Chapter 24: Monday 5 August
01
A week's flown by and these notes need to be brought up to date.
On Tuesday morning Nesta stopped by the cottage after seeing her friends off in Inverness and we decided to pack some sandwiches and ride up to Loch Bennerain to picnic on the shore. We talked the whole ride into the glen, relating our various weekend adventures with our friends. Nesta was bright and cheerful and I was happy to be home, which, of course, was a red flag whenever I caught myself thinking that, but I shoved that thought back down. I'd pay the piper for this happiness, but later. We fished in the evening, and had tea in my cottage before I walked her home in the flickering light. The storm did not escape Maig Glen that night.
On Wednesday evening we set out for Maig Glen as usual, but didn't get beyond the loch before the storm building in the west forced us to turn around and race back. The sun is in a very restless period these days and the high solar activity seems to be reflected in the operation of the Gate causing the storms to occur earlier each evening. Even racing back, we'd cut it too fine and had to veer off at the bottom of Maig Loch and take shelter in the abandoned powerhouse.
The heavy door creaked as we pushed it open and walked our bikes into the dark and hollow interior of the powerhouse, smelling of dust, rats, and bats. With no place to sit, so we stood against the wall near the open door. The storm struck half a minute later.
'Getting together with Red again this weekend?' she asked over the pounding of the rain on the roof and pavement outside.
I shook my head, 'No, Red and the gang are off to summer camp for the next three weeks. A physics seminar in Heidelberg, so I'll be on my own this weekend. I was thinking of hiding out in either Inverness or going all the way down to Edinburgh to see the sights. Steering clear of your father is my guiding principle these days. The one good thing about being off the estate grid, is that he can't growl at me unless he physically tracks me down,' I added, with a laugh. 'All I have to do is make sure he can't track me down and I'm in the clear.'
'You're wise to avoid him. I got the impression he's none too happy with your progress,' she laughed. 'I'm on the estate grid.'
'He's never been happy with it. But I work for Professor Blake, so it doesn't really matter how unhappy he is, if I can avoid him, anyway. You can tell him I expect to be done on the 14th.' Which just happened to be two days before I'd have to be shifted to Belwood to make room for the big August holiday gathering.
'You can estimate it that finely?'
'Aye. Almost to the hour,' I laughed. 'I read TTR's handwriting quite well these days and have all the complete words transcribed. My focus now is to get every page in its proper order, so I can make as much sense out of the half words I've left to transcribe. So basically I'm just sorting and resorting the pages using the transcribed full lines to make them read like they make some sort of sense. Mostly it's mental work which isn't recorded by keystrokes, but it's all in a good cause. Any suggestions as to what I can do this weekend?'
'I might,' she replied. 'I was invited down to the Fraser's with Flora. I begged off for the fortnight stay, but agreed to visit this weekend. If you like, you can come with me. I'm sure Hamilton would extend the invitation to you as well, though I doubt that would be wise...'
'I'm sure it wouldn't be,' I said, hastily.
'I could drop you off in Dunkeld and pick you up Monday on my way back.'
'What's Dunkeld like?'
'Small, old, but it has good trout fishing.'
'Sounds like as good a place as any to lay low.'
Ten minutes later, when the rain had passed, we continued on to the cottage, had tea and biscuits, and using Nesta's watson, made reservations at the Tay Arms. It wasn't a place I'd be able to stay at if I wasn't being paid my princely per diem, but, as I noted before, I'd fallen into bad habits. Who knows how I'll survive on my post doc wages once I return to Cambridge.
'I'll drop off a travel rod and a reel for you tomorrow. It'll be a lot more convenient,' Nesta said.
On Thursday we rode out as soon as Nesta returned from her home calls to avoid the storm and I made supper for us. Afterwards we fished until the flickering lightning in the west signalled time to call it a day.
02
Nesta picked me up Friday morning in her E-Rover.
Her E-Rover is built on a Class 3, van or utility vehicle, undercarriage. (The standard Class 1 carriage is a small town car, the Class 2 is a saloon.) Like all ULVs it has a standardized undercarriage with a custom upper body. The undercarriage contains the battery and most of the mechanical parts. Some companies make both the undercarriage and upper coachwork – as in the case of E-Rover – but since all undercarriages are built to class standard, the modular upper coach sections, and interior fittings, can be supplied by any number of companies to create custom vehicles to taste or for a specific purpose.
The E-Rover is, of course, top of the line, boasting seats made from leather suspended from the light frames rather than fabric, real wood veneer trim and precise mechanical fittings, not to mention powerful motors and the most efficient solar panel roof. Compared to the heavy pre-Storm cars, the Rover is sparse and simple, but weighed nearly 2/3rds less, and had a range of 700 km at its maximum speed of 65 kph, not counting what the solar panel roof might provide.
We picked up the A9 north of Beauty Firth, made Inverness in half an hour and continued south, skirting the Cairngroms, following the same course as the rail line that had carried me north in June. The highway view was no less desolate and we came across little traffic of any kind once we put Inverness behind us. Nesta drove 65 kph all the way. We pulled over in a little clearing along the deserted road for picnic lunch a little after noon and ate from a well packed basket, a prudent precaution since we'd not come across any inhabited hamlets.
After lunch she let me drive to Dunkeld, which was brave of her. I've driven our firm's electric delivery drays in London, but they couldn't go over 30 kilometres an hour, and rarely did 10 kph on the city streets. Generally, you could walk faster.
We reached the Tay Arms a little after three, and she continued on her way to the Fraser estate, some 20 kilometres further south. I explored the little old cathedral town until supper and did a bit of fishing in the evening. Alone, it wasn't quite the same.
I spent Saturday on my bike dodging, with little success, light rain showers. The narrow, tree lined road – the Old Military Road – that I followed west wandered through lush green farmlands and dark woods in wide valleys between bare, purple and brown heather hills. Farms seemed few and far between, and my impression of my ride was one of quiet and vague loneliness. The loneliness may not have been entirely due to the landscape. I'd become used to the company of Nesta on my rides, and I missed her, as I had when I fished. The shape of things to come, I fear. And that only reminded me that the end of this strange summer was less than a fortnight away. Sunday proved to be another day of sun and rain that I spent fishing, trying hard not to feel too sorry for myself, with little success in either endeavour.
I was mighty glad to see Nesta pull up before the inn this morning and we spent much of the drive back up to Glen Lonon chatting about our little weekend adventures. I'd little to tell, but she kept up a flow of cheerful stories as the hours and the abandoned countryside passed by unnoticed. She did tell me some welcomed news. It seems that with the long August holiday with friends and family gathering in Glen Lonon in two weeks, her father wouldn't be up next weekend. He'd be working to clear his calendar for his month-long holiday, so I'd no need to spend my last weekend in lonely exile.