Unknown (18 page)

Stuart drank his own while standing up, for he was talking to an elderly man with a reddish beard.

“Aye, I’ll come,” he said at last.

“You’d better stay here, Judith,” Stuart told her. “Mrs. MacLeod will make you comfortable for the night. If I can find any way of telephoning, I’ll do that. Otherwise, I’ll come and fetch you in the morning. I’ll stay on the
Cloud."

“Will it be safe?” she asked, pushing down her rising fear.

“Just as safe as being here.” She did not fully understand the mocking fight in his eyes.

Judith was only too glad when Stuart went out with Mr. MacLeod. Later, wrapped in a thick woollen nightgown with a plaid on top, while Mrs. MacLeod draped Judith’s own wet clothes over a rack in front of the blazing fire, fragments indicating Stuart’s attitude began to piece themselves together in Judith’s mind.

He believed that she had purposely delayed crossing from one island to the other in order to be marooned with him! She had suggested going over the causeway, in fact for that reason; then pretended that her watch had stopped, had even put it back, perhaps, to fool him.

Oh, no! He couldn’t think that. She couldn’t have known about the storm. Besides, he’d taken the dinghy to save them from being cut off.

But her anxious mind now asked—was that why? Had he suspected those unworthy motives from the start?

She fell into a troubled sleep and dreamed that she was back on Kylsaig calling to Stuart, who turned his back on her, launched a boat from the slipway and sailed away across the water. She woke with a start, remembering the legend about the inn.

Daylight had come, and Mrs. MacLeod bustled in with steaming porridge.

“Aye, it’s a fine morning and the young man will have come to no harm,” she greeted Judith.

Stuart did not appear, and Judith went outside when she was dressed in her dry but bedraggled cotton dress. The sea was calm as mirror-glass and only the faintest breath of wind stirred the trees or made the grasses nod. Who would ever believe the fury of last night’s storm?

Stuart did not appear for some time, but when he came he appeared to be more friendly than he had last night, enquiring how she had slept.

“Quite well. Better than you, probably. Did you make the boat safe? Is she all right?” she asked eagerly.

“More or less. MacLeod helped me to run her across to Bradda and beach her there on sand instead of rocks. The engine’s gone temperamental, but I hope to get you back to Kylsaig soon.”

“You weren’t able to telephone Barbara, I suppose?”

“MacLeod went to his nearest neighbour, but the gale had blown the line down and it’s nearly ten miles to the post-office. I couldn’t expect him to walk that far in the middle of the night.”

“No, of course not.”

“We’ll go as soon as you’re ready,” he suggested.

This morning she felt able to tackle the long walk back to the inlet where she expected the boat to be, but found that Stuart had been able to take advantage of the morning tide to come much closer to the MacLeods’ cottage.

The thanks and goodbyes were said and then Stuart was putting out into the Firth.
Flying Cloud
could only dawdle while the engine coughed and choked and several times spluttered into silence, but eventually they came in sight of the new slipway on Kylsaig. To her relief, Judith saw that no one was waiting there.

Once again, she tried to make amends to Stuart. “I’ve caused you a lot of trouble,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry about it.”

“Oh, don’t worry. We’ve lived to see the morning sun again.”

“But the damage—your dinghy wouldn’t have been knocked about if we’d known the time.”

“Sometimes damage would be done even if we knew and counted every minute as it went by.” He smiled at her and she felt that perhaps her apprehensive thoughts of last night had been unnecessary. Then instantly his face changed and the smile turned into a scowl.

“Hallo, there!” called a voice behind Judith. “Home from the sea at last! Caught in the gale?”

Neil stood there, his glance fixed intently on Judith. Stuart brought
Flying Cloud
alongside the slipway, Judith quickly collected her possessions and the odds and ends of shopping in Cruban—how long ago yesterday seemed!—and stepped ashore with Neil’s help, but quickly disengaged her hand from his.

“Thank you, Stuart,” she said. “I—”

“What are you thanking me for? A rough night on Callamore?”

“Oh, that’s where you were!” exclaimed Neil.

“Sorry we couldn’t let
you
know, Raeburn! You must have been extremely worried. Next time Judith will possibly find some means of telling you—unless, of course, you happen to be her companion.”

She turned away, too sick to reply, and walked to the top of the slipway. In Stuart’s sardonic tone she had heard that final unspoken phrase—“and you’ll be welcome to her.”

As
Flying Cloud
drifted out, the engine suddenly overcame its sporadic laziness and quickened into an impatient roar, as though it, too, as well as the boat’s owner, were glad to get rid of Judith.

BARBARA made light of her sister’s adventure. “We weren’t really worried. Fiona telephoned us that Stuart hadn’t returned, so we just assumed you’d both taken shelter somewhere. I knew you’d be quite safe with Stuart.”

Judith grinned. “Does that mean that my reputation couldn’t possibly be in jeopardy if I was with Stuart?”

“Certainly. He’s too well-known and too much the local laird for titbits of gossip to do him any harm. Now if you’d gone off with Neil, that would have been different.”

“I see. There are some subtle distinctions in manners and modes on this island. One night on an island with Neil and I’d have been forced to marry him.”

“Don’t be prim, darling,” Barbara giggled.

All the same, Judith was relieved that Stuart had been her partner in the storm, in spite of the obvious fact that he believed she had done her best to engineer the delay. With Neil, the situation would have become more precarious, and undoubtedly he would have renewed his appeals that she should marry him. She had the slightly uncomfortable feeling that he might even have tried to use the incident as a lever to force her into an intolerable position.

Judith was uncertain whether to be grateful to Fiona for having spied on Stuart’s movements and subsequently reporting his non-return. At least, she had prevented consternation for Barbara and Andy. But of Mairi’s reaction Judith was left in no doubt at all.

“I hear you’ve taken a job in Cruban,” Mairi said at the first opportunity when the two girls met. “You intend to stay permanently, then?”

“For a while, at least,” Judith answered. “Nothing is very permanent at the moment.”

Mairi’s fair face showed a complacency which only partially hid resentment and bitterness. “It won’t make any difference now, however long you’re here. Neil can see that you don’t really care about him.”

“But I’ve tried to tell you and him that I want nothing more than friendship between us.”

“First you come between me and Neil. Now you’re trying to do the same with Stuart and Fiona. But it won’t be any use. I shall warn Stuart that you never play fair.”

“Oh, you can save yourself the trouble. Stuart doesn’t imagine I’ve designs on him.” Judith heard her own voice speaking the words, but even in that instant wondered if she had convinced herself that she was telling the truth. She did not really know what Stuart thought. “Fiona, too, can rest assured that I shall not steal her lord of the isles from her. Frankly, Mairi, I find your attitude school-girlish—”

“You can’t expect sophistication here.”

“But you need not treat me as though I were a kind of ‘scarlet woman’ bent on breaking up happily-matched couples,” Judith retorted. “As far as I’m concerned, you and Neil can make whatever arrangements you choose. I shan’t interfere.”

Mairi’s mouth trembled and then twisted into a pathetic smile. “You say that now that you think he’s finished with you.”

“He never began!” Judith became more angry at Mairi’s futile persistence. “D’you think I’d never met any men at all until I came to Kylsaig and that Stuart and Neil are the only two?”

Mairi shook her head. “No, I’m sure you’ve had plenty of experience. That’s why I feel at such a disadvantage.” Judith let out a gusty sigh of exasperation. What was the use of trying to reason with a girl so blindly in love with her own image of Neil? Mairi did not love Neil the man, with his human qualities and failings, but a god-like vision of what Neil ought to be. Judith felt compassionate towards Mairi, for the outcome could mean only heartbreak.

“Well, let’s forget our men troubles,” she now said more gently. “I must go. I have a lot to do before starting work on Monday.”

On the way back to Andy’s farm, Judith mused on her own irritated outburst. It was, perhaps, a little strange that although she had men acquaintances in London—in the store where she worked, the tennis club, friends of the girls with whom she had shared a flat—no lasting mutual attraction had occurred. But she had come to this tiny island, originally for only a fortnight’s holiday, and two men had slashed the texture of her life—one who claimed to love her, the other to whom she had, unasked, given her own heart—so that she was forced to re-weave the pattern as best she could.

In the knitwear department of Dalkeith’s she decided to scale herself down to its own modest level. By contrast with the spacious salons of the London store, Cruban’s principal shop seemed like a doll’s house—although Judith soon realised that it was also a quality house.

The tweed showroom was an astonishment to Judith. At one time, she thought, it must have been the proprietor’s dining room, for it resembled a baronial hall with stag antlers decorating the balcony. There was much fine polished wood and the department was lit by daylight from a glass roof.

Still, she recognised the advantages of daylight in choosing materials mainly intended for outdoor wear, and it was here that she had chosen her own length of heather-mist tweed for taking home after her holiday. This she had now made up with the aid of Barbara’s sewing machine into a two-piece outfit with a green tuck-in blouse and wide leather belt.

Judith was wearing this elegant suit one early-closing day when she had promised to treat Barbara to a stylish lunch at one of the hotels. Judith would have preferred to avoid the Roxburgh, but as her sister declared that this was the only hotel where the cooking was really first-class, Judith yielded, although she knew it was not true. Cruban possessed several other excellent hotels, but then Barbara was biased.

“Is that one of our tweeds?” the assistant manager, Mr. Cameron, asked Judith as she prepared to leave when the shop was already closed.

“Yes, I bought it here to take home with me.”

“Did you have it made up in Cruban?”

Judith flushed. “No, I made it myself.”

The man’s eyebrows rose. “Really? A very smart outfit, if I may say so.”

“Thank you, sir.”

As she stepped out of the staff entrance, she was aware of his appraising glance. Since he was a man in his mid-fifties, she judged it to be pretty certain that he was solely interested in the way she had manipulated his tweed and not in herself as the wearer.

A few days later, when she was examining dress materials in another department, he asked, “Are you looking for something special?”

“Yes, I want a new evening dress.”

“Will you be making this yourself?”

“Of course. I make all my own,” she answered. “I usually design them, too. As I told you, I began to study design in London.”

“When you’ve made the dress, could we see it?”

“Oh, yes, certainly.” Judith tried not to jump to wrong conclusions as to the drift of his enquiries.

He stood for a moment, his lips sucked in, his head nodding like a mandarin’s. “Good. That’s fine. Possibly we may be able to use you in another department.”

She interpreted this as a half-promise, and told Barbara about the incident.

“But of course they must use you as a designer! Anyone can sell twin-sets. Besides—” but Barbara left the sentence unfinished. “Show me the material you’ve bought.”

Judith unrolled the length of glowing apricot satin.

“Oh, it’s perfect with your dark hair!” her sister exclaimed.

Barbara had decided that she could not afford the extravagance of a new dress. “Perhaps you can renovate my old white for me,” she suggested to Judith.

The “old white” turned out to be a most lovely creation of matt white crepe, cunningly draped in Grecian style and Judith declared it would, be sacrilege to touch a single fold.

“Wear it as it is, no matter how many people have already seen you in it,” she advised.

Judith had abandoned the notion of going to the Highland Ball as one of Stuart’s party. In a way, it was just as well that she could accompany Barbara and Graham Mundon.

She was all the more surprised, then, to receive a friendly little note from Mrs. Huntly, inviting her to dinner on the night of the Ball and suggesting that she might like to dress at Garranmure and stay overnight.

“Yes, I’ve an invitation for both Andy and me,” Barbara announced. “I’m not sure whether Andy will spare time, but in any case, I’ve promised to dine at the Roxburgh.”

“With Graham?” queried Judith.

“Well, darling, not with the hall porter.” Barbara made a slight grimace, but Judith was not deceived by this hint of bravado.

“All right, I’ll accept for myself and leave you to sort it out with Andy,” Judith said at last.

There was a long, uncomfortable pause. Then Barbara said, “You don’t like Graham, do you?” Her sherry-brown eyes gleamed with amusement.

“Frankly, no.”

“Why not?”

“He’s too successful—and looks it. In this part of the world, if you’re wealthy and successful at whatever you’re doing, then you hide it modestly under a cloak of discreet shabbiness. You don’t flaunt it.”

Barbara’s fly-away eyebrows rose. “Really? Like dukes and duchesses who can afford to wear rags? Graham wouldn’t be very impressive in his hotel business if he went about in torn jeans or corduroys and a tweed jacket dropping to bits.”