by Flora Kidd
Sally watched the moon slide behind a cloud and the land become momentarily dark. Everything was different from what she had imagined from her scanty knowledge of the Wallace family and the gossip she had heard concerning Ross. Winterston, far from being an elegant historic mansion, was nothing but a decrepit ruin. Ross, whom she had heard labelled so many times by Craig Dawson and others as an ungrateful, inconsiderate black sheep, had once been a little boy who had yearned for his mother, a youth who had been determined to choose his own career. And now he was a man with whom she felt this curious sense of fellowship as they leaned shoulder to shoulder looking out at the shadowy landscape.
The new knowledge of the house, of Ross and of herself was disturbing. It shattered numerous preconceptions she had held and left her vulnerable and shaken. She had been so safe and secure in the world of daydreams in which she had lived since the car crash that she resented being made to face reality once more and found herself wishing that Ross hadn’t returned and that she hadn’t come with him to see the house. Instinctively she guessed he was the dynamite that could destroy her peace of mind.
‘Is there no way of saving the house?’ she asked in a small voice.
‘It’s been condemned as unfit for habitation. Only a recommendation from the Fine Arts Commission that it should be preserved can save it now ... and since it’s been argued that any tanks built where the house stands would be virtually unseen from the sea, I can’t see the Commission changing its mind.’
He raised an arm and pulled the window shut. Sally moved away, sad because the close moment was over and because the death warrant of the house was sealed and she could do nothing about it.
‘How will you knock it down?’ she asked.
‘Probably with a demolition weight swung from the jib of a crane,’ he replied, giving her a sharp glance. ‘We’ll be needing secretarial staff once we get the trailers and huts which will provide our offices. Why don’t you join us? I’m sure you’re very efficient, and it would be a change from the Municipal Offices. We pay well.’
She was so disconcerted by his suggestion that she had no immediate answer ready. Then the thought of what it would involve provided her with a decisive reply.
‘Och no, I couldn’t. I couldn’t see the place destroyed. I don’t want to have any part in its destruction.’
‘I see.’ He sounded unconcerned as he turned away. ‘Well, I daresay there are plenty of other typists in Portbride who’ll jump at the chance.’
He was away through the door, leaving her once again alone in a dark room. Again she hurried after him along the passage, following the distant shaft of yellowish light. Down the wide worn steps of the staircase she flitted. Her foot slipped and twisted. She lost her balance and fell.
Hearing her stumble, Ross turned quickly as he reached the bottom of the first flight of steps and blocked her fall effectively, catching her in his arms. The force of her hurtling body knocked him backwards against the stone wall behind him. The torch fell from his hand and rolled away down the lower flight of stairs.
Shocked and breathless, Sally was in no hurry to release herself from his arms this time. She closed her eyes and leaned against his chest and listened to the rhythmical beat of his heart.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘You left me in the dark ... and I couldn’t see the stairs,’ she accused shakily.
‘Are you afraid of the dark?’ He seemed surprised.
‘Not normally, but ...’ She hesitated, unable to explain her confusion.
‘But tonight is not normal,’ he continued for her in a low voice, ‘because you’re here in Winterston with me, and it’s two o’clock in the morning. Is that why you’re so uncertain, so disturbed?’
Sally jerked away from him, breaking his hold, fearful of his ability to guess at what she was thinking. She covered her apprehension with simulated amazement.
‘Two o’clock? Och, what will Aunt Jessie and my father be thinking? The dance finishes at twelve and I’m always home by twenty past at the latest.’
Whirling round, she started down the second flight of stairs into the dimly lit hall. Halfway down Ross caught up with her and the pressure of his hand on her arm forced her to move more slowly.
‘Do you want to break your neck?’ he asked. ‘This staircase is a deathtrap in poor light. There’s no need for you to worry about Aunt Jessie or your father. I’ll do the explaining if they complain. But I doubt very much if they’ll be awake and worrying about you. Now if you were like Maeve, it would be a different matter.’
‘If you were like Maeve.’ Now what did he mean by that? Did he mean that if Maeve had been his companion tonight Aunt Jessie and her father would have good reason to be concerned?
Downstairs Ross collected his pictures from the dining room, retrieved the torch and switched off all but the hall lights. Everywhere he went Sally followed closely and when he told her to hold the pictures and wait in the hall while he turned off the electricity, she refused.
‘No, let me come with you, please, Ross,’ she pleaded, sinking her pride.
He studied her upturned face. Wide eyes glinting green gazed back at him appealingly and he frowned impatiently.
‘What’s wrong now?’ he asked.
‘N ... nothing,’ she replied, then shivered uncontrollably. He would laugh at her if she told him that the dark dismal atmosphere of the house had played upon her imagination so much that now she disliked the idea of being left alone, even
for a few minutes.
‘A ghost walking over your grave?’ he jeered. ‘Winterston is full of them for people like you. Here, you can hold my hand if it will help you to feel better.’
Once more he was regarding her as a child to be humoured and tolerated. Remembering her earlier resolve to show him that she was independent and adult, her pride returned and she tilted her chin.
‘No, I’ll wait outside,’ she retorted.
‘Sally, Sally, quite contrary,’ he taunted. ‘Your name should have been Mary. All right, please yourself.’
Outside the wind had died away and the night was still. The shushing sound of the waves as they tumbled on the unseen beach, the brilliance of the unclouded moon were familiar, everyday, and their familiarity settled her nerves.
Ross wasn’t long in coming and they started to walk back the way they had come. He strode ahead, erect, purposeful, apparently absorbed by his thoughts, as silent as he had been on the way out.
Trudging behind him, Sally felt none of the delight she had experienced earlier. Tired, disappointed and completely shaken out of her escapist daydreaming rut, she was deaf and blind to the beauty of the night. The harbour lights seemed a long way away and the winding coastal road seemed interminable.
By the time the fishing boats came into view Ross was a good ten yards ahead of her and she realised miserably that he must have forgotten her again. ‘If you were like Maeve it would be a different matter.’ The words taunted her. If she was Maeve he would have walked with her. Och, what was the matter with her? She didn’t want his arm around her.
When she reached Rosemount he was waiting for her, standing under the solitary street lamp. She would have walked past him and on into the house without another word, but he stepped in front of her barring the way. She looked up questioningly. Under the harsh glare of the street lamp the face under the tossed sun-bleached hair was serious.
‘I expect after tonight’s experience you feel you have more reason to dislike me,’ he said unexpectedly.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she fenced weakly.
He raised his eyebrows.
‘No? Now be honest and admit that you’re hating me because I’ve tried to destroy your cherished illusions about Winterston ... and I’ve come pretty near to succeeding. Or is there some other reason for that miserable expression on your face?’
His words nipped, but Sally was too tired to fight back.
‘I wish you hadn’t come back,’ she said dully.<
br />
‘Why? Because I’ve woken you up? You’ve been hiding away, opting out ... weaving daydreams about an old house not worth a moment’s thought. Dreams are no substitute for life, Sally. You’re sweet and twenty, young and pretty.’
‘I’m not pretty ... not with this.’ The words were torn out of her as she put her hand to her disfigured cheek.
He removed her hand from her cheek and stared at her intently. ‘That’s entirely a matter of opinion,’ he murmured.
Tired and tormented, Sally could stand no more. She pulled her hand from his grasp and cried,
‘Oh, I wish you hadn’t come back! I wish you’d go away!’ and dodging past him she ran into the house and up to the shelter of her bedroom.
CHAPTER TWO
IT was a bright freshly washed Monday morning. Sally looked up at the small white clouds which floated across the pale blue sky and signed wistfully. Monday morning and the sun was shining brightly on the placid sea and complacent hills, all of which had been shrouded by misty rain the whole weekend.
Entering the cool grey building of the Town Hall, she walked up the stairs to the office which she shared with two other typists, Betty Oswald and Judy McEachern. The room was quiet and although it was nearly nine o’clock there was no sign of the other two girls. Sally removed the jacket of her jersey wool suit, tucked her blouse into the top of her skirt and crossed over to her desk. She removed the dust cover from her typewriter, opened a drawer and took out paper and carbon paper.
The clock tolled the hour. Nine. Sally frowned. She had never known the room to be so quiet at this time on a Monday. Usually all the girls who worked in the Municipal Offices gathered together for talk about their weekend activities, their subjects ranging from new dresses or shoes they had bought to their most recent romantic adventures.
Noise, rumbling, grating noise associated with the passage of a heavy vehicle, penetrated the quiet room. It was a clanking, clattering sound with which the inhabitants of Portbride had become very familiar during the past fortnight. Moving to the window, Sally raised the sash and looked down. Below, two yellow bulldozers were passing by, perched incongruously on long flat trailers and looking like strange monsters. At the end of the main street they would turn right on to the harbour road on their way to Winterston, to join all the other equipment that had been collecting there.
Sally closed the window abruptly and returned to her desk. Now she remembered why the other girls hadn’t come to work this morning. This morning the interviews were being held for typists required at the site and the Municipal Offices wouldn’t be the only one lacking typists. They would all be waiting for their interviews in the lounge of the MacKinnon Arms.
Sally inserted paper in her typewriter, took out the committee meeting minutes she was in the middle of typing and started to type. Her fingers flashed rapidly and there was an expression of determined concentration on her face.
Black words spilt across white paper. A bell pinged, the carriage of the typewriter dashed back to the beginning of the page and more words appeared, neatly, accurately. Her speed was good. She had left the secretarial college she had attended with excellent references, and could have gone to work in Glasgow, Edinburgh or London. In fact it had been her ambition to go to one of the cities eventually and possibly work her way up to be secretary to an important executive in an important industry. She knew she had a flair for organisation and administration. But that ambition had been buried out of the reach of thought since the car crash had made her so nervous and diffident.
At least it had been buried until Ross had suggested she went to work at the site. She could have gone to work there without an interview if she had wanted. But she had said she didn’t want any part in the destruction and had told Ross to go away.
He had gone away—away from Rosemount after spending only one night. He had left the next day for Glasgow and when he had returned almost two weeks later with the first batch of equipment and the first members of the group of engineers and administrative staff who were to work with him, he had gone to stay at the MacKinnon Arms.
Maeve was furious when he didn’t return to stay at Rosemount. She had blamed Sally, accusing her of being rude to Ross when he had taken supper with them. Since he had come back she had not been home at all between supper time and closing time, and she soon informed the family that she had taken a job as part-time barmaid at the hotel at the request of the proprietor, Andy Forbes. Already the gossip was filtering back to Sally that Maeve spent much of her time talking and flirting with Ross in the course of her duties as barmaid, and Sally could only assume that Ross’s presence in the hotel was Maeve’s real reason for taking the job.
Her hands moved more quickly and the words appeared faster as her thoughts disturbed her. Although her stepsister had not said anything Sally guessed that Maeve had left her husband Fergus. If she hadn’t left him Fergus would surely have appeared by now, demanding her return to Ireland. Several times Hugh Johnson had suggested in his mild way that his elder daughter should go back and had offered to take her in the Mary Ross, but Maeve always found some reason for staying.
Sally stopped typing and stared for a moment at the words on the paper. How could Maeve behave so obviously, so outrageously after only two years of marriage? She and Fergus had been almost ecstatically happy on that day in spring when they had been married in Portbride, and Sally had been happy for them. Fergus had seemed the perfect partner for Maeve, serious, responsible and possessive. What had gone wrong? Why did Maeve now seem so eager to break her marriage vows? Sally often wanted to ask her, but a certain reserve had prevented her from doing so. But with the danger presented by Ross perhaps it was time to break that reserve. He had returned at a very bad moment, just when Maeve was in the mood to commit any folly.
Sally gnawed at her lower lip and began to type again. Whenever her thoughts touched on Ross she experienced a new heart-thumping turmoil of emotion which she could not explain. She did not want to think about him. In fact she tried hard to pretend he didn’t exist, a pretence she had practised successfully for ten years. Most of the time it wasn’t difficult because she had not seen him once since their walk to Winterston and back. But the sight of a piece of heavy equipment trundling through the wide main street or the glimpse of a donkey-jacketed workman entering a shop would remind her of the fuel tanks and Ross’s reason for being here, and immediately she would begin to think of that strange moonlit night in the old house and of the times when their minds had been sib.
‘Sib’ was an old Scottish word which meant related or akin to. But it also had a deeper sense beyond the dictionary meaning, implying that minds or souls could be close to each other in understanding.
But why should she feel sib to the Ross Lorimer who had returned to Portbride when there was so much about him she didn’t like? Sally shook her head in perplexity and wished that something would happen to stop her from thinking about Ross and his involvement with Maeve which would have such unhappy and disastrous consequences.
Nothing happened, however, and the day passed in humdrum routine until the return of Betty and Judy from their interviews. Both had been offered positions at the site, but Betty was not sure whether she wanted to accept.
Judy was full of enthusiasm and had accepted immediately. Tall and slender with long fair hair and innocent-looking baby blue eyes, she was a self-confessed opportunist.
‘Och, I’ll be glad to get out of this old-fashioned hole and to work among people who have been somewhere and have done something. We were interviewed by the personnel officer. He was interviewing all sorts of people ... not just typists, but cleaners and labourers. I’m thinking this is one of the best things that ever happened to Portbride. With the salary I’m going to receive I’ll be able to save up for a holiday abroad next year. And who knows, I might meet ...’
‘Your match,’ put in Betty dryly. ‘We all know that’s what you’re hoping, and I daresay there’ll be some poor unsuspecting engineer among them w
aiting to be hooked. I think I’d rather stay here with Sally. I’m not keen on working among all the mud and mess they’ll make out there.’
The two of them argued about their interviews for the rest of the afternoon, and Sally listened, half wishing she had gone to try her luck, yet knowing she could not have faced up to the searching scrutiny of the interviewer.
In the Town Hall she was safe. In Portbride she was safe ... or thought she had been until three weeks ago. Safe from curious eyes, safe from pain ... safe from joy too?
The unexpected thought occurred to her as she left the office at five o’clock and walked down the corridor. A door opened and a man stepped out of the Town Clerk’s office. He was of medium height. He had smooth shining dark hair and was dressed in a well cut suit of charcoal grey. She recognised him at once—Craig Dawson.
Her immediate reaction was to retreat stealthily and wait in her room until he had gone. But he glanced sideways and saw her.
‘Hello, Sally,’ he said courteously. ‘How are you?’ His dark narrow eyes flickered away from her face and he looked at something just behind her.
‘Hello, Craig. I’m well, thank you. And you?’
Stilted conversational phrases designed to cover embarrassment.
‘I’ve just been out ...’
‘Did you know that ...’
They both spoke together, hurriedly trying to prevent a silence, then they stopped simultaneously and the silence happened. Craig smiled faintly, a slight curving of narrow chiselled lips.
‘Walk down to the harbour with me while we talk. I left my car parked down there. I’ve been at Winterston all afternoon and I thought about you. You must be feeling very disappointed that the tanks are going to be built there after all.’
Sally fell into step beside him, feeling rather surprised by his request for company.
