The Tender Glory (11 page)

“They have to be thinned.” He was gazing straight ahead, not wanting to discuss Calders. “I may sell the house.”

“Oh, surely not?” Helen couldn’t hide her genuine dismay at the idea. “It’s been in your family for three generations.”

“Which may be enough.” His voice was harsh. “I have no further use for it.”

“You’ll come by a use,” Helen persisted, in her forthright way. “I wouldn’t sell till I was sure, if I were you.”

He pushed the car to its full capacity without answering and they speeded north. Sarclet Head stood out, darkly pinnacled, as they veered inland over the moors, and soon the blue water of Hempriggs lay beside the road, still and calm, reflecting the sky, a captive, inland lochan among the hills.

Wick was busier than Helen had seen it for some time. She sat quietly now, looking about her, not wanting to talk. These were the streets she knew so well, the familiar shops, the people who were her people. Had she come back among them for the last time?

Huntley drove straight to the hospital.

“I’ll wait,” he said in a tone which brooked no argument. Alison’s knees felt weak and she had to bite her teeth into her lower lip to keep it from trembling.

“Don’t worry, wee dear,” her mother said. “I’ll be as right as rain!”

A nurse met them at the door.

“Mrs. Christie? Will you come this way, please?” She looked at Alison. “Are you her daughter? Perhaps you’d like to see your mother settled in?”

The hardest bit was coming away with the suitcase. Huntley took it from Alison, putting it back into the car. He had been waiting an hour.

“Would you like to contact the Orbisters right away or will you come for some tea?” he asked.

“Perhaps I’d better try to contact Jim,” she decided.

He drove to the taxi office, only to find a young girl in charge. “Can I take a message?” she asked helpfully.

“No—I’ll come back. When do you expect Mr. Orbister in?”

“He’s gone to Thurso. He might be back about five.”

“No luck?” Huntley asked when she came out into the street again.

Alison shook her head.

“None, at the moment. Jim won’t be back till five.”

“Then come and have a cup of tea,” he suggested. “At least it will help to pass the time.”

“You must want to get home.” She stood irresolutely on the pavement. “I can walk about. It’s quite fine.”

He took her by the elbow, propelling her firmly towards the car.

“Stop talking nonsense! You know I can’t leave you like this.” He was no doubt irked by the necessity of looking after her, yet she didn’t want to be left alone. She clung to kindness, although it meant nothing. He could hardly leave her flat after coming all this way with her.

He parked the car in front of an hotel and they sat over their tea, looking down on the harbour. Like a chain of glowworms the lights on the North and South Heads pricked out, brilliant against the darkness of the sea. They said very little, neither of them feeling the need for speech. At five o’clock Huntley rose to pay his bill.

“Orbister ought to be back by now,” he suggested.

Jim’s taxi was parked outside the office door. When he saw Alison he looked surprised, then taken aback.

“You haven’t come to stay?” he asked in obvious confusion.

“My mother went into hospital this afternoon.” She felt dazed by his uncertain welcome. “I tried to phone you yesterday, but the line was dead. The only thing I could do was to come and hope everything would be all right.”

Jim smoothed his unruly fair hair into a semblance of order.

“It would have been, normally.” Suddenly he was looking beyond her at her companion. “But we’ll soon fix you up. Not to worry! Cathie went off to Invemaver for the week-end and she hasn’t come back yet. She’ll be home tomorrow, I expect.”

“Which means you’ve nowhere to spend the night,” Huntley interrupted, looking at Alison. “Let me fix something for you, or would you rather go home?”

“There’s no need for that,” Jim assured him aggressively. “I’ll look after her. I’ve plenty of friends in Wick. Thanks for bringing her,” he added abruptly. “If I’d known I’d have come down with the taxi.”

Huntley accepted his dismissal with an indifferent shrug of his broad shoulders, obviously glad to be rid of his responsibility.

“Have you any message for Kirsty?” he asked.

“Just say—everything went very well.” Alison stood looking up at him, her eyes enormous in her pale face.

“Thank you for bringing us,” she added. “You made everything so easy for my mother.”

“That was the idea.” He stepped back. “You’ll let me know if there’s anything else I can do?”

“I’ll be taking over from here,” Jim said before Alison could reply. “Thanks for being so helpful, Daviot, I’m sorry you had to come all this way, but it needn’t happen again.”

“I wish you hadn’t been quite so curt,” Alison told him as Huntley drove off. “He stepped into the breach and saved the situation for me. He’s been terribly kind.”

“I can’t say I like him much,” Jim scowled, picking up her canvas grip. “Never did, as a matter of fact. He’s the superior sort I’ve little use for, but never mind! We’ve got more to talk about than Huntley Daviot. This business of Cathie being away is a bit awkward. If we had known, of course, she wouldn’t have gone.”

“Please don’t worry about me,” she begged. “I can easily put up at an hotel.”

“Bobby Henderson and his wife would take you like a shot,” he began, “but maybe you wouldn’t want to be with strangers?” “That’s about it,” she confessed. “I don’t think I feel up to polite conversation tonight, Jim. The operation is scheduled for tomorrow morning. Please believe I’m not ungrateful,” she added, “but I think I’d rather go to an hotel.”

He drove her through the town without demur to the Three Heads Hotel, where she had no difficulty in finding accommodation, but he wouldn’t allow her to shut herself up in her room alone.

“I’m going to take you out to John o’ Groats,” he said. “We’ll have a meal there, at the hotel. It’s still open. Then we can wander back slowly when it’s time for bed. You’ll sleep better for a breath of fresh air.”

Alison felt too numb to protest. She was entirely in his hands. Nothing had gone according to plan, but soon this dreaded day would be over. Her mother was in safe keeping and she was here with Jim, who didn’t try to hide his affection for her.

The road to Duncansby took them along the coast until Freswick Bay pushed them inland and the great stacks of rock which marked the edge of Scotland reared between them and the sea. Long before they reached John o’ Groat’s they could hear the pounding of the surf round the mighty Head and the thunder of the tides pouring through the Firth like some wild and terrible concerto beaten out by a gigantic orchestra of wind and wave. Alison felt shaken by it and curiously afraid, yet it had a fascination for her which drew her irresistibly. She stood looking out from the hotel window to Stroma and Mell and the distant Skerries looming dangerously in the moonlight, hardly aware of the man by her side.

They went out to stand in the darkness and Jim put his arm about her, drawing her against him while the fierce wind tugged at them both.

“Don’t fret, Alison,” he said, with heartbreaking gentleness. “It’s all going to work out for the best. You’ll see.”

His words were awkward, but his kiss, firm on her mouth, underlined his sincerity.

“I’ll take care of you, never fear,” he assured her.

The revelation of his affection was almost more than Alison could bear in the circumstances. Jim wasn’t the demonstrative type and he had gone out of his way to look after her, but his kiss had been disturbing.

Gently she disengaged herself from his encircling arm, staring out at the stormy Firth. It wasn’t quite eight o’clock and an eternity of waiting stretched between her and the morning. She wondered if Huntley had reached home and supposed he might be already at the Lodge.

“I’ve been making friends with the Searles,” she confessed as they made their way to the dining-room. “Tessa’s rather a strange sort of girl. She seemed almost antagonistic when we met, but now I believe we’re getting to understand one another. She’s lonely, I think, shut up there in the Lodge all the time, and I think she’s sensitive about her limp.”

“She changed completely after her accident.” Jim pulled out a chair for her. “She was the gay, friendly type before it happened. Everybody liked Tessa. She came up here a lot, generally with Robin. They sailed his Snipe together at Scrabster, but after her hip was injured she wouldn’t come. I believe Daviot tried to persuade her once or twice, but it didn’t work. If she wasn’t able to handle a dinghy properly she wouldn’t want to be an onlooker.”

“I think she feels her position very keenly,” Alison agreed, “but it could right itself, I suppose.”

“Given time, perhaps.” He studied the menu. “There’s a rumour going round that she’ll marry Daviot.”

Alison drew in a quick breath.

“I’ve heard so.” She couldn’t tell him that it was Tessa herself who had given her the impression. “Maybe she wants to wait till she’s absolutely fit.”

“Or he’s forgotten her sister! Two accidents inside a month,” Jim mused. “It was enough for any man! No wonder he flung himself into work like a fanatic and shut himself up in that lighthouse of his. He was responsible for Tessa’s injuries, of course, but the American plane crash could hardly be laid at his door. We knew Leone Searle quite well up here,” he added when he had given their order to the waiter. “She never turned down a request to sing for charity—a reasonable one, anyway—though she came in the first place because she had been ill. She had a breakdown or something, after a European tour and a change of scene was evidently the answer.”

“I read about it at the time,” Alison said, toying with her fish. “She was helping with the lunchtime concerts at the Wigmore Hall when she collapsed. It was a great disappointment to everybody concerned.”

“We wondered why she stayed on at Calders,” Jim remarked, “but when she came back the following year I suppose we knew. Daviot was the obvious attraction.”

“I wonder—do you think she would ever have settled down here, even at Calders?”

“That we’ll never know,” Jim decided. “How do
you
feel about settling down?”

“I don’t know.” She gazed out through the wide, plate-glass window to the towering headlands etched greyly in the moonlight against the darkness of the Firth. “I haven’t had time to think properly. Sometimes I feel as if part of me has been torn out, as if I’ll never really be a whole person again, and then I wonder if there might not be something else. Some sort of compensation for loss.”

“One door opening where another has closed? Well, maybe. It has happened before, and you belong here, Alison.”

Was that the answer? The fact that she had come home. But without Robin Craigie Hill meant nothing. “Do you think he’ll ever come back?” she asked.

“Robin? I’d like to think he would, but, quite honestly, I don’t know. He got a sort of wanderlust on him. It seemed he couldn’t get away quickly enough.”

She felt that he could tell her a great deal more but wouldn’t. Men were like that, she supposed; staunch to one another, especially if they had been friends for a long time.

Shortly after nine they rose to go. Time was lagging on leaden feet.

“I’ve not been a very bright companion,” she excused herself. “I think I’d like to get back to Wick.”

“I thought we might have gone round by Mey and Castletown.” Jim was frankly disappointed. “But if you don’t feel like it we’ll go straight back.”

A full moon had risen over the Pentland Firth, widening the panorama of cliff and bay and scattered islands for miles. They could see Stroma quite plainly, with Mell Head standing out like the prow of a ship. Beyond it, far across the silvered water. Ronaldsay gleamed like a pale ghost in the distance. It was her country, the place she had known and loved since infancy, and Jim was part of it. He was part of this night, too, and her agony of waiting. She took his arm as they walked to the car. “How far is it round by Castletown?”

His fingers closed over hers.

“Not much farther than going back by the coast and not half so windy. We’ll be back before eleven,” he promised.

Gills Bay lay like quicksilver under the moon, with the jagged pinnacles of St. John thrusting up above it, and the Castle of Mey appeared and disappeared between the road and the sea. The roar of the tides round Dunnett Head was the same thundering concerto she had listened to at Duncansby, and she was almost grateful when they turned south to be enveloped in the timeless silence of the moors. The road before them was white and clear. Jim knew every inch of the way, as she knew it.

“Alison,” he said when the lights of Wick were once more on their horizon, “I want you to promise you’ll come to me if anything goes wrong. I would have come for you today if I had known. You know that, don’t you? Daviot hasn’t any time for women.”

She felt her cheeks burning in the darkness.

“He makes it reasonably clear,” she agreed, “but I’d never have got here if he hadn’t helped.”

“You won’t need to bother him again. He’s not our sort.” He pulled up at the hotel. “I’ll come for you tomorrow. What time have you to be at the hospital?”