I nodded and smiled. ‘I saw a mother bear with cub that morning. Very exciting.’
‘Good, good.’ His long arm reached for a biscuit. ‘Excellent plan, this.’ He took the Bourbon in one mouthful and grinned, munching.
I warmed to him immediately. He was a big kid, a breath of fresh air among the academics and policy workers who filled my days. He beamed when I told him we had a mutual acquaintance in Petr Scazia.
‘Gem of a guy,’ he said. ‘Should get him involved in this project – no one more expert.’
I still smarted at Petr’s rejection and couldn’t bring myself to admit it to Luke, so I just said. ‘I wish.’
As the mood in the room hardened against the proposal in front of us, I was comforted by his presence. He laughed at Stig’s jokes and bounced in his seat as I presented the map, showing by his loose body language that he was with us and open to our ideas.
‘I’m really interested in that big green patch you’ve got on the map up in the northwest. I mean, we’re there just off to the east, and there’s this gap in the middle that’s also pretty green.’ He was stabbing at the forests in the Oykel River catchment. ‘It’s perfect territory, if you ask me. We’ve been looking at it for years.’
‘You’re saying we should extend that northwest area?’
‘Yeah. Bring it across all the way to Glenmathan. After all, we’ve already got bears. It’s logical to include us in the area you’re studying. We’re happy to share our experience of how they’re doing. They love it up there!’ He looked mischievously at the NFUS staff and opened his mouth as if to say something else, then stopped and looked back at me, a gleam in his eye. ‘Broaden out to include more sympathetic landowners.’ He gestured to the guy from the Scottish Wildlife Trust, who nodded assent.
‘I think you’ll find plenty of crofters and farmers in the area who are not what you would call sympathetic, not by a long shot,’ said Robert from the NFUS. ‘You’d better listen closely to them, I suggest.’ He wore an expression that was almost a snarl. His female colleague sat rigid, fingernails biting into her chair arms.
‘Yes, OK, thanks very much.’ Stig nodded fast. ‘That takes us on quite neatly to what I’d like us to discuss now. The issue of risk management and livestock compensation schemes.’
I suddenly became aware of the smell of sweat. ‘Perhaps we could have a little break first, have a cup of tea, make ourselves comfortable?’
There were nods all round. I got to my feet and headed for the door and the solitude of the toilet. It was not going well.
As I emerged from the Ladies, Luke Restil was standing in the corridor with his jacket on. He pumped my hand. ‘Must dash. Best of luck. If you’d like to hold something a bit more convivial, we’re happy to play host at Glenmathan. All the best.’ With a carefree wave, he breezed out.
Oh, to be so free. I gazed at a photograph of a wooded glen on the corridor wall, then pushed my longing aside and returned to the meeting room.
I watched Christmas approach with dread. The family celebrations had always been managed by Mum: the whole ritual decoration, gathering, gifting, feasting complexity of it had been led by her. With no captain at the helm, I was sure Dad and I would just drift along and be miserable. The very idea of trying to cook a turkey filled me with horror. I considered boycotting it altogether and finding an excuse to return to Norway, but I was haunted by the image of Dad alone with a spruce tree in a plant pot and a supermarket ready-roasted chicken. I had an inconclusive conversation with him one Sunday about options for dinner out in some country pub but in the end we were spared by Aunt Marjory, who invited us to spend Christmas with her.
The morning we were due to leave, a stack of mail arrived. I had asked Karl to forward my post and in among the cards was a handwritten letter. I didn’t recognise the writing and the postage mark was blurred. I opened it in my bedroom.
Dear Callis
I hope that all is well with you. I haven’t heard from you for many months. I wonder if you are angry with me for not joining in your EU project. If so, I am sorry. I have struggled and tried hard to resist making contact with you again, thinking that nothing good would come of it, but in the end I realise that I have to say what is on my mind, to make my confession. So here it is.
I often reflect on those brief three days we spent together in the Strimba valley, and wonder what might have happened if we had not behaved with such professional restraint.
You seemed shy from the start. Whenever you looked at me you had a startled look in your eye. You looked at me as if I was carrying a loaded gun, as if I was dangerous. I wanted to protect you. It was a fatherly feeling, not something I have a reputation for. At the same time, I wanted to put you in danger, to prove to you that you could cope with it, that you could overcome the fear.
Make no mistake, I wanted you too, to take you to bed, from the moment I saw you. While you were sleeping, the lines of your face like an etching – perfect – I looked at you for a long time. I’d never seen anyone so delicate. It was like looking at a flower bud. When you moved I felt certainty, utter certainty, that I could bring you into bloom, that I could be a rootstock for you, give you direct contact with the earth.
I’ve never met anyone who made me feel so animal, so male. And yet, when you looked at me all I saw was fear: those pale eyes, with their little spark, your chin jutting forward with bravery. You placed your feet apart like a cowboy ready for action. I learned that you were a tough creature, really, physically, despite your appearance. I was desperate to hold you.
I felt it was possible to touch you like a father does, and I tried, and it was a pleasure, but it felt wrong, too. That was not what I wanted really. What I wanted was to fuse myself to you, melt you into me, but I was scared of how hot that passion might burn. I was scared of hurting you. That was my fear. What I suppose I am trying to say is that I loved you from the moment I saw you.
Perhaps you think it is strange of me to write this to you now, but I am less frightened of being strange than of being forgotten, and as you know, I do not believe in keeping secrets.
Have a happy new year.
Your friend,
Petr
Dad was shouting that it was time to leave. I folded the letter up neatly, returned it to its envelope, creased it in half and buried it in the inside pocket of my suitcase.
I was intrigued to see where Marjory lived. I hadn’t been to Dad’s sister’s house for years, and it wasn’t the place I remembered, which was a ground floor tenement flat in central Dundee. Now Marjory lived in some style in a stone house high up on the north side overlooking the city, with a splendid view out to the Firth of Tay. It was one of those sturdy well-to-do Presbyterian houses, complete with tall privet hedge, a garden of tortured rose skeletons and a rounded faux-turret corner window in the living room and guest bedroom.
Marjory more than filled the place from her first chimes of welcome to her full-throated singalong to the TV when The Twelve Days of Christmas came on. A huge fir tree, dressed from floor to tip in silver tinsel and red baubles dominated the dining room and glittering streamers decked the entire house. After a very large glass of pink Cava – there was no question of asking for anything else – I found myself almost able to smile.
As well as Dad and I, Marjory had invited another friend of hers, Anne. She worked as a librarian in Crieff, lived alone and gave little else away about herself, but I found we shared an interest in botany, and we spent a contented hour in discussion of how moths and butterflies were responding to climate change, and the invasion of alien plants across the country. Anne’s knowledge of the spread of giant hogweed and Himalayan balsam was prodigious.
The other guest remained in the kitchen for most of the predinner preparations. At 2pm he emerged with a huge turkey on a platter, and proceeded to carve it into impressively wafer-thin slices. Jack, it turned out, had served as a cook in the merchant navy for fifteen years before being ‘land-locked’, as he put it, ‘for getting
a wee bit carried away with the herbs and spices in the Far East’. I let my imagination do what it could with this information. Jack’s conversation always left me alternately guessing and knowing more than I really wanted to. I watched with amusement as Dad made an effort to relax his policeman’s shoulders, but Jack’s repartee and a generous refill of wine soon won him round. Marjory even consented to turn the telly off while we ate.
In the kitchen afterwards, while I washed up, Marjory plucked my concerns out one by one, while dismembering the remains of the turkey. It was a relief to talk to her.
‘I can’t get Dad to stop going on about my job in Trondheim, as if it’s the only job I’ll ever have.’
‘He thinks your boss is the bee’s knees.’
‘I know, but that’s just because he somehow wangled that football club sponsorship out of him. He can’t understand that actually the man is a total bastard, excuse my French. He’s trying to turn all my colleagues against me. I just don’t get it.’
‘Run a mile, love. Life’s too short to scrap about work.’
‘My sentiments exactly.’
‘I’ll have a word in your dad’s ear. On the quiet. Don’t you worry.’ She took a drag on her cigarette and blew smoke up towards the rattling extractor fan. ‘More importantly, do I hear you’ve a man tempting you back to Scotland?’
I grinned at her. ‘The walls have ears?’
‘Who is he? Is he dishy? Has he asked you to marry him?’
‘No!’
‘He’s not dishy? Ditch him, a girl with your looks deserves a handsome man.’
I laughed. ‘OK. He’s fit. He’s a farmer. You’d have seen him at Mum’s funeral. And there’s no marriage on the cards.’
‘Yon big fella? Well, I hope you’re happy together. I’ve never been a great one for marriage myself, but a woman deserves a bit of romance, that’s what I’ve always believed. I’ve followed my heart and I can’t see it’s done me anything but good. I’ve had fun, that’s what matters. And he’s fit, you say?’
I flicked bubbles from the bowl at her as she sucked on her fag, pouting like a cabaret queen.
Jack edged into the kitchen and reached for one of Marjory’s cigarettes.
‘Well, good for you, Cally,’ Marjory said, catching his hand. ‘And all I get for my trouble is a pot-bellied sailor!’
He slung an arm around her ample waist. ‘Aye, hen. All you get is me and I get all I can, isn’t that right?’
I grimaced into the washing up to the sound of kissing. ‘Are you two not too old for that?’
‘Ach, Miss Prim. Your Aunty M could teach you a thing or two, I’ll bet.’ He chortled like a boat engine, then choked into coughing.
‘Go and confess your crimes to Derek,’ said Marjory. ‘We’re having a girls’ talk.’
‘Don’t mind me.’
‘Go on, get the malt out. We’ll be through in a minute.’ She pushed him out of the door, then turned to me.
‘I’ll speak to your dad, love. Your mother used to get me to have a word with him sometimes. He’s a stubborn old bastard, but he’ll see sense in the end. You trust to your instincts and don’t let anyone bully you. Sometimes I think the most important thing to be able to do is to walk away. Do you know what I mean?’
Malcolm and I drove out to the croft one January morning. It was a grey day as we set out. Malcolm had bought a classic Land Rover as a symbol of crofter status. We battered up to Evanton in it, pursuing an advert for an old caravan, so cheap I couldn’t believe it would have wheels. But it did. It had everything – a cooker, a heater, even a tiny shower – and I fell instantly in love with it. Malcolm failed to see the charm, and tried in vain to argue in favour of bigger, newer models, or the option (his preference) of a motor home. But my determination prevailed. The caravan was mine.
‘Can I keep my caravan on your croft?’ It was meant as a joke but it came out sounding more pointed than I intended.
We squabbled for a while about who would drive. In the end I persuaded him that as I had an advanced driver’s licence I was competent with a trailer, and we set off in the rattly vehicle towing the caravan across the country.
Two hours later, the caravan installed in the clearing beside the shed, we were drawing up a list of all the things we needed to make it comfortable. There followed a shopping raid on the Lochinver Fish Selling Company, one of those West Highland stores that sell everything for boats and houses, including kitchen sinks. As we ate a late lunch in our newly furnished home, the sun came out, sinking into the southwest sky, low-angled beams levering under clouds, prising them apart and squeezing shafts of eye-piercing brightness into the clearing.
‘Shall we go for a walk?’ I said.
‘No, I’m going to try to work out how to connect this thing up to a battery. You go.’
I pulled a hat and gloves out of my bag, tugged on my new Lochinver Fish Selling wellies and set off. Beyond what I was already thinking of as ‘our’ clearing we were surrounded on all sides by a plantation of conifer trees, mostly Sitka spruce. I followed the trickle of water that oozed out of the ditch running along the track. A mat of sphagnum moss glowed amber, russet and jade in the low sun. I peeled my gloves off and bent down to touch it, stroking it like the pelt of an animal, marvelling at its velvety softness, the spongy denseness. It made me wonder how different a bear pelt would be under my fingers, and whether that was something I would ever feel.
I looked up. The sun chequer-boarded between trees. White lichen shone among the moss like a scatter of snow. Along the streambed a gap had been left in the forest, a corridor without trees, forming a natural passage. I followed it, trying not to plunge into the stream’s deep channel in the peat, detectable only by sound, it was so smothered by moss and rank heather. I picked my way along, squelching, enjoying the bounce of the deep moss underfoot, until eventually I reached the edge of the plantation at the shore of a loch.
It was cool now. I breathed little clouds and my knees were damp from the long heather. I stood among stones at the uneven edge of the water, looking out across the grey-green reflectionblur of trees. Fish made circular ripples that radiated across the loch. Looking out at the surface, I let myself be absorbed by its pattern of rings, the shuffling shadows where two circles interfered. Just how people interact, I thought, blurring each other’s identities. I put my gloves together on a boulder and sat on them. On the bank, a heron stalked and paused, mesmeric in its watching poise.
My phone bleeped. The heron swivelled its head towards me, then, as I pulled it out of my pocket to answer, it flapped up like an old coat shaken off its hanger and beat away with a derogatory squawk to the far end of the loch, off to some undisturbed fishing corner.
I hit green. ‘Hello.’
‘Cally, it’s me.’ Stig sounded tense. ‘Can you talk now?’
‘Aye, you’ve frightened the heron off. I’m by the loch near the croft. It’s beautiful. Can’t think where I’d rather be for a chat. What’s doing?’
‘Um, not sure. I’ve had an email. Thought I’d better call you.’
Something about his tone made my stomach clench. ‘What kind of email?’
‘It claims to be from Dr Yuri Zeveris, at your institute in Trondheim. It’s kind of official looking, and it’s got an attachment in legalese.’
I swallowed. ‘Accusing me of data theft,’ I said.
‘Yeah. You know about it?’ Stig sounded relieved.
‘No, but I’m not surprised. He’s determined to spread these crazy accusations. He’s got it in for me. I don’t know why.’
‘God, why didn’t you say before?’
‘I dunno. I hoped it could be sorted out by the Institute. Can you forward it to me?’
‘Yeah, sure. What’re you going to do?’
I held my head in one hand, the phone pressed to my ear with the other. ‘Call my professor, I guess. I don’t really know what to do. I mean…’
‘Is there, um, you didn’t, did you? The data, is there a
ny truth in it?’
‘Christ, Stig, not you as well. Who do you think I am? It’s a complete work of fiction.’
‘No. I didn’t mean… I’m sure you wouldn’t…’
‘He’s a bastard. I used to think he was OK but since I joined the bear panel he’s been a total…’ Smarting, I tailed off. There was silence for a while.
‘Is he jealous?’ Stig said.
‘Do you think? Of the bears?’
‘Envy makes people do some pretty weird stuff.’
‘Is that experience talking?’
‘Just observation. People are pretty green about what you’re pulling off.’
‘What people?’
‘Well, like, you should hear Fran.’
My pulse raced. ‘What’s she saying?’ The wound was as raw as ever, fresh, untouched by any explanation or compromise. Frances’ rejection still cut as sharply as it had that day after our trip to Glenmathan. I had tried to deal lightly with her unfriending me on FemComm, but it really hurt. Blood rushed up my neck, into my cheeks, flooding me with resentment. ‘What’s she saying?’
‘Oh, the usual feminist rant about independence. I reckon she’s jealous of Malcolm, you know. You used to be her bosom pal and now there’s a man in the way.’
‘But what’s she said?’ I fought for control. I couldn’t bear the thought of Stig and Frances discussing me. ‘She won’t talk to me at all.’ I could hear myself close to whining and tried to choke down the emotion. Diana being hateful was somehow easier to bear, but Frances had been my friend forever.
‘Och, I can’t remember,’ Stig said.
I let the lie roll between us like the ripples on the loch.
‘I tell you who else is seething with envy,’ Stig continued. ‘That Fenwick model lassie, Julia whatserame, the toff.’
‘Why on earth?’
‘She used to be an item with your Malcolm. Rumour has it they were even engaged, so I hear.’
‘You’re making this up.’ I felt like pinching myself. The hand clamping the phone to my ear was freezing. ‘You’ll send me that message from Yuri.’
Bear Witness Page 20
