Anna of Strathallan (26 page)

Grace said, 'I think he'll have had such a boost in morale to know he's freed Kitty and Gilbert from anxiety tiiat he'll be on top of the world.' She seemed to hesitate, then said with firmness, 'And Anna, when Calum gets home and tells you
everything,
don't allow yourself to retain a single vestige of doubt. It's been a trying time for you, my dear. And I just want to say we all love you for the way you came to Strathallan and made those two dear people there live again. So remember that whatever Calum tells you, I'm with him all the way. Please don't ask me anything about that right now, just remember it when the time comes.'

'Th - thank you, Mrs. Sherborne.' Anna was really bewildered by now. What could she mean? Grace caught the tone and laughed and said, 'Dear Anna, you must think me crazy. Don't ask me what I mean. You'll soon know. Give my love to Kitty and Gilbert.'

She said nothing to her grandparents about this odd behaviour. Kitty had taken a turkey out of the deep freeze, and now, in the afternoon, it was sizzling in the oven. Grandfather was podding the peas, sitting on the step, sheer happiness in his every glance round the smiling garden. Kitty had earlier instructed Anna how to make Calum's favourite pudding with the last bag of redcurrants in the freezer, from last summer. It was quite a complicated one. You lined a greased mould with the thinnest of bread and butter. It took ages to get it to stick perfectly. Then you filled it with stewed currants drained and whipped through an egg custard, capped with more strips of bread, symmetrically arranged, and chilled till stiff, when it had to be carefully unmoulded and served with ice-cream and whipped cream. He was certainly getting five-star service!

The fatted caff, in fact. Only the prodigal in this story hadn't come home. He had stayed in the far country, and Calum was the messenger bringing the news of the lost one to the ones who had stayed home and longed for his return.

Kitty said happily, 'We must dress up. This is an occasion. I'm sorry Ian and Betty won't be here, but Betty was adamant. She said we'd be able to talk more freely without little ears pricked up, which is true. I shall wear my new blue crimplene.'

'Oh, do, Gran, it's so beautiful with your white hair and blue eyes and pink cheeks. And the little touches of lavender and purple in it make you look like a herbaceous border.'

Kitty's resultant peal of laughter reached her Gilbert's ears on the back step. He smiled to himself. He'd not heard Kitty laugh quite like that since ... since Alex was a stripling.

Kitty said, 'Anna, wear your white and gold and brown dress. I do love it. And Calum's never seen you in that. You've only started to wear it since the weather got really hot.'

Anna dropped her eyes swiftly. Dress up for Calum? Who was she to do that? But she would, Kitty wanted to make this an occasion.

The shower was cool against her skin. She picked up a shaker of sandalwood talcum. It suited this dress somehow. She dabbed skin perfume to match at her ears, her wrists, and brushed out die gold layers of her hair till it shone like spun gossamer, gilded by some alchemist.

She stepped carefully into the cream dress, ran downstairs to have Gran zip it up. It was sleeveless with a plain round neck and had a dropped waistline, with box pleats forming a tiny skirt. Printed tricel in big splashes of gold and orange and brown formed patch pockets above that hip- line, and epaulettes at the shoulder, fastened with gold buttons. Over it she dropped a fijian necklace of shells in all shades of brown, and clasped a bulky copper bracelet about her tanned wrist. She was so brown now, one could see a faint golden down on her arms bleached by the sun.

Gilbert was bringing in the peas. He caught her to him, kissed her. 'Eh, lass, but you're like summer itself. What a season for Strathallan, my Anna!'

She kissed him back, her strong young arms hugging him. He added: 'The mail's come at last. I saw dust at the end of the drive as he took off. I'll away down for it.'

'Oh, I'll go. You go and put your best duds on too, Grandy. I'd love a walk, it will fill in the time.'

Kitty and Gilbert watched her go, then turned to smile at each other.

Anna sauntered, delighting in the feel of the grass on the verge, cool against her toes in the thonged sandals she was wearing. The hawthorn blossom had long since faded. If you looked very closely you could see the tiny beginnings of the berries that would redden the avenue all next autumn and winter.

Beyond her and above her the hills were clothed in the tussocky-gold of Central Otago Decembers. Above her a lark sang in the sky, symbol of summer happiness, so high it couldn't be seen, yet its song trilled over all Strathallan and beyond.

This was
her
land, born and bred in her; that skyline, that horizon, that intersecting of trees and streams, the flocks that grazed, were her heritage through a father who had redeemed himself and paid his debt to the world he had lived in. It had to be enough. How could she ask for more?

She drew out the mail. Lots of window envelopes, no doubt receipts for the cheques Grandy had posted off recently. There was a letter for Calum, and the name on the back meant it was from Doug Fenton, who'd given them that blue-and-gold day at the sea all those weeks ago. That one day that had been all hers, to remember always.

Two letters for her, from friends in Suva, one from Auntie Edna, and ... why, this one bore a London postmark. The writing was vaguely familiar. But she knew no one in London. She turned it over and stared, grew still.
It was from Victoria.

She didn't know why she began to shake. She looked round, saw the octagonal seat round the third hawthorn along and went across to it. She put the other letters down, carefully weighted them against the breeze, with a stone, then slowly began to prise the envelope open. How could a letter from Victoria bear a Heathrow postmark?

The address was merely the name of the jumbo jet in which she was flying from Los Angeles to Heathrow. 'Dearest Anna,

I know you'll be surprised to hear from me away up in the clouds, unless the situation has been too much for my lady mother and she's rushed over to Strathallan to tell you. I was speaking to her by phone before I left Sydney. I'm spending the hours I cannot bear to sleep up here, in writing you. Otherwise I'm going to be so consumed with impatience to get to my journey's end I'll be a wreck when I get there, and if ever I want to be at my best, it's then.

'Anna, I broke it off with Calum, by letter, from Sydney, some time ago I'd been trying to do it for ages, but knowing how I'd felt when Blair jilted me, I couldn't bring myself to do that to Calum. Long before you came to Strathallan, I was trying to screw up my courage. He and I just drifted into that engagement. He took me round out of sheer compassion after Blair went away - did it for years. I think I clung to him because I could see Blair in him, which was hardly fair to Calum.

'Maybe some people can settle for second-best, but not me. I'm an all-or-nothing person. Nobody else had ever got Calum going ... I had it borne in on me more and more than I was cheating him too. That he ought to have the chance to find out if there was someone, somewhere, he could
really
love.

'I was away when you arrived at Strathallan, much longer than I needed to be. I'd wanted to think things out, to come to a decision. And of course, as always when I was with Calum, I felt I couldn't do it to him. But that night, when you in some way brought Philip and Sophy together, I saw Calum look at you. And something in his voice as you two laughed and teased each other filled me with hope. I thought if I waited just a little, Calum might by then know his own heart more - would realize that ours had been a very milk-and-water affair.

'But I still couldn't find the courage to break it off. It's so hard to do these things face to face. The other one interrupts all the time. I'd a pretty strong feeling by then that he'd only be glad, but a chap can't show relief to a girl. He'd feel caddish. So I did it by letter, from Sydney. Oh, Anna, I'm so glad Calum didn't tell me, when he first knew, that Blair was a widower. If he had, I wouldn't have had the courage to break it off. It would have seemed as if I was doing it so I could be free to marry his brother.

'When Calum got my letter, he rang me - from Alexandra Post Office, so no one would know - and told me about Blair. And he was so generous - told me that his mother had written him to ask if he would go across there to see her, but to say nothing to me. She wanted to ask him face-to-face if he really loved me as one ought to love a wife-to-be. She'd always thought he didn't. But the main reason was this: When she asked Blair why on earth he hadn't told them about Yvette, he told her that he'd wanted to let a year elapse before he told
me.
During that year he wanted to prove he
could
manage as a solo parent so I could never think he'd asked me to marry him for a mother for his children.

'He had the letter half written to me to tell me and to ask me to come to him in England when he heard Calum and I had become engaged. So, Anna, I'm on my way to my true destiny. Blair's found his niche in life. I'll stay in England with him. I can probably do a bit of my own work round there. It would help financially. But mostly I just want to look after Blair and small Beth and Michael.

'But I've been so afraid you might wonder all sorts of things. I told Calum (he confessed he loved you) not to ask you too quickly, in case you thought he'd proposed to you on the rebound. That wouldn't be true. I do so hope that-you get this before he gets back from the Argentine. I'm a great believer ... or hoper... in journeys ending in lovers' meetings. That it will be that way for me and Blair, and for you and Calum. Knowing Calum, I'm quite sure that he'd never let a glimmer of his feeling for you escape him while he was still engaged to me, but he told me on the phone that when he met you, he
knew.
So
please
, Anna, don't let any thoughts of his prior engagement cloud any of the happiness you so richly deserve. Oh, how happy your grandparents will be! And Anna, may we remain the best of friends? Please write to me, always.

'The dawn is coming up over Ireland, all rosy-pink and pearly with mist... the clouds have parted now. My seat- mate has just told me that the lough below is Killarney. Now we're across the Welsh hills. Isn't air travel wonderful? ... I'm looking south, and somewhere there, in the beech woods that Blair's mother has described, Blair is waiting. Oh, you and Calum must have a trip over here, bringing Kitty and Gilbert with you, and stay with us. I'm as sure as that. But pray for me, Anna, that it
is
like that. Oh, the patchwork of fields, the silver glimmer of rivers that till now have just been names in a geography book! Anna, I'll stick this down now. I'll post it at Heathrow. May it speed to you on the wings of prayer. Love, and God bless you both,

Victoria.'

Anna sat gazing into space, dazed. You are dazed when happiness has just been handed to you in a sealed envelope. She looked down at that envelope, touched it caressingly. Calum hadn't needed to go to England to sort things out, after all. But he'd been prepared, would have had his immunizations, his passport. He'd only have needed to get a South American visa, once he'd decided to go to the Argentine.

This, then, was what Victoria's mother must have meant. Victoria must have rung her before setting off. Oh, what dear, dear people. The vagueness departed and other memories crystalized. Victoria's mother saying both her children were tarred with the one brush, like their father, 'Once they love, they love for keeps.' Not only Philip, but Victoria too. Now she could look back on things with joy, not with a faint feeling of guilt ... the sunrise-to-sunset day Calum had given her; the way he had washed her feet that night to warm them; the way he had taken her chin in his hands after that involuntary kiss when she was looking for the divorce papers, and had looked his fill in a renunciatory farewell to all that might have been and couldn't be, because of Victoria.

She was still smiling over the memories when a car swept round the bend, up to, and across the cattle-stops, before it came to a squealing stop at the third hawthorn. She was on her feet, the pages of the letter falling unheeded to the grass.

It was like a miracle. He was leaping out, tall, craggy, broad, smiling ... how could she ever have thought him forbidding?

The sunlight was in those Highland blue eyes, she saw a white flash in his tanned face as his smile broadened, took in the scattered pages ... he said, T like a woman who smiles to herself when she thinks she's alone ... Oh, Anna, Anna, dare I hope that letter is from Victoria?'

'Yes, oh yes, Calum. I've just read it, my darling. Oh, Calum, Calum, Calum!'

Just as well this wasn't a main road, because any passer-by might have been forgiven for imagining he was watching something on a television screen, not on a country road in Central Otago. They kissed and kissed again, drew apart, then closed together again, touched each other's faces, all quite incredulously.

Then Calum laughed. 'My love, we'd better pick these pages up. That breeze is blowing them about. Imagine if some busybody came along and picked them up! Or would it matter? Come to think of it, we're going to have some explaining to do before we dare announce our engagement in the
Central Otago News.
How on earth can we do it without telling it over and over? Oh, I have it. We'll go over to see Mrs. de Paget tomorrow. Bridie would love to be the first outside the family to know it. Before the end of the week all Crannog, Roxburgh and Alexandra will know.'

Anna said reproachfully, 'Why didn't you tell me before you went flying off to South America, Calum?

He laughed. 'Sweetheart, did you really think I could bear to squash a proposal into half an hour before I had to pack? Besides, I wasn't sure I could even convince you that Victoria had done this of her own free will. You're such an addled-Anna at times. I thought if I had to rush explanations you'd have all sorts of doubts while I was away ... you'd think I'd somehow let Victoria see I loved
you.
And I just couldn't bear to put six thousand miles of ocean between us if we'd been at cross-purposes. Apart from that, I'd so much on my mind, with this business about your father. Anna, I've the best present in the world for your grand-parents here.'