by Jenny Colgan
‘Well, call someone, I suppose,’ he said, looking at the empty windscreen.
‘Do you know who to call?’
He did.
* * *
The mechanics were stuck behind a few fallen trees en route, but if she could sit tight they’d get there. The same went for the coach. Inside, Agnieszka was going pink with excitement about how many lunches she was going to have to prepare. The choices were sandwiches with cheese, or sandwiches with cheese and ham, so she was going to be busy.
Zoe went out into the road and started picking up the books that had scattered when the van had careered from side to side. Some were dusty and a little damp; some had more or less got through unscathed. Perhaps, she thought, she could have a sale.
Murdo came out next to her and picked up a copy of The Terror.
‘What’s this then?’ he said, looking at the ship on the cover with interest.
‘Oh, the Erebus and Terror,’ said Zoe. ‘Two ships went to try and find the Northwest Passage and were never seen again.’
‘And this is what happened to them?’
‘It’s an idea,’ said Zoe. ‘It’s pretty gruesome, incredibly dark and very, very long.’
She mused.
‘A near-perfect book in fact. The warmer you are when you’re reading it, the more you’ll enjoy how miserable everyone else in it is.’
Murdo carried on looking at it.
‘I might take this.’
‘You can have money off if it’s damaged,’ said Zoe.
Murdo didn’t mention that he thought – having picked her bodily up off the floor and saved her from potentially dying in a fireball then calling the garage – he probably ought to have it for free, more or less.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll take it. I’m a sailor myself.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Zoe, looking at him. He was solid-set, running mildly to fat, but in a comforting rather than unattractive way. His pleasant bluff face was ruddy and he had very humorous, sparkly dark eyes, she couldn’t help noticing. Then she reminded herself what had happened the last time she’d noticed a pair of sparkling dark eyes.
‘Whereabouts?’
Murdo indicated the loch in front of them, lapping on the narrow shore. ‘I take the tour boats out,’ he said. He tapped the book. ‘It’s not quite the Northwest passage,’ he smiled. ‘Although it does get a little tasty from time to time.’
They both looked out on the choppy waters. ‘Bit too much today,’ he said. ‘Not for me,’ he added quickly. ‘I mean, for the tourists.’
‘You take people out to look for the monster?’ said Zoe.
‘You crash vans full of books into buses?’ he said.
‘I do not!’
‘Okay,’ said Murdo. ‘But everyone’s got to make a living.’
‘Have you ever . . . ?’
‘Maybe.’
‘You didn’t know what I was going to ask.’
‘You were going to ask if I’d ever seen the monster. Because that’s what 99.99 per cent of everyone asks me and the other person was very, very drunk.’
Zoe smiled.
‘Well, I’m glad I’m a very boring person and we can get it out of the way. What do you mean “maybe”? Is that what you have to say, otherwise nobody will come out on your tours with you?’
‘Maybe,’ said Murdo again, infuriatingly.
‘I thought it had all been disproved anyway,’ said Zoe. ‘Science and that.’
‘Science and that,’ said Murdo contemplatively. He scratched his mop of thick hair. ‘Uh-huh.’
‘Oh, that’s good,’ said Zoe. ‘Kind of a mystical schtick going on that doesn’t quite answer the question. Very good.’
They wandered back towards the hotel. Several bus passengers were milling around. The bus wasn’t going to get fixed any faster than they were, and they peered into the van curiously.
‘Have you got any books on Loch Ness?’ said one woman wearing a Pac A Mac against the still-howling wind.
As it happened, Zoe had two, one for adults and one for children, and she immediately sold both of them.
‘You’d think,’ said Murdo, who should have been doing repairs and maintenance on his boat in down time, in a storm, and as a result was much happier hanging around and talking to this dark-haired girl. ‘You’d think that someone running a bookshop around Loch Ness would probably carry a few more books about Loch Ness.’
‘I know,’ said Zoe, who was rapidly coming to this conclusion herself. ‘I think I’ll have to get some in.’
Agnieszka emerged from the hotel, a tea towel thrown over her shoulder, a happy look on her face.
‘This is the busiest we’ve been in months,’ she said happily.
‘You should crash more tour buses,’ said Murdo. ‘Set them up, like pins in the road.’
Agnieszka hit him playfully with the tea towel.
‘You be quiet.’
She turned to Zoe.
‘It’s hard. The official visitor centre is round the other side. They get most of the business – they’ve got a cool museum and everything. We get what’s left.’
‘It still seems lots,’ said Zoe, thinking of the coaches in the morning.
Agnieszka sighed.
‘Oh, they come, they take a picture, sometimes they buy a sandwich, they use the toilet, then off they go again. In fact, I’m losing money just in how much toilet roll they get through.’
‘Can’t you charge them?’ said Zoe.
‘Seems a bit . . .’ Agnieszka screwed up her face.
‘Don’t they catch the boat here?’
Agnieszka shot Murdo a cross look.
‘Oh no, some people moor out of the visitor centre. Even though they live practically next door, they go right to the other side.’
Zoe looked at Murdo. ‘You live next door and you take the boat away every morning?’
He looked back at her.
‘You haven’t been making a living in the Highlands long, have you?’
Zoe had to turn away to serve a few customers, who were buying anything Scottish they could find – she even sold a mint edition of Waverley novels (which was going to cause Nina’s eyebrows to rise. It would also raise the eyebrows of the airline check-in staff who loaded planes by weight, and those of the lady’s Canadian grandchildren, one of whom would devour the entire series in one gulp and grow up to become Newfoundland’s foremost Sir Walter Scott historian and an internationally recognised expert with an incredibly fulfilling career as a television academic).
‘Maybe,’ she said, musing. ‘Maybe I should come down here more often. Especially on rainy days.’
‘You know the coaches are heading back to Edinburgh or to London?’ said Agnieszka. ‘I think there’s a lot of people would like something to read. Bring some large print.’
‘And some translations?’ said Murdo. ‘Per favore seduti.’
‘That’s quite impressive,’ said Zoe.
‘ボートに座ってください,’ said Murdo.
‘Okay, now you’re freaking me out,’ said Zoe.
‘He can speak six languages,’ said Agnieszka, looking at him fondly.
‘I can,’ said Murdo. ‘That was “Please don’t stand up in the boat”.’
‘I’m still impressed,’ said Zoe.
‘Et vous pouvez manger bien dans notre retour au centre,’ he said. ‘That’s the bit, Agnieszka, where I tell them to eat at the visitor centre.’
‘That place is horrible,’ said Agnieszka.
‘Yes,’ said Murdo patiently. ‘But they can get more than a sandwich with cheese or a sandwich with ham and cheese.’
‘Everyone likes ham and cheese,’ said Agnieszka.
The storm, as they’d been talking inside the van, had started to die away and there was even the occasional watery ray of sunshine peeping out from behind a cloud, as if the sun was apologising shyly for all the tempestuous fury that had come their way just moments before. Zoe couldn’t get used to it at all: surely
there couldn’t be anywhere else in the world where the weather changed so fast and so entirely. The stones beneath their feet were already drying out.
They emerged as the crowd thinned, and looked at the little brown hotel. The gutters needed cleaning and the window frames repairing and repainting. Agnieszka sighed.
‘You could do it, you know,’ said Murdo.
‘Would you start your boat from here if I did?’ said Agnieszka. Murdo shrugged.
‘Maybe.’
He turned to Zoe. ‘Will you bring your van back?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Zoe. ‘Will there be an evil coach driver ready to jump out and run me off the road?’
‘It’s all right to admit it when things haven’t quite gone your way,’ said Murdo.
Zoe gave him a hard stare, just as the welcome sign of a large AA van finally trundled up the road towards them.
Chapter Thirty-one
Nursery had not, Zoe gathered, gone well today. Not at all. There appeared to be a bruise mark on Hari’s arm that Tara insisted had been utterly accidental.
But she couldn’t bear to think about what would have happened if she’d had him with her. What if a shard of glass had cut right through him? Hit him in the eye? She felt caught between a rock and a hard place.
Still though, here was something undeniable: as they turned back up the gravel drive, Zoe having driven the entire route at twenty miles an hour, Hari started bouncing up and down in his seat with excitement, and as soon as she stopped the car and unbuckled him, he dived down in glee and charged off round the back to find Patrick.
The idea of Hari doing anything on his own happily was completely new to Zoe, and she watched him for a while as he went, then carefully and tiredly got out herself. It had been a big day and she didn’t feel ready to face the kitchen just yet. Mrs MacGlone came charging out and vanished without as much as a wave.
Zoe took her time. It was now a deep golden-stained afternoon, only the shaken leaves and fallen branches everywhere any reminder that the storm had existed at all.
She lingered in the forecourt and stared up at the engraving over the front door. She hadn’t noticed it before; the letters were so ornate she’d assumed it would be in Latin or something poncey she wouldn’t be able to understand.
But now she could see there were small repeated designs – a fish, a sheaf – and the words, cut in an angular font into the grey sandstone around the door frame: ‘Speuran Talamh Gainmheach Locha’.
She was staring at it when she heard a crunching of heavy feet on the gravel and turned round to see Ramsay coming up behind her. His face was rueful.
‘I . . . I wanted to apologise.’
‘No need,’ said Zoe. ‘I’ve been told not to stick my nose in.’
He rubbed his hand along the back of his neck.
‘I appreciate it may not seem like a conventional set-up.’
Zoe blinked.
‘You can say that again,’ she said.
He sighed and kicked the doorstep.
‘I have . . . I have to work very hard to keep the lights on here.’
Zoe nodded.
‘It . . . well. Things can . . . anyway. Sorry.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Zoe. ‘I spoke out of turn.’
‘No, no. I know what you mean . . . They’re not being too horrible to you?’
Zoe decided it was prudent not to mention the fact that she was fairly sure things were being moved around in her room, and that morning Shackleton had dropped an entire bag of flour on the floor and watched her clear it up as Mary had laughed in her face.
Instead she changed the subject.
‘I hadn’t seen the thing carved over the door before. What does it say?’
‘I never look at it myself,’ confessed Ramsay. ‘But I know. “Sky, sand, loch, land”.’
‘. . . loch and land,’ said Zoe.
‘Actually it’s pronounced locchhhhh,’ said Ramsay making a slightly spitting sound.
‘I know,’ said Zoe. ‘I’m not going to try it – I’ll sound like an idiot. I’m from Bethnal Green.’
‘You’ll sound like a correct idiot, who’s making an effort!’
‘I am making an effort! Look!’
She held up the dripping plastic bag. Lennox had left her some venison steaks.
‘What’s that?’
‘Venison,’ said Zoe. ‘I’m to fry it up with some cloudberries.’
‘Where did you get it?’
Zoe glanced up.
‘Why? Did someone steal it off you?’
Ramsay ran his hands through his hair. ‘Oh, generally speaking. Still, at least you’re in the supply chain. Can you really cook venison?’
Zoe shrugged.
‘Well, someone on YouTube can, so I’m taking it from them.’
There was a slight pause, then Ramsay said, ‘Right, yes, I see,’ in a way that made it instantly clear to Zoe that he didn’t have the faintest idea what she was talking about.
He grimaced.
‘Am I . . . ? I mean, there’s enough cash in the kitty, isn’t there? You’re not having to poach to feed the children or anything?’
‘Oh no, it’s fine,’ said Zoe. ‘Well, if you have any spare?’
His face looked worried and she looked back at the inscription.
‘So. Sky, sand, loch, land. Is it basically just reminding you that you own absolutely everything around you? That you’re the master of all you survey?’
Her tone was lightly mocking.
Ramsay blinked in surprise. The four words were burned into his make-up really; he’d always heard them, repeated as if a grace, and their Latin translation made up their crest of arms. Caelum lacus harena terra.
‘No, quite the opposite,’ he replied, a trifle irritated. ‘It’s to remind you what’s actually all about you, that you’re merely a trespasser on what has always been here and what will always be here. It’s a reminder to treasure it and to look after it, and that worldly things – houses, cups, jewellery, all of that stuff – don’t last and don’t matter.’
He warmed to his subject.
‘And also, it’s even better than that – it’s not like a skull and a goblet and a pile of rotting fruit. It’s hopeful. It’s saying, you will come and you will go, but these things that go on for ever are all around you; look how beautiful and wonderful they are. Sheaves from the field, fish from the loch, light from the sky and glass from the sand. Every day.’
Zoe looked at him. He was quite different when caught up in speaking. She was so used to him being distracted and distant; never quite there or at one with the children or the house or her. He caught her looking and his oversized hands started to fiddle awkwardly with his buttonhole.
‘I see,’ she said. She looked beyond him, down the gravel drive and into the garden. The evening sun was descending, and the shadows of the trimmed hedges were long across the grass.
‘We used to have topiary,’ said Ramsay, who was looking the same way as her. ‘That’s bushes cut into shapes.’
‘I know what it is, thanks,’ said Zoe chippily.
‘Oh yes, of course. Sorry.’
‘I’m not actually on the house tour.’
He went quiet after that, put his large hands deep in his pockets.
‘Oh, I’m only teasing,’ said Zoe, cursing herself for being so out of practice at talking to new people. ‘What topiary did you have? A monster?’
He gave her a look.
‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘Not a monster. We had roosters one year though.’
‘I bloody hate chickens,’ said Zoe automatically. Ramsay gave her a strange look.
‘Well, I hate this one chicken,’ said Zoe. ‘This one chicken who had got it in for me.’
‘I don’t think chickens can have it in for people,’ said Ramsay.
‘Well, you explain how it keeps pooing in my wellington boots.’
Ramsay frowned.
‘Perhaps move your wellington boots?’
>
‘I did!’ said Zoe. ‘It found them. Because it is a chicken of evil.’
‘We also had fish,’ said Ramsay hastily changing the subject. ‘Beautifully trimmed. They were lovely.’
‘Can’t you still have them? They’d look lovely in this light,’ said Zoe. The sun was golden and huge, going down in the sky.
‘I know,’ said Ramsay regretfully. ‘Cutbacks, I’m afraid. Again.’
‘You should train up the children to do it.’
Ramsay gave her a sharp look. ‘I’ll add that to my list of things I’m getting wrong, thanks.’
There was a tricky silence.
‘Right. I’d better get on. I might let Shackleton loose on the venison.’
‘That,’ said Ramsay, ‘is not a phrase I ever thought I’d hear.’
And he followed her into the house where, in short order, a very pleasant roasting scent started to emanate on the autumnal air, followed briefly by a rather less pleasant burning smell, but one that was soon rectified, and there was so much it didn’t really matter that some of the edges had to get chopped off, and anyway Porteous turned up at a perfect time and slipped in and out like a leftovers ghost, whisking any spare food away, and Ramsay, sticking to his word, actually popped in for half an hour, and there was a conversation instigated by Patrick about dinosaurs and why it was very unfair that they didn’t have some way of watching more films about dinosaurs as the television was broken and Ramsay had frowned and said he hadn’t realised they had a television and Zoe had said, you guys are living in the 1920s and Ramsay had said he didn’t see much wrong with that and she said, well, you will when you have to get glasses for Patrick because he’s trying to watch Jurassic Park on my phone and Ramsay said he would try and deal with it and Zoe said he should, they were practically giving tellies away these days and Ramsay said, quite right, they were only fit for the dump and Zoe said, I have now lived in this house for six weeks and I can tell you I’m not sure about your knowing what’s fit for the dump abilities, and the children, of all things, actually laughed – they actually laughed – and it had suddenly occurred to Ramsay, as it hadn’t for a long time, that perhaps he should nip down to the cellar and get one of those lovely bottles of red his ancestors had stored down there – why ever not? – and there was light and noise and chatter in the kitchen for the first time in such a very long time, and he felt a quick stab of guilt, then decided he could probably squash that down too with the red wine, when there came a sudden and decisive knock at the back door.