Susan was noted, or notorious, for plain speaking. This latest example was pondered by her guests.
‘As a matter of fact,’ she went on, rubbing their noses in it, ‘all men, when they reach the age of fifty, should be libbed. Don’t you agree, Gregor?’
Mrs Donaldson, who insisted on wearing her hat – to hide her baldness, it was thought – asked, in a thin high voice like a child, what was ‘libbed’.
‘You tell her, Gregor,’ said Susan.
I smiled. ‘That’s for Bruce, surely.’
But Bruce Donaldson, Mabel’s husband, like her close to 80, wasn’t following the conversation. He was giving all his attention to the wine. Good for you, Bruce, I thought.
‘It would prevent a lot of useless lust, wouldn’t it?’ said Susan, still rubbing our noses in it.
There was a rumour in the town that Albert Cramond, wealthy ironworks owner, had found Susan when she was working as a barmaid in an Edinburgh pub. No one had ever dared to ask her if it was true.
There followed a small silence.
It was broken by Jimmy McDowall, one of my ‘Murchison pals’. He thought it was time he contributed to the conversation. Unfortunately, he usually spoke irrelevant nonsense and punctuated it with sly giggles. That he was 74 and therefore on the verge of dementia, might have been regarded as an excuse in other company, but not there, where most were older than he.
‘This Mrs Cardross that Bill’s run off with,’ he said, with a typical giggle, ‘is fair-haired, isn’t she? Gregor prefers fair-haired women, don’t you Gregor? Kate was fair-haired, wasn’t she?’
They all looked crossly at him and his wife Agnes stepped on his foot under the table, but he had given them an opportunity to speak about their friend Kate.
‘Kate was the nicest-looking woman I ever saw,’ said Archie McBain.
His wife Sheila smiled and nodded. She was a sensible woman. There was no point in being jealous of a woman who was dead. If you were 75, there was no point in being jealous at all.
‘I never heard her say a bad word about anyone.’
‘She had such a merry laugh.’
‘Did you ever see her dance a Duke of Perth? Light-footed as a fairy, she was.’
Yes, but not latterly. She still had danced, but not so nimbly. I felt desolate.
‘It’s all right, Gregor,’ said Sheila McBain. ‘You’re not parted forever. You’ll meet again in heaven.’
It would be difficult, for neither Kate nor I had been able to believe in such a place.
Morag McVey had been waiting, like a vulture, for an opening to try to ruin the party. Born and brought up in Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, she was a member of the Free Kirk. Probably she was the only person there who thoroughly believed in heaven. The rest were Protestants or Presbyterians, which meant that they did not believe in heaven (though they weren’t sure about hell) or in the Resurrection, or the Virgin Birth, or miracles, but of course they still called themselves Christians.
‘Gregor and Kate can never meet again,’ said Morag, sternly. ‘Kate is in heaven, but he will go straight to hell.’
If it had been meant as a joke, it would have been in bad taste but worth perhaps a twisted grin.
No doubt some of the guests, like myself, were reflecting that Morag’s heaven would be worse than most people’s hell. Nothing enjoyable would be allowed. It would be Bible-reading and psalm-singing morning, noon, and night.
‘That’s not a nice thing to say, Morag,’ said Helen Sneddon.
I would have liked to ask the McVey bitch what she thought I had done or not done to deserve an eternity of separation and pain. There were such things, but she did not know about them. No one did. No one ever would.
‘Don’t heed her, Gregor,’ said Helen. ‘I see you as Orpheus, you know, the singer who went down into the Underworld to ask Hades the king to let him have back his wife Eurydice, who had died. He sang so beautifully that Pluto agreed, on condition that Orpheus on his way up to earth didn’t look back. He couldn’t resist looking back to see if she was following. She was, but she faded before his eyes and he never saw her again. What would you sing, Gregor? “Maiden of Morven”?’
That Celtic cry of anguish and longing for a dead sweetheart. It would certainly have drawn ‘iron tears’ from Pluto’s eyes.
Henry patted his wife’s hand. ‘You’re too old to believe in fairy-tales,’ he said fondly.
Orpheus had not loved his Eurydice more than Henry with his fragile bowels did his Helen.
‘But you know what happened to Orpheus,’ said ex-Sheriff Alec Riddick, with a chuckle. ‘He was torn to pieces by savage women.’
Somehow, that picture of me being set upon by harpies lightened the mood and cheered everybody up. Perhaps, metaphorically, they were putting their fingers to their noses at death, an ominous if invisible presence. Someone proposed that they should have a wee dance. In Susan’s mansion there was plenty of room.
Susan wasn’t sure, she had no objection to their dancing, but she was afraid that one, perhaps more, might drop down dead.
‘Gregor’s the guest of honour,’ she said. ‘He might not feel like dancing, considering the circumstances.’
I said that dancing was as good a way of remembering Kate as any. She had been so keen on it and had enjoyed it so much.
Anyone looking in would have been moved or amused or both to see those shaky legs and gouty feet foxtrotting and waltzing, so cautiously but also so happily. No one dropped dead, though some puffed and wheezed. A Duke of Perth was recklessly demanded. If there was going to be a heart attack, it would be during that dance, however sedately it was performed. Luckily it passed off without mishap.
At last they all departed. Several offered to give me a lift home but Susan stepped in and said I ought to walk, the fresh air would sober me up.
She sat down purposefully beside me on the big couch. She smoked a cigarette, I a cigar. We both drank cognac.
‘Well, Gregor, it went quite well, I suppose.’
‘Very well, Susan, thank you.’
I was wondering, with some apprehension, what it was she wanted to say to me.
‘That bitch McVey wasn’t getting at you, you know. She was getting at me.’
‘She’s not worth heeding.’
‘I said I had something to say to you. Well, here it is. Go to California. Get over Kate. Don’t wait till March. Come back soon after the New Year. We’ll go off together on a world cruise.’
In my astonishment, I let cigar ash fall onto my golf-club tie. But I couldn’t help imagining myself in white slacks and nautical cap, strolling round the deck.
Would there, though, be one or two cabins?
‘We’re suited to each other,’ she said. ‘Some would say we deserve each other.’
‘But, Susan, you’re an unrepentant Tory and I’m a committed socialist.’
‘Piffle. You’re no more a socialist than I am. You’re a worse snob than me. Ask anyone who knows you.’
Was that how people saw me? I remembered overhearing a remark at the golf club: ‘That Gregor McLeod’s a pain in the arse.’ I had been captain at the time and had taken my duties seriously. If I saw a rule being wilfully broken, I immediately reprimanded the offender. It had not made me popular.
‘We’ve