Ross heard the catch in her throat. An audible click of sorrow.
‘Followed by his name, of course, in that careful flourish,’ she said.
He thought of Alastair penning those two words. An abdication of duty. He wouldn’t have expected that of his brother. ‘And your father, what does he think of this?’
‘He understands the difficulties,’ answered Darcey cautiously.
‘You could return home.’
‘Yes, that is an option.’
‘Then why are you still here?’
‘You are direct, aren’t you?’
Ross realised he was making this meeting very difficult for her. Somehow he couldn’t bring himself to be kinder, gentler. He was being intolerant of her, of the situation, of his family and yet it felt right to claim that ground. It was a position he could defend.
‘The doctor’s report said Alastair had injuries to his legs and arms. That he’d been buried alive in a bombardment. I assumed that was what he was apologising for in his note. The wounds he’d sustained. And I’d seen enough amputees in London to presume the worst. Your brother wasn’t the kind of man to be a burden to anyone, Ross, and trauma affects people in many ways. Then he disappeared. The details were so unclear as to what happened. I thought perhaps there was a mix-up with identification, but if there wasn’t and Alastair did simply leave the hospital without proper medical attention then his chances of survival were slight. But I still hoped. I knew that if he was found the AIF would send him back home,’ Darcey explained, ‘so I took a position as a nurse’s aide on a returning troopship and came to Adelaide to wait for your brother. I’m still here because your grandmother asked me to stay and, if I’m honest, very little waits for me in England. My father is no longer alone. He has taken in lodgers. A widow and her two children.’
‘So you stayed because you had nothing better,’ said Ross.
‘I remained here after I lost hope, Ross, because Alastair said if anything ever happened you would help me.’
Ross leant back in the chair. Every ounce of him wanted to accuse Darcey of seeking sympathy, of hoping to gain favour by concocting a fanciful lie. Instead he recognised the candour in her voice. He didn’t doubt that Alastair would have said those very words. Ross would have done the same in his place. ‘Did you tell my parents what Alastair said?’
‘No,’ she admitted.
It was something only between them, this sharing of Alastair’s request. Darcey waited. And Ross made her wait. It was as if Alastair was standing in the room with them. Surely his brother hadn’t expected him to marry her.
‘Well, there is very little I can do that my parents haven’t done already, Darcey. And as for this expectation of marriage, we don’t know each other,’ said Ross. The woman seated before him belonged to another time and place. To another man. And she still wore his brother’s ring. ‘I think this whole thing is absurd.’
Darcey observed him from the middle of the sofa. Her fingers began smoothing the material of her skirt across a knee. They were like two playthings tossed into the air by fate. The wind buffeting them back and forth until the breeze stilled and they landed with a thud. Ross waited for a response, half-expecting her to voice similar thoughts. Then he realised with renewed clarity that Darcey really was desperate. She’d elected to travel out to Australia before the war’s end to wait for her fiancé when he’d already disappeared. The trip itself was extremely risky. The vessel could have been attacked. Why would a woman do that? Was it for love or for money?
Ross’s thoughts gathered speed. It was not inconceivable that it may have been in the back of Darcey’s mind that if Alastair didn’t return from France there was another brother at home. A brother who’d spent years on a property in the middle of nowhere, safe from harm. He imagined the woman was very used to the comforts provided by his family. And although it was unlikely they would send Darcey back to England, at this stage a marriage offered security, a permanent connection to the Grant name and money. He circled the sofa. ‘Why do you think my brother loved you? If he did indeed feel that way. I don’t want to offend, but you were put together in rather odd circumstances.’
There was a tilt to her chin as she followed his movements. ‘As we are now.’
‘Can you answer me?’
‘Why? Am I so lacking in attributes that you must dig for reasons?’ She twisted the ring on her finger. ‘Would you like to go out?’ she offered. ‘It’s very warm inside. We could sit under the camphor laurel tree. Alastair said that you and he –’
‘No,’ he replied curtly. How could she even presume to know anything about his relationship with his brother? ‘Do you want this to happen? To marry me? Someone you don’t know? For that’s what my parents expect.’ When he frowned his injured eye stung. Ross moved closer. ‘I’m sure my father would ensure you were financially secure. You could go back to England.’
‘Ross, if you don’t want me, say so, but this is not about money,’ she interrupted. ‘Your family have been very kind to me and I was led to believe that a marriage between us would help ease the pain caused by the last few years.’
‘Pain for some, embarrassment for others,’ said Ross.
Her eyelids fluttered but she didn’t lower her gaze. Ross wondered what she was really thinking as she sat there offering herself to him. She was so precise in the way she spoke. So assured and yet brittle. He’d not been brought up to be discourteous to anyone, least of all a woman, yet here he was thinking of the very worst things that he could say to her. Anything to discourage her, so that it was she who made the decision to step away.
‘Your grandmother said that war can do terrible things to a man,’ said Darcey. ‘Things that we could never understand. That it can change a person. I’ve seen that at St Thomas’. I understand what she means. I could never blame Alastair for what’s happened.’
‘I hate war,’ said Ross. ‘Wars have uncertain endings.’
‘How would you know?’ countered Darcey.
She cut him as surely as if she’d wielded a knife. ‘I’ve lost a brother, Darcey, and I’m here today because of a war and the mess it’s created. I think I know what wars can do.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘This was a ridiculous idea. I shouldn’t have agreed to come here,’ said Ross.
‘As I said before, Ross, if you don’t want me, say so. But I will not be the one to throw away this, this –’
‘Opportunity?’
‘That was unkind. You’re unkind. You’re nothing like Alastair.’
Ross laughed. ‘Now you speak the truth.’
From a table Darcey retrieved a cardboard box. ‘Your brother asked me to post this, but I kept thinking it would be safer to give it to you personally. Now I know it may as well have been thrown into the ocean on my journey here. It won’t mean anything to you. The only person you really care about is yourself.’ She dropped the parcel on the sofa and marched angrily from the room.
Chapter 11
Ross shook the gift curiously and contemplated what Alastair might have wanted him to have. He worried that if he opened the parcel he would be reminded of lost youth and brotherly adventures. And he wasn’t sure he could cope with returning to that place of grief after so many months of doggedly crawling from it. So he left the parcel untouched, staring at it as he rolled up his shirtsleeves.
He already missed the endless nothingness of Gleneagle. The long days of work, the pre-dawn starts and early evenings. The remoteness of living there. Being back in Adelaide only reminded him of how removed he now was from this world. He looked again at the parcel, knowing it had to be opened. Inside were layers of fine paper, within which was a piece of carefully folded rough cloth. It was old, stained and tattered. The colours were barely recognisable.
‘Ross?’
He could keep the door closed to anyone but his grandmother. Reluctantly, Ross let her in. ‘Hello, Grams. Have you come to give me a talking to? If so, it won’t
help.’
‘Locked yourself in, eh? You used to do that when you were young.’ She held a decanter of whisky in one hand and leant on a duck-headed walking stick. ‘Get some glasses from the sideboard.’
Ross returned with the tumblers as she sat on the sofa, waving irritably at him to sit down. His grandmother seemed to have taken on the proportions of Great-Aunt Fiona. She was stunted by the curve in her shoulders, something he’d not noticed at Gleneagle, and her face had adopted a squareness of jaw that bagged around the edges. She thumped the decanter on the table. ‘Pour.’
They skolled the whisky together. Ross helped himself to another. This time he poured a good four fingers’ worth into the whisky glass. The liquid was still burning when it hit his stomach.
‘So, I gather she’s not to your liking.’ She ran a finger around the rim of the empty glass. ‘I’ll admit Darcey is no great beauty but she’s not plain either. She’s pretty enough.’
‘Grams, this isn’t about what she looks like,’ Ross protested.
‘We women aren’t silly enough to think looks dinnae count. They’re what attracts a man in the first place. It’s having the skill to keep him, that’s where you separate the sheep from the lambs. Darcey’s older.’ She wagged a finger. ‘And intelligent enough to make a good wife. No bad thing for a young buck. You, on the other hand, look worn out. What would you have us think, arriving home unkempt and filthy? And you’ve been in a fight by the looks of that bruise. Look at you. Sitting here in a state of undress. Half your shirt buttons undone. You’ll be lucky if Darcey wants you at all, and then where will we be?’
‘Saved,’ he muttered.
She cupped a hand around an ear. ‘What’s that?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Take another,’ commanded his grandmother.
Ross scowled and poured a splash into the glass, wishing he’d eaten something. He handed her the box.
The old woman turned the container over before lifting the lid. ‘So, she gave it to you. Darcey brought that over from England. Your brother visited the Clan Grant lands and that piece of tartan was given to him by one of the lairds who swore it’d come down from Culloden itself.’
Culloden. A battle fought on boggy ground that ended in disaster. ‘It couldn’t have survived that long,’ said Ross, studying the cloth with renewed interest.
‘Could it not?’ asked his grandmother. ‘It was a very bad day for the Highlanders. A poorly chosen site,’ she tutted. ‘The road to Inverness had to be defended.’
‘Grams, you’ll upset yourself.’
‘Upset myself? I was born distressed. Unsettled. And why not? Look where I ended up.’
‘I thought you liked Adelaide?’
‘What’s there to like? There are more churches than people and everything makes a clamour these days. I didnae mind the place twenty years ago. It was more like the capital of a small principality with parks and gardens and its little court society. Yes, I liked it then, before the time of conspicuous industrialism.’ She leant on the cane, shuffling forwards on the seat. ‘I might rant at you, Ross, but I know why you cleared off. It wasn’t because you felt unjustly treated. It’s in us, this need for air and space. It’s in our blood.’ She raised her glass. ‘Stand fast, stand sure.’
‘Stand fast, stand sure,’ repeated Ross, lifting his own.
‘The pattern is one I’ve not seen.’ His grandmother held the cloth close to her eyes. ‘But then clans didnae all wear the same setts and colours back then. The colours people wore came from the area where they lived.’
‘You honestly believe …’ Ross took the tartan from her.
‘Darcey seems certain because your brother was.’
‘Grams, Alastair was a dreamer,’ said Ross.
‘And that’s no bad thing. Sometimes I do it myself. I’m always dreaming for another day. My husband, your dear grandfather, used to comment in his youth that he’d be pleased to reach seventy, but when you get there, you always want more.’
Ross held the cloth. A remnant from antiquity. Maybe it was the whisky or the long journey and lack of food, for the briefest of moments he found himself wanting to believe as well.
‘A Scot whose ancestors fought at Culloden could hardly not be stirred by that piece of cloth. Alastair recognised its significance enough to pass it on to you for safekeeping. That’s what allows me to sleep at night, knowing that your brother wasn’t completely disinterested in our heritage or our family. That piece of tartan is proof of that,’ said his grandmother. ‘It is evidence of a bond that can never be broken even in death. Alastair was your only brother. Darcey was to be his wife. Go and speak to her, Ross. Both you and this family need an honourable conclusion to move forwards.’
‘I can’t.’ He placed the material back in the box. ‘She still wears Alastair’s ring and, anyway, I don’t want to marry her.’
‘It’s my ring. Take it off and put your own on her. You have to do this. You’ve been absent from this family for too many years. You must step up, lad. You know this, otherwise you wouldn’t have come back.’
‘I came home for you, Grams,’ he found himself admitting.
‘Rubbish. You came for fear of being cut off. It’s a hard thing for a grandmother to say but sometimes a person has to die to make space for another. Your twin William is dead. Alastair is undoubtedly gone. You and I both know that this is your time. That’s why you returned.’
‘And if I don’t marry Darcey?’
‘No one can make you do the right thing, Ross. Only you can do that.’ She got carefully to her feet, brushing away his offer of assistance. At each piece of furniture in the room she stopped, tapping at the item with her stick and pointing out the object’s history as if she were discussing the pedigree of a relative. At the writing desk she revealed it once belonged to her grandmother and was carted from Edinburgh by ship to the colony of New South Wales with her family.
‘I’m amazed it wasn’t damaged by the final journey to Adelaide.’ She returned to the sofa and sat down, hands resting on the brass-headed duck. ‘I’d never disown you, Ross, for I’ve lost too many grandsons already, but I would ensure that your inheritance goes to one of your cousins. Someone who deserved and appreciated all that being a Grant entails. Other than that, you will always be welcome to visit,’ she finished with a sweet smile.
‘Father would never allow it,’ Ross countered furiously.
‘He’s my son,’ she answered fiercely. ‘Try me.’
Ross broke from her stare. He knew his grandmother. The house and land may have passed to his father on his grandfather’s death, but Connor was right. Bridget Grant exerted her influence across everything. She was the matriarch, the true head of the family.
‘Well?’ She was waiting for an answer.
Ross had never once requested money from the moment he’d left home. So why did he want it now? Because it was to be given away to another? He stared at the scrap of tartan in the box, thinking of the legacy woven into the pattern. The people, the sheep, the vegetable dyes. The women who used their own urine to set the pigments. The singing of waulking songs as they beat the cloth to soften it. At that moment he hated Alastair. They’d won. His grandmother’s satisfied expression said it all. But there was still one card left to play. ‘I’ll do it, but only on my terms.’
His grandmother’s face crinkled in annoyance. She wasn’t expecting this. She’d assumed he would forget any notion of travel and take up his place in Adelaide as a married man.
‘I still go north,’ he said. The rest of his life depended on his grandmother’s agreement to this final phrase: ‘For as long as I like.’
There was no more bartering to be had and they both knew it.
‘Very well,’ the old woman muttered. The stick struck the floor loudly. ‘Done.’
Chapter 12
Waiting until morning may have been more polite, however Ross knew his limitations. One night spent pondering his fate would have had him on his horse before da
ylight. Instead, he went directly upstairs. He stopped outside the large bedroom that had been the focal point for all manner of family milestones. It was here that his mother and father had spent their wedding night. Later, the same room had played host to his mother when she spent months recovering from the trauma of his birth. It was the same bedroom where his grandfather was laid out, a stream of visitors trailing down the hall and staircase to pay their respects. This was also the room of escape. The place where he and Alastair came, climbing out the window to the eucalypt and down to freedom. It was a room of special occasions, tragedy and, as of today, farce.
Pushing open the door he strode through the mauve-wallpapered sitting area and into the bedroom. Darcey was laying on a chaise lounge in the corner, her back to the room. Her shoes were discarded on the floor.
She sat up abruptly. ‘Ross.’
Her blouse was partially undone, revealing a chemise and her hair was loose. Ross spun around so that he couldn’t see her, realising the rudeness of arriving unannounced. She clutched at the edges of the material, a mirror reflecting her movements as she hurried to dress. She caught him watching.
‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ stammered Darcey. ‘Could you wait outside?’
In the adjoining room there were books on every surface, hat-boxes stacked neatly in a corner and on the writing desk letters tied with a ribbon. In one of the drawers there would be saved mail from his brother. He was sure of it. Once he would have liked to have seen their correspondence, to learn the truth of their relationship. Now he wanted no detail of that past life. In a corner of the room a suitcase sat open on the floor, with a pile of clothes in a heap beside it.
‘You wanted to see me?’ Darcey’s voice was thick with formality.
Her clothes were righted but her hair remained loose. It made her appear younger, less severe. Ross could tell she’d been crying. He wouldn’t have anticipated that. She’d been so forthright earlier, so confident.
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