A Small Death in the Great Glen

by A. D. Scott

  “I need to hire four men for a few weeks, but there’s no one to be had.” Bill pointed to the schedule. “But I’m now certain there’s something going on. Shenanigans with deliveries, men walking off the site, it stinks to high heaven. And the name Findlay Grieg keeps coming up.”

  At that, Andrew McFarlane’s eyes went greener. “What have you heard?”

  “You yourself said the men left the site because there’s no materials. The supplier swore the shipment was sent three weeks since, but it’s stuck in Kyle, nothing to do with him.” And he wants paying, Bill didn’t say. “I’m away over to see for myself. And thon local firm that didn’t get the contract are passing the word to others, so I hear, to not cooperate with us.”

  “So, if the job’s no on time, the second bidders’ll hope to pick up the contract.”

  “Aye, I’ve seen it all before. No doubt I’ll see it again.” And I’ve done it maself, Bill did not say. “But Grieg? What’s thon sleikit manny going to get out of it?”

  “I did hear he’s building what he calls a lodge, for visitors, with fancy rooms and shooting and fishing and all laid on,” Mr. McFarlane contributed, “for the Yanks and suchlike that want to return to the home of their ancestors.”

  “Done wi’ favors for favors, I’ll bet.” Bill looked dour. “The lady owner of this place is a right gossip, and she has no time for Mr. Grieg, so I hear. Maybe I can charm some information out of her.”

  McFarlane laughed, partly in admiration and partly in disapproval.

  “I’ve no doubt you’ll work your usual spell. Anyhow, you’ll no be needing me the now. I’ll leave you to sort it out. One way or another.”

  As soon as he said it, he regretted his choice of words. One way or another was exactly what Bill would do. Unlike himself, he knew Bill had few problems with the niceties.

  Come to think of it, he told himself on his way home, Bill Ross and Findlay Grieg deserve each other.

  The herring were lightly fried in oatmeal, plump and juicy. Golden Wonder potatoes, yellow, fluffy, had a nutlike flavor; the swedes were fragrant, the moist orange flesh mashed with hand-churned butter; a simple, delicious, traditional west-coast meal. Bill ate in silence. He had always liked his food and nothing beat herring. Joanne waited for Bill to tell her of his meeting. He didn’t.

  “That was lovely, thank you.” Joanne smiled at Mhairi as she cleared the table.

  “Can I get you anything else?”

  “A pot of tea would be nice.”

  Mhairi was delighted. Someone had noticed her cooking. This was a singular occurrence in her two years at the hotel. She brought them a tea tray, banked up the fire and prepared for closing. The few earlier customers were long gone. Joanne wished her good night and took the tray upstairs, leaving Bill alone at the bar.

  “I’ll be right behind you,” he promised. He ordered a half gill, then another. A third glass was served before Bill felt comfortable.

  “What is it about this place? Why does everyone shut you out? What’s wrong with the people over here?”

  Polishing the glasses while she waited for him to finish up, Mhairi did the barmaid’s listen, one ear on the customer, the other on the ticking clock. Bill was becoming maudlin and she wanted to go home.

  “I’m being frozen out. They didn’t want an outsider on this job. No supplies. Men quit. Foreman quit. A plot, that’s what it is. Thon Grieg has got me, no two ways about that.”

  This disjointed dialogue was between himself and his whisky, that Mhairi knew, but the name made her all ears. “Mr. Findlay Grieg?”

  “The one and only.”

  The third dram and the long day finally won. He bade Mhairi good night and stumbled up the stairs.

  Two thoughts stayed with Mhairi from that night and the thoughts burrowed like wee black moles into her nights: Mr. Findlay Grieg, she knew more than enough about him; and Joanne Ross, a nice woman, kind, she’d like to ask her for help, but could she be trusted?

  The lintel of the door frame was especially low. Bill hit his head as he came into the room. Cursing, he dropped onto the bed and scrabbled around trying to pull off his boots and clothes. Joanne had turned out the bedside light and lay beneath the eiderdown, pretending to sleep. He pushed his cold body up against her, icy hands running over her, whispered loudly.

  “What you need is another bairn. A wee boy. That’s what you want.”

  A mist of secondhand whisky breath enveloped her, killing desire stone dead.

  They left the inn early, the dawn pewter-flat from an absence of light. Bill whistled as he drove, Joanne silent, desperately trying to recall dates. A pregnancy would close the trap.

  Up and over the bealach, back down the hairpin bends, a right turn to the sea, and the van reached the fishing port and the ferry crossing to Skye. Sea, sky and land faded in and out on a melting horizon. An occasional distant darker gray suggested an island. Buildings huddled along on the foreshore, shape-shifting in the rain.

  Whitewashed terraced houses peered out at the harbor, small windows grudgingly allowing some light in. Seagulls kept up a perpetual screech that periodically rose to hysteria pitch when buckets of guts were tipped into the waters of the harbor. Picturesque in summer, it was bleak the other ten and a half months of the year.

  “Mrs. Watt? I’m Joanne Ross, and this is my husband, Bill. We stayed at your lovely hotel last night.”

  “Come in, come in, the both of you. Mhairi told me to expect you.”

  They were shown into the front parlor, where they stood around awkwardly until she returned with the tea. She bustled about, a mother hen of a woman. Mrs. Ina Watt saw herself a true Highlander, a hospitable woman, originally came from Dingwall in Easter Ross.

  “Bill, you explain.” Joanne prayed that Bill wouldn’t offend the woman by relating any of his inexhaustible fund of Dingwall small-town jokes. He could safely joke about their football team. Everyone knew they were a disgrace.

  She knew that Bill didn’t want her here when he talked to Mrs. Watt. It would cramp his style. He would have to tone down the color, stick to the truth, go easy on the waffle. He was not an analytical man, emotions were foreign territory, talking was for passing on information, charming people, telling a story, having a joke. Meaningful conversations were for women. Margaret McLean had once remarked to Joanne that had Scottish men been gifted with the graces of Rudolph Valentino, they might be forgiven, but with a culture of claymores instead of scimitars, what could you expect?

  He told Mrs. Watt most of the story but left out the bank, the final, final letters, the missed appointments with the manager. The story was new to Joanne too. This was the first time she had heard Bill put all the pieces in joined up talking. After seeing the ghost of a building site, she had worked most of it out for herself. That the situation was close to desperate was now clear.

  Mrs. Watt waited until Bill had finished, then asked, “Do you fancy a wee dram in yer tea? I know it’s a bit early but it’ll warm you up.”

  Joanne covered her cup in refusal; Bill held his out. A hefty slug did indeed warm him up and he fancied that Mrs. Watt, as she turned to put the bottle back, did likewise to her own cup.

  “What a day.” She began, using the convention of a conversation on the weather before deciding how much to tell. “I don’t mind the cold. I like the snow. But this dreich mist, it gets in everywhere. If it keeps up, I’ll be back to the east coast before long. Drier, you know. There’s not much to keep us here this time of year. We do a good trade in bed-and-breakfast but only in the summer. Course we’ll no take single men nor seamen, respectable folk only.”

  She blethered on while Bill sipped his fortified tea and Joanne warmed herself by the fire. The pain from her thawing hands and feet, almost frostbitten on the drive over, was now a warm tingle.

  “Willie, my man, he’ll be sorry to have missed you, Mr. Ross. He’s away over to Skye to look at some cobals. We’re thinking of setting up a business hiring them out to visitors as sea loch f
ishing is getting popular in these parts.”

  “We just dropped by to bring you the list of the messages Mhairi needs. We must be setting off back home soon, before it gets dark.” Joanne was desperate to get the woman to return to the point of their visit.

  “How’s Mhairi managing? I hope she looked after you? More tea?” Mrs. Watt tucked the list into her apron. She continued to blether, a burn on its way to the sea; restless, relentless, determinedly tumbling over any object in its way.

  “Thon man from over your way, Mr. Grieg, Mr. High and Mighty I call him, he’s going into the fishing business too. It’s a whatjemaca’it, a lodge. Rowan Lodge. I ask you. Like in Canada, he says.”

  Bill had been sitting there, a glaikit look on his face. It took him a moment to realize what Mrs. Watt was on about as he had shut off many sentences earlier.

  “And the midges over there, they’re that bad, thon peat bog’s no place for visitors. Well, I says to him, with all the money you’ve put into the place, I hope you get something back. It’ll be fine, he says, as bold as brass. Got my contacts, he says. I know all about his contacts. Disgraceful. And my Mhairi says he’s no playing fair wi’ you neither. The man’s got no shame. More tea?”

  There had been no need for Joanne’s intervention; wait long enough and Mrs. Watt would tell you the antecedents of every family in both the shires.

  “I’m in trouble, Mrs. Watt.” Bill needed to keep the conversation on his concerns. He switched the charm back on. “I need someone who knows about these things to put me straight. I might end up losing everything.”

  “You poor soul. It’s no about thon council houses is it?”

  Bill nodded.

  “Aye, I thought as much.” And she was off again. “Now I’m no a gossip, but I can’t stand that manny. An’ the builder, a local man as you know, nice enough fellow but no much of a thinker, Grieg has him in his pocket. All the work done on thon lodge thingy is at cost price or nearly, so I hear, in the hope of council work to come. County council work, but Mr. Grieg is only town council. Queer that! And it all must be costing a pretty penny. All swanky inside, so I hear, tartan carpets and the like. Rowan Lodge, I ask you!”

  “But what’s Grieg up to exactly?” Bill was dying of curiosity.

  “Exactly?” That stopped her. “How should I know?” She realized her tongue had got the better of her. “I’m no a gossip.”

  Joanne turned to Bill. “I could look up the planning notice in the Gazette archives.”

  “The Highland Gazette?”

  “Aye, I work there.”

  “You have a job?” Mrs. Watt looked at Joanne again. “Now I know why you’re so anxious about this contract. It’s aye hard to make ends meet when you have bairns. My man has always been able to look after me but I won’t pretend that he could run our wee B and B business without me.”

  All this did not go down well with Bill.

  “But tell me,” she started up again, “tell me about the wee boy that drowned and thon Polish sailor, you being in the know and all. How could he do that? Kill a bairn? Mind you, them foreigners—”

  Bill raised his arm in an exaggerated arc and looked at his watch. “We haven’t time to sit around and gossip.”

  “Gossip? Me gossip? I don’t know anything about anything. I’m no one to gossip.”

  “But I thought you said Grieg—”

  “Thought’s a fine thing. I’ve said nothing. Nothing at all. Look now, there’s a wee gap in the weather. See? Best take advantage of it. It’s a long drive back and it’ll be dark by four thirty. Nice to meet you. Cheery-bye.”

  Before they could get a word in, they were out the door, out on the pavement, in the fine misty rain. Joanne looked at Bill and rolled her eyes before making her way back to the van.

  The fine mist and rain made visibility poor. As they slowly followed the road south along the sea loch, the peaks of the Five Sisters were only a memory, a mark on the map. After about fifteen miles a painted sign appeared at the bottom of a rough track. Lurid pink and silver salmon were leaping over the lettering that proclaimed Rowan Lodge. And in the space of a few minutes the mist evaporated, the sun shot through the breaks between clouds, the mountains appeared again to take up their usual positions as a backdrop and there on a small rise perched a building. It looked painted onto the landscape. With 360-degree views to the sea, the islands, the mountains behind and beyond, the size of the construction made Bill whistle.

  “Some lodge!” Joanne too, was awed.

  They drove up and parked. The long two-story building, with a grand entrance and reception rooms plumb in the middle, was in local stone with a slate roof. A grand stone terrace big enough to turf over for a bowling green was almost finished. Sounds of hammering on stone and wood echoed around the grandiose foyer and up the elaborate wooden staircase.

  A painter, previously contracted to Bill’s project, was varnishing the wood paneling that covered the lower part of the walls. No doubt his colleagues were around. At least the workman had the decency to look shamefaced.

  Bill walked around the building site, taking his time, estimating the square feet of it, checking everything. And running his hand over the oak banisters, admiring the hand-forged railings, estimating the amount of slate and of stone, noting the expanse of glass and stained glass windows fit for a cathedral, and gilt-framed paintings of stags at bay or highland cattle, Bill was all the while making a mental calculation on the cost of the project. And when he reached the conservative side of a breathtaking total he knew he had been outfoxed. Yet in some part of him, he was full of admiration for the gall of the man. And jealous.

  Their journey home was quiet. Through the light of an almost full moon, the final stretch, before the road descended to the east coast, had the added danger of wandering sheep suddenly appearing in the middle of the road. Broken walls of deserted crofts showed up as dark shadows on the hillsides. During the Clearances, this drovers’ route from the west came to be known as Desolation Road, the evicted and often starving clansmen herded to the emigrant ships or to the poorhouse. The very rocks of the drove roads had witnessed and retained the sorrow of the desperate human exodus, sending the Highlanders to form diasporas in Canada and America and New Zealand and Glasgow, Joanne remembered, and the stories, the history and the mountain ridges seemed to press in on the passing van. Bill too felt the weight of the day, but he put it down to the weather.

  On the final miles along the shore back into town, Joanne insisted on calling in to Bill’s parents to kiss the girls good night. But they were asleep.

  “How was the trip?” Grandad Ross asked as she came into the sitting room.

  “Grand, but the weather was winter one minute and summer the next.”

  “I’ll put the kettle on.” Granny Ross put her knitting aside and rose.

  “I’d love to but Bill’s waiting.”

  “He’s outside?” Grandad Ross was not happy. “Well, if he can’t be bothered coming in to see his own mother and father, he’ll just have to wait.”

  “He’s tired after the long drive.” She was too tired to come up with the usual elaborate excuses for her husband.

  “He needs a good talking-to, that son of mine.”

  “How were the girls? Did they behave?”

  “Wee angels they were.”

  Granny Ross rolled her eyes at this.

  “Saturday matinee, Wee Jean wanted to go home early,” Grandad told her, “frightened by the big boys shouting.” The sound of her shrieks still echoed around in his head. “Mind you, the film was a bit scary and she has such an imagination.”

  “That’s more Annie’s trouble than Jean’s.” Joanne laughed.

  She managed to extricate herself after five minutes, knowing that Bill would be furious at being kept waiting but even more furious at his own cowardice, his own shame whenever he had to face his father. His mother might forgive him anything, but his father saw everything.

  “See you in the morning at church. Nig
ht.” She shivered, pulled her coat tight against the cold and walked down the path to her husband and a decision. Standing at the front door, the sight of his son’s van annoyed Grandad Ross yet again. We’ve all been through some things that don’t bear thinking about, he thought, we all have had to put behind us the death of friends, the horror of the past; there are two generations of us with memories we have to live with, it’s no excuse, he thought, fuming.

  “George, shut the door, there’s a terrible draft,” Granny Ross called out from the sitting room.

  That son of mine, I despair of him, he thought as he took a last look at the Milky Way. He admired Joanne, a grand lass, he told everyone. But something was not right in their household, he knew that. He also knew to hold his tongue. Look out for the girls, he told himself, that’s all I can do. Then, for the thousandth time, the memory of the morning’s outing to the cinema came back to plague him.

  Grandad Ross was a practical man. He worked at the iron foundry, a good steady job. After surviving the First World War all he had wanted he now had—a quiet life, a shed and a bicycle. His escapes were the weekly trips to the library to satisfy his unquenchable thirst for cowboy books—Westerns was the only section he ever visited—and a regular outing to a film at any of the three cinemas in town that were showing Westerns, especially John Wayne films. His idea of America was in shades of red and yellow. Not like the Highlands, where he pictured everything in shades of gray and brown and green with occasional flashes of brightness breaking through.

  The Saturday-morning children’s matinee at the Palace he enjoyed as much as his granddaughters did. Probably more than Wee Jean, he acknowledged; she found it intimidating but loved going anywhere with her grandad. The Lone Ranger was his favorite, followed by Zorro, the Masked Avenger. He liked Charlie Chaplin but loved Buster Keaton. The adventure serial made especially for children he didn’t mind but he couldn’t abide Lassie. Not that he would ever say so—it was Wee Jean’s favorite.