Highland Interlude

by Lucilla Andrews

  I put down my cup, quickly. ‘No. How on earth do you know his name?’

  ‘Mrs Valentine told us. She says he’s up for the fishing and she told Uncle Dougal and he said Gairlie was a popular place for tourists and they both laughed. Robin says that Mr MacDonald was the man you saw at Glasgow station, but I wasn’t sure. Was he? Has he had it?’

  ‘Yes, to both.’

  ‘Did you know he was coming to Gairlie?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Robin thinks that’s why you came up with us. He told Uncle Dougal and Mrs Valentine, and she thought it awfully funny, but Uncle Dougal didn’t laugh that time and he said, “That’s enough, laddie,” so Robin had to belt up. Please can I have some fruit cake?’

  I offered him the plate. Charming, I thought. Charming.

  ‘I say, Elizabeth ‒ you won’t tell about her being Uncle’s girl-friend? Cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die-in-a-cellar-of-rats?’

  I did so. I also did some thinking, and later that evening told Dougal the exact truth about Archie.

  ‘A pleasant coincidence for you. More coffee, Elizabeth?’

  I hoped he had believed me. I didn’t think he had.

  It rained all next day. Through the rain the grey loch rippled with tiny waves, and the broad patch of gorse that on our side divided the bank from the sandy shore glistened like sprinkled gold. The gorse and Archie MacDonald’s ’phone call were the only bright spots of my day. Dr Sinclair didn’t call, Robin sulked because Maury Valentine hadn’t asked him to tea again until tomorrow, Judy was well enough to be bored and need Johnnie’s company in her room, and from Dougal’s sombre manner towards me I was personally responsible for the Act of Union, 1707.

  The rain stopped at noon the following day. I asked permission to take another walk. Dougal hoped it would keep fine for me.

  Archie was waiting at the Sinclairs’ house as we had arranged yesterday. We walked by the river, not talking of anything in particular, but laughing a good deal at the same jokes. I began to like him enough to be slightly on edge until he asked me for another date.

  Dougal was out when I returned. He had driven up the glen to collect Robin. Johnnie had backed out of the second tea-party. He had spent all morning taking to pieces an old clock, and just had to get it working again. He was showing the partially finished result to Mrs Pringle when I let myself in. ‘My penknife isn’t thin enough. I want something to go right in here.’

  Mrs Pringle fetched a lethal-looking kitchen knife. ‘Will this do ye, laddie? Och, but ye’re the wee spit of the Professor when he was a bairn no older than yeself!’

  ‘Och, away!’ retorted Johnnie. ‘Is tha’ a fact?’

  Mrs Pringle recollected my presence and sniffed. ‘Will ye take ye tea now, miss, or wait on the Professor?’

  I said I was happy to wait, and they both went up to show Judy the clock. I was rather worried about that knife, but as Mrs Pringle had produced it and Johnnie was a neat-handed child, I told myself to stop fussing and tried to concentrate on The Scotsman. There were shouts of laughter above, and then Judy’s voice demanding, ‘Tell us again, Mrs Pringle. Did Uncle Dougal really fall into the loch in his Sabbath suit and come out covered in mud? Tell us again!’

  Edinburgh had a traffic problem. Archie thought Edinburgh the most beautiful city he had ever seen, yet he had no plans to stop off there on his present trip. I was casually wondering why not when a scream jolted me to my feet. A child’s scream of terror.

  I was on the stairs when Judy screamed again. ‘Stop it, Mrs Pringle ‒ stop it ‒ Johnnie ‒ Mrs Pringle ‒ do something!’

  It took me only a few seconds to reach her room, but in those seconds the blood from the artery Johnnie had cut in his left hand had hit the bedroom ceiling, soaked his face and hair and Mrs Pringle’s white apron.

  ‘Let me take a wee look, laddie,’ she was saying shakily, dabbing ineffectually at his hand with her apron skirt.

  ‘I’ll do that, Mrs Pringle.’ I grasped Johnnie’s left wrist, clamping my fingers against the radial artery. ‘Sit down, love. This’ll soon stop.’ I held his arm high over his head. ‘It looks messy, but blood’s like spilt milk. Always looks worse than it really is. Can you pass me that small hand-towel over there, Judy? Thanks.’ I wound this round Johnnie’s wrist with my free hand and gave him one end to hold. ‘Hang on, Johnnie. This may hurt a bit as I’m going to pull it tight. Good boy. That’s stopped it.’ I used both hands to tighten the knot. ‘Chuck me that pencil, Judy.’ I used this to increase the tension. ‘Stay sitting, Johnnie, and I’ll clean you up.’

  He sat quietly watching me with grave brown eyes. He was dead scared, but he wasn’t going to admit it and he kept his head. When I washed his face, he said, ‘Thank you,’ very politely.

  Judy stopped crying. ‘You stopped it bleeding, Elizabeth. It was like turning off a tap. Did you know you could?’

  ‘Yes.’ I smiled at her, then saw Mrs Pringle was pale green. ‘Do sit down, Mrs Pringle. Come on, my dear.’ I switched on my most professional manner, as she seemed about to protest and was certainly about to pass out. ‘That’s right. Now, bend your head right forward on to your lap. You’ve had a bit of a shock. It’ll pass.’ I took her pulse with one hand and reached for an open box of assorted candies with the other. ‘Have a sweetie, kids. You too, Mrs Pringle. It’ll help.’

  She raised her head. ‘Is tha’ a fact?’

  ‘It is. Glucose works wonders. Try it. No, don’t sit up yet, but when you do, do it slowly.’ They were all chewing, so I looked round for something to use as a sling for Johnnie.

  Judy gave me a headscarf. ‘Will Johnnie have to have his arm stitched, Elizabeth?’

  ‘I’m not a doctor, love, so I can’t say for sure. I should think so.’

  Johnnie asked, ‘Are you going to ring Dr Sinclair? Suppose he’s out?’

  ‘If he is and your uncle’s not back I’ll ring Gairlie Hospital and ask the doctor on duty for advice.’

  Mrs Pringle muttered, ‘I canna’ put my mind to the number.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll find it. Keep those sweets circulating, Judy. I’ll be quick as I can.’ I closed the door quietly behind me, then ran down the landing as Dougal appeared at the head of the stairs.

  He glanced over my head. ‘I wondered where you all were.’

  ‘With Judy. Dougal, I’m glad you’re back ‒’

  ‘It would seem high time. Have you forgotten my request that you stay away from Judy ‒’

  An arterial haemorrhage always shook me. I had yet to meet the person it didn’t. ‘I’m not that bloody silly, chum! Johnnie’s nicked an artery.’

  Five minutes later he drove Johnnie, with Robin for company, to the Casualty Department of Gairlie Hospital. Mrs Pringle was still greenish, so I made tea for her, Judy, and myself. She voiced no objection to my using her kitchen, and when I found a step-ladder, bucket, and cloth and washed off the blood on Judy’s ceiling Mrs Pringle, unasked, steadied the foot of the ladder. ‘You’re not using hot water, miss?’

  ‘Not for blood. Cold works much better, providing you do it at once.’

  Judy lay back to look up. ‘I expect you’re used to sloshing about in oodles of blood, Elizabeth?’

  ‘We don’t actually slosh in the stuff, love, but we have enough scattered around for me to be an old hand at shifting bloodstains.’ I came down the ladder. ‘I think that patch should dry clean.’

  Mrs Pringle studied the patch in silence. She followed me down with the bucket when I took the ladder back and removed the stained apron she had left soaking in a basin of hot water and began rinsing it under the cold tap. ‘You’re right,’ she remarked without looking round. ‘It’s coming away well with the cold.’ Then she turned slowly. ‘It’s a mercy you were in this house just now. You’ve a sensible head on your shoulders, and that was required. I’m willing, but I’ve no skill and I’m growing old, miss. I canna’ now be taking shocks the way I could as a young lassie.’ Her face twisted. ‘And
to think it was myself gave wee Johnnie that knife! The bairn could maybe have bled to his death.’

  She began to weep the helpless, exhausted tears of the old. She wept on my shoulder, and I patted her back and reminded her small boys had been cutting themselves with knives ever since knives were invented. ‘Before that they probably cut chinks out of themselves with sharp flints.’

  ‘Is tha’ a fact?’ she asked pathetically.

  ‘My dear, you know it is. Now, didn’t the Professor chop himself up as a small boy?’

  ‘Aye. Maybe.’

  When she was calmer I went into the dining-room for Dougal’s whisky.

  ‘Och, no, lassie! I canna’ take a wee dram without the Professor’s permission.’

  ‘Nonsense! I’m sure he won’t mind. If he does we can blame me.’

  ‘I’d not have that!’

  I said gently, ‘Mrs Pringle, I was only joking. Come on. Knock it back. That’s it.’

  She handed me the empty glass. ‘You’re a strange lassie, Miss Elizabeth, but sensible ‒ aye ‒ and kind.’

  Chapter Four

  HIGHLAND HOSPITALITY AND HIGHLAND RAIN

  From that evening Mrs Pringle never again addressed me as ‘Miss Wade’. I became ‘Miss Elizabeth’ or ‘lassie’.

  She said, ‘I was not aware it was at the Professor’s request you were avoiding wee Judy.’

  I took her point. ‘He’s very anxious the scarlet germ shouldn’t spread to Gairlie.’

  ‘He’s aye been a man thoughtful for others, but never one to communicate his thoughts to others, not even as a wee bairn.’

  As far as I was concerned, not only his thoughts. We were living in the same house and I had tried, but I had yet to make any real communication with the man at all.

  I tried again that night when the boys had gone up. I was describing Johnnie’s admirable calm when Mrs Pringle came in with our coffee. ‘Aye,’ she agreed, ‘a stout-hearted laddie! And that attached to his clever wee sister.’

  It was the first time she had joined in a mealtime conversation in my presence. He glanced from her to me without comment. I said, ‘Judy strikes me as very bright.’

  ‘Her father tells me her school are much impressed by her I.Q.’

  Mrs Pringle paused on her way out. ‘And the same affection for her books as poor Miss Catriona.’

  ‘That’s so, Rose.’ Dougal waited till the door closed. ‘Catriona was my twin. She died ten years ago. Pneumonia. B. virulens.’ His face took on an extra rigidity. ‘You’ve met it?’ He hesitated, momentarily.

  ‘Only in textbooks.’ I watched his expression as he was looking at his coffee-cup. ‘I’m very sorry.’

  ‘It was a great grief to us all,’ he said, and changed the subject. Knowing grief to be one of the rarities that increase when shared, particularly with strangers, that change I understood. For the same reason I had not told him Dr Sinclair had already put me in the general picture. Nor did I mention the occasion, two years ago, when for a few hours I had set Martha’s Thoracic Unit and Inpatient Path Lab in a tiz, as during those hours I had been suspected of harbouring the same bacillus. I had gone on duty one night with a pain in my chest and come off with acute bronchitis. A couple of hours later it was double-pneumonia. For that brief period every senior physician and pathologist in Martha’s seemed to brood round my oxygen tent, but as the suspected diagnosis had been wrong, I was still alive, and though I had later had pleurisy, eventually I recovered so well that I was still one of the Thoracic Unit’s pin-ups. Our chest pundit never saw me round the hospital without pointing me out to the nearest student as an example of what good medicine, good nursing, and a good constitution could do. But during that brief period I had known enough to be very frightened. It was reasonable to hope Catriona Grant had been spared that part, though inevitably Dougal could not have missed one turn of the screw. I hoped he now realized I understood and sympathized; if he did he didn’t show it.

  He was talking about Robin. ‘As he’s so keen to climb, he should learn properly. He’s going to attend Charlie Urquhart’s holiday climbing school up the glen, from Monday. You’ve heard of Charlie Urquhart?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Sorry. Should I have?’

  ‘No, since this clearly illustrates your lack of interest in climbing.’ And without giving me the chance to explain that in this case ignorance was not synonymous with lack of interest, he moved on to a telephone conversation he had had with Dr Sinclair that afternoon. ‘He considers Judy’ll be clear on Saturday, and you on Sunday.’

  ‘Then I’ll go back Sunday night?’ I hoped I did not sound too eager.

  Apparently it would not have mattered if I had. ‘I rang up about it this afternoon while you were out. Unfortunately there’s no available sleeper until Monday. I’ve booked you one for that night. I’ll drive you in.’

  ‘That’s kind of you, but do you really want to do the double journey?’

  ‘I enjoy driving, and it so happens that I want to be in Glasgow on Monday. The twins can come with us. They’ll maybe enjoy the outing.’

  ‘It’s a beautiful drive ‒ I think. To be honest, I didn’t see much more than the road ahead.’

  ‘One doesn’t, particularly on a strange road. Talking of things unseen’ ‒ he refilled our cups ‒ ‘it would be a pity for you to leave Gairlie without one trip up the hills. I mentioned that to Maury Valentine this afternoon, and she kindly suggested we all join her for an all-day picnic on Saturday. There’s a plateau fairly near with one of the finest views in Scotland. We thought we’d take you up. Would you care for that?’

  I was too much of a moral coward and making too little headway for the truth. I hedged. ‘Perhaps I should warn you, I’ve never climbed more than a fire-escape.’

  ‘Understandable,’ he said flatly, ‘since this is your first visit to the Highlands.’ He sat back and folded his arms. ‘I doubt you’re any better acquainted with the Alps?’

  ‘No. Ben Gairlie’s the first mountain I’ve even come this close to.’

  ‘Indeed? It’s a pity you’ll have no opportunity to get even closer. The Ben’s a fine mountain and as near to Alpine standards as any in the British Isles.’

  I thought of my weak head for heights and thanked God. ‘Great pity.’

  The conversation remained on Scotland in general and the Highlands in particular. Just for a little while he shed a fraction of his reserve and talked more freely than I had yet heard him. He was very interesting, but what interested and astounded me most of all was his almost pathological nostalgia for the past. Thoughtlessly, I mentioned Culloden. He froze visibly. He said very politely, ‘I hope you’ll forgive a Highlander for changing the subject now, Elizabeth.’

  After that I gave up. There was a sticky little silence while we finished our coffee, then we both agreed there was nothing like an occasional early night.

  He came upstairs with me as he wanted something from his own room, and escorted me to my bedroom door. Mrs Pringle had taken herself off watch, but we needed no chaperon. Dougal thanked me again for my first-aid to Johnnie, produced his usual nightly spiel on the subject of my sleep, and with the utmost civility managed to impress me with the conviction that I was not just unattractive, but sexless. Seeing him standing there in my bedroom door, I was suddenly quite wildly grateful to Archie, since without his uninhibited approach these few days with Dougal would have reduced my morale to sub-zero. As it was, it was taking quite a beating.

  It was pelting again next morning. Johnnie and I were playing two-handed whist in the sitting-room when Dougal came in at noon. ‘There’s a personal call coming through for you from London, Elizabeth. If you’ll take it in my study I’ll play your hand here.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I gave him my cards. ‘Who’s ringing me at this hour? One of my friends come into money?’

  He frowned at the cards. ‘I can only apologize for being in no position to enlighten you on that score.’

  I was growing accustomed to his bouts of
pomposity, but that one stuck in my throat for some odd reason. ‘And I can only apologize for being unable to present you with a better hand, Dougal. Unfortunately I’ve no talent for card games.’

  He glanced at me, but whether or not he realized I was sending him up I couldn’t tell. ‘Even Homer sometimes nods.’ He held open the door. ‘Whose bid, Johnnie?’

  Maury Valentine might not believe it, but at that moment she had all my sympathy.

  The telephone was ringing as I reached the study. ‘Hi, there, Elizabeth! Kind of a surprise?’

  ‘Archie! What are you doing in London?’

  ‘I have just had to fly in from Inverness, honey. Seems there’s this deal I have to put through, but I’ll be right back, Saturday. Can I see you then? You’ll be through with the bugs Sunday? Great! So we’ll make it Sunday. Can I call round your place Sunday, and maybe you can come round to my hotel?’

  ‘I’d like that. Thanks. Come round and meet Dougal and the kids.’

  ‘I’d be happy to do that ‒ and I guess this Dougal Grant’ll like to take one good look at me at that!’

  I was curious. ‘Why do you say that?’

  He laughed. ‘Last night I had a few drinks with Davie MacDonald, and from what he let out I have the impression Dougal Grant has been doing one real keen security check on me. So who blames him,’ he added good-naturedly, ‘seeing he has one mighty pretty English girl as a house-guest?’

  ‘It’s the kind of thing he would do, but I think it very big of you not to take umbrage.’

  ‘You figure I should?’

  ‘I would. Bloody cheek!’

  He was amused. ‘Don’t be too mad at the poor guy. So he’s an egghead and a stuffed-shirt? So who cares?’

  I said, ‘Archie, you are very sensible and I am very stupid. But it’s this docile little woman act. Getting me down, as I am just not one.’

  ‘And you know what is getting me down, honey? Already I am missing you like crazy. See you Sunday and call you Saturday night to say hallo, the man is right back!’

  Dougal was alone in the sitting-room when I got back, as Johnnie had taken Judy up a fresh supply of books and apples. I told Dougal Archie was in London.