The Tender Glory (22 page)

“She spoiled his life,” Alison said bitterly.

“I should have known then, of course.” Robin started to pace up and down the room. “What had I to offer her when Huntley Daviot and Calders wasn’t enough? I had a cast-iron ego in

those days, apparently. My conceit must have been phenomenal.”

“You were in love with her.”

“I thought I was in love with her. She was furious when I followed her to New York.”

She looked at his broad back.

“Robin, what about Tessa?” she asked.

“What right have I to expect Tessa to want me now?” he demanded, keeping his back turned. “I served her one of the dirtiest tricks imaginable.”

“Sometimes that doesn’t matter.”

“It would with Tessa.”

“How do you know?”

“She’s proud and brittle. I hurt her beyond all forgiving. I could never ask her to come back to me. Besides, I hear she’s going to marry Daviot.”

It was Alison’s turn to keep her eyes hidden.

“What a tangle!” he exclaimed, coming back to the fire. “Will it work out?”

She jumped to her feet.

“I don’t know,” she cried. “You can’t expect me to find an answer to everything.”

“Steady on!” He was looking at her keenly. “How long have you been here, Alison?”

“Two months. A little more than two months.”

“Time enough to fall in love with Daviot?” he suggested shrewdly.

She turned to the door.

“Don’t make things—more difficult than they are,” she implored huskily. “I’m off to help Kirsty wash up.” He was still standing by the fire when she returned, gazing into the heart of the smouldering peats.

“A year,” he said. “What a difference it can make!”

“All the difference in the world,” Alison agreed.

CHAPTER TEN

KIRSTY was scouring the milk pans in the dairy.

“There was a wee Cooper wha lived in Fife,” she sang, Nickety, nackety noo, noo, noo.

And he had gotten a gentle wife

Hey Willie Wallacky, how John Dougal,

Alane, quo Rushity roo, roo, roo ...”

“Kirsty,” a voice said behind her, “is Alison in?” The song came to an abrupt end and the old woman wheeled round with a burnished pan in her hand.

“Och, michty-me, Miss Searle,” she exclaimed. “You fair frightened the life oot o’ me! Aye, she’s in. She didn’t have to tak’ the milk round this morning so she’s had time to look tae her mother.”

“How is Mrs. Christie?” Tessa asked.

“Fine, now that all the excitement’s over,” Kirsty declared. “But away ye go in an’ see for yourself. She’ll be glad of a visitor for the next week or two when she has to stay in her bed till eleven in the mornin’.”

Tessa turned towards the house.

“Rap hard on the door,” Kirsty advised. “The wireless will be on full blast!”

But Alison had opened the door before Tessa had time to knock.

“I came to ask about your mother,” Tessa said. “We wondered how she travelled yesterday.”

“You—walked up here?”

Tessa shook her head.

“Huntley brought me. He’s gone on down the glen.” Alison opened the door wider. She would have to invite Tessa in. Her heart began to pound. Robin had just returned with the jeep. He had delivered the milk, but obviously Tessa hadn’t seen him.

Just as she was about to speak he came across the yard. She saw him over Tessa’s shoulder as he walked slowly and deliberately towards them.

Tessa turned.

“Robin?” she gasped. “You—!”

She backed towards the wall, her hands clenched by her sides, but all her love was mirrored in her eyes for him to see.

Alison turned into the kitchen, not knowing how this would end.

She heard Tessa say: “Why have you come back?” but she had closed the kitchen door before Robin answered.

It seemed a long time till there was any sound outside and

then she saw Tessa’s red, fur-trimmed hood and blue anorak passing the window. She had gone away, alone.

A few minutes later Robin called across the yard to Neil, his voice high-pitched and demanding.

“What have you done about the sheep? You’ll have to jump to it, Nellie! We’ve got work to do.”

Not the voice of a man whose world had been finally shattered, she thought.

When he came in for the eleven o’clock break she asked him point-blank what had happened.

“I let her get some of the gall out of her system,” he said. “Tessa told me exactly what she thought of me.”

“And then?”

“I said I would go to the Lodge.”

“But—Huntley?”

“She’s not in love with Huntley. She never was.”

“Then why did she promise to marry him?”

“She was afraid. Anyway, that’s my guess.”

“Afraid?”

“Yes. She couldn’t see the future all that clearly. She saw security at Calders, but she wasn’t in a great hurry to grab it.”

“In case you came back?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Alison flushed.

“How conceited can you get?”

“Sorry, but I think it’s as near the truth as anything.”

“How could anybody be so selfish?”

“We all could if we saw our world in ruins at our feet.” He lit a cigarette, his hands not quite steady as he nursed the flame. “We’d snatch at the nearest compensation. For Tessa, it was Huntley Daviot and the security of Calders. He had been served a dirty deal, too, remember.”

“I don’t think he proposed to Tessa for that reason.”

“I dare say not, but Tessa didn’t take time to argue these things out. She acted on impulse—or on instinct, if you like.

She needed protection and Huntley offered it.”

“I wonder why?”

“Partly because of the accident—because he blamed himself—and partly because he knew about Leone, I should say.”

“He loved her. Perhaps he still does, in spite of everything.”

“I think not.” Robin’s mouth was hard. “Tessa says he knew why Leone left him. It was because of her career, because it mattered most to her and because she thought she had another chance to conquer the world. Fame was still within her grasp. I reckon Daviot could have stomached it better if it had been another man,” he added thoughtfully, “but when a woman puts her career before everything and tells him so I reckon no self-respecting man can really take it. Leone wasn’t in love with Huntley either, but she wanted Calders for security if her career failed her, just as Tessa did.”

“In case you didn’t come back.” Alison’s tone was flat.

“I guess so.”

“And now?”

“Tessa’ll come round in the end.” He spoke without arrogance. “I told her I was sorry.”

“Just that?”

He looked her in the eye.

“What more could I say?”

She bit her lip.

“It all sounds so very easy, but where does Huntley come in?”

“He’s going back to Calders.”

“Among all those unopened crates! The furniture he bought for Leone.”

“That’s the material side of it. He can easily get rid of them,” Robin said. “If he had wanted to live with his memories of Leone he would have unpacked them long ago. No, as I see it, they were left there unopened in anger, to remind him constantly of one woman’s unfaithfulness.”

“While he played her music up at Sterne?”

He looked at her uncertainly.

“He
knew
about Leone,” he repeated.

It was no real answer to the questions hammering in Alison’s mind. So many questions without answers!

In the few remaining days before Christmas she had so much to do she had scarcely time to think about Huntley or Calders or anything else. Her mother’s return and Robin’s homecoming had made all the difference to the festive season and she sang as blithely as Kirsty as they worked together.

“How about coming with us on Christmas Eve?” Robin asked on the Tuesday morning.

“Us?”

“Tessa and me. She thinks she might be able to skate if we went up to the lochan. It’s been bearing for over a week.” “Why shouldn’t you go?” Helen said. “You’ve been tied to the house far too long. It will do you the world of good.”

“I’m not going to play gooseberry!” Alison laughed. “If you’re going with Tessa—”

“The loch will be swarming with other people,” Robin pointed out. “Jim might come down.”

Alison looked taken aback.

“I’m not sure. I’ll see,” she said. “How are you going to get there?”

“Major Searle is bringing his car. He’s a crack performer on skates, apparently. Quite an active old buffer, in fact!”

Tessa and Robin, and Major Searle and, possibly, Jim. That was to be their party. Nobody had mentioned Huntley. She wondered what he had been doing all this time, but there was no answer to that, either. Robin was taking the milk on the early-morning round now. She had no need to go to the Lodge, or Sterne, either.

At a distance the lighthouse looked deserted.

“I’m taking the milk to Calders now,” Robin said the following morning. “Daviot moved in there yesterday.” Alison’s heart lurched.

“To stay?”

“I guess so. The place was going to pigs and whistles, Tessa says.”

“Robin, are you going to marry Tessa?”

“One day, when I have a home to offer her.”

“She wouldn’t come here?”

“Like a shot! Tessa’s not afraid of hard work.”

But there wasn’t room. Was that it? There wouldn’t be room for Tessa till she made up her mind to go back to London and continue her career.

“What about tomorrow?” Robin asked. “Are you coming with us?”

“Yes, I’ll come.”

They set out early, but there would be a moon later on so there was no need for them to hurry back. The ice was in excellent condition, the lochan crowded by the time they reached it. Robin skated off with Tessa clinging tightly to his crossed hands.

“She’s come into her own,” the Major said. “I always knew Huntley’s solution wasn’t the only one. It was a kind thought, but it wouldn’t really have worked very well. No, sir, not at all! One can’t just marry someone out of pity or even out of a sense of guilt, and that was what he was prepared to do.”

“Because of Tessa’s accident, you mean?”

He buckled on her skates for her.

“Because Huntley forced Tessa to go with him after your brother left Craigie Hill. These two foolish young people had quarrelled violently, but Huntley believed Tessa should say she was sorry and save Robin from making a fool of himself. He talked her into it in the end. They had just about time to get to the airport at Prestwick before Robin’s plane left.

Huntley knew why your brother was going and he saw how easily his life could be spoiled.” He spoke with difficulty about his daughter. “Leone wasn’t cut out for married bliss,” he said. “She never really wanted it. Huntley realised that and I suppose he thought he might be able to persuade Robin to come back to Craigie Hill. He and Tessa between them.”

“But they never reached Prestwick.”

“No. A tyre burst with them half an hour after they left Calders. They were doing a fair speed at the time and the miracle is they weren’t killed. Huntley came out of it without so much as a scratch.”

Which was why he would feel such an overwhelming sense of guilt. Alison understood it all now, but not Huntley’s self-imposed isolation at Sterne. Nobody could explain that, perhaps, but Huntley himself.

They set off round the edge of the loch, their skates hissing against the ice. Far behind them the chatter and laughter of children echoed against the hills, and when they came round to the road again Alison saw the Mercedes parked at the end of the row of other cars.

“Huntley’s managed to get here, after all,” her companion said. “I told him we were coming this afternoon.”

Alison’s heart was pounding like a sledgehammer, although the big car was empty.

“We’ll have a look for him,” the Major suggested. “Though, heaven knows, one could miss one’s own grandfather in a crowd like this!”

They saw him skating solo far ahead of them.

“We could never catch up with him,” Alison decided. Huntley was skating fast, with his hands clasped behind him and his head down against the wind. Soon he was out of sight.

It was several minutes before they heard the commotion. Someone came running, shouting for a ladder, and a few adults were forming a sort of cordon, keeping the children back.

“It’s posted clearly enough,” someone remarked. “It’s funny how some kids can’t keep away from a danger zone.”

“Major Searle! What’s happened?” Alison pushed through the crowd which had separated them. “Is someone in trouble?”

“A boy over there,” he said, pointing to the far side of the lochan as he ran past her. “I’m going to help with the ladder.”