlet beneath the walls of the castle itself, and East Sands, a lengthy walk past the pier and harbour at the other end of the town as it now stood. In monastic days a leper hospital had stood there, but there was now, he assured them, no trace of it. Miss Kirk did not seem quite satisfied on this point, as if monastic days might be much closer in North Britain than they had been in Bath.
Their supper was passable, but of a solidity so intense that various good-humoured remarks were made as to the possibility of the bathers sinki
ng next day. The gentlemen decided to walk it off, and having seen the ladies settled in their parlour they called for gloves and hats and went for a stroll.
The summer evening was clear and calm, the sky glowing pink and peach over a plated sea. Tonight it would not grow dark until perhaps two in the morning, and lighten again almost immediately, toying with the idea of night, leaving no rest for farmers and lighting the work of fishermen far out in little boats. The light was warm and almost artificial, candlelight behind glass, magnified through water like a lacemaker’s lamp.
They walked in silence for a little while, drawing in the fresh sea smell and hearing the distant, gentle movement of the waves like the breath of a sleeping giant. Murray strolled contentedly, feeling no need for conversation except for the one inside his head, silently greeting each familiar building or tree or view along a narrow passage to a garden beyond. St. Andrews held very varied memories for him, some grim indeed, but the place itself still enchanted him. The students, including two of his own old pupils, would all be away for the summer, and the town had its grown-up air about it. His heart filled to the brim with a soft, familiar pleasure.
‘I hate coming here,’ said Kennedy suddenly, with feeling. ‘I feel like a ghost.’
‘Like a ghost?’ Mr. George laughed. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
Kennedy stopped and waved his hands about, trying to find words. Murray was surprised at his emotion.
‘When we were here before, Murray, as students. Remember? We knew everyone. You could not walk down the street but you would meet half a dozen friends or acquaintainces. But now, here I see others greeting and meeting, and no one knows me. I feel as if all I knew are dead and I am come back to haunt the earth.’ He twisted his shoulders inside his coat, and scowled.
An Abandoned Woman (Murray of Letho Book 4) Page 14
