The One and Only

by Doris E. Smith

  ‘Watch out for this one,’ McKenzie warned in the first real breakthrough of the interview. ‘It’s maybe nothing, but you’ll need to keep an eye on him.’

  Maggie looked at the slightly staring coat. ‘Has he got a temperature?’

  ‘No. Just the same, mind how you go wi’ him.’

  ‘I will,’ she promised. The show of humanity was welcome. He had already given her the vet’s card and phone number. She wouldn’t hesitate to use it. She said so and to her chagrin found herself facing a raised restraining hand.

  ‘Now steady on. He’s a busy man. He’ll no’ thank you for fussing. You can leave it up to Rob in the morning. He’ll tell you what you should do.’

  ‘Now you can see why Angus kept rooting for Mac,’ Troy commented as they walked back to the house. ‘They both have the same high opinion of women!’

  Maggie had not missed Mac’s implication that she should take her cue from Rob McIntyre. It could be a depressing augur for the future. As depressing was the prospect of a sick horse so early in the game. Not that the chestnut’s looks had unduly alarmed her.

  ‘Is the horse bad?’ Troy asked uncertainly.

  The first duty of a manager is to reassure. Maggie did so. ‘I don’t think so. I’ll take a look at him later and I’ll phone the vet if necessary.’ She was still smarting at the implication that she would not be competent to decide.

  They were walking westward. It was an hour to sunset, the blood-red mackerel were flying above Strathyre and the house itself shone like a brazier. Beside it Wee House sheltered like a foal under its dam.

  ‘What’s “Rob” like?’ Maggie asked cautiously.

  ‘Crabby,’ Troy returned promptly. ‘So begin the way you mean to go on. I always do.’ It was said lightly, but there was no frivolity in her eyes. Suddenly they were light and hard like pieces of quartz. Strange eyes, very beautifully shaped but at that moment devoid of warmth. Maggie was hardly aware that she had shivered till Troy asked if she felt cold.

  ‘Not really. It’s just the sun going.’ She must not be over-imaginative. It came, no doubt, from being tired.

  Troy’s hands were in her trouser pockets, the flared waistcoat blew free. ‘Have you gone off Derek?’ she asked casually.

  It was a shock and it was impertinent. Maggie was old-fashioned about private affairs, but times had changed and in a way it was a compliment. At least Troy felt they could communicate.

  ‘Not that I know of,’ she answered lightly. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Love thy neighbour,’ Troy responded as lightly. ‘I like old Derek and he thinks so. It’s put him right off his oats.’

  ‘What has?’ Maggie stared.

  ‘You fancying Angus.’

  ‘M-me fancying...’ she couldn’t continue. Stillness added itself to the cold. A bird’s black silhouette showed against the fire-splurged sky. ‘You’re joking, of course?’

  ‘You tell me. All I know is, I rang Derek last night and offered to drive you up and that was the message. Cousin Angus was taking you and it was please keep off the grass for everyone else. Seemingly all hatchets were buried last week in Ireland and you’d given him rave notices. So what I want to know is—what have you got that I haven’t? A bear trap, perhaps, or an outsize jar of honey?’

  Maggie felt her head spin. Troy must be teasing. She couldn’t remember what she’d said to Derek about Angus MacAllan, but it was ludicrous that he should think... Wait! For a second her stomach turned over. Bad that Derek should think it, but if Troy let her tongue wag in this silly way before others—before Angus—he might think ... ‘How could Derek think that? It’s crazy!’ she asserted.

  ‘I’m glad.’ The strange eyes teased no longer. ‘It would never work out. You couldn’t stick him.’ As they reached Wee House she stopped. ‘Oh, about tonight. We didn’t decide, did we? You thought Angus might be upset.’ The words seemed to hover.

  It was true Maggie had thought that once, but since then more perilous risks had appeared. ‘No, you’re right, I’m sure. He won’t be if you explain.’

  ‘Troy’s coming to supper. Let’s see what we have to eat.’ Maggie, only too conscious that Kelly looked deadbeat, tried to enliven her. ‘You’re tired, sweet one, I know. Never mind. You can get to bed quite soon.’ The child had been on a seesaw since daybreak, in the depths on the flight to Edinburgh, heartwarmingly restored thanks to Angus MacAllan for the rest of the journey, but now, alas, once more sadly diminished.

  When Maggie tried to coax her into enthusiasm for the pony and Wee House it was plain she was too weary to respond.

  As a cook, Maggie was in the cordon bleu class, armchair division. It was a harmless addiction, specially recommended after hoof-picking, tail-brushing and mucking out. It made her feel a woman to read about soufflé omelettes bedded on nuts and banana, cannelloni stuffed with chicken, pears vinaigrette, roast duckling with pineapple sauce, peaches in brandy.

  Out of the armchair and generally rushing to her next lesson or ride out, it was a different story, and good hands, she had discovered, did not carry through to the paper frills without which apparently no well-dressed crown of lamb would be seen in public. Tonight mental agony gripped her as she opened the fridge. The boss was coming to dinner. Used to dressing from the collections, she would also be used to good food. Unfortunately without the knowhow on things like peppers (green, black or red), mace,-allspice or bay leaves, old uncle parmesan and all, it looked like soup, scrambled eggs, toast, sausages and tomatoes.

  Nice while it lasted—that dream of lying in the gold and black bath upstairs, slipping into a flared skirt, trying her hair perhaps in a Kate Greenaway style and going through that beautiful white door to a meal she had not had to prepare. But now she was awake and icy particles of truth were stinging her like hailstones.

  She had lost sight of the facts. Easily done since Angus MacAllan had been so cordial. But even Troy who was not one of his fans had allowed that his disguise was good when he was feeling mellow. The snatch of conversation between him and Graham in the car showed that the merger plan was developing well. She needed to get the sums right. A skim of mellowness, no more, had bought her lunch and shown her the colleges.

  How had she responded? She had felt so happy. Had it shown? If you dissected it, for instance...

  That purple bank on the road to Aberdeen and Angus’s dry look. ‘Actually you can get the same heather in Ireland, not so good, though.’ She had laughed and gone on laughing, and first he had looked surprised and then he had laughed too, quite uproariously. But could he have thought she was overdoing it? Same thing at the factory. The reference to showing her round it had been casual. She had taken it up so eagerly, jumped at it in fact. What had he thought?

  She knew the impression she had unwittingly given Derek. Could today, possibly, dreadfully, have sown the same thought in Angus MacAllan? Rich and a widower, he must often see this coming.

  Not any more, though, not from this quarter, not a whiff, not a shadow, not a speck. Troy had done her a good turn. Thank heaven for candour and plain speaking.

  She was lifting the last sausage when the phone rang. ‘Maggie, I’m furious!’ Troy said dramatically. ‘I can’t go. I’m being interned!’ Angus, it seemed, ‘thought they should have a talk’. ‘In a way I suppose he’s right,’ she lowered her voice. ‘I do generally run for cover. A little of dear cousin goes a long way.’

  Maggie tried not to think of the waste of effort, to say nothing of the can of soup she need not have opened and the pile of sausages she would not be able to eat. As relative and fellow shareholder, Angus MacAllan did deserve Troy’s time. He deserved it particularly on this occasion when at no notice at all he was having to put her up.

  ‘Sorry,’ Troy said again. ‘You know I mean that! Some other time, I hope.’ The telephone rattled gaily into its place.

  As it did so, Maggie realised that nothing had been said about herself, but then the invitation had been casual, no time had been mentioned, an
d, significantly, it had been given before Troy’s arrival. Now that she was there Angus MacAllan would not want an outsider and Maggie was certainly not prepared to risk a snub. It was not ten minutes since she’d taken that cool hard look at How Not To Give The Wrong Impression.

  ‘We’re going to eat an awful lot of sausages, darling,’ she told Kelly briskly.

  As a baby Kelly’s wakeful nights had caused many an argument between Tom and Sally, and the tragic happening when she was five years old had played havoc with her nerves. It had taken months of patience to build up a sense of security, but time, place and mountain air had all helped and, in the quaint loft bedroom at Fairley Hall, she had eventually slept peacefully. If she did chance to wake in the night and find Maggie’s bed empty, she would accept that her aunt had gone down the ladder like stairway to the horses underneath them.

  Maggie supposed it was asking too much of any small person on their first night in a strange house, but she tried anyway. The chestnut gelding was very much in her mind. ‘Would you mind, sweet one, if I slipped down to the stables to see how he is? I won’t be more than half an hour, I’m sure.’

  As she’d feared the face clouded. ‘When? I’ll come with you.’

  ‘You’re going to bed, love. This instant. You’re tired.’

  Kelly said no, twisting her hands at her sides. It was a dilemma, potentially feverish horse or exhausted child, and, truth to tell, supper had been quite a restorative. Kelly’s eyes no longer drooped and she had a faint colour. Perhaps rather than see her distressed they should both go down to the stables, now, at once, without waiting to wash up or unpack. Except that she must unearth jeans and anoraks. She could not work in the blue trouser suit in which she had travelled, still less could Kelly hang about loose-boxes in her new coat.

  It was a matter of minutes, albeit hurricane-like ones, to find what they needed in the cases, and Kelly’s brightening face as they set out was rewarding.

  Gloaming was a real magic time. The ball of dark hadn’t flattened out yet, it was still unwinding. The paddocks’ fading green was meshed in indigo, freak lockets of light gleamed up in places, the hedges were black fuzz. On the farmland across from Strathyre where they were burning the straw a line of copper flame coursed through the darkness. Angus MacAllan had a lot more land than Maggie had realised and it seemed to be all as free and open as God had made it.

  In Glencullen the horses had always pricked up for callers. Here, there was little reaction. Kelly, Maggie anticipated, would soon change all that. Each horse had a Scottish place name, the strong-quartered grey was Kincardine, the liver chestnut Braemar. A romantic name, but the bearer, alas, at this moment was anything but that. If he had not been running a temperature when Mac had last checked he was now, or else the years had taught her nothing. She laid a practised hand under his jaw. Yes, his pulse was fast, so was his breathing.

  ‘Poor boy,’ Maggie soothed. ‘Poor old boy. I thought you needed help, and you do.’

  Fortunately Mac’s medicine cupboard in the tack room was as orderly and well stocked as the store. She found the thermometer and took Braemar’s temperature. It was slightly over a hundred and one. Not too high, but it needed watching. She made a note of the reading, shook down the mercury and gave Kelly the thermometer to clean. It was an ill wind that blew no good and already the child was becoming involved.

  ‘Will you get the vet?’ she asked.

  ‘Not just now. Tomorrow maybe,’ Maggie replied. ‘Tonight we’ll just keep him warm and see how he goes. I don’t think he’s too bad. What about you talking to him while I find a rug?’

  All Maggie’s charges were talked to and seemed to thrive on it. Now as she located rug and bandages Kelly’s light tones murmuring away outside were a homely accompaniment.

  ‘Are you going to give him a drench?’ Kelly asked knowledgeably.

  Maggie would have liked to, but it was a job needing assistance. She was not sure enough at this stage of Braemar to attempt it alone.

  ‘I’ll hold him,’ Kelly offered. ‘I held Cream Cracker.’

  ‘Yes, darling, that was a bit different.’ Braemer was a tall horse, sixteen hands at a guess.

  ‘I could stand on something.’

  ‘No, love. Just talk to him,’ Maggie commanded.

  Rugging and bandaging did not take long, the patient throughout standing like a statue. He was a handsome animal with a race and snip into his left nostril. He could have had a drop of Arab blood, his lean face viewed from the side had a slightly concave line.

  ‘Poor old boy,’ Maggie comforted. ‘Now you’ll be warm at least. Tomorrow I’ll do a bit more.’

  Crabby as he might be, she had a hearty wish at this moment for Rob McIntyre. A purgative now rather than twelve hours hence might make all the difference to Braemar’s rate of recovery.

  Back in Wee House she hurried Kelly to bed. The visit to the stables had taken longer than expected and the supper dishes were lying there mutely reproachful. Sausage grease coated the red frying pan and it was a pity she had not put the egg pan to soak. In the sitting-room the two opened suitcases spewed out their contents precisely as she had left them.

  Oh, help! Maggie, though not exactly a stranger to happy chaos, had a qualm about it here. She felt almost as if Angus MacAllan were there looking over her shoulder. The feeling sent her scurrying into action.

  It was nearly ten when she hung the last clothes in Kelly’s built-in cupboard. Throughout the whole operation the child had slept soundly. Not even a pair of shoes dropping noisily from one of Maggie’s ‘lazy man’s’ loads had roused her. Tired out and for the moment at peace with her new lot, she would almost certainly sleep the clock round. In fact ... Maggie raised the curtain and stared thoughtfully through the darkness.

  But of course, she couldn’t. It was not like going downstairs. Look how long it had taken to walk. And what could she do when she got there? On her own—nothing. Except satisfy herself that the patient was no worse. If only she had transport. Troy, she thought suddenly. Troy owned Braemar after all and had been concerned about him. She also owned a car and by now Angus MacAllan had had several hours of her company, so it did not seem unreasonable to break in. Troy, anyway, would not find it so. There remained Kelly. Maggie had never taken a chance with Kelly and she could not do so now. A note of explanation in the large capitals seven years could read had to be written and propped beside the bed. This done, she crept downstairs, took her anorak from its peg and drew the door to almost noiselessly.

  The first setback was that the pale blue Mini was no longer in the drive, the second that Strathyre was in total darkness. Not a chink, not an edging limmed any of the windows, it could have been part of the earth like the braes and the dark beech trees rather than a place where people lived. Certainly it did not look like offering the help she needed.

  She could have knocked or rung, but she didn’t. Angus MacAllan had either taken Troy and Graham out for the evening or else he and Troy had gone out and Graham was in bed. Opinions differed on the age at which a child might safely be left alone; personally she was fussy, but Graham was older than Kelly and very mature. And just in case he was in there by himself, she could not risk startling him.

  She was turning away when her eye fell on the old bicycle. Pretty decrepit, but if it were rideable it would carry her a lot faster than tired legs. Investigation, however, proved ‘rideable’ a moot point. It moved and the tyres had air in them, but the saddle was loose and the brakes were only for show. Maggie didn’t think that mattered because she would meet no obstruction on the field path and so have no call to stop without warning. She whacked the saddle down to the horizontal, stood on a handy boulder and swung her leg across. No house should be without it—a mounting block, she thought, and wobbled off into the darkness.

  You couldn’t call it a comfortable ride. The smallest bump caused the saddle to waver and the pommel to thrust upwards. Thump it and it went flat, but you might follow suit. Twice Maggie nearly did
. After that she settled for a bad ride but a short one and went faster, perched uncomfortably on the rear end.

  It happened quickly. One minute she was pedalling along alone in the dark, the next there was a shape in front of her. She jammed on the brakes, but they were useless. The bicycle went on like a stone from a catapult. She should have called a warning, but fright had frozen her. Yards, feet, inches, brought the shape clearer.

  She saw the outline of a dark square-crowned head, heavy shoulders, and, in the second before she hit it, a tweed hacking jacket. She swerved unsuccessfully, the machine teetered and crashed. Next instant she was on her back in the roadway with handlebars on her legs and her head pillowed on something soft.

  ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ she gasped. ‘I couldn’t stop—’

  ‘That,’ said the voice beneath her, ‘is stating the obvious. Are you hurt?’

  Minor parts of her, an elbow, a knee, an ankle, were stinging painfully, but they were not worth mentioning. ‘No.’ To prove it she struggled to her feet. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’

  ‘Then please don’t try.’ He too had got up and was dusting himself down. ‘Just explain. Or do you usually travel at breakneck speed in pitch dark with neither lights nor brakes?’ It was too much. ‘Invariably,’ Maggie retorted. ‘When I have a child in bed in one place and a sick horse half a mile away.’

  ‘A sick horse? Since when? Troy said nothing.’

  ‘I purposely didn’t alarm her. Braemar has a touch of fever. Not too high, but I want another look at him.’ She had been rubbing her elbow. It did not go unnoticed.