Lucy (6 page)

Lucy shook her head. “She thinks that everything outside of Marysburgh is foreign country.”

“Then you had better go home and pack up what you need. Have courage, Lucy. If worse comes to worst and your luck fails, you can always come back here to me.”

After she and Miss Johnstone had composed a suitable letter for Mrs. Balfour, Lucy walked slowly back into the town and turned down the lane that was marked Glebe Road. She had only been a little over four weeks away from home and already the house looked smaller.

How quiet and dark it was in the kitchen! Everything was scrubbed and somehow lifeless. She climbed the narrow stairs to her room. She had very few belongings; some books, a school photograph, a lucky penny, school certificates. Lucy sighed. There was really nothing that was worth packing.

She slowly went downstairs and placed her farewell letter on the kitchen table. Then she opened the kitchen door and stepped out into a blaze of sunshine. The weather had changed in its usual mercurial fashion, a frisky breeze sending the wisps of mist up to the mountain tops.

Lucy began the long walk to the tradesmen’s entrance of the castle, which was a good three miles from the town. Suddenly she saw a bush of white heather growing among the rocks beside the road. She bent down and tore off a small spray and put it into her handbag. At least she would have one reminder of home.

That evening she waited nervously at the end of the pier for the last steamer to Glasgow. If anyone saw her, she had her story ready. She was merely delivering some old clothes to the next port of call down the loch.

But as the boat chugged away from the pier, she was the only passenger to get on board. She stood in the stern at the rail and watched the lights of Marysburgh fade into the twilight. She felt very young, vulnerable, and alone. She thought of her mother and father reading the letter in the kitchen and a tear rolled slowly down her cheek.

The peace of the loch was slowly left behind in the soft Highland twilight.

A seagull dived past her ear with a raucous cry—a noisy harbinger of the tumultuous days to follow.

A dusty fiacre crawled up the hill above Monte Carlo bearing its ill-assorted burden.

A pale dawn was creeping over the expanse of the Mediterranean as Mr. and Miss Balfour-MacGregor went home to their villa high up in the pines.

Mr. Balfour-MacGregor, resplendent in a tall silk hat, evening clothes, and gold embroidered waistcoat, with his aristocratic features highlighted by a small imperial beard, seemed too distinguished a figure to have such a dowdy daughter. Miss Balfour-MacGregor was lumpy and fat with a pasty face and dull brown hair falling in lank, greasy strands from under a tired headdress of osprey feathers.

“I thought you would be delighted, Lucy,” said Mr. Balfour-MacGregor. “Five thousand pounds in francs at one sitting.”

“I am tired to death,” said Lucy. “How would you like to sit in the stifling heat of the casino with pillows stuffed down your dress and cotton wool wadding your cheeks?”

“It’s all to the good,” said the ex-butler. “I don’t want anyone to recognize you in London. And I don’t want any mashers hanging around my beautiful daughter. You’ll marry an English lord by the time I’m through with you.”

“Don’t you think we have enough money now, Mr. MacGregor?” pleaded Lucy,

“Call me Papa,” said the ex-butler, “and remember our name is Balfour-MacGregor. No, we have not made nearly enough. We must move on tomorrow. You caused quite a sensation tonight. We must move to another casino fast before these casino owners begin to pool their gossip.”

The fiacre came to a stop before a small villa and the couple alighted and trailed wearily indoors. MacGregor had not hired any servants so that there would be no witnesses to wonder why the beautiful Miss Balfour-MacGregor became transformed into a fat, frumpy woman as soon as night fell.

“Make us a snack, Lucy,” called MacGregor over his shoulder. “I’ll nip down to the cellar and get us a bottle of bubbly.”

Lucy shut the kitchen door behind him and then walked over and closed the heavy shutters. She then removed the heavy, lank wig and headdress and threw them in a corner. She stopped and listened and heard the faint sounds of MacGregor in the cellar underneath the house. She lifted her skirts and drew out one large pillow from the front and another from the back and threw them in the same corner. She dug her fingers into her mouth and removed the wads of cotton wool and, crossing to the sink, poured a basin of water from a wooden bucket on the floor and scrubbed the white paint and gray powder from her face.

She unbraided her own hair and, taking a brush from her handbag, began to brush it out with long, even strokes until it crackled and shone in the dim candlelight. She put a long loaf of bread and a box of Camembert together with some of the local cheeses on the table and, tying an apron around her waist, she lit the stove.

MacGregor came up the stairs from the cellar and into the kitchen as she was beating eggs for an omelet. “Sit down and I’ll do that,” he said, taking the wire beater from her. He cast a furtive, guilty look at her tired, drawn face and the shadows under her eyes and came to a decision. “I’ve been thinking, Lucy,” he said with his back to her. “We might stay on here for a few days and get a bit of rest. You know, just sleep and wander about the countryside.”

“Sleep!” echoed Lucy faintly. She felt as if she could never sleep enough.

Since she had stepped from the steamer at the Broomielaw in Glasgow two months ago, and found MacGregor waiting on the quay, she had known no rest. They had taken the night train to London, stopping only to change over to the Dover train. Then across the Channel to France and then the long circuitous journey south, taking in several of the less-fashionable casinos on the way.

She had followed MacGregor’s stage-managing faithfully, looking nervous and flustered at her first win and shyly continuing to play all her winnings until there was a large pack of plaques beside her elbow. The minute her extraordinary success began to draw the notice of the other players, MacGregor would cough discreetly behind her and she would promptly leave.

MacGregor placed the omelet on the table and opened the champagne and poured it into two tumblers. The bubbles rose and fell hypnotically in front of Lucy’s tired eyes. MacGregor raised his glass in a Scottish toast: “Here’s tae us/ Wha’s like us? / Gey few/ And they’re a’ deid.”

“Amen,” said Lucy wearily, draining her glass.

“Hey, hey, now,” said MacGregor. “That is not the lemonade you are drinking.”

“No, Papa,” said Lucy dully.

“Och, it’s just a wee bit of sleep you need,” he said, covering her small hand with his large bony one. “Things will look different in the morning.”

“I can’t help worrying about my mother,” said Lucy, poking her congealing omelet with distaste. The birds began their dawn chorus outside, bringing aching memories of home.

MacGregor refilled her glass. “Just drink that up and go to bed.”

“But what will she do?” persisted Lucy.

“Mrs. Balfour? She’ll have a bit of a cry and a bit of a temper and then she’ll let your room to a lodger.”

“You’re too cynical for this world, Mr. MacGregor,” said Lucy, displaying a rare burst of temper. “But I’m sure the devil has an extra-warm place ready for you in hell.”

Mrs. Balfour had in fact cried when she had read Lucy’s letter. She remembered Lucy as a little girl, clinging to her skirts as they walked along beside the loch. This was soon replaced by a picture of the reserved, difficult girl that Lucy had become, and Mrs. Balfour began to feel very ill-used indeed.

She had been forced to face the countess with the news, but her formidable employer had taken it all very calmly and had laid the blame for Lucy’s departure fair and square on the shoulders of the suffragettes. “Pesky females putting silly ideas into young gel’s heads,” she had declared.

Mr. Balfour had also taken the news with an irritatingly phlegmatic calm.

“But what will we do?” wailed Mrs. Balfour, giving way to an unaccustomed bout of emotion.

Mr. Balfour had removed his pipe from his mouth and said, “Let her room. But no female lodgers, mind. They’re worse than bitches in heat.”

Mrs. Balfour was then so taken up with wondering when and where her husband had had such experiences of female lodgers to refer to them in such coarse terms, that she almost got over the muddled sorrow engendered by her infuriating daughter’s departure.

MacGregor’s disappearance had been another matter. His clothes were found untouched in his room along with the rest of his belongings. It was popularly supposed that the butler had been drunk as usual and had fallen into the loch and drowned. The servants were in high excitement as the loch near the castle was dragged in a search for his body. Nothing other than the flotsam and jetsam of the loch was brought to light. A new butler was appointed, a severe, humorless martinet, and life at the Castle settled back into their normal routines, but without the jokes and mimicry of MacGregor to enliven the evenings for the upper servants.

A middle-aged Frenchwoman was hired as lady’s maid to Lady Angela and she turned out to be as cold and uncommunicative as her mistress.

Sometimes in the dark evenings when the formidable butler was not around, the cook, the housekeeper, and Miss Jones would talk in whispers about Lucy, the girl with the extraordinary luck at cards, and wonder what on earth she was doing.

Lucy herself wondered what on earth she was doing as she woke the following morning to find the sun high in the sky. She could hear MacGregor moving around downstairs, singing some unintelligible Scottish song under his breath. She got slowly out of bed and poured water from the ewer on the washstand. A familiar little knot of panic began to form again in her stomach.

She had been brought up to believe that anyone older than herself knew ‘what was best for her,’ but she could not help wishing that Mr. MacGregor would decide to forget about the whole idea of a Season in London. Lucy was strong-willed enough to oppose her mentor, but every time she opened her mouth to tell the ex-butler that she did not want to go to London and that she could not bear the sight of another casino, the picture of Andrew Harvey standing at the bend of the autumn road came into her mind.

After all, she had gone along with this mad scheme for one purpose only—to gain enough money to set herself up as a lady and to win the handsome viscount’s love.

Lucy wondered if MacGregor really meant to give her a few days of rest. The moment she entered the kitchen and saw the slightly guilty look on his face, she knew he had thought of some plan.

He turned from the sink and stood hesitantly on one leg with his head to one side, looking like an elderly stork spying a particularly large fish. “I’ve been thinking …” he began while Lucy frowned. Any of MacGregor’s plans for her discomfort always started with “I’ve been thinking …

“Don’t frown like that. I know what’s best for you,” he said, turning back to the sink. “Apart from Lady Angela, you haven’t had much experience of young society ladies … what they talk about and all that sort of thing.”

“You promised me a few days’ rest and I mean to take them,” said Lucy, pushing out her small chin.

“Oh, well,” sighed MacGregor, rattling the dishes in a disconsolate manner. “It’s just that I got to chatting with a fellow at the casino last night and he told me the Blair sisters were in Monte.”

“So?”

“Well, it doesn’t matter now,” said MacGregor sadly. “Though it’s said the Blair girls are always fighting over Andrew Harvey. Said to have a powerful way with the ladies, the viscount….”

“Mr. MacGregor!”

“Papa.”

“Oh, very well, Papa. What have you in mind?”

“Och, I don’t suppose you will be in the way of fancying the idea. It’s just my nonsense. But I thought that if we were to go into Monte to take tea at the Palace Hotel, you might be able to observe these ladies and hear the sort of thing they talk about.”

He handed Lucy a bowl of coffee and a plate of croissants with all the dexterity of a conjurer.

Lucy stirred her coffee slowly. “Would I have to wear that terrible wig and stuff those pillows down my dress?”

“Yes.”

“Then the answer is ‘no.’ “

MacGregor turned back to the sink and rattled the dishes. If a man’s back could be said to think furiously, then MacGregor’s certainly did, thought Lucy.

The sun shone bravely outside the dingy kitchen, lighting up a whole world of fresh air, light, and freedom.

The rattling ceased. “I don’t see that it would matter if you went as yourself,” said MacGregor slowly. “It’s curiosity about the girl who wins at cards that we want to check. Yes … if you were simply dressed with one of these large hats"—here he waved his bony hands frantically in the air—"to hide your features, I don’t see why not.”

A shadow crossed Lucy’s face. “I have no suitable clothes. All my frocks are designed to have great pillows shoved inside them.”

“No trouble at all,” said MacGregor, unhooking his coat from a peg. “I’ll run down to the town and get you something and be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tale.”

“But Papa,” called Lucy after him. “You do not know my measurements.”

“I ken them fine,” said MacGregor, pausing at the garden gate and surveying her with a malicious twinkle in his eye. “I am not so old that I have lost my eye for the ladies.”

With that he fled off down the road to the town, his lean legs taking him at a fantastic pace.

Lucy wondered gloomily what style of dress MacGregor would buy.

The temperature soared into the seventies and the Mediterranean landscape swam in the golden light of the winter sun. Back in Marysburgh, reflected Lucy, the loch would be frozen and the houses of the town shrouded under a heavy fall of snow. All this sunshine in the middle of winter seemed … well … somehow
indecent.

She moved about the old villa, opening the shutters, and cleaning the already cleaned rooms to control her nervousness. She suddenly wished she had not agreed to MacGregor’s plan. She felt she carried a glaring sign on her forehead marked “impostor.”