Flight of the Grey Goose

by Victor Canning

  Sometimes while they were fishing, Dobby, the otter with a missing foot that roamed free around the island now, would swim out and circle the boat and get cursed for putting the fish down. But later, when Smiler began to take the boat out by himself, he loved Dobby to come. He would drop the large rock that served as anchor overboard, strip off, and dive into the water and be delighted to see Dobby make circles around him, a stream of silvery bubbles wobbling surfacewards from his nostrils.

  Lying in his bed at the end of the third week, curtains drawn to show the light sky of the summer night, Smiler told himself, ‘Samuel M., if you don’t know how lucky you are to get a place like this then you ought to be. You got a good job and you’re getting to know things. Like handlin’ a boat, and fishing, and all those flies you can make, and the animals and birds. Why it’s kind of … well, perfect. Not a fly in the ointment,’ he chuckled to himself ‘– except ones you can fish with.’

  He lay back, feeling Bacon stir at the bottom of the bed, and the thought suddenly struck him. When he found his father in October and things were sorted out, maybe the Laird would let him bring his father up here for the rest of his leave. They could all be together. Gosh! That would be perfect.

  The next morning early, as Smiler came back from doing his feeding and cleaning rounds, he looked up to see the flag of St Andrew flying from one of the corner towers of the castle, lazily flipping its folds in a warm westerly breeze.

  As he was making breakfast, keeping an eye on the frying trout and the toast under the grill, the Laird came into the kitchen.

  Smiler gave him good morning and then said, ‘Sir, please, why is the flag flying today?’

  ‘Because, lad,’ said the Laird, ‘we want some more supplies, and also I need my newspapers and mail. It’s for Mistress Laura to come up.’

  ‘But she can’t see it right down the other end of the loch, can she?’

  ‘No, she can’t. But someone on the hill or the loch will see it and pass the message. You think you’re living up here lost like Robinson Crusoe, but ye’re not, Samuel M. The hills, the braes and the glens are full of eyes. There’s always a keeper, farmer or shepherd to spot the flag and pass the word. And remember this – if there’s ever trouble up here all that needs to be done is to fly the flag at half-mast and there’ll be someone along within the day.’

  After breakfast Smiler went down to release Laggy from his pen. The bird was recovering well and each day now he was let out so that he could graze on the grass of the meadow above the small bay, and swim in the water. The gander had got to know Smiler well. Wing still bandaged tightly to its side, Laggy would follow him down to the water and join the other wild fowl that were paddling about in the shallows.

  Smiler, seeing the flag flying over the grey towers of the castle, found himself thinking about Laura. Not that he had much time for girls. But it was nice to know she was coming up. She was a bit bossy, of course, and a chatterbox. Still if a chap, say, had to be cast away on an island with a girl then she’d be better than most. She wouldn’t go all helpless and be a nuisance. If he had to choose between his Sister Ethel and Laura he knew which he would choose. Suddenly the thought of being cast away on a desert island with his sister made him go off into a fit of giggles … She’d want everything spick and span, grumbling about footmarks on her nice sandy beach, sweeping around with big palm leaves, and forever scouring away at the tin cans they would use for cooking. Oh, couldn’t he just see it! No, thank you. Give him someone like Laura any day.

  Laura arrived an hour before noon the next day. Smiler was up in the wood at the back of the castle chopping down some young pine growths to make stakes for an enlargement to the wild-fowl enclosure that the Laird was planning. It was hard work. Not for the first time, he dropped his axe and, with Bacon at his heels, moved quietly to the edge of the rockface drop and lay looking down at the place where the big salmon had its lie behind the underwater boulder. He liked watching it. Mostly the fish rested almost motionless behind the boulder. But now and then, as though bored with its long wait for the autumn floods that would let it run the burn where it would find a spawning mate, it moved off majestically in a slow circle. Watching it, Smiler wondered what it would be like to have a fish that size on his line. In the Laird’s study was a stuffed salmon weighing thirty pounds which the Laird had caught years and years before … Thirty pounds, thought Smiler – the line would fair go whizzing out, burn your fingers if you let it … He looked up, the sound of a motor coming to his ears. On the sun dazzle far down the loch he saw the black shape of a boat.

  Forgetting his work, he jumped to his feet and began to run back to the castle to tell the Laird that Laura was coming.

  The two of them, with an accompaniment of animals and birds, met her at the jetty steps. She was wearing her tam o’shanter and dressed as before. Smiler leaned over and took the bow rope and made it fast. The boat was more heavily loaded this time with sacks of stores and two butane gas containers. At her feet was a wickerwork hamper which she lifted out with her. After they had passed their greetings she explained that the hamper held a red-throated diver with a broken leg and a young cormorant whose plumage was covered in oil.

  The Laird said, ‘ Take them along to the surgery pen, lad. I’ll deal with them after lunch.’

  When Smiler got back from putting the birds in the surgery pen, it was to find Laura in the kitchen getting the lunch trays. She grinned at him and said, ‘Well, Samuel Miles, I’ll say this for you – you keep the kitchen a sight tidier than that daft Willy McAufee used to. And the Laird tells me you’re a dab hand with the floor polish and the scrubbing brush. The next time I come up I’ll bring you a pretty apron to tie around your waist.’

  ‘Don’t you … well, don’t you just dare,’ said Smiler embarrassed.

  ‘There’s no call to be upset,’ said Laura. ‘On a farm or a place like this there’s no such thing as a man’s or woman’s work. Just work. You like it here?’

  ‘Of course I do. It’s the best job I’ve ever had,’ said Smiler.

  ‘And how many jobs have you had in your long life?’

  Smiler smiled, suddenly untouched by her teasing, and said, ‘More than you think.’

  ‘Well, here’s another for you.’ She handed him a full tray. ‘Carry that through to the Laird and I’ll bring ours.’

  They all had lunch in the sunshine on the terrace and during it Laura brought the Laird up to date with all the local news and gossip. For Smiler, listening, none of it made much sense because he knew none of the people or places mentioned. But he was content to sit and listen, feeling that he was beginning to belong to this place and that he would be safe here until October came when he could go to meet his father in Greenock.

  After lunch the Laird went off to the surgery to deal with the new invalids and Smiler helped Laura to unship the rest of the stores and stuff from the boat and carry them into the castle. This done, he left Laura in the castle and went off to do his afternoon tasks and to milk Mrs Brown. When he brought the milk back to the kitchen it was to find that Laura had lit the fire in the big old kitchen range. The kitchen was stifling with the heat although the wide window was open.

  ‘What have you lit that for?’ asked Smiler.

  ‘What on earth do you think? That old gas thing may be good enough for you two men on your own. But how would I bake a batch of bread on it, leave alone a proper dinner tonight? But it will be another couple of hours before it’s ready so I’ll take ye up to Cearciseanan and we’ll have a swim.’

  ‘Keerk what?’ asked Smiler.

  ‘Cearciseanan – that’s Gaelic for the Hen and Chickens.’

  ‘The Hen and Chickens. What are they?’

  ‘You’ll see. Come on.’

  Laura led Smiler down to her boat and a few moments later they were motoring farther up the long arm of the loch. Laura pointed ahead to the three islands in the middle of the loch, explaining that the big one was called the Hen and the two little ones the
Chickens. As she ran the boat ashore on the small beach of the Hen, she reached into a locker under the stem seat and tossed a pair of swimming trunks across to Smiler.

  ‘They’re my brother’s,’ she explained. ‘ He’s bigger than you, but you can draw them tight with the waist string.’

  They pulled the boat high on to the beach and then Laura began to undress. Smiler didn’t know where to look or what to do as she stripped off sweater and shirt and then began to undo her jeans, but to his great relief he soon saw that she was wearing a two-piece bathing dress under her clothes. He looked quickly away from her sun-brown, firm body and then ran up the beach and undressed himself behind a rock. The swimming trunks were much too big for him but the cord through the waist held them firm. When he came out from behind the rock Laura was already in the water.

  ‘Come on,’ she called. ‘We’ll swim right round the islands.’

  Smiler waded into the water and joined her and they began to swim around the three islands. It was quite a long way and Smiler had to admit to himself that it wasn’t something he would have set out to do himself. He was a fairly strong swimmer but he soon realized that Laura was a stronger one. Curiously enough, instead of feeling jealous about this, he found himself pleased about it. She was a girl who could look after herself and Smiler liked that. Most of the girls he had known in Bristol before they sent him off to approved school couldn’t think about anything else but making up their faces or nattering all the time about clothes.

  When they had made the circuit of the islands, they lay on the beach and let the sun dry them.

  Laura said, ‘You really do like it up here with the Laird, don’t you, Sammy?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Smiler. ‘I like him and I like the place and all the animals and birds. It’s like …’

  ‘Like what?’

  For a moment Smiler didn’t reply. His eyes were on the steep cliff face on the far side of the loch, on the purpling heather slopes of the hills above, the green tree-filled cleft of a glen, and the thin white scar of a waterfall marking the higher reaches of a burn. Below the tops was the slow movement of grazing sheep and on the tops now, although he couldn’t see them, Smiler knew the red deer would be feeding, their calves hidden in the bracken and tall grasses and heather of the corries. High over the water a pair of buzzards circled and clear across the loch came the sweet, rippling call of sandpipers.

  ‘Well …’ said Smiler a bit embarrassed, ‘… sort of like … well, like paradise.’

  Laura rolled over and rested on one elbow and smiled at him. ‘So it might seem. But there’s more than that to it. Aye, it’s beautiful and it looks good. But there’s other things not so good. There’s the hoodies always ready to attack some injured creature, there’s the golden eagles after a mountain hare for their young, the vixen hunting for her cubs, the wild cat after the grouse and the otters after the fish. Also it’s summer now, but you should see it in winter when the hill is all snow and life is hard for beast and man. You’re like all summer tourists. All you see is a nice picture postcard sort of place –’

  ‘I’m no tourist!’

  ‘Then what are you?’

  ‘Well … I’m a … well, I’m a worker.’

  ‘Why up here – this isn’t your country?’

  Smiler said nothing. For the moment he felt very angry with her. Just because this was her country didn’t mean that no one else could like it or understand it. He knew, too, that everything in nature had to hunt to live. That was the way it was. And, of course he knew things were hard in winter.

  Suddenly Laura laughed. ‘You should see your face! It’s gone just like my father’s does when he’s crossed. I was only teasing you.’ She stood up, the wind taking her dark brown hair as she brushed sand from her legs and arms.

  Smiler, his anger suddenly gone, said before he could stop himself, ‘You like doing that, don’t you? Teasin’ people.’

  Laura smiled and pushed her hair back over her neck. ‘Of course I do, you daft loon – but only those I like. Come on.’ She turned and ran for the boat.

  Smiler stood looking after her and slowly a broad smile flushed across his sun-tanned, freckled face and he had a feeling inside him as though … well, as though he had drunk too much fizzy lemonade or something and that he was gradually filling with bubbles that would float him away.

  As they made their way back to the castle in the boat, Laura and Smiler were watched from the far southern shores of the loch.

  High up on the side of the brae that flanked the burn which ran down from the waterfall, a man was sitting in the shadow of a large boulder at the side of a narrow track holding a pair of field glasses to his eyes. He was a man of about forty, plumpish and heavily built. He wore a brown corduroy jacket, dark breeches and stockings, and heavy walking boots. A rucksack lay on the ground at his side. His face was running with sweat and every now and then he brushed at the cloud of flies that swarmed over his head which was bald with little tufty patches of fair hair above his ears.

  He watched Laura and Smiler motor back to the castle and tie the boat up at the jetty. When they disappeared into the castle, he swung the glasses and picked up the figure of the Laird who was digging a hole for one of the posts of the new extension to the wild-fowl enclosure. He watched the Laird for some time and then slowly swung the glasses to make a close survey of the beach and the meadow and the tree-clad rise behind the castle. Then he put the glasses down, rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and began to hum gently to himself as though he were well content. He had a pleasant, round jolly sort of face – except for his eyes which instead of being jolly and friendly, were still, and cold-looking like marbles.

  He fished in his rucksack, took out a can of beer and opened it. He drank from the can, finishing it in two long swallows. He threw the empty can away into the heather and then slowly said aloud to himself, ‘Billy Morgan, given the right timing, I think you might be on to a bit of all right here. Yes, Billy, something really good. Sweet and easy as kiss your hand.’

  Five minutes later he was making his way back along the track and a bend in the glenside soon hid him from the sight of the loch.

  6. The Birthday Present

  That evening was one of the nicest that Smiler could remember for a long time. They had dinner in the main hall and Smiler had to admit that, compared with Laura’s, his cooking was very rough and ready. They began with smoked trout from the loch and then there was roast chicken – served by the Laird at the head of the table with a great flourishing of carving knife and fork – with roast potatoes and fresh green beans from the small garden patch on the slope above the castle. Afterwards there was blackberry pie (the berries preserved from the previous year’s crop) and custard. By the time they were finished Smiler was so full he could hardly move. And, while they ate, the dogs and animals moved around them and a row of fantails and other birds sat on the terrace balustrade outside the open doors and watched them like an audience. Laura had prepared the meal in the two hours since they had come back from swimming.

  But when she brought the dinner in Smiler saw, too, that she had found time to change. Her long, brown hair was tied back with a green silk strip and she wore a short red dress with green stripes, and thick-heeled black shoes that went clack, clack across the polished floor boards. Suddenly she seemed very grown up and different. So much so that Smiler couldn’t keep his eyes off her as she carried the dish of chicken to the table – until she said, ‘And which, Sammy, would you be gawping at? Me or the chicken?’

  It was during the dinner that Smiler learnt something of the history of the Elphinstones and their castle. While he and Laura drank milk and orange juice, the Laird was treating himself to a small bottle of wine. From the moment he had said grace, he kept up an easy flow of talk, telling stories and making them laugh. But the story that Smiler liked best, although it didn’t make him laugh, was one about another Sir Alec Elphinstone – an ancestor of the Laird’s – whose picture hung at the top of the great sta
irway. Smiler, who was very fond of history, listened fascinated because the man the Laird was talking about had once lived in this castle, had eaten at the very same table and had fished and swum in the loch outside.

  When Charles Edward Stuart – Bonnie Prince Charlie – the grandson of James II, had come back to Scotland to make a bid for the throne of England in 1745, he had landed on the coast not far away and had called all the clansmen to him at Glenfinnan. This was the town to which the truck driver had given Smiler and Bacon a lift from Fort William. The Laird of those days had joined him. He had marched south with the clans to take part in the great victory of Prestonpans, and had soldiered and campaigned with the Prince as far south as Derby where the tide of fortune had turned against Bonnie Prince Charlie.

  Finally, retreating into the Highlands, the Prince’s forces had been defeated by the Duke of Cumberland, Butcher Cumberland, at Culloden Moor not far from Inverness. After many adventures Bonnie Prince Charlie had escaped, the country never to return. With him had gone the Sir Alec Elphinstone of those days, after making a hurried visit to the castle to say good-bye to his wife and children.

  The Laird said, ’Aye, he went with his Prince. And, like him, never to return. From those days the House of Elphinstone has never recovered. The Butcher’s men sacked the castle of every valuable except a few pieces of silver plate that Lady Elphinstone hid. But the one thing they wanted and didn’t get was the Elphinstone jewels. Sir Alec took them with him, they say, to raise further funds for the Prince. We’ve been poor as cathedral mice ever since. When you go up to bed, Samuel M., you can see the jewels. Next to Sir Alec’s picture at the top of the stairs is a painting of his wife. A grand lady and she is wearing some of the jewels.

  ‘What would you do with them, if you had them now, sir?’ asked Smiler.

  ‘Do? Why, laddie, be sensible and sell the lot, and use the money to good purpose. Put the farms in order, plant the forest, break new land, and polish up this old ruin and leave a fine going concern for my son. But most of all – for there would be money to spare – I’d set up a fine wild life sanctuary at this end of the loch. Turn it over to the beasts and the birds. Aye, and have enough money still to pay for wardens to keep people’s thieving hands off the beasts. The sea ospreys would come back and breed in peace from egg stealers, and so would the golden eagles, the peregrines, the merlins and hobbies, and that bonnie bird the hen harrier. When I was a boy there were always two pairs of ospreys breeding here. One on the Hen and the other pair on the far Chicken. And I’d have a surgery and hospital and maybe a wee experimental station for studying. We all have dreams, laddie, and that’s mine. And dream it will stay.’ He looked at them both and slowly smiled. ‘Of course, I wouldn’t forget my friends. I’d buy Mistress Laura here a good farm and leave her to find a fine, hard-working young man to go with it.’