September

Edmund?'

'I wanted to talk things over. I hadn't made up my mind about Henry, but now I feel sure it's the right thing to do.'

'What is the right thing to do?'

'To send him there in September.'

'As a boarder?'

'He could scarcely attend as a day-boy.'

Apprehension by now had gone, overwhelmed by a slow, consuming anger. She had never experienced anger like this against Edmund. As well, she was shocked. She had known him to be overbearing, even dictatorial, but never underhanded. Now, behind her back, it seemed that he had betrayed her. She felt betrayed, without defences, destroyed before she had even time to fire a single gun.

'You had no right.' Her own voice, but it did not sound like Virginia. 'Edmund. You had no right.'

He raised his eyebrows. 'No right?'

'No right to go without me. No right to go without telling me. I should have been there, to talk things over, as you put it. Henry is my child just as much as he is yours. How dare you sneak off and organize everything behind my back, without saying a single word!'

'I didn't sneak off and I'm telling you now.'

'Yes. As a fait accompli. I don't like being treated as a person who doesn't matter, someone who has no say. Why should you always make all the decisions?'

'I suppose because I always have.'

'You were underhanded.' She rose to her feet, her arms folded tightly across her breast, as though the only way to stop them from actually striking her husband was to keep them under control. Always so compliant, she was a tigress now, fighting for her cub. 'You know, you've always known, that I don't want Henry to go to Templehall. He's too little. He's too young. I know you went when you were eight to boarding-school, and I know that Hamish Blair is there, but why should it have to be a rigid tradition that we all have to follow? It's archaic, Victorian, out of date, to send little children away from home. And what is worse is that it doesn't have to happen. Henry can perfectly well stay at Strathcroy until he's twelve. And then he can go to boarding-school. That's reasonable. But not before, Edmund. Not now.'

He gazed at her in genuine perplexity. 'Why do you want to make Henry different from other boys? Why should he be marked out as an oddity, staying at home until he's twelve? Perhaps you're confusing him with American children who seem to rule the family household until they're practically adult…'

Virginia was incensed. 'It's nothing to do with America. How can you say such a thing? It's to do with what any sensible, normal mother feels about her children. It's you who are on the wrong tack,

Edmund. But you won't ever consider the possibility that you might be wrong. You're behaving like a Victorian. Old-fashioned and pigheaded and chauvinistic.'

She got no reaction from this outburst. Edmund's expression did not change. On such occasions, his was a poker-face, with sleepy eyes and an unsmiling mouth. She found herself longing for him to behave naturally, let himself go, lose his temper, raise his voice. But that was not Edmund Aird's way. In business, he was known as a cold fish. He stayed unmoved, controlled, unprovoked.

He said, 'You are thinking only of yourself.'

'I'm thinking of Henry.'

'No. You want to keep him. And you want your own way. Life has been kind to you. You've always had your own way; spoiled and indulged by your parents. And perhaps I continued where they left off. But there comes a time when we all have to grow up. I suggest that you grow up now. Henry is not your possession and you must let him go.'

She could scarcely believe that he was saying these things to her.

'I don't think of Henry as a possession. That is the most insulting accusation. He's a person in his own right, and I've made him that person. But he's eight years old. Scarcely out of the nursery. He needs his home. He needs us. He needs the security of surroundings he's known all his life, and he needs his Moo under the pillow. He can't be just sent away. 1 don't want him to be sent away.'

'I know.'

'He's too little.'

'So he needs to grow.'

'He'll grow away from me.'

Edmund made no comment on this. Her bracing anger had dissolved and she was left hurt and defeated, and near to tears. To hide these, she turned away from her husband and walked to the window, and stood there with her forehead against the cool glass. She stared, hot-eyed, unseeing, at the garden.

There was a long silence. And then, reasonable as ever, Edmund began to speak again. 'Templehall's a good school, Virginia, and Colin Henderson's a good headmaster. The boys are never pushed, but they're taught to work. Life is going to be hard for Henry. It's going to be hard for all these youngsters. Competitive and tough. The sooner they face up to this, and learn to take the rough with the smooth, the better. Accept the situation. For my sake. See it my way. Henry is too dependent on you.' 'I'm his mother.'

'You smother him.' With that, he walked calmly from the room.

7

In the golden evening, Henry walked home. There were few people about because it was nearly six o'clock and they were all indoors eating their tea. He imagined this comforting meal. Soup perhaps, and then haddock or chops and then cakes and biscuits, all washed down with strong and scalding tea. He himself felt pleasantly full of sausages. But perhaps before he went to bed there would be space for a mug of cocoa.

He crossed the curving bridge that spanned the Croy between the two churches. At the top of the curve he stopped and leaned over the ancient stone parapet to gaze down at the river. There had been much rain, too much for the farmers, and it was running deeply, carrying on its spate stray scraps of flotsam gathered on its journey. Branches of trees and bits of straw. Once he had seen a poor little dead lamb swept away beneath the bridge. Farther down the glen the land flattened out and there the Croy changed character, to widen and wind through pasture land, between fields where the peaceful cattle came down at evening time to drink at the water's edge. But here it flowed steeply downhill, leaping and sliding over the rocks in a series of miniature waterfalls and deep pools.

The sound of the Croy was one of Henry's earliest memories. At night he could hear it from the open window of his bedroom, and he awoke to its voice every morning. Upstream was the pool where Alexa had taught him to swim. With his friends from school he played many wet, muddy games on its banks, building dams and making camps.

Behind him, the big clock on the Presbyterian church tower struck the hour with six solemn, donging tolls. Reluctantly he drew back from the parapet and went on his way, down the lane that bordered the south bank of the river. Tall elms towered overhead, their topmost branches noisy with a colony of cawing rooks.

Reaching the open gates of Balnaid and anxious all at once to be home, he began to run, his satchel bumping at his side. As he came around the house he saw his father's dark-blue BMW parked on the gravel. Which was splendid, and an unexpected treat. His father did not usually get home until after Henry was in bed. But now he would find them in the kitchen, comfortably chatting and exchanging news of the day, while his mother prepared dinner and his father had a cup of tea.

But they were not in the kitchen. He knew this the moment he went through the front door because he could hear voices from behind the closed library door. Just voices and the closed door, so why did he have this feeling that it was wrong; that nothing was as it should be?

His mouth had gone dry. He tiptoed down the wide passage and stood outside the door. He had truly meant to go in and surprise them, but instead he found himself listening.

'… Scarcely out of the nursery. He needs his home. He needs us.' His mother, speaking in a voice he had never heard before, high-pitched and sounding as though she was about to burst into tears. '… He can't be just sent