by Flora Kidd
She felt suddenly very tired. Emotionally it had been an exhausting evening. For a short while there had been a feeling of peace, a brief moment when their minds had been sib. A moment her heart would remember.
Her breath caught in her throat as the thought crept in uninvited.
‘I’d like to go home, please,’ she said shakily, wishing that she had not ventured forth, that she had stayed hidden.
‘Of course,’ he murmured politely. ‘You must be feeling tired. But don’t think for one moment that the shock treatment is over.’
Shock treatment. Yes, she supposed it could be called that. By a series of conversations and events she was being forced out of her comfortable lethargy which had protected her for six months from unpleasant realities.
The Land-Rover bumped down the narrow hill road beside the rushing water of Trool. The yellowish light from the headlamps revealed a scampering rabbit and a slow-moving hedgehog. Sally glanced across at Ross. He was sitting far away from her, remote and silent, a lighted cigarette between his lips, his eyes watching the road and his thoughts far away.
There was no traffic on the road from Newton Stewart to Portbride. Here and there pale wreaths of mist swirled in the hollows of the land. Sally eyed the mist apprehensively and moved surreptitiously closer to Ross.
The road curved to the left and then to the right. A patch of mist, white and opaque, blanketed their view. Sally gripped the edge of the seat. Ross changed gear, the engine slowed and they passed through the mist under the bridge and began the steep climb on the other side.
Sally sat back limply. Her mouth felt parched, and she searched for a handkerchief to wipe the cold perspiration from her face. Ross said nothing. He seemed to have forgotten all about her. Perhaps he was thinking of Maeve again and wishing that he had taken her out this evening to have fun.
Supposing Fergus did come to Portbride to take his wife back to Ireland? What would he do when he found that Maeve was having an affair with Ross? Sally pictured her dark-eyed, piratical-looking brother-in-law, imagined his reactions and spoke her thoughts aloud.
‘Fergus is very strong ... and he has a wild temper,’ she said.
Ross’s cigarette lighter flared as he lit another cigarette and before the flame went out she had a brief glimpse of his bold blunt features and the pronounced crease in his cheek which meant he was amused.
‘Is that a warning?’ he queried lightly. ‘Then I must keep out of his way if he comes to Portbride. It was a nasty patch of mist back by the bridge. Was it like that when your mother was killed?’
‘Yes.’
‘Now that you’ve re-lived the experience and survived, how do you feel? Still nervous?’
‘Not as much. It wasn’t as bad as I imagined it might be.’
‘Nothing ever is,’ he commented dryly. ‘Take this business of Maeve and myself. Women are always fascinated by other people’s marital problems. For one thing they make such a good subject for gossip. I’m willing to bet that all the old wives of the town are having a great time putting two and two together and erroneously making five ... just because ever since I’ve been staying at the MacKinnon Arms, Maeve has been serving behind the bar there, and quite naturally we’ve been seen talking and even having a drink together.’
‘Yes, they have,’ admitted Sally reluctantly, feeling embarrassed by his cool, slightly mocking observation.
‘And obviously you’ve believed the gossip and with your
over-active imagination and the knowledge you have of my previous relationship with Maeve you’ve created an extramarital romance for her in which I play the spectacular but invidious role of the “other man”. Shame on you, Sally!’
This time there was a sharp edge underlying the mockery and Sally flushed guiltily as he continued with his explanation.
‘When I realised how Maeve was going to behave I decided that to stay in your father’s house while she’s there would create an impossible and difficult situation, and would give rise to more gossip. What I didn’t foresee, however, was that Maeve would pursue me.’
An agony of embarrassment on Maeve’s behalf made Sally squirm. It was closely followed by an upflare of indignation.
‘Well, you don’t have to encourage her. You said yourself when she asked you that you wouldn’t let the fact that she was married make any difference.’
Ross sighed exasperatedly.
‘I thought she meant she hoped I wouldn’t let it make any difference to my friendship with her. I’ve made no attempt to encourage her. But the more I avoid her the more she pursues. I like Maeve and I’d like to help her. I expected to find her married and well settled with a couple of bairns to keep her out of mischief. As it is, she throws herself at me almost literally when I go into the lounge for a drink.’
Sally stared out at the darkness. With the calm reasonableness which she was beginning to associate with him he was destroying once again all her preconceptions about his own behaviour, and knowing Maeve as she did she could easily imagine her being tantalised and enticed by Ross’s amused aloofness.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked curiously.
‘Try to keep out of her way as much as I can ... and hope that she’ll take the hint. You could help.’
‘How?’
‘Find out why she and Fergus quarrelled. See if you can get him to come for her. If he loves her and he’s the man you say he is, when he sees how she’s behaving he’ll have no hesitation in asserting his rights as a husband.’
‘But how do you know all this?’
‘The problem Maeve presents at the moment is not unfamiliar to me,’ he said coldly, and the coldness pushed her away again, a deterrent to her innocent questions.
Pushed away, shut out, Sally moved away and looked out of the side window again. A problem with which he was not unfamiliar. The problem of the married woman pursuing him. Her lack of knowledge about the life he had led since he had left Portbride was creating another barrier between them. Naturally curious, she longed to know everything about his life during those ten years, yet she was afraid of knowing because she guessed that some of the knowledge might arouse a new and frightening emotion, an emotion she feared because it was related to other deep and painful emotions. She was afraid she might be jealous.
The lights of Portbride appeared as they descended from the moors in a series of looping bends. The main street was shadowed and empty. The quayside, cluttered with fishing equipment, was deserted and quiet under the harsh glare of the harbour lights.
When they stopped in front of Rosemount under the street lamp Ross jumped out of the Land-Rover and walked round quickly to open the door on her side. Sally stepped out and stood poised and ready to run indoors quickly as she became conscious of the tension which had sprung up between them again.
‘Thanks for the drive. I’m glad I went with you,’ she said hurriedly.
‘We both learnt a lot,’ he remarked easily. ‘I won’t come in.’
‘You haven’t been invited,’ she flashed back, and he laughed.
‘I’m glad to see you’re coming to life again. Maybe I should finish the shock treatment now ... because I’m going to be busy for the next few weeks, possibly up to my ears in mud. I might as well give you something else to think about.’
Startled by this announcement, Sally glanced up at him uneasily.
‘What do you mean?’
For answer he bent and kissed her on the mouth—a brief, tantalising kiss, giving nothing yet promising much. It made her hungry for more and she put her arms round his neck to prevent him from moving away.
‘Sweet and twenty and never been kissed,’ he murmured mockingly against her mouth, then kissed her again with a thoroughness which obliterated all thought.
‘Sally! It’s high time you were in bed!’ Aunt Jessie’s clarion-like voice seemed to echo round the harbour. ‘As for you, Ross Lorimer, I see you’re up to your old tricks. As if you hadn’t caused enough trouble in your time! Get off wi�
�� ye!’
Ross raised his head and released Sally, who fled into the house, mortified by her aunt’s unexpected intervention. As she went she heard Ross’s laughter and his derisive comment,
‘You look charming in your nightgown, Aunt Jessie,’ followed by the determined slamming of a bedroom window.
CHAPTER THREE
‘You shouldn’t take Ross seriously, you know,’ said Maeve as she and Sally breakfasted together next morning. Aunt Jessie rarely appeared early because, as she said herself, it took her a long time to get goin’. ‘Just because he took you out for the evening and then kissed you goodnight, don’t think he has any more than a passing interest in you, will you? It’s all part of the game with Ross to kiss the girl goodnight, and it doesn’t mean a thing,’ continued Maeve rather jerkily.
This morning her smooth golden beauty was somewhat marred by the faint blue lines beneath her lovely eyes and the petulant droop to her full mouth.
Sally was also feeling rather jaded after a night of tumultuous thought in which Ross had figured predominantly. Consequently she answered rather sharply,
‘Och, Aunt Jessie had no right to tell you!’
‘She didn’t,’ replied Maeve equably. ‘I saw for myself. I was watching for your return too. You were such a long time that we both became anxious thinking that ... Why were you so late? Did you have a breakdown?’
Touched by her sister’s concern about the possibility of her being involved in another accident, Sally’s attitude softened.
‘No, nothing like that. Ross drove very carefully. We went to Glen Trool. I didn’t realise you would be so anxious or I wouldn’t have gone.’
‘Glen Trool!’ exclaimed Maeve. ‘Why did you go there? Doesn’t sound like one of Ross’s ideas.’
‘Which shows how little you know him,’ thought Sally to herself. Aloud she said,
‘Well, it was. He hadn’t been there before.’
She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, noting that she had a bare fifteen minutes to finish her breakfast and to get to the office.
‘Maybe Ross feels sorry for and feels he should try to help
you,’ went on Maeve. ‘A sort of brotherly interest. I do hope you realise that, Sal. I don’t want you to be hurt.’
Sally refrained from saying that there had been nothing brotherly about Ross’s kiss and wondered why Maeve was being so persistent. Was it possible that she was jealous?
The thought jolted her and she glanced at the clock again. There was really no time to question Maeve about Fergus, but the questioning must be done before Maeve made a fool of herself over Ross.
‘Maeve, I must talk to you. Not now—there isn’t time.’
Maeve looked up, suspicion hardening the expression in her eyes.
‘What about?’ she cut in sharply.
‘About Fergus.’
Maeve clasped her face between her hands and leaned her elbows on the table. She did not look at Sally but stared at her plate.
‘Och, him,’ she said with synthetic jauntiness. ‘Why should you want to talk about him?’
‘He ... he’s your husband,’ Sally reminded her gently, hesitantly, afraid of what she might discover.
‘I suppose you want to know why he hasn’t come to fetch me. Why I’m here and he’s in Ireland. Why he doesn’t write to me or call me.’ Maeve’s voice shrilled suddenly with emotion. ‘Well, I can tell you. He doesn’t want me any more because I can’t have a baby.’
Tears brimmed in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. Sympathy surged up in Sally and forgetting the time she sat beside her sister and put a comforting hand on her arm.
‘Och, Maeve, I’m sorry. Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘It isn’t the sort of thing you go around telling people,’ replied Maeve as she wiped the tears away with the back of her hand.
‘But Dad and Aunt Jessie and I aren’t just people. We’re family.’
Maeve smiled through her tears.
‘I know, that’s what I thought. That’s why I came. But somehow I couldn’t tell you ... or Dad. You had your own problems.’
‘Problems are meant to be shared.’
‘That’s what we say, but we never share them, do we? It must be some silly pride we all have. We go about pretending all is right with our particular little world, putting on a good face. You do it. You pretend you don’t care about the scar on your face, that you don’t care when the boys at the dances prefer me to you. Dad pretends that the bottom didn’t fall out of his world when Mum was killed. Aunt Jessie pretends her legs aren’t growing stiffer every day and that they don’t give her pain every time she stands up. I pretend that I don’t care that Fergus hasn’t followed me here.’
Maeve’s voice broke again and she covered her face with her hands. Sally stared in wonderment, surprised to find that her lovely, rather silly stepsister was so observant after all.
‘And is running after Ross your way of putting on a good face?’ she asked curiously.
‘Is that how it looks to you ... to everyone?’ said Maeve, obviously surprised. ‘Yes, I suppose it does. I was glad to see him. He belongs to the time before Fergus, to the time when I had fun, when nothing was serious.’
‘But you were so upset when he went away and didn’t write,’ objected Sally.
Maeve smiled faintly.
‘Yes, I was, wasn’t I? It was the heartbreak of the year. I enjoyed it. Calf love ... sweet while it lasted, but it doesn’t last long when you’re seventeen, and Ross recognised that better than I did.’ She paused and then added in a low choked voice, ‘Love at twenty-seven is a different matter ... and I love Fergus.’
‘Then why did you leave him?’
“We had an awful quarrel. He refused to adopt a baby. I was so miserable, and his mother didn’t help, always telling me how many children she had had and how the MacGinnis family had always been good breeders. Having to live in the same house as her was becoming unbearable. If only Fergus and I could have found a place of our own it might have helped, but it’s so difficult to find accommodation, so I came here. I thought that if Fergus really loved me he’d come after me.’ Maeve’s mouth trembled and her eyes brimmed again. ‘He hasn’t come and he hasn’t written.’
‘And Ross is here,’ said Sally musingly.
‘Yes. It gave me such a lift to see him. I thought we might have a mild affair ... nothing harmful, just to take my mind off Fergus. I even imagined at one point Fergus arriving and finding me with Ross and being so smitten with jealousy that he’d drag me back to Ireland. Silly romantic me!’ Maeve sighed. ‘Ross won’t play. Och, he talks to me and listens to me, but all the time his mind is far away. And sometimes he looks at me with an odd cold light in his eyes as if he’s seeing someone else. Och, Sally, I just don’t know what to do!’
‘Go back to Fergus,’ said Sally simply.
‘It sounds so easy, but I can’t. Not unless I know that he wants me. That silly pride again, I suppose. And I don’t think I could bear to live in his mother’s house any more. He’s away so often and when he’s there she’s so possessive about him.’
Sally looked at the clock again. Nine-fifteen. She had to go. She looked back at her sister’s tear-stained face and wished suddenly that she was older and had more experience of life.
‘Why don’t you tell Dad and Aunt Jessie? They might be able to help you, to give you some advice.’
‘They’ll say the same as you ... go back to Fergus,’ replied Maeve dully.
Sally rose to her feet.
‘I must go now, I’m late already. I’m glad you’ve told me what’s wrong between you and Fergus. Try not to act foolishly,’ she said.
‘Foolishly? In what way?’ Maeve’s voice was sharp again.
‘Letting pride come between you and Fergus, being too easy with Ross.’
It was out at last. And if Maeve was hurt at this reading of her character, it couldn’t be helped.
Maeve smiled, a tight grim little smile.
<
br /> ‘I’ve never been able to help myself. That’s why it was such a relief when Fergus came along with his old-fashioned ideas about no nonsense with other men if I wanted to go with him. His possessiveness became a protection. I miss him badly.’
‘Then go back to him,’ reiterated Sally exasperatedly as she walked to the doer.
‘I can’t,’ moaned Maeve miserably, and began to cry again as Sally left the room hurriedly, bound for work.
Sally’s first instinct was to tell Ross about Maeve’s dilemma. After all, it had been Ross who had urged her to find out what was wrong between Maeve and her husband, so she felt he should be the first to know the result of her questioning, and it was possible that he might do something to help Maeve.
In the days that followed, however, no opportunity presented itself for her to speak to him. For three consecutive evenings she waited by the harbour wall in front of the hotel hoping to see him when he returned from the site, but each time she had to go home for her supper before he arrived. Short of going into the hotel and asking to see him or going out to the site she could think of no other way of approaching him. She was too shy to try doing either, and she was not the type of girl to take up the office telephone and brazenly call him at his work.
She tried waiting a fourth evening, using as an excuse the fact that her father was still aboard his fishing boat and she could wait for him sitting on a bollard with her back to the harbour while she watched the road for the arrival of a yellow Land-Rover.
It was a warm humid evening. Beyond the harbour the sea was calm and flat stretching away to the faint blue line of hills which were Ireland. Thin grey nimbus cloud was encroaching gradually upon the pale misty blue which had been prevalent all day. It was the warm front of a depression which would bring rain, cutting short the spell of perfect sunny June weather, during which the bulldozers and mechanical shovels at Winterston must have been busy.
A flash of yellow caught Sally’s attention. A Land-Rover was coming along the road from Winterston. Unaccountably her heart began to pound. Several times she had rehearsed in her mind what she should say to Ross when she saw him. She would pretend she hadn’t been waiting to see him but had just happened to be there at the time when he arrived. She would let him make the approach as he usually did and let the conversation take its course, then introduce the subject of Maeve casually.
