Winter Solstice

by Pilcher, Rosamunde

  Carrie said, “There must, once, have been a lot of money. This is a huge establishment, with all those estate cottages, the farm, and the walled garden and everything. I wonder where it all came from? The wealth, I mean.”

  “Industry, probably. Shipbuilding, steel, that sort of thing. Or Far Eastern connections. Shipping, tea, teak. I don’t know. We’ll have to ask Oscar.”

  “Oscar doesn’t seem to have anything”

  “No. I don’t think he does have much.”

  “What’s happened to it all? The money, I mean.”

  “What’s happened everywhere. Old people died, and death duties claimed enormous chunks of the estate. The cost of living soared. The war changed everything. After the war, there was a gradual decline. Then chaps like Hughie McLennan took possession, squandered the last of the capital, and finally sold up. In the south of England, all this land would probably be littered with bijou bungalows and private building estates. But here, because of its remoteness, and the fact that the hotel chain took over the house, it’s managed to stay looking-at least-the way it always has done.”

  “Why didn’t Oscar inherit? He would have made a lovely laird.”

  “I suppose he didn’t qualify. Hughie was the son of the eldest son. Primogeniture. Just bad luck on everyone he proved to be such a little shit.”

  “It seems unfair, doesn’t it?”

  “Carrie. Life is unfair.”

  “I’m so sorry for Oscar. He deserves better. He and Elfrida. They deserve some place to live together that they can call their own and know that they don’t have to leave. I would like to be rich so that I could take care of them both … buy them a desirable residence and settle them for life. I wish we hadn’t been there when they were told that the David Wilkie was a fake and worth so little. Elfrida was so filled with hope. And so certain that she owned a little treasure that would get them through and give them security. It was painful to see her so destroyed and downcast. Embarrassing. I was embarrassed.”

  “I was the same,” Sam reminded her.

  “But it’s different for you.”

  “Why different?”

  “Because if they have no money, Oscar will be forced to sell you his half of the Estate House, and then you will have what you came for.”

  “Do you think I am that sort of a monster?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know you well enough. I don’t know how you think.”

  He let this pass. There was no point in precipitating a row so early on their expedition. Instead, “Will they stay together, do you think?” he asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. I think they probably will. Neither of them has anybody else. But where will they stay?”

  “Where they are. If Oscar doesn’t want to sell, then Hughie can’t.”

  “So what will you do?”

  “Look for someplace else.”

  “In Buckly?”

  “I don’t know. So far, I’ve hardly seen the neighborhood in daylight, let alone investigated property for sale.”

  For a bit Carrie said nothing to this. They were walking at a brisk pace, her long legs keeping pace with his own as they trudged through the snow. To their left, the snow-fields swept down to the water of the loch; on their right a small wood of ancient beeches revealed dells and paths between the massive tree-trunks, and the snow was patterned with the tracks of rabbits and birds. Overhead, rooks cawed, and from the empty shores came the long bubbling cry of a curlew.

  She said abruptly, “I would like to see your mill.”

  Sam had never imagined her being remotely interested, and found himself taken aback by this suggestion.

  “Would you?”

  “You sound disbelieving.”

  “It’s just that there’s not much to see. Large, empty, damp spaces, some dye vats, and a few bits of salvaged machinery.”

  “But you told me it was a listed building. That, in itself, would be interesting. Can you get access? Have you got a key?” She was serious.

  “Of course.”

  “Shall we go one day?”

  “If you want.”

  “I like seeing buildings and houses stripped down. Empty places, bare walls. I like imagining how they were, and trying to visualize what they could become. You must feel rather excited about it all, longing to get your teeth into the challenge. Putting it together, and getting it going again.”

  “Yes.” He thought about it, and the seemingly insurmountable problems which had yet to be addressed.

  “I am. But at the same time it’s a fairly daunting prospect. Every now and then I shall doubtless become frustrated, impatient, and even violently angry, but difficulties can be stimulating, particularly if some other person believes you can solve them. And in Buckly, I have a good man, Fergus Skinner, on my side. I’ve a lot of faith in him.”

  “It’s still a long stride from working in New York.”

  “If I were a much younger man, I probably wouldn’t have taken the job on. But I’m thirty-nine now. Been there, done that. And for me this is exactly the right time to change course. For all the high finance in the world, nothing is so satisfactory as going back to the grass roots of the business.”

  “Downgrading.”

  “In a sense, yes. But, you see, I was born and bred into the woollen trade, and I secretly believe that there is nothing so good-looking, so comfortable, so exactly right, as a familiar, well-tailored tweed jacket. It’ll stand up to anything the elements choose to hurl at it, and by evening be perfectly acceptable at anybody’s dinner table. I love the smell and the if feel of tweed. I love the sound of well-tuned cog-wheels, the clack of looms, the monstrous pistons of the carding machines. And I like the people who work them, the men and women who have spinning and weaving and dyeing in their blood, going back two or three generations. So I am in my own world.”

  “I think you’re fortunate.”

  “Because of my job?”

  “Not just.” Carrie stopped, her head thrown back, to watch a buzzard floating high in the sky.

  “Because of coming to live up here. In this enormous, clean, unsullied place.” She went on walking.

  “Just think, you can play golf, shoot grouse and pheasants, and fish in one of those salmon rivers you told me about.” She thought about this.

  “You do fish?”

  “Yes. I used to fish with my father in Yorkshire when I was a boy. But for trout, not salmon. And I’m not over keen on shooting.”

  “Nor me. Darling little wild birds tumbling out of the sky. And then you eat them at the Savoy, and they look about the size of canaries.”

  By now, ahead, could be seen the wall of the formal garden, topped by an ornate wroughtiron fence. The path led to a wroughtiron gate flanked by gate posts bearing stone armorial lions, and entwined by thorny roses, blackened now by winter.

  They reached the gate and there paused, gazing through the lattice of intricate curlicues at the garden which lay beyond; lawns climbing in stepped terraces, and drawing their eyes to the first sighting of Corrydale House. A Victorian mansion, gabled and turreted, built of red stone, some of which was smothered in Virginia creeper. It was large and perhaps a little pretentious, but attractive in a prosperous and settled sort of way. The windows were all shuttered from the inside, but facing south, glass panes flashed and shone with reflected sunshine. There was a tall white flag-pole at one side of the top terrace, but no flag flew from its masthead.

  “Nice,” said Carrie, after a bit.

  “What good times Oscar must have had.”

  Sam said, “Would you like to live here?”

  “Do you mean in this house? In this place?”

  “No. I just mean here. In Creagan. In Sutherland.”

  “I have a job. In London. I have to have a job. I have to earn my living.”

  “Supposing you didn’t? Would you be content? Could you bury yourself in such an environment?”

  “I don’t know. I think I’d need notice. To weigh up all the
pros and cons. And to leave London, I’d need to be free. No commitments. No responsibilities.”

  “Aren’t you free?”

  “There’s Lucy.”

  “Lucy?”

  “Yes, Lucy.” She unlatched the gate and opened it, and beyond was a wide path, straight as a rule, leading across the garden towards a distant stand of beech trees. In the middle of this path, in line with the flights of steps which climbed the terraces to the house, stood a stone sundial and a curved wooden seat. Another flight of steps led down to a parterre garden, sheltered by shrubberies of rhododendron and azalea. Its formal structure, radiating from a stone statue of some mythical goddess, was composed of curves, circles, ellipses, all edged in box, and, buried in snow, resembled nothing so much as an artist’s design drawn on thick white paper with a stump of charcoal.

  “… Lucy is the main reason for taking this London job. Somebody has to be there for her. Somebody has to winkle her out of that dull, enclosed, totally female life she’s forced to lead. Through no fault of her own. She doesn’t really stand a chance. I have to try to give her one.”

  Sam considered this. He said tentatively, “She seems to me to be quite a well-adjusted child. Happy, even.”

  “That’s because she is happy. Here. With Elfrida and Oscar and people coming and going. And, of course, Rory Kennedy. Going back to London is going to be a real letdown.”

  Sam found himself resenting this maiden-aunt attitude. Carrie was too young, too beautiful, to start structuring her life simply for the sake of one small niece.

  “She’ll probably be all right,” he said.

  “She’s young enough to be resilient; in time, she’ll make her own escape.”

  “No.” Carrie was adamant.

  “You don’t know her selfish little mother. You can’t say that.”

  “So, what will you do with Lucy?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Just be around; on the end of the telephone. There. Perhaps at Easter I’ll take her away again. To Cornwall to stay with Jeffrey. He is, after all, her grandfather. Or maybe we could go skiing. His children are old enough. Jeffrey took me skiing for the first time when I was about ten, and I loved it so much, it started a whole new passion.”

  “Will you go back to Oberbeuren… ?”

  “No.” She had said the word almost before he had finished asking the question.

  “Not Oberbeuren. Somewhere else. Arosa, or Grindelwald, or Val d’lsere.”

  “You could go to the States. Colorado or Vermont. Sounds a long way to travel, but it would certainly be cheaper.”

  “Vermont.” Carrie, with her hands in the pockets of her parka, strolled along beside him.

  “Have you skied in Vermont?”

  “Yes. A number of times. We used to drive up for weekends from the city.”

  “We,” Carrie repeated.

  “You and your wife, you mean?”

  So this was it. The nub around which they had both been circling, the moment of truth, the point of no return. He said, “Yes. With my wife. We’re separated.”

  “Elfrida told me that.”

  “Deborah. I was working in New York. I went out to East Hampton, for a weekend with a friend; and we got asked to this party, and I met her then. Her grandfather had a great house down there; lands, beach, horses, paddocks, swimming pool. The lot. When we got married, we were married on the lawn at East Hampton in front of her grandfather’s house. There were seven hundred guests, ten bridesmaids, and ten ushers all dressed up like penguins. Deborah looked ravishing and I was happy to be swept along in a current that I couldn’t control or resist. Then we bought this apartment in the Upper Seventies, and it was all done up regardless of cost, and that kept her happy for some time; but when it was finished and the interior designer had finally departed, I think that’s when she started to get bored and restless. I had to travel all over the States, and sometimes she went back to East Hampton while I was away, and other times, she simply occupied herself having a good time.”

  “Children?”

  “No. She didn’t want babies. Not so soon. Someday, perhaps, she’d promise me, but not just now. Anyway, sometime last summer, she met this guy again. She’d known him when she was at college. Since those days he’d been married twice, but was on the loose again. In New York. Rich; smooth; pretty stupid. Randy as a tom-cat. They started what is politely known these days as ‘a relationship.’ I never guessed. I never knew until she told me she was leaving me because she wanted to be with him. And I was devastated. Not just because I was losing her. But because I knew she had fallen for a shit. And I knew, too, that he was the sort of guy who, marrying his mistress, was simply creating another job vacancy.”

  “But you’re not divorced?”

  “No. There’s hardly been time. Six weeks after she departed I got a call from David Swinfield, asking me to come back to London. And since then… well, I’ve just procrastinated. Let it slide. Had other business to occupy my mind. No doubt, sooner or later, I’ll be on the receiving end of a lawyer’s letter, and after that the ball will roll.”

  “Will she be greedy and demand great wads of alimony?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on the lawyer. I don’t think so. She was never that sort of a person. Anyway, Deborah has money of her own. Too much, maybe. Perhaps that was one of our problems. My problems.”

  “Are you still in love with her?”

  “Oh, Carrie …”

  “I know. But you feel responsible. You have anxieties about her future. You’re afraid she’s going to be hurt, to be dumped. You still feel protective.”

  After a bit, “Yeah,” Sam admitted.

  “I suppose I do.”

  “If she wanted … if she beckoned, demanded … would you go back to her?”

  He thought about this. He said, “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because my life has changed direction. Because Deborah is part of the past and I’ve left that behind. I’m here now. And this is where I’m staying, because I have a job to do.”

  “She’s still your wife.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That if you’ve been married to a person, they’re part of you. You can never be free. You belong to them.”

  She spoke with such bitterness that Sam all at once knew that he only had to push a bit further and the closed door which had stood between them would finally, creakily, open.

  He turned to her.

  “Carrie …”

  But she strode on, and he had to catch her up and take her by the arm and jerk her around to face him. The black orbs of her sunglasses stared up at him, and he put up a hand and took them off, and saw, to his horror, that her dark eyes were shining with tears.

  “Carrie. Tell me.”

  “Why?” She was angry, blinking the tears away.

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “Because I’ve been honest with you.”

  “I never made a deal. It’s none of your business and I don’t want to talk about it. It’s not worth talking about. And you wouldn’t understand.”

  “I could try. And I think I would understand. I’ve been through bad times myself. The worst was knowing that everybody was aware of what was going on except thick-headed me. Taking one day at a time, and each day like being on a treadmill and getting nowhere. Trying to come to terms with a total rejection.”

  “I wasn’t rejected,” Carrie shouted at him, and all at once her face creased up like a child’s and she was in floods of tears. Furious with herself, she pushed at him, trying to escape from his grip, but he held her shoulders between his hands and would not let go, because if he did, he felt she might fall to pieces, and his strength was the only thing that kept her whole.

  “I wasn’t rejected. I was loved. We were in love, and all we wanted was to be together. But the odds were too great. Stacked against us. Too many demands, responsibilities, traditions. His job, his family, his wife, his children, his religion, his money. I
was simply his mistress. Living in the back streets of his life. I didn’t stand a chance. Never did. And what I really hate is that I always knew. I hate myself for shutting my eyes, burying my head in the sand like a stupid ostrich. Pretending everything would work out. I’m thirty, for God’s sake. I thought I could handle it. And finally, when Andreas walked away from me, I went to bits. So now you know, Sam, and now you can stop trying to find out. And perhaps you can accept the fact that I’m really not very interested in married men. And if you start being sympathetic or sorry for me, I shall scream.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, but at that moment, with a wrench of her body, she slid out of his hold and set off, at a run, away from him, stumbling in the snow, righting herself, carrying on. He went after her, and caught her once more.

  “Oh, Carrie …” and this time she did not fight him. Perhaps she was too tired, too breathless with sobs. He took her into his arms and she leaned against him, her shoulders heaving, weeping into the front of his Barbour.

  Holding her, having her in his arms, was something he had been wanting to do all day. She felt slender, weightless, and he told himself that he could feel the beating of her heart through all their combined layers of winter clothing. The fur of her hat tickled his cheek, and her skin smelt sweet and cool.

  “Oh, Carrie.” It was shameful to feel so elated when she suffered from such desolation and wretchedness. Trying to comfort, he said, “It will be all right.”

  “It won’t be all right.”

  So cold, so adamant was her voice, that he was suddenly wise, realizing that it was hopeless to continue mouthing pointless platitudes. Standing there, with his arms about her, Sam found himself uncharacteristically confused and disoriented. Normally, his instincts did not let him down; instead they told him how to deal with any situation, emotional or otherwise. But right now he knew all at once that he was totally at a loss. Carrie was beautiful, intelligent, and desirable, but also complicated. And perhaps because of this, she remained an enigma. To truly understand her was going to take much patience and a lot of time.