Isabel remembered something else. “And here’s another thing she said. We had a meeting at the Royal Society of Edinburgh. It was an open seminar on political philosophy, and this woman and the two male colleagues who had come with her came to it. They spoke in Russian, and there was a translator.”
She paused as she remembered the translator, a sallow-faced man who had been a chain-smoker and who had slipped out of the room every fifteen minutes to have a cigarette. “Members of the public were invited, but hardly anybody came. There was one man who did, however, a rather thin, very elegant-looking man who must have been in his late seventies, I think. At the end, after our guests had finished, he asked a question. He spoke in Russian, and I saw them turn and stare at him in what seemed to be astonishment. And when I looked to her, this woman philosopher, I saw there were tears in her eyes. I asked her what he had said, and she just shook her head and replied,
‘It’s not what he said. That’s nothing. It’s just that I haven’t heard my language being spoken so beautifully, ever. Ever.’ It tranT H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
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spired that he was speaking pre-revolutionary Russian, that he was the son of an exile who had been brought up speaking old Russian in France. Our visitors were used to the brutality of Soviet Russian, which was full of crudity and ugliness and jar-gon, and that is what made her cry. To hear real Russian spoken again.”
TO M H A D F O U N D Tarwhinn House through a friend from Austin who had leased it a few years previously. The house had been in the same family for almost three hundred years, or so the owners claimed. It had been built in the seventeenth century by a man of some account in that part of Scotland, and it had remained with his successors until an unwise choice in the 1745 uprising—support for Bonnie Prince Charlie—had resulted in the then head of the family being outlawed, pursued to the very jetty from which he set ignominious sail for France, and his property taken away from him. That was the point at which the new owners acquired it by bribery, insinuating themselves into the position of the disgraced owner and eventually assuming his arms and his name. “An early example of identity theft,” remarked Isabel, when she heard the story.
The current generation felt no need to gloss over the facts of the shameful acquisition and wholeheartedly adopted the romantic associations of the property. But they had other fish to fry, and the house and estate had been neglected. Eventually repairs could be put off no longer—the roof, in particular, was suffering from something which roofers call
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h pervaded the house gradually began to be replaced by warmth and light. But this was all an expensive process, and the long summer lets to visitors became all the more important. Somebody like Tom, who was prepared to take the house for two or three months, was ideal.
“There it is,” said Isabel. “Can you see it? Over there.”
Jamie looked in the direction in which Isabel had pointed.
Just above a stand of trees, the roof could be made out, and a few of the windows on the top storey. But then the trees blocked the view, and all he saw were Scots pines and a hillside rising sharp behind.
“One of those tall, thin houses?” he asked.
“I’ve seen it only once,” said Isabel. “And I don’t remember it very well. They had a Scotland’s Gardens open day a few years back and I saw it then. But I didn’t go into the house.”
They turned off the public road at a lane end marked with a modest sign, a piece of painted board that announced tar-whinn house. They were now on the drive up to the house, a dirt track with only a little bit of gravel here and there. There were potholes, filled with water from the last rain, and Isabel slowed down to negotiate her way past them.
They rounded a large cluster of rhododendrons and the house revealed itself. It was four storeys high and had the small windows which marked the fortified houses which people needed to build in those days. It looked rectangular—like a cardboard box standing on its end—but there was a simplicity about it which made it beautiful. The walls were pebble-dash harling and painted with a soft terracotta-coloured wash with just a touch of pink in it. This imparted to the house a soft quality, a sort of luminescence, which the gentle sun of late afternoon now caught, made glow.
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“I love this place,” said Jamie impulsively. “I just love it.”
There were two cars parked on the edge of the large gravelled circle at the front of the house; one was Joe and Mimi’s hire car, a small red vehicle which somebody had dented at the back, and the other was the large car which Isabel remembered seeing in Edinburgh when she had first spotted Tom and Angie.
She nosed her green Swedish car into position behind Joe and Mimi’s car and stopped the engine.
Jamie, still in the car, looked round. “Yes,” he said. “This is it.”
“What?” asked Isabel. “What’s it?”
“It’s the place I wanted to be this weekend,” said Jamie. “It’s exactly what I wanted.”
Isabel was not sure what to say. “Good,” she said at last.
“You see,” Jamie continued, struggling to release his seat belt, “I’ve never been invited to a house party. Not once. I almost went a few years ago when some friends rented a cottage up near Aviemore for a weekend, but they miscalculated the numbers and two of us had to drop out. There were strict limits on the number of people who were allowed to stay, and so I didn’t go. That was my house party.”
Isabel laughed at this. She thought for a moment: This is where it shows, those years between us. He’s
Could she dare to think that?
They got out of the car. Jamie took both cases out of the back of the car—he had only a small weekend bag—
