by A. D. Scott
“I’ll believe you if you tell me what you know. And we’ll not say anything about ringing doorbells. This time.”
Annie was about to deny it, admit nothing, but something in her mother’s voice stopped her. Hiding the truth was giving her nightmares. Maybe her mother would believe them.
“We just want to know why he didn’t go home. It’s not your fault, what happened to him. Do you understand?”
They nodded.
Both were in complete agreement, they were adamant, they told their mother, over and over; a hoodie crow had taken Jamie and that was the last they saw of him.
The next morning’s meeting was “housekeeping,” in McAllister parlance. They worked through the many small tasks, discussed what to run, what to discard, they brought each other up-to-date on their articles and reports and worked steadily through the morning to the heavy rhythm of typewriter keys and the ping of the return bell.
“I know, it’s a big place out there in the glens,” said the editor, chatting with Rob as they both leaned back, stretching tired arms, between articles, “and I don’t need to tell you again, but if you find the Pole, talk to him before he’s locked up, there’ll be a wee story in it. Whichever way it unfolds it’ll be interesting. And Don, that council story—I like it. I have a feeling about it. All these new housing and industrial developments are too much of a temptation for the unscrupulous. So fill it out, a bit more background. And check for legal problems. I don’t trust Mr. High and Mighty Grieg or any other councilor not to sue us on this one.”
He left them to it. The clatter of typewriters, the regular ringing of the phone, Don up and down the stairs taking copy to the comps, Rob in and out to who knows where. Eleven thirty struck from the church clock. Joanne made tea but there was only Don and herself at the reporters’ table.
“Thanks, lass.” He wrapped both hands around the mug and nodded to the half-sorted pile of copy paper. “I can see the renowned Scottish education system has failed miserably with the boy. Punctuation is where he pauses for breath.”
“That’s Rob for you. He knows you’ll fix it.”
Joanne was having problems of her own. One arm was still tender from the beating, making typing hard; sitting was also uncomfortable, but the main problem was that she had no idea how to even begin the report on the Highland Ball.
“Don, can you help me?”
The clocks across town struck a quarter to twelve.
“You’ve got one minute, no more.”
“I don’t know how to put this. I know the Gazette usually publishes a list of who attended the ball and not much more.” She waved the clippings at him, caught the eyebrows raised in exasperation. “What?”
“It’s easy. Who was sitting where. Who didn’t attend. And throw in a wee description of the getup the posh damochs were wearing.”
Joanne looked puzzled.
“Who was sitting at the provost’s table?”
“You know … the lord lieutenant, legal folk, a laird or two.”
“All as it should be,” Don informed her. “How about the town clerk’s table?”
“Businesspeople and councilors and the wives. A man from some big concrete company in Aberdeen, a builder, an architect …”
“How do you know?”
“Bill and I were at that table.”
“Specify the host. List his guests by name and business.”
“Why?”
“Those in the know will quickly figure out who’s in favor. Or who’s begging for favors. Then there’s your revenge. Give back thon fishwives as good as they gave. ‘Mrs. Uppity from Lower Auchnamuchty, also known as Mrs. Town Clerk Grieg, was resplendent in pink with a Princess Margaret décolletage and matching tiara.’ Everyone knows she’s fifty-seven if she’s a day and shows off her wrinkly bosom any chance she gets. ‘Her husband was seen in close proximity to—’ then name some young lassie … I’m joking, leave that bit out, even though everyone knows he’s gey fond o’ a sweet young thing. Then add that the Honorable Mary McCallum was unfortunately unable to attend. That’ll get them all going ’cos she, the Honorable, is always a revered guest but she’s had a huge bust-up with Mrs. Lady Provost. So, rather than endure a seat at a second-tier table, the Honorable Mary comes down with a mysterious malady.”
“Don, you’re a genius. I’m going to enjoy this.”
The sound of a cyclone rushing up the stairs brought Rob, still in his motorbike gear, flying into the room.
“They’ve arrested Peter Kowalski.”
“Peter? Arrested?” Joanne sat down. “What for, for heaven’s sake?”
“You’re sure?” Don was equally skeptical.
“Look at this.”
Rob waved a smudged paper, obviously the last of at least half a dozen carbon copies.
“Mr. Peter Kowalski has been detained, charged with aiding and abetting an illegal alien. Anyone with information on the matter of a missing Polish seaman, Karel Cie—szy—nski, no idea how to pronounce that, is asked to contact the police on Central 257.”
“Poor Chiara, I’ll phone her right now.”
“No, wait.” Don marshaled his team. “Joanne, go over and talk to your friends the Corellis, see what’s what. I’ll let McAllister know—he’s friends with Peter the Pole. Rob, you have a chat with your special friend. WPC Ann, is it? And don’t look so glachit. Nothing passes by me.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
“Forget the facetious bit, laddie. If Mr. Kowalski is any friend o’ yours, you might want to put him in touch with your father. He’ll be needing a good solicitor. The town prison is gey cold and grim. Better still, Joanne, you get hold of Chiara Corelli, tell her to call Mr. McLean. I’ll tackle the inspector.” Don reached for his hat. “Arresting Peter the Pole—the usual overkill from Tompson.”
Rob was halfway out the door. “Oh, I nearly forgot. … Joanne, my mother wants to talk to you. Something about a bell, or bells. Hell’s bells, maybe.”
FOUR
Chiara was shivering-white-cold furious, every word she enunciated in rapier-sharp, rapid sentences. “Anything else you forgot to tell me?” Her black eyes bored into him. “To protect me?”
Her father stood silent, head bowed, like a wee boy about to get the strap. The comfortable, well-proportioned sitting room of the Corelli family home, curtains drawn against the chill autumn night and fire ablaze in the large hearth, was often the setting for heated family discussions. Family fights were unknown. Arms windmilling, voices raised, heated discussions about important things such as pasta, the color to paint the chip shop or gelato versus ice cream were the most this family ever argued about.
“Cara. Please, we try to do what is for the best.” Her tiny aunt stood in the doorway, hands wrestling with invisible knitting, trying to support her brother.
“Oh really? Well, it didn’t work. And, Aunty Lita, I can’t believe that you too hid this from me.” She stared at her. “Peter was hiding a DP, a displaced person, who is on the run from the police. But none of you told me. You thought I should be protected like a little princess. That is such an insult. What next? Oh yes, you forget to tell me my future husband is in prison. Yes, yes”—she held up her hands to ward off the excuses—“I know he’s out on bail now. And I have to hear from Joanne that he was arrested. Do you know how that made me feel?” Especially, she thought, since I always lecture her about trust in a marriage.
Her father called out when he heard the front door opening.
“Cara, where are you going?”
“Out.” And the door slammed.
“What’s wrong?” Chiara stood shivering on the doorstep like a bedraggled little bird, lost in a storm.
Joanne tried to steer Chiara into the kitchen, but the girls were pulling her by the hand in the opposite direction.
“I’ve had a big fight with my father about Peter and—”
Joanne shook her head imperceptibly and gestured with her eyes toward Annie, who had immediately latched on to their conver
sation.
“Later,” she mouthed.
“Play with us, Aunty Chiara,” Jean pleaded.
“We’re about to have mince and tatties, Scottish haute cuisine. Join us.”
Chiara smiled at Joanne’s feeble joke.
“And Bill’s out late so we can have a good blether.”
She knew Chiara didn’t like Bill. But then he too had made it clear he had no time for “turncoat” Italians. And she had no idea where Bill was tonight. When he was home he was monosyllabic. Joanne put it down to guilt. And more and more, especially when he’d been drinking, he’d spend the night in his workshop. So he said. The business had problems; that much she had been able to twist out of him. But her husband didn’t believe in a woman knowing a man’s business.
“It’s no him. It’s the drink.” Granny Ross always had an excuse for her son.
“That’s the Scottish national anthem,” was Joanne’s retort.
The girls had had their story and were now in bed. A wind was up, rattling the last of the leaves from the rowans. The two friends sat each side of the fire talking quietly, on their third cup of tea.
“What really gets me is that I thought they—Peter, Papa, Aunty Lita—were all doing secret wedding stuff. They were keeping a secret, all right—a secret missing Polish seaman. My own family, my fiancé, didn’t trust me. They did it to protect me, didn’t want to worry me, they said.”
“That was wrong.” Joanne knew the feeling of being shut out.
“Aiding an illegal, something like that, that’s what he’s charged with. Peter was seen crossing the canal bridge, heading north, with the sailor in his car. The idiot! This could affect Peter’s business badly, our business too. I know some in the town still think of Italians as cowards, turncoats, traitors—that’s a mild way of putting it. I’ve heard much worse. We’re not responsible for what happened in the war, I was a child! Papa suffered! My mother was killed.” Chiara was becoming more agitated. “And so many Italians who were born here, been here for ages, were interned in camps—just for being Italian, for being on the wrong side.”
Joanne didn’t know what to say. She knew the sentiments of people in wartime. Prejudice had nothing to do with being rational.
“I’m going to tell Peter I can’t marry him.”
“Chiara! You can’t. You love him.”
“I love him to bits but if we don’t trust each other, there can be no marriage.”
There was nothing Joanne could say. It was too raw a subject for her.
The fire had burned down to a deep devil red. From the wireless in the corner, the round plummy voice of the BBC announcer introduced Mahler’s second symphony. The opening chords began, the music a salve for raw emotion. Slowly, surely, as the adagio led into the opening movements, Joanne opened up.
“I’ve never known real trust,” she began quietly. “It’s not the way Bill sees a marriage. He tells me what he thinks I need to know, no more. He doesn’t share, doesn’t talk, he provides for his family, that is what men do, but talk? Discuss things? Share his thoughts? I think that only happens in films and books, and even then, you have to be a foreigner. No Scottish man would talk ever about his dreams, tell you he loves you …”
“Except Rabbie Burns.”
“Aye, Rabbie. Goodness, would you not want to marry him?” They both laughed.
“Even though we had to get married in a registry office,” Joanne continued, “the ‘love, honor and obey,’ especially the ‘obey,’ is how Bill thinks it should be. As for love, well, he does love me in his own way. Honor, I don’t think he’s ever wondered what that means.”
Chiara sat silent, slightly uncomfortable at the intimacy of the conversation, but knowing Joanne needed to talk to someone.
“You probably guessed, but yes, we ‘had to’ get married. We barely knew each other. End of the war, a handsome soldier laddie swept me off my feet. I brought complete disgrace to my family. My father literally barred me from his door, very dramatic it was, biblical, well, he is a minister, and he has never spoken to me since … nor my mother.” She shook her head and forced a smile. “I wonder how many war brides have the same story. After all that death, we were avid for life, for a new start. We were intoxicated by our survival when so many …” Her throat started to close up. “Another cup of tea, that’s what we need.” She rose abruptly.
It was the last thing Chiara needed, but she was used to the Scottish custom of endless cups of tea in every situation.
Settled back in her chair, Joanne determined to be more cheerful.
“I saw Margaret McLean today, she told me that Annie has a game of ringing doorbells and running away.”
“That’s my girl.” Chiara smiled.
“I’d be too scared. I was a right goody-goody, a true daughter of the manse.”
“Me too. All Italian girls are supposed to be princesses.”
“When I was little I thought God was my grandfather. My father called him ‘our Father’ when he preached his sermons. But my mother used God to threaten me. You know; He was watching, He knew when I hadn’t tidied my room, knew what a naughty girl I was, all that kind o’ thing. I suppose I was lonely, my sisters being much older than me, but I had books, books were my escape. When I first read Jane Eyre, I used to fantasize that my mother was like Mrs. Rochester and that my real mother would one day appear.”
“And you wonder where Annie got her imagination from.”
“This time it’s Wee Jean with the fantasies, some nonsense about the wee soul Jamie, the boy that drowned, being taken away by a hoodie crow.”
Chiara stared at her.
“It’s a horrible big black bird that eats carrion and waits around at lambing time for the carcasses of dead and sometimes not so dead lambs.”
“Euch!” Chiara shuddered. “Children have great imaginations; they need to explain the things that scare them. A crow, that’s a new one. But this wee boy drowning, so terrible for the parents, the family.”
“Aye. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
Angus and Margaret McLean were sitting quietly together over their ritual evening G&T. Rob had wine, a taste he had acquired when on exchange holidays with French family friends. He was desperate to ask questions, knew that his father rarely expressed an opinion and wouldn’t speculate nor ever break a client’s confidence. Rob and his mother knew none of those restraints.
”My, my,” said Margaret. “A fine mess.”
“Peter did give assistance to the man, a person the police wanted to interview, the procurator fiscal can’t ignore that,” her husband gently pointed out.
“Maybe Peter didn’t know the police wanted him when he helped the man,” Rob offered.
“Ignorance is no excuse in law. And please remember, you’re a reporter. You investigate. You report. And you inform the police if need be. It’s not your job to play detective.”
“Don McLean is always telling me the same thing. I’d like to find this sailor, though. A great story.”
“We all would. For Peter Kowalski’s sake.” Angus McLean looked thoughtful. “The police will have checked the trains and roads and of course boats. This man can’t have vanished. If you believe he is up the glens, why don’t you go to Beauly? Ask Dr. Matheson if he has anyone on his list who would notice unusual goings-on in the glens. You know country people; no one can walk across a field without someone seeing them. You never know.” An afterthought struck him. “Dr. Matheson knows Mr. Stuart, the head gamekeeper up Cannich way. There’s not much escapes his eye. What with his precious pheasants and stags and the salmon, he’s always on the lookout for poachers. He would spot a stranger, if that’s where this Polish man is.”
“Thanks, Dad, I might just do that. It’s worth a try anyhow.”
“I also seem to remember,” Angus went on, “the old ghillie, this one’s father, he knew Peter from when they were building the dam. They played together.”
“Football?”
“No,” laughed his f
ather, “the fiddle. Though in Peter’s case it would be the violin. A good player, I’m told. Classically trained. I recall them playing at one or two dances at the Spa Pavilion in Strathpeffer. Peter was far too good of course, but they rattled off a fine jig.”
Margaret agreed. “Yes, that was fun, wasn’t it, Angus?”
Rob could never imagine his father having fun. Enjoying himself, yes. But fun? Still, it was a good lead and the prospect of being out and about on his bike appealed to him.
“Thanks, Dad, I’ll give Dr. Matheson a call right now.”
“Give him our regards,” Margaret called after him as Rob left to use the phone in the hall. She turned to her husband. “You do know something.”
“Only one thing for certain. Peter Kowalski is a good man. Inspector Tompson needs someone to charge, makes him look competent. The police here have the added problem of searching in Ross-shire, in a different jurisdiction. Peter’s a foreigner. For some, that means he must have done something. So, this arrest is opportune.”
“No one would believe anything bad about him.” Margaret was certain.
“Maybe,” said Angus, “but I’m afraid I don’t have your faith in human nature, and people believe that the police are always right. ‘No smoke without fire’ sort of thing. Peter Kowalski could lose a lot more than his reputation if he ends up with a police record.”
Rob arranged to meet the young ghillie. Young Archie had inherited his father’s job and his love of the glens. Even though retired, old Archie Stuart was “fit as a fiddle,” as he told everyone who asked. In late Victorian times the estate was at its peak. As a young boy, he always knew he would follow his father in the service of the clan chief, lord of the vast estate. Vast in square miles. Vast in glens and hillsides. Nearly empty of people. The people, rounded up like cattle, had been driven to the four corners of the earth. Rob had heard there were more Highlanders in Canada than in the Highlands.
Rob drove up the steep winding track to the gamekeeper’s cottage at the top of the glen. The scars of the clearances were visible still. Ruined croft houses, remains of dry stone dykes marking lost fields, now reclaimed by ferns and gorse and whin and heather, a brighter shade of green on the hillsides showing where crofters had fertilized and cultivated the land, now they were empty, except for the sheep. Only ghosts and the faeries remained.
