‘They’ll dry.’
Eventually I won, thanks to the moth-eaten kilt from the nursery bathroom, which we used to line the passenger seat.
‘Did you see anything?’ I asked. ‘Did you see any of it yourself – what they found?’
‘Aye, but I’ll not tell you about it.’
And I didn’t try to get it out of him. After that, Euan sat in absolute silence the whole way back to Inchfort Field. The morning in the sun with Ellen seemed a very long time ago.
I pulled up in front of the field gate. It is easier to turn around in the gravel drive in front of the library than in the narrow lane that runs past Inchfort on its way to Inverfearnie, but I didn’t want to risk getting Euan in trouble with Mary again just by being in the car with me as I reversed, so I dropped him off first.
He started to get out.
‘Euan …’
He waited, sitting next to me with the door open and one leg out of the car.
‘Euan, now that they’ve found Dr Housman and it’s officially an accidental death, the Procurator Fiscal might decide there needs to be an inquiry. If there’s blame to be found, I know they’re going to try to blame you.’
After a moment of absolute silence I heard him swallow.
‘That day you found me – that last time anyone saw Dr Housman alive,’ I reminded him. ‘Do you remember what you did that day?’
Euan nodded.
‘I’ll swear you did nothing but help me,’ I said fiercely. ‘I’ll swear you had nothing to do with whatever happened to Hugh Housman.’
‘I’ll swear you did nothing but fall on your face at my feet,’ Euan said shakily.
We sat quietly for another moment.
‘Meanwhile we just go on as usual,’ I said finally. ‘Shall I come for you tomorrow morning? I wouldn’t blame you if you never went back.’
‘The work’s worthwhile,’ Euan said. ‘And I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ll be waiting for you.’
The next morning, the kilt I’d left in Mummy’s car in the garages overnight had disappeared.
A good many of the lads working on the building site were more ragged than any of the McEwens, and could probably use a well-made kilt, regardless of the moth holes. I was damned if I’d be the one to cast aspersions at anyone. I just knew that the second I said something had gone missing, someone would point a finger at Euan again.
Bloody hypocrites. It made me furious to think that the Glenfearn School builders were blaming Euan for stolen cigarettes. But in the uproar over Hugh Housman’s mutilated body, disappearing kilts and cigarettes didn’t attract the attention of anyone in authority.
Still, I’d miss that kilt. Father mentioned on the ’phone that my trunk had turned up at last, but of course, it was sent home to Craig Castle instead of to Strathfearn. Blast it.
10
LYING ABOUT ONE’S AGE CAN BE A FORM OF ART
Three days after my outing with Ellen I acquired a DRIVING LICENCE. Quite illegally, as I was not yet seventeen (or even sixteen for another month), and it was all down to Mummy. Inspector Milne’s suspicious prying appeared to have awakened her inner Bolshevik, and so I discovered my own lady mother is not above quietly circumventing the law.
‘I wouldn’t do this for just anyone,’ she told me. ‘But Jean McEwen is a good woman and we’ll help her son in any way we can.’
Mummy had the driving examiner from Perth meet us at the Brig O’Fearn railway station. Then she waited on the station platform with Lisette Romilly’s latest novel (in French, of course) for half an hour while I took the examiner for a sedate tour of Brig O’Fearn village. I thought Mother was probably very happy to get a quiet half-hour alone with a book.
She knew I’d pass because she’d already tested me herself. Mother was very thorough. We spent the entire day on the road practising on Sunday; we drove all the way home to Craig Castle and back, had a lovely lunch with Father, and – hurrah! – collected my clothes. Not my trunk, obviously, as it couldn’t possibly go in the Magnette. But proper ordinary clothes that actually fit me. I had no excuse for being Davie Balfour any more.
Driving for twelve hours in a single day, or whatever it was in total, was shattering. I slept most soundly the night before my examination.
Thus, mirabile dictu, I now had documentary proof that I was ‘seventeen’ – apparently approaching my eighteenth birthday – in case Frank Dunbar ever had any serious doubts. I was grown up and comfortable all in an instant, a proper young lady, appropriately dressed, at the wheel of a racing car.
Sandy came up on the train that night. Mummy let me collect him from the railway station when he arrived on Tuesday morning.
He looked straight over my head as he tried to hail a taxi.
‘Sandy!’ I cried.
Surprised, my big brother looked down and found me sitting not ten steps away from him at the wheel of our mother’s motor car.
‘Julie! Great Scott! I didn’t see you!’
‘I’m not as insignificant as that!’ I parried.
‘I saw the car, but it wasn’t Mother driving it, so I thought it couldn’t be hers … Does she know you’ve taken it?’
‘She certainly does,’ I said with pride. ‘She even fibbed to the examiner himself when I got my licence yesterday. For the “Age” box on the form she told him, “Put seventeen – Julia will be seventeen in August”.’
Sandy burst out laughing. ‘That is not technically untrue.’ He bent to kiss me on top of my head. Even up close I don’t think he noticed my hair at all. He hopped irreverently over the side of the car without opening the door, a habit all my brothers share, and rode balancing his worn leather valise on his knees.
I had hoped it would even up the sides in terms of youth and age to have another of my brothers about the place, but in truth Sandy might as well have stayed in London for all we saw of him after that. He stopped in to sleep (up in the former servant’s room in the attic with Jamie), but spent every waking second organising the Murray Hoard at the Inverfearnie Library. He even took his meals there. I couldn’t tell if it was the collection itself, or Mary Kinnaird, that he was so enchanted by. Possibly both.
I had not yet made peace with her.
On the Wednesday after Sandy arrived, the fourth day of Euan’s ditch-digging work, Euan and I passed Mary on her bicycle on the Perth Road as I drove Euan the long way round from Inchfort Field to Strathfearn House. She had her head down, focused on the road ahead of her, and didn’t recognise me at the wheel of Mother’s car.
I didn’t recognise her either; I mean, I didn’t notice. I wasn’t paying attention. But Euan noticed her right away.
‘There’s the librarian getting her messages.’
‘She always does that on a Wednesday morning. She’s early today.’
‘Aye, we’ve seen her before. Dad and I passed her on the day we found you. We were in Brig O’Fearn that morning collecting tin.’