"What goes on there?"
"Nothing, really. It's just a little place on the way to somewhere else. And yet everything. You know how small communities are. And we have a pub and a school, and shops, and two churches, and a dear queer who sells antiques. There always seems to be something going on. A jumble sale, or a garden opening, or a school play." It sounded dreadfully dull. She said, "It sounds dreadfully dull."
"Not a bit. Who lives there?"
"The village people, and the Balmerinos, and the minister and his wife, and the rector and his wife, and the Airds. Archie Balmerino is the Laird, which means that he owns the village and thousands of acres of land. Croy is enormous, but he's not in the least grand, and neither is Isobel. Isobel works harder than any woman I know, which is saying something in Scotland because all the women beaver away endlessly. If they're not running huge houses, or bringing up children, or gardening, then they're organizing enormous charity events or engaged in some home industry or other. Like running farm shops and selling all their own produce, or drying flowers, or keeping bees, or restoring antiques, or making the most beautiful curtains for people."
"Don't they ever have fun?"
"Yes, they have fun, but it's not Long Island fun, and it's not even Devon fun. In August and Septeniber, everything comes to a rising boil and there's a party most nights, and hunt balls and shooting and things. You've come at the right time, Conrad, though you'd never believe it on a dismal evening like this. But then the winter closes in and everybody hibernates."
"How do you see your girl-friends?"
"I don't know." She tried to work this one out. "It's not like anywhere else. We all live such miles apart, and there's no club life. I mean, there aren't country clubs like there are in the States. And pubs aren't the same as they are in the south. Women don't really go into pubs. There are golf clubs, of course, but those are mostly male-orientated, and women are strictly personae non grata. You might go to Relkirk and meet a girl-friend there, but most of the socializing is done in people's private houses. Lunch parties for the girls, and dinner parties for the couples. We all get dressed up, and like I said, drive for forty miles or more. Which is one of the reasons that life more or less stops during the winter. That's when people escape. They go to Jamaica, if they can afford it, or'Val d'Isere for the skiing."
"And what do you do?"
"I don't mind the winters. I hate the wet summers, but the winters are beautiful. And I go skiing up the glen. There's a ski-area only about ten miles on from Strathcroy, with a couple of tows and some good runs. The only thing is that if there's a lot of snow you can't get up the road. Which rather defeats the purpose."
"You used to ride."
"I used to hunt. For me, that was the whole purpose of riding. When I first came to Balnaid, Edmund said I could keep a couple of horses, but there didn't seem any point if there was to be no hunting."
"So how do you fill your days?"
"So far," she told him, "I've filled them with Henry." She gazed at Conrad, in glum hopelessness, across the table, because he had nailed with a single question the sum total of all her apprehension. Henry was gone, torn from her against her will. You smother him, Edmund had told her, and she had been furiously hurt and angry, but the smothering and the mothering had been her daily occupation and her greatest joy.
Bereft of Henry, there was only Edmund.
But Edmund was in New York, and if he wasn't in New York, then he was in Frankfurt or Tokyo or Hong Kong. Before, she had coped with these long separations, partly because there had always been Henry for comfort and companionship, but also because she had been totally confident, wherever he might be, in Edmund's strength and constancy and love.
But now… the doubts and dreadful possibilities of last night's waking nightmares crowded in on her again. Lottie Carstairs, that madwoman… but perhaps not so mad… telling Virginia things that she had never thought to hear. Edmund and Pandora Blair. Why do you think he's taken himself off to America? He'll make a fool of you, same as he did his first wife, poor lady.
Suddenly, it was all too much.
To her horror, she felt her mouth tremble, her eyes prick with tears. Across the table, Conrad watched her, and for a mad instant she thought about confiding in him, spilling out all the anguish of her miserable uncertainties. But then the tears swam into her eyes and his face dissolved into a watery mist, and Virginia thought, oh, bugger, I'm pissed. Just in time. The moment mercifully was over, and the dangerous temptation behind her. She must never speak about it to anybody, because if she did, then the words, said aloud, might make it all true. Might make it happen.
She said, "I'm sorry. So silly." She sniffed lustily, searched for a handkerchief, couldn't find one. Across the table, Conrad offered his own, white and clean and freshly ironed, and she took it thankfully and blew her nose. She said, "I'm tired and I'm miserable." She tried to make light of it. "I'm also slightly pissed."
He said, "You can't drive yourself home."
"I have to."
"Stay here the night and go back in the morning. We'll get a room for you."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
Tears poured again. "I have to get back for the dogs."
He did not laugh at her. He said, "Stay here for a moment. Order coffee. I just have to make a telephone call."
He laid down his napkin, pushed back his chair, and went. Virginia mopped her face, blew her nose again, glanced around the dining-room, anxious that no other person had noticed her sudden attack of weepy emotion. But the other diners were all absorbed in their dinners, munching stolidly at fried fish, or spooning their way through the "offly guid" trifle. The tears, mercifully, receded. The waitress approached to remove their plates.
"Did you enjoy your steak?"
"Yes, it was delicious."
"Are you taking sweet?"
"No. I don't think so, thank you. But if we could have some coffee?"
She had brought the coffee, and Virginia was already drinking the black and noxious stuff, which tasted as though it had been made out of a bottle, before Conrad returned to her. He drew back his chair and sat down. She looked at him inquiringly, and he said, "That's all settled."
"What have you settled?"
"I've cancelled my room, and cancelled the hire car for tomorrow. I'll drive you back to Strathcroy. I'll drive you home."
"Will you go to Croy?"
"No. They're not expecting me until tomorrow morning. I can go to the pub you mentioned."
"No, you can't, because they won't have a room. They're filled with grouse-shooting visitors who've taken Archie's moor." She sniffed away the last of her weeping, poured his coffee. "You can come to Balnaid. Stay the night there. The guest-room beds are all made up." She looked up, and caught the expression on his face. She said, "There's no problem," but even as she said this, knew that there was.
In the darkness, Conrad drove. It had stopped raining, as though the skies had run out of water, but the wind was from the south-west, and still damp, and the night stayed overcast. The road climbed and wound and dipped, and in the hollows lay pools of flood-water from the overflowing ditches. Virginia, bundled in her Barbour, thought of the last time that she had made this journey; the evening Edmund had met her off the shuttle and they had had dinner together in Edinburgh. Then the sky had been an artist's wonder of rose-pink and grey. Now the darkness was sombre and menacing, and the lights that shone from the windows of farmhouses scattered over the surrounding braes of Strathcroy gave little relief, seeming distant and unreachable as stars.
Virginia yawned.
"You're sleepy," Conrad told her.
"Not really. Just too much wine." She reached out and rolled down the window, and felt the cold, wet, mossy air pour over her face. The tyres of the Subaru hissed on the wet Tarmac; out of the darkness came the long call of a curlew.