by John Burke
‘Not yet.’ His voice was resonant and decisive. ‘This is not yet the time.’
Lesley wanted to freeze the frame, hold the scene, explore its meaning; but there was a brief wobble of the picture and a hurried switch to something even less in keeping. A voice-over announced, with a touch of incredulity, the arrival of ‘The South Dakota Lassies’. Two girl pipers marched out on to the main level, danced around by six sandy-haired girls with long legs and the shortest of mini skirts, twirling pom-poms at the end of plastic lances.
In the background there was an outraged cry from Morwenna. Lesley waited for a similar outburst from Jacques Hunter, but there was a sudden blackout. When she flicked the remote control, she found it was matched on the competing channel. Then on each an announcer read out a hurried news flash. A suspected terrorist attack on Prestwick airport was under way, with a rumoured involvement of US planes on rendition flights. The BBC was hurriedly apologetic: ‘It is hoped to incorporate a further visit to Achnachrain during Woman’s Hour. In the meantime, we shall be giving live coverage of events at Prestwick as they unfold.’ ITV made no promises. In both cases it was obvious that camera teams were being rushed away to the airport.
Lesley sat back. Questions lingered, unanswered. Hadn’t the Torrances been promised an invitation to the opening? Official opening was tomorrow, but they had received no invitation.
She watched the panic-stricken to-ings and fro-ings around the airport for a while, until it was reported that two mischief-makers had been arrested and there was apparently no serious threat.
After that she felt no taste for further news bulletins or for predictions about next weekend’s football.
In the evening Nick rang briefly to report on matters just as muddled as those at Achnachrain or Prestwick, pronounced himself ready for a good night’s sleep, and wished her pleasant dreams.
Lesley found it impossible to sleep. At best she sank into fitful drowses, with dreams irritating rather than pleasant. One minute she was involved in a meeting with some faceless dealer anxious to sell her some cracked porcelain which dissolved into a pyramid of broken crockery shards and began to ooze blood; then she came face to face with Jacques Hunter offering to contribute an Indian shirt to the Ross collection. She jolted awake, found that only ten minutes had elapsed, and tossed to and fro, half fighting off another silly vision, half trying to keep a hold on it and squeeze some sense out of it.
In the small hours she got up, made herself a cup of hot chocolate, and sat in front of her computer. It was a crazy thing to do. Her eyelids seemed gummed together, and she was tackling the keyboard as clumsily as that of an old-fashioned typewriter. What on earth did she imagine she was searching for? Normally she used her machine only for straightforward correlation of details or linkage with compatible reference sources. Now, in the middle of the night, she found herself seeking some response from Luke’s missing laptop. Somewhere out there were the answers to so many exasperating puzzles. But it would take a more experienced operator than herself to make a connection in that way-out no-man’s-land.
She wondered about ringing Nick first thing in the morning.
But if she did ring him, it would be to tell him that she had to drive to Achnachrain to see for herself. See what? She wouldn’t be able to tell him that because she didn’t know just what was dragging at her mind, and he was sure to get angry and tell her to stay where she was and have nothing more to do with that crowd. It would be unreasonable of her to interrupt his own commitments right now.
And why persevere, when they hadn’t even had that promised invitation to the opening ceremony?
If anything, that spurred her on. Even as a polite formality, why hadn’t the invitation arrived?
She ought to go back to bed.
And do battle with another swirl of nagging questions and visions?
Including a sudden clear vision of old Mrs Aird smiling at her with a knowing, fatalistic smile …
It was no good. She simply couldn’t hang around any longer, waiting for the night to end, when there would still be no answer. She dressed, hurriedly packed a bag, and drove away from Black Knowe into the night. She was well beyond Aviemore by the time the sky in her rear-view mirror became flushed with the dawn and she had to stop for petrol.
The filling station had the bleakness of an Edward Hopper painting. The attendant was half listening to a babble of radio news and pop music, and resented the need to say ‘Thank you’ as he tore off the receipt from the credit card machine. Not that she would have enjoyed a perky ‘Have a nice day’ from him.
She wondered how many people, groups summoned from overseas and members of the public looking forward to a colourful day out, were waking up or already on their way to Achnachrain.
*
Beth was woken by the sound of two trucks rattling to a halt at the side of the hotel. She moaned, turned over, and clung for a few minutes to the warmth of Randal’s body before pushing herself up and out of bed. He groped vaguely after her, but she was on her feet and trying to persuade herself that it was going to be a wonderful, sunny, well-organized day which would work out exactly according to plan.
After breakfast, she stood beside Randal as he played around with a light meter and then watched him pacing around the arena, calculating, trying to anticipate any snags and any first-rate possibilities.
‘Made up your mind yet, young lady?’
The voice might so appropriately have come out of her own head that for a moment she did not realize that old Mr Ross’s electric buggy had bumped up alongside her. His two shadows — very substantial shadows — stood in their usual positions behind him, but looking forlorn with empty hands.
‘I’m just having a last-minute check on what we might have overlooked,’ she temporized.
‘You’re not one to overlook anything.’ He chuckled, then raised a peremptory hand, which his two minders interpreted as meaning that he wanted to be pushed along the path for a closer view of the croft.
A group of security men arrived in a 4x4 and jumped out vigorously, making a great show of inspecting the exteriors of every building and spreading out along the perimeter of the site to check on the temporary metal fencing.
Another gang was finalizing the erection of two plinths for the return of the television teams.
Randal, swinging a camera over his shoulder, came back to Beth.
‘They’re going to make a complete cock-up of this, you know.’
It was something she didn’t want to hear. ‘I’ve checked on every detail I could,’ she said defensively. ‘It’s always like this. I’d be worried if it all looked too smooth. Pandemonium until curtain up — and then somehow it all falls into place, and sheer determination carries it on. We’ve always coped in the end.’
‘Only this time you’re not in charge.’ He put his hand on her shoulder and fleetingly kissed her cheek. ‘You’ve sweated your guts out, OK, but somebody else is calling the tune.’
She wanted to snap out some indignant put-down; but it came out as plaintive appeal. ‘After all we’ve put into it, it’d be a tragedy if it all went pear-shaped at this stage.’
‘Not a tragedy. A farce. Farce noir.’
Before she could summon up a denial, a tall, domineering figure came striding across the grass towards them with the confidence of a man who had only to lift a finger for the orchestra to begin. Morwenna Ross, coming out of the hotel, was staring at him. Whatever work she had put into preparing the individual contributors, Jacques Hunter had taken on the role of conductor. Now her gaze seemed to be demanding that he turn and bring her in alongside him — or else, perhaps, be stricken down for his arrogance.
Hunter was at his most condescending, ‘Ah, Miss Crichton. Everything going smoothly? Television, film cameramen, the Press — your usual efficient list, ticked off item by item?’
‘One or two folk haven’t shown up yet. But we’ve still got an hour’ — she glanced at her watch — ‘and twenty-five minutes.’
/> ‘Like I said, on the ball as ever.’
‘But,’ Beth ventured, ‘there’s nothing on my schedule about your friends over there.’ She nodded towards the file of Indians who had silently appeared on the fringe of the arena as if conjured up by some incantation beyond the hearing range of ordinary mortals.
Hunter sounded loftily dismissive, deigning to bother with only the sketchiest explanation. ‘They have their part to play, as they played it in the past. These are representatives of the true Americans who greeted the first Scottish settlers, fought with them, and then assimilated them. Our fates are interwoven.’
Assimilated?
‘Just as Big Chief Prancing Bullshit proposes to assimilate my father’s empire?’ said Randal in an undertone as Hunter stalked away.
*
Early morning traffic was sparse, but police patrols were already in position along the main approaches. AA signs, some attached to the metal posts marking passing places on the narrower roads, directed visitors to THE CROFT REVIVAL. Lesley was thankful to arrive, at last, at the uneven line of steel fencing weaving its uneven line between the Auchenchrain site and an improvised car park on a stretch of lumpy moss. She would not have been surprised to find that the urge for pseudo-authenticity had driven the team to rush up a drystone wall in record time. Out of the car, she stretched to ease the stiffness in her joints, and made her way across the spongy ground to a gap in the fence. If the proceedings should be ruined by a heavy downpour, it was going to be difficult to get vehicles out of the inevitable quagmire.
Nobody was on duty yet at the entrance, taking tickets or offering directions. She walked through the gap with a confidence that made the cluster of men a hundred yards away assume that she was an authorized participant.
She stopped by the odd new building she had noticed during the television coverage. It proved to be no more than the shell of a croft, hastily assembled and topped with a turf roof, unlike the painstakingly reconstructed old homestead of the Rosses.
‘A bit of dramatic spectacle the public are bound to expect.’ Jacques Hunter had appeared silently beside her. ‘Like a firework display, you know, to round off the proceedings.’
‘No, I didn’t know. I don’t remember it being in the programme.’
‘A dramatization of a screaming old woman being thrown out of her home, while it’s set on fire and burnt to the ground. A dramatic set-piece to end the day for the benefit of sensation seekers.’ Hunter had opened the door of the mock-up and seemed ready to wave her in. ‘I must say, I’m surprised to see you here, Lady Torrance. I didn’t think you had any more to contribute.’
‘I understood my husband and I were to receive an official invitation to the opening. As it has failed to arrive, I decided to drive up anyway.’
‘Sir Nicholas is with you?’
‘He’s at a meeting in Stirling.’
‘Perhaps you would have been wise to go with him.’
She was seized by a crazy desire to wipe that arrogance off his face and out of that chilling voice. ‘There are still some questions to be answered here. About the ‘wrong Rosses’, for starters. Haven’t you worried about what Luke Drummond may have come across?’
‘Such vague speculations are not what you were hired to investigate.’
‘I was hired,’ said Lesley, ‘to track down and authenticate historic artefacts related to this reconstruction. I’m still interested. More and more interested, in fact, in some even deeper basic truths.’
Hunter’s arm had seemed to be gently waving an invitation for her to look inside the mock-up croft. Now the gentleness ebbed out of it and was lost under an almost sadistic pulse.
‘Recorded screams, of course, through an amplifier. Background noise of crackling flames. And over there’ — his right hand was an iron clamp on her shoulder — ‘a smoke generator, and a controlled flame-thrower.’
Lesley knew this had gone beyond a joke, beyond even a dramatic charade. Her old training had to come to her aid now. She braced herself, ready; but tried to stay very calm, still not quite believing that things could have gone this crazy.
‘I don’t know what sort of nonsense you’re adding to the programme. So far as I was aware —’
‘You have all of you been aware of so little.’ She twisted down and under, slid from his grasp, but then he had both hands on her and she was lifted off her feet and hustled right inside the dark little room.
‘Oh, no. You really mustn’t leave, now that you’ve taken it into your head to come so far. Let’s see if we can’t calm you down until the real drama begins.’ His laugh was almost friendly, sharing a joke with her. ‘You wouldn’t want to miss the grand climax, would you?’
19
Morwenna Ross, alone on the platform with a microphone in front of her and television cameras angled on her for the opening address, might have looked lost and vulnerable. Instead, she radiated enthusiasm. After all they had come through in such a short, harrowing time, the moment had come for jubilation — this moment she had been waiting for, planning for.
She held a dramatic silence for a long, brooding minute. Then she stared at some vision in the air before her, and opened her arms in greeting. Her eyes shone, her voice throbbed.
‘So many of the workers on this land were shipped off without their consent, driven out of their wilfully destroyed homes. Now they are coming back. You are their embodiment. We are here on lands sacred to all of you. Welcome. To our cousins from Newfoundland, Cape Breton, Ottawa, the United States, Australia, New Zealand … welcome.’
There was a spattering of applause. A man sporting the MacLeod tartan stepped up beside her, well primed in his part. He clutched the microphone as if to lift it from its stand and start singing — a traditional Hebridean lament, or, more befitting his stocky appearance and confident swagger, country and Western, hip-hop or reggae?
‘I know I speak for all of us when I say that …’ He paused, took a deep breath, and bellowed: ‘We always promised ourselves that one day’ — another dramatic pause — ‘we’d see Scotland. We’d be back in our homeland. And here we are. By God, here we all are.’ The amplifiers added a whistle of protest to his booming delivery, but were drowned out by a genuine roar of approval. ‘And in return let me offer all you good folk an invitation to visit us. In March every year we have Tartan Week in the United States, with the greatest parades you ever did see through New York City. We aim to be here with you again next year for the Gathering of the Clans around the great Rabbie Burns’s birthday. And then all you good folk will be coming to continue the celebrations with us.’
They came up one after the other to say their piece. Most of them, needing someone to focus their harangue on, were happy to direct their tribute at their host: James Fergus Ross, seated in the forefront of the crowd, his head tilting back appreciatively, drinking in every word of the tributes and promises. It all sounded so warm and comradely, as it was meant to be. Yet Beth was dismayed to find, after all her commitment to the project, that she was feeling it was all … well, what? What had gone wrong? It was too contrived. Whatever wonderful nostalgic glow old Mr Ross might be getting, there was a cheap banality about it all.
And already, echoing her own unease, a sour note was coming into the proceedings themselves.
A descendant of the McKenzies was the first speaker not to trot out platitudes about the poetic sadness of their ancestors’ cruel dispersal. Instead, he spoke confidently of migrants who had settled in eastern Canada but, bravely battling famine, had ultimately moved yet again and set up prosperous sheep stations in New Zealand. To Beth the irony of it was inescapable. Driven from their homeland by sheep, they had prospered far away by driving off the natives of those other lands to make room for their own ranches.
The speaker for an Australian contingent said boldly: ‘You gotta face it, it was maybe a good thing in the end. If you were prepared to work, you got on just fine. Things were a whole lot better than they ever were round here.’
&nb
sp; Morwenna was beginning to lose that flush of dedication. The dispossessed claiming that their lot had been improved? This was a blasphemy against the convictions that had brought her so far.
She called on the Cape Breton fiddlers to start their half-hour recital.
Two men strolling aimlessly through the gathering crowd swapped names and backgrounds, began a friendly argument about a past which was still vivid to them because of family tales handed down, and snatches they had gleaned from the movies. Then the conversation grew noisy — boisterously amiable at first, more quarrelsome in a short time.
‘Look, we sweated blood to get ourselves settled. Established our own good native tradition in our new land. So why —’
‘And what about their tradition?’
‘Bloody barbarians. I’m telling you, man, our folk didn’t go all that way to be scalped by gangs of Stone Age tribesmen.’
Jacques Hunter had been standing to one side for a while, smiling remotely. The smile faded. As the music began, he turned and walked away. It was clear that to him these were just preliminaries. To Beth, it was equally clear that, in spite of her fervent opening flourish, Morwenna was no longer as commanding a presence as she had been on her first appearance in the Ross building; and on the rostrum she was becoming aware of it herself, too blatantly snubbed by her supposed colleague.
The day was growing warmer. A haze began forming above the lochans, with a heavier cloud dancing deep within it — a cloud of midges, swirling like tiny starlings preparing to leave, but in reality seething with the desire to feed on human blood.
At her elbow, Randal said quietly: ‘Why the hell did I come back? Too much of this bloody country is still poisoned by its past. Covenanters, Jacobites, Free Kirk men, and Wee Free Kirk men — hordes of conflicting parasites and antibodies forever giving battle in the blood. And my father deciding, a bit late in life, that he’s got what it takes to provide an antidote.’ He looked across the arena at Hunter’s unexplained cohort of Indian braves, assembling close to the fake croft. ‘And I’ve got a feeling it’s going to get worse.’
