Operation Nassau (38 page)

‘Sort out the sober ones,’ I said. (Music: ‘Reel for My Hume’). ‘And trust to the ingenuity of your MacRannoch friends.’

Nothing short of stereotaxic surgery will ever obliterate the events of the rest of that night. The Brigadier, six feet high in cock’s feathers, holding up five Italian Bersaglieri on his shoulders in the Musical and Physical Training Display. The high jump Wallace Brady competed for in singlet and kilt, and the sixteensome reel Krishtof Bey danced as my partner before racing off to take four different parts in Fighting Men through the Ages.

The MacRannochs greeted it all with a violent and warming enthusiasm. The applause, the cheers, the encores increased until the programme wallowed on to its end, and in the marquee Wallace, Krishtof and the Brigadier met, full of exhausted hilarity, for the Final March Past of Massed Bands and Salute. Pipes tuned, drums thudding and thundering, they would walk past the saluting MacRannoch, and behind would fall in the Chief and the two thousand clansmen, to cross to Crab Island and dinner.

Across the bridge, I heard the Brigadier preparing his pipers; I heard Krishtof and Wallace shouting with laughter but I wasn’t laughing. Five bridges had fallen under the Chief of the MacRannochs. No MacRannoch had succeeded in building a bridge between the shore and his castle since the thirteenth, and he had had the help of the fairies. I said to Wallace. ‘I don’t want them to go over the bridge.’

He broke off at once and came over. He said, ‘Look: I know what happened in Scotland. Believe me it won’t happen here.’

‘No,’ I said after a pause. ‘But you don’t know my family. It’s a legend.’

A man in full piper’s uniform fell at my feet: someone took him by the armpits and dragged him away. Wallace Brady said, ‘I’m going to cross that bridge, and so is your father. We’ll break the legend between us. We’ll make a new one, Beltanno.’

Brigadier McCanna said, ‘Dr MacRannoch?’

‘Lay him down somewhere cool and let him sleep it off,’ I said, without turning.

‘Dr MacRannoch,’ he said again, and I turned at the alarm in his voice. ‘That was the only damned man among them who could play the solo “The MacRannoch for Ever”.’

They all looked at me in my silver wig and my silver suit with the white ostrich feathers, and they saw nothing at all. They saw a woman doctor who could play on the bagpipes.

I lifted the pipes. I tucked the bag under my arm and threw the drones over my shoulder and put the blow-pipe to my lips and settled my grip on the chanter. I nodded. Then the massed pipes struck up and we marched, Brady and Krishtof on either side, out of the marquee.

My father fell in before us as we passed the main stand. He had the Begum with him and they were both smiling politely because of the roar of applause that had gone up when we three emerged from the tent. James Ulric patted me on the back and muttered something about Mr Tiko.

I wasn’t playing, but the massed pipe band was. ‘What?’ I said. The pipes had switched to ‘The Bonawe Highlanders’.

‘He says the place on your right ought to be occupied by the heir,” shouted the Begum. The rest of the two thousand were shuffling into place behind us, but we couldn’t hear them and they certainly couldn’t hear us. ‘It’s a shame about Mr Tiko.’

I shouted back, ‘What happened to him?’

Wallace Brady cupped his hands round his mouth and aimed it at my father. ‘They wouldn’t let him in,’ he yelled, ‘because he wasn’t a MacRannoch.’

‘Mr Tiko,’ I shouted. ‘We’re talking about Mr Tiko.’

‘I know,’ yelled Wallace. ‘He wasn’t a MacRannoch.’

I said, ‘But he said -’

‘No, he didn’t,’ yelled Wallace. ‘He just said his name was hard to pronounce. And that he was a doctor as well. It was you who said he was called T. K. MacRannoch.’

What with rage and astonishment and confusion, I had almost nothing to shout with. I croaked, ‘But his name was on the Paradise Island golf register.’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Krishtof Bey, flicking a strand of silver off his impeccable Lincoln Centre filibeg and plush doublet. ‘I played a round of golf just behind Mr Tiko. It wasn’t his name you saw in the book, it was mine.’

The pipers switched to ‘The Garb of Old Gaul’ and got half-way through it quite uninterrupted. I could hear my father’s F.E.V. revving up. The Begum was smiling, strolling along. I said, ‘What?’

Krishtof Bey said mildly, ‘I am T. Krishtof MacRannoch. It is a bizarre name for a ballet-dancer. I do not use it.’

My father said, in a fixed voice, ‘The name of my heir after Beltanno is T. K. MacRannoch. A Japanese.’

‘A Turk,’ said the Begum dreamily. ‘James, I ought to have told you. But after Wallace mentioned what Krishtof’s real name was. I went over the papers again. The genealogical people didn’t mean to mislead you, darling. It was a typing error. T. K. MacRannoch. Turk. Krishtof Bey is the heir to the chieftainship.’

‘And?’ I said thinly. It was another damnable plot. It was a plot between the Begum and Brady. I remembered she had even got James Ulric to agree to my marrying Krishtof. ‘What about me? What about Mr Tiko?’

‘Mr Tiko is polite,’ said the Begum. ‘He will marry you if you insist, but I believe he would be rather relieved not to have James Ulric for a father-in-law.’

‘And Krishtof?’ I said.

Krishtof was admiring the swing of his kilt. ‘I? I never interfere.’ he remarked. ‘I am interested in love, not in chieftains or marriage.”

‘I’ve noticed as much,’ said James Ulric. His face had brightened. ‘But I’ll not deny you’re a treat at the sixteensome. You’ll mind, Beltanno, that “The MacRannoch for Ever” is due at the bridge?’

His words fell in to a wheezing withdrawal of bedlam. The pipes had ceased. The files were opening and halting, displaying before me the dazzle of concrete under a flock of bright, floodlit banners, with the standard of the MacRannochs flying over it all. Ahead, in the darkness, on either side of the white arch before me, I could hear the low chuckle of water, and smell the salt, soft air of the sea.

Here was the new bridge. And here was I, at the head of two thousand, to pipe the 45th Chief to his castle.

The MacRannoch for Ever is not a difficult solo, but there is a knack to it.

I had the knack. I settled the bag and put the blow-pipe into my mouth and sent up a prayer and drew in all the sea air I could muster between there and the Florida coast. The drones started up, and then the first note, clear and steady; and I launched into my father’s own tune as I set foot on his bridge.

I played steadily as I walked over, and behind me I could sense the trample and thud as the MacRannochs flocked after the piping: whether as rats or as children it is not for me, a MacRannoch, to say. I filled my own ears with my music so that no lesser rumble could reach me: no crumbling chasm of concrete: no cracking and sliding of piers.

Beneath my feet the new bridge was solid. Solid to the midway reach of the strait, with the lights twinkling in front and behind. Solid as the far end came nearer, and the lights of the castle shone sharp-cut and welcoming there.

I walked on, and James Ulric walked firmly behind me; and when we both stepped on to dry land, he moved forward and laying his hands on my shoulders, he embraced me for the first time since childhood.

‘The curse is broken,’ he said.

He underestimated his reticuloendothelial system; but success is an excellent doctor. I kissed him back fondly. And through the fronds of his tall Chieftain’s bonnet, I saw not MacRannoch Castle before me, but a palm tree with a banana bird in it, and beneath it, B. Douglas MacRannoch: mistress to the man on my one hand, or wife to the man on my other; or both.

Thank you. Johnson. Thank you for everything.

Published by House of Stratus

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