The Tender Glory Read Online Free PDF Page A

our customers. Are we still delivering in the glen?”
    “Ay, that’s right, an’ there’s a message come to leave an extra pint at the Lodge.”
    “At Calders?”
    “Ay, the gate house.”
    If she stopped to talk to Neillie she would be there all day, Alison realised.
    “I’ll try to remember,” she promised.
    “You’d better! They’re folk that like good service,” Neillie warned her.
    Friends of the Daviots, her mother had said.
    The van was old and needed attention. Neillie had driven it hard over their inadequate roads and it rattled at every joint. She put in the milk crates and slammed the rear doors, only to find them swinging back defiantly in her face.
    “You’ll be needin’ a bit o’ string,” Neillie advised. “It’s the only way to keep them shut once ye get her going.”
    Wondering if ‘once ye get her going’ was some sort of veiled warning on Neillie’s part, she pressed the starter, but the engine responded immediately, roaring into vigorous life. The body shuddered and quivered as Neillie slammed the back doors and
    fastened them with the necessary length of string.
    “I’m on my way!” she shouted, letting in her clutch. “Tell Kirsty I’ll be more than hungry by the time I get back for breakfast.”
    It was a lovely morning, clear and bright now that the sun had come up over the sea. There was a diamond sparkle in the air, the prelude to a glorious autumn day, and far beneath her the tide slipped gently in. The whole grey-blue expanse of the North Sea lay before her, wide and empty as the sky above it, a vast world of loneliness where only the seabirds moved. She watched them wheeling and circling above the rocks out on Sterne Point where the old, disused lighthouse stood starkly white against the sky. Unoccupied for years, it had always been a favourite haunt for the children of the neighbourhood and she had gone there often in the past, breasting the wind on a day of violent storm or, in the peaceful weather, lingering along the cliff top listening to the hum of bees and the bleating of the sheep.
    But now she couldn’t linger. There was work to do. She delivered the milk at the clachan, setting down the bottles at cottage doors where most of the blinds were still undrawn. Here and there, where a farm labourer had already gone to work, she was waylaid by his bright and cheerful wife and smiled at shyly by his children, so that it was almost seven o’clock before she turned into the glen.
    Sunningdale cradled the Calder Water from its source in the hills to where it plunged eagerly to the sea. Belying its name for the first mile or two, it was narrow and dark, widening to the vast expanse of moorland where the sheep grazed in uninterrupted silence.
    Most of the crofters still kept their own cow, but here and there, where sheep was their main concern, their milk was delivered daily from Craigie Hill.
    Alison decided to leave the Lodge for her return journey, but renewing old acquaintances was a time- stealing business. It was nearly eight o’clock before she drove back down the glen and the back entrance to Calders faced her. The gates lay wide open and by going through the grounds she would save herself a mile or more of tortuous, winding road to the Lodge.
    Without hesitation she drove through into the green twilight of the trees. Giant firs and larch grew tall on either side of her, shutting out the sun, and the deserted driveway was softly cushioned by fallen pine needles. Even the rattle of the van was muted in the prevailing stillness. It was a road that hadn’t been
    used for a very long time.
    Coming to the house itself, she found it shuttered and silent. Calders, which had once been the hub of entertainment in the neighbourhood, turned a harsh face towards her, regarding her trespass with vacant eyes.
    Oddly disconcerted, she drove on, winding down the drive towards the Lodge. Here she found a difference. The small, octagonal house guarding the south gates was fully