Beyond the Green Hills by Anne Doughty Page B

always done. The way Andrew had simply stepped into the place appointed without question, shouldered all the arrangements. Then she thought of what the Missus had said about him. Now she knew why Andrew wasn’t welcome at Drumsollen. He was like his mother. Full of ideas. Yet it was she, city born as she was, who had run the farm and cared for the animals, while husband and father-in-law did what they had to do at Stormont and at Westminster.
    But hadn’t the Missus got it wrong? She’d said Andrew wasn’t like his father. ‘His father was more realistic. Always did what had to be done.’ Those were her words. But wasn’t that precisely what Andrew had done, the moment Edward died?
    She sat on the edge of her chair, unaware of the pain in her back or the ache in her head. She went through it all again. Andrew was now the headof the family, heir to the bankrupt estate of Drumsollen and whatever additional burden had fallen upon Edward. It was really all so simple. A one-way choice. Washe going to marry her and go to Canada and make a home with her? Or was he going to follow the tradition, now and forever more, doing what was expected of him by anyone who could make the remotest claim upon him?
    She looked down at her pretty ring with its tiny diamond and winking red stones. Thought again of the joyous moment when it slipped on to her finger, a perfect fit.
    ‘The ball is over, Cinderella,’ she said to the empty room. ‘Unless the Prince carries you off to a new life and a new world, you’ll have to start all over again.’
    She turned out the fire, pulled off her clothes, tossed away the cushions on her bed, crawled under the bedclothes and cried herself to sleep.

9
    M orning came, grey and sodden. The trees dripped heavily on the pavements, though the rain itself had stopped. Oppressed by the aqueous gloom which surrounded her, she switched on the red-shaded lamps that Ronnie had made out of old wine bottles. They glowed dimly and made no impression at all upon the room itself. In the even dimmer kitchen she made tea and toast, put it on a tray, brought it back up to her table by the window and sat down in Robert’s chair.
    The house was so quiet. In the week since Edward died, all the other students had gone away, off to holiday jobs, to travel abroad, or back home to the country to help on the farm. It was a relief. The less goodbyes to say the better. All she wanted to do now was to slip away. Leave behind the remains of a life Edward’s death had taken from her.
    She’d no appetite for her toast, but she was very thirsty. She sat drinking tea and trying to decide how best to fill the hours before Andrew came, when she would know for sure if she were right. She ran her eye around the room, paused at the large calendar produced by the engineering firm Uncle Jack now worked for. Bright with flags and bunting,the white-hulled ship had been an encouragement all through these last weeks. With a shock, she registered the red stars marking the days of her exams. Then it was May and now it was June.
    She got up, tore off the weeks already consigned to history and stared at the pattern of squares revealed. Below the picture of a Viscount flying in a clear, blue sky, three entries were written in.
    ‘See Rector about wedding,’ she read aloud. ‘Pack up books for store. Move out into flat.’
    She went on staring at the numbered squares, searching for the one that marked the day when Edward died, an unexceptional square, no different from its companions, the square after which her life had fallen to pieces, yet once more – just like the day Granda Scott slipped down beside his anvil and lay there in the silent forge till Jamsey came looking for him.
    ‘All things pass, however pleasant or unpleasant,’ she reminded herself, smiling a little, hearing the echo of Aunt Sarah’s voice; words which had proved their truth, time and time again.
    She took a deep breath, got up and carried her breakfast tray back to