“What do you do for a living?” asked Alice.
“I’m a barrister.”
Alice felt a pang of disappointment. She had been secretly hoping he did something as undistinguished as she did.
“What do you do?” she heard Jeremy asking.
He was wearing a short-sleeved check shirt and a baggy pair of old flannels, but there was a polished air about him, an air of social ease and money. All at once Alice wanted to pretend she was someone different, someone more important.
“I’m chief accountant at Baxter and Berry in the City.” She gave a self-conscious laugh. “An odd job for a woman.”
“Certainly for someone as young as yourself,” said Jeremy. “I didn’t think such a fuddy-duddy firm would be so go-ahead.”
“You know Baxter and Berry?” queried Alice nervously.
“I know old man Baxter,” said Jeremy easily. “He’s a friend of my father. I must tease him about his pretty chief accountant.”
Alice turned her face away. That’s where telling lies got you. Futureless. Now she wouldn’t dare even see Jeremy again after this holiday.
“When I was your age, which was probably all of ten years ago,” said Jeremy gently, “I told a perfectly smashing-looking girl that I was a jet pilot…”
“Oh, Jeremy,” said Alice miserably, “I’m only the chief accountant’s secretary.”
“Thank you for the compliment.” He grinned. “It’s a long time since anyone’s tried to impress me.”
“You’re not angry I lied to you?”
“No. Hey, I think you’ve caught something.”
“Probably weed.” Alice felt young and free and lighthearted. Mr Patterson-James’s saturnine face swam around in her mind, faded and disappeared like Scotch mist.
She reeled in her line, amused at the tugs, thinking how like a fish floating weed felt.
There was a flash and sparkle in the peaty brown and gold water.
“A trout!” said Jeremy. He held out his net and brought the fish in.
“Too small,” he said, shaking his head. “We’ve got to throw it back.”
“Don’t hurt it!” cried Alice as he worked the fly free from the fish’s mouth.
“No, it’s gone back to Mum,” he said, throwing it in the water. “What fly were you using?”
“A Kenny’s Killer.”
He took out his box of fishing flies. “Maybe I’ll try one of those.”
A companionable silence settled between them. The light began to fade behind the jumbled, twisted crags of the Two Sisters. A little breeze sent ripples lazily fanning out over the loch.
And then out of the heather came the midges, those small Scottish mosquitoes. Alice’s face was black with them. She screamed and clawed for her mosquito net while Jeremy rowed quickly for the shore.
“Quick – let’s just bundle everything in the car and drive away from the beasts,” he said.
Alice scrambled into the bucket seat of something long and low. They shot off down the road, not stopping until they were well clear of the loch. Jeremy handed Alice a towel to wipe her face.
Alice smiled at him gratefully. “What about Daphne? I’d forgotten all about her.”
“So had I.” Jeremy was shadowed by a stand of trees beside the car. He seemed to be watching her mouth. Alice’s heart began to hammer.
“Did…did you buy this car in Scotland?” she asked. “I mean, I thought you and Daphne came up by train.”
“We did. My father had been using the car. He knew I was coming up this way and so he left it in Inverness for me to collect.”
“You’ve known Daphne a long time?”
“No. Heather wrote to me to ask me if I would join up with Daphne. She had written to Heather saying she did not like to travel alone.”
He suddenly switched on the engine. Alice sat very quietly. Perhaps he might have kissed her if she hadn’t kept on and on about stupid Daphne.
Daphne was probably back at the hotel changing into some couture number for dinner. Damn Daphne.
“I never thought indecision was one of my failings,” said Jeremy, breaking the silence at last. “I don’t want to spoil things by going too fast too soon.”
Alice was not quite sure if he meant he had wanted to kiss her and had changed his mind. She dared not ask him in case he should be embarrassed and say he was talking about fishing.
But he suddenly took one hand off the wheel and gave her own a quick squeeze.
Alice’s heart soared. A huge owl sailed across the winding road. Down below them nestled the village of Lochdubh.
Busy little fishing boats chugged out to sea. The lights of the hotel dining room were reflected in the still waters of the loch. Down into the evening darkness of the valley they sped. Over the old humpbacked bridge which spanned the tumbling waterfalls of the river Anstey. Along the waterfront, past the low white cottages of the village. Out in the loch, a pair of seals rolled and tumbled like two elderly Edwardian gentlemen.
Tears filled Alice’s eyes, and she furtively dabbed them away. The beauty of the evening was too much. The beauty of money emanating from the leather smells of the long, low, expensive car and the faint tangy scent of Jeremy’s aftershave seduced her senses. She wanted it all.
She wanted to keep the evening forever. Scenic beauty, male beauty, money beauty.
A picture of Lady Jane rose large in her mind’s eye, blotting out the evening.
If she tries to spoil things for me, I’ll kill her, thought Alice passionately.
And being very young and capable of violent mood swings, she then began to worry about what to wear for dinner.
When she entered the dining room an hour later, the rest of the fishing party, except for Lady Jane, Charlie, and the major, was already seated.
To her disappointment, the only available seat was at the other end of the table from Jeremy.
Jeremy was sitting next to Daphne and laughing at something she was saying.
Daphne was wearing a black chiffon cocktail gown slit to the waist so that it afforded the company tantalizing glimpses of two perfect breasts.
Long antique earrings hung in the shadow of the silky bell of her naturally blonde hair. Her usually hard, high-cheek-boned face was softened by eye shadow and pink lipstick.
Jeremy was wearing a well-cut charcoal grey suit, a striped shirt, and a tie with one of those small hard knots. He wore a heavy, pale gold wrist watch.
Alice wished she had worn something different. All her clothes had looked cheap and squalid. At last she had settled for a pale pink cashmere sweater, a tailored shirt, and a row of Woolworth’s pearls. She had persuaded herself in the privacy of her bedroom that she looked like a regular member of the county. Now she felt like a London typist trying ineffectually to look like a member of the county. The dining room was very warm.
Amy Roth was wearing a floating sort of chif-fony thing in cool blues and greens. It left most of her back bare. At one point, Marvin slid his hand down his wife’s back, and Amy wriggled her shoulders and giggled.
Heather was wearing a long gown that looked as if it had been made out of chintz upholstery, but she managed to look like a lady nonetheless, thought Alice gloomily. John Cartwright was cheerful and relaxed, obviously glad that the rigours of the first day were over.
The hotel had contributed several bottles of non-vintage Czechoslovakian champagne, their labels discreetly hidden by white napkins.
The food was delicious – poached salmon with a good hollandaise sauce. Everyone began to relax and become slightly tipsy.
Emboldened by the wine, Alice decided to forget about Jeremy and talk to the Roths. Marvin, it transpired, was a New Yorker born and bred, but Amy hailed from Augusta, Georgia. Marvin was her third husband, she told Alice, very much in the way a woman would describe an expensive gown that had been a good buy.
Marvin was quiet and polite and very deferential to his wife, the way Alice imagined American men should be.
