“When?” he asked.
Heather leaned forward. “Just over three weeks from now,”
she whispered. “Three weeks on Friday.”
Again, a silence descended. The Jacobites looked at one another, to all intents and purposes, thought Big Lou, like children who had just heard of an impending treat. They were to receive a visitor from Belgium; obviously somebody of importance in their movement, a historian perhaps or . . . No, that was highly unlikely; in fact it was absurd.
“Who exactly . . . ?” Big Lou began to ask.
Michael interrupted her, raising a finger in the air in warning. “One minute,” he said. “Before further details are revealed, I must ask you, Lou, to give your word that this conversation will be kept confidential. It’s absolutely impera-tive that . . .”
200
You won’t speak about this, will you?”
Big Lou shrugged. “I don’t like secrets very much,” she said.
“But then I don’t talk about things it’s no business of mine to talk about.”
“That’s fine, then,” said Robbie, turning to Michael. “Lou’s fine on that.”
Michael looked doubtful for a moment, but Robbie held his gaze and eventually he nodded. “All right, this is it. We’re receiving a visit from a member of the Stuart family. He’s coming to Scotland. A direct descendant of Charles Edward Stuart, or Bonnie Prince Charlie as you may know him, Lou.”
Jimmy, who had been hanging on Michael’s every word, now turned and looked at Big Lou. She noticed, as he did so, a trace of milk from his cappuccino making a thin line around his weak, immature mouth. “See,” he said. “Just like Charlie himself. A Young Pretender.”
Big Lou stared at him. “Really?” she said. “Coming to Scotland to claim his kingdom?”
“Well, not exactly,” said Michael, glancing discouragingly at Jimmy. “What Jimmy means is that there are parallels. As you know, Charles Edward Stuart came to incite an uprising against the usurpers. Conditions are different today. This is more of a consciousness-raising exercise. This member of the Stuart family is not exactly acting on behalf of His Majesty King Francis, whom we recognise as the rightful king, even if he’s never made that claim himself and doesn’t use that title.
His Majesty keeps himself out of all of this. He’s very digni-fied. This young man’s a descendant of Charles through a subsidiary line. He’s coming for a few weeks to assist us in our endeavours.”
“So this is not the Forty-Five all over again?” asked Big Lou.
Michael laughed, waving a hand in the air. “Hardly! No, this is more of a courtesy call by a member of the family to those in this country who have kept alive the claims of the Stuarts.
That’s all.”
“Yes,” said Jimmy, slightly aggressively. “That’s all. We’re not bampots, you know.”
Big Lou looked at him. “Have you finished with that coffee cup?” she asked.
Robbie stayed with Big Lou for half an hour or so after the rest of the Jacobites had left. She had hoped that he would stay for longer, that he would keep her company while she continued with her cleaning, but he had seemed nervous, as if he was uneasy about something, and had kept looking at his watch.
“You’re awful fiddly,” she said at one point. “Looking at your watch like that. Is there something . . . ?”
Robbie cut her short. “Nothing,” he said. “It’s nothing.”
Big Lou shook her head. “Well, it’s nothing that’s worrying you then,” she said. “And what is this nothing?”
“I said . . .”
Big Lou sighed. “Robbie. I’m no wet aboot the ears. It’s those folks, isn’t it? Your friends.”
Robbie was defensive. “What about them? Have you got a problem with them, Lou?”
Big Lou hesitated. The truthful answer was that she did have a problem with them – with all of them, but most of all with Heather McDowall and Michael’s acolyte, Jimmy. But Lou was tactful, and melancholy experience had taught her that men sometimes did not respond well to direct criticism, particularly the sort of men with whom she found herself ending up.
“Don’t get me wrong, Robbie,” she began. “I’m not the sort of person who likes to find fault. I’m sure that there are lots of things about your friends that are very good, very positive.” She tried to think of these qualities, but they seemed to elude her for the moment.
202
“But?” asked Robbie. “There’s a but, isn’t there?”
“Well,” said Big Lou, “there is a small but. Just a small one.
This Jacobite business. This character who’s coming over. Isn’t that a bit . . . ?”
“A bit what?”
She took a breath. What she wanted to say was that it was bizarre – ridiculous, even, that people should want to open such obviously finished business. But then she realised that there were many people who were interested in precisely that – old business. People lived in the past, fought old quarrels, clung to the horrors of decades . . . centuries ago. But the futility of this had always struck Big Lou forcibly. There were plenty of old quarrels that she could keep alive if she wished, nursing her wrath to keep it warm – like Tam O’Shanter’s wife – but she found she had no desire to do this, nor the energy.
