Mr. George laughed, but Murray for once knew what Kennedy meant.
‘The trick,’ he explained, ‘is to come back often, and to have reasons for coming and company to come with. There is no point in coming back and thinking it will all be the same. It might be, but we are changed enough to make the difference.’
Kennedy thought about it.
‘Come with me after we bathe tomorrow to visit our old master,’ Murray added. ‘That may return you an air of reality.’
‘I might at that,’ said Kennedy dubiously. ‘Maybe.’
They carried on walking, and Kennedy continued to sigh and fidget.
‘We should have a fine day tomorrow,’ Mr. George remarked, as they turned the corner from the fishing rig houses of North Castle Street into North Street. The air was less fishy now, and the sun was a conflagration at the far end of the street. ‘Good enough weather for all. My only anxiety is that it might be too busy and the ladies might lose the best of the morning waiting for a machine.’
‘The people at the inn said they could book a machine for the earliest hour if the ladies wished it. They have some kind of arrangement there, I believe,’ Murray said. They stopped to look through the gates at the cathedral, the broken tracery made golden by the sun, paths worn already in the grave-dotted grass by sightseers. It had been the largest cathedral in Scotland, but not for long.
‘Where shall we bathe tomorrow?’ asked Mr. George.
‘I like Castle Sands,’ said Murray. ‘It’s a whiles more interesting than just sand.’
‘Oh, can’t we go nearer the ladies?’ asked Kennedy in what was close to a whine. Murray glanced at him curiously. Surely visiting St. Andrews had been part of Kennedy’s stated intentions on coming to Fife, but now that he was here he seemed to view the matter completely differently.
Mr. George was also looking at Kennedy.
‘Certainly you are right. We should not go far from the ladies, and West Sands is long enough for us to go out beyond where they are bathing. They will be between us and the inn, if they are in need of any kind of assistance.’
Murray nodded agreement. Castle Sands would be there another day.
‘No,’ said Kennedy, ‘we should not go far from them. And yet,’ he added, as if struck by a sudden thought, ‘we should not be too near them, for they – they might not wish us to think that we should be anxious about them.’
‘But we are not,’ objected Murray. ‘Are we?’
‘No,’ replied Kennedy, ‘of course not.’ He fidgeted with the edge of his glove. ‘Should we not perhaps be returning? If we are to rise early ...’
‘Of course,’ said Mr. George kindly. ‘This summer light is deceptive, and makes it seem much earlier than it really is. I hope little Anna is safely in her bed, for I think she will be too excited to sleep.’
‘Yes, Anna,’ said Kennedy, as if struggling to remember who she was. ‘What is the matter with her, anyway?’
‘Something with her chest, I believe,’ said Murray. ‘She has great difficulty sometimes in catching her breath. Mr. and Mrs. Helliwell are very anxious about her, for sometimes the attacks of breathlessness can be quite severe. Mr. Helliwell, of course, says it is the fault of the state of the manse.’
‘He could be right,’ conceded Mr. George generously, ‘and if he would protest a little less we might have had something done about it by now. Strange though it may seem to our good minister, I do not have it in mind to have him and his whole family couped by the heels.’
V
The minister’s wife had just succeeded in settling her daughter at the inn, tucking her into a cot at the bottom of her own bed and closing the shutters firmly against the evening sunlight, and stating with unopposable conviction the usual formulas that mothers employ to encourage sleep in excited offspring. At eight, Anna was almost beyond the need for such things, but the pattern was soothing, and she was tired enough from the journey to be on the verge of a doze, at least. Mrs. Helliwell tiptoed out into the sitting room, and joined Miss George and the Misses Kirk.
‘Ah, Mrs. Helliwell!’ said Miss George. ‘I was just admiring the beautiful lace on Miss Kirk’s chemisette. Is it not fine?’
‘Indeed it is,’ Mrs. Helliwell agreed politely, peering at it without much interest. She could scarcely afford lace, and even if she could it would just catch on something and tear. ‘Is it English?’
‘No,’ said Virginia Kirk, ‘our brother Leopold brought us both a quantity from France a couple of years ago. He looks after us very well.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Parnell. ‘Leopold looks after us very well.’
There was a pause, perhaps for all to digest the idea of such a virtuous brother.
‘Bath is such an elegant city to live in,’ Miss George began again. ‘I have spent some very happy times there myself. Tell me, do you know Lady Ashdown?’
‘Not at all,’ said Virginia hastily. Miss George was taken aback.
‘But she is so much in society – surely you cannot have gone about without meeting her?’
‘We were not much in society,’ Parnell explained quickly.
‘Hardly at all,’ agreed Virginia.
‘In fact, we were only really in Bath for such a short time.’
‘Only two years, indeed.’
‘Hardly at all. As my sister says. Hardly at all.’
‘Hardly at all.’
Another little silence fell, into which, beyond the windows, the sea murmured cautiously. A candle spat.
‘I believe we shall have grand weather tomorrow,’ said Mrs. Helliwell stoically. ‘And by the sea, the heat is rarely too oppressive.’
‘Do you remember, Mrs. Helliwell,’ began Miss George with a smile, ‘how two summers ago in Edinburgh there was a dreadful fashion for cropping one’s hair in the summer? I assure you, Miss Kirk, it must have seemed laughable, for there we all were with our hair only inches long, screaming at our maids to arrange hair pieces over it to make it look as though it had never been touched. All the misses at Portobello – that is the best bathing spot near Edinburgh – and half the married ladies as well, clutching at their bathing caps and bonnets lest a gust of wind should show their naked heads! What we find ourselves doing in an effort to discover a compromise between comfort and fashion!’ She laughed, and so did Mrs. Helliwell, who remembered well how practical the cropping had seemed, and how ridiculous the hair pieces, though her husband would have entertained neither. The Kirks laughed, too, more from relief at the change of subject. Miss Parnell patted her own glossy curls, as if to say that she would never make such a mistake.
‘Now, do you both have bathing dresses?’ asked Miss George. ‘And caps? This whole expedition was arranged at such short notice that I am sure no one thought to ask you – I regret that my brother is sometimes too impulsive. But have you? For I have brought three in case.’
Parnell looked faintly alarmed, but Virginia Kirk thanked Miss George and explained that they had indeed brought bathing wear with them from Bath, and were able to furnish themselves adequately from amongst it.
‘Good,’ said Miss George. ‘Not that there is much making in the plainest of them, but it is rather late to start now to make two for the morning. Ah, here are the gentlemen back, anyway.’
The gentlemen entered and a whist table was efficiently formed by Miss George, leaving Kennedy, Miss Kirk and Murray to desultory chat by the screened fireplace. Murray could not help noticing that both his companions persisted in casting covert glances at the whist table, and at last despairing of any better entertainment he retired to bed with a book. Some time later, still by something close to daylight, the rest of the party also retired.
VI
Daniel woke Murray early in the morning, with the session of unsubtle throat-clearing to which Murray had become blissfully unaccustomed since Robbins’ return to Letho. Daniel brought the news that the two maids had gone to wake the ladies, and a boy from the inn had been sent to tell the people down at the bathing mac
hines to hold one machine in readiness until the ladies arrived. Daniel opened the window shutters with a few brutal thumps and began to clatter the shaving things on to the washstand. Murray turned over reluctantly in bed to see what the weather looked like, and was rewarded by the sight of a slice of glowing blue sky, dancing with brightness. He blinked and decided it was worth rising after all, and sat very still while Daniel shaved him with more confidence than skill. As he dressed, he could hear distantly Anna’s voice on the stairs, excited and impatient, and he smiled. He too was very much looking forward to his bathe.
Anna, fresh in her first crisp, new, flannel bathing dress with a blue ribbon in her cap, had to be pulled back in again from the stairs twice before all the others were ready to go. The simplest thing to do, they had agreed, was to put their bathing dresses on at the inn and wear cloaks over them to walk to the West Sands, with the maids carrying their clothes for them to change into afterwards. However, when this had all been decided and their cloaks were already on, Virginia Kirk opened a window to try how hot or cold it was, and decided that she would have to wear a pelisse as well under her cloak, and that her sister should do the same, for the air from the sea had quite a chill. Her sister made an elaborate face expressive of extreme boredom, but allowed herself to be taken back into their shared bedchamber and the complicated business of inserting the voluminous folds of their flannel bathing dresses into the snug sleeves of their pelisses was carried out mostly by Virginia. At last they were ready, the maids’ bundles of clothing were checked for the last time to make sure that nothing essential to respectability had been omitted, and with Anna almost breathless with excitement they set off down the road towards the golf links and the path to West Sands.
The sight that greeted them was a cheerful one. The dunes which held back the golf links from the sea were a bright emerald green on top of white sand, fine and clean. The tide was well in, and on the high beach a line of ten or twelve bathing machines, painted in bright colours like the stalls at a fair, were drawn up dry or already axle-deep in water, surrounded by bobbing heads, some capped in floppy white, some bare. The donkeys that drew the machines, usually tired, drab creatures, were fresh from their morning feed and seemed almost alert, twitching their friendly ears away from the occasional fly. The sea glittered blue-clear under a sky of lapis lazuli, flecked with gulls. Anna could not imagine being happier.
Some distance behind them, following unhurriedly, the gentlemen watched the little party padding in flat slippers along the beach path. Anna was skipping, they could see, and even the maids were chattering excitedly, clutching their bundles of clothes and towels. In turn the parties crossed by the head of the links, while far out to their left the navy blue and red figures of some early golfers could be seen assessing the next shot. The sun was so bright on them that their white stockings seemed to glow larger than life. Mr. George, himself a member of the Royal and Ancient, watched them for a moment with a critical gaze.
The ladies had reached the sands and were making their way rather more slowly now. Mrs. Helliwell watched Anna anxiously as she skipped and danced even on the soft sand: she wished Anna would calm down just a little, or she might bring on another attack.
A woman from one of the nearer machines saw them approach and came to meet them, dropping a rather floppy curtsey when she was near. She smiled at them, squinting against the sun.
‘Is that the party from the inn? Miss George was the name I had?’
‘That is correct,’ said Miss George. ‘I understand you have a machine waiting for us.’
‘Oh, aye,’ said the woman, barefoot and browned from the outdoor air. ‘Come on on in. It’s the wee red one with the worthless auld cuddy with the crooked lugs.’ She walked ahead of them, strong toes splaying in the sand.
Anna, disentangling the woman’s carefree pronunciation, was delighted to see that the machine’s poor old donkey did in fact have crooked ears, and could scarcely be restrained from the unladylike pursuit of going to talk to it. Mrs. Helliwell wondered how she could have produced two such couthless children, and sighed. The bathing machine woman ushered them up the steps into the dark little changing room, and followed them in, whereupon it became painfully apparent, as it had not been in the open air, just how much of her high complexion could be attributed to an overindulgence in spirits. The smell of drink was so strong that it made Virginia cough.
‘It is always the same,’ said Miss George with disapproval, meeting first Virginia’s eye, then Mrs. Helliwell’s. ‘I suggest we change quickly and get out into the open air.’
‘Here,’ said the attendant, ‘whit are you saying? Are you compleening?’
‘Not at all,’ said Miss George, evidently trying not to breathe in. ‘It is simply that we are in a hurry to get into the water.’ Her maid, squeezing into the smallest corner of the machine, was trying to help her quickly out of her cloak. The attendant stared at her, arms folded, for a long moment, aggressive in the confined space.
‘Gid gad!’ she said at last, on a long note of disgust. ‘Ye great Englified carline. Ye think I’m fou?’ She gave a loud guffaw, and leaned back out through the landward door. ‘Here! Nansie! Look at me, I’ve the Highness Lady Muck in here, thinks I’ve been turning up my wee finger more than is good for me! She’s that heich-headit you could grow beans up her! Ah, get on into the water, the lot of you!’ She threw the last remark back into the machine like a dirty rag, and jumped down the steps to see to the donkey.
‘I’ll be mentioning your behaviour to the landlady at the inn,’ Miss George called after her.
‘Ach, away till Hexham with you!’ retorted the woman, without bothering to look back.
By now they were very nearly ready, in any case. The Kirk sisters, tucking themselves into one corner, had managed to help one another out of their tight pelisses, and the little room was full of folds of the sack-like flannel bathing dresses. Miss George’s was rather elegantly embroidered with sandy brown seashells, a pretty conceit. Mrs. Helliwell’s was uncompromisingly plain, and she busied herself making sure that all of Anna’s long hair was tucked under the ribbon of her cap. The machine gave a lurch and started to roll down the beach, and Anna’s eyes shone with excitement bordering on terror. In a moment, they could feel and hear the soft action of the waves on the seaward steps and wheels, and shortly after that the machine came to a halt and Miss George, lowering her head to look through the little window, declared that they were in position. They waited a moment for the attendant to open the doors, but nothing happened, and in the end Miss George and her maid pushed open the doors together, and the ladies descended, in the spreading petals of their pale bathing dresses, to float on the surface of the waves like water lilies. The sensation was luxurious.
Up on the hispid dunes, Kennedy had stopped to watch the little red bathing machine roll into the water and slide to a halt. One by one the white bobbing shapes appeared, shrinking again as the water soaked into their bathing dresses and dragged the cloth down flat.
‘Well, they’re all in safely,’ he remarked, almost to himself.
‘The attendant does not seem very attentive,’ Murray commented, watching the girl with her short skirt and thick muscled ankles, stamping through the sand to talk to another attendant further down the line.
‘Oh, they’re all like that,’ said Mr. George. ‘Drunk, as like as not. They are paid too much by the tourists, now that bathing is grown so popular.’ He scanned the figures in the water by the machines, probably hoping, thought Murray impolitely, that one of the better-looking young ladies was old-fashioned enough not to wear a bathing dress. He glanced down himself, just to check, but saw no one so bold.
‘Well, a little further on then, for us,’ he said with a sigh, and they continued, the wind twitching their wide-brimmed hats, to where, far enough after the bathing machines for decency, there was a broad stretch of empty beach. They slithered down through the sharp grassy banks, Daniel following with the towels, and without further
ceremony stripped off and ran towards the sea, plunging in and swimming almost while their flailing arms and legs would still brush against the sandy floor, stirred by their passing into a state between liquid and solid. They were a hundred yards out before they knew it, and turned, alive and breathless, laughing at the dry and steady shore, the strange perspective on their familiar land.
Daniel stood desolate on the empty beach, trying to look, as Robbins did, efficient even when at rest.
‘Daniel!’ called Murray, feeling sorry for him, ‘you might as well come in.’
Daniel shuffled.
‘I can no swim, sir.’
‘Then paddle,’ called Mr. George.
‘Come on, it’s the best place to learn,’ called Murray.
Nervous, and not quite sure where his duty lay, but positive that it did not include being drowned in the German Sea, Daniel fumbled his way out of his clothes and tried to walk confidently into the water. The ground beneath his feet swirled as the waves sucked it, and he knew it should not: soon, however, he was more concerned about the numbing cold that prevented him from feeling his feet at all, until he stood on the edge of an empty limpet shell and abruptly knew precisely what his feet felt like. By the time the water was around his knees he felt that crawling was better than walking, and after the shock of the first wave hitting his face, he knew that he liked it. The next wave lifted him gently and pushed him back a little, but by then he was not going to be rejected by this unfamiliar element, and he half-crawled, half-paddled out to where Mr. George and the master were waiting for him.
Daniel was a natural: in an hour it seemed he had been swimming all his life, and while he lacked style, he made up for it in speed and beat Mr. George in three races. They were about to have a fourth, when Kennedy, who had not much involved himself in the swimming lesson, said,
An Abandoned Woman (Murray of Letho Book 4) Page 15
