The Last of the Kintyres

by Catherine Airlie

  Richard Lord was waiting for her when she reached his office. He did not say that she had just missed meeting Hew Kintyre for the second time, but she was even more surprised by what he did say.

  “All the arrangements have been made for your journey by Mr. Kintyre. He is acting, of course, on behalf of his father.”

  “Of course.” Elizabeth took off her gloves, folding them rather precisely on her knees before she asked, “Mr. Lord, can you tell me what exactly my position will be when I go to Ardlamond Lodge?”

  He looked taken aback, and then he laughed and said:

  “If it will make you feel any better about your invitation—more independent, perhaps—I feel quite sure that Sir Ronald hopes that you will be able to look after your brother and perhaps make him feel happier about the transition from London.”

  There was a small, awkward pause before Elizabeth forced herself to say:

  “Then he does know how—difficult Tony can be?”

  Mr. Lord stroked his thinning hair.

  “Shall we say that he appreciates the fact that all young people of your brother’s age are something of a problem?” he answered with a smile. “He does realize that perhaps your mother was a little lenient towards him because of the circumstances of your father’s death. A mother tends to spoil her son more than she does her daughter,” he added. “And you are older.”

  “I’m twenty-two,” Elizabeth said. “That’s why I don’t intend to—sponge on Sir Ronald when it isn’t really necessary,” she added firmly.

  “My dear young lady!” Mr. Lord exclaimed, “I don’t think that was ever suggested. Sir Ronald wants you there, too, for your mother’s sake.”

  “Does he—live alone?” Elizabeth asked cautiously.

  “Most of the time.” The answer seemed to be just as cautious. “His son farms several miles away,” he added with the barest suggestion of a twinkle in his eyes.

  “Oh—I thought he worked in London!”

  Richard Lord shook his head, smiling, as if the idea amused him.

  “I can’t imagine Hew living anywhere but in the Highlands of Scotland,” he answered. “He’s not the type who would ever come to terms with a town. And besides, Ardlamond is his home.”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth acknowledged slowly. “I suppose I should have recognized that as soon as I met him.” He gave her an odd, quizzical sort of look before he returned to the papers on his desk.

  “You may never see him at Dromore,” he said. “He lives his own strange, isolated sort of life there.” Elizabeth did not know what to make of his statement and would not ask for an explanation. All she hoped was that Dromore was big enough to ensure that they would never meet now that she was quite certain that he resented them going there—even although he had made the necessary arrangements for their journey to Ardlamond Lodge.

  The final details had probably been entrusted to him by Sir Ronald because he was coming to London on business, and that was made fairly obvious by the solicitor’s next remark.

  “Sir Ronald doesn’t see any real reason why you and your brother shouldn’t travel north right away,” Richard Lord informed her. “Tony, of course, must go. He will be in Sir Ronald’s care until he is twenty-one. After that,” he added slowly, “he will come into your grandmother’s money. I never could understand why she didn’t provide more adequately for your mother,” he observed thoughtfully, “instead of leaving a considerable amount of money to accumulate for her grandson. A great many people do that sort of thing for no very obvious reason. However,” he commented, “that’s by the way. Tony can’t touch the money just now, which is perhaps just as well.”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth agreed, “I think it is.” Her grey eyes looked troubled. “In so many ways, Mr. Lord, Tony is an enigma. Half a man and half a child. He can be so endearing—and so defiant. I sometimes wonder if I’m going to be able to cope.”

  He leaned across the desk to pat her hand.

  “That was why your mother thought about Sir Ronald, I should think,” he said. “You will have his help.”

  It wasn’t until she had boarded the north-bound train two weeks later and it was steaming out of Euston that Elizabeth realized just how much she was depending upon that help.

  Sometimes she felt completely at a loss when she was trying to cope with Tony, and certainly the past two weeks had been hectic. Rushing through a series of farewell parties which she had found herself unable to attend because there was so much to do otherwise, he had seemed almost indifferent to the breaking up of the only home they had known. She had excused him because she supposed that boys felt differently about such things, and now she told herself that she, too, must forget. This was a new life, and if they ever did come back to London it would not be to the security of a suburban home.

  Her job was assured. A qualified secretary, she had only given it up during these past few months of her mother’s last illness, and she could pick up the threads again easily enough. There was always plenty of that sort of work to be found in a large city.

  It was not of her return to London she was thinking as the train finally thundered across the Border and ran smoothly between the Lowland hills. The thought of Dromore was ever in the forefront of her mind, and the problem of how they would fit in at Ardlamond Lodge.

  They spent the night in Glasgow, at an hotel previously arranged for them by Hew Kintyre, and the very fact strengthened the odd impression that he seemed to have been travelling with them all the way. His strong, dominant personality had left its mark on both their minds, because Tony mused, as the single track wound in among the mountains:

  “One doesn’t have to think of Hew Kintyre living here. You can feel him! These mountains would make a bandit out of any man.”

  Guardedly she laughed at the remark.

  “I didn’t think you were so impressionable,” she told him.

  “Don’t say he didn’t strike you that way!” he countered. “You didn’t exactly fall in love with him at first sight, did you?”

  Elizabeth flushed.

  “No,” allowed. “I—thought he might be quite ruthless if occasion demanded. But first impressions are sometimes terribly misleading. Besides,” she added hastily, “He’s not going to count, is he? He doesn’t even live at Ardlamond Lodge.”

  “Which is perhaps just as well,” Tony decided. “I’m not counting on treading on his toes all the time. The old man ought to be easy enough to handle,” he reflected. “I don’t mean to stay any longer than a week or two, of course,” he added controversially when she did not reply.

  Elizabeth looked round from the carriage window. Facing her in the opposite corner, with the sombre mountains of Scotland flashing past them, her brother looked very young, very inexperienced, and very vulnerable.

  “What do you want to do, Tony?” she asked.

  He shrugged.

  “I don’t quite know,” he decided. “I should say I was at a sort of dead end.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense!” Elizabeth returned firmly. “You’ve only just started on your way.”

  But which way, she wondered, when he did not answer her. Which way? He had had a good education. Nothing had been spared, yet there was nothing, really, that he wanted to do. Nothing within reason and their limited means. Several months ago he had decided that he “hadn’t the bent” for a university education, but perhaps Sir Ronald would insist on that.

  “How do we get from Oban?” he asked as the train wound along beside the incredibly blue waters of Loch Etive. “We’re almost there,” he added for her enlightenment, because for the past half-hour she had said so little, caught up in a spell of utter enchantment as this lovely countryside had unfolded its beauty before their eyes.

  “We go south, I think, but I understand we’re being met at Oban.” Suddenly her heart was beating hard and fast and her pulses had quickened expectantly. “Mr. Lord said that Sir Ronald would certainly come to welcome us.”

  The thought of meeting the man who had once
loved her mother had been much in her mind since she had left London, and now she found herself looking out at the mountains of Lome and felt that she had come home.

  The train turned in a great loop into Oban Bay, and even Tony gasped his surprise. He got up to stand at the window, gazing down at a blue anchorage filled with little boats—a fishing fleet and yachts of every size and description, and glittering white cabin cruisers whose immaculate enamelled hulls reflected back the dazzling sunlight in little dancing waves.

  The sun itself seemed to rest delightedly above the placid scene, and everything was closed in and closely guarded by a long green island like a friendly monster sleeping on the surface of the bay.

  Beyond and above it towered the mountains of the west, the silent giants of Mull and Morven, with their heads buried in the clouds, and over everything lay a peace which could almost be felt.

  “This is certainly something!” Tony exclaimed, looking at the yachts. “I had no idea Oban was like that. I wonder if the old boy has a boat.”

  “It’s amazing how little we really know about him,” Elizabeth mused, turning to collect their luggage. “Apart from the odd thing Mr. Lord has told us and what Mother has said from time to time, we’ve no idea about Ardlamond at all.”

  “I expect you’ve dreamed up something, though!” he grinned, swinging down the heaviest case. “Wasn’t there some sort of romance between Sir Ronald and Mother when they were young?”

  Elizabeth’s eyes were fixed on the distant mountains beyond Lismore as she said:

  “It was a long time ago, but somehow I don’t think Sir Ronald has forgotten.”

  The train pulled into the station and she stood behind Tony, looking out. They were much of a height, tall and slim and dark, and there could be no mistaking their relationship even at the most casual glance.

  “What will the old boy look like?” Tony asked over his shoulder as he let down the window to call a porter.

  “Tall—and distinguished, I should think, with white hair and very blue eyes.”

  Tony laughed at her imaginative description.

  “In fact,” he grinned, “an older edition of Hew Kintyre!”

  “They are father and son, after all!” she defended herself.

  “I hope that’s where the resemblance stops,” Tony declared, gazing down the long platform for someone who might conceivably answer her fanciful description of their host. “I didn’t much like what I saw of Hew Kintyre in London.”

  “You only met him for a moment or two,” Elizabeth pointed out. “And anyway, we managed to survive it! We may not have to meet him here, you know.”

  “No,” Tony agreed absently. “I can’t see anyone who might answer the old man’s description,” he added as the carriage door swung open. “Supposing we’re not met? What then?”

  “We’ll just have to find our own way to Dromore,” Elizabeth decided, although she was suddenly and most acutely aware of disappointment. “I suppose there’s a bus to the village.”

  One glance down the long platform before their fellow travellers had started to swarm off the train had shown her that, at least, Hew Kintyre was not waiting there to greet them. Had she really expected him to come, she wondered, or was it only because everything about this mountain-girt stronghold with its face turned to the sea reminded her of him most forcibly?

  Tony began to collect their luggage. He travelled untidily, with numerous small bags, and he had brought along some old fishing tackle and a bicycle, which she offered to recover from the luggage van.

  When she returned to the carriage most of the other travellers had reached the ticket barrier and there was no sign of anyone left waiting on the platform.

  “It looks pretty much as if we’re to be our own reception committee,” Tony remarked, coming up with a porter. “Perhaps Hew Kintyre had a say in the matter, after all.”

  Elizabeth, still keenly aware of her disappointment, turned to him with a questioning look.

  “He doesn’t really want us here, does he?” Tony said. “I thought that was fairly obvious when we met.”

  “We’re not going to worry about that,” she answered defensively. “And anyway, I don’t think he’d bother to say we shouldn’t be met. It wouldn’t gain him anything.”

  “It might give him a lot of satisfaction, though, and he might succeed in freezing you out,” Tony answered. “I dare say he could see at a glance how sensitive you were as soon as he met you.” His eyes scanned the scattered groups beyond the barrier and came to rest on a line of parked vehicles in the sunshine outside. “I suppose we’d better see if we can grab a taxi.”

  “We can’t afford a taxi all the way to Dromore,” Elizabeth cautioned. “It’s a considerable distance, and Ardlamond Lodge is well beyond the village. Right on the coast, in fact.”

  “Are you for Ardlamond?” the porter asked, overhearing their conversation and touching his cap. “You’ll be met, I’m thinking,” he added before Elizabeth could say anything. “The car will be for you. It’s generally parked in the yard.”

  They came out into the sunshine just as a large white car swung into the parking enclosure. Tony looked at it and whistled his approval.

  “That’s something!” he declared appreciatively. “It’s a Cadillac.”

  Elizabeth was looking beyond the lines of the big American car to the girl driving it. She was an arresting-looking person, faultlessly dressed in cream shantung, with a large black hat shading her eyes, and her deep sun-tan suggested that she had spent time in a warmer climate than the west coast of Scotland. Her vividly red lips were parted in a half smile as she looked about her, as if she expected to see someone she knew.

  To Elizabeth’s utter surprise she hesitated only for a fraction of a second before she got out from behind the wheel and came directly towards them.

  “You must be Tony and Elizabeth Stanton,” she suggested, holding out an immaculately-gloved hand. “I’m sorry to be so late, but I had quite a lot of shopping to do and your train was in right to time.” Recovering from her surprise, Elizabeth found herself taking the slim, gloved hand and wondering why she did not like this newcomer very well. It was ridiculous, of course, to form such a swift opinion about anyone, and only a few minutes before she had been telling Tony that first impressions were sometimes misleading.

  Tony, for his part, seemed completely taken aback by the encounter and left her to do the talking.

  “Of course you don’t know who I am,” the tall girl said before she could think of anything to say. “My name’s Caroline Hayler. I ought to have explained right away that I’m a near neighbour of Hew Kintyre’s. Hew was in rather a spot, so I offered to help by coming to meet you.”

  Elizabeth managed to say “How do you do?” thinking how frigid her voice sounded all of a sudden, and Miss Hayler laughed.

  This must all seem rather odd to you,” she agreed, “but there’s rather bad news from Ardlamond. Sir Ronald has had a stroke and is quite seriously ill. Hew had to go to the Lodge right away and, of course, there was no question of his being able to come to Oban. Hence me!”

  She gave Elizabeth a quick, calculating look which appeared to dismiss her as a rival, but suddenly she looked again.

  “I had no idea you were grown up,” she said. “Hew rather implied that you were both very young.”

  “I don’t know what impression Mr. Kintyre formed of us,” Elizabeth answered stiffly, “but I certainly didn’t expect him to meet us off the train. We were told that we would be met but I expected Sir Ronald—”

  She hesitated, fully aware now of all that had happened in the interval of their journey from London. “This is such a dreadful thing to have happened to him,” she said, forgetting her momentary chagrin. “I think you said he was rather seriously ill, Miss Hayler?”

  “Mrs. Hayler,” the tall girl corrected her surprisingly. “I’m afraid it was quite impossible for Hew or Sir Ronald to send anyone else to meet you,” she added. “Ardlamond was in chaos when
I left there this morning, and I offered to collect you in case you would find difficulty in getting there. It’s quite off the beaten track, you know.”

  There was a thin look about her mouth in repose, Elizabeth thought, which made her look older than she had seemed at first glance.

  “Do you think we ought to go in the circumstances?” she asked. “If Sir Ronald is so very ill?”

  “Where else could you go?” Caroline Hayler asked the question with barely-concealed irritation. “I understand that you have come to stay for some time—that you are Sir Ronald’s wards.”

  “My brother is Sir Ronald’s ward,” Elizabeth corrected her. “I am twenty-two.”

  Again Mrs. Hayler looked her surprise, although this time she made no definite comment. Instead, she glanced in Tony’s direction.

  “Is this all the baggage you have?” she asked, surveying the motley array at his feet. “Or have you a trunk as well?”

  “No, it’s all here—in bits and pieces, I’m afraid!” Tony smiled, and Elizabeth’s heart gave a strange little nervous lurch. He seemed completely bewitched by this stranger. “Are you sure you can stow it all away without it inconveniencing you too much?” he added.

  Caroline Hayler laughed.

  “Of course we can!” she agreed pleasantly. “The boot is enormous. Please move my things around to suit yourself,” she added, opening the wide flap at the back of the car. “All sorts of odds and ends appear to accumulate in a car this size!”

  Tony was obviously impressed, and now Elizabeth could smile at the inevitability of it all. What boy wouldn’t be bowled over when confronted with such a car?

  “This is very kind of you, Mrs. Hayler,” she said while they waited for Tony to stack the last of their luggage into the boot. “I hope we’re not taking you back to Dromore before you had planned to go?”

  “Not really,” Caroline Hayler said indifferently. “I’ve been in Oban since before lunch.” She took a gold cigarette case from the large patent-leather handbag she carried and offered it to Elizabeth. “Do you smoke?”

  “Not very often,” Elizabeth said, “but I feel as if I need one now. This has been quite a shock.”