‘We’ll never find any grouse in this, Charles,’ Peter broke the long silence. ‘And even if we do, they’ll be lost in the mist before we can even get a shot.’
Charles did not reply because there was nothing to add to his companion’s logical observation. This was the outcome of a whim which had started in the claustrophobic atmosphere of a stockbroker’s London office one afternoon last spring. Nostalgic memories of youthful grouse shooting on a rolling sun-drenched moorland, where you sweltered in shirt sleeves and the scent of the heather was sickly sweet in your nostrils, of coveys of whirring grouse, salvos of gunfire, beaters and pickers up, panting dogs lapping thirstily in a rushing burn. One phone call to Stewart, the land agent in Invernesshire, and it could all become reality again, a return to those halcyon days for Peter and himself.
Just one phone call could bring it all back. It had, and was in the process of destroying it all in a matter of hours. Mankwill wasn’t a ‘proper’ grouse moor, Stewart had pointed that fact out with true Scottish bluntness and honesty at the outset. Just an expanse of moorland inhabited by a flock of scraggy sheep for which the tenant, Macgregor, paid a pittance of a rent. The agent added, with a touch of dour humour, that, ‘If it wasnae for the mountains in the way, ye’d be able to see Loch Ness from the Moss!’ The sporting rights had never been leased because they, ‘were na worth guid money,’ but the factor was open to any offers, ‘and if ye bag a brace, then ye’ve got the best o’ the bargain!’ Two hundred pounds for a three-year lease on two thousand hectares, the offer was accepted within three days, starting from August 12th. And perhaps Macgregor, the crofter, would act as beater and guide for a tenner and the occasional nip from there hip flasks.
And here we bloody well are, Charles thought, two hundred quid for a walk in the mist, every possibility of falling down the mountainside or blundering into a bog, and if we’re lucky enough to escape either of those then we’ll be back in London by tomorrow night, totally disillusioned. But at least they would have Macgregor to safeguard their welfare, he surely would not spurn the opportunity.
‘No-oo,’ the ageing shepherd gave the impression of trying to withdraw his sparse and bent frame in the saturated smock that dripped rainwater into the tops of his patched wellingtons. He leaned up against the doorway of the tumbledown farmhouse at the apex of the valley, stared down at the ground. ‘No-oo, sir, not for a tenner, not for a hundred pounds, would I go up to the Moss wi’ye, neither in mist nor sunshine, summer nor winter. Even the sheep have more sense than that.’
‘Why?’ Peter asked, and there was a hint of relief in his voice. An excuse, a god-sent escape route from this miserable place; a let off. After all, it had been Charles’s idea from the start, he had only gone along with his old school friend in order not to offend him. Peter had not really wanted to go grouse shooting. Back in the city it had seemed a pleasant enough diversion from the stress of an artificial existence; up here, at the mercy of the elements, it wasn’t so appealing. All the same he was curious to discover why the flockmaster was refusing to go up to the Moss. And, of course, the raw dampness was responsible for that tiny shiver that began at the base of his spine and goose pimpled its way right up to his scalp.
‘Ye’ve na’ heard aboot Ferguson, what happened to him up on the Moss?’ Toothless mouth agape with incredulity, those grey eyes now elevated and staring, seeming to shy away from the mist that was creeping down the mountainsides and encircling the tiny farm. ‘Ye din’na know about Ferguson?’
‘We’ve never even heard of this Ferguson,’ Charles spoke with a note of irritation. In fact, we don’t give a damn about him, all we’re interested in is getting some sort of value for two hundred quid which we’ve chucked down the drain. All the same, he was unable to suppress a shiver. It was the weather, of course. ‘It was during the Great War, I was a wee boy then ma father lived here. Ma mother died at childbirth,’ Macgregor had stepped back a pace, clutched the rickety door as if he had a mind to drag it shut and have done with the foreigners from the city. ‘Just as ma dear wife did, her baby with her. There was a shortage of meat and the Laird turned a blind eye to anybody who helped himself to a deer or grouse, so long as it was’na too many. Ferguson, he lived over at Cornharrow, just a we holding. One day, a day just like today with the mist covering the mountains he turned up here with his gun. They was pretty near to starvation over at Cornharrow and the deer were all up on the Moss.
‘He wanted ma father to go with him to find a beast, so the two of them set off. By late afternoon, there was no sign of them, so I went up the slope as far as the start of the Moss to look for them. I heard a shot. Just one. And then i heard ‘em
