Under Gemini (10 page)

Even the furniture in Tuppy's room seemed magic and mysterious, made of carved mahogany and faded buttoned silk. The dressing-table was crowded with silver-topped jars and strange things like button hooks and hair nets which Tuppy had told him ladies used to use in the olden days, but now no longer had any need of.

“There were two red lobsters, and a ham, a fish, a pudding, and some pears and oranges.”

The curtains were drawn, but outside a wind was getting up and a draft edged its way through the ill-fitting sash windows. The curtains ballooned slightly as though there were someone hidden behind them. Jason drew closer to Tuppy and was glad that she was there. These days he did not like being too far away from her in case something nameless happened and she would not be here when he got back again.

There was a nurse, a proper hospital nurse, who had come to Fernrigg to take care of Tuppy until she was better. Her name was Mrs. McLeod, and she had come all the way from Fort William to Tarbole on the train, and Watty had taken the car to Tarbole to fetch her. She and Mrs. Watty had made friends, and talked importantly in half whispers at the kitchen table over endless cups of tea. Nurse McLeod was thin and starched. She had varicose veins, too, which was perhaps one of the reasons that she and Mrs. Watty had made friends. They were always comparing their varicose veins.

“One morning Lucinda and Jane had gone out for a drive in the doll's perambulator.”

Downstairs, in the cavern of the hall, the telephone started to ring. Tuppy stopped reading and looked up, taking off her spectacles.

After a little Jason said, “Go on.”

“There's the telephone.”

“Aunt Isobel will answer it. Go on.”

Tuppy went on, but Jason could tell her mind wasn't on Lucinda and Jane. Then the ringing stopped and once more she stopped reading. Jason gave up. “Who do you think it is?” he asked.

“I don't know. But I've no doubt that in a moment or two Isobel will come upstairs and tell us.”

They sat together in the big bed, the old lady and the small boy, expectant. The sound of Isobel's voice floated dimly up the staircase, but they could not hear what she said. At last there came the single ring as she put down the reciever, and then they heard her coming up the stairs and along the passage toward Tuppy's room.

The door opened and Isobel put her face around the edge of it. She was smiling, radiating suppressed excitement. Her soft grayish hair formed an untidy aureole about her beaming face. On such occasions she looked very young, not at all like a great-aunt.

“Do you two want to hear some nice happy news?” she asked, coming in and shutting the door behind her. Sukey, almost lost in the folds of the silk eiderdown, raised her head to give a cursory growl, but Isobel took no notice. She leaned on the rail at the end of Tuppy's bed and said, “That was Antony, calling from London. He's coming home for the weekend and he's bringing Rose.”

“He's
coming.
” Tuppy loved Antony more than anyone else in the world, but now she sounded as though she were about to cry. Jason glanced at her anxiously but was relieved to see no sign of tears.

“Yes, they're coming. Just for a couple of days. They both have to go back on Monday. They're catching the evening flight to Edinburgh and then driving over. They'll be here first thing in the morning.”

“Well, isn't that splendid?” Two patches of color glowed on Tuppy's wrinkled cheeks. “They're really coming.” She smiled down at Jason. “What do you think of that?”

Jason knew all about Rose. He knew that one day Antony was going to marry her. But, “I've never met Rose,” he said.

“No, of course you haven't. You weren't living here when she and her mother stayed at the Beach House.”

Jason knew about the Beach House, too. It had once been a fisherman's croft, tucked into the curve of the beach which lay to the north of Fernrigg. Tuppy had converted it into a little cottage and let it out in the summer to holiday people. But now the summer was over and the Beach House was closed and shuttered. Jason sometimes thought it would be a nice place to live. It would be pleasant to step out of the front door, straight onto the sand.

“What's she like?”

“Rose? Well, she was very pretty. I can't really remember very much else about her. Where is she going to sleep?” she asked Isobel.

“I thought the little single room, since it's warmer than the great big double one, and the bed's made up. I'll do some flowers.”

“And Antony's room?”

“Mrs. Watty and I will do that this evening.”

Tuppy laid down
The Tale Of Two Bad Mice.
“We must ask one or two people in…”

“Now, mother…” Isobel started in a warning sort of voice, but Tuppy took no notice of her. Perhaps because she was so happy, Isobel did not seem to have the heart to persist in her objections.

“… Just a little supper party. When do you think we should have it? Sunday night? No, that wouldn't be any use because Antony will have to start back to Edinburgh. It'll have to be tomorrow night. Tell Mrs. Watty, will you, Isobel? Perhaps Watty can lay his hands on some pigeon, or better still, some grouse. Or Mr. Reekie might be able to let us have some scampi.”

“I'll see to it,” promised Isobel, “on one condition—that you don't start trying to organize anything yourself.”

“No, of course I won't, don't be so silly. And you must ring up Mr. and Mrs. Crowther, and we'll ask Anna and Brian Stoddart over from Ardmore; they knew Rose when she was out here before, and it'll be nice for Anna to have an evening out. You don't think it's too short notice, do you, Isobel? You'll have to explain, or they'll think we're very rude…”

“They'll understand. They won't think it's rude at all.”

Mr. Crowther was the Presbyterian minister from Tarbole, and Mrs. Crowther taught Jason at Sunday School. He did not think it sounded a very gay party.

“Do I have to come?” he asked.

Tuppy laughed. “Not if you don't want to.”

Jason sighed. “I wish you'd finish the story.”

Tuppy began to read again, and Isobel went away to do her telephoning and confer with Mrs. Watty. Just as Tuppy reached the last page, with the picture of Hunca Munca with her dustpan and broom, Nurse McLeod came in. With her starchy rustle and her big red hands, she whisked Jason out of the bed and bundled him good-naturedly out of the way, scarcely giving him time to kiss his great-grandmother goodnight.

“You don't want to make your great-granny tired,” she told him. “And what Dr. Kyle would say to me if he were to come in the morning and find her all peely-wally, well, I wouldn't like to imagine.”

Jason, who had sometimes overheard Dr. Kyle letting fly at something that had annoyed him, could imagine well, but decided to keep it to himself.

He went slowly through the door, not disliking Nurse, because it was nice that she was going to make Tuppy better, but wishing that she didn't always have to be in such a hurry. Feeling ill-used, he trailed along to the bathroom to clean his teeth. In the middle of this, he remembered that tomorrow was Saturday, which meant that he did not have to go to school. And Antony was coming. Perhaps he would make Jason a bow and arrow. In good spirits, Jason finally retired to bed.

*   *   *

When the telephone rang at Ardmore House, Anna Stoddart was out in the garden. At that hour between daylight and darkness, the outdoors had a special magic for her and even more so at this time of the year, when the evenings were drawing in and the twilight was thick with nostalgia for the blue and gold evenings of the summer that was over.

It was easy to come indoors at tea time and draw the curtains and sit by the fire, forgetting about the scents and the sounds of outside. But then there would be a ruffle of wind against the windowpane or the scream of a gull or, at high tide, the whisper of the sea, and Anna would make some excuse, put on her jacket and gumboots, pick up her secateurs, and whistle up the dogs and go outdoors again.

From Ardomore the views of the coastline and the Islands were spectacular. This was why Anna's father, Archie Carstairs, had chosen the site for his pretentious granite mansion. Indeed, if one did not mind being a mile from Ardmore Village (where there was a general store cum post office, and the yacht club, and little else) and six miles from the shops of Tarbole, it was a marvelous place to live.

One of the reasons Anna usually liked this time of the evening was the lights. Just before dark they came on, shining out at sea, along the coast road, from the great mountains which shouldered up inland; the riding lights of fishing boats, and the warm yellow windows of distant crofts and farms. The street lights of Tarbole stained the night sky with a reddish-gold reflection, and beyond that again Fernrigg stretched like a long finger into the sea, with at its tip, half-hidden by trees, Fernrigg House.

But this evening there was nothing to be seen. The half-light swirled in mist, a fog horn sounded out at sea, and Ardmore was isolated by the weather like a house forgotten at the end of the world.

Anna shivered. Being able to see Fernrigg across the sound had always been a comfort to her. Fernrigg meant Tuppy Armstrong. Tuppy was Anna's touchstone, living proof that a person could live contentedly and usefully, surrounded by family and friends, never confused or lacking confidence, apparently totally happy. Tuppy, it always seemed to Anna, had lived her considerable life—and in many ways it had been a tragic one—in a straight line; never diverging, never faltering, never defeated.

Anna had been a shy little girl when she first remembered Tuppy, the only child of an elderly father more interested in his thriving business and his yachting ventures than his small silent daughter. Anna's mother had died soon after Anna was born, so that Anna had been cared for by a series of nannies and insulated from children her own age by her shyness and her father's considerable wealth.

But Tuppy never made Anna feel that she was either plain or stupid. She had always had time for Anna—time to talk and time to listen. “I'm just going out to plant bulbs,” she would say. “Come and help me, and while we're working we can talk.”

The memory made Anna want to cry. She pushed it to the back of her mind because she could not bear to think of Tuppy ill, much less imagine Tuppy dying. Tuppy Armstrong and Hugh Kyle were Anna's best friends. Brian was her husband and she loved him so much that it hurt, but he wasn't her friend and he never had been. She sometimes wondered if other married couples were friends, but she never got to know the women well enough to be able to ask them and find out.

She was picking the last of the roses, pale shapes in the gloom. She had meant to pick them that morning but had forgotten, and now was gathering a bunch before the first frost could nip them. The stems felt cold in her bare hands, and fumbling a little in the half light she pricked her thumb on a thorn. The smell of the roses was faint and somehow old as though already they had died, and all that remained of their summer glory was their scent.

She thought,
When they come again—the new buds and then the flowers—the baby will be here.

That should have filled her with happy anticipation, but instead was more of a talisman, like touching wood. She would not think of this baby dying, of it never being born. It had taken so long to become pregnant again. After five years, she had almost given up hope. But now the living seed lay within her, growing every day. She was planning for it: knitting a tiny sweater, getting the old wicker cot down from the attic, putting her feet up in the afternoons the way Hugh had told her to do.

Next week she was going to Glasgow to buy a lot of expensive maternity clothes, and to have her hair done. A woman was at her most beautiful when she was pregnant—so the magazines proclaimed—and all at once Anna had visions of herself as a new person—someone romantic and feminine, loved and cherished.

The old-fashioned words started her.
Loved and cherished
They seemed to reach her consciousness from some remote past. But now with the new baby coming, there was perhaps real reason to feel hopeful.

Brian had always wanted a child. Every man wanted a son. The fact that she had lost the last one had been Anna's own fault. She had worried too much and become upset too easily. But this time it was going to be different. She was older, less anxious to please, more mature. She would not lose this child.

It was nearly dark and, now, quite cold. She shivered again. Inside the house, she heard the telephone begin to ring. She thought that Brian would probably answer it, but turned toward the house anyway and began to walk up the garden, across the damp grass, up the slippery stone steps, across the crunching gravel, and through the garden door.

The telephone continued to ring. Brian had not appeared. She laid down the roses and, without bothering to remove her rubber boots, went across the hall to the corner under the stairs which, when he had built the house years ago, her father deemed a suitable place for the tiresome instrument. There were other telephones at Ardmore now—in the drawing room, the kitchen, and by Anna and Brian's bed—but this one remained in its stuffy little nook.

She picked it up. “Ardmore House.”

“Anna, it's Isobel Armstrong.”

Fear caught at Anna. “Tuppy's all right?”

“Yes, she really is. She's looking better and she's eating quite well. Hugh got a nurse for us, a Mrs. McLeod from Fort William, and she's settled down splendidly. I think Tuppy quite likes her.”

“What a relief.”

“Anna, would you both be able to come over for supper tomorrow evening? It's rather short notice, but Antony is coming home for the weekend and bringing Rose, and of course the first thing Tuppy thought of was a party.”

“I think we'd love to come. But isn't it too much for Tuppy?”