He hadn’t told her anything she didn’t already know. “If you ask me,” he added slowly, “the rot set in when he started seeing so much of the people at Calders.”
Some of the high colour left her cheeks. “What do you mean? Why Calders?” she asked. “We never had any contact with Calders in the past, except perhaps to deliver their milk.”
He laughed.
“Maybe that’s what Robin was doing when he met them.”
“You mean the Daviots?”
He nodded.
“Well?” She saw his sharp profile against the sudden blue of sea as they took the coast road south. “What difference did it make, knowing the Daviots?”
“They absorbed him.” There was the suspicion of jealousy behind the words. “He thought Huntley Daviot was some sort of superman, and as for Leone Searle, I guess he worshipped her.”
“He told me about Leone,” Alison said quietly. “She came to Calders once or twice.”
“Once or twice!” With an open road in front of him Jim put his foot hard down on the accelerator. “She was always there. She was going to marry Daviot.”
“Before she was killed.” Alison spoke half to herself. “Before she died in that American plane crash. It was such a dreadful tragedy, a terrible, terrible waste of talent!”
He allowed her words to fall into a lengthening silence.
“You could have done as well,” he suggested at last. “Robin always thought so.”
“Leone had a wonderful gift,” Alison said. “How I wish I could have met her! ”
Jim didn’t answer.
“I’ve heard her sing, of course, and I have most of her recordings,” she went on. “Whenever she was in London we went to hear her. If I’d known she came to Calders regularly I should have been green with envy.”
Her companion grunted, applying all his attention to the road.
They were south of Sarclet Head now, winding across the moor, with the Hill of Yarrows behind them and the loch water at its foot a distant glitter in the sun. It was desolate-looking country, with only the narrow herd roads leading away from the sea and a cluster of grey stone houses here and there to mark the tiny villages she knew so well. Clyth and Lybster and Latheronwheel had always been magic names to her, redolent of childhood joys, and Morven still stood high above the dale hills with his head in the clouds.
She looked back at the mountain which had dominated their view from Craigie Hill all her life, aware at last that she had truly come home, and the ache in her heart eased a little.
“It isn’t so bad,” she said, half to herself. “Coming back like this.”
“You’ve chosen a mean season,” Jim Orbister reflected. “The summer’s past. All the visitors have gone.”
“I didn’t come with the idea of amusing myself,” she told him almost sharply. “I know what Caithness can be like.”
He glanced down at her gloved hands.
“It’s going to be hard work,” he pointed out.
“I’m used to work.” Her tone was stiff. “You seem to have the idea that I’ve softened up in London.”
“Well, haven’t you?” He seemed faintly amused. “You’d never have worn shoes like those in the old days, for instance.”
She moved her feet in their high-heeled courts, flushing at
his unabashed criticism.
“I have brogues with me,” she said flatly. “I haven’t forgotten about Craigie Hill.”
He turned the car off the main road out on to a bare table land of rock where there were few trees and nothing seemed soft or kind. The deep straths and gentle, wooded dales lay far behind them. Here was nothing but rock and sky and sea. The moor swept right down to the cliff’s edge, spilling over in a sheer drop to the cold grey waste of water far beneath them.
The road they followed was little more than a track, yet it was well metalled and in reasonable repair. Sheep met them at every turn and bend, cropping the richer grass by the wayside or huddled in groups on the road itself. Jim changed down, sounding his horn vigorously.
“They’ll move,” he said, “given time. Even the Craigie Hill ewes stand aside for a car nowadays.”
Because of the traffic to Calders, she supposed, but didn’t say so. The great house, hidden from view by the only trees for miles, lay in the one sheltered spot on the whole tableland, its private road sweeping off at a tangent to isolate it from Craigie Hill and the two other crofts on the north side of the headland.
Calders, like Dunrobin Castle, had always been something of a legend to her, the mysterious, unapproachable mansion set apart, whose wealthy inhabitants drank Craigie Hill’s milk and ate Craigie Hill’s butter and appeared on odd occasions at clachan fetes to dispense their favours with a smile. It had seemed odd to her that a great singer like Leone Searle should have come to Calders until she remembered the Daviots’ great love of music and the fact that it had been the Isobel Daviot Scholarship which had taken her straight from school to the London Conservatoire of Music.
Closing her eyes, she tried to blot out the memory of her joy and pride as she had walked up to the platform that summer afternoon to receive her prize. The Isobel Daviot Scholarship! The words echoed in her ears like a knell and tears beat against her closed lids. It had all been for nothing.
Nothing at all.
When she opened her eyes she could see Craigie Hill. It looked so small, so desolate, crouching there in its tiny hollow braving the wind and the cut of salt coming in from the sea. Somehow, it didn’t seem so white as she had always imagined it, lacking its yearly cement-wash, she supposed. The byres, too, looked in need of repair, and the narrow strip of garden walled in from foraying sheep looked bleak and neglected. It had been her mother’s pride for so long that her heart lurched with fear as she looked towards the closed door of the house. Yet front doors were rarely used on Highland crofts. There was the back way in, which was the familiar way, used by friends and family alike. The front door was for strangers.
Jim Orbister drew his car up at the side of the house. The few cows they possessed were already in the byre, lowing gently, and a pail clanked down on a stone floor. Footsteps sounded across the flags.
“So you’re home, Miss Alison, and high time!” a dry voice remarked behind them.
Alison turned to find Kirsty Sutherland surveying them from the byre door. She was a short, dark, thick-set woman in her early sixties, her vividly blue eyes taking in every detail of the prodigal’s return. She missed nothing of the fashionable London attire. Kirsty didn’t approve of modern ways, nor did she see the need for scholarships which took a girl, especially, away from the place where she had been born and bred. Her own loyalty to Craigie Hill, where she had served for close on forty years, reminded her constantly that modern youth had no sense of responsibility and no true values, yet she would have lashed out with her adequate tongue at anyone who dared to criticise any of the Christies in her presence. She had nursed Alison and her brother in infancy; she had watched them grow; she had stood with tears in her eyes as they went away and thought them foolish in her heart, but now that at least one of them had returned she was prepared to overlook their frailty in the past, although not without comment.
“You’ve taken your time,” she remarked as Alison bent to kiss her, “but I suppose it was a wrench for you, leaving London.”
Alison dismissed the reprimand with a smile.
“I had a lot to do, Kirsty,” she explained. “After all, it was nearly three years and I had all my belongings to pack.” She moved towards the house. “Mother must have heard the car. Is she still in bed?”
“Not her! She got up to meet you,” Kirsty said dryly. “In ye go and I’ll finish the milking while I can see. Neillie’s away for the day, but he’ll be back before night.”
Alison turned to Jim Orbister.
“You’ll come in for a cup of tea?” she invited. “It’s a long drive back.”
He hesitated.
“Your mother will want you
to herself.”
She smiled at him.
“She’d never forgive me if I let you go.”
Once more he appeared to hesitate and she remembered his friendship with her brother.
“It won’t matter,” she said, trying to keep the stiffness out of her voice. “She’ll expect you to come in.”
He followed her to the green painted door between the two windows. Byres and house were huddled closely together, making three sides of a square, as if for protection, and the marks of muddy boots and herded cattle were everywhere. It was Neil Kinloch’s job to clean the yard, but Neillie had been away. Rather vaguely ‘away’, for it seemed that the yard had been neglected for days.
“Illness doesn’t improve a place like Craigie Hill,” she mused.
“Nor a woman on her own.” Jim’s tone was serious. “Your mother tried to do too much.”
“It’ll be different now.” Alison squared her shoulders. “I’m not as helpless as I apparently look.”
He carried her suitcases into the rather untidy dairy. Kirsty probably had her hands full in the house, but the dairy had always been her mother’s especial pride and the signs of neglect hit Alison with the force of a blow. She had been kept
in ignorance of the true plight of Craigie Hill for too long.
The door leading to the kitchen opened and her mother stood there, small where once she had seemed big and comfortable, frail now beyond imagining. “Mother!”
It was all Alison could find to say as Helen Christie folded her in her arms with the faintest sigh of relief. Never a demonstrative woman, Helen had always been happier to give than receive. She had never clung to her family nor sought to stand in the way of their advancement, and even now, when she felt the ebb tide of her strength running out, that small, faint sigh was the only indication she gave of her heartfelt joy that her daughter, at least, had returned to Craigie Hill in her hour of need.
“Come away in, both of you! ” She had seen Jim Orbister in the background and recognised him. “You’ll be needing a cup of tea. I haven’t been out, but I can smell a haar a mile away and it’s always cold.”
Jim picked up the suitcases and followed them into the kitchen where a large fire burned in the grate. The sullen peats, newly stirred to a blaze, bathed them all in a deep orange glow, sending warmth and a certain amount of comfort into Alison’s heart. Life might be hard here at Craigie Hill, but it was the known way. She must put her mind to it with confidence and forget her dreams.
Jim looked about him while she helped her mother with the tea. The big room was much the same as it had always been, simple, tidy and scrupulously clean, a family living-room and kitchen combined with its small gestures to comfort added through the years. He had been in it often enough during the time Alison had been in London, but it was almost a year since his last visit and he had not been quite sure of his reception. He might have known, he assured himself, that Mrs. Christie would make no difference. She had welcomed him with only the barest trace of hesitation, although his presence must have reminded her all too vividly of her missing son.
“Bring in your chair,” she invited, making room for him at the hearth. “It’s a long drive back to Wick.”
He stood beside the table, not intending to stay.
“If you don’t mind, I won’t be too long,” he excused himself. “The haar’s sure to thicken when the light goes and I don’t like Berriedale bank in the dark! I’ve another job, too, when I get back, taking some people up to Scrabster. There’s no flying out of Wick, so they’ll have to cross to Stromness with the early boat tomorrow morning.”
“You’re a busy man!” Helen smiled at him. “I hear you’re doing well with your business.”
“Reasonably well,” he acknowledged with justifiable pride, looking suddenly in Alison’s direction. “It’s what I always had a fancy for,” he confided. “I’ve two cars now, both earning their keep, and I’ll start a garage in the spring. There’s scope for it now, with all the holiday traffic up to John o’ Groats and along the north coast.”
“You’ll do well, I dare say,” Helen agreed, taking his empty cup. “You’ll come again, maybe, and stay a while longer.”
It was a rather obvious attempt to make Craigie Hill a little brighter for her daughter, although Jim’s presence could only remind her of Robin, who had gone away. Alison, who was longing for Jim to leave, turned with him to the door.
“Maybe I ought to wait till you add your invitation to your mother’s,” he said when they were outside once more, “but you’re going to need company, Alison. You can’t be selfsufficient in a place like this and Wick’s your only answer. It doesn’t begin to compare with London, I know, but you’ll have to settle for it for a month or two, won’t you?”
“I can’t see myself settling for anything apart from Craigie Hill,” she told him, looking about her. “There’s enough work here to keep me busy all the time. I don’t think I’ll find myself in Wick very often.”
He wouldn’t show his disappointment, but somehow she felt it.
“That’s up to you,” he said. “But there’s nothing here. You’ll simply stagnate.”
She laughed without mirth.
“You forget that I was brought up at Craigie,” she said.
“No,” he said, “I haven’t forgotten. I quite believe that part of you still belongs here, but there’s the other half, the part that always wanted to get away, the part that made you spread your wings and fly south to conquer the world in London.”
Turning her head, she avoided his probing blue eyes, wondering what he wanted her to admit.
“I didn’t conquer,” she said flatly, “and I didn’t die, either.
I’ve just come home. Goodnight, Jim. I’ll see you again, some time.”
Some time soon, he determined, as he started up the car’s engine. Now that he had been invited back to Craigie Hill, even if it were only by Helen, he meant to come quite often. Alison didn’t have to live the life of a recluse now that she had turned her back on London and all it had meant to her.
CHAPTER TWO
ALISON went slowly back into the kitchen. The first shock of encounter over, she was able to look at her mother with critical eyes. Helen had made a tremendous effort, but there were deep hollows in her cheeks and the marks of fatigue even in the way she walked across the room. She had lost so much weight that she looked a shadow of her former self. Her robust health had kept her going to the very edge of collapse, but now an operation was necessary and, although she did her best to hide it, the hand of fear lay coldly on her heart.
“It’ll all come right,” she said vigorously. “I’m a strong woman. I’ve never ailed a day in my life. It wasn’t the operation I was thinking about when I wondered if you’d come home. It was Craigie Hill. It’s all we have. It’s been in the family so long. It would be a pity to lose it.”
Alison took the teapot out of her hand.
“Mother, why are we doing this?” she asked gently. “Do you really think Robin will come back?”
Helen looked down into the fire where the peat glow was already dying to a sullen brown.
“I’m hoping with every breath I draw that he will,” she said.
“He used to be so fond of Craigie and I had hopes of him bringing a bride to it—the fourth in line—somebody of our own kind, who would help him with all these new-fangled notions he had for improvement. At one time he was very keen to see Craigie a big place, with more sheep and more cattle, perhaps.” “Then what changed him?” Alison demanded.
Helen sat down in her chair beside the fire, allowing the question to remain unanswered for several minutes as she gazed at the sullen peats.
“Circumstances, I think,” she said at last. “A chance meeting with someone from another world.”
“You mean the Daviots?” Alison asked.
“Partly.” Helen’s tone was guarded. “They were very fond of him.”
“But how could they influence him completely?”
“He enjoyed their way of life.”
“Oh, Mother!” Alison knelt beside her chair. “I’m sorry, and I think I hate these people. I don’t know anything about them, but they had no right to—to lead him on when they knew Robin had to work for a living.”
“It wasn’t like that at all,” Helen said fairly. “Huntley Daviot was a young man, doing his best for Calders. They had the same interests, they did things in the same way, only Huntley had the money to put his ideas into practice. When old Mr. Daviot died he took over the estate.”
“As Robin should have done here, at Craigie,” Alison suggested tersely.
“He made improvements,” Helen continued without comment. “He even worked on the home farm and helped out in the glen, besides. Huntley Daviot was anything but a lazy young man, although he had spent so much of his time abroad.”
“Wasn’t he in the Fleet Air Arm?” Alison remembered. “I thought it an odd sort of choice at the time, although I never really knew him.”
“That was what he wanted to do most of all in life,” Helen said. “He wanted to fly, and his father was a good manager, so there was no real need for them both at Calders. But when he was needed he came back.”
“So he’s here,” Alison mused, not really interested.
“Yes.”
Her mother’s brief monosyllable fell into a lengthening silence. Apparently Helen had told her all she needed to know about Calders and Huntley Daviot, yet she was suddenly
prompted to ask:
“Is he living at the big house?”
“No.” Helen turned in her chair, shading her face with her hand. “It’s closed. When he comes home he doesn’t stay there. It’s a big place and there are people at the Lodge—friends of his. They came from Edinburgh some time ago, before your father died.”
And before Robin left for America, Alison supposed, but her questions seemed to be tiring her mother, or distressing her unduly, so she dismissed Calders and Huntley Daviot from their conversation if not entirely from her thoughts.
The Tender Glory Page 2