September

'Do you want a cup of tea?'

'In a moment. No hurry.'

'Let's go and be comfortable.' Isobel led her visitor into the drawing-room, not with any intentions of grandeur but simply because it was full of sunlight, and the library and the kitchen, at this time of day, were inclined to be gloomy. The windows stood open, the room felt cool, and a mass of sweet peas, which Isobel had picked that morning and arranged in an old soup tureen, filled the air with their fragrance.

'Heaven.' Verena sank into a corner of the sofa and stretched out her long and elegantly shod legs. 'What a day for the cricket match. Last year it bucketed with rain and they had to pull stumps in the middle of the afternoon because the pitch was flooded. Are those your own sweet peas? What colours! Mine were a bit of a failure this year. Do you know I really hate Relkirk on a warm afternoon? The pavements were banked three deep with fat girls in jeans pushing babies in buggies. And all the babies seemed to be howling.'

'I know the feeling. How's everything going?'

She had already made up her mind that Verena wanted to talk about the dance and she was not mistaken.

'Oh…' Verena, for a moment, became quite dramatic, groaning as though in pain and closing her eyes. 'I'm beginning to wonder why I ever thought about throwing a party. Do you know half the invitations haven't even been answered yet? People are so thoughtless. I think they leave them curling on mantelpieces, waiting to die of old age. It makes trying to arrange dinner parties and find beds for everybody quite impossible.'

'I wouldn't worry.' Isobel tried to sound soothing. 'I'd let them make their own arrangements.'

'But that would mean utter chaos.'

Isobel knew that it wouldn't, but Verena was a perfectionist. 'Yes, I suppose so. It must be awful.' She added, almost afraid to ask, 'Has Lucilla replied yet?'

'No,' Verena told her bluntly.

'We did send your invitation on, but she's travelling so she may not even have got it. She sent us a rather vague address in Ibiza, but we haven't heard from her since she was in Paris. She thought she might go and see Pandora.'

'I haven't heard from Pandora either.'

'I'll be surprised if you do. She never answers anything.'

'But Alexa Aird's coming, and bringing a boyfriend. Did you know that Alexa has found herself a man?'

'Vi told me.'

'Extraordinary. I wonder what he's like.'

'Virginia says he's dishy.'

'Can't wait to see him.'

'When is Katy arriving?'

'Next week sometime. She called last night. Which is one of the favours that I have to ask you. Have you got a houseful of people staying over the dance?'

'So far, nobody. Hamish will be back at school and I don't know whether Lucilla will be here or not…'

'Well, could you be an angel and have a stray man to stay? Katy told me about him last night. She met him at some dinner party, and liked him. He's an American-a lawyer, I think-but his wife's just died, and he's come over here for a bit of a holiday. He's coming to Scotland anyway to stay with some people who live in the Borders, and she thought it would be friendly to send him an invitation. We can't put him up at Corriehill because I'm full, with all Katy's friends, and Toddy Buchanan hasn't a room free at the Strathcroy Arms, so I thought you could give him a bed? Would you mind? I don't know anything about him except the bit about his wife dying, but if Katy liked him I don't suppose he'd be dreadfully heavy weather.'

'Poor man. Of course he can come.'

'And you'll bring him to the party? You are sweet. I'll ring Katy tonight, and tell her to tell him to get in touch with you.'

'What's his name?'

'Something funny. Plucker. Or… Tucker. That's it. Conrad Tucker. Why do you suppose Americans always have such peculiar names?'

Isobel laughed. 'They probably think Balmerino's pretty odd. What else is happening?'

'Nothing really. We've persuaded Toddy Buchanan to do the catering and run the bar, and produce some sort of a breakfast. For some reason, Katy's generation are always ravenously hungry around four in the morning. And darling Tom Drystone is organizing the band.'

'Well, it wouldn't be a party without our whistling postman up on the platform. Are you having a disco?'

'Yes. A young man from Relkirk is doing that. He produces everything. A sort of job lot. Flashing lights and amplifiers. What the noise is going to be like, I dread to think. And we're going to have fairy lights all the way up the drive. I thought it would look festive, and if it's a miserably dark evening, it'll help people find the way.'

'It'll look wonderful. You've thought of everything.'

'Except flowers. That's the other favour I've got to ask you. Would you help with the flowers? Katy will be there, and I've press-ganged one or two others, but nobody does flowers the way you do, and I'd be endlessly grateful if you'd help.'

Isobel felt flattered. It was nice to think that there was something that she could do better than Verena, and gratifying to be asked.

'The thing is,' Verena went on before Isobel had a chance to speak, 'I can't think how to decorate the marquee. The house isn't so difficult, but the marquee presents something of a problem because it's so enormous and ordinary flower arrangements would simply be dwarfed. What do you think? You're always full of bright ideas.'

Isobel searched for a bright idea but drew a blank. 'Hydrangeas?'

'They'll be over by then.'

'Hire some potted palms.'

'Too depressing. Like the ballroom of some provincial hotel.'

'Well, why not make it really countrified and seasonal? Sheaves of ripe barley and branches of rowan. Lovely red berries and those pretty leaves. And the beeches will be turning as well. We can soak the stems in glycerine and simply cover the tent-poles, make them look like autumn trees…'

'Oh, a brainwave. You're brilliant. We'll do it all the day before the party. The Thursday. Will you write it down in your diary?'

'It's Vi's birthday picnic that day, but I can give that a miss.'

'You're a saint. What a weight off my mind. The relief of it.' Verena stretched luxuriously, swallowed a yawn, fell silent.

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked gently, and the quiet of the room closed in on the two women. Yawns were catching. And it was a mistake ever to sit down in the middle of the afternoon because you didn't feel like ever getting up again. Summer afternoons and nothing in particular to do. Once more Isobel drifted back into that illusion of timelessness in which she had been lost before Verena's interruption. She thought again of old Lady Balmerino, who used to sit here, as she and Verena sat, reading a novel or peacefully sewing her tapestry. Everything now as once it had been. Perhaps in a moment there would come a discreet tap on the door and Harris the butler would enter, pushing before him the mahogany trolley laid with the silver teapot and the eggshell china cups; the covered dishes of scones, fresh from the oven, the bowl of cream, the strawberry jam, the lemon sponge-cake, and the dark, sticky gingerbread.

The clock, with silvery notes, struck four, and the illusion dissolved. Harris was long gone and would never return. Isobel yawned again and then, with some effort, pulled herself to her feet. 'I'll go and put the kettle on,' she told Verena, 'and we'll have that cup of tea.'

2

Friday the Ninth

'… That was the year my cousin Flora had her bairn. Did you know her parents? Uncle Hector was my father's