Snare (2 page)

‘It's the fainting, isn't it? You could have a nasty fall. You're a big man.'

‘Be thankful for small mercies,' he said cheerily, evidently echoing his mother. ‘I can look after myself and I enjoy my food, and I got Baby here.'

Miss Pink and Baby exchanged wary glances. Alec said, peering, ‘Who's that in your garden, miss?' in my garden? I can't see anyone.'

‘They're gone now. Maybe it was my father.

I don't see all that well.'

‘But ... it doesn't matter. We're all friends.' With which inane comment she left him and made her way home, pondering his gentle nature, forgetting the possibility of an intruder in her garden until she entered her kitchen and was astonished to find the daylight blocked. A figure was outside, its hands shading reflections from the glass, peering round the interior until it spied Miss Pink. A grin materialised like that of the Cheshire cat, a hand waved, lips moved, there were faint calls of greeting. Miss Pink made no move towards the back door but that was immaterial; her presence was known and the front door was open.

Esme Dunlop knocked superfluously as she stepped in from the street: a large, ungainly woman in her fifties in fawn trousers with a knife-edged crease, a Viyella shirt and burgundy pullover. Her expression was as ingenuous as her style. She brimmed with enthusiasm and, having encountered her several times already, Miss Pink had found herself reflecting that such relentless exuberance might prove tiresome on occasions – upon bereavement for instance, or if one were trying to do something quietly without attracting attention.

‘I went round the back,' Esme was saying. ‘I got no reply at the front, so I thought you must be in the garden. You've got a wilderness out there! I wasn't really surprised. I mean, Coline owns the holiday homes but who looks after them?'

Miss Pink refused to be steam-rollered. ‘Gardens always look unkempt at this time of year –'

‘It's the same in here –' Esme wasn't listening. Her eyes probed the corners of the living room. ‘Mary MacLeod is supposed to look after this property, but look at it! If I spent a couple of hours in this room you wouldn't recognise it.'

Miss Pink had, in fact, spent an appreciable time cleaning her one reception room when she moved in. She had even polished the table.

‘It's not dirty,' she said firmly.

‘Well – those loose covers haven't seen the inside of a washing machine for yonks, but I was thinking in terms of a spot of polish and some elbow grease. Look at that table ... Is this your latest book –' Esme advanced heavily.

Miss Pink skirted a chair and placed one hand on a pile of manuscript, forestalling her visitor, it's not a book as yet; merely a draft.'

‘That has to be typed.' It was a flat statement. ‘And that's your typewriter?' Regarding the portable as if it were a museum piece, Esme gave a snicker of amazement. She said decisively, ‘Look, I'll tell you what we'll do. What you want is a secretary, and here I am, with oodles of free time at my disposal. Coline's between books at this moment. I've got an electric typewriter and I'm an excellent typist. None of your two-finger pecking for me. I'll come over each morning – better still, you give me that manuscript and I'll return it to you, clean as a whistle, in three days. With all the spelling mistakes and grammar corrected: word-perfect, guaranteed. How's that?' Her beam split her face.

Miss Pink hesitated, and Esme pounced. ‘I promise you, I've got nothing else to do. It'll be a pleasure. Give it to me now –' Their hands shot out simultaneously, but Miss Pink was the quicker. Esme wasn't beaten. ‘Half price?' She twinkled roguishly. ‘I shall adore reading it.'

Miss Pink struggled with her reactions. ‘No,' she said, and knew she sounded aggressive. ‘You're accustomed to Lady MacKay's methods –'

‘No problem! All grist to the mill. I'm adaptable – and we're all alike: romantic and gothic, the three of us –'

‘I want a man,' Miss Pink said loudly and, since she had managed to silence Esme, went on more quietly, ‘I prefer working with men; their angle is different, and refreshing.'

Esme was all contrition. ‘I was crowding you. You've only known me three days. And here I am, a total stranger, proposing to take more than half your work-load on my broad shoulders. Look, forget I ever proposed the arrangement, at least for the time being' – she grinned happily – ‘and I'll forget the crack about a male secretary, right? I'll leave you now to get down to work, and we'll meet this evening.' She thrust past the sofa to the door and paused on the step. ‘We don't dress, you know, nothing formal.' Her gaze travelled from Miss Pink's hair to her brogues. ‘Tweeds would
do
,' she added doubtfully.

* * *

Miss Pink walked along the street to take morning coffee with Beatrice Swan, whom she'd met on the foreshore two days ago while watching the waders. An old lady, emerging from the Post Office (which was also the store), had crossed the road and introduced herself. Having chatted about the local wildlife, she had indicated a house she called Feartag and extended the invitation to coffee. Miss Pink, observing the old but beautifully tailored Harris tweed, the leathery skin and serene eyes, sensed a kindred spirit: another loner living out her remaining years on the fringe of the wilderness.

Feartag was at the far end of the street where the road crossed the river before turning west towards Fair Point. The house had been built just upstream of the bridge and some thirty feet above the water which, in a dry autumn, was merely a stream between boulders. It was approached by a gravel drive between lawns which were still mown. Grass had a long growing season in this climate, where the Gulf Stream lapped the shores.

Feartag was Victorian; there were sash windows downstairs but the upper storey was in the roof, its dormers whimsically fitted with casements of leaded lights. The roof was purple slate; even the porch had its own neat cap of slates, supported at each corner by knotted trunks of Scots pine. The front door was open on a passage where a bowl of sweet peas stood on an oak table. Above it, on the planked wall, was a narwhal's tusk of spiralled ivory.

Beatrice appeared in answer to the knock and, seeing Miss Pink's interest, remarked that her brother had brought home the tusk from Greenland: ‘The narwhal is called the unicorn of the ocean. Isn't that lovely?'

She showed the visitor into a room that extended the width of the house. French windows opened on a terrace and Miss Pink was taken outside to admire tints in the birches opposite and the water chuckling among pink rocks below a stout fence of post and rails. There were two doors at the back of the house, one leading to the kitchen, the other open on a dim room Beatrice called the log cellar. There was a strong smell of sawn timber.

‘We took a tree down,' Beatrice said. ‘We must get all the logs under cover before it rains, although there's little sign of that. These autumnal days are delightful, but there's a nip in the air when you're out of the sunshine.

Come inside and we'll have some coffee.'

The sitting room was homely, with white walls and old furniture that was mostly oak. The floor was parquet, the carpet oriental, its jewelled shades echoed by paisley cushions on a coral sofa. One wall was lined with book­shelves, but there was also a television set and a record player.

Beatrice came in with the coffee and they settled to small talk. Miss Pink didn't mention the brother but after he had, as it were, obtruded twice on the conversation, she wondered how long her hostess could refrain from doing so. ‘We are well above flood level,' she said of the river and, acknowledging a compliment on the garden, ‘We're fortunate; there's a man who comes twice a week to mow the grass and cut up dead trees and so on. We do all the light work ourselves.'

At that she looked uncomfortable and conversation dried up for a moment.

‘You don't live alone?' Miss Pink's tone was light.

Beatrice was still. ‘I'm alone now,' she said. ‘I lost my brother two years ago.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘He wasn't ill for long.' The tone was flat. ‘It was cancer. He was in hospital, but he came home at the end.' She looked round the room and her lips moved in the travesty of a smile. ‘Life goes on, doesn't it? Do you have any brothers or sisters?'

‘I was an only child. My father died when I was young, but I was devastated when my mother died. I was in my late forties.'

‘What did you do? I mean, how did you cope once you'd recovered from the shock?'

‘I worked,' Miss Pink said. ‘I started writing stories and articles for magazines while I looked after my mother. She had a long illness. But I wasn't alone after she died. I had, and still have, an excellent housekeeper. I've never been lonely.' There was a silence which stretched too far. ‘There was always something to do,' she went on, ‘even if I had to fabricate it. Unfortunately that gets more difficult with age, at the same time as the writing becomes easier. So I started to travel.'

‘Did that work?'

‘It worked very well. I was something of a mountaineer when I was younger and I'd always thought I would have made a good explorer. When I go abroad, I don't exactly court danger but I don't go out of my way to avoid it. And there's nothing to bring back the old joy of living so much as a good dose of fear.'

‘I was the timid one,' Beatrice said. ‘Robert was the explorer. He crossed Greenland by dog sledge; he was in Spitzbergen, Baffin Land, the Yukon.'

‘Robert Swan!' Miss Pink was amazed. ‘Of course. The polar traveller. I knew the name was familiar.'

‘You must come one evening and see some of his slides. I'll put on a show.' Beatrice smiled engagingly. ‘He used to call me his producer. I always helped select the pictures for a new lecture, and he tried out his commentary on me. I was representative of his audience, you see. He knew how mountaineers' minds worked but he didn't understand people who stayed at home.'

‘Did you always live together?'

‘Since the war. I had two more brothers. One was killed in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Burma, the other was a bomber pilot. He was shot down over the Ruhr. Robert went through North Africa without a scratch. Afterwards he worked for oil companies – he was a geologist – but when our parents died and we inherited, he didn't need to do that kind of work any longer, so he explored and lectured. We came here in 1950. He loved Sgoradale – for a few months at a time – and then he'd be off again to some wild corner of the world. Are you like that: unable to spend long at home?'

‘I've not yet found a home,' Miss Pink confessed. ‘I thought it was North Wales, then Cornwall – where I still have a house. It doesn't bother me; I'm not looking for a home. No doubt the right place will appear in due course.'

‘You're good for the soul. When will you be free to come for a meal?'

‘I'm dining at the lodge tonight. Is tomorrow too short notice?'

‘Not at all. Everyone in Sgoradale has freezers. Tomorrow it is. Shall we say six-thirty since we're to have a slide show?'

* * *

Miss Pink made her way along the street. The tide was high, lapping close to the green turf on the other side of the road. Across the bay a boat broke away from the steps and headed down the loch, the sound of its outboard coming over the water moments after it had picked up speed. She had meant to ask her hostess about Ivar Campbell's background – what, in jargon, constituted his motivation. There had been no gossip from Beatrice Swan but, despite a conversation that had never overstepped the bounds of propriety, there had been a sense of self-exposure. Predictable, of course. There hadn't been a sign of so much as a cat. Sgoradale would be a subjective place – heaven or hell or lotus-land depending on how you looked at it. In such an environment, Esme Dunlop's gush and Campbell's shiftiness did not seem excessive. Could they be defence mechanisms mutated in a rarefied atmosphere?

Miss Pink pondered the kind of eccentricities the MacKays might exhibit. She decided on a stiff walk from Fair Head to blow her mind clear and strengthen her defences for dinner at Sgoradale Lodge.

Miss Pink drove to Fair Point, left her car outside the gates of the lighthouse and started along a sheep path which meandered through heather towards a craggy knoll. From this pimple of a hill, Sgoradale appeared more than ever like an outpost of civilisation. Even its sheltering escarpment was diminished, for behind it the high ground stretched across Scotland, fretted with spires and elephantine humps of hills, with glimpses of water like scattered sapphires in the peat and, most distantly, grey ranges frosted with the first snowfall.

Sgoradale turned its back on this hinterland, facing down the loch past wooded islets to skerries that marked the open sea. The sides of the loch were steep and, near the water, they were clothed with hardwoods now patched with gold as the leaves started to turn. Beyond the mouth of the loch and across the Minch, the Hebrides appeared like a fairy land on the horizon.

Miss Pink was not deceived by the gentle beauty of the scene. She could visualise Atlantic gales driving across the loch, lacy waterfalls swollen to brown torrents, blizzards where now the lochans reflected blue sky. Strolling back to the car she passed a ruin: a gable end above a scatter of stones. She remembered the Clearances, when cottages were fired and crofters evicted (cats thrown back in the flames) to make room for commercially viable sheep. There was a smell of blood and soot and burned fur. She shuddered; elemental violence was terrible, but it lacked malice. That was a human attribute.

* * *

‘We have no local crime. No doubt we lose a few fish to the pot here and there, even deer, but I've seen no evidence of it. Poaching is traditional, y'know – wasn't there a Norman king killed by a poacher? But they must follow up and kill a beast if it's been wounded. Only criminals leave a wounded beast to die slowly. And poachers must not get caught; that's another crime.'