The Last of the Kintyres

by Catherine Airlie

“Probably.” Hew’s mouth hardened a little, but he did not seem particularly angry. “I hope they won’t attempt to go down along the coast. There’s quite a bit of mist coming up.”

  They had been back at Ardlamond for the best part of an hour before the white Cadillac drew up at the front of the house. Tony got out and called something to Caroline, but if it had been an invitation to come in when he had seen the lights still burning in the hall, she did not accept it. With a sharp, almost angry sound she let in her clutch and drove away, and they could hear the engine roaring right along the coast road.

  Hew got up and began to extinguish the lights on the wall sconces, leaving the two above the high chimney-piece.

  “There’s some hot chocolate, if you feel like it,” he told Tony when he came in.

  Elizabeth rose, infinitely relieved that Tony had returned without mishap. She felt much happier now, able to look about her and visualize the future without the disturbing thought of Caroline in the forefront of her mind. She would work for her happiness, putting everything she could into her marriage of love and service to achieve the tranquillity and peace which Hew wanted at Ardlamond.

  This much, at least, she knew. He would value peace in his home and look to her to keep it there.

  When she had poured out the hot drink for Tony, Hew moved with her to the foot of the stairs.

  “Good night, Elizabeth,” he said.

  Quite deliberately she turned her face up to his, waiting for his kiss, but instead of touching her lips he raised her hand from the carved newel-post and carried it to his with an odd little gesture which she would have believed utterly foreign in him.

  “Good night,” he repeated. “Sleep well.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE full, heavy September tide came right up over the rocks as the days shortened. The autumnal equinox was approaching with its threat of high water and a fury of seas, but still Hew was busy with the other affairs of the estate and had not decided to take the sheep off the island.

  Lingay drowsed in the intermittent sunshine, with the cloud galleons sailing over her green pasturage, and Tony helped with other things, going off occasionally with Caroline for mad jaunts in the white car but always returning to the task Hew had set him.

  Caroline did not seem the sort of person to remain indefinitely at Dromore with little to do and no excitement to stimulate her restless spirit save a mild flirtation with someone several years her junior, but then it was difficult to be sure about Caroline.

  She seemed to be keeping out of Hew’s way, too angry, perhaps, to trust herself to meet him, and only through Tony had they any news of her activities.

  Stephen, busy laying up Naomi for the winter months, had taken the yacht through the Crinan Canal to the Clyde. He had phoned Hew from Crinan, explaining his absence and saying that Imogen had gone to stay with Shona Lorimer for a few days, but Elizabeth knew that even Shona and Ravenscraig would not help Imogen to forget.

  Hew had made no further reference to their engagement. It was an accepted thing with him, she supposed, trying to look at it with the same casualness and failing miserably. To her even such a fragile linking of their two lives was something to be lived with every minute of the day and cherished in the deep and secret places of her heart.

  In time, she thought. In time he may come to love me. Here, at Ardlamond, where time descended slowly, like the gentle rain, affection and respect and kindness might eventually be nurtured into love.

  She had already planned a small, helpful routine for herself, persuading Hew that she could quite easily handle the paper work connected with the estate, setting him free for the more practical tasks of management which came more easily to him.

  She was sitting in the business-room one afternoon about a fortnight after the regatta dance, typing letters, when Hew came in. He had changed out of his wet clothes and looked relaxed in an old pair of corded trousers and an open-necked shirt with a silk cravat at his throat.

  Without speaking he went to stand beside the window, and she finished the letter she was busy with, placing it with the other completed ones for him to sign.

  “It’s four o’clock,” he said. “Time to let up. Jessie tells me you’ve been working in here all day.”

  “I didn’t start till ten, and I’m rather slow,” she confessed, putting the cover on the typewriter.

  He came across to where she sat, lifting the letter she had just completed. Reading it, he smiled onesidedly.

  “There are two t’s in attest,” he observed, “and an ‘e’ on the end of gauge!”

  “You fluster me”, she laughed confusedly, “when you come in so unexpectedly!”

  He turned back to the window.

  “I didn’t know I had that effect on you,” he said. “I thought we were bearing with each other rather well.”

  “I—we don’t see so very much of one another,” she reminded him.

  “No,” he agreed, setting down the spoiled letter on the table at her elbow. “I suppose we’ve worked hard enough to merit a holiday or, at least, a respite. I’m going to take you to see Loch Tralaig.”

  A swift flush of pleasure rushed to her cheeks as she looked up at him.

  “I’d love that,” she admitted. “Did you remember about my mother?”

  “Yes.” He glanced at his watch. “We can have tea somewhere on the road, if we’re quick. On the way back,” he added as they crossed to the door, “I want to call in at Whitefarland. I have to evacuate the house itself by the week-end, and there are still one or two bits of furniture to bring away. We can quite easily fit everything in before dinner.”

  Elizabeth walked ahead of him into the hall. The prospect of Loch Tralaig—of going there alone with Hew, even for an hour—had been wonderful, but now there was this visit he had to pay to Whitefarland. Was he arming himself with her presence in case he should meet Caroline there? For, after all, Caroline was now the owner of the farm and had every right to be on her own property when they arrived.

  Almost before the thought had taken shape in her mind she realized that Hew didn’t need to arm himself against anyone. He would not fear an encounter with Caroline or anyone else. Only circumstances could defeat him.

  When he brought the Daimler round to the front of the house she had found her coat and told Mrs. Malcolm that they would not be in for tea.

  “If Tony comes in you can tell him that we’ve gone to Loch Tralaig,” she explained.

  The little secret lochan lay half hidden among the hills. The sun had almost set before they reached it, for they had lingered over their tea at Kilninver, and the purple light of the gloaming hour was creeping down the glen.

  Deep in its heart the water lay like black glass, with the shoulders of the hills hanging inverted in it, the reflection as clear in every detail as the image itself. There was no sound anywhere. It was as if the whole glen and the silent lochan stood waiting for their coming, waiting down through the years, for her mother and Hew’s father had come here long ago. Was it here, perhaps, that they had first discovered their love?

  Suddenly Elizabeth turned.

  “Thank you for bringing me, Hew,” she said. “Somehow I knew it would look like this.”

  He stood beside her, looking down into the loch for a long time before he spoke.

  “There’s something I want to give you, and I thought you would like to have it here,” he said, at last.

  Feeling in his pocket, he brought out a flat leather case, and when he opened it she saw that it contained a bracelet of most excellent workmanship set with several square-cut amethysts. The stones were a rich, deep purple, like the colour of the heather when it first comes into bloom, and beside them, deeply embedded in the white velvet lining of the case, there was a ring of equal depth and beauty. Hew lifted the ring out first.

  “The stones are found locally,” he explained. “There’s quite a lot of quartz in the district, but these are particularly fine examples. Mrs. Malcolm said the other day that it was
time you had an engagement ring ‘so that folk would know it was a fact’!” he added.

  Elizabeth tried to smile, but she could not. Her throat was quite choked with tears.

  “It’s lovely,” she said, holding out her hand. “The loveliest thing I’ve seen for a long time.”

  He put the ring on, slipping it over the third finger of her left hand and looking at it with a small, onesided smile while she longed for him to take her in his arms and kiss her.

  “Well,” he said, “there it is.”

  “Yes.” The tears were so near her eyes that she thought he must surely see them. “It’s exquisite,” she repeated.

  “There’s this, too.” He held out the bracelet. “They appear to go together.”

  He turned her hand over, his head bent to the task of clasping the delicate, linked stones about her wrist, but as the little safety-catch slid into place his eyes came up to meet hers.

  “It could be an amulet—or a handcuff,” he said dryly.

  “I’d rather it proved an amulet,” she told him steadily.

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, his lips came down, sealing hers with a kiss, and they stood there for an endless moment, letting the silence envelop them, letting time run out without thought. Then Hew drew her back on to the narrow moor road where he had left the car.

  “Time to go,” he said with a hint of regret in his voice. “I want to get to Whitefarland before dark.”

  Elizabeth held the amethyst bracelet close against her wrist as they drove away, leaving Loch Tralaig in the shadows.

  Whatever gift Hew might give her in the future, there would be nothing quite like this again. She would wear his ring and bracelet and nothing could harm her love. Even, now, half-way to Whitefarland, she was thinking of the linked amethysts as an amulet against anything that Caroline might do in the future.

  They reached the croft, and it seemed more bare and empty than before.

  “I’ll get what I can into the back of the car and the boot,” Hew said. “If I can get it all aboard this time it will save me a second journey. Caroline has bought all the heavier stuff,” he added briefly. “She plans to put in a shepherd.”

  That was all. No further explanation, no mention of the sale of the furniture being a personal matter between him and Whitefarland’s new mistress, no hint of any feeling at all. His face looked mask-like as he pushed open the door and went into the house.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Elizabeth asked.

  She had stood hesitating on the doorstep, not really wanting to go in because that old memory of Caroline, might still be there, haunting the place.

  “You could fold up the bedding, if you wouldn’t mind,” he suggested. “That’s all personal stuff. I’ll see what has to go from the kitchen.”

  Elizabeth reached the door of the bedroom, wondering if he had forgotten about the photograph of Caroline he had kept there for so long to remind him of the past.

  When she looked for it, it had gone.

  It was no proof, of course, that Caroline had gone completely out of his life. The portrait might be at Ardlamond now, for all she knew, treasured there as carefully as it had been up here on the face of the hill.

  She told herself determinedly that she must not think of that. If I do, she thought, I’m going to spoil everything. It would be like meeting Caroline half-way.

  When they went out to the car again, laden with his belongings, a wind had sprung up and it looked darker than usual away to the west. Stars had pricked out immediately overhead, however, and the moon rose suddenly over the rim of the hills. It had a veiled look, and Elizabeth saw Hew glancing at it speculatively once or twice as they crammed everything into the boot. As they drove away he said:

  “Time to get the sheep off the island. I’ll see to it in the morning, I think. We can’t expect this present weather to continue much after the end of the month. One can take a chance on October, of course, but I like to be on the safe side.”

  As soon as they reached Ardlamond he tuned in to the shipping forecast, but it was normal enough for that time of year. Tony, who had followed them in, asked what was amiss.

  “Nothing, at the moment,” Hew told him. “But I shall want the sheep off Lingay before the week-end. I thought of doing it tomorrow, but I have a buyer coming for some of the Whitefarland stock.”

  “Let me do it,” Tony offered eagerly. He had been deep in thought and almost morose since the day , before, and this seemed a complete reversal of a difficult mood. “I could do it quite easily, with someone to help me,” he added.

  Hew looked undecided, but it was obvious that he thought the island should be evacuated right away. He probably sensed a storm, knowing from bitter experience the havoc which several days of gale-forced winds could do, especially when they were driving high tides before them. The ewes on Lingay were valuable and he could not afford to lose them through carelessness, especially at this time.

  “Take Duncan,” Hew advised. “He knows about the launch and how to load it safely.”

  Elizabeth supposed there would be a certain amount of risk involved if the weather was bad. There was always a danger where the sea was concerned, and where it was the enemy man was a puny adversary.

  That night she was listening to the rising wind and the clock striking the hours and the half-hours. It was as if some portent of evil had encircled the house, wrapping it round in a grey gloom. The minutes fled away, taking sleep with them; she could not clear her mind of the thought of disaster.

  The dawn came at last, grey and cold, with a peculiar yellow light along the horizon which she had never seen before. The overcast, angry sky seemed to press down against the hill tops, leaden and ominous-looking, waiting for the wind to rise and lash the sea into a fury of snarling waves.

  Yet, when she looked out across the stretch of water between Lingay and the mainland, there was little sign of a storm. The sea lay brooding and still, a monster only half awake, the yellow weed that edged the shore rising and falling against the rocks with its heavy breathing.

  The fears of the night had been groundless, she told herself, and promptly fell into a restless sleep.

  When she woke it was broad daylight. A grey day, with little fretful waves breaking endlessly down on the shore and the suggestion of white horses far out between Lingay and the red bastion cliffs of Mull.

  The clock on her bedside table told her that she had been allowed to oversleep. It was after ten.

  “Mrs. Malcolm,” she protested when she reached the sitting-room where she generally took her breakfast with Hew’s housekeeper, “you should have called me ages ago!”

  “I did look in on you,” Jessie explained, “but you were sleeping like a lamb and it seemed a shame to disturb you. The master was out and away earlier than usual this morning,” she added, “and young Mr. Tony was in a hurry, too.”

  Elizabeth glanced out of the window. Her nerves felt on edge, and the sea had a curiously sullen look to her anxious eyes.

  “Do you think we’re in for a storm?” she asked.

  “It looks like it,” Jessie said, slicing bread at the sideboard. “It’s the time of year for them now. We generally get a bad spell round about the end of September. It passes, though, and we can have lovely, fine weather after it. A right Indian summer, in fact.”

  “It was today I was thinking about,” Elizabeth confessed. “Do you know if Tony has gone across to the island?”

  “I heard him saying something to the master this morning before he went out. He’ll be worried about the sheep,” Jessie mused, obviously thinking about Hew. “They’re generally taken off before this, but he’s been busy settling up at Whitefarland and one thing and another. The Lingay sheep will mean a lot to him now,” she added. “They’ve got to help to make Ardlamond pay, to put this place on its feet again. I think that means more to the master than anything else,” she concluded.

  Elizabeth dragged her eyes away from the sea, trying not to panic.

  “Ho
w long will they be—if they’ve gone across to Lingay?” she asked.

  “All day. It takes a fair time to round up the ewes,” Jessie explained. “Some of them get into crannies in the rock for shelter and the dogs have to ferret them out.”

  Elizabeth had no appetite for her breakfast. She spent what appeared to be an interminable morning filing estate correspondence in the business-room and carrying the purely domestic documents to Hew’s study for his perusal later.

  In the afternoon she went slowly down to the shore. The wind was really strong now, blowing the spume high into the air as the big Atlantic breakers came rushing in across the bay to dash themselves to pieces against the rocks. The whole scene had changed in the matter of an hour or so. There was no break anywhere in the leaden sky and distance had dwindled. Mull, that magic island where the sun had lain trapped, was hidden behind a grey pall of mist, sinister in its isolation, and even the nearer isles were invisible. Sound had become limited to the rhythmic beat of waves and the intermittent, lonely cry of a gull.

  She could not stay there and believe that anyone could possibly survive in such a sea, but when she returned to the house Jessie said that it was ‘no’ so bad.”

  She had experience of storms, of course, of the cruel ravaging of the sea, and this, Elizabeth was to believe, was no more than a minor trouble.

  But for Elizabeth the fact remained that Tony, whom she loved, was out there in a frail boat, battling his dangerous way from Lingay with a few sheep on board. He was out there because Hew had sent him on this errand, thinking more of his stock than he did of her brother’s life.

  She knew that the accusation was unjustified even as she made it, but her nerves were frayed by the long waiting and facts could so easily become distorted when they were viewed through a haze of anxiety for someone loved. Tony was very dear to her. In spite of his many indiscretions, he was the baby she had nursed, the little boy she had watched grow almost to manhood, the impetuous youth who had no real fault in him except an insatiable desire for living every minute to the full.

  Hew had not returned all day, and by four o clock she could not remain closed up in the house for a minute longer.