Anna of Strathallan (10 page)

If one had a true career, of course, it might be different. To be as dedicated as Sophy Kirkpatrick was, or to be in the nursing profession, or the teaching, which was what Anna had craved, could be very satisfying. But Mother would have been so lonely if she had gone to Auckland University and teachers' college. Anna had simply pretended she had no ambition for a career, for higher education. Mother would have killed herself managing the guest-house on her own. So it had been a case of: 'Do with thy might what thy hand finds to do.'

Anna hung up the tea-towel, said, 'I must write Mother and Magnus tonight. I'm thrilled about this. Not only do I feel this is my home, that my roots are here, but it gives them a world of two, and I can go up once a year to see them.'

Kitty put her arm round her girl. 'You can go more often than that, Anna, if it's the money for air-travel you're thinking of. The estate can easily stand two or three trips a yearr Tell her that. Would you tell her too, that I'm not possessive, that you'll always be free to come and go as you like and if you do finally decide to take up some career in Auckland to be near them, I'll be glad for this precious interlude, and will then look forward to you spending holidays here. And tell her I am very grateful to her - because I'm sure now I've seen how she brought up her daughter solo - that she must be a fine person herself and I feel she must have given my son at least some years of happiness in his turbulent lifetime.'

When they went back into the sitting-room Calum was down from the story-telling and he and Gilbert were watching
County Calendar,
intent on a demonstration of a new method of irrigation. Anna said she'd go into another room to write her letter.

Kitty stopped her. 'They don't like the next couple of programmes, so write your letter then.'

Anna got fascinated with the irrigating too. Kitty went upstairs to switch the children's lights off and tuck them in, then called downstairs, 'Gilbert, they want Grandy too.'

Calum looked across at Anna from his big chair, said, 'Aren't you too tired for letters? You worked like a Trojan in the paddocks this afternoon. There's always another day.'

She shook her head. 'I like to be outside then. And this is going to be a mammoth letter. I'm writing to my mother and stepfather to tell them about finding my grandparents and that I'm staying.'

He looked startled. 'Mean to say they don't know yet? I thought Kitty wrote to Fiji. I'm sure she said when she heard from you from Auckland and then confessed to Gilbert what she'd done, that she'd written there. Why didn't you tell them then?'

Anna looked at him steadily. 'It came the morning of their wedding. I didn't want any thoughts of the un- happiness of other days to intrude upon Mother then. She'd shed ten years. She looked so young ... all in gauzy green ... and so lovely and carefree. You know how it is when something happens like that. It rakes up things best forgotten. The mind can't help going back. It wouldn't have been fair to Mangus if her thoughts had been of anyone but him that day. When we went to Scotland, Mother and I, and I found out the Drummonds' motto was 'gang warily' I thought it fitted Mother's attitude to life very well. Because of my father. She was sweet, never bitter, but she walked warily, didn't seem to want to trust a man again. Then Magnus came and changed all that. I used to lie awake at nights and pray she'd let that old reserve go, and fall in love with him. On her wedding-day I felt that faith looked out of her eyes again, and rang in her voice as she took her vows. I wanted nothing to upset that. So I kept mum. I determined I'd see what my grandparents were like before I committed myself, or told her.'

She stopped speaking, looked at him sharply for his reply to that. His eyes still held hers, but he withheld comment. It irked her.

She had an edge to her tone, 'It's very disconcerting when you get carried away and reveal your inner feelings to someone who's asked why, then doesn't comment. What's the matter with you?'

His eyes searched for a moment or two longer as if he needed to assure himself this was truth, then that dark face broke up and the fans of laughter-lines about his eyes deepened. He stood up and came across to where she sat at the table with the lamp on it.

He couldn't help a chuckle. 'Oh, Anna, you're so funny! You have such an angelic air, all cream and pink and soft two-tone golden hair and pansy-brown eyes ... and you aren't angelic at all. In fact you're a bonnie fighter. You can certainly hold your own. But this time please hold me blameless. You were thinking I didn't understand, that I thought you were putting on an act. Anna, get this straight: my silence meant only one thing. I was touched to think a modern girl could be so understanding, would put her mother's happiness first. And that, even though a very disturbing thing had happened to herself. So I couldn't find any words. Will you accept that as true?'

She was intensely conscious of him standing closely above her. She bit her lip. 'Sorry, Calum. I'm being too touchy where you're concerned. I thought you weren't giving me any credit for what
I
'd done, that you'd thought me secretive, not telling. Mother.' She grinned at him. 'But don't you think you're a bit tough on the modern girl, generalizing about her like that? I think lots of girls would have acted that way. I mean, wouldn't the Reverend Sophy have done just that?'

His face softened as if the very thought of Sophy was pleasant. 'Yes, she would, but then Sophy doesn't fit into the ordinary run of girls. She's someone very special.'

Anna dropped her eyes, picked up her ballpoint nervously, said, 'Well, I'd better get on with it. Calum, why don't you tilt that extension chair back and have a doze? A bit of rest now would stand you in good stead tomorrow. Don't crack too hardy. Most chaps would have had a day or two in bed after a crack like that.'

He hesitated a moment, then did as she said. By the time the Drummonds came back he was lying back, sound asleep, his open book on his chest, his dark face relaxed and even boyish.

Anna told Lois and Magnus the whole story, beginning with the likeness Elizabeth and Rossiter Forbes had seen, and omitting the actual nature of her arrival. She said that her mother's in-laws were kindred spirits and she and Magnus would adore them and when their year was up, or sooner if they could get leave, they must come over to meet them. 'You would both love it here and the grandparents would make you just as welcome, Magnus. You could have marvellous holidays, absolutely relaxing, after the tension and long hours of the operating theatre.

'I wish you could see it right now, with spring lying all over the meadows and the willows greening and the garden bursting forth in new colour and blossom every day. I don't know which I love most, the
garden,
the hills
and
the mountains, or the house itself. It looks as if, like Topsy, it "just growed". But I'm gradually finding out how it came to be, in the pioneer glimpses Grandy lets fall from time to time. At first it was a sod cottage, clay turfs, with tussock mixed in to bind it, just a shelter. But the first New Zealand Drummond wanted a stone house, like his forebears back in Scotland, so he didn't build in the wood that would have been quicker, he hewed his own stone out of the hillside. You can see the places he took it from, Mother. He built this large two-storey house slowly, adding to it as his family grew. His wife's name was Kirsty, but their first daughter was Anna, after the Annabella of long ago. There's always been an Anna here till Grandy's sister died. Now there is again.

'Mother, you wouldn't think I was any less yours because I've found my grandparents, would you? Because you and I have had such a marvellous relationship over the years, but it's pretty good to know your family tree. Besides which, in Grandmother and Grandfather you'll find kindred spirits. I think Dad must have subconsciously picked someone of the same calibre as his own mother. Gran is so happy about you, I can't tell her enough. She feels you must have given her son the only real happiness he could have known in his adult years.

'So I'm staying. I'll probably take a job at Roxburgh Hospital. We're too busy lambing just now. I've a feeling this wi|l make you worry less about me. You were such a chump taking so long to say yes to Magnus because of me. I've got side-tracked. I was describing the house.

'It's on a slight rise, a ridge on the hill, so the drive sweeps up to the front door and down again. They built there because in torrential rain, which is seldom, the creek below can flood. Native and European trees mingle and shelter it from the west and east. Its back is to the south where the bad weather comes from, and it faces the sunny north, which lies open, between hills. A creek meanders through, and it looks as if for all the world a much mightier stream of long ago had carved its way through so that the sun could shine all day on the spot where Strathallan was to rise. They built it foursquare like those Georgian homes we saw in Britain, with small-paned windows, painted white, which show up against the natural stone.

'The windowsills are painted turquoise blue and the roof is made of Welsh slates and the front door is shining black with a brass knocker that I recognized immediately, from that sketch I took of the Drummond crest. A goshawk on a coronet with expanded wings. They sit on the gateposts too, carved in stone and thrill me every time we sweep between them. Each side are small modern wings, which soften the severity, and as they are single-storey, they have low- gabled roofs. They couldn't get Welsh slates of course, now, but they got some modern tiles that were black and blended well, though Gran said they looked rawly new at first, but now lichens are clinging to them, they don't look so alien.

'You may wonder why they went on adding, with only two of them here, but the bigger annexe was added so that some day, when age means they can no longer manage the big house, they could install a manager's family here and go on living in the new part.

'I was so glad when Gran told me this. She said, "I could never take Gilbert away from Strathallan. I'd like him to be able to look out on Drummond pastures and Drummond flocks, till his day is done." Isn't that a poetic thought, Mother?

'There are hollyhocks climbing up against the house and I'm dying to see them bloom, and rambler roses too. The flowering currants and japonicas are all rosy and coral-pink and everywhere are forsythias like fountains of gold. I'm learning new names as fast as I can. The lilac has tight dark buds on it. I told Grandy how you'd once said you longed for the come and go of the seasons, for winter giving place to spring, and the scent of lilacs after rain, and he straightaway rang up a nursery in Roxburgh and ordered twenty lilac bushes, to plant each side of some natural stone steps that lead down to the brook, so you can walk between them when you come. They ought to bloom next year. So when Magnus's appointment with the Hong Kong clinic is finished, you have a rendezvous with the lilacs. They are to be palest mauves, deepest purples, and the all-white Persian lilacs.'

She paused and thought for a while before she added the next item. She ought to say something about how Strathallan was run. It took some thinking about because for some stupid reason, a reserve had crept into her outpourings. Then she scratched away. Get it over and done with, Anna.

'You'll wonder what the set-up is here. Well, Ian Doig, with his wife Betty, and three adorable children live in a new house on the estate. I haven't met the mother and father yet because Betty's mother in Dunedin is very ill, and she and Ian went down there before I got here. There are twin boys of five, Mac and Bill, and Maggie who's seven. They're imps of Satan, the boys, but such fun and quite biddable. It's just that we never know what they'll do next, and they have to be continually rescued from mud and water and trees.

'Ian's younger brother, Calum, is the farm manager and I expect when he gets married, he'll take over the big house. The Annexe is big enough to entertain you in, though - it has three bedrooms - so if he's wed before you come there'll be plenty of room.'

Well, that was one hurdle over. She'd taken it lightly. Hurdle? Why was she using that expression in her thoughts? She wrenched her mind away from this analysis, realized she was very tired, yawned, looked up, said, 'There, I've described Strathallan to them, my darlings, till they ought to be able to see it in their minds' eyes without need of photos, but remind me to take some coloured ones just the same. And some of you and Grandy, Gran. I've assured them you'd love to have them here for a holiday. I'll go and make our last cuppa. I know where everything is now.'

Calum didn't open his eyes till she brought the tray in. They listened to the late news, went to bed.

After Anna brushed her hair, she sat looking into the triple mirrors of the dressing-table. Three Annas looked back at her. One who had been Anna of Fiji; one, the centre one, who was now Anna of Strathallan; and that other one, in the right mirror, who was that? An apprehensive Anna, who shrank from the knowledge in her eyes. It was the Anna who'd never been in love before. Not till now. But what good could it do her?

Calum Doig had said he was 'spoken for'. She'd thought he'd meant an engagement. Seemingly it wasn't quite that, yet. Imagine anyone hesitating ... over a man like Calum Doig? Was Sophy really so dedicated to the ministry that she wanted nothing to come between it and herself, as a husband and family must to a certain degree?

If that was so, she simply didn't deserve Calum! She didn't know the meaning of love! Suddenly Anna banged her brush down, said to her mirrored eyes: 'You absolute idiot! A week ago you didn't even know he existed! Three days ago, when you first met, you positively hated the man. You've always scoffed at attractions as sudden as this. You must be mad! It won't last. It
can't
last. It's something born of the fact that he's here at Strathallan, in the home of your people, and that he loves it, even as you do. But he belongs to Sophy. Fancy falling for a man already spoken for!'

S
OPHY
rang them quite early the next morning, asked for Calum. He came back to the breakfast-table, said, 'Sophy can't come out till lunch-time. Old Mrs. Meadows died during the night. She's over there now. And Peter Hollings is coming out of hospital at ten. Mrs. Hollings doesn't drive, so Sophy's going to take her over to get him. She said not to bother too much about lunch if you're going to be busy in the lambing paddock, Kit.'