A Step So Grave

by Catriona McPherson

  5

  It was falling heavily, straight down in intricate flakes the size of saucers, before we were back through the labyrinth, across the terrace and in at a side door.

  Lady Love shook herself like a dog, laughing. ‘It’s going to lie, I think,’ she said. Mr Spencer was crossing the hall towards us and she called to him: ‘Have you looked out the front windows, David darling? They do say if it lies on the beach an hour it’ll lie on the land a week. I don’t give much for my party now.’ She gave a mischievous look. ‘Or is it supposed to be a surprise? Well, too bad. I’m going to go and tell Biddy to telephone around and dissuade everyone from making the attempt.’ She said something else, about a bee of yellow that ended in a cough. Gaelic again, I assumed.

  ‘Fat chance,’ said David Spencer when she had skipped up the stairs and away along a corridor. ‘The neighbours will come, by land or sea. She inspires devotion and the most wondrous thing about it is that she doesn’t even know.’

  ‘That is indeed a rare trait in a— person,’ said Hugh. I was sure he had been about to say ‘woman’ until he caught my eye. ‘We have just seen evidence of devotion out in the garden. What a marvel. What a display it must be in blossom and in fruit.’

  ‘Oh, so you’ve met Samuel McReadie, have you?’ said Mr Spencer. We had drifted into a library, where a fire was burning. A large hound of indeterminate breed was slumbering before it. I went over to make its acquaintance. ‘He has good reason to be devoted to Lady Love. To be grateful. Care for anything, old man?’

  Hugh took out his watch and looked at it, then stared out of the window at the incessant snowflakes dashing past and seemed to decide that three o’clock on such a filthy day was late enough. He nodded at the tantalus of whisky.

  ‘Why should Samuel McReadie be especially grateful?’ I said, when they had settled into two armchairs with their drams. I had a cigarette and this darling of a dog to warm my feet and was quite happy. ‘For steady employment, do you mean? Or is it more? Carte blanche with the bulb catalogue?’

  ‘He’s not just a gardener,’ Spencer said. ‘He’s a renowned plant-hunter.’

  ‘He’s that Sam McReadie?’ said Hugh.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Spencer. ‘He has travelled all over Europe and Africa at LL’s bidding and brought back some decent stuff. She went too once or twice, before Lachlan needed her here. But the famous lily was all his own.’

  ‘He mentioned a lily,’ I said. ‘Played it like a trump card.’

  ‘Good grief!’ said Hugh. ‘Agapanthus Mallorium!’

  ‘He’ll be delighted that you’ve heard of it,’ Spencer said. ‘It’s rather obscure, having no particular beauty to add to its rarity, and he has his heart set on bigger fish now.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Hugh.

  ‘A black one,’ Spencer said. ‘A true black lily.’

  ‘The holy grail,’ Hugh said, without any irony. ‘And you think this gardener …?’

  ‘He’s a fine plantsman. It’s the Highland tradition: a lowly birth doesn’t get in the way of learning. In the sciences as in the arts.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Hugh. ‘The Ettrick Shepherd, the excise man …’

  ‘But James Hogg and Robert Burns were lowlanders,’ Spencer put in. ‘Allan Ramsay too. Although Lord Byron was brought up in Aberdeenshire.’

  ‘Gosh,’ I said. ‘I wonder what they made of him.’ Hugh shook his head at me and I affected not to notice. ‘But why,’ I went on, ‘would being sent to darkest Africa to dig up bulbs make one grateful?’

  David Spencer gave me a grave look. ‘Lachlan saved their son’s life in the war,’ he said. I was chastened, of course, but felt a little sulky with it. How was I supposed to know that?

  ‘Their son?’ said Hugh.

  ‘Mrs McReadie is the cook. Daughter of the last cook. She’s lived at Applecross all her days, like Sam too. They have just one son, Roddy, and he was a corporal in the Fusiliers. It was the Somme he got caught in. Lachlan shouldn’t have been anywhere near the front, of course. He was almost forty for one thing and he was a major. But he happened to be on a visit to the trench, boosting morale or something, so the story goes, and there was a push no one had been expecting.’

  Hugh nodded sagely. All I could think was that I was glad Alec Osborne was not here to sit through this boorish rehashing of battle stories. My fellow detective, the other half of Gilver and Osborne, is a good-natured soul but his hard war is still with him. To be fair, Spencer must have discovered Hugh’s own, rather milder, war record over luncheon and so knew there were no dark chasms to avoid. Had Alec been here, no doubt – one soldier to another – Spencer would not have been so plain.

  ‘The way it’s told, a couple of men came back from no-man’s-land, bleeding and broken, one carrying the other, and shrieking that McReadie was lying there awake and unable to move.’

  ‘Shrieking,’ I repeated softly. It seemed a slur on the poor men – or boys, quite possibly – ambushed and terrified.

  ‘My apologies,’ said Spencer. ‘We are supposed to pretend otherwise for our womenfolk, aren’t we? Dandy, I sobbed like a child throughout Arras and I was not the only one.’ I concentrated hard on the dog. Its fur was black and sleek, like velvet loosely dropped over its warm muscles.

  ‘So McReadie’s lying on the field,’ said Hugh. ‘What then?’ I could not have looked at him if God had commanded me. For of course he did pretend that all soldiers were heroes. This was the first of shrieking and sobbing I had ever heard.

  ‘The lad still on his feet made to go back out and fetch McReadie once he dropped off the other one,’ said Spencer. ‘But he was bleeding heavily from one shoulder and an eye and his mates managed to overcome him and keep him in the trench. No one noticed that Lachlan had slipped away. No one knew a thing until he came back. There was an almighty bang closer than ever and a hideous bellow, and young Roddy McReadie came rolling over the sandbags like a dead weight to be followed a minute later by Lachlan, hauling himself by his hands and somersaulting into the trench. He had carried the boy almost all the way before a shell caught his legs. Then he rolled him the last few yards and tipped him in. Bravest thing anyone had ever seen, so the story goes.’

  ‘And for a gardener’s boy,’ I said.

  ‘Indeed,’ said David Spencer.

  ‘Despite the fact that he had a wife and two daughters at home,’ I added.

  Hugh glared at me. ‘A wife and girls safe at home and a boy you’ve known all his life lying out in the shelling? There’s not a soldier born who’d do it differently.’

  ‘And what happened to his hands?’ I said, ignoring Hugh. I am used to being scolded. It runs off me like water by now. ‘Lord Ross’s burnt hands.’

  ‘Young McReadie had been trapped under a plank that had caught alight, perhaps, or a puddle of oil set off by a shell, I’m not sure,’ said Spencer. ‘But Lachlan beat out the flames with his bare hands before he lifted the boy. The lad’s legs are scarred, I believe, but they work. It’s Lach who’s paid the price.’

  We were all silent a moment then. The beautiful dog turned onto its other side to warm a new patch of skin.

  ‘What’s its name?’ I asked, stroking its flank.

  ‘No idea,’ said Spencer. ‘I haven’t met this beast before now.’

  ‘And is young McReadie here at Applecross with his parents?’ said Hugh. He disapproves of my silliness about dogs.

  Spencer gave a bark that might have been laughter. ‘No indeed. Roddy McReadie, if you please, is at Oxford. Balliol. Courtesy of Lady Love.’

  ‘Gosh,’ I said. ‘Although I suppose if one saves a life it makes sense to ensure it’s a life well lived. What’s he reading?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Spencer again. He spoke rather grimly. ‘But I think his Applecross days are over, no matter how much his parents might miss him.’

  I nodded uncertainly. As a mother myself, I think I would be happy to know my son was safe. If he was leading a soaring kind of life to my modest one, I
do not imagine it would trouble me, as long as he wrote regular letters anyway.

  ‘No doubt he’ll be back for the wedding,’ I said.

  David Spencer looked as though he was going to say something more than a conventional remark and I sat forward. But all he did was set his glass down on the table and get to his feet, with a rather ostentatious glance at the clock upon the mantel.

  ‘I hope you’ll excuse me,’ he said. ‘I want to beard Lach while LL is busy. I’ve come all this way to talk to him and I can’t ever catch him without either his wife or that nurse of his.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Hugh. ‘We’re quite content to sit on. Send Donald in, would you though, if you see him on your travels.’

  ‘No need,’ said Spencer, as he left. ‘Here he is.’

  Donald was wandering past the library door with that very specific look upon his face and with that very specific aimless gait. To be a houseguest, especially a male houseguest, in a country house in bad weather when the womenfolk are planning a party is to be more bored than humans were ever meant to be.

  ‘Mother,’ he said. ‘Father. Any idea where Ted’s got to? I’m dying for a game of billiards and he’s vanished.’

  ‘Sit down, Donald,’ said Hugh. ‘We want to talk to you.’

  ‘Sounds ominous,’ Donald said. ‘Have you found something to disapprove of, Father? Might I point out that you’re drinking whisky in the afternoon and Mother is lolling on the floor hugging a dog. If that’s not feeling at home I don’t know what is.’

  ‘I’ve found nothing whatsoever to disapprove of,’ said Hugh.

  ‘I have,’ I said, but Hugh drowned me out.

  ‘I thoroughly approve. But I’m rather in the dark. Of course, I’ll talk man to man with Ross, but I want to talk to you first. You know you’ll inherit Gilverton when I’m gone.’

  Donald had flung himself into an armchair in his usual fashion, but now he straightened up. ‘Hello!’ he said. ‘It’s that time, is it?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ I said. ‘Nothing is announced.’

  Hugh glared at me and I withdrew my gaze and concentrated on the dog instead, who appreciated me. Its ears were the most wondrously silky things I had ever encountered and it groaned with pleasure and thumped its whip of a tail as I rolled them up on top of its head and then let them unfurl again.

  ‘But Gilverton is one thing and this place is something else again. Do you happen to know why it’s earmarked for young Cherry? She doesn’t seem the type to take land stewardship seriously.’

  ‘You divined that from one luncheon she arrived at late, did you?’ I said. Dog’s ears or no, I could not let that pass.

  ‘Whereas your Mallory is clearly a sensible girl.’

  ‘Very sensible,’ Donald said. It was a deathly compliment for a young man to give his betrothed and I wondered for the first time how Donald had come to the current pass. Heretofore, he had been swayed by glamour and giggles.

  ‘Is it your upcoming marriage that’s leaving the way clear for the younger girl?’ Hugh said.

  ‘I don’t know, Father. It never occurred to me to wonder. I’ve got an estate now and another, some distant day in the future, and Applecross is stuffed to the gunnels with Dunnochs and Tibballs. Why would Mallory and I think of squashing in here?’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘There’s such a thing as being too close to one’s family.’

  ‘That’s what I think,’ Donald said. ‘I shall be very happy just to visit a few times a year and perhaps have Lady Love down at Benachally sometimes. Lord Ross doesn’t travel but there’s no reason she couldn’t.’ His face had lit up as he spoke of it.

  ‘Well,’ said Hugh, ‘when Lady Love and Ross move out to the Clachan manse, there will be no need for two of the Tibballs. And as for the other two …’

  ‘They love Applecross,’ said Donald. ‘They adore it. They’ve got their own sheep.’

  ‘I don’t know what weight that’s supposed to bear,’ Hugh said. ‘You have sheep, Donald. I have sheep.’

  ‘No, I don’t mean they’ve got five hundred ewes and followers and a shepherd with a cottage. I mean they’ve got their own little flock of hefted blackface sheep that they shear and dip and drench with their own four hands. Cherry’s in the rota for turning all the sheep back up the hill for the local crofters if they wander.’

  ‘Like Madame de Pompadour and the Sun King,’ I said. ‘How do the crofters take it?’

  ‘Tremendously well,’ said Donald. ‘Mitten tried drying his hay on the fences last year, as they do in Norway, and it was a revelation. Even the oldest and stodgiest crofter had to admit it was efficient.’

  Hugh was nodding. ‘It makes a lot of sense,’ he said. ‘Get the wind through it without it blowing away.’

  ‘Hugh!’ I said. ‘We are not here to talk about drying hay. We are here to decide on the wisdom of an alliance between the Gilvers and the Rosses.’

  Hugh’s mouth dropped open and Donald, after an initial start, burst out laughing. ‘You sound like something from Shakespeare, Mother,’ he said. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘Do you love her?’ I said.

  Hugh shot to his feet and banged down his whisky glass. ‘I just remembered a letter I need to get in the late post,’ he said, hurrying out.

  ‘There’s only one post,’ Donald called after him. ‘And you’ve missed it.’ But Hugh had made his escape and did not return.

  ‘Well?’ I said, when I was certain we were alone. ‘Do you love Mallory Dunnoch?’

  Donald shrugged. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Why wouldn’t I? She’s a good sport and very chummy. Not always sulking and simpering like some girls.’

  ‘She’s quite a bit older than you, darling,’ I said and, to my horror, Donald grew red in the face and stammered as he answered.

  ‘What difference does age make? Who’s to say that the chap must be older than the lady? What would it matter if she were even older? What would it matter if she were forty instead of thirty? What if she were fifty?’

  The dog by my side was looking up at him from under troubled brows, worried by the raised voice.

  ‘Oh Donald,’ I said. ‘Oh darling. She is fifty, isn’t she? But you can’t marry her daughter, just to be near her. It isn’t fair on anyone.’

  Donald stared at me, absolutely aghast. It took two swallows before he was able to speak. ‘Are you talking about Lady Love, Mother? Where did you get such an extraordinary notion?’ He went over to the drinks table and poured himself a goodly measure of whisky. I heard the tantalus neck knock against the rim of the glass. ‘I wish you’d told Father your mad imaginings before you told me,’ he said. ‘Or told Teddy, even. They’d have laughed you out of it and we wouldn’t be having this embarrassing—’

  ‘They think it too,’ I said. ‘Teddy asked your father and me to do something.’

  Donald swung back round to gape at me, as shocked as I had ever seen him. ‘Ted did?’ was all he said, but his face showed that this was the ultimate betrayal, by his lifelong co-conspirator and chum.

  ‘Look,’ I said hurriedly, for I was sure I could hear footsteps approaching. ‘It’s Lady Love’s birthday tomorrow. Don’t say anything to spoil her party. Then we can all go home and your father will write to Lord Ross and you can write to Mallory and the whole episode will be behind us by spring.’

  ‘I can’t do that to Mallory!’

  ‘Better that than what you were planning to do,’ I said. ‘Let the poor girl meet someone who adores her.’

  ‘She’s thirty,’ Donald said. ‘No one has shown up so far.’

  ‘That’s terribly unkind, darling,’ I said. ‘I’m shocked at you for that, I have to say.’

  ‘And I have to say I’m shocked at you, Mother,’ Donald said. ‘You of all people. Lecturing me because I’ve decided airy-fairy love and marriage don’t need to go hand-in-hand.’ The dog by my side was shaking now. It stood up and shivered, its flank bumping against my shoulder.

  ‘How
dare you!’ I said, scrambling to my feet. ‘How dare you speak to me that way.’

  Donald’s eyes had a glint of triumph in them. ‘I notice you don’t ask what I mean,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I—’ I put a hand up to my throat and straightened the neck of my shirt, which had got disarranged from my sprawling. ‘I don’t care what you think you mean. I have not brought you up to be impertinent and unfeeling.’

  ‘No,’ said Donald. ‘You’ve brought me up to be sensible about my domestic arrangements and discreet in affairs of the heart. And now you scold me for learning my lessons well.’

  I tried hard to speak, but my mouth opened and shut like that of a goldfish and no sounds emerged. The dog was growling.

  ‘All I can say is if I get the chance I shall try not to disappoint you any more,’ Donald said.

  ‘What?’ I managed to croak.

  ‘If the vision Cherry and Mitten saw on the moor turns out truly to be a harbinger of death,’ he said. ‘If she should suddenly be widowed, perhaps I shall follow my heart. As you suggest.’ I blinked in astonishment. Donald laughed. ‘I don’t mean it,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe in any of that nonsense.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ I said, trying very hard not to think about the black crow ousting the doves from their cote. ‘I don’t believe that you meant a single word you just said and I am willing to disregard it. Let’s just be good guests until Friday morning and we shall discuss this when we get home.’

  Before he had a chance to answer me, whether in agreement or in more of this most uncharacteristic belligerence, a gasp from the open doorway hooked my attention away.

  It was Cherry, standing there framed in the light from the hall, staring – or so I thought – right at me. She had the cat Ursus in her arms.

  ‘Did you bring that with you?’ she said. ‘Is it yours?’