Friends and Lovers (4 page)

“Were you at school with George Fentonstevens?”

“No.” David turned away from the hollyhocks.

“Where did you go to school?”

“In London.” There was a fleeting smile. This insistence on schools always amused him: the safe conversational gambit, becoming suddenly less safe when London was given so broadly. That might, people always thought as they withdrew their cloaks just an inch, mean even a Board school. Mrs. Lorrimer obviously thought so.

“Oh!” She was vaguely distressed, as if she had been talking to a legless man and had asked him how he liked dancing. “But you are at Oxford?”

“Yes.” This time he looked at her very directly.

“On a scholarship,” he said very clearly. Just as your father was, he thought. Just as more than half the men at Oxford are.

“How interesting,” she was saying, but her voice was far from interested.

“And what are you going to do after Oxford?”

“That isn’t decided yet.” It wouldn’t be, until he had First Class Honours.

If he didn’t get that, then his choice of career would narrow down.

“Really?” Mrs. Lorrimer was amazed.

“I thought young men always knew at this stage of their lives what they were aiming for.”

They know, he thought. Most of them know, but only some of them can talk about it. There is nothing like a nice little private bank account to let one talk confidently about the future.

Mrs. Lorrimer was saying, “Mr. Fenton-Stevens is thinking of the Foreign Office, I hear. A diplomat’s life must be so interesting, don’t you think?”

David agreed politely, but there was a strained look about his mouth.

What an odd young man, Mrs. Lorrimer decided. He talked so little about the things that really mattered. This was not what George Fenton-Stevens had led her to expect from his friend. Brilliant talker, editor of this magazine, secretary of that society, leading light in the Union … Why, he had made David Bosworth sound really quite interesting. She picked one of the roses, and looked at its soft petals without seeing them. She liked young men handsome and well mannered with nice families and definite careers and high hopes. Who didn’t, with three growing daughters to be launched into successful marriages?

She tried once more.

“And how is Lady Fentonstevens?”

David turned to look at her with some surprise.

“Charming woman,” Mrs. Lorrimer said, on the strength of one chance meeting some three years ago in Edinburgh. Not that Mrs. Lorrimer approved of all the publicity which Lady Fenton-Stevens managed to attract in the newspapers.

David only smiled, and Mrs. Lorrimer felt uneasy. If she had been a mind-reader she would have been horrified.

“You are a friend of the family’s, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Not exactly. I’m staying at Loch Innish as a tutor. George’s young brother and his cousin need some grounding, and George and I are doing some reading together too when we get time for that.” David made an effort to end this question-and-answer conversation.

“The Lodge is an interesting old place. It must have seen a lot of fighting in the days when the McDonalds owned it. Their coat of arms is carved over the entrance, you know.” And a Margaret McDonald is the housekeeper, and a Malcolm McDonald is the head gillie— but let that pass, he thought tactfully.

“Oh, these McDonalds were very good sheep-stealers and pirates themselves,” Mrs. Lorrimer said lightly.

“It isn’t wise to investigate any of the past history round here. All these Highlanders were very wild.”

“Fortunately for us!” David said, with a laugh.

“Or England might have found herself being attacked by Norsemen who had settled quite cosily in these mountains.”

There was a tolerant silence. Oh, God, David thought, isn’t that letter finished yet? And then, as his eyes left the garden, searching for some possible piece of conversation which would not leave them feeling this hidden antagonism, he found his release.

“Hello!” he said.

“There is some one in rather a hurry.” He pointed to a small thin figure scrambling over the hillside with more energy than grace.

“That’s Betty,” Mrs. Lorrimer said.

“I wonder where the others can be.” There was a motherly note of anxiety in her voice which made her sound human for the first time.

“Oh, they’ll be all right, Mrs. Lorrimer,” David said.

“George is really awfully good with children. He handles his small brother and shrimp of a cousin very well.”

Mrs. Lorrimer looked strangely at the young man beside her. But she did not reply, for her attention was gathering on her daughter, now within polite calling distance.

“Don’t jump like that, Betty. It’s dangerous. You’ll sprain your ankle.”

The girl, one of those long-legged pole-like creatures who haven’t yet become conscious of their sex, waved cheerily back, but she stopped leaping from mound to mound obediently and settled into a jogging run.

“I wish I had had three boys,” Mrs. Lorrimer said, as if to herself.

“It would not matter if they were to thicken their ankles, or break a nose, or have a scar on their cheek. Just look at you, Betty!”

Betty, red-cheeked and breathless, looked. She had seaweed stains across the shoulders of her blouse, her skirt was wet at the hem as if she had waded in the sea and had misjudged the height of a wave, there was a long red score on her leg still bleeding slightly, and her shoes were caked with the black earth of the peat bog.

“Doesn’t hurt a bit,” she assured her mother cheerfully, looking down at the cut on her leg.

“We were exploring the rocks, trying to show George the seals, and I slipped into a pool. It’s nothing.” She surveyed David gravely, with frank curiosity. To her a man meant some one who could run more quickly and climb more rocks than she could.

He also meant some one who paid no attention to her, but just let her come along with her sisters. But this man was smiling as he watched her. She felt he was sort of on her side.

Mother was asking questions again. Betty said wearily, conscious of her audience, “Oh, Moira and George have gone to the village to see the boat come in. I came to get Grandpa’s old letter.”

Just wait until I can talk to you alone, my girl, Mrs. Lorrimer thought.

“And to wash and change.” She looked angrily at-‘the scarred leg.

“Put some iodine on that. Am wear your stockings. You are much too big a girl to gi I running about with bare legs.”

Betty’s red cheeks deepened in colour as she was disciplined in public. She glanced nervously at the man standi nj so silently beside her mother.

“Yes, Mummy,” she said dutifully.

Old letter, indeed, Mrs. Lorrimer thought.

“And where’s Penelope?”

“She stayed to see if the seals came. Don’t worry. Mummy, she went on quickly, seeing the frown on her mother’s face ” She isn’t climbing over the rocks. She’s sitting on the shore She can’t fall off there.”

Betty, with her natural good humou) once more regained, moved towards the house. She callec over her shoulder to David, “Aren’t you going down to se the boat come in? There are horses on board to-day. One< ‘ there was a storm, and the waves were so big that when ths horses were swimming ashore ‘ ” Betty! You are late,” Mrs. Lorrimer interrupted.

“Yes, Mummy.” Betty moved another three feet.

“Yoi couldn’t see their heads,” she finished for David’s benefit, and then ran.

David felt himself abandoned once more to Mrs. Lorrimer’! quiet disapproval.

If only she wouldn’t be so polite and sta^ here with him. If only she would go away and do what sh< wanted to do. It would be pleasant to stretch out on the grass and wait here for George to return. Or it would be plea san to explore the island. This was a perfect day for exploring He said suddenly, “I say, Mrs. Lorrimer, why don’t you lei me go over to the Atlantic shore and bring your daughtel I home? She may forget all about time over there.” Davk looked towards the western path across the island.

“I suppos< if I follow that I can’t go wrong?”

“There is a stretch of sand at the end of that road. She is probably there.

I suppose she will be all right, really. But ] never know what these children are up to next. Cave-exploring, rock-climbing, diving through Atlantic breakers. The} think they are indestructible.” Mrs. Lorrimer spoke with e certain relief. She really had wasted so much of this after noon already.

“I’ll find her, and bring her home totea. Don’t worry. Nc trouble at all.

I should like a walk. Yes, really I should.

David said quickly, and started towards the road. Just at that last moment he had felt Mrs. Lorrimer was about to change her mind after all.

He was perfectly right about that. She remained standing there, hesitating.

But she was too late now. She turned and went indoors.

He would have been amused if he had known that Mrs. Lorrimer had already started worrying about him, and worrying all the more because she couldn’t imagine why she should be worrying. But all he was thinking about was the fact that he was free for the next hour, that he was actually going to be left alone. He never seemed to be able to be alone over at the Lodge—not until the others went to bed. They were gregarious animals, and assumed that every one wanted to be like them: an afternoon spent by themselves would seem to them intolerable. This, David decided as he looked with keen pleasure about him, is sheer luxury. The air tasted of heather and bracken and sea.

There was silence—so much silence that it was almost a sound; for here, in the middle of the island, the murmur of the waves had faded in the sloping moorland, and the solitary falcon overhead made no cry.

He remembered his errand, and increased his pace slightly. If he must play nursemaid to get this hour he was quite willing to do it: the walk across the island was well worth it. For somehow, from the photograph in MacLntyre’s study, David had formed the idea that Betty was the eldest child— she was easily identified, freckles and all.

So he must keep his eyes open for some pig tailed creature with a passion for seals. But perhaps, he thought hopefully, she had gone home already, taking a short-cut, like Betty, across the hills. That would make things perfect.

On the west side of the island there were no houses whatever. The scattered trees had disappeared too—the last ones he had passed had been only man-height, with all their meagre branches growing eastward. The sun’s reflection dazzled his eyes for a moment; and then he saw, at either end of the stretch of shining sand, black rocks, bared like giant teeth, jutting boldly up against the enormous breakers. As he watched a small fragment of the black rock moved and dived into a spent wave. Another piece of glistening rock raised itself and then lay down again. Good Lord, he thought, there are seals after all. He stood still; if he moved they would take fright. He remembered, dutifully, to look for the Lorrimer child.

She wasn’t there.

Instead he saw the girl with the auburn hair and the bright blue sweater.

She was sitting on the sand, so motionless that the outcrop of black rock beside her had partly hidden her, and she was looking at the seals. She hadn’t noticed him.

His first impulse was to leave. You don’t have to see her again, he told himself. He waited, perhaps hoping that she might turn her head.

You don’t have to see her, he told himself again.

And then he began to walk slowly towards her.

Chapter Four.

WHITE SANDS AND BLACK SEALS.

As he reached her his heavy shoes sank into the harsh sand, and the sound made her turn her head.

“Hello,” he said—hesitated, and then dropped casually down beside her on the sand. She smiled, but she did not speak. She lost the startled look which had greeted him.

David said, “Sorry, I’m afraid I’ve frightened off your friends.”

After his first quick glance at her face he had looked away, and now all his interest seemed to be focused on the seals as they dived into the water and stayed there.

She was silent for some moments. And then, as if she had suddenly realized that it was her turn to say something, she spoke quickly, still clinging to the subject that he had given her, “They are easily frightened.” She hesitated, but as he seemed to be perfectly happy just sitting there, waiting for her to speak, she gained confidence.

Her voice became more natural.

“They are funny, you know. They love showing off, and they will flap up on these rocks and pose for us because they simply can’t help it. Then, if we move, they’ll dive into the sea. But a little later, if we keep quite still once more, they’ll come back on to the rocks. They’ll look round, as if they were making quite sure we were still there, and they’ll start posing again.”

“Disappointing for them when they find their audience has gone home to tea. What were you trying to_do, sitting so still? Tame them?”

“I don’t always sit quite so still.” She looked at him with her blue eyes smiling. The nervous tightness in her throat had altogether disappeared now, and she no longer felt as if each word were being strangled.

“You see,” she admitted, ‘sometimes I get tired of them on the rock. They aren’t so very pretty bouncing around on land, and their fur gets dried —all sort of brown and spotty. So I move, and they dive. They really are beautiful when they dive. And when they come back on to the rocks they are black and glistening. Much more attractive.”

He found he was laughing, partly because of the vivacity in her face, partly because she was laughing at herself.

“One-woman society for the preservation of the beauty of the seal,” he said.

“And what else do you do over here? Fascinate the waves?”

“They do the fascinating,” she admitted.

And then her conversation crumpled under her like a treacherous mountain path, and she was left stranded, afraid to go back, unable to go on. That was the kind of remark which her mother and Moira called silly. Her cheeks flushed. There was a pause. The more things she tried to think of the less she found to say.

“What do you do?” he insisted gently. Did she just think about herself?

Wasn’t that what girls thought of mostly? Even when they went out with a man they couldn’t lose the habit: you’d see them looking at themselves in mirrored walls in a restaurant, comparing other women with themselves. In cinemas and theatres they still found another kind of mirror, measuring their own lives by what they saw.