by Henry Sands
The thought of meeting again, and having to make polite conversation, mostly filled him with dread, though these feelings were undeniably coupled with a small element of excitement too, at the thought of meeting her properly rather than with her squatting on the loo, or stretching her bottom into the air close to his head during her accomplished Downward Dog.
Ultimately, he needn’t have worried himself. When the class was called to an end, Leonardo instructed them all to lie on their backs, stretch their legs down as far as they could go, open the palms of their hands and relax until they were ready to start the day.
With the sound of waves behind him, and the gentle music playing from the speakers, Anthony found himself forgetting about the concerns dashing around his head. He let his mind drift off, until he was once again asleep.
He woke to Leonardo whispering next to him, ‘Wake up, Anthony,’ in a tone that suggested he had been repeating this for a little while now.
When he sat up, the rest of the class, including the woman in green, had gone, and their mats had been rolled up at the back of the deck.
‘I thought I’d let you doze for a bit,’ Leonardo said. ‘You were only out for about ten minutes, but it’s good for the mind to switch off after our classes.’
‘God, sorry about that. And thanks. Feeling good now, I must say. You know, relaxed. I can’t believe how quickly the week’s passing by.’
‘That’s what Tulum is for, Anthony. To switch off completely and find parts of yourself that you’ve buried for many years. It’s a release. Just go with it. The earth’s calling for you. Mother Nature has her plan for all of us.’
Being unsure of what he was meant to make of Leonardo’s words of wisdom, he nodded and muttered something along the lines of, ‘Yes. Yes, quite.’
Leonardo rolled up Anthony’s yoga mat for him. Anthony thanked him and then headed back towards the yurt. As he reached the sand, Leonardo called out after him, ‘Remember, Anthony, throw yourself into your surroundings wholeheartedly. Love Mother Nature. Love yourself.’
Anthony assumed he was just shouting random words at him by the end, but he had enjoyed his yoga class, even if his mind was now racing again at the thought of the woman in green.
When he got to the yurt, he found Lucinda sitting up in bed reading her book. She read all of Margaret Attwood’s books. This one was called Hagseed, and was about a former theatre director who had reinvented himself as a Shakespeare teacher in one of Canada’s toughest male prisons. Not Anthony’s choice of holiday reading, but each to their own, he thought.
Lucinda had always read a lot, particularly since Sophie and Jack had been at school. She especially liked novels that had some sort of historical factual element to them, as it allowed her to believe there was an additional educational purpose to reading the book, rather than being purely for pleasure.
‘Ah, welcome back, my spiritual guru. Did you find enlightenment, darling?’ Lucinda asked, teasing him.
‘Well, not quite, but I do feel it’s helped me stretch my back out. And I rather fell asleep by mistake at the end.’
‘Asleep? Is that what you’re meant to be doing? You could have just slept here in the bed. By your standards, I’ve been doing a morning yoga class too.’
- Chapter Ten -
Glen Clova, Scotland
There was something about the vastness of Glen Clova that Sophie fell in love with straight away. She remembered the first time she went to visit Harry there and was blown away by the dramatic, raw landscape, starting shortly after turning off the A90 on the way out of the increasingly cosmopolitan City of Dundee.
On hitting the lanes off the main road, she found herself being immediately catapulted into open countryside, as they meandered their way down country lanes and crossed babbling brooks. Hidden away in the low ground before reaching the Glens, she just caught sight of the magical castle of Glamis, where the Queen Mother was born, before the lanes and the surrounding scenery gradually gained elevation.
On the higher ground, the open grazing land soon became more dramatic as they left the town of Kirriemuir and headed into the Cairngorms National Park.
The last of the already limited phone signal then disappeared, and the lanes became narrower as the road weaved around and over the cascading rivers coming off the top of the hills above.
On the last turning, signposted towards Glen Clova, Sophie gazed at the basin of the rising jagged rocks and moorland high in the distance. The road, which turned into a track, then ran along the River Clova.
On either side of the road, high up on the rock face, she saw waterfalls cascading down, eventually making their way into the river.
Harry’s father, Nigel, had bought the 7,000-acre Brottal Estate after selling his Hertfordshire-based manufacturing business in the 80s. Having always wanted to live surrounded by the Highlands of Scotland, Brottal offered everything he dreamt of, even if his wife, Alison, had been less than enthusiastic initially.
She liked the proximity to London that their comfortable home just outside St Alban’s had afforded them, and couldn’t understand why Nigel, who she had known since school, now suddenly wanted to pack up and get as far away from London as possible, just when they had all the money they needed to enjoy it. But, like her husband, Alison soon fell in love with Glen Clova and the outdoor lifestyle they had there. And when she did need to go to the city, she found Edinburgh had everything she loved about London, only without quite so many people.
On the farming side, they had sheep and cattle, which more or less looked after themselves, but what Harry was most interested in now was building Brottal as a tourist destination. In the last five years, he had overseen the development of half a dozen self-catering wooden cabins built around the lower woodland area, a few hundred metres from the house and overlooking the river.
The trick was to ensure you could get as many of these cabins in the woods without compromising on the solitude and experience of being immersed in nature that drew people to the area. There was a host of activities for guests to enjoy, but simple, long walks around the surrounding hills proved to be the most popular.
In fact, ever since Visit Scotland launched their “Munro Bagging” campaign to bring more visitors to this part of the country, the area had become a popular destination for hill walkers. The term referred to climbing a hill that was higher than 3,000 feet, and of which there were said to be 282 in Scotland. There were three significant Munros in the vicinity of the cabins at Brottal, and a fourth if you included the one upon which Harry had erected a 12-foot viewing platform, just to push the elevation over the 3,000-foot marker.
Those people that successfully summited all 282 Munros called themselves “Munroists”, and were granted entry into a highly exclusive hill walking club. Harry never quite understood the mindset of those chasing the Munroist title, but was grateful for their business nonetheless. For him, the landscape could never be considered a challenge to conquer, but instead a privilege to experience. Every time he climbed the hills above his house, he noticed something different about the dramatic landscape. It was just a case of being there, in the moment, that he appreciated so much. Not the head-down focus with which many of the walkers he met took to the hills.
Saturday was handover day, and Sophie walked with Harry around the cabins to check they were all being turned around okay. Seeing the small but comfortable cabins having their sheets changed, she wondered how her mother and stepfather were getting on in their Mexican yurt.
She pulled out her phone and logged on to the cabins’ WIFI network – essential for all guests, even those who wanted solitude, Harry would regularly tell her. The “ping, ping, ping” of her WhatsApp notifications came through, the majority of which were for a hen party group she had been added to a couple of months ago. Long since the event, a couple of girls in the group continued to send pictures of their similar-looking dachshund puppies, a
ssuming everyone wanted to be kept up to date with their latest canine activities. Sophie, however, wasn’t interested in the slightest as she watched with some irritation as more of the limited data from Brottal WIFI satellite drained away.
*
After they had finished checking the cabins, Harry suggested a walk up the hill behind the house, to catch the sunset coming in. It was a brisk, clear day, and the sun was coming down the valley. From the top of the hill, there was a small bothy hut they regularly liked to visit, from which they had the best view of the setting sun throughout the year.
When they arrived at the hut, Sophie was surprised to find the wood burner was already lit, as if someone had been in there already.
‘I thought it might be a bit chilly, so asked Malcolm to get this lit up for us a while ago,’ Harry said, sensing Sophie’s confusion. Malcolm was one of his farmworkers who managed and maintained the bothies on the estate.
There were a couple of large cashmere blankets that had been woven at a nearby mill used for sitting on the bench on the edge of the hut. Sophie took her usual spot, and Harry wrapped her up in one blanket and used the other one to cover her legs.
Once Sophie was bundled up, Harry went back inside and grabbed the bottle of Pol Roger vintage Champagne he had been saving since it had been given to him for a 21st birthday present, which he had asked Malcolm to hide in the fridge. Next to the bottle there were a couple of silver tankards, which worked well for ensuring its contents stayed cool, as if an evening in Scotland in January hadn’t already taken care of that.
When Harry returned with the bottle, and poured Sophie a tankard full of Champagne, she asked him whether he was trying to raise the standards of their Brottal sundowners, which in the past had been either a cold can of Tennent’s lager, or a swig of single malt whisky from a flask.
Harry sat down next to her on the bench and reached his long arm around her, pulling her in tight next to him. They clinked their tankards and watched the sun set behind the valley in front of them.
Harry kissed Sophie’s forehead, and then, without any sign of nervousness or hesitation, said softly, ‘Sophie Morley, will you marry me?’
Out of the pocket of his bulky green jacket, Harry pulled a little brown leather box, in which was the diamond-encrusted sapphire ring that he had had made for Sophie. It was an exact copy of the ring Sophie’s father, David, had given her mother and which he’d seen from photographs at Ferryman’s when he’d stayed there in the past. He had given the photographs to a friend who had become a self-taught jeweller, and he replicated it almost exactly in his studio behind Victoria Station.
Sophie recognised the ring immediately and was close to allowing her emotions get the better of her, before she composed herself. Keeping it together, just, she responded coolly,
‘Are you not even going to get on one knee?’
‘Do I have to? It’s just that we’re on a moor and that’s bog we’re sitting on.’
‘Yes, Harry, I think you ought to,’ Sophie giggled.
Harry got off the bench and onto his knee. He asked again.
‘Of course I will,’ Sophie smiled back at him. It was the proposal she had wanted, in a place that was incredibly special to her, by the man she knew she would spend the rest of her life with.
Sophie leant forward and kissed Harry, before throwing her arms around him tightly and resting her head against his muscular shoulder. They stayed like that for a full minute. ‘Nothing could give me more pleasure in life than the thought of you being my wife,’ Harry whispered into her ear.
A single tear of joy trickled down from her left eye as she kissed him again.
The sun had completely disappeared by the time they had finished their drinks, and the temperature began to plummet. They went back into the bothy to huddle by the wood burner, agreeing to tell their families that day, but waiting a few days before they let their friends know.
Sophie suggested that they took a selfie which could serve as a memory of that happy moment. By the time they took the photo, though, the light had all but disappeared, and what had meant to be a photo capturing their joy in fact looked like a strange silhouette of a couple of dark shapes. They both laughed at the prospect of their lamentable engagement photo.
*
Once they were back at the lodge, Harry told his parents their news, and another bottle of Champagne was opened. They loved Sophie like their own daughter and couldn’t have been more pleased with their son’s choice of wife.
With Sophie’s phone finally able to pick up the WIFI from the house, she sent a message to her brother, attaching the terrible photo of their faces in darkness.
A single line of text accompanied the photograph:
Guess what, we’re getting married. x
Within seconds of the message being sent, Jack called Sophie back. They had always been extremely close, and Jack was genuinely delighted for his sister. He saw Harry as an older brother and loved nothing more than visiting the two of them in Scotland.
After speaking to his sister for a short while, during which she gave him a brief summary of the proposal and Harry’s efforts to keep his knee out of the bog, he agreed to be sworn to silence until Sophie had managed to speak to her mother and Anthony first.
Putting down the phone, Harry looked in front at his computer screen, where a large logo of Brennan & Co traversed across his monitor as the screen saver.
As excited as he was to be working in a smart, professional office in the heart of London’s bustling West End, deep down he knew the smoggy air and frenetic pace of a city was not for him. He would have been lying to himself if he hadn’t admitted to being a tiny bit envious of the life Sophie and Harry were set to lead.
He looked across his office to see countless men all hammering away on the phones, trying to close property deals across the capital. None of them looked particularly healthy, a fact that probably wasn’t helped by the two-hour lunches everyone seemed to take on a daily basis, and which were normally washed down by at least two bottles of claret. Even if Jack had decided this was how he wanted to spend the rest of his working life, he was far from certain his body would be able to manage it.
And as if compulsory work lunches were not heavy going enough, he quickly learnt that his flatmate George had made his house the de-facto after-party HQ for nights out in Fulham. It didn’t help that it was positioned less than a hundred metres from Chelsea Lodge and Embargos, the local nightclubs where for at least three nights a week, energetic young men and women would ram themselves into a mirrored sweatbox of a dancefloor until 2am. Then, in the early hours, various revellers who had some tenuous claim to knowing George would begin ringing the door bell, hoping for one more drink at his infamous top-floor roof extension which he had turned into a pop-up bar, with disco balls from the ceiling and no closing time.
George had a job as a wine merchant, working for his uncle’s company Harris, Winterbottom and Clarke, based in Pimlico. As his working day didn’t start until 11am, calling it a night at 4am on a weeknight was manageable for him.
Within just the first week of living there, Jack was woken three times by late-night guests arriving at the house, with at least one of them walking into his room looking for a lavatory.
Jack had joined the after-party the first couple of times it happened but recognised his limitations. He was also aware that he was still on probation at Brennan & Co and had to try and give the impression at least of being a responsible and capable adult. He had resorted instead to sleeping in a pair of old ear defenders that he had in his bag, wearing an eye mask he had picked up from his recent flight back to the UK and using the lock on his bedroom door to stop random people rambling into his room at all hours.
How his life had changed from the spiritual carefreeness he had while living in Mexico only a few weeks back. Leonardo, Diego and the others had chosen to abandon all convention a
nd turned what was a holiday for most people into a life choice. Was that not a better option?
Thoughts of Mexico turned his mind to Lucinda and Anthony. He had forgotten that Leonardo had sent him a message yesterday saying, Anthony seems to be getting into the swing of things, alongside a photo of his stepfather fast asleep on the floor of the yoga deck.
He realised he had forgotten to mention this to Sophie, so decided to forward the caption of Anthony on to her, with the words:
Forgot to say, all seems well in paradise for our intrepid travellers. x
Sophie had never thought her mother would have gone ahead with the holiday, even once the flights had been booked. Beaches, and certainly sleeping in yurts on beaches, had never been her thing. Sophie wondered whether she ought to have saved them by suggesting they came up to Glen Clova for the week instead, staying in one of the new cabins.
They both enjoyed being active in the outdoors, walking and watching the birds in the Highlands. Even if Jack had meant well in arranging the trip, and although she didn’t say anything, Sophie feared the trip could end up causing more harm than good to her mother’s already strained relationship with Anthony.
Perhaps it was a mother-daughter thing; Sophie knew Lucinda’s relationship with Anthony hadn’t been one of passion or love, in the way she knew she loved Harry. She had intuitively known that it was one of convenient companionship, and an understanding of mutual respect for each other’s independence. Contrasting the situation to her own, she felt a wave of sadness for her mother.
She was too young to remember her father, but in her mind she maintained an image of him looking down at her, encouraging her to walk towards him when she was a young toddler. She didn’t dwell on the fact that having an image of her father from this age was somewhat unrealistic, and her memory was more likely to have been formed by photographs and stories instead.
