Moreton's Kingdom (15 page)

Emma turned abruptly towards the door.

‘Time to go,’ she said. ‘Time to pack up and set out for home.’

It was after three o’clock before they had tidied the entrance, stacking the best of the corrugated sheets into the back of the Mini to take with them.

‘We’ll meet at Callander for a quick snack,’ Emma said, getting in behind the wheel. ‘If you beat me to it, as I think you will, you can order.’

When she drove away Fergus said:

‘I ought to have taken you to see the flat. Did Charles give you a key?’

‘The key and all the necessary instructions,’ Katherine told him. ‘Don’t worry about me settling in. It won’t be the first time I’ve taken over an empty flat.’

She wanted to go to the flat alone, to be there without anyone—not even Fergus—looking on when she first opened the door. It was foolish, she knew, something she found hard to explain, even to herself, but it was what she wanted.

At Callander the Mini was parked at the kerb before the cafe where they had been served excellent coffee that morning and Emma was ordering tea when they joined her.

‘We’ll be home before dark,’ she assured them. ‘There’s plenty of time.’

It was a respite from driving for Fergus, who had insisted on taking the wheel of the Rover when they had left the gallery, and he looked relaxed and almost happy now, thinking of the effort which lay behind them.

‘I’d like Charles to see it,’ he said. ‘Perhaps he’ll drop in during the week if he has time to spare. Personally, I think he works too hard.’

‘He said he might look in,’ Katherine answered, feeling that his brother’s concern for him brought Charles very near. ‘He must want to see what you’ve been doing with yourself all these months,’ she added lightly, ‘and I think he’ll be surprised.’

Emma was still thinking about the exhibition.

‘We’ve got a good position,’ she said. ‘Anyone interested who was in Edinburgh even for a day couldn’t fail to spot us.’

‘With all Kate’s azaleas in the entrance lobby they could hardly miss!’ Fergus laughed. ‘You’re going to need the Rover to bring them over from Glassary.’

‘I could give you rhododendrons if you came down to the hotel,’ Emma mused. ‘But no! Perhaps we’d better stick to one species and be more artistic!’

They covered the remaining distance to the glen, one behind the other, saying goodbye to Emma when they reached the hotel.

‘You’ll come in?’ she asked, but Fergus shook his head.

‘We’re already late,’ he said. ‘See you Tuesday!’ Turning into the glen, they were conscious of its peace, of the quiet that came, like acceptance, at the ending of the day. Neither of them spoke until Fergus said unexpectedly:

‘If you’ll drop me at the Stable House I’ll get the murals ready.’

Katherine drew up when they had crossed the bridge. ‘I’ll walk from here,’ she offered, getting out from behind the wheel. ‘There’s time to stretch my legs before dinner. You can bring the Rover up when you come.’ Walking slowly through the shrubbery where the rhododendrons shone like pale lamps in the gathering dusk, she allowed the stillness of the gardens to encompass her. There was practically no sound apart from the rustle of leaves as some small creature of the night hurried across her path and a sleepy duck took to the water with a scarcely audible splash. Behind the shrubs and the still water Glassary stood waiting, and when she hurried towards its lighted windows there was a strange hope in her heart.

She came out of the shrubbery on to the end of the terrace, to stand there transfixed by what she saw. The light was still strong enough and there could be no mistake. Her car had been returned from the garage where it had been repaired and it was waiting for her outside the front door. Charles was letting her see as plainly as he could that she was no longer welcome at Glassary. It was his way of saying goodbye.

CHAPTER SIX

Charles
was standing in the hall when Katherine went in.

‘There’s been a phone call,’ he said, coming forward. ‘Someone for you. Mrs. Stevas took it and didn’t ask who was speaking. It was a woman’s voice, but the line was bad.’

He was looking directly at her and because she still felt distressed about the car her voice faltered a little.

‘I’ve no idea who it could be,’ she said after a moment’s consideration. ‘No one knows where I am.’

‘Except Coralie,’ he suggested. ‘You phoned her several times.’

‘Only to leave a message.’ She met his distrustful gaze, aware of a new anger in him. ‘You must believe me, Charles. I haven’t spoken to Coralie direct since I left London, but I did think she ought to know where Sandy is. I’d be out of my mind with worry if he was my son and I discovered that my sister hadn’t got him, after all.’

‘I doubt if you would ever find yourself in that kind of situation,’ he said, to her surprise, ‘but that’s beside the point. Do you think she’ll come here?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve no idea what Coralie might do because I’m realising, more and more, that I never really knew her. It was a man who answered when I last phoned the flat, and he seemed to know quite a lot about her,’ she added reluctantly. ‘He gave me the impression that she’d pursue her career quite ruthlessly now that she found herself on the road to success.’

Charles nodded his agreement.

‘There’s just one thing,’ she added, taking off her coat. ‘However ambitious a woman may be, she must want her child more than anything else.’

‘To trail round the world with her, leading an unnatural life?’ His eyes were suddenly remote. ‘We don’t intend Sandy to develop into a mixed-up kid, as he would do if he were left entirely to Coralie’s tender mercies. Fergus has legal custody and he’s given Coralie reasonable access to Sandy in the past, but now we have to settle for the letter of the law. No more “kidnapping”, as she likes to call it. This is Sandy’s home. You can see for yourself how happy he is at the Stable House with his father, and when Fergus eventually marries again he’ll be able to give him a normal home.’

‘I don’t think it will be very long before Fergus does remarry,’ said Katherine, thinking of Emma and the bond which existed between her and Sandy. ‘If this exhibition is a success—even if they sell only half of their work—it will make a tremendous difference to him. He wants to prove himself, Charles, to feel that he can stand again on his own two feet with no props to support him. I don’t mean that he isn’t grateful for all you’ve done for him,’ she added swiftly, ‘but it would help a lot if he could feel capable of supporting a wife and family on his own.’

Charles moved to the open door to look out.

‘It’s a natural enough ambition,’ he allowed, ‘and I can only thank you for your part in it.’

She tried to smile.

‘Don’t thank me too soon,’ she said. ‘I was just adding things up because—because I’ve become very fond of Sandy in the short while I’ve known him. I hope he can have the best of two worlds,’ she added quietly. ‘Knowing his mother—being with her from time to time—yet recognising Glassary as his true home. It’s asking a lot of a child of his age to accept the fact that his mother lives such a nomadic life most of the time, but Glassary might make up for that. Its security is something that even a child could accept.’

She stood beside him in the open doorway looking out into the night and seeing only the means which would take her away from the glen.

‘Now that my car is repaired I must go,’ she said bleakly. ‘You can’t want to keep me here any longer, Charles. I’ve been nothing but an embarrassment to you.’

‘Where will you go?’ he asked without turning to look at her.

‘To Edinburgh for the exhibition. After that, I don’t know. I love Scotland,’ she added simply. ‘I’d like to stay here.’

He looked beyond the shadowy outline of her car to where the hills came down, closing in the glen.

‘It shouldn’t take Fergus too long to make up his mind,’ he said brusquely. ‘There’s just one thing.’ He turned to look at her, at last. ‘I don’t think you should tell him about the phone call when there’s just a chance that it wasn’t Coralie after all.’

‘They’ll ring again if it was important,’ Katherine said, ‘and meanwhile I’ll try to think who else it might have been. I’d cut adrift from my old colleagues in a way after my boss died, but it’s just possible that one of them might have traced me to Glassary. How, I don’t know, unless they had some idea that I’d always had a love affair with Scotland!’

Her gaze followed his to the shadowy contours of the hills and the dim outline of the mountains above them and back again to the nearer quiet of the gardens where the rhododendrons still gleamed in the dark, realising suddenly that he might think she was pleading her own cause.

‘There must be lots of things I could do in Edinburgh,’ she concluded firmly, ‘but meanwhile I’m not thinking farther ahead than the outcome of the exhibition.’

In the silence which followed her confession twin headlights pierced the darkness, heralding Fergus’s approach from the Stable House.

‘He’s changed completely,’ said Charles, turning to go inside. ‘At one time he wouldn’t even attempt to drive again.’

Fergus braked beside her parked car.

‘That was quick,’ he said, winding down his window. ‘Or is it just that we don’t want you to go?’

‘I’ve had my reprieve,’ Katherine tried to say lightly. ‘Charles obviously feels that I can’t do any more harm.’

Painstakingly Fergus edged himself from behind the steering-wheel to cross the gravel to her side.

‘I never thought that you did,’ he said gravely, putting an arm about her shoulder in a comforting way. ‘Even when you first came here I guessed that you must be doing it for Sandy’s sake and that you weren’t really Charles’s prisoner. The whole idea was absurd, you know. He couldn’t possibly have kept you at Glassary against your will.’

‘I suppose I knew that, really, but it was all rather disconcerting in the beginning,’ Katherine admitted. ‘I had no idea what you would be like or how—homely Glassary would turn out to be. I suppose I judged everything by Charles’s attitude towards me, but I think I can understand his anger now, though not his contempt.’

‘It’s time he got over that,’ said Fergus, pressing her hand. ‘Don’t worry too much about it, Kate, if he hasn’t such a good opinion of women. He has his reasons, quite apart from Coralie, but that’s too long a story to relate just now.’

She looked round at him, trying to see the expression in his eyes.

‘He never married,’ she said. ‘Was it because of someone? Someone he loved and lost?’

Fergus hesitated, looking towards the house with its watching windows.

‘More or less,’ he said. ‘Charles has a long memory.’

They walked the short distance to the door, still with his arm about her shoulders, and his grip seemed to tighten as they entered the hall where his brother was waiting. Charles turned towards the fire which Mrs. Stevas had lit in the wide stone fireplace to dispel the damp, and Katherine thought it would have been the most welcoming sight in the world if her thoughts hadn’t been in turmoil.

‘How did your day go?’ Charles asked his brother. ‘Are you more or less ready to stun the public with your genius and Emma’s little men?’

‘The “little men” are mostly animals,’ Fergus laughed, releasing Katherine as they reached the fireplace.

‘I thought she’d bequeathed most of the animals to Sandy,’ Charles said. ‘Judging by his collection I shouldn’t think she has many left.’

‘She’s been hoarding them for years,’ Fergus returned. ‘I’d no idea how many she’d made. I’m going down to the hotel in the morning to help her root out some more in case we do have a quick sale.’

‘She could do them on commission afterwards, I suppose,’ Charles suggested. ‘How long will you be away tomorrow?’

‘Why?’ Fergus asked. ‘Is there anything spoiling? Anything I could do here?’

Charles shook his head.

‘Not a lot,’ he said. ‘I’ll be going on to the hill to check up on some prowlers we’ve seen around at the weekends. They come up with innocent-looking caravans and not so innocent-looking vans and invariably there’s a fleece lying in the heather where they’ve butchered a ewe. They don’t always take the fleece with them and, of course, we’ve to think of the lambs. They’re not big enough yet to be worth killing, but we have to protect them if the ewe’s been taken.’

‘How cruel!’ Katherine exclaimed. ‘When you think about Glassary it’s hard to believe that anything so barbaric could happen up here. Who are these people?’

‘Twentieth-century bandits, I suppose you could call them,’ Charles answered. ‘If they’d do the job cleanly I wouldn’t mind so much, but sometimes they lame an animal or leave it with a festering wound in its side to die in agony as far away from human habitation as possible. But that’s enough of gore for the moment,’ he added. ‘The point was that I can’t take Sandy with me on an errand like this, so perhaps you would keep an eye on him for a while?’

He was looking straight at her, and Katherine knew that he must have seen her surprise at his request.

‘I’ll do what I can,’ she said, ‘since you appear to trust me.’

‘Why not?’ Fergus came to stand beside her again. ‘Why not,’ he repeated, ‘when you’re practically one of the family now?’

Charles turned his back, going slowly towards the stairs.

‘You shouldn’t have said that.’ Katherine sat down on the wooden settle beside the fire. ‘Because it isn’t really true.’

‘It’s as true as doesn’t matter,’ Fergus declared, ‘and I think Charles is quite prepared to trust you now that we’ve come to know you better. Otherwise, why would he ask you to look after Sandy?’

‘Probably because he knows I wouldn’t get very far if I did decide to take Sandy away again! No,’ Katherine amended hastily, ‘that wasn’t quite fair. I think he was giving me the benefit of the doubt—because of you.’ Fergus took her hand.

‘Accept it,’ he said warmly. ‘I’d like you two to be friends instead of enemies.’

‘Is that what we are? Enemies?’ The word choked in Katherine’s throat. ‘We were in the beginning, I suppose.’

‘It’s a long time ago,’ Fergus consoled.

‘Not much more than a couple of weeks.’

‘A day can be as long as a lifetime in assessing a friendship,’ he pointed out.

‘I suppose it can.’ She moved restlessly, freeing her fingers from his confining grasp. ‘When should I start out on Monday?’

‘You don’t mind going on ahead?’ he asked. ‘Going alone, I mean.’

She shook her head, unable to answer him in words because they were choking back in her throat. She would be going on ahead for a very practical reason, but she would also be leaving Glassary for good. She would be going alone in the fullest sense of the word.

In the morning Charles had gone out before any of them was awake.

‘He’s off on to the hill with the dogs in the Range Rover,’ Mrs. Stevas announced, ‘and he’s taken his lunch with him. He wouldn’t have bothered if I hadn’t insisted, but I made him take what would do him till dinner time. Some folk think they can exist on fresh air when they’re busy,’ she sniffed, ‘but it can happen too often.’ She looked across the room at Fergus. ‘Will Emma Falkland be coming here for her lunch?’ she demanded.

‘No, I’m going over to the hotel.’ Fergus helped Sandy on to a chair at the table. ‘But you’ll have Kate and Sandy to cater for, which is an even distribution all round.’

‘You’ll be well enough fed at the hotel,’ Mrs. Stevas remarked dryly, ‘but no better than you would be here. I suppose you’ll be back in time for your dinner?’

Katherine took Sandy down to the lochside where they fed the ducks and went for a short trip to the little island in the green-painted boat which was used for fishing. They didn’t fish because Sandy made a habit of casting the fly too widely, and the day before had hooked it strongly into his trousers as it had swung back towards him. The expert in the shape of Charles had been there to unhook him, but Katherine didn’t want to be faced by a more dangerous accident when they were alone. The trouser leg could so easily have been his own chubby flesh, and she could imagine the howl of anguish which would have gone up if he couldn’t have been freed immediately.

As they rowed close to the shore he referred to Charles more than once, ‘My Uncle Charles lets me fish’ or ‘My Uncle Charles is teaching me to row’, but she was determined not to rise to the obvious bait. Finally ‘Why isn’t he here?’ had her completely lost for an answer.