BUT IT WAS Alex who, seeing us pull up, hastened to open the heavily panelled door. He came out with a welcoming smile and embraced his mother and kissed her.
‘This is splendid. We didn’t expect you until later.’ He turned to me and grasped my hand. ‘What luck that Verna had you to call on.’
I thought he looked thinner than when I had last seen him and that his brown eyes met mine a little deliberately. But then Anne came running out of the house to throw her arms round Verna.
‘Oh – mother!’
‘My child!!’
‘Oh mother, I’ve wanted you such a lot.’
‘Now I’m here, my darling.’
‘I’m so miserable.’
‘Darling, we’re going to make it all right.’
Anne sobbed and Verna comforted. It was the best thing that could have happened. I could see Verna’s morale rising rapidly as she wept and commiserated with her daughter. I imagined that she had expected Anne to be censorious and that this scene yielded a double cordial. Her eyes sparkled: she could feel her situation becoming established. She was the long-awaited mother, come to comfort, support, and forgive.
‘Then you’ve arrived, woman,’ said a dry voice that halted Verna’s cooing instantly. The tall figure of James Mackenzie loomed impressively in the doorway. He was eyeing Verna askew and his thin-lipped mouth had a joyless droop. His lean, high-cheekboned features were framed in long hair that now was quite white. Verna released Anne, but kept a firm grip on her arm.
‘Yes, I’m here, Jamie,’ she said meekly.
‘Aye. And you’ve come too late to do more than greet along with the lassie.’
Verna bridled. ‘I came as soon as I could.’
‘Where were you when the lass was carrying?’
‘I—’ She shot a look at Anne. ‘That is between my daughter and me.’
‘Aye, no doubt.’ The drooped mouth drooped further. ‘It will be between you that you gave her no countenance. It will be between you that set on a scoundrel to come worrying her night and day. But woman, it’s between you and me that I never had word that my son was dead, and that you did not come to speak to an old man and seek to lighten his grieving. Where was your heart then, and where is your heart now? You had a husband worth a dozen of the rogue you sent to woo your daughter.’
Verna’s eyes were big, but she remembered. She gave a sob. ‘Oh, that isn’t fair! I loved Colin. No woman could have loved him more than I did. When he died it broke something inside me, I was out of my mind for days. I couldn’t bring myself to write letters. I simply had to leave it to other people. They didn’t write to you, but I never knew that. Oh, you don’t know how unfair you’re being.’
James Mackenzie’s eyes were fierce. ‘But since, woman? In all this time that you’ve been back?’
‘When I realized you hadn’t been told I just didn’t know what to do about it. You get so angry. I couldn’t think what to write and I daren’t come to see you. I knew what you’d think, that I didn’t love Colin, and I couldn’t bear to hear you accuse me of it.’ She ventured another sob.
‘Aye, and that’s likely,’ James Mackenzie growled. But now there was a curious expression in his eye: it might well have been unwilling admiration. ‘You loved him so sore that you could not face me – could not abide a wee explanation. Your fondness unnerved you. Your grief was so strong that you could not fufil the mere forms of humanity.’
‘I loved him. But you’ve never believed that.’
‘Your love stopped short of doing what he would have wished.’
‘You’re so unfair!’
‘You have not behaved well, woman.’
‘It’s because you’re so hard. And yet you blame me.’
‘Ach well, ach well.’ The old man sighed. ‘You cannot be other than you are, I’m thinking. Colin chose you, and that’s in your favour, and you brought him a lad and a fair lassie.’
‘I never loved anyone else but Colin.’
‘I am hoping that truth is in your conscience. But we’ll say no more. I cannot well blame you that his bones are lying so far from Kylie.’
Verna snuffled and hugged Anne’s arm: Anne’s eyes were large and distant. She too had changed in the last year; her handsome face had fined, had saddened. One felt that the roguish smile she had from Colin had been overlaid by much suffering; there was hurt in her face. She had a stillness about her as though a vital part had been stunned. James Mackenzie raised his hand and let it fall.
‘You had best come in, then, and seek your room. It is a sad time to be offering welcome, but I doubt not that things will mend yet.’ He peered at me. ‘You’ll be Colin’s friend?’
I nodded. ‘We’ve met before.’
‘Aye, I recollect. He spoke much of you. They were happier days then.’
I held back. ‘If you’re short of room . . .’
James Mackenzie stared, then grabbed my hand. ‘Ach, get in, and cease your nonsense.’ He had the grasp of a man much younger.