‘Surely not!’
‘It’s hard to prove. Impossible really. It’s so well hidden and he’s so bloody charming in public. Or he can be, when it suits him.’
She remembers Mrs Cameron talking about a ‘vortex of negativity’. She had thought her overly dramatic, but perhaps not.
She hesitates, drinks some more of the whisky, almost whispers, ‘Is he violent?’
He shakes his head again but seems unperturbed by the question. ‘No. That’s not the way he operates. It’s all words, all to do with control. He’s a very strong character and a very attractive character, Daisy, and when you pair that with the kind of success he’s had, everyone thinking how wonderful he is, telling mum how lucky she is... God, he’s the most selfish individual I’ve ever known. It took us years and years to understand it. How afraid she’d become of crossing him. As though the sky might fall if she challenged him. I don’t know what she was like before she met him, but people have told me everything was different.’
It strikes her again that she has met people like that in the past, people who seem able to exert an unreasonable pressure. Often deeply attractive men. It’s how they do it. One or two of her friends have been involved with men like this and she has seen how they work, finding fault, quarrelling with friends and family, gradually detaching their partner from their circle of support, and all for their own good. Allegedly.
‘I think it was here that we first noticed it, though. Me and Catty, I mean. We used to get off the ferry and come here for the whole summer. The three of us. I always remember, the first thing we did, after we’d opened the door and put the bags inside, we’d go straight down to the beach. We’d be running about, making sure everything was as it should be: the rocks, the dunes. One year there’d been a terrible spring gale and a high tide and the sea had eaten into the sand hills. As though a giant had taken big bites out of it. And the salt had burned all the young leaves in the garden. We hated that. We liked everything to be the same.’
‘I used to feel like that whenever I went to stay with my gran in Ayr. I hated it if she’d redecorated, or moved furniture around.’
‘Anyway, Mum would be sitting on a rock and just breathing. We didn’t notice so much when we were little kids, but when we hit our teens we did. I remember Catty saying to me, “Isn’t she different? Isn’t Mum different on Garve?” And she was. All the tension just drained out of her. It was as though she could be herself here. Until there was the occasional short visit from Dad, and then she’d change again. He was forever telling her she was doing things wrong: her driving, the garden, the cooking, the way things were here in the house, the fact that we’d go down to the beach in our pyjamas if we wanted to. The only saving grace was that he never stayed. He’d go and we’d all breathe a sigh of relief and get back to the way we were.’
‘Is that why she doesn’t come here much now? He doesn’t want her to?’
‘That’s about it. When we were kids, he wanted the peace and quiet, so he was quite happy for her to bring us here. Now he needs her in the shop and for making sure the house runs the way he likes it. So she doesn’t come. She always says she can’t get away. But she could. Annabel could manage the shop perfectly well. Even Catty comes here sometimes, with the kids. They make do, bring camp beds.’
‘So he wants you to run the shop?’
‘He wants me there. I think even he realises it’s getting a bit too much for my mum. They’re not getting any younger, and he doesn’t want to do it full time, or even part time, but he doesn’t want to let it go either. He could, you know. He could sell up. Just paint.’
‘But wouldn’t you miss the income from it? I mean you, yourself.’
‘I’d manage. You trade online, don’t you? I have a big fat book of contacts now. I could do some buying and selling, but concentrate on the restoration side of it. It’s Dad who likes having a shop window for his pictures. But I think, most of all, he likes us to be there, under his thumb. He’s like Hector, only without the good nature. He gets uneasy when he doesn’t know where we all are and what we’re doing.’
Hector hears his name, pokes his head briefly round the door in case there’s any dinner in evidence and wanders off again.
‘But your sister must have got away.’
‘She did and he’s never quite forgiven her for it. Or Garve for that matter. She met Jake at a ceilidh in the Keill village hall. He was over here on farm business. At some level, I think Dad blames the whole island!’
‘It sounds almost pathological. I mean, it could have been worse. She could have run off, like my mum.’
He smiles, grimly. ‘It is pathological.’
‘Can’t you – I don’t know? Buy this place yourself?’
‘You mean sell my heavily mortgaged house in Glasgow?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Besides, I have to be there sometimes, and I can’t live under the same roof as him when I am. And even if I could sell, I’d never get a mortgage on this place – it needs too much modernisation – and it would be long gone. He’d never let me buy it. He’d take a cut in the price before he’d let me do that.’
‘Does your sister know about all this yet?’
‘No. She’ll be horrified. But there’s nothing she can do either. They don’t exactly make a fortune and what they do have goes back into the farm or they spend it on the kids.’
He looks around in desperation. ‘Christ, Daisy, I love this place. The best bits of my childhood were spent here. I can’t bear it. If I can’t come over to the island, I don’t know what I’ll do.’
She can’t help herself. She feels so much pity for him that she goes over to him and embraces him. Then he’s pulling her into his arms and kissing her fiercely, desperately. She can hardly remember how they find themselves in the bedroom, but she knows he closes the door and jams a chair against it. ‘Hector,’ he says, succinctly.
The bed is unmade but the bed linen is clean. It all smells of Fiona’s lavender, like everything in the house. They struggle to get their clothes off, reluctant to part even for a moment. His lips are warm and dry. They taste of whisky, but so do hers. He fumbles around in the bedside drawer and emerges with a condom.
‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘I didn’t think I had any. I don’t do this all the time. I really don’t do this all the time.’
She stops his words with another kiss, desperate for him, for his long, strong, whip-thin body. It’s ridiculously quick, this first time. They want each other too much and come quickly, together, laughing at themselves, at their sudden undeniable craving for each other, lying back on the pillows and on the crumpled sheet, the duvet a tangle at the foot of the bed.
‘God, that was good!’ he says. ‘Almost worth...’ He hesitates.
‘Worth what?’
‘I was going to say, almost worth having to suffer my pitiful father.’
‘I didn’t ... it wasn’t...’
‘Out of pity. I know that, sweetheart. You’re going to stay the night, right?’
She nods. ‘But have you...’
‘Any more of these things? I don’t know. I’ll have to have a hunt around. Let’s hope so, eh? Otherwise I’ll have to get myself to the hotel.’
‘The hotel?’
‘There’s a machine.’
‘Ah, of course!’
‘Can you imagine it?’ he says, and there’s genuine laughter in his voice this time, laughter that bubbles up and infects her. ‘Can you fucking well imagine it? I might meet my father in there. Just as I’m putting a coin in the slot.’
She spends the night in his bed. He finds another condom at the back of the drawer and they wake at first light to make love again, this time more slowly, just as enjoyably. He’s considerate, a kindly but passionate lover. Unselfish. She can see that she will have to be careful with this one. Never before has it occurred to her so soon and
so swiftly in a relationship that here is a man she might love. He’s immensely loveable. And they fit well together. She feels comfortable with him, but given his troubles with his father, given his background, she can see that he might not be a straightforward man to love. The physical side is one thing, but he clearly has, to use the cod psychology term, baggage. And she’s mature enough to see that unpacking those bags might just be beyond her capabilities, no matter how much her overwhelming desire for him is currently clouding her judgement.
‘Is your dad coming back?’ she ventures to ask, as they are eating breakfast together, her bare feet resting on his, under the table.
‘Lord, no.’ He looks bleaker than he has since last night. ‘No. He gave me his ultimatum. He’ll be putting this place on the market at the end of June, so I’m to clear out my stuff before then. But it isn’t all my stuff. A lot of it belongs to my mum’s family. He’s going off on the first ferry. Doesn’t want to hang about. Tell you what, though. He took his two lousy pictures with him!’ He gestures at the wall, where she sees two blank spaces where the small rock pool studies were hung.
‘What a plonker!’
He starts to laugh, genuine laughter again. At least he’s seeing the funny side of it all. He can’t help himself. ‘Exactly. He is. He’s a plonker. But sadly, he’s a plonker with power. And an unimpeachable reputation.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to phone Catty later on, once she’s got the kids off to school. We’ll have a chat about it. You’re going to have to meet her, you know. Otherwise you’ll think my entire family is crazy, and she’s reasonably sane and sensible now. Well, compared to the rest of us she is.’
‘I’d love to meet her.’
‘I think you’ll get on.’
‘Am I sane and sensible too?’
‘You know what I mean. In one way she’s as mad as a box of frogs. I’m sure that’s what my father thinks.’
‘I do know what you mean. Listen, why don’t you come to the house later? To Auchenblae? You can let me know what she says. You’re going to have to think about all this, aren’t you?’
‘I am.’
‘Don’t make any hasty moves.’
‘You mean like last night.’
‘No. You can make those hasty moves as often as you like. I mean with this house. Don’t let yourself be bullied.’
‘It’s kind of hard not to when he has all the best cards in his hand.’
‘But he doesn’t. You only think that. He’s made you think that. You’re a grown man with all kinds of talents. When push comes to shove, he can’t dictate to you any more. He just thinks he can and he’s got you thinking he can as well.’
‘You’re right of course. It’s just...’ He looks around, sadly. ‘Here. Garve. I can’t bear to lose this.’
‘Where there’s a will there’s a way.’
‘Aye right,’ he says. ‘Talking of wills, I suppose I could just bump him off. That would be one way out of it.’ She thinks he might almost be serious. But then he grins at her again. ‘I don’t mean it. If he crashes his car on the way down the side of Loch Lomond, it wisnae me, hen. I didn’t tamper with his brakes.’
‘We’ll work something out between us. And until then, hell mend him.’
‘Hell mend him,’ he says, raising his coffee cup in a salute.
TWENTY-SEVEN
She heads back to Auchenblae, taking Hector with her. He seems to have accepted the sudden imposition of dual ownership, and hops into the car happily enough.
‘What an obliging dog you are,’ she says to him. He wags his tail.
On the way, she drops in at the hotel, relieved to see that the Jaguar has already gone. So William must have got the first ferry, as planned. She explains things, as far as she can without breaking too many confidences, to Elspeth Cameron.
‘He’s selling Carraig?’ says the older woman, horrified. ‘But that will break Cal’s heart. He loves the place and he loves the island too. What will he do?’
‘I honestly don’t know. He’s going to phone his sister for a chat. Maybe she’ll have some ideas.’
Too late, she realises that Mrs Cameron will almost certainly make assumptions about where she has spent the night. Should she fib, say she has just driven in for milk and bread? But then she might be caught out in the lie. And it isn’t really any of Mrs Cameron’s business. They’re both grown-up people. As it is, Elspeth is too shocked about Carraig to enquire, although she may well speculate later on.
‘Can he just do that? Up and sell it, just like that? I thought it was Fiona’s cottage, originally.’
‘Cal says it’s William’s property as well now. I suppose once they were married he had joint ownership. He can presumably do what he likes with it if Fiona doesn’t object. It isn’t Cal’s main home, or William’s for that matter. It’s a holiday cottage, although I don’t think that’s how Cal sees it.’
‘But that’s appalling. And I don’t suppose Catty will be able to do anything about it either.’
‘He says not.’
‘Well, hill farming, three kids, there’s no spare cash in that branch of the family, that’s for sure.’
*
She has coffee with Elspeth Cameron while they chew over the sins of William Galbraith, sotto voce in a corner of the hotel lounge. Then she heads back to Auchenblae. Hector seems just as enthusiastic about being back here as he does about Carraig, rushing about happily, finding his water bowl and his bed.
‘We might need to get you another bed,’ she tells him, aware that she is planning for the relationship with Cal to continue, wondering if that’s wise. If Carraig is sold, he might never come back here again.
You can see him in Glasgow, whispers the voice inside her head. And besides, there are other possibilities, aren’t there?
‘Don’t go there!’ she says aloud. Hector looks up at her and wags his tail obligingly. Don’t go where, he wonders, more or less understanding the phrase, not aware that he had been doing anything amiss.
The thought has occurred to her that she could ask Cal to come here, to Auchenblae. It isn’t as if she doesn’t have plenty of room. Plenty of rooms, as well, although she can’t see that being an issue. And outbuildings where it would be perfectly possible to conduct a furniture renovation and upcycling business. But it seems much too early in their relationship to suggest such a thing. It’s one of those convenient fantasies, and if it all goes pear-shaped, as these things seem to have a habit of doing, what then? How could she, not to put too fine a point on it, get rid of him, once he was settled in? She needs more time. Perhaps by the end of June things will be clearer, if William carries out his threat to put Carraig on the market. Perhaps he will think better of it. Perhaps something will happen to stop him.
She goes upstairs and starts to sort out the things from Viola’s room that she has considered selling, dividing them all over again into items that might go online and others that might be better sold at an antique fair in the city. She remembers passing a signpost to an antique centre on the way to the island and it strikes her that she might be better to rent space closer to the island for the present, or find more local antique markets or fairs. It’s all very well for Cal to try to work between the countryside and the city, but in view of the magnitude of the task in front of her – reducing the contents of the house to more manageable proportions and attempting to make some money out of them at the same time – it might be better to focus on that and whatever income she can make from it over the summer.
Later, she opens the box containing the posy ring, just to be sure it’s still there. She takes it out, puts it on the oak table, examines it, slips it on her finger. When she lifts her eyes it’s to find the portrait of Lilias watching her – but of course in this kind of portrait the gaze often does follow the viewer. Nevertheless, it’s almost as though there i
s a certain reproachful quality to it. The ring is warm and comfortable on her finger. A time will come. You and no other, she thinks. Quite suddenly, she is assailed by a sense of ... what? It’s like being dowsed in a shower of emotions, so powerful that they make her catch her breath. She wonders if it is sadness, but there’s more energy about it than that. It’s positive. She realises that what she is feeling is desire: overwhelming, uncomfortable, physical desire. She tries to pull the ring off but her finger must have swollen because it catches on her knuckle and she can’t get it off. She panics, tugging at it, but the more she pulls, the more firmly it seems to be lodged.
She hears a car in the lane, followed by the gate opening. Hector barks and then wags his tail furiously. It’s Cal. She’s still sitting at the table, frowning at her finger that is now red and swollen. She calls to him to come in, the door’s open. She waves her hand at him.
‘Look. I can’t seem to get it off.’
‘Let me see.’
She tries to laugh, but it’s becoming increasingly painful: like a band of barbed wire around her finger.
‘It’s ridiculous. It was quite loose yesterday!’ she says.
‘I know it was. I put it on the same finger.’
He takes her other hand and pulls her to her feet. ‘Come into the scullery, quickly, before it gets any more swollen.’
In the scullery he seizes a bottle of washing-up liquid from behind one of the sinks, and dowses her finger in it. To her relief, the ring slides off and into his hand.
‘Well, that was weird,’ she says, massaging her finger. The swelling is already diminishing, although the pain remains.
‘But it was loose, yesterday, wasn’t it?’
‘It definitely was.’
‘What made you put it on again?’
‘I don’t know. I was just interested in it. Wanted to see if it really did fit me.’
‘Which it doesn’t seem to, now.’
‘It’s getting better, though. Look.’ Her finger is almost back to normal. ‘Did you phone your sister?’
The Posy Ring Page 27