“Please what?”
“You know.” She cast a scared look around the dining room. “Everyone’s listening.”
“Let them listen. I’m not bound by your suburban little fears, my dear.” His voice rose to a high falsetto. “What will the neighbours think.”
And so he went on and on.
The severe Miss Gunnery, who prided herself on ‘keeping herself to herself, was driven to open her mouth and say to the tall, lanky, red-headed man opposite, “That fellow is a nag.”
“Aye, the worst kind,” agreed Hamish, and then smiled, and at that smile, Miss Gunnery thawed even more. “Mrs Harris is right,” she said. “The tea is disgustingly weak, the ham is mostly fat, and those cakes look vile. I know this place is cheap…”
“Maybe there’s a fish-and-chip shop in the village,” said Hamish hopefully. “I might take a walk there later. My dog likes fish and chips.”
“Oh, you have a dog? What breed?”
“Towser’s a mixture of every kind of breed.”
Miss Gunnery looked amused. “Towser! I didn’t think anyone called a dog Towser these days – or Rover, for that matter.”
“It started as a wee bit o’ a joke, that name,” said Hamish, “and then the poor animal got stuck wi’ it.”
“What do you do for a living, Mr Macbeth?”
The nag’s voice had temporarily ceased. There was silence in the dining room. “I’m a civil servant,” said Hamish. He did not like telling people he was a policeman because they usually shrank away from him. And he had found that when he said he was a civil servant, it sounded so boring that no one ever asked him where he worked or in what branch of the organization.
“I’m a schoolteacher,” said Miss Gunnery. “I’ve never been to Skag before. It seemed a good chance to get a cheap holiday.”
“When did you arrive?”
“Today, like the rest. We’re all the new intake.”
Mr Rogers and his wife hovered about among the tables, snatching away plates as soon as any diner looked as if he or she was finished. “We have television in the lounge across the hall,” announced Mr Rogers. His wife was carefully packing away uneaten cakes into a large plastic box. Hamish guessed, and as it turned out correctly, that they would make their appearance again during the following days until they had all either been eaten or gone stale.
The company moved through to the lounge. Bob Harris had temporarily given up baiting his wife, but Andrew Biggar made the mistake of asking Doris Harris what she would like to see.
“‘Coronation Street’ is just about to come on,” said Doris shyly. “I would like to see that if no one else minds.”
Her husband’s voice cut across the murmur of assent. “Trust you to inflict your penchant for soaps on everyone else. How you can watch that pap is beyond me.”
Hamish walked over to the television set, found ‘Coronation Street’, and turned up the volume. “I like ‘Coronation Street’,” he lied to Doris. “Always watch it.”
He sat down next to Miss Gunnery. He was aware of the nag’s voice all through the programme, sneering and jeering at the characters. He sighed and looked about the room. The chairs were arranged in a half-circle in front of the television set. The fireplace was blocked up and a two-bar electric heater stood in front of it. There was a set of bookshelves containing battered paperbacks, no doubt left behind by previous guests. The Rogerses were probably too mean to buy any. The chairs were upholstered in a scratchy fabric. The carpet was a worn-out green with faded yellow flowers. There were various dim pictures on the walls, Highland cattle in Highland mist, and a grim photograph of a Victorian lady who stared down on all. Probably the original owner, thought Hamish.
At the end of the programme, which he had only stayed to watch for Mrs Harris’s sake, he rose and said to Miss Gunnery, “I’m going to walk my dog along to the village and see if there’s a fish-and-chips shop. Want to come?”
“I don’t eat fish and chips,” she said primly, looking down her nose.
The tetchiness that had been in him for months rose to the surface again. “So you prefer that high-class muck we had for tea?”
There was an edge of contempt to his light Highland voice and Miss Gunnery flushed. “I’m being silly,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’d enjoy the walk.”
Hamish went up to get Towser, but when he descended to the hall again it was to find not only Miss Gunnery waiting for him but the rest of the party, with the exception of the Harrises.
They did not say anything like ‘We’ve decided to come too,’ but merely fell into line behind the policeman like obedient children being taken for a walk.
Mr Brett was the first to break the silence. “A stone’s throw from the sea,” he exclaimed. “You would need to have a strong arm to throw a stone that distance.”
“Are ye sure there’s a chip shop, Jimmy?” asked Cheryl. She hailed from Glasgow, where everyone was called Jimmy, or so it seemed, if you listened to the inhabitants.
“I don’t know,” said Hamish. “May be something in the pub.”
“I’m starving,” confided Tracey, stooping to pat Towser. “I could eat a horse between two bread vans.”
Cheryl slapped her playfully on the back and both girls giggled.
“It’s a pity little Mrs Harris couldn’t come as well,” said Andrew Biggar. “Don’t suppose she gets much fun. Are you in the army, by any chance, Mr Macbeth?”
“Hamish. I’m called Hamish. No, Andrew. Civil servant. What makes ye say that?”
“When I first saw you, I thought you were probably usually in uniform. Got it wrong. I’m an army man myself. Forcibly retired.”
“Oh, those dreadful redundancies,” said Miss Gunnery sympathetically. “And us so soon to be at war with Russia again.”
“Don’t say that,” said Mrs Brett, whose name turned out to be June, and her husband’s, Dermott. “It’s been a grim enough start. That man Harris should be shot.”
“You can say that again,” said Dermott Brett, so June predictably did and the couple roared with laughter at their own killing wit.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to bear this holiday,” murmured Miss Gunnery to Hamish.
“Och,” said Hamish, who was beginning to feel better, “I think they’re a nice enough bunch of people and there’s nothing like a common resentment for banding people together.” He winced remembering how common resentment had turned the villagers of Lochdubh against him.
“Harris, you mean,” said Miss Gunnery. “But his voice does go on and on and it’s not a very big place.”
They arrived at the village of Skag. It consisted of rows of stone houses, some of them thatched, built on a point. The river Skag ran on one side of the point and on the other side was the broad expanse of the North Sea. The main street was cobbled but the little side streets were not surfaced and the prevalent white sand blew everywhere, dancing in little eddies on a rising breeze. “Getting fresher,” said Hamish. “Look there. A bit of blue sky.”
They walked down to the harbour and stood at the edge. The tide was coming in and the water sucked greedily at the wooden piles underneath them. Great bunches of seaweed rose and fell. Above them, the grey canopy rolled back until bright sunlight blazed down.
Hamish sniffed the air. “I smell fish and chips,” he said, “coming from over there.”
They set out after him and found a small fish-and-chips shop. Hamish suggested they walk to the beach and eat their fish and chips there.
They made their way with their packets past the other side of the harbour, where yachts were moored in a small basin, the rising wind humming and thrumming in the shrouds. There was a sleazy café overlooking the yacht basin, still open but empty of customers, the lights of a fruit machine winking in the gloom inside.