The Things We Said Today

by Lise McClendon

  Now, with Merle on his arm, looking delicious in a green-and-blue print dress and bright yellow shoes, her hair up off her neck (he loved her neck) he felt the sensation again. How could he keep her close? He had to figure this out.

  Merle steered them over to the autre Français, Bruno, who chatted with Elise. The youngest Bennett sister was flushed — from wine? — and bumped Bruno with her shoulder coquettishly. Ah. So that’s how it is.

  “Bonsoir,” Pascal said as Merle went to get them wine. Bruno mumbled something. He wasn’t a friendly sort, or the type of man Pascal trusted, to be honest. Being a policeman made one suspicious but still, he was not impressed with this Bruno.

  “So. You live in Paris then?” Pascal asked him.

  “Mais oui. Un appartement in the Sixième, near the Seine. Very small but I love it.” Bruno sneered, or smiled perhaps. To say one had any sort of abode in the Sixth Arrondissement of Paris, around Saint Germain-des-Prés, the priciest area of the city, was not the sort of thing one led with in polite company. No doubt it was a huge 19th-Century flat with a parquet floors, fireplaces, and a view of the river. He was informing Pascal that he was rich, had inherited a company, a title, or a country estate. That he was an elite. A not-so-subtle game of la surenchère, of one-upmanship, was afoot.

  “Et vous, d’Onscon?”

  Pascal took note of the use of his surname. They weren’t to be friends. “I work in Paris at times. But mostly in the south of France.”

  The short man nodded, unimpressed. He was quite Napoleonesque. Even his hair, combed forward like an emperor— but what was that color? It had been bleached but the roots were dark. Pascal supposed it was fashionable. It gave Bruno the aura of having recently been in disguise. Wasn’t he too old for a punk hairstyle? Pascal examined his face for wrinkles and found few.

  Elise spoke up: “Pascal is a policeman, Bruno. For the National Police. So be good.” She nudged him again.

  “Ah, but I am always good, chérie,” he purred, patting her backside in a familiar way. She giggled. Pascal thought he might be sick. He must warn Elise about Bruno. But what could he say, he didn’t even know the man’s full name.

  “Pardon. My throat is parched,” Pascal said, walking away to find Merle. She was talking to the young caretaker who was pouring wine tonight.

  “It’s all so lovely,” Merle was saying. “We’re so grateful to have use of the house for Annie’s wedding.”

  “It’s our pleasure to have you here,” Jinty replied, sounding anything but pleased. Then she looked up at some newcomers at the door, her face alight.

  An elegant middle-aged couple had arrived, dressed more formally than any of the Americans, the man in a dark suit, white shirt, and navy tie, the woman, a stunner with long black hair and flashing blue eyes, wore a sleek gray dress and high heels.

  “Who is that?” Merle whispered. Pascal shrugged as they watched the couple greet Callum warmly, both hugging him. He introduced them to Annie then turned to the group.

  “Everyone?” The party paused. Elise stopped whispering in Bruno’s ear. Callum said, “I want you all to meet my brother, Hugh, and his lovely wife, Davina.”

  The Bennett sisters gathered to greet the brother and his wife. Pascal shook their hands and went back to his wine. Callum’s brother had streaks of gray in his dark hair. He was stiff but that might just be Scotland. There was something about the wife though, she seemed unusually nervous. Maybe shy, he mused, until it came out in conversation that she had been a model as a teenager (no surprise) and now owned a fashionable shop for women in Edinburgh. Hugh was in finance like Callum. Doing well by the cut of his suit.

  The lady, Mrs. Logan, flitted in to say hello. Annie was talking to the wife now, with Merle. Jinty delivered glasses of wine to Hugh and Davina, smiling eagerly. Definitely a preference there. People were so transparent. The liars, the cheats, the ones with something to hide: the world was full of them. And in this room? Flirtations. Nothing too serious. Unless you counted that goujat, Bruno. What was the term in English? Bounder? Cad?

  Then it was time for dinner. A sparkling candelabra, white-serviette, five-course affair of the old sort. The Bennett sisters did their best to keep things lively. Mrs. Logan beamed at the crowd from the place of honor. The lamb was agréable au goût — quite palatable. Callum brought around a bottle of whisky, something called Talisker, smoky with pepper notes. Intense, complicated, with a strong aftertaste, like two families mingling.

  Pascal pulled Merle’s hand into his lap and looked at the smiling women around the table, his heart full of their joy.

  With the whisky, he somehow survived.

  6

  The kitchen was warm and moist, clattering with china and silver, the extra staff bumping awkwardly into each other at the sink, as the remains of dinner were cleared. Jinty had performed the serving of the dishes herself as there was no footman or maid these days. The lack of staff would have shocked the original owner, Old McRoberts whose portrait complete with stiff collar and mutton chops hung in the library. That was a different time. Jinty had begged Mrs. Logan for a girl from the village for the week, for all the extra work, but of course that was deemed wasteful and unnecessary. They would make do.

  Killian, the chauffeur, had his hands deep in suds, washing plates. The cook, Mrs. MacKeegan, sat on a stool in a corner, exhausted. Five courses was at least two too many for the old lady. She wasn’t entirely well, Jinty thought, watching her wilt.

  The housekeeper, a newcomer like Jinty, was talking a mile a minute to anyone who would listen. Vanora Petrie was from the village, a bit rough around the edges. Mrs. Logan must have been desperate for help, or, more likely, unwilling to pay for a professional. Vanora confessed her last job was pulling the tap at Carnagan’s, a workingman’s pub. The woman, in her late 50s with a taste for drink herself, had cleaned up decent and knew her way around a dust rag if she felt like it. Rumor was she’d been fired as a cleaner at the Hydro. Would she last the summer? Doubtful. Wait until she had to strip all the beds and wash all the linen.

  Vanora was drying plates as they came from Killian’s suds. Who knew a chauffeur could double as scullery maid? It made Jinty smile, watching him from behind, swinging cutlery. She could almost imagine him in their own kitchen, working side by side. The only staff missing in the kitchen was Gunni. He had set the table though then eaten alone in great gulps before he disappeared back to his beloved sheep. Mrs. MacKeegan said he wasn’t fit for society anyway.

  “Did you hear about the big blow comin’?” Vanora was saying, eyes wide with excitement. “Maybe tomorrow, they said on the Beeb.”

  Killian stopped washing and stared at her. “Radio Scotland, ya yob,” Vanora said, swatting him with her cloth. “What? Ya never listen?”

  “Some wind then?” Jinty said, hoping to distract them.

  “Big wind, the fella said, in crazy circles. The kind they call — what do they call ‘em?”

  “Hurricanes?” Mrs. MacKeegan said helpfully.

  Killian muttered, “No hurricanes come to Scotland.”

  “Aye but they do,” Vanora declared. “They have a different name, that’s all, innit.”

  “Stop yer flap and take ol’ Craiggie his supper,” the cook said. The former caretaker, eighty-two at last count, lived in a stone cottage near the barn, his reward for fifty years of service. That and the wee Highland pony that Mrs. Logan’s father had given him. Gad, he loved that horse.

  Vanora protested. “I’ll not be dryin’ then— ”

  “A weather bomb?” Jinty said, the term coming to her at last. “Is that what you mean, Vanora?”

  “That’s it,” she replied, triumphant. “Yon weather bomb, rain and wind and huge waves. Coming through tomorrow or the next.”

  Jinty felt a flash of anxiety. “Radio Scotland, you say?”

  Killian turned his handsome gaze on Jinty and she flushed. He growled: “Not this time o’ year. The old stick’s in a guddle again. Weather like that comes in
winter. Christmas and the like, not in Maytime.”

  Vanora put her hands on her hips and ignored the plate of food covered with tin foil that Cook was handing across. “I heard it meself, I sweer. I ain’t makin’ it up.” She threw down the dishcloth, took the plate in a huff, and waddled out into the gloaming of last light.

  “Do you have a radio set, Mrs. MacKeegan?” Jinty had a smart new mobile but the service was so poor in the valley it was worthless.

  “She’s a gype, eh? Forget it, Jinty.” Killian glared at her before turning back to the sink.

  She was stunned for a moment by his speaking her name. He knew her name! Cook was telling her to stop by her room, that she had a wee radio. Mrs. MacKeegan worked for the Logans in Edinburgh, then for the widow after the old man passed. Jinty wondered if Cook liked Mrs. Logan enough to be yanked to the countryside every summer, working with an unruly collection of newbies each time, taking orders from that grand and annoying lady. It would be enough to make anyone tired.

  Jinty tried to focus. She must know about the storm. Mrs. Logan and the others would be distracted by lace and flowers.

  When the kitchen was cleaned and the tumblers removed from the drawing room, Jinty slipped outside to the women’s quarters in the back of the house, leaving the last guests on their own. Mrs. Logan wasn’t around and Hugh, the older master, had left hours before. She’d lost track of Callum. She couldn’t have three masters this week; it wasn’t fair. Besides there was weather to monitor.

  Mrs. MacKeegan was in her baggy nightgown, her eyes heavy with fatigue. She handed over an ancient pocket radio at her door and went to bed. In her room Jinty plugged it in, fiddling with the dial. The speaker was crap, scratchy and tinny. Then suddenly the voice of a male presenter came through, clear as a bell in his Oxbridge manliness.

  “Keeping you updated on all the latest weather here at Radio Scotland. Calm and clear this evening from the Borders to the Highlands. Showers over the Outer Islands after midnight. Coming up, we’re watching a large storm gathering in the North Atlantic, three hundred miles north of Ireland now and headed east. Warm ocean temperatures this year have fed this unusual late storm phenomenon, a swirling mix of wind and rain. Much like a hurricane but of course our northern storms are not particularly tropical. It’s moving rather fast at the moment and is not expected to reach the coast of Scotland from the West as these ‘weather bombs’ often do. Looks like no cause for immediate concern. We’ll be keeping an eye on it. No flood or tide warnings are in place at this time.”

  Jinty relaxed back on her bed, pulling off her shoes and throwing them across the room with a thud. Once again Vanora was just a crazy — what did Killian call her? — a gype. A fool. She’d got it wrong again, the drunken cow.

  Jinty reached over to flip off the radio, smug now, as the presenter continued: “The weather models are however a bit strange this year. Blame it on El Nino or what you will. There is a chance of the storm gathering strength north of Britain, bumping off the coast of Norway, then swinging back down to hit us from the Northeast. A slim chance, very rare indeed. But one we’re keeping our eye on for you. Stay tuned to Radio Scotland as this progresses. We’ll have all the latest for you.”

  Jinty pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. No. The weather must be fine for the wedding, for the parties leading up, for the keeping the mud out. All they needed this week was a rainstorm to muck things up.

  Jumping from bed she scanned the sky: clear and calm, as the weatherman said. Nothing to worry about. A few raindrops, not uncommon, only a daily thing.

  She cupped her hands against the glass. Someone was walking out there in the dark, headed for the pasture beyond the stables. Probably Gunni, roaming about, looking for a woolly to shag.

  No need to worry about the guests. No need to worry at all.

  * * *

  Annie announced she was beat, going to bed early, and slipped away from the gathering by the fire in the drawing room. She was tired but that wasn’t all of it. She was actually beyond fatigue into a sort of numb state where your thoughts jumble and your fingertips tingle. Her rhythms were off, as were everyone’s. Even Callum said he was feeling the jet lag although it didn’t show as he talked animatedly to Hugh and Davina.

  Annie just wanted to be alone. To walk under the stars for a moment. To think, to decompress. The staff was still in the kitchen, talking and washing up, as she stepped past them toward the rear door. She’d scoped it out earlier, knowing she’d need an escape plan, a way out of this old house and all its memories that weren’t part of her. It was hard to believe this all real, all happening— to her.

  That surreal feeling, a dislocated-ness, that she’d felt in the car hadn’t abated. At the ripe old age of fifty-five: a full-on fancy white-dress wedding. If someone had told her two years ago that she’d be a bride any time before her dotage, she’d have laughed in their face. Even last summer she couldn’t imagine it, even after he asked her. Even after he made such a case for the two of them, together.

  Nope. Didn’t seem possible.

  But here she was. Pinching herself at regular intervals.

  To be clear: she was in sound mind when she said ‘yes.’ Callum was smart, funny, kind, sexy, and excellent in bed. Much better than she was, heading into her golden years.

  She’d always been so zen, living in the moment. Don’t worry about the future, it will take care of herself. But now she’d couldn’t think of anything else. In five years she’d be sixty. She was so much older than Callum. She remembered the Beatles when they were together, she remembered Ziggy Stardust and the end of Nixon. She remembered a different America than the one Callum knew, a simpler life without laptops and smart phones and the constant go-go-go, one he couldn’t imagine.

  He said it didn’t matter, that the two of them together, that mattered. That their pasts were moot, they would make new memories. He was right of course.

  And yet. There was that moment last week with her assistant administrator in the environmental law firm where she worked, the laughs they spontaneously shared, the strong connection. She would miss him, miss working there. There was a man at the airport who caught her eye. Men shouldn’t be catching her eye on her way to her wedding. He somehow looked just her type, graying hair, rugged tan, frayed jeans, fringed jacket; he even wore beads. Callum would never dress like that, even when he got old. And what about when she broke her hip or her hair fell out or she up and died on him? What then?

  And what if he changed his mind and wanted children? It was unfair to the child to adopt at 60, wasn’t it? She wasn’t that type of woman. She was no saint, no Earth Mother, as much as she loved the planet.

  Looking around back at this amazing house, the lights shining through diamond panes set into thick stone walls, casting yellow streaks across manicured lawns, it occurred to her that she hardly knew Callum. He’d never taken her here, his ancestral home, never even described it. He’d spent summers here as a boy that must have been wild and free. It bored him and he despised it, he claimed, but that must have just been a line to keep its grandeur a secret. How could he possibly despise it? It was magical, full of stories and scents. The fabulous manor. The freaking bluebells and heather. Green rolling hills and comical fat sheep. He wanted to come back at bluebell time, to be married among the brilliant flowers. That meant he had a deep emotional connection, didn’t it?

  Annie walked carefully in the near blackness. Only a fading glow over the western mountains lit the way. Overhead the stars were dim, the moon absent. She tried to remember where the bluebells started. How far was that? Would she fall in a ditch and hit her head? She reached a stone wall, carefully crafted without mortar, tumbling in places. She picked up a fallen stone, rolled it in her hands, and replaced it on top of the wall.

  She tried to imagine Callum playing here with his brother Hugh, going fishing in the river with his father. When had his father died? Why didn’t she know the details about his father? She didn’t even know his name.
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  She smelled the clean Highland air, let it fill her lungs. The scent of pine and something sweet hung in the breeze. Was this place to be part of her? Well, why the hell not? Just because you lived in a crummy walk-up in Pittsburgh and didn’t own anything besides a second-hand car and an old television didn’t mean you couldn’t be part of something more, something bigger. But was that why she was marrying Callum? To claim part of bonny Scotland for herself? To inherit a country house in the Highlands?

  That was a repugnant thought. She wasn’t the ‘owner’ type. Things, houses, didn’t matter to her. People, causes, the big blue sky, the Earth mattered. And she loved Callum. She was being silly, afraid of herself, of her passion for him. This was where Callum was from, but it wasn’t him.

  This incredible place was just a bonus. They would come once a year, at bluebell time, and reconnect. Otherwise they’d live their Manhattan life. She’d abandon her ratty sofa, pack up her vinyl, and move into the city. If she hated his high-rise apartment— and she already did— she’d find something more her speed. Something warm and comfortable, without chrome, with a little patch of garden. He would let her. Of course he would. He loved her. She knew that as much as she knew her own hands, wrinkled and spotted and soft.

  She let out a deep breath and watched the stars come out. A meteor streaked across the sky, a shooting star. She made a wish. It would work out. It would all be done in five days.

  Five freaking days.

  7

  Wednesday

  The mist along the road swirled and lifted as the wind picked up in the morning gray. Even Scottish mist was thick with stories, more than damp, a little bit magical. Merle took Pascal’s hand, glad they had decided to forgo the communal breakfast and walk into the village for the fitting. She was eager to see her parents who’d arrived late yesterday with Rick and Stasia. And of course their two kids, Willow and Oliver, out of school for a week. Merle wished Tristan had come but he was serious about his grades, looking forward to college with a sharp eye. And who was she to argue with that? He was so like her: practical, a bit obsessive, and driven.