Hotel By The Loch

by Iris Danbury

  Fenella said quietly, ‘We’ve nothing more to say to each other, Miriam. But I’m sorry about Jamie. Shall I put this in his room?’

  Miriam shrugged and turned away to walk down the next flight of stairs.

  In Jamie’s room, adjoining Miriam’s, there was a certain deliberate chaos. The treasured pieces of plaster from his arm, those with the caricatures of Miriam and Cameron and others, had been smashed; the stamp album was lying open on the floor and loose stamps were scattered around.

  She remembered the boy’s stormy face earlier this afternoon and went in search of Cameron.

  As soon as he heard that Jamie was missing he exclaimed, ‘Why on earth didn’t Miriam tell me?’

  ‘I could go out in my car and search for him,’ Fenella suggested. ‘I’ll also telephone Alex. He may have gone there.’

  But Laurie had already phoned her home with no result.

  ‘Wait a few minutes and I’ll come with you,’ Cameron urged. ‘Any idea when he was last seen?’

  ‘Angus might know. The boy was with him this afternoon.’

  But Angus reported that Jamie had given up planting almost as soon as Fenella had left them.

  ‘He said he had important things to be doing,’ Angus told her.

  Cameron drove through the village after he had first searched around the lochside cafe and the marquee by the shore.

  ‘He hasn’t gone to McNicol’s, he doesn’t appear to be in any of the hotel places unless he’s found a very secure hidey-hole. Where else could he be?’

  ‘A wee hoose,’ Fenella murmured. ‘He said this afternoon that he was sick of hotels and he wanted to live in a wee hoose like other boys.’

  ‘Well, we’ve called at every house in the village,’ Cameron replied. ‘Where next?’

  ‘Wait a minute. Let me think. That stamp-album—he exchanged stamps with a boy called Dougal, but I don’t know the surname or where he lived.’

  At the Trachan Arms the landlord searched his memory for trace of a boy called Dougal, about eight or nine or older.

  ‘There would be the McIntyres. Three boys.’

  ‘Where do they live?’ enquired Cameron impatiently.

  ‘Away over the other side of the loch.’

  ‘Then unless he went by boat Jamie couldn’t have walked that distance in the time. Who else?’

  ‘Aye, I mind a young Dougal Scott. Now that would be the croft about two miles along the road, then a wee bit up on the left.’

  The evening sun slanted across the hills when Cameron drove towards the croft up a rugged path. Jamie was stumping about in wellingtons along with a boy about his own age, and the pair were busy shutting up the hens for the night.

  ‘Poor child!’ murmured Cameron. ‘Living in hotels must be hell to that boy.’

  Mrs. Scott came to the gate.

  ‘I’m from the Gairmorlie,’ announced Cameron. ‘I’m afraid I’ve come to take Jamie home there. His mother is worried about him.’

  ‘Ye were not knowing where he was?’ she asked incredulously. ‘But Jamie said he’d like fine to stay the night with Dougal if I’d have him.’

  ‘I’d better take him back,’ Cameron said gently.

  Jamie had already heard voices and stood a few yards off, a bucket in his hand. He glanced wildly around him, undecided whether to make a dash for freedom, but he saw that he was cornered.

  He came defiantly at a run towards Cameron. ‘Ye need not have been following me here!’ he shouted. ‘Dougal’s mother lives in a proper house.’

  ‘Jamie, listen!’ commanded Cameron. ‘Your mother is worried about you.’

  ‘She doesn’t care. She likes living in hotels.’

  ‘She has to live in hotels to earn a living for you both.’ After a pause, Cameron continued, ‘She has to go now to another hotel, but you must come back with me and tell her the truth. Jamie, only small boys run away without saying where they’ve gone. Boys who are growing up to be men stand up and say what is in their minds.’

  Mrs. Scott was almost in tears. ‘I would never be bringing this trouble on everyone if I’d known he was running away.’

  ‘Has he been up here before?’ Fenella asked.

  ‘Oh, aye, he’s Dougal’s pal at school, and now it’s the summer holidays they go off together whiles.’

  ‘Would you have him here as a boarder for a few weeks, Mrs. Scott?’ Fenella asked boldly, knowing that she was taking a serious risk.

  ‘Aye, I would that. He’s a good boy and happy with Dougal. He’s company for my own lad.’

  ‘You’d be paid, of course, Mrs. Scott, for his keep and so on. When the holidays are over, we’ll see what arrangements can be made with his mother. I’ll have to let you know later when we have her permission.’

  Jamie looked up at Fenella. ‘You’d not be fooling me? You mean I can stay with Dougal in the house?’

  ‘If your mother agrees. Will you come back now and ask her?’

  Jamie waved to Dougal, then clambered into Cameron’s car, not even stopping to change out of his wellingtons.

  ‘I wonder what we’ve done, Fenella,’ Cameron said quietly as he drove down towards the road.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied, ‘but perhaps we’ve done a kindness to Miriam as well as Jamie.’

  She sat in the back of the car with Jamie, so that he should not feel that he was being ignominiously dragged back to the hotel which had never been a home to him.

  ‘Does Dougal play chess?’ she asked.

  ‘Aye, I think he does.’

  ‘I’ve bought you a small chess set,’ she told him.

  His dark eyes glowed for a moment or two. Then after a pause he said, ‘Why don’t you marry Mr. Cam-Ram, Fenella? You could live in a wee hoose and then I could live with the both of ye. I’d like that fine.’

  Fenella laughed happily and Cameron turned his head slightly and spoke over his shoulder. ‘I’d like that fine, too, Jamie. See what Fenella says, will you?’

  ‘I don’t know if I can promise the wee hoose, Jamie,’ she said, ‘but if it will please you, I’ll marry Mr. Cam-Ram.’

  ‘And where will ye live?’

  ‘All over the place,’ replied Cameron. ‘When you’re really grown up, Jamie, perhaps I’ll arrange a trip to Canada for you.’

  Back at the hotel, Cameron explained to a white-faced Miriam what had happened. She agreed readily to Jamie’s staying for a few weeks with Mrs. Scott. ‘It’s no help to me having to drag Jamie around hotels.’

  Fenella thought angrily that hotels were no help to Jamie, but she said nothing, and left Cameron to arrange final details.

  Later in the evening Fenella went down alone to the lochside cafe where a couple of dozen hotel guests were enjoying the still lingering light of a warm Scottish gloaming. A row of fairylights danced along the loch edge and gentle music filled the air like a seaside band echoing on the wind.

  She had been so sure that Cameron’s energetic development ideas would ruin the peace and quiet of her home surroundings, yet he had brought only gaiety and pleasure in addition to the beauties of nature.

  She was surprised when she turned to move away to find Cameron at her elbow.

  ‘Am I caught hobnobbing with hotel guests when I should have remained on my second floor beat?’ she asked him in a quiet, but impudent, voice.

  He smiled at her, then cast a critical eye over the almost-Continental scene.

  A woman at a nearby table spoke to him. ‘Oh, Mr. Ramsay, I do want to tell you how much we’re enjoying this holiday. My husband and I have been to the hotel several times before, but you’ve worked such wonders for comfort and entertainment.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he replied graciously.

  ‘And everything goes so smoothly, absolutely like clockwork.’ She smiled archly. ‘I shall begin to believe that your staff aren’t really human, soon, but it’s all done by computers!’

  Fenella had already walked slowly away and when Cameron came behind her, taking her arm, he c
hanged direction away from the road and the hotel and led her towards the small clump of rhododendrons and azaleas fringing the loch.

  ‘So smooth!’ Fenella giggled. ‘Little does she guess at the tensions, the dramas going on under the surface of our excellent computer-like service.’

  ‘A woman of no imagination,’ he commented. His arm went round her waist.

  ‘Perhaps she’ll believe that some of us are human if she can spy the manager flirting with one of his staff,’ Fenella said.

  ‘If she’s watching, let’s give her something to see.’ He seized Fenella by the waist and lifted her high in the air like a ballet-dancer. As he lowered her to the ground his lips travelled over her face from chin to temple, then returned to her mouth. He grasped her hand and together they ran past the clump of bushes where they were now out of sight of anyone except a lone angler on the far side of the dark glassy loch.

  She cupped his face in her hands. ‘Oh, Cameron,’ she whispered, ‘I’m happier than I deserve.’

  ‘So am I.’ He held his hands against hers. ‘That’s the way we’ll try to keep it.’