Wild Mountain Thyme Read online

  Even as a boy, he had rebelled against slaughtering wildlife, and had never gone hunting, for mule deer or elk, with the other men, and there seemed no reason, just because he was staying in Scotland and it was expected of him, to give up the habits and convictions of a lifetime.

  Finally, and this was the most important reason of all, he had never thought that his Uncle Jock liked him very much. “He’s just reserved. He’s shy,” John’s father had assured him, but still, try as he could, John had never been able to work up a rapport with his father’s eldest brother. Conversations between the two of them, he remembered, had never done more than creak painfully along, like wagon wheels in need of a good greasing.

  He sighed, and laid the letter down, and picked up the last envelope. This time he slit it open without inspecting it first, and with his mind still brooding over the letter from Jock, he unfolded the single sheet of paper. He saw the old-fashioned letterhead, the date.

  McKenzie, Leith & Dudgeon,

  Solicitors, Writers to

  The Signet.

  18 Trade Lane,

  Inverness.

  Tuesday, 17th February.

  John Dunbeath, Esq.,

  Warburg Investment Corporation,

  Regency House,

  London.

  John Rathbone Dunbeath Deceased

  Dear Mr. Dunbeath,

  I have to inform you that under the terms of the Will of your Uncle, John Rathbone Dunbeath, you have been bequeathed the Benchoile Estate in Sutherland.

  I suggest that you take an early opportunity to come north and see me in order to make practical arrangements for the management and future of the property.

  I shall be happy to see you at any time.

  Yours sincerely,

  Robert McKenzie.

  When Miss Ridgeway came back into the room, bearing his black coffee in a fine white Wedgwood cup, she found John sitting, motionless at his desk, an elbow on his blotter, the bottom half of his face covered by his hand.

  She said, “Here’s your coffee,” and he looked up at her, and the expression in his dark eyes was so somber that she was moved to ask if he was all right, if anything had happened.

  He did not reply at once. And then he sat back in his chair, letting his hand fall to his lap, and said that yes, something had happened. But after a long pause, during which he showed no signs of wishing to elucidate on this remark, she laid the cup and saucer beside him, and left him alone, closing the door between them with her usual tactful care.

  9

  THURSDAY

  As they drove east, up and away from the mild-mannered sea lochs of the West of Scotland, leaving the farms and villages and the smell of sea wrack behind them, the countryside changed character with dizzying abruptness, and the empty road wound upwards into a wilderness of desolate moorland, apparently uninhabited except for a few stray sheep and the occasional hovering bird of prey.

  The day was cold and overcast, the wind from the east. Grey billows of cloud moved slowly across the sky, but every now and then there came a break in the gloom, a ragged scrap of pale blue appeared, and a gleam of thin wintry sunshine, but this only seemed to accentuate the loneliness rather than do anything to alleviate it.

  The undulating land stretched in all directions, as far as the eye could see, patchworked in winter-pale grasses and great tracts of dark heather. Sometimes this was broken by a gaping peat-pit or the somber black of bog. Then scraps of snow began to appear, like the white spots of a piebald horse, and lay where it had been trapped in corries and ditches and in the lea of low drystone dikes. As the gradient steepened, the snow grew thicker, and at the head of the moor—the roof-ridge, as it were, of the country—it was all about them, a blanket of white six inches deep or more, and the road was ice-rutted and treacherous beneath the wheels of the Volvo.

  It was like finding oneself in the Arctic, or on the moon. Certainly in some place that one had never even remotely imagined visiting. But then, just as abruptly, the wild and desolate moor was behind them. They had crossed the watershed, and, imperceptibly, the road began to slope downhill once more. There were rivers and waterfalls and stands of larch and fir. First appeared isolated cottages, and then hill farms and then villages. Presently they were running alongside an immense inland loch, and there was the great rampart of a hydroelectric dam and beyond this a little town. The main street ran by the water’s edge, and there was a hotel and a number of small boats pulled up on the shingle. A signpost pointed to Creagan.

  Victoria became excited. “We’re nearly there.” She leaned forward and took from the cubbyhole on the dashboard the Ordnance Survey map that Oliver had bought. With Thomas’s dubious help, she opened it out. One corner spread out over the driving wheel, and Oliver flipped it back. “Watch it, you’ll blind me.”

  “It’s only about another six miles to Creagan.”

  Thomas, using Piglet as a weapon, struck the map a blow and knocked it from Victoria’s hands and onto the floor.

  Oliver said, “Put it away before he tears it to pieces.” He yawned and shifted in his seat. It had been a hard morning’s drive.

  Victoria rescued the map and folded it up and replaced it. The road ahead of them wound steadily downhill, between steep banks of bracken and copses of silver birch. A small river kept them company, chuckling and sparkling on its way in a series of little pools and waterfalls. The sun, obligingly, came out from behind a cloud; they turned a final corner, and ahead, glinting and silvery, lay the sea.

  She said, “It’s really amazing. You leave one coast behind you, and you drive up and over the moor and through the snow, and then you come to another sea. Look, Thomas, there’s the sea.”

  Thomas looked, but was unimpressed. He was getting tired of driving. He was getting tired of sitting on Victoria’s knee. He put his thumb in his mouth and flung himself backwards, striking her a resounding blow on the chest with the back of his bullet-hard head.

  His father snapped, “Oh, for God’s sake, sit still.”

  “He has sat still,” Victoria was moved to point out in Thomas’s defense. “He’s been a very good boy. He’s just getting bored. Do you suppose there’s a beach at Creagan? I mean a proper sandy one. We haven’t found a proper sandy beach yet. All the ones on the West seemed to be covered in stones. If there was one I could take him.”

  “We’ll ask Roddy.”

  Victoria thought about this. Then she said, “I do hope he isn’t going to mind us all turning up like this. I hope it isn’t going to be difficult.” She had never quite got rid of this apprehension.

  “You’ve already said that a dozen times, at regular intervals. Stop being so anxious.”

  “I can’t help feeling that you cornered Roddy. Perhaps he didn’t have time to think up an excuse.”

  “He was delighted. Jumped at the chance of a little lively company.”

  “He knows you, but he doesn’t know Tom and me.”

  “In that case, you’ll both have to be on your best behavior. If I know Roddy, he won’t care if you’ve got two heads and a tail. He’ll just say how do you do, very nicely, and then, I hope and believe, will hand me an enormous gin and tonic.”

  * * *

  Creagan, when they reached it, proved a surprise. Victoria had expected the usual small Highland township with its single narrow main street, flanked by rows of plain stone houses built flush on the pavement. But Creagan had a wide, tree-lined street, with deep cobbled sidewalks on either side. The houses, which stood back from the road and were separated from it by quite large gardens, were all detached and remarkably attractive, with the simple proportions and elegant embellishments associated with the best period of Scottish domestic architecture.

  In the middle of the town the main street opened up into a wide square, and in the center of this, sitting on a sward of grass, rather as though it had been set carefully down in the middle of a green carpet, rose the granite walls and slate-capped tower of a large and beautiful church.

&n
bsp; Victoria said, “But it’s lovely! It’s like a French town.”

  Oliver, however, had noticed something else. “It’s empty.”

  She looked again, and saw that this was true. A stillness brooded over Creagan, like the pious gloom of a Sabbath. Worse, for there was not even the cheerful clangor of bells. As well, there seemed to be scarcely anybody about, and only a few other cars. And … “All the shops are shuttered,” said Victoria. “They’re closed and all the blinds have been pulled down. Perhaps it’s early closing.”

  She rolled down the window on her side of the car to let the icy air blow in on her face. Thomas tried to put his head out, and she pulled him back onto her knee. She smelled the salt of the sea and the tang of sea wrack. Overhead a gull began to scream from a rooftop.

  “There’s a shop open,” said Oliver.

  It was a small newsagent, with plastic toys in the window and a rack of colored postcards at the door. Victoria rolled up the window again, for the blast of cold air was bitter. “We can go and buy postcards there.”

  “What do you want postcards for?”

  “To send to people.” She hesitated. Ever since that morning by Loch Morag, her conscience had been constantly troubled by the nagging awareness of Mrs. Archer’s anxiety and distress for Thomas. The opportunity to confide in Oliver had not, so far, presented itself, but now … She took a deep breath and went on with the bold determination of one intent upon striking while the iron is hot. “We can send one to Thomas’s grandmother.”

  Oliver said nothing.

  Victoria took no notice of this lack of response. “Just a line. To let her know he’s safe and sound.”

  Oliver still said nothing. This was not a good sign. “Surely it couldn’t do any harm.” She could hear the pleading note in her own voice, and despised herself for it. “A postcard, or a letter or something.”

  “How you do bang on.”

  “I’d like to send her a postcard.”

  “We’re not sending her a bloody thing.”

  She could not believe that he could be so blinkered. “But why be like that? I’ve been thinking…”

  “Well, stop thinking. If you can come to no conclusion more intelligent than that one, then simply make your mind a blank.”

  “But…”

  “The whole point of coming away was to get away from the Archers. If I’d wanted them on my doorstep, hounding me with lawyer’s letters and private detectives, I’d have stayed in London.”

  “But if she knew where he was…”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  It was not so much what he said as the tone of voice that he used to say it. A silence grew between them. After a little, Victoria turned her head and looked at him. His profile was stony, his lower lip jutted, his eyes narrowed, and staring straight at the road ahead. They had left the town behind them, and the car was picking up speed when they turned a corner and came all at once, upon the signpost, pointing inland, to Benchoile and Loch Muie. Oliver was caught unawares. He braked abruptly, and swung the car around with a screech of tires. They started up the single-track road, heading for the hills.

  Unseeing, Victoria gazed ahead. She knew that Oliver was wrong, which was perhaps one of the reasons that he was being so stubborn. But Victoria could be stubborn, too. She said, “You’ve already told me that she hasn’t got a leg to stand on, legally. That she can’t do anything to get Thomas back. He’s your child, and your responsibility.”

  Again, Oliver said nothing.

  “So if you’re so certain of yourself, there can be no reason not to let her know that he’s all right.”

  He still was silent, and Victoria played her final card. “Well, you may not intend telling Mrs. Archer that Thomas is safe and well, but there’s nothing to stop me writing to her.”

  Oliver spoke at last. “If you do,” he said quietly, “if you so much as pick up a telephone, I promise you, I’ll batter you black and blue.”

  He sounded as though he actually meant it. Victoria looked at him in astonishment, searching for some sign to put her mind at rest, to convince herself that this was simply Oliver, using words as his strongest weapon. But she found no reassurance. The coldness of his anger was devastating, and she found herself trembling as though he had already struck her. His stony features blurred as her eyes filled with sudden, ridiculous tears. She looked away, quickly, so that he should not notice them, and later, surreptitiously, wiped them away.

  So it was, with the sourness of the quarrel between them, and Victoria struggling not to cry, that they came to Benchoile.

  * * *

  Jock Dunbeath’s funeral had been a big and important affair, as befitted a man of his position. The church was full and later the graveyard, crowded with somberly, clad men, from all walks of life, who had come—some many miles and from all directions—to pay their respects to an old and much-liked friend.

  But the wake that followed was small. Only a few close colleagues made the journey to Benchoile, there to gather about the blazing fire in the library and to partake of Ellen’s homemade shortbread, washed down with a dram or two of the best malt whisky.

  One of these was Robert McKenzie, not only the family lawyer, but as well a lifetime friend of Jock Dunbeath. Robert had been Jock’s best man when Jock married Lucy, and Jock was godfather to Robert’s eldest boy. Robert had driven up that morning from Inverness, appeared in the church wearing his long black overcoat that made him look like one of the undertakers, and afterwards had acted as pallbearer.

  Now, with his duties behind him, and a drink in his hand, he had become once more his usual brisk and businesslike self. In the middle of the proceedings, he drew Roddy aside.

  “Roddy, if it’s possible, I’d like a word with you sometime.”

  Roddy sent him a keen glance, but the other man’s long face was set in its usual professional lines, and gave nothing away. Roddy sighed. He had been expecting something like this, but scarcely so soon.

  “Anytime, old boy. What do you want me to do, nip down to Inverness? Beginning of next week, maybe?”

  “Later, perhaps that would be a good idea. But I’d rather have a moment or two now. I mean, when this is over. It won’t take more than five minutes.”

  “But of course. Stay and have a bit of lunch. It won’t be more than soup and cheese, but you’re more than welcome.”

  “No, I won’t do that. I have to get back. I’ve a meeting at three o’clock. But if I could just stay on after the others have gone?”

  “Absolutely. No trouble at all…” Roddy’s eyes wandered away from the lawyer. He spied an empty glass in somebody’s hand. “My dear fellow, another dram for the road…”

  It was not a gloomy gathering. Indeed, there were nothing but happy memories to recall, and soon there were smiles and even laughter. When the guests finally took themselves off, driving away in Range Rovers, or estate cars, or battered farm vans, Roddy stood outside the open front door of Benchoile and saw them on their way, feeling a little as though he were saying good-bye to the guns at the end of an enjoyable day’s shoot.

  The simile pleased him because it was so exactly the way that Jock would have liked it. The last car made its way down through the rhododendrons, over the cattle grid, and out of sight around the corner. Only Robert McKenzie’s old Rover remained.

  Roddy went back indoors. Robert waited for him, standing in front of the mantelpiece, with his back to the fire.

  “That went very well, Roddy.”

  “Thank God it didn’t rain. Nothing worse than a funeral in a downpour.” He had had only two whiskies. Robert still had a bit in his glass, so Roddy poured himself another small one. “What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “Benchoile,” said Robert.

  “Yes, I imagined it was that.”

  “I don’t know if Jock told you what he intended doing with the place?”

  “No. We never discussed it. There never seemed to be any pressing need to discuss it.” Roddy considered
this. “As things have turned out, perhaps we should have.”

  “He never said anything about young John?”

  “You mean Charlie’s boy? Never a word. Why?”

  “He’s left Benchoile to John.”

  Roddy was in the act of pouring water into his tumbler. A little of it spilled onto the tray. He looked up. Across the room his eyes met Robert’s. Slowly he laid down the water jug. He said, “Good God.”

  “You had no idea?”

  “No idea at all.”

  “I know Jock meant to talk it over with you. Had every intention of doing so, in fact. Perhaps the opportunity never came up.”

  “We didn’t see all that much of each other, you know. More or less lived in the same house, but didn’t see that much of each other. Didn’t really talk…” Roddy’s voice trailed off. He was confused, confounded.

  Robert said gently, “Do you mind?”

  “Mind?” Roddy’s blue eyes widened in astonishment. “Mind? Of course I don’t mind. Benchoile was never mine, the way it was Jock’s. I know nothing about the farm; I have nothing to do with the house or the garden; I was never particularly interested in the stalking or the grouse. I simply roost in her. I’m the lodger.”

  “Then you didn’t expect you’d be taking over?” Robert was considerably relieved. One could never imagine Roddy Dunbeath being disagreeable about anything, but he might well have been disappointed. Now, it appeared, he was not even that.

  “To tell you the truth, old boy, I never even thought of it. Never thought of Jock dying. He always seemed such a tough old thing, walking the hill, and bringing the sheep down with Davey Guthrie, and even working in the garden.”

  “But,” Robert reminded him, “he had had a heart attack.”