Newhame – Chapter 19

Tim Leary wanted answers.

He’d put aside his curiosity all day, had kept himself busy in the pub making little repairs and improvements he’d put off forever; with all this time on his hands he knew he needed to keep busy, or go mad.

But since that morning when the glaziers had arrived unannounced, and he learnt of his secret benefactor, he’d been consumed by curiosity as to what possible motive this Arnott character could have for paying for his fecking front window.

In the end he needed to talk to your man Arnott in person. So he called the hotel in North Berwick where somebody had told him the American was staying. They told him Mr Arnott was out for the evening. Out where, Tim had asked them. They were not at liberty to divulge that information. So that was that, then.

So the first the star that night found Tim standing in the doorway of the Silver Darlings, pondering his next move, when two females stopped in front of the pub.

Now this had been happening all day: a stream of people, delegates to the Witches of Lothian Conference, some strangers, some Tim recognized from previous years, had stopped by the pub. Tim had spent the better part of the day explaining why the pub was closed to people he was gratified to see were disappointed. True, he was gnashing his teeth at the thought of the lost revenue the conference always brought in, but it was nice to know the nightly session in the Silver Darlings was considered a high point by regular delegates.

But these two ladies Tim was especially sorry to disappoint. They were Irish themselves, and as first-time delegates had been told about the Silver Darlings and it’s traditional Irish landlord. Tim was just going to invite them in for a wee dram on the house, when one mentioned a knees-up at the “gypsy camp”.

“What gypsy camp would that be now?” asked Tim, puzzled. “I don’t know of any ’round these parts at the minute, and anyway, they’re not the kind of places nice girls like you would want to visit at the best of times.”

The older of the two women, Sally was her name, told him, “Oh, it’s what they’re calling the campsite where a lot of the ‘non-academics’ are staying. You know, the druids, wiccans and that lot.”

“They say the craic is brilliant – music in the dunes, dancing on the sands – ” began the younger woman, Maeve.

“- fornication in the waves,” cackled Sally, completing the list of attractions.

Tim joined the laughter, but didn’t miss the look Sally gave him as she made her little joke. Come hither was in her clear green eyes, and Tim was never shy about going thither after such a clear invitation.

When they finally started the long walk out to the camp, Tim had persuaded them to accept some of his hospitality, so their journey was a merry one. It turned out that, like many another academic, they were staying at the Chalet Park. The campground was part of the same complex and hid behind a barrier of dunes that separated it from the sea.

They heard the music and laughter from the campground before it came into sight, and young Maeve went twirling down the road ahead of Sally and Tim, who brushed arms as they walked close together in the gloaming.

“She’s such a young thing, you forget sometimes,” sighed Sally, watching her junior colleague skipping ahead in her cups.

“You should talk, you’re just a pup your own self,” said Tim with a smile in his voice.

“Flatterer,” scoffed Sally coyly, bumping him with her shoulder. She brushed the hair from her face. “Low light and strong drink can take years off a woman in a man’s eyes.”

“Well, none of us are spring chickens any more,” agreed Tim. “Except maybe her.”

“A spring chicken is not always such a fine thing to be,” said Sally with a laugh. “Sometimes it’s all you can do to survive until the summer. Spring chickens tend to end up in the pot unless you’re careful. I intend to be a tough old bird for a very long time.”

“Here’s to tough old birds,” said Tim, raising an imaginary glass.

Sally leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, then linked arms with him as they walked. Tim smiled in the encroaching gloom. He liked forward women.

Fiddle music, laughter, a rhythm of drums. Voices rising in a cheer. A sleek luxury car sat parked on the verge where a rough track led off the tarmac into low grassy dunes. Maeve, a spirit of wild abandon taking her, raced ahead to where a crackling glow shone through a break in the dunes – a gateway to the sea framed with sea buckthorn, olive-leaved and decked with orange berries. Now the sound of waves on the shore could be heard as a low bass note under the other sounds.

“So, the campground is on the beach?” asked Sally. “That doesn’t sound very sensible.”

“No,” explained Tim. He stopped and pointed. “The campground’s up the road there. You can’t see it properly because there’s a hedge in the way. But it sounds like the party’s moved from the camp down onto the beach. Quite sensible, really, if you think about it. Some of the old pagans need their sleep, after all.”

“You’re horrible, so you are,” grinned Sally, nudging him with her elbow.

“Sure, I’m an awful man,” agreed Tim. He suddenly pulled her against him and kissed her, a proper kiss, none of your cheek-pecking business. And Sally kissed him back, willingly and hotly. She put her arms around his neck. “Well, you’re a man anyway, I’m not so sure about the awful part,” she said, locking eyes with him, still grinning.

Tim only smiled in reply. He took her arms from his neck, held her hand and led her down the path to the dunes. “I’m glad you stopped by the pub,” he said. “We can go back later and I’ll show you the rest of it – my private quarters.”

“That might be interesting,” she said, squeezing his hand.

“Yes, many many items of interest to be seen – and handling of said items of interest is encouraged.”

“You are awful!” Sally laughed, slapping him on the arm. “Are you saying you’re nothing but an old museum specimen now?”

“One of those living museums,” he retorted. “A throwback to a simpler time. A real caveman, me.”

Sally fluffed up her short hair. “I’m not sure there’s enough here to be dragging me along the ground by. Not that I’d let you, mind – atavistic mating habits will only get you so far with the modern girl, I’m afraid.”
Mating habits – Tim liked the turn of the conversation. And the fact that she brought up the subject herself. Sometimes he wondered if he still had it, and at other times – like tonight – there was no doubt that there was life in the old dog yet.

They pushed through the gap in the shrubbery, their bodies rubbing hard against each other, perforce, and emerged onto the beach to a scene of bacchanalian merriment that even startled Tim, who’d been to one or two conference parties in the past.

There was a fire, all right – a bonfire, in fact. Someone must have collected every stick of driftwood between North Berwick and Dunbar, by the looks of it. Massive logs were piled in the middle, and others were waiting to be put on the blaze – some would have to be winched by crane, by the size of them.

The crowd was a curious mix of the wild and the simply casual. From past experience, Tim could tell the academics dressed down – or not as they sense of dress dictated. Tim spotted a regular, a learned Oxford professor, in a full 3-piece tweed suit, with bow tie and gold watch chain dangling from his waistcoat pocket. Most others were in jeans and t-shirts and jumpers.

But the real pagans, the hangers-on who showed up uninvited every year, the ones who off their own bat had turned what years ago had originally promised to be yet another staid academic conference in an unusual setting into a totally unique mix of erudition and full-on pagan celebration – they were the majority here, and dressed in such a multiplicity of styles it would take a whole chapter to try and catalogue them.

Of course, those were the ones who actually dressed. The naked dance around the bonfire to the uproarious beat of a dozen drums, and pair of fiddles and a battalion of penny-whistlers was what caught the attention of Sally and Tim as they stared, gob-smacked, at the scene.

“Holy jumping Jesus on a pogo stick,” muttered Sally under her breath.

“I couldn’t have put it better meself,” agreed Tim.

Where was Maeve? She was standing just outside the circle of dancers, pretending to listen to an older academic woman who was speaking to her earnestly about something – probably the running order of the conference events the next day – but Maeve had such a fierce, wild look in her eye as she watched the dancers, sweaty flesh glinting in the firelight, that Tim half expected her to fling offer her clothes herself and join the revelry.

Sally spoke into Tim’s ear. “I better go rescue Maeve from that witch so she can give in to her baser instincts, as she so obviously wants to do.”

“Witch?” said Tim. “She doesn’t look that bad – a little bit staid maybe – “

“No, she really is a Witch. One of that San Francisco lot that organize the conference. Quite nice, but as you say, a bit boring.”

“Ah now, that reminds me,” said Tim, narrowing his eyes, “you must help me get in contact with someone soon, during the conference I mean.”

“Sure, if I know them myself I mean,” said Sally. “Who would that be then?”

“A fellow from San Francisco. Jeffrey Arnott. Ever heard of him?”

Sally laughed out loud. “This is a wind-up, it must be. You might as well go to Rome and ask someone at the Vatican if they’d heard of the Pope.”

“He’s that big, is he?” asked Tim, a little wary now.

“Oh yes, he is that that big. I mean, he is that well known. Quite a respected scholar of the East Lothian witches and their trials. In addition to being a practicing Wiccan himself, High Priest of the coven that organizes this. Her High Priest, as a matter of fact,” she said, indicating the woman still trying to get Maeve’s attention, even as the younger woman was trying to move away.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he was here tonight, seeing his wife’s here,” Sally continued, eyes now moving through the crowd.

“Oh, that’s Isabella, isn’t it?” asked Tim. “She was in the pub a couple of weeks ago, on the very morning it was shut down. Where is she, by the way, I can’t spot her myself.”

Sally laughed again and shook her head in disbelief. Tim followed her pointing finger to the circle of naked dancers, and suddenly, like one of those optical illusions where a hidden pattern resolves itself with a shift of perspective, she was there – naked like the others, long blond hair unbound (dyed, definitely), now holding hands and stepping slowly, almost sedately – now dropping hands and spinning with the other dancers in the circle’s line of movement.

Sally tapped him on the shoulder. “I bet you’d like to see me out there,” she suggested half-jokingly, but Tim pulled his eyes away and scanned the dark crowd gathered round. Arnott might be here, a foot away, if Tim only knew who he was looking for.

“Hey, I’m talking to you, Sunshine!” She grabbed his collar and pulled his face around to hers. She spoke with her face close to his, only millimeters between their lips. “I asked if you wanted to see me dancing naked around the fire.”

Tim blinked. In an instant he knew this was more than poteen-fuelled lust. It wasn’t just Sally talking – an outgoing girl who liked a drop and a laugh and her share of the old rumpy-pumpy – it was like she’d become possessed by some spirit at large on the beach, a spirit conjured by the ritual of movement, music and the sea’s rolling basso profundo underlying it all.

“Sally, my dear, there’s nothing I’d like better, and I hope to God you hold … that … thought,” he said slowly and deliberately as he turned slowly from her. “I know this sounds mad, but I really need to see this Arnott character before we join the Wild Chase tonight. So if you think you could help me spot him … “

If Tim had been looking at Sally he’d have seen a frustrated anger grip her features, but it passed as quickly as it came. “Yeah, ‘course I will,” she muttered, and she sounded so defeated that Tim did turn back to her. She had a hand to her forehead and seemed to be swooning. He gripped her shoulder, and together they sat in the sand. “Hey, what’s the matter?” Tim asked softly. “You all right there, Sally?”

Maeve appeared, flinging herself on the beach beside them. “What’s up with her?” she asked no one in particular, her eyes still glued to the dance.

“I’m all right, I’m all right … really, I’m okay. Just the drink and … all this. I’ll be fine in a second.”

“Mmm. Did you see that Linda Parker, her from America, that was bending my ear over there?” Maeve looked around. “Jesus and Mary, here she comes again, ’scuse me folks.” With that she leapt up and pelted through the crowd. A second later, in the distance, Tim heard a wild laughter and feet splashing in the waves. Maeve must have made it to the safety of the dark foreshore.

That Linda Parker, her eyes peering out to sea in the direction where Maeve had trotted off, came up to where Sally and Tim sat in the sand. She looked down, a bottle of Sol in her hand.

“Sally?” said Linda, still peering. “Is that Sally Bloom?” She kneeled next to them. “And you’re – the bartender at the Silver Darlings, aren’t you?”

“Landlord,” Tim corrected her. “Subtle difference there, Missus.”

“I’m Linda,” she said, reaching her hand out to Tim, who reluctantly shook it.

Sally leaned against Tim, who put his arm around her protectively.

“Did you ever see the like? It gets worse every year. More and more of the non-academics, it’s a regular Woodstock, next they’ll set up giant stages and amplifiers.” Linda didn’t seem to notice that Sally wasn’t quite all there. She, like Maeve, had her eyes glued to the dancers. “‘Course, you and Maeve are newbies here, aren’t you? It’s a good year to come, a good programme. Jeff’s going to give the keynote tomorrow, some big plans for developing the conference in the future. Pity about her though.”

She lifted her chin at the dancing Isabella.

“I don’t know what he sees in her, I really don’t. You think he’d be mortified to be seen in the same place, but he follows her around like a little puppy sometimes. An odd couple … ” She trailed off, her attention wandering, sipping her beer. “Where did Maeve get off to, did you see?”

Tim thought quickly. “I think she went off with some man, didn’t see him myself.”

“Oh.” Another swig of beer.

“But listen Missus – “

“Linda, please.”

“Linda, did you say that Jeffrey Arnott fellow is here tonight?”

“Sure, right over there.” She gestured with the neck of the beer bottle.

Knowing he would regret this, he said, “Can you look after Sally for a minute, I need to talk to Mr Arnott.”

“What do you mean?” Sally and Linda asked simultaneously.

“Which one is he?” asked Tim, ignoring their protests.

“Who are you exactly?” asked Linda, perhaps regretting pointing out the leader of her coven to a stranger.

“Tim Leary.”

A blank look, then raised eyebrows. “Are you trying to be funny, buster?”

“The Silver Darlings?”

Something clicked behind Linda’s eyes. “Oh, yeah, the bartender.”

“Landlord!” said Tim, exasperated. Bloody Yanks, you’d think they’d have learned by now.

“Whatever,” said Linda. “Anyway, your call, I guess. That’s him, over there, sitting on the blanket. Young Latino beside him? They’re signing to each other.”

“Signing?”

“Sign language. Jeff’s has a hearing a speech impairment.”

“You man he’s deaf and dumb?”

Linda glared at him.

“Anyway, thanks Linda, I think I’ve spotted them now. Sally are you all right for a minute? I really have to talk to Mr Arnott about some urgent business.”

Pausing long enough to make eye contact with Sally, but not long enough to read the mixed emotions welling there, Tim circled the fire and until he approached a little group of three men sitting on a blanket on the sand, watching the dancers.

One of the men was tall and black, with a shaved head and a gold earring. Pirate, thought Tim for no logical reason. This man sat furthest away from the fire and deepest in the shadows of the almost full night now.

Two men closer to the fire: one small, lithe and dark, a Spaniard, thought Tim. Next to him was an obvious Anglo – pale, shock of ginger hair going white, soft and flabby looking. Someone’s been missing his morning jog, thought Tim, pausing before making his advance.

Without warning, Tim threw himself onto the sand by the blanket where the two men closest to the fire sat.

“Hi,” he said, extending his hand. “The name’s Leary – and you must be Mr Arnott.” He thrust his hand in the direction of the ginger-haired man.

There was a moment when the three men on the sand seemed in a state of shock. Then the black man behind rose to his feet – that’s all, just stood up – but carrying an aura of menace and threat that caused Tim to withdraw his hand and – although later he would never admit it, not even to himself – actually cower. But Jeffrey Arnott gently raised his hand in the air, first to make a subtle gesture for the benefit of his bodyguard, who lost his air of threat immediately and sank back into the sand almost indolently, and to extend it to Tim to shake. After a split second of indecision, Tim took Arnott’s hand. It was cool and dry, and the grip was firm and steady. Arnott made a series of movements with his hands. Adolpho, watching him, then said, “Mr Arnott asks that you call him Jeff, and that he’s pleased to meet you – you must be the landlord of he Silver Darlings.”

Tim was fascinated. He’d known Arnott was deaf and dumb – you couldn’t be around WOL conference delegates for as many years as he had without picking up that sort of basic information – but it hadn’t registered with him until now. Why should it, indeed? He hesitated, then spoke to Adolpho: “So, how does this work, then, do I talk to you or to him?”

Before Adolpho could answer, Arnott reached out and laid the tips of his fingers on Tim’s arm. Then he patted his chest with his other hand, smiling.

“Okay, that suits me. Well, really, two things – I wanted to thank you for paying for the window at my pub, and to ask you why you did it. I mean, we aren’t exactly bosom buddies, if you see what I mean.”

To Tim’s surprise, this caused a flurry of gestures to pass between Adolpho and Arnott, that went far beyond translating what Tim had asked. Besides, Tim had the impression that Arnott could read his lips and got the gist of what he was saying just fine – and now they were discussing the response. Hell, they almost seemed to be arguing about what to say. Arnott had a grim look on his face, Adolpho an almost pleading one.

In the background, the bodyguard sat, watchful, the reflection of the bonfire glinting in his eyes.

Tim hated not knowing the gist of the argument he had touched off. He kneeled and raised his hands in a gesture of peace.

“Now hold on just a minute, would you? I’ve only asked why you’ve helped me with me pub window – I’d not have it be a cause for the two of you to fall out. Let’s just say it was from the goodness of your hear and leave it at that.”

Adolpho and Arnott listened to this, then Arnott nudged Adolpho with his elbow. Adolpho looked away, angry it seemed to Tim. Arnott nudged him again.

Tim decided to come to his rescue. “Listen, Adolpho is it? I may have said something to offend you and if I have, will you accept my sincere apologies and my hand of friendship?” Once again he extended his hand to the young man.

Adolpho stared at him, looked at the hand extended to him, then seemed to compose himself. “Mr Leary,” he said in a soft voice, “You’ve only been the soul of courtesy and respect. You haven’t offended me in any way.” He gathered his thoughts, sighed, and continued.

“The reason Mr Arnott paid for your pub window is because he would like to acquire the Silver Darlings from you. He is prepared to make you a handsome offer, way above the market value.”

Time stood still for Tim. He thought that the liquor had finally caught up with him – he couldn’t believe he was hearing it. Then it dawned on him. It was all a joke – these two Yanks were pulling his leg. Tim grinned.

“You’ll not be fooling me as easily as all that,” he said with a wink. “Buy the Silver Darlings!” He barked out a harsh laugh. “Why, I’d rather sell me old Granny’s bones to a witch doctor – no offence, Mr Arnott, I’m sure … Well, it was nice meeting you boys, to be sure, but I’ve got a warm, willing woman waiting for me – at least I hope she’s still waiting …” His eyes started to wander away from them, when Adolpho gripped his arm firmly.

“Mr Leary. Mr Leary!” Tim looked the earnest, almost desperate-looking young man in the eyes, and his heart sank.

“My God, you’re not joking, are you?” he whispered.

“You don’t have to worry, Mr Leary. Mr Arnott would keep you on to manage the bar, at a very fair salary, so nobody’s suggesting that you give up he place altogether.”

“Never!” Tim rasped hoarsely.

Adolpho and Arnott exchanged glances. Adolpho’s voice took on a hard tone as he said, “I’m afraid you don’t have many options here, Mr Leary. You see …” he glanced questioningly at Arnott, who nodded grimly. “You see, the local authorities here were – tipped off – about things like insurance and licences. Mr Arnott has the ear of influential men here in East Lothian and Edinburgh, and I think you’re going to find it very difficult, if not impossible, to reopen the Darlings on your own.”

Arnott nudged Adolpho and spoke with his hands. Adolpho nodded and translated: “Mr Arnott says that he will buy the Silver Darlings, whatever happens – either from you or at public auction. It just depends on whether you want to get anything out of it or not. And of course, if you decline to sell, I’m afraid Mr Arnott’s offer of employment will be withdrawn.”

A red mist filled Tim’s vision, and he felt his hair standing on end. “Why you …” he shouted and launched himself at Adolpho.

Sally heard the shout and saw a tumble of bodies in the direction Tim had gone. Her head cleared in an instant as she jumped up and raced over the sand. People from all around were doing the same – the circle of dancers broke up, and the music and drumming came to an abrupt halt.

Sally could just make out Tim on top of somebody – it looked as if he had his hands on someone’s throat, and Jeff Arnott and a large black man grappling with him. Then a large body pushed her aside, and she recognised Isobella Arnott, not with a hazy gown wrapped quickly around her, rushing over to the fighting men.

“Get away – get away from my stuffs!” she was shouting, and seemed to be fighting with all four men at once. The arrival of this female tornado seemed to stun them all, Tim not least, and he loosened his grip enough to be tackled and held down by the bodyguard.

At that moment Maeve came running up. She had somehow managed to lose her trousers and her pants were sopping wet as well – she’d obviously decided to go for an evening paddle in the sea.

“What’s up?” she asked excitedly.

Then an extraordinary thing happened. As both women watched, a small object flew through the air from the tussling bodies and landed at Sally and Maeve’s feet.

Maeve snatched it up from the sand. “Looks like some kind of ju-ju bag,” she said, peering at it in the gloom.

Sally only half-noticed. A good part of her attention was focussed on the méllee surrounding Tim. Isobella was now in the thick of it, shouting, “Where is it? What has you done with my thing?”

Meanwhile, Maeve gently untied the thong that held the small leather bag shut. “Maeve,” said Sally cautiously, “Maybe you shouldn’t be opening that. I think it might belong to that woman over there, that Mrs Arnott.”

But it was too late. Maeve tipped the bag’s contents into her hand. What looked like a small animal’s bone, a glittering stone and a wodge of cotton wool. A faint chemical smell rose from the objects.

“Christ almighty, what’s that pong?” snorted Maeve. “It’s diabolical.” Fascinated, almost against her will, Sally’s full attention was now on the small packet of cotton wool as Maeve picked it apart with her long fingernails.

Nestled inside was a small figure, no larger than Maeve’s little fingernail, wrapped in what looked like grey hair. It seemed to be made of hessian, with small features drawn in biro on the head end. The chemical smell grew stronger as the thing emerged from its wrapping.

“Hey! Hey you, what you go there?”

Both Maeve and Sally looked up at the shout. Isabella was crouched amid a whirl of men still struggling, but she was glaring straight at the two Irishwomen.

Sally was startled when Maeve shouted back, “No, the man you want is over there!” With these words Maeve flung her hand out to her left, and Sally saw the leather bag, the bone, stone, little hessian figure and cotton wool ball fly out into the night, all on separate trajectories into the thicket of sea-buckthorn.

The little figure lodged in the fork of a top twig in the shrub – if its little drawn-on eyes could see, it would have had a grandstand view of Isabella charging Sally and Maeve, a shouting match that would have come to blows had Leo not stepped in at the last minute, Tim bellowing and fighting long after the battle was lost, and him eventually being led away by Sally back to her own room at the chalet park. Maeve, Isabella, Jeffrey, Leo, Adolpho, Linda, … and all the revellers and combatants soon drifted off, their night of debauchery interrupted and spoiled by the fighting and shouting … and as it was held aloft by a buckthorn twig, the last wafts of chemical scent drifted away, blown by the cleansing sea breeze.

#

… And in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Fiona opened her eyes.

Newhame – Chapter 18

By the time Hamish and Henry arrived at Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary, just about tea time it was, Cynthia had caught up with events, leaving the court case she was leading in the capable hands of one of her colleagues. The two men hesitated for a fraction of a second, both instinctively uneasy at the gathering of women in the private room Cynthia had arranged.

In the bed, connected to an I.V. drip and still sleeping – they were avoiding the word “unconscious” – lay Fiona, looking serene and young. Hamish had a jolt, remembering Elspeth. Around her sat her descendants – Cynthia and Lydia, Lydia sitting on the floor with her head in her mum’s lap. Opposite them, looking drawn and severe, sat Morag. She glanced up at the advent of the two men in the doorway, the arrival of unexpected guests, and her blank look transformed when she saw Henry. She didn’t smile – in fact, quite the opposite – her face crumpled into tears, as she immediately rose and threw her arms around his neck.

Startled but pleased, Henry embraced her sturdily as she buried her face against his neck and breathed a tearful sigh. “I missed you,” Morag whispered into Henry’s ear, and he felt hot tears on his own cheek. He held her more tightly.

In spite of the situation, Hamish couldn’t quite conceal his grin. He moved away from the two to where Cynthia and Lydia were watching the reunion with renewed interest. He sat on the one spare chair and put his hand on Cynthia’s shoulder. “How is she?” he asked, trying to wrench the moment back into its proper context.

Cynthia looked at him blankly, then turned her eyes back onto her Mum. “Well, she’s sleeping, can’t be woken, but nobody knows why. They’ve run a battery of tests, still waiting results, but on the face of it they haven’t got a clue.” Hamish studied her face. He considered himself a past expert on tense hospital situations, and he recognised worry, incomprehension, and, it had to be said, boredom. “How long have you been here like this?” he asked.

“What? Oh,” checking her watch, “Three hours. Christ is that the time?” She stroked Lydia’s hair. “What are we going to do about your tea, love?”

“I’m not hungry,” Lydia lied. Her stomach rumbled audibly, and despite everything her Mum smiled.

“The evidence does not support the witness’s allegation,” she said drily.

“Come on, then, let’s go find the canteen,” said Hamish authoritatively. “I think I can still find my way around these corridors. I’ve spent enough time here over the years.”

“Thanks, Hamish,” said Cynthia with a grateful smile, as Lydia rose, stretched,then leaned over to kiss her Nan’s forehead. Cynthia squeezed her hand as she passed to go out with Hamish.

“Right,” said Henry, “what happened, then?” He gently pulled Morag’s arms away, and the two st together opposite Cynthia. Morag seemed to have melted, her strength in the face of adversity willingly yielding to her unexpected emotion at seeing Henry. She leaned against him, took his arm and put it around her shoulder. Henry was slightly overwhelmed by this show of affection, but it seemed so right and natural, he was able to carry on as if this closeness was part of his normal life.

Cynthia hesitated, expecting Morag to begin the story with a recount of of the events of the Farmers’ Market meeting. When Morag half closed her eyes and snuggled more closely against Henry, she decided to speak.

“Mum took ill at her committee meeting this afternoon.”

“The Farmers’ Market?” asked Henry. Cynthia nodded, and he explained, “Jack Maggs called Hamish and filled him in. We came over as soon as we heard.”

“I’m surprised the jungle drums took so long to get the story out,” observed Cynthia wryly.

“We were out. Excommunicado. Jack left a message on Hamish’s machine.”

“I see,” said Cynthia. She opened her mouth to continue, when Morag straightened up abruptly and looked at Henry sharply. “So you’ve been staying with Hamish this past fortnight, have you?”

“Yes,” admitted Henry, embarrassed. “I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch sooner. I felt like I needed a retreat after the brawl in the pub.”

“Never mind,” said Morag, patting his arm. “It makes perfect sense to me. Anyway, what matters is Fiona.” She leaned forward and put her hand on top of Fiona’s, as if feeling for life. Afer a moment, she settled back again against Henry, who felt emboldened to reach up and stroke her hair as she spoke. “She just, I don’t know, collapsed during the meeting. I mean she couldn’t go on. I took her up and put her to bed.” Morag hesitated, decided to say nothing yet about her vision. She could tell Henry later, but she didn’t like to admit in front of Cynthia that she’d been touching her mother’s things, let along using her hair brush. “Then we called Dr Roebuck, he organised an ambulance, someone called Cynthia – “

“Jack Maggs,” Cynthia supplied the answer. She felt curiously detached from this narrative. After all, the crisis had been a fait accompli by the time she’d received the call. The most she’d contributed had been to ring the hospital and arrange for a private room for Fiona before the ambulance arrived. She sat there, admiring, grateful to, and jealous of Morag all at once. She’d held it together, and who could blame her now for letting go and leaning on the nearest masculine shoulder?

“I rode in with her, I mean Lydia and I rode in,” continued Morag.

Another stab of jealousy pierced Cynthia’s heart, but it was short-lived. Since Cynthia had arrived, Lydia had not left her side. She seemed to have regressed from 16 years old to about half that. Despite her jealousy, Cynthia felt moved to speak.

“I never said, Morag,” she began, then stopped, choked suddenly with emotion. Her mum, Mummy, laid there so helpless. Morag had been a good friend to them, to each one of them, in her own way. Cynthia’s eyes welled with tears for the first time that day. “You’ve done so much for us …”

“Ssssh, shush,” she said, cradling Cynthia’s head in her hand. “You’d have done the same for me.”

“It’s just that I’ve never seen her like this,” said Cynthia, through her sobs. “So helpless. And I feel so bloody useless…”

As she collapsed in tears, Henry squirmed uncomfortably in his chair, then stood. “I’ll just go find Hamish and Lydia, I think. Do you want something – a cup of tea maybe?”

“Two cups, please, Henry?” said Morag, looking at him with her own eyes shining with tears. Henry stepped over, leaned down and their lips met softly, briefly. He heart soaring, Henry said, “Be back in a few minutes,” and left the room, with a backward glare that caught Morag with her eyes closed, a sad smile on her face.

Out in the corridor, Henry took a deep breath. That had been unexpected. A pleasant surprise. Henry chuckled at his own reserve. “Fan-fucking-tastic, I’d say.”

A passing nurse gave him a strange look, and Henry grinned apologetically, then rushed to catch up with her. “Is there a cafeteria, or somewhere to get a cup of tea nearby?” he asked.

“Down the corridor, first left, down a flight, then follow the signs.”

Henry thanked her, then set off with only faint hopes of actually finding the canteen.

As Henry wandered down the corridor, past wards of elderly people in various states of distress, he wondered if hospital planners actually went out of their ways to make hospitals soul-less and unattractive. Strictly functional. No beauty; just when ailing folks might like a light visual touch, or the richness of natural wood and upholstered fittings, they were met with cheap wood veneer finishes, plastic chairs, straight lines and hard chrome. Henry shook his head. He kept coming back to the shabbiness. The Royal Infirmary was only a few years old, meant to be a state of the art facility, but it was already starting to look tatty around the edges. Cheap materials, said Henry to himself. Expensive technology, expensive doctors, but couldn’t they spend some money on making it look nice?

He slowed down at the open door to another private room. An elderly man was sitting in a hard plastic chair beside an equally elderly woman in a bed, surrounded by equipment and intravenous lines. The man’s face was withered with pain as the nurse appeared to be unhooking the woman from her life support. The woman was quite obviously dying – or dead – and the realisation gave Henry a shock that caused him to pause for a moment, staring. The nurse caught sight of him, have him an angry look, and shut the door firmly in his face.

Shit, thought Henry as he walked on. What a place to draw your last breath.

After that he walked more quickly, passing more wards filled with more suffering and despair, and shut off his senses as best he could. He soon found the corridor, the stairs door, and sure enough, signs directed him to the cafeteria that only took another five minutes to get to.

The canteen was fairly busy, it being tea-time and during visiting hours. There was a mixture of medical types and punters. After a moment Henry spotted Hamish and Lydia deep in conversation. He made his way over.

Hamish had a black coffee, Lydia a Caesar salad and a glass of apple juice, all pretty much untouched.

“Hey, guys,” said Henry as he sat down. He patted Lydia on the shoulder. “How you holding up, kid?”

Lydia managed a small, weak smile and a shrug. “Not great,” she confessed. Henry could see her point. Her eyes were red with dark circles underneath and her hair, usually so carefully brushed and looked after, was a mass of tangles. She ran her fingers through it unconsciously, twisting the ends, pushing it away from her face and letting it fall back again.

Hamish cleared his throat. “Lydia was just saying how Morag had been there when she came home, and pretty much took care of the whole thing until Cynthia met them at the hospital.”

“The doctors don’t know what’s wrong with her,” said Lydia, her voice trembling. “I mean, they say there’s nothing wrong. She just won’t wake up. They say it’s a non — a non-trauma coma.”

“Non-trauma-induced coma,” Hamish filled in the rest of the phrase. “Like Lydia said, she’s shut down for no apparent reason. All they can do is run tests, and wait.”

“They said we could talk to her if we like, she might be able to hear us,” said Lydia, “but we didn’t. We couldn’t think of anything to say.” The tears rolled down her cheeks now, and her voice broke. “Maybe if we talked to her more – maybe she’d wake up ….”

Hamish put his arm around the sobbing girl, and once again Henry squirmed. He hated himself at times like this, his uncharitable inclination to run away when people started blubbing. But curiously, he hadn’t felt like that when Morag had shed hot tears on his neck, and leaned on him for support. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Breathing deeply, the urge to run subsided as he conjured up the feeling of Morag’s body pressed against his. Calmly he said, “I’m gonna grab a coffee. You guys need anything?”

“Nah, you’re all right Henry,” said Hamish. Lydia just smiled weakly again and shook her head.

Henry negotiated the queue of medics and bought a cinammon bun and a rather anemic capuccino. Still, a hospital cappuccino was like Doctor Johnson’s dog, as far as Henry was concerned. The amazing thing was that it existed at all, never mind if it was actually any good.

When he got back to his seat, he neatly cut the bun in half and pushed his plate with half the bun over to Lydia. “Comfort food,” he explained as he dunked his half into his coffee and bit off the dripping pastry.

“Thanks,” said Lydia, taking the half bun and nibbling on it.

“So,” said Henry after a long silence, “What now? What do the doctors recommend? Does she stay here, or can she be looked after at home?”

“I expect they’ll want to keep her in for a while at least,” Hamish said. He started to launch into the expense of home care in case she she stayed in a vegetative come, but bit his tongue for Lydia’s sake. Best stay hopeful at this point. “I doubt this will last. I mean, there’s not anything wrong with her, right? So there’s no reason to think she won’t wake up soon.”

Henry caught a significant look from Hamish. “Yes, of course, it’s probably just like exhaustion or something.”

“Nan hasn’t been sleeping well,” confirmed Lydia, gasping at straws. “She’s been looking awfully tired and worried lately.”

“I expect it’s all just caught up with her,” continued Hamish. “Us oldies, ken, we come down with these mysterious illnesses from time to time. It’s only age. You just have to accept you can’t keep up the pace. Your Nan isn’t the kind of person to slow down voluntarily, so her body has said, ‘enough is enough’, and taken a wee holiday.

Lydia sighed, “I hope that’s all it is.” She thought for a moment. “But old folks don’t go dropping into comas all the time, do they? No … it’s more than that. Something must have happened.” She averted her eyes. “I know it sounds daft, but ….” She stopped.

“What?” asked Henry.

“No, never mind.”

“Tell us what you’re thinking, lass,” said Hamish, with a curious soft command in his voice.

Lydia caught the tone, and it steadied her. She looked calmly from one man to the other as she said, “I think someone has cast a spell on my Nan.”

Newhame – Chapter 17

Insomnia makes for difficult days – so mused Fiona Blyth as she struggled to stay alert during the planning meeting for the upcoming Newhame Farmer’s Market.

Chairperson of the planning committee, Fiona had called the meeting because this Sunday’s Market coincided with the final day of the “Witches of Lothian” Conference. She usually organised the market herself with mutually agreed independence from the committee; but she had convened this meeting to make sure nothing had been overlooked in light of the anticipated large numbers of strangers looking for evidence of the superiority of locally produced food and crafts.

But her mind was wandering, and her eyes were following the shifting leaves of a poplar outside the window of the Manse’s 1st floor drawing room. Just starting to tinge with Autumn colours, the poplar leaves twisted and trembled in the day’s light breeze. Silver – green – silver again, like a shoal of herring in the air ….

“Fiona? Are you listening?” Jack Maggs’s gruff voice cut through her reverie. “Agnes said she’d set up a marquee for teas and cakes.” Agnes Samson ran the Tuppeny-Hapenny Tea Room, and normally didn’t participate in the Market.

Agnes cleared her throat, pinning Fiona with a beady eye. “With the numbers we’re talking about, it’s best to make an effort outside,” she said primly. “I won’t be having that lot inside my tearoom all at once. It would be pandaemonium.”

Fiona returned her gaze blankly.

“But what about the baker stall?” cut in Roger Hanson, the baker. “I’ve always supplied the cakes and pastries for the Market. And the teas,” he finished, glaring at Agnes, who haughtily refused to return his look. “She’s not even part of the committee, I don’t know why she’s even here,” he snarled as a final retort.

“Gentlemen, Ladies, please,” put in Morag McKillop. Fatigued by her night’s vigil and preoccupied by her own personal worries, she was still on top of the discussion, trying to see a way through that would satisfy everyone. Fiona being so distracted wasn’t helping. “Fiona, what do you think of this?” she asked in a commanding, but not sharp voice. The effect was to draw everyone’s attention, Fiona’s included, without anyone feeling resentful of her input. “Agnes isn’t a regular merchant for the Market, but with the numbers anticipated, her expertise and resources would be better suited to cater the teas and coffees – ” She raised her hand to cut off Roger’s protestation – “but it wouldn’t be fair for her to provide cakes as well, see Roger’s well-established catering over the years. You could even discuss running a joint stall on a profit sharing basis – ” Agnes opened her mouth to protest, but Morag quickly intervened – “Of course, you could split the cost of the stall as well.

Other members of the committee jumped in to voice their concern with this seeming favouritism, and with the rising voices Fiona seemed to crumble in front of Morag, who decided it was time to go from “concerned” to “seriously worried”.

“Jack,” Morag said suddenly, and Jack Maggs turned to her. “I think Fiona’s not well. Can you take the meeting from here?”

“What?” He glanced at Fiona, whose head was sunk into her hands now. “Oh – aye, of course, do – you know – the necessary. Put her to bed – or whatever.” Ever awkward about other’s emotions, he was clearly troubled, then grateful as Morag when to Fiona and led her slowly from the room amid general well-wishing from all present.

“Now,” said Jack as they exited, he in sole charge for once, “let’s talk meat.”

#

“You must think me a doddery old woman,” said Fiona as they made their way slowly up a flight of stairs to Fiona’s bedroom on the 2nd floor. “But I’ve hardly been ill a day in my life. Even when Cynthia was born, I – ” She seemed to swoon, and Morag had a moment of panic as she supported Fiona’s full weight, precariously balanced between one stair step and the next – but Fiona recovered herself straight away.

“I’m sorry, so sorry,” she repeated weakly as they made their way to the landing above and into Fiona’s bedroom. Morag only murmured, “Don’t worry, Fiona, you’ll soon be your old self again.”

“You see, I hardly slept last night – just lay awake for hours, worrying, and now I’m just so tired ….”

Sitting on the side of her bed, Fiona submitted meekly to Morag’s undressing her, hardly seeming to notice the younger woman as she removed her clothes, and slipped a night-gown over her head. Morag actually had to gently lift Fiona’s arms to thread them into the sleeves of the gown.

Then Fiona sank like a stone onto her bed, closing her eyes immediately as Morag pulled the light duvet over her. But Fiona managed to flutter her eyelids a last time and asked, “Morag, my dear, did you ever make more of that lovely infusion? You know, the one I drank when you so kindly invited me into your home? I know you’re a very private person, so that was really ….” She seemed to drift off mid-sentence. Morag leaned over and brushed the hair from her face.

“Yes, I’ve made more, and I’ll bring some around for you,” she answered, though she wasn’t sure Fiona could still hear her.

“Thank you,” whispered Fiona, a small smile on her lips; she sighed and her whole body relaxed into sleep.

Morag sat watching Fiona, making sure she had really sunk into sleep this time. She was disturbed. Even had she been ill, Fiona would most likely have put up more of a fight against it. But her will and strength seemed to have sapped away. She couldn’t imagine Fiona submitting to being undressed and put to bed like a child in normal circumstances.

Looking around the room, Morag was intrigued, but unsurprised at the accoutrements of Fiona’s bedroom, this glimpse into her private life.

Good quality, heavy furniture of an old-fashioned style. Antiques, some of it, but not guarded and cloistered away. Antiques in everyday use – as they were originally intended.

She stood over Fiona’s dressing table. Her ivory-handled brushes, toilet articles and lacquered make-up case. But also, things belonging to the Colonel, Fiona’s late husband, still carefully arranged next to her own. The Colonel’s things were done in tortoise-shell – comb, nail brush, straight-razor – and odd looking clippers that Morag could only conclude had to do with something obscure like trimming nose-hair.

A large oval mirror, set in a scrollwork frame, was affixed to the dressing table. Although she knew she shouldn’t, Morag loosened her hair from the clips that held it up today, and letting it flow over her shoulders, took up Fiona’s brush and began brushing her own hair. She checked the mirror – yes, Fiona was still asleep.

The brush moved easily through her fine hair. She brushed a few strokes on either side, then put the brush down her hand still resting on it. Morag closed her eyes.

She could hear Fiona, breathing heavily now, and a carriage-clock on the mantelpiece ticking. She became aware of the sound of the sea booming on the cliffs below the manse. Gulls. Then the murmur of voices carrying faintly from the drawing room below her. She stilled her mind and let the sensations of the quiet room eddy around her.

In her mind’s eye an image was forming. It was tiny pinpoints of light on a dark field. It might have been stars, but she knew it was the lights of the town. Newhame. Dark land mass consolidated around the lights. But there was no sky or sea – just the land and the town with her lights on.

The lights – surely there had been more of them. And now Morag could see them dimming, winking out. A heaviness, unnatural, lay over the town, and Morag sensed a presence almost as if someone was snuffing the life out of each light, one by one.

The town grew darker, the darkness grew larger, enveloped more of the town, until there was a single light left. The stillness in Morag’s mind felt oppressive, as the one light left seemed to grow larger, seemed to move closer. She could make out the house – it was the Manse. Dark but for one window, upstairs. Closer still, she could make out a single candle flame, steady in all that heavy darkness. The window grew closer, the flame grew brighter – she could see inside, it was this room, Fiona’s room, and someone was sleeping in the bed. And as Morag was finally able to see clearly who was in the bed, the flame of the candle guttered, and went out.

Morag opened her eyes, but for a moment saw only darkness still. Then, like a broken film projector stuttering into life, the apparent world came flooding back in – the carriage-clock, the gulls, the murmur of voices downstairs – but one sound wasn’t there – the sound of Fiona’s breathing. Morag stood and stumbled towards the bed. Fiona lay on her back, ashen-faced. Quickly, Morag grabbed a hand mirror from the dressing table and held it under Fiona’s nose. She almost collapsed with relief when a slight mist gathered on the mirror’s surface. Morag lay the mirror down, then held Fiona lightly on the shoulder.

“Fiona,” she said softly, squeezing the older woman gently. No response. Louder, she said, “Fiona, wake up!” She shook her a little harder. Still no response. She patted Fiona’s cheek lightly, then more sharply. Nothing.

Morag looked around the room. Trust Fiona to keep her boudoir free of modern contraptions like telephones. She left the room and clunked down the stairs two at a time, bursting into the committee meeting with no warning, and standing on no ceremony.

“Call the doctor!” she commanded no one in particular. Robert Hanson whipped out his mobile and quickly found the number of the local G.P.

“What is it?” asked Agnes Samson sharply. Morag knew the tearoom owner had some knowledge of herbology, so she told her – pale, cool, shallow breathing, not responding to stimulus. Agnes stared off into space, obviously running the symptoms through her repertoire of ailments and folk medicine. “No fever, you say?”

“None,” confirmed Morag, who took Robert’s phone at his signal, and repeated it all to the G.P.

After a moment, she handed the phone back to Robert, informing them, “He’s calling for an ambulance.”

“I’ll go up and have and look, and wait with her,” said Agnes.

Morag smiled grimly and waved her on. Yes, any port in a storm. Agnes could be deeply unpleasant, but she was a canny woman, and if anyone in Newhame could diagnose and prescribe outside the ken of allopathic medicine, it would be she.

Downstairs, a door slammed. A young bright voice called up, “Nan, you there?”

Morag covered her face with her hands. Lydia home from school. Jack started to get up and go down to her, but Morag put her hand on his arm. “No, let me, Jack. Could you call Cynthia? I think there’s an address book on the phone table in the hall, you’ll probably her work number in there.” Jack nodded.

Lydia was coming up the stairs now, sounding worried.

“Nan? Where are you?”

Morag took a deep breath, steadied her nerves, and went out to break the bad news to her young apprentice.

Newhame – Chapter 16

Henry Higgenbotham looked away from the computer screen and rubbed his weary eyes. He knew you weren’t supposed to stare at the screen for hours, but he always forgot and the result was a cracker of a headache – much like the one coming on now. He winced as the throbbing commenced.

Henry pushed his chair back and took in his surroundings again, after so long in cyberspace. The tiny, rustic room, furnished with the table, chair, laptop computer, and a single bed. There was also a small wooden washstand with a large china jug and enamel bowl. Henry went to the stand, poured some water into the basin, and splashed his face with it, using a towel hanging from a rail on the side of the washstand to dry himself.

Yes, a tiny room, and yet he preferred it to the larger but soulless chalet he’d been, until late, residing in. It was only a step from the table to the washstand, a step to the bed, a step to the door. He made that last step and went outside.

A woodland glade – sunlight filtering through the trees. Henry supposed the cable for the computer’s broadband must be buried. Didn’t matter. What mattered was that just when he needed it most he had his retreat. He heard, but couldn’t spot, a woodpecker somewhere close by. Plus a lot of other birdsong he couldn’t identify. Some druid!

Henry reached inside and lifted the chair out, placing it on the dry woodland ground. Even to his untrained eye, the country here seemed parched. Very un-Scotland-like, or so everyone told him. And even for a first-time visitor he could see it was unnatural. Plants that looked as if they should be lush seemed to be suffering. Again, what they were, he had no idea. He frowned this time. He really needed to start giving the natural history side of his philosophy more care and attention. After all, he’d first started with druidry to re-establish a connection with the natural world. But that was the one area where he’d never made much headway.

Henry shifted the chair so that he sat in a strong shaft of sunlight. His headache seemed to be subsiding, but his mind was still spinning with the information he’d been collecting. Too many loose ends, too fractured. He couldn’t see how to put all the pieces together.

He stood up. He needed to move, to let his body stretch. He usually did his best thinking on his feet anyway. Henry put the chair back into the hut, locked the door (city paranoia) and set off on a path through the trees he had become very familiar with.

The path wound circuitously through the wood – a deer path, he reckoned. Hardly wider than a foot, he’d made it slightly more distinct during the fortnight he’d stayed in the cabin. Past the solitary birch tree – he recognised that one anyway – through endless scots pines whose needles padded the forest floor with plush softness. And as he walked, the sound which was distant and indistinct from the cabin became louder, more identifiable: the sound of the restless sea crashing to shore.

Henry came out of the trees on a narrow strip of dried grass that lay between the forest eaves and a cliff that plunged to the sea. He admired the view for a moment – the cliff descended to the left, climbed to the right a short distance to a headland, and below, a rocky stretch of coast, pocketed with secluded sandy coves. He turned left and after a few steps started down a narrow path that traversed the the incline. At this point the cliff gave way to a steep but less precipitous grassy slope. Even so, he still had to scramble over boulders to finally set foot at sea level.

Oh. This was odd. Footprints. For the first time, evidence that someone had been here before him. His eyes followed the small prints of bare feet back to where they emerged around a rocky outcrop to the left. That was some relief anyway. Whoever it was had not come the same way as he had, and so was unlikely to have been near his retreat in the woods.

A shout from the sea brought Henry’s head up with a jerk. Someone was swimming. Yes, now he spotted the pile of clothes strewn across a rock to this right. Female clothes unless he was much mistaken. Narrowing his eyes, he could see blond hair and a head bobbing about 50 yards to sea. The person gave him a wave. He waved back.

He took a step closer to the clothes, then smiled. The large-size diaphanous wrap. Various pieces of copper and jade jewellery – it could only be one person – Isabella Arnott. Hmm, no towel, so it couldn’t be a premeditated swim, and yet she had left her underwear with her other clothes on the rock. Indications were of a case of opportunistic daylight skinny-dipping, pure and simple.

Another hello from the sea, and this time Henry could plainly see it was she – swimming closer in to shore, her features a bit clearer now. He settled himself comfortably on the rock next to her clothes. Not that he was dying to see Mrs Arnott in the buff, but he took an admittedly cruel pleasure at the prospect of her embarrassment. After all, she had embarrassed him often enough.

But it didn’t seem to be working. She rose from the sea like a voluptuous goddess. Henry was a bit shocked, actually. He was expecting someone more, well, corpulent. In fact she reminded him of Titian’s painting of Venus Anadyomene which hangs in the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. And she was smiling and wringing her long hair, as Venus does in that famous painting.

“‘Enry,” she called out when she finally stepped from the sea to strand. “I told myself this was you. What some pleasant surprises there are.”

She was totally unabashed in her nakedness, and Henry’s anticipation of delight at her embarrassment recoiled on him – he suddenly became aware of his situation – alone on a secluded beach with a naked woman who seemed pleased to see him. He looked away abruptly, but then looked back at her just as quickly. Was this a game she was playing with him? He saw her grinning, and knew it was. Who was going to crack first? Well, it wouldn’t be him.

“Izzy,” he called cheerfully, raising his hand in salute. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Oh, ‘Enry,” she sighed, coming over the sand to the rock where he and her clothes sat, still wringing her extraordinarily long, thick hair. Henry remained, calm, impassive, as if they were meeting in the Tuppenny Ha’penny Tea Room. “‘Enry, you are probably not knowing this, but I really ‘ate someone calling me that name.” She shuddered and broke out in gooseflesh all over her body. Henry was surprised at the physiological reaction. But he kept his cool.

“And why is that, then? It’s a perfectly acceptable pet name for Isobel or Isabella in this country.”

Surprise upon surprise, she sat next to him and took his hand. “‘Enry,” she said, “If I am telling you a secret, a story I am never telling anyone other, not Jeffrey even, are you promising to keep the secret in your heart?”

Henry was torn. He most certainly did not want to be beholdened to Isabella in any way, and yet the prospect of knowing a secret something about her past was irresistible. However, he should maintain a sense of decorum. He stood, pretending to spot an interesting shell, completely nonchalant, saying as he stood, releasing her hand and stepping away, “Why of course, Izzy, you have my complete discretion.” He stopped and gathered one or two inconsequential shells to examine.

He glanced over to find here reclining on a flat space on the rock. She caught his glance, and stretched luxuriously. The tart, he thought.

“I am forgetting to bring a towel, so this is best way for me to dry my body,” she explained, arranging herself spread-eagled on the rock. Oh, you’re good, thought Henry, Very good. But I think you’ll find I’m made of sterner stuff.

“Go right ahead,” Henry said magnanimously. He scanned the skies, hoping for a rain cloud, but rain cloud came there none.

“‘Enry,” she said, piteously. “Come sit by me here. I am telling you a deep secret that hurts me to say it. You are so far away, you might not hear my words in your heart from there.”

Henry looked over, suddenly touched by her words. She sounded to be genuinely struggling. Her face was etched with worry lines, and were those tears in her eyes? By St. Crispin, so there were! He hurried over and perched on the rock, taking her outstretched hand. “I’m listening with my heart,” he answered her.

Afterwards, thinking back, Henry knew this was when he was at his most vulnerable. Isabella could have played him for all she was worth at this juncture, and who knows what the outcome might have been.

She sighed, and seemed to relax. She squeezed his hand once, then used her hand to shade her eyes from the sun as she spoke.

“When I was a little girl, my Father spent all his money on a bad business. He was cheated by his partner, may he rot in hell!” She spat symbolically to the left. “So my Mother and Father sent me and my brother to America to live with my Uncle and his wife for awhile – until the business got better again. I called him my Uncle, we called all our man relations by Uncle. I think he was my Father’s cousin.” Her voice turned malevolent. “And he called me Izzy!

“Anyway, we flew over to their house in Mary Land. He was a touristic fisherman in the Bay of Chesapeake. He took peoples fishing for big moneys. Georgio and me went out on Uncle’s boat very often. He was a nice man, we thought. One day ….”

There was a pause as Isabella took a deep breath. Henry quickly said, “You don’t have to tell me this story, you know, Isabella. I see it’s a painful memory.”

“No, you should know this if you want to understand me, ‘Enry. I was at that man’s power. We were alone on the boat one hot summer day – why not? He very often went out with his boat, it was normal, until … one day …”

“Isabella -”

“No. I change my mind. You say you listen with your heart, but how I know you will keep what I have to say there, inside you? No, a man with too much power – is not good. I tell you, you know things about me, you have power. Mystery is better, yes?”

Henry felt miffed, without quite knowing why. He didn’t want to know this woman’s trashy secrets anyway. Still, he wanted to think he was trustworthy, and for some strange reason he wanted her to think so to.

“Isabella, I swear to you — “

“No! Don’t swear, don’t make an oath you cannot fulfill. Something bad happened that day, so from that day I make an oath to me, to never be under anyone’s power. Not my uncles, not you, not even my husband. Jeffrey and me, we have an understanding. See, our marriage is an old-fashioned one. Not for love, no, for advantage and power – and once we thought for dynasty. But no babies,” she sighed, her hands back on her belly. “No babies, even though I have not stopped trying after Jeffrey couldn’t come to my bed any more. But no matter who I try, no babies. So I know it is my womb that is barren.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Henry, though it has to be said without complete honesty.

“So, ‘Enry. Are you are thinking right now that maybe you is the one who is giving me babies?” She looked at him, slowly running her hands up and down her thighs.

For Henry that broke the spell. He almost laughed, but checked himself at the last second. Instead he managed a regretful smile. “I’m going to have to pass, Isabella. Tempting though the offer is.”

Isabella smiled again as she sat up next to him. “I have my eye on you, ‘Enry. I know you love Morag McKillop and are wanting only her. Am I right?”

Maddeningly, Henry could feel himself blushing. “That’s none of your business, my dear,” he blustered. His embarrassment caused Isabella no end of amusement, and Henry was relieved when a phone rang – Beethoven’s Fifth again – from inside the pile of her clothes.

She looked at the display, put it to her ear and said, with a purr in her voice, “Ciao Leo. Okay. Yes, tell him I am just out of the water for a swim.” She mouthed the words Do you want to speak to Jeffrey? to Henry, but he just frowned and waved the phone away as she grinned at him. “Yes, of course I am alone, who else would be with me, ‘Enry ‘Eeggenbotham?” Even Henry could hear the roar of laughter from the other end, and his eyes narrowed with hatred. “Okay, see you soon darling. Ciao,” she finished, and began to dress, chuckling all the while. “Still,” she said finally, swathed again in her swirling clothes, “don’t put all your chickens in one basket, ‘Enry. I could be a useful lover for you -” She chucked him under the chin. “-if you ever changed your mind.” And still smiling, she turned and made her way back across the sand the way she had come.

Henry shook his head, turned back toward the cliffs, and almost jumped out of his skin as out from behind a spur of the cliff stepped Hamish Donaldson.

“She’s a remarkable lady,” Hamish said wryly. “Remarkable, but very odd as well.”

“For heaven’s sake, how long have you been there?”

Hamish burst out laughing. “Long enough to be impressed with the both of you.”

“Christ,” said Henry, joining Hamish on the steep climb back up to the wood, “that was the longest half-hour of my life.”

“Aye, you’ve earned a reward, lad. How about a stiff double scotch and soda to round off your afternoon?”

Henry had to admit he hadn’t had such a good offer in a long, long time.

Newhame – Chapter 15

“Aye,” said Jamie Macallan, as he chucked another tattie into the wagon, “I’m telling you, Mr Donaldson, the future is straw bales. Organic straw bales.“

He paused to wipe his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief, then took a long draught from one of the bottles of water Hamish had brought out for him and the other tattie haukers. A half dozen local lads and lasses, taking a break from the backbreaking work of pulling potatoes from the ploughed field, lounged in the shade of the wagon and gratefully drank from the large bottles of water Hamish had brought them.

“And I’m telling you,” said Hamish to his youngest full-time employee, “I’ve no got the time, space or inclination to grow straw. I’ll stick to the edibles, if you don’t mind.”

Jamie passed his water bottle on to another thirsty hauker and pressed his point. “I saw this thing on telly last night, about this man down in England somewheres, he’d built his whole house out of straw bales, and it was like the whole world opened up in front of my eyes – “

“Aye, television’ll do that to ye,” said Hamish. “Lead you down the garden path when you should be in the garden hard at work.”

Jamie ignored him. “And I said to myself, I said, ‘Jamie, that’s where the money’s going to be in the future. Renewable building materials.’”

Hamish gave his protégé a look of astonishment. Such long words. Still it should come as no surprise really. Jamie had worked for him since he’d been knee-high to a grasshopper, and Hamish had talked enough about renewables, organic crops and such over the years, Jamie had been bound to see the light sooner or later.

“Mr Donaldson,” called one of the other haukers, a young woman over from Dunbar, “how do you no do all this tattie pulling by machine, like? The farmer in the big fields by us had all his tatties up in an afternoon with a big tattie-pulling-up machine.”

“Well,” said Hamish, “this is easier on the tattie, I can charge more for them if I say they were hand-pulled, plus it puts money in your pocket, young lady.”

“Aye, but you can do more tatties quicker the other way,” another lad joined in. “Bigger fields, more tatties, more money for you.”

Jamie stepped in to explain. “Nah, you’ve got it all wrong, Cameron. Mr Donaldson’s done all that big farming stuff, he’s made pots of dosh already, now he wants to give something back – isn’t that right, Mr. Donaldson?”

“Oh aye, St. Hamish, that’s me and all,” chuckled the old farmer. “But I’ll no be all sweetness and light if you lot don’t clear this field today. You’ll find out what a real demon I can be!”

“Okay, Boss,” said Jamie quickly, recognising the seriousness poorly hidden behind Hamish’s half joke.

Hamish watched with satisfaction the haukers get on with the pulling, whilst Jamie, driving the tractor, towed the tattie wagon a bit further along the furrows; then he got into his battered Land Rover and headed back towards the farm house.

He drove by his modest fields of brassica and root vegetables, and swung away up to the fruit farm to check on the day’s takings where punters could come and pick their own fruit from the acres of raspberries, currants and brambles – the strawberries and gooseberries were finished for the season, but he was considering opening access to his boggy burnside land where the elder trees produced huge crops of berries every year.

After conferring with his fruit manager, and watching the steady stream of happy pickers arriving and leaving, Hamish finally admitted to himself that all was going well on the farm and he could head home for the rest of the day.

But as he drove up to the two story stone farmhouse, a sense of gloom descended on him. No matter how well his farm was doing, not all was right in Hamish’s world.

#

Entering the cool of the stone farmhouse was a relief from the unseasonably warm weather. This late hot spell was worrisome to Hamish. The fruit and veg had put on a bumper crop, but it had taken serious irrigation, and he knew the local reservoirs were at their lowest levels for a decade.

In his heyday of oilseed rape and other monocultures, Hamish would have scoffed – and did regularly scoff – at environmentalists’ concerns, but now he’d made it his business in his waning years to be kinder to the Earth. He mused on this as he sat down in his study and looked at the pictures of his family.

Duncan, his eldest, was a lawyer for a major insurance company in London; he’d married an English girl and they had two bairns of their own on a converted farmhouse in Surrey. Hamish smiled at the irony. He’d had such hopes that Duncan would follow in his footsteps, but very early on made it plain he took no interest in farming. Now he lived with the trappings of the farming life – house, paddock, gardens – but with none of the debilitating responsibility. Hamish shook his head and wondered who was the cannier.

Now Martin, his second son – he was always a puzzle to Hamish. He’d gone to university, got a good degree in English and Celtic Studies, but instead of going straight into the world of academia as all had expected, had dropped out. He’d taken on a series of odd jobs and used the income to go travelling, first all over the British Isles, then further afield. There had been a time when the postcards came from China, Mexico, the Sudan. He always talked a good line on the developing world and helping raise up the prospects of the downtrodden of the Earth. He railed against multinationals and there had been some blazing rows between father and son about his own business dealings. But just when everyone thought he would take on a job with some third world charity or other, he’d fooled them again. He’d returned to Scotland and taken on a lecturer’s position at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, teaching Celtic Studies. He’d taken a woman – not married, even now, after 15 years – and had three children. Out of wedlock, which had enraged Hamish initially, but all that was past. Of his three sons, he saw the most of Martin now, and it could be said he’d ultimately had the greatest influence on their father.

Hamish sighed as he took up the photo of Rab. Rab the soldier. The picture was of him in full dress uniform. Of his three sons, Hamish had thought that in the end Rab would stay with him and carry on the farmer’s life.

Rab was a dab hand with machinery, and he’d had a sensitivity to weather and the seasons. Even at a young age Hamish would discuss farming matters with his youngest, and he soon transferred his hopes for a dynasty from Duncan to Rab. Rab was quiet, thoughtful, and stuck to his father like glue. So it was all the more inexplicable and heart-wrenching when, soon after Rab’s sixteenth birthday, Hamish and Elspeth received a call from Edinburgh – from Rab – who said he’d joined the Army and would be staying with mates in town until he joined his unit.

It was a shock and no mistake. Hamish refused to believe it. He cajoled, shouted, wept even, but Rab remained impassive over the phone. He wouldn’t or couldn’t explain why, only that he had to do it,and that he was sorry.

Of course Hamish had got on to the Army straight away, but what could he do? Rab was entitled to join the services at 16 without his parent’s permission, and though the recruiting officer understood Hamish and Elspeth’s anguish, he was not empowered to force Rab to change his mind. Indeed, it was too late for that anyway. Rab was committed.

That had been 14 years ago. It had been a long time before Rab came home on leave. He wrote sporadically, but it was all news of his unit and what they were doing and what his mates got up to. Hamish sent news of the farm and the family, but it was barely acknowledged in Rab’s replies, as if he didn’t really understand his connection with that life any more.

When Rab had come home the first time, the weekend was fraught, to say the least. Hamish was still angry, Elspeth tried to reconcile the two, but soon gave up in the face of Rab’s impassivity. He didn’t rise to his father’s bait, but kept his council on any personal feelings, which only fuelled Hamish’s frustration.

After that unedifying event, Rab hadn’t come home much. He did write regularly, though, a letter a month like clockwork, but Hamish soon gave the job of replying up to Elspeth. He could no longer stand Rab’s studied ignoring of all his comments on the state of the farm, land, and weather.

Not that he ever stopped reading Rab’s letters home, though. In fact, after he’d given up the job of letter writing, and hence his own expectations, he began to enjoy Rab’s little tales of Army life. His anger thawed. But Rab had gradually stopped coming home, and the last he’d seen him was at Elspeth’s funeral.

Elspeth.

Hamish took up her photo and felt empty. It had been awhile since he brimmed with tears whenever he looked at this photo. Elspeth with pitchfork in hand, in the open barn door, a scarf not coping with containing her wild shock of hair. A wry smile on her face, head cocked to one side, slightly squinting in the morning sun. Younger in this photo, before the Alzheimer’s stole her from him.

He felt empty and he hated it. She had given him so much, filled his life with love and laughter, supported him, exasperated him, gave him children, cooked his meals, was his wife, lover, helpmate, farmhand …. Where had his tears for her gone? Dead only five years now, and the tears gone already.

But he’d seen her slip slowly away over the course of the years, sliding from health to frailty, from mental sharpness to rambling senility. There had been many tears in the beginning, by himself after she’d gone to bed. And tears when she finally passed over – the lines and bewilderment seemed to melt away in death, and all of a sudden she was there again, the face he’d fallen in love with, but too late now, cold and pale, already a ghost ….

He sighed. Still no tears. He carefully replaced the photo in its silver frame in the centre of the desk. Life was strange. He’d initially began to sell his land to pay for home care for Elspeth, and that had led by strange byways to his present situation – local organic guru and benefactor of the planet. He chuckled. Elspeth would have appreciated the irony.

Trying to distract himself from his swirling thoughts, he carefully pulled over a chessboard with a half-finished game set out. He pondered over a postcard with a notation carefully lettered: “exd5″. After stasis in the centre of the board for so long, Manuel had decided to push his pawn through. Hamish studied his black pieces, turned the board around to see it from Manuel’s perspective, then turned it back again.

Making a decision, Hamish took a blank from a stack of postcards pre-addressed to Manuel in Grenada, and wrote “Nxd5″. If Manuel wanted slaughter and mayhem in the centre then by God he would have it.

He made the move on the board, carefully placing the dead white pawn in the wooden port wine box which held the set of replica Lewis chess pieces. The two queens, exchanged early on, grimaced at each other where they lay face to face in the bottom of the box. Hamish wondered at their age-old enmity, then shook himself. Dinnae be daft, he told himself, as he slid the lid shut, sealing the warring parties in darkness once more.

Newhame – Chapter 14

During the drive from Edinburgh Airport, Jeffrey Arnott finally began to relax. Leo set the car’s temperature to an optimum 68 degrees, and put Brubeck on the stereo. Adolpho stayed glued to his cell phone, checking on who had and hadn’t yet arrived for the WOL conference, and arranging meetings for Jeffrey for the next few days’ runup to the big event.

Jeffrey’s mind wandered as they skirted Edinburgh on the ring road, the early evening traffic sparse and manageable. Not that Leo was ever phased by traffic. No matter how hectic or stop-and-start, he always seemed to manage to maintain steady progress at a few miles an hour over the speed limit, but not enough to attract attention.

As they penetrated the green countryside to the east of the city, Leo turned off the motorway and onto the B roads that hugged the coast. He knew that Mr Arnott wanted to take in as much scenery as possible. There was no hurry. Mr Arnott had once told Leo that coming to Scotland was like coming home, so Leo was happy to toodle along the back roads at a leisurely pace, to let Mr Arnott’s mind settle and his soul come to some kind of rest.

As Leo drove, and Adolpho kept up a constant stream of calls, Jeffrey was quietly reflecting on a dream he’d had while sleeping on the plane. At least he thought it had been a dream, and not a vision. It hadn’t had the intensity his astral travels usually held. But it troubled Jeffrey all the same.

In the dream, as so often was the case in his dream, he was whole and undamaged. He could speak and walk as easily as he had before the automobile accident that had crippled him ten years earlier. In this dream he was on horseback, and he knew he was in the countryside around Newhame. He rode along a dirt track behind a bank of high dunes, on the other side of which he could plainly hear the sound of the surf breaking.

It had been hot in this dream, and he had been drenched in sweat. The motion of the chestnut coloured horse between his legs had been vividly felt, so much so that riding in the car now he fancied he could still feel the movement, as a horseman might who had ridden for miles and only recently dismounted. In the dream flies had buzzed around them, the horse’s tail swishing constantly to keep them off its flanks, and Jeffrey likewise kept removing a felt hat and batting them away with it. The bank of dunes blocked the sea breeze that was driving the unseen waves onto the beach, and the air had felt humid and thick.

While Jeff pondered the meaning of it all, his car purred through the seaside towns of East Lothian: Aberlady, Gullane … at Dirleton Jeff signalled that he wanted to stop at the castle. Leo manoeuvred into the car park, and Jeff and Adolpho went into the grounds. Adolpho planted himself on a bench, still on the phone, while Jeff wheeled himself along the paths, taking the long drive up to the drawbridge.

Instead of crossing over, he sat on the path for awhile, surveying the countryside about. He could see the rolling Lammermuir Hills to the south, and the dramatic peaks of Trapprain and Berwick Laws, standing proud from the surrounding fields. The fields were full of golden grain, or the massive rolls of hay where the fields had been cut, dotted about like strange surreal monuments to ancient gods of the earth.

It was a hot day, and a heat haze lay over the land. A fly flitted around Jeff’s face. He knew it must be buzzing, and he felt an overwhelming sense of loss at his hearing come over him. At that point he would have given his fortune to hear that fly buzz.

He rolled over the drawbridge, more to get out of the sun than anything else. He knew once across he’d not be able to go much further than the small area inside the portcullis gate. Steps, slopes, ledges … he watched children leaping, climbing among the ruins, and people walking up and down the stairs so nonchalantly. He sighed and wheeled himself back out to the driveway, feeling the rumble of his wheels over the wooden planks of the drawbridge. Once over, he looked up at the highest tower, where people had climbed, and he wondered what magnificent views they were seeing from up there.

An image from his recent dream came to him as he sat there. He’d determined to get over the dunes to see the sea, but the horse had not been able to climb the dunes. It sank up to its knees in the shifting sand, and Jeff had had to give up and turn back to the track. He and the horse regained solid ground with a sense of relief, and he cantered it along, looking for a break in the sand. There seemed to be no break, either ahead or behind. He overtook an old woman on the road, and asked her how to get over to the sea.

“What are ye on aboot, son?” she asked. “There’s nae sea here.”

Jeff had grown angry in the dream. “I can hear it, you stupid woman. It’s on the other side of those dunes.”

The woman looked at the dunes, puzzled, and Jeff saw she wasn’t old at all. In fact it had been the face of the the young mother in his last vision. “I’ve never noted they dunes before, son,” she said smiling. “I’ll go over mysel’ and hae a wee look…”

“Don’t – ” Jeff tried to warn her, but the woman immediately scrambled onto the shifting hill of sand. Jeff watched in horror as she started to sink into the sand. She shrieked, lost her balance and fell forward, to become half buried. She continued to sink, even as Jeff felt powerless to move. As she sank so only her arm, shoulder and head were left, he tried to kick his horse forward onto the dune, but it shied, bucked, and threw him to the ground, afterwards galloping away.

Dazed, Jeff stood, looked around, but neither horse nor woman were anywhere to be seen. A declivity in the sand, even now shifting and smoothing over, showed where the woman had struggled to get free. But she had never called to him, never asked for help, only struggled grimly and silently on her own.

If only she’d called my name, I could have saved here, Jeff thought; then a hand fell on his shoulder. He looked up. Adolpho. His assistant signed a question: “Do you want a coffee or something?”

Jeff shook his head wearily. It must be the jet lag, the thought. “Let’s just get to the hotel,” he signed back, and let Adolpho wheel him down the curving slope of the castle drive.

Newhame – Chapter 13

Tim Leary, too, was having an unusual breakfast experience that day. Unusual in that he was eating breakfast in the morning. At the crack of dawn. The fecking birds were singing and all, for sweet Jesus’ sake!

It wasn’t really the crack of dawn, but for Tim it might as well have been. Running a pub had always meant late nights and later mornings. He had habitually set his alarm for 11.30 a.m. and that timetable had suited him since time immemorial. Now he had found himself without a pub to run, and up and breakfasting at 9 a.m.

Tim was sitting on the bench outside the Silver Darlings, in the morning sun, with a mug of coffee, a bowl of corn flakes and still-folded copy of the Racing Post. A large piece of plywood was up in place of the window that had been broken out in the fight, and that rankled Tim. Somehow, his buildings insurance on the pub had been allowed to lapse, and now even though he’d dug deep in his pockets to renew it, they wouldn’t pay for the replacement of the window, and he was now officially too skint to pay for the window himself, what with no income coming in and all.

Pending licence board investigation of certain irregularities which had come to light during the investigation of the the brawl in the pub, Tim’s licence had been revoked. Well, strictly speaking it had not been renewed. Tim’s failure to renew it and operating unlicensed for six months was one of the things being investigated.

Tim was lost in his misfortunes when a sweet voice broke his reverie: “You all right, Mr Leary?”

He shielded his eyes against the low sun in the East. It was Lydia Blyth in school uniform. “Oh, it’s yourself, Lydia. Aye, not too bad. Enjoying the morning air.”

Lydia sat tentatively beside him on the bench. “I feel so bad about your pub, Mr Leary.” Her brow was knitted and her mouth pursed. “I feel like . . . well, I feel like it’s my fault, in a way.”

Tim looked at her with a blank expression. “You?” he finally said. “Your fault? How do you make that one out, exactly?”

“I was distracting you,” she explained, twisting her fingers together nervously. “If I hadn’t been asking you about a job, you might have been able to stop Coyote from going over to Mr Maggs, and there wouldn’t have been an argument, and all of this wouldn’t have happened.” She waved her hand at the plywood behind them.

Tim rubbed the back of his neck. “Sure, and you may be partially right, Lydia.” He patted her knee when he saw her face screw up in tears. “Hush now, none of that! I only said partially right. You’re about as much to blame as Mr Higgenbotham, who was also talking to me, or Hamish or Jamie. But there’s no denying it’s mostly down to three people. Jack Maggs for being such a miserable husband that his wife left him. Then your man Coyote, the daft eejit, he couldn’t stop himself from making things worse by apologising to a drunkard. But of course, even if I couldn’t have prevented the fight, this ….” He looked around at his pub, then slumped on the bench, sighing. “I’ve been living on the edge of my luck for years now, lass, and it just happened to be my time to slide off. If I had walked the straight and narrow my pub would be solvent and operating, and I’d be in my bed now, instead of enjoying the morning sun and the conversation of a pretty girl. So, it’s all swings and roundabouts, Lydia. Those bloody swings and roundabouts.”

The two sat silently for a moment, contemplating their role in the demise of the village pub, when Tim finally yawned and looked at his watch. It was a quarter past nine. “Now, I’ve no idea what time school is meant to start, only there was quite a parade of children about half an hour ago, rushing along as if they were late. So I’m thinking that maybe you ought to be making a move your own-self, young Miss Blyth.”

Lydia sighed. “I suppose so.” She stood. “By the way, Miss McKillop has given me a wee job. So, you know, it’s no problem that you said you’d give me work, and now . . . .” She looked at the pub, misery on her face.

“Think nothing of it, Lydia, I’m pleased for you. But I’ll hold you to your promise when we open up again.”

Lydia smiled. “I’d like that.” Then she turned and hurried along the High Street.

Tim sat a while longer, saying good morning to astonished shopkeepers and tradesmen, for whom the sight of Tim Leary in the morning was like a freak of nature. Just when he stood up and turned to go inside, a large van from a glazier in Edinburgh pulled up at the kerb. The driver put his head out of the window.

“Is this the Silver Darlings?”

Tim looked up ostentatiously at the sign over the door. “Yes, it is, indeed,” he said at last, biting back a sarcastic answer. He didn’t have the heart to castigate someone for being stupid at this time in the morning.

“Okay boys,” the driver said to two others in the van. They bustled out, and while they opened the rear of the van, the driver came over with a clipboard to Tim.

“You’re no Tim Leary, are you?”

“Aye, that would be me.”

“Magic. Sign here please.” He thrust the clipboard at Tim, who, however, refused to touch it.

“See, the thing is lad, I never ordered any glass.” He watched as the two other men took out equipment and tools from the back of the van. He went on, “I didn’t order it and I can’t pay for it.”

“Nae bother, pal, it’s already paid for. All you need to do is sign the paper.”

Tim still made no move to take the clipboard. “Paid for already, is it? Now I wonder who’s been so generous to me?”

“I can tell you exactly,” said the glazier, going through the sheets in the clipboard. He found the one he was looking for. “Mr Jeffrey Arnott. The address says San Francisco, California.”

A young schoolboy, puffing, ran up the pavement, late for school. The glazier stopped him. “Here, I’ll give you a quid if you’ll sign this, pal.”

Barely hesitating, the lad grabbed the clipboard, scrawled his signature, took the pound coin, and continued puffing his way to school.

Grinning at Tim, he said, “You missed your chance, Mr Leary. Okay, boys, let’s get to work.” And a final word to Tim. “Oh, and a cup of tea wouldnae go amiss the now.”

Bowing to the inevitable, Tim let them get on with prizing the plywood from the shop front and fitting the new sheet of class while he went in and put on the kettle.

The glass was soon in place, and the workies tucked into their mugs of tea, standing in the morning sun.

“Not that it’ll do me much good, I’ve had to close temporarily,” explained Tim. “Still, it’s better for the image of the town.”

“Aye, you’re right,” replied the glazier. “But you’re no really on the main drag here, are you? I never even kent this place existed.”

“I did,” piped up one of his workers. “We used to come out here for our holidays. To the chalet park, like.”

“Aye, we still get a fair few folk there during the year,” agreed Tim. “Of course, it’s always full up for the conference.”

Seeing the blank looks, Tim went on. “You know, the Witches of Lothian conference.” He grinned, and said, “Not that I’d expect you not have heard of that lot.”

The mood among the crew from Edinburgh changed. They looked suspiciously at their teas. “We’ll wait in the van, like,” said the holiday boy. Then without thanking Tim for the tea, the two workers climbed into the van and out of sight.

“Dinnae mind them, son,” said the glazier. “It’s just, ken, witches an all that. We have heard about your conference. A’body has. For most of us it’s a wee bit joke – the teuchters taking the urban pagans for all they’re worth – ” he tapped his temple. “Canny, that. Very canny. But for some, well . . . , you might say it’s uncanny.” He handed Tim a job sheet to sign off. “When is this conference, anyway?”

“Halloween,” lied Tim, suddenly feeling terse and defensive.

“Aye, right!” laughed the glazier, then caught the look on Tim’s face. “You’re no one of they . . . .” He waved his hand vaguely.

“No,” said Tim. “Just an honest publican sitting on his hands.” He felt an urge to punch the eejit in the face, but the urge passed. This man was no different than millions of others, and Jesus knew Tim had slagged off the dafties who came to the conference often enough himself. “You’ve done a grand job, man.” He reached out and shook the glazier’s hand, who shook it back with a grin. He hadn’t liked the dark look in Tim’s eyes, and was relieved that it was all ending amicably. Still, it only reinforced the notion of the queer folk in Newhame, and he didn’t feel entirely easy until he’d driven his van out of town at well above the legal speed limit.

Newhame – Chapter 12

Something very odd was happening up at the Manse. The Blyth family were breakfasting together.

That is to say, they were all present at the breakfast table at the same time. To suggest they might have been eating a co-ordinated morning meal would have been entering the realms of pure fantasy.

Lydia sat before a massive stack of toast and marmalade. She and Cynthia were drinking mugs of tea – Fiona knew better than to try to introduce civilised chinaware to her progeny – those battles had been fought and lost years ago.

Cynthia was having a fag with her tea for breakfast, munching on the odd piece of toast stolen from Lydia’s plate.

“I don’t see why you can’t make your own toast!” Lydia complained with exaggerated bitterness. Cynthia merely rolled her eyes and took another puff. “And I wish you wouldn’t smoke while I’m trying to eat!”

“Yes, Cynthia, it is rather disgusting,” agreed Fiona. She sat in front of scrambled eggs and bacon, a small pot of tea and a proper china cup and saucer. Cynthia and Lydia both eyed the cooked breakfast with envy, but Cynthia would have died before asking her Mum to cook breakfast for her, and Lydia was so unused to the concept of eating breakfast together it never occurred to her that her Nan might be pleased to do it.

Fiona looked glumly at her daughter and granddaughter, and wished she had divined this unusual event would take place. She would have boiled up a pot of porridge and they could have had a proper meal together.

Cynthia ignored the censure of her family, and continued to smoke, drink her tea and steal Lydia’s toast. She was usually up and out of the house first, to beat the traffic into Edinburgh and get started on her day’s briefings with the solicitors she worked with.

But Cynthia had had a bad night the previous night. She’d lain awake for hours, thinking about Coyote Star-Raven, of all people. She knew she was mildly obsessed with the man; what made things worse was that since the night of the fight in Tim Leary’s pub, Coyote seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth.

There were strange rumours about what happened in the pub that night. Some said he disappeared into thin air. She overheard one old duffer swear to another that Coyote had turned himself into a ferret and slipped through a hole in the floor in the resulting melée. But Cynthia had firsthand knowledge of the unreliability of eyewitnesses.

“Why aren’t you at work, anyway?” Lydia asked her accusingly.

“Yes, I thought you had a preliminary hearing at ten?” Fiona gently probed.

Cynthia stabbed out her fag, lit another. “Got a text this morning,” she explained around her first puffs. “The silly bugger hanged himself in cells.” That shut them up, she observed to herself as an awkward silence descended on the table. “Still,” she couldn’t resist adding, “The bright side is that I got a lie-in.”

“Cynthia, really!” her Mum protested, but Cynthia was truly surprised when Lydia shrieked, “Mum, why are you so horrible!” and fled the kitchen in tears.

Ignoring Fiona’s withering looks, Cynthia got up and followed Lydia. She found her outside, lying on a bench beside the back door in the morning sunshine.

“Go away,” said Lydia, wiping the tears from her face.

“You’re getting covered in dew, you silly ass,” said Cynthia sternly, then sighed and shoved Lydia’s feet off the bench to make herself a place to sit. She knew she had gone a little too far, but this reaction was unprecedented, and called for unprecedented measures on Cynthia’s part.

“I’m sorry, pet,” said Cynthia with such tenderness that Lydia couldn’t help staring. Her mother stubbed out her fag and took Lydia’s hand in hers. “I’m a right twat sometimes, don’t think I don’t know it.” She sighed, as Lydia sat up and leaned against her on the bench. Cynthia chuckled and put her arm around her daughter’s shoulder. “I’m surprised you’ve not run away from home. Yet. I’m such a crap mum I wouldn’t blame you.”

Gazing out to sea, Lydia said hesitantly, “Well, I wouldn’t say you were a crap mum.”

“Inadequate, then.”

“Aye, I’d go along with inadequate.”

Cynthia lightly punched her shoulder. “Brat,” she chided, then, “Off you go and finish brekkies, no point in us both being late this morning.” Lydia got up to go inside, but Cynthia touched her hand as she passed. “What time are you in tonight? Are you working with Morag?”

Lydia nodded, pulling the fringe of hair back from her eyes. “I should be home by ten.”

“Ten? That’s a bit later than usual, isn’t it? What’s she got you doing, stirring her potions for her?”

“Don’t be daft, Mum,” said Lydia, but Cynthia noticed that she blushed slightly, and she didn’t answer the question.

“Off you go, then, see you later,” said Cynthia, but she made a mental note to have a word with Morag to see exactly what kind of work Lydia was doing for her twice a week until ten in the evening.

She spent a calm few minutes vegging out in the morning sun, wondering vaguely if she should go in to work at all or call in sick. She could feel the morning chill dissipating moment by moment. She cross-examined herself. Most unlike you, Ms Blyth. Would you say you made a habit of shirking your work – work for which you are paid handsomely, I might add?

“No,” she answered out loud, but still made no move to start her day properly. Hell, she hadn’t even got dressed yet. Ancient dressing gown over her pyjamas. She let her dressing gown fall open, examining the threadbare cotton pj’s, their tartan pattern starting to fade. Tatty, she thought. So it has come to this, has it Ms Blyth? No romantic life of any kind, lusting after a virtual vagrant … sleeping in pyjamas? Tartan pyjamas, Ms Blyth? Not very sexy, is it?

“Piss off,” she muttered angrily. She started to light another fag, then stopped herself. Her mum was right, they were nasty little things, and she had a sudden vision of herself at 60, wrinkled, too much make-up, a lipstick-smeared cigarette dangling from her dried-up mouth. She buried her face in her hands.

“Tea, darling?” Cynthia looked up to see her Mum coming out the back door, a china cup and saucer balanced in one hand, and Cynthia’s own mug in the other.

“Thanks, Mum,” she said, taking her mug and sliding over on the bench. Fiona, of course, was already impeccably turned out and made up. She wouldn’t leave her room in the morning until she had put her face on with elaborate care.

Cynthia both admired that and was repelled by it at the same time. Of course one had to look one’s best in Court – the power of sex appeal could only be ignored at the peril of one’s client – but it was a process always put off until one was actually in the office. Cynthia had enough trouble lifting a mug of tea in the morning – the thought of intelligently applying makeup before 8 a.m. was beyond her ken.

Fiona leaned back on the bench and breathed a heavy sigh. Cynthia glanced at her. She absently pulled the packet of fags from her dressing-gown pocket again, but just looked at the crumpled packet and shoved it back in.

“What’s up, Mum?” she asked, leaning back as well. This was a rare moment. It had been a long time since she’d had a heart to heart with her mother. Two busy women with full schedules and a liking for their own company didn’t exactly make for a gab-fest scenario at the Newhame Manse.

“Oh, I’m just dreading the next few days.” She paused, marshaling her thoughts, trying to articulate the sense of foreboding she been feeling lately.

“It’s this whole Witches of Lothian nonsense,” she continued. “Except it’s not nonsense – I mean, it is, of course, but the conference has become so important to the village. It’s not healthy. And now, this Arnott character -”

“Who, that bizarre French woman?”

“Is she French? I thought she was Romanian or something – but no, I mean her husband. Jeffrey Arnott. He’s the power behind it all. The Chairman of the Board.”

“The Big Cheese,” added Cynthia.

“The Gargantuan Cheese,” Fiona corrected, both women chuckling. But it was short-lived. A grim look came over her face. “I don’t trust him, Cynthia. Did you know that other American chap, Henry what’s-his-name, did you know he’s working for this Arnott fellow? Buying local property – or rather trying to buy local property, none too successfully if the rumours are true.”

Cynthia patted her mum’s knee. “Now you’re sounding paranoid, Mum. If Higgenbotham hasn’t been successful, there’s nothing to worry about. QED.”

“I suppose you’re right,” said Fiona. “Still, you couldn’t ask around at the courts, could you? For any unusual conveyancing activity? I know you’re very busy, dear . . . . “

Cynthia surprised her by smiling grimly and saying, “Consider it done, Mum. I’m not guaranteeing anything, mind you, but I’ll extend my antennae.” Whereupon she put her fingers out from her forehead and made beeping noises. He mum guffawed.

Cynthia grinned and her mother stared in wonder. She hadn’t see or heard her daughter act so childlike and accommodating for . . . well, she couldn’t remember the last time they’d laughed together. Fiona drank the last of her tea, and decided that the three of them should have breakfast together more often.

Newhame – Chapter 11

While Jeff and Adolpho were checking into their evening flight, it was early morning in Newhame. Morag McKillop sat by the window looking out over the North Sea, watching first light tinge the horizon. A fire crackled in the fireplace, burning low, the coal scuttle almost emptied from her long night’s vigil.

Morag felt a sudden chill, and pulled her dressing gown close around her, tucking her feet up under her in the armchair she’d pulled over to the window. She was in a state of visionary exhaustion.

Although she couldn’t see it from where she sat, she knew the old half-moon was more or less directly overhead. Waning – decrepit – rotting away in the sky. Morag could clearly see herself blasting it with a shotgun, the moon exploding into shards like a clay pigeon.

She rubbed her hand over her face, then sat up to go into the kitchen. Opening her cupboard, she surveyed the jars and boxes of various infusions. Without hesitating, she took down the jar of strong Yorkshire Tea. Let the medicine suit the malaise. She put the kettle on, and when the water had heated a bit, poured a little into the pot, returning the kettle to the heat. She swirled the hot water around the bottle, poured it out, and spooned two large teaspoons of the sturdy black tea into the pot. She took out a mug – smiling, imagining the horrified look on Fiona Blyth’s face – and put a drop of milk into it. When the kettle whistled, she poured the still-boiling water into the teapot, and slapped a tea cosy over it. The tea cosy was blue and white-checked quilted cotton.

A golden glow stole over the room, and a sudden stab of light shot into Morag’s eyes, reflected from the small window over the kitchen sink. She turned to look through the kitchen door, which was on a direct line with the window in the east gable end. The sun was pouring over the horizon, like the eruption of a distant volcano, a continual nuclear explosion in space. Her living room and kitchen were suffused with light. Morag thought of Hiroshima.

When she turned back to pour the strong brew into her mug, Morag’s hands were shaking.

Drinking the tea, Morag felt warmth spread down her throat and radiate throughout her body. Yes. She felt ever-so-slightly more aligned with the universe.

She took her tea downstairs, through the studio, stopping in the doorway out to the garden. She sat cross-legged in the open doorway, watching the world wake up.

The dawn chorus was in its full-throated glory. One particular blackbird was perched in a rowan tree, pouring crystal notes into the golden morning. For the first time in a fortnight, since the night she’d brought Henry Higgenbotham home from the brawl in the Silver Darlings, Morag felt connected with the universe.

It had been a rough two weeks, Morag reflected, sipping her tea. Why it had been rough, though she wasn’t entirely sure. She just knew she had become progressively unhappier with each passing day. And her artwork had suffered. She was supposed to be finished her pieces for her show in London in three weeks time. Three weeks? Christ . . . she rubbed her hand across her scalp. The possibility of cancelling it crossed her mind for the first time.

She knew she needed to pull herself together and last night’s vigil had meant to accomplish that, but it had done nothing of the sort. She had meditated for hours, but enlightenment continued to elude her.

She wished desperately for divine inspiration, but the Goddess seemed to have deserted her lately. Though several times she had done ritual in her garden, the owl-oracle had not appeared. But then neither had the fox who advised her than night. Morag felt terribly alone.

Even Henry had made himself scarce – whether from real press of work or embarrassment for having woken up naked in Morag’s guest bedroom, she wasn’t sure. Certainly he had been embarrassed, and had left her house as soon as she decently could get away. Before he left, she reminded him she still owed him a Tarot reading, be he only smiled wanly. “Oh, I don’t think you owe me a thing,” he’d assured her. “But the fact is that I owe you quite a lot. He’d turned serious then. “Listen, can I call you this week and talk? There are things we need to discuss – you’re the only one round here I can trust on this – and it’s something you’ll need to know about.”

“Is it about Jeffrey Arnott?” she’d asked, touching his arm as he stood in the doorway.

He’d blinked, then grinned. “Should have known you’d know at least that much. But he’s only a part of it. There is much more. But I have to do some research, and I may not be around for a few days.” He’d held her hand. “I’ll be thinking about you.” Then he’d leaned forward and kiss the corner of her mouth.

Sitting in her doorway now, Morag touched her face where he’d kissed it. A few days had turned into a week, and then two weeks.

No word from Henry. Morag suddenly felt profoundly hollow, and she knew then that she cared deeply what happened to him, and that she wanted – needed – to see him again and as soon as possible.

Was she in love? Sipping her tea, Morag smiled ruefully at the thought. It seemed so unlikely, and yet stranger things had happened.

Newhame – Chapter 10

“Sing for your Mammy, wee canny manny,
Sing for your Mammy when Daddy’s awa’
Sing for the fishies, and sing for the sojers,
Sing for them a’, aye the great and the sma’”

Sleepy eyes stare at the smoky coal fire … a few meagre lumps, carefully hoarded, in the grate. But no worries. A mucky thumb in his mouth, the smell of his Mammy’s body and her soft breasts to lean against, rocking gently. Her song like a soft breeze blowing through his soul. Then, a choked sob brings his head up. Tears … Mammy’s no supposed tae greet. Fascinated, he sits up, reaches to touch her grimy cheek with his wee fingers. He hasn’t got the language to know what to say or to ask, or how to make it better, so he puts his arms around her neck and pats her head, because that’s what she does for him when he’s in tears, when he scrapes his knee, or the local children call him the “Deil’s bairn”

But now his beautiful mother smiles through her tears, wiping them away. “Dinnae worry yersel’, Angus,” says haltingly. “Och, I was only thinking on your faither, and the thought was making Mammy sad. I just miss him . . . .” Another sob, more tears. But she controls herself now, with Angus’s piercing green eyes looking boldly into her own. “You’re the spit of him, wee man, so you are.” She folds her arms around him, and all’s right with the world again.

Jeff Arnott blinked his eyes open, bewildered. That was a new one. He usually came back from his regressions angry, determined for revenge. But now – he rubbed his eyes, finding it hard to return to the here and now. The sound of the young mother’s voice still lilting gently in his head, the smell of the reeking fire still acrid in his nostrils, mixed with the smell of Angus’s Mother.

The feeling of love had been so sweet, and a sadness welled up in Jeff’s heart. He sighed, made a concentrated effort to re-centre himself, looking around the room. Bare cream walls, a few pieces of bespoke blond maple furniture upholstered in white, a frosted glass coffee table in front of the wheelchair he sat in.

He reached out to the table to touch the objects on it: a burning candle, a stick of incense, an ancient patch of tartan fabric. He extinguished the candle and incense, then gently fingered the tartan rag. In the watery light of the window it was faded, the colours almost gone, but the weave was still tight, across all the years and in spite of all it had been through . . .

- A scream. A man’s leering face. A harsh, guttural voice: “Ye’ll no kill ma cattle ony mair, Mary Arnott!” And a tight stricture around the throat, choking -

Jeff dropped the fabric from his trembling fingers, and clutched his head. What the fuck was that? It had never come on so hard and fast before, without careful meditation and regression. He leaned back in his chair, taking deep breaths. His hands groped for the wheels, and he pushed the chair back from the table, then rolled over to one of the tall windows.

Outside it was thick cold mist. Typical San Francisco autumn day. The sun was trying to cut through overhead, as Jeff swung the window open to let the sharp air into the room. He glanced across the street, where the hillside steeply fell away. Without the mist, there was a stunning view of Golden Gate Park and the sea. Not today, though. Today, the world ended, fading into a shifting mass of pearl grey.

Still, he had the street. The stately row of Victorian mansions, of which his own home was one, always soothed him, reassured him of his status in the world, and now he let his eye linger on the houses opposite, tracing the details of the ornate architecture, and he was conscious of his heartbeat slowing . . . he was back in his own world now, fully recovered from his regression.

Jeff closed the window again, and wheeled himself out of the room, carefully locking the door behind him. He had left the candle, incense and cloth on the table. Of the many rooms in Jeff’s mansion, that one had one purpose only, and he always left it in a state of readiness for the next session.

Adolpho, his private assistant, poked his head out of the office along the landing, and waved to catch Jeff’s attention. “Everything okay?” he signed.

Jeff grunted, and signed back, “Yes, yes, now come along, we’ve got work to do.”

He rolled away without waiting for Adolpho, slotting himself into the personal lift. As it sank down to the ground floor, Jeff reviewed his tasks for the day. He still had a lot to do before his plane departed for Heathrow that evening.

1. Finalise the San Francisco contingent of speakers coming over for the Witches of Lothian Conference.
2. Go over Higgenbotham’s reports again, make a decision on how to move forward.
3. Speak to his solicitors about the status of the purchase of the Newhame chalet park.
4. Pray.

On the ground floor, Jeff wheeled into the main living room, with the magnificent bay window that held another view, normally, across to the Golden Gate Bridge and Mt. Tamalpais in Marin. For some reason, Jeff felt comforted by being visually blocked in today.

No distractions, he thought to himself. That’s good. And he proceeded to get down to work.

#

Later that day, as they were driven the long drive down the peninsula to SFO, Jeff had to take Adolpho in hand. His PA had been sulking since Jeff told him earlier he wouldn’t be able to take Sandy, his boyfriend, along on this trip with him.

“It’s not fair!” signed Adolpho in the car as they slowed to a momentary halt in the crush of traffic. “Sandy hasn’t been back to Scotland in five years. If you could have seen his face when I said he might be able to come with us – “

Jeff cut him off. “You shouldn’t have said anything to him without clearing it with me first.” Adolpho slumped back against the seat. Jeff sighed. “Look,” he signed, “I don’t have anything against Sandy. I like Sandy. It think he’s good for you.” Adolpho straightened up a bit at this, let himself smile. “But we need to focus on this trip,” Jeff continued. “There’s a lot of hard work, and I’m going to be relying on you. And not just for this stuff.” Jeff fluttered his hands in the air to indicate the signing that Adolpho translated on his behalf.

Adolpho giggled, and Jeff smiled back. That was better. “No,” he went on, “I rely on your judgement as well. Sometimes I get caught up in the emotion of being there, and I need an objective mind.” He sighed and looked out the window.

Adolpho touched his arm. “Why do you do this?” he signed. “Why do you put yourself through this upset? It’s not good for you – I worry about you sometimes, you know.”

Jeff was touched. He took Adolpho’s hand, squeezed it, but didn’t try to explain. Sometimes he couldn’t understand himself what drove his actions, what made him return to Newhame time and again, what made him want the people of that obscure Scottish village to suffer.