Winter Solstice (48 page)

She was totally without artifice. If she had nothing to say, she said nothing. If she spoke, or aired an opinion, it was deliberate, considered, intelligent. She did not seem to know the meaning of small talk, and while others chatted, over meals or an evening drink, she was always attentive, but often silent. Her relationship with Elfrida and Lucy was, however, deeply affectionate and caring. With the young girl, Carrie was quite protective, but not in a smothering way. Lucy came and went, but always there were endearments for her, casual hugs, a listening ear. Laughter.

As for Sam, he found it impossible to guess what Carrie thought of him. She was totally at ease, in charge of the situation, but at the same time reserved to the point of withdrawal. The one time he had got her to himself for more than five minutes-which was when they had driven to Kingsferry to do the huge supermarket shopping-he had thought that he could break through this barrier, but every time the conversation veered around to Carrie and her private Me, she had fallen silent, and then, speaking, turned the conversation into a totally different direction. When Sam, with some difficulty, had run to earth the Gent’s Outfitters in Kingsferry, he had expected that she would come into the shop with him; make suggestions, choices; even joke about his choice of boxer shorts and pyjamas (which the Gent’s Outfitters called Intimate Apparel); or insist on choosing Sam some dreadful and unsuitable tie. But she did none of these things. Instead, she crossed the road to the ironmonger, where she bought Elfrida a new baking dish and a pudding bowl. So Sam did his intimate shopping on his own, and when he got back to the car she was waiting for him, reading The Times, and not overly interested in his purchases.

He found himself wondering if she had once been married, but knew that he could never pluck up the nerve to ask such a question. It was, after all, nothing to do with him. That first evening, while they sat and waited for Oscar and Elfrida to return from their party, she had imparted a little casual information about herself.

That was all. She enlarged on nothing, volunteered no gratuitous information, and he was left with the sense of a strong door firmly shut between them, and nothing was going to persuade Carrie to open it.

About Lucy, she was more open. She spoke, as well, about her own father, and when she did this, her voice warmed, her lovely eyes shone, and she became quite animated and informative. Her father was called Jeffrey, and lived, with his second and much younger wife, in Cornwall.

“He’s an amazing man,” Carrie had said.

“The most giving of men. He stayed with my mother, in some unhappiness, until Nicola and I were both adult and on our own, and only then did he light out and leave us all, and go off with Serena. If Lucy had had a father like Jeffrey, things would be so different for her. He wasn’t just my father, he was my best friend. He opened every door, never stopped praising and encouraging. With a man like that behind me, I always believed I could do anything.”

Anything. But sometime, somewhere along the line, something had gone wrong. And Carrie was not about to confide in Sam.

The less she spoke, the less she gave away, the more he longed to know. He wondered if this obsession was the beginning of falling in love with her. Otherwise, why should it matter so much? And what was the point of falling in love with a woman already deeply committed to her career and her ill-assorted family, who would never, in a thousand years, jettison the lot and come to live in the north of Scotland with Sam Howard?

All this quite apart from the fact that he was still married to Deborah.

The dog shifted and whined. Horace was growing cold. Sam was cold, too, but did not move. For, when he looked again, he saw that the faint shell-pink had exploded into an aureole of red and yellow, with vaporous streaks like flames. And over the shallow hills of the distant headland inched the first sliver of an orange sun. The curved rim of dazzling light touched the shifting sea, smudged shadows on the undulations of the sand, and drained darkness from the sky, so that gradually it was no longer sapphire-blue, but faded to aquamarine.

He watched, and lost all sense of time as the orange orb sailed up, out from behind the far side of the world. And it was the same fresh miracle that it had always been, and he forgot about being cold. The pinprick blink from the lighthouse, all at once, ceased. The new day had begun, and after today, the days would start to grow longer, and then it would be another year, and Sam, thinking about it, found himself unable to imagine what it might hold in store for him.

He walked back to Creagan at a brisk pace, following the narrow path that led along the top of the snowcovered links. The mist was dissolving, and the sky was a pale, pure blue, quite cloudless. By the time he reached the first of the houses, he saw that the morning was already on its way: cars came and went, shops were open; the first of the shoppers were out, with their baskets and plastic bags. The butcher was sweeping snow from his front step, and a young mother pulled her bundled baby along in a little wooden sledge. He was ravenously hungry.

Letting himself into the house, he realized that it, too, was a hive of busy activity. From upstairs came the drone of a Hoover, and a female voice singing an old Beatles song.

“I love you, yeah yeah yeah….”

The redoubtable Mrs. Snead, no doubt, come to muck them all out.

From the open kitchen door flooded light, and mouth-watering smells of bacon and coffee. He unclipped Horace’s lead, took off his outer clothes, and went through the open door. There he found only Carrie, sitting surrounded by the detritus of other people’s breakfasts. She was drinking coffee and reading The limes, but looked up, saw him, and said, “Good morning.”

That first evening, a mere two days ago, when he had so gracelessly barged in, out of the dark and the snow, clutching Hughie McLennan’s key, he had been knocked sideways by the unexpected glamour of the girl who had opened the door to him. She had, he later learned, been struck down by a bout of flu, or some unknown bug, and had only just risen from a bed of sickness, and because of this had looked pale, frail, and intensely vulnerable. He had still thought her sensational. But now the flu was a thing of the past, cast off by the resilience of youth, and this morning she wore a red cashmere sweater and the bright colour rendered her vital, radiant, and more attractive than ever. In his present mood of well-being he knew a physical urge to touch her, to sweep her up into his arms, embrace her, break down imagined barriers, and start to talk.

“Did you have a good walk?”

Mad impulses, prudently, retreated.

“Too far, perhaps. Horace is exhausted.” Horace, slopping the water on the floor, was treating himself to a noisy drink.

“You must be frozen.”

“No. I am warm from exertion. But starving.”

“There’s bacon.” She laid the newspaper down and got to her feet.

“I guessed.”

“I’ll make fresh coffee.”

“Carrie, I can do that.”

“No.” A plate sat on the warmer, covered by another plate. With oven-gloved hands she lifted it, set it down on the table, and with a certain flourish removed the top plate. He saw not only bacon, but eggs, a sausage, and a fried tomato. Everything sizzled.

“I can. You start eating.”

He looked at the feast in some amazement.

“Who cooked all this?”

“I did. I reckoned you’d be hungry.”

He felt much touched.

“You are sweet.”

“No problem.”

He sat, and buttered a slice of toast.

“Where is everybody?”

Carrie filled the kettle and plugged it in.

“Oh, around and about. They’ve all finished breakfast. Mrs. Snead has come, and I think Elfrida’s making beds. Oscar’s telephoning. We have to go and fetch the Christmas tree this morning. He wondered if you would do that, in your car. Easier to load trees in, and Oscar’s a bit nervous of driving in snow.”

“Where do I have to go for it?”

“Corrydale Estate. That’s who he’s phoning now. Some man called Charlie Miller. It’s all ordered and everything, but he just wanted to be sure that Charlie was around when we went.”

“We? Are you coming with me?”

“Oscar’s drawn a map. I shall have to come, to be your navigator. Besides, I want to go to Corrydale. Oscar’s told me all about it. How his grandmother used to live there, and then his uncle, and then Hughie. And Oscar used to spend holidays there when he was a little boy. He says the grounds and the garden used to be amazing, but of course it’s different now, because it’s an hotel. Anyway, I’d like to see it. The hotel’s empty, so if Charlie Miller says we can, we could have a nose-around.”

Sam, eating bacon, was filled with a silent satisfaction.

He could think of no better way of spending this fine morning than driving Carrie to Corrydale, collecting the Christmas tree, and having a nose-around. It would be interesting to see what Hughie McLennan had once owned and then squandered. But he only said, “Right,” and went on eating, because he didn’t want Carrie to sense his pleasure, and then start backing off.

She spooned the ground coffee into the jug and poured on the boiling water.

“Shall I make more toast?”

“That would be kind.”

She made toast, and then poured coffee for him, refilled her own cup, and returned to her chair. Sam wondered if they were about to spend a few companionable moments together, but inevitably they were interrupted by Lucy, running downstairs and bursting in upon them.

“Carrie, Mrs. Snead says she’s going to do a white wash and do you want anything done? Hello, Sam. Did you and Horace have a lovely walk?”

“We certainly did.”

“When did you go?”

“About eight. It was still dark. We saw the sun rise.”

“Oh, how lovely. I wish you’d taken me. I’ve never seen a proper sunrise. It must have been pretty, with all the snow on the golf course. Like Switzerland, or somewhere.”

Carrie said, “Sam and I are going to Corrydale to fetch the Christmas tree. Do you want to come with us?”

“Oh …” Lucy made an agonized face.

“Oh, I would love to, but… well… I’ve promised Mrs. Snead I’d help her. Do something. So I can’t. And I really want to go and look at Corrydale.”

Sam, loving Lucy for not coming, said, “I’ll take you another time.”

“Will you? Is that a promise? Oscar says it’s the most wonderful place in the world, and that his grandmother used to have the most beautiful azaleas, in every single colour. And the grounds go down to the water, too, and he used to have a boat.”

From upstairs, Mrs. Snead screeched.

“Lucy! What about that laundry? I want to get it all collected….”

Carrie made a comic face.

“We’d better do what we’re told, otherwise we’ll be in trouble. Come on, Lucy….”

And Sam, left on his own, drank hot fresh coffee and felt as contented as a well-fed schoolboy with a treat in the offing.

Oscar’s little map of directions to Corrydale proved to be a meticulous plan of all that lay within the protection of the boundary wall. Which appeared to be a small maze of roads and drives, stands of woodland, and a long shoreline. Each estate worker’s house had been drawn, in some detail, and named. Billicliffe’s house; Rose Miller’s house; the gamekeeper’s house; Home Farm (Mains of Corrydale). The last was the gardener’s house (Charlie Miller), alongside the walled garden, and the tractor shed. A little way off along another winding driveway that ran parallel to the water, and standing, in some grandeur, all on its own, he had drawn Corrydale House, surrounded by formal gardens and with stepped terraces leading down to the meadows on the fringe of the firth.

It reminded Sam of the end papers of a Pooh Bear book, but Carrie said it was a work of art and should be framed.

The road they followed took Sam and Carrie into new territory, where neither had ventured before. Instead of crossing the bridge over to Kingsferry, they forked right before reaching this and went by way of the old road, which headed west, winding through farmland, dipping and climbing, tunnelling down tall avenues of skeletal beech trees. All was thick with snow, but the morning had kept its promise and the sky was cloudless, the air sparkling with cold. There was little traffic, and few people about. A tractor, chuntering across a field with a load of hay for a huddle of sheep; a woman, hanging washing out in the still, freezing air; a red post-van, making its way up a rutted farm-lane.

On their left lay the great sea loch, penetrating inland for fifteen miles or more. The tide was at half-flood, and the water as blue as in summer. On the far shore, massive hills reared up into the sky, all blindingly white, save where dark rock stood sheer, or corries of scree tumbled, like waterfalls of stone.

Carrie said, “It’s all huge, isn’t it? Even the sky seems twice as big as it does anywhere else.” She wore a black padded parka and her fur hat, and had put on dark glasses against the glare.

“No fog or pollution, I suppose. A clarity of air. Did you know that five of the finest salmon rivers in Scotland flow into this loch?”

“Who told you that?”

“Oscar.”

“I supposed he fished them as a boy.”

“Lucky boy.”

Carrie scrutinized Oscar’s map.

“I think quite soon we’ll be there. We come to the wall first, and then the main gate’s about a quarter of a mile-” The boundary wall appeared, almost at once, on the left-hand side of the road. Beyond this could be seen handsome trees, carefully positioned, suggesting parkland. The main gate, when they came to it, was flanked by two towering Wellingtonias. A small lodge blew a plume of smoke into the air, and there was a line of washing out in the little garden, and a child’s plastic tractor abandoned on the front-door step.

They saw the notice. CORRYDALE COUNTRYHOUSE HOTEL. AA. RAC. ****

Carrie said, “Here we go.”

Sam turned in through the gates, and the formal drive led downhill between an avenue of huge oak trees. It was ridged with the tracks of other vehicles, recently come this way, and the snow barred with the blue shadows of the trees. After about a quarter of a mile, the road forked, and here stood a wooden signpost. To the right, hotel visitors. This track, unused, was white with virgin snow. Ahead, home farm and sawmill, so they continued on their way. Carrie scanned Oscar’s map.