Cold, Lone and Still (3 page)

‘ “This darksome burn, horseback brown,

His rollrock highroad roaring down

In coop and in coomb the fleece of his foam

Flutes and low to the lake falls home,” ’

she said, gazing at the tumbling torrent with the fascination I had hoped for.

We came upon it rather unexpectedly, as a matter of fact, in spite of the noise it made. We had had rather a rough scramble after walking through woods and then along the side of the loch, but, coming through more woodland on another stretch of The Way, we had seen birds and wild flowers which enchanted both of us and the sound of the waterfall was a diapason to all this happiness.

When we came in sight of the torrent and Hera had spoken Hopkins’ lines, I put my arm round her and quoted in her ear:

‘What hand but would a garland cull

For thee who art so beautiful?’

‘Then why didn’t you cull me one?’ she asked. ‘There was plenty of opportunity a little while ago.’

We knew that by now we must be well in the rear of Carbridge and his party, and by the time we had spent the night at the Inversnaid hotel they would be miles and miles ahead of us. They had camping gear with them and, as there was no sign of them at Inversnaid, I guessed that they would pitch tents somewhere near Inverarnan before going on to the youth hostel at Crianlarich. I thought it possible that the two clerks might opt for a night at a hotel, but not any of the others.

After lunch, Hera and I climbed a winding road up Glen Arklet past the little loch of the same name which is the property of the Glasgow waterworks and, to my mind, most uninteresting, but we did not finish the walk and reach Loch Katrine. Hera wanted to do this, but I pointed out that by the time we got there and back we should have added at least ten miles to the seven and a quarter we had already covered between Rowardennan and Inversnaid and that we still had to get to Crianlarich the next day.

She gave in, but rather resentfully.

‘It’s a great pity to miss the Trossachs when we’re so close,‘ she said. I pointed out that, even if we reached Loch Katrine, we could not reach the Trossachs without circumambulating most of the loch. She was silent at this. However, she admitted at dinner that I had been right and we went to our separate rooms at peace with one another.

I had a job to get her away from the waterfall after breakfast on the following morning, but we were on the move at last in perfect weather and before the day was too hot.

Hardly had we set out for Inverarnan, however, than she embarked upon a discussion of our marriage from an angle which surprised and annoyed me.

‘Comrie,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to have to sign myself Hera Melrose.’

‘Well, marry some other bloke, then,’ I said lightheartedly, thinking that she was teasing me.

‘Don’t be silly! Look, your firm is called Alexander Comrie, isn’t it?’

‘Alexander for Sandy, the senior partner, Comrie for me. We thought it sounded better for a literary agency than Storey and Melrose. What about it? Lots of firms do the same sort of thing. It’s quite legal, so long as you register the name.’

‘But, Comrie, you have another name, haven’t you?’

‘Yes. You know I have. It’s Alan.’

‘I wouldn’t mind being Mrs Alan Comrie.’

‘Well, you can’t be that, if you marry me. My name is Alan Comrie Melrose.’ I began to wonder what she was getting at.

It did not sound like teasing, after all.

‘Is Comrie a real Christian name?’

‘Not being a Christian I can’t say.’ But she was not to be fobbed off by persiflage of that sort.

‘You know what I mean,’ she said shortly.

‘Comrie was the surname of the uncle who left me such money as I have put into the firm.’

‘Well, wouldn’t he be pleased if he knew you had adopted Comrie as your own surname?’

‘I shouldn’t think he’d bother to sit up in his grave and cheer. Anyway, Melrose I am, and Melrose I stay.’

In that extraordinary way of hers, she realised that, although I tried not to show it, she had annoyed me. She abandoned the subject completely except to say, with a promise I could not mistake, that whoever would view fair Melrose aright must visit it by pale moonlight. I was not sure that she was quoting quite correctly, but I knew that she was offering me a bribe. Alan Comrie I was to agree to become. I said no more; neither did she. On our way from Inversnaid, we came upon a family of otters gorging themselves on the waste food thrown out from the hotel. They took not the slightest notice of us, so I am in great hopes that nobody hunts them in those parts.

We did not bother to visit Rob Roy’s Cave. In any case it is not, as Hera pointed out, a ‘real’ cave, but a fissure in the rocks. Moreover, we had learned from the brochure that some idiot had marked it in large white letters and so destroyed any romance which could ever have been attached to it. I don’t wonder that Stonehenge and other fascinating monuments to the past have had to be protected from the many-headed.

The next mile or two made very rough walking indeed. We scrambled and toiled towards Inverarnan, sometimes through woods, sometimes along the lochside. There was a bonus in the form of a wild goat, but we gave it as wide a berth as we could. Once, on the Isle of Wight, I had freed a domesticated goat which had got its tether wound round a gorse bush, and the horned, ungrateful devil had then done its best to rush at me and butt me into the sea.

Apart from the goat, the only interest lay in our struggles to keep our footing on the rough path while we listened to the traffic on the other side of the loch. At Doune, or rather just before we reached a desolate farmhouse on the way to that place, we took a break on a gravel shore and then, after we had crossed a brook, the going became easier and we stopped to take a look at some deserted farm buildings.

From Doune (one of three places of that name in Scotland) to Inverarnan the way was easy. We climbed, rested, and then went by way of a little pass to find a glorious view of the loch we were leaving behind us with Ben Lomond guarding it. Ahead of us were other great mountains — I think Ben Lui was one. Soon we dropped downhill, partly through woodland, until we came to a bridge. A ruined farm and a waterfall led us to another bridge, this one over the River Falloch. After that, we came out on to the main road and so to the hotel.

I went inside to confirm our booking, secure in the knowledge that, if we ever ran into Carbridge and the others again, it would not be at Inverarnan. Neither was it. That unwished-for joy awaited us at Crianlarich, although that bit of information was not given us until we got there.

Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, runs the writ to which Gilbert Keith Chesterton too optimistically added, ‘for he shall be gloriously surprised’. In my experience, the glorious surprises have always been leaked beforehand, for it is not only bad news which travels fast. Our bad news did not travel at all, in one sense. It simply caught up with us, but that came later, for at Inverarnan, except for the prospect yet again of separate beds, all was well and I felt remarkably fit and very happy as I went to the hotel desk, leaving Hera outside.

I
t was as I came out again that I saw the gypsy. She was an old woman with a keen face and wispy grey hair coming from under a man’s felt hat.

‘Mind how you go, my pretty,’ she said to Hera. We stopped, although I hardly know why. She had sprigs of flowering rowan in her basket and some fronds of young bracken. Colour was provided by a collection of paper flowers, red, blue, yellow and mauve.

‘Mind how I go? Why?’ asked Hera, although I touched her arm to indicate that we should move on. I wanted to have a look round before we dined.

‘The Way is long,’ said the gypsy.

‘ “The wind was cold,

The minstrel was infirm and old,” ’

I quoted, and gave another slight touch to Hera’s arm.

‘You keep to The Way,’ said the gypsy, ignoring me. ‘It may be long, but there is danger if you stray. Buy a flower and a bit of green fern, lady. Green is a lucky colour for you. Buy a bit of rowan for the white soul of you. Come autumn, there will be berries red as pigeons’ blood, but the flower of the rowan, that’s white as milk, as pure as your heart, my lady.’

‘All right,’ said Hera. She picked a spray of rowan out of the gypsy’s basket and gave the old woman a fifty pence coin. ‘Now tell me why I’m to mind how I go. Go where?’

‘Come you apart from your gentleman.’

I was not very keen on this, but Hera motioned me to stay where I was. The gypsy took her aside far enough for me to be out of earshot. The conference was not a very long one. Hera came back to me with a couple of paper flowers as well as the spray of rowan for which she had paid such a ridiculously exorbitant price, but she refused to disclose any details of the conversation.

‘It’s all a lot of nonsense, I expect,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and look at the old canal.’

I saw that it would be useless for a time to ask any questions, but I guessed that she would come out with something later on. I spent a comfortable night, although I had no luck, as I say, with the sleeping arrangements because I had booked us in separately again at Hera’s insistence. I hoped she now regretted this as much as I did, but, short of telling them at the desk that we had got married since I had made the booking, there was nothing to be done about it.

We breakfasted at eight next day and went back to join The Way, but midway through the stop we made for our elevenses Hera came up with one of those bright ideas which might seem all right at the time, but end in disaster later.

‘You’ve got maps, haven’t you?’ she said.

‘Sure. Why?’ I asked, scenting danger.

‘When we get to Crianlarich we’ll study the map,’ said the temptress. ‘There might be a short cut we could take. So long as we don’t use public transport, nothing was said about having to keep strictly to The Way, was it?’

‘No. but I didn’t accept any bets and one doesn’t take short cuts in this sort of country unless one is a fool or has been born and brought up here.’

‘Oh, we won’t take a short cut unless it’s marked on the map,’ she said.

‘Well, it won’t be. The Way would follow it if it were.’

‘We’ll see,’ she said. Again, I did not argue. There were nearly seven miles to cover before we reached Crianlarich and I thought she would have forgotten about short cuts by the time we got there.

From Inverarnan to Crianlarich we were in Glen Falloch and had left Loch Lomond behind. We finished on the old military road constructed, I suppose, by Wade, who opened up parts of the Highlands in this way to assist in what was known as their pacification. This meant he had to move his troops about to get to the trouble spots during and after the Jacobite risings.

It was when we had left the river we had been following and were getting near our destination that we caught up with the first of Carbridge’s off-loadings. These were Perth and the students. One could not call them stragglers, since they had fallen behind only in order to get on with the job they had come to do. They were all busy with notebooks, maps, chisels and their little geological hammers and told us that they were having a great time and had booked beds at the youth hostel in Crianlarich, where they hoped to see us again.

We gave them our good wishes and asked how far ahead the rest of the party would be. It turned out that they had all booked in at the hostel, but Carbridge might have decided to push on towards Tyndrum without stopping in Crianlarich.

‘He must be mad,’ said Hera. ‘The hostel at Crianlarich is the last one on The Way until he gets to Fort William.’

‘He talked of camping and how much time they would save that way because they would be striking camp at the crack of dawn each day. I’m thinking we delayed the rest of them an unco’ time on Inchcailloch and he is impatient to be pushing on. Ye’ll mind ye of the lassies Green and Parks?‘ said Perth.

‘Would those be Rhoda and Tansy?’ I asked.

‘The same. They canna thole yon man Carbridge, I’ll be thinking, and they are to leave the rest of us and take to the train, but whether they will then go on to Fort William I dinna ken.’

‘When did they leave the party?’

‘They are bookit in at Crianlarich the night, sensible lassies, so we’ll meet up wi’ them there.’

‘We’ll meet them there, too, and you and the students, of course.’

‘Aye. We can do wi’ a bed the night, for we shall be into the hills the morn, and that may be hard going for the lassies, wi’ the digging and scraping and all.’

‘Does that mean you will spend more than tomorrow prospecting around these parts?’

‘We’re biding three nights. The students are awfu’ keen and we’re a wee thing weary o’yon man Carbridge and his haverings.’

‘We soon got bored with him, too. I don’t know much about geology, so what are the students actually looking for in these parts?’

‘We didna let on to the rest of them, but you and Miss Camden are sensible bodies, so I’ll tell ye. Ye’ll mind ye of a theory that, awa’ back in time, the geography of the world was vastly different from the way it is today? Well, what these laddies and lassies are after is to match the American dinosaurs wi’ bones found over on this side. There is muckle talk o’ the Cretaceous period and its giant sauropods — ’

‘Titanosaurus from Argentina,’ I said. ‘Go back to the Jurassic and we get Brachiosaurus, who was also four-footed, but during the Cretaceous time we also get Tyrannosaurus. He seems to have walked upright on massive hind legs and his forelegs were tiny and can’t have been of much use for any practical purpose. The Americans found a good specimen of this intimidating chap in Montana, I believe, and the Russians found another one in Mongolia.’

‘I thought ye kenned nothing about geology.’

‘Oh, everybody is interested in dinosaurs.’ We wished the working party luck again, said we would see them at the hostel supper and that we were leaving after next morning’s breakfast.

‘We must get provisions in Crianlarich if we are going to take a short cut across country,’ said Hera, when we came in sight of the hostel.

‘There are not going to be any short cuts. It’s crazy to think of such a thing,’ I said in my firmest tones.

‘We shall see,’ she said again, putting out her tongue at me.

The hostel was in a turning off the Tarbet-Crianlarich road and, further on, the turning led to the road between Tyndrum and Killin. A disused railway line was just beyond it.

The hostel itself was described by Hera as quaint. It was in two parts. One part was raised above the ground on piers. The entrance was up some steps to a building just behind the other. There were sixty-four beds, a members’ kitchen and a hostel store, but meals were not provided, so that conditioned our shopping. We went back with the food for the next day, but bought our supper from the hostel shop.

On enquiry of the warden at the hostel we learned that although Carbridge and his party had not cancelled their booking, they had not yet arrived. Perth and the students, as they had told us, were booked in for three nights. The office girls were booked in, too, but did not turn up, so we assumed that they had decided to take the train straightaway and we did not expect to see them again unless they were at the hostel in Fort William when we arrived there.

It looked as though Carbridge’s party had been reduced to four, himself and Todd and the brother and sister Jane and James Minch, but Perth that evening gave it as his opinion that the couple would leave The Way after Tyndrum, as Jane was footsore and James had quarrelled with Todd.

‘The quarrel was about Jane, I suppose,’ said Hera. ‘I don’t trust men where girls are concerned.’ But it was at me she looked. I laughed, and she went on: ‘Never mind that. We’ve got to pass Carbridge as soon as possible. If he’s got the two Minches in tow and poor Jane Minch with sore feet, we may be able to pass him between Tyndrum and Bridge of Orchy. After all the walking they’ve done, even Todd and Carbridge may be inclined to slow down a bit from now on.’

‘We shall never pass them if they’re camping and we are staying the night at a hotel,’ I said. ‘They’ll be away at first light and I’m certainly not going to get up at dawn and miss my breakfast. Who cares about Carbridge when a Scottish breakfast is in the offing?’

‘You are a pig where food is concerned!’

I grinned and told her to bear the fact in mind when we were married. All the same, I resented the unnecessary slur and said I would go for a walk. I strolled out with the intention of taking a look at the route we should be taking next day. I walked alongside the loch, but had not gone far when I met the Minch brother and sister. Jane was limping. I stopped.

‘I thought you were pushing on,’ I said. James indicated his sister.

‘We thought the same,’ he said, ‘but Jane can’t go any further without something being done about her feet. Like lunatics, we’ve brought no first-aid stuff except a crêpe bandage and some of those bits you stick on to cuts. We’re going back to the hostel to see whether we can pick up something more useful.’

‘I’ve got stuff,’ I said, ‘and she’s done enough walking.’ With this, I picked up the slightly-built girl and carried her like a baby. When we got to the hostel, I produced my kit and ministered to her small, tender feet. I knew all this would irritate Hera and it did, but I found I did not care. Looking after Jane was like caring for a child. I found it a pleasant experience. Her brother then took her up to bed.

Perth and the students arrived a bit later and the youngsters soon turned in, but Perth still stayed up. Looking out of the window he said, ‘Losh! Look who’s here!’ It was Carbridge and Todd. They had noticed that the weather was changing and, as they had not cancelled their booking at the hostel, they had decided to go back on their tracks and seek beds instead of camping out.

Hera congratulated them upon their common sense, at which Carbridge said, ‘Your commendation, fair one, is as the voice of the turtle dove,’ and he began to sing, as he showed signs of putting his arm around Hera: