by Flora Kidd
Sally felt Ross’s fingers tighten painfully on her arm and she looked at him again. There was a tautness across his cheeks and a cold light in his eyes.
‘Lydia and I have not corresponded with each other at all,’ he said curtly.
Miriam opened her eyes wide and her mouth made a round ‘O’ of surprise.
‘No? I think that was very wise of you both. It would never have done for him to have suspected anything, would it? Anyway, it will be quite like old times to have her with us ... and you. Tom and I are looking forward to it. Goodbye for now, Sally. Maybe I’ll see you again.’
The flashing smile was working overtime. As she walked through the hotel with Ross, Sally felt that Mrs. Hunter was the sort of woman who talked and talked and smiled and smiled, while all the time her small shrewd eyes were taking in every detail of a person’s appearance so that later she would be able to describe that person perfectly.
Outside the hotel Ross released her arm at last. Involuntarily she rubbed it, trying to ease the soreness away.
The evening was azure, rose and gold. The harbour was crammed with fishing boats and several graceful visiting yachts swung at anchor on the smooth gilded water. A group of noisy children with bags of chips in their hands rushed by on their way to the excitements of the fairground.
As she looked up at the brilliant evening star which had just appeared above the smooth green shoulder of a hill, it seemed to Sally that there was a tingle of expectancy, of excitement in the atmosphere. The feeling was not strange to her. It was one she often experienced and it was always connected with an evening like this when the weather was clear and warm. On such evenings she expected something different to happen. Usually nothing did and she would go to bed with a faint sense of disappointment, of having been cheated.
This evening the feeling was stronger, heightened by the presence of Ross by her side and the meeting with Mrs. Hunter.
Who was Lydia? And why hadn’t Ross written to her? They were nearing the corner of the harbour where the road divided, one branch going off to the fairground where the lights already twinkled, and the other branch going up the hill towards her home.
She glanced at Ross. The tautness was still in his face tightening his mouth and hollowing his cheeks. As he strode along beside her she had the impression that he was controlling his temper with difficulty.
Ross in a temper! He was usually so calm, so self-possessed, but mention of a person called Lydia had pricked that self-possession.
At the fork in the road Sally stopped walking. Ross stopped too and looked at her in surprise.
‘You needn’t come any further, thank you,’ she said.
"Why not?’ he rapped out the question.
‘I can find my own way home perfectly well ... and you might want to talk to Mrs. Hunter. I know you only refused her invitation because you promised Mike you’d see me home.’
‘I did no such thing.’ He sounded as if he was talking through gritted teeth. ‘I had no wish to have a drink with her.’
‘Oh, I thought perhaps you’d want to ask her about ... about Lydia. Who is Lydia?’
Now he would call her an inquisitive pest, but it was important that she should know who Lydia was, desperately important.
‘She’s Miriam’s niece. Someone I used to know ... does it matter who she is?’ he retorted.
‘Someone special?’ persisted Sally.
‘I thought so ... for a while.’
‘But not any more?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen her for three years. People change, emotions change, everything changes ... I’ve told you before,’ he ground out. ‘Have you finished with your questions, or would you like to know the date, the place and the hour of my last meeting with Lydia? If you do I’m sorry I can’t give you the information, because I’ve forgotten.’
His anger was very obvious now in the rasp of his voice, in the blaze of his eyes as he glared down at her.
She had expected something different to happen, and this was it. Ross was violently angry with her and she didn’t like it.
‘I’m sorry, Ross,’ she said simply. ‘I didn’t mean to annoy you.’
The expression on his face softened slightly.
‘It isn’t your fault. Miriam is mostly to blame, with those damned tactless remarks of hers about baby-snatching.’
Sally was puzzled, not understanding why he should be annoyed about that.
‘But why should that irritate you? You know it isn’t true, so why be angry?’
He looked down at her in silence, a strange intent expression in his eyes.
Sally looked back, feeling the tension mounting between them and remembering the evening they had gone to Winterston and he had stared at her in the same way. Automatically her hand went to the scar on her face.
‘You’re quite right. I’m glad you realise it,’ said Ross, all anger gone.
The jangling fairground music wafted louder on a breath of wind, enticing them to enter the bizarre escapist world of sideshows and weird exhibitionists.
‘Come to the Fair,’ invited Ross in his abrupt, commanding way.
It wasn’t the first time in her life he had invited her to the Fair, but she was caught off balance and stammered,
‘No ... no, thank you. You mustn’t feel obliged to take me anywhere.’
‘What are you saying? Who said anything about being obliged?’ he barked, the anger back.
‘Because you think you’ve spoiled my evening you mustn’t
feel obliged to take me anywhere. You don’t have to feel sorry for me,’ said Sally, her pride riding high.
Exasperation twisted his mouth and glittered in his eyes and when he spoke it was quietly, dangerously, every syllable separated carefully as if he was trying to ram home a lesson.
‘Let’s get this straight. I’m not sorry for you. I don’t feel obliged to take you anywhere, as you put it, because I interrupted your evening with Mike. This happens to be the first night off I’ve had in weeks and I haven’t been to the Fair for years. I want to go and I would like your company. Is that clear?’
It was very clear. Her obstinacy overcome by the forceful beat of the words, Sally resisted no longer. I would like your company. What better invitation could she receive from anyone? Her earlier anticipation that something different would happen this evening was realised and she felt suddenly happy.
She smiled. Her eyes sparkled and two dimples dented her cheeks.
‘Yes, Ross,’ she said with counterfeit meekness, ‘I’d like to go to the Fair with you. It’s quite clear to me that I daren’t refuse.’
His hands were on her shoulders and he was shaking her gently and they were both laughing.
‘Don’t get any wrong ideas about me, sweet and twenty,’ he warned humorously. ‘All my actions are governed by self-interest. I’m never sorry for anyone. Always remember that.’
Although faintly disturbed by this statement of his attitude to life Sally had no more time to ponder as for the next hour she was swept along on a wave of gaiety and laughter, riding the dodgems, sliding down the helter-skelter, trying her luck at the hoopla and winning a ridiculous pink and white fluffy dog, eating sticky candy floss and watching Ross at the rifle range, and finally failing ignominiously to hit the target at the archery stall.
‘You’re no Cupid,’ taunted Ross smugly. He had hit the bull’s-eyes three times out of five shots.
‘Well, show me how to do it,’ challenged Sally.
He paid for another five arrows and taking her bow fitted an arrow. His body at right angles to the target, his left arm held straight out at shoulder level, he held the bow in his left hand. The point of the arrow rested on the top of his clenched hand. Slowly he bent his right arm, stretching the gut of the bow until it rested in the notch at the feathered end of the arrow. He sighted along the arrow to the centre of the target. His right hand flicked, the gut twanged, the arrow sped forward and hit the bull’s-eye. With a triumphant grin he ha
nded the bow back to Sally.
‘Quite easy. All you need is patience and a good eye. I’ll show you how to hold the bow and how to release the arrow, but you must do the sighting and watch the target yourself. If you don’t keep your eye on where you want the arrow to go, it will go wide of the mark.’
He put his hand over her left one where it held the bow. Then he put his right arm round her shoulder and placing his right hand in hers guided the gut to the right place on the arrow. He bent closer, his cheek near to hers as he looked along the arrow. Sally held her breath and tried hard to concentrate. Ten years ago his nearness would not have affected her. Now it was as if she had turned to jelly.
‘Now, direct the arrow at the centre of the target and look along it. Don’t look anywhere else ... and pull on the gut.’
He moved away carefully and she breathed again. She sighted along the arrow, saw the red centre of the target and shot. The arrow flew straight and landed quivering in the middle of the red.
Lowering the bow, she turned delightedly to Ross. He was leaning nonchalantly against the side of the booth and was lighting a cigarette, apparently completely indifferent to her success.
‘I did it!’ exclaimed Sally.
‘Of course you did,’ he remarked. ‘You can do anything if you really want to.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Shoot the other arrows ... and then we must go. It’s past ten, and I want to make plans for tomorrow.’
Some of the happiness died within Sally. He’d had enough of the Fair and her company. Immediately she chided herself silently. How foolish of her to expect more than he was prepared to give. She had had this evening, and hadn’t he warned her not to get any wrong ideas about him?
Facing up to the target, she shot the remaining three arrows in turn. They all fell short of the target.
‘I shot them in exactly the same way,’ Sally complained as they walked away from the bright lights and the jaunty discordant music into the purple lampshot twilight of the town.
‘No, you didn’t. You weren’t concentrating,’ he replied briefly, and she sensed his disinterest. She wanted to tell him it was his fault that she hadn’t concentrated, but decided disconsolately that he had withdrawn so far away from her that it would be a waste of breath.
The hour at the Fair was over, an interlude which had possessed the same magic quality as the visit to Winterston and the drive to Glen Trool. Now he was impatient to be gone.
When they reached the fork in the road they stopped as if by mutual consent that their ways should part there.
‘Thanks for coming to the Fair with me. I enjoyed it,’ he said. He smiled at her, touched her cheek with a casual forefinger and turned away to walk swiftly down the road.
Sally watched him go, saw him break into a run and angle across the road towards the hotel and disappear through its door. Then she began to walk slowly up the hill to her home, her head bowed in thought.
Plans for tomorrow. Did those plans include Miriam Hunter and her niece called Lydia? Lydia who had once been someone special in Ross’s life and who was now free to marry?
Sally sighed perplexedly. Her image of Ross as an unassailable individualist who had never known the weakness of falling in love was as wrong as her impression of a heedless, arrogant destroyer had been and she was beginning to realise that he was very human after all, as capable of falling in love with another man’s wife as he was of losing his temper.
‘Don’t get any wrong ideas about me,’ he had warned. Had he guessed she was full of them? But the trouble was the more her ideas were proved wrong by him the closer she was to the danger of loving him.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE next morning was flawless. A bright blue sky arched over the hills and was reflected in the smooth water. The quayside was quiet and deserted except for a solitary holidaymaker who took up his position at the south corner of the harbour wall to photograph a scene which Sally knew was a favourite with all photographers. Eventually his colour slide would show the fresh dark blue, white and red of the lifeboat, stationary at its mooring in the middle of the harbour, resting on its watery reflection; beyond it would be the bulky varnished hulls of the fishing boats and behind them the mixture of hazel, whin and blackthorn bushes which screened the sloping hill on which Rosemount stood.
‘It’s going to be a grand day for the trip,’ said Hugh behind Sally, who had already dressed to go to sea in blue jeans and red shirt and was standing outside the front door watching for Mike. ‘Maeve hasna’ changed her mind, by any chance?’
‘No. She says she has something better to do. Do you think if I told her where we’re going she’d come?’
‘Na.’ He shook his head negatively, then sat down on the bench beside the porch and began to stuff tobacco into his pipe. ‘I think she’s guessed where we’re goin’ and that’s why she won’t come. But ye needna’ worry, the trip won’t be wasted. We’ll see Fergus, I hope, and between us we should be able to persuade him to come back with us. A hint about her serving in the bar at the hotel will fetch him. I’m thinkin’ he won’t like that.’
He puffed hard for several minutes. Then having got his pipe going to his satisfaction he took it out of his mouth and pointed with the stern to the opposite side of the harbour.
‘Here’s yer young friend comin’ now. He’s in no hurry this morning.
A yellow Land-Rover had appeared from the Winterston road. It dawdled along past the hotel and stopped in front of the small shop which was always open on Sundays for the sale of grocery items, ice-creams and Sunday newspapers. A man stepped out of it and went into the shop.
‘That isn’t Mike,’ said Sally, and was annoyed with herself because her heart had started to beat faster than normally for the simple reason that she had no difficulty in recognising Ross as the man who had got out of the vehicle. ‘I’ll just go and see if Aunt Jessie has everything ready—’
She darted into the cool gloom of the house and went into the kitchen. Maeve was there washing up the breakfast dishes.
‘It’s a lovely day,’ she remarked. ‘Almost makes me wish I was coming with you.’
‘Why don’t you?’ asked Sally, trying not to sound too eager.
Maeve shrugged.
‘I don’t know, really. Partly because I don’t feel like standing around on a fishing boat all day watching the scenery and the gulls and listening to Aunt Madge talk about her aches and pains, and partly because I’m hoping Ross might take the day off and we might go swimming together like we used to do. He suggested it last night when he came back into the hotel ... asked me to stay around just in case he was able to organise things at the site so that he could get away.’
Plans for tomorrow. It was Maeve who was included in those plans after all and not Lydia. What was Ross trying to do? He made out that he wished Maeve was far away ... and then made plans to go swimming with her.
‘I don’t understand him,’ said Sally loudly and crossly.
Maeve gave her an amused sidelong glance.
‘It isn’t difficult,’ she murmured. ‘He lives for the moment, that’s all. Past and future mean nothing to him. He does what he wants when he wants, and the devil take the consequences, and I’m beginning to think he’s right. That’s how we should live.’
‘But it’s so selfish ... so inconsiderate,’ complained Sally. She did not hear Maeve’s reaction to her complaint because the telephone rang. ‘I’ll answer it,’ she muttered, and went out into the hall. She still felt cross because she knew that Maeve’s assessment was true in some part. But it irritated her to know that he behaved in that way with Maeve as well as with herself. Last night he had gone to the Fair because he’d wanted to go and because she had been around at the time he’d invited her to go with him. Today he might go swimming, and if Maeve was around he’d invite her to go with him. It was as simple as that ... and it irritated her.
She picked up the phone.
‘Hello, Sally,’ said Mike at the other end of the line. ‘Bad news, I’m af
raid. I can’t make it today. The slavedriver insists that this bulldozer be in action by this afternoon and I’ll have to stay and supervise the rest of the repairs. I hope you understand.’
‘Och, what a pity. It’s such a lovely day.’
‘I know, only too well, and I notice that this little inconvenience hasn’t stopped you-know-who from taking the day off. Oh well, I suppose he’s earned it. Still, to have both Saturday night and Sunday fouled up is a bit much. What did you do last night?’
‘Ross took me to the fairground.’
‘He did?’ Mike sounded surprised. ‘How very avuncular or elder-brotherly of him! He probably thinks that’s the right sort of entertainment for someone of your age. Sorry I let you in for that.’
‘There’s no need to apologise ... I enjoyed it,’ replied Sally coolly, but the implication underlying Mike’s words hurt, and when she hung up a few minutes later she reflected rather disconsolately that probably Maeve and Mike were very right. To Ross she was still an adolescent for whom he sometimes found himself responsible.
The sound of a vehicle stopping outside the house caught her attention. Maeve came into the hall and said,
‘I suppose this is Mike arriving.’
‘No, he isn’t coming. He just telephoned. He has to work.’
‘What a shame!’ commiserated Maeve, but her sympathy did not last long. Her face lit up. ‘It must be Ross, then.’
She hurried to the open door and Sally followed her slowly, lingering hesitantly in the doorway as Ross walked up the path.
‘Good morning to ye,’ greeted Hugh. ‘And what brings ye
here at this time o’ day?’
‘I thought you might need a good experienced deck hand, or perhaps even a first mate for your intrepid voyage,’ replied Ross with a grin. ‘I must say I’ve never seen the North Channel look so calm.’
‘Aye, I could do with someone to take a turn at the wheel. My nephew George who fishes with me is comin’, ye ken, but we really need another hand. And I was thinking, Mike might know all there is about sailing dinghies, but he’ll know nothing at all about manoeuvring a forty-ton fishing boat. We’ll be glad of yer company, no need to tell you.’
