“Have a drink first,” said Harriet.
“In a moment. I would really prefer a cup of tea. Jane seems down on caffeine, though. I thought she would have frowned on alcohol.”
“She seems to think it all right in moderation. Well, the couple drinking gin and tonics are Heather and Diarmuid Todd. He’s in real estate. She’s a self-appointed culture vulture.”
Diarmuid Todd was an attractive-looking man; that is, to anyone who liked the looks shown in tobacco advertisements. He had thick brown wavy hair and a pipe clenched between his teeth. He was smiling enigmatically and staring off into the middle distance. Despite the heat of the lounge, he was wearing a chunky Aran sweater with blue cords and boat shoes without socks.
His wife, Heather, looked older. She had blackish-brown hair and was wearing a pink jump suit with high heels. But her figure was lumpy and she looked like a parody of Jane, whom she obviously admired immensely. She had a doughy face set in lines of discontent.
“And Tweedledum and Tweedledee, that’s Ian and Sheila Carpenter.”
Ian and Sheila Carpenter were both roly-poly people with fat jolly faces and fat jolly smiles. They were flirting with each other in a kittenish, affectionate way.
“The small, bad-tempered man is Jane’s ex, John Wetherby.”
John was well-groomed, slightly plump, looking as if he had been reluctantly dragged from his office. He was wearing an immaculately tailored pin-striped suit, a shirt with a white separate collar and striped front, and an old school tie.
“He’s a barrister,” said Harriet. “So what do
Hamish hesitated. It was obvious that Jane did not want anyone to know he was a policeman. “I work for the forestry,” he said.
Heather Todd, who had come up to them, caught Hamish’s last remark. Her eyes bored insolently into his. “Good heavens,” she said, “where did Jane pick you up?”
“In Lochdubh, on the mainland,” said Hamish amiably.
Heather’s voice was Glaswegian, although it would take a practised ear to register the tact. Among the middle classes of Glasgow it had become unfashionable to try to affect an English accent, the painful result of that effort usually coming out as what was damned not so long ago as Kelvinside, the name of one of the posher areas, where glass came out as ‘gless’ and path as ‘peth’. The new generation of middle-aged, middle–class snobs affected a transatlantic drawl (“I godda go’) but occasionally throwing in a few chosen words of Scottish dialect to show they were of the people, there being nothing more snobbish than a left-wing Glaswegian who longed for the days when that city was a dump of slums and despair instead of having its present successful image. These same snobs talked about ‘the workers’ and their rights frequently, but made sure they never knew one, short of indulgently telling some barman when they were slumming to “buy that wee fellow in the cap a drink.”
“Do you realise what you and your like are doing?” demanded Heather.
“No, tell me.” Hamish looked around, wondering whether he could ask Jane to relent and fetch him a cup of tea. There did not seem to be any staff.
“Covering the Highlands with those ghastly conifers, and all so that rich yuppies in England can get a tax shelter.”
“Forestry is no longer a tax shelter,” pointed out Hamish.
“There arnae that many jobs in the Highlands, and forestry’s a blessing.”
“Well, that’s not the way I see it,” said Heather, casting her eyes about her to draw an audience from the rest. “The massacre of the flow country in Sutherland, the damage to the environment…” Her hectoring voice went on and on.
Hamish did not like the dreary new pine forests that covered the north of Scotland, but someone like Heather always made him feel like defending them.
“I’ll find you a cup of tea,” said Harriet’s voice at his ear, and she tugged at his sleeve. They slipped quietly away while Heather continued her lecture, her eyes half-closed so that she could better enjoy the sound of her own voice, which went on and on.
Harriet led kim into a sterile-looking kitchen where everything gleamed white under strips of fluorescent light.
“I bet it’s herb tea,” said Hamish, looking gloomily about.
“No, real tea. I’ve been in charge of the kitchen while Jane’s been away.” Harriet opened a cupboard and took down a canister of tea and then plugged in an electric kettle.
“Never tell me Jane does all her own cooking,” Hamish said more in hope of being contradicted than anything else.
“Not while the hotel is running.” Harriet heated the teapot and spooned in tea-leaves. “Women come in during the day to do the cleaning and make the beds. But for us, her friends, she does do the cooking.”
“Health stuff?” asked Hamish.
“Well, yes, but you only have to suffer for the next few days. I’m doing a traditional Christmas dinner, and, of course, tonight’s dinner.”
“Which is?”
“Very simple. Sirloin steak, baked potato, peas and carrots, salad. Before that, soup; and after that, butterscotch pudding.” She filled the teapot.
“And were you all friends before you met up here?”
“No,” said Harriet. “We’re all new to each other. In fact, I was very surprised to get Jane’s invitation. We’re not that close. I felt I was putting on too much weight – oh, about four years ago – and went to a health farm in Surrey. Jane was there, slim as ever, but finding out how a health farm was run. We talked a lot and then met once or twice in London for lunch. How did you meet her?”
“I’m a friend o’ a friend o’ hers,” said Hamish. “That’s all. I had nowhere to go this Christmas and she asked me along.”
The grey eyes regarding him were shrewd. “And that’s all? You’re not Jane’s latest?”
“Hardly,” said Hamish stiffly, “with her husband present.”
“Her ex-husband. But that wouldn’t stop Jane. Anyway, she’s made a go of things here. Of course, she imports a lot of staff during the tourist season, chef, masseur, waitresses, the lot. The Todds, that’s Heather and Diarmuid, were paying guests, and so they’re now here as non-paying friends. The same with the Carpenters.”
“More like acquaintances than friends.”
“Exactly. Off with you. I’ve got to prepare dinner.” Harriet took down a tray and put teapot, cup and saucer, sugar and milk on it, handed it to Hamish, and shooed him out.
Hamish returned to the lounge, carrying the tray. He was feeling much more cheerful. He liked Harriet Shaw.
But no sooner had he taken off his sports jacket and tie, for the room was hot and there did not seem to be any rigid dress code, and established himself in an armchair, than Heather Todd bore down on him and stood over him, her hands on her hips. “Are you a Highlander?” she demanded.
“Yes,” said Hamish, carefully pouring tea and determined to enjoy it.
She threw back her head and laughed. It was a copy of that laugh of Jane’s, which always sounded as though Jane herself had copied it from someone else.
“A Highlander, and yet you are prepared to contribute to the rape of your country.”
Hamish’s eyes travelled up and down her body with calculated insolence. “Right now, I’ve never felt less like raping anyone or anything in ma life.”
Heather snorted, and one sandalled foot pawed the carpet. “What of the Highland clearances?” she demanded.
“That wass the last century.”
“Burning the poor Highlanders’ houses over their heads, driving them out of their homes to make way for sheep. And now it’s trees!”
“I hivnae heard o’ one cottager being turned out to make way for a tree,” said Hamish, trying to peer round her tightly corseted figure to see if Jane or anyone else looked like coming to his rescue.
“What have you to say for yourself?” Heather was asking.
“What I haff to say,” said Hamish, his suddenly sibilant accent betraying his annoyance, “is that when the
