The Blue Bedroom: & Other Stories Read online

  William glanced at his watch. “It’s all right. We’ve got ten minutes to spare.” He stretched and looked about him. “What a fantastic spot this is. Like being on the bridge of a ship.”

  Laurie leaned back in her chair. “Did you know,” she asked him, “did you know that this wasn’t always an estuary? Long, long ago, before it all got silted up with sand, it was a deep water channel that reached a mile or more inland. And the Phoenicians came, sailing their ships up on the flood tides, with cargoes of spice and damask, and all the treasures of the Mediterranean. And they would tie up and unload and barter, and finally start back again on their long and hazardous journeys, loaded to the gunwales with Cornish tin. About two thousand years ago, that happened. Just think. Two thousand years.” She looked at William. “Did you know that?”

  “Yes,” said William. “But I like hearing it again.”

  “It’s nice to think about, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. It keeps things in proportion.”

  Laurie said, “Grandfa told me.”

  “I thought he probably had.”

  Without thinking, she said it. “I miss him so much.”

  “I know you do. I think we all do. He was a great man. He had a great life.”

  She had not thought of someone like William missing the Admiral. She looked at him in some curiosity and thought, I don’t really know him at all. It wasn’t like talking to a stranger on a train. Suddenly it was easy.

  “It’s not that I was with Grandfa all that much. I mean, lately I’ve been away from home more than I’ve been here. But when I was little, I was with him all the time. I can’t even get used to knowing that he’s never going to be here again.”

  “I know.”

  “It wasn’t just his telling you things, like the Phoenician boats two thousand years ago. So much had happened in his lifetime. The whole world changed under his very eyes. He remembered it all. And he always had time to talk. He could answer questions and explain things. Like how a boat can sail against the wind, and the names of stars. And how to use a compass, and how to play Mah Jong and backgammon. Who’s here now to tell Robert’s little children all those marvellous things?”

  “Perhaps that’s up to us,” said William.

  She met his eyes. His expression was sombre. She said, “You think I’m being impossible, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “I know I’m being impossible, and everybody thinks I’m spoiling things for Jane. I don’t mean to. It’s just that if I could have had a little more time … But this wedding…” Suddenly her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, if only we could have put it off. Just for a little while. I can’t bear the thought of having to go into the church. I can’t bear the thought of having to smile and be nice to people. I can’t bear any of it. Everybody says that Grandfa would have wanted us to go ahead, just the way the wedding was planned. But how does anybody know what he would have wanted? They couldn’t ask him, because he wasn’t here to ask. How can they know…?”

  She couldn’t go on. The tears were spilling down her cheeks. She tried to wipe them away, but William took a handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and tossed it across to her, and Laurie accepted it wordlessly, wiped the tears with the soft cotton, then blew her nose. She said, hopelessly, “I wish I could just sit here for the rest of my life.”

  He smiled. He said, “That wouldn’t do anybody any good. And it wouldn’t bring the Admiral back. And you know, you’re mistaken. He did want the wedding to go ahead. He said as much. He went to see my father about two weeks before he died. I think he’d probably been feeling a little unwell, or perhaps he had some sort of a premonition, but they were talking about the wedding, and the Admiral told my father that if anything did happen to him, then he didn’t want it, under any circumstance, to make any difference to Jane’s wedding.”

  Laurie wiped her eyes again. After a little: “Is that really true?” she asked him.

  “I give you my word, it’s true. Isn’t it typical of the old boy? He always liked everything cut and dried, shipshape and Bristol fashion. And I’ll tell you something else, too, although I shouldn’t jump the gun. It’s a confidence, so you’ll have to keep it to yourself.” Laurie frowned. “He’s left this house to you. He wanted you to have it. His favourite grandchild and his best friend. Now, don’t start crying again, because if you do, your face will go all red and blotchy and you’ll be a hideous bridesmaid instead of a beautiful one. This is a very happy day. Don’t look back over your shoulder. Think about Jane and Andrew. Keep your chin up. The Admiral will be so proud of you.”

  She said, “I’m so afraid of making a fool of myself.”

  “You won’t,” William told her.

  * * *

  And now it was time. In the porch of the ancient church, the bride and her father and the bridesmaid arranged themselves. Above, the clangor of the wedding bells was stilled. From inside the crowded nave came the small whispers and rustles of an impatient and festive congregation. Laurie gave Jane a kiss, and stooped to arrange the skirts of her dress. Jane’s bouquet was heavy with the scent of tuber roses.

  The vicar, in his starched white surplice, waited to lead the small procession. The church warden gave a signal to Miss Treadwell, the village schoolmistress who played the organ. The music started. Laurie took a deep breath. They moved forward, through the doorway, down the two wide shallow steps.

  Inside, the church was dim, awash with flowers and drowned in their scent. Sun shone through stained-glass windows as the congregation, in all its finery, surged to its feet. Laurie did not think about Grandfa’s funeral, but instead concentrated on her mother’s pink hat, her brother’s broad shoulders, the sweetly brushed heads of his children. One day, she thought, when they’re bigger, I’ll tell them about the Phoenicians. I’ll tell them all the marvellous things that Grandfa ever told me.

  It was a good thought to hold on to. It was looking ahead. Suddenly, Laurie realised that the worst was over. She had stopped feeling nervous and miserable. She simply felt wonderfully calm, making her way down the flagged aisle behind her sister, stepping in time to the music.

  The music. The music Miss Treadwell was playing. It was resounding, triumphant, exactly right for a wedding. It had probably never been played before on just such an occasion, but it bore them up towards the altar on a tide of glorious, joyous sound.

  Spanish ladies

  A lump swelled in Laurie’s throat. I never knew. I never knew they were going to use Grandfa’s music for a wedding march.

  But how could she have known? She had refused to come to the wedding rehearsal, and probably none of her family had had the heart or could summon the nerve to tell her.

  Goodbye and farewell to you, fair Spanish ladies …

  Grandfa. He was here. He was here in the church, revelling in the tradition, the ceremony, encouraging all of them. Still part of the family.

  Goodbye and farewell to you, ladies of Spain.

  Andrew and William stood waiting at the end of the aisle. Both men had turned to watch as the little procession approached. Andrew’s eyes were on Jane, and there was pride and wonder written all over his face. But William …

  He was watching Laurie, his expression steadfast, concerned, reassuring. She realised that the lump in her throat had come to nothing, and that she wasn’t going to cry. She wished there was some way of telling William about Grandfa, but then she caught his eye, and he smiled and sent her an unmistakable wink, and she knew that there was no need to tell him because he already knew.

  Miss Cameron at Christmas

  The little town, which was called Kilmoran, had many faces, and all of them to Miss Cameron, were beautiful. In spring, the waters of the firth were blown blue as indigo; inland the fields were filled with lambs, and cottage gardens danced with daffodils. The summer brought the visitors; family parties camping on the beach, swimming in the shallow waves, the ice cream van parked by the breakwater, the old man with his donkey giving rides to the chil
dren. And then, around the middle of September, the visitors disappeared, the holiday houses were closed up, their shuttered windows staring blank-eyed across the water to the hills on the distant shore. The countryside hummed with combine harvesters, and as the leaves began to flutter from the trees and the stormy autumn tides brought the sea right up to the rim of the wall below Miss Cameron’s garden, the first of the wild geese flew in from the north. After the geese, she always felt it was winter.

  And perhaps, thought Miss Cameron privately, that was the most beautiful time of all. Her house faced south across the firth, and although she often woke to darkness and wind and the battering of rain, sometimes the sky was clear and cloudless, and on such mornings she would lie in her bed and watch the red sun edge its way over the horizon and flood her bedroom with rosy light. It winked on the brass rail of her bed and was reflected in the mirror over the dressing table.

  * * *

  Now, it was the twenty-fourth of December, and just such a morning. Christmas tomorrow. She was alone, and she would spend tomorrow alone. She did not mind. She and her house would keep each other company. She got up and went to close the window. There was an icing of snow on the distant Lammermuirs and a gull sat on the wall at the end of the garden, screaming over a piece of rotten fish. Suddenly it spread its wings and took off. The sunlight caught the spread of white feathers and transformed the gull into a magic, pink bird, so beautiful that Miss Cameron’s heart lifted in pleasure and excitement. She watched the gull’s flight until it dipped out of sight, then turned to find her slippers and go downstairs to put on a kettle for her cup of tea.

  * * *

  Miss Cameron was fifty-eight. Until two years ago she had lived in Edinburgh, in the tall, cold, north-facing house where she had been born and brought up. She had been an only child, the daughter of parents so much older than herself that by the time she was twenty, they were already on the road to old age. This made leaving home and making a life for herself, if not impossible, then difficult. Somehow, she achieved a sort of compromise. She got herself to University, but it was Edinburgh University, and she lived at home. After that, she had taken a teaching job, but that, too, had been in a local school, and by the time she was thirty there could be no question of abandoning the two old people who—unbelievably, Miss Cameron often thought—were responsible for her very existence.

  * * *

  When she was forty, her mother, who had never been very robust, had a little heart attack, lay feebly in her bed for a month or so, and then died. After the funeral, Miss Cameron and her father returned to the tall and gloomy house. He went upstairs to sit morosely by the fire, and she went down to the kitchen and made him a cup of tea. The kitchen was in the basement, and the window had bars on it, to discourage possible intruders. Miss Cameron, waiting for the kettle to boil, looked out through the bars to the small stone area beyond. She had tried to grow geraniums there, but they had all died, and now there was nothing to be seen but a stubborn sprout of willow herb. The bars made the kitchen feel like a prison. She had never thought this before, but she thought it now, and knew that it was true. She would never get away.

  Her father lived on for another fifteen years, and she went on teaching until he became too frail to leave, even for a day. So she dutifully retired from her job, where she had been not exactly happy, but at least fulfilled, and stayed at home, to devote her time to what remained of her father’s life. She had little money of her own, and supposed that the old man had as little as herself, so frugal was the housekeeping allowance, so cautious was he with things like coal and central heating and even the most modest forms of enjoyment.

  He owned an old car, which Miss Cameron could drive, and on warm days she used sometimes to bundle him into this, and he would sit beside her, in his grey tweed suit and the black hat that made him look like an undertaker, while she drove him to the seaside or the country, or even to Holyrood Park where he could take a little stumbling walk, or sit in the sun beneath the grassy slopes of Arthur’s Seat. But then the price of petrol rocketed, and without consulting his daughter, Mr. Cameron sold the car, and she did not have enough money of her own to buy another.

  * * *

  She had a friend, Dorothy Laurie, with whom she had been at University. Dorothy had married—as Miss Cameron had not—a young doctor, who was now an eminently successful neurologist, and with whose cooperation she had produced a family of satisfactory children, now all grown up. Dorothy was perpetually indignant about Miss Cameron’s situation. She felt, and said, that Miss Cameron’s parents had been selfish and thoughtless, and that the old man was getting worse as he was getting older. When the car was sold, she blew her top.

  “It’s ridiculous,” she said, over tea in her sunny, flower-filled drawing room. Miss Cameron had prevailed upon her daily help to stay over for the afternoon to give Mr. Cameron his tea, and make sure that he didn’t fall down the stairs on his way to the lavatory. “He can’t be as penurious as all that. Surely he can afford to run a car, for your sake, if not for his own?”

  Miss Cameron did not like to point out that he had never thought of any person except himself. She said, “I don’t know.”

  “Then you should find out. Speak to his accountant. Or his lawyer.”

  “Dorothy, I couldn’t. It would be so disloyal.”

  Dorothy made a sound which sounded like “Pshaw” and which is what people used to say in old-fashioned novels.

  “I don’t want to upset him,” Miss Cameron went on.

  “Do him good to be upset. If he’d been upset once or twice in his life, he wouldn’t be such a selfish old…” She bit back what she had been going to say and substituted “… man, now.”

  “He’s lonely.”

  “Of course he’s lonely. Selfish people are always lonely. That’s nobody’s fault but his own. For years, he’s sat in a chair and felt sorry for himself.”

  It was too true to argue with. “Oh, well,” said Miss Cameron feebly, “it can’t be helped. He’s nearly ninety now. It’s too late to start trying to change him.”

  “Yes, but it’s not too late to change you. You mustn’t let yourself grow old with him. You must keep some part of life for yourself.”

  * * *

  He died at last, painlessly and peacefully, falling asleep after a quiet evening and an excellent dinner cooked for him by his daughter, and never waking again. Miss Cameron was glad for him that the end had come so quietly. There was a funeral and a surprising number of people attended it. A day or so later, Miss Cameron was summoned to her father’s lawyer’s office. She went, in a black hat and a state of nervous apprehension. But as it happened, nothing turned out as she had thought it would. Mr. Cameron, the canny old Scot that he was, had played his cards very close to his chest. The penny-pinching, the austerity of years, had been one huge, magnificent bluff. He left in his will, to his daughter, his house, his worldly possessions, and more money than she had ever dreamed of. Polite, and outwardly composed as ever, she left the lawyer’s office and stepped out into the sunlight of Charlotte Square. There was a flag flying high over the ramparts of the castle and the air was cold and fresh. She walked down to Jenners and had a cup of coffee, and then she went to see Dorothy.

  Dorothy, on hearing the news, was characteristically torn between fury at old Mr. Cameron’s meanness and duplicity and delight in her friend’s good fortune. “You can buy a car,” she told her. “You can travel. You can have a fur coat, go on cruises. Anything. What are you going to do? What are you going to do with the rest of your life?”

  “Well,” said Miss Cameron cautiously, “I will buy myself a little car.” The idea of being free, mobile, with no person but herself to consider, took a bit of getting used to.

  “And travel?”

  But Miss Cameron had no great desire for travel, except that one day she would like to go to Oberammergau and see the Passion Play. And she didn’t want to go on cruises. She really wanted only one thing. Had wanted only one thing in h
er life. And now she could have it.

  She said, “I shall sell the Edinburgh house. And I shall buy another.”

  “Where?”

  She knew exactly where. Kilmoran. She had gone there for a summer when she was ten, invited by the kindly parents of a school friend. It had been a holiday of such happiness that Miss Cameron had never forgotten it.

  She said, “I shall go and live in Kilmoran.”

  “Kilmoran? But that’s only just across the firth…”

  Miss Cameron smiled at her. It was a smile that Dorothy had never seen before, and it silenced her. “That is where I shall buy a house.”

  * * *

  And so she did. A house in a terrace, facing out over the sea. From the back, from the north, its aspect was both plain and dull, with square windows and a front door that led straight off the pavement. But inside, it was beautiful, a Georgian house in miniature, with a slate-flagged hallway and a curving staircase rising to the upper floor. The sitting room was upstairs, with a bay window, and in front of the house was a square garden, walled in from the sea winds. There was a tall gate in the wall, and if you opened this, a flight of stone steps led down the sea wall to the beach. In summer, children ran along the top of the sea wall and screamed and shouted at each other, but Miss Cameron minded this noise no more than she minded the noise of the waves, or the gulls, or the eternal winds.

  There was much to be done to the house and much to be spent on it, but with a certain mouselike courage, she both did and spent. Central heating was installed, and double glazing. The kitchen was rebuilt, with pine cupboards, and new pale green bathroom fixtures took the place of the old white chipped ones. The prettiest and smallest articles of furniture were weeded out of the old Edinburgh house and transported, in an immense van, to Kilmoran, along with the china, the silver, the familiar pictures. But she bought new carpets and curtains, and had all the walls repapered and the woodwork painted a shining white.

  As for the garden—she had never had a garden before. Now she bought books and studied them in bed at night, and she planted escallonia and veronica and thyme and sea-lavender, and bought a little lawnmower and cut the ragged, tufty grass herself.