Anna of Strathallan (14 page)

Anna blinked.
'Me?
Oh, she thought I might take you seriously. Oh, Philip, I do hope you told her it was my idea too. I don't want you blamed for the lot.'

He sighed. He must like to stand high in Sophy's regard. 'I'm afraid it's nothing that can be sorted out quickly, Anna, but thanks for trying. Sophy thinks it was sweet of you, so you needn't feel embarrassed about meeting her.'

Anna wrinkled her brows. 'Then why are
you
shy of meeting her?'

He shrugged. 'Oh, well, it's a matter of timing. It's business too. Had a ring from a chap who has a high-country run in South Canterbury. He's going to be in Dunedin at the week-end and would like to see me. He wants another man and his team of dogs up there. I'd fancied it two or three years ago, and he knew that but didn't want anyone then. But not a word to anyone here. I have to find out a bit more about it, then think my way through it for a day or two. And Sophy just could feel embarrassed in her pulpit on Sunday so soon after ticking me off.'

Anna was appalled. 'But, Philip, they can't do without you here. Calum said the other day how glad he'd be when Ian got back, that they didn't always like working at this pace, and he thought Kitty and Gilbert were looking tired.'

'Yes, I know, but you can always get men for here, so easy of access to Central towns. It's different back in the Alps, and I think it might do me good to get away. I've been considering it for some time. I'm suddenly fed-up with things. But not a word.'

She promised.

It made her feel restless herself. It was such a fair and lovely place, Strathallan, but there were undercurrents. She herself worried because Calum must feel ousted because of her; he was not only in love with someone who seemed to put career before marriage, but because of Anna he might feel his future here was uncertain. If she herself married a farmer,
he
might want to take over Strathallan. Not that Calum need entertain that thought: the farmer she wanted loved someone else ... but the idea was bound to occur to him.

Philip was restless and wanted the challenge of the high-country station life. Only Grandmother and Grandfather seemed perfectly happy. Or was perfect the word? More like happier than of yore. True, they now had their granddaughter here, but there was always the remembered bitterness that their prodigal son had gone away, but, unlike the Biblical character, hadn't come back.

Calum went out after dinner, saying he was going to Crannog. Was he bound for St. Kit's Manse? It would be a relief to know that Sophy
had
decided to marry him, then she wouldn't be tormented by the faint hope she felt was so unworthy, that Sophy might stick to her career and in time Calum might turn to herself.

If he did, she would take him, even knowing she was second-best. Sometimes second-bests turned out happiest in the end. She'd heard of cases like that. Oh, stop dreaming, Anna. You're no less than a fool!

When Calum came home, much earlier than she'd expected, he found Kitty, Gilbert and Anna deep in discussion of the past.

Till now Kitty had forborne to ask Anna much about what she remembered of her father, what she knew of the situation as it had been between him and her mother. She must want to know how her boy had spent those years, but Anna thought it was because they were rarely alone for long without Gilbert, and for her husband's sake Kitty wouldn't bring up yesterday's sorrows.

But tonight it was Gilbert who did. Perhaps with the telepathy that exists between two partners of a long and happy marriage, he sensed there were things Kitty hungered to know.

Out of a companionable silence he said, 'Anna, would you like to tell us about your father... how he met your mother, where they lived, what Alex did? But tell us the truth, don't spare us. We know he was unreliable, spendthrift, had no sense of responsibility. Though the knowledge of his physical bravery at the end compensated us a great deal.'

Anna said, 'I'll tell you what I know, though of late years Mother didn't speak so much of him. I do know she loved him dearly when they were first married. That they were almost deliriously happy. It was later, when money got tight and Mother couldn't work because she had me, that things began to go wrong.'

'Aye, that adds,' said Gilbert. 'But why did they have more at first? Did your mother have a very good job?'

'Not particularly. Just a run-of-the-mill wage, but her adoptive parents left her a house and a small legacy. She lost her parents when young, and their childless neighbours adopted her. She had only this bachelor uncle in Fiji besides. They were not young when they took her, so they died before she was married.

'Mother and Dad lived on in the house for a while, then Dad fancied a citrus farm. It took all the money from the sale of the house and meant a big mortgage. Dad, I'm afraid, was lazy. That's why I felt a fellow-feeling for Elizabeth Forbes today. Certainly they had bad luck, but, in spite of the fact that growers' hazards did set them back, they could have survived except that Dad—' she hesitated.

Gilbert raised his dark brows that were so like Anna's and filled in for her, 'But Alex couldn't stay away from the race- meetings?'

'Yes. Was he like that here?'

'He was, I got him out of debt time and again. More fool I. I didn't want to see the Drummond name besmirched. I should have been firmer, I can see that now. I forgave him too readily, too often. Forgiveness is fine till a weak character trades on it so much that it makes him weaker still. It's kinder by far to put a bit of backbone and independence into them. Go on.'

'When Mother's uncle left her the guest-house she saw it as a godsend. It was something she could manage, even with a small child. It would get him away from his racing friends, give him a new start. It was also an exciting, glamorous setting, and Dad was so keen at first, she had high hopes. But of course it was hard work. They couldn't afford a big staff to start with and Dad thought some of the tasks were too menial for him. So he started spending more and more time away. The life there can be a lotus-eating sort of existence. There were other forms of gambling.'

She decided to say nothing about the wine and the women. 'Mother thought she was going to lose the guesthouse too, and that was all she had to bring me up on, to support herself and her husband. She put a notice in the
Suva Times
that she would no longer be responsible for debts contracted in her name. She must have been desperate to do it. In a week Dad was gone, taking with him all that could be turned into cash. It upset Mother terribly. Wondered had she been wise, that he might go from bad to worse. But she got over that, because without the drag of his constant debts, she made the guest-house pay, extended it, modernized it, educated me as far as I wanted to go. That was all, till news of his death reached her.' She hesitated. She didn't want them to know he'd discarded his parents to the extent of even denying their existence. 'If Mother had known about you, had any idea where you were, she would have been in touch with you, have let you know you had a grandchild. She'd probably have tried, in the early years, to bring you together again.'

Gilbert said, 'Aye, lassie, I'm sure she would. We've searched our hearts many's the time, to find out where we'd gone wrong. You canna help doing it. You ask yourself were you too strict at a time when gentleness would've perhaps answered better. Were you too soft when discipline and putting your foot down might have been the right method? And you canna know.'

Kitty nodded, dry-eyed. She'd lived with this so long she'd learned to bear it. 'I used to find myself going back over the years trying to pinpoint just where we lost his confidence, when he first began lying to me, deceiving us. Aye di me, but he was such a dear little lad, bubbling over with the sheer joy of living, rushing in from school, eager to tell us all that had happened.

'I know he got in with a bad crowd. We tried to turn him from them without antagonizing him too much, but we never learned how. We felt hampered by inexperience - I expect most parents do. But even now there are times when I long to know how he spent his last years. And it always comes back to me, "Where did I fail"?'

..Before Anna could search for words that might give some measure of comfort, they came from Calum. He'd come in, unheard.

'Oh, Kit,' he said, 'don't you realize you suffer more than you need from the fact that Alex was your only one, your all?" So you feel your failure is a total failure. Can't you see what I mean? There's a perfect example of it in our family. Mother and Dad have three of us, Ian, Blair, me. Far be it from me to hold Ian and myself up as exemplary characters, but you know what Blair was like. Mother always says what a comfort you've been to her, because you understood as no one else did. He was weak, irresponsible - flawed in the making somewhere. If he'd been their only child they'd have felt as you do. I wish I'd realized this before. But because the two of us turned out reasonably decent, Mum and Dad, even though they fret over Blair, put it down to some throwback and they feel they've only had thirty-three-and-a-third per cent failure with their family. They're not always tormenting themselves with such questions. So from now on, you cut it out, do you hear?'

Anna would never forget the look that crossed the two faces she so loved. A new truth, a saving truth, had dawned on them. Calum crossed to the fire, took off his shoes, put on the slippers Kitty had by the hearth for him, said, 'Now, that's all the soul-searching we're going to do tonight. How about a game of five hundred?'

No one would have guessed at any inner conflicts disturbing the Reverend Sophy's breast on Sunday morning. Anna wondered how long she'd spent on that sermon. It was masterly. It made a hitherto inexplicable Old Testament incident come alive for Anna. Sophy built up the atmosphere moment by breathless moment, once she'd given them a sketch of the historical events that had led up to it, making them see the times in their own century, understanding the old prohibitions, the shibboleths, the customs that seemed harsh now, but were accepted then, things ingrained into a godly people. But a state of judgment, rather than mercy.

She made it seem inevitable then, that the God of Love and Mercy had to be born into the world to reveal Himself as He was. She had still incorporated the flashes of humour, the quotations from poets, but it was an inescapable presentation of a case for Christian living. For the first time Anna wondered if this section of the community didn't need Sophy more as their pastor, than as a farmer's wife.

Outside Sophy's eyes twinkled as they met Anna's. 'You looked extremely thoughtful in kirk ... I noticed you. I sincerely hope you weren't hatching up any more Machiavellian plots.'

Anna laughed too, but ruefully. 'That was the trouble. Ours wasn't in that class. Kid stuff. And, Sophy, I wasn't thinking of anything but the points of your sermon. It made me wonder how I'd ever had the nerve to try to influence you in any way. Oh, if only there was some way for you to be- a wife
and
a minister! Oh dear, I'd better stop, pretty nearly everyone's out, but this is no place for a conversation like this.'

For a moment Sophy's face changed, it was just a quiver, but in that instant Anna saw again not the severity of the upswept hair-do and the black of the Geneva gown, but the laughing girl in the sapphire blue dress of the Alexandra musical.

Sophy said in a low voice, 'Anna, come over and see me some time when I'm on my own. Ring first to make sure. I'm not as sure of myself as I was. Sometimes I'm terribly lonely. And I— Oh, here's Mrs. Middlemarch coming. Come and see me this week. I've got to the stage where I think I'm just being selfish. Oh, good morning, Mrs. Middlemarch. Your flowers were perfect, with that use of the native flax as a background.'

Anna thought she ought to be glad. It looked as if Sophy was coming to a decision. She must make herself glad that Calum looked like getting his heart's desire.

She had no opportunity to talk with Philip on the Monday. Gilbert was trucking some heifers to Cromwell and took her with him. 'The orchards are a picture right now, the peach and apricot blossom is out. We go through Alex, and it's a garden town that you've only seen in the dark, and then through Clyde, with an air of still dreaming over its days of gold, and through the Cromwell Gorge. I want you to see Cromwell as it is now, before the dams alter it beyond recognition of us old-timers. I want you to see the confluence of the Kawarau and the Clutha, such turbulent rivers that they don't mingle till well downstream. I know we need the power and that changes have to be, and that no doubt in time we'll find new stretches of beauty, but—'

It was a day of sheer happiness for Anna. She pushed all other concerns to the back of her mind. Grandfather was delighting in having her all to himself for the drive, and later, in introducing her to all and sundry, men who had known him and his father before him in some cases.

On Tuesday morning Philip was across at the sale, leaving early straight from his own home. His father worked a few acres and wanted him to buy some stock in. Philip rang Anna late the night before, but very briefly. He said guardedly, 'Anna, don't give anything away in your answers, but I thought I'd like to tell you I have been offered a job on Draviemore in the Mackenzie country, but I've got till tonight to think it over. This chap is going to ring me at home then, after ten.'

Anna wished she could have talked it out with him, tried to persuade him not to leave Strathallan. She liked Philip. They might not get as good a man again. But it was Philip's business, and possibly Calum's as manager, and she dared not say a word.

Anna went round the sheep with the two men, Calum and Gilbert. Kitty came too. There wasn't the same need, lambing was tailing off now, but they liked being outside. She and Kitty came back earlier than the men, with a ewe and her lamb they hoped would do better with each other in a pen. Kitty said, 'Would you like to go over to the kitchen and start the lunch? Switch on the infra-red griller and put the sausages under it, and pull the soup on to the fire. I'll see if I can persuade this one she has a purpose in life.'