by Flora Kidd
‘Hello, Ross,’ she said brightly. ‘I thought I heard you come. Are you waiting for me? I shan’t be long. I just have to put on my shoes.’
Ross was lounging in characteristic pose, his long legs stretched before him, his head resting on the well-stuffed chintz-covered back of the sofa, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets. Maeve was crouched beside him and was leaning forward, her rich abundant hair almost touching his face. She looked as if she had been about to kiss Ross ... or as if she had just kissed him, thought Sally, as she noticed her stepsister’s unusually heightened colour and her sudden swift withdrawal.
Ross was looking at Sally’s feet. An enigmatical smile curved his mouth.
‘We were wrong, Maeve,’ he murmured. ‘She wants to go after all. I’m ready when you are, Sally.’
He looked up then and Sally felt uneasy when she saw the blatant laughter glinting in his eyes. Was he playing a joke on her?
‘Are you sure you want to go?’ Lovely but petulant, Maeve was examining her fingernails. ‘You don’t have to go, if you still feel afraid ...’
The impulse to turn and run from the room was strong, almost as strong as the one which had pushed her into it. Only the triumphant amusement glimmering in Ross’s eyes kept her stationary.
‘I’m going.’
‘Then I’ll come with you,’ announced Maeve unexpectedly, ‘in case you feel ill or nervous.’
She looked at Ross, clearly expecting his agreement to her suggestion.
‘Your sisterly concern does you credit, Maeve,’ he said blandly, ‘but it’s for Sally to decide. It would really be better for her if she didn’t have your support for once.’
Was that sarcasm edging the crisp autocratic words? Sally couldn’t be sure, and it was impossible to read the expression on his face now that the amusement had faded from it.
‘No, thanks, Maeve.’ How hard it was to refuse! She had never refused Maeve anything, having always been afraid of hurting her feelings. ‘I must do this by myself. It’s time you stopped holding my hand.’
Maeve looked nonplussed and had no reply ready. Ross stood up.
‘Put your shoes on, Sally ... quickly before you change your mind. I’ll be waiting outside for you,’ he said.
Sally ran upstairs, stepped into a pair of old brogues and ran downstairs again without any further preparation, knowing that if she hesitated she might change her mind.
Outside the house she found Maeve and Ross standing beside a yellow Land-Rover. She looked round for another vehicle, but there was none.
‘Are we going in this?’ she asked.
‘In this,’ assented Ross, and opened the near door. Sally scrambled up on to the bench seat and he slammed the door shut. She was aware that Maeve was fussing rather like Aunt Jessie as Ross climbed in front the other side of the vehicle.
‘Don’t drive too fast, Ross. Remember she had an awful shock. Come straight back if she’s ill ... I’ll be waiting for you. Don’t go too far ...’
Ross shut off the stream of words by banging the door closed. Sally sat tensely reliving the last time she had sat behind a windscreen. A blank wall of grey mist approaching, the tinkle of glass, the crunch of metal against stone. Her hands went to her cheeks as she fought for control and she looked appealingly at Ross. Pitiless blue eyes and a firm straight mouth. No mercy there.
‘All set?’ he asked, and she was surprised at how concerned he sounded.
Her voice had gone completely and she could only nod. He started the engine, released the brake and the vehicle bumped down the rough road, paused at the junction with the main road and then turned left into the town.
Sally held on to the edge of the seat and forced herself to look out of the window at the shops and the evening strollers, but when the Land-Rover stopped sharply to avoid hitting a dog which had darted out in front of it she cringed as the brakes squealed.
Once through the town they followed the road which wound inland towards the distant Galloway hills. In the clear light of the June evening they presented a smiling serene facade, very different from the usually cloudy, menacing aspect hinting of mystery and danger—Larg, Lamachan, Benyellary and Merrick. The Rhinns of Kells, Corserine, Carlin’s Cann and Meaul. The well-known names lilted through Sally’s mind like an oft-heard melody as she watched the shifting panorama of tawny moorland and saffron-tinted mountains.
‘Have you ever been to Glen Trool?’ asked Ross idly.
‘Yes ... a long time ago.’
‘I haven’t. I thought we might go there this evening. I’ve been going through Aunt Elena’s desk in my spare time and I’ve discovered she had been writing a history of the Wallace family. Apparently there was a Wallace at the battle of Glen Trool, supporting Robert the Bruce in his fight to gain the throne of Scotland.’
‘But it’s a long way from here,’ objected Sally. She had thought that they would go only a short distance and that her ordeal would be over quickly.
‘We have all evening, haven’t we?’ he replied coolly. ‘Unless you have another engagement?’
‘No, I haven’t ... but I thought you wanted to take Maeve out, to have fun.’
Now he would know she had heard his contemptuous reference to herself as a ‘stubborn little prig’ and perhaps he would have the grace to apologise.
The laugh which greeted her words was far from apologetic.
‘As I thought, you were listening. You were on your way to your hiding place hoping I would forget you. That’s why I said what I did. I thought it might goad you into coming with me.’
So that was the reason for the expression of triumphant amusement on his face when she had entered the front room! Indignation bubbled up once again and words came rushing up to be hurled in verbal assault. But as she turned to speak she caught an amused sidelong glance from his very blue eyes and to her surprise she laughed.
‘That’s better,’ he observed. ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen you laugh. You should do it more often. It makes you sparkle.’
It was a casually uttered compliment, but it betrayed his acute powers of observation, a brief personal comment delivered with a directness which she found disconcerting.
She looked out of the side window at the drystone dyke bordering the road. Beyond the grey stones which had been arranged with skill hundreds of years ago to form neat dividing walls, a green meadow sloped down to a willow-fringed burn beside which a group of black and white cattle stood placidly meditating. They were Galloway Belties, distinguished by the white band round their middles separating the areas of black.
‘Do you always get your own way?’ she asked the window. ‘Craig told me this afternoon that you’re capable of using violence to achieve your ends. If I hadn’t reacted to your goading what would you have done ... used force?’
‘Why use force when there are more subtle methods available?’ he replied lightly. ‘Craig’s opinion of me shouldn’t be taken too seriously. It tends to be coloured by his memory of a time when we were both much younger.’
He did not elaborate, and Sally, her interest excited, had to ask,
‘Why? What happened?’
Ross’s chuckle was wholly mischievous.
‘It was all very youthful and normal, and I’m really surprised that he still holds it against me. He took Maeve to a dance. I was there, and she spent most of the time with me ... rather a blow to his ego, I suspect.’
‘Oh, I’d no idea he’d ever been interested in Maeve.’
‘All the boys of the town were interested in Maeve. Craig was one up on them that night because she had agreed to go with him. She rarely accepted an invitation, preferring to go on her own so that she could dance with anyone who asked her.’
‘But where did the violence come in?’ asked Sally.
‘I took Maeve home, and he followed us. One thing I cannot bear is being spied upon, so I was pretty wild when he appeared out of the bushes in front of your house after Maeve had gone in and began to tell me what he thought of
me.’ Ross chuckled again, reminiscently. ‘We had quite a tussle. I suppose I had an unfair advantage over him because I was bigger and heavier and older. Anyway, he ran off down the road. He didn’t speak to me again until today.’
Sally was so interested in the story that she did not notice the road curve and dip and pass under a bridge, and it was not until they entered the town of Newton Stewart and swung left to follow the road beside the River Cree that she realised she had passed the bridge where her mother had died without noticing it.
‘I didn’t see the bridge,’ she whispered.
‘I thought you didn’t,’ he replied briskly, apparently having no intention of lingering on the subject. ‘Did you drive before the smash?’
‘I ... I was having lessons, but ...’
‘Then you should continue with them. Now you’ve taken the first step your nerve will come back and once you can handle a car on your own you’ll be completely confident again.’
A calm authoritative voice telling her what to do and assuring her of the return of the confidence which had oozed away from her during those weeks in hospital. Only her father had suggested that she should take up driving lessons again, but he had made the suggestion in a hesitant, halfhearted way as if he hadn’t been sure it was the right thing to do. And he had been too absorbed in his own grief to insist when she hadn’t bothered. No one else had made the suggestion.
Then why was Ross doing this for her? The answer—because he was sorry for her—gave her no pleasure and she was not inclined to believe it. He didn’t behave as if he was sorry for her. He didn’t handle her gently as if afraid of hurting her. In fact he seemed to go out of his way to hurt her.
A white signpost pointed to the right and they turned into a narrow country road which rose gradually sometimes between rows of silver birches, sometimes besides the tumbling rock-strewn waters of the burn. Higher they climbed past dark green plantations of pointed conifers until the road ended suddenly on open moorland where sheep cropped at the short grass among grey boulders, and the mountain wind sighed among the fast-growing bracken.
Ross stopped the Land-Rover in the parking space provided, opened the door on his side and leapt to the ground. Banging the door shut behind him, he walked off in the direction of a heap of stone which were surmounted by a huge solitary boulder on which an inscription had been written. For a moment Sally sat and watched him. It was the same here as it had been in Winterston House, as it had been years ago. He led and he expected her to follow. And of course she invariably did follow. She couldn’t help herself.
By the time she reached the memorial stone Ross had finished reading the inscription and had wandered to the edge of the cliff to look down at the long curve of Loch Trool.
Sally knew the inscription would tell her that in 1306 a small army of Scots under the leadership of Robert the Bruce had defeated a larger number of English by rolling boulders down the cliff on to their climbing enemies. She shuddered at the thought of the unpleasant violence which had taken place and looked around. Mountain and moor were bathed in crimson light. Far below the water of the loch gleamed like smooth steel between the dark walls of the surrounding land. A whaup cried sadly as it winged its way over the land and a hidden lamb bleated forlornly.
Twilight. The wind rustled. Sally stood transfixed, her vivid imagination flighting back to that day when the Scots had lain hidden as only they knew how to hide among the rocks and the bracken, and had waited for the right moment to topple the boulders upon the unsuspecting English.
‘It must have been horrible!’ she cried out suddenly, and Ross turned to look at her. He was a tall, broad-shouldered silhouette against the sky and the distant water.
‘But effective,’ he said. ‘And it gave Bruce the moral victory he required. It gave his followers the confidence they needed.’ He walked towards her and peered down at her. ‘Ghosts again?’ he queried softly, and she nodded. ‘That imagination of yours gives you trouble, doesn’t it? Let’s forget about the battle. I didn’t really come here out of patriotic pride. I just wanted to see what it was like in the midst of the mountains. Look.’
Sally turned to look. Hill and moorland were wine red, reflecting the rays of the setting sun. Clouds had gathered like banks of rose-coloured feathers to streak the pale blue sky. The whaup cried again and the wind sighed.
‘It’s moments like this, in places like this, which haunt the memory when you are far away,’ murmured Ross.
‘ “My heart remembers how—’ ” quoted Sally softly,
understanding instinctively.
‘Tell me some more,’ commanded Ross, his voice quickening with interest. ‘It’s from a poem by Stevenson, isn’t it?’
‘I can only remember the first verse. He wrote the poem when he was far away from Scotland,’ replied Sally.
‘One verse will do,’ he urged, moving closer.
Gravely aware that the closeness was more than physical, that once again their minds were in tune, Sally quoted the first lines of the nostalgic poem.
‘Blows the wind today, and the sun and the rain are flying
Blows the wind on the moors today and now,
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying
My heart remembers how’
The soft husky voice stopped and as if to echo the poignancy of the words the whaup cried again.
‘ “My heart remembers how,” ’ repeated Ross. ‘That describes the feeling exactly. For no reason at all you find yourself thinking of moors, of the rain and wind in your face ... and you want to come back even though there’s no one here to come back to.’
No one here to come back to. Had he hoped to find Maeve ready and waiting? Had he been disappointed to find she had married? The thought had never occurred to Sally before, but now she realised that disappointment could have been the cause of his cynical remarks concerning Maeve.
Hope sprang up in Sally. He wasn’t as impervious to sentiment as he made out to be. He had just admitted as much. In distant places he had felt the pull of his homeland and had returned. His heart had remembered the beauty and the mystery. Perhaps she could use that sentiment to prevent him from destroying Winterston and at the same time prevent him from destroying Maeve’s marriage.
‘But if you feel like that why do you want to destroy, now that you’ve come back?’ she challenged.
He moved away from her and the bond was broken. ‘Taking advantage, Sally?’ he queried coldly, scoffingly. ‘I can’t afford to be too sentimental. I have to earn my bread and butter. I had two alternatives offered—Scotland or Africa. I’d had enough of heat and sweat. A job at Winterston gives me a chance to satisfy my nostalgic yearnings ... and to work as well. The destruction, as you call it, will not take long ... and something else will be built in its place.’
‘Fuel tanks,’ said Sally scornfully.
‘A greater asset to the economy of the area than an old rotten house,’ he retorted. ‘Don’t you agree?’
‘No. You could have lived in the house.’
‘And what would I do for money?’ he jibed.
‘You could have farmed the land, and contributed to the economy that way.’
He did not reply, and Sally experienced the pleasure of knowing she had defeated him for once. The pleasure did not last long as she realised that the barrier had been raised between them again, and that the warmth had gone. The warm colour had gone from the sky too and the clouds were darkening with the approach of night.
‘Where’s Maeve’s husband?’ asked Ross abruptly.
‘In Ireland. Well, I think he is.’
‘Why doesn’t she live with him?’
‘She ... she came here for a holiday. She hadn’t been well.’
‘She’s well enough now. Why doesn’t she go back to him?’ The abrupt cold questions revealed his disapproval of Maeve’s behaviour and made Sally stammer,
‘I ... I ... don’t know. I think ... I think ...’ she paused, not sure whether she shoul
d tell him what she thought.
‘Go on,’ he ordered. ‘You think what?’
‘Maeve hasn’t said anything, but I think they must have quarrelled and she’s left him. I know he hasn’t written to her since she’s been here ... and I can’t understand why he hasn’t been over to see her or us. I know my father is very worried about Maeve and so is Aunt Jessie.’
‘You worry ... but you never come out into the open about anything. What a family! Don’t you ever tell each other how you feel? Aren’t you ever honest with each other?’ he scoffed. Then with a change of tone, with a touch of mockery, ‘It might create quite an interesting situation if Fergus turned up now, don’t you think?’
Sally went cold.
‘Ross you mustn’t, you couldn’t ...’ she stammered, fumbling desperately for the right words. ‘Please leave Maeve alone. Don’t cause any more trouble between her and Fergus.’
‘Now whatever makes you think that I would?’
She was too anxious on Maeve’s behalf to notice the sharp edge to the question and she rushed on,
‘You seem to have so little respect for old-established things like Winterston that I suppose it’s too much to expect you to have any respect for marriage either.’
She intended her words to sting, and he was so silent that she began to think that they had found their mark.
The bracken rustled in the wind. It was almost dark except for one pale streak of light in the north and the faint steel-like glitter of the loch.
‘I respect anything which is stable and sound and worth preserving,’ said Ross quietly. ‘I think marriage is a very fine institution provided the partners are compatible and love one another enough to give as well as take. Unfortunately it’s been my experience to discover that marriage doesn’t necessarily make a woman unattainable if she doesn’t want to be.’
The quiet reasonableness seemed to emphasise the cynicism underlying his last words, and it was Sally’s turn to be silent and she wondered miserably whether his ‘unfortunate experience’ had been with her stepsister and that he was implying that if anyone destroyed her marriage it would be Maeve herself and not him.