Susan Howatch - Scandalous Risks

‘I thought you’d back down and come to Leicestershire. I never dreamed you’d run off instead with Primrose and Eddie and – my God! – Venetia –’

‘What’s wrong with Venetia? Isn’t she Primrose’s best friend and the daughter of one of my own oldest friends?’

‘I don’t give a damn who she is, that girl’s sly, not to be trusted, a trouble-maker –’

‘My dearest, I really don’t think this conversation does you justice –’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s just that I feel so depressed, so alone, so utterly abandoned –’

There was a silence. I guessed he had been driven to silence her with an embrace. Pressing my back against the wall of the passage I held my breath and waited until at last she said tearfully: ‘How I hate separations!’

‘I’ll write every day.’

‘If only there was a phone at this stupid place –’

‘I’ll try and phone from the nearest village.’

‘Promise?’

‘Of course I promise.’

‘Oh Stephen …’ Another silence elapsed before Aysgarth said abruptly: ‘Here’s Eddie with the car. Quick, take my handkerchief and dry your eyes – where are the children?’

‘I don’t know … Elizabeth! Pip! Your father’s leaving!’

At once I slipped silently away.

Primrose and I began our journey north twenty-four hours later after the day-long diocesan conference of the Young Christians for Peace, an event which Primrose had helped to organise and which apparently could not take place without her. Primrose had always been an enthusiastic organiser. She had acquired the taste for power when she had become a Girl Guide leader, and since then the local branches of the Student Christian Movement, the Bible Reading Fellowship, the Missions to Africa Fund and the Inter-Faith League had all benefited from her efficient interference.

‘You really ought to get interested in some worthwhile cause, Venetia!’ she exclaimed as she returned, flushed with triumph, from her conference. ‘If I were to do nothing but read dated schoolgirl books, watch television and listen to Radio Lux., I’d go mad in no time!’

I refrained from argument; I was all for a quiet life, and since I was a guest in her flat I had a moral obligation to be docile, but I realised then that Mrs Ashworth had been correct in deducing that Primrose and I had reached the parting of the ways.

Meanwhile we had to go on holiday together. Driving to Heathrow in my MG we caught a late-morning flight to Glasgow and arrived in the town of Stornoway, the capital of the Outer Hebrides, in the middle of the afternoon. Although it was the largest settlement on the island of Lewis and Harris, the town was small and the airport was primitive. On stepping out of the little plane I felt a soft damp wind on my cheek. A vast vista of white clouds and green treeless wastes stretched before me, but when I had an immediate impression not of desolation but of peace I realised my mood of torpor was at last beginning to dissolve.

‘There’s Eddie,’ said Primrose.

Eddie’s ungainly figure was clad in the English holiday uniform of grey trousers, a casual shirt and a tweed jacket, but he still managed to look like a foreigner; the uniform was much too well-tailored. He was driving a hired car, a faded white Morris which had seen better days but which bucketed along the narrow roads with surprising spirit. Lewis, I realised as I stared out of the window later at Harris, was the tame, domesticated part of the island. Harris was all bare hills and sinister peat-bogs and glowering little lakes with hardly a croft in sight. Yet I was intrigued. It seemed light years away from London, and beyond the village of Tarbert we appeared to leave civilisation behind completely. A single-track road adorned with the occasional hardy weed wound through brutal hills. Now and then the sea was visible as a lurid strip of midnight blue. Squalls of rain swooped down from the hills and swept away along the coast. Rainbows appeared fleetingly during improbable bursts of sunshine. The car groaned but battled on. I began to be excited.

‘Is there really anything at the end of this road, Eddie?’

‘Wait and see!’ He pulled the car round a hairpin bend, and a second later Primrose and I were both exclaiming in wonder. Before us lay a small bay, shaped like a crescent moon and fringed with pale sand. Overlooking this idyllic seascape stood an Edwardian house, not too big but solid and well-proportioned. Beyond a walled garden the brown-green moors, dotted with rocks, rose towards mountains capped by cloud.

‘Just like Wuthering Heights !’ remarked Primrose. True romantic isolation! All we need now is Heathcliff.’

The front door opened as if on cue, and the Dean of Starbridge stepped out into the porch to welcome us.

Despite its remoteness the house turned out to be very comfortable, in that plain tasteful style that always costs a lot of money, and this comfort was enhanced by a married couple who did all the boring things such as cooking, shopping, cleaning and keeping the peat fires burning. At that time of the year in the far north the weather was still cold, particularly in the evenings, but having spent so much of my life at Flaxton Hall, where the heating was either non-existent or modest, I took the chill in my stride. In contrast, wretched Eddie was soon complaining of rheumatic twinges and saying that whenever he was in pain he was convinced he was going to die young.

‘In that case,’ said Primrose, ‘please do die now and save us from listening to any more of your moans,’ but at that point Aysgarth intervened, reminding Eddie lightly that life had been much worse in the POW camp on Starbury Plain and begging Primrose not to encourage anyone to die because it would be so annoying to have to cut short the holiday.

Our days in the wilderness began with breakfast at nine. Eddie then walked to the village and collected the specially ordered copy of The Times; on his return he studied it for twenty minutes. Another brisk trot followed, this time up and down the beach, but finally he allowed himself to relax in the morning-room with The Brothers Karamazov.

In contrast Aysgarth followed quite a different pattern of activity. After breakfast he sat in the drawing-room for a while and gazed at the sea. Then he dipped into one of his newly-purchased paperbacks (all detective stories) and read a few pages. More sea-gazing followed but at last he roused himself sufficiently to pen a letter to his wife. (‘The daily chore,’ commented Primrose to me once in a grim aside.) By the time the letter was finished Eddie had returned from the village but Aysgarth refused to read the newspaper in detail after Eddie had discarded it; he merely glanced at the headlines and tried to do the crossword. Despite his intellect he was very bad at crosswords, almost as bad as he was at bridge, and had to be helped by Primrose and me. The completion of the puzzle took at least twice as long as it should have done because we all spent so much time laughing, but once the last letter had been pencilled in Aysgarth invariably announced with regret: ‘I suppose I ought to take some exercise.’ He then staggered outside, inhaled deeply a few times and staggered back indoors again. As soon as the clock in the hall chimed twelve he declared it was time for drinks. Eddie, who preferred to abstain from alcohol till the evening, remained in the morning-room with The Brothers Karamazov but Aysgarth and I would swill champagne while Primrose toyed with her customary glass of dry sherry.

At some time during the morning Primrose and I would have been out, either scrambling along the rocky coast or following the path up into the stark wild hills. It rained regularly, but since we always wore macks and sou’westers the weather was never a serious inconvenience. Besides, the rain never lasted long. When the sun did shine we continually marvelled at the colours around us: the sea was a sapphire blue, the waves bright white, the sands dark cream, the moors green-brown mixed with ash-grey rock. Primrose took numerous photographs while I tried to impress the scenes on my memory and wished I could paint. Often as we scrambled along the low cliffs we saw seals playing near the beach, and several times in the hills we glimpsed deer. There were never any people. As the days passed my sense of peace increased until I even began to wish I could have been one of those ancient Celtic saints, dedicated to a solitary life in a remote and beautiful place in order to worship God. At least I would have been spared the rat-race in London and the hell of attending the Great Party of Life as a wallflower.