‘Oh, I don’t go for that sort of bunk. Come and get matey, do.’
We could not get out of it without being boorish, although a certain restlessness in the atmosphere indicated that some of the company were not too happy, any more than we were, at being roped in by this hot-gospeller of togetherness. He introduced himself as Neville Carbridge, but invited us to call him Nel. ‘Only one “1”, of course, old boy, old boy!’ The only lone wolf was the fellow who had approached Hera on the train and then slopped drink on her at the airport hotel. I could see that Hera was not overjoyed at meeting him again. He was introduced to us as Barney Todd.
‘Not Sweeney?’ asked Hera, with the innocence she always displays when she looses off a barbed shaft.
‘Now, now, fair one! ’ shouted the idiotic Carbridge. ‘I thought of it first! You’re not the only joker in the pack. Besides, I doubled up. I said, “Sweeney” and then I said, “I’m on my tod, too, so why don’t we mingle, eh, old boy, old boy?” And now he’s going to be the life and soul of the party, just like hot toddy! I say, I say! That’s a good one, boys and girls! That’s a
One or two of the girls giggled, but I noticed that Todd himself was not amused. Personally I wondered whether I could restrain myself from assaulting Carbridge if he called Hera ‘fair one’ just once more. There was no stopping him on the subject of Todd, however. He put his hands to his forehead in the shape of horns and curvetted about, shouting, ‘My name is Toro! Bring on the matadors! Toro! Toro! Bring on the toddy, for the toro,
Todd took it calmly, but I don’t think he liked being the butt of Carbridge’s joking, or listening to the giggles of the girls. Apart from Carbridge and Todd, there were four other men. One, called James Minch, was accompanied by his sister Jane. Another rather cluttered-up chap seemed to be acting as bearleader to four students, two men called Lucius Trickett and Freddie Brown, and two girls. Their leader’s name was Andrew Perth, and it seemed to me that already he had the harassed look of a schoolmaster in charge of a pack of unruly children on a school outing.
It turned out that the students were from a London polytechnic and were ‘doing’ The Way as part of a course in geology. Perth had been hired by the college as an experienced guide who had a detailed knowledge of the countryside through which the walk would take his party, so that accounted for his being with the four youngsters and looking somewhat disconsolate.
The girls were called Coral Platt and Patsy Carlow. There were two other women, but these had come on their own and got themselves collected by Carbridge. I put them down as office girls, possibly minor civil servants. They turned out to be clerks in two different insurance firms. They had been friends from schooldays and always managed to fix their holidays for the same three weeks of the year. I spotted them eyeing the men in the party, particularly Todd, James Minch and myself.
James Minch was a straw-haired lad in, I guessed, his early twenties. It transpired that he had been president of his students’ union and I could well envisage him in the part, for he turned out to have the gift of oratory to an extent which almost reduced the exuberant Carbridge to silence, and during the course of the evening he gave us not only what I thought was a highly coloured and would-be humorous account of his college career, but also a description of his journey that day with his sister from their home town to the youth hostel in which, the prisoners of Carbridge, we were now stuck until the morning.
Jane Minch, the sister, was a redhead and her otherwise unremarkable but pleasant young countenance was completely smothered in freckles. The office girls, Rhoda and Tansy (I did not get their surnames at the time), were a good deal older than any of the other women except Hera. They must have been going on for thirty. They were homely-looking girls, quite unexciting, but probably kind-hearted. I thought that the men would write them off.
‘I hope they have that much going for them, anyway. I mean, kind hearts,’ I said to Hera next morning. ‘They don’t seem to have much else to recommend them.’
‘They’re all right,’ said Hera, who was not always a defender of her sex. ‘Isn’t it about time we set out?’
I had delayed our departure deliberately in order to give the others a good long start. There had been some debate among them about whether to take the public transport to get to Milngavie, where The Way kicked off, or whether to footslog it, but this meant pavement-bashing and also it would add another seven miles or so to the long walk to Fort William. In the end it was decided, for the sake of the girls, that the public transport was to be favoured and, as we were going to use it too, although for a longer distance than theirs, I decided to let them get away first. I hoped we should never see them again. It was no part of our experiment to travel in convoy, even if we had liked the gang. The essence of our arrangement was that Hera and I should be on our own for a fortnight except for contact with hotel staff, hostel wardens and the cottagers who were to lodge us for an occasional night.
Hera had demurred when I insisted upon delaying our start, but I held on firmly and said, ‘We’ve got to let that lot get clear away. Besides, I’d like to see as much as I can of the city before we leave. We’ll have lunch somewhere and get on our way this afternoon. We’re in no hurry. Don’t you want to see the sights while we’re here? We can still clock into the hotel at Drymen in plenty of time for a bath and dinner. How I hope we’ve seen the last of that laughing jackass and his party! My bet is that most of them will jettison him the first chance they get. Tomorrow morning we’ll begin our tramping. We can start out directly after breakfast and take it easy to Balmaha. They will be a long way behind us by then, because we’re getting transport to Drymen and they’re walking all the way from Milngavie.’
There was plenty to see and do in Glasgow and, although we by no means covered everything, we did look around the twelfth-century cathedral, the museums, the art gallery, the shops in Sauchiehall Street, and we had lunch at one of the hotels. Hera was still slightly peevish and said that she could see no reason for my having delayed our start, but added that she had enjoyed her lunch. By mid-afternoon I felt we had had enough of sight- seeing and I could see that Hera was almost exhausted, so I suggested a slight change of plan.
‘We’re staying here for the night,’ I said. ‘We’ll have some tea and then I’ll book us in at the hotel where we had lunch.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Hera. ‘We’re booked in at Drymen and that’s where we’re going to spend the night.’
We had had a toss-up about the late start, so I did not argue. We went to Drymen, just as we had arranged to do, and turned in early. On the following morning we took a look around the little place before going on to Balmaha, where we had booked accommodation in a cottage.
Drymen is built around what, in England, would be called the village green. The hotel was excellent, the welcome cordial and the food good. We had been told that the shops were the best we should find for the next sixty miles, so we took the opportunity next morning to stock up on our rations and buy a couple more batteries for the torches. I also went to the bank, having previously arranged for this. I never like being short of ready cash, particularly on holiday when one never knows what unexpected calls may be made upon one’s pocket.
