Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones

by Bobbie Darbyshire

  ‘Oh dear me!’ Fiona became agitated. ‘Have I lied to you, Henry? I didn’t mean to, really I didn’t. I thought the danger was past, that Peter wouldn’t realise. But yes, I suppose, you’re right. I am so dreadfully sorry.’

  Henry’s mist of self-pity lifted. For a brief moment, he felt vengeful. ‘Are you saying you never knowingly tell untruths, Miss Urquhart? About you and my brother being old friends, for example?’

  She looked startled. He felt like a cad. ‘Henry,’ she said. She had the tone she used for his brother. She was about to tell him what to do, and he was powerless to gainsay her. ‘Henry, I’m going up the hill just now, to speak to my father. Will you come with me?’

  Peter

  Up, up and fucking up, shouldering Señorita’s effects, pissed-off as hell with the lot of them, thwarted robot powered by Duracell, programmed by FU, audience with Calum interminably postponed.

  More than one exit from this escalator; where did Rob Roy get off? Sod it, Spanish mare scarcely in urgent need of toothbrush; let rage propel him upwards, into some turret, some eagle’s eyrie, whence he could espy Calum Calum scratching out his golden Gaelic. Up and fucking up.

  Spiral narrowing, stairs creaking, breath short and legs aching. Trapped twixt dizzy corkscrew to unforgiving flagstones and gnarled door by brothers Grimm. Cold draught beneath; bend ear to oak. What’s this? Low, intermittent female moaning, plus DIY supply of spooked violins. No key, be bold, try handle. Yes! with Hammer horror creak, door opening stiffly, inch by inch, into castellated thin air.

  Wind upping ante from moan to wail. Step through into surround-sound space. White peaks fast vanishing in lowering cloud. Growl of thunder, snow turned to rain falling straight from the freezer. Banshee howl. Squall slamming door behind, wrenching hair-roots, tearing suitcase from shoulder and flinging it against battlement. Elements trying to kill him. Rise like Lear to yell at sky, ‘BLOW, WINDS, AND CRACK YOUR CHEEKS!’ Fuck them all with poetry.

  Beethoven joining in – Ode to Joy – scarcely in keeping, what in hell’s name? Phone chirruping away in Señorita’s bag, ruining mood entirely. Dig in, pull it out, hit talk to stop the thing. ‘What?’

  Shriek of gale dumping him – ‘Ow!’ – on knees, phone to lughole, chin on granite ledge. Stare out through castellations at Highland wilderness, wild-eyed and disembodied like Urquhart clan trophy, some deep-voiced foreigner girning in his ear. ‘Elena?’

  ‘Yes, mate.’

  Next bit lost in whirlwind.

  ‘Come again.’

  Phone droning protests. ‘What is happen? Where is Elena?’

  Movement on mountainside below. Fiona it was! dogged by dogs and climbing into imminent cloud-line, side by side with some brother or other. Fuck it, his brother! Henry! Fiona, the double-crossing witch, leading the jammy creep straight to Calum.

  Anxious crackle in his ear. ‘Hello. You there?’

  ‘Yes, mate, more fool I. The fool on the foul, fucking heath.’

  ‘Who is this? Where is Elena?’

  ‘Not here. I’ll tell her you called.’

  ‘Yes, tell her please, my name is – ’

  Storm lashing face with ice, inflating jacket, halfway to lifting him over parapet.

  ‘Mick, you say?’

  ‘No – ’

  ‘Look, Mick, now really isn’t the best time.’

  Punch off-button. Glare through tempest at Fiona and Henry, heads down, side by fucking side, battling through. Beethoven kicking in like mocking, clockwork jester. Stupid phone, hurl it at Henry’s head. Watch its impotent, parabolic dive, down towards gravel, disappearing, grey on grey.

  Whoops. But something had to give. Do this, do that; what was he, a fucking factotum? View gobbled by racing curtains of iced fog. Nothing to see; storm crashing like South Atlantic round cabin-boy in crow’s nest. Crawl on hands and knees to wrench door open, drag bags through, clamber after them and let it slam behind.

  Collapse on top stair, hair raked, face scoured by cold, shivering, dripping, muttering curses. Replay of creaking woodworm silence, haunted by wailing ghost. And nothing still to do but fucking wait.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Henry

  The weather had ferreted out gaps at Henry’s neck and ankles and was insinuating icy dribbles onto his bare flesh. The wind kept trying to steal his cap. He pulled it down hard and bent into the torrent of rain. Beneath his feet, the path had transformed itself into a stream. The dogs gleamed wet as otters.

  He could hardly see Fiona – he stumbled against her and then away. In his head she was not Fiona, she was his mother. He gave in to the old comforts, took refuge from the storm within and without, and became a child, battling up hill and down glen to save his mother from some evil villain.

  A touch on his arm interrupted his reverie. Fiona wanted to speak. In yellow sou-wester and gumboots, she looked like Christopher Robin. ‘I’m sorry,’ she yelled. ‘This is no fun in winter, but lately he’s insisted on hiding himself away up here.’

  Reality startled Henry. He had almost forgotten that the man they were battling up this hill to see was an actual villain. A man who took money from a friend and brought no guns, who threw peasants to the mercy of Franco’s army.

  Nothing had altered. What did it matter that he had blown his chances with Elena? He would still risk himself for her. He would remain her cavalier, if not her suitor.

  Ouch! He stubbed his toe on a rock and nearly went headlong. Fiona made a grab to save him, and his anger against this inscrutable little Scot resurfaced. She hadn’t explained her lie, he noted; thought she was going to get away with it, no doubt. She might yet if he didn’t smarten up. For Elena’s sake and his own, he must be level-headed.

  There was a flicker of lightning, then thunder built and rumbled round them, bouncing off the unseen mountainsides. The dogs came close, their tails between their legs.

  ‘It’s not far.’ Her face, framed by the sou-wester, was whipped pink by wind and rain.

  ‘Yes, but what’s the real story with you and Peter?’

  She stopped and stood quite still, meeting his eye with no hint of embarrassment. She spoke deliberately through the storm. ‘It’s more a secret than a lie. You’ll know it soon. Today, if my father agrees. But please, Henry, do believe me when I say how badly I feel for gossiping about you. I’d no idea Peter knew you.’

  The wind tugged relentlessly at Henry’s cap. His anger found no words. He was a useless cavalier.

  They ploughed on through the rain, skirting a giant rock to their left. There was a roar in the air, steadier than the storm, the sound of falling water. They were up past the rock and onto level ground. The cloud lifted, the wind dropped and hushed, and the rain stopped battering his face.

  Henry gasped. He was standing practically on the lip of a hanging valley that reached deep into the mountain. A river was bowling along it and, a few yards from his feet, a mini-Niagara dropped sheer through a belt of mist to Loch Craggan far below.

  ‘Beautiful, aren’t they?’ said Fiona. ‘My father’s falls.’

  He nodded dumbly, mesmerised by the water’s transformation from rain-pocked silk to white havoc. As he watched, his spirits lifted.

  Was he romanticising Scotland again? He stole a glance at Fiona, but she too was smiling at the falls.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Incredibly beautiful.’

  His eyes were drawn past her, along the valley, where the dogs were running. The snow was gone; there was nothing to see but grey. Boulders, stones and water, no tree or patch of green. Only a croft with a chimney at either end and a porch centre-front, behind a dry stone wall. A makeshift retreat for a shepherd.

  Fiona turned and followed his gaze. ‘I know. We’ve been worried about him. But this is all he seems to want just now.’

  Elena

  She dreamt she was strolling with Mikhail, arm-in-arm on a curved, sandy beach, beneath the Mediterranean sun. They smiled and recited English tenses together. ‘There was no proble
m, there is no problem, there will be no problem.’ The waves fell with a sound like thunder. Or was the thunder from the sky?

  ‘Is there a storm, Mikhail?’ She knelt to put her ear against the sand.

  The sand was warm and damp. Mikhail stroked her hair. ‘There will be no problem,’ he said.

  She opened her eyes into a pillow. Mikhail was gone but his touch remained, and his voice. There will be no problem.

  Beyond the pillow, she saw a room covered with roses. The walls, the closed curtains, the bed-linen, the carpet, the framed prints. Everywhere she looked, pink blossom clustered and twined.

  Loch Craggan! Her heart accelerated as she remembered. But her head was free from fear.

  Mikhail was lost. She gasped to think of it. She must not think of it. She must find her anger again.

  Her mother’s diary. Yes, she had only to remember and her body sprang alert. How foolish she was to be ill. In place of food she had drunk cognac; in place of sleep she had wept with rage. How stupid. She must not waste this anger.

  Angus Urquhart. She must find her enemy with no more delay and hear his lying histories of heroism. His wickedness had soaked through the generations and stained her heart. She hated the old man he had become. She hated him and all his smug, smiling, Scottish family, born of lies and treachery. Before night came, they would look into the eyes of Carlos’s granddaughter and know their shame.

  Her watch showed two-thirty. She left the bed, searching for her luggage.

  Her jacket and the new sheepskin coat were hanging in the wardrobe. Her new boots lay on the rose-patterned carpet. But where was her suitcase? And her handbag?

  She refused to panic; the anger had concentrated her mind. She put the boots on, crossed to the door and opened it. The hotel corridor was empty. Slipping the key into her pocket, she hurried to the central stairwell and saw the stone floor of the hall below. Henry’s bag lay beside a huge, carved-wood chair. Fiona’s small suitcase was there also, but her own was not.

  Who had taken them? She could feel her fear returning. Worse than fear, her terror. She clung to the stair-rail, trembling, as she went down.

  And then she realised, it was the smell that was making her afraid. The dusty odour of old wood was evoking the shuttered house of her childhood. Spain was so near in this hallway. Hated, rejected, feared, it followed as many miles as she could run.

  She must not be foolish. Here was the stone arch through which Urquhart’s giant son had carried her from shuttered house into sun-brilliant square. Perhaps in the salon with the glass wall she would find her bags. She entered bravely.

  Only the disagreeable young man with the blue eyes was here, Henry’s brother Peter. With relief she saw her case beside his feet. He was crouched on the sofa, chewing his fingers and studying pages hand-written in blue like the one in the photocopier. Urquhart’s poetry. He noticed her and made a defiant face. ‘Hi, Señorita. Your things.’ He pushed them with his foot.

  He was not worth fighting. ‘Thank you. But where are Henry and Fiona?’

  ‘Gone without us, the sods.’ He jumped from the sofa to point through the glass wall. ‘Up that path, to see her dad. Jack and Jill, up the fucking hill.’

  The view was grey with rain. ‘So come,’ she said. ‘We follow.’ Her anger was pure and pressing. She must find Urquhart.

  Peter’s blue eyes mirrored her urgency. She did not like him, not at all, but always she found herself reflected. ‘You’re right. Why not?’ He was pushing the poem into his bag and heading for the hall. ‘No more mañana. Look, there are some cagoules here. Let’s go.’

  ‘Wait.’ She ran after him with her luggage. ‘Five minutes only. I will get my coat and meet you here.’

  Peter

  ‘Well hi! Where y’from? Ain’t this place just grand?’

  No time for idle chat. Cagouled and in cahoots with Elena, bulldoze through sudden plague of sodden, sodding Yanks, back from huntin, shootin, fishin, oil-prospectin. ‘Sure. Yeah. Seeya layder. Godda fly.’

  Onto gravel, whoops! swerve round broken phone in puddle – ‘Here’s the path’ – and set about it, Mohammed at the mountain.

  Climb and climb and fucking climb. Steep as hell and savage gale, but rain stopped and clouds parting, shaft of sun from Hollywood epic, and Calum up here somewhere, holy Moses with tablets of Gaelic stone.

  Interminable track, steps cut into bedrock, up and up. Hammering heart, aching muscles and skewered ribs – keep it going, one-two one-two, squaddy with backpack, Sisyphus with deadline to meet.

  Catch breath, glance back, check progress. Señorita way behind. Valley and loch in massive bas-relief, swept by giant cloud-shadows and searchlight of sun, gold on charcoal, wow, and bang, it got him, Icarus in solar beam. Godda fly before his wax wings melted.

  Señorita waving, shouting, ‘Peter. Please.’

  Sun swallowed by black sky and icy gust. Fuck it, must stick together, for sphinx minx Fi might bar his way, Peter be patient. ‘Sorry. Too fast for you?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you. Too fast.’ Panting and pale, cagoule aflap round face like yellow flag.

  ‘Sure thing. Take five. Admire the fucking view.’

  Heart banging in mouth, plus earache from wind, and stab of stitch, an eagle at his liver, Prometheus now. Press elbow into side, pull up hood, glare down at Urquhart pile. Granite fist with central ‘up yours’ tower. Ring of gravel, sporting Land-Rovers around Fi’s little bus, like break-out at Jurassic Park.

  ‘Peter. I have a question.’

  ‘What?’

  Ominous Spanish scowl. ‘I notice how you speak.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Grit teeth for lecture, female censorship.

  ‘Is difficult to understand, but I am not complaining.’

  Match scowl: eye for eye and tooth for tooth, hood to flapping hood.

  ‘You are brief, but you invent. I am impressed, though many times confounded.’

  No answer to that but ‘Charmed, I’m sure’ and wait for the ‘but’. Yes, here it hailed, slap-bang on cue.

  ‘But Peter, I am wondering. Why the bad words and – how do I say it? – la malevolencia?’

  Fuck it, tell the cow to mind her own. Or, strung out on a cliff in vicious gale, where better to bellow truth? ‘BECAUSE I’M FUCKING ANGRY, THAT’S WHY.’ Great surge of freedom, snatched by wind and hurled against the sky.

  Señorita, mouth open startled, had it coming. But hang on, what was this, a laugh? And yelling as loud as he? ‘YES, PETER, I SEE THIS, BUT WHY? WHY ANGRY?’

  Double the volume, let his fury fly. ‘WHY NOT? AREN’T YOU? WHAT IS THERE NOT TO BE ANGRY ABOUT?’

  Truth shared, Señorita’s hood snatched by howl of wind. ‘YES. I AM ANGRY ALSO. JUST AS YOU.’ Voice of a diva in his face.

  So kiss her, yes! Her tongue right there, hot and hungry. Gobble it up, cagoules acrackle, hands a-roaming. Fi wouldn’t kiss him, Stop it Peter, frigid Fi with unhinged Henry – Calum waiting, godda fly, but Señorita tugging at his hair, clash of teeth and hard against his hard-on, good angry kisser, angry woman, eating his anger up.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Henry

  ‘Sugar?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Henry smiled politely. He was trying to imagine this old stick of a fellow roughing it through the Sierra Nevada with a pack of rifles on his back. Only he hadn’t, had he? There had been no guns.

  ‘Guid,’ the old man said, ‘for I’ve nae sugar to offer ye.’ He dumped the mug in Henry’s hands. The rim was chipped and stained. ‘A biscuit, though? Ye’ll be having a biscuit?’

  Henry nodded nervously.

  Urquhart was levering the top off a rusty tin. ‘They’re auld, mind ye. I don’t bother with them. I keep them for the dogs.’ Hannah and Mabel milled round his knees expectantly.

  ‘Father.’

  ‘Or the meece when they gang hungry.’

  ‘Father, don’t tease.’

  ‘Nae, Fiona. The wee mun wants a biscuit. Dinnae ye?’

  The t
in was under his nose.

  ‘Be brave, mun. Have a biscuit.’

  They didn’t look too bad. Henry took a chocolate digestive. ‘Thanks,’ he said and bit into it. It was a touch stale, but nothing he couldn’t cope with.

  ‘Sae, “Henry” is it?’

  This was harder. Hearing his name pronounced in this way that accused him of being English or worse. ‘Yes. I’m – ’

  ‘Father,’ Fiona intervened. ‘Henry is a good man, and you’re to treat him kindly or I shall be cross with you.’ She turned to Henry. ‘Whereas my father is a vexed old man, with nothing better to do some days than pick on other people.’

  To Henry’s relief, Urquhart smiled. ‘That’s ma wee lass. Keeping her faither in order.’

  ‘Sit down, Father. I have things to tell you.’

  He did as she said, sinking abruptly onto the edge of his unmade, wood-framed bed with knees well apart. This Scotsman wore navy underpants, thank God.

  Henry was perched beside Fiona on a low, foam sofa, covered in the familiar tartan. The only other furnishings were a table and stool, a bookcase, a ragbag heap of clothes, a sink unit with a camping stove on the draining-board, a shelf for crockery, and a paraffin heater.

  It was chilly in here. The dogs had settled close together near Henry’s feet. The older one, Mabel, was snoring already. He leant to pat Hannah, and she licked his hand.

  Where was the loo? The cold was making him want to go.

  ‘There are others below I want you to be kind to, Father. They’ve come especially to see you.’

  Henry finished the biscuit. The door beside the sink was probably the loo. He cleared his throat, and Fiona and her father looked at him. ‘Excuse me, but do you have a lavatory?’

  ‘Nae, laddie, I don’t,’ the pressure in his bladder increased a notch, ‘but there’s a privy oot the back, with soft paper from Tesco.’ The old man guffawed and walloped his knee.

  Henry struggled up from the sofa, his ears burning. ‘Back in a tick then.’ How banally English. He was definitely off on the wrong foot here. As if to confirm it, he tripped over the dogs and then had trouble getting the door open, one of those lift-the-latch affairs. He stepped out into the rain.