by Cooper Jilly
‘Hello, Finn,’ said Calen, ‘how are things, have you met this steaming girl?’
‘Doctor Maclean isn’t one of my fans,’ I said.
‘Maybe not,’ said Calen, ‘but he’s tall enough to see right down your front, unless I rearrange that sash. That’s better, don’t want to give you blood pressure, do we Finn? Always get swollen heads, these quacks, think all the nurses and women patients are nuts about them.’
I laughed, Finn didn’t.
‘It must be exciting, running your own hospital,’ I said to him. He was about to answer when someone shoved a steaming great soup ladle between us. ‘Great fun running your own hospital,’ I went on. Then it was his turn to help himself to soup.
‘What’s the disease people suffer most often from round here?’ I asked.
‘Verbal diarrhoea,’ muttered Calen.
I was just warming to my subject, asking Finn all the right questions about the hospital and the operations he would perform there, when Calen lifted up the curtain of hair hanging over my left ear and whispered: ‘Christ, I want to take you to bed.’
I started to laugh in mid-sentence, then blushed:
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ I said to Finn, ‘it’s just something Calen said.’
Finn obviously thought we were too silly for words and turned his huge back on me and started talking to the girl on his right.
Footmen moved round the table, the clatter of plates mingled with the clink of knives and glasses and the hum of various animated conversations. Lady Downleesh sat at the end of the table, a large imposing woman who must once have been handsome. Only Marina and Rory sat mutely side by side, talking little, eating less. They appeared to see and hear nothing of what was going on around them. Suddenly I felt panicky. They were probably playing footy-footy. I imagined their cloven hoofs entwined. Calen and Finn were temporarily occupied with other conversations. I dropped my napkin and dived under the table to retrieve it. It was very dark. I hoped my eyes would soon become accustomed to it, but they didn’t; not enough carrots when I was a child I suppose. I couldn’t see which were Rory’s or Marina’s legs. I grabbed someone’s ankle, but it was much too fat for Marina’s and twitched convulsively — cheap thrill!!! All the same, I couldn’t stay here for ever exciting dowagers. I surfaced again.
‘Are you all right, Mrs Balniel?’ said Lady Downleesh, looking somewhat startled.
‘Fine,’ I squeaked, ‘absolutely marvellous soup.’
‘Everyone’s waiting for you to finish yours,’ said Finn in an undertone.
‘Oh I have,’ I said, ‘I’ve got a tiny appetite, I never eat between males.’
Finn didn’t laugh. Pompous old stuffed shirt.
Everyone started to talk about fishing as the soup plates were moved.
‘You’re not a bit alike,’ I said, ‘you and Marina.’
He shot me a wary glance.
‘In what way?’
‘Well, she’s so wild and you’re so well controlled. I can’t see you as a medical student putting stuffed gorillas in college scarves down Matron’s bed.’
He gave me one of those big on-off smiles he must use all the time for keeping people at a polite distance.
‘I was working too hard for that.’
‘Are all the people in this room your patients?’ I asked. ‘Must be funny to look round a table and know what every single woman looks like with her clothes off.’
‘Calen does anyway,’ said Finn. ‘What do you do with yourself all day?’
‘Not a lot, I’m not very good at housework. I read and grumble, sometimes I even bite my nails.’
‘You ought to get a job, give you something to do,’ he went on. ‘What did you do before you met Rory?’
‘Oh, I mistyped letters in several offices, and I did a bit of modelling when I got thin enough, and then I got engaged to an M.P. I don’t think I would have been much of an asset to him, and then Rory came along.’
‘It’s a full moon tonight,’ said a horse-faced blonde sitting opposite us. ‘I wonder if the ghost’ll walk tonight. Who’s sleeping in the west wing?’
‘The Frayns,’ said Diney Downleesh, lowering her voice, ‘and Rory and his new wife.’
‘What ghost?’ I whispered nervously to Calen.
Calen laughed. ‘Oh, it’s nothing. There was a Downleesh younger son a couple of centuries ago, who fell in love with his elder brother’s wife. The wife evidently had a soft spot for him as well. One night, when her husband was away, she invited the younger brother into her bedroom. He was just hot-footing along the West Tower where she was sleeping (all tarted up in his white dressing-gown), when the husband came back, and picking a dirk off the wall, he stabbed him. The younger brother is supposed to stalk the passage when there’s a full moon, trying to avenge himself through all eternity for not getting his oats.’
‘How creepy,’ I said with a shiver.
‘I’ll take care of you,’ said Calen, putting his hand on my thigh and encountering bare flesh.
‘Christ,’ he said.
‘My only pair of tights split,’ I said.
Finn Maclean pretended not to notice. Calen filled my glass over and over again.
Eventually we finished dinner and the ball began. The host and hostess stood at the edge of the long gallery welcoming latecomers. Every time the front door opened you could feel a blast of icy air from outside. It was terribly cold in these big houses. The only way to keep warm was to stand near one of the huge log fires that were burning in each room, then two minutes later you were bright scarlet in the face. I could see exactly why Burns said his love was like a red, red rose.
Rory came up to me. ‘What was Finn Maclean talking to you about?’ he said suspiciously.
‘He was stressing the importance of getting one’s teeth into something,’ I said.
‘If he got his teeth into me, I’d go straight off and have a rabies jab,’ said Rory.
‘On with the dance,’ I said. ‘Let Emily be unconfined.’
‘Come on, Rory,’ said Diney Downleesh, coming over to us, ‘we need two more people to make up an eightsome over there.’
We couldn’t really refuse.
Dum-diddy Dum-diddy Dum-diddy-diddy-diddy went the accordions. The men gave strange, unearthly wails, like a train not stopping at a station. We circled to the left, we circled to the right.
‘Wrong way,’ hissed Rory, as we swung into the grand chain. When it was my turn in the middle, I made an even worse hash of it, setting to all the wrong people and doing U-turns instead of figures of eight, and whooping a lot. ‘For Christ’s sake stop capering around like the White Heather Club,’ said Rory under his breath. ‘Women don’t put their hands up, or click their fingers, or whoop.’
The next dance, thank God, was an ordinary one. I danced it with Buster, who squeezed me so hard, I thought I’d shoot out of my dress like toothpaste.
‘Why don’t any of them look as though they’re enjoying themselves?’ I said.
‘You can never tell until they fall on the floor,’ said Buster.
On the other side of the room Marina was dancing with Hamish. She looked so glowingly beautiful and he so yellow and old and decayed I was suddenly reminded of Mary Queen of Scots dancing and dancing her ancient husband into the grave.
The evening wore on. I wasn’t short of partners. I danced every dance.
A piper came on, well primed with whisky, and assaulted our ear-drums for a couple of reels. My reputation as a reel-wrecker was growing. I messed up Hamilton House and then the Duke and Duchess of Perth, and then the Sixteensome. On the surface I must have appeared rather like a loose horse in the National, potentially dangerous, thoroughly enjoying myself and quite out of control. But through a haze of alcohol and misery I was aware of two things, Rory’s complete indifference to my behaviour and Finn Maclean’s disapproval. Both made me behave even worse.
I danced a great deal with Calen. I came into my own when they stopped doing those silly reels.
‘Did your wife dance professionally?’ I heard a disapproving dowager say to Rory, as I came off the floor after a gruelling Charleston. Calen and I went into the drawing-room for yet another drink. I put my glass down on a gleaming walnut table. When I picked it up two minutes later, there was a large ring on the table.
‘Oh God,’ I said, ‘how awful.’
‘Looks better that way,’ said Calen, ‘looks more lived in somehow.’ He led me back on to the floor. The music was slow and dreamy now.
‘You are the promised breath of springtime,’ sang Calen laying his handsome face against mine. I snuggled up against him for a few laps round the floor, and then I escaped to the loo. Big-boned girls stood around talking about Harrods and their coming-out dances. Really, I thought as I gazed in the mirror, I look very loose indeed. Tight dress, loose morals, I suppose.
I wandered along the long gallery so I could watch the people on the floor. A double line of dancers were engaged with serious faces in executing a reel. Marina and Rory faced one another, expressionless. God they danced beautifully. I was reminded of Lochinvar again:
So stately his form and so lovely her face
That never a hall such a galliard did grace…
And the bride’s maidens whispered, ‘T’were better by far
To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar.
Oh dear, I thought in misery. In this case young Lochinvar seems to have missed the boat, arriving too late and finding his love married to Hamish.
The dance ended. The couples clapped and spilled out into the hall. If only Rory would come and look for me. But it looked as though I’d have to wait for a Ladies’ Excuse Me before I had a chance to dance with him again.
I heard footsteps behind me. I felt two hands go round my waist, I turned hopefully, but it was Calen.
‘I’ve got a bottle,’ he said, ‘let’s go and drink it somewhere more secluded.’ He dropped a kiss on to my shoulder and led me downstairs along a long passage into a conservatory.
Chinese lanterns, hanging round the walls, lit up the huge tropical plants. The scent of azaleas, hyacinths and white chrysanthemums mingled voluptuously with the Arpège I’d poured all over myself. The sound of the band reached us faintly from the hall.
‘You are the promised breath of springtime,’ sang Calen, taking me in his arms.
‘There isn’t any mistletoe,’ I said.
‘We don’t need it,’ said Calen, his grey, dissipated eyes gazing into mine.
You’re rotten to the core, I thought. Mad, bad and dangerous to know. Bad from the neck upwards, and not at all good for Emily. Not that Rory was doing much good for me either.
‘God, I want you,’ said Calen undoing the top button of my dress. He bent his head and kissed the top of my cleavage, and slowly kissed his way up my neck and chin to my mouth.
I didn’t feel anything really, except a desire to slake my loneliness. God, it was a practised kiss. I thought of all those hundreds of women he must have seduced. Hands travelled over my bare back, pressing into every crevice. Suddenly a light flicked on in the library next door.
‘Calen,’ said a voice, ‘you’re wanted on the telephone.’
‘Go to hell,’ said Calen, burying his face in my neck, ‘don’t be a bloody spoilsport, Finn.’
Over Calen’s head, our eyes met. ‘It’s Deidre,’ Finn said.
‘Oh God,’ sighed Calen, as reluctantly he let me go. ‘You see before you the most henpecked husband in the Highlands. Goodnight, you dream of bliss.’ He kissed me on the cheek and walked somewhat unsteadily out of the conservatory. Finn and I glared at each other.
‘You are beyond the pale,’ I snapped, ‘beyond a whole dairyful of pales. Why do you have to rush around rotting up people’s sex lives? I thought you were a doctor, not a vicar.’ I lurched slightly without Calen to hold me up.
‘You won’t get Rory back that way,’ said Finn. ‘Getting drunk and going to bed with Calen doesn’t solve anything.’
‘Oh it does, it does,’ I said with a sigh, ‘it gets you through the next half an hour — and half an hour can be an eternity in Scotland.’
I wandered into the library and discovered a glass of champagne balanced on a stag’s head. I drank it in one gulp.
‘I’ll take the high road and ye’ll take the low road,’ I said, ‘and I’ll be inebriated before ye. Tell me, Doctor, you know the area better than I do, what gives between Rory and your sister?’
‘Nothing,’ he said roughly. ‘You’re imagining things, and you’re not making things any better behaving like this.’
I stared at him for a minute. ‘My mother once had an English setter who had freckles like yours,’ I said, dreamily. ‘They looked really nice on a dog.’
We went into the hall which was fortunately deserted. ‘What about your friend Frances Nightingale,’ I said, swinging back and forth on an heraldic leopard that reared up the bottom of the banisters. ‘Isn’t she missing you?’
‘That’s my problem,’ he said.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m not usually as silly as this. It’s a pity you’re not as good at mending broken hearts as broken bones.’
‘I suggest,’ said Finn, ‘you go straight up to bed without making a fool of yourself any further. Take three Alka-Seltzers before you go to sleep, you’ll feel much better in the morning. Come on.’ He moved forward to take me upstairs, but I broke away.
‘Go and jump in the loch,’ I snarled, and ran away from him up the stairs. I fell into bed, preparing to cry myself to sleep, but I must have flaked out almost immediately.
In the middle of the night, it seemed, I woke up. I didn’t know where I was, it was pitch black in the room. The fire had gone out. Where the hell was I? Then I remembered — Downleesh Castle. I put out a hand — groping for Rory. He wasn’t there, I was alone in the huge fourposter. Suddenly the room seemed to go unnaturally cold, the wind was blowing a blizzard outside, the snow still falling heavily. As the windows rattled and banged and the doors and stairs creaked, it was like being on board ship. Then I felt my hair standing on end as I remembered the ghost in the white dressing-gown that walked when the moon was full. I gave a sob at the thought of him creeping down those long, musty passages towards me. I was trembling all over. Getting out of bed, I ran my hands along the wall, hysterically groping for a light switch. I couldn’t find one. The room grew even colder. Suddenly I gave a gasp of terror as the curtain blew in, and I realized to my horror the window was open. I leapt back into bed. Where the hell was Rory? How could he leave me like this? Suddenly my blood froze as, very, very gently, I heard the door creaking. It stopped, then creaked again, and, very, very gradually, it began to open. I couldn’t move, my voice was strangled in my dry throat, my heart pounding.
Oh God, I croaked, oh, please no! I tried desperately to scream as one does in a nightmare, but no sound came out.
Slowly the door opened wider. The curtains billowed again in the through draught from the window, and the light from the snow revealed a ghostly figure wrapped in white, gold hair gleaming. It suddenly turned and looked in my direction, and slowly crept towards the bed. Panic overwhelmed me, I was going to be murdered.
Someone was screaming horribly, echoing on and on through the house. The next minute I realized it was me. The room was flooded with light and there was Buster, standing in the doorway, looking very discomfited in a white silk dressing-gown. I went on screaming.
‘Emily, my God,’ said Buster. ‘I’m so sorry, pet. For Christ’s sake stop making that frightful row. I got into the wrong bedroom, must have got the wrong wing for that matter.’
I stopped screaming and burst into noisy, hysterical sobs. Next minute Finn Maclean barged in, still wearing black trousers and his white evening shirt.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ he said.
He was followed by the Frayns. She had tied her hair up with a blue bow.
‘Where’s Rory?’ I sobbed, ‘where is he? I’m sorry,
Buster, I thought you were the ghost. I was so frightened.’ My breath was coming in great strangled gasps. Buster patted my shoulder gingerly.
‘There, there, poor Emily,’ he said. ‘Got my wings muddled,’ he added to Finn. ‘She thought I was the Downleesh ghost.’
‘I’m not surprised after all the liquor she shipped,’ said Finn. ‘I’ll go and get something to calm her down.’
Once I started crying I couldn’t stop.
‘Do try and pull yourself together, Emily,’ said Fiona. ‘Oughtn’t you to slap her face or something?’ she said as Finn came back with a couple of pills and a glass of water.
‘Get these down you,’ he said, gently.
‘I don’t need them,’ I sobbed, then gave another scream as Rory walked in through the curtains, snowflakes thick on his hair and his shoulders.
‘What a lot of people in my wife’s bedroom,’ he said blandly, looking round the room. ‘I didn’t know you were entertaining, Emily. You do keep extraordinary hours.’ A muscle was going in his cheek, he looked ghastly.
‘Where have you been?’ I said, trying and failing to stop crying.
‘Having a quiet cigarette on the battlements,’ said Rory. ‘Pondering whether there was life after birth. Hello, Buster, I didn’t see you, how nice of you to drop in on Emily. Does my mother know you’re here?’
‘She was quite hysterical,’ said Fiona, reprovingly.
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Rory, ‘with all these people in here.’ He came over and patted me on the shoulder. ‘There, there, lovie, pack it in now, everything’s all right.’
‘I thought Buster was a ghost,’ I explained, feeling terribly silly. ‘I could only see his dressing-gown and his hair.’
‘You what?’ For a minute Rory looked at Buster incredulously, and then he leant against the wall and started to shake with laughter.
‘I got into the wrong wing,’ said Buster, looking very discomfited. ‘Perfectly natural mistake in these old houses, thought I was going into my own bedroom.’