William. All the same, I’m going to see that we hang about long enough to make sure that he’s left Fort William before we get there. I’m not going to run into that gang again if I can possibly help it. Of all the boring evenings I’ve ever spent, last night was the worst.’
‘Kinlochleven is not a place to hang about in. Isn’t it all factories and works and things?’
‘We can cross by the Ballachulish Bridge, then, and not go into Kinlochleven at all. We don’t have to stick to The Way.’
She said no more, but I knew, by the obstinate set of her chin, that if she had her say, we were to walk The Way to Kinlochleven come hail, wind, physical injury, rain or snow.
I had seen the others loading up with food at Rowardennan, so it looked as though they were going to bivouac on the way. There was little chance that we should catch up with them, I thought, at any rate on the first stage of the journey. It was only just over seven miles to Inversnaid and they had set off at half past eight from the hostel, so I guessed that they would pass the burn and the waterfall and be well on their way to Inverarnan before they rested and had their lunch. We ourselves had decided upon a mid-morning snack and a drink at Inversnaid, where there was a very good hotel. We were also booked in for the night there — separately again, of course.
It was a place I had seen once before, but not when I had been walking The Way. My mother and father had taken me on a coach tour when I was very young and we had followed the Glasgow to Arrochar road to turn off for Glencoe. The lunch stop had been at the Inversnaid hotel, however, and to reach it we had to be ferried across the loch and then back again in the afternoon to rejoin the coach.
As I recall it, the boat was supplied by the hotel and to get into it we had to step up on to an empty petrol can. I could not remember the lunch or anything about the hotel except that I saw two young men drop a large, heavy crate of eggs just outside the entrance. They stood and roared with laughter at the extremely messy result. I think they must have been Irishmen come over for the summer season to provide extra help at the hotel, for I cannot believe that Scotsmen, even Highlanders, would have regarded such a wasteful catastrophe with such uninhibited joy. We laughed, too, of course. Such laughter is really rooted in shock.
I particularly wanted Hera to see the waterfall. It is immensely high and so early in the summer there would be a lot of water coming down. Wordsworth admired the torrent, but, when we came upon it after having heard it from a long way off, Hera quoted from Gerard Manley Hopkins:
‘ “This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down
In coop and in coomb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home,” ’
she said, gazing at the tumbling torrent with the fascination I had hoped for.
We came upon it rather unexpectedly, as a matter of fact, in spite of the noise it made. We had had rather a rough scramble after walking through woods and then along the side of the loch, but, coming through more woodland on another stretch of The Way, we had seen birds and wild flowers which enchanted both of us and the sound of the waterfall was a diapason to all this happiness.
When we came in sight of the torrent and Hera had spoken Hopkins’ lines, I put my arm round her and quoted in her ear:
‘What hand but would a garland cull
For thee who art so beautiful?’
‘Then why didn’t you cull me one?’ she asked. ‘There was plenty of opportunity a little while ago.’
We knew that by now we must be well in the rear of Carbridge and his party, and by the time we had spent the night at the Inversnaid hotel they would be miles and miles ahead of us. They had camping gear with them and, as there was no sign of them at Inversnaid, I guessed that they would pitch tents somewhere near Inverarnan before going on to the youth hostel at Crianlarich. I thought it possible that the two clerks might opt for a night at a hotel, but not any of the others.
After lunch, Hera and I climbed a winding road up Glen Arklet past the little loch of the same name which is the property of the Glasgow waterworks and, to my mind, most uninteresting, but we did not finish the walk and reach Loch Katrine. Hera wanted to do this, but I pointed out that by the time we got there and back we should have added at least ten miles to the seven and a quarter we had already covered between Rowardennan and Inversnaid and that we still had to get to Crianlarich the next day.
She gave in, but rather resentfully.
‘It’s a great pity to miss the Trossachs when we’re so close,‘ she said. I pointed out that, even if we reached Loch Katrine, we could not reach the Trossachs without circumambulating most of the loch. She was silent at this. However, she admitted at dinner that I had been right and we went to our separate rooms at peace with one another.
I had a job to get her away from the waterfall after breakfast on the following morning, but we were on the move at last in perfect weather and before the day was too hot.
Hardly had we set out for Inverarnan, however, than she embarked upon a discussion of our marriage from an angle which surprised and annoyed me.
‘Comrie,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to have to sign myself Hera Melrose.’
‘Well, marry some other bloke, then,’ I said lightheartedly, thinking that she was teasing me.
‘Don’t be silly! Look, your firm is called Alexander Comrie, isn’t it?’
‘Alexander for Sandy, the senior partner, Comrie for me. We thought it sounded better for a literary agency than Storey and Melrose. What about it? Lots of firms do the same sort of thing. It’s quite legal, so long as you register the name.’
‘But, Comrie, you have another name, haven’t you?’
‘Yes. You know I have. It’s Alan.’
‘I wouldn’t mind being Mrs Alan Comrie.’
