by A. D. Scott
“Hiya.” Joanne came in with a blast of cold fresh air. “I’m here to meet my husband.” She gave him a peck on the cheek.
She nudged Rob with her shoulder. “Fit like?”
“Brawly guid,” he answered, echoing her east coast dialect.
She grinned at Don. “Don.”
“Lass.”
Seeing the prints spread out on the high table, she asked, “More genius pictures, Hec?”
“The auction sale,” Hec said, nodding in agreement to the point where his neck was in danger of dislocating. He too thought his work genius.
“Aye,” Don told her, “but nothing usable of the golf match.”
“These pictures from inside the clubhouse are good. Since it’s so historical, maybe do a feature on the club?”
“So you’ll write it up?”
“No, Don, you’re not roping me in. Ask McAllister. He was there.”
McAllister was about to protest when he saw the photograph of the nineteenth hole. “Maybe I will. And we’ll use this.” He pointed to the shot of the bar, where a collection of silver cups and shields was prominently displayed. On one side of the trophy cabinet were framed boards with the names of past champions listed in gold lettering. On the other side were the three gentlemen huddled together in conversation.
He was about to ask Hec to crop the men out of the shot, but there was something about them—the closed pose and what appeared to be a grave discussion whilst people all around were chatting, drinking, celebrating the home team’s success. It was a clear picture of the club but not of the men; they were barely recognizable.
Unless you knew them.
Shake the tree, sees what falls, he decided.
Joanne was leafing through the rest of Hec’s prints and looking carefully at the contact sheets. “More or less the whole community was there.” She was talking to herself. “Probably everyone who was at her trial or involved in the case.”
“No doubt the sheriff and the fiscal and every worthy of the county are members of the golf club,” McAllister added.
“With our ridiculous licensing laws, there’s nowhere else to get a drink outside of closing time, so who can blame them?” Don said. Like most men who worked unsociable hours, he was of the opinion that closing bars for the afternoon and shutting altogether at ten in the evening were a major infringement on his liberty.
McAllister suspected that the man had been the passenger in the car that had scared him on the blind bend, but with the speed of the moment, he wasn’t entirely sure there had been someone in the backseat. And although he was curious, his overriding concern was Joanne. No more potential dramas, he’d vowed after seeing her lying in a hospital bed, head bandaged, unconscious, and with no certainty she would recover.
He left the photograph with Don, who was sizing up the dummy page with an em ruler, mentally composing a story on the golf club and the tournament for the sports section.
“Right, Mrs. McAllister, are you ready?” McAllister asked.
“Where are we going?”
“To choose curtains,” he said, turning once more to a contact sheet. “Hec, can I borrow these prints for a day or so?”
“Aye, no problem.”
Joanne was staring at her husband. “Since when are you interested in curtains?”
“You’ll see.” He smiled at her. Patted his pockets for the car keys, put on his hat, and they went out, leaving Don and Hec staring at each other.
“Curtains?” Hec asked. “Is that a code word for . . . ?”
“I’ll explain once you’re safely married,” Don told him.
Joanne returned home with two large envelopes; one contained Hector’s pictures, the other details of the house. McAllister went back to work after the property inspection, saying they’d talk about it when he came home. He could see how, after the initial surprise at the style of the building, she had begun to look at the rooms, particularly the summerhouse, with increasing enthusiasm.
“What are we doing here?” she had asked when they stopped on a street a short distance from where they lived.
“I promised when we married to find you a home that is ours, not mine. Now we are looking.”
She hadn’t forgotten; but she’d not given the idea much thought, especially as their garden was now finally responding after years of indifference on McAllister’s part. Not that she faulted him. He’d confessed that the garden had almost stopped him from buying the house. City men saw grass as useful only on a football pitch.
“It looks expensive,” she said as they turned into the driveway to an angular white building that looked more like a marooned ocean liner than a home. Joanne could not tell him that she was slightly intimidated by the house.
It was large, on huge grounds, and in a style of architecture she had only seen in magazines; deep inside, she felt it was too grand for someone like her. The words, the put-downs—who does she think she is?—were always there to ground any woman who seemed to be living “above their station,” a phrase that she equally delighted in and detested.
Standing in the empty sitting room, seeing the sun streaming through the windows, even this late in autumn, giving the room a warm light glow, she began to feel the possibilities of the house. Almost Mediterranean, she thought, not that I know what Mediterranean light feels like. But she had read of it in magazines and decided it was a style she could make her own.
McAllister had read the contract and the details of the house, had checked it from the outside, but this was the first time he’d seen the interior. And he liked it. Walking around, checking out the rooms, ignoring the kitchen, he examined the sitting room in approval, and ditto the four bedrooms. Standing in the study, he liked the warm honey of the parquet floor, the built-in bookcases, the French doors leading out into the garden.
He was not a practical man; poking about in plumbing and electric wiring, checking for dry rot or woodworm or whatever else could be wrong with a building, was not his forte. But the light, the spaciousness, the clean white lines, inside and out, with nothing to remind him of Scottish baronial architecture, of damp, of mean wee rooms, there was a sense of future to the place.
Joanne went into the garden to inspect the summerhouse. It felt perfect. She could see herself there, at a desk, pen in hand, notebook spread open, a comfortable armchair in the corner, pictures on the one solid wall, a rag rug. She shivered, imagining what Alice would have done with the empty space. Alice. What made her so desperate she’d abandon her retreat?
“I like it.” McAllister returned from a stroll around the property’s perimeter walls. “The garden is a bit big. The bedrooms are nice . . .” He tried to think of what else to say about places he had barely glimpsed, like the kitchen. “The study is grand. And since you’re working at home, it’s just right for you.”
She laughed. “McAllister. Don’t. You know, and I know, that is your room. I’ll even knit a PRIVATE sign for the door. No.” She looked out of another set of French doors leading to a stone terrace and summerhouse beyond. “Out there, that wee place in the garden, that’s my—”
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Room of one’s own,” he finished, knowing how much Joanne enjoyed the Virginia Woolf book.
“I hadn’t thought of it that way, but yes.”
“Do you want to think about it and come back again?”
“I want to think how we could live in a place this big. None of your, our furniture or curtains would fit the style of this place. Then we’d need a new cooker, rugs . . .”
“That’s your department.” He was remembering Angus MacLean the solicitor’s opinion that as the house was so unusual, there might not be a great deal of interest. Most people prefer traditional stone-built houses, he’d said, and the size of the grounds might attract a builder who’d tear the house down and subdivide for two, possibly three new homes.
McAllister hated the idea of moving and saw nothing wrong with their present home. Yet he would suffer the catastrophe of pa
cking and unpacking and decorating and spending months trying to remember where everything was stored, if it made Joanne happy. The possibility that his wife might become distracted and drop the Alice Ramsay obsession was also a motive for moving.
“I need to get back to work,” he told Joanne. “Can you pop in and see Angus and arrange another viewing?”
As he drove down the hill to the Castle car park, she said, “I kept thinking about Alice Ramsay—how she set up her own house, was in the midst of renovating the byre, planting fruit trees and bushes. The book she was working on was almost finished, so she said.” Joanne saw the question from his eyebrows. “Nurse Ogilvie, the landlady at the hotel, Elaine, they all said people liked her. The old people in the home too.”
“Then the court case came along.”
“Alice hated that. But at the same time found it amusing. It was a local scandal, nothing more, she said. Then I . . .” She flushed at the memory of her complicity. “That traitor Forsythe used me. He published her name, her location, exposing her . . . Sorry, I just can’t see . . .” But she could. At the auction in the barn, seeing the solid beams cut to last a hundred or more years, she had imagined Alice up there, swinging.
“Alice killed herself. There is no evidence of anything or anyone . . .”
“It’s just so hard to believe.”
“I know.” He parked the car, wanting the subject over, finished, done with. “So, do you like the house?”
“It’s a lovely house.” But . . . she was thinking and didn’t say.
“Good. I like it too. Don’t get your hopes up, though—you never know how many other possible buyers are out there—but fingers crossed, yes?”
“Thank you.” She smiled. “I’ll try not to be too excited, but that house would be fun, a new beginning.”
And a new obsession, he was wise enough not to say.
“How did it go at the solicitor’s office?” He kissed the top of her head, breathing in the smell of shampoo and Joanne. Being a Thursday, the usual quiet-after-publication day, McAllister was home early.
“Interesting. I’ve an appointment to look at the house again tomorrow, so let’s hope it’s raining; then I can really see what it would be like to live there. And I’ve asked Chiara to come with me.”
“Good idea.” McAllister felt that Joanne’s best friend, Chiara, being Italian, would love the light in the house.
“So what did Angus MacLean say?” He was watching her, her glasses perched on the end of her nose, her hair falling forwards as she reached for her notebook.
“There are two other bidders and no allowance for a building inspection. So he’s going to try to find out if it is in good repair and let us know.”
“Good enough.” He knew how Scottish property sales worked, knew the hazards of the sealed-bidding system.
“Angus showed me this. He knows from Rob the story of Alice and . . .” She didn’t want to say her death. “It was sent to him by a solicitor in Dornoch who’s acting on behalf of the estate.” She handed over a document relating to the sale of Alice Ramsay’s house and land. There was also an asking price, and the price was low. “How come it’s so cheap?” she asked.
“Too remote for most people. Probably gets snowed in in winter. And that track up there will put most potential buyers off.”
“It’s all so sad. By the way, don’t mention the new house in front of the girls.”
They heard the front door open. When the girls came in, McAllister asked, “How was school today?” It was a question their mother had long given up asking, as the answer was always “fine,” or “the same” or “OK.”
She now knew to be specific. “Did you have PT today?” she would ask, knowing the answer was “today was art” or “singing” or any subject more interesting than English or arithmetic.
Annie said, “I’m top in French class.”
“Well done!” McAllister was delighted; fluent in French, he enjoyed helping his stepdaughter and had promised her a holiday in France next year if she came in the top three in her exams.
Annie secretly thought her new father would take them to France no matter her exam results. But, she thought, maybe not if they bought that house.
What Joanne didn’t know was that Annie, with her usual inquisitiveness, had seen the papers describing the house, had jumped to the correct conclusion, and had already gone to Culduthel Road and inspected their potential new home from the outside.
“Milk and a scone?” Joanne asked the girls.
“Yes please,” they chorused.
“Start your homework, and I’ll bring a tray into your room.”
Girls fed and watered, she asked her husband, “Did you unload Alice’s pictures from the car?”
“I’ll do it later.” He had had enough of Miss Alice Ramsay for the time being. “Let’s talk about the White House.” That was his name for his dream home.
The House—in capital letters was how Joanne thought of it. She liked the house, just couldn’t quite see herself in such a grand setting. The cost of moving would be astronomical. “Fine,” she replied. Then, even though she knew her heart’s instinct would overrule the reality, she said, “Let’s discuss the practicalities.”
That week, as was true even in wartime, the Highland Gazette came out on time, no problems, few letters to the editor, and then only complaints about the chaos and destruction of Bridge Street and the delays from the temporary bridge across the Ness while a new one was being built.
The sports section carried a summary of golf tournament results for the Highlands. Don had used the picture of the cabinet of trophies to illustrate another year of successful results for Dornoch.
In the classified section, a notice had been placed stating that a solicitor in Dornoch was handling the affairs of the late Miss Alice Ramsay and any who might have a claim on the estate should contact the office. As the solicitor was legally bound to place this notice, it was not unusual, but with the connection to the “witch trial” and the subsequent suicide, it would attract interest.
Joanne read it. She felt a sense of desolation at the abandonment of a place of such geographical beauty, a place that Alice had been renovating, turning an ordinary Scottish farmhouse of no heritage value into an enchanting refuge. Joanne remembered Alice’s plans for a conservatory, another reason to doubt the suicide verdict. No matter how mistaken it was to see such tragedies as anything other than despair, Joanne couldn’t shake her conviction that killing yourself was much worse than any other death.
But in the spirit of Alice Ramsay, Joanne resolved she would create, in the open space of the shiplike house, a refuge as beautiful as the farmhouse far up the Sutherland glen.
Next morning, Joanne helped McAllister lift the boxes of books and papers from the car into the sitting room. Thoughts of Alice once more intruded. But this time, Joanne told herself, Stop it. You hardly knew the woman. Stop being so maudlin. And forget witches—find something cheerful to write about.
McAllister was leafing through history books, art books, and four books of botanical illustrations, one very old.
Joanne was wiping the dust from the writing box the auctioneer had included in the job lot of books and papers, hoping to finish the auction sale before the pubs shut for the afternoon.
“The box is beautiful. Cherrywood, I think.” She loved the swirl of the grain, the deep red of the wood, the little inkwell, and the groove for the pens, and she appreciated the slope of the writing surface. “The box is old. Sir Walter Scott might have used a traveling desk like this.”
McAllister smiled; his wife’s flights of fancy were yet another part of her that he enjoyed.
“What’s this?” She unlocked the desk with the brass key still in the lock and took out a thick cardboard folder tied with brown twine. It was heavy. She put it on the floor and sat down on the rug. Opening the folder, and finding a bundle of loose papers, she immediately knew what it was. “It’s Alice’s manuscript, the one she said was almost fi
nished.”
“Looks more like a portfolio of paintings.”
“Sort of. But see, the paintings are numbered on the back, and on each painting is a description of the plant’s location. It seems she intended it to be an illustrated book on the flora of the Highlands.” She turned over more pages. “Look at this.” She held out a painting of a tiny wild orchid. “It’s beautiful and, from what she writes here, pretty rare.”
“It is lovely,” he agreed. “Let’s finish unpacking the boxes. Then we can lay the manuscript out and have a proper look. If at all possible, we will do something with it.”
“Have it published?”
“Maybe.”
The idea gave Joanne more pleasure than the thought of having her own work published. “That would be wonderful. It might make up for—” She shook the guilt out of her head. “McAllister, the note, or rather that article and my phone number, will it be part of the evidence at the fatal accident inquiry?”
“Possibly.”
She saw his face close. “What if that was a message to me? What if she was saying she wanted me to question her death?”
McAllister doubted this greatly. But he welcomed anything that made the love of his life feel less responsible for the whole nightmare. “From what we know, the findings of the inquiry are almost certain to be suicide. It would take a professional to fake a . . . that type of method.” Even he balked at the word “hanging.”
The house was silent apart from the rustle and groan and creak of windows and doors and floorboards. Not that it was old, only a hundred years or so since it was built, and the noises were nothing Joanne didn’t recognize; the familiar whispers and grumblings made her feel safe. She rolled paper, interleaved with sheets of blue carbon, into the portable Olivetti, then picked up a pencil opening her reporter’s notebook to summarize what needed doing to Alice’s manuscript.
“People” was the heading. She stopped. Get on with the manuscript. Stop procrastinating. Stop obsessing with the court case. But she needed to revisit the trial, if only to clear her thoughts.