Behind the Scenes at the Museum (30 page)

Bunty glides around the loch, casting meaningful glances instead of bright, feathery little flies. Her romance is being seriously hindered by the presence of Mrs Roper, but despite this her loch-side perambulations bring her round and round again to Mr Roper. It’s amazing how often, in the daily round, they collide with each other, fingers brushing as they reach for cups, bodies bumping as they try to pass through doors together as if Mr Roper is a magnet and Bunty a heap of iron filings.

Christine tries to involve me in a stream of games that she invents, all of which are based on the premise that we are horses. It’s difficult to avoid playing equine games with her and the best I can usually manage is to gallop hell-for-leather towards the nearest hill and hope that she doesn’t follow. Sometimes I escape successfully, especially if she becomes embroiled in some minor distraction (Oh, my God –
where’s the baby?
) or gets inveigled into helping Kenneth test the bottomless theory (
Kenneth, get out of the water this minute!
). It seems to me that the easiest way to test this theory would be to simply throw Kenneth in.

I prefer to be as far away as possible from the loch. It creates a feeling of unease in me and if I get too near the edge I begin to think it’s trying to suck me into its endless blackness. It reminds me of something, but what?

We have several fine days of weather together (‘It cannae last,’ Mr von Leibnitz says dismally, shaking his head, and Mrs von Leibnitz agrees, ‘Aye, we’ll suffer for it next week.’) and traipsing across hill and dale to the loch isn’t an altogether unattractive proposition. One afternoon, hot and bright, I gallop free of Christine, up to the top of the highest of the hills around the loch and, panting like a racehorse, throw myself down on the grass which is coarse and tickly like a straw mattress. Down below, the water gleams, fathomless and secretive, and the people buzz around meaninglessly. Far away in the distance, the wide horizon of heather meets a big, pale sky that’s been swept clean of everything except for a buzzard, hanging like an augury, and I experience a moment of pure elation, like an unexpected gift, and the hole inside me – where something has been taken away – heals over and is filled. This rapture cannot last, of course, and I’m summoned down to eat our lunch (Mrs von Leibnitz packs us a picnic, always the same – potted meat sandwiches, over-ripe bananas, plain crisps and mint Yo-Yos), and by the time we walk home everything is the same as usual and my own bottomless loch of loneliness is back in place.

‘Is it your soul, Patricia?’ I ask sympathetically.

‘Shutupruby.’

As we descend into Oban we can see the sea, like the rim of the world, and the sky above, aqueous and translucent. We pass a piper standing – inexplicably – at the side of the road in full regalia (an Anderson kilt, I note) and he pipes us into Oban on a mournful, shivery pibroch. I could enjoy this holiday if they would just let me, but no, there is already talk of, ‘A little boat trip – or should I say “wee” boat trip, ha ha – after lunch,’ Mr Roper chuckles, accidentally rubbing against Bunty as we make our way to a restaurant in a hotel that has a tartan (McGregor) carpet. We all have fish and chips, except for Patricia who has one chip and turns greener than the water in the harbour.

The Mull ferry steams away like a
grande dame
as we struggle to board our own craft – the
Bonny Bluebell
, a tiny little thing, more coracle than boat. We find her below a sign that says, ‘Trips Round the Bay’, and underneath, ‘Mr A Stewart – Proprietor’, and George says, ‘Donald, where’s your troosers, hoots mon!’ and Mr Stewart looks at him with a mixture of pity and disdain in his eyes.

What harm can there really be, I say to myself as I sit down, next to Patricia on a sea-sawing plank; the weather, after all, is fair, the bay relatively small. Then the motor goes prut-prut-prut and we’re off! Bunty would never have set foot on this boat if she hadn’t been blinded by love and she soon discovers her mistake because hardly are we out of the harbour when all the colour drains from her skin and she whispers, ‘Oh, no.’

‘What is it, Bunty?’ Mr Roper’s voice is full of earnest concern as he leans over towards her. Both Mrs Roper and George look up quickly at the intimate timbre of his voice, but Mrs Roper is immediately distracted by baby-David wanting to be a little teapot again. Not so George, who from this moment on is on his guard, watching the pair of lovers like a hawk.

As soon as we’ve chugged out of the harbour, the previously glassy-calm water seems to change – the water is ruffled by waves and it’s not long before an alarming swell begins to develop. The forget-me-not blue of the sea grows claret-dark and trouble brews. Gusts of wind begin to batter and buffet the little boat and its jolly sailor occupants. ‘Poor Bunty,’ Mr Roper says as she heaves up her fish and chips over the side of the boat. I can understand how she feels because my own stomach is conducting the Highland Fling. Patricia slides down in her seat and I shuffle up to be nearer her. When I grasp her hand she responds without hesitation, squeezing mine hard, and we cling to each other in terror.

‘It’s just a wee squall,’ Mr Stewart yells, which doesn’t comfort any of us, especially not Mr Roper, who shouts above the wind, ‘Wee or not, I don’t think this boat is up to a squall, old chap.’ I don’t know whether it’s the Anglo-imperialism in Mr Roper’s tone or that our captain is an evolved species with earlids, but he turns a deaf ear and sails on into the storm. Mrs Roper is fully occupied with the baby-David who is damp and screaming, with Christine who is moaning and clutching her stomach and with Kenneth who is dangling over the side of the boat, apparently trying to plumb the sea with his own body. Mr Roper is not helping his wife at all, but has moved over to Bunty’s side of the boat so that we’re now listing dangerously, caught between the Scylla of George’s jealousy and the Charybdis of Oban Bay.

And then – and this is dreadful – suddenly I begin to scream, a fearful scream of despair that rises up from the bottomless loch deep inside me, a place with neither name, number nor end. ‘The water,’ I sob into Patricia’s neck, ‘the water!’ and she does her best, given the circumstances, to soothe me. ‘I know, Ruby . . .’ she shouts, but the wind carries away the rest of her words.

Whatever else it did, at least this lost child’s cry seems to have an effect on Mr Stewart, who, finally and with great difficulty, turns the boat round and heads back to the shelter of the harbour.

‘Zair’s a problem?’ Mr von Leibnitz asks, stepping forward, and Mr Roper turns to look at him and growls, ‘You stay out of this, you Nazi,’ which, as you can imagine, doesn’t go down too well with the von Leibnitzes. I look around for Patricia to see if she’s going to stand up against this injustice and am surprised to see her leaning against the door-post, a rather twisted smile on her face. Seeking a scapeparrot, Bunty turns to her and says testily, ‘Stand up straight, Patricia!’ as if Patricia’s deportment was the issue here. Patricia, in one of her greatest
non sequiturs
, smiles and shrugs and then says in a funny drawl, ‘Actually, Mama, I just came down to tell you that I’m pregnant.’

Can anyone top that? Yes, Mrs Roper can. She flings herself into the dining-room like a tea-cake from a toaster, shouting, ‘Help! Help! Someone call an ambulance!’

Patricia and I sleep most of the way home, although we wake up for a thoroughly nice meal in a restaurant on the road to Glasgow, which noone regurgitates. The atmosphere in the car is the stunned, silent one that follows on great disasters. We leave Och-na-cock-a-leekie very early in the morning, giving the porridge and baked beans a miss, because George wants to get a head start on the sheep and traffic. We pull away from the farm in a thick, early-morning mist that muffles and baffles the normal world. As we approach the road with no name and number, at the end of the farm-track, I peer sleepily through the car window to catch a last glimpse of our Scottish Farm and am astonished to see the head and shoulders of an heraldic beast emerging from the mist like a trophy on a wall. He’s only a few feet from the car but gazes at me with regal indifference. It’s a stag, a huge monarch, with a great head of antlers, like something from a myth. I don’t even bother prodding Patricia to tell her about him, because I know I must be dreaming. Somewhere just beyond the mist, there’s our real Scottish holiday – and perhaps all the other holidays we never had as well.

I think Patricia must have been thinking on the same lines because later on, just as the mist clears and we’re surprised to find ourselves half-way up an impressive mountain, she leans over to me and whispers, ‘Do you remember Auntie Doreen?’ and looks quite relieved when I nod and say, ‘Of course I do.’