The Dog Who Came In From The Cold

Chapter 54: Words of Welcome

Sorley led them to an ancient green Land Rover. Their cases loaded, he ushered Barbara into the front seat while Hugh prepared to climb in behind. “I don’t mind the back,” she said. “Let Hugh …”

“Certainly not,” said Sorley. “Hugh is perfectly accustomed to being back there – with the dogs, if we had any – aren’t you, Hugh?”

“Of course.”

“And we would never expect a lady to sit in the back, would we, Hugh?”

“Certainly not.”

Sorley unfolded a tartan rug and laid it across Barbara’s knees. They drove off. Hugh pointed to a mountain that rose almost sheer from the other side of the sea loch and named it. It was a name of liquid sounds, a Gaelic name she feared she would never be able to remember.

After ten minutes following a winding coastal road they came to the Corran ferry, a five-minute crossing of Loch Linnhe that would take them into the hills of Ardnamurchan. As they waited for the ferry to disgorge its last few cars and allow them to drive down the ramp, Sorley told a story.

“There was a doctor round these parts,” he said. “He was a very popular figure. But he liked his whisky. Nobody minded that, of course, as everybody likes his whisky in Lochaber. Anyway, he drove onto the Corran ferry one day after he’d been up to the Fort to visit some friends. He’d had a few drams up there and decided to get out of the car to clear his head. When he got back in there was a terrible fuss and he called one of the ferrymen over to the car. ‘Somebody’s stolen my steering wheel!’ he complained. The ferryman had a look and said, ‘You’re sitting in the back seat, doctor.’”

Barbara laughed, and, glancing behind, she noticed that Hugh looked pleased that she had found the story amusing. She would tell him later, she decided, that her own father, Gregory Ragg, used to tell stories too; substitute Soho for Argyll and the stories were the same.

The farm was a good distance down Loch Sunart, in the shadow of a towering hill that Hugh identified as the Holy Mountain. Sorley had become quiet; he had engaged Hugh in desultory conversation but this dried up as the journey continued. Then they were there, at a set of stone pillars between which an ordinary stock gate had been hung. An untarred road wound its way up through a stand of broad-leafed trees; beside it, down a bank that was covered with rioting whin, a burn, wide as a river in places, made its way seawards. Barbara looked up and saw that there was a long, wispy waterfall where this burn tumbled down the hillside. Hugh, following her gaze, reached forward from the back seat to touch her arm gently. “I used to go up there every day when I was a boy,” he said.

“Can we?”

“Of course we can,” he said. “There’s a pool up there. Right under that high bit – see? – where the water falls about thirty feet. Look.” He addressed his next remark to his father: “The hydro scheme. How are things going?”

His father sighed. “Where does one begin?”

“Not going well?”

“No.”

Barbara looked enquiringly at Sorley. “A hydro scheme?”

“Hydroelectricity,” he said, pointing up at a far place on the mountain. “Over there we have another body of water coming down the hill. Quite a decent volume of it. If we lay a pipe down the hill we get a terrific drop, which means that we can generate hydroelectricity down at the bottom.”

“For the house?”

Sorley shook his head. “Far, far more than that. We can probably get eight hundred kilowatts. We could sell it to the electricity people. Pump it back into the grid.”

“It’s very green,” said Hugh. “It’s far better than making electricity from coal or nuclear reactors.”

“Exactly,” said Sorley. “And this part of the world is full of energy. Wind energy. Tidal energy. And so on.” He sighed again. “That’s the theory. But try getting any of this started and … Well, there are all sorts of difficulties and problems put in your way. And contractors too. Don’t talk to me about contractors.”

The farm road veered sharply to the right and the house came into view. Barbara almost gasped, but stopped herself in time. She had expected something simple; they had passed a number of farmhouses on the way all of which had an air of solid, rural simplicity about them. This house, which was painted white, was considerably larger than the others she had seen, and considerably more beautiful.

“Is it Georgian?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Sorley. “At least, in its inspiration. One of my forbears was a great devotee of Georgian architecture. He built this in the middle of the nineteenth century, when everybody else was building great piles like Glenborrodale Castle or Ardtornish. He went in for simplicity.”

They went inside. Hugh’s mother had waved to them from a window and now appeared in the hall. “Stephanie,” whispered Hugh.

Stephanie smiled at her son, but went first to Barbara. “My dear,” she said, “you are so very welcome to our family.”

The words were the exact ones used by Sorley, and Barbara had to make an effort not to register her surprise. Had they discussed in advance what they were going to say to her? If so, it disappointingly diminished in her mind the warmth of Sorley’s welcome at Fort William station; rehearsed words always struck her as being so much less powerful than those that are spontaneous and unprepared. And yet there were so many occasions when there were no alternatives to stock phrases that might mean little but nonetheless oiled the wheels of social life. “Good morning” in one sense meant nothing, but in another meant everything. “Have a nice day” in one sense meant nothing and in another … meant nothing too.