Waterfall Glen

by Davie Henderson

  Cameron didn’t say anything.

  Kate turned from the figure in the painting to the man standing next to her, and got the impression he’d forgotten she was even there. She wondered if he was experiencing a similar legacy of shame to the one she felt when she looked at the portrait of Lady Carolyn. But she guessed there had to be more to it than that, because as she studied him she rocognized the same troubled expression that she’d seen on his face several times earlier that day, when they first met down in the glen. She sensed that as Cameron stood in front of the portrait of Jamie Chisholm he was feeling a connection which went beyond that of distant kinship. It was as if he was being reminded of some sort of shame or disgrace that wasn’t simply ancestral, and she wondered what lay behind it.

  Whatever it was, she could see it was causing him deep unhappiness. Deciding a change of subject was in order, she moved on down the line of portraits and said, “I think if any picture should be turned to face the wall, it’s this one.”

  Tearing his gaze from Jamie’s portrait, he saw that Kate was looking at the painting hanging next to it. He thought the woman it portrayed would have been strikingly beautiful if there had been any hint of warmth and kindness in her eyes. “Who is it?” he asked.

  “I take it you don’t know anything about the history of the glen?”

  “Just what you told me this afternoon about Jamie and his cottage.”

  “If you’ve got a skeleton in your closet with Jamie, I’ve apparently got the Wicked Witch from the North in mine with this woman, Lady Carolyn.”

  “What did she do?”

  “According to Finlay, she kicked most of the clan out of the glen to make way for sheep.” Staring at the painting, Kate quietly said, “The way things are looking, I’m going to be the next Lady Carolyn.”

  “I don’t think so, Kate: there’s a cold, cruel look in her eyes, where there’s warmth and kindness in yours.”

  “That’s sweet of you, Cameron, but I’ll feel every bit as cruel as Lady Carolyn if I’m responsible for crofters being forced from the glen.”

  “It might not come to that.”

  “It will if nobody comes up with any bright ideas tomorrow night,” Kate told him.

  “You arranged a meeting, then?”

  She nodded. “In here at six o’clock. You’re invited, by the way.”

  “Thanks. That’ll save me pretending I need to borrow a cup of sugar or a jug of milk as an excuse to see you again.”

  Kate smiled. “At least you won’t be kicked out of your home if I have to sell, Cameron. That’s something. Did you get a chance to look around the cottage this afternoon?”

  Cameron didn’t want to think about Jamie’s Cottage, about the blackness within it and inside himself. So, rather than talk about it even just in passing, he said, “I looked around the glen instead.”

  “What did you think?”

  “It’s just about perfect, isn’t it?”

  Kate nodded. “It’ll break my heart if I have to sell it.”

  “I wish there was something I could do to help.”

  “Well, if you get any ideas about how to make the estate pay without turning the glen into a ski resort and Greystane into a ‘tartan tat visitor center’, don’t keep them to yourself.”

  Just then the doors opened and Miss Weir and Finlay came in, each carrying a large silver tray. “If you would like to take your seats,” Finlay said grandly.

  Two places were set opposite each other at the nearest end of the table, with a neatly folded white linen napkin and half-a-dozen pieces of sparkling silver cutlery at each setting. Kate moved to the nearest seat. Before she could ease it out from under the table, Cameron did it for her.

  Miss Weir smiled approvingly and said, “That’s what I like to see, manners.”

  Finlay set his tray down in front of Kate.

  Cameron took his seat, and Miss Weir set the other tray down in front of him.

  Each tray held a bowl of soup; a main course of roast lamb, boiled potatoes and carrots; and a crystal goblet of cranachan for desert.

  “We thought we’d serve the courses all at once so we don’t have to keep coming in and out and bothering you,” Miss Weir said, all but giving Kate a nudge and a wink.

  Kate stole a glance at Cameron, and saw he was trying not to laugh.

  It got even harder to keep a straight face when Finlay produced a box of matches from his waistcoat pocket and lit the wicks in the nearest candelabrum.

  “Won’t you and Finlay join us?” Kate said, not just to be polite but because she had to say something to stop herself from laughing at the none-too-subtle matchmaking.

  “That’s kind of you to ask, Lady Kate, but not when you have company,” Miss Weir said. Looking at Cameron she added, “And such charming company at that.”

  “Thanks so much,” Kate said, looking at the little feast.

  “It looks lovely,” Cameron added. “I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I looked at this.”

  “You’re most welcome, both of you,” Miss Weir said. “Finlay’ll be back with something to drink. After that we’ll not be disturbing you. What can he get you?” she asked Cameron.

  “A cold beer would be fine, if you have one.”

  Kate nodded to show she’d like the same.

  When Finlay and Miss Weir had gone, Kate said, “They’re so sweet, both of them. They’ve really tried to make me feel at home—and I do, even after only a couple of days. That must seem a little crazy.”

  Cameron shook his head. “What seems crazy is that, even though I’ve only just met you, I feel like you’re more than a stranger, more even than just a neighbour.”

  “If that makes you crazy, then I’m a little crazy, too,” Kate told him.

  Neither of them knew quite what to say after that, and for a moment it seemed as though a slightly awkward silence might give lie to the words that had gone before.

  Then, studying the glittering array of cutlery in front of him, Cameron said, “I’m going to have to apologize for not knowing what spoon to use.”

  “Damn! I was going to watch you to find out because I don’t know either.”

  They laughed easily and together, the momentary trace of awkwardness gone, before turning their attention to the food.

  Kate lifted her bowl of soup and pushed the tray aside.

  Cameron did likewise, but paused with the bowl of soup in his hand.

  Sensing that something was wrong, Kate looked across the table at him. The happiness of moments earlier had disappeared from his face, along with the color. He was staring at the space on the tray where the soup bowl had been. Kate glanced from his face to the tray in search of an explanation, but all she saw was a folded piece of purple linen, put there to stop the bowl from slipping. From Cameron’s expression, the square of cloth might have been drenched in blood. He seemed transfixed by it. She saw his adam’s apple move up and down as he swallowed, and watched as he picked up the scrap of linen with the studied calm of someone using every ounce of willpower to conquer a crippling phobia, and slid it under the tray, out of sight.

  Before Kate could ask what was wrong, Finlay came in carrying a tray with two bottles of McEwan’s lager and a couple of tall glasses. By the time Finlay had poured the drinks and made his exit Cameron had regained his composure. Before Kate could think of a tactful way to ask why he’d been so unsettled by the scrap of purple linen, Cameron said, “I hope I didn’t spoil you from opening a bottle of wine by asking for a beer.”

  Kate shook her head. “Wine reminds me of a time in my life that wasn’t too great, when my local tavern was a wine bar and there would be an awkward silence if you asked for a cold beer.”

  “Back in San Francisco?”

  She shook her head. “New York City.”

  They started on their soup. “Cockaleekie,” Cameron said.

  “I beg your pardon?” Kate said, bemused by the strange sounding word.

  Cameron smiled. “Cockaleekie—it’
s what this soup is called.”

  “What a great name.” Kate took another spoonful, and said, “It’s marvellous, isn’t it?”

  Cameron nodded, then said, “I wouldn’t have thought of New York as a pretentious kind of city.”

  “For the most part it’s not, but the little part of it I was living in was.”

  “What part was that?”

  “The orbit of the arty circle.”

  As they pushed aside the soup plates and started on the main course Kate told him how a holiday in New York led to a job as a guide at the Metropolitan Museum, and then a post arranging and promoting exhibitions.

  “Sounds good,” he said.

  “To begin with it was. I was meeting all these people who’d been my heroes when I was at art college—”

  “You’ve got an artistic streak, then?”

  She sighed, and said, “I used to think I had.”

  Cameron thought that was a slightly odd thing to say—you either had some artistic ability or you didn’t.

  “Anyway,” Kate continued, “there I was, making up the guest list for cocktail parties and exhibition previews, so, of course, I invited myself to all of them.”

  “Doesn’t sound too bad to me.”

  “Like I said, to start with it was great, and I suppose I was hoping some of the brilliance of the people I met might inspire me … Hoping that one day I might be arranging the guest list for an exhibition that included some of my own sculptures.”

  “But…”

  “Instead of being inspired, the opposite happened. I started feeling I was moving in a cliquey little circle of insufferably pretentious prima donnas with narrow minds and big egos; people who were so in love with themselves they couldn’t genuinely like anyone else, let alone love them.”

  Cameron thought he detected the bitterness of a broken heart in her words. “It’s a long way from New York to San Francisco. How come you ended up there?” he asked.

  “It’s where I was born. Well, just across the bay in a little tourist-trap town called Sausalito. Mom owned a craft shop there; Dad was the sheriff. When Mom died—around about the time I was getting disillusioned at the Met—I quit the Met and went back home. I didn’t intend staying there for any length of time; I just wanted to be with Dad for a little while. I told Dad I’d look after the shop as a stop-gap measure, until we could find someone to run it for us and I could work out what I wanted to do with my life.

  “And when the telegram from Archibald Cunningham arrived last week—five years down the line—I was still running it.”

  “And still trying to work out what you wanted to do.”

  She nodded. “I suppose so. For the first three or four years I was able to do some sculptures and sell them in the shop. But then they started turning out a different way from how I wanted them.”

  “In what way?”

  “Horribly cold.” As cold as Lady Carolyn, she thought. Something made her glance at the portrait of her reviled ancestor and, as she did so, she realized what was behind the strange familiarity she’d felt the first time she looked at the old oil painting: it wasn’t the features that were familiar, rather the expression. The cold look was the same as the loveless look of her later sculptures. At first Kate felt a rush of relief at being able to rationally explain the unsettling feeling of being familiar with a total stranger …

  Then a horrible notion struck her: the thought that losing her ability to sculpt romantic figures was maybe down to more than a lack of romance in her life …

  That maybe it was the first manifestation of an ancient cur—

  Don’t even go there, Kate, she told herself. She tried to laugh at what common sense told her had been a crazy notion, and to put the thought from her mind—but didn’t succeed on either count.

  “Is everything okay, Kate?”

  Cameron’s voice broke into her thoughts, and she realized she was sitting with a forkful of lamb poised halfway to her mouth. She forced a smile, and then found she had to force down the food because she’d lost her appetite for a meal that moments earlier she’d been eating with relish.

  “Do you never try painting or drawing?” Cameron asked.

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t give me the same buzz. Sometimes I used to work right through the night on sculptures when I felt like I was doing them well. I’ve never done that with a painting. It’s hard to explain, but there’s something wonderfully sensual about shaping with your hands, forming line and curve, feeling texture. I don’t want to sound kinky, but it was almost a sexual thrill.”

  “I can understand—it was almost a sexual thrill just listening to you there.”

  Kate threw her head back a little, the dark thoughts replaced by delightful ones. For the second time that night Cameron noticed the lovely smoothness of her neck, and then he heard the surprisingly throaty laugh he’d already come to like so much.

  After taking a drink, Kate said, “It’s such a challenge—making something that’s incapable of thought, feeling, or movement look like it can think and feel and move. It’s immensely satisfying if you pull it off—and frustrating when you can’t. Somehow I don’t get the same satisfaction when I’m painting or drawing. But, having said that, the glen’s so beautiful it’s just a matter of time before I try to capture it on paper or canvas.”

  Cameron finished his lamb and said, “I can’t tell you how much better that was than the food I’ve been used to.”

  “Which would be army rations, right?”

  He nodded and took a drink.

  “So, what made you want to join the army?” Kate asked. “From the way you act with a camera in your hand, I imagine you’d be happier as an out-and-out photographer.”

  “It was kind of expected of me, joining the army.”

  Kate remembered Archibald Cunningham’s comment about Cameron’s ancestors all having a military background.

  Cameron’s next words bore out the lawyer’s: “There’s been a career soldier in my family every generation for as long as anyone can remember. You might say it was the family business, and I know my dad would have been disappointed if I hadn’t carried it on. The bedtime stories he read to me weren’t about Noddy and Tin-Tin, they were about my uncle Calum at The Hook in Korea, where the Chinese attacked in a human wave and The Black Watch dug in and called artillery fire down on their own positions when they were over-run; about my grandfather Sandy being lowered down the cliffs at St Valery on a rope made of rifle slings rather than surrendering; and about my great grandfather storming the Heights of Dargai on the North-West Frontier.”

  For a few moments Cameron seemed lost in thoughts he’d rather not be having, then he said, “Anyway, you’re right: when I left school I did want to be a photographer. The thing was, my parents’ marriage had broken up and I stayed with my mum, so I already felt I’d let my dad down in a way by choosing her over him, and didn’t want to disappoint him in another way by choosing photography over the army.

  “As a compromise I went to college to study photography but also joined the Officer Training Corps. I was hoping the uniform would keep my dad happy, and that when I graduated I could open my own studio and just join the TA—that’s like your National Guard.”

  “But you didn’t, you joined the full-time army instead,” Kate said.

  He nodded. “In my last year at college I met a girl who broke my heart.”

  “And instead of joining the Foreign Legion to forget, you joined The Black Watch.”

  Cameron laughed. “Sounds very melodramatic when you put it like that, but that’s pretty much how it was. About that time, my dad told me The Black Watch had been picked to oversee the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese, and were looking for regimental photographers to document what was obviously going to be a historic tour of duty. It seemed like the ideal chance for me to move on, keep Dad happy, and do something I might even enjoy myself, so I took it.”

  “Any regrets?”

  “Not about my time in Hong Kong. It was exc
iting to be a part of it, capturing a little piece of history on film and seeing an amazing place at the same time. I’ll never forget the first time I took the Star Ferry over to Kowloon and then walked up Nathan Road. It was like nowhere I’d ever been, nothing I’d ever seen. There was so much atmosphere I could smell it and see it, touch it and taste it, so much excitement in the air that every single breath I took filled me with excitement.”

  “I love Chinatown in San Francisco, so I can see why you’d like Hong Kong,” Kate said. “How about after the Far East posting, did you go back to ordinary soldiering?”

  He shook his head. “I was a photographer in a uniform. The only shooting I did was with a camera.”

  Choosing her words carefully, Kate said, “I can’t imagine you doing the other kind but, earlier today, you acted like you had.”

  Cameron looked at her, not understanding.

  “When you talked about believing in ‘another kind of ghost’ this afternoon you had a really haunted look in your eyes.”

  After a long, reflective look into his drink, Cameron said, “Other people did the shooting, but I saw the bodies.”

  Kate thought it seemed like there were times when he was still seeing them. “You’re not just talking about one or two bodies, are you?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “You must be talking about Yugoslavia, then,” she guessed.

  “Kosovo. It’s a terrible thing to say, but they all seemed the same: Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia. It wasn’t a clash of countries or armies. It wasn’t even one village against another, or one soldier against another. It was one neighbour against another, ordinary people doing terrible things to each other for no real reason. It’s bad enough when it’s just one or two psychos, but at least you can dismiss that as an aberration. When it’s whole villages, though, whole countries … When you realize it’s the behaviour that becomes the norm in situations where people can behave as they please, then you find out much more about other people than you ever wanted to know.” He sighed, and added, “You find out much more about yourself than you ever wanted to know.”