Air Ambulance (19 page)

“He says so. He mentioned, in fact, that we might meet quite often in future.”

Alison’s heart raced.

“You mean that he will be coming to work in Glasgow?” She turned, standing before him with parted lips and her cheeks flushed and all her love reflected in her wide grey-green eyes for him to see. She had no idea how completely she had given herself away, and Ronald Gowrie was conscious of a peculiar little stab of envy as he thought of the man he had just left. To be loved like this was more than any man deserved, yet, according to Alison, Blair was completely blind to the fact. He intended to marry Margot.

“I don’t think he can work permanently in Glasgow,” he heard himself answering. “Not if he must administer Heimra, too. That’s an old issue. What he did repeat was the offer of the factor’s job on Heimra Mhor. He thinks I may want to accept it one of these days.”

“He’ll keep it open for you as long as he can,” Alison said. “He knows it will all depend on how we make out with your arm.”

“Strange,” he reflected as Fergus approached them from the direction of the surgery, “how one’s entire future can be changed by a detail!”

Or an unexpected tragedy, Alison thought, facing Fergus across the dining table.

It was a difficult meal as far as she was concerned, and she was glad when it was over and she could offer to help with the children during the afternoon.

Fergus preferred them to be in the open air whenever that was possible, and in April it was often quite mild in the sheltered places along the shore. They would go there to paint or gather shells, and sometimes they would have an
al fresco
meal among the rocks.

Alison had spread their picnic out on the slab of rock where she had been sitting all afternoon before she heard a footfall behind her, and turned to find, not Isobel, but Fergus looking down at her.

“Red,” he observed, “is a colour to wear beside the sea. I was able to spot you a mile off!”

She had put on a scarlet cardigan which had come with the few clothes she had asked to be forwarded to her from the Nurses’ Home, mainly because it was the warmest thing she possessed and the wind was still slightly cold.

“It clashes with my hair!” she smiled, her heart racing as he sat down on the rock beside her. “But I bought it in a moment of defiance because everyone expects a redhead not to wear red.”

“Do you often run contrary to the rules?” he asked, taking out his pipe to fill it while he watched the children clambering over the rocks.

“Who doesn’t?” Her cheeks were suddenly flushed. “I think everyone snatches something at one time or another that doesn’t really belong to them.”

She was thinking of today, of this moment which she meant to snatch from Margot now that the opportunity had been given to her. “One hour out of all the years”! Someone had written that who had felt exactly as she felt now, and this was her hour. She would watch it “by degrees unfold”, and afterwards, when it was done, she would have the memory of it to keep deep in her heart forever.

Fergus had decided not to a
n
swer the challenge in her words. He see
m
ed content just to stretch his long legs out beside her in the sun and smoke placidly while she spread the rolls Isobel had baked that morning with butter and honey for the children.

When everything had been eaten Alison met Fergus’ eyes with a twinkle in her own.

“I thought we’d brought enough for a regiment!” she laughed. “Heimra air certainly gives them an appetite!”

Laughter came easily on an occasion like this, she thought; laughter and friendship and understanding. For this past hour she had been unbelievably happy, shutting out reality, perhaps, but grasping at something which she could continue to cherish for the rest of her life, something that was near-
ecstasy
, and perfection, and peace.

“We must go,” Fergus said, getting to his feet with obvious reluctance. “Isobel expects us back before seven.”

They had quite a way to go, and the children began to straggle, as reluctantly as the adults were to leave their sunny paradise behind. There was a good deal to see and all sorts of treasures to pick up on the way—shells for the collections, and flowers to press; a new, strange grass here and there, and the pursuit of a butterfly luring its would-be captor like a will-o’-the-wisp off the road on to the none-too-solid moor where the tufts of cotton-grass marked the perilous margin of a bog.

It was still warm and sunny when they reached the road above Monkdyke. They could see the house from a distance, and suddenly Alison was aware of a familiar figure among the trees. The man moved slowly but with a peculiar look of purpose about him which she could not fail to recognize. She bit her lip as she walked on, wondering if Fergus had seen Ronald Gowrie, too.

Quite deliberately Ronald was on his way to Monkdyke to see Margot.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

RONALD GOWRIE had taken his tea alone, and the fact had allowed him to think deeply about the events of the past few hours. Carefully he had gone over his conversation with Alison, reviewing it word for word because each phrase, each hesitant revelation had burned itself into his mind where he knew that it would leave a s
c
ar if he did not do something about it now.

He did not know why he was going to see Margot Blair after all these years. She meant nothing to him. He was adamant about that. He knew her for what she was—selfish, indolent, treacherous as they come, he reminded himself savagely. And now she was bent on playing a dangerous game which involved a good many people he had come to like and respect during these past few weeks.

Blair, for instance. He knew how much he owed Fergus Blair, not only for virtually saving his life but for helping to give him back something he had thought he had lost. Of course, he couldn’t accept Blair’s offer of a job on Heimra, but the offer had been made. The love of Heimra which he had tried to crush down and stifle within himself all these years had been recognized by someone else and brought into the open. He need no longer pretend.

He could feel the ache of longing even as he crushed the shells of the Silver Strand underfoot on his way along the shore, and when he was almost in sight of Monkdyke he paused to look at the dark headland on the far side of the bay where the Heron had come down nearly four weeks ago.

Four weeks, was it? And it seemed as if he had been here for a lifetime! As if he had never gone away at all. The island belonged to the silences. There was a peace, a remoteness about it that came from the sea, and the blue sky and the winds blowing over it. It was
his
island, the place of his birth—where he belonged. All his envy, all his hatred against the Blairs who owned it had evaporated, banished like the mists when the sun pierced through to shine down into the secret glens.

Determinedly he turned towards the house above the shore. When he came to the fringe of pines which sheltered Monkdyke he could hear the sound of children’s laughter coming from a distance, and he thought of Alison and Andrew Blair with a grim smile. They were up there on the moor road, he supposed, with the others, but that was as near to Monkdyke as Andrew dared to come.

His jaw tightened as the house came into full view. At this hour it was quiet and looked curiously empty. A house without a sou
l.

Margot would be somewhere in there, doing heaven alone knew what with her long, interminable day.

He looked at the yellow door, wondering why she had wanted it painted that colour when she had shut all light and colour out of her life and only admitted selfishness.

There was a bell—a meticulously-polished ship's bell—hanging from a wrought-iron bracket at one side, and he rang it after only a moment’s hesitation. The sound of it made in that quiet place would have summoned the dead.

Footsteps came quickly across the hall within, and Hannah opened the door. She blinked at him without recognition at first.

“You’ve forgotten me, Mrs. Auld,” he said. “Or is it just that I’ve changed so much in the past six years?”

“Ron Gowrie!” she exclaimed without belief. “It can’t be you! Not after all this time.”

“It can and it is!” He walked past her into the dim hallway, noting the cap and apron with distaste. “Where’s Margot?”

“I wasn’t to disturb her.” She was still gazing at him as if she found it difficult to believe the evidence of her own eyes. She had always liked him, always thought him the determined sort of person Margot needed in her life. Not gentle and easily swayed like the man she had eventually married. “She has bad days and good ones,” she added. "It will be a long time before she will be able to walk properly.”

“But she can walk.” His mouth was thin. “Will you tell her that I want to see her?”

Hannah Auld hesitated, not knowing what to do in the circumstances, and in that moment a sharp, clear voice demanded from the head of the staircase:

“Hannah, who is that?”

“It’s someone you used to know.” Hannah sounded as if she had been trapped. “I said you were resting—”

“And I told her I had to see you!” Ronald was at the foot of the stairs, his thin, dark face with its smoldering, resentful eyes turned upwards. “The name’s Gowrie, by the way. Ronald Gowrie. Do you want me to come up and help you down, or are you prepared to invite me up?” he asked.

“Neither!” Her voice was cool, although there might have been just a suggestion of desperation in it as she added, “I don’t want to see you at all.”

“That’s rather a pity.” He gave Hannah a swift, commanding glance which told her to stay where she was and not to interfere. “Because I’m afraid you will have to. I’m coming up.”

He mounted the stairs slowly, because he still felt the strain on his back, and Margot appeared to accept the situation, for she did not turn away. She stood holding on to the newel-post at the top of the stairs, and only when he reached her side did he see that the knuckles on her hand were standing out against the pink flesh.

“What do you want?” she asked, looking at him directly for the first time. “I didn’t ask you to come here. People on Heimra understand that they don’t pay visits to Monkdyke. They come when I send for them.”

He laughed that to scorn.

“All right, Margot!” he agreed. “Let’s say that I didn’t understand, shall we? I’m not ‘on Heimra’—not to stay, so perhaps I have some excuse.”

“There can be no excuse for thrusting yourself in here, for trying to speak to me against my will,” she began, until she felt him take her gently by the elbow.

Gently? His grip was like iron. It forced obedience, and she found herself backing towards the half-closed door of her bedroom, the inner sanctuary which she guarded against all comers, as a rule.

“You can’t
do
this!” she cried. “I’ll talk to you downstairs some other time!”

“Time won’t stand still, even for you, Margot,” he told her relentlessly. “There’s so little time left for me, you see. I’m leaving Heimra the day after tomorrow—on Friday.”

“Then why have you come?” she demanded, her voice curiously shaken. “Surely not to say goodbye?”

“We said goodbye once before, remember?” His voice was low and controlled, his eyes like flint. “Ten years ago, when you decided to marry someone else. You were all I had,” he went on relentlessly, “but you wanted something more than love. You wanted position, money, social standing—and now you want it all again.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she countered nervously as he closed the door behind him. “And you had no right to come.”

“No?” he queried, watching without pity as she sank down into a chair. “Not when I know you’re out to cheat and deceive and trick again?”

“That’s not true!” she gasped. “You’re saying all this because you’re sore about the past—”

“Sore?” There was nothing but derision in his tone. “That’s an understatement if ever there was one! I came to hate you, Margot, for what you did to me. You’ve given me nearly seven years of hell, when I trusted no one, believed in nothing, and scattered every ideal I ever had held to the winds. Do you wonder that I hated you?”

Her eyes softened as she rose carefully to her feet.

“But you don’t hate me now,” she suggested softly. “You couldn’t go on hating me for ever, Ronnie—”

He moved then, catching her roughly in his arms and kissing her with a passion he had never shown in the past. And she clung to him with equal passion, pressing her lips to his in a wild abandonment which, in a saner moment, he would have considered nauseating.

When he put her from him at last she was trembling.

“I’ve nothing much to give you, Margot,” he reminded her scathingly. “Nothing except love. Not the sort of love you’ve known—reticent and weak and far too generous in its giving—but an overpowering, demanding love, taking as well as giving. You wouldn’t have the plush existence you’ve had here on Heimra if you married me,” he added, glancing round the over-furnished room. “You’d have to be prepared to take me as I am—crippled and perhaps unable to fend for you when we got back to the mainland. I’d never be able to give you the things you’ve enjoyed here as Blair of Heimra’s widow—the luxury, the security. I’ll never fly a plane again,” he added grimly. “I know that now, although they won’t admit it at Garrisdale. But that won’t keep me from holding down some other job.”

“Ronnie!” she sobbed, “you know I’ve always loved you, but I needed security. I never had any. Always, when I was a child, there was the thought of Hannah Auld and her husband—the thought that they could send me away if they liked. I wasn’t really their child. I was the little girl nobody wanted. And it was all so drab! The close in the Edinburgh tenement and the windows overlooking the back green.” She shivered. “There was nothing green about it. The world seemed full of reeking chimneys and grey pavements on the way to school. I never had the sort of clothes that other children had. They were always hand-down from someone else—rich people’s children who looked at me with pitying eyes at the church bazaars when they came with their mothers to serve behind the jumble stalls! I hated Hannah for being poor in those days, and I’ve hated poverty ever since. But I wanted your love when you first told me you loved me. I wanted you desperately—as I want you
now
...
”

He looked at her, half believing what she said for a moment, and then he shook his head.