A Dark and Distant Shore (112 page)

Vilia wouldn’t believe it. She went on kneeling there, shaking him, and saying, ‘Oh, Sorley! Oh, Sorley!’ over and over again until Theo took her by the shoulders and pulled her forcibly to her feet.

In the end, she whispered dully, ‘Leave me with him. Go away, all of you.
Go away!
’

Gideon, Theo and Jermyn had a stiff whisky in the ice-cold dining-room and then went shivering to bed. But Gideon couldn’t sleep, even with Amy cradling him and wiping away the childish tears that sprang to his eyes, uncontrollably, all through the bleak hours of that bleak night.

Dawn wouldn’t come until about nine, but long before that Gideon rose and went downstairs again. The drawing-room fire had gone out, and the candles, and the room had a chill and neglected look in the light of his oil lamp. There were still blankets and plaids scattered around, and the forgotten tray with its burden of cold tea and once-hot milk, the skin thick and wrinkled on it. Sorley lay where they had left him, cold and stiff, the covering plaid turned down to reveal his dead, empty face, and Vilia was sunk on the floor beside him in a billow of dark green dressing robe, her arms on the seat of a chair and her face buried, her hair tumbling over her shoulders like a waterfall. In the oil light, it looked almost golden again.

Gideon, anticipating something of the sort, had wakened her maid on his way down and told her to relight the fire in Vilia’s room and warm the bed. Now, bending, he took her by the shoulders and raised her, resistless, to her feet. She seemed scarcely less cold than Sorley, and her tear-drowned face was as empty.

He remembered another night, more than thirty years ago, when a small black cat had died. He didn’t understand his mother. He never would. Other women wept for children or lovers, but she took that kind of tragedy in her stride. It was what most people would have considered as insignificant deaths that laid waste her spirit.

He wondered what she had been thinking in all these last dark, lonely hours. He couldn’t know that she hadn’t been thinking at all. Only repeating again and again, meaninglessly, in her head, ‘Oh, Sorley.
Oh, Sorley.
’

‘Come along, my dear,’ he said softly. ‘You need rest.’ And then, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll look after him.’

The blank eyes turned up to his for a moment, and then she said, ‘Yes,’ and, leaning on his arm, allowed him to take her to her room.

But the day wasn’t over.

The hands of the clock had just struggled as far as noon, and Gideon was in the castle workshop with the carpenter and the woman who did the sewing. She was asking how much cloth would be needed to line Sorley’s coffin when the door opened and Theo stood there. At the sight of his brother’s face, Gideon’s nerves began jangling again. Saying, ‘I think it would please my mother if you used the Cameron tartan, Maggie,’ he turned and followed Theo in silence to the dining-room, which was deserted.

Theo closed the door carefully, and stood surveying Gideon for a moment before he said, ‘Ian Barber.’

‘What about Ian Barber?’

‘We need another coffin.’

The world began to spin. Heavily, Gideon sat down. ‘What’s happened?’

Theo shrugged. ‘Who knows? Jock Tamson doesn’t, and he found him. I thought we’d better hear the whole saga together. I’ve told Jock to wait in the dungeon, and he’s had his dram, so he’s contented enough. What I want to know is, who tells Grace and Isa?’

‘Not Vilia. It’ll have to be Shona.’

‘Dear Shona! Yes. She’d better see Tamson with us, I suppose.’

The man stood fidgeting before them, twisting his bonnet in his hands. His kindly, nondescript face with the greyish bristle on cheeks and chin, was high-coloured with embarrassment at Shona’s presence.

‘What a terrible thing, Mr Tamson!’ she said, her eyes distressed. ‘Can you tell us just what happened? You think his horse threw him, my brother-in-law says?’

‘Aye, mistress. I wass chust taking a last look at the cow, do you see, before I went to bed, and I heard a horse – fair tearing along, it wass, and no one on her back at aal. I wass knowing her at once, but I could not be catching her. She wass wild, ferry wild, and in a terrible lather.’

‘What time was this?’ Gideon asked.

‘Och, it would be about ten, or a bitty after. I knew the chentleman must haff been thrown, so I got my lad Alasdair from his bed, and we took the ponies and came back along the road, do you see. I thought we wass neffer going to find him, but chust where the road comes round from Inverbeg – you will be knowing the place when I show you – there he wass. There iss a ferry sharp elbow in the hill and another wee one close by, so that they make a kind of chimney. Ferry black it iss, and the road iss chust on the edge of the loch, with a nasty chumble of rocks down to the water. Och, they should haff cleared those away years ago! It wass the whinstone they wass digging out when they was cutting the road, do you see, and it takes a terrible time for whinstone to lose its edge.’

‘And?’ Gideon prompted him. Highlanders were the worst he had ever come across at telling a story. Either they started in the middle, so that you never discovered what they were talking about, or they started long before the beginning and never reached the end at all. Either way, they took hell’s own time about it.

‘Och, well. It wass there he wass. Head down over the rocks with his hand trailing in the water. Stiff as a board, so he wass. Och, it wass a cold night. Not a night to be out at aal.’

Shona gave a little gasp, and Gideon put an arm round her shoulder. ‘How long had he been dead, do you think?’

‘I haff no idea. If he wass killed when he fell, there wass the time it took for the mare to reach my cot, and then Alasdair and I were slow coming back because we wass looking carefully, do you see?’

Theo said, ‘From Inverbeg to Jock’s place is the devil of a long way for the mare to have kept running. I don’t think I’ve ever known a horse bolt for more than a couple of miles, if that. Have you, Gideon?’

‘She may have eased off a bit. And she was on the way back to her stable, so she had no reason to stop.’

Jock Tamson pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘Maybe aye, maybe no. But och, the light was strange last night, ferry strange. Our own ponies are out in the moon, often enough, when we are after deer or vermin, but last night – och, they were shying at every shadow. It wass ferry still, do you see, and the shadows wass as black as I effer remember. With a high-bred beast like Mr Barber’s, a fox or a wildcat would have been enough.’

Ian had been a perfectly competent horseman, but the drop to the water – Gideon remembered it now, only about five miles from Kinveil – was on his blind side. Easy enough to misjudge things, trying to steady a rearing horse. Easy enough to pull it too far to the right, when it shied from the left, so that the frightened animal would see the new danger when his master didn’t. The animal would lose its trust in him then, and dig its heels in. And that could have been enough.

‘Where is Mr Barber’s body now?’ Theo asked.

Jock Tamson looked shifty. ‘Well, it wass like this, Mr Lauriston, do you see. We wass that cold that we took him to Willie Macleod’s at Inverbeg, and then we wass talking, you see, and it wass late before we woke. That iss why I wass maybe a wee bitty slow getting here. You know how it iss.’

‘I know how it is,’ Theo said a little drily.

‘But I wass thinking it wass maybe best not to bring the chentleman here chust at once, in case Mistress Barber wass wanting him taken straight back to Glenbraddan.’

Theo and Gideon looked at each, and then at Shona. She, tears standing in her gentle eyes, said helplessly, ‘I don’t know.’

Grace, deeply shocked, didn’t know, either, and Isa, giving way to something like hysteria could only moan, ‘Whatever you think. Whatever you think,’ before Amy led her away and saw her laid down on her bed, with five weeping daughters and one puzzled small son for company.

It was Amy who said, ‘You must ask Vilia, you know. Grace and Isa are too distraught. You, Gideon, think it would be simpler if he were buried here at Kinveil, in a double funeral with Sorley, while you, Theo, are sure he should be put to rest at Glenbraddan. You have no choice but to ask Vilia.’

Gideon exclaimed. ‘We can’t lay another burden on her shoulders, damn it! She’s in a bad enough way already!’

‘I don’t know,’ Theo said consideringly after a moment. ‘You never can tell, it might divert her mind. I will even take it on myself to go and ask her.’

When he returned, Gideon saw, incredulously, that he was trying to stifle a grin. ‘Well?’ he said sharply.

‘We-e-ell. My trick, dear boy. Prostrate she may have been, but
that
question roused her smartly enough.
On no account
is Ian Barber to be buried at Kinveil! One had the distinct impression that it would be nothing less than a mortal insult to the shade of friend Sorley. If that isn’t a contradiction in terms, which I suppose it is. So I win, dear boy. Ian is to be laid to rest where he belongs, at Glenbraddan.’

The two funerals followed each other in the same appalling week. There was no painful discussions over Sorley’s dispositions. What he possessed – little enough, although more than anyone had expected – went to his cousin Bessie, except for the one thing that was for Vilia. They found it in the chest where he kept his odds and ends, and there was a note with it. He had found it, years and years ago, in one of the little crevasses in the hills, and he had kept it secretly, because he wanted to be able to leave her something to treasure when he died. Even Theo gasped when he saw it, for, simple though it was, it was anything up to a thousand years old – a spiral silver bracelet, thick and round as a rope, with a rough pattern of antlers impressed into it, and heavy, bevelled ends. ‘Viking?’ Theo said. But Vilia choked, and repeating, ‘Something to treasure when he died’, clapped her fingers over her mouth and stumbled from the room.

Ian Barber’s affairs, tidy-minded though he had been, were in chaos. He hadn’t expected to die in his early thirties, and had made no arrangements beyond the obvious.

It was only too clear that little Jay, fair and nervous, couldn’t be left to the undivided attention of a parcel of women.

Gideon was horrified when the family decided that the obvious person to be his guardian was Theo. What could he say? What
could
he say? There wasn’t anything. The one argument against Theo’s being appointed the boy’s guardian was the one argument that couldn’t be put into words to his gently bred mother and grandmother, who wouldn’t understand it anyway.

Afterwards, Francis Randall was the first to leave. Gideon, having a quiet farewell drink with him, remarked, ‘You mustn’t think that this New Year has been precisely typical. Mass interment isn’t an essential feature of the ritual.’

Francis had eased up a good deal with Gideon and Amy. He grinned. ‘I didn’t think it was.’ But he could see that Gideon wanted to say something else and was having difficulty. He raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

‘You’re doing a European tour now, are you?’

‘Yes. My father had one scheduled for me when I was nineteen, but you may remember that it wasn’t just the best time for it.’

‘No.’ Gideon wrinkled his nose.

Francis could still remember his father saying, ‘You’ll like Gideon,’ and he did. An honest, considerate, humorous man who, unlike so many honest men, was nobody’s fool. In some ways, he wasn’t unlike Perry Randall, whom Francis still thought of with a deep sense of loss. But he didn’t, Francis thought, have either the driving force, or the same ironical, clear-sighted knowledge of himself. One had always sensed that Dad knew himself through and through, and other people, too. Gideon still had illusions.

Gideon said, ‘You’ll be going to Paris?’ and Francis laughed aloud. ‘Try and stop me! If I go nowhere else in this whole, wide world, I am going to Paris.’

‘I don’t know if you – if you remember Shona’s dinner party in ’51?’

Francis laughed again. ‘Don’t I just!’

‘Do you remember Juliana? Juliana Telfer.’

‘Sure I do! Eyes as big and soft as pansies, and the prettiest blonde curls.’

Gideon smiled. ‘That’s right. She’s almost the same age as you. Now, this is in confidence, Francis. You may know that she was – is – married to Theo. She left him a few years ago for very good reasons that I won’t explain.’

Francis did know something about the world, and he could guess. But there was something else nagging at his memory. ‘But she... Oh yes. I recall. She had a tragic time during the mutiny in India, and lost her first husband and baby as well.’

‘That’s right. Now she’s cut herself off from the family and no one knows what’s happened to her. But I do, or some of it at least. I had a very short note from her last year, saying very little more than that I wasn’t to worry. She was working her own life out and managing quite well. There was no address but Paris, not even an
arrondissement
number. But I
am
worried, because I know how little money she had, and she’s been away three years now. Could you – do you think you might – would you...?’

‘Keep an eye out for her? Sure, Gideon! What else are family connections for?’

He said gratefully, ‘Thank you. And if you should find her...’

‘I’ll let you know, and no one else.’

Gideon smiled in relief. ‘I’ll tell you this, Francis. I don’t know what your brother and sister are like, but your father made a damned good job of
you
!’

Francis Randall spent only a few days in Paris after he left Kinveil, sniffing the strange, characteristic smells, and familiarizing himself with the general layout of the city. He intended to get to know the place better, much better, but he had always been one to keep the best for last, so he postponed the pleasure, and in the meantime set out to ‘do’ the rest of Europe, Turkey, the Holy Land, and Egypt. He took a long time about it, because he was interested; longer than he had anticipated, especially as it would have been a pity to rush away and miss the grand opening of the Suez Canal. It wasn’t, therefore, until early in 1870 that he returned to Paris to stay.