The Last Wolf (3 page)

‘My father sailed here many years ago. He remembered that it was there.'

‘Oh.'

‘Don't worry,' he said gravely. ‘We won't tell anybody else. It will still be your secret place. Who is Hamish, by the way?'

‘My brother.' She nodded towards the plateau. ‘He's up there. We're playing croquet on the lawn and I went and hit my ball over the top. I'm always doing that.'

‘Croquet? I do not know this game.'

‘Oh, it's good fun. Basically, you have to hit the ball through iron hoops stuck in the lawn.'

‘Not so difficult, then?'

‘Yes, it is, actually. It's really quite complicated. You have to keep thinking several turns ahead, sort of like chess, and the other players can knock your ball out of the way if they want. You can earn extra shots, you see, if you hit one of the other balls. Hamish always wins, but I'll beat him one day.'

‘What happens when you hit your ball far away, like you did just now?'

‘You can put it back three feet from the edge of the lawn and carry on. There's no penalty.'

She was very amusing, he thought. So serious about her peculiar game and its peculiar rules. And so worried about him finding her secret cove. The frown was still there, a small crease between the smoky eyes.

‘What is your name?'

‘Stroma.'

It was new to him. ‘That is a Scottish name?'

‘Yes. My full name is Stroma Rosabella Mackay but, basically, I'm only a quarter Scottish. My mother is English and the Rosabella is after my grandmother who's Canadian – that's my father's mother. She emigrated to Canada from Italy with her parents when she was a child and married my grandfather who's a Scot, so my father's half-Scottish and half-Canadian and I'm half-English, a quarter Scottish and a quarter Canadian.'

‘This is very confusing.'

‘Yes, it is, isn't it? What's your name?'

‘Reinhard. Reinhard Max Richter.' He gave her a formal bow, as to a grown-up person. ‘I am all German. And I come from Hamburg.'

She moved the ball over to her left hand and held out her right one. The frown had vanished.

‘How do you do?'

He took her hand in his. It was filthy, he saw, the nails rimmed with black. So were her bare feet. He wondered if she ever took a bath.

‘How do you do?'

She said, ‘I thought you talked in a funny way.'

He rather prided himself on his English. They'd been very well taught at his school and he was the best in his class. His father spoke it well, too. So had his mother. He said stiffly, ‘I am sorry if my English is not so good.'

‘Oh no, it's quite good,' she assured him. ‘But you don't pronounce the words the same as we do. And I've never heard of a Christian name like yours. What did you say it was?'

‘Reinhard,' he said.

She giggled. ‘You sounded as though you were going to spit it out.'

He was not so amused. ‘It's how we say our Rs. It's normal to us.' He found the English Rs equally strange: scarcely pronounced, and in some words, not at all. It was a ridiculous language compared with the logic of German. Grammar, rules, spelling – all impossible.

‘You can just say the R in the English way, if you want. It doesn't matter.' He looked up towards the big house again. ‘You are living here?'

If so, he was very surprised that she should be so dirty and poorly dressed.

‘Not all the time, worse luck. Basically, just in the summer. It belongs to my grandparents – my father's parents that I told you about. They've lived here for ages. My grandfather was born on Islay, in Bowmore, but he went off to Canada when he grew up and made lots of money in oil. Then he married my grandmother and came back and bought the house and all the estate.'

‘What is the name of it?'

‘Craigmore. It's my favourite place on earth. We come every summer for the school holidays. It's rotten when we have to go back to London – that's where we live with our parents.'

‘They do not come here with you?'

‘My father's too busy – he's a surgeon at a London hospital. And my mother hates it here, specially the weather. She used to come up with us but she stopped as soon as we were old enough to do the journey on our own. Sometimes we come at Christmas too but not every year because the journey takes ages and we only have a month's holiday. Do you like living in Hamburg?'

‘Very much. It is a very beautiful city. We have beautiful old buildings, museums, the largest harbour in Germany, a big river, lakes, canals, parks . . . all kinds of good things.'

She seemed totally unimpressed. ‘What's the weather like?'

‘Nice in summer but it can be very cold in winter and we get many fogs from the sea. In summer we go sailing at the weekends and in the holidays.'

‘Did you sail here all the way from Hamburg?'

‘Not from Hamburg. We came from Schleswig where we keep our boat. Usually we sail in the Baltic Sea, but this year we came across the North Sea to sail around Scotland and to see the islands.' He could see that he had made a better impression now.

‘What kind of boat?'

‘A ketch. Two masts. About twelve metres long, you know.' He spaced his hands. ‘Not so big and not so small. You have a boat too?'

‘Just an old dinghy. Twelve feet.'

‘That is how I learned to sail. In a small boat. I have sailed since I was very young. My father is a very good sailor. He has taught me and my brother.'

‘Are you bird-watching?'

‘Excuse me?'

‘Looking at birds.' She pointed to the binoculars hanging round his neck. ‘Through those. There're hundreds of kinds here. The island's famous for its birds and people come here specially to see them. That's why I thought perhaps you had. Hamish and I sometimes borrow Grandfather's old binoculars but they're not as big as yours.'

He could hardly admit that the Zeiss binoculars had been used by his father from the bridge of his U-boat during the Great War, or that he had just been using them himself to spy on the house.

‘No, I am just looking at the scenery. At anything interesting.'

‘Did you see the whale's jawbone at Glas Uig?'

Whale? He was not sure he understood her. ‘
Walfisch
, you mean, perhaps? The big fish?'

She corrected him. ‘It's not a fish. It's a mammal.'

‘Yes, of course. I know that.' He swallowed his annoyance. ‘No, I did not see this bone.'

‘It's stuck in the rocks. My grandfather says the whale must have come into the cove by mistake and then got trapped there, poor thing.'

‘Perhaps the whale was ill and came to die in peace. That is possible too.'

‘It might have done. Anyway, it happened a long time ago.'

The blood had reached her bare foot and was creeping towards her toes.

‘I think you have hurt yourself.' He had forgotten the English word for knee and pointed to his own. ‘Here.'

‘Have I?' She looked down. ‘Oh yes, I did it earlier. It's nothing.'

‘But you should wash it.'

‘Whatever for?'

‘To clean it. It might become . . .' He searched for another word. ‘Poisoned.'

‘Infected, you mean.'

‘Yes, that is what I meant. Infected.'

‘No, it won't. I get cuts all the time. They never go bad.'

Well, it was none of his business. He took a swipe at the cloud of insects that had been gathering round his head. ‘What are these things?'

‘Midges. They come up out of the grass in summer, but they're not too bad today.'

‘Well, they are very . . .' He searched again for the right English word. ‘Irritating. And they bite.' He swiped away some more.

‘Yes, I know. But we're used to them and they don't bother us too much. You won't make them go away like that. Basically, it's better not to take any notice of them.'

‘What does that word mean? I've never heard it before.'

‘What word?'

‘Basically.'

‘Oh . . . Well, it's like simply . . . or actually . . . or only . . . That sort of thing.'

He was none the wiser.

There was a shout from above – a boy's voice up on the plateau. ‘Come on, Stroma! What on earth are you doing down there?'

‘That's Hamish. I'd better go. He's waiting.'

She turned and made off up the slope, pausing once to call back over her shoulder. ‘Go wherever you want. Nobody will mind.'

She vanished over the top and he stood for a moment, staring after her. He had never met anyone like her. In Hamburg, little girls did not run wild in ragged boy's clothes without shoes. Instead, they wore pretty frocks, socks and polished shoes and ribbons in their well-brushed hair. They were clean and decorous and orderly. But perhaps not so interesting?

Presently, he walked down towards the open cove below the house and, on the way, came across a small dry-stone wall enclosure ringed by trees and shrubs and with an iron gate set in the wall.
Go wherever you want
, she'd said.
Nobody will mind
. So . . . He opened the gate and found himself in a little garden.

In Germany, he lived in an apartment with his father and brother. It was a very large and pleasant apartment on the top floor of a tall building with wonderful views over the Alster lake, but there was no garden. He knew nothing about gardens but he could tell that this one had been created by somebody who did. No rough tussocks or reeds here but smoothly clipped grass, plants with leaves from palest to darkest green and beautiful flowers in bloom. The garden had been cleverly arranged to form sheltered nooks and, in one, he discovered a small waterfall running over rocks into a pool, and beside it, a wooden bench. He sat down for a moment, marvelling at the peace and stillness so close to the wildness of the Atlantic.

After a while, he made his way on down to the inlet, clambering over boulders to reach the rocks and the pebble shore. The tide was going out, brown seaweed and mud left behind, birds pecking about, gulls screaming and wheeling overhead. They had plenty of gulls in Hamburg and wild birds by the Baltic but some of these were strange to him.

He balanced on a rock and looked seawards through the binoculars. The sky was overcast, the water much more grey than blue. Scotland was all soft colours. Water colours, rather than oils. Nothing bright or gaudy. Some people, he supposed, would find that dull, but he didn't. He was used to northern skies and northern light. Hamburg, after all, where he had been born and lived all his life, was almost as far north as here. And he was well-accustomed to cold winds and rough seas. Today the wind was moderate, the temperature mild, the sea quite calm; in bad weather it would be very different. The wind would come roaring down the narrow sound between the two islands and the waves would rush into the wide and unprotected mouth of this cove and hurl themselves against the rocks in great clouds of spray and spume. But the other cove, where
Sturmwind
was tied-up, would make a safe, snug little harbour. What had the girl called it in Gaelic? Glas Uig, or something like that. It meant green cove, which was an apt description with its wooded slopes. He thought of his father bringing his U-boat stealthily down the deep channel of the sound and slipping silently into that hidden place under the very noses of the enemy. The cool nerve! The audacity! He smiled to himself.

‘You were simply ages, Stroma. Why ever did you take so long?'

‘I met somebody. I was talking to him.'

‘Well, you might have been quicker about it. Who was it, anyway?'

‘A German.'

‘A German? What's a German doing here?'

‘He's sailing with his father and brother and they've moored their boat in Glas Uig.'

Her brother frowned. ‘Well, I wish they hadn't. We don't want anyone going there, especially not Germans. They might be spies, for all we know.'

Hamish loved reading spy stories. In the illustrations, spies were always short and dark and they spoke very bad English.

‘He didn't look like one. And he found the ball for me.'

‘That doesn't mean a thing. Spies always pretend to be nice. They have to fool everyone. Where's he gone?'

She shrugged. ‘I don't know. I said he could walk anywhere he liked.'

Her brother strode to the edge of the lawn, wielding his croquet mallet like a weapon. ‘I can see the blighter. He's standing on a rock and looking through binoculars. They're pretty powerful ones, too. Zeiss, I'll bet. We'd better tell Grandfather.'

Grandfather was at his desk in the library, writing a letter. He seemed unconcerned by Hamish's news.

‘We are not at war with Germany now, Hamish, and I hope we never will be again. The war finished long ago. But I tell you what we'll do. I'll send one of the men over to Glas Uig with an invitation to dinner this evening so we can take a good look at these spies of yours.'

Which meant that they would have to wash and change. Stroma would have to put on proper clothes and socks and shoes and brush her hair. The rule was that they had to look clean and tidy for visitors and it wasn't easy. Baths were only once a week. It meant unhooking the zinc bath from the scullery wall and filling the copper kettle from the cold water tap over the sink. The bath took several kettles full heated on the kitchen range, which then had to be mixed with cold water.

And Ellen, busy stirring pots on the range, was in one of her cross moods. ‘You'll have to make do with the basin upstairs. I'll no' have you gettin' in ma way. There's far too much work to be done.'

Stroma carried the heavy kettle along the corridor to her bedroom. She tipped the hot water into the dresser bowl, added cold from the jug and set to work, washing her face with soap and flannel and scrubbing her hands and nails. Her legs were not only dirty but covered in scratches, old and new, and the cut on her knee had started bleeding again. Her feet were the worst of all, dirt ingrained in the skin, and she had to put the bowl on the floor and stand in it to get them clean.