‘Well, you can’t be that, if you marry me. My name is Alan Comrie Melrose.’ I began to wonder what she was getting at.
It did not sound like teasing, after all.
‘Is Comrie a real Christian name?’
‘Not being a Christian I can’t say.’ But she was not to be fobbed off by persiflage of that sort.
‘You know what I mean,’ she said shortly.
‘Comrie was the surname of the uncle who left me such money as I have put into the firm.’
‘Well, wouldn’t he be pleased if he knew you had adopted Comrie as your own surname?’
‘I shouldn’t think he’d bother to sit up in his grave and cheer. Anyway, Melrose I am, and Melrose I stay.’
In that extraordinary way of hers, she realised that, although I tried not to show it, she had annoyed me. She abandoned the subject completely except to say, with a promise I could not mistake, that whoever would view fair Melrose aright must visit it by pale moonlight. I was not sure that she was quoting quite correctly, but I knew that she was offering me a bribe. Alan Comrie I was to agree to become. I said no more; neither did she. On our way from Inversnaid, we came upon a family of otters gorging themselves on the waste food thrown out from the hotel. They took not the slightest notice of us, so I am in great hopes that nobody hunts them in those parts.
We did not bother to visit Rob Roy’s Cave. In any case it is not, as Hera pointed out, a ‘real’ cave, but a fissure in the rocks. Moreover, we had learned from the brochure that some idiot had marked it in large white letters and so destroyed any romance which could ever have been attached to it. I don’t wonder that Stonehenge and other fascinating monuments to the past have had to be protected from the many-headed.
The next mile or two made very rough walking indeed. We scrambled and toiled towards Inverarnan, sometimes through woods, sometimes along the lochside. There was a bonus in the form of a wild goat, but we gave it as wide a berth as we could. Once, on the Isle of Wight, I had freed a domesticated goat which had got its tether wound round a gorse bush, and the horned, ungrateful devil had then done its best to rush at me and butt me into the sea.
Apart from the goat, the only interest lay in our struggles to keep our footing on the rough path while we listened to the traffic on the other side of the loch. At Doune, or rather just before we reached a desolate farmhouse on the way to that place, we took a break on a gravel shore and then, after we had crossed a brook, the going became easier and we stopped to take a look at some deserted farm buildings.
From Doune (one of three places of that name in Scotland) to Inverarnan the way was easy. We climbed, rested, and then went by way of a little pass to find a glorious view of the loch we were leaving behind us with Ben Lomond guarding it. Ahead of us were other great mountains — I think Ben Lui was one. Soon we dropped downhill, partly through woodland, until we came to a bridge. A ruined farm and a waterfall led us to another bridge, this one over the River Falloch. After that, we came out on to the main road and so to the hotel.
I went inside to confirm our booking, secure in the knowledge that, if we ever ran into Carbridge and the others again, it would not be at Inverarnan. Neither was it. That unwished-for joy awaited us at Crianlarich, although that bit of information was not given us until we got there.
Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, runs the writ to which Gilbert Keith Chesterton too optimistically added, ‘for he shall be gloriously surprised’. In my experience, the glorious surprises have always been leaked beforehand, for it is not only bad news which travels fast. Our bad news did not travel at all, in one sense. It simply caught up with us, but that came later, for at Inverarnan, except for the prospect yet again of separate beds, all was well and I felt remarkably fit and very happy as I went to the hotel desk, leaving Hera outside.
3: A Change in the Weather
« ^ »
It was as I came out again that I saw the gypsy. She was an old woman with a keen face and wispy grey hair coming from under a man’s felt hat.
‘Mind how you go, my pretty,’ she said to Hera. We stopped, although I hardly know why. She had sprigs of flowering rowan in her basket and some fronds of young bracken. Colour was provided by a collection of paper flowers, red, blue, yellow and mauve.
‘Mind how I go? Why?’ asked Hera, although I touched her arm to indicate that we should move on. I wanted to have a look round before we dined.
‘The Way is long,’ said the gypsy.
‘ “The wind was cold,
The minstrel was infirm and old,” ’
I quoted, and gave another slight touch to Hera’s arm.
‘You keep to The Way,’ said the gypsy, ignoring me. ‘It may be long, but there is danger if you stray. Buy a flower and a bit of green fern, lady. Green is a lucky colour for you. Buy a bit of rowan for the white soul of you. Come autumn, there will be berries red as pigeons’ blood, but the flower of the rowan, that’s white as milk, as pure as your heart, my lady.’
‘All right,’ said Hera. She picked a spray of rowan out of the gypsy’s basket and gave the old woman a fifty pence coin. ‘Now tell me why I’m to mind how I go. Go where?’
‘Come you apart from your gentleman.’
I was not very keen on this, but Hera motioned me to stay where I was. The gypsy took her aside far enough for me to be out of earshot. The conference was not a very long one. Hera came back to me with a couple of paper flowers as well as the spray of rowan for which she had paid such a ridiculously exorbitant price, but she refused to disclose any details of the conversation.
