Wild Mountain Thyme Read online

  Watching him, filled with the tenderness that was by now becoming familiar, Victoria wondered about maternal instincts. Was one meant to have them, if one didn’t have a child of one’s own? Perhaps, if Thomas had not been such an engaging person, she would never have experienced this basic, unreasonable surge of protective affection. But there it was. Like a child in some sentimental old film, he seemed to have found his way into her heart, made himself snug and was there to stay.

  The whole situation was odd to say the least of it. When he had first told Victoria about stealing Thomas from the Archers, Victoria, although shocked at Oliver, had also been moved. That Oliver Dobbs, of all people, should be so aware of his own parenthood as to take this extraordinary step was somehow a marvelous thing.

  And to begin with, he had seemed both amused and involved; buying Thomas a toy, carrying him around on his shoulders, even playing with him in the evenings before Victoria put him to bed. But, like a child quickly bored by a new diversion, his interest seemed to have waned, and now he took little notice of Thomas.

  The incident in the boat was typical of his attitude. Against all Victoria’s better instincts, it was becoming impossible not to suspect that Oliver’s impulsive removal of his son had not been prompted by fatherly pride and a real sense of responsibility, but that in his own oblique way he was simply getting back at his parents-in-law. The taking of Thomas from them sprang more from reasons of spite than reasons of love.

  It really didn’t bear thinking about. Not just because of the slur this cast upon Oliver’s motivations and so upon his character, but because it rendered Thomas’s future—and indirectly her own—miserably precarious.

  Thomas banged her with his fist and said, “Look.” Victoria looked, and saw the tumbled pile of pebbles and his beaming, grubby face, and she pulled him up onto her knee and hugged him.

  She said, “I love you. Do you know that?” and he laughed as though she had made some tremendous joke. His laughter eased everything. It would all be all right. She loved Thomas and she loved Oliver, and Oliver loved Victoria, and obviously—in his own undemonstrative way—loved Thomas as well. With so much loving around the place, surely nothing could destroy the family that they had become.

  Behind her, she heard the crunch of footsteps coming down the beach towards them. She turned and saw John Dunbeath. Beyond him, the fire now blazed, plumed with blue smoke. The other two men had disappeared. She searched for them, and saw their distant figures, more than halfway up towards the march wall, and still climbing.

  John said, “I guess we won’t get our lunch for another hour. They’ve gone up to search for the deer.”

  He reached her side, and stood a moment, looking out across the water, to the distant sunlit blur of the house, half hidden in the trees. From here it looked infinitely desirable, like a house in a dream. Smoke rose from a chimney, a white curtain blew, like a flag, from an open window.

  Victoria said, “It doesn’t matter. About lunch, I mean. If Thomas gets hungry we can always feed him something to stave off his pangs till the others get back.”

  He sat beside them, leaning back with his elbows in the shingle. “You’re not hungry, are you?” he asked Thomas.

  Thomas said nothing. After a bit, he clambered off Victoria’s knee and went back to his game with the plastic cup.

  Victoria said, “Don’t you want to go and look for deer too?”

  “Not today. Anyway I’ve seen them before. And that’s quite a climb. I didn’t realize Oliver would be so energetic and interested in wildlife.”

  There was no hint of criticism in his voice, but even so Victoria sprang to Oliver’s defense. “He’s interested in everything. New experiences, new sights, new people.”

  “I know it. Last night after you’d gone to bed, Roddy finally got round to telling me that he’s another writer. It was funny, because when I was introduced to him, I thought ‘Oliver Dobbs, I know that name,’ but the associations eluded me. And then when Roddy told me, the penny dropped. I’ve read a couple of his books, and I saw one of his plays on television. He’s a very clever man.”

  Victoria’s heart warmed towards him. “Yes, he is clever. He’s just had a new play put on in Bristol. It’s called Bent Penny. The first night was on Monday, and his agent says he’s got a hit on his hands. It’s probably going to the West End, just as soon as they can find a theatre.”

  “That’s great.”

  She went on extolling Oliver, as though praise of him could in some way obliterate the memory of the fleeting expression she had caught on John Dunbeath’s face when Thomas fell in the boat. “He hasn’t always been successful. I mean, it’s a notoriously difficult business to get started in, but he never wanted to do anything else, and I don’t think he ever got discouraged or lost faith in himself. His parents practically disowned him because he didn’t want to go into the army, or be a lawyer, or do anything like that. So, at the beginning, he really didn’t have any security at all.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “I suppose from the moment he left school.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  Victoria leaned forward and picked up a handful of pebbles. So close to the water’s edge they were wet and shining and cold to the touch. “About three years.”

  “Was he successful then?”

  “No. He used to take dreadful, undemanding jobs, just to earn enough money to buy the groceries and pay the rent. You know, like harrowing bricks and mending roads and washing dishes in a fish-and-chips shop. And then a publisher began to take interest in him, and he got a play on television. And since then things have just snowballed, and he’s never looked back. He and Roddy met through television. I expect Roddy told you. That’s why we came to Benchoile. I read The Eagle Years when I was at school, and I’ve reread it at regular intervals ever since. When Oliver told me he knew Roddy and we were coming here to stay, I could hardly believe it was true.”

  “Has it lived up to its expectations?”

  “Yes. Once you get used to it not being summer all the time.”

  John laughed. “It certainly isn’t that.” She thought he looked much younger when he laughed.

  The sun had, for the last moment or so, been hidden behind a cloud, but now it came racing out again, and its brightness and warmth were so welcome, that Victoria lay back on the beach, and turned her face up to the sky.

  She said, “The only thing that spoiled coming here was being told about your uncle dying. I felt we should have turned right round and gone away again, but Roddy wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “It’s probably the best thing in the world that could have happened. A bit of company for him.”

  “Ellen told me you used to come here when you were a little boy. I mean, when you weren’t in Colorado.”

  “Yes. I used to come with my father.”

  “Did you love it?”

  “Yes. But it was never home. Colorado and the ranch were my real home.”

  “What did you do when you used to come here? Did you slay deer and grouse and do manly things like that?”

  “I used to fish. But I don’t like shooting. I never have. It made life a little difficult.”

  “Why?” It was hard to imagine life for John Dunbeath ever being difficult.

  “I suppose because I was the odd man out. Everybody else did it. Even my father. My uncle Jock didn’t understand it at all.” He grinned. “Sometimes I thought he didn’t even like me very much.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he liked you. He wouldn’t have left Benchoile to you if he hadn’t liked you.”

  “He left it to me,” John told her flatly, “because there wasn’t anybody else.”

  “Did you guess he was going to leave it to you?”

  “It never entered my head. That probably sounds crazy to you, but it’s true. I got back from Bahrain and found this lawyer’s letter waiting for me on my desk.” He leaned forward to pick up a handful of pebbles and started to pitch them, with dea
dly accuracy, at a lichened rock which jutted from the edge of the loch. He said, “There was another letter as well, from Jock. I guess he wrote it just a couple of days before he died. It’s a funny feeling getting a letter from a person who’s already dead.”

  “Are … are you going to come and live here?”

  “I couldn’t, even if I wanted to.”

  “Because of your job?”

  “Yes. That and other reasons. I’m based in London just now, but I may be sent back to New York at the drop of a hat. I have commitments. I have my family.”

  “Your family?” She was taken by surprise. But, on consideration, why should she be so surprised? She had met John in London, at a party, as a single man, but that did not mean that he had not left a wife and children behind him in the States. Businessmen all over the world were forced to lead such lives. There was nothing unusual about such a situation. She imagined his wife; pretty and chic as all young American women seemed to be, with a space-age kitchen and a station wagon in which to fetch the children from school.

  He said, “By family, I mean my mother and father.”

  “Oh,” Victoria laughed, feeling foolish. “I thought you meant you were married.”

  With immense care, he pitched the last stone. It hit the rock and fell into the water with a miniature splash. He turned to look at her. He said, “I was married. Not any more.”

  “I’m sorry.” There didn’t seem to be anything else to say.

  “That’s all right.” He smiled reassuringly and she said, “I didn’t know.”

  “Why should you know?”

  “No reason. It’s just that people have been talking about you, telling me about you. Roddy and Ellen, I mean. But nobody said anything about your being married.”

  “It only lasted a couple of years, and they never met her anyway.” He leaned back on his elbows and looked out across the loch towards the hills and the old house. He said, “I wanted to bring her to Benchoile. Before we were married I used to tell her about it, and she seemed quite enthusiastic. She’d never been to Scotland and she had all sorts of romantic imaginings about it. You know, skirling pipes and swirling mists and Bonnie Prince Charlie draped in tartan. But after we married … I don’t know. There never seemed to be time to do anything.”

  “Was … the divorce why you came to live in London?”

  “One of the reasons. You know, a clean break, all the rest of it.”

  “Did you have children?”

  “No. Just as well, the way things turn out.”

  She knew then that she had been wrong about John. Meeting him for the first time, he had impressed her as being self-contained, self-reliant, and totally cool. Now she realized that beneath that smooth veneer was a person just like anybody else; vulnerable, capable of being hurt, probably lonely. She remembered that he had been meant to have a girlfriend with him that evening, but for some reason she had let him down. And so he had asked Victoria to have dinner with him, and Victoria had refused. Thinking of this, she now felt, in some obscure way, as though she had let him down.

  She said, “My parents got divorced. When I was eighteen. You’d have thought I’d have been old enough by then to cope with the situation. But it does something to your life. Nothing’s ever quite the same again. Security is lost forever.” She smiled. “Now, that’s something that Benchoile has got and to spare. Security oozes out of the walls. I suppose it’s something to do with the people who’ve lived in the house, and the way people live there now, as though nothing has changed in a hundred years.”

  “That’s right. It certainly hasn’t altered in my life time. It even smells the same.”

  She said, “What will happen to it now?”

  He did not answer at once. And then he told her. “I shall sell it.”

  Victoria stared at him. His dark eyes, unblinking, met hers, and beneath their steady regard, she slowly realized that he meant what he said.

  “But, John, you can’t.”

  “What else can I do?”

  “Keep it on.”

  “I’m not a farmer. I’m not a sportsman. I’m not even a true-blooded Scot. I’m an American banker. What could I do with a place like Benchoile?”

  “Couldn’t you run it…?”

  “From Wall Street?”

  “Put a manager in.”

  “Who?”

  She cast about for some person, and came up, inevitably, with, “Roddy?”

  “If I’m a banker, then Roddy is a writer, a dilettante. He’s never been anything else. Jock, on the other hand, was the strong pillar of the family and an exceptional man. He didn’t just stride around Benchoile with a dog at his heels and a string of instructions. He worked. He went up the hill with Davey Guthrie and brought the sheep down. He helped with the lambing and the dipping. He went to the market in Lairg. As well, it was Jock who kept an eye on the forestry, took care of the garden, mowed the grass.”

  “Isn’t there a gardener?”

  “There’s a pensioner who cycles up from Creagan three days a week, but keeping the kitchen garden in vegetables and the house in logs seems to take up most of his time.”

  But Victoria was still unconvinced. “Roddy seems to know so much about everything. Last night…”

  “He knows a lot, because he’s lived here all his life, but what he can actually do is another matter altogether. I’m afraid that without Jock, supporting him and giving him a shove every now and then, Roddy is in mortal danger of simply sinking into the ground.”

  “You could give him a chance.”

  John looked regretful, but he shook his head. “This is a big property. There’s twelve thousand acres of hill to be farmed, fences to be kept up, a thousand or more sheep to be reared. There’s cattle involved, and crops, and expensive machinery. All that adds up to a lot of money.”

  “You mean you don’t want to risk losing money?”

  He grinned. “No banker wants to risk that. But in fact, it isn’t that. I could probably afford to lose a bit; but no property is worth holding onto, unless it’s a viable proposition and capable, at least, of washing its own face.”

  Victoria turned away from him, sitting up with her arms wrapped around her knees, looking back across the water to the old house. She thought of the warmth of that house, of its hospitality, of the people who lived there. She did not think of it as a viable proposition.

  She said, “What about Ellen?”

  “Ellen is one of the problems. Ellen and the Guthries.”

  “Do they know you’re going to sell Benchoile?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Does Roddy?”

  “I told him last night.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He wasn’t surprised. He said he hadn’t expected me to do anything else. And then he poured himself the biggest cognac you’ve ever seen and changed the subject.”

  “And what to you suppose will happen to Roddy?”

  “I don’t know,” said John, and for the first time he sounded miserable. She turned her head over her shoulder, and once more their eyes met. His own were bleak and somber, and she was moved to sympathy for him in his dilemma.

  She said, impulsively, “He drinks too much. Roddy, I mean.”

  “I know it.”

  “I love him.”

  “I love him, too. I love them all. That’s why it’s so ghastly.”

  She felt impelled to try to cheer him. “Perhaps something will turn up.”

  “Who are you, Mr. Micawber? No, I’m going to sell it. Because I have to. Robert McKenzie, he’s the lawyer in Inverness, he’s fixing an advertisement for me. It’ll go into all the big national newspapers around the middle of the week. Desirable Highland Sporting Property For Sale. So you see, I can’t go back now. I can’t change my mind.”

  “I wish I could make you.”

  “You can’t, so don’t let’s talk about it anymore.”

  Thomas was getting bored with his game. He was also getting hungry. He had drop
ped his plastic mug, and now he came to climb onto Victoria’s knee. John looked at his watch. He said, “It’s nearly one o’clock. I think you and I and Thomas should go and find something to eat…”

  They got slowly to their feet. Victoria brushed shingle from the seat of her jeans. She said, “What about the others?” and turned to look up the hill, and saw Oliver and Roddy already on their way down, moving a great deal faster than they had on the way up.

  “They’re feeling hungry, too, and thirsty as well, no doubt,” said John. “Come along…” he stooped and hoisted Thomas up into his arms, and led the way back to where his fire smoldered “.… let’s see what Ellen’s put in the picnic baskets.”

  * * *

  Perhaps because of the picnic—which had been so successful—and the memories of former happy parties that this had evoked, the conversation that night at dinner did not concern the literary world of London, nor the problems of the future of Scotland, but became instead a feast of reminiscence.

  Roddy, sated with fresh air, flushed by wine and good food, and relentlessly prompted by his nephew John, was in his element, carried along on an unstoppable flood of anecdotes that reached far back into the past.

  Around the polished, candle-lit table, old retainers, eccentric relations, domineering dowagers, most of them long since defunct, came back to life. There was the story of the Christmas house party when the tree caught fire; the grouse-shoot at which a universally disliked young cousin peppered the guest of honor with shot and was sent home in disgrace; the long-forgotten winter when the blizzards cut the house off for a month or more, and its occupants were reduced to boiling snow to make the porridge and playing endless charades to keep themselves amused.

  There were the sagas of the overturned boat; the sheriff’s Bentley, which, inadvertently left with its hand brake off, had finished up in the bottom of the loch; and the gentle-woman of reduced circumstances, who had come to stay for a weekend, and remained firmly installed in the best guest room two years later.

  It took a long time to run out of stories, and even when he did, Roddy remained inexhaustible. Just as Victoria was about to suggest that perhaps it was time to retire to bed (it was now past midnight) he pushed back his chair, and led them all purposefully away from the table and across the hall to the deserted, dust-sheeted drawing room. There stood the grand piano, draped in an old sheet. Roddy turned this back, pulled up a stool to the keyboard, and started to play.