To Be Continued

by James Robertson

  ‘I – I did take them from the bar. There was nobody about and I needed a drink.’

  MacLagan was all geniality again in an instant. ‘Well, and what would any sane man do in the circumstances but help himself to his favourite tipple. Or, indeed, tipples. We will say no more about it. On the house, on the house. I see you have two glasses also. I will avail myself of one of these, and let us raise a toast to the hospitality of the glens, for which indeed they are famous. Which of these two fine whiskies is in fact your favourite? Myself, I cannot make up my mind. Sometimes I incline towards Glen Gloming, sometimes I am all for the Salmon’s Leap. Ach well, the night is yet young. We can test them to destruction if we so choose. To the hospitality of the glens, Mr –?’

  ‘Elder. Douglas Elder.’

  ‘Elder as in the Kirk? Kirk as in Douglas? Douglas as in Fir? Slàinte mhath!’

  ‘Slàinte mhath,’ Douglas said weakly.

  ‘Now, did you say you would be wanting some supper?’

  Any minute now, Douglas thought, he would wake from a terrible dream. But for the moment he was defeated by physical and mental exhaustion. It was all he could do to sink back in his chair and feebly mutter, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Ruaridh MacLagan. ‘I will go and see what the food options are. I think there may be some soup.’

  As soon as he had gone, Douglas hissed in the general direction of the windows, ‘Mungo, where are you? Show yourself.’

  ‘That’s what I thought you would not want me to do,’ Mungo said, emerging from behind a curtain of garish design, like a comedian coming on stage.

  ‘Were you a witness to that?’

  ‘I was. As you surmised, up to his eyes in the smuggling business!’

  ‘Never mind that. Reassure me that I am not mad. That was the bard, wasn’t it? Stuart Crathes MacCrimmon?’

  ‘There was some doubt, as I recall, as to whether “bard” was the right term, but yes, it was the same individual.’

  ‘He denied it.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Either he thinks I am stupid, or he believes himself to be a different person. Mad, in other words.’

  ‘So it would seem. Unless of course you are mad, in which case the confusion would be yours, not his.’

  ‘But you also think it’s MacCrimmon.’

  ‘Yes, but you have previously expressed incredulity that you and I have a speaking relationship at all. I am a toad, remember. I don’t think my agreeing with you proves much. Some would say that if proof of your insanity were needed, citing me as a character witness would provide it.’

  ‘I’ll have to think about that. Watch out, he’s coming back.’

  ‘Enjoy your evening,’ Mungo said. Halfway behind the curtain, he added, ‘Oh, and leave your jacket somewhere handy, would you? I could do with a wee nap.’

  ‘I have brought the register for you to sign,’ MacLagan said, beamishly. There was a clatter as his toe connected with the ashtray on the floor. ‘Well, well! How on earth did that get there?’ He picked it up, shook his head at the dregs of wine in it, and placed it on the bar. ‘Never mind, this carpet has seen a lot worse than that in its time, I can tell you! Now, we have a nice room available for you at a very reasonable rate. And the soup of the day is Scotch broth. I have put it on to heat.’

  [To be continued]

  THIRD AND FINAL EXTRACT FROM NOTES FOR AN AS YET UNWRITTEN BIOGRAPHY OF ROSALIND MUNLOCHY BY DOUGLAS FINDHORN ELDER, AUTHOR; COMPOSED FROM PREVIOUSLY CITED SOURCES. NO PART OF THIS WORK MAY BE REPRODUCED, STORED OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC, MECHANICAL, INCLUDING PHOTOCOPYING, RECORDING OR ANY INFORMATION STORAGE OR RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN PRIOR PERMISSION OF THE AS YET UNIDENTIFIED PUBLISHER

  After leaving the House of Commons, Rosalind had more time to devote to her family, to the estate, to local politics, and to her writing. Between 1952 and 1966 she published a second collection of verse, a volume of anecdotes and folklore connected with the Striven family history, a number of polemical pamphlets on various subjects, six novels and a memoir, Some Life (1966). The novels are A Hairst Moon (1952), The Weathervane (1955), McCaig’s Folly (1959), To Shun the Devil (1960), Indifference (1962) and All and Nothing (1965). The first two of these sold moderately well, but thereafter her fiction became less and less noticed, and there was a prophetic knowingness in the title of her final novel, Is This Where It Ends?, published by the soon to be defunct Winstanley Press of Wigan in 1969. But she never resented her relative lack of literary success. ‘To have an imagination is commonplace,’ she once said, ‘but to have one’s imaginings printed is a privilege and a rare delight, like seeing one’s dreams projected on a cinema screen.’

  In 1964 Rosalind and Ralph separated. He was sixty-one, she forty-nine. The split, brought about partly by Ralph’s increasing desire to live in a warmer climate and Rosalind’s determination not to abandon Glentaragar (by now reduced to the big house and garden and a few acres of rough pasture), was amicable. (Ralph eventually settled in Biarritz, and he and Rosalind continued to correspond until his death in 1978.) The children had meanwhile all left home, at least for the time being. Each had inherited the Striven genetic disposition towards making an effort. Gabriella was striving to make a breakthrough as a scriptwriter in Hollywood, Gregory was striving to be a lawyer in Edinburgh, and Georgina was striving to have fun in London, going from party to party and, almost as rapidly, from boyfriend to boyfriend. Rosalind, left alone in Argyll, was restless and frustrated. She decided, in the year of her fiftieth birthday, to go on an adventure.

  A Striven ancestor had been a trapper and fur trader with the Hudson’s Bay Company in the nineteenth century, and Rosalind had had, from childhood, an interest in the vast, empty territories over which this character had wandered. That summer she took a flight to Toronto, then went by train to Calgary, Edmonton and on to the end of the line at Waterways, thence by road to Fort McMurray. From there, by barge and boat, and in the varied company of government officials, geologists, ecologists, missionaries, Indians, Métis and other travellers, she followed the Athabasca River to Lake Athabasca, the Slave River to Great Slave Lake, and the great Mackenzie River as far as Fort Norman. A pontoon plane took a small party to Great Bear Lake, part of which they explored by canoe. Rosalind returned to Fort McMurray by a series of plane hops, and retraced her journey to Toronto before coming home. The trip took three months and, according to the journal she kept, cost ‘an inordinate amount of money, which I somehow scraped together despite not having it’. Back in Glentaragar, she felt she had been in some magical land very like the West Highlands, only magnified a thousand times. The experiences of that summer are recounted in Some Life and many of them found their way into her novel All and Nothing.

  Rosalind became a grandmother for the first time the following year, when Gabriella, who had married and settled in California, had a son, David. Gabriella had two more children, both boys, in 1967 and 1969. Rosalind visited them in the early 1970s, but the trip was not a success and was not repeated. At the time of writing she has five great-grandchildren in different parts of the United States. Gregory, who declared his homosexuality in the mid-1970s, had a successful career in commercial law, retired to Provence and died in his sleep in 2010. Georgina eventually tired of London, moved to Glasgow, gave birth in 1976 to a daughter whom she called Coppélia while refusing to name or acknowledge the child’s father, and in due course came to live with Rosalind at Glentaragar. In 1990, at the age of forty-eight, Georgina drowned in a swimming accident near Oban, at almost the same spot where her grandfather had perished many years before. When this tragedy occurred Coppélia was fourteen years old. Coppélia has remained with her grandmother ever since, and has taken over most of the responsibility for running Glentaragar House. The building, which stands on the site of an older fortified house, dates from the 1820s and is the only surviving example of the Ossianic-Palladian style championed and developed by the Nairn-born arc
hitect William Garrison Buchanan (1789–1830). It is in need of considerable renovation.

  OUT OF ORDER

  My host, whom I strongly suspect of deceit, delusion or doppelgangsterism, has me enter my details in the register before taking me upstairs. While I am writing he expresses the hope that I will be paying in cash as regrettably the card-processing facilities are out of order owing to a technical issue. I ask what the rate is for a single night’s stay. ‘How much do you have on you?’ is his response. Were he not so obviously in financially straitened circumstances, I would refuse to enter into these sordid negotiations. I pull first one, then a second £20 note from my wallet, then a £10 note, pausing significantly after each presentation as if about to withdraw the increase. At the third stroke, as the Speaking Clock used to say, he can bear the tension no more, seizes the £50 from me and says that that will be adequate unless I require breakfast. I suggest that we discuss that in the morning. He says he will go and see to my supper, and wishes me a pleasant stay.

  The room is not pleasant at all. It is cramped, cold and hideously decorated, but it will have to do. The contrast between it and the warm, nest-like cosiness of the room I shared with Xanthe last night – was it only last night? – is stark. Oh for Xanthe to appear at this moment! But, once again, it seems more than likely that our encounter was nothing but a blissful dream.

  I have very low expectations of the meal, but to be fair to MacLagan he produces not only a tasty bowl of Scotch broth and some crusty bread to go with it, but an individual chicken pie, peas and oven chips. He has switched on a fan heater, which has warmed the room up – so much so that I remove my jacket – and he hovers anxiously around while I eat, asking repeatedly if everything is to my satisfaction. Would I not like a wee something to go with my meal? Convinced as I am that Ruaridh MacLagan is Stuart Crathes MacCrimmon, I decline, and consume only tap water. If his behaviour at the Shira Inn is any gauge, it is only a matter of time before he himself has a wee something, and that wee something is likely to lead to a larger something. I do not wish to encourage him. If strong drink is to be taken at all, let it not be taken early. I will need a clear head for the morning.

  No sooner have I eaten the last pea than MacLagan sweeps my plate and cutlery away to the kitchen, and no sooner has he returned than he is pressing a dram on me – ‘On the house, on the house!’ – and pouring himself a pint of beer and a dram, too. I accept but say I am tired and will soon be retiring to bed.

  ‘I quite understand. You will have come a long way today?’

  ‘From the Shira Inn.’

  ‘Yes, you mentioned that before. And how far would that be roughly?’

  ‘You should know. You made the journey yourself in your wee yellow car.’

  ‘Ah now, Mr Elder,’ he says, wagging a finger at me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You are doing what you did before, confusing me with somebody else.’

  ‘Oh come on, MacCrimmon! There’s only the two of us here. You can drop this silly pretence.’

  ‘There is no pretence on my part, I assure you. This MacCrimmon, I understand, is a poet, a teller of tales, a singer of songs, a tradition-bearer. Is that correct?’

  ‘You know it is. “Bard” is the word you use to describe yourself.’

  ‘I will disregard that. I have heard – I cannot quite remember from whom – of the likeness between us. It is remarkable that I have never laid eyes on the man. Well, well, if the car outside really is his, perhaps we are destined to meet at last.’

  ‘The easiest thing would be to look in a mirror.’

  He tuts at me and refuses to come clean, yet when he looks from under his wild brows it is in such a way as to imply a secret shared between us. Prolonged isolation, I decide, must be the cause of his derangement. I am tempted to keep drinking with him, to see if his mask slips once he is well and truly ablaze, but on the other hand I really cannot be, as my Erstwhile Colleague Grant McKinley would put it, ersed.

  ‘I’m away to my bed,’ I say. ‘I will be leaving at ten o’clock.’

  ‘Ten o’clock, is it? So early? And how, exactly, will you be leaving?’

  ‘Someone from Glentaragar House called Corryvreckan is coming for me. Do you know him?’

  ‘Corryvreckan is well known in these parts,’ he says, moving to the bar. ‘You will be in good hands, all being well.’

  ‘All being well?’

  ‘If he turns up.’

  ‘It’s been arranged by Miss Munlochy.’

  ‘Has it? And how did that happen?’

  ‘I spoke to her on the hotel phone earlier – before you appeared.’

  ‘Well, that would be miraculous if it were true, since the telephone line has been out of order all day.’

  ‘I can assure you it wasn’t at about five o’clock.’

  Behind the bar there is a phone that I haven’t previously noticed. MacLagan lifts the receiver to his ear, rattles the connection, holds the receiver out to me and says, ‘You were fortunate then. Quite dead. Are you sure you spoke to Miss Munlochy?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. Do you think I imagined it?’

  ‘I could not say. Well, we will see in the morning. Can I not persuade you to take a nightcap?’ He holds one of the whisky bottles up.

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Very well. I will just have a wee one myself.’

  ‘Good night, Mr MacLagan.’

  ‘Call me Ruaridh,’ he replies, but his eye is fixed on the golden flow of whisky from bottle to tumbler. ‘Good night.’

  I am exhausted. Upstairs in my room I have left my mobile phone to charge, and I check it now in the vain hope that there might be a signal. There is none. I crawl between damp sheets, shiver, think fondly and bitterly of last night, and close my eyes. My last thought is that I have left my jacket in the bar, and that MacLagan will probably be rifling it in search of money. Fortunately I keep my wallet in my trousers, and they are folded on a chair at the foot of the bed.

  A VISITATION

  An irregular but repeated tapping worms its way into my sleep and finally shakes me out of it. It is still dark. I switch on the bedside lamp. The knocking at the door continues.

  ‘Who is there?’

  ‘It is I, Ruaridh MacLagan. May I come in?’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘It is six o’clock. I am sorry to disturb you, Mr Elder, but I must speak with you.’

  ‘Can’t it wait for an hour or two?’

  ‘No. It is a matter of life and death.’

  ‘Is the hotel on fire?’

  ‘No. My life and my death. Please may I enter?’

  I sit up and put my back against the headboard. ‘Come in, then.’

  In he comes, as white as a sheep, and as sheepish, too. I was expecting, when I went downstairs in the morning, to find him dead-drunk, but if he is drunk now he disguises it well. He looks as if he has had a severe shock.

  ‘In case you are missing it,’ he says, ‘you left your jacket in the bar.’ He sits heavily on the chair at the end of the bed, and consequently on my trousers. He clutches his head with his hands.

  ‘You woke me at this hour to tell me that?’

  ‘No, no, that is incidental. A great and terrible thing has happened. Are you a religious man?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you believe in ghosts, spirits, apparitions?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor I, until tonight. Mr Elder – I have had a visitation.’

  ‘So have I,’ I say unkindly.

  ‘A miraculous though at the time terrifying visitation,’ he says. ‘After you left me, I sat for a while, musing on the things we had discussed. And I confess and admit that I aided my cogitations with another glass or two of uisge beatha – the water of death I should call it after tonight’s experience! I suppose I was puzzled – needled – by your repeated assertions that I was this other fellow, the bard. We must really look identical, I thought to myself, or such a gentleman as Mr Elde
r would not have been so insistent. Could it be that this bard was my long-lost brother?’

  ‘You have a long-lost brother?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge, but I could think of no other explanation. And then I wondered – if that really was his car outside – where was he? Perhaps he was asleep in the car! Perhaps he was dead! So I took a torch and I went to have a look.’

  ‘Did you find him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘I opened one of the doors but there was nothing there except a guitar case, just as you had mentioned. And so I came inside again.’

  He puts his head in his hands once more, for such a long time that I wonder if he has gone to sleep. I almost nod off myself.

  ‘I must have nodded off,’ MacLagan says, his hair sticking out crazily above his ears, ‘but something made me come to with a start. It was about midnight. I felt that I was not alone – that there was a presence in the room. I looked at the chair on which you had hung your jacket and there it was!’

  ‘My jacket?’

  ‘The most enormous, ugly brute of a toad I have ever seen.’

  ‘A toad? On the chair?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Come now, MacLagan! It’s not the season for toads, even indoors. You’d had too much whisky, you said it yourself. You fell asleep and woke from a nightmare.’

  ‘I woke to a nightmare, Mr Elder! I will not deny that I was somewhat the worse for wear, but that creature was no more than three feet away from me, and it was real. I could smell its foul smell, I could have reached out and touched its revolting, wart-covered skin and, worst of all, I could see it watching me with its evil eyes.’

  ‘How big, did you say?’

  ‘Enormous! Like gobstoppers.’

  ‘I meant the whole toad.’

  ‘It was the size of these two fists of mine clasped together, doubled and doubled again!’

  ‘Och, away. That would be a cane toad. You don’t get them here.’