The One and Only

by Doris E. Smith

  ‘I hope, if you’ve any doubts about the job, you’ll not be afraid to back out.’ The pause was expectant. Maggie did not fill it. ‘Yes. Well...’ Only too evidently the speaker did not think it was well. ‘So long as you’re sure.’ She drew a breath. ‘I think poor Angus would sometimes like Troy to get rid of the stables. They’re nothing to do with him, of course, and he takes no interest in them. You should know that before you go up there. If anything goes wrong there’s no use running to him.’ She smiled. ‘Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Perfectly.’ If she’d set it up in six foot blocks the message ‘Hands Off Angus’ could not have come louder or clearer. Maggie decided to change the subject. ‘What a lovely garden, Mrs. MacAllan. Do you do it all yourself?’

  It was a good choice of topic. Her hostess beamed. ‘Oh, every bit. Would you care for a ramble round it?’ She glanced at Graham, who again did not raise his head. ‘Just look at our wee bookworm! I’m hiding all the books in the house on Wednesday, then maybe we’ll know if he’s got a tongue at all. He’s coming to stay with us for a few days while Angus goes to a conference,’ she explained, stretching to unlatch the french window. ‘It’s a real problem for him since Jean died, but he’s got us now and of course I offered at once. Oh, I could see the relief it was. First of many visits, I daresay.’ The window opened, she ushered Maggie forward. ‘Now, Miss Campbell, go wherever you like. We’ve some nice wee fish down there in the pool.’

  Too thankful for words, Maggie went down the steps of the terrace. Five minutes of Mrs. MacAllan and you needed air, ten minutes and you were a case for the kiss of life.

  She looked over her shoulder and saw that she was being watched. Two round eyes and a silky wing of hair had appeared above the edge of the supplement. They retired hastily when she smiled. ‘I wonder if he’s looking forward to Wednesday,’ Maggie thought sympathetically, and went on.

  You could, however, overlook much of Mrs. MacAllan’s tiresomeness for the pleasure of her garden. It was not only beautifully kept but unusual, three velvet lawns linked by wrought iron gates and each with its own focal point of sundial, pool or bird table. The middle lawn also boasted a rustic summerhouse. Maggie was near this when she heard voices ahead of her and realised that if she were to continue on through the gateway she would find herself face to face with Troy and Angus MacAllan.

  It was not to be borne and without stopping to think she ducked into the summerhouse. A moment later and there they were, Troy looking good and rangy in white trousers and a yellow shirt, her companion in the black blazer that had gone into St. Giles that morning but now teamed with a red polo-neck sweater.

  ‘The price will be right, I’ll guarantee it,’ he was saying. ‘Name your figure, in fact. I can’t say fairer than that.’

  ‘The word is challenge, Angus,’ Troy retorted. ‘Something to get my teeth into.’

  ‘How can you? You won’t be there.’

  To Maggie’s discomfiture they both stopped walking and stood, Angus with a foot on the rim of the pool. He was handsome, the red handkerchief in his breast pocket was jaunty, his lips had a quirk.

  ‘I’ll be there a lot more in future. Maggie Campbell can’t be left on her own,’ Troy retaliated.

  Maggie Campbell. Maggie’s heart gave a bound of horror. It was she who was under discussion, she and the job at Strathyre.

  ‘Then don’t have her,’ Angus advised. ‘Why take a leap in the dark? Mac knows the ropes. Keep him.’

  ‘He won’t stay.’

  ‘I think he might. I’ve been sounding him.’

  ‘When?’

  There was a pause. ‘Does that matter?’

  To Maggie it mattered intensely and she was not surprised when Troy, equally quick on the uptake, gave a burst of mocking laughter.

  ‘Angus, you are a rotter I It was today, wasn’t it? To pay the poor girl out for taking that shower?’

  In the summerhouse Maggie curled with mortification. Outside it, Angus replied as calmly as ever. ‘You should watch your words, Troy. ‘I’ve given you my reasons. It’s for your own good.’

  ‘Or yours?’ Troy flashed. ‘You know, man, I’m getting ideas about you. All this “Hate Maggie Campbell” stuff—it could be,’ the voice turned silky—‘quite the reverse.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ Angus said drily. ‘But please continue.’

  Troy obeyed—mischievously. ‘It occurs to me, dear cousin, that you might well not trust yourself with Maggie across the garden. Not even a fence between you, now I come to think of it.’

  How could Troy? In the summerhouse Maggie’s fists clenched mutely. Doubtless the aim was to ridicule Angus out of his prejudices, but did she not see how provocative she was being? On her own admission she loathed her cousin, so why not tell him bluntly that Strathyre Riding Stables were no concern of his. Senseless darts like these could only add fuel to the flames.

  Extraordinarily, Angus’s fury was slow to come to the boil. ‘Don’t worry. When I do feel myself losing control it won’t be over one of your flighty friends.’

  ‘Dear, dear!’ Again the laugh was coy. ‘Is that the only way you see her? She’s quite a dish.’

  ‘She may be. The circumstances of our meeting hardly enabled me to see much of her even if I’d wanted to.’

  ‘Which you don’t?’ Troy liked witticisms and Angus’s seemed to have pleased her immensely.

  ‘Correct,’ Angus clipped.

  ‘I’m afraid you have taken against her. Poor Maggie!’ Troy sounded sad. Certainly she was one of the most hardworking champions in the business.

  Maggie hated herself for being so cowardly. Eavesdropping was as low in her book as stealing. She wanted to fling the door open and walk out, but the thought of another confrontation with those shrewd green eyes was too much.

  ‘Forget personalities,’ Angus was now saying. ‘I just want the place to myself. I’m not gregarious. I know that’s something you find hard to understand, but there it is. I work hard and when I come home it’s not unreasonable to want peace and privacy. After all, that’s why I bought Strathyre in the first place.’

  ‘Bought Strathyre? But I thought it was Uncle Robert’s. I thought he left it to you and the stables to me.’

  ‘No.’ The brown head shook. ‘Strathyre’s my house. I bought it five or six years ago. You should check your facts.’

  ‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ Troy quipped. ‘How did my riding stables get there?’

  ‘They got there after a great deal of heart-searching when the doctor told Uncle Robert to take up a hobby and Uncle Robert got this bee in his bonnet about starting a riding stables and wasn’t able to find a site anywhere else in the vicinity. I leased him the land thinking it wouldn’t be for long.’

  ‘For long? It’s a twenty-year lease.’

  ‘Yes, well, we’d a gentleman’s agreement. It was all’—the pause was self-conscious—’to come back to me.’

  Silence fell. Maggie so far forgot herself as to move. Troy’s face was flushed and put out. ‘Oh hell, Angus, I’d no idea.’

  ‘No, no, it’s all right,’ Angus MacAllan said quickly. ‘He liked you and wanted you to have something. And I’m no worse off, I suppose, than I would be if he’d lived.’ He turned absently towards the summerhouse and Maggie stepped back.

  ‘Then don’t hold it against us that he didn’t,’ Troy commanded. ‘And stop being anti-social. Make friends with Maggie. She’s more than anxious to meet you halfway.’

  It was fine to have a champion, but was she overdoing it? Maggie questioned uneasily.

  In contrast to the honeyed tones Angus’s sounded more dour than usual. ‘Most touching, but that’s not the way she struck me.’ Maggie risked a peep and caught a glimpse of his face, implacable as ever and with a twist to the mouth. He was staring straight at the summerhouse.

  ‘How then?’ Troy prompted.

  ‘She was aggressive,’ he pronounced, eyes still boring through the summerhouse wall. ‘And she’d too much to say
for herself.’

  They walked on out of earshot and Maggie discovered that she was trembling. A trivial impulse had got her into hiding, but no triviality had handed her that conversation. It had been like an X-ray—an X-ray of a man, troubled and wronged, and a girl who until that moment of compunction had never seen it from his side. Correction. Two girls. Two girls who had looked no further than suiting themselves.

  It would be a nice job, Maggie did not doubt that, but the price was too high. And the sooner she got it over with the better.

  Mrs. MacAllan’s voice greeted her as she approached. The good lady was on the terrace with Angus and Troy. Derek, his business talk apparently over had also joined the group.

  ‘Oh, here’s Miss Campbell back. Come away in, all of you, and we’ll have tea.’

  ‘Not for me, thanks.’ It was Angus MacAllan’s voice. ‘Nor for Graham. Where is he?’ He looked round enquiringly. ‘We need to be on our way.’

  The suggestion fared badly. ‘Oh, now Angus, you can wait for one wee cup. I know how you speed in that car of yours. It won’t take you any time.’

  Car? Maggie’s eyes widened. That mammoth of silver propulsion in the drive, that super car that Derek had said cruised at eighty was not Troy’s father’s property. It belonged to Angus MacAllan. She might have guessed it, she thought. It was so obviously a ‘One and Only’ car.

  ‘What will she do?’ she asked suddenly.

  For a second the green eyes took on a new light. ‘That would be telling,’ their owner said.

  A lighthearted interruption came from Derek. ‘Talking about telling, Maggie, it’s time you did some yourself. Troy has been very patient.’

  ‘Oh yes. Please!’ Troy was quite an actress. She was looking at her, Maggie realised, as though that vexed exclamation in the garden had never escaped her. ‘You must know now, Maggie. What’s the verdict? Yes or no?’

  It was the last chance. The faces were all turned to her, Troy’s vivid, Derek’s serene and Angus MacAllan’s flintlike. Maggie drew a breath. ‘I’m sorry. It’s—no,’ she said.

  The rest of the afternoon and the supper to which Mrs. MacAllan had pressed them had been like the edge of a precipice. Maggie had clung even to the tedium of a transparently gleeful mother. No poaching now on Troy’s preserves, so she had gushed quite gruesomely. Other reactions had been less marked. Troy, fluent as always, had said: ‘I’m sorry too. No hope of changing your mind?’ and had then gone on to talk about a communal group who were shopping for an island. Angus had stayed only a moment before making his adieux. His clasp of Maggie’s hand had been perfunctory. She doubted whether the great renunciation scene had not passed him by.

  It had not passed Derek by. His jaw had dropped and the creases in his brow had thickened. For at least an hour his face had been like a thundercloud.

  For Maggie a miserable evening with the worst part of it just beginning. She answered him simply. ‘Yes. But I couldn’t do anything else.’ He did not comment and she went on, ‘Derek, I want to come back. I want to live in Scotland. I want to bring Kelly up in her own country. But not that job. It wouldn’t be right.’

  He looked at her sharply. ‘Right?

  ‘Yes. I didn’t understand at first I thought Troy was in a spot. But she isn’t She can get “Mac”—is that his name?—to stay on. He will now her great-uncle is dead. She said as much. And that’s what Angus MacAllan wants, so why not let things stay?’

  ‘Angus MacAllan?’ Derek was staring. ‘Has he got on to you?’

  ‘I told you. When I met him this morning he said it was a job for a man.’

  ‘And that put you off?’

  ‘Not then. As a matter of fact it made medecide to say yes—to spite him. But afterwards I saw what a wrong motive it was. He’d resent me, I’d be on the defensive, the situation all round would be intolerable.’

  ‘And that’s a load of crap if ever I heard one,’ Derek said scathingly. ‘Let Hercules sulk if he wants to. The right’s on your side.’

  ‘I don’t think so. If Troy couldn’t get anyone else, yes. But that’s not so. Things can go on as they are without upsetting anyone. The world’s full of factions, I think we have a duty not to create another, even if it does seem minute.’

  ‘So the bully boy gets away with it? Is that your answer?’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she said hopelessly.

  ‘I confess I’m finding it difficult.’

  ‘Oh, Derek,’ penitence wrung her voice, ‘I hate this. You’ve been so good.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ His tones were back to the ‘played down’ key that concealed deep hurt. ‘It’s up to you.’

  ‘It’s just that I’d feel...’ she sought for the word, ‘contrived. Put down where I needn’t be and wasn’t wanted. He’d watch me and I’d watch him. It would be like living next door to a spy.’

  The motorway to Edinburgh was not particularly quiet and nor was the engine of Derek’s car, but suddenly they both seemed so. The stillness was intense and the profile beside her was like a sculpture. ‘You’re talking bloody nonsense,’ Derek said evenly. ‘As I expect you know.’

  He was so silent for the rest of the way that when they pulled up by the hotel she did not expect him to get out of the car. He did so, however, claimed her key for her and accompanied her to her room. Not, it seemed, with any thought of reconciliation, for when she said awkwardly: ‘Perhaps I should go home tomorrow now that I’m not going up to Aberdeen,’ he threw her a casual: ‘Yes. No point in my making any arrangement with you. I’m tied up most of the day.’ Yet another silence drifted up, ominous as a cloudbank bellying with rain. Maggie, standing at the window, heard first the snick of a match and then the hiss of the flame as he shook it out. The cigarette at least meant a few minute’s grace. She stared dully down Northbridge to where in Princes Street a line of silver lamps bloomed in the blackness above the lit shop windows.

  Am I a fool? she questioned.

  ‘All right, you’ve guessed it,’ said Derek’s voice behind her. ‘It was a put-up job. I knew Mac would take back his notice. Troy knew it too. She was going to approach him in fact when I sold her the idea of having you instead. I’m sorry. There are times when I say: “Ethics be blowed”, and this is one of them. You’ve been eighteen months in that godforsaken hole, my dear, and I’m sick of it.’

  She couldn’t tell exactly at what point he’d risen, and truth to tell she was suddenly absurdly shy. She couldn’t turn to him either, much as she knew she should. She could only stand staring down at the dark looking glass of the road and feeling his arms creep round her.

  ‘There’s still time. Let me phone Troy.’ Tone was now as gentle as the long soothing arms.

  It was Derek’s essence, kind, gentle and utterly lacking the ability to coerce. The totally uncharacteristic spurt of anger on the homeward drive was gone. ‘Please, my dear,’ he repeated, ‘give it a trial. It won’t be for long.’

  She did turn then, jerking in astonishment. He flushed; he had a near-perfect mould to his face, light jaw and square forehead. His eyes under the sweep of grey had a schoolboy apprehension. Why she should as suddenly panic, Maggie did not know. Did he mean what she thought he meant and, if so, what was wrong? ‘Why do you say that?’ she challenged.

  ‘I thought it was obvious. If we’re going to have a working partnership it rather depends on our being in the same place.’

  It was surely a defect in workmanship that with his looks he should not have one romantic phrase in his book. And the proposal itself? Contrived was still the word. Why go to Aberdeen? Why not marry now and stay in Edinburgh? Would you marry him now? she asked herself. Would you marry him next week?

  But that was not what he was asking. ‘You have a point,’ she said lightly. ‘I’ll make a note of it.’

  ‘And think about Kelly. Think very seriously about Kelly.’ His arm felt just as comforting on her shoulder as it always had. ‘The best could well be the hardest. But we’ve got to assess h
er future. Aberdeen is a new environment. It could be an ideal jumping-off ground.’

  His hold was warm, his words were a chilling douche. And yet he might be right. She did want to cushion Kelly, she admitted it. It was probably fair to no one. ‘I do see that, Derek, and I’d like to try it, but not in Aberdeen. As things stand at present with Angus MacAllan so hostile I’m sorry, I’m just not brave enough.’ She was afraid of his silence, afraid even that his arm would be withdrawn. ‘There must be other jobs in Scotland, in Edinburgh even. Why don’t I spend tomorrow trying to get one?’

  Infinitesimal, but she had felt it, a tensing of the muscles beside her. ‘I don’t want you to rush into anything. I know Troy, I can vouch for her, I’ve seen the stables and the accommodation; it’s there I want you.’

  She stood wordless, filling her eyes with the vista of black and silver and the bright links of shop windows. It seemed there was no solution and this further talk had achieved nothing. ‘So we’re back to square one,’ she sighed.

  The hand on her shoulder tightened. ‘Not quite. I think we’ve made it up, haven’t we? And don’t forget Mr. Micawber,’ he added almost cheerily. ‘Something will turn up!’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Derek’s dismissal of Glencullen as a ‘godforsaken hole’ was less than just. Maggie was very fond of it. As she jolted home next evening in the Sandyford bus its green slopes, pocked with granite and brassy gorse, were welcome. If Edinburgh had been a flop there was still this gentle refuge. She would think twice before she left it again.

  Inside the home pastures Kelly was sitting on the paddock fence. Just recently Maggie had begun to fear that she was near-sighted. Certainly she was slow at recognising people.