Three threadbare rugs were placed in such a way across the floorboards that one could walk from door to bed without treading, if barefoot, on cold wood. Everything about the room was grand, austere, dignified and faded. In the winter it would be an icebox. Now, at the end of October, Douglas rather liked it, even its musty aroma – a combination, he thought, of mouse and very old wood.
Mungo Forth Mungo, whom he had extracted from his pocket once Corryvreckan had gone, had also been taking in the surroundings, poking his snout into corners and lashing out with his considerable tongue along the skirting boards.
‘I take it we have finally arrived?’ he asked.
‘Yes, this is Glentaragar House,’ Douglas said. ‘What do you think?’
‘It’s an improvement on the hotel,’ the toad replied. ‘I prefer this more Spartan style – not that I saw your bedroom last night. I remained in the bar when I wasn’t outside.’
‘I wanted to ask you about that. Did you have some kind of conversation with MacLagan? He came to see me at six o’clock claiming to have met a giant toad who told him he was up to his neck in sin.’
‘Giant?’
‘About the size of a cat, from his description.’
‘I did puff myself up a bit, but he’s exaggerating. I wanted to teach him a lesson. He went through your jacket pockets, you know.’
‘I thought he might.’
‘I saw him at it when I came in from dinner.’
‘Do you never stop eating?’
‘Seldom. One has to guard against the possibility of privation. I waited till he’d dropped off and then I positioned myself to give him a fright.’
‘Well, you managed that fine. But what were you hoping to achieve by advising him to get a job on the railway?’
‘A resolution to your ethical dilemma. Since you seemed to want to knock this bootlegging business on the head without getting involved, I thought I could shift the dilemma on to MacLagan.’
‘Is that why you put him in a trance?’
‘I didn’t put him in a trance.’
‘He thinks you did.’
‘Rubbish. He was drunk. After our little exchange he fell asleep, and so I crawled into your jacket and did the same. I woke up briefly once and he’d gone. He must have been seeing you. Was he suitably chastened?’
‘At the time, yes. I sent him to his bed and told him to consider his options when he woke up. The trouble is, the man who goes to bed as MacLagan doesn’t necessarily wake up as MacLagan, so he might have forgotten.’
‘The toad who goes to bed as Mungo always wakes up as Mungo. Sometimes he wishes he hadn’t. The journey from there to here was extremely unpleasant. I was nearly sick in your pocket.’
‘Thank you for not being. You’ll not have seen Corryvreckan then?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘Take a good look at him when you do. It’s MacCrimmon, or MacLagan if you prefer, without a beard.’
‘I see. Has he shed it?’
‘It’s more complicated than that. It was a false beard.’
‘A disguise?’
‘Yes, but there doesn’t seem any point in making an issue of it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t think he’s aware it’s a disguise. I think he suffers from a three-way split personality.’ There was a knock at the door. ‘That’ll be him now. I’m about to meet Rosalind Munlochy. Want to come?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Hop in then.’
Douglas went to the door. It took him twelve paces to get there. Corryvreckan, still wearing his deerstalker, stood outside. ‘If you would care to follow me, please,’ he said.
They retraced their steps to the head of the stairs, then proceeded to the left wing, down a corridor hung with oil paintings of Highland scenes. Corryvreckan knocked at the third door along.
‘Come in, Corryvreckan,’ a thin, clear voice called, and some deep memory was stirred in Douglas, of a vintage film in which a Highland postmistress makes contact with an island by radio. This voice was rather more aristocratic, but it had the same black-and-white precision, the same sense of belonging to a bygone age. Corryvreckan turned the brass handle, and in they went.
Douglas expected to find himself in a room as large and barren as the bedroom, but the reality was very different. This room was smaller but packed with furniture – armchairs and a sofa, a writing desk, a standard lamp, and bookcases ranked and double-ranked with books. Other shelves and surfaces were covered with knick-knackery, lamps, small plants and arrangements of dried flowers. On the wall hung paintings and prints – bright, modernist and abstract – and on the floor was a red cord carpet overlaid with thick Persian rugs, so that the room was riotous with colour. The centrepiece was an open fire heaped with logs, which filled the place with a friendly, welcoming heat. There was a window with a built-in seat, and even from where he was standing Douglas could see the shimmering loch through the glass. It was the kind of room from which, on wet, cold or windy days, one would never wish to shift. And in the armchair nearest to the fire sat someone who looked as though she had not shifted for some time.
‘Mr Elder,’ Corryvreckan said.
‘Thank you, Corryvreckan,’ said Rosalind Munlochy. ‘Would you tell Poppy that Mr Elder is here? And you may bring the coffee directly.’
‘I will do that,’ Corryvreckan said, and he touched the peak of his deerstalker and withdrew.
[To be continued]
FIRST-NAME TERMS
Rosalind Munlochy is small and neat, her skin as brown and lined as the shell of a Brazil nut. She is in an armchair next to the fire, with several cushions and a rug packed around her as if to hold her in place: she is like an unhatched egg in a nest or, rather, like a chick – a very young one, and consequently prehistoric-looking. Her white hair is so fine and light that it seems to sit above her skull in a cloud. She wears pink-framed glasses on her sharp, straight nose, and behind the round lenses her eyes are blue and bright. There is a downward turn to her mouth that nevertheless is a kind of smile, or holds the promise of one.
‘Good morning, Mr Elder.’
‘Good morning, Mrs Munlochy.’
‘Won’t you sit down? Not in that chair or you will squash the cat. I won’t get up. I’m a little stiff in the mornings. If the weather holds we might get out later.’
‘Really?’ I take a seat opposite her. The cat referred to, a tabby well camouflaged against the upholstery of the chair next to hers, sleeps on.
‘If it stays dry and the wind has dropped. If there is one thing I can’t cope with it is the wind. It blows me about like a leaf. I’d like to show you what’s left of Glentaragar’s policies. What is your first name? I think they told me, but I have forgotten.’
‘It’s Douglas.’
‘Douglas Elder.’ The downward smile briefly becomes an upward one, as if a joke has passed over her face. ‘The cat’s name is Sitka but she doesn’t answer to it. She doesn’t answer to anything, she just sleeps all day. You’ve come for the interview. Now, how shall we play this?’
‘Play what, Mrs Munlochy?’
‘That, precisely. Formality. I can’t be doing with it, can you? Shall we be on first-name terms until some reason arises for us not to be?’
‘That’s fine by me.’
‘Let us practise then. Douglas. Your turn.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You have to call me Rosalind.’
‘Rosalind.’
‘Douglas.’
‘Rosalind.’
‘Excellent. We shall get along very well – until we don’t.’
Had Corryvreckan frisked me in the corridor he couldn’t have disarmed me more efficiently.
‘Remind me,’ she goes on, ‘what exactly am I supposed to be interviewing you about?’
‘Actually, I’m supposed to be interviewing you.’
‘You’re not here about a job?’
‘No.’
‘Oh. Well, that’s good,
because there isn’t one.’ A musical chuckle follows. ‘What do you want to interview me about?’
‘Your life. Your thoughts on Scotland, past, present and future.’
‘Oh dear. Yes, Poppy did say something about it. Are you from a newspaper?’
‘Yes, the Spear. I have a card here.’
‘Never mind that. You have tracked me to my den whether you have a card or not. I don’t read the papers now. There is nothing in them I haven’t read before. The Spear used to be rather a good newspaper, but that was a long time ago. Have you been there a long time?’
‘More than twenty years.’
‘Not long then.’
‘Actually’ – I find I cannot lie to her – ‘I don’t work there any more. This is a one-off job the editor asked me to do.’
‘Oh? Should one of us be flattered by that?’
‘Probably not.’
The smile passes over her features again. ‘You know why the Spear is called the Spear, don’t you? Apart from it being a sharp weapon?’
‘I thought that was the reason.’
‘One of the reasons. But “spier” is also a Scots word meaning to inquire or interrogate. That was a pun that was understood when the paper was founded in the nineteenth century. It was understood when I was a young woman, too. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.’
‘Well, now that you’ve reminded me, I think I did. I’d forgotten. Someone told me when I first started. A man called Ronald Grigson. He had that sense of tradition. The paper has a very different ethos now.’
‘Well, perhaps that’s inevitable. Even the best traditions have to end some time. Some aren’t even traditions.’
Behind me the door opens and Corryvreckan enters with a tray of coffee things, which he places on the desk.
‘We always have coffee about now,’ Rosalind says, ‘with Abernethy biscuits. The origins of which have almost nothing to do with Scotland, which proves the point I was making. Thank you, Corryvreckan. Just leave it there.’ When he has gone, she says, ‘He’s a wonder, that man. I don’t know what we’d do without him.’
‘Yes, he is a wonder. I’ve been wondering quite a bit about him,’ I say.
She gives me a quick look, but only asks, ‘How was the drive up the glen?’
‘Challenging.’
‘It always was. It is some time since I last did it. It was a battle to have the road metalled in the Fifties and it’s been a battle having it repaired ever since. The Council say they can’t justify the cost when this is the only occupied property in the glen, but if the road had been properly maintained perhaps some of the people would have stayed. I used to say that if they couldn’t afford to mend the road I couldn’t afford to pay my rates, but I had to or they would have debarred me from being a councillor. I don’t trouble myself with all that any more, but Poppy has taken up the cudgels, and she says they’ve promised to fill in the potholes next year. Well, we’ll see! Ah, here’s Poppy now. She can pour. Poppy, this is Douglas Elder. We are on first-name terms already. Douglas, this is my granddaughter Poppy. Her mother called her Coppélia for reasons I shall never understand. I call her Poppy for short.’
‘Hello, Poppy,’ I say, standing up.
‘Hello, Douglas,’ Poppy says. Only it isn’t Poppy, although it must be because that is how Rosalind has introduced her. But when I slept with her two days ago she was Xanthe.
It is fortunate that I am not already holding a cup of coffee, because if I were, I would undoubtedly have spilt it. The way she says, ‘Hello, Douglas’: it is her voice, the one I’ve heard on the telephone at the weekend and again only last night, but is it also Xanthe’s? Xanthe sounded less posh, more Scottish – but immediately I have to question what that means, ‘more Scottish’. Perhaps Poppy doesn’t sound any different – not to herself or her grandmother anyway. It is my problem, not theirs – if it is a problem. How can I not have recognised her voice that night at the Shira Inn? How can I not have put two and two together: she and MacCrimmon were gone in the morning. Surely, as I suspected, they left together, and now it is clear why – because they were going to the same place.
Yet they barely acknowledged one another at the Inn. I seem to remember Poppy saying that MacCrimmon didn’t know her. Was that a barefaced lie? And the bard was a complete wreck by the end of the night. Was he able to drive in the morning? Perhaps Poppy took over. But she told me on the phone – at least, I think she did, but am I imagining it? – that she didn’t drive.
I am all but speechless. Poppy – I can hardly think of her by that name, but have to try – asks me if I take milk in my coffee. ‘Yes, please,’ I say, thinking of her in bed saying she has no socks on. Do I want sugar? ‘No,’ I say, inhaling her perfume from the sheets of that bed. A biscuit? ‘Thank you,’ I murmur, trying to put other memories from my mind.
She places her own coffee on one of the wee tables, and in a single swift movement sweeps the cat up with one hand and sits down in its chair, with the creature, barely having woken, resettling itself at once on her lap.
She is dressed in a thick grey jumper speckled with other colours, and a pair of blue jeans tucked into brown boots. She appears not to be wearing any make-up, and the only jewellery I can see is a silver bracelet on one wrist. Everything about her is plain and understated and ordinary. I could weep, she looks so good.
Am I to say anything? What am I to say in the presence of Rosalind Munlochy? That her granddaughter and I are already intimately acquainted, that she comes and goes by another name and that in some way I have been tricked, deceived, misled by her? Have I been? Perhaps Poppy suffers from the same kind of personality disorder as Corryvreckan? Perhaps Poppy does not recognise me, and only Xanthe could?
Not for the first time in recent days, I question whether I am awake or dreaming.
‘Well, here we are,’ Poppy says.
‘Yes, here we are,’ I reply. ‘I’m a little confused.’
‘Already?’ Rosalind says. ‘You’ve only just arrived.’
Looking at me directly, Poppy says, ‘You’ve had a difficult journey, Douglas. You’re probably disorientated. But we’re glad that you have come.’ And her eyes seem to assure me that I am not dreaming, that she knows exactly who I am, and that her welcome is not false.
‘Very glad,’ Rosalind says.
‘We don’t get many visitors,’ Poppy continues. ‘My grandmother has been much looking forward to your company. Haven’t you, Gran?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ Rosalind says, ‘although I’m afraid he will find us dull.’
‘I don’t think I will,’ I say.
Poppy smiles. ‘I don’t think you will either.’
‘Then I am outvoted,’ Rosalind says, ‘and it will all be great fun.’
I glance sharply at her. Her eyes shine behind the pink, round spectacles. Are these women laughing at me? Does Rosalind already know what happened at the Shira? Did Poppy rush home to tell her?
‘I think,’ Poppy says, ‘that you two should start your conversation right now. It’s half-past eleven already. I’ll make you a sandwich for lunch and you can just keep going.’
‘We’re going out later,’ Rosalind says, ‘if the weather holds.’
‘That’s good. Perhaps after that I could borrow Douglas to help me in the kitchen? Would you mind, Douglas?’
‘It would be a pleasure, Poppy. We can get to know each other properly.’
She doesn’t even blush. ‘Good. We tend not to eat too late in the evening, as my grandmother gets tired.’
‘I do,’ Rosalind agrees. ‘I’m never up beyond nine. It’s like being a child again. You’ll have to entertain yourselves after that.’
‘Well, in that case, if you don’t need anything else, I’m going to leave you together for an hour or two,’ Poppy says. She slips out from under the cat, kisses her grandmother on the cheek, and makes a dash for the door.
I stand up. ‘I’ll just go and get my notebook from my room, Rosalind. Be back in a min
ute.’
I catch up with Poppy halfway along the corridor, and stay her with a hand on her shoulder. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing,’ she says.
‘Nothing?’
‘Everything. Please don’t be angry.’
‘We need to talk.’
‘Yes, but not now. Talk to Rosalind. It’s as she said, we can entertain ourselves later.’
‘I can’t wait till later.’
‘Neither can I, but we’ll have to.’
‘That’s not what I meant. You have to tell me what’s going on.’
She pulls away. ‘I will.’
‘Did I speak to you last night, on the phone?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘It’s a simple enough question. Did I speak to you last night?’
‘Did you? Last night? I don’t think so.’
‘I phoned from the hotel. Surely you remember?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘I don’t.’
I feel the sickness from the car journey returning. ‘You’re lying,’ I say.
‘Douglas! I’m not lying. If you phoned I have no recollection of it. I’m sure you didn’t because I tried to phone the hotel last night and I couldn’t get through.’
‘What?’
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m not sure. Poppy?’
‘Yes?’
‘Who are you?’
‘Poppy. I’m Poppy Munlochy. Go and do the interview.’
She has been frowning. Now she laughs, and runs down the corridor like a woman half her age, whatever her age is.
I am in a play, I think to myself. I am an actor in a play, but it’s as if I’ve just woken up on stage with no knowledge of who wrote the script, of my lines, my part, what scene we are in, whether it’s a tragedy or a farce or who all the other characters might be. And I can’t walk off again. There is an audience out there waiting for me to die – in the theatrical sense – and I’m not ready to do that. I must carry on as if I know what I am doing.
To Be Continued Page 26