Cauldstane

by Gillard, Linda

  Then I realised something that made me sit up with a start and spill my coffee. I hadn’t left my room. Whoever had tampered with my laptop had done it while I was asleep on the bed. They’d read my notes while I dozed, deleted them, then left as silently as they’d come. But who? Would I have heard Mrs Guthrie in her trainers? Perhaps not. Alec, with his cat-like poise, could probably get in and out of a room without making a sound.

  But the most likely explanation was surely that I’d somehow wiped my own work in some semi-conscious state. Was it possible I’d woken briefly, gone over to the laptop, made a few more notes, accidentally wiped the whole document, then gone back to sleep again? This scenario seemed even less likely than an intruder entering and deleting a load of harmless questions. It would only have taken a few keystrokes: Select all and Delete.

  Except that wasn’t what he’d done. (I was shocked to realise I’d already fixed on Alec as the culprit.) He hadn’t deleted everything. There was half a line remaining – the final line, if my memory served me. As we drew into Perth, I switched on my laptop, half hoping my notes might have re-appeared. They hadn’t.

  leave Cauldstane to its ghosts

  Each time I read that phrase I fought back an irrational fear, a heartfelt wish that these words would also disappear, because the thought that someone had left them deliberately, that they weren’t just a remnant of text, but a message, a warning even, made me feel sick and shivery – exactly how I’d felt on the landing when I was talking to Alec. Was this my damn virus getting a hold again? Or was it those words?

  If they were a message for me, then I had to accept the possibility that someone – Alec, I supposed – didn’t want me at Cauldstane.

  ~

  When I got home, I watered my houseplants, checked my post, then sat down to ring Rupert. I chose my favourite spot – the sunny, plant-filled bay window of the Victorian semi I used to share with him. It had always been mine but Rupert had paid me rent and shared the running costs. It was one of the things that had prevented us calling ours a permanent arrangement. He liked to refer to me jokingly as his “landlady”.

  I’d met Rupert at a publishing party. He was a theoretical physicist who’d just published a popular science book. We found we got on well and one thing led to another. He eventually moved in to reduce the trekking about from his flat in Putney to my house in Crouch End. The break-up had been equally relaxed. There was no third party involved – unless you wanted to cite God – and I had many happy memories of our years together. I still kept a few photos of us on display and was gazing at one while I waited for Rupert to pick up the phone.

  We were pictured on board ship, smiling at a fellow passenger who’d taken the photo for us. It was a Norwegian cruise ship, headed for the Arctic Circle and we were togged up in coats like duvets. Rupert, always self-conscious about his lack of height, looked almost as broad as he was tall, like Henry VIII, but he’d just seen a sea eagle at close quarters and was grinning like a schoolboy. I looked more Nordic than the Norwegians, dressed in white, with pale skin and long ash blonde hair, but I was slouching as I always did in photos, so I wouldn’t look taller than Rupert. (I don’t know if I ever really loved him, but I was always tender of his feelings.)

  I looked different now. Older of course, but now my hair was very short and starting to go grey. So far I hadn’t resorted to dye. I told myself it didn’t really show. Yet.

  At forty I’d done the inevitable stock-take. No man. No child. No ties. I was poorly paid, but self-employed and I had a very nice home. Things could have been worse. Had been worse, in fact. So I took each day as it came, which meant that sometimes I cried myself to sleep with loneliness and sometimes I woke full of joy that I was accountable to no one. If I couldn’t write exactly what I wanted to write, in the way I wanted to write it, it seemed a small price to pay for all the other advantages. I wasn’t one of those women who wanted to have it all. I was too aware how many people had very little. Having everything would have made me uncomfortable. I might have expected some kind of trade-off. I was free, but I suppose I was fearful.

  So I missed Rupert, but only as a friend. He was now a curate in Newcastle so we rarely saw each other, but kept in touch by phone and email. If I’d been able to bring myself to believe in Him, I’m sure I would have resented God for depriving me of Rupert’s company, but I accepted that his parishioners’ need was greater than mine. So, presumably, was God’s.

  When Rupert finally answered the phone, he sounded breathless. ‘Hello. Rupert Sheridan.’

  ‘Hi, it’s me. How’s things?’

  ‘Jen? I thought you were in Scotland?’

  ‘I was. I’m back now.’

  ‘Did you get the commission?’ He sounded eager and I felt pleased I had good news for him.

  ‘Yes, I did actually.’

  ‘Congratulations! I suppose you’re not at liberty to say more?’

  ‘You know the rules. All I can tell you is, I’m going to be staying somewhere in the region of Inverness for the next few weeks.’

  ‘So you’d like me to look after your houseplants.’

  ‘Would you mind? I don’t really want to give neighbours a key for weeks and I can’t think of any friend I can ask who won’t forget to water them or kill them with kindness.’

  ‘You flatterer! You’re travelling north by car, I presume?’

  ‘Yes. The subject wants me to start as soon as possible, so I’ve just come home to collect some clothes and other bits and pieces. I thought I could drop off the plants on my way up. If that’s OK with you?’

  ‘Yes, fine. The more the merrier. The house badly needs re-painting but I have neither the time nor inclination, so adorning it with houseplants is a good disguise. Parishioners will be impressed by my green fingers. So is this going to be a good job then?’

  ‘Well, the money’s crap, but the people seem very nice. Which is just as well. I’ll be staying with the family for a few weeks.’

  ‘Won’t that be a bit… intense?’

  ‘Not really. I’ll have my own room and a study. The family home is large. Very large.’

  ‘So a stately pile then, somewhere-in-the-Highlands.’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly comment.’

  ‘Spoilsport. But if the money’s crap, why are you taking the job?’

  ‘Rupert, I seem to remember asking you the very same question about becoming a minister. I don’t take jobs for the money. I accept jobs that interest me. Which usually means people who interest me. Though in this case, I do think my subject has a fascinating story to tell and I think I could write him the sort of book that would sell. It has all the right ingredients.’

  ‘Let me guess… Money. Class. Sex. Scandal. And a big country house?’

  ‘A very big country house.’

  ‘Splendid! Put me down for a copy. What’s the catch?’

  ‘Catch?’

  ‘I assumed there must be one. You sounded as if you were trying to convince me it was a good job. Or convince yourself.’

  ‘No, there’s no catch. Not that I know of anyway. There’s been a lot of tragedy in the family and a certain amount of… well, betrayal, I suppose. The subject is a widower. A very interesting man, but he’s been through a lot. I don’t think it’s going to be an easy book to write. And I’m not totally convinced everyone wants me to write it.’

  ‘So there is a catch.’

  ‘No, not really. I mean, I just picked up on a few things, that’s all. I suppose I could just sense… all the sadness.’

  Rupert’s sigh was audible down the phone. ‘Oh, sweetheart… please. Walk away from this one. You don’t want to go down that road again. That was the whole point of taking the ghost jobs. Easy money. No hassle. No comebacks.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t get involved. But I do have to be sensitive to – well, to atmospheres, otherwise I couldn’t do the job. It’s all about reading between the lines. Trying to find out what people want to say, but are perhaps not brave eno
ugh to say. Or strong enough.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure you know what you’re doing,’ Rupert said, in a tone that implied completely the opposite. I remembered then how guilty yet relieved I’d felt when I realised we’d finally come to the end of the line.

  ‘So can I come up and see you tomorrow? And offload the plants?’

  ‘Of course not – it’s Sunday! I won’t have a spare moment to talk to you. Can you come Monday instead? I can put you up for the night if you want to break your journey.’

  ‘No, that might scandalize your parishioners.’

  ‘On the contrary, it might put the brakes on their relentless match-making.’

  ‘Rupert, it will be lovely to see you, but it has to be just a flying visit. I want to get up to Scotland as soon as I can.’

  ‘Fair enough. I’ll make us some lunch – unless you’d rather go out?’

  ‘It would be a late lunch. Is that OK? It will take me four or five hours to get to you.’

  ‘I’ll have something waiting.’

  ‘Thanks. Oh – I’ve just thought of something else. Do you have a bird book you could lend me?’

  ‘Several. Did you see something interesting in Scotland?’

  ‘I don’t know. A bird of prey, hovering.’

  ‘A kestrel?’

  ‘No, it was big. And very still. The only movement was a little flick of its tail.’

  ‘Forked?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Was its tail forked?’

  ‘Yes, I think it was.’

  ‘Then you saw a red kite, you lucky thing. Not so rare in the Highlands now, but uncommon elsewhere. I’ll lend you a book and my second best pair of binoculars on the condition you let me know about any interesting sightings.’

  ‘It’s a deal.’

  ‘See you Monday then. You’re sure you won’t stay over? The spare bed’s always made up for any passing waifs and strays. Or bishops.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’ll be anxious to get on. I want to get as far as Edinburgh, then I’ll do the rest the next morning. I’m rather looking forward to that bit of the drive.’

  ‘You sound excited about this job.’

  ‘I am. It feels like something big for me.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what worries me.’

  It was my turn to sigh. ‘Rupert, I’m not your problem any more. Worry about your flock. I can take care of myself.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you can,’ he replied, doing that maddening contradictory thing with his voice again.

  We said our goodbyes and I hung up feeling grateful, but slightly irritated. I knew Rupert was disappointed I wasn’t staying over, but the truth was, I wanted to keep a circumspect distance between me and my former lover. I enjoyed being a free agent now, but I still felt I needed to prove to him I could cope on my own. That’s what I’d done, for years now. There was nothing left to prove really, least of all to Rupert. Perhaps I was still trying to convince myself. If there was a small voice inside my head saying, “Walk away from the MacNabs, or you’ll be sorry,” I had no intention of listening to it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Ghostwriting is a job for an author with no ego and unlimited discretion.

  I grew up wanting to be a writer. Actually I think I always was a writer. A storyteller, certainly. As an only child, I was often bored and lonely. If I was short of a playmate, I would devise make-believe games that entailed me acting out all the parts. If there was no one to talk to, I was prepared to talk to myself.

  I was an avid and precocious reader, but if I didn’t like the ending of a book, I would re-write it in my head – and sometimes on paper – with the conclusion I thought the characters deserved. Sometimes it wasn’t just the ending I re-wrote. I would create parallel lives for characters I loved. So my Sydney Carton was saved at the eleventh hour from the guillotine. When my Katy Carr fell from the swing in the barn, she only broke her ankle and was laid up for four months, not four years. My Beth March recovered fully from her scarlet fever and – like Tiny Tim – she did not die.

  You might suppose I grew up impervious to the greatness of the classics, that my quest for a happy ending guaranteed I would become a sentimental and clichéd writer, but the effort of unpicking Dickens, Coolidge and Alcott taught me a great deal about the structure of stories. As I grew older, my fascination with story overcame my aversion to unhappy outcomes. Predictably, I read English at university, acquiring a first class degree, which qualified me for absolutely nothing.

  On the death of my widowed mother, I inherited a large house in north London, my parents’ home for thirty years. There was some money too, so I was under no pressure to sell up. I could afford to freelance as a journalist or work as a publicist, developing a list of contacts that would come in useful years later.

  But I always wrote. Writing was always there as the ballast that kept me stable and happy. The stories felt like my real world. Work was just something I did, something that got me out of a house now crammed with books – mine and my parents’. I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of objects that had meant so much to the people I loved. To have sold their books or given them away would have seemed sacrilegious and unkind – not just to my dead parents, but unkind to their books. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that I’ve never dog-eared a page in my life. Even as a child I found the lamentable state of some library books upsetting. I used to try to repair them with sellotape, but in the end I stopped using the library and took to re-reading my own books, then made an early start on reading adult fiction, guided by my bibliophile parents.

  There was never any ego involved in my writing. I had no desire to be famous or win prizes, only a desire to satisfy my immense curiosity about people with lives more interesting than mine – which was most of them. Ghostwriting provided me with a crash course in someone else’s life. I, who knew nothing about horses, could learn in a matter of weeks what it took to become an Olympic show jumper. I’d never bought a lottery ticket, but I could absorb the riches-to-rags story of a compulsive gambler who’d lost everything and found God.

  As a ghost, I was allowed to ask impertinent questions. I could quiz my subjects about their infidelities and criminal activities. I could ask if there was any substance to the rumours that had destroyed a marriage or a career. I couldn’t always use the information entrusted to me, but my knowledge and understanding of my subject was enriched.

  I suppose if ghosting hadn’t worked out and I’d been desperate for money, I could have pursued an alternative career as a blackmailer. Except that nothing would have made me break the seal of the confessional. The relationship I had with my subjects was based on trust and respect. The intimacy we shared might have been one-way (I knew almost everything about them and they knew almost nothing about me), but intimacy there was. It was something I cherished, even when my subject was a far from admirable human being. My immersion in the classics had furnished me with a staunchly-held belief in the possibility of redemption. I assumed that, like Sydney Carton, all miscreants were capable of doing a far, far better thing than they had ever done.

  My job sanctioned curiosity and compassion and these enabled me to sublimate my own personality and take on temporarily the personality and voice of someone else, someone quite unlike me. Curiosity and compassion took me to Cauldstane and kept me there long after any sane person would have left.

  ~

  When I returned, Sholto established a work routine that suited us both. We would talk in the morning, then he liked to lunch alone. In the afternoon he took a nap and then attended to estate business. At six o’clock I was invited for a drink and more talk in the library, then we dined at seven with any members of the family who were at home. So my afternoons and evenings were largely free for me to read, write, research and walk around the estate.

  One day Sholto and I were sitting on a bench in the walled garden, sheltered from a cool autumnal breeze. He preferred to be outdoors whenever possible and liked to walk while talking, but he often ne
eded to resort to one of the many strategically-placed benches in the grounds. The tools of my trade were just a small dictaphone and a notebook in which I would record questions that occurred to me while Sholto talked, so we could work anywhere. Today he’d chosen a favourite spot on a south-facing wall and as we rested, I could feel the warmth radiating from the stones behind me. I was enjoying the play of sunlight on the last of the roses and the fluttering dance of Painted Ladies on a white buddleia when Sholto said, ‘Our family’s cursed, of course.’ He saw my look of astonishment and treated me to one of his roguish smiles. ‘All good Scots families are.’

  ‘Cursed?’

  ‘Oh, yes. There’s a MacNab curse. Hundreds of years old. As old as the castle. Older possibly.’

  ‘Do people believe in it?’

  ‘It’s quite hard not to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Our women keep dying.’

  I felt a chill crawl down my back and looked at the little tape recorder I’d placed beside him. I wondered if I should stop it, but Sholto seemed unperturbed as he stared into the distance, his fingers clasping the handle of the carved rowan walking stick Alec had made for him from a dead tree on the estate. There was no indication from Sholto’s demeanour that we’d strayed into dangerous personal territory. As I studied his handsome, craggy profile, I saw no clue as to how I should proceed, so I decided to leave the tape running and said gently, ‘Do you believe in the MacNab curse?’

  ‘No, I don’t. I don’t believe in any kind of hocus-pocus. Ghosts, spirits, witchcraft, what have you.’ He turned to me and smiled again. ‘That’s quite unusual for a Scot my age. Did you know the last witch was burned in Scotland? And not that long ago. 1727. We’ve clung to our old superstitions. Some still won’t let them go.’