‘There was someone rattling the door out here!’
‘There are watchmen all over the estate! You were down there with the lights on and the house wide open at two o’clock in the morning, waking your grandmother and all the rest of us right above you – of course they’re checking the doors!’
‘Well, it scared me,’ I said petulantly. ‘I thought he might still be about. I didn’t see him go.’
‘He’ll have gone around to the front of the house. You won’t frighten off intruders singing Border ballads! Come to bed!’
I wished quite suddenly I was tucked up in my narrow iron cot in the crowded room my grandfather was born and died in.
‘But when I go back to the reception hall so I can come upstairs, whoever it is will be testing the front door …’
My voice was still quavering a little. Thank goodness Jamie was upstairs in his servant’s garret; otherwise I’d never live down his mockery of my lack of fighting spirit.
‘I’ll come and get you,’ my mother said with resignation, as if I were ten years younger.
‘I’ll come myself,’ I said with dignity, bearing in mind the bold reputation of my glorious ancestors.
What a thing to be afraid of, I scolded myself; but I stood on a chair to bolt the terrace doors behind me at the top too, when I came in. I didn’t hear anybody try the front door.
I didn’t think the shadow I’d seen had the look of a nightwatchman. He’d been missing something watchman-like. Where was the torch, the inevitable cigarette, the peaked cap?
But that wasn’t what was nagging at me; it had been something more fleeting.
Where was the confidence?
8
RATHER A LOT OF GIVING AND TAKING
The car conversation went something like this:
ME: Mother, would you let me drive your car, like you did at Christmas?
MUMMY: I expect so. But I haven’t a great deal of time to teach you.
ME: I could go around the grounds, like Jamie and I do at home in the big car.
MUMMY: I expect so …
ME: And if you thought I wasn’t too bad, I could take Euan to work. The Water Bailiff …
(Here I inserted a list of unfounded grievances against the McEwens in general and Euan in particular.)
ME: I wouldn’t be going far. Just back and forth on the Perth Road between here and Inchfort Field, through Brig O’Fearn.
MUMMY: Hmmnn … you haven’t got a licence for being on the road, darling.
ME: It’s only one road and almost all through country. It’s wide and flat all the way except the last bit of lane that leads down to the library, but that’s never got traffic on it. And it would save the McEwens ever so much time and trouble.
MUMMY: I shall make you change the oil in it yourself to prove your commitment to the safety of my motor.
So I twisted Mother’s arm enough to let me take her sedately up and down the drive in the Magnette the next day, in and out among the new dormitories, proving I was not a reckless idiot. It was still raining and we did not stay out for long, hurrying to get the open-topped car back under cover.
The grown-ups were trying to soldier on as usual and were pestering me about clothes that evening after the driving lesson with Mother. Solange in particular, trying to recover from her sordid past, wanted to see me looking like a respectable young lady again.
‘We ought to buy Julia some everyday things, at least. Yours are too big for her, Madame,’ she told Mother.
‘She has clothes!’ Jamie said. ‘I brought all her favourite things down from Craig Castle!’
‘The Schiaparelli blouse Lord Craigie will not allow her to appear in at dinner!’ Solange exclaimed. ‘It is sheer. She has nothing to wear beneath it. O, seigneur … Imagine, in this house, with the workmen coming and going! And there is the Vionnet frock with the silver thread all down the front.’
‘I do love that one though,’ Mother said. ‘It’s modest, but it makes her look very grown up.’
I put in: ‘It would make her look silly on the river path if she wore it to visit Mary or the McEwens.’
Really, did we need to argue about getting me some decent clothes? When did we become so frugal?
‘I bet the McEwens could get me something to wear,’ I said. ‘They do a trade in old clothes.’
Mémère suddenly spoke up. ‘I have made you an appointment with my seamstress in Perth, Julia.’
‘You need a party frock,’ Mother reminded me. ‘For your birthday. Mrs Menzies has very kindly offered to hold a ceilidh for you at Glenmoredun Castle after the grouse shoot on the Twelfth. It’s only a month off now. It won’t be big, but your father will come down – he’s going to let Davie manage the Craig Castle shoot, and I can’t be in two places at once organising things – and we must do something for your sixteenth. It’s always awkward your birthday falling on Opening Day.’
‘Mother, whose fault is that?’ Jamie teased.
It was awkward. I rarely got decent attention on my birthday, since everyone was always so focused on killing birds. A birthday dance at Glenmoredun Castle would be marvellous, especially after the gloom that had been shadowing us all summer – even if everyone was exhausted after tramping about on the moors all day. Very nice of Mrs Menzies and her husband the Laird of Moredun, though I am sure it was partly out of respect for Grandad and sympathy for Mémère. I had been looking forward to a grown-up frock without tartan ruffles on my sixteenth birthday, and sweeping my hair up in a French chignon like Mémère’s, since forever.
Oh blast it, I thought, remembering. My hair. Blast and drat.
Well, there’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip, for although I was determined to be a good girl when they took me into Perth to be measured (and I was looking forward to demanding powder-blue silk), the following day again I did something I ought not have done (and it had nothing to do with Mummy’s car).
That was the morning it finally stopped raining: the morning when Euan would start going to work digging on the pipeline for the new Glenfearn School swimming pool. The sun was out for the first time in glory knows how long, and it was a stunningly and unexpectedly beautiful summer’s day, everything sparkling. There was only room for two in the Magnette, so Jamie couldn’t come along when I went to collect Euan. Instead, Jamie gallantly offered to help Mother escort Mémère and her entourage to Edinburgh again. I did not envy him that job.