The Stranger Came Read online

'That's right!' He gave it an emphasis of relief.

  'What on earth has he promised to you?'

  He regarded her thoughtfully. 'I'm going to raise funds for them. We haven't quite settled on a title for what I'll be doing.’

  'Mr Norman, the Gregory and Rintoul already has an administrative secretary. A very good one, I believe.’

  'Didn't realise it was something you were involved with. I thought it was just an interest of your husband's.’

  The first foretaste of nausea came as a premonition – a shimmer on the edge of vision like a shadow passing across a hill slope before the storm breaks. God! she prayed, don't let me be ill. Not now. Not in front of him.

  Since nothing mattered now but to be well, she explained softly, in a tone that seemed like indifference, 'Rintoul is my maiden name. The Trust was founded by my grandfather. By him and Charles Gregory. There aren't any of the Gregorys left. Charles Gregory had no children of his own. After his death, his younger brother took over his part in the Trust. And then he had a son who carried it on after a fashion – but they emigrated to Australia, the son and his family I mean, and since then…' The headache had begun or rather its faintest preliminary touch, not anything to fear or dread in itself; only it meant that what was coming was inevitable and that made it cruel and like a mockery.

  'I didn't know. He didn't say. Not about you being the Rintoul in Gregory and.’

  'I don't take an active part. But Maitland,' she could not resist her pride in that, 'has made all the difference. Things had been allowed to slide. With the Gregory’s planning to go abroad – I don't think you make up your mind to something like that overnight. I'm sure you have it grow on you, and you get gradually less and less involved with things in the country you're preparing yourself to leave. And my father was dead by then – and I was too young – still at University.’ The lights at the corner of her vision slowed and dimmed. Perhaps it was going to be all right. Without any transition, she said abruptly, 'With the best will in the world my husband can't simply offer you a job. There is a Committee which is responsible for the running of the Trust.’

  Unexpectedly he grinned. 'From what he said last night that shouldn't be a problem. The Professor gave me the impression they'll do whatever he tells them to do.’

  Like a salesman, she thought, but one who is quite sure he has made his sale.

  'No,' she said. 'Mrs Stewart is perfectly capable. There's no need. What you describe seems to me quite a new idea.’ With his spoon he took out a little sweet sediment from the bottom of his cup and licked it off. 'I've only met one person called Rintoul in my whole life. It's not a common name. Maybe I should tell you about him some time.’

  But now, the deceptive respite over, the cloud was moving, drifting, its shadow pressing back the light. She was going to be ill. The headache would wound and sicken and for a time leave her blind. Before that happened, she had to be on her own. Far away a voice made her excuse. Guided by flickering cracks of vision, she drew herself upwards, clutching the banister like a lifeline. With eyes closed, she groped along the upper landing and reached the shelter of her bedroom. She had to lie down but it would bring her no relief. It was like what they did to prisoners – everywhere now it seemed – kept them awake until they were broken. If someone had planned this for her, it would be a torment like theirs. She could not bear it.

  She opened her eyes against the glare at the sound of the bedroom door being opened. He was standing over her.

  'I could see you were ill,' he said. 'You don't have to suffer it on your own. I can help. I've helped other people.’

  'You're not a doctor.’ She wanted him to say, yes, he was.

  'You know I'm not.’

  She was disappointed, not angry, cruelly disappointed.

  'But has any doctor helped you? Haven't you always hoped for help instead of finding it?'

  It was true.

  In the echoing tilting isolation of her need, she cried, I believe in you.

  Help me.

  It didn't take much to amuse students. She wondered, though, why Maitland felt he had to make a joke at that point. It was like a disclaimer; for she knew that in a certain mood the story could bring tears to his eyes. It had been a long time since she had heard him tell it.

  'Quite alone in the middle of the night, he wrote to his wife, "My brain burns. I must have walked and a fearful dream rises upon me. I cannot bear the horrible thought. God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me.”’

  Sophie, had that been her first name? She scanned the lines of heads bent before her, the occasional glimpse of a profile. The girl in the front row – But she turned to smile at her neighbour, appreciating something Maitland had just said, the little chuckle going back wave on wave, ah, they appreciated, all of them appreciated him – and, no, it wasn't Miss Lindgren. Sophie…

  When she came out, Sam Wilson was lurking. 'Such devotion!' he cried. 'Quite beyond the call of duty!'

  Little Sam, as Maitland called him, which was unkind, but it was possible not to feel in the mood for yet another of his jokes about her habit of slipping in to sit on one of the back benches if she had to wait for Maitland. Why should he care, why should it be anyone's business, that she still enjoyed listening to her husband lecture?

  On the fringe of the loch there was a skin of ice. 'Should I feel guilty?' she asked.

  'He'll have gathered ammunition and some of it will be useful, but I can manage just as well without it.’

  'All the same, if you promised to go over his paper for the Dean's meeting…'

  'Don't worry. It's too fine an afternoon to spend indoors listening to Sam. Anyway all the horse trading has been done, the cuts decided. He doesn't understand the politics of this place.’

  'I was rude to him. I can cope usually. It's just that today ...’ She sighed. 'He's devoted to you. I should like him for that. I do like him. It's just that I don't see why it should make him jealous of everybody, including me.’

  'He's actually fond of you, give him half a chance. There's a streak of chivalry in little Sam.’

  'You treat him badly.’

  'Not a bit of it.’ Maitland was surprised. 'He enjoys making drafts. Getting the facts marshalled. Academics love that; like holding meetings. "On a point of order, Vice Chancellor.” It gives them – us, me – the illusion of controlling events.’

  'Illusion?' She shivered. 'I hadn't realised it was so cold. Take my hand – feel how cold it is.’ From the top of the bank she caught glints of late afternoon sun coming up from the ice. 'I'm getting old.’

  'Rubbish!' he said.

  'Ice, already. Sign of a hard winter. Like all the berries on the rowans or when the starlings leave.’

  He laughed and they began to walk again, turning back in the direction that would take them to the car park.

  Under the clear water near the edge she could see smooth round pebbles that emerging made a little patch of shore. On the other side of the loch, the low white buildings of the administrative block and residences were set like toys at the foot of dark soggy looking hills. The site was beautiful but she had always been bothered by the notion that the University's buildings were temporary and out of place. Perhaps because they were functional in style and of concrete they could only seem like after thoughts in this dark landscape.

  'Country lore,' Maitland said.

  'What?'

  'Rowans and starlings. But the ice has more to do with the hills keeping the sun away most of the day. You get ice on that stretch in August.’

  She smiled at the slyness of his pleasure. He was a connoisseur of her credulity and would sometimes test its limits as if she might believe the most outrageous thing if he assured her it was so.

  'That sounds like our summers,' she said.

  He bent and picked up a stone from the edge of the path. With a swing and jerk of his arm he sent it curving out, and watched frowning as it punched through the thin ice.

  'When I was fourteen,' he said
, rubbing his fingers clean, 'there was a winter like that one we had five years back. There was a lochan in the hills above our village. I climbed up to it late one afternoon, and it was frozen from side to side. “I'll bet I could walk across”, I said to myself.’

  'Were you alone?'

  'The lochan was about a mile long – very narrow – perhaps two hundred yards across where I was standing. Above on the headland there was a lighthouse. The lochan had been made in the old days by the lighthouse people to give them fresh water. Across on the other side, directly opposite me, was a pump house. That was my mark. I was about halfway before I started to get worried. I heard the ice crack and felt it bending under me.’

  'Don't tell me,' she said. 'I don't want to hear.’

  'On the other side I could see the trees without any leaves, just little trails of mist winding through the branches. It was the cold in my legs got me moving again. As I got near, I could see the grass bent over under the ice on the bank. If I'd gone through, the current would have carried me down to the dam across the landward end. I'd have got trapped there and stayed until the thaw came. Unless, of course, someone had looked down and seen me staring through the ice at them with a face as yellow as the grass.’

  But she refused to be horrified. 'Funny you've never told me that before. It's the kind of story you like to tell.

  'Every man his own hero.’

  He unlocked the car doors and she watched through the window as they passed the staff club and more residences and then were on the road that would take them through the town and put them on the way for home.

  Dearest Lydia, she remembered it had gone, dearest children, farewell. My brain burns as the recollection grows. My dear, dear wife, farewell. Hugh Miller.

  Born Comarty 1802, the son of a middle-aged ship's master and an eighteen-year-old mother, Harriet Wright. Died on Christmas Eve 1856. They had found him with a bullet in his chest and the revolver in his hand. In between he made himself a scientist who impressed Darwin, a writer admired by Dickens.

  'You made a joke of his signing his name in full. You never used to.’

  With the telepathy of the long-married, he answered, 'On a note like that. Telling her of his suicide.’ It didn't take long to get through Balinter; they were on to a country road again. "'Hugh Miller.” Sometimes those old Victorians seem like aliens from another planet.’

  'But it didn't mean he didn't love her. Wasn't that the point? That behind the changes of language the feelings stay the same?'

  'Hmmm,' he said.

  'All right, I understand,' she persisted, 'that it's about paradigms. About Lamarck and Darwinism coming and Miller not being able to bear it. And his "elevatory fiats" and how the Creationists have to follow just the same line because their belief system doesn't give them any choice. And how Marxist scientists take the discontinuities and get quite keen on them for their own reasons – making nature advance in bursts of revolutionary change. What was it you said? ­– "It gathers all of prehistory for them into the neat paradigm of the dialectic.” I know all that. But all the same ...’

  'I married you because you were my prettiest student,' he said.

  'Not the cleverest.’

  'At the end of my first year's stint as a lecturer, pretty was what counted.’ There was silence for a while, and when she stole a glance at him he was frowning so that she expected him to make some grumble about the flat spread of the familiar landscape. Instead, he said, 'I found him a place to stay in Edinburgh.’

  'Who?'

  'Monty Norman. It'll be convenient if he goes to work with the Trust.’ Round the long curve of the road, she could see the hill that rose into their village. 'I thought I might put it to the Committee next week.’ They began the sharp brief ascent. 'Do you mind?'

  'No.’

  As they came level with the inn, he braked and swung the car across the road into their drive. 'I don't know,' he said. He switched off the engine and the silence buzzed. 'I don't know, it's only an idea. Nothing settled.’

  'Put it to the Committee.’

  'I don't know…'

  'I want you to,' she heard herself saying. 'I want you to.’

  Inside he found her sitting at the table in the kitchen, hand shading her eyes from the light.

  'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I didn't realise.’ He rubbed gently at the nape of her neck.

  'It's just that if you promised…'

  'Rest for a bit. I'll help you upstairs in a little while.’ His thumbs pressed and stroked, again, again. '…I'll probably go through with it ... The Norman thing ... See what happens ...’

  She felt better.

  'Like a duckling,' she said, her voice muffled as her head hung forward.

  'Sorry?'

  'Sam Wilson . That winter five years ago on the University loch. Skating behind you like a duckling following the mother duck.’

  'Everyone waiting to see if it would bear our weight. All that space to ourselves. It was like flying.’

  'I expected every moment to see you vanish through the ice.’

  'You should have come. I would have supported you.’

  He glowed for her again in memory sliding against the keen rapture of the wind.

  'Perhaps if we'd been on our own. But with all those students there – I didn't want to collapse in front of them all, let you down. Perhaps if it freezes again this year, I'll try. Shall I? It could happen this year with ice there already – We should check on the rowan berries. And the starlings.’

  'No,' he said, so softly she turned her head a little to hear, 'that winter won't come back again. You have to take it while it's there.

  Chapter 3

  The stairs curved up out of sight. There was a door facing her and another in the corner, but she knew that Julian Chambers would come down from above to greet her and lead her up to the first floor where he preferred to have his room. There were magazines on the low table, but she was passing the time by listening.

  'There is the other possibility,' the woman was saying to the girl at the desk. She was neatly dressed in a black coat which had been expensive when it was bought a little too long ago. 'They open my letters. You see the implication? It's the other possibility for the money, isn't it?'

  'I've explained Mr Thomson isn't available this morning.’ Pulling a face of wry irritation, the girl glanced at Lucy, who refused the conspiracy. The woman was a client of the firm. It was really too bad. She was sure Julian Chambers would not approve of the woman being slighted in this way.

  'Mr Thomson,' she lowered her voice cunningly, 'has to be told. In case anything happens to me. But I couldn't tell you, it wouldn't be safe.’

  'There's no chance of seeing Mr Thomson,' the girl said. 'Mr Byers could have a word with you.’

  As if on cue, the door in the corner opened and a plump smooth young man in a three-piece suit came out, crying as he came, 'Now then, Mrs Willis. If you come with me, we can chat about whatever's upsetting you. '

  'It's wicked of them. It's not possible for me to live on what's coming in. It was never like this when Jim was alive.’

  'Ah, well, let's you and I go over things. I'm sure we can set your mind at rest.’ His tone was kindly and patient and very satisfied with its patience and content with its kindness. Before he whisked her inside, he did not resist the glance about him of an actor in search of applause.

  'She's been in already this morning,' the girl at the desk said. 'I warned them somebody would have to deal with her. I can't be expected to do it on my own. I have work to do, too.’

  'It seems very sad,' Lucy said. 'I suppose it isn't possible that there is something wrong with her money?'

  The girl shook her head dismissively. 'There may not be enough of it. We all have that problem. Her husband's dead and she imagines things.’

  'It must be hard to be so lonely.’

  'Lonely,' the girl repeated, weighing the word like an amateur diagnosis.

  Mad then, Lucy thought. I don't suppose being even a
little mad is easier. Unless, of course, you were a happy maniac. I believe that's possible. I wonder if mad and happy is preferable to sane and wretched. That poor woman – not very sane and really rather wretched.

  As she pondered that, Julian Chambers reached over the banisters and began his apologies, which went on until he arrived before her.

  'So busy – and just at the wrong moment. I hadn't expected you, of course. If I had known…Not too interminable a wait, however? It's splendid to see you – after such a time, and looking so well.’ He climbed the stairs ahead of her, his lean old haunches pumping him upwards with the energy of a schoolboy. 'It must be, two years, is it, surely not three?'

  He stood aside and going into the familiar room she took the comfortable chair by the table rather than one of the clients' chairs set before his desk.

  'Oh, I think so,' she said. 'Quite as long as that.’

  'Maitland keeps me in touch, of course.’ He settled himself behind the desk, folding his long frame almost out of sight. 'I ask for you.’

  'You look the same to me,' she said. 'You never change.’ 'I fancy I've done so since our first meeting. You were chuckling in your mother's arms, and were quite charming in a christening robe. That would be almost – it wouldn't be right, would it, to say how many years? It would be ungallant. Or is that old-fashioned? At seventy-three, I feel I can allow myself to be.’

  'No one would believe it. Sixty perhaps.’

  'No,' he said firmly. He had sunk down so that she, taught in childhood to sit up straight, looked down on the white clean curve of his brow. 'That's flattering but not so. I look like what I am – a well preserved seventy-year – old who's blessed with good health and fortunate enough to be one of the lucky few who don't have to comply with any nonsense about retiring. I shan't retire. I'll go on like this and one day someone like you will say, You might be sixty – and the next the deception will cease and some unconsidered piece of the machinery wear out and I shall be dead.’

  He paused as if there was a response she might care to enter at this point, but since what he had said was truth so clearly expressed it did not occur to her to offer any comfort. She waited with hands passive in her lap and as though pumped under pressure he rose up until he had straightened himself behind the shelter of the desk.