Sally (36 page)

‘What I am saying is, spots have been my downfall and my salvation.'

She sees that Richard looks just a fraction confused and can feel him working hard to keep abreast of her drift.

Quick, quick! Restore him.

She looks him boldly in the eye. ‘You see Richie, I thought I had none, so I painted some myself and I wore them with aplomb. Or so I thought. And then, of course, I woke to find myself covered by others uninvited.' Richard's eyebrows twitch and cross.

‘Chicken?' hints Sally, gesturing at her face.

‘Ah ha!' Richard says triumphantly. She nods and beams at him.

‘You see, these awful itchy spots proved to me how superficial my painted ones were. I have realized that beneath them both – the chicken and the painted – are my true spots; those I was born with, those I had spurned, those that define me as, well, Me.'

Clasping Richard's hand with both of hers, she summons her will and confides: ‘A leopard can't change her spots, we all know that, yet I tried to change mine. I wanted to obscure them from view beneath a veil of contrived subterfuge. But now, I should like to show you them. If you would like? If I may?'

They gaze out over the loch. The rain has caused an eerie vapour to whisper along its surface and the hills are shrouded by the mist. Richard turns slowly towards her and summons her eyes away from the water. She raises them to meet his. She is crystal clear.

‘Sal,' he starts with an affectionate tap to her nose, ‘at first, I was utterly blinded by your so-called painted spots. But, if truth be told, it didn't take long before I was utterly blind
to
them and could see way beneath them – that veil was pretty transparent and what was beneath was infinitely more beautiful.' He pauses. Her gaze has been unflinching and he is heartened.

‘Remember how, once the leopard was accustomed to his spots, his life was good?'

Sally nods, a little forlornly. Richard takes his time, treading carefully, rather enjoying it.

‘Well then!' he declares.

‘Well
what
?' she worries, scouring his face.

Richard lets it lie for a moment.

And why not, Richard? The girl's led you a merry dance.

‘Well then,' he says with a big grin, ‘spots and all, you'll do for me!'

If Sally could have said ‘sorry' in all the languages of the world, she would have done so, again and again.

Richard settled for just the one which was delivered with conviction and honesty before she kissed him.

‘I'll never do it again, Best Beloved. I am quite content as I am.'

Richard returned Sally to Celia a different woman. Only her leg was broken, her spirit was whole again. While Sally slept in the next room by the fire, he declared Celia had restored his girl back to him and thanked her. Celia was quite taken aback.

‘It wasn't me, but you!' she gasped.

Richard shook his head gravely. ‘If she hadn't come here, if you hadn't scolded her, if she hadn't walked and broken her leg, we would still be at an impasse.'

Celia refused to agree and they stood deadlocked, both too well-mannered to take any personal credit for Sally's salvation. Both felt indebted to the impact the other had on Sally. And yet both had been integral to her redemption: Celia with her directness, Richard his tact; both for their strength, support and patience.

‘Let us put it down to this old isle, hey? Mull has treated Sally well – in breaking her leg, it has repaired her soul,' Celia concluded.

‘I raise my glass to the Isle of Mull!' proclaimed Richard.

Celia turned to the Aga, hiding a private smile from him.

Taking a glass of whisky to the living-room, they padded around Sally. Swathed in dirndl and enveloped in an old Aran knit of Angus's, she was snuggled deep into the sofa. Her lips were slightly parted and her cheeks were rosy; one hand rested under her chin, the other was pressed between her knees. She was fast asleep, as much a part of the fabric of the sofa as the woollen shawls and hillocks of cushions. Richard and Celia sat down in the armchairs either side of the fire and sipped contemplatively. Every now and then they looked to the sleeping almost-beauty, but before long, the warmth and glow of the embers seduced them away and held them captive. Indeed, only a particularly loud crackle from a spliced branch roused them some time later and they saw it was now quite dark outside.

Still Sally slept.

On the occasional table at Richard's side teetered a pile of books. He browsed over their spines, smiled at
The Just-So Stories
but forsook Kipling, Hardy and Scott, for Burns. Celia beamed at his choice.

Closing his eyes, he caressed its worn leather cover and traced his finger over the embossed lettering. Taking the volume to his nose he breathed deeply, savouring the evocative aroma of well-thumbed pages. He laid the book in his lap, closed. Looking first at Sally, he then regarded Celia and grinned:

Celia clapped her hands and clasped them to her heart, exclaiming, ‘A Burns boy! What joy!'

Sally woke, bleary-eyed and blotched, mumbling, ‘Huh? Hey? What?'

Richard merely shrugged his shoulders at her while directing a conniving wink at Celia.

It is time for Richard and Sally to head home. Into the proverbial sunset? Would you really have wanted it any other way?

Celia will miss them both enormously but sends them on their way with a tin of home-made shortbread and a silent wish.

Sally and Richard receive it unconsciously and bid her farewell with a firm promise to return in the summer. Sally feels quite tearful to be going but both Richard and Celia remind her that it is Sunday and there is school tomorrow. She senses she is leaving Mull to embark on the rest of her life and feels a little timid. But Mull will stay as it is, hugging the coastline of western Scotland, its treasures guaranteed. It is time for Sally to take home all she has discovered there. She knows now that mundanity and romance can happily co-exist but to put it into practice she must return home, to Highgate and school and the patch of rising damp in the bathroom.

With a chorus of parps and their hands reaching high out of the windows, Richard and Sal tootle away from the cottage and Celia soon becomes just another vague shape in the rear-view mirror.

Part of the heather, part of the cottage. Part of the land
, thinks Sally.

They take a worthwhile detour to Glencoe and then follow the road to the Grampian mountains.

‘It's going too quickly!' Sally rues when the shores of Loch Lomond arrive so soon after Crianlarich.

‘Want to stop?' asks Richard.

‘Would you mind?'

Richard parks as near to the shore as he can and helps Sally hobble to the water's edge. In she dips her hand and waits until her joints ache. She holds her fingers aloft and sees how the hazy sun is caught in the droplets the moment before they fall. Richard allows her the ritual, the space, but she gives him her wet hand and touches his lips so that they glisten.

They are now but a mile or two further down the road because the promise of a warming Scotch at a pretty pub was too hard to resist. The room is quite empty, wonderfully cosy but bright. They sip away beside the fire.

‘Anything else I can get you people?' asks the landlord.

Richard and Sally shake their heads with a smile. The landlord excuses himself. Richard and Sally chat away happily. He asks her if she feels ready for school. Yes, she says, she does. She asks him if they will make it home in time for an early night. Oh yes, he assures her, they will. Briefly excusing her actions, Sally reaches over to a neighbouring table for a clean knife. She pokes it down the side of her plaster cast and her eyes close in bliss at the sudden coolness of the steel.

‘Gracious, Sal,' says Richard, ‘it's quite bare!'

They regard the pristine plaster of Paris, mostly smooth but dented a little, here and there. ‘We can't have that!' he cries as he searches his jacket pockets for a pen. ‘Damn!' he says.

‘Hold on, I may have one,' says Sally as she rummages through her bag. ‘Damn,' she says.

Richard goes over to the bar, but despite his strong ‘Hello?' there is no sign of the landlord. Undeterred, he leans right over in his quest until his feet are quite off the ground. Sally giggles behind her hand. With a glance to his left and to his right, he nips under the counter and searches furtively among the pint pots and peanuts.

‘Aha!' he exclaims, holding his trophy aloft. ‘It won't be an oil painting,' he explains, brandishing a very thick marker pen, ‘but it'll do.'

Here is Richard, sitting on a stool opposite Sally. He lifts her leg on to his lap and looks at her face which glows and glints. He thinks her quite perfect. Pen poised, he ponders awhile.

Sally waits.

Richard is ready.

He writes.

Two words. Thick black. Permanent marker. Permanent.

WILL YOU?

As she looks at the shape of the letters which she reads in an instant but has now forgotten, she sees a cine film of her life flash across the white screen of her plaster cast. Childhood, youth, adolescence, young womanhood, now. Here she is and the present tells her all about her future. Here she is and she twists her head this way and that, reading it from every angle though it was quite legible, as it was, upside down.

She looks at Richard gravely and eases her leg off his lap, unwittingly clonking his shin but he neither winces nor does she even notice. Leaning forward, she puts her hand on his face. Her fingers lie on his cheek, her thumb rests over the dimple in his chin. His day-old stubble feels rather nice under her skin, like a coarse velvet. There is no need to clear her throat for it is as clear as her mind and as strong as her soul.

‘Oh, yes,' she says, ‘I will.'

‘S
he's back! She's back.'

‘Have you seen her?'

‘She's broken her
leg
!'

‘Wow! Is it in plaster?'

‘Of course, stupid.'

‘Has she got crutches?'

‘Yup.'

‘Poor old Miss Lomax.'

‘Yeah, but at least she's back.'

‘Too right! No more killer lessons with that Mrs Westford.'

‘Dragon!'

‘Broomstick rider!'

‘Hurray for Miss Lomax!'

‘Shush! She's coming!'

‘Hullo, Class Five. It's lovely to see you all, at long last.'

‘Not half as nice as it is for us to see you!'

‘Oh, Marcus, what are you after? Late with your homework?'

Snigger, chuckle. She's back.

Miss Lomax launched into her lessons with gusto and ease. The children were delighted to have her back again. She instigated a post-mortem of sorts and Marcus and Rajiv filled her in on the missing details of her fall.

‘We were so worried,' frowned Marcus.

‘Some of us even cried,' confided Alice.

‘I had to summon the ambulance,' Rajiv informed her.

Miss Lomax thanked each member of her class and answered their probing questions about chicken pox and breaking a leg.

‘I mean, did you actually hear it go
snap
?' gawped Marsha who had chicken pox last summer but had never broken a bone.

‘Oh, yes!'

Thirty gasps of approval filled the room. ‘Well,' Miss Lomax clarified, ‘it wasn't so much a snap as a hollow crack. Very loud.'

The children went: ‘Ooh!'

Miss Lomax told them how she waited and waited and was careful not to panic, to keep warm and to sip tea.

‘Why the tea?' asked Marcus.

‘I'm not really sure, because I wasn't thirsty. It just seemed a sensible thing to do – and I knew I had to keep my wits about me. Anyway, how often have you heard your mummies or grandmas say “have a nice cuppa tea” when you're upset?'

‘How did they get the ambulance to you?' asked Rajiv with a head full of helicopters, mountain rescue teams and St Bernard dogs with brandy barrels on their collars.

‘Two wonderful women happened to come across me, Mary and Isla – I'd seen them earlier in the day – walking in the wilds wearing skirts, I ask you! Well, Isla sat with me and Mary went for help. There was a farm nearby and a big, burly chap – rather like you Sam! – called Fraser drove a tractor and trailer as near as he could. He then gave me a fireman's lift over to it and they trundled me back to the farm on the back of the trailer. An ambulance picked me up from there and I was plastered up and back at my aunt's two hours later. Here, would you like to see my X-rays?'

What a question! The children could not leave their desks fast enough.

X-rays! A broken leg! Wow!

‘Cor!' said Marcus.

‘Blimey!' said Rajiv.