A Dark and Distant Shore (82 page)

If the circumstances had been different – and the man. Perhaps, or perhaps not. All she knew was that she felt revivified. In two weeks she would be forty-eight years old, though she knew she didn’t look it. Now, she didn’t feel it, either. When she had married Magnus, so that Kinveil had been restored to her, she had gained something beyond price and at the same time lost the one thing that had kept her going through so much of her life, her sense of purpose. She hadn’t noticed the loss at first; she had been too busy setting the estate to rights. And then everything had deteriorated until it seemed that her only ambition was to keep Magnus pampered and peaceful. None of it had diminished her feeling for Kinveil, but her sense of looking forward, of having a positive objective in life, had been doused like some useless candle. It was as if all Fate held in store for her was to spend the next twenty or thirty years, as she had seen other people do, waiting resignedly for death.

Effervescently, she thought that Fate was due for a surprise.

No one, perhaps, but Meg, the nurse of her childhood, would have recognized the mood that took her in its grip. The boys, certainly, had never seen their mother when she was looking for mischief.

One evening at dinner, she said bracingly, ‘Now, this problem over what is to be done about Lizzie!’

Gideon looked up warily. ‘It seems to me that I have no choice but to take her back to London with me.’

Drew laid down his fork and looked at Shona who, in turn, glanced at McKirdy, who was in his sixties now but whose eyes were as blue and his smile as open as they had ever been. Obedient to her signal, he nodded to one of the footmen to remove the plates, and himself made ready to bring one of his wife’s magnificent puddings to table.

Vilia ignored the byplay. ‘On the contrary,’ she said, ‘I will take the child back to Kinveil with
me.’

Drew said, ‘Pudding, Vilia?’

‘What is it? Mrs McKirdy’s apple crumble? Yes, please.’

Gideon’s relief was fleeting. ‘But what about Magnus?’

His mother said, her eyes wide and disingenuous, ‘What
about
Magnus?’

‘Won’t he mind?’

She smiled limpidly at her apple crumble, and raised her spoon. ‘Why should he, my dear?’

Gideon could think of any number of reasons. After a moment’s reflection, he himself was not too sure of the scheme, and voiced his own doubts. ‘He’s hardly a man to want children round his feet. His own daughter is one thing, but Lizzie as well...’

‘Pooh!’ she said.

‘What Gideon is trying tactfully to say, Vilia,’ Theo intervened, ‘is that it is scarcely a house for children. With respect, a little – er – middle-aged.’

Gideon was annoyed. It was precisely what he had meant, but there was no need for Theo to be so elephantine about it.

‘Pooh!’ Vilia said again through a mouthful of pudding.

It troubled Gideon that she didn’t say she would like to have Lizzie with her, or even more to the point, that the child would be company for Juliana. Hesitantly, he said, ‘She and Juliana are much of an age. Would Magnus really not object?’

‘Why should he?’ she repeated.

Gideon caught Theo’s eye and could see that the same thought was in his mind. Two birds with one stone. Help Gideon out of a fix, and annoy Magnus at the same time. Surely not? He didn’t want Lizzie caught in that kind of cross-fire.

Theo, having rejected the pudding, was peeling a pear. He had long, capable fingers, perfectly controlled. His eyes on his task, he said softly, ‘Don’t I remember some complaint that, even as it was, you didn’t devote sufficient time to Juliana?’

She chuckled. ‘That was part of his campaign to stop me from being quite so busy about the estate. He found my energy exhausting.’

Drew spoke for the first time. ‘Embarrassing, too, I should hope. His idleness is beyond anything.’ Shona murmured something inaudible, and he said, ‘No, my dear. I am sure your uncle has many virtues, but responsibility is not one of them. Goodness knows where the estate would be without Vilia.’

‘Goodness
knows?’ Vilia repeated, amused. ‘My dear, the whole world knows. Between ourselves I have made no secret of the – difficult – aspects of my husband’s personality, although I wouldn’t, of course, talk about it to anyone else. But I have not been able to prevent it from becoming common knowledge that he neither wants, nor is competent, to manage Kinveil. I only wish he would give me a rather freer hand with it. He has a regrettably public habit of countermanding my orders.’

Theo paddled his fingers in the bowl of scented water before him, and began to dry them on a napkin. ‘He can’t last forever,’ he said with rare candour.

‘Fine consolation!’ Gideon found her amusement vaguely shocking.

‘Has he reached any conclusions?’

‘Conclusions? Magnus?’ Her brows rose over satirical eyes. ‘It’s one of his favourite topics of conversation, and if he were to make up his mind the whole game would be spoiled.’ She glanced quizzically at Gideon. ‘We’re talking about Magnus’s Will, in case you hadn’t guessed. He’s almost sixty and knows he
ought
to have made up his mind about it; on the other hand, he likes to think there is plenty of time. So he changes it regularly, once a month.’

Gideon said, ‘There can’t be many permutations. Surely everything must go to you and Juliana?’

She laughed. ‘“Aye, well,” as Mungo Telfer used to say. You might think so, but you’re leaving Magnus’s views on women out of account. Especially managing ones, of whom he considers me a prime example. He’s terrified of encouraging the same tendency in Juliana. It would be different if she were married. A husband and a son or two would solve all his problems, but that happy day isn’t likely to come for a while yet. After all, she’s only six. He can’t decide what provisions to make in the meantime – who’s to be responsible for running Kinveil, I mean.’

‘You, of course,’ Drew exclaimed.

‘Of course,’ she agreed dulcetly. ‘But Magnus feels it ought to be a man.’

‘Edward Blair?’

‘He’s one possibility. There’s Peter Barber, too. And in another few years there will be young Ian, and of course Guy Savarin. He must be twelve or thirteen by now. And you know, Drew, you ought to be a possibility yourself, if you hadn’t such a talent for offending Magnus. You’re just as much married to one of his nieces as Peter Barber is!’

Drew grinned. ‘I can just see me trying to manage Kinveil! No, thank you, I have enough troubles already, and I really wouldn’t be suitable.’

‘You could hardly be less suitable than Peter Barber. It turns my hair grey to think of a philosopher trying to manage thirty thousand acres of Highland hills. Now, if only Theo would marry some nice girl and settle down...’

With his blandest smile, Theo said, ‘I thought Magnus wanted to keep everything in the Telfer family.’

‘Well, he does, but you seem to have the knack of handling him. He might be persuaded, you know.’

‘And then you could continue to run the place as if nothing had changed?’

‘My dear Theo!
Would
I?’

‘Yes.’

She laughed. ‘Well, I should certainly have something to say if you tried to interfere. What’s the point of having sons if they don’t do what mother tells them?’ The signs of strain that Gideon had noticed at Kinveil had vanished in the last few weeks under the stimulus of the foundry and the relief of separation from Magnus, and he thought that she looked more like Theo’s sister than his mother.

Theo smiled again, unreadably.

‘It would fairly upset Magnus’s apple cart if anything happened to Juliana,’ Drew remarked, shocking his tender-hearted wife.

‘Drew! What a dreadful thing to say!’

He was unrepentant. ‘Well, it would, wouldn’t it?’

Vilia said, ‘Don’t worry, Shona. She’s a disgustingly healthy child. In fact, Gideon, to return to the subject, I think – if you insist on being sombre and serious about it – that she might be good for Lizzie. Being younger, she won’t dominate the child as Lavinia does, but she’s a bright little thing on her home ground and might be able to put more of a sparkle into her.’

Gideon didn’t enjoy having it pointed out that his daughter, of whom he was genuinely fond, was such a timid mouse. ‘I suppose so. You’ll have to break Juliana of that habit of shying away from anything unfamiliar, though, or she’ll have a hard time growing up.’

Vilia stared at him. ‘Is that a criticism?’

He sighed, ashamed of himself for trying to hit back. ‘No. Merely a comment. I suppose she’ll be all right as long as she has someone to cling to.’ Casting one more look at Drew and Shona, he sighed again and said, ‘Well, if you feel able to contend with Lizzie as well as Juliana, all I can say is, thank you. I’m grateful. I don’t know what I’d have done otherwise.’

Vilia rose, smoothing down the smoky green wool of her skirt. She smiled in the business-like way so long familiar to all of them. ‘Let’s try it for a few months and see how she settles down, shall we? She will have a week or two to become used to the idea. I think, despite everything, we ought to be back at Kinveil by Christmas, otherwise Magnus will be angry enough to pull up the drawbridge. And that would be bad tactics on my part, when I want him not only to accept an extra child about the place, but to accustom himself to the idea of my being back on the board of the foundry again. Dear me, poor Magnus!’

Magnus, who had a very selective memory, welcomed Vilia back not with relief or forgiveness, but with a large tolerance that was almost as informative. He clearly found it more comfortable not to remember what they had said at parting, and had also missed someone to talk at. Vilia was a little – a very little – touched when he accepted Lizzie with no more than a pessimistic mutter, and decided to save the foundry until later.

She watched Lizzie carefully for the first few weeks, but she was an opaque child compared with Juliana, and Vilia couldn’t tell whether she was settling down contentedly or not. She knew the nursery routine would be different from what Lizzie was used to, for at Kinveil, as in most Highland houses, there were no concessions to luxury, and in winter it was often necessary to break the ice on the washstand ewer for one’s morning sponge-down. At least, Vilia thought bracingly, it might wake the child up a bit. She had the most maddening ability to dawdle around looking languid, and was very slow to learn. Vilia herself taught the children French and arithmetic, while their governess, a kindly, cheerful, but limited young woman whose name was Emily Harper, instructed them in singing and geography, sketching and stitchery, and set them to learn reams of the sickliest poetry by heart. Lizzie had an aptitude with pencil and paintbrush, but no other talent that Vilia could discern. It was fortunate that she was going to be such a beauty some day.

The winter was a tiring one. It seemed as if the wind never dropped, whistling round Kinveil day after day, night after night, battering against the walls, finding its way through every invisible crack, howling in the chimneys. Sometimes it was laden with rain, sometimes with snow, but more usually with a bitter, soaking sleet. Even Vilia, hardened to it, found it required an increasing effort of will to venture outdoors for the early afternoon walk that was part of her unvarying routine. Juliana complained, but Lizzie didn’t.

Vilia’s own frame of mind was oddly suspenseful, as if she were waiting for something to happen, she didn’t know what. She had half expected a few weeks’ exposure to Magnus to drain her of the vitality her encounter with Felix von Sandemann had given back to her, but it didn’t. All that happened was that the desire to
do
something, deprived of outlet, went on simmering inside her.

In March, the weather suddenly improved. Juliana very nearly danced with glee, for March was the time for ‘the floating’, an event at which she had been present last year for the first time, and couldn’t wait to see again.

‘Extraordinary the things that catch a child’s fancy!’ her father grumbled, and privately Vilia agreed with him, although she knew she might have felt differently if it had been a feature of her own childhood. But Kinveil, unlike Glenbraddan, had never been timber country.

Edward Blair, however, had begun to fell more trees, and more systematically, than ever before, anxious to clear extra land for sheep. The days of casual forestry and lonely little sawmills had gone. Now the trees were felled in autumn, and the foresters spent the winter lopping the branches and stripping the bark. When the spring thaws came, the logs were sent tumbling down the mountain streams to the Braddan, there to be gathered on the banks for the great floating, when merchants from the eastern side of the country sent their own men to help dispatch the piled logs towards the loch and the big sawmills that would convert them into planks at a speed undreamed of by the foresters of the glen.

When the spring floods came, and the salmon were running, that was the time for the floating. The sluices were opened and the river roared into a torrent that tossed the logs towards their destination as if they were so many stalks of grass.

‘It’s so exciting, Lizzie!’ Juliana assured her cousin importantly. Since it was demonstrably silly to think of Juliana as Lizzie’s step-aunt, ‘cousin’ had been agreed as a compromise. ‘I’ll explain it all to you when we get there. You can’t understand without seeing it, you know.’

‘Stop showing off, Juliana!’ Vilia told her, suppressing her amusement. Lizzie was fated to go through life with people telling her, ‘you won’t understand unless...’

Next day, Juliana bustled around greeting the floaters as familiarly as some old lady who had known them all since the cradle, and the men grinned and ducked their heads appreciatively, thinking it was wonderful what a year could do for a little girl. Very shy and retiring she’d been, last year, as if she were frightened of them. But now that Juliana no longer felt herself among strangers, her wide blue eyes smiled at them and her fair curls tossed merrily under the scarf that held her bonnet in place. Only when she encountered a few men who were new this year did her brightness falter.