The Tender Glory (2 page)

That was why it seemed so unnatural to Alison that her brother should have thrown it all away. It might have been a meagre heritage, but at least it was his own.

They had grown apart a little after her departure for London, but she had always thought of Robin as belonging there, the last link in the chain that bound them to Craigie Hill.

The first stop on her journey was Aberdeen. The plane touched down at Dyce in a thin
haar
creeping in from the sea. They had flown above it, watching it drifting like a delicate chiffon scarf between them and the land, and the pilot had to wait for a radio signal from Wick before they could go on.

“We can just about make it,” the air hostess announced, coming back from the terminal buildings, “but anyone going on to Kirkwall may have to spend the night in Wick. There’s poor visibility all the way north from Duncansby Head.”

The two passengers for the Orkney Islands shrugged resignedly. After all, it was October and they had travelled by air often enough at this time of year to expect delay. They settled down behind their respective newspapers as the plane taxied along the runway, lifted and flew north-westwards over the Moray Firth.

Alison drew a swift breath of relief. At least, she was going to reach Wick without delay and after that her journey south along the coast would be easy enough. She would hire a taxi in Wick to take her to Craigie Hill.

Coming nearer, with the mist lifting a little to show her Sarclet Head, her heart began to pound with a remembered excitement. Coming home had always felt like this. She had made the journey so often that every step of the way was dearly familiar, and some of her disappointment and hurt fell away as she watched the high plateau of Caithness forming beneath her. The
haar
still hugged the coastline, but behind it the spreading moorland lay under the autumnal sun, gilded like burnished gold until it rose to the terrible mountains of the west. The great peaks of Sutherland, seered by their isolated straths, looked back at her without kindness, girded by a chain of lochs, and far to the north the Pentland Firth heaved in sullen fury against Duncansby and Dunnet Head.

Deliberately she brought her gaze back to the nearer hills, to green Morven and the Maiden Pap and Scaraben, which they had climbed as children. In the fitful gleam of sunlight they seemed to welcome her. Dunrobin Castle appeared, standing out on its rocky promontory half obscured by mist, the fairy stronghold of her earliest imaginings, the rose-pink castle of romance and mystery. In no time, it seemed, they were over the South Head and slipping down to the airport.

Crossing the windswept runway, she hired the necessary taxi, aware of the driver studying her as he collected her hand-luggage and stowed it in the boot. His face, vaguely familiar, would not supply her with a name and she waited for him to speak first. She had already told him where she wished to go.

“You’re Alison Christie,” he commented without preliminary as he got in behind the wheel. “We were at school together, but maybe you don’t remember,” he added dryly.

She struggled to bridge the gap of years.

“Jim Orbister!” she remembered. “But you were really in Robin’s year. Older than me.”

He smiled, guiding the car away from the airport into the town.

“Four years. You’ve changed a lot.”

“Which means?”

“You’re different. More sophisticated, maybe. But then, you’ve been to London.”

The remark had been tossed at her almost aggressively, yet in the next instant he seemed amused.

“What’s brought you back to Caithness?” he asked. “Surely you don’t intend to farm Craigie Hill?”

She flushed. He was far from being the uncouth country bumpkin with his fair, Viking good looks and his penetrating blue eyes which he kept fixed on her face as he asked his questions. She remembered him well enough now, thinking that he had grown into a handsome man.

“I’ve no idea what I’m going to do,” she was forced to confess. “That will depend on my mother. She’s been ill for some time.”

His face sobered.

“I’m sorry,” he apologised. “You must be very anxious about her.”

“I am.” She paused as he negotiated a busy crossroads. “That’s why I’ve come home.”

“For good?” he asked, letting in his clutch as the lights turned to amber. “You’ve got a lot of luggage with you,” he observed when she made no immediate reply.

“It may be for good,” she said a little breathlessly.

“And you consider it a great waste,” he suggested. “I remember the furore when you went off with your scholarship to conquer the musical world or die in the attempt.”

“I don’t think that’s very funny.” Her cheeks were scarlet. “I did my best.”

“I’m sure you did.” He sounded contrite. “But don’t tell me you aren’t disappointed and blaming Robin like mad.”

She turned in her seat to look at him.

“You were his friend,” she said. “Have you heard from him?” He shook his head.

“No. It was a sort of final step when he went to America. He got sort of secretive towards the end, not confiding in anyone. When I came up here to Wick to start this hire-car business we more or less drifted apart. Sometimes he’d come up at week-ends, sometimes not. I got the idea that he was settling in at Craigie Hill.”

He hadn’t told her anything she didn’t already know. “If you ask me,” he added slowly, “the rot set in when he started seeing so much of the people at Calders.”

Some of the high colour left her cheeks. “What do you mean? Why Calders?” she asked. “We never had any contact with Calders in the past, except perhaps to deliver their milk.”

He laughed.

“Maybe that’s what Robin was doing when he met them.”

“You mean the Daviots?”

He nodded.

“Well?” She saw his sharp profile against the sudden blue of sea as they took the coast road south. “What difference did it make, knowing the Daviots?”

“They absorbed him.” There was the suspicion of jealousy behind the words. “He thought Huntley Daviot was some sort of superman, and as for Leone Searle, I guess he worshipped her.”

“He told me about Leone,” Alison said quietly. “She came to Calders once or twice.”

“Once or twice!” With an open road in front of him Jim put his foot hard down on the accelerator. “She was always there. She was going to marry Daviot.”

“Before she was killed.” Alison spoke half to herself. “Before she died in that American plane crash. It was such a dreadful tragedy, a terrible, terrible waste of talent!”

He allowed her words to fall into a lengthening silence.

“You could have done as well,” he suggested at last. “Robin always thought so.”

“Leone had a wonderful gift,” Alison said. “How I wish I could have met her! ”

Jim didn’t answer.

“I’ve heard her sing, of course, and I have most of her recordings,” she went on. “Whenever she was in London we went to hear her. If I’d known she came to Calders regularly I should have been green with envy.”

Her companion grunted, applying all his attention to the road.

They were south of Sarclet Head now, winding across the moor, with the Hill of Yarrows behind them and the loch water at its foot a distant glitter in the sun. It was desolate-looking country, with only the narrow herd roads leading away from the sea and a cluster of grey stone houses here and there to mark the tiny villages she knew so well. Clyth and Lybster and Latheronwheel had always been magic names to her, redolent of childhood joys, and Morven still stood high above the dale hills with his head in the clouds.

She looked back at the mountain which had dominated their view from Craigie Hill all her life, aware at last that she had truly come home, and the ache in her heart eased a little.

“It isn’t so bad,” she said, half to herself. “Coming back like this.”

“You’ve chosen a mean season,” Jim Orbister reflected. “The summer’s past. All the visitors have gone.”

“I didn’t come with the idea of amusing myself,” she told him almost sharply. “I know what Caithness can be like.”

He glanced down at her gloved hands.

“It’s going to be hard work,” he pointed out.

“I’m used to work.” Her tone was stiff. “You seem to have the idea that I’ve softened up in London.”

“Well, haven’t you?” He seemed faintly amused. “You’d never have worn shoes like those in the old days, for instance.”

She moved her feet in their high-heeled courts, flushing at

his unabashed criticism.

“I have brogues with me,” she said flatly. “I haven’t forgotten about Craigie Hill.”

He turned the car off the main road out on to a bare table land of rock where there were few trees and nothing seemed soft or kind. The deep straths and gentle, wooded dales lay far behind them. Here was nothing but rock and sky and sea. The moor swept right down to the cliff’s edge, spilling over in a sheer drop to the cold grey waste of water far beneath them.

The road they followed was little more than a track, yet it was well metalled and in reasonable repair. Sheep met them at every turn and bend, cropping the richer grass by the wayside or huddled in groups on the road itself. Jim changed down, sounding his horn vigorously.

“They’ll move,” he said, “given time. Even the Craigie Hill ewes stand aside for a car nowadays.”

Because of the traffic to Calders, she supposed, but didn’t say so. The great house, hidden from view by the only trees for miles, lay in the one sheltered spot on the whole tableland, its private road sweeping off at a tangent to isolate it from Craigie Hill and the two other crofts on the north side of the headland.

Calders, like Dunrobin Castle, had always been something of a legend to her, the mysterious, unapproachable mansion set apart, whose wealthy inhabitants drank Craigie Hill’s milk and ate Craigie Hill’s butter and appeared on odd occasions at
clachan
fetes to dispense their favours with a smile. It had seemed odd to her that a great singer like Leone Searle should have come to Calders until she remembered the Daviots’ great love of music and the fact that it had been the Isobel Daviot Scholarship which had taken her straight from school to the London Conservatoire of Music.

Closing her eyes, she tried to blot out the memory of her joy and pride as she had walked up to the platform that summer afternoon to receive her prize. The Isobel Daviot Scholarship! The words echoed in her ears like a knell and tears beat against her closed lids. It had all been for nothing.

Nothing at all.

When she opened her eyes she could see Craigie Hill. It looked so small, so desolate, crouching there in its tiny hollow braving the wind and the cut of salt coming in from the sea. Somehow, it didn’t seem so white as she had always imagined it, lacking its yearly cement-wash, she supposed. The byres, too, looked in need of repair, and the narrow strip of garden walled in from foraying sheep looked bleak and neglected. It had been her mother’s pride for so long that her heart lurched with fear as she looked towards the closed door of the house. Yet front doors were rarely used on Highland crofts. There was the back way in, which was the familiar way, used by friends and family alike. The front door was for strangers.

Jim Orbister drew his car up at the side of the house. The few cows they possessed were already in the byre, lowing gently, and a pail clanked down on a stone floor. Footsteps sounded across the flags.

“So you’re home, Miss Alison, and high time!” a dry voice remarked behind them.

Alison turned to find Kirsty Sutherland surveying them from the byre door. She was a short, dark, thick-set woman in her early sixties, her vividly blue eyes taking in every detail of the prodigal’s return. She missed nothing of the fashionable London attire. Kirsty didn’t approve of modern ways, nor did she see the need for scholarships which took a girl, especially, away from the place where she had been born and bred. Her own loyalty to Craigie Hill, where she had served for close on forty years, reminded her constantly that modern youth had no sense of responsibility and no true values, yet she would have lashed out with her adequate tongue at anyone who dared to criticise any of the Christies in her presence. She had nursed Alison and her brother in infancy; she had watched them grow; she had stood with tears in her eyes as they went away and thought them foolish in her heart, but now that at least one of them had returned she was prepared to overlook their frailty in the past, although not without comment.

“You’ve taken your time,” she remarked as Alison bent to kiss her, “but I suppose it was a wrench for you, leaving London.”

Alison dismissed the reprimand with a smile.

“I had a lot to do, Kirsty,” she explained. “After all, it was nearly three years and I had all my belongings to pack.” She moved towards the house. “Mother must have heard the car. Is she still in bed?”

“Not her! She got up to meet you,” Kirsty said dryly. “In ye go and I’ll finish the milking while I can see. Neillie’s away for the day, but he’ll be back before night.”

Alison turned to Jim Orbister.

“You’ll come in for a cup of tea?” she invited. “It’s a long drive back.”

He hesitated.

“Your mother will want you to herself.”