by Flora Kidd
‘I did not speak to her. She spoke to me. Your warning about the undesirability of her accosting strange men seems to be totally ineffective. Good afternoon.’
He turned on his heel and walked away with a quick determined stride, his hands thrust in his jacket pockets, his shoulders slightly hunched. The desire to go after him and explain to him all her difficulties in restraining Linda’s exuberant behaviour was so strong that Nancy had taken a few steps after him before she realised the folly of doing such a thing. She turned to follow Linda instead.
But by the time she had reached the post marking the site of the Mithraum or temple of Mithras, Linda was already loping across the wide windy field to the car park. As she reached it, the rakish car left it with a roar of exhaust and headed west. Linda stopped running to wave to the driver.
When Nancy reached the Rover Don and Linda were already sitting in it and the engine was running.
‘Come on, hurry up,’ chided Don impatiently. ‘You should have seen the fellow who owned the other car. Talk about posh! His clothes must have cost a fortune, never mind the car. It’s the type which won the Le Mans last year, only it has two extra seats at the back. I wish we had his horse-power. We’d soon be in Lanmore if we had.’
‘We did see him and talk to him. I found him. He was all alone and looking so sad that I just had to speak to him,’ said Linda as they chugged at a steady forty-five miles an hour westward.
‘Sad?’ exclaimed Nancy, her feathers still ruffled. ‘That’s the last word I would use to describe him. He was ... he was...’ She searched for a word to describe the cool authoritative manner of the stranger. ‘He was insolent,’ she said lamely.
‘Well, you were rude to him. You made out that he was one of those horrible men who pick up young girls and strangle them or something, and naturally he was annoyed,’ accused Linda.
‘For all I know he could have been,’ defended Nancy. ‘I’m always telling you to be careful about strangers.’
‘Yes, I know. As if I hadn’t more sense. I knew he was all right—I knew I could trust him. I’m going to put him in a story. My adventure with Mr. Mithras. I think he must be a history teacher.’
‘Huh, with a car like that?’ jibed Don. ‘Don’t be daft. No teacher could afford a car like that. I can’t help thinking I’ve seen him somewhere. His face was familiar.’
‘Why do you think he might be a history teacher?’ asked Nancy.
‘He knew so much about the wall and the camp,’ replied Linda dreamily, her mind already busy with her story. ‘Or perhaps he was a ghost ... the ghost of the Roman commandant of the camp.’
‘You’re nuts,’ remarked her brother unkindly.
‘Judging by his clothes, his car and his hair style it’s more likely that he’s a pop singer or a T.V. actor, which would account for you thinking he seemed familiar,’ said Nancy. ‘Anyway, whoever he is I’m glad there’s no possibility of us meeting him again.’
Don slanted an amused glance in her direction.
‘He’s roused you all right. What happened, Nancy? Didn’t you win?’
Nancy compressed her lips and tilted her chin.
‘I’ve no wish to discuss the man any more,’ she replied haughtily, her manner making her brother grin more widely. ‘It was an unfortunate meeting which I shall proceed to forget.’
During the rest of that day and the whole of the following day it wasn’t difficult to forget the meeting with the stranger because they were all too busy absorbing the sights and sounds of the journey.
They spent the first night at Dumfries, the old county town with its houses of red sandstone crouched beside the swan-scattered waters of the Nith. After a good night’s rest they were up early and at Linda’s insistence they inspected the house where. Robert Bums spent the last years of his life and found the plaque which marked the site of the church in which Robert the Bruce had murdered Red Comyn in the struggle for the throne of Scotland.
Having paid their respects to history they had to hurry along the road to Glasgow and were half an hour late arriving at the lawyer’s office. Mr. Roberts, a thin sharp-faced man with a voice like rustling leaves, informed them that Mr. Maclaine, who had cut short a visit to London especially to come north and meet them before they set off for Lanmore, had been unable to wait any longer to see them. The laird was rather concerned about Don taking over the croft, said the lawyer. He had no wish to see it deteriorate through incompetence and had hoped to persuade Don to give up his claim.
A roused Don hotly assured the lawyer that he had no intention of giving up what was his until he had seen it and had tried living there. Pursing his lips and shaking his head, the lawyer reluctantly handed over the key to the cottage as well as a cheque for two thousand pounds. As he shook hands with Don he wished him luck and added warningly,
‘Mr. Maclaine has a bad impression of you already because you were late for the appointment, so don’t be surprised if you receive a poor welcome from him.’
With this cold comfort they left the city and drove out towards Loch Lomond, reaching Balloch at the southern end of the loch as rain began to fall in the late afternoon. For a while they pushed on, but soon the rain was so heavy that it blurred visibility and the narrow lochside road became so slippery that they decided to stop for the night and stay at a small hotel.
Next morning there was a hint of sunshine behind the grey clouds which hid the mountains from view. The water of the loch was flat and inert. But in spite of the cloudiness and the discomfort of travelling along the winding road, the spirits of all three suddenly soared and they sang cheerfully all the Scottish ballads they knew with frequent repetitions of ‘Loch Lomond’ and ‘The Road to the Isles’.
The dour barren stretch of Rannoch Moor reduced them to silence for a while. Although the sun had struggled through it did little to relieve the desolation of the moor, so that they were fully prepared for the strange and terrible atmosphere of Glencoe.
Nancy was glad when they left that haunted place and had crossed Loch Leven on the Ballachulish ferry. They followed the comparatively straight road beside lovely Loch Linnhe, a long arm of the sea, which dimpled and glittered in the mellow light of the afternoon sunshine. The steeply sloping banks of the loch were thickly covered with pine, birch and oak and the succulent luscious green of rhododendron, evidence of the mildness of the climate created by the invasion of the land by the sea.
Although Linda wanted to look in the many gift shops, they did not stop in the busy town of Fort William. As Don pointed out, it was Saturday and the ferry to Lanmore, the only means of access to the peninsula from the south, did not run on a Sunday. If they did not reach the ferry point at Glenarg by six o’clock they would have to spend another night in a hotel, which they could not afford.
Don was determined to sleep in his cottage that night, so taking over from Nancy who had been driving, he put his foot down on the accelerator and drove as fast as he dared along the road to Spean Bridge, refusing adamantly to stop and let the girls look at the memorial to the Commandos who had trained there during the Second World War.
Along the side of Loch Lochy the sped, watching carefully all the time for a signpost which would show them the way to Lanmore. When it appeared they almost missed it, because its pointing white finger was half hidden by the drooping branches of a tree and the entrance to the narrow road was scarcely noticeable.
It was as if Lanmore was reluctant to draw attention to itself, as if it did not wish to be invaded by persons from the world of commerce and industry. This impression increased as they drove carefully along the road. Up and up it climbed, a switchback which hung at times over precipitous banks screened by a thick scrub of hazel and birch and oak. Far below shadowed lochs gleamed wanly, linked together by silvery snakes of rivers, while above them towered rugged bracken-clad hillsides down which waterfalls cascaded.
The road was rough and took its toll of the car as they bumped along. They reached the top at last, had a brief glimp
se of the sun shining on the sea and then they were plunging downwards, twisting and turning on a road which was not much wider than the car.
But there were no complaints about the discomfort of the journey. Nancy was too fascinated by the wild landscape. Don was happy because he was nearly at Lanmore and Linda was too enthralled with the idea that it was possibly in this type of country that Bonnie Prince Charlie had hidden when in flight from the battleground of Culloden.
‘Just think, Nan, it must be the same as when he was alive. He might have hidden behind that boulder there, or behind that screen of birch. One of the first things I’m going to do is visit Skye and see the place where he sailed from.’
‘Don’t you believe it,’ scoffed Don. ‘When you get to Lanmore you’ll have to work. The house is probably in a mess and needs cleaning. No trips to Skye or anywhere else until you’ve done your stint of work!’
At that moment the car, which had been behaving rather erratically for the last few miles, gave an ominous cough, stopped momentarily and then moved on jerkily. It coughed again, stopped and went on again.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Nancy. ‘Have you run out of petrol?’
‘Of course not. I filled the tank at that petrol station this side of Fort William,’ replied Don.
‘Hadn’t we better stop here where there’s a passing place?’ suggested Nancy. ‘We can’t stop in the middle of the road, we’d block it completely.’
Limping and spluttering, the car jerked on a few yards as Don guided it into a small space carved out of the hillside. These spaces occurred at regular intervals to enable cars to pass on the narrow road. They had hardly reached it when the car engine stopped altogether, and although Don tried several times to coax it to life it remained silent and unresponsive.
‘Of all the fiendish luck, when we’ve only another eight miles to go to the ferry!’ moaned Don.
‘Maybe someone will come by and stop and help us,’ said Linda, who was always optimistic.
‘I shouldn’t think anyone ever comes this way,’ commented Nancy. ‘I have an unusual feeling that we’ve entered a place which doesn’t really exist and from which we’ll never return.’
Her brother and sister regarded her with surprise, because Nancy was the most practical and realistic of the three of them and she never romanced or indulged in flights of imagination.
‘It exists all right, although I’m half expecting the wee folk to appear any minute,’ laughed Linda. ‘Maybe there’s a demon in the engine. Let’s get out and look.’
They got out. The air was cool and smelt slightly of the sea. Sunlight dappled the purplish rock of the hillside where the passing space had been gouged out of it. Don opened the bonnet of the car and looked in. There was no demon. The engine appeared to be normal, if a little overheated by its exertions.
The only noise in that place was the occasional twitter of a bird, but suddenly they became aware of another noise, the drone of a car engine.
‘Someone’s coming!’ cried Linda delightedly. ‘The way we came. I’ll wave and stop them.’
‘Be careful. Don’t step out or you’ll be knocked down,’ cautioned Nancy.
The sound grew louder, the unmistakable roar of a high-powered engine. A car appeared round the bend. Linda waved frantically. It passed them, screeched to a stop beyond them, and then reversed slowly. It was dark green, low-slung and aggressive-looking.
‘It’s Mr. Mithras!’ screeched Linda excitedly.
‘What on earth is he doing here?’ murmured Nancy, more and more convinced that she was living in a dream and aware of a strange feeling amounting almost to fear as she watched the door of the green car open and its driver step out.
‘He’s going to be our Good Samaritan,’ said Linda with complete disregard for her mixture of religions.
Anyone who looked less like a sun-god or a kindly do-gooder it was hard to imagine, thought Nancy as she watched the stranger of Housesteads approach them. With his dark hair and sallow complexion he was more like Pluto, the god of the underworld.
‘So it’s you again,’ he said quietly to Linda, but it was Nancy who received the slightly disdainful glance of his heavy-lidded grey eyes. Then turning to Don, he asked politely,
‘What’s happened? Can I help you?’
‘I don’t know,’ muttered Don, grudgingly, not willing to admit his ignorance. ‘The engine just stopped and it won’t start again.’
With an expressive twitch of his eyebrows and the corner of his mouth their Good Samaritan managed to convey that he thought very little of people who did not know why their car had stopped and ignoring them all proceeded to make a thorough inspection of all that was inside the bonnet.
Linda and Don leaned into the bonnet with him watching everything he did, occasionally offering comments to which he did not bother to reply. Wishing heartily that it could have been someone else who had come to their aid, Nancy leaned against the side of the car and watched the shadows grow longer down in the deep glen as the sun sidled down the sky, hoping by her detached attitude she would show him that she wished him far away.
His inspection made, the man took the rag offered to him by Don with which to wipe his oily hands and to Nancy’s annoyance came to lean beside her.
‘You’re admiring the scenery?’ he queried. ‘Tearlath’s country.’
‘Tearlath? What does that mean?’ questioned Linda.
‘Bonnie Prince Charles to you, little southerner ... our brave, valiant and so romantic prince. I’m sure he’s the only character in Scottish history in whom you’re interested.’
There was an undercurrent of amusement in his voice as if he was making fun of them, which irritated Nancy. But his claim to Prince Charlie as his prince surprised her and before she could check her interest she exclaimed disbelievingly,
‘Are you a Highlander?’
A faint smile revealed his appreciation of her disbelief.
‘In so much as I was born in the Highlands, and now make my home here,’ he replied indifferently as if he satisfied her curiosity reluctantly, and immediately she decided that she would not be trapped into asking any more personal questions.
‘Why did you buy this outdated machine?’ he asked curtly, slapping the side of the car with a derogatory hand.
‘It was all Don and I could afford to buy,’ she answered stiffly, looking him in the eye.
‘Do you realise you’ve been swindled? It isn’t fit to take on the roads.’
‘It has a recent certificate of road-worthiness, and I was sure that the fellow who sold it to us was honest,’ defended Don hotly, reacting violently, as usual, to implied criticism.
‘I expect he put on an act of being honest,’ commented the stranger. ‘Didn’t you take anyone with you who had experience of cars when you went to buy it?’
‘Rod offered to go with you, Don, but you wouldn’t let him,’ put in Nancy.
‘He knows as much about cars as I do,’ snorted Don. ‘Do you know what’s wrong with it?’ he asked, rounding on the other man.
‘Yes. The petrol pump has packed up ... and the fan belt isn’t in very good shape.’ He spoke quietly with that touch of authority which put paid to argument.
‘Oh!’ Don sounded thoroughly disappointed.
‘But what are we going to do?’ wailed Linda. ‘We can’t stay here all night. I’m getting hungry and it’ll soon be dark.’
‘Where are you going?’ asked the man, turning to Nancy again.
‘To Lanmore.’ She wondered where else they could go along this road.
‘It’s a peninsula, almost an island. You can only reach it by ferry,’ burst out Linda. ‘Do you know it?’
The stranger did not answer at once but gazed at each of them in turn as if summing them up.
‘Yes, I know it,’ he replied at last. ‘There’s a garage at Glenarg where the ferry is. They do repairs there and they have a towing truck. Leave your car here and I’ll drive you there. I doubt if they’ll tow your car
in this evening ... and then to-morrow is Sunday, truly a day of rest in these parts, except in the summer time when there’s money to be made from the tourists. So it will be Monday before they move it.’
He was amused again and Nancy felt her pride stiffening her attitude towards him. What right had he to be amused at their plight?
‘But where shall we stay?’ Don asked. ‘I hoped to be at the cottage to-night.’
‘Which cottage?’
‘The cottage on my croft at Lanmore.’
Again they were all subjected to a searching glance and as if realising that the stranger wished to know more Don introduced himself and his sisters.
‘We’re just on our way to take up possession of the croft to show the local laird he can’t have it,’ he asserted.
The stranger did not offer to introduce himself. In fact he looked as if he was regretting having played the part of the Good Samaritan, as if he wished he hadn’t become involved with them. Immediately Nancy’s pride went into action.
‘There’s no need to tell ... Mr. ... Mr. ... all our business, Don,’ she said sharply. Then turning to the stranger she gave him her haughtiest glance and said coolly, ‘If you would be so good as to give Don a lift to the garage he can make some arrangements with the proprietor to come and tow the car in.’
The unusual heavy-lidded eyes surveyed her dispassionately for a couple of seconds.