I propped the picture on a chair and took a seat. I refused tea but accepted another whisky.
My choice of painting was approved by Beth – not that I had the least intention of allowing her to change my mind. Hattie seemed surprised that I had chosen a picture which gave more emphasis to birds than to scenery, but she admitted that the colours were pretty. I wondered how George Muir had managed to sustain a lengthy marriage to a woman whose aesthetic perceptions seemed to have stopped short at the pictures on greetings cards, and decided that he had probably found Hattie a relief. His acquaintances had no doubt felt obliged to discuss Art with him, out of the depths of their ignorance, just when he was sick of his chosen profession and hoping to take his mind off it.
In contrast to Hattie’s disinterest, now that I had the painting in my hands I was appreciating it more and more by the minute. Each glance revealed fresh detail. Once I was sure where the solitary wildfowler had to have placed himself, a faint trace across the sand turned itself into a line of footprints. It would have gone against the grain to put the picture back in the studio. There might be other and less scrupulous legatees. ‘I’ll put it in the car,’ I said. ‘Then we can leave it with a restorer in Glasgow tomorrow.’
‘That would be best,’ Hattie agreed. ‘There’s still young Edgar to make his choice. After that, an agent can uplift the lot and see what’s to be done with them and the builders can come in and see to the damage. I shan’t be sorry to have the house set to rights.’ At the mention of Edgar’s name I thought that her nostrils flared slightly, as if at a bad smell.
‘We may not need to go right into Glasgow tomorrow,’ Beth told me. ‘Not unless you want to go to the restorer.’ She turned her left hand and held it out. I saw the sparkle of gems on the third finger.
‘It was my mother’s engagement ring,’ Hattie said. She sounded almost shy. ‘I’m not one to wear much jewellery. I’ve no daughter of my own to leave it to and Beth was always her uncle’s favourite. George gave me this, so it’s a fair exchange.’ She showed us her own ring, of two large, square-cut diamonds. The ring on Beth’s finger was more modest, a diamond ringed by small rubies, but it was a very pretty ring and far from valueless. It suited Beth’s slim young fingers better than anything more ostentatious would have done.
‘If you’re quite sure,’ I said awkwardly, aiming the phrase indiscriminately between the two of them. I was struggling to hide my acute embarrassment. Beth’s legacies from her uncle were one thing, but to accept a gift from his widow was quite another. Logic insisted that Hattie had to be implicated in her husband’s death, although the absolute openness of her manner made the idea seem absurd. If there should be any grounds for my suspicions, the ring would have to go back. Meantime, let them both be happy.
‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’ Beth asked me.
‘Bless you, no. I’m not proud. We can spend the money on the house instead.’
‘That’s all right, then.’ Beth jumped up impulsively and stooped to kiss first Hattie and then myself on the cheek. ‘I love the ring and now I’ll have something to remember each of you by.’
‘Try not to sound as though I’ll be gone tomorrow,’ Hattie said severely, but I could see that she seemed pleased. She turned on me. ‘You’d best be taking that thing out to the car,’ she said briskly. ‘I’m expecting neighbours in and it’s making the place look untidy.’
Telling myself that Hattie’s sharpness was no more than her way of hiding a soft heart, I manhandled the painting to the front door. The old Labrador, scenting a walk, began to struggle to her feet but subsided at a word from Hattie. The switch for the light over the front door evaded me. The canvas was too large to go behind the back seat of the estate car. Rather than let it stand in the drizzle which had set in, I left it in the doorway while I laid the back seat flat, fumbling with the catches in the poor illumination of the courtesy light.
I was just laying the painting in place, and feeling for the first time that it might really be ours, when a car came up the drive and parked close to mine, effectively blocking me in. A man got out, leaving his engine running and his lights on. ‘What are you doing?’ he demanded.
The words were innocent enough, but his tone was suspicious and held all the arrogance of a man who was sure that he had every right to ask insulting questions of complete strangers. It was, in fact, the tone which a landowner might use towards an under-gardener. I found it difficult to see him clearly behind the blazing headlamps but his outline seemed to be distinctly pear-shaped.
His aggression was tainting a moment which I wanted to savour. There had been a time when it took me hours to get angry, but since my illness I seemed to have a much shorter fuse. My hackles, which I usually kept smooth by an effort of conscious restraint, rose on the instant. I chose the politest from four possible replies.
‘None of your bloody business,’ I said.
Without further comment he reached into his car and began a fanfare on a very loud set of horns.
The light over the front door came on – the switch that had eluded me turned out to be hidden behind one of the coats on the hall stand. Hattie appeared in the doorway with Beth at her side. ‘Do stop that noise, Alistair,’ Hattie said mildly. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
He removed his hand from the horn and switched off his engine. The headlamps died and I saw that he was a large man, tall and with a belly on him. If he had not been obviously male I would have put him down as eight months pregnant. His face was square, jowly, with fleshy lips and an overbearing brow.
Hattie’s words must have made it plain that I was no burglar, but he did not seem in the least abashed. ‘This chap was loading one of George’s paintings into a car in the dark,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d better check on him. For all I knew, he’d just knocked you on the head.’ The accent was meant to be English and educated, but there was just a trace of a glottal stop.
‘Well, he has not done any head-knocking yet,’ Hattie said, ‘and if he has any such intention in mind I don’t think that I will be the victim. Don’t keep him standing out there in the damp. Come in and be properly introduced.’
‘Oh, very well,’ the man said ungraciously. ‘Come on, Hilda.’ He stood, waiting.
The woman who got out of the passenger side was as small as her companion was huge. She elected to come round the front of the car so that I had to move back against my rear door. As she squeezed past me through the gap, I realised that she was even thinner than I was. She gave an impression of weightlessness and even through her artificial fur coat I could feel the hardness of her ribs against my hip. The top of her head failed to reach my chin by at least a hand’s breadth.
I finished stowing the painting, locked up the car and followed them into the house. The others were still in the hall. ‘This is George’s niece, Beth,’ Hattie was saying, ‘and her fiancé, John Cunningham. Captain John Cunningham,’ she added, as though that should put my character beyond any possible doubt. ‘Mr and Mrs Alistair Young. The Youngs are my nearest neighbours. Now do for Heaven’s sake come and have a drink and let there by no more foolish argie-bargies.’
*
When drinks had been dispensed – whisky for the men, sherry for the ladies and dry-looking cigarettes untouched in a box on the rosewood coffee table – and she had us seated in a neat semi-circle round the fireplace and the blank television set, Hattie decided to explain us to each other.
‘Hilda and Alistair were a great help when . . . it happened,’ she said. ‘They live just a hundred yards further up the hill. Hilda heard the bang—’
‘We both did,’ Mrs Young said. Her accent was unashamedly Glasgow, but from the better side of it. ‘I thought that it was a shot. But Alistair said that if that was a shot he was a monkey’s uncle, which of course he isn’t—’
‘I feel as though I were, sometimes,’ Alistair Young said. His look invited sympathy.
‘—so we came down straight away. Luckily, my brother was visiting
us for the evening with all his brood, so we could leave the children with him.’
Hattie was looking put out at the interruptions. ‘I had already called the Emergency Services,’ she said. ‘I was just sitting by the phone, knowing that I should be doing something but quite unable to think of anything sensible to do. My mind wouldn’t accept that George was dead and I could only think of clearing up the mess, but nothing would have dragged me back in there. Then they knocked on the door and called out to ask whether I was all right.’
‘Not an easy question to answer,’ I said.
Hattie looked at me in surprise. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I was dazed, and at first I could only take the question literally. I nearly answered that I was perfectly all right. Then I saw how silly that would be and I went to let them in. I explained that George seemed to have blown himself up.
‘They were very kind. Hilda made me drink some whisky and then made tea while Alistair went into the studio. He came back after a few minutes to say that there was no doubt that George was dead, which I already knew even if I had difficulty accepting it. What I wanted to know most of all was whether there was any danger of fire or of another explosion, but he set my mind at rest.’
‘I switched the lights off,’ Alistair Young said, ‘in case the wiring had taken any damage. That seemed to be the only danger.’
‘There wasn’t much we could do after that,’ his wife added, ‘except stay with Hattie and try to keep her occupied until the police arrived. And an ambulance.’
‘And very glad I was,’ Hattie said. ‘I think I’d have gone to pieces, alone in this big house with George dead and myself wondering what had happened and what else might happen. They’ve been very helpful and attentive ever since.’ She looked at me as she spoke. She was explaining, in her own way, why the Youngs should be taking a more than neighbourly interest in her wellbeing.
‘The very least we could do,’ Alistair Young said modestly.
With the Youngs satisfactorily accounted for, Hattie decided to explain our presence. ‘George left Beth the first choice of a painting in his will.’
Alistair Young held out his glass for a refill and chuckled. ‘So that’s why you were putting a picture into your car in the dark. You only had to say so, young man.’
Evidently he considered our difference to be forgiven and forgotten by both of us, but he was still managing to irritate me. For one thing, he was only a few years older than myself. ‘I didn’t have to say so,’ I pointed out.
There was a quick flash of anger from under the beetling brows. ‘All George’s best work was cut to pieces,’ he said. He sounded not displeased.
‘Beth was also left the dog which Edgar has in training,’ Hattie said loudly into the sudden silence. ‘George was so looking forward to getting him, it’s a shame that he couldn’t have lived to see the day. There was something missing from his life when Mona became too stiff to work any more. A new dog would have given him a fresh lease of life. He said that this dog would see him out, so he wanted a good one.’ She got up and fetched from a side table a pencil sketch in a silver photograph frame. It showed a handsome Labrador pup of about six months, caught in the act of playing with a ball. It had been executed with very few lines and yet it was all there, the individuality of the pup and more. Some of George Muir’s hopes for the pup showed through.
‘Oh yes. The famous pup,’ Young said. There was a hint of tolerant amusement in his voice. ‘What was his name again?’
‘Jason,’ Beth said. ‘Luckily, Uncle George hadn’t written to the Kennel Club yet, so we can add our kennel name when we register him. Throaks. Short for Three Oaks.’
‘I’m sure he’ll love that,’ Young said.
There was another short and nasty silence. The comfortable room seemed to have lost its friendly atmosphere the moment the Youngs walked into it.
The sketch had been passing from hand to hand and was now with Beth. She put it down carefully on the coffee table. ‘What family do you have?’ she asked, falling back on the woman’s eternal stand-by for bridging awkward gaps in conversation.
Hilda Young brightened immediately. ‘Two girls and a boy,’ she said. ‘There’s quite a good school locally, so that’s where they go. A boarding school was out of the question.’
‘You know we both agreed—’ her husband began.
‘We disapprove of private education,’ Mrs Young amended quickly. ‘And we feel that boarding schools aren’t good for the more sensitive children. It’s nicer to have them at home, of course, but it does make rather a crush in that wee house.’ She glanced apprehensively at her husband.
‘We rather hope to be moving soon,’ Young said.
‘George made a provision in his will,’ Hattie said. ‘Alistair and Hilda can exchange houses with me, provided that they pay the difference between the two values as estimated by a mutually chosen surveyor. I was agreeable,’ she added quickly. ‘George consulted me when he made his will. This house will be too big for me on my own, and I’ll be fine and happy in the smaller one. It has just the same view over the loch.’
‘We’ll have a separate dining room again,’ Hilda said happily. ‘And the girls can have their own bedrooms, which will be a blessing, because we can make them responsible for tidying their own. When you have bairns,’ she told Beth, ‘never ever let them share a room or you’ll find their stuff all over the floor; and whichever of them you tell to pick it up, what do you get? “That isn’t mine. I didn’t drop it.”’
‘I’ll remember,’ Beth said, smiling.
‘And Alistair’s offered me a hundred pounds for George’s old gun,’ Hattie said. ‘It isn’t here, of course. The police are holding it for the moment, because I don’t have whatever sort of certificate it is that you need. But that’ll answer another little problem.’
I was suddenly suspicious. A hundred pounds does not buy much of a gun. ‘Had he had it long?’ I asked.
‘Since the year dot,’ said Young.
‘About thirty years, I suppose,’ Hattie said. ‘He had it made for him in Edinburgh when he was a young man. It was a present from his father. Somebody called Dickson made it. I remember that because Dickson was my maiden name.’
A custom-built Dickson from the 1950s or 1960s would be worth a lot of money unless . . . ‘Unless he’s backed the car over it or dropped it into salt water—’ I began.
‘George was aye very careful of his things,’ Hattie said seriously.
‘Then I think that you should have it valued,’ I said.
Alistair Young bristled. ‘I hardly think—’
My tongue decided to run away with me. ‘Or,’ I said, ‘if you prefer, I’ll give you two hundred for it, sight unseen.’
Young hesitated. He was caught in a trap. If he increased his offer he would be admitting that he had been looking for a thief’s bargain. If he agreed to a valuation, the same fact would emerge later but with greater clarity. He took the only way out. ‘I am not joining in an auction,’ he said with dignity. ‘I was only trying to help an old friend out of a tricky situation. My offer is withdrawn. Hattie, I suggest that you accept this young man’s rash offer.’
They left shortly afterwards. Hattie saw them to the door. Her manner was apologetic. When she came back she said, ‘That wasn’t very nice.’
I assumed, perhaps wrongly, that she was referring to my behaviour. ‘I’m sorry, but nor was he. And he was trying to rip you off,’ I told her.
‘I’m not going to fash myself over a few pounds for an old gun.’
I held my peace. If she still wanted to give Alistair Young a bargain despite my warning, at least she could give it with her eyes open.
*
An unfortunate chance might have marred our visit.
My physique might be recovering from the years of illness, but my nerves were slower to mend and I was still prey to insomnia, induced by anxieties real or imagined. The squabble with Alistair Young, coming on top of my concern over George Muir’s
death, had unsettled me. Sleep was slow to come in a strange and lonely bed. I crept through to Beth. We both felt loving, though in a Platonic way, and we soon fell asleep comfortingly entwined.
It would not do for Hattie to find us together, so I set my mental alarm clock for 6.30. Unfortunately that clock, which had never let me down during my army days, had become rusty with disuse. We were woken by Hattie, who brought Beth a cup of tea at eight.
She said nothing at the time, but made a tight-lipped exit. Over breakfast, however, her soft, Highland voice embarked on a contrastingly stern lecture in which religious morality, the physical and psychological dangers of promiscuity and the decline of the younger generation were obscurely mingled.
My view was that ‘Least said, soonest mended’, and while, from my own confused ethics, I would have disputed the applicability of her sentiments to Beth and myself, I agreed in principle with most of them. I was prepared to listen in respectful silence, but Beth, who never hesitated to read me a lecture of her own, was just as determined that nobody else should ever think ill of me. She broke into Hattie’s lecture.
‘We won’t come back tonight, if you think we’ve abused your hospitality,’ she said. She was pink but determined. ‘We wouldn’t want to upset you when you’ve been so good to us. But nothing happened. John still isn’t fit after his illness.’
The last two statements, taken separately, were true. As a single entity, they were misleading to say the least. I could even have resented the implication, except that I was too amused by the truly feminine example of suppressio veri.
There is a certain type of West Highlander who is the world’s foremost example of double thinking. Strict Sabbatarians and churchgoers, they are scandalised by any example of overt sexuality; yet they are at the same time romantics. Convention seems to be satisfied provided only that marriage takes place before the arrival of the firstborn, following a presumably immaculate conception.
Doghouse (Three Oaks Book 3) Page 4