My Bones Will Keep

Chapter 2

Two Houses in Wester Ross

‘By perilous paths in coomb and dell,

The heather, the rocks and the river bed.’

John Davidson

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DAME BEATRICE not only wrote the letter but rang up Mrs Stewart of Gàradh and it was arranged that Laura was to call on her, the date of the visit to be arranged by telephone later so that Laura did not need to be tied in advance to any one particular day.

‘Won’t she think that a bit thick?’ Laura suggested, for she was at hand while the call was being made. Dame Beatrice put the point, and then replied:

‘She says good gracious no. She has no plans for the next fortnight and will be delighted to see you at any time. You are not to dream of spoiling your holiday. So there you are.’

The following days, therefore, found Laura (in her own expression) ‘stooging round the Highlands in a hired Tin Liz’ and thoroughly enjoying her freedom. She devotedly loved her husband and her small son, but it was a welcome change to be a grass widow and mother for a bit.

She left Edinburgh for Inverness, but stayed a night on the way at Pitlochry and another at Kingussie. In Inverness she put up at an hotel where they knew her, and on her first evening she saw a shabby man take a good-sized salmon out of the River Ness right under the hotel windows. This she regarded as a splendid omen for the success of her trip. Every diner left the table to see the fish taken, and, the ice thus being broken, Laura, who was a sociable soul, found plenty of people to talk with over coffee in the lounge.

Before dawn on the following day she crept quietly out of her room, left the hotel by a side door she had used for early-morning excursions on previous visits, retrieved the hired car from its lock-up garage and drove along the shores of the loch in the hope of seeing the Monster.

This attempt to add herself to the small but convinced band of Nessie Spotters was doomed, like all her former ones, to disappointment, although she drove all the way to the western end of the loch and parked there until hunger drove her back to the hotel for a very late breakfast.

It was all very well, she thought, bearing the learned gentleman a certain amount of resentment, for Dr Maurice Burton to scrutinise all the evidence for Nessie’s existence and then attribute her energies merely to expanding gases in a waste of vegetable matter, but what of the stories of swimmers tossed out of boats who had found their art of no avail and whose bodies had never been recovered? What of the stories of divers who refused to speak of what they had seen in the depths of the loch, when they had been sent down to salvage those bodies? What of the unimpeachable evidence of many accredited eyewitnesses? As for the discrepancies in their accounts of the actual appearance of the Monster, well, Laura had heard her husband’s opinion of the way in which witnesses in police court cases could fail to identify—or could wrongly identify – people whom they had seen far more clearly and at much closer quarters than anyone had ever seen the elusive Nessie.

Yet Dr Burton, reflected Laura, comforting herself with the thought, seemed to have ended his researches with a divided mind. He was even prepared to accept the hypothesis that there might exist some sort of amphibious creature, nocturnal, on the whole in its habits and looking rather like a longnecked otter, a creature so far unknown to zoologists. On the whole, perhaps such an animal was rather more delightfully terrifying than the completely aquatic and apparently purposless Nessie herself.

Laura enjoyed her late breakfast, decided to spend the morning shopping, loitering and writing letters, have lunch at the hotel and then make her way to Freagair and hope to put up there for the night If the one hotel at Freagair could not take her, there was always Strathpeffer.

The hotel at Freagair had a room for her. She ate Scotch broth, trout and good Scotch beef for her dinner, refused the sweet and asked for roes on toast, drank a half bottle of undistinguished Burgundy and went to bed in good time, having decided upon an early start for Gàradh so that she would be able to call upon Mrs Stewart before lunch.

She arranged to return to the hotel for the following night, breakfasted at eight and was on the road by a quarter to nine. She had been warned that after the first ten miles the road was single-track all the way to Crioch and, a mile out of that resort of wide and shining sands, single-track again to her destination. There were passing places, but it could take a long time to make the full journey.

Laura, however, was lucky. There was very little traffic, the hired car behaved well and the road was extremely beautiful. The morning was sunny, although not particularly warm, and although the narrow road needed concentrated attention, she was aware of green hills to her right, a sluggish, broad river bordered by rough pasture to her left, and beyond the shallow valley there were the mountains. A single-track railway line ran alongside the river.

Later, on the right, she passed a smallish loch with islands, one of which was wooded, another of which had been built on (she had a glimpse of a white house) and the rest were no more than rocks.

Later, she passed another house, but it was beyond the river and the railway and, although she noticed the trackways which opened off the road, she did not see the house.

Some miles further on she came into Tigh-Osda, at which the single-track railway terminated, and, except for a disfiguring new hydro-electric plant, the views for the rest of the way were superb. The long windings of the narrow road descended to a loch twelve miles long, guarded by grim mountains on the far side, partly wooded on the near side, islanded and tantalisingly beautiful. Laura drove slowly past it and although she still kept a wary eye on the road for approaching cars and passing-places, she managed to see enough of its loveliness to make her decide to come that way again at some time and enjoy it to the fall.

At Crioch, on the coast, she passed a post-office and wondered whether to stop and send her employer a card, but a glance at the clock on the dashboard suggested that it might be better to press on, for she had an invitation to lunch at Gàradh and did not want to be late.

From Crioch, through Baile (a tiny hamlet where fishermen lived) and all the way to Gàradh, the road ran along the coast. The day became warmer, the sun still shone and Laura was almost sorry when she reached the great gates of the Gàradh policies and realised that this was journey’s end. The gates were wide open, as though in hospitable welcome, and this impression was reinforced by the presence of her hostess waiting on the terrace to greet her.

‘So this is Gàradh,’ said Laura, when they had introduced themselves. ‘It’s indescribable. I expected something rather wonderful, but this beats anything I’d thought of.’

‘You shall see it all when you’ve had your lunch. Did you have a good journey?’ said her hostess, taking her into the house. ‘Lunch will come to the table as soon as you’re ready.’

Laura washed her hands and tidied her hair in a broad, low-ceilinged room to which Mrs Stewart showed her and from which a shy, smiling housemaid took her to the dining-room door. There was a fire in the room, Madeira wine on the enormous sideboard and a pleasant, homely atmosphere everywhere. Laura was very glad indeed that she had come.

After lunch there was a good cup of tea served in beautiful china and poured from a pot of Georgian silver. Tea, said her hostess, she greatly preferred to coffee after mid-day meals. After this they went into the grounds. From what she had seen when she had driven up to the house and while she had been standing beside Mrs Stewart for a moment or two on the terrace, Laura had realised that the policies were extensive, but she had not fully grasped what an acreage they must cover nor how truly superb were the seascapes and the natural scenery, even apart from the glories of the gardens themselves.

Across the sea-loch whose weedy tides slapped idly and in slow motion against the rocky walls rose the stern, dark outlines of the humped and massive Ben Caraid, and on the homeward side, running far out into the shallow water, was a long peninsula which formed part of the Gàradh estate. Gàradh was indeed a garden, a magnificent garden which had been contrived by the owner’s grandfather on what had once been barren, heartless sandstone and patches of sour peat.

It was not ordinarily particularly enjoyable to Laura to linger among the treasures of gardening fanatics or to listen with patient courtesy while these poured out, in considerable detail and even more Latin, a wealth of information about their insignificant-looking plants, but this occasion was different. In spite of the details and the Latin nomenclature, Laura enjoyed herself. The very extensive garden had been romantically conceived, for all the soil had been transported to it from far, far away, earth had been banked and trees grown to protect it, and, by the time Laura saw it, it was, in effect, a miniature Kew.

To her right, as she peered with well-simulated interest at Anacyclus Depressus, Cotoneaster Frigida Prostate, Leontopodium Alpinum and the rest of the fifty-nine species which the rock-garden had on display, were palm trees and an Australian tree fern, while in the opposite direction was a group of northern pines. Between the two lay the house, comfortable, large and built in Colonial style, to which they returned at half-past four to what Laura called ‘a real Edinburgh tea.’ After tea they went out again for the days were already long and the light good until late evening.

‘Come and see the rhododendrons,’ said Mrs Stewart. ‘Many are over, but we get some of them in flower, different species and hybrids, you know, from April almost until the autumn. We have some, indeed, which flower in February and March.’

They left the house, passed beside the rock garden which Laura had already seen and stood a while by the jetty and a small boat-house to look across the sea-loch to Ben Caraid’s formidable cliffs and shadowed corries.

‘It is a lovely place!’ said Laura. ‘I suppose it’s not really cold here, even in winter?’

‘The trees and the banks give a great deal of shelter, and the sea, this side, is warm, but we get snow, of course. I mind well – four years ago last Hogmanay it was – I had guests snowed up here for the best part of two weeks. Och, that was a time! My son’s friends, too, not folk of my own choosing. One of them was the laird of Tannasgan. Did you ever hear of Tannasgan?’

‘No, I never did. Is it far from here?’

‘Not so far. It’s a wee island in a loch, a piece east of Tigh-Osda, ay, and Freagair. You will have passed it on your way here. The laird is a strange body and has not a very good name in these parts, but my son had had businessdealings with him and invited him to stay a couple of nights to finish discussing the details. I did not take to the laird at all, and there was I stuck with the poor man for a fortnight!’

‘Talking of Freagair,’ said Laura, ‘if I’m to get there tonight I shall have to leave pretty soon, I’m afraid.’

‘Ay, you’ll not want to travel a single-track road in the dark. You’ll not change your mind and bide here the night?’

‘It’s very kind of you, but I booked a room, so I’d better get back, I think. I have enjoyed it here.’

‘You must persuade Dame Beatrice to bring you again before you both go back to London.’

‘I most certainly will.’

They strolled on, past flowering shrubs and then, taking a steep little side-path, came upon an enormous and impressive bare rock.

‘Torridon red sandstone,’ said Mrs Stewart. ‘If you’ll look that way across the bay you will see the Torridon mountains.’

They returned by a détour to the house to collect Laura’s bag and install her in the hired car. It was still broad daylight, but there was cloud coming up and Ben Caraid, never a friendly mountain, was looking ominous.

‘It’s going to rain,’ said Laura.

‘Ay, but you’ll be well on your way before that. I wish you had been able to see the herbaceous border at its best, but that’s not until July. The man I was telling you about, the laird of Tannasgan, gave me some rock plants, but I think it was my son’s idea that he should, for I don’t think the chiel would have thought of it for himself.’

They parted with thanks on the one side and a repetition of the invitation to ‘come again and bring Dame Beatrice with you’ on the other, and then Laura drove away from Gàradh and followed the only road, the coast road, back through Baile to the small resort of Crioch. Here she pulled in, got out of the car and took a stroll along the cliff-top. There were very few people about, although a hotel of moderate size faced the sea. The tide was out and the sands were wet and shining, broken here and there by seaweed-covered rocks humped like glistening saurians lazily washed by tiny waves. It was a charming place.

Out to sea, and barely visible except to those who, like Laura, knew it was there, lay the Hebridean island of Lewis and, south-west and a great deal nearer, she could see the unmistakable outline of the northern end of Skye. She would have liked to descend the cliff by the rough steps which led to the sands, but gathering cloud and a glance at her wristwatch warned her that time was pressing, so she returned to the car and drove inland towards the road which ran alongside the waters of Cóig Eich, the Loch of the Five Horses, claimed (locally) to be the loveliest in Scotland. The name and the claim she had received from Mrs Stewart.

The way, before she reached the loch in its beautiful valley, wound upwards through pine-woods. Although here not strictly, perhaps, a single-track road, it was extremely narrow and the bends followed one another for mile after mile, so that it was unsafe to drive at any sort of speed. Alongside the water it was easier going, but the loch was often screened from the car by trees and on the opposite side of the road there were high banks, more trees and some bracken. It reminded Laura a little of the road alongside Loch Lomond, but it was lonelier, wilder and narrower.

Once past the loch, the view became more open, although the road itself was still narrow. Here Laura became aware that the fine weather was at an end and the clouds had won. The mountains she could see in front and to the right of her were standing starkly against a lowering sky and almost at once it began to rain. The landscape swam in a green haze and soon she was keeping to a road sheeted in the most relentless down-pour. She dared not pull up, for she was by this time on a single-track stretched between high hills on the one hand and the shallow river, beyond which ran the single-line railway, on the other, so that passing-places could not be obstructed by a stationary car.

At last she approached the hydro-electric power station with its pipe-lines. The rain eased off a little and she was able to see that the little river had been diverted and the small, ugly loch into which it flowed had been turned into an even uglier reservoir. Then the rain came down again and blotted out everything. Fortunately Laura met nothing on the road until she reached Tigh-Osda, the little hamlet with a railway station. It also possesed an hotel. At this, most thankfully, she pulled up, deciding to try to get a room there for the night and go on to Freagair in the morning. She wished she had not stopped at Crioch, or else that she had left Gàradh a little earlier.

Drawn up outside the hostelry was an empty estate-wagon, and just inside the covered entrance to the station stood a man and woman whose resigned expressions, as they stared gloomily at the rain, caused Laura to suppose them the owners of the vehicle. She got out of her own car and darted into the inn, but she had only time to wipe her shoes on the mat before a man’s voice said:

‘Losh! You’ve a car!’

Laura turned and saw the man who had made one of the desolate-looking pair in the station entrance.

‘Do you mean you’ve broken down?’ she asked.

‘Do I not! And not a mechanic or a garage this side of Freagair! I suppose you couldn’t give my wife a lift home? I’d be eternally grateful if you could. You see, we’ve had a day out together and left the bairn with the baby-sitter. We promised faithfully to free the lassie by seven o’clock and it’s a quarter to seven now. She lives in a wee clachan about two miles from our house, but, of course, she won’t leave the wean until my wife gets in. It’s ten miles from here and my wife isn’t able to walk so far, especially in this awful weather. I’d go myself, but I must catch the up train, and it’s due any minute. I have to get to Inverness.’

‘All right,’ said Laura, ‘but I’ll just need to reserve a room here first’

‘No, no,’ said the man. ‘It’s an awful poor sort of place. My wife will gladly see you taken care of at our house for the night if you’ll just run her along there. I’m much obliged to you for your kindness.’

Laura went back to her car and in a moment the wife had joined her.

‘It’s awful good of you,’ she said. ‘We telephoned Freagair, but there’s only the one garage there and they said they had nobody to send. We tried the hotel at Crioch, but they said they had no facilities to deal with mechanical faults.’

Laura started the engine.

‘You’ll have to guide me,’ she said.

‘Well, it’s the straight road towards Freagair and then we have a private lane and a bridge, turning off to the right and crossing a wee burn. I’ll give you plenty of warning.’

So Laura found herself again upon the way to Freagair, driving in sheets of dark-grey rain on a single-track road with leviathan, dirty, green hills on her left and a broken-fenced morass on her right. The man had minimised the distance. It was nearer twelve miles than ten before she turned off. A gate had to be opened before the car could proceed bumpily forward on to the so-called drive – actually a causeway across a marsh—and this led to a rickety bridge. The ‘wee burn’ was a good thirty feet wide at this point, and Laura, driving over the narrow bridge with extreme caution in the pelting rain, half-expected the car to go through the rotten planking into the stream below. However, they crawled safely over and then had to negotiate a level crossing of the branch railway-line before they arrived at the house.

This was of fair size but appeared to be servantless except for the baby-sitter, and the woman used her own front-door key to let herself in. The fact of a front door key in itself surprised Laura, who was accustomed to having her own Highland relatives keep open house to the extent of never locking up anything. An open-fronted shed formed the garage, it seemed, so Laura, left alone, drove into it, her headlights showing her the way. She switched off and went to the front door. Then she remembered that the babysitter would have to walk home in the teeming rain unless she was given a lift. Laura groaned.

‘Come in!’ called the woman. ‘Kirsty is just leaving.’ She switched on the light and in the hall Laura saw a tallish, round-faced girl wearing a raincoat, a head-scarf and gum-boots.

‘I’d better drive you home,’ said Laura. ‘Come on.’

‘No, no,’ said the girl. ‘It is pleasant with me to walk in the rain.’ Without another word she passed Laura and stepped sturdily out into the elements.

‘Let Kirsty be,’ said the woman. ‘She’s independent and she’ll take no harm. Come ben.’ She led the way into a room where there was a pleasant fire burning in the hearth. ‘Take off your things and draw up to the fire. The bairn’s sleeping fine, and she’s no trouble once she’s off. Have you any luggage in the car? I’ll go out and get it when we’ve supped.’

Laura’s hostess was named Grant. After the meal the two women settled down by the fire, Mrs Grant observing that the washing-up could wait until the morning.

‘I’m without any help in the house, as you see, Mrs Gavin,’ she said, ‘and the Dear knows I could do with it.’

‘I suppose the local girls all move away to the towns,’ said Laura

‘Och, it’s not only that. It’s the curse that’s been put upon this house.’

‘The curse?’

‘I call it that. It’s that wicked old wretch who lives on Tannasgan—or so I believe. He is harmful to this house.’

‘Really?’ said Laura, not attempting to divulge that she had already heard of the laird of Tannasgan. Mrs Grant, certain of a listener, continued:

‘That old man is the devil himself. He can make anybody who is as simple as some of the folk in these parts believe anything he chooses to tell them. I cannot pin it down to him, and, if I could, I don’t know what I would do about it, because he’s so wicked and because he has influence. It goes ill with anybody who crosses him.’

‘But why should he wish to do you harm?’

‘Well, there are two reasons. It was dead against his wishes that the hydro-electric plant was established way back the other side of Tigh-Osda – you’ll have noticed the hydro-electric plant when you were after passing the loch of Cóig Eich? – it’s a big ugly thing on the left of you along that road.’

‘Yes, I didn’t miss it, I must say!’

‘Och, well, you see, my man has a very good job there, so the old devil has his knife into him.’

‘But aren’t other men working there?’

‘Och, ay, but they’re away to Crioch or maybe Freagair and he has no hold over them. Besides, there’s the second reason I mentioned. You see, he once made me an offer of marriage, but I was already promised to my man, and, in any case, I would have been terrified to have married on such an old warlock. So we’re both in his bad books.’

‘And too obstinate to move away from his neighbourhood?’

‘You may say that. This house is my own, willed to me by my grandfather, who had it before me. What way would I let myself be driven off from what is mine?’

‘Quite, But isn’t it an awful bore to be without servants in a house of this size?’

‘Och, my man gives me a hand with the rough. He’s kind. And Kirsty will sit in when we both go out, although she takes good care to speir at me whether it will be both of us out before she’ll agree to come ben the house.’

‘Well, I’ll do the washing-up before I go to bed,’ said Laura, getting up. The conversation embarrassed her. There was something unreal about it.

‘You’ll do nothing of the kind! No guest of mine does a hand’s turn here. I would be mortified to my death!’ exclaimed Mrs Grant.

‘What kind of a place is Tannasgan?’ Laura asked.

‘It is an island in Loch na Gréine, and Cù Dubh, as the people call him, lives in the Big House, An Tigh Mór. He keeps a wee boat and visitors have to use a special signal and then he brings the boat over for them. You’ll see the same arrangement at other places just here and there about the Western Highlands.’

‘You say he brings the boat over. Hasn’t he servants, then? Can’t he get them, either?’

‘He has a couple, I believe, but he’s all on his own and I heard tell that most of the house is shut up. He brings the boat over himself to see whether he wants a visitor. He mortally offended some of the local folk when first he came, because they went to call on him and were refused. I believe nobody signals now except the tradespeople.’

‘Surely he doesn’t row over to take in the shopping?’

‘As to that, I would hardly know. I never go near the place if I can help it. Eh, but I’m glad to have company in the house this night!’

‘When do you expect your husband to get back?’

‘The Dear knows! He was for Inverness and then on to Edinburgh. That will be tomorrow. He doesn’t know whether he’ll need to go back and spend another night in Inverness, but I’ll be hearing.’

She went on to give Laura a detailed description of the hardships of her own and her husband’s life owing to the evil machinations of the laird of Tannasgan. Laura listened without much interest. Her day at Gàradh, spent mostly in the open air, her journey and now the warmth of Mrs Grant’s fire and the heavy supper she had eaten, had made her sleepy. Her long limbs demanded a bed, and her general comment on the diatribe would have been that she thought the lady did protest too much.

Mrs Grant’s tales of slights and petty tyrannies, of slanders and mischief-making were, however, apparently endless. She had an audience and was only too obviously prepared to make the most of it. It was two in the morning before the flow ceased and Mrs Grant proposed that they should retire for the night. She brought whisky and some brownish peat-stained water for a night-cap and then, when she had escorted Laura to her room, she said:

‘I’ll be bringing a can of hot water, so if you’ll just give me the key of your car I’ll get your luggage up to you.’

‘Oh, please don’t bother.’ said Laura. ‘I’ll get it myself.’

‘No, no! I couldn’t think of that. You just get yourself ready for bed and I’ll be along with it in two ticks.’

Laura handed over the car keys. In two minutes the hot water came and, before she had finished washing, her suitcase was deposited at the door and Mrs Grant said goodnight, adding:

‘You’ll not need to mind the wean if you hear her crying. She’ll soon drop off again.’

Thankfully Laura fell into bed. It was a very comfortable bed and she was asleep immediately. In the ordinary way she needed very little sleep, but on this particular morning she did not wake until eight. The rain was over and the sun was shining. She did not know whether to get up or whether there was any prospect of early tea, but this problem was soon solved, for her hostess came in with a tray. On it were a large cup of very strong tea, milk, sugar and her keys. Breakfast would in half an hour, she was told, and there was another can of hot water at the door.

Breakfast was porridge, kippers and thick slices of bread and butter, reinforced by bapps, scones and a home-made sultana loaf. Laura did full justice to it, thanked her hostess and hoped that her man would soon be home. There was no sign of the child, but this did not disappoint Laura, who was no baby-worshipper. She left the house – it was called Coinneamh Lodge on the direction-sign which fronted the road, she noted – at just after ten o’clock. It was a twenty-mile journey to Freagair and, as was her habit, when she had garaged the car she glanced at her mileage record.

Arithmetic was not Laura’s strong point, but her memory was excellent and she had checked her mileage at Gàradh. According to her reckoning, the car had done thirty-two miles more than it should have done.

“Funny! So that’s why my keys didn’t come back until this morning!’ thought Laura. ‘Wonder where she went and what she wanted the car for? Dash it, she might have mentioned she was going to borrow it! I suppose her bringing it back was what woke me up this morning! Wonder whether the whisky was doped? I don’t usually sleep like that!’