When Eight Bells Toll
Page 28
Charlotte said to me: ‘I think you are the most devious and detestable and untrustworthy man I’ve ever met.’ Her eyes were shining, whether from tears or whatever I didn’t know. I felt acutely embarrassed and uncomfortable. She put her hand on my arm and said in a low-voice: ‘You fool, oh, you fool! That gun might have gone off. I – I might have killed you, Philip!’
I patted her hand and said: ‘You don’t even begin to believe that yourself.’ In the circumstances, I thought it better not to say if that gun had gone off I’d never have trusted a three-cornered file again.
The grey mist was slowly clearing away and the dawn coming up on the quiet dark sea when Tim Hutchinson eased the Firecrest in towards Eilean Oran.
There were only four of us on the boat, Hutchinson, myself, Mrs MacEachern and Charlotte. I’d told Charlotte to find a bed in Dubh Sgeir castle for the night, but she’d simply ignored me, helped Mrs MacEachern on to the Firecrest and had made no move to go ashore again. Very self-willed, she was, and I could see that this was going to cause a lot of trouble in the years to come.
Uncle Arthur wasn’t with us, a team of wild horses couldn’t have dragged Uncle Arthur aboard the Firecrest that night. Uncle Arthur was having his foretaste of Paradise, sitting in front of a log fire in the Dubh Sgeir castle drawing-room, knocking back old Kirkside’s superlative whisky and retailing his exploits to a breathless and spellbound aristocracy. If I were lucky, maybe he’d mention my name a couple of times in the course of his recounting of the epic. On the other hand, maybe he wouldn’t.
Mrs MacEachern wasn’t having her foretaste of Paradise, she was there already, a calm dark old lady with a wrinkled brown face who smiled and smiled and smiled all the way to her home on Eilean Oran. I hoped to God old Donald MacEachern had remembered to change his shirt.
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