Inside, the Inneses’ crofthouse was furnished with a few old wooden pieces and a large selection of cushions and sheepskins and homemade rag rugs. The walls were painted white and decorated with bright, beautiful woven wall hangings. We sat on rugs in front of the peat fire while Rebecca set a black, crusted kettle on the hob.
We shared tea and a bowl of sunflower and pumpkin seeds, roasted in a pan on the fire, and talked. I learned that the Inneses were from Edinburgh and had gone to the university there. After a brief spell as teachers, they had gathered every scrap of their finances and invested it in this small farm on the Sron Ban hill. Two summers ago they had packed themselves, Tambrey, and newborn Toby into a borrowed car and driven quietly out of the twentieth century.
They had the cow, a flock of black-face sheep, five goats, hens, and a white Highland pony and a trap. They grew vegetables and feed for the animals. Rebecca made cheese and preserves. In the far room of the crofthouse Rebecca kept her loom, on which she wove rugs and hangings from her handspun wool, which they sold to the tourist shops in Ullapool. Andrew turned the few spare hours of the day to writing children’s stories. From these few thin sources, they made enough to live on, simply but with gentle grace.
Rebecca shooed the children into the garden and we talked about Shona Anderson. Rebecca had known her quite well. Since there were no other children at Lower Achbuie, Shona had been accustomed to bringing Caitlin to the Innes croft for Toby’s companionship.
‘Poor Shona,’ Rebecca said finally. ‘She had a rough time out of life.’
‘Shona made her own rough times,’ Andrew Innes said quietly. ‘She caused most of her own troubles.’
‘Andrew, how can you?’ Rebecca said. ‘Shona did the best she could. She looked after Caitlin as well as she was able.’
‘Which wasn’t all that well,’ Andrew said sharply, ‘was it? You looked after Caitlin as much as anyone. You and Grisel, and even Mary and Diana. It’s a wonder she even knew her own mother.’
‘You’re too hard, Andrew,’ Rebecca said. ‘Shona couldn’t help herself. She tried.’
‘Och, you’re soft, woman,’ Andrew said, though not unkindly. ‘You’re always seeing the best in folk. If you ask me, Shona could have tried harder. She could have tried a lot harder if she wasn’t always stoned out of her mind.’
He stood up and stalked to the window, while Rebecca said, ‘Och, Andrew, she’s dead. Please don’t be hard on her.’ She was staring into the fire, tears on her cheeks. Andrew came back quickly and knelt on the floor beside her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I know it wasn’t Shona’s fault. If she’d just gotten herself to shake loose of McGuire …’
‘She loved him,’ Rebecca said simply.
Andrew grunted. ‘She loved that bastard. God help her.’
Rebecca looked up at me suddenly, saying, ‘I’m sorry, we should never have gotten into this. Forgive us, but we’re all rather upset about Shona.’ She smiled apologetically. I assured her that I understood, and then I explained about Caitlin and how she would stay with me at Sron Ban until a foster family was found for her. Rebecca was delighted and made me promise that I would bring Caitlin to play with her children as soon as I could.
As I left the Inneses’ house, I felt I understood why Caitlin had showed so little concern for her mother’s absence, and why the presence of so many strangers did not disturb her. The child had been raised by strangers. I thought, too, that the police were probably right in believing Shona Anderson had died under the influence of drugs. Apparently she had lived that way.
Andrew Innes pointed down the hill, down the road. ‘It’s not much farther to Lower Achbuie. Just follow the road until you get to a path going off to the right. The house is right down on the lochside. It’s on our land, actually.’
‘Is it?’ I said. ‘Do you rent it?’
Andrew nodded. ‘Daniel Morrison ‒ he’s one of them ‒ well, he was a friend of mine, back in Edinburgh. He asked to rent the place first. He’s a pretty decent sort. Anyhow,’ he said after a slight pause, ‘anyhow, I let them have it.’
I somehow felt it was something he had done against his better judgement; something he now regretted.
Thanking them for their kindness, I walked down to the road, waving to the children at the gate.
I turned once, before the road went into the birch wood below the Achbuie fields. The low sun streaked uneven yellow patches on the high points of the pasture. Rebecca Innes was leading the nanny goats away for the milking. I could hear the bells tinkling faintly, and the children shouting. Then I went, down, again, into the birchwood and the shadow of evening on the hill.
I found the path that led from the road down to the shore and Lower Achbuie. It was beaten earth, damp and shadowed by trees. By it, at the edge of the road, two vehicles were parked. One was a scraped and rusted old blue mini. The other was Kevin McGuire’s grey Land Rover. McGuire was beside it with a bucket of soapy water, washing the mud off the grey paint. He didn’t notice me and I was not inclined to attract his attention by speaking to him.
Beyond him, the road curved back up the hill, a stony track that led eventually back to the point at the phone booth where McGuire had left me to walk. I stood a moment looking at his bent back, and then slipped quietly into the path. I was glad that I would not have to contend with him at the house.
I saw the loch through the trees, black by the shore, bright blue out farther where the sun still touched the water. Salt water and beach smells that reminded me of home mixed with the dank earthiness of the woods. The path ended at a broken wire fence. I climbed over the sagging strands of wire between two posts and walked through the beaten earth of an overgrown vegetable garden. Tall weedy sprays of winter cabbage gone to seed patched the earth here and there, reminders of abandoned efforts.
The back wall of the house was rough unfinished stone and the hill grew close behind it, hiding the foundations.
I walked past the windowless gable end. There was a broad stretch of untended wild grass that reached from the grey front of the house to the narrow seaweed-patched beach. The front wall had been harled, but that was cracked and peeling. One window was broken and patched with weathered cardboard.
Old brown paint was peeling off the window frames and the planks of the door at which I knocked. There was a long wait before my knock was answered, but I could hear the muffled sound of a radio playing rock music and I knew the house was occupied.
The door was flung open. A sharp English voice said, ‘Yes?’
The girl, in blue jeans and an army jacket, was studying me very carefully. She was unkempt and ragged in a deliberate way. Her hair was loose and hung in waves of dark gold over the khaki jacket; her face was aristocratic and sharply intelligent. With her creamy complexion, she was beautiful in the fine tradition of the English rose, though I imagined it would irk her to be told so.
I explained who I was and why I had come. She stood in the doorway for a long time, looking at me with suspicion and no great warmth. Then she said, ‘You had better come in,’ and turned back into the dark hallway. ‘I’m Diana,’ she flung back over her shoulder.
She led me through a low doorway and into a small room in which three other young people sat on the floor in front of a smoking coal fire. The music I had heard came not from a radio but from a battery-operated tape recorder. It was loud and one of the young men rose and switched it off as I entered.
‘Here’s the new Yank from Sron Ban,’ Diana said by way of introduction. There was a short laugh from the young man who had remained on the floor. He was long and graceful, and with his dark hair and eyes and sharply clipped little beard, he had a look of handsome evil. I had a feeling he cultivated it, and that he also cultivated the lazy boorishness with which he lounged, barely raising his eyes to greet me. When he spoke, his voice, like Diana’s, had the confident resonance of the upper-class English.
The other young man was very different. He was slim, with fine, almost d
elicate features and curling light-brown hair. Unlike the others, he was dressed in something resembling ordinary clothing, plain trousers and a sweater. He smiled and said hello, and his voice was different, plainer, the accent Scottish. He introduced himself as Daniel Morrison.
‘This,’ he said, gesturing downward, ‘is Stephen Griffiths, and this gracious lady’ ‒ he indicated, laughing, the dark-haired girl who sat leaning against the wall by the hearth ‒ ‘is Highland Mary.’
‘Mary Fraser,’ she said sharply, shaking back long, straight black hair, looking with annoyance at Daniel Morrison. She glanced a sharp look at me and then, as if reminding herself, said, ‘I don’t talk to Yanks.’ It was, I thought, a joke in bad taste. Then I realized she was not joking. She turned her pale, pretty face away and looked disdainfully out the window.
Daniel Morrison laughed, finding it all very funny. ‘Mary doesn’t talk to Yanks,’ he said to me, as if that explained her rudeness.
‘Except Dominic,’ the low voice of Stephen Griffiths put in.
‘Och, away,’ Mary Fraser whirled on him, slapping at him, but giggling now and girlish. He caught both her white wrists in one hand and held them, teasing. When he did release her, she sat back against the wall, stroking back the long hair, preening.
‘Dominic’s different,’ she said with a quiet pleased smile.
She had the same soft Highland accent as Grisel MacLeod.
They had a smug, tight intimacy that made me feel uneasy and unwelcome. I think they realized it, and they liked it that way, because they remained silent for an uncomfortably long time, coolly looking me over and making their judgement of me. Then finally Diana said, ‘I’ll get the stuff,’ and left the room.
Mary Fraser stood up and flicked the switch of the tape recorder, filling the cramped room with throbbing music. They all slid back into the sound of it, eyes half-shut. Only Daniel Morrison made the small attempt at graciousness of offering me a place on the floor beside him.
I shook my head, preferring to wait standing. I looked around the room. It was a sordid parody of Rebecca Innes’s beautiful home. The walls here, too, were white, but with one thin coat of paint. At one end, someone had begun an abstract mural and never finished it. The tawdry bright patches were scuffed and dirty from wear.
The traditional college-dorm revolutionary posters took the place of Rebecca’s handwoven tapestries. They were taped to the wall and some hung loose from torn corners. There was a damp grey square of carpet on the floor, and no furniture. I had a strong picture of the days passing here one after another, with the occupants clustered around the fire and lulled by the heavy beat of the music, lacking even the energy to repair the broken papered-over window that shut out much of the light. It was hard to envision Caitlin spending her babyhood in this sour darkness. But this had been her home.
Diana reappeared at the doorway with a bundle of faded baby clothes. She thrust it at me saying, ‘That’s all I could find.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, taking it. She shrugged and turned back to her friends at the fire. They had in effect dismissed me, but as I turned to leave I said, as I felt I must, ‘I’m terribly sorry about Shona Anderson. You must all feel pretty bad about her.’
Diana turned and gave me an incredulous, cynical little smile. Mary Fraser, without looking up, said clearly, ‘Shona Anderson was a boring little fool.’
I stood for one moment, looking with amazement at the calm, delicate little face, then I whirled and walked out the door. I had had enough of Lower Achbuie.
At the top of the path, where it reached the road, Kevin McGuire was still busy over his Land Rover. He was the last person I wanted to see or talk to just then, but this time there was no avoiding him. He heard me stepping onto the gravely surface of the road, looked up, and swore.
‘And what is it that you are after?’ he demanded.
‘I’m just leaving,’ I said sharply. ‘I’ve been down to the house to get some clothes for the child.’
He looked surprised and sullen. ‘I did not hear you pass.’
‘You were busy washing the car,’ I replied. His eyes narrowed and his small mouth tightened. Then he turned back to his work without speaking, and I walked quickly up the road into the green shelter of the birch trees, glad to be away from that place.
The sun had left the Sron Ban hill, though the tops of the far hills beyond the loch were still golden. It was cool, and when I came from the darkness of the woods into the open pasture, the soft lights of the Innes croft and the curl of blue-grey smoke from their chimney were very tempting.
I had not intended to stop. Grisel would be waiting for me with Caitlin; and I should have hurried back to Sron Ban, in case Dominic did decide to come home for dinner. Whether or not I was angry with him, he was still my boss.
But as I passed near the gate, Tambrey suddenly appeared from behind the stone wall and shouted out, ‘My mam’s wantin’ you.’ She turned and scampered up the track to the house, having delivered her prepared message.
Laughing, I followed her and was met at the door by Rebecca Innes. ‘I sent Tammy to catch you coming back,’ she explained. ‘I wanted to give you this.’ She was holding the sort of tubular steel-and-canvas frame that is used to carry a small child on an adult’s back. ‘We had two, you see, one for each of the bairns, but Tammy’s grown too big. Now you’ll have no excuse not to come and visit me.’
I thanked her, taking it gratefully. Having carried Caitlin half a mile in my arms once, I found this ingenious solution most welcome. Rebecca invited me in for a meal, but I explained to her the reasons for my hurry.
As I walked with her to the road, she asked quietly, ‘How did you get on at Lower Achbuie?’
‘They aren’t exactly friendly,’ I replied honestly.
She bit her lip, looking down at the ground. ‘I suppose I should have warned you, but I didn’t feel I should talk against them before you had a chance to make your own decision about them.’
‘What do they do there?’ I asked. ‘Anything?’
Rebecca smiled. ‘Not very much, I’m afraid. Stephen is supposed to paint, but he doesn’t very often. Kevin McGuire is the only one who has a real job. At the distillery, of course.’
‘So who pays the rent? McGuire?’
She looked surprised. ‘No, I thought you would know that. Mr. O’Brady pays the rent now.’
I spent much of the long walk back to Sron Ban asking myself why? That Dominic should pay Kevin McGuire’s rent was not all that extraordinary. Free housing goes with many jobs, and out here, where housing was probably hard to find, it might be necessary for an employer to supply it. But what about all those other people who drifted in and out of the house? Shona, who had come and gone and returned; Daniel, who was ‘back again’ according to Grisel. Were they all there by Kevin McGuire’s generosity? And if so, why did Dominic allow it? After all, he was paying for the place.
I shook my head. I didn’t know, but essentially it wasn’t any of my business. If Dominic wanted to support a hippie commune, even this rather unpleasant one, he had a perfect right to. But whyever should he want to?
I wasn’t about to ask him. Indeed, after the response I had got to my last question, I wasn’t about to ask him anything that didn’t strictly apply to business. As it turned out, I got no chance to ask any questions at all that night.
Dominic was still out when I returned with Caitlin. Grisel had given her her supper. I took her upstairs, half-filled the old-fashioned bathtub, and plunked her down in it, with a plastic cup and a sieve from the kitchen. While she played water games, happily draining both cup and sieve over her head, I sorted out the ragged pile of clothing from Achbuie.
I found some worn faded pink pyjamas, and some wearable underwear and another playsuit, hand-knitted in gaudy colours. I decided that I would go as soon as possible to the nearest big town and buy the child some clothes. In the meantime, these would do.
I got Caitlin out of the tub, with much protest, and int
o bed. Then I went downstairs and made myself some supper. There was still no sign of Dominic. By eleven o’clock, when he still had not returned, I gave up waiting.
I went into the kitchen and made up another plate of sandwiches to leave out. Then, feeling rather guilty, I went up the stairs, carrying my candle for light. We had decided to put Caitlin in the little back room, the door of which opened beside mine. I looked in on her and found her sleeping, humped up under the blankets and quilt in a little mouse shape.
In my own room, I put down the candle and went to the window to shut it against the cool evening air. It was deep dusk now, though there was still enough light to see clearly the shape of the hills across Loch Broom. Far across there I could make out the dim lights of the one or two lonely crofthouses whose fields were spread across those hills.
And then there was another light, more than one, and brighter and much nearer. The lights were white and clear and moving on the dark water of the loch. They had appeared around a promontory of the shore, out to the west in the direction of the sea. They came closer, following the shore, as if searching. Then, still to the west of Sron Ban, but not far, they stopped searching and turned inward to land.
Abruptly they vanished as the boat that carried them slipped behind the curve of the hill. I could not imagine why anyone was out on the dark loch in a boat at this hour. But whoever it was, I was sure of one thing: I was certain, from my high vantage point, that the place they had sought, the place I saw them find and make their landfall, was the beach at Lower Achbuie.
Chapter Six
‘Caroline?’ Dominic’s voice, and a knock on the door. I sat up quickly. It was morning, and raining. The light was grey.
‘Is it late?’ I called, searching for my watch.
‘I’ve brought you some tea. I’ll leave it outside the door.’ I heard the cup being set down on the floor and his steps going down the stairs. I jumped up, shivering in the cold damp air, and quickly slipped into my jeans and sweater. I opened the door, and leaning down, lifted the mug of tea. It was hot and felt good in my hands; summer appeared to be a matter of words only at Sron Ban.
Highland Fire: captivating romantic suspense full of twists Page 6