by Gwen Moffat
‘Colin Irwin.’
‘Mine is Pink. I live in Cornwall.’
‘Do you?’ His eyes lit up again. ‘I’m from Stranraer; our sea cliffs are just vertical tips.’
‘Granite is delightful,’ she enthused, ‘but at rather a high angle when one is getting on. I have to lower my standard on Cornish cliffs.’
‘Have you been climbing up here?’
‘I’ve just had two weeks in Sutherland and Wester Ross. If you’re free tomorrow you might like to take me up something.’
‘I’d be delighted.’
They discussed the relative merits of Skye climbs and he filled in the gaps in her memory. It was many years since she’d visited Glen Shira. She had booked a room at the only hotel and now she asked him if he knew the proprietor: Mr Hamlyn.
‘Mister Hamlyn,’ he repeated, savouring it, and smiled. ‘Everyone in the glen calls him “the colonel”. Yes, I know him: not to speak to, of course; he wouldn’t acknowledge me. He’s been brought up in the tradition of alpine guides: a very formal crowd, call their clients “sir” and all that.’ He grinned mischievously. ‘Keep their hair short.’
‘Yes,’ Miss Pink said. ‘But it’s not the appearance, is it? It’s those certificates. Regular Servicemen have etiquette drilled into them. Does he still climb?’
‘Occasionally. Not with me of course.’
‘With Madge Fraser?’
‘Yes. Not with Watkins.’ She said nothing. ‘George Watkins,’ he elaborated without expression. ‘He’s the other guide in the glen.’
‘Why doesn’t Colonel Hamlyn go out with him?’
He looked out of his window. ‘Everything’s as dry as a bone,’ he observed. ‘That waterfall has hardly anything in it.’ Then, carelessly: ‘Watkins and the colonel? I guess they don’t get on.’ After a moment he asked: ‘What does Ken Maynard do?’
‘He edits a woman’s magazine.’
‘That explains a lot. I thought he was trying to escape from something.’ He sighed and his eyes followed a cockerel which suddenly raced across the road to a barn. ‘His wife’s very unhappy,’ he added gravely. Miss Pink slowed for a cow suckling its calf in the middle of the road. ‘Funny lot,’ he went on. ‘Then there are the Lindsays. They’re with Watkins,’ he added tightly.
‘Who are the Lindsays?’
‘Oh, another couple. But they both climb. Mrs Maynard doesn’t, you see. Perhaps that’s the trouble. But both the Lindsays climb.’ He was abstracted again. ‘That may be their trouble.’
Ahead of them Sligachan Hotel showed at the junction of the Portree and Dunvegan roads. Miss Pink continued west, across the centre of the island at its narrowest point, and after a few miles they came to the hamlet of Drynoch.
Below them now was Loch Harport, filling up with the tide, so full in fact that the water had pushed a trio of heron back to the weed-line. Miss Pink stopped and the birds rose and flapped lazily up the course of a burn to fish in lochans on the moor.
‘Midges are biting,’ she remarked, putting the car in gear. One didn’t halt for long beside a Skye loch on a September evening.
She drove up the hill to the Shira road-end, turned hard left, and as they crossed the high moor, she watched the peaks of the Cuillin come into view, gauzy and dreaming in the sun, with the two splendid corries separated by the cone of Sgurr an Fheadain where Waterpipe Gully was a pencilled line on the rock.
The road was narrow but where it dipped to descend steeply to the glen, there were wide hairpins, then the way reverted to a single track with passing places marked by white diamonds on posts. She remembered that somewhere about here was the start of the path going over to Sligachan. On the right was a big lay-by with a forestry track behind a gate. Below them the river bed was a string of boulders with hardly a gleam of water visible from a distance. On the other side of the glen long scree slopes ran to the top of the only dull peak in Glen Shira. A drift of warm air spiced with resin came through the open windows.
They crossed the river by way of a wooden bridge which rattled under the wheels. Now the road twisted among heathery humps and far ahead the sky seemed brighter and the light of a different cast: softer perhaps, as if it held another quality from that inland—if anywhere could be termed inland on an island that was nowhere more than a few miles from the sea.
A tall square structure appeared: the youth hostel. Figures moved about it: all young except for an elderly collie. There were towels and swim suits on washing lines, and a few dusty cars. Cattle replaced sheep on the road, and the woods of Glen Shira came into view: sycamores and birches with the odd redwood spired above the canopy. From road-level the trees hid the mouth of the glen and, but for the curious light and the tang of weed (scarcely noticed because it is seldom lost on the island), one would never have guessed that the Atlantic lay within half a mile.
Irwin asked to be set down before they reached the woods. ‘That’s my place.’ He indicated a shabby cottage on the far bank of the river. ‘That’s Largo,’ he added with pleasure. ‘Maybe I’ll go out and get some fish for supper.’
‘It’ll soon be dark.’
He smiled. ‘But that’s nice: fishing in the dark. I’ll take you out one night.’
After she’d dropped him she continued to a gateway and a notice by a cattle grid which said, glen shira house private. A gravel drive wound through glades where sycamore trunks sprouted lichen like plastic lettuce leaves. As a walled garden came in view on her left, the trees thinned and the house appeared, raised a few feet on a knoll. It was shabby, large and roughly square, with a porch crowned by concrete castellations. A figure moved behind a window and a man stepped out on the gravel sweep.
Miss Pink, suddenly assuming the protective role of the elderly spinster and blinking with what might have been nervousness, saw a tall and well-preserved man in his sixties who, from his bearing, could only be the colonel: Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Hamlyn (Rtd). He wore a soft shirt the colour of mud, a club tie and shapeless trousers in expensive tweed. His hair was short and his moustache clipped. His eyes were blue and he regarded her with a belligerent stare. The impression was that he was over-playing the role and she could only pray that he would turn out to be amusing.
He gave a welcoming bark. ‘Miss Pink, ma’am! We are delighted to see you safe and sound.’ She felt as if she’d galloped down the Khyber in front of Afghan hordes. She blinked at a string of molehills on the lawn and said she was delighted to be there.
He carried her bags upstairs. The walls were hung with swords and sabres, daggers, a pair of Gurkha kukri, various firearms. He showed her to her room and retreated with a flourish, bowing. She suspected that she was the oldest guest and he assumed he’d found a kindred spirit.
They had put her on a south-west corner and she had two windows; one, a bay with a window seat, looked over the lawn and a meadow to miles of shining sea, the Isle of Canna and the cliffs of Rum. Through the other she was startled to see Colin Irwin, across the river, feeling for the key above the lintel of Largo’s door. She watched him enter, to emerge in a moment without his pack and carrying a bucket. He went to a burn which, from this distance, was nothing more than a line of stones. On its northern bank the conifers, which stretched all the way down the western side of the glen, climbed to the skyline.
She turned to her room. One corner had been partitioned for a bathroom which was in itself commodious, yet it left enough space that the massive Victorian furniture was not obtrusive. The colour scheme was off-white with touches of plum and sage-green. The ceiling was high, drawers ran as if on ball bearings, the bath water was scalding hot. There remained only the food. That, and the colonel’s lady, were unknown quantities. So were the other guests, but at the moment Miss Pink’s thoughts were concentrated on her dinner and she hoped devoutly that Mrs Hamlyn could cook.
*
It was no forlorn hope. As she went downstairs there was a smell of herbs, hot wine and roasting mutton. She was in nice time for sherry. Voices guided her to a large room
with a wide window and a bar. A group of people stood at the bar and a man detached himself, extending his hand. She recognised Ken Maynard.
He introduced her to his wife, a thin woman perched with a youthful air on a bar stool. Lavender Maynard might have been a striking redhead once but now her hair was deeply tinted above the face of an ageing squirrel. She wore a bright green jersey sheath which emphasised her sharp angles distressingly.
The other woman in the room was introduced as Betty Lindsay. She was large and solid with a loud voice, lavish gestures and unquiet eyes. Her husband was small and preoccupied. As he took Miss Pink’s hand, his lips did little more than twitch in the semblance of a smile.
She accepted sherry from Maynard and remarked that she understood Madge Fraser was staying at the hotel. He nodded, his warm brown eyes fixed on hers. Behind him Lavender stiffened. Miss Pink realised that she should have tested the temperature first. Her eyes wandered vaguely to Hamlyn who was emptying an ash tray. Betty Lindsay said: ‘The energy of that girl! And she’s not all that young—’
‘And a mother.’ For some reason, perhaps an impediment, Lavender threw her voice so that every syllable appeared to be jerked out of her. At first hearing this was painful and embarrassing, and Miss Pink looked vacuous as she observed that even grandmothers climbed nowadays. She glanced at Hamlyn who responded roguishly.
‘In my opinion it is the older people who have the energy, ma’am, but then, they’re the ones who enjoy life.’ His face fell. ‘I’m very depressed when I look at today’s youngsters; it’s not just their long hair and the terrible manners—it’s their aimlessness. We had to work to make our way in the world; these actually prefer to live on National Assistance!’
Murmured agreement came from Maynard. ‘There’s no discipline,’ he assured Miss Pink earnestly.
She recognised the game immediately. He was a bear-baiter—but apparently Hamlyn was not unaware of this.
‘That’s a generalisation,’ their host admitted, referring to his own comments, ‘not all youngsters are layabouts—’ he regarded Maynard distantly, ‘—not all adults are useful members of society.’
‘How right you are,’ Lavender put in, addressing the end of her cigarette.
Betty Lindsay came in with a rush: ‘You missed a fabulous climb today, Ken. Didn’t he, Andy?’
Her husband nodded. She hesitated, then went on, to the company generally: ‘Archer Thompson’s Route; it’s a classic.’
‘George didn’t think much of it,’ Lindsay said.
‘Oh, Andy! George was miserable because we had to walk three miles to the cliff! He thought it was wasted climbing time.’
‘Rock gymnast,’ Hamlyn muttered.
‘Gymnast? Watkins?’ Maynard was clowning again. ‘You have to be joking.’
Lindsay turned on him furiously. ‘He leads harder stuff than you’ll ever be hauled up!’
‘Led them once,’ the other corrected, unperturbed. ‘In his remote youth. But even there, you’ve only got his word for it. I doubt if George ever did anything harder than a Severe—with a following wind.’
Betty hooted with laughter. Lindsay’s face, which had been quite pale to begin with, was flushed and ugly. Miss Pink moved across the room to contemplate Sgurr Alasdair and Sgumain: a far vista beyond the end of a rough avenue of trees. In the sunset the black rock had a magenta tint and she remained there, staring, while behind her the colonel remarked judiciously: ‘Watkins was never a brilliant climber, Andrew; I doubt if he would get his certificates in these days. The tests are pretty searching.’
‘Are they?’ Betty asked brightly. ‘What does one have to do? Ah, here’s Madge; she’ll tell us.’
Miss Pink turned with interest to see a girl in a long white dress, with bare arms and a plunging neckline, who looked like a starlet until one noticed her build. She was lissom but all muscle, and no starlet had the flat arrogance that was in Madge Fraser’s eyes. Apart from that she was not remarkable. Her hair curled and was cut short, her features were regular, her ears set flat to her head. She looked chic and very neat. When she was introduced to Miss Pink she referred, and correctly, to one of that lady’s exploits in the Alps. Ken Maynard observed this exchange with an air of proprietorial amusement.
Betty Lindsay said, ‘What are the qualifications for a guide, Madge?’
The girl frowned. She must have been about thirty but she looked younger. ‘I forget what they are technically; I judge the applicants according to whether I think they’ll make good guides.’
‘You judge! What d’you mean: you judge?’ No one seemed unduly surprised at Lindsay’s rudeness, only resigned.
‘I’m a senior guide.’ Her voice was colourless. ‘There’s a panel of examiners and I’m on it. We have them on the hill for two or three days and judge their ability; that’s all.’
‘Why—?’ Lindsay began, but Maynard got there first: ‘Why isn’t George on this panel?’
‘Whatever’s got into you?’ Madge asked and he looked into his drink without answering.
‘Well, why isn’t he?’ Lindsay barked, and Miss Pink wondered how much he’d had to drink this evening.
Madge had no time for Lindsay. ‘Because he’s not good enough,’ she said coldly.
‘I’ll say one thing for lady guides,’ Hamlyn observed quickly, setting a whisky before Madge and addressing no one in particular. ‘They’re workers: punctual to the minute in the morning, and there’s none of this breaking off early and rushing down for opening time as there is with some of the men.’
Madge laughed. ‘You don’t keep your clients if you short-change them.’
‘Some people don’t care.’ Hamlyn looked hard at her.
‘Well,’ she said easily, as if this were an old topic, ‘hard work’s no fun if you don’t like the job.’ She glanced at Betty carelessly. ‘He can’t wait for the winter, you know.’
The other nodded agreement. ‘He’s answered an advert for a handyman in an hotel at Aviemore.’
‘I know. Christ!’
Lavender said: ‘It wouldn’t occur to you, I suppose, that your criticism of a colleague was rather unethical—in public?’
Madge looked at her. ‘No.’
Maynard said quickly, ‘We brought his girl friend down the glen; picked her up at—’
‘George’s girl friend!’ It was Lindsay again. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
As Maynard stared at him, Madge said with interest: ‘I didn’t know he’d got a girl coming.’ She turned to Betty. ‘Did you?’
The big woman shook her head dumbly.
‘Collects them like flies,’ Maynard said. ‘You can go down to the shore any night and find all the female campers in George’s tent.’
‘You’re making that up,’ Hamlyn said. ‘He’s usually up here, drinking.’
‘I mean afterwards.’
‘Tell us about this girl,’ Betty urged.
Maynard looked at his wife, then away. ‘Very young—’ he drew a breath, ‘—surprisingly beautiful. Not a climber; all strung around with packages, you know the kind of thing; no rucksack.’
Madge shrugged and looked bored. Betty said, ‘I can’t believe it. Does he know she’s coming?’
‘I didn’t ask her. She walked over the moor in flip-flops.’
‘What are flip-flops?’ Hamlyn asked.
‘Sandals with no heels; you keep them on by a bit that goes between the toes.’
‘That’s asking for trouble: walking over the moor without boots.’
‘I hope she stays off the ridge,’ Madge remarked, but not as if she cared.
Hamlyn said: ‘I’m with you there. If they’re going to come to grief, I’m all for them doing it in an accessible place, like the moor or the sea cliffs. Recovery of the body is so much simpler.’
‘They also stand a better chance of survival if they don’t have to spend the night lying injured on the ridge,’ Miss Pink put in.
Hamlyn smiled at her but not apologeti
cally. ‘If you knew the problems we have in this glen, ma’am, you’d sympathise. When we first came here all the climbers knew each other, and they climbed carefully and properly: none of these artificial aids and metallic junk like walking ironmongers’ shops. They’re criminal!’ Miss Pink sensed the atmosphere; as with Lindsay’s outbursts, the company was resigned, not askance. These people were used to each other. Her expression remained politely attentive. Hamlyn leaned across the bar. ‘D’you know, if you leave your rucksack at the foot of a climb, there’s a fifty-fifty chance it won’t be there when you come down again? There have been thefts from tents! In our day, if anything was missing from your tent it was only ever food, and the thief was either a sheepdog or a fox. It couldn’t have been anything else. Why, I remember in the forties when that fellow O’Rorke was convicted for stealing a typewriter from an hotel in the Lakes, the scandal shook the climbing world—and he was an Irishman—what could you expect? Now, theft is so common among climbers the police don’t trouble to make inquiries, the implication being that we’re mad to think our sport might be different from any other. The whole moral fabric of this country is being ripped apart.’ He glared round the bar.
Maynard went on, ‘And then there’s the nude bathing from the shore—’
Hamlyn nodded fiercely at Miss Pink. ‘I’ve protested to the police, I’ve been down there with a shot gun, threatening to run them off the land—but it’s not mine; the foreshore grazing is MacNeill’s—and he’s—’ he broke off as he was pushed from behind by an opening door.
‘—no better than he should be,’ a cool voice completed for him. A slim woman in a lemon overall came in the back of the bar and greeted them pleasantly, with a smile and a handshake for Miss Pink.
Whereas her husband had the somewhat bloated features of a Blimpish bon viveur, Vera Hamlyn had the hooded eyes, the long nose and primped mouth that is termed patrician. She brushed back her grey hair with a fine but greasy hand.
‘A large gin for the cook, darling. And what’s old MacNeill been up to now?’
‘The nude bathing,’ Maynard told her meaningly.
