by Wendy Holden
She shook her head. ‘I never went.’
Mordor raised his eyebrows. ‘Never went to the varsity?’
Sandy slipped out ‘for more wine’ as Mordor pressed on with his questions. She seemed to take her time returning. It was when he got on to the topic of Laura’s journalistic intentions that Mordor became most obviously interested, as well as very dismissive.
‘So, Society thinks it can produce a puff piece that will sell this pile, does it? Just with a wave of its hand and a click of its fingers?’ He waved his own hand in its Shetland sleeve, and clicked his fingers, sending a bright gold flash from his signet ring. ‘Well, let me tell you, little girl, that this place is going to be one hell of a hard sell.’
He paused to draw breath, and Laura tried to get a protesting word in edgeways. He ignored her completely. ‘What was it that my good friend Boris Johnson said? “You can’t polish a turd!” How true. Spoken with the wit and wisdom of an OE. Statesmanlike. Well, Glenravish castle is a haunted turd, I tell you that for nothing, Miss…’ He paused to pretend to remember Laura’s surname, or, at least, to emphasise how common he found it ‘… Lake.’ And with that, Mordor stabbed a dumpling and stuffed the lot into his mouth.
Laura stared at him in surprise. He had changed from pleasant to poisonous with bewildering speed. Ever since Sandy had mentioned the Ponzi scheme he had been simmering with fury. But it was hardly her fault and there was no need to lash out at her job and the magazine in this way. She was trying to help Sandy, after all.
‘Sandy says it isn’t haunted,’ she said.
Mordor slammed down his glass and gave a hollow laugh. ‘In the words of the immortal Mandy Rice-Davies, she would say that, wouldn’t she?’
Laura was speechless in the face of such extraordinary ingratitude. Didn’t he want to help his cousin, on whose hospitality he seemed to be depending?
She cut in with her counterargument. ‘A positive piece in Society will drive up interest and increase the possibility of a sale.’
Torquil thumped the table. ‘Come on. You’ve noticed it. Lights going on and off. Phones never working. Plumbing like the bowels of an incontinent navvy. These spooks don’t like modern communications and conveniences. This place’ll never sell. No Wi-Fi and scared shitless – that’s not what the moneyed classes want. They want a good night’s sleep and seamless communication with the markets.’
‘I don’t agree,’ Laura began, but Mordor interrupted.
‘You journalists, you’re all the same,’ he thundered. ‘Unprincipled liars, arch-manipulators, grubby exploiters. Dabbling in the stuff of other people’s souls.’
Laura’s mouth fell open. She was the editor of a glossy magazine. The only other people’s soles she dabbled in were Manolo Blahniks and the like. She waited for an opportunity to interrupt, but none came. After raging against her profession for some minutes longer, Mordor slammed down his knife and fork and stormed out.
‘Well, he didn’t last long,’ Sandy remarked dryly as she re-entered the kitchen brandishing a 1967 Château de Chasselais. ‘His approach to dinner can be a bit functional. Goes back to his public-school days.’
‘Is that what it is?’ Laura thought of Harry, also public-school educated but who ate beautifully, even if mostly takeaways. A great pang of longing washed over her.
‘Oh yah. Stuffing down the carbs in competition with eight hundred other braying Hoorays doesn’t leave much room for manners.’
‘He didn’t seem to like journalists much,’ Laura said ruefully. Her ears were still ringing with the force of Mordor’s remarks. ‘He didn’t seem to think that the article was a good idea.’
‘No one’s asking him,’ Sandy said cheerfully. ‘Anyway – to business.’
‘Yes,’ said Laura. ‘I was wondering what else we might promote as part of the feature.’
‘Stalking,’ said Sandy, immediately.
Laura looked at her. ‘Isn’t that illegal?’
The blue-mascaraed lashes were wide with surprise. ‘Why would it be? Been a tradition up here since Queen Victoria.’
Laura stared. She hadn’t realised Queen Victoria followed people about without their permission.
‘Glenravish always used to be a sporting estate, got a game larder, the whole shebang. With the emphasis on bang, haw haw haw.’
Laura didn’t have a clue about country sports. She thought a game larder was where you kept the Scrabble. She waited for Sandy to enlighten her.
‘Stalking’s huge,’ barked Sandy. ‘People will pay a fortune to dress up in tweeds, walk for miles, get bitten to death by midges and soaked through by Scotch mist to get a squint at some poor stag that they take an ill-considered potshot at. They miss completely, but the stalker simultaneously fires and hits the beast bang in the engine room. Everyone’s happy. The guest pretends they’ve hit something, even if they couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo. And the stalker’s got one less stag to worry about.’
‘And this makes money?’ Laura could hardly believe it.
‘Damned right it does. I’m told you can charge a chunky six figures for a weekend’s stalking for a group of chinless wonders from the Square Mile. Better still, get some Russians. They pay in cash.’
‘You’re told?’ Laura stared. ‘You mean you haven’t done it, this stalking thing?’
‘Yes to the stalking, no to the charging,’ Sandy admitted.
‘But – why not?’
All Sandy’s bravado now seemed to escape her, like the air escaping a balloon with an eighties pie-crust collar. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Laura,’ she sighed. ‘Charging seems so vulgar, somehow. A kind of admission of defeat, that the great days are over and the estate can no longer wash its face without help.’
Laura was silent. She could see that this was indeed a kind of tragedy. A Chekhovian drama in which the grand old ways must submit to the new, like The Cherry Orchard. Or, in the case of Glenravish, The Haggis Orchard.
‘Anyway,’ Sandy concluded after a final philosophical swig of wine, ‘I’ve so many castle-creeping relatives like Mordor, queuing up to blag stalking for free, that I’ve never really set my mind to monetising it.’
*
Later, in the comfort of her cosy room, Laura collapsed finally and gratefully into bed. Despite her exhaustion, she felt triumphant and relieved. Glenravish was a wonderful subject, and with her new-found love for Scotland, she felt she could write any number of other pieces extolling the country’s virtues. She would deliver an issue so ravishing that advertisers would be queuing up to be in it.
Her only regret was that Harry was not here with her. Laura pictured them sailing down a silver loch together, or gazing out, hand in hand, over a heart-stopping view from the top of a just-climbed mountain. It was so easy to imagine them cooking sausages in a bothy while the rain rattled on the corrugated iron roof, or sitting on a beach and watching a magnificent sunset sink into the Scottish sea. Whatever he was angry with her about, Laura felt, for whatever reason he had stormed off, he would surely forgive her all in the blissful surroundings of the Highlands.
As she burrowed further down into bed, she realised she had left the light on. But then, suddenly, it went off. And on. And on and off again. The Frankenstein fizzing was back. Pop. Now everything was dark.
Odd. She had not noticed gaps in the windowpane. On the contrary, the room had felt warm and cosy. But now she could definitely feel a cold wind that had not been there before. And what was that moaning noise? That scratching? With a great flood of relief she realised it was just the sound of her eyelashes against the bedspread.
Laura turned over. And back again. Had she been asleep? In the gloaming she could make out the unfamiliar shapes of the furniture. Was that a hatstand? Or something, someone in the corner? She turned over again. More wind and whistling. Her eyes were open again. Was that a face at the window? Or the shape of dust? Then darkness, and troubled sleep. Laura began to dream.
Surrounded by heaps of shining sovereigns, M
ordor was presiding at a Macbeth-like banquet. By his side was Boris Johnson, egging him on as he swallowed gold coin after gold coin. Around the banqueting table were all the members of the McRavish clan, casting astonished and concerned glances at each other. Suddenly, at a vacant seat at the table, Sandy herself appeared as a ghost.
‘No, Mordor – you shall not inherit,’ she boomed. ‘I denounce you as a haunted turd!’
Mordor rose to his full height, emitting a blood-curdling scream. A blast of bagpipes sounded from the back of the great hall.
‘Aaaaaaah!’ Laura sat bolt upright in her bed. Thank God, it was morning! But what was that noise? Bagpipes? Real ones? Bagpipes were playing outside?
She popped her head out of the deep-silled window and, sure enough, a red-faced gentleman in a kilt was marching up and down beneath her window, blowing with cheeks distended to the size of footballs into something resembling a partially dismantled antique tartan Hoover.
Laura wanted to return to her bed and snatch a few minutes’ more sleep. But something about the haunting notes of the pipes had caught at her heart. Their sound rose into the air, yearning, sad, beautiful. It seemed to speak of troubles both past and present, longings and sorrows both endured and yet to come. It was powerfully moving and the listening Laura was surprised to feel the tears running down her cheeks.
Chapter Twenty-three
Going back to sleep after that was out of the question. She decided to get dressed and found, to her surprise, that the jeans she had torn on the gate the night before lay on a chair by the bed. They were not only mended, but cleaned and pressed.
Laura stared at them. She remembered the fear she had felt during the night; the intruder she had sensed in her room. It hadn’t been a ghost after all, but kindly Mrs MacRae, trying not to wake her up as she delivered her repaired trousers.
This put a whole new positive spin on things and Laura decided to go outside and explore the garden. She had only seen it by moonlight and needed a more thorough look for the purposes of the article.
She tiptoed down the corridor. There seemed to be no one about however; even Mrs MacRae seemed to be in bed. Laura pictured the rosy-cheeked housekeeper in a mob cap and nightgown, carrying a candle, like someone comforting in a nursery rhyme.
The passage widened out into the tartan-carpeted landing Laura remembered leading to the main staircase. Goody, her way out was now clear. Running lightly down the wide tartan treads she thanked her strong Anglo-French constitution, the French part especially, for her lack of a hangover. She must have consumed her own weight in wine last night, but with no ill effects, thank goodness.
She paused in the hall, glancing quickly at the weapons on the walls and wondering how long it had been since someone had seized them in earnest. Obviously, they got seized fairly frequently for the purposes of polishing; their sharp tips shone in the light blazing through the arrow-slit windows. It looked like a nice morning, Laura saw, approaching the door.
She had expected the vast arched entrance portal to be locked. But to her surprise a vertical line of light shone between the edge of the door and its surrounding lintel. It was, to use that strange English word, ajar.
Laura pushed it open and it swung easily back on its hinges. The sight before her was postcard-like in its perfection. Beneath a bright blue sky stretched a wide, bright green lawn, bordered with flower beds and overlooked by mature trees. It was surrounded on all sides by hills which ranged from gradual and green in the foreground to jagged purple mountains in the distance. Just visible between the far fringe of firs and tall Wellingtonias marking the garden’s boundary, was the bright flash of a silver loch.
Laura took a deep breath of the coolest, freshest air she had ever known. It smelt even better than it had the night before: grassy, sea-salty and with a silvery breath of rain. It had obviously been a wet night and the ground shone and sparkled brilliantly, each grass blade and leaf holding its own diamond drop. Laura moved forward, her boot heels sinking into the soggy gravel of the path, mesmerised by the beauty of it all.
Set against the wildness of its background, the garden was a vision of elegant order and serenity. There were urns, fountains, paved areas and a small round pond with putti in the middle, blowing tiny stone trumpets at the sky. Birds sang, hopped about the trees and bushes and poked inquisitive little beaks in the beautifully tidy flower beds with their cheerful plants, some of which seemed unexpected for somewhere this far north. There was bright calendula in shades from deepest orange to palest yellow, scented purple lavender and roses of all colours in full bloom, as well as flourishing tree ferns.
Beyond the flower beds was an orchard where a great number of apples were busily growing. Laura paused by the just-forming fruit to smell their faint, sweet scent. Walking on the carpet of thick grass between the tree trunks, she happily imagined Mrs MacRae making pies, jellies and crumbles in the autumn, using the polished copper containers. How beautiful it must be round here at that time of year, Laura thought, imagining the fiery shades of the trees, the auburn curl of the bracken, the sharp tang of woodsmoke in air chill enough to tweak the nose and numb the ears.
The orchard abutted the wall and Laura spotted the small garden gate she had shinned over the night before. It seemed like years ago now. The imprint of her bottom cheeks on the gravel had been raked smooth, and possibly the same early morning hand had opened the ironwork gate.
She walked through and, passing the station, walked along the road. It was clear that there had been a village here at some stage. There was a huddle of ruined bothies, a collapsed church and an eerily abandoned graveyard full of lichen-dappled granite headstones. It had a bleak romance to it, Laura thought, especially in the bright morning sun. There were bitterns and oystercatchers pecking around and gulls wheeling above.
Laura decided to walk down to the water. A small path led through the grass towards the loch. She followed it and was amazed to find, opening before her, not only a wide stretch of pinkish sand, but an uninterrupted view down the water. It seemed to lead directly to the sea.
Laura stared at it, transfixed for a few moments. The great mass of moving silver headed down to the rocky outline of some distant island. Its dancing glitter seemed to her the visual embodiment of absolute freedom. Over the waves the seagulls swooped and wheeled, cawed and cried, their wings brilliant white in the sunshine.
It was all so exhilarating and Laura took in another deep, happy lungful of briny air. On a sudden whim, she raised her arms. She flapped them like a seagull’s and ran around, laughing. Why not, no one was there to see her. She whirled and whooped, hair soaring behind her, fixing her eyes on the turning sky and the white clouds blowing across the blue. It was dizzying yet liberating, as if she was throwing off all the worries of the last few weeks and hurling her burdens into the sea.
When Laura paused for breath, the smell had changed. What had been seaweed, grass and rainfall had a distinctly different tinge now. It was smoky and fishy. It triggered a memory of the summer before; herself and Harry on a beach in Cornwall.
It was a bright warm breezy day and they were sailing on the sea off Sennen Cove in a tiny hired boat. The ocean air had kindled Laura’s never-long-dormant appetite and Harry, who seemed to be able to do anything, had obligingly hauled in a good number of mackerel using just a shoelace and a bag of crisps.
Then Laura, who had learnt to sail at school, piloted the boat into a tiny cove. Harry had leapt ashore with his fish, rummaged behind an outcrop of rocks and, within minutes, had got a small driftwood fire going. The taste of fresh mackerel, grilled in the open air and eaten perched on low rocks facing the sea had seemed to Laura then, and even more so now, as the very flavour of pure happiness.
Afterwards they had made love, over and over again. Kissing passionately and entirely naked, they had rolled over the warm sand and into the cool shock of the waves.
Laura’s entire body thrummed now with the memory. She could smell the same scent now, no doubt from s
ome village smokehouse, but so strongly did it bring back that magical meal that she felt all her exhilaration at the morning’s beauties evaporate. Standing on the wide pink sands, looking down the stretch of sea loch, Laura wished with every fibre of her being that Harry was with her. She missed him so much it made her ache.
She sniffed again. The smell was stronger and seemed closer than the village, wherever that was. Come to think of it, the only buildings round here Laura had seen belonged either to ScotRail or Sandy McRavish.
A strange prickling sensation now seized her neck. She turned and looked behind her.
The stretch of pink sand sloped up to the grass which bordered the road. Along it were a few old sheds and in front of one of them someone had pitched a small tent. They had built a small fire outside it and it was over this that the fish were grilling.
Laura narrowed her eyes. The occupant of the tent – a man – was outside and busy with cooking. It was too far away to see his face but there was something about his broad shoulders, tumble of dark hair and air of concentration that she recognised immediately. She took a deep breath. Her legs, which felt unsteady, pushed her on faster and faster and before long she was running, hair streaming behind her like a black flag. ‘Harry!’
He did not seem in the least surprised to see her. He raised his head, gave her the familiar amused-yet-assessing look, and returned his attention to the mackerel.
Spotting the shoelace and bag of crisps outside the tent, Laura recalled Harry jokingly telling her that he had been taught Special Forces survival techniques. But now she wondered how much of a joke it was, after all.
He was out of his suit, she noticed, and had on his old uniform of battered leather jacket, jeans and T-shirt. At times, this frequently unwashed trinity had tested her patience but now, looking at them, she felt a flood of affection.
His chin was stubbly; he had evidently not shaved for a few days. She preferred this look; like the leather jacket it reminded her of the old days. Days – or rather middle-of-nights – when he had appeared unexpectedly from some derring-do assignment, swinging by her flat before disappearing mysteriously in the dawn. Completing his return to Harry Mark One was the fact he had dark shadows under his eyes, suggesting lack of sleep.