AS SHE came down the steps in the lamplight to greet him she looked so dignified and chaste – he could think of no better word, unfashionable though it was – that lust certainly, and perhaps love itself, was chilled. She seemed to be carrying herself with exaggerated elegance, as if to emphasise how untouchable she was. He was being made to look crude and unworthy. Was that her intention? Did she suspect, from giveaway signs that he himself had not been aware of, that he had an instinctive or instilled prejudice against coloured skins and was challenging him? No, that was absurd. More likely she was simply letting him see that if he married her he would be getting a wife he could be proud of. The trouble was she was doing it too well. Could it be that she was not as self-possessed as she pretended?
She stood close to him. He smelled her perfume, among all the other fragrances of the warm night. She shivered and sighed. He sensed in her – what? Unhappiness? Grief? Despair?
He almost embraced her then.
Instead he showed her the presents he had brought, a record of Scots love-songs for her and an illustrated book of Scottish folk-tales for Christina.
She put her hand on his arm. ‘Love-songs?’ she said, smiling.
‘We have some of the finest love-songs in the world, though the world finds it hard to believe.’
‘Why does it?’
‘Because the Scots are thought to be dour and reserved.’
‘I think you are a little dour and reserved, Andrew.’
Thanks to mosquitoes he did not have to answer that. They started biting in earnest so that he and Leila had to flee up the steps into the house.
Her father, she said, was at a meeting. Was she letting him know they had the house to themselves?
‘Why aren’t you at it?’ he asked. ‘Won’t they be discussing the great news?’
‘Yes, but I’d much rather be here with you, Andrew.’
It would have been ludicrous for him as a lover to ask her why she preferred to be with him, and yet he would have liked to ask, not because he wanted to hear praise of himself from a woman he loved or thought he loved, but because he really could not see what in him attracted her. It was easy to tell what he found attractive in her: beauty, grace, intelligence, courage, and sadness, but above all mystery. There was so much about her that he didn’t understand and perhaps never would. Jean, so different, had revealed her inmost thoughts and feelings as freely as she had her body. Would he be happier or at least more at home with a woman like that?
They went into her daughter’s bedroom. Christina was in bed, looking at a picture book.
‘Here’s a lovely book Mr Sandilands has brought you,’ said her mother, in English. ‘It’s about Scotland. I’m sure if you were to ask him nicely he would read one of the stories to you.’
‘Would you like that?’ he asked.
She nodded, dourly. After all, she had Scottish blood in her.
He chose a tale set in North Uist where his mother had been born and his grandfather had been a Free Kirk minister. It was about a little girl the same age as Christina herself who, while playing on the beach, had been kidnapped by selchies, creatures half-seal and half-human. They had taken her to their land under the sea. One day, years later, she had returned, strangely changed, with a marvellous account of where she had been and to where she must go back.
Now and then he would look up from the page and see those young brown eyes watching him. She was following the story, smiling at some parts and looking sad at others, but all the time she was judging him, not as a reader of stories but as a person. Had her mother told her he might be taking her father’s place? She was old enough to remember her father.
He thought that he would be proud and happy to regard her as his daughter. What if he and Leila had children of their own? Would they all be happy together? There could be more joy and more danger in their marriage than he had so far foreseen.
Leila tucked in her daughter and kissed her goodnight.
Sandilands did not offer to kiss the child, nor did she expect him to. He wished her good night. She returned it, quietly; not shyly, though. Young though she was, she seemed to have put up defences.
In the dining-room, as they ate, Leila said: ‘She’s very interested in Scotland. She tells her friends that she’s part Scottish. She’s sorry she never saw her Scottish grandmother.’
‘You’ll have to take her there some day.’
‘We’ll have to take her, you mean.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Tell me about your mother, Andrew.’
How could he, telling the truth, say that his mother was bigoted, embittered, vindictive, and unloving? That she would never welcome Leila as her daughter-in-law? That she would write letters full of hysterical vicious screams?
If the truth could not be told, what lie could he make convincing?
All the defences he had built up since childhood were no protection. He felt exposed and desolate. Even that dark beautiful face opposite him seemed inimical, though it was smiling at him with sympathy and love.
‘She’s very religious,’ he said at last. ‘Like most of the people on the island. Her father was a minister.’
‘You are not religious yourself?’
He shook his head.
‘But you would not mind being married in church?’
He minded but would not object if that was what she wanted. He shook his head again.
‘Thank you, Andrew.’
In the sitting-room, as they sat on chairs well apart, he looked more like a casual visitor than a lover, and she like a polite hostess. For something to say, he asked if she would like to hear the songs on the record. Let other lovers say for him what he could not say for himself.
She said she would like very much to hear them.
So for the next half hour they sat and listened to the yearnings, griefs, joys, and triumphs of those other lovers of long ago. The Highland chief inconsolable after the death of his Maiden of Morven. Jock o’ Hazeldean riding off o’er the border with his English sweetheart. The Borders man lamenting fiercely the death by accident of his burd Helen on Kirkconnel Lea. Leezie Lindsay joyously off to the Highlands with Lord Ronald McDonald, a chieftain of high degree. The poet taking farewell with ae fond kiss. The lovers who would never meet again on the banks of Loch Lomond.
Jean had laughed at his fondness for those ‘sentimental’ songs of the past. ‘For heaven’s sake, Andrew, be more up to date.’ But the love-songs of today seemed to him by comparison shallow and tawdry.
Leila, he saw, was in tears: thinking of Azaharri, he thought, but he did not feel jealous. On the wall was a photograph of her dead husband. Chichaks lurked behind it. He had died when only thirty-six.
‘Would you take Christina and me to the Golf Club on Sunday?’ she asked, suddenly.
He could not quickly enough disguise his dismay.
Members’ wives sat outside in the shade of the trees, drinking and gossiping, while their husbands played golf and their children built sand-castles. Most were white. Jean’s friends would be there. Jean herself might be. Did Leila realise that? Was she deliberately putting him to a test? He had been seen with her in the restaurant. Now he was to be seen with her and her child. Those women, most of them mothers themselves, would be especially interested in watching how he behaved towards Christina. They knew that he never made any fuss of their own children. He was not that kind of man.
‘Don’t you go to church on Sunday?’ he asked.
‘Yes. But after the service we could go to your house and then to the Club. Perhaps we could have lunch there.’
It would amount to an announcement of their engagement. There might be unpleasantness. One or other of Jean’s friends, who had had too many gins, might shout abuse. But it wouldn’t matter. It came to him, as an inspiration surely, that he had a defence against not only abusive women but against the whole world; against Leila even. The child, Christina. She represented everything of value that had been left out of his own life. Even if she never grew fond of him, looking after her would give him strength and comfort.