by M C Beaton
"But it's after midnight!"
"If he's a conscientious bobby, he won't mind being woken up."
"All right," said Alison shyly, suddenly elated at the idea of seeing Hamish while being accompanied by this handsome man. And Peter did seem handsome to Alison, who did not notice the weakness in his face, having a pretty weak character herself.
Hamish Macbeth, opening the kitchen door—Alison had quickly learned that friends and locals never used the front door—thought wearily as he looked at the two faces, God help us all if the meek do inherit the earth. He tucked his shirttail into his trousers. He had been undressing for bed when he had heard the knock at the door.
"Come in," he said. "I am sure it must be something awf'y important to get me out o' bed." Towser stood beside his master, blinking sleepily in the light. He let out a low growl, sensing Hamish's dislike of Alison.
"Oh, Hamish ," Alison wailed and threw herself against his chest.
Peter noticed the way the policeman quickly put Alison away from him. Fat lot of sympathy she's going to get from him, he thought, feeling suddenly protective of Alison.
"Sit down," said Hamish, "and I'll fetch us a dram."
Hamish, when he drank, preferred warm bottled beer. His sideboard contained only a bottle of twelve-year-old malt whisky, a Christmas present he had never broached. It seemed such a waste to open it now, but hospitality was hospitality and Alison, tiresome though she might be, might cheer up with a little whisky inside her.
He went back into the kitchen, carrying bottle and glasses, and poured three measures. "Now," said Hamish, "begin at the beginning and go on to the end. I have had a visit from herself today. My! Isn't plastic surgery and bleach the wondrous thing? She was like one of thae film stars, ye know, she looked like beauty preserved rather than beauty reclaimed."
Clutching her glass, Alison told the whole dismal story, of Maggie's will, of her plans to marry, of her damaging the car, and ended up with, "I can't have any respect for her, Hamish, not after having read her book."
"What book?" asked Peter Jenkins sharply.
"She's written a book about her affairs and a nasty bit of pornography it is too," said Alison. "So what am I to do, Hamish?"
"I've told you before," said Hamish quietly. "Get away from her. You're a grown woman. You can earn your own money."
"But ... but ... I'm still weak and what if the cancer comes back?"
"It's got more chance of coming back if you stay on with her and keep getting yourself into a state," said Hamish.
Peter Jenkins eyed the policeman coldly. What sort of help and comfort was this? In fact, what sort of policeman was this? In Peter's mind, policemen should always be on duty and always be in uniform. Hamish was wearing a tartan shirt, an old pair of cavalry twill trousers, and had thrust his bare feet into carpet slippers. His red hair was tousled and his eyelashes were ridiculously long.
"That sort of advice," said Peter, "is very easy to dole out, but very hard to take."
"But the lassie's in such misery, anything else would be better," said Hamish patiently. "What would you suggest?"
"I would suggest, Officer, that you have a word with Mrs. Baird and tell her to be nicer to Alison."
"For heffen's sake." Hamish stifled a yawn. "If Mrs. Baird wants to play the wicked stepmother and Alison here is hellbent on playing Cinderella, I can't do anything about it."
"Come along, Alison," said Peter Jenkins sternly. "There's no point in your staying here. If you ask me, it's all a great waste of time."
"I couldnae agree wi' you more," said Hamish sweetly. His hazel eyes mocked Peter. "Och, if you ask me, this lassie's got nothing to complain about. You've got to pull yourself together, Alison, you've become a right wee moaning Minnie."
Shocked and hurt, Alison stumbled to her feet. Peter put an arm about her shoulders.
"You despicable pillock," he raged at Hamish. "Don't you see she's had more than enough to bear?"
"Aw, go and boil your heid," said Hamish with lazy insolence.
Peter almost dragged Alison from the police station. As he slammed the door behind them, Hamish leapt from his chair and stood with his ear pressed against the kitchen door. "In future, Alison," he heard Peter say firmly, "you'd be better off coming to me for help."
Hamish grinned. Well, let's hope that got Sir Galahad up on his high horse, he said to himself, nothing like a bit o' knight errantry to stiffen the weakest spine.
Perhaps because of Hamish's remarks, Alison tried again on the following morning to get Maggie's permission to use the car, and the resultant row sounded around the house. If Alison wanted a car that much, she could damn well buy one, said Maggie, ending up by calling her 'a useless drip.'
Alison was shuffling about the garden later that day, kicking the weeds, when Crispin Witherington approached her. "Couldn't help hearing the row," he said.
He was dressed in what he fondly imagined suitable gear for the Highlands—lovat green cord breeches with green socks and brogues, tweed jacket, checked shirt, and a paisley cravat held in place by a large gold horseshoe. He had a rasping, rather hectoring voice, but Alison wanted sympathy.
"I hate Maggie," she muttered.
"Oh, it's just her fun. I'll bet she's fond of you. Tell you what, I'll let you drive my roller."
"I'm only used to the small car," said Alison, looking longingly to where Crispin's white Rolls-Royce was parked.
"Oh, come on, have a go."
"All right," said Alison, suddenly feeling like no end of a femme fatale. Peter had shown an interest in her and now here was Crispin.
"Better drive it out onto the road for you," said Crispin. "I'll look up the map first and pick a place to go."
"I know practically all the places 'round here," said Alison, but Crispin crackled open an ordinance survey map as if she had not spoken.
"Ah, let's try this place, Fern Bay, sounds pretty."
"I know the road there," said Alison eagerly.
"Now, then, girlie, just you drive and I'll navigate. Always go by the map, that's my motto."
Alison drove off, nervously at first but then slowly gaining confidence. But it was to be her first experience of a back-seat driver, or rather, a front-seat one. "Too fast," he snapped. "Slow down a bit."
Alison dutifully slowed down to thirty miles per hour.
"We'll never get anywhere if you're going to crawl along," he said after a few minutes. "Turn off next left."
"But that's not the road to—"
"I said, turn off," he growled.
Alison reduced speed at the turn with a great crash of gears. "No wonder Maggie won't let you drive," jeered Crispin.
She slowed the big car to a halt, switched off the engine and carefully put on the handbrake, and turned to him. Enough was enough! "Why did you want me to come out with you?" she demanded in a thin, shaky voice. "I know all the roads around here and I don't care what your map says, this is a dead end."
He let out a hearty laugh although his eyes were humourless. "You ladies are always touchy about your driving. So, I'm wrong. There! I apologize. Friends?"
"Yes," said Alison weakly.
"You see, we could be of great help to each other."
"I don't see how ..."
"Maggie's fond of you." He took out a thin gold cigarette case and extracted a cigarette. "I know she bitches at you like hell but she must like you or she wouldn't have made out her will in your favour."
"But that was before you ..."
"Before we all turned up? I think she's playing games. I think she don't want any of us. She's changed."
"When did you ... erm ... meet her?"
"Ten years ago just after my marriage broke up. She came in to buy a car, a Jag, and I ended up paying for it and when our affair broke up, she sold it and bought that heap of trash she's driving around at the moment."
"That was a very good car," said Alison furiously, "before she started mangling it."
"Well, have it your way.
Anyway, then she was fun. It cost me a bomb but it was a barrel of laughs while it lasted." He put a pudgy hand on Alison's knee and squeezed it. "We could get along fine, girlie. Looks to me as if you haven't had much of a life. I could show you a good time."
"I would like to go home now," said Alison, her voice coming out in a squeak.
"Not yet. It's a fine afternoon. Let's find this Fern Bay and have a few noggins."
Alison hadn't the courage to stand up to him. But he had stopped navigating and criticizing her driving. Alison pulled up outside Fern Bay's one pub, which was more of a shack. It was a dingy bar ornamented with posters warning crofters of the penalties to be incurred if they did not dip their sheep, an announcement of a Girl Guide rally of a few years back, and a notice saying that drink would not be served to minors. A row of small men in cloth caps leaned over the bar.
Alison felt herself beginning to blush. There were still pubs in the Highlands where the presence of a female was frowned on and she felt this was one of them.
A juke box in the corner was grinding out a seventies pop record, the sort of music which might sound catchy to someone stoned on pot, but to the clearheaded appeared a series of rhythmic thumps overtopped by a harsh voice yelling out unintelligible sounds.
Crispin approached the bar and squeezed his way in between two of the locals. "Hey, mine host," he cried. "A little service here."
"Aye, whit dae ye want?" said the barman, wiping his hands on a greasy apron. He was a great hairy man with an untrimmed red beard.
"I'll have a scotch and water," said Crispin.
"Aye, and whit aboot yer daughter?"
"I'll have the same," said Alison.
"My friend will have the same," said Crispin, who wondered at the same time why barmen the length and breadth of the British Isles usually referred to his female companion as his daughter, no matter what age the lady was, not knowing his offensive manner always prompted the time-honoured insult.
They sat down at a rickety plastic table by the window with their drinks.
"This is fun," said Crispin. "I like these quaint old places. It's amazing when you look about places like this and realize that Britain still does have a peasantry."
One of the small men turned from the bar and approached their table. He went straight up to Crispin who smiled at him weakly and then before Crispin or Alison could guess what the man was about to do, he whipped off his cap and butted Crispin on the forehead.
Crispin groaned and clutched his head.
"You assaulted him!" screamed Alison. "I'll call the police."
But that word police seemed to have an amazingly restorative effect on Crispin. "I'm fine," he said. "Let's get out of this smelly place."
When they got outside, Alison noticed he looked white and shaken and there was a lump beginning to form on his forehead.
"I'd best get you back," said Alison. "Are you sure you're all right? I mean, I could call the police." Fern Bay was probably on Hamish's beat, thought Alison, and then remembered Hamish's cruelty of the previous evening.
"No, no, I'll be all right in a tick. That little bastard. Did you see the way he just put his cap back on and went back to his drink as if nothing had happened?"
"It's because you're English," said Alison soothingly. "They don't like the English and I don't suppose they like being called peasants either."
Maggie was waiting for them when they got back. She was holding a pile of typed manuscript.
"I've made some changes," she said nastily to Alison, "so you better get in there and start typing."
"Alison said you were writing a book. Are we all in it?" asked Peter Jenkins.
"Wait and see," said Maggie with a husky laugh. The four men who were in the living room exchanged uneasy looks. Maggie rounded on Alison. "Well, stop standing there like a drip and get to work!"
"I'd like a word with you in private, Maggie, now!" said Peter.
"Very well. Come outside."
Alison went into the study, feeling a little glow of warmth. Peter was going to give Maggie a telling off about her harsh treatment of her. The study window overlooked the garden. Alison longed to hear what Peter was saying. She pushed open the window and listened hard.
Peter's well-modulated drawl reached her ears quite clearly.
"This advertising business of mine has been going through some hard times, Maggie," she heard him say. "But I've got some new top clients and the money will be coming through soon. If you could see your way to lending me a few thousand, I can pay you back at the end of six months and at a good rate of interest, too."
"So you want my money without having to marry me to get it?" said Maggie.
"Ah, love, come here and give me a kiss. If I thought I had a hope in hell of getting you, I wouldn't have asked ..."
Alison closed the window and sat down, feeling miserable. No-one loved her; Hamish was fed up with her and Peter and Crispin were only making up to her because they thought she had an in with Maggie.
The study door opened and James Frame sidled in. "I say ..." he began tentatively.
"If you've come to ask me to put in a word with Maggie, forget it!" said Alison bitterly. "She hates me and I hate her and I wish I were dead but I'd like to see her in her grave first!"
"Gosh, you are in a tizzy," said James, smoothing down his patent leather hair with a nervous hand. "I only came to ask you ... well, don't you see, it's that damn book that's worrying me. Be a good chap and tell me if she's got me in it."
Alison looked at him with loathing. She hated them all. "You're all in it," she said spitefully, "and highly pornographic it is, too. Do be an angel and tell the rest, won't you? I'm sick of being pestered and I've got work to do."
The study door opened again and this time Maggie walked in. She stopped short at the sight of James. If Alison had listened at the window a little bit longer, she would have heard Peter defending her. That and the fact that her niece had been out driving with Crispin had put Maggie in a towering rage. The sight of James bending over Alison was the last straw.
"When you've finished typing that book," said Maggie to Alison, "you can pack your things and leave."
"But I've got nowhere to go," said Alison weakly.
"Listen, Alison," said Maggie, "you've got your health and strength so I suggest you stop sponging off me and start working for a living. That whey face of yours makes me sick. I expect you to be out by the end of the week."
"Could I have a word with you, beautiful?" oiled James.
Maggie went in for one of her lightning changes of mood. "Of course," she murmured seductively. "Come up to my bedroom."
Alison sat, numb with misery, but somewhere at the bottom of her misery was a tiny feeling of relief. The door opened again and she heard Steel Ironside's Liverpudlian accents. "Well, that's that. She's taken that gaming club creep up to her room. He's probably getting his leg over right now."
Alison sat, rigid and silent.
The pop singer began to pace up and down the room. He was wearing a black cotton shirt open to the waist, revealing a thick mat of grey chest hair in which nestled a large gold medallion. "God, I could do with a bit of her money," he said. "I know I've got a hit. But I need the money for a backing group and then the hire of a studio."
Alison began to cry. She had been crying such a lot lately that the tears came easily, splashing on to the typewriter.
"Hey, what's up, luv?" The pop singer sat down on a chair beside Alison and peered at her through his half-moon glasses.
"Maggie's throwing me out at the end of the w-week," hiccuped Alison.
"Haven't you any place to go?"
Alison dumbly shook her head.
"Here. Give me a piece of paper. There's these bods in a squat down in Liverpool who'll take you in. Give them this note."
"You're very kind," said Alison when she could, although she thought she would rather die than move in with a lot of Liverpudlian squatters who were probably all high on dope.
&nb
sp; "Fact is, the four of us were talking about you this morning. Maggie's gone on so much about her bad heart, in the event of her dying soon, we was saying it might be better for one of us to marry you and then divvy up the takings."
"If Maggie died," said Alison, "I would take the money, keep it, and throw you all out. I hate Maggie and I hate you."
But he merely laughed and patted her head. "Maggie's turned out a right bitch," he said. "She's enough to turn the milk. When I think what a smasher she was, warm and beautiful. Right bloody cow she is now. Don't take it out on me. With any luck, she'll drop dead. I'll survive somehow."
"I'm sorry if I was rotten to you," said Alison, "but you all seem so mercenary. Not one of you seems to like Maggie."
"It's all very well to live in slums and eat baked beans when you're young," said Steel, half to himself, "but one day you wake up old and broke and the thought of going back and starting all over is scary. Know that I mean?"
"I'm going to have a cup of coffee," said Alison, getting to her feet. "Coming?"
"Sure. Lead the way."
Mrs. Todd was in the kitchen and looked anxiously at Alison's tearstained face. "Whit's the matter, bairnie?" she said.
Alison told her of Maggie's throwing her out.
"Maybe she's worried about something," said Mrs. Todd. "Mrs. Baird's a fine decent woman and—"
"Decent!" Alison's laugh was shrill. "I never told you, Mrs. Todd, but she was and still is a tart. You should read that book of hers ..."
"Don't be saying nasty things about herself," said Mrs. Todd soothingly.
"S'right, all the same," said Steel, slouching around the kitchen with his hands thrust into the pockets of his jeans. "Real old whore is our Maggie."
"I will not be having that language in my kitchen!" Mrs. Todd was quite pink with outrage. The pop singer grinned and strolled out.
"Don't worry your head at the moment," said Mrs. Todd. "I have a wee bit cottage in the village and I can put you up there until you get on your feet."
"Thank you," said Alison weakly. But inside her head another prison door seemed to slam. She only half realized that she would probably accept Mrs. Todd's invitation and therefore say goodbye to any hope of independence. "I'd better get back to work." said Alison, picking up the cup of coffee Mrs. Todd had poured for her.
