The Tender Glory (16 page)

“Afraid?”

“Of the future. At times I wonder if Calders
is
the answer.”

“Calders?” Her voice quivered.

“I’ve asked Tessa to marry me,” he said.

The light was fading and the fire had died a little, but the room wasn’t dark. It only seemed dark.

“When?” she asked dully.

He took his tune to answer that.

“Whenever she’s ready,” he said slowly, at last.

It was true. What Tessa had told her was true! Alison’s heart felt sick within her. This made it true. She had heard it now from Huntley himself. ‘I’ve asked Tessa to marry me! ’

“I must go.” She crossed blindly to the window. “This is the quickest way.”

She couldn’t bear to pass all those crates and packages in the hall a second time. They were for Tessa, after all. What a fool she had been to imagine that they were part of his remembering, the outer trappings of his sorrow over his former loss. They

belonged to Tessa, not to Leone. They were the symbol of his future of hard won contentment.

Without so much as a backwards glance, she left him standing beside the dying fire, his dark face shadowed by its flickering light. She wanted to get away, as far away as she could possibly go. It had been madness to feel that she had found sanctuary at Calders, even for a moment. Calders belonged to Tessa and Huntley and their future together.

Why, then, did Tessa appear so restless? Was it because she wouldn’t go to Huntley until she was completely well, until she could walk without that peculiar limp which crippled her more in spirit than it did physically?

Without thought, she ran towards the promontory, although she had left Huntley’s milk at Calders, completely forgotten in her headlong flight. Heartache and pain and defeat blinded her, making her stumble on the rough grass. There was nothing in her heart except despair.

“I loved you! I loved you!” she cried passionately across the mocking waves. “I loved you with all my being and every ambition I ever had. Oh, Huntley! why had we to meet like this?”

There was no reply. Sterne looked down at her coldly and the grey sea ridiculed her despair. The wind lashing the spray in her face and the waves’ incessant thunder echoed the agony in her heart.

Standing out there, high above the rocks, she listened to the wild concerto of the sea, hearing its counterpart in the music she knew and loved so well. All the torture and confusion of Peer Gynt was there, all the melancholy of Sibelius and his final acceptance. Beethoven had raged and wept in terms of thunderous music only to end it all in beauty. And contentment? Contentment was what Huntley wanted.

Turning her back on Sterne, she faced the sea. It was still grey, yet far out on the distant horizon’s rim, a pale band of light lay like a silver thread between sky and sea.

CHAPTER SEVEN

TWO days later Alison took the weekly order of butter and eggs to the Lodge. Tessa had also sent a request for a fowl, which Kirsty had plucked and prepared during the morning. She was on her feet again, refreshed by her enforced rest in bed, although what she termed her ‘Scot’s stamina’ was slow in returning. She moved with less agility and was more quickly tired. Alison left her the easier jobs around the house while she fed the poultry herself. Neil still looked after the byres and the few sheep scattered on the hill.

One day, Alison thought, as she neared the Lodge gates, they might be forced to give up sheep altogether. Neil wouldn’t be fit for the hill much longer.

Stopping the van just short of the gates, she remembered how she had found it on her return from Sterne on that dreadful afternoon of storm. It had still been parked where she had left it beside the bridge, but its lights were on and a note on the windscreen from Huntley told her that he had ‘managed to start the thing’, although he still advised her to sell it.

It had brought him so near, so heartrendingly near, even if he had only been trying to be kind and practical.

For two days she had tried to dismiss him from her thoughts only to discover how many things there were to remind her of him. The little things which made up the big things of life, like willing help in an emergency and unfailing kindness where her mother was concerned. Twice he had sent flowers and telephoned the hospital.

The basket with Tessa’s butter and eggs was in the back of the van. Tessa and Huntley! Would she be delivering eggs and poultry and butter to Calders one day?

She opened the van door. Then, alerted, she heard footsteps on the far side of the boundary wall. Not Tessa’s slow, dragging step, but a quicker walk, someone hurrying in the opposite direction along the drive towards Calder. A village woman, perhaps, calling at the Lodge on an errand of some kind. Yet why go through the estate? Calders had never been thrown open as a right of way to the clachan. She had used the avenue herself, but only in an emergency.

It was none of her business, of course. The privacy or

otherwise of Calders was not her concern.

“Ah, now, here you are!” Major Searle greeted her. “Tessa left word to ask you about the chicken. We’re giving a little dinner-party this evening. If it isn’t very big could we have another one?”

“Two, or a larger bird?” Alison asked, wondering where Tessa had gone.

“Two, I expect she meant.” The Major was busy dismantling a fishing-rod. “Or perhaps it was a larger bird. Dear me! I wish she wouldn’t leave me with decisions to make. I’ve supplied her with the salmon, which would have been enough, to my way of thinking.” He eyed Alison speculatively. “I’ll send you one up to the farm. I landed him yesterday in Davidson’s Pool, down beside the bridge. Mind you, all that timber-felling along the river side isn’t helping me to catch fish. The fellows are so noisy they’d scare anything away!”

“I’ll send Neil down with another chicken,” Alison promised, smiling at his preoccupation with his fishing. “Will it do about four o’clock?”

“Nicely! Nicely!” He accompanied her to the van. “You haven’t had time to come and use the piano,” he observed. “Tessa should have invited you this evening.”

“No!” Her refusal had been sharp, driven from her by the thought of Huntley being there. “I’m hoping to go to Wick this afternoon to visit my mother.”

“Oh, well, you can take her some of the salmon,” he suggested. “I’ll send you another one quite soon. I never thought of it before,” he added, “and I’m always fishing!”

She waited for him to bring the salmon, conscious of the stillness all around her. It was very quiet beneath the trees and even the smallest sound carried a long way. She heard a twig snap and the scuffle of an animal among the fallen leaves. Then, quite suddenly, Tessa appeared round the bend in the drive, coming from the direction of Calders. She was walking slowly without limping.

From that distance, of course, it was difficult to be absolutely sure, but it seemed that she was getting about more easily by herself and not having to depend on Huntley so much.

Tessa saw her almost in the same instant. She waved her scarf in salute, but it seemed to take her longer than necessary

to negotiate the distance between them. As she approached the limp was quite pronounced.

From a distance, then, Tessa looked normal. It was only when she came really near that her infirmity was noticeable.

“Did you bring the chicken?” she asked. “If it isn’t very big we ought to have another one.”

“I’ve just promised your father to let you have it by four o’clock,” Alison explained.

“That should do. Huntley won’t get here much before eight. Will you dress it for me?”

“I always do. They’ve been hanging since yesterday, so it ought to be nice and tender. Is it a special celebration?” Alison asked.

“My birthday,” Tessa said. “Twenty-four, and still unattached!”

“Poor old Methuselah!” Her father came down the steps from the front door with the salmon wrapped in a piece of canvas. “Wait till you’re fifty-four, like me!”

“I’ll have had my life by then,” Tessa said. “Or what might have to pass for it.”

“Now, Tessy!” her father remonstrated. “Don’t let’s begin all that again. Of course you’re going to get well! You’re improving every day.”

A dark colour stained his daughter’s cheeks.

“I wasn’t thinking about my health,” she muttered. “I’m able to leave that to other people. You and Huntley, for instance.”

“Huntley is doing his best to help, you know, and you don’t exactly co-operate, do you?” The Major sighed. “I know it’s difficult, Tessa—very difficult—but if you would only agree to see the specialist it would help.”

The look in Tessa’s eyes registered sheer panic.

“I won’t!” she cried with a small strangled gasp. “I won’t see anyone yet. Not till I’m sure.”

“What can you be sure of?” her father wanted to know, bewildered by her adamant refusal. “You can’t be the judge, Tessy. The doctors have always held out the utmost hope of a complete recovery.”

Tessa slumped against the van.

“I know,” she agreed weakly, her eyes swimming in tears.

“It’s—wicked of me to be so perverse about it, but please— just don’t ask me to go so soon. Let me wait a little while to be sure. To be absolutely sure,” she added beneath her breath.

The odd little request had come straight from her heart. Gilbert Searle shook his head. Puzzled and distressed, he hardly knew what to make of his daughter in her present mood. She seemed to be refusing all help, even from the two people who cared about her most. Huntley and himself.

“I think you’re wrong,” he said, “but nobody will insist. You must tell Huntley this evening how you feel about seeing the specialist next week. He’s made the appointment, but it could quite easily be cancelled.”

“I’ll ask him to cancel it,” Tessa said, tight-lipped. Her father gave Alison the salmon.

“I’ve wrapped him well up,” he pointed out. “No need to have the smell of fish all over your van, eh?”

“I’ll take him in front with me,” Alison smiled as he walked back to the house.

Tessa seemed to see her clearly for the first time. “You heard all that,” she said. “You know I’m being awkward about everything, so perhaps you think you know all about me now.”

Alison turned to face her.

“I’m not curious, Tessa,” she said. “Not in that respect, but I’d like to help, if I can.”

“How could you help?” Tessa’s face looked paler than ever. “How can anyone? It’s up to me, isn’t it? I’ve got to make my own decisions about—so many things. Nobody can help me. Nobody at all!”

“I could try,” Alison offered.

The thought struck Tessa as amusing.

“I wonder if you would if you knew the truth,” she said harshly. “You’d be too greatly involved, for one thing,” she added with a return to her former bitterness. “Perhaps even more involved than I thought possible.”

“If you’d stop talking in riddles,” Alison admonished, “we might get somewhere.”

“Why did you stay just now?” Tessa demanded fiercely. “What made you want to know about me? Is it because you’re

in love with Huntley?”

Her words fell into a stunned silence. Alison couldn’t bring herself to speak, although she felt that her heartbeats must surely be heard.

“I’m sorry for you if you are,” Tessa rushed on. “I’m sorry for everybody in love when things go wrong.” Alison moistened her dry lips.

“You’re upset,” she said. “Go with Huntley next week, Tessa. You’ll have to see the specialist, sooner or later. There isn’t anything to be afraid of.”

The suggestion of fear and restraint in Tessa’s eyes silenced her.

“You don’t know!” Tessa cried. “You couldn’t possibly understand!”

She limped up the three steps to the front door, looking back for an instant before she closed it between them. There could be no doubt now about the fear in her eyes.

Alison drove off, conscious of the rising tumult in her own heart. Was Tessa afraid that she was going to be lame for the rest of her life?

The thought pursued her all the way to Craigie Hill. Tessa was relying on Huntley. He had asked her to marry him, but would his offer stand if she was crippled for life?

The awful doubt might easily be at the root of Tessa’s fear. Huntley would go on being kind, but he wouldn’t marry her.

Oh, dear heaven, no! Alison protested inwardly. He couldn’t be like that, callous and cold. He couldn’t make a sacred promise one day and rescind it the next!

She drove to Wick in a torment of emotional doubt. Tessa had said that she was involved, too, but how deeply this concerned her even Tessa would never know. She had to put the thought of Huntley right out of her mind, yet how could she, meeting him every day?

The journey seemed endless, although she had no weather hazards to contend with. As far as the eye could see it was bright and clear.

At Thrumster she met Jim Orbister, who had come south with a fare.

“Leave the van here and drive back with me,” he suggested. “I’ll bring you down again in the evening to collect it, or take you all the way home, whichever you like.”

“And leave me minus a van for tomorrow’s milk round?” she smiled. “Besides, I’ve got a fourteen-pound salmon in here with me. Your next customer might object to the smell of fish!”