And I caught Frank’s eye. He was silently imploring me to switch sides, to defend him.
I pitched my voice as low and level as it would go, trying to sound like Marlene Dietrich, and said slowly, ‘Wouldn’t the Glenfearn School itself want to save what’s there of the log boat if it can be saved? Can’t you ask the trustees if they’ll help? Perhaps let Sandy direct a few men from the site, and see if any of the boat can be salvaged?’
Sandy slammed the Proceedings flat on the table where the post gets left, a metaphoric gauntlet.
‘Yes, I can do that,’ Frank said gratefully. ‘I’ll ring tomorrow morning.’
Sandy didn’t move.
‘I’ll ask if they’ll pay for any outside expertise you might need.’
Sandy didn’t say anything. He nodded, turned on his heel and stalked back out through the front door, which stood open as usual; we could see him heading for the river.
Heading, I felt sure, for Mary, who would understand, and who would never tell a soul if he wept over it.
‘Come, Colette, Mémère will be waiting for this and it’s getting cold.’ Jamie beckoned with his head, and Colette followed him away from the reception hall towards the morning room.
The little audience of workmen slunk back to whatever it was they’d been doing, and – without expecting it – Frank and I were left on our own.
‘Thank you,’ he said softly. ‘It is my fault, I suppose …’
I took the three long steps that brought me next to him, snatched his hand in mine and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the chin – it was as high as I could reach.
‘How can it possibly be your fault?’
He tilted his face carefully away from mine, but didn’t let go of my hand. God. I felt traitorously disloyal to my Murray bloodline. Dunbar’s palm was cold and dry. Mine, I thought, must feel like a quiet flame against his. Better not try to kiss him again.
After a moment he turned back to look down at me, his eyebrows lowered in a faint frown of baffled unhappiness, and said, ‘If nothing had happened – nothing at all, none of this –’
‘Something would have.’
He changed course so fast it was dizzying.
‘There’s a variety playing at the City Hall in Perth. The trustees gave me a pair of tickets – worrying now that I never stop working. I thought …’
He paused to let me fill in the blank. To let me choose.
Oh, glory, I was tempted. Because why not – why not? If I was a decent, ordinary girl working in a hat shop – if we’d been introduced at a dance or a shoot or a village-hall concert, if we’d played golf at the same club – wouldn’t it have been perfectly all right for him to ask me out? It wouldn’t have to end in marriage, for goodness’ sake. I wouldn’t have minded going to a music-hall variety show in Perth with Francis Dunbar.
But I knew I couldn’t. It wasn’t the age difference, or my being the daughter of an earl, or the fact that I hadn’t yet finished school, though Mother and Father might have pointed to any of those as reasons. It was more … the way the summer had started. Solange’s sad affair shadowing everything. My virtue being in question behind my back. I had to walk the tightrope without drink.
I think he knew it too.
At any rate I was damned if I’d give away my game by finishing his sentence. If he wanted to take me to a show he could jolly well ask me himself.
He sighed. He didn’t let go of my hand; I got the impression he’d forgotten it was there, or felt so comfortable holding it in his that it didn’t occur to him he shouldn’t really be doing it.
He said, ‘I thought you and Jamie might like to go.’
‘But they’re yours!’
‘I’d like to give them to you,’ he said quietly. ‘I owe you something.’
And remembering what Ellen had said about giving, I had to take them.
14
THOSE ARE PEARLS THAT WERE HIS EYES
Sandy press-ganged me and Jamie out to the riverbank with him at dawn the next morning armed with trowels loaned us by Francis Dunbar, so we could try to salvage pieces of boat. Mother brought us breakfast – bread and jam and a flask of coffee – in a willow basket that I’m sure she bought from Jean McEwen.
The work was messy and dispiriting. Being the one with the smallest hands and the lightest touch, I was supposed to move the clammy slabs of decaying wood at Sandy’s direction; Jamie was required to draw pictures. But everything I touched seemed to crumble. Pinkie lurked some distance away panting and sulking on her belly, unwilling to come anywhere near this project.
By about nine o’clock the sun was high and a few reporters had turned up again, along with a small crowd of intrigued citizens from Perth and Brig O’Fearn village who’d seen last night’s papers. I spotted the photographer from the Mercury whom I’d admired, and waved her over.
‘Can you take close photographs of these bits and pieces? Can you do a lot of them – not for publication but to record it before it falls apart?’
She looked surprised. ‘Do you really –?’
She glanced at Sandy, mud-streaked and carrying with him an air of weary gloom as though he’d already been on his feet for a solid day. ‘Show me what you need.’
There was also more than one terrifically annoying urchin who wanted very much to nick bits of archaeological treasure. I tried to keep a wary eye on the crowd. There was someone at the back trying awkwardly to get a bicycle past everyone else standing gawping on the river path; the bicycle had a wide basket attached to the front handlebars and a great tin washtub strapped over the rear wheel. Pinkie suddenly exploded in joy like a demonic buttery rocket and launched herself at the bicycle.
I mean, at the person in charge of the bicycle.
It was Ellen.
I recognised her myself a moment later. Jamie said I looked just as excited and silly as Pinkie as we leaped to greet her. Perhaps he was jealous that I got there first.
Ellen had to lower the laden bicycle into the undergrowth so she had her hands free to manage both me and the dog.
She’d only been gone three days, I realised later – it felt like I hadn’t seen her for a month.
‘Pinkie, ye’re tiresome. All right, Jamie? Julie –’
Her stormcloud-blue eyes danced.
‘I had to come back for the dog,’ she said.
‘You never,’ I accused. ‘You came back for the log boat!’
‘Daddy might have mentioned it to me. He was in the pub in Comrie last night and heard the men talking. And I did want Pinkie back, so I borrowed my uncle’s pushbike and came out here this morning.’
‘It’s thirty miles!’
‘It’s mostly flat. Well, for Perthshire. Straight along the Fearn Valley.’
She got Pinkie subdued, left the bicycle where it lay and we all worked our way past the bystanders back to Sandy.
I told him, ‘This is Ellen McEwen. She’s the one who did the spear-tip drawings for Grandad two years ago, when his eyesight got so bad.’