Waterfall Glen (4 page)

“And I’d have to bring you back again a couple of months later, when there aren’t any colors left at all, just a blanket of pure white, and the falls are frozen into fantastical shapes like something out of a fairy tale and we have a bonspiel on the lochan.”

Finlay suddenly seemed embarrassed, and Kate guessed that he wasn’t used to talking with anyone the way he’d just talked with her. “Forgive me, you must be tired,” he said. “It was thoughtless of me to rant on like that.”

She smiled at him. “Those were far from the words of a thoughtless man, Finlay.” Turning back to the glen, she said, “I could stand here looking at this place all day.”

“Aye, well, Miss Weir’s anxious to meet you, so maybe we best be cracking on,” he said.

Kate nodded, and reluctantly followed him back to the Land Rover.

As the they bumped down the untarred road and through the glen—with forested hillside rising on the left, the still waters of the lochan stretching away to the right, and the twin crags jutting up ahead—the splendour of the scenery led Kate to ask, “How can such a lovely place possibly have a name that’s Gaelic for sorrow?”

“Look down by the lochan,” Finlay told her, pointing out the window on his right until a bump threw the Land Rover to one side and forced him to grab the wheel again with the hand he’d just taken off.

Kate looked past the old Highlander at the water down below. For the first time she noticed small clusters of abandoned cottages every half-mile or so all around the lochan. Some were roofless and had badly scorched walls but were otherwise almost complete, while others were little more than lines and piles of stone.

“There used to be roofs on those cottages and fires
in their hearths,” Finlay said. “There used to be women cooking around the fires and men herding cattle on the hillsides; little girls playing at their mother’s feet and wee boys following in the footsteps of their fathers—not in my time, you understand, but I heard tell of how it was from my father, who heard from his father, whose father saw it for himself. That was in the days before the glen earned the name Corranoch.”

“So what happened?” Kate asked.

Finlay didn’t answer, and at first Kate thought he hadn’t heard. Then finally he said, “When you have some time to spare, Lady Kate—later today if you feel like it, or maybe tomorrow—we’ll have a walk around the glen and I’ll tell you. You’ll not thank me, but you’d doubtless hear it from others, anyway; and I think it would be better if you heard from me.”

They were past the lochan now and, before Kate could press him on the matter, the sight of the waterfall and the crags up ahead made her forget all about the ruined houses.

“The cottages at the foot of Castle Crag belong to the crofters,” Finlay said.

Kate barely heard his words or noticed the cluster of low, whitewashed cottages they referred to—she was too taken up by what lay beyond them. “The falls are so beautiful!” she exclaimed.

Finlay nodded and said, “Before this place was called Gleann Corranoch it was known as Waterfall Glen.”

T
HE ROAD WOUND UP AROUND THE BACK OF THE LEFT-
hand crag but stopped some forty feet below the summit, at a place where the outcrop steepened abruptly.

“Welcome to Greystane, or Clach Glas as it’s called in the Gaelic,” Finlay said.

As Kate got out of the Land Rover and looked up at Greystane she found it hard to tell where crag stopped and building began. She guessed that the outer walls were a hundred feet long on each side and two storeys high where complete, but in places they’d crumbled to little more than half that height and were topped by ragged rubble rather than castellated battlements. As for the tower house itself, all she could make out from down below was one of its small, jutting corner turrets.

Hearing a grunt behind her, Kate turned to see Finlay unloading her cases from the Land Rover. Reluctantly she tore herself away from Greystane to give him a hand.

Once the cases were unloaded Finlay said, “I’m afraid the only way up is by those steps.” He pointed to a narrow
staircase chiselled out of the rock. A banister of chain links had been hammered into the face of the crag to the right of the steps.

When Kate set foot on the first step, suitcase in hand and daypack slung over one shoulder, Finlay said, “Mind how you go, Lady Kate. It can be a bit slippy. The chain’s a last resort, though, because it’s so manky.”

Kate looked back at him quizzically. “Manky?”

“Aye, you know: barkit, clarty.”

Kate laughed. “I love the sound of those words but I haven’t the slightest idea what they mean.”

“Right enough, I don’t suppose you’d be hearing them very much in San Francisco,” Finlay conceded. “Let’s just say that your hands will be in need of a good wash if you have to grab hold of the chain.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.”

Non-plussed, Finlay said, “Now it’s my turn to ask what you’re talking about.”

“Heads-up? It just means early warning.”

“Heads-up,” Finlay said. “I’ll try to remember that.”

Despite Finlay’s warning, Kate soon had to reach for the chain with her free hand because she was so tired she needed all the help she could get to climb the steep stairway. Looking at the rusty imprint on her palm when she let go, she said, “I see what you mean, Finlay. I think I’m going to be a very ‘clarty’ lady by the time I get to the top.”

Finlay chuckled away at that, before saying, “I think you’ve got far too much class to ever be called that, Kate Brodie.”

Kate smiled. The smile soon wore off, though, and after a dozen more steps she had to pause for another break.

“If only I was a few years younger I could have carried you up these steps,” Finlay said.

“If only I was a few younger I wouldn’t need you to,” Kate told him. “How do you manage to get furniture and things up here?” she asked.

“Mr. Chisholm never bought any. You’ll notice that for yourself when you’re looking around the house. Miss Weir got one of those Fridgedaire things for the kitchen about twenty years ago, and a machine that washes clothes. But, other than that, not much has changed inside Greystane since before the war.”

“I suppose it would be a shame if it had been modernized and turned into just another house inside,” Kate said.

“It would be a terrible, terrible shame,” Finlay agreed. “That would be an awful thing to happen.”

Smiling to herself at what was obviously Finlay’s idea of a subtle hint, Kate picked up the suitcase and started up the rest of the steps. The next time she looked up, it was to see an arch in the outer wall, framing a door of rough planks bound top and bottom by rusty iron strapping.

“Just give it a shove, it’s not locked,” Finlay said when Kate reached the final step.

She pushed the heavy old door. It swung open slowly, and she caught her breath at what was revealed. Cracked stone flagging led to an ivy-covered tower house twenty feet on each side and four storeys high. It had an ironstudded
door at its base, and a seemingly random scattering of tiny, deep-set four-paned windows on each floor.

To the right a long, single-storey building was attached to the side of the tower, running almost all the way to the outer wall. It, too, had only small, square-paned windows.

On either side of the path was a cobbled courtyard so overgrown that it was as much green as grey.

Likewise, the inside of the castle walls and the open stairways leading up to the ruined battlements were covered in moss and ivy.

“I don’t suppose you’ll have seen many places like this in California,” Finlay said.

Kate shook her head, enchanted.

Near one of the open stairways that led up to the ramparts a ragged notch in the walls came down almost to the highest step. Kate walked towards the staircase, wanting to glory in the view.

“It’s very much the worse for wear, there’s no two ways about that,” Finlay said, thinking Kate wanted a closer look at the damage to the walls. “But I don’t think it’s beyond repair if someone was to really set their heart on it.”

Kate barely heard his voice, let alone his words. She put her suitcase down on the flagstones and started climbing the stairs. Half-way up she paused, because the ruined cottage on the crag opposite had come into view in the notch in the walls.

“I’m afraid the cottage doesn’t belong to you,” Finlay said, guessing what she was looking at. “Archie
Cunningham’s had the devil of a job tracking down the man Mr. Chisholm left it to. There seems to be a bit of a mystery about him, which is quite appropriate given the history of the cottage. But that’s another story …”

Again, Kate barely heard him. Her attention had been caught by the sound of rushing water. She hurried up the last few steps and gazed down at the whitewater river which flowed through the little hanging valley between the crags before tumbling into the glen below.

“Wait till you see the view from the top of the tower,” Finlay called up to her.

“It can’t be much better than this,” Kate said, captivated.

“You can see a half a dozen other glens,” Finlay told her.

“Are any of them half as beautiful as Glen Cranoch?”

“Maybe to other people, but not to me,” Finlay said.

Kate reluctantly tore herself away and went back down the stairs. As Finlay led the way up the path he gestured towards the long building to the right of the tower and said, “That’s the banquet hall. But before I show you that and the tower house we better stop off at the kitchen, if you don’t mind, because Miss Weir can’t wait to meet you. She’ll have my guts for garters if she finds out I’ve been showing you around the place before introducing you.”

“She sounds quite formidable.”

“Plain-speaking, is how I think you’d best describe her if you were being polite—and if there was any chance she might be hearing you describe her, you’d definitely want to be polite. But under it all she’s got a good heart. She’s
honest as the day is long, and she’ll keep your house clean and your plate full.”

Finlay turned left along the path, around the tower house. “This is what you might call Miss Weir’s own little kingdom,” he told Kate as they approached a stone-built lean-to abutting against the rear of the banquet hall.

Knocking timidly on the door, he said, “Miss Weir?”

A voice from inside said, “Don’t tell me: her highness from across the water stood you up, and you all tarted up as if you were meeting royalty.”

Kate had to work hard not to laugh out loud.

Drawing his head down and his shoulders up while he squirmed with embarrassment, Finlay said, “Miss Weir, I’ve got Lady Kate here with me now.”

There was a long silence from the lean-to, and Kate could almost sense the mortified embarrassment within its walls.

The door finally opened and, accompanied by the smell of freshly-baked bread, Miss Weir appeared: a woman no taller than Finlay’s five foot four but dwarfing him by virtue of a beehive dyed the sort of black that would make a lump of coal look pale in comparison. Whereas Finlay barely tipped the scales at ten stone Miss Weir weighed half as much again, with a fair bit of that in the chest that filled out the top of her white blouse and the hips that stretched her black skirt. She glowered briefly at Finlay before turning her attention to Kate. A smile as strained as the seams of her clothes crossed her heavily powdered face and she
said, “I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t realize you’d arrived, Lady Kate.” She gave a half curtsy. Kate wasn’t sure if it was just her imagination, but she thought she heard fabric tearing and stitches popping out one by one.

Turning to look at Finlay, but still speaking to Kate, Miss Weir said, “I didn’t think that Mister McRae would bring the new lady of the house to the kitchen door like some hired help.”

Addressing Finlay now, she said, “Have you not got a brain in that balding napper of yours, man! What on earth were you thinking about?”

“I’m sorry, Miss Weir,” Finlay said, shrinking back like a chastened schoolboy.

“It’s not me you should be apologising to, it’s Lady Kate.”

Before Kate could say that there was no need for an apology, or to keep calling her Lady Kate, Miss Weir said, “Now if you’ll see to the suitcases and show Lady Kate through to the banquet hall, I’ll rustle up a bite for her to eat. She must be half-starved after such a long journey.”

“Actually, I’d quite like to see the kitchen,” Kate said, fascinated by the little she could make out beyond the redoubtable figure in the doorway. “May I?”

Bemused, Miss Weir stepped aside. Her attention turned to Finlay—who was beating a hasty retreat with the cases—when she heard him muttering ‘Awa’ an bile yer heid, you auld dragon’ under his breath. “The ‘auld dragon’ll’ see you later, Mr. McRae,” she said in a voice that could have cracked a roof slate, and one that made
Finlay McRae quicken his step and think of battle-hardened sergeant-majors as gentle souls in comparison.

Kate was barely aware of what was going on behind her because she was so taken up with the kitchen. It was unlike any she’d ever seen before. Apart from a fridge and washing machine, there wasn’t a modern appliance in sight. The floor was covered in flagstones rather than tiles or textured vinyl, and the unplastered walls were lined with rough-hewn shelves crammed with jars of jam and honey, chutney and pickled preserves. The labels on each jar were hand-written, the tops sealed with wax paper held in place by elastic bands. Kate knew at a glance that nothing on the shelves had been bought in a supermarket. As well as freshly-baked bread she smelled a dozen other equally comforting aromas, from sweet to savoury, the latter coming from a large pot bubbling away on a vast, ancient, but lovingly cared for wood-burning stove.