Rosamunde Pilcher - September

She said, "You're back. Come."

She took his arm and Conrad followed them and they mounted the steps and went indoors. Looking at the American, Isobel saw that he too showed signs of strain. She put questions aside, and concentrated on practicalities.

"You must be exhausted, and hungry as well. I didn't cook anything because I was waiting for you to come, but it won't take a moment. You'll both feel better when you've got something inside you."

Conrad said, "That sounds like a fine idea," but Archie shook his head.

"Isobel, in a moment. I must telephone first. I must ring Edmund Aird."

"Darling, that can surely wait…"

"No." He raised his hand. "I'd rather get it over. You two go ahead. I'll be with you in a moment."

Isobel opened her mouth to argue, and then thought better of it and stayed silent. Archie turned and slowly, painfully, walked away from them, down the hall, headed for his study. In silence, Conrad and Isobel watched him go, and heard the door close behind him.

They looked at each other. Isobel said, "I think he probably wants to be alone for a moment."

"That's understandable." Conrad wore a borrowed pair of green rubber boots and an old jacket of Archie's. His head was bare, his eyes, behind the heavy glasses, filled with sympathy.

"Was it very awful?" she asked.

"Yes," he told her, and his voice was gentle. "Yes. It was very sad."

"Where did you find her?"

"Just where Willy said she'd be. By the sluice-gate."

"Did she…?" She tried again. "I mean, how long had she been there?"

"Only a few hours."

"Yes." Only a few hours. Not long enough to change, swell, putrefy. "I'm glad Willy found her so soon. It was good of you to go with Archie, and bring him back again. I can't tell you how grateful I am…"

"It was the least I could do."

"Yes. There isn't really very much anybody can do, is there?"

"Not very much."

"No. Well…" The subject, for the moment, had run its course. Breakfast. "I'm sure you must be ravenous."

"I am. But first, if I may, I'll shed these boots and wash my hands."

"Of course. I'll be in the kitchen."

Lucilla and Jeff had disappeared, taken themselves off somewhere. Isobel found frying pan, more sausages, bacon, tomatoes, and eggs. She put bread in the toaster, made a fresh pot of coffee, laid two places at the table. By the time Conrad joined her, his breakfast was just about ready. She poured a cup of coffee and set it by his place.

"Drink it while it's hot. I just have to fry you an egg. How do you like it? Sunny side up? Isn't that what they say in America?"

"That's what they say. Isobel…"

She turned from the Aga. "Yes?"

"I think I should leave you this afternoon. You have enough to think about without extraneous guests hanging around the place."

She was horrified. "But I thought you weren't leaving until tomorrow!"

"I can call a taxi, get myself to Turnhouse…"

"Oh, Conrad, please don't feel you have to go…"

"This is not a time for visitors…"

"I don't think of you as a mere visitor. I think of you as a friend. And I would be very distressed if you felt you had to leave us a day early. But if you would prefer to do that, I shall quite understand."

"It isn't that 1 would prefer it…"

"1 know. You're thinking of Us.But you know, at the moment, it's good for us to have friends around. This morning, for instance. What would we have done without you? And I am certain that Archie will want you to stay. At least for one more night."

"If you really mean that, I would like to stay."

"I do really mean it. And when I said I think of you as a friend, I really meant that as well. You came as a stranger to Croy, and we none of us knew you or knew anything about you. But now, after just a few days, I feel as though we'd known you all our lives. I hope you'll come back again and visit us some other time."

"I'd like that. Thank you."

Isobel smiled. "And you can bring your little daughter. This is a good place for children."

"Watch out. I may take you up on that."

Isobel professionally broke the egg into the pan.

"When are you flying back to your little daughter?"

"On Thursday."

"And Virginia's coming with you?"

"No. Not now that Henry's home again. She's cancelling her flight, and calling her grandparents to explain. She and Edmund will maybe come out next spring, and we're all going to get together then."

"That's disappointing for her. But perhaps better. More fun to go on holidays with your husband." She stooped to take his plate out of the low oven, added the egg to the pile of goodies already on it, and then set the lot in front of him. "Now you wrap yourself around that, as my son Hamish always says." She glanced at the clock. "What is Archie doing? I think I'll take him a cup of coffee. You don't mind being left on your own, do you?"

"No, I'm perfectly all right. And this looks like the best breakfast I've ever eaten."

"You've earned it," Isobel told him.

Archie sat at his desk, in his study, in his father's chair, and surrounded by his father's possessions. The room faced west, and so, on this bright morning, was sunless. For the moment, he was grateful for quiet and solitude. Deadened by fatigue and his own despair, he waited until such time as he could muster enough moral courage to pick up the telphone, dial the Balnaid number, and speak to Edmund

Aird.

From the moment that Willy Snoddy had finally managed to find the words with which to relay his dreadful tidings, Archie had experienced the grip of a mental numbness that precluded all intelligent incentive. Somehow, like a sleep-walker in the throes of a nightmare, he had got through the motions of doing what he knew had to be done.

Waking Isobel, having her there beside him, had been the first priority. Only with Isobel could he share his grief. Then, together, they had gone to Pandora's bedroom, disordered in characteristic fashion, as though she had, just that moment, gone from the room. It was Isobel who had drawn back the heavy curtains and opened all the windows to set free the suffocating odour of the spilled and wasted perfume. It was Isobel who had spied the envelope on the desk, and handed it to Archie.

And, together, they had read Pandora's final letter.

After that the inevitable, painful procedures. Ringing the police, and the seemingly endless wait until the official vehicle, with the police doctor on board, arrived. The long drive to the loch, crawling with agonizing slowness up the steep and bumpy track. The gruesome and heart-breaking operation of retrieving from the loch his dead sister's body.

The irony of the situation was his own hopelessness. No sooner, it seemed, had he come to terms with his memories of Northern Ireland than he was fated to be burdened by this new horror. The sight of Pandora, like a sodden doll, washed up beneath the sluicegates. Her face bloodless, her wet hair wound, like silken cords, around her neck. Her white arms, thin and bleached as drifting twigs, the skirts of her dress tangled in a flotsam of broken branches and broken reeds.

How great it would be if the impossible were rendered possible, and he could blank the image from his mind's eye for ever.

He sighed, and drew her letter towards him. The thick blue paper embossed with the Croy address, and Pandora's scrawly handwriting, unformed as a child's. A ghost of a smile touched his lips, because he remembered how she had never bothered to learn to do anything properly, and at the end of the day, she still could scarcely write.

Friday evening.

My darling Archie. I once went to a funeral and a man got up and read something so nice, about dead people having just slipped away into the next room, and not being miserable nor sorry, but going on laughing at the same old jokes. If, by chance, you give me a lovely Christian funeral (and who knows, you may be so cross, you'll just toss me onto Isobel's compost heap), then it would be nice if somebody coud read that about me.