Nursery had not, Zoe gathered, gone well today. Not at all. There appeared to be a bruise mark on Hari’s arm that Tara insisted had been utterly accidental.
But she couldn’t bear to think about what would have happened if she’d had him with her. What if a shard of glass had cut right through him? Hit him in the eye? She felt caught between a rock and a hard place.
Still though, here was something undeniable: as they turned back up the gravel drive, Zoe having driven the entire route at twenty miles an hour, Hari started bouncing up and down in his seat with excitement, and as soon as she stopped the car and unbuckled him, he dived down in glee and charged off round the back to find Patrick.
The idea of Hari doing anything on his own happily was completely new to Zoe, and she watched him for a while as he went, then carefully and tiredly got out herself. It had been a big day and she didn’t feel ready to face the kitchen just yet. Mrs MacGlone came charging out and vanished without as much as a wave.
Zoe took her time. It was now a deep golden-stained afternoon, only the shaken leaves and fallen branches everywhere any reminder that the storm had existed at all.
She lingered in the forecourt and stared up at the engraving over the front door. She hadn’t noticed it before; the letters were so ornate she’d assumed it would be in Latin or something poncey she wouldn’t be able to understand.
But now she could see there were small repeated designs – a fish, a sheaf – and the words, cut in an angular font into the grey sandstone around the door frame: ‘Speuran Talamh Gainmheach Locha’.
She was staring at it when she heard a crunching of heavy feet on the gravel and turned round to see Ramsay coming up behind her. His face was rueful.
‘I . . . I wanted to apologise.’
‘No need,’ said Zoe. ‘I’ve been told not to stick my nose in.’
He rubbed his hand along the back of his neck.
‘I appreciate it may not seem like a conventional set-up.’
Zoe blinked.
‘You can say that again,’ she said.
He sighed and kicked the doorstep.
‘I have . . . I have to work very hard to keep the lights on here.’
Zoe nodded.
‘It . . . well. Things can . . . anyway. Sorry.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Zoe. ‘I spoke out of turn.’
‘No, no. I know what you mean . . . They’re not being too horrible to you?’
Zoe decided it was prudent not to mention the fact that she was fairly sure things were being moved around in her room, and that morning Shackleton had dropped an entire bag of flour on the floor and watched her clear it up as Mary had laughed in her face.
Instead she changed the subject.
‘I hadn’t seen the thing carved over the door before. What does it say?’
‘I never look at it myself,’ confessed Ramsay. ‘But I know. “Sky, sand, loch, land”.’
‘. . . loch and land,’ said Zoe.
‘Actually it’s pronounced locchhhhh,’ said Ramsay making a slightly spitting sound.
‘I know,’ said Zoe. ‘I’m not going to try it – I’ll sound like an idiot. I’m from Bethnal Green.’
‘You’ll sound like a correct idiot, who’s making an effort!’
‘I am making an effort! Look!’
She held up the dripping plastic bag. Lennox had left her some venison steaks.
‘What’s that?’
‘Venison,’ said Zoe. ‘I’m to fry it up with some cloudberries.’
‘Where did you get it?’
Zoe glanced up.
‘Why? Did someone steal it off you?’
Ramsay ran his hands through his hair. ‘Oh, generally speaking. Still, at least you’re in the supply chain. Can you really cook venison?’
Zoe shrugged.
‘Well, someone on YouTube can, so I’m taking it from them.’
There was a slight pause, then Ramsay said, ‘Right, yes, I see,’ in a way that made it instantly clear to Zoe that he didn’t have the faintest idea what she was talking about.
He grimaced.
‘Am I . . . ? I mean, there’s enough cash in the kitty, isn’t there? You’re not having to poach to feed the children or anything?’
‘Oh no, it’s fine,’ said Zoe. ‘Well, if you have any spare?’
His face looked worried and she looked back at the inscription.
‘So. Sky, sand, loch, land. Is it basically just reminding you that you own absolutely everything around you? That you’re the master of all you survey?’
Her tone was lightly mocking.
Ramsay blinked in surprise. The four words were burned into his make-up really; he’d always heard them, repeated as if a grace, and their Latin translation made up their crest of arms. Caelum lacus harena terra.
‘No, quite the opposite,’ he replied, a trifle irritated. ‘It’s to remind you what’s actually all about you, that you’re merely a trespasser on what has always been here and what will always be here. It’s a reminder to treasure it and to look after it, and that worldly things – houses, cups, jewellery, all of that stuff – don’t last and don’t matter.’
He warmed to his subject.
‘And also, it’s even better than that – it’s not like a skull and a goblet and a pile of rotting fruit. It’s hopeful. It’s saying, you will come and you will go, but these things that go on for ever are all around you; look how beautiful and wonderful they are. Sheaves from the field, fish from the loch, light from the sky and glass from the sand. Every day.’
Zoe looked at him. He was quite different when caught up in speaking. She was so used to him being distracted and distant; never quite there or at one with the children or the house or her. He caught her looking and his oversized hands started to fiddle awkwardly with his buttonhole.
‘I see,’ she said. She looked beyond him, down the gravel drive and into the garden. The evening sun was descending, and the shadows of the trimmed hedges were long across the grass.
‘We used to have topiary,’ said Ramsay, who was looking the same way as her. ‘That’s bushes cut into shapes.’
‘I know what it is, thanks,’ said Zoe chippily.
‘Oh yes, of course. Sorry.’
‘I’m not actually on the house tour.’
He went quiet after that, put his large hands deep in his pockets.
‘Oh, I’m only teasing,’ said Zoe, cursing herself for being so out of practice at talking to new people. ‘What topiary did you have? A monster?’
He gave her a look.
‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘Not a monster. We had roosters one year though.’
‘I bloody hate chickens,’ said Zoe automatically. Ramsay gave her a strange look.
‘Well, I hate this one chicken,’ said Zoe. ‘This one chicken who had got it in for me.’
‘I don’t think chickens can have it in for people,’ said Ramsay.
‘Well, you explain how it keeps pooing in my wellington boots.’
Ramsay frowned.
‘Perhaps move your wellington boots?’
‘I did!’ said Zoe. ‘It found them. Because it is a chicken of evil.’
‘We also had fish,’ said Ramsay hastily changing the subject. ‘Beautifully trimmed. They were lovely.’
‘Can’t you still have them? They’d look lovely in this light,’ said Zoe. The sun was golden and huge, going down in the sky.
‘I know,’ said Ramsay regretfully. ‘Cutbacks, I’m afraid. Again.’
‘You should train up the children to do it.’
Ramsay gave her a sharp look. ‘I’ll add that to my list of things I’m getting wrong, thanks.’
There was a tricky silence.
‘Right. I’d better get on. I might let Shackleton loose on the venison.’
‘That,’ said Ramsay, ‘is not a phrase I ever thought I’d hear.’
And he followed her into the house where, in short order, a very pleasant roasting scent started to emanate on the autumnal air, followed briefly by a rather less pleasant burning smell, but one that was soon rectified, and there was so much it didn’t really matter that some of the edges had to get chopped off, and anyway Porteous turned up at a perfect time and slipped in and out like a leftovers ghost, whisking any spare food away, and Ramsay, sticking to his word, actually popped in for half an hour, and there was a conversation instigated by Patrick about dinosaurs and why it was very unfair that they didn’t have some way of watching more films about dinosaurs as the television was broken and Ramsay had frowned and said he hadn’t realised they had a television and Zoe had said, you guys are living in the 1920s and Ramsay had said he didn’t see much wrong with that and she said, well, you will when you have to get glasses for Patrick because he’s trying to watch Jurassic Park on my phone and Ramsay said he would try and deal with it and Zoe said he should, they were practically giving tellies away these days and Ramsay said, quite right, they were only fit for the dump and Zoe said, I have now lived in this house for six weeks and I can tell you I’m not sure about your knowing what’s fit for the dump abilities, and the children, of all things, actually laughed – they actually laughed – and it had suddenly occurred to Ramsay, as it hadn’t for a long time, that perhaps he should nip down to the cellar and get one of those lovely bottles of red his ancestors had stored down there – why ever not? – and there was light and noise and chatter in the kitchen for the first time in such a very long time, and he felt a quick stab of guilt, then decided he could probably squash that down too with the red wine, when there came a sudden and decisive knock at the back door.