The One and Only

by Doris E. Smith

  Kelly, on the other hand, was growing every day into the child she herself had been—high-spirited, reckless, gay. It was marvellous how well she and Graham got on, how little the years between them seemed to count.

  Next day, however, it was necessary to enforce this. Seven years was too small for a mountain trek. Graham was for giving in, Maggie was determined his treat should not be spoiled. She took Kelly aside and spoke: ‘It’s Graham’s birthday. We’re his guests. You had your fun this morning.’ The daughter of the house, Peggy, had taken them pony trekking and Kelly had evolved a game of make-believe into which Graham, good-natured as ever, had entered to the full. ‘Now he must have his.’ The owners of the chalets had offered to look after Kelly and Maggie was standing no nonsense, that was for sure.

  ‘You’ve changed, sweet one,’ she added more gently, because truth to tell it was heartening to have her niece standing up to her. ‘You never used to say boo to a goose.’

  ‘You’re not a goose,’ Kelly pointed out with a grin.

  ‘Pity,’ Maggie clipped. ‘Now do as I say.’

  After lunch Graham said importantly that they had better get the forecast. He pulled a face at the news that rain was expected before nightfall.

  ‘Doesn’t look much like it,’ he observed. The sky was blue and the air still clear and cold. ‘But I suppose you won’t want to get a ducking.’

  Maggie was well used to getting wet, but in any event she had no intention of being out till nightfall. It was about four miles over the moor to the root of the mountains and she was sure Graham would have reached his limit long before then. This suggestion, however, was disdained.

  ‘I think it’s fair to warn you I am a very good walker and I have been training.’

  Kelly accompanied them for the first quarter mile and at the point where they left the road and struck south-east across Balmoral Forest Graham solemnly piled stones on top of each other.

  ‘You can take yours off now,’ he told her kindly. ‘Maggie and I can’t till we come back.’

  ‘And mind you go straight home,’ Maggie, less romantically minded, added her quota. ‘Do as Peggy tells you and don’t walk in the middle of the road.

  ‘You’ve done her a lot of good,’ she commented as Graham fell into step. ‘She’s not nearly as shy as she used to be.’

  ‘I like her,’ he returned seriously. ‘She’s a good wee soul. And she’s awfully brave with horses.’

  He had not exaggerated his own powers of walking. Sturdy and strong-limbed, he set a good pace, first over scrubland and then over scree and heather. Ahead towered Lochnagar which ‘Dad’ had climbed. When ‘Dad’ was at university he had been a member of the rescue team and before that at school he had captained the mountaineering club.

  ‘And are you going to boarding school?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘Well...’ The mouth had a sudden shy twitch. ‘That depends. As a matter of fact I’m looking for someone to advise me.’

  ‘Care to put me on the short list?’ Maggie asked casually.

  It seemed the right approach. He beamed and launched willingly into the problem. When first discussed about a year ago he had not been keen on the prospect and it had been postponed.

  ‘And now you think you’d like it?’ Maggie prompted.

  ‘I think so,’ he said slowly. ‘And in a way it might suit Dad. You see, Bonnie Tweeds are giving him a seat on their board and that’s in Hawick. He said something about having some of the joint meetings in Edinburgh, but sometimes he will have to go to Hawick and it could be an awful drag farming me out all the time. On the other hand,’ he slackened speed and spoke frowningly, ‘it’s a big house for one person, so I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re afraid your father might be lonely?’

  ‘Hm.’ He nodded. ‘What do you think?’ Angus’s eyes, younger and guileless, looked back at her face from his son’s face.

  ‘I think,’ she said gently, ‘that your father would want you to think only of yourself. If he sees you happy, Graham, he’ll ask no more.’

  Graham stepped round a boulder to let her pass. ‘Of course neither solution is perfect. At our age we generally have to settle for something a little less.’

  Maggie coughed. ‘You did say our age?’

  ‘Well, give or take a year,’ he said graciously.

  ‘Thank you, kind sir. And what would make you perfectly happy?’

  He flushed. ‘Oh well, I... it’s just a silly thing.’

  She could have kicked herself for probing. Could have kicked herself too for not keeping a weather eye on the sky. It had clouded ominously.

  ‘I think we should turn back, Graham. I didn’t mean to come so far.’

  He had strode out so energetically that almost without noticing it they had come into the boulder field at the foot of Lochnagar. Still, the time was all right. She’d planned to turn back at four and it still wanted ten minutes to the hour. Not a bad effort. She smiled at Graham’s downbent head as he kneeled and built another small cairn. ‘Might come back with Dad in the morning,’ he said.

  Maggie thought it unlikely. She was sure it would be raining in the morning. The air was damp already and when Graham stood up there were wet patches on the knees of his yellow jeans. ‘Put up your hood,’ she bade him, ‘and let’s hope we don’t get caught.’

  She had forgotten how dramatically weather can change in the mountains. The last time she’d looked at the sky it had been reasonably clear, now as they turned to retrace their steps swathes of black clouds overhung each peak. A cool wind knifed into their faces. You couldn’t blame the weather men. They’d said ‘before nightfall’. She just wished they could have been more specific because she’d bet the rain they’d promised was not five minutes off.

  ‘I think this is the way,’ Graham said confidently, setting off.

  ‘Yes. Let’s see how fast we can go.’ Under the black sky the boulders stood up like tombstones. It was a thought she could have done without as she started down, plunging from foot to foot on the rain-streaked gravel.

  It seemed a long way to the moor. Going up she had hardly noticed the boulders. ‘Are we right?’ To proceed blindly was too risky. There had been many tragedies of climbers who had died not from injuries but from getting lost, and getting lost was ten times easier on the way down because you were tired and cold and the body could be losing its insulation.

  Graham, thank heaven, was quite composed. ‘I was just wondering that myself. We should maybe go back to my cairn and start again.’

  ‘Yes. Good idea,’ Maggie approved.

  Turning her back on the wind was a relief. It was getting up into gale force, whistling and hissing like running water. But so far the rain had not followed it No sooner had she thought this than something brushed her cheek and something else, felt but not seen in the poor light, landed on her nose.

  ‘Do you know something?’ Graham shouted. ‘It’s snowing!’

  ‘Just a shower,’ Maggie called back. Tt won’t last.’

  ‘I don’t know so much. You can get real white-outs in the Cairngorms. Lucky we’re not up there.’ He stood back to point and gave a sudden: ‘Ouch!’

  A hand as chill as the wind clutched Maggie’s heart. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’ve turned my ankle.’ Horrifyingly, he was standing on one leg, his face creased with pain. ‘The stone slipped. It’s all right, though, I’ll just hold it up for a minute.’

  It seemed a long minute, especially as the wind was carrying the snow, and the moment Maggie faced about it stung her eyes and she felt herself tasting it Graham did not panic but neither did he pretend.

  ‘A minute won’t do it I thought it would. You’d better not wait for me. I’ll follow.’

  That was out for a start She said so firmly and thought he seemed relieved. Heaven knows she knew the danger of sitting down without shelter in a snowstorm, but what else was there to do? It was still afternoon, there was still some light and with luck either the weather would clear
or Graham’s ankle recover.

  Half an hour later she had to face it. Neither hope was going to be fulfilled. Graham could put no weight on his right foot and in the blizzard both he and she looked like snowmen. Any sort of movement was a dicey business in half light, and yet she knew she must stimulate her body heat. Jump around, swing her arms, do anything to keep her cold wet outside from seeping into her blood and cooling it down. Graham terrified her because he could not do this and because his trousers were on the thin side and because a child’s body had not the same resistance to cold as an adult’s.

  ‘How are your fingers and toes?’ she asked sharply. ‘Are they tingling?’

  ‘A bit. But it’s all right. Someone will come looking. We’ve only got to wait.’

  ‘We’ve got to do a bit more than that.’ Fingers and toes were the first danger signals. From then you had something less than twenty-five minutes to get yourself to shelter. Bothy, tent, snow hole—she had none of these. She had literally nothing. It was a moment completely naked in its terror.

  But thank heaven she had at least a companion as coolheaded as the atmosphere.

  ‘It may be a little while yet,’ she said gingerly, ‘so I vote we find a place for ourselves before it gets dark.’

  Graham she had not over-estimated. ‘ “Somewhere a place for us”,’ he quipped gallantly.

  She made him crawl into a hollow beneath one of the boulders. She knew it hurt and he progressed only by inches. For all that he gave her enquiry a cheerful: ‘Okay.’ She found a hole herself and ducked into it.

  ‘Sometimes they send a chopper,’ Graham said.

  ‘They won’t send a chopper for us. We can’t be more than three miles from the road.’ She tried not to think that people had perished in snowdrifts much nearer home than that.

  ‘It’s my birthday in the morning,’ he observed. ‘Well, at least it’ll be one to remember.’

  ‘You don’t think at our age it’s time to start forgetting them?’

  ‘That’s what I like about you, Maggie,’ the small voice came heroically out of the darkness. ‘Your sense of humour. It’s very important in a tight corner. And I don’t know about you,’ the voice went on in its old deliberate way, ‘but my corner is definitely tight.’

  He might not have thought so much of her sense of humour, Maggie owned guiltily, if he could have seen her at that moment. But now she must make an effort—or rather a joke. The only thing she could think of was the complaint he himself had made to Angus that beautiful Sunday evening driving home from Glencoe. ‘I was just going to say that. You don’t give me a chance!’

  It was a long shot, but he remembered and chuckled approvingly. ‘It’s also very important to have a good unit.’ Maggie, not sure she could match this, said merely: ‘Indubitably.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t put that very well,’ Graham apologised. ‘I meant to say that we are an excellent example of a unit—Dad and Kelly and you and me. You see, we all get on with each other and yet we’re all a bit different, so that makes us interesting. Do you follow?’

  ‘I think you’re saying a very nice thing,’ Maggie faltered. ‘Well, it’s not up to me, of course,’ he returned. ‘But you did ask. I think—if you could—I would be perfectly happy with it.’

  She was tempted to sit down and cry, but she didn’t. Soon it would be dark, but there was still a glimmer. ‘Listen, Graham, at our age, we’re old enough not to panic. There’s no danger so long as we keep our heads. Let’s try something. I’m going to make one more attempt to get down. Will you stay here and sing?’

  ‘Sing?

  ‘Yes. All you’re good for. Loud as you can.’

  ‘All right, but take your time,’ he instructed.

  There was no option. Clambering over the snow-powdered boulders was slow and perilous. She had moments when for sheer fright she could not think straight. By contrast, Graham’s voice behind her rang out like a lark:

  It passed before her like a mirage, the red house like a poppy and the cairns on the hilltops raised by age-old hands. Graham was not old. His hands building the cairn had been young and small. ‘Maggie and I can’t take our stones off till we come back,’ he’d said.

  It could not be far now to the end of the boulder field. She slithered on, forcing herself to sing.

  ‘When the sun is gaen doon and the kye are at rest.’

  It was a frail lifeline, but she threw it out into the black snow as bravely she hoped as Graham was flinging his. She didn’t feel brave, she had no particular feelings left except that it would be good to sit down. The snow would be soft and quiet and Graham’s voice still singing on gallantly had an echo somewhere ahead of her.

  ‘Till the moon in the heath climbing higher and higher

  Bids us sleep on fresh brackens in bonnie Strathyre

  An echo? Impossible. Graham was still singing, but so far away it was just a thread of sound. The ‘echo’ in front of her was strong and deep. Another second and the truth glowed in. Her voice, cracking and untuneful, went ahead of her. Her feet followed, reckless with joy. And suddenly it was all over.

  An eskimo-like figure loomed out of the snow. Bonnie Strathyre snapped off in mid-air.

  ‘Maggie!’ Angus shouted.

  ‘Here!’

  He waded towards her, hands outstretched. ‘All right.’ He gripped her. ‘All right, take it easy.’

  She couldn’t, at least not yet. ‘Get Graham,’ she stuttered. ‘He’s up there. Listen to him. Oh, Angus, he’s been so brave!’

  The reed notes were still audible, travelling high on the wind. Graham might or might not have known that his mission was accomplished, but obviously he had no intention of quitting on the job. He was a very secure, a very courageous little boy. And now he finished with aplomb:

  ‘But I’ll aye herd my cattle and bigg my ain byre And I’ll love my ain Maggie in bonnie Strathyre’

  ‘There’s an offer for you,’ his father said cryptically, looking up. ‘Any takers?’

  Next morning, no amount of persuasion could keep Graham in bed, mainly because he fancied himself hobbling around on the alpenstock. ‘Good thing I thought to bring it,’ he said smugly.

  ‘You didn’t bring it where it would have been of use,’ Angus pointed out.

  All last night they had sparred lightheartedly about the rescue.

  ‘It should have been done properly,’ Graham had asserted. ‘They didn’t even send out the dogs.’

  ‘No, just one beast of burden.’ Angus had carried him for more than two miles. ‘They say everyone has a man on his back,’ he had observed philosophically. It was no mean feat even though by then the worst of the blizzard was over.

  It had blown up in true freakish fashion and caught him, just as unprepared as they, halfway across the moor.

  ‘You were looking for us?’ Maggie had asked.

  ‘I was coming to meet you. Kelly remembered where you’d built the cairn. She brought me to it. I think somebody ought to buy Kelly a drink!’

  Every second had helped the ordeal to recede, and this morning with bright sunshine outside and Graham excitedly opening his presents it was a different world. The other darkness, however, remained.

  Discounting yesterday’s drama-filled meeting, Maggie had not yet found herself alone with Angus. As soon as that happened, back would come the hurt she had inflicted last Monday and the bitterness he had flung at her on Friday. The blizzard had passed and they were still the same people, she the ungrateful girl who had thrown his good works in his face, he the man who had pitied her and appointed himself her mentor.

  No wonder her feelings were complicated. She was nothing to him—the situation Derek had outlined could not have been plainer or more logical—and yet she loved him. For all his brusqueness, arrogance and condescension, he was the man for her, the only one. Dear heaven, how truly he was named—Angus, ‘the one, the one and only’.

  For Kelly, of course, it had been love at first sight and this morning as usual she w
as hanging round Angus, deaf to all hints that she might give the owners a hand with the ponies.

  ‘Away with you, Kelly. You heard Mr. MacAllan,’ Maggie said sharply. She had been mortified to see a look pass from Angus to Graham. Suspicions were confirmed when the latter rose with exaggerated difficulty from his chair.

  ‘If you’ll just hand me my stick, Kelly, I’ll take you to see a fox and two wild cats.’

  Kelly, though dubious, could not be proof against this. ‘Where?’

  ‘Och now, that’s my secret,’ Graham returned.

  ‘Should he be walking with that ankle?’ Maggie queried. If looking could bring the children back to the chalet her eyes would have done it. They were riveted to the two departing backs.

  Angus’s eyes, for their part, were riveted to her. ‘He isn’t, he’s walking with my stick. What’s more, he’s not coming back till I’ve had a chance to talk to you. Why are we being so formal, by the way? Why have I turned into Mr. MacAllan?’

  ‘I want Kelly to learn respect.’

  ‘Fiddlesticks! You’ve made enough mistakes over Kelly in the past, don’t add to them.’

  ‘Do you mind?’ Maggie retorted angrily.

  ‘Very much. That wee bairn and I were friends from the moment we saw each other. In spite of you!’ She started, but was given no chance to speak. ‘Don’t trouble to deny it,’ she was told. ‘It’s obvious you’re not anxious for my company, but some things must be said and listened to. So sit down, please, there’s no charge.’