A Risk Worth Taking

by Robin Pilcher

  “Dan, I can’t wait any longer,” Jackie said as Dan put down the receiver five minutes later. “I have to get to work.”

  “Please—if you could just wait a minute.” He walked back to the table and pulled out two chairs for Jackie and Josh. “Sit down, would you?”

  “Dan, I can’t—”

  “Please.”

  Jackie let out a loud sigh as both she and Josh sat down at the table. “So? What is it?”

  “I’ve been offered a job . . . for four months.”

  Jackie raised her eyebrows. “Well, I suppose that’s better than nothing. After all, it’s a foot in the door and if it all goes well, you might be kept on for longer.”

  “No. It’s only for four months.”

  “Right. Where is it? In the City?”

  Dan shook his head and looked directly at Jackie, anticipating already her reaction to his answer. “Scotland.”

  Jackie placed her elbows on the table and slowly keeled her head forward into her hands. “Who has offered you a job in Scotland? Not this . . . mail order company?”

  “No. It’s another one, but it does belong to the husband of the woman who has just sold that company.” He paused. “Listen, please don’t say anything until I’ve explained it all to you.”

  Over the next ten minutes, Dan told them everything that he knew about the Trenchards. Josh sat staring at Dan throughout, enthralled and captivated by the story, whilst Jackie never lifted her head from her hands.

  “What an amazing guy,” Josh said when Dan had eventually finished.

  “Yes, he is.”

  “So,” Jackie sighed, sitting back in her chair. “I suppose that means that you’re going to take the job.”

  “I don’t know,” Dan replied. “I thought we might discuss it.”

  “Why did he not ask you yesterday? Why wait for you to come all the way down to London before asking you?”

  “Because yesterday he had someone lined up to help him run the business. The chap telephoned him this morning to say that the company that currently employed him had changed their tune and were now insisting that he serve out his contract.”

  “And that just happens to be four months,” Jackie stated slowly.

  “Exactly. Patrick is now desperate. He can’t really cope by himself, not after his last relapse. It was his wife who made him call me.”

  “I think you should do it,” Josh said forthrightly.

  “Wait a minute,” Jackie exclaimed, holding up her hands. “Don’t let’s be too hasty here. Maybe this guy can’t cope up in Scotland, but how on earth am I going to be able to cope down here? I haven’t got the time to look after the place and the girls and you, Josh. I’m having to go back over to Paris in a couple of weeks.”

  “Maybe Battersea Gran wouldn’t mind coming round to stay,” Josh suggested.

  Jackie shook her head. “This is all going too fast,” she sang out in a desperate voice. “Listen, there’s no way that Battersea Gran can manage for that length of time. Damn it, she proved that over the weekend. She was out of here like a bullet.”

  “That’s because you were back here,” Dan said. He looked around the kitchen. “And you have to admit that there’s not much sign of the fact that she wasn’t able to manage.”

  “Well . . . what about the dogs? They can’t be left all day in the house. Battersea Gran won’t be here all the time.”

  “Could you do without the car?” Dan asked.

  “I don’t drive it anyway, Dan,” Jackie answered tersely.

  “Well, in that case, I could take the dogs with me.”

  Jackie bit at her lip as she watched him silently. “You’re going to take the job, aren’t you?”

  Dan nodded slowly. “If Battersea Gran can help out, then, yes, I think I will take it. I’m not doing anything else, and the man is desperate for help.”

  Jackie took in a deep breath and got to her feet. “Well, that’s that, then. End of discussion.”

  “It’s only for four months, Jackie,” Dan said.

  She picked up her handbag and her coat. “Yes. Of course. Only four months.” She walked towards the door. “By the way, your dog shat on the other side of the island this morning. Maybe you could finish clearing it up before you go.”

  Dan pushed himself to his feet. “Jackie, don’t be unreasonable. I wasn’t thinking of going today.”

  Jackie walked towards the door and opened it. “Well, I would if I were you, Dan. For all our sakes, I think you should.” She walked out of the kitchen, and a moment later the front door slammed behind her.

  “Oh, for God’s sakes,” Dan murmured under his breath.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Josh said quietly. “She’s just a bit cranky at the minute.” He got up from the table, picked up Nina’s cereal bowl and Dan’s mug, and walked over to the sink. “So, what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Josh picked up the telephone and pushed in a quick-dial code. He held the receiver out to his father. “Have a word with Battersea Gran and explain the situation. Knowing her, she’ll be more than happy to help out, especially if she knows about your friend’s circumstances.”

  “What about the girls?” Dan asked, taking the receiver from Josh.

  “They’ll be fine, Dad. They’re a unit on their own. Just leave a note for them. They’ll understand.”

  An hour later, Dan had a large suitcase in the boot of the car and the dogs sitting looking rather puzzled on the backseat. He was pretty sure Biggles was thinking that his misdemeanor that morning had been the final straw, and that now he was being returned to the dog home. Dan walked back into the house, licking the envelope in which he had put the note for the girls. He placed it on the hall table, next to the one that bore Jackie’s name, and then went to the bottom of the stairs.

  “Josh?”

  “Hang on, I’ll be down in a minute,” Josh’s voice rang out from his bedroom.

  “I’m heading off, Josh.”

  “I heard you. Just give me a minute.”

  Dan leaned against the banister rail. He heard Josh’s footsteps coming along the passageway. He appeared at the top of the stairs, fully dressed in a pair of his bum-showing jeans and a blue parka, a beanie pulled hard onto his black, curly head. On his back was an overstuffed rucksack with a white T-shirt streaming out its side.

  Dan looked questioningly at him. “Where are you off to?” he asked as Josh came down the stairs.

  “Scotland,” Josh replied with a broad grin on his face.

  Dan couldn’t help but laugh. “Josh, you can’t come.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . . it’s totally different up there. You wouldn’t enjoy it. There aren’t any nightclubs or venues or things like that. I don’t even know if there’s a Tesco’s.”

  Josh blew out derisively. “Oh, what the hell! Listen, Dad, I’m in a rut here. You said it in so many words the other day in my bedroom. I’m going noplace. I’m sick of my dead-end job and I’m sick of life in London. Even Horace’s Inferno has been taken over by West End posers.” He shrugged the haversack higher onto his back and adjusted the shoulder straps. “I’ve been trying to think of something else to do for the past few months, but I just came up blank every time. I know this is impulsive, but what the hell, you’re doing something pretty impulsive as well. So come on, man, I’m quite willing to do something adventurous if you are.”

  Dan felt the unaccustomed prickle of emotion in his eyes. “All right, Josh. Come on, we’ll do something impulsive together.” He put an arm around his son’s shoulder and held him tight. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained, eh?”

  Josh grinned at his father. “Let’s hit the road, then.”

  15

  It was only a short distance, barely a mile, between the Trenchards’ house and the cottage. Dan drove hard on the heels of the red Golf as it sped along the narrow road that followed the south shore of Loch Eil. He was almost taken unawares when Katie’s brake
lights suddenly shone red. She swung the car to the right through a rusting gate that hung askew from one hinge, and drove up a short, rutted track, the grass in its centre brushing heavily on the underside of her car.

  “Oh, gawd,” Josh muttered as they followed the Golf up the track. “I saw this place from back there, and I was going to make some stupid joke about it being our new home in the Highlands.”

  The low, corrugated iron–roofed cottage was situated thirty yards back from the road on a small hillock, its three front windows giving out to a view across the loch. That was its only plus point. Sections of the wooden fence that surrounded its small, overgrown garden had fallen victim to the wind and those that still stood were covered with greeny-black lichen. A nondescript climbing plant, devoid of much of its foliage despite it being only September, grew in a tangled heap up the rough stone wall and hung like an unkempt fringe over the drab brown front door. At the back of the cottage, there was a flat-roofed harled extension with a small metal window that was, in architectural terms, utterly discordant with the rest of the building.

  “Still pleased you came?” Dan laughed, as he creaked open the Saab door.

  Josh leaped enthusiastically from the car. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  They had arrived late the previous night after a drive that had included numerous stops for the dogs and at least three completely unnecessary excursions, thanks to Josh’s appalling map-reading skills. Due to his fraught exchange of words with Jackie and the subsequent speedy departure from London, it had completely slipped Dan’s mind to telephone Patrick and Katie to say that he was on the way north, so they were amazed at his quick response to their cry for assistance, and even more so when they saw his extraordinary entourage. It was decided over a beef sandwich and a couple of restoring glasses of Glendurnich malt whisky that Dan and Josh should stay the night in the small downstairs spare bedroom, but Katie had told Dan out of earshot of Patrick that the room had to be kept free for him, as there were times when he couldn’t make it up the stairs to their own bedroom. It was at that point that the Trenchards’ former home, about which Dan had already read Katie’s gruelling account of damp discomfort, was mentioned.

  “We had a holiday let in July,” Katie said, as she ducked under the sparsely leaved vine and put an enormous key in the door lock, “but that was the last time it was used, so please don’t expect too much.” She shouldered open the door and Dan and Josh followed her in.

  There was a distinctly musty smell about the place, and dust, highlighted by the sun that glanced through smeared windows, showed up on every surface. The front door led straight into a kitchen-cum-sitting room, this being made apparent by the presence of a cream-coloured stove, with scoured chrome tops and hardened dribbles of brown grease below its oven door, at one end of the room, and a moth-eaten three-piece suite in a nice shade of dung at the other end. Other than that, the room was sparsely furnished, save for a small fridge next to the stove, an old sideboard with a glass-fronted cabinet above it, both painted in gaudy green to make them look as if they were one unit, and four plastic-seated chairs pushed in around a small table that was covered by a faded oilcloth, and upon which sat two bottles that flowed with candlewax.

  “For heaven’s sakes!” Katie exclaimed, holding a hand to her mouth. “You know, I think I must have forgotten to come in to clear up the place after they’d gone.” She let out a sigh and shook her head. “That’s what happens when you have other things on your mind.”

  Dan shrugged. “It doesn’t seem too bad.” He turned to Josh. “What do you think?”

  “Does the telly work?” Josh asked, pointing to an enormous television set that dwarfed the three-legged table on which it rested in the corner of the sitting area. Judging from its antiquity, Dan thought it highly unlikely that it had been switched on since Muffin the Mule graced the screen.

  “I think so,” Katie replied. “I seem to remember that it’s quite like viewing through a snowstorm, though.” She walked across to a door at the back of the room. “I hardly dare look in here,” she said, pushing it open. She shuddered as she entered the bathroom, built into the flat-roofed block at the back of the house. “Well, it’s freezing, but it’s clean enough.”

  Dan and Josh peered through the doorway. There was an old cast-iron bath with sticky-out feet and peculiarly bulbous taps, a basin with a mirrored cupboard above it, and a lavatory with a wooden seat.

  “How is the water heated?” Dan asked.

  Katie smiled as she walked past them into the main room. “Ah, well, now that’s another thing. The stove does it all. The water, the radiators in the bathroom and the bedrooms, and, of course, the cooking too.”

  Dan was pleasantly impressed. “That sounds quite efficient.”

  “Quite,” said Katie, biting at her bottom lip. “The trouble is that the stove burns solid fuel.”

  “Oh yes,” Dan chuckled. “I remember now. It takes whole forests to feed it.”

  “Actually, it’s not that bad. It’s a bit of a pig to get started, but once it’s going well, you can close it right down and it just burns slowly.”

  “What about getting the wood?”

  “I’m sure there’ll be some logs in the lean-to at the back of the cottage, but if not, I can get Patrick to order you up a load.”

  She threaded her way through the three-piece suite and opened up a door at the east end of the cottage. “That’s one of the bedrooms. It’s got a double bed.” She opened the door next to it. “And there’s a single bed in there.” She turned to Dan and Josh. “That’s it, I’m afraid. Not quite the Ritz, but it’s all we have. What do you think?”

  Dan blew out a breath that was visible in the cold of the room. “Well, it’s the right size for us both.”

  Katie took that as a noncommitment. “I’m sorry. It’s not brilliant, is it? I suppose we could try and find some lodgings for you, but it’s just the dogs that—”

  “I think it’s great!” cut in Josh. He turned to his father. “Come on, Dad, it’ll do us all right.”

  “No, I wasn’t meaning . . .” He paused to get his words right. “Yes, it’s absolutely fine for us. We’ll get it cleaned up and heated in no time. It’s . . . perfect.”

  Katie’s eyes expressed relief. “That’s great, then!” She walked across to the kitchen sink, which was situated in front of the window nearest the stove, and opened up the cupboard beneath it. “There’s some cleaning stuff in there, and”—she got down on her hands and knees and put her head into the cupboard, and there was an immediate sound of trickling water above in the roof space—“that’s your water turned on.” She got to her feet and pulled open a door next to the stove. “And there’s a mop and bucket and a vacuum cleaner in there.”

  “Okay,” said Dan. “Just leave us to it, then.”

  “Would you mind if I did?” Katie asked. “I really have to make sure that Patrick’s all right before I go to work.”

  “Of course. We can easily cope here.”

  “Good. And then you must both come over to the house for lunch, say about half-past one? I think Patrick is pretty eager to take you into Seascape this afternoon, so maybe after that you could go to the supermarket in Fort William and buy some provisions for yourselves.” She turned to Josh. “I don’t know what plans you have, Josh, but Patrick said that, if you wanted, he could give you a job in the factory.”

  “Nice one!” replied Josh enthusiastically. “That would be sound.”

  “Right then. Well, best of luck and we’ll see you at lunch.”

  Having pulled the Saab up onto the side of the track to allow Katie to reverse down to the road, both Dan and Josh watched as she accelerated away, giving a short blast on the horn before disappearing around a bend in the road. Dan shot a sideways glance at Josh and snorted out a laugh. “Bit of a change of lifestyle, eh?”

  Josh turned and surveyed their new abode. “They should film us for the next episode of Survivor.” He let out a resigned sigh. “Co
uld be character-building, I suppose.”

  Dan reached over and pulled his son’s beanie down over his eyes. “I’m glad you came, Josh. I think I’d be near suicide by now if you hadn’t.” He gave him a macho slap on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get started.”

  As they walked up the track, Dan opened the back door of the Saab to let out the dogs. Cruise came out like a bullet and stood looking around, ears cocked and nosing the air, as if already getting himself in tune with the whereabouts of interesting females. No scent was carried on the chilly wind, so he lost interest and headed off to cock his leg against a large stone at the side of the track. Biggles, on the other hand, was reluctant to get out. After the long journey, and still not totally convinced that he wasn’t being taken back to the dog home, he regarded the car as his refuge. He lay on the backseat, feet skywards, with his upper lip curled back to give the best view of his curved white teeth.

  “All right, I’m not going to force you to get out,” Dan said, leaving the door open for him. “You just don’t know what you’re missing, though.”

  If there had been a passing stranger that morning inquisitive enough to find out who now dwelled in this remote cottage, it would have become immediately apparent to him that the new occupants had survived their years without once putting a match to an open fire. For an hour, Dan and Josh knelt in front of the stove, trying to coax some form of incendiary reaction from a six-month-old edition of the Press & Journal that they had found lining a cupboard, a roll of lavatory paper, five unpaid parking tickets issued by the London Borough of Chelsea (courtesy of the glove compartment of the Saab), a flier announcing the impending visit of a celebrated DJ called JamHamFister to Horace’s Inferno (plucked in desperation from the pocket of Josh’s parka), and a pile of damp twigs. It was the plastic sheaths on the parking tickets that eventually got it going, but the whoops of delight that met this monumental achievement immediately turned to choking coughs of asphyxiation as the damp chimney refused to draw away the dense blue smoke. Instead, it regurgitated it out, along with a good dollop of soot, into the joyous faces of Dan and Josh.