Under Gemini (33 page)

“You didn't come here for stories. You came to say goodnight and then go down to the party. Just think, it's your very first dance. And you'll always remember wearing your grandfather's kilt and his velvet doublet.”

Jason, reluctantly, got off the bed. He went towards the door. He said to Flora, “Will you dance with me? I can only do ‘Strip the Willow' and an ‘Eightsome Reel' if everybody else knows how to do it.”

“I can't do either, but if you can teach me, I'd love to dance with you.”

“I could probably teach you ‘Strip the Willow.'” He opened the door. “Goodnight, Tuppy.”

“Goodnight, my love.”

He left them. The door closed behind him. Tuppy leaned back on her pillows, looking tired but peaceful.

“It's very strange,” she said, and her voice, too, seemed tired, as though the day had been too long for her. “This evening I seem to have lost all track of the years. Hearing the music, and knowing just how everything is looking downstairs, and all the fuss and the commotion; and then Jason coming in. And for a moment I really thought it was Bruce. Such a strange feeling. But a nice one, too. I think it has something to do with this house. This house and I know each other very well. You know, Rose, I've lived here all my life. I was born here. I wonder if you knew that?”

“No, I didn't know.”

“Yes, I was born here and I grew up here. And so did my two little brothers.”

“I didn't know you had brothers, either.”

“Oh, dear me, yes. James and Robbie. They were much younger than I was, and my mother died when I was twelve, so in a way they were my children. And such dear, wicked little boys. I can't tell you how naughty they were, and the dreadful things they used to get up to. Once they built a raft and tried to launch it off the beach, but they got swept out to sea by the ebb tide, and the lifeboat had to go out after them. And another time they lit a campfire in the summer house and the whole place went up in smoke and they were lucky not to be roasted alive. It was the only time I ever remembered seeing my father really angry. And then they went away to school, and I missed them so much. And they grew into young men, so tall and handsome, but still as wicked as ever. I was married by then and living in Edinburgh, but oh, the stories I used to hear! The escapades and the parties! They were so attractive they must have broken the heart of every girl in Scotland, but so charming that no female had the heart to stay angry for long, and they were always forgiven.”

“What happened to them?”

Tuppy's gay and valiant voice cracked a little. “They were killed. Both of them. In the First World War. First Robbie and then James. It was such a terrible war. All those fine young men. The carnage and the casualty lists. You know, even someone of Isobel's generation cannot begin to imagine the horror of those casualty lists. And then, so near the end of the war, my own husband was killed. And when that happened I felt that I had nothing left to live for.” The blue eyes shone with sudden tears.

“Oh, Tuppy.”

But Tuppy shook her head, denying sentiment and self-pity. “But you see, I had. I had my children, Isobel and Bruce. But I'm afraid I wasn't a very maternal person. I think I'd used up all my mothering on my little brothers, and by the time Bruce and Isobel turned up I wasn't nearly as pleased as I should have been. We were living in the south, and they were so pale and quiet, poor little souls, and somehow I couldn't make myself get enthusiastic about them, and that made me feel guilty and sorrier than ever for myself. It was a sort of vicious circle.”

“What happened?”

“Well, my father wrote to me. The war was over at last, and he asked me to bring the children home to Fernrigg for Christmas. So we got into a train and we came, and he met us at Tarbole on a dark winter's morning. It was very cold and it was raining, and what a miserable little party we were, all dressed in inky black, gray in the face and sooty from the train. He had brought a wagonette and we got up behind the horses and drove back to Fernrigg just as the dawn was beginning to light the sky. And on the road we met an old farmer my father knew, and he stopped the horses and introduced the old man to the children. I remember them now, shaking hands so solemnly.

“I thought it was just for Christmas I'd come home. But we stayed over the New Year, and the weeks turned into months, and the next thing I knew, it was spring again. And I realized that the children were at home, they belonged to Fernrigg. And now they were rosy and noisy, and out of doors most of the time, just the way children should be. And I began to be interested in the garden. I made a rosebed and I planted shrubs and a fuchsia hedge, and gradually I began to realize that however tragic the past had been, there still had to be a future. This is a very comforting house, you know. It doesn't seem to change very much, and if things don't change, they can be very comforting.”

She fell silent. From downstairs now came the sounds of cars arriving, the swell of gathering voices rising above the jig of the music. The party had started. Tuppy reached out for her glass of champagne and had a little drink. She laid down her glass and took Flora's hand again.

“Torquil and Antony were born here. Their mother had a difficult time when Torquil was born and the doctors told her that she really shouldn't have a second child, but she was determined to take the risk. Bruce was naturally very anxious about her, and so we arranged that she should come to Fernrigg for her pregnancy and to have the baby. And I think everything might have gone well, but Bruce's ship was torpedoed just a month before Antony was born, and after that I think she lost all will to live. There was no fight in her. And the worst bit of it was that I understood. I knew how she felt.” She gave a wry smile. “So there we are, Isobel and I, right back where we'd started, with two more little boys to bring up. Always little boys at Fernrigg. The house is crawling with them. Sometimes I hear them running in from the garden, calling up the stairs, making such a racket. I think, because they died, that's why they've never grown old. And as long as I am here to remember them, then they are never really gone.”

Once again, she fell silent. Flora said, at last, “I wish so much you'd told me this before. I wish I'd known.”

“It's sometimes better not to talk about the past. It's an indulgence which should be kept for very old people.”

“But Fernrigg is such a happy house. You feel it the moment you walk into it.”

“I'm glad you felt that. I sometimes think it's like a tree, gnarled and old, the trunk twisted and deformed by the wind. Some of the branches have gone, torn away by the storms, and at times you think the tree is dying—it can't survive the elements any longer. And then the spring comes again, and the tree opens out into thousands of young, green leaves. Like a miracle. You're one of the little leaves, Rose. And Antony. And Jason. It makes everything worthwhile to know that there are young people around again. To know you're here.” Flora could think of nothing to say, and with a characteristic change of mood, Tuppy became brisk. “What am I doing, keeping you here, talking a lot of rubbish, when everybody is downstairs waiting to meet you! Are you feeling nervous?”

“A little.”

“You mustn't be nervous. You're looking beautiful and everyone—not just Antony—will be in love with you. Now, give me a kiss and run along. And tomorrow you can come and tell me all about it. Every tiny detail, because I shall be waiting to hear.”

Flora got off the bed. She bent and kissed Tuppy and went to the door. As she opened it Tuppy said, “Rose,” and Flora looked back. “Have fun,” Tuppy told her.

That was all. She went out of the room, and shut the door behind her.

*   *   *

It was no time to be emotional. It was simply childish to become sentimental, to get upset because an old lady had had a glass of champagne and started to remember. Flora was not a child. She had learned long ago to control her feelings. She had only to stand very still, and press her hands to her face and close her eyes, and in a moment the lump in her throat would stop growing like a great balloon and the foolish tears would recede and never be shed.

She had been a long time with Tuppy. From the hall the swelling sounds of the party, already well under way, rose to taunt her. She had to go down. She couldn't start crying now, because she had to go down, and meet everybody. And Antony was waiting, and she had promised him …

What had she promised him? What madness had impelled her to make that promise? And how could they ever have imagined that they would get away with their deception without destroying both themselves and everyone else involved?

The desperate questions had no answer. The dress she wore, starched and relentlessly uncomfortable, had become a physical embodiment of her own shame and self-loathing. Wearing it was torture. Her arms were forced into sleeves that were too narrow; her throat constricted by the high, tight collar, until she felt she couldn't breathe.

Rose. Have fun.

But I'm not Rose. And I can't pretend to be Rose any longer.

She pressed her fist to her mouth, but it wasn't any good, because by now she was crying—for Tuppy, for the little boys, for herself. Blinding, salty tears filled her eyes and streamed down her cheeks. She imagined herself, blotchy and with her mascara running, but that was of no importance because she had come to the end of the charade. She could go to no party, face nobody. Instinctively, she had started back toward the sanctuary of her own room, and now she was running, like a person trying to escape—down the long passage, till she had reached her door and was inside, shut away. She was safe.

Now the music and the laughter were deadened to a faint murmur and there was only the ugly sound of her own weeping. The room felt icy. She began, clumsily, to undo all the tiny awkward buttons of the dress. The collar lay loose and she could breathe again. Then the bodice and the narrow cuffs. She wrenched the dress from her shoulders and it slid with a whisper to the floor, and she stepped out of it and left it there, like the discarded wrappings of some parcel. Shivering with cold, she snatched up her old familiar dressing gown, and without bothering to do up the buttons or tie the sash bundled herself into it, flung herself across the bed, and was abandoned, at last, to the inevitable storm of weeping.

*   *   *

Time was lost. Flora had no idea how long she had lain there before she heard the sound of her door open, and gently, close again. She was not even sure whether or not someone had actually come into the room until she felt the pressure on the edge of her bed as someone sat beside her. A warm presence, solid and comforting. She turned her head on the pillow, and a hand reached out and smoothed her hair back off her face. She looked through swimming eyes, and the dark blur with the white shirt front gradually resolved itself into Hugh Kyle.

She had expected perhaps Isobel or Antony. Certainly not Hugh. She made an enormous effort to stop crying, and as the tears did recede a little, she wiped them away with the heel of her hand, and looked at him again. Hugh's image sharpened, and she saw a man she had never seen before—not simply because he was dressed differently, but because it was unusual for him to be so patient, sitting there as though he had all the time in the world, not saying anything and apparently prepared to let Flora cry herself to a standstill.

She made an effort to speak. To say something, even if it was only, “Go away.” But Hugh—Hugh, of all people, opened his arms to her, and this she found impossible to resist. Without a second thought, Flora pulled herself up off her pillows, and cast herself into the waiting comfort of his massive embrace.

He seemed impervious to the damage she was probably wreaking on his crisp white shirt front. His arms were warm and strong about her shaking shoulders. He smelt of clean linen and aftershave. She felt his chin against the top of her head, and when, after a little, he said, gently, “What's wrong?” the words came, incoherent and disjointed, but still they came—a torrent of words, a flood.

“I've been with Tuppy … and she was telling me … the little boys … and I never knew. And I couldn't bear it. And she said … a leaf on the tree … and I couldn't bear it…” Telling him all this was not helped by the fact of her face being pressed so closely to his shirt front. “I … could hear everybody and the music, and I knew … I couldn't come down.…”

He let her cry. When she had calmed down a little, she heard him say, “Isobel wondered what had happened to you. She sent me to find out, and to bring you down.”

Flora shook her head as vehemently as possible under the constricted circumstances. “I'm not coming.”

“Of course you're coming. Everybody's waiting to meet you. You can't spoil it for them.”

“I can't. I'm not going to. You'll have to say I'm sick again, or something … anything…”

His arms tightened. “Now come along, Flora, pull yourself together.”

The room became very still. Out of the silence random sounds impinged on Flora's conscious mind: faint strains of music from the other end of the house, the wind rising, nudging the window, the distant murmur of the sea; and so close that it was felt rather than heard, the regular thud of Hugh's heartbeat.

Cautiously, she drew away from him. “What did you call me?”

“Flora. It's a good name. Much better than Rose.”

Her face ached from crying. Undried tears still lay on her cheeks, and she tried to wipe them away with her fingers. Her nose was running and she could not find a handkerchief and had to sniff, enormously. He reached into his pocket and produced his own handkerchief. Not the beautiful silk one which showed from the top of his breast pocket, but a comfortable everyday one, the cotton soft from washing.

She accepted it gratefully. “I don't seem to be able to stop crying. I don't usually cry, ever.” She blew her nose. “You won't believe that, but it's true. These last few days I don't seem to have done anything but cry.”