24th December. Coppell said, would I like to go shooting? Shooting what? I asked. Well, he said, there wasn’t much, unless, he added with a peculiar look, I fancied an eagle. They were a dire pest in the district, seizing McVitie’s young lambs. To get rid of one or two of them would be a public benefit.
Christmas Eve. While I was not full of the milk of human kindness or a wish to make my fellow men rejoice, I didn’t really feel I wanted to down an eagle just for the fun of it. Had I known that it was against the law to shoot them I might have thought again. Fortunately maybe, Coppell didn’t understand my peculiar nature.
I said I’d walk to the sea.
‘To the loch, sorr?’
‘No, the sea.’
‘It is further away than it looks, sorr. Upwards of four miles. Will I saddle Chieftain? He’s a good sober animal to ride.’
The last time I had ridden a good sober animal was when I was nineteen, and then not with any great success, so I said no to this too and went off in the direction he pointed.
It was certainly rough old land, the path this way not much more than a sheep track – which, I gathered from the droppings, it was mainly used for. As you got nearer the sea, sharper and larger rocks began to jut out and there was a steep sheer mountain on the left. Where I came off my own meagre acres I don’t know. There was only one cottage to be seen all the way. As I slithered down to the foreshore large gulls chattered overhead, and I crunched across to the edge, to where the waves crimped and hissed and played crap with the pebbles. I skimmed a few stones on the sea. At least you couldn’t complain about the air. One way to pass Christmas Eve.
A more roundabout way back, making a semicircle to come past the cottage. This was a bit more of a road, with a few cart tracks and tyre marks on it where the ground was soft.
As I got near the cottage I saw a large orange-coloured mound in the roadway, as if a fork-lift truck had dropped a load of cloth or skins or brick rubble in the path. It was about three feet high and about eight feet long. I came up with it and it raised its shaggy head and observed me bloodshot through a curtain of hair. A very large Highland bull.
I stopped and looked at the bull, then at the cottage, which was deserted. The tremble of smoke seen earlier had ceased. The fire had gone out. No doubt whoever owned the cottage was hacking away in some distant field. The bull looked at me without much favour. I took a few casual steps, sideways. His tail whisked once. I saw a gate just behind me to the right. I climbed casually over it. The bull didn’t stir. I was now in a moorland field with a low wall of crumbling stones by way of slight protection. A bloody sheep baa-ed noisily, drawing attention to me. I walked along by the wall, not looking at the bull. Presently I was past and tried not to quicken my step. Then I was above and behind him. At a broken gap in the wall I rejoined the road. I looked back. His head had gone down; his horns just showed through the tangled hair like curved periscopes in a ginger sea.
I worked up a fine sweat climbing the hill to Wester Craig. At the door, just behind my Jaguar, was a yellow Mini.
Alison Abden coloured at the sight of me as she came down the steps. ‘I didn’t know you were here. Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?’
‘Impulse,’ I said. ‘But I did ring. Didn’t Coppell let you know?’
‘No, he said he thought we would know.’
She stood on the bottom step, the breeze barely stirring her urchin cut. A Harris tweed costume with flecks of green in it, a yellow polo-necked fine woollen blouse, lisle stockings and brogues, but she still seemed to look slim and well shaped with it all.
‘Why don’t you come in?’ I said. ‘Or have you been in?’
‘Yes. I still come up here sometimes to see the Coppells and the McVities. After all, this was my home on and off for nearly two years.’
‘Ah, yes. Well, take a sherry with me. That’s always supposing there is such a thing.’
‘I would think so.’
‘I’m indebted to Malcolm, by the way,’ I said, as she led the way in; ‘it wasn’t a big cellar he left but it’s all first-rate stuff.’
‘I doubt it was not all his doing. His father would buy wine from time to time, and it’s a better storage cellar here than we have at Lochfiern.’
‘Perhaps I should buy it from you.’
‘You must ask Lady Abden.’
‘Surprising that the wine wasn’t transferred to Lochfiern before I came.’
‘I think,’ she said, ‘you underestimate the shock of having two male deaths in the family within so short a time.’
‘Ah yes.’
There was a brief silence.
She said: ‘ Is it true you are breaking the entail and selling the property?’
‘Yes.’
‘Isn’t it – a bit precipitate?’
‘What, to get rid of it? I don’t think so. The place is costing me money that I can’t afford.’
‘Pity.’
‘Someone else said that.’
‘Who?’
‘Oh, a friend.’
We were now in the drawing-room. I said: ‘I don’t know where Coppell is.’
‘Do you know where the cellar is?’
I’d been down but I let her show me. The best I could find was a medium amontillado, and I carried it up, admiring her legs on the cellar steps ahead of me.
We had to go through the medieval hall, and I stopped there. Even on this shiny day the room was dark, the low sun squinting through the windows.
‘What’s the motto?’ I said. ‘I can’t read Gaelic.’
‘I believe Malcolm told me once but I’ve forgotten.’
‘Could he speak Gaelic?’
‘No. For all his roots he was very Anglicized.’
‘These banners could do with a wash. Is there a laundromat in Ullapool?’
She looked at me to see if I was serious. ‘Don’t you – feel anything, coming up here?’
‘Feel anything?’
‘Any interest, any pride?’
‘None at all.’
As she moved, a shaft of sun fell on her head like a klieg light. ‘Perhaps it’s too soon yet.’
‘D’you think if I gave myself time I might go native – start eating the haggis?’
‘No … but I think it would be strange if you gave yourself time, as you say, if you felt no pull, no sense of ancestry, no stirring of the blood.’
‘I’ll let you know when it happens.’
She flushed. ‘Pray don’t bother.’
In the drawing-room I found a corkscrew and soon we were sipping sherry. Feeling I was probably overplaying the unfeeling Sassenach, I told her of my encounter with the bull. She laughed.
‘Oh, that would be Dornoch. He’s an old dear really, but he can cut up rough sometimes.’
‘That seemed to be a public road he was occupying.’
‘Oh, yes, it is, but people don’t mind. It’s part of the Highland scene.’
‘It isn’t part of my scene. Next time I go down there I shall go in a jeep.’
‘I see you have a new car.’
‘Yes, that’s an Abden failing.’
‘One of many,’ she said.
I raised my eyebrows but she didn’t provide a list. We made small talk.
She said: ‘Will you come to lunch with us tomorrow, Christmas Day?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘As you possibly know, we don’t make so much of Christmas in Scotland, but it would be unsociable if we left you here alone. And Malcolm’s four daughters will be there. I’m sure they’d like to meet you. Why won’t you come?’
I hesitated.
‘I’ll come when my mother is invited.’
‘Is she here?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Well, isn’t that rather an academic point, then?’
‘Not to me, it isn’t.’
She bit her lip thoughtfully, eyes slanting towards the windows. ‘I understand how you must feel. But isn’t it rather out of date, all in
the distant past? Christmas is a season of goodwill or it’s nothing. One can even, I would have thought, sit down to a meal with people one doesn’t much like.’
‘Ah,’ I said, ‘would that not be hypocritical?’
She sighed and finished her sherry. ‘ If you say so.’
‘I’d point out,’ I said, ‘that the part of the family I don’t much like does not include you.’
She shook her head as if I had offered her more sherry. ‘Roundabout compliment? I am spared from anathema.’ She got up. ‘Are you very fond of your mother, David?’
It was a nasty question. ‘No, I don’t think so. No, I’m afraid not.’
‘So it’s really a matter of pride, not sentiment, that makes you see only one side in this?’
Was it? ‘I expect so. But don’t forget the Abdens rejected my mother because she was of the wrong blood. I am her son and must have at least half the wrong blood myself. The fact that I’m called Abden and have come in for their place is beside the point.’
‘All this happened thirty-five years ago. Don’t you think attitudes have changed since then?’
‘Has theirs?’
‘A little, I would think. Besides …’
‘Besides what?’
‘I don’t want to interfere – intervene in what is not my quarrel – but you do know, I suppose, that your father was difficult as a young man long before he married your mother.’
‘Difficult in what way?’
‘Well, I only know what I’m told, but there seems no reason why they should wish to deceive me. There would be no purpose, would there?’ She waited, but I didn’t answer. ‘Only that he often ran himself into debt. His father baled him out more than once. Then they made him an allowance. But after that, some time after that, they had to help in a bigger way because it was a matter of the law. I believe he had been passing bad cheques. They saved him from prosecution but told him it was the end … It wasn’t until after that – after all that – that he married your mother. I don’t think the break was originally to do with your mother, if you see what I mean …’
‘This is the gospel, as you remarked, according to the Abdens.’
‘Of course. But you have to try to see their side.’
‘I’ll try.’
She stood up. ‘But I didn’t come here to argue. I’m sorry if I have said too much.’
‘I hope you’ll come again. I’m sure there are topics we won’t argue on.’
She smiled. ‘Are you fond of many people, David?’
‘Not many. One or two. I tend to fight shy of getting involved.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Saves risk of being let down.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘There’s something to be said for that. But it wastes a lot too.’
I went with her to her car, admired her legs again as she swung them in.
‘Anyway … Happy Christmas,’ she said.
‘And you too. I shall be leaving on the twenty-seventh. Do come for another sherry, if you can.’
She nodded non-committally and drove off. I watched the yellow Mini until it disappeared. Clouds were creeping up to ambush the sun.
III
That night a storm came on, and it blew and rained all through Christmas Day. It blew and rained like the devil; the windows rattled, and some of the slates; the doors were ill fitting and the draughts were like a hi-fi gone wrong; the fires spat at water dripping down the chimneys.
Before I was up, Coppell had put three buckets in the old hall, and the splash, splash could be heard above the wail of the wind.
‘Och,’ said Coppell, ‘it has been like this for aye, sorr. It gives nae trouble in the fine weather.’
‘Well, it wouldn’t, would it? Has anyone ever been up to see?’
‘Och aye. Dr Malcolm had it all looked at in about 1961, soon after he was wed to the fairst Mrs Malcolm – Lady Fiona. They said it was the lead.’
‘And it was repaired then?’
‘Well, it was never vairy satisfactory.’
I spent most of the day in the drawing-room – which was the only decent room in the house. There was no television except in the Coppells’ cottage, so I made do with my own company and a few magazines. Somehow they had found a young goose for lunch, and I opened a bottle of 1966 Gevrey Chambertin. This was a flop – even the great Burgundies can go off sometimes; it tasted of rubber tyres – and a bottle of Santenay that we got up later was too cold to enjoy. But there was a plum pudding and mince pies, and by the time I’d finished the lot I was ready to doze off before the fire.
It was an uneasy doze, the sort when you can’t draw a line between thinking and dreaming. I half supposed I was a kid again when I was devoted to this rocking-horse – used to ride it like mad and imagine I was a knight in armour attacking a bandit’s castle. One day while I was out my mother gave it away to a bring and buy sale. She said I was too old for it, and anyway it was a mistake to get too attached to a toy like that. I was broken-hearted and started kicking all the furniture until she took an umbrella to me. I’d forgotten this – totally. Where had it come from, this memory? Out of some primeval sludge? Yet I’d loved her through it all.
Then there was the episode of the pen. The boy sitting next to me at school, Alec, had a fountain pen, and lost it and said I’d stolen it. It was found in my bag. There was a stink about that. I swore I’d never touched it. Someone had planted it there. Melodrama. To be falsely accused when you’re eight years old is a traumatic experience. Hell. I never afterwards felt quite the same about people and things. Sitting there dozing in front of the fire, a man in early middle age, I fought all the old battles, the old resentments, over again. Sometimes I wondered, did I take it? I couldn’t have. You could never feel that bitterness, that searing desolation, unless you were falsely accused. Was that the start of a bent career or the cause of a bent career? Ask the shrinks. But odd to have resurrected it all now, like a nightmare, like a promise.
I woke as the last light was ebbing out of the room. The fire had been spitting dangerously without encouragement from rain down the chimney, and bits of ash were smouldering up to the edge of the stone surround. I shoved them in with my shoe, and wondered idly whether it would be worth burning the house down for the sake of the insurance. Solve a few problems. I’d pocket maybe a hundred thousand, and would incur few future costs in maintaining a burned out shell. In many ways it would be a very suitable solution – ridding myself of an unwanted burden and thumbing my nose at the clan.
On the other hand the Coppells and the McVities would be sure to be bonny fire-fighters, and I would have to convince the insurance company that it was not a planned affair. Surest way of doing that, of course, was to be in the house and to get incinerated at the same time. A very distinguished Scotsman I knew had recently inherited an estate from his cousin who had gone to sleep over his whisky and done just that; but in spite of my general displeasure with life I’d no fancy to end things that way. It would be uncomfortable.
I chucked on a couple more logs, which instantly spat back at me. Then I walked through into the old hall to see how the buckets were filling. They had recently been emptied, for the water gave hollow plops as it fell.
Bone cold in here, and almost dark. The gale still ranted outside, and I wondered how many centuries of winter storms this beaten-up old room had weathered. What had Alison said? ‘I think it will be strange if sooner or later you don’t feel some pull, some sense of ancestry, some stirring of the blood.’ Fat chance of that. I’d never known my grandfather, Nicholas Abden, who had died the year I was born. I wondered if they had ever sat together in here, Nicholas (1880–1943) and Joanna (1886–1956); one chair in front of each fireplace, talking, making plans that a world war would knock over. Or was that habit and this hall abandoned long before then?
There were names here and there, engraved in the stonework. I switched on the lights, which flickered uncertainly and dismally from two hanging candelabra. Fraser Abden, Bannockbu
rn. Grant Abden, Culloden. Malcolm Abden, Glenfinnan. Charles Abden, Homildon. Douglas Abden, Sauchieburn. The names were clumsily cut, and not all by the same hand; but they didn’t look very old, probably not more than half a century. We’d been a bloody lot – though there was nothing to show whether these were the names of men who had fallen or merely of men who had fought.
I peered at the coat of arms between the two fireplaces. It looked like a unicorn and a heart and a shield. Underneath was written: Creag mo chroidhe-se a chreag ghuanach.
I wandered about the room and saw some more scratchings: these much older, looking contemporary with the dates. Bruce Abden, beheaded, January 1572. Malcolm Abden, died on rack, November 1583.
Lovely. There was another coat of arms here, more primitive in style, with something like a lynx or a leopard snarling. Algionnach no nadur fhein. Someone much more recently had been obliging enough this time to write underneath what I took to be a translation. The beast itself both bright and bold.
A shiver went down my back, caused by the tomb-chill of this hall. I’d think myself in a bloody haunted house soon. Where was the old woman dragging her son’s head along the floor or the man screaming as his bones were stretched from their sockets? The beast itself both bright and bold.
I supposed I must come of a family of Jacobites. Whom else could they have followed but that born loser, Bonnie Prince Charlie? Yet somehow they’d hung on, in their arrogant, single-minded, obstinate way. They’d hung on to the house and the name and the faith, through all the plots and counterplots and uprisings and conspiracies, the beheadings, the rackings, the sequestrations, the oppressions, the denials of right and privilege. And later on there were these other names on the walls: Lucknow, Salamanca, Waterloo, Sebastopol, Omdurman, Loos, Tripoli, Arnhem. At some stage they’d thrown in their lot with the English, helped their old enemies in their quest for Empire.
And the end of it all was me, a sales manager in a perfumery firm. No wonder my old aunt was wetting herself with disappointment.
Yet what had her own son Malcolm been? A failed Member of Parliament, a raconteur, a minor television personality, a poseur, a womanizer. Was that much better? It was the strain that was deteriorating, wearing out, trickling like a spent river into the sands.