by Betty Neels
If Mrs Macdonald was disappointed at this wishy-washy statement she didn’t say so. ‘It is nice to know that your uncle is in competent hands. He’s not a consultant?’
‘No, no. He has a practice in Oban.’
‘Of course, he can call in someone from Edinburgh or Glasgow if he needs a second opinion.’
‘Well, yes, only there was no need because Professor Cameron was already there, and he’s a consultant.’ Rosie frowned. ‘Though I don’t know what of.’
‘Ah, well,’ said her mother. ‘I dare say we shall hear how your uncle does.’
Sooner than they had expected, as it turned out.
Rosie had been back at her desk, neatly typing Mr Crabbe senior’s dry-as-dust letters when Mr Crabbe junior called her on the intercom.
‘There is a telephone call for you, Miss Macdonald. As you know, we do not allow private calls in that office, but it seems that this one is urgent. It will be switched through to your office.’
He always referred to the cubby-hole where she worked as an office.
She thanked him while half a dozen dire possibilities left her with a dry mouth. She lifted the receiver, and Professor Cameron’s voice said, ‘Ah, good morning, Rosie.’
‘It’s you!’ she exclaimed. ‘I thought something awful had happened at home.’ She let out the breath she had been holding. ‘How did you know that I was here? Is Grandmother ill? But you wouldn’t know that, would you? Dr MacLeod would have phoned—’
‘Stop nattering. I’m a busy man, and presumably you’re doing whatever it is you do. Your uncle died early this morning.’
‘Oh—oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t like him, but all the same I’m sorry.’
‘He had been unconscious for several hours. His solicitor and Dr Douglas will be in touch with your father. Goodbye, Rosie.’
He had rung off before she could thank him.
When she got home that evening her father told her that he had had a telephone call from Dr Douglas. ‘It seems that there is no one on his side of the family—only those in Canada. I shall have to go to the funeral. They will let me know when it is to be. I’ll go up by train, and stay with your grandmother.’
There was a letter from the solicitor in the morning, too, suggesting that Mr Macdonald might wish to attend the funeral on what was now the following day, so Rosie drove her father to the station and saw him off, and then went back to the office to spend the morning in the dimly lighted basement looking for documents for old Mr Crabbe while she wondered if by any chance her father might meet Professor Cameron. She pulled out a bundle of old papers covered in dust, and sneezed. It was most unlikely.
Her father telephoned that evening, merely to say that he had arrived safely, and was at her grandmother’s house. The funeral was the next day, and Aunt Carrie and her fiancé were going to drive him to Oban.
‘Your granny isn’t going to like that,’ observed her mother as she put the phone down. ‘I’m so very glad that Carrie is going to get married.’
She started down the flagstone passage to the kitchen. ‘I’ll start the supper, love, if you’ll lay the table. Your father will be back in two days’ time—the house is empty without him, isn’t it?’
Her father phoned again the following evening to tell them that he would be home the next day.
‘He sounded tired,’ observed his wife, who had taken the call. ‘Well, I suppose it was tiredness—as though something had happened…’
‘I dare say he is tired,’ said Rosie comfortingly. ‘It’s quite a journey to Edinburgh, and then driving to Oban and back today. I hope he’ll rest on Sunday before he goes back to work. Did he say what time he would get here?’
‘No—and I quite forgot to ask him. We’ll have a casserole, then it won’t matter, will it? Will you be able to get home a bit earlier?’
Rosie said yes, of course, Mr Twitchett had kept her during her lunch-hour that day; she would point that out to him in the morning, and leave as soon after her lunch-break as she could.
Mr Twitchett wasn’t best pleased, but he was forced to admit that she had missed half an hour of her lunch hour, and since it was an urgent family matter he had no choice but to allow her to go home during the early afternoon. There had been no message from her father, she and her mother had tea, put the casserole in the oven, and Rosie occupied herself in making a treacle tart.
A rather watery sun shone into the kitchen, touching lightly on Hobb, her father’s labrador, who had come with them from Inverard, and now that he was elderly led a leisurely life, sleeping a great deal and keeping the family cat company before the Aga. The sun also rested on Rosie as she stood at the kitchen table making her pastry, and it showed up the worn paintwork and shabby chairs. All the same, the kitchen was a pleasant room with bright curtains and the vase of early roses she had picked from the New Dawn climber outside the front door. Mrs Macdonald switched on the radio for the six o’clock news, and neither of them heard the car stop outside the house.
It was Rosie who heard the rumble of voices first.
‘That’s Father!’ she cried. ‘And there’s someone with him.’ Her mother had got up to open the door just as her father came in, and, right behind him, Sir Fergus Cameron.
Rosie, the tart on its plate held in one hand while she neatened its edge with a knife, put them both down carefully, very conscious of her pinny and floury hands. She looked vaguely at her father embracing her mother, and allowed her astonished gaze to dwell on Professor Cameron. After a moment she said ‘Hello’ in an enquiring voice.
By then her father was introducing him to her mother, and it was a few moments before the guest said, ‘Hello, Rosie! I had to come this way—it was pleasant to have your father’s company.’
‘You’re a long way from home,’ she commented, and blushed at the silliness of the remark.
‘Home is where the heart is,’ he told her gravely, and turned to make a civil answer to her mother’s offer of a bed for the night.
‘I’m expected at Bristol,’ he told her.
‘Then at least do stay for supper,’ urged Mrs Macdonald. ‘A casserole, and Rosie has made a treacle tart. You must be hungry?’
He smiled. ‘I am, and I would be delighted to have supper with you.’
Mrs Macdonald beamed at him. ‘Oh, splendid. Go along the pair of you, and have a drink while we get it on the table.’
When they had gone she said, ‘Put that tart in the oven, love, it should be just about ready to eat by the time they’ve had a drink and we’ve had the casserole. What a nice young man.’
Rosie put the tart in the oven and said nothing. Sir Fergus was indeed a long way from home, and what on earth had he meant about home being where the heart was? His home was in Scotland. She took off her pinny, and went away to tidy herself, and presently joined the others in the pleasant, rather shabby sitting-room.
Her father gave her a glass of sherry and, her mother observed, ‘It’s a long drive from Edinburgh…’
It was really a question.
‘We left early this morning, there wasn’t much traffic, and I enjoy driving.’ Sir Fergus didn’t sound in the least tired, and he didn’t look it, either. He looked perfectly at home, thought Rosie, peeping at him when he wasn’t looking.
‘I am most grateful,’ said her father quietly. ‘It was a pleasant journey, and far less tiresome than that long train ride. I had a great deal to think about, and the time to do it.’ He looked at his wife. ‘I have a g
reat deal to tell you, my dear…’
‘I’ll go and see to the supper,’ offered Rosie, and very much to her surprise Sir Fergus got up too.
‘I’m sure there is something I can do to help you,’ he said smoothly, and her father said,
‘Oh, Fergus, be so good as to tell Rosie my news while you’re dishing up—you will excuse us if we have just a few minutes to talk?’
So it’s Fergus, is it? thought Rosie, leading the way to the kitchen. And what is this news?
She said, ‘Sit down, do. We’re going to eat here because it’s warm, and we weren’t expecting guests…’ She turned swiftly. ‘I’m sorry, that sounded rude, but I didn’t mean it to be. Only perhaps you don’t eat in the kitchen, being a professor; if we had known that you were coming we would have used the dining-room.’
‘I like kitchens.’ He sat down on the edge of the table. ‘Something smells delicious.’
‘Beef casserole, dumplings and mashed potatoes.’ She took the saucepan off the sink, drained it, and began to beat the contents with a fork.
‘Quite the little housewife,’ murmured the professor. ‘Well, not so little.’
Rosie added a generous knob of butter, and went on beating, looking annoyed.
‘That doesn’t mean to say you’re large,’ he went on equably. ‘In fact, you appear to me to be just right…’
She shot in some milk and plied her fork. ‘Stop annoying me, Sir Fergus. What news?’
‘Your uncle has left Inverard to your father. He left a good deal of money besides. Most of it goes to distant relations in Canada, but there is sufficient for your father to run the place and return to sheep-farming.’
She had abandoned the potatoes. ‘Is that really true?’ And then, at the look on his face, added, ‘Oh, sorry, no one ever doubts your word; it’s just that I’m a bit overcome.’
‘Naturally. It may interest you to know that your uncle altered his will after he had seen you.’
She echoed him in a bemused fashion. ‘Seen me? After he had seen me?’
‘You sound like a parrot. There is a delicious smell of toasted treacle.’
‘My tart!’ Rosie flung open the Aga oven door, snatched out the tart, and put it on the table. It was exactly right, the pastry pale brown and flaky and the treacle bubbling. The fragrance of it caused Sir Fergus’s patrician nose to flare with pleasure.
He asked, ‘Are you glad?’
‘Glad? I’m dumbfounded—over the moon. Wouldn’t you be, in my shoes?’
‘Indeed I would. You will no longer need to pound a typewriter, will you? But you must have some friends here whom you will miss?’
He was watching her, sleepy-eyed.
‘Well, of course I have some friends; we have been here for six years. There’s Brenda up at the big house; we play tennis and go shopping and that kind of thing, and there’s Will—we go fishing sometimes…’
‘Will?’ prompted the professor gently.
‘He’s a nice boy, waiting to go up to Oxford…’
‘So you have no regrets at leaving?’ He spoke casually.
‘None—oh, I’ve been happy here, but I long to be back at Inverard.’
She smiled widely at him. ‘I can’t quite believe it, you know.’ She put the saucepan with the potatoes in it back on the Aga to keep warm, and asked, ‘Are you very hungry?’ She added, ‘There’s such a lot of you, isn’t there?’
‘Er—yes, I’m afraid so.’
Mrs Macdonald came into the kitchen followed by her husband, and the professor got up from the table, saying easily, ‘It is really very good of you, Mrs Macdonald, to invite me to supper.’
‘A small return for bringing my husband home, Sir Fergus!’
She beamed at him, and Rosie said quietly to her father, ‘I’m still trying to believe it’s true, Father. Can we go soon?’
‘Just as soon as there is someone to take over from me, my darling. Fergus, you’ll have a glass of beer with your supper? Something smells good.’
Supper was a cheerful meal, the talk naturally enough centred round Scotland—the Highlands and Inverard in particular—and Rosie was surprised to discover that Sir Fergus, without pushing himself forward in any way, became, as it were, integrated into the conversation. It seemed that he knew several old friends of her parents, had an excellent knowledge of the country round Oban and Fort William, and at the same time betrayed a sound knowledge of Edinburgh.
And yet, she thought uneasily, he had told them nothing about himself. That he had some kind of consultant position at the Royal Infirmary seemed obvious, on the other hand he seemed to have a good deal of free time. He had been on holiday, hadn’t he, when they had met? And now he had said that he was going to Bristol. For how long? she wondered. He had told her that he hoped to marry; perhaps the girl lived there. She wondered where they had met; Bristol and Edinburgh were very far apart…
‘Rosie, dear.’
Her mother’s voice broke into her thoughts.
‘Will you help me take the coffee into the sitting-room?’
And Rosie looked up to find the professor’s eyes on her.
He looked amused, and she flushed a little, aware that she had allowed her thoughts to stray—about him, too.
She became all at once very brisk, serving the coffee, and carrying on a laboured conversation with the professor, who, for his part, replied to her stilted comments with suitable gravity and enjoyed himself enormously.
He got up to go presently, assuring them that he hoped they might meet again when they returned to their home in Scotland. ‘You can reach me at the Royal Infirmary,’ he told them, ‘and perhaps I shall be able to return your hospitality, Mrs Macdonald?’
‘Oh, I do hope so.’ Mrs Macdonald tiptoed to kiss his cheek, and said, ‘You were so kind to my mother-in-law, and I’m sure Rosie was delighted to have some young company.’
‘I’m flattered,’ he murmured, and held out a hand to Rosie, who shook it with her eyes fixed on his tie, and mumbled awkwardly.
Bother the man, she thought. Making me feel a fool!
After he had gone they sat up until late discussing a suddenly delightful future. They wouldn’t be able to go at once, of course; her father reckoned that it would be at least a month before he could leave his job. There would be the furniture to sell, for they had taken only their personal possessions when they had left Inverard, but the house went with his job, which would simplify their move.
‘It is early days for planning, but perhaps it would be a good idea if your mother and I took Hobb and Simpkins, the china and glass and so forth and as many clothes as we can pack in, and you, Rosie, go by train with the rest of the luggage. Could you manage that?’
‘Yes, of course. You’ll leave a day ahead of me—you’ll have to spend a night on the way. Will you go to Granny’s first?’
‘I think not—we can cross over at Carlisle, and go straight up from there. Could you manage to change trains at Waverley Station? I could meet you at Crianlarich.’
‘I can’t wait!’ declared Mrs Macdonald happily. ‘Did you say everything looks the same, dear?’
‘As far as I could see. Mrs MacFee and Old Robert certainly haven’t changed.’
‘To meet old friends again…’ She sighed with pleasure. ‘Of course, we shall have to have this Dr Douglas now he’s taken over the practice. He sounds very nice.’ She looked at Rosie. ‘You’ll have a chance to meet some young people, darling.’
Wh
ich remark Rosie rightly translated as having a chance to see more of Dr Douglas, single and most suitable. He was, as her mother had said, a nice man, which made it all the more strange that Sir Fergus’s austere visage should superimpose itself upon the younger man’s pleasant features.
On Monday she begged an interview with old Mr Crabbe, and gave him her notice. He was no more than a figure-head in the firm now; his son and young Mr Twitchett conducted the business with the aid of computers, word processors and every modern gadget which might enable them to take on more work. He sat in his backwater of an office, surrounded by deed boxes and stacks of papers and shelves of law books, and Rosie, who liked him, felt sorry to be leaving him, although she was glad enough to turn her back on her typewriter. She thought happily of Inverard and the life she would lead there. She would take over the kitchen garden once more, and the hens, and help Flora around the house, and there would be time to knit; she was a skilled knitter, and like many girls and women in the Highlands had spent the long winter evenings making the traditional sweaters. She had had no trouble in selling them to shops in Fort William and Oban, and they were always in demand, especially by tourists.
It had seemed to her at first that the month before they could return to her old home would be far too long, but the days were filled with packing, giving farewell dinners to the friends they had made and, once she had left her job, the task of helping her father hand over the considerable bookwork to his successor.
The last day came, and she saw her mother and father off early in the morning with Hobb and Simpkins cocooned in the most precious of the family possessions, and the boot stuffed to capacity. She waved until they were out of sight, and then went into the house. She wouldn’t be leaving until the next day, and there was a good deal to do before then. The house must be left clean and tidy for the new tenants, and there were the last of the cases to finish packing. Two big trunks had been sent on in advance, but there were always last-minute things which she would have to take with her. The day went quickly, she had no time to be lonely; she cooked supper and went to bed early, and was up at first light to eat a hasty breakfast, cast an eye over the house for the last time, and then get into the taxi to take her to the station.
