The Tartan Ringers

by Jonathan Gash

  ‘Number one thousand, then. A tortoiseshell armorial stencil, from Three-Wheel Archie. Then a word: quatrefoil.’

  I almost welled up. Putting him first was Tinker’s way of saying everything was normal between me and Three-Wheel, that he was back on my side. I coughed, and covered up my embarrassment by explaining, ‘Quatrefoil’s the code you’ll use for secretly pricing Archie’s items. No letter recurs; ten letters, see? Q is one, U is two, so on to L which is nought. It’s called steganography. You can use the letters to denote any amount of money.’ Craftsmen serving noble houses cut coat-of-arms designs in tortoiseshell for ease of repainting armorials on coaches, chests, even furniture. Women used them for embroidery.

  ‘Secret pricing? What a cheat!’

  ‘You know anybody who doesn’t cheat?’ I asked dryly. She reddened and read on.

  ‘Number one thousand and one. A nineteenth-century button die from Helen, eight sides; she thinks the Howard family crest. Sutherland. Another code?’

  ‘Yes. Helen always uses “Sutherland” as her price code. But refuse it, love. Too many wrong crests’ll reveal it’s a papering job. Pity.’

  A button die’s valuable because you can strike genuine silver buttons on it till the cows come home. A bit of sewing then converts any period garment into Lord Howard of Effingham’s, with great (but illicit) profit.

  ‘One thousand and two. Fob seal, glass intaglio on gold, Chester 1867. Big Frank . . .’

  Hamish came at nine-thirty, looking even younger still. He was hesitant, definitely guarded.

  ‘Noticed something amiss, Hamish?’ I joked.

  ‘It’s this: Sotheby’s “Standard Conditions of Sale” Apply Throughout.’ He showed me a copy. ‘As long as it’s in order.’ I reassured him a mite, and he went down to unload. His bike pulled a tiny homemade cart, a packing case on pram wheels. I went to the window to watch him in the forecourt. What a lot of people.

  ‘Michelle. How many McGunns are there?’

  ‘Thirty-two, but very scattered.’

  More than I’d supposed. Yet if you counted them all over the Kingdom . . . ?

  ‘I mean retainers, pensioners, employees at Tachnadray.’ Hamish below was hanging a wooden tray round his neck to carry those obsessively neat brick-like parcels printers make. ‘What is a retainer, love? Is Hamish one?’

  ‘Somebody on a croft belonging, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Tied to Tachnadray by loyalty and economics?’

  Michelle hesitated, unhappy at the way my questions were heading. ‘Yes. But nobody would express it in those terms. Not nowadays.’

  ‘ ’Course not, love.’ I gave her a sincere smile.

  Still looking down, as Michelle, with ill-disguised relief, recommenced her list checking, and Hamish clumped up the stairs with the stationery, I couldn’t help thinking: thirty-two, probably, not counting infants. Say, twenty houses or so. Which is quite a lot of hidey-holes.

  At noon I decided to drive into Thurso with Elaine, leaving Michelle replying to the letters and sending out flyers in envelopes. She still hadn’t got a typewriter. I’d refused her baffled excuse that there simply wasn’t one. ‘Don’t plead unavailability,’ I commanded.

  ‘But, Ian—’

  ‘Look, Michelle,’ I’d said kindly, tucking a Scotch plaid rug round Elaine’s knees. ‘We’ve reached the stage where talking’s done. We need action.’

  She blazed up at that. I think she really only wanted to come a ride. ‘Action, is it! Then what about postage stamps? By teatime we’ll have scores of letters to post and no money—’

  ‘A post office franking machine arrives today, love.’

  The post office supplies a little printing gadget which marks your envelopes. It’s the only postage you can get on tick. You pay only when the man comes to read its meter.

  ‘And,’ I concluded, ‘two letters’ll arrive, neither with enough postage. You’ll have to pay a few coppers to the postie.’

  Michelle listened, nodded, didn’t wave us off. First time in her life she’d ever shut up. Swinging us out of the gate, I asked Elaine to issue an order to the vestigial remnants of the clan.

  ‘Not you too, Ian!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve noticed it creeping into your bones. You’re careful to say “Scottish” instead of Scotch now, even when “Scotch” is correct. Soon you’ll be fighting drunk at football matches. You’ll believe our stupid tribal myths.’ She was watching Tachnadray recede in the wing mirror. I said nothing, making my unresponsiveness an invitation. She began to speak on, quiet and intense. ‘That lunacy killed my father. He drank himself to death. Failing to become the legend of the Scottish clan chief. You know something?’ She gave me a woman’s no-smile smile. ‘He had a stroke the day after two immigrant Pakistanis registered a Clan MacKhan tartan. What could that possibly have mattered?’

  ‘Shona thinks you’re a heretic. Paradox, eh? Clan Chieftainess as iconoclast.’ The giant Mawdslay’s tyres made a crackling sound on the track. I could do with these vintage motors, but everything seems on the outside almost out of reach with you perched high as a pope in a palanquin.

  ‘Wasn’t William IV the best socialist of his time?’ she shot back. ‘Pride’s for those with money to burn. Pomp and circumstance reduced Tachnadray to penury. The carriages – we had six, matched horses – went, the grooms, liveried servants. And Father entertaining, hosting the County Show, silver everywhere, guests by special trains we couldn’t pay for. Shooting parties. Mother gave up early, passed away when I was two. I saw the whole film round, the dozen pipers on our battlements. One enormous sham. You know what? Father even had battlements built, because Tachnadray had none.’

  Her bitterness was getting to me. I knew all about tribal ferocities, having seen Sidoli’s war with Bissolotti.

  ‘Why not simply take the gelt from whoever wants to pay you? Everybody else does. An ancient lairdship’s marketable—’

  ‘Because,’ she said. The little girl’s defiant silencer.

  I wasn’t having that. ‘Because Shona’s mob won’t let you?’ It was my pennyworth. I’d wrestled the great Mawdslay as far as Dubneath Water before she answered.

  ‘Whose side are you on, Ian? Tradition’s?’ The last word was spat out with hatred.

  Well, I couldn’t really say until I’d visited her mother’s grave, but I gave her my best fill-in. ‘The prettiest bird’s.’

  ‘Me?’ She was smiling.

  ‘Bullseye.’ So far I’d counted two men watching on skylines, plus Robert.

  ‘Then I’ve a problem for you.’ A pulse beat, then, ‘I’m still a virgin, Lovejoy. Which means I require information about sex techniques . . . Why’re we stopping?’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘It’s a golden opportunity. There’s no one else I can ask. Tell me. Do women mostly make love on their sides sometimes, with their leg over the man? Only, with my handicap—’

  The lumbering Mawdslay, slightly shocked, resumed its journey. ‘Look, love,’ I said anxiously.

  ‘Don’t go all coy, Ian.’ She was quite reasonable. ‘I read once that sexual intercourse . . .’

  Shona’s van caught us up by the first houses. She’d been following us, naughty girl. And Jamie was waiting in Dubneath’s market square. All smiling friendliness, but very definitely there.

  Chapter 22

  SHONA’S PRESENCE IN Dubneath put the kibosh on any further interrogation – me of Elaine about crookdom, Elaine of me about sex. Elaine had to visit the one bank, and Shona seemed determined to accompany her. Innocently I said I’d sightsee, happy to be squeezed out. Shona’s furrowed brow cleared at that. Jamie went off down the harbour after we’d lifted Elaine’s wheelchair to get her mobile. I walked to the chapel, slow and idle.

  Reverend Ruthven was a pleasant balding man who told me, ‘Two things, Ian. I’m a pastor, not a vicar. And secondly, I’m the exception that proves the rule.’ He had to explain that Ruthvens were addicted to assassination over a long and bloody history
. ‘I’m probably the first peaceable Ruthven on earth!’

  ‘Lineage seems a right pest.’

  He sighed. ‘It can be, Ian, heaven knows. Come. I expect you’re here to see the McGunns. A fated clan, if I may say so.’

  ‘Fated? Everybody’s fated. Why McGunns especially?’

  ‘Conflict dooms life. They say your very name is Norse, gunnr, meaning war. Etymological pilf, of course. But the war between those wretched Sinclairs and the Sutherland Gordons crushed the poor McGunn clan. It’s a wonder there’s any of you left. The Gordons are a rapacious breed.’

  He took me among the chapel’s gravestones, and pointed out Elaine’s mother’s. And the laird’s headstone, coat-of-arms on marble, a little way off. James Wheeler McGunn.

  ‘Elaine was telling me about her mother, Pastor. How very sad.’ I shook my head sorrowfully as if I knew so much.

  ‘Aye, Ian. Isn’t that life all over? Unable to come to terms with The McGunn’s fanaticism. Clan was everything to the poor man. Driven. It’s often the way, with converts. Reasoning erodes. Jesuits call it a state of erroneous conscience.’

  ‘I understand.’ I was very knowing, and lied, ‘My mother and she used to correspond, until matters . . .’

  We both sighed. Pastor Ruthven determined to exonerate Elaine’s mother. ‘Then you’ll know how hard The McGunn took it. Women tend to blame themselves in those circumstances.’

  ‘And needlessly.’ I was busy working out in what circumstances.

  After that it was sundry graves, the chapel foundation stone, a list of former pastors, gold lettering on stained mahogany, before I decided it was time to go. ‘You’ll have had your bite, Ian . . . ?’ An Edinburgh man. He said to call again. I promised to, but wouldn’t need. How come Ruthven likened James Wheeler McGunn to a ‘convert’, when he in fact was The McGunn?

  Shona, Elaine and me sat down for a nosh at the MacNeish tavern. Mary told me that two letters had come addressed to me, care of Michelle, with only half the requisite postage. Elaine looked across. I went all innocent and said my friends were sometimes careless. My granny actually taught me the trick: registered letters hint at riskily valuable contents. But skimp the ordinary postage and the postman’ll beat a path to your door to recover that outstanding penny. It’s cheaper than registration and far more reliable.

  ‘Just think, Mary,’ I told her through a mouthful. ‘Soon we McGunns’ll be able to start paying for these tuppenny pasties of yours.’

  She blazed up at that. ‘Twopence? I’ll have you know, Ian McGunn, that my cooking’s worth more than—’ etcetera, etcetera. A pleasant meal, with me prattling away and inspecting Elaine’s and Shona’s respective faces. Faces are fascinating, but I’ve already told you that.

  Shona followed the Mawdslay back. I was determined to tell Elaine about attribution. Elaine was determined to ask about sex.

  ‘When you buy a painting at auction,’ I said firmly, ‘you’ll lose your life savings if you simply believe what’s written in the catalogue. Never mind that it clearly states: “Giotto, St Peter Blessing the Penitents”. That only means a work of the school of Giotto, by a student or merely some ninth-rate artist who painted in Giotto’s style, and that the date’s completely uncertain. In other words, it could be by the world’s worst forger. Now,’ I waxed enthusiastically, holding the booming engine in up the fell road, ‘if the catalogue gives the artist’s initials as well—’

  About sex,’ Elaine interrupted.

  ‘—then you’re on safer ground. It means the painting is of the artist’s period, though only possibly his work, in whole or in part—’

  ‘Have you ever raped anyone, Ian?’

  ‘What you look for,’ I shouted desperately, ‘is the artist’s complete name. That means it’s really by Giotto himself—’

  ‘Who decides that sex will happen?’ Elaine pondered. ‘Does it hurt very much the first time?’

  ‘Knock it off, love,’ I begged, hot under the collar.

  ‘How does it end? I mean, do you both simply get tired?’

  ‘You need your bum smacked, miss.’ Me, with sternness my next failure.

  ‘Spanking,’ said this devil seriously. ‘A sadomasochistic ritualization enjoyed by 91 per cent of women. A Salford survey—’

  Good old Salford, still hard at it. See what I mean about women? If they find they’ve a problem, their inborn knack makes it yours. No wonder they live so much longer. One day, I promised myself, savagely bumping the Mawdslay along the stone track, I’ll think up some privileges for myself. Then watch out, everybody.

  ‘Why ask me, love?’ I pleaded.

  ‘You look lived-in, troublesome. You’re sexually inclined. I can tell.’ She was quite candid. ‘Tell me. I’d like to know how it’s actually done. I mean, a man’s so heavy. Does the woman bear his weight? And how does a man’s thing feel? I imagine something rubbery. Is this correct?’

  ‘Please.’ I was broken. ‘I’ve one of my heads.’

  * * *

  ‘How did she know your address?’ Michelle was in a high old rage, holding two letters out.

  ‘Eh?’ I’d come bolting upstairs for protection, leaving Robert to unload Elaine.

  ‘A woman’s writing. And you knew these letters were coming because you said—’

  ‘Mmmmh,’ I said absently. ‘Is Elaine Aries?’ I don’t even know what Aries is.

  ‘Libra. September.’ Like Three-Wheel’s motor.

  Thanks, I said inwardly, and opened the letter. Margaret could be trusted not to give my location away. She’d sent me the list of Trembler’s usual team, putting asterisks beside those who’d been in police trouble lately. That was all, and best wishes with one discreet cross. The other envelope, much thicker, held a mass of newspaper cuttings, notes, annotated catalogues and police notices. I’d told her to get them from my cottage.

  Suppertime, the safety of numbers. I informed Elaine that our auctioneer would be arriving in a week’s time, by air from Edinburgh to Wick’s tiny airport, and could I have the car to meet him, please. She said of course, sweet and demure. Her grilling had really drained me. Still anxious about her telepathy trick, I didn’t let it enter my mind that Trembler would of course come by road, and to Inverness, not Wick.

  Late that night I pulled another sly trick, though I hated creeping back to our office in that draughty old deserted west wing. It was made for Draculas and spooks. I spent a long time on the phone talking to Doc. He’s a genealogist, been one of my poorer customers, lace bobbins, some three years. He was delighted to be given a difficult problem, tracing a complex family tree. I dictated the dates from the gravestones, and what I knew about Elaine’s family. I bribed him to secrecy. He demanded, and I promised, an Isle of Man lover’s bobbin I hadn’t yet got. See how friends take advantage?

  Inspection time. We’d had a run of three days’ warm clemency. Weather helps fakers, or, as I decided we should start labelling ourselves, reproducers and copyists. This meant that stains worked better. Sunshine is an excellent ageing factor. And we could move the McGunn clan’s assembled items unafraid of drizzle. Elaine was nervous, for once keeping her thoughts above her umbilicus, as we trooped down to see the three days’ worth.

  ‘They’ve stopped coming in, Ian.’ Her tone said therefore this was it, everything her retainers could raise. Pathetic.

  It was unfortunate that Michelle had chosen the Great Hall. Our voices echoed. The long stained-glass windows accentuated the space. I’d nigh on thirty rooms and halls in a stately home to fill. This piteous heap was two journeys of Drummer’s donkey cart.

  My dismay must have communicated itself to the others. I looked round, slowly, wanting faces. They were observing me in total silence. Hector, stoic and relaxed, with Tessie and Joey eeling round his feet. Robert’s eyes gleamed hatred from that mass of red hair. Shona silent and dogless, whose heart must be beating faster because she more than anyone here realized it was crunch hour. Elaine, mortified in spite of herself. Duncan frankly
ashamed. Mary MacNeish ticking off which neighbours’d contributed what. Mac patient, waiting orders. My annunciatory cough made us all shuffle.

  ‘Not much, folks,’ I said. ‘Is it?’

  Silence.

  ‘Is it?’ Still no answer. ‘How many retainers, Elaine? Thirty or so? And they raise twelve mass-produced pieces of furniture, earliest date 1911.’

  ‘You may have noticed,’ Elaine said, pale, ‘that my people are not well off. And Tachnadray is not Edinburgh Castle.’ She had a right to anger, but insufficient reasons.

  ‘True. But why not?’

  Shona glanced at Robert. ‘What does that mean?’ she demanded.

  ‘I mean that it was. Once.’ I walked towards them, vaguely embarrassed by their being in a facing line, a barrister at somebody’s trial. ‘It’s really quite simple. The clan centre, a great house. The laird tried to uphold . . . tradition. So debts mounted. The estate folded. Produce faltered, finally dwindled to a few flocks of sheep—’

  ‘Here, mon,’ Hector blurted. Sadly I waved him down.

  ‘I know, Hector. Nobody could’ve done better, I’m sure. You must have slogged, winning cups at the gatherings, doing what you could with damn-all help. Robert, too.’ The man’s head rose ominously. ‘Probably the most loyal seneschal on the planet. You all tried. But people were paid off, and the laird finally passed the torch on to Miss Elaine.’

  The end of the faces. I started a reverse stroll. Elaine in her wheelchair was the centre of the group. It was a Victorian clan tableau, proud before the magnesium flashlight struck their likenesses for the mantelpiece. All it needed was a dead tiger and bearers. And, in this case, a mantelpiece.

  ‘So you hit on a scheme. I guessed wrong earlier, and none of you corrected me. Because there wasn’t a bleep of an antique in the west wing, I assumed there weren’t any left. That they’d all been sold to pay Tachnadray’s way. But they hadn’t, had they?’

  ‘What does he mean?’ Elaine demanded of the world.