The Tartan Touch

by Isobel Chace

  Mr. Fraser had no such scruples. He ordered a suite for us at the superior hotel as though he did such things every day. Two bedrooms, he wanted, and another room where we could sit and have our meals if we were not inclined to go down to the restaurant. My own bedroom had a view across Hyde Park that was apparently to be much admired, though it ill compared to the glen and the Highlands I knew so well. The bed was soft and the sheets were perfumed with I know not what, and I longed for my own cot at home with sheets smelling of the open air and much washing. It was well we were not there for long, for I was sadly homesick.

  We were waiting for my passport and then we were to fly straight to Australia.

  “What would you like to do today, Kirsty?” He was kind enough to ask the same question every day, though in the end he decided it all himself.

  “Whatever pleases you, Mr. Fraser.”

  He gave me an impatient look. “Don’t you think you could call me Andrew?”

  I licked my lips. “I could,” I said reluctantly.

  “After all, I call you Kirsty,” he pressed me.

  “And without my permission,” I said darkly.

  His eyebrows shot up, “My word,” he said, “in the Murchison, no one will call you anything else!”

  “Are they so forward, the people there?” I asked demurely. He hadn’t the least suspicion that I was teasing him.

  “They’re friendly,” he grunted.

  “Is that what it is,” I murmured, “to be familiar with the opposite sex!”

  His grey eyes stared at me. “Kirsty, if I thought you—”

  “Yes, Mr. Fraser?”

  His anger died. “I’ve given you a crook deal, haven’t I?” he said at last. “Perhaps I should have left you to work it out for yourself.”

  It was my turn to be puzzled. “But that wouldn’t have suited you,” I reminded him sharply.

  “No, I suppose not,” he answered gently.

  His words threw me into an uncomfortable confusion. Had I failed him already?

  “I’m very—very adaptable,” I tried to reassure him.

  “And I don’t suppose Perth in Australia is so different from Perth in Scotland.”

  “That’s all you know! London frightens you half to death as it is!”

  That made me feel sulky as well as uncertain. “It does not!” I denied brazenly.

  He gave me a look of pure contempt. “Wait until you see the Murchison!” he threatened me.

  “Wh-what’s it like?” I asked him, I longed to know about the place where he lived. I could make no picture in my mind that would satisfy me. The world was such a very different place from what I had thought it to be.

  “Oh, it’s quite a place,” he said. “It’s in the back-blocks, you understand, free as air! It’s gold-mining country, only the yellow stuff is about played out now. We have mines of our own on Mirrabooka, so I’m a miner as well as a Cocky.”

  “A Cocky?” I repeated, mazed by his talk.

  “That’s what the miners call the sheep station owners,” he said.

  “Do you really get gold out of your mine?” I asked him. I thought it a highly romantic thing to have a goldmine of one’s own.

  He almost smiled. “Some,” he said. “There are a couple of tin mines further back that we still keep open, but mostly it’s just sheep.”

  Sheep was something I thought I knew about. “How many sheep do you have?” I asked.

  “My word, I wouldn’t know. Depends on the time of year and whether the wet has kicked through.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I expect the land is poor,” I added wisely. “The feed isn’t very good at home either. The crofters can only run very few sheep over the hills, sometimes no more than two to the acre.”

  Mr. Fraser’s laughter sounded like the crack of a rifle. “I run a sheep to the square mile, or thereabouts!” he said.

  Then where did he get his money from? Every crofter that I knew relied heavily on his few sheep to subsidise his living.

  “Perhaps tin makes a lot of money?” I hazarded, aware that I was on the point of asking a most personal question about the size of his income.

  “You’re out there! The mining may have put Western Australia on the map, but it’s the wool that keeps me there. My last wool cheque was more than twenty thousand dollars.”

  It sounded a great deal of money. I frankly did not believe him. “From a few sheep?” I chided him.

  He sighed. He must have thought me very stupid. “I reckon my station is as big as a couple of Scottish counties,” he said.

  My eyes grew as big as saucers. “Is—is Australia very big?” I asked nervously.

  “You can’t believe it,” he assured me. “You have to see it for yourself! Nothing is what you expect. Take the Murchison, There’s the Big Bell Mine, not a century old, but already half abandoned. And Kalgoorlie, where the gold is. And all of it on some of the oldest rocks in the world!”

  “And are there really kangaroos?” I put in eagerly.

  “Too right, there are!”

  I was reduced to silence at the thought. A great gladness of the spirit rose within me and I was longing to be quit of London to see this place for myself. Four years no longer seemed like a prison sentence. I was convinced that life was beginning for me now, despite having to be married to Mr. Fraser.

  “Mr. Fraser, do you like London?” I asked him cautiously.

  “In its way,” he grunted. “I like a bit of space myself.”

  I sighed happily, sure now that the Murchison and I would get along very nicely. “So do I!” I said.

  There was a new sympathy between us after that conversation. Mr. Fraser went round to Australia House to get them to help him to hasten the Passport Office for my passport and it was with us the following morning. It was very new, a shiny navy blue, with my name written in large letters in its place in the front. Only it wasn’t my name, for it read Mrs. Andrew Fraser, and my name of Kirsty MacTaggart was written in much smaller letters inside.

  Still, I was not complaining, for now there was nothing to keep us in London any longer. I longed for the feel of the wind in my hair and to breathe air that none had breathed before me and to be rid of the traffic and the endless noise. Cities are all very well, but you need, to accustom yourself to them gradually. I have never had the time to do so.

  On our last night in London, Mr. Fraser took me to the theatre, and very wicked I felt too. Oh, I could see for myself that my father’s ways were dead and done for, and I would not have chosen to make them mine, but the truly delicious sensation of guilt as we sat on those velvet chairs and watched the players on the stage before us, so close that I could sometimes glimpse their make-up, was a pleasure that no one could take away from me.

  Mr. Fraser, who is not a mean man, bought chocolates in the interval, brushing aside my thanks with one of his impatient looks.

  “It’s quite customary,” he said.

  “Is it so?” I retorted. I was in a good mood to be impertinent, for the envious glances of other females in the audience when they saw Mr. Fraser had not been lost on me. I had never thought to relish such reflected glory, but he had an air that brought all eyes to him wherever we were.

  “You’d better enjoy them while you can,” he said flatly. “Mary eats them by the pound if she gets her hands on them!”

  It was the first box of chocolates I had ever been given. I clutched them to me throughout the production and the whole way back to the hotel in the taxi. Mr. Fraser gave me a kindly look as we entered our suite.

  “Goodnight,” he said. “Sleep well.”

  I held the chocolates more tightly than ever. “Goodnight, Mr. Fraser,” I said.

  In the morning, he woke me himself. I had been dreaming of the manse and that my father was alive, far away from the luxury of the life I was living now.

  “Ciamar a Tha?” I asked him in Gaelic, forgetting where I was.

  “Tha gu math,” he answered easily. “I am well.”

 
; “Oh, Andrew,” I said, “I didn’t know you had the Gaelic!”

  “A few words,” he dismissed it lightly.

  I sat up and hugged my knees, well pleased with life, “Whoever would have thought it!” I remarked with pleasure.

  “With a name like Andrew Fraser?” he reminded me haughtily.

  “And with an accent such as yours!” I laughed at him.

  “While you speak the Queen’s English, I suppose,” he said, offended.

  “Well, so I do!” I claimed. “Don’t I?”

  ‘You speak Gaelic better!” He picked up the telephone beside my bed and ordered breakfast for us both.

  “Come on, Miss MacTaggart,” he said, “it’s time to get up!”

  Miss MacTaggart indeed! And he alone with me in my bedroom! I was getting to be the next best thing to a scarlet woman!

  “Yes, Mr. Fraser,” I said demurely.

  “It was Andrew earlier,” he reminded me quickly.

  “Och, that was a slip of the tongue!”

  “Was it indeed, Mrs. Fraser?”

  I took fright. My sense of well-being depended entirely on Andrew Fraser’s goodness, I remembered uneasily. My position was more vulnerable than I cared to think about.

  “I—I’ll; try to remember,” I promised.

  “See that you do,” he said.

  I was in a subdued mood as I packed my new clothes in the bag I had brought with me from the manse. They were beautiful garments, very much what Mrs. Fraser would wear as a matter of course. Perhaps it was that that added to my sense of disquiet, for I was only Mrs. Fraser by pretence, and Kirsty MacTaggart had never worn anything other than a simple dress, or a skirt, with my plaid, or my winter coat, to keep me warm.

  Even so, my luggage came to the half of Mr. Fraser’s. He had a matching set of leather cases, all of them bulging with clothes of one sort and another. He wasn’t one to deny himself when it came to his own comfort, but then he was a different man from the one my father had been. It was all part of the quandary I was in, for I had an eye for such things like any woman, but I could still be shocked at squandering money on fine raiment.

  The porter had to make two trips to our room. I thought we might well have carried some of the baggage down ourselves, but Mr. Fraser prevented me with a frown. Some friends of his had gathered in the foyer of the hotel to say goodbye to him and he put his hand on my elbow and introduced me to them as his wife. Not one of them showed by so much as a look that they were surprised, or even that they thought he might have done better.

  “Good on yer, Andy!” one of them yelled across the muffled foyer suddenly.

  Mr. Fraser smiled at him. It was a shock to me, for I had never really seen him smile before. His face had been set by looking into the sun and long distances and he seldom saw the need to disarrange his expression for any reason.

  “Good on yer, mate,” the man said again, pumping Mr. Fraser’s arm up and down. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to the missus?”

  “Too right I am!” Mr. Fraser agreed. He pushed me forward and the man ducked his head and gave me a smacking kiss on the cheek.

  “That’s for the lovely bride!” he grinned at me.

  I went scarlet, but I managed to mumble something suitable, and retreated closer to Mr. Fraser and, I hoped, his protection.

  “Kirsty,” Mr. Fraser said gravely, “this is Frank Connor, one of our nearest neighbours in the Murchison.”

  “I’ll be seeing you there!” the man assured me. “You can bet on it!”

  “Would you be very far away from us?” I asked him huskily. It seemed all Australians bet on everything all the time.

  He bent his head to hear me the better. “My word,” he said, “you’ll be a breath of Old Scotland in the Outback!” He smacked his lips in exaggerated satisfaction. “Most of us pastoral fellows are Irish by descent round the Murchison. Andy is the odd man out. But it’s all in the family! My word, they’re going to love you, Mrs. Fraser!”

  I glanced up with pride at Mr. Fraser, aware of his eyes watching me.

  “I’ll look forward to it, Mr. Connor,” I said, and blushed in case he should think that I was putting myself forward. But apparently Australians don’t worry about such things, for he kissed me again with some enthusiasm and said he would have to be going.

  “So must we!” Mr. Fraser said cheerfully.

  “See yer!” said Frank Connor, and was gone.

  Mr. Fraser gave me an odd look and squeezed my arm gently. “Don’t mind Frank,” he said. “He’s a fine fellow underneath all that bounce.”

  I was surprised. “I like him,” I said. “I wish we were all as free and easy—” I broke off, blushing furiously as I realised that Mr. Fraser had been talking about Frank Connor kissing me. “It’s no more than his manner!” I exclaimed.

  “And you didn’t mind it?”

  I shook my head, “Why should I?” I said bravely. “I’m not a young girl to be fashed by a man’s ways!”

  He escorted me carefully across the foyer and into the waiting taxi. “Is that so? I congratulate you, Mrs. Fraser!”

  I peeped up at him, anxious lest I had displeased him. “You like him too, don’t you?” I asked quickly.

  “He’s okay,” he drawled.

  The taxi drew away from the hotel and joined the streaming traffic, making its way to Victoria and the B.O.A.C. terminal. Once there, we would be well on our way to Heathrow and the aeroplane that was to carry us to Australia.

  “Don’t be too friendly with Frank Connor,” Mr. Fraser went on slowly. “He’s a bachelor—a rich one and he has a reputation with the ladies.”

  “He’s a grand man!” I agreed with enthusiasm.

  “The Murchison has little to do. Most people gossip about one another all the time—”

  “I know,” I said impatiently. “They gossip in the glen too, but there’s small harm done by it!”

  “Kirsty, I won’t have you talked about,” he said a great deal more sternly.

  I shrugged my shoulders, a trifle uneasy myself.

  “As my wife—”

  My Scottish temper got the better of me. “But I’m not your wife!” I exclaimed angrily. “Not in any way that matters! It takes more than a few words to make a woman a wife—even words from a minister. I may be Mrs. Fraser in public, but to myself I’ll be Kirsty MacTaggart until I die!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  I had never seen an aeroplane close up, except once, and that one bore little relation to the gleaming monster which swallowed us up, like some all-enveloping nightmare, and disgorged us, only a couple of days later, on the opposite side of the world. We flew and we came down to refuel in romantic-sounding places whose airports all looked exactly the same, and then we flew again. I ticked off the places on the Southern Route that we had been to and never seen. There was New York, San Francisco, Honolulu, and Fiji, and then bang on time there was Sydney spread before us, full of red and green roofs, and the new Opera House, shaped like a boat in full sail, and the racecourse where Mr. Fraser said all the smart people gathered for the equivalent of the English Ascot and Derby, or something like that, for he talked of Melbourne and Adelaide and Alice too, and I was tired enough to be easily confused.

  And Sydney itself was not an end to the journey. Together with a single lady, who had sat across the way from us in the aeroplane from England, and whose ankles had swollen badly in the long flight, we were shepherded along to be received by the Customs people, who asked far more questions than was good for them, and to be given a poor thing of a meal that gave us all indigestion.

  “Is this what they give you to eat in Australia?” I demanded of Mr. Fraser.

  “I’ve eaten better,” he grunted.

  “One mustn’t complain,” Miss Rowlatt, as I discovered her name to be, said gently.

  “I can’t abide waste!” I said with deep disgust.

  Miss Rowlatt’s eyes twinkled. “You’re absolutely right, my dear, but it doesn’t sit well on a Pommy
to say so!”

  I hadn’t heard the term before. “Are you a Pommy?” I asked her.

  “I suppose I am,” she admitted, “though I’ve lived at Geraldton for more than thirty years now.” She certainly had a fine tan to show for it. ‘You must come for a visit,” she added kindly.

  “Is it far from the Murchison?” I asked her.

  She laughed, though I couldn’t tell why, “Not too far. We’re on the coast at Geraldton. A lot of the Murchison families come to us for holidays. You can bring Mary, if you like.”

  I hesitated, not knowing the kind of thing Mr. Fraser’s ward would want to do. “If Mr. Fraser says we may,” I compromised.

  Miss Rowlatt laughed again, “I’ll deal with Andy!” she promised.

  “Ay, Andrew,” I amended hastily.

  I liked Miss Rowlatt. I liked her as much as I had Mrs. MacGregor, she whose ham we had eaten on the drive down to London.

  “I’ve not met Andrew’s ward yet,” I confided to her when we went to the Ladies’ together.

  “And you want to know all about her?”

  I wriggled with embarrassment. “Is she—fierce?” I asked.

  “No more than any of the other Frasers!” she laughed at me, thus confirming the worst of my fears. “She’s a bit lost, poor lamb.”

  It would have been disloyal to have asked her any further questions. Mr. Fraser had already told me everything he wanted me to know and the rest I should have to find out for myself. But, even so, I couldn’t resist asking just one more thing.

  “And Mrs. Fraser? Does she come to Mirrabooka often?”

  Miss Rowlatt looked suddenly serious. “Hardly at all,” she said. Then she went on briskly. “You must remember that you are Mrs. Fraser now, my dear. Andy’s wife rates higher than Donald’s widow, which is part of Margaret’s trouble, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  I didn’t mind at all. I didn’t understand more than the half of what she was saying to me. She laughed delightedly to herself.