by John Burke
‘Lady Torrance?’ The young woman’s voice on the line achieved just the right tinge of respect without sounding too gushing. ‘This is Beth Crichton from the Ross Foundation. I don’t know if you’ve read about the work we’re undertaking to restore a Highland croft which used to be in the Ross family before they were driven out during the Clearances.’
‘I seem to remember there was a feature about it in one of the Sunday supplements.’
‘Yes, we’ve had quite gratifying coverage. And you’ll recall that one of the important aspects is to assemble as many authentic artefacts of the time as possible, as well as any original paintings which are relevant to the theme.’
‘Such as Nicol’s Lochaber No More? And Wilkie’s Distraining for Rent?’
‘Lady Torrance, that’s exactly the sort of know-how we need. Time’s getting short, and we do have to get things moving. We’d be glad to offer you whatever retainer you think would be appropriate to act as our artistic adviser. Sorting out the genuine from the fake. We don’t want anything contrived. The whole atmosphere’s got to be evocative but real, not gimmicked up. I’m sure you know what I mean.’
‘I know what you mean, all right.’ Lesley eyed the proofs a few inches away. ‘But I really don’t think I’ve got the time right now. I’m sure you can find someone else with just the qualifications you need.’
‘We’re told you’re the best in the field.’
‘Flattering, but … oh, of course, I know who I’d recommend. My old colleague Dr Smutek. He has a gallery just off Thistle Street. Only a brisk short walk from your office.’
‘Mrs Ross is set on talking to you personally.’
‘Mrs Ross?’
‘Mr Ross’s daughter-in-law. In this country to check on progress. She’s appearing in the arts programme on local TV at ten-thirty this evening. Please, Lady Torrance. Could I ask you at least to watch it? I’m sure you’ll find it interesting. And then if we could have a word afterwards …’
The young woman sounded so genuine, eager yet not pushy, that Lesley couldn’t quite bring herself to cut the call short and hang up. In the end she found herself promising to watch the programme; but promising nothing else.
Nick was waiting for her to emerge. ‘You’re weakening already,’ he accused her.
‘I’m vaguely curious, that’s all. It won’t hurt to watch for half an hour. I do know something about the Ross collections here and there.’
‘Like so many tycoons, plastering his name all over the landscape in the hope of achieving immortality. And all of it a sitting target for all the forgers and con-men in the business. There’s a subject for another book, my love.’
‘As it happens, there’s a reference in the present one to a very dubious Landseer in their Winnipeg gallery. Don’t know if that’s likely to endear me to them.’ Lesley turned back towards the proofs still waiting in her study. ‘All the same, I don’t mind being a couch potato for a short time this evening.’
*
The first five minutes of the programme were devoted to a brief review of a new book about ghosts of old Edinburgh, with a shivery sound track provided by a group calling itself The Creeps, desperate to be featured in the Edinburgh Festival. Then Mrs Morwenna Ross was introduced, sitting on a couch with the usual presenter on a high stool opposite. The contrast between the two women could hardly have been greater. The interviewer’s dress was adorned with multi-coloured chrysanthemums flowing down long, puffy sleeves, twitching continually as she leaned forward to ask questions or make statements, emphasizing every other word by waving her arms and making stabbing or vaguely circular movements with her hands which Lesley found hard to relate to what those words were saying. Her voice combined a pretended deference with easygoing chattiness, yet left an aftertaste of implicit condescension. Mrs Ross, in a charcoal grey two-piece, hardly moved, yet dominated the screen. She was dark, elegant, and apparently offhanded in her replies to the interviewer’s volleys of questions. But when she was allowed to speak at length for herself, although it was at half the speed of the interviewer, every word and phrase sank in and went on echoing in the mind. A face and voice, thought Lesley, which meant something.
‘The ancestors of James Fergus Ross were driven off their lands in Strath More by greedy lairds who wanted space for their sheep in preference to living space for their clansmen. Mr Ross’s great-great-grandfather was only a lad when he and his parents were thrown bodily out of their croft and forced to watch it burn down.’
The silhouette of a ruined, roofless cottage appeared on the screen against a background of fiery sky. As Morwenna Ross told her story, other images were slotted into place, and the story itself moved far out across the world. Lesley found herself remembering bits and pieces from historical studies and magazine articles she had read: disjointed fragments which were now being smoothly joined up.
Great play had often been made in the Ross Foundation press releases, she recalled, of James Fergus Ross’s humble origins. They made a good story at the first three or four tellings, after which editors and financial correspondents began to get a bit bored. But Morwenna Ross was quietly bringing it all back to life as if it were all new and vibrant.
The legend began in one of the bleak little clachans on the borders of Sutherland and Wester Ross. Caught up in the mass eviction of the crofters to make room for sheep runs, young Fergus Ross and his parents were thrown out of their home, and by burning it down it was made ruthlessly clear that there was no possibility of their ever returning. Protests were suppressed by factors and the police. Supposedly compassionate resettlement was offered in half-finished fishing villages which were utterly alien to the crofters. When his mother died of a broken heart and failing body within a few weeks of their eviction, the lad was taken by his father to brave the hideous Atlantic crossing on which so many sickened and died.
The sea passage and guarantee of employment had to be paid for by the father indenturing the two of them for ten years to a lumber company in Nova Scotia. Forests which for a couple of centuries had supplied masts for the sailing ships of Britain and America were proving even more prosperous as suppliers of pulp paper mills. Increased production of newspapers all over North America meant an increased greed for newsprint. Smaller mills amalgamated into large combines. There was a rich future for hard grafters.
Fergus’s father, robbed of home and land and wife, did not have the willpower to live long in this new world. ‘Left to his own devices,’ Morwenna Ross intoned, ‘his son slaved every hour that God or the devil made, growing to tough adulthood without ever having had a childhood. The day came when he had saved enough money to go into partnership with another immigrant and become a master instead of a slave.’
‘And after another ten years,’ murmured Nick, ‘he fiddled his partner out and acquired an unassailable corner in newsprint mills.’ As the woman on the screen talked of dogged determination and integrity, he tossed in some muttered accusations suggesting a background of financial chicanery and a ruthlessness towards competitors which echoed the behaviour of the Highland lairds towards his own forebears.
By the time James Fergus Ross was born in 1925, Ross Enterprises had become a conglomerate of companies astutely juggling seasonal losses from one arm against profits from another.
His father was killed in action with a Canadian division during the crossing of the Rhine in World War Two. By the end of the war young James was left with a stake in a construction company which had done tolerably well out of military contracts, and the longer term holdings in the timber and wood pulp business.
‘Which,’ observed Nick, ‘in the absence of its managing director on military service, had been in danger of missing out on the fortunes to be made by paying appropriate backhanders during the recent conflict. But young Jamie soon caught up.’
His interruption was itself interrupted by the interviewer asking, with breathless earnestness and an accompaniment of outthrust fingertips, ‘Hasn’t it been suggested in certain par
ts of the media that Mr Ross’s present restoration work in the Highlands is just another story of a tycoon persuaded late in life to seek — what shall we call it? — heavenly insurance by giving lavishly to charity?’ She allowed herself a self-congratulatory little giggle. ‘Balancing the costs, of course, against special tax breaks.’
‘There’ll always be people eager to bring down those who’ve been more successful than themselves. I’ve studied my father-in-law’s work in depth, and I know what benefits it has brought to thousands of people worldwide.’
Colourful fragments of film offered glimpses of Ross Foundations in Canada, New Zealand, the United States, and here in the United Kingdom.
‘Libraries and museums with a slant on pioneering history.’ Morwenna’s tone became almost an incantation. ‘The contribution of Scots driven from their own lands to make a new life in the New World.’
A tracking shot flashed up on the screen of Gaelic signs on the causeway linking Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island, then cut to a dazzling array of fiddlers, pipers and drummers at a music festival on Prince Edward Island. There was a display of kilt and plaid, and heraldic flags. Music of the pipes swelled up.
‘The Mountain Games in North Carolina based on the Braemar Gathering,’ explained Mrs Ross reverently. ‘And every year the Fort Lauderdale Highland Pipe Band’ — there was a brief blur as one scene was superimposed on the original — ‘plays the Palm Beach Highland Fling. Many of those elements will be attending the great Gathering of the Clans in Edinburgh next year. We want to tie in the formal opening of our reconstructed site with the presence of these homecoming exiles. Invite them to contribute.’
‘And in the longer term’ — the camera swung towards the interviewer’s face as if she had dragged it back impatiently — ‘you envisage a sort of memorial park in memory of the supposed victims of the Clearances?’
‘There’s no ‘supposed’ about it. The true folk of the land were thrown out to make way for sheep walks. Thrown out without mercy. And the local minister would preach from his pulpit about the sin of resisting the lawful wishes of the landlords. Of course,’ said Mrs Ross with relish, ‘once he had done his bit for his patrons, he found he had no congregation left to preach to.’
The picture of a small hotel cowering under a windbreak of pines came on screen. ‘The minister’s abandoned manse was converted into a comfortable home for the factor who had driven the crofters away, and later into a hunting lodge for well-heeled visitors. And later, the hotel which still stands there today. It’s part of Mr Ross’s regeneration scheme that the hotel should become part of a fully equipped visitors’ centre. And, of course, it’s within walking distance of the real heart of the development.’
The ruined croft which had opened the programme was graphically transformed by a turf roof sliding into place. The collapsed stones of the doorway reassembled themselves, and on the sound track a fiddle began a slow, nostalgic tune.
‘The home from which James Fergus Ross’s forebears were brutally driven, but to which he is calling them back in spirit.’
The interviewer babbled some platitudes, the sound track mixed the plaintive melody with a swelling pipe march, and the picture faded through a superimposed photograph of James Fergus Ross staring into the distance.
‘Looks rather like Dr Livingstone,’ said Nick, ‘but without the beard. And I don’t suppose Livingstone would have gone much for the idea of financial leverage. Keeping profits on investments in his own hands while his lenders got only the agreed interest on their money.’
‘But getting sentimental in old age,’ mused Lesley. ‘Conjuring up idealistic memories of the simple life of the crofter.’
‘All neatly packaged. Only I’d not be too sure about it working out all that neatly. There could be some toes trodden on. I’ve met some of the present landowners during that conference a couple of years ago to discuss the new Crofters’ Acts. They put on a big act of looking down on us Lowlanders, but they’re keen enough to get us on their side every time there’s a conflict with the legislators. Could be difficulties with some of them. Long ago gave up chucking crofters out to make room for sheep, and then got rid of the sheep to reserve the space for their stalking and shooting friends. Shouldn’t imagine historic re-creations of their ancestors’ wrongdoings will go down all that well.’
‘Could be interesting, though.’
‘You don’t really fancy getting involved? Filling a gimmicked-up heap of stones with bogus bric-a-brac just to please an ageing entrepreneur going soppy round the edges? Not quite your scene.’
‘The whole idea, the way I heard it, was for me to make sure there isn’t anything bogus.’ The phone rang.
‘Beth Crichton here, Lady Torrance. What did you make of the programme?’
Close to Lesley’s right cheek, Nick silently mouthed: ‘Well, what do you make of it?’
4
Among others who had watched TV that evening was one Rab Thomson, who reluctantly showed up again at DCI Rutherford’s office three days later, once again prodded by his wife. It was hardly the sort of programme Rutherford would have expected him to choose, and Thomson did seem a bit sheepish about it.
‘Been away staying with oor daughter, or I’d have come in sooner. It was her wean’s first birthday, so we had to … well, ye ken how it is.’ It was only because he wanted to get away from the family and watch sports results on the telly that he had blundered across the arts feature.
‘And that woman,’ said Thomson. ‘That one talking about the auld crofts and all that. I’d swear she was the one I saw behind that puir auld bugger.’
‘You’d swear to it?’
Rutherford was not too surprised when Thomson immediately began to hedge, saying that well of course in that bad light no, he couldn’t be all that sure, but all the same his wife had thought he really ought to come forward again, because he was as near sure as could be … only he wouldn’t want to take his oath on it.
It was a familiar pattern. So many promising leads in so many cases had turned out to be false leads that Rutherford was protectively sceptical about this one, which didn’t add much to Thomson’s original vague statement: so vague, indeed, that you could hardly call it a statement. Yet there was something in the man’s manner, confused as he might have been, that persuaded him there could be some truth behind those blurred memories.
‘I’m grateful to you, Mr Thomson. When I’ve pursued the matter further, perhaps we can —’
‘I’d no’ be wanting to get anyone in trouble because of a wee mistake. I mean, ye’ll no’ be calling on me for one of those identity parades or whatever, wull ye?’
‘That depends on developments. But we certainly wouldn’t want to cause any more disturbance in your domestic situation than is strictly necessary. Thank you again, Mr Thomson. Believe me, we do appreciate how public-spirited you’ve been in this matter.’
That would give him something to boast about to his mates, if not to his wife.
When he had gone, Rutherford checked back on the television arts programme to find out who this mysterious female might be.
It didn’t take long. A young woman PC in the Fettes Avenue road policing branch had been watching, and had no difficulty filling in the background details. A Morwenna Ross — yes, those Rosses — had been talking about a historic restoration scheme which the Foundation was backing in the Highlands.
‘Mighty powerful lady,’ she recalled. ‘Bags of clout behind her, I’d say. She’s the sort who’ll probably be on Desert Island Discs in a week or two. All part of the PR.’
‘Didn’t know you could bribe your way onto that.’
‘Not exactly, sir. But my guess is that if you happen to be in town and you happen to have enough influence to get to the front of the queue, you stand a good chance of being asked.’
‘What sort of music d’you suppose she fancies?’
‘Sinister stuff. Danse Macabre … Night on the Bare Mountain … that kind of thing.’
/> ‘Thanks, constable. I’ll watch out for the incantations.’
He decided to go along to the Ross building and tackle this Mrs Ross head on. If the woman was out, then he would have to adjust his tactics. But making an appointment was rarely in Rutherford’s procedures. He preferred to tackle things full tilt, catching people unawares. It had led him into trouble more than once, but he wasn’t going to change his ways now.
He and his sergeant were kept waiting at the reception desk until a Simon Ogilvie appeared and made a big fuss about him showing up unannounced.
‘We work to very tight schedules in this business, Chief Inspector. Each one of us depends on the smooth integration of our respective functions and the time available to our communal efforts. Unwarranted intrusions — quite unwarranted, I would say, in this instance — can cause serious disruptions.’
‘I’ll cause as little disruption as possible, sir. It’s simply a matter of having a few words with Mrs Morwenna Ross to clear up a possibly foolish misconception.’
‘If you’re aware of its foolishness, then all the more reason not to come here without even the courtesy of a prior phone call.’
Rutherford had come across so many of this type before. The man’s sallow complexion suggested that he spent very little of his life outside the office, and was determined that every aspect of existence should be caged within a recognisable social and business hierarchy. Determined to sound imperious, he became shrill and nasal, pinching his words into what he thought was an authentic Morningside voice.
‘I am minded to have a word with your superior officer about this clumsy intrusion.’ Meaning, thought Rutherford, that there might be a nudge and a snide remark at the next Lodge meeting. If he was on a high enough level. Or the golf club. No, Ogilvie didn’t look healthy enough to be a golfer.
‘Perhaps, sir, you’d be good enough to let Mrs Ross know that we’d like a word with her.’
‘I think I may say that I am sufficiently in Mrs Ross’s confidence for you to tell me what the matter is before I disturb her.’
