To Be Continued

by James Robertson

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Rosalind says. ‘I never say anything sensible after I’ve spoken to the hens. I’m not blaming the hens, but I’m afraid it’s true. I shall go and read a reproving book for an hour. Bring me a glass of something later, will you, my dear?’

  ‘I will,’ Poppy says, helping Rosalind out of her jacket, hat and boots and restoring her to her indoor appearance. Once again I think of myself as being in a play – a play within a dream – knowing the lines that my fellow players are uttering, recognising that they are leading towards lines of my own, and yet not having a clue as to what I am to say or when I am to say it. And so, like a spear carrier or some other minor character, I follow Poppy offstage, while Rosalind, one hand on the banister, the other holding her stick, negotiates the stairs as if mimicking the movements of a slightly weary chaffinch.

  US. LIFE

  I decide not to beat about the bush. ‘Poppy,’ I say, as we descend to the kitchen, ‘if indeed that is your name, I am very angry with you.’

  We are halfway down the stone stairs. She stops, turns suddenly and flings her arms around me. ‘I know you are,’ she says, and kisses me very hard and long on the mouth. I offer some feeble resistance, then give up. After about a minute I push us apart and pull myself together.

  ‘This is all very well, but you have some explaining to do.’

  ‘I do,’ she says, looking slightly contrite. She continues on her way, and I follow. In the kitchen she ambushes me again, using the enormous kitchen table to block my retreat. Her behaviour is outrageous and I can barely contain my outrage. At last she releases me and goes to the sink to wash her hands – not because of anything we have done but because she is about to start preparing food. I take a couple of steps and nearly fall over, my left leg having temporarily died from the pressure her right one was exerting on it against the edge of the table.

  ‘Shall we have a glass of wine?’ Poppy says cheerily. ‘I think that would help to break the ice. There’s a nice pinot noir in the rack over there, that doesn’t need to breathe.’

  She hands me a corkscrew. I open the bottle while she finds two glasses.

  ‘If I had done to you what you have just done to me, you’d have been furious, and quite rightly,’ I tell her.

  ‘No I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Well, you should have been. Once again I ask you, what the hell is going on?’

  ‘I will explain, darling –’

  ‘I must ask you not to call me that. I’m not in the mood.’

  She disputes this with her eyebrows.

  ‘Douglas,’ she says. ‘Look, I don’t mean to sound insensitive to your legitimate concerns, but I need to get the dinner started.’

  ‘Dinner? You speak of dinner?’

  ‘Yes, a chicken casserole. We killed a hen at the weekend and had it roasted yesterday. What’s left will go into the casserole along with some other bits and pieces.’

  I am momentarily distracted from the main item on the agenda by this information.

  ‘You killed one of those delightful hens I was talking to?’

  ‘No, the one I killed was dead before you met the others.’

  ‘You killed it, personally?’

  ‘It wasn’t personal, but yes, I wrung its neck. Rosalind hasn’t the strength any more, and it’s one of those jobs you shouldn’t ask anyone to do if you’re not prepared to do it yourself. Don’t look so shocked. I like the hens too but there’s no point in being sentimental about them. That’s what happens to hens – they go in pots. At least here they have a good and useful life first.’

  ‘That must be a great comfort to them,’ I say.

  ‘You’re not a vegetarian, are you?’ Poppy asks, tying herself into an apron and somehow managing to make this simple act sensual.

  ‘No, I am not a vegetarian. I had the Scotch broth the other day, remember? We are getting completely off the subject.’

  ‘No we’re not. You can help by preparing the carrots and this leek and peeling some potatoes. We’ll talk as we go. You see, right back on subject. Where shall we start?’

  ‘Why don’t you start, with Xanthe? Or Jezebel or whatever you call yourself when you’re not Poppy.’

  ‘Oh, I never thought of Jezebel,’ she says, dumping the chicken carcass on a board and beginning to tear it apart. ‘That could have been fun, if a little unbelievable. I made Xanthe up some time ago. It’s just a name really. I can’t remember why I chose it. She’s not so different from me, but it’s nice to think she could be. When I need to escape – and believe me, sometimes I have needed to – Xanthe comes out to play.’

  ‘How convenient for her. And you. Tell me, does Malcolm know who she is? That is, who you are? I mean, who she really is?’

  She is not fazed by my sarcastic tone. ‘Possibly,’ she says. ‘He’s never been here, and he’s not in the least bit curious, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t worked it out. Don’t be jealous, Douglas. Malcolm and I had our fling but it was ages ago. We’re just old pals now.’

  ‘Me, jealous of Malcolm? I don’t suppose there’s any chance he might be jealous of me?’

  She shakes her head. ‘No. He doesn’t care about anything or anyone but himself, honestly.’

  ‘ “Honestly” is a word I’m having some difficulty with at the moment,’ I say. It is meant to cut her to the core, in much the same way as she is now carving meat off the chicken carcass with a very sharp knife.

  ‘I can see why that would be,’ she says. ‘From the outside, everything here must seem a bit off the true.’

  ‘Just a bit. How, for example, do that place of Malcolm’s and the Glen Araich Lodge survive?’

  ‘That’s two separate questions. Don’t just stand there, darling – I mean Douglas.’ In spite of myself, I go to the sink, give the leek a good rinse and start cutting it up on another chopping board. Meanwhile, Poppy chatters on.

  ‘The Shira survives because it’s not Malcolm’s. It’s owned by an uncle of his, one of those rich bankers we’re all supposed to hate. Well, I do hate them, they won’t lend us any money. I can’t blame them, though, we wouldn’t be able to pay it back. Every August Malcolm’s uncle and his wealthy friends take over the pub for a couple of weeks and shoot at every living thing in sight. Sometimes they even manage to wing each other. The rest of the year Malcolm keeps it ticking over but it doesn’t really matter if it makes money or not. He has a cottage a mile away and he spends most of his time there, complaining about the slowness of the broadband.’

  ‘And the Glen Araich?’ I can’t help noticing we’re straying off course again, but maybe this background information is necessary to gain an understanding of Poppy.

  ‘That’s more complicated. Corryvreckan owns it. He bought it thirty years ago when I was little and for a while he seemed to make a go of it, but the reality was he couldn’t even break even. That’s when he started working for us. He uses what we pay him to keep the hotel afloat but it can’t go on much longer. He paid off the last of the staff this summer. Give those carrots a scrub, will you, and cut them into quarters lengthwise. Next question?’

  ‘Would you please explain Corryvreckan to me?’

  ‘Ah. That one needs quite a long answer. Can we save it till later?’

  ‘That’s what Rosalind said. All right, try this one instead,’ I say, sensing a chance to land a few wounding blows. ‘Maybe it’s more straightforward. How come you turned up at the Shira Inn on Monday? Let me suggest an answer. You needed to get away from here, you adopted your alter ego Xanthe, and then what? You decided to go to the pub and pick up any available man regardless of which side of the bar he was on?’

  ‘That isn’t fair,’ Poppy says.

  ‘Why isn’t it?’

  ‘Because I knew you were going to be there.’

  ‘That’s even worse! You knew there would be an available man? Anyway, how did you know I’d be there?’

  ‘Because I arranged it.’

  Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. Surpri
sed and, once again, confused.

  ‘So it was you who put the request in to the train, to get me off it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. She is hanging her head, possibly in shame but I think she’s just looking to see if there’s any more meat to come off the chicken bones.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To check you out. Out of the blue a journalist wants to talk to Rosalind? Nobody’s been near her for a quarter of a century. I’m her guardian. Not her legal guardian, but I protect her. I wanted to find out what kind of man you were. If you were going to treat her kindly.’

  ‘And your way of doing that was to seduce me?’

  ‘Oh, Douglas, no, that’s not how it was. Honestly.’

  ‘Please don’t use that word.’

  ‘Sorry. It’s true, though. I didn’t plan that part. And if you don’t like “honestly” I don’t like “seduce”. Seduction’s one-sided. The seduced may be a willing victim but really it’s about power and manipulation. That’s not what this is about.’ She makes a big gesture that I understand is meant to encompass herself and me preparing food and drinking wine in the kitchen of Glentaragar House.

  ‘How do I know that?’ I ask.

  ‘You don’t. Neither do I. It’s not about knowing, it’s about feeling. You just have to feel it, Douglas. And you do, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, I –’

  ‘You didn’t fight me off just now – not much anyway – any more than you fought me off on Monday. What happened then was mutual. Mutual and mutually enjoyed. Wasn’t it?’

  ‘So I thought. Except that you weren’t there in the morning to share the memories. That put a slightly different slant on it, for me at any rate.’

  ‘I had to get back here,’ she says.

  ‘Aha!’ I have her now. ‘And so, coincidentally, did Corryvreckan. You left together, I take it?’

  ‘I left in that car, yes.’

  ‘You took your life in your hands, then. Corryvreckan must still have been way over the limit.’

  ‘It wasn’t Corryvreckan. It was MacCrimmon. You’re right, he wasn’t at his best but luckily we didn’t meet any other traffic. By the time we reached Glen Araich he was almost sober. Not that you’d have known from anything he said – he didn’t speak a word the whole way. He abandoned the car outside the hotel and I imagine he went straight to bed. When he woke up he would have been MacLagan. Why are you laughing?’

  ‘Because the alternative is screaming. And what did you do then?’

  ‘I walked back home up the glen. It was a filthy day but there’s something glorious about getting soaked to the bone, don’t you think?’ She has chopped a couple of onions and is frying them on the range. Some garlic too, if I am not mistaken.

  ‘No,’ I tell her.

  ‘Well, I do. I didn’t care anyway. I love walking the glen and I was thinking about you all the way.’

  ‘Really? And what were you thinking? Who was that total stranger I had sex with last night? Did I have sex with a total stranger last night?’

  She gives me a hurt look even as she adds the chopped chicken to the pan. I call that inappropriate multitasking. ‘As a matter of fact,’ she says, ‘I was wondering if you were awake, and if you were following me yet.’

  ‘If you’d stayed a bit longer we could have made the journey together.’

  ‘Do you think I didn’t want to stay?’

  This strikes me as being a very silly question. ‘I have no idea, Poppy. You didn’t, though. You left. You could have woken me even if it was just to say goodbye. You could have told me where to find you. You could have told me who you really were. You didn’t do any of those things.’

  ‘I was confused.’

  ‘Well, that makes two of us.’

  ‘When I woke up at first I didn’t know what I should do. Everything seemed like a dream. I was torn between staying in the dream and running away from it. Then I realised I could put us to the test.’

  ‘What test?’

  ‘The test of fate. Would I ever see you again? I had to leave it to fate. If you actually got here, that would be a sign that everything was going to be all right. And here you are. I feel this is the start of something – something good. It is, isn’t it?’

  I am chopping carrots vigorously and almost add a fingertip or two to the pile. ‘Jesus, Poppy, how would I know? This isn’t exactly a normal way to begin a relationship. And I’m not saying it is a relationship. Just think about it. You arrange to meet me but not to sleep with me. Then you sleep with me. Then you leave me so that we can get together again, if fate decrees it. And fate does, apparently. And that’s the start of something good? Something weird, maybe.’

  ‘You’re not so normal yourself.’

  ‘By your standards, I’d say I was.’

  ‘Not beneath the surface. I bet you have a secret life too.’

  ‘And if I do? Does that make me acceptable? Does that mean I’m going to – what was it you said? – treat Rosalind kindly?’

  ‘You already have. You’re a decent man.’

  ‘You can’t know that.’

  ‘I’ve been wrong before, but I’m not wrong now. Please be careful with that knife. And can I have those carrots now?’

  I put down the knife and hand over the carrots. I sit down at the table and swallow a large mouthful of wine. Then I return to the fray. I have been alone in her company for a while now and am running low on ammunition.

  ‘How on earth did you manage that business with the train anyway?’

  ‘I asked Malcolm,’ she says. ‘Or rather, Xanthe did. Malcolm knows how to put a request in. When it happens in August about a dozen of his uncle’s friends get out, with guns and shooting sticks and a dog or two. Once you’d confirmed which train you were going to be on, I got Malcolm to arrange it.’

  ‘That’s why you insisted on that particular train. And the guy on the train said Corryvreckan was supposed to meet me. Are you telling me that you sent Corryvreckan to pick me up but by the time he got to the inn he’d changed personality and was MacCrimmon?’

  ‘No, I just told Malcolm to mention Corryvreckan’s name, so you’d be sure to get off. I knew Corryvreckan wouldn’t make it.’

  ‘So how was I meant to get to Glentaragar that day?’

  ‘You weren’t. Corryvreckan gave me a run down to Glen Araich, at which point I got out and he drove on. I waited for the afternoon minibus to Oban, got out at the junction where the road goes to the Shira Inn and started walking. I told you, that’s how I get around. Those women who’d been at a funeral in Oban gave me a lift.’

  If my resolve to be stern has been softening, this stiffens it again. ‘You mean you left Rosalind alone? How could you? She’s extraordinary, but how could you leave her entirely on her own here?’

  ‘You see, you are a decent man. Don’t worry, Rosalind can look after herself for a night. In fact, she insists on doing so every so often. You’ve spent the afternoon with her, Douglas – you can see how capable she is. What’s the worst that can happen? She dies, aged ninety-nine.’

  ‘That’s a terrible attitude!’

  ‘It’s hers, not mine, although I happen to share it.’

  ‘She slips when she’s getting ready for bed, breaks her femur, and dies alone, freezing and in great pain, on the bathroom floor. You’d feel fine about that?’

  ‘No, but if that’s how it happens, so be it. She’s not frightened of death, however it comes. She’s a philosopher – you should have found that out already. What else can you be at that age? If she were a hen she’d have a philosophic attitude to pots. Anyway, she likes her own company. And it’s good for all three of us to have a break from each other.’

  I pounce on her inconsistency. ‘Five of you, surely? Counting Corryvreckan and his enigma variations.’

  ‘Three. Here in the glen, Corryvreckan is only Corryvreckan. The point is, Rosalind needs her space and so do I. She’s not interested in going away, so I do.’

  I put my head in my hands but it
doesn’t help much. ‘Can we go back a bit?’ I ask. ‘You hitched a lift to the Shira Inn and you got there whenever you did that afternoon. You just seemed to appear beside me. Did you tell Malcolm to make himself scarce before you arrived?’

  ‘No need. He has form in that department. It didn’t matter if he was there or not. You were going to wait for someone called Corryvreckan, and I knew someone called Corryvreckan wasn’t going to come. The only person who was going to turn up was MacCrimmon.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Poppy! This is certifiable behaviour.’

  ‘We don’t care much for that kind of label.’

  ‘Again, how convenient!’

  She looks at me coolly. ‘We’re all other people, Douglas, every one of us. Don’t think you’re immune.’

  I know that already but I’m not going to admit it. ‘But MacCrimmon wasn’t the only one to turn up, was he?’ I say instead. ‘The place was stowed out. If I’d managed to get anyone to give me a lift – and believe me, I tried – your plan would have been scuppered.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true. It never occurred to me there’d be all those customers. I don’t know where they appeared from. But no one gave you a lift. Maybe that was fate again.’

  ‘To hell with fate. Here’s something else. You left me stranded at the Glen Araich last night. Why? Why didn’t you come and get me?’

  ‘I don’t drive.’

  ‘Ah, yes, you told me that on the phone.’

  ‘I didn’t speak to you on the phone. I already said, I tried to call the hotel but there was something wrong with the line. Even if I had spoken to you and even if I could drive, it wouldn’t have been any use. Corryvreckan’s is the only vehicle here and he’d taken it down to the hotel.’

  ‘Then you could have asked him to bring me up. Or you could have asked MacLagan if that’s who he’d turned into by then.’

  ‘That wouldn’t have worked. MacLagan never comes up the glen. My grandmother doesn’t like him, and he stays away.’

  ‘So what you’re telling me is, I imagined that phone conversation.’

  ‘Maybe you did,’ Poppy says.

  I remember Ollie saying that the Glentaragar set-up sounded as safe as a bag of snakes. I think he was understating the case.