Winter Solstice (28 page)

It was not until they were speeding down the motorway across the Black Isle, and Inverness was in view across the water, that Major Billicliffe fell silent. For a moment Oscar wondered if he had fallen asleep, but glancing sideways saw his passenger was still awake. Perhaps simply brooding. After a bit he started talking again, but now it was not about the past that he spoke, but his present and his future.

“Been thinking, Oscar…”

“What have you been thinking about?”

“What’s going to happen…. Turning my toes up …”

“You’re not going to turn your toes up,” Oscar assured him, hoping that he sounded robust.

“Never know … Not as young … Have to be prepared. Ready and prepared for all contingencies. Learned that in the Army. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.” Another long pause.

“Wondered … up to you, of course … if you’d agree to be my executor. Good to know … Capable hands…”

“I’m not so sure my hands are capable.”

“Rubbish. Hector McLennan’s nephew. Not that his son was great shakes … you … different kettle of fish. Friends all dead. Thought you might… Appreciate it…”

His unfinished sentences Oscar found maddening. He said, as calmly as he could, “If you want. If it would set your mind at rest, I’d be happy to be your executor. But…”

“Splendid. All settled…. Tell my lawyer. Nice feller. Did all the conveyancing when I bought my house from the Corrydale Estate. Keen fisherman. Liked the cut of his jib.”

“Has he got a name?”

Major Billicliffe gave a snort, which perhaps was meant to be laughter at Oscar’s quirky question.

“Course he’s got a name. Murdo MacKenzie. Firm's MacKenzie and Stout - South Street, Inverness.”

“Murdo MacKenzie”

“I must tell him you're my executor. That's settled. Ring him up.” He thought about this. “’Suppose I could ring from the hospital. They’ll have telephones, won't they?” he asked hopefully.

“Of course. The nurse, I am sure, will bring one to your bedside.”

“Bit different from the old days,” said Major Billicliffe, as though he had once languished in the military hospital at Scutari. “Medical officers’ rounds and bedpans. And a matron like a sergeant-major. No telephones then.” Sobering, he fell silent once more, and did not speak again until they had reached their destination.

The hospital was the Royal Western. Oscar found it without too much difficulty, and once arrived, matters were taken out of his hands, and all he had to do was accompany Major Billicliffe on his way. A porter appeared with a wheelchair and took over the new arrival, while Oscar walked alongside, carrying the necessary suitcase, a heavy and battered bit of equipment fashioned from what looked like elephant hide. Upstairs in a huge lift, and then the long corridors of polished linoleum, and finally the ward. Ward 14. The Ward Sister was ready and waiting for admission, with her clipboard and her forms. All went smoothly until she came to Next of Kin.

“Next of kin, Major Billicliffe?” Suddenly, he looked bewildered.

“Sorry?”

“Next of Kin. You know. Wife. Children. Brothers or sisters.”

He shook his head.

“I have none. I have no one….”

“Oh, come along, there has to be someone.” Oscar could not bear it.

“Me,” he said firmly.

“I am Major Billicliffe’s next of kin. Oscar Blundell. You can write it down. The Estate House. Creagan.”

Sister did so.

“Have you got a telephone number?” Oscar gave it to her.

Finally, all was written, recorded, and signed. And it was time for Oscar to leave. He said goodbye.

“You’ll come again?”

“Of course. Provided we don’t get snowed in.”

“Thank you for bringing me. Obliged….”

“Not at all.”

And he walked away from the old man and his suitcase, and told himself that it wasn’t his fault. There was no reason to feel as shifty as a traitor.

He could have done no more. Later, when there was news of the invalid, he and Elfrida would set out on the long drive once more, and go to visit Godfrey Billicliffe. Elfrida, if anybody could cheer him up. She would probably take him grapes.

A clout of wind struck the house. Oscar turned into the pillows and closed his eyes, and all at once found himself thinking about Francesca. This often happened in the dark hours of a restless night, and he dreaded the inevitable aftermath, a torment of rekindled, anguished loss. Francesca. Soundless, his lips formed her name. Francesca. He slid his hand beneath his pillow to rumble for his handkerchief, knowing that he would probably weep. But instead of weeping, he became aware of a sort of quiet, as though he were more at ease with himself than he had felt for weeks. Francesca. He saw her running across the sunlit lawns of the Grange, towards him. And the image stayed, poignant, but especially sweet.

Holding it close, he slept.

Tuesday, December 12th.

The next morning dawned a day of dismal weather. The sparkle of the big freeze was drowned in showers of sleety rain, driven in from the sea, and the street was filled with bobbing wet umbrellas. At midday, the huge gritting lorry appeared, trundling back to its depot, with snow crusted beneath its mudguards and windscreen wipers going full-tilt.

Elfrida had bought herself a notebook, and over lunch, which was soup and some Stilton she had found in the supermarket, she made lists.

“I’ve got to think of everything,” she told Oscar importantly.

“There isn’t time for forgetting. They’ll be here on Friday. Do you think Lucy will want a dressing-table?”

Oscar, who was trying to do The Times crossword puzzle, set it nobly aside and removed his spectacles, as though the better to think.

But “I have no idea” was all he could come up with.

“And a bed, of course….”

With some effort, he applied himself to the problem.

“A wardrobe?”

“We’d never get a wardrobe under those combed ceilings. Some hooks on the wall would do.” She wrote, in her notebook. Hooks.

“And coathangers.” She wrote Coathangers.

Oscar sat back in his chair and watched her with amusement. He had never seen Elfrida so focused and organized. For a moment she reminded him, in the nicest possible way, of Gloria; planning and plotting and writing lists and making things happen.

“When does Mrs. Kennedy come?”

“Half past two, she said she’d be here. I said I’d drive her in your car. You don’t need it, do you?”

“No.”

“If you felt frightfully energetic, you could take Horace for a walk.”

Oscar, hedging, said, “I’ll see,” and went back to his crossword.

But when Tabitha Kennedy arrived, Elfrida was up at the top of the garden, un pegging a line of wet washing which should never have been pegged out in the first place. So, when the doorbell rang, it was Oscar who went downstairs to open the door.

She was booted and rain coated but her head was bare, and her dark hair blew in the wind. She put up a hand to push a strand from her cheek, “Hello. I’m Tabitha.”

“Of course. Come in out of the wet. Elfrida won’t be a moment, she’s getting a lot of wet clothes off the line. I’m Oscar Blundell.”

“I know.” She had a lovely smile.

“How do you do.” They shook hands.

“I hope I’m not too early.”

“Not at all. Come upstairs, it’s more comfortable than standing around here.”

He led the way, and she followed, chatting as though she had known him forever.

“Isn’t it disappointing, the rain, after all that lovely frosty weather? There’ve been burst pipes all over the place and the plumber’s run off his feet.” In the sitting-room, the fire burnt brightly, and a pot of Arthur Snead’s forced hyacinths filled the air with their fragrance.

“Oh, aren’t they heaven. They really smell of spring, don’t they? I said to Elfrida we’d have to go in your car, but Peter’s at home today, so he let me bring our car. Anything rather than come shopping with me. He hates shopping more than anything.”

“I sympathize. It’s very good of you to help Elfrida out.”

“I’ll love it. I adore spending other people’s money. We’ll probably be quite late back. The market won’t close till five, and by then we’ll both be ready for a restoring cup of tea.”

Downstairs, a door slammed, and Elfrida’s footsteps came running up the stairs. She appeared at the door in her blanket coat and her tea-cosy hat.

“Tabitha, I am sorry; have you been waiting? It’s on days like this that I long for an electric dryer. But only on days like this. Now, I just have to get my bag, and my list, and the car keys….”

“You don’t need them,” Tabitha told her.

“I’m driving you.”

They departed at last, in some excitement, reminding Oscar of a couple of young girls setting off to enjoy themselves. He stood at the window and watched them go, getting into the well-worn estate car, slamming doors, fixing seat-belts, moving away across the square and out of sight.

He was alone. Horace slept by the fire. Aware of his own procrastination, Oscar made another attempt to finish the crossword, but was defeated and laid the newspaper aside. There were other things, he knew, that he had to do. He pulled himself out of his chair and went across the room to the heavy oak table which stood against the wall opposite the fireplace, and which he used as a desk. He made space, pushing aside a file or two and his briefcase, and settled down to write two long-overdue letters. One was to Hector McLennan, thanking him for his generosity, and doing his best to sound positive and reassuring. The second was to Mrs. Muswell, who had looked after Oscar during the worst time, and whom he had abandoned so abruptly. The memory of her standing, weeping, at the door of the Grange as he and Elfrida drove away had been pricking his conscience ever since. Now, he assured her that he was well, thanked her for her loyalty, and said that he hoped she had found other congenial employment. He sent his best wishes. He signed his name.

He folded the letters, addressed envelopes, found stamps. They were ready for posting.

Peter’s at home today.

Now.

He went out of the room, where, on the landing, stood the telephone. He found the phone book, looked up the number, memorized it, and punched the digits. He heard the ringing tone, but only once, as though the instrument stood on a desk, at a man’s elbow, ready for instant response.

“Creagan Manse.” The warm, familiar voice.

“Peter Kennedy.”

At half past five, Oscar, bundled up and hatted, let himself out of the Estate House and set off on the stepped lane that led up the hill. Elfrida and Tabitha Kennedy had not yet returned, so he left the light burning in the hall, as a welcome for when they eventually came home. And a note for Elfrida on the kitchen table. Gone out for a while. 1 shan’t be late. He left Horace as well, having done his duty and taken the dog for a walk and fed him his biscuits and lambs’ hearts. Lambs’ hearts, for Horace were the treat of all time, and he had guzzled the lot and then retired to his basket for a snooze.

He walked between high walls and garden trees. It was very dark, an overcast evening, but the wind had dropped and a drizzling rain fell. At the top of the lane, a steepish climb, he paused to get his breath, and then continued on his way along the footpath that leaned up against the slope of the hill. The town dropped below him. He looked down on the other gardens, rooftops, the lines of the streets marked with lamps. In the tower of the church, the clock face shone like a full moon.

A little farther on-by now his eyes had adjusted to the darkness-and he could make out the long line of the distant coast, stretched like an arm out to sea, and holding in its fingers the intermittent pinprick signal of the lighthouse. There were no stars.

A gate led out into a wide road, lined on the right-hand side by large stone-built Victorian houses set in spacious gardens. The first house was the Manse. Oscar remembered its location from sixty years ago, when he was sometimes brought for tea by his grandmother, and to play with the then-incumbent’s children. He remembered the house and the family who lived there, but had forgotten all their names.

A light burnt over the door. He went up the path, sea-pebbles crunching beneath the soles of his boots. The front door had been painted bright blue. He pressed the bell.

Suddenly he shivered. He told himself that it was because of the cold and the damp.

He heard the inner door open, and then the blue door was flung wide, and he was dazzled by light. Peter Kennedy stood there, warm with welcome. He wore a thick polo-neck sweater and a pair of worn corduroys and looked comfortingly un churchly “Oscar! Come away in.” He looked over Oscar’s shoulder.

“Did you not bring your car?”

“No. I walked.”

“Good man.”

He went indoors, into the hall. Saw the Turkish carpet, the fumed-oak hall-stand, the antique cist on which stood a neat stack of parish magazines. A riding hat had been dumped on the newel-post of the banister, and on the bottom stair stood a pair of football boots and a stack of clean and folded laundry. All left there, Oscar guessed, until the next obliging person would collect them and bear them upstairs.

“… take your coat off. The children are both out, so we’ve got the place to ourselves. I’ve a fire on in my study. I’ve had an afternoon of it, catching up on paperwork and writing a long-overdue article for The Sutherland Times? Oscar divested himself of gloves, jacket, and hat, and Peter Kennedy took them from him and laid them on an impressive oak chair, which looked as though it might, at one time, have seated a bishop.

“Now, come along in….”

He led the way into his study, a bow-windowed front room which had probably been intended as the dining-room of the original house. It was thickly curtained against the dreich evening, and softly lit by three lamps-one on the huge littered desk, and two more burning on either side of the fire, where stood two ancient leather armchairs. Walls were lined with shelves of books, and after the airy emptiness of the Estate House, all felt safe and dark and warm. A bit like going back to the womb.

As well, there was a marvelous smell, which Oscar finally traced to the chunks of carefully stacked peat smouldering in the fire basket.