Wild Mountain Thyme Page 10

  “Well, there’s the rub,” said Oliver Dobbs. “We’re a sort of family. Victoria and me and Thomas. He’s only two, but he’s quite undemanding and very well-behaved. Would there be room for us all, because if not Victoria says we can go to a pub if there’s such a thing nearby.”

  “Never heard such rubbish.” Roddy was quite indignant. Benchoile hospitality had always been legendary. True, during the last five years, since Lucy died, the entries in the battered leather-bound visitors book, which lived on the hall table in the big house, were few and far between, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t still the warmest of welcomes for any person who wished to come and stay. “Of course you must come here. When will you arrive?”

  “Perhaps about Thursday? We thought we’d drive up the West Coast. Victoria’s never been to the Highlands.”

  “Come by Strome Ferry and Achnasheen.” Roddy knew the Scottish highways like the back of his hand. “And then down Strath Oykel to Lairg. You’ve never seen such country in your life.”

  “Have you got snow up there?”

  “We’ve had a lot, but the good weather’s back again. By the time you get here, the road should be clear.”

  “And you’re sure you don’t mind us coming?”

  “Absolutely delighted. We’ll expect you Thursday about lunchtime. And stay,” he added with the expansiveness of a potential host who has no intention of being involved in the tedious necessities of airing sheets or dusting bedrooms or cooking meals, “stay as long as you like.”

  The telephone call, coming out of the blue as it had, left Roddy in a pleasurable state of mild excitement. After he had replaced the receiver, he sat for a little, finishing his cigar, and anticipating, with the satisfaction of a boy, the forthcoming visit.

  He loved young people. Trapped in the spreading bulk and the balding head of approaching old age, he still thought of himself as young. Inside, he still felt young. He remembered with pleasure the instant rapport that had sprung up between himself and Oliver Dobbs. How they had sat through that dinner, serious-faced and boiling with suppressed laughter at the endless, cliché-ridden speeches.

  At one point, Oliver had made some remark, thrown from the corner of his mouth, about the chest measurements of the lady across the table from them, and Roddy had thought, “You remind me of me.” Perhaps that was it. Oliver was his alter ego, the young man Roddy had once been. Or perhaps the young man he would like to have been, if circumstances had been different, if he had been born to a different way of life, if there had been no war.

  The pleasure had to be shared. Not only that, Ellen Tarbat had to be told. She would put on a face, shake her head, accept the tidings in martyred resignation. This was customary and meant nothing. Ellen always put on a face, shook her head and looked martyred, even if one happened to be the bearer of delightful news.

  Roddy stubbed out his cigar, and without bothering to put on a coat, got up out of his chair and started down the stairs. His dog followed him. They went out into the cold morning air together, crossed the icy cobbles of the stableyard, and let themselves in through the back door of the big house.

  The passages that lay beyond were stone-floored, cold, and seemingly endless. Doors gave off to coal sheds, woodsheds, laundries, store rooms, cellars, pantries. He came at last through a green-baize-covered door, and emerged into the big hall of the old house. Here, the temperature rose by a few degrees. Sun poured in through long windows and the glassed inner front door. It sent long beams, dancing with dust motes, down the turkey-rugged staircase and quenched the fire, which smoldered in the immense grate, to a bed of dusty ashes. Roddy stopped to replenish this from the basket of peats which stood alongside and then went in search of his brother.

  He found Jock, inevitably, in the library, sitting at the unfashionable roll-top desk, which had belonged to their father, and dealing with the endless accounts and paper work related to the management of the farm.

  Since Lucy had died, the drawing room had, by wordless consent, been closed and shut away, and this was now the apartment in which Jock spent his days. It was one of Roddy’s favorite rooms, shabby and worn, the walls lined with books, the old leather-covered chairs sagging and comfortable as old friends. Today this room too was filled with the pale sunlight of the winter’s day. Another fire burned in the hearth, and Jock’s two golden Labradors lay, drugged in the warmth.

  As Roddy opened the door, Jock looked up, over the spectacles which habitually slid to the end of his long beak of a nose. Roddy said, “Good morning.”

  “Hello.” He took off the spectacles, leaning back in his chair. “And what might you be wanting?”

  Roddy came in and shut the door. He said, “I am the bearer of pleasing news.” Jock sat politely, waiting to be pleased. “You might even say, I was some sort of a fairy godmother, granting all your wishes.”

  Jock still waited. Roddy smiled and let his weight cautiously down into the armchair nearest the fire. After his trek across the yard and down the arctic passages of Benchoile, his feet felt cold, so he toed off his slippers and wriggled his stockinged feet in the warmth. There was a hole in one of his socks. He would have to get Ellen to mend it.

  He said, “You know, yesterday, you said that the minister at Creagan said that what we needed at Benchoile was some young company. Well, we’re going to get it.”

  “Who are we going to get?”

  “A delightful and bright young man called Oliver Dobbs and what he pleases to call his ‘sort of family.’”

  “And who is Oliver Dobbs?”

  “If you weren’t such an old reactionary, you’d have heard of him. A very clever young man with a string of literary successes to his name.”

  “Oh,” said Jock. “One of those.”

  “You’ll like him.” That was the extraordinary thing, Jock probably would. Roddy had called his brother a reactionary, but Jock was nothing of the kind. Jock was a liberal, through and through. Beneath his chilling, eagle-proud appearance lay concealed the real man, gentle, tolerant, well-mannered. Jock had never disliked a man on sight. Jock had always been willing and ready, in his reserved and diffident way, to see the other man’s point of view.

  “And what,” asked Jock mildly, “does the ‘sort of family’ consist of?”

  “I’m not quite sure, but whatever it is, we may well have to keep it from Ellen.”

  “When are they coming?”

  “Thursday. Lunchtime.”

  “Where are they going to sleep?”

  “I thought over here, in the big house. There’s more space.”

  “You’ll have to tell Ellen.”

  “I am steeling myself to do that very thing.”

  Jock sent him a long amused look, and Roddy grinned. Jock leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes with the gesture of a man who had been up all night. He said, “What time is it?” and looked at his watch. Roddy, who was longing for a drink, said it was twelve o’clock, but Jock didn’t notice the hint, or if he did he took no account of it, but said instead, “I’m going out for a walk.”

  Roddy suppressed his disappointment. He would go back to his own house and pour himself a drink there. He said, “It’s a beautiful morning.”

  “Yes,” said Jock. He looked out of the window. “Beautiful. Benchoile at its most beautiful.”

  They talked for a little and then Roddy departed, with conscious courage, kitchenwards, in search of Ellen. Jock got up from his desk, and with the dogs at his heel, went out of the room and across the hall to the gunroom. He took down a shooting jacket, shucked off his slippers, climbed into a pair of green rubber boots. He took down his cap, pulled it down over his nose. A muffler to wind round his neck. He found knitted mittens in the pocket of the jacket and pulled them on. His fingers protruded from the open ends, swollen and purple as beef sausages.

  He found his stick, a long shepherd’s crook. He let himself thankfully out of the house. The cold air hit him, the piercing chill of it biting deep into his lungs.
For days he had been feeling unwell. He put it down to tiredness and the bitter weather, but all at once, in the meagre warmth of the February sun, he felt a little better. Perhaps he should get out and about more, but one needed good reason to make the required effort.

  Tramping over the creaking snow towards the loch, he thought of the young people whom Roddy had invited to stay, and he was not dismayed, as many men of his age would have been, by the prospect. He loved young people as much as his brother, but somehow he had always been shy with them, had never been much good with them. He knew that his manner, and his upright, soldierly appearance, were off-putting, but what could you do about the way you looked? Perhaps, if he had had children of his own, it would have been different. With children of your own, there would be no necessity to break down the barriers of shyness.

  People to stay. They would have to get the rooms ready, light fires, perhaps open the old nursery. He had forgotten to ask Roddy the age of the child who was coming to stay. A pity there would be no fishing, but the boat was laid up anyway, and the boathouse locked for the winter.

  His mind strayed back to other house-parties, other children. He and his brothers when they were small. Their friends, and then Lucy’s numerous young nephews and nieces. Rabbit’s friends and relations he had called them. He smiled to himself. Rabbit’s friends and relations.

  He had reached the edge of the loch. It stretched before him, edged with ice from which the winter-pale rushes grew in straggling clumps. A pair of peewits flew overhead, and he raised his head to watch their passing. The sun in his eyes was blinding, and he put up a hand as shade from the dazzle. His dogs nuzzled into the snow, scenting exciting smells. They inspected the ice, in small nervous darts, but were not brave, or perhaps foolhardy, enough to venture out onto the shining surface.

  It was indeed a beautiful day. He turned back to look at the house. It lay, a little above him, across the snow-covered slope; familiar, loved, secure. Sunlight glinted on windows, smoke issued from chimneys, rising straight up in the still air. There was a smell of moss, of peat, and the resin of the spruces. Behind the house, the hills rose to meet the blue sky. His hills. Benchoile hill. He felt immensely content.

  Well, the young company was coming. They would be here on Thursday. There would be laughter, voices, footsteps on the stairs. Benchoile was waiting for them.

  He turned away from the house and set out once more upon his walk, his stick in his hand, his dogs at his heel, his spirit untroubled.

  * * *

  When he did not put in an appearance for his midday meal, Ellen became worried. She went to the front door to look for him, but saw only the single line of footprints that led to the edge of the loch. He had been late many times before, but now her Highland instincts were dark and foreboding. She went to find Roddy. He rang Davey Guthrie and in a moment Davey appeared in his van and the two men set out together to look for Jock.

  It was not a difficult search, for the prints of him and his dogs lay clear in the snow. They found the three of them in the lea of dry-stone dike. Jock lay quietly, his face serene and turned up to the sun. The dogs were wheeking and anxious, but it was instantly clear that their master would never know anxiety again.

  7

  TUESDAY

  Thomas Dodds, wearing new red rubber boots, squatted at the water’s edge, fascinated by this strange new phenomenon that had suddenly come into his life, and staring at it with the mesmerized, unblinking gaze of some old seafarer. It was all bigger and brighter and wetter than anything he had ever before encountered in his short life, and there were, as well, the added diversions of the little choppy waves, so sunlit and cheerful, the screaming of the sea birds which wheeled in the cold air over his head, and the occasional passing boat. Every now and then he dug up a handful of gritty sand and threw it into the sea.

  Behind him, a few yards off, Victoria sat on the shingly beach and watched him. She wore thick, corduroy trousers and three sweaters, two of them her own and one borrowed from Oliver, and she sat huddled, with her knees pulled up and her arms wrapped around them for warmth. It was, indeed, extremely cold. But then, at ten o’clock on a February morning in the north of Scotland—well, nearly the north of Scotland—it would have been surprising if it had been anything else.

  It wasn’t even a proper beach, just a narrow strip of shingle between the wall of the hotel garden and the water. It smelt fishy and tarry, and was littered with scraps of debris from the boats that plied up and down the long sea loch on their way to and from the fishing grounds. There were bits of string, an old fish-head or two, and a damp furry object, which on investigation proved to be a rotting doormat.

  “The back of beyond,” Oliver had said yesterday evening as the Volvo topped the pass and began the long gradual descent to the sea, but Victoria thought that the isolation was beautiful. They were now much further north than they had intended to come, and so far west that if you took another step, you fell into the sea; but the views, the sheer size and grandeur of the country, the colors, and the brilliance of the sparkling air had made the long drive more than worthwhile.

  Yesterday morning they had woken to a Lake District streaming in rain, but as they drove up into Scotland a wind had sprung up from the west, and the clouds had been blown away. All yesterday afternoon, and this morning again, the sky was clear, the air piercing cold. Snow-covered peaks of distant hills glittered like glass, and the waters of the sea loch were a dark indigo blue.

  The loch, Victoria had discovered, was called Loch Morag. The little village, with its tiny shops and fleet of fishing boats tied up at the sea wall, was also called Loch Morag, and the hotel was the Loch Morag Hotel. (Oliver said that he expected the manager was called Mr. Lochmorag and his wife, Mrs. Lochmorag.) Built for the sole purpose of catering to fishermen—both freshwater and sea fishing, the brochure boasted, was on their doorstep—it was large and ugly, constructed of some strange stone the color of liver, and much crenellated, towered and turreted. Indoors, it was furnished with worn turkey carpets and uninspired wallpaper the color of porridge, but there were peat fires burning in the public rooms and the people were very kind.

  “Would the wee boy like high tea?” had asked the comfortable lady in the mauve dress who appeared, in this quiet season, to have taken on the duties not only of head waitress and barmaid, but receptionist as well. “Maybe a boiled egg, or a wee bit oatcake?” Thomas stared at her, unhelpfully. “Or a jeely. Would you like a jeely, pet?”

  In the end they had settled for a boiled egg and an apple, and the kind lady (Mrs. Lochmorag?) brought it up to his bedroom on a tray, and sat with Thomas while Victoria had a bath. When she emerged from the bathroom, she found Mrs. Lochmorag playing with Thomas and the pink and white calico pig that they had bought him in London before they left, along with a wardrobe of clothes, a toothbrush and a pot. Victoria had wanted to buy an endearing teddy bear, but Oliver informed her that Thomas did not like fur, and chose the pig himself.

  The pig was called Piglet. He wore blue trousers and red braces. His eyes were black and beady and Thomas approved of him.

  “You’ve got a lovely wee boy, Mrs. Dobbs. And what age is he?”

  “He’s two.”

  “We’ve made friends, but, mind, he hasn’t said a word to me.”

  “He … he doesn’t talk very much.”

  “Oh, he should be talking by now.” She heaved Thomas onto her knee. “What a lazy wee boy, not saying a word. You can say Mummy, now, can’t you? Are you not going to say Mummy? Are you not going to tell me the name of your pig?” She took Piglet and jigged him up and down, making him dance. Thomas smiled.

  “He’s called Piglet,” Victoria told her.

  “That’s a bonny name. Why does Thomas not say Piglet?”

  But he did not say Piglet. He did not indeed say anything very much. But this in no way detracted from his charm. In fact, it added to it, because he was such a cheerful and undemanding child that four days of his company had been nothing
but pleasure. In the car, during the long drive north, he sat on Victoria’s knee, hugging his new toy, and gazing out of the window at passing lorries, fields, towns; obviously enjoying all the new and strange sights, but seeing no reason to comment upon them. When they stopped for meals or to stretch their legs, Thomas joined them, eating bacon and eggs or drinking milk or munching the slices of apple that Oliver peeled and cut up for him. When he became tired or bored, he plugged his mouth with his thumb, settled himself with endearing confidence in Victoria’s arms, and either slept or sang to himself, with eyes drooping and dark lashes silky against his round red cheeks.

  “I wonder why he doesn’t talk more?” she had said to Oliver once, when Thomas was safely asleep on her lap and could not overhear the discussion.

  “Probably because nobody’s ever talked to him. Probably they were all too busy sterilizing the house and manicuring the garden, and boiling his toys.”

  Victoria did not agree with Oliver. No child, so well-adjusted and content, could have been neglected in the smallest way. Indeed, his behavior and his sunny disposition gave every indication that he had spent his short life enveloped in affection.

  She said as much and instantly aroused Oliver’s ire. “If they were so marvelous with him, then how come he doesn’t seem to be missing them? He can’t have been particularly fond of them if he hasn’t asked for them once.”

  “He hasn’t asked for anything,” Victoria pointed out. “And most likely his being so confident and unafraid is all to do with the way he’s been brought up. Nobody’s ever been unkind to him, so he doesn’t expect unkindness. That’s why he’s being so good with us.”

  “Balls,” said Oliver shortly. He could not stand a single good word being said on the Archers’ behalf.

  Victoria knew he was being unreasonable. “If Thomas howled for his grandparents all the time, and complained, and wet his pants and generally behaved like most children would under the same circumstances, I suppose you’d have blamed that on the Archers, too.”