MATT ASKED KIRSTY TO marry him in May 1922.
‘I won’t give up asking,’ he said when he had received her negative answer, ‘until you tell me that there is someone else. There isn’t anyone else, is there?’
‘Matt? Who would you suggest? One of the gardeners? Sergeant Kinloch?’
‘The Colonel,’ he said almost defiantly.
She was shocked and stared at him in disbelief. The Colonel was old; he was Hugh’s father, Jamie-John’s grandfather. Matt couldn’t know that, of course. ‘The Colonel is already married, or didn’t you know?’
‘It’s a shaky marriage, from what I hear. And he has been spending a great deal of time here since he retired.’
‘This was his home, Matt. It was an extremely generous gift and, naturally, he wants to keep an eye on things.’
‘That’s why the Trust hired me,’ he said pettishly and then, ‘Forgive me, Kirsty, I’m being silly. It’s just that my mother thinks I’m wonderful and she can’t understand why I haven’t been snapped up.’
Kirsty knew that Matt’s fiancée had been unable to bear his long absence during the war and had married someone else. Matt, too, was a casualty of the war. She looked at him measuringly.
‘You would be, or will be, if you stop wasting your time with me.’
‘I’m not sure that I’m wasting my time.’
She could not explain about the letter, the letter that had confirmed that Hugh had loved her, that she had seen him and heard him speak to her in the Dell days after his death. That was love, and she had been preparing to settle for second best. No, she couldn’t do that, to herself or to Matt. She liked him, admired him, respected him, but he did not make her heart race the way Hugh had been able to do. He did not fill her being with gentleness and promise the way Jamie had begun to do.
‘Give both of us a chance, Matt. Come as often as you need to, on business . . .’
‘But, otherwise, stay away.’
She nodded sadly. ‘Yes.’
When she found that he had taken her at her word, she missed him. ‘You miss having an escort to the theatre. You miss being taken out to dinner. And that’s all you miss, Kirsty. You don’t really miss Matt at all,’ she told herself.
She set herself to composing an advertisement for The Times and the Scotsman. There would be another class in September and she would need another teacher, a man perhaps. A married man could have the flat over the converted coach house. One day they would have a school shooting brake; they would need to take the boys on outings, or to the football matches Sergeant Kinloch talked about.
She heard the sound of scurrying feet. If that was Alice, the maid, and not one of the boys, she would be quite cross. Alice really must learn to walk sedately, no matter who her visitor was. There was the expected knock at the door.
‘I know my way, girl. This is my house,’ said a voice that Kirsty recognized immediately, although she had never before heard it. She rose, trembling, to her feet and forced back the terror the voice had evoked. Why should a visit from Lady Sybill worry her?
‘Thank you, Alice. Please ask Mrs Robertson for some tea.’
The girl curtseyed and withdrew and Kirsty was left confronting, for the first time, Hugh’s mother.
Lady Sybill smiled. ‘Forgive me, Mrs Cameron, I should have said “was my house”, I suppose, but bumbling servants do distress one so. I hope you had someone a little more au fait when the dear Queen visited.’
‘Her Majesty didn’t appear . . . distressed by Alice, nor Alice by Her Majesty.’
Reluctant admiration appeared for a moment in Lady Sybill’s eyes.
‘I am Sybill Granville-Baker.’
‘What can I do for you, Lady Sybill? I should be more than happy to conduct you round the school. We are very conscious of your generosity in gifting us the building.’
‘Not my generosity, girl. Not a penny of my money ever went into the place and Hugo removed all my furniture, every last little piece. He always was so honourable, my wonderful husband. No, I wanted to meet you.’ She sat down in the chair Kirsty indicated, disposing of her coat and bag in an effortlessly elegant gesture. ‘You’re much younger than I imagined. Actually, I’m surprised at Hugo. Well, we haven’t had much of a marriage since the war, nothing since the boy . . . died, but I would have thought someone a bit older, his own class. It’s the novelty, I suppose. They do say men get . . . peculiar as they get older, but Hugo? I could have sworn he was the type to tear out any unworthy thoughts – you know, like a medieval knight, lying on his belly on a cold altar to defeat the urges of the flesh.’
Kirsty rose to her feet. Whatever she had expected from Lady Sybill’s visit, it was not this.
‘I must ask you to leave, Lady Sybill. I will not sit here and listen to such vilification of one of the noblest . . .’ She got no further, for the door opened and the tea and Jamie-John arrived together.
‘Mummy, there’s a super car . . .’ He stopped on seeing Lady Sybill and then turned his blue eyes on his mother’s visitor and awarded her a beautiful smile. He well knew how to earn himself a drive in that marvellous machine – but his charm did not work this time. Lady Sybill was looking at him, not in shocked realization but in anger.
‘You slut,’ she said in a low voice to Kirsty. ‘I never dreamed . . . and Hugo . . . Hugo, the pure, the undefiled.’ She swept up her belongings which she had draped so negligently on her chair and pushed past the gaping Alice. ‘You’ll hear from my lawyers, Mrs Cameron.’
‘What’s a slut, Mummy?’ asked Jamie-John.
*
‘Matt’s a lawyer. Perhaps you should talk to him?’ Jessie was furious. ‘Oh, if I’d been there . . .’
In spite of her deep fear and worry, Kirsty smiled. She could not imagine her gentle mother who had so loved ‘the right people’, Lady Sybill’s people, squaring up to anyone.
‘I keep hoping it will go away, like a bad cold or a headache. That’s been a weakness of mine all my life, Mother, trying to pretend that the awful thing that is happening isn’t really happening at all. At least I faced the fact that Hugh was dead.’ Her voice dropped so low that Jessie could barely hear it. ‘And now Hugh’s mother is calling me a slut. She’s the third person to call me that, and it’s not true. First, old Buchanan because I let Bob Cargill walk me home, then Jamie’s mother and now Lady Sybill. I looked it up in a dictionary. It says a slut is an immoral woman. Am I immoral? I suppose some people would say I am. You’ve never said so, or Jamie, or the Colonel.’
‘Of course you’re not immoral, Kirsty.’
‘I wasn’t married to Hugh.’ Kirsty paced across the beautiful room, the room which had so recently echoed to Lady Sybill’s cruel words, and looked out of the windows. Boys were playing on the lawns. One, Alfie Briggs, was sitting with his back against the old sun-warmed wall, and he was reading. He was reading the new comic, the Hotspur, that the big Dundee company, Thomson Leng, had commissioned in order to give jobs to men coming back from the war. Alfie was unaware of the football that narrowly missed his head, and for a few minutes he had forgotten the misery that was his home life.
‘She’ll spoil it for Alfie and the others, Mother. She’ll make it all dirty and horrible, and the school will close because of the scandal. Why should she want to hurt the Colonel this way?’
‘I don’t know, Kirsty.’ Jessie had no experience of unhappy marriage. She said again, ‘Please tell Matt.’
Later Kirsty sat by her son and watched him as he slept. The blue eyes were closed but he still looked like Hugh, like the Colonel. It was the hair, the shape of the head, the ears. ‘I thought she might be broken-hearted when she saw you, my lamb,’ the words went round and round in her head, ‘but it was anger on her face, not unhappiness. She can’t really believe the Colonel is your father. On the train south she is bound to have worked it all out, but Matt’s coming tomorrow and we’ll tell him everything.’ She winced as if with pain, for Matt would have to be told about Hugh. She looked carefully at the sleeping child. ‘Perhaps he knows already.’
*
Matt bounded up the stairs to greet her, but one look at her face told him that he was not here to receive good news.
‘Kirsty, what is it?’ he asked. ‘You look as if you haven’t slept.’
‘I haven’t, Matt, and I’m sorry to drag you into this mess, but I wasn’t able to contact the Colonel last night . . .’
‘I had a telegram from his office this morning. He’s on his way. What on earth is this about?’
‘Lady Sybill came . . .’ Kirsty stood up abruptly and walked to the window, to the solace of the gardens. No, she had to face Matt; she had to see his face, the anger, the scorn, the derision. She turned again. ‘She thinks Jamie-John is the Colonel’s child. I don’t know what she means to do, but she’s planning something.’
‘Divorce,’ said Matt quietly.
‘Divorce,’ Kirsty echoed.
‘Yes. It’s common knowledge that the marriage has been a sham for some time. Now Lady Sybill has seen a way to become the injured party. She wants a divorce with her name unsullied.’ He stood up, avoiding looking at Kirsty. ‘Perhaps it would be better if we wait for the Colonel? Obviously she or her lawyers have already been in touch. He might prefer that you both consult a lawyer more versed in this kind of litigation.’
‘Both. Oh, Matt, you don’t believe it, do you?’
‘I honestly never thought about it before. We did think it odd that the Trust should choose such a young woman, but you were a war widow and you were qualified, and everything in the school has gone so well. You seemed to justify the Colonel’s faith in you. You worked so damned hard those first few months, and since, of course. But a scandal involving the head teacher and the Chairman of the Trust . . .’
‘Colonel Granville-Baker is the noblest, kindest man I have ever met, Matt. And you know me. You must know that nothing has ever happened between us.’
‘Jamie-John?’
‘Is his grandson.’ There, she had said it out loud for the first time.
He was looking at her so oddly. What was he thinking?
‘I think the best thing would be to wait for the Colonel, Mrs Cameron,’ he said stiffly.
‘Mrs Cameron?’ And then she understood. He was like Jamie’s mother, making the same calculations, the same judgements, probably wondering too if Jamie knew about the child’s parentage or if he had been able to believe that he himself was the father. She drew herself up scornfully.
‘You’re right, Mr Matthews. It would be better if you left.’
‘Try to understand, Kirsty. I wanted to marry you.’
‘I was married, Mr Matthews, to a truly good and noble man. I’m ashamed that I ever considered settling for anything less.’
He winced as if he had been physically struck and she rejoiced as she turned back to the window and let him leave by himself. There were other lawyers who would not make moral judgements. She would wait for the Colonel, and for the first time they would have to really discuss Jamie-John’s parentage. For the sake of the school she might have to leave, but surely Lady Sybill would not proceed with her action when she learned the truth.
There was another scratching at the door. Alice really would have to learn if she was to stay on. Oh, God, would there be a school for her to stay on in?
She summoned a smile. No one, children or frightened little servants, learned when they were afraid.
‘Yes, Alice?’
‘There’s a gentleman, ma’am, come about a job.’
But the advertisement had not even been received at the newspaper offices yet.
‘Show him in, Alice.’ Perhaps it was yet another former soldier looking for something, anything. Could she hire anyone? Proceed as normal, Kirsty.
There was something familiar about the tall, too-thin man who limped into her office and held out his left hand. He had no right arm. The eyes that looked into hers were still shadowed by pain and fear.
‘Good morning, Mrs Cameron. I am a fully qualified teacher. I have been abroad for some years and now can also offer you French and Italian. Three teachers for the price of one!’
A ghost of an old grin, that she struggled to recognize, played across those tormented eyes.
‘Bob,’ she whispered incredulously as she put out both her hands to take the one offered her. ‘Bob Cargill?’
He came closer to stare into her face. The eyes lit up for a moment with pure joy.
‘Kirsty?’ he breathed. ‘You’re no’ telling me it’s wee Kirsty Robertson!’