by M C Beaton
By the time he reached the village of Skag, he felt as tired as if he had walked there. He asked directions to The Friendly House and then set out. It was about two miles outside the village, and not on the beach exactly but behind a row of sand dunes set a quarter of a mile back from the North Sea.
It was an old Victorian villa, vaguely Swiss-chalet design, with fretted-wood balconies and blue shutters. He glanced at his watch. Half past five. Tea was at six.
He entered a dim hallway furnished with a side-table holding an assortment of tourist brochures, a large brass bowl holding dusty pampas-grass, a carved chair, and an assortment of Wellington boots. He pressed a bell on the wall and a door at the back of the wall opened and a thick, heavyset man came towards him. He had blond hair and bright blue eyes and a skin which had a strange high glaze on it, like china. Hamish thought he was probably in his fifties.
“You must be our Mr Macbeth,” he said breezily. “The name’s Rogers, Harry Rogers. You’ll find us one happy family here. Come upstairs and I’ll show you and the doggie your room.”
The room boasted none of the modern luxuries like telephone or television. But the bed looked comfortable, and through the window Hamish could see the grey line of the North Sea. “The bathroom’s at the end of the corridor,” said Mr Rogers. “As you see, there’s a wash-hand basin in the corner there. Tea’s at six. Yes, none of this dinner business. Good old–fashioned high tea.”
Hamish thanked him and Mr Rogers left. Towser, tired after the long walk, crawled on to the bed and closed his eyes. Hamish quickly unpacked, taking out a bowl which he filled with water for the dog, and a can of dog food, a can opener and another bowl. He filled the second bowl with the dog food and put it on the floor beside the water. Spoilt Towser did not like dog food, but, reflected Hamish, he would just need to put up with it for the duration of the holiday. Of course, maybe he could buy him some cold ham as a treat. Towser was partial to cold ham. He changed into a pair of jeans and a checked shirt, debated whether to wear a tie and decided against it, and then went downstairs and pushed open a door marked ‘Dining Room’. A small, birdlike woman who turned out to be Mrs Rogers, hailed him. “Mr Macbeth, your table’s here…with Miss Gunnery.”
Hamish nodded to Miss Gunnery and sat down. All the other diners were already seated. Mr Rogers appeared and introduced everyone to everyone else. Hamish’s quick policeman’s mind noted all the names and his sharp eyes took in the appearance of the other guests.
Miss Gunnery on the other side of the table had the sort of appearance which even in these modern days screamed spinster. She had a severe face, gold-rimmed glasses and a mouth like a trap. Her flat-chested figure was dressed, despite the humidity of the day, in a green tweed suit worn over a white shirt blouse.
At the next table was a man with his wife, a Mr and Mrs Harris. Both were middle-aged. She had neatly permed brown hair and neat, closed features, and was dressed in a woollen sweater and cardigan and a black skirt. Her husband was wearing an open-necked shirt and a trendy black leather jacket and jeans, the sort of outfit that tired businessmen in a search for fading youth have taken to wearing, almost like a uniform. He was grey-haired, had large staring eyes and a bulbous nose.
Beyond them were Mr and Mrs Brett and their three children, Heather, Callum and Fiona, aged seven, four and three, respectively. Mr Brett was a comfortable, chubby man with glasses and an air of benign stupidity. His wife was an artificial redhead with a petty face and pencilled eyebrows. Either they were plucked, a rare fashion these days, thought Hamish, or they had fallen off, or she had been born that way. She had pencilled in arches of eyebrows, which gave her a look of perpetual surprise.
At the window table were two girls called Tracey Fink and Cheryl Gamble, both from Glasgow. They both had hair sunstreaked by chemicals rather than sunlight and white pinched faces under a load of make-up, and both were wearing identical outfits, striped black-and-white sweaters and black ski pants with straps under the instep and dirty sneakers. And in a far corner was a solitary man who had the honour of having a table to himself. His name was Mr Andrew Biggar. He had a tanned face and thick brown hair streaked with grey, small clever brown eyes, and a long, humorous mouth.
High tea, that famous Scottish meal now hardly ever served, consists of one main dish, usually cold ham, and salad and chips, washed down with tea. In the middle of each table was a cake stand. On the bottom were thin slices of white bread scraped with butter.
On the next layer were scones and teacakes, and on the top, cakes filled with ersatz cream and covered in violently-coloured icing.
“Grand day,” said Hamish conversationally to Miss Gunnery, for every day in Scotland where it is not exactly freezing cold and pouring wet is designated a ‘grand day’.
Her eyes snapped at him through her glasses. “Is it? I find it damp and overcast.”
Hamish relapsed into a crushed silence. He wished he had not come. But Mr Harris’s voice rose above the conversation at the other tables, he of the trendy leather jacket, and caught Hamish’s attention.
“Well, this holiday was your idea, Doris,” he said.
“I only said the tea was a trifle weak,” protested his wife.
“Always finding fault, that’s your problem,” said Mr Harris. “If you exercised more and thought less about your stomach, you might be as fit as me.”
“I only said – ”
“You said. You said,” he jeered. He looked around the room. “That’s women for you. Always nit-picking.”
“Bob, please,” whispered his wife.
“Please what?”
“You know.” She cast a scared look around the dining room. “Everyone’s listening.”
“Let them listen. I’m not bound by your suburban little fears, my dear.” His voice rose to a high falsetto. “What will the neighbours think.”
And so he went on and on.
The severe Miss Gunnery, who prided herself on ‘keeping herself to herself, was driven to open her mouth and say to the tall, lanky, red-headed man opposite, “That fellow is a nag.”
“Aye, the worst kind,” agreed Hamish, and then smiled, and at that smile, Miss Gunnery thawed even more. “Mrs Harris is right,” she said. “The tea is disgustingly weak, the ham is mostly fat, and those cakes look vile. I know this place is cheap…”
“Maybe there’s a fish-and-chip shop in the village,” said Hamish hopefully. “I might take a walk there later. My dog likes fish and chips.”
“Oh, you have a dog? What breed?”
“Towser’s a mixture of every kind of breed.”
Miss Gunnery looked amused. “Towser! I didn’t think anyone called a dog Towser these days – or Rover, for that matter.”
“It started as a wee bit o’ a joke, that name,” said Hamish, “and then the poor animal got stuck wi’ it.”
“What do you do for a living, Mr Macbeth?”
The nag’s voice had temporarily ceased. There was silence in the dining room. “I’m a civil servant,” said Hamish. He did not like telling people he was a policeman because they usually shrank away from him. And he had found that when he said he was a civil servant, it sounded so boring that no one ever asked him where he worked or in what branch of the organization.
“I’m a schoolteacher,” said Miss Gunnery. “I’ve never been to Skag before. It seemed a good chance to get a cheap holiday.”
“When did you arrive?”
“Today, like the rest. We’re all the new intake.”
Mr Rogers and his wife hovered about among the tables, snatching away plates as soon as any diner looked as if he or she was finished. “We have television in the lounge across the hall,” announced Mr Rogers. His wife was carefully packing away uneaten cakes into a large plastic box. Hamish guessed, and as it turned out correctly, that they would make their appearance again during the following days until they had all either been eaten or gone stale.
The company moved through to the lounge. Bob Harris had temp
orarily given up baiting his wife, but Andrew Biggar made the mistake of asking Doris Harris what she would like to see.
“‘Coronation Street’ is just about to come on,” said Doris shyly. “I would like to see that if no one else minds.”
Her husband’s voice cut across the murmur of assent. “Trust you to inflict your penchant for soaps on everyone else. How you can watch that pap is beyond me.”
Hamish walked over to the television set, found ‘Coronation Street’, and turned up the volume. “I like ‘Coronation Street’,” he lied to Doris. “Always watch it.”
He sat down next to Miss Gunnery. He was aware of the nag’s voice all through the programme, sneering and jeering at the characters. He sighed and looked about the room. The chairs were arranged in a half-circle in front of the television set. The fireplace was blocked up and a two-bar electric heater stood in front of it. There was a set of bookshelves containing battered paperbacks, no doubt left behind by previous guests. The Rogerses were probably too mean to buy any. The chairs were upholstered in a scratchy fabric. The carpet was a worn-out green with faded yellow flowers. There were various dim pictures on the walls, Highland cattle in Highland mist, and a grim photograph of a Victorian lady who stared down on all. Probably the original owner, thought Hamish.
At the end of the programme, which he had only stayed to watch for Mrs Harris’s sake, he rose and said to Miss Gunnery, “I’m going to walk my dog along to the village and see if there’s a fish-and-chips shop. Want to come?”
“I don’t eat fish and chips,” she said primly, looking down her nose.
The tetchiness that had been in him for months rose to the surface again. “So you prefer that high-class muck we had for tea?”
There was an edge of contempt to his light Highland voice and Miss Gunnery flushed. “I’m being silly,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’d enjoy the walk.”
Hamish went up to get Towser, but when he descended to the hall again it was to find not only Miss Gunnery waiting for him but the rest of the party, with the exception of the Harrises.
They did not say anything like ‘We’ve decided to come too,’ but merely fell into line behind the policeman like obedient children being taken for a walk.
Mr Brett was the first to break the silence. “A stone’s throw from the sea,” he exclaimed. “You would need to have a strong arm to throw a stone that distance.”
“Are ye sure there’s a chip shop, Jimmy?” asked Cheryl. She hailed from Glasgow, where everyone was called Jimmy, or so it seemed, if you listened to the inhabitants.
“I don’t know,” said Hamish. “May be something in the pub.”
“I’m starving,” confided Tracey, stooping to pat Towser. “I could eat a horse between two bread vans.”
Cheryl slapped her playfully on the back and both girls giggled.
“It’s a pity little Mrs Harris couldn’t come as well,” said Andrew Biggar. “Don’t suppose she gets much fun. Are you in the army, by any chance, Mr Macbeth?”
“Hamish. I’m called Hamish. No, Andrew. Civil servant. What makes ye say that?”
“When I first saw you, I thought you were probably usually in uniform. Got it wrong. I’m an army man myself. Forcibly retired.”
“Oh, those dreadful redundancies,” said Miss Gunnery sympathetically. “And us so soon to be at war with Russia again.”
“Don’t say that,” said Mrs Brett, whose name turned out to be June, and her husband’s, Dermott. “It’s been a grim enough start. That man Harris should be shot.”
“You can say that again,” said Dermott Brett, so June predictably did and the couple roared with laughter at their own killing wit.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to bear this holiday,” murmured Miss Gunnery to Hamish.
“Och,” said Hamish, who was beginning to feel better, “I think they’re a nice enough bunch of people and there’s nothing like a common resentment for banding people together.” He winced remembering how common resentment had turned the villagers of Lochdubh against him.
“Harris, you mean,” said Miss Gunnery. “But his voice does go on and on and it’s not a very big place.”
They arrived at the village of Skag. It consisted of rows of stone houses, some of them thatched, built on a point. The river Skag ran on one side of the point and on the other side was the broad expanse of the North Sea. The main street was cobbled but the little side streets were not surfaced and the prevalent white sand blew everywhere, dancing in little eddies on a rising breeze. “Getting fresher,” said Hamish. “Look there. A bit of blue sky.”
They walked down to the harbour and stood at the edge. The tide was coming in and the water sucked greedily at the wooden piles underneath them. Great bunches of seaweed rose and fell. Above them, the grey canopy rolled back until bright sunlight blazed down.
Hamish sniffed the air. “I smell fish and chips,” he said, “coming from over there.”
They set out after him and found a small fish-and-chips shop. Hamish suggested they walk to the beach and eat their fish and chips there.
They made their way with their packets past the other side of the harbour, where yachts were moored in a small basin, the rising wind humming and thrumming in the shrouds. There was a sleazy café overlooking the yacht basin, still open but empty of customers, the lights of a fruit machine winking in the gloom inside.
A path led round the back of the café, past rusting abandoned cars and fridges, old sofas and broken tables, to a rise of shingle and then down to where the shingle ended and the long white beach began.
“You spoil that dog,” said Miss Gunnery as Hamish placed a fish supper on its cardboard tray down in front of Towser. Hamish did not reply. He knew he spoilt Towser but did not like anyone to comment on the fact.
“Why does a woman like Doris marry a pillock like that?” asked Andrew Biggar.
June Brett nudged her chubby husband playfully in the ribs. “They’re all saints before you marry them and then the beast comes out.”
Dermott Brett snarled at her and his wife shrieked with delight. Faces could be misleading, thought Hamish. June looked rather petty and mean when she was not speaking, but when she did, she became transformed into a good-natured woman. The Brett children were making sandcastles down by the water. They were remarkably well-behaved. Heather, the seven-year-old, was looking after her young brother and toddling sister, making sure that little Fiona did not wander into the water. Long ribbons of white sand snaked along the harder damp surface of the sand underneath and then there came a haunting humming sound, “Whit’s that?” cried Cheryl, clutching Tracey.
“Singing sands,” said Hamish. “I remember hearing there were singing sands here but I forgot about it.”
“It’s eerie,” said Miss Gunnery. “In fact, the whole place is a bit odd. It never gets dark this time of year, does it, Hamish?”
He shook his head, thinking that the place was indeed eerie. Because of the bank of shingle behind the beach and the flatness of the land behind, there was a feeling of being cut off from the rest of the world. He remembered the seer’s prediction with a shudder and then his common sense took over. Angus had heard the gossip about his holiday and had invented death and trouble to pay Hamish back for having called him a fraud.
Miss Gunnery was carefully collecting everyone’s fish-and-chip papers when Hamish heard Dermott Brett say, “He’s got worse.”
“Who?” asked Andrew, lazily scraping in the sand for shells.
“Bob Harris.”
“You know him?” Asked Hamish.
“Yes, he was here last year.”
Miss Gunnery paused in her paper-gathering. “You mean you stayed here and came back!”
“New management,” said Dermott Brett. “It was owned by a couple of old biddies. They did a good tea, but their prices were quite high for a boarding-house. We weren’t going to come back, because with the three kids it was coming to quite a bit. Then June saw the ad with the
new cheap prices, but it said nothing about new management.”
“What happened to the old women who owned it?” asked Hamish, ever curious.
“They were the Blane sisters, the Misses Blane. Rogers said they took a small house for themselves in Skag. Might call on them, if I can find them.”
“So Harris is worse now?” pursued Hamish.
“He was bad enough last year, but in fits and starts. Didn’t go on like he does now the whole time. Maybe he’ll have settled down by tomorrow. Doris Harris wanted to come with us, but he ranted on at her when you were upstairs getting your dog about wasting good money on fish and chips when she had already eaten.”
There was a scream of delight from the Brett children. Heather had placed the three-year-old Fiona on Towser’s back. Towser was standing patiently, looking puzzled, his eyes rolling in Hamish’s direction for help.
“Leave him be,” shouted Hamish. Heather obediently lifted Fiona off Towser’s back and Towser lolloped up the beach and lay panting at Hamish’s feet.
“Time I got those kids in bed,” said June. “They’ve been on the train all day.”
“Come far?” asked Hamish.
“From London.”
Dermott got to his feet and brushed sand from his trousers. He walked up to the children and swung the toddler on to his shoulders. June joined him, and the family set off together in the direction of the boarding-house.
“That’s a nice family,” said Miss Gunnery, returning from a rubbish bin on the other side of the shingle, where she had put the papers. “Perhaps we should be getting back as well.”
“Whit aboot the night-life o’ Skag?” sniggered Cheryl. “Me and Tracey’d like a drink.”
“How old are you?” demanded Miss Gunnery severely.
Cheryl tossed her long blonde hair. “Old enough,” she said. Her heavily made-up eyes flirted at Hamish. “Aye, old enough fur anything, isn’t that right, Tracey?”
“Sure is,” said Tracey in a dreadful imitation American accent. “So let’s just mosey along to the pub.”
“Bound to be bottled beer up here,” said Andrew, “but I’m willing to try it. What about you, Hamish?”
