Bonnie Jack

by Ian Hamilton

  “The castle it is, then.”

  17

  Light was peeking through the curtains when Jack awoke, alone in the bed. That surprised him because Anne was rarely the first one up. He went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. When he entered the living room, Anne was sitting on the sofa in front of a tray on the coffee table.

  “I can’t remember the last time you slept this late. It’s already past nine,” she said, and motioned to the tray. “I ordered a large pot of coffee. It’s still hot.”

  “How did you sleep?” he asked as he poured himself a cup.

  “Really well.”

  “I didn’t. I started off thinking about work and then found myself fixating on Georgie and our mother. The last thing I thought about before going to sleep was McPherson. I don’t know why he was in my head, but he was.”

  “I’m not surprised to hear that. You were a bit casual about him last night, but he’s another unresolved issue. You’ve seen your mother’s grave; maybe you need to see his too — assuming that he’s dead.”

  “I could go to the health service in Glasgow and make enquiries, but I don’t know if they’ll have any answers for me,” he said. “It might be better to go to the pub Georgie mentioned and ask about him there.”

  “So we’d go to Glasgow?”

  “It’s only an hour away.”

  “You’ll have to contact Georgie if you want the photo.”

  “I’ll call Harry.”

  “Before you do, let’s decide where we’re going to have dinner tonight,” Anne said. “I’ve been looking through this Edinburgh guide, and it has a list of the best restaurants in the city. The hotel isn’t mentioned, but there’s one called Bannockburn further along Princes Street that’s highly recommended.”

  “I’ll ask the concierge to make a reservation,” Jack said as he walked over to the desk, where his blazer hung on the back of the chair. He reached into a pocket and took out the slip of paper with Caledonia Insurance’s phone number. He dialled, then said, “Mr. Harry Montgomery, please. Tell him that Jack Anderson is calling.”

  “Jack, good morning. It’s good to hear from you. I hope you and Anne had a comfortable night’s sleep.”

  “It was fine, Harry, thanks for asking,” Jack said. “We were thinking about going to the Bannockburn tonight rather than eat at the hotel. Does that suit you?”

  “Indeed. It’s one of the best in the city.”

  “Seven o’clock?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Also I’d like to get in touch with Georgie.”

  “Certainly . . .” Harry said hesitantly. “But I can let her know about dinner if that’s the reason.”

  “Actually, I’ve decided that I want to know more about McPherson after all. I thought I’d go to that pub in Glasgow and do some poking around. She has the information I need to get started.”

  “I see. Give me a second,” Harry said. The second turned into a minute before he returned. “Sorry, Jack, I was just checking to see if she was working today. She isn’t, so you should be able to reach her at home. Here’s the number.”

  “Thanks. And we’re looking forward to seeing you and Barbara tonight,” Jack said.

  He put down the phone and walked over to the sofa. “Would you mind calling Georgie?” he said to Anne. “You seemed to get along well, so the request might be easier coming from you. All I need is the name of the pub, some general idea of where it is, and the photo from the newspaper.”

  “I suspect this is less about how Georgie and I got along and more about your not wanting to answer any questions about why you want to look for him,” Anne said.

  “Yes, I admit that’s part of it.”

  Anne shook her head. “Give me the number.”

  She went to the desk and dialled. Jack poured himself another coffee and watched her intently.

  “Georgie, good morning. This is Anne,” she began, and after a few more general pleasantries she said, “We’ve decided to try to find out what happened to Douglas Andrew McPherson. Since we’re here in Scotland, why not take advantage of it? We would appreciate it if you could give us the name of the pub where you saw him and if you could lend us that newspaper photo.”

  Anne listened for a moment and then said, “You don’t have to do that.” Then, after a longer pause, “We’ll see you here, then. Call us when you get to the lobby.”

  “What did she say?” Jack asked when Anne had hung up.

  “Georgie insists on coming with us. She’ll be here around noon with the address and the photo.”

  “I’m not sure I like that idea.”

  “I do,” she said. “She’ll know where to go and she’ll recognize him if he’s there.”

  “That’s assuming he’s still alive. I can’t help hoping he’s not.”

  “Why do you feel that way?”

  “It’s much easier to deal with the idea of him in the abstract. I’m not sure how I’ll feel if he’s alive.”

  “Let’s hope you don’t have to find out. But if he is alive, having Georgie along will give you someone else to share that burden. Besides, whether he’s alive or dead, the people at the pub may be more inclined to speak to a local than American tourists.”

  “That is true.”

  Anne looked at her watch. “We have a couple of hours to kill before noon. If you get dressed right now we should have time to take a castle tour. It lasts about two hours.”

  “Let’s do that,” he said.

  Twenty minutes later they left the hotel for the ten-minute walk to the castle. It stood on Castle Rock, overlooking the city, and was a formidable sight. Jack hadn’t been overly impressed by anything he’d seen during their Burns tour in Ayrshire, but the castle made an impact. He keenly took in thousand-year-old St. Margaret’s Chapel and the Great Hall, and he enjoyed the guide’s stories about the sieges the castle had withstood. He respected perseverance, and to suffer through twenty-six sieges in a thousand years — including the “Lang Siege,” which lasted two years — embodied it.

  At ten to twelve they walked back to the hotel to find Georgie, wearing blue jeans and a red fleece sweater, waiting for them in the lobby. “I hope we didn’t keep you waiting,” Anne said after a hug. “We did the castle tour.”

  “I just got here a few minutes ago. The bus was punctual for once.”

  “Did you speak to Harry this morning?” Jack asked.

  “Yes, and I told him I’m going with you.”

  “How did he react?”

  “He didn’t seem to care one way or another, but with Harry you can never really tell what’s he’s thinking.” She smiled. “As you’ve seen, I’m the opposite.”

  “Did he tell you about dinner?”

  “He mentioned the Bannockburn. It’s a great restaurant.”

  “It was Anne’s choice. And speaking of food, do you think we should have some lunch before we head out?” he asked.

  “I could use some lunch, but why not pub food? The Tartan Rover has traditional fare, if you can handle sausage rolls, Scotch eggs, and meat pies.”

  “Is that the pub in Glasgow?”

  “It is.”

  “That sounds like a good idea to me,” Anne said.

  “Then I’ll ask them to bring the car around and we’ll hit the road,” said Jack.

  Anne and Georgie went to the hotel entrance while Jack spoke to the front desk. When he rejoined them, Anne was holding a photo. “I hope you don’t mind, but I asked Georgie to show me the picture,” Anne said.

  Jack reached for it.

  “It’s rather uncanny, don’t you think?” Anne said. “It gave me a bit of a jolt.”

  Jack looked at the photo and blinked. It was grainy and some of McPherson’s features were blurred, but his square chin, wide brow, and thick hair were plain enough. “When was this taken?” he
asked Georgie.

  “Close to thirty years ago.”

  “He would have been close to the age I am now.”

  “We all have that chin and brow,” Georgie said.

  “Thank goodness that’s all you inherited from him,” Anne said as Jack passed the photo back to Georgie.

  “I’ll show you some photos of Mum . . . when you’re ready. None of us look much like her,” she said.

  Jack didn’t answer, and when the car arrived, that topic of conversation ended. “Since Georgie is our guide, it might be easier if she sat in front with me,” Jack said to Anne.

  “That’s fine,” she said.

  Traffic was light when they exited the city. As they sped down the highway towards Glasgow, Anne asked questions about Liz and answered Georgie’s about her own children. When they reached Glasgow, Georgie focused on their route, pointing out landmarks.

  “You know the city very well,” Jack said.

  “I lived here for a while and then in Bearsden, a small town nearby, for years. I used to come into the city all the time for shopping and the like.”

  “Are you firmly settled in Edinburgh now?” Anne said.

  “I don’t know about settled, but I have a nice apartment and a decent job that I can walk to.”

  “Where are you working?” Jack asked.

  “I’m a salesclerk in the Goldbergs department store near Tollcross,” she said, and then added quickly, “You should start looking for a place to park. We’re getting close to the pub.”

  The Tartan Rover came into view a few hundred yards later. Jack pulled into a public parking lot almost directly across from it. “How do you think we should handle this?” he asked Georgie after he’d turned off the engine.

  “We’ll have lunch. That will give us a chance to have a look around and get acclimatized. Also, the pub staff might be more co-operative if we’ve spent some money.”

  “Then let’s go and eat,” he said.

  From the outside, the pub wasn’t particularly inviting. It had a brown brick façade that was black in places, and small, dirty windows on either side of a glass door etched with thistles. The Tartan Rover sign above the door looked as if it had been hand-painted. Georgie saw the look on Jack’s face and said, “The local pubs don’t care much about outward appearances, but it will be better inside. And you don’t have to worry about the food. They don’t actually cook anything on the premises; all they do is heat up the pies and rolls they buy from bakers.”

  “If you say so,” Jack said, as he opened the door for the women and was immediately hit by the smell of cigarette smoke.

  At the furthest end from the door, the pub had a semicircular bar with eight stools. Padded benches in red leather were set against the walls, with rectangular wooden tables in front of them. About a dozen round tables with four chairs each had been squeezed into the remaining space. The grey walls were covered in plaques, each depicting a different clan tartan. At least half the tables were taken.

  “We should sit against that wall. It will give us a good view of the room and the door,” Georgie said. They went over to the bench she’d indicated and sat side by side. The three of them at once scanned the room, looking for a familiar face. “I don’t see him,” said Georgie.

  “I would have been shocked if you had,” Jack said.

  “Where are the menus?” Anne asked.

  “The menu is on that blackboard,” Georgie said, pointing just left of the bar. “And our orders will be taken at the bar. There’s no table service here.”

  “What do you recommend?” asked Anne.

  “You can’t go far wrong with Scotch pies.”

  “I’ll have that, then, with a glass of white wine.”

  “Do you drink beer?”

  “Not often, but I can.”

  “I suggest you do so here. Maybe a lager?”

  “That will be fine.”

  “Jack, how about you?” Georgie asked.

  “I’ll have the same.”

  “I’ll be back,” Georgie said, and got up and went over to the bar.

  “This is certainly different. I can’t remember the last time I was in a place where nearly everyone was smoking,” Anne said.

  “Or drinking so early in the afternoon.”

  They lapsed into silence as Georgie approached the table, gingerly balancing three pints of lager. She distributed the drinks, then raised hers. “Here’s to good health and a long life,” she said.

  “Amen to that,” said Anne.

  Georgie sipped her beer, then turned towards Anne. “I spoke to Harry last night after dinner. I was saying how fortunate Jack is to have such a supportive spouse.”

  “That’s a very nice thing to say.”

  “I mean it, and Harry agrees with me. But then of course he would, because Barbara is a rock for him.”

  “Barbara is lovely,” Anne said, sensing that the conversation could be heading towards Atholl Malcolm.

  “Harry told us a little about your husband,” Jack said. “It sounds like you’ve had a rough go of things.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He said Atholl ran into some financial difficulties and left the country.”

  Anne glared at him, angry that he had raised a topic that should have been Georgie’s choice to initiate. “Jack, the relationship between Georgie and her husband is their business. We shouldn’t be prying.”

  “I appreciate that, Anne,” Georgie said, and then shrugged. “But it isn’t something that can be ignored, and I’m finally at a point where I don’t mind talking about it.”

  “You don’t need to,” Anne said.

  “I know, but why not?”

  “As long as you’re comfortable doing it,” Anne said.

  Georgie shrugged again. “The truth is, Liz and I went from a very comfortable life to scraping for every pound and worrying about every penny. It has taken some getting used to, but we’re getting there. The hardest thing for me isn’t going without the things I used to take for granted. It’s trying not to be consumed with rage at what that bastard did to us,” she said in a rush.

  “Harry implied that he left you high and dry,” said Jack.

  “‘High and dry’ is a nice way of putting it. What he did was take all the shit in his life, dump it on us, and then bugger off, leaving us to deal with the aftermath. And there seemed to be no end to it. The cars were repossessed, taken from our driveway in broad daylight so the neighbours could get a good view. Our bank account was frozen, even though he hadn’t left much in it. Our credit cards were rejected at places where we used to be treated like royalty; and then, as if rejection wasn’t enough, we’d be asked to hand over the cards to be destroyed. The bank started foreclosure on the house, but before they’d got far, some of his creditors came after us themselves. I just walked away from it.”

  “Was Liz living at home when this was going on?” Anne asked.

  “No, she was at uni here in Glasgow, but it caught up to her when the cheque to cover her fees bounced and her credit cards became useless.”

  “How terrible! Did she manage to finish her school year?”

  “Harry stepped in to help. I don’t know what we would have done without him.”

  “That was good of him.”

  “He’s a good man, unlike the bastard I married,” she said, then lifted the glass to her lips and took a deep swig. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and pointed at the bar. “I think the barman is telling us the pies are ready.”

  “I’ll get them with you,” Anne said.

  As they walked to the bar, Anne saw there were only two other women in the pub, and both of them looked to be well past retirement age. “I’m sorry Jack raised the subject of your husband,” Anne said softly.

  “There isn’t any right or wrong way to do it, so no
apology is necessary,” Georgie said.

  “Another round?” the barman asked.

  “I think we’re set for now,” Georgie said, and pointed at the pies. “Those look good.”

  Anne eyed the small, round pies sitting on paper plates, each surrounded by a clump of potato chips and a few bread-and-butter pickles. If they hadn’t been on a mission, she might have passed on lunch.

  Georgie took three sets of plastic cutlery wrapped in paper napkins from a container on the bar, picked up two of the pies, and headed back to the table, with Anne and her plate close behind.

  The pies were encased in a pale brown crust. The sides and top were soft, more white than brown, while the circular rim was hard and dark. Georgie cut her pie from top to bottom into four equal portions. Inside was a brown minced meat that gave off a pleasant aroma. Jack and Anne followed Georgie’s lead, and soon all three of them were eating.

  “That tasted better than it looked,” Jack said when he was done.

  “Glad you enjoyed it,” Georgie said, washing down her last bite with some lager.

  They sat back and looked around the pub.

  “When should we ask about McPherson?” Anne asked.

  “Let’s give it a few more minutes,” Georgie said.

  Jack had eaten everything on his plate, and now he reached for the chips that Anne hadn’t touched. “Did you move to Edinburgh to be closer to Harry and Barbara?” he asked.

  Georgie nodded. “Edinburgh is less than thirty miles from Bearsden, but for me it was like moving to another planet.”

  “I assume that was a positive thing.”

  “Definitely. I might have survived in Bearsden if it was just about losing material things, but I couldn’t cope with the humiliation. People who I thought were friends stopped talking to me. They wouldn’t take my phone calls, and if they saw me on the street they’d cross over to the other side to avoid me. If I accidently bumped into them in the shops, they couldn’t look me in the eye, and several of them wouldn’t speak to me at all.”

  “But surely people understood that you weren’t to blame for your husband’s actions,” Anne said.