Gently North-West

by Alan Hunter

  Gently shrugged. ‘Just about everything. It’s big enough to lose people.’

  He pointed to the traffic streaming past, the belching trucks, the shouldering cars, their hot tyres pounding, pounding, pounding the Romans’ road across the Pennines. Even to cross that road to the drystone wall was an enterprise of moment. Though the wall made the best vantage for the photographers, few were bothering to exploit it.

  ‘Yes,’ Brenda said, ‘I understand, George. Getting lost is what counts.’

  ‘George can say what he likes,’ Bridget said. ‘But he’s about the last person to get lost, anywhere.’

  They drove on, by Brough, by Appleby, making the lake mountains climb higher, then turning their back on them at Penrith to join the fast carriageways of the A6. The Hawk was leading again now and Brenda had taken the wheel of the Sceptre. She drove with a flair that contrasted with Gently’s smooth discipline, which combined police coaching with natural poise and temperament.

  They crept through rusty-faced Carlisle and bore left on the A74. Still it was England, though the classic boundary of the Wall lay behind them.

  ‘Oh Highness,’ Brenda sighed. ‘This Scotland is certainly a far country. I’ve a feeling that if we go this way much longer we’ll drive clean out at the top.’

  ‘Just a little farther,’ Gently said. ‘We cross the Border at Gretna Green.’

  Brenda threw him a glance. ‘You kept that dark. If I’d known, you might have whistled for your Strathtudlem.’

  ‘Just drive,’ Gently said. ‘Keep your mind on the job.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s difficult,’ Brenda said. ‘Driving a man like you through a place like that.’

  And she whistled a few bars of ‘Bonny Dundee’, lilting her head in time with it.

  ‘I suppose,’ Gently said, from the depths of his pipe, ‘on balance, your whiskery friend isn’t a traveller.’

  ‘Redbeard?’ Brenda said, surprised. ‘Have you been turning the trained mind on him?’

  ‘Force of habit,’ Gently grinned. ‘He’s the only likely material we’ve seen today. And now I consider it I’m inclined to agree with you. On balance, I don’t think he’s a traveller.’

  ‘Well, one up to my intuition,’ Brenda said. ‘Why don’t you think he’s a traveller?’

  ‘The car. It’s not the model a traveller would use, nor a model a firm would supply to its reps.’

  ‘A-hah,’ Brenda said. ‘But suppose he was in the car trade. Car-trade men often go for a hot car.’

  ‘Yes, but they can usually drive them, too,’ Gently said. ‘And Redbeard’s driving didn’t impress us. No, on balance we can eliminate travellers. Also, I wouldn’t place him in a profession. Professional men are required to conform in matters of dress and hairstyle.’

  ‘A musician perhaps.’

  ‘A musician is possible. But there again the car is unlikely.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Musicians are pariahs to insurers. He’d hardly get cover for a hot car.’

  ‘Hm,’ Brenda said. ‘You’re making it difficult. On balance, he soon isn’t going to exist. But there he was with his beard and buttons, singeing the tyres of his G.T. So who does the trained mind say he was?’

  Gently puffed. ‘Could have been a farmer.’

  ‘Oh, no. Never a farmer!’

  ‘Why not? It fits most of the facts.’ He counted on his fingers. ‘One, a dirty car, with plenty of mud in the wheel arches. Two, a man who dresses flamboyantly and can’t be bothered with razors and barbers. Three, a man who drives impatiently as though he’s used to owning the road. Four, a man who employs a break in a journey to tot up figures in a notebook. Five, a man who uses a hot car but is satisfied with one of the cheapest. Add it up.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Brenda said. ‘You shan’t make my Red-beard into a farmer.’

  ‘I’d say he was in cattle,’ Gently said. ‘He’s just been south with a shipment of bullocks.’

  ‘He’s a bank-robber at the least!’

  ‘Probably from the Highlands,’ Gently said. ‘Your description of his features suggests that. Yes, a Highland farmer on his way home from a livestock sale.’

  Brenda flickered him a venomous look. ‘You’re just rotten to me, aren’t you, George?’ she said. ‘You know I can’t stand up for myself, and you’re brutal to me all the time.’

  ‘It’s my job,’ Gently said. ‘I’m a brutal policeman.’

  ‘Well you are,’ Brenda said. ‘That’s you all over. I’ll bet you oil your thumbscrews every morning and blanco the webbing on your rack. Do you want to know something, George Gently?’

  ‘Tell me,’ Gently said.

  ‘We’ve just passed through Gretna Green – and I wouldn’t go back there if you paid me.’

  And the tall sun, which had begun the day riding low on their right, was now standing to their left; and still the cars raced northwards. Eight spinning wheels turning, tilting the great globe itself, while the great globe itself revolved shining in its spaceway. But the drivers were growing tired now and speed was slowing with them, so that tyres occasionally scrubbed on a bend which arrived too fast; and eyes were wearying of impressions and seeing increasing sameness in every vista, with only enough of strangeness to make the fresh scene unfriendly. So the A74 became the A73, brushing Glasgow’s wide urbation and crossing the big east-west arteries; reached Cumbernauld, took another bite north as the A80, then skirted Bannockburn to lose itself in the anonymous streets of Stirling. They crossed the Forth, but at this end of the day the Forth was just another river; came to Balmagussie, its broad street closed to the west by some bald-browed ben; drove now slower, because the twisted road was squeezed between loch and jealous braeside, the last, longest, weariest miles to the glen village of Strathtudlem.

  And there the wheels stopped spinning, by the low white walls of Maclaren’s cottage, the target of all those stretching roads from the Victorian villa in Finchley. And in the buzzing stillness a Scots voice was saying:

  ‘My guidness! From London this morning, did ye say? But you’ll be wanting your supper, that’s certain. Step in – step in. And you from London!’

  CHAPTER TWO

  I went wi’ Maggie up the glen,

  Donsie, sonsie Maggie Mackay;

  When think ye we cam doun again?

  Whist! I mauna lie.

  ‘The Gauger’s Wooing’, attrib. Burns

  AND YOU FROM London . . . ! Perhaps no greeting could have been more salutary, Gently thought. At one stroke it turned them about from facing north to facing south. London, till then, had travelled with them like an aura they could not lose, but now suddenly a cord had snapped and London vanished below the horizon. They were in Scotland. The Town of Cockney from here was merely another town; distinguished by being distant, like Plymouth or Bristol, but not otherwise greatly remarkable.

  ‘You’ll be Mrs McFie?’ Geoffrey was saying to the plump, smiling woman who showed them into the cottage.

  ‘Ay, and you’ll be Mr Kelling, I don’t doubt, who sees to the Major’s law-work in England. How is the Major?’

  ‘Maclaren’s well.’

  ‘I had a letter from him on Tuesday. I’m to treat you like himself, the Major says, but no’ to plague you with tup’s head or haggis.’

  ‘Oh,’ Geoffrey said. ‘What would tup’s head be?’

  ‘If ye dinna ken, Mr Kelling, you’ll perhaps be better off without it.’

  Maclaren’s cottage made no pretension to being grander than its name suggested. One stepped straight from the porch into a low-ceilinged living-room littered with old and shabby furniture. The flagged floor was overlaid with mats and the rough walls were simply whitewashed, and so massively thick that the small window seemed to be set in a tunnel. A Welsh dresser, weighty with crockery, occupied much of the back wall, and a case of books, mainly fiction and sporting, was arranged to conceal a door into another room. By the window stood a large, solid table, covered and laid for four people. Perhaps because the wal
ls were so ponderous the room had an air of great silence.

  Mrs McFie, having made their acquaintance, retired to the kitchen to brew tea; but since the kitchen was next door to the living-room the remove was small bar to her conversation. From the kitchen also they soon began to hear a suggestive sizzle of hot fat, and a rich smell of frying started to percolate through the cottage.

  Gently was feeling bone-tired. He had not driven so far for many a summer, and now he was glad to sprawl on a board-hard couch and sip a mighty cup of strong, sweet tea. Geoffrey, he noticed with some surprise, seemed quite unmarked by the trip. He was spryly hauling in luggage from the Hawk and keeping up a running chat with Mrs McFie. Brenda and Bridget, lugging travel-bags, had vanished into a scullery-cum-bathroom, but this too was so closely adjacent that one heard their voices and the sound of running water.

  The cottage, Gently noticed, had a distinctive smell, over and above the smell of frying, a cold, church-like odour and faint seediness, yet with no suggestion of damp. On the living-room walls hung framed texts and one print after Landseer.

  ‘Did Maclaren farm up this way, then?’ Geoffrey asked, dumping the last of his cases and looking round for his tea.

  ‘Oh ay, the Maclarens are an auld family up this way,’ Mrs McFie’s hot face said, poking round the doorway. ‘The Major and his faither before him, and his grandfaither – auld Shoggie Maclaren – but the Forestry came here, ye ken, and they got in the Major’s bad buiks over the hill pastures. So the Major ups and sells to Donald Dunglassall except this bit cottage – and takes himself off into England. He’s a man of speerit, is the Major.’

  ‘I’ll second that,’ Geoffrey grinned at Gently. ‘He’s the most obstinate and litigious Scotsman who ever set foot over the border.’

  ‘Ay,’ Mrs McFie’s face assented, ‘he’s a one for the law, no doubt. I ken the time he’s had five suits together goin’ in to the sessions at Balmagussie. But Donald Dunglass, he’s another fish – he’s from Glesca, ye ken, not a proper farmer – but he wedded a McGuigan from Cuitybraggan. How will you have your tatties, Mr Kelling?’

  The ladies returned looking sprucer, and supper was on the table soon after. It consisted of lamb chops, kidney, liver, fried sliced potatoes and fried oatmeal, or skurly. And strangely, Gently’s appetite, which had been nil when he’d sat down on the couch, was now man enough to deal with these items and the pancakes and honey and jam that followed. Slowly, the journey was easing out of him and being replaced by the cool silence of the cottage. He ate without joining in the conversation, but gazing out of the small deep window opposite him. When he lit his pipe he caught Brenda watching him.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘What’s the great man staring at?’

  Gently smiled. ‘Just that bit of a peak. I’m going to be neighbours with it for a fortnight.’

  ‘So,’ Brenda said.

  ‘So it’s there. And if we’re going to live with it, we’ll have to climb it.’

  ‘Oh will we then,’ Brenda said, peering through the window. ‘It looks a pretty hairy prospect to me. You’ll perhaps manage the bit through the trees all right, but you’ll soon get stuck when it turns craggy. And even where the trees are it looks sheer. Aren’t I right, Mrs McFie?’

  ‘Ay,’ said Mrs McFie, coming in that moment to collect the plates. ‘There’s a guid Forestry path up to the Keekingstane, but it’s only for sheep after that.’

  You see?’ Brenda said. ‘I’m always right. What’s the Keekingstane, Mrs McFie?’

  ‘Just that queer rock at the top of the craig – a look-out, ye ken, in the aulden times. They could put a man on the stane and he could keek at what was coming up the glen – they were a terrible lot in those days, aye fightin’ and murderin’ each other.’

  ‘And there’s a good path to it?’ Gently asked.

  ‘Guid enough when it’s dry. Ye’ll find a gate just across the bridge, with a Forestry notice beside it.’

  ‘What do they call the hill?’

  Mrs McFie laughed. ‘Ye’ll no’ pull my leg, now, if I tell ye? In Strathtudlem we call it the Hill of the Fairies – though ye wouldna find the name on a map.’

  ‘The Hill of the Fairies,’ Brenda said. ‘That’s lovely . . . yes, it really is.’

  ‘Well, you won’t get me up there,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Not to meet the Queen of the Fairies in person.’

  Mrs MacFie washed-up and bustled away, promising to be in early to cook their breakfast. Though apparently she lived only two doors off she put on a coat for the expedition, and drew a black, bonnet-like hat over her crimped and dyed locks. She turned to give them a last smile as she hastened by the little window.

  ‘And that’s us,’ Brenda said. ‘Oh, if I had that woman in Kensington! But some millionaire would pinch her if I did. He’d offer her mink, or just marry her.’

  ‘Well, you don’t know about her cooking,’ Bridget said. ‘You can’t judge it on the basis of one Scotch high tea.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Scotch high teas at every meal,’ Brenda said. ‘Why not always eat food? They seem to thrive on it up here.’

  Gently said: ‘How about a stroll to help the one Scotch high tea settle?’

  ‘And a dram at the local,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Who knows what the Scots drink among themselves?’

  Though it was 9 p.m., the strangely suspended Highland evening was still brilliant in the glen, with sun pouring over the mountains to the west to flood the tops of those to the east. The glen was perhaps fifteen miles long and in the shape of a flattened S, so that its steep sides, shaggy with conifers, appeared to fold in on each other in both directions. A broad river flowed through it to join the loch at the southern end, and formed the strath, or alluvial flats, by which the village was built. The strath was meadowland. To the west of the road, where the only buildings were a shop and a garage, extended flowery meadows, intersected by the river, to the edge of the forest that fledged the braes. The houses facing these on the east had doubtless been sited for firm foundation. They made a line of brick and whitewashed fronts separated from the road by rough stone paving. The largest building, the Bonnie Strathtudlem, was late Victorian stone-quoined brick; and few of the other dwellings, with their slate or sheet-iron roofs, seemed likely to post-date it. Directly opposite the village the Hill of the Fairies lifted its blunt peak of grey, rose-tinted rock, and established a separate identity from the braes with a treeless blaze of broken crag.

  The two men and two women loitered down the road towards the inn. The satiety of travel had left them now and they felt buoyed and absorbed by the scene about them. The air was soft yet exhilarating and miraculously clear, allowing minute detail of the sunlit tops and ten thousand trees to show vividly. It carried a faint odour of wild chervil, which here still flowered in the meadows, and in its hush one could hear the murmuring of the river from behind a screen of ash and alder.

  As they neared the Bonnie Strathtudlem they became aware of other sounds.

  ‘The devils, they’re having a Gaelic hop!’ Geoffrey exclaimed. ‘Listen, that lad with the accordion is no fool.’

  ‘Ought we to go in there, Geoff?’ Bridget asked. ‘It’s probably a private affair. We should look foolish if they asked us to make a set in a strathspey.’

  ‘Oh nonsense,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Probably do us good after a day in the car. Anyway, I’m game – what do you say, George?’

  Gently laughed. ‘I could probably tap my feet a little,’ he said. ‘But I’d sooner stroll down that lane and take a look at the river.’

  So they passed the Bonnie Strathtudlem, before which a dozen cars were parked, and turned left to a narrow stone bridge which carried a minor road across the river. The river was fast-running and transparent, and made deep pools near the bridge. Staring into the pools it seemed imposible one should miss seeing a salmon or a monster trout. There the water appeared so still, while a yard away it was rushing and white; and under the bridge it positively thundered as it swooped down some concealed declivi
ty.

  ‘The fishing’s free,’ Geoffrey said, in the indifferent tone of a non-angler. ‘You can hire rods at the inn, Maclaren says. Plenty of trout, or whatever you go for.’

  ‘Trout will do,’ Gently said.

  ‘Well, it’s apparently a good spot. Maclaren comes up here for the fishing, that’s why he keeps the cottage on.’

  ‘My respects to Maclaren,’ Gently said. ‘I begin to admire that man very much.’

  The midges buzzed and brushed at their faces, and Geoffrey turned again towards the Bonnie Strathtudlem. The siren strain of the Bluebell Polka was now sounding from that direction. But Gently, casting an eye up the road, had spotted the gate mentioned by Mrs McFie, and wanted at least to view the point of departure of the ‘guid path’ to the Keekingstane.

  ‘Oh come now, George,’ Geoffrey objected. ‘We all know where listening to you will get us. It’ll just be one thing after another till we’re at the top of that blessed mountain.’

  ‘Maybe a few steps up it,’ Gently grinned. ‘Just to the first place with a view.’

  ‘Yes, and up to our knees in bogs before we’ve gone a dozen yards!’

  In the end they separated, with Brenda electing to accompany Gently. If they were not down by closing-time, Geoffrey said, he’d alert Whitehall and the Mountain Rescue.

  The road over the bridge formed a T-junction with a narrow back-road behind the strath, and almost opposite the junction was the wooden field gate with its bright Forestry notice. The notice informed the public of its privilege to use, but not abuse, the Forestry tracks, but offered no indication of where the track was supposed to be. In effect the gate opened into a grassy tangle of small bushes, broken by rock outcrop and shaded by tall oaks and graceful ashes. To the right a noisy torrent burled down over green, gloomy boulders, and some way off, on the strath side of the road, a large house showed through the trees. Brenda nodded towards the house.

  ‘We could ask the laird. He should know where the track is.’

  ‘I think it’s towards the left,’ Gently said. ‘The other way we’d run into that torrent.’