Vee: Lost and Found

by David Roberts

  ‘She confirmed it was Adrian’s because of the handwriting, but had difficulty believing the book had brought me all that way. Many books had the owner’s name, just like that one, and Annat “isn’t on the road to Achnasheen”. Those were her exact words. I remember them because there was real suspicion in them. I could sense there was a real possibility of the meeting going sour, so, trying to be as careful as possible, I explained that the name and place wasn’t the important thing. There was something else.

  ‘I flicked through a bundle of pages with my thumb, spotted a good example and went back a couple of pages to find it. “Annotations,” I said, showing her examples of pages covered with them. It was obvious that someone, Adrian, had spent a lot of time making all these changes. It made me feel the book was important to him. I thought he might just have forgotten it was there when the Morris was traded in. I explained how it’s not unusual to find things.’

  “How did she react?” asked Tom.

  “Well I suppose I was expecting more of a reaction than I actually got.”

  “You mean like, ‘Oh how wonderful, you’ve found it. How can I ever repay you? Remember I’m seventy-six?’”

  “Or possibly she might have snatched it from me and thrown it on the fire shouting, ‘He told me he’d destroyed you!’”

  “And it would have refused to burn.”

  “Yes, something like that. Well, there was nothing like that. I think she had recognised the book, which is why she straightened up even before she’d had enough time to read the title. She didn’t have to read it because it was familiar. The photographs, though; she did express real interest in the photographs. When she saw them, her eyes lit up.

  ‘“That’s the back of the cottage,” she said. She was in the photograph, along with Adrian and someone else. The car in it was the one Adrian had owned when they first moved from down south, apparently. I told her I thought it was a Morris 8, going by the design of the bonnet. She thought that could be right. She remembered it being poor on hills and very noisy- though nearly all cars were back in those days. She smiled as she held the photograph. “I must have been about twenty-three or twenty-four in this. Maybe about 1950 then. How lovely of you to bring this to me.”

  ‘She went back to the book, flicking through some pages. She stopped and looked carefully, her finger on one of the annotations. Then she moved ahead, pointing out several more on other pages. “This is not him, though. Someone else has written these.” I explained the writing was mine and began an apology but she smiled and looked at me.

  ‘Her eyes were a very pale blue, and her directness began to make me feel slightly uncomfortable. Seeing the last biscuit on the plate, she went over to the cupboard, took out the open packet of digestives and brought it to the table. Then she put a couple more on the plate and topped up both cups with the teapot. All the tension and suspicion was gone by then. I remember realising that at the time. Then she asked if I had any other photographs.

  “In fact there were five others, but they weren’t as interesting for her. No people, I suppose. Purely scenery. She recognised Loch Maree in one. It had been taken from the far end, looking down the loch. The others were unknowns. One pictured a mountain at the end of a long straight road. Another was of a flat, rocky area next to a road, with water and mountains in the background. A small loch, photographed through dark, spindly trees featured in another. It had been taken just as the light was fading. The last was of a very old car, standing next to two stone pillars. It was labelled ‘Altnaharra’, though there was no date. All the photos were black and white. She couldn’t remember or even identify these places. She did say that Adrian would often go off for a day or two. It was like a need in him, to be alone with these places. She said that was really why they’d moved north all those years before, though she’d never really felt the same herself, though she appreciated the beauty and the peacefulness. She had a really good, long look at that photograph.

  ‘Then she said something curious, which has stuck in my mind. After explaining how her brother felt about the mountains she said, “This is a need you share with him, I think.” There was an upward inflection in the way she said it which somehow made me want to respond.

  ‘I said, “Yes. You have to keep going back, without really knowing why.” For a second time in the meeting I began to feel not exactly vulnerable, but exposed. Car mechanics are not supposed to feel like that. A slight commotion outside drew our eyes to the small window and she stood up and walked towards it. The rooks were coming back to the trees. It was the early evening by then. They were cawing and flapping. You’d think she would see them as sinister but the opposite was the case.

  ‘ “People say they are ugly birds,” she said, “but to me they can be beautiful, like a family.” It seemed such an odd thing to say. Perhaps she’d been on her own too long; I don’t know.’

  “It does sound like that,” said Tom. “Was that how your meeting with her ended?”

  “More or less. She asked if she could keep that particular photograph, but she wanted me to keep the book because it had belonged to Adrian, not her. Perhaps she felt I’d find use for it.”

  “If she did, she was right,” said Tom.

  “I suppose so. Anyway, that was about it. Oh – and she gave me the biscuits, or what was left of them. She said it was in case I got stranded on the way to Achnasheen. We both had a smile at that. That’s when she said she hoped I’d pop in again sometime. We were on good terms by then, chatting away. I felt it was a bit strange for me to make a connection like that, with her being the age she was, but there was something about her which made it easy. When I drove off she was still at the door, smiling, and she gave me a wave as I headed off.”

  “And did you ever go back?”

  “Yes. I called in, that would have been quite a few years ago, but it was a young woman who answered the door. The place seemed much busier. A chainsaw was screeching at the other side of the house. Six years they had been in the house- Ellie had sold it to them. They were a local couple.”

  “That makes a change,” said Tom, “a welcome change for this area.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened to Ellie?”

  “I didn’t want to ask. I suppose I felt guilty as I had left it too long: about six years too long. It still annoys me when I think about it, even now.”

  “You shouldn’t beat yourself up about it. Seeing her again might have been impossible. Perhaps she had died.”

  “I know. But you’ll understand that’s not much of a consolation. I liked her.”

  “That’s life, I’m afraid: full of little disappointments. And occasionally, very big ones. Those are usually called Eleanor: at least that’s been my experience. And they often involve a ginger haired boiler suit from the Gas Board. On a fucking Tuesday. That was the last of the cans by the way.”

  “Was it a routine service.?”

  “Yes. That was the problem. He was well into it when I arrived home unexpectedly. She cleaned me out afterwards, of course, after I’d broken his nose with the monkey wrench. Appropriate, really…… She got the house and a lot of my stuff as well as her own. That’s how it always seems to end now. They did a good job on me, her lawyers. And I should know.

  “I don’t think about her now. I’m not bitter or anything. Never a second thought… You never know what’s round the corner. I’m sure she’s going to be gorgeous. She’s somewhere out there right now. Gorgeous and very lucky, obviously.”

  4 Auntie Vee

  Mallaig 1936

  “Jamie, Jamie. It’s all right. It’s just the engine letting off steam and you were standing very close. What a big noise! What a big noise!”

  She was in her early thirties. Putting down the suitcases, she reached out towards him. The small boy, of around four years, rushed into her, gripping her coat tightly. She could feel his face bury itself in its dark blue folds.

  Instinctively, she lowered herself, taking her head down to the level of
his, an action which required her almost to kneel.

  “It’s all right. What a noisy engine.” She wiped his cheeks with her forefinger, quickly and without fuss. By then the steam had cleared and when she saw her chance she took it.

  “Look at that, Jamie,” she said, pointing to the brass nameplate, grimy but still splendid, the red background highlighting the big brass letters. “It is called Duke of Atholl. What a lovely name. We should say it together. Duke-of-Atholl.”

  Mhairi Mackinnon spent the next few minutes with her nephew pointing out the salient features of the locomotive, until she could see that he was alright again. Basically, that meant pointing at anything shiny, or the long gunmetal rods which linked the wheels, or the long, filthy smears of grease on the flat slides next to the cylinders.

  “Can I help you with that, Madam?” said a voice behind her.

  Mhairi turned around. By this time she had lifted Jamie up to her height, holding him tightly to her chest. She smiled at the porter and he put the cases on a small two wheeled trolley.

  “We’re going to be staying here this evening. The station entrance would be fine if you could do that. We can carry them from there, can’t we Jamie.”

  They both looked at him. His cheek was still pressed against her collar, but there was a little smile, a self-conscious little thing. The two adults smiled and nodded to each other before making their way along the platform, past the ticket office and into Mallaig.

  As the guard on the train had said, The Sleat Inn was only thirty yards from the station and it did look clean and well kept: exactly the traditional kind of place that would make her feel comfortable. Comfort, that is what was needed, not just for her but for the boy, especially for the boy. Mhairi tipped the porter, who insisted on taking the cases right to the door of the hotel, before rushing back before his absence was noted.

  “A good man,” thought Mhairi, “a good man.”

  After their meal, Mhairi saw the signs of Jamie’s exhaustion and slipped off his clothes and managed, one sleepy limb at a time, to put him into his warm cotton pyjamas.

  “Good boy,” she said.

  “Let’s tuck you up nicely,” she said.

  “Auntie Vee is right here,” she said.

  And she did tuck him up nicely and she did stay with him, lying on top of the blanket, snuggled up, always looking at him, trying to see what he was going through.

  She saw the small, red upturned mouth, the blond hair (his father had looked the same when he was young) and the slight chubbiness of the cheeks, which would probably be disappearing sometime soon. Like many small children, he had an unworldliness about him which could make him seem almost ethereal: that too, Mhairi realised, was something which might be disappearing soon because worldly matters were clawing away at this protection. The events of the last few days were working on him. Even as he slept, he would be trying to make sense of it all.

  Mhairi moved the blankets up slightly, so that they covered the open neck where his pyjamas had unbuttoned. Right now, she thought, they needed different things. She needed to think about what might be happening next and about what she would have to do. After all, for the moment at least, she was his protection. What Jamie needed was sleep. He needed to forget.

  5 The road to Applecross

  2014

  For only the second time in over ten years, they were heading for Applecross. Lots of villages in Scotland could be described as ‘remote’ but very few, if any, are as isolated as Applecross. If you are there you have to drive for a couple of hours just to reach the middle of nowhere, because the village is at the outer edge of a loop which is itself on a larger loop off the main west coast road which runs from near Dornie, up through Achnasheen to Kinlochewe.

  The place itself is beautiful, especially on a clear summer’s day when there are views of Raasay and Skye, but this masks the reality of staying there all year round. One journey there tells you all you need to know: that the road forming the lower half of the loop will close frequently over the winter. It’s the nearest thing in Scotland to an Alpine traverse, complete with its hairpin bends and steep gradients.

  The northerly half of the loop is easier, but much of it is still single track and great care is needed. This means that in winter, Applecross has an introspective feel- and the problem with introspection is that the subject is always there. The brain can’t leave itself behind.

  Tom and Alastair finished loading the car and went back to run a final check on the cottage. The dishes were all back in the kitchen cupboards; the worktops were clear and the appliances switched off; the beds tidy. (To make life simpler, they had slept on the beds, but in their sleeping bags.)

  “Looks okay,” said Alastair. “I always like to leave the place decent, otherwise I might not get the use of it again. My cousin comes up for a long stay in the summer and it suits her that it is visited now and again, which is why she gives me a key.”

  “Why can’t I have cousins like that? Even just the one. My relatives keep a tight grip on everything.”

  Alastair turned the key in the lock and pushed the red painted door at least twice, just to make sure. “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder” he said, glancing at Tom.” They slung the bags in the rear of the estate car and headed off.

  Just three miles from Dornie, the main road to Achnasheen and the north branches off the Skye road and it begins a long climb. Two thirds of the way up, on the right hand side, is a gravelled area which offers striking elevated views of Loch Alsh and the pine forest at the side of the loch. There is a feeling of great openness here, as though a veil has been lifted from the landscape. In the distance the mountains of Knoydart, and beyond, are visible.

  “I always try to stop here,” said Alastair, “though the traffic can sometimes make that difficult. You are on a bend and you don’t want to make all the traffic behind you stop because a car is coming the other way. Sometimes it’s easier just to go on.”

  “It would be a pity to have to drive past a stop like this, knowing how good the view is, but I suppose, since you know what it is like, it’s a picture you already have in your head anyway.”

  “Yes, but it changes according to the time of year, and because of the weather. The larches are too grey looking now- it’s better in early August, but then you have the midges. It’s breathtaking, isn’t it. You can easily be swept along just by that, but for me this view is also instructive.” He held out his arm and pointed to the south and the west as he spoke.

  “Nearly all of what you see is owned by one family- the Mackenzies, I think. It has been passed down intact for hundreds of years. Almost nothing changes from one generation to the next: and these two things are connected. You can see why these big landowners like the present set-up. It favours them. Unless the system changes your great grandchildren could be standing here in another hundred years saying exactly the same things as I am saying now.

  “Anyway, time to go. There’s another place I need to show you: a viewpoint over Lochcarron.”

  “Far?”

  “About ten or twelve miles. It’s on the hilltop and you look over the loch. We pass it on the way to Applecross.”

  A series of climbs saw them there, in a big parking area perched right on the top. Far below them, on the opposite shore, they could see the small white houses of the village lining the roadside and a concrete slipway leading into the water. This was the road they travelled on after they had made the long descent and passed through a strange concrete construction which protected the road and the railway from falling rocks. Tom had never seen anything like it before.

  After Lochcarron (and coffee) the road narrowed as it wound on to the Applecross peninsula until it became, in places, little more than a track. The tarmac just seemed to peter out at the roadside, with no definite edge.

  “Quite a tricky bit of road in winter, I imagine, like you were saying,” said Tom, as they rounded a blind corner, the road falling away into a peaty ditch.

  “No, this is the g
ood bit. The bit I’m talking about is not up to this standard. Look at the map.”

  Tom flicked though to page 52. “Yes, I see it. It’s not even coloured in, the road you’re talking about.” Pause. “Will that not make it hard to find?”

  “That would make it difficult right enough. Fortunately they decided not to use transparent tarmac. I suppose the council must have had some of the ordinary black stuff left over.”

  Another six miles on, the dark blue Golf estate slowed and turned left on to the single track road heading uphill on the final loop to Applecross. At first the road felt like many other single track Highland roads, if a little more tortuous. Tom remarked on this.

  Alastair slowed the car a little as they rounded the corner and entered the valley, which appeared at first glance to be a gigantic cul-de-sac.

  “The road is very quiet today so it’s not so obvious, but if you look carefully up the valley you’ll see the road winds up the face of the hill at the far end. Because the turns are hairpins you can sometimes see the cars going up and down what looks like a flight of stairs. When there’s two way traffic it’s mesmerising, like one of those old wooden clocks which works by releasing marbles which run down a chute.”

  Alastair changed down to second as they approached the first hairpin, and they could see the road above them, and the one above that, at crazy angles of lean.

  “You know I once saw a big Jaguar, a black XJ6, stop dead half way round one of these hairpins. I don’t know if it was the steering lock or the wrong gear but he had to change into first and try again. The clutch was slipping like mad so I hung back just in case. You don’t want one of those things running backwards into you.”

  He changed into first. They rounded the last corner and cresting the rise, they entered the car park on the left. Getting out of the car, they could hear the engine ticking as it cooled down.