Moreton's Kingdom (18 page)

first opinion of her? Katherine turned away from the thought with a wry smile. It couldn’t matter very much now, in any case, she thought, because after the exhibition closed they would go their separate ways. Without regret? The regret would be all on her side, she imagined as she turned back into the hall with its deep purple carpet and Emma’s flowers making a brilliant splash of colour against the apple-green walls.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The
exhibition went from strength to strength and very soon Fergus had to persuade his customers to leave his pictures on the walls where possible so that there would be something to be seen.

There was a tremendous change in him as each day passed and the crowds continued to flock to the gallery. He was buoyant and eager, never tiring in his effort to please or explain, and when people were argumentative he bore with them; when they were kind he accepted their praise modestly, and when they were no more than indifferent he allowed them to waste his time with a happy smile. When Emma suggested that some of them only came in out of the rain, he laughed.

‘There’s plenty of room for everybody,’ he said indulgently, ‘and Kate can always present them with a catalogue for future reference!’

When they discussed his work more seriously, which they frequently did, he said earnestly:

‘It makes me feel independent, Kate, for the first time since the accident. I can’t tell you how much that means to me. My life is my own again. Not that I’ll ever be able to repay Charles for all he’s done, but I’m sure you know what I mean.’

They were often alone at the gallery when Emma had to return to the hotel to help her mother, and a firm friendship had developed between them which had really nothing to do with Sandy.

‘I wish you’d come back to Glassary for a spell when this is over,’ he said once. ‘You really haven’t got another job to go to right away.’

‘I’ll find one,’ Katherine said, nearly choking on the words as she considered the inevitable ending of their friendship. ‘There must be plenty to be had in Edinburgh or London.’

‘London is very far away,’ he said without pressing too hard for a decision.

When she was alone in the flat Katherine took the opportunity to tidy up. After the party they had stacked away china and glass, leaving only the essentials for a light meal in the evenings if they didn’t want to go out to a restaurant, and mugs and bowls to hold their breakfast cereal. Emma would not be sleeping at the flat again because only four days remained until they had to hand over the gallery key to a new tenant and Katherine had offered to manage on her own until they closed.

Emma had folded her blankets on a chair in the bedroom, promising to put them away later, but they were still where she had left them and Katherine selected the deepest drawer in the chest which stood against the wall, thinking to find it empty, but it was half full of tissue paper and various odds and ends which Charles probably considered to be dispensable in a bachelor flat. It was still the best place for the blankets, however, and she started to gather the other things together to put them in one of the shallower drawers. There was a rubber hot-water bottle, an old pair of leather slippers and a silver photograph frame turned face down on the tissue paper as if it had been forgotten.

Picking it up, she knew herself suddenly reluctant to turn it over. If it was someone’s photograph, long cherished by Charles, she had really no right to pry.

Handling it, she found the frame coming apart, the velvet back slipping as she tried to keep it in place and the portrait itself falling to the floor. It lay there on the deep purple pile of the carpet, face uppermost, and she knew that she had rarely seen such a beautiful girl before. Deeply penetrating eyes gazed up at her as if in amazement while the lovely mouth seemed to break into a smile. Smooth fair hair was drawn back from a high forehead with a little tortoiseshell comb and the pale, petal-smooth skin looked like silk. Only the bold, rounded signature in one corner looked hard. ‘Deirdre,’ she read, ‘With love.’

Shaken by the sudden revelation that this was the girl Charles had wanted to marry, she picked up the pieces of the frame, trying to fit the photograph back into it while a dozen conflicting emotions struggled in her heart. It seemed that all the grief she had ever known had culminated in this moment, but there were no tears to wash it away. Deirdre, beloved of Charles, was no longer here, but the memory of her lingered. Their contact had scarred his life in some way, and the thought of it remained. The flat was the home he had prepared for her in Edinburgh, the complete antithesis to Glassary because she might have found it dull, and he could not bring himself to part with it.

The deep purple carpet was something Deirdre had chosen, and it was still there, dominating the entire flat. Only the smiling portrait had been hidden away.

Katherine put it back into the drawer where she had found it, covering it with the tissue paper, and found another store for Emma’s blankets in the cupboard above the hot-water tank, but she couldn’t banish the thought of Deirdre so easily. One day she might return, making Charles’s life complete.

That could be why he kept the flat, hoping against hope that she would come.

Emma had promised to tell her about Deirdre, but now she didn’t want to know. She was a coward in that respect, she told herself, although she had no hope of Charles ever loving her in return. Madly she had told him that she loved him, and he had not answered her. The hot colour of embarrassment rose in her cheeks as she thought about her confession, but there was no one there in the flat to see.

Perhaps it was to be expected that the last few days of the exhibition would be hectic, but she managed on her own easily enough. Now that she had gained some of the experience she needed she could discuss the catalogue knowledgeably enough even with the experts, and she was glad when people came back more than once. The curious ones wanted to know all about Fergus, where he came from and how long he had been painting, and Emma had her own coterie of admirers.

Once she caught a small boy stuffing a carved otter into his pocket, but he was so like Sandy that she found it hard to remonstrate with him, making him a present of the little model much to his mother’s mortification.

‘I’m always telling him he shouldn’t
take
things,’ she apologised, fumbling for her purse, ‘but he doesn’t seem to understand.’

‘This time it’s all right,’ said Katherine, ‘but I’ll try to explain.’

She knelt down beside the child, admiring the otter as he held on to it with grim determination in his blue eyes.

‘I’d like you to have it,’ she said, ‘but we must pay for it first. Will you come to the office till I find my purse?’

He exchanged a doubtful glance with his embarrassed mother.

‘Go when you’re told,’ she said. ‘The lady’s being very kind.’

In the privacy of the office Katherine said very firmly:

‘You won’t do this again, will you? Everything has to be paid for, like Mummy pays for the groceries she picks up in the supermarket. They aren’t free. You see, people have to make these things and it takes a long time, so we mustn’t expect them for nothing.’

The boy looked at her with a dawning awareness in his blue eyes as she passed over the neatly-tied parcel.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

‘Sandy.’

Katherine’s heart contracted with the well-known pain as she led him back to the cubicle where his mother was waiting.

‘I’m fair affronted,’ the woman said. ‘Could I give you something towards it, miss?’

It was painfully obvious to Katherine that she had ‘just come in out of the rain’ and couldn’t afford expensive sculptures.

‘No. It’s a gift. I know another Sandy who has plenty of animals to play with.’

The woman pulled the child away, remonstrating with him till they were safely outside, and Katherine went back to the office to make out a receipt. To keep the records straight, she told herself.

The final day of the exhibition dawned fine and clear. Emma had telephoned from the hotel the evening before to say that they would be in Edinburgh early to help with the tidying up and that they would be bringing Sandy with them.

‘He’s got this fixation about the Zoo,’ she had explained, ‘and Fergus thought he might be able to take him for a couple of hours before we finally packed up.’

So she was to see Sandy again, if not Charles! Katherine was already tidying up in the office and marking off the unsold canvases which they would take back to Glassary with them. There weren’t many left, and the fact was a source of encouragement for the future. She could see it all quite plainly: Fergus and Emma working hard at the Stable House, sharing their enthusiasm and their life, while Sandy grew up strong and affectionate beside them. The Stable House would be full of shared endeavour and duplicated love, while at Glassary—At Glassary?

She busied herself with her tasks, not troubling to eat lunch because she was suddenly busy again. The inevitable end of the exhibition rush was upon her.

Emma had phoned earlier to say they were in Edinburgh and she had pressed her to spend some of the time with Fergus and Sandy at the Zoo.

‘Go with them,’ she had said. ‘You won’t be wasting time. Think of all the other animals you’ll see there!’

‘Are you sure?’ Emma had asked with a note of excitement in her voice. ‘You’ll be on your own.’

‘I’ll cope,’ Katherine had assured her. ‘We’re not as busy as we were yesterday, and you can help me with the packing when you eventually get here.’

She had honestly not expected to be so busy, but selling paintings was a leisurely business compared to some and she was able to satisfy everybody.

When the crowd was thickest around three o’clock she had the disconcerting sensation of being watched, but she was able to dismiss it because she hadn’t much time for impressions during these last few hours, but when the crowd thinned again she became aware of a girl in a long green coat standing near the door. She seemed to be examining the painting on the easel which Fergus had placed as a single attraction in the window to draw the crowd, and something about her seemed vaguely familiar.

When she went out at the door a moment or two later she walked briskly away.

She was back again, however, when the gallery cleared, standing beside one of the display tables pretending to examine one of Emma’s sculptures, and when she looked up Katherine gasped.

‘Coralie!’ she exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’m curious, for one thing.’ Coralie came towards her. ‘Though I didn’t expect to find you behind the shop counter! I’m intrigued, of course,’ she added with the brief laugh Katherine remembered so well. ‘Is it Fergus you plan to marry, or Charles?’

Katherine ignored both laugh and question.

‘What are you doing in Edinburgh?’ she demanded, suddenly angry because she was thinking of all this might mean to Fergus and Emma if Fergus had never really forgotten his ex-wife.

‘I was going to ask the same question.’ Coralie still looked faintly amused although her expression had hardened. ‘You were at Glassary when you phoned me in London. The fact gave me the faintest of shocks when Mendell told me. He’s Stephanie’s boy-friend, by the way, and he happened to be in the flat when you rang,’ she added. ‘You hadn’t met, but he did say you’d phoned twice.’

‘I had to let you know about Sandy,’ Katherine explained, trying to curb her anger, ‘and I had to tell you about your sister. She wasn’t at Beck Cottage when we got there.’

Coralie’s eyes narrowed.

‘So you took the law into your own hands and went on to Glassary,’ she suggested.

‘Not quite.’ Vividly Katherine was remembering the sequence of events which had taken her to Charles’s kingdom. ‘When I was almost at Kendal I thought I was being followed. It was Charles Moreton—but perhaps you won’t be too surprised at that.’

‘Not really.’ Coralie was watching her closely. ‘I knew he was in London, you see, and it wasn’t too difficult to guess that he was looking for me.’

Katherine’s accusing gaze met hers.

‘Because you weren’t playing fair?’ she suggested. ‘Sandy should have been returned to his father after his holiday with you in London. It wasn’t Fergus who was kidnapping Sandy, it was you.’

Coralie shrugged.

‘Does it really matter?’ she asked. ‘You needn’t have become so—involved.’

‘But I was involved, right from the start,’ Katherine pointed out. ‘You lied to me, Coralie. If you’d told me the truth I would never have promised to help you.’

Coralie looked about her.

‘Aren’t we being a bit aggressive?’ she suggested. ‘No harm has been done, as far as I can see.’ Her eyes narrowed a little. ‘Or is that it? Has your unexpected visit to Glassary given you ideas?’

‘What I think about Glassary has nothing to do with it,’ said Katherine under her breath. ‘It’s now that matters. Sandy and his father are here, in Edinburgh—with Emma Falkland.’

‘Good heavens! Emma?’ Coralie exclaimed. ‘She was always crazy about him, of course, but it’s most amusing, all the same. When I saw their exhibition advertised I don’t think I was greatly surprised, but I would never have imagined this. Where are they, since they’re not exactly helping to sell their wares?’

‘They’ve taken Sandy to the Zoo.’ Instantly Katherine wondered if she should have revealed the fact. ‘They’ll be here shortly.’

‘And you don’t think I should be waiting for them on the doorstep?’

Katherine didn’t hesitate.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t think you should do anything so dramatic. I think you should give yourself more time to think things over.’

‘To think about my former marriage, do you mean?’ Coralie picked up one of Emma’s fragile sculptures, her blue eyes almost caressing it. ‘She’s making the most of her talent, isn’t she? Emma, I mean. I suppose Sandy has dozens of these little animals.’

‘It’s natural enough,’ Katherine pointed out. ‘He watches Emma making them.’

‘And they’re all deliriously happy together,’ Coralie concluded. ‘This takes a lot of accepting.’

‘Coralie,’ Katherine appealed, ‘don’t make a hasty decision. If you’re not able to look after Sandy—if you’re going to be travelling all over the world—wouldn’t it be better to leave things as they are?’