Flowers in the Rain & Other Stories (8 page)

“Doesn’t anybody come to stay any more?” It was sad to think of the big house so bleak.

“Well, it wouldn’t work, would it? Mary Reekie told me the one person Mrs. Farquhar wanted to see was Rory, and she told the minister, too, and he wrote to Rory, but Rory’s in America and I don’t know if there was ever any reply to the letter.”

Rory. Mrs. Farquhar’s grandson. What had prompted Mrs. McLaren to suddenly come out with his name? I looked at her across the counter and tried to detect some glimmer of unexplained Highland intuition. But her faded eyes remained innocent and met my own with an untroubled gaze. I told myself that she could not guess at the pounding that started up in the region of my heart at the very mention of his name. Rory Farquhar. I had always thought of him as Rory, and will write of him that way, but in fact his name was spelt, with Gaelic inconsistence, R-u-a-r-a-i-d-h.

I fell in love with Rory, one remembered sunny spring, when I was sixteen and he was twenty. I had never been in love before and it had the effect of making me, not dreamy, but intensely perceptive; so that objects, previously unnoticed, became beautiful; leaves and trees, flowers, chairs, dishes, firelight—everything was touched with the magic of a spell-binding novelty, as though I had never known any of these ordinary day-to-day things before.

There were many picnics that spring, and swimming in the loch and tennis parties, but the best was the idleness, the casual getting to know each other. Lying on the lawn in front of the Big House, watching some person practising his casting, with a scrap of sheep wool instead of a fly to weight the line. Or walking down to the farm in the evenings to fetch the milk, or helping the farmer’s wife to bottle-feed the abandoned lamb who lived by her kitchen fireside.

At the end of those holidays Mrs. Farquhar arranged a little party. We cleared the old billiard-room of furniture and put on the record-player, and danced reels. And Rory wore his kilt and an old khaki shirt that had belonged to his father, and showed me the steps and spun me till I was breathless. It was at the end of that evening that he kissed me, but it didn’t do much good because he was going back to London the next morning, and I could never be sure if it was a kiss of affection or a kiss of goodbye.

After he went, I lived in a fantasy world of getting letters and phone calls from him, and having him realize that he could not live without me. But all that happened was that he started working in London, with his father’s firm, and after that he did not come back to Lachlan for Easter. If he did take a few days off in the spring, Mrs. Farquhar told me that he was going skiing, and I imagined rich and elegant girls in dashing ski-clothes and felt sick with jealousy.

Once I stole a photograph of Rory out of an old album I found in a bookcase in Mrs. Farquhar’s library. It had come loose and fallen out of the shabby pages, so it wasn’t really stealing. I picked it up and put it in my pocket and later between the pages of my diary. I always kept it, although I never saw Rory again, and since my father died and we stopped coming to Lachlan, I had heard no news of him.

And now Mrs. McLaren had said his name, and I remembered that young Rory, with his worn kilt and his brown face and dark hair.

I said, “What’s he doing in America?”

“Oh, some business or other, in New York.
His
father died too, you know. I think that was the start of Mrs. Farquhar getting so ill. She never lost heart, but she aged a lot.”

“I expect Rory’s a married man now, with a string of children.”

“No, no. Rory never married.”

I said, lying, “I’d forgotten about Rory.”

“Ah, you’ll have other things to think about with your nursing and your fine job.”

We talked a little longer, and then I bought some chocolate from her and said goodbye and went out of the shop and set off in the direction of the big house. I tore the paper from the chocolate and bit off a chunk. Eaten thus, in the open air, it tasted just the way it used to.

I’ll just go and see,
I told myself.
I’ll just go and ring at the door, and if the nurse sends me packing, it won’t matter.

A woman was coming towards me down the street, carrying a shopping basket and dressed in the countrywoman’s uniform of headscarf, tweed skirt, and sleeveless quilted waistcoat in that horrible sludgy green colour.

I can’t come all this way and not just try.

She stopped. “Lavinia.”

I stopped, too. It was certainly a day for being recognized. My heart sank. “Hello, Mrs. Fellows.”

I
would
meet her. Stella Fellows, the one woman in the village my mother could never bring herself to like. She and her husband, who had been a lawyer, had built themselves a house in Lachlan after his retirement and had settled permanently. He was a manic fisherman and always said “Tight Lines” instead of “Cheers” when he took a drink, and she was enormously efficient and spent most of her time trying to dragoon the village ladies into attending unsuitable Arts Council lectures, or involving them in money-making events for charity. The village ladies were polite and charming, but despite Stella Fellows’s enthusiasm, the events were never very lucrative. She could never think why, and we were all far too kind to tell her.

“What a surprise! I couldn’t believe it was you. What on earth are you doing here?”

I told her, as I had told Mrs. McLaren.

“But my dear, you must come and see us. Lionel would love to have a glimpse of you.”
Tight Lines.
“Anyway, he’s bored stiff today. He was meant to be fishing, but it was called off.”

“It … it’s very kind of you, but actually I’m on my way to see Mrs. Farquhar.”

“Mrs. Farquhar!” Her voice rose an octave. “But hasn’t anybody told you? She’s dying.”

I could have hit her.

“Had this appalling stroke a couple of months ago. My dear, nurses day and night. It’s no good going to see her, she just lies like a log. We do what we can, of course, but I’m afraid social visiting is just a waste of time. So sad, when you remember how wonderful she was, and how much she’s always done for the village. But of course, now that the house is no longer a free meal-ticket, none of her so-called friends come near her. And as for her family”—her mouth buttoned—“I could kill that Rory. There he is, sitting in New York, and he’s never been to see her. You’d think, when he’ll obviously inherit the place…”

I couldn’t bear to listen to any person talking about Rory, and certainly not Stella Fellows.

I said, “I am sorry. I really must be on my way. I haven’t much time before the last bus back to Relkirk.”

“You’re going to the Big House, then?” She made it sound as though I was deliberately defying her.

“Yes. I am.”

“Oh, all right. But if you have a moment to spare before you do catch the bus, be sure to pop in…”

“Of course.” I thought of their modern house, with the picture window framing the rain, and the switch-on logs in the grate. “So kind…”

“Lionel will give you a snifter…”

I backed away from her, and then turned and left her standing there, gazing after me as though I were mad. Which I probably was.

I wouldn’t think about Rory, sitting in New York. If he hadn’t come home, if he hadn’t answered the minister’s letter, there was probably some very good reason. I walked, in long, warming strides, on up the hill; along the narrow lane that led to the gates of the Big House. I came to them, and they loomed before me, standing open, and I did not walk up the drive, but took the short cut through the wild garden, through the sodden drifts of daffodils. They were still in bud, closed against the rain, their trumpets unopened. I went beneath the trees and opened the tall gate in the deer fence. Beyond lay the rough grass, the azaleas and the hybrid rhododendrons, and then the lawn, sloping up to the gravel terrace in front of the house.

Through the mist, the house took shape. The old, ugly red stone house with the conservatory tacked on to one side and the pepper-pot turret over the front door. The outer door stood open and I went up the slope of the grass, crossed the gravel, went into the porch and rang the bell. Then, with the jangling of the bell still sounding from the back regions, I opened the inner glass door and let myself in.

It was very quiet. Very tidy. No flowers stood upon the table in the hall; no dogs barked; no children’s voices broke the quiet. There was the smell of pine and polish, and as well, a faint aura of disinfectant, nursing, hospitals, so familiar to me that I noticed it at once. I went into the centre of the hall and pulled off my hat. I looked up at the empty staircase. I said, not wanting to call too loudly, “Is anyone around?”

Out of the silence came footsteps along the upper passage. Not the quick, rubber-heeled tread of a professional nurse, but heavy, masculine footsteps. Sandy Reekie, I decided, upstairs to fill the log baskets for the invalid’s fire. I waited.

The footsteps started downstairs. Reached the half-landing and stopped. He was silhouetted against the light of the stair window. Not Sandy Reekie, whom I remembered as wiry and stooped, but a tall man, dressed in a kilt and a thick sweater.

“Who is it?” he asked, and then he saw me, my face tilted up to his. Our eyes met. There was a long silence. Then, for the third time that day, someone said my name. “Lavinia.”

And I simply replied, “Rory.”

He came on down the stairs, his hand trailing on the banister. He crossed the hall and took my hand.

“I don’t believe it,” he said, and then he kissed my cheek.

“I don’t believe it, either. Everybody tells me you’re in New York.”

“I flew over a couple of nights ago. I’ve been here a day.”

“How is your grandmother?”

“She’s dying.” But he didn’t say it the way Stella Fellows had said it. He made it sound rather peaceful and nice, as though he were telling me that Mrs. Farquhar was nearly asleep.

I said, “I came to see her.”

“Where from? Where have you come from?”

“Relkirk. I’m working there, nursing for a month. I got a day off. I thought I’d come to Lachlan. My mother told me Mrs. Farquhar had been ill, but I thought perhaps she would be getting better.”

“There are two nurses with her, around the clock. But the day nurse wanted to go and do some shopping in Relkirk, so I lent her the car and said I’d watch out for my grandmother.” He paused, hesitating, and then said, “There’s a fire on in the sitting-room. Let’s go there. It’ll be more cheerful. Besides, you’re wet through.”

It was more cheerful. He put logs onto the fire and the flames crackled up. I pulled off my wet anorak and warmed my swollen, scarlet hands at the blaze. He said, “Tell me about you all,” so I told him, and by the time I had finished with all the family news, I was truly warm again, and the clock on the mantel-piece struck four, so he left me by the fire and went off to put the kettle on for a cup of tea. I sat by the fire, very cosy and happy, and waited for him. When he returned, with a tray and cups and a teapot and the heel of a gingerbread he had found in a tin, I said, “And what about you? I’ve told you all about our family. Now you’ve got to tell me about you.”

“Not much to tell, really. Worked with my father for a bit, and then when he died, I went out and joined the American office. I was in San Francisco when my grandmother became so ill. That was why I’ve been so long in getting back.”

“You had a letter from the minister.”

I was pouring tea. He sat in an armchair and watched me, grinning. “Lachlan grape-vine never gets anything wrong. Who told you that?”

“Mrs. McLaren in the shop, and then Mrs. Fellows.”

“That woman! She’s been more trouble than she’s worth. Endlessly telephoning and rubbing the nurses up the wrong way, organizing everybody, telling the Reekies what they ought to be doing. A nightmare.”

“She told me that Mrs. Farquhar was lying like a log and there was no point in coming to see her.”

“That’s just because she hasn’t been allowed near the house, and she’s furiously jealous if anybody else is.”

“I’m sure she means well. At least that’s what my mother always used to say about her. Go on about America.”

“Well, anyway, I had a letter from the minister. But I didn’t get it until I returned to New York. I had a couple of days’ work to get through, and then I lit out and came home. I’ve only got two or three days’ leave and then I’ve got to get back again. I’ll hate going, but I have to. I feel torn in half, with my loyalties pulled in two totally different directions. That’s the worst of being the only, nearest, surviving relative.”

“And if she … when she dies … what will happen to the house?”

“It’ll come to me. And how fortunate I shall be. And what the hell am I going to do with it?”

“You could stop being a highly powered businessman and retire to the country and take up farming.”

“Perhaps I’d end up like Lionel Fellows, saying ‘Tight Lines’ every time I took a drink.”

I considered this. “No. I don’t think you would.”

He grinned again. “And farming is just about the most highly powered business that’s going these days. I’d have to go back to college, start at the bottom, learn a whole new trade.”

“Lots of people do that. You could go to Cirencester. Take what they call the Gin-and-Tonic course. That’s what they mean by the course for mature students, retired army officers, those sort of people.”

“How do you know so much about it?”

“My mother lives no more than five miles from Cirencester.”

He laughed, and all at once looked just as young as I had remembered him. “And then I should be near you all again. That’s just about the biggest carrot you could dangle in front of this old donkey. I shall have to think seriously about it.” And then he became grave again. “I would rather hold on to this place than anything else in the world. What good times we used to have. What good times we could have again. Remember walking down for the milk? And how you fed the lamb from a bottle?”

“I was remembering that.”

“And the evenings when we danced reels…”

*   *   *

We talked on, sharing memories, until the clock struck five. I could not believe the hour had passed so swiftly. I laid down my empty teacup and got to my feet. “Rory, I must go, or I’ll miss my bus.”