They followed the ruck of passengers off the platform assuming Askew had for some reason gone to the front of the train and would soon be sighted. But he was not. They lingered on the concourse, expecting him to appear from one direction or another. But he did not. Harry accompanied Lloyd and Judd back to the train, where the cleaners were already at work and the guard assured them that all the passengers had left. He surmised that their friend had simply got off earlier. Why Askew would have left his bag behind was a puzzle the guard neither needed nor wished to dwell on.
Back on the concourse, Johnny Dangerfield had arrived to collect them. A weather-beaten but still handsome figure in Barbour, guernsey, corduroys and brogues, he had kept the trimmed moustache and Brylcreemed hairstyle of his youth, but the moustache had lost most of its colour, while his face had reddened with age and whisky. The twinkle in his eyes, that had once been like Venus in the night sky, was now more akin to a distant star in an unnamed galaxy. But there was still enough dash about him to suggest he had left an E-Type in the car park, rather than the minibus he had actually hired to transport them to the castle.
Harry had expected to see Chipchase at Dangerfield’s elbow, but there was as little sign of him as of Askew. The mystery of Askew’s whereabouts took priority, however, and it was not until a deputation, which he and Dangerfield were both part of, had been despatched to the railway police office, that Harry had the chance to ask after his old friend.
‘Did you leave Barry in the van, Danger?’
‘Fission? No. Actually, this is a bit of a double whammy, chaps. Fission’s sister died last night. Her husband’s in a godawful state, apparently. Fission’s had to fly down to Manchester. He’s not going to be able to join us.’
‘Sister, did you say?’ It was the first Harry had ever heard of Chipchase having siblings, dead or alive.
‘Yes. Know her, did you, Ossie?’
‘No. Actually, I didn’t.’
‘Well, there it is. Can’t be helped. At least we know where Fission’s gone. Unlike Crooked, blast the fellow.’
The railway police were not a lot more helpful than the train guard. The officer on duty took a note of their friend’s apparent disappearance, but emphasized that much the likeliest explanation was that he had got off the train at an earlier stop or had disembarked at the front on arrival at Aberdeen and left the station, forgetting to take his bag with him.
It was only then that Harry remembered Askew’s mobile. Why not simply ring him and ask where the blue blazes he was and what he thought he was playing at? But no one had the number. Lloyd, indeed, did not even know Askew possessed a phone.
‘He never made or took a call while I was with him yesterday. Or while we were at my daughter’s.’
‘He took a call on the train,’ said Harry. ‘While we were having lunch.’
But no one else had noticed. And some suggested Harry was confused.
‘Your powers of observation while under the influence were always close to zero, Ossie,’ said Tancred. ‘I can’t think age has improved them.’
Harry could not find the energy to be riled by this and it was generally agreed that none of them could claim more than partial recall of the events of the journey anyway. They adjourned to the station buffet for much-needed coffee, which completed the sobering-up Askew’s vanishment had kick-started without inducing much in the way of inspired thoughts.
But Harry’s memory was slowly booting up, distracted though he was by the parallel mystery of Chipchase’s sudden flying of the coop. (He did not think this was the moment to voice his certainty that Chipchase had never had a sister.) ‘I spoke to Peter on the platform at Waverley station. He said he was having second thoughts about the whole idea of the reunion.’
‘Why?’ snapped Tancred.
‘Something about it reminding him of how little he’d achieved in life.’
‘He’s hardly alone in that,’ said Fripp.
‘Well, it seemed to be preying on his mind,’ said Harry.
‘That’s it, then,’ said Lloyd. ‘He’s baled out. He always was chicken.’
‘It’s possible, I suppose,’ said Dangerfield. ‘Let’s see.’ He flourished a GNER pocket timetable and leafed through it. ‘We know from Gregger he was still on at Dundee. But if he got off after that, at Arbroath, say, or Montrose …’ He recited various train times under his breath. ‘Mmm. Montrose would’ve been too late. It has to have been Arbroath.’
‘Can you spell it out for us, Danger?’ pleaded Judd. ‘You might be firing on all cylinders, but I can assure you the rest of us aren’t.’
‘It’s simply that if he’d got off at Arbroath and caught the next southbound train … he could connect with the seven o’clock from Edinburgh to London … and get into King’s Cross just after midnight.’
‘You mean he’s bolted back to London?’
‘I don’t know. What do you think, Ossie? Based on his state of mind during your chat at Edinburgh.’
Put on the spot, Harry had to admit it was a distinct possibility. ‘I reckon he must have done.’
‘Charming,’ said Lloyd. ‘I go to all the bother of arranging for my daughter to put him up and he goes and does this.’
‘He obviously wasn’t thinking straight,’ said Dangerfield. ‘Otherwise he’d have taken his bag. No doubt he’ll be in touch with us about that – and to apologize. Sorry, gents, but we’re two down and we’ll just have to make the best of it. That’s all there is to it.’
Harry did not share Dangerfield’s complacency. He knew Chipchase was lying about a dead sister and a distraught brother-in-law in Manchester. He also knew Askew had a mobile and had been using it on the train. If Askew had been capable of working out the logistics of getting back to London from Arbroath, he would surely not have been so forgetful as to leave his bag behind. What all this meant Harry had no idea, but the coincidence of Chipchase and Askew going missing was too much to swallow. Something was going on. And Chipchase was up to his neck in it.
Still Harry said nothing about the non-existence of Chipchase’s sister. Some loyalty to his old friend that he could not shake off, despite the many occasions on which that friend had let him down, bound him to silence. Denied this information, his companions naturally made no connection between the two turns of events. Chipchase had been called away. And Askew was AWOL. There was no more to be said.
They piled into the minibus and began the final leg of their journey. The Deeside railway line was long gone, a victim of the Beeching cuts of the mid-sixties. Their arrival at the castle would not be a re-creation of how they had arrived fifty years previously, in ones and twos, on different days, by slow, labouring steam train. It was the road for them this time, with Dangerfield at the wheel, cursing and swearing his way through the rush-hour traffic as a pallid sun cast a sickly hue across the grey city. Conversation was subdued, thanks to encroaching hangovers, incipient indigestion and a general feeling that the absences of Chipchase and Askew had taken some of the gloss off the proceedings. Some even wondered if Wiseman had deserted them as well, though Dangerfield seemed certain he would join them before the evening was out.
Their spirits revived somewhat when they left the straggling suburbs of Aberdeen behind and headed on towards the sun-gilded hills of Deeside. They had a first encounter with Erica Rawson to look forward to – and a weekend of carousing. As Lloyd put it: ‘Bugger Crooked. And bad luck, Fission. They’re going to miss a right royal piss-up.’
Chapter Seven
FOR THE LAST few miles of their route to Lumphanan, the road ran alongside the disused cuttings and embankments of the railway line. The countryside was bare and empty, stands of silver birch and pine giving it a vaguely Nordic look. Spring had been in spate in Wiltshire, but was still feeling its way in Aberdeenshire. Harry had forgotten just how bleak and alien the surroundings of the castle had initially looked to him. Some of the gloom they had plunged him into washed back over him as he gazed through the minibus window at the twilit h
ills and fields and patches of scrub.
The village of Lumphanan had not changed much in its essentials. The disappearance of the railway station and the humpback bridge over the line was disorientating at first glance. Bungalows had been built in the old goods yard and the station building itself converted into a private house. The footbridge which Harry and Chipchase had trudged over with their kitbags that cold March evening in 1955 was now just a memory in thin air. But the post office, the Macbeth Arms, the main street of the village and the narrow-steepled parish church on its hillock at the far end were instantly familiar.
‘See the spire, chaps?’ said Tancred. ‘An admonitory finger of a Calvinist God raised over the cowering villagers.’
‘They didn’t do a lot of cowering, as I recall,’ Judd laughed.
‘That’s because you never went to church.’
‘We wouldn’t have been welcome if we had,’ said Lloyd. ‘They didn’t want us here.’
‘So we should have hit it off straightaway,’ said Judd. ‘We didn’t want us here either.’
Kilveen Castle stood half a mile out of the village, on the southern flank of Glenshalg Hill. The estate’s boundary wall, so tumbledown and overgrown in 1955 as to be barely distinguishable from the rock-strewn woods screening the castle from the lane, appeared on their left, solid and well maintained. Daffodil-sown glades had been opened up in the woods, affording glimpses of the castle as they climbed. They turned in between stout granite pillars, past the swag-lettered hotel sign and up the no-longer potholed drive.
The photographs had not lied. The damp and draughty hybrid of medieval stronghold and Georgian villa where Harry and his fellow Clean Sheeters had passed their unproductive days was now an elegant retreat for well-heeled tourists. The lawns were trimmed, the paths neatly gravelled, the harling of the tower honey-tinged by the setting sun. The very appearance of the place promised ease and indulgence. And most of Harry’s companions seemed in the mood for both.
They pulled into the yew-hedged car park and clambered out. A couple of porters appeared with trolleys to take their bags. Dangerfield led the way into the reception area on the ground floor of the tower, where a massive fire blazed and tartan-uniformed staff flitted around them. The manager, a small, trim, sleek-haired fellow called Matthews, introduced himself and welcomed them to Kilveen. Dr Starkie and Erica Rawson had arrived, he reported, but Mr Wiseman was still awaited. Dangerfield broke the bad news about Askew and Chipchase. Matthews took it in his modest stride. The register was signed. Keys were distributed.
Harry followed a bright-eyed young woman, identified by her lapel badge as Bridget, to his room, high up in the tower. A lift had been installed in place of one of the two spiral staircases he remembered stumbling up and down. Bridget praised the view, which was panoramic, and rattled through detailed advice about heating controls, meal times and telephone extension numbers. Then she was gone. To his relief, Harry found himself alone. But not for long. The porter arrived with his bag. Soon, however, bag delivered and tip dispensed, Harry’s solitude was restored.
He sat down on the four-poster bed and looked about him. Every comfort was on hand. But he did not feel comfortable. He did not feel relaxed in any way. And neither a satellite television nor a Jacuzzi bath was going to change that. Where was Chipchase? What was he up to? What in God’s name was going on?
Harry took a shower and dressed for dinner, which meant donning the dark-grey suit he had worn at his mother’s funeral, paired with a rainbow-striped tie Donna had given him for Christmas a few years ago. Then, after casting a wary eye over the telephone tariff, he put a call through to Seattle.
Donna and Daisy were having brunch, prior to their drive back to Vancouver. It was good to hear their calm, cheerful voices. He reported Chipchase’s no-show, but not Askew’s disappearance. He did not want Donna to worry, especially when there was, obviously, nothing to worry about. She promised to give him a wake-up call in the morning. He promised not to drink too much.
When he put the phone down, Harry realized how much he missed his wife and daughter. He wanted to be with them, not carousing with half-forgotten comrades from fifty years ago. He wished profoundly that he had not come to Scotland. But he had. And if he did not head down to the bar soon, they would probably send up a search party. With a sigh, he grabbed his key and set off.
Halfway down the stairs, he literally bumped into another guest, who was emerging from his room. They stepped back to examine each other and Harry’s brain scrambled to deduce who the fellow might be. Tall and fleshy, with thinning, white, curly hair, an eagle’s-beak nose, a broad but not altogether warm smile and an intense, faintly sceptical gaze, he was wearing an expertly cut suit of some shimmering dark-blue material, a blue shirt with a white collar and bright-red tie that matched the hue of a flamboyantly disarranged breast-pocket handkerchief.
‘Magister.’
‘That’s right. And you must be … Ossie Barnett.’ They shook hands, the band of a signet ring grinding into the knuckle on Harry’s little finger.
‘You made it, then.’
‘Got here half an hour ago. Checked in with Danger. He seemed relieved to hear from me. I gather Crooked and Fission have dropped out.’
‘Looks like it.’
‘On your way to the bar?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s go, then.’
They carried on down. ‘Buy anything at the auction?’ Harry asked as they went.
‘That.’ Wiseman’s laugh echoed in the stairwell. ‘No. Complete and utter waste of time. Telephone bidders are taking all the fun out of the auction business.’
‘But you’re still active in it.’
‘You’ve got to stay active, Ossie. You must know that. The brain as well as the body. They have to be kept in trim.’
‘Oh, absolutely.’
‘And what this brain and this body need at the moment … is a stiff drink.’
The bar was next to the dining room on the ground floor of the Georgian wing. There was a stag’s head over the mantelpiece, but otherwise little in the way of Caledonian kitsch, just a welcoming fire and lots of soft leather armchairs. Harry and Wiseman were evidently the last to arrive, for Dangerfield and the rest were all there, along with Dr Starkie and Erica Rawson, who seemed to be coping well with being the only woman in a gathering of men too old to have absorbed many feminist principles.
Short and slender, with boyishly cropped black hair, the young woman’s large, teak-brown eyes had a sharpness of focus that made Harry feel, albeit briefly, the undivided object of her attention as they shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. She was plainly but elegantly dressed in a dark top and palazzo pants, prompting Judd to mutter in Harry’s ear, ‘It’d be nice to know what she’d look like in something a bit more figure-hugging, don’t you reckon, Ossie?’ as Dangerfield piloted her away to meet Wiseman.
Donald Starkie, who had stooped slightly, even as a young man, stooped even more fifty years later. His mop of black hair had turned wire-wool grey and his spectacles had acquired alarmingly thick lenses, but otherwise he had changed little, remaining beanpole thin, scruffily dressed (even with an Aberdeen University tie on) and unsmilingly lugubrious.
‘You heard of Professor McIntyre’s death, Barnett?’ he husked to Harry.
‘Not at the time. But he’d be over a hundred now, so … it was no surprise.’
‘He achieved a lot, let me tell you. More than his obituarists could comprehend.’
‘But not with us, hey? We must have been a sore disappointment to him.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that.’
‘No?’
‘What I mean …’ Starkie took a sip from his glass of mineral water. ‘What I mean is that Professor McIntyre regarded failure … as no less instructive than success.’
‘So, at least we were instructive.’
‘Aye.’ Starkie looked thoughtful. ‘So you were.’
Chapter Eight
THE TABLE OF tw
elve planned for dinner had become a table of ten, with the advantage, according to Dangerfield, of more elbow room all round. He had devised a seating plan based on the alphabetical order of the Clean Sheeters’ surnames, from which he had exempted only himself. He was seated at the head of the table, with Dr Starkie and Erica Rawson to his left and right. In Askew’s absence, Harry found himself sitting next to Erica, with Fripp on his other side and Wiseman opposite. Judd, at the far end of the table, looked disappointed by his distance from Erica and shot Harry an envious glance as they sat down.
It was the same room where they had eaten their plain and not always wholesome meals during Operation Clean Sheet, but barely recognizable as such. Silver service, fine napery and haute cuisine heightened the contrast. ‘Danger’s doing us proud,’ Harry murmured to Fripp. But the response hardly came freighted with gratitude. ‘I wish I’d gone into oil instead of bookkeeping. My God, I do.’
It was no hardship for Harry to concentrate his conversational attentions on Erica Rawson. To his surprise, she spoke to him more than anyone. Dangerfield and Starkie became immersed in a discussion of the effects of the oil boom on Aberdeen, while Tancred and Wiseman began trading points in delicately barbed arguments ranging from politics to poetry.
‘It’s a pity only eight of you made it in the end,’ Erica said, as she toyed with her starter. ‘Eight out of fifteen isn’t very representative.’
‘Representative?’ Harry responded. ‘Are you studying us?’
‘In a sense, yes.’ She turned to smile at him. ‘I hope you’re not shocked.’
‘Depends why, I suppose.’
‘Oh, to see whether Professor McIntyre’s experiment really was as futile as his colleagues maintained. Ever since Dr Starkie told me about it, it’s interested me. This reunion gave me a chance to meet some of the people I’ve only previously known by name.’
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