Anna of Strathallan (7 page)

Kitty said, 'Oh, leave them be, child, we'll do them when we come back. Lambing comes before all.'

'I won't delay you. I'll just go on till you've finished that.

They can drain. I wouldn't keep yon Calum waiting for anything. He'd think I was too much of a new chum to know what's urgent and what's not. I can't see him as a patient man.'

As she spoke she was flicking liquid detergent in, and sloshing cups through at great speed. Kitty laughed, folding a snowy tea-towel over her gems in their basket. 'Och, at the moment his bark's worse than his bite. Something's been bothering him. He's very easy-going as a rule - but of late he's been a bit sharp wi' the womenfolk. No wonder. He likes to know where he's going, and his lady-love won't fix the wedding-day.'

Kitty turned, said, 'Losh, lassie, you've nearly finished those dishes. I've never seen such speed, and I pride myself I don't waste much time. A big wash-up too.'

Anna's laugh was so full of genuine mirth that Calum, coming to winkle them out of the kitchen, stopped and wondered what the joke was. He heard her say, 'Oh, Grandmother, that teeny-wee wash-up! I'm used to a guest-house, remember. Sometimes twenty-five guests and five courses, and for sure that would be the night all the girls wanted to go off to fire-walking or a local hop.'

He had boots in his hand, said, 'You'd better put these on, they're Betty's. The mud, after that light snow thawing, will have to be seen to be believed. They'll probably be too big for you, though. You could always put a pair of farm socks underneath.'

She shook her head. 'I hardly think so. I haven't got very small feet.' She pulled off her brogues, thrust one toe in experimentally.

He knelt suddenly, to help her tug them on over her heels. 'Gumboots are the devil to get into.'

She nodded. 'I used to wear them a lot when I was a kid, paddling round the lagoons in the tropical rain. You can't keep kids in there when it rains. Later when I took a fancy for Regency novels, it made me understand why the men needed their valets to ease them on and take them off.'

He looked up. 'Oh, do you like Georgette Heyer too? We all do, here.'

One little touch of nature makes the whole world kin? For a fleeting instant she felt - perhaps foolishly - that his antagonism need not last.

He looked at her. 'Those clothes are too new. Put some old duds on.'

She held his eyes, looked amused. 'My only old clothes are gay printed shifts and shorts. Think how you'd have jeered had I appeared in those during early spring in Central Otago!'

Small creases she hadn't noticed before appeared each side of his mouth. 'Touche! What a fool I am! But it's such a filthy job, lambing. You'd better watch from some distance away.'

She said with spirit, 'I'll keep out of the way if I'm going to be a nuisance, otherwise I'd like to wipe the newness off these... it marks me as a novice.'

He laughed outright at that. 'Okay.' He turned to Kitty. 'Would you put this cap over my head, very gently? I feel such a Charlie with this capelline bandage on.'

Kitty said, 'I'm away off upstairs for a moment. Anna will.'

Calum said apprehensively, holding out a striped woollen cap, 'Stretch it well, won't you?'

She nodded. 'Sit down, or I'll have to get a step-ladder.'

He sat. She went round the back of him, pulled it out to its fullest extent, eased it on. He thanked her, rose, said, 'There's an old windcheater on the back door and quite a range of caps. Not glam, but very necessary. In spite of that blinding sunshine there's an icy wind blowing off the tops.'

Definitely more friendly. She allowed a sarcastic note to crisp her voice. 'I believe that you, unlike the snow on the tops, are thawing. Did my dexterity and speed with the dishes surprise you? Had you taken me for a lily of the field?'

He faced her with rugged honesty. 'I had. I thought you'd be used to all manner of servants over there, where labour is cheaper. That possibly you'd be merely the receptionist.'

She chuckled, her brown eyes alight with laughter. 'Oh, even the receptionist worked hard. But it wasn't me. I was the dogsbody, fitting in wherever the need was the greatest. Scrubbing, cooking, waiting on table, taking one of the launches out to the coral reef, doing the laundry, oh, the lot! Well, here's Grandmother. Out we go. If you knew how I was dying to get outside to really see Strathallan. I'd not wanted to see it first in the dark.'

Then she wondered if she'd sounded reproachful. Oh, well, she didn't care. He wasn't above a few digs himself. But she hoped wistfully that the urgency of the paddocks where presumably the lambing ewes would be grouped wouldn't mean he would whisk them away from her first glimpse of her father's home too speedily.

If that had been his intention he hadn't a chance against Gilbert Drummond.

Anna tugged the cap down over streaky dark-blonde hair, zipped up the very ancient windcheater, stepped out on to the back verandah with them into the cool, sweet air of a sunshiny-gold September day. She stood very still, after her first gasp of delight, her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes sweeping from left to right, to take in the ridge of the lavender hills below faraway mountains that were pocketed and peaked with blinding white snows; the silver glint of a stream that threaded through willows as green as English willows, then back to the dearer delights that lay at her feet, in the gifts of the garden.

The bed below the verandah was carpeted with the palest of primroses, and violets made a patch of purple shadow under a silver birch, a young one, just leafing. Under the orchard trees where apricots and peaches were miracles of newly-opened bloom, daffodils spread a living carpet of gold, common double daffodils that cocked a gay defiance at late snow and frost. The sun shone through the coral-rose of an enormous japonica that had grown to unrivalled heights, and pooled rosy shadows on a white concrete path as if it had come through a stained-glass window.

A perfume, borne on the wind, came to her, surely a perfume of summer, not spring? She lifted her face, trying to trace it. 'Can lilies be out already?'

Kitty laughed. 'Well, yes and no. That's the perfume of the cabbage-tree over yonder.'

Anna wrinkled her brow, 'But it looks like a palm-tree.'

'Yes, but it's really a giant lily, the largest in the world. They're funny, tufty old things, and I bless them for shedding their dry flax-like leaves all over my garden, but it wouldn't be spring in my garden without that fragrance.'

Anna said, 'Oh, no wonder Mother longed for spring in New Zealand. She used to say she'd give up all the orchids, the frangipanni, the bougainvillea, for the time of daffodils, the time of roses, the time of golden poplar leaves, the time of snow. No, she didn't say the time of snow, she said the silence and the hush of snow. But I'll admit it scared seven bells out of me last night. Oh, I mustn't linger ... it will hold you up. And there'll be other spring days.'

Her grandfather caught at her hand, said, with a shake in his voice, 'Lassie, there'll also be other springs.'

Anna sensed, rather than saw Calum Doig take a quick glance at her. She turned away a little, saw a light in her grandmother's eyes that made it all worth while. Kitty was looking at her Gilbert as if she, and she alone, had handed him happiness on a platter when she had written to ask his granddaughter to come.

There was a moment of slight embarrassment for them all, except perhaps for Gilbert, because he was quite unashamed of the tears in his eyes.

Calum Doig broke it. 'Well, come on, Anna of the Islands,' he said, 'and show us how you react to lambing.'

Gilbert Drummond had the last word. 'Not Anna of the Islands,' he said proudly, 'but Anna of Strathallan... where she belongs.'

T
HEY
piled into the Land-Rover and were away. There were rough metalled tracks leading through the white- painted gates of the paddocks that looked vast to Anna but Gilbert said weren't, in comparison with those of high- country stations.

Anna looked about her, marvelling, at the heights above and beyond. 'Isn't this high-country stuff?'

They all laughed. 'No, lass. Just rolling country. You've got to get back in, nearer the lakes for that, right amongst the mountains. Crannog and Roxburgh are practically lowlands.'

But for the clots of snow dotting the pastures, it was hard to believe that last night's fall had happened, much less frightening Anna so much and putting Calum off the road. They came through another gate, Gilbert opening each one, amazingly agile for his age. It was obvious this was the lambing paddock.

Small lambs, endeavouring to stand on wobbly legs and bearing plain traces of recent birth, were everywhere, anxious ewes butting them with their noses, alarmed bleatings from the mothers of older lambs who were straying, and a tall figure bending over a ewe and a lamb by a willow-tree near the creek. They left the Rover and approached on foot. Philip Sherborne was obviously assisting a second lamb into the world. It was exceedingly primitive and amazingly quick. Anna was fascinated.

Her grandfather, once he'd introduced her to Philip who had already heard from Calum by phone before he left his home that she had arrived - and how - took her off with him to assist him make a reluctant ewe recognize her maternal duties and feed her lamb.

'We don't do a pre-lamb shear here. Some do - they're not so likely to get cast during lambing with the weight of wool off, but we hardly ever get lambing over without a storm, or snow, and we've lost too many through shearing them beforehand. Besides which - as now - it's much easier to hang on to these ewes when they've got a bit of wool on them. Ah ... got her!' He shook his head over the ways of sheep. 'Some have lambs too weak to feed but do their darnedest. Some have insufficient milk or trouble in feeding them, and others perfectly healthy and well endowed for feeding twins or even triplets are sublimely lacking in the maternal instinct - selfish to the core. Like some human parents, I guess.

'See this one's udder ... full as can be, yet the moment her poor lamb has a go, she's off. Stand away a bit, Anna, or you'll get milk all over you. I'll express it a bit. It flows more easily when it's no' so full. That'll make it easier for the lamb to get a start.'

It was surprising how soon the udder softened. Gilbert said, 'Now, Anna, my darling, bring the lamb up and hold her on. She's hungry and'll soon take it.'

Anna, holding the lamb against her legs, felt the blatant newness of her trews would soon lose their novice freshness thank goodness. She didn't want to be the new chum too long.

Kitty, coming up from helping the others, laughed at the look of her. For a time, as Philip said, it was a case of 'thick and fast they came at last'. Then they had a breather. No other births seemed imminent.

Philip looked at Anna with admiration, both for her looks and what she'd buckled in to do. He was as tall as Calum, more slimly built, but whipcord tough. Extremely handsome, and where Calum's was a ruddy tan, Philip's was a creamy one, showing up against his chestnut hair and hazel eyes.

Kitty said. 'We'll have our coffee while the going's good. Off to the creek.'

Philip guffawed. 'Mrs. Drummond's a tiger for hygiene! We all dance to her bidding. I'll instruct you in the drill, Anna. Though the creek's the least of it.'

The water was icy. They swished their hands in the leaping water with great energy, then sprang back on the turf, shaking them madly to get the circulation going again, and followed Kitty back to the Land-Rover where she produced a flask of hot water, poured it into a red plastic bowl, brought out a cake of soap and motioned to Anna to use it first.

The steaming coffee was glorious and the ginger gems disappeared as if by magic. Anna said, 'I can hardly believe that those lambs frisking round by themselves over there were like those slimy yellow new ones a day or two ago. It's like a miracle.'

'Birth is always a miracle,' said her grandmother. 'You look at your newborn baby, all red, wrinkled, and with puffy eyes, looking more mouth than anything, like a newly- hatched bird ... just one big concentrated yell, knowing only physical needs - and in less than a week you're certain it's smiling back at you and responding to your voice above anyone else's, needing and recognizing love.'

Anna bent swiftly to dislodge a huge clump of mud from the instep of her gumboot. Pity scalded her for her grandmother, who had known that joy of motherhood when a girl younger than she was herself... planning her son's future, full of hopes and dreams, only to have him so uncaring of her love as to disappear from their ken.

As she straightened up she was struck anew with the sweetness of Kitty's expression and realized something. Her grandmother had triumphed over that long ago. What could have done it? Her Christian faith? Aye, that would be it. Anyway, the sting had gone out of it, the affront to her motherhood. All she would have prayed for in the long years of silence would have been for her son's eventual comfort and happiness and perhaps the reclamation of his selfish soul.

It was a tough morning. Two lambs and one ewe died. Two or three weren't in very good shape and Philip brought the truck and trailer across. The trailer had a hoisting device that lifted the heavy ewes up and into it. They'd be taken to a mothering shed where a close eye could be kept upon them. Anna thought, with distress, that they looked pretty far gone. Calum shook his head. 'I've seen much worse revive. They'll have shelter and ritzy treatment. Not to worry.' She thought his manner to her was a little less antagonistic.

He left her to assist Philip and Gilbert retrieve a ewe that had lambed among some willow roots and was either having trouble getting out from among them, or was about to have a second lamb.

Kitty called her. Another ewe was down. 'Anna, wipe its lamb free of mucous - like you saw us doing before - while I attend to her. There's another to come.'

Anna said swiftly, 'Could I do what you're doing? I saw how last time. Or would I hurt her?'

'No, love, go ahead. You'll never learn younger. Just ease it - she and the lamb'll do the rest. She's just a bit tired with the first effort.' She stooped to free the nostrils of the first lamb.