Finding Fraser (24 page)

Fried Food…

10:30 am, May 1

Nairn, Scotland

I have been trying so hard to do the
right thing while I am here. To follow my map. To stick to the plan. But the
plan has a way of not working, somehow.

Last night, I got onto a bus and left
Glasgow. And today, I’m in Nairn, a seaside village in the Highlands; a place
of great beauty and deep history. I’ve had a deep-fried Mars Bar for breakfast,
which has banished the terrible Jane Austen dreams that came as a result of
last night’s mystery meat sandwich, and am about to embark on a research
session to learn more of this place. Of its people.

Of the Nairn Highland Games.

Plan be damned. My journey is now back in
the hands of fate.

Wish me luck!

- ES

Comments: 23

SophiaSheridan, Chicago, USA:

Wish you luck as you put yourself into
the hands of fate? Emma, you’ve really lost it. After a month of trying, you
can’t even manage to hold down a job to earn the money to get home? I just
can’t read this any more. The stress is too much.

Jack Findlay, Inverness, Scotland:

Been buried in final galley corrections
for the new manuscript, so I’m just catching up on your adventures today.
Wonderful to see you back in the Highlands again, though I’m not sure the job
prospects will be any better than Glasgow, to tell you the truth. At any rate,
wanted to wish you a happy first day of summer, such as it is. May the sun
shine down on your adventures while you are here.

Jack

(Read 21 more comments
here
…)

I
shook my head and looked out the window of the library.
It was May Day—how did
that
translate to the first day of summer? Jack had to be nuts—or making some
kind of twisted Scottish joke.

That had to be it.

But he was right about one thing. The sun
was
shining in this wee town, and it was
so good to be out of the Glasgow gray.

The dream I had awakened from on the bus had
been brutal. And the inside of my mouth had tasted like a grease-slicked fry pan.
But a wander through the town in the crisp, early sunlight had cured so much of
what ailed me. Over my odd breakfast, I’d read through my copy of OUTLANDER yet
again.

I couldn’t recall if Claire had ever made
the journey to Nairn, and I wanted to check it out. I had flipped pages,
scanned and read some more, but the text of OUTLANDER proved no help. Claire
had obviously not made Nairn a stop in her travels, at least in the first book.
The map inside the cover was even less help, since the town name was nowhere to
be found, and at that moment, I wasn’t quite sure exactly where I had ended up.
Had I taken a bus to nowhere?

Luckily, the man at the chippy had handed me
a creased and dog-eared copy of a leaflet cheerily titled ‘Welcome to
Nairnshire’. The back half of the leaflet was missing, but it at least gave me
a place to start. Then he pointed me to the Tourist Center, which shared space
with the town library and actually offered use of a free Internet terminal for
visitors.

I walked out into the street, feeling
hopeful for the first time in what felt like weeks. This was, after all, the
land of the hardy Highland Warrior. The Nairn Games. Another chance to complete
my journey. Forget the ghosts that Gerald had me chasing—I needed to find
my very own Fraser. Mind you, I needed to find a laundromat first. If I did come
across my Jamie, he’d probably like me better in clothes that had been recently
washed.

But still. I felt so welcome already.

Inside the library, I learned that the town
itself had a population somewhere north of 8,000 people, and that the locals
considered their wee metropolis to be the center of golfing excellence, with
two large courses nearby and more than forty others within a sixty mile radius.
I wondered briefly about a golf-playing Jamie, and then rejected the thought.

I needed a guy who had time for noble
pursuits. Like the pursuit of Emma, for example.

The brochure went on to note that other than
being a seaside village with many popular tourist amenities, Nairn also hosted
one of the largest competitive games events in the Highlands.

Of course. I’d known that from the kilted
man on the side of the bus. Seeing as there were fewer clan wars in the
twenty-first century, and cattle poaching had become almost unheard of, the
Highland Games seemed as good a place as any to carry on the quest for my
personal version of Jamie.

Unfortunately, a quick search of
Nairn - Highland Games
brought me a more
complete story. While it turned out the dog-eared little brochure from the
chippy man was correct, and there
were
Highland
Games in Nairn every year, they were held in late summer. Which made perfect
sense. It can’t be easy to toss a caber while slogging through a muddy field.

I logged off the computer with a sigh.

At least some of my commenters had returned.
But aside from the cheery note from Jack and the diatribe from my sister, all the
comments came from overseas readers. All asked, in a range of dialects and with
varying degrees of subtlety, when the hell I was going to find my Highlander
and fall in love, already.

Since my last experiences with men had been
a naked fishmonger and an irate café owner, I obviously needed more practice.

So there I sat, months away from the Games
that drew the muscle-y Highland boys, one of whom might be my own personal
Fraser. I had no idea what to do next. From the way my comments were going, it
was clear the outside world was losing patience in my quest. And the dwindling
contents of my wallet were dragging me down worse than the light blog traffic.

I decided to take a look around the place,
anyway. I was, after all, deeper in the Highlands than ever before. I could at
least allow myself a day to play the tourist before addressing the twin evils
of facing up to my financial situation and heading back south to find work. And
who knows? Maybe there would be a singles bar in Nairn.

Beside the computer terminal was a tourist
information bulletin board, which was speckled with bent pushpins and old
messages. After reading every torn page, it soon became clear there was no
hostel in the town, or at least not one open in the off-season. Since the
bulletin board and the computer desk were the full extent of the tourist
information section, I wandered up to the library front desk and picked up a
pamphlet detailing local accommodations.

Even at off-season rates, there wasn’t a bed
and breakfast anywhere that could match hostel rates.

Finally the lady behind the desk leaned
forward on one elbow and looked up at me over her glasses. “Try Missus
McGuinty, down Lochloy Road,” she said, with a serious nod. “I’ve heard she’ll
give travelers a special rate in springtime, especially those who are willing
to look after themselves.”

“My budget is just ten pounds a night,” I
repeated.

“You try her, pet. She’s got a lovely spot
out there, facing the firth. Ye won’t be disappointed, I promise.”

It felt like destiny.

On the library lady’s advice, I tried to
banish my bad memories of earlier experiences and rented a bicycle from a
garage across the street. After a twenty-minute ride into the teeth of an
extremely brisk wind, I found myself at a deeply rutted driveway marked with
the McGuinty’s B&B sign.

Ominously, beneath the name, a little wooden
plaque reading NO had been hooked on before the word Vacancy. I hopped off my
bike, anyway, and pushed it carefully into one of the mostly-frozen ruts in the
drive.

Inside the fenced yard off the lane, an epic
struggle unfolded before my eyes. A squat old man, his iron-gray hair slicked
back from a face the color of a fire engine was fighting a losing battle with a
giant orange bull.

I’d never seen anything like this animal
before. Huge horns on either side of its head spread out as wide as the
handlebars on a Harley. A mane of long, curly red hair cascaded down the
creature’s forehead, obscuring its eyes. Completing the picture was a
comparatively small pink nose, which at the moment was blowing twin bores of
steam straight into the face of the small farmer.

The bull, massive testicles swinging, was
pulling the man backwards by virtue of a rope harness the farmer had somehow
tangled around the animal’s head. The other end of the harness was clutched
tightly in the hands of the farmer. The old man had his heels dug deeply into
the mud, but I could see by the twin channels in the dirt behind him that the
bull’s tactics had proven successful for quite a distance already. The farmer’s
jaw was set, though, and there was no aura of defeat about him. I stood beside
my bicycle, not sure what to do, but he didn’t spare a glance for me.

“Ye’ll no beat me, yeh wee bastard,” the man
hissed, but the bull pulled him steadily on toward the open gate to the road.

“Would you like me to shut the gate?” I
called out, helpfully. I certainly wasn’t going to offer anything else. That
bull was a monster, taller than the farmer by nearly a foot.

“O’ course I dinnae want ye to close the
blasted gate. Jes’ get yerself and yon bicycle ou’ of the bluidy way.”

By this time, the bull had picked up a bit
of speed, as far as slow-motion tug-o-war contests went, and I could see the
man’s arms shaking as he clutched the harness for dear life.

Reasoning that I could be more help if I
went up to the farmhouse to fetch Mrs. McGuinty, I did as the old man said, and
pushed my bike further along one of the deep ruts. I could hear the bull
blowing and the man grunting with exertion behind me as I hurried up the lane.

But when I got to the house, no one came to
my desperate knock.

I heard a cry behind me and turned to see
the bull had pulled the harness at last out of the old man’s hands, but instead
of the animal running along the road, it was charging up the hill into the
field beyond. The old man, having closed the gate behind the animal, was
stumping up the laneway toward me.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t find anyone to come
and help,” I said, as the farmer strode up and began cleaning his boots on an
enormous iron scraper beside the front door.

“No help to be had or needed,” he said, and
having scraped his boots, put a hand on the door. “I manage on mah own jes’
fine, thank-ye-very-much.”

The bull, still trailing the rope harness,
was by this time frolicking up a small hill behind the farmhouse. The farmer
stared up at the bull, a smile of satisfaction on his still-rosy face. “Did
tha’ wee bastard right,” he said, chuckling a little.

“How did you get him to go that way?” I
asked. “I thought he was going to head straight out onto the road.”

“’Sa kissin’ gate,” the old man said. He
tapped his temple with a muddy finger. “It’s all abou’ the brains, y’know. The
young fella wouldnae gone through that gate for any money, less I told ’im he
wasnae welcome.”

“So—you pulled him along to convince
him he wasn’t to go that way?”

“Aye, did that, indeed. And yer the sharp
one to figure it out, aren’t yeh?” He nodded at me approvingly. “Sure enough—lookit
him up there. He’ll be safe up away from the ladies down ta lower pasture until
he’s welcome.”

“What about the harness—won’t he trip
himself on that?”

The old man opened up the front door of the
cottage and shrugged out of his overcoat. “Nah, nah—won’t hurt the wee
bastard for an hour or two. Be needin’ to halter train ’im for the show this summer,
anyroad. ‘Reinhardt’s mah prime stock, for all his stubbornness.”

“Reinhardt?”

“Aye. After an ol’ beau, an all.” He paused
and looked me up and down.

“What’ll you be needin’ then? Directions to
Nairn?”

I came back to myself. “No—no. I think
I’m at the wrong spot, actually. I was told to find Mrs. McGuinty’s place.
There’s no hostel in Nairn and I’m looking for somewhere to spend the night. I
heard she offers good rates.”

The old man jutted his jaw at me
contemplatively for a moment. “Lookin’ fer a place, are ye?”

“Uh—yeah. But the library lady told me
to speak to Mrs. McGuinty, actually.”

“She did, eh? That Katy is full of well
meanin’, now, ain’t she?”

By that point I was starting to think the
lady at the library hadn’t been so well meaning after all. “I guess so. If you
can just point me in the right direction …”

The farmer paused again, and then barked so
loudly that I jumped a full foot backwards. He slapped his knee furiously and I
realized he was laughing.

“Well, Missy, yer lookin’ at ‘er. I’m Morag
McGuinty. Come inside—we’ll have a cuppa tea and discuss terms, shall
we?”

And that’s how I found myself living in a
converted cow barn in Nairn, Scotland.