My Heart Remembers

  MY HEART REMEMBERS

  Flora Kidd

  Sally had adored Ross Lorimer ever since she was a child, and she was thrilled when she heard that he was coming back into her life again.

  But she was not quite so thrilled when she discovered that the job he was coming to do involved the destruction of the home she loved.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sally Johnson sat on a cast-iron bollard near the edge of the quay and waited for her father. She could see him quite clearly. He was leaning over the broad flat bulwark of his fishing boat the Mary Rose, and he was talking to a man who stood below him on the grey granite quay.

  There was something familiar about the man; something about the set of his wide shoulders, about his unruly wind-tossed hair which stirred her memory and made her heart beat a little faster. Who was he? And why was he delaying her father? It was almost six o’clock. High tea would be ready and Aunt Jessie would be fussed if they were late for the meal. Sally knew it was no use trying to hurry Hugh Johnson. Strong and placid, he never hurried and was rarely disturbed. She had seen him upset only once, and that was when he had visited her in hospital after the car accident which had killed his second wife Rose, Sally’s mother, and had damaged Sally’s face.

  Involuntarily she touched the scar on her cheek. It would fade in time, Aunt Jessie said, but Sally was very conscious of it, especially when she met strangers. Fortunately in her home town of Portbride she did not have to meet many and she worked as a typist in the Town Hall among people she had always known.

  Pushing the memory of the accident and of her scar to the back of her mind, she gazed round the harbour with loving eyes. Beyond the grey outer wall of the harbour the turquoise and white water of the wide ruffled sea-loch rose and fell in perpetual movement. Within the protective walls the black silhouettes of the radio masts of the varnished fishing boats moved almost imperceptibly as the boats clustered close to each other, rising and falling, creaking and squeaking. Seagulls and terns, sailing and soaring, crying and calling, were white flashes against the new spring green of the rounded hills. Facing the harbour the grey and white of the houses, some tall and angular, others short and squat, frowned or smiled in the intermittent sunshine and rain of a wild windy May day, and above all the turbulent purple clouds rolled and jostled before the gusty breath of the mad north-westerly gale.

  A faint smile of satisfaction touched Sally’s mouth. This was her town, her home. It had been like this for hundreds of years, a sheltered haven for fishing boats and a meeting place for farmers. She would stay here for ever, hidden and protected from the world by familiar things.

  A movement to her left drew her attention. The crew of a big black submarine which had been driven into harbour by the forecast of bad weather was coming ashore. The wind mischievously whisked the round white-topped hat from the head of one of the sailors, and it bowled along merrily, past Sally towards the end of the quay and the sea.

  Swiftly Sally jumped off the bollard and ran after the hat, her slim legs and light feet carrying her rapidly over the granite sets. She caught up with the hat about a yard away from the end of the quay. She pounced on it, picked it up and turned to offer it to its owner, who arrived a few seconds behind her.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Och, I thought it had gone for good.’

  He was of medium height and he was very thin as if he didn’t get enough to eat. His face was pale, the result probably of spending long hours under water. But his smile was gay as he crammed the hat down on his short fair hair and walked back with her along the quay.

  ‘Ye’re a fine wee runner,’ he remarked.

  Maeve, Sally’s stepsister, would have fluttered her long dark eyelashes and said something devastating. Sally could only smile shyly and remain silent, keeping to herself the information that she had once been Senior County Champion for the girls’ hundred-yards sprint.

  ‘I’m Jim Shaw,’ said the sailor, ‘able seaman in Her Majesty’s Navy. What’s your name?’

  Sally told him.

  ‘Do you live here?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then how about coming to the dance in the Town Hall tonight?’

  Sally glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes and thought about the number of times Aunt Jessie had said,

  ‘Don’t ever let me catch you going with any of those sailors Sally, or else...!’

  Sally had never found out what would happen after ‘or else’ because Aunt Jessie had never finished the sentence. Yet her aunt had never threatened Maeve in the same way, probably because Maeve was twenty-seven and married, whereas Sally was not yet twenty-one and had not had a boy-friend ... unless she called her association with Craig Dawson having a boy-friend.

  ‘Not interested, huh?’

  She was recalled from her thoughts by Jim Shaw’s voice and realised that he thought she was going to refuse. With a great effort, because since the accident speech had been an effort, she managed to say,

  ‘I’m going to the dance anyway. Perhaps I could see you there?’

  His gay smile lit up his plain face again and she tried not to notice that he avoided looking directly at her face.

  ‘That’s just fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll meet ye at the door at about eight-thirty, and maybe we’ll go and have a drink before the dance.’

  Sally agreed, and he walked off to join his companions who were waiting for him. She sat on the bollard and watched his thin angular shape until he and his friends turned the corner by the MacKinnon Arms Hotel into the main street.

  It had been nice of him to ask her to go to the dance. Possibly he had felt that he owed her something for rescuing his hat. There could be no other reason. He had seen her face clearly enough and had flinched from the sight of the scar. Sally’s mouth tightened, making her appear older than her years and giving her face a sour expression. She expected it would be always like this, being asked to go out with someone she would not normally be interested in and accepting because such invitations would be all too rare.

  The clock in the Town Hall tower chimed the hour. Sally looked along the quay hopefully. In her father’s company she could usually forget her problems. He was coming at last, accompanied by the other man, whose tall well-proportioned figure made Hugh seem short and wider than he was.

  ‘That was a fine wee chase ye had after yon laddie’s hat,’ murmured Hugh in his soft husky voice as he stopped in front of her. ‘I’m glad to see ye’ve not forgotten how to run.’

  His black oilskin coat rustled and creaked as he raised his hands to attend to the short black pipe he had placed in his mouth.

  ‘Are you coming now, Father? Aunt Jessie will have the tea on the table and she’ll be crabbit if you’re not there,’ said Sally as she slid to her feet. Her self-consciousness caused her to ignore the other man until such time as he was introduced, but she was aware of a strange excitement which caused her breathing to quicken and her body to tense.

  ‘I want to have a few words with Archie McIntyre, and then I’ll away home,’ said Hugh. ‘Meanwhile I’d like ye to take Ross here up to the house and to tell Jessie he’s eatin’ with us. Ye remember Sally, Ross?’

  ‘Yes, I remember, but maybe she doesn’t remember me. Ten years is quite a long time to be away from a place.’

  It seemed to Sally that her heart stopped beating. He had come back! He had dared to come back.

  ‘Do you remember me, Sally?’ Amusement softened the normally crisp ‘no nonsense’ voice as a big muscular hand was held out to her. Sally stared at the hand and remembered Maeve’s pleading,

  ‘Ross, promise you’ll write ... promise you’ll come back?’ But he hadn’t written and he hadn’t come back until now, and for a while Maeve had been brokenh
earted.

  Sally shook the hand reluctantly and looked up. There were some changes. The square face was leaner than it had been ten years ago and it had been tanned by a stronger sun than any that shone in Scotland. Fine lines radiated outwards from the corners of blue eyes which no longer blazed with the enthusiasm of youth but were cool and guarded as if he had many secrets he wished to keep to himself. The brown sun-streaked hair was slightly shorter but was still inclined to be unruly.

  ‘I remember you,’ she murmured coolly.

  His eyes narrowed slightly and his gaze went deliberately to the scar on her cheek so that she became conscious of it and raised her hand to hide it.

  ‘Ross has come back to work here,’ chipped in Hugh, who had been too busy with his pipe to notice the tension. ‘He was thinking of staying at the MacKinnon, but I thought perhaps we could fix him up. On your way now, both of ye, and tell Jessie I’ll not be long.’

  His rubber boots thudded on the granite blocks of the quay and his oilskin coat rustled as he swung away towards the harbourmaster’s office, a jaunty figure, his peaked cap pushed well back on his head, his pipe puffing forth smoke like an old diesel engine.

  They were alone beside the ruffled darkening water and deserted fishing boats. Around them on the quay lay the debris associated with sea fishing—stacks of wooden slatted boxes, blatant orange plastic marker buoys and the dark tangle of nets. The wind was still blowing and moaning, wafting the smell of fish about and sending a sudden billow of grey smoke downwards from the chimney of a high house.

  Sally stood silent, struggling to overcome the tongue-tiedness from which she had suffered since the accident, aware that a new disturbing feeling of antipathy towards the man at her side was growing.

  Last time she had seen him she had been eleven. Maeve had been seventeen and he had been twenty-two. He had been spending his holidays as usual with Miss Wallace of Winterston. Winterston was the big house on the southern shore of the sea-loch. His mother had been a relation of Miss Wallace. Ross’s father, who had been a civil engineer, had been killed in a building accident somewhere in South America and Miss Wallace had become Ross’s guardian.

  Although a forceful character, Miss Wallace, who had been the last of her line, had not been able to exercise much control over the lively spirited boy entrusted to her charge. He had done more or less as he had wanted, and when he had reached his teens he had developed an interest in fishing and had hung about the quayside until Hugh Johnson had taken him to sea with him. And so a friendship had sprung up between fisherman and youth, a friendship which had spread throughout the Johnson family, affecting mother and daughters alike so that they expected to see Ross every holiday time when he was home from his boarding school.

  Hugh had liked Ross because he was a braw lad, tough and handy with the nets. Rose Johnson had liked him because she could treat him like the son she had never had. Maeve had liked him because he teased her in a curiously intimate fashion, and as they had both grown older and Maeve had become aware of her feminine charms she had tended to try and keep him to herself, walking away up the hills with him through the bracken to some secret hiding place. As for Sally, she had hero-worshipped him, following him about wherever he went and sometimes sharing an adventure with him, like the time they had gone searching for gulls’ eggs, climbing the dangerous Blackwall cliffs and getting stuck and having to be rescued by the Portbride Fire Brigade.

  Then eventually Ross had graduated as a civil engineer and had decided to go away to England to work. Sally had been playing in the ruins of an old cottage on the Winterston estate when she had accidentally stumbled upon their hiding place and had overheard Maeve’s plaintive plea,

  ‘Promise you’ll write! Promise you’ll come back and I’ll love you for ever!’

  And now she remembered vividly the sun glinting on Ross’s sun-bleached hair as he had tossed his head back to laugh, and she could hear again the youthful scorn in his voice as he had replied,

  ‘Nothing is for ever.’

  A wild gust of wind shook the rigging of the fishing boats’ masts and flurries of wavelets scurried across the water.

  ‘Shall we go and find out what Aunt Jessie has for tea?’ He sounded tolerantly amused again, and realising that she must seem rude Sally pulled her thoughts away from the past and looked at him.

  ‘What will Maeve say?’ she asked. ‘What will she do?’ She had not meant to say it and was rather surprised that she had spoken without hesitation.

  His straight eyebrows which were much darker than his hair quirked together in a frown of puzzlement.

  ‘Why should she do or say anything?’

  ‘She asked you to write and to come back, but you didn’t. You hurt her badly.’

  His eyes hardened and he gave her a glance which told her quite clearly that she had spoken out of turn.

  ‘Your memory is better than mine,’ he replied coolly. ‘I don’t believe anyone could have hurt the Maeve I knew. Shall we go up to Rosemount now?’

  Vaguely conscious that she had lost the first round in a contest which had only just begun, Sally moved forward and Ross walked beside her after swinging a rucksack over one shoulder. Sally eyed it curiously and asked,

  ‘Did you come by car?’

  ‘No, I walked over the moors from Newton Stewart,’ he answered curtly, leaving her in no doubt that he resented her curiosity, and was in no mind to satisfy it.

  Sally was surprised. She would have thought he would have roared into Portbride in a fast car. It would have been more in keeping with her memories of him. Walking over the moors must have taken him about three days.

  ‘Why did you walk?’ Her natural curiosity, which had been subdued by the feeling of lethargy which had possessed her for the last few months, was awakening, aroused from its abnormal sleep by the challenge of his return to Portbride.

  He was looking about him as they walked round the head of the harbour and he did not bother to glance at her as he answered offhandedly.

  ‘I’ve been away from Scotland for a long time and I wanted to get the feel of the place before I started to work here.’

  ‘Where have you been all this time?’

  He looked at her then, and laughed.

  ‘There are some ways in which you haven’t changed. You still pester people with questions. It used to be “Where are you going, Ross? Why can’t I come too, Maeve?”’ he mocked. ‘Oh, I’ve been in various places. The last one was near Karachi in Pakistan.’

  Although her curiosity was satisfied Sally found it rather mortifying to realise he had once considered her a pest, and

  she became silent again.

  ‘You didn’t have that scar on your face when I last saw you,’ continued Ross. ‘How did you get it?’

  It was his turn to be curious. The abrupt question, the one which shouldn’t be asked out of respect for the hypersensitivity of the person with the scar, seared her feeling momentarily and she disliked him intensely.

  ‘In a car accident. My mother was killed,’ she replied, as abrupt as he had been.

  ‘Ah, yes, Hugh told me. I was sorry to hear of your mother’s death. She used to be very kind to me. Whoever did the surgery on your face made a good job ... but don’t let the scar spoil your life by being self-conscious about it.’

  They had left the harbour and were walking up the steep rough road to her father’s house which was perched on the ridge of rock which formed the northern side of the deep, wide sea-loch and which eventually ended in the high cliffs of Blackwall Edge. The land on the opposite shore of the sea- loch which comprised most of the Winterston estate was blurred by white spindrift lifted from the crests of the waves. Sally looked resolutely in that direction, keeping her face turned away from the man whose frank comments were piercing her newly formed defensive shell.

  ‘Have I said the unforgivable? Shouldn’t I have mentioned the scar?’ he prodded. ‘I suppose you’ve been using it as an excuse to hide away.’

  Sally
whirled round to deny his accusation and even opened her mouth to say ‘I haven’t!’ But she closed it again, knowing he had spoken the truth.

  ‘How can you know anything about the way I feel or act?’ she defended with an attempt at haughtiness.

  ‘I’ve known others who have been similarly damaged. You’re not the only person in this world to have her face slashed open by glass from a broken windscreen.’

  He was hateful! Last time he had been in Portbride he had hurt Maeve. Now he had come again, intent on hurting and on disturbing the even comfortable flow of their lives. She wished Hugh had not invited him to stay to tea.

  They reached Rosemount, the white gable-ended house which was her home. It was traditional in style, having three dormer windows in its grey slate roof. Sturdily built of granite, it had housed Johnsons for almost a hundred and fifty years and for Sally it was an important part of her security.

  She opened the garden gate and hurried up the path. She must try to warn Maeve somehow. Without looking behind her to see if Ross was following she opened the door, went straight through the small narrow hallway and into the living room at the back of the house.

  ‘Is that you, Sally? Where’ve ye been? Is y’r father with ye?’ Aunt Jessie, Hugh Johnson’s spinster sister, came out of the kitchen into the room. She moved slowly because her legs were crippled with rheumatism. Square-shouldered and stocky like her brother, her round rosy face and twinkling hazel eyes betrayed her good nature.

  ‘He’s gone to see Archie MacIntyre. He won’t be long.’ A quick glance round the room assured Sally that Maeve was not there, and then Ross was in the room behind her.

  ‘This is Ross Lorimer, Aunt Jessie. Dad said I was to bring him home for tea.’

  ‘Och, to be sure, I remember ye. Ye used to live with Miss Wallace, God rest her soul, and ye used to go fishin’ with Hugh. How time flies! Come awa’ and sit ye down. ’Tis a wild day the day. Sally, set another place at the table.’

  ‘In a minute, Aunt. I must go upstairs first.’

  She was out of the room before Aunt Jessie could object. She sped upstairs to Maeve’s bedroom, flung open the door without knocking and after entering banged it shut behind her. Maeve, who was lounging on the bed reading a novel, looked up, an exasperated frown marring the smooth white of her forehead.