Rosamunde Pilcher - September

"What was the reaction of your parents?"

"Oh, they'd seen it coming for years. My father was delighted and my mother resigned. Once she'd got over agonizing over what her smart friends would say, I think she decided that it was better for me to marry Geordie Aird than stay a spinster daughter, getting under her feet and interfering with her butterfly life. So, on an early summer day in 1933, Geordie and I finally wed. And for my mother's sake, I submitted to being laced into stays, and buttoned into white satin so stiff and gleaming that it was like being encased in cardboard. And after the reception, Geordie and I got into his little Baby Austin and we trundled all the way to Edinburgh, where we spent our wedding night in the Caledonian Hotel. And I remember undressing in the bathroom and taking off my going-away dress, and unlacing my stays, and dropping them, with great ceremony, into the waste-paper bin. And I made a vow. No person is ever going to make me wear a corset again. And no person ever has." She burst into lusty laughter and struck Noel a thump on his knee. "So you see, on my wedding night, I said goodbye, not only to my virginity, but my stays as well. It's hard to say which gave me the most satisfaction."

He was laughing. "And you lived happily ever after?"

"Oh, so happily. Such happy years in a little terraced house in Relkirk. Then Edmund was bom, and Edie came into our lives. Eighteen years old and the daughter of the Strathcroy joiner, she came to me as a nursery maid, and we've been together ever since. It was a good time. So good that I pretended not to notice the gathering clouds of war looming up over our horizon. But the war came. Geordie joined up with the Highland Division and went to France. In May 1940, he was taken prisoner at Saint-Valery, and I didn't see him again for five and a half years. Edie and Edmund and I moved back to Balnaid and sat out the war with my parents, but they were growing old, and by the time peace was declared, they had both died. So when Geordie finally came back to us, it was to Balnaid that he came, and it was there that we spent the rest of our life together."

"When did he die?"

"About three years after Edmund was married-for the first time, you understand, to Alexa's mother. It all happened with astonishing suddenness. We had such a good life. I made plans-for the garden, for the house, for holidays and trips that we would take together-as though both of us were going to live forever. And so I was quite taken by surprise when I realized that, quite suddenly, Geordie was failing. He lost his appetite, lost weight, complained of vague discomforts and pains. At first, refusing to be frightened, I told myself that it was simply some digestive disorder, legacy of his long years in prisoner-of-war camps. But a doctor was finally consulted and then a specialist. Geordie was wheeled into Relkirk General for what was, at that stage, euphemistically known as "tests." The result of these tests was conveyed to me by the specialist. He sat across a desk from me in a sun-filled office, and he was very kind, and when he had finished telling me, I thanked him very much, and I got up, and went out of the room, and down the long rubber-floored corridors to where Geordie lay in a side ward, propped up by pillows in the high hospital bed. I had brought him daffodils from Balnaid, and I arranged them for him in a jug, with plenty of water so that they should not wilt and die. But Geordie died two weeks later. Edmund was there with me, but not Caroline, his wife. She had started a baby, and was suffering from sickness. Knowing that Alexa was coming was one of the things I hung onto during those dreadful, dark days. Geordie was gone, but another new little life was on its way, to set the seal on the bonds of continuity. Which is one of the reasons that Alexa has always been so special to me."

After a little, Noel said, "You're special to her as well. She's talked to me so much about you."

Violet fell silent. A wind sprang up, shuddering through the grass. It carried with it the smell of rain. She looked, and saw the clouds rolling in from the west, blurring the hills and darkening their lower slopes with shadow.

She said, "We've had the best of the day. I hope you don't feel it has been wasted. I hope I haven't bored you."

"Not for a moment."

"I began by trying to prove a point to you, and ended up by telling you my life story."

"I feel privileged."

She said, "Alexa is coming."

He sat up, dusting scraps of grass from the sleeves of his sweater. "So she is."

They watched her approach, making her way up the steep path with youthful speed and energy. She wore her jeans and a dark-blue sweater, and her dark-golden hair was tousled and her cheeks were rosy with the wind and the sun and the effort of the climb. She looked, thought Violet, quite absurdly young. And, all at once, knew that she had to speak.

"I was so fortunate. I married the man I loved. I only hope that the same thing will happen to Alexa." Noel, slowly, turned his head, and their eyes met. "Virginia told me that I must keep my counsel and not interfere. But I think you know already how much she loves you and I cannot bear to see her hurt.' I am not pressuring you, but I want you to be careful. And if you have to hurt her, then you must do it now, before it is too late. You are surely fond enough of her to be able to do that?"

His face was expressionless, but his gaze steady. After a bit, he said, "Yes. Yes, I am."

There was, perhaps mercifully, no time for more. Alexa was there, within earshot, pounding up the last few yards towards them, collapsing into the heather at Noel's side.

"What have you two been talking about? You've been up here for ages."

"Oh, this and that," her grandmother told her airily.

"I've been sent to come and tell you that perhaps it's time we thought about packing up. The Ferguson-Crombies have got to go to some dinner party, and they've offered to give the Gloxbys and Dermot Honeycombe a lift back to Croy. Anyway, before very long, it s going to start to rain; the sky's beginning to look really black."

"Yes," said Violet. She looked, and saw that the boats were coming in off the water. Someone had damped down the fire, and her guests were already on their feet, folding rugs, reloading the cars. "Yes, it is time to go."

She began to heave herself up, but Noel was on his feet before her and ready with a helping hand.

"Thank you, Noel." She dusted scraps of heather from her heavy tweed skirt, took a last lingering look. All over. All over for another year. "Come."

She led the way, down the path, off the hill.

Noel awoke to darkness and a raging thirst. And something more urgent. Analyzed, this proved to be a rising physical longing for love and Alexa. He lay for a bit, dry-mouthed and lonely and frustrated, in the strange bed, in the unfamiliar bedroom, with the windows wide open onto a dark and blowy night, where no lights shone, and no cars passed, and the only sound was the soughing of the wind in the topmost branches of the trees. He thought nostalgically of London, of Ovington Street, where he had existed for the last few months, lapped in comfort and care. If he awoke thirsty in London, he only had to reach out a hand to find the tumbler of spring water which Alexa set out for him each night, spiked with a slice of lemon. If, in the small dark hours of the morning, he found himself desiring her, he only had to turn to the downy bed, reach out and draw her towards him. Awakened, she was never resentful nor too sleepy for his ardour, but responded with the gentle passion that he had taught her, glorying in her own new-found knowledge, confident in her own desirability.

These reflections helped not at all. At last, unable to bear his thirst a moment longer, he turned on the bedside light and climbed out of bed. Went into the bathroom, ran the cold tap and filled a tooth-mug with water. The water was ice-cold and had a sweet and clean taste to it. He drained the tumbler and refilled it, and then went back to the bedroom and stood in the howling draught, gazing out into the bloomy darkness.