September (1990) (53 page)

He did this. "A present for me?" He tried to imagine what on earth his sister had brought back for him. He hoped not a gold watch, a cigar cutter, nor a tie-pin, none of which he would use. What he really needed was a new cartridge belt. . . .

Isobel finished drying herself, pulled off the bath
-
cap, shook out her hair, reached for her silk dressing
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gown, knotted the sash around her waist. "Come and look." He pulled himself off the lavatory and followed her through to their bedroom. "There."

It was all laid out on the bed. Tartan trews, a new white shirt still in its cellophane wrapper, black satin cummerbund, and his father's remembered green velvet smoking jacket, which Archie hadn't set eyes on since the old man died.

"Where did that come from?"

"It's been in the attic, in moth-balls. I hung it over the bath to get the wrinkles out. And the trews and the shirt are from Pandora. And I've polished your evening shoes."

He gaped. "But what's all this for?"

"Friday night, you goop. When I told Pandora yo
u w
ouldn't wear your kilt, and you'd go to Verena's party in a dinner jacket, she was horrified. She said you'd look like a part-time waiter. So we visited Mr. Pittendriech and he helped us choose these." She held up the trews. "Aren't they heaven? Oh, do try it all on, Archie, I can't wait to see how you look."

The last thing Archie wanted to do, at this particular moment, was to try on a lot of new clothes, but Isobel seemed so excited that he hadn't the heart to refuse her. And so he put his glass down on her dressing-table and obediently began to shed his old tweeds.

"Leave your shirt on. We don't want to open the new one in case you get it dirty. Take off your brogues and those smelly old stockings. Now . . ."

With her help, he pulled on the new trousers. Isobel dealt with zips and buttons, tucking in the tails of his blue country shirt and generally fussing around as if she were dressing a child for a tea-party. She fixed the cummerbund, laced his evening shoes for him, held out the velvet smoking jacket. He put his arms into the silk
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lined sleeves, and she turned him around and did up the frogged fastenings.

"Now." She smoothed his hair with her hands. "Go and look in the mirror."

For some reason, he felt like an idiot. His stump ached and he yearned for a hot bath, but he limped obediently over to Isobel's wardrobe, where her full
-
length mirror was set in the centre panel. Observing himself in mirrors was not his favourite occupation, because his reflection nowadays seemed such a travesty of his former handsome self, so thin and grey had he become, so graceless in his shabby clothes, so awkward with his lumbering, hated aluminium leg.

Even now, with Isobel's proud eyes upon him, it took some effort actually to face himself. But he did so, and it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be. It wasn't bad at all. He looked all right. Great, in fact. The trews, long and slim-legged, immaculately cut and sharpl
y c
reased, had a crisp and almost military dash about them. And the marvellously rich and lustrous velvet of the jacket provided exactly the right touch of worn and gentlemanly elegance, the faded green picking up the thread of green in the tartan.

Isobel had smoothed his hair, but now he smoothed it again, for himself; turned to see other aspects of his reflected finery. Undid the jacket to admire the satiny sheen of the cummerbund, sleek around his skinny middle. Did the jacket up again. Caught his own eye and smiled wryly, seeing himself preen like a bloody peacock.

He turned to his wife. "What do you think?"

"You look amazing."

He held out his arms. "Lady Balmerino, will you waltz with me?"

She came to him, and he held her close, his cheek resting on the top of her head, the way they used to dance long ago, smooching in night-clubs. Through the thin silk of her gown his hands felt her skin, still warm from the bath-water, the curve of her hips, her neat waist. Her breasts, soft, unrestricted, pressed against him, and she smelt sweetly of soap.

They shifted gently from foot to foot, rocking in each others' arms, dancing, as best they could, to music which only the two of them could hear.

He said, "Have you, at this moment, got anything pressing that you have to go and do?"

"Not that I can think of."

"No dinner to cook, no dog to feed, no bird to pluck, no border to weed?"

"No."

He pressed a kiss on her hair. "Then come to bed with me."

She was still, but Archie's hand moved on, stroking her back. After a little, she drew away from him, looked up into his face, and he saw that her deep-blue eyes were bright with unshed tears.

"Archie . . ."

"Please."

"The others?"

"All occupied. We'll lock the door. Hang up a 'Do Not Disturb' sign."

"But ... the nightmare?"

"Nightmares are for children. We are too old to allow dreams to stop us loving each other."

"You are different." She frowned, her sweet face filled with puzzlement. "What has happened to you?"

"Pandora bought me a present?"

"Not that. Something else."

"I found a guy who would listen. At the top of Creagan Dubh, with only the wind and the heather and the birds for company, and no person to obtrude. And so I talked."

"About Northern Ireland?"

"Yes."

"All of it?"

"All of it."

"The bomb blast, and the bits of body and the dead Jocks?"

"Yes."

"And Neil MacDonald? And the nightmare?"

"Yes."

"But you told me. You talked to me. And that didn't do us any good."

"That's because you are part of me. A stranger is different. Objective. There was never anybody like that before. Only relations and old friends who had known me all my life. Too close."

"The nightmare's still there, Archie. That won't go away."

"Maybe not. But maybe its fangs have been drawn."

"What makes you so sure?"

"My mother had a saying. Fear knocked at the door, Faith went to answer it, and no one was there. We'll have to see. I love you more than life itself, and that's all that's important."

"Oh, Archie." Her tears overflowed and he kissed them away, unloosened the sash of her gown and slid his hand beneath the soft silk, caressing her nakedness. His lips moved to her mouth, the lips opening for him ...

"Shall we give it a try?"

"Now?"

"Yes. Now. Right away. Just as soon as you can get me out of these damned trousers."

Chapter
9

Thursday the Fifteenth

Virginia, awake at five o'clock, waited for the dawn. It was Thursday, Vi's seventy-eighth birthday.

Vi, as she had promised, had rung in the evening just before the nine-o'clock news. Lottie was back in the Relkirk Royal, she had told Virginia. Not at all upset, she seemed to take it in her stride. Edie had been distressed, but after some persuasion, had accepted the inevitable. And Vi had telephoned Templehall and instructed the headmaster to reassure Henry that he no longer needed to agonize over his beloved Edie. The horrendous episode was over at last. Virginia must put it out of her mind.

The conversation left Virginia in a state of confused emotions. The most important was one of thankfulness and overwhelming relief. Now she could face the darkness of the night, go to bed by herself in the large and empty house; sleep, in the certain knowledge that no ghoul haunted the shadows of the garden, hovering, watching, waiting to pounce. Lottie would not return; she was shut away with her dangerous secrets. Virginia was free of her.

However^ she knew a certain uneasiness. It was hateful to imagine Edie's distress at having to admit failure, her reluctance to commit her cousin once more to the professional, but impersonal, care of the hospital. But surely, deep down, Edie must know some relief, if only for the fact that she was shed of that almost untenable responsibility and no longer had to endure listening to the seemingly endless spate of Lottie's conversation.

Finally, there was Henry, and here Virginia was filled with guilt. She knew how Henry felt about Lottie, and how he feared for Edie, and yet the sensible idea of making a telephone call to his school had never even occurred to her, and she realized that the shameful reason for this was that Henry had slipped out of her mind, so absorbed had she become in herself and the events of the last few days.

First, Edmund and Pandora. Now, Conrad.

Conrad Tucker. Here, in Scotland, in Strathcroy, already part of the Balmerino household and an important character in the dramatis personae of the next few days, his presence changed the shape of everything. Mostly herself, as though some unsuspected and hidden facet of her own personality had been, by him, revealed. She had slept with Conrad. They had made love with a mutual desire that had more to do with comfort than passion, and she had stayed with him, and spent the night in his arms. An act of infidelity; adultery. Call it the worst name in the world, and still Virginia regretted nothing.

Whatever you do, you must never tell Edmund.

Vi was a wise old lady, and confession was not a penance but a self-indulgence. It was unloading your so-called sin onto another person, and thus shedding guilt. But her own total lack of remorse had taken Virginia by surprise, and she felt that in the last twenty
-
four hours she had somehow grown, not physically, but within herself. It was as though she had been struggling up some precipitous hillside, and now had time to pause for breath, to rest, to appreciate the widened prospects that her efforts had achieved.

For so long she had been content to be simply Henry's mother, Edmund's wife, one of the Airds, her existence shaped by clan, and all her time and energy and love channelled into making a home for the family. But now Alexa was grown, Henry was gone, and Edmund . . . ? For the moment, she seemed to have lost sight of Edmund. Which left only herself. Virginia. An individual, an entity with a past and a future, bridged by the fleeting years of marriage. Henry's going had not only ended an era, but freed her as well. There was nothing to stop her stretching her wings, flying. All the world was hers.

The visit to Long Island, which for months had been simply a dream, edging around at the back of her mind, was now possible, positive, even imperative. Whatever Vi said, it was time to go, and if excuses were needed she would plead her grandparents' advancing age and her own burning need to see them again before they grew too old to enjoy her company; before they became ill or infirm; before they died. That was the excuse. But the true reason had much to do with Conrad.

He would be there. He would be around. In the City, or Southampton, but never more than a telephone call away. They could be together. A man whom her grandparents had always known and liked. A kindly man. He was not one to leave abruptly, nor break promises, nor let you down just when you needed him most; nor love another woman. It occurred to her then that perhaps trust was more important than love if a relationship was to be truly enduring. In order to deal with these uncertainties, she needed time and space, some sort of an interlude in which to stand back and review the situation. She needed solace, and knew that she would find it in the company of one who had always been her friend and was now her lover. Her lover. An ambivalent word, loaded with meanings. Once more, she searched her conscience for that mandatory twinge of guilt, but found nothing but a sort of assurance, a comforting strength, as though Conrad had brought to her some sort of a second chance, another taste of youth, a whole new freedom. Whatever. She only knew that she was going to grab at it, before it eluded her forever. Leesport was there, just a jet flight away. Unchanged, because it was a place that never changed. She smelt the crisp autumn air, saw the wide streets scattered with fallen scarlet leaves, the smoke from the first fires rising from the chimneys of the stately white clapboard houses drifting sweetly upwards into the deep-blue sky of a Long Island Indian summer.

Recalling other years, she took stock. Labor Day was past, the kids back at school, the ferry no longer running to Fire Island, the shore bars closed. But Gramps would not yet have pulled his small motor boat out of the water, and the great Atlantic beaches were there, only a short trip distant. The dunes, combed by the wind; the endless sands littered with clam shells, and laced by the surf of the thundering rollers. She felt that blown spume on her cheeks. Saw herself, as though from a great distance, walking through the shallows, silhouetted against the evening sky, with Conrad at her side. . . .

And then, despite everything, Virginia found herself smiling, not with romantic delight, but with healthy self-ridicule. For this was a teenager's image, culled from some television ad. She heard the soupy music, the deeply sincere masculine voice urging her to use some shampoo, or deodorant, or biodegradable washing powder. Too easy, it would be, to drift through this day on a cloud of fantasy. It was not that day-dreams were the sole right of the young, it was just that their elders did not have the time to lose themselves in fantasy. They had too much to do, toa much to see to, too much to organize. Like herself. Right now. Life, immediate and demanding, claimed her attention. Resolutely, she put Leesport and Conrad out of her mind and thought about Alexa. The first priority was Alexa. Alexa was due to arrive at Balnaid in an hour or two, and a month ago, in London, Virginia had,made Alexa a promise.