“Leave that to me,” he said. “At least I can do that for you, although it won’t be an easy task.”
“He’s going to be bitterly, bitterly disappointed,” she said heavily.
The following morning Fergus told Ronald Gowrie the truth about his injured arm.
“It was no use evading the issue,” he told Alison before he went to see Sir James off with the afternoon plane returning from the Outer Islands. “He wanted to know where he stood. He took it remarkably well,” he added for her further comfort. “I don’t think you will have any real trouble with him.”
When Alison finally made her way up to her patient’s room she paused before she opened the door, and was immediately aware of voices. Ronald already had a visitor.
She recognized Isobel’s voice and the low rumble of Ronald’s monosyllabic replies, and impulsively she turned and went downstairs again.
It was Friday afternoon, and Mrs. Cameron had come for the children to take them on a picnic to the other side of the island. She did this once a week regularly in the spring and summer months, when the gorse was dry and hundreds of butterflies played above it, and it gave Isobel at least one free afternoon to herself.
Alison felt curiously at a loss and at a loose end without the children. They had become part of her life, and the great house seemed empty without them.
She put on her cloak and went out. The rain of the day before had lifted and lay like a gossamer veil against the hills of Heimra Mhor, leaving their own island smiling in the sun. It was a day for walking beside the sea, and she chose the Silver Strand, picking up shells as she went along. Already she had established quite a small “industry” among the children, teaching them to fashion necklaces and bracelets from the delicate little mother-of-pearl shells which were the easiest to find, and she picked up more than a dozen in the first few yards, idly at first, and then completely engrossed.
The fascination of her quest took her the whole length of the beach, and because she was concentrating on finding more of the elusive lilac shade she loved, she pressed on beyond the barrier of rocks, searching in the small pockets of sandy shore which separated Garrisdale from Monkdyke.
She had reached the firm sand of Margot’s secret little bay before she realized just how far she had come, and the knowledge made her glance half guiltily at the house above the machar.
The windows leading on to the terrace were open today, but there was no one about.
All the same, she decided to cut her quest short. She had enough shells now, and it was time to retrace her steps.
She had tied the shells in her head-scarf, allowing her hair to blow free in the wind, and for a moment she stood poised on the rocks looking down at the sea.
How lovely it was! How calm and serene today, with the blue sky reflected in the little mirrors of the rock-pools where the sea anemones clung! Yet even as she thought of the peace of this quiet place her thoughts were in turmoil, eddying like the tiny swirls of the waves in the crevices, restless, seeking, unappeased.
It would always be like this, she supposed, and then determinedly she turned to jump down on to the sand.
With her swift action the head-scarf flew out of her hand and a rain of shells spattered the rocks at her feet.
She could not leave them there; not after all the efforts she had made to gather them.
Painstakingly she began to pick them up, amazed at how widely they had scattered, and when she reached the end of her task she was facing Monkdyke again.
From her hidden position in the rock-cleft she could see the house quite plainly, but it was not the sight of Monkdyke that made her hold her breath and set her heart beating like a sledgehammer against her ribs. It was Margot.
Margot was walking across the machar towards the beach, trailing her leg, yet—but walking!
Before she gave herself time to think, Alison was running towards the slim figure on the sands.
“Margot! this is wonderful,” she cried as she reached her. “Does Fergus know?”
Margot Blair turned and saw her, and there was hatred in every line of her lovely face. Her hand clenched so hard on the handle of the walking-stick she carried that it shook.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “I thought I told you to go—to leave the island?”
Alison recoiled, drawing back before the obvious truth. Margot had been caught. Her legs had strengthened gradually after the final examination, as Fergus had hoped they would, and the natural miracle—the thousandth chance he had spoken about— had come to pass.
But Margot was not glad, not in the way she should have been. She looked guilty and afraid, like a rebellious child discovered in some reprehensible deceit.
Why had she not run to Fergus weeks ago with her good news?
Suddenly Alison knew the answer to that. It was because Margot’s crippled state was the greatest hold she had on her brother-in-law.
Aghast, she could scarcely believe the truth.
“Why are you standing there staring at me?” Margot cried. “Why don’t you go? Why don’t you get out before Fergus has to tell you to go?”
“Because I’m needed here.” Alison’s voice was curiously calm.
“And because you mean to run to Fergus with what you’ve just seen!” Margot accused her a little wildly. “Well, it won’t do you any good!” Suddenly she was in tears, the lovely face ravaged with grief. “Don’t tell Fergus,” she begged. “Don’t tell him till I can go to him properly the woman he loves and wants to marry! It will take weeks yet—months, perhaps—before I can walk without this dragging limp. I can’t bear to go to him like this. You understand? You must understand! I want to get up and walk straight into his arms!”
Alison was far too disturbed to see the watchfulness in the tear-filled eyes, too pitying to detect a certain hardness in the beseeching voice.
“I know how you must feel,” she said gently, “and I have no right to tell Fergus anything you don’t want him to know, Margot. But don’t take too long in going to him with your news. If he loves you he can bear to wait.”
Margot drew in a deep breath that might have been a sigh of relief.
“Don’t imagine this gives you a free pass to Monkdyke,” she said unkindly. “When I’m completely strong again I shall have my own friends here.” Her eyes glittered. “It will all be just as it was before my husband died. Monkdyke will be full of people and Garrisdale will come back to life.”
Alison thought of the children, knowing quite well what Margot meant. Monkdyke was the Dower House and had been used in the past to accommodate any overflow of guests from Garrisdale, but the great house of the island was where Margot intended to live and hold court again when she finally married her brother-in-law.
For that reason, when it came to the point, she might even accept Andrew, because, no matter in what way she cared to look at the situation, her son was Blair of Heimra, but the other children would have to go.
Was Fergus already prepared to accept such a terrible sacrifice, she wondered, or had Margot still to force the issue upon him?
She could not bear to think of his dilemma, and so she turned away without a word.
“Remember, you’ve given me your promise!” Margot called after her as she crossed the sand.
Blindly Alison stumbled over the rocks, reaching the Strand as Kirsty approached it from the direction of the moor road with Fergus’ small “colony” at her heels. Some of the children carried butterfly nets, which they had used to chase the lovely, gaudy insects, but there was little evidence of any captures.
“They always let them away again,” Kirsty explained when she mentioned the fact. “Handicapped children are amazingly gentle and kind.”
Alison knew how true that was. For the one child who took a sadistic delight in wanton destruction, there were a dozen others who would have wept at the sight of an injured bird.
Andrew came to put his hand confidently in hers.
“We’ve been to the caves,
” he explained, “to see the babies. The seal babies,” he rushed on when she did not appear to understand. “Their mothers feed them and hug them tight. They do it with their fins!”
He was wide-eyed with wonder, and Alison’s voice was not quite steady when she asked:
"Are you sure it’s safe to go to the caves? They’re rather far away, you know, and if it was stormy it might be dangerous down there on the rocks at the north end of the island.”
“Uncle Fergus goes,” Andrew protested. “The seals don’t mind him. They don’t mind anyone if you keep very still and don’t frighten them. The babies,” he added dreamily, “are all white, and they have big, big eyes!”
Alison had always longed to see the newly-born seal pups, but she could not ask Fergus to take her to the caves now. They were so close to the spot where they had stood together that first day on the headland and she had recognized her love for him.
“I’ve gathered some shells,” she said. “They’re mostly all one colour. Would you like to take them into the workroom for me?”
Eagerly he grasped the head-scarf.
“Uncle Fergus says I’m to make you a bracelet of the little purple ones,” he declared. “He says they’re your colour.”
Pain stabbed in Alison’s heart with an almost physical intensity. She had not expected Fergus to take an interest in what suited her, or even to think of a present for her.
“I would love a bracelet, Andrew,” she said. “Do you think we have enough shells there?”
He shook his head.
“I’ll need some more,” he decided. “But I can easily get them myself.”
“Well, be careful, won’t you?” she cautioned. “They’re quite easy to find if you walk along the high-water mark after the tide has gone out.”
They were easier to find, too, in Margot’s hidden bay beyond its sheltering screen of rocks, but she could not tell him that.
CHAPTER TEN
DURING the next few days the secret she shared with Margot began to disturb Alison more and more. She felt her deception very strongly, and when, finally, the strapping came off her injured ribs and she felt free and well again, no other course seemed to remain open to her but to return to the mainland at once.
Ronald was out of danger now, although he could not walk far. His arm was still not responding to massage, so it looked as if Fergus might advise their return to Glasgow for their joint benefit as well as his own.
He stood with a piece of the discarded strapping in his hand for several minutes after he had taken it off, looking at it thoughtfully.
“It has served its purpose,” he mused. “I suppose you feel—completely free now?”
Free to go, did he mean?
“It’s a great relief to have it off,” Alison admitted, tidying away the remaining straps. “You’ve done a good job, doctor!” she tried to say lightly.
“I thought you might have wanted to keep a piece as a souvenir,” he smiled, tossing the fragments into the wastepaper basket under his surgery desk.
“Of Heimra?” Her eyes were suddenly remote. “I don’t think I shall need such a tangible reminder,” she confessed.
“I always think that’s rather a pity,” he said, his fingers closing over something in the pocket of his white coat. “Children always like to offer some tangible gift, for instance,” he added. “Andrew was quite emphatic about it, in fact.” He pulled a narrow, clumsily-fashioned bracelet from his pocket. “He made this for you, but he said the idea had been mine. I must have planted the fertile suggestion in his mind some time ago.”
The bracelet was made of shells, the delicate lilac ones she had gathered in her head-scarf that afternoon before she had stumbled on Monkdyke’s secret. She noticed that they were interspersed with a rarer, darker species which she had not seen before, and turned to Fergus for an explanation.
“It’s lovely!” she exclaimed. “But where did you find the dark ones?”
“They were some my mother collected a long time ago. They belong on Heimra Mhor.”
“I wonder why Andrew asked you to give it to me,” she said.
“Sometimes a child’s reasons are best known to himself,” he said slowly. “They think ‘deep, deep thoughts’ more often than we suspect.”
She held out her hand and he clasped the bracelet round her wrist.
She could not express her emotions. There were no words to tell him what this gift meant to her and how often she would look at it in the years to come. For it was, after all, a farewell gift. He expected her to go quite soon.
As if her thoughts had pulled at his, their eyes met and held, and then, very briefly, he bent and kissed her on the lips.
“Be happy, Alison,” he said roughly. “It’s the sort of gift I would most like to give you.”
She turned away, unable to answer him, unable to stem the tears which gathered so humiliatingly in her eyes.
“Now that the strapping is off and your arm is usable again you’ll want to report back to the hospital,” he suggested. “I think,” he added after a pause, “that if we are very lucky, I might be able to send Gowrie back with you for a first course of radiotherapy.”
He expected her to be grateful for that, and so she was. She was more than grateful for all he had done, and it could not matter to him that she was not in love with Ronald. He had not asked her that.
“I ought to go,” she agreed, “quite soon.”
His kiss still burned against her lips, something to take away with her, after all, that was not tangible. Why had he kissed her? Why had he added that memory to the many others which would sear across her lonely heart in the days to come?
“Yes.” The single, clipped affirmative dropped into the tense silence between them.
“There’s a plane in three days’ time,” he offered.
“Can you arrange for me to go with it?” she asked.
“Yes. That should be about the easiest part.”
They stood for a fraction of a second longer, as if uncertain what they should say next, and then he turned back to his desk and she felt dismissed.
Unable to repress her sorrow, she sought the comfort of the sea, walking a long way across the Silver Strand and only returning when some of the pain had gone.
Whether Ronald Gowrie would be well enough to accompany her or not did not matter, but she supposed he would not want to remain indefinitely on Heimra.
Alison had no fears about Ronald’s future. He might never fly again, that was true, but in spite of his cynicism where life was concerned, he would pick up the threads of living and weave a new, gay pattern for himself out of what was left. And in it he might even include love.
Subconsciously she found herself thinking about Isobel Pollock and wondering. Was “Polly” the answer to the future as far as Ronald was concerned?
She found them together in the garden when she returned to Garrisdale. It was Ronald’s first venture out of doors, and, although he was thin and very shaky on his legs, he was enjoying every minute of it, looking up at the blue sky as if it might be only a matter of time before he would conquer it again.
“This is something!” he grinned appreciatively as Alison came down the rough stone steps into the sheltered rose garden where they sat. “I’ve had my windows open all the time but one can’t really breathe in a room. You have to see space to get your lungs really full of air. Where have you been?” he demanded abruptly.
“Oh—walking beside the sea.”
“Saying goodbye?” He looked at her oddly. “Blair thinks we can both make the journey back to the mainland on Friday. He believes I should have some sort of electrical treatment for my arm.”
“It’s time you had it,” Alison tried to agree lightly. “I’ll come and visit you in hospital, if you like,” she offered.
He did not answer that, and Isobel said that it was time they went back to the house. He stood up, determined to walk without her assistance, but at the steps she drew his hand very firmly through her cro
oked arm.
“One move at a time!” she reminded him gently. “You can’t do everything at once.”
The following morning, however, found him down at the jetty where Sandy was busy servicing the launch.
“Where are you going?” he asked the old sailor.
Sandy looked up from under his red brows to smile at him. “I thought of taking a wee dander round the island,” he admitted, “just to see how the engine is working. It wouldn’t be taking more than an hour, I would say.”
“Would you be needing company, Sandy?” Ronald asked.
“I could be doing with a hand with the tiller,” the old man decided, sucking reflectively at his empty pipe. “That is if you’ve not forgotten the art since you’ve left Heimra.”
“You never forget it, Sandy,” he said as he put a leg carefully over the gunwale and heaved himself aboard.
“Maybe Mr. Blair wouldn’t be approving of me taking you,” Sandy suggested as an afterthought. They were away from the jetty now and heading towards Coirestruan. “But he didn’t say that you weren’t to get the feeling of the sea back into your bones, did he?”
“He gave me carte blanche, Sandy. I was to do what I liked, within reason.”
Sandy pressed the engine into full throttle.
Coirestruan was running fast, but they were going with the tide, and soon they were rounding the headland to Rudha-nan-Gael—the Point of the Stranger.
“The seals are late this year,” Sandy observed. “Late at the breeding grounds. You can see the little fellows over there in their white coats.” He pointed with the stem of his pipe to the great slabs of smooth grey rock beneath the Point. “You’ll remember them on Heimra Mhor when you were a lad? Your mother used to lose you for hours, but always knew where to find you in the end. The seals seemed to have a fascination for you even more than they had for the other lads about the shore. Once,” he mused, “I took you off the Pladda island when the tide had caught you, but you’ll not be remembering that. It was a long time ago.”
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