He could well believe it. She was as much a creature of the cold north as Fidelia was of the hot south.
‘How would you like a lodger?’
He smiled, not taking her seriously.
‘I’ll be waiting outside the hotel tomorrow at eleven.’
More customers came in then and thronged the bar. He took his drink back to his seat.
Donald was wearing Angus’s hat. He took it off.
‘The barmaid, do you fancy her?’ asked Torry.
‘Better not,’ said Dugald.
The three of them grinned.
Donald explained the joke. ‘She’s the kind would bite off your cock like the woman in the Bible.’
Angus could not recall any such woman, but perhaps they were right: Janet’s place was not in Celtic mythology but the Old Testament, along with Lot’s daughters, Delilah. Jael, Jezebel, and the apocryphal cock-biter.
2
Outside the bar the proprietor, David McNaught, Janet’s cousin, a shy bald thin young man with a soft sure-as-death voice, waylaid Angus. He wore his usual uniform of black trousers, white shirt, and tartan bowtie.
‘Could I have a word with you, Mr McAllister?’ he whispered.
‘Why not?’ Angus supposed that he was going to be invited to display some of his paintings on the hotel walls.
‘In my office, if you don’t mind. It’s rather confidential.’
‘As you please.’ As Angus followed him, he considered what prices he would demand. At least £200 a picture. But he had no intention of exposing his work to the insults of oafs like Donald and his pals.
On the desk in the small office was a stuffed penguin: all it needed to be a miniature of its owner was a tartan bowtie. Through the window was a view of the harbour. Live gulls could be heard screaming.
‘Please sit down, Mr McAllister,’ said McNaught. ‘I’ll not keep you long. I noticed you talking at some length to our new barmaid.’
‘Barmaids are often loquacious.’
‘She’s my cousin.’
‘Yes, she said so.’
‘I don’t know if you noticed or not, but I’m sorry to say she’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown.’
It would explain the nonsense about second sight, and also the instinctive distrust of Donald and his pals.
‘She’s been enquiring about you, Mr McAllister.’
‘So I gathered. I can’t think why. We’ve never met before.’
‘Well, you are quite a celebrity here.’
‘Because of my painting?’ That was sarcasm.
‘Yes, of course, but there’s the way you dress and then your house, with its strange contents. I’m afraid my daughters have been telling Janet about you. Jean’s eight and Agnes is ten.’
Little ruffians sometimes cat-called him from around corners.
McNaught never smiled. Sometimes he came near it, as now. ‘It isn’t every house in Flodday that has a dragon painted on the ceiling, nor a life-sized Buddha in the living-room.’
‘Please come to the point, Mr McNaught.’
‘Janet, you see, has run away from her husband.’
‘She said she was separated. When did it happen?’
‘Just a week ago. Did she tell you why?’
‘No, and I didn’t ask.’
McNaught sighed again. ‘I’m afraid it’s rather a sordid story. I would like to ask your help, Mr McAllister.’
‘How can I help? I don’t know her husband, and I scarcely know her.’
‘To cut a long story short, she came home unexpectedly from a holiday with her parents in Skye and found Douglas and a woman friend practising putting on the sitting-room carpet.’
‘Quite a harmless if childish activity, surely?’
‘They had no clothes on.’
‘Not even gloves on their left hands?’
McNaught did not smile at what was quite a witty remark. ‘I’m afraid Janet jumped to conclusions. She picked up one of the putters and hit him with it.’
Angus kept his face straight. ‘On what tender spot?’
‘She didn’t say. It must have been painful for he lost his temper and struck her. He’s a very strong man, a golfer and a karate expert. He could have broken her neck.’
She could have bitten off his cock. Angus still managed to look solemn.
McNaught then dropped his voice so low it was as if the penguin was speaking. ‘Janet’s not an ordinary kind of person. She has second sight.’
‘So she said. I didn’t believe her.’
‘It’s true. It’s been in her family for generations. She had an aunt who was famous for it. People came from all over Skye to consult her. She went mad. We don’t want that to happen to Janet. Do you believe in magic, Mr McAllister?’
Angus did. As a painter trying to portray and interpret the beauty of the earth and to convey the mysteries of the human soul, he had to believe in magic. But not in Janet’s superstitious nonsense.
‘Even as a child she was always imagining things. Her parents were very relieved when she married Douglas. He’s a levelheaded intelligent man.’
‘Did you say he was a golfer?’
‘A very good one, I understand. He wins cups.’
‘In which case I am not so sure about his intelligence.’
‘Douglas keeps his feet firmly on the ground.’
‘Golfers must, I should say.’
‘He’s an engineer. Very practical. He once told me that he could spend a night alone in a graveyard without losing a minute’s sleep.’
‘I should think self-respecting ghosts would keep well away from a golfer. You mean, he’s a clod, without imagination?’
McNaught winced, but nodded. ‘Janet has a foolish notion that things will never be right between her and Douglas until he is made to realise there are more important things than golf or his new Rover.’
‘Not so foolish, surely. Most wives would agree with her.’
‘But most wives would not think that the way to bring that about is for her to – well, misbehave (my word, not hers) with some stranger.’
‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, an adultery for an adultery. Sound Wee Free doctrine. I doubt though if it would make cloddish Douglas behave himself in future. He would be more likely to strike her again, harder this time.’
‘She says she knows he will become more humble and more – mystical was the word she used.’
‘Mystical?’
‘It’s a word she’s fond of. I’m not quite sure what she means by it. She thinks that you, Mr McAllister, can help her cast the spell. Her words, not mine.’
‘Me?’ That was a squeal of indignation but there was amusement in it too.
‘You see, you lived so long among black heathens and you have idols in your house.’
‘I’m afraid, Mr McNaught, your cousin’s not right in the head.’
‘You wouldn’t then, as an honourable man, take advantage of her?’
Angus rose. ‘Wouldn’t it be a case of her taking advantage of me? Good evening, Mr McNaught.’
As he made his way to his car, parked near the harbour, Angus consulted another soothsayer, a large gull watching him from the top of a mast, with mysterious yellow eyes. What painter, he asked it, would welcome the intrusion into his haven of a woman who claimed to have second sight, who believed in magic, who had run away from her husband, a quick-tempered karate expert, and who on the one hand was on the look-out for a sexual partner whose magic would match her own, and on the other hand was a suspected cock-biter? The gull stretched out its neck and opened its beak in a prolonged squawk. Wasn’t he in need of company and inspiration? Didn’t the woman in question meet his standards of beauty? Might not an affair with her galvanise him into producing powerful and enigmatic masterpieces? If that happened, no price would be too high to pay, not even a broken neck or bitten-off cock.
3
On Sunday morning Angus found himself driving slowly towards Kildonan, enjoying the splendid seascapes
and identifying the many seabirds. He thought he saw a stormy petrel, a rare visitor. There was a place where on Sundays he liked to stop and listen to the church bells across the sea-loch. He could make out the white cottage where he had been born, so close to the shore that in winter the waves swamped the garden. Thus his mother had complained that her roses always smelled of seaweed, but she had laughed when saying it. In all his memories of her she was smiling, laughing, or singing. When he had sat by her death-bed she had smiled at him. That had been 33 years ago and he still missed her. He remembered too his father’s grief. His father had died in Glasgow while Angus was abroad. Angus had flown home too late to see him alive but in time to have him buried in Kilnaughton graveyard beside his wife. There was room in the grave for Angus himself one day.
Amidst all the pleasant reassuring noises around him he heard his mother’s cheerful voice: ‘Dinna be sich a feartie, Angus.’ But she had been encouraging him to wear a kilt in public, not to go and fetch a married woman who had run away from her husband. If he had heeded his mother’s ghost, which was present in every sparkle of sunshine, he would have turned the car and gone back to Ardnave.
In any case, Janet was probably safe in church, listening to Mr McPherson’s hour-long sermon, on the theme no doubt of the righteousness of retribution.
The Free Kirk minister had once called at Ardnave. He, who worshipped bloody-minded Jehovah, had been offended by the presence of Buddha, who had preached the sanctity of life. Angus had offered him a dram of Flodday Mist, the island’s most famous malt and, to his surprise, it had been accepted. When Angus had gone out of the living-room for a minute or two he had come back to find the old minister looking through an illustrated book on the erotic sculptures of Hindu temples. He had been tempted to ask him if he would like to take it home for further study, but he had thought that Mrs McPherson, a dumpy little woman with a sour face, might see it and be outraged.
The loch was full of sunny spangles, but if a man ventured too far out he could drown. It should have been a warning.
Whistling, to propitiate, not defy, all the voices of nature urging him to go home, he started up the car and drove round the bay towards Kildonan.
Both kirks being in session, the streets were empty, stricken by a plague of piety. Shops were shut: they would be shut all day; a starving man would not be sold a loaf. Dogs and cats were imprisoned at home, lest their barking and miaowing should disturb the holy quiet. Even the gulls seemed to scream and squawk with less than week-day irreverence. At the pier no boys played with the boats tied up, and no fishermen mended ropes or nets. They were all in church, listening either to the Church of Scotland minister’s parsimonious 20-minute sermon or in the Free Kirk, not a Bible’s throw from Flodday Distillery, to Mr McPherson’s harangue of an hour or longer.
As he rounded the corner before the hotel, Angus had still not decided what he would do if Janet was waiting for him, and there she was, seated on her suitcase on the hotel steps. Surprising himself, he felt compassion. If she really was in danger of mental collapse, where better to recover than at Ardnave, with its lambs and larks? He had not in his lifetime done so many deeds of kindness that he could afford to let this one pass. His motive would be misunderstood and maligned, but if his heart was pure, in this respect at least, he need feel no guilt.
He stopped beside her. She was wearing a red dress and white cardigan. Her hair was tied up with a red ribbon. Her legs were bare. She had on red sandals.
He had been visualising her as downcast but, on the contrary, she could not have been brisker and more self-confident. He had heard that people with mental troubles were either on a high or on a low, that was to say, either extravagantly cheerful or gloomily depressed. Janet, it seemed, was on a high.
He had not realised how beautiful she was. It was a beauty intense yet delicate, such as he had seen in paintings of medieval martyrs. If, like her aunt, she was to lose her sanity, a melancholy would be added. He must do his best to prevent that.
‘Good morning,’ he said, out of the window. ‘I thought you would be in church.’
She rose. ‘I was. But I slipped out. I had my case ready packed. I knew you would come.’
‘Were you noticed slipping out?’
‘Every head turned. Is your boot locked?’
He got out and helped her put the suitcase in the boot.
‘Thanks,’ she said, and was in the car before him. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Right.’ He would stop somewhere and have a serious talk with her.
As they passed Cruachan Cottage, he saw roses in the back garden. His compassion for his companion returned. For all her boldness she looked vulnerable.
‘It’s not true, is it,’ she asked, ‘that you don’t like women?’
He felt cross. Was this how his kindness was to be rewarded?
‘Is that what they have been telling you?’
‘It seems the general opinion.’
About to reject scornfully that ridiculous slander, he fell into a deeper level of truth, perhaps because he had been thinking of his mother.
What really was his attitude to women? He did not mind their pettiness, their unpredictableness, or their unreasonableness. Such qualities, if not extreme, made for exhilarating intercourse. He had always played fair with them, making it clear from the outset that the relationship could not be permanent. Not even Fidelia had been excepted. In her case it had not been necessary. She was already married and, as a devout Catholic, ahborred divorce.
Why did he object to marriage? One simple reason was that he preferred sleeping alone. Even Fidelia’s ample loving flesh, after an hour or so, had become oppressive. But then that had been in the tropics where even at midnight it was hot and sweaty. Still, many successfully married couples used separate beds, not to say separate rooms. Being an artist, he cherished his independence more than most men. He had painted the ceilings and walls of his house to please himself. No wife would have permitted those glorious excesses. Also, if he was doomed to failure as a painter he would be better able to endure it without wifely commiserations, whether sincere or not.
Those were the accessible reasons. There were others far below the surface. Was one of them his memory of his mother dying and his father weeping?
‘Does it need all that thought?’ asked Janet.
She had a way of staring. Was it her idea of coquetry, or did she think that was how a seer should look, or did she just need spectacles?
He stopped the car on a grassy bank close to the sea. Oyster-catchers pecked in the sand with their long red bills.
‘We’d better talk about this,’ he said.
‘About what?’
‘About your going to Ardnave. I’m not sure it’s such a good idea.’
‘I thought it was settled.’
‘I never said I agreed. In fact I more or less promised your cousin Mr McNaught to have nothing to do with you. What if your husband descended upon us?’
‘He won’t. He’s in the wrong, so he won’t.’
In Angus’s experience people in the wrong were the worst troublemakers.
‘Besides, he doesn’t know where I am.’
‘Won’t your cousin tell him?’
‘Not till Friday. That’s our agreement. Anyway, he’s often away from home on business. You needn’t worry about Douglas. When he comes he’ll be very humble.’
But not mystical, thought Angus.
‘I’m a good cook. I’m sure after you’ve been painting for hours you’d like to find a nice meal waiting for you.’
Yes, but not with her bossing him about. He liked to relax after work, eating at leisure, with a bottle of wine, and listening to music.
‘I’ll pose for you. David was telling me you can’t get models.’
‘What about your job at the hotel?’ said Angus, feebly.
‘Oh that! I just did that for a laugh. Look here, I’m not proposing to stay with you for good. I wouldn’t want that any more than you would. Just for
a few days, that’s all. I don’t want to sleep with you either, if that’s what’s bothering you. I might ask you to make love to me, but it would be only once, and it would be for a particular purpose. If the conditions aren’t right it won’t happen. To tell you the truth, I’d be mortified if I was made pregnant by you, though we might have to take that chance. I want Douglas to be the father of my children. I love my husband but he’s got to be made to understand that I’m not just a bit of elegant engineering. He’d much rather look at the Forth Road Bridge than the Mona Lisa. Because I’ve got second sight I sometimes see people who aren’t really there. It may be they’ve been dead a long time, or it may be they’ve still to come, but I do see them. I can describe them and the clothes they’re wearing. I’ve proved it to him but he refuses to believe. He says it’s just hallucinations. He says what about all the times I’ve been wrong. Well, maybe I am wrong sometimes, but not often and there’s always a reason. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but he handles his new Rover with more care than he does me. I’ve told him he makes love like a crocodile. I cast up that he took more time in lining up a putt. Do you know what he said? He said a missed putt could lose him a championship. He wasn’t joking either, not altogether. Now do you see why I’ve got to do something about him?’
It seemed to Angus nothing could be done about a golfing boor like Douglas, except perhaps fling his clubs into the sea, like so many Excaliburs.
It was Angus’s turn to be psychic. He heard a faraway voice: Nell Ballantyne’s. ‘Jesus, Angus, here’s a lady who’ll give you a lot more trouble than ever I did. Before she’s finished with you you’ll be so mesmerised you’ll not be able to paint worth a shit.’
That had long been a dread of Angus’s, that one day when he picked up his brush his hand would have lost not only its cunning but also its power: however much he strove he would not be able to put the brush to canvas. It had already happened two or three times, but only momentarily. Nell, with her coarseness, had brought it about; and Fidelia more so, with her fits of remorse.
Poor Angus Page 2