Anna of Strathallan (2 page)

'Would you come to see us, Anna? We won't be possessive or press you to stay. We would just like to see you, and if it wouldn't upset your mother in any way, I would like to keep in touch with you. I would also like, when they come back to New Zealand, to meet your mother. Had it not been that you were leaving Fiji, I would have taken a holiday there myself, just to see you. I won't expect an answer till you get settled in Auckland - Elizabeth told me you were going to a friend of your mother's there - but how I pray Gilbert may yet see a descendant of his. Elizabeth told me that although you are young you have great strength of character, and that the friendship between you and your mother is just beautiful to behold; that despite the fact it meant you must part from her, you seemed unreservedly glad that she is at last to have a second chance of happiness.

'Coming from Elizabeth that means a great deal. She herself had a ne'er-do-well husband, then found her true love in Rossiter Forbes. The last few years have compensated her gready. I was afraid to tell Gilbert at first about you, in case you wanted nothing to do with us, but we've had very few secrets from each other in a long married life and he sensed that something was disturbing me.

'If you do not wish to come, I shall try to understand. I think women bear these disappointments better than men, but for your grandfather's sake, please come, dear child. He has not seen this letter. I have told him only that I was going to write you, not that I was asking you to come to us. Come and look us over, then return to Auckland if you must. We'll ask no more.

Lovingly,

Grandmother.'

Anna's eyes were full of tears just as they had been when she had read it first. It had a strange sound to one who, till now, hadn't known of a relation in the world, save her mother.

'We'll ask no more.' The pathos in that was almost unbearable. She picked a ballpoint up from the desk, began to write. She told her grandmother she had brought her mother's car across from Fiji, that she would drive down the North Island, cross Cook Strait on the car ferry, and come down the South Island so she could see the whole country, almost, as she came. So she couldn't give a definite date for her arrival as she didn't know the distances involved, but would ring Strathallan as she neared Central Otago.

Thus far, good, all right for a preliminary, but how to phrase the rest of her letter? What was the clan motto of the Drummonds? ...
Gang warily.
Well, she
would
go carefully. They sounded all a girl might hope for in grandparents, but you never knew. There might have been some reason for her father's instability of character, his waywardness. She mustn't hurt her mother by becoming too deeply involved too soon. This letter read all right, but the proof of the pudding was in the eating, in this case, in the quality of life as lived at Strathallan. But even while she knew she must proceed with caution, she couldn't help responding to the loneliness that was inherent in that letter. But she would make no rash promises about staying on ... yet.

She wrote: "Your letter has moved me, of course. I thought my mother and myself were quite alone in the world. That's why I was so glad when my stepfather came into her life. I've not told her about your letter yet, which may sound strange, but it arrived on her wedding-day, and I thought that that day belonged to the present and the future, not to the past.

I'm so sorry for all you must have suffered through the years and am only sorry we didn't know about you sooner, but hope that now, in some way, we may all find compensation for this lack. More I can't say. It may not be easy x for you, having someone of my age projected into your ordered lives, but IH try not to disrupt them. I think it was sweet of Elizabeth Forbes. We took a great fancy to her and had read her books for years, even though she wasn't writing about gardening in Fiji! We sensed that in later years she'd come into a time of greater happiness, when she wrote of the delightful garden she had created when she married again and left Lavender Hill for Pukerangi, which she said so truly meant The Hill of Heaven. I'm looking forward to meeting her again. It was a kind thought of hers, perhaps sensing I'd be a little lonely when Mother and Magnus took off ?or Hong Kong. I won't start looking for a job in Auckland till I've seen you. Once I get a position it might be some time before I got leave.

'Please understand if this letter doesn't flow very well. It's not easy to write. Until I arrive, my love to you and Grandfather,

Anna.'

She stared at it a long time. 'Love to you and Grandfather.' Words she had thought she would never be able to pen. It had been completely out of her ken.

What was it Magnus had said, kissing her good-bye? 'God bless you, little one. May many a glad surprise be just around the corner for you as it was for me. This time last year I didn't even know my ideal woman really existed.'

He'd meant, of course, that marriage might be ahead of her, too, but
this
was what had been around the corner. Kinsfolk of her own. Well, the die would be cast when she posted her letter. Butterflies fluttered uneasily in her stomach. New relations could be such unknown quantities. She supposed it was like meeting future in-laws for the first time. They might be kindred spirits, they might not.

She heard a door open and close. She would go down and tell Auntie Ed and Uncle Alan now. They'd be glad for her, perhaps a little apprehensive, and would assure her that their home was always open to her if she didn't want to stay in the south. She would ask them not to tell Mother and Magnus yet. Time enough for that. She'd write herself and just say she was off exploring New Zealand before settling down.

It was more than a week later. What an extraordinarily varied country New Zealand was. It ranged from a semi- tropical North to an extremely Scottish-type Far South, not only in the history of the pioneer settlers and the number of Macs in the telephone directories, but in the landscape too, except that there was no heather, but higher mountains.

Now she had left Dunedin behind, journeyed thirty-five miles south to Milton and had headed west beyond there. This was like the Border country, rolling hills just such as she had loved in Scotland, the land of her forebears, hills cropped close and sheep-dotted, whin-hedged ... or did they call it gorse here?

Beyond and above were hills with here and there snowy shoulders, streams sang loudly, clouds like giant soap bubbles scattered and amassed, restless and beautiful, larkssoared in the sky, magpies swooped. So many English birds were here, many new to her. She must get a book on birds, be able to recognize them all, the natives and the exotic ones. She loved the New Zealand custom - a relatively new custom, she'd been told - of putting over bird-calls as signals on the radio just before the news. They were native birdcalls, with enchanting notes that chuckled and twanged and suggested cool forests, mossy-green underfoot, dappled with leaf-shadows.

She had meant to ring Crannog from Dunedin, to announce the time of her arrival to her grandparents, but with her fingers in the toll slot, panic had seized her and she had stopped. What if her first sight of Strathallan daunted her? What if it was like that near-derelict house on the main road she had passed yesterday, long unpainted, with a rusting tin roof, cracked window-panes, a verandah lolling lopsidedly under its overgrown vines because the posts had rotted through? What if - well, she'd changed her mind?

She had told her grandmother it might be ten days before she reached Dunedin because she was going to sight-see all the way. So she would put up, unannounced, at the Crannog pub listed in the directory, no doubt a relic of the gold- mining days, because it was called The Pan and Shovel, go out the next morning to drive past Strathallan, inspect it, drive back and ring her grandparents from the pub. If she found it too unattractive, she'd tell them, on the phone, that she could stay only a few days this time, that she had to be back in Auckland for a job. How odd that only now, nearing journey's end, she should feel this reluctance!

She had little more than a hundred miles to go, so she hadn't left Dunedin early. Crannog was just past Roxburgh. She dawdled, taking a keen interest in every miners' monument among the hills and minor gorges on the way, stopping at small-town museums where, because it was a little early for many tourists yet, those in charge delayed her each time, warming to her evident interest.

It was a pity, then, that just before she got to Miller's Flat, a truck with a load of stuff from some demolition job on board passed her, dropped a piece of four-by-two with some enormous nails in it and Anna ran over them with both offside tyres.

Despite the fact there had been quite a lot of traffic passing till now, she had to wait nearly half an hour before someone came along and offered to send out a mechanic from the Flat, and even then it was an age before he arrived, jacked up her car, and took the tyres into the township to repair. He explained that they had had an incredible number of urgent jobs in, and he had had to finish one before coming out to her.

'You'd better come in with me. You're going to get pretty cold waiting here at this time of day. No one'll pinch your car with two tyres off. Lock it up, though.'

Now she did wish she had set off sooner and had not been decoyed into stopping. The early spring night was closing in fast and the hills to the west would soon shut off the sun that was already dropping low.

By the time the mechanic returned her, and attached the tyres, the sky had a leaden look. He asked, 'How far are you going tonight? Not too far, I hope, that's a snowy sky.'

'Is it?' She sounded surprised. She'd just taken it for the grey of twilight. Of course she'd never seen snow fall and had assumed it would be all over. 'I'm going to Crannog. It won't fall for some time, will it?'

'Probably not, but waste no time. If your home's there you'll want to make it. But if you're just touring, I'd say put up at Roxburgh - but even if you go on to Crannog, at least you won't be going through the gorges. They're on beyond Alexandra, the Cromwell Gorge and the Kawarau Gorge.'

She thanked him and was away. She was glad she'd had some coffee from her flask when waiting for a motorist to show up, because the temperature was falling rapidly. She switched the heater on.

She turned a corner sharply a few miles further west and met swirling snow in a white-out sort of skiff. It was most alarming by its very strangeness and lack of visibility but lasted only a few moments. The light came through again, wanly, but reassuringly.

The moment she could see again, she was enchanted... it lay like a filmy veil over everything. Nevertheless, she kept to a crawl. Common sense, if not experience, dictated that. A hundred yards or so and the road was clear again, though the wind-driven snow lay in flakes against the dry grass tufts of the verge, the dead stalks of last autumn above the sweet green of the new season's grass.

Well, it wasn't far to Roxburgh now. She might make it before any more snow fell. She'd stop there. It was larger, so she could get a good choice of accommodation. She was beginning to feel hungry.

Around the next corner snow was sheeting the road thinly. The car skidded a little. What an alarming feeling! Your hands were on the wheel, but there was no control. Conditions like these were right out of her ken. This road was so winding. The enormous Clutha River must be on her right - she couldn't see it - she just hoped it didn't swirl near the road on any of these bends. Visibility was getting nil and in this half-light one's lights were of little use. You needed full dark for contrast. She wished she had asked more about any hazards to expect. But then locals never recognized hazards unless they were really startling ones. Custom dulled the edge of danger.

The darkness deepened and now her headlights showed up fruit orchards and a lighted window or two. If the snow came on really heavily, she might have to knock someone up and ask a bed for the night. How ghastly! You wouldn't know who might answer your knock. It was a terrifying thought. Even apart from fears, it could be vastly embarrassing. No one would relish having to put a stranger up. You could get a busy mother, already harassed by many things, or an elderly, frail wife, put out by this descent upon her by a feckless, ignorant stranger. Anna pressed on, the wiper only just coping with the sleety snow driving against the windscreen, but still giving her a fan of clearish glass through which to peer.

Her lights were good, but the whitening of the landscape was somehow diluting their strength now, rendering the terrain almost featureless. She hoped she was still driving to the left side of the white line that had long since disappeared, yet not too far to the left, or she might tilt off the verge into a ditch. She set her teeth and ground on, tense with anxiety.

She carefully steered round a left-bearing corner of the hillside and then, with ghastly suddenness, into her vision loomed a horrible sight - a man, staggering from side to side, with his face covered with blood. Anna turned left instinctively and stopped dead as he lurched almost unseeingly towards the right of her. He put out a hand as if to ward off the obstacle and fell across the bonnet.

She got out on the passenger side as less risky and was round the car in a jiffy, clutching him. 'What's happened? No, don't tell me. I'm too near the corner. Come on, come on!
Move!
Get into the car, and I'll drive on a bit, then stop, so you can put me in the picture.'

She guided and tugged him to the door, wrenched it open, he half fell in and Anna heaved him the rest of the way. She bent down, lifted his legs, thrust them in, whipped round the front of the car, tried to slide in under the wheel, found he had fallen over into her seat, managed to lever him up, knew her suit would be covered in blood, but that didn't matter, and she got her door shut smartly. Great relief. She'd made it before anything else came round the corner.

She drove on a few yards, peering out anxiously in case another victim was on the road, or their presumably smashed car, saw a wider curve that seemed to snuggle in under some crooked willows and very gingerly eased the car on to the verge.