When Mr. McGuire stopped the Land Rover in front of the booth, I thought he was going to make a call. Instead he unloaded my suitcase and stood impatiently beside it. I opened my door and got out uncertainly.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘You’re here,’ he said. I saw for the first time that, both amused and contemptuous, he was enjoying my bewilderment.
‘Where’s the house?’ I asked, suppressing the anger I was feeling.
‘Over the hill.’ He waved offhandedly in the direction of a gate in the wire fencing beside the road. Beyond it a vague depression in the grass indicated a long neglected track. He turned his back on me and was up in the Land Rover starting the engine as I called out, ‘But how do I get there?’
‘You walk, lass. You’re not in America now.’
The Land Rover roared away up the strip of road, and disappeared among the dips and bends.
I stared after it angrily. I had no objection to walking, but I would have liked to know how far the house was and in which direction. And I resented his easy dismissal of me, presumably because of my nationality. Ruefully I thought of the trip Danny and I took just after we were married; we hitched and hiked to San Francisco, and I don’t care to recall how many rolling miles of broad American highway we walked. So much for Mr. McGuire.
I lifted my heavy case over the rail gate, and then climbed over, warily because the gate was old and sagging on its improvised wire hinges.
Parallel grassy depressions stretched off over the heather. It had been a cart track probably, in the days when carts were still regularly used. Since then it had become a footpath and a sheep track, and one side of it was deeper and cleaner than the other; the sheep evidently had no use for two lanes.
I followed the track, trusting the dubious Mr. McGuire to have at least been honest about where it led. My watch put the time at just past seven, but it was still daylight. Overhead the stormy grey clouds were ragged and broken and bright splashes of sunshine on adjacent hills served to remind me how close this northern land lay to the sunlit nights of the Arctic.
The track was easier to follow than it looked. The hard-beaten earth beneath the grass felt like a road, and if I strayed from it, my feet told me before my eyes. I was enjoying my walk, though I could have done without the heavy suitcase.
I had walked for perhaps a quarter of a mile and was becoming used to the way each rise in the path revealed nothing on its far side but more rolling knobs of brown heather and soft lichen-patched rock. Then I heard a sound, a soft roar like wind or surf. I climbed up over the next rise, and the whole world fell away in front of my feet. The moorland plunged down into pasture, and that tumbled, green and windswept, into woodland, and the woodland ran down to the unseen shore of the great black water before me.
Then I knew where I was. I was in the painting on Dominic’s wall. The dark line of hills on the far side of the loch were where the artist had stood, and this shore the one he had shown us. Below was Loch Broom, shadowy and patched with cresting white waves.
I turned instinctively to the left, knowing now that I would find the road continuing there, slanting down diagonally into the woodland. Between the hill and the loch I followed it, down to Sron Ban.
Chapter Three
I saw the roof first, a slate roof, almost black in the shadow of the hill and the surrounding stand of larch trees. I had come through a soft green tunnel of hazelnut trees, crossed a small stream on slippery rocks, and climbed another gate. The track climbed then, bare and grassy and around a rocky outcrop. I reached the top of that rock and five sheep scattered and galloped away on slim black legs, their small hooves clattering on the stone.
Below me the track wound down through a sloping green pasture and disappeared into the blowing, bending larches behind the house. The walls were harled stone, whitewashed, though not recently, and as I came nearer, I saw where dampness had greyed the colour near the ground. The traditional wooden trim, carved into curves at the eaves and sharp little spikes at the peaks of the gables, was a faded dark red. The house looked weathered and secretive and secure, the sort conjured up in childhood stories, that one never expected to live in.
I shifted my suitcase to my other hand and trudged down the hill, my boot heels slipping on the damp grass. The strange soft sound of the wind and the loch was constant. I felt washed and weathered by it, like the house. I was short of sleep, too, and tired, but at least the time change was working now in my favour; it was mid-afternoon in New York, and my body, in tune with it, did not want sleep.
The track ended abruptly behind the house in the black mud of the byre. Three large grey-black cows stood silently in the mud, their wide, bony hips blocking the gate. Beside the greyest of the cows a small, shiny, black calf stood watching with large, dark, long-lashed eyes. Its legs were in mud nearly to the knees. Seeing me, it stepped back and the mud squelched. The mother responded with a soft low sound, and watched me.
I’m not a country girl by any means, but I knew enough about mothers and little things to sense I had come far enough. I looked around for some way to the house that would not involve disturbing the cows. I saw none, but then a voice called from among the larch trees, a woman’s voice.
‘Wait just now, lass, I’ll get the gate for you.’
The woman appeared then, beyond the gate, from behind two of the larches. She was short and round with hair the same grey and black as that of the brindled mother cow. She wore a brown skirt and an orange sweater that appeared to be piled on over several other sweaters, the tails of which reached to varying lengths, leaving bands of other colours below the orange. A brown plaid wool kerchief covered part of her hair. Her face was pink-cheeked, the skin soft and youthful.
She hurried to the gate, her heavy laced shoes sinking in the mud, splashing black drops of water up onto her grey wool stockings. She carried a wide flat bowl filled with grain and set it down by the gate explaining, ‘I was just up seeing to the hens, or I would not have seen you there at all.’
The gate was held shut with a loop of bent wire, which she slipped loose with accustomed ease. The cows leaned toward her, lowing.
‘Och, away, Maggie,’ she muttered impatiently, giving the brindled cow a heavy flat-handed push against its wide furry side. It moved heavily away and the woman stood to let the calf trot past also, saying, ‘There you are now, pet, go to mama.’
She smiled up at me, and perhaps reading the admiration on my face, explained, ‘You see, they know me.’
I stepped rather gingerly past the animals and through the gate, which she fastened behind me. I turned and started to introduce myself but she interrupted, laughing. ‘Here I am waiting all the day for you, Mrs. Reilly, watching down the road, and then down you come off the hill and into the byre. Surely you have not been walking just now from Braemore?’ she asked incredulously.
‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘Hardly. No, I’ve just walked from the road, where Mr. McGuire dropped me off, by the phone booth.’
She looked puzzled, studying me and my suitcase. ‘I am not understanding,’ she began softly. We had come around the house and then I wasn’t understanding very well either. There was a road in front of the house, below the neat rose garden. It curved away in the direction opposite to that which I had come, a rough road, but its suitability for traffic was well established. A pale-green minivan was parked in the middle of it.
‘But why did he not bring you to the house?’ the woman asked.
I wondered myself why indeed, but I replied simply, ‘He said I could walk from the phone booth. I didn’t realize the road came to Sron Ban, actually,’ I added.
‘Och, the Irish tinker,’ she said harshly. ‘He knows all right where the road goes. He comes back and forth on it from Achbuie often enough. The road comes around the hill there, lass,’ she explained, waving a distracted hand, still puzzling about Mr. McGuire’s odd behaviour. ‘To think, leaving you there, with that heavy suitcase and all.’ She reached for it then, a
pologetically, trying to make up for Mr. McGuire’s rudeness. ‘Let me help,’ she offered.
I shook my head, laughing and assuring her it was nothing to carry. ‘Actually, I enjoyed the walk,’ I said, hoping to ease her mind a little.
She still shook her head doubtfully and then suddenly leaned close to me and said with sudden anger, ‘To tell the truth, Mrs. Reilly, I don’t know why Mr. O’Brady keeps that man on, the way he is.’ She turned away quickly, troubled by her own outspokenness.
I followed her on the little gravel path that ran by the front wall of the house, brushing close to the scratchy growth of the climbing roses that surrounded the narrow wide-ledged windows. She stopped at the dark-red painted wooden door, reaching into an apron pocket for a large old-fashioned key.
Picking up on her first mention of my employer’s name, I said, ‘Is Mr. O’Brady here?’
‘Oh no, dear,’ she said, half-turning, fiddling with the door lock. ‘No, he’s left me the key, you see, and my instructions.’ She giggled as the latch clicked and the door, divided in the middle, swung open in two halves. ‘The way that man fussed about this house so that everything would be just right for you, and then he found he must be away to Edinburgh for his business on the day you were coming! Well, I assured him I could make you welcome, but he was not happy about it yet. I think he did not trust me to even be remembering to light a fire for you, but not to worry.’ She bustled ahead of me through a dark hall with a narrow staircase and into a low-ceilinged room, warm and dim in the evening light. The fire had indeed been lit and flickered in the black iron grate. The white walls reflected soft yellow.
‘It’s lovely,’ I said, turning to her. ‘It’s so nice of you to have prepared everything for me.’
She giggled again. ‘Oh, it is my pleasure indeed, lass. And besides, Mr. O’Brady would be having my head if I didn’t.’
I smiled to myself. It was kind of Dominic to see that I was so well looked after. I found that reassuring, particularly after my odd meeting with Kevin McGuire. Also this gentle friendly person, who I realized must be the neighbour he spoke of, appeared to regard him with warmth and affection. That, too, spoke well of him.
‘Excuse me,’ I said then, ‘but are you Mrs. MacLeod? Mr. O’Brady said ‒’
‘Oh, my dear,’ she said, putting both hands to her face. ‘Oh, do forgive me, that man McGuire has me now forgetting my manners entirely. I am Grisel MacLeod, and I stay in the farmhouse down the road.’ She took me to the window and pointed out to where I could just see the top of a chimney smoking over a rise in the pasture. ‘My husband, Angus, looks after the work of the croft, and ours, too, and I help with the work at the house here. Of course, I knew you, because Mr. O’Brady has told me all about you, though.’ She leaned closer and whispered, ‘He has not been telling me how young and pretty you are.’ She giggled. ‘And me expecting an old wifie with grey hair.’ She stopped suddenly and her expression softened and saddened. ‘And you so young and a widow, too. He told me that, you see. I am so sorry,’ she said simply, meaning it so obviously that suddenly I wanted to cry. I bit my lip and she threw her arms around me and hugged me, apologizing for reminding me.
‘Come, lass.’ She hurried to the door at the far end of the room. ‘Come and see the kitchen.’
Grisel MacLeod led me around the house, showing me the kitchen, with its bottled gas stove, simple but adequate, and small refrigerator, also run off the bottled gas. There was also a larder amply stocked with dry goods and canned goods and a supply of blue-striped white dishes. It was neat and clean, if a little dark with its slanted roof and one small window facing the byre. Outside, the black calf stood nosing the window and looking in.
There were two rooms downstairs, the one with the fire, and a second similar room on the opposite side of the hallway. In this there was no fire lit and the room was cool. I saw a desk and a typewriter, a series of bookshelves. I assumed it would be my office. I noticed also, with surprise, a small portable television set, wired to a car battery. It struck me as odd that Dominic would reject that staple of civilization, electricity, yet still retain a television.
That was what he had done, though, for the lights, like the kitchen equipment, ran on bottled gas.
Grisel led me around upstairs, three bedrooms under the eaves, with dormer windows for the front two and simple skylights for the back one and the little bathroom. She showed me the lighted fire in one of the front ones and said that this room was to be mine. I stepped inside, savouring the warmth of the coals glowing behind the protective fire screen. The evening was cool now and the rising wind moaned softly in the chimney. There was a simple wood-framed bed, covered with a dark red quilt. The floor was old dark wood and beside the bed a thick woolly sheepskin promised warm feet on cold mornings.
Standing at the dormer window, I looked down over the sheep-dotted pasture and the trees and the green bracken near the shore. The black loch was a presence that ruled over everything.
‘I’ll just be showing you the lamps now, and then I must be off, Angus will be waiting for his tea,’ said Grisel, and she scurried down the stairs again and into the front room with the fire.
She showed me how to reach up from below the glass with a lighted match and where to turn the gas on. ‘Now, you must be gentle with the match or you will break the mantle,’ she warned as that little soft linen net flared up and glowed warm and yellow. ‘But if you do, there will be a box in the cupboard. Angus will change the cylinder if you run out, but this is a new one and you should not be needing another just now.’ She spoke as she went from lamp to lamp, lighting them, but my mind was suddenly elsewhere. There was no electricity, was there a phone? I tried to recall if I had seen any telephone poles near the house, any wires at all. I could not remember any.
‘Mrs. MacLeod,’ I said, ‘is there a phone?’
She finished with the last lamp and looked up. ‘Oh no, dear, none of us here have the phone, or the electricity. There is the one in the box at the road, you see. When we are needing the phone, we go there.’ She must have seen my concern, for she added quickly, ‘Why dear, is there something you are needing? Perhaps Angus …’
‘No.’ I smiled. ‘No, it is only that I promised my parents I would call them when I arrived. If I had known, I would have done it before.’
‘But you must call them,’ she said, ‘they will worry.’ She seemed as concerned about it as if she had been my mother.
‘I will,’ I promised. ‘I’ll go back to the phone as soon as I’ve had a meal.’
She stood worrying about it and suggested that I might wait until Mr. O’Brady returned from Edinburgh, so that he might drive me to the phone, but then she could not be sure when he would be back.
Realizing that even if he were to arrive quite soon, he would hardly feel like driving me out to the phone, I assured Grisel MacLeod that the walk would do me no harm.
‘There is the van there,’ she said. ‘But then, I don’t have the key, and we have no car, Angus and I. There is neither of us that drives, you see.’
Finally having found me two flashlights and an old pair of rubber boots in case of rain, Grisel left, still worrying, and I returned to the little kitchen to make my supper.
I found bacon wrapped in plain paper in the refrigerator, and a bowl of fresh brown eggs in the cupboard. I had never cooked on a gas stove before, but found this one easy enough. I was pleased that the bottled gas carried a strong oniony smell; at least I would not be inclined to leave it on by mistake.
After I had eaten my meal and washed the dishes in the deep old-fashioned sink, I carried my suitcase up the narrow bare wood stairs and into my room. I unpacked as far as my old jeans and raincoat and changed into them for my trek back across the moor to the phone.
I tentatively took a few more large coals from the brass scuttle in my room and set them on the fire. Then I went around the house, carefully extinguishing the lamps Grisel had lighted. In the hallway I put on the rubber rain boots she had
found for me and took up one of the flashlights.
I locked the front door behind me and slipped the big key into my raincoat pocket. Outside, it was still dusky twilight. I could just make out the top of Grisel’s chimney, and far down the hill I saw a figure in dark clothing carrying a long crook and followed by a black dog. Before the figure, the black shapes of the cows moved like big shadows. I realized that this was Angus, taking the cows to another pasture, and I was pleased that I would not have to contend with them at the gate, either now or later in the dark.
I went through the gate behind the house, carefully fastening it again, as Grisel had done. In among the larch trees I heard the soft roosting sound of the chickens in the henhouse.
There were splashes of rain in the wind as I climbed back up through the pasture. Glad for my borrowed boots, I sloshed confidently through the little stream beyond the second gate. Then I was in the shelter of the hazelwood, and it was dark enough that I needed the beam of my flashlight
Once out on the open moor, I had no shelter from the strong cold wind and the rain, which fell more steadily. I turned up the collar of my raincoat and pulled a scarf from the pocket to tie around my head. The cold was cutting, though it was late May and at home summer was beginning. I felt suddenly a very long way from home, and lonely.
The path was not easy to follow in the narrow beam of light, and the shower was becoming a real storm. I stumbled and splashed and eventually with great relief saw the thin bars of the gate ahead through the blowing rain. I reached them and climbed awkwardly over the slippery metal poles. On the other side, the road felt firm and good under my feet. I ran the few feet to the phone booth, slid open the door, and slipped into the little cubicle of shelter.
The light came on as I shut the door and I stood in the bright yellow rectangle in the middle of the wide dark night.
I removed my wet scarf, shook it, and laid it down with the flashlight on the little shelf beside the phone. Then reaching into my shoulder bag for my purse, I sorted out my collection of British change, though when I read the instructions printed on a board on the wall, I found I would need no money to reach the operator and place my collect transatlantic call.
Highland Fire: captivating romantic suspense full of twists Page 3