September

Christmas and Easter never passed without entire families coming to share the festivities.

Compared to all this, Verena's proposition did not sound at all arduous. It would only take up two days a week throughout the four months of summer. Surely that could not be too demanding. And… cheering thought… it would be stimulation for Archie, people coming and going. Helping to entertain them would give him an interest and bolster his morale, sadly in need of a boost.

What she hadn't realized, and what she had painfully learned, was that entertaining paying guests was a very different kettle of fish to having one's own friends about the place. You couldn't argue with them, any more than you could sit about in a companionable silence. Nor could you allow them to slope into the kitchen to peel a pot of potatoes or concoct a salad. The real rub was that they were paying. This put hospitality on a totally different level because it meant that everything had to be perfect. The tour was not cheap and, as Verena forthrightly insisted, the clients must be given value for their dollars.

There were certain guide-lines, printed out on a special instruction sheet for hostesses. Every bedroom must have its own bathroom, preferably adjoining. Beds must have electric blankets, and the rooms must be centrally heated. Also, if possible, there should be supplementary heating… preferably a real fire but, failing this, then an electric or gas fire. Fresh flowers must be arranged in the bedrooms.

(Reading this, Isobel had known some annoyance. Who did they think they were? She had never in her life put a guest in a room without seeing that there were fresh flowers on the dressing-table.)

Then there were more rules about breakfast and dinner. Breakfast must be robust and hearty. Orange juice, coffee, and tea, all available. In the evenings, a cocktail must be offered, and wine at dinner-time. This meal had to be formally served, with candles, crystal, and silver on the table, and consist of at least three courses, to be followed by coffee and conversation. Other diversions, however unlikely, could be offered. A little music… perhaps bagpipe-playing…?

The overseas visitors awaited them in Verena's drawing-room. Verena flung open the door. 'I am sorry we've been so long. Just one or two ends that needed to be tied up,' she told them in her best committee-meeting voice, which brooked no question nor argument. 'Here we are, and here is your hostess, come to take you to Croy.'

The drawing-room at Corriehill was large and light, palely decorated and little used. Today, however, because of the inclement weather, a small fire flickered in the grate, and around this, disposed on armchairs and sofas, sat the four Americans. To while away the time, they had switched on the television and were watching, in a bemused fashion, cricket. Disturbed, they rose to their feet, turning smiling faces, and one of the men stooped and politely turned the television off.

'Now, introductions. Mr. and Mrs. Hardwicke, and Mr. and Mrs. Franco, this is your hostess for the next two days. Lady Balmer-ino.'

Shaking hands, Isobel understand what Verena had meant when she described this week's guests as being'slightly more robust than usual. Scottish Country Tours seemed, for some reason, to attract clients of an extremely advanced age, and sometimes they were not only geriatric but in a dicey state of health-short of breath and uncertain about the legs. These two couples, however, were scarcely beyond middle age. Grey-haired, certainly, but apparently bursting with energy, and all of them enviably tanned. The Francos were small of stature, and Mr. Franco very bald, and the Hardwickes were tall and muscled and slim, and looked as though they spent their lives out of doors and taking a great deal of exercise.

'I'm afraid I'm a little late,' Isobel found herself saying, although she knew perfectly well that she was not. 'But we can go whenever you're ready.'

They were ready right now. The ladies collected their handbags and their beautiful new Burberry raincoats, and the little party all trooped through the hall and out into the porch. Isobel went to open the back doors of the minibus, and by the time she had done this, the men were humping and heaving the big suitcases across the gravel, and helped her to load them. (This, too, was novel. She and Verena usually had to do the job by themselves.) When all were safely aboard, she shut the doors and fastened them. The Hardwickes and the Francos were saying goodbye to Verena. 'But,' Verena said, 'I'll see you ladies tomorrow. And I hope the golf's a great success. You'll love Gleneagles.'

Doors were opened and they all climbed in. Isobel took her place behind the wheel, fastened her seat-belt, turned on the ignition, and they were away.

'I do apologize for the weather. We've had no summer at all yet.'

'Oh, it hasn't bothered us in the least. We're just sorry you had to come out on such a day to come and collect us. Hope it wasn't too much trouble.'

'No, not at all. That's my job.'

'Have we far to go to your home, Lady Balmerino?'

'About ten miles. And I wish you'd call me Isobel.'

'Why, thank you, we will. And I am Susan and my husband is Arnold, and the Hardwickes are Joe and Myra.'

'Ten miles,' said one of the men. 'That's quite a distance.'

'Yes. Actually my husband usually comes with me on these trips. But he had to go to a meeting. He'll be home for tea, though, so you'll meet him then.'

'Is Lord Balmerino in business?'

'No. No, it's not a business meeting. It's a church meeting. Our village church. We have to raise some money. It's rather a shoe-string affair. But my husband's grandfather built it, so he feels a sort of family responsibility.'

It was raining again. The windscreen wipers swung to and fro. Perhaps conversation would divert their attention from the misery of it all.

'Is this your first visit to Scotland?'

The two ladies, chipping in on each other like a close-harmony duo, told her. The men had been there before, to play golf, but this was the first time their wives had accompanied them. And they just loved every inch of the place, and had gone crazy in the shops in Edinburrow. It had rained, of course, but that hadn't bothered them. They had their new Burberries to wear, and both decided that the rain made Edinburrow look just so historic and romantic that they had been able to picture Mary and Bothwell riding together up the Royal Mile.

When they had finished, Isobel asked them what part of the States they came from.

'New York State. Rye.'

'Are you by the sea there?'

'Oh, sure. Our kids sail every weekend.'

Isobel could imagine it. Could imagine those kids, tanned and windblown, bursting with vitamins and fresh orange juice and health, scudding over starch-blue seas beneath the curving wing of a snow-white mainsail. And sunshine. Blue skies and sunshine. Day after day of it, so that you could plan tennis matches and picnics and evening barbecues and know that it wasn't going to rain.

That was how summers, in memory, used to be. The endless, aimless summers of childhood. What had happened to those long, light days, sweet with the scent of roses, when one had to come indoors only to eat, and sometimes not even then? Swimming in the river, lazing in the garden, playing tennis, having tea in the shade of some tree because it was too hot anywhere else. She remembered picnics on moors that simmered in the sunlight, the heather too dry to light a camp-fire, and the larks flying high. What had happened to her world? What cosmic disaster had transformed those bright days into week after week of dark and soggy gloom?

It wasn't just the weather, it was just that the weather made everything so much worse. Like Archie getting his leg shot off, and having to be nice to people you didn't know because they were paying you money to sleep in your spare bedrooms^ And being tired all the time, and never buying new clothes, and worrying about Hamish's school fees, and missing Lucilla.

She heard herself saying, with some force, 'It's the one horrible thing about living in Scotland.'

For a moment, perhaps surprised by her outburst, nobody commented on this announcement. Then one of the ladies spoke. 'I beg your pardon?'

'I'm sorry. I meant the rain. We get so tired of the rain. I meant these horrible summers.'

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