Anna of Strathallan (5 page)

The men went off, grinning. Kitty said softly, 'Now, I can look at you, Anna, all on my own. My, but you're bonnie! And how like Gilbert, as he was when I first met him. That broad brow ... under your bit of fringe... a serene brow, I always thought. It served him in good stead in those years when serenity was hard to come by. I know Gilbert's almost white now, but when he was young his hair was just like yours, fair, with darker gold streaks in layers underneath.'

Anna laughed. 'It would be easier for a man ... nobody would ever come up to him, and say: "Do tell me where you get your hair streaked? It's so natural-looking!" then get huffy when I told them it
was
natural. They thought I just wouldn't share my secret.'

Kitty's eyes were roving still. 'You have the same dark brows, and those warm brown eyes. So unusual with fair hair. And his chin, with its faint cleft in it. Oh, you're just the little daughter I always longed to give him.' Gently she lifted the hair that was barely shoulder-length, back from Anna's ears, her touch as light as thistledown. 'Yes, slightly pointed ears. Oh, how satisfying this is! Alex wasn't like Gilbert at all, except for his ears. He was, I'm sure, a throwback to a forebear of my own, the one whose name was rarely mentioned! But you've been given to Gilbert in his old age. His sister Anna was his twin. There's an oval picture of her in your room, as like you as he is. This house will live again now. It was slowly dying, its day done. William Drummond built it in 1869 when he turned from gold- mining back to sheep.'

Anna's eyes kindled with interest. 'William Drummond ... named, I suppose, for the first Viscount Strathallan?'

'Aye. Oh, lassie, you know a bit of clan history, then? Oh, how this will please my man. When he knew you were coming he was so feared you might be too modern to care about the things we care about. "With it" they call it these days. Did your father - did Alex tell you these things, then?'

She didn't want to tell her her son had never talked about his childhood, her forebears. She said cautiously, 'I was too young to remember more than a very little about him, Grandmother. Some children have a long memory, but I don't seem to. All I remember is my father bouncing me on his knee and singing old Scots tunes.'

Kitty nodded, pleased. 'Then he did retain some memories of the old songs... and he did call you Anna.'

Anna said, 'Just over two years ago Mother and I went for a trip to Britain. Friends of hers managed the guest-house. I looked up some Drummond history, explored the places the clan knew so well. It gave me a feeling of - having roots.'

Kitty nodded. 'Aye, you would miss that. Every child should have a heritage of songs and tales handed down from one generation to the next, especially of their immediate forebears. That's where I think illegitimacy is so cruelly hard on the children. There's so much of it in our permissive society. I think every child has a right to know the stock whence it sprang. But it's denied to so many. I hate that word, illegitimate, as applied to children. It should be applied only to parents. Oh, listen to me, what a subject! Anna, there's a batch of scones under that tea-towel. Would you pop some in the oven on one of the shelves in there? The lower one, in case the men take their time. They'll be nicer warmed up. I'll pull my soup-pot on.' She got up, bustled round, began cutting rounds from a loaf, ready to put in the toaster.

Anna was glad to do something. This little task marked her as one of the family, not a guest. She looked round the large kitchen, said, 'What a glorious room! That lovely blue-and-white enamel stove - it emanates such heat And that rag mat... it makes me feel as if I belonged.'

It was beautifully worked, in a traditional Scots thistle design. It had known the tread of many feet. Kitty said, 'Gilbert's mother worked it not long before she died. It was to replace the one that the first Drummond's wife made more than a century ago. I still have the iron pot she used to dye her rags in. It was beginning to show signs of wear, and the Crannog museum wanted it. So it's preserved for always. I thought that many of my old dear things would have to be bequeathed to that museum, but now ...' she smiled at Anna, complete happiness in her beautiful blue eyes, 'now you are here, to treasure them.'

Anna was made aware in that instant that the past was reaching out to her, that it would not want to let her go. She didn't know if it was a good thing for her or not. Was it something that might separate her a little from her mother? Because she would never risk that. Would there be rocks ahead? Calum and his brother and brother's wife weren't likely to want her here. She would, above all things, gang warily.

She and her grandmother went out to the car, brought in the cases Anna had with her, then, somewhat to Anna's surprise, Kitty said briskly, 'Plenty of room in the barn for this car, I'll run it round. Easier for me, knowing the place, than for you. Just take in the last lot of stuff, Anna.'

She saw the look on Anna's face, said, 'I can drive most cars. I love all mechanized things.' Off she went with a smooth gear change.

Anna took her bits and pieces in, stacked them on the sewing-machine in the kitchen window alcove, opened the oven door to make sure the scones weren't browning too much and felt already a granddaughter of Strathallan.

Kitty came in, flung an embroidered willow-pattern supper-cloth on the table, put out cups to match. 'They came out with the first William's wife,' she said, seeing Anna's eyes on them.

Anna put out a caressing hand to one. 'How fascinating! It seems to me that everything here will have a story, that one would always be conscious that other hands had served out from these dishes, had dusted those pictures every spring-cleaning.'

Kitty nodded. 'That other eyes had looked out of this kitchen window every morning and seen those same contours, Blue Spur, and Ghost Hill and all of them with a sprinkling of snow like now, and in summer and autumn tussock-gold, emerald green in spring. The only differences would be in the height of the trees. They brought saplings out with them, sticks of willow and poplar, acorns and pine- cones. Year by year they grew and sheltered the homestead and made a garden possible.' Suddenly she laughed and looked ten years younger. 'Oh, what fools Gilbert and I have been! We longed for you to come, but dreaded it too, told ourselves and each other over and over that we must realize you were a different generation, that naturally you'd like modern things best, that you'd think this very old-fashioned. Like Betty, Calum's brother's wife. She's a dear girl, but she can't abide anything that gathers dust. I ken fine she thinks this is downright cluttered. So it is. I wasn't going to worry if you were that way too, but to find you like this, really of the same ilk, not just by blood but by nature, is beyond belief. We hadn't dared hope for it.

'Mind you, I'm not daft about the past to the point of foolishness - only sentimental. I'd never despise the convenience of electric ranges in our hot summers. I love mine, out yonder in the wee kitchen, but I feel it's foolish down there, where snow can bring wires down, to do away with a fuel stove. Not that I've ever liked sooting the flues. I'm always a bit sharp in the temper then, but it's my best friend all the same, that coal range.'

Anna had never seen one before. She gazed at it with the greatest of respect. 'You'll have to tell me how it works. I can't imagine how a tiny fire-box like that can heat an oven away over at one side. I can understand how it would heat the top plate, but how is it that it doesn't burn things all one side?'

Kitty beamed, took a short poker with a bent end off the track, inserted it into a rectangular stove-plate at the right- hand side, hooked it off and said, 'See...?'

Anna peered in, saw a soot-covered space under which, apparently, the square box of the oven was housed, and Kitty pulled out a lever at the front of the stove and a bar amongst the soot moved, with a flange at the end, revealing a hole that led into the chimney. Almost immediately the fire roared away, and tongues of flame shot over the top, drawn to the hole with the draught created.

'That brings the fire over the top, then when it's going nicely, you almost close it, and the heat goes steadily right round the oven. The old ranges hadn't a thermometer, of course, but these ones have. So when it reaches the height you want, you put in whatever you're baking.'

'What did you do before? How would you know when it was right for baking?'

'Oh, we used to put a hand in and test it... you got quite expert at knowing when it was right, by the feel. If it was very important a pie should be just right, I used to put a scrap of pastry in to make sure the oven was good and hot as it should be for that. But in no time, you could judge without that.'

'That's
red
cooking,' said Anna, with awe. 'I always thought that about some of the more primitive ways of cooking in Fiji, in the villages. It makes it an art, not just a skill.' She was working the lever back and forth. 'This fascinates me. I think it's the most marvellous invention I've ever seen.'

At that moment the men came back, Calum in a tweed dressing-gown, and both looked staggered at this naive remark and the sight of the women peering into the innards of-a sooty stove. 'What's gone wrong with it?' demanded Gilbert.

Kitty burst out laughing. 'Not a thing. It's just that she's never seen one before. Eh, but it does my heart good to hear a young one admiring my Old Warrior!'

Anna straightened up and both men laughed. Gilbert drew out a large handkerchief and held Anna, and carefully removed a very large smut from the end of her nose and some smaller ones from her forehead. 'All I can say, lassie, is I'm glad you came unannounced. Kitty'd have been stiff and unnatural if she'd known the hour of your coming.'

'Aye, that I would. But he's made your face all smudgy. Come awa' to the bathroom with me.'

Anna shook her head. 'No, thank you, Grandmother. I'll be washing it before I go to bed, and I'm ravenous. That soup smells delicious.'

It was, too. They all ate as if famished, Calum possibly because he was weak from loss of blood and needed refuelling, and the other three because they were suddenly gloriously light-hearted. Gilbert began telling tales out of school about Kitty's agitated preparations, how she'd even thought of taking up the old-fashioned flowered carpet in Anna's bedroom to replace it with a modern one, and how the weakling lambs had all been banished to the wash-house and a heater turned on for them there, every day, instead of them being in the kitchen.

It wasn't till a clean-faced Anna had been tucked up in a warm nest of a bed, fussed over by both grandparents, and tenderly kissed goodnight, that she suddenly felt a return of anxiety, a dread of the days ahead. Not because of her father's parents, but because of Calum Doig, and that as far as he was concerned this return of the prodigal son's daughter could upset all his hopes for the future. What would his antagonism mean to her? But whatever it meant, she would have to make sure there was no hurt in it for Kitty and Gilbert Drummond. They had suffered enough.

She was so exhausted, she knew nothing till morning and woke not knowing where she was. Noises had wakened her, children's voices, giggling, and the sound of a door opening. Memory came flooding back. Sunlight, surprisingly, was slanting through an opening in the drapes. She looked at the door and two tousled towheads appeared round it, quite disembodied.

Two pairs of blue eyes looked out under fringes, two snub noses seemed to quiver with apprehension. Anna grinned. 'It's all right, I'm awake. Come on in. Wanted to see what I looked like, did you?'

She raised herself up.

Two mouths opened into perfect O's, and she was pretty sure they registered disappointment But why?

Now sleeping-suited bodies revealed themselves and advanced. Twins for sure. Not quite identical, but twins. They stopped and said, 'Are you really Anna?'

'Yes, I'm Anna. Why not?'

The slightly fairer, slightly taller one said, 'But they said you were from Fiji.' It was an accusation.

Light dawned. 'Oh, I get it. You thought I'd have fuzzy hair. Oh, what a disappointment for you! Never mind, I've got lots of photos with me of my Fijian friends. Some of them have children about your age. You must be cold, hop in.'

They parted, one to each side, and were in before she could change her mind. The other one said quickly, 'If they come, would you please tell them you invited us in?'

'I will. Grown-ups are always afraid children gate-crash, aren't they?'

They beamed on her. This grown-up certainly knew her onions! 'Yes, Maggie's downstairs and Nanna sent her up to tell us you weren't to be disturbed, so we thought we'd just peep. You're to have your breakfast in bed. But as long's you tell them.'

'I sure will. I'll get in first. Now I know who you are ... the children of Calum's brother. What do they call you?'

'I'm Mac, Malcolm really, and he's Bill.'

Something hit Anna. Those were all Drummond names. Maggie would be Margaret. Margaret Drummond had married King David the Second. Malcolm had supported Bruce at Bannockburn. And of course there had always been Williams. It looked to her as if the Doig family was well entrenched at Strathallan, had been for years. How cunning, in a homestead where there was no one to inherit, to incorporate family names. It was to create an illusion of belonging, she supposed. No wonder Calum Doig hadn't wanted her here!

The twins proceeded to put her in the picture, enjoying no doubt being able to impart to a newcomer and an adult things she didn't know, unhampered by and unchecked by an uncle, an older sister, or the Drummonds.

Bill, the slightly shorter one, said confidently, 'She's not really our nanna, of course. Mum's mum and Dad's mum are that. We call Mum's mum Grandma and Dad's mum Granny. But Nanna Drummond likes us calling her that.'

She would, of course, with no descendants of her own till now.

Mac said, 'What'll you like to be called when you're a grandmother?'

Anna blinked. She'd never thought about herself as a possible grandmother. Who would? 'I don't know really. I must start considering it. It's just as well to be ready in plenty of time. I call Mrs. Drummond Grandmother, but I expect it'd be a bit of a mouthful for a tiny to manage. I mean, I hadn't met my dad's mother till now, so it's all right. I think she's lovely ... just like a grandmother in a fairytale, except in present-day clothes.'