Prim was looking at me. Her aghastness had changed to expectation. My hands gripping the wheel as I turned towards the M8 junction, I smiled, sideways, the first and last insincere smile I’ve ever given her.
‘Ah, my dear,’ I said, ‘that is the sixty-four dollar question!’
She laughed and punched my arm. ‘Oz, that’s my first disappointment. I thought you had an answer for everything!’
In which the fourth most famous human on the planet buys us a drink
We made a deal that on the journey to Connell Ferry we would forget Dylan, torn fivers and the rest. The amazing thing was that just by being with each other we could do that. We chatted about nothings, funny experiences from our lives. We sketched in the broad facts of our previous love-lives, without either of us feeling any strange pangs.
I filled Prim in on the basics of my relationship with Jan. She tutted in disapproval when I admitted that my last live-in had left after she found out that under the influence of a few bevvies, I had admitted to Ali that my nickname for her was ‘Tomorrow’. It was a cruel thing and I’m not proud of it. I didn’t have to spell out the punchline for Prim.
A daft thought came to me as I drove along, casting off the shackles of prehistory. ‘All my past life now,’ I said grandly, ‘I’ll call BP, Before Primavera.’
She laughed spontaneously, brightly, joyously, doubling over in the driver’s seat and holding her sides. ‘You can’t do that,’ she spluttered, ‘or all of mine will have been BO!’
It wasn’t that funny, but tension made us laugh so hard, that I had to pull the car into a parking place. We sat there, our chests heaving from our mirth … heaving very provocatively in Prim’s case, I have to say. Occasionally one of us would look at the other, and we would break out again. Eventually, I reached across and held her shoulders, and as I did a feeling came over me, as yet another emotional height was scaled. ‘In that case, my love, since acronyms are out, all my life till now has been Winter. I’ve spent it waiting for my Springtime, and now she’s here.’ I was only slightly surprised when I realised that Mr Lump was back in my throat.
She looked at me and smiled. ‘You’re really laying it on the line, aren’t you,’ she whispered. ‘Just give me time. That’s all I ask.’
After a while we drove on, heading towards the West, watching as the leafy countryside gave way to moorland, and as the surrounding hills grew into mountains. Eventually a salty tang came into the air and flooded the car through Prim’s open window.
‘God, but you don’t know how good the taste of this is, my dear, daft Oz, after twelve months of Africa. The heat, the poverty, the cruelty, the blood. I never ever want to go back to that place again.’
‘What, not even to minister to the sick?’ The old Oz was disappearing. There wasn’t a trace of irony in my question.
I glanced across at her. She was sitting with her legs pulled up on the squab, grasping her neat ankles. She shook her head slowly and deliberately. ‘No way on Earth. I’ve hit the compassion wall too, just like my late pal. I left the hospice for a different world, and what I found was far, far worse. I can’t take it any more. Sister Phillips has hung up her starched bunnet for good and all.
‘Although I haven’t a clue what I’m going to do next!’
‘Don’t do anything, then. I can look after us both.’
She flashed me a glance, suddenly sharp and serious. ‘Don’t even think that, far less say it. I’ll consider living with the right man, although that’s something I’ve never done before. But I’ll always want my identity, and working is part of it. What if you and I got together, and it wore off, or something? Where would I be?’
‘Primavera,’ I said, ‘when it wears off for me it’ll be because your zimmer keeps on blocking the stair up to the loft; and even then I’ll just rig up a pulley and haul you straight up to the balcony.’
She took a hand from her ankles and rubbed it, gentle as silk over the back of my hand on the steering wheel. We drove on for a while, safe in our island away from the action, and the danger.
‘Where are we going to stay tonight?’ asked Prim.
‘That kind of depends on whether or not we find your sister, doesn’t it. Let’s play it by ear.’
Connell Ferry’s a bit of a misnomer, because there’s a bridge there, a big iron single-track thing that was built in the days when, even north of Oban, the prospect of today’s traffic volumes would have looked like visions from one of H. G. Wells’ wilder efforts. We saw it well before we reached the village, and slowed up, looking for the Falls of Lora Hotel.
It wasn’t hard to find. It’s a big building on the left, as you come into the village; once it was someone’s grand house, no doubt, but extended now, in a totally uncomplementary style. The car park looked as if it might have been a cowshed once, but now it was empty, save for a Land Rover with the Falls of Lora logo on its spare-wheel cover.
I parked the Nissan under the curving roof, and jumped out. Prim took my arm, as we crunched along the gravel towards the entrance.
The reception area was small, and empty. There was nothing fancy about it, just a dark-varnished counter in the shadow of the staircase, with a doorway leading off. Prim pushed the service bell, and after a few minutes a girl appeared, fresh-faced and not far out of her teens, wearing what looked like a waitress’s uniform.
‘Yes?’ she said, in a lovely island lilt. ‘Can I help you?’
All at once my mind swam back to a night in the cocktail bar of another hotel, in St Andrews, with my Dad and his sailor pal Archie. The girl there was as fresh-faced as this one, with an accent as soft as mist, and as wild as heather. Archie said to her, ‘Where are you from, then?’
‘Tiree,’ the lass replied.
‘Ah,’ said the old salt. ‘They’ll have had to lasso you to get you over here, then!’
Back in the present, Prim said, ‘I hope so. I’m looking for my sister. She’s with the film party, and I understand they’re booked in here. Have they arrived yet?’
‘Not yet,’ said the girl. ‘We’re expecting them any time now, though. Why don’t you wait in the bar. It’s just through there.’ She pointed along a narrow hallway to her left.
‘Okay.’ Prim took my hand and started off along the corridor, but I held her back, gently. ‘Suppose we wanted to stay tonight,’ I asked, ‘have you any room left?’
The girl shook her head. ‘Sorry. The film party have booked the whole place.
‘But there are plenty of hotels down in Oban,’ she added, doing her best to please. ‘You’ll get booked in there all right.’
We made our way through to the bar. It was a big room, square but for an alley off one comer, where a dartboard hung on the wall. A big open fireplace was set in its centre, topped by a copper flue which disappeared up into the roof. Prim took a seat in the corner, near the window. ‘What would you like to drink, love?’ I asked her.
‘Just a lime and soda. If they have any sandwiches, I wouldn’t mind one. It seems forever since lunch.’
I pressed the service bell; after only a second or two, a door opened behind the bar, and the young receptionist appeared. ‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘they work you hard.’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Och, I like it. You get to meet all sorts of interesting people.’
‘Aye, I can imagine,’ I said. ‘A right wee metropolis Connell Ferry must be.’