Hamish Macbeth 01; Death of a Gossip

∨ Death of a Gossip ∧

Day Two

Then as the earth’s inner, narrow crooked lanes Do purge salt waters’fretful tears away

—John Donne

Alice fumbled with a sleepy hand to silence the buzzing of her travel alarm and stretched and yawned. Her room was bathed in a grey light. She had forgotten to close the curtains before going to bed. Fat, greasy raindrops trickled down the window.

Somehow the horrible first dinner had miraculously turned out all right. Lady Jane had carried all before her. Before the major had had time to round on her, Lady Jane had apologized with such an overwhelming blast of sincerity and charm, with such subtle underlying appeals to his status as an officer and gentleman, that the major’s angry colour had subsided, and, after that, people had begun to enjoy themselves. It was Lady Jane who had suggested that they should all get together in the lounge after dinner and help each other tie their leaders. It was Lady Jane who had kept the party laughing with a flow of faintly malicious anecdotes.

Alice remembered Jeremy’s well-manicured hands brushing against her own and the smell of his aftershave as he had bent his head close to hers to help her tie knots. He had seemed to lose interest in Daphne.

There was to be another lecture that morning before they went out fishing for the day. Alice got out of bed and went to the window and looked out. She could not even see the harbour. A thick mist blanketed everything and the rain thudded steadily down. Perhaps she would be lucky and would be teamed up with Jeremy again. Alice closed her eyes, imagining them both eating their packed lunches in the leather-smelling warmth of Jeremy’s car with the steamed-up windows blocking out the rest of the world.

After a hasty shower, she took out her pink plastic rollers and tried to comb her hair into a more sophisticated style, but it fluffed out as usual.

To her dismay, they were not all to be seated at the same table for breakfast, and she was ushered to a table where the major was already eating sausages. Jeremy was with Daphne and Lady Jane at the other end of the dining room.

The major glanced at Alice and then rustled open a copy of The Times – last Friday’s – and began to study the social column.

“Wet, isn’t it?” volunteered Alice brightly, but the major only grunted in reply.

Probably doesn’t think I’m worth talking to, thought Alice gloomily.

She rose and helped herself to cereal and rolls and juice, which were placed on a table in the centre of the room, and then shyly ordered the Fisherman’s Breakfast from a massive waitress who was built like a Highland cow.

When the breakfast arrived, she poked at it tentatively with a fork. Bacon, eggs, and sausage, she recognized, but the rest seemed odd and strange.

“What are these?” she asked the major. He did not reply so she repeated her question in a rather shrill voice.

“Haggis and black pudding and a potato scone,” said the major. “Very good. Scotch stuff, you know. Introduced to the stuff when I was first in the Highlands on military training.”

“Were you in the SAS?” asked Alice.

“No.” The major smiled indulgently. “They hadn’t been formed in my day. We called ourselves something else.”

“Oh, what was that?”

“Mustn’t say. Hush-hush stuff, you know.”

“Oh.” Alice was impressed.

“Of course I was in the regular army for most of the big show.”

“Which was…?”

“World War Two. Can still remember leading my men up the Normandy beaches. Yanks had taken the easy bits and left us with the cliffs. ‘Don’t worry, chaps,’ I said. ‘We’ll take Jerry this time.’ They believed me, bless their hearts. Would have died for me. ‘Straordinary loyalty. Quite touching, ‘s matter of fact.”

Alice wished her mum could see her now. “Quite one of the old school,” Mum would say.

“Tell me more,” urged Alice, eyes glowing.

“Well,” said the major happily. “There was a time…”

His voice faded away as a bulky shadow fell across the table. Alice looked up. Lady Jane’s pale eyes surveyed the major with amusement. “Telling Miss Wilson all your tales of derring-do? All those pitched battles around the tea tent on Salisbury Plain?”

Now what could there be in those remarks to make the major sweat? Alice looked from one to the other. Lady Jane nodded her head and gave a little smile before walking away.

The major looked after her, mumbled something, and went off mopping his forehead with his handkerchief.

Charlie Baxter, the Roths, and all the rest were already in the lounge. A cheerful fire was blazing on the hearth. The heavyset waitress lumbered in and threw a pile of old tea leaves, cabbage stalks, and old rolls on the fire, which subsided into a depressing, smoking mess.

Heather examined all their leaders and tugged at the knots. Several gave way. “I wish you wouldn’t say you can tie these things when you obviously can’t,” said Lady Jane to the major.

“You are supposed to tie them yourselves,” pointed out Heather.

“Like a bloody schoolroom,” muttered Lady Jane. “Oh, here’s that wretched man again.”

Constable Macbeth lounged in, water dripping from his black cape. He removed it and squatted down by the fire, raking aside the sodden lumps of congealed goo and putting on fresh coal and sticks. Then, to Alice’s amusement, he lay down on his stomach and began to blow furiously until the flames started leaping up the chimney.

“This hotel has central heating, hasn’t it?” Amy Roth shivered. “Why doesn’t someone turn it on?”

“Now I want you all to try to tie your leaders properly this time,” came Heather’s voice. Everyone groaned and began to wrestle with the thin, slippery nylon.

Constable Macbeth had ambled over to an armchair by the window. Suddenly Alice saw him stiffen. It was almost as if he had pointed like a dog. He got to his feet, his tall, thin frame silhouetted against the greyness of the day.

Overcome by curiosity, Alice rose quietly and walked to the window. Whatever, or whoever, Constable Macbeth was looking at was absorbing his whole attention.

Alice looked out.

A slim, blonde girl was getting out of a Land Rover. She had a yellow oilskin coat and shooting breeches and green Wellington boots. Her beautiful face was a calm, well-bred oval. She was struggling to lift a heavy wicker basket out of the Land Rover.

The policeman turned around so quickly he nearly fell over Alice. He seized his cape and darted from the room and reappeared a moment later below the window. He said something to the girl, who laughed up at him. He leaned across her and wrested the basket from the Land Rover. The girl locked the car, and then they walked away, the constable carrying the basket.

I wonder who she is, thought Alice. Rich-looking with that cold sort of damn-you stare. Not a hope there, Lady Jane would no doubt say.

“This goddamn thing has a life of its own,” came Marvin Roth’s voice.

“What we need,” said Lady Jane, “is some useful slave labour. Some sweated labour, wouldn’t you say, Mr Roth?”

“Watch that mouth of yours, lady,” grated Marvin Roth.

There was a shocked silence. Oh dear, thought Heather, I should never have tried to cope with them alone. That dreadful woman. She keeps saying things which sound innocuous to me but which seem terribly barbed to the person they’re directed against. She’s got that mottled red about the neck which usually means high blood pressure. I wish she would drop dead.

“And now,” said Heather out loud, amazed to hear how shaky her own voice sounded, “I will pass round some pieces of string and teach you how to tie a figure of eight.”

To Heather’s relief, her husband came into the room. “We’re running a bit late,” he said: “Better get them started. We’ll issue them with rods again, that is, the ones who want to rent stuff – I think only the major has brought his own – and then we’ll get them off to the Upper Alsh and Loch Alsh.”

Alice pulled on her waders in her room and checked she had everything tucked away in the pockets of her green fowling coat – scissors, a needle (for poking out the eyes of flies – artificial ones, she had been glad to find out – and for undoing knots), and a penknife. She placed her fishing hat on her head and made her way back downstairs, hoping the other guests thought she was a seasoned fisherwoman.

In the car park, John was passing out maps, explaining that Loch Alsh was some distance away. Water dripped from his hat on to his nose. Rain thudded down on the car park. “At least it will keep the flies away,” he said. “Now, let me see – Jeremy, you’ll take Daphne.” Alice had a sinking feeling in her stomach as John went on to say she was to come along with himself and Heather and young Charlie Baxter. Alice felt Lady Jane’s eyes on her face and angrily jerked her already sodden hat down on her forehead.

The journey seemed endless. The mountains were blotted out by the mist. The windscreen wipers clicked monotonously back and forth. Alice looked at Charlie. He was hunched in the far corner. Alice did not know what one talked to children about. “Enjoying yourself?” she asked at last.

The child’s hard, assessing gaze was fixed on her face. “No,” he said at last. “I hate that ugly fat woman. She’s cruel and mean and evil. Why doesn’t she die? Lots of people die in the Highlands. They get lost and starve and die of exposure. They fall off cliffs. Why can’t something happen to her?”

“Now, now,” said Alice reprovingly. “Mustn’t talk like that.”

There was a long silence, then, “You’re very silly, you know,” said the child in a conversational tone of voice.

Alice coloured up. “Don’t be impertinent.”

“You were being impertinent,” said the maddening Charlie. “Anyway, you hate her just as much as I do.”

“If you mean Lady Jane, she is very trying,” said Heather over one plump shoulder. “But her faults seem worse because we’re such a small group. You wouldn’t notice her much in a crowd.”

“I would,” said Charlie, putting an effective end to that bit of conversation.

Alice began to feel carsick. The big estate car swayed on the slick macadam surface of the road and cruised up and down over the many rises and bumps.

At last the car veered sharply left and lurched even more over a dirt track where clumps of heather scraped the side of the car.

When Alice was just about ready to scream that she was about to be sick, they lurched to a halt.

She climbed out, feeling stiff and cold.

A rain-pocked loch stretched out in front of her and vanished into the mist. All was still and silent except for the constant drumming of the rain. Heather and John began to unload the rods as the others drove up.

“Now, who wants to row the boat?”

“Me!” cried Charlie, showing rare animation.

“Then you can be my ghillie,” said Lady Jane, a ghillie being a Highland servant. “Too many bushes around here. I’d be better in the middle of the loch.”

“With a stone around your fat neck,” muttered Amy Roth. She caught Alice staring at her and blushed like a schoolgirl. “She’s such a lady,” thought Alice, amused. “I bet she feels like fainting any time she says ‘damn’.”

Heather hesitated. Charlie was looking horrified at the idea of rowing Lady Jane. On the other hand, Charlie seemed to be the one member of the party that Lady Jane had so far not managed to intimidate. And he could be rescued after an hour.

“Very well,” said Heather. “The Roths and the major can go with John further up the loch and fish the river. We should get good brown trout or small salmon so you will only need light rods.”

“What about me?” asked Alice.

“You come with me and I’ll start you off,” said Heather. “Jeremy, you go along to the left and Daphne to the right. Keep moving now. We’ll only fish for a little bit and then we’ll meet back here in two hours’ time.”

Alice kept looking hopefully in Jeremy’s direction while they assembled their rods. Daphne had caught her fly in her jacket, and Jeremy was laughing and joking as he wiggled it free for her.

Alice shivered. The rain had found its way inside her collar.

“Come along,” said Heather. “No, don’t carry your rod like that, Alice. You’ll either spear someone or get it caught in a bush.”

Jeremy waded off into the loch, and Alice watched him go until he was swallowed up in the mist. Lady Jane’s petulant voice sounded over the water, “Can’t you row a little harder?” Poor Charlie.

Alice waded along the shallows after Heather. “Just here, I think,” said Heather. “Try casting here.”

Wet and miserable, Alice jerked her rod back and caught the bush behind her. “No, like this,” said Heather patiently, after she had extricated Alice’s hook. She took Alice’s arm in a firm grasp and cast the fly so neatly that it landed on the water without a ripple. “Good,” murmured Heather. “Now again. And again.”

Alice’s arm began to ache. She cursed and stumbled and slipped on the slippery boulders in the water beneath her feet. “I’ll try a little bit further on,” said Heather placidly. “You’re doing just grand. Remember to stop the rod at the twelve o’clock position. The loch’s quite shallow for a good bit, so if you move slowly out from the shore, you might get a bite and then you don’t have the risk of getting your hook caught in the bushes.”

Why don’t I just say I’ll never learn how to fish and I don’t care, thought Alice wretchedly. Jeremy’s not interested in me. I don’t belong here. But somehow she found herself wading slowly out into the loch, casting as she went.

Then the line went taut.

Alice’s heart leapt into her mouth.

It was probably a rock or a bit of weed. She began to reel in, feeling with growing excitement the tugs and shivers on the line. A trout leapt in the air at the end of the line and dived.

“Help!” screamed Alice, red with excitement. Would Heather never come? What if she lost it? She could not bear to lose it. Seized with a fever almost as old as the hills around her, Alice reeled in her line.

“That’s it,” said Heather quietly, appearing suddenly at Alice’s side. “Get your net ready.”.

“Net. Yes, net,” said Alice, scrabbling wildly about and dropping her rod in the water. Heather bent down and seized the rod.

“Get the net ready,” said Heather again. Alice wanted to snatch the rod back but was afraid of losing the fish. Forward it came, turning and glistening in the water. Alice scooped the net under it and lifted it up, watching the fish with a mixture of exultation and pity.

“Quite a big one,” said Heather. “Three pounds, I should think. It’ll make a good breakfast.” She led the way to the shore after removing the hook from the trout’s mouth.

“Can’t you kill it?” asked Alice, looking at the panting, struggling fish. “Oh yes,” said Heather, slowly picking up a rock. All her movements were slow and sure. “We’ll just put it out of its misery.”

How abhorrent the idea of killing things seemed in London, thought Alice, and how natural it seemed in this savage landscape. Heather slid the trout into a plastic bag. “Put that in your fishing bag,” she said to Alice. “It’s about time for lunch. I think I hear the others returning.”

Alice was the only one who had caught anything and received lavish praise from everyone but Lady Jane and Charlie Baxter. The child looked exhausted, and Heather was fussing over him, helping him into the front seat of the car and pouring him hot tea.

“You’re a marvel, Alice,” said Jeremy. “Did you really catch that brute all by yourself?”

“Yes, did you really?” asked Lady Jane.

Alice hesitated only for a moment. Heather was a little bit away, hopefully out of earshot. “Yes,” said Alice loudly. “Yes, I did.”

“I’d better keep close to you this afternoon,” grinned Jeremy. “Seems you have all the luck.”

Alice’s pleasure was a little dimmed by, first, the lie she had told, which she was now sure Heather had overheard, and, second, by the fact that Jeremy and Daphne were to share a cozy lunch in his car while she herself was relegated to the back of the Cartwrights’ estate car.

Lunch tasted rather nasty. Great slabs of paté, cold and heavy, and dry yellow cake and boiled eggs. But the fishing fever had Alice in its grip, and she could hardly wait to try her luck again. Somehow, Alice felt, if she managed to catch another fish all on her own then the lie would be forgiven by the gods above. For the first few moments after they climbed from the cars again, it looked as if the day’s fishing might have to be cancelled. A wind had risen and was driving great buffets of rain into their faces.

“It said on the forecast this morning it might dry up later,” yelled John above the noise of the rising wind. “I say we ought to give it another half-hour.”

Everyone agreed, since no one wanted to return home without a fish. If Alice could catch one, then anyone could, was the general opinion.

“I’m all right now,” Charlie said, after Heather had towelled his curls dry. “It was that woman. Row here. Row there. And then she said…she said…never mind.”

“Slide along behind the wheel, Charlie,” said Heather firmly. “I really think you ought to tell me what Lady Jane said to upset you.”

But Charlie would only shake his drying curls and look stubborn.

Heather was determined to have a word with her husband about Lady Jane as soon as possible. But the roar of an engine told her that John was already setting out with the major for the upper beats of the river.

“Would you like me to run you back to the hotel?” she asked the boy.

He shook his head. “As long as I can fish alone,” he said. “I’ll wait with the rest and see if the weather lifts.”

Alice was oblivious to the slashing rain as she waded out into the loch again with Jeremy at her side, deaf to the sounds of altercation from the shore as Heather told Lady Jane firmly that she was to leave Charlie alone and drive to the upper beats to join the major, the Roths, and John.

“Brrrr, it’s cold,” said Jeremy. “Where did you catch your trout?”

“Just here,” said Alice. “I’ll show you.” She cast wildly and heard the fly plop in the water behind her, then clumsily whipped the line forward. “I’m tired,” she said defiantly, “and my arm aches. That’s why I can’t do it right.”

“Look, it’s like this,” said Jeremy. “Keep your legs apart – ” Alice blushed “ – with the left foot slightly forward. Bring the rod smartly up towards your shoulder using the forearm and hold your upper arms close to your body. When you make the back flick, the line should stream out straight behind, and when you feel a tug at the top of the line, you’ll know the back cast is completed, and then bring it into the forward cast.”

Alice’s line cracked like a lion tamer’s whip. “Are you sure you caught that fish yourself?” laughed Jeremy.

“Of course I did,” said Alice with the steady, outraged gaze of the liar.

“I’ll try further down,” said Jeremy, beginning to wade away. “I wonder if Daphne’s had any luck.”

Damn Daphne, thought Alice savagely. All her elation had fled, leaving her alone in the middle of a howling wilderness of wind and rain.

She simply had to get Jeremy back.

Remembering everything she had been taught, she balanced herself on the slippery pebbles under the water and cast carefully and neatly towards Jeremy’s retreating back.

“Caught ‘im,” thought Alice. Aloud, she called, “Sorry, Jeremy darling. I’m afraid I’ve hooked you.” Now, in the romances that Alice read, Jeremy should have said something like, “You caught me a long time ago,” and men walked slowly towards her and taken her in his powerful arms.

What he did say in fact was, “Silly bitch. There’s the whole loch to fish from. Come here and help me get this hook out.”

Blushing and stumbling, Alice edged miserably towards him. The hook was embedded in the back of his jacket. She twisted and pulled and finally it came free with a ripping sound.

Jeremy twisted an anguished face over his shoulder. “Now look what you’ve done. Look, just keep well clear of me.” He waded off into the driving rain.

Tears of humiliation mixed with the rainwater on Alice’s face. She felt hurt and lost and alone. Her face ached with trying to maintain a posh accent. Jeremy would never have behaved like that wititi someone of his own class.

She decided to turn about, give up, and go back and shelter in the car until this horrible day’s fishing was all over.

Alice stumbled towards the shore. Suddenly the water turned gold. Sparkling gold with red light dancing in the peaty ripples. She turned and looked towards the west. Blue sky was spreading rapidly over the heavens. Mountains stood up, sharp and prehistoric with their twisted, deformed shapes. Heather blazed in great, glorious clumps, and the sun beat down on Alice’s sopping hat.

“Alice! Alice!” Jeremy was churning towards her through the water, holding up a fairly small trout.

“Marvellous girl.” He beamed. “Knew you would bring me luck.” He threw his arms around her, slapping her on the back of the head with his dead trout as he did so.

Transported from hell to heaven, Alice smiled back. “Come along,” said Jeremy. “I’ve got a flask of brandy in the car. Let’s take a break and celebrate.”

While Jeremy got his flask, Alice took off her hat and her wet coat and put them both on the bushes to dry. Jeremy sat down on a rock beside her and handed her the flask and she choked over an enormous gulp of brandy.

The liqueur shot down to her stomach and up to her brain. She felt dizzy with happiness. They had had their first quarrel, she thought dreamily. How they would laugh about it after they were married!

Elated with brandy and sunshine, they cheerfully agreed to return to the loch and try their luck again. And Alice did try. Very hard. If only she could catch a fish all by herself then she could be easy in her conscience.

But at four in the afternoon, Heather appeared to call them to the cars. They were to return to the hotel for another fishing lecture.

Even Alice felt stdkily that it was all too much like being back at school. Why waste a perfectly good afternoon sitting indoors in a stuffy hotel lounge?

But none of them had quite realized how tired they were until John Cartwright began his lecture on fly tying. Despite the heat from the sun pouring in the long windows, a log fire was burning, its flames bleached pale by the sunlight. A bluebottle buzzed against the windows.

While Heather’s rumble fingers demonstrated the art of fly tying, John discoursed on the merits of wet and dry flies. Names like Tup’s Indispensable, Little Claret, Wickman’s Fancy, Black Pennell and Cardinal floated like dust motes on the hot, somnolent air. “Sound like racehorses,” said Jeremy sleepily.

Alice felt her eyes beginning to close. The major was asleep, twitching in his armchair like an old dog; the Roths were leaning together, joined by fatigue into a fireside picture of a happily married couple. Lady Jane had her eyes half closed, like a basking lizard, and Daphne Gore was painting her nails vermillion.

Suddenly Alice jerked her eyes open. There was a feeling of fear in the room, fear mixed with malice.

While John droned on, Heather had stopped her demonstration to flip through the post. She was sitting very still, holding an airmail letter in her plump hands. She raised her eyes and looked at Lady Jane. Lady Jane raised her heavy lids and smiled. It was not a nice smile.

Heather’s face had gone putty-coloured. She put a hand on her husband’s sleeve and passed him the letter. He glanced at it and then began to read it closely, his lips folded into a grim line.

“Class dismissed,” he said at last, putting down the letter and assuming a rather ghastly air of levity.

“What was all that about?” murmured Jeremy to Alice. “And why do I feel it has something to do with Lady Jane?”

“Care for a drink before dinner, Jeremy?” came Daphne’s cool voice.

“Are you paying?” asked Jeremy, his face crinkling up in a smile.

“What’s this? Men’s lib?” Daphne slid her arm into his and they left the lounge together. Alice stood stock still, biting her lip.

“I told you you were wasting your time.” Lady Jane’s large bulk hove up on Alice’s port side.

Fury like bile nearly choked Alice. “You are a horrible, unpleasant woman,” she grated.

This seemed to increase Lady Jane’s good humour. “Now, now,” she purred. “Little girls in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. And I do trust our stone-throwing days are over.”

Alice gazed at her in terror. She knew. She would tell Jeremy. She would tell everybody.

She turned and ran and did not stop running until she reached her room. She threw herself face down on the bed and cried and cried until she could cry no more. And then she became conscious of all that barbaric wilderness of Highland moor and mountain outside. Accidents happened. Anything could happen. Alice pictured Lady Jane’s heavy body plummeting down into a salmon pool, her fat face lifeless, turned upwards in the brown, peaty water. Abruptly, she fell asleep.

When she awoke, she thought it was still early because of the daylight outside, forgetting about the long light of a northern Scottish summer.

Then she saw it was ten o’clock. With a gasp, she hurtled from the bed and washed and changed. But when she went down to the dining room, it was to find that dinner was over and she had to put up with sandwiches served in the bar. Everyone seemed to have gone to bed. The barman informed her that the fat FEB had gone out walking and perhaps the other was with her – that Lady Whatsername. Alice asked curiously what a FEB was but the bartender said hurriedly he ‘shouldnae hae said that’ and polished glasses furiously.

♦

Charlie Baxter threw leaves into the river Anstey from the humpbacked bridge and watched them being churned into the boiling water and then tossed up again on their turbulent road to the sea. His aunt, Mrs Pargeter, thought he was safely in bed, but he had put on his clothes and climbed out of the window. His mother had written to say she would be arriving at the end of the week. Charlie looked forward to her visit and dreaded it at the same time. He still could not quite believe he would never see his father again. Mother had won custody of him in a violent divorce case and talked endlessly about defying the law and keeping Charlie away from his father for life. Charlie felt miserably that it was somehow all his fault; that if he had been a better child then his parents might have stayed together. He turned from the bridge and headed towards the hotel.

The sky and sea were pale grey, setting off the black twisted shapes of the mountains crouched behind the village.

Charlie walked along the harbour, watching the men getting ready for their night’s fishing. He was debating asking one of them if he could go along and was just rejecting the idea as hopeless – for surely they would demand permission from his aunt – when a soft voice said behind him, “Isn’t it time you were in bed, young man?”

Charlie glanced up. The tall figure of Constable Macbeth loomed up in the dusk. “I was just going home,” muttered Charlie.

“Well, I’ll just take a bit of a walk with you. It’s a grand night.”

“As a matter of fact, my aunt doesn’t know I’m out,” said Charlie.

“Then we would not want to be upsetting Mrs Pargeter,” said Hamish equably. “But we’ll take a wee dauner along the front.”

As Hamish Macbeth was turning away, a voice sounded from an open window of the hotel, “Throw the damn thing away. It’s like poison.” Mrs Cartwright, thought Charlie. Then came John’s Cartwright’s voice, “Oh, very well. But you’re worrying overmuch. I’ll throw this in the loch and then we can maybe get a night’s sleep.”

A crumpled piece of blue paper sailed past Charlie’s head and landed on the oily stones of the beach. The tide was out.

Charlie picked it up. It was a crumpled airmail. “You shouldn’t look at other people’s correspondence,” said Hamish Macbeth severely, “even though they may have chucked it away.”

“I wasn’t going to read it. It’s got a lovely stamp. Austrian.”

They passed the Roths, who were walking some distance apart. Marvin’s face was flushed and Amy’s mouth was turned down at the corners. “Hi!” said Marvin, forcing a smile.

“It’s a grand night,” remarked the policeman. The American couple went on their way, and Charlie hurriedly thrust the airmail into his pocket.

When they reached his aunts house, Charlie said shyly, “Do you mind leaving me here? I know how to get in without waking her.”

Hamish Macbeth nodded, but waited at the garden gate until the boy disappeared around the side of the house.

Then he made his way home to his own house where his dog, Towser, gave him a slavering welcome. Hamish absentmindedly stroked the animal’s rough coat. There was something about this particular fishing class that was making him uneasy.