And we are, therefore, delighted to be able to add Lady Sybill’s illustrious name to the list of Trustees. We feel sure it is what the Colonel would have wished.
Kirsty read the letter from Sir John Banniman, London solicitor to the Trust, several times. Lady Sybill to replace the Colonel! She shook her head as if to brush away the pain that thinking of either of them always brought.
‘Bad news, Kirsty?’
She looked up and smiled at her old friend, now her colleague, Bob Cargill. ‘No, not really. Lady Sybill Granville-Baker has been persuaded to lend her name and title, I suppose, to the School Trust. I really don’t want to see her here, at any time. Her one and only visit was not a success.’
She looked at him again, taking time to register how much his appearance had improved in the last two years. He was heavier and his face was no longer so lined with pain. His eyes were clearer and either he had bought a suit to fit his filled-out frame, or good food and rest had allowed him to fit into clothes that for too long had merely draped his bent body.
‘I don’t know how I could have borne the last few years without you, Bob,’ she said suddenly. ‘You have been such a tower of strength.’
‘We’ve helped one another, Kirsty. For a time there, I thought I would never be really useful again, and to have this job and a home, and feel that I’m really playing my part and not just being tolerated . . .’
‘Tolerated? What would the school do without you?’ Bob not only took the senior class but coached a French club, and the football team that Sergeant Kinloch had finally been able to put together. The sight of her old friend running swiftly down the side of the field, his good arm waving enthusiastically, warmed Kirsty’s heart often. He had been a source of reliability right from the start and had even, fortuitously, been on the premises when Matthew Matthews brought the news of the Colonel’s death.
It had been Bob, not Matt, who had comforted her. He had sent a boy upstairs for Jessie, and had sat beside her holding her in the circle of his one good arm until Jessie had appeared.
‘I’m sorry,’ Matt had said somewhat stiffly as he stood awkwardly looking down at them. ‘I don’t know you, do I?’
‘Mrs Cameron hired me to take the third class,’ Bob had answered easily, ‘but we have known one another . . .’ He had broken off and looked down at Kirsty in amazement, ‘Good gracious, Kirsty, for half our lives.’
‘How good that you were here today,’ Matt said seriously. ‘The Colonel meant a great deal to Mrs Cameron.’
At that Kirsty had stood up out of the shelter of Bob’s arm and looked at the lawyer challengingly. ‘Yes, he did, a very great deal.’
‘I’m sorry, Kirsty. I have wanted to come back often to apologize . . .’
‘This isn’t the time or the place, Matt, and what you thought really doesn’t matter.’
He moved as if to continue speaking but just then Jessie arrived.
‘Matt, you here? Kirsty, what’s happened, what’s wrong?’
When the sad news had been broken to her, it was the ever practical Jessie who remembered what Kirsty had completely forgotten. ‘But Jamie-John? What difference will this make to him?’
‘Jamie-John?’ Bob asked.
‘My son, Bob. The Colonel was his grandfather.’
*
And now, two years later, Bob was more a part of Kirsty’s life than he had ever been. She avoided thinking about how much he had come to mean to her. He was friendly, but always there seemed to be some barrier between them. Was it that she was the head teacher of the school, or was it something to do with his disability? She didn’t know, and couldn’t ask. All she knew was that, every day, more and more, she depended on him. If he was ill she worried – inordinately, she told herself, and tried to assure herself that she was concerned only for the smooth running of the school. There were now four permanent teachers: Meg had charge of the babies, but would change this year to the middle class because Kirsty did not want Jamie-John to be taught by his own mother; Kirsty herself, who would take the four youngest children; Bob, who had charge of the senior class, and Mrs Irene Pacholek, the widow of a Polish soldier. Irene had the second oldest group; this class included her own daughter, Olga, who had been the school’s first girl. At the new term there would be six girls of all ages. Miss Purdy was too frail now for much teaching, but her sitting room was always open to the children and usually Kirsty would find one or two there whenever she herself went to call.
Now she stood up as she heard Sergeant Kinloch running down the stairs outside. That meant he was off to ring the bell for the end of playtime.
‘Having the babes next year, Kirsty, will give you more time for administration. You’ve hardly touched that tea, and you always did enjoy a nice cup of tea.’
Kirsty walked with Bob to the door and realized again how many memories they shared: classes in the gloomy old school, hot buttered baps and mugs of strong, sweet tea in the janitor’s room. Mr McGillivray had died last year and she had given the school a half-holiday so that she and Bob could attend the funeral. Miss McNeil had been there, and Mrs Buchanan, and Kirsty had had to steel herself to speak to them, so frightening were the memories that the sight of them conjured up.
‘Well, you landed in a honeypot, didn’t you, Miss Robertson, or . . . it’s Mrs Something or other – not Cargill, though, one of your other . . . friends.’
Miss McNeil had lost none of her charm.
‘I heard you were running that school for orphans at the castle, Kirsty.’ Mrs Buchanan steered the conversation. ‘Well done! Are you a political activist too, like Miss McNeil here?’
‘I did intend to get involved, Mrs Buchanan, but the school and my son take all my time.’
And then she was able to chat quite naturally about Jamie-John, and the awkward meeting was over and they could make their way to the High Street to have tea before their train.
Now Jamie-John was almost nine and, had the Colonel lived, she might have been looking at a different prep school for him, for it was unlikely that the breadth of experience provided by the Aberannoch Castle School would have been enough for entry to Eton. She looked at her son as he raced with his classmates to the lines. Was it only her maternal pride or did he really stand out from the others? There was just something about the set of his head, about the directness of his look, an assurance, that set him apart.
That’s because his mother is the head teacher, she told herself, not because he is special.
At lunchtime she climbed the stairs to Miss Purdy’s room to share the communication from Sir John.
‘Will her being on the Board bring back all the unpleasantness of her allegations, Kirsty?’
‘No, it shouldn’t. I doubt that we’ll ever see her ladyship. She didn’t like the castle when it was hers to live in, and I can hardly see her popping up here to worry about the welfare of penniless orphans. But never mind Lady Sybill. How are you today?’
‘Better than anyone my age has any right to be, but I have been thinking that I’m not really earning my keep these days. I should be put out to grass like an old horse.’
‘You are out to grass, my dear,’ Kirsty said affectionately, ‘sitting here, night after night, listening to the boys and now the girls . . .’
Miss Purdy became almost animated. ‘Oh, I do enjoy having girls around. It puts me in mind of my niece, the one who has my house. Did you know that Olga Pacholek is smitten with Dougie Taylor?’
‘Olga is only nine!’ Kirsty was scandalized.
‘And Dougie is eleven and breaking her little heart, which reminds me. Are you still seeing that nice Mr Matthews?’
‘I’m having dinner with him on Friday evening.’
‘That’s nice,’ said Miss Purdy complacently. ‘There’s nothing like having dinner with one man to make another man jealous.’
Kirsty felt a blush creep up her neck and she moved over to the window, ostensibly to watch the children in the walled garden. Olga Pacholek was indeed following Dougie Taylor around. How did the old woman, who never moved from her room and only rarely from her chair, know so much of what was going on around her? She decided to ignore her remark, which had been thrown like a bone to a dog. This dog was refusing to pick it up.
She thought about it later though. Since the Colonel’s death, Matt had been seen more and more often at the school. He had apologized to Kirsty for all his suspicions. Yes, he admitted, it had occurred to him that the Colonel was Jamie-John’s father, and he had wondered too if Jamie Cameron had had reason to believe that he himself was the child’s father.
‘But the more I got to know you, Kirsty, and the more fond of you I became, the less I believed that,’ he had said.
‘My husband knew the truth about Jamie.’ She would say no more. She would not explain that she and Jamie had never lived together as man and wife. She would not tell anyone that real love for her husband had been growing strong and sure when he had been cut down.
She was obliged to see Matt, she told herself. He was the school’s lawyer, Sir John Banniman’s local representative. She could forgive him his suspicions, could even understand them. The meetings to discuss school matters – like Bob’s contract, or later Irene Pacholek’s – were held in the beautifully furnished panelled drawing room of the castle. Kirsty was glad that the room had never been changed. She could sometimes feel the Colonel’s presence there. No, she did not believe that a friendly ghost visited her: it was just that some aura seemed to remain there, some strength of feeling. The same feeling existed, from another source, in Jamie-John’s bedroom and in the Dell.
‘You wish you could feel their presence, Kirsty, and so you do,’ her practical side told her.
*
‘Matt . . . Mr Matthews is here, Mummy.’ Jamie-John burst into the room and then he stopped stock-still to look at her. ‘You do look nice. Why are you putting on your best frock? Can I ask him for a run in the car?’
‘Thank you. I’m going out to dinner. No, lamb. Mr Matthews and I are driving all the way to Montrose for dinner, and it’s time you were in bed.’
To her surprise Kirsty saw her young son glare mutinously at her, his hands on his hips. Unconsciously she smiled. Because he was so thin, it was hard to even find his hip bones.
‘A carpenter’s dream, oor Jamie-John,’ laughed Mr Seaton, the school’s custodian. ‘A right two b’four, J-J, and no’ a knot in sicht.’
But Jamie-John was not amused. ‘Why are you going out to dinner with him? Grannie made us a nice dinner.’
‘Come on, lamb. Is Mr Matthews in the drawing room? We’ll go and say “Hello” and then I’ll pop you into bed. Grannie will read you a story tonight.’
‘Grannie reads soppy stories. I’m going to Mr Cargill’s flat.’ He turned and made to run off towards the stable wing and she caught his arm.
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘It’s bedtime, Jamie-John, and if you don’t want one of Grannie’s nice stories then you can go to sleep without.’
He went with her unwillingly and, for the first time in his life, turned his head away deliberately when she bent to kiss him.
She said nothing except, ‘Good night, Jamie-John,’ and went downstairs to meet Matt.
He rose as she entered the room, a growing smile on his face. ‘My, you look good enough to eat, Mrs Cameron,’ he said, ‘but there’s a tiny frown. Anything I can do?’
‘It’s nothing, Matt,’ said Kirsty firmly and thrust her son’s aggressive behaviour to the back of her mind.
As always, she enjoyed the drive up the coast to the old town of Montrose. Tonight the sea lay on her right like a placid pond and the old castles that dotted the rugged coastline stood out proudly. The wheat and barley were ripening in the fields. Everything in the world was lovely – except Lady Sybill’s unwelcome advent and Jamie-John’s out-of-character behaviour. She did not know that she sighed.
Matt reached out and lightly covered her hand. ‘What’s wrong, Kirsty?’
She could hardly tell him the truth, if there was a truth there yet, that she was feeling herself more and more drawn to a man who avoided every opportunity that was given him to take their relationship a stage further.
‘It’s having Lady Sybill on the Board, I suppose. And then there was Jamie-John. He seemed jealous of our outing and he’s usually such a sunny person.’
Matt avoided talk of Kirsty’s son. ‘Lady Sybill shouldn’t cause any embarrassment. I doubt we’ll even see her in Scotland.’
There he was wrong.
*
Lady Sybill Granville-Baker had actively campaigned to be given a position on the school Board of Governors. Her husband’s death had not, as one would have thought, made everything easy for her. Colonel Granville-Baker had taken several days to die, and it was his wife who had sat hour after hour beside the battered wreck of what had once been a strong and good man. He had regained consciousness two days after the accident and she had even hoped that he might recover. The doctors muttered things like ‘massive internal injuries’. She heard them speak of irreparable damage to the spleen, to the spinal column.
‘Hugo is very strong,’ she reminded their own doctor, ‘and very, very determined.’
He shook his head. ‘Quite frankly, Sybill, I wish he had gone immediately. He’s suffering intense pain.’
‘He’s completely rational.’
It had not lasted, however. The Colonel had lapsed into unconsciousness and his wife had hardly been aware of the moment when his last tenuous hold on life was released. She had been unprepared for the violence of her grief. When their son had died there had been no guilt, but grief compounded by guilt was almost insupportable. She sat for hours looking through snapshots of the young Hugo.
‘This is morbid, Sybill,’ her friends and family told her. ‘You must build a new life for yourself. You’re still young.’
Build a life? On what? No child, no husband. She refused to give her faithful Arthur any hope that they would marry soon, and she had lost all interest in pleasant dalliance.
‘You need some outside interest,’ said her family, but Lady Sybill sat surrounded by photographs of her husband and then of her son, and to these mementoes she added school reports and letters, and always and always her husband’s few last halting words tumbled around in her head.
The other members of the Trust were surprised to discover that their new member intended to be quite active. They had expected only her name and its connections with her nephew, one of England’s premier earls.
‘I am going to Scotland. In August it’s really quite fashionable.’ There was the difficulty of finding a suitable hotel. Really, the Scots were still so very, very uncivilized. One was eventually found, however, and in mid-August, just as the school was in a perfect turmoil, Lady Sybill Granville-Baker was announced. Kirsty thanked whatever good fairy had been in the castle that morning that it was Jessie who answered the imperious ringing of the doorbell. She had shown Lady Sybill into the library and gone to find Kirsty. Alice would have led Lady Sybill right to the school floor, where Kirsty in an apron and mob cap worked with the cleaners at getting a new classroom ready.
‘Why did I choose this tatty old frock this morning?’ Kirsty sighed as she pulled off her apron and cap and hurried downstairs to meet her illustrious but unwelcome guest.
Lady Sybill was standing before the fireplace and she turned when Kirsty entered.
‘I always did wonder why Hugo left this portrait,’ she said as she moved forward to greet Kirsty, but she went on as if she did not expect an answer. ‘I think my late husband would have wished me to continue his interest in the school, Mrs Cameron. Perhaps I should have telephoned? You are on the telephone?’
‘Yes, Lady Sybill, but I am quite happy to show you round. The Trust has found six girls this year, and therefore we need another dormitory and a fourth classroom.’
‘No children are here at the moment then?’
‘Little Olga Pacholek is here – her mother is a new teacher and is helping me with classrooms – and my own son. They’re playing somewhere in the gardens.’
‘Then if I’m not interrupting too terribly much, I should like to see the school.’
Kirsty tried to cleanse from her mind all memory of the last time she had seen Lady Sybill. ‘This is a normal inspection tour,’ she told herself. ‘She has said nothing about Jamie-John, and perhaps that reference to a valuable family portrait shows that she knows about Jamie-John . . . and perhaps it doesn’t.’
They toured the classrooms, dormitories, dining rooms, kitchens and bathrooms, and Kirsty took a malicious and unworthy pleasure in noting the unsuitability of Lady Sybill’s shoes for so much walking.
‘Would you like to see the play area in the gardens, Lady Sybill? We have our own football team now and we even play against other schools. We always lose because our team members are all different ages, but the boys enjoy the challenge.’
‘Another day, perhaps, Mrs Cameron. I would like that coffee you promised.’
They went to the library where Jessie had set up a small table and a tray.
‘Goodness. Was it only my personal things that the Colonel removed?’ asked Lady Sybill, looking in astonishment at the silver coffee service.
‘The silver belongs to the Trust, Lady Sybill,’ answered Kirsty easily, ‘and is only used to entertain honoured guests. The cloth, of course, was embroidered by my mother. Her Majesty was kind enough to admire it.’
‘We were all conscious of Mrs Robertson’s undoubted skill,’ said Lady Sybill, neatly allying herself with the wife of the Sovereign. ‘But I really must go and let you return to your endeavours.’ She rose gracefully.
‘I’ll never be able to slide out of a chair like that,’ thought Kirsty as she rang the bell for Alice to bring her ladyship’s furs.
There was no response to the bell.
‘Same girl, I take it, Mrs Cameron,’ said Lady Sybill, but there was a smile of genuine amusement and not malice on her face.
‘She really has improved,’ said Kirsty as she went to the door to see what was keeping the maid.
Jamie-John and Olga were in the narrow hallway and each was draped in expensive fox tails. They minced along towards one another – Olga in a pair of high heels that Kirsty recognized as being her own – bowed grandly to each other and then tossed the furs around their small necks with gay abandon. Alice was vainly trying to separate them from the furs but, since she was laughing more than she was scolding, the children were paying little attention to her.
‘Jamie-John Cameron!’ said Kirsty in her most severe headmistress voice and the children stood transfixed and gazed at the adults.
‘Let me show you, Olga. It is Olga, isn’t it? said Lady Sybill and she took the furs from the children and draped one elegantly around the neck of her exquisitely cut frock. ‘One to wear, and one to drag,’ and she walked off down the hallway to the stairs with the second fox tail trailing along behind her.
Kirsty was as surprised as the children, and her guest had almost reached the front door before she caught up with her to show her out.
‘Don’t be too cross, Mrs Cameron,’ said Lady Sybill as Kirsty apologized profusely. ‘Children are all the same, aren’t they? I’ll come back to see the football ground. We must think about cricket. I think boys like cricket, don’t they?’
The chauffeur opened the door for her and Kirsty stood and watched until the car was out of sight.