Winter Solstice

by Pilcher, Rosamunde

  “He’s an amazing man,” Carrie had said.

  “The most giving of men. He stayed with my mother, in some unhappiness, until Nicola and I were both adult and on our own, and only then did he light out and leave us all, and go off with Serena. If Lucy had had a father like Jeffrey, things would be so different for her. He wasn’t just my father, he was my best friend. He opened every door, never stopped praising and encouraging. With a man like that behind me, I always believed I could do anything.”

  Anything. But sometime, somewhere along the line, something had gone wrong. And Carrie was not about to confide in Sam.

  The less she spoke, the less she gave away, the more he longed to know. He wondered if this obsession was the beginning of falling in love with her. Otherwise, why should it matter so much? And what was the point of falling in love with a woman already deeply committed to her career and her ill-assorted family, who would never, in a thousand years, jettison the lot and come to live in the north of Scotland with Sam Howard?

  All this quite apart from the fact that he was still married to Deborah.

  The dog shifted and whined. Horace was growing cold. Sam was cold, too, but did not move. For, when he looked again, he saw that the faint shell-pink had exploded into an aureole of red and yellow, with vaporous streaks like flames. And over the shallow hills of the distant headland inched the first sliver of an orange sun. The curved rim of dazzling light touched the shifting sea, smudged shadows on the undulations of the sand, and drained darkness from the sky, so that gradually it was no longer sapphire-blue, but faded to aquamarine.

  He watched, and lost all sense of time as the orange orb sailed up, out from behind the far side of the world. And it was the same fresh miracle that it had always been, and he forgot about being cold. The pinprick blink from the lighthouse, all at once, ceased. The new day had begun, and after today, the days would start to grow longer, and then it would be another year, and Sam, thinking about it, found himself unable to imagine what it might hold in store for him.

  He walked back to Creagan at a brisk pace, following the narrow path that led along the top of the snowcovered links. The mist was dissolving, and the sky was a pale, pure blue, quite cloudless. By the time he reached the first of the houses, he saw that the morning was already on its way: cars came and went, shops were open; the first of the shoppers were out, with their baskets and plastic bags. The butcher was sweeping snow from his front step, and a young mother pulled her bundled baby along in a little wooden sledge. He was ravenously hungry.

  Letting himself into the house, he realized that it, too, was a hive of busy activity. From upstairs came the drone of a Hoover, and a female voice singing an old Beatles song.

  “I love you, yeah yeah yeah….”

  The redoubtable Mrs. Snead, no doubt, come to muck them all out.

  From the open kitchen door flooded light, and mouth-watering smells of bacon and coffee. He unclipped Horace’s lead, took off his outer clothes, and went through the open door. There he found only Carrie, sitting surrounded by the detritus of other people’s breakfasts. She was drinking coffee and reading The limes, but looked up, saw him, and said, “Good morning.”

  That first evening, a mere two days ago, when he had so gracelessly barged in, out of the dark and the snow, clutching Hughie McLennan’s key, he had been knocked sideways by the unexpected glamour of the girl who had opened the door to him. She had, he later learned, been struck down by a bout of flu, or some unknown bug, and had only just risen from a bed of sickness, and because of this had looked pale, frail, and intensely vulnerable. He had still thought her sensational. But now the flu was a thing of the past, cast off by the resilience of youth, and this morning she wore a red cashmere sweater and the bright colour rendered her vital, radiant, and more attractive than ever. In his present mood of well-being he knew a physical urge to touch her, to sweep her up into his arms, embrace her, break down imagined barriers, and start to talk.

  “Did you have a good walk?”

  Mad impulses, prudently, retreated.

  “Too far, perhaps. Horace is exhausted.” Horace, slopping the water on the floor, was treating himself to a noisy drink.

  “You must be frozen.”

  “No. I am warm from exertion. But starving.”

  “There’s bacon.” She laid the newspaper down and got to her feet.

  “I guessed.”

  “I’ll make fresh coffee.”

  “Carrie, I can do that.”

  “No.” A plate sat on the warmer, covered by another plate. With oven-gloved hands she lifted it, set it down on the table, and with a certain flourish removed the top plate. He saw not only bacon, but eggs, a sausage, and a fried tomato. Everything sizzled.

  “I can. You start eating.”

  He looked at the feast in some amazement.

  “Who cooked all this?”

  “I did. I reckoned you’d be hungry.”

  He felt much touched.

  “You are sweet.”

  “No problem.”

  He sat, and buttered a slice of toast.

  “Where is everybody?”

  Carrie filled the kettle and plugged it in.

  “Oh, around and about. They’ve all finished breakfast. Mrs. Snead has come, and I think Elfrida’s making beds. Oscar’s telephoning. We have to go and fetch the Christmas tree this morning. He wondered if you would do that, in your car. Easier to load trees in, and Oscar’s a bit nervous of driving in snow.”

  “Where do I have to go for it?”

  “Corrydale Estate. That’s who he’s phoning now. Some man called Charlie Miller. It’s all ordered and everything, but he just wanted to be sure that Charlie was around when we went.”

  “We? Are you coming with me?”

  “Oscar’s drawn a map. I shall have to come, to be your navigator. Besides, I want to go to Corrydale. Oscar’s told me all about it. How his grandmother used to live there, and then his uncle, and then Hughie. And Oscar used to spend holidays there when he was a little boy. He says the grounds and the garden used to be amazing, but of course it’s different now, because it’s an hotel. Anyway, I’d like to see it. The hotel’s empty, so if Charlie Miller says we can, we could have a nose-around.”

  Sam, eating bacon, was filled with a silent satisfaction.

  He could think of no better way of spending this fine morning than driving Carrie to Corrydale, collecting the Christmas tree, and having a nose-around. It would be interesting to see what Hughie McLennan had once owned and then squandered. But he only said, “Right,” and went on eating, because he didn’t want Carrie to sense his pleasure, and then start backing off.

  She spooned the ground coffee into the jug and poured on the boiling water.

  “Shall I make more toast?”

  “That would be kind.”

  She made toast, and then poured coffee for him, refilled her own cup, and returned to her chair. Sam wondered if they were about to spend a few companionable moments together, but inevitably they were interrupted by Lucy, running downstairs and bursting in upon them.

  “Carrie, Mrs. Snead says she’s going to do a white wash and do you want anything done? Hello, Sam. Did you and Horace have a lovely walk?”

  “We certainly did.”

  “When did you go?”

  “About eight. It was still dark. We saw the sun rise.”

  “Oh, how lovely. I wish you’d taken me. I’ve never seen a proper sunrise. It must have been pretty, with all the snow on the golf course. Like Switzerland, or somewhere.”

  Carrie said, “Sam and I are going to Corrydale to fetch the Christmas tree. Do you want to come with us?”

  “Oh …” Lucy made an agonized face.

  “Oh, I would love to, but… well… I’ve promised Mrs. Snead I’d help her. Do something. So I can’t. And I really want to go and look at Corrydale.”

  Sam, loving Lucy for not coming, said, “I’ll take you another time.”

  “Will you? Is that a promi
se? Oscar says it’s the most wonderful place in the world, and that his grandmother used to have the most beautiful azaleas, in every single colour. And the grounds go down to the water, too, and he used to have a boat.”

  From upstairs, Mrs. Snead screeched.

  “Lucy! What about that laundry? I want to get it all collected….”

  Carrie made a comic face.

  “We’d better do what we’re told, otherwise we’ll be in trouble. Come on, Lucy….”

  And Sam, left on his own, drank hot fresh coffee and felt as contented as a well-fed schoolboy with a treat in the offing.

  Oscar’s little map of directions to Corrydale proved to be a meticulous plan of all that lay within the protection of the boundary wall. Which appeared to be a small maze of roads and drives, stands of woodland, and a long shoreline. Each estate worker’s house had been drawn, in some detail, and named. Billicliffe’s house; Rose Miller’s house; the gamekeeper’s house; Home Farm (Mains of Corrydale). The last was the gardener’s house (Charlie Miller), alongside the walled garden, and the tractor shed. A little way off along another winding driveway that ran parallel to the water, and standing, in some grandeur, all on its own, he had drawn Corrydale House, surrounded by formal gardens and with stepped terraces leading down to the meadows on the fringe of the firth.

  It reminded Sam of the end papers of a Pooh Bear book, but Carrie said it was a work of art and should be framed.

  The road they followed took Sam and Carrie into new territory, where neither had ventured before. Instead of crossing the bridge over to Kingsferry, they forked right before reaching this and went by way of the old road, which headed west, winding through farmland, dipping and climbing, tunnelling down tall avenues of skeletal beech trees. All was thick with snow, but the morning had kept its promise and the sky was cloudless, the air sparkling with cold. There was little traffic, and few people about. A tractor, chuntering across a field with a load of hay for a huddle of sheep; a woman, hanging washing out in the still, freezing air; a red post-van, making its way up a rutted farm-lane.

  On their left lay the great sea loch, penetrating inland for fifteen miles or more. The tide was at half-flood, and the water as blue as in summer. On the far shore, massive hills reared up into the sky, all blindingly white, save where dark rock stood sheer, or corries of scree tumbled, like waterfalls of stone.

  Carrie said, “It’s all huge, isn’t it? Even the sky seems twice as big as it does anywhere else.” She wore a black padded parka and her fur hat, and had put on dark glasses against the glare.

  “No fog or pollution, I suppose. A clarity of air. Did you know that five of the finest salmon rivers in Scotland flow into this loch?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Oscar.”

  “I supposed he fished them as a boy.”

  “Lucky boy.”

  Carrie scrutinized Oscar’s map.

  “I think quite soon we’ll be there. We come to the wall first, and then the main gate’s about a quarter of a mile-” The boundary wall appeared, almost at once, on the left-hand side of the road. Beyond this could be seen handsome trees, carefully positioned, suggesting parkland. The main gate, when they came to it, was flanked by two towering Wellingtonias. A small lodge blew a plume of smoke into the air, and there was a line of washing out in the little garden, and a child’s plastic tractor abandoned on the front-door step.

  They saw the notice. CORRYDALE COUNTRYHOUSE HOTEL. AA. RAC. ****

  Carrie said, “Here we go.”

  Sam turned in through the gates, and the formal drive led downhill between an avenue of huge oak trees. It was ridged with the tracks of other vehicles, recently come this way, and the snow barred with the blue shadows of the trees. After about a quarter of a mile, the road forked, and here stood a wooden signpost. To the right, hotel visitors. This track, unused, was white with virgin snow. Ahead, home farm and sawmill, so they continued on their way. Carrie scanned Oscar’s map.

  “Next, we come to another fork and we go left again and we see BilliclifFe’s house.”

  “And who is Billicliffe?”

  “He used to be the factor here. Elfhda and Oscar had.1 go and call on him to get their key. Elfrida told me he was a bit of an old bore, and the house was a tip, and they were both a little unkind about him. And then he confounded everybody by becoming extremely ill, and Oscar had to drive him to hospital. Where he is now … here’s the fork ia the road. So we go left….”

  The tyre tracks continued. Clearly a well-used access. There then was revealed, set back from the verge, the first of the estate workers’ cottages.

  “Here,” said Carrie, “is where Major Billicliffe lives.”

  Sam, curious, slowed down to take a look at it. A small, stone-built house, soundly constructed, with a rural porch and two dormer windows set in the slated roof. A short driveway led from gate to door, where stood parked, and wearing at least ten inches of snow, an elderly Vauxhal, rusted, sad, and abandoned. The windows of the house were tightly closed, no light showed, and no smoke rose from the chimney.

  “What a gloomy little place,” Carrie remarked.

  “Nothing’s at its best when it’s desolate.”

  They moved on, slowly, tyres crunching in icy ruts; exploring. The road twisted and turned in charmingly random fashion. Another corner, and now Rose Miller’s cottage was there, a different kettle of fish altogether; snug and trim, with lace curtains at the windows, and a few cheerful hens clucking around the small garden. She had lighted her fire, and peat-smoke filled the air with its delicious smell.

  They meandered on. Past the farmhouse, and a farmyard reeking with the good smell of manure, was a field of sheep, and then another little cottage, the gamekeeper’s, with kennels, and a run at the back of the house from which two spaniels appeared, barking their heads off.

  “Good thing,” said Carrie, “we didn’t bring Horace with us. He’d have a heart attack and die.”

  By now the loch was in view again, with fields running down to the water. More trees, another cottage, and then the north wall of the enclosed garden, a handsome stone edifice wrought-iron gates set in the middle. The big tractor shed stood at the back of this, with wide I standing open, and alongside it stood parked a venerable mud-spattered Land Rover. Sam drew up alongside I they climbed out of the car. As they did so, a young man from the shed with an old yellow Labrador at his heels. The young man wore a boiler suit and rubber boots, and on his head a deerstalker, the peak tipped forwards, over his nose.

  “Charlie Miller?”

  “Yes, that is me. Now, stay down, Brandy, and don’t jump up on the lady. You’re a stupid old bitch with no manners.”

  “I don’t mind,” Carrie smiled.

  “You would if she covered you with paw marks.” He turned to Sam.

  “You’ll be Sam Howard.”

  “That’s right. And this is Carrie Sutton.” Charlie Miller said, “Pleased to meet you,” and he and Carrie shook hands.

  “Oscar phoned me. You’ve come for the tree. It’s in the shed, if you’d like to come away in.” He led the way, and they followed into the dim interior of the shed, which clearly accommodated a number of functions. Sam saw a pile of potato pallets, a stack of sawn logs, a number of old fruit boxes, turnips bagged in netted sacks. There was a good smell of earth, sawdust, and engine oil. Leaning against an aged Ferguson tractor was their cut tree. “… Oscar said six-foot would be tall enough, so I picked this one out. It’s a good shape, and no broken branches.”

  “Looks fine to me.”

  “Two pounds a foot. Twelve pounds. Have you got a stand for it?”

  “I really wouldn’t know. Oscar didn’t say.”

  “I’ve this.” Charlie produced, from some corner, a rough wooden contraption knocked together with masonry nails.

  “The farmer’s boy made them, selling at two-fifty each.”

  Sam eyed it doubtfully.

  “Is it going to work?”

  “Oh, yes
, it’ll work all right.”

  “Right.” Charlie set it down by the tree.

  “So that’s fourteen-fifty you owe me.” He was obviously not a man to beat about the bush.

  Sam dug out his wallet and handed over fifteen pounds. “Tell the farmer’s son to keep the change. He deserves it, if only for enterprise.”

  “I’ll tell him,” said Charlie, and the notes disappeared into the pocket of the boiler suit.

  “Will I load the tree for you?”

  “If you would. I’ve put the back seats down; there should be enough space….”

  “No problem.”

  Carrie now spoke. “Charlie, do you think it would be all right if we went for a walk? We’ve never been to Corrydale before, and we wanted to look around, see the house. But if it’s private, or we’re not allowed….”

  “You’re allowed, all right. Go anywhere you please. The hotel is closed anyway. And there’s not much to look at in the gardens.”

  “We don’t mind. Which is the best way to go?”

  “Back the road you came, and then, at Major Billicliffe’s house, take the left fork, and that will bring you to the gardens and the house. There’s a path from there down through the trees to the water, and a track leads back to here, along the shore. While you’re walking I’ll net the tree and load it, and if I’m not here when you’re back, I’ll be away for my dinner.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No trouble. Have a good walk, now.”

  They set off, footsteps scrunching on frozen ruts, the air sweet as chilled wine, the thin sunshine warming their backs and causing flurries of melted snow to drift down from the upper branches of trees. These, leafless, made patterns like black lace against the brilliant blue of the sky. They went by the farm, the gamekeeper’s house, and by the garden gate of Rose Miller’s delectable dwelling.

  “It’s the sort of place,” Carrie observed, “where you feel you could happily snug up and spend the rest of your life.”

  After Major Billicliffe’s deserted cottage they left the road and took the path that led towards the main house. It was heavy walking, because now the snow was virgin and untouched, and quite deep.