"Growing up, I don't think that ever occurred to me."
Violet laughed, appreciating his honesty. "Youth is wasted on the young. But you enjoyed your mother's company?"
"Yes, I did. But from time to time we had the most stupendous rows. Usually about money."
"That's what most family rows are about. And I don't imagine that she suffered from materialism."
"The very opposite. She had her own philosophy for living, and a selection of homespun truisms which she would come out with in times of stress, or in the middle of some really acrimonious argument. One of them was that happiness is making the most of what you have and riches is making the most of what you've got. It sounded plausible, but I never quite worked out the logic."
"Perhaps you needed more than wise words."
"Yes. I needed more. I needed not to feel an outsider. I wanted to be part of a different sort of life, to have a different background. The Establishment. Old houses, old families, old names, old money. We were brought up to believe that money didn't matter, but I knew that it only didn't matter provided you had plenty of it."
Violet said, "I disapprove, but understand. The grass is always greener on the other side of the hill, and it is human nature to yearn for what you cannot have." She thought of Alexa's little jewel of a house in Ovington Street, and the financial security she had inherited from her maternal grandmother, and knew a small stirring of disquiet. "The worst is," she went on, "that when you achieve that green grass, you often discover that you never really wanted it at all." He stayed silent, and she frowned. "Tell me," she said abruptly, coming straight to the point, "what do you think of us all?"
Noel was taken aback by her bluntness. "I… I've scarcely had time to form an opinion."
"Rubbish. Of course you have. Do you think, for instance, that we are Establishment, as you term it? Do you think that we are all very grand?"
He laughed. Perhaps his amusement disguised a certain embarrassment. She could not be sure. "I don't know about grand. But you must admit that you live on a fairly lavish scale. To achieve such a life-style in the south, one would need to be a millionaire ten times over."
"But this is Scotland."
"Precisely so."
"So you do think we're grand?"
"No. Just different."
"Not different, Noel. Ordinary. The most ordinary of folk, who have been blessed with the good fortune to be raised and to live in this incomparable country. There are, I admit, titles, lands, huge houses, and a certain feudalism, but scratch the surface of any one of us, go back a generation or two, and you'll find humble crofters, mill workers, shepherds, small farmers. The Scottish clan system was an extraordinary thing. No man was any man's servant, but part of a family. Which is why your average Highlander does not walk through life with a chip on his shoulder. He is proud. He knows he is as good as you are, and probably a good deal better. As well, the Industrial Revolution and Victorian money created an enormous and wealthy middle class out of a lot of hard-working artisans. Archie is the third Lord Balmerino, but his grandfather made his pile in heavy textiles, and he was raised in the city streets. As for my own father, he started life as the barefoot son of a crofter from the Isle of Lewis. But he was blessed with brains and a talent for book-learning, and his ambitions led him to scholarships, and eventually to study medicine. He became a surgeon and prospered and attained great heights-the Chair of Anatomy at Edinburgh University and a knighthood. Sir Hector Akenside. A resounding name, don't you think? But he always remained a man without pride or pretension, and for this reason was not only respected but loved."
"And your mother?"
"My mother came from an entirely different background. I have to admit that she was rather grand. Lady Primrose Marr, the daughter of an ancient and well-connected family from the Borders, who had, through nobody's fault but their own, become totally impoverished. She was very beautiful. Famously so. Small and elegant and with silvery-blonde hair, piled up on her head, so that it looked as though her slender neck might break with the weight of it. My father set eyes on her at some ball or reception in the Assembly Rooms, and fell instantly in love. I don't think she was ever in love with him, but by then he was something of a personage, and well-to-do to boot, and she was intelligent enough to realize on which side her bread had been buttered. Her family, although they could scarcely approve of the match, raised no objections… they were probably only too glad to get the girl off their hands."
"Were they happy?"
"I think so. I think they suited each other very well. They lived in a tall and draughty house in Heriot Row, and that is where I was born. My mother relished Edinburgh, with all its social life, the coming and going of friends, the theatre and the concerts, the balls and receptions. But my father remained a countryman with his heart in the hills. He had always loved Strathcroy, and had come every summer for his annual fishing holiday. When I was about five, he bought the land south of the river and built Balnaid. He was still working, and I was at school in Edinburgh, so to begin with, Balnaid was simply a holiday home, a sort of shooting lodge. To me it was paradise, and I lived for the summer months. When he finally retired, he retired to Balnaid. My mother thought it a rotten idea, but he had a stubborn streak to him, and in the end, she simply made the best of it. She filled the house with guests, thus ensuring a fourth for bridge, and a dinner party every night. But we kept the house in Heriot Row, and when the rain fell with unceasing venom, or the bitter winds of winter blew, she invariably found some excuse to return to Edinburgh, or take herself off to Italy, or the south of France."
"And you?"
"I told you. For me it was paradise. I was an only child, and a great disappointment to my mother because I was not only dreadfully large and fat, but plain as well. I towered over all my contemporaries, and was a total failure at dancing class because no boy ever wanted to be my partner. In Edinburgh society, I stuck out like a sore thumb, but at Balnaid it didn't seem to matter how I looked, and at Balnaid I could be just myself."
"And your husband?"
"My husband?" Violet's warm smile transformed her weathered features. "My husband was Geordie Aird. You see, I married my dearest friend, and at the end of over thirty years of marriage, he was still my dearest friend. Not many women can say that."
"How did you meet him?"
"At a shooting party, up on the moors of Creagan Dubh. My father had been asked to shoot with Lord Balmerino, and because my mother was away on some Mediterranean cruise, he asked me to accompany him. Going shooting with my father was always the greatest of treats, and I went to great pains to be useful, carrying his cartridge bag, and sitting, quiet and still as a mouse, in his butt."
"Was Geordie one of the guns?" asked Noel.
"No, Noel. Geordie was one of the beaters. His father, Jamie Aird, was Lord Balmerino's head keeper."
"You married the gamekeeper's son?" Noel could scarcely keep the astonishment out of his voice, but there was admiration there as well.
"I did. It smacks a little of Lady Chatterley, doesn't it, but I can assure you it was not like that at all."
"But when did this happen?"
"The early 1920s. I was ten and Geordie was fifteen. I decided he was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen, and when it was time for the luncheon picnic, I took my sandwiches over to where the keepers and the beaters sat, and ate them with him. You could say that I set my cap for him. After that, he was my friend; I was his shadow, he took me under his wing. I wasn't alone any more. I was with Geordie. We spent whole days together, always out of doors. He taught me to cast for salmon and guddle for trout. Some days we walked for miles, and he showed me the hidden corries where the deer grazed, and the high peaks where the eagles nested. And after a day on the moor, he would take me home to the little house where bis parents lived… where Gordon Gillock, Archie's keeper, lives now… and Mrs. Aird would feed me bannocks and scones and pour me strong black tea from her best lustre teapot."