The Tender Glory (23 page)

Instinctively Alison began to run. It was almost dusk, but she could still see quite plainly. She seemed to be the only one running in the right direction. The child’s cries guided her in the end. She ran past the warning notice on its tall post and in among the reeds. She could see the boy now, his red cap bobbing above a black gash in the ice, his gloved hands clutching frantically at its torn edges.

She braked instinctively, but she had to do something until the others arrived with a ladder or a rope. Flailing about with his arms, the boy had become exhausted. She saw him sink and rise to the surface again. There was nothing for it but to go to him.

When she reached him he all but pulled her under with him.

“Stop struggling!” she shouted. “I’ll get you. Just lie still and let me support you.”

But the child had panicked. He clutched her round the neck, drawing her down, his remaining strength concentrated on one last frantic bid for survival.

“Don’t, I tell you!” she yelled, but the icy water closed over them both.

She struggled, still holding him, not able to see for the dragging weed. Then she felt herself pulled clear, supported miraculously by a man’s strong arm. The boy was still holding on round her neck.

“Lie as still as you can,” a man’s voice commanded. “Both of you!”

“Huntley—!”

She looked up at him in the uncertain light.

“Don’t talk,” he ordered. “You’ll need all your strength to get us out of here. Just hang on!”

She lay in his arms in the icy water, supporting the child. They daren’t move, for even without movement the ice was groaning under their combined weight. The hole was growing bigger, too.

Huntley lay full length along the ice, breathing heavily but still supporting them. After what seemed an eternity of waiting, voices rang out across the stillness. Huntley turned on to his side, signalling with his free arm.

“Over here!” he shouted.

Alison saw his breath, like steam, in the air above her, and the figures hovering on the edge of the ice.

It was a long slow business. The ladder pushed out towards them was too short. Huntley gave his orders in brief clipped sentences, still holding her. The cold grew intense. She felt his lips close against her hair.

“Don’t give in, Alison,” he begged. “For God’s sake, don’t give in!”

Inch by careful inch they were drawn nearer to the bank. She heard Tessa sobbing somewhere in the crowd of helpers.

“Oh, Huntley! You’ve saved her! You’ve saved her!” Someone told her to be quiet. Perhaps it was Robin. Alison felt the child lifted out of her arms. Then there was only herself and Huntley. She clung to him now, like a drowning person.

“Well done!” someone said. “Well done, sir!”

Huntley helped her to her feet, keeping a supporting arm about her.

“Can you manage to walk?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m fine now.”

“You’re soaking wet.” Tessa’s voice sounded a long way off.

Huntley was leading Alison across the ice, going in the direction of his car.

“I’ll get her home,” he said.

Alison felt the ice swinging up to meet her while their voices drifted farther and farther away, yet she knew when they had reached the road and Huntley swung her off the ice. Stooping down, he undid her skates.

“Tessa’s going home with the boy,” he said. “They’ll follow us to Calders after they’ve warned Kirsty.”

“Take me home,” she begged. “I don’t want to go to Calders. I want to go to Craigie Hill.”

“And scare everybody out of their wits? Don’t talk nonsense,” he said. “Calders is on the way.”

“I can’t go there.” She seemed obsessed by the idea.

“Can you tell me why?” He looked down at her.

“Because of—the last time.” She moved towards the car. “I—pushed my way in.”

“You won’t be doing that now,” he told her firmly. “I’m taking you there. Wrap yourself up in that.”

He handed her a tartan travelling rug and she huddled into it, sitting beside him in the front seat as he drove away.

It was useless arguing with him in his present mood, she supposed, and perhaps he was right about Craigie Hill. If she appeared there out of the blue in such a soaked condition it would be a shock for her mother. They could have gone to the Lodge, though. But the others were already on their way to Borgue with the boy they had rescued and the Lodge would be empty. Calders had been the only alternative.

As they turned off the main road out on to the promontory long, reaching fingers of light climbed the sky ahead of them. They flickered above the sea, lighting the sky in a perfect arc, the aurora borealis in full play. Sterne stood out against it, pale in its opalescent light, and cliff and rock and wave were suddenly edged with silver. It was a magic night, cold and clear, with a sprinkling of frost on the pines and the Calder Water running darkly between its snow-capped banks. The quiet in the glen was almost tangible and they could see the winking lights of the clachan a long way off. Calders, too, had its welcoming light. It shone out from one of the downstairs windows, bright and unmistakable between the trees.

Alison huddled deeper into the protecting folds of the rug. “You’ve got visitors,” she suggested.

He shook his head.

“Mrs. Gillies comes up from the village every day,” he explained. “She promised to stay this evening. I thought of asking you to come back with the Searles for a drink before you went home.”

They were almost at the door, swinging round on the wide semi-circle of the terrace which fronted the house. More lights blazed in the porch as Huntley helped her out and she saw Jessie Gillies’ surprise as the door opened.

“For goodness’ sake!” Jessie exclaimed. “Mr. Daviot, what have ye got there?”

“Miss Christie got very wet saving a boy who went through the ice,” Huntley explained. “Can you bring some blankets, Mrs. Gillies, and perhaps you could conjure up some hot soup?”

“Well, I never!” Jessie murmured, taking Alison by the arm. “What next? I would have thought the ice was bearin’ right across the lochan in weather like this, but it’s a dangerous spot and the bairns have been well warned. When we were children we were told it was bottomless and, likely as no’, it is. But come away ben, Alison. There’s a grand fire in the sitting-room and I’ll soon have a pickle soup on the stove.”

She led the way across the hall. There was no need to go carefully now between a pile of unopened crates. They had all gone and the hall had been polished and dusted to perfection. A great bowl of holly, a concession to the Christmas spirit, stood on a table in an alcove and somewhere in the shadows a clock struck five.

“I had no idea it was so late,” Alison said. “I should really have gone straight home.”

Jessie turned to look at her as she discarded the tartan rug.

“You’re fair drookit!” she commented. “In ye go to the fire. Mr. Daviot will be tryin’ to find ye something dry to put on.”

Huntley had disappeared, going swiftly up the stairs to the floor above.

The room Jessie took her to was bright with firelight. It was smaller than the other room she knew and there was no piano. It looked as if it had been lived in for a very long time, a family gathering place, snug and warm, where books were scattered to be picked up at will and the odd, half-assembled fishing-rod didn’t look out of place. The chintz covers on the well-worn armchairs had been freshly laundered and there was more holly in a copper bowl on the window ledge. This was the lighted window they had seen from the drive, and Jessie had said ‘come away ben,’ as if it was the only other room in the house.

“Tak’ off your shoes an’ peel off your stockings,” Jessie advised. “An’ I’ll get ye a towel for your hair. Ye must have gone right in after the bairn.”

“I had no choice!” Alison laughed shakily. “He grabbed me and took me with him!”

“And is he all right?” Jessie paused in the doorway with her wet shoes in her hand.

“Apart from shock, I think. It wasn’t a very pleasant experience and I think he’ll take notice of the warning board another time.”

When Jessie returned with an enormous white bath towel she was still standing before the fire.

“You’ll catch your death standin’ there dreamin’!” Jessie admonished. “Gie yoursel’ a good rub down wi’ this.” She thrust the towel into Alison’s hands. “Nobody is going to disturb ye.”

She put a thick woollen dressing-gown on a nearby chair. A man’s dressing-gown.

“I’m not quite wet through, Mrs. Gillies,” Alison tried to assure her without her teeth chattering. “It’s just my skirt and cardigan.”

“I’d better have the lot.” Jessie stood waiting. “They’re bound to be damp. His dressing-gown’s big enough for two o’ ye! I’ll tak’ your things and hang them in the kitchen, above the stove. They’ll be dry in no time.” Alison did as she was told. Her clothes really were wet.

The comforting warmth of the fire caressed her skin as she wrapped her naked body in the big, fleecy towel and gradually her teeth ceased their chattering. She stretched her hands out to the blaze, kneeling down on the sheepskin hearthrug when she had tied the dressing-gown about her.

Presently there was a light tap on the door and Huntley came in carrying a tray with a couple of tumblers on it. The firelight caught the rich amber glow of toddy as he held it out towards her.

“Drink this first,” he commanded. “Then we’ll have some soup. We both need it.”

He picked up his own glass, waiting till she had obeyed his order. Alison cupped her hands round the warm tumbler, looking up at him in the flickering yellow glow from the fire.

“I always seem to be in one sort of predicament or another,” she said half apologetically, “and you always seem to be there to get me out of the mess.”

“I wouldn’t say you asked for this one,” he remarked. “What you did this afternoon was very brave.”

She flushed at his praise.

“I couldn’t have done anything else. I was first there.”

“You could have waited for the ladder.”

“You
didn’t wait,” she pointed out.

“No.”

She saw the small pulse she had noticed once before beating in his cheek. He was looking down at her with a strange expression in his eyes, but he drank his toddy in silence, waiting until she had finished her own before he said:

“What are you going to do about Robin and Tessa?”

It was a straightforward question which she couldn’t hope to evade.

“They want to get married.” She imagined he knew that. “So many things have changed since Robin came home.”

He took the tumbler from her, setting it down on the table beside the fire.

“For you, too, Alison,” he said.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“You’ll go back to London?” His jaw hardened. “You’ll accept the renewed scholarship?”

Steadily her eyes met his.

“What else is there for me to do?” she asked.

“You could stay here.”

“Stay?”

“Here, at Calders.” He moved swiftly, kneeling beside her chair but not touching her, although she could feel the restraint in him like a tightly drawn band of steel. “You could stay with me. I need you. Calders needs you.”

She looked at him without answering for a moment, all her love and her own desperate need of him welling to the surface.

“What do you say?” he asked. “I love you, Alison. I’ve known it for a very long time, but I wouldn’t let myself admit it. But if your career means more to you, I’ll understand that, too.”

“More?” She reached out, clasping his hand in both her own. “How could it? What could mean more than being loved?” Her voice shook. “Oh, Huntley! Do you mean it? Do you really mean you need me here, at Calders?”

“I’ll need you wherever we are.” He swept her into his arms, covering her shining face with kisses, holding her against him as if he would never let her go. “I knew, I think, from the beginning what this would be like, how deeply we could love each other, but you had your career to consider, the prospect of going back one day. I had to give you that chance.”

“To prove I loved you?” She smiled gently, tracing the lines on his forehead with a gentle finger. “I can still have my music, Huntley, even though I never make a career of it.”

His arms tightened about her.

“You’re different,” he said roughly. “I suppose I realised that, too, when I first met you—the day I came to Craigie Hill while you were wrestling with the stove! There was a smudge on your forehead and your hair was awry and you were angry. You didn’t appreciate me any more than I appreciated you.”

“I couldn’t understand you, living up there at Sterne the way you did,” she confessed.

“Sterne was part of my protective armour,” he answered slowly. “I couldn’t afford to be hurt a second time. I lived up there like a hermit, I suppose, playing Leone’s music to remind me of a woman’s perfidy. Leone’s whole life was a treachery of pretence. She was incapable of love or loyalty. That’s why I tried to stop Robin following her to New York. She didn’t want him or any man, but when she was bored she was prepared to play at love.”