Moreton's Kingdom (16 page)

If she had told Sandy the truth she would have said that she thought Charles was trying to avoid her, that this final day in her presence was too much for him, but how could she offer such an explanation to a child?

After lunch, while he took his usual nap, she strolled as far as the bridge, looking out across the narrow neck to where the carriageway joined the main road and thinking that it was no longer a means of escape to her but the final way she would travel in the morning from Glassary.

How could she possibly have thought that she might stay here, she wondered, that she might have become part of this quiet, mountain-girt kingdom which belonged to one man when that man was only waiting for her to go?

Then, coming down the road towards the bridge, she saw the Range Rover. Charles was driving, with another man beside him, and in the back there was something with a tarpaulin over it. When they drew up she saw that it was a young deer lying on its side with its pathetically large eyes fixed on Charles’s back.

‘We’ve got a casualty,’ he said briefly. ‘Could you get some hot water and bring it to the stable? There’s plenty of disinfectant there.’

She ran back to the house, her breath coming swiftly, her heart pounding with indignation. It was a young roe deer, a ‘baby Bambi’, as Sandy would have called it, and it was badly injured.

Like Sandy, Mrs. Stevas was resting after her midmorning walk to church and there was really no need to disturb her. Katherine boiled the water in her immaculate kitchen, carrying it along the side of the shrubbery to the stables where Charles and the ghillie were waiting.

The deer was stretched out on the canvas, still alive, and Charles beckoned her over.

‘How squeamish do you feel?’ he asked.

‘I hate to see an animal in pain,’ Katherine confessed, ‘but I’ll be all right if you give me something to do.’

‘Hold her head as gently as you can.’ He made room for her on the floor beside him. ‘Try to keep her still.’

It seemed to take an eternity to remove the bullet which had lodged in the deer’s side without actually killing it, but when it was done the little animal lay back with its head in Katherine’s lap and its dark eyes on her face as Charles and the ghillie bound up the wound.

‘We’ll let her go in the morning,’ said Charles. ‘She’ll be all right once she’s on her feet again. Can you bring some milk?’

From time to time, while he had been prodding for the bullet, he had looked quickly into Katherine’s eyes, watching for the first signs of nausea, but she had set her teeth and continued to hold the deer, soothing it with soft, crooning words which it appeared to understand. She could not show Charles how sick she felt or how much she relied on his experience to heal this small, helpless creature which depended on them for its life.

Tears stood in her eyes as she went back for the milk he had asked for, and when she knelt beside him again to pour it gently down the deer’s throat she knew him as determined as ever to steer her in his brother’s direction because he imagined that Fergus had need of her and because he owed him a personal debt which he believed he could never repay in full.

These precious moments they had spent together tending the stricken deer would remain in her memory for ever, a tenderness she would guard for as long as she lived. Whatever the future might hold for her, there would be Charles and Glassary to look back on with a bitter-sweet pain.

When they had settled the deer for the night they walked back to the house together, and she remembered how she had thought of it in the first instance as a prison. Strange prison, she thought, when it held everything she would ever want within its stout grey walls!

‘I’ll be leaving fairly early tomorrow,’ she said, ‘and taking my own car, so this is really goodbye.’

‘You’ll be coming back to the Stable House,’ he said harshly. ‘You can’t refuse Fergus if he asks you to marry him.’

She turned away, not wanting him to see the futile yearning in her eyes.

‘He won’t ask anyone to marry him till he can stand firmly on his own two feet,’ she declared huskily. ‘That’s what the exhibition is all about. Can’t you see how alike you are?’ she challenged. ‘Determined and independent to a degree. Fergus must prove himself before he can settle at the Stable House with any hope of continuing happiness. He needs his independence and—and our help,’ she declared. ‘There’s Emma, too. She understands him so well and she’s very fond of Sandy.’

‘Fergus knew Emma long before he met Coralie,’ Charles pointed out doggedly. ‘She was “the girl next door”, but I don’t think there was ever anything between them except an acknowledged affection, a brother-and-sister emotion, if you like.’

‘Which could easily have developed into love,’ Katherine suggested.

He thought about the idea for a moment.

‘You overrate the emotion,’ he said harshly. ‘A full and lasting understanding is just as good.’

‘How can you say that when you know it isn’t true?’ Katherine cried. ‘I love you, but you could never return my affection because you could never trust me. You told me so in the beginning, remember? You thought that I must be Coralie all over again because I allowed her to impress me. Well, I’m not impressed any more, but I’m not going to stay at Glassary to become the answer to your regret. I must go. Emma will look after Fergus for you!’

Shaken by the confession of her love, she rushed from him into the waiting house, where she watched from her bedroom window as he plunged through the darkened shrubbery into the gathering night.

Before Fergus returned she knew what she must do. She would leave Glassary without seeing Charles again, if that was possible. They had said their last goodbyes.

He made it easy for her to go unchallenged. Emma came back with Fergus to join them for their late evening meal and as soon as it was over he made the injured deer his excuse for spending the next hour in the stable, coming back to the house when Emma had gone.

In the morning he released the deer, taking it up to the treeline to watch it hobble away to freedom in search of the herd.

By nine o’clock Katherine had packed her suitcase and was ready to go.

‘We’ll follow you as quickly as possible,’ Fergus said. ‘We’re fully loaded with Emma’s gear. You’re sure of the extra pictures?’ He looked into the back of her car. ‘You haven’t much space left.’

‘Enough!’ Katherine tried to smile although her heart felt as heavy as lead. ‘I’ll have everything in place by the time you get there. You don’t look as excited as you should be!’

‘It doesn’t always show,’ said Fergus, ‘but I’m quaking inwardly. It’s what the critics are going to say tomorrow that bothers me most.’

‘I don’t think you need to worry,’ Katherine told him.

‘Will you stay at the flat?’ he asked.

‘No.’ She looked away from his searching eyes. ‘I’d rather wait till Emma joins me.’

How could she tell him that she couldn’t go to Charles’s flat alone, that she needed Emma’s moral support, if nothing else?

Saying goodbye to Sandy was one of the hardest things she had ever done. She bent to kiss him on the cheek, feeling his skin fresh and soft against her lips.

‘When will you come back?’ he asked anxiously.

‘I wish I could,’ she said because there was no need to lie to him. ‘I only wish I could come back soon!’

Even as she drove away from Glassary she was watching for Charles coming off the hill, hoping that she would see him once more yet not knowing what she could say to him if she did.

Through her driving mirror she could see the old house dwindling in size behind her, screened at the bridge by a blazing barrier of azaleas and the quieter flame of rhododendrons as she put distance between her and Charles’s kingdom for the last time.

When she reached the main road she drove faster than usual, keeping pace with her thoughts, although she had no real need to be in Edinburgh before the afternoon. When the Trossachs were behind her and the great bens had given place to the rolling Ochil hills she joined the motorway and was in the Scottish capital by noon. Driving fast, she had put as much distance as possible between herself and Glassary.

The day was fresh without a great deal of sun, but even without its gilding rays Edinburgh was an enchantment. Katherine drove swiftly along Princes Street, climbing towards St Giles with a new excitement stirring along her veins. The gallery was in the old town, tucked in between a narrow close and a shop selling leather goods which was already doing a brisk trade with the early tourists, who were mostly American or German. They haunted the narrow streets on their way down the Royal Mile to the Palace, standing to gaze at buildings which were steeped in ancient history or turning aside to admire the crafts displayed for their inspection by modern man.

Parking her car in a side street, Katherine opened the gallery door. They had worked hard on the Saturday afternoon to make everything ready, but she dusted vigorously when she had hung the remaining pictures in their allotted cubicles so that not even a speck of dust could mar their bloom. They looked so good hanging there in their selected places, land and seascapes glowing with the colours of the glens, and the odd portrait Fergus had attempted as a challenge when he had wanted to tackle something different for a change.

The portraits were undoubtedly good, but it was the pictures of the glens with their guardian mountains which said most to her, because she had lived among them for over two weeks of happiness and a wild despair which would stay in her memory for ever.

That night she spent in a nearby hotel, thumbing through the catalogue Emma had prepared in order to acquaint herself with prices and a brief general knowledge of what they were about to offer to the public.

‘I feel sick at the pit of my stomach!’ Emma announced when she arrived with Fergus the following morning. ‘All this D-Day atmosphere is making a coward out of me before we even begin!’

‘You’ll get over it,’ Katherine assured her practically. ‘We have to remember that we can’t expect to be crowded out on the very first day.’

‘It’s the critics I worry about,’ Emma wailed. ‘I won’t be able to bear it if they say we haven’t an ounce of talent between us, though that wouldn’t be true of Fergus,’ she added stoutly.

‘Nor you!’ said Katherine, watching Fergus as he made his final round of the cubicles. ‘Must we really take a lot of notice of the critics?’

‘They can make or break you, in a way,’ Emma said, ‘but sometimes the public can reverse their decision by just buying what they like and you have to sell.’

‘Then why worry?’ Katherine asked. ‘I feel success in the air!’

‘That’s because you want us to succeed,’ said Emma, prowling behind Fergus to replace a small sculpture she had picked up on her way in. ‘We’ve got to come out of this alive,’ she added under her breath, ‘and preferably kicking. It means so much to both of us.’

At two o’clock they opened the gallery doors and waited. There was no immediate rush, and Katherine stood anxiously behind her pile of catalogues willing the public to come in. By three there were half a dozen people standing quietly in the gallery assessing what they saw. Two of them were obviously newspaper critics taking notes.

By five the trickle had expanded to a steady flow and they were answering questions and providing extra information on every side. Emma was sticking little red seals on her sculpture with amazing regularity, but only Katherine’s small red sticker on the painting of the glen adorned Fergus’s efforts.

Trying not to see his evident disappointment, Katherine busied herself parcelling up Emma’s sculpture. The little animal models had sold so well that there were gaps on most of the display tables and many of the shelves, but these could be easily filled.

She saw Fergus speaking to a tall, bearded man in a blue duffle coat, and they were still deep in conversation when the gallery closed at seven o’clock.

Emma came through to the cramped little office where Katherine was unpacking another box of her sculptures.

‘Well, that’s that!’ she gasped, flinging herself down in the only available chair. ‘Our very first day!’

‘You’ve done well,’ Katherine pointed out. ‘Counting gaps, I reckon you’ve sold about forty of your animals.’

‘They’re not important,’ Emma shrugged. ‘It’s the pictures we have to sell. Fergus has been talking to that bearded wonder for almost two hours,’ she reflected, ‘but he hasn’t bought a thing.’

When the bearded man finally shook hands and departed, Fergus put a sticker on one of his smaller paintings.

‘One sale in five hours,’ he remarked despondently. ‘We’ll have to do better than that.’

‘You’re suffering from first-day blues,’ Emma suggested. ‘Tomorrow we’ll do better. Perhaps if we went out and had something to eat we wouldn’t feel so gloomy. Where would you suggest?’

‘The Gateway serves a first class meal and it’s near the flat,’ he said.

It had been arranged that Emma and Katherine would share the flat while Fergus went to a friend who had offered him hospitality as soon as he had heard about the exhibition.

‘You’ll be on your own after tomorrow until the weekend,’ he said to Katherine when they were finally seated at a table in the restaurant of their choice. ‘How do you feel about it?’

‘I’ll cope,’ she promised. ‘Don’t worry about me.’

They ate heartily in spite of their disappointment, discussing the type of person who had come into the gallery on their opening day.

‘Perhaps we should have had a celebrity to launch us, after all,’ said Fergus. ‘It’s the popular gimmick nowadays.’

‘And it doesn’t sell a thing!’ Emma decided.

‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘It brings people in and we do want the public to recognise us. We also need their support.’

Katherine sat back in her chair.

‘Emma’s done not too badly this afternoon,’ she said. ‘It could be your turn tomorrow.’

‘True enough.’ Fergus stretched and smiled. ‘Will you drop me at the Pattersons’ on your way to the flat?’ he asked. ‘I can find my own way to the gallery in the morning.’

‘And just how will you do that?’ Emma demanded. ‘If you’re thinking about a taxi you can forget it. I’ll pick you up when I’ve dropped Kate at the gallery.’

He smiled at the new edge of authority in her voice. ‘Yes, ma’am!’ he agreed. ‘Just as you say!’

Although the Pattersons asked them in for a nightcap, Emma declined the invitation because it was getting late.

‘Have you been to Charles’s flat before?’ Katherine asked almost nervously as Emma parked her car in a side street off Heriot Row. ‘Charles gave me full instructions when he handed over the keys, but it’s nice to be with someone who knows their way around.’