‘Hello there,’ said the female voice behind her, in exactly the same friendly tone of voice. ‘And who are you then?’
Kathy turned to see an elderly woman, her white hair caught in a lazy bun at the back of her head with strands escaping in every direction. She was leaning heavily on a stick; the fabled cook left to Angus in the Major’s will. ‘I’m Kathy Kelly,’ she said. ‘Major Angus brought me here to help you out … I think.’
‘Och, that’s nice!’ said the old lady pleasantly, advancing on her as she stood looking out of the window. In view of the equally pleasant conversation that had started as she and Angus had entered the house, Kathy wasn’t entirely sure whether she should shake hands or take cover. Bunty made her way over, leaning heavily on her stick, and put out her hand. ‘I’m Bunty,’ she smiled. Her face was covered in wrinkles, yet she was incredibly beautiful, her soft, pink skin glowing through the lines, and smiling eyes a shade or two of blue deeper than her husband’s. ‘My, but you’re a pale wee thing!’ she said. ‘Are you all right yourself? Here, sit you down by the fire and we’ll get that useless creature to make you a cup of tea. Macdonald!’ she shouted. ‘Macdonald, whatever you’re doing, stop it this minute and get your idle self in here!’
Angus had been unloading the car and was passing with his arms laden, but he threw the large parcels he was carrying on the floor with some force and entered the room.
‘What is it, you old beast?’ he asked amiably.
‘Get the lassie a cup of tea this instant!’ Bunty commanded. ‘She’s frozen cold, so she is!’
Kathy opened her mouth to protest that she was no such thing, but both protagonists ignored her.
‘Listen to her!’ Angus muttered. ‘Thinks she’s the lady of the manor! Silly old sow!’ but he went out of the door and headed into the depths of the house anyway, picking up the discarded parcels on the way.
‘And you can stop acting the big man!’ Bunty called after him. ‘You’re impressing no one here!’ She turned to Kathy. ‘You’ve got to treat them rough,’ she said gently, ‘get them by the scruff of the neck right at the beginning or you’ll lose control for ever, mark my words!’
She turned awkwardly, heading for an armchair beside the fire and Kathy instinctively moved to help her by taking her arm.
‘Och, that’s kind of you, lass,’ the old woman said. ‘I can see it’ll be nice having you here. You’ll be from Glasgow by the sound of you? Aye, I thought so. I’ve always wanted to go there, but that mean old miser keeps me prisoner here without a penny to my name.’ Just then Angus came in with a tray, and Bunty continued speaking to Kathy while aiming her comments at him. ‘And I’ll bet he had nothing to do with picking you either,’ she said. ‘Left to him we’d have one of his fancy women under my roof!’
‘My roof,’ Angus corrected her, setting the tray down on a table beside his wife.
‘Some floozy he’d had his way with so often that she’d be giving him discounts!’ Bunty continued.
‘Don’t be so stupid!’ Angus said, pouring tea into three cups. ‘I do them so much good that they pay me. You just canny bear to face the truth, can you?’
‘No more than you can tell it!’ Bunty replied, and in the same breath and voice she said to Kathy, ‘Help yourself to biscuits, lass.’
Kathy wasn’t quite sure how to handle the situation, so she started to ask about her duties.
‘Just keep her out of my way,’ Angus said. ‘I don’t care if you leave the place like a pigsty, but keep that old woman away from me, that’s all.’ He lifted the teapot and refilled Bunty’s cup, put milk and sugar in, stirred it, then carefully handed it to her.
‘You’re not married, are you, Kathy?’ Bunty asked kindly.
Kathy shook her head.
‘Good for you!’ Bunty smiled. ‘They’re not worth it, you know. Men, that’s the creatures I’m talking about. Look at the state of me, and all because I got in tow with that bundle of uselessness there!’
The bundle of uselessness continued to munch on a biscuit. ‘And who else but me would’ve taken pity on you?’ he asked. ‘You were only a cook with nowhere to go when I offered you a roof over your head, and a rotten cook at that.’
‘I’ve been the making of you, Angus Macdonald,’ Bunty grinned knowingly. ‘Everybody for miles around knows what an uncivilized thing you were when I took you on. Everybody knows what a difference I made to your life.’
‘Aye, you did that!’ he replied. ‘You’ve made it a bloody misery all these years! When the hell are you going to die, woman?’
‘Och, I’ll see you out, make no mistake about that! I’ll dance on your grave, Angus Macdonald, they’ll have to drag me away at nightfall the next day, still dancing! Pass me one of those biscuits before you eat the lot.’
Angus passed the biscuits politely, and as he did so he said, ‘I’ll poison you first! That’s my next project, I’m studying poisons.’
‘Studying them? Your whole character’s full of them!’ Bunty said.
‘I think you should have a lie down, Bunty,’ Angus said. The tone of his voice hadn’t altered, Kathy noticed, it could’ve been just another barb.
‘Aye, I think I will,’ she replied. ‘Give me your arm, Macdonald.’
He carefully bent to help her out of the chair and looked to Kathy, who took Bunty’s other arm.
‘It’s just through here,’ he said, indicating with his head as they moved down the corridor. ‘I’ve made the big room at the back into a bedroom for the ungrateful old cripple.’
‘Just so that you can sneak out to meet your harlots!’ Bunty responded, as they eased her on to the bed. ‘I don’t know why I’ve stood it so long, Macdonald, I’m too damned good for you!’
Angus gently put an arm under her legs and swung them on to the bed so that she could lie down. ‘Go to sleep, woman,’ he said, covering her with a quilt. ‘Only this time, don’t for God’s sake wake up again!’ He went to the kitchen and collected the large parcels he’d brought from Fort William. ‘You can have the front bedroom upstairs if that’s all right,’ he said to Kathy. ‘It has a fine view across the loch. And if anyone wants me, tell them not to bother looking for me. I’ve my knitting to do and I don’t want to be disturbed.’
She took her courage in both hands, addressing his disappearing back. ‘Um, can I ask, I mean, would you mind?’
Major Angus turned and stared at her with those wonderful eyes.
‘What I’m trying to say is, would it be all right to maybe read some of your books?’
Angus smiled at her. ‘Do you hear that, you ignorant Campbell witch?’ he shouted at the closed door. ‘At last we’ve got somebody in this house besides myself who can read!’
‘Go you to hell!’ Bunty’s voice replied conversationally.
Angus laughed softly and turned away without answering Kathy’s question, so she presumed he had no objections. He went off to do his solitary knitting, leaving her in his wake feeling more than a little bemused. From the moment she had entered the house the entire conversation between its inhabitants had veered between insults and kindness then back again without a moment’s pause, yet there hadn’t been any hint of venom throughout. No one had called God’s wrath upon anyone else, no one had slumped to the floor sobbing like a child or singing a maudlin song. Was there something in the water up here?
9
It soon became clear that her duties with Bunty and Angus were whatever Kathy wished them to be. As long as she was there to help Bunty get back on both feet she had the run of the house, and she found that she wanted to help Bunty. She was a different person up here, there was no impulse to hit first just in case, no anger. She wasn’t sure if it was the place or the people, or a combination of both, she only knew that she felt at home here. Bunty was still mistress of her own house, her mind was active and clear and all she needed was time for her hip to mend. They were in the kitchen and Bunty was baking, with Kathy as her fetcher and carrier.
‘You
must be fed up with hanging around an old woman!’ she said.
‘Fed up? No, no,’ Kathy protested, ‘I love being here with you!’
‘My, but you’re such a kind lass. Could you get that big sandwich tin out of the cupboard there and grease and flour it? Aye, that’s the one, the big shallow affair. Have you done much baking, Kathy? No? Well, this is your chance to learn. I’m the best for hundreds of miles!’ She chuckled loudly. ‘You’ll have to be able to cook and bake or you won’t get a man!’ she continued.
‘Who says I want one?’ Kathy replied wryly.
‘Ah, so it’s like that, is it?’ Bunty laughed. ‘I thought I sensed a sadness!’
Angus came into the kitchen carrying a piece of knitting with six different coloured balls of wool and several needles attached. ‘Dear God!’ he said, making himself a mug of coffee. ‘Now the daft old woman’s got the second sight!’
‘I can certainly tell that you’re not wanted here!’ Bunty responded quietly. ‘So be off with you before this bowl lands on your head, Macdonald!’ She turned her attention once again to Kathy. ‘We need the mixed spice and the ginger,’ she said, and Kathy handed them to her. ‘So!’ Bunty said happily, adding treacle to the mixture in the bowl. ‘You were going to tell me all about this love affair of yours that went wrong. He let you down, I’ll bet.’ She glanced at Angus as he left the kitchen, shaking his head and grinning. ‘And we won’t even look at that one, we’ll just treat him with the contempt he deserves and ignore him,’ she said dismissively. ‘Well?’
Kathy laughed. ‘It’s no big deal,’ she said. ‘I was engaged and I called it off, that was all.’
‘Och, away with you!’ Bunty said. ‘Anyone can see that you’ve been badly let down by some man who didnae deserve you in the first place!’ She raised her voice. ‘The way that one has been letting me down all my married life,’ she called down the corridor, then lowering her voice again she said, ‘What did he do then, this blaggard of a man?’
‘I just didnae want to marry him,’ Kathy said, shrugging her shoulders, ‘I didnae want to marry anyone, he just took it for granted that I did.’
‘Aye, well, they’re all good at that! Macdonald himself would’ve been married sooner if he hadnae assumed that I’d jump at the chance,’ she said happily. ‘Took it for granted he was the only one interested, so I kept him at arm’s length. So this man. You just broke it off? It was that simple?’
Kathy smiled but made no reply.
‘Ah, I knew it!’ Bunty said smugly. ‘He had someone else, didn’t he?’
‘Well, in a way,’ she said. ‘He’d got this other lassie pregnant and he told me that if I didnae marry him soon he’d marry her instead.’
‘Oh, the swine!’ Bunty said in a quiet, shocked tone. ‘He would’ve left the other lassie on her own with his bairn if you’d married him? He really said that?’
Kathy nodded.
‘Well, you did the right thing there!’ Bunty told her, wiping the sticky gingerbread mixture off her hands with a cloth. ‘Even if you had wanted him, you wouldnae’ve after that, would you? You wouldnae want a man who could do that to any lassie, would you?’
‘I didnae want him before that,’ Kathy said. ‘I kept trying to tell him without hurting him, only I left it too long and everyone got hurt.’
‘Not you, surely? You knew you were better off without him?’
‘Aye,’ Kathy said, ‘I knew that for sure.’ But she had been hurt, of course she had. She would carry the grief for her lost child for ever, and even in those early days after it had happened she knew it would always scar her. Bunty had managed to get more out of her than she had ever told anyone or intended to and she had no idea how the old woman had done it, so to protect more secrets leaking out she changed the subject and asked how Bunty had hurt her hip.
‘I see,’ Bunty smiled amiably. ‘You don’t want to talk about it any more!’
‘No, it isnae that…’
‘Och, it’s all right, I’m a nosey old woman!’ she chuckled. ‘Well, I was standing on the top step of the ladders putting curtains up,’ she explained, ‘and I fell. Have you ever heard anything so stupid? Only old folk fall off ladders, I felt so angry for making such a fool of myself.’
‘Well, you’re hardly a teenager, are you?’ Kathy laughed.
‘What a thing to say to a friend!’ Bunty replied severely, feigning hurt. ‘That’s only on the outside, I’m seventeen years old in the inside, and that’s where it counts!’
‘I think I’m about ten!’ Kathy grimaced.
‘There was such a fuss! They had to take me to the Raigmore in Inverness in an ambulance.’
Angus came in again with his now empty mug. ‘And despite everything I said, they insisted on bringing her back again,’ he said quietly.
‘You couldnae have lasted another day without me, and you know it!’ Bunty replied.
‘I offered them money to keep her for another week,’ he said to no one in particular, ‘or to send her back here and give me a bed there. But they’d had enough of her too, and as I was the legal owner of the baggage there was nothing I could do about it.’
‘Listen to him!’ Bunty said. ‘Sobbed like a baby all the while I was lying in that hospital bed, the nurses told me, couldnae bear the thought of being without me. “For God’s sake get up and take him away with you, the place is awash with his baby tears,” that’s what they said to me.’
‘Tears of happiness,’ Angus responded, going out the door once more, ‘I don’t deny it, that were cruelly turned to tears of sorrow when they told me I had to have her back home or they’d all resign in protest.’
‘Och, get away with you! Look, you’ve dropped a stitch. Away and knit, you great nit!’
Angus wandered off, smiling to himself.
‘What’s he knitting?’ Kathy asked.
‘He’s teaching himself Fair Isle,’ Bunty replied brightly, pushing the gingerbread mixture into the oven. ‘We’ll be forced to wear things we don’t want once he gets the hang of it. But don’t you worry, he’ll be on to something else soon.’ She eased herself into a chair by the kitchen table. ‘But at least it’s not frogs. I barely managed to get through his frog phase.’
‘I heard about that!’ Kathy smiled.
‘Everyone in Lochaber heard about it!’ Bunty replied. ‘I know that every living being has a right to life, but I canny abide frogs and things. Everybody’s allowed something not to like, aren’t they? Well frogs and things is mine. And as for those lizard creatures, scurrying about and turning their heads to look at you!’ She shivered theatrically. ‘Ugh! My son has told me of a few things he’s seen in his travels. Apparently, in India, they have cockroaches four inches long, and they can fly! We have enough trouble with those damned midgies, but can you imagine those things coming at you? He says they turn and look at you too. And there are fishes somewhere that use their fins to walk out of water! Now that’s not right, is it? And I bet they turn and look at you too!’ She shivered again. ‘Things that do what they’re not supposed to give me the grues!’
Kathy laughed with her, but she could see that Bunty was tiring. ‘Why don’t you have a lie down?’ she suggested.
‘Oh, I see. It’s heave the old woman into her bed, is it?’ Bunty asked severely, but she was getting up from the chair, leaning heavily on her stick. ‘Well, I’ll do it, but just to be polite, you understand! Now remember, don’t let my gingerbread burn! Have a look at it in another hour and a half. Stick a knife in the middle, just pretend it’s that swine of a man you had!’ she chuckled to herself. ‘And if it comes out with nothing sticking to it, take the tray out and leave it on the table there to cool.’
Kathy nodded, giving Bunty her arm to lean on.
‘Och, I don’t know what things have come to,’ she said, ‘leaving an amateur in charge of my gingerbread that’s famous all over the Highlands and Islands! And all because of a pair of curtains too!’
They reached the sitting room that h
ad been converted to a bedroom and Kathy went through the ritual of settling Bunty down for a rest.
‘On second thoughts,’ Bunty said, ‘don’t worry about it. I’ll likely smell when it’s ready myself.’
As Kathy gradually eased herself into whatever the job was meant to be, she and Bunty established a routine. She would take the older woman a cup of tea first thing in the morning and leave her to come awake. It was a matter of pride to Bunty that she should wash and dress herself, though Kathy knew it took her a great deal of effort and time, but what did either matter when she had an abundance of both? It was the way of life in these parts, there was little reason to go tearing around. Time passed slowly and easily, there was no pressure to be super-efficient and to run yourself ragged. Depending on how Bunty was feeling, she either slept through what in other parts would be considered to be lunchtime, or slept in the afternoon. Mealtimes were whenever people felt like eating, the clock wasn’t important. And while Bunty slept Kathy would tidy up quietly or explore the house. It was an impressive place, full of oddly-shaped little rooms and others not so little. In one she discovered a collection of musical instruments, violins, violas, mandolins, all beautifully crafted in wood by Angus during that phase of his life. They took up the entire room, lying at various angles against the walls and the furniture, as though they had been delivered by mistake and simply forgotten. Lying at the back of the room were two beautiful dark wooden trunks, their entire surfaces covered in ornate carvings. She looked closer and ran her fingers over the wood, recognising individual scenes on the trunks. She traced carvings of the house she was standing in, the hills behind, boats on the loch and the wildlife, deer, otters, eagles, all exquisitely worked into the wood. In another room she found paintings in every style, delicate water-colours and strong oils, and from every school of art. There were some that were clearly influenced by Picasso, others Turner, all done by skilful artists or, she thought, coming to terms with Angus’s ways, possibly by one. She was lost in examining the canvases when Angus entered the room, his knitting in his hands, and she sprang back, blushing to her toes at being discovered, desperately embarrassed at being caught snooping. Angus smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
Chasing Angels Page 17
