by M C Beaton
‘Class dismissed,’ he said at last, putting down the letter and assuming a rather ghastly air of levity.
‘What was all that about?’ murmured Jeremy to Alice. ‘And why do I feel it has something to do with Lady Jane?’
‘Care for a drink before dinner, Jeremy?’ came Daphne’s cool voice.
‘Are you paying?’ asked Jeremy, his face crinkling up in a smile.
‘What’s this? Men’s lib?’ Daphne slid her arm into his and they left the lounge together. Alice stood stock still, biting her lip.
‘I told you you were wasting your time.’ Lady Jane’s large bulk hove up on Alice’s port side.
Fury like bile nearly choked Alice. ‘You are a horrible, unpleasant woman,’ she grated.
This seemed to increase Lady Jane’s good humour. ‘Now, now,’ she purred. ‘Little girls in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. And I do trust our stone-throwing days are over.’
Alice gazed at her in terror. She knew. She would tell Jeremy. She would tell everybody.
She turned and ran and did not stop running until she reached her room. She threw herself face down on the bed and cried and cried until she could cry no more. And then she became conscious of all that barbaric wilderness of Highland moor and mountain outside. Accidents happened. Anything could happen. Alice pictured Lady Jane’s heavy body plummeting down into a salmon pool, her fat face lifeless, turned upwards in the brown, peaty water. Abruptly, she fell asleep.
When she awoke, she thought it was still early because of the daylight outside, forgetting about the long light of a northern Scottish summer.
Then she saw it was ten o’clock. With a gasp, she hurtled from the bed and washed and changed. But when she went down to the dining room, it was to find that dinner was over and she had to put up with sandwiches served in the bar. Everyone seemed to have gone to bed. The barman informed her that the fat FEB had gone out walking and perhaps the other was with her – that Lady Whatsername. Alice asked curiously what a FEB was but the bartender said hurriedly he ‘shouldnae hae said that’ and polished glasses furiously.
Charlie Baxter threw leaves into the river Anstey from the humpbacked bridge and watched them being churned into the boiling water and then tossed up again on their turbulent road to the sea. His aunt, Mrs Pargeter, thought he was safely in bed, but he had put on his clothes and climbed out of the window. His mother had written to say she would be arriving at the end of the week. Charlie looked forward to her visit and dreaded it at the same time. He still could not quite believe he would never see his father again. Mother had won custody of him in a violent divorce case and talked endlessly about defying the law and keeping Charlie away from his father for life. Charlie felt miserably that it was somehow all his fault; that if he had been a better child then his parents might have stayed together. He turned from the bridge and headed towards the hotel.
The sky and sea were pale grey, setting off the black twisted shapes of the mountains crouched behind the village.
Charlie walked along the harbour, watching the men getting ready for their night’s fishing. He was debating asking one of them if he could go along and was just rejecting the idea as hopeless – for surely they would demand permission from his aunt – when a soft voice said behind him, ‘Isn’t it time you were in bed, young man?’
Charlie glanced up. The tall figure of Constable Macbeth loomed up in the dusk. ‘I was just going home,’ muttered Charlie.
‘Well, I’ll just take a bit of a walk with you. It’s a grand night.’
‘As a matter of fact, my aunt doesn’t know I’m out,’ said Charlie.
‘Then we would not want to be upsetting Mrs Pargeter,’ said Hamish equably. ‘But we’ll take a wee dauner along the front.’
As Hamish Macbeth was turning away, a voice sounded from an open window of the hotel, ‘Throw the damn thing away. It’s like poison.’ Mrs Cartwright, thought Charlie. Then came John’s Cartwright’s voice, ‘Oh, very well. But you’re worrying overmuch. I’ll throw this in the loch and then we can maybe get a night’s sleep.’
A crumpled piece of blue paper sailed past Charlie’s head and landed on the oily stones of the beach. The tide was out.
Charlie picked it up. It was a crumpled airmail. ‘You shouldn’t look at other people’s correspondence,’ said Hamish Macbeth severely, ‘even though they may have chucked it away.’
‘I wasn’t going to read it. It’s got a lovely stamp. Austrian.’
They passed the Roths, who were walking some distance apart. Marvin’s face was flushed and Amy’s mouth was turned down at the corners. ‘Hi!’ said Marvin, forcing a smile.
‘It’s a grand night,’ remarked the policeman. The American couple went on their way, and Charlie hurriedly thrust the airmail into his pocket.
When they reached his aunt’s house, Charlie said shyly, ‘Do you mind leaving me here? I know how to get in without waking her.’
Hamish Macbeth nodded, but waited at the garden gate until the boy disappeared around the side of the house.
Then he made his way home to his own house where his dog, Towser, gave him a slavering welcome. Hamish absentmindedly stroked the animal’s rough coat. There was something about this particular fishing class that was making him uneasy.
Day Three
Thy tongue imagineth wickedness: and with lies thou cuttest like a sharp razor.
– The Psalms
Alice had reasoned herself into an optimistic frame of mind, although anxiety had first roused her at six in the morning. She had dressed and had taken herself out on a walk up the hill behind the hotel.
A light, gauzy mist lay on everything, pearling the long grass and wild thyme, lying on the rippling silk of the loch, and drifting around the gnarled trunks of old twisted pines, last remnants of the Caledonian forest. Harebells shivered as Alice moved slowly through the grass, and a squirrel looked at her curiously before darting up a tree.
Alice sat on a rock and talked severely to herself. The youthful peccadillo that had landed her briefly in the juvenile court was something buried in the mists of time. Why, her mother’s neighbours in Liverpool hardly remembered it! It was certainly something that Lady Jane could not know about. It had appeared in the local paper, circulation eight thousand, in a little paragraph at the bottom of page two. At the time, it had seemed as if the eyes and the ears of the world’s press had been on her when she had read that little paragraph. But now she was older and wiser and knew that she had been of no interest whatsoever to the media. That was the hell of being so hypersensitive. You began to think people meant all sorts of things because of their lightest remarks. Who was Lady Jane anyway? Just some silly, bitchy, discontented housewife. Jeremy had said she had been married to Lord John Winters, a choleric backbencher in Wilson’s government, who had died of a heart attack only two months after he had received his peerage for nameless services.
Then there was Daphne Gore. Alice envied Daphne’s obvious money and cool poise. Lady Jane hadn’t been able to get at her. But she, Alice, must not let her own silly snobbery stand in the way of luring Jeremy away from Daphne. Come to think of it, Lady Jane had not riled Jeremy either. Perhaps that was what money and a public school gave you – armour plating.
John Cartwright awoke with an unaccustomed feeling of dread. Certainly, he was used to enduring a bit of stage fright before the beginning of each new fishing class, but that soon disappeared, leaving him with only the heady pleasure of being paid for communicating to others his hobby and his passion . . . fishing.
Now Lady Jane loomed like a fat thundercloud on the horizon.
Perhaps he was taking the whole thing too seriously. But neither he nor Heather had really performed their duties very well this week. Usually, they meticulously took their class through more intensive instruction on casting, leader tying, fly tying and the habits of the wily salmon. But so far both of them had been only too glad to get their charges out on the water, as if spreading them as far apart as possible
could diffuse the threatening atmosphere. There was nothing they could do – legally – to protect themselves from Lady Jane. There were two alternatives. They could pray – or they could murder Lady Jane. But John did not believe in God, and he shrank from the idea of violence. Lady Jane had been charming at dinner last night and seemed to be enjoying herself. Perhaps he could appeal to her better nature . . . if she had one.
The mist was burning off the loch when the class assembled in the lounge. It promised to be a scorching day. Alice was wearing a blue-and-white gingham blouse with a pair of brief white cotton shorts that showed her long, slim legs to advantage. She was wearing a cheap, oversweet perfume that delighted Jeremy’s nostrils. Women who wore cheap scent always seemed so much more approachable, conjuring up memories of tumbled flannel sheets in bedsitting rooms. She was concentrating on practising to tie knots, her fine, fluffy brown hair falling over her forehead. He went to sit beside her on the sofa, edging close to her so that his thigh touched her bare legs. Alice flushed, and her hands trembled a little. ‘You look delicious this morning,’ murmured Jeremy and put a hand lightly on her knee. Alice realized, all in that delightful moment, that her knees could blush.
‘I am so glad to meet a young man who actually pursues single girls,’ commented Lady Jane to the world at large. ‘I’m one of those old-fashioned women who believe adultery to be a sin, the next worst thing to seducing servants.’
This remark, which sounded like something from Upstairs Downstairs, went largely unnoticed, but it had an odd effect on both Jeremy and Daphne Gore. Jeremy slowly removed his hand from Alice’s knee and sat very still. Daphne dropped her coffee cup and swore. ‘No good comes of it,’ pursued Lady Jane. ‘I’ve known girls run off and make fools of themselves with Spanish waiters and young men who seduce married barmaids. Disgusting!’
There was a long silence. Daphne’s distress was all too evident, and Jeremy looked sick.
‘Of course,’ came Constable Macbeth’s soft Highland voice, ‘some of us are protected from the sins of the flesh by our very age and appearance. Would not you say so, Lady Jane?’
‘Are you trying to insult me, Officer?’
‘Not I. I would be in the way of thinking that it would be an almost impossible thing to do.’
Lady Jane’s massive bosom swelled under the thin puce silk of her blouse. She’s like the Hulk, thought Alice. Any moment now she’s going to turn green and explode.
‘Were I not aware of the impoverished circumstances of your family,’ said Lady Jane, ‘I would stop you from scrounging coffee. Six little brothers and sisters to support, eh? And your aged parents in Ross and Cromarty? So improvident to have children when one is middle-aged. They can turn out retarded, you know.’
‘Better they turn out retarded – although they’re not – than grow up into a silly, fat, middle-aged, barren bitch like yourself,’ said Hamish with a sweet smile.
‘You will suffer for this,’ howled Lady Jane. ‘Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know the power I have?’
‘No,’ said Amy Roth flatly. ‘We don’t.’
Lady Jane opened and shut her mouth like a landed trout.
‘That’s right, honey,’ said Marvin Roth. ‘You can huff and you can puff, but you ain’t gonna blow any houses down here. You can make other folks’ lives a misery with your snide remarks, but I’m a New Yorker, born and bred, and Amy here’s a Blanchard of the Augusta, Georgia, Blanchards and you won’t find a tougher combination than that.’
A strange change came over Lady Jane. One minute she looked about to suffer the same fate as her late husband; the next, her angry colour had died and she looked around lovingly at Amy.
‘Dear me,’ she said sweetly, ‘a Blanchard born and bred?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Marvin Roth proudly. ‘Amy’s old money, just like the Rockefellers.’
‘Please!’ called John Cartwright. ‘Let me begin or we’ll never get the day started.’
They shuffled their chairs into a semicircle. Heather unrolled a screen and then started setting up a small projector. ‘Lantern slides,’ groaned Lady Jane.
A tic appeared in John’s left cheek, but he gamely went on with his lecture, showing slides of what salmon looked like when they headed up river from the sea, when they were spawning, and when they were returning to the sea.
‘Our prices at this school are very reasonable,’ said John. ‘Very reasonable,’ he repeated firmly after Lady Jane snorted. ‘The better-class salmon beats are all strictly preserved and can only usually be fished at enormous cost. Salmon are fly-caught, particularly the ones of small size, on ordinary reservoir-strength trout rods. Regular salmon anglers, however, also include in their tackle longer rods, some designed for two-handed casting, larger reels, heavier lines, stouter leaders, and flies much bigger on average than those used for trout.’
‘If we had a decent government in power,’ interrupted Lady Jane, ‘instead of that Thatcher woman’s dictatorship, then everyone would be able to fish for salmon, even the common people.’
John sighed and signalled to Heather to pack up the projector. He and Heather loved the Sutherland countryside, and he usually ended his talk by showing beautiful colour slides of rivers and mountains and lochs. But he felt beauty would be wasted on the present gathering. ‘We will fish the Upper Sutherland today. Heather will pass around maps. The pools on the upper river are small, easy to fish, closely grouped together and within easy distance of the road. During the summer, the fish cannot get over the Sutherland falls and so that’s why they concentrate in the upper beats. On your map, you will see the Slow Pool marked. This is a very good holding pool, but it is particularly good in high water when it is best fished from the right bank. Heather and I will take Alice and Charlie and the rest of you can follow as before.’
The day was gloriously hot, and even Charlie Baxter lost his customary reserve and whistled cheerfully as the large estate car swung around the hairpin bends of the Highland roads. At one point a military plane roared overhead, flying so low the noise of its jets was deafening. ‘A Jaguar!’ said Charlie.
John fiddled with the knobs of the car radio. A blast of Gaelic keening split the air. He tried again. Gaelic. ‘Isn’t there anything in English?’ asked Alice, feeling the more cut off from civilization by the sound of that incomprehensible tongue coming from the radio. ‘She’s got a ticket to ride’ roared the Beatles, and everyone laughed and joined in. There was something about the scorching sun and clear air that reduced the likes of Lady Jane to a dot on the horizon. Alice could now well understand why people once thought the night hideous with evil creatures.
Alice was only sorry the estate car was big enough to take their rods lying down flat in the back. It would have been jolly to have them poking upright out of the open window, advertising to the world at large that she was a professional fisher of salmon.
They parked in a disused quarry and climbed out to meet the others. Lady Jane was wearing a Greek fisherman’s hat that gave her fleshy face with its curved beak of a nose an oddly hermaphroditic appearance.
John spread out the map on the bonnet of the car and sorted them out into pairs. Daphne and Lady Jane were to fish the Calm Pool, a good holding pool, and were told that the streamy water at the top was best. The major and Jeremy were to try their chances at the Slow Pool; the Roths at the Silver Bank; and Alice and Charlie at the Sheiling. Heather would go with Alice and Charlie and John with the major and Jeremy.
Alice fished diligently until Heather announced they should break for lunch. Fishing fever had her in its grip and she had not thought of Jeremy once.
At lunch it transpired that Lady Jane and the major were missing. Jeremy said the local ghillie from Lochdubh had taken him aside and begun talking to him, and the major had packed up and left with him. Daphne said crossly that Lady Jane had thrashed her line about the water enough to scare away a whale and then had mercifully disappeared.
The absence of Lady Jane acted on the
spirits of the party like champagne. Heather had augmented the hotel lunch with homemade sausage rolls, potato scones, and fruit bread covered in lashings of butter and strawberry jam. Alice was dreamily happy to see that Daphne’s skin was turning an ugly red in the sun while her own was turning to pale gold. A little breeze fanned their hot cheeks and Jeremy made Alice’s day perfect by opting to fish with her for the rest of the afternoon.
After some time, Jeremy suggested they should take a rest. Alice lay back on the springy heather by the water’s edge and stared dreamily up into the blue sky.
‘What do you think of Lady Jane?’ asked Jeremy abruptly. Alice propped herself up on one elbow. ‘I dunno,’ she said cautiously. ‘I think she’s learned the knack of fishing of a different sort. I think she knows everyone’s got some sort of skeleton in the cupboard and she throws out remarks at random and watches until she sees she’s caught someone. Like with you and Daphne this morning. Whatever she meant by that servant and Spanish waiter remark, it upset you and Daphne no end.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Jeremy quickly. ‘I was upset for Daphne’s sake. I could see the remark had got home.’ But you were upset before, thought Alice. ‘I think the woman’s plain mad. All that talk about her having power is pure rot. She’s nothing but the widow of some obscure Labour peer. She’s not even good class. I phoned my father about her the other night. He says she’s the daughter of old Marie Phipps, who was secretary to and mistress of Lord Chalcont, and Marie forced his lordship into sending Jane to a finishing school in Switzerland. There never was a Mr Phipps, you know.’
‘You mean, she’s illegitimate,’ gasped Alice. ‘How splendid. I’d like to throw that in her face.’
‘Don’t, for God’s sake,’ said Jeremy harshly. ‘She’d bite back like a viper.’
‘But you said she’s got no power.’