Bad Heir Day (21 page)

Cassandra’s eyes blazed and a lump rose up her throat. Her week had hardly been enhanced by the demand of the publishers that she pay back her advance for
A Passionate Lover
on the grounds that no manuscript of any description had neared her editor’s desk and it was a good six months past the deadline. For the moment at least, money was tighter than a gnat’s arse. The fact that Gosschalk probably knew it made her blood boil.

“Have you thought of sending Zachary to boarding school?” Mrs. Gosschalk suggested. “There are ways of getting help with the fees, you know.”

Reduced fees
.
The horror of it. Something in Cassandra suddenly snapped—something quite apart from the bra strap currently hanging on by a thread. “Why don’t you stuff your school up your leathery old
arse
?”
Cassandra yelled. “And yes, I might well send him to boarding school. You’ll be laughing on the other side of your raddled old face when Zak comes out top of his year at Eton.”

“Come the glorious day, no one would be more delighted than me, Mrs. Knight. When he’s the right age, of course. Although, given your recent remarks and his general attitude, I see no reason in keeping from you the fact that the only boarding school I can see Zachary getting a place at is Borstal.”

“Midgies.” The word hung in the damp, heavy air.

“Sorry?” Anna whirled round to see who had spoken. A cloud of tiny black insects half obscured the unedifying sight of the ancient retainer MacLoggie, grinning malevolently through his tooth stumps.

Her heart sank. She had been avoiding MacLoggie for ten days since the Mad Angus Angus’s Burn encounter, the memory of which still made her shudder. She had not mentioned it to Jamie—partly out of suspicion that he was far more likely to have been inspecting a septic tank than looking out of the window at the time, and partly because, given his manic respect for Dampie and its traditions and legends, he might hold her to it.

“What did you say?”

“Midgies. Those wee black flies there. They bite like
bastards
.”

“
Really
?”
Disbelieving, Anna flapped her hands half-heartedly in front of her face. “They don’t look big enough to.”

MacLoggie smirked. “Ye”ll see.”

“Well, thanks for the advice, MacLoggie. I’m sure there are lots of things I’ve yet to learn about living up here.”

MacLoggie snickered. “Ye can say tha’ again.”

“Well, then, perhaps you could tell me how I get to the nearest town.”

Her enquiry was rewarded by yet another glimpse of the ancient creature’s slimy stumps. “’Orrible’s over there. That way.” MacLoggie pointed vaguely beyond the end of the loch and staggered off in the opposite direction.
Horrible
?
Anna echoed, silently. There couldn’t, not even
here
,
be a village called
that
.
Could there?

She walked off at a brisk pace in the direction indicated, along the side of the loch. The pewter platter of the water, bordered by the rust and sodden green of the heather, reflected a chill, white sky. The only signs of life were a few Highland cattle in the distance and a group of sorry-looking sheep limping over the rocky hillside. A slight stinging sensation she had noticed earlier continued; looking down, she saw that small red marks like strawberry-juice stains had appeared on her wrists.

Some time later, quite a long time later, long after she had left the loch behind and had continued onward without even as much as a signpost to confirm she was headed in the right direction, Anna wondered if she should perhaps have pressed MacLoggie for more details. A steel-keen wind began to slice at her across the rock spurs and skim over the heather like a Stealth bomber. Surely MacLoggie would not have let her set off alone and directionless if the village really were a long way? She looked at her ring for reassurance. It gleamed dully back at her. Far more vivid was the memory of MacLoggie’s insolent leer.
Would
he?

By the time she gained the village—not the cheerful cluster of white-painted cottages she had imagined, but a sullen, sodden huddle called, not Horrible, but Oribal—the rain was lashing down like stair rods and bouncing off the deserted—and only—street. Shivering in the bus stop, Anna looked speculatively across the road to the only establishment in the immediate vicinity featuring electric light. The low, grey-white pebbledashed building with frosted windows looked as if it might be a pub.

Though desperate for a vodka and tonic, Anna decided to give it a miss and, taking advantage of a hiatus in the deluge, walked towards a damp wooden hut with “Village Hall” in rotting letters above the door. Before it was a glass-fronted noticeboard containing a Met Office declaration that Oribal had had the most rainfall and least hours of sunshine of any place in the British Isles in the previous year. It was difficult to shake off the impression, fostered by the prominent position the notice commanded on the board, that the village was rather proud of this distinction.

Another notice offered the services of a Mrs. McLeod and her ironing board at what Anna considered to be the extremely reasonable rate of a pound per ten items, “discretion assured.” Either people round these parts wore things they didn’t want others to know about, thought Anna, or to be suspected of not doing one’s own ironing in Oribal was to be suspected of sin beyond redemption. Perhaps both.

Rather grudgingly displayed at the board’s bottom was a card advertising evening classes in flower-pressing and the bagpipes. Neither appealed to her much; having failed so far to spot a single bloom she doubted the feasibility of the former, and the idea of learning how to make the sort of ghastly row that woke her every morning similarly held few attractions. MacLoggie, on the other hand, could clearly do with a lesson or two. Perhaps she’d suggest it to Jamie when she saw him at lunchtime; the thought of which reminded her that it was probably time that she was heading back to the castle.

Just then a vibrating sensation somewhere around her lower pelvis announced that either she was having an unexpected orgasm or someone was attempting to make telephonic communication. The latter seemed most likely. Dragging the mobile out, Anna stabbed frantically at the buttons and slammed the instrument against her ear several times before finally the voice came through.

“Hi, babe.”

“
Geri
!”
Anna shrieked in delight.

“So, life is bliss, is it? Set a date yet? I’m desperate to get my bridesmaid dress—I’ve seen just the thing in Gucci. White, tight, and with a huge slit up the side.”

“Sounds amazing,” said Anna truthfully. “We’re still sorting the date out, as it happens—no, nothing’s wrong.” Anna crossed her fingers behind her back, keen to get off the tricky subject. “So how are
you
?
Your voice sounds funny.
Deeper
.”

“All that screaming at those
bloody
kids,” said Geri with feeling.

“
What
?
But I thought Siena and Savannah were supposed to be angels. Wasn’t the holiday good then?”

“Absolute fucking
disaster
.
Mostly because their cousin came with them—ghastly brat called Titus. Fought
all the sodding time
.”

“Oh dear.” Yet Anna felt a faint sense of relief that even a take-no-prisoners nanny like Geri was powerless in the face of a truly intractable child.

“And so bloody
noisy—
had a scream that could shatter glass.
Could
,
but didn’t have to—he managed very well at that with just his hands. Looked like Kristallnacht in the kitchen when he’d been looking for something to put his pomegranate juice in.”

“What a shame. And the place looked so peaceful.” Anna remembered the snaps Geri had shown her of the magnificently well-appointed and stupendously expensive-looking palazzo that Julian Tressell had restored to its former glory after many years serving as a rural bus station.

“Was until Titus got there. Then we became the cabaret for the entire village—walking through these
completely
silent old squares with all the kids screaming and hitting each other with their Barbies.”

“Did Titus have a Barbie as well then?”

“’Fraid so. His parents are against sexual stereotyping. Which in my experience has one of two results. Either he becomes a complete wuss who embroiders his own bookmarks, or he turns into Attila the Hun. Titus is the latter. Obsessed with bums, willies, and toilets. Loved nothing better than watching himself pee in the bath.”

“Didn’t know Attila the Hun did that.”

“Ha bloody
ha
.
Well, anyway, I’m thinking of suing retrospectively for mental distress. Had a long discussion about it over lunch with a gobsmackingly rich barrister who has a place out there as well. He agreed it would make an interesting test case, and said he’d be only too happy to take the brief. Except I think he had other briefs in mind.”

“But what’s wrong with that?” asked Anna. “A rich barrister with a place in Tuscany?”

“And a face like a basket of fruit. Rotten fruit, at that,” said Geri with her trademark crushing frankness. “Even
I’ve
got standards, sadly. But enough of me. Any gossip?”

“Gossip?” The last gossip on Skul, Anna imagined, was when Flora MacDonald dressed Bonnie Prince Charlie as a woman to help him escape. That rumour was probably still doing the rounds. “Not as
such
.
What’s going on down there?”

“Oh, the usual. Otto Greatorex has got a place in the choir of St. Pauls and Fenella is beside herself.”

“I bet she is.”

“But not for the reasons you’d think. It’s a nightmare, apparently. She’s got choir school mother’s bottom, sitting on a hard pew for hours every week, and has Otto under her feet all the time because he’s not allowed to go out in case he gets a cold and loses his voice. But she says the worst thing is that all that time sitting in cathedrals contemplating the Almighty means she’s getting rather worried that He might actually exist.”

“Oh dear. I see.”

“Yes, the parents are rather suffering at the moment,” Geri said breezily. “The Rice-Browns are mortified because their new nanny drives around in an Audi while they make do with an old Volvo. Polly said to Kate the other day how ghastly it is when your nanny is so much richer than you are. Then Hanuki—you know, that Japanese male nanny you met? Well, he’s won the nannying equivalent of the Lottery. The Pottery, I suppose you’d call it. People have tried to poach him so often he’s on double pay, works no more than thirty-six hours a week, and gets his breakfast in bed. It’s rather gone to his head. He refuses to come anywhere near the kitchen until the dishwasher has been unloaded nor anywhere near the children until they’ve been washed and dressed.”

Dishwashers
!
Anna determinedly suppressed a pang of envy. Even the thought of Liv seemed suddenly tempting—it was warm, if nothing else. Downstairs, at least. “I can see now that I never quite got the hang of nannying,” she sighed. “I practically had to wash and dress Cassandra as well as Zak. Particularly after she’d been at the Bombay Sapphire.” Anna shuddered. Yes.
That
was what it had been like.

“Oh, that reminds me. Cassandra’s divorcing Jett.”

“No! Why?”

“Cassandra realised he was shagging her new nanny when she saw someone else had been squeezing the spots on his back.” With a sense of a cliff-hanger ending that
Days of our Lives
would do well to emulate, the mobile abruptly cut itself off.

As Anna put it away and prepared to return to Dampie, something caught her eye. Something typewritten, white, and tucked right into the edge of the board. “Robbie MacAskill. Poet. Creative Writing Classes Given.” Anna gazed at it in astonishment. A
poet
?
The only man of letters she’d imagined ever braving this place was the postman—and Dr. Johnson, of course. As the rain began again, she scribbled down the number with one of the family of leaky Biros that seemed to have a member in the pocket of every coat she had ever owned.

***

Jamie was nowhere to be seen when Anna returned, sodden and demoralised, to the castle. Thanks to her nonexistent breakfast, her stomach felt as if it were almost touching her backbone, but she resisted the temptation to seek out the kitchens for fear of encountering Nanny. She made do with some furry, age-softened Polos from the bottom of her bag and spent the afternoon blowing on her purple fingers in the bedroom and trying to write up the morning’s events in her diary. The thought of there being a poet in the area intrigued her. She determined to ask Jamie about it at dinner—it was a topic concerning the island, so hopefully she’d get a response. And then perhaps she could tackle the increasingly tricky subject of who was organising the wedding as well. Why couldn’t Jamie speak to Nanny about it? After all, he’d known her since birth. It occurred to Anna that perhaps this was precisely the reason the task had been delegated to her.

Dinner came and, more thankfully, went with Jamie, as usual, distant and absorbed in paperwork, muttering, this time, about damp proof courses. So when a window of conversational opportunity presented itself during coffee in the upstairs sitting room, Anna seized it.

The sitting room stretched the entire length of the second floor of the castle. Outside the three long deep-silled windows along one wall, the sulky grey of day had sunk into the coma of night. Inside the cavernous chamber, a few inadequate lamps made it gloomier still. There were a few gilt-framed and watery Highland scenes on the walls, a number of small, padded chairs, a couple of battered sofas, and a rather experienced-looking china tea set on a side table. The most arresting item in the room was a large portrait opposite her chair. Suddenly it became obvious what her opening gambit should be.

“Is that the Angus tartan?” she asked, wondering if she should be wearing eclipse glasses to view the blazing yellow and orange of the kilt being worn by the large, hostile-looking bearded gentleman with the extremely red face who was the subject of the portrait canvas. Despite the considerable degree of age and fading, the tartan glowed as retina-fryingly brightly as the day it was first painted.

“Absolutely. Yes. That’s Mad Angus Angus wearing it.” Jamie, as predicted, looked up eagerly from his books. As in Burn, thought Anna. She looked at the picture again. “Why was he mad?” she asked.

Jamie’s head shot up again. “He had what would probably be called an anger management problem today.”

“Oh, I see. Mad as in cross.” That figured. The very portrait looked ready to explode with rage. “The tartan’s very, um, yellow.” There was no polite way of saying it was the most hideous pattern she had ever seen—yellow, orange, and brown shot through with bilious green.

“Oh. Yes.” Jamie was now happily back on track. “Yellow,
yes
.
There’s rather a funny story connected with that. The family motto is Hold Fast. Unfortunately, for many years that did not extend to the colours of the tartan. Ran horribly in the wash.”

Anna decided to change the subject, but did not feel confident enough yet to tackle The Subject.

“Gosh, that’s huge,” she remarked presently.

“
Magnificent
,
isn’t it?” Jamie said proudly.