Kissing Toads (10 page)

One smile, I thought, and it turns on a gush of confidence. Perhaps he was lonely.

‘I'll bet it was,' I said warmly. ‘How – how old were you?' I was picturing a child of ten or eleven confronted by a devouring Spanish lamia.

‘Fourteen.' And he added: ‘Before I got spots.'

‘Have you tried tea tree oil?' I found myself responding.

‘No . . .'

‘A friend of mine uses it: he says it's pretty effective. And sun lamp treatment. That's great if you don't overdo it.'

‘Yeah? Morag said there was nothing I could do. She's our housekeeper. She says we all have our crosses to bear.'

‘Probably, but not at your age. You're too young for crosses. I don't know if you could get a sun lamp round here, but—'

‘That's okay. I'll go online. I have all Dad's credit card details.' Whether legitimately or not, I didn't ask. ‘I just didn't think . . . Dad said he had spots when he was sixteen. He said you grow out of it in a year or two, but that's
ages
away . . .'

‘Sun lamps and tea tree oil,' I said. ‘It may not clear them all up, but it'll make a difference. Things have changed since your dad was a teenager.' Not 'alf.

By the time we reached my bedroom, we were best friends. ‘Sorry about this,' Dorian said as I surveyed a light fitting that appeared to be made from dented tin cans and a futuristic four-poster draped in lilac chiffon and quilted in lime-green silk. ‘It's Her again.' There was a definite capital letter. ‘But at least the ghost doesn't come in this part of the house.'

‘I'm not surprised. What kind of a ghost is it?'

A teenage poltergeist, maybe?

‘The usual kind.' He was vague. ‘You'll see. Look, I'd better leave you to settle in. Come down for tea about four.'

‘I'll never find my way.'

‘Harry'll fetch you. Harry Winkworth – he's the butler. He brought your case upstairs.' Sandy hair. Grin. Of course. ‘See you later.'

‘See you.'

When he had gone, I unpacked. There was far too much wardrobe space for my clothes, making me feel inadequate. Was I supposed to dress up like a
Vogue
fashion plate every evening? Well, Delphi could do that; no one would care what I wore when she was around. (Except her.) Suddenly, I found I was missing her acutely. We hadn't got together for over a week and I wanted her buoyancy, her confidence, her arrogance, her opinion of Basilisa's décor. I sent her a text – ‘Dream castle. Nightmare inside. Wait till you see it' – and changed into a cashmere sweater in an attempt to smarten up for tea.

Tea was served in a drawing room largely untouched by the Basilisk effect, with a couple of stags' heads on the wall, shelves of books and CDs, Persian rugs and sofas covered in hessian and scattered with tapestry cushions. Crusty was there, with Dorian, and a square-faced, square-bodied woman with gunmetal hair who had to be Morag the housekeeper. She gave me tea and home-made shortbread biscuits of true melt-in-the-mouth consistency. She was obviously a native – she looked dour if not actively hostile – but, like Crusty, might well have a heart of gold beneath her unpromising exterior, though in the light of her views on acne and crosses I doubted it. Two more people joined us, one of whom I recognised from his TV show as Nigel Willoughby-Purchiss – the probing nose, the retreating chin, the eyes that managed to seem at once sharp and bleary, like a rat with a hangover. However, I knew he was both articulate and clever, and I determined not to hold his appearance against him. Our society is too obsessed with externals, when we should look deeper into the soul. It was not his fault that nature had given him ratty eyes and the profile of an aggressive coat hanger. I shook his hand, gazed (briefly) into his soul, and turned to his companion. My host. Hot God Jakes.

An elderly man, shorter than I'd expected – superstars tend to be short, something to do with the Napoleon complex – in shabby jeans and trainers, rolled-up sleeves showing the sinewy forearms of someone who could not only play the guitar but wrestle it to the ground. He had a leathery, rubbery sort of face with very mobile features (no Botox, then) and more than the usual complement of lines, doubtless the product of his former lifestyles. All four decades of them. Overall, he had a faintly piratical air, probably due to the eyepatch. And the long, streaky grey hair tied back with what had to be a red bandana, since no rock star would be caught dead in a hair ribbon. He greeted me with the relaxed friendliness of someone who has been doing relaxed and friendly since he got off heroin, and I so far forgot myself as to blurt out: ‘Are you all right? Your eye . . .' In all the things I had heard or read about him, no one had ever mentioned him losing an eyeball.

‘Cataracts,' he said briefly.

Cataracts
? A legendary rock icon couldn't possibly have cataracts. Syphilis, yes, even AIDS, hepatitis, beriberi, swamp fever – any disease that was either sleazy or exotic. But not
cataracts
.

Next thing, it would be lumbago.

‘I'm so sorry,' I said, feeling gauche.

‘It's still a bit red,' he explained. ‘More comfortable if I block out the light. How do you like your room?'

Was he joking? ‘Lovely,' I lied, thinking of the tin cans and the lilac-and-lime bed.

‘My wife's taste.'

‘Yes, Dorian did mention . . .'

‘Did he tell you about our ghost?'

‘I'm afraid I'm a bit of sceptic,' I said apologetically.

‘Me too,' said HG. ‘But there's no doubt we have
something
in the oldest part of the castle – a presence, an absence, the feeling of eyes on your back . . . a touch on the nape of your neck. A draught where no draught should be, the rustle of a curtain, a footstep. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.'

‘Does it throw things?' I asked.

‘A poltergeist? Nothing so vulgar. But see for yourself.'

‘Clanking chains? Skirling pipes?'

‘No chains. But I think I've heard the pipes once or twice, faint and far off, when I've woken up before dawn.'

‘Maybe you did,' I said. ‘Some villager practising beside the loch in order to get the right atmosphere.'

‘Maybe.' He smiled, deepening the lines in his cheeks. It occurred to me that in an elderly, wrinkled sort of way he was attractive. Charisma. Charm is superficial and beauty fades, but charisma only increases with time. HG had buckets of it.

Whoops! I was being thrilled, if not overawed. I tried to look at him through Dorian's eyes – an awkward father who wouldn't act his age, constantly dating women who were too young for him. Still cavorting on stage occasionally, thinking he could dance – the ultimate horror for any teenager is their seniors wriggling around to old pop songs. Put that way, a rock-star dad would be about as embarrassing as a parent could get. Hot God's pelvic lunge was famous, but, to his son, it would probably be excruciating. Mind you, at his age it might well be excruciating for him too.

The voice of Morag broke in on my thoughts. ‘Ye shouldna mock the powers o' the dark,' she intoned in a superb Scottish brogue that rolled off her tongue like porridge. Sooner or later, I deduced, she's going to say: ‘We're all doomed.' It was inevitable.

‘Morag's very religious,' HG offered.

I'd never have guessed.

The conversation moved on to matters historical and horticultural, with Nigel Willoughby-Purchiss holding forth authoritatively on the gap between legend and fact. After dinner, I was promised a sight of the long-lost plan of the maze, carefully restored from a few lines on ageing and discoloured paper to a feasible sketch of the layout.

‘It's incomplete, of course,' HG said, ‘but Nigel reckons there will be clues in the terrain to help us fill in the gaps.'

‘The ground will be uneven,' Nigel elucidated. ‘There will be little ridges – dips, nuances – which only the trained eye can perceive.' Clearly his was the trained eye in question.

‘Ye would do better tae let the ghaisties lie,' Morag remarked predictably, pausing as she tidied the tea things.

‘I keep her around for the atmosphere,' HG explained when she had left. ‘I suspect she plays up to it, but that's okay. At least she provides an authentic feel of Scottish drama.'

He didn't just want the castle, I reflected, he wanted the whole package. We weren't here just to replant the garden: we were bringing Birnham Wood to high Dunsinane. (This wasn't the last time that particular metaphor would come into play.) And
Macbeth
is supposed to be unlucky. Suddenly, like Morag, I experienced definite qualms about the omens.

Before dinner, Dorian took me to check out the ghost. The oldest part of the castle boasted bare stone walls, narrow uncurtained windows, heavy oak beams plainly added as an afterthought and vaguely military wall decorations, including a moth-eaten banner and something which might have been a claymore – if a claymore was what I thought it was (a sort of chunky two-edged sword). The banner was embroidered with the arms of the McGoogles: a cow rampant – ‘Lochnabu means lake of the cow,' Dorian explained knowledgeably – confronting what looked like a giant horned dachshund.

‘It's a dragon,' Dorian said.

‘It doesn't look very dragonish to me.'

‘Either that, or it's a cross between a dog and an iguana . . .'

‘What about the ghost?' I asked. ‘Does it run screaming through the hall, or wash its hands in someone's blood, or what?' My mind was still running on
Macbeth
.

‘It gets very cold,' Dorian said, a shade defensively.

‘It's March,' I pointed out. ‘There's a north wind blowing. This hall stretches far beyond the range of your father's new central heating.'

‘The fire always goes out.'

I gazed at a huge chilly fireplace. ‘Chimney needs sweeping? Probably draws badly. Jackdaws nesting in there somewhere, I expect. I don't know much about chimneys but I'm told jackdaws like to nest in them.'

‘You get this creepy feeling . . .'

‘I get a creepy feeling in
nightclubs
,' I said. Dorian was looking crestfallen, and suddenly I felt like a wet blanket. ‘Sorry. I'm just not a ghost person, I suppose. Do we know whose ghost it is, and why it's meant to haunt the place?'

‘Not exactly. Morag says the spirits of all those who died in the maze will sleep until it's replanted, so it can't be one of them. Of course, these old Scottish clans were always having feuds and murdering each other. It could be practically anybody.'

Myself, I can't see the
point
of being a ghost. Just hanging around the same place for hundreds of years, scaring people. I'd find better things to do with my death. Perhaps that's why I have trouble believing in them. It isn't the phenomena that fail to convince, it's the motivation.

‘We're calling in a psychic researcher,' Dorian went on. ‘Major Beard-Trenchard suggested someone, I think.'

‘I've heard.'

‘Dad says if there's a troubled soul here it should be set at rest.' Nice to know a rock icon could be as susceptible to paranormal bullshit as everyone else.

‘And if Morag's right,' I said flippantly, ‘when we replant the maze, we'll be up to our ears in spectres.'

Dorian managed a chortle. (You shouldn't say a boy giggles: giggles are for girls. A chortle will do.) An icy draught came from somewhere, raising the hairs on my nape. But icy draughts were to be expected in an antique castle at the tag-end of winter.

‘Who's the psychic researcher?' I asked, as idly as I could. ‘Some woman with purple hair and jewellery made of melon pips?'

‘It's a man,' Dorian responded. ‘Ashley somebody. I don't remember exactly.'

Maybe it was the icy draught which made me shiver. Suddenly, Dunblair Castle didn't seem so much fun any more.

I had known it would happen, of course. If you make a bad impression on someone, and you say to yourself, ‘It doesn't matter, I'll never see him/her again,' they're absolutely guaranteed to become a major part of your life within a month or two. I had always suspected Fate was a malevolent goddess, and now I was sure of it. Worst of all, I found I wanted to show Ash that he was wrong about me – that I
do
care, I
do
have compassion – but my chances of showing compassion in the luxury castle of an ageing rock star were practically nil. At Dunblair, compassion simply wasn't in demand.

Damn Kristof Ashley. I knew a craven urge to jack the job in then and there and flee south – a reaction out of all proportion to the circumstances. I had to get a grip.

It really was awfully cold in there. And gloomy. The tin-can light fittings and magenta sheep hadn't penetrated this far. I almost regretted them.

‘Can't you feel it?' Dorian said, clutching my arm. ‘Like . . . this eerie chill, giving you goosebumps.

For once, I didn't say anything cynical. There was a chill, and my geese bumped.

‘Let's go,' I responded.

  

Roo met me at the airport, driving a Millennium Mini from Hot God's garage. ‘It's the only normal car he's got,' she said. ‘He bought it for Dorian, I gather, only he hasn't passed his test yet.'

‘Who's Dorian?'

‘Son. Sixteen. Not sure which wife.'

I'd been doing a little homework on Hot God, and I made a mental calculation.

‘Should be the model – Tyndall Fiske. Neck and legs like a giraffe, big nose, own hair a yard long. Good-looking in an ugly sort of way. After the split she got mixed up with some cult in America living out in the middle of nowhere and growing their own vegetables and not having proper sanitation. I remember reading about it. Is Dorian like her?'