The Bark Cutters (39 page)

Rose toyed with the watery soup before her, her silver spoon partially disappearing into the grey green of the vegetable broth.

‘Are you ill?' Hamish's voice echoed down the length of the table.

‘Take this away, please.' Rose waited for the maid Colleen to clear her bowl. ‘Can you bring me something edible?' Colleen looked to Hamish for confirmation, her thick bottom lip trembling. ‘Do it,' Rose said firmly. Colleen finally did as she was bidden, reappearing with dinner plates and two more black maids in tow. One carried a platter of vegetables, the other a large covered tureen. With little ceremony Colleen arranged a plate before Rose and within minutes was dishing up vegetables and a watery stew with shaking hands. Then the girl began to cough. Rose poked at the large chunks of meat, unrecognisable vegetables and shooed the girl away. With a cautionary stab at a piece of meat, she smelled the food before chewing thoughtfully.
She pushed the plate away again, dabbed at her dry lips with her napkin and folded the fine lawn in half.

‘I ask again, are you ill?'

Rose could see her husband was becoming angry. His fingers twirled the fine cut-glass stem of his wine glass.

‘I am not hungry.' She sipped from a glass of water, the moisture barely quenching her dry throat. How she longed for something cool.

‘It would appear,' he countered, ‘that the food is not to your liking.'

Rose was about to explain that in her opinion their menu had deteriorated significantly since the departure of the Abishari brothers, however she was loath to even mention the surname. Footsteps sounded from the cypress wood hallway leading to the kitchen. Rose knew immediately who the owner of the unmistakeable clomp was.

‘There is a problem with dinner, Mr Gordon?' Mrs Cudlow's concern showed itself in the twisting of her apron.

‘Must you sneak about, Mrs Cudlow?' asked Rose. ‘It would be more appropriate if you knocked and then announced yourself.'

The older woman started in surprise. ‘I apologise, Mrs Gordon. Colleen said you did not like the soup.'

‘Apart from my having said no such thing, your question should be addressed to me, should it not, Mrs Cudlow?'

The nanny turned puce. ‘My apologies.'

Since Abdullah's departure last week Rose found Mrs Cudlow's behaviour much changed. Only yesterday on returning to her bedroom to collect her sewing Rose disturbed the woman, her sure grip on her bedroom doorknob. Then this morning she had peered over her shoulder while Rose was immersed in a long letter to her daughter, Elizabeth.

‘Wait.' Hamish took a large mouthful of stew and rolled it
around his mouth appraisingly. ‘It is excellent. My wife is merely not hungry. Thank you, Mrs Cudlow.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘Must you disenfranchise yourself from everybody?' Hamish began when Mrs Cudlow departed. He took a mouthful of stew, chewed, swallowed and took another mouthful. ‘It is bad enough that you paraded your affections with Abdul's brother in front of the poor woman. Now I find you behaving in a rude and condescending manner towards her and the rest of the staff under this roof. I will not tolerate it, Rose. Why should they suffer because you are unhappy? They are not the cause of your discontent. Nor may I add, am I in this particular instance.' Hamish took a sip of wine and recommenced eating.

‘I am not altogether inexperienced at how certain affairs can affect a household,' Rose replied bitterly. It was as if all the sadness she'd experienced in her life were piling together into an insurmountable barrier. And now her domain, the household that she'd so recently come to play a satisfying part in, was treating her as one might treat an unwieldy child.

‘You have not eaten properly for the last three days.' Hamish shovelled the remains of the stew into his mouth and then rang the sterling silver bell resting on the table. Colleen entered the room almost immediately.

‘Some of Mrs Cudlow's apple pie, Colleen.'

‘Yes, sir.' The girl coughed again, the exhaustion weakening her.

‘I had not realised my diet was important,' Rose continued as the girl bobbed a tight curtsey. ‘You are ill, Colleen. Leave the homestead until you are well and send someone else in with the dessert.'

‘Won't you at least eat for the children?'

Rose thought of how willing she'd been to leave them behind and join Abdullah. ‘I would eat if I was hungry,' she answered wearily. ‘And Hamish …'

He drew his concentration up from where he mopped his gravy with a wedge of bread.

‘I would appreciate it if you would cease Mrs Cudlow's invasion of my privacy. There will be no further contact between myself and Abdullah Abishari.'

Hamish inclined his head in agreement. ‘He is to be married, you know.' He wondered if Jasperson had been in contact with Tootles. It was one thing for his wife to have an infatuation, quite another for a business acquaintance to take advantage of his wife's delicate nature.

‘I am very much aware of that fact. Excuse me.'

Moments later, in the privacy of her bedroom, the remnants of food lying in Rose's stomach rose up. There was barely enough moisture to wet the base of the porcelain bowl.

Mrs Cole signed her name at the bottom of the letter to her sister and sealed it safely within the envelope. Whilst instructed not to discuss any detail of her current employment with the Whittakers, Mrs Cole felt it was only polite to let her dear sister know how she was progressing. After all it was upon her sister's recommendation that she had the good fortune of being selected for the Whittaker's housekeeping position and it was fine employment. The terrace was a little damp and drab and the neighbourhood definitely middle class, but Mrs Cole could hardly fault her wages. The extra money allowed her to save a little each week and she took great delight in placing the coinage in the toe of her stocking and tucking it between her bed and mattress.

No, she doubted the contents of her letter flaunted the strict rules regarding her new charges. Talking of Mr Whittaker's failing health and of Claire's improving progress with her lessons was hardly exciting news. Of more interest to Mrs Cole
was the household's benefactor. She guessed him to be wealthy and a widower, aged, perhaps, with no dependents. The fact that he was only one of these things made him and his interest in the Whittaker family all the more intriguing, especially when her duties required ad hoc reporting as to young Claire's progress, to a foreign gentleman no less.

Placing the letter in her basket with the days' shopping requirements listed in her neat writing, Mrs Cole opened the back door of the terrace. It was early. The sun's rays were only just visible in the dawn sky. Resting her basket on the ground she checked quickly for rodents and other pests in the oblong vegetable garden. Tufts of greenery marked out carrots and potatoes while three pale cabbages, the last of the season, bore the mute passing of grubs. Mrs Cole squatted down on her haunches. Pulling two fat caterpillars from one cabbage, she squashed them beneath the soles of her leather shoes, grinding them into the dirt of the backyard.

‘Mrs Cole?'

The familiar accent startled her and she rose to her feet. She walked to the back gate and peered down the laneway. Pressed flat against the wooden palings of the next door fence stood a swarthy man dressed in an expensive dove grey suit, his hair hidden beneath a turban. Mrs Cole stole a glance nervously behind her before joining the man in the laneway.

‘I was not expecting you,' she cautioned, lifting her skirts to step over a pile of horse manure.

‘How is the girl?' He lit a long cigarette, coughing at the first intake of tobacco.

‘Her lessons are improving.' Mrs Cole looked back towards the terrace. The upstairs window remained shut, the curtains drawn.

‘And the father's health?'

‘Fair to poor.'

‘So you don't expect him to last the year?'

Mrs Cole shrugged. ‘Who is to know these things?' The wind blew up about them sending leaves and litter hurtling down the street.

The man drew his collar up about his neck. ‘Thank you.'

He was gone before Mrs Cole could say another word. She watched him walk down the laneway before disappearing around a corner. Turning back towards the terrace, she walked across the dirt of the backyard to where she left her basket. It was empty. ‘Blast.' The shopping list she found between the carrots and cabbages, but the letter had disappeared. ‘Blast and blast.' It was then that she noticed Claire's window. It was wide open.

The air carried unknown scents, a wisp of moisture from both loch and sea. Sarah's vehicle travelled comfortably on the dirt road as she passed sparsely located buildings. A tiny crofter's cottage with a B&B sign emitted thin curls of smoke into the pungent air, smells intensifying as she passed close to stagnant pools of water. Only now did she see the world she had entered. A dog sat patiently near a wrecked car while a mother pushed an ancient pram as scattering birds soared low. It could have been any place in the world, but it was like no place ever imagined. It was as though in the forty kilometres she had travelled yesterday, she had crossed into a vast moonscape. Rocks lay everywhere: at the side of roads, by the varying-sized lochs she passed, in the form of fences, up hillsides, scattered in mounds on fields. And in the fields themselves; many were cut away, great hunks of earth removed with systematic adeptness. The large slices had been left to dry, mutilating the scenery. Sarah slowed her car, wondering how much more peat the
soil could give up, in this treeless land ravaged by weather and centuries of habitation.

It was summer. Yet it was not hot. There were no trees, no flowers, and no gardens, except the barest kind. Exasperated, longing for a break from the monotonous scenery, Sarah turned left onto the bitumen. The small car instantly shuddered in a gust of wind. On her right, the North Sea pounded below. Above, a hill staggered under a carpet of heather blowing in torrents of purple and green. Arriving in the village of Tongue, a narrow road led her to a parking spot outside the freshly white-washed façade of an otherwise uninspiring pub. Turning the ignition off and pulling on the handbrake, Sarah let out a slow breath. In the days since leaving Australia, she replayed her final moments with Jeremy as if she were caught in some kind of time warp. That moment, the last she would ever spend with him, continued to flick through her mind, yet in the last couple of hours many thoughts began to combine and crowd her head. Anthony, her parents and grandfather and her beloved dead brother pushed and pulled at her subconscious like unwanted children; yet underlining her every thought lay Wangallon. Shaking her head, as if the motion would eradicate her thoughts, Sarah flipped through her itinerary, her finger coming to rest on the address of her next B&B. It was on the outskirts of the village, giving her just enough time for an afternoon walk before it got dark.

Gathering her backpack, she headed for a signposted trail. The track sloped downhill through tall wet grasses and mud, and her feet, awkward in boots already pinching her heels, slid in the soft vegetation. In the distance, across the sea entrance, Sarah glimpsed mist swirling on far mountains, then she was sliding downhill again to the bottom of the small valley, where a wooden stile marked the presence of a small stream. On the soaking banks the freezing water stung her fingers as it ran rapidly over worn pebbles. Flies rose in a dense mass, invading her eyes and nose so
that she quickly navigated the stream and its slippery rocks, and rejoined the overgrown track leading uphill on the other side. The woods she passed through were dense and, having climbed two higher stiles, she was about to give up on ever finding anything of interest when a clearing appeared on the other side. There, perched atop a steep hill, stood a castle. Silhouetted by sun and cloud, the ruin rose prominently above the surrounding countryside.

Judging it would be a good ten minutes uphill once she breached the thick clumps of thistle-type vegetation before her, Sarah hitched her backpack and slipped through another fence. Her boots, for all the sales jargon, still slipped on the moist hillside that was virtually bare of any growth, yet by keeping her head down, her eyes clear of the increasing wind and measuring her breath, finally she reached the summit and the ruined castle. Closing her eyes briefly, she took a deep breath. Beyond the ruin lay an incredible view. The distant inlet was suffering from the effects of a low tide and was bordered by ridges of exposed sand, while further down towards the chilling North Sea, a long low bridge carried two cars.

Wiping flying hair from watering eyes, Sarah gazed at the village. Around it, fields were dotted with tiny cottages and curling smoke, the mountains still shrouded in cloud. Circumnavigating the tall tower and its fallen slabs, a small entrance, dark and unwelcoming, finally came into view beyond a jumble of rocks. Clambering over the ruins to stand on the threshold, Sarah waited until her eyes adjusted to the dim interior. A trace of light seeped through a crack. Checking her footing, she jumped down to the submerged floor, not realising the drop was one of two feet. ‘Shit!'

‘Better to investigate first before you go jumping here. It's a long way down with a broken ankle to wear.' The heavy accent belonged to a male outline.

Sarah stepped back quickly at the voice, suddenly aware of their isolation. ‘Who are you?'

‘And I could be asking the same of you?'

‘A visitor.' Sarah turned to leave.

‘Don't go on my account, lass.'

Sight now accustomed to the light, Sarah watched as her companion returned to sit on a small ledge. He looked tall, taller than her five-foot-ten inches. His hair was a golden red, forming a halo in the refracted light. Heading for the crack of light creeping through the old stones, Sarah nervously pulled out her water bottle.

‘Well, at least you are prepared.' The figure reclined, book in hand, on the opposite side of the circular building. ‘You're Australian. You've travelled a long way.'

‘Yes.'

‘You don't say much.'

‘Well, you know, strangers and all that stuff,' she answered abruptly.

‘We don't have strangers here, lass.'

Based on the size of Tongue, Sarah figured it was a bit like Wangallon town; if people didn't know your business they'd make something up. ‘This is a great lookout,' she announced, deciding it wouldn't kill her to be friendly.

‘Exactly what it was built for, the inhabitants could see everything. Attack from the land, from the sea. Steep defensive position. One small doorway.'

Taking another sip of water Sarah touched the cold crumbling walls. ‘When was it built?'

‘Hundreds of years ago, I'd say. Initially to watch for Vikings, or built by them. Then rebuilt, renovated, who knows?' His voice deep and lilting echoed slightly in the cavernous space above them.

‘Why isn't it listed? You know, preserved? Most of the ruins I've passed are run by trust organisations.'

‘Too many. Besides, there's more money to be made down south. Up here, this far north, not many people travel through, and there aren't many monuments. Weren't too many invaders either. Not too much in the way of spoils to make off with and, well, look at the land, lass: it's not exactly fertile.'

The rich wealth of Wangallon sprang up in her mind. ‘So what do you do?'

‘I'm a farmer, of course.'

‘Really? We have something in common. So am I. Well, a grazier is what we call it.'

‘You own your land? Yes?'

‘Of course,' Sarah answered, aware of a slightly imperious tone creeping into her voice. ‘My family has been there for years.'

‘Of course they have.'

Unsure of whether she was being mocked, Sarah screwed the lid back onto her water bottle. ‘Strange name, Tongue.' It was a little disconcerting talking in the half-light like this.

‘It's Norse,' he explained to her. ‘In the Gaelic it's known as Kintail Mackay, being the heart of Mackay country.'

‘I think I had better go.' A mist of rain seeped in through the ancient entrance and Sarah didn't relish being stuck in some drafty monolithic structure with a total stranger.

‘The weather changes frequently. Keep your bearings and tell someone where you're going. Once the mist creeps up, that'll be it. It's possible to die of exposure.'

‘Great.'
Tell me something welcoming
, she thought, escaping from the smell of damp soil and worn stone. Outside she zipped her wet coat firmly up to her chin and began to make her way painstakingly down the hillside. She looked back only once to check her progress, but the rain had obliterated the ruined fortress from view.

Back in her hire car, Sarah continued with her sightseeing. Below the narrow road, the North Sea ate away at the cliff face. Masses of bulbous seaweed reached in and out at a beach that at low tide stretched a healthy kilometre back to the tiny houses nestled together at the base of a small hill. It was as if a slice of the land had been cut away, leaving a great semi-circular gouge at one end. An end filled with mouldering weed. Winding the window up, Sarah leaned back into the cracked upholstery of the car. Cold seeped through her bones. Distance made Sarah regret her many arguments. Maybe it was purely because she was miles away from the pressures of her life, or the knowledge that she cared enough about everybody to feel upset about her last conversations with Jeremy and her grandfather. Then there was Anthony. She shouldn't have kissed him and she was embarrassed it had happened. He was a friend and they should have known better. The fault lay with both of them, however, and in apportioning the blame equally, she considered it was possible that Anthony could have been unwittingly led into her grandfather's future plans for Wangallon.

What Sarah had not reckoned upon during the long flight from the southern hemisphere was her increasing frustration at the possibility of Wangallon being left entirely to Anthony. After all she had left Australia without informing her grandfather immediately of her broken engagement to Jeremy and considering how furious he'd been with her when she had last seen him, anything was possible. Her pride had stopped her from telling him, although by the time she landed in Edinburgh commonsense told her that her father would have probably shared the news by now. Her grandfather's reaction would be the opposite to her father's initial shock and then disappointment, of that Sarah could be certain.

Seagulls stalked the sand below, while beyond only smoke suggested habitation in the windswept hills. Tearing her eyes
from the great shivering expanse of water, Sarah studied her road map. Tongue lay to her left while the ruin and its resident stranger hung soundlessly to the north. The ignition turned over smoothly, and soon the car was running easily back to the main road. Within a short space of time, she was heading towards a signpost pointing to the left. Sarah hesitated only slightly before turning the car down the dirt road in the direction of the B&B.

As she increased her speed, the heather-covered hills blurred as the road narrowed to a mere track, her small car bumping alarmingly as she cut through desolate countryside. Sarah gripped the steering wheel tightly. The road was too narrow to turn back. Slowing down to a mere crawl, she twisted the radio dial and was rewarded with static as the noise of a car horn jolted her. Glancing in her rear-view mirror, she saw a large black four-wheel drive.

‘Okay, okay.' The vehicle remained hot on her heels, the outline of two men just visible beneath two long fishing poles strapped to the roof. Sarah slowed as she rounded a bend, instantly the car behind her pulled out to overtake her, Sarah felt her vehicle spin out instantly as she was pushed to the side of the road.

A number of voices were talking loudly in unfamiliar accents. Sarah lifted her forehead from the steering wheel. Touching her face instinctively, she checked her hands. ‘No blood,' she mumbled. Cautiously she peered down, feeling her ribs. It hurt to move. With shaking hands she undid her seatbelt and shifted her legs from their position squashed hard against the door. It was only then that she looked out her window. Horrified, she burst into tears as she stared at a sea of water.