by Flora Kidd
‘But isn’t it possible to inject something into it?’ asked Sally hopefully. ‘I’m sure I’ve heard Aunt Jessie mention that there’s a cure for it these days.’
Ross shook his head negatively.
‘Too late. It’s been like that for years.’
His appraising glance surveyed the dresser with its assortment of heavy pewter pots and platters and passed on to the three small black-framed watercolours which hung on the wall beside it.
‘The only things worth preserving in this room are the pewter and the paintings,’ he said.
He left her side and went to look at the pictures more closely, while Sally followed curiously. Once more a feeling of intense delight ousted the encroaching disillusion as she regarded the paintings. All three depicted various views of Winterston and were painted in a vigorous, distinct style.
‘Who painted them?’ she asked.
‘My mother,’ he replied curtly. ‘It seems she showed great promise as an artist when young. She must have found her talent useful to while away the monotonous and hateful hours and days she spent in this house.’
Sally gave him a startled sidelong glance. He was removing one of the pictures from the wall. In the place where it had hung a dusty cobweb draped the panelling.
‘Where does your mother live now?’ she asked curiously.
He had placed the picture on the table and had returned to lift down another, but at her question he paused and turned to look at her.
‘Do you mean to say you don’t know? I thought it was one of the stories which did the rounds of the gossips annually,’ he remarked cynically. ‘It happened before you were born. She was drowned, off the Point. I was about five at the time.’
He made the statement in a flat unemotional voice and turned back to take down the next picture. Sally clenched her teeth together to quell the spontaneous upsurge of sympathy which his words aroused. She guessed instinctively that he would spurn any show of sentiment on her part. Her curiosity concerning his mother’s death would have to be satisfied by someone else. Aunt Jessie would know the full story.
‘No, I didn’t know,’ she answered quietly. ‘I’m sorry. What will you do with the pictures?’
‘I think I can claim them as mine. I’ll take them with me when we leave. As I had guessed, the whole place is falling to pieces. It shouldn’t take long to knock it down—a week, maybe.’
Sally watched him lift the third picture from the wall and struggled to hide her consternation at the thought of the house being pulled apart, seeing with her mind’s eye the walls swaying and crumbling into untidy heaps of stone.
Ross laid the third picture on the table with the others and proceeded to wipe the dust from all three with his handkerchief. Then as if aware that she was watching him he turned his head suddenly, gave her a quick underbrowed glance and smiled. Immediately the impression of ruthlessness which his square aggressive chin and stubborn lower lip gave was dispersed.
‘You’re looking at me as if you really disapprove of me,’ he accused. ‘What have I done to earn such a fierce glare?’
Sally blinked and looked away, disconcerted by the charm of his smile and by the indulgent expression in his eyes. He must still regard her as an eleven-year-old whom he had to humour. For some reason she did not like his indulgent tolerance. She wanted him to realise that she was twenty, almost twenty-one, and that she possessed an independent spirit which would neither be trampled upon nor wooed by suspicious gentleness.
‘This house must have some pleasant memories for you. You lived here at one time and you spent most of your holidays here. Don’t you care for it at all? Doesn’t the thought of having to destroy it disturb you?’ she attacked.
The smile faded from his face. Cool and wary again, he seemed to consider her words seriously for a few seconds.
‘I’m not unduly disturbed. The house is rotting and rat-ridden and unsafe. It should have been pulled down years ago. I told Aunt Elena many times to cut her losses and dispose of the estate to someone who had the money to buy.’ His mouth curled cynically. ‘She didn’t listen to me, of course. As for memories, I remember only part of the time I spent here, and few of my memories concern the house. I believe people to be more important than stone and mortar.’ He gave her another underbrowed glance and the curl to his mouth grew more pronounced as he said,
‘Everyone, everything is subject to change at some time or other. Winterston has proved to be no exception.’
His words jarred on Sally and she retorted spiritedlys ‘Some things stay the same.’
‘You mean you like to think that nothing changes?’
‘The mountains, the sea ... they don’t change,’ she countered.
‘How pleasant to grow up and still preserve some illusions!’ he murmured. ‘Even mountains change slowly, inexorably.’
On the defensive, refusing to be beaten, Sally challenged defiantly,
“Love doesn’t change.’
‘ “Time will come and take my love away,” ’ he quoted, and smiled again as if he found her challenge juvenile and just a little foolish. ‘Love changes more than most sentiments. It’s a feeling of the moment, to be enjoyed while it’s there. Shakespeare had it taped: “In delay there lies no plenty.” ’ He stopped and his smile widened into a mischievous grin. ‘Perhaps I’d better not finish the quotation. You’re so square and so prim and proper, you might take me seriously and think I’m making a pass at you.’
Sally was annoyed. She had never been described as a square before, nor prim and proper, and they were descriptions she would never have applied to herself—at least not before the accident.
‘I’m not a square, and I’m not prim ...’ She saw mockery glimmer in his eyes and stopped in time just as she was about to admit to not being proper. ‘I wouldn’t think you were making a pass at me because I know that’s the last thing you’d want to do where I’m concerned. You don’t like me any more than I like you,’ she finished furiously, more shaken by his teasing than she cared to admit.
The mockery vanished. The coolness returned and with it the ruthlessness.
‘In that case I may as well finish the quotation and improve your education: “Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth’s a stuff will not endure.” ’
Sally’s cheeks burned. She could no longer return his clear cool gaze. She wished suddenly that she had held her tongue, then wondered immediately and irrelevantly why she was able to overcome her tongue-tiedness when she was with Ross.
‘I thought blushing went out with long skirts and smelling salts,’ Ross prodded wickedly. ‘You’re even more square than I’d thought. Could it be that you’ve never been kissed? Maybe that’s something I should alter for you, after all.’
Sally retreated at once and he laughed. To her relief he moved away from her towards the door, saying,
‘Another time, perhaps. Let’s finish our tour of the house. You should see as much as you can while you’re here. It’s your only chance. I’ll leave the pictures here and pick them up on our way out.’
He switched off the lights and went out of the room, leaving her alone in the dark. She followed hurriedly, as he must have known she would, and caught up with him as she pushed open another door further down the passage. He flicked a switch and light from three wrought-iron chandeliers revealed another big room whose stone walls were hung with tapestries depicting classical scenes. A wide fireplace was set in the middle of one wall. The furniture was a mixture of Jacobean and heavy Victorian with a few choice pieces of Sheraton. There was no impression of comfort. The scattered rugs on the floor looked thin and worn, and Sally thought they had done little to protect the feet from the cold of the stone flags and the draughts which would whistle beneath the doors in the winter time.
Chilled and depressed by the cold damp atmosphere, she was beginning to realise that perhaps the house was well named Winterston, since even on a mild spring night it was cold and cheerless.
‘This is commonly know
n as the tapestry room, for obvious reasons,’ mocked Ross. He had hardly spoken when a mouse which had been playing on an escritoire near the doorway leapt down and scurried over Sally’s feet. She shrieked and turned blindly to Ross, clutching at him for reassurance. He put an arm round her shoulders and held her closely.
‘What was it?’ she whispered into the smooth tweed of his jacket.
‘ “A week sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie ...” A field- mouse at least one inch long, all grey and furry, and terrified of us,’ he replied, and his voice shook with laughter.
‘Och, I thought it was a rat,’ said Sally, pulling away from him embarrassedly, conscious of a disturbing desire to stay within the circle of his arms.
Apparently indifferent to the incident, he started to walk round the room examining the furniture, peering up at the raftered ceiling, touching the threadbare tapestries.
Attracted by three portraits which hung above the fireplace, Sally stood in front of the dark cavernous hearth and stared up at the painted faces of a man and two women who were dressed in Regency-style clothes.
‘Vicious-looking tyrant, isn’t he?’ remarked Ross, coming to stand beside hen ‘The two women were his wives. He was Aunt Elena’s great-grandfather ... and incidentally my mother’s great-grandfather too ... and therefore my great-great-grandfather. How incredible! I’ve never thought of that before. It’s no use looking for any family resemblance, though.’
Once again he sounded thoroughly amused, but although she knew he was making fun Sally glanced at him. It was true he did not resemble the man in the painting. But Miss Wallace had. She had possessed the same pale eyes and the same pursed adamant mouth.
‘There isn’t much worth preserving in here either,’ commented Ross. ‘The whole lot should be burnt.’
‘Och, no,’ Sally objected. ‘The escritoire and the spinet ... they’re worth keeping ... oh, and this love-seat here.’
Moving quickly and lightly to the chair, she sat down on it. It was covered with dimpled green velvet which had lost some of its pile and which was very faded. Sally stroked the velvet and imagined the lovers who had shared it in the past. Perhaps the man in the portrait had sat on it with his wives ... one at a time, of course.
Lost in her dreaming, she smiled at her thought and was unaware that Ross had sat down beside her until he spoke crisply.
‘If you like it so much, I’m sure I could arrange for you to have it.’
‘Could you really?’ Sally looked at him, her face alight with pleasure. ‘I would like to have it. I could recover it and there would be room for it in my bedroom.’ Then she noticed the faintly cynical curl at the corner of his mouth again and woke up from her daydreaming completely. ‘No, I couldn’t. It must stay where it belongs, with all the other lovely things, because Winterston must not be destroyed.’
Ross leaned back and folded his arms across his chest and stretched his long legs before him. Sally realised suddenly how close he was to her and that his head with its untidy sun- bleached brown hair was near to her hand where it rested on the mahogany frame of the chair back. Resisting an irrational desire to rake her fingers through his hair, she removed her hand stealthily, sat up straight and as far away from him as the confines of the chair would allow her.
‘I can’t understand why you want to preserve the place,’ said Ross abruptly. “Your family have no connections with it.’
‘It has always been here. It belongs here. I don’t want Winterston to be changed, or Portbride to be changed.’
‘You’re afraid of change because you’re afraid of life,’ he jeered unkindly, then frowned and muttered more to himself
than to her, ‘You didn’t used to be. You’ve changed, but you want everything else to stay the same. How unrealistic you are!’
Jolted and jarred by his criticism, Sally sat on the edge of the chair, her head turned away from him as she tried to control the unusual desire to burst into tears which almost overwhelmed her.
‘What reasons were given in the original petition against the building of the tanks ... for the preservation of Winterston?’ he asked.
‘The main objection was that the building of the tanks would mar an attractive part of the countryside and that in destroying the house a fine example of baronial architecture belonging to a family which played a great part in the history of Scotland would be lost for ever.’
She had turned to face him in order to deliver this speech. When she finished speaking he gave her an underbrowed sardonic glance.
‘Fine phrases, but not yours,’ he jibed. ‘How can you believe such nonsense? Architecturally Winterston is a very bad example of baronial architecture. Historically neither the house nor the family are of great importance. Structurally it’s rotten and a menace. If it isn’t pulled down it will fall down. Who wrote the petition?’
‘Miss Wallace.’
‘An eccentric who put stone and mortar and pride of lineage before human feelings,’ he jibed caustically.
‘And Craig Dawson.’
‘Who is he?’
‘An architect. He works for the department of Town and Country Planning in the County Council offices. He was against the tanks from the start because he loves this place as much as I do. He was very friendly with Miss Wallace. He was very upset when she died.’
‘Was he now?’ murmured Ross, turning his head to look at her sharply. ‘Tell me more.’
‘You must have known him. He belongs to Portbride. His father was the manager of the Royal Bank in Ritchie Street.’ Ross’s eyes narrowed as he searched his memory.
‘I remember. A thin dark boy, rather like a weasel.’
Sally, who had often admired Craig’s fine-featured face topped by smooth black hair, was rather irritated by the description.
‘Yes, he’s a dark and thin ... but he isn’t like a weasel.’
‘You’re prejudiced in his favour, I suppose, because like you he wants to preserve this old ruin,’ taunted Ross with a grin. ‘Have you seen him recently?’
Sally caught her lower lip between her teeth as the betraying colour flooded her cheeks again. Before the accident she and Craig had been going about together regularly. Brought together by the petition, they had discovered that they had a few other interests in common. There had been nothing exciting or particularly romantic in their relationship, but for Sally it had been something new and she had rather enjoyed having a regular date at the weekends like the other girls in the office.
But after the accident, or rather after seeing the scar on her face, Craig had politely withdrawn his interest.
‘Dropped you like a hot coal, did he?’ probed Ross softly. ‘Then you’re well rid of him, so stop pining for what might have been. And now I’m going to have a look round upstairs. Coming?’
He was on his feet and striding away from her, flinging the careless questioning familiar invitation over his shoulder.
He thought—heavens, what did he think?—that she was pining because her love was unrequited, because Craig had given her the cold shoulder? She must tell him it wasn’t true. She must tell him that though she had been initially hurt at Craig’s withdrawal the pain hadn’t lasted long because she hadn’t been in love with him.
‘Ross, wait!’
She was too late. He had gone. Hastily she followed, arriving in the hallway to see him disappearing into the gloom at the bend of the stairs, the light from his torch spearing the darkness before him.
Her feet slipping on the worn stone stairs, she hurried after him, determined not to be left alone. She reached his side as he tried the switches at the top of the stairs. They clicked, but no light appeared. ‘Hmm, good thing I know my way around here,’ he commented, then turned right and strode along a wide passage, Sally at his heels. She longed to hold on to the tail of his jacket, but pride and an idea that he might misconstrue such an action prevented her from doing so. He stopped and the torch’s beam flickered over a panelled door. He opened the door and tried the light sw
itch. Nothing happened. The torchlight swept over the large room which was furnished with big furniture, laden with dust.
‘Aunt Elena’s room,’ Ross remarked briefly, and closed the door again.
They peered into two other rooms similarly furnished. In the fourth and smaller room, however, the beam of light revealed a single bed, chests of drawers, a small desk and a bookcase.
‘Ah, they’re still here.’ Pleasure and satisfaction warmed Ross’s voice as he walked across to the bookcase to examine some of the books.
‘Was this your room when you stayed here?’ asked Sally.
‘Yes. I used to lie awake here when I was small listening to the rats, wondering when my mother would come back. Later when I came in my school vacations I used to come and go by way of this window.’
He moved across to the narrow latticed window which had been modernised at some time to open. In obedience to his persistent pushing it burst open and the cool night air rushed in, a welcome refreshment after the musty odour of the house.
Her curiosity roused by his statement, Sally went over to the window and as if impelled by the same thought they leant together over the stone sill. Below them the triangular leaves of tenacious ivy creeper which cloaked the side of the house shivered with silvery reflected moonlight.
‘You climbed down the creeper?’ guessed Sally. ‘Why?’
‘Because Aunt Elena didn’t allow me to go out at night. She thought I ought to stay here with her, and not mix with the youths of the town. She disapproved of such dissipated entertainments as the cinema, the fairground and the Saturday night dances. So I had to go secretly.’
Sally glanced at his rugged profile. Her right shoulder was jammed against his left one and she was suddenly aware of the lively rebellious spirit she had known when a child and felt a warm kinship with him.
‘Did she ever find out?’ she asked interestedly.
Ross chuckled.
‘Of course she did. She was as sharp as a needle. We had a rip-roaring row—she was my guardian, you know. I promised to behave if I could follow my own inclinations to be a civil engineer like my father. She wanted me to go into the Army because all the Wallace men had ... and she considered me to be a Wallace. She had some strange fixed obsessions about the Wallace family ... and about me. She lived alone too much, and living alone in this house would be enough to send anyone a little crazy.’
