by Betty Neels
The hotel was old and rambling and lay, delightfully, by the lake. Their rooms overlooked the water and the fells beyond; the slow falling sun touched everything in sight with gold; the water of the lake looked like smooth shot silk. Sarah flung her hat on the bed and ran on to the balcony in order to have a better look, and found Hugo on the balcony alongside. ‘It’s lovely,’ she cried enthusiastically. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘Wait until you see the cottage,’ was all Hugo would say, and ‘I’m coming for you in five minutes.’
She was ready, with her bright hair brushed and a face nicely powdered and lipsticked. They went down, arm in arm, to the almost empty dining room and ate filet de sole Grand Duc and chicken Marengo and drank champagne, then Sarah found room for a water ice while Hugo watched her lazily over his coffee. Afterwards they strolled along the road beside the lake, it was almost dark, although the sky was still a deep turquoise in the west. Everything around them smelled delicately sweet and they hardly spoke until Sarah asked, ‘What time do we go tomorrow?’
‘We’ve about three hundred and thirty miles to go—if we leave at nine, allowing stops for lunch and tea and the condition of the roads, which will slow us down a little, we should get there about six. Are you tired?’
‘No, not really.’ She said with quick intuition, ‘Shall we go for a walk before breakfast—would there be time?’
‘Yes, if you don’t mind getting up early … I’ll ask them to call you at seven.’
The morning was even more beautiful than the evening had been. They walked in the opposite direction this time and discussed the pleasures of getting up early, something they were both used to, as their jobs demanded it. The sun struck warm upon them, early though it was, and Hugo looked up at it and murmured, ‘‘‘Busie old foole, unruly Sunne,’’ although perhaps that’s a little out of context.’
‘John Donne,’ said Sarah, pleased that she knew what he was talking about, ‘and most inappropriate, if I remember the rest of the poem.’
He burst out laughing and caught her by the hand. ‘You know, Sarah,’ he said, ‘I think that we are going to enjoy life together.’
They stopped for lunch at Crianlarich, with Ben More and Ben Lui looming majestically on either side of them, and arrived in Inverness after a journey through scenery which had left Sarah speechless and round-eyed. Its grandeur, however, had by no means detracted from her enjoyment of her tea, although she found so much to talk about that Hugo had to press her to try a second slice of fruit cake. She took it absently.
‘How many years have you had the cottage?’
He thought. ‘Five—no, six; I come up twice a year, and when I can manage it, a third time as well.’
‘Shall we—that is, shall I come with you?’
He raised surprised eyebrows. ‘My dear girl, of course, unless there is anything else you would prefer to do.’
Sarah shook her head. ‘I can hardly wait to get there.’ The road ran along the edge of Loch Ness, but at Invermoriston Hugo turned away from it on to a narrow road and slowed the car’s pace.
‘We’re almost there,’ he said, and she could hear the happiness in his voice.
‘It’s beautiful and lonely and makes everything else seem unreal.’ She craned her neck in order to see as much as possible of the grandeur around them and then stole a glance at him. ‘Aren’t you tired?’
‘Not really. I enjoy it too much. I know the road quite well now, you see, which helps considerably.’
Sarah said, ‘Only the direst of circumstances would make me drive all this way; I should be terrified by myself. Supposing I got a puncture, or ran out of petrol?’
Hugo laughed and said in a comfortable reassuring voice:
‘The country looks empty, doesn’t it? But you’re far less likely to be overlooked here than in London. Would you really not drive up here?’
‘No—at least, only if I were desperate.’
Loch Duich looked at its loveliest in the early evening light. The mountains of Kintail hung in the near distance, looking like some splendid, gigantic backdrop to a natural stage scenery of incredible beauty. A couple of miles along the loch’s edge, and Hugo turned the car again, up a winding little road which appeared to go nowhere but presently unravelled itself into a tiny huddle of cottages, pressed against the side of the hill. He stopped the car at the last cottage and got out and knocked on its stout door. He had told Sarah that Mrs MacFee was one of the most remarkable women he had ever met, and when she had asked why, he had said:
‘She’s forty, sandy-haired and plain-faced and beautiful. She has a brood of children like angels and a husband who is the best shepherd in the district. She’s completely content with her lot—so is he. Each time I meet them I’m cut down to size.’
Sarah knew exactly what he had meant when the door opened and Mrs MacFee appeared. She had no beauty at all, and yet she appeared beautiful. She went straight to the car and spoke to Sarah in her soft Highland voice, then gave Hugo a large old-fashioned key, and stood waving as they drove on up the hill.
‘I usually leave the key under the water-butt,’ Hugo explained, ‘and so does Mrs MacFee, but I guessed she would have it with her today.’ He gave her a wicked look. ‘Everyone loves a bride, even in these lonely parts.’
Sarah giggled. ‘You’ve got it wrong—that only applies to arriving at the church, all dressed up.’
‘Which reminds me—your dress was quite perfect, Sarah, so was that ridiculous hat. You looked quite beautiful.’
She said, ‘Thank you, Hugo,’ in a demure voice and went on, ‘Mrs MacFee is exactly as you described her, and I see what you mean. How do you manage about food?’
‘Over the years we’ve worked out a very good system. When I leave, Mrs MacFee goes up to the cottage and restocks the cupboard, gets in coal for the Aga, makes up the beds, scrubs and polishes and so forth and leaves everything in apple-pie order—in fact, she leaves it so that if I were to arrive unexpectedly, I could walk straight in and live in comfort for at least a month. MacFee grows vegetables in the garden—and there’s a potato clamp, and apples and onions in the shed. What more could I want?’
The last few yards were steep, and he slowed the car to walking pace and turned it sharply between the gateposts set in the old stone wall bordering the lane. The cottage stood a little way back; it was whitewashed, with a grey slate roof and small windows either side of its door. It was alone in the little lane, but Sarah had no feeling of loneliness as she inspected it. It was cosy and solid and looked as though it had grown out of the mountains all around it. The front door opened directly into a minute lobby and thence to the living room, which held a pleasant clutter of furniture—comfortable chairs, several small tables, well-filled bookshelves flanking a stone fireplace, and a variety of oddments conducive to comfort, all so well arranged that the small room looked larger than it was. The floor was wooden, covered to a large extent by thick handmade rugs. The crimson serge curtains and the brass oil lamp on the table beside the easy chair drawn up to the fireplace added a colourful little glow to the room, so that she sensed how pleasant it would be to draw the curtains against a cold evening and light the lamp. The kitchen was beyond—small, expertly planned, and equipped down to the last saltspoon. There was a scrubbed table against one wall, partnered by two rush-bottomed chairs and crowned by a bowl of fruit, witness of Mrs MacFee’s thoughtfulness. The Aga took up most of the opposite wall, with the stairs, neatly hidden behind a narrow arched door, beside it.
‘Go on up,’ suggested Hugo, ‘while I fetch the cases in.’
There were two small bedrooms upstairs, divided by a bathroom. The whole floor was carpeted by a pale amber which showed up the white-painted furniture very well. The curtains at the small windows were blue and white chintz with splashes of yellow. There were fitted cupboards cleverly built into the unequal angles of the walls and some beautiful candlesticks; pewter and old, each with its snuffer. The front room was the larg
er of the two, with a small Pembroke table under the window, bearing a shieldback mirror, a fine linen runner, exquisitely embroidered, and a little vase of garden flowers—Mrs MacFee again. She thought that the room would be hers, and Hugo confirmed this when she went downstairs to the kitchen. He had lighted the Aga, and the fresh aromatic tang of pine as the kindling blazed, filled the small room. He had taken off his jacket and was leaning against the wall, waiting to replenish the stove. He looked content, as though he had come home … for a second, Sarah had the feeling that she didn’t know him at all. He looked so very different from the rather silent, immaculate doctor she had worked for. Then he glanced up and she knew that he wasn’t changed in the least; it was she who was seeing him as he really was. They smiled at each other.
‘Come up to the end of the garden and see the view,’ he invited. The garden was long and narrow, with a path running up its centre to the boundary hedge—the village, a tiny cluster of rooftops, lay a mile or so below them, and lower still and further away was the road running alongside Loch Duich.
‘We’ll unpack, shall we? and then go down to Dornie for a meal. There’s a splendid little hotel there.’
Sarah was disappointed; she was as good a cook as she was nurse; she was anxious to display her talents, but she said nothing. After all, they would be at the cottage for two weeks at least; plenty of time to demonstrate her ability to cook.
The days passed—long slow days of lovely weather, made longer because they got up early. It was the new Hugo Sarah was still learning to know who got up just after six and made tea and brought her up a cup. He was dressed and out in the garden by the time she got down to get breakfast; chopping wood or weeding or cutting back a hedge—he had a boundless energy which she had never suspected of him. At breakfast, that first morning, she had said, ‘You’re so different. I’d never thought of you as someone who could be so—so practical—chopping wood, and washing up and gardening and making tea in the morning.’
She caught his mocking eye and blushed brightly.
‘My poor Sarah, have you been disillusioned? Perhaps I have the best of the bargain, for you are a famous cook.’
She had laughed then, and they had left the little house in Mrs MacFee’s capable hands and packed a picnic basket and roamed the lower slopes of the mountains until the early evening, when they went back to the cottage and Sarah surpassed herself in the roasting of a superb joint of Angus beef.
They went somewhere different each day; sometimes to spend hours fishing, a sport at which Hugo excelled, but which Sarah didn’t much care for because of taking out the hook, but she was content to sit as still as a mouse while he went after his trout. He took her to Inverness one day, and she bought a quantity of wool to knit him an Aran sweater. This, together with an assortment of books from the sitting room, kept her contentedly occupied while Hugo fished. They might not speak for an hour, for she knew better than to start up a conversation, but that didn’t matter, for her sense of companionship had deepened with the days. There was no need to talk, but it was pleasant to look up from time to time and see him, pipe in mouth, standing motionless and enormous in his waders, and to be ready with a wifely word of praise at the right moment.
But it wasn’t all fishing—they went to Skye, taking the car with them, and spent the night at Portree, so that Sarah might have a chance to see as much of the island as possible. And he took her along the coast road too, north to Lochinver, and then inland to Lairg, where they lunched and then on to Dingwall and Loch Garve, where they left the car to allow Sarah to stare spellbound at the Falls of Rogie. She gazed in silence, and presently put out a hand and slipped it into Hugo’s. After a minute, he loosed it gently and put an arm around her shoulders and drew her close, and for all that his touch was casual, Sarah felt a small thrill at it, instantly dispelled by his placid voice bringing her down to earth again with some rather prosaic facts and figures.
They went on to Achnasheen after that, where they had tea at a hotel overlooking Strath Bran, and then on to the Strome Ferry, and so home. After their meal they sat in the small living room, still light with the late sun of an early summer evening, and later, when she was in bed, Sarah couldn’t remember what they had talked about, only wonder at the endless things they had to say to each other. She thought, fleetingly, of Steven and wondered if Hugo thought of Janet, and hoped, hazily and half asleep, that he didn’t. She yawned, listening to Hugo walking about downstairs, shutting doors and seeing to the Aga, and, lulled by these homely sounds, she went to sleep.
They stayed just over two weeks at the cottage, and when they finally locked its door and put the key under the water-butt in the garden, Sarah felt as though she had turned the last page of a particularly delightful book. They had said goodbye to Mrs MacFee the day before, but all the same, she was at her cottage door to wave to them as they went past early in the morning.
It was glorious weather. They lunched in Edinburgh and stopped briefly in York, then went on to Monk Fryston, a village to the south of the city where there was a hotel which had once been a twelfth-century manor house. It was set in idyllic surroundings, and was, Sarah considered, a most romantic place. Her bedroom was vast and luxurious, with a bathroom which could have done justice to one of the glossy magazines. Influenced by her surroundings, she changed for dinner, and put on a straight little dress in pale coffee silk, one of the village paragon’s masterpieces. She added the earrings which Hugo had given her for good measure, and was rewarded for her pains when Hugo tapped on her door and then stopped short as he entered. He said at once:
‘How pretty you look, Sarah—that dress is perfect with your tan.’ He raised quizzical eyebrows. ‘And the earrings.’
She went a little pink under his admiring eye. ‘Well, it’s such a lovely place I felt I should try and do it justice.’ She twiddled an earring absently. ‘Hugo, do you always stay in this kind of luxury?’ She stopped and frowned, then tried again. ‘Is it because we’re on holiday?’ It still wasn’t quite what she had meant to say; she had sounded rude. She peeped at him to see if he was offended. Apparently not. He leaned easily against the door, his hands in his pockets. He looked well turned out, idle and completely assured.
He said silkily, ‘My dear good girl, I like comfort and the good things of life, and I shouldn’t dream of offering you anything less than that—you are my wife.’
He was smiling, but he was also, she saw, annoyed. She took a step towards him and said contritely, ‘There, I knew it sounded wrong when I said it—I didn’t mean to criticise you, you know. I love having b-bathrooms all to myself and champagne at dinner, only what I meant was—I don’t mind if I don’t—I’m happy without them.’ She added, still trying desperately to make herself clear, ‘The cottage was perfect.’
She had a sudden vivid memory of standing at the stove in the early morning, frying bacon and eggs, watching Hugo through the open door, chopping wood in old corduroys and an open-necked shirt. She raised troubled eyes to his and said baldly, ‘I didn’t know you were so—so—rich—this sort of rich.’ She waved an expressive arm around her. It was a relief to see that he was no longer annoyed. He left the door and came across the room to her and she felt the firm touch of his hands on her shoulders. He said gently as though he were talking to a child:
‘My dear, you are surprisingly naïve, and it’s refreshing. My money isn’t important. I have a good deal more than most people, perhaps, and I use it how and when I wish …’
She interrupted, ‘Oh, Hugo, I do beg your pardon! I’m sure you use your money wisely and you’re not in the least selfish—no one else would have bothered with Mrs Brown, and I expect there are quite a number of Mrs Browns you’ve helped, and Dick Coles told me that you’re godfather to all his children and that you’re always buying them presents … and Kate’s Jimmy told her you gave Matron bottles and bottles of super sherry for the nurses’ dance and didn’t tell a soul …’ She paused, a little incoherent and out of breath, to see laughter
surging over him. She said crossly, ‘What’s so funny about that?’ then smiled, albeit reluctantly because he was smiling at her—not laughing any more; staring at her in an odd speculative way. ‘Am I a disappointment to you?’ she asked slowly.
She felt his fingers bite into her flesh. ‘On the contrary, my dear Sarah—you have been in many ways a delightful surprise.’
‘Because I can cook?’ she queried practically. ‘People seem to think that if one is a nurse, one is incapable of doing anything else.’
He took his hands from her shoulders and said lightly, ‘I believe you to be capable of anything, Sarah. And now shall we go down to dinner?’
They reached Richmond the following evening, and getting out of the car, Sarah thought what a lovely house Hugo’s was. There were Bourbon roses out in the front garden, and the soft pink of a New Dawn climber mingled with the rich mauve of wisteria on the house walls. They went inside, to be welcomed by Alice’s quiet warmth and to sit by candlelight in the dining room eating lobster Thermidor and the strawberries and cream she had served after it. Afterwards they sat in Hugo’s study; he at his desk, reading a pile of correspondence, while she, having devoured the few letters which were hers, sat quietly doing nothing at all. There had been a letter from Kate, written in haste and excitement because Jimmy had got the Surgical Registrar’s job—for Steven would be leaving when he married Anne Binns. The news was heavily underlined and surrounded with exclamation marks, then lost in a pageful of wedding plans. Sarah had put the letter aside, resolving to ask Kate over for the day. It would be nice to hear all the news, although hospital life had never seemed so remote. There were letters from her mother and father too, and her brother, who had flown over from his regiment in Germany for the wedding and to have a brief glimpse of the bride and groom. Apparently he thoroughly approved of Hugo and was looking forward to seeing them both again on his next leave.