‘Can mice make all that noise?’
‘You’d be surprised. Sometimes they sound as if they’re wearing tackety boots.’
‘Well, I’m not keen on mice, but I’m relieved it’s nothing worse.’
‘Did you think ghostly McNeill servants were having a ceilidh up there?’
‘Kind of,’ she says, lamely.
‘Listen, I’m coming back to the island tomorrow. I’ll fetch some traps. And these plug-in things that do stuff to the wiring. I’ll try and find some of those.’
‘What about the thump from downstairs?’
‘You know the fridge makes a noise, don’t you?’
‘The fridge?’
‘I noticed it when I was there. The motor runs and then when it stops for a bit it makes quite a loud juddering noise. I don’t think you notice it in the daytime because of all the birds and the sea and the wind.’
She thinks about it. ‘Yes – it could be that, I suppose.’
‘Do you want me to come round tomorrow? I could be on the last ferry of the morning if I get a move on, leave early. I’ll see if I can get some mousetraps on the way.’
‘Are you sure? I mean, were you coming anyway?’
‘Aye, I was. I said I was. I had things to do here, but I was planning to come back for the rest of the week. I can lend a hand. I know I’m a dealer and all that and you probably think I have ulterior motives...’
‘It had crossed my mind.’
‘Well, if I’m honest, it had more than crossed my mind too. I’ve been dying to get a look inside Auchenblae since I was a lad and we used to think your granny was a witch, God forgive us. But I’m happy to help.’
‘We could venture into the tower.’
‘Are you scared of it?’
‘A bit. It seems so neglected. As though my grandmother didn’t even go there. I don’t know why I feel like that but I do. I’ll feel better when I’ve explored it.’
‘We’ll brave it together then.’
‘OK.’
To tell the truth, she wishes he were here right now. Preferably in bed with her. For a moment, she wonders how he would react if she came right out with it. He would run a mile probably. She has to remind herself that he’s almost certainly more interested in her house and its contents than her body. For two years previously, she had been in an on-off relationship with a history lecturer, separated from his wife and wary of committing himself fully to anybody new – or so he said. Then she had seen him with one of the younger lecturers, sitting at a table in the Kelvingrove gallery, knee touching knee, hands entwined across the table.
‘I didn’t want to hurt you,’ he had said.
That had been last year. She had promised herself there and then that she would take a break. Concentrate on taking her business to the next level, whatever that might be, until the unexpected news of her inheritance and her unknown grandmother had thrown everything into confusion. The last thing she needs now is another attractive but potentially unreliable man. All the same, in the early hours of the morning, in her crumbling castle, the prospect of his company seems very comforting.
‘See you then,’ he says. ‘Oh, and by the way, I’ll be bringing somebody with me.’
‘Who?’ She has a pang of disappointment. His girlfriend maybe?
He chuckles into the phone, intimate, very close to her ear. ‘You’ll see,’ he says. ‘And if you hear any more sinister noises, give me a ring. I don’t know what I can do from the back of the Botanics, but I’ll do what I can. Even if it means sending out the lifeboat.’
He rings off. She falls into a deep and dreamless sleep, and is woken only by the seabirds, screeching around the house in the early morning. It promises to be a very fine day.
ELEVEN
In the morning, Daisy finds a selection of cleaning materials and starts on the downstairs rooms, mopping the floors, opening windows and letting in air and sunshine. On the seaward side of the house she finds a couple of lines strung between clothes poles. She hauls some of the rugs outside and pegs them out for the breeze to freshen them. Just after her late breakfast or early lunch, a gallon of coffee and a slice of toast and marmalade, Daisy hears what she assumes is Cal’s car on the quiet road outside. There is no other traffic. Auchenblae sits on a narrow lane between high gorse hedges, blooming more or less all year round, but beginning to be dazzling at this time of year. Beyond the house, the potholed lane bends away from the sea again and narrows into a muddy track, leading only to the wishing tree. She hears the creak of the iron gates as Cal swings them open before driving in and goes to open the door for him.
Her hair is pulled back with a rubber band and she is wearing a grubby blue and white striped apron that she found hanging on a peg in the kitchen. When she first put it on, she found a tissue in the pocket. It smelled faintly of lavender and she wondered if Viola had left it there. She wishes she could speak to her grandmother. There are so many questions she would want to ask. She has found the time to pick a big bunch of budding wild flowers, campion and bluebells and frothy ground elder, and she has stuck them in a cream stoneware jug on the oak table.
Cal gets out of the car and goes round to open the passenger door. To her surprise, a shaggy, biscuit-coloured dog of indeterminate breed leaps out and starts to cavort around her, wagging his tail, play-bowing in front of her. The animal searches frantically for something to give her, finds a stick, seizes it and drops it at her feet, his tongue lolling, his head on one side.
‘Meet Hector,’ says Cal. ‘I told you I was bringing somebody with me.’
‘I thought you meant a person!’
‘Hector, she thinks you’re not a person! I can assure you he is. In fact, he’s got more personality than most people I know. He’s a recycled dog. Very suitable.’
‘Recycled from what?’
‘From the dog rescue place at Cardonald. He’d been dumped as a puppy. He looked as if he had mange, but it was just a flea allergy. Chucked out on the A77 somewhere south of Glasgow. Don’t you just love people, eh?’ He looks very fierce all of a sudden.
Hector wags his tail frantically in agreement. He genuinely does love people. He comes to be petted, then rushes off in pursuit of his stick again. His sandy coat is rough and shaggy under her fingers.
‘How are you with dogs? I should have asked you, but I figured he could stay in the car if you’re not a fan. I usually bring him with me. He does love the island so much.’
‘No, I’m fine with dogs. It’s fine.’ Last night, hearing the thud downstairs and the rustle and scurry above her head, it had occurred to her that it would be good to have a dog. The flat in Glasgow has always been too small to house anything but the most undemanding pets: the odd gerbil or goldfish, when she was much younger.
‘You can borrow him if you like,’ says Cal, suddenly. ‘I mean temporarily. I wouldn’t give him away for the world. But he can sleep here while you’re on the island if you want.’
‘I have to go home at the weekend anyway. I have a fair.’
‘Ah yes. So you said.’
‘But I’m planning to come back soon. Stay for a bit longer if I can. I needed to suss it out first. See if the place was habitable.’
‘And it is, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. It is. So I thought I might come back for a few weeks. See how I get on. But I have to keep selling things. I don’t have any other income. I have to make a living.’
‘Well, if you want to borrow Hector for a while, you’re very welcome. We can make some arrangement.’
‘Would he be OK here?’
‘He seems to like you. And he’s a very discerning chap, our Hector.’
Hearing his name, the dog wags his tail, rushes over, licks Cal’s hand briefly, and charges off to sniff the undergrowth.
‘Actually,’ says Cal, ‘he’s not so much discerning as easy. He�
��ll go with anyone who feeds him. He’s the most laid-back dog I’ve ever met. I have this town house at the back of the Botanics, in Glasgow, and he spends some of his time there, sleeping, or in the gardens when he can persuade somebody to take him for a walk, some of his time on the road with me, and the rest here on Garve, chasing rabbits whenever he can.’
‘It sounds like a great life.’
‘It is. He’s happier than I am. But he’s no guard dog. Although I think he’d be company for you. Just having him in the house.’ He looks around. ‘Seems to me that you have enough stock here to last you a lifetime.’
‘Well yes. But I have to be careful. I don’t want to let anything go that I might regret later.’ She frowns at him, still suspicious.
‘Oh, that’s for sure,’ he says, ingenuously. ‘No dodgy house clearance guys in here!’
She finds herself laughing. She can’t help it. He’s the kind of man who makes you laugh. ‘No. In fact, no dodgy guys at all.’
‘I don’t do house clearances, hen.’
The way he calls her ‘hen’ reminds her both of her father and her grandma Nancy. Hen, sweetheart, which is she?
‘I don’t suppose you do. Not with a shop like the one you have.’
‘It’s not mine, though. My mum and dad own the shop. I just have an interest in it and they pay me a retainer, for the buying, plus commission on sales. Quite a lot of commission sometimes. But it’s their business really. Not mine.’
They go into the house. She makes a big pot of coffee and they sit at the oak table in the living room. The back door is open and Hector stretches himself out across the doorstep in the sunshine.
‘You sound as though you don’t much like the shop.’
‘Have you ever worked in a shop?’
‘No. Only fairs. My dad’s a musician. I started off doing stalls when he had a gig. Now I do quite a bit of online stuff as well. I have a degree in history, but I worked for one of the west of Scotland auction houses for a while. It kind of gave me a taste for it.’
‘My mum worked in an auction house too.’
‘I don’t think I was on quite the same level as your mum. I was a lowly porter. Packed things, unpacked them. Made sure the punters didn’t smash them. Or pocket them. Took phone bids. They can be a grumpy bunch, dealers. Especially the old men. I expect your mum’s an expert.’
‘Have you been talking to Mrs Cameron?’
‘She was telling me a bit about you. I asked her,’ she says, apologetically.
‘Mum’s an art historian and conservator. She met my father at a private view.’
He frowns, drains his mug and holds it out for a refill. She wonders if his apparent hyperactivity is down to caffeine. ‘Have you seen his work? Do you like it?’ he asks, abruptly. The truth is that she has indeed seen some of the work and disliked it, but before she can think of anything tactful to say, he pre-empts her. ‘I don’t mind his early stuff. He used to do these strange little studies of the island. But that was before he got bitten by the urban bug. Now it’s just moody, repetitive crap as far as I’m concerned.’
She shifts uncomfortably, not used to hearing somebody criticise a parent so forthrightly. She would never be so disloyal to her own father. Besides, she loves him too much.
‘Sorry,’ he says, noticing her discomfort. ‘I get the bit between my teeth where Dad’s concerned. We don’t often see eye to eye. He’s difficult. Thinks I should knuckle down and spend a lot more time in the shop.’
‘What do you want to do then?’
‘Me? I did a course in furniture restoration. I’d like to do a lot more of that.’
‘I’d have thought your dad would approve of something like that.’
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But he doesn’t get the whole artisan thing. Despises what he calls crafts. Spent a fortune on our education, mine and Catriona’s. That’s my younger sister. And we both discovered that we wanted to go off and get our hands dirty. Catty more successfully than me. Very dirty indeed.’
‘What does your sister do?’ She doesn’t like to admit that Elspeth Cameron has already told her.
‘She escaped. Catty’s married to a hill farmer, back on the mainland. Jake Brodie. Not all that far from the ferry, which means I get to see them all quite often. Sheep farmers. Hard graft. As far as I can see, sheep mainly want to get dead and they find a hundred ways of doing it. But she thrives on it. They both do. And they have three kids as well. I like their life. Not sure I’d want to live it myself, mind you. But I do like watching them living it.’
*
A little later, he finishes his coffee, stands up and says, ‘It’s now or never, sweetheart. We’d better go and have a look at this tower.’
Hector stands up too, yawns and shakes himself. He’s ready for anything, wagging his tail enthusiastically, grinning at them.
‘There’s a door in the kitchen, isn’t there?’
‘Yes. And one outside as well, further along. The one in the kitchen will be easier.’
‘Let’s go in that way then.’ He picks up the tray and heads for the kitchen, Hector scurrying after him, his nails clicking on the floor. She follows them more slowly.
‘You’ve left the key in the door.’
‘I had a look in and then locked it again. It’s OK. It’s not too stiff.’
She watches as he turns the key in the big lock and tugs at the door. It swings open, quite quietly. No horror movie creaks this time. Hector patters inside, stops, turns to face them, tail down. He doesn’t like the look of the broad stairs, curving both up and down.
‘So where does the outside door go in then?’
‘Further along. Just before you get to the bit where the tower meets the garden wall. There must be another stair along there.’
‘So there must. The levels are a bit different then.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, you’d sort of expect the rooms in here to be on the same level as the house back there, but they aren’t. Not quite anyway. I’m wondering which came first?’
‘The tower, surely.’
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But perhaps not. This tower could be an addition. The new wing.’ He chuckles. ‘Except not that new.’
She’s intrigued, in spite of the almost constant tension in the pit of her stomach at the sheer magnitude of her inheritance.
‘I wonder what’s down there?’ She peers down the curve of the spiral.
He grins. ‘Maybe you have dungeons!’
‘It isn’t dark enough for dungeons. Old kitchens, maybe?’
Cal pushes Hector out of the way and heads down the first few stairs. She hangs back, her hand on the dog’s wiry coat.
Cal calls up to her as he goes. ‘It’s OK. There’s a doorway here. It isn’t very far down at all. It’s actually wired, Daisy. There are lights here. Bet the leccy’s a bit dodgy, though.’
Hector gazes after him, whining.
‘Go on,’ she says, patting the dog on his bum. ‘Go on down! You’ll be fine.’
He still doesn’t like it much, but when Cal calls to him, he gallops down the stairs and disappears. Daisy follows, reluctantly, but this section of stair is very much shorter and wider than she expected. There are metal light fittings with wires leading up to them, and dusty lightbulbs on the walls. Only a little way down, there is another massive oak door. It is standing open and she can just make out Cal inside, with Hector sitting next to him, panting. The room is gloomy, but not dark. She has imagined the tower to be empty and echoing, big, dark rooms, smelling of damp. Cobwebs everywhere. Large spiders, undisturbed for years. But it isn’t like that at all.
‘What is it?’ she says. ‘What’s in there? Is it a kitchen?’
‘Come in and see for yourself! I don’t think this was the old kitchen. I think that’s further down still
. The stairs keep going. I’ll bet the door you can see from the outside is on this level. In fact, I can see it. So the ground must slope a bit.’
She steps into a large room with stone walls and floor, incredibly dirty windows on opposite sides shedding some light: salty on the outside, dusty and cobwebby on the inside. This room is only a little way below the level of the rest of the house. Shrouded shapes, covered in dust sheets and grubby blankets, loom at her. Cal finds a light switch – an old circular affair that makes him draw in his breath and mutter ‘not seen one of these for years’ – and gingerly presses it. There are meagre lamps on one wall. They are surprised to find that the lightbulbs appear to be working. They don’t exactly flood the room with light, but it becomes easier to make things out: tea chests, one piled precariously on top of another, old-fashioned wooden blanket boxes, a couple of metal trunks, a pile of elderly suitcases and larger pieces of furniture shrouded in dust sheets. There are a great many heaps of frames stacked face against the wall so that you can’t see at first glance whether they are empty or still contain pictures.
‘See what I mean,’ Cal says, grinning at her through the gloom. Hector is skittering about sniffing at things. ‘Hector! Don’t you dare pee on anything,’ he says, sharply. The dog, looking guilty as only dogs can, comes back, wagging his tail.
‘Oh God!’ Daisy shakes her head, between fascination and dismay. ‘I thought this would be empty.’
‘I was afraid it would be,’ he says, giving her a sidelong glance.
‘It’s all right for you. I mean, everything is quite neat in the other part of the house, or half empty, like the servants’ quarters.’
‘You thought Viola or her parents might have had a big clearout.’
‘I was kind of hoping that would be the case. I can’t cope with all this.’
The Posy Ring Page 12