Cauldstane

by Gillard, Linda

  To my dismay, I realised I was sounding just like Rupert, giving myself a good talking to. It was all very sensible advice – Rupert would have been proud of me – but it failed to take into account that when Alec was around, my breathing changed slightly. I was always aware of his position in the room and what he was doing. I didn’t watch him. I didn’t need to. I automatically registered his presence and the distance, or lack of it, between us.

  I rolled over on the bed and drew up my knees, trying to recall the photographs on the notice board in the armoury, photos in which Alec was demonstrating historical swordsmanship in period costume. I’d always thought that sort of historical re-enactment was for sad, geeky types. Maybe it was, but I doubted whether most blade enthusiasts looked as dashing or dangerous as Alec in doublet and hose.

  Despite taking sensible precautions, I’d succumbed to the glamour of Cauldstane and the MacNab men – Alec in particular. Work would be the remedy. Putting pleasant thoughts of Alec aside, I resolved that I would get off my very comfortable bed, settle down with my notes and get some work done. Soon.

  I must have been dozing off when the music began. It was distant and indistinct, but I thought it sounded like a harpsichord. I sat up on the bed, straining to hear. The piece was sad and stately and I assumed it must be coming from a radio or CD player. The music stopped abruptly. In the silence that followed, I decided I must have imagined it. After all, I spent a lot of time cooped up with a harpsichord in the music room and I often tried to imagine what it would sound like.

  I concluded I was in need of tea and possibly some of Mrs Guthrie’s restorative home baking. I’d eaten very little at lunchtime. As I swung my legs off the bed, the music began again – a different piece, frenetically complex this time. I’m sure it demonstrated great technical brilliance, but I found the jangling noise completely enervating. After only a moment or two, I felt a headache coming on and wished the music would stop – which it did, just as suddenly as it had started. I sat on the edge of the bed, braced for the music to start again, but there was nothing but silence – silence and a chill in the room that sent me rooting in a drawer for a jumper.

  As I pulled it on over my shirt, I glanced out the window, across the river. On the opposite bank the leaves had already started to change colour. The wind tossed the tops of the trees and a few yellow leaves spiralled into the air, whirling madly before they drifted down to the surface of the rushing water. I watched them as they hurtled under the stone bridge and were gone. Despite my thick jumper, I shivered.

  ~

  I was heading for the stairs, on my way to the kitchen, when Zelda opened her door. Her head shot out and when she saw it was me, she smiled broadly. ‘Jenny! I’m glad I caught you. I’ve dug out some old photo albums. Come and have a look. Wilma’s just brought me some tea, so we can have a wee blether.’ Her head shot back inside again and I heard her say, ‘Wilma, would you bring another cup, please?’ Mrs Guthrie emerged carrying an empty tray and nodded to me before setting off downstairs at a lick.

  Knowing Zelda, I doubted whether the blether would be all that wee, but I obeyed what was in effect a royal command to peruse the family albums. Sholto had shown no interest in choosing the illustrations for his biography, so Zelda and I had taken it upon ourselves to make a first selection.

  As I entered the room, soft classical music was playing. It stopped abruptly as Zelda switched off a radio.

  ‘Please don’t turn it off on my account,’ I protested.

  ‘Och, it’s just Classic FM. Wallpaper music. I have to have something on in the background. I can’t bear the silence of this place. It gets on my nerves. Sholto says he loves it, but he’d live in Antarctica if he could. All that silence and no litter. He gets so worked up about that.’

  ‘Litter?’

  ‘Litter in Glasgow, litter on Mt. Everest. Sholto goes on and on about it.’ Zelda plumped up a needlepoint cushion in an armchair and indicated I should sit. She poured a cup of tea, handed it to me, then drew up another chair and sat down. ‘Help yourself to gingerbread. Wilma excels at gingerbread!’

  I obeyed and, as I sat, took a moment to survey the room. When I entered, I’d expected to find Zelda’s bedroom, but I found myself in a tiny sitting room which must once have been a dressing room. A closed door led, I presumed, to the bedroom. I had to admire the way she’d made herself a little den, heated by a primitive two-bar electric fire. Small pieces of furniture had been crammed in for the sole purpose of displaying bric-a-brac. Zelda was evidently a collector. I spotted lace bobbins and darning mushrooms arranged in different areas of the room, but I was unable to guess the purpose of what appeared to be a bowl of china apples. Pastel-coloured and surprisingly modern, these plain and patterned china balls turned out to be a set of 1930s carpet bowls. (Zelda told me later that her mother had allowed the children to play with them indoors on rainy days.) There was a shelf full of cookery books, many of them French, and a piece of needlepoint canvas stretched over a frame had been set down beside a sewing box, open on the floor beside Zelda’s chair.

  It was all very cosy, charming and feminine. I couldn’t help thinking what a contrast it was to Alec’s workshop and it suddenly struck me how separately all the MacNabs lived – all of them single, all in their separate areas. If Sholto wasn’t in the walled garden, he’d be holed up in the library. Fergus was always out working on the estate and went home to his bachelor cottage. We rarely saw him except for the occasional meal. I wondered if the melancholy atmosphere I was beginning to sense at Cauldstane was just the family’s palpable loneliness and isolation. Undoubtedly they’d known happier times, but those seemed long gone.

  Mrs Guthrie re-appeared at the open door with more crockery. ‘Thanks Wilma! I’ll take that.’ Zelda got up to take a cup and saucer, then shut the door and came back to the table. Pouring her own tea, she resumed her complaints about Sholto’s anti-social tendencies.

  ‘I just don’t bother to take him out any more. It’s not worth the lecture on the evils of modern society, particularly chewing gum and what Sholto would like to do to the folk who drop it. He’s happy enough at Cauldstane, buried alive, but it’s too quiet for me. I used to run a restaurant, you see. In France. I loved all the pandemonium! The joie de vivre! And Johnny was hard of hearing, so everything was always full blast with him. Conversation. Music. TV.’

  ‘Johnny? That was your husband?’

  ‘My ex. Jean-Claude. A life spent racing cars wrecked his ears. He couldn’t converse below a shout. And all in French, of course. Not at all what I’d grown up with here. Our mother was one of those soft-spoken Highland women who never raised her voice, even when she was angry with us.’ Zelda pushed the plate of cake towards me. ‘Will you not have some more gingerbread? No? Och, well…’ She helped herself to a piece. ‘But you can get used to anything. I got used to the noise of the race track and the restaurant kitchen and Johnny bellowing at me across the breakfast table. I really missed it when it stopped. All that racket. It made you feel alive.’ Zelda cast a jaundiced eye round her room. ‘This place is like a morgue now. When Meredith was alive it was very different. There was always music in the air.’

  ‘She played the harpsichord, didn’t she?’

  ‘Aye, she did. And she was always singing or playing her own CDs. Cauldstane used to be full of music.’

  ‘She listened to her own recordings?’

  Zelda nodded. ‘Especially in the years before she died. That was a particular treat for her. She liked to sit in a darkened room – she was very fond of candlelight, said it was flattering – and she’d listen to her old recordings. There weren’t that many if truth be told, so it got a wee bit repetitive. But she liked to have company when she listened, so I used to humour her. Sholto’s tone deaf and the boys weren’t interested of course, but Coral and I used to sit with her sometimes.’ Zelda shook her head. ‘She tried very hard to get on with Meredith.’

  ‘Coral did?’

  ‘Say what you lik
e about that lassie, she did her best to fit in with the MacNabs. And Meredith didn’t make it easy for her.’

  ‘Oh? Why was that?’

  ‘I couldn’t say. Meredith liked to be queen bee, of course. She was very much a man’s woman. The type who lights up when a good-looking man walks into the room – you know the kind I mean? But Coral was hardly the sort of woman to inspire jealousy. She couldn’t hold a candle to Meredith. Not that she even tried.’

  ‘So you think Meredith just didn’t like women? Wasn’t she Liz’s friend?’

  ‘She was the younger sister of Pamela, one of Liz’s friends. Meredith and I got along well enough. We had a lot in common. We loved to swap stories about our time abroad, we both loved French food and wine. And French men! No, it was just Coral Meredith took a dislike to.’

  ‘Dislike? As bad as that?’

  ‘Och no, not really. Meredith was just impatient with her. Intolerant. But I think you have to make allowances for the artistic temperament.’ Zelda paused and lowered her voice. ‘Especially if the artist is no longer in demand. Meredith found that hard. Very hard when the phone stopped ringing. And, it has to be said, Sholto was not the most attentive of husbands, so naturally she got bored. And when Meredith got bored, she could be… well, a wee bit spiteful. Coral’s only crime was to be young and very much in love. An old wifie like me was harmless enough. And of course Meredith was much younger than Liz. I suspect Meredith just had no time for younger women.’ Zelda chortled, as if something amusing had suddenly struck her. ‘She’d have hated you!’

  ‘Hated me? Why?’

  ‘Too much competition, my dear! You’re pretty, blonde and slim. Poor Meredith fought a constant battle with her weight. She always had a generous figure, but as she got older and more indolent she became quite… substantial. She was always crash dieting, but being hungry made her miserable and being miserable made her eat. It was a vicious circle. Comfort-eating was what she did when Sholto was away on his travels. We used to sit and blether in here when she was bored or miserable. She liked to play with all my bits and pieces.’ Zelda indicated a shelf unit behind her full of small pieces of china and porcelain – thimbles, pill boxes and something I couldn’t identify.

  ‘What are the things that look like pepper pots?’

  ‘Holders for hat pins. I collect hat pins.’ She stood up and took what looked like a large pincushion down from the top of the shelf unit. It was stuffed with long pins, each of which finished in a piece of coloured glass or ornate beadwork. ‘Meredith called this my hedgehog,’ Zelda said, holding it out for me to examine. ‘She loved it. She bought me several of these pins, in fact. She liked to browse round junk shops and antique fairs and whenever she saw a nice hatpin, she’d buy it for me. She was very taken with them after I told her a bit of their history as a weapon.’

  ‘A weapon?’

  ‘Did you not know? They were sometimes used in self-defence. Some were ten inches long! They could be hidden in your hair – Edwardian women wore hair pieces to bulk out their own – and a hat pin could double as an impromptu weapon if the occasion arose.’

  ‘Really? I had no idea!’

  ‘Och, you can do a lot of damage with a hat pin!’ said Zelda with relish. ‘In fact by 1910 some places were actually passing laws banning their use. So they’re an interesting thing to collect. They aren’t quite what they seem. Meredith loved all that. The idea of a secret weapon. It appealed to her childish side.’ Zelda sighed. ‘Poor Meredith… She was a child in many ways. She’d led a very sheltered life. She didn’t know much about anything other than music. I always thought it was a shame she never had a family. One of her own, I mean. A baby would have been good for her. Good for Sholto too. It might have made him act more… responsibly. But Meredith was so focused on her career.’

  ‘Did she believe in the Cauldstane curse?’

  ‘I’m not sure. She was very upset when Liz died and there was a lot of superstitious talk after the accident. Not within our family, but Meredith was probably aware of what was said. And she did mention the curse now and again, years later. In front of Coral, too, which was tactless of her, but that was Meredith for you. She always spoke her mind. She didn’t seem to realise that not everyone was as emotionally robust as she was.’

  ‘Do you believe in the curse, Zelda?’

  She gave me one of her beady looks. ‘Will this be going into the book?’

  ‘Not if you don’t want it to. The final content of the book will be up to Sholto not me. He’s already said he doesn’t believe in the curse.’

  ‘That’s right, he doesn’t. But I think he wavers occasionally. Coral’s death was such a tragedy. We were all pole-axed by grief, but it almost destroyed Alec. It was a very dark time. He got through it by throwing himself into work, but he still seems… och, I don’t know – haunted is putting it too strongly, but I don’t think he’s himself, even now. But he certainly seems to have brightened up since you arrived, Jenny.’ Zelda’s smile was a little too knowing, so I looked down and studied the contents of my tea cup. She took the hint. ‘I think we’ve all benefited from having a fresh face around. Someone new to talk to. And talk about! It makes a pleasant change from dwelling on this ridiculous curse.’

  ‘So you think there’s nothing to it?’

  ‘I think there’s nothing to the curse, but I think the curse itself has poisoned our lives.’

  ‘Poisoned? How?’

  ‘MacNab lives have been tainted by fear. Tragedies occur in many families, misfortune affects most, but constant fear of tragedy and misfortune – that’s a hard cross to bear. None of the MacNab men lack courage. Even Torquil set about a burglar with the Cauldstane claymore. And he showed great fortitude at the end, poor man, dying a slow and miserable death. For all their faults, MacNabs have always had plenty of fighting spirit,’ Zelda said, looking and sounding the embodiment of fighting spirit herself. ‘But if you’re not careful, fear will weaken you and it can break you. That’s why I left Johnny.’

  ‘Johnny? What happened – if you don’t mind my asking?’

  ‘Well, this is definitely not going into the book, but between you, me and the gatepost…’ Zelda set down her cup and saucer and folded her hands in her lap. ‘Racing is a young man’s game, everybody knows that, and once Johnny was too old for it, he started to drink. That made him aggressive.’ Her hand fluttered to her throat where she smoothed her string of pearls. ‘We had terrible rows. Terrible! On one occasion he even struck me. Just the once, because I packed my bags and left. Now I’ll put up with a lot of things, Jenny – noise, silence, cold, solitude – but I’d had enough of living with fear. I’d spent years living with the fear of Johnny killing himself on the race-track. So when he hit me, that was the last straw. If years of living with the fear of losing him were to be followed by years spent fearing his foul temper and drunken outbursts – well, that was it as far as I was concerned. If you live in fear, you fear to live. And if you fear to live, you might as well be dead. I was only thirty-four. I still had a lot of living to do.’

  ‘Well, good for you. How did Johnny cope?’

  ‘Drank himself to death. But I suspect he’d have done that anyway, with or without me.’

  ‘But you came home to help Sholto manage Cauldstane after Liz died?’

  ‘It was a terrible time. They hadn’t been here all that long. Barely got their feet under the table when tragedy struck again. So I decided to quit France altogether. I was needed here.’

  ‘This poor family has endured so much.’

  ‘Aye, we’ve surely had more than our fair share of trouble… Now, will you have more tea, Jenny?’

  ‘No, thanks, I’m fine. I think I’d like to go and make some notes now.’ I set down my tea cup, cast a last longing glance at the gingerbread and got to my feet. ‘Could I take some of the photo albums away with me?’

  ‘Of course.’ Zelda picked up several leather-bound albums and handed them to me.

  ‘Thanks. And thank
you for the tea and the lovely chat. Your collections are delightful.’

  ‘I’ll get Wilma to deliver the rest of the albums to your room.’

  The mention of my room jogged my memory. ‘Oh, before I go… I’ve just remembered something I wanted to ask. It’s nothing important, but I wondered whether you could remember what was on the radio before I came in. What had they been playing?’

  She looked surprised, then gazed at the radio for inspiration. ‘Before you came in?... I think it was a piano concerto. Mozart, I believe.’

  ‘Piano? Not harpsichord?’

  ‘Did Mozart write a concerto for harpsichord?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just wondered if they’d been playing harpsichord music on the radio.’

  Zelda looked puzzled. ‘When?’

  ‘Just before I came in. Well, a few minutes before, actually.’

  ‘No, it had been Mozart for a wee while. I remember now, there was a lovely slow movement.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’

  ‘But why d’you ask? Are you particularly interested in harpsichord music?’

  ‘No, it’s just that I thought I’d heard some. When I was in my room. And I knew no one in the family plays, so I assumed it must have been a CD. Or maybe the radio,’ I added lamely.

  ‘You heard harpsichord music?’

  ‘Yes. At least, I thought I did.’