Wild Mountain Thyme

  “Don’t be horrid about her. I like her.”

  “I like her too, but one day she’ll drive me into a nuthouse.” He sighed and looked down at his empty glass. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a drink?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “In that case, be a good girl and go and run Oliver and that little boy of yours to earth, and tell them lunch will be ready in about ten minutes.” He heaved himself off the window seat and went to throw more logs onto his dying fire. As usual they sparked violently, and as usual Roddy tramped the glowing embers to death on his long-suffering hearthrug.

  Victoria went to do as he had asked. At the top of the stairs, she paused.

  “Where did you say I’d find Oliver?”

  “In the library.”

  She left him, clattering down the open treads like an eager child. Alone, Roddy signed again. He debated, and finally succumbed. He poured himself another drink, and took it through to the kitchen where he inspected his fragrant soup.

  * * *

  Victoria put her head around the door. “Oliver.”

  He was not writing. He sat at the desk in the window, with his arms hanging loose and his legs outstretched, but he was not actually writing.

  “Oliver.”

  He turned his head. It took a second or two for him to recognize her. Then his blank eyes came to life. He smiled, as though she had just woken him up. He put up a hand to rub the back of his neck.

  “Hi.”

  “It’s lunchtime.”

  She closed the door behind her. He held out a long arm and she went over to him, and he drew her close, burying his face in her thick sweater; nuzzling, like a child, into its warmth. Memories of last night filled her with sweetness. She laid her chin on the top of his head, and looked down at the desk and sheets of paper, covered with scribbles and doodles and Oliver’s narrow, tight writing.

  She said again, “It’s time for lunch.”

  “It can’t be. I’ve only been here five minutes.”

  “Roddy says you’ve been here since breakfast.”

  “Where did you get to?”

  “Creagan.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Shopping.” He put her away from him, and looked up into her face. Coolly, Victoria met his eyes, and repeated herself. “Shopping. I bought you cigarettes. I thought you’d soon be running out.”

  “Marvelous girl.”

  “And there’s someone else coming to stay; arriving this afternoon.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “John Dunbeath. Roddy’s nephew.” She put on a spurious Highland accent. “The new young laird of Benchoile.”

  “Good God,” said Oliver. “It’s like living in a novel by Walter Scott.”

  She laughed. “Do you want some lunch?”

  “Yes.” He pushed the scribbling pad away from him, and stiffly stood up. He stretched and yawned. “But I want a drink first.”

  “Roddy’s longing for someone to have a drink with him.”

  “Are you coming too?”

  “I’ll find Thomas first.” They moved towards the door. “Ellen’s had him all morning.”

  “Bully for Ellen,” said Oliver.

  * * *

  John Dunbeath, driving the hired Ford, came through Eventon, and the road swung east. To his right lay the Cromarty Firth beneath the cloudless winter sky; blue as the Mediterranean and in all the extravagance of a flood tide. Beyond it, the peaceful hills of the Black Isle drew a skyline sharp as a razor in the clear, glittering light. Rich farmland swept down to the edge of the water, sheep grazed on the upper slopes, and scarlet tractors, minimized to toys by the distance, were out ploughing the rich dark earth.

  The dazzling brightness of the day came as an unexpected bonus. John had left London cloaked in grey rain, and boarded the Highlander in a state of unrelieved exhaustion. Weary from forty-eight hours of ceaseless activity, suffering from jet lag, and still in a mild state of shock occasioned by Jock Dunbeath’s unthought-of bequest, he had drunk two enormous whiskies, and fallen into a sleep so deep that the sleeping car attendant had had to come and shake him awake, and inform him that the train had actually arrived at Inverness Station five minutes before.

  Now, on his way to Benchoile, and with nothing but necessarily unhappy news to impart to all who lived there, he could not get rid of the feeling that he was going on holiday.

  Part of this was due to association of ideas. The further he got from London and the closer to Benchoile, the clearer and more vivid became the memories. He knew this road. The fact that he had not driven it for ten years did not seem to matter at all. He felt that it could have been yesterday, and the only thing amiss was the fact that his father was not beside him, cheerful with anticipation, and anxious for John not to miss a single familiar landmark.

  The road forked. He left the Cromarty Firth behind him and climbed up and over Struie and down to the further magnificence of the Dornoch Firth. He saw the wooded slopes on the distant shore, and behind these the snow-capped ramparts of the hills of Sutherland. Far to the east lay the open sea, still and blue as a day in summer. He rolled down the window of the car and caught the smells, damp and evocative, of moss and peat, and the sharp tang of the sea wrack washed up on the shoreline far below him. The road sloped away, and the Ford idled its way down the smoothly cambered curves.

  Forty minutes later, he was through Creagan. He began to slow down in anticipation of the turning to Benchoile. He came upon it and left the main road, and now all was familiar in quite a different way. For he was back on Benchoile land. Here was the path that he had taken one grey day with his father and Davey Guthrie, that led over the distant summit of the hill and down into the desolate glen of Loch Feosaig. There they had fished, and late in the evening, Jock had driven around by the road to collect them and bring them home.

  Below him purled the river, and he passed the spot where he had once stood for two hours or more, fighting a salmon. The first line of grouse butts swung into view; the Guthries’ farmhouse. The trodden garden was cheerfully bannered with washing, and the tethered sheepdogs raged at the passing car.

  He rounded the final bend of the road. Before him lay the long sweep of Loch Muie, and at the end of it, slumbering, solitary in the late afternoon sunshine, the old grey house.

  This was the worst of all, but his heart was hardened and his mind made up. I shall sell it, he had told Robert McKenzie this morning, because, from the moment he had read the lawyer’s letter, he had known that there was nothing else that he could possibly do.

  Whether she had been watching for the car or not, John had no idea, but Ellen Tarbat appeared almost instantly. He had only time to open the boot of the Ford and take out his suitcase before she was there, coming out of the front door, down the steps towards him. A little tottery about the legs, smaller than he remembered her, strands of white hair escaping from her bun, her red, knotted old hands flung wide in welcome.

  “Well, well, and you are here. And what a delight to see you again after all these years.”

  He laid down his suitcase and went to embrace her. He had to bend almost double to receive her kiss and her frailness, her lack of substance, was unnerving. He felt that he should urge her indoors before she was caught up by a breath of wind and blown away. And yet she had pounced on his suitcase and had started to try to lug it indoors before he could stop her, and he had to forcibly wrest it from her grasp before she would let it go.

  “What do you think you’re doing? I’ll carry that.”

  “Well, let’s get in, away from the cold.”

  She led the way back up the steps and into the house, and he followed her and she closed the big doors carefully behind her. He walked into the big hall and was assailed by a smell made up of peat smoke and pipe smoke and floor polish and leather. Blindfolded, or drunk, or dying, he would have known by that smell that he was back at Benchoile.

  “And did you have a good journey? What a surprise when Roddy
told me this morning that you were coming. I thought you were away with all those Arabs.”

  “Where’s Roddy?”

  “He and Mr. Dobbs have gone to Wick. But he’ll be back this evening.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “He seems to be bearing up very well. It was a terrible thing your uncle dying, and such a shock to us all…” She had begun to lead the way upstairs, very slowly, one hand on the bannister. “… but I had a premonition. When he did not come in for his lunch, I was certain that something had happened. As, indeed, it had.”

  “Perhaps it was a good way for him to go.”

  “Yes, yes, you are right. Out on a walk, with his dogs. Enjoying himself. But it is a terrible thing for the folk who are left behind.”

  She had reached the turn of the stair. She paused, to sigh, to draw fresh breath for the next flight. John shifted his suitcase from one hand to the other. They went on up.

  “And now you have come to Benchoile. We wondered, Jess and I, what would happen with the colonel dying so suddenly, but it didn’t seem very fitting to start enquiring. So when Roddy came to tell me this morning, you can imagine my delight. ‘Why,’ I said to him, ‘that is the right person for Benchoile. Charlie’s boy! There was never anybody like Charlie.’”

  He did not want to continue this line of conversation. He changed the subject firmly. “And how about yourself, Ellen? How have you been keeping?”

  “I am not getting any younger, but I manage to keep busy.”

  Knowing the size of the house, he wondered how she would manage to do anything else. They had now, at last, reached the landing. John wondered where he was sleeping. He had a ghastly suspicion that Ellen might have put him in his uncle’s bedroom; it was just the sort of horror she would be capable of springing on him, and he was thankful when she led him towards the best spare bedroom where, before, his father had stayed. She opened the door to a flood of sunlight and a gust of cold, fresh air. “Oh,” said Ellen, and went to close the windows, and John, following her into the room, saw the high, wide beds with their white starched cotton covers, the dressing table with the curly framed mirror, the velvet-covered chaise longue. Even the blast of fresh air could not dispel the smell of polish and carbolic. Ellen, it was obvious, had been busy.

  “You won’t find anything changed.” Having closed the windows Ellen pottered about, straightening a starched linen mat, opening the immense wardrobe to check on coat hangers, and letting out a wave of camphor. John laid down his suitcase on the luggage rack at the foot of one of the beds, and went to the window. The sun was beginning to slip out of the sky and a rosy flush stained the hilltops. The mown grass of the lawn spread as far as a shrubbery, and beyond this to a copse of silver birch, and as he stood there, two figures appeared through these trees, making their way slowly towards the house. A girl, and a little boy. Behind them, looking more exhausted than they, an old black Labrador. “And the bathroom’s just through that door. I’ve put clean towels out, and…”

  “Ellen. Who’s that?”

  Ellen joined him at the window, peering with her old eyes.

  “That is Mrs. Dobbs and her little boy Thomas. The family is staying with Roddy.”

  They had emerged from the trees and were now out in the open. The child, tagging behind his mother, suddenly spied the water, and began to make for the loch’s edge. The girl hesitated, and then resignedly, followed him.

  “I thought that you and she could have tea together in the library, and Thomas can have his tea with me.” She went on, tempting him, “There’s a batch of scones in the oven and heather honey on the tray.” When John neither spoke, nor turned from the window, Ellen was a little putout. After all, she had opened the heather honey especially for him. “I’ve put towels on the rail, so that you can wash your hands,” she reminded him, with some asperity.

  “Yes. Sure.” He sounded abstracted. Ellen left him. He heard her slow descent of the staircase. The girl and the child seemed to be having a small argument. Finally, she stooped and picked him up and started to carry him up towards the house.

  John left the window and went out of the room and downstairs, and out of the front door. They saw him at once, and the girl, perhaps startled by his sudden appearance, stood still. He crossed the gravel and started down the slope of the lawn. He could not tell the exact moment of her recognition. He only knew that he had recognized her instantly, as soon as she appeared through the trees.

  She wore jeans and a brilliant green sweater with suede patches on the shoulders. Her face, and the child’s face, so close, observed his approach. The two pairs of wide blue eyes were ridiculously alike. There were freckles on her nose that had not been there before.

  Mrs. Dobbs. With, doubtless, the child who had been making such a hullaballoo the night John drove her home. Mrs. Dobbs.

  He said, “Hello, Victoria.”

  She said, “Hello.”

  * * *

  Now, there were four of them around the dinner table, and the empty chair at its head was no longer empty.

  Victoria wore a caftan of soft blue wool, the neck and the edges of the sleeves threaded with gold. She had, for the evening, put up her hair, but the arrangement seemed to John Dunbeath to have been ineptly contrived. It trailed one or two pale strands of hair, and served, instead of making her look sophisticated, only to enhance her air of extreme youth. The exposed back of her long neck seemed, all at once, as vulnerable as a child’s. Her eyes were darkened, her beautiful mouth very pale. The shutaway, secret expression was still there. For some reason, this pleased John. It came with some satisfaction to realize that if he had not been able to break down the barrier, then neither had Oliver Dobbs.

  “They’re not married,” Roddy had told him over a drink before dinner, when they were waiting for the Dobbses to appear. “Don’t ask me why. She seems a charming little thing.”

  Charming, and reserved. Perhaps in bed, in love, those defenses came down. His eyes moved from Victoria to Oliver, and he was annoyed to discover that from these pretty images his instincts shied like a nervous horse. Firmly, he brought his attention back to what Roddy was saying.

  “… the great thing is to keep investing capital in the land. Not only money, but resources and time. The aim is to make one good blade of grass grow where nothing grew before; to keep up employment for the local people; to stop the endless drift of the country population to the big cities.”

  This was Roddy Dunbeath, revealing a totally unexpected side to his character. Victoria, helping herself to an orange from the bowl in the middle of the table, wondered how many people had heard him expound thus on a subject that was obviously close to his heart. For he spoke with the authority of a man who had lived in Scotland all his life, who recognized its problems, and was prepared to argue to the hilt against any easy solution that he believed to be inadequate or impractical. People seemed to lie at the root of it all. Everything came back to people. Without people there could be no sort of community. Without communities there could be no sort of future, no sort of life.

  “How about forestry?” asked John Dunbeath.

  “It depends how you go about it. James Dochart, who farms Glen Tolsta, planted a stretch of hill with woodland, maybe four hundred acres…”

  She began to peel the orange. He had been at Benchoile for about five hours. She had had five hours in which to get over the shock of his sudden appearance, but she still felt bewildered. That the young American she had met in London, and John Dunbeath, nephew to Roddy and only son of Ellen’s beloved Charlie, should be one and the same person, still seemed impossible, unacceptable.

  He sat now, at the end of the softly candle-lit table, relaxed and attentive, his eyes on Roddy, his expression somber. He wore a dark suit and a very white shirt. His hand, on the table, slowly turned his glass of port. The candlelight gleamed on the heavy gold of his signet ring.

  “… but he did it in a way that meant those four hundred acres still support some cows and four h
undred sheep, and his lambing has improved. But forestry, the way the state goes about it, is no answer to the hill-farmer’s problem. A solid mass of stitka spruce, and you’re left with a three percent return on capital and another shepherd out of a job.”

  Mrs. Dobbs. She wondered if Roddy had told him that she wasn’t married to Oliver, or whether he had guessed this for himself. Either way, he seemed to take it for granted that Thomas was her child. She told herself that this was a good thing. She and Oliver had come beyond justifications and explanations. This was the way she wanted it to be. She had wanted to belong to somebody, to be needed, and now she belonged to Oliver and she was needed by Tom. She began to break the orange into segments. Juice dripped over her fingers, and onto the delicately trellised Meissen plate.

  “How about the tourist industry?” John was asking. “Highlands and Islands.”

  “Tourism is very tempting, very nice, but it’s also dangerous. There is nothing more dismal than a community depending on tourists. You can convert holiday cottages, you can build log-cabin chalets, you can even open your house to summer visitors, but given one bad summer and the wet and the cold frighten the ordinary family man away. All right, if he’s a fisherman or a hill walker or a bird watcher, he probably won’t object to a bit of rain. But a woman with three children, trapped in a small cottage for a long, wet fortnight, is going to insist on being taken to Torremolinos next summer. No, any population must have jobs for men, and it’s their jobs that are being lost.”

  Oliver sighed. He had had two glasses of port and he was becoming sleepy. He listened to the conversation, not because it was of much interest to him, but because he found himself fascinated by John Dunbeath. The epitome, one would have thought, of the quiet, well-bred, Down-Easter, with his Brooks Brothers shirt, and elusive mid-Atlantic accent. As he talked, Oliver observed him covertly. What made him tick? What were the motivations behind that polite, reserved facade? And what—most intriguing of all—did he think about Victoria?