On and on I scrambled, slipping back almost as much as I pressed upwards, clutching at tussocks to stop myself from sliding all the way. My hands were scratched and I felt my nails bend back and break as the earth pitted in behind them. My knees were raw, scraped bare through my stockings. Still I climbed, and time began to slow down, to roll past, falling away behind me in heavy folds; each time I lifted a hand and hauled myself upwards it was like a tree uprooting itself; each time my foot struck the ground a tide rushed up through me and shattered behind my eyes.
Was that a light? Was I imagining it? Up ahead of me I thought I could see a thick glow smeared across the darkness and I could hear a noise that was not a hum and was not a howl but was both of them and neither and then I was up on top of the law standing immensely tall, with all the darkness splintered and streaming away from me, my ears rushing with the howling humming sound and there was the dark stranger, all in black, but his legs had stuck together and turned into a bell and the bell swung around as he moved. It was Vashti, it must be, in a black robe like a bell and there were the bones, white and shimmering, too big to be a kitten’s bones. And they were clothed with flesh again and it was Lorna’s body, lying white and still.
I moaned and the humming howl broke off, whispering and rustling like a thousand crows’ wings all around me. I staggered forward and fell as the black bell turned, clanging.
There were five of them, stone angels, their carved robes grey-white like bones, and they were coming from all sides. And they were past me, closing in on her now, walking slowly in their grey stone robes, chanting. Four of them closing over the black bell, making it stop, and one of them, huge, monstrous, bigger than the hill, bigger than the sky, bowing over the bones that were clothed in flesh, that was Lorna, and lifting her. The black bell clanged.
I closed my eyes. It was over.
20
The moon, looking as tremulous and iridescent as a soap bubble balanced on the branch tips of the bare dark trees, shone down through the windows of the schoolroom onto the heads of the Rural ladies. Miss Lindsay, standing on a set of steps with a taper in her hand, began touching its glowing tip to the candles and as the dots of light steadily grew into pointed, flickering flames and the flames spread all around the tree with each touch, the ladies began to murmur.
‘Oh, did you ever see so bonny!’
‘My, those bottle tops fair catch the light when they’re strung together.’
‘Away. It’s your bobbles you made that are twinkling.’
‘And what a fair heat comes off it. You’ve got the fire bucket there, eh no, Miss McCallum?’
Miss Lindsay stepped down and blew out the taper and we stood in silence for a while, admiring.
‘Let’s not put the lamps on again,’ she said. ‘Let’s have our tea in the candlelight.’
‘Are those mincemeat pies warmed through yet, Moyra?’
‘Aye, they’re rare and hot.’ And then, sotto voce. ‘I’d be as happy with a scone myself, mind.’
‘No! Fruit only lies heavy if you’ve put too much peel through it. You’d better have one of my ones, Mrs Martineau – with the wee stars on the top – and you’ll be fine.’
When we had collected our cups from the tea table and sat back down in the ring of chairs around the tree we looked, in the soft light, like children gathered around a manger, or rather like children pretending to be wise men gathered around a manger, half the air of wonderment acting and half of it real.
Miss McCallum settled down next to me.
‘I’m sorry about your talk, Mrs Gilver,’ she said. ‘You’re fated never to give it, it seems.’
‘If I’d insisted on the Household Budget instead of a Christmas party with a tree, there might have been a riot,’ I said and there was some soft chuckling from the ladies nearest us, who were listening in.
‘Well, you’re always welcome to come back and join us,’ said Mrs Hemingborough, from across the way. ‘You’ve been a good friend to Luckenlaw.’
‘Aye, some folk can fit in anywhere,’ said another voice, sounding rather grim for the setting. ‘And some folk just fit in nowhere, try as they will.’
There was a slight silence after that, and a few throats were cleared. I had seen the board as I drove past the gateposts of Luck House on my way down that afternoon. Fine small estate, historic mansion house, tenanted farm, cottages, trout stream, stocked shoot. Enquiries and viewing strictly through agents.
‘I hear that Vashti one is still in the hospital,’ said Annette Martineau. ‘What is it that’s wrong with her again?’
‘They’ve never said,’ said Molly.
‘I heard the pair of them had been dabbling…’ said a timid voice. I stiffened. ‘In… drugs.’
‘Now, ladies,’ said Miss Lindsay. ‘The Rural is no place for gossip.’ There was a rumble of assent, with just a hint of amusement too. ‘There but for the grace of God…’
‘I cannot agree with you there,’ said Mrs Palmer. ‘I think you make your own luck in this world.’
‘You’re right,’ said Mary Torrance. ‘The good you do and the harm you do: both come back to you threefold.’
‘And what’s for you won’t go by you,’ said Mrs McAdam, of course, because someone had to.
‘Let’s not dwell on it,’ said Miss Lindsay. ‘It’s Christmas time. Let’s be happy that we’ve got this first year behind us and the Rural is going strong.’
‘And we’ve a lot to look forward to next year,’ said a voice from the other side of the tree, sounding slightly knowing. ‘I hear we’ve a wedding coming.’
Lorna Tait looked down and said nothing, but she was smiling. Jock Christie from Luckenheart Farm had been there at the manse for tea before the meeting tonight, very well-scrubbed and uncomfortable in his good shirt and squeaky shoes, looking younger than ever but not much younger than Lorna with her rosy cheeks and dancing eyes, and while I was changing I heard from Grant who had heard from Mrs Wolstenthwaite in the kitchen that he was there two and three times a week, and they had been seen out walking together with no chaperone, and last Sunday young Christie had sat in the manse pew at the kirk and Mr Tait had looked mightily pleased and said nothing.
It could not have been the ideal way to meet one’s future mate, being carried down a hillside in a dead faint and laid on his kitchen table wearing nothing but a blanket, but Alec told me that Christie had taken it all in his stride and had attended to Lorna as he would attend to any sick calf or heifer struck with milk fever.
He had had time to gather himself, right enough. He had, of course, not believed me that nothing was wrong and had run to the manse at a sprint as soon as I had left him. He met Alec coming out of the gates.
‘I need to see Mr Tait,’ Christie panted.
‘He’s not in,’ said Alec, whose sides were also heaving. ‘I’m trying to find him too. I’ve just been up the law and there are lights, candles. I saw them and went to investigate but there’s no one to be found.’
‘I think they’re in that cave-thing at my place,’ said John Christie. ‘That dark-haired lady went in after them.’
‘A dark-haired lady?’ said Alec, starting to run. ‘Didn’t you try to stop her?’
By the time they had reached the cleft in the rock and Alec had seen my motor car sitting there, Mr Tait was almost all the way down the hill with Lorna in his arms, his knees threatening to give out at the strain.
‘Help!’ he shouted. ‘Captain Watson? Jockie? Someone help me.’
‘I’ve got her, sir. You can let go now,’ said Christie.