To Alice’s joy, Daphne had been suffering from mild sunstroke and had been taken back to the hotel by Heather. So she was allowed to ride home with Jeremy.
There is nothing more sensuous than a rich fast car driven by a rich slow man through a Highland evening.
Alice felt languorous and sexy. The setting sun flashed between the trees and bushes as they drove along with the pale gold brilliance of the far north.
The grass was so very green in this evening light, this gloaming. Green as the fairy stories, green and gold as Never-Never Land. Alice could well understand now why the Highlanders believed in fairies. Jeremy slowed the car outside the village as the tall blonde Alice had seen with Constable Macbeth came striding along the side of the road with two Irish wolfhounds on the leash.
“That’s the love of Constable Macbeth’s life,” said Alice, delighted to have a piece of gossip.
“No hope there,” said Jeremy, cheerfully and unconsciously quoting Lady Jane. “That’s Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, daughter of Colonel James Halburton-Smythe. Her photograph was in Country Life the other week. The Halburton-Smythes own most of the land around here.”
“Oh,” said Alice, feeling a certain kinship with the village constable. “Perhaps she loves him too.”
“She wouldn’t be so silly,” said Jeremy. “I wouldn’t even have a chance there.”
“Do people’s backgrounds matter a great deal to you?” asked Alice in a low voice.
Jeremy reminded himself of his future as a politician. “No,” he said stoutly. “I think all that sort of thing is rot. A lady is a lady no matter what her background.”
Alice gave him a brilliant smile, and he smiled back, thinking she really was a very pretty little thing.
The sun disappeared as they plunged down to Lochdubh. Alice prayed that Jeremy would stop the car and kiss her again, but he seemed to have become immersed in his own thoughts.
When they arrived at the hotel, it was to find the rest of the fishing party surrounding Major Peter Frame. He was proudly holding up a large salmon while Heather took his photograph. Two more giants lay in plastic bags on the ground at his feet.
“How on earth did you do it?” said Jeremy, slapping the major on the back. “Hey, that fellow’s got a chunk out the side.”
“Fraid that’s where I wrenched the hook out, old man,” said the major. “Got too excited.”
“Gosh, I wish I had stayed with you,” said Jeremy. “But I thought you went off somewhere else. Did you?”
The major laid his finger alongside his nose. “Mum’s the word, and talking about mum, the filthy Iron Curtain champers is on me tonight.”
“Let’s take them to the scales and log your catch in the book,” said John, his face radiant. The photograph would go to the local papers and the fishing magazines. He loved it when one of his pupils made a good catch. And no one had ever had such luck as this before.
They all were now looking forward to the evening, reminding themselves that that was the time when Lady Jane could be guaranteed to be at her best. They were to meet in the bar at eight to toast the major’s catch.
Alice slaved over her appearance. She had bought one good dinner gown at an elegant Help the Aged shop in Mayfair. Although the clothes were secondhand, most of them had barely been worn and the dinner gown was as good as new. It was made of black silk velvet, very severe, cut low in the front and slit up to mid-thigh on either side of the narrow skirt.
She was ready at last, half an hour too early. This was one time Alice was determined to make an appearance. Her high-heeled black sandals with thin straps gave her extra height and extra confidence. In the shaded light of the hotel room, her reflection looked poised and sophisticated.
Alice was just turning away from the mirror when all the barbed remarks Lady Jane had made seemed to clamour in her brain. It was no use pretending otherwise; Lady Jane had set out to fold out something about each one of them.
Jeremy must never know. The future Prime Minister of Britain could not have a wife with a criminal record. But then, Lady Jane knew something about Jeremy. Had he seduced a servant? But that was an upper-class sin and therefore forgivable, thought Alice miserably. She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked about her with bleak eyes.
How perfectly splendid it would be to go back to Mr Patterson-James and hand in her notice, and say she was going to be married to Jeremy Blythe – “one of the Somerset Blythes, you know,” There was Mum and Dad in Liverpool to cope with. Alice thought of her small, poky, shabby, comfortable home. Jeremy must never be allowed to go there. Mum and Dad would just have to travel to London for the wedding.
But between Alice and all those dreams stood Lady Jane. A wave of hate for Jane Winters engulfed Alice; primitive, naked hate.
Ten past eight! Alice leapt to her feet with an anguished look at her travel alarm.
The bar was crowded when she made her entrance. “Dear me, the Merry Widow,” remarked Lady Jane, casting a pale look over Alice’s black velvet gown. The fishing party had taken a table by the window where the major was cheerfully dispensing champagne. Alice’s entrance had fallen flat because the major was describing how he had landed his first salmon, and everyone was hanging on his every word. “It’s almost a good enough story to be true,” said Lady Jane.
“Well, obviously it’s true,” said the major, his good humour unimpaired. “Here I am and there are my fish, all waiting in the hotel freezer to be smoked. By the way, Alice, your trout’s still there. You forgot to have it for breakfast.”
“You and Alice have a lot in common,” said Lady Jane sweetly. “I can see that by the end of the week that hotel freezer will be packed with fish that neither of you caught.”
The rest of the group tried to ignore Lady Jane’s remark. “Tell us where exactly you caught those salmon, Major,” asked Jeremy.
“Yes, do tell,” echoed Daphne. “It isn’t fair to keep such a prize place to yourself.”
The major laughed and shook his head.
“Oh, I’ll tell you,” said Lady Jane. She was wearing a sort of flowered pyjama suit of the type that used to be in vogue in the thirties. Vermillion lipstick accentuated the petulant droop of her mouth. “I was talking to Ian Morrison, the ghillie, a little while ago and the dear man was in his cups and told me exactly how you caught them.”
An awful silence fell on the group. The major stood with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a glass in the other and a silly smile pasted on his face.
“I think we should go in to dinner,” said Heather loudly and clearly.
“I say, yes, let’s,” said the major eagerly.
They all rose to their feet. Lady Jane remained seated, a gilt sandal swinging from one plump foot as she looked up at them.
“Major Frame didn’t catch those fish at all,” she said with hideous clarity. “Ian Morrison took him up to the high pools on the Anstey. In one of those pools, three salmon had been trapped because of the river dwindling suddenly in the heat. They were dying from lack of oxygen. One was half out of the water and a seagull had torn a gash in its side, not the dear major’s fictitious hook!”
One by one they filed into the dining room, not looking at each other, not looking at the major. Alice couldn’t bear it any longer. She took a seat by the major. “I don’t believe a word of it,” she said, patting his hand. “That terrible woman made it all up.”
The major smiled at her in a rigid sort of way and drank steadily from his champagne glass.
Charlie Baxter had been invited to join them for dinner. He had not been in the bar and therefore did not know about the major’s humiliation. But he looked from face to face and then settled down to eat his food so that he could escape as quickly as possible.