Gently with Love

by Alan Hunter

  Verna was waiting in the car; she was boredly leafing through a magazine.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’ve seen Earle, and spoken to the officer in charge of the case.’

  ‘And I’ve been to lunch, and got wet, and waited for three solid hours.’

  ‘Two and a half.’

  ‘Three. My God, if I’d known I’d have come in too. Of course Earle would have been rude and desperately unfair to me, but that would have been better than watching the rain.’ She slid me a look. ‘What did he say about me?’

  ‘He was just being rude and desperately unfair.’

  ‘Beast.’

  ‘It’s a failing of young people to be frank and over-exacting.’

  She bit her lip. ‘You think I’m a bitch, don’t you?’

  I strapped myself in but said nothing.

  ‘Perhaps I am. But the point is that I shall have to live with Earle if he marries Anne.’

  I started the engine. ‘He’ll simmer down.’

  ‘Yes, but there’ll be all sorts of ructions first. You know what a filthy temper he has, and Anne will only make matters worse. And really I was only doing my best. I was simply trying to be a good mother. There’s no justice. All I’ve left to hope for is that he’ll take her back to Canada.’

  There were genuine tears in Verna’s eyes and she borrowed my handkerchief to prove it. I was touched, but I felt it would be unmannerly to interrupt such artless grief. I switched on the wipers and drove away. There was no break in the wrack overhead. We left Dornoch as we had found it, in twilight and torrents, and pointed our bonnet to the murky hills.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  AS EARLE HAD reported, the road was a slow one that seemed to go on for ever. After Lairg it became very narrow, a slender ribbon coiling through the wilderness. At distances of a hundred yards or more glimmered the white staves of passing places, and often they appeared in unexpected situations to which the road gave no indication that it would wind. But it always did. There was but the one road, climbing and turning across the mountains, the single, tenuous evidence of man in this empty, primeval landscape. We met few vehicles. We were often alone through many miles of wrack-laden country. When the mist parted we caught the sight of dark peaks and stretches of dreary moor and bogland. There were few trees, there were no animals, and we passed more lochs than houses. The rustle of the rain was brisk and continuous; the whole of Sutherland seemed to weep. Once I stopped to fill my pipe, and then the only sound was of rain. It battered the car and hissed on the road and rattled on the foliage of scrubby birches. It seemed to sum up the remoteness of a country that was proof against the usage of man; here he could fret a little at the edges but no more: he didn’t belong. Even Verna was moved. ‘Just think what it must be like to live here in the winter.’

  ‘People don’t live here. They stick to the coast. Here you can’t even graze sheep.’

  ‘But the coast is just as bad. It’s the back of beyond, and the nights there are just as long. No wonder the natives are so queer. You can’t expect civilized people up this way.’

  ‘You are worrying about meeting Colin’s people.’

  Verna shivered. ‘It won’t be pleasant. George, I’m relying on you to stand by me. That old man Jamie scares me stiff.’

  ‘He was fond of Colin.’

  ‘Don’t I know it!’

  ‘You had better take the line that you’re still grieving for him.’

  ‘Well, it’s the truth.’ Her eyes upbraided me.

  ‘If you let it show I think you’ll get by.’

  I drove on. Verna was quiet, but on her face was a thoughtful expression. I have no doubt she was thinking that it wouldn’t be easy to play the heartbroken widow with Anne looking on. But then the expression grew complacent and I took it that she had settled her tactics. I had confidence in her. The role might be difficult, but Verna brought to it the poise of a genuine hypocrite.

  At long last our tedious trail joined the equally tedious west-coast road, and after but few more rainy miles we reached the turn to Kyleness. The way thence began benevolently enough with a winding stretch through streaming birch woods. and not until a mile later did the going become truly dramatic. Then it was brutal but unforgettable. I know of no other road with which to compare it. The improbable gradients were quite lost sight of in its sheer tortuosity and scenic grandeur. Now we had left the wilderness behind and had entered the lush landscape of the west coast. The road soared and dipped through an extravagant forest where wild roses bloomed and ferns grew thickly. Rocks were multicoloured and spectacular in form; torrents and waterfalls sheeted down them; we whirled past lochans where, unbelievably, waterlilies floated in peaceful colonies. It was a road of violence and luxury and not one hundred yards was straight. Vistas, coming and going like flashes of film, opened majestic views of a pale sea. Finally we crawled over a breakneck gradient between reddish rocks that rose in terraces, and found ourselves cruising along level road on heights above a sea loch, beyond which lay islands.

  ‘Not much further,’ Verna said, a little tensely. ‘Kyleness is on the other side of the headland.’

  ‘It’s stopped raining.’

  ‘I’d rather it began again. What we need is a bit of thunder.’

  In fact there was a patch of fiery blue showing through the clouds above the islands; and as we drew closer I could see, like a vision, ghosted sunlight on a country further off still.

  ‘What’s that out there?’

  ‘Lewis.’

  I kept my eyes on it as I drove. We seemed suddenly to have entered a legendary land beyond the confines of an accountable world.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  WE CAME TO the hotel. It was a white-painted house standing alone near the point of the headland, with, descending from it, a steep path to a staithe and a boathouse on the loch shore below. A cluster of rowing boats were moored at the staithe. A sign at the top of the path said Private. A sign outside the hotel said House of Reay/Robert Mackenzie/Fishing. I stopped the Sceptre at the gate.

  ‘Shall we check in first or carry on?’

  ‘Don’t be daft. We’ll be staying at the house. If we booked in here they’d take it as an insult.’

  I hesitated. ‘I’m not family.’

  ‘It makes no difference. You’re a guest of the Mackenzies. That means you eat and sleep and drink with them. Especially the latter. So let’s get it over.’

  I was a little taken aback. It had not been my plan to become an inmate of the Mackenzie house. Certainly I wanted to hobnob with them but I would have liked to have preserved a comfortable distance. However, there seemed no help for it, so I set the Sceptre rolling again.

  The road lifted gently to the point of the headland, which ended in a knob of pinkish rocks. On the right the land rose steeply in a heathery shoulder and on the left dropped sheer to the shores of the loch. We reached the bend: it was a strange moment. I felt an irresistible sensation of having been there before. Just as I had been imagining it from Earle’s description, so now it was appearing in all its complex reality. I stopped for the second time.

  ‘This won’t take a moment. There’s a point here I want to check.’

  ‘But George, we’re almost there—!’ Verna’s eyes grew round. ‘This . . . this isn’t the place where it happened, is it?’

  I paid no attention. I suppose the scene of a killing is for me the most compulsive spot on earth. I climbed out of the car and stood quite still, intently absorbing every detail. The rocks had been the roadmaker’s final problem; there had been no way round or over them. They had brought the road along the line of the loch till it reached the cliff, and then they had to blast. They had taken a great bite from the knob of the headland; the bend in the road was a descending hairpin; they had blasted it out to double width to prevent awkward encounters in the blind turn. On each side the pink rock was savagely shattered and on the inside of the bend it rose in a precipice. On the outside it was fissured vertically, fo
rming pinnacles and broken teeth of rock. Now what Earle had asserted was evident. The gradient was steep going down into the bend. If the fight had taken place where I had parked the Sceptre it was unlikely to have shifted from there to the parapet. The distance was a matter of thirty yards, incorporating a surface of broken rock and debris: up there, without a doubt, Fortuny had been dragged while he was senseless or semi-conscious. I wondered if Sinclair had found trailing bloodstains. The rain had erased such evidence for me.

  I walked up to the parapet and looked over to the waves I could hear booming below. I disturbed a gull from its perch on a ledge and it went floating away with echoing cries. At this point the cliff was shallowly indented. In the angle lay a delta of fallen rocks. The sea, green and yeasty, broke over them furiously with a ponderous and sullen sound. One slab of rock stood clear of the breakers: I picked up a splinter and dropped it over. The splinter fell clean and, it seemed, slowly, till it bounced on the slab and soundlessly vanished. Fortuny hadn’t bounced and hadn’t vanished, though the odds were high that this would happen. The nature of the waves suggested a scour that would quickly have carried the body away.

  ‘Oh God, George, do let’s go!’

  Verna had come up to stand beside me. She stared over the cliff with horrified eyes and in her voice was an urgent appeal. But I hadn’t finished. There was one vital point that had to be settled before I left. I knew I must find the answer here and I thought I knew where I should look. I returned to the car. Ranked behind it were the splintered and broken pinnacles. Between several there was space sufficient for a man to insinuate his body. I compared the fractures and chose one. Beyond it I spied a cleft in the rock. Two steps took me through it: I was looking down at a bay with a quay, and a trawler moored to it. I looked back: I could see the Sceptre. I looked down: I could see the quay. I felt as sure as if he had told me that I was standing on the spot where the murderer had stood. From the quay a road departed in the direction of the village; and a path rose steeply to pass close under the rocks.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  WE DROVE OUT of that ominous ravine to be met at once by a prospect of the village. Kyleness was sited in a horseshoe of hills of which the two tips were two headlands. From the surrounding heights the land fell modestly to the shore and the quay, and the road descended by easy stages through the village before turning sharply towards the latter. White-walled croft cottages scattered the lower ground; houses of brick fronted the road; one boasted a shopfront, and beside it I noted the red flash of a phone box. The quay was furnished with a storage tank and several wooden structures, one of which I took to be a net store. Three poles carried a telephone line to it down the steep slope from the upper road. It was a scene of space and charm, and warmed now by chequered sunlight. In the bay lay a multitude of rocky islets and sheep were grazing on two of the largest. It lacked trees, I thought, but little else to render it a setting of the heart’s desire; and I felt sad to have been brought to such a spot by the commission there of a brutal crime.

  Verna wasn’t sharing my sentiments. She pointed nervously: ‘That’s it.’

  I would have guessed anyway; the Mackenzie house was easily the largest in Kyleness. It was a tall, grey, double-fronted building, standing alone on a forbidding slope, to the right of the road, directly above the quay, and presenting narrow windows to the sea and Lewis. Gates stood open to a short, steep drive which was flanked by azaleas in bloom, and grey walls surrounded the gardens to fence them off from the bracken and heather. The style of the house was mid-Victorian and indeed it had a formidable appearance.

  ‘George, I’m relying on you,’ Verna muttered. Her usual brio was quite cowed.

  ‘He can but eat you,’ I returned callously.

  Her expression conveyed that that was no joke.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  BUT IT WAS Alex who, seeing us pull up, hastened to open the heavily panelled door. He came out with a welcoming smile and embraced his mother and kissed her.

  ‘This is splendid. We didn’t expect you until later.’ He turned to me and grasped my hand. ‘What luck that Verna had you to call on.’

  I thought he looked thinner than when I had last seen him and that his brown eyes met mine a little deliberately. But then Anne came running out of the house to throw her arms round Verna.

  ‘Oh – mother!’

  ‘My child!!’

  ‘Oh mother, I’ve wanted you such a lot.’

  ‘Now I’m here, my darling.’

  ‘I’m so miserable.’

  ‘Darling, we’re going to make it all right.’

  Anne sobbed and Verna comforted. It was the best thing that could have happened. I could see Verna’s morale rising rapidly as she wept and commiserated with her daughter. I imagined that she had expected Anne to be censorious and that this scene yielded a double cordial. Her eyes sparkled: she could feel her situation becoming established. She was the long-awaited mother, come to comfort, support, and forgive.

  ‘Then you’ve arrived, woman,’ said a dry voice that halted Verna’s cooing instantly. The tall figure of James Mackenzie loomed impressively in the doorway. He was eyeing Verna askew and his thin-lipped mouth had a joyless droop. His lean, high-cheekboned features were framed in long hair that now was quite white. Verna released Anne, but kept a firm grip on her arm.

  ‘Yes, I’m here, Jamie,’ she said meekly.

  ‘Aye. And you’ve come too late to do more than greet along with the lassie.’

  Verna bridled. ‘I came as soon as I could.’

  ‘Where were you when the lass was carrying?’

  ‘I—’ She shot a look at Anne. ‘That is between my daughter and me.’

  ‘Aye, no doubt.’ The drooped mouth drooped further. ‘It will be between you that you gave her no countenance. It will be between you that set on a scoundrel to come worrying her night and day. But woman, it’s between you and me that I never had word that my son was dead, and that you did not come to speak to an old man and seek to lighten his grieving. Where was your heart then, and where is your heart now? You had a husband worth a dozen of the rogue you sent to woo your daughter.’

  Verna’s eyes were big, but she remembered. She gave a sob. ‘Oh, that isn’t fair! I loved Colin. No woman could have loved him more than I did. When he died it broke something inside me, I was out of my mind for days. I couldn’t bring myself to write letters. I simply had to leave it to other people. They didn’t write to you, but I never knew that. Oh, you don’t know how unfair you’re being.’

  James Mackenzie’s eyes were fierce. ‘But since, woman? In all this time that you’ve been back?’

  ‘When I realized you hadn’t been told I just didn’t know what to do about it. You get so angry. I couldn’t think what to write and I daren’t come to see you. I knew what you’d think, that I didn’t love Colin, and I couldn’t bear to hear you accuse me of it.’ She ventured another sob.

  ‘Aye, and that’s likely,’ James Mackenzie growled. But now there was a curious expression in his eye: it might well have been unwilling admiration. ‘You loved him so sore that you could not face me – could not abide a wee explanation. Your fondness unnerved you. Your grief was so strong that you could not fufil the mere forms of humanity.’

  ‘I loved him. But you’ve never believed that.’

  ‘Your love stopped short of doing what he would have wished.’

  ‘You’re so unfair!’

  ‘You have not behaved well, woman.’

  ‘It’s because you’re so hard. And yet you blame me.’

  ‘Ach well, ach well.’ The old man sighed. ‘You cannot be other than you are, I’m thinking. Colin chose you, and that’s in your favour, and you brought him a lad and a fair lassie.’

  ‘I never loved anyone else but Colin.’

  ‘I am hoping that truth is in your conscience. But we’ll say no more. I cannot well blame you that his bones are lying so far from Kylie.’

  Verna snuffled and hugged Anne
’s arm: Anne’s eyes were large and distant. She too had changed in the last year; her handsome face had fined, had saddened. One felt that the roguish smile she had from Colin had been overlaid by much suffering; there was hurt in her face. She had a stillness about her as though a vital part had been stunned. James Mackenzie raised his hand and let it fall.

  ‘You had best come in, then, and seek your room. It is a sad time to be offering welcome, but I doubt not that things will mend yet.’ He peered at me. ‘You’ll be Colin’s friend?’

  I nodded. ‘We’ve met before.’

  ‘Aye, I recollect. He spoke much of you. They were happier days then.’

  I held back. ‘If you’re short of room . . .’

  James Mackenzie stared, then grabbed my hand. ‘Ach, get in, and cease your nonsense.’ He had the grasp of a man much younger.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  WE MET MRS Mackenzie, a busy, grey-haired matron in whom I remembered Colin’s lively mother, and Iain Mackenzie’s wife, Maisie, a tall, sandy-haired woman of about fifty. Then we were introduced to Anne’s daughter, who was sleeping soundly in an old-fashioned cradle. She had been christened Helen, after her great-grandmother, and of her lineage there could be no doubt. The faces of babies differ widely. In some the features are determinedly neutral. They are baby faces, and time must elapse before they begin to assume their distinctive characters. In others the character is present from birth and they seem to enter the world as complete people. Such a one was Helen. She was instantly recognizable as a Mackenzie and as Anne’s daughter. She had dark hair and a perfectly shaped nose and the chin and the mouth of her mother and her grandfather. The genes of Fortuny, Verna and Colin’s mother might never have existed in this world: they had been side-stepped entirely. Helen had been born where she belonged. And for once, I think, I saw Verna lovable, when she looked with starry eyes at her granddaughter. In that there was no falseness. I felt that baby was going to be spoiled.