The House of Lyall

by Doris Davidson

  ‘Looks like Melda’s going into the mill,’ Mima Rattray observed to the first customer after he had left the post office. ‘Her and the Master are having a trip to Edinburgh to look round the big shops to see what sells best.’

  Chapter Twenty-five

  In late spring of 1925, Melda decided that she would like to try something new. She had introduced many variations of designs for the different kinds of cloth the mill produced, and she needed another challenge.

  ‘I was thinking of finding out about Fair Isle patterns,’ she told Ruairidh one day. ‘Jean Lambie’s cousin’s here on holiday from Shetland, and I began copying from her scarf, but there must be other patterns and combinations of colours. So if I go there and –’

  Her husband frowned. ‘I can’t go traipsing up to Shetland with you just now. I’ve to supervise the worsteds and tweeds we’ll offer the buyers for next winter, and Father’s trying to set up a better range of light-weight flannels for ladies’ costumes.’

  ‘I wanted to go on my own anyway. Fiona goes home next week, so I if I travelled on the boat with her, we could discuss –’

  ‘Can’t you discuss whatever you want to discuss with her before she leaves?’

  Irritated that he couldn’t understand how much better it would be if she saw things for herself Melda said sharply, ‘She can’t keep dozens of patterns in her head. It took me ages to write down one, and she told me she has a whole set of charts on graph paper at home. She says that’s the proper way to knit Fair Isle, not written in words like in the leaflets wool shops sell – two brown, one natural, three white, and so on – and she’s willing to let me copy them.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask her to do it for you? Or ask her to post them on and you can return them when you’ve copied them? I’m not keen on the idea of you going so far away by yourself.’

  She had to laugh at this. ‘I’m not a child now, Ruairidh. I’ll be twenty-three soon, and what harm could I come to in Shetland?’

  After a moment’s reflection, he said, ‘I’d be happier if someone was with you. What about Ruby?’

  ‘Oh, you know Ruby. She’d always want to show she’s a lady’s maid, and I don’t want anyone to say I think I’m any different from them.’

  ‘Jean Lambie, then? If I’m any judge, she’d jump at the chance of a free holiday with her cousin.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that leave you short of a knitter?’

  ‘Yes, but we’d manage, somehow.’

  Ruairidh was not put to the test, however. When Hamish heard of Melda’s plan, he pronounced it a dashed good idea. ‘And you don’t need a guard dog,’ he smiled, patting her shoulder. ‘No doubt there will be other women on the boat home.’ He turned to his son. ‘She’s a big girl now, Ruairidh. You’ll have to let go of her, and there’s no need for her to hurry back. She can take the whole summer if she likes. That nurse can keep Dorothea under control.’

  Ruairidh gave in, but told his wife later, ‘It’s all very well for Father, but I can’t do without you all summer, my darling.’

  Not sure whether to be annoyed that he thought of her as a chattel or to treat it as a compliment, Melda opted for the latter and gave a soft laugh. ‘It shouldn’t take long to copy down Fiona’s charts, but I’d like to ask her friends as well, to get as many designs as I can while I’m there. I’m sure all the shepherds’ wives’ll be itching to start knitting when they see them, and I won’t be more than three or four weeks away.’

  ‘Four weeks?’ he groaned. ‘That’s a lifetime.’

  * * *

  Marianne’s air of suppressed excitement puzzled Hamish, but he asked nothing until Ruairidh had left in his new Singer with Melda and her luggage – Jean Lambie’s cousin was to be collected on the way.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded, eyeing her suspiciously as they closed the big oaken door and returned to the dining room to finish breakfast. ‘You’re up to something.’

  After a brief hesitation, she said, ‘I’m in the process of creating a grandson for us.’

  He tutted his displeasure at what he took to be levity. ‘I can’t see Melda even looking at another man, and besides, as you know full well, she can’t have any more children, sons or otherwise.’

  Her finger tapped the side of her nose secretively. ‘Not Melda.’

  ‘Good God! You’re surely not going to encourage Ruairidh to –’

  ‘I’m just giving him the opportunity. If I can get him to fall for one of the girls I’m going to invite on Sunday afternoons –’

  ‘But, Marianne, even if he makes a son with another girl, it would be illegitimate, and think of the scandal there would be.’

  ‘I thought Andrew could arrange for an annulment of his marriage.’

  Hamish snorted. ‘On what grounds, may I ask? Ruairidh can’t claim non-consummation, not when Melda’s already given him a daughter.’

  ‘A divorce, then.’ Marianne’s sharpness betrayed her irritation. ‘Then a son would be legitimate, otherwise there won’t be an heir to follow him, unless you’re hiding some relatives up your sleeve.’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know of any still alive, not even forty-second cousins, and I don’t think even Andrew could dig any up.’

  * * *

  On Sunday, the Hon. Patricia Matthewson roared up the drive to Castle Lyall just before three o’clock in a red two-seater sports car with her grandmother looking apprehensive at her side. Marianne, who hadn’t seen Lady Matthewson since Hector’s funeral twenty-three years earlier, was dismayed to find that Patricia was not what anyone could call a beauty – having what could only be described as buck teeth, and a neighing laugh to match.

  Ruairidh did as he had been instructed by his mother and asked the girl to have a game of tennis, but he could not understand why his mother had made contact with the Matthewsons at all. By the time a dainty afternoon tea was served, he’d had enough, and so, pleading a mountain of paper work to clear, he disappeared into the library.

  At dinner that night, he turned on Marianne angrily. ‘Don’t ask me to be nice to that monster again! She couldn’t say anything without braying and it went right through my head.’

  The following Sunday went much better. Lord and Lady Furness had brought their whole family with them – two sons who had been at boarding school with Ruairidh, and a daughter he and Ranald had both enjoyed seeing when they were in their early teens. Kitty was even more attractive now, and was obviously attracted to him, lying close beside him when he flopped down on the lawn after the exertion of the doubles match. The two mothers were chatting in the shade facing towards them, the fathers were smoking pipes on a bench near the library window but also watching them, and when Edwin and Sydney, both mad about cars, disappeared to the garage to inspect Hamish’s new Lagonda, their sister put her lips to Ruairidh’s ear.

  ‘Can’t we go somewhere a bit more secluded?’ she whispered. ‘This is like sitting in a goldfish bowl.’

  Her perfume had started a flicker of desire in him, her breath fanned it to a glowing ember, and jumping up, he guided her towards the path to the woods. He knew he shouldn’t, but he was missing a woman’s company. He steered her past the old hut where he and Melda had first made love, and remembering that evening made him realize the risk he was taking now. ‘We’d better turn back, Kitty.’

  ‘Oh, Ruairidh,’ she pouted, ‘don’t you like being alone with me?’

  ‘I do, Kit, but … it’s playing with fire.’

  She slid her pointed tongue seductively over her lips. ‘And you’re scared of being burned? We used to have fun together in the old days and I quite fancy getting a bit singed, myself.’

  He was beginning to fancy more than a slight singeing, but he said, ‘No, Kit. We’re older now, and I’ve an adult need in me.’

  ‘So have I,’ she murmured, turning to press her body against his, ‘and it’s best to give in to your feelings.’

  Her kiss, long and searching, rekindled his inner fire so that his mouth sought hers
again, his hands went involuntarily to the small of her back then parted to follow the swells of her buttocks. He would have been lost if Kitty had left him to continue at his own pace, but in trying to hurry him on, she guided one of his hands to where she had opened the buttons of her thin dress. His fingers sank into one breast for only a second before he jumped away from her – alarmed by his reaction to the stimulus. ‘We can’t … I’m a married man.’

  ‘So were nearly all the others I’ve had,’ she murmured huskily. ‘I get a bigger thrill knowing the man’s another woman’s husband, and they say it’s more exciting for them, too.’

  The knowledge that he was just another married man she wanted to add to her list of conquests sickened him, and although it did cross his mind that he wouldn’t be taking advantage of a naïve virgin if he did take her, he pushed her roughly away. ‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘I love my wife and I’d never even dream of being unfaithful to her.’

  He walked her back to the castle without saying another word, left her on the lawn, then marched straight past both sets of parents and upstairs to his room. Stretching out on his bed, he wondered if he’d been a fool. Nobody would have known – except himself, and that was what had stopped him. He would never have lived easily if he’d done what he wanted. He couldn’t have faced Melda without remembering and feeling ashamed and guilty. A deep remorse flooded through him as he recognized the passion building up in his loins at just the memory of Kitty’s softly curved body and the sweetness of her kisses.

  Damn it all! he told himself furiously. Melda’s every bit as sweet and curvaceous. He had been tempted because he was missing her, and he should be thankful that he’d had the willpower to withstand that temptation. Vowing that he would never again get into a situation like that, whoever the girl was, he wondered why his mother had begun to invite people to the house, something she very rarely did. Worse still, why were they families with marriageable daughters?

  ‘I’m certain something happened,’ Marianne said triumphantly. ‘He’s ashamed of himself, that’s why he hasn’t come down to dinner.’

  ‘It’s nothing to be pleased about,’ Hamish frowned, ‘and please do not speak about it in front of the servants.’

  It took a great effort of will on her part to wait, and as soon as they were alone in the drawing room, she started. ‘I could read the signs, you know.’

  ‘You think they’d been fornicating?’

  ‘There’s no need to be so crude,’ she objected.

  ‘That’s the only word for it, the only decent word, that is.’

  Marianne scowled at him. ‘I can’t invite her every week, that would be too obvious, but I’m sure they’ve started something and we’ll have to hope it develops naturally.’

  At that moment their son walked in, and without thinking, Marianne said archly, ‘Kitty’ll make a good wife to some man, won’t she?’

  Ruairidh’s expression was icy. ‘I hadn’t given it a thought. Melda’s the only wife I’ll ever want.’

  Marianne’s face warning him not to say anything, Hamish muttered, ‘I’d better take the dogs out.’ The two red setters, grandsons of Romulus and Remus, sprang from the hearthrug and dashed through the door as soon as he opened it.

  ‘I just came down to say good night, Mother,’ Ruairidh mumbled, ‘but before I go up again …’ His face turning scarlet, he averted his head for a moment and then burst out, ‘You’re so transparent, so devious, it’d be laughable if it weren’t so pathetic.’

  She did not seem one whit abashed that he had caught her out. ‘You need a wife who can give you a son, and Melda can’t now she’s been rendered useless. Your father would like to see you with an heir before he dies.’

  The slur on his wife made him see red. ‘If Father’s so desperate for a bloody heir to follow me, why doesn’t he do the needful? I’ve seen him eyeing Nursie, so he must still be capable.’

  Outraged, Marianne cried, ‘How dare you speak of your father like that? He’d never dream of being unfaithful to me.’

  ‘And I’ll never be unfaithful to Melda, though I came damned near it today before I saw sense.’

  Marianne pounced. ‘So I was right! You and Kitty had been –’

  Hanging his head, Ruairidh whispered, ‘That’s what you planned, was it? Well, she tried her best, but I did not give in to her. All the same, I went further than I should, and if you knew how badly I feel, you’d have some pity for me.’

  After a moment’s reflective silence, Marianne said softly, ‘Shall we let it be our secret, then?’

  No more girls were offered as sacrificial lambs, and although Kitty Furness turned up the following Sunday, Ruairidh kept to his room and left his mother to excuse his absence. He was pleased to receive a letter from Melda the following day, asking him to collect her from the North Boat at Aberdeen on Wednesday – pleased, yet apprehensive.

  Describing her stay in Lerwick, Melda could sense her mother-in-law’s antagonism; Marianne’s jealousy of her son’s wife was almost tangible. Not only had Melda returned with a huge selection of Fair Isle designs and instructions for knitting them into scarves, ladies’ jumpers, men’s pullovers, gloves, children’s outdoor sets consisting of patterned tops and plain pantaloons, but she had also been told how the various dyes were obtained for the Shetland floss, the two-ply wool in which all true Fair Isle work is carried out.

  Having shown her husband and his parents her range of graphs, she produced samples of the fine wool. ‘The older women just use white, natural, grey and moorat – this mossy brown – that was traditional, but the younger ones are using other colours as well, not garishly bright like some national shops do under the pretence of them being real Fair Isle, but muted shades of rose, rust, lemon, blue, green, all dyed from woodland plants – lichens, grasses and natural sources.’

  She glanced around her three listeners. Hamish was studying the skeins of wool as if trying to visualize the transformation from the dirty fleeces of the mountain sheep to this fascinating rainbow. Marianne had the hint of a sneer on her face as she contemplated the graphs with their explanatory keys at the side. Ruairidh was the only one to meet Melda’s eyes, and instead of lingering on her with the love she had expected, he turned his head immediately away.

  ‘They’re not all the same,’ Marianne observed abruptly. ‘Look, a cross on this one stands for natural, but on this one, natural’s a blank square, and it’s the same with all the colours … different on every sheet of paper.’

  Melda did her best to stifle her impatience. ‘That’s because I got them from different women. Each one writes them down in the way her mother taught her. They hardly need to look at the patterns now, in any case, they’ve knitted them so often. They stand outside their doors, their hands working back and forth like shuttles, you’d hardly credit the speed they can go, and everything – from the largest man’s pullover to gloves and scarves – is done on four needles … wires, as they call them.’

  Marianne’s eyebrows rose in disbelief. ‘They can’t knit standing up … not when they’re using a lot of colours at a time. The balls of wool would get all tangled up.’

  ‘If you had taken time to look properly,’ Melda began, an edge to her voice, ‘you’d have seen it’s seldom more than two colours at a time, and they break off each colour at the end of the last row it is used, and join it in when it’s needed again. I know that sounds as if there’ll be an awful lot of ends, but they darn them all in so you’d never notice, and it means there’s no long stretches of wool to snag on rings or fingernails when they’re being worn or washed. And the wrong side of the work is as neat as the right side.’

  ‘Stop criticizing, Marianne,’ Hamish snapped, as his wife opened her mouth again, ‘and give credit where it’s due. Melda has done a marvellous job, and we’d better have a selection of Fair Isle goods ready for the buyers coming to get their winter stock. Nothing big, of course, maybe gloves and scarves, enough to whet their appetites.’

  That night, bitter
ly disappointed that her husband was lying like a stone beside her instead of loving her as she had hoped, Melda tried to bring him round. ‘I can’t understand why your mother’s annoyed at me. I was just trying to get more interesting work for our knitters and extra business for the mill.’

  Having brooded about his own misdemeanour since Sunday, Ruairidh decided he would have to get it off his chest before he could resume relations with his wife. He had not, however, had time to think how to confess without hurting her. ‘That’s not why she’s annoyed at you,’ he began. ‘She blames you for there not being an heir to come after me.’

  Her heart sank. ‘We’ve always known that, so why are you telling me now? Have you done something that needs that as an excuse?’

  ‘I’ve done nothing … not really.’ It was the first lie he had ever told her, and he could not keep it up. ‘Oh, Melda, I’ve got to tell you. Mother invited the Furness family for afternoon tea one of the Sundays you were away, and Kitty … I took her for a walk after we’d had a game of tennis.’

  ‘Kitty Furness? Wasn’t she one of the girls your mother tried to get you or Ranald to marry at one time? You must have known she was up to something, inviting them here.’ Only then did she understand what her mother-in-law had wanted to happen. ‘Are you trying to tell me … you made love to Kitty Furness?’ Her eyes brimmed with tears at the thought of how quickly he had betrayed her.

  ‘No, Melda! It’s what she wanted, yes, and I nearly did.’

  ‘Nearly did?’ Her voice was heavily sarcastic. ‘How nearly? Did you kiss her and fondle her, and … and … oh, how could you, Ruairidh? I know you can’t stop once you’re roused.’

  ‘I can’t deny I was roused, but I thought of you, my darling, and shoved her away.’ He turned towards her in appeal. ‘Melda, I could say it was all down to her, but it was as much my fault. I wish you could understand how ashamed I am, though I wouldn’t blame you if you can’t forgive me … but … please try, please!’

  Her mouth was trembling. ‘You’re sure you didn’t …?’