by Morris West
‘What do you want me to say, Kathleen oge?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Suppose I tell you that I’m a jealous man, too, but not of a child – because a child is a love fruit for the cherishing of lovers.’
‘Then I’ll feel safer, but still not sure.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t know who I am any more. I’m a lover and a hater. I’m a healer and a killer, both.’
‘And Red Ruarri’s a killer too?’
‘That’s brutal.’
‘But true?’
‘In one way, yes. In another, no, no, no!’
‘Then we have a chance.’
‘Only if you say we have.’
‘We both have to say it. We both have to believe it. Look, my dear, dark girl, we all have murders on our hands, little or big, dreamed or done. Before anyone else can forgive us, we have to ask pardon of ourselves.’
‘Have you been able to do that?’
‘Not quite. But you said it yourself. Someone has to love us enough, so we can love ourselves a little. Well, Kathleen?’
‘Will you give me time?’
‘Will you open your heart and let me in? It’s cold outside the door.’
‘Please come in, seannachie. Please come in and tell me fairy stories again.’
If this were a trite tale of faceless nobodies, I would tell you how we mated that night and what we did with these and those parts of each other, what wild pleasurings we had and what newness and what wonders. The truth is that we did none of it. We kissed and embraced like the lovers we nearly were; we parted at the milestone we had reached; she slept in her bed and I in mine and, wise or foolish, we waited for the day when the golden eagle would come plummeting down with the gift of the sun-god in his triumphant talons.
Chapter 4
THREE days later – and they were good days, when I caught my first sea salmon and earned my first downright praise from Fergus William McCue and hired a boat and took Kathleen McNeil swimming off the beach at Borvemore – Red Ruarri telephoned me at the lodge. He had a mind to go night fishing; would I like to join him? I could bring my girl, too, if she had a taste for that sort of thing. We should take along a bottle of whisky and a sandwich maybe, and wrap up warmly because it could be cold on the loch at midnight. I told him we would be happy to come and arranged to pick him up at his house at ten the following night. When I told Alastair Morrison, he didn’t approve at all.
‘If Ruarri’s night fishing means what I think it does, you’re going on a poacher’s picnic. Ruarri owns no fishing rights that I know of. You can’t use a rod and flies at night. You have to use a net, and that’s another offence from the poaching. There are gamekeepers out everywhere and they’re well organized. They’re in touch with one another by radio and with the police too. If you’re caught with a fish on you, or even the tackle, then it’s a big fine and a damage to your reputation and mine. And it wouldn’t be good for Dr McNeil to be hauled up in a magistrate’s court, would it now?’
All of which put a new complexion on Master Ruarri’s invitation. If I went, I became a partner in the petty outlawry of him and his buannas. If I didn’t, I was a mealy-mouthed moralist with no stomach for a foray against the forces of privilege. There was no shame in poaching, only in getting caught. Fishing and shooting rights were an old sore in the Highlands, and whatever the law said, no man had God-given rights over the fish in the sea and the wild deer in the mountains. Also – I could see that crooked grin and those mocking blue eyes – a man who was scared of a gamekeeper could hardly hold his woman against the swagger of Ruarri the Mactire. On the other hand, I was a guest in Morrison’s house. He had offered me friendship and support when I needed it most. If I was going to play games with the law, he had a right to be forewarned.
So I told him how it was with Kathleen McNeil and myself and with myself and Ruarri. He had trusted me with his own secret, I was entitled to trust him with mine.
He heard me out patiently, pacing the garden walk with me, and when I had finished he laughed. ‘You’re in deep water, aren’t you, laddie? When the tide comes full, you’ll have to swim for it.’
‘Do you blame me?’
‘No. It’s probably the cure you need: one good fight for a woman or a cause – even if you lose. You could, you know. From all I hear, Ruarri’s a dirty scrapper.’
‘I’ve thought of that too. This is just sparring and skirmishing.’
‘The last battle could be bloody.’
‘We may never come to it.’
‘I’ll lay odds you will.’
‘So I go poaching, eh?’
‘I’m an old man, laddie. I don’t hear very well, and I suffer from night blindness too. I wouldn’t know what you do with your spare time. But I’ll give you a tip. Ruarri’s tossed you a lure. He doesn’t know you’ve seen the hook under the feathers. I wouldn’t be in a hurry to tell him.’
And there we left it. I called Kathleen McNeil and invited her to join our innocent expedition. Then I spent an instructive hour with Farran on the land laws of Scotland, where I found that salmon rights were called regalia minora, that they could be alienated, but that they were held inviolable by ruffians like myself under pain of fines and possible imprisonment. Regalia minora sounded like a good phrase to have handy when the gamekeepers were hounding us over the bogland.
However, in case it shouldn’t meet all our needs, I shoved a small flask of whisky into my pocket and walked down to the cottage to share it with Fergus William McCue.
F. W. McCue on regalia minora was like the Kama Sutra on sex. He could give it to you upside down, inside out, left to right, back to front, with butter and honey, love and kisses and an anecdote to illustrate every mode of victory or violation. As a legalist he had his faults – some of his law had not been revised since the time of Morrison the Brieve – but as a tactician he had Farran licked to a frazzle. If he hadn’t been a gillie, he would have been the noblest poacher in the land. In fact I’m not sure he hadn’t been, and wouldn’t have been still if he had kept his mind to it. He delayed his summary until the flask was almost empty, but the advice was worth the fee.
‘If you had a mind to break the law – which I know you haven’t, but I’m just supposing – then this would be the way of it. First, you stay off private land, because even if you’re not had for poaching, you can still be caught for trespass. Besides, a man’s allowed to keep a dog on his own property, and many do; and some of them are savage beasties that would take a bite out of your backside as soon as look at you. Also, a man’s allowed to keep a shotgun; and I have to tell you no trout in the world is worth a charge of birdshot in the sensitive parts of the anatomy. So the trick is to poach in open water, because there’s no danger from dogs or guns, and you can always claim you were outside one man’s water and inside another’s. If the wrong man swears out a summons, you’re off free, with maybe a claim for damage to your unsullied reputation. Always providing, of course, that they don’t find you with the fish or the tackle in your possession. Another thing about open water – if you’re in a boat, it’s hard for a policeman or a gillie to identify you, and harder still to come at you. The shoreline’s so long and the roads are so bad, the best he can do is sit and wait where he thinks you’re going to land – and that’s a long, cold watching when you’re counting your catch a mile away. Of course if you’ve got a car and he finds it in a suspicious place, then he can ask embarrassing questions, but there’s sweet nothing he can do unless he finds the fish. Have I made myself clear now?’
‘Couldn’t be clearer, Fergus.’
‘Then perhaps you wouldn’t mind answering one question for me. Who are you going out with – and where?’
‘That’s two questions. And if I answered one or both, you’d never trust me again.’
‘Then I’ll ask you another. Why risk a fine when you’ve all the Morrison water and me to guide your stumbling feet?’
‘Because a fellow mad
e me a challenge, and there’s a woman in it, and you wouldn’t want your pupil to shy away from a thing like that, would you, Fergus?’
‘Never, laddie! And I’ll drink a toast to your success. Next time bring a full bottle. These halves are just travellers’ samples!...’
The night came down, cool and clear and full of stars: a gift to lovers, but no good at all for a poacher because by midnight the moon would be full on the water and any bailiff with half an eye would spot us a mile away. However, I was armed with Fergus’ counsel, so I felt reasonably secure; also I was the innocent who was presumed to know only his prayers, so I made no comment. When we came to Ruarri’s house we found him alone. I made no comment on that either, but I noted it as a nice piece of stage management which would display all his raider’s skill and leave me, dumb and fumbling, in the background. He suggested we drive to the loch in his car. I balked at that. I wanted my own wheels under me and no crazy redbeard haring us round the country roads. He shrugged agreement, poured us a drink and then went out to stow the gear in the trunk. When he came back I asked him, ingenuously, what lures he would use for night trolling.
He laughed. ‘No lures, seannachie. Just an old-fashioned gill net and an otter trawl. We’re fishing for the plate and for the pocket tonight, not for the sport of it. We’ll set one net and trawl another, and whatever we get is profit – salmon sea trout, or pollock.’
‘I thought gill nets were illegal,’ said Kathleen McNeil.
‘Only if you’re found using ’em, ma’am.’
‘And you have your own fishing rights?’ God love the dark woman! I had not prompted her and she was right on cue.
‘Well, Kathleen, I’d have to distinguish. I claim I have a natural right to fish the waters of my own island. The law says I haven’t. So the matter’s in dispute. Tonight I’m giving myself the benefit of the doubt.’
‘So it’s poaching we’re at?’ My question this time.
‘Objections, seannachie?’ He said it with a grin, but there was no smile in his eyes.
‘None. Just so we all know the name of the game. Besides, we can’t have the lady involved if we’re caught.’
‘We won’t be caught. If we were, my boys would never work for me again. Let’s be on the road, shall we?’
We drove perhaps five miles down the main road and then cut off on a narrow, rutted track that led down to the loch. About two hundred yards from the shore we stopped. Ruarri unloaded a large duffel bag, hefted it onto his shoulders and led us on foot down to the beach. There was a boat hauled up on the shingle with a pair of oars in it.
Ruarri tossed the duffel bag aboard and, before we pushed off, uttered a cryptic warning. ‘Don’t get your feet wet. You might just have to walk later. And keep your voices down. Sound carries far over the water.’
Then we were afloat, and Ruarri was sculling round the rocky fringes of the bay. He kept close inshore, I noticed, and his strokes were slow and careful so that there was no splash and no rattle of rowlocks. I noticed something else, too: a slight tightening of the tension within him, a new wariness in the eyes, a self-contemplative smile as if he were checking off his own skills and finding them still adequate for the task in hand. I had seen the same expression before: in the faces of men just before a night raid in New Guinea; on a desert tracker in the Jordan Valley, searching the sand and the shale for the tracks of Fedayeen raiders. It was the mark of the hunter, the professional, moving wary but confident in a hostile terrain.
Five minutes’ rowing brought us to a spot where a long finger of water thrust deep into the land between two cliffs. On either side of the channel there was an iron stake, hammered into the rocks just below the high-water mark. Ruarri pointed them out with cheerful vanity. ‘I put those in last year. No one’s tumbled to them yet. That’s where we sling the gill net to catch the darlings as they run in and out with the tide. Lend a hand now, seannachie, and mind you don’t topple overboard, or you’ll spend a damn cold night.’
A gill net is exactly what its name implies – a strong, coarse mesh into which a cruising fish will butt himself and tangle himself by the gills. To the honest angler it is anathema, but to a hungry fellow who wants food in the pan or silver in his pocket it is the invention of a genius. Ours was strung in a matter of minutes. We would leave it and come back for it on the way home. Then we were ready for the otter trawl: a large sock, winged open at the neck and trailed from a line astern. This one we had to use offshore where there were no reefs or snags but where we would be clearly visible when the moon came up.
When we had the trawl line cleated, I offered to take over the rowing to spare Ruarri’s damaged wrist. He would have none of it. The plaster was firm, the muscles moved freely, and besides, he had more weight than I had. So I settled down with an arm about Kathleen McNeil’s shoulders and left him to pull his heart out if he wanted. Half a mile down the loch we hauled in the net. There were half a dozen pollock and one small salmon. We poured them into the duffel bag and tossed the trawl back into the water. I offered once again to relieve him at the oars. Once again he refused.
The moon was rising now, a globe of tarnished silver, with the hills black against its lower circumference. Its light was like the beam of a searchlight, refracted along the flat water. We were in the middle of it, with the trawl line cutting a silver furrow behind us. Another half mile and we were ready to haul in again. As I stood at the stern dragging on the line, I saw the lights: one two, three, four of them, widely spaced, moving along the ridge of the northern hills. I pointed them out to Ruarri.
He nodded. ‘That’s the gillies, without a doubt. And at least one of them has night glasses.’
‘So what now?’
‘Let’s get the net in and see what we’ve got.’
This time there was a big salmon, eight pounds of him at least, and a few small whitefish. We emptied the net and left it inboard. Ruarri sat down again and sculled quietly to hold us against the run of the tide.
‘Watch the lights, seannachie. Tell me how they’re moving.’
After five minutes or so the movement was clear. They were moving downhill in a half circle, gradually closing the circumference round the spot where we had left the car.
Ruarri swore softly. ‘Damn and blast them! They don’t have to do any more. They find the car; they call the police for two roadblocks on the main road and they’ve got us trapped. Unless we want to walk ten miles across country, that is. Even then they can trace the driver of the car. Christ! I haven’t seen them here for months. Why tonight of all the nights in the year?’
It was the moonlight that betrayed him: the one reflection thrown up by an oar stroke onto his bearded face. The bastard was smiling. His voice was mourning over us both, but inside he was laughing like a bloody leprechaun on a mushroom. We were supposed to register panic and concern. We would make a great act of faith in his skill and beg him to save us from mulct and mischance and the disgrace of a day in court. He would calm us with his courage and row us into a quiet cove to wait out the danger. But he couldn’t save us all, only Kathleen McNeil and himself. The car was rented to me. I might dodge the gillies and the policemen tonight. Tomorrow they would be on my doorstep with soft, sweet talk and a list of questions I couldn’t answer without a lie. And Ruarri would be laughing at my discomfiture. To hell with that for a joke in the Stornoway bars.
I was just opening my mouth to tell him the joke was stale when I remembered Alastair Morrison’s warning. I wasn’t supposed to see the hook under the feathers of the lure. Even if I did, I mustn’t tell the fisherman. I shut my mouth and sat quietly, watching the lights draw closer and closer to the place where the car was parked. Then, as if at a signal, they all snapped out.
The moon was higher now and the shoreline was clear, a series of small, dark coves with headlands between. I marked the spot from which we had launched the boat. I turned to Ruarri and pointed to the next bay. ‘Row us in there, Ruarri.’
‘What the hell…! The police
are just round the corner.’
‘There’s no problem. We’ll be home free, with fish for breakfast. Take us in now.’
‘You’re crazy, seannachie!’
‘If I am, I’ll pay the fines for all of us.’
‘At least tell me what you’ve got in mind.’
‘It’s easy. Farran on land tenure and regalia minora appurtenant thereto: only possession of tackle or fish, or the means of transporting same, to wit a boat on prohibited waters, constitutes evidence of trespass or poaching. So you drop us ashore. We’re lovers, in case you didn’t know. We’ve been having a private interlude on the beach. This very night we’ve decided to become engaged – unofficially, of course. While we’re explaining all that to the law, you’ll row back and clear your gill net. We’ll take your house key and drink your liquor and I’ll be back to pick you up on the main road an hour after midnight.’
He stared at me for a long moment, then dissolved into laughter, coughing and spluttering as he tried to stifle it. ‘You son of a gun! You slew-eyed Sassenach! Here’s me sweating my soul out to save you from the hangmen, and you’re six jumps ahead of me. Are you a good enough actor to bring it off?’
‘If my leading lady’s up to it?’
‘How would you like it played, dear one?’ The leading lady was enthusiastic. ‘Slightly drunk and singing? Or tender and brimming with happy tears?’
‘Play as your heart tells you, Kathleen.’
‘Pass me the bottle,’ said Ruarri. ‘I need a big drink.’
When we reached the shore, we had to walk the length of a stony cove and scramble over the rock and kelp of a headland to reach the car. The law was waiting for us: two genial constables and a sour-faced gillie with a big border collie on a leash. The constables were polite, if sceptical. Was this my car? It was. Would I mind telling them what it was doing at this particular place so late at night? I wouldn’t mind at all; but was I in breach of any local law I didn’t know about? Not at all. But it was a lonely spot and they were just doing a routine duty to the public. I told them: Dr McNeil and I were friends, old and fond friends. We were out for a drive. We had stopped here to be private and watch the moon on the water. How long had we been on the beach? Hard to say. Lovers lose track of time so easily. We hadn’t been fishing by any chance? Did we look as though we had? Had we seen anyone else fishing? We’d seen a boat on the loch. We had thought it rather beautiful in the moonlight. We wouldn’t know who was in it by any chance? That was hardly possible. Both of us were newcomers. Dr McNeil was doing a locum in Harris. I was a guest of the Morrison at Laxay. He would be quite happy to identify us if identification were needed. It wouldn’t be. They were sorry to have troubled us. One last question: where were we heading now? Back through Carloway to the lodge. Anything else? Nothing at all. We were free to go. God rest you, merry gentlemen. I hope to God Ruarri’s out of sight now; and I hope, more fervently, there’s no patrol car on the road when I come back for him…
