The Red Staircase

Perhaps I underrate myself. I remember saying to Patrick then: ‘But I can’t understand how you came even to notice me.’

‘Can’t you?’ A quizzical look.

‘No. Grizel is the beauty.’

‘Well, there I don’t agree with you. But you need not wonder, Rose. Amongst all those people you really stand out.’

‘I do?’

‘Yes, you’re different. Rose, different from most girls.’

‘I suppose it must be a result of my training in Edinburgh,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘My look, I mean.’

‘It was different to start with.’

‘Yes, in our set it was.’ Which was true.

‘Do you regret not finishing?’

I gave him a radiant smile. ‘Not now, my darling Patrick.’

It wasn’t true, though; I did mind, and perhaps Patrick sensed it.

‘Patrick’s arriving the day after tomorrow,’ I said to Tibby and Grizel, when I got back home. ‘His mother had a telegram while I was there. Arriving in the morning and not to meet the train.’

‘And nothing to you?’ said Grizel indignantly.

‘Oh, I knew anyway. He told me in London’.

‘You never said.’

‘I was going to.’ And I saw Tibby’s eyebrows go up. She knew, and I knew, that I usually came out fast with things I wanted to say.

I knew to the minute the time when the London train arrived at the junction, and knew too how long it would take Patrick to get to me if he took the station fly, and I made up my mind to be waiting for him in the garden so we need not meet in the house. I had an irrational fear of being in a confined space while we talked. I suppose Tibby saw what I was up to, but she helped me by agreeing that the more I weeded that path where the hollyhocks grew, the better.

The time of the train’s arrival came and went, but Patrick did not appear; I waited and waited. ‘This will be the best weeded path in Perthshire,’ I thought in desperation. I was on the point of giving up and retreating to the house when I heard him coming. He was whistling softly to himself as he did sometimes when distracted. I recognised the tune: a poem of Robert Burns’ set to music. ‘My love is like a red, red rose’. I doubt if he knew what he was whistling, and in any case he stopped when he came into view. His shoes and the edge of his trousers were covered with dust. We have very dusty lanes here about Jordansjoy when the weather is dry, and I knew by that dust that Patrick must have been walking and walking around them since the train got in.

‘Hello, Rose,’ he said. ‘You here?’

‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

‘Thought you might be. Sorry if I was a long while coming. I’ve been walking about. Thinking.’

I saw Patrick had someting in his hand: a small packet, neatly done in fresh brown paper. I thought it might be a little present for me. Patrick did sometimes give me presents – a good book or a leather notebook for my accounts, that sort of thing – and now was the time for presents if there ever was one, these weeks before our marriage. I couldn’t expect much after we were married. A brooch with a white river pearl from Perth, perhaps, if I had the good luck to bear him a son.

He did not look in a present-giving mood; he was wearing his dark town suit and carrying lavender gloves. The clothes about which Alec had once been heard to mutter: ‘The mute at the funeral.’ There had never been any love lost between Patrick and Alec since Patrick recommended that Alec, that freedom-lover, be sent away to Eton, for ‘only a top flight public school could whip him into shape’.

‘Let’s go into the house, Rose,’ Patrick now said.

‘Oh, no.’ My reply was spontaneous and instinctive. ‘I’d rather stay outside.’ No good news could come to me inside the house, I knew that, and so I wanted to stay in the garden where there was sunshine and warmth and the memory of happiness.

‘Could I have a glass of water then, Rose? I’m parched.’

Reluctantly I conceded. ‘Come into the parlour.’ And I led the way into its cool darkness. ‘Wait there and I’ll get you a drink.’

I went into the kitchen and drew him a glass of water which was fresh and sweet from our own spring at Jordansjoy. Tibby, who was standing at the table preparing a fruit pie – plum, it smelt like – raised her head and gave me a look.

‘A drink for Patrick,’ I explained.

‘Ah, so he’s come then?’

‘Just the while,’ I said in as non-committal a voice as I could manage.

‘Is water all he wants? We’ve a keg of beer in the pantry.’

‘Water he asked for and water it shall be,’ I announced, carrying the glass out in my hand.

‘Would you have liked beer, Patrick?’ I asked.

‘No, water,’ he said, taking the glass and draining it thirstily. ‘I hate country beer.’

‘We get ours from Edinburgh. McCluskie’s Best Brew.’

‘It’s not good, all the same. You never drink it yourself so you don’t know. I’ve never told you so before.’

‘You’re telling me now.’ I took the glass from him. ‘Of course, we’re not really talking about beer,’ I said coldly.

‘Are we not?’

‘No. Come, Patrick. Perhaps I am a year or two younger than you, but let us meet in this as equals. There’s something on your mind. What’s it all about? You must tell me.’

‘Man to man, eh, Rose?’ He smiled. Patrick never had orthodox good looks, but he smiled with his eyes as well as his mouth and I never knew a soul who could resist that smile, it had such luminous comprehension in it.

For a moment the joke gave me hope. Because he could tease me in this way, surely things could not be wholly bad? ‘Why not?’ I returned boldly.

‘But we aren’t man to man, but man to woman, and that’s the whole of it.’ Looking back, I see that Patrick, who was a brave man, never said a braver thing in his life, but then I hated him for it.

Our parlour at Jordansjoy has one long window which we keep filled with sweet geraniums. Patrick stood with his back to it, so that he was in silhouette and I could hardly see his face. He could see mine, though, and I suppose it looked foolishly young and innocent.

‘Come out into the garden,’ I said. ‘I can breathe there.’

But he interrupted me, saying – his voice a tone higher than usual, and abrupt: ‘Look here, Rose, the wedding will have to be put off. Postponed. I’ve to go to India. I’m transferring.’

I stared; perhaps I said something, I don’t remember; it can have been nothing coherent.

‘It can’t go ahead. You can put about what explanation you like. Blame it all on me. It is my fault. God knows it is.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I stammered.