Land of Heart's Desire

by Catherine Airlie

  Christine seemed to grasp the details slowly, and then her heart gave a small, sickening lurch.

  “Finlay?” she said. “What happened, Jane? Is he all right?”

  “Yes.” Jane turned rather abruptly and went back to stand at the window where a thin, watery sunlight was seeping through the half-drawn curtains. “Yes, he’s all right. Nothing happened to him. It was you we were worried about—the knock you got on the head. He and Rory carried you back here between them.”

  “Rory?” Christine questioned vaguely. “I don’t remember—”

  “No.” Once more Jane turned, and the light seemed to be clearer, more full on her face now. It was very pale. “Rory was down at the ford,” she said. “He tried to stop Finlay and you in the jeep but he was too late getting on to the causeway. He had found the damage half an hour earlier, suspecting something of the kind, I think.” Her voice was tense and very low, but it was quite steady now. “He never trusted Hamish, you see.”

  Christine half rose from her pillows and Jane put a firm, warm hand over hers.

  “For some reason best known to himself, Hamish decided to wreck the causeway,” she explained with bleak humiliation in her voice. “He has always resented Finlay, always been jealous of what was being done for the island by someone else, the more jealous, it seems, because he knew himself unprepared to make any sort of sacrifice for Croma. But I would never have dreamed, even in my wildest moments, that he would have stooped to a thing like this. It was about the most treacherous act he could have thought of. He must have hated Finlay...”

  Christine lay quite still. It was almost impossible to believe that Hamish had done such a thing, yet suddenly she was remembering the incident at Port-na-Keal when she had come upon him inciting the men to boycott the handling of the material for the new road. That had been her own personal experience of his treachery.

  “It’s all so horrible,” Jane said after a pause. “My own brother—”

  Christine said, in a voice that was no more than a whisper.

  “Finlay won’t make any difference to you because of that, Jane. He’s—not the sort of person to hold a grudge.” She remembered what Joe had said. “He knows what you have already done for Ardtornish and—he’s very fond of you.”

  Jane smiled a trifle wanly.

  “We ask a lot of friendship, don’t we?” she said as Finlay’s housekeeper came in with a tray. “You’ll need your breakfast,” she added practically, “and then Doctor McIlroy is going to take another look at you to make quite sure there is nothing wrong. There’s a rather disfiguring bump on your forehead,” she smiled, “but that will wear away in time!”

  “Jane,” Christine began, but Jane smiled her firm refusal to enter into further argument.

  When the doctor came his examination was brief.

  “You gave us a bit of a fright, young lady!” he said. “But now I’m quite sure there’s nothing serious to worry about. Pity you decided to make the journey across the ford in the dark,” he added, “and in a storm into the bargain! The new road is a fine idea, but maybe it was rushed into position too soon. One weak link, you know—” He looked at her with a quick shake of his head. “It was a bad storm,” he said, “and sometimes we underestimate the power of the sea. I’ve watched whole necks of land being torn away by it in my time, and bridges crushed, as if they had been a child’s toy. Ay,” he concluded, “it has a terrible power! But next time Mr. Sutherland will make sure of the finished job. He’s a man like that. A good man for this island. Ay, a good man for Croma!”

  Christine wondered when she would see Finlay again, whether he wanted to meet her before she returned to Erradale or not. She had caused him endless trouble and inconvenience and nearly lost him his life, and she was not without guilt over Hamish.

  When she dressed and went slowly downstairs she found that he was at the ford with the other men. The storm was over, but Cloe Simpson and Eve Albright were ensconced in two deep armchairs on either side of the hall fireplace, feeling the cold.

  “It’s going to snow,” Eve said. “I can feel it in my bones! What does the island look like when it’s covered in snow?”

  “We have it so rarely,” Christine explained. “The sea protects us, you see.”

  “And savages you on the other hand when it beats up into a storm!” Cloe pointed out. “Oh, well, it’s your life, and I expect you wouldn’t change it for all the central heating in America!”

  “No,” Christine said. “I would never change it.”

  She was speaking like someone in a dream, thinking only about Finlay, how she would have to apologize to him when he came because she believed herself responsible for at least some of the events of the preceding night.

  After that she would go back alone to Erradale, perhaps not to see him again for many weeks. When the spring came there would be the tweed and their business negotiations about the starting of the mill, but that would be all. She thought that she could not bear easily seeing Finlay and working with him and knowing that, deep in his heart, he despised her.

  He came in with the other men, tired and work stained from their efforts on the causeway, telling them that they should have gone ahead with their lunch and not waited.

  “Must you get back?” he asked when Christine rose to go. “It will take an hour or two to get the span into place again and the road has been damaged. We’re leaving it till to-morrow.”

  She lifted eyes that were full of regret to his, but she could not beg for any pardon.

  “It’s the day for the steamer,” she reminded him. “It will be coming into Scoraig at three o’clock.”

  “Not to-day,” he said. “They’ve had trouble over on the mainland. If you want to get back,” he added, “I’ll take you.”

  The sea was calm enough now, so calm and gentle that it seemed impossible that it could have raged in unrestrained fury only a few hours before, yet the return journey to Port-na-Keal would take Finlay till dinner time and he looked strained and tired. Quite possibly he had not slept during the night, and Jane had said that he and Rory had carried her back all the way from the ford.

  “I can’t let you do it, Finlay,” she told him. “You ought to rest.”

  The direct green eyes came down, keen and alert, on her own.

  “And if I want to do it,” he said, “could you really stop me?”

  “No.” She smiled briefly. “No, Finlay, I couldn’t do that. You have always been very determined once your mind was made up.”

  “I still am.” He turned away to where the others were seated round the fire. “If Rory comes in will you tell him to leave everything till to-morrow morning? It’s no use trying to work in the dark. We’re not taking any risks this time.”

  “What I can’t understand,” Ellis Simpson began as they made their way towards the dining-room, “is how that span only came down on one side. In the natural order of things, water rushes under a series of arches like that—”

  “Finlay doesn’t think it was the water,” Eve Albright interrupted him. “He believes there was some other element involved. The human element. You know, there just may have been some faulty workmanship—something overlooked.”

  Glancing at Finlay’s grim mouth and suddenly tightened jaw, Christine knew that he thought nothing of the kind. He was aware of the truth, although he would not correct Eve’s estimate of what had really gone wrong. He did not want them to know about Hamish, for Jane’s sake.

  She said good-bye to the two Canadian couples after lunch, and Jane walked with her to the jetty. Finlay had gone on ahead to bring the boat round to the steps, but when they reached it there was nobody to be seen there but Rory.

  He stood holding the mooring rope, and Christine’s heart gave a keen lurch of disappointment.

  Was he going to take her to Port-na-Keal? Was this Finlay’s final answer to all the trouble she had brought upon him at Ardtornish, this brief dismissal, with Rory to look after her till she was safely back in Erradale?
<
br />   Her heart twisted painfully, but it seemed that Rory was not to go, after all. He was waiting for Finlay, on Finlay’s instructions.

  “You haven’t had any lunch, Rory,” Jane said with a new gentleness in her voice. “It’s waiting for you at the house.”

  “I’ll get it,” he said, “in a while.”

  “Have you seen Finlay?”

  Rory nodded.

  “He’s having a look at the other boat.” For the first time he turned fully towards Christine, looking at her with dumb apology in his brown eyes as he added: “I had to bring your boat back here, Chris. There was a small repair to do on it before it could be taken round the island again.”

  “The Erradale boat?” Christine’s brows drew together in a quick frown. “But how did it get here, Rory? You’ve just said that you brought it, of course,” she remembered, “but Hamish—”

  She saw Rory’s expression change and grow ugly at the mention of his brother’s name.

  “Hamish brought it to the ford—full of dynamite.” The small exaggeration passed them all by. “You know, don’t you, that he blew the support from under the middle span? He would have wrecked both sides, out of his fiendish spite, if he had been given time, but he didn’t get the second charge securely enough into place. It went off, harmlessly enough, down on the sand. That’s where I found it,” he added grimly. “The rest of the stuff was in the boat—as incriminating a piece of evidence as you could possibly want!”

  Christine felt stunned and bewildered by the swift sequence of events, yet there was still something more to be said.

  “Where is Hamish?” she asked in a strangled undertone.

  Slowly Rory’s hands came together, the strong, misshapen fingers curving inwards as they might have done if they had been circling a man’s throat. “He’s gone,” he said. “He won’t come back.”

  “Rory—!”

  Jane had taken a step forward, the one stricken word forced by fear from between her dry lips, but Rory shook his head.

  “No, I haven’t killed him,” he said, “though he deserved it.” The peculiar, tensed fingers relaxed. “He won’t come back to Croma,” he repeated. “I made sure of that.”

  Christine’s breath came out in a small, gasping sigh of relief and Jane moistened her lips twice before she said: “Try to forget it, Rory. Hamish wasn’t worth all the worry we’ve given ourselves over him. Finlay needs you here,” she added gently, looking into her brother’s distorted face. “Croma needs you.”

  When Finlay came Christine was already in the boat. He took over the controls and signalled to Rory to cast off.

  “See you in a couple of hours!” he said, and Jane raised her gloved hand in a silent gesture of farewell.

  Watching brother and sister standing there on the tiny jetty with Scoraig and the grey battlements of Ardtornish behind them, it seemed to Christine that so many pages had been turned back in the book of time. It was thus that she had left Scoraig so often in days gone by, waving to the two familiar figures of brother and sister until they were no more than specks against the backcloth of white quayside cottages, but always in those days she had been on board the S.S. Morar, the steamer which had first brought Finlay Sutherland to her island home.

  She had never left Scoraig like this, with Finlay’s hand on the tiller and Finlay so close beside her that she had only to stretch back a little way to touch him, to lay her head against the firm protection of his broad shoulder and cry for his forgiveness and his love.

  But how useless that would be, she thought. How useless now! Instead, she had to let him know the truth.

  “Finlay,” she said unsteadily, “I know that Hamish wrecked the bridge.”

  “I wondered,” he returned briefly. “Jane told you, I suppose?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a small silence in which they turned out of the shelter of the bay and faced the sterner passage to the north.

  “There is—something I have to say.” Her voice was determined and strong, although at first it had threatened to desert her. “What he did may have been because of me.” She turned to look at him, but she could not read any of his emotions in the green eyes gazing steadily ahead.

  “There’s just one question, Chris,” he said. “Are you still in love with him?”

  “No.” Her reply came without the slightest hesitation, strong and assured in the waiting silence. “I don’t think I ever was. Hamish always had a—sort of fascination for me, a romantic fascination, I suppose it was. He was handsome and gay and devil-may-care, and in some ways he could make you feel a sort of queen. That was his charm, I suppose, but it was all so—so false. He had used it so often that it was just a habit, but I didn’t understand that. Even in my schooldays I thought it would be wonderful to be loved by Hamish—until I discovered how hollow he really was.” She clasped her hands tightly in front of her, aware that there was little more she could say. “I had to tell you this,” she confessed miserably, “because of the bridge—because what he did was possibly my fault, too.”

  He looked down at her with a sudden, fierce light in his eyes.

  “Need, you tell me?” he asked. “All I want to know is that you are not going to marry this man, that I was right when I thought you never would.”

  “Finlay!” she gasped. “How could you have known a thing like that?”

  “Intuition, primarily, I guess!” He stretched forward, one hand still on the wheel, the other drawing her slowly and purposefully towards him. “Intuition,” he repeated, “and the powerful, reciprocal urge of love.”

  Before she could answer, he had bent her head back and kissed her, full and possessively, on the lips, a long, hard, demanding kiss which gave her no room for doubt, a man’s kiss with the salt tang of the sea behind it as the wind swept up from the Rhu Dearg to fold them in its swift embrace.

  “Finlay!” Christine whispered at last, trembling close to tears. “I never dreamed this would happen...”

  “Why not? Didn’t you know we had to share Croma right from the very first day we met? I knew then,” he added, holding her close when he was forced to give his attention to the wheel. “I knew you were for me just as surely as I knew that all the time that had gone before was wasted time. I was in love once—or thought I was—but I sensed that Carla wasn’t right for me or for the land. She was the brittle product of a town, and so many other things besides. But you were Croma, the island I bought because of a dream.”

  “Finlay,” she said, holding his arm tightly about her, “we belong here. We’ll go away sometimes, so that we can come back and see how lovely it is and know with certainty that we want to stay! We’ll build up your dream together.”

  “And what a lot of building we still have to do!” he said, kissing her again. “But, first of all, there’s the gap in the causeway.” He slewed the helm round a degree or two so the black head of the Rhu Dearg was directly on their beam and they were facing the ford. “We’ve got to complete it and remake the road to the Port, and after that we’re going to open the mill up there in Erradale and fix our London showing of the tweed and rake in the resultant orders so that more folk will come back to Croma and the island will be young again. Then we can bring our kids up in freedom and love. But first of all,” he added with a brief, one-sided grin, “we’ve got to find a preacher and ask him to marry us! There’s no point in living one on either side of a divided island, is there?”

  “None at all!” Christine looked up at him, her eyes shining through happy tears. “But what will everybody say—Joe and the Simpsons and the Albrights—and Jane?”

  “Jane and Joe will get married pretty soon, I think,” he said immediately. “They kind of took to each other on sight as soon as Joe got here. He means to stay, I guess. I’ll offer him the management of Ardtornish and you and I will stay at Erradale and look after the mill.”

  “Finlay,” she asked with a small, sparkling smile, “did you always want to live at Erradale?”

  He l
ooked down at her and grinned.

  “I always thought it was the better house!” he admitted, drawing her hand firmly through his arm. “Jane and Joe and Rory will get on all right at Scoraig.”

  “You plan everything,” she said, rubbing her cheek against his coat, “just the way you want it!”

  His face sobered.

  “Not really,” he confessed. “At one time, Chris, I thought I had lost you—for good. When you told me, and Rory confirmed it, that you were going to marry Hamish I felt that the world had folded up under me. There didn’t seem to be much point in Croma or anything else without you. It would have been an island divided in the fullest sense of the words if that had happened.”

  Christine drew his head down towards her and kissed him gently on the cheek.

  “I must always have loved you,” she said, “even in the beginning when I couldn’t—wouldn’t see eye to eye with you! Perhaps a sense of conflict isn’t such a bad thing, after all. At least one is aware of the other person—vitally aware. You just can’t dismiss them without a second thought!”

  “And second thoughts are invariably best,” he assured her. “Come and have a last look at our causeway before we sail past!”

  Still held close against him, and with the wind in her face, Christine looked towards the shore. The tide was out and the whole length of the new causeway stood sharply silhouetted against the long stretch of wet white sand, with the faint amber glow of the sunset’s aftermath still showing through between the supporting piers.

  “Finlay,” she said, her eyes full of a new wonder which matched the wonder of their love, “I’ve discovered something. Even without the causeway, Croma was never a divided island. It has always been one. The ford was just a—temporary gap!”