by Wendy Holden
Having secured herself a paper bag containing two miniature bottles of gin and two tins of tonic, Geri headed back to her telephone-box-sized compartment and locked the door, intending not to emerge until the train reached Inverness. She did not even intend to make the long, cold trek in her nightclothes to the loo, having decided on an impromptu but, she suspected, by no means infrequently employed system involving an empty plastic cup and the sink.
One blessing at least was that the couple next door had temporarily ceased their activities, having reached something of a crescendo at Stevenage. Geri downed her second gin and tonic and, having prised apart sheets so firmly tucked together they made opening an oyster with bare hands look easy, made a determined attempt to sleep.
Something in the compartment on the other side, however, seemed just as determined to stop her. Something that shouted, screeched, and banged itself periodically against the very wall—against the very section of the very wall, in fact—that Geri’s face lay closest to in quest of slumber. As the noises increased in volume and the thuds in violence, she half expected the interconnecting door between the compartments to open and a madman with a carving knife to loom above her. The madman, however, did not seem to be the only person in the cabin. Someone else was shrieking as well. Two nutters. Finally, Geri stuffed tissue paper from the complementary toilet bag in her ears and pulled the blanket over her head.
But now something had woken her. Not a noise, but a smell. Geri sniffed hard. Something was burning. She gasped and sat up, visions of a rolling fireball filling the corridor outside springing terrifyingly and irrepressibly to mind. There was another scent besides, something heavy, slightly acrid. Geri had never smelt burning flesh before, but…
Flinging the compartment door open, Geri stuck her head out into the corridor. No fireball in sight, no nothing, in fact. But the smell here was definitely stronger and coming from the compartment next door, the one with the nutters in it. Geri hesitated for a nanosecond before rapping hard on the door. As shouts within greeted her knock and the door eventually opened to allow the throat-punching fumes within to escape, Geri saw she had not been wrong about the inmates. The person standing before her was, without a doubt, the most insane she’d ever seen.
“Cassandra! What the hell are you doing here? And what on earth is that stink?”
Cassandra gasped. Her eyes boggled and her mouth fell open. Was there no escape? Here she was, trying to leave everything behind her. Trying to forget the theatres of humiliation and degradation otherwise known as Kensington, Jett, St. Midas’s, Mrs. Gosschalk, and most of all the Tressells’ wretched party which had started it all. And who should be in the carriage next to her but the Tressells’ ghastly nanny whom she had last encountered whilst in a very compromising position on the Tressells’ bathroom floor.
“Got a body in there or something?”
“As it happens, I’ve got Zak in here.” Cassandra spoke with as much hauteur as she could muster. Was the creature spying on her? Would the shameful truth—that she had been reduced to travelling in a second-class sleeper, and a pre-booked, reduced-price Apex one at that—filter back to W8? But now that the divorce was underway and the mortgage payments had fallen behind, did it much matter if it did? The Mrs. Curtaintwitchers down the road had had a field day as it was; Cassandra knew she would never be able to hold her head up in Kensington again. Or her hand up either; taxis were, temporarily at least, a thing of the past. She and Zak had suffered the ultimate indignity of coming to Euston on the Tube, a shattering experience for both of them. Having to actually hold those disgusting yellow poles that a million filthy commuter hands had gripped before her had turned Cassandra’s stomach like a skipping rope.
“So what’s the smell?” asked Geri. “I thought the carriage was on fire.”
“South American Sage Stressbuster, since you ask,” said Cassandra, as haughtily as she could. For she had salvaged one item from the wreck of the luxury liner of her life. The last of her scented candles. Not only did the smell remind her of happier—well, wealthier—times, it also reminded her of the joyous fact that Fenella Greatorex had recently burned her entire house down by leaving a scented candle alight while out at a parents’ meeting.
“Oh, I see. Well, I am surprised to find you here, Cassandra,” Geri said. “Didn’t have you down as a user of public transport. Unless it’s the sort that flies.”
Cassandra swallowed. “Yes, well, it’s really for Zak’s benefit, of course.” Over Cassandra’s bony shoulder Geri could see him lurking on the top bunk, computer game in hand, watching her malevolently.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, as he’ll be going to a Scottish boarding school and they’re supposed to be terribly basic, I thought it best he got used to travelling rough straightaway. As a matter of fact,” Cassandra tittered hysterically, “I took him to Euston on the Underground!”
“Heavens above,” drawled Geri. “You’ll be throwing caution to the winds and going on a bus next. So which school is Zak going to? Excuse me for saying this, but I thought he hadn’t got a place anywhere.”
“Of course he had,” Cassandra snapped. “There were plenty of offers.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” said Geri, unable to resist turning the knife. “I’ve obviously been getting the wrong information. Last I heard, you were looking into Christ’s Hospital.”
Cassandra’s lip curled in a snarl. “Yes, well, I wouldn’t have sent Zak there anyway.”
“Why not?” asked Geri. “The academic standards are supposed to be excellent, aren’t they?”
“Well, it can’t have been a very good hospital,” Cassandra barked. “Didn’t do Christ much good, did it?”
She shifted forward into the doorway so less of the cabin behind could be seen. The last thing she wanted was for this wretched creature to see the handful of headmasters’ letters scattered over the bed behind her, grudgingly agreeing to see Cassandra and her son for five minutes despite there emphatically being no possibility of a place. “And what are you doing here?” she asked Geri. Time they got off this subject.
“Well, I’m going to see your old nanny as it happens,” Geri said, recognising another opportunity to rub Cassandra’s nose in it. “At her castle.”
“Oh. Yes. You must give me the address.” A light went on in Cassandra’s eyes. Or was it, Geri thought, merely the fact that they were drawing into a station? They were stopping, at any rate. Rather abruptly, as well. As the train shuddered with screeching suddenness to a halt, she turned behind her to the window and looked out.
“How bizarre,” Geri said. “We seem to be stopping in the middle of nowhere.” She grinned at Cassandra, unable to resist the urge to tease her. “Zak’s not pulled the communication cord, has he?”
Cassandra glared. “Of course he hasn’t. Zak would never do such a thing.” She darted a nervous glance over her shoulder, threw a startled look back at Geri, and disappeared inside the cabin.
Geri slipped back into her own compartment just as the train guard strode as furiously up the narrow passageway as his well-built frame would permit.
“How dare you say that about my son?” she heard Cassandra yelling as she fitted the tissue paper back in her ears. “He’s just curious. A sign of very high intelligence. He pulled it because he thought it was something to do with the air conditioning.”
***
“But what did MacLoggie mean about your father’s will?” Anna was trying to get Jamie to meet her eyes, but so far hadn’t even managed to set up an appointment. This made her angrier than ever.
“Here, have some of Nanny’s shortbread,” Jamie said quickly, proffering a plate of thick-cut brown blocks. “She’s spent all morning making it.”
Staggered by the inadequacy of the diversionary tactic, Anna took the plate anyway. As her wrist plunged floorwards, she bit back the urge to enquire whether a concrete mix
er had been employed in the construction of the shortbread and if so, why didn’t Jamie prop up the crumbling curtain wall with it? She looked for the smallest piece possible. None seemed less than a foot across.
“Nice, isn’t it?” said Jamie, chewing away so violently his eyes watered with the strain.
Thanks to Nanny’s lurking in the shadows all through dinner, it had been impossible for Anna to bring up the subject of what she had overheard in the kitchen. Her chance had, as usual, only arisen during after-dinner coffee—and shortbread—in the castle’s upstairs sitting room.
“Let me put it another way,” Anna said when Jamie’s jaws had finally stopped moving. “Why did you ask me to marry you? You don’t love me, do you?”
Jamie did not respond immediately. “We-e-ll…” he hedged.
“Well what?” A frigid calm, far more disturbing than anger, spread through Anna. She was, she knew, emotionally anaesthetising herself against what was to come.
“Well, of course I like you,” Jamie murmured, crossing one yellow-corduroyed leg slowly over the other. “But I’m not really sure what love, such as it is, really is.”
“Oh really,” Anna snapped. “You sound like Prince bloody Charles. You know what I mean.”
There was a pause.
“Well, love’s never really, um, been an issue in our family as far as, er, marriages are concerned,” Jamie said, still avoiding her gaze. “There’s an estate to consider. Anguses usually marry for a reason.”
“Yes, so I heard. Your father put it in his will that you had to have a wife in order to make the inheritance final.”
“Yes, um, well, there is that,” Jamie said.
“But why? That’s not normal, is it?” Anna felt furious, yet oddly detached. Like a cross-examining barrister. A very cross examining barrister.
“No,” Jamie admitted, turning his wide dark eyes on her almost pleadingly. “But my father realised that, after being beaten and buggered by the other boys at school, I wasn’t either. At the start of one term, I begged him not to send me back and told him what was happening. He was worried about the effect it would have on me and my future relationships with women.”
“That sounds very enlightened,” Anna remarked.
“Not really. He told me it hadn’t done him any harm, thrashed me senseless, packed me off, and went straight round to his lawyer and stuck in that clause.”
“Oh. Oh dear.” For a few moments, sympathy for the crushed little boy Jamie must have been welled up in Anna. Then she remembered what they were supposed to be talking about. “That explains why you want to get married, but not why you want to get married to me. I’m not remotely grand.”
“Which is why we were the perfect match.”
“Sorry? Am I missing something?”
“Simple.” Jamie darted a look at her. “You had no money and nowhere to live and were desperate to get away from that boss of yours. I needed someone to come here and marry me in order to properly inherit the estate. What better arrangement could there possibly have been?”
Anna stared at him for a few seconds. “None, I suppose,” she said, slowly. “Except for the fact I was the only person—on this entire island, by the sound of it—who didn’t realise it was an arrangement.”
Jamie cleared his throat. He sounded almost bored now, so distant had his tone become. “Well, that didn’t seem necessary,” he drawled, “because you seemed to find me rather, um, attractive when we met.”
Anna blushed furiously. “But I still don’t understand why you picked me,” she hit back. “Surely half the smartest girls in Scotland would have been desperate to marry you.”
Jamie took a deep breath and closed his eyes—a brief but eloquent gesture implying that this was an extremely unpleasant business he heartily wished was over. “It’s true that in the past there have been some women—some rich, some beautiful, some even both—who thought they wanted to marry me,” he muttered. “But they all changed their minds.”
How rich? How beautiful? More to the point, how dare he? Anna gazed at him indignantly. “Why?”
“I’m not sure,” Jamie said, not entirely convincingly. “I think when they came here they realised that perhaps living in an isolated castle in the middle of nowhere wasn’t their idea of heaven.”
You mean they didn’t realise they would have to play second fiddle to a pile of old stones, Anna thought. She glanced at the engagement ring. Belonged to his mother, indeed. His mother and God knew how many other women since. Like an upmarket Pass the Parcel.
“I see what you’re getting at,” she said with just a trace of sarcasm. “It’s not so much a matter of not being able to get the staff these days as not being able to get the ladies of the manor.” So this is what he had meant in the tandoori about not having the right personnel in place.
Jamie wrinkled his brow slightly. “Something like that,” he confirmed. “But another advantage you had was that you had at least been up here and knew what it was like.”
What I thought it was like, thought Anna. Dampie dressed up with flowers and laughter for a wedding and Dampie in its everyday habit had turned out to be very different places. God, she’d been a fool.
“So to a certain extent, you knew what you were taking on,” Jamie continued.
“So it’s all my fault, is it?” Anna felt the anger rise again.
“To a certain extent, well, um, yes.”
Anna stared at him hard. There was something, she felt, that Jamie wasn’t telling her. Something wasn’t quite adding up. Plenty of women, after all, willingly married into remote estates. There must be some other reason why only someone poor and desperate would want to marry him.
“This is just a thought,” she said slowly, as it suddenly struck her. “Just an idea. But did they, did any of these beautiful, rich women happen to meet Nanny?”
Jamie looked away quickly.
“Thought as much,” said Anna, as triumphantly as she could, given the circumstances.
Chapter Nineteen
Officially, it was morning, yet as the light stayed that way all day, it could be any time at all. Jamie once had tried to persuade her that the failing light was a consequence of their position in the far north, a sort of Grey Days of Skul answer to the White Nights of Scandinavia. Anna’s private theory, however, was that there was only so much light to go around and what there was simply didn’t stretch as far as Dampie.
As she walked away from the castle, Anna clenched her fists and stared desperately into the grey half-darkness. Dawn rambles were getting to be a habit with her, as was not sleeping. She had stayed awake almost the entire night after Jamie’s bombshell, first pouring out her battered heart to her diary and then lying sleepless in the darkness. She was alone—Jamie had gone off to a bedroom somewhere else. As soon as ashen-fingered dawn appeared between the crack in her curtains, Anna had got up. A walk might clear her head, as well as give her some idea of what the hell to do next. Jamie had asked her not to make any sudden decisions, but to think about things. He’d refused even to take back the ring which she had yanked painfully from her finger and hurled across the mouldering carpet at him. Eventually, she had been persuaded to pick it up again; this time, however, it was going in her pocket.
But…think about things? What was she to think? She must, of course, leave the castle. But go where? In the not-so-broad light of day, the idea of returning to London struck her as lamer than a sheep with foot rot. She was, Anna dolefully told herself, unemployed, unskilled, impecunious, and effectively homeless. She was back to square one, square minus one now she’d failed at being engaged as well as everything else. As the mist rolled over her like steam from a kettle, gathering her into its ethereal embrace, Anna let out an agonised howl.
It was a howl of hurt, of betrayal. Of fury with herself for having been so easily taken in. Having failed even at writing romantic novels, ho
w had she ever thought it possible to live them? She felt exploited, more used than an old five-pound note. And lurking darkly behind all the sound and fury of her disappointment was the maddening knowledge that Jamie had had a point. It had suited her to agree to marry him at the time. No one had forced her. She had only herself to blame.
Anna stumbled blindly onward, heading she knew not where and caring less. She felt as if the earth had given way beneath her—which, given the muddy ground and the careless way she was negotiating it, was more or less the case. The violent jolts of her ankles as they twisted and slid onward over the uneven humps of marshy grass were intensely painful; throwing back her head, Anna howled again, investing in the sound all the indignation, betrayal, remorse, and shame one might have expected to find given the circumstances. It was a howl that reverberated with perfectly understandable panic and pain. Only one thing about Anna’s howl was a surprise. It was answered.
At first, she thought the sound was an echo bouncing off the rocks and drifting back across the water, except that the water she saw before her, she suddenly realised, was the sea. She must have stumbled for miles and did not now recognise the shore she found herself standing on, heels sinking into an expanse of sand as white as bone. She listened in awe as the full aural expression of her agony was borne thunderously back to her on the waves. It was impressive. Terrifying, even, a wild, abandoned shriek, the cry of a banshee, the scream of a soul in purgatory. As she listened, it came again. Exactly the same but with the crucial difference that this time she had not yelled first. Someone else was howling by the shore.
Anna’s first instinct was to duck out of sight behind one of the rocks and wait for her fellow hollerer to reveal himself. Yet, as the minutes went by and no one appeared, Anna started to wonder whether what she had heard had, in retrospect, been MacLoggie at the pipes again. Failing that, a howling dog.