"Did your mother not object to this friendship?"
"I think she was quite glad to have me out of the way. She knew that 1 would come to no harm."
"And did Geordie follow in his father's footsteps?"
"No. Like my own father, he was a clever and academic boy and he did well at school. My father encouraged him in his ambitions. I think he recognized something of himself in Geordie. Because of this, Geordie won a place at the Grammar School in Relkirk, and after that was apprenticed to a firm of chartered accountants."
"And you?"
"Sadly, I had to grow up. All at once, I was eighteen, and my mother realized that her Ugly Duckling had become an Ugly Duck. Despite my size and my lack of social graces, she decided that 1 must Come Out-do a season in Edinburgh and be presented to Royalty at Holyroodhouse. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but Geordie had gone from me and was living in lodgings in Relkirk, and I worked it out in my own mind that if I was complaisant about this dreadful scheme of hers, then perhaps she would in time accept the fact that Geordie Aird was the only man in the world 1 would think of marrying. The Season and the Coming Out were, as you can imagine, a total failure. A charade. Dressed in enormous evening gowns, all satin and glitter, 1 looked like a youthful Pantomime Dame. At the end of the season I remained unsought, unwanted, and unengaged. My mother, deeply ashamed, brought me home to Balnaid, and I did the flowers and walked the dogs… and waited for Geordie."
"How long did you have to wait?"
"Four years. Until he had qualified and was in a position to support a wife. I had money of my own, of course. A trust, which came to me when I was twenty-one, and we could quite easily have managed on that, but Geordie would not hear of it. So I went on waiting. Until the great day came and he passed all his final examinations. I remember 1 was in the wash-house at Balnaid, giving the dog a bath. I'd taken him out for a walk, and he'd rolled in something disgusting, and there I was wrapped in an apron and soaking wet and smelling of carbolic. And the wash-house door was flung open, and there stood Geordie, come to ask me to marry him. It was the most romantic moment. And since then, I've always had a soft spot for the smell of carbolic."
"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."