Cry of the Panther

by Jeff Gulvin

  Connla followed her to the valley floor and they drove south-east along Loch Duich, wide and flat with the hills rising steeply on the far side. He glanced up as they passed under the shadow of the Sisters of Kintail, which dominated the southern fringe, and then through the steep-sided Glen Shiel towards Cluanie. He remembered Loch Loyne as the flat elbow-shaped expanse of water he had passed when he’d first driven up here. An hour later Imogen pulled off the road and they parked their vehicles in the shelter of the foothills with the water lapping to the north. There was little wind today and a clear sky that boasted the warmth of the sun. Connla jumped down and helped her with the tailgate of the horsebox. Working close beside her he could feel the rustle of her clothing, her blouse billowing at the neck, and could just see the top of her breasts. Her hair hung loose, half covering her face as she bent to settle the tailgate. Connla went inside and untied the rope rein from the loop that held it. He backed Keira out carefully and she snorted, tossing her mane, then whinnied at the loch, as if she saw the ghosts of dead ancestors trapped beneath the surface. Imogen quietened her and then she fastened the pack frame on her back. Keira watched with interest, unused to this change in weight and feel.

  Between them they loaded the tent and sleeping bags and Connla’s climbing gear onto the frame. Imogen motioned to the great loop of rope he had with him.

  ‘Are you planning on going climbing?’

  ‘You never know,’ he said. ‘I do a bit back in the States, mostly when I’m chasing cougars.’

  ‘Do cougars go that high?’

  ‘Sure they do. They’re a lot better climbers than we are.’

  Ready now, they left the vehicles and moved off, Connla noting that he would need to put some air into a tyre on his truck when they got back. Imogen walked free of any pack. He carried only his cameras, taped and fitted with a 300 and 180 mm lens respectively. He wore his Pendleton hat and she told him he looked like Indiana Jones, which he didn’t mind at all. ‘Harrison Ford’s good-looking, right?’ he said.

  ‘Well, I suppose some people would say so.’

  The horse followed them, her lead rein fastened to the pack frame. If she paused to crop grass Imogen would just nicker at her and she’d come trotting on. Connla walked with the sun climbing higher up his back, his face to the west, freshened by a breeze that breached mountain passes from the sea. There was no path to speak of; Imogen picked her own way through the gullies and clefts in the land, threading a path away from the loch, where the ground lifted and the colours changed every few hundred feet. Connla smelled the sweet scent of new heather, and ahead he could see a line of stags high on the ridge. ‘I never knew there were so many deer in Scotland.’

  ‘There are too many. The environment can’t sustain them. They should let the wolves come back.’

  ‘You think that’ll happen?’

  ‘With the prejudice of the farmers? Hell’s got more chance of freezing over.’

  ‘I know a gal that runs a sanctuary in Minnesota,’ Connla said. ‘She told me the people here aren’t against it.’

  ‘I didn’t say the people. I said farmers.’

  ‘You might be surprised. The same thing happened in Montana, but the ranchers finally bought into the idea.’

  ‘I won’t hold my breath.’ She looked a little scornfully at him. ‘If you can prove there really are big cats, d’you think they’d let the wolf come back?’

  ‘You got a point there.’ Connla paused and looked again at the ridge. ‘Where does the stag you paint live?’

  Imogen made a face. ‘Oh, everywhere. North of here mostly.’

  ‘Redynvre. The stag of Redynvre.’

  She nodded.

  ‘D’you know much Celtic mythology?’

  She walked on, a stem of grass between her teeth. ‘Some. Enough to tell stories to the children.’

  ‘At school? Is that what you do?’

  ‘Every afternoon.’ She smiled, hunching her shoulders into her neck. ‘In the last lesson, just before they go home. They love it.’

  ‘I bet they do. Makes a change from Nickelodeon.’ They walked on for a while and then Connla said, ‘Do you want to have children?’

  She looked sideways at him, shading her eyes from the sun. ‘Perhaps. I’ve considered it now and then. But I ought to get them a father first.’

  Connla laughed out loud.

  ‘Seriously, I have thought about children,’ she told him as they rested briefly below a craggy outcrop of rock. ‘But I suppose being an infant-school teacher fulfils a lot of my natural urges.’

  ‘And you can give them back.’

  ‘There is that, of course.’ She gazed back the way they had come, between the rising hills which stretched as far as they could see now. They had climbed maybe a thousand feet and the wind had risen a little.

  ‘Remote up here,’ Connla said. ‘A man could get lost if he didn’t know what he was doing.’

  Imogen glanced at him. ‘They do, frequently. We lose people every year, winter and summer. The mountains are far more dangerous than they look. More often than not it’s walkers rather than climbers. They don’t take the care that they should.’

  ‘You’ve got search-and-rescue teams, though, huh?’

  ‘Of course. Volunteers mostly, but backed up by the RAF with a helicopter.’

  Connla looked from south to east to north, sweeping the rugged, broken landscape with an eye that had grown up in the lee of the Rockies. ‘Bet this is bleak in winter.’

  She smiled, appearing to guess his thoughts. ‘It’s not Rocky Mountain bleak, but it’s bleak.’

  ‘You know the Rockies, Imogen?’

  ‘A little. I know I was young but I did live in Wyoming, remember.’

  Connla stared into the distance. ‘Of course. Can you remember much about it?’

  ‘Bits and pieces.’ Her face was shadowed all at once, the sun dipping behind a cloud. ‘My brother got killed there.’

  Connla felt as though somebody had jabbed a stick at his chest. His lungs tightened and he had to open his mouth to release the trapped air. She wasn’t looking at him; her gaze had shallowed to where the ground fell away in slate and shale at their feet. The horse snorted and Connla glanced round and saw a brown-coated mountain hare squatting on its hind legs, cleaning its whiskers. Imogen followed his gaze. ‘Their coats turn white in the winter. I’d get one on canvas if only they stayed still long enough.’

  ‘How did your brother die?’ he said it softly, hating himself, but knowing the question had to be asked.

  Imogen didn’t answer right away; she moved off the square of polished rock and stood looking at the trail between her feet. ‘He drowned in the Salmon River.’ She looked up suddenly, almost sharply. ‘D’you know it?’

  Connla nodded. ‘I’ve fished there.’

  ‘We used to fish there, too, with some friends of my parents. Steelhead trout.’

  Connla watched the hare bound away. ‘On the east fork. Some of the best fishing in the country. I know people who fly in from St Louis just for the steel-head.’ They were quiet for a long time; Imogen was staring across the mountainside. Then she moved off again, nickering softly like a horse. Keira lifted her head and followed her.

  They climbed and the sun climbed with them. Connla watched the horse, which was more surefooted than they were even hefting all the gear. He took some photos of her and some of Imogen, too, walking with her head down, that great mass of hair flying in all directions.

  Halfway up the hill she stopped and, taking an elastic tie from her pocket, she dragged the hair back from her face. Connla watched her, then, almost unconsciously, he cupped the smoothness of her cheek with a palm. Imogen closed her eyes at his touch; she turned her face to him and he kissed her. She didn’t move, both hands still holding her hair. Then she let it go and he drew her to him, the softness of her breasts against his chest. She held him, one hand sliding down his back to rest at the top of his jeans. They kissed and broke apart, and she looked into hi
s eyes; neither of them said anything, but around them the mountains sang with a silence broken only by the horse cropping at grass.

  Hand in hand now they pressed on; no words, just the dirt and stone and deer tracks under their feet, the horse trailing them and the sky clear again above them. That night they camped by a burn, which bubbled between flattened patches of dark heather before spreading into a pool about the size of a large garden pond. Imogen touched Connla’s arm and lifted her finger to her lips; he followed her gaze and saw a pair of otters poke their snouts from a burrow. They sniffed cautiously at the air before slipping silently beneath the surface of the water.

  Moving their campsite further upstream, Connla sought fallen wood until he had enough for a fire. He lit it while she watched him, feeding just the right amount of kindling to keep it small but bright with very little smoke. They had brought food and some wine and Connla cooked a kind of stew while he watched Imogen standing a little way off, sketch pad resting against her hip and working with a stick of charcoal as the sun sank beyond the mountains.

  She came and sat down, laying aside her pad, and fed a little more wood onto the fire. ‘What’s that hill there?’ he asked, pointing to a craggy buttress that jutted between the uppermost flanks of two hills several miles to the north.

  ‘That’s Devil’s Rigg,’ she told him. ‘We lose lots of walkers up there. It’s far more treacherous than it looks, full of crevices and ravines, some of which you can only see from the air.’

  ‘Why do I recognize it?’

  ‘There’s a painting of it hanging in my kitchen.’

  ‘With the goat on the bluff.’ He nodded. ‘I knew I’d seen it somewhere.’ He laughed then. ‘You know, you must be very good if I recognize it from your painting.’

  He poured some wine; she tasted his stew and blinked several times, but ate it anyway. Connla laughed, nibbled at his and gave the rest to the otters. Then he lay on his back and looked at the darkening sky.

  ‘It’ll only get grey.’ Imogen moved next to him, kneeling, one arm across his chest and looking where he looked. Her hair fell onto his face and he could smell it; he closed his eyes just to breathe her in. He felt the lightness of her lips against his and then she pressed harder and he tasted her tongue, her teeth, the wine-sweetened scent of her breath.

  She stood up as the moon rose and the wind died to a whisper, then she peeled off her top as if it were a second skin. Connla lay where he was, one arm behind his head, looking up at her until she was naked and blurred at the edges, her back to the moon like a silhouetted sepia image. Her hair hung over her breasts so he could only see their outline; the ends frayed against her thighs and the shadows of her lap until she knelt once more and he felt her softness against him.

  They lay for a long time, naked on the sleeping bags in the heather, Imogen’s head against his chest, tracing patterns on his skin with her fingertips, saying nothing and thinking everything. Connla felt both elated and depressed in the same moment. He felt wrong. He was a liar, yet he knew he loved this woman. The panther and his pictures, his life and career were forgotten. There was just this place and the stars and the warmth of her body on his.

  ‘Look.’ Her voice was a whisper. Connla looked where she pointed and saw the northern lights, whiskers of faintly illuminated cloud tracing patterns at the edge of the world.

  Imogen rested against him, warm, fulfilled, a woman, listening to the night sounds she knew so well, watching the firmament, aware of the shape of each breath that rose from his chest beneath her. She could hear the steady beat of the life inside him and she wanted to look into the well of his eyes and see herself there and hope that she always would. She knew this man, knew all about him. She didn’t know how, but she could sense that she did. Maybe it was in a former life. Who knows what mysteries surround the moment of death? She could die here; she could die like this, tonight. She could happily go to sleep lying against the warmth of this man and never ever wake up. She had thought that such emotions were beyond her, that she delved too deeply, looked too hard into whatever it was that confronted her. She had looked at her husband to be and seen what she did not wish to see, and ever since then she had been walking backwards, facing things but backing away from them.

  They woke at dawn and Imogen got up, walked naked to the stream and bathed while Connla watched her. She stood with the sun behind her and he could see the tiniest blond hairs lifting against her skin where they were caught between light and water. Later that morning they walked on and camped again in the afternoon.

  It was a perfect summer’s day, where the sweat dried on their bodies after they made love, and Imogen rode Keira naked, hair to her thighs, and Connla photographed her like Lady Godiva. In the twilight she made him sit on a rock, one leg extended, arms across his chest with the wind in his hair, and then she painted him, naked—something she hadn’t done in years. Again they slept under the stars and talked long into the night. Imogen asked questions and Connla lied, hating himself more and more and more.

  In the morning they lay together for a long time, and then Imogen said she really ought to get back, as there were things she had to do. Connla agreed and said he would return to the village with her to spend at least one more night before driving down to London. His ticket was open and he could postpone the flight just a little longer. They packed up the tent and cooking gear and he decided he would tell her everything that evening. He’d sit her down and explain, tell her the truth and why he had lied in the first place. He felt a little better after that, and he was determined that this thing budding between them would somehow not be spoiled.

  They had just loaded everything onto the horse when two dark specks against the sky caught Connla’s eye. He tugged the brim of his hat lower and Imogen followed his gaze. ‘They’re golden eagles, not white tails,’ she said. ‘A breeding pair. They’ve nested in this area for years.’ Connla watched as the two birds drifted on the breeze, then swung towards the height of Devil’s Rigg, disappearing into the folds of black rock. He looked round at Imogen. ‘I’ve got to get some pictures.’

  ‘I know.’ She smiled, touched his face and handed him his pack with his boots and climbing gear. ‘Be careful,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you at home tonight.’

  They had walked in a rough semi-circle and were only a couple of hours from the trucks. Connla stood watching as she headed back towards the loch, Keira trailing behind her. Home, she had said. I’ll see you at home tonight.

  Twenty-Three

  IMOGEN LED KEIRA BACK to the vehicles and settled her in the horsebox. She secured the tailgate, then looked westward again, wondering where he was, if he was climbing, if he had got his pictures. Slow warmth eased through her knotted muscles as she got behind the wheel and felt in her pocket for the keys. The engine started first time and she smiled and wondered how she could make him stay. She could not. He had to return to America; she knew that. Take it for what it is, she told herself: a glorious interlude, one of those precious interruptions in your life that should be treasured not mourned when they’re over.

  The road alongside Loch Duich was busy, crowded almost with coaches; the world and his wife seemed determined to cross the bridge to Skye this summer. Imogen was glad her aunt had built her house on Loch Gael and not Duich or Alsh. She trundled up the Keppoch Road and let Keira loose in the field, then she backed up the horsebox and hung the tack in the stable. She was anxious to get home, anxious to get inside and close the door, open her book of watercolours and look at what she had painted. He would be a good few hours yet, and she wanted that picture on the easel in her studio so she could work on it some more. It would be nice to be able to show him what he looked like as an artist’s model when he got home. Home. She must stop using that word; home for him was a cabin in the hills of Dakota.

  She closed the five-bar gate and drove back past Patterson’s house without so much as a sideways glance. She saw a police car parked outside McLaran’s bar, but ignored it, crossed the bridge and to
ok the turn for Gaelloch. Morrisey was out in his boat as he always was; he seemed to spend his entire life crossing and recrossing the loch. Perhaps it was just his method of keeping away from his wife. Imogen crossed the second bridge and took care with the cattle and sheep that always seemed to block the road, though she had never quite figured out where they came from. Then she saw the police car parked in her driveway.

  Two policemen got out as she pulled up and one chilling thought struck her: they always send two policemen when somebody has been killed. The older of the two men came up to her, cap set high on his scalp, face seamed and tanned like leather. He cleared his throat very matter of factly.

  ‘Imogen Munro?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’d like to speak to you, please.’ He indicated the keys in her hand. ‘Can we come inside?’

  ‘Is it my father?’

  He frowned and glanced at his colleague. ‘Inside would be better.’

  Her father then. Numbed, she fitted the key in the lock and let them into the kitchen.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ she said.

  The policeman took his cap off; he was bald underneath except for one wispy length of hair flattened against his scalp. ‘It’s not your father, Miss Munro, or your mother. So don’t worry.’ He squinted at her then. ‘D’you know an American named John Brady?’

  Imogen frowned. ‘Yes.’

  ‘D’you know where he is?’

  ‘Yes. I left him this morning. He’s in the hills west of Loch Loyne. Why?’

  The policeman indicated one of the high-backed chairs at the table and she nodded. He sat down and took a magazine from his pocket. BBC Wildlife. ‘We don’t think his name is John Brady,’ he said slowly, ‘although that’s who checked into the hotel by the castle.’