The One and Only

by Doris E. Smith

  Was he serious? Maggie could not be sure. But he was. ‘Perfectly,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’m thinking of buying a horse. Now Graham has one, we could go riding. They say it all looks different from the back of a horse.’

  His self-confidence was sublime. ‘I think I’ll try Kincardine,’ he pronounced, strolling along the boxes with his hands in his pockets.

  It was not a good choice. The big grey had one or two bad habits, among them that of moving off as soon as he felt his rider’s foot on the stirrup. They were trying to break him of it, but meantime novices were not put up. Any of the remaining four was entirely suitable, her own preference was for Glenshee.

  Regrettably, Angus had a mind of his own. ‘I’m not a novice. I’ve ridden before,’ he told her firmly. ‘And I’ll not sue you if I fall off.

  ‘I’m a bit rusty on the approved drill for mounting,’ he said casually next minute. ‘Just brush me up, will you?’

  It was not a graceful mounting and it was not improved by Kincardine as anticipated starting to move so that for a few seconds it looked as though Angus were going to sprawl across the withers, but he righted himself and eventually gained the saddle. The blood had rushed to his face, but he was nonchalant. ‘I’ll get the feel of it presently. Are you coming?’

  A mesmerised Maggie thought she had better—and with the minimum of delay. Her own feelings were clearly mirrored in Rob’s face as he led Glenshee forward. Kelly too, fully appreciative of the fact that Angus was sitting like the proverbial sack of potatoes, had astonishment written all over her.

  For all that Maggie was the first to admit that grit and determination went a long way and her companion did not lack them. He might not have looked elegant, but he certainly looked static and before long even relaxed. It was like the night he had held Braemar’s head with such success. But luck was not to hold on this occasion. Some litter hound had thrown a broken umbrella into the field and Kincardine shied. It was too much for his rider and he toppled and was thrown.

  It seemed to Maggie’s horrified eyes a heavy fall, and after it he rolled over slightly and lay with his eyes shut. Maggie was off Glenshee in a matter of seconds and kneeling beside him. Ridiculous the way her heart was pounding. She’d been riding and taking tumbles herself since the age of five and she never made a fuss, on principle, when it happened to her pupils. But this was different. Her hand trembled as she touched him, saying urgently; ‘Angus, are you all right?’

  He didn’t answer and still he did not move. Lying there with one cheek pillowed on the grass he looked so peaceful he might have been asleep. But that was what you said when ... Her inside turned over. The ground rocked under her knees. She laid her ear to his chest.

  ‘God, no!’ she was screaming inwardly. ‘No, no, no!’

  ‘My heart’s on the other side,’ said a voice.

  She jerked back. The eyes had not opened, but the lips had taken a curve.

  ‘I think you should take my pulse,’ the casualty suggested, and held up his right hand.

  Idiotically she let it capture hers. He was looking at her now and, in an absurd turning of the tables, she was the one being reassured. Wordlessly and—in spite of the dewy grass—without moving.

  ‘Do you go green over all your pupils?’

  ‘They usually do what they’re told,’ Maggie was recovering fast. ‘If it’s not too much to ask, how long is it since you were last on a horse?’

  ‘You could say about five minutes,’ he laughed. ‘But if we’re speaking historically about thirty-five years. We went down to England for a holiday, Bournemouth I think it was, and I did my riding without stirrups. The donkey was practically senile and my father lifted me up.’

  Was it possible? He had been four, he had ridden a donkey on the sands and today thirty-five years later he had got up on Kincardine. She looked at the strong-quartered grey who at the best of times took courage to ride. Who did Angus MacAllan think he was? Daniel, the lion-tamer? Or just Angus, ‘the one, the one and only’?

  It was against all her principles to approve foolhardiness, and yet the sheer bravery of it made her glow. It was heightened when he insisted on re-mounting and riding back to the stables.

  ‘By the way,’ he said casually as Rob took the horses to their boxes, ‘we’re going up to Glencoe tomorrow to see my mother-in-law. There’s room in the car if you and Kelly would like to join us.’

  The invitation was irresistible. Maggie had never been to Glencoe, Scotland’s most sinister glen and the scene of Campbell perfidy.

  ‘Always provided you’ve got the nerve,’ Angus qualified teasingly. ‘There’s those even still who’d wreak their vengeance on the lot of you.’

  She said gaily that she would take the chance. History was unlikely to repeat itself. In any event she did not speak to ghosts nor they to her.

  Next morning the breeze was as light as her heart and the thin air had the bouquet of wine.

  She chose dark green trousers and her new sweater. It was almost a shock to see how its colour brought up the blue of her eyes. In fact there was something different about her whole face. Her hair, perhaps. It had grown since summer and was not so sun-bleached. Brushed out, it curled on her shoulders like poured honey. ‘But I don’t look like that,’ she thought absurdly, tucking a green silk scarf into the neck of the sweater. ‘That’s Sally.’ Beside Sally she had always seemed such a milkmaid with her straw-coloured hair. Today, either the mirror was lying or Kelly’s Zebedee, these days with less and less to do, had dropped in some rose-coloured contact lenses while she slept.

  ‘Laugh before breakfast, cry before supper’ had been another maxim of childhood. It came into her head for no particular reason as she ran downstairs.

  They started early since it would be a long drive. The first stop was to be Braemar where Angus had a parcel of plants from the garden for a friend, next halt would be Crianlarich for lunch.

  ‘I thought you and Graham would be lunching with your mother-in-law,’ Maggie observed. She had wondered about bringing a packed lunch for herself and Kelly.

  Angus and Graham looked at each other and laughed.

  ‘I only take risks with horses,’ Angus chuckled as he turned the ignition key. ‘Tea, maybe, if we’re lucky. Pamela’s a writer and we’re not sure if she eats. We found that out when she was staying with us.’

  ‘Dad had to do the cooking,’ Graham supplied from the back.

  ‘Don’t get the wrong impression. She’s the kind this world needs. She hasn’t a bad thought in her head,’ his father added. ‘But she’d live on the heather if she had a writing fit on. We usually go on a food run before winter because we know she’ll have forgotten to gather in the nuts.’ He went on to speak affectionately of his mother-in-law, giving her professional name, which was exciting since Maggie had read her books. Further personal areas were also shaded in. Angus’s mother was dead, but his father, when forced to retire for health reasons, had gone on holiday to Bermuda. While there he had looked up an old friend and married her. They had come home last year. ‘And I’m thinking of making the trip myself early next year.’

  ‘Lucky old you!’ Maggie quipped.

  The face glinted with satisfaction. ‘You’d approve of that? If I said as part of the honeymoon would it put up my chances, do you reckon?’

  Suddenly the sun seemed to draw in from the stooked crops. There was a greyness. On previous occasions the thought of his marrying Troy had brought indignation. This morning she felt only that the days ahead had somehow lost savour.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said curtly. ‘Any girl would love Bermuda, but very few would like it as a bribe.’ The word he had uttered mocked her. As she had learned already, Angus MacAllan had no need of material aids.

  Meantime, the passing countryside should not be missed. Ride outs along by the river had taken her past Culder, but Culder and Banchory were now well behind them. Here rolling away in braes that had been purple with heather or parading right to the skyline in for
est was surely every exile’s dream.

  It was no wonder Queen Victoria had loved her home in the Highlands. The tasselled ferns and the young conifers growing from the tufted heather had all the richness of the Victorian era. The river was low. Looking down, it was a silver snake, and the road copied it. Wire fencing protected the forests. ‘To keep out the deer,’ Angus volunteered. ‘They come down to the road in winter to feed.’ Not too long ago in the early evening he had seen two beautiful red deer at the Devil’s Elbow. The news sent Kelly into a paroxysm of excitement, but he quenched it. They were hard to see since their colouring merged into the landscape.

  Going on, he spoke of the Highland games and pointed out the venue for the Aboyne gathering which had been held four weeks last Saturday. A trail of smoke spotted by Graham among the forest on the left was also explained. ‘They’re probably cutting some trees down and burning the small branches. For every tree they cut down they must plant another. It’s usually Douglas or Regent Spruce.’

  Kelly’s eye was caught by the birch beaters neatly racked at intervals along the verge.

  ‘Oh ay, the brooms,’ Angus said solemnly. ‘We keep them at the roadside and if a witch gets tired she just takes one and carries on.’

  ‘Really?’ Kelly asked, wide-eyed.

  Graham sniggered, but this had no effect on the storyteller.

  ‘D’ye doubt me? Better not take a broom then. We bum witches at the stake so if you’re seen with one of them...’ The silence was impressive.

  It was plain that Angus MacAllan liked children and there was a sudden poignancy in remembering the joke he had made that day in the factory about being able to manage a few more.

  The halt at Braemar was brief and after Angus had handed over the parcel of plants to his friend he explained that the latter was engaged with other sheep farmers on Deeside in a tourism enterprise. He was erecting a number of chalets on his land for letting. Various facilities were being provided including sauna chambers and during the day visitors could avail of pony trekking, fishing and mountain walking.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be super for a weekend?’ Graham remarked as they drove on. ‘Wouldn’t it, Dad? For my birthday?’

  ‘Your birthday?’ Angus echoed. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve a birthday coming! Not another one?’

  ‘Saturday next,’ Graham chanted happily. ‘Will we come then? I could take Kelly to look for deer.’

  ‘You could,’ his father said noncommittally.

  Maggie was taken aback. At all costs no one must think she was angling for inclusion in yet another treat. The suspicion that Rob liked having the place to himself had salved her conscience for today, but there had been a lot of time off in the past fortnight and life was not meant to be all play.

  ‘It’s not Kelly’s birthday,’ she said decisively. ‘Count her out.’

  Angus, now driving the Cairnwell Pass between Braemar and Glenshee and with the notorious Devil’s Elbow coming up ahead, did not raise his eyes from the road. ‘Nothing like spoiling the sport,’ he murmured. ‘Are you worried about what they’d get up to?’

  The further west they went the less lush the country became. Perthshire dropped behind and Argyllshire, stone-peaked and flayed in blue, unrolled its barren colour. Limes, yellows and saffrons shaded the hills; golds, yellows and purple marbled the Muir o’ Rannoch. There was the wild blue of Loch Tulla, the scattered blue of Loch Ba—and the sleepy aftermath of a good lunch.

  Mile after mile fell away hypnotically until the paintbox colouring seemed to be running out. The raisin rocks turned grey and then to the left of the road the shoulder of Etive Mor, The Great Shepherd, huge, grim and bone bare, guarded the way to Glencoe. There was a chair lift and a little further on the sour green flanks of the Three Sisters reared up from the dividing gullies.

  A few brown Ayrshires grazed the marshland under the overhang. Higher up the white dots moving across the green were black-faced mountain sheep, incredibly hardy, incredibly sure-footed. ‘But no good for knitting wool,’ Graham observed knowledgeably. ‘They make carpets.’

  ‘You see, they must do something in the long winter evenings,’ his father put in helpfully.

  With the head of the glen behind them the surroundings were less desolate. The odd house flashed by on the roadside and there was a field of Highland cattle.

  ‘Just there,’ Angus reported, and Maggie felt the car slow. It was not, however, their final destination. On a wooded slope to the right it was just possible to pick out a stone pillar with a cross on top.

  ‘Commemorating the massacre,’ Angus said thoughtfully. ‘Since when no MacDonald has ever trusted a Campbell.’ He sent Maggie a measuring glance.

  ‘Well, I can’t deny my origins,’ she said, laughing. ‘So it’s a good thing you’re not a MacDonald.’

  Diamond points gleamed in his eyes. ‘Of course I am. Twice over. The MacAllans come from Clanranald, which strictly speaking takes in all the MacDonald clans, but my mother,’ he paused, ‘actually was a MacDonald of Glencoe. She could trace her descent right back to Angus Mor. I think she named me after him. So you see we’re all MacDonalds and proud of it. Never more so than when we come to these parts.’

  Maggie felt cold. The sun was behind a cloud. ‘I didn’t know,’ she said uneasily.

  ‘Didn’t you?’ Angus MacAllan laughed. ‘Well, now you’ll need to watch your step. Not many Campbells would care to change places with you.’

  Pamela Patterson’s house was on the shores of Loch Leven. It was small and white and one wall carried the branches of antlers as decoration. All its windows gave glimpses of brown-blue water. The owner explained that in winter all roads but one were blocked and the village was supplied by the sea.

  ‘And you don’t find that scaring?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘Not at all. I wouldn’t live anywhere else,’ Angus’s mother-in-law rejoined. It transpired that after Jean’s death she had moved in with Angus and Graham for a short period. The confusion had been ‘total’. ‘It was a good thing really. I thought it might be. Coping with my muddles pulled Angus round. Once I saw he was back to porridge I cleared out.’ The reasoning, if novel, was sound and in keeping with the knowledge of human nature all Pamela’s books displayed.

  Maggie found her fascinating. She had a face like a well-bred poodle and the resemblance as accented by sideboards and a topknot. Her clothes were simple, black trousers and a plain black sweater. The long copper necklet and medallion looked hand-beaten.

  Some bits fitted expectations, some didn’t. The house was untidy but comfortable. The cups and saucers on the tea-table were not all the same, but all were beautiful. The scrambled eggs were simple fare, but they were thick and golden. Angus had brought food, a carton packed with tins went down on the kitchen table as well as a MacAllan bag which proved to contain a jacket in the new dense violet. On the other hand some papers went down with them.

  ‘Before I go, I want your advice on these,’ he said as Graham and Kelly dragged him out to the loch.

  Pamela dried her hands absentmindedly on the tablecloth and took Maggie to see the sights. They looked at the white hotel with the ten-pointer head over the door, the list of historical sites and the museum, the mountain rescue hut and a miniature ‘new town’ of dark-walled yellow-doored houses. In the horseshoe of grey mountains the village was a toy.

  Angus and the children were flipping pebbles at the water’s edge and Pamela’s eyes stayed affectionately on her son-in-law.

  ‘I make no bones about it. I wish I could hear he was marrying again. Jean hoped he would too, she knew better than anyone else how much a wife and family meant to him. But it’s three years now and all the nice girls will be snapped up if he doesn’t hurry.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry too much about that,’ Maggie said guardedly. After all, a honeymoon trip to Bermuda early next year seemed pretty conclusive.

  A horrifying light spread over her companion’s face. ‘Oh, my dear, I’m so glad. I was fishing, of course. Was
I terribly obvious?’

  ‘Not me. I don’t mean me.’ The words would not come fast enough.

  ‘Who, then?’

  ‘Oh dear!’ This could be indiscretion. ‘Mrs. Patterson, I’ve spoken out of turn,’ Maggie said penitently. ‘But I’m sure it will happen quite soon. She’s young and very pretty and I think he cares for her a great deal!’

  ‘Then I’m sorry to hear it,’ Pamela retorted unrepentantly. ‘I married you to him at tea. It’s an occupational hazard. I do it all the time.

  ‘Do you mind my asking you something?’ she enquired when they got back to the house. ‘Have you other commitments?’

  ‘Yes.’ Suddenly Maggie did not want to talk about Derek. She sat silent, staring at the photograph on the desk in the sitting-room. ‘That’s Jean,’ Pamela had said five minutes ago. ‘They say Graham has a look of her. I’ve never seen it myself.’

  Maggie couldn’t see it either. Jean MacAllan’s face was long and slender. She looked very nice, friendly and humorous. What a tragedy her death had been.

  Pamela had been following her gaze. ‘They were a happy pair,’ she said intuitively. ‘They’d been pals for years before they married. Angus used to say she was nice to come home to. In the early days he had to go away a lot, but he’d drive any distance to get home for the weekend. He’s very simple, you see. City lights don’t do a thing for him, he’d far sooner be at home with the family. Home’s a weakness with Angus, if you can call it that, I don’t know. And there’s another one.’ She tapped the bundle of papers her son-in-law had brought. ‘He always believes the best of people. He can’t accept that anyone would do him down.’

  ‘And would they?’ Maggie asked wonderingly.