The Last of the Kintyres

by Catherine Airlie

  “I’m going out, Mrs. Malcolm,” she called to Jessie, who was busy in the kitchen. “If—anyone comes in will you say that I’m down on the shore?”

  She meant to go in search of Duncan, to see if, by any chance, Tony had returned with the old shepherd to his cottage at the far side of the bay.

  When, finally she reached it, the cottage was deserted. There was no sign of life in it at all. Duncan lived by himself, his sole companion the grey-and-white collie who worked with him on the hill. His wife had died five years ago and he “managed” for himself. He was seventy-five, but he could still do all that was needed about the house and on the hill, too.

  Elizabeth stood before the closed door, not even attempting to knock because she was quite sure that the old man had not returned.

  Hew must have known, she thought. He was bound to know and recognize all the signs of an approaching storm. He had seen the prelude to them so many times. He should never have let Tony go.

  Shivering, she began to make her way back along the shore. The cliff path was narrow and dangerous in places, so that the going was necessarily slow, and by the time she reached the other side of the bay she was all but exhausted.

  Buffeted by the wind and deafened by the roar of the waves, she could not think of anything but a small boat trapped out there in its hopeless fight to reach the mainland across the inferno of that narrow, boiling strait.

  Nothing could survive in that mounting sea, she told herself. All the fury of the roused Atlantic was behind it as it pounded Lingay’s western shore and came rushing through into the narrow neck between the mainland and the island. It was a death-trap even for the experienced seaman, and Duncan was an old man.

  Once she paused to wonder if Hew had gone over to Lingay with them and felt immeasurable relief. The three of them may even have decided to stay on the island and would be unable to communicate with Ardlamond. They could be marooned there for days, she supposed.

  Hopefully, but still apprehensive, she clambered over the rocks, taking the short cut to the house. She would ask Mrs. Malcolm what she thought about Hew being on Lingay, too.

  The wind seemed to have doubled in fury when she reached the headland, but she did not look back. It was beginning to grow dark—earlier than usual because of the heavy layer of cloud—and a cold, biting rain was falling.

  She climbed the fence between the road and the shore, her heartbeats increasing as she quickened her pace almost to a run. She had forgotten how long that winding road was until now when it seemed that it would never end.

  The entrance lodge came in sight, at last, small and crouching beside the heavy stone pillar of the gateways, as if in an attempt to shelter behind it from the bludgeonings of the storm, but she did not linger there. The heavy iron gates lay open and she went straight through, hurrying along the drive, every minute precious to her now.

  The wind snatched at the rain, blowing it in heavy gusts against her, making her gasp for breath, but she would not slacken her speed.

  When the house was almost in front of her, round the final bend, she heard the sharp barking of a dog. It came from the hill above her and she turned that way, instinctively seeking the reassurance of Hew’s presence.

  Yet, if he were here, on the hill somewhere behind Ardlamond, he could not also be on Lingay.

  The certainty arrested her where she stood. She could not go on, nor could she go back. She could only wait there, hoping, praying that both Tony and Duncan would come down off the hill with Hew.

  When she made out the shadowy figure approaching through the sheet of rain she could neither speak nor move. It was Hew. He was alone, and both dogs were with him.

  “Elizabeth—!” He came up to her, peering at her from under the brim of the tweed shooting hat which he wore pulled hard down over his eyes. “What is it? What’s gone wrong?” he demanded.

  She stared at him for a moment without answering. He was here—safe—while Duncan and Tony—Duncan and Tony—

  Coherent thought eluded her. She could only remember the dark gulf of water surging between Lingay and the mainland and the waves tearing at the rocks and the desolate cry of the gulls high on the cliff face.

  “What is it?” Hew repeated, catching her arm. “Why are you out here in weather like this? Answer me, Elizabeth!”

  She looked at him, seeing him as if had retreated to a great distance.

  “Because Tony is out.” She did not recognize her own voice. It had all become tangled up with the plaintive, agonizing cry of the gulls. “Because Tony is out on Lingay—because you sent him there.”

  His fingers tightened on her arm like a vice and she thought vaguely that he was about to shake her, disbelieving what she had just said.

  “This is ridiculous.” His voice was like ice. “He can’t have gone to the island.”

  “He went because you sent him!” Her words were an accusation now, tumbling out between her trembling lips, words she had never meant to say. “You wanted the sheep brought over—safely—before the storm broke. That was all you thought about!”

  He forced her along the drive ahead of him “Go back to the house,” he commanded. “You’ll not do the slightest bit of good standing here.”

  She obeyed him automatically. There was nothing else to do. She even thought, vaguely, that he was angry, but it didn’t seem to matter any more. She was too numb and cold to care. Numb all through.

  When they reached the house he pushed open the big main door and called for Mrs. Malcolm, saying something to her that Elizabeth did not hear.

  There was a log fire burning in the hall and he led her towards it, kneeling down to take off her sodden shoes, but she drew her feet away with a little cry of protest.

  “No!” she said. “No, I must go out again.”

  He got to his feet without a word.

  “Stay where you are just now,” he insisted after he had taken a quick turn to the window and back. “I’m going for Duncan.”

  “He isn’t there,” she heard herself saying with dreadful finality. “Duncan isn’t at the cottage. I’ve been there. He’s—over on Lingay, with Tony. They’re both on the island—”

  He made no answer to that, turning on his heel to go out again without even changing his coat.

  Jessie Malcolm came hurrying through from the kitchen with a tray between her hands.

  “It’s not going to do any good to worry,” she advised in her forthright way. “If Mr. Tony is on Lingay he’ll be all right. There’s the wee kirk to shelter in, and a hut at the far side of the island. He won’t come to any harm so long as he has the sense to stay where he is.”

  “They could have started to come across—”

  That was the fear in Elizabeth’s heart, the desperate, consuming fear, for no small craft could have survived the passage in that murderous sea.

  “Duncan wouldn’t attempt the crossing, would he?” she asked, like a child seeking comfort and guidance from someone more experienced than itself.

  Jessie hesitated. It was only for a split second and it was several hours before Elizabeth recognized the significance of that infinitesimal pause before the housekeeper said:

  “No, Duncan wouldn’t attempt it in weather like this.”

  After that they could do very little but wait with whatever patience they could muster.

  Pacing backwards and forwards in the far-too-quiet room, Elizabeth watched the light fade out of the sky, grey deepening to black, with no outline of cliff or hill to be seen and only the sound of the wind and the rain filling up the vastness beyond the streaming window panes.

  Heavy gusts came in, flinging spear-like shafts of rain against the ancient bastion of Ardlamond’s thick wall and, defeated, returned anew to the onslaught, but she did not fear for Ardlamond. It had survived gale and storm and siege down through the centuries. It would survive this night, too.

  But what of Duncan, that old, hardy shepherd, and Tony, and Hew, and herself? Would they survive?

  A
terrible sense of inevitable defeat caught her by the throat. Hew had not spoken one word of comfort to her, not given her any hope.

  The hours passed, crawling on leaden feet, and when the telephone rang she could not answer it at once. For a split second she remained where she was, like someone who had been turned to stone, and Jessie passed her and got there first.

  The agonizing wait as she stood listening to one side of the conversation was almost more than Elizabeth could bear, and she watched the changing expressions on Jessie’s face with a thumping heart.

  “Yes, yes, we’ll do that, Mr. Monro,” Jessie was saying. “How long have they been out searching?” She paused, listening to the person at the far end of the line. “I’ll see to that. Do you think—”

  Do you think there’s any hope? Jessie may as well have uttered the words, Elizabeth thought numbly, staring at Hew’s housekeeper as she hung up the receiver and came from the alcove. They looked at each other for a full minute before either of them spoke.

  “They’ve called out the lifeboat,” Jessie Malcolm said, at last, no longer attempting to minimize the gravity of the situation. “The master has gone out with it,” she added.

  After that Elizabeth could not remain , in the house. Jessie did not try to stop her, knowing that it would be of little use, but she made her put on a yellow oilskin coat and a sou’wester before she went out again into the rain.

  Elizabeth cared nothing for the fact that her shoes squelched wetly along a drive that was now little more than a rushing torrent. She had no very definite idea where she was going, and she knew that she could do nothing to help. This was a man’s job, but she could not stay in the house.

  Fear mounted, shaking her as the wind shook the crouching thorns that bent before it along the edge of the cliff, fear because she could see nothing and hear nothing but the fury of the storm.

  She thought of the lifeboat out there, searching, searching, buffeted by that cruel sea because a small boat had left for the island and not come back. Had they landed on Lingay and found it deserted?

  It was ten o’clock before she returned to Ardlamond. She could not have said where she had been. She had probably walked for miles, struggling against the wind, searching too.

  The rain had stopped, that fierce lashing rain which had driven her back so many times, but she hardly seemed aware of the fact. All she knew was that the greyness had lifted a little, letting her see the house.

  There were lights in all the downstairs rooms and a car and a little knot of people standing before the open door. Some of the people—three men—got into the car as she came slowly forward, and it drove away, passing her on the rain-wet drive.

  A shaft of light cut the night in two, streaming out from the doorway, and she saw two figures silhouetted against it. One of them was Duncan. The other was Hew.

  She ran then, blindly, covering the remainder of the distance somehow, her limbs trembling, her throat so parched that she could scarcely utter the one word that was hammering against her heart.

  “Tony—?”

  Hew strode towards her, catching her before she reached the door, holding her icy hands firmly in his.

  “Have you found him?” she begged in a low, hoarse whisper.

  “Not yet.”

  The deliberate words struck her with the force of a physical blow.

  “But—Duncan?” she protested, looking beyond him to where the old shepherd stood, cap in hand, on the broad step.

  “Duncan wasn’t with Tony.” Hew’s voice was low and controlled. “He went out in the launch by himself.”

  Elizabeth watched Duncan move away in a silence which seemed to stretch out and touch the edge of the world.

  “Because you sent him,” she heard herself saying, at last, in a calm, dead voice. “Because you sent him. Because you valued a few sheep more than my brother’s life—”

  Hew’s fingers tightened on her arm, but she scarcely felt their pressure. He had killed him as surely as if he had drowned him with his own two hands!

  “Don’t say any more,” he advised her. “Not just now. Go in.” He led her towards the door. “Go in to Mrs. Malcolm and let her take care of you, Elizabeth.”

  She tried to shake him off, pulling in a frenzy of grief at the ring he had given her.

  “Take this.” Her voice was a stifled whisper as she held the ring out to him. “I couldn’t wear it now. I couldn’t ever wear it—after tonight.”

  He took the ring, putting it into his pocket without demur. His understanding seemed to shatter the last shreds of her control and she felt the tears coming down her face as the rain had run all day. There was nothing in the whole world but tears.

  CHAPTER TEN

  BY morning the launch had been found. Hew told Elizabeth about it, tight-lipped and stern, when he came back soaked and haggard-looking at seven o’clock.

  She had felt, at first, that she could not bear to face him after her impassioned outburst of the night before, for already she had recognized it for what it was—the accumulation of tension and despair, the final twist which had unwound the spring.

  She had returned to sanity again, accepting this thing as it really was—a terrible accident—but Hew’s grim face did nothing to help her to apologize.

  What she had said to him in these few seconds of desperate realization was unforgivable.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” she asked.

  “That’s impossible to say, at least for the present.” He stood over her, yet he might have been a million miles away, on another plane. “The launch was picked up on an isolated beach four or five miles from Oban. It could have been washed up there, of course, the way the tide was running when the storm struck the Firth. There’s always that possibility.”

  Under his closely-drawn brows his eyes were as grey as slate, but she said resolutely, knowing that it had to be said:

  “Can you forgive me, Hew, for last night? I had no right to think it. I didn’t really believe that you were to blame for one minute. It was just—just that the words tumbled out. I didn’t have time to reason—”

  He drew in a sharp breath, turning from her as he said:

  “I think we’d better leave it as it is, Elizabeth—if Tony is dead.”

  Desperately she saw that she could not argue with him. He had thought about this thing all through the night, perhaps, and this was his answer, his final decision. She had given him back his ring and their engagement was at an end.

  He stood at the window, looking down at the sea, and then he seemed to rouse himself to renewed action. As he went towards the door Elizabeth managed to say: “Where are you going, Hew? You’ve been out all night—”

  His fingers closed over the door knob.

  “I’m going to find Caroline,” he said. “Something has just occurred to me.”

  Her heart reduced to ashes, Elizabeth watched him go, standing quite still in the empty room until she heard the Daimler’s wheels crunching across the gravel beneath the window. Then her whole body seemed to crumble and she sank into the nearest chair and buried her face in her hands.

  Hew took the high road to Dromore Castle. It was over six miles from Ardlamond and the Daimler covered the distance in under ten minutes. He swung the car in between the ancient gateposts, bringing it to a standstill on the edge of the terrace a short distance from the main door, which was closed.

  The whole place, in fact, had a shut-up look, a sort of dead appearance which suggested that the owner might be away from home.

  Angrily he noticed that the inside window shutters in some of the downstairs rooms had been closed, yet he strode to the stone portico and pulled the bell-chain hanging beside the wall.

  The sound leapt through the hall beyond the heavy door with a hollow sound, but after several minutes his summons was answered. Heavy bolts were withdrawn, a chain removed, and the iron-studded door creaked on its hinges as it swung back an inch or two. Then, seeing who was standing there, the old servant opened it wid
er.

  “Good morning, sir,” David Bannerman said, trying to hide his astonishment at this early-morning call. “I had no idea who could be ringing. Will you step inside?” It was then that Hew realized, for the first time, how early it really was. It seemed far more than four hours since a pale yellow dawn had come flaunting over the eastern hills as if to mock the havoc of the night before.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, David,” he apologized, “But I’d like a word with Mrs. Hayler, if I may?”

  The old man shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but she’s gone. She went late yesterday afternoon, sir, to Edinburgh.”

  “I see.” Hew set his lips. “Have you any idea when she will be back?”

  “She didn’t say. She thought she might be away for a day or two. She comes and goes, as you know, sir. I have just to expect her when she arrives. She doesn’t often send a message beforehand.” The old servant hesitated. “Would there be anything I could do for you, sir?” he asked.

  Hew hesitated.

  “No,” he said, “I don’t think so.” And then he seemed to change his mind. “Just one thing, David, if you would? Can you tell me if Mrs. Hayler went to Edinburgh alone?”

  “From here, sir? Oh, yes. She drove away in the Cadillac shortly after four o’clock.”

  , “I see.” Hew turned back to his car. “Thank you, David,” he added. “I won’t leave a message, but perhaps you would be good enough to ask Mrs. Hayler to phone me if she does return—or if you should hear from her?”

  “I haven’t her Edinburgh address,” the old man said regretfully. “She sometimes stays at the North British Hotel, though. Perhaps you could contact her there, sir?”

  “Yes, David, thank you.”

  “It was a dreadful storm, sir, we had last night.”

  “Indeed, yes.”

  “There must be plenty of damage. We never get a gale like that without someone suffering some loss.”

  “No.”

  Hew got into the Daimler and closed the door.

  “Good morning, sir,” Bannerman said with a slightly puzzled look. It was not often that Mr. Kintyre appeared so absent-minded. “I’m sorry you would not come, inside, sir.”