Wild Mountain Thyme

by Rosamunde Pilcher

  That they had already met in London, he knew. Victoria herself had told him this evening, while Oliver soaked in a bath, and she brushed her hair, and they talked through the open door.

  “So extraordinary,” she had said, in her lightest and most casual of voices. He knew that voice. It was Victoria’s keep-out sign, and always aroused his avid curiosity. “He was the man who brought me home from the party that evening. Do you remember? When Tom was crying.”

  “You mean John Hackenbacker of Consolidated Aloominum? Well, I never did. How extraordinary.” This was fascinating. He mulled it over, squeezing spongefuls of peat-brown water over his chest. “What did he say when he saw you again?”

  “Nothing really. We had tea together.”

  “I thought he was flying off to Bahrain.”

  “He was. He’s flown back again.”

  “What a little bird of passage he is. What does he do when he’s not flying hither and yon?”

  “I think he’s in banking.”

  “Well, why isn’t he in London, where he should be, cashing people’s cheques?”

  “Oliver, he’s not that sort of a banker. And he’s got a few days leave to try and sort out his uncle’s estate.”

  “And how does he feel about being the new young laird of Benchoile?”

  “I didn’t ask him.” She sounded cool. He knew he was annoying her, and went on with his teasing.

  “Perhaps he fancies himself in a kilt. Americans always adore dressing themselves up.”

  “That’s a stupid generalization.”

  There was now a definite edge to her voice. She was, Oliver realized, sticking up for the new arrival. He got out of the bath and wrapped a towel around himself and came through to the bedroom. Victoria’s anxious blue eyes met his through her mirror.

  “That’s a very long word for you to use.”

  “Well, he’s not that sort of an American at all.”

  “What sort of an American is he?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She laid down her comb and picked’ up her mascara brush. “I don’t know anything about him.”

  “I do.” Oliver told her. “I went and talked to Ellen while she was bathing Tom. Get on the right side of her, and she’s a mine of the most delicious morsels of gossip. It seems that John Dunbeath’s father married a veritable heiress. And now he’s been landed with Benchoile. To him who has shall be given. He’s obviously been walking about with a silver spoon sticking out of his mouth since the day he was born.” Still wrapped in the bath towel, he began to prowl around the bedroom, leaving wet footmarks on the carpet.

  She said, “What are you looking for?”

  “Cigarettes.”

  * * *

  To he who has shall be given. Roddy had given Oliver a cigar. He leaned back in his chair, and through its smoke, through narrowed eyes, he watched John Dunbeath. He saw the dark eyes, the heavy, tanned features, the closely cut pelt of black hair. He looked, Oliver decided, like a tremendously wealthy young Arab, who had just climbed out of his djellabah and into a Western suit. The malice of the simile pleased him. He smiled. John looked up at that moment and saw Oliver smiling at him, but although there was no antagonism in his face, he did not smile back.

  “What about the oil?”

  “The oil, the oil.” Roddy sounded like Henry Irving intoning “The bells, the bells!”

  “Do you reckon it belongs to Scotland?”

  “The nationalists think so.”

  “How about the private millions that British and American companies have invested before the oil could be discovered? If it hadn’t been for that, the oil would still be under the North Sea, and nobody would know about it.”

  “They say this is what happened in the Middle East…”

  Their voices faded to a soft murmur. Their words became indistinguishable. The other voices moved in, the real voices. Now the girl was there, sullen and pushy.

  And where do you think you’re going?

  I’m going to London. I’m going to get a job.

  What’s wrong with Penistone? What’s wrong with getting a job in Huddersfield?

  Oh, Mum, not that sort of a job. I’m going to be a model.

  A model. Tarting up and down some street with no knickers on, more like.

  It’s my life.

  And where are you going to live?

  I’ll find somewhere. I’ve got friends.

  You move in with that Ben Lowry, and I’m finished with you. I tell you straight, I’m finished …

  “… soon there won’t be any real craftsmen left. And I mean real ones, not the weirdos who come from God knows where and set themselves up in windswept sheds to print silk scarves that no one in their right minds would ever buy. Or to weave tweed that looks like dishcloths. I’m talking about the traditional craftsmen. Kiltmakers and silversmiths, being seduced away by the big money to be earned in the rigs and the refineries. Now, take this man we went to see today. He’s got a good business going. He started with two men, and now he’s employing ten, and half of them are under twenty.”

  “What about his markets?”

  “This is it. He’d already contacted his market outlets before he came north.” Roddy turned to Oliver. “Who was that publisher he worked for before—when he was in London? He told us the name, but I can’t remember it.”

  “Umm?” Oliver was dragged back into the conversation. “Sorry, I wasn’t really paying attention. The publisher? Hackett and Hansom, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, that’s it, Hackett and Hansom. You see…”

  But then Roddy stopped, suddenly aware that he had been holding forth for far too long. He turned to Victoria to apologize, but at this instant, to her obvious horror, she lost herself in an enormous yawn. Everybody laughed, and she was covered in confusion.

  “I’m not really bored, I’m just sleepy.”

  “And no wonder. We’re behaving abominably. I am sorry. We should have saved it for later.”

  “It’s all right.”

  But the damage was done. Victoria’s yawn had broken up and ended the discussion. The candles were burning down and the fire was nearly out, and Roddy looked at his watch and realized that it was half past ten. “Good heavens, is that the time?” He put on an impeccable Edinburgh accent. “How it flies, Mrs. Wishart, when you’re enjoying yourself.”

  Victoria smiled. “It’s the fresh air,” she said, “that makes you sleepy. Not the lateness of the hour.”

  Oliver said, “We’re not used to it.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched.

  “What are you going to do tomorrow?” Roddy asked. “What are we all going to do tomorrow? You can choose, Victoria. What would you like to do? It’s going to be a good day, if we can rely on the weather forecast. How about the waterfall. Shall we take a picnic over to the waterfall? Or has anybody got a better suggestion?”

  Nobody had. Pleased with his notion, Roddy enlarged on the plan. “We’ll take the boat across if I can find the key to the boathouse. Thomas would like a boat trip, wouldn’t he? And Ellen will pack us a nosebag. And when we get over there we’ll light a fire to keep us warm.”

  This seemed to meet with everybody’s approval, and on this note, the evening began to come to an end. Oliver finished his port, stubbed out his cigar, and stood up.

  “Perhaps,” he said, mildly, “I should take Victoria off to bed.”

  This suggestion was made to the company in general, but as he said it, he looked at John. John’s face remained impassive. Victoria pushed back her chair, and he got to his feet and came around the table to hold it for her.

  She said, “Good night, Roddy” and came to kiss him.

  “Good night.”

  “Good night, John.” She did not kiss John. Oliver went to open the door for her. As she went through it he turned back to the dusky room, and said with his most charming smile, “See you in the morning.”

  “See you,” said John.

  The door closed. Roddy threw more peat on the
fire, stirred it to life. Then he and John drew chairs up to its warmth and resumed their discussion.

  11

  SATURDAY

  The weather forecasters had been only partially correct. The sun indeed was shining, but intermittent clouds blew across its face, driven by a western wind, and the very air had a liquidity about it, so that hills, water, sky, all looked as though they had been painted by a huge sodden brush.

  The house and the garden were sheltered by the curve of the hills, and only the smallest of breezes had shaken the trees as they waited to embark themselves and an immense amount of equipment into the old fishing boat, but they had no sooner moved forty yards or so from the shore, when the true force of the wind made itself felt. The surface of the beer-brown water was flurried and driven with quite large waves, foam-crested and splashing over the gunwales. The occupants of the boat huddled into the various waterproof garments that had been gleaned from the Benchoile gunroom and handed around at the start of the voyage. Victoria wore an olive drab oilskin with enormous toggle-fastened poacher’s pockets, and Thomas had been wrapped in a shooting jacket of immense antiquity, lavishly stained with the blood of some long-defunct bird or hare. This garment restricted him considerably, and Victoria was thankful for this, because it made the task of holding him still less difficult, his one idea apparently being to cast himself bodily overboard.

  John Dunbeath, without any spoken agreement, had taken the oars. They were long and heavy, and the sound of creaking rowlocks, the faint piping of the wind, and the splash of breaking waves against the side of the boat were the only sounds. He wore a black oilskin that had once belonged to his uncle Jock, and a pair of green shooting boots, but his head was bare, and his face wet with spray. He rowed expertly, powerfully, the swing of his body driving the prow of the balky old boat through the water. Once or twice he shipped his oars in order to look over his shoulder and judge how far the wind and the run of the water were carrying them off course, and to get his bearings. He looked very much at home, at ease. But then he had done this thing, and come this way, many times before.

  Amidships, on the center thwart, sat Roddy and Oliver. Roddy with his back to Victoria, and with his dog Barney secure between his knees; Oliver astride the thwart, leaning back with his elbows propped on the gunwale. Both men had their eyes on the approaching shore, Roddy scanning the hillside through his binoculars. From where she sat, Victoria could see only the outline of Oliver’s forehead and chin. He had turned up the collar of his jacket, and his long legs, straddled in their faded jeans, ended in a pair of aged sneakers. The wind caught his hair and blew it back from his face, and the skin, fine-drawn over his cheekbones, was burned russet with the wind.

  In the bottom of the boat, pools of water, inevitably, slopped. Every now and then, when he thought about it, Roddy would lower his binoculars on their leather strap and bail absent-mindedly, dipping the water up with an old tin bowl and emptying it overboard. It didn’t seem to make much difference. Anyway, the picnic baskets, the box of kindling, the bundles of tarpaulins and rugs had all been stowed with care, out of reach of the puddles. There seemed to be enough food to feed an army, and various vacuum flasks and bottles had a special basket to themselves, with divisions, so that they did not bang together and break.

  Roddy, having finished with a little bit of bailing, took up his binoculars again, and began to cover the hill.

  “What are you looking for?” Oliver asked.

  “Deer. It’s amazing how hard they are to see on a hill face. Last week when we had the snow you could pick them out from the house, but there don’t seem to be any about today.”

  “Where will they be?”

  “Over the hill, probably.”

  “Do you get a lot here?”

  “Sometimes as many as five hundred. Deer and does. In cold weather they come down and eat the fodder we put out for the cattle. In the summer they bring their young down, after dark, to graze in the pastures and drink from the loch. You can drive up the old cattle road from the foot of the loch. Keep the headlights of the car turned off, and you take them unawares. Then turn the lights onto them, and it’s a beautiful sight.”

  “Do you shoot them?” Oliver asked.

  “No. Our neighbor over the hill has the stalking rights. Jock let them to him. However, the deep freeze at Benchoile is full of haunches of venison. You should get Ellen busy on it before you take yourselves off again. It can be dry and tough, but Ellen’s a way with venison. It’s delicious.” He lifted the leather strap over his head and handed the binoculars to Oliver. “Here, you have a look, see if you can spot anything with your young eyes.”

  Now, in the magical way that such things come about, the other shore, their destination, drew nearer and began to reveal its secrets. No longer was it a landscape blurred by distance, but a place of rocky outcrops, emerald green swards, white pebble beaches. Bracken, dense as fur, coated the lower slopes of the hill. Higher up, this gave way to heather and the occasional lonely Scots pine. The distant skyline was edged by the uneven outline of a drystone dike, the march wall between Benchoile land and the neighboring property. In places this dike had broken, leaving a gap like a missing tooth.

  But there was still no sign of the waterfall. Holding Thomas in the circle of her arms, Victoria leaned forward, meaning to ask Roddy about this, but at that moment the boat swept past a great promontory of rock, and the little bay was revealed before them.

  She saw the white shingle beach, and purling down the hillside, the burn, tumbling and twisting through heather and bracken, until, twenty feet or so above the beach, it leaped out over a ledge of granite and spouted down into the pool at its base. White as a mare’s tail, dancing in the sunlight, fringed with rushes and moss and fern, it lived up to all Victoria’s expectations.

  Roddy turned to smile at her face of openmouthed delight.

  “There you are,” he told her. “Isn’t that what you came all this way to see?”

  Thomas, as excited as she was, lurched forward and escaped from her hold. Before she could catch him, he had stumbled, lost his balance, and fallen forward against his father’s knee.

  “Look!” It was one of his few words. He banged Oliver’s leg with his fist. “Look!”

  But Oliver was still engrossed with Roddy’s binoculars, and either did not notice Thomas, or else paid no attention. Thomas said, “Look,” again, but in the throes of trying to get his father to listen to him, he slipped and fell, bumping his head on the thwart and finishing up in the bottom of the boat, sitting in three inches of icy water.

  He began, not unnaturally, to cry, and the first wail was out before Victoria, scrambling forward, could rescue him. As she picked him up, and lifted him back into her arms, she looked up and saw the expression on John Dunbeath’s face. He was not looking at her, he was looking at Oliver. He was looking as though, quite happily, he could have punched Oliver in the nose.

  * * *

  The keel ground up onto the shingle. John shipped his oars and climbed overboard, and heaved the prow of the boat up onto the dry beach. One by one they alighted. Thomas was carried to safety by Roddy. Oliver took the forward painter and tied it up to a large, concrete-embedded spike, which was, perhaps, for this very purpose. Victoria handed out picnic baskets and the rugs to John, and finally, herself jumped ashore. The shingle of the beach crunched beneath the soles of her shoes. The sound of the waterfall filled her ears.

  There seemed to be a strict protocol for Benchoile picnics. Roddy and Barney led the way up the beach, and the others followed, a straggling, laden procession. Between the waterfall pool and the tumbledown walls of the ruined croft was a sward of grass, and here they set up camp. There was a traditional fireplace, a ring of blackened stones and charred wood bearing witness to previous picnics, and it was very sheltered, although high above, the clouds still raced. The midday sun blinked in and out, but when it shone, it shed a real warmth, and the dark waters of the loch took on the blue of the sky and dance
d with sun pennies.

  The group shed their bulky waterproofs. Thomas set off by himself to explore the beach. John Dunbeath took up a stick and began to scrape together the ashes in the fireplace. From the drink basket Roddy took two bottles of wine, and stood them at the edge of the pool, to cool. Oliver lit a cigarette. Roddy, his wine safely dealt with, stopped to watch a pair of birds, twittering and anxious, circling a rock ledge at the edge of the waterfall.

  “What are they?” asked Victoria.

  “Dippers. Water ouzels. It’s early for them to be nesting.” He began to climb the steep bank in order to investigate this. Oliver, with the binoculars still dangling around his neck, watched for a moment, and then followed him. John was already searching for kindling for the fire, gathering handfuls of dry grass and charred heather stalks. Victoria was about to offer her help, when she spied Thomas, heading for the loch and the pretty waves. She ran after him, jumping down onto the beach, and catching him up, just in time, into her arms.

  “Thomas!” She held him close and laughed into his neck. “You can’t go into the water.”

  She tickled him and he chuckled, and then arched his back protesting and frustrated. “Wet!” he shouted into her face.

  “You’re wet already. Come along, we’ll find something else to do.”

  She turned and carried him back up the beach, to where the pool overflowed to a shallow stream that ran over the pebbles to the loch. Beside this she set Thomas, and stooping, picked up a handful of stones, and began to throw them, one by one, into the water. Thomas was diverted by the little splashes they made. After a little he squatted down on his haunches and began to throw pebbles for himself. Victoria left him and went back to the picnic place, and removed the plastic mug from the top of a vacuum flask. She took this back to Thomas.

  “Look.” She sat beside him and filled the mug with stones. When it was full, she poured them out into a heap. “Look, it’s a castle.” She gave him the mug. “You do it.”

  Carefully, one at a time, with starfish hands, Thomas filled the mug. The occupation absorbed him. His fingers, red with cold, were clumsy, his perseverance touching.