The End of Summer Page 6

  I found that I was ravenous. There was bacon, and eggs and Cooper’s marmalade and hot floury rolls which I remembered were called baps, and while I ate, Sinclair and my grandmother talked, in a desultory fashion—breakfast chat concerning news in the local paper, the result of a flower show, a letter that my grandmother had received from an elderly cousin who had gone to live in a place called Mortar.

  “What the hell’s he gone to live there for?”

  “Well, it’s cheap of course, and warm. The poor old thing always suffered dreadfully from rheumatics.”

  “And how does he propose passing his days? Rowing sightseers around Grand Harbour?”

  I realized that they were talking about Malta. Mortar: Malta. I was more Americanized than I had thought.

  My grandmother poured coffee. I watched her and worked out that she must now be in her seventies, but she still looked exactly as I had always remembered her. She was tall, dignified and very good looking, her white hair always immaculate, her eyes, deep set beneath finely arched eyebrows, a bright and piercing blue. (At the moment their effect was charmingly youthful, but I knew that she could register a world of disapproval with a single lift of those eyebrows, accompanied by a chilling blue stare.) Her clothes were ageless too, and entirely becoming. Soft heathery tweed skirts and cashmere sweaters or cardigans. In the day-time she wore constantly her pearls, and a pair of coral earrings, shaped like tear drops. In the evenings a modest diamond or two was likely to spark from her dark velvets, for she was sufficiently old-fashioned to change each evening for dinner, even if it was Sunday and we ate nothing more exciting than scrambled eggs.

  And as she sat ensconced at the head of her table, I thought that she had had more than her share of tragedy. Her husband had died, and then she had lost her daughter and now her son, the elusive Aylwyn, who had chosen to live and die in Canada. Sinclair and I were all she had left. And Elvie. But her back remained straight and her manner brisk, and I was thankful that she would never become one of those mournful old ladies, perpetually remembering the old days. She was too interested, too active, too intelligent. Indestructible, I told myself comfortably. That’s what she is. Indestructible.

  After breakfast Sinclair and I made a ritual tour of the island, missing nothing. We went out through the gate that leads into the graveyard. There we did the rounds of all the old headstones, and peered in through the window-gaps of the ruined church, and then climbed the wall into the field, and went down past the eyes of curious cattle, to the edge of the loch. We disturbed a pair of mallard ducks and had a competition skimming flat stones, seeing who could throw them the farthest. Sinclair won. We walked the length of the jetty to look at the leaky old boat that was such a devil to row, and our footsteps echoed out over the sagging planking.

  “One day,” I said, “this is going to collapse.”

  “No point in getting it mended if it’s never used.”

  We went on, around the edge of the water, under the spreading beech where we had built our tree house, and then up through the birch spinney, ringed about by quietly falling leaves, and so back to the house by way of a cluster of out-buildings—abandoned piggeries and henhouses, and stables, and an old coach house which had long since been put to use as a garage.

  “Come and see my car,” said Sinclair.

  We struggled with bolts and the big, old-fashioned door, and it swung creakily back to reveal, alongside my grandmother’s large and dignified Daimler, a dark yellow Lotus Elan, black hooded, low to the ground and infinitely lethal.

  I said, “How long have you had that?”

  “Oh, about six months.” He got in behind the driving wheel, and backed it out, the engine purring like an angry tiger, and showed me, like a small boy with a new toy, the car’s varied accomplishments: the electrically operated windows; the neat device which worked the hood; the automatic burglar alarm; the headlight covers, which opened and shut like monstrous eyelids.

  “How fast does it go?” I enquired nervously.

  He shrugged. “Hundred and twenty, hundred and thirty?”

  “Not with me in it, you don’t.”

  “Wait until you’re invited, my chicken-hearted child.”

  “You couldn’t go sixty on the roads up here without coming off them altogether.” He got out of the car. “Aren’t you going to put it away?”

  “No.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got a date to shoot pigeons.” I knew I was home. In Scotland men perpetually go and shoot things regardless of any plans their womenfolk may have made for them.

  I said, “When’ll you be back?”

  “Probably for tea.” He grinned down at me. “Tell you what, after tea, I’ll walk you up to call on the Gibsons. They can’t wait to see you and I promised I would.”

  “All right. Let’s do that.”

  We went back to the house, Sinclair to change and collect all his shooting clobber, and me to go up to my room and unpack.

  As I went in through the door the air struck chill and I shivered and realized that already I was missing the Californian sunshine and American central heating. Elvie was thick-walled and south-facing. Open fires burned constantly and there were always gallons of hot water, but the bedrooms were inclined to be decidedly parky. I laid my clothes in the empty drawers and came to the conclusion that although they were Mild-Wash, Drip-Dry and Perma-Pressed, they were not warm. For Scotland I should have to buy some new ones. Perhaps—happy thought—my grandmother would buy them for me.

  With this in mind I went downstairs to find her, and met her coming out of the kitchen wearing rubber boots and an ancient raincoat and carrying a basket.

  She said, “I was just coming to look for you. Where’s Sinclair?”

  “Gone pigeon shooting.”

  “Oh, yes, he said he’d be out for lunch. Come and help me pick sprouts.”

  Our progress was held up for a moment while I found boots and an old coat and then we set out once more into the quiet morning, only this time we made for the walled garden. Will, the gardener, was there already. He looked up as we came in, stopped digging and came treading cannily over the newly-turned earth to shake me, muddily, by the hand.

  “Eh,” he said, “itsh a long time since you were lasht at Elvie.” He did not always speak very clearly, as he only wore his teeth on Sundays. “And hoo is life in America?”

  I told him a little about life in America, and he asked for my father, and I asked for Mrs Will, who appeared to be ailing, as always, and then he went back to his digging and my grandmother and I went off to pick sprouts.

  When we had filled the basket, we went back towards the house, but the morning was so fresh and quiet that Grandmother said she didn’t want to go back indoors just yet, so we went around and into the garden, and sat on a white-painted, iron seat, looking out over the garden and the water, to the mountains beyond. The herbaceous border was filled with dahlias and zinnias and purple Michaelmas daisies, and the pearly grass was scattered with the dark red leaves of a Canadian maple.

  She said, “I always think autumn is a perfect time. Some people think it’s sad, but it’s really much too beautiful to be sad.”

  I quoted,

  “September has come, it is her’s,

  Whose vitality leaps in the autumn.”

  * * *

  “Who wrote that?”

  “Louis MacNeice. Does your vitality leap?”

  “Well, it might have done twenty years ago.” We laughed and she pressed my hand. “Oh, Jane, what a delight to have you back again.”

  “You wrote so often and I would have come before … but it really wasn’t possible.”

  “No, of course not, I quite see that. And it was selfish of me to keep insisting.”

  “And those … letters you wrote to my father. I didn’t know anything about them, or I’d have made him reply.”

  “He was always a very stubborn man.” She shot me a glance, very sharp and blue. “He didn’t want you to come?”

  �
�I’d made up my mind. He became resigned. Besides, with David Stewart there, waiting to bring me, he could scarcely raise too many objections.”

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to leave him.”

  “No.” I reached down and picked up a maple leaf and started shredding it between my fingers. “No. He has a friend staying with him.”

  Again that sideways glance. “A friend?”

  I looked up ruefully. She had always been high-principled, but never a prude. I said, “Linda Lansing. She’s an actress. And his current girl-friend.”

  After a little, “I see,” said my grandmother.

  “No, I don’t think you probably do. But I like her, and she’ll look after him … anyway, until I get home again.”

  “I can’t think,” said my grandmother, “why he didn’t marry again.”

  “Perhaps because he didn’t stay in any one place long enough for the banns to be called?”

  “But it’s selfish. It hasn’t given you a chance to get away, come back and see us all, or even to have some sort of a career.”

  “A career is one thing I have never wanted.”

  “But nowadays every girl should be able to support herself.”

  I said that I was very happy being supported by my father, and my grandmother said I was as stubborn as he was and hadn’t I ever wanted to do some sort of a job?

  I thought hard, but could only remember being eight years old and wanting to join a circus and help wash the camels. I did not think my grandmother would appreciate this, so I said, “Not really.”

  “Oh, my poor Jane.”

  I rose like a bird to my father’s defence. “Not poor. Not poor anything. I don’t feel I’ve missed a thing.” But I added, to soften this, “Except Elvie. I did miss Elvie. And you. And everything.” She made no comment on this. I dropped the shredded leaf, and stooped to pick up another. I said, intent on it, “David Stewart told me about Uncle Aylwyn. I didn’t say anything to Sinclair … but … I was sorry … I mean, his being so far away and everything.”

  “Yes.” Her voice was expressionless. “But then, that’s what he chose … to live in Canada, and finally, to die there. You see, Elvie never meant very much to Aylwyn. He was essentially a restless person. He needed, more than anything, the company of a lot of different people. He liked variety in everything he did. And Elvie was never the best place for that.”

  “It’s strange … a man being bored in Scotland … it’s so essentially a man’s ambience.”

  “Yes, but you see, he didn’t like shooting, and he never wanted to fish, he was bored by it. He liked horses and racing. He was a great racing man.”

  I realized, with some surprise, that this was the first time we had spoken about my Uncle Aylwyn. It was not exactly that the subject had been avoided; just that, before, I had been totally incurious. But now I realized it was unnatural how little I knew about him … I did not even know how he had looked, for my grandmother, unlike most women of her generation, was not one for family photographs. Any that she had were neatly filed away in albums, not standing about, silver-framed, on top of the grand piano.

  I said, “What sort of a person was he? What did he look like?”

  “Look like? He looked like Sinclair does now. And he was very charming … he would walk into a room and you could see all the women perk up, and start smiling and being very attractive. It was quite amusing to watch.”

  I was on the point of asking about Silvia, but she forestalled me by glancing at her watch, and turning businesslike again.

  “Now, I must go and give these sprouts to Mrs Lumley or she won’t get them in time for lunch. Thank you for helping me pick them. And I’ve enjoyed our little talk.”

  Sinclair, true to his word, was home for tea. Afterwards, we put on coats and whistled up the dogs and set off to call on the Gibsons.

  They lived in a small keeper’s cottage, tucked into a fold of the hill which rose to the north of Elvie, so that we had to walk off the island, and cross the main road, and follow a track which wound up between grass and heather, crossing and re-crossing a tumbling burn which passed under the road by means of a culvert and emptied itself into Elvie Loch. It had traveled from deep and high in the mountains, and the glen down which it ran, and the hills on either side, were all part of my grandmother’s estate.

  In the old days, there had been shooting parties, with schoolchildren as beaters, and hill ponies to carry elderly gentlemen up to their butts, but now the moor was let off to a syndicate of local business men, who enjoyed walking the moor during two or three Saturdays in August but appeared just as well content to bring their families picnicking, or to fish the waters of the burn.

  As we approached the cottage, there was a cacophony of barking from the kennels, and, disturbed by the noise, the figure of Mrs Gibson presently appeared through the open door. Sinclair waved and called, “Hello there!” and Mrs Gibson waved back, and then disappeared hastily back inside again.

  “Gone to put the kettle on?” I suggested.

  “Or warn Gibson to put his teeth in.”

  “That’s not at all kind.”

  “No. But likely.”

  There was an old Land-Rover parked by the side of the house with half a dozen white Leghorn hens pecking round its wheels and a line of breeze-stiffened washing. As we came up to the door, Mrs Gibson came out once more, having removed her apron. She wore a blouse with a cameo brooch at the collar and was beaming from ear to ear.

  “Oh, Miss Jane, I’d have known you anywhere. I was speaking to Will, and he said you hadna’ changed at a’. And Mr Sinclair … I didn’t know you were up.”

  “Taken a few days’ leave.”

  “Come away in then, Gibson’s just taking his tea.”

  “I hope we’ve not come at a bad time.…” Sinclair stood aside and waited for me to go ahead of him. I ducked my head cannily at the door, and went into the kitchen, where a fire burned redly in the grate and Gibson was heaving himself to his feet from behind a table laden with scones, cakes, butter and jam, tea and milk, and a comb of honey. There was also a strong smell of haddock.

  “Oh, Gibson, we are disturbing you…”

  “Not at all, not at all…” He put out his hand and I took it, and it felt dry and gnarled as old tree bark. Without his inevitable tweed hat he looked strange and unfamiliar, as vulnerable as a policeman without his helmet, his bald head protected by only a few wisps of white hair. And I realized that, of all my friends at Elvie, he was the only one who had truly aged. His eyes were pale and rimmed with white. He was thinner, more stooped, his voice had lost its manly depth.

  “Aye, we haird you were on your way home.” He turned as Sinclair followed us into the hot, crowded little room. “An’ you, too, Sinclair.”

  “Hello, Gibson.”

  Mrs Gibson bustled in behind him, organizing us all. “He’s just having his tea, Sinclair, but you can just sit down for a wee while, Gibson willna mind. Now, you sit here, Jane, near the fire where it’s nice and warm…” I sat, so close to the heat I thought I would roast. “… would you like a cup of tea?”

  “Yes, I’d love one.”

  “And a wee bit to eat.” She made for the scullery, laying a hand on her husband’s shoulder as she passed behind him, and pressing him back on to his chair. “Sit down, dearie, and finish your haddock, Jane won’t mind…”

  “Yes, please finish it.”

  But Gibson said that he had had enough, and Mrs Gibson whisked away his plate as though it were indecent, and went off to fill her kettle. Sinclair pulled a chair out from the other side of the table, and sat down, facing Gibson across the electro-plated cake stand. He took out his cigarettes and gave the old keeper one and took one for himself, and then leaned across to light it.

  “How’ve you been?” he asked.

  “Oh, no’ so bad … it’s been a braw, dry summer. I hear you were after the pigeons today—how did you get on?”

  They talked, and listening to their convers
ation and seeing them thus, the young strong man, and the old one, it was hard to remember that once Gibson had been the only man the boy Sinclair really respected.

  Mrs Gibson bustled back with two clean cups—her best, I realized—and set them on the table, and poured tea, and offered us scones, iced “fancies” and shortbread, all of which we tactfully refused. Then she settled herself down on the opposite side of the fireplace and we gossiped cosily, and once more I was asked for news of my father, and gave it, and then I asked after her sons, and was told that Hamish was in the army, but George had managed to get into Aberdeen University where he was reading Law.

  I was very impressed. “But that’s wonderful. I never knew he was as clever as that!”

  “He was always a very hard-working boy … a great one for the books.”

  “So neither Hamish nor George will follow their father.”

  “Och, it’s not the same for the young ones. They don’t want to spend their lives on the hill in all weathers … it’s too quiet for them. And mind, you can’t blame them. It’s no life for a young man these days, and while we managed to bring them up all right, there’s not the money in it these days. Not when they can earn three times as much with a job in a city, or a factory, or an office.”

  “Does Gibson mind?”

  “No.” She looked at him fondly, but he was too involved with Sinclair to notice her glance. “No, he was always anxious that they should do what they wanted, and do well for themselves. He encouraged Geordie all the way … and mind,” added Mrs Gibson, unconsciously quoting Barrie, “there’s nothing like a good education.”

  “Haven’t you got pictures of them? I’d love to see how they look.”

  She was delighted at being asked. “I have them by my bed. I’ll go and fetch them…”

  She bustled off, and I heard her footsteps, heavytreaded, up the little staircase, and across the floor of the room above. Behind me, Gibson was saying, “Mind, there’s nothing wrong with the old butts … when they were built, they were built to last … they’re just a wee bit overgrown.”