‘Go on.’
‘No, if I say that, you will take it the wrong way.’
‘Try me.’
‘I was about to say that the title will look very well on our billheads. I have often thought we might invite some person who for a small interest would lend his name …’
‘Why didn’t you ask the Marquess of Ludgrove?’
‘Oh, Eddie was not the type. No, I am sorry, I can see, as I thought, that you have taken it the wrong way. You should not have pressed me to speak what was only a floating thought. Forget it. Think only of yourself.’
‘Do I ever do anything else?’
‘Just now and then – in spite of your best intentions. But that proverb, not to look a gift horse in the mouth. What can you lose?’
‘What have I gained? Some rickety old sixteenth-century ruin that’s falling to pieces round my ears, a few acres of desert, a couple of crofters’ cottages occupied by wild hairy Highlanders; and a damned title.’
She patted my hand. ‘ Go up and see. Shall I come with you?’
‘I wouldn’t submit you to the ordeal. It’s quite clear they’ll all hate my guts for stealing the title, and the dislike’ll not be a one-way street.’
‘Your mother is pleased at the news?’
‘I don’t know if she knows. It’s hardly likely she’ll rejoice. It was her total unacceptability to them that made the break between them and my father.’
Shona sighed. ‘As I have said, it is all quite hard for me to understand. Perhaps it is better that I should not try. In Russia I think this would be a matter for rejoicing all round.’
‘Yes, I can see it: Polovtsian dances, wild men leaping over bonfires, maidens throwing flowers, gypsy fiddlers with epilepsy.’
‘And your Highland crofters? I know they can dance! Perhaps they will all rejoice to see you.’
‘They won’t be seeing me yet. I’m going to Bristol tomorrow to put some more of my ideas for Semaphore to Mr Schmidt.’
‘Take care how you drive. It would be a pity if you held the baronetcy for too short a time.’
Chapter Fifteen
I
So it was late September before I finally hit the trail north. In the meantime some strain had been put on the postal system by my correspondence with Mr Andrew Macardle, WS, and with a chap called Bruce Macintyre who called himself a factor and seemed to have been given responsibility by the Abdens for looking after my bit of property and their male-less estate. Perhaps he’d been in charge for longer than that, since Malcolm had been dead quite a while and Sir Charles had been a sick man.
I drove to Edinburgh. For all its claims to beauty and dignity, I thought ill of the place. It seemed to me to represent the stiffness and the arrogance and conceit of so many Scotsmen. Glasgow was a shambles by comparison but it was more human and matter-of-fact and down-to-earth. How I hated the Scottish accent!
A longish session with Macardle, during which most of our talk must have been heard the length of Princes Street. He said he’d ring Captain Bruce Macintyre and tell him I was on my way. I raised no objection, though privately I’d decided to come to Wester Craig when they were not expecting me. I told Macardle I’d be arriving Wednesday morning, having worked it out that I should be able to get there Tuesday afternoon.
I left his office at noon, had lunch, checked out of the hotel and pottered north to Inverness. Next morning I didn’t take the direct route but followed a wayward fancy to keep to the east coast as far as Bonar Bridge and then turned west across the flat neck of the Highlands. Twenty miles out of Ullapool the scene changed: all the gentle undulation was gone and you were in a moonscape of jutting mountains and jagged cliffs and sugar-loaf peaks and water, lots of water, lochs, or whatever they were called, invading the land round every corner.
I had a snack in the town and asked the way to my noble inheritance. A finger planted firmly on the map steered me in the general direction, and a bit later an old chap with a moth-eaten moustache and no teeth pointed the way from the only cottage in sight on the lonely moors. I turned the Aston up a narrow way between fields, came to a white wooden gate, which I had to get out to open. The land to the left fell into a valley, and the potholed drive dipped sharply to a rattling bridge over a stream. Then up the other side you could see the house for the first time.
I hadn’t known what to expect. Sixteenth century had suggested a turreted castle or a moated grange; but this looked just like any other rotten old house. Two-storeyed with Victorian windows under inverted V-shaped roofs, the chimneys tall and ranked, the walls done in a white stucco which wasn’t bad against the first and larches climbing the hillside behind.
I drew up in a sort of walled garden, where the chief product seemed to be decaying vegetables; and the entrance to the house, if it was the main entrance, was a brass-knockered white door inside a monstrosity of a glass porch. I put the engine to sleep and got out; there was a metal bell pull beside the door so I gave it a try.
Nothing happened for a while – except for a racket of dogs barking in the distance – and then a thin, small, middle-aged man in a shabby grey suit with a collar stud but no collar squinted suspiciously out.
I explained my presence, and he immediately melted into a watery welcome. His name was Coppell; he was the gardener-caretaker and lived with his wife in the adjoining cottage. They had been expecting me in the morn, he explained, and he had just been cleaning up in the kitchen. Please to come ben the hoose, Sir David, and welcome. Did I fancy some tea, or a drop of something stronger? The cellars were not what they used to be, but there was a jar or two he could bring up.
I wondered how many jars he had been bringing up for himself; there was a whiff of peppermint in the air; but I said no, I’d look over the house first.
We went through the glass porch which would have been an excrescence on any house, and into a horrible little hall; then into a dining-room which was separated from the hall by a leather screen. The house was just furnished but only just; the furniture looked nineteenth century and built for dour endurance. Floors were flagged, with a few old rugs and druggeting to hide the cracks. A butler’s pantry led off the dining-room and kitchen, which was a square stone room with pre-Jurassic fitments, and beyond that another room with an antique boiler which, Coppell informed me, was ‘where the gentlemen changed their boots and damp clothes after shooting’. He had a different accent, softer voiced than most, maybe a touch of the Irish.
This part of the house was older than the first, and now he opened a heavy oak door and stood aside. ‘After you, sorr.’ And there I was being shown into a big hall with a beamed ceiling, a chequerboard floor of brown and white, and medieval windows. Between the windows, which were high up, a dozen tattered flags hung like last year’s washing.
‘We’ve come round in a half-circle, sorr. It is ower aisy to lose ya sense of direction. This door, here, leads back to the dining-room.’
Not cold outside but bone cold in the house, particularly this hall, which smelled like a neglected church. There were two fireplaces pretty well side by side.
‘I’ve never seen that before,’ I said, pointing.
‘Och, it was built so that the laird and his lady might each have an equal share of the fire. Now as for these battle flags, sorr …’
He named names that stirred vaguely in my memory like disturbed worms. A coat of arms on the wall above and between the fireplaces had a motto underneath, but it was in Gaelic or something. The only furniture in this hall was a refectory table that looked as if it had stood years of carousing, and three tall Jacobean chairs. I wondered the Abdens hadn’t pinched the battle flags as well. Perhaps they were mentioned in the entail.
We were now joined by Mrs Coppell, who was taller than her husband but as anxious to please. Perhaps there’s no trade union for gardeners and their wives. She said, would I be staying the night, and I said I was sure there was no room ready, and she said, och aye, it would be nae trouble at all, and she would get the fire
going right away, and what would I fancy for supper?
A long narrow drawing-room had a parquet floor and a few better chairs; its windows overlooked the valley, and you could see water. I thought it was the sea; but the sea, they said, was round the corner and over the hill. What you could see was Loch Ashe. Some portraits here, presumably ancestral portraits, on the pale striped walls, confirmed my view that the Abdens would have been better to keep their faces to themselves.
A staircase led up from the first hall to the upstairs bedrooms, of which there appeared to be eight. The one Mrs Coppell showed me into was bright enough, with a four-poster bed and chintz curtains.
‘Who slept here last?’ I said.
Mrs Coppell fumbled with the neck of her blouse and looked at her husband, who scratched his head.
‘We’ve had nae one reg’lar like since Dr Malcolm was killed, sorr. Sir Charles has nae been any too weel for lang enough. I think it must have been the American, sorr, who rented the hoose a year last August.’
‘Did Dr Malcolm live here when he was alive?’
‘Part of the time, sorr. He would gie stalking parties here noo and then, entertaining his London friends, like.’
‘Is there a grouse moor?’
‘No, sorr, not on this coast. It is the deer Dr. Malcolm’s guests came here for.’
‘What are those dogs?’
‘Och, just the one or two that are left. Would ye like to see the stables while the light lasts?’
I would and did. There were two pointers and a spaniel, all very friendly and anxious to meet the new owner. There was another man and his wife too, called McVitie; a typical ghillie with leggings, and a leather jacket over a once yellow sweater; scars down his left cheek as if sometime he had got in the way of the pellets. They lived in a second cottage nearby, and McVitie made a living of sorts rearing a few sheep. They got no wages but lived rent free, and in return Mrs McVitie helped Mrs Coppell with the household chores; when there were guests Dr Malcolm had hired girls from the village. What village, I wondered?
The kitchen garden ran to a few flowers as well; wet Michaelmas daisies and depressed dahlias shared the protective walls with cabbages and runner beans. ‘The winds can be a wee bit trying,’ said Coppell, scratching under his arm. We walked around as the sun glinted through barred clouds on the metallic sea. The bars were realistic but ran the wrong way. I wondered what Shona would have made of it all. I wondered what these people would make of Shona. Did they even know a world of perfumery existed? The answer was yes, nowadays. They’d all have their tellies.
Dinner was at eight, and Mrs McVitie waited on. I had chicken soup, a fillet of grilled cod, a grouse (what else?) and a square or two of very old cheese. Apart from the cheese it was a good meal, and the bottle of 1964 Beau Site was easy to put away. A glass of 1920 port, a cigar – slightly mildewed – and two cups of black coffee ended the meal and I went to bed.
No rattling bones or heavy breathing disturbed the night, and I knew nothing until Coppell came in at seven, pulling back the curtains with an unnecessary rattle, while Mrs Coppell brought in the breakfast, ordered at their suggestion the night before. Shrouds of damp mist were hanging over the larches. I was about early and left the house at nine thirty. Coppell had said Captain Bruce Macintyre intended to come at ten to be on the spot whenever I arrived that morning. I drove about three miles back towards Ullapool and parked in a narrow lane leading up the side of the mountain. After twenty minutes a fairly smart BMW went by, and I thought that was probably the car he would drive.
I started the Aston and drove fast towards Lochfiern House.
II
Lochfiern was only about a dozen miles from Ullapool, but the opposite side, and a very different kettle of fish from Wester Craig. For one thing it was in a valley, and compared to the rest of the country was wooded and fertile. For another, it was unmistakably Georgian, and no infidels had mucked about with its original exterior. A well-cut lawn with an ornamental iron seat, tall roses and Michaelmas daisies in the surrounding shrubbery, a mass of clematis flowering over a shed. It could all as well have been in Hampshire or Sussex except for the hills and mountains never far away, and the windows of the house were not so big. As I rang the bell I saw a smaller place built of the same stone, with ecclesiastical windows, separate from the main house.
You couldn’t see either the sea or loch from here, but clouds were drifting up from where the sea could be expected to be, and the sun had inhaled too much of the morning vapour and was hiding behind it. A maid came, in an untidy black frock. I asked to see Lady Abden. She asked me what name should she say, and for the first time in my life I answered: ‘Sir David Abden.’
She did a double take and then asked me in. A square hall with a wide, white-painted staircase and oriental rugs. The house was probably about the same size as Wester Craig, but the furniture was elegant, well kept, shining darkly polished in the subdued light. I walked across to the right-hand wall where there was a cluster of miniatures, but before I could read the inscriptions underneath a footstep clicked on the polished floor.
A dark young woman in grey tweeds, hair cut short and boyish. A Sealyham scuttled at her heels but didn’t yap.
‘David Abden?’ she said. She held out her hand. ‘I’m Alison Abden.’
We shook hands. She went on: ‘ We were not expecting you until tomorrow. I think Captain Macintyre had made arrangements to meet you at Wester Craig this morning. Hadn’t he? Mr Macardle rang on Monday, I thought.’
This must be one of Malcolm’s younger sisters. A sight more personable than the average Abden, if you could judge by the photographs and portraits.
‘I’ve just come from Wester Craig. I expect we passed each other on the way.’
Her eyes were cool, sizing up, not unfriendly but non-committal.
‘Are you? …’ I began.
‘I’m Malcolm’s widow.’
‘Oh … I see.’ The Ayrshire heiress. Who, it seemed, had brought good looks as well as siller. ‘I thought you might have been one of his sisters.’
On cue another female showed. Shorter and older than the first, a thick black jersey over a shabby black woollen frock. We were introduced. This was Lucie, Malcolm’s sister, sallow-faced, and her lips tight and plump like a closed fist. She looked as if she’d missed her man by saying too many Hail Marys.
‘Do come in,’ said Alison at last, and led the way into the drawing-room. ‘Can I get you coffee? Or something stronger?’
‘Coffee would be fine.’
We talked, Lucie sitting by the window staring out and joining in with a few dry crumbs when she felt like it. I reckoned she must have been Malcolm’s elder sister; maybe most of the troubles of the family weighed on her.
Alison rang the bell for coffee and the same little maid came in, glancing at me askance before she left. The Sealyham wobbled across and sniffed at my shoes, probably scenting the gun dogs. He thumped his tail and whimpered.
‘You’ll be wanting to see Mother,’ said Lucie abruptly.
‘If she’s to be seen,’ I said. ‘Not that it matters if she’s not.’
‘I don’t think she will wish to talk business,’ said Lucie, as if there was a disagreeable smell about it. ‘That is all left for Mr Macintyre.’
‘I didn’t come to talk business.’
‘I’ll see if she’ll see you, then.’ She got up and left. When I sat down again I said: ‘I’m a bit hazy as to the number of Abdens in this house. Or even in the district. I never met one until I met Malcolm a few years ago.’
A very still young female, this: her head might have been one of the cameos in the hall.
‘Malcolm’s four daughters are away at school. My town … she is out with her nurse. Apart from Lucie and myself there is Lady Abden and – er – Mary.’
‘Mary?’
‘Malcolm’s other sister. She is not well and tends to keep to her room.’
‘Do you live here yourself all the time?’
‘Most of the time. Should I not?’
‘I wondered whether you spent part of the year with your own family in Ayrshire.’
‘Kirkcudbright,’ she corrected.
‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘or is ignorance no excuse?’
She half smiled; very delicate lips, choosy, fastidious. You wondered if Malcolm’s extravagant, extrovert style mightn’t have jarred on this contained young female.
She said: ‘We spent one summer at Wester Craig. Then after Malcolm’s death I was waiting for the birth of my daughter. Then Sir Charles took ill. I have felt it my place to be here …’
Coffee came. The little maid looked so goggle-eyed at me as she served it that I was tempted to pinch her bottom. Just in time she moved out of reach.
‘And you,’ said Alison Abden when we were again alone. ‘Shall you make your home here?’
I thought to cough up what I felt about the place, but restraints were growing on me with increasing age. ‘Depends what I’ve inherited.’
‘I thought Mr Macardle would have explained …’
‘A little. Anyway, I’ve a profession in London …’
She stirred her coffee. ‘I know. It was you who made a present to Malcolm of perfumes and things – four years ago, was it? More? Yes, well, I’ve used Faunus ever since.’
‘Bread upon the waters,’ I said. ‘As a matter of fact, I had noticed it.’
She did not raise her eyes, which were long and pale-lidded and brown when you saw them.
‘Do you know this part of Scotland?’ she asked.
‘I’ve never been to Scotland before.’
‘I thought you went to the same school as Malcolm.’
‘I don’t count schooldays.’
The faint smile again. ‘Don’t you like your family?’
‘They haven’t given me much cause to.’ Then I added: ‘As a Lowlander, you may also have found their exclusiveness hard to bear.’