The Tartan Touch

by Isobel Chace

  He drank his tea hotter than I could manage. The best cups I had got out in his honour looked inadequate and flimsy in his strong, tanned hands. In a single gulp the contents had completely disappeared and he was holding out his cup for more. It was much the same with the scones. To my relief, they came out light and airy, just what scones ought to be. I buttered them quickly and placed them at Mr. Fraser’s elbow so that he could help himself, and sat down opposite him, pulling my own cup of tea closer to me.

  “Are you still hungry, Mr. Fraser?” I asked with gentle irony.

  His steely grey eyes met mine. “I congratulate you, Miss MacTaggart,” he said formally. “You can cook.”

  I was pleased, but I tried not to show it. I took a quick sip of tea and nearly choked. It was strange that someone so unpleasant should interest me so much. It was because I had met so few men of any sort, I told myself wisely. There had only been the minister from over the way and the few crofters who were left locally, and none of them knew anything more about the world than I knew myself.

  “Don’t they feed you in Australia?” I said pertly.

  “More or less,” he answered. He helped himself to the last of the scones, unabashed, liberally spreading it with jam. It disappeared with the rest of them into his stomach. In a second, I thought, he’d be asking for more!

  “What are you going to do when you leave here?” he asked me suddenly.

  My personal worries settled about me again, as close as the mist outside. “I’ll go away from here,” I said. “Maybe I’ll be off to London.” I longed to see London. It was farther away than Edinburgh or Glasgow and I’d been told that it was bigger than the both of them. No, I’d go to London and make my fortune there. Maybe I’d marry a fine man down there. There must be more than one Scot in a place as large as London Town.

  “Why not Australia?” he suggested quietly.

  For a second the world stood still. It whirled on its axis to make up for lost time, making me feel giddy even as I sat still on my chair.

  “Au-Australia?” I repeated.

  “It’s a bit farther than London,” he added.

  For an instant I thought that he knew, but of course he couldn’t. My dreams were my own, and no interfering stranger was going to read my mind.

  “Why should I go to Australia?” I objected, frowning.

  “Why not?” he countered.

  “Because I couldn’t leave Scotland! I’d be homesick before I got as far as Gretna Green!”

  “Then you’d be homesick in London,” he pointed out with maddening logic.

  “I might be,” I admitted carefully.

  “So you might as well be homesick in Australia,” he thrust home.

  “I’d not like Australia.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you think of a bit of mist as rain!” I retorted.

  “So would you if you lived in the Murchison! We reckon rain there in a hundred points to an inch, did you know that?”

  “I couldn’t go to Australia on my own,” I said flatly.

  Mr. Fraser poured himself out some more tea, without asking me. He certainly made himself very much at home!

  “You wouldn’t be on your own,” he said. “I’d better begin at the beginning, My cousin Donald—”

  “Donald Fraser from Perth, Australia,” I couldn’t resist putting in.

  Mr. Fraser nodded impatiently. “He made me his daughter’s guardian just before he died. Margaret countered by claiming that she had sole care of the child because they had never been legally married, but I have proof now that she is lying. The only objection now is that the courts will not allow her to live on Mirrabooka unless there is some female to keep her company—”

  “Mirrabooka?” I asked blankly,

  “That’s the name of my sheep station,” he said. For the first time a glint of a smile crossed his face. “It’s the Aboriginal word for the Southern Cross.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I had thought of sending Mary away to school,” he went on. “But she’s had enough of being sent here and there at her mother’s whim. What she needs is a settled home and a settled background.”

  “I think her mother’s right,” I said stubbornly. “Why should she be left with you on a sheep station?” I pictured it a bit like one of the lonely crofts that I knew and pitied the girl.

  “She’s bound to say that,” he agreed. “A bachelor’s household, full of roustabouts and migrant workers. That’s where you come in!”

  “I?” I breathed.

  “You’d provide the female influence that would knock the bottom out of Margaret’s best argument.”

  “I couldn’t do that!” I exclaimed.

  “Why not? You’re a female, aren’t you?”

  “That’s why!” I said, very prim and red in the face. He gave me an exasperated look. “Then you’d better marry me!” he said.

  “I’ll not listen to another word!” I told him baldly. “It’s—it’s indelicate—”

  “Look,” he said evenly, “Mary is seventeen now. In a few years she’ll be twenty-one and then we could sort ourselves out and see what you want to do. In four years you could train for any job you wanted and I’d see you right. Is that asking so much, Kirsty MacTaggart?”

  I was silent. He was unkind, I thought. I had served my father all these years and I had earned my freedom, and yet what could I do? Was four years’ servitude all that I could look forward to? I’d be twenty-eight and my life half done before I began to live at all.

  “I couldn’t marry a man I don’t know,” I whispered, the shame of my situation scorching the very marrow in my bones.

  “It wouldn’t be a marriage, except as far as Margaret is concerned,” he explained patiently.

  “I don’t understand,” I said blankly.

  “I mean that there is no love between us and no need to pretend that there is. I’m asking you to live on Mirrabooka and to look after my ward, no more than that. The wedding ceremony will protect us both from unpleasant gossip and give you some status as my wife. What happens when my ward comes of age will be your decision.”

  I thought longingly of London and freedom and knew them both to be impractical. I stared out at the mist through the kitchen window, inwardly weeping because I knew now that romance was forever doomed to pass me by. Then a shaft of sun broke through the mist, lighting up the glen below us. I turned and looked pleadingly at Mr. Fraser.

  “Is there no other way?” I whispered.

  He shrugged his shoulders, his grey eyes hard. He didn’t care either way, I thought. I was no more than a convenience to him, to care for his precious ward and to thwart poor Margaret, and she a widow and entitled to his regard.

  “I fancy you’d find it hard to get work here without any proper training,” he reasoned slowly. “But you’re entitled to try, if that is what you wish?”

  I swallowed, hating him, wondering how he knew that I knew nothing at all except how to cook and keep a house on next to nothing.

  “I’ll pay you,” he said.

  I lifted my chin proudly. “You can keep your bawbees! I’ll come to Australia because I must, I have nothing else to do, but I’ll not sell myself to you or any man!”

  “Right,” he said coolly, “Then we’d best settle your affairs as quickly as we can. I want to be gone before the end of the week.”

  So soon? I bit my lip. But then why not? If it had to be, the sooner the better!

  CHAPTER TWO

  There was no one to tell how I felt about him, a despiser of widows and orphans, who sought his own will before all else. I vowed I would do all in my power to ease the lot of Margaret Fraser if I could. Her heart must have broken when she heard that her daughter had been left in the charge of Andrew Fraser. I flattered myself that I knew a little of what she was feeling, for wasn’t I, too, another sacrifice to his relentless single-mindedness?

  The minister over the way asked no questions about the wedding. Mr. Fraser was waiti
ng for me in the plainly furnished church that was much the same, and yet very different from the one I had known all my life. It was strange to see another man in the role my father had so often taken. This was a thin, bespectacled man, gentler of aspect and gentler of word. He preached a fine sermon, there was no doubt about that. If I had indeed been committing my whole life into Mr. Fraser’s keeping, I would have taken his words to heart, but as it was, they served only to accentuate the fact that we were strangers entering into a bond that I more than half thought was sinful under the circumstances. Marriage, the minister said, is a holy estate, and whosoever mocks it mocks God. I might have turned and fled then out of the church and away across the glen, but Mr. Fraser held my hand in his own and listened impassively, not showing by so much as a flicker that the words meant anything other than some play he had come to watch.

  The minister dwelt long on the obedience a wife owes to her husband. It was the same, he said, as that due from the Church to her Lord. It was cold comfort to know that I was not Andrew Fraser’s wife and never would be. I owed him no duty, for this was only a farce we were playing for his own purposes, but I wondered if it had been otherwise how it would have been between us. I have a temper to match my hair and I had already met his implacable will to be master.

  And so I was married. It was an unbearably beautiful morning, with the heather shining purple on the hills beneath a gentle, blue sky that peeped at itself in the distant loch, like a beautiful woman admiring herself in a looking glass.

  “You see,” I said to Mr. Fraser, “how beautiful is my Scotland!”

  “It’s certainly better without that mist,” he answered gravely.

  I pulled my plaid closer about my best white dress and smiled my forgiveness for his disparagement of my native land.

  “I think it is as beautiful as the Song of Solomon,” I said, and I quoted softly: “For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come—”

  “And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land,” he finished for me. I was surprised that he was so apt with quoting from the Bible, but then they say that the Devil is as good at it as anyone else.

  “There are other parts that I would not dream of saying aloud,” I told him frankly.

  “Perhaps you have never been in love,” he suggested.

  “I have not!” I assured him.

  “It is a love poem like any other.”

  “That’s as maybe,” I said, intending to snub him. “But for all that it’s in the Bible, parts of it are most improper!”

  “Indeed?” he said gravely.

  “If you think otherwise, you can’t have read it!” I assured him readily.

  “I seldom read improper literature,” he drawled. It was not the last time that Andrew Fraser had the last word either!

  Mr. Fraser had come to the church in a hired car which he was using all the while he was in Britain. I had walked across the glen, holding my shoes in my hand in case they got wet in the long grass beside the burn. It was a strange parting from the house where I had been born and bred. Mr. Fraser had called on me the day before and had made the final arrangements with the Church Commissioners to take possession of the manse and to bring to an end the MacTaggart tenure of the gloomy old house at the head of the glen. There was nothing to back there for now. That was the past, the future lay in another land. It was more than possible that I would never see my father’s manse ever again.

  Mr. Fraser’s car was a large one. Sitting beside him in the front seat, I could stretch my feet out in front of me without any danger of reaching the end of the floor. It was beautifully comfortable.

  “Would you find it too tiring to drive straight to London today?” he asked me.

  I shook my head. I didn’t like to say that I had no idea how far away London was. I didn’t want him to think me a fool and one without any education at all.

  “I brought a hamper with me for lunch,” I told him shyly. “It’s not much—not what you will be accustomed to, but it’s all homemade.”

  He looked quite pleased. “I hope you have included some scones,” he said.

  I bridled with pleasure. “Griddle-scones. And some bannocks. And slices of Mrs. MacGregor’s ham that’s been hanging in her kitchen this last month—”

  “Is this Mrs. MacGregor a friend of yours?” he interrupted me.

  “No,” I said carefully, “an acquaintance only.”

  “How long have you known her?” he insisted. It was queer how set he was on knowing about a woman whose existence he’d known nothing about a few minutes before.

  “I’ve known her all my life,” I responded thoughtfully, “She had known my mother, you understand, but my father couldn’t abide her at any price, so she never came up to the manse.”

  “Were you lonely, Kirsty?” he asked me gently.

  I gave him a proud look and shook my head. “One cannot be lonely when everything is familiar about one,” I observed.

  “I see,” he said.

  I frowned, wondering if he did. “Will I be lonely in Australia?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know.” At least I couldn’t complain about his honesty. “You’ll have Mary to keep you company.”

  “Your ward? What is she like?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t know how to describe her,” he said at last, “I think you’d better wait until you meet her. She’s young and very Australian and used to having her own way. She’s pretty enough to twist any man around her little finger.”

  I considered what he had to say carefully. Truth to tell, I was a little afraid of meeting his pretty ward. “Will you marry her when she’s ready for you?” I demanded suddenly.

  To my surprise he looked embarrassed. “How dare you ask such a thing?” he retorted.

  I couldn’t see that there had been anything in my question to offend him. There must be some reason for his interest in his cousin’s daughter, and what would it be if it wasn’t marriage? Men often had to wait for a girl to grow to an age when it would be proper for them to be wed.

  Then I remembered that it was I he had married scarcely an hour since, and I blushed.

  “A marriage of convenience isn’t a marriage at all,” I said bluntly. “I’ve no mind to pretend to be anything I’m not. It may be Mrs. Fraser in public, but in private I’ll know I’m still Miss Kirsty MacTaggart, and so will you!”

  “I’ll try and remember,” he said dryly.

  I knew he was mocking me and so I lapsed into silence. It was a relief, in a way, not to have to make conversation, for I had never driven so far from home before. I was expecting to be in London in no time and when we slipped through between Glasgow and Edinburgh, avoiding both cities, the land was so dull after my beloved Highlands that I thought we were already in England.

  But we did not cross the Border for several hours yet. There were great signs beside the road, so there was no mistaking it. I wondered at Mr. Fraser’s stamina if he thought he could drive so far without a break, for I myself was exhausted and could only think longingly of sleep, when I didn’t think of the picnic I had provided in the hamper on the back seat.

  Is it far to London?” I asked him timidly, when Scotland was left behind us.

  “We’ll stop shortly and eat,” he soothed me.

  “I’m a mite peckish,” I admitted.

  His grey eyes slid over my face. “I reckon you’re bushed besides,” he said kindly. “You can sleep in the back seat after lunch.”

  It had already been a long day. The manse had been so dark and lonely after we had buried my father. I had gone from room to room looking for comfort from my own thoughts, but there had been none there. The manse had been his house, never mine. His ghost was at home there, mine was nervously seeking new things and new places to see and experience, even if he were dead and I still amongst the living.

  That last night I hadn’t slept at all. I had heard the breeze in the trees and the Highland
cattle leying at the dawn. I had been too excited to sleep and my conscience had been uneasy. Work is the panacea for every ill, and for all Mr. Fraser’s fine words, I couldn’t be sure that being a female influence on his niece was real work! I would cook, of course, and keep the house as well, but was that an honest exchange for my keep? I wished there had been someone whom I could have asked. I was too frightened to question Mr. Fraser on the subject.

  When the sun had at last come up, flooding the glen with its welcome light, I had risen from my bed, stifling my doubts in a new anxiety that I would look a fright at the altar with nothing but my three-year-old white dress to wear. I tried all the others in my wardrobe, packing them as I rejected them, greeting softly to myself. I had my plaid, I reminded myself. Many a MacTaggart had had nothing more than a plaid to warm them. A plaid and a glass of whisky, I had added with a burst of honesty. Not even his calling had made my father a teetotaller, not even his miserable nature had made him see evil in having a dram whenever he could afford it.

  The trouble with tears is that once one has begun it is difficult to stop, so I was glad of the walk along by the burn to my wedding. When I arrived, I was clear-eyed and resolved to make the best of my destiny. I had my shoes in the one hand and the hamper of food in the other, hardly a fitting mate for Mr. Fraser, neat as a pin in his suit and holding a broad-brimmed pork-pie hat, the like of which I had never seen before.

  So it was not surprising that now I could hardly keep my eyes open as the scenery swished past us, sometimes pretty, sometimes drab, but never-ending. We stopped and we ate, and Mr. Fraser complimented me on the bannocks and the griddle-scones, for he seemed to have a taste for such things, and then we went on our way. For a long time I fought the sleep that weighted my eyelids, for I was afraid that in such an unaccustomed position I might snore, and that was a thought not to be dismissed lightly. But in the end it got the better of me and I slept.

  I was afraid all the time we were in London. I was afraid of the traffic, and afraid of the tall, box-like building that was the hotel where we stayed. I was afraid of the enormous department stores where Mr. Fraser took me to buy some clothes, for he thought badly of those I had brought with me, and I was afraid of spending so much money, for how was I ever to repay him?