Wildfire at Midnight (2 page)

And, locked in the great arms of the mountains, the water lay quiet as a burnished shield, reflecting in deeper blue and deeper gold the pageantry of hill and sky. One thin gleaming line, bright as a rapier, quivered between the world of reality and the water-world below. Our boat edged its way, with drowsily purring engine, along the near shore of the loch. Water lipped softly under the bows and whispered along her sides. The tide was at half ebb, its gentle washes dwindling, one after one, among the sea tangle at its edge. The seaweeds, black and rose-red and olive-green, rocked as the salt swell took them, and the smell of the sea drifted up, sharp and exciting. The shore slid past; scree and heather, overhung with summer clouds of birch, flowed by us, and our wake arrowed the silk-smooth water into ripples of copper and indigo.

And now ahead of us, in the center of the mountain crescent, I could see the dip of a bay, where a green valley cut through the hills to the sea's edge. Higher up this valley, as I knew, was a loch, where the hills crowded in and cradled the water into a deep and narrow basin. Out of this the river flowed; I could see the gleam of it, and, just discernible at that distance, a white building set among a mist of birch trees where the glittering shallows fanned out to meet the sea. The boat throbbed steadily closer. Now I could see the smoke from the hotel chimneys, a faint penciling against the darker blue of the hills. Then the glitter of water vanished as the sun slipped lower, and the enormous shadow of the Cuillin strode across the little valley. One arrogant wing of rock, thrusting itself across the sun, flung a diagonal of shadow over half the bay.

"Garsven," said the other passenger, at my elbow. I jumped. Such had been my absorption in the scene, so great the sense of solitude imposed by these awful hills, that I had forgotten I was not alone.

"I beg your pardon?"

He smiled. I saw now that he was a pleasant-looking man of perhaps thirty, with hair of an unusual dark gold color, and very blue eyes. He was tall and lightly built, but he looked strong and wiry, and his face was tanned as if he spent most of his time in the open. He was wearing an ancient ulster over what had, once, been very good tweeds. "This must be your first visit," he said.

"It is. It's a little—overpowering, wouldn't you say?"

He laughed. "Decidedly. I know the district like the back of my hand, but they still take my breath away, every time."

"They?"

"The Cuillin." He gave the word what I imagined must be its local pronunciation. His gaze had moved beyond me, and I turned to follow it. "Garsven," he said again. "That's the one at the end that sweeps straight up out of the sea at that impossible angle." His hand came over my shoulder, pointing. "And that's Sgurr nan Eag; then the big one blotting out the sun—that's the Pointed Peak, Sgurr Biorach."

"You mean Sgurr Alasdair," put in the boatman unexpectedly from behind us. He was a sturdy Skye man with a dark square face and the soft voice of the Islands. He steered the boat nonchalantly, and now and then spat to leeward. "Sgurr Alasdair," he said again.

The fair man grinned, and said something in Gaelic which brought an answering grin to the boatman's face. Then he said to me: "Murdo's right, of course. It's Alasdair on the maps—it was rechristened after some mountaineer or other; but I like the old names best. Sgurr Biorach it is, and that next to it is Sgurr Dearg, the Red Peak." His pointing finger swung towards the last towering pinnacle, black against the sunset. "Sgurr nan Gillean." He dropped his hand and gave me the sort of smile that holds the hint of an apology—the Britisher's regret for having displayed an emotion. He said lightly: "And you couldn't have had your first sight of them under better conditions. Sunset and evening star—all the works, in fact, in glorious Technicolor."

"You must be a mountaineer," I said.

"A climber? Yes, of a sort."

"He's a good man on the hill, is Mr. Grant," said Murdo.

Grant took out cigarettes, offered them to me and Murdo, then spun a spent match into the water. He said to me: "Have you come for long?"

"A week or ten days. It depends on the weather, If it stays like this, it'll be heaven."

"It won't," he said confidently. "What d'you say, Murdo?"

The boatman cast a dubious eye at the southwest, where the Atlantic merged its long and glimmering reaches into a deep blue sky. He jerked a thumb in that direction, and spoke briefly and to the point. "Rain,"

he said.

"Oh dear." I was dismayed. This golden prospect seemed, now that I was here, to be infinitely more desirable than the rain-washed hills of my dreams.

"Never mind," said Mr. Grant cheerfully, "it'll improve the fishing." I must have looked blank, because he added: "You do fish, of course?"

"Oh no." To my own surprise I sounded apologetic. "But I—I could learn."

His interest quickened. "You climb, then?"

"No." I felt suddenly very urban and tripperish. "Actually I came for a—a rest, and quiet. That's all."

His eye fell on my cases. "London?" He grinned. "Well, you've certainly come to the right place if you want to get out of the crowds. You'll have no neighbors except the Black Cuillin, and the nearest of them is—" He stopped abruptly.

"Nearest?" I glanced at the hotel, much closer now, islanded in its green valley, dwarfed and overborne by one great solitary mountain to the east. "That mountain? Is that one of them too? You didn't speak of it before. What's it called?"

He hesitated perceptibly. "That's Blaven."

The boatman took his cigarette from his mouth, and spat into the water. "Blahven," he repeated, in his soft Highland voice. "Mph—mm. . . ."

"The Blue Mountain ..." said Grant in a voice that was almost abstracted. Then he pitched his cigarette into the water, and said abruptly: "Was London so very crowded?"

"Oh yes. It's been steadily filling up with people and excitement for months. Now it's like a great pot slowly simmering to boiling point."

Murdo turned the boat's nose neatly towards the river mouth. "London, is it?" His voice held a naive note of wonder. "Did ye not want to stay and see the Coronation, mistress?"

"In a way, I did. But I—I've been a bit overworked, so I thought a holiday was a better idea after all."

"What made you come here?" asked Grant. His eyes were still on the Blue Mountain.

"To Skye? Oh, I don't know—everybody wants to visit Skye at some time or other, don't they? And I wanted quiet and a complete change. I shall go for long walks in the hills."

"Alone?" There was something in Murdo's expression that made me stare at him.

"Why, yes," I said in surprise.

I saw his eyes meet Grant's for a moment, then slide away to watch the approaching jetty. I laughed. "I shan't get lost," I said. "The walks won't be long enough for that—don't forget I'm a city bird. I don't suppose I'll get farther than the loch, or the lower slopes of—Blaven, was it? Nothing much can happen to me there!" I turned to Mr. Grant. "Does Murdo think I'll go astray in the mist, or run off with a water kelpie?" Then I stopped. His eyes, meeting mine, held some indefinable expression, the merest shadow, no more, but I hesitated, aware of some obscure uneasiness.

The blue eyes dropped. "I imagine Murdo means—" But Murdo cut the engine, and the sudden silence interrupted as effectively as an explosion. "London . . ." said Murdo meditatively into the bowls of his engine. "That's a long way now! A long way, indeed, to come. ..." The guileless wonder was back in his voice, but I got the embarrassing impression that he was talking entirely at random. And, moreover, that his air of Highland simplicity was a trifle overdone; he had, 1 judged, a reasonably sophisticated eye. "A very fine city, so they say. Westminster Abbey, Piccadilly Circus, the Zoo. I have seen pictures—"

"Murdo," I said suspiciously, as we bumped gently alongside a jetty, and made fast. "When did you last see London?"

He met my eye with a limpid gaze as he handed me

out of the boat. "Eight years ago, mistress," he said in his soft voice, "on my way back frae Burma and points

East

"

The man called Grant had picked up my cases and had started walking up the path to the hotel. As I followed him I was conscious of Murdo staring after us for a long moment, before he turned back to his boat. That simple Skyeman act had been—what? Some kind of smoke screen? But what had there been to hide? Why had he been so anxious to change the conversation?

The path skirted the hotel to the front door, which faced the valley. As I followed my guide round the corner of the building my eye was once again, irresistibly, drawn to the great lonely bulk of the mountain in the east, stooping over the valley like a hawk.

Blaven? The Blue Mountain?

I turned my back on it and went into the hotel.

IT WAS AN HOUR LATER. I had washed, brushed the railway smoke out of my hair, and changed. I sat in the hotel lounge, enjoying a moment of solitude' before the other guests assembled for dinner. I was sipping an excellent sherry, my feet were in front of a pleasant fire, and on three sides of the lounge the tremendous mountain scenery was mine for the gazing. 1 felt good.

The door of the hotel porch swung and clashed, and presently, through the glass of the lounge doors, I saw two women come into the hall and cross it towards the stairs. One I judged to be about my own age; she was shortish, dark, thickset, with her hair cropped straight and mannishly, and the climber's uniform of slacks, boots, and heavy jersey exaggerated her masculine appearance. The other was a girl of about twenty, very young-looking, with bright red cheeks and straight black hair. She did not, I thought, look particularly happy, and her shoulders strained forward under her rucksack as if she were tired. The pair of them stumped up the first flight of the stairs and round the corner.

In a minute or so they were followed by an elderly couple, both tall, thin, and a little stooping, with gentle well-bred faces and deplorable hats. They solemnly carried an empty fishing creel between them up the stairs, and on their heels another woman trudged, hands thrust deep into the pockets of an ulster. I couldn't see her face, but her hunched shoulders and lifeless step told their own story of depression or weariness.

I yawned and stretched a toe to the blaze, and drank some more sherry. Idly I turned the pages of an old society weekly which lay at my elbow. The usual flash-lighted faces, cruelly caught at hunt suppers and charity balls, gaped from the glossy pages . . . beautiful horses, plain women, well-dressed men . .. the London Telephone Directory, I thought, would be far more interesting. I flicked the pages. There was the usual photograph of me, this time poised against an Adam mantelpiece, in one of Hugo Montefior's most inspired evening gowns ... I remembered it well, a lovely frock. Here was the theatre page—Alec Guinness in an improbable beard, Vivien Leigh making every other woman within reach look plain, Marcia Maling giving the camera the famous three-cornered smile, staring at vacancy with those amazing eyes. . . .

The lounge door swung open and whooshed shut with a breathless little noise. Marcia Maling came in, sat down opposite me, and rang for a drink.

I blinked at her. There was no mistake. That smooth honey-gold hair, the wide lovely eyes, the patrician little nose and the by-no-means patrician mouth—this was certainly the star of that string of romantic successes that had filled one of London's biggest theatres from the first years of the war, and was still packing it today.

The drink came. Marcia Mating took it, tasted it, met my eyes across it and smiled, perfunctorily. Then the smile slid into a stare.

"Forgive me"—it was the familiar husky voice—"but haven't we met? I know you, surely?"

I smiled. "It's very brave of you to say so, Miss Maling. I imagine you usually have to dodge people who claim they've met you. But no, we've, never met."

"I've seen you before, I'm sure."

I flicked the pages of the magazine with a fingernail.

"Probably. I model clothes."

Recognition dawned. "So you do! Then that's where! You model for Montefior, don't you?"

"More often than not—though I do a bit of free-lancing too. My name's Drury. Gianetta Drury. I know yours, of course. And of course I saw your show, and the one before, and the one before that—"

"Back to the dawn of time, my dear. I know. But how nice of you. You must have been in pigtails when we did Wild Belles."

I laughed. "I cut them off early. I had a living to earn."

"And how." Marcia drank gin, considering me. "But I remember where I saw you now. It wasn't in a photograph; it was at Leducq's winter show last year. I bought that divine cocktail frock—"

"The topaz velvet. I remember it. It was a heavenly dress."

She made a face over her glass. "I suppose so. But a mistake for all that. You know as well as I do that it wasn't built for a blonde."

"You weren't a blonde when you bought it," I said, fairly, before I thought. "Sorrj," I added hastily, "I—"

But she laughed, a lovely joyous gurgle of sound. "Neither was I. I'd forgotten. I'd gone auburn for Mitzi.

It didn't suit me, and Mitzi was a flop anyway." She stretched her exquisite legs in front of her and gave me the famous three-cornered smile. "I'm so glad you've come. I've only been here three days and I'm homesick already for town. This is the first time since I left that I've even been able to think about civilized things like clothes, and I do so adore them, don't you?"

"Of course. But as they're my job—"

"1 know," she said. "But nobody here talks about anything but fishing or climbing, and 1 think they're too utterly dreary."

"Then what on earth are you doing here?" The question was involuntary, and too abrupt for politeness, but she answered without resentment.

"My dear. Resting."

"Oh, I see." 1 tried to sound noncommittal, but Marcia Maling lifted an eyebrow at me and laughed again.

"No," she said, "I mean it; really resting—not just out of a job. The show came off a week ago. Adrian said I positively must vegetate, and I had just read a divine book on Skye, so here I am."