September

by Rosamunde Pilcher

  “Now why should I do that?”

  “Because my face is going to start looking as though it’s been cleaned off with sandpaper.”

  “I’ll have to stop kissing you then. Or start kissing you some place where it doesn’t show.”

  They fell silent. The sun was dropping in the sky, and soon, quite suddenly, it would be dark. Lucilla thought of Scottish summer twilights that went on until midnight. She said, “Do you think they’re lovers? Do you think they’re having a raging affair?”

  “Who?”

  “Pandora and Carlos Macaya.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “He’s terribly handsome.”

  “Yeah. A real smoothie.”

  “I thought he was nice. Rather cosy. Easy to talk to.”

  “I liked his car.”

  “You have a one-track mind. What do you think it was he asked her?”

  “Come again?”

  “He said, ‘Let me know if you change your mind.’ And she said, ‘I won’t change my mind.’ He must have asked her something. He must have wanted her to do something with him.”

  “Well, whatever it was, she didn’t look too bothered.”

  But Lucilla was not satisfied. “I’m certain it was something terribly significant. A turning-point in both their lives.”

  “You have a runaway imagination. More likely he was trying to fix a tennis game.”

  “Yes.” But somehow, Lucilla did not feel that this was so. She sighed, and the sigh turned into a yawn. “Perhaps.”

  At half past eight they were ready to join Pandora, and Lucilla decided that, after all her anxiety, they didn’t look too bad. Both of them had showered and scrubbed and now smelled sweetly of the gratuitous shampoo. Jeff had neatened up his beard with a pair of nail scissors, and Lucilla had ironed his one clean shirt and salvaged from the pile of clothes on the laundry floor his tidiest pair of jeans.

  As for herself, she had washed her long dark hair and brushed it dry, pulled on a pair of black leggings, and now buttoned up the borrowed shirt. The heavy silk felt deliciously cool against her bare skin, and the sequined embroidery, viewed in the mirror through half-closed eyes, was not nearly as outrageous as she had first imagined. Perhaps it had something to do with these unaccustomed surroundings. Perhaps the ambience of enormous luxury helped absorb such small vulgarities. It was an interesting notion and one that she would have liked to discuss at length, but right now there was no time.

  “Come on,” Jeff told her. “Time to be off. I need a drink.”

  He made for the door and she followed him, first making sure that all the lights in the guest house were switched off. She was fairly certain that Pandora would not give a damn if every light was left burning, but, brought up by a thrifty Scottish mother, such small housewifely economies were engrained in Lucilla, as though her subconscious were a programmed computer. She found this strange, because later strictures had left as little impression as water on a duck’s back. Another interesting thought worth chewing over at a later date.

  Out of doors, they stepped into a blue night, star-bright and soft and warm as velvet. The garden was headily fragrant, the swimming pool floodlit, and lamps lit the way along the stepping-stones of the path. Lucilla heard the incessant chirp of the cicadas, and there was music coming from Pandora’s house.

  Rachmaninoff. The Second Piano Concerto. Banal, maybe, but perfect for just such a Mediterranean night. Pandora had set the scene and now she was waiting for them on the terrace, lying in a long chair with a wineglass on the table beside her.

  “There you are!” she called as they approached. “I’ve already opened the champagne. I couldn’t wait any longer.”

  They went up the steps and into the pool of light that illuminated their hostess. She had changed into something black and cobwebby and wore gold sandals on her bare feet. The smell of Poison was even stronger than the scents of the garden.

  “Don’t you both look sleek! I can’t think why you were so worried about yourselves. And Lucilla, the shirt is divine on you, you must keep it. Now, find chairs and settle down. Oh, blast, I’ve forgotten the glasses. Lucilla, darling, go and get some, will you? The little bar’s just behind the door, you’ll find everything there. There’s a second bottle of bubbly in the fridge, but we’ll leave it there till we’ve finished this one. Now, Jeff, you come and sit here, beside me. I want to hear all about what you and Lucilla have been up to…”

  Lucilla left them and obediently went in search of the wine-glasses, stepping indoors through wide, curtained doors. The bar was immediately to hand, no more than a large closet fitted with everything that any human being could need to fix a drink. She took two wineglasses from the shelf but did not at once return to the terrace. This was the first time she had actually been inside Pandora’s house, and she found herself in a room so spacious and spectacular that she was momentarily diverted from her errand. All was cool and creamy, sparked here and there with touches of brilliant colour. Sky-blue and turquoise cushions, and coral-pink lilies massed in a square glass vase. Alcoves, cunningly lit, displayed a collection of Dresden figures and Battersea enamel. A plate-glass coffee-table was stacked with books and magazines, more flowers, a silver cigarette box. There was an open fireplace faced with blue-and-white tiles, and above this hung a mirror-framed flower painting. At the other end of the room the dining table — glass again — was set for dinner with candles and crystal and yet more flowers, and to Lucilla’s bemused eyes it all seemed more like a stage set than a room designed for living in. And yet, she realised, there were homely touches too. An open paperback tossed on to a sofa; a half-finished tapestry lying close at hand for an empty moment. And there were photographs. Archie and Isobel on their wedding day. Lucilla’s grandparents, sweet old things in their tweeds, standing in front of Croy with their dogs beside them.

  Lucilla found these evidences of nostalgia immensely touching. For some reason, she had not expected them, perhaps not imagining Pandora capable of such sentiment. Now she pictured Pandora taking them everywhere with her, all through her wayward love affairs and her turbulent nomad’s life. Saw her unpacking them from her suitcase in houses in California, hotel bedrooms, apartments in New York and Paris. And now, Majorca. Setting the seal of her past and her identity upon yet another temporary home.

  (There did not seem to be any pictures of the men who had owned these apartments and occupied so much of Pandora’s life, but perhaps she kept those in her bedroom.)

  Warm dark breezes blew through the opened windows, and Rachmaninoff emanated from some unseen stereo, concealed by a gold-latticed trellis. The piano solo dripped its notes, pure as raindrops. From the terrace came the low murmur of comfortable conversation, Pandora and Jeff sounding peaceful and unimpatient.

  There were other photographs on the mantelpiece, and Lucilla crossed the floor to inspect these more closely. Old Lady Balmerino, resplendent in a feathered tam-o’-shanter, apparently opening a village fête. A snapshot of Archie and Edmund Aird, two very young men sitting in the boat at the edge of the loch with their rods and their creels stowed on the thwarts. Finally, a studio portrait of herself and Hamish, Lucilla in smocked Liberty lawn and Hamish a fat baby on her knee. Archie must have sent that one to Pandora with one of his letters and she had framed it in silver and set it in the place of honour. Tucked into this silver frame was an invitation whose format was instantly familiar.

  Pandora Blair

  Mrs Angus Steynton

  At Home

  For Katy

  Lucilla’s first thought was, how nice. And then, how ridiculous. A waste of a card, a waste of a stamp, because there was not the slightest possibility that Pandora would accept. She had gone from Croy when she was eighteen and never returned. Resisted all pleading, first from her parents, and then from her brother, and stayed resolutely away. It was scarcely likely that Verena Steynton, of all people, would achieve what Pandora’s own family had so abjectly failed to do.

  “Luc
illa!”

  “Coming…”

  “What are you doing?”

  Lucilla, bearing the wineglasses, joined them on the terrace. “Sorry, I’ve been snooping round that beautiful room. And listening to the music…”

  “Oh, darling, don’t you love Rachmaninoff? It’s one of my most favourites. I know it’s a bit hackneyed, but I seem to go for hackneyed things.”

  “I’m just the same,” Lucilla admitted. “Songs like ‘Oh, Lovely Moon’ and ‘The Barcarolle’ leave me quite weak-kneed. And some of the old Beatles records. I’ve got them all at home at Croy. And if I’m feeling really blue, I’ve got a tape of a Fiddlers’ Rally in Oban and I play it and I can feel my spirits rise visibly, like mercury in a thermometer when you’ve got a temperature. All those dear old men and little boys in their kilts and their shirtsleeves, and an endless round of jigs and reels, as though they didn’t know how to stop and didn’t want to anyway. I usually end up dancing all by myself and leaping around the room like an idiot.”

  Jeff said, “I’ve never seen you do that.”

  “Well, if you hang around long enough, you probably will. But seriously, Pandora, this is the most beautiful place you’ve got. And our guest house is perfection.”

  “It is rather sweet, isn’t it? I was so lucky to snap it all up. The people who lived here before had to go back to England; I was looking for somewhere to live and it seemed that it was just waiting for me. Jeff, you’re meant to be pouring champagne…”

  “And the furniture? Is that all yours too?”

  Pandora laughed. “Oh, darling, I haven’t got any furniture, just little bits and pieces that I’ve gathered on my travels and cart about with me. Most of the furniture here I took over with the house, but of course I’ve changed almost everything. The sofas were the most hideous blue, and there was a carpet with swirls on. Got rid of that pretty sharpish. I took Seraphina over with the house as well, and she’s got a husband who does the garden. All I’m missing out on is a little doggie, but doggies in Majorca are inclined to get shot by youths with airguns, or else they get ticks, or they get stolen, or run over. So there’s not really much point.” All the glasses were now brimming full. Pandora raised hers.

  “Here’s to you both, and what heaven it is to have you here. Lucilla, Jeff’s been telling me all about your journey down through France. How fascinating it must have been. And you got to see Chartres, such an experience. I’m longing to hear more, get all the details; but first, and most important, I want to be told all about home, and my precious Archie and Isobel and Hamish. Hamish must be enormous now. And Isobel, with those tedious Americans to stay. I hear all about them in Archie’s letters, when he isn’t telling me about the latest grouse-bag, or the size of the salmon he caught last week. It’s a miracle he’s able to do so much with that terrible leg. Tell me how the poor leg is.”

  “He can’t actually do that much,” Lucilla told her bluntly. “He just writes you positive letters because he doesn’t want you to be upset. And his leg isn’t anything. It’s tin, full stop. It can’t get any better, and we all pray it’ll never get any worse.”

  “Poor darling. Beastly, beastly IRA. How they dare to do such things, and to Archie, of all people.”

  “They weren’t necessarily gunning for him, Pandora. They were waiting, over the border, to blast off at a lot of British jocks, and he happened to be one of them.”

  “Did he know they were there? Or was it an ambush?”

  “I don’t know. And if I asked, he wouldn’t tell me. He won’t talk about it. He won’t talk about it to anybody.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “I don’t suppose it is, but there’s not much we can do about it.”

  “He was never a great talker. The most darling man, but even as a little boy he always kept everything to himself. We never even knew he was courting Isobel, and when he told our mother that he wanted to marry her, Mama nearly dropped dead with astonishment because she’d got him lined up for some entirely different female. Never mind, she made the best of it. Just as she always made the best of everything…” Her voice faded. She fell silent, then swiftly emptied her glass. “Jeff, is there any more left in that bottle, or shall we open another?”

  But the bottle was not yet empty and Jeff refilled Pandora’s glass, and then topped up Lucilla’s and his own. Lucilla was now beginning to feel not only light-hearted but light-headed as well. She wondered how much Pandora had already consumed before they joined her. Perhaps the champagne was why she seemed to be talking so much.

  “Now tell me…” She was off again. “What are the two of you going to do next?”

  Jeff and Lucilla looked at each other. Making plans was not one of their strong points. Doing things on the spur of the moment was half the fun.

  It was Jeff who replied. “We don’t really know. Only thing is, I have to go back to Australia at the beginning of October. I’ve a flight booked with Qantas on the third.”

  “Where do you fly from?”

  “London.”

  “So, some time, you’ll have to go back to England.”

  “Right.”

  “Is Lucilla going with you?”

  Again they looked at each other. “We haven’t discussed it,” Lucilla said.

  “So you’re free. Free as air. Free to come and go as you wish. The world is your oyster.” She made an expansive gesture with her hand and spilled some of her champagne.

  “Yes,” Jeff agreed cautiously, “I suppose it is.”

  “Then let us make plans. Lucilla, would you like to make plans with me?”

  “What sort of plans?”

  “When you were snooping, as you put it, around my drawing room, did you notice that large and pretentious copperplate invitation on my mantelpiece?”

  “From Verena Steynton? Yes, I did.”

  “Have you been asked?”

  “Yes. Dad sent my invitation on to me and I got it in Ibiza.”

  “Are you going?”

  “I…I hadn’t actually thought about it.”

  “Might you go?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Because…” She laid down her glass. “I think that I shall go.”

  The shock of this announcement stunned Lucilla out of her delightful tipsiness and into a state of cold sobriety. She stared at Pandora in total disbelief, and Pandora stared back, her grey eyes with their huge black pupils bright with a strange elation, as though delighting in the expression of blank incredulity she had brought to Lucilla’s face.

  “You’d go?”

  “Why not?”

  “Back to Scotland?”

  “Where else?”

  “For Verena Steynton’s dance?” It did not make sense.

  “It’s as good a reason as any.”

  “But you’ve never come before. Dad asked you and begged you, and you’ve never come. He told me.”

  “There has to be a first time. Perhaps now is the right time.” All at once she stood up and walked away from them to stand looking out over the garden. She stayed there for an instant, quite still, silhouetted against the light that shone upwards from the pool. Her dress, her hair moved in the breeze. Then she turned to face them, leaning against the balustrade. She said, and she spoke now in quite a different voice, “I’ve been thinking so much about Croy. Just lately, I’ve been thinking so much about it. I dream about it, and wake up, and start remembering things I hadn’t thought of in years. And then the invitation came. Like yours, Lucilla, forwarded on from Croy. And it brought back a million memories of the fun we used to have at those ridiculous dances and hunt balls. And house parties, and the hills ringing with the crack of guns, and every evening an enormous dinner party. How my poor mother coped with us all, I cannot imagine.” She smiled at Lucilla, and then at Jeff. “And you two arriving. Phoning from Palma and turning up out of the blue, and Lucilla so like Archie. Omens. Do you believe in omens, Lucilla?”

  “I don’t know.”

&nb
sp; “Neither do I. But I’m certain, with the Highland blood that courses through our veins, that we should.” She came back to her chair and sat on the footrest, her face close to Lucilla’s. Beneath the beauty, Lucilla could discern the years stamped on Pandora’s lovely features: the lines around her eyes and mouth, the papery skin, the sharp angle of her jawbone. “So, let us make plans. Will you both make plans with me? Would you mind if I asked you to do that thing?”

  Lucilla looked across at Jeff. He shook his head. She said, “We wouldn’t mind.”

  “Then that is what we’ll do. We’ll stay here for a week, just the three of us, and you shall have the time of your lives. And then we’ll take my car, and we’ll catch the ferry to Spain. And we’ll drive through Spain and France, taking our time and making a pleasure of the journey. When we get to Calais, we’ll cross over to England. And we’ll head north, and we’ll go to Scotland, and we’ll go home. Back to Croy. Oh, Lucilla, say you think it’s a wonderful idea.”

  “It’s certainly totally unexpected,” was all Lucilla could come up with, but if Pandora noticed a certain lack of enthusiasm in her voice, she gave no indication of doing so. Swept along on her own excitement, she turned to Jeff. “And you? How does it sound to you? Or do you think I’m out of my mind?”

  “No.”

  “You wouldn’t mind coming to Scotland with us?”

  “If that’s what you and Lucilla want, I’d be delighted.”

  “Then it’s all settled!” She was triumphant. “We’ll all stay at Croy with Isobel and Archie, and we’ll all go to the Steyntons’ lovely party.”

  “But Jeff hasn’t been asked,” Lucilla pointed out.

  “Oh, that’s no problem.”

  “And he won’t have anything to wear.”

  Pandora dissolved into laughter. “Darling, you do disappoint me. I thought you were an unworldly artist, and all you seem to do is worry about clothes! Don’t you see, clothes don’t matter. Nothing matters. The only thing that matters is that we’re going back home, together. Just think what fun we’re going to have. And now we must celebrate!” She sprang to her feet. “The perfect moment to open that second bottle of champagne!”