The same little maid whose bottom I had once thought of pinching brought us coffee. Shona had said no to sherry because she thought it bad for her touchy liver. I thought, I wonder which baronet Sir Charles was, sixth or seventh? I was thirteenth. That’s me, unlucky number, maybe I shall be the last, and good riddance; but you can’t kill the damned thing off unless there are no male heirs anywhere. Fourteenth baronet, Hiram K Abden from Oregon or Nova Scotia.
‘What is the motto under the crest?’ Shona asked. ‘That in the hall. Under the larger crest.’
It was Lucie who answered. ‘ ‘‘Creag mo chroidhe-se a chreag ghuanach.’’ It means: ‘‘Rock of my heart, the secure rock.’’ ’
‘You speak Gaelic?’ I said.
‘A little.’
‘We all speak a little,’ said my aunt. ‘Not as much as we should.’
‘There are many languages in Russia,’ said Shona. ‘Too many, I sometimes think. It makes for lack of communication and understanding.’
‘That is what many Scotsmen have felt,’ my aunt said sourly. ‘They have become so Anglicized that you can scarcely detect a hint of their native tones. They live in their big houses in Edinburgh and in London and ape the people who conquered them.’
‘Ah now,’ said Mary. ‘Did we not agree before that it is all too long ago? One hundred years, two hundred years, it is all so far past. Why, nearly half the prime ministers of England this century have been Scottish!’
‘You miss my meaning, Mary. They should have been prime ministers of Scotland!’
‘Did Margaret no’ bring anything in to drink? David, I’m sure, would like a dram.’
‘We should be going,’ I said. ‘By the way, that other motto in the hall; whose is that?’
‘What motto?’
‘On the wall away from the window. There’s another coat of arms and another inscription which someone has translated underneath. ‘‘The beast itself both bright and bold.’’ That ours too?’
Lucie coughed and stared out of the window. Lady Abden said: ‘It is the insignia of the Fiernes of Loch Fierne. At the end of the eighteenth century the families were joined. Duncan Abden married the only surviving Fierne daughter, who brought this property with her; though for some time after that, until this new house was built, they continued to live at Wester Craig.’
‘Not quite the motto for a Christmas cracker,’ I said.
‘What? Oh, such things were chosen long ago and times change.’
‘They were a mad lot,’ said Mary with relish. ‘Made their own laws, more or less. Wish we could.’
‘As always, you exaggerate, Mary,’ said Sister from the Window.
‘Well, the Highlands have always been a wee bit wild. A lot of folk still have the mind that civilization ends at the Grampians.’
It looked as if Shona had made a hit with my aunt, and I had a hunch that when they were a few minutes alone Shona had promised to send up some sample night creams to combat ‘a dry skin’, a not unknown ploy of hers. There was even a lack of hostility – can’t claim more than that – in Aunt Helen’s cold eyes as I took her hand. It was so shrunk and thin the rings almost rattled. If Shona had offered her something for a dry skin she was damned right.
Mary, whom I began to think would quite likely become my favourite Abden, followed us out and weaved a way down the stairs to the front door.
‘A mad lot,’ she said, ‘the Fiernes. Definitely weak in the crumpet, if you follow me. Their motto fits ’em fine.’ She glanced behind to see if Lucie was following. ‘Stop and have a dram wi’ me. Take the flavour of the coffee away.’
I glanced at Shona, who smiled and shook her head.
‘Tell me more, Cousin,’ I said.
‘Ha, well the Fiernes were here before us, and that’s saying something. Time of Robert the Bruce they looked on themselves as little kings. Didn’t change much through the years neither. When they stopped murdering their neighbours they would sail off to Ireland and do the same there. A standing feud with the Abdens, of course, whom they looked on as upstarts. And they were neighbours, more or less. Neighbours always quarrel, don’t they?’ She pushed back her hair, which immediately fell forward again. ‘Then one day it all blew up into a bitter fight – when Fierne of Loch Fierne and both his sons were killed. That did not stop Duncan Abden – who was desperate short of siller at the time – from paying court to the one remaining daughter, Cathy Fierne, who was queer as a bat, and marrying her. She gave him three children and then was locked away under a keeper.’
I opened the front door. A thick fine mist had come up unnoticed, blotting out the sun and dulling the day.
‘It’s the haars,’ said Mary, twisting a button on her shabby jumper. ‘Got to expect it; time of the year. D’ye know, I never go out. Why should I? Far better indoors with a dram.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ I said.
Mary put her knuckles to her mouth. ‘Pardon again. One feels empty at this time of day. Do you know …’ She stopped.
‘Know what?’
‘The three bairns Cathy Fierne bore. One was normal, one took to chink, one went to the madhouse.’ She chuckled. ‘They say it has been in the Abden family ever since. Getting born into our family you have a one in three chance … I know which straw I drew.’
Chapter Nineteen
I
As we were about to drive away a yellow Mini zoomed up. I had to do the introductions. They summed each other up in pretty smart time, and I didn’t suppose an offer of samples of night cream would create sudden spiritual affinity. Alison was at her stillest and coolest and most composed, and Shona in her fur hat and short sable coat looked like the Tsarina out slumming. When we finally pushed off, screenwipers working overtime, she made no reference to Alison, or even to the others; we talked of the kitchen alterations and what chance Bruce Macintyre had of making a few summer lets to meet some of the cost.
‘One trouble with conmen,’ I said, ‘ is that they sometimes con themselves. I can’t do that here. Unless I sell it there’s no way of seeing the house as an economic proposition.’
‘I can give you more money.’
‘I know. I’m worth it. But I don’t want an increase just to tip it away on something I don’t value.’
‘Don’t you? I think you should.’
‘Didn’t know you were such a romantic.’
‘I think you should go into it more carefully with Captain Macintyre and Mr Macardle – and even with Coppell and McVitie – to see if something cannot be worked out. For you may not be able to sell it.’
‘That thought,’ I said, ‘had certainly occurred to me.’
‘Tomorrow morning we will inspect your property thoroughly, see if there is any profitable prospect.’
‘But we’re leaving for London first thing. It’s no short hop, as you observed coming up. Near on six hundred miles.’
‘Tomorrow morning,’ Shona said, ‘we will inspect your property.’
The sea mist stayed thick all afternoon, partly clearing now and then and pulling the bedclothes back from the sickly sun, but then rolling down again from the moorland ridges that surrounded the house. Next morning it had all gone, but Shona, keeping to her resolutions, said we could leave late and spend the night in Edinburgh: she wanted to call on two shops, and if we were back in London by Friday it would do.
So we went off, part of the way accompanied by Coppell, who knew exactly where my land began and ended. She strode along beside us with the vigour of a youngster.
There was no real height behind the house – but once you’d climbed it you seemed on top of the world. It was primeval land; most of the moor probably hadn’t been turned over since the wild Duncan courted his dotty wife. Heather and stunted birch and rabbit tracks and small rocks and clumps of Scots pine; and the stream tinkling among the rocks and forming pebbly pools here and there, one at least of which might have been rated as a small loch with an island in the middle covered with spruce and fir.
I
said to Coppell: ‘Why no grouse?’
‘Och, there are some, sorr. But all this season I only got a dozen brace.’
‘Why so few?’
‘It is not quite the country. And there has been disease among ’em. More gamekeepers are needed. And there are ower many poachers aboot.’
‘Would it ever be profitable to raise them in sufficient numbers to let off the shooting?’
‘I doubt it would not pay. Neither Dr Malcolm nor Sir Charles ever tried.’
When Coppell had loped off she said: ‘That hillside over there, with the young trees all growing in rows. It is like a knitted pullover drawn across the shoulder of the mountain.’
I picked up a flat stone and skimmed it over the water of the small loch. It hopped a half-dozen times, and some birds rose and flapped away into the next coppice. Cold standing there, not so much the air as the wind, which gimleted its way through.
‘Yesterday,’ she said, ‘when we were in Ullapool and you left me in the car to buy that magazine, I heard two men passing by talking Russian. I was so startled that I jumped out and spoke to them. They are here buying herring from the local fishermen to take back to Leningrad. It makes the world suddenly so much smaller!’
‘I thought you looked excited. Did they know you were a lapsed communist?’
‘We did not speak as political people – only as Russians.’
‘You still love Russia?’
‘Of course.’
‘So you expect me to feel the same about Scotland, eh?’
‘Not the same, for you never lived here; but, well, yes, I do not think you will be able altogether to resist the pull of your ancestry.’
‘That’s what Alison said.’
Unspoken name. ‘Did she.’
‘She’s wrong. So are you.’ I scratched my head. ‘ Trying to remember some poem I was forced to learn at school. ‘‘Breathes there the man with soul so dead who never to himself hath said, This is my own my native land. Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned as home his footsteps he hath turned from wandering on some foreign strand.’’ After that curses are heaped on the poor bastard if he doesn’t fairly drool at the thought of porridge and haggis.’
Shona said: ‘I am glad something was beaten into you. No one has ever succeeded in impressing you since.’
‘Except for you, it might be true.’
‘Thank you, dear David.’
‘Incidentally,’ I said, ‘ it was news to me yesterday that there was insanity in the family. Though, God knows, I should certainly have had a fair inkling.’
‘Oh, look into anyone’s ancestry and you will somewhere sooner or later see the gibbering madman behind the barred window. It is most fortunate when people don’t know what their ancestors have been.’
‘Well, the drink problem still recurs. I wonder if I had a child whether it would take to the bottle.’
‘The feeding bottle, I am sure.’
I threw another stone. ‘For a Russian you’re optimistic.’
‘You have been reading Dostoevsky.’
‘Since I was never beaten to do so I’ve never opened a book of his in my life.’
‘David, I weep for your education.’
‘Never mind that. Never forget I know a lot about perfume and a lot about cars, and maybe a fair amount about women.’
Shona was staring sternly at some birds high in the sky.
‘Talking of women, perhaps you should marry money.’
I looked at her. ‘That’s a little off the beaten track, coming from you.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘ you could always marry me.’
There was a longer silence.
‘This is so sudden,’ I said.
‘Well, you could. As you know, you would certainly be marrying money. We should not need to sell the house. We could renovate it – spend a good deal on it. Remove some of those tasteless additions. Rebuild the entrance so that it is suitable to match the old hall. Thin out those plants – they are rhododendrons, aren’t they? Your aunt says some of them are fine ones; the Gulf Stream – is it? – makes them possible. We could do good things with the property, together.’ Her voice stopped as if suddenly cut off.
‘And John?’
‘We haven’t lived together for two years. It should not be at all difficult to get a divorce.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Of course. Never more so.’
I hitched the shoulders of my coat. ‘Those birds you’re glowering at – what are they?’
‘Birds? I do not know. Birds of prey.’
‘Hawks or buzzards, I expect. Odd sound they make. Like cats. Mewing.’
‘No doubt they are after the rabbits.’
‘And the grouse – if any.’
We turned and began to walk back. The wind was coming off the sea and it was hard going even downhill. The Gulf Stream didn’t seem to be working too successfully just then.
‘One thing I’d never know if I married you,’ I said.
‘What is that?’
‘Whether my child would be a drunkard or a lunatic.’
She was silent, walking beside me. We were striding over soft damp moss and it deadened even the sound of our feet. The birds had been blown away and we were quite alone.
I said: ‘Joke over.’
‘What? No matter. It is blunt. What you have said. And it is the truth. Would it be important to you, having an heir?’
‘No.’
‘I think it would be important to you,’ she said, ‘having an heir.’
II
Next morning Mrs Linda McNeill, the buyer of Stovolds of Edinburgh, had something private to say. While Shona was making a royal progress towards the general manager’s office she drew me aside.
‘Pardon me, Sir David, but we have had a complaint from a customer about a bottle of your Faunus perfume. I have no wish to bother Madame with it if ye could attend to this yourself.’
I followed the stout little body into her office, where she unlocked a drawer and took out a bottle of the perfume. It had been opened and about a quarter used. It was the ½ fluid ounce size which sold for £26. She took the stopper out and handed me the bottle. I sniffed, and made a face.
‘Where did this come from?’
‘It was bought from us, most unfortunately, by the sister of the Lord Provost. It seems last week that they were dining out and after dinner Mrs Grant and another lady had occasion to discuss perfumes. They were, as it happened, both using Faunus, but when they compared the scents there were differences. The other lady had bought her perfume from McLeish’s, and Mrs Grant from us. They both agreed that Mrs Grant’s perfume was inferior in quality, and she brought it back yesterday.’
‘How did you come by this bottle?’
‘It was – hm – part of a consignment from Hilliers. You know them, I’m sure. They’re usually vairy reliable.’
Hilliers were one of the smaller wholesalers. We never, of course, dealt with wholesalers ourselves, otherwise we could not control our distribution.
Mrs McNeill said: ‘ Do you think there has been some error in the manufacture?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Then what has gone wrong?’
‘Why did you get our stuff from Hilliers?’
She coughed. ‘This was a special offer.’
‘At a discount?’
‘Er – yes. It was – surplus stock. We bought it in really for the January sale but decided to put it in right away.’
‘Where did the stock come from?’
‘I’ve no idea, Sir David. It was quite a small consignment and Hilliers have always played fair with us before.’
‘Have you more of it?’
‘Yes. I think we’ve kept it separate. We gave Mrs Grant a new box, naturally. She opened it in the shop and seemed quite satisfied.’
‘Can I try another?’
She sent for a couple more of the elegant silver-faced boxes. She opened one and smelled it. ‘I – I th
ink that’s all right, isn’t it?’
I took it from her and sniffed it. ‘ No. It’s a much better copy than the one Mrs Grant returned. But it’s still a copy.’
‘Copy? D’you mean … But the boxes …’
‘I suppose you realize this could make a nasty scandal if it were brought out into the open.’
Mrs McNeill’s fat little face coloured up, ‘This was all done in the greatest good faith, Sir David! Otherwise clearly we should not have drawn your attention to it!’
‘I only hope Mrs Grant got a genuine box this time …’
‘Of course, of course, of course.’
She said it so often I wondered if she was certain.
I didn’t say any of this to Shona on the way home. The Scottish visit was petering out on a sour note. However civilized and sophisticated she might be, the fact stood out like a sore thumb that she’d suggested marriage to me and had been turned down flat. And it was a flat that left no doubts as to the cause: she was too long in the tooth. Her lover thought she was too old. So it happened to be true: did that help? Why should it? If her fancy boy had been even halfway in love with her – as he’d once thought he was – his birdbrain would have contrived to smooth over a few rough corners before he loosed off his reply. Instead he had simply come out with the facts of life.
All right, it was done, and as she was honest she would know it was the truth. More than ever if she remembered her phoney passport. But that didn’t make it easier going.
I took the bottles of perfume to Stevenage and called in Phil Parker and we put them under the gas chromatograph along with some of our own Faunus. The ‘fingerprints’ were quite different. Fingerprints are a series of block charts rather like the things you see showing world population changes. The copy perfume had been made on the cheap to a formula that closely resembled ours, without the costly items. In all perfume you need an expensive fixative. If you don’t have a good fixative the perfume loses its ‘note’ very quickly. That’s why Mrs Grant’s first bottle smelled much less right than the equally phoney one just opened by Mrs McNeill. But there were many other economies as well. One of the main ingredients of Faunus was Bulgarian rose absolute – rose petals gathered by the thousand at dawn in Bulgarian fields and costing £2,000 a kilo. This thing had got some synthetic substance in it that had never been near a rose bush in its life and probably cost £2 a kilo.
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