The Green Flash (45 page)

I saw my aunt. She said Alison and her little daughter were away for a month visiting her parents in Castle Douglas. I thanked her for her letter that I'd not replied to and said I'd be glad to inspect the military relics sometime, but as my wife was a champion fencer and unlikely to have children at least for some years, it might be better to delay making speculative gifts. She was right in supposing that I was not a safe repository for so much of the family history and I advised her to leave all the medals, etc., to a suitable war museum.

She heard me out gravely.

Then she said: ‘ Perhaps you might just like to see this one.' She went to a cupboard and laboriously produced a bronze cross with a red ribbon. The cross had a crown and a lion and
For Valour
underneath. ‘The only one we have in our family,' she said, hands trembling as she held it. ‘But it is something we specially prize. It was won by Colonel Cameron Abden of the Scots Guards, at Loos in 1915. He was with the 9th Division in their attack on the Hohenzollern Redoubt. The piper leading the company was killed almost at once, but Cameron Abden at once picked up the pipes and led his company to capture the enemy positions, playing on through it all, though himself severely wounded. He died a year later on the Somme.'

She wanted me to hold it so I held it, wondering if she thought it would convert me to right thinking. It didn't, but I handed it back politely enough and helped her to put it away. To say that there was a growing accord between us would be piling on the lush, but at least we weren't actually sharpening dirks.

She said: ‘I believe your wife has money.'

‘Yes.'

‘That will be a help to you in maintaining Wester Craig.'

‘Yes.'

‘Perhaps even in making a decision not to sell the property.'

‘I don't think it will affect that.'

‘Your wife is not in Moscow?'

‘No. She wasn't chosen.'

‘Oh. That would be a disappointment … I understand the repairs to Wester Craig are almost complete.'

‘So far as they are going, yes.'

‘You are staying here a while?'

‘Oh, a week or so.'

III

I stayed a week or so. There were other things to do besides massacring a porch. By a rickety old jetty at the edge of Loch Ashe was a boat. It was in poor shape but apparently belonged to me. The frame was fairly sound but it needed a repaint and new oars. I set about that and with Coppell's help worked on it all week.

I thought once or twice about Cameron Abden and wondered who was the daftest: him playing his pipes while the bullets whistled or me half strangling an ex-convict with a stocking-mask over my face.

On the second Monday a letter from Shona:

I do not know if you have heard from Erica but I have confronted her with her statement and she says she does not say
I
knew about the problems she might face if having another child. She says that she meant that I knew all about the abortion. In any case the specialist does
not
say she could have no more children, only that she was so constituted that childbearing shall be difficult and perhaps dangerous.

John died last Monday. In later years we were not so close but he is my husband and colleague and kind companion so long that I have lost a piece of my early life. He will be missed in so many ways. And coming so close after the death of my father leaves a gap in my existence it is hard to fill.

As you know, John was strongly opposed to the idea of our becoming a public limited liability company. Now I shall go into this with my lawyers and accountants, and if or when you shall come back I would wish you to participate in these talks. There is much to be said for the idea. As from next month we are also increasing your salary by £10,000 a year. I could not make this sort of increase in John's lifetime without offending him more than ever. This brings your salary to a higher level than the comparable position in much larger companies like Rubinstein, de Luxembourg, or Arden.

Now I have to tell you that six men have been charged with conspiracy to defraud and remanded in custody. To my astonishment one of them is Maurice Laval who was so prominent in our trade not so long ago. His namesake, when Prime Minister of France, was called a turnvest – as indeed he was – because you could read his name backwards or forwards the same. An Inspector Chalmers rang for you yesterday but I said you were on leave. I gave him your telephone number in Scotland, where I presume you still are.

The newspaper says further arrests can be expected.
I trust you are enjoying your holiday. It has been very stuffy

in London, and sultry.

The following day Alison turned up.

I'd forgotten how composed she was, how smooth her hair and her voice and her manner. Yet smooth didn't mean slick, it meant unruffled. I wondered what it would be like to ruffle her.

She had a little girl with her. ‘This is Trina. This is Uncle David. You are a sort of uncle, aren't you, by marriage?'

‘Second cousin probably. Ask Aunt Helen, she'll be sure to know. Hullo.' We shook hands. ‘Trina? Is that short for something?'

‘Catriona.'

‘Romantic.'

‘Stevenson didn't invent it,' said Alison shortly. ‘You have a new car?'

‘Yes, I'll take you for a run in it sometime.'

‘Oh, super!' said the little girl. ‘How fast does it go?' I made a face at Alison. ‘Fairly fast. But the engine sings lovely noises: that's what I like most about it.'

Trina ran across and stared at the low red thing. I said to her mother: ‘Sorry. Wrong instincts to encourage.'

‘Oh, she has them already. She always wants me to drive fast in the Mini.'

‘I thought you were away for a month.'

‘I have been. We came back on Saturday.'

We looked at each other with a degree of interest you couldn't disguise. Wind blew my hair more than it did hers. She broke the moment by turning to glance up at the house. ‘You've had the porch taken off.'

‘I did it myself the first weekend. The builders were supposed to be repairing the marks I'd left – said they'd do it this week.'

‘That means six weeks. But the house looks better anyway. I never thought of having it taken off.'

‘It didn't offend you?'

‘Not a bit.' She laughed coolly. ‘I have no architectural taste … But I suppose you know what will happen? The winter gales and rain will beat directly on the front door and seep into the hall. The porch also acted as a valuable dam for the wind. You could close one door before opening the other.'

‘Ah. Whereas now carpets will flap all the way through the house. We'll have to hang a curtain inside. You lose one eyesore and put up another.'

‘We?' she said. ‘Your wife is not here, though?'

‘She may come again.'

‘Of course. She gave me the impression that Scotland was not really her scene.'

‘At the moment she has other things on her mind.'

Later I took them a ride in the car, driving pretty steady on the busy roads, but showing off its enormous acceleration. Trina shrieked with delight.

‘You are ruining her character,' said Alison.

‘And yours?' I asked.

‘Oh, mine is already set in its own peculiar directions.'

‘Which don't include an unstable cousin-in-law?'

‘There could be dangers in that.'

‘What sort of dangers?'

‘Physical, of course.' She added quickly: ‘
In this car
. What else?'

‘I thought your Catholic soul might feel imperilled.'

‘Mine is not a Catholic soul. I was born a Protestant, but changed to please Malcolm.'

‘Did that worry you?'

‘Not particularly. My convictions are not of the strongest.'

‘It doesn't give you an extra feeling of guilt?'

‘No. There's no guilt one can't be absolved from.'

‘Happy thought.' I stopped to allow some sheep to drift across the road. ‘Tell me, what did you mean – or someone mean, was it you? – speaking of the Abdens as being a Catholic enclave here? As if –'

‘As if the whole of this area were strictly Protestant? Well, it is. Nobody cares so much now, but they used to care. There are Catholic families dotted about Scotland, but relatively few in Ross and Cromarty.'

We drove home. Alison refused to come in; they had to be getting back.

‘Come again,' I said.

‘Thanks.' Trina climbed into the driver's side of the Mini and was persuaded to move reluctantly into the passenger's seat. Alison got in and swung in her legs, pulled down the seat belt.

‘Saturday,' I said, ‘would be a good day. Come after lunch and we'll go for another drive. Or a walk if it grabs you.'

‘Trina has a French lesson on Saturday afternoons from Father Donald.'

‘Well, come on your own, then.'

‘Aw,' said Trina. ‘That's not fair!'

‘Come to lunch with us next Monday, then,' said Alison. ‘Trina can have a ride with you after.'

‘And Saturday?' I said.

Alison looked speculatively at the gathering clouds. ‘What
about
Saturday?'

‘Come without Trina. We'll still probably find something to talk about – even if it's only old ghosts.'

‘All right,' she said, her eyes not higher than the steering-wheel. ‘See you about three.'

One advantage of breaking the entail on the house is that you can then raise a mortgage on it, and this was the way I'd paid for the roof repairs without calling on Erica's bounty. The cost of the new Ferrari, even with a generous trade-in price for the Jaguar, was ghastly, but this was to be paid for monthly by banker's order. All very fine so long as I stuck it as now highly paid sales manager of Shona and Co., still easier if I became, as I was likely to become, managing director of Shona and Co. Ltd. It was there for the taking but I wasn't in the mood to take it.

All very fine too if I stayed married to the daughter of Lease's Cream Crackers. But if we were getting unhitched the picture wasn't so jolly. What shall we do for the rent? as Sickert said.

I sweated away at the boat. No great fisherman me, but I thought when it was done I'd have a go at enticing the trout and the salmon.

The jetty was groggy too and wood had been ordered for a rebuild. As usual everything took for ever to come, but a pile of stuff arrived on the Friday afternoon and we got it sorted out to begin. When Alison came on the Saturday I took her down to see it.

She said: ‘I didn't know you were so ready with your hands.'

‘Don't remind me of it.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘Sorry. Sick joke.' I lifted a plank and pushed it in with the rest. ‘Seriously, this just shows what frustration will do.'

‘Frustration?'

‘So much of the property is falling around my ears. And I took a course in fretwork once.'

She didn't smile. ‘Pity you can't stay longer.'

‘Who says how long I'm staying?'

‘Nobody. I presume this is only a holiday?'

‘Not with definite limits.'

‘Mme Shona is very understanding.'

‘She can be. What are we going to do this afternoon – drive or walk?'

‘Let's walk.'

‘It looks like rain.'

‘Are you afraid of getting wet?'

‘Not if you're not.'

She was wearing a polo-necked sweater of fine green wool with one of those shortish tweed skirts fastened at the side with an ornamental safety pin. Hefty brogues.

‘Is that the Abden tartan?'

‘As a matter of fact, no. It's my own family.'

‘Got a mack?'

‘In the car. I'll fetch it.'

We started off up the hill, rather the way I'd gone that morning with Shona, but we went further, walking into the low clouds, but no rain yet.

She said: ‘Up here at one time the whole place was full of briar roses. It must have been a picture in the spring. That was before the sheep came and ate them all.'

‘Who told you that?'

‘Coppell.'

‘Must have been a long time ago.'

‘Well, his father was here, and his grandfather before him. Do you never talk to Douglas Coppell? He's a mine of information.'

‘Are they Catholics?'

‘Yes. They go in their old car every Saturday to Mass and Confession.'

‘It never occurred to me until I knocked down the porch and Mrs C started exclaiming about Holy Mary!'

‘Coppell's grandfather was Irish,' she said. And then: ‘D'you know those fine pines behind the house – the six big ones. Well, Malcolm's great-great-grandfather planted those and put briar roses in at the same time so that the cattle wouldn't push the saplings over rubbing their hides against them.'

We voyaged in silence for a bit, then she stopped and nicked a strand of hair out of her eyes, looked back. We hadn't gone much higher but the land was stone-barren, just rock and peat, the odd patch of heather. We couldn't see much because of the mist.

‘Know your way back?' I said. ‘Because I don't.'

‘Och aye. I've been this way afore, afore.'

‘With Malcolm?'

‘Not often. He was not fond of walking.'

‘Tell me about him,' I said.

The exercise had dabbed a touch of colour in her face, which was normally pearl-pale.

‘You met him.'

‘Well, yes, but.'

‘Well, what did
you
think of him?'

‘Interesting. A few unlikable characteristics – least they seemed so to a misanthrope like me – but stimulating. Quality in him. Larger than life, and maybe that's a plus in a grey society.'

‘He was certainly stimulating.'

‘You'll miss him a lot, I suppose.'

‘Yes,' she said, ‘like a high temperature.'