by Wendy Holden
‘Why did you leave me in London?’ she demanded. ‘I was worried sick. And really hurt. How could you do that to me?’
Harry looked down. ‘Had some things to think about,’ he muttered into the collar of his leather jacket.
Laura said nothing. She was calculating the risks of continuing this conversation, which might yet reveal something – or maybe someone – she did not wish to know about. But surely he was here because of her – this could not be a coincidence.
He loved her after all!
And she loved him, and forgave him everything. All their past disagreements meant nothing. If he wanted to live in a glass block shaped like a fork rather than down among the hipsters with their craft gins and vegetable box delivery services, then so be it. She would live anywhere he wanted; here on this beach if necessary.
Actually, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. The morning view down the loch would be bliss. She glanced at the tent; small but cosy. They would keep each other warm.
She slid a nervous look at Harry; did he still want her, though?
His handsome face gave nothing away. But she felt encouraged by the fact that he now passed her a couple of the mackerel laid out on a battered tin plate.
Their hands touched as he handed the plate over and the remembered thrill of what those hands could do sent a shudder of pleasure through her. She tried to concentrate on the fish, admiring their brown and crispy skin; cooked to a turn, and sniffed the savoury scent rising from the firm, oily flesh beneath. ‘Is this a peace offering?’ she asked, giving him her sexiest smile.
‘No,’ said Harry, shortly, chewing rapidly.
Despair swept Laura. So he had found someone else. The urge to abandon the meal and walk off briefly seized her. But it smelt so delicious and she had no idea what the breakfast arrangements at Glenravish were. She had a vague memory of Sandy saying something about it but it was all lost in a fog of drink. Come to think of it, Sandy had been full of plans for today, not that Laura could remember any.
Her head was feeling a familiar tightness now; perhaps she had not escaped the hangover after all. It might just be starting, in fact.
The bright sun above now slipped behind a cloud, echoing Laura’s feeling that the day, which had seemed to full of promise, was now taking a distinctly downward slide. ‘Not a peace offering, no,’ Harry said, shoving his empty plate aside, wiping his mouth with a scrunched handkerchief and reaching for her. ‘My feelings towards you are not remotely peaceful. Come into my tent, Laura Lake. There’s something I need to discuss with you.’
Half an hour later, tousled, panting and thoroughly ravished, Laura lay on Harry’s scrunched nylon sleeping bag, completely fulfilled and happy. Was there any better feeling than the warmth of Harry’s skin against hers, any better sight than his wide, dark, always-unfathomable gaze?
‘I’m not letting you go ever again,’ she said fervently.
‘You’ll have to,’ Harry rolled on to his back. ‘I’ve got to skedaddle.’
Dismay seized Laura. ‘But where? Didn’t you come here to see me?’
He grinned. ‘I’d love to say yes, but not exactly.’
‘You mean,’ Laura frowned, ‘you’re here on an investigation?’
‘You may think so, I couldn’t possibly comment.’
Laura punched him. Her headache was ebbing back. Their passionate reunion had shot it into the middle of the sun, but only temporarily, it now seemed. She gave a hollow groan. ‘I think I’d better go back to the castle and lie down.’
‘No chance of that, I’m afraid. You’re going stalking. Witnessing one of the estate’s prized assets from a recreational perspective.’
If she tried really hard, Laura could just about remember something being said about this. She was to go deer-hunting with Struan, who was apparently the estate gamekeeper, ‘on the hill’.
Whichever hill that was. Hopefully one of the smaller ones. ‘But how do you know?’ she asked Harry.
‘I know everything. Now put your clothes back on. I’ll see you in London.’
Chapter Twenty-four
Laura tottered back across the road, trying to force the gathering headache away. She felt surprisingly optimistic, even so. Stalking – no problem. Bring it on. The knowledge that she and Harry were together again was so glorious she could have happily gone bog-snorkelling on the strength of it.
She returned to her bedroom to discover that Mrs MacRae had been in again. Her bed was made, a bath was drawn and a set of unfamiliar clothes was laid out on the bed. This was what it must be like to be Prince Charles.
The clothes – a tweed suit – were presumably for stalking in, and presumably belonged to Sandy. They undoubtedly dated from the eighties; Laura smiled to see the knickerbockers. But breeches were sensible for terrain with long grass, and the suit was otherwise plain and perfectly cut. The tweed was a pale green and the jacket fitted beautifully over the warm flannel shirt. Laura pulled on the socks, laced up the boots and admired herself in the mirror. The effect was surprisingly stylish; memo to Raisy and Daisy, Laura thought. There were endless companies specialising in high-end country wear and potentially lots of advertising on the back of a tweedy fashion shoot.
Feeling for once perfectly dressed for her baronial surroundings, Laura descended to the kitchen, looking forward to its familiarity. To her dismay, it was full of unfamiliar people standing up eating porridge out of wooden bowls.
‘Good morning, darling,’ Sandy greeted her. She was in a white pie-crust collar blouse this morning, teamed with a flower-print Laura Ashley skirt and patent flats. Her hair was tonged out as usual and already clearly the beneficiary of a torpedo-sized can of hairspray. ‘How did you sleep?’
It seemed to Laura that the room went rather still at this, almost expectant. There was, of course, only one polite answer. ‘Fantastically, thank you!’
‘Super. Now, let me introduce you to the estate “team”,’ honked Sandy. ‘Now, we have Wee Archie, Big Kenny, Fat Ishbel, Young Tommy, Big Oonagh…’ She reeled off a series of monikers, none of which Laura felt she would remember, especially as their different shapes, sizes and sexes weren’t necessarily reflected in the listed nicknames. Presumably, particularly in the case of the noticeably wizened Young Tommy, they had been given to them some years ago.
Still, they seemed a friendly enough bunch as they all stood around beaming at her and Sandy, who seemed preoccupied with the stalking trip.
‘Mrs MacRae is just making the cold herring baps for you to take up on the hill. There’s some lovely hard Granny Smiths too – nice and acid just as I like them. And we’re reusing old Highland Spring water bottles with estate water for drinking – that’s why it looks a bit brown – no, it’s not whisky – hwah hwah hwah!’
As the kitchen rang with Sandy’s braying laughter, Laura’s stomach wrenched in anticipation of such short commons.
There was a quick knock at the kitchen door followed by the apparition of a further member of Glenravish’s extensive dramatis personae. A red-faced, friendly, yet forceful-looking man in his late forties extended a palm the size of a baseball glove.
Sandy beamed from him to Laura. ‘And this is Struan – Mr MacRae – who is going to take you up the Hill.’
Eyebrows as bushy as the heather itself sat atop his deep country-green eyes. His tanned, rounded head was the size of a large football. There was something of the friendly troll about him. Something scary that might appear from under a bridge and then offer you a biscuit, Laura thought.
‘Hellooo, Miss Laura,’ he boomed. ‘Looking forward to the stalk – uh-huh?’
Struan’s speech, Laura discovered, was continuously punctuated with the indeterminate word-particle ‘uh-huh’, which seemed an attempt to bridge the linguistic gap between his heavily accented Scots English and the interlocutor straining to understand him.
‘Well, um, yes,’ Laura said doubtfully.
‘That’s the spirit, uh-huh,’ Struan beamed. ‘Come with me, Miss
Laura – we’ll choose you a gun – uh-huh?’
‘What, off the wall?’ Laura asked in disbelief a few minutes later. She found it hard to believe that any of the ancient shooting gear clamped to the sides of Glenravish’s hall could be deployed without a serious risk of annihilating anyone and everything within a fifty-yard and 360-degree radius of its lethal discharge.
Struan seemed not to hear. He was looking at the antique ordnance assessingly. ‘How do ye fancy this beastie? An Auld Jacobite musket. The “Bollock-Splitter” they used to call it – no need to tell you why, uh-huh, uh-huh.’
Struan handed Laura what was actually quite a beautiful piece. A fluted butt had a cheerful hunting scene carved in primitive relief on it. The flintlock mechanism was entirely exposed and had a Heath-Robinsonian logic to it.
Laura handled the gun with a comfort and aplomb that seemed to surprise Struan. ‘Ye’ve used a gun before have ye, Miss Laura, uh-huh?’
Laura smiled at him and nodded.
She was remembering a scene from her childhood. It was Saturday night in the tiny kitchen of their Montmartre flat. There was a single lamp light on the table where her grandmother Mimi was taking a Schmeisser submachine gun to pieces and challenging Laura to put it together again. It was, to the old Resistance heroine’s mind, a more useful pursuit than Scrabble or cards. The weighty German weapon had, Mimi told Laura, been prised from the cold, dead hands of an SS NCO in the rue de Rivoli during La Liberation de Paris.
Laura decided not to mention all this to Struan.
‘Just show me how it works and we’ll get on fine,’ she said.
‘Right ye are, Miss Laura, uh-huh.’
They headed outside and bumped into Sandy. She had shrugged on an oversized green mac which blew about in the wind, although her hair remained absolutely rigid.
‘Well, Laura, good luck on the hill. I’m sure you’ll be a natural and bag a stag to make us all proud,’ she barked.
Laura had not been expecting such ceremony. The entire estate staff seemed to have mustered by the castle entrance to wish them off and Laura and Struan marched over to the green Land Rover Defender. They strapped their arsenal carefully in the jeep, and set off up the estate track.
Struan began the bumpy ride chattering away about different aspects of the estate’s management, landscape and wildlife. It was clear that he cared deeply about keeping Glenravish’s majestic natural setting. Laura got out the trusty notebook and pencil she still preferred to any number of gadgets and prepared to ask him some questions about himself. Presumably as a local boy Glenravish ran in his blood as the crystal streams ran down the mountainside. He had been nursed by the winds and schooled by the changing seasons. He had learnt to fish and stalk at his father’s knee. ‘So,’ began Laura.
But at the exact same time Struan had turned to her: ‘So, what’s brought you up here, Miss Laura?’
While the question was direct, it was asked in a friendly fashion. Laura didn’t feel any hesitation in taking him into her confidence.
‘I want to promote Glenravish in my magazine so Sandy can finally sell it,’ she explained.
The Defender’s differential lock and low gears ground noisily.
‘What’s that, eh? Jelly? Uh-huh. Och, yes, my Grizelle’s a fine cook. Those baps are tasty and she makes a fine cranachan.’
‘Not jelly. Selling.’
Struan dropped a gear, and the Land Rover growled. ‘Melons? Aye, they make a fine starter before a roast saddle of venison.’
Laura took a deep breath. ‘I’M TRYING TO HELP SANDY SELL THE CASTLE!’ she boomed.
The keeper gave her a warm appreciative smile as if to say ‘thank you’.
Land Rover ads? Laura wrote in her notebook. Until the engine stopped, she was clearly going to get nothing out of Struan.
The rough, unmetalled track rose steadily up into the hills. After about four miles, the keeper pulled up outside a primitive-looking, corrugated iron-roofed building set at the head of the glen.
‘That’s the bothy. We’ll stop for tea and then we’ll walk from here.’
Inside the small building, Struan fired up the gas cooker and clattered a huge aluminium kettle on. Laura was surprised that, in what was essentially a wooden hut, there could be such a sense of cosy calm. In the centre of the kitchen-cum-sitting room, sat a seasoned pine table and chairs. Comfy old sofas and armchairs were arranged around the walls, draped in tasteful grey and tan tartan rugs. The walls were decked with Ordnance Survey maps of the estates, one for each year, mounted on cork boards with map pins showing where a stag or deer had been shot that year. A barren sixties was followed by absolute carnage in the seventies, it seemed.
Struan talked her through the topography of the estate, pointed out the location of the best views, the windiest reaches and the most dangerous bogs. Laura made copious notes, reassured that he was going to such trouble, giving her all the detail she needed to keep her safe.
The tea finished, they quit the bothy and set off on foot towards their quarry. As they headed up the hill, Laura discovered terrain that looked soft and velvety from a distance, mottled dark green, purple and grey, was anything but easy-going. It was full of dangers: long, sharp grasses, pitfalls, small, knee-deep black pools, huge boulders. To round it all off nicely, the notorious midges were closing in.
Struan handed Laura a small, pink plastic bottle as she scratched. ‘Here, use this, lassie.’
The label said Skin So Soft. It was made by Avon.
‘As used by the Royal Marine Commandos,’ Struan supplied. ‘It’s the only thing that’ll keep the beasties off ye!’
Another take on the idea of ‘going commando’, Laura thought as she sprayed the fine mist into her hand and wiped the pungent oil onto any exposed skin. The fragrance was pronounced, to say the least. But it seemed to work like a dream. The wee insects which had previously been invading everything including her ears and nostrils now kept a respectful distance. Laura made a mental note for the beauty editor, as well as Harriet. Avon needed to take a couple of pages of advertising at least.
Struan was issuing instructions. ‘Over the next hill the glen divides. I’ll swing right and you swing left into the small glen and we’ll regroup at the brow two miles or so up ahead. We can compare notes on where there’s deer. Keep on the firm ground and away from the black pools – they’ll suck you in right enough. Unless you see a duckboard – step away!’
The bollock-splitter slung over her shoulder, Laura headed off as instructed, turning occasionally until she saw Struan disappear into a dot against the horizon.
She was trying hard to see where the ‘fun’ was in all of this; why people bothered to do it. The landscape was beautiful, sure enough. The air came in fresh lungfuls. The exercise was bracing. But you couldn’t call it sybaritic. Would that be a good beginning to her piece? Laura wondered.
The weather had changed, too. The sunny skies of morning had turned an angry leaden colour. A spitting rain began to cast itself in malign grey curtains across the land. It was becoming difficult to see the way ahead, or match her surrounding to the tattered map Struan had handed her.
A thought flashed across Laura’s mind. If Struan was such an expert in the ways of the wild, and of the estate’s moods and humours, why had he brought her, a neophyte, up here today? The conditions were becoming appalling and the chances of spotting a deer seemed more than remote.
She entered her ‘small glen’, as Struan had called it. Or perhaps it was different one. It was hard to tell in the rain. The landscape looked huge and daunting. She was the only living thing in it. Or was she? Just then, following a flicker at the corner or her eye, she swung right. There on the crest was a majestic stag straight out of Landseer.
Remembering to count the points, as Struan had earlier counselled her, she got to eight on the left antler and nine on the right.
Engrossed, she slipped and found her left boot up to the ankle in one of the small black pools Struan had warned her abo
ut. Using the bollock-splitter as a lever, she managed to extract her foot. But not the boot, which was now lost to the pitchy mire.
‘One boot or barefoot?’ Laura mused crossly. She’d look a fool and suffer either way.
She opted for the barefoot option. It wasn’t cold – yet – and it would give her an even gait, which was crucial with the Jacobite musket piece now weighing her down. She felt that she probably really did look like a member of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s benighted band of brothers shambling towards their engagement at Culloden with Butcher Cumberland.
Ahead, she sighted a duckboard track across a stretch of the blackest bog. Despite the unpromising surroundings, this seemed far and away the best bet, especially as she was now pieds nus.
The stag had disappeared, but progress was good, and she was even beginning to look forward to her cold herring bap. Then there was a dull crack beneath her and, before she knew it, she was waist deep in black peaty water, the duckboards beyond her grasp. Laura sought to paddle her feet, but there was nothing beneath them, and the more she paddled the more she sank.
‘HELP!’ she cried, but all that came in return was a mocking echo from either side of the glen, which now appeared like more of an enclosed bowl than an open space. Struan would never hear her above the wind and the rain, wherever he was.
So, this was it, Laura thought. She was going to drown in a peaty pool, miles from anywhere, on a forgotten Scottish moor, and all because she was trying to save Society magazine and the jobs of her colleagues, not to mention her own.
‘Bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger…’ Tailing off, Laura’s tears melted with the Highland rain running down her cheeks. She thought of Harry, a mere few miles away on the beach at the lochside. ‘HARRY!’ she screamed, praying that somehow her words would be taken to him on the wind. But the air was buffeting in the other direction and, besides, he was probably long packed up and gone now.