My Heart Remembers Page 3

  Sally had been told afterwards that they had hit the side of a railway bridge which crossed the road at a bend. The mist had hidden both bend and bridge and instead of following the curve of the road her mother had driven straight on into the supporting wall of the bridge. She had been killed instantly. Sally had been shocked and badly cut about the face.

  Everyone had said the plastic surgeon had worked a miracle on her face. But no one had been able to work a miracle on her injured spirits.

  Everyone had been kind and patient with her. Her father had been gentle and forbearing even in the midst of his own distress at the death of her mother. Aunt Jessie, that most maternal of spinsters, had poured out all her love to comfort her niece and when Maeve had come back from Ireland for a short holiday she had stayed ostensibly to help her young stepsister, a stay which had lasted four weeks.

  But somehow none of the kindness and cosseting had helped, and Sally found herself shrinking back from contact with people. Maeve’s policy of making her attend the weekly dances hadn’t helped either, because every time she noticed a young man’s eyes avoid looking at her scar, she wanted to run home and hide.

  Someone leant on the wall beside her. A strong hand uncurled the clenched fingers of her right hand and massaged them gently. Automatically her other hand unclenched as she turned in surprise to look at Ross. He took her left hand too and rubbed both hands between his, then released them.

  ‘Why did you walk out on us?’ he asked.

  She was too surprised to speak and could only stare at his profile as he looked away at the fishing boats.

  ‘Are you sulking because Maeve deliberately monopolised the attention of your naval friends and they forgot about you?’ he queried, and the taunt which lay beneath his question roused her.

  ‘I’m not sulking,’ she objected. ‘And Maeve didn’t do it deliberately.’

  ‘Didn’t she?’ His tone was dry.

  ‘No,’ she asserted vehemently, hoping by her fierce negation to stamp the idea from his mind. ‘Maeve can’t help being lovely and attractive.’

  ‘Any more than you can help being irritable, sulky and downright sorry for yourself, I suppose. Are you going to wallow in self-pity for the rest of your life? Shame on you! I thought you were made of tougher fibre than that.’

  His forthright criticism scorched her like fire. Only a few minutes ago his hands had held hers and had soothed away her tension. Now his crisp, authoritative voice lashed at her, stiffening pride and rousing her anger. Words bubbled up longing to be spoken. They remained unspoken and she could only glare in an agony of frustration. She wheeled away from him, intending to run home, but before she could take a step he caught her hand and jerked her round roughly to face him.

  ‘Let me go!’ she fumed.

  His grin was unsympathetic as he did as she asked.

  ‘I’m glad to find you’re not as dull and lethargic as you

  look, and that there’s still a spark of life left in you.’

  Sally rubbed at her bruised wrist and involuntarily the words came tumbling out.

  ‘Why did you have to come back? I wish you’d go away!’

  ‘I shall go one day, when I’ve done my work. Meanwhile ...’

  ‘Meanwhile you’ll upset Maeve again. She loved you and you went away. She was heartbroken.’

  ‘Did she tell you that?’ He sounded incredulous. Then he laughed. ‘Maeve didn’t love me. She was merely in love with the idea of being in love.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. Maeve isn’t like that, and you wouldn’t say so if you’d seen how she used to cry herself to sleep after you’d gone.’

  ‘Frustration, I expect. She hadn’t been able to get her own way. I’m willing to bet she was over it within a week and was walking the hills with some other youth.’

  Sally had no retort ready. She guessed that the picture he painted of Maeve was possibly more true to life than the one she preferred to paint of her stepsister. She liked to think that Maeve’s love affairs after Ross had left had been the result of desperation and a broken heart, trying to disguise the truth from herself that Maeve was fickle.

  But disillusionment hurt, especially when it concerned a person she had adored from babyhood, and she was in no mood to forgive the tough self-confessed realist who stood beside her for stripping the romantic trappings from Maeve and making her appear cheap.

  ‘I’m on my way to Winterston,’ Ross announced abruptly in a well-remembered manner. ‘Coming with me?’

  The careless off-hand way of inviting her was so familiar that for a moment she was eleven again and he was asking for her company on some adventure.

  ‘N ... n ... now?’ she stammered. ‘But it’s late, and I thought you’d be going to the dance with Maeve?’

  ‘No. I met Maeve by chance on my way over to have a pint. She just happened to be going my way ... very conveniently for her,’ he replied with a touch of cynicism. ‘It isn’t completely dark, because there’s a moon. And if it isn’t too late for dancing, it isn’t too late for walking. Coming?’

  He had turned to go and she knew he wouldn’t ask her again. The thought of seeing Winterston by moonlight intrigued her spirit of adventure which she had thought to be dead. She couldn’t resist.

  ‘Can you wait, please? I must change my shoes,’ she asked hesitantly.

  He turned back to look at her and by the light of the street lights she saw his familiar daredevil grin.

  ‘I’ll wait,’ he agreed.

  And without further hesitation Sally turned and sped towards her home, her melancholy mood miraculously dispersed.

  Only one road led to Winterston. It was a continuation of the wide road which wound round the harbour and which ended abruptly on the southern side of the sea-loch where the quayside gave way to a narrow rock-strewn shore which was overshadowed by a ridge of rock which ran in a curve to end in a tumble of rocks known as Winterston Point.

  The road was narrow and rough and was surfaced by granite chips which glittered and sparkled in the moonlight, and crunched and scattered under their steady footsteps.

  Waves tumbled on the rim of pale sand and frills of bubbles exploded in scintillating showers of light when water hit rock and sprayed upwards. From the craggy hillside the scents of unseen flowers and grasses tantalised Sally’s nose. She knew that in the crevices pale yellow primroses would be hidden and that among the long grasses which bordered the roadside diminutive violets could be found. The scents of the newly grown plants mingled with the salty tang of the sea and with the odour of the damp seaweed which had been washed up to lie in long dark ribbons on the wan sand.

  Moonlight on the sea. The smells of springtime. Sally experienced a feeling of intense delight in all that she could see and hear and smell.

  For generations the moon had shone down on these hills and on this sea. Nothing had changed, she thought. And now the man at her side had come to destroy the beauty, to disturb the peace, to build ugly fuel tanks which would mar the countryside. No matter how well they were hidden they would leave a scar, like the one on her face which would never fade completely.

  The fact that he could ever think of such destruction raised a barrier between him and herself which she felt she could never overcome.

  The road curved round a protruding bastion of rock and then the way was barred by two high wrought-iron gates. Ross thrust a broad shoulder against them and they yielded, opening on to a tree-lined driveway already overrun with grass and weeds.

  Ross strode forward without hesitation. Sally dallied behind him, caught in the spell which Winterston had always cast upon her. She remembered the times she had gathered wild daffodils which grew in drifts in the springtime under the tall trees. She recalled the many brown trout which she had poached from the nearby burn which she could hear rushing perpetually to the sea. There were memories too of the tall stern lady who had been the guardian of Winterston and who had fought to preserve it.

  A small animal scampered out of the da
rk rhododendron bushes and startled her. She realised that Ross had gone, disappearing round the bend of the drive. He had gone, leaving her behind, having probably forgotten her.

  She ran lightly up the drive. She found him on the front lawn, standing motionless, his head tilted back as he surveyed the moon-silvered frontage of the old house. Standing beside him, Sally looked at it too. In spite of the moonlight the small oblong latticed windows seemed dark and secretive and the two pointed turrets which decorated either side of the high gatehouse with its serrated gable added to the Gothic and melodramatic appearance of the house. At right angles to the gatehouse, the rest of the house was the normal unspectacular structure of a plain three-storey house with a gable end and a slate roof.

  The house had been built on a long hump of land and it was backed by a clump of whispering pines behind which the land rose steeply. In front of it wide lawns dotted with what had once been carefully barbered ornamental trees swept down to the water where a small jetty jutted out.

  ‘How can you take part in turning all this into a mass of

  mud and rubble?’ said Sally, suddenly articulate as emotion stirred her. ‘If you can’t see the beauty you’re going to destroy you must be inhuman!’

  He didn’t bother to turn his head to look at her as he replied quietly,

  ‘I’m not inhuman. I can see the beauty. On the other hand, I’m not a sentimentalist and I know that the house is a crumbling, unsafe ruin and that eventually it must come down, preferably before it falls down and injures someone.’

  His quiet matter-of-fact statement concerning the fate of the house disturbed her greatly as she realised that the situation was far worse than she had anticipated.

  ‘Och, no, you can’t destroy the house. You mustn’t!’

  ‘Actually the decision whether it should be destroyed or not is not mine to make,’ he replied calmly. ‘I can only present my point of view. But I’m inclined to agree with the consultants for the job that the house is standing in one of the obvious places for a couple of the tanks.’

  ‘But how do you know that it’s a ruin? Miss Wallace lived in it until she died, so it can’t be that bad,’ objected Sally.

  ‘Have you ever been inside?’ he asked.

  ‘No, although I’ve often wanted to see what it’s like. I asked you once to take me over it, but you refused.’

  ‘Would you like to see it now?’

  Sally found herself struggling with wayward conflicting emotions. His calm unemotional comments upon the state of the house dismayed her. He seemed extremely sure and completely unassailable. On the other hand, his invitation to show her the inside of the house which had always enticed her disarmed her temporarily.

  ‘But we won’t be able to see anything. It’ll be dark inside,’ she replied, half-heartedly finding an excuse. ‘Anyway, how will we get in?’

  ‘I have a torch with me, and I also have a key,’ he said practically. ‘I daresay I’ll be able to find the main electric switch and there are bound to be a few light bulbs still intact and working. Of course if you’d rather stay outside while I look around the house you can, but I warn you, this might be your last chance to see inside it.’

  Sally responded immediately to his take-it-or-leave-it attitude.

  ‘No, I’d like to see it, please,’ she said hurriedly.

  He moved forward towards the plain door set in the gatehouse. On either side of the door were two stone tubs in which were set box trees, now shaggy and overgrown. Sally, who had followed Ross eagerly, looked at them sadly, thinking how symbolic they were of the air of general unkemptness which prevailed around the house.

  Ross produced an outsize old-fashioned iron key, inserted it in the keyhole of the iron-studded door. He turned the key and the lock slid back obediently. He grasped the large iron ring which was the door handle, pushed the door and it opened slowly and protestingly. He stepped inside and at once the beam of his torch shed a pool of yellowish light on the stone-flagged floor of the cavernous entrance hall.

  Sally followed him and he closed the door. Moonlight filtered through a large rectangular window, a simple grid of vertical and horizontal stonework with square leaded panes of glass in each small rectangle, which was situated high up in the wall facing the door. The torch beam flitted round the shadowed stone walls, flickered momentarily on the high timbered roof, lingered briefly on the window and descended the wide curving imposing staircase.

  ‘Wait here,’ ordered Ross peremptorily. ‘I’ll try the electricity.’

  He moved away from her and was immediately swallowed up in the gloom. Sally stood still, absorbing the atmosphere of age. She was inside Winterston at last. Winterston, the home of the Wallace family since the days of the first king to rule all Scotland, David the First, who had granted land to the Norman knights who had come at his invitation from England to help him administer his new kingdom. One of those knights had been Hugo Wallace, who had chosen this particular land.

  He had built his castle nearer to the present site of the town and its ruins could still be seen, two fingers of stone pointing to the sky on a mound behind the small crouched cottages of the oldest part of the town. When the castle had been destroyed by fire the family had built a new house away from the town on a fine piece of coast where they could enjoy privacy as well as beautiful uninterrupted views of the sea. Many romantic and wild tales had been told about the family whose sons in more recent times had carried on the tradition of serving their king by entering the British Army. The tradition had come to an abrupt end when Miss Wallace’s only brother, William Wallace, had been killed in action during the second world war, leaving no heir to succeed to the estate.

  Sally was a bit hazy about the details, but she knew from local gossip that Ross’s mother had been a second cousin of Miss Wallace’s and had lived for a while at Winterston before marrying Alec Lorimer, a civil engineer. She and her husband had returned to Winterston occasionally for holidays, and she had made her home there during the war while Ross’s father had been doing his war service. Sally wasn’t sure what had happened to Mrs. Lorimer, because Aunt Jessie and her own mother had tended to stop discussing the matter when they came to that part.

  A scuttering, scrabbling noise startled Sally and, cold with apprehension, she peered about her. She wasn’t really afraid of the dark—she had walked too many country roads at night for that. But it seemed as if Ross had been away for a long time and the dank smell of age coupled with the brooding silence of the house were beginning to attack her nerves. She had a sudden longing to call out to Ross, and only the thought that he might think her foolish and hypersensitive prevented her from doing so.

  A door at the end of the passage to the left of her opened and he called out,

  ‘Sally, there are some switches to the right of the front door. Try them, will you?’

  Dim light sprang up from wall lamps shaped like flambeaux, revealing the grey stone walls of the hall which were decorated with stuffed stags’ heads, crossed claymores, dirks and round embossed shields. Tattered banners, their colours long faded so that they were of a uniform greyness, hung lifelessly from their staffs which protruded from the walls. A huge carved chest stood against the wall under the curve of the staircase. On it two enormous ornate silver candelabra were still spiked with white candles. Beside it a rusty, rather lopsided suit of armour looked doleful and pathetic. Everything was old, dusty and decrepit.

  Ross appeared, his tall wide-shouldered figure seeming strangely out of place, dressed as he was in dark trousers, a turtle-necked sweater and a tweed jacket. Sally had the oddest feeling that he should have been wearing the pointed helmet and chain mail of a Norman knight.

  He eyed her observantly and his grin mocked her.

  ‘You look slightly pale. Is the ghost of Willy the Hatchet walking tonight? He’s supposed to appear at full moon.’

  Sally’s skin goose-pimpled. She knew the story of the medieval William the Hatchet who had apparently gone berserk one day a
nd had applied a hatchet to his wife, her lover and then to himself.

  ‘I ... I ... heard a scrabbling noise in the walls.’

  ‘Rats,’ he replied laconically as his gaze roved round the hall assessingly. ‘The place hasn’t changed much in ten years except that there are probably more rats, more woodworm and more dry rot.’

  ‘Och, no!’ wailed Sally, as she tried to stave off the disillusion which was creeping inexorably into her mind. This was the dream house of her childhood and adolescent years, around which she had woven so many dreams. Now this ruthless realist was attempting to destroy its romance as he hoped to destroy its structure.

  ‘Och, yes,’ he jeered softly. He walked across to the staircase and placed a hand on the carved wooden balustrade which had been superimposed on the original stone one. Then he beckoned to her and she went over to him.

  ‘Look,’ he pointed with a blunt forefinger and she looked. Scarred wood, dry and brittle, marred the symmetry of the carving.

  ‘And here,’ the cool hard voice persisted, and she looked again at another disfiguring patch of dry rot.

  ‘Couldn’t it be cut out and patched?’ she quavered defensively.

  His glance was disparaging and he did not bother to reply, but moved away towards the passage which led to the living quarters of the house. He opened a panelled door, put his hand to the wall inside, found a switch and light from a Jacobean wrought-iron chandelier shed a weak yellow glow over the Jacobean refectory table and its accompanying high-backed chairs.

  ‘What a lovely room!’ exclaimed Sally, looking round at the pine-panelled walls, at the long green velvet draperies looped back from lead-paned windows. ‘What lovely furniture!’

  ‘The panelling is full of woodworm and rats,’ commented Ross, ‘and the furniture is probably ready to fall to pieces.’

  He started to examine the panelling and Sally, after a sad glance at the lovely chairs, followed him. The panelling she could see was riddled with small holes.

  ‘Woodworm,’ announced Ross succinctly.