Tidings of Great Boys

by Shelley Adina

  More in People

  SIX DAYS LEFT until Hogmanay. The amount of work to do in such a short time would have frightened me if I’d slowed down enough to think about it. Thank goodness I wasn’t on my own. Not for nothing did we have two of the greatest organizational minds on the planet under our very roof. Between Patricia Sutter, who organized galas and benefits for the under- as well as the over-privileged, and my mother, who could pick up the phone and have everyone short of the Queen herself on the guest list at a moment’s notice, the party of the decade was a given.

  Each morning over breakfast, we girls took on our assigned tasks for the day. I’d have had a hard time helping Mrs. Gillie polish and clean endless acres of carved wood and items of silver, but Carly and Gillian went at it as though they were getting grades for it. Lissa spent most of the day with her mobile glued to one ear, making arrangements for food and tracking down a band that wasn’t already booked.

  Mummy and Patricia divided and conquered the guest list, the wine cellar, and my father.

  On Sunday, the day after Boxing Day, the girls trekked off to the service in the village church as though it were an adventure. When Dad got home, he told me they’d been invited to lunch by Mrs. Gillie’s daughter, who was married to the minister. Fine. I guess they deserved a day off, though I wasn’t taking one. I had things to do. Sitting in church and then making polite conversation for an hour would have only frustrated me.

  I unearthed my rusty calligraphy skills and hid in the morning room to address invitation after invitation on creamy paper with the earl’s crest (my personal friends got theirs on eVite, which dropped the level of cramping in my hand by quite a bit). The door to the library stood open, which meant I heard my parents find each other, and every word thereafter.

  Even the ones I wished I hadn’t.

  “Graham.” My mother sounded surprised. She must have come in through the other door that led into the kitchen corridor and the back of the house. “I’m sorry. Am I interrupting?”

  “No, of course not. I was just looking for Granddad’s book on land management. Gabriel is fascinated by everything from repairing the roof to grafting the apples. I think he means to use it in a movie somehow.”

  “After The Middle Window and that pirate film, I shouldn’t think he’d ever have to make another one. Didn’t Window just pass the hundred million mark?”

  “I can’t imagine him not working. He’s a very creative sort. How are you and Patricia managing?”

  “We’ll get it done, and no one will miss the bits we’ve left out. I can’t think how Lindsay meant to do it all herself.”

  “She’s a determined lass.” I warmed with the pride in Dad’s voice.

  “But what are you two doing wittering about land management when you’re meant to be outside helping Mr. Gillie tidy up the drive and the front gardens?”

  “That’s how it came up. We got into a heated discussion about solar panels, which became environmental something-or-other, which became land management in general. Then I told him Granddad had written a book on the subject, and I came in here to find it.”

  I heard Mummy blow a breath through her wispy, precisely cut bangs, and could practically feel her plead with the ceiling for patience. “I see.”

  “Do you? Land management has never interested you very much.”

  “At any other time, I’d have agreed with you. But as a matter of fact, it’s been on my mind quite a lot lately.”

  “And why would that be?”

  “Graham, I—” Her voice choked off, and she had to begin again. “I’m not going to be able to make the payment to Strathcairn in the New Year.”

  Silence.

  More silence. I put down the pen and realized I was holding my breath.

  “And why is that?” Dad asked quietly.

  “Because the portfolio didn’t pay the dividends we were expecting this year. With the price of petrol and the economy in the UK and America, I’m lucky to be able to send Lindsay back to St. Cecelia’s to finish out her final year. Her going to Spencer is out of the question, even if they would have allowed a third exchange term.”

  I let out a breath. I hadn’t expected to go back. But at the same time, I’d hoped…

  “And her expenses?”

  “We’ve had a talk. I expect I’ll have another one when it sinks in a little.”

  “And this Hogmanay extravaganza?”

  “It’s taking the last of this year’s dividend. We won’t be penniless, of course, but we certainly won’t be going to Paris in March for our dresses. Lindsay will have to settle for London. As will I.”

  “A sacrifice, indeed,” Dad said gravely.

  “As I said, we’re not penniless.”

  “We’re not married, either. So Strathcairn’s welfare naturally falls lower on the list than… dresses.”

  “There’s no need to be cruel.”

  “Simply making an observation.”

  “Patricia has made a number of observations.” From the tension in her voice, Mummy was holding back what she really wanted to say for the greater good. “I think we should listen to them.”

  “And what does our American guest have to say?” he inquired in a very un-Dad-like tone. As though an American couldn’t possibly know anything. For the first time, I saw the depth of my father’s pain over losing our home. And for the first time, I realized losing it might actually happen.

  I pulled the cardie Grannie had knitted for me for Christmas last year closer, and listened with all my might.

  “Apparently,” my mother began slowly, “there is an organization called the Society for Self Sustaining Estates. With grants and help, places like ours—like Strathcairn—can be turned into paying properties again.”

  “As what? Bed and breakfasts?”

  “No.” This must mean an awful lot to Mummy. She was hanging on to her temper in a way I’d rarely seen before. “As first-class boutique hotels.”

  “Out of the question.” Something heavy slid off a shelf and Dad grunted. Granddad’s book on land management, no doubt.

  “Graham, listen. Look at places like Crathorne Hall. It’s smaller than Strathcairn, and it’s on the Hand Picked Hotel list. The Duke of Roxburghe loans out Floors Castle for shooting parties and charges by the bird, for heaven’s sake. We need to capitalize on the exposure the place is getting from The Middle Window. Get a few articles in travel magazines. Patricia says that once you’re on the American lists, companies fly their employees here for corporate retreats and pay top dollar to do it.”

  “The same companies who aren’t paying their dividends?”

  Mummy ignored him. “All we’d need are a few adjustments, like extra bathrooms and a first-class restaurant kitchen with a chef. We have a salmon stream, so that would appeal to the anglers. We could charge hundreds of pounds for a week’s stay.”

  “And where would we be in the meantime? In the cellar?”

  “Of course not. We’d stay in the family wing. You know as well as I do that the entire east wing has been unused for years. With a little fixing up, the guests could use those rooms to sleep in, we could open up the ballroom as the corporate meeting center, and the sitting room and music room could be used for what they’ve always done.”

  A pause, and then Dad said, “You’re making awfully free use of the first person plural.”

  Mummy’s breath hitched. “I suppose I am. The excitement of the moment.”

  “But it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It… it could.”

  “Ah. The price of my agreeing to have my home butchered by the Society for Self Sustaining Estates is that my wife comes back to it?”

  Mummy gasped. I heard a rush of quick footsteps on the carpet, and then the far door slammed.

  A large, heavy book landed on the library table with a thud like a clap of thunder. And under his breath, my father swore at himself in the most colorful Scots I’d ever heard him use.

  I didn’t know he even knew
those words.

  Well. Weren’t things just peachy on the MacPhail home front? I had no idea how to manage my parents. But the sudden slam of Granddad’s book had jolted something loose in my brain. For how many months had I been drifting along, envying people like Shani and Carly, who knew exactly what they wanted to do with their lives the moment they graduated?

  Too many. I didn’t want to go back to London and float from one party to the next until some boy with a title and an overbite proposed. Nor did I want to go to an American college—unless one of my lassies was there for moral support.

  Dad wanted me to go to uni in Edinburgh and study medicine. Well, I’d go him one better.

  What I really wanted most of all was to stay right here and live at Strathcairn. And what better way to do that than with an M.B.A. in business management, with a minor in tourism? Because the Managing Director of the brand-new Strathcairn Hotel and Corporate Retreat Centre would need nothing less.

  FROM TECHNORATI.COM

  Entertainment / Celebrity / what’s percolating in blogs now

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  chapter 14

  HOW DID MY LIFE, which used to be completely in my control, get so scary and unmanageable in the space of a week?

  The end of the year was all about leaving the old behind and embracing the new. It was about cleaning one’s house, physically and metaphorically. But I didn’t think that extended to being left behind by my old village friends, who didn’t seem to be speaking to me at the moment, or to the prospect of being tossed out of said house by the shrinkage of nameless investments I knew nothing about.

  Yet. I was going to fix that as fast as I could write a university application.

  The one new thing I would’ve loved to embrace—Alasdair—was a lost cause. He’d taken to hanging about with Gabe and taking bracing walks across the heath and through the woods. The two of them had even cleared the snow off the lake, though by the time they’d gone ten feet out onto the ice, it was crystal clear that one more inch would result in them both going through.

  Ice skating was not going to be on our holiday agenda. Just as well. There was plenty of thin ice round here without the real thing.

  Even my intrepid team of party planners was running into snags.

  “I’ve called in every favor I or my parents have on two continents,” Lissa moaned over tea on Tuesday. “And still I can’t come up with a band to play here on Thursday night.”

  “What?” Carly said, deadpan. “The Kills are busy?”

  “Totally booked. I tried twice.”

  “Lissa. I was kidding.” Carly put down her wedge of Christmas cake, glistening with nuts, cherries, and probably a bit of Dad’s terrible whiskey. I knew for a fact that Mrs. Gillie put it in her cakes just to get it out of the pantry—which was good, because rumor had it the cakes tasted much better than the whiskey.

  “I wasn’t.” Lissa looked down the list in her phone. “I tried Hot Chip and Duffy too, but no luck. I’ve been through the UK record labels, the Celtic Music Society, and now I’m down to Edinburgh DJs and country-dance groups.”

  “Which will be booked,” I pointed out. “Did you ask Mummy who she had for our last party?”

  Lissa nodded. “The Battlefield Band, who are booked through 2011.”

  “Oh. At this rate, Gillian will be playing for us.”

  “I can do that.” Gillian brandished a mincemeat tart like a conductor’s wand before popping it into her mouth. “Have sheet music, will travel.”

  “You could always try your friend Anna Grange in Edinburgh.” Daddy came in from his study and snagged a piece of Christmas cake. I poured him a mug of tea and splashed milk into it before I handed it to him. “Someone told me she’s in a band.”

  “I’m not hiring a bunch of amateurs to play Hogmanay at Strathcairn, Dad,” I told him. “We have a reputation to uphold.”

  Though Anna was a pretty good guitarist. She’d dropped out of school last year, but she’d managed to score some gigs in town—enough to finance her own flat, anyway. Hmm.

  “I can get online and do some research,” Lissa offered. “What’s the name? The band will probably have a MySpace with some clips on it.” I told her, and she keyed it all into her iPhone.

  Patricia and Mummy came in, windblown and shivery.

  “Wow,” Patricia said, pulling off gloves and a knitted hat. “It’s cold out there. What do we have here? Ooh, mince tarts. My favorite.”

  Gillian put a couple on her plate and took another for herself. “Did you go for a walk?”

  “More like a plow through drifts.” Patricia poured a mug of tea and gulped it to warm her insides. “I’m sure I burned off two tarts’ worth of calories in advance.”

  “This is a guilt-free zone,” Carly informed her. “Have some cake.”

  Patricia laughed. “That’s what you can put in the brochure. ‘Indulge yourself in Scotland’s only guilt-free zone.’”

  “Brochure.” Dad’s gaze swung from Mummy’s tousled hair to Patricia’s face. “What brochure?”

  “Nothing, Graham.” Mummy gave Patricia a glance that plainly said stow it. “It’s just talk.”

  “I thought I made it clear there wasn’t going to be any talk on that subject.”

  “What subject?” I asked, all big eyes and innocence.

  “Nothing.” Dad picked up his mug. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the handle.

  “It could be something,” Mummy muttered under her breath, but since she was clattering cutlery for Patricia, I don’t think anyone else heard.

  “Nothing I care to discuss in front of our friends,” Dad said more loudly.

  “Even if it means saving the ranch?” Patricia didn’t back down an inch. I glanced at Lissa and saw my own trepidation in her eyes. Two immovable forces. One of them had to give—but did it have to be two days before the party, when all of us were stressing?

  “I will not discuss our personal concerns in front of our guests,” Dad said. “Or with them.”

  “Fine with me,” Patricia said with a shrug. “But you might want to think about it. From what Meg has told me about the finan—”

  “That’s enough!” Dad slammed down his mug so hard, the forks jumped. He pushed back from the table and strode out of the kitchen. Down the corridor, I heard the door to the kitchen garden thud closed.

  “He’s gone to be with the hens,” I said into the silence.

  “He’d make better company for ostriches,” Mummy said through stiff lips. “He’s as good at burying his head in the sand as they are.”

  “I don’t think ostriches actually do that,” Gillian said thoughtfully. “I think they—”

  “The point is, he doesn’t want to talk about—whatever it is.” I caught myself just in time. “What is it, anyway?”

  “I told you,” Mummy reminded me. “Dad doesn’t want to talk about turning the place into a first-class hotel. Not that I can blame him. But if we don’t do something soon, the Inland Revenue will come along and take the lot.”

  “This place would make a great hotel,” Carly said. “It’s straight out of a fairy tale. Or a dream.”

  “A nightmare, more like.” Mummy turned her mug round and round in her hands. “It costs a fortune to run. When we had a fortune, that wasn’t a problem. But now, with things the way they are…” Her voice trailed away, and she seemed to catch herself. “But Graham is right on part of it, at least. I shouldn’t burden you girls with it. We have a party to plan.” Her voice took on the false brightness of someone trying to convince a group of children that Pin the Tail on the Donkey is fun.

  “Mummy,” I said slowly. “Don’t treat us like we’re twelve. These girls have taken on more than you can imagine and come out on the winning side.”

  The brightness faded and her gaze r
ested on Carly. “I know.”

  “Look at me, for instance,” Shani said suddenly. “I came this close”—she held her thumb and forefinger apart half an inch—“to getting engaged to Rashid. But I said no. And then what happened?”

  “What?” Mummy sipped her tea.

  “Shani,” I said quickly, “she and Patricia don’t know. None of us have said.”

  “That’s okay.” Shani hitched her chair closer to the table, and my mother and Patricia echoed her body language. I don’t think they even knew they were leaning forward to close the circle of intimacy.

  “I said no to the prince, and because of that, his dad, the Sheikh, pulled his stake in my dad’s company. Since it was forty percent, the company couldn’t hold up, and the whole thing folded. My parents lost everything. Seven-million-dollar mansion, antique car collection, courtside seats at the basketball game, couture clothes. Everything.”

  Slowly, my mother’s hand fluttered up to cover her mouth. “That’s dreadful,” she whispered. “But it’s just as dreadful that they asked you to do such a thing.”

  “Where are your parents now?” Patricia asked.

  “Still in Chicago, living in a two-bedroom cottage in the old neighborhood where my grandmother used to live. Dad salvaged one division of his company, and he’s running that on a shoestring.” She took a breath. “But what I’m getting at is that they didn’t plan for the contingency that I’d say no. They did the ostrich thing, or maybe it was just a blind spot. I didn’t ask. But they didn’t have to lose it all. They could have arranged it so the Sheikh’s pulling out wouldn’t have hurt so much. Diversified, you know?”

  “She applied to Harvard Business School,” I said in an aside to my mother. “She knows her stuff.”

  “Evidently. So how did you come to be here?” she asked Shani. “How can you afford to stay at Spencer?”

  “I had a nest egg,” Shani said smoothly. Okay. The necklace and what had happened to it were going to stay a secret. Good to know. “I’m financing my own education now, and my friends here”—she glanced round the table, smiling—“helped me out with the plane ticket.”