To be fair, Norman had been faithful to his late wife for over thirty years, only once dallying with an air hostess on a business trip to Singapore. Prior to his marriage, however, he had been considered a bit of a catch and notched up an impressive portfolio of conquests before succumbing to the charms and substantial bank balance of his employer’s daughter.
That, of course, was the problem. Throughout his career Norman, his marital duties preoccupying every minute of his spare time, had been kept far too busy to philander. Now that his wife was gone – taken by breast cancer at the age of fifty – he had all the time in the world to feel sorry for himself, and, despite the creative urges which drove him to spend hours of torment in front of a word processor, he was bored.
And that was when the trouble began. On the pretext of delivering a package to the wrong address, Norman had one afternoon called upon Mrs Pru Spalding in the hope of encountering her daughter. Jan was not in at the time, but Pru had made Norman suitably welcome. There followed flowers, and in gratitude Pru invited him to Sunday tea to meet Jan. Having been formally introduced, the courting commenced in earnest, with Norman entirely oblivious to the fact that Jan was not even remotely interested in him.
It was most unfortunate. He had never previously been spurned by the opposite sex, and Norman’s persistence soon became an embarrassment. As the days passed, it was inevitable that Rachel and Alice should be drawn into the fiasco.
Sensing their friend’s growing irritation with the constant phone calls and the notes of endearment that were pushed under her front door almost every other night, they proposed that something be done about it.
‘Why don’t we cast a spell over him?’ suggested Rachel. ‘I’m sure we can look up some ancient curse to sort him out. There must be something we can do. His sort have been around for centuries.’
That weekend, once again exploring the Trossachs, the three women unloaded their picnic and, consulting a book of spells, set about the bewitching of Norman Lovet.
‘In the night and in this hour, we call upon the ancient powers. Bring them to we sisters three. A eunuch will he henceforth be.’
None of them took any of this particularly seriously, and when they had finished chanting aloud under the night sky, they all three rolled around on the ground convulsed in laughter. ‘That’ll teach him,’ cried out Alice. ‘That’ll teach him to meddle with the Trossach witches.’
The following day was a Monday, and Jan set off bright and early for school as usual. On her way, she glanced over towards the bothy and experienced just a slight twinge of guilt. There was no sign of movement, so she relaxed. However, later that morning she received a call from her mother, who sounded distraught.
‘I thought you should know about poor Norman,’ said Pru in a voice charged with emotion.
‘What’s happened, Mum?’ said Jan with a mounting feeling of dread.
‘It’s just too terrible to talk about,’ said Pru. ‘It’s Norman, the poor man. He was crossing Farmer MacEwan’s field yesterday afternoon, you know the one we’ve all been warned to avoid, and he got trampled by that great brute of a bull. It’s just too dreadful. I’ve seen the district nurse and she says he’ll never be able to father children!’
17
THE LANDSCAPE OVER THE FIREPLACE
A house is never still in darkness to those who listen intently; there is a whispering in distant chambers, an unearthly hand presses the snib of the window, the latch rises. Ghosts were created when the first man awoke in the night.
JM Barrie, The Little Minister (1891)
The massive oil painting had hung in its heavy gilt frame over Great-aunt Alison’s fireplace for as long as Sandra could remember. She had never paid much attention to it when she was a child, but now that the old lady was dead, Sandra had come to take stock of the gloomy Victorian house in Woodside, on the outskirts of Aberdeen. For such a prominently placed picture, it appeared strikingly modern amid its period surroundings of flock wallpaper, faded chintz and wilted pot plants. Only its frame kept faith with the early twentieth-century decor.
A sense of guilt gripped Sandra Pottinger as she and her great-aunt’s executor, a gauche young lawyer in a striped suit, explored the print-hung corridors and poked about among the dusty rooms, several of which seemed not to have seen the light of day for years. A pang of guilt enveloped her. Over the past ten years she had been far too busy with her own life bringing up her children and making ends meet to maintain contact with the old lady. At least, that was her excuse. Now it was too late. Sandra knew she should have made more of an effort over Great-aunt Alison. She had been the last of that generation, and as her nearest relative, all of this, the house and its contents, now belonged to Sandra. Knowing this simply enhanced the realisation that she had hardly known her grandmother’s younger sister.
As she appraised the bulky Victorian wood furniture, the porcelain bric-a-brac, threadbare rugs and heavy curtain drapes, it seemed that all that she and the lawyer could think about was how much was everything worth. How horrible to think that once you are gone, that is all there is to it; an entire existence, relegated to an auction saleroom to generate cash.
By now, Sandra’s conscience was really playing up. Great-aunt Alison had barely been cremated and here they were, these virtual strangers behaving like predatory vultures, evaluating how much the house and its treasures would fetch; the treasures of an old lady’s entire lifetime; treasures Sandra had never expected to inherit.
Alison Bradie was in her nineties when she died, and little if any contact had been maintained with her since the death of Sandra’s mother fourteen years earlier. There had been the generous gift of some silver when Sandra married, a nuisance to keep clean but nonetheless welcome. Being reluctant to travel, Great-aunt Alison had not attended the wedding. Christmas cards had nevertheless been exchanged annually, and when the children were born, Sandra had sent photographs.
Of course, Sandra had known the house well when she herself was a child, but in all innocence had never asked any of the questions she should have about Great-aunt Alison. All she knew about her was that she had never married, a stigma for her parents’ generation that you did not talk about; that in her middle age Great-aunt Alison had worked as a housekeeper for a wealthy bachelor who, when he died, had left her his house with a small private income. Perhaps Sandra was imagining it, but she was sure that there had been some sort of mystery about Great-aunt Alison’s early life. It had never been mentioned by the family, although Alison and her sister, Sandra’s grandmother, had remained close until the latter’s death.
When Sandra’s parents moved to live in the south of England, it became too much of an excursion for them to return regularly to Aberdeen, and Sandra had no recollection of Great-aunt Alison ever visiting them in Surrey. As the years flew past, she had almost forgotten that Alison existed, that is until the solicitor’s letter arrived. Her death had come out of the blue, but as it transpired, proved a timely blessing.
There were school fees and the mortgage to pay. With her husband Paul being passed over for advancement in the sports promotion agency where he worked, every little helped.
As Sandra continued her inspection of the house, she once more succumbed to a great well of regret. Great-aunt Alison had certainly lived to a good age; she had had a good innings, as people say when they can think of nothing else.
But that did not make Sandra feel any better. Great-aunt Alison was the last link with her own mother’s past. Despite her inheritance, and the money it brought her, Sandra was only too aware that this was somebody she felt she had never really known, and would never now have the opportunity to know. How selfish we are when we are young, she murmured under her breath as the thoughts accumulated.
It appeared that, latterly, Great-aunt Alison had occupied only a bedroom on the first floor, and the stone-flagged kitchen with its ancient Aga in the basement. The public rooms were closed up.
Although fiercely independent, Alison Bradie
had asked neither family nor friends for help. Towards the end there had been day visitors who kept her fed and watered and to some extent cleaned the rooms. Sandra’s first instinct on entering through the front porch had been to throw open the shutters and windows to allow fresh air to circulate. It was a bright autumn day with a brisk North Sea off-shore breeze. As Sandra stood on her own in the drawing room, a shaft of yellow sunlight fell on the oil painting hanging over the fireplace and she was struck by its beauty. She had never before rated Scottish landscapes. They were generally too stark and overpowering, with lots of orange cattle dotted about. But this one was exceptional. It was hypnotic.
Decades of smoke from the open fireplace had coated its surface, but the colours still shone through. Sandra could clearly make out a range of hills overhung with racing rainclouds. In the foreground was a wisp of smoke climbing from the chimney of a tiny dwelling place on the shores of a silver loch. In an adjacent field were two figures seemingly absorbed in chopping wood. Tucked into the fold of a hill was a small church, encroached upon by a graveyard. The detail was fantastic, thought Sandra, searching for a signature or clue as to the artist’s identity.
All she could make out was the date – 1938 – and an indecipherable squiggle. No clue was given as to the location. Sandra’s thoughts were racing ahead of her when they were interrupted by the arrival of Alison’s lawyer carrying the urn with her ashes. Ignoring this, Sandra asked him if he knew anything about the painting.
‘You’ll find out when it is valued for probate,’ he informed her, placing the urn on a side table. ‘Probably fetch you a couple of grand in the auction rooms.’
As he spoke, a Georgian carriage clock perched prominently on the mantelpiece overturned and crashed to the floor, the glass cracking. ‘That’s a shame,’ he continued briskly. ‘That would have been worth a few bob.’
Sandra stared at him. ‘Did you know my great-aunt?’ she asked.
‘Only met her once,’ he replied. ‘Old McKillop, the senior partner, looked after her affairs. We’d all expected him to pack it in when he hit seventy, but he just went on and on and on until the Almighty gathered him in January. What a way to go! He fell off his bike at a protest meeting to stop that American building a golf course on Balmeddie Beach. A great golfer, was Old McKillop, but he didn’t want his beloved environment to be buggered up.’
‘Balmeddie Beach? Is that somewhere I could scatter my great-aunt’s ashes?’ asked Sandra on impulse.
‘No chance,’ came the response. ‘Miss Bradie was very specific about that in her will. She wanted them to go into the sea somewhere called Loch Buie. I think it’s on Mull.’
Sandra looked appalled. ‘How on earth am I expected to do that?’ she gasped. ‘I don’t even know where Mull is, let alone Loch Buie.’
The young lawyer smiled. ‘That’s your problem, Mrs Pottinger,’ he said, gesturing towards the urn. ‘I’d best get back to the office.’
When Paul telephoned Sandra that evening, she told him about Great-aunt Alison’s last wishes.
‘I wouldn’t bother, if I were you,’ he said. ‘She’s long past caring about that now.’
Sandra was inclined to agree, but her conscience still pricked her with a gnawing doubt that was unlikely to be dispersed when she decided to stay overnight in the old house. The least she could do was consult the touring map in the glove pocket of her hire car. And there it was. Loch Buie was situated on the south coast of the island of Mull, fourteen miles from the ferry terminal at Craignure.
‘Sorry, Great-aunt Alison,’ muttered Sandra under her breath as she climbed into bed. ‘You’ll have to make do with Balmeddie.’
The night fell silent, but towards daybreak Sandra awoke to a persistent rattling noise coming from downstairs. At first she tried to ignore it, but the sound merely increased in volume. Finally she went to investigate and, wrapping herself in a dressing gown, descended the staircase. The sounds were coming from the drawing room, but stopped when she entered and switched on the lights.
The first thing she noticed was that the funeral urn had been moved to the fireplace. She could have sworn it had been on the side table where the lawyer had left it, but it was now pressed up against the fire guard, where the clock had fallen. Convinced her mind was playing tricks on her, Sandra flicked the light switch inside the door, but the over-light above the oil painting remained on. That was odd, she thought to herself. There must be another switch but, search as she did, she was unable to locate it. There were no connections on either side of the fireplace. Nor could she see plugs on the skirting board.
That was very odd. Moreover, she could not remember the over-light having been on before, and once again she found herself staring at the painting. It was certainly striking, she confirmed to herself, and this time she noticed that there was something that looked like lettering under the paintwork in the left-hand corner. Removing a handkerchief from her pocket, she dampened the fabric with her tongue and rubbed the surface. As she continued to rub, the dirt slowly lifted away and, much to her amazement, the words ‘Loch Buie’ were revealed.
It was at that moment she decided that despite the inconvenience, she would take Great-aunt Alison’s ashes to Loch Buie. When she returned to bed, the house became silent and Sandra fell into a deep sleep in which she dreamed of a woman in her early twenties and a man of around the same age. They were laughing together as they cast fishing lines over the side of a small boat floating on a loch surrounded by high hills. The following morning, the overwhelming sense of happiness created by the dream filled Sandra with a sensation of great contentment.
That morning, having secured all of the doors and windows, Sandra packed her suitcase, loaded Great-aunt Alison’s ashes into the boot of the car, and set off to drive west, bypassing Inverness, to travel south and south-west again towards Argyllshire and the sea port of Oban. It was midday by the time she arrived at the ferry terminal, but she was just in time to book the car onto the CalMac. At Craignure, she asked for directions to Loch Buie and set off to follow the signs to Fionnphort, turning south onto one of the narrowest and windiest tracks she had ever seen.
When eventually she arrived at the village of Lochbuie, on the curve of Loch Buie, it was mid-afternoon. Rounding a corner, she pulled over beside the loch to inspect the picturesque little church, which she recognised instantly. It was the church in the oil painting. At the door stood an elderly woman, her hair tucked up into a woollen bonnet, her shoulders wrapped in a plaid shawl.
‘You’ll be the one with Alison Bradie’s ashes,’ she said in a matter-of-fact manner.
Sandra stared at the stranger in astonishment. ‘How can you possibly know that?’ she gasped.
The woman’s face cracked in a smile. ‘I saw in the newspaper she’d gone. They called me from Craignure to tell me you were on your way.’
People on islands are still like that, thought Sandra. She remembered having told the ferry master the purpose of her visit. ‘But who are you?’ she exclaimed, bewildered.
‘Let me show you,’ said the woman gently. Taking Sandra’s hand, she led her round the side of the church to a simple commemorative stone. On it was carved: ‘Rhuaridh Maclean. Painter, sculptor and lobster fisherman. 1912–1939. Lost at Sea.’
‘Rhuaridh was my oldest brother,’ she explained. ‘I am Norma Maclean. Alison was betrothed to Rhuaridh, but my father did his utmost to prevent them from marrying because he didn’t approve of the way Rhuaridh earned his living.
‘Besides, he said Alison was too young. Such nonsense. She was nineteen, and her parents liked Rhuaridh, so there was not much my parents could do about it.
‘And it was not as if Rhuaridh didn’t have his own money. He sold a lot of his paintings. He was very successful – he even exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. So they decided to come here to a croft on the Moy estate in search of the simple life. Mull’s a great place to live if you’re an artist . . .’ She paused. ‘But you must be one of the famil
y,’ she said as an afterthought.
‘Her great-niece,’ said Sandra. ‘Alison left me her house in Aberdeen.’
Norma nodded. ‘My brother’s house,’ she said.
‘How do you mean? I thought Great-aunt Alison worked there as the owner’s housekeeper?’
‘That was Lachlan, my other brother,’ replied Norma. ‘Like me, he wasn’t that keen on marriage, was Lachlan, especially when he saw how my father treated our mother and our brother. When Rhuaridh died, Lachlan offered Alison a home. I think that he’d always had a thing for her, but he’d never have done anything about it. That was Lachlan.
‘She couldn’t stay here on Mull, of course. Or rather, she wouldn’t stay here. There was too much sorrow. Lachlan and Alison always liked each other, but there was no way he would have married her and nor would she have wanted to marry him.
‘So the only way for it to be respectable in those days was for her to be his housekeeper and keep to her own quarters. They were together for almost half a century. She looked after him well.’
‘But what happened to Rhuaridh?’
Norma Maclean gave off a deep, weary sigh and gazed across Loch Buie towards the Firth of Lorne. ‘One day Rhuaridh just went off in his little motor boat and he never returned. Upturned by the tide off Carsaig Bay, they said. His body should have washed up on the shore near Malcolm’s Point, but it was never found. Alison was devastated. She never recovered from her loss. It broke her heart. That’s why she left. That’s why all these long years later she needs to return.’
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