A Small Death in the Great Glen (2 page)

Annie jumped. She knew it. Mum could read minds. How did she know about the canal? She held her breath, waiting for her sister to give the game away. Wee Jean squinted up through her thick fringe, saw Annie's glare and decided she was more afraid of her than of their mother.

“No, it's too cold and too dark.” Annie was emphatic.

Joanne believed her eldest child. This time anyway. Then came the next puzzle.

“Do you know a wee boy called Jamie?”

“No” came Annie's automatic reply. Then, “Well, there's a boy called Jamie but he's not in my class. Not in Wee Jean's class neither.”

“But you know him,” Joanne persisted.

“We sometimes see him on the road home. He's in Miss Rose's class.”

As Joanne well knew, ages and sexes didn't mix when you were eight and a half and six. Her mother's questions alerted Annie, but she knew asking would get her nowhere. They reached their gate. Joanne wheeled her bicycle through, then turned back to her girls, her voice unusually stern.

“If I ever catch you or hear from anyone that you have been up the canal banks, your father will hear about it.”

That meant the belt. Whilst not a frequent occurrence, just the threat of a leather belt on a little girl's bare bottom, always “for her own good,” was terrifying for Wee Jean. To Annie, the humiliation was worse than any pain. They ran up the stairs to change out of their uniforms. Behind the closed bedroom door Annie
grabbed Wee Jean's arm. She leaned over her wee sister and whispered fiercely, “If you say one word about Jamie, a giant worm'll go up your bum when you sit on the lavvy pan.”

“I won't tell, I won't. I'll never tell.”

And she didn't, but constipation and a dose of syrup of figs were the inevitable consequence.

Later, in bed, lights out, curtains closed against the night, Mum and Dad fighting downstairs, Wee Jean cowering under the blankets, Annie thought it through. Why did Mum ask about Jamie? And where was Jamie anyway? Sick again? Fearty, scaredy-cat Jamie, they often didn't see him for days—asthma he said.

Annie pulled the eiderdown over her ears, vainly hoping to muffle the sobs from her parents' bedroom. Almost asleep, she felt a small warm body climb in beside her. Jean hated it when Mum and Dad fought. She let her sister coorie in, tried to drift off, but the remembrance of walking home, playing their game, of that last glimpse of Jamie, before they ran off, abandoning him, terrified they might not reach their house before their father came home, kept her from sleep for a good two minutes.

“Truth, dare or got to,” the girls chanted, “truth, dare or got to!”

They kept it up till Jamie, wee, skinny, timid Jamie, finally gave in.

“Truth!” he shouted, scared of the girls but pleased to be one of the gang at last.

“Truth,” said Annie. “We-e-ll. Is it true, you eat poo?” The other girls shrieked with laughter at the very mention of the rudest word they knew.

“Big poo number two, big poo number two.” The girls circled him, chanting, laughing, no malice in their game. He joined in, relieved. They didn't push him or try to pull down his pants, nor accuse him of being a wee lassie.

On they skipped like skittish lambs, Annie, her sister, the two girls from their street, the boy Jamie, on they meandered through the darkening autumn, down the long long street, lamps coming on, past the respectable semidetached Edwardian houses, past the prewar bungalows with their neat gardens, past the big old mansions with their big old trees and their dark noisy birds settling for the night, on their way home from school.

One particular mansion with graveyard dark trees the children avoided, crossing to the other side of the road, pushing and shoving, telling stories, and making ghostly noises to scare themselves. The curving gravel driveway disappeared into a tunnel of sprawling rhododendrons, but the double doors, set with vivid stained-glass scenes of some forgotten Victorian martyrdom, were clearly visible through a gap in the shrubbery. Annie stopped. The other girls ran on ahead.

“Come on, Jamie, it's your turn.”

“Don't want to,” he said, frightened, knowing what was coming, “don't have to.” He was near to tears.

“Cowardy cowardy custard, stick yer nose in mustard.”

“No a'm no. I'm no frightened.” But he was.

“Well then?” taunted Annie.

Jamie knew. They'd played this game many a time. As yet, no one but Annie had dared. Simple enough: run through the legs of the menacing crablike rhododendrons, run across the oval of gravel in front of the house, run up the steps to the big dark door, reach up to the big brass bell, pull hard, run for the road as though the devil was at your heels, run, run, run to the safety of the dim scattered streetlight, grab the lamppost, bending double from the stitch in your side, panting, grinning, triumphant . . . did it!

A distant ringing but this time, the first and only time, the door opened. Annie and Jean peered through the rhododendrons, eyes popped wide open, giggling with fascinated fear. The other
girls were long gone. Annie's games were too scary for them. A pool of light, like a pulsating evil halo in a horror film, backlit the misshapen figure that seemed to fill the double door frame. Annie grabbed her sister's hand, and they fairly flew up the street, terrified the bogeyman was on their heels.

They raced round the corner and ran till they could run no more.

“I've a stitch in ma side.” Wee Jean staggered, her wee legs trembling, peching like a collie dog, winded after rounding up an unruly flock of sheep.

“What was thon?” her voice squeaked. “What was that, in the door?”

Annie had been as terrified as her sister but would never show it. “It was nothing.” Now she was scared her sister would tell on her. “It was nothing.”

“Yes it was, I saw it, a great big black thing.”

“Aye, a hoodie crow. That's what it was. And it'll come back and peck your eyes out if you tell Mum.” She poked a finger toward her sister's eye.

“I'll no tell, promise, I'll no tell,” Wee Jean wailed.

So the hoodie crow was destined to become another of their secrets, their thrills, their nightmares.

Flushed from running, from fright, they walked quickly home, clutching hands, holding on tight against hoodie crows, bogeymen, the dark starless night and their dad's temper. And Jamie, poor, always-left-behind Jamie, was abandoned yet again. But Jamie was a boy. He would be fine. Bad things only happened to girls, everyone knew that.

“Where is everybody?”

Rob, late as usual for the Friday morning postmortem, grinned at Joanne and grabbed her copy of the paper.

“Hey, get your own.”

“I daren't go downstairs. The office is unhappy with me over my phone calls to Aberdeen. I didn't put in for an approval chit for long-distance.”

The
Highland Gazette
came out on a Thursday. Serving the town and county as well as the far-flung outposts of the western Highlands, it was a newspaper with a long history—and not much had changed since its inception in 1862. Advertising on the front page, a monotonous diet of county council, town council and church notices interspersed with the goings-on of various community groups; the highlight of the paper for some was the prices fetched at the livestock market. For others, Births, Deaths and Marriages was the first page they turned to, the obituaries the best-read section of all. Rob skimmed all eight pages of broadsheet, pausing only to read his own contributions, then gave the paper back to Joanne.

“It's not folded right. You've made a right bourach of it.”

The phone rang.

“
Gazette.
Right. Uh-huh. When? Right. See ya.”

Rob stood, pulled Joanne up by the hand, the mess of newsprint floating to the floor.

“A reprieve. We've one hour—back here at ten. McAllister's out with Don, so are we. I'll shout you a coffee.”

“Seeing you're paying, how can I refuse? And how come the boss is away with Don McLeod? They're usually bickering like some old man and his wifey.”

Rob, reluctant to admit he didn't know, just shrugged. Then dashed down the stairs.

“Race you.”

Off he sprinted, his overlong barley-colored hair billowing out in the wind, giving him a close resemblance to a dandelion. For many a local girl, Rob was the epitome of a dashing hero of
some ilk; a Spitfire pilot perhaps, a film star maybe, a romantic character in
The People's Friend
possibly. He had a look that charmed. Even before he turned on his best blue-eyed, American-teeth smile. Whatever it was, all agreed he was a heartthrob.

The two friends linked arms, strode through the stone arch out onto the bridge, a biting sea wind channeling down the firth, blowing the river into delicate white horses, stinging their ears and eyes. Below, the drowned paving stones of an ancient ford were clearly visible through the whisky-colored current, which at high tide deepened to a darker shade of full malt.

The café on the corner served toasted sandwiches, pastries and its own ice cream and, wonder of wonders, had a real cappuccino machine. Huge, gleaming, its strangled gurgle and hissing blasts of steam could rival the
Flying Scotsman.
Next door was the chip shop, which also served as a social center after dark.

Gino Corelli shouted above the noise as Joanne pushed through the doors.

“
Bella,
how are ya? Shame, you just missed Chiara. An' Roberto, ma boy, I seen your father a wee whiley back. Sit down. Sit down. I bring the coffee.”

Gino, dwarfed by his chrome monster, beamed across the café at his daughter's best friend, his cheerful chatter drowned out by the milk-frothing thingwayjig. He had been proud of his English until the day when Joanne told him he spoke Scottish English. The ensuing explanation as to what was English and what was Scottish became complicated.

“Ah, I get it.” He beamed like a torch on a wet Highland night. “Like you have Italian and you have Sicilian. Like in my village.” He now cherished many Scottish words and phrases, although their usage was haphazard and often hilarious.

Joanne leaned back into the fake leather of their booth dreamily taking in the creamy, frothy bliss of a cappuccino and
the highly imaginative gelato-colored murals of famous Italian landmarks.

“I wish I could go there.” She nodded up at the hot-pink lava pouring out of Vesuvius down to a turquoise sea.

“Me too.” Rob sipped his coffee. “Mind you, it's probably changed a bit.”

“Bill was in Italy during the war. His regiment had a hard time of it. Sicily, Naples, Monte Cassino. The Lovat Scouts, all the Highland regiments, had a hard time. I doubt Messina looks like that anymore.”

Her husband, her handsome brave soldier boy, had survived the battles but not the war. Towns and villages everywhere had their share of ghosts and the walking shells of lost men, boys most of them. Gone to fight in distant wars, fighting the battles of others, again and again the Scottish regiments had been in the thick of it. Mothers, sisters, wives, children, they too were the victims of wars, the unacknowledged victims. Down the centuries, in hopeless situations, in harsh conditions, when all looked lost, “Send in the Scots” was the cry of the generals—the Black Watch, the Lovat Scouts, the Cameron Highlanders, the Seaforth Highlanders, the Gordon Highlanders, the Highland Light Infantry, along with the thousands upon thousands of wild colonial boys. They're tough, they're fierce, the generals said. They're expendable, they thought.

Rob peered through his hair, watching Joanne spoon up the last of the coffee froth. He had been at the
Highland Gazette
a year, Joanne six months, hired because she could type and because McAllister had taken a liking to her. Long-legs, nut-brown shoulder-length hair, bright blue-green eyes, big smile, light freckles; a “bonnie, bonnie lass” incarnate. She loved swinging on the children's swings, her bicycle, knitting, reading, singing and listening to music. And she was a battered wife.