“I hope he’s put an end to this scatter-brained idea of hers.”
“I’m not sure. But I rather think the party is on.”
“The Lord save us,” said Nurse.
Mrs. Watty was more philosophical about it all. “Well, if it’s a party she wants, why shouldn’t she have it?” She added, “It’s not as though we can’t manage. Why, there’ve been so many parties given in this house that we could probably manage standing on our heads.”
“I’m meant to be doing the flowers.”
Mrs. Watty looked amused. “So you’ve been given your own wee job. Mrs. Armstrong’s very good at giving people jobs to do.”
“Yes, but I’m hopeless at flowers. I can’t even put daffodils in a jug.”
“Oh, you’ll manage fine.” She opened a cupboard and counted out a pile of plates. “Was the doctor easily persuaded?”
“Not easily, but he was persuaded. On condition that Tuppy doesn’t have any visitors. Nurse is going to be put to stand guard at her door.”
Mrs. Watty shook her head. “Poor Dr. Kyle, what a time he does have, to be sure. As if he didn’t have enough to worry about without us unloading more trouble onto his shoulders. And, seemingly, he has no help at the moment. Jessie McKenzie—she’s meant to be his housekeeper—well, two days ago I hear she took the Skye Ferry over to Portree. Her mother lives there and seemingly the old lady’s poorly.”
“Oh, dear.”
“It’s not that easy to get help in Tarbole. Most of the women are working with the fish these days, packing herrings, or in the smokehouses.” She glanced at the clock, remembered her roasting joint, and forgot about Dr. Kyle’s woes. Cautiously she stooped to open her oven door, and they were assailed by fragrant steam and the sizzling of fat.
“Is Antony not up yet?” Mrs. Watty drove a skewer into the flank of the roast. “I think it’s time you went and gave him a call. Otherwise he’ll sleep through the day, and the next thing it’ll be time for him to start for home.”
Flora went to do this, but as she crossed the hall, she heard Hugh come out of Tuppy’s room, and start down the upstairs landing. She had reached the foot of the stairs when he appeared. When he saw her, she stopped and, without really knowing why, waited for him to descend.
He was wearing horn-rimmed spectacles, which made him look distinguished. When he had reached her side he set down his bag, took off the spectacles, towing them in a case, and slipped the case into the pocket of his jacket. He looked at Flora. “Well?” he prompted, as though she should have something to say to him. To her surprise, Flora found that she had.
“Hugh, last night … You didn’t want me to say I’d stay on, did you?”
He seemed unprepared for such forthrightness. “No. But I have a feeling that that is what made you change your mind.”
“Why didn’t you want me to stay?”
“Call it premonition.”
“Of trouble?”
“If you like.”
“Does Tuppy’s party count as trouble?”
“We could have done without it.”
“But it’s on?”
“At the moment it is.” She waited for him to enlarge on this, and when he didn’t, she became persistent. “But it will be all right? I mean, Tuppy will be all right?”
“Yes, provided she does as she’s told. Nurse McLeod is rigidly disapproving. Her opinion of me has sunk to rock bottom. But, in fact, it may prove to be the small stimulus that Tuppy needs. And if it doesn’t…” He stopped, letting the unsaid words speak for themselves.
He looked so worn down by all this that despite herself Flora was sorry for him. “Never mind,” she said, trying to sound cheerful, “at least she’s doing what she most loves doing. Like the old man of ninety, being asked how he wants to die, and choosing to be shot by a jealous husband.”
Hugh’s face broke into a smile, spontaneous as it was unexpected. She had never seen him smile properly before and was caught unaware by its sweetness, by the way it altered his whole face. For an instant she caught a glimpse of the young, light-hearted man that he had once been.
He said, “Exactly so.”
The morning had been gray and gentle, very still. But now a breeze had got up, clouds were being blown aside, as they stood there at the foot of the stairs, the sun broke through and all at once everything was bathed in its liquid, golden light. It poured into the hall through the two tall windows which stood on either side of the front door. The beams became filled with floating dustmotes and previously unnoticed details sprang into vivid clarity and importance: the texture of his suit, shabby and, in places, growing threadbare; the pockets sagging with the weight of various articles which he had stuffed into them; his pullover, which had an inept darn, right in the middle; and his hand, which he had placed over the newel post as he talked. She saw the shape of it, the long fingers, the signet ring, the scrubbed and clean look.
She saw that he was tired. He was still smiling at the small joke she had made, but he looked bone-weary. She thought of him coming out to dinner last night, getting dressed in his best, searching the cheerless house for a clean shirt, because his housekeeper had left him to go off to Portree to visit her mother.
She said, “Last night, the telephone call you had—I hope it wasn’t anything serious.”
“Serious enough. A very old man, getting older, and a daughter-in law at the end of her tether. He’d got out of bed to go to the lavatory and he’d fallen down the stairs.”
“Did he hurt himself?”
“By a miracle, no bones were broken, but he’s bruised and badly shocked. He should be in a hospital. There’s a bed for him in Lochgarry Hospital, but he won’t go. He was born in the house he lives in now, and that’s where he wants to die.”
“Where is the house?”
“Boturich.”
“I don’t know where Boturich is.”
“Up at the far end of Loch Fhada.”
“But that must be fifteen miles.”
“Thereabouts.”
“When did you get home?”
“About two o’clock this morning.”
“And what time did you get up again?”
His eyes crinkled with amusement. “What is this? An inquisition?”
“You must be tired.”
“I don’t have time to be tired. And now”—he glanced at his watch and stooped to pick up his bag—“I must be on my way.”
She went with him to the door to open it for him. The sunlight made a dazzle of damp grass and gravel and shining flame-colored leaves. He said, reverting to his usual manner, “I’ll doubtless see you,” and she watched him go down the steps, into his car, down between the rhododendrons past the lodge, and through the open gate.
In the sun, it should have been warm, but Flora shivered. She came indoors, closed the door, and started upstairs to wake Antony.
She found him already up and shaving, standing in front of the basin dressed in a pair of scarlet leather slippers and two towels, one tied around his waist and the other slung like a muffler round his neck. As she put her head around the edge of the door he turned to look at her. His face was lopsided, one side soapy, the other clean.
She said, “I’ve been sent up to wake you. It’s twelve thirty.”
“I’m awake, and I know it is. Come on in.”
He turned back to the mirror and continued his task. Flora shut the door and went to sit on the edge of the bed. She said, to his reflection, “How did you sleep?”
“Like the dead.”
“How strong are you feeling?”
There was a pause and then, “For some reason,” Antony told her, “that question fills me with nameless apprehensions.”
“And so it should. There’s going to be another party. Next Friday. A dance.”
After a little, he said, “I see what you mean about feeling strong.”
“Tuppy organized the whole thing before breakfast. And she seems to have steamrolled everyone, including Hug
h Kyle, into letting her have her own way. The only person who’s really opposed to it is Nurse, and she’s going around with a face of doom.”
“You mean, it’s really on?”
“Yes. It’s really on.”
“I suppose it’s for Antony and Rose.”
Flora nodded.
“To celebrate the engagement.”
“Right again.”
He had finished shaving. Now he turned on the tap to wash his razor. “Oh, God,” he said.
She was remorseful. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have said I would stay.”
“How could you have known? How could any of us have guessed she’d think up something like this?”
“I don’t suppose there’s anything we can do about it.”
He turned to face her, his copper-colored hair standing on end, and an expression of gloom on his usually cheerful face. He jerked the towel from round his neck and threw it across a chair.
“Not a bloody thing. It’s like drowning in a quagmire. By the end of the week, all that will be left of us will be a couple of bubbles. And muddy ones at that.”
“We could make a clean breast of it. Tell Tuppy the truth.” The idea had been shadowing around at the back of Flora’s mind all morning, but it was the first time she had brought it out into the open and acknowledged it, even to herself.
Antony said, “No.”
“But…”
He turned on her. “I said no. O.K., so Tuppy’s better. O.K., so Isobel got everything wrong and Tuppy’s going to make a miraculous recovery. But she’s old, and she’s been very ill, and if anything happened just because you and I insisted on the luxury of a clean conscience, I’d never been able to forgive myself. You see that, don’t you?”
Flora sighed. She said, miserably, “Yes, I suppose so.”
“You are the most super girl.” He stooped to give her a kiss. His cheek was smooth; he smelt clean and lemony.
“And now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get some clothes on.”
* * *
That afternoon, the tide was out. After lunch Flora and Antony, meanly evading Jason, who wanted to come with them, set out for a walk. They took the dogs—even Sukey, whom Antony had firmly scooped off Tuppy’s eiderdown—and went down to Fhada sands, left clean and white by the ebb tide. They headed toward the distant breakers while the wind blew gusts of sunshine at them out of the west.
It was not a cheerful outing. Antony’s departure for Edinburgh lay over them both like doom, and they talked scarcely at all. And yet the silence that lay between them was in its own way companionable, because Flora knew that Antony’s thoughts were as troubled as her own.
At the water’s edge they halted. Antony found a long rope of seaweed and flung it out into the waves for Plummer to retrieve, which he did with a great deal of splashy swimming. Moments later he was leaping back at them out of the sea with the seaweed trailing from the side of his mouth. Sukey, who did not like getting her feet wet, sat well back and observed him. Plummer laid down the seaweed, shook himself stupendously, and sat with his great wet ears pricked, waiting for Antony to throw it again. This he did, even farther out this time, and Plummer plunged once more into the breakers.
Standing in the wind, they watched him go. Flora said, “We’ll have to tell them sometime, Antony. Sometime they’ll have to know that I’m Flora, I’m not Rose. Perhaps a clean conscience is a luxury, but I can’t live with this for the rest of my life.” She looked at him. “I’m sorry, but I simply can’t.”
His profile was stony, his face ruddy from the wind. He dug his hands deep into his pockets and sighed.
“No, I know. I’ve been thinking that too.” He turned his head to look down at her. “But it has to be me who does the telling. Not you.”
She was a little hurt. “I’d never think of doing such a thing.”
“No. But it isn’t going to be easy for you these next few days. It’s going to get worse, not better, and I’m not going to be here to support you. Next weekend, after the dance, if Tuppy’s all right, then we’ll make a clean breast of it. Confess, if you like.” He looked quite drawn at the thought. “But meantime, you must promise not to say anything to any of them.”
“Antony, I wouldn’t.”
“Promise.”
She promised. The sun went behind a cloud, and it became suddenly chilly. They waited, shivering slightly, for Plummer to return to them, and then turned and started on the long trudge back to the house.
When they got home, Plummer was banished to Mrs. Watty’s kitchen until he had dried off, and Sukey shot like an arrow back up the stairs to Tuppy’s bedroom. Antony and Flora shed coats and gumboots and went into the drawing room, where they found Isobel and Jason by the fire eating tea, engrossed in some swashbuckling adventure on television. Conversation was obviously not expected so they joined them, in silence, eating buttered toast, and mindlessly watching some spirited swordplay and a great deal of running up and down flare-lit spiral staircases. It was finished at last, with the hero clapped into a dungeon until the following week’s episode. Isobel switched off the television, and Jason turned his attention to Antony and Flora.
“I wanted to take a walk with you and when I looked for you, you’d gone.”
“Sorry,” said Antony, sounding not sorry in the least.
“Will you play cards with me?”
“No.” He laid down his empty teacup. “I’ve got to go and pack and then start back for Edinburgh.”
“I’ll come and help you.”
“I don’t want you to come and help me. Rose is going to come and help me.”
“But why…” His voice rose to what sounded perilously like a whine. He was often in a bad humor on Sunday evenings because he knew tomorrow morning was Monday, which meant school again. Isobel tactfully intervened.
“Antony and Rose have got a lot of things they want to discuss without all of us listening. And if you get the cards out of the drawer, I’ll play a game with you.”
“It’s not fair…”
“Do you want to play Beggar My Neighbor, or Pelmanism?”
They left Jason spreading the cards on the hearth rug for Pelmanism, and went up to Antony’s room, which was painfully neat, almost as though he had already gone. The curtains had not been drawn; the center light was cheerless. He began collecting his shaving gear and putting it into his bag, while Flora stacked clean shirts and folded his dressing gown. It didn’t take very long. He put his silver brushes on top of the pile, closed the lid, and snapped the locks shut. The room, stripped of his possessions, became unfriendly.
He said, “You’ll be all right?”
He looked so anxious that she made herself smile. “Of course.”
He felt in his pocket and took out a scrap of paper. “I wrote my telephone numbers down for you in case you want to get in touch with me. That’s the office, and that’s my flat. If it’s something you don’t want anybody to hear, you could probably borrow one of the cars and get yourself to Tarbole. There’s a call box down by the harbor.”
“When will you be back?”
“As early on Friday afternoon as I can manage.”
“I’ll be here,” she told him, unnecessarily.
“You’d better be.”
Carrying his suitcase, he went along to say goodbye to Tuppy, while Flora went downstairs to tell Isobel and Jason that he was just about to leave. Jason was dispatched to fetch Mrs. Watty, who appeared from the kitchen with a box of buttered scones and a bag of apples. She could not bear the thought of one of the family setting out on any sort of a journey without being well-provisioned. Antony then came downstairs, kissed them all, and told them not to work too hard. They all said, “See you on Friday,” and returned to their various occupations, while Antony and Flora let themselves out into the dusky evening. His car waited on the gravel outside the front door. He flung his case into the back seat, put his arms around Flora, and gave her a hug.
She said, feebly, “I wish you d
idn’t have to go.”
“So do I. Take care of yourself. And try not to get too involved.”
“I’m involved already.”
“Yes.” He sounded hopeless. “Yes, I know.”
* * *
She watched him drive away, the taillight of his car whisking out of sight beyond the gates. She went back into the house, closed the door, and stood in the hall feeling desolate. From behind the drawing room door came the murmur of voices as Isobel and Jason continued their game. Flora looked at her watch. It was nearly a quarter to six. She thought she would go upstairs and have a bath.
Her bedroom, which she had liked so much from the beginning, seemed, in the chill half-light, unfamiliar; the room of a stranger staying in a strange house. She drew the curtains and turned on the bedside lamp, thus improving things, but only slightly. She turned on the electric fire and, longing to be warm, knelt on the hearth rug as close to the reddening bars as she could get.
It took a few moments to realize that she was suffering from loss of identity. Antony had known that she was Flora, but she hadn’t realized that this was so important. Now, with him gone, it was as though he had taken Flora with him, and left only Rose behind. She knew that she had come to distrust Rose, almost to dislike her. She thought of Rose in Greece, trying to imagine the sort of things Rose would be doing, like sunbathing, and dancing under the stars to soft guitar music or whatever it was one danced to in Spetsai. But none of those mental pictures had any depth. They were two-dimensional, unconvincing, like overcolored postcards. Rose, it seemed, was not in Greece. Rose was here, at Fernrigg.
Her hands were frozen. She spread them to the warmth. I’m Flora. I’m Flora Waring.
The promise she had made to Antony hung on her conscience like a weight. Perhaps because she had made it, she longed passionately to be able to tell the truth. To someone. To anyone who would listen and understand.
But who?
The answer, when it came, was so obvious that she could not think why it had not occurred to her right away. Promise not to say anything to any of them, Antony had insisted. And she had given him her word. But “any of them” surely only meant the Armstrongs, the people who lived in this house.
Under Gemini Page 16
