Land of Heart's Desire (21 page)

Christine stood very still, the gay chatter all about her going completely over her head. It seemed that there was no one there but Finlay and herself, that this was their moment and not to be shared. Yet he did not come to her. He worked on with the men even after the shout of triumph went up from both sides of the span and Rory called back from the shore that everything was secure.

It was almost dark by then, too late for any sort of ceremony, she supposed, trying not to feel too disappointed when Finlay turned almost abruptly towards the waiting cars. The workmen were already throwing tools and hauling gear into the trucks and the moment of victory was over. Behind them the new bright metal of the bridge gleamed faintly, while beneath it the water rose steadily with the incoming tide.

Tears blinded Christine, but she had blinked them away long before they had reached Ardtornish. When they separated to wash and change Jane came to her door.

“Finlay must be very tired,” she said. “He has been working like a slave these past few days. But he’s very proud, too—proud of all he has been able to do.”

“Even with the limitations I’ve forced on him?” Christine said in a half-strangled undertone. “How he must despise me!”

There was a small, tense silence.

“I don’t think he does that,” Jane said. “He understands how you felt about Croma in the first place, you see.” She paused and then asked abruptly: “Chris, is it true that you are going to marry Hamish?”

“No!” The word flew out before Christine realized how vehement it was. “No,” she repeated more quietly, “not now.”

“I see.” Jane ran a comb through her fine, silken hair, looking at her pale reflection in the dressing-table mirror with a small, wistful smile. “What do you think of Joe?” she asked.

“He’s—exactly like Finlay,” Christine answered without hesitation. “A younger edition of Finlay!”

“Everyone thinks so,” Jane said, walking back towards the door. “You won’t be too long, will you?”

When she went down to the hall Christine found Finlay waiting at the foot of the stairs. Some of the others were already gathered in the brilliantly-lit drawing-room, but he did not turn that way.

“I have something I would like to show you,” he said. “We’ve still got a quarter of an hour or so before dinner.”

“Is it the tweed?” she asked eagerly, following him across the hall.

“The tweed and quite a few other things.” He turned to look down at her. with the look of quiet triumph in his eyes again. “If this is a pointer to the success of the London exhibition,” he said, “we’re going to be all right.”

She would not have believed that he and Jane could have worked so hard on the exhibits and done so many other things besides. It had been Jane’s natural artistry, she knew, that had decided her to use the library to lay out the tweed and Callum’s jewellery, and it was no doubt Jane who had spread Christine’s paintings among the exhibits, propping them beside a bale of tweed or against a wall where they merged so beautifully into the atmosphere of the fine old panelled room.

“I don’t know how you are going to feel about this,” Finlay said, “but they’re all sold. The Simpsons have a son in the antique business in New Jersey and he’s handling painting as a side line. Cloe’s sure he’s going to use these and want a lot more.”

“But, Finlay,” she protested, completely taken by surprise, “they weren’t meant to be sold. I—they weren’t painted with a market in view. They can’t be good enough. I was trained to do commercial stuff. They were just—a sort of means of expression, something which said how I felt about Croma, I suppose.”

“And so they
are
Croma! Let them go,” he advised. “They belong with the tweed, and you can paint some more. That was what you wanted, wasn’t it? To paint?”

“Yes,” she said in a small, far-away voice. “But I hadn’t thought of it quite like this. Croma has offered me so much.”

“I hope it is going to give you the kind of happiness you want,” he said in a changed tone as he turned towards the door.

“What do you think of it?” Jane asked, coming in from the hall. “It’s so much of all of us,” she added. “Callum, and Rory, too, because he drove for miles across the island, arguing in the Gaelic for hours, persuading people to part with the tweed they were keeping by them for the future. Callum and Rory and you and me and Finlay!”

Finlay smiled warmly as he went to put an arm round her shoulders.

“Don’t forget the background to it all,” he said. “That was your effort, Jane. Without you there would have been none of this.” His glance swept from the tweed and the pictures to the crowded shelves behind them where the tabulated books had been placed back in order. “I guess we’re going to need your help a lot more in the future, too.”

Jane returned his smile a little wistfully.

“Finlay is already away ahead of us!” she told Christine. “He has the London exhibition all planned. It will be a much bigger one than this, of course, and it ought to bring in the orders we need to keep us busy for another year.”

“I’m getting excited already,” Christine confessed.

She wondered what else Finlay had planned for the future. Did it include asking Jane to stay at Ardtornish for good, to remain there as his wife? Jane was her friend, but somehow she could not bear the thought and, turning, found herself face to face with Joe.

“I came to find you,” he said. “I might have known you would be in here! You’ve given your tweed a big send-off,” he declared. “Cloe and Lucille are crazy about it and Eve Albright had bought up all the jewellery. She’s taking a chance with it and hopes to show it in Quebec when she gets back. Your Old Man of the Sea ought to be kept busy with orders for the rest of his life, Miss MacNeill!”

Christine was glad for Callum. She knew what an interest it would give him and how easy it might have been for him to feel useless and unnecessary in their small community now that her grandmother had died. Now he could go on setting his stones and the schoolchildren could gather them for him along the shore. She would repair the cliff path and buy more sheep when the money for the tweed came in, and there would be her painting—her one talent—to bring her fulfilment down through the years.

Strange, then, how empty those years should feel when she thought about them!

During the next two days, when the storm broke and poured the full fury of its wrath over the island, they were more or less tied to the house, but it was Christmas and there was plenty to do. They decorated a tree and garlanded the hall with evergreens and paper chains and hung a holly wreath and a star on the great studded door in the Canadian fashion to welcome all comers to the house in the name of Christ.

The children from the village were given tea and a present from the tree in the afternoon and their laughter rang down the hall and up to the dark oak rafters till the whole house seemed full of joy.

Sleeping under Finlay’s roof for the first time, Christine knew a strange tranquillity. The storm might rage outside, lashing itself in fury against Ardtornish’s stout grey walls, but all was warm and cheerful within. She came to know the people he liked, who had been his friends for years, and she came to know and understand his brother, Joe.

Joe was Finlay’s greatest champion.

“Finlay is a white man all through,” he said on Christmas night as they sat in a corner of the hall while the others danced to the radiogram. “He never holds a grudge, even though the offence has been severe. I should know that,” he added feelingly. “I served him about the meanest trick any man could have done. I went off with the girl he was going to marry.”

Christine felt herself stiffen. So here was Finlay’s secret, at last. His unhappy love, his reason for leaving Canada and crossing three thousand miles of ocean to find Croma. “Don’t tell me, Joe,” she said. “It—won’t do any good.”

“I don’t think Finlay minds about it now. He’s kinda got it out of his system, I guess. Carla strung him along for over three years, putting him off all the time because of her career. She was a singer, and Finlay wanted her to give it up when they married and settle in at Wynyards. She never would have made a farmer’s wife, though, and I think he came to realize that in the end. She wasn’t even capable of making him a home anywhere, I guess.” There was bitterness in Joe’s voice for the first time. “Finlay might have given in about her career, but then I came on the scene. I was fresh out of college and I didn’t want to settle for the farm, either. Like Carla, I wanted to be at the hub of things—till I came to my senses. But the mischief was done then. We thought we were in love and we told Finlay. Then, after a year, Carla wanted him back. I didn’t have the same money, you see, and the excitement was growing kinda thin. We both were working in New York and practically broke. Then, quite suddenly, Finlay offered to let me go back to Wynyards.”

Christine drew in a deep breath.

“And he came away?”

“Yes. I guess maybe he thought we would be better apart. He knew Grieve wanted the farm anyway. He’s the brother next to Finlay, and maybe he thought I would get Carla out of my system easier if he wasn’t around to remind me of her. But Grieve was boss there after Finlay left and we never got on. So here I am!”

“You’re going to stay on Croma?”

“I guess so, if Finlay will have me. It looks like there’s plenty to do around these parts!” he grinned.

“Yes, Joe,” Christine said eagerly. “There’s plenty to do!”

It seemed that all she needed and had ever wanted was coming true for Croma, because of Finlay.

The following morning the storm had abated a little and she said that she must go.

“I must get back in time to prepare for Hogmanay,” she told Finlay. “New Year is our big festival at Erradale and I have most of the tenants in for a celebration.” She hesitated, overcome by a sudden shyness. “I—wondered if you and Jane would come and bring the others—Joe and Mr. and Mrs. Simpson, and the Albrights. I know the Holmans are going back to London to-morrow.”

“We’ll all come,” he agreed. “But I can’t spare you till this afternoon. I’ve got a village committee coming up to have a word with you about the tweed. They should be here about three o’clock and Jane has promised to make them some tea.”

“Oh! Then I ought to stay—”

She wanted to see these people and she was glad that he had thought of a committee of villagers.

“Don’t worry about getting back,” he said. “We haven’t got to rely on the boat now, you know. Besides,” he added with his slow smile, “I rather fancy taking you across the causeway for the first time myself.”

Christine flushed and her heart began to beat wildly. “I’d like that, Finlay,” she said, forcing a lightness into her voice that she did not feel. “Is it going to be a ceremony?”

“Not in this weather!” He glanced beyond her through one of the long windows overlooking the bay. “Things have quietened down a bit, but it’s still rough. Did you sleep at all last night?”

“I’m an island woman!” she reminded him.

She could not tell him how restless her sleep had been for a reason far removed from the raging of the storm.

“So you are!” he smiled. “And a journey in a jeep across the causeway won’t worry you overmuch.”

She wondered if they would be going alone, but thought that they would probably take Jane with them—or Rory.

Rory, however, had not been in evidence since breakfast, and she supposed he would be at the ford.

The committee meeting took longer than they expected, and she wondered if she should offer to stay the night and go back to Erradale by daylight, but somehow she felt shy about asking Finlay for further hospitality.

When the jeep came round he was in it alone, and Jane had made no preparations to come with them. As Finlay’s hostess, she could hardly have left his other guests to look after themselves, and when Christine kissed her good-bye she was conscious of a sudden envy. Finlay thought such a lot of Jane.

The wind, which had fallen during the earlier part of the day, had risen again, and a fierce rain drove savagely in their faces as they went out to the jeep. It was a sullen night, full of sound and fury, and as they drove northwards the rain increased until it was like a solid wall in front of them.

“Do you think we ought to turn back, Finlay?” Christine asked once, but he said almost sharply:

“Not unless you’re nervous about the ford.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that.” She bit her lip. “It’s a vile night, and you have a long journey back.”

“I’ve been out in worse,” he said, but she saw him strain over the wheel to see out, and the rain on the windscreen was rapidly turning to sleet.

They drove in silence for the next few miles with the sound of the storm an angry accompaniment to their separate thoughts. The road was good, however, and the jeep had powerful headlights. Finlay pushed the sturdy little vehicle as fast as he dared, but the rain and sleet seemed to beat them back with renewed viciousness.

Long before they approached the causeway they could hear the beat and roar of the waves round the Rhu Dearg tearing at the land while the relentless rain beat down upon it like some savage accomplice.

They ran out on to the causeway, at last, and now there was a new sound—the sound of the jeep’s wheels drumming on the arches between the piers. It was a strange, hollow sound, with the wind behind it howling through the gap in the hills where the dark, unseen water foamed and swirled close beneath them, a sound that held the cry of warlocks and the shriek of all the evil spirits of the sea. It was so easy for Christine to conjure up a vision of the
Each Uiseag,
the Hemon water-horse who lived in the lochan close up under the hills and came to ride on a night like this; so easy to connect each savage onslaught of wind and rain with the fury of the sea creatures who wreaked their wrath on defenceless travellers caught out on such a night of storm.