September

by Rosamunde Pilcher

  Keeping Croy, living there, come hell or high water, became their first priority. Optimistically, they laid plans. Archie would retire from the Army, and while he was young enough to do so, find himself some sort of a job. But before this could happen he was committed to a last tour of duty with his regiment, and went with them to Northern Ireland.

  The regiment returned home four months later, but it was eight months before Archie came back to Croy, and it took Isobel about eight days to realise that in spite of his rehabilitation any sort of a job was, for the time being, out of the question. In some desperation, through long and sleepless nights, she reviewed their plight.

  But they had friends. In particular Edmund Aird. Realising the gravity of the situation, Edmund moved in and took control. It was Edmund who found a tenant for the home farm, and Edmund who assumed responsibility for the grouse moor. Together with Gordon Gillock, the keeper, he saw to the burning of the heather and the maintenance of the butts, and then let the entire concern out to a syndicate of businessmen from the south, retaining a gun for himself and a half-gun for Archie.

  For Isobel, to be shed of at least some of her anxieties was an enormous relief, but income remained a vexing problem. There was still some inherited capital, but this was tied up in stocks and bonds, and was all that Archie had to leave to his children. Isobel had a little money of her own, but this, even added to Archie’s army pension and his sixty-per-cent disability pension, did not amount to very much. The day-to-day expenses of simply running the house and keeping the family fed and clothed remained a constant source of worry, so that Verena’s suggestion, initially daunting, was in fact the answer to a prayer.

  “Oh, come on, Isobel. You can do it standing on your head.”

  And Isobel realised that she could. After all, she was well used to managing the big house, and accustomed to having people to stay. When Archie’s father was alive there were always house parties to be arranged for the shooting, and the dances in September. During the school holidays, Croy filled up with the children’s friends, and Christmas and Easter never passed without entire families coming to share the festivities.

  Compared to all this, Verena’s proposition did not sound at all arduous. It would only take up two days a week throughout the four months of summer. Surely that could not be too demanding. And…cheering thought…it would be stimulation for Archie, people coming and going. Helping to entertain them would give him an interest and bolster his morale, sadly in need of a boost.

  What she hadn’t realised, and what she had painfully learned, was that entertaining paying guests was a very different kettle of fish to having one’s own friends about the place. You couldn’t argue with them, any more than you could sit about in a companionable silence. Nor could you allow them to slope into the kitchen to peel a pot of potatoes or concoct a salad. The real rub was that they were paying. This put hospitality on a totally different level because it meant that everything had to be perfect. The tour was not cheap and, as Verena forthrightly insisted, the clients must be given value for their dollars.

  There were certain guidelines printed out on a special instruction sheet for hostesses. Every bedroom must have its own bathroom, preferably adjoining. Beds must have electric blankets, and the rooms must be centrally heated. Also, if possible, there should be supplementary heating…preferably a real fire but, failing this, then an electric or gas fire. Fresh flowers must be arranged in the bedrooms.

  (Reading this, Isobel had known some annoyance. Who did they think they were? She had never in her life put a guest in a room without seeing that there were fresh flowers on the dressing-table.)

  Then there were more rules about breakfast and dinner. Breakfast must be robust and hearty; orange juice, coffee, and tea, all available. In the evenings, a cocktail must be offered, and wine at dinner-time. This meal had to be formally served, with candles, crystal, and silver on the table, and consist of at least three courses, to be followed by coffee and conversation. Other diversions, however unlikely, could be offered. A little music…perhaps bagpipe-playing…?

  The overseas visitors awaited them in Verena’s drawing room. Verena flung open the door. “I am sorry we’ve been so long. Just one or two ends that needed to be tied up,” she told them in her best committee-meeting voice, which brooked no question nor argument. “Here we are, and here is your hostess, come to take you to Croy.”

  The drawing room at Corriehill was large and light, palely decorated and little used. Today, however, because of the inclement weather, a small fire flickered in the grate, and around this, disposed on armchairs and sofas, sat the four Americans. To while away the time, they had switched on the television and were watching, in a bemused fashion, cricket. Disturbed, they rose to their feet, turning smiling faces, and one of the men stooped and politely switched the television off.

  “Now, introductions. Mr and Mrs Hardwicke, and Mr and Mrs Franco. This is your hostess for the next two days. Lady Balmerino.”

  Shaking hands, Isobel understood what Verena had meant when she described this week’s guests as being slightly more robust than usual. Scottish Country Tours seemed, for some reason, to attract clients of an extremely advanced age, and sometimes they were not only geriatric but in a dickey state of health — short of breath and uncertain about the legs. These two couples, however, were scarcely beyond middle age. Grey-haired, certainly, but apparently bursting with energy, and all of them enviably tanned. The Francos were small of stature, and Mr Franco very bald, and the Hardwickes were tall and muscled and slim, and looked as though they spent their lives out of doors and took a great deal of exercise.

  “I’m afraid I’m a little late,” Isobel found herself saying, although she knew perfectly well that she was not. “But we can go whenever you’re ready.”

  They were ready right now. The ladies collected their handbags and their beautiful new Burberry raincoats, and the little party trooped through the hall and out into the porch. Isobel went to open the back doors of the minibus, and by the time she had done this, the men were humping and heaving the big suitcases across the gravel, and helped her to load them. (This, too, was novel. She and Verena usually had to do the job by themselves.) When all were safely aboard, she shut the doors and fastened them. The Hardwickes and the Francos were saying goodbye to Verena. “But,” Verena said, “I’ll see you ladies tomorrow. And I hope the golf’s a great success. You’ll love Gleneagles.”

  Doors were opened and they all climbed in. Isobel took her place behind the wheel, fastened her seat belt, turned on the ignition and they were away.

  “I do apologise for the weather. We’ve had no summer at all yet.”

  “Oh, it hasn’t bothered us in the least. We’re just sorry you had to come out on such a day to come and collect us. Hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”

  “No, not at all. That’s my job.”

  “Have we far to go to your home, Lady Balmerino?”

  “About ten miles. And I wish you’d call me Isobel.”

  “Why, thank you, we will. And I am Susan and my husband is Arnold, and the Hardwickes are Joe and Myra.”

  “Ten miles,” said one of the men. “That’s quite a distance.”

  “Yes. Actually my husband usually comes with me on these trips. But he had to go to a meeting. He’ll be home for tea, though, so you’ll meet him then.”

  “Is Lord Balmerino in business?”

  “No. No, it’s not a business meeting. It’s a church meeting. Our village church. We have to raise some money. It’s rather a shoestring affair. But my husband’s grandfather built it, so he feels a sort of family responsibility.”

  It was raining again. The windscreen wipers swung to and fro. Perhaps conversation would divert their attention from the misery of it all.

  “Is this your first visit to Scotland?”

  The two ladies, chipping in on each other like a close-harmony duo, told her. The men had been here before, to play golf, but this was the first time their wives had ac
companied them. And they just loved every inch of the place, and had gone crazy in the shops in Edinburrow. It had rained, of course, but that hadn’t bothered them. They had their new Burberrys to wear, and both decided that the rain made Edinburrow look just so historic and romantic that they had been able to picture Mary and Bothwell riding together up the Royal Mile.

  When they had finished, Isobel asked them what part of the States they came from.

  “New York State. Rye.”

  “Are you by the sea there?”

  “Oh, sure. Our kids sail every weekend.”

  Isobel could imagine it. Could imagine those kids, tanned and wind-blown, bursting with vitamins and fresh orange juice and health, scudding over starch-blue seas beneath the curving wing of a snow-white mainsail. And sunshine. Blue skies and sunshine. Day after day of it, so that you could plan tennis matches and picnics and evening barbecues and know that it wasn’t going to rain.

  That was how summers, in memory, used to be. The endless, aimless summers of childhood. What had happened to those long, light days, sweet with the scent of roses, when one had to come indoors only to eat, and sometimes not even then? Swimming in the river, lazing in the garden, playing tennis, having tea in the shade of some tree because it was too hot anywhere else. She remembered picnics on moors that shimmered in the sunlight, the heather too dry to light a camp-fire, and the larks flying high. What had happened to her world? What cosmic disaster had transformed those bright days into week after week of dark and soggy gloom?

  It wasn’t just the weather, it was the fact that the weather made everything so much worse. Like Archie getting his leg shot off, and having to be nice to people you didn’t know because they were paying you money to sleep in your spare bedrooms. And being tired all the time, and never buying new clothes, and worrying about Hamish’s school fees, and missing Lucilla.

  She heard herself saying, with some force, “It’s the one horrible thing about living in Scotland.”

  For a moment, perhaps surprised by her outburst, nobody commented on this announcement. Then one of the ladies spoke. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m sorry. I meant the rain. We get so tired of the rain. I meant these horrible summers.”

  5

  The Presbyterian church in Strathcroy, the established Church of Scotland, stood, impressive, ancient and venerable, on the south bank of the River Croy. It was reached from the main road that ran through the village by a curved stone bridge, and its setting was pastoral. Glebelands sloped to the water’s edge, a grassy pasture where, each September, the Strathcroy Games were held. The churchyard, shaded by a mammoth beech, was filled with time-worn, leaning gravestones, and a grassy path led between these to the gates of the Manse. This too was solid and imposing, built to contain the large families of bygone ministers and boasting an enviable garden burgeoning with gnarled but productive fruit trees and old-fashioned roses, for these flourished behind the protection of a high stone wall. All of this, so charmingly disposed, exuded an ambience of timelessness, domestic security, and god-fearing piety.

  In contrast, the little Episcopal church, like a poor relation, crouched directly across the bridge, totally overshadowed, both literally and metaphorically, by its rival. The main road ran close by, and between the church and the road was a strip of grass which the rector, the Reverend Julian Gloxby, himself cut each week. A small lane led up a slope to the back of the church and to the rectory that stood behind it. Both were modest in size and whitewashed. The church had a little tower with a single bell, and a wooden porchway enclosed its main door. Inside, it was equally unassuming. No handsome pews, no flagged floors, no historic relics. A worn drugget led to the altar, and a breathless harmonium did duty as an organ. There was always a faint smell of damp.

  Both church and rectory had been erected at the turn of the century by the first Lord Balmerino and handed over to the Diocese with a small endowment for maintenance. The income this produced had long since trickled to nothing, the congregation was tiny, and the Vestry endeavouring to make ends meet, found themselves perpetually strapped for cash.

  When the electric wiring was discovered to be not only faulty but downright dangerous, it was very nearly the last straw. But Archie Balmerino rallied his meagre troops, chaired committees, visited the Bishop and wangled a grant. Even so, some fund-raising was going to be necessary. Various suggestions were put forward, discussed, and eventually turned down. In the end, it was decided to fall back on that old dependable, a church sale. This would take place in July, in the village hall. There would be a jumble stall, a plant and vegetable stall, a white elephant and handwork stall, and, of course, teas.

  A committee was duly appointed and met, on that grey and damp June afternoon, around the dining-room table at Balnaid, home of Virginia and Edmund Aird. By half past four the meeting was over, with business satisfactorily concluded and modest plans laid. These included the printing of eye-catching posters, the borrowing of a number of trestle-tables, and the organising of a raffle.

  The rector and Mrs Gloxby, and Toddy Buchanan, who ran the Strathcroy Arms, had already taken their leave and driven away in their cars. Dermot Honeycombe, busy with his antique shop, had been unable to attend. In his absence, he had been given the job of running the white elephant stall.

  Now only three people remained. Virginia and Violet, her mother-in-law, sat at one end of the long mahogany table and Archie Balmerino at the other. As soon as the others had gone, Virginia had disappeared into the kitchen to make tea, and brought it to them on a tray, without ceremony. Three mugs, a brown teapot, a jug of milk, and a bowl of sugar. It was both refreshing and welcome, and it was pleasant to relax after the concentrated discussions of the afternoon and to be able to chat without restriction, enjoying the easy closeness of family and old friends.

  They were still mulling over the church sale.

  “I just hope Dermot won’t mind being told he has to run the white elephant stall. Perhaps I should ring him and give him the opportunity to say he doesn’t want to do it.” Archie was always cautious about other people’s feelings, terrified of it being thought that he was throwing his weight about.

  Violet pooh-poohed the very idea. “Of course he won’t. Dear man, he never minds pitching in. He’d probably be far more hurt if we gave the job to somebody else. After all, he knows the value of everything…”

  She was a tall lady in her late seventies and very large, dressed in a much-worn coat and skirt and shod in sensible brogues. Her hair was grey and wispy, skewered to the back of her head in a small bun, and her face, with its long upper lip and wide-set eyes, resembled that of a kindly sheep. And yet she was neither plain nor dowdy. Wonderfully upright, she had presence, and those eyes were both merry and intelligent, dispelling any suggestion of haughtiness. Now they twinkled with amusement. “…Even pottery doggies with bones in their mouths, and table-lamps made out of old whisky bottles plastered in shells.”

  Virginia laughed. “He’ll probably pick up some wonderful bargain for twenty-five pence and sell it for some incredible price in his shop next day.”

  She leaned back in her chair and stretched, like a lazy girl. In her early thirties, Virginia Aird was a blonde and as slender as the day she had married Edmund. Today, making no concession to the formality of the occasion, she wore her usual uniform of jeans, a navy-blue Guernsey sweater, and polished leather loafers. She was pretty in a pert and catlike way, but this prettiness was elevated to beauty by her eyes, which were enormous and of a glittering sapphire blueness. Her skin was fine, innocent of make-up, and the colour of a delectable brown egg. A fine tracing of lines fanned out from the corners of those eyes, and these alone betrayed her age.

  Now she flexed her long fingers and circled her wrists, as though performing some prescribed exercise.

  “And Isobel will be the tea-lady.” She stopped stretching. “Why didn’t Isobel come today, Archie?”

  “I told you…or perhaps you were out of the room. She had to
go to Corriehill to pick up this week’s batch of visitors.”

  “Yes, of course, how stupid of me. Sorry…”

  “That reminds me.” Violet held out her mug. “Pour me a little more tea, would you, dear? I can drink it till it comes out of my ears…I met Verena Steynton in Relkirk yesterday, and she told me that I didn’t have to keep it a secret any longer. She and Angus are going to throw a party for Katy in September.”

  Virginia frowned. “What do you mean, keep it a secret?”

  “Well, she confided in me a few weeks ago, but she said I wasn’t to say anything until she’d spoken to Angus about it. It seems that he has finally been persuaded.”

  “Goodness, how enterprising! A little hop, or a full-blown affair?”

  “Oh, full-blown. Marquees and fairy lights and copperplate invitations and everybody dressed to the nines.”

  “What fun.” Virginia was filled with enthusiasm as Violet had known she would be. “It’s lovely when people throw private parties, because then you don’t have to pay for your ticket. Instead I’ll have a good excuse to go and buy myself a new dress. We’ll all have to rally round and have people to stay. I’ll have to be certain that Edmund’s not planning to go to Tokyo that week.”