Vee: Lost and Found

by David Roberts

  Ten minutes later Tom and Alastair were standing looking at the sign in front of ‘Riverside Guest House’. They had already passed it once and gone down the road to the left which curved around till the houses were facing the open sea. They had come back to this one because it seemed less like a house and more like a small hotel.

  Two red Ducati sportsbikes with Irish registration plates were parked just to the left of the entrance. They were impossibly attractive, classy machines, the lipstick red set off by the polished alloy of the footrest hangers and the fork yokes. In the era of mass production, they were like works of art. At bike gatherings Ducatis always stand out, like antelopes would in a field of cows.

  An Audi estate pulled up and out stepped a young French couple. They opened the rear passenger doors and helped two young children out. All then trooped inside and disappeared up the stairs to the right. They had already signed in, obviously. There was a real energy to the place. Alastair could see the attraction of staying here: if you were lucky enough to find a vacancy, that is.

  Charlie Macrae was through in the sitting room to the left when they entered and went up to the reception desk. He had been waiting for them to appear and had seen them talking outside. They seemed genuine enough when they explained themselves and he could see that the book had belonged to Adrian, a man he knew of, though the actual memory of him was faint.

  “Please have a seat,” he said. “I can’t promise anything but I can ask”

  He disappeared for three or four minutes.

  “Ellie would very much like to see you,” he said when he returned. “If we just move through into the lounge you won’t be disturbed.”

  When Ellie appeared, carrying the book, her smile was all it took to reassure Alastair that she had not merely remembered him, but remembered him fondly.

  “It’s lovely to see you again. I’ve often thought of you and your kindness in coming all the way up to Annat just for that. It was such a round-about route for where you were going that I didn’t really believe you were just passing.”

  They shook hands warmly.

  “This is my friend Tom.”

  “This is Jamie,” she said.

  Lots of handshakes were exchanged before everyone sat down and Ellie continued.

  “I remember when I was sorting through some things about five or six years ago. I came across the photograph you’d given me. You probably don’t remember it. I was looking at it, thinking about the day you visited me and I was kicking myself for not even asking your name.”

  “Alastair Singer.”

  “Ellie has mentioned you quite a few times,” Dr Macleod added. “I was intrigued about the book. Could I see it?”

  Ellie handed it over and he opened it. “Yes. I remember giving this to Adrian.”

  He flicked through the initial pages and saw the inscription.

  “August 1945. In fact I remember buying the book, in a second-hand bookshop in Edinburgh. It was along from James Thin’s. That’s probably not there now.”

  “It is still there I think,” said Tom. “But the firm was taken over, I think by Waterstones. It’s near the university.”

  “That’s right,” Jamie continued, starting to relax into the conversation now that everyone had spoken. “We’d all gone through to Edinburgh for a long weekend- Vee, John and me. Adrian was in his final few weeks at the base, so we took him too. This book was a cheerio gift to him. I hoped it would help him to think about Scotland and all the good times we’d had here, after he’d moved back to Birmingham.”

  “It certainly did that,” said Ellie. “He was always talking about it. Camping. Cycling. Vee in particular, I recall.”

  She and Jamie shared a smile at this point, but of course Alastair and Tom just looked blankly at one another, as they often did.

  “I should explain,” Jamie said. “Adrian was a soldier at the base in Loch Ewe. He was posted there in nineteen forty-two and he was billeted in our house in Gairloch.”

  “We passed through there on the way up here, just a few days ago,” said Tom. “There’s a museum at Mellon Charles. We went there…”

  Ellie looked up at that point and smiled towards the door. Charlie had come in.

  “Could I get you a coffee or anything?” he asked.

  Everyone nodded.

  “That would be lovely, Charlie. Thank you so much. I was just telling them how pleased I was to see them again. It’s been quite a few years.”

  Charlie went out and Ellie leaned forward slightly. “We like to come here. Charlie always looks after us.”

  Jamie resumed. “When the war ended, he went down south, back to Birmingham but three years later he moved back up here, to Annat.”

  “Bringing me with him,” said Ellie. “There was a lot of hardship just after the war and, to cut the story short, Adrian and I came into some money. Adrian loved this area- and I’d been visiting a couple of times, so it seemed the natural thing to do. You can’t imagine what life was like in the Midlands at that time, after the war. So when Adrian saw this small house in Annat, for next to no money, it was an easy decision. A good decision too. We were happy there.”

  “We spent a lot of time together,” said Jamie. “Even when I went to Medical School in Edinburgh we continued to meet up and tramp around the countryside. We found a plane once, you know, not far south of where he lived. They were great days, great days. Actually, I think it was the three of us in the picture you gave Ellie, where we were outside the cottage, next to the car. God, it was uncomfortable, that thing.”

  Charlie came in with the coffee, made good eye contact with Ellie, nodded and left.

  “Thank you,” she said, “that’s very good of you.”

  Tom and Jamie were looking at one of the photographs from the book. Jamie took him over to the window so it would be clearer in the natural light. They were chatting away, probably about Edinburgh, university and bookshops.

  Ellie leaned towards Alastair, making eye contact so she could speak quietly.

  “I’ve always loved him, you know.” She tilted her head towards the window. “Right from the start, from the first meeting. We had a great time together, all three of us, but I think he thought of me as more of a sister than anything else. He was very close to Adrian of course. Really, they were brothers more than friends.

  “Those two are getting on famously,” Ellie said, glancing in their direction. Tom caught them looking and became, unaccountably, very self-conscious.

  “Yes, we used to go away together camping, swimming; you name it. The walking could be quite hard work, though. Adrian was what you’d call ‘rangey’ and he’d leave us both behind, without realising.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Those were the bits I really looked forward to, but all Jamie ever tried to do was catch up.”

  She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head sadly, then gave him a wink so he knew there was humour even in there, in all that waiting.

  “We did get together of course,” she said, sticking in the word ‘eventually’ so loudly that Jamie looked over. Ellie looked over to the window and winked at him. He laughed and shook his head, then he and Tom made their way back to the seats.

  “I’m telling Alastair about Adrian and the times we had together,” she said. Jamie nodded and she continued.

  “Adrian passed away. Of course you know all about that because you found the book in the car and brought it to Annat. That left the two of us….and it really just developed from there.”

  Jamie cut in. “I was officially retired by then, as GP in Gairloch. That would be nineteen ninety-eight, when Adrian died. Ellie confirmed the date. “It was the following year, once the house had been sold, that Ellie moved to Gairloch.”

  “Yes, that’s fourteen years we’ve been living in sin,” said Ellie, “so even God will be used to it by now.”

  Everyone laughed at that. Eighty-six and undiminished.

  Jamie excused himself for a moment and left.

  “We really are so
glad you’ve come. We’re returning to Gairloch tomorrow morning. I don’t know if you’ll be passing that way when you head south, but if you are I want both of you to pop in for a cup of tea. We would both like that.” She wrote the address down on a corner of a magazine and tore it off.

  “It might seem strange to you, being the age you are, that talking about people who have gone can be so…(she struggled to find the right word)...so positive as an experience. People and places can just slip away in the memory. Talking like this, it somehow brings them all back here… That probably sounds daft to you, but this is what it feels like.”

  “Can I ask you about something?” said Tom.

  “Of course”.

  “You mentioned Vee. Who was that?”

  Ellie thought for a moment. “Vee is Mhairi Macleod, who was married to Doctor John. Together, they brought up Jamie and took in Adrian. But those are just the facts- they don’t describe her.”

  Ellie had to pause, as if starting afresh.

  “I think it’s impossible to understand all of what’s happened to this family, without actually knowing Vee. She had a hold on everyone around her. No, ‘hold’ is not the right word because it wasn’t deliberate or calculated. It just seemed to happen by itself, effortlessly. She captured them. That was especially true of the men. They simply thought about her more than they thought about anyone else. It really was the strangest thing.

  “I spent years getting to know her, and years thinking about her, and she’s still several steps way. When she died in the mid-nineties her funeral was the biggest funeral ever seen in Gairloch, though it was a very simple affair. That in itself captures something of her. The people I talked to there all seemed to say the same thing- regardless of whether they were former colleagues, neighbours or ex-pupils. Somehow, she made them feel safe, or made them feel special, or worthy of being loved. Those kinds of feelings, the kind that don’t leave you. You keep hold of things like that.”

  Jamie had returned by the time Ellie had finished speaking and he walked over to the armchair and sat down.

  “That’s it exactly,” he said. “People remember Vee not because of who she was, a doctor’s wife in Gairloch, or what she did, but because of how she made them feel. Of course, I owe more to her than anyone does. She always made me feel I was the most important thing in her life.”

  “You were the most important thing,” said Ellie,” so that is perfectly understandable. The bit that’s hard to understand is that somehow or other, so many other people came to feel the same way.”

  “You’re right Ellie, absolutely.”

  He turned to look at Alastair and Tom.

  “All of this must seem very peculiar but if you’d met her you’d understand...”

  Ellie completed the sentence “….Yes, because you’d feel it too. So that would make it four of us all sitting here, unable to explain it.”

  Everyone laughed, erasing the feelings which had built up whilst Vee was being described. On this blank sheet, Tom put another, simpler question.

  “So, Doctor John, he had the practice in Gairloch before you?”

  “Yes, I took over from him in the mid-sixties. He was in his mid-sixties at the time.”

  Tom went on. “He must have been very proud, having his son take over the practice. I know from the legal practice I work in that that sort of thing happens quite frequently.”

  “Yes,” Ellie added with a smile, “Lawyers and doctors are bad for that.”

  Alastair grinned appreciatively. It served Tom right for being pompous.

  “Yes, he was proud of me; he definitely was. He wasn’t really my father though. In fact there was no blood link there. Vee was my aunt. She brought me up from the age of four and married John when I was about eight.”

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know,” said Tom. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “No, no, that’s all right. It was a long time ago. It will be well over seventy years ago. It was a family holiday in Argyll, and Vee was with us. My parents left one morning and were never seen again.”

  Much later on Ellie would describe this as a ‘lightning strike in mid –conversation’. Alastair suddenly looked completely alert. Tom turned to him and had just begun to speak when he suddenly shut the conversation down. Like that. Ellie couldn’t recall the exact words but in effect it was a ‘Good Heavens look at the time we must be going cheerio then’ type of statement, but less tactfully deployed than that.

  The lightning comparison was apt.

  Somehow, before either Jamie or Ellie, or Tom in fact, knew what was happening, an Australian girlfriend had been rammed into the conversation; a local restaurant had been booked earlier that day and both he and Tom had to leave right way. Then he left right away.

  “Please thank Charlie for us,” said Tom. “It was lovely to meet you. I’m sorry, I must be going now. I’m sorry.”

  All of this came out sounding like an apology, because that is essentially what it was.

  “Is Alastair all right?” asked Jamie.

  “He’ll be fine. Things get a bit on top of him sometimes, but he’ll be OK in a little while.”

  “Please come and see us if you are passing,” said Ellie. “We’d like to know that he is all right.”

  Tom gave them an acknowledgement and left.

  He caught up with him thirty yards down the road.

  “You gave them a real shock, leaving the way you did. Why did you do that? They are genuinely upset.”

  “I’m sorry about that, but I just had to get out once he’d told us about his parents.”

  “You’re thinking about the bodies you stumbled on in Argyll, aren’t you. This could be the explanation. Surely it was worth a mention. After all, it’s a mystery Jamie has had to live with for seventy-odd years.”

  “And that’s why I didn’t want it mentioned. What if it’s not the same people? How would Jamie and Ellie feel about that? They’ve had all these years of living with it. They’ve come to accept it. One night won’t make a difference but it’ll give us time to work out what to do.”

  “Okay. I see where you’re coming from now. What next?”

  “A bit of time to think about it all”, said Alastair. “That’s what we need now.”

  _________________________

  From the windows of the sitting room in the Riverside Guest House, the elderly couple (for that’s how a paper would have described them) watched the two figures walking quickly in the direction of the town centre.

  “They certainly do seem to be in a bit of a hurry,” said Ellie. “That Australian, what did you make of her?”

  “You mean the one he just made up?”

  “My feelings exactly. You have to wonder why anyone would do that.”

  They watched the figures disappear before Jamie spoke again. “Alastair. Did he remind you of anyone?”

  “Do you mean anyone; or anyone as well as Adrian?”

  “That’s what I thought too,” said Jamie.

  “It’s an unusual friendship, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” said Jamie, “and I know all about those. We both know that.”

  38 Fire and Steam

  2014

  The Ullapool Bookshop was still open (it was only seven o’clock on a Tuesday in late October) and the lady at the counter looked up when they entered.

  “Hello again,” she said. “Did you find your friends? Oh that’s good.”

  This time it was Alastair who spoke to her.

  “Could I possibly use one of your computers?” he asked, pointing to the area to the right which was laid out like an internet café. “I’m interested in looking up back numbers of newspapers. Would I be able to do that?”

  “It rather depends on what newspaper it is, and how far back.”

  “The Herald might do, but the one I’m really looking for is the Oban Times, from about nineteen ninety-five. It’s a news item that appeared. I’m quite happy to look through the ones from August and September.”


  “I think I can save you a bit of time,” she said. The shop was quite empty and Alastair’s request was unusual, hence interesting. “The Oban Times is a syndicated paper, sharing stories with quite a few other local newspapers. If you can tell me what the article is about I should be able to find it quite quickly using that.”

  After explaining the basis of the story and after only a couple of dead ends, the story popped up in three different versions. Alastair picked one and began to jot down details.

  “If you like, I could give you a printout of that. We don’t normally do it, but I do have a printer in the back.”

  He nodded. She typed in a few words to relay the message and then she disappeared into the room behind the counter, emerging a moment later with the printout. It was exactly what he wanted. She could see that by his expression.

  He reached into his pocket.

  “It’s alright. You were only on for two minutes; and it was interesting for me, helping you find it. You bought that book here earlier.” She pointed to the small bag containing Wolman’s ‘Fire and Steam’. “That takes care of it.”

  “You know,” said Alastair as they left the shop, “you often see complaints about poor service in the Highlands. That’s not been my experience. If people enjoy their jobs, or even just enjoy their lives, they offer good service.”

  “People with axes to grind,” said Tom. “They’re always finding something to moan about. You see these po-faced individuals in the Hamilton office, keen to make a complaint about the service they’ve had from a school, or a restaurant, or get some compensation on account of some ‘trauma’ they’ve experienced.”

  “It must be hellish dealing with people like that. Working on cars might be messy, with skint knuckles and oil pouring out over your hand but at least the customers are grateful you’ve fixed their car.” There was a pause…. “It was the customers you were talking about?”