The Boggart Fights Back

  “It’s that nasty man again!” the Boggart said, and instantly he became a fly and dived at William Trout’s head, landing an inch or two from the green forage cap. He gave a little hop.

  Mr. Trout swatted irritably at his head, and knocked off his cap.

  “And what about the castle?” a reporter called out.

  Jay said quietly to Allie, “And what about the seals?”

  Mr. Trout said, “We are negotiating to buy Castle Keep, and we’re renting it in the meantime.” He reached up and ran his hand protectively over his gleaming head.

  “Do you have full permission from the government?”

  “Castle Keep is privately owned,” said Mr. Trout. “For the resort, we’ve had great support from the council. I’m putting millions of pounds into this modern miracle, millions. Think what that does to the tax base! And six hundred jobs will be created!”

  The Boggart dive-bombed his head again, touching down, bouncing up again, three times. Mr. Trout swatted at him furiously.

  “Michael!” he hissed to a Trout underling. “Get rid of this fly!”

  “What fly?” said the underling.

  “Mr. Trout!” said Granda loudly. “Can ye tell us how you’d stop a mammoth resort like this from polluting the loch and destroying the whole countryside? There’s a major breeding ground for the grey seals not two hundred yards from the castle—have ye thought of that?”

  Mr. Trout looked at him with recognition and dislike. “It’s going to be environmentally perfect,” he said. “I’ve built resorts all over the world, and I’ve had many, many environmental awards.”

  Granda said, “On this model of yours, is that a bridge going to Castle Keep?”

  There was a stir in the crowd, as heads craned to peer at the model.

  “A causeway,” Mr. Trout said. “A stone causeway. There are causeways in many, many Scottish lochs, as I’m sure you know. For travel from the mainland. It’s traditional, very traditional. We’ve done research. And of course all our hotel guests and condominium owners will need easy access to this beautiful castle.”

  Granda said, “Traditionally, castles were built on islands just tae stop anyone gettin’ there from the mainland.”

  “This is part of the second stage of our plan, so nothing is yet cast in stone,” Mr. Trout said. He gave a slightly strained smile. “Ha-ha,” he added.

  Nobody laughed.

  A grey-haired woman reporter raised her hand, and Mr. Trout pointed at her in relief, though the relief did not last.

  “What else do you propose to do to the castle?” the reporter demanded. “Are you making changes? Are you turning it into a hotel?”

  “The castle and all other parts of stage two are still under consideration,” Mr. Trout said curtly. He pointed at the model. “And our hotel is on the shore of the loch, as you can plainly see.”

  “How many rooms in the hotel, Mr. Trout?” called out a bearded young man with a microphone.

  “Two hundred,” said Mr. Trout proudly. “It’s a luxury boutique hotel.”

  “Do you not think we have more than enough rooms in our existing hotels on this coast? They’re very good.”

  “I’m sure they are,” said William Trout. He smiled. “But last time I checked, none of them was a five-star hotel. All my hotels have a five-star rating.”

  “So you’re catering to the very rich?” persisted the bearded young man.

  “And bringing them to spend their money in Scotland,” Mr. Trout said. “Anything wrong with that?”

  “Yes!” whispered Allie in Jay’s ear. “They’ll roar around on jet-skis, and they’ll scare away the seals!”

  “Yes! And what about Granda’s store?”

  The bearded young man called out, “Mr. Trout, figures at your other resorts show that your rich visitors spend most of their money inside the resort. Is that not totally alien to the culture of farms and small villages in this area?”

  William Trout looked out at the small crowd around him and smiled. “Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a paid agitator among us,” he said.

  “I’m frae Channel Six News!” said the young man.

  Trout ignored him. “Who else has a question?” he said.

  Granda said very loudly indeed, “Mr. Trout, have ye not noticed that your architect’s plan covers a home and an acre of land that ye dinna own?”

  “In my long career in business, I’ve found that everything is negotiable,” Mr. Trout said smoothly. “And Mr. Cameron, you are speaking now as a private person, and interrupting a press conference.”

  “I’m a member of the press but also a storekeeper,” Granda said, “and my store’s bang in the middle o’ that ridiculous model of yours, and ye’ll not have it!”

  His voice rose angrily, and outside the enclosure Allie, to her surprise, heard herself call out, “That’s right!”

  Jay clutched her arm in support. He shouted, “No! You can’t have it!”

  Mr. Trout lost his temper. His broad face was suddenly red, and he thumped the fist of one hand into the palm of the other. “People will come here for the work of a brilliant world-famous architect! If that ramshackle store stays where it is, I’ll take care our visitors don’t have to look at it!”

  “I don’t want a great fancy hotel on my doorstep!” Granda roared. “And the folk here don’t want you monkeying with Castle Keep!”

  A great buzz of conversation began among the journalists, and some of them began to move toward Granda.

  The Boggart called silently to Nessie, “He’s family with our young ones! And the uncouth man is an invader! It’s a battle!”

  They had both seen so many battles in Scotland, over the centuries, against invaders, between clans. And they had always taken sides.

  “Aye,” said Nessie. “And that enemy castle has to be kept out!”

  William Trout said into the microphone, “Well, ladies and gentlemen, come study the model. We’ll switch now to individual interviews with those of us up here. For any of you.” He turned and pointed deliberately at Granda. “Not you!” he said.

  Granda looked at him, expressionless.

  Trout turned back and spread his arms to his audience. “Come up here and talk to us. And if you want follow-up, I’ll be back in a few days in my yacht, the Trout Queen. Now that’s a sight to see too!”

  His face tight and determined, Granda walked out past the two little gatehouses, ignoring friends and journalists trying to ask him questions, and the Boggart and Nessie wafted invisible after him.

  A television cameraman near Jay and Allie, on the other side of the yellow ribbon, turned and pointed his camera at their faces, and the reporter beside him thrust a microphone toward them. Her long blond hair was draped round a gentle face, but there was a steely glint in her eye. “And who are you two?” she said.

  “That’s our grandfather!” Jay said. “He’s a writer, and he’s the one who took that famous picture of the Loch Ness Monster!”

  “And that’s his store!” said Allie, pointing.

  The reporter blinked as she heard their accents. She said eagerly into her microphone, “And you’re here from America to defend him against the Trout development?”

  “Canada,” they both said instantly, which seemed to please her even more.

  But two large men wearing the black Trout Corporation jackets had appeared on either side of the twins. They had very short hair and very thick necks, and the quiet confidence of wrestlers.

  “Sorry, kids,” said one. “I must ask you to move away from the press conference.”

  “We’re doing an individual interview,” said the reporter indignantly. “Just like the man said!”

  “Not with these two,” said the second man, towering over her ominously. Like the first, he sounded American. He thrust out a massive hand at the cameraman. “And get that camera out of my face!”

  The cameraman darted sideways and turned his lens on the large yellow T on the man’s back.

  “Ve
ry nice, Roger,” said the reporter. She pulled out her cell phone, and her fingers began flying.

  Allie and Jay ducked away, ignoring other hopeful questioners, to follow Granda back to the store. Still busily making notes, the blond reporter called after them, “Tell your grandad to get a lawyer!”

  * * *

  Granda said he already had a lawyer: a friend in Aberdeen, named Hamish, whom he had known since they were both at St. Andrew’s University a very long time ago. “He came to stay for a weekend, a year or two ago. Portia was impressed.”

  “A nice down-to-earth man,” Portia said. “And a very distinguished lawyer.” She had watched the press conference from a distance, and when they all came back she had firmly locked the door of the store. Now she was making cheese-and-tomato sandwiches for lunch, ignoring the sequence of hopeful jingling sounds from the store’s door.

  The Boggart and Nessie had flittered in with Granda, but she didn’t know that.

  Granda was sitting at the table in his favorite carved wooden chair, looking rather like an angry king on a throne. “I rang Hamish yesterday,” he said. “He says that Trout can’t touch the store or the land, if I don’t want to sell. Not unless he gets something called a compulsory purchase order from the local council, which he won’t.”

  “Are you sure?” said Allie nervously.

  “Well, if he did, Hamish would appeal to the government, and Trout would have to stop his whole scheme for months. Aargh!” said Granda crossly, and added something in Gaelic, just to relieve his feelings.

  “What did that mean?” Portia said.

  “I’m not going to tell you,” said Granda.

  Jay said, “I really wish Dad had taught us the Gaelic. I do know one of those words you said. It meant—”

  “Hush!” said Granda.

  “Have some strengthening lunch, and a few of the evil treats your grandfather sells to young tourists,” Portia said. She put a platter of cheese-and-tomato sandwiches in the middle of the table, and added several packages of potato crisps.

  “Cheese!” breathed the Boggart to Nessie, as they floated overhead. His long invisible fingers reached down and extracted a sturdy slice of Cheddar cheese from the nearest sandwich. It disappeared in the instant that he touched it, but the top slice of bread wobbled a little.

  Jay grabbed a sandwich. “But the lawyer can’t stop them building the hotel?”

  “No,” Granda said. “Because the really bad news from this famous press conference is that clearly they’ve bought all the land next to me. It must be Trout who’s bought Johnnie Robertson’s land, that big farm along the shore. Johnnie hasn’t been telling anybody who he sold it to, and now I understand why.” He reached for a sandwich, bit into it hungrily and then surveyed it, chewing. “You forgot the cheese in this one, Portia,” he said.

  “I did?” said Portia. She stared at the sandwich, puzzled.

  Allie said, “If he’s got the land next to you, he can build the hotel, and everything else in that terrible model! And he’s going to do awful things to the castle! This whole lovely place will be ruined!” Her voice quivered, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes.

  Jay glanced at her with sympathy, as he helped himself to a bag of potato crisps. He felt just the same, even if he was less likely to pour it out in words. And the Boggart, feeling distress from both of them, forgot all about cheese. Though boggarts live only for themselves, though they have no care for the problems of most human beings, the impulse to help these people to whom he felt a mysterious connection washed over him like a rising tide.

  He whirled invisibly round Nessie, so that Allie felt a breeze pass her head and put up a puzzled hand to her hair.

  “Back to the castle, cuz!” he called. “We have to guard it, to keep the enemy away!”

  SIX

  After breakfast next morning, Granda was about to lead Jay and Allie up the hill behind the store, to photograph the reality of the view reproduced in William Trout’s model, when the telephone rang.

  He picked it up, and almost at once switched it to speakerphone, with his eyes on the twins. It was their father, Tom.

  “Dad, what’s happening?” demanded the voice out of the phone. “You were all over the local TV last night! And a shot of the twins, yelling, at that press conference. William Trout? The American developer? In Appin?”

  “He’s bought the Robertsons’ farm,” Granda said. “Nobody knew till it was too late.”

  “And he wants to build a Trout resort hotel? Right here on our doorstep? And he’s buying Castle Keep?” Tom’s voice rose even higher in disbelief.

  “Looks like it,” Granda said grimly. “Big business in action. I’ve been slow, but it has to be stopped. We have perfectly good hotels of our own—we don’t need his. And as for the castle, don’t get me started.”

  “Good,” said Tom. “I’m coming back to help. Tonight.”

  Allie and Jay both cheered loudly, and they heard him laugh.

  “But you’re working,” Granda said. “You have meetings. You crossed the Atlantic for them.”

  “This is more important,” Tom Cameron said, and both twins recognized the note in his voice that showed there was no point at all in arguing. He also sounded more Scottish than usual.

  So as their father went away to begin his drive back from Edinburgh to Appin, Jay and Allie and Granda climbed the steep grassy slope behind the store and took pictures of Castle Keep on its small green island, and the beautiful, still-untouched coast of Loch Linnhe. Above them rose the tree-capped summit of the hill. Granda gazed up at it.

  “Up there, that’s Johnnie’s land, but he used to graze his sheep on my field,” he said. “Do you remember? He had lambs last time you were here. Jay fed one from a bottle.”

  Allie said crossly, “I remember that, because I was a little wimp and wouldn’t do it. Fancy being scared of a lamb.”

  “Well, it was butting at you. It was hungry,” Jay said. Then he paused, looking up at the trees. “Granda, what are those?”

  “What?” said Granda, squinting.

  “On the trees. Stuff tied round the trunks.”

  They climbed higher, and found a plastic orange ribbon tied neatly round every tree at the outer edge. The trees were large, beautiful pines, wrapping the hilltop like a shawl.

  “At home, those ribbons would be markers to show people where to start cutting trees down,” Jay said.

  Granda said, “That’s what it means here, too.” He added something forceful in Gaelic, and this time nobody asked when it meant.

  Allie said, “It’s for his resort.”

  Jay said, “There were buildings on the hills, in his model.”

  “Well, of course,” Granda said bitterly. “Just look at the view!”

  “So they’re already marking the trees to be cut down.”

  Jay looked at Allie, and Allie looked at Jay. Even though they were not identical twins, sometimes they thought as one. Each of them moved to a tree and carefully removed an orange marker.

  Allie said, “If the trees aren’t marked, nobody will know to cut them down. Right, Granda?”

  “That’s an excellent thought,” Granda said. “It won’t stop them for long, but it’s worth a try. There’s a bylaw here about littering—we’re just clearing up the litter.”

  And together they began stripping the tree trunks and making a large collection of orange ribbons, which eventually found its way into the damp, smelly bag of rubbish at the bottom of the dustbin of the Port Appin General Store.

  * * *

  Tom Cameron drove into the parking lot that evening; the twins saw him from the kitchen and went running out to the car. After some enthusiastic hugs, their father pulled his suitcase out of the trunk with a determined gleam in his eye.

  “Okay,” he said. “Family into action. All the way from Edinburgh I’ve been thinking about this nightmare. A huge hotel, blocks of flats, a new sewage plant, hundreds of people and cars and delivery trucks, so many streetligh
ts you’ll never see the stars at night. The castle turned into a tacky theme park. No more seals—”

  Jay said, “We haven’t told Mom about the castle yet.”

  “Tell her!” said Tom. “Tell everybody! We’ve got to stop him!”

  Allie said, “Was it really all right for you to leave your conference? You were looking forward to it.”

  “Sure it was,” said her father. “I saw the people I wanted to see, I gave my paper last night and they liked it. Everything else I can do at a distance.” He grinned at them. “Distance is what my job is about—you know that. Where’s Granda?”

  Tom Cameron was an astrophysicist at the University of Toronto, and the twins did know that he and his graduate students spent their time trying to trace the formation of distant galaxies, though it was nearly always impossible to understand anything they talked about.

  “Granda’s on the phone,” Jay said. “Drumming up support.”

  “Good. Let’s go give him some.”

  And Jay and Allie fell asleep that night to the continuing rumble from the kitchen of the voices of their father and grandfather, planning and discussing a campaign of meetings and letters, e-mails and petitions, to enlist everyone from local Appin neighbors to longtime friends of Granda’s in the Scottish government. The voices rose and fell like gusting wind, and as sleep swallowed them up, each twin tried not to remember the orange ribbons of the Trout Corporation tied around the hilltop trees, and the chance that it might now be too late for any plans at all.

  * * *

  But it was indeed too late. Next morning, before they started breakfast, there was a deep rumbling sound out over the silent loch, and into the parking lot drove one of the Trout Corporation buses they had seen at the press conference, closely followed by an enormous truck carrying a bright yellow bulldozer and a small crane.