Smouldering Fire
Page 34
Katherine’s Marriage (1965, aka The Marriage of Katherine)
The House on the Cliff (1966)
Sarah Morris Remembers (1967)
Sarah’s Cottage (1968)
Gerald and Elizabeth (1969)
House of the Deer (1970)
Portrait of Saskia (collection of early writings, published 2011)
Found in the Attic (collection of early writings, published 2013)
* see Explanatory Notes
Explanatory Notes
MRS. TIM
Mrs. Tim of the Regiment, the first appearance of Mrs. Tim in the literary world, was published by Jonathan Cape in 1932. That edition, however, contained only the first half of the book currently available from Bloomsbury under the same title. The second half was originally published, as Golden Days, by Herbert Jenkins in 1934. Together, those two books contain Mrs. Tim’s diaries for the first six months of the same year.
Subsequently, D.E. Stevenson regained the rights to the two books, and her new publisher, Collins, reissued them in the U.K. as a single volume under the title Mrs. Tim (1941), reprinted several times as late as 1992. In the U.S., however, the combined book appeared as Mrs. Tim of the Regiment, and has generally retained that title, though a 1973 reprint used the title Mrs. Tim Christie. Adding to the confusion, large print and audiobook editions of Golden Days have also appeared in recent years.
Fortunately no such title confusions exist with the subsequent Mrs. Tim titles—Mrs. Tim Carries On (1941), Mrs. Tim Gets a Job (1947), and Mrs. Tim Flies Home (1952)—and Dean Street Press is delighted to make these long-out-of-print volumes of the series available again, along with two more of Stevenson’s most loved novels, Smouldering Fire (1935) and Spring Magic (1942).
SMOULDERING FIRE
Smouldering Fire was first published in the U.K. in 1935 and in the U.S. in 1938. Until now, those were the only complete editions of the book. All later reprints, both hardcover and paperback, have been heavily abridged, with entire chapters as well as occasional passages throughout the novel cut from the text. For our new edition, Dean Street Press has followed the text of the first U.K. edition, and we are proud to be producing the first complete, unabridged edition of Smouldering Fire in eighty years.
FURROWED MIDDLEBROW
FM1. A Footman for the Peacock (1940) ... RACHEL FERGUSON
FM2. Evenfield (1942) ... RACHEL FERGUSON
FM3. A Harp in Lowndes Square (1936) ... RACHEL FERGUSON
FM4. A Chelsea Concerto (1959) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM5. The Dancing Bear (1954) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM6. A House on the Rhine (1955) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM7. Thalia (1957) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM8. The Fledgeling (1958) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM9. Bewildering Cares (1940) ... WINIFRED PECK
FM10. Tom Tiddler’s Ground (1941) ... URSULA ORANGE
FM11. Begin Again (1936) ... URSULA ORANGE
FM12. Company in the Evening (1944) ... URSULA ORANGE
FM13. The Late Mrs Prioleau (1946) ... MONICA TINDALL
FM14. Bramton Wick (1952) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM15. Landscape in Sunlight (1953) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM16. The Native Heath (1954) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM17. Seaview House (1955) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM18. A Winter Away (1957) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM19. The Mingham Air (1960) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM20. The Lark (1922) ... E. NESBIT
FM21. Smouldering Fire (1935) ... D.E. STEVENSON
FM22. Spring Magic (1942) ... D.E. STEVENSON
FM23. Mrs. Tim Carries On (1941) ... D.E. STEVENSON
FM24. Mrs. Tim Gets a Job (1947) ... D.E. STEVENSON
FM25. Mrs. Tim Flies Home (1952) ... D.E. STEVENSON
FM26. Alice (1950) ... ELIZABETH ELIOT
FM27. Henry (1950) ... ELIZABETH ELIOT
FM28. Mrs. Martell (1953) ... ELIZABETH ELIOT
FM29. Cecil (1962) ... ELIZABETH ELIOT
D.E. Stevenson
Spring Magic
Frances was free. She had enough money for her holiday, and when it was over she would find useful work. Her plans were vague, but she would have plenty of time to think things out when she got to Cairn. One thing only was certain—she was never going back to prison again.
Young Frances Field arrives in a scenic coastal village in Scotland, having escaped her dreary life as an orphan treated as little more than a servant by an uncle and aunt. Once there, she encounters an array of eccentric locals, the occasional roar of enemy planes overhead, and three army wives—Elise, Tommy, and Tillie—who become fast friends. Elise warns Frances of the discomforts of military life, but she’s inclined to disregard the advice when she meets the dashing and charming Captain Guy Tarlatan.
The ensuing tale, one of D.E. Stevenson’s most cheerful and satisfying, is complicated by a local laird with a shady reputation, a Colonel’s daughter who’s a bit too cosy with Guy, a spring reputed to guarantee marriage within a year to those who drink from it, and a series of misunderstandings only finally resolved in the novel’s harrowing climax.
Spring Magic, first published in 1942, is here reprinted for the first time in more than three decades. Furrowed Middlebrow and Dean Street Press are also reprinting four more of Stevenson's best works—Smouldering Fire, Mrs. Tim Carries On, Mrs. Tim Gets a Job, and Mrs. Tim Flies Home. This new edition includes an introduction by Alexander McCall Smith.
“The author tells of what befell a young woman who, while on a seaside holiday in Scotland, enters the social life surrounding a battalion of troops and of how she found personal happiness. Lively and charming.” Sunday Mercury
“The cheeriest company . . . charmingly told” Sunday Times
FM22
CHAPTER I
A good inn run by a good-tempered landlord is always an important social centre in village life, and the Bordale Arms at Cairn is no exception to the rule. It is the place where men congregate when they want to talk to other men when their homes are disorganised by washing-days or noisy children. The bar counter is broad and polished; men lean upon it and discuss the prospects of the fishing season or argue about the war. Cairn is a small fishing village, a mere handful of fishermen’s cottages built of grey stone from the quarry on the hill. The main street slopes up from the harbour; it is steep and paved with cobbles and is lined with small dark shops. Painters sometimes come to Cairn; they set up their easels and mix their colours and paint strange pictures of the place—pictures which, as far as the villagers can see, bear little or no resemblance to the scene.
It was Mr. MacNair, the innkeeper, who put the matter in a nutshell when he said: “If they are making a picture of this place why is it not like this place at all? And if they are not making a picture of this place why do they trouble to come? Could they not stay at home and paint a picture out of their heads?”
“But it is as well for you that they have not thought of that,” replied Alec MacNair, his nephew. Alec usually had an answer ready, and on this occasion it was very much to the point, for the painters were a fruitful source of income to Mr. MacNair—or had been before the war.
The inn had belonged to Mr. MacNair’s father, and to several generations of MacNairs before him; it was an ancient rambling place, dark and gloomy and none too clean, but the present owner is a thrifty man and has the good fortune to possess a capable and far-seeing wife. They saved enough money to rebuild part of the house and to put in a couple of bathrooms, and now the gaily-painted sign, which hangs over the front door and is apt to squeak somewhat dolefully when the wind is in the north-west, bears the inscription BORDALE ARMS HOTEL. It is a grand name—every one agrees to that—and it confers distinction upon the whole village, but the Cairn people continue to speak of it as “The Inn,” and even the MacNairs themselves rarely use the new title.
The war affected Cairn in various ways. The young men departed to serve their country and the old men joined the Home G
uard. They turned up at the first parade with a curious assortment of weapons, and Mr. MacDonald, the Laird, who was a keen historian, was so much interested in the weapons that it was some time before he was able to settle down to the enrolment of his recruits. He was aware that the shot-guns had been used for poaching upon his land and that some of the rifles might be described as loot from the last war, but there was one ancient weapon which looked as if it might have lain under the thatch since Culloden. . . .
“It will shoot a German if he lands upon the shore,” explained old Donald Fraser, the bootmaker. “Aye, it will do that—and a fine noise it makes too.”
Mr. MacDonald believed him.
The odd thing was that there was scarcely a man in the place who could not produce some sort of firearm. They had no right to possess firearms without a permit, but Mr. MacDonald shut his eyes to this well-known fact and welcomed the motley collection with enthusiasm.
Cairn had its A.R.P., and a few of the more timid inhabitants covered their windows with strips of sticky paper, but after a week or two the sticky paper peeled off and the village settled down to its usual routine. The boats went out to the fishing, and the women cleaned and looked after and minded their children or sat upon the steps of their houses mending their husbands’ nets and conversing with each other from doorstep to doorstep in strident tones.
The war was there, of course; it was at the back of their minds (they followed its course in the papers and listened to the wireless bulletins), but the war was a long way from Cairn and somehow or other it was not very real to them. An epidemic of whooping-cough which was racking the children and disturbing their parents’ nights seemed much more real than the war.
The winter passed—it was the second winter of the war—and one day in early spring a fleet of enormous lorries suddenly appeared and rumbled down the cobbled High Street with a noise like thunder. It was a friendly invasion, this, and the people who crowded into the street were greeted with cheers and amicable waves by the khaki-clad figures of the invaders.
“’Ere we are again!”
“’Ere we are—but where are we?”
“Is this the end o’ the world?”
“Hi! where’s the nearest pub?”
Cairn was too bewildered to respond. It watched the lorries draw up at the inn and saw the men climb down and disappear into the bar.
“It is the Tower of Babel come back,” declared Mr. MacNair as he strove to understand and to satisfy the demands of his unexpected customers.
It certainly seemed like it, for there were men from London and Yorkshire, from Devon and Lancashire and Wales, and although they all spoke the same language it sounded like a dozen foreign tongues. They were not fighting men, they were Pioneers, and were recruited from all over the British Isles. In twenty minutes they had drunk the place dry, and, returning to their lorries, they moved on to a field about a mile from the village, where they proceeded to erect enormous huts. A few days was sufficient to turn the field into a camp, and Cairn was just beginning to get used to its visitors when they vanished as suddenly as they had appeared.
“So they have gone,” said old Donald Fraser in his slow Highland voice as he leaned upon the bar counter and sipped his drink.
“M-hm, they have gone,” Mr. MacNair agreed. He was not quite sure whether to be glad or sorry at their departure. They had brought business to the house, but on the other hand it was pleasant to feel that the bar was once more his own peaceful preserve. It had not been the same place at all in the last few days.
“Mr. MacDonald will have let them the field,” said Fergus MacNair. He was the innkeeper’s cousin.
“There is some law now by which they could take it,” replied Mr. MacNair vaguely.
“But they would pay him, surely?”
“Och, they would pay him.”
“There will be little need of the Home Guard,” declared Fergus with a hoarse chuckle. Fergus was one of the few men in Cairn who had not joined the body, and he lost no opportunity of poking fun at it in his pawky way.
“I would not be so sure,” said old Donald gravely. “The Home Guard is to defend Cairn. . . . M-hm, and what will the soldiers know of the paths over the hills?”
“Donald is right,” agreed Mr. MacNair, nodding.
“Aye, I’m right,” said Donald in his squeaky voice. “I’m the auldest man in the Home Guard, but there’s nobody can beat me ower the hills.”
“There will be men coming to the camp,” said Alec, drawing upon his pipe in a ruminative manner.
“Men!” exclaimed Fergus. “You would not expect women to come to a camp!”
“That is what I said. There will be soldiers . . . and soldiers drink beer.”
Mr. MacNair took the point. “Alec’s right,” he said. He hesitated for a moment and then added: “Maybe it would be a good thing to order six barrels. . . .”
“Six barrels would be a little better than none at all,” remarked Alec dryly.
He had scarcely finished speaking, and his uncle was still standing with his mouth agape, trying to envisage the enormous quantity of beer which might have to be procured, when the door was pushed open and a woman looked in. She was a stranger, of course, for no Cairn woman would be likely to come into the bar, and the six men turned their heads and looked at her. The heads turned quite slowly, and the looks were neither friendly nor hostile. It was the way in which a herd of cows turn their heads and look at a stranger when he opens the gate of the field in which they are grazing.
“Oh!” exclaimed the newcomer, somewhat nervously. “Oh, is this . . . I mean I thought this was the hotel.”
“It is the Bordale Arms Hotel,” said Mr. MacNair, nodding.
“Yes. That’s what I thought. I tried the other door but I couldn’t find any one.”
“Annie will have gone out with Sheila,” said Mr. MacNair after a moment’s thought.
“Sheila is better, then?” inquired Alec with interest.
“Och, there is not much the matter with her,” Mr. MacNair replied.
“I should like a room, please,” said the stranger.
There was a short silence. Mr. MacNair stroked his chin—he had shaved that very morning so it felt nice and smooth. “You will be painting pictures,” he said at last.
“No.”
“M-hm!” said Mr. MacNair. The exclamation was one of slight surprise, and his voice rose on the second syllable.
Alec looked at the newcomer with more interest. He wondered why she had come to Cairn if she did not intend to paint pictures. She was nice to look at, Alec thought. She was slight, and rather tall, with short fair hair which curled softly about her ears. Her eyes were very large, they were a strange deep blue, shadowed with violet, and they had a wondering expression which is more often seen in the eyes of a child than of a grown-up person. In some ways (thought Alec) she was like the artist lady who had come to Cairn last year, but in other ways she was quite different . . . she had not painted her own face at all, Alec noticed. The suitcase, which she had put down on the floor when she came in, bore a green label, and by twisting his head to one side and using his extremely long-sighted eyes Alec was able to make out the name on the label—it was “Miss F. FIELD.”
“The lady will have come off the bus,” Alec said.
The lady agreed that she had done so. There was no other way in which she could have arrived unless she had walked.
“It will be the soldiers,” said Fergus thoughtfully.
Every one in the room understood what Fergus meant by this somewhat enigmatic statement—every one except Miss Field. She turned her eyes upon Fergus and inquired: “What soldiers?”
“The soldiers at the camp,” said Fergus.
“Are there soldiers here?” asked Miss Field in surprise.
“No, there are none at all,” replied Fergus, shaking his head.
Miss Field looked thoroughly bewildered.
“Not yet,” explained Alec kindly.
“But they
will be coming soon, no doubt,” added Mr. MacNair.
“I don’t understand,” said Miss Field.
“You will be here on account of the soldiers,” suggested Fergus.
“No,” said Miss Field firmly. “No, I didn’t even know there were any soldiers here . . .”
“There are no soldiers here—not yet,” Fergus reminded her.
There was another silence—quite a peaceful sort of silence—the clock on the wall ticked away busily and Donald finished his drink.
“Perhaps you haven’t got a room for me,” said Miss Field at last.
“We have five rooms,” replied Mr. MacNair with some pride. “Five good bedrooms, we have. Two of them are a wee bit small, but they are not bad—”
“They’re grand rooms, so they are,” declared Donald in his squeaky voice.
“I spent good money on them,” Mr. MacNair admitted.
Miss Field looked relieved. One room was all she required, but it was pleasant to know that she had such a wide choice of accommodation.
“You could not have the east room,” said Mr. MacNair doubtfully. “It would not be nice for you at all. The paper has come off the wall in the corner, so it has. Alec has been too busy to paste it.”
“I have been busy with the boat,” explained Alec. “I did not think there would be anybody coming so soon—but I will get on to it to-morrow. It will not take long once I can get started to it.”
“There is the south room—” began Mr. MacNair.
“Och, you would not put her in there!” exclaimed Fergus. “A dark room, it is, with a wee window in the corner, and no view at all.”
“The west room has a view of the sea,” Alec pointed out.
“That would be lovely,” declared Miss Field.
“The north room is nice too,” said Mr. MacNair.
“It is the biggest one,” agreed Fergus, nodding his head.