“No, I think that’s cheating,” said the child severely. “If you don’t do it yourself, you’ll never learn.”
Alice blushed miserably. “I’ll show you,” said a pleasant voice on her other side. Alice found Jeremy Blythe surveying her sympathetically. He took the string from her and began to demonstrate.
After the class had been struggling for several minutes, Heather said, “Have your leaders knotted by the time we set out tomorrow. Now if you will all go to your rooms and change, we’ll meet back here in half an hour. John will take you up to the Marag and show you how to cast.”
“Well, see you in half an hour,” said Jeremy cheerfully. “Your name’s Alice, isn’t it?”
Alice nodded shyly. “And mine’s Daphne,” said a mocking voice at Jeremy’s elbow, “or had you forgotten?”
“How could I?” said Jeremy. “We travelled up together on the same awful train.”
They walked off arm in arm, and Alice felt even more miserable. For a moment she had hoped she would have a friend in Jererny. But that fearfully sophisticated Daphne had quite obviously staked a claim on his attentions.
Lady Jane surveyed Alice’s powder-blue Orion trouser suit with pale, disapproving eyes. “I hope you’ve brought something suitable to wear,” she said nastily. “You’ll frighten the fish in that outfit.”
Alice walked hurriedly away, not able to think of a suitable retort. Of course, she had thought of plenty by the time she reached the privacy of her bedroom, but then, that was always the way.
She looked at her reflection in the long glass in her hotel bedroom. The trouser suit had looked so bright and smart in London. Now it looked tawdry and cheap.
The stupid things one did for love, thought Alice miserably as she pulled out an old pair of corduroy trousers, an army sweater and Wellington boots and prepared to change her clothes.
For Alice was secretary to Mr Thomas Patterson-James. Mr Patterson-James was chief accountant of Baxter and Berry, exporters and importers. He was forty-four, dark, and handsome – and married. And Alice loved him passionately.
He would tease her and ruffle her hair and call her ‘a little suburban miss’, and Alice would smile adoringly back and wish she could become smart and fashionable.
Mr Patterson-James often let fall hints that his marriage was not a happy one. He had sighed over taking his annual vacation in Scotland but explained it was the done thing.
Everyone who was anyone, Alice gathered, went to Scotland in August to kill things. If you weren’t slaughtering grouse, you were gaffing salmon.
So Alice had read an article about the fishing school in The Field and had promptly decided to go. She imagined the startled admiration on her boss’s face when she casually described landing a twenty-pounder after a brutal fight.
Alice was nineteen years of age. She had fluffy fine brown hair and wide-spaced brown eyes. Her slim, almost boyish figure was her private despair.
She had once seen Mr Patterson-James arm in arm with a busty blonde and wondered if the blonde were Mrs Patterson-James.
It was not like being in the British Isles at all, thought Alice, looking out at the sun sparkling on the loch. The village was so tiny and the tracts of heather-covered moorland and weird twisted mountains so savage and primitive and vast.
Perhaps she would give it one more day and then go home. Would she get a refund? Alice’s timid soul quailed at the idea of asking for money back. Surely only very common people did that.
Mr Patterson-James was always describing people as common.
Suddenly she heard raised voices from the terrace below. Then loud and clear she heard Mr Marvin Roth say savagely, “If she doesn’t shut that goddamn mouth of hers, I’ll shut it for her.”
There was the sound of a door slamming and then silence.
Alice sat down on the bed, one leg in her trousers and one out. Her ideas of American men had been pretty much based on the works of P.G. Wodehouse. Men who looked like Marvin were supposed to be sweet and deferential to their wives, although they might belong to the class of Sing-Sing ‘45. Was everyone on this holiday going to be nasty? And whose mouth was going to be shut? Lady Jane’s?
Jeremy Blythe seemed sweet. But the Daphnes of this world were always waiting around the corner to take away the nice men. Did Mrs Patterson-James look like Daphne?
Alice gloomily surveyed her appearance in the glass when she had finished dressing. The corduroys fitted her slim hips snugly, and the bulky army sweater hid the deficiency of her bosom. Her Wellington boots were…well, just Wellington boots.
Carefully setting a brand-new fishing hat of brown wool on top of her fluffy brown hair, Alice stuck her tongue out at her reflection and went out of her room and down the stairs, muttering, “I won’t stay if I can’t stand it.”
To her surprise, everyone was dressed much the same as she was, with the exception of Lady Jane, who had simply changed her brogues for Wellingtons and was still wearing the breeches and blouse she had worn at the morning lecture.
“We’ll all walk up to the Marag,” said John Cartwright. “Heather will go ahead in the estate car with the rods and packed lunches.”
Loch Marag, or the Marag as it was called by the locals, was John’s favorite training ground. It was a circular loch surrounded by pretty sylvan woodland. At one end it flowed out and down to the sea loch of Lochdubh in a series of waterfalls. It was amply stocked with trout and a fair number of salmon.
The major took himself cheerfully off to fish in the pool above the waterfall while the rest of the class gathered with their newly acquired rods at the shallow side of the loch to await instruction. Instead of a hook, a small piece of cotton wool was placed on the end of each leader.
It was then that the class discovered that Lady Jane was not only rude and aggressive, she was also incredibly clumsy.
Although the loch was only a short walk from the hotel, she had insisted on bringing her car and parking it at the edge of the loch. She backed it off the road on to the grass and right over the pile of packed lunches.
She refused to listen to John’s careful instructions and whipped her line savagely back and forth, finally winding it around Marvin Roth’s neck and nearly strangling him. She then strode into the water, failing to see small Charlie Baxter and sending him flying face down in the mud.
Charlie burst into tears and kicked Lady Jane in the shins before Heather could scoop him up and drag him off.
“I’ll kill her,” muttered John. “She’s ruining the holiday for everyone.”
“Now, now,” said Heather. “I’ll deal with her while you look after the others.”
Alice listened carefully as John Cartwright’s now slightly shaking voice repeated the instructions.
“With the line in front of you, take a foot or so of the line from the reel with your left hand. Raise the rod, holding the wrist at a slight down slant. Bring the line off the water with a smooth motion but with enough power to send it behind you, stopping the rod at the twelve o’clock position. Your left hand holding the line pulls downwards. When the line has straightened out behind you, bring the rod forward smartly. As the line comes forward, follow through to the ten o’clock position, letting the line fall gently to the water. Oh, very good, Alice.”
Alice flushed with pleasure. Heather had said something to Lady Jane, and Lady Jane had stalked off. Without her overbearing presence, the day seemed to take on light and colour. Heather shouted she was returning to the hotel to bring back more packed lunches.
A buzzard sailed above in the light blue sky. Enormous clumps of purple heather studied their reflections in the mirror surface of the loch. The peaty water danced as Alice waded dreamily in the red and gold shallows, which sparkled and glittered like marcasite. She cast, and cast, and cast again until her arms ached. Heather came back with new lunches, and they all gathered around the estate car, with the exception of Lady Jane and the major.