I sat still, looking into her face. I hardly knew which of many emotions I felt most forcibly: rage, for the insult to my mother and myself; amazement at the tortuousness of Mrs McAllister’s thoughts; and pity, for a woman to whom love meant nothing but an advantageous marriage. I had to clear my throat before I could speak. “And who will be the next mistress of Drumwithie?”
She had collected herself. Her face was resuming its usual pallor, and her voice was icy. “That is for destiny to decide. My grandson, as you are aware, is about to go up to university, where he will meet young ladies who are the daughters of more suitable families. You, meanwhile, will go back to Gilchester, where you belong.”
She said the word with distaste, as if Gilchester were a place of such low social standing, she would have to be deranged to enter it. I smoothed my skirt while I considered how to reply, then I looked up at her. If my face showed defiance, I did not care. “Yes, I am aware that Jamie is on the brink of his new life. But I am younger even than he is and on the brink of my life too. I have no thought of making an alliance with anyone at present. And I must insist, Mrs McAllister, that you take back your accusation of my mother’s ambition for me. I absolutely assure you that such a thing never entered her mind.”
She had the grace to bow her head, though her expression did not change. “Very well, ” she said.
“However,” I continued before my courage failed me, “I refuse to apologize for the fact that Jamie has become fond of me. Love, I have heard it said, will run its course. And I intend to follow that course wherever it takes me.”
Into her eyes came a different light. She stared at me, her mouth working. “You will regret this! You will find out, as your father did before you, that Drumwithie is an unlucky place for lovers!”
With that she got to her feet and, abandoning her workbasket, left the room.
I was too crushed to move. The fire burned low, but the room was warm now, and I did not replenish the coals. The afternoon dimmed almost to darkness, but I did not light the lamps.
Mrs McAllister’s parting words about my father would not leave me. What could she have meant? She had never known my father. He had never visited Drumwithie as an adult. Doctor Hamish had clearly stated that the cousins had become estranged before “either of us had met our future wives”. According to Jamie, Mrs McAllister knew about their falling-out, but as she had only begun to visit the castle after the doctor’s courtship of her daughter had begun, she had never seen David Graham.
Staring into the fire, I remembered Mrs McAllister’s face when Doctor Hamish had taken out Father’s cigarette case. Troubled, agitated, full of dread. Why had she been so distressed, since she had never known the man to whom it had belonged?
I sat up, struck so forcefully by a thought that my ears buzzed. If it were true she had never known my father, how did she recognize his cigarette case?
My heart beat so hard the roar in my ears grew louder and louder. I tried to breathe deeply, but could not calm myself. My father’s mother, Granny Graham, had given him that cigarette case when he was nineteen, and about to go up to Cambridge. But he and Doctor Hamish fell out soon afterwards and Father never went back to Drumwithie. So how did Mrs McAllister know the case had belonged to him? She had even referred to him as “David”, which her cultivated manners would never allow her to do if she did not know him. Evidently, she did know him!
He must have come here, sometime after he went to Cambridge, perhaps during a university vacation. Contrary to what Doctor Hamish had told me, my father had met Mrs McAllister and, without doubt, her daughter Anne.
My eyes travelled irresistibly to the portrait above the mantelpiece. The beautiful, just-married Anne. Her husband’s handsome, golden-haired cousin. Unchaperoned meetings. Ungovernable feelings. Unlawful love.
Numb, I stared at the portrait. That was why Mrs McAllister was so anxious to get me away from Jamie. “An old feud that is nothing to do with you,” she had said. But the feud between our fathers was to do with me, and with Jamie. Handsome, golden-haired Jamie. Out of all the girls in the world, I was the one his grandmother could not allow him to fall in love with. It had nothing to do with my inferior wealth, my supposed desire to “set my cap” at the heir to Drumwithie. It was because there was a strong possibility that my father was Jamie’s father too.
Jamie, I thought, my heart lurching. Jamie, my love. Like my father’s before me, my own unchaperoned, ungovernable, unlawful love.
I sat by the fire for the rest of the afternoon. The gloom inside the castle and the lowering clouds outside made it as dark as it was possible for a place to be in daylight. The ruined tower was invisible, the trees a blur, the sky obliterated. It was banal to liken a wet day to sadness, but like many clichés, it contained a truth. Perhaps if the weather had been glorious, the weight upon my heart would not have felt so heavy.
Mrs McAllister did not return. At five o’clock, Jamie came in. “Why are you sitting in the dark?” he asked. But he did not stop to light the lamps. He squashed himself into the armchair beside me and put his arms around me. “Darling Cat, I have been lurking in the library all afternoon, thinking you were being subjected to some ghastly reading by my grandmother and impatient to talk to you – and here you are, all alone! However did you manage to get rid of her?”
I allowed my body to collapse against his. Whatever my dread about our possible blood relationship, Jamie remained Jamie. My handsome winsome Johnny. In his embrace I felt secure. “She got rid of herself,” I told him. “Perhaps she was bored or had something else to do. Of course, the moment she left the room I put down that tedious book, and have been dozing by the fire.”
He looked at me sideways. “You quarrelled. Do not deny it.”
“Oh, Jamie, what nonsense you—”
“I can see it in your face, even by firelight,” he insisted. He slid off the chair and sat at my feet. “You are not yourself. Your spirits are oppressed; there is something different about your eyes. You are not feeling ill, are you?”
What should I say? I could not speak of his grandmother’s words, nor my suspicions about their significance. Jamie was unsettled enough; what if my fancy had run away with me, and the estrangement had been caused by something else entirely? “I do have a headache,” I told him, glad of the excuse he had provided.
It was clear from his expression that I had not fooled him. He could see the uncertainty Mrs McAllister had planted in my mind. He was not as sure of my heart as he had been yesterday. “I suppose,” he said, his eyes still searching my face, “a couple of hours spent reading aloud to my grandmother is enough to give anyone a headache!”
His tone was light, but I was not fooled either. “Jamie, my afternoon has not been pleasant, it is true, but apparently neither has yours, and you are perfectly well. My headache has nothing to do with that. It is just a headache.”
To my relief, he did not pursue the point, but sat back on his heels and patted his pockets for his cigarettes. “Actually,” he said, “my afternoon was not as unpleasant as you think.” He threw his match on the fire and regarded me through the cigarette smoke. “It was really rather extraordinary. Indeed, one might say wonderful.” He drew on the cigarette, smiling enigmatically as he exhaled. “Though for once, the wonder has not been caused by the beautiful Cait Sìth.”
Removing Mrs McAllister’s crumpled tapestry from the other chair, he sat down and leaned towards me, his elbows on his knees. His hair had grown long enough by now to be brushed back and slicked down with water, and the firelight revealed his smooth, suntanned face without hindrance. I was touched, as always, by his eagerness and innocence.
“This afternoon,” he began, “Father returned from the surgery earlier than usual. When he found me alone in the library, he asked to see some of my work. I was amazed. I said, ‘Do you mean my poetry, Father?’ He has never in his life called it my ‘work’ before. And what he said when he looked at it – while I sat with my back to him, rigid with fear, as
you can imagine – was more amazing still. He said it was far better than he had imagined it would be. Then he started to talk about keeping an open mind, and not allowing his love of his own profession to stand in the way of his judgement. He said that the important thing is to get there in the end, even if the path is twisting. I must say, I’ve never heard him sound so reasonable.”
Neither had I. But the words themselves I had heard before. At Chester House, when Doctor Hamish and Mother had discussed Jamie’s several attempts to pass his examinations, Mother had made her usual comment about perseverance: “But he got there in the end, however twisting the path, and that is the important thing!” Unbeknown to Jamie and if only indirectly, the influence of the faerie cat was at work in his father’s words.
“Jamie, that is wonderful. What did you say?”
“Well, I didn’t have much hope, but I thought I’d chance it, so I asked him if he might consider my giving up the University altogether. I thought he’d give me his usual sour-faced lecture, but – this is scarcely believable, Cat, you may have to pinch me – he told me he had spoken on the telephone this afternoon to the Dean of the Medical School. Father and I have an appointment for tomorrow, to see this fellow and discuss retaining my place, but changing from medicine to a different subject!”
“Oh!” I flushed with surprise and pleasure. “This is the very outcome I myself have wished for! You see, your father is not such a pompous oaf after all!”
He looked at me happily, but ruefully. “And what subject do you think will suit a man with poetic ambitions? Shall l study history and become an eminent historian? Or found a publishing house? That would give me plenty of time for composition and ensure my poems are published! Failing that, I could write books on Scottish history and give public lectures – and open the ruined part of Drumwithie to the public on the first Sunday of every month!” He laughed gleefully. “What a lark! I would be known as ‘That glaikit auld fuil, Buchanan o’ Drumwithie’!” he added in his most exaggerated Scots.
I did not laugh. “Perhaps,” I pointed out, “the choice of subject will be discussed at your meeting tomorrow.”
“Aye,” he said dreamily, leaning back in his chair. “And as long as it does not involve cutting up dead bodies, I do not care what it is.” He looked at me from under lowered eyelids. “And now, you must tell me the real reason you are so out of spirits.”
I smoothed my skirt. “So you and your father will be off to Edinburgh in the morning?”
“On the nine fifteen train. Father and Doctor Skerran over in Dunkeith share emergencies on Saturday afternoons and Sundays, and it is Doctor Skerran’s turn tomorrow.” He waved his cigarette theatrically. “Cat, this evasiveness is making me so very agitated! Is it the thought of going down to the cave? Has Grandmother been frightening you with her nonsense?”
“It is nothing to do with the cave.”
I stood up and went to the window, glad to stretch my legs after sitting so long. Jamie followed and stood beside me. The rain had eased to a drizzle. The lawn was visible, and Anne’s garden. Beyond that lay the valley, blue–green in the gathering dusk and absolutely still. How beautiful it was, and how mysterious.
“It is to do with Grandmother, though, is it not?”
He went to draw me towards him. His face was so full of tenderness and love, my heart swelled. But the moment had come; I slid free of his embrace and leaned against the windowsill, weakened by the flood of emotions. “I am sorry,” I said, but I do not… I cannot…”
“What is it, darling Cat?” He was so close to me, his breath dampened my cheek. “What ideas has she been putting into your head?”
“Nobody has put any ideas into my head!” I could not look at him. “But I have been thinking … this dalliance may not be—”
“Dalliance!” He was offended. He stood back. “What, do you think I am a philanderer? My intention is not to dally with you, Cat! What an awful word – it reminds me of those sentimental songs about maids and soldiers kissing at the garden gate. What is the matter with you?”
I did not wish to witness his hurt. I closed my eyes, but could not stop tears welling behind my eyelids. I loved him; I knew I did, and he knew I did. But loving him might prove impossible. “Please understand—”
“Have no fear, I do understand!”
My eyes were stinging, but I dared not open them, in case the tears fell and alerted him to my misery. I stood with my back to him, fumbling in my sleeve for a handkerchief, sniffing and mumbling. “I am so sorry, Jamie. I am sorry I accused you of dalliance. That was an unforgiveable choice of word. I did not mean that I think you wish to take advantage of me or anything like that. I was only trying to explain that I am overwhelmed by my feelings, and yours.”
Half blinded with tears, I turned and looked into his face. Fear was gathering in his eyes. He stepped closer. “I do not believe you,” he said softly, no longer accusing. “Something has placed doubt in your mind. What the devil has happened?”
“Nothing!” I protested. “At least, all that has happened is that I have been sitting here thinking, and—”
“And you have decided that love is too precious to run at like a pole vaulter runs at the bar? You wish to cry ‘Hold, hold!’ like Lady Macbeth, in case our feelings carry us away? You think I am such a puppy, while you are the goddess of reason?”
I was too distressed to speak. Jamie crushed his cigarette angrily in an ashtray. “Do not try and pretend, Cat. You are hopeless at it. My grandmother obviously considers me a worthless bounder who wishes only to seduce you. I am not surprised at that. But what does surprise me is that you believe her!”
Although I had no reason to feel shame, his accusation humiliated me nonetheless. That he should think such a thing was intolerable. But I could not let him suspect that his grandmother had said not that he was unworthy of me, but that I was unworthy of him. Furthermore, her unguarded words about my father and my suspicions about Jamie’s parentage must be kept from him at all costs.
My helplessness silenced me. I stood there, the warmth of the glowing embers drying the tears on my cheeks, unable to defend either myself or Mrs McAllister. Jamie turned and grasped the edge of the mantelpiece with both hands, his head bowed beneath his mother’s portrait. Perhaps he could no longer bear to look at me. But my heart expanded with love.
Together, Jamie and I had kept the secret of the ghost and felt our way towards its revelation: the tree, the cave, the rain, the slide. And all the while we had been feeling our way towards a true attachment to each other. But now, I had repulsed him. How disappointed he must be! At the exact moment when his father’s change of mind had increased his happiness, my own apparent change of mind had begun to threaten it.
His breath came unevenly; he was angry and upset. I knew I could not leave him like this. I could no longer permit myself to feel the thrilling, abandoned happiness of yesterday, but my love, and desire for his love, endured regardless. “Jamie…” I ventured softly, “please hear me. Your grandmother did speak to me about you, but she did not accuse you of philandering. She merely expressed her concern that we were rushing too quickly into an attachment, considering that we are both so young, and you are on the brink of your university career. She was quite sensible about it.” I braced myself for the lie. “So sensible, I found myself almost agreeing with her.”
He whipped round, astonished, but when he tried to protest, I held up my hand. “Of course, she has no inkling of the depth of our feelings! But I must own the truth of her words, though it pained me to hear them. And so must you.”
His eyes bore through me, suspicious still, but gleaming with that familiar, and beloved, excitement. After a long moment, he whispered, “You do love me, then?”
My throat constricted; I whispered too. “Of course I love you.”
He looked at the ceiling, as if thanking some deity for his deliverance. Then he laughed. “Do you know what I wish, little Cat?” he said. “That we could run away together like
people in stories, and live in an attic in Bloomsbury. I could be a poet and you could mend my shirts and cook my porridge, and my father and grandmother, and your mother, and the Dean of the Medical School and everyone else who thinks we are too young and irresponsible wouldn’t be there, and it would be heaven.”
“It would not.” My voice had recovered, though my spirits had not. “And you know it. Listen to the goddess of reason.”
He smiled at me. The anger of a moment ago had evaporated. “I will not kiss you, though God knows I want to! The puppy has been admonished and will behave himself.”
THE CAVE
By the time I came down the next day, Jamie and the doctor had breakfasted and gone out, and Mrs McAllister did not appear. I had the castle to myself.
By the middle of the morning the rain had eased enough for a proper inspection of the landslide to be made. MacGregor came in, stamping his boots on the flagstones, and reported gloomily that it was worse than the slide of twenty years ago. “A whole section of the glenside is come away,” he told me and Bridie. “I canna say how many trees are lost, but it’s a braw few.”
“May I go out and look?” I asked.
MacGregor looked doubtful. “Ye ken ’tis dangerous down there, miss, do ye not?”
“I will not venture down the glen. Is it still raining?”
“Aye, ye’ll need a mackintosh.”
Bridie went to the boot room and returned with an oilskin. “Here ye are, miss. This is Mr Jamie’s, so it’ll be too big, but it’ll keep ye nice and dry.” She addressed MacGregor as she helped me into the oilskin. “Go with Miss Graham and the both of ye’s be careful, now.”
Five minutes later, I left the house for the first time in three days. MacGregor and I made our way under dripping branches to Anne’s garden and looked over the wall.
Shocked, I stared into the depths. Mud, stones, bracken, gorse, grass, heather and the bright green moss that grew between the boulders lay tangled together on the hillside, like rubbish thrown out by a giant. And the trees, so majestic when they stood, had been tossed aside like driftwood. Pines, rowans and birches had met their ends, their roots, still embedded in lumps of earth, held aloft. Their leaves and branches were impossible to separate; all I could see was a soaking wet mass of blackish-green vegetation.
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