Today their numbers will be swelled from the herd of farmed deer at Culligran, which at present are scattered over an enclosed stretch of tree-studded hillside. The herding party is Frank Spencer-Nairn, big Hamish, who's his manager, Frank's son Douglas and a helper called Julian. I'm on the sidelines, a watcher.
‘Our chief management tool is a bag of feed,’ says Frank, tipping out a trail of pellets. A string of animals moves closer, warily. Suddenly there's a breakaway and hinds and calves turn tail and flee. Much running and shouting and waving to get them back. Separating calves from their mothers is tricky as they keep dashing for freedom.
When all are rounded up again, the calves are manhandled into pens to be labelled by sex – blue for a male, yellow for a female – which Hamish determines by lifting their tails. Tags are punched into an ear and then a metal disc bearing the animal's number, a statutory requirement. Deer are vulnerable to foot-and-mouth disease and their movements must be recorded. Last thing is to thrust a needle into the rump, which delivers a shot of vitamins, and another under the skin at the shoulder to inject prophylactic drugs.
The calves don't take it calmly. Wide-eyed, they buck and kick, banging against the planks. Sometimes Hamish has to wrestle a lively beast in a headlock. When the last group has gone through the pen, they're marshalled into trailers and taken to the shed to join the others. Their eventual fate – venison cuts on a Waitrose slab.
I talk to Julian. Lean-faced with black hair, nearing 50 I guess, he tells me he was cattleman at nearby Erchless (where years ago Iain Thomson was cattleman for a previous owner) until the boss decided to sell the herd and laid Julian off. A cattleman is a specialist but Julian has had to pick up casual work where he can find it. For the time being, he still lives in a house on the estate and he doesn't want to move – as he says, it's his home and he's among the people he knows.
Weeks later, I pass roadworks near Struy. Among the yellow-jacketed gang is Julian. He waves. Now a road mender.
69
I sit at a table in the window of a café called the Corner on the Square watching the world go by – the world of Beauly, that is. The sun shines and there are people about.
At first sight, the town seems hardly more than a broad square flanked by trim houses and nice shops. Nevertheless, it has a certain charm and status and the Corner, a café-cum-delicatessen selling wines, cheeses and high-class groceries, is a Mecca for ladies of the county set.
The Square's a microcosm. There's a butcher – ‘black pudding and haggis champion of the north of Scotland’ – a baker and a fruit-and-veg shop – all you need for survival. The Co-op and another small supermarket eye each other from opposite sides of the street. A café humbler than the Corner offers plain fair – coffee, tea, baked potatoes, bacon rolls, egg and chips – plus postcards and assorted tourist ephemera and, this being the sunny side of the square, two tables are set out on the pavement – Beauly caff goes continental. There's a hotel, the Priory, with attached rhyming (and punning) fish and chip shop, ‘the Friary’, a gift shop, an art shop with paintings in large gilt frames, the accent being on sheep and gloomy heather moors, and a pub. Maggie Blyth – there is a Maggie Blyth, I have met her – is a chic dress shop for sophisticated ladies. Here, Catherine has shopped and I have bought for her. Hard by, for a time, was Maggie Blyth Men, a similar showcase for stylish males, where sitting at his desk was Garry Blyth himself, coiffed, with a cravat at his neck. Alas, Maggie Blyth Men did not last. On a return visit, I find it shuttered and bare.
In the centre of the Square, a small stone obelisk commemorates war dead – not those of the world wars but men who died in South Africa in the Boer War of 1899–1902. There's a particular reason for this. The inscription tells that it was erected in 1905 by Lovat tenantry to commemorate the raising of the Lovat Scouts for service in South Africa by Simon Joseph 16th Lord Lovat ‘who desired to shew that the martial spirit of their forefathers still animates the Highlanders of to-day and whose confidence was justified by the success in the field of the gallant corps whose existence was due to his loyalty and patriotism’. It was Lovat's belief that stalkers and gillies, marksmen all, handy with their ponies and trained in stealthy approach over rough country, would be well qualified to meet the Boer irregulars on the veldt. Many enlisted.
All Strathglass was Lovat country. Their lands stretched from Beauly to the far west and the Lovat baronial seat, Beaufort Castle, is just a mile or two away – former seat, it should be said, for, now that the Lovat wealth and lands have been frittered away, it belongs to Ann Gloag of Stagecoach, businesswoman and philanthropist. Close to the Square is a house that used to be the Lovat Estate office and, beside that, the Lovat Arms Hotel, grandest building in town – modestly grand, as befits the place – somewhat French in style with mansard roof. Here Catherine and I spent a couple of nights, attracted by its homely atmosphere – log fire blazing in the hearth – and sleeping under a canopy swagged in tartan. One night, a party of elderly bus trippers made merry in the dining room. One dame in her 70s introduced us to her companion: ‘He's not my husband – he's the boyfriend.’ Cackle, cackle.
A short step from the Square, there is a time capsule: Campbell and Co., Highland outfitters ‘by royal appointment’ (the Queen Mum), where you may be served by the latest Campbell in the line and his two elegant sisters. Here I place an order for breeks or plus-twos, the tweed breeches worn as working garb by stalkers and farmers and casually by the gentry and wealthy visitors who like to show a well-turned leg.
In a small back room lined with pictures of tartan-clad clansmen, silver-haired James Campbell takes my measurements, shows his pattern books and I choose a check. It's a surprise to see how many colours are combined in the weave though the overall effect is muted – there are at least three shades of green, from olive to very nearly black, through which run thin lines of mustard and red.
James lays out his two big pattern books on the table – Scottish Estate Tweeds and Our Scottish District Checks – heavy, floppy volumes of sample patches. In the old days, lairds used to dress their servants with their own choice of livery. Estate tweeds were big business when small armies of outdoor workers were employed – keepers, stalkers, gillies, gardeners, foresters and hands, all to be clad. It's still done, though on a lesser scale, says James. When an estate changes hands it's not unusual for the new owner, English, American, Scandinavian or Arab perhaps, to change the livery to a style more to his taste.
He's heard tales of his grandfather taking to the moors in company with a landed client to match the colours of a proposed tweed to the tones of the heather, the grasses, the mosses. In what season? For the colours change. Late summer and early autumn might be best when the sporting season is at its height.
You step inside the shop and feel the years roll back – wooden shelves heaped with rolls of tweed, deerstalker hats, pork pies and other country headgear piled up in pagoda-like stacks, racks of heavyweight jackets and breeches – such an air of yesteryear. An American who came into the shop was so entranced that he photographed it from every angle, saying that he wanted to replicate it in the States.
But what's to come? Some day, all this must change and probably not for the better. Ian at Comar Lodge thinks so. He forecasts that the Campbells will eventually sell and whoever buys the shop won't keep it that way and may not even continue the business. It's the prime site on the main street and it's not the tweeds sold there that counts. The ironmonger's next door was similarly old-fashioned until it was reinvented 20 years ago – although not wholly, for the wooden stairs creak as they always did and there's still old timber panelling on the upper floor.
James Campbell would hate the shop to change but there's no one to take over – he and his sisters are the last of the line. They'll have no trouble selling. When they moved from the flat above the shop to a bungalow nearby, rumours circulated that they were giving up the business and offers to buy flooded in.
The business began in 1858 under a dif
ferent name and the Campbell interest came when James's grandfather married a daughter of the firm. It's been Campbell & Co. since the 1920s. James says the ’70s to the ’90s were the boom years, with the bulk of the trade coming from American visitors. Now there are fewer Americans around and business is calmer.
Royalty has shopped here, hence the coat of arms on the facade. The Queen Mother would despatch an equerry for her shopping and Princess Margaret came in person. Camilla has been but not Charles so far. The coat of arms – ‘by royal appointment’ – has to come down under a rule that declares it must be removed five years after the royal customer's death. It will then join another in the attic from the short reign of Edward VIII. Did Mrs Simpson ever call? Probably not.
James is no ordinary tailor and outfitter. He's been made a papal knight, at the mention of which he smiles deprecatingly. How many of us have had their inside leg measured by a papal knight?
70
In a small antique shop just off the Square, the lights glint on silver and a shelf crowded with Staffordshire figures, historic and mythical, including the Gladstones, Mr and Mrs. He's severe, she frumpish. Who'd buy Mr Gladstone now, four times prime minister, classical scholar and grand old man though he was in his time? I for one, if I'd the money to spare – I've a soft spot for him.
There's local interest. Gladstone came to Guisachan as a house guest when elderly and out of office and past all thought of wielding his axe on Tweedmouth trees.
The Staffordshire Gladstone is ghostly in plain white glaze relieved only by a hint of gold on the waistcoat, a touch of black on his toecaps and black pinpoint eyes. I could have had him for £145 or £400 the pair. So he's worth more with his missus than alone.
71
Strolling in the Square in the evening, I stop at the art shop to gaze at a large coloured engraving on an easel in the window. It's a stalking scene – or, rather, an après stalking scene. In the foreground, figures in Highland dress led by a piper cross a humpback bridge. There's a gillie with the dogs and, on the crown of the bridge, the chieftain walks tall, a tartan plaid slung over his shoulder and a feather in his cap, followed by two retainers and a boy leading two ponies with stags slung sack-like across their backs, antlers spiked against the sky. In the rear, a stalker with guns on his shoulder chats to a group of peasant women at the wayside. A sliver of blue loch is just visible beyond, with snow-capped hills in the distance. A copperplate inscription reads The Chief's Return from Deer Stalking and the artist is named as Sir Edwin Landseer.
Landseer, a great favourite of the Victorians, is unfashionable now but this Landseer I liked. It's deer stalking as grand opera. Did it ever happen that way? Since Landseer took pride in the accuracy of his scenes despite a tendency to romanticise, it probably did. It's different nowadays. Where's your Highland dress, the full panoply? And the ponies? Gone, mostly, ousted by the stalkers’ Argocats and Land Rovers.
Next morning, I return to the shop and a deal is done. Return from Stalking is lifted from its easel and put into store to be collected later and I amble back to the guest house where I've spent the night.
This guest house is rather grand in its way – a large villa close to the Square with spacious rooms reached by a handsome staircase. On the landing stands a wardrobe in dark figured wood garnished with carved oak leaves, about nine feet tall and wide in proportion. Thinking of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I sneak a glance inside but it doesn't lead to Narnia. The way is blocked by neat piles of bed linen.
72
A gate leads off the Square into the grounds of a ruined priory as reclusive as the monks who once lived there – a gaunt building screened by big trees. Grandest of all is a sycamore with a huge spread of foliage held aloft on up-stretched boughs. But the elm tree beside the gate is a sad spectacle – an ancient ruin to match the priory. It's said to have been planted by Mary Queen of Scots and looks its age – a time-wizened stem leaning at an angle, shorn of its crown from which a cluster of sprouting shoots indicate the last snatch at life of a decaying leviathan. Two more elderly elms shade the few gravestones at their feet. One, split down the middle and held together by webbing straps, gets regular health checks and medication from Historic Scotland.
First glimpse of the building is of a bare red sandstone gable where the great window was, stark against the sky. The body of the church is roofless. The nave is high and narrow, with tombstones sunk flat on the turf floor. On one side are three pear-shaped windows, the stone salt-bitten and etched by wind and rain. There's a feeling of arrested decay about the place. Why was it abandoned to the elements and when? Possibly misguided zealotry on the part of Protestant reformers, the dilapidating rage of religious fundamentalists. The glib answer is to blame John Knox.
According to an information panel, the priory was established in 1230 though the ruined building dates from later. It was, it says on the board, a Valliscaulian foundation – an order of monks which took its name from its place of origin, the Val-des-Choux (Valley of the Cabbages) near Dijon. A maximum of 20 monks was permitted in Valliscaulian houses and it's suggested that Beauly housed no more than a handful. Only the prior had contact with the world.
Life was hard. Silence reigned. They had no mattresses. A thankless regime. They lived in hope of what? Of their daily bread and ale or of something more than the bare necessities? Salvation, I guess.
73
The station at Beauly is really only a halt. You stick your hand out and the train stops. A single line of rail curls round the tiny platform which is only one coach long. Beauly scrapes on to the railway map but only just.
To the left, the line disappears under the road through an arch of red sandstone, buttressed these days by concrete. That way leads, several hours up the line, to Thurso and Wick in the far north. Inverness is the other way. At the end of the short platform, signs poke out from spires of rosebay willow herb warning: ‘Do not alight here’. You'd tumble into the undergrowth if you did. ‘
‘Alight’ – it's curious word, gives pause for thought. Railways like it but you don't see it much elsewhere. I look up a dictionary. ‘Rather formal or old use,’ says Chambers. ‘Poetic,’ says another. Or, as Samuel Johnson had it long ago, ‘The word implies the idea of descending; as, of a bird from the wing, a traveller from his horse or carriage.’
On this sunny morning, delicate leaves of wych elm flutter down from the trees to settle on the track. Oddments of debris litter the elderly wooden sleepers – an old glass bottle, once green but now opaque, coated with black oil as if transmuted. When did I last see timber sleepers? Ageing, dark brown, knotted and split – a reminder of the time when wheels on rails went clickety-click and still do here.
A peacock butterfly settles on the platform edge, unfolding its wings to the sun's rays. ‘A peacock alighted (alit?) on the platform edge’ – poetic.
74
In bed at Comar Lodge, reaching for a book to read from the selection on the bedside table, I find this: Paul Kruger, His Life and Times, a faded edition of more than 30 years ago by a Cambridge academic. Boer Wars etc. – a bit esoteric for a B&B. I wonder who left it there.
I read Kruger's words, I hear them gruff and guttural: ‘Whether we conquer or die, freedom will come to Africa as surely as the sun rises through tomorrow's clouds . . . Then shall it be from Zambesi to Simon's Bay, Africa for the Afrikanders.’ Wrong, of course – when freedom came, the sun rose not on Afrikaaners but black Africans.
75
Scott multi-tasks. He grows his own food. He drives a van for the library service, delivering books to the housebound. He takes a hand with the desktop publishing business his wife runs – she's also the school secretary. And he's the district's part-time registrar.
Deanie is two houses and a ruin reached by way of a rough track. It's the last outpost of Lovat land in the glen, sandwiched as it is between Mr Salleh's Braulen Estate and Frank Spencer-Nairn's Culligran.
We sit on a bench looking down the garden Scott made �
� a tiny pool, poppies in bloom, other flowers and shrubs and a vegetable patch, of course. He points to the corner where he has planted the Gaelic alphabet – in other words, the 18 trees which, in folklore, represent the Gaelic letters. They're growing sturdily – Gaelic thrives in his garden. He says that, when he came to Deanie, it took three days to move in all his household goods mainly because of the compost, which is close to his heart. He loaded it onto a trailer and brought it all with him. ‘I couldn't leave it,’ he says, feelingly.
Being a peripatetic registrar here can be demanding. One wedding at which he officiated took place beside a lochan above Loch Monar, a romantic spot or so the happy couple thought until the tempest struck. The wind howled and the rain bucketed. A dozen or so guests including a mother and her seven-month-old baby turned up for the ceremony, dripping, some trudging up the muddy track, others jolting along in a stalkers’ vehicle. They'd brought a tent but failed to pitch it in the storm so the wedding took place in the open and, on the way down, the walkers had to wade through two burns in spate.
76
It's 10 miles round Loch Affric. The river's in turmoil and all the burns are high, spilling over the rough track often ankle deep. I splash through on submerged stone, thinking, ‘What will these burns be like later when the sodden hills have released all their weight of water?’ Stalkers’ vehicles have churned the peat in many places and, a short way off the track, I see two figures hunched in a parked Argocat, peering into the gloom. Not a good day for their sport, I guess.
Out of the landscape comes the only human I'll meet from first to last, a young Frenchman, heavily laden, who's trekked in from the west coast, having stopped overnight at Alltbeithe. It's not the weather that bothers him, he says, but the midges.
Season in Strathglass Page 15
