A View to a Kilt

by Wendy Holden

  ‘Laird McBang,’ It was time to get the negotiations under way.

  He leant forward, eyes narrowed sexily, full lips thrust out, the glow of the strip lights accentuating his high cheekbones. ‘Call me Torquil,’ he murmured seductively.

  ‘Torquil… I am interested in the whole estate – how you say – lipstick barrel.’

  ‘Lock, stock and barrel?’

  ‘Loch, yes. And mountains.’

  ‘McBang’s Tables?’ The laird paused and lay down his spoon. ‘Now you really are talking. Those beauties don’t come cheap. For one thing, they are the home of the rare McBang Haggis. You know how to catch a haggis, of course?’

  Lulu neither knew nor cared; McBang, all the same, prepared to divest himself of the old canard. Foreigners always fell for it.

  ‘A haggis has four feet, and the two on the right are shorter than the two on the left. That means it always runs clockwise around the hill. All one has to do it walk anti-clockwise – et voila – you have the haggises coming towards you. If they turn and run, they simply topple over.’

  Lulu forced herself to take an interest. ‘Do haggis have skin like crocodile? Make leather for handbags?’ There might be something to be said for them if so.

  ‘No idea. Look, I can let you have the mountains and the peasant cottages for a hundred mil, do we have a deal?’ pressed McBang.

  Lulu hesitated. Despite a family history of bargaining people into the ground, she felt decidedly nervous about signing anything with this handsome but obviously unscrupulous man. Certainly without Vlad to advise her.

  She wished the butler would return. It was absolutely unprecedented for her not to come when expected. The terrible fear now started to form within Lulu that her devoted womanservant felt less devoted. Had the Scottish trip proved too much even for Vlad and had she, not to put too fine a point on it, left her service? The thought was too ghastly to be borne. Life without Vlad was simply unimaginable.

  Lulu could not stop herself getting up from the dining table and running to the window to see if the helicopter had left. It was hard to see in the murky gloom, exacerbated by the smoked glass of the windows. But a pale, helicopter-shaped shape seemed still to be out there on the multicoloured AstroTurf. Lulu felt relieved. Vlad must still be in the area.

  ‘Okay,’ McBang said, watching appreciatively as his guest/customer undulated back to the table. ‘I’ll throw in the disused abattoir. You drive a hard bargain, Lulu.’

  ‘What about restaurant? And toilets, including soap?’ Lulu tried hard to remember what the butler had told her.

  ‘Not the soap.’

  ‘Deal he is off then.’

  And so it went on until the arrival of the famous McBang Shortbread, again courtesy of Lidl, washed down with Auld McBang’s Throatscratcher single malt. This, at least, was the genuine article. Torquil’s father had sworn by it, especially after working through the best part of a bottle.

  Lulu was tired. Sitting here in the candlelight, with the clan chief breathing whisky fumes all over her whilst simultaneously trying to seduce her and get her to sign over vast amounts of money, was an exhausting experience. Perhaps, after all, she should just agree the deal and go to bed with him. He was very handsome, after all, and she had seen with her own eyes how well-equipped he was.

  She raised her chin and pointed her sunglasses at the laird. ‘Okay. I want see contract.’

  It seemed that McBang had been waiting for just such a cue. In a matter of seconds he had produced a vast vellum scroll, a nibbed ostrich feather and an inkwell. The ancient document was spread out on the black ash table, a prosecco bottle holding down each corner.

  Lulu squinted through the gloom at the convoluted, copperplate manuscript that adorned the calf skin. The words crossed her eyes and made her head spin…

  ‘… whereupon and forefoothbefaid that confideration in Scottifh banknotef, infomuchafwheretofore, on depofit at the Queenfferrie branch of the Firft Britifh Linen Bank… all vaffalf and chattelf and mountainef, foreftf, fervantf, retainerf, crofterf, fheepef, whilholme and notwithftanding thefaid contrarye claimef and hereby I, Lulu Fried, folemnly do fwear…’

  The document would have been unintelligible even to a seasoned Scots lawyer straight out of Kidnapped. Lulu didn’t stand a chance of understanding what she was signing. But by now she was so tired and bored she didn’t care.

  McBang thrust the elaborate quill into Lulu’s hand, the pitchy ink dripping from its nib. But even now, Lulu hesitated. Her father’s voice with its heavy Middle Eastern accent came back to her. ‘Be careful where you put your hands and your signature…’

  *

  The four-armed monster of Castle McBang was not quite what Vlad was expecting.

  For a start, it was two people, and not ghosts of starved former prisoners dressed in peasant rags either. The young men staring at Vlad from the other side of the bars were handsome, vigorous and in their early thirties. One was of tousled, agricultural appearance in a woolly Aran sweater offset by a Paisley neckerchief. The other was in full mountaineering gear, complete with rucksack and crampons.

  ‘May I assist you, gentlemen?’ Vlad enquired. Producing from her boot a standard issue Estonian infantry lock-picker, she made short work of the chains securing the gates.

  They rushed out immediately. ‘We’ve got to stop the sale!’ blurted out the one in the jumper.

  ‘The sale of the McBang estate?’ Vlad enquired. She felt slightly offended. Possibly it might have been nice to be thanked, considering she was freeing these people from a lingering death in the depths of an ancient prison. On the other hand, the buttling profession was not one for people who required a high level of personal appreciation.

  ‘It’s not his estate! That’s the point!’ the mountaineer type exclaimed. ‘He doesn’t own those mountains! Nor half of what he says he does!’

  ‘You are referring to the Laird of McBang?’ Vlad deduced.

  ‘Fraud of McBang, more like!’ expostulated the jumper. ‘He shut us up in here because he knew we’d blow the whistle on the sale. I’m a crofter and I’d lose my home and grazing.’

  ‘And I,’ declared the other, rattling his crampons for emphasis, ‘am a member of the mountaineering club. McBang’s Tables are not his to sell! Nothing is. He sold what belonged to him years ago.’

  Vlad looked from one to the other. ‘You have not told anyone? No one else knows this?’

  In the recesses of his sandy eyebrows, the crofter’s blue eyes bulged. ‘We’ve had Radio Scotland and the West Highland Free Press gagging to break the story.’

  ‘But gagging is the word! McBang has injuncted them up to the eyeballs!’ the mountaineer shouted, his agitation echoing round the tiny cell. ‘The McBangs have always seen themselves as above the law. It started with his father knocking the castle down, even though it was a Category A listed building. Sold the whole thing to some American who’s re-erected it in the Arizona desert.’

  ‘He was always desperate for cash,’ added the crofter. ‘Had a gambling habit the size of Skye, which Torquil’s inherited.’

  Vlad listened as the mountaineer described the catalogue of sometimes shocking ways McBang senior had attempted to exploit the local area. ‘Tried to stop the seal boat trips for the tourists last year so he could start exporting seal meat to a chain of Korean barbecue restaurants. He wanted to send the fur to upscale Moscow furriers.’

  ‘I see,’ said Vlad, who personally could not see what was wrong with this. Fur was very important in Eastern Europe. But there was no doubt the laird’s general behaviour was poor.

  ‘Then he had a business exporting “genuine Scottish midges”,’ the crofter continued.

  ‘But who would wish to buy midges?’

  The mountaineer indignantly explained. ‘McBang called it “A Breath Of Real Scotland”.’ His thinking was that people loved complaining about Scottish midges when they were hundreds of miles away at southern summer garden parties. It was what’s known in the tr
ade as a social indicator. People think that banging on about midges makes them posh because it makes it sound as if they’re familiar with vast Scottish estates.’

  This had the ring of truth to Vlad. She was by now familiar with the twisted snobbery of the British. The most surprising things were seen as posh. Bad teeth. Anchovy paste. Clothes that looked as if they had been buried in the garden. But midges, that was a new one.

  ‘So he supply midges? Send in post?’ she guessed.

  ‘Exactly. The finishing touch for any aspirational gathering. Simply uncork the phial of McBang’s Midges and – voila! – the genuine “bitten to death” experience.’

  ‘As for Torquil,’ the crofter added, ‘he’s got a terrible reputation with women. He’s known throughout the Highlands and Islands as “Jack Russell”. There isn’t a chair leg in Scotland that he won’t try to couple with.’

  Vlad thought of her mistress alone at the dinner table with this financially incontinent, morally reprehensible and sex-crazed monster. She looked decisively from one companion to the other. ‘Well, gentlemen. It appears we must act fast.’

  *

  Meanwhile, in The Boardroom, the strip lights were throwing into dreadful relief the veins standing out on Torquil McBang’s forehead. His eyes stared from his skull in crazed fashion. His mouth worked agitatedly, spittle gathering at its edges.

  Lulu stared at him. He had been so smooth, handsome and collected before. But now he was a terrifying McBang monster who could easily have given Scary Mary a run for her money. She would need all her ju-jitsu skills to deal with him. Thank goodness she had the lucky Macdonald corsets on.

  ‘Sign, you slutty foreign bitch!’ McBang hissed, his limited self-control now evaporated.

  ‘You don’t talk to me like that!’ Lulu picked up one of the prosecco bottles and thumped him with it at the exact same time the door to the dining room burst open.

  In rushed Vlad with her two companions. Lulu looked at them in appreciative surprise. One looked like a sexy farmer. The other was rocking more of a mountaineering vibe.

  ‘Don’t sign!’ they urged in unison. ‘Stop!’

  ‘It seems Mr McBang is a fraud, and doesn’t own everything he is trying to sell, madam,’ Vlad explained.

  Fifteen minutes later, McBang fled into the night, shaking his fist and vowing revenge as he slithered over the wet AstroTurf in his crested slippers. Lulu, Vlad and the two protestors then helped themselves to the rest of the prosecco and settled down to the all-important business of finding another estate for Lulu to buy. From the plastic folder hung around his neck the mountaineer produced an Ordnance Survey map. They spread it out over the black ash table in the place the near-fateful contract had just lain.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Sandy really need not worry, Laura thought. Glenravish Castle was going to make the most wonderful feature. In every room was some amazing historical surprise. It seemed as if everyone who was anyone had visited.

  The red knickerbockers and pixie boots had led her to a glass display case against a panelled oak wall. ‘Ye gartere of Mary, Queen of Scots’ read a label next to a small pile of material.

  ‘Wow,’ said Laura. The legendary and tragic monarch formed a point where British history met that of her native land. Mary had been Queen of France once.

  Scotland’s dramatic and romantic past formed the perfect fit with its landscape. And while she could understand why Sandy wanted to leave, Laura was now thinking again that the transient pleasures of London were nothing compared with the eternal beauties of the country north of the Border. And in particular this ravishing, fascinating building. If she could afford it, she would buy Glenravish herself. But that was never going to happen. Not even if she got 200 per cent advertising for Society.

  ‘When did Mary come here?’ she asked, thinking that images of the ill-fated queen would be great for the feature, give it real historical depth. There were some wonderful portraits of Mary looking elegant and tragic in a black gown with a high ruff and a long pearl necklace with a cross at the end. She had been a religious martyr, ultimately.

  ‘A three-night break in the 1560s. Worked her way through most of the estate farmhands. Mary, Queen of Shags, more like. Hwah hwah hwah,’ brayed Sandy.

  Laura’s eyes widened. On the other hand, sex definitely sold and that angle on Mary was probably as good as any. She wondered what other great Scottish heroines had visited Glenravish.

  ‘How about Flora MacDonald?’ she asked.

  The sprayed wings of hair remained rigid as Sandy shook her head. ‘We’re practically the only house in Scotland that doesn’t have a piece of her, hwah hwah hwah. Bloody woman left hair, shoes and underwear scattered everywhere from the Western Isles downwards. Hwah hwah hwah.’

  Pity, thought Laura, staring into the next case. It contained what looked like a small, moth-eaten handbag with a series of mechanical ratchets and barrels. ‘And this is…?’

  ‘Rob Roy’s exploding sporran!’ Through the rings of blue mascara, Sandy’s eyes lit up. ‘Pure genius. Like all great leaders, he was paranoid and lived in constant fear of assassination. This little devil could be operated from a lever on his belt and take out any unexpected assailant with a surprise round of ordnance delivered straight from the gentleman’s area.’

  ‘Goodness,’ said Laura. It sounded like a Jacobite version of James Bond’s Q. This sent her thoughts inevitably to Caspar, who had so recently lost the 007 job. She really should give him a ring, see how he was coping.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t all goodness, actually,’ Sandy was saying. ‘There was a slight risk of backfire, and many of the prototypes left their wearers a bit short in the meat and two veg department.’

  Laura was speechless. Her hostess had moved on, however.

  ‘And this mighty drinking horn is the Auld Stonker of Glenravish.’ Sandy held out a four-foot long polished and twisted Highland cow horn with exquisitely worked Celtic silver trimmings. ‘Holds six bottles of claret. The new laird has to drain it in one on assuming the title. No problem with that for me. Though I did feel a little liverish afterwards. Hwah hwah hwah!’

  Sandy swept them along further expanses of tartan carpet in a range of lurid colours, one a shocking orange. ‘Dress McRavish, worst tartan in all of Scotland, worse even than the McBangs. But you have to stick with what you’re given. Clan tartans are all a Victorian invention anyway.’

  ‘Are they?’ Laura was surprised.

  ‘Oh yes. Victoria and Albert were mad about tartans As were the Hanoverians, which is ironic, really. Butcher Cumberland was well known for chasing down and slaughtering any poor fleeing Jacobite with so much as a fleck of check about their person after Culloden.’

  Laura wasn’t entirely sure what she was talking about, but the mention of slaughter reminded her of the castle’s creepier side. How much did Sandy know about the ghosts, really?

  She resolved to try again. ‘So, with all these historical artefacts, the history and so on, don’t you feel sometimes that Glenravish is – well – haunted?’

  ‘No, my dear, not in the least. Not seen so much as a smidgeon of a spook the whole time I’ve lived here.’

  Laura wasn’t so sure. Sandy seemed less relaxed in her denials than she had been over her Glenravish anecdotes. Those had spilled out spontaneously, full of warmth and colour.

  But now, and rather abruptly it seemed, the tour was over. Laura now found herself in a kitchen straight out of Upstairs, Downstairs. There were wheelback chairs at one end of a huge pine table and lots of oak cupboards and shelves on which copper pans of all sizes and shapes, including fish moulds for salmon mousse, were displayed in all their well-polished glory. A comforting wave of heat radiated from the venerable deep green Aga.

  ‘My cousin Mordor,’ honked Sandy, waving at a man sitting at the end of the table. Despite the late hour – it must be the middle of the night – he was demolishing what was left of the venison stew. Laura, now stone-cold sober, quickly took in the
details of his appearance.

  It resembled Sandy’s quite closely, although naturally minus the heart-attack lipstick, blue mascara and nuclear blusher. Mordor too was delicately built, with a narrow, thin-featured face He had fair hair, blue eyes and very smooth skin with pink cheeks. He looked, Laura thought, rather angelic.

  It was hard to say whether Mordor thought he was living in the 1980s as well, however. Country casual clothes for upper-class men had not changed over the past forty years and Laura was unable to guess whether the graph-paper flannel shirt, red cords and beige Shetland jumper were contemporary or from the time of leg warmers and ra-ra skirts.

  ‘Charmed I’m sure.’ He leapt to his feet and extended his hand. ‘Mordor McRavish, delighted to meet you.’ He then treated Laura to a dazzling smile.

  ‘Mordor’s the poor relation,’ honked Sandy with what Laura now recognised as characteristic directness. ‘Lorst everything on some bloody Ponzi scheme, the muppet,’ she added good-naturedly. ‘Now he lives up the glen in a bungalow. All mod cons, though. He’s even got a microwave.’

  Laura felt uncomfortable. Mordor’s smile had disappeared instantly. A frigid atmosphere now filled the kitchen, despite the warmth of the Aga. Perhaps Sandy realised her mistake because she hardly spoke while her cousin asked Laura a stream of questions.

  Most of them were very personal; why, Laura wondered, was Mordor quizzing her so closely about her background? It was a no-holds-barred social impact assessment and as such took her straight back to boarding school. There, the more snobbish girls would ask similar things to this to work out how rich and important she was.

  ‘So what did your father do?’

  ‘He was a war reporter.’

  ‘Did he buy his own furniture?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Laura had never heard her father ever mention furniture. So far as he was concerned, it was just something to sit on and hold up his typewriter.

  ‘Where did you go to school?’

  Laura told him.

  ‘And university?’