‘Nor would I!’
‘Exactly.’
Mary knew she was blushing, and turned her face away from mine in embarrassment. ‘I know he would never – well, Julia, you see me for what I am. But I like him more than anyone I know, and I don’t have many friends. Sergeant Henderson is a dear, you know, but he’s not really a friend. I am concerned for Dr Housman, but I am selfishly glad his disappearance means I am to work with Sandy …’ Mary hesitated all of a sudden. ‘I wouldn’t confess this to anyone but you, Julia.’
‘I do understand, Mary! And I don’t spill secrets.’
I obviously didn’t know her any bit as well as I thought I did.
Because –
Mary and Sandy! I couldn’t imagine it. I couldn’t imagine Mary with anyone. But was that because I thought she was not … not, say, ordinary enough to have ordinary desires and ambitions? Perhaps my feeling that she had a ‘kind’ face was as unthinking and shallow as Euan and Ellen calling her a goblin.
What Sandy thought was another story. A story I didn’t know.
Mary became brisk again all of a sudden. ‘Now, darling, I don’t want you sitting about here idly, so you can help me set up the card tables and unpack the boxes. The tables are going to go around the edges of the room in front of the shelves. It’ll make it very tight, so be sure to leave a gap for people to get through. And if you could make a note of everything you take out of the boxes and which table you put it on, that would be most useful.’
I couldn’t believe my luck, really. Perhaps I would come across Grandad’s pearls myself. Taking an inventory of the Murray Hoard would be a fabulous way to spend my convalescence. And maybe I’d find some clue as to what had happened to Housman.
After nearly a fortnight of being treated with the fearful gentleness one might use to handle a treasured pet budgerigar with a broken wing, it was a shock to be awakened one morning with the mattress beneath my feet bouncing so hard it made the iron bed frame squeak. I raised my head and shoulders, leaning back on my elbows. And there was my favourite brother Jamie. He is only a year older than me.
‘You are going to give me concussion again,’ I told him.
He stopped bouncing, took one look at me and clapped a hand over his mouth in an attempt to suffocate himself so he could not laugh. His shoulders shook.
‘Stow it!’ I said.
‘Sluggard!’ he accused. Then he added, rather chokingly, ‘I think I shall call you Feathers.’
‘Don’t be unkind!’ I was very pleased to see him. ‘They cut my hair while I was insensible in hospital and I’ve only just been allowed to wash it.’
‘It’s very modern. Very gamine. You look like a jazz singer.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Actually, you look more like that doll you used to carry around by its hair, Donalda. Do you remember? Till most of it fell out except that wiry ashy tuft on the very top that you used for a handle –’
I threw my pillow. He nearly threw it back, instinctively, but checked himself just in time. Instead he tucked it behind his head against the French window. I pulled my knees up so there was more room for him.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.
‘Much, much better.’
‘I thought you might need cheering up. Invalids need cheering, don’t they? I’d only just got home from school myself, and I overheard Father speaking to Mother on the ’phone. You know how he echoes back everything you say to show he’s being attentive? “She spent a night with the Travellers! A man standing in the river! That’s all she remembers! The scholar’s still AWOL!” I couldn’t hear what Mother was telling him – just all the intrigue he was repeating. So here I am. I took the milk train from Aberdeen.’
‘You have cheered me up enormously already,’ I said. ‘Now that you’re here to look after me I’ll be able to go somewhere other than the library day after day! I want to retrace my steps. I want to know what happened to me.’
‘Let’s get started,’ Jamie answered, grinning.
He provided me with clothes. This is the sort of thing that makes him my favourite. No other brother would have thought of it. He was patient with me eating the tea and toast he’d carried up from the kitchen, and then with me getting dressed in Mother and Solange’s little room (in Mother’s clothes again because although Jamie had brought me several of my favourite garments, it cannot be said he’d included anything practical ). He got bored waiting for me to finish fussing with my hair at Mémère’s dressing table.
‘Let me,’ he said, leaning over my shoulder to take hold of the comb. ‘We did HMS Pinafore this spring and they made me be Josephine because I’m so scrawny. I’ve become rather good at primping.’
He was standing behind me and we could see each other in the mirror. With my hair short we looked very much alike, except that he was grinning and I was scowling.
‘I should think you made a lovely Josephine,’ I said. ‘You are quite as pretty as me. I’ll bet you wore a wig though. Yellow curls.’
‘True, but not for rehearsals.’
‘I wish you’d brought it down with you. I could have used it.’
Jamie laughed. He was deft and sure with the comb and hairgrips. ‘It would not have suited you at all. Anyway we had a ritual burning of it after the last performance, carrying it down to the river on a pike like a beheaded aristocrat.’
‘You seem to have a great deal more fun at school than I do,’ I grumbled.
Jamie stood back, lifting his hands. ‘There.’
He’d really done as good a job as Solange. He held a hand mirror to the back of my head so I could see how he’d hidden the stubble.
I said, ‘You should leave off bothering with Eton and become a ladies’ –’
‘Stop being such a miserable cat, Julie,’ Jamie said hastily, going a little pink. ‘Now. Where do you want to go?’
‘I’m burning to go to Inchfort Field!’ I answered. ‘I want to see how far I got between hitting my head and falling over. I want to see if we can find any trace of Dr Housman. And maybe the lad who rescued me has come back. The Traveller folk who took me to the hospital told me to come and see them. Everyone is so suspicious of them and as far as I can tell they haven’t done a thing to deserve it. I want to tell them thank you.’
FREEDOM!
We left the house through the terrace doors of the morning room and stood for a moment surveying the building works.
‘They’re putting down paths,’ I observed, and was struck with melancholy over my grandfather not being around to appreciate this improvement. ‘We could have pushed Grandad about in his chair if there’d been paths last summer.’
‘I remember him wishing for a smooth path down to the river. He didn’t have the money for it,’ Jamie said soberly. ‘Cheer up. Let’s see what they’re up to over by the tennis lawn – it looks like they’re digging a swimming bath. Tell me what it was like to sleep in a Travellers’ camp!’
‘I can’t remember,’ I said crossly. ‘I was asleep the whole time.’
‘Perhaps they’d let me stay with them tonight, if they’re there,’ Jamie said. ‘Better than sleeping all by myself in one of those servants’ rooms in the attic. Or I could build a camp tent on the terrace. I wonder how deep they’ve gone with that swimming hole.’
He was doing his best to distract me – although I knew, based on his fascination for hydromechanics (or as our eldest brother Davie calls it, ‘Jamie’s obsession with drains’), that he was serious about wanting to look at the pool project.
We didn’t get too close, but it was interesting. There was a hole in the lawn as big as a cottage, and the invasion into the riverbank was a miniature geological history lesson if you knew how to read it, slices of different coloured earth piled neatly one on top of the other like a giant layer cake with green grass icing on top. The layer they were currently digging into looked like Black Forest gateau.
‘Peat,’ Jamie commented. ‘I wonder if they’ll find anything interesting
in it. Remember the log boat, under the water near the river gate by Aberfearn Castle? That’s three thousand years old. They can tell because the peat’s laid down into it, all around it.’
‘Show-off. You only know that because you’ve read it in Sandy’s antiquarian article.’
‘We could go to see if they’ve uncovered it. It’s still there. They must be digging nearby if they’re laying pipes beneath the riverbed for this pool.’
‘Drains,’ I exclaimed in disgust. ‘What about the Traveller folk camping at Inchfort?’
‘I’ll go to look at the pipes on my own later,’ Jamie conceded generously.
We carried on down to the river path, just as I’d done two weeks earlier, and turned upstream along the Fearn. I watched my brother’s face change as he gazed around him at the birch wood. I knew he was feeling exactly as I’d felt that first day here; all the sadness and joy.
Jamie spoke quietly. ‘I can’t believe this isn’t Murray land any more. And to think I wouldn’t even be here if it hadn’t been for your sore head! I felt like Grandad’s funeral was the end. I’m glad I came.’
We walked for a little while without talking. But when we got to Inverfearnie Island we both jumped along the iron footbridge to make it bounce, and ended up laughing. We passed the open door of the old library, crossed the mossy stone bridge to the other side of the burn and took the path towards Brig O’Fearn by way of Inchfort Field. The river wood hadn’t changed in the least bit since the first day I’d arrived.
We’d nearly reached the bend in the river where the beachy place and the big stones are when the yellow dog came bounding out of the undergrowth along the path as if it had been waiting for us.
It really did come straight towards us as if we were old friends. It saw us, scampered around us both in a circle of excitement, then made a rash decision and plunged into the clear brown waters of the Fearn.
Something tugged at my brain.
The dog found its footing and scrambled out again, bounding through the tangle of nettles and forget-me-nots on the riverbank. It shook itself gloriously and was suddenly transformed from a dripping rag to a golden powder puff, like a pantomime Cinderella under her fairy godmother’s wand. She was a very beautiful tan Border collie. She chose me to leap upon in greeting.
And I knew her.
This dog – this sodden whirlwind of golden fluff – was one of those terribly sweet, terribly brainless characters that you can’t take anywhere if you want to work: she barks at sheep, she’ll scare the grouse before your gun is loaded, she leaps at strange girls to give them kisses. That’s what she was doing now, and I knew that’s what she’d done the day I met her, the day I’d fallen.
‘Pinkie! You silly, silly girl! Down, love. Good girl, Pinkie.’
You see, I even knew her name.
Jamie helped to drag her off me before she knocked me down. She shook herself again, splattering us with river water.
‘I do remember you.’ I fondled her ears. ‘Pinkie, love, where are your people?’
She pranced away from me towards the river’s bend. She knew where her people were, and she was going to take me to meet them.
They were standing in the burn by the flat rock, fishing for pearls with glass-bottomed jugs and pronged sticks, just like the man I’d seen before my head exploded. Unlike him, they knew what they were doing.
One of them looked up at us and waved. It was Euan McEwen. He was so clearly a younger copy of his tall and ginger-haired companion that it took me one glance to guess the older man was Euan and Ellen’s father.
‘That’s the Traveller lad who found me,’ I told Jamie. ‘And his dad, I think.’
They were both wearing waders, but the water scarcely came to their knees. When Euan saw us, he pulled the tin-and-glass jug of his trade out of the water and slung it over his shoulder.
‘You’re looking bonny, Davie Balfour!’ he shouted.
The dog ran to meet him. She took a flying leap off the flat rock and into the water. The older man winced away from the splash with a strangled noise that was half groan, half laughter. She was obviously not a working dog.
‘You’re here! Hurrah!’ I cried in answer to Euan. ‘I remember your dog – the daftie! She jumped all over me!’
‘This is my dad, Alan McEwen,’ Euan said. ‘Dad, here’s our Davie Balfour come back from the dead.’
Funny things, names. Funny how it felt easy and natural for me to call Euan by his first name, and daring and grown-up to call Frank by his. I suppose I would never call Mother by her given name either, though she is Mummy in fondness.
I liked it that Euan kept calling me Davie. It felt special and friendly, though I think he did it partly to avoid having to call me Lady Julia.
‘This is my brother Jamie,’ I said. I was trying to make it clear I didn’t want the dreadful formality of a title – especially since it was only me, as the Earl of Craigie’s daughter, who had this dilemma; Jamie, a younger son, isn’t saddled with a courtesy title in everyday speech. I added firmly, ‘And I’m Julie.’
Alan McEwen whipped off his cap and flashed us a McEwen grin. ‘You’re looking braw, lass! Hello, Jamie.’
Jamie knelt on the flat rock and held out a hand. Alan McEwen gave it a wet shake. Pinkie sloshed about around the McEwen men’s legs, struggling a little against the current.
‘I wanted to thank you for taking me to Perth the other week,’ I told him. ‘And Mrs McEwen too.’
Alan McEwen smiled warmly. ‘Mrs McEwen will be glad to know you’re on your feet again.’
‘Have you found anything?’ Jamie asked.
Alan McEwen grimaced a little. ‘We’ve five fat fiddle-bellied crooks for Mrs McEwen to open. But I dinnae like to see so much rubbish chucked in the burn – glass target balls and tins and jam jars and whatnot. Washing downstream frae the village, I suppose, but it saddens me, folk using the burn as a midden. Not like the old days.’
‘You can get a penny for a jam jar,’ Euan said.
‘I’m no’ divin’ for rubbish.’
‘I say, can I see?’ Jamie asked, as eager as the dog. ‘Could I take a look through your glass jug?’
Mr McEwen smiled. ‘Aye, but you’ll have to get wet.’
‘Go on,’ I told Jamie enthusiastically, anticipating an excellent variety performance. ‘The water’s pretty low. The chap I saw fishing here two weeks ago was up to his waist!’
‘The Fearn’s tidal right the way past Brig O’Fearn village,’ explained Alan McEwen. ‘It’s coming up on a spring tide just now. Makes the high tides extra high and the low tides extra low.’
Jamie undid a couple of buttons at his throat and shrugged out of his shirt. He handed it to me for safekeeping and, just like Pinkie, slid off the flat rock and sloshed into the burn. Euan passed his pearl-fishing glass across to Jamie so he could look below the surface of the water.
Jamie’s arms and shoulders were fair as flax, as though he’d spent the last ten years in a dungeon. He bent over by the flat rock, and as he leaned down, light from the river caught his face and light from the sky gleamed on his bare back, and – incredible. Incredible the way it comes back. Just like that. It happened in a flash, in an instant of clarity – sparked by another pale body standing in the River Fearn.
The man in the river on the day I’d fallen – there was a reason I’d thought he was comical. There was a reason I hadn’t been able to remember his clothes.
He hadn’t been wearing any.
That man had been stark naked. Seeing Jamie with his back stripped bare, with the reflected light off the water on his face, made me remember.
I could see the other man perfectly now, splashing about when he lost his cap, the lenses of his glasses spangled with drops of water after he submerged his face. Those shifting dots of light on his skin like gold coins – I’d seen those because he’d been wearing glasses. The lenses had reflected in the river as he moved. I hadn’t been able to see his eyes, focused on something below
the surface of the water.
I stood quite still, remembering. It was a bit like being hit on the head all over again. It made me go quiet for a moment.
But then Pinkie came crashing out of the stream, romping up devotedly to keep me company, since everyone else was in the water. I took a deep breath. Jamie peered intently at his feet, or something, through the glass jug. I wondered what he could see. The McEwens stood by watching, indulging him.
‘What happened after Euan brought me up to your camp?’ I asked. ‘Did you try to find where I’d come from? I was here when I hit my head. There was a man – I saw someone in the burn here, over by the Drookit Stane in the middle of the stream. We think it was the scholar who was working at the library, and no one’s seen him since that day, either.’
‘Aye, the police have been sniffing around here looking for him,’ said Alan McEwen. ‘We knew him because he’d been in about the place last month, wanting to know the good fishing spots for Fearn pearls. Nice enough gadgie and a friend of Strathfearn’s, but none of our business.’
‘How did I get up the path to Inchfort Field before you found me, Euan – did Dr Housman carry me?’
‘He might have,’ Euan answered. ‘It was Pinkie found you. Your scholar might have been frighted by the dog, and put you down, and gone away again.’
Alan McEwen laughed. ‘Frighted by that!’
‘Well, Dad, some people don’t like dogs. And Pinkie was with her when I found her.’
‘Did you see the other man?’ I asked.
Jamie straightened up to listen, intrigued.
Euan shook his head.
‘We found that cap, lad,’ Mr McEwen said. ‘The Water Bailiff took it away with him for the police to look at, remember?’
‘So we did.’
‘What did he look like, your man in the stream?’ Jamie asked suddenly. ‘Was he wearing gold wire-rimmed specs?’
My mouth dropped open. Because he had been.
‘Why?’
Jamie bent over, using the jug to pinpoint something at his feet, and reached into the water with his free hand. He came up dripping, holding something that glinted gold between his fingers.
The Pearl Thief Page 7