on coaches, chests, even furniture. Women used them for embroidery.
“Secret pricing? What a cheat!”
“You know anybody who doesn’t cheat?” I asked dryly. She reddened and read on.
“Number thousand and one. A nineteenth-century button die from Helen, eight sides; she thinks the Howard family crest. Sutherland. Another code?”
“Yes. Helen always uses ‘Sutherland’ as her price code. But refuse it, love. Too many wrong crests’ll reveal it’s a papering job. Pity.”
A button die’s valuable because you can strike genuine silver buttons on it till the cows come home. A bit of sewing then converts any period garment into Lord Howard of Effingham’s, with great (but illicit) profit.
“One thousand and two. Fob seal, glass intaglio on gold, Chester 1867. Big Frank…”
Hamish came at nine-thirty, looking even younger still. He was hesitant, definitely guarded.
“Noticed something amiss, Hamish?” I joked.
“It’s this: Sotheby’s ‘Standard Conditions of Sale’ Apply Throughout.” He showed me a copy. “As long as it’s in order.” I reassured him a mite, and he went down to unload.
His bike pulled a tiny homemade cart, a packing case on pram wheels. I went to the window to watch him in the forecourt. What a lot of people.
“Michelle. How many McGunns are there?”
“Thirty-two, but very scattered.”
More than I’d supposed. Yet if you counted them all over the Kingdom…?
“I mean retainers, pensioners, employees at Tachnadray.” Hamish below was hanging a wooden tray round his neck to carry those obsessively neat bricklike parcels printers make. “What is a retainer, love? Is Hamish one?”
“Somebody on a croft belonging, that sort of thing.”
“Tied to Tachnadray by loyalty and economics?”
Michelle hesitated, unhappy at the way my questions were heading. “Yes. But nobody would express it in those terms. Not nowadays.”
“Course not, love.” I gave her a sincere smile.
Still looking down, as Michelle, with ill-disguised relief, recommenced her list checking, and Hamish clumped up the stairs with the stationery, I couldn’t help thinking: thirty-two, probably not counting infants. Say, twenty houses or so. Which is quite a lot of hidey-holes.
At noon I decided to drive into Thurso with Elaine, leaving Michelle replying to the letters and sending out flyers in envelopes. She still hadn’t got a typewriter. I’d refused her baffled excuse that there simply wasn’t one. “Don’t plead unavailability,” I commanded.
“But, Ian—”
“Look, Michelle,” I’d said kindly, tucking a Scotch plaid rug round Elaine’s knees. “We’ve reached the stage where talking’s done. We need action.”
She blazed up at that. I think she really only wanted to come a ride. “Action, is it! Then what about postage stamps? By teatime we’ll have scores of letters to post and no money—”
“A post-office franking machine arrives today, love.”
The post office supplies a little printing gadget that marks your envelopes. It’s the only postage you can get on tick. You pay only when the man comes to read its meter.
“And,” I concluded, “two letters’ll arrive, neither with enough postage. You’ll have to pay a few coppers to the postie.”
Michelle listened, nodded, didn’t wave us off. First time in her life she’d ever shut up.
Swinging us out of the gate, I asked Elaine to issue an order to the vestigial remnants of the clan.
“Not you too, Ian!” she exclaimed. “I’ve noticed it creeping into your bones. You’re careful to say ‘Scottish’ instead of Scotch now, even when ‘Scotch’ is correct. Soon you’ll be fighting drunk at football matches. You’ll believe our stupid tribal myths.” She was watching Tachnadray recede in the wing mirror. I said nothing, making my unresponsiveness an invitation. She began to speak on, quiet and intense. “That lunacy killed my father. He drank himself to death. Failing to become the legend of the Scottish clan chief. You know something?” She gave me a woman’s no-smile smile. “He had a stroke the day after two immigrant Pakistanis registered a Clan MacKhan tartan.
What could that possibly have mattered?”
“Shona thinks you’re a heretic. Paradox, eh? Clan chieftainess as iconoclast.” The giant Mawdslay’s tires made a crackling sound on the track. I could do with these vintage motors, but everything seems on the outside, almost out of reach, with you perched high as a pope in a palanquin.
“Wasn’t William the Fourth the best socialist of his time?” she shot back. “Pride’s for those with money to burn. Pomp and circumstance reduced Tachnadray to penury. The carriages—we had six, matched horses—went, the grooms, liveried servants. And Father entertaining, hosting the County Show, silver everywhere, guests by special trains we couldn’t pay for. Shooting parties. Mother gave up early, passed away when I was two. I saw the whole film round, the dozen pipers on our battlements. One enormous sham. You know what? Father even had battlements built, because Tachnadray had none.”
Her bitterness was getting to me. I knew all about tribal ferocities, having seen Sidoli’s war with Bissolotti.
“Why not simply take the gelt from whoever wants to pay you? Everybody else does.
