by M. B. Shaw
‘Here we are.’ The housekeeper opened the door to a simple but pretty bedroom, made up in crisp white linens and with a vase of fresh peonies on the dressing table. Walking straight to the mullioned window, Iris found herself looking out over a spectacular view of rolling parkland that seemed to stretch right to the sea. She knew from her drive up here that there was a village between the two, but the gradient was too sharp to be able to see any of Pitfeldy from here. ‘I hope you have everything you need, but if not, don’t hesitate to ring.’ She pointed to an antiquated bell on a pulley next to the door. ‘Eliza will be looking after you during your stay and she’ll be more than happy to help. She’ll also show you to the dining room later.’
Mrs Gregory left her and Iris took a quick shower – the water was a lukewarm, rust-brown trickle, much more the Scotland she remembered. She changed into what she hoped was an appropriate outfit for dinner. The long, floaty, Indian-style dress had a muted paisley print and just enough embellishment to keep it on the right side of ‘hippie’. In the past, Iris had frequently been singled out for her eclectic, colourful dress sense, and not always in a good way. Her ex, Ian, once described her look as ‘jackdaw-meets-lunatic’. It was tough to put a positive spin on that. Since her divorce, Iris had made a conscious effort to rein in her wilder sartorial urges.
Spritzing gardenia scent into her short, towel-dried hair, she applied her usual minimal make-up (primer, mascara, gloss) and cast an appraising look at the result in the antique bathroom mirror. Although others disagreed, Iris had never thought of herself as especially pretty, and that wasn’t about to change as she approached her mid-forties. But she didn’t dislike her face either. Elfin and birdlike, with cartoonishly large eyes, it was at least striking – and relatively wrinkle-free. This evening, however, she was tired after her journey and was still slathering on under-eye concealer when the maid arrived to escort her down to dinner.
Pitfeldy Castle seemed to consist of a large, central section containing all the reception rooms, adjoined on either side by two conical wings consisting mainly of bedrooms and bathrooms. Iris followed Eliza past an impressive-looking library, study and drawing room, all empty, as they made their way to the dining room. (Not to be confused with the much larger dining hall, the maid explained, which was only for big, formal occasions.) There was even a ballroom, vast, empty and covered in dust sheets, adding to the general air of chilly grandeur.
‘When it’s just the family here, they mostly stick to the parlour in the evenings and the morning room during the day,’ Eliza told Iris, who’d wondered aloud where everybody was. ‘But they should all be in the dining room by now, ready to meet you.’
All? thought Iris, wondering who was going to be there, besides Jock MacKinnon and his fiancée. But before she had a chance to ask Eliza, they’d arrived.
‘Here we are.’ Pulling open a set of heavy double doors, the maid ushered Iris into a more modest room, hung on all four sides with rich tapestries of hunting and feasting scenes. In the centre was a long refectory table, sumptuously laid and ringed with wine-red velvet chairs, five of which were already taken. The low hum of conversation stopped abruptly when Iris entered, and five faces turned simultaneously to look at her.
Iris took a quick mental picture. There was a man of about seventy at the head of the table, rigid-backed and tense, flanked by two young women. One was strikingly pretty, the other not. Next to the attractive woman was a younger man, also attractive in a skinny, dark, vulpine sort of way, but his good looks were marred by a sour, miserable expression. Opposite him sat a third man, middle-aged, balding and with the sort of pale, translucent ginger colouring peculiar to the Scots, which might look Lady-of-Shalott ethereal on a woman, but always looked terrible on a man. Older and uglier than the other younger man at the table, he did at least have the advantage of not looking as if he were choking to death on a wasp.
The old man stood up stiffly.
‘Miss Grey.’ He extended his arm robotically and without a trace of warmth, like a retired general meeting a tiresome new recruit. ‘Jock MacKinnon.’
My God, thought Iris, he looks about a hundred and ten.
‘Please call me Iris,’ she said nervously, shaking the leathery hand. ‘Miss Grey makes me sound like a schoolteacher.’
A look of irritation flashed across the baron’s face. First names were clearly not his thing. But it passed quickly as the breathtakingly beautiful young woman sitting to his left stood up and laid a proprietorial hand on his bony shoulder, simultaneously beaming at Iris like a lighthouse.
‘Iiiiiiiiii-ris,’ she sighed, her drawly American accent stretching the first syllable out into what felt like twenty. ‘What a perfect name for a painter! I’m Kathy.’
‘I thought you might be,’ said Iris.
In a tight, red T-shirt dress that showcased her slender figure and toffee tan, and with her tousled, honey-blonde hair framing a face so perfectly featured it almost made you want to laugh, Kathy Miller looked as if she’d just walked off a modelling shoot on Malibu beach.
Iris’s first thought was the same as everybody else’s: How on earth did this goddess of a woman end up with a crumbling, crusty old ruin like Jock MacKinnon? ‘Lovely to meet you,’ she said, exchanging Jock’s age-spotted hand for Kathy’s manicured perfection.
Quickly pulling her hand away, Kathy pressed both palms together, bowing deeply and with more than a hint of drama. ‘Namaste, Iris,’ she breathed heavily. ‘Welcome to our home.’
‘This is my daughter Emma Twomey and her husband Fergus,’ Jock announced before Iris had a chance to react to Kathy’s greeting, nodding brusquely and without obvious affection towards the other woman at the table and the middle-aged man beside her.
Iris smiled at Emma, who struggled to return the compliment, her entire face having begun to curdle at Kathy’s ‘namaste’, as if she’d just ingested dog shit.
‘Twomey Castle’s north of here, in the Highlands,’ added Jock, injecting a note of withering disdain into the word ‘Highlands’, as if he were boasting to Iris that his daughter had married another baron with a castle of his own, while simultaneously declaring his son-in-law’s estate as inferior to his.
‘And this is my son, Rory.’
‘Charmed,’ drawled the vulpine man, shooting Iris a look that made it quite plain he was nothing of the sort. ‘So you’re the famous painter?’ He stifled a yawn as she sat down.
‘Artist. She’s an artist,’ Kathy corrected him, earning herself a look that would have turned a lesser mortal to stone.
‘Painter’s fine,’ said Iris. Not because she wanted to stick up for the horrible Rory, but because it was fine. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you all.’
A horrible silence fell. Everyone except Kathy returned their attention to their food, while she cocked her head like a curious dog and gazed at Iris, staring quite unashamedly, as if Iris were a puzzle she were trying to decipher.
‘My boxes should have arrived at my rental house in the village this morning,’ said Iris, hating herself for filling the silence with inane babble but doing it anyway. ‘But it’s a luxury not to have to start unpacking right away, especially after such a long journey.’
‘I never travel with more than an overnight case, do I, baby?’ said Kathy, looking lovingly at Jock. ‘Our modern obsession with material things has become such a burden. The lighter our loads, the lighter our hearts, that’s my motto.’
‘And the lighter Pa’s wallet, since he met you,’ Rory muttered in a deliberately audible sotto voce.
‘Sorry, Rory, what was that?’ Kathy asked guilelessly. ‘You really must speak up.’ Turning to Iris, she said, ‘The British upper classes are terrible mumblers, don’t you find? I can never understand half of what they’re saying.’
‘It’s an acquired skill,’ Iris agreed, tactfully.
‘I said…’ Rory began.
‘Never mind what you said,’ growled Jock. ‘Either you keep a civil tongue in your head, or you
can find your own dinner. That goes for both of you.’ He glared at Emma, who looked suitably affronted, her pendulous bosoms rising and falling like barrage balloons beneath her prim, high-necked blouse.
‘What did I do?’
‘For one thing, you let that bloody woman in here earlier, pleading about the fair,’ Jock said. ‘You knew how distressing that would be to Kathy.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Pa, “that bloody woman” is the vicar,’ Emma protested. ‘What would you have me do, slam the door in her face?’
‘She slammed the door in our faces, about the wedding,’ said Kathy, reaching out for Jock’s hand and squeezing it, her eyes welling with tears.
Iris watched the drama, gripped, remembering her taxi driver’s commentary earlier about the ‘lovely’ Reverend Michaela, and the spat over the local fair.
‘She did nothing of the sort,’ snapped Rory, turning on Kathy like a roused viper. ‘You do realise just how petulant and spiteful it makes you look, refusing to let her host the fair here? Oh, wait a minute, I forgot. You are petulant and spiteful.’
‘I’m the one refusing,’ Jock boomed, banging his fist down on the table so hard it made the cutlery jump. ‘Not Kathy. Me. It’s my bloody house, and I’m damned if I’m going to have my fiancée upset. Besides, why shouldn’t they hold the damn thing in the village for once?’
Dinner dragged on – beef Wellington and dauphinoise potatoes with a side of tension – and although Iris enjoyed playing the observer (clearly both of Jock’s adult children hated his girlfriend with a passion) she was also tired and ready for her bed. Trying not to get drawn into the embarrassing familial sniping about the impending wedding, Iris spent most of the evening talking to Emma’s husband Fergus, whose sole interest in life appeared to be hunting, and the injustice of the ‘bloody socialists’ all but banning it with their ‘damned Hunting Act’. ‘They don’t understand country life, you see,’ he opined pompously to Iris. Like Jock, he spoke with a cut-glass English accent with no hint of Scots. ‘These oiks from London or Birmingham or wherever it is they crawl out from – I mean, what does a shop girl from Leeds know about farming or tradition or the life of a wild animal? They think of foxes as fluffy bloody teddy bears.’
‘Perhaps they just think it’s cruel to watch living creatures being torn to shreds by dogs?’ Iris suggested mildly. ‘I mean, there are more humane methods of control.’ But Fergus was having none of it. As far as he was concerned, the urban lower classes had no business expressing an opinion on the matter and, in a decent world, would not have been allowed the vote but instead would have to defer to those such as himself.
How worrying, Iris thought, listening to Rory MacKinnon and his father take shots at one another, to think that Fergus was actually the least objectionable person at the table. (Apart from Kathy, who appeared to exist in a weird world of her own, smiling at everybody and exuding an odd serenity as the insults flew around her like bullets.)
After dinner, coffee was served in the parlour. Emma and Fergus immediately excused themselves, pleading exhaustion, and Rory followed suit soon afterwards, mumbling something about ‘work’. Iris had gleaned over dinner that he was a lawyer, based in London, but that he was up at Pitfeldy working on something for his father – a little odd, given the naked hostility between the two men.
‘I am so looking forward to sitting for the portrait,’ Kathy told Iris, as Jock draped a soft cashmere throw lovingly around his fiancée’s bare shoulders. Now that the couple were alone together, the affection between them was obvious. ‘The painting was Jock’s idea, as you know. He is sooo romantic. I mean, what a perfect wedding present, right?’
‘Hmmm.’ Iris nodded but privately thought that a picture of oneself might not be what every new bride was hoping for.
‘I was the one who insisted on you,’ Kathy said proudly.
‘Oh,’ said Iris, genuinely surprised. ‘Do you know my work?’
‘Sure.’ Kathy’s eyes lit up. ‘I was glued to the Dom Wetherby murder case. Glued.’
‘Ah,’ said Iris, disappointed but not entirely surprised. Dom Wetherby, Iris’s last sitter, was a famous book and television writer whose death by drowning last Christmas had gripped the nation. For some reason the media had picked up on Iris’s personal role in bringing Dom’s killer to justice, and she’d found herself a minor celebrity ever since, a sort of artistic Miss Marple.
‘After I saw you on TV, I looked up all your stuff, and I was, like, ‘Yes! She’s the one,’ Kathy gushed. ‘Wasn’t I, honey?’
Jock smiled at her indulgently, a different man from the brittle patriarch Iris had just witnessed with his children at dinner.
‘I know it probably sounds weird to you, but I just felt this strong connection to you right from the start,’ Kathy went on, looking at Iris again with that disconcertingly penetrating stare. ‘Having the chance to work with you will be a beauuutiful experience. I know it.’
‘I hope so,’ said Iris awkwardly. ‘I should warn you that sittings can be long and, frankly, boring sometimes. You might not love every minute.’
Leaning forward on the deep chintz sofa, Kathy clasped Iris’s hands in hers. ‘As long as I grow every minute,’ she rasped huskily. ‘That’s what I care about.’
‘My girlfriend’s a very spiritual person,’ said Jock, reverting to his earlier clipped tones, as if daring Iris to deny it. She noticed his gnarled hands caressing the back of Kathy’s neck in what struck her as a distinctly non-spiritual manner, and was thinking again how strange the dynamic was between the two of them when a knock at the door disturbed them.
‘Sorry to disturb you so late.’ The man in the doorway was young, about thirty, and spoke with a soft Scots accent, his voice altogether gentler than the rough-edged speech of Iris’s taxi driver. He wore workman’s clothes, overalls and heavy boots, but his pale, freckled face and everything about his manner suggested a more refined, educated background than his appearance suggested. ‘I wondered if I could have a quick word?’
‘Angus!’ To Iris’s surprise, Jock’s face lit up like a street lamp. ‘Of course. Come in, my boy, come in.’
The young man hesitated, glancing at the sofa and apparently noticing Iris’s presence for the first time. He was attractive in a diffident, boyish way, she decided.
‘Best not,’ he said to Jock, holding up oil-stained hands.
‘Ah, all right,’ said Jock, still smiling. ‘I’ll come out in that case. But you two must meet. Angus, this is Iris Grey, the portrait painter. She’ll be staying in the village for a few months, working on a painting of Kathy.’
‘Hello.’ Angus nodded shyly.
‘Hello,’ said Iris.
‘Angus is our gillie,’ Jock explained to Iris. ‘He grew up on the estate, just like his old man, so he’s part of the furniture here. You’re bound to run into each other.’
Angus glanced anxiously at his watch. Taking the cue, Jock kissed Kathy on the top of her head and followed him outside, presumably to talk estate business.
‘What’s a “gillie”?’ Iris asked Kathy once they’d gone and the two women were alone.
Kathy rolled her eyes conspiratorially. ‘I know, right? Like you’re automatically supposed to know all these crazy, feudal job titles they have up here? A gillie is a guide who takes people fishing or stalking, or any of that other stuff that these rich Scots seem to want to do. It sounded so demeaning to me when I first heard the term, but Angus doesn’t seem to see it that way. In any case his actual job is way more than just a gillie, even though that’s what Jock calls him. He’s basically the estate manager. He’s organising everything for our wedding, for example. Jock couldn’t run the place without him.’
‘They seem close,’ Iris observed.
‘They are,’ Kathy agreed, making space on the sofa for two ridiculously small, ridiculously fluffy dogs that had suddenly trotted in, hurling themselves towards their mistress like jet-propelled pom-poms. ‘Angus is a breath of fresh air compared to
Emma and Rory, that’s for sure. Talk about two stiffs, right?’
Iris raised an eyebrow but said nothing. What a strange young woman she was, spouting Californian mumbo jumbo one minute, all namaste and spiritual growth, and the next cutting to the chase with searing honesty. Emma and Rory were indeed a pair of stiffs. But it hardly seemed tactful for Kathy to say so.
‘Sometimes I think Angus is the only person in the world Jock really loves,’ Kathy went on. ‘Except me, of course.’ She grinned. ‘Angus’s father was Jock’s best friend when they were kids,’ she explained, in between showering her dogs with kisses. ‘I guess it’s kind of a loyalty thing.’
‘Is his father still around?’ asked Iris, intrigued by this snippet, even as she felt her own tiredness creeping up on her like a shadow.
‘Edwin,’ Kathy answered. ‘He’s alive but he’s in a home. Isn’t he, my babies?’ she added in a sing-song voice to the dogs. ‘Yes, he is. He’s in a home because he’s lost – his – mind. Oh yes he has. So saaad.’
She pouted, pushing her pretty lips forward into a faux sympathetic expression as she ruffled the dogs’ hair. In that instant, Iris could see why so many people seemed to dislike Kathy Miller. Envy might explain a part of it – her looks, her wealth, her position – but the future Lady Pitfeldy didn’t help matters, unaware of how insincere she sounded with outbursts like these.
‘This is Milo, by the way,’ she told Iris, patting the smaller dog, which was not much bigger than a guinea pig. ‘And this is his brother, Sam Sam. At least we think they’re brothers. They were rescues and they are literally the LOVES of my LIFE. Aren’t you, boys? Do you like dogs?’
While Iris searched for the right answer (‘no’ would be truthful but alienating, ‘yes’ an outright lie and ‘sometimes, but not ones that look like mohair cushions’ didn’t feel like a viable option), Kathy ploughed on regardless.
‘I adore them. Jock does too. His kids claim to, but I can’t tell you how cold they’ve been to my boys, Rory especially. It’s almost like he sees them as an extension of me.’