Bad Heir Day

by Wendy Holden

  Seeing what he was looking at, Anna closed up her fingers into a fist. “I’ll go on my own, then,” she said, trying, more for her own benefit than his, to sound as if she felt this to be an attractive prospect.

  “Perhaps someone else could show you round,” Jamie said vaguely. “MacLoggie, for example. Or…” His glance fluttered speculatively towards the wide doorway through which Nanny’s almost equally wide back was at that moment retreating. “Perhaps…”

  With a deafening scrape of her chair, Anna stood up. “No, really, I’d rather go by myself.” It was clear, in any case, from the sudden acceleration of Nanny’s back through the door that Nanny felt as eager as Anna about the prospect of taking a walk together. So they could agree on one thing, at least.

  Jamie looked relieved. “Oh well, if you’re sure. Thought it might be an opportunity for you to talk to Nanny about…”

  His voice was drowned in a sudden deafening clatter from the corridor. Nanny, by the sound of it, had consigned most of the breakfast service to the stone-flagged floor. Anna’s nerves jangled wildly, both at the noise and the prospect of discussing something so intimate with such a terrifying creature. As the sound of Nanny scraping up china drifted into her ears, it occurred to her that here was another subject on which they probably held identical views.

  “Yes, I must get round to doing that,” muttered Anna.

  “Yes, and I must get in touch with the vicar,” muttered Jamie, as if to himself. “The whole thing should have been done and dusted by now. If it wasn’t for the fact that the whole bloody place is suddenly collapsing.”

  His eye flickered towards Anna’s ring again. “I’ll go for my walk, then,” said Anna.

  ***

  Once outside the front door, the first thing about the lie of the land she discovered was that the land didn’t as much lie as desiccate in wiry tufts. Each was surrounded by a sticky sauce of black and oozing mud, over which Anna had to pick her way carefully as she headed automatically towards the loch which, grey and bloated this morning, lapped the rocks on which the castle was built. The waves made a slapping sound which, for some reason, immediately reminded Anna of Nanny. She shuddered. Nanny and the wedding were fast fusing into the same thing, and she was starting to dread the one at the thought of the other.

  Glancing back at her new home-to-be from the shore, Anna saw with surprise that the ever-present clouds had parted sufficiently to allow her first proper look at Dampie in daylight. It was not a sight to lift the heart. The rocks leading down to the water from the castle were slimy and rather brutal-looking. The building itself was a long, thin construction, its sheer sides punctured with slitty, sullen-looking windows. Any romantic effect the turreted top may have had was undermined by the walls being coated with a grey pebbledash and concrete mixture across which the dampness spread in a huge unsightly stain. So unprepossessing and prison-like was its aspect that, as the softening mists embraced the building once again, Anna felt almost relieved to see it go.

  Her left hand clasped comfortingly round the Panasonic in her pocket that Geri had given her along with the Ghost dress as a farewell gift. “Think of it as an early wedding present,” she had said. The “w” word again. Geri, of course, would be in the People’s Republic of Tuscany now. Probably at this moment lying by a palazzo poolside sipping Prosecco, nibbling Parma ham, and chatting to Tony and Cherie, who had apparently been due to drop by.

  Picking her way with difficulty along a soggy glen on either side of which the hills rose sheer as walls, Anna determinedly quashed the frisson of envy that contemplation of Geri’s probable lot provoked. Skul’s beauty, she told herself, was not of the obvious Mediterranean sort. It was a more subtle matter altogether. Very subtle, she thought, scanning the grey and green horizon and noticing the threatening grey clouds squatting sullenly atop each twisted hill. As one suddenly, bomber-like, dropped its load of hail straight in her retinas, Anna closed her eyelids hard. Opening them again, she looked once more on the desolate scene, noting that the bumpy spines of the hills reminded her of stegosauruses and trying not to dwell on how strongly their particular shade of bilious green resembled mould. More depressing still was the collective effect of the jagged hills ringing the grey sky above her—making her feel as if she were trapped inside a giant, just-cracked, soft-boiled egg.

  The grey mists on one of the summits suddenly drifted sufficiently for Anna to glimpse a tall, thin rock in profile on its upper slopes. Its very particular shape, combined with the forty-five-degree angle at which it leant from its fellow rocks, reminded her irresistibly of a penis. She smiled before reflecting, rather sourly, that it was the nearest thing to an erection she’d seen so far on Skul. Could this, she wondered, be the Old Man Rock?

  The hail began again and put an end to her curiosity.

  Visions of steaming baths drifting before her—which she already knew better than to expect to be realised—Anna set off back towards the castle, hoping fervently she was going the way she had come. The mists were fast closing in, and it was becoming impossible to tell. After spending several worrying minutes skirting the edge of a large and very troublesome bog, she recognised, through the now almost opaque swirls of fog, Dampie’s familiar, damp-stained walls rising gloomily up before her, albeit from a slightly different angle to that expected. She was much lower than she had thought. Practically in the loch, it seemed. No wonder it had been boggy.

  The slippery remains of what had once been a stone path stretched up before her. Gritting her teeth and grasping at clumps of grass to support herself, Anna slowly ascended, eventually emerging through a thicket of extremely wet bracken to what could almost feasibly have been, long ago, part of a garden. There was even some sort of building there, small and squat, lurking behind the vegetation. Moving forward through knee-high grass, Anna used both arms to heave aside the lolling fronds of an enormous rhubarb plant and reveal a half-ruined pile of stones whose relatively imposing arched entrance seemed to hint at some ecclesiastical function.

  It could not, thought Anna, the cold hand of panic gripping her stomach, surely not be the chapel Jamie had mentioned. The chapel he had marked out for their wedding ceremony? But surely, when Thoby and Miranda had got married…? Obviously, she now realised, they had been married in the castle itself. A room must have been adapted for the occasion, somewhere small and cavelike, which had passed at the time for a chapel. The wine store, most probably. At least they’d tied the knot before the roof had caved in. She and Jamie, Anna thought, looking at the sodden pile of stones, would have no such luck. Just to recap, Anna thought miserably, I’m getting married in a ruin, toasting my good fortune with wine box plonk, and arranging the whole thing with Hagar the Horrible’s twin sister because my husband-to-be is too busy trying to prop up our collapsing home to do anything about it. Marvellous. Turning her back on the chapel, Anna walked in what she imagined to be the direction of the castle, now invisible above her. A loud rushing sound, accompanied by a steep downward movement of her path, alerted her to the possibility that she might be about to slip. Parting more fronds of vegetation, Anna suddenly realised in terror that she had stopped just short of certain death down a deep and profoundly gloomy chasm, at the bottom of which lay a voracious-looking river flowing into the loch. The rushing noise was now explained. Deafening now, it came from a waterfall thundering, spitting, and spraying over the glistening rocks just to the right of where Anna was standing.

  “Aaargh.” Anna jerked in shock. Her feet slithered nearer the treacherous edge. “MacLoggie.” She had not quite framed who she thought had suddenly crept up directly behind her, but she was relieved nonetheless that it was not Nanny. So relieved, in fact, that it did not occur to her to wonder what the ancient retainer was doing here, wandering about in the wet, abandoned garden. MacLoggie did not react. Nor did he make the slightest noise of apology. Instead, he fixed her with his rheumy eyes and demanded to know what she was doing by Mad
Angus Angus’s Burn.

  “Oh, is that what it is?” Anna did her best to sound unfazed.

  “Aye. It’s said that it was the only thing that calmed him down. He had a dreadful temper,” MacLoggie explained. “He especially liked to listen to it at night. In bed.” His watery eyes glistened unpleasantly. He was, Anna thought uneasily, being unusually friendly. His mouth was stretched in a way that, on someone resembling a human being to a slightly greater degree, might almost have passed for a leer.

  “I see.” Jamie would be impressed. Two of the island’s hotspots before lunch. Not bad going. The weak sun that had finally deemed it safe to come out glanced against her ring. There was no doubt, this time, that MacLoggie had spotted it.

  “But this is nae place for a woman engaged to be married,” MacLoggie suddenly growled. He stretched his splitting, scabbed lips still wider.

  “No, I’m sure you’re right.” Relieved, Anna grabbed the chance of escape with both hands. “I’d better go then.”

  “Too late.” MacLoggie grinned at her evilly. Anna suddenly felt rather ill.

  “What do you mean?” She was not at all sure that she wanted to know.

  “Tradition is that the unmarried woman who walks down to Mad Angus Angus’s Burn before noon marries the first man who claps eyes on her.”

  Anna glanced up nervously at the steep wall of the castle. A mean slit of a window could just about be seen through the dripping fronds of the trees. As MacLoggie strode off, cackling, she hoped fervently that sometime in the last twenty minutes Jamie had looked out and seen her here.

  ***

  “Total bollocks!” Cassandra stormed.

  Twisted old bitch, she seethed. What did Gosschalk mean about the psychologist’s report confirming her own impression that Zak’s unstable parental background affected his attitudes and aptitudes? Call herself a headmistress. Head case, more like.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Knight?” Mrs. Gosschalk looked sternly over her bifocals.

  “Absolute shit.”

  True, she’d had a gin or three before coming here, but even Barack Obama would probably need Dutch courage before facing this shrivelled-up old bluestocking. On second thoughts, Gosschalk was probably a stranger to stockings. Blue tights, more like, the thick, knitted sort with the gusset you can’t get above your knees.

  “I read a survey only recently,” Cassandra spluttered. “In fact”—she rummaged in her bag—“I have it right here.” She produced a crumpled piece of the Times over which foundation from her makeup bag had liberally leaked. “Which says that parents with, um, volatile relationships are the best thing that can happen to a child, and that there’s nothing like seeing your parents scream blue murder to kindle the creative spirit. For Christ’s sake, Jett and I are doing Zak a favour.”

  Mrs. Gosschalk took the piece of newsprint between finger and thumb—bloody cheek, thought Cassandra, as if it was smeared with old chip fat and not my best MAC foundation.

  “My dear Mrs. Knight,” she said in a voice so cutting it could have given the de Beers machinery a run for its money, “you are no doubt aware that newspapers are full of surveys of questionable value on the subject of education. Only yesterday I read one claiming that giving your child a ludicrous name guaranteed its future success, as the struggle it would have to overcome the teasing in the playground would teach it independent habits of mind. Obviously ridiculous.”

  “Absolutely,” burst out Cassandra. “Teasing in the playground?” she added scornfully, relieved to have found a theory both she and the headmistress could agree to despise. “There is no teasing in the playground at St. Midas’s. Everyone has ludicrous names.”

  “Quite,” said Mrs. Gosschalk. Why were the corners of her mouth quivering like that? Cassandra wondered. Nervous tic, obviously. The mad old bat was obviously off her rocker. “So naturally you will understand when I fail to take the dysfunctional parent theory quite as seriously as you seem to.”

  Mrs. Gosschalk compressed her lips which were, Cassandra noticed, resolutely lipstick-free. Perhaps she should have held back on her own facial ensemble; the startling Ruby Tuesday lipstick from the Rock Star range was, she was aware, possibly visible from Venus, but the cashpoint was boringly refusing to play ball at the moment so visits to the Harvey Nicks makeup counters were, for the moment, on hold.

  Mrs. Gosschalk stood up. Cassandra’s heavily made-up eyes—well, she’d had to balance the lipstick somehow—flicked over the sensible suit and crisp shirt which seemed miraculously free of creases. Everything everyone else was wearing seemed miraculously free of creases at the moment; Cassandra, for the first time in her life having to grapple with an iron on a regular basis, was constantly frustrated by the fact that whenever she tried to use it, her clothes looked worse than they had to start with.

  She was aware that the grey linen trousers she was wearing looked as if they had spent the last fortnight buried at the bottom of the garden; also that their greyness was more the result of a spin-cycle confrontation with one of Jett’s new tour T-shirts than a conscious attempt to look businesslike before Mrs. Gosschalk. Jett, thank God, was finally away on Solstice’s “Back From The Dead” tour, promoting the Ass Me Anything comeback album. Comeback indeed, thought Cassandra. The thought of Jett coming back from anywhere but the pub was almost hilarious enough to cheer her up. Although, maddeningly, he was going for half of everything they had in the divorce. Or half of everything that was left after the man from Mishcon de Reya had been paid. He had at least put up no resistance whatsoever to Cassandra’s claim for custody of Zak. One would almost think—ha ha—that Jett didn’t want to see his son at all.

  “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid I cannot allow your son to remain in the school,” said Mrs. Gosschalk. “That is my final word. Now, if you’ll excuse me, good afternoon, Mrs. Knight.”

  “But you can’t do this,” Cassandra gabbled as Mrs. Gosschalk showed her firmly to the door. “Zak is autistic, he’s got Tourette’s syndrome, he’s got special needs, and he’s a gifted child.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Knight. I wasn’t going to mention it, but there is also the additional matter of the school fees. As you know, your payments lately have not been as regular as they might have been.”

  Cassandra’s eyes blazed and a lump rose up her throat. Her week had hardly been enhanced by the demand of the publishers that she pay back her advance for A Passionate Lover on the grounds that no manuscript of any description had neared her editor’s desk and it was a good six months past the deadline. For the moment at least, money was tighter than a gnat’s arse. The fact that Gosschalk probably knew it made her blood boil.

  “Have you thought of sending Zachary to boarding school?” Mrs. Gosschalk suggested. “There are ways of getting help with the fees, you know.”

  Reduced fees. The horror of it. Something in Cassandra suddenly snapped—something quite apart from the bra strap currently hanging on by a thread. “Why don’t you stuff your school up your leathery old arse?” Cassandra yelled. “And yes, I might well send him to boarding school. You’ll be laughing on the other side of your raddled old face when Zak comes out top of his year at Eton.”

  “Come the glorious day, no one would be more delighted than me, Mrs. Knight. When he’s the right age, of course. Although, given your recent remarks and his general attitude, I see no reason in keeping from you the fact that the only boarding school I can see Zachary getting a place at is Borstal.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Midgies.” The word hung in the damp, heavy air.

  “Sorry?” Anna whirled round to see who had spoken. A cloud of tiny black insects half obscured the unedifying sight of the ancient retainer MacLoggie, grinning malevolently through his tooth stumps.

  Her heart sank. She had been avoiding MacLoggie for ten days since the Mad Angus Angus’s Burn encounter, the memory of which still made her shudder. She had
not mentioned it to Jamie—partly out of suspicion that he was far more likely to have been inspecting a septic tank than looking out of the window at the time, and partly because, given his manic respect for Dampie and its traditions and legends, he might hold her to it.

  “What did you say?”

  “Midgies. Those wee black flies there. They bite like bastards.”

  “Really?” Disbelieving, Anna flapped her hands half-heartedly in front of her face. “They don’t look big enough to.”

  MacLoggie smirked. “Ye”ll see.”

  “Well, thanks for the advice, MacLoggie. I’m sure there are lots of things I’ve yet to learn about living up here.”

  MacLoggie snickered. “Ye can say tha’ again.”

  “Well, then, perhaps you could tell me how I get to the nearest town.”

  Her enquiry was rewarded by yet another glimpse of the ancient creature’s slimy stumps. “’Orrible’s over there. That way.” MacLoggie pointed vaguely beyond the end of the loch and staggered off in the opposite direction. Horrible? Anna echoed, silently. There couldn’t, not even here, be a village called that. Could there?

  She walked off at a brisk pace in the direction indicated, along the side of the loch. The pewter platter of the water, bordered by the rust and sodden green of the heather, reflected a chill, white sky. The only signs of life were a few Highland cattle in the distance and a group of sorry-looking sheep limping over the rocky hillside. A slight stinging sensation she had noticed earlier continued; looking down, she saw that small red marks like strawberry-juice stains had appeared on her wrists.

  Some time later, quite a long time later, long after she had left the loch behind and had continued onward without even as much as a signpost to confirm she was headed in the right direction, Anna wondered if she should perhaps have pressed MacLoggie for more details. A steel-keen wind began to slice at her across the rock spurs and skim over the heather like a Stealth bomber. Surely MacLoggie would not have let her set off alone and directionless if the village really were a long way? She looked at her ring for reassurance. It gleamed dully back at her. Far more vivid was the memory of MacLoggie’s insolent leer. Would he?