Call of Glengarron

by Nancy Buckingham

  That faint elusive smile still lingered on his face as he looked up suddenly and met my eyes.

  “I haven’t made it a bit clear, have I? But there it is. I only know that I could always imagine living with Margo again, despite everything. After all, I had loved her once. Something must still have been there, deep down.”

  I had nothing to say to that. All at once I felt terribly young, acutely conscious of my raw innocence. Craig was talking about things I couldn’t understand. His next words were utterly unexpected.

  “Do you know, Lucy—you are very like Margo.”

  My cheeks flushing hotly, I spluttered, “I should hardly think that’s a compliment—the way you’ve been talking about her.”

  “No, I meant like her to look at. And that is a compliment. Margo was a very beautiful woman.”

  Distantly, the dinner gong was booming again—the second summons.

  “We’d better go down,” I said hastily.

  Craig made no move. It was as if he hadn’t heard me.

  “Lucy, this is difficult for me to say....”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve not told anybody else about stopping off in London between planes on ... on that night. It’s much better left alone. I think we both want to avoid any more muckraking.”

  I thought of Lambert Nairn. He knew Craig had visited Margo. But Lambert Nairn had his own good reason for keeping silent.

  Cautiously, I said, “Are you sure nobody else could have seen you?”

  He shook his head. “I took the precaution of phoning Margo before I went there.” He flushed slightly, biting his lower lip. “You see, I thought if by chance she had anybody with her, I’d give him ... give them an opportunity to clear out before I arrived at the flat.”

  What a good thing, I thought, that Craig had phoned, and so avoided finding Lambert Nairn with Margo. Or was it? Maybe if the two men had come face to face, Margo’s tragic death would not have occurred. That was something I should never know.

  “Why did you go to see Margo?”

  He looked surprised that I should ask. “As I said, I never entirely gave up hope that we could come together again. I went to plead with her. Not just for my own sake, but for Jamie’s too. He was growing up—he needed to have a father around.”

  “But Margo wouldn’t listen?”

  “No,” he said huskily, “she wouldn’t listen. But let’s not discuss what Margo said to me. Let’s try to forget that she and I ever met that night.”

  I was only too ready to agree. “You can be sure that I will never mention it.”

  Swiftly Craig reached out and took my hand in his. We stood close, facing one another. Then abruptly he swung around and led me across the room.

  “Are you ready to go down to dinner?”

  “Yes, I was on my way when I saw you.”

  Craig opened the door, and with my hand still in his we walked out into the corridor.

  A silent figure stood at the head of the staircase, watching us.

  Alistair Lennox.

  This time it was not a mirror image. I was looking directly at him. He smiled quickly, waved a vague hand, and went on downstairs ahead of us.

  Chapter 8

  The next morning I decided to take another walk. I felt I had to go out, because it was the only way I could see of separating myself from Jamie. As long as I was around the castle, the little boy tended to keep close by me. On the other hand he’d apparently been happy enough out with Craig and Fiona the previous day. Given time, given a bit of understanding, I was confident now that the final break would be fairly painless—for Jamie.

  As I finished breakfast I announced in a general sort of way that I planned to go walking.

  To my surprise Craig said at once, “I’ll come with you, Lucy.”

  “Thank you,” I said quietly, “but I guess it would be best if I went alone.” I nodded toward Jamie as I spoke, hoping that Craig would get the message.

  Luckily he caught on. “Yes ... yes, of course. Which way are you going?”

  I hadn’t really thought about it, except that I was determined to keep well away from Lambert Nairn’s land. I didn’t want another encounter with him.

  Fiona had already left the table. She was- sitting in the window seat, idly flicking through a copy of the Scottish Field. She looked up sharply. “You’re taking me to Fort William this morning, Craig.”

  The words were tossed across the room with a feather lightness. I doubted if Craig could see what I could see—the underlying iron determination.

  He swung toward Fiona, surprised. “Oh, is it today you wanted to go?”

  “But I told you,” she snapped, irritated.

  “Sorry, Fiona. I thought you just meant sometime in the next few days. Still, it’s perfectly okay. As it happens I’m free this morning.”

  Her ironic eyebrows arched upward. “How very fortunate.”

  Jamie was making rather a sticky mess of a boiled egg, too absorbed to listen to the adult conversation. I knew he hadn’t heard me say I was going out. Feeling a bit of a heel, I made my escape and ran upstairs to get changed.

  The inner hall looked deserted when I came down again. But at the foot of the stairs I suddenly spotted Isabel Lennox standing quietly in a doorway. Obviously she’d been waiting for me to appear. She beckoned me over.

  “Could I have a word with you please, Lucy dear?” For her, the sentence was clear and explicit.

  “Yes, of course, Mrs. Lennox.”

  “Will you come in here for a moment?”

  The room was casually furnished, even a bit shabby. Near the window, in the clear light, a large tapestry was stretched on a frame. In the subtly soft browns and greens of a Scottish landscape, merging with muted red and tenuous blue, it was a scene of Highland soldiers in battle.

  Isabel Lennox saw my look of interest. “I am repairing it. A little hobby of mine.”

  “How fascinating.” I went closer, bending to admire the fine stitching. “It’s terribly clever of you.”

  She fluttered a little. “Oh, not really ... it’s just a matter of— It makes something to ...”

  I realized that this was her retreat from a life that brought no happiness. The magnificence of the castle, the round of social engagements, the lavish dinner parties—all these meant nothing to Isabel Lennox—nothing but anxiety. She preferred to shut herself away in this small homely room, quietly working on her tapestry. I felt a sudden rush of pity for her.

  Craig’s aunt motioned me to sit down. I took a seat beside the fire, and she sat opposite me, her thin angularity uneasy in the well-sprung armchair.

  “We all of us want you to know how grateful we are, how extremely grateful.”

  I had never before heard her speaking so fluently. Clearly she had screwed herself up to say something important.

  I waited, and she went on: “I mean, you have been so very kind and patient with little Jamie.”

  “I’m very fond of him.”

  “Yes, my dear—I can see that. But after all, you have your own life to consider.”

  “If I could,” I told him earnestly, “I would gladly have Jamie. Don’t think for a moment that I want to part with him.”

  “We realize that, but his place is with his father. I know you understand.”

  I was puzzled, and beginning to get a bit annoyed. Was Isabel Lennox hinting that I was being obstructive?

  “Of course I understand that,” I said stiffly. “And I’ve been doing everything possible these last few days to lessen Jamie’s dependence on me. It’s at your request that I’m staying here longer than originally planned.”

  “And I feel rather badly about that now. It was selfish of us to expect you to jeopardize your whole career just to make things easier for us.”

  “Jeopardize?” I exclaimed. “It’s hardly like that, Mrs. Lennox. As I told you, my boss understands the circumstances, and is sympathetic.”

  “All the same,” she said with a firm finality that was comp
letely out of character. “All the same, we cannot presume upon your kindness any further.”

  I stared at her. Then I asked bluntly, “Do you mean you want me to go?”

  Isabel Lennox jerked up her hands, taking shelter behind them from the crudity of my words. “Of course we don’t want... Please try ...”

  I rose to my feet. “When would you like me to leave?”

  She jumped up too, and came and put her thin fingers on my arm.

  “You’re making it very difficult for me, my dear.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said with cold sarcasm.

  “We don’t want to rush you, of course,” she went on. “You are very welcome here.”

  I cut in impatiently: “I don’t know the details of the flights back to London. Perhaps you will let me know.”

  “There is an afternoon plane,” she rushed in eagerly. “At ten past five from Inverness. You could leave after lunch….”

  “Today?”

  She looked quite shocked. “No, I didn’t mean ...” She took breath, and added ingenuously, “Besides, you couldn’t go today—there are no seats vacant.”

  Without another word I turned and walked out of the room.

  It was fortunate I’d planned a solitary walk. I needed to be alone for a while to give me a chance to calm down. To be asked to stay on at Glengarron, and then to be unceremoniously kicked out. There wasn’t even to be a decent dignity about my departure. I was being put on the first available plane back to London.

  Steaming with fury, I stalked across the causeway and took the first track I found heading up into the forest-clad hills.

  A soft breeze blew against my cheeks, and there was the cool sweet scent of pines. I was glad of the vast remoteness which quickly engulfed me. Maybe it would help me to get my own insignificant problems into perspective.

  The track was steep, but my anger and hurt pride goaded me into keeping up a brisk pace. Even so I was forced to slow down after a while, and the very act of slowing eased the pressure on my mind.

  Was I making too much of that scene with Mrs. Lennox? Her whole attitude had been so untypical. Had she perhaps spoken with such clumsy directness only out of a sort of consideration for me?

  Maybe the family was embarrassed about taking advantage of my being here as a kind of unpaid governess for Jamie. And so they darn well should be.

  Who would look after him when I had gone away? Mrs. Lennox herself lived too much in her own quiet dream world, while Fiona was not at all the sort to cope with a child. I suspected she only showed interest in Jamie to impress Craig.

  That left the servants. There was Duncan’s wife, who from the little I’d seen of her appeared to be fond of the boy. But she was fully occupied with her job as housekeeper and cook. As for the two or three maids, these girls only came in for a few hours during the day.

  The family would surely be forced to employ someone specially for Jamie. And they might not find it all that easy to get a woman willing to work and live in such an isolated place. I wondered if Isabel Lennox, in her abstracted, unworldly way, had overlooked the fact that a five-year-old boy needs quite a lot of attention.

  There was no point agonizing over all this, I told myself. Jamie was no longer my responsibility, however much he claimed my love. If I was asked to leave the castle, I had no option but to go.

  With a sense of bitter resignation, I decided to make the most of my last day here.

  My instinct was to spend every precious minute with Jamie. But that was just what I must not do. No sad farewells.

  As far as possible I would spend the day alone, giving myself up to the strange wild beauty of this highland country. Maybe its magic would do something to heal the slashing wound in my heart.

  Ahead of me there was nothing but the rising ground, thickly coated with pines. But I had only to swing around for the most superb and ever-spreading view. Glengarron Castle down there at the head of the blue-green loch grew smaller each time I turned. Loch Ghorm itself, seen end-on from this angle, stretched away like a pointing finger until it was lost in a delicate lilac veil.

  How I wished I could draw such a veil across my searing thoughts.

  Since my talk with Craig, I had been made to face a new and ugly picture of Margo. All these years I had kept my cousin firmly in place on a pedestal. Now, all at once, my idol had come tumbling down, shattering into a thousand brittle fragments. Could the pieces ever be put together again? Had Margo really been just a beautiful shell, empty of warmth and understanding and tenderness?

  Sadly, I acknowledged that the Margo of my dreams had gone forever—and I felt sorry for myself. Now I was being denied even my memories.

  I would be alone in the world. Apart from Jamie, my only relative was Margo’s father, my Uncle Arthur. And his main objective had always been to isolate himself from family contacts and obligations.

  There were my friends, of course. And Mike Randall. Mike was a dear—but he wasn’t family. He couldn’t give me the roots I needed.

  The sun came up higher. It was really quite hot for April. The damp earth steamed gently, so that I was walking into a lazily drifting white haze.

  Faintly at first, growing louder as I drew nearer, I could hear a man’s voice, singing. It was a fine clear baritone. I recognized the song –“My love is like a red, red rose....”

  I reached a point where the forest track crossed another. The ground was churned into sticky mud where tractors had swung around, and I had to pick my way carefully to avoid getting a shoeful. I was so engrossed that I didn’t notice the singer approaching me until he spoke.

  “Good day to you, Miss Calvert.” It was the foreman forester.

  I smiled at him, standing balanced on a dryish patch.

  “Hello, Mr. MacRae.”

  “You are out on your own, miss, are you then?”

  “Yes, I thought I’d enjoy a walk. It’s so lovely today.”

  “Aye—a grand morning.”

  In his rubber boots he plunged through the slush indifferently, and held out his hand to me.

  “Allow me to assist you. There, just step this way, and you will be clear of the mud.”

  I put my foot where he said, gave a little hop, and I was on dry ground again.

  “Thank you.”

  He saw my glance down at the hatchet he was carrying. “For marking the trees,” he explained. “For thinning, you understand.”

  His voice was incredibly gentle for so big a man—the soft lilting voice of a born and bred Highlander.

  “And how is the laddie?” he inquired. “Little Jamie?”

  “Oh, he’s fine.”

  “How fortunate he is to be having you to care for him, losing his poor mother as he did.”

  “Well,” I began carefully, “I think I have been able to help him get settled in at the castle. But I’m returning to London tomorrow.”

  He raised his bushy eyebrows in surprise. “You are going away so soon?”

  “I have to get back to my job.”

  “Mr. Craig will not be pleased about that.” Angus MacRae shook his head with slow deliberation. “No, he will not be pleased.”

  I said stonily, “I imagine he’ll be glad to have his son to himself.”

  “That is not the impression I have been receiving from Mr. Craig.”

  The suggestion behind his words was unmistakable. Seeing my astonishment, MacRae added with a smile: “Since he was just a wee laddie himself, I have known Mr. Craig.”

  I flushed and tried to hide my confusion with a swift change of subject. “I expect you are pleased to see Mr. McKinross back home.”

  MacRae nodded. “Indeed I am, miss. All the workers at Glengarron are glad to see him back. The pity is that he will not be staying here.”

  “Not be staying? Has he definitely decided to go away, then?”

  The reply was emphatic. “Mr. Craig wouldna settle at Glengarron, miss—not while Mr. Lennox is here.”

  “Oh yes, of course....” Craig
had explained to me how he felt about that, but I’d rather expected things to be different now.

  MacRae went on in his softly musical voice: “The young master has a deep sense of obligation to Mr. Lennox, you understand.”

  “I know. He told me how splendidly his aunt and uncle stepped in when his father died.”

  “Aye.” The intelligent gray eyes were solemn now, remembering. “And he’ll never be forgetting the way Mr. Lennox kept on searching when everybody else was ready to give up.”

  “Searching?”

  “Aye. Searching for the master—Mr. Craig’s father, that is. It certainly wasna the fault of Mr. Lennox that they found him too late.”

  “I see. I didn’t know about that. As a matter of fact I didn’t know any of the details—only that Mr. McKinross’s father was dead.”

  “It was a great tragedy, miss. He had some sort of fall on the lower slopes of Ben Liath ....” He made a sweeping gesture to where the mountains lay. “A fine man for the forestry, he was. Always making the rounds. It was the blizzard that caused his death, you see. The poor master lay there unconscious in the snow. There was no serious injury. He died as a result of the exposure.”

  “How horrible.”

  “Young Master Craig was just twelve years of age at that time. Old enough to understand, you see, but without the strength of a man. It was Mr. Lennox who led the searchers. ‘I’ll not give up until my brother-in-law is found,’ he said. For three days and nights he didn’t spare himself. In all that time he scarcely slept an hour.” MacRae shook his head sadly. “We have never had a snowfall like it, before or since. It was the worst in my whole experience.”

  Now I could understand why Craig had been so vehement about not taking the estate from his uncle’s control. Craig owed Mr. Lennox too much.

  Surely Margo could have seen the justice of that, too?

  But whatever Craig’s feelings about his uncle in the past, the circumstances were different now that Margo was dead. Craig had to consider what was best for Jamie. Wouldn’t he want his son to grow up here at Glengarron with the security of the family home as some compensation for the loss of his mother?