Blushing and stumbling, Alice edged miserably towards him. The hook was embedded in the back of his jacket. She twisted and pulled and finally it came free with a ripping sound.
Jeremy twisted an anguished face over his shoulder. “Now look what you’ve done. Look, just keep well clear of me.” He waded off into the driving rain.
Tears of humiliation mixed with the rainwater on Alice’s face. She felt hurt and lost and alone. Her face ached with trying to maintain a posh accent. Jeremy would never have behaved like that wititi someone of his own class.
She decided to turn about, give up, and go back and shelter in the car until this horrible day’s fishing was all over.
Alice stumbled towards the shore. Suddenly the water turned gold. Sparkling gold with red light dancing in the peaty ripples. She turned and looked towards the west. Blue sky was spreading rapidly over the heavens. Mountains stood up, sharp and prehistoric with their twisted, deformed shapes. Heather blazed in great, glorious clumps, and the sun beat down on Alice’s sopping hat.
“Alice! Alice!” Jeremy was churning towards her through the water, holding up a fairly small trout.
“Marvellous girl.” He beamed. “Knew you would bring me luck.” He threw his arms around her, slapping her on the back of the head with his dead trout as he did so.
Transported from hell to heaven, Alice smiled back. “Come along,” said Jeremy. “I’ve got a flask of brandy in the car. Let’s take a break and celebrate.”
While Jeremy got his flask, Alice took off her hat and her wet coat and put them both on the bushes to dry. Jeremy sat down on a rock beside her and handed her the flask and she choked over an enormous gulp of brandy.
The liqueur shot down to her stomach and up to her brain. She felt dizzy with happiness. They had had their first quarrel, she thought dreamily. How they would laugh about it after they were married!
Elated with brandy and sunshine, they cheerfully agreed to return to the loch and try their luck again. And Alice did try. Very hard. If only she could catch a fish all by herself then she could be easy in her conscience.
But at four in the afternoon, Heather appeared to call them to the cars. They were to return to the hotel for another fishing lecture.
Even Alice felt stdkily that it was all too much like being back at school. Why waste a perfectly good afternoon sitting indoors in a stuffy hotel lounge?
But none of them had quite realized how tired they were until John Cartwright began his lecture on fly tying. Despite the heat from the sun pouring in the long windows, a log fire was burning, its flames bleached pale by the sunlight. A bluebottle buzzed against the windows.
While Heather’s rumble fingers demonstrated the art of fly tying, John discoursed on the merits of wet and dry flies. Names like Tup’s Indispensable, Little Claret, Wickman’s Fancy, Black Pennell and Cardinal floated like dust motes on the hot, somnolent air. “Sound like racehorses,” said Jeremy sleepily.
Alice felt her eyes beginning to close. The major was asleep, twitching in his armchair like an old dog; the Roths were leaning together, joined by fatigue into a fireside picture of a happily married couple. Lady Jane had her eyes half closed, like a basking lizard, and Daphne Gore was painting her nails vermillion.
Suddenly Alice jerked her eyes open. There was a feeling of fear in the room, fear mixed with malice.
While John droned on, Heather had stopped her demonstration to flip through the post. She was sitting very still, holding an airmail letter in her plump hands. She raised her eyes and looked at Lady Jane. Lady Jane raised her heavy lids and smiled. It was not a nice smile.
Heather’s face had gone putty-coloured. She put a hand on her husband’s sleeve and passed him the letter. He glanced at it and then began to read it closely, his lips folded into a grim line.
“Class dismissed,” he said at last, putting down the letter and assuming a rather ghastly air of levity.
“What was all that about?” murmured Jeremy to Alice. “And why do I feel it has something to do with Lady Jane?”
“Care for a drink before dinner, Jeremy?” came Daphne’s cool voice.
“Are you paying?” asked Jeremy, his face crinkling up in a smile.
“What’s this? Men’s lib?” Daphne slid her arm into his and they left the lounge together. Alice stood stock still, biting her lip.
“I told you you were wasting your time.” Lady Jane’s large bulk hove up on Alice’s port side.
Fury like bile nearly choked Alice. “You are a horrible, unpleasant woman,” she grated.
This seemed to increase Lady Jane’s good humour. “Now, now,” she purred. “Little girls in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. And I do trust our stone-throwing days are over.”
Alice gazed at her in terror. She knew. She would tell Jeremy. She would tell everybody.
She turned and ran and did not stop running until she reached her room. She threw herself face down on the bed and cried and cried until she could cry no more. And then she became conscious of all that barbaric wilderness of Highland moor and mountain outside. Accidents happened. Anything could happen. Alice pictured Lady Jane’s heavy body plummeting down into a salmon pool, her fat face lifeless, turned upwards in the brown, peaty water. Abruptly, she fell asleep.
When she awoke, she thought it was still early because of the daylight outside, forgetting about the long light of a northern Scottish summer.
Then she saw it was ten o’clock. With a gasp, she hurtled from the bed and washed and changed. But when she went down to the dining room, it was to find that dinner was over and she had to put up with sandwiches served in the bar. Everyone seemed to have gone to bed. The barman informed her that the fat FEB had gone out walking and perhaps the other was with her – that Lady Whatsername. Alice asked curiously what a FEB was but the bartender said hurriedly he ‘shouldnae hae said that’ and polished glasses furiously.
♦
Charlie Baxter threw leaves into the river Anstey from the humpbacked bridge and watched them being churned into the boiling water and then tossed up again on their turbulent road to the sea. His aunt, Mrs Pargeter, thought he was safely in bed, but he had put on his clothes and climbed out of the window. His mother had written to say she would be arriving at the end of the week. Charlie looked forward to her visit and dreaded it at the same time. He still could not quite believe he would never see his father again. Mother had won custody of him in a violent divorce case and talked endlessly about defying the law and keeping Charlie away from his father for life. Charlie felt miserably that it was somehow all his fault; that if he had been a better child then his parents might have stayed together. He turned from the bridge and headed towards the hotel.
The sky and sea were pale grey, setting off the black twisted shapes of the mountains crouched behind the village.
Charlie walked along the harbour, watching the men getting ready for their night’s fishing. He was debating asking one of them if he could go along and was just rejecting the idea as hopeless – for surely they would demand permission from his aunt – when a soft voice said behind him, “Isn’t it time you were in bed, young man?”
Charlie glanced up. The tall figure of Constable Macbeth loomed up in the dusk. “I was just going home,” muttered Charlie.
“Well, I’ll just take a bit of a walk with you. It’s a grand night.”
“As a matter of fact, my aunt doesn’t know I’m out,” said Charlie.
“Then we would not want to be upsetting Mrs Pargeter,” said Hamish equably. “But we’ll take a wee dauner along the front.”
As Hamish Macbeth was turning away, a voice sounded from an open window of the hotel, “Throw the damn thing away. It’s like poison.” Mrs Cartwright, thought Charlie. Then came John’s Cartwright’s voice, “Oh, very well. But you’re worrying overmuch. I’ll throw this in the loch and then we can maybe get a night’s sleep.”