My Bones Will Keep

Chapter 3

A Visit to An Tigh Mór

‘Now who be ye would cross Lochgyle,

That dark and stormy water?’

Sir Walter Scott

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THE girl in the hotel reception office at Freagair smiled sympathetically when Laura explained that she had been held up by the bad weather. She added that she would require her room that night, provided that it was still vacant, as she proposed to explore the countryside before returning to Inverness.

She was too early for lunch, so she bought herself a drink and, over that and a cigarette, she wrote a letter to Dame Beatrice describing her visit to Mrs Stewart at Gàradh and summarising her subsequent experiences.

Lunch over, she left Freagair in the hired car (which seemed none the worse for its extra trip), in quest of a place where she could park it and go for a walk. Before she left the garage she checked her petrol and discovered that Mrs Grant must have had a supply at Coinneamh Lodge, for the tank contained more than it had held when Laura had checked it at Tigh-Osda before driving Mrs Grant home.

‘Oh, well, that’s something to her credit, and she certainly looked after me well. I wonder what on earth she was up to? Went back to Tigh-Osda to make sure their van was all right, knowing that I was at hand to look after the kid, perhaps? I suppose the rain had left off when she went. I wonder when she did go? At about six, I should think. She’d hardly drive in the dark. She can’t have had much sleep, anyway. Oh, well, she hasn’t damaged the bus and she’s given me lots of free petrol, so that’s all right’

She left Freagair by the road to Uinneag and parked the small car on the grass verge of a little, noisy stream which was racing through a wooded glen. It seemed possible to follow the course of the stream and, even if it proved necessary to return the same way, Laura reflected, the scenery would not look the same, seen from the opposite direction.

The grass verge soon ended, she discovered, and then the going became rough. Boulders, like passive grey sheep, were strewn all over the narrow valley and the birches grew so thickly that Laura welcomed the change when, some time later, she came out among pines. Here the little stream, still rippling, shouting and tumbling, wound freely, finding its way. Sometimes it narrowed between walls of rock, sometimes it broadened into shallow, brown, shining pools.

The going, beside the shallows and pools, was much easier, and after about an hour Laura sat down beside one of the pools and took out a cigarette. The trees here were not birches and pines, but slightly stunted oaks growing less than five feet from the water.

The opposite bank was similar to the one on which she was seated, but the glen had widened considerably and beyond a hill, on whose lower slopes the deciduous trees were clustered, rose the high peaks of mountains. A little farther on, when she resumed her walk, she could see, on the opposite bank, a rough stone wall dividing neighbouring policies, but on her side of the river there seemed to be no obstacles.

In the next two or three miles the scenery changed again and the mountains altered their shape with the continual windings of the river. Laura found herself walking uncomfortably on shale, and on the opposite bank the pines reappeared, dwarfing the oaks and looking almost black against their greenery. Occasionally thick bushes on Laura’s side of the water hid the river from her view.

At last she came out upon a path and in full view of the mountains. There was bracken beside the path, and here and there, as the path mounted, there was heather among the boulders. A long, bare ridge of solid rock ran from the path down to the river, which, by this time, was churning its narrow way in the gorge below. A solitary Scots pine with a writhing trunk on whose smoothness the sun shone, was the only tree Laura could see, and the shadow it cast was a long one.

Laura glanced at her wristwatch. It was later than she had thought, but the sky was clear and she was thoroughly enjoying her walk. She made a mental note of the time and decided to give herself half an hour longer before she turned back. The path had been travelling steadily upwards for some time and she thought that the return journey would be speedier than the outward one.

Before the half-hour was up, however, her luck changed and so did the weather. The path went steeply downhill instead of up, then, for no obvious reason, it petered out as soon as it reached a clump of birches on a little knoll above the river, which here, having left the gorge and the boulders behind, ran shallow and clear, with low banks of dry pebbles dividing it into channels.

Beside the birch trees Laura paused to take stock. The sunshine had gone and a menacing little wind shivered in the delicate branches. The sky was ominously overcast and the river had lost all its colour. The mountains seemed suddenly nearer, and then down came the mist and blotted them out Then it began to pour with rain. Laura took what shelter she could from the birches, but their attenuated branches and light, small leaves offered almost no protection.

‘Oh, hell!’ she said aloud, and, as though the infernal archangel had heard her invocation and had decided to come to her aid, she saw, on the other side of the river, what she took to be a crofter’s cottage. Faith in the traditional hospitality of the Highlands made up her mind for her. She was opposite a part of the river where it was safe enough to cross. She decided to seek sanctuary.

Still keeping within what little shelter she could get from birches, she chose the likeliest fording place, where a long spit of shingle-shale almost cut the river in two. Here she faced the full of the teeming rain, slithered on the stones and stepped out into the water. At its deepest it reached to her knees and she found it difficult to keep her footing, but she was almost immediately in the shallows and soon reached the opposite bank. It was higher than the one she had left, but, with the aid of another spit of shingle – a small one this time – and a low-growing bush, she mounted the bank and, head down against the elements, battled her way towards the croft.

There was a stone wall to be surmounted, for there was no visible opening, and in climbing over this she tore her skirt. Then, when she approached the forlorn little dwelling, she saw that it was roofless. She saw something else, too. Because of the bends in the river she had not realised that she had almost reached the point at which it flowed into the loch, but there, in front of her, was not only the loch but a narrow road. What was more, as she came out on to the road through a gap in the stone wall which bounded the deserted croft, she saw that there was an island in the loch and against a black background of trees a big house on the island stood out eerily white.

‘Pity it’s on the island. I could have asked for shelter there,’ thought Laura, pausing before she stepped out along the road in the hope—forlorn, she supposed – of coming upon a clachan. Suddenly a man’s voice said, from just behind her:

‘If it might be for the laird you are wishing, it is known to me that it is necessary to you turning the sign at the side of the small quay. There is a boat at the laird.’

Laura had not even seen the small quay. The man, a bearded figure in a stout anorak and fisherman’s waders, pointed out where it lay to the left, about forty yards from where he was standing.

‘Oh, thank you,’ said Laura. Before she could say any more, the idiosyncratic stranger, whose pleasure it appeared to be to converse in a direct and unwieldy translation from the Gaelic, had made for the small quay and was operating what Laura, following him, perceived to be a large lantern, half of green and half of red.

‘They’ll never see that from over there,’ said Laura, ‘unless we light it, and I don’t see how we can do that in this rain. Besides…’

‘Is terrible this rain, but it is pleasant with me to ring the bell,’ said the stranger. He swung the lantern round so that it showed green towards the loch and red towards the road and then took up a tarpaulin, which was pegged down by four large stones, and disclosed a handbell. This he swung vigorously until its harsh clamour violated the air. He put it back, replaced the tarpaulin and the stones, touched his dripping tweed hat and scrambled back on to the road. Laura, as wet as though she had fallen into the loch, looked across the water and saw a boat putting out from the island.

‘Here’s hoping!’ she muttered, wriggling her feet in their squelching shoes. ‘Now for the sacred claims of the wayfarer!’

At this the rain eased a little and, as the boat approached the quay, she could see that it was a stout coble pulled by one man. She stood at the end of the quay and the boatman, a huge, red-bearded brigand in oilskins and a sou’-wester, brought the boat round with the skill of long usage, reached over and gripped an iron ring.

‘If you’re for Tannasgan,’ he said, in a voice which matched his frame, ‘you had better get in.’

Laura’s pulse quickened. It was a fantastic quirk on the part of Fate, she felt, to have brought her, in this roundabout fashion, to the lair of the ogre of An Tigh Mór. She stepped into the boat and, almost before she was seated, the boatman had released the ring, given a hearty push off from the side of the jetty, and was rowing, with short, powerful strokes, across the choppy water.

There was a boat-house on the island. Here the bearded man tied up and handed Laura out. The house was a mere thirty yards away. The man took Laura’s wrist in a strong grasp and ran with her up to the front door, which was open.

‘Come ben,’ he said, and thrust her into the hall. ‘Mairi! Mairi! To me here! We have a guest!

A woman almost as tall as the man appeared from some lair off the side of the hall. She had the grim, almost mannish face of some elderly Scotswomen and was dressed in a black blouse of the type which used to be called a bodice, a black skirt to her ankles, and a starched white apron.

‘Ye called?’ she asked.

‘I did that. Pop this water-kelpie in the bath-tub and then bed her with two hot bricks, a dram and a basin of broth. Dry out her clothes. She dines with me tonight. Send her down at three-quarters after eight, and put out sherry on the sideboard and a bottle of champagne on the dining-table.’

Having given these orders, he pushed Laura towards the woman and went out by a door at the far end of the hall. The woman waited until he had slammed this door and then she relaxed her expression and grimly smiled.

‘Dinna fash yourself,’ she said, ‘about that one. There’s them that think him a wee bit wrong in the head and his talk, times, is wild, but use him wi’ sense and civility and dinna cross him, and he’ll eat out o’ your hand, as they say.’

‘Do you come from Glasgow way?’ asked Laura.

‘Kirkintilloch. My man, too. Come wi’ me. Ye’re soppin’ the floor.’

Three-quarters of an hour later, having soaked herself in a portable zinc bath which was so long and so deep that she concluded it had been fashioned to the individual specification of her host, Laura was between warmed sheets and also in the comfortable company of two hot bricks wrapped in flannel, a whisky toddy of almost frightening potency and a huge bowl of Scotch broth. Outside the bedroom window the rain still pelted down. Laura pulled a black woollen shawl more closely about her shoulders and breathed a short, heartfelt prayer of thanks for the situation in which she found herself.

She was left in peace until a quarter past eight, and had dozed off, when the housekeeper came in and informed her that she could not get her sodden clothes dry in such a short time, but that, although she had explained this, ‘that one’ was still determined that Laura should dine with him.

‘What’ll we do?’ she enquired. ‘He’s a gey ill chiel to cross.’

‘You had better lend me a pair of your man’s breeks,’ said Laura.

‘Awa’ wi’ ye!’ shrilled the housekeeper, highly diverted by this suggestion.

‘Well, speir at the gentleman will he lend me his dressing-gown, then.’

To her amusement the woman took this suggestion with all seriousness, went off and soon returned with the garment in question. Laura was tall and well-built, but, even so, she had to gather up trails of the blanket-cloth from which the dressing-gown was fashioned in order to make a stately descent of the stairs.

The man, it appeared (indeed, he stated it), preferred to take his meals in silence.

Laura was allowed and even encouraged to converse with him while each of them drank two glasses of sherry, and then, as he offered his arm to her to conduct her from the sideboard to her seat at the table, he gracefully observed:

‘And now, no more babbling until coffee!’

So they sat in complete silence at opposite ends of the table and consumed hare soup, boiled salmon, gigot of mutton followed by treacle tart. The man had changed his mind about the wine. Instead of champagne two bottles of Clos de Vougeot had been placed upon the table, one beside Laura and the other at the disposal of her host. They were waited upon to the extent that a grey-haired man brought each dish in and put it on the table. Her host served it, carried Laura’s plate to her, collected it when she had finished and then bellowed for Corrie. At this, the grey-haired man came in with the next course and took out the empty plates.

The dinner was a good one, beautifully cooked, and Laura, always a hearty trencherman, enjoyed it. At last the pudding plates disappeared and the man pushed back his chair and stood up.

‘There’s a kebbuk of cheese if you want it. If not, there’s coffee beside the fire, and then you may loosen your woman’s tongue,’ he said. ‘Tell me, are there werewolves in your part of the country?’

‘No. They live in the Hartz Mountains,’ said Laura.

‘They live in the Grampians; they thrive in the Cairngorms; they have been known at Leith and now they are here.’

‘So is the basilisk,’ said Laura, grinning.

‘Do you tell me that?’ He looked at her with a keen interest which caused her to wonder whether he was something more than a mere eccentric.

‘And what about the cockatrice?’ she asked.

‘But, my good lassie, they are the same creature! Where’s your education? The crowned serpent hatched from a cock’s egg, that’s the basilisk—basil, a king, you ken. And the crown is like a cock’s comb. I’ve seen it. I know.’

‘Pardon,’ said Laura, now convinced that she was in the presence of a madman. ‘A slip of the tongue. I should have asked about the salamander.’

‘I had one once as a pet, and a dear wee beastie he was until he fell into the fire—jumped into it, you might say. Then — losh! There was a blaze. It nearly had my house burnt down. One of these days I will show you. They love the fire, as you know. Born and bred in the secret, incredible heat of mid-earth, half-way to the Golden Gate—I mean to the Antipodes – is the salamander, and on fire he feeds. Ay, on fire he feeds and grows. Why, this one—Loki I call him—my ancestors came from Scandinavia, you ken – he grew like Yormungand.’

Laura, closely regarding the red beard and the tall figure of her host, had no difficulty in believing some of this.

‘Then you come from the east coast or, possibly, the Orkneys,’ she said. He looked pained.

‘Not necessarily. Not necessarily at all. Is it unknown to you that the Vikings sailed as far west as Ireland? However, be that as it may, this salamander grew as big as a boa-constrictor that time the house was on fire and he was used to spitting — like this!’ He leaned forward and expectorated into the heart of the glowing peat. ‘Ay, and woe betide the chiel on whom he would be voiding his rheum. Wait until I shew you.’

He rose and went over to the sideboard, a massive affair in bog-oak on which the tray and the glasses which had held the sherry were still standing. There was a key in the cupboard drawer. He turned it and pulled open the stout door. Putting in a huge and hirsute hand, he took out a couple of small ornaments, placed them on the floor and then dived in for a couple more. These objects he brought to the table, which still bore its white, beautifully-laundered cloth.

‘I say! They’re nice,’ said Laura. They were beautifully modelled, inches only in height and length, and they represented the fabulous creatures of which she and her host had been talking. They would have made wonderful chessmen, she thought. When she had sufficiently admired them the red-bearded man put them away, and then returned to his chair.

‘Did you ever meet Shakespeare?’ he enquired.

‘Only once,’ said Laura, ‘and then I wasn’t sure who it was.’ Better humour the madman, she decided.

‘Ay, meeting him on the Cam instead of on the Avon must have been very confusing. Yes, yes, your mind would have been confused,’ he observed. Laura thought it was time to depart.

‘It’s confused now, too,’ she said, ‘because I’m most terribly tired. Will you excuse me if I go? I’ve had a long day.’

‘Surely, surely, lassie. Up you go to your bed. How long are you staying?’

‘I have to get back to Freagair,’ said Laura. ‘I am staying there at the hotel. I’ve booked a room.’

‘Oh, never fash about that. You must stay a week here. I insist, now.’

‘You’re very kind,’ said Laura, ‘but…’

‘Havers! Havers! Off to your bed. Breakfast will be at nine.’

‘Good night, and thank you ever so much for your hospitality. I’ll leave your dressing-gown on the banisters, shall I?’ she asked, anxious only to be out of the house.

‘That will be fine. Good night.’

She discovered, when she gained her room, that the rain had stopped and that a watery moon was riding in a sky half-clear, half-cloudy. Laura decided that her clothes would have been laid out or hung out in the kitchen and that in a house the size of An Tigh Mór there would be a back stair leading to the servants’ quarters. Kilting the borrowed dressing-gown, which she was wearing over a petticoat belonging to the woman, and kicking off borrowed slippers, the property of the manservant Corrie, she set out to explore.

At the end of the long landing she found a door, and beyond it were the back stairs, as she had anticipated. She crept, barefoot, to the kitchen, found it deserted, as she had hoped, and groped around in the pale, thin moonlight for her clothes. They were not completely dry, but she decided that they were wearable. She carried them and her shoes up to her room. She retained the strong feeling that leave An Tigh Mór and the Island of Ghosts she must, and that forthwith. Laura, like Old Meg the gipsy, was tall as Amazon and brave as Margaret queen; nevertheless, the crazy owner, with his fixation on fabulous animals, his reputation, according to Mrs Grant, of being an implacable enemy, and his determination that Laura should extend her impromptu visit, drove her to take flight. She pulled on her damp and chilly garments, put on her soggy shoes and stuffed her stockings into a pocket. Then she hung the dressing-gown over the top of the banisters and crept downstairs again to the front door.

It was unlocked, but a light showing under the Library door proved that the man had not gone to bed, so Laura decided to try the back door. This was bolted but not locked, so, with the utmost circumspection, she set about drawing back the bolts. As though to aid her escape, the sound of bagpipes came from the front of the house. Someone was playing a lament

Laura got the door open, and, horribly uncomfortable in her damp clothing and sodden shoes, stepped out into the policies and round the side of the house. She was thankful for the moonlight. Without it she could hardly have found her way. She darted to the boathouse and there received a shock, for a man rose out of the shadows and demanded:

‘Tell me where you are going!’

‘Quick! Don’t stop me! Help me row! Doctor! No time to lose!’ said Laura. She climbed into the tub-like boat. The man hesitated. ‘Come on!’ she said fiercely. To her relief, he obeyed and they pushed out on to the loch. There was but one pair of oars and with these, using a short, stabbing sort of stroke, the man drove the clumsy boat across the water. ‘Where’s the nearest telephone?‘ asked Laura, as the boat reached the jetty and she stepped ashore while the man held on to a length of chain put there for the purpose.

‘Three miles. Maybe I should go for you,’ said the man. He pointed in the direction which Laura wanted to take; this to her relief.

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Better get back to the house. You may be needed.’

The man gripped her arm.

‘What way would you be knowing a doctor might be needed? Tell me!’ he said, in very low but fierce and threatening tones. Laura wrenched herself away.

‘Get back to the house!’ she said. She was brave enough and self-confident enough, but the whole adventure had been bizarre in the extreme and her damp clothes were making her chilly. Suddenly the piping, which sounded clearly across the lake, increased in volume. It skirled and screamed. It rose higher and higher. It sounded as though the piper had gone mad. Then it died down again to a sobbing lament and in a few moments it ceased.

The young man, who had been listening, poised like a statue in the moonlight, relaxed his stiff body.

‘So, that’s all over,’ he said. He reached out towards Laura again, but, deeming that discretion was the better part, she eluded him and ran. He began to call something after her, but he did not attempt to give chase and before he had finished speaking she was off the quay and on the very wet road. Hoping that this would prove a shorter way back to Freagair than the scrambling walk she had taken that afternoon, she pressed on, alternatively running and walking, until she came upon the telephone that the man had mentioned. Here she hesitated, wondering whether to put through a call to the hotel, and had just decided against this, only hoping that the hotel employed a night porter so that she could gain admittance if and when she got back, when strong headlights indicated the approach of a car. It was coming up behind her. Laura stepped into the middle of the road, waved her arms and yelled. The car pulled up. It had not been going very fast on the single-track road. The driver put his head out.

‘Give me a lift as far as Freagair, please,’ said Laura. ‘I got lost.’

‘O.K.,’ said the driver. He opened the door on the nearside. ‘Hop in.’

‘I’m a bit damp,’ said Laura. ‘I got caught in that rain.’

‘This car won’t hurt. You English, like me?’

‘No, but I’ve lived most of my life in England and have lost my guid Scots tongue except when I employ it deliberately. Name of Gavin. My husband is a Detective Chief-Inspector at New Scotland Yard.’ To unknowns from whom she accepted lifts on lonely roads, Laura always offered this piece of gratuitous information as a precautionary measure, for, although she was a match for most men, she preferred to keep unpleasantness and amatory enthusiasm at bay.

‘Oh, really? My name’s Curtis. I travel for Panwick, the shrubs and flowering trees people. Just come from Baile, from the Gàradh estate. I was sent there to see whether the lady of the house, who’s got those sub-tropical gardens, has anything she wants to sell when the time’s right for transplanting.’

‘Mrs Stewart? That’s a coincidence. I was there myself a day or so ago,’ said Laura. ‘I’m glad I asked you for a lift. Isn’t she charming? And aren’t the gardens lovely?’

They talked of plants and gardens all the way to Freagair and, to Laura’s relief, the young man asked no awkward questions. She found that she did not want to mention her strange and fortuitous visit to the island of Tannasgan and the big white house.