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Gallus rolled on his back and waved his stubby paws in the air. It was his highest form of compliment.
Barra hadn’t intended to stop at the Pascoes’ house, but Jennifer was working in the flower-beds and her husband was sitting in a chair by the doorway, enjoying the day. It would have been rude to pass without a greeting.
‘Yir flowers are bonny,’ Barra remarked, cycling up to the fence and resting against it. ‘Hi, Mr Pascoe,’ he called.
‘Aren’t they?’ Jennifer Pascoe replied, while her husband nodded a smile in Barra’s direction. ‘Would you like some lemonade?’ she asked, straightening from her labours.
‘No, thanks. I’d better get home.’ Barra grimaced at having to refuse. He loved getting into the Pascoes’ house. Everything was so modern and new-looking. He especially admired their green Mini, and had greatly enjoyed getting the occasional lift to Craigourie and back in it.
Of course, Mr Pascoe had been well enough to drive then.
‘He’s looking fine,’ Barra said, quietly enough, he thought.
‘And I’m feeling fine,’ Jim Pascoe called out, making his wife smile. ‘Sorry, Mr Pascoe.’
‘You’re an awful boy for “sorry”,’ Jim said. ‘What’ve you got to be sorry about?’
‘Nothing really, I suppose. It’s a habit.’
‘Aye, well, it’s a bad habit, young feller-me-lad.’ Jim leaned forward in an effort to look fierce, but the movement pained him and he groaned.
Jennifer was up like a shot and by his side. He held up a hand to let her know it had passed, and she took a deep breath and stroked his head.
‘He’s like an Easter chick,’ Jennifer said, looking at Barra. ‘Don’t you think so, Barra?’
‘Aye.’ Barra grinned. ‘It’s good his hair’s coming back though, isn’t it?’
‘Fluff.’ Jim smiled. ‘I wouldn’t call it hair exactly.’
‘It’s what he wants for his birthday, Barra,’ Jennifer said. ‘A good crop of hair.’
‘When is it, your birthday?’ Barra asked.
‘Easter Sunday this year. Eighteenth of April.’
‘And how old will you be?’
‘Were you always this nosy?’ Jim asked, as though he didn’t know.
‘Aye. Always.’
‘That’s good then. I’ll be twenty-five, in answer to your question. What next?’
‘What next?’
‘What next do you want to know?’
Barra grinned. ‘That’ll do,’ he said, pushing off from the fence. ‘See you.’
He hadn’t gone far when he shouted back at them, ‘You’ll have some hair for Easter. What ’yis bet?’
Jim looked up at his wife, grudging the sadness he knew he would find in her eyes. ‘I may have to refuse that wager.’
‘No,’ she answered, taking his hand. ‘I won’t let you.’
The road was clear all the way to the Whig. Barra was singing at the top of his voice – ‘Always something there to remind me. Da-dah-da-dah-da’ - when Olive Tolmie stuck her head out of the shop door to see who was making all the racket.
Had Drumdarg ever needed a town crier, Olive would surely have been first choice. There was little that passed in the village, or indeed in Craigourie itself that Olive wasn’t aware of. Indeed, it was regularly said of her that what she didn’t already know, she would soon find out.
‘Och, it’s you,’ she muttered.
Barra placed his bike against the wall and followed her inside, hypnotised by the slap-slap of her sandals. Olive’s feet overlapped the sandals in every direction.
‘It’s a grand day,’ he remarked, lifting his eyes.
Olive didn’t agree. ‘I’m fair trachled wi’ the heat,’ she grumbled. ‘My feet’s like potted heid already. God knows what they’ll be like by July.’
Barra hadn’t eaten potted heid. He reminded himself never to try it.
‘Are yis quiet the day?’
‘Off an’ on. Off an’ on,’ Olive replied, busying herself with polishing the counter. ‘I’m in the wrong job, of course. Worst thing I could be doing, standing all day, with this feet. I’ll be glad when Isla gets here.’
‘Isla’s coming back?’ This was the best news Barra had heard all day.
‘Aye. Maisie got a letter from her sister. Seems the wee trollop got caught wi’ a boy again. Still, she’s a good help round here.’
‘Caught wi’ a boy?’
‘That’s all I’m saying,’ Olive stated, pausing in her endeavours to give Barra a knowing stare.
Barra was unsure what the stare was meant to convey. Certainly, there had been no mention of boys when Isla had arrived in Drumdarg last summer. She had told Barra that she simply wanted to stay with her Aunt Maisie for a while as she hadn’t been getting along with her stepfather. Not that Isla had told Barra very much of anything. She was, after all, two and a half years older than he, and could therefore be considered a young woman.
‘Less of the “young”!’ Isla had reprimanded him when he’d sought to please her by mentioning the fact.
From that point on she had been scathingly dismissive of his presence, but it was to be expected from a woman of her years, and it didn’t alter the fact that she was really, really beautiful.
Plus, she had an enormous chest. Barra couldn’t wait to see what she looked like now.
‘When’s she coming?’
‘Well, Maisie says she left school at Christmas, and she doesn’t seem able to hold down a job, so I think her mother’ll have her on the bus as soon as Maisie gives her the OK.’
‘She left school? And she wants to come here?’
‘It’s no’ a matter of “wants”,’ Olive replied with another knowing stare. She was becoming more mysterious by the minute.
‘Where is Maisie?’ Barra asked, in the hope of getting some reliable information as to the date of Isla’s arrival.
‘Ben the back,’ Olive replied, casting a sturdy thumb over her shoulder.
Barra ran outside and grabbed his bike, racing around the building. He pushed on the side entrance door to the café, but it was locked. He carried on around the back and entered through the kitchen door but, seeing no sign of Maisie, he rushed on into the café. Then he stopped dead in his tracks.
‘Wow!’ was all he could manage.
Maisie Henderson’s bulk was contained in a flowing purple kaftan, patterned haphazardly with large yellow sunflowers. Her grey hair reached almost to her waist, and today was festooned with purple streamers woven along its length. Barra knew that, even though his mam and Maisie were the best of friends, Maisie was much, much older than Rose. Still, Maisie’s laughing eyes and generous mouth gave her a youthful appearance which belied the grey hair.
It wasn’t only her mouth that was generous, though. Maisie Henderson was the largest woman Barra had ever seen. At the moment she was tearing into a steaming bowl of soup and, by the looks of it, had demolished the best part of a sliced loaf and a half-pound of butter besides.
‘Sit down, Barra,’ Maisie instructed, pointing to the scarred wooden chair across from her. The café had seen better days, but then so had Maisie.
Barra kneeled on the chair. ‘I like yir dress,’ he said.
‘This old thing?’ Maisie laughed. She lifted an arm, and fanned out the huge batwing sleeve. ‘It’s my Lautrec look.’
Barra looked at the two posters on the far wall. Neither La Modiste nor the Lady At Her Toilet (which always slightly embarrassed him – even though the lady wasn’t actually at her toilet) looked anything like Maisie Henderson.
‘How d’you mean?’ he asked.
‘Toulouse, my cultural friend. Too loose.’ She sighed. ‘Except nothing’s too loose on Maisie.’ She buttered another slice of bread. ‘I’m eating for two,’ she said, and they both roared at the old joke. The ‘two’ Maisie referred to were herself and Doug. Doug wasn’t much of an eater. He liked the drink, though.
Barra thought it must be a great thing to enjoy your work as much as those two – Doug at the bar, with all that drink around him, and Maisie in the café with … He’d nearly forgotten why he was there.
‘Isla’s coming back?’ he asked.
‘Aye. My sister Fiona wants her down here. Out of harm’s way, so to speak.’
‘What harm’s she doing?’ Barra asked.
‘The same harm any buxom dame at that age should be doing,’ Maisie answered, making Barra blush.
She noted the flush spread across his features and laughed again. ‘You’ll no’ be letting her lead you astray now, will you?’
‘Course not,’ Barra replied, more sharply than he had intended.
Maisie leaned back. ‘Begging your pardon!’
‘Sorry, Maisie.’
‘Och, Barra, I’m teasing you.’ Maisie gnawed on her bread. ‘Isla’ll be here on the Sunday afternoon bus. You come in and have a blether. She’ll be glad to see you.’
‘I doubt it,’ Barra answered, sounding unusually forlorn. ‘She didn’t take to me.’
Maisie leaned into him. ‘Who couldn’t take to you, Barra, y’bonny boy that you are?’
Barra cheered up. ‘I’m off, then,’ he said. ‘Tell Doug I said hello.’
Maisie shrugged, and pointed above them. ‘Always supposing he sleeps it off before you’re back.’
‘He will,’ Barra assured her. ‘He’ll be opening up soon.’
‘Another grand evening in front of us, then,’ Maisie said, returning to her soup. ‘I hope Isla will appreciate it, the sophistication of it all …’
Maisie was eight years older than her sister Fiona, and it had been shortly after Fiona’s birth in 1923 that their father succumbed to the ’flu epidemic which had ravaged the British Isles. Their mother, a large, capable woman, had worked hard to keep the small grocery shop in Craigourie, and had quietly invested the profits over the years.
On the morning of Maisie’s twenty-fifth birthday she rose to bring her mother breakfast in bed, just as she’d done every Sunday for as long as she could remember – and would never do again. Her mother lay cold as stone, having died in her sleep from a massive heart attack.
Maisie had taken charge, arranging the funeral, organising the shop, and interrupting each new heart-rending chore to stop and comfort Fiona. After her mother had been laid to rest, and Fiona had gone to bed, Maisie lay in her darkened room and waited for her heart to stop breaking.
She had never even guessed at the extent of the inheritance she and her sister had been left. That night she would gladly have thrown every last pound of it into the flickering coals if, for one day longer, she could have held her mother close.
The morning after the funeral Maisie rose, washed and dressed, and opened the shop door on the second of nine o’clock. Over the next nine years she soldiered on single-handed, while Fiona took her less-than-impressive typing skills and set off across the Great Glen, moving from hotel to hotel in search of a happiness which seemed constantly to elude her.
In the summer of 1949, as the country recovered from the ravages of war, Fiona arrived back in Craigourie with her new husband – and a swollen belly. Duncan Gillespie had married Fiona in the mistaken belief that she had a substantial amount of her inheritance still waiting to be spent.
They had bought a small home in Fort William, under the glowering shadow of Ben Nevis, and Duncan looked cheerfully forward to giving up his back-breaking work in the hospital laundry for an altogether more carefree existence.
By the time his daughter Isla was a year old, Duncan had come to realise that he was having to work ever longer hours to provide for his wife and family. He strung his guitar across his back and walked out, whistling his way southwards.
Five years later, Maisie sold her parents’ shop and bought the Whig, continuing to support her sister while Fiona, who had taken a part-time job in one of the hotels which stretched along the Fort William seafront, adamantly insisted that the monthly cheques she received from Maisie were temporary loans – just until she got on her feet again. When it became apparent that Fiona was unlikely ever to get on her feet, Maisie had purchased the house outright, providing a permanent home for her sister and her young niece. Fiona uttered not one syllable in protest.
Then, three years ago, she had once more returned, this time bringing with her Jack Strachan. Jack was the night porter at the hotel where Fiona worked – and her husband of two weeks.
Maisie detested him on sight and her heart went out to Isla, who had had to put up with her mother’s endless stream of boyfriends over the years. She could tell from the hunched shoulders and sullen expression of her niece that Isla, too, felt less than happy at Fiona’s choice.
Indeed, Maisie had no doubt that Isla’s imminent return had more to do with Jack Strachan than even Fiona realised.
The rutted tarmac at the back of the Whig allowed parking space for five cars before ending at the woods which led further into the hills, and then down to Barra’s home half a mile further on. He meandered along the trail, stopping here and there to explore this, examine that.
In a ditch long since carved by the rush of a stream escaping its lofty source, he spied the featherless frame of a dead nestling. He couldn’t tell what it might have been, but the sadness of its short life washed over him as cold as the water which carried its body out to the distant loch.
A picture came to his mind – almost a year ago, the May holiday weekend, a day just like today, with the sun shining and the canopy of blue sky above. Jim Pascoe had called for him early that morning and they’d gone fishing together down by the banks of the river which flowed past the big house. Jim had landed a fat wee trout almost at once, and Barra had watched as Jim removed the hook from its mouth.
‘Looks like we’ve made a good start on the supper.’ Jim laughed. Then he noticed Barra’s expression. ‘What is it, son? We’ve done this many a time before …’
‘Aye. It’s just … It’s just, well, d’you think he feels it?’
Jim had shaken his head. ‘They’re cold-blooded, Barra. You know that.’
‘Aye …’ Barra shrugged, ‘but it’s no’ as if we’re needing it for our supper.’
Jim held the trout for a moment, and then released it, skittering, back into the water. ‘Well, that’s put the tin lid on our fishing trip.’ He sighed.
‘Och, Mr Pascoe, I didn’t mean … I didn’t mean to spoil the day.’
Jim clambered up off the shingle and lay on the grassy bank. Crossing his long legs in front of him, he clasped his hands behind his head.
‘You’d have to be the devil himself to spoil a day like this, Barra.’ Then he had laughed. ‘And there’s not a single good reason why that wee trout can’t enjoy it just as much as us.’ Jim had sighed deeply. ‘Aye,’ he murmured, ‘it’s a bonny day like this that makes you feel you could live for ever.’
