The Tender Glory Read Online Free PDF Page B

in this bleak outpost overlooking the North Sea.
    “You’ve taken your time,” Kirsty observed when she finally swung the van into the yard. “You’ll be gettin’ frizzled ham and eggs this morning and I wouldn’t thank you for the porridge! I’ve taken your mother’s breakfast up to her,” she added virtuously, “but she hasn’t much of an appetite. If you ask me, it’s as much grieving as the thought of the operation that’s wrong with her. She needed Robin here when your father died.
    She needs him now, and not knowing where he is—not hearing from him for months—isn’t helping her to relax.”
    “I know, Kirsty,” Alison agreed. “And that’s why I’m here.” Her chin firmed and her eyes were suddenly hard, but she wouldn’t discuss her brother with Kirsty. “I wrote to Robin from London at his last address. We can only go on hoping that he’ll come now.”
    “If it hadn’t been for that limmer at the Lodge,” Kirsty said, and then stopped. “Did you remember the extra milk?”
    “Yes.” Alison took off her coat. “I met Major Searle. There was someone else there, but she didn’t come out.”
    “That would be Tessa.” Kirsty was busy at the stove. “She wouldn’t show herself. They say she’s crippled, but nobody seems to be sure. You won’t get to know her, that’s for certain. There was some talk of Huntley Daviot marrying her after her sister died, but that was just gossip. He takes her about with him when he’s here, but I’d say there was little to it.”
    “How long have the Searles been at the Lodge?”
    “They rented it for the summer two years ago and they came back again last year. That’s all we know. The singer one liked the isolation, for some reason or other, and then we heard she was going to stay. We expected a big wedding in Wick, or even here, in the glen, but it all came to nothing. She was killed, you know, in America, in an aeroplane crash. I couldn’t say I liked what I saw of her.”
    The brief assertion was typical of Kirsty. She had her likes and dislikes and nobody could budge her from a decision once it was made. Curiously enough, she was rarely mistaken in her summing up, but Alison was quite sure she must be wrong this time.
    “Miss Searle was very beautiful, Kirsty,” she said as she sat down to her breakfast. “Beautiful and talented and respected wherever she went. She had the voice of an angel. It was wonderful to hear.”
    “Maybe so,” Kirsty acknowledged dryly. “But they say in the glen that she brought trouble with her. She was a witch.”
    “Kirsty!” Alison laughed outright. “You don’t believe that! The days of witches and warlocks are long since past.”
    “Maybe you’re right,” Kirsty allowed, “but some folk have inherited their power, if you ask me. The Searles are strangers. It would have been better for the glen if they had stayed where they belonged.”
    Alison applied herself to her porridge, aware that it would be useless to argue with Kirsty in her present mood. When she had finished her breakfast she turned her attention to the housework. Kirsty was getting old and the dairy work alone would be enough for her. Her butter was famed throughout the glen and well beyond it, and it would be a long time before Alison could equal her skill.
    The beds made, she went to her mother’s room, but Helen was asleep. She had fallen into the blissful doze which sometimes follows a restless night and Alison closed the door behind her and tiptoed away.
    There was much to be done, but she found herself spending more than an hour in her own room browsing through old books and gazing across the moor to High Morven on the far horizon. All her childhood joys were reflected in the wide panorama of moor and hill and memories crowded in, one behind the other, until the intense cold drove her back to the kitchen. The midday meal was to be prepared for Kirsty and Neillie and her mother and the stove had gone out.
    The mass of brown ash