The Complete McAuslan (68 page)

‘Trouble?’ I wondered. She gave her sharp, pleasant laugh, shaking her head.

‘Just an attack of responsibility. Poor Jacky, he has hopes of being Lord-Lieutenant, and can’t sleep for the glorious prospect. He can be a right wee pest, at that.’

‘Jimmy the Porter’s very word. How pestilential?’

‘Och, he’s heard that the Dipper has an illicit still going, so he’s worked himself into a fine indignation. As if it mattered. Heavens, the Dipper’s being making malt since grouse grew feathers, and who’s the worse for it?’ She laughed again, and frowned. ‘Aye, the trouble is, I hear they’re on to him – two Excisemen are up from Glasgow, and that’s a sure sign. So Admiral Jacky gets all blown up with civic duty and bustles about saying it’s a scandal and the law must be upheld. The wee twirp,’ she added warmly. ‘The truth is he has a grudge because the Dipper and the other McLarens poach him blind, and he can’t catch them at it.’

‘He’s got a point,’ I said.

‘Devil a bit he has! They poach
me
, and do I ken the difference? What’s a bird or a fish more or less – or a beast, either? The man’s just chawed at the Dipper, and wants his own back.’

I could have pointed out that they didn’t poach her more than enough to keep the game alert, no doubt because the Dipper was her faithful slave, having been in my uncle’s outfit (and lost an eye) in Flanders. He was the oldest and idlest of the ne’erdo-well McLarens, and performed odd jobs about the district to supplement his income from poaching and moonshining. A long grey man of deep guile and so little scruple that he lured game birds with whisky-sodden grain and shot them while they were reeling drunk. I asked if she knew where his illicit still was.

‘I take good care not to. It’s no business of mine. Jacky had the cheek to ask me that very question, so I advised him to look between Cruachan and Crianlarich’ – a distance of over twenty miles – ‘and he flew up into the trees. Well, good luck to him and the gadgers if they take the hill after the Dipper.’ But she looked anxious all the same; then she was smiling again. ‘So I’m to put you and your ruffians up for two nights? Well, there’s no room at the inn, so you can have the house to yourselves, and see they keep their tackety boots off the furniture. They’ll be teetotal – I don’t think. Cook’ll give them their meals here. As for you, my lad, you’ll dine in state with your old aunt and try not to disgrace her. Robin Elphinstone’s coming.’ She winked and patted her coiffure. ‘That’s sure to infuriate Jacky.’

She came out with me to the truck, and won my three Jocks with the obvious pleasure she took in meeting them; it was interesting to watch their different reactions to her smiling handshake. From Brooks, the driver, an Englishman, it was a hesitant: ‘Pleased to meet you, mum’; Macrae the hillman drew himself up to his lean dark height and inclined his head formally, saying: ‘Mem’; McAuslan, beaming expansively, greeted her with ‘Aw, hullaw rerr, missusl Hoo’s it gaun?’ As usual he looked as though he’d just been exhumed by Burke and Hare, but Aunt Alison didn’t seem to notice; she laughed and talked for a few minutes, reminded me not to be late, and then we drove the quarter mile up the road to Wade’s House in its little tree-lined valley.

It was good to be back, under the low beamed ceilings, to look round at the massive white walls hung with brasses and old prints, smell the faint drift of fir-wood, and hear the burn chuckling by. We settled in, McAuslan observing that it wis fair champion, and my aunt was an awfy nice wumman; he hoped we werenae pittin’ her tae bother. I reassured him, and presently we strolled back to the hotel in the warm August dusk. I turned the three of them over to the cook and the kind of dinner soldiers dream about, and walked through to the dining-room, which was filled with hotel guests and local worthies. Those were the days of rationing and the five-shilling maximum charge, which in a Highland hotel with resources denied the city was just an invitation to gluttony. To my surprise there were a number of dinner jackets and evening dresses making a gallant protest against post-war austerity; the little Admiral, presiding (as foretold by Jimmy the Porter) over a table of twelve, even had miniature decorations on his mess jacket. He kept frowning in the direction of my aunt’s private table in an alcove near the door, the object of his dark glances being Robin Elphinstone, a burly gentleman farmer of the district; if my aunt noticed she gave no sign, but surveyed the long crowded room contentedly, remarking that at her age the greatest pleasure in life was just gaping at folk. Elphinstone, no hand at the social graces, said: ‘Oh, come off it, Alison, you’re not that old!’ with such evident sincerity that she went into fits of laughter, which attracted another indignant glare from the jealous Admiral.

‘Can’t stand that chap Elphinstone,’ he told me later, when I ran into him in the hall and was commanded peremptorily to join him for a drink. ‘He’s uncouth. And we see far too much of him hereabouts.’ He gestured impatiently, spilling gin. ‘Your aunt is so generous, of course – wonderful woman! Gracious, delightful – couldn’t say an unkind word if she wanted to.’ That’s all you know, Nelson, I thought. ‘I do wish, though, that she’d take a firmer line with people like that. Ought to be put in his place. Not the right type at all. Do you know,’ he fixed me with his glittering poached eye, ‘a few years ago he lost some stock to a golden eagle up on the Conanish, and – you’ll hardly credit it – there was a rumour that the bounder actually shot it! A golden eagle, my God! Imagine it!’ He leaned heavily on his gin for support. ‘That shows you the kind of bounder he is. Well, I ask you, is a brute like that a fit dinner companion for . . . for . . . well, for anyone, I mean to say? Have another. No, I insist . . .’

He went on to say that if the ghastly Elphinstone were so rash as to repeat the offence, and it could be brought home to him, he, the Admiral, would have no hesitation in bringing a prosecution. ‘And it wouldn’t be the only one, either,’ he added with grim satisfaction. ‘Did your aunt tell you? That old scoundrel McLaren is at his tricks again – yes, an illicit still! Would you credit it?’ I said it boggled the imagination. ‘It isn’t enough that he and his cronies strip the country bare of game, they have to try to poison it, too, with their vile potheen, or whatever it is. Well, it’s not good enough. He’s going to be laid by the heels this time. Stamp it out. Someone’s got to take a stand.’

He was having difficulty doing that very thing by the time his chauffeur helped him into his limousine, and I walked round to the back of the hotel where the public bar was getting out. My three Jocks were emerging with the crowd of farm-workers and ghillies, Brooks and Macrae gratifyingly sober and McAuslan happy but not obnoxious. I knew this because he was still wearing both boots; in a more advanced stage of inebriation he would have removed them and tied them round his neck (why, I never discovered); when he discarded them altogether it was a sure sign that he was approaching the paralytic. As I waited for them I caught sight of the Dipper, in his battered tweed hat and long shabby overcoat, slipping away by himself. He saw me, and gave me his slow smile and a lift of the hand before disappearing into the quiet night.

I found myself wondering about him as I lay in bed in Wade’s House, listening to the burn and the sigh of the night wind in the leaves. He would know, of course, that the forces of law and order were mustering to close in, but it would not occur to him to lie low. They never had, his kind; if anything, he would go his unlawful ways harder than ever, out of pure devilment and defiance, and when the grip came he would meet it with all the craft and cunning that was in him. It would be on ground of his choosing, too, rock and heather and brown water – good luck to the Admiral and his gadgers, as my aunt had said. Yet he was no longer young, the same Dipper – he must be near seventy by now, and the legs and lungs would be failing. If it came to trouble on the hill, well . . . it would be a far cry from Loch Awe, as the saying is.

I slept sound, and half-woke only once, sometime near dawn, fancying I had heard a step on the gravel and a door closing softly. For a moment I wondered if I’d been dreaming a memory from childhood, and then I remembered that my three stalwarts were bunking down on the ground floor, and that the hotel maids were more than average pretty.

It was after nine when we got up, and to save the kitchen staff the trouble of finding a late breakfast we caught a few trout from the burn (something I hadn’t done since boyhood), grilled them on hot stones, and had them in the open with tea and digestive biscuits – there are some meals so far beyond Escoffier that they belong in another world. Elphinstone had invited me to play golf at Dalmally, and since Brooks was a golfer I took him along down to the hotel; the other two were content to spend the day loafing. McAuslan had already fallen in the burn twice, and been prevented in the nick of time from eating rowan berries – like many city-dwellers discovering countryside for the first time, he was going around open-mouthed, exclaiming at the size of the heather spiders and generally communing with nature. I told Macrae to keep an eye on him, and left them at the house, with the truck parked under the trees.

It was one of those beautiful tranquil days, until we got to the hotel, where the peace had been shattered at breakfast-time by the arrival of an Admiral with blood in his eye, to quote Jimmy the Porter. For some days, apparently, a troop of stags had been observed on the lower slopes of Ben Vornach, on his land; this morning they were nowhere to be seen, having evidently been scared into the high forest, but the Admiral’s head keeper had heard a shot in the night, and on venturing forth at dawn had discovered blood on the rocks, and signs of tracks carefully covered. In a word, poachers, and the Admiral’s land was now being beaten, under the supervision of its owner gone berserk, in search of the carcase and clues to the miscreants.

‘It’s now or never, of course,’ said Elphinstone, from whom I had the details in the hall. ‘They wouldn’t get a beast that size off the hill before first light, so it’ll be snug under a ledge until they can bring it near a road and pick it up with a car. Jacky’s boys will have to find it today or tomorrow at latest.’ He shook his head. ‘Sooner them than me, on Ben Vornach.’

‘Do they know who did it?’ I asked, and he looked at me slantendicular.

‘Jacky thinks he does. If he heard someone had shot an elephant when there was an “r” in the month he’d put it down to the McLarens. He’s probably right, but he’ll have to catch them with it. There’ll be no sleep for any man of his this fine night, I’ll wager.’

The Admiral’s troubles didn’t come singly; first it was the Dipper’s illicit still, and now poachers on his own domain.

‘Aye, there’s a coincidence for you,’ said Elphinstone. ‘And don’t think he hasn’t noticed.’

‘And why should he come bawling aboot it here, to the hotel, will you tell me?’ demanded Jimmy the Porter indignantly. ‘Spoiling herself’s breakfast on her, as if his dam’ beasts were any concern of hers! Did I not hear him at it? “This is what comes of apathy among those who should ken better,” cries he, and her at her boiled eggs and the
Oban Times
. “A fine thing, when the lower orders take advantage of indifference and slack management by their betters. It’s a positive encouragement to crime!’ Lower orders, and be damned to him! And heckling at her, as though his bluidy stag was in her larder!’

‘What did she say to him?’ I asked.

‘Offered him a cup o’ coffee and warned him aboot apoplexy,’ said Jimmy. ‘She’s far too easy on him. I’ve told her. Aye, and I told him, too. “Have ye no manners, that ye’ll break in on a lady at her meat, stopping her ears wi’ your drivel?” says I. “How dare you, my man?” says he. “I’ll report you to your mistress!” “Ye can report me to MacCallum More and his great-grandmither,” says I, “but you’ll leave herself alone in her own hoose. I’m the porter,” says I, “and I’ll have no disturbance in this hotel, not if it was the Duke himsel”!’ He went off, grindin’ his teeth, vowin’ vengeance on half the country.’ Jimmy snorted, straightening his uniform coat. ‘The impudence of the man!’

‘What’s apathy, Mr Robertson?’ asked the junior porter.

‘A disease of the spirit, boy. Apathy, says he! He’ll find enough of it among his own folk by the time they’ve finished beatin’ the bracken for his precious deer. And then he’ll be off colloguin’ wi’ the gadgers aboot the Dipper’s still. Oh, there’ll be a fine crying of “Cruachan” hereabouts today!’

I asked Elphinstone if there was anything we could do, and Jimmy the Porter exclaimed in outrage.

‘Do for the Admiral, d’you mean? You’ll be off to your gowf, young Dand, and let the silly sailor take care of himself!’

It seemed reasonable, so Brooks and I piled into Elphinstone’s ancient Argyle and were driven the few miles to Dalmally, which is one of the great undiscovered golf courses of the world. We played a leisurely threesome with one set of clubs, driving with care, for golf balls were like gold dust in those days and Dalmally’s rough was like Assam after the monsoon. It was late afternoon before we set off for home, and nightfall by the time Elphinstone left us at the foot of the gravel drive winding up to Wade’s House. The house, when we reached it, was in darkness, but there was light enough to reveal one disturbing absence. Our 15-cwt truck was missing.

‘What the blazes?’ I said. ‘Macrae knows better than to take it without permission.’ But Macrae wasn’t there, nor McAuslan, and there was no message or explanation in the house. I was demanding of the empty night where they and the truck had got to when Brooks reminded me of something even more startling: neither of them knew how to drive.

I left him at the house in case they turned up, and set off in some alarm for the hotel – whoever had taken the truck had removed Army property for which I was responsible, and a right damfool I was going to look if it wasn’t recovered forthwith. I had a half-hope it might be on the gravel sweep before the hotel, but it wasn’t; the Admiral’s limousine was, though, and a couple of farm lorries, which was unprecedented in a spot reserved for visitors’ cars; there was also a plain black saloon with a man in a diced cap at the wheel – police. Plainly great things were happening, and I sought enlightenment from Jimmy the Porter, who was at the reception desk with the local police sergeant.