Cauldstane

by Gillard, Linda

  ‘We don’t have to stick to our schedule,’ I said gently. ‘We can discuss something else if you’d rather. Or meet at another time?’

  ‘No, let’s get it over with. This bit of the story, I mean. The deaths. That’s what we agreed to discuss today, wasn’t it?’ He sounded uncertain, as if struggling to remember.

  ‘Only if you feel up to it. We have to talk about them some time, but it doesn’t have to be today. You could talk to me instead about managing Cauldstane. The financial burden. The legacy you inherited and the one you hope to pass on to your sons.’

  Sholto made a derisive noise. ‘Some legacy! No, let’s talk about my dead wives. At least I know how those two stories end.’ He turned away again and stared at the leaden sky. ‘Can’t stand the rain. It depresses me. Makes me worry about the roof and the thousands it will cost to repair it. It’s only a matter of time before that becomes necessary...’ He fell silent again and I was wondering how to salvage our limping conversation when he suddenly asked, ‘When is it time to let go, Jenny? How do you decide to let go of something or someone you love, because… because it’s just no longer possible?’

  I hesitated, then said, ‘Are you talking about Cauldstane?’

  ‘Mostly.’ He turned round and waved his walking stick in the direction of his desk where there was a pile of opened mail. ‘There have been a lot of bills lately and the bills are on the same scale as Cauldstane. Monumental! You wouldn’t credit what it costs to heat this pile in winter. I wouldn’t mind if that expenditure kept us warm, but just ask Zelda about her chilblains. On second thoughts, don’t. It’s rather a sore point after all her years in the south of France. But she’d tell you, we freeze in winter. Except for Alec, of course. When he’s got his furnace going, he’s cosy enough. But the rest of us – well, we just have to put up with it. Cauldstane is kept warm enough to preserve the fabric of the building and its contents, then we have to dress in layers. Many layers. As if embarking on a polar expedition.’

  Sholto hobbled over to the fireplace and indicated I should join him in the chairs set either side of the fire. Such was the thickness of Cauldstane’s walls, it was frequently warmer outdoors than in, so the fire was always a welcome sight in the otherwise chilly library. He waited for me to be seated, then settled with palpable relief into the other chair. ‘It wasn’t so bad when I could keep active. We used to tell the boys to run up and downstairs to keep warm! But nowadays…’ He tapped one of his legs with his stick. ‘I can’t move fast enough to keep the circulation going. It’s bloody miserable. Especially when Fergus reminds me – as he does with monotonous regularity – just how cosy I’d be in a centrally heated bungalow.’

  ‘He wants to sell up, doesn’t he?’

  ‘And Alec and I don’t. Alec and I are the dreamers. The fools. Fergus is the sensible one. And he has all our interests at heart.’

  ‘I’m sure he does, but he isn’t taking your heart into account. Or Alec’s.’

  ‘What?... Oh, I see... Well, he can’t, can he? You only have to look at the accounts. Shocking. I tell you, Jenny, owning a property like Cauldstane is like having a high maintenance wife. And when I was married to Meredith, I had two of those,’ Sholto grumbled. ‘But making Cauldstane pay was always going to be a tall order. I inherited a lot of debts. The estate was not in good heart. Torquil was largely an absentee landlord and left his affairs to inadequate staff. Our father hadn’t been much better organised. The poor fellow was dogged with ill health and had disastrous luck with his investments. So when I took charge, the farms had been poorly managed for years and the forestry areas neglected. The woods were all but impenetrable. Should have been thinned out, you see, but my father didn’t know what he was doing. Thought timber would be a quick and easy cash crop. Sadly the trees had to be clear-felled before they reached maturity, wasting a lot of the original investment.’ Sholto turned away and stared into the fire. ‘Fergus and I have achieved a certain amount, but Cauldstane really needs investment now. And that means cash. Which we don’t have.’ He narrowed his eyes and said, ‘How much do you think this book could make, Jenny?’

  ‘Not enough, I’m afraid. I don’t know what sort of offers we’ll get for it. It could be a tidy sum, but I don’t think the book alone would save Cauldstane. If the manuscript goes to auction – that means several publishers competing for the book – that would push the price up nicely. My agent would be able to play the bidders off against each other, but if the advance is generous, it’s unlikely you’d earn any more.’

  ‘I don’t quite follow.’

  ‘The amount you’re paid is called an advance because it’s an advance against future earnings. The book would have to earn that advance back before you were paid any royalties.’

  ‘You mean it would have to sell a lot of copies?’

  ‘Yes. But you never know – it might. If it became a bestseller, there would be all the spin-offs – translation rights, audio, serialisation for radio. You might even sell screen rights. It could mount up over the years. But I wouldn’t want you to bank on it, Sholto. Publishing a book is always a gamble. No one knows what makes a bestseller, least of all publishers.’

  ‘Would you talk to Fergus about all this, Jenny? Put him in the picture? It might get him off my back for a while.’

  ‘Yes, of course. But I doubt it will change his mind. If you sell up, he’ll be out of a job, won’t he? So he must really think selling up is best for you. And Alec.’

  ‘Oh, Fergus is undoubtedly taking the long view. He believes we’ll have to sell eventually and says the time to let go is before you have to. “Sell up now and name your price,” he says. That way you still feel you’re in control of your destiny. But I don’t think he really understands – he’s a younger son, how could he? – that letting go of something like Cauldstane is admitting complete and utter failure. In every respect. It means I’ve failed the building, failed in my obligations to the estate and failed to protect my sons’ inheritance.’

  ‘You were a younger son, Sholto. You understood. I expect Fergus does too. He’s just trying to limit the damage. And if he regards the sale as inevitable—’

  ‘Oh, he does. He’s made that quite clear. It’s a question of when, not if, as far as Ferg’s concerned.’

  ‘Then he probably thinks the sale should take place while you’re still around to enjoy that cosy bungalow. And while he and Alec are young enough to start over somewhere else.’

  ‘Yes, I know, it all makes perfect sense,’ Sholto conceded grudgingly. ‘It just fails to take into account my feelings. And Alec’s. And this place is Alec’s now. I’m just hanging on, like some old family retainer. A useless custodian. The future of Cauldstane lies with Alec and his family. If he ever manages to acquire one…’ His voice tailed away into silent despondency, then he suddenly slapped his thigh with impatience. ‘Enough of all this maudlin talk! We must get to work, Jenny. This damn book won’t earn us a penny until you’ve finished writing it.’

  Fishing in my bag for my notebook and tape recorder, I said, ‘I’d still like to answer your question, if I may.’

  He looked surprised. ‘Which question was that?’

  ‘You asked me when it was time to let go.’

  ‘So I did. Sorry. Burdening you with all our problems. Selfish of me. And a criminal waste of your time.’

  ‘Not at all. It’s all good background for the book and if I’m to write as you would have written, I need to think like you, feel as you do. And up to a point I do. I care about Cauldstane and this family. I may not be one of you, but I hope I’m considered a friend of the family now.’

  He beamed at me. ‘Indeed, you are, my dear.’

  ‘Well, for what it’s worth, my answer to your question would be this: perhaps it’s time to let go when you can no longer hold on. That might not be the most sensible advice, but I think it’s what people do when they care passionately about a place. Or a person. They hold on until something compels them to let go. Then it’s no
longer a choice. It’s taken out of our hands, so there can be no regrets. No blame. Maybe it’s not the actual letting go that’s hard. Maybe it’s making the decision to let go, when you still have a choice.’

  Sholto nodded his head slowly. ‘You know, I should have made that decision with Meredith. I should have let go of the marriage. Of the idea that she could ever be more than a very alluring mistress. But my boys needed a mother. And I missed Liz dreadfully. I know I wasn’t faithful to her, but I did love her. Can you understand that, Jenny? Meredith never forgave me for it. She was jealous of Liz when she was alive, jealous even after she was dead. That never seemed reasonable to me. How can you be jealous of a dead woman?’

  I thought it best not to comment on Meredith’s obsessive nature and instead asked, ‘Did you love Meredith? If you don’t mind my asking.’

  It was a mark of the trust that Sholto now put in me that he could answer such personal questions without embarrassment and without demur, even though he was basically a private, rather taciturn man. We could talk frankly to each other and he appeared genuinely interested in my opinions. We shared little in terms of life experience and had almost nothing in common, apart from affection for Alec, but in a matter of weeks, we’d achieved the sort of intimacy one enjoys with old friends. How we’d achieved this was something of a mystery to me, but I’d observed the phenomenon many times now. It seemed to be a by-product of sharing stories.

  ‘Did I actually love her?... That was a question she asked me all the time. I always said yes, of course, and I believed it to be true. But looking back… And that’s what this book is about, isn’t it?’ Sholto looked up as if he needed reassurance to carry on.

  ‘It’s about looking back, but it’s also about capturing how things were at the time. Wordsworth defined poetry as “emotion recollected in tranquillity”. That’s what I’m trying to get you to do. Recall how you felt then.’

  He nodded and said, ‘After Liz died, I realised – somewhat belatedly – what love was. What it should be. But I had a situation to deal with. What was uppermost in my mind was guilt. And the welfare of two motherless boys, both distraught, one of them blaming himself for his mother’s death. And I had a mistress – ex-mistress by then – who seemed determined to re-establish herself as the new wife.’

  I looked up from my notebook. ‘Ex-mistress? I didn’t realise you’d broken off with Meredith. Wasn’t she here when Liz had the accident?’

  ‘Yes, she was. In her capacity as a friend of the family. Her sister, Pamela was an old school friend of Liz’s. When we had weekend parties and charity bashes, Pam and Meredith would come over. That’s how I met her in the first place. She was a rather intense music student. Then years later, I met her again at a charity ball, when she was attached to a fellow I knew, a scientist who’d been on one of my expeditions. It was strange, the way I kept bumping into Meredith. Looking back, I wonder if she deliberately set her cap at me.’

  ‘But by the time Liz died, Meredith was history?’

  ‘Well, I’d made it pretty clear the affair was over. She’d asked me to divorce Liz and of course there was no question of that as far as I was concerned. She took that very badly, so I decided our relationship must end. It had run its course anyway, as these things do.’ Sholto turned and gave me a shrewd look. ‘That makes me sound a complete bastard, doesn’t it? Well, maybe I was, but I don’t think Meredith really loved me. She loved the idea of me. Famous explorer, Laird of Cauldstane, all that. So yes, it was all over as far as I was concerned.’

  ‘How did she take the news?’

  ‘Surprisingly well. I was braced for histrionics, but after the initial shock, she was very calm, very grown-up about it. She insisted we remain friends – she said she still wanted to see Liz and the boys – so I could hardly refuse, especially as she’d been so understanding about ending the relationship.’

  ‘So that’s why Meredith was still around when Liz died.’

  ‘She and Pam and her husband were staying the weekend. There was some young man in tow, I forget his name now, but we assumed he was Meredith’s latest paramour. The idea was, the men would go fishing with the boys while the girls went riding. We used to keep a few horses in those days because Liz liked to ride and wanted the boys to learn. But I had to sell them after she died. Neither of the boys would go near a horse – which was understandable – and we couldn’t afford them anyway.’

  ‘But after Liz died… you got back together with Meredith?’

  ‘No, not immediately. She came to the funeral and was very sweet. We kept in touch. Pam was very upset by Liz’s death and Meredith spent time with her, so I saw her socially. She just seemed to pop up all over the place. And it seemed natural, I suppose, to pick up where we’d left off. But this time she put her foot down about marriage. I thought she intended to give up her career to help run the estate and look after the boys in the holidays. In fact, I still think she did agree to all that, but later we rowed like hell about it and she claimed I’d misunderstood. I let her have her way, but I was very disappointed. I knew then that the marriage had been a mistake. So did Meredith when she realised she hadn’t married money.’

  ‘That was important to her?’

  ‘Good God, yes! She’d thought because I spent money on her when she was my mistress that there was a lot of money to spend. She underestimated my stupidity, you see,’ Sholto said ruefully. ‘I’d never enlightened her about the family finances. Didn’t think it would make much sense to a girl like Meredith. And in any case, you only had to look at Cauldstane to see it was a money pit. But she’d jumped to conclusions. She thought if the boys were at Gordonstoun and we lived in a castle, we must be loaded. Ha!’ Sholto shook his head. ‘Meredith liked to think she was a woman of the world, but she was actually quite naïve. Not stupid though. She was a clever girl in many ways. You might almost say scheming. But naïve. Lived in a world of her own. And she was the centre of her universe. But that universe shrank when she came to live here and it shrank again when the offers of work dried up. She put it down to living in the sticks, but I think there was more to it than that. I don’t think her singing career had really got established. She had a meteoric few years when she was on the cover of all the music magazines. She was very good at publicity, I’ll say that for her. Every inch the diva! But critics said she pushed her voice too soon, sang parts that were too demanding for her technically. The general opinion seemed to be, she’d peaked while still young, so it was a decline almost as rapid as her ascent. She was very bitter about that and blamed me, blamed the marriage. And she hated Cauldstane. With a passion! She said she’d die of boredom living here, so she used to disappear every so often. Sometimes to London for auditions or work. Well, that’s what she said. I didn’t ask questions. I could see how unhappy the poor girl was. I just begged her to be discreet. Which she wasn’t.’

  Sholto fell silent, but I said nothing. I knew he would resume his painful narrative when he was ready. We sat listening to the rain tapping at the window until he heaved a huge sigh, re-arranged his gangling limbs and said, ‘What I have to say now, Jenny, is strictly off the record.’ I switched off the tape recorder. ‘If Meredith hadn’t died, I would have had to divorce her. I was very sorry when she was killed and completely horrified by the circumstances of her death, but the fact is, the marriage had been over for some time. There were faults on both sides, undoubtedly, and I should have made our financial situation clearer, but by the time of her death, Meredith had become a pernicious influence on this family. I’m not prepared to go into any details. Suffice to say, she’d made herself generally unpopular and was running up bills like nobody’s business. But certain information had come to light about her erratic sexual behaviour that had convinced me divorce, though expensive, was my only option. She died before I could discuss it with her.’ Looking exhausted now, Sholto hung his head and said, ‘I’m glad she was spared the ignominy of divorce. The papers would have had a field day.’

  When i
t seemed clear he wasn’t going to say any more, I prompted Sholto gently. ‘You told me she drove off after a row with Alec.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Do you want to talk about that? Or perhaps I should say, do you want that information to go into the book?’

  ‘No, I don’t. Alec was in no way responsible for Meredith’s death. She died because she’d been drinking heavily. Meredith being drunk was not an unusual occurrence – certainly not one for which Alec could be blamed. I’m prepared to talk about my marriages in the book, but all I’m prepared to say about Meredith’s death is what appeared in the papers. She was killed in a terrible crash, she was driving and no other vehicles were involved. And that,’ said Sholto with some finality, ‘was the end of the whole sorry, sordid tale.’

  I looked up from my notepad, startled by a distant sound.

  Sholto gazed at me, puzzled. ‘Is something wrong, Jenny? Did I say something that offended you? Perhaps I’ve been a little too frank—’

  ‘No, no, it’s not that. It’s just— Can you hear anything?

  He cocked his head to one side. ‘Just the rain. But my hearing isn’t what it used to be. Zelda’s always telling me I should get a hearing aid.’

  ‘You can’t hear music?’

  ‘No. Why, can you?’

  ‘I’m not sure… I thought I heard music playing.’

  ‘That’ll be Wilma in the kitchen. She always has the radio on. You must have sharp ears if you can hear that.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ I smiled, acknowledging the compliment, even though I hadn’t merited it. The noise I could hear – and heard intermittently throughout the rest of my interview with Sholto – was the sound of the harpsichord.

  Meredith was letting me know that her sorry, sordid tale was far from ended.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The rain continued to fall and Sholto’s mood remained subdued until Wilma brought us coffee. His face lit up when she entered. I sensed he not only welcomed the interruption, he found the predictable Cauldstane routines comforting. For that matter, so did I, especially after last night’s revelations. Wilma was as solid and reliable as her home baking. (Today’s treat was the splendidly named Ecclefechan Tarts.) As I watched her pour coffee, it struck me Wilma Guthrie and Meredith MacNab were polar opposites. Wilma’s life had consisted of loyal service to just one family. Meredith’s life appeared to have been entirely self-serving. Wilma was plain, pleasant but unmemorable, save perhaps for her trainers. Meredith had been charismatic, beautiful in her youth and, to judge from photos, she’d retained a blowsy glamour as she aged. There had been many men in Meredith’s life. Had Wilma loved and lost a Mr Guthrie? She wore no ring. Was the title “Mrs” an honorary one, in the tradition of country housekeepers?