September

Revolution and Victorian money created an enormous and wealthy middle class out of a lot of hard-working artisans. Archie is the third Lord Balmerino, but his grandfather made his pile in heavy textiles, and he was raised in the city streets. As for my own father, he started life as the barefoot son of a crofter from the Isle of Lewis. But he was blessed with brains and a talent for book-learning, and his ambitions led him to scholarships, and eventually to study medicine. He became a surgeon and prospered and attained great heights-the Chair of Anatomy at Edinburgh University and a knighthood. Sir Hector Akenside. A resounding name, don't you think? But he always remained a man without pride or pretension, and for this reason was not only respected but loved.'

'And your mother?'

'My mother came from an entirely different background. I have to admit that she was rather grand. Lady Primrose Marr, the daughter of an ancient and well-connected family from the Borders, who had, through nobody's fault but their own, become totally impoverished. She was very beautiful. Famously so. Small and elegant and with silvery-blonde hair, piled up on her head, so that it looked as though her slender neck might break with the weight of it. My father set eyes on her at some ball or reception in the Assembly Rooms, and fell instantly in love. I don't think she was ever in love with him, but by then he was something of a personage, and well-to-do to boot, and she was intelligent enough to realize on which side her bread had been buttered. Her family, although they could scarcely approve of the match, raised no objections… they were probably only too glad to get the girl off their hands.'

'Were they happy?'

'I think so. I think they suited each other very well. They lived in a tall and draughty house in Heriot Row, and that is where I was born. My mother relished Edinburgh, with all its social life, the coming and going of friends, the theatre and the concerts, the balls and receptions. But my father remained a countryman with his heart in the hills. He had always loved Strathcroy, and had come every summer for his annual fishing holiday. When I was about five, he bought the land south of the river and built Balnaid. He was still working, and I was at school in Edinburgh, so to begin with, Balnaid was simply a holiday home, a sort of shooting lodge. To me it was paradise, and I lived for the summer months. When he finally retired, he retired to Balnaid. My mother thought it a rotten idea, but he had a stubborn streak to him, and in the end, she simply made the best of it. She filled the house with guests, thus ensuring a fourth for bridge, and a dinner party every night. But we kept the house in Heriot Row, and when the rain fell with unceasing venom, or the bitter winds of winter blew, she invariably found some excuse to return to Edinburgh, or take herself off to Italy, or the south of France.'

'And you?'

'I told you. For me it was paradise. I was an only child, and a great disappointment to my mother because I was not only dreadfully large and fat, but plain as well. I towered over all my contemporaries, and was a total failure at dancing class because no boy ever wanted to be my partner. In Edinburgh society, I stuck out like a sore thumb, but at Balnaid it didn't seem to matter how I looked, and at Balnaid I could be just myself.'

'And your husband?'

'My husband?' Violet's warm smile transformed her weathered features. 'My husband was Geordie Aird. You see, I married my dearest friend, and at the end of over thirty years of marriage, he was still my dearest friend. Not many women can say that.'

'How did you meet him?'

'At a shooting party, up on the moors of Creagan Dubh. My father had been asked to shoot with Lord Balmerino, and because my mother was away on some Mediterranean cruise, he asked me to accompany him. Going shooting with my father was always the greatest of treats, and I went to great pains to be useful, carrying his cartridge bag, and sitting, quiet and still as a mouse, in his butt.'

'Was Geordie one of the guns?' asked Noel.

'No, Noel. Geordie was one of the beaters. His father, Jamie Aird, was Lord Balmerino's head keeper.'

'You married the gamekeeper's son?' Noel could scarcely keep the astonishment out of his voice, but there was admiration there as well.

'I did. It smacks a little of Lady Chatterley, doesn't it, but I can assure you it was not like that at all.'

'But when did this happen?'

'The early 1920s. I was ten and Geordie was fifteen. I decided he was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen, and when it was time for the luncheon picnic, I took my sandwiches over to where the keepers and the beaters sat, and ate them with him. You could say that I set my cap for him. After that, he was my friend; I was his shadow, he took me under his wing. I wasn't alone any more. I was with Geordie. We spent whole days together, always out of doors. He taught me to cast for salmon and guddle for trout. Some days we walked for miles, and he showed me the hidden corries where the deer grazed, and the high peaks where the eagles nested. And after a day on the moor, he would take me home to the little house where bis parents lived… where Gordon Gillock, Archie's keeper, lives now… and Mrs. Aird would feed me bannocks and scones and pour me strong black tea from her best lustre teapot.'

'Did your mother not object to this friendship?'

'I think she was quite glad to have me out of the way. She knew that 1 would come to no harm.'

'And did Geordie follow in his father's footsteps?'

'No. Like my own father, he was a clever and academic boy and he did well at school. My father encouraged him in his ambitions. I think he recognized something of himself in Geordie. Because of this, Geordie won a place at the Grammar School in Relkirk, and after that was apprenticed to a firm of chartered accountants.'

'And you?'

'Sadly, I had to grow up. All at once, I was eighteen, and my mother realized that her Ugly Duckling had become an Ugly Duck. Despite my size and my lack of social graces, she decided that 1 must Come Out-do a season in Edinburgh and be presented to Royalty at Holyroodhouse. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but Geordie had gone from me and was living in lodgings in Relkirk, and I worked it out in my own mind that if I was complaisant about this dreadful scheme of hers, then perhaps she would in time accept the fact that Geordie Aird was the only man in the world 1 would think of marrying. The Season and the Coming Out were, as you can imagine, a total failure. A charade. Dressed in enormous evening gowns, all satin and glitter, 1 looked like a youthful Pantomime Dame. At the end of the season I remained unsought, unwanted, and unengaged. My mother, deeply ashamed, brought me home to Balnaid, and I did the flowers and walked the dogs… and waited for Geordie.'

'How long did you have to wait?'

'Four years. Until he had qualified and was in a position to support a wife. I had money of my own, of course. A trust, which came to me when I was twenty-one, and we could quite easily have managed on that, but Geordie would not hear of it. So I went on waiting. Until the great day came and he passed all his final examinations. I remember 1 was in the wash-house at Balnaid, giving the dog a bath. I'd taken him out for a walk, and he'd rolled in something disgusting, and there I was wrapped in an apron and soaking wet and smelling of carbolic. And the wash-house door was flung open, and there stood Geordie, come to ask me to marry him. It was the most romantic moment. And since then, I've always had a soft spot for the smell of carbolic.'

'What was the reaction of your parents?'

'Oh, they'd seen it coming for years. My father was delighted and my mother resigned. Once she'd got over agonizing over what her smart friends would say, I think she decided that it was better for me to marry Geordie Aird than stay a spinster daughter, getting under her feet and interfering with her butterfly life. So, on an early summer day in 1933, Geordie and I finally wed. And for my mother's sake, I submitted to being laced into stays, and buttoned into white satin so stiff and gleaming that it was like being encased in cardboard. And after the reception, Geordie and I got into his little Baby Austin and we trundled all the way to Edinburgh, where we spent our wedding night in the Caledonian Hotel. And I remember undressing in the bathroom and taking off my going-away dress, and unlacing my stays, and dropping them, with great ceremony, into the waste-paper bin. And I made a vow. No person is ever going to make me wear a corset again. And no person ever has.' She burst into lusty laughter and struck Noel a thump on his knee. 'So you see, on my wedding night, I said goodbye, not only to my virginity, but my stays as well. It's hard to say which gave me the most satisfaction.'

He was laughing. 'And you lived happily ever after?'

'Oh, so happily. Such happy years in a little terraced house in Relkirk. Then Edmund was bom, and Edie came into our lives. Eighteen years old and the daughter of the Strathcroy joiner, she came to me as a nursery maid, and we've been together ever since. It was a good time. So good that I pretended not to notice the gathering clouds of