by Gwen Moffat
‘You must be George’s friend,’ Vera said, and the girl smiled wanly. ‘How long are you staying?’
‘Only a week.’
Vera nodded. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I haven’t thought about it. Sunbathe, go for walks. . . .’
‘How nice for George.’ Vera appeared abstracted and Miss Pink stirred. Terry shrugged and looked sullen.
‘He did know you were coming?’ Betty asked. ‘He never said a word to us.’
‘He didn’t know.’
‘Oh dear.’ Vera’s tone was full of sympathy. ‘What will you do?’
‘What can I do?’
Vera glanced at Betty. ‘You might go to Portree,’ she told the girl. ‘There are always vacancies in the hotels and they’d fall over themselves to engage you. Can you do bar work?’
‘I’ve done it,’ Terry said listlessly, then, with more spirit, glancing towards Hamlyn: ‘Would you take me for a week?’
‘No.’ The tone was flat. ‘We don’t need staff.’ More pleasantly: ‘The Royal is always short-handed, and then there are places in Broadford, and a very big hotel at the Kyle—’
Betty said, ‘There’s work all over the islands and on the mainland if you’re prepared to put your back into it; you could have your pick of jobs.’
‘I suppose so. I could go back to London if it comes to that. I’m more used to working in boutiques.’
‘They don’t go in for boutiques on Skye,’ Betty said coldly. ‘It’s different from London here—and there’s absolutely nothing to do in the evenings.’
‘I don’t want much.’
Vera said acidly, ‘You’ve got to have money for clothes and food; you’ve got to do some work, or do you live on social security?’
‘Not all of the time.’ She wasn’t affronted. ‘But I get most of my clothes given me, food as well a lot of the time. You don’t need much money really. People eat too much.’
‘Of course, if you beg—’ Betty’s voice shook with anger, ‘—you don’t need much, and then you’ll always be able to get the price of a meal out of a man.’
It went clean over her head. ‘Chaps don’t give me money so much; they usually give me a meal, in a restaurant like—or a caff if they’re lorry drivers.’
Her voice carried. Maynard was listening, his eyes shining with delight, but Lavender was sober and intent, straining her ears.
‘Have you any family?’ Miss Pink asked equably.
‘I haven’t got a father. And my mum’s married to a bloke I—don’t get on with, so I don’t go home.’
‘When did you leave school?’
She grinned for the first time. ‘When did I ever go to school? Officially I left this year, in July.’
‘Should you be drinking?’ Vera asked. It seemed the epitome of an anti-climax.
‘I don’t drink.’
Everyone stared at her tumbler and noted the bubbles rising in her lemonade.
‘Tomorrow’s Sunday,’ Vera went on, recovering quickly. ‘You can’t make a move till Monday. I suggest you have a lazy day on the shore while George is climbing and you can spend the evening with him because the bar isn’t open to non-residents on Sunday. We’re not open to the public at any time in fact; George is allowed in because he’s Mrs Lindsay’s guide, as a special favour. Then on Monday you can go to Portree and look for work, although you’re more likely to find a suitable job on the mainland. Inverness is a very nice place and there’s a lot happening there. They have boutiques too.’
‘London would be better.’ Betty’s tone was pregnant with meaning.
‘You’re right,’ Terry said, and sighed. ‘It’s not really my scene, is it?’ She glanced over her shoulder at George Watkins who hadn’t looked at her since they entered the room. ‘I’ll give it till Monday,’ she said hopefully.
Madge Fraser came in. Her casual gaze went round the room, observing the occupants without surprise until it rested on Terry Cooke. The others watched her, the Maynards like alert pointers. Only Watkins and Lindsay, after glances which were no more than acknowledgement of her entrance, ignored her.
Hamlyn looked a query, received a nod, and drew her a whisky which she brought over to the table in the window.
‘You’re George’s friend,’ she remarked without preamble and in the cool tone girls used to each other.
‘I’ve known him a while.’
‘Staying long?’
The other stiffened. ‘It depends.’
‘On George?’
‘What’s it got to do with you?’
Madge took a sip of her whisky. ‘Nothing.’
Suddenly Terry addressed Miss Pink. ‘Do you think I’d find work in Portree?’
‘I think you would be happier in London.’
Miss Pink did not mean happier because, she thought, no one could be happier in London than on Skye, but she didn’t want the girl to look for work in Portree or even the Kyle of Lochalsh. Not happier—
‘What kind of work are you looking for?’ Madge regarded the lilac frock and its décolletage incuriously.
Terry said, ‘I’m easy.’
‘You could get a job anywhere.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Hell, with your looks?’
The girl seemed puzzled by the reactions she aroused at this table. She would be used to attention but not, perhaps, quite so much. And she was surrounded by women.
‘You’re wasted here, my dear.’ Miss Pink’s voice was kind. ‘Has no one offered you the kind of work where you could use your appearance: films perhaps, or television?’
‘People have, but they never meant it.’
‘You want an agent,’ Madge said. ‘A chap who cares about you; not the kind that doesn’t think any farther than jumping into bed. A queer would do nicely. Why don’t you go back to town and find the best television agent who’s a homosexual? Can you act?’
‘You’re not serious?’
‘Christ! Do you expect everyone to take advantage of you?’
Miss Pink was speculative behind the thick spectacles. She did not think it would be easy to exploit Terry. Because she was infatuated by the oaf at the bar, that didn’t mean her behaviour was usual. It could be one of those instances of an attractive and otherwise balanced woman falling—just once in her life—for a rogue. It happened even to mature women, women with judgement, although, of course, judgement failed in the one direction. But how much judgement did this child have in any direction? Safer. That was what she’d been thinking: Terry would be, not happier in London than on the island, but safer.
Chapter Four
‘I’m sorry,’ Colin Irwin said, ‘I can’t come with you after all.’
Miss Pink regarded him thoughtfully. It was ten o’clock on the Sunday morning and, having waited in vain for him to come to Glen Shira House, having seen him fetching water from the burn at eight o’clock, she’d walked across to Largo to find out what was keeping him.
‘The fact is,’ he went on uncomfortably, ‘I’ve got a visitor.’
Playing for time, she turned and studied Sgurr Alasdair. Irwin was biting his lip; he may have been up at eight but at close quarters he looked tired and worried. There was also an air of defiance about him.
Miss Pink said: ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t break a previous engagement without good reason . . .’
She left it hanging and made to move away; he hadn’t asked her in. They descended a rough slope to the river where there were so many boulders exposed that one could cross anywhere. On the other side, the colonel’s woodland came right down to the bank.
Irwin said with suppressed fury: ‘A girl came here last night. I was reading late and she saw my lamp. Some lout had knocked her about and thrown her out of his tent. So I took her in. She’s in a bit of a state and I’d rather not leave her.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Terry. She didn’t tell me her surname.’
‘It’s Cooke. She was in the hotel last
night with George Watkins. It was he, of course—? I think it’s an excellent idea for you to spend a day with her. Is there anything to be done or will she recover with rest—and security?’
‘The worst of it is,’ he began, not answering her but following his own line of thought, ‘she seems used to it. She’s not upset about the violence, but the fact that he threw her out—I mean, that he doesn’t want her! Can you understand that?’
‘It happens. It’s deplorable, but even the nicest girls do come under the spell of thugs: bewitched rather than falling in love. Strange—’ her eyes followed the flight of a raven towards the shore, ‘—how people who are not quite so strong as they might be, and immature ones easily fall prey to bad influences where they resist the good.’ She looked at him candidly. ‘Perhaps they’re less resistant to good influences after a nasty shock,’ she suggested. ‘You stay with her; don’t leave her on her own today. Watkins has gone out—but she might brood on her own.’
He still looked anxious. ‘I’ve to go to Sligachan tomorrow for two days. It means leaving her on her own in the cottage.’
‘See how today goes,’ Miss Pink urged. ‘If she doesn’t—’
His eyes sharpened at something behind her. She turned and saw Terry Cooke in the doorway of the cottage, still wearing her lilac dress. Miss Pink pondered for a moment, then climbed the bank again, Irwin following. Terry watched her approach without expression but when the girl looked at Irwin her eyes softened. Her lip was swollen and split and one eye was partly closed and bruised black. Both arms were grazed as if she’d fallen heavily when running. The dress was in tatters.
‘You go out with this lady,’ she told Irwin, ‘I don’t mind.’
He must have told her he’d intended to guide Miss Pink today. The latter said cheerfully, brooking no argument: ‘I changed my mind.’ Then, practically, ‘Have you left anything in Watkins’ tent?’
Terry looked at Irwin. ‘Your gear,’ he explained. He turned to Miss Pink. ‘She did. I’ll go across for it.’
They all went, Terry barefooted and limping a little.
The river ran into the sea at the side of the glen, leaving half a mile of unbroken sand stretching to the far side of the valley. Above the shore were grassy dunes and the camp site which was best reached from Largo by a swing bridge a short distance downstream. The MacNeills’ farm, Rahane, was the only other dwelling on this side of the river. It stood close to the tide-line on the miniature estuary.
They crossed the bridge upstream of a ford and climbed the bank through broom bushes to a track which led to the camp. Terry guided them to an old Ford van and an orange tent. Miss Pink unzipped the latter and exposed a chaos of squalor. With some show of eagerness (she must have thought she’d seen the last of them), Terry retrieved her possessions.
‘How much money did you have?’ Miss Pink asked as the girl backed out of the entrance with a green suède shoulder bag.
Irwin said quickly, ‘She doesn’t need money; I’ve got plenty.’
‘Have a look.’ Miss Pink indicated the bag.
He lifted the flap and took out a leather purse, opened it, shook it. It was empty.
‘How much?’ Miss Pink pressed.
‘There wasn’t a pound,’ Terry said, almost in tears. ‘It’s not worth bothering about.’
‘Of course it isn’t,’ Miss Pink agreed suddenly. ‘Forget about it. Have you got everything? Now you’d better go home and have some breakfast.’ Across the mouth of the river some cows were gathered about Rahane. ‘If we’re lucky,’ she went on, with unconscious irony considering the late hour, ‘the MacNeills will have milked. Go and get a dozen eggs, Mr Irwin, and plenty of milk.’
She gave him a pound note and at the bridge he strode away to the farm while the women strolled towards Largo. Miss Pink glanced back at the dunes. There were only a few tents on the camp site besides that of Watkins, and one camping van. People had been moving about the site but they’d paid no attention to the elderly woman and the girl in the ragged dress. She wondered how bizarre a situation would have to be before their attention was engaged.
‘You didn’t think of asking for help from any of those people last night?’ she asked. Largo was some distance from the camp site.
‘I met Colin last evening when I went over to Rahane for the milk.’ With her bad foot, Miss Pink thought grimly. ‘Besides,’ the girl went on shame-facedly, gesturing to the dunes, ‘all these people are couples, or with kids. And Colin was the only one with a light. It was late, see, when we got back.’ Her voice dropped. ‘I ran away from him—from George—and when I stopped and looked, there was the light, quite close. I fell over the stones in the river; that’s how this happened, I guess.’ She held out her arms.
Miss Pink had been the first to go to bed last night. She’d wondered at the time what would be the outcome when Watkins decided to leave the hotel. He was not the kind of man who would go home sober. As they walked slowly back to Largo she reflected that, taking everything into consideration, the girl had been lucky.
*
She left them absorbed in cooking and each other and walked back past the big house and through the wood to take the main path that climbed straight out of the glen towards the Cuillin. She was preoccupied—which is not a bad thing on long upward gradients—and she plodded on for twenty minutes only half aware of the sun on her damp face, and moorland smells: peat and heather and baking rock. Grasshoppers rasped, and from the glen came the whine of a tractor.
Suddenly she stopped, appalled. Her vision had been confined to dry earth and heather stalks about her boots; now the land stopped, dropped away, and for a moment there was only a green abyss below. She was on the lip of the ravine which contained the burn emerging from Coire na Banachdich and the greenery was the tops of silver birches which, on the near side of the depression, plunged so steeply that one wondered where and how their roots found purchase. On the far side, the ground was even steeper with vertical rock walls where, in the sheltered and humid environment, every ledge and scoop was a riot of vegetation. In the back of this sculpted amphitheatre the cliffs were over a hundred feet high and the burn poured over the lip in the waterfall called Eas Mor.
Today the fall was a broken thread, still impressive because of its height but nothing like so sensational as it was when in spate.
She moved back to the path, and the sound of water faded to be replaced by the hum of insects and the whine of the tractor. After a while she heard a distant but unmistakably metallic clatter and realised that the tractor had stopped. She looked back towards the settlement.
Largo and Rahane were full in the sunshine. The sound of the tractor’s engine came to her again and she pulled the binoculars from her rucksack to focus on the farm. After a few moments she discovered the tractor moving along a level green shelf towards the buildings. It was drawing no implement but a hydraulic shovel was attached to its front. She worked backwards, along the shelf to its termination at a gully in the sea cliffs. There, as she’d suspected (for the clatter could have been only something large falling a long distance), was Rahane’s rubbish tip: at the back of the once beautiful inlet called Scarf Geo.
She put the binoculars away and turned towards the mountains. If anything could be done to stop crofters throwing their waste, from old cars to drums which had contained toxic chemicals, over the nearest cliff, it could not be done at this moment. Now, seven hours of the ridge lay ahead and, like an efficient detective, she turned, metaphorically and literally, from Scarf Geo and, looking southwards, concentrated on the islands and the nearer moors where water gleamed in the peat and once, long ago, she had found black-throated divers nesting.
The path meandered through dried-out bogs, skirted a lochan, climbed steeply to turn the corner where the world of wide seas and skies shrank suddenly to a narrow corrie hemmed by cliffs. But the impression of claustrophobia was momentary for the eye was drawn upwards to a skyline of gaps and towers and pinnacles while, across the mouth of the corr
ie, stood the Sron: Sron na Ciche, a concave precipice of dark rock where the coloured specks that were climbers looked terribly lonely and vulnerable. The Lindsays and Watkins were here. Madge and Maynard were round in the next corrie.
The cliff was a place for companions and a rope. Miss Pink made her way to the back of the corrie and the innocuous pleasures of Sgurr Sgumain with its more broken face.
Again her preoccupation showed, this time in her making a false start. She failed to notice that the loose and steepening rock up which she was scrambling bore no traces of previous climbers. It wasn’t until she was brought up short by an impending wall where chimneys were wet even in the drought that she realised her mistake but, unwilling to retreat down something which, from the top, assumed a much higher angle than had been apparent from below, she wandered under the wall trying in vain to find a way through.
At some risk she negotiated rising basalt dykes which stood proud above the basic rock, but it wasn’t until she was descending an enormous balloon of black lichen like a tumour on the face that she came to her senses.
She descended carefully, to find the correct line farther along: cleaned of lichen and the rock smoothed by nailed boots. In half an hour she reached the crest and looked over to see the Sron, with figures, much closer, and more human in scale. A thousand feet below, the peacock eye of a lochan was winking in the sun.
She came to the final tower of Sgumain and turned it by a trod like a chamois track which brought her at last to the main ridge. Across Glen Sligachan rose the Red Hills and beyond them and just distinguishable through the haze, the great sea lochs of the Inner Sound penetrated the hinterland of Knoydart and Applecross. Then gently, and so quiet she could hear the air in its pinions, an eagle drifted past, and before it vanished round a near buttress, she saw the wings come up and the feathered talons brake and knew it was going to land.
She scrambled after it, forcing herself to go carefully because there was a drop into Coir’ a’ Ghrunnda and if she slipped she might not stop for several hundred feet, but as she rounded the buttress and thought there was a small pinnacle perched on the edge, she saw its eye. She had one glimpse of the fierce profile then the wings spread and, dropping a little under its own weight, it sailed down the corrie leaving her breathless with pleasure.