“There’s a tradition,” Eve said now, “that you have to drop a pebble into a hole in this big stone nearby when you visit. An offering, so you can pass in peace. Maybe that’s where we went wrong.” She raised her eyebrows, looking first at Olivia and then at James.
In theory they were all helping with the cooking, but Eve had been comfortably settled in the carving chair for half an hour with a bowl of green beans that she was topping and tailing at a dilettante pace. Cooking was a decorative act for Eve, Olivia thought; it represented womanly virtue in the abstract.
“We camped in the middle of the circle,” Olivia said. “Braved the ghosts of the Druids.”
“And we had an adventure,” said Eve. “Perhaps we did disturb some ghosts. The spirit of the place.” She paused for effect, a long, slender bean poised in her hand. “It was a beautiful evening, and we sat on top of one of the stones and watched the sun set.”
“Not like Stonehenge,” James said, “where you can’t get anywhere close.”
He was rolling pastry, his arms and chest dusted with flour. Olivia couldn’t work out what she thought about his proficiency in the kitchen, all this pastry-making and fish-gutting, the swift movements of his hands. Like a surgeon: was that what he wanted to be?
“It’s not as dramatic as Stonehenge,” she said. “Just a ring of rather dumpy stones.”
“Still,” said Eve. “It’s four thousand years old. Not the kind of place many people have camped. Anyway, there we were, asleep in our tent, and in the middle of the night we were woken by a noise. And what do you think? When we opened our eyes we saw a man’s face. Crouching there, just staring at us.”
Olivia frowned, but she was silenced by the expression on Eve’s face.
“A local farmer, I should think,” said James. “Wondering what you thought you were doing.”
Eve shook her head in a slow, deliberate way. “No. Definitely not a farmer. He had – oh, a hideous face. Great heavy brows. And as soon as we moved, he ran away. Definitely not an innocent local, or why run like that?”
“But not someone who meant you harm, either,” pointed out James, “or why run away from two – sorry, but – from two girls?” He lifted the pastry onto the rolling pin and held it in mid-air for a moment before lowering it into the flan dish.
“But if he didn’t mean us any harm,” said Eve, “why follow us around the country?” She looked at Olivia. “He did, didn’t he? We kept seeing him.”
“We thought we did,” said Olivia.
Eve glared. “A few days after that, we were in Oban,” she told James. “There’s this huge folly on the hill above the town, a bit like the Colosseum, built by some Victorian philanthropist.”
“McCaig’s Tower,” said Olivia.
“It’s empty inside, just a kind of park,” Eve continued, “but the views of the sea and the islands are wonderful, everyone told us, so we walked up there one afternoon. This was – what, three or four days later? And two hundred miles north?”
“A hundred and fifty,” said Olivia.
“We’d forgotten all about the man at Torhousekie by then. We’d stopped in Glasgow, seen lots of different things, and there we were in Oban, climbing up to McCaig’s Folly. The entrance is very dramatic, a great archway with rows of empty windows each side. It’s not spooky, exactly, but it’s – awe-inspiring.”
Bright sun and shadows, Olivia remembered. No one in sight except seagulls.
“Like a film set,” said James, and Eve’s eyes widened.
“Yes,” she said. “Exactly. And as we came through the archway, there he was. Standing in the shadows, looking out of one of the windows at the path we’d just walked up.”
“The same man?”
“The same man. We only caught a glimpse of his face, but he was wearing the same jacket, dark grey with these thick white stripes across the shoulders.”
She turned to Olivia with an expression somewhere between command and entreaty. Olivia made a tiny gesture of equivocation.
“We were sure it was him,” she said. “It was pretty startling.”
“And then what?” asked James. “Did he run away again?”
“He slipped out through the archway and headed off down the hill.”
“Well, well.”
Eve frowned. Her bowl of beans was going down slowly, a small pile of green tips gathered on the table in front of her, cut off with little jerky movements of the knife James had given her.
“You might call that coincidence,” she said, “but we saw him the next day on Mull. He was waiting when we arrived back at the port at Craignure, leaning against the railing, wearing the same jacket. We were so spooked we walked away and waited for the next ferry, even though it meant hanging around for another two hours.”
“Although if he was a tourist like us, it’s hardly surprising he went across to Mull from Oban,” said Olivia.
“But I saw him again when I went for a walk above Loch Ness that weekend,” Eve insisted. “You only missed him then because you stayed behind to read your book.”
Olivia said nothing; she could see Eve was on the brink of tears or losing her temper, or perhaps both at once. She didn’t want to provoke her.
In the little bed and breakfast at Drumnadrochit, on the edge of Loch Ness, they’d slept in twin beds squeezed so tightly under the eaves that it had felt more like being in the tent. The sky was heavy and dark the next morning, and she’d decided to stay in bed while Eve went out for a walk. She remembered the bliss of a day of silence, a whole day alone. Then Eve had come back, late in the afternoon, full of excitement and something like triumph. Guess who I saw, she’d asked, and Olivia had said, Nessie?
“It was a bit of a saga,” Olivia said now, in a voice she could tell was wrong; too placatory, as though she was talking to a child. “We wondered whether he was stalking us, didn’t we? Where he was going to turn up next. But he didn’t follow us south from Scotland. We threw him off the trail in the end.”
She smiled, but Eve stared down at the table, her eyes widening as though in silent communication with the beans or the knife or the grain of the wood.
“Drink,” said James. “How have we gone this long without a drink? It must be half past six. Red or white? Eve? Olivia?”
The man hadn’t appeared again after Drumnadrochit, but Eve’s flashes of bad temper had. Olivia marked off the days in her head, the towns and villages and mountains and rivers. Aberdeen, she remembered: a bustling city perched at the very edge of the land, coming as a surprise after miles and miles of open country. Eve had sneered when Olivia said the front of Marischal College reminded her of the Houses of Parliament, then insisted they checked into an expensive hotel where the sheets weren’t even clean. St Andrew’s: the castle, the botanic gardens, the fearsome row in a medieval teashop.
Olivia felt weary, suddenly. Even though Scotland was behind them and Eve was her friend and there had been midnight walks on the beach, too, and singing along to the radio with the car roof open and the glens empty, empty of anything except air and heather.
“White,” she said, “please,” and James poured her a glass as lightning flashed through the gap in the curtains.
Chapter 18
2008
Faith’s catering business took off with a bang in the month after she met James. She had him to thank for it, partly. He’d given her card to a few people at the hospital, and one booking had led to another and then another. Word of mouth was the way to do it, everyone said so – but you needed a break, and Faith was lucky to have got hers. All kinds of parties came her way: wedding anniversaries, twenty-first birthdays, engagements, retirements. She even had to take on a friend from her Cordon Bleu course to help out.
“You’re a jammy sod, Faith,” Erica said, looking through her bookings diary. “You’ve walked into a goldmine.”
Goldmines weren’t the kind of thing you walked into, Faith thought, but she didn’t want to annoy Erica by being clever-clever. She was an asset,
Erica, a quick worker and good with the clients. Reliable, for all her flash comments and glamorous looks. If things went on like this she was going to need Erica to stick around.
“Is this all through that doctor boyfriend of yours?” Erica asked.
Faith shrugged in a nonchalant sort of way. “He’s certainly given the business a boost.”
“My last boyfriend didn’t give me anything except chlamydia,” Erica said, and Faith laughed, although she knew that was just a line.
They were in Faith’s kitchen, rolling out puff pastry for a batch of vol-au-vents. No one did vol-au-vents any more, but people liked them, Faith had found. They were becoming one of her trademarks.
“The only problem with being so busy is that I don’t get to spend enough time with James,” Faith said. “What with his weekends on call and his private work, we’ve hardly seen each other lately.”
“My heart bleeds.”
“If I didn’t know how hard he worked I’d wonder whether he’d got someone else on the side,” said Faith, and then she laughed, to make sure Erica didn’t take it seriously.
But James evidently understood her frustration – felt the same way himself, no doubt – because the next time they met he suggested a weekend away.
“I’ve got a reception on the Saturday evening,” Faith said. “Up at Boars Hill. A party in one of those huge houses.”
She made her mournful face, and he stroked her cheek.
“Couldn’t Erica handle it?” he asked. “Wasn’t that why you took her on, so you wouldn’t have to do everything yourself?”
“I guess so.” Faith had her doubts about leaving Erica to it – not because she wasn’t competent, not that at all; more because she was too competent. She didn’t want Erica stealing her clients. But the way things were going she was never going to have a free weekend to spend with James, and they needed it.
“You’re right,” she said. “It would be fantastic to get away together.”
“My cousin has a house in Aldeburgh,” said James. “It’s beautiful there. You’ll love it.”
“Where’s Aldeburgh?” Faith asked. She’d had Paris in mind, but she tried not to let her disappointment show.
“On the Suffolk coast.”
“I like the beach,” said Faith, thinking as she said it that the English coast in November wasn’t exactly what she’d call a beach. But even so it would be romantic, all windswept and bleak. They could snuggle up together, listening to the sea.
It rained all the way to Aldeburgh, five hours’ drive from Oxford. They could have been in Paris by now, Faith thought, as they covered the last few miles with the windscreen wipers working double speed to keep the road in view. It had been two o’clock before she’d finished clearing up after last night’s event, and she was dead tired. She’d fallen asleep a couple of times in the car. She didn’t like to think what she must have looked like, lolling forward in the passenger seat, and she’d woken up with a stiff neck, too.
“You’re not doing any cooking this weekend,” James had said when he picked her up, and she’d been cheered by the thought of cosy suppers in country pubs. That was something to look forward to, anyway.
“Okay?” said James, seeing that she was awake again. “Nearly there now. We’re just coming into Aldeburgh.”
Faith peered out of the window, but she couldn’t see a thing through the dark and the rain. She looked at the dashboard display: nearly ten o’clock. She was famished, she realised. She hadn’t had time for lunch.
“Will the pubs still be serving?” she asked.
“I’ve brought food,” James said. “I’m going to cook for you.” He grinned at the look on her face. “Don’t worry. I learned to cook at my grandmother’s knee.”
“So that’ll be dumplings and junket, then?”
James squeezed her leg. “Actually, though I hesitate to say so to a pro, I’m not a half bad cook. And I’ve got a damn good bottle of Chablis in the cooler, so at least we can enjoy the drinking.”
It was still pouring when they pulled up opposite the house. James lent Faith his mackintosh to pull over her head for the dash to the front door. He followed with the bags and they slammed the door behind them, dripping wet just from that short sprint.
The house had the damp, mildewy smell of the seaside and all the furniture was old and battered, but at least it was warm. They left the bags in the hall and went through to the kitchen. The big old range cooker and the slate worktops looked original, Faith thought, and there was even a huge butler’s sink in the corner.
“Wow,” she said. “This is a real period piece. How long has it been in your family?”
James unzipped the chiller bag and pulled out a bottle of wine.
“For Madam’s delectation,” he said, “Chablis Valmur Grand Cru, 2006. I think Madam will agree it was an attractive year, and that the classical austerity of Chablis is nicely balanced here by the weight of the finish.”
He reached in a cupboard behind him for a couple of wineglasses, then pulled the cork out with a flourish.
“Well,” said Faith.
James laughed. “That’s what the label says, anyway. Cheers.”
It didn’t taste like wine at all, or not the kind she usually had. It was sweet and spicy at the same time; rather how she thought of James, in fact. The thought made her giggle and want to slide her hands around his waist. God, if she was going to get pissed this quickly …
“This certainly beats a conference on vulval surgery,” said James, removing the film from a packet of king prawns.
“What conference?”
“Didn’t I tell you? I was supposed to be at a conference in Florida this weekend, that’s why my diary’s clear. No private patients booked in.”
“You could have taken me to Florida,” said Faith. “I’d have liked a bit of sun.”
He looked fondly at her and shook his head. “Lots of boring seminars and lectures,” he said. “This is much better: I’ve got you all to myself. And the sun will come out tomorrow, I promise.”
But it didn’t. The rain kept up for the whole weekend.
“We could borrow some wet weather gear and go for a walk on the beach,” James said, when they woke on Sunday morning to a steady patter against the windows.
“I suppose so,” said Faith doubtfully. One day spent doing nothing had been great, but another might be a bit much. She didn’t want them to get scratchy with each other from being cooped up too long.
“Or we could go for a drive?” James suggested. But they had the drive back to Oxford ahead of them, and Faith didn’t want to spend any more time in the car. You couldn’t see anything except clouds and rain, anyway.
In the end, Faith had a long bath in an antique bathtub with clawed feet, then James brought up brunch on a tray for them to eat in bed. Bed was the right place for them, Faith thought; a safe bet for a good time. She felt like a courtesan, with James feeding her fingers of toast while the towel slipped off her shoulders. He’d turned out to be a good cook, just as he claimed, and she found that sexy too: watching him cut up vegetables in a methodical, efficient way, frowning as he checked for some herb or spice in the cupboard.
“I’ll tell you what,” James said when they’d finished, “why don’t I find a nice pub on the way home? We could head off soonish, and stop for a late lunch to break the journey.”
Faith couldn’t imagine eating another thing, after bacon and eggs and fried tomatoes, but she could see the sense in ending on a good note. And much as she’d looked forward to the weekend, she didn’t want to be too late home. She had a frantic week ahead.
“The house has wifi,” James said, as though her hesitation had to do with the practicalities. “I’ll Google The Good Pub Guide.”
He’d brought his laptop, and while she was getting dressed he sat at the kitchen table and checked his e-mail.
Faith hadn’t paid much attention to the house so far, except to approve of the old-fashioned kitchen, the old-fashioned bat
h and the working fireplace in the sitting room as suitable props for their romantic weekend. It needed a bit of money spending on it, she thought, pulling her clothes on slowly and watching her reflection in the long mirror. A coat of paint and some new furniture would spruce it up no end, make the rooms look bigger. Maybe next time they came she could make some suggestions.
While they were packing, the rain stopped and the clouds lifted – Sod’s Law, James said – and at last they could see the sea from the bay window in the bedroom. It looked cold and uninviting, even with a wintry sun in the sky, but at least it was the sea, Faith thought. It made a difference, being by the seaside: a change from landlocked Oxford.
“Was this where – “ she started, then stopped.
“Where what?” James had finished his packing. He held up one of her dresses (what had she been thinking, bringing so many clothes for one weekend?) so she could take it from him and fold it into her case.
“Where Helena came,” Faith said, her heart beating fast suddenly.
James looked stunned, as if all that had been so far from his mind that it was a surprise to remember it, and Faith kicked herself. Idiot: why did she have to spoil things?
“She came here, yes,” he said. His voice didn’t change; Faith wasn’t sure whether that was good sign or a bad one. “But she drowned off the south coast. We had some friends with a house there.”
“I’m sorry,” Faith said, and she was. But things didn’t go the way she expected after that. James dropped the dress on the bed and took her in his arms.
“God, I’m glad I’ve found you,” he said. “You’re my redeeming angel, do you know that?”
The Partridge and the Pelican Page 13