Read Online Consider the Lily by Elizabeth Buchan - Free Book Online
Authors: Elizabeth Buchan
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me that yourself.’
Kit had calculated correctly: the idea of damp, peaty Highlands, sweeping palls of rain, sodden ferns and mosses and the rusty, almost blood-coloured water of the Morven peninsula diverted Rupert. ‘I might do that,’ he said. ‘I could take Danny.’
He and Flora had won, but it was prudent not to linger on the subject. Kit pulled the account book towards him and resumed their previous conversation. ‘Shall we sell the Lady Meadow then, sir?’
‘No.’ Lighter than his son’s, Rupert’s blue eyes assumed a belligerent expression. ‘Never sell your land. You must cling on to it, even if the ship is sinking. Do you understand?’
Rupert was about to climb on his hobby horse, and to forestall this Flora intervened. ‘If we’re short of money why don’t we ask Cousin Andrew in Boston to help us? We all know he has pots.’
As soon as she had spoken, Flora knew the extent of her stupidity. Cousin Andrew was second cousin to their dead mother, rich, condescending, and as unlikely to dispense charity as Rupert wished to receive it.
‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea,’ said Kit, shooting a look at his sister which asked, Why undo my good work?
‘No,’ said Flora.
Rupert whipped round and wrenched the pipe out of his mouth. Flora felt her stomach dive at the prospect of a confrontation. But all Rupert said was, ‘That’s enough, Flora. As usual you speak out of turn.’
‘Sorry,’ she said, and again looked at her watch without seeing it. ‘I didn’t think. I mean, it was just Cousin Andrew—’
‘Cousin Andrew has nothing to do with us,’ said her father, in the way he had of dismissing something of no account, and Flora felt even more miserable. She looked at Kit for help but he jerked his head towards the door. The message was unmistakable: Leave Father to me.
‘Go away,’ said Rupert. ‘We are busy.’
Nothing was ever said, but it was there, always there: the tissue of misunderstanding, of habit hardened into the immutable, of repression and unshriven grief. Plait unravelling, hands bunched inside her cardigan pockets, Flora hovered on one foot then another. Too young at eighteen, too inexperienced and lacking in knowledge to untie the threads that tangled her family, she grasped at the only available straw.
‘Well, France will be lovely,’ she said brightly.
At Eton Kit had been solitary but not in the sense that he had no friends. A cricketer, regular overspender in ‘sock’, prize winner for the English essay, and witty in a dry, subversive manner, he attracted the attention of other boys. Onlookers never knew what to expect. Sometimes, Kit was a ringleader in the thick of it, sometimes so cool and distant that he barely spoke. Other times, at crucial points, he hesitated, felled by an inner crisis, and if he got away with this failure of nerve with the boys, it infuriated the masters who expected better of a boy so promising.
He left Eton unscathed by the attitude of his friends, some brilliant, who regarded the College and Oxbridge afterwards as the glittering prize in life. For that instinctive recoil, Kit was grateful. He looked forward, not back. He did not like to look back. Ever.
Chimeras, however, have many forms, and Kit’s visited him in the summer of 1926. Riding with Max Longborough from Constantinople to the Yemen over fever-ridden plains, through mountain defiles, past starvation and poverty, and places where flowers grew through eyesockets in skulls by the wayside, he had fallen in love with the Middle East and, above all, with the desert. Max and he had been hungry, dry-lipped, sand-blind and thirsty, but the desert’s harshness and its demands had slipped into Kit’s bloodstream and flowed alongside his rootedness in Hinton Dysart. Should he, could he, settle there instead? Kit wrestled often with the idea – but to abandon his home would be to cut out his bone.
Provence in August reminded Kit of the Middle East – almost.
Kit had calculated correctly: the idea of damp, peaty Highlands, sweeping palls of rain, sodden ferns and mosses and the rusty, almost blood-coloured water of the Morven peninsula diverted Rupert. ‘I might do that,’ he said. ‘I could take Danny.’
He and Flora had won, but it was prudent not to linger on the subject. Kit pulled the account book towards him and resumed their previous conversation. ‘Shall we sell the Lady Meadow then, sir?’
‘No.’ Lighter than his son’s, Rupert’s blue eyes assumed a belligerent expression. ‘Never sell your land. You must cling on to it, even if the ship is sinking. Do you understand?’
Rupert was about to climb on his hobby horse, and to forestall this Flora intervened. ‘If we’re short of money why don’t we ask Cousin Andrew in Boston to help us? We all know he has pots.’
As soon as she had spoken, Flora knew the extent of her stupidity. Cousin Andrew was second cousin to their dead mother, rich, condescending, and as unlikely to dispense charity as Rupert wished to receive it.
‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea,’ said Kit, shooting a look at his sister which asked, Why undo my good work?
‘No,’ said Flora.
Rupert whipped round and wrenched the pipe out of his mouth. Flora felt her stomach dive at the prospect of a confrontation. But all Rupert said was, ‘That’s enough, Flora. As usual you speak out of turn.’
‘Sorry,’ she said, and again looked at her watch without seeing it. ‘I didn’t think. I mean, it was just Cousin Andrew—’
‘Cousin Andrew has nothing to do with us,’ said her father, in the way he had of dismissing something of no account, and Flora felt even more miserable. She looked at Kit for help but he jerked his head towards the door. The message was unmistakable: Leave Father to me.
‘Go away,’ said Rupert. ‘We are busy.’
Nothing was ever said, but it was there, always there: the tissue of misunderstanding, of habit hardened into the immutable, of repression and unshriven grief. Plait unravelling, hands bunched inside her cardigan pockets, Flora hovered on one foot then another. Too young at eighteen, too inexperienced and lacking in knowledge to untie the threads that tangled her family, she grasped at the only available straw.
‘Well, France will be lovely,’ she said brightly.
At Eton Kit had been solitary but not in the sense that he had no friends. A cricketer, regular overspender in ‘sock’, prize winner for the English essay, and witty in a dry, subversive manner, he attracted the attention of other boys. Onlookers never knew what to expect. Sometimes, Kit was a ringleader in the thick of it, sometimes so cool and distant that he barely spoke. Other times, at crucial points, he hesitated, felled by an inner crisis, and if he got away with this failure of nerve with the boys, it infuriated the masters who expected better of a boy so promising.
He left Eton unscathed by the attitude of his friends, some brilliant, who regarded the College and Oxbridge afterwards as the glittering prize in life. For that instinctive recoil, Kit was grateful. He looked forward, not back. He did not like to look back. Ever.
Chimeras, however, have many forms, and Kit’s visited him in the summer of 1926. Riding with Max Longborough from Constantinople to the Yemen over fever-ridden plains, through mountain defiles, past starvation and poverty, and places where flowers grew through eyesockets in skulls by the wayside, he had fallen in love with the Middle East and, above all, with the desert. Max and he had been hungry, dry-lipped, sand-blind and thirsty, but the desert’s harshness and its demands had slipped into Kit’s bloodstream and flowed alongside his rootedness in Hinton Dysart. Should he, could he, settle there instead? Kit wrestled often with the idea – but to abandon his home would be to cut out his bone.
Provence in August reminded Kit of the Middle East – almost.
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